  The alignment dependence of the ionization behavior of H$_2$ exposed to
intense ultrashort laser pulses is investigated on the basis of solutions of
the full time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation within the fixed-nuclei and
dipole approximation. The total ionization yields as well as the
energy-resolved electron spectra have been calculated for a parallel and a
perpendicular orientation of the molecular axis with respect to the
polarization axis of linear polarized laser pulses. For most, but not all
considered laser peak intensities the parallel aligned molecules are easier to
ionize. Furthermore, it is shown that the velocity formulation of the
strong-field approximation predicts a simple interference pattern for the ratio
of the energy-resolved electron spectra obtained for the two orientations, but
this is not confirmed by the full ab initio results.
