First things first: Hitler was a murdering piece of gak, and may he rot in hell for the misery and suffering he caused. Let's get that out of the way.
Secondly, in view of the new Dakka policy on politics, this topic is strictly military. I know that military and politics are so often intertwined,(the famous Clausewitz quote springs to mind) but this is not the place for that. This is PURELY a focus on the military aspect of the Eastern Front campaigns, and not the murderous racial policies of the Third Reich. But I readily admit the latter could not have occurred in occupied Europe without the former. But we focus on the military side of things. OK?
Lastly, this is an objective look at the facts of what actually happened in the various Eastern Front campaigns. The reason why unfairly is in inverted commas, because I'm trying not appear sympathetic to Hitler, whilst acknowledging the popular historical narrative may be wrong. It's a delicate balance, but I hope people see where I'm coming from. We're treating this as we would objectively treat any other historical figure.
Anyway, let's go. In the last few years, I've been reading a lot of books by Robert Citino, David Glantz, David Stahel etc etc books which I would recommend to anybody who's interested in the Eastern Front of WW2. And they're insightful, and they challenge you, and they make you look again at the popular narrative. We've all heard of Stalingrad, the German army being stopped outside Moscow in 1941, Kursk, Bagration etc etc
And we've all heard people say that Barbarossa shouldn't have happened, Hitler should have attacked Moscow earlier, Stalingrad was a mistake, he delayed too long at Kursk etc etc etc
And because of Hitler's infamous reputation, it's pretty much accepted wisdom amongst the general public. Or should it be?
I'm starting to think differently, and to shift a lot of the blame onto the military professionals, and from my reading I get the following:
1. Hitler trusted and accepted a flawed Barbarossa plan from military professionals who should have known better.
2. German military intelligence's assessment of Red Army strength was so risible as to be almost useless. Where did all those extra Red Army divisions and tanks come from? As Franz Halder would say.
3. That trying to grab the wheat and oil of the Ukraine and the Caucasus, instead of focusing on Moscow, made better strategic sense. Capturing Moscow would have done nothing. Capturing, say, Baku, would have hurt the Red Army more.
4. German commanders were all over the shop and floundering near Moscow in late 1941, and Hitler's stand fast order probably saved the Germans from an even greater calamity.
5. Franz Halder shares just as much of the blame as Hitler.
6. When Hitler proposes new campaigns in 1942, far from advocating a defensive posture, as we're often led to believe, the Generals are in complete agreement with Hitler.
7. Far from micro-managing, the vast distances of travel and communication in Russia, give German field commanders a lot of freedom to act independently from OKW.
8. That the debacle of the 1942 summer campaign is largely due to Hoth and Bock's reluctance to press forward at Voronezh, which threw a spanner in the works of Case Blue, a plan which had little room for error.
9. That breakout at Stalingrad might have been attempted, and that a reluctant Hitler was almost about to rubber-stamp it...until Von Manstein threw a spanner in the works by saying 6th army should hold.
10. In contrast to Guderian's narrative that Kursk was seen as a mistake, German generals welcomed the chance to attack, and that there was little to no opposition to Kursk.
11. The delays needed to get the Panther tank ready to go, were a necessary move to counter Red Army armoured superiority. Hitler knew the numbers, and knew the army needed an edge to defeat Red Army armour. Panzer IVs, although good tanks, wouldn't cut it in a war of attrition.
12. Hitler's stand fast orders in 1944 make sense when you consider Germany's crippling lack of oil. Where does the fuel come from to make these grand and sweeping counter-attacks his generals advocate?
13. Franz Halder is a git, and deserves more blame
and so on and so on...
Hitler made mistakes, and is ultimately responsible for Barbarossa and its aftermath, no argument there, but his military professionals deserve an equal, if not more, share of the blame IMO. Some of them blundered badly. I would aportion blame to be 55% the generals and 45% Hitler up until 1943, when the war was lost and what happened afterwards was to late to make a difference anyway on the Eastern Front.
After the war, for obvious reasons, Hitler was the easy fall guy for retired German generals writing their memoirs, and it was easy for them to shift the blame onto Hitler for their mistakes. Von Manstein and Guderian being two examples. The fatcs, however, say a different story. For example,
In 1940, a senior German officer was captured with sensitive operational plans for invading France, despite clear orders not to fly around with them, and it happened again in 1942 with Case Blue, denting Hitler's confidence in his generals. . You can't blame Hitler for those blunders.
So, what do other people think? And please stick to purely military matters. I look forward to a good debate.
I am going to keep this to a quick reply before heading to bed, but you mentioned you have been reading some stuff about this subject. I wonder, what kind of things have you been reading? reports, books, memoires, etc?
As I kinda want to read more about the eastern front myself, being that I have only read Lost Victories by Erich von Manstein.
Marxist artist wrote: Depends wether you think the guy at the top is ultimately responsible for everything as he appointments the generals.
Yes and no to be honest. Obviously, Nazi Germany was a totalitarian regime, but if you contrast that to one of the Democracies, say the USA, and you look at American defeats in WW2 (Pearl Harbour, Philippines, Kasserine Pass etc ) then nobody really blames FDR for those setbacks, even though FDR was obviously the Commander-In-Chief of the US military and is ultimately responsible, the buck stops here and all that...
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Cruxeh wrote: I am going to keep this to a quick reply before heading to bed, but you mentioned you have been reading some stuff about this subject. I wonder, what kind of things have you been reading? reports, books, memoires, etc?
As I kinda want to read more about the eastern front myself, being that I have only read Lost Victories by Erich von Manstein.
Anything I can get my hands on. I don't speak Russian or German, so my reading material is limited to what is in English, but from the top of my head, I was reading:
Hans Von Luck, Citino's Death of the Wehrmacht, anything by David Glantz, and Richard Overy does a small, but good primer to the Eastern Front - 'Russia's War.'
An interesting study is to compare Manstein's Lost Victories, and Guderian's Panzer Leader, to what the above historians are saying about those two commanders.
TIK, a youtube channel, does good WW2 videos on the Eastern Front, and North Africa.
Hitler's generals were crazy about the invasion for a simple strategic reason - Starting a new war on a geographical different front than the two (Europe and Africa) fonts they already had was a huge mistake. Even if Germany had been the numerically superior opponent, creating a whole new direction and drain for logistics should be avoided when possible.
The only reason this would have been a good idea is if it was certain that Russia was already planning on striking. The reports of the Red Army's weakness speaks against him there - the Red Army wasn't considered a major threat.
Tactical mistakes are often the fault of those on the ground, but Hitler's job was the strategic. The overall picture. He was terrible at this, being predisposed to risky operations that often denied the realities of both men, machines and logistics. If he had been sensible at all, he would have actually consolidated his gains, focused on the European theater, and probably forced England out of the war by any means necessary. His German state would have been much larger by the end and the Nazis would have been an effective state for at least a dozen more years before they'd either need to expand again or collapse utterly.
Luckily/By God's Will/Via the Laws of Murphy/etc, Hitler was a military disaster for the Nazis. He constantly ignored his generals and focused on the worst paths forward to victory. His generals, who developed the Blitzkrieg, the mobile tank warfare and our earliest combined arms, aren't to blame for anything other than support a horrific regime because 'hey, fitz is doing it too!'
I think there is a certain amount of sense in the common narrative. Hitler lacked any kind of military quality and whether or not he had agreement from his generals or not, a lot of the Eastern Front warfare was, at a macro level, down to him. He was the one who insisted that Stalingrad, Leningrad and Moscow all be crushed no matter what, he was the one who okayed the renewal of the offensives and he was the one who signed off on not pulling out of Stalingrad. Moreover, he was the one that set the war goals, which were far too vague, grandiose and mired in political rhetoric to be attainable; I think you can argue that Hitler essentially set his generals an impossible task then pushed them to keep attempting it for the next 3 years.
However, I think the deeper issue is at the operational and doctrinal level rather than the grand strategy. The entire German war machine was built around the Blitzkrieg idea, from its doctrine to its equipment to its leadership to its training. The successes in Western Europe reaffirmed this, and by the time Barbarossa came about, it seemed to be an 'I win' button. Having ploughed through the Belgium, Norway, France, they had complete faith in the methodology and some very dodgy intelligence suggested that their forces compared very favourably to the Russians, so naturally, they didn't see fit to adapt the practice for an entirely theatre.
The weather, the terrain, the nature of the Russian defence all play a part in this, but it's ultimately a matter of scale. Blitzkrieg works when you can wrap the campaign up in a handful of weeks, when the enemy only have so far to withdraw before they have to surrender, and when you can deny them any opportunity to put together an effective, coordinated defence. That is simply not possible in Russia due to the size of it. The Germans were essentially punching jelly with that kind of offensive eastwards, and it's not just the depth but the breadth. The width of the front made it so easy for the Russians that rallied to form pockets of resistance that in turn, disrupted supply lines, diverted impetus and materiel away from the spearhead of the attacks and generally made themselves a nuisance.
Now, you can kind of bring this back round to Hitler and/or the generals, but if you do it's a matter of short-sightedness rather than incompetence; when they spend most of a decade preparing exclusively for one kind of war, they are not really in a position to suddenly switch over their practices, doctrine and equipment for something entirely different. At which point, the question becomes 'why, in the period between rearming and invading the USSR, did they not take these factors into account?'
I think some credit does also have to go to the Russians. Zhukov manages to put together one hell of a counterattack after Stalingrad, and the ability of the USSR to endure the most prolonged and draining sieges of the war is remarkable. Yes, they had the population and managed to relocate the industry, but in human terms the level of national willpower and fortitude required to stick it out has to be accounted for somewhere.
In short though, I don't think it's possible to put together a state of affairs in which what followed Barbarossa would ever have worked without rewriting the history of the entire war and the preceding decade. Even if the initial attack was better prepared and managed, the war goals were too muddied and unrealistic. Even if the Russian resistance had been as weak as the intel suggested, the Germans would still have become exhausted before the USSR capitulated. Even if the strategy was absolutely nailed, Germany didn't have the doctrine, equipment or materiel in place to pull it off. Maybe if they take Stalingrad and the oil fields on the initial thrust, they have a chance, but I don't think even that was really possible.
There's a reason that in the history of modern warfare, there's not really been an invasion of the heartland of Russia that ended in anything but disaster for the attacker.* It undid Napoleon and it undid Hitler, both times that's in large part down to the fact that it's a region that's overtly difficult to fight in. Supply chains from central Europe become bloated and ridiculously long and slow, communication and coordination equally so. The climate is openly hostile to prolonged campaigns and the geography too vast for a swift decisive victory. Perhaps most importantly, it's a theatre that requires total commitment and the moment you falter and begin to withdraw, you've got to retreat over thousands of miles with the enemy free to harass, pursue and pick you apart at their leisure.
And to bring it all back to Hitler, I'll throw in Napoleon again; as a leader in both the military and political sense, Napoleon vastly oustripped anything the Germans had to offer and had an army that was, contemporaneously, indisputably the greatest in Europe. And even he couldn't pull off an invasion of Russia. Hitler was, by comparison, a bumbling idiot in military matters, a much worse thinker on the strategic level and while there's a lot more in play than just his uselessness in that regard, he certainly didn't make things any better for the Germans on the Eastern Front...
*WW1 is an exception here, but that is also Russia at it's very weakest and turning on itself as much as anything else.
ChargerIIC wrote: Hitler's generals were crazy about the invasion for a simple strategic reason - Starting a new war on a geographical different front than the two (Europe and Africa) fonts they already had was a huge mistake. Even if Germany had been the numerically superior opponent, creating a whole new direction and drain for logistics should be avoided when possible.
The only reason this would have been a good idea is if it was certain that Russia was already planning on striking. The reports of the Red Army's weakness speaks against him there - the Red Army wasn't considered a major threat.
Tactical mistakes are often the fault of those on the ground, but Hitler's job was the strategic. The overall picture. He was terrible at this, being predisposed to risky operations that often denied the realities of both men, machines and logistics. If he had been sensible at all, he would have actually consolidated his gains, focused on the European theater, and probably forced England out of the war by any means necessary. His German state would have been much larger by the end and the Nazis would have been an effective state for at least a dozen more years before they'd either need to expand again or collapse utterly.
Luckily/By God's Will/Via the Laws of Murphy/etc, Hitler was a military disaster for the Nazis. He constantly ignored his generals and focused on the worst paths forward to victory. His generals, who developed the Blitzkrieg, the mobile tank warfare and our earliest combined arms, aren't to blame for anything other than support a horrific regime because 'hey, fitz is doing it too!'
But sometimes, listening to his generals, was a mistake by Hitler. As I said above, there was an almost universal consensus to break into Stalingrad and rescue 6th Army. Hitler is slowly swinging around to the idea. Von Paulus is firing out messages saying he's ready to go, hurry the feth up and give me the green right.
And then Von Manstein turns up and says 6th army should hold out, and then the Luftwaffe says we can supply them by air
and Hitler then swings back to last man standing at Stalingrad mode...
Could 6th army have broken out? It's doubtful. But given what we know what happened to them, it had to be worth a go.
But sometimes, listening to his generals, was a mistake by Hitler. As I said above, there was an almost universal consensus to break into Stalingrad and rescue 6th Army. Hitler is slowly swinging around to the idea. Von Paulus is firing out messages saying he's ready to go, hurry the feth up and give me the green right.
And then Von Manstein turns up and says 6th army should hold out, and then the Luftwaffe says we can supply them by air
and Hitler then swings back to last man standing at Stalingrad mode...
I think this speaks to the bigger issue here; Hitler was irrational and irrationally committed to a very particular set of beliefs. If someone comes along and tells him that there's still a way to make those beliefs a reality, of course he's going to listen because at that point he's not thinking about how practical or even possible that suggestion might be, just that it exists. If Hitler was thinking rationally he'd never have invaded in the first place (or at least, delayed it until the rest of the opposition was beaten) but he was a fundamentalist to the point of being blind to reality.
He's going to agree to anything that helps him realise those goals, no matter how outlandish. See also the various 'doomsday weapons' that just ate up funding and effort in the latter years of the war; someone was able to convince him their latest device was The One that was going to end the war, and got the go-ahead no matter how impractical or ineffective the results were.
In the end, it was Hitler's decision to initiate Operation Barbarossa that caused the German defeat (mostly) at Russian hands. Without the Soviets beating on the eastern front, Germany could have made invasion from the west so expensive that getting terms for peace instead of absolute surrender quite possible.
Paradigm wrote: There is certainly a lot to talk about here!
I think there is a certain amount of sense in the common narrative. Hitler lacked any kind of military quality and whether or not he had agreement from his generals or not, a lot of the Eastern Front warfare was, at a macro level, down to him. He was the one who insisted that Stalingrad, Leningrad and Moscow all be crushed no matter what, he was the one who okayed the renewal of the offensives and he was the one who signed off on not pulling out of Stalingrad. Moreover, he was the one that set the war goals, which were far too vague, grandiose and mired in political rhetoric to be attainable; I think you can argue that Hitler essentially set his generals an impossible task then pushed them to keep attempting it for the next 3 years.
However, I think the deeper issue is at the operational and doctrinal level rather than the grand strategy. The entire German war machine was built around the Blitzkrieg idea, from its doctrine to its equipment to its leadership to its training. The successes in Western Europe reaffirmed this, and by the time Barbarossa came about, it seemed to be an 'I win' button. Having ploughed through the Belgium, Norway, France, they had complete faith in the methodology and some very dodgy intelligence suggested that their forces compared very favourably to the Russians, so naturally, they didn't see fit to adapt the practice for an entirely theatre.
The weather, the terrain, the nature of the Russian defence all play a part in this, but it's ultimately a matter of scale. Blitzkrieg works when you can wrap the campaign up in a handful of weeks, when the enemy only have so far to withdraw before they have to surrender, and when you can deny them any opportunity to put together an effective, coordinated defence. That is simply not possible in Russia due to the size of it. The Germans were essentially punching jelly with that kind of offensive eastwards, and it's not just the depth but the breadth. The width of the front made it so easy for the Russians that rallied to form pockets of resistance that in turn, disrupted supply lines, diverted impetus and materiel away from the spearhead of the attacks and generally made themselves a nuisance.
Now, you can kind of bring this back round to Hitler and/or the generals, but if you do it's a matter of short-sightedness rather than incompetence; when they spend most of a decade preparing exclusively for one kind of war, they are not really in a position to suddenly switch over their practices, doctrine and equipment for something entirely different. At which point, the question becomes 'why, in the period between rearming and invading the USSR, did they not take these factors into account?'
I think some credit does also have to go to the Russians. Zhukov manages to put together one hell of a counterattack after Stalingrad, and the ability of the USSR to endure the most prolonged and draining sieges of the war is remarkable. Yes, they had the population and managed to relocate the industry, but in human terms the level of national willpower and fortitude required to stick it out has to be accounted for somewhere.
In short though, I don't think it's possible to put together a state of affairs in which what followed Barbarossa would ever have worked without rewriting the history of the entire war and the preceding decade. Even if the initial attack was better prepared and managed, the war goals were too muddied and unrealistic. Even if the Russian resistance had been as weak as the intel suggested, the Germans would still have become exhausted before the USSR capitulated. Even if the strategy was absolutely nailed, Germany didn't have the doctrine, equipment or materiel in place to pull it off. Maybe if they take Stalingrad and the oil fields on the initial thrust, they have a chance, but I don't think even that was really possible.
There's a reason that in the history of modern warfare, there's not really been an invasion of the heartland of Russia that ended in anything but disaster for the attacker.* It undid Napoleon and it undid Hitler, both times that's in large part down to the fact that it's a region that's overtly difficult to fight in. Supply chains from central Europe become bloated and ridiculously long and slow, communication and coordination equally so. The climate is openly hostile to prolonged campaigns and the geography too vast for a swift decisive victory. Perhaps most importantly, it's a theatre that requires total commitment and the moment you falter and begin to withdraw, you've got to retreat over thousands of miles with the enemy free to harass, pursue and pick you apart at their leisure.
And to bring it all back to Hitler, I'll throw in Napoleon again; as a leader in both the military and political sense, Napoleon vastly oustripped anything the Germans had to offer and had an army that was, contemporaneously, indisputably the greatest in Europe. And even he couldn't pull off an invasion of Russia. Hitler was, by comparison, a bumbling idiot in military matters, a much worse thinker on the strategic level and while there's a lot more in play than just his uselessness in that regard, he certainly didn't make things any better for the Germans on the Eastern Front...
*WW1 is an exception here, but that is also Russia at it's very weakest and turning on itself as much as anything else.
A good post, a lot to debate, but alas, it's nearly midnight in the UK, so I'm heading off.
I will try and go through it line by line tomorrow. But to address one of your points:
I don't think the Stalingrad counter-attack is the stroke of genius it's often made out to be.
I'm not trying to demean the Russian people, or the huge sacrifices they made, or the terrible suffering they endured in WW2
But when you consider the operational maps, the fact that the Germans have fallen flat on their faces by then, and the inertia gripping OKW at the time, a blind man could see the Germans were in trouble and ripe for this move by Zhukov. Hell, even the Germans knew they were in trouble before it happened.
The Romanians and the Italians should never have been put in that position. The Germans knew it, and the Russians certainly knew it. The Russians were pushing at an open door IMO.
1. Hitler trusted and accepted a flawed Barbarossa plan from military professionals who should have known better.
Barbarossa was a workable plan assuming you were hell bent in invading the Soviet Union.
Hitler delayed crucial weeks for a Yugoslav campaign and interfered.
2. German military intelligence's assessment of Red Army strength was so risible as to be almost useless. Where did all those extra Red Army divisions and tanks come from? As Franz Halder would say.
It wasnt that far off, but could only calculate facing forces, not the speed of recruitment. Furthermore the new Soviet hardware was so new and 'advanced' the Red army didn't know anything about it either. Hence why grossly inferior tanks defeated T-34's at Tolochino, despite it being the first encounter and a major culture shock.
The OKW counted on a collapse of the Soviet Union due to hatred of Stalin's policies, however the political groundwork and doctrine required to support that was not only lacking but worked against for ideological reasons.
3. That trying to grab the wheat and oil of the Ukraine and the Caucasus, instead of focusing on Moscow, made better strategic sense. Capturing Moscow would have done nothing. Capturing, say, Baku, would have hurt the Red Army more.
Hitler changed his mind and chnaged it again in autumn of 1941 making all three objectives out of reach.
4. German commanders were all over the shop and floundering near Moscow in late 1941, and Hitler's stand fast order probably saved the Germans from an even greater calamity.
They reached Moscow earlier then were recalled/unsupported to follow Hitler's new directive..
6. When Hitler proposes new campaigns in 1942, far from advocating a defensive posture, as we're often led to believe, the Generals are in complete agreement with Hitler.
I doubt this is true, opposing Hitler was not shrewd. Besides in 1942 a rapid offensive was Germany's only option. Win quickly or loose entirely, it was the last chance. A large scale push was wise under the circumstances.
7. Far from micro-managing, the vast distances of travel and communication in Russia, give German field commanders a lot of freedom to act independently from OKW.
Hitler cannot be credited with this. Tactical independence was theorised in WW1 by the German Stosstruppen, leading to Rommels early adaption and book infantry attack. Guderian respected Rommels theories and incorprated them on a much wider scale.
8. That the debacle of the 1942 summer campaign is largely due to Hoth and Bock's reluctance to press forward at Voronezh, which threw a spanner in the works of Case Blue, a plan which had little room for error.
Not quite fair, the Germans had on shot, and had to make few to no mistakes. Such mistakes were indeed few, the generals made a good show of a very bad situation with real but narrow hopes if victory.
The real failure comes back to Hitler and the Nazi party. Western Russia was ripe for liberation from Stalin, but that was soured as the Slavic peoples were a race enemy. Second Hitlers obsession with poliical showboating and 'capture the flag objectives. This made sense at Moscow, but not at Stalingrad or Leningrad.
9. That breakout at Stalingrad might have been attempted, and that a reluctant Hitler was almost about to rubber-stamp it...until Von Manstein threw a spanner in the works by saying 6th army should hold.
6th army was doomed. The weather was worsening and the Wehrmavht were ill equipped to fight a winter campaign. They had two choices: not go into Stalingrad to begin with, or ;later to prevent encirclement and hold out until spring.
10. In contrast to Guderian's narrative that Kursk was seen as a mistake, German generals welcomed the chance to attack, and that there was little to no opposition to Kursk.
Kursk was a sound plan, but the Lucy Ring sold the plans to the Soviets. So it became a trap.
11. The delays needed to get the Panther tank ready to go, were a necessary move to counter Red Army armoured superiority. Hitler knew the numbers, and knew the army needed an edge to defeat Red Army armour. Panzer IVs, although good tanks, wouldn't cut it in a war of attrition.
This cannot be blamed on anyone, the request to copy the T-34 was not realistic. Germany could not match soviet numbers, they required quality. The counter came later with the StG III. A quality armoured vehicle that was cheap to manufacture.
12. Hitler's stand fast orders in 1944 make sense when you consider Germany's crippling lack of oil. Where does the fuel come from to make these grand and sweeping counter-attacks his generals advocate?
By this time any commands given were an irrelevancy. the soviets had overhelming production. Right way, wrong way, its a finger in the dam.
I've read a lot of the same authors you have, Stahel in particular is a favorite of mine. It's been a while though so I'm going to be fuzzy with specifics.
At the outset, I find it really hard to apportion anything but a tiny amount of the blame to the field commanders. Barbarossa was entirely Hitler's baby, brought on by his inability to subjugate the United Kingdom and also the idealogical crusade against communism that was so important to him. Were it not for his own personal desire to vanquish the Soviet Union, I highly doubt anyone in the OKW would have seriously proposed an invasion. That right there makes him 100% responsible, at least in my opinion, for everything that happened in that theater from that point onward. It's easy to say here that high command could have dissuaded him from doing this, but by this point in the war Hitler was already convinced of his own genius after so many successful campaigns that his generals strongly advised against. There was no talking him out of it.
Even when you get into more specific details, it's hard not to square the blame on him. Barbarossa was executed with a baffling lack of intelligence, and what little intelligence they did have was refuted. Their maps were years out of date, and Hitler rejected Guderian's assessment of the Soviet Union's tank strength - an assessment that turned out to actually be correct. The plan itself was also pretty bonkers. I forget which generals specifically objected to engaging on such a wide frontage, but I know at least one of the army group commanders had serious reservations about diluting German strength to capture Leningrad AND Moscow AND Kharkov. Hitler's needless micromanaging, like shuffling all of the panzers away Army Group Centre to capture Kharkov, started here and would become a habit for the rest of the war.
Case Blue is a similar story. Army Group B was in a position to capture Stalingrad when it was relatively undefended, but Hitler again ordered the panzers over to Army Group A on account of the slow progress they were making into the Caucasus. By the time Army Group B was again ready to march on Stalingrad, several weeks had passed and the city had become a fortress. Now, I'm not sure how much of the actual operational plan was Hitler's own concoction, but it was a pretty major overextension of the line that was absolutely begging for exactly the kind of encirclement that the Germans had used time and again while fighting the Red Army. In this instance I'd be willing to concede that this particular disaster may not be entirely HItler's fault, but only because I don't know how involved he was in the planning.
You mentioned that, with the exception of Guderian, the generals were in support of attacking at Kursk. I'm not sure whether this is true, but even if it is I find it hard to condemn the military leaders for this. The Kursk salient was of a fairly significant size and high command was cognizant of the fact that they were losing the initiative. Leaving the bulge intact meant granting the Soviets a launching pad for a future offensive and tying up more German divisions to cover such an extended frontline when they were really suffering from manpower shortages as it was. Delaying the offensive to deploy the newer Panther and Tiger tanks was, I believe, entirely Hitler's decision and so, again, I feel he has to take the blame for the debacle that happened there. Kursk may or may not have succeeded if they attacked according to their original plan instead of delaying to the end of July, but we'll never know.
From '44 onwards it's hard to lay the blame on anyone, the situation was just that hopeless. By this point the Germans had spent their armour at Kursk and didn't have the capacity to launch any kind of meaningful offensive. More of Hitler's bone headed decisions followed, like the absurd 'fortress city' doctrine and diverting the last of his panzers to Hungary when the Red Army was already dangerously close to Berlin. Ordering his divisions to stand fast on the belief that the Wehrhmacht should never surrender ground they bled for led to wasting precious manpower that they couldn't spare and only accelerated the collapse.
What I CAN fault army leadership for was the total lack of consideration for the differences between Russia and their previous military conquests. The lack of paved roads in the Soviet Union, the sheer distances they had to traverse to reach their strategic objectives, how they were going to actually supply their armies given the sheer size of the area, how a Luftwaffe depleted from the Battle of Britain was going to secure the air superiority on which blitzkrieg depended - these are but a few of the very important issues that were not considered. The fact that they relied on capturing Russian locomotives to keep the men fed and supplied says a lot about the German Army's logistical capability.
Now, having said that, I will say that I completely understand why these things weren't considered. By the summer of 1941 the Wehrmacht had a well earned reputation of invincibility. In the span of a year and a half they had successfully conquered France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece. These campaigns were all too short to really highlight the deficiencies of blitzkrieg, and there was no reason to believe that the Red Army would be more capable than the opposition they had already faced. The reason that I hesitate to really rake the generals over the coals for not thinking about this stuff is that I find it highly unlikely Hitler would have listened to these concerns even if they were presented to him. He already thought of himself as a great conqueror and found their overly cautious disposition extremely distasteful.
So yeah, in conclusion it's hard for me to get anywhere near a 50/50 accountability with the top brass. His continuous meddling exacerbated many of the disasters faced by the Ost Heer, and his ego had inflated to the point that he didn't have anyone he considered to be a peer. You can't advise someone that thinks he's a messiah, and at the end of the day he was the one in charge. It was his choice to attack, his choice to prosecute the war the way that he did, and his choice to surround himself with yes men more concerned with carrying out his will than objectively assessing his directives.
However, I think the deeper issue is at the operational and doctrinal level rather than the grand strategy. The entire German war machine was built around the Blitzkrieg idea, from its doctrine to its equipment to its leadership to its training. The successes in Western Europe reaffirmed this, and by the time Barbarossa came about, it seemed to be an 'I win' button. Having ploughed through the Belgium, Norway, France, they had complete faith in the methodology and some very dodgy intelligence suggested that their forces compared very favourably to the Russians, so naturally, they didn't see fit to adapt the practice for an entirely theatre.
There was a counter factor, unlike the other territories invaded the population loathed their masters. Thev Germans did expect and to some part did exploit this, but any gains were undone by Hitlers rhetoric, and the policies of the SS.
The weather, the terrain, the nature of the Russian defence all play a part in this, but it's ultimately a matter of scale. Blitzkrieg works when you can wrap the campaign up in a handful of weeks, when the enemy only have so far to withdraw before they have to surrender, and when you can deny them any opportunity to put together an effective, coordinated defence. That is simply not possible in Russia due to the size of it.
Scale comes into it, but the German advance during Barbarossa was also upscaled to match. The Wehrmacht did reach the key objectives, but the campaign was six weeks late due to the invasion of Yugoslavia and Hitlers refusal to wait until the same time in 1942.
The Germans were essentially punching jelly with that kind of offensive eastwards, and it's not just the depth but the breadth. The width of the front made it so easy for the Russians that rallied to form pockets of resistance that in turn, disrupted supply lines, diverted impetus and materiel away from the spearhead of the attacks and generally made themselves a nuisance.
These pockets need not have rallied if the Germans had made clear/true their war was against Communism not Russians.
Now, you can kind of bring this back round to Hitler and/or the generals, but if you do it's a matter of short-sightedness rather than incompetence; when they spend most of a decade preparing exclusively for one kind of war, they are not really in a position to suddenly switch over their practices, doctrine and equipment for something entirely different. At which point, the question becomes 'why, in the period between rearming and invading the USSR, did they not take these factors into account?'
They adapted very quickly. warm weather clothing was rushed to the front as priority, though this was delayed again my meddling. there were two insurmountable obstacles, first the lack of tracked lofistical transport, only a portion was tracked, the majority wheeled. Which was totally inadequate for Russian roads. had the Germans surveyed the route properly and had more tracked logisrical support the invasion would have kept its pace. also the six weeks delay. Hitler had the option of ignoring the fall of the pro-Axis government in Yugoslavia and pressing on with Barbarossa on its original timetable, this would have permitted completion of primary objectives during the Summer of 1941.
In short though, I don't think it's possible to put together a state of affairs in which what followed Barbarossa would ever have worked without rewriting the history of the entire war and the preceding decade. Even if the initial attack was better prepared and managed, the war goals were too muddied and unrealistic. Even if the Russian resistance had been as weak as the intel suggested, the Germans would still have become exhausted before the USSR capitulated. Even if the strategy was absolutely nailed, Germany didn't have the doctrine, equipment or materiel in place to pull it off. Maybe if they take Stalingrad and the oil fields on the initial thrust, they have a chance, but I don't think even that was really possible.
Stalin would never capitulate, but if Moscow fell by August 1941 and a new government put in place with assurances for the non-Communist Russian regime the Soviet Union could have imploded. Stalin himself new this and stayed in Moscow in the winter of 1941 as a symbol.
There's a reason that in the history of modern warfare, there's not really been an invasion of the heartland of Russia that ended in anything but disaster for the attacker.* It undid Napoleon and it undid Hitler,
Had the Uk and France supported Czechoslovakia in 1938 we might currently believe that Blitzkrieg itself was a pipe dream, The Czechs could have won that fight but had no support.
We would then rightfully think that Germans plans to conquer France in six weeks to be nonsense.
The actual lesson of Barbarossa was that it failed, not that it was impossible. After all several key elements nearly worked, the armies made time and reached Moscow on schedule. given the extra six weeks, No interference from Hitler and a solid self determination and anti-Communism policy to sell the the average Russian it was very plausible.
Plausible however doesn't make it a good idea. Hitler didn't need that fight. 1941 could have been focused on a bomber offensive in the Atlantic to support the U-boats and resources for a successful push the Suez canal and a threat of liberation of India from British rule. Hitler should have convinced Tojo to concentrate entirely against the British also, with guarantee of oil for Japan from other sources in the British empire.
Stalin could then be dealt with after the spring thaw hardened in 1942.
Scale comes into it, but the German advance during Barbarossa was also upscaled to match. The Wehrmacht did reach the key objectives, but the campaign was six weeks late due to the invasion of Yugoslavia and Hitlers refusal to wait until the same time in 1942.
The advance was upscaled, yes, but hardly upscaled 'to match.' Graphic presentations that show the speed of the Ost Heer's advance into Russia are incredibly misleading. The panzers did get that far that fast, yes, but blitzkrieg relied on advancing infantry to mop up the encircled pockets and, given the sheer distances involved in this theater, that was very hard to do. As a result of this, the advance was not decisively seizing ground. Red Army divisions harassed the rear areas incessantly, and many of the soldiers that were encircled in this way became leaders of partisan forces that plagued the Ost Heer for the rest of the war.
Additionally, a lot of people harp about the delay that Yugoslavia created but the rasputitsa, or rain season, in Russia went much longer than it usually does in 1941. Barbarossa could not have started any sooner than it did as a result of this.
These pockets need not have rallied if the Germans had made clear/true their war was against Communism not Russians.
This is not a fair point to make. You would have had to remove Hitler from the equation entirely for the war in the East not to be a racially driven crusade, and if you do that then it's highly unlikely the war would have started at all.
Hitler had the option of ignoring the fall of the pro-Axis government in Yugoslavia and pressing on with Barbarossa on its original timetable, this would have permitted completion of primary objectives during the Summer of 1941.
As above, Barbarossa could not have begun earlier than it did. It's also highly presumptuous that the timetable is the only reason they did not achieve their objectives in the summer of '41. There were many factors that contributed to the Ost Heer's failure to achieve a decisive victory in that year.
The actual lesson of Barbarossa was that it failed, not that it was impossible.
This is highly, highly debatable. There has been a lot of discourse on whether the fall of Moscow would have actually ended the war on the Eastern Front. It had strategic significance as a railroad hub and production centre, but it's not so cut and dry as to say that Moscow would have meant victory. Most of the Soviet Union's industry had been moved east of the Urals which is well beyond Moscow's eastern city limits. In terms of breaking Russia's ability to wage war, taking Moscow would not have done that. Political ramifications are something else entirely and I can't really speak to that. Whether Stalin would have been forced out or not, I can't say. Victory over the Soviet Union was a serious longshot, if not outright impossible given what they had and what they were up against.
1941 could have been focused on a bomber offensive in the Atlantic to support the U-boats and resources for a successful push the Suez canal and a threat of liberation of India from British rule.
A bomber offensive into the Atlantic in '41 would not have been feasible. The Luftwaffe was hurting dearly after the Battle of Britain, having lost many of its planes and most of its seasoned pilots. In addition I don't think they had an actual machine capable of mounting a serious air offensive over the ocean, the Germans had only 2-engine bombers which would not have had the range or the payload to seriously threaten the Atlantic convoys. The Suez Canal would have been quite a herculean task, and it wasn't like they weren't trying. The Mediterranean was a logistical nightmare for both sides, but the Axis in particular had a hard time supplying their armies in North Africa on account of the Allied bastion at Malta.
Hitler should have convinced Tojo to concentrate entirely against the British also, with guarantee of oil for Japan from other sources in the British empire.
Stalin could then be dealt with after the spring thaw hardened in 1942.
You're seriously overstating the level of cooperation between those two Axis powers. Germany and Japan had very little in the way of coordinated planning. Both parties were struck dumb by each other's foreign policy, the Germans by the Russo-Japanese peace after Khalkin Ghol and the Japanese by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Hitler convincing Tojo is, to my mind, an unfair hypothetical because it assumes a much closer relationship between the two nations than the one that actually existed.
Haven't got time for a very long response but to touch on a couple of points,
German logistics were poor, their logistical tail was not mechanised/motorised it still mostly horse borne and relied upon railheads.
Soviet strength was reckoned to be so poor qualitivly due to the Winter War where the poorly equipped and understrength Finnish army fought it to a stand still.
Break out of 6th army was necessarily delayed, Manstein had to gather forces to both hold the Soviet offensive back and counter attack, 6th army could have broken through easily enough when the Kessel was forming but they would have lost most of their meagre transport and the men would have been exhausted and the whole formation would have needed to be withdrawn to rest and requip themselves. Germany didn't have the strength available to allow them do so until Manstein's reinforcements were gathered, so they were shafted regardless.
Many Russians and especially Ukrainians joint the German armed forces despite to the Nazi rhetoric not only to provide guards for the tail and hubs but also as fighting formations (even in the SS).
No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Orlanth wrote: The actual lesson of Barbarossa was that it failed, not that it was impossible.
This is highly, highly debatable. There has been a lot of discourse on whether the fall of Moscow would have actually ended the war on the Eastern Front. It had strategic significance as a railroad hub and production centre, but it's not so cut and dry as to say that Moscow would have meant victory. Most of the Soviet Union's industry had been moved east of the Urals which is well beyond Moscow's eastern city limits. In terms of breaking Russia's ability to wage war, taking Moscow would not have done that. Political ramifications are something else entirely and I can't really speak to that. Whether Stalin would have been forced out or not, I can't say. Victory over the Soviet Union was a serious longshot, if not outright impossible given what they had and what they were up against.
Taking Moscow would have meant nothing. It is just a city, a pile of brick and concrete, nothing more. The Russians burned Moscow behind them when Napoleon was about to take it, they would have burned Moscow again had Hitler been able to take it. Same goes for Stalingrad or Leningrad. They were symbolic cities because of their names and the heroism of their defenders, but ultimately irrelevant to the larger war. If they had fallen it would have done little to impact the strength of the Red Army. This is the way Russian armies have fought for centuries whenever Russia was invaded. Just burn everything behind you and let attrition take its toll on the enemy before counter-attacking and defeating their weakened forces. As long as there is space left to retreat to there is hope, and in Russia you never run out of space.
HMMM, I just don't know if there is any scenario where Germany comes out on top in that war no matter what happens. You can not out produce the United states, Russia and Europe at the same time. Germany can not win a war of attrition. If he can fight Europe on its own, consolidate, then fight Russia on its own without US lend lease........maybe. I think Germany actually did much better than it had a right too. Their equipment and logistics for the equipment was pretty awful and inefficient. Many of the weapons that are so highly touted were actually very scary, but the practical use of them was very difficult and production for many was a nightmare.
I will start off by saying that yes, the popular view of Hitler and WW2 in regard to strategic failings is slightly skewed. Most of this was build on the memoirs of German generals after the war that were all to happy to wash their hands off failure. Its a case of he said, Hitler dead. Take into account that these same people also did their best to propagate the myth of the clean Wehrmacht after the war. From the material I have read over the years by historians most mention the pitfall of post-WW2 memoirs in this subject (going back at least a decade and a half by now). As Iron_Captain said they lost when they started it.
To add some things:
3. That trying to grab the wheat and oil of the Ukraine and the Caucasus, instead of focusing on Moscow, made better strategic sense. Capturing Moscow would have done nothing. Capturing, say, Baku, would have hurt the Red Army more.
Doubtful, Baku might as well have been a million miles away. Even if the Germans had reached Baku and not found a scorched wasteland of burning oil fields and refineries where would they have gotten the logistical capacity to move the oil when they could barely keept themselves supplied in Russia as is due to logistic issues? Its doubtful that the Soviets couldn't manage to make up for its loss or recaptured it as it so incredibly far away from Germany.
4. German commanders were all over the shop and floundering near Moscow in late 1941, and Hitler's stand fast order probably saved the Germans from an even greater calamity.
Historians tend to partially agree on this, winter would have made it impossible to dig new defensive lines so standing firm was the only reasonably decent option. The issue is that they were already overstretched and should have pulled back to more easily defendable and supplied positions before they reached the point when digging in was the option.
6. When Hitler proposes new campaigns in 1942, far from advocating a defensive posture, as we're often led to believe, the Generals are in complete agreement with Hitler.
Nowhere to go but forward, with the US having been drawn in to the war on the tail end of 41 the Soviets had to be defeated to improve their snowball's chance in hell when the US was inevitably going to join in. Of course this comes down to memoirs again and trying to wash their hands for the overstretch that lead to the 42-43 losses.
8. That the debacle of the 1942 summer campaign is largely due to Hoth and Bock's reluctance to press forward at Voronezh, which threw a spanner in the works of Case Blue, a plan which had little room for error.
42 was a debacle regardless, the Germans just didn't have the manpower. If the Soviet army hadn't been a mess they could have destroyed significant parts of the German push as they were spread out with little support. The plan wasn't going to work because reality just wasn't on the side of Germany for their 42 plan.
9. That breakout at Stalingrad might have been attempted, and that a reluctant Hitler was almost about to rubber-stamp it...until Von Manstein threw a spanner in the works by saying 6th army should hold.
Realistically this was the best option. 6th army had been fighting hard and lost most of its support elements and supplies in the encirclement. Only once they were encircled did Manstein build up a force to break them out. 6th army was mostly reduced to an underequipped and starving infantry force that would have been cut to pieces among the snowdrifts against superior Soviet forces if it had attempted a breakout towards Manstein's forces. Either they held out in an urban enviroment till help could arrive or they would have died, going out of the city into the steppe would have just hastened the process. By my clumsy km to mi conversion Manstein's forces had to bridge a gap of 40 miles to get into the pocket. By the time its reported the 6th army cluld hear the artillery in the distance they did'nt have the strength to break out. Really, if Manstein couldn't break in, what hope did infantry have against the forces that were strangling them into starvation? None of the groups that tried to break through reached German lines.
10. In contrast to Guderian's narrative that Kursk was seen as a mistake, German generals welcomed the chance to attack, and that there was little to no opposition to Kursk.
Here is the handwashing again of course. Really convenient for them Hitler was dead. As GW would say, forge the narrative.
11. The delays needed to get the Panther tank ready to go, were a necessary move to counter Red Army armoured superiority. Hitler knew the numbers, and knew the army needed an edge to defeat Red Army armour. Panzer IVs, although good tanks, wouldn't cut it in a war of attrition.
No, the Panther in 43 still suffered from numerous flaws and the amounts reaching Kursk did in no way offset the amounts of Soviet armor reaching Kursk at the same time. Waiting for the Panthers and Tigers just gave the Soviets time to create massive defensive lines. So A. It was doubtful the Germans could succesfully pull off Kursk in the first place, even if the won the battle then what? B. Waiting favored the Soviets who could bring more of just everything to bear and C. It gave them time to massively dig in with mines, AT guns you name it, it gave the Soviets multiple massive defensive lines.
12. Hitler's stand fast orders in 1944 make sense when you consider Germany's crippling lack of oil. Where does the fuel come from to make these grand and sweeping counter-attacks his generals advocate?
Stand ground orders also meant dooming men and equipment in meaningless locations that could have been pulled back. The counter attacking fantasies are of course just that, fantasies, but stand ground orders are for the most part incredibly wasteful in lives and material.
13. Franz Halder is a git, and deserves more blame
All of them do, even if ignoring how they washed their hands of defeat they also managed to even now to some extent wash their hands of their part in the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, the 3 million Soviet PoWs that starved under Wehrmacht responsibility and their treatment of the wider civilian population. To an extent and this is as political as I get, you still see the innocent Wehrmacht myths even on the stage of national politics in Germany itself.
After the war, for obvious reasons, Hitler was the easy fall guy for retired German generals writing their memoirs, and it was easy for them to shift the blame onto Hitler for their mistakes. Von Manstein and Guderian being two examples. The fatcs, however, say a different story. For example,
Blaming it all on Hitler is one of those tenacious popular myths that does have some truth, but can be included in a long list including the one where Stalin supposedly dissapeared for a week following the Soviet invasion. Its convenient and reflect better on the survivors, not to mention that the truth would have seen them hang.
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thekingofkings wrote: The Red Army is pretty much 100% to "blame" for Germany's defeat in the Eastern Front.
And even more so, several factors responsible for Soviet weakness in 41-42 almost handed the Germans their victory and they still lost the war. To keep it painfully short, the Soviets did almost everything but roll over and play dead operationally speaking in the opening phase and still won in the end. Germany winning relies on them doing even better in spite of logistical reality and the Soviets doing even worse.
The what if Germany did this is kind of like saying, "sure I can beat the world's best boxer, just give me a metal pipe and cuff them to a radiator and I'll show you!"
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Orlanth wrote: The actual lesson of Barbarossa was that it failed, not that it was impossible.
This is highly, highly debatable. There has been a lot of discourse on whether the fall of Moscow would have actually ended the war on the Eastern Front. It had strategic significance as a railroad hub and production centre, but it's not so cut and dry as to say that Moscow would have meant victory. Most of the Soviet Union's industry had been moved east of the Urals which is well beyond Moscow's eastern city limits. In terms of breaking Russia's ability to wage war, taking Moscow would not have done that. Political ramifications are something else entirely and I can't really speak to that. Whether Stalin would have been forced out or not, I can't say. Victory over the Soviet Union was a serious longshot, if not outright impossible given what they had and what they were up against.
Taking Moscow would have meant nothing. It is just a city, a pile of brick and concrete, nothing more. The Russians burned Moscow behind them when Napoleon was about to take it, they would have burned Moscow again had Hitler been able to take it. Same goes for Stalingrad or Leningrad. They were symbolic cities because of their names and the heroism of their defenders, but ultimately irrelevant to the larger war. If they had fallen it would have done little to impact the strength of the Red Army. This is the way Russian armies have fought for centuries whenever Russia was invaded. Just burn everything behind you and let attrition take its toll on the enemy before counter-attacking and defeating their weakened forces. As long as there is space left to retreat to there is hope, and in Russia you never run out of space.
Hitler and Napoleon shame similarities, but their opponents did not, at least not initially. Napoleon always faced a deep defence of the homeland. Hitler need not. Carve out Moscow, 'free' Russia from Communism and pull back. The Nazis had no small support from captured Red Army soldiers in the first months, which was thrown away by the SS.
I will accept the argument that had race ideology been mutable the entire campaign could also have been avoided, if not the whole war. However I look at expediency Hitler didn't want war with certain races, he tried to avoid war with Britain. An expediency based rethink on eastern European races was not impossible. Hitler already pretended to have one with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
I favour the view that conflict between the Third Reich and Soviet Union was inevitable. In 1941the Red Army was weakened by purges and while Stalin was blindsided by Barbarossa, he was increasingly worried by events to the west. The Nazis were a personal existential threat, and Stalin went to extreme lengths with those. I concur with the view that if Hitler had not have invaded Stalin would have, by 1943 in the latest.
but because of the size of the posts, it would take a while to go through them all, so I'll generalise about the main points made.
1. Barbarossa delayed by the Balkans campaign. I think that's been pretty much debunked by now. Hitler was always going to secure the southern flank, and it was the wet weather, and not operations in Greece, that delayed Barbarossa.
2. Invading the Soviet Union was a mistake, but was it? It's easy to sit here now, with the full benefit of hindsight, but at the time, look at how the Germans would have seen things. They're masters of Europe, the French army, widely regarded as Europe's premier fighting force, has been vanquished in 6 weeks, the British have been sent scuttling across the channel, and confidence is high. The Germans know from their own experiences with the Red Army in 1939 and Poland, and their dire performance in the Winter War, that the Russians are there for the taking. After all, Germany did beat them in WW1.
3. You have to defeat the Soviet Union by conquering all of Russia. Not so in my book. It's likely that the Russians could have held on beyond the Ural Mountains, but if the Germans capture and consolidate the wheat fields of Ukraine, secure the Black Sea, and dominate the Caucasus, then that would be enough for victory in my book. Stalin, the great survivor, probably would have struck a peace deal with Hitler.
You have to take into account that planned starvation and mass shootings was something the Wehrmacht had agreed on. Europe didn't produce enough food in wartime to prevent starvation on the Eastern Front even if Germany wanted to treat the population nicely. German logic was either the Wehrmacht eats or the civilians eat. The Wehrmacht did as much to turn the population against them as the SS, they happily went along with the murderous intent, the protesting exceptions in the higher command can be counted on one hand.
Andrew1975 wrote: HMMM, I just don't know if there is any scenario where Germany comes out on top in that war no matter what happens. You can not out produce the United states, Russia and Europe at the same time. Germany can not win a war of attrition. If he can fight Europe on its own, consolidate, then fight Russia on its own without US lend lease........maybe. I think Germany actually did much better than it had a right too. Their equipment and logistics for the equipment was pretty awful and inefficient. Many of the weapons that are so highly touted were actually very scary, but the practical use of them was very difficult and production for many was a nightmare.
This has a bit to say about how inefficient german equipment actually was.
I don't think the Germans need to out-produce or defeat the USA. Just make the price of victory so high as to make it politically unfeasible to continue the war, and thus get some kind of peace treaty. The USA is obviously a super-power, and a democracy, but the Vietnam War showed us the limits a democracy will go to win a war if the casualties are piling up. Even in 1945, when the USA is beating Japan, there is growing concern at how hard it will be to invade Japan. They are deeply worried at the casualties they think they will take.
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Disciple of Fate wrote: You have to take into account that planned starvation and mass shootings was something the Wehrmacht had agreed on. Europe didn't produce enough food in wartime to prevent starvation on the Eastern Front even if Germany wanted to treat the population nicely. German logic was either the Wehrmacht eats or the civilians eat. The Wehrmacht did as much to turn the population against them as the SS, they happily went along with the murderous intent, the protesting exceptions in the higher command can be counted on one hand.
I agree that mass starvation was a weapon to kill people in Eastern Europe so the German colonists could move in for their living space doctrine, but food production levels in Europe were a lot higher in WW2 than they were in WW1. You obviously don't have the British blockade, and occupied France was something of a golden goose for the Germans.
I'm not saying it was easy for the civilians in occupied Europe, but it wasn't as bad as the turnip winters of WW1.
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thekingofkings wrote: The Red Army is pretty much 100% to "blame" for Germany's defeat in the Eastern Front.
2. Invading the Soviet Union was a mistake, but was it? It's easy to sit here now, with the full benefit of hindsight, but at the time, look at how the Germans would have seen things. They're masters of Europe, the French army, widely regarded as Europe's premier fighting force, has been vanquished in 6 weeks, the British have been sent scuttling across the channel, and confidence is high. The Germans know from their own experiences with the Red Army in 1939 and Poland, and their dire performance in the Winter War, that the Russians are there for the taking. After all, Germany did beat them in WW1.
It certainly was. The Soviets were providing the Germans with all the supplies they needed, even food. Germany went for it because of Hitler and their generals fear of communism and Lebensraum. Even if the Soviets would have attacked Germany later on, which is possible. This still might have gained Germany years to build up, potentially make peace and gain Western allies to fight off any Soviet attempt. Nazi Germany was not rational, they shot themselves in the foot over and over. The need to invade the Soviet Union was overwhelmingly ideological versus practical/rational.
3. You have to defeat the Soviet Union by conquering all of Russia. Not so in my book. It's likely that the Russians could have held on beyond the Ural Mountains, but if the Germans capture and consolidate the wheat fields of Ukraine, secure the Black Sea, and dominate the Caucasus, then that would be enough for victory in my book. Stalin, the great survivor, probably would have struck a peace deal with Hitler.
Likely not, but even conquering the Soviets west of the Wolga was not possible under some of the best conditions. Even the more limited objective of knocking the Soviets out of the war failed. It just wasn't doable without some massive what-ifs in favor of Germany.
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Orlanth wrote: The actual lesson of Barbarossa was that it failed, not that it was impossible.
This is highly, highly debatable. There has been a lot of discourse on whether the fall of Moscow would have actually ended the war on the Eastern Front. It had strategic significance as a railroad hub and production centre, but it's not so cut and dry as to say that Moscow would have meant victory. Most of the Soviet Union's industry had been moved east of the Urals which is well beyond Moscow's eastern city limits. In terms of breaking Russia's ability to wage war, taking Moscow would not have done that. Political ramifications are something else entirely and I can't really speak to that. Whether Stalin would have been forced out or not, I can't say. Victory over the Soviet Union was a serious longshot, if not outright impossible given what they had and what they were up against.
Taking Moscow would have meant nothing. It is just a city, a pile of brick and concrete, nothing more. The Russians burned Moscow behind them when Napoleon was about to take it, they would have burned Moscow again had Hitler been able to take it. Same goes for Stalingrad or Leningrad. They were symbolic cities because of their names and the heroism of their defenders, but ultimately irrelevant to the larger war. If they had fallen it would have done little to impact the strength of the Red Army. This is the way Russian armies have fought for centuries whenever Russia was invaded. Just burn everything behind you and let attrition take its toll on the enemy before counter-attacking and defeating their weakened forces. As long as there is space left to retreat to there is hope, and in Russia you never run out of space.
I don't deny how hard it has been to defeat and occupy Russia over the years, but the Mongols managed it didn't they?
As I said, we obviously sit here with full knowledge of what happened, but I'm not convinced German defeat is the foregone conclusion it's made out to be. A smarter plan, that sees Germany stop, dig in, and consolidate at a certain line, could have shaken down the Soviets for a negotiated peace.
Disciple of Fate wrote: You have to take into account that planned starvation and mass shootings was something the Wehrmacht had agreed on. Europe didn't produce enough food in wartime to prevent starvation on the Eastern Front even if Germany wanted to treat the population nicely. German logic was either the Wehrmacht eats or the civilians eat. The Wehrmacht did as much to turn the population against them as the SS, they happily went along with the murderous intent, the protesting exceptions in the higher command can be counted on one hand.
I agree that mass starvation was a weapon to kill people in Eastern Europe so the German colonists could move in for their living space doctrine, but food production levels in Europe were a lot higher in WW2 than they were in WW1. You obviously don't have the British blockade, and occupied France was something of a golden goose for the Germans.
I'm not saying it was easy for the civilians in occupied Europe, but it wasn't as bad as the turnip winters of WW1.
It wasn't just a weapon, it was basic logistical necessity for a Wehrmacht that didn't plan on feeding itself to free up transport for other material. This wasn't even done for ideological reasons but more for nationalistic homefront reasons. That it helped the ideoligical madness was the cherry on top. You have to take into account that Western Europe was still undergoing rationing because food was moved to Germany and to the army, but this was done while letting millions starve.
WW1 was also fought across Europe while from 1940 to 43-44 Germany had a pretty good grip on the continent so production was higher because half your agricultural land wasn't involved in trench warfare. Germany in WW2 was just as incapable of sufficiently feeding itself as in WW1, the only reason they didn't eat turnips because people in Eastern Europe were starved to death so they wouldn't have to.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Just make the price of victory so high as to make it politically unfeasible to continue the war, and thus get some kind of peace treaty.
Until 1946-47 arrives and B-36s armed with nuclear weapons fly directly from the US to Germany and erase it from the map. That's the problem with all of these ridiculous "make Germany win WWII" scenarios, even the absolute best-case outcome for Germany is to continue the war long enough to turn defeat into complete annihilation.
The USA is obviously a super-power, and a democracy, but the Vietnam War showed us the limits a democracy will go to win a war if the casualties are piling up.
And this is why your insistence on ignoring politics is nonsense. Vietnam was 100% a political issue, not a military one. Our entire interest in Vietnam was high-level politics between pro- and anti-communist sides, nobody in the US gave a about Vietnam itself. It was just a convenient battlefield to fight a proxy war with Russia. And that makes it a lot harder to care about the war or find the will to continue fighting despite high casualties. That's not at all the case with WWII and defeating Germany. There it's our closest allies, militarily and culturally and politically, being invaded and occupied. The US is going to have a much more personal stake in liberating England and France than fighting over some random country most US citizens couldn't even find on a map. That's going to translate directly into a much greater willingness to keep fighting, and the US automatically wins the war once it gets involved as long as it doesn't voluntarily surrender.
Even in 1945, when the USA is beating Japan, there is growing concern at how hard it will be to invade Japan. They are deeply worried at the casualties they think they will take.
Also not really a comparable situation. We were worried about invading Japan because the perception was that every person in Japan would fight to the death in a suicidal last stand. Note the lack of similar concerns with Germany, nobody expected German children with sharpened sticks to be making mass human wave charges into machine gun fire. And note that in the real world we did invade Germany, and at no point did the invasion become anything other than a question of how long it would take for Germany to finally surrender. Casualties were accepted and the invasion proceeded.
I don't deny how hard it has been to defeat and occupy Russia over the years, but the Mongols managed it didn't they?
Take into account that the Mongols conquered a fractured area with small states and a significant advantage with highly mobile cavalry armies. Versus a united Soviet totalitarian empire with a higher production, resource and population base than Germany which is vital in industrial warfare, with quite similar armies. That's not even getting into the issue of logistics of a modern army versus what a cavalry army can basically carry what they need. Mongols can just go home when winter sets in as there is no strategic depth to most of the small Russian states, as these are usually a few cities not too far apart. Say knock out Moscow or Kiev and you pretty much destroy the power base of one of the states in that time period, knock out Soviet Kiev and the country might not even blink as it has dozens of other large cities.
To make another point I forgot to mention in the OP, I like Panzer Leader and Lost Victories, they're good books to read, but when dealing with Guderian and Manstein, it's always best to cross-reference what they're saying with other sources.
As an example, Guderian criticises Hitler for diluting the strength of the Panzer Divisions, by doubling the number of Panzer divisions, but without providing extra tanks.
But this was actually sound military practice. From the Polish and French campaigns, the Germans realised their Panzer Divisions were too tank heavy and needed to be balanced out by other supporting arms (infantry and artillery) for a combined arms approach. And other armies adopted this, because tanks obviously can't do everything and are useless in some situations i.e fighting in built up areas.
The proof of the pudding is that the modern day US army, which could afford as many tanks as it wanted, follows a similar approach to organising its armour formations.
As previous posters have said, it was Hitler who got Germany into the East Front war when they were already embroiled in North Africa and hadn't managed to finish off Great Britain in the West.
Hitler also interfered in strategy and made some big mistakes which made things worse.
Could Germany have beaten the Soviet Union if Hitler hadn't interfered? Maybe, maybe not, but the generals left to themselves would never have attacked anyway, so it's a moot point.
The long and short of it is that it's Hitler's fault and he is fairly blamed for it all.
Hitler/Germany had a huge issue with oil. As a matter of fact, the invasion of western Europe and Norway and all had a huge impact on oil reserves. That is why they stopped pushing into Moscow and went to south in Operation Blue or Case Blue whatever it was called. Once Hitler knew the war wasn't going to end quickly, oil became a priority. But Germany would have run out of oil even if it has not invaded Russia.
People tend to think Hitler was mad and over-ruling his generals all the time but the truth is the vast majority of his generals were only looking at the war in a tactical sense from battle to battle, and not strategically. All of his generals were crying for more supplies, manpower, tanks, and oil. Hitler knew what was at stake but also knew they had over-reached, and I think that in part led to his breakdown. I think he knew it was all lost a long time before peeps think he knew, and part of the reason his health deteriorated and became doped up all the time.
I have said it on here before and will say it again: Amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics. While short wars can be decided by strategy, long wars are decided by production. If you don't believe me, ask Rommel. Imagine if Rommel had access to all of the reinforcements he asked for, as well as oil. The Germans might still be in Libya today (just joking). Montgomery beat Rommel by overwhelming him. That was done because the English were able to move more men and material to the region, while many of the german supplies ended up at the bottom of the sea. The Russians, Americans, all did the same.
It really comes down to simple math really. That is, so long as everyone is playing with the same weapons. I don't think Germany had any chance of winning once they started taking so many opponents on.
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Yes, but the Mongols invaded Russia back when it was still a relatively small area, and before it became a country. Russia back then was just a general area with lots of small independent states. The Mongols obviously had no trouble subjugating all those tiny independent city-states (with the exception of Novgorod which was protected by a marsh). The reason why it is stupid to invade Russia is not simply because it is Russia, but because Russia is a massive country that mostly consists of vast empty spaces, meaning it is almost impossible to control without ridiculous amounts of manpower and a logistical nightmare. Back in medieval times this was simply not true yet because the Russian states were all very small and compact.
Orlanth wrote: The actual lesson of Barbarossa was that it failed, not that it was impossible.
This is highly, highly debatable. There has been a lot of discourse on whether the fall of Moscow would have actually ended the war on the Eastern Front. It had strategic significance as a railroad hub and production centre, but it's not so cut and dry as to say that Moscow would have meant victory. Most of the Soviet Union's industry had been moved east of the Urals which is well beyond Moscow's eastern city limits. In terms of breaking Russia's ability to wage war, taking Moscow would not have done that. Political ramifications are something else entirely and I can't really speak to that. Whether Stalin would have been forced out or not, I can't say. Victory over the Soviet Union was a serious longshot, if not outright impossible given what they had and what they were up against.
Taking Moscow would have meant nothing. It is just a city, a pile of brick and concrete, nothing more. The Russians burned Moscow behind them when Napoleon was about to take it, they would have burned Moscow again had Hitler been able to take it. Same goes for Stalingrad or Leningrad. They were symbolic cities because of their names and the heroism of their defenders, but ultimately irrelevant to the larger war. If they had fallen it would have done little to impact the strength of the Red Army. This is the way Russian armies have fought for centuries whenever Russia was invaded. Just burn everything behind you and let attrition take its toll on the enemy before counter-attacking and defeating their weakened forces. As long as there is space left to retreat to there is hope, and in Russia you never run out of space.
Hitler and Napoleon shame similarities, but their opponents did not, at least not initially. Napoleon always faced a deep defence of the homeland. Hitler need not. Carve out Moscow, 'free' Russia from Communism and pull back. The Nazis had no small support from captured Red Army soldiers in the first months, which was thrown away by the SS.
I will accept the argument that had race ideology been mutable the entire campaign could also have been avoided, if not the whole war. However I look at expediency Hitler didn't want war with certain races, he tried to avoid war with Britain. An expediency based rethink on eastern European races was not impossible. Hitler already pretended to have one with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
I favour the view that conflict between the Third Reich and Soviet Union was inevitable. In 1941the Red Army was weakened by purges and while Stalin was blindsided by Barbarossa, he was increasingly worried by events to the west. The Nazis were a personal existential threat, and Stalin went to extreme lengths with those. I concur with the view that if Hitler had not have invaded Stalin would have, by 1943 in the latest.
Both faced a defence in depth. The Red Army lost almost all of its trained manpower and advanced equipment in the first days of the war when the Germans attacked by surprise (due to Stalin's errors in judgement, the secret services had warned him of what was coming but he ignored it). This made a defence in depth a sheer neccesity. The strategy of the Red Army was to slow down and hinder the German advance as much as possible to prepare the next defense line and allow for the army's strength to be rebuilt. It is a classical example of a deep defence.
Hitler's aim was never to ""free" Russia. His aim was to take the European part of Russia as Lebensraum for ethnic Germans and lock up the Russians behind the Urals in Asia (where according to the German race theories, the Russians belonged). Hitler did get support of anti-communist elements, but outside of Ukraine and the Baltics that support never amounted to anything meaningful. Once Hitler invaded Russia proper even many monarchist, anti-communist groups such as the Cossacks joined up with the Red Army. If Hitler had put aside all of his wacky race theories and had positioned himself instead as as the defender of "old Russian values" and had for example aimed to restore the imperial regime in Russia (as a Nazi puppet state), then he would have enjoyed a great deal more support, and if his armies had not been so murderous on top of that he might even have enjoyed enough local support to overthrow Stalin and the Bolsheviks. But instead, the Nazis did not really hide their race theories and genocidal aims, and their armies massacred millions of innocent Russian civilians just for the hell of it. And so he never really enjoyed any meaningful support. Except again in Western Ukraine,where the Banderites were busy with their own little genocide and which unfortunately remains a Nazi stronghold to this day.
Kilkrazy wrote: As previous posters have said, it was Hitler who got Germany into the East Front war when they were already embroiled in North Africa and hadn't managed to finish off Great Britain in the West.
Hitler also interfered in strategy and made some big mistakes which made things worse.
Could Germany have beaten the Soviet Union if Hitler hadn't interfered? Maybe, maybe not, but the generals left to themselves would never have attacked anyway, so it's a moot point.
The long and short of it is that it's Hitler's fault and he is fairly blamed for it all.
I'm not so sure about your third point, because some of those generals loathed Communism as much as Hitler did, so they may have attacked anyway. You're also overlooking the mode of euphoria that prevailed in German high command pre-June '41. Norway, Denmark, Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, were all vanquished, and the rest were either neutral (Switzerland, Sweden) or were allies or satellites of Germany. Germany's only enemy was obviously back across the English Channel.
And let's not forget the Barbarossa plan was a sack of gak and that it was drawn up by military professionals. Hitler might have tweaked it here and there, but the army's paw prints were all over it. Even when their pre-invasion wargames were wildly optimistic, OKW didn't change tack.
And I'll repeat the following to everybody: If you're the German Generals in 1941, and you've seen first hand how shoddy the Red Army was in 1939 Poland, know how bad they were against Finland, and were coming off the back of having conquered Western Europe and the Balkans, why wouldn't you feel confident about taking on the Russians? You beat them in WW1, why not WW2?
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KTG17 wrote: Hitler/Germany had a huge issue with oil. As a matter of fact, the invasion of western Europe and Norway and all had a huge impact on oil reserves. That is why they stopped pushing into Moscow and went to south in Operation Blue or Case Blue whatever it was called. Once Hitler knew the war wasn't going to end quickly, oil became a priority. But Germany would have run out of oil even if it has not invaded Russia.
People tend to think Hitler was mad and over-ruling his generals all the time but the truth is the vast majority of his generals were only looking at the war in a tactical sense from battle to battle, and not strategically. All of his generals were crying for more supplies, manpower, tanks, and oil. Hitler knew what was at stake but also knew they had over-reached, and I think that in part led to his breakdown. I think he knew it was all lost a long time before peeps think he knew, and part of the reason his health deteriorated and became doped up all the time.
I have said it on here before and will say it again: Amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics. While short wars can be decided by strategy, long wars are decided by production. If you don't believe me, ask Rommel. Imagine if Rommel had access to all of the reinforcements he asked for, as well as oil. The Germans might still be in Libya today (just joking). Montgomery beat Rommel by overwhelming him. That was done because the English were able to move more men and material to the region, while many of the german supplies ended up at the bottom of the sea. The Russians, Americans, all did the same.
It really comes down to simple math really. That is, so long as everyone is playing with the same weapons. I don't think Germany had any chance of winning once they started taking so many opponents on.
If Rommel had obeyed orders and waited for the planned invasion of Malta, and not pushed on in 1942, then maybe he would have won!
As to one of your other points, I believe the reason why Moscow wasn't attacked in 1942 was due to Red Army defence, and a manpower and tank shortage on the German side.
None the less, the first half of 1942 seen some of the most spectacular military victories in world history, never mind German history. Red Army field armies were crushed left, right, and centre by the Germans in the first half of 1942. They were damn close to victory in 1942.
As to one of your other points, I believe the reason why Moscow wasn't attacked in 1942 was due to Red Army defence, and a manpower and tank shortage on the German side.
None the less, the first half of 1942 seen some of the most spectacular military victories in world history, never mind German history. Red Army field armies were crushed left, right, and centre by the Germans in the first half of 1942. They were damn close to victory in 1942.
If Germany didn't have oil problems they would have still pushed against Moscow. Plus, oil was shipped to Russia via barges on the Volga too, so going south would have killed two birds with one stone: it could have given the Germans the oil they needed, and at the same time cut the Russians off. Its one of the reasons why they even went to Stalingrad: it was to cut off the Volga and the oil shipments. But the operation was a mess for a whole host of reasons, as well as naive in that thinking thet the Germans would have just been able to start pumping from the moment they took the fields.
Read up on German oil production and reserves during the stages of the war and you'll see what drove their strategy. And while they were able to produce synthetic oil, it was really expensive to produce. Just about every decision the Germans had to make was influenced by oil. But the most surprising thing is that if Hitler NOT invaded Russia, Germany would have run out of oil anyway because of the massive drain from occupying western Europe. It was really a race against the clock, and I think they were less than a year away from economic collapse too.
One of the German Army groups was fighting on the outskirt suburbs of Moscow late in the fighting season. They came pretty close to dissolving the Soviet governent to go into hiding, and perhaps break the Russian morale into destruction.
It was the Russian Winter & more TIME that saved the Russians.
If you ever play Axis & Allies as the Axis- you don't have the luxury of playing attrition against the Allies. If Germany can't break Russia in early game it's usually game over.
In addition, wasn't it Hitler who ordered the Luftwaffe to stop bombing RAF airfields and bomb civilians after an RAF counterbombardment made a navigational error and accidentally bombed a German town?
IIRC, this in turn led to the RAF getting a breather, rebuilding, and eventually winning the Battle for Britain.
If that hadn't happened, the British might have lost the battle, and, if not surrendered, at least sued for/accepted peace, closing down at least one front for the Nazi's in the buildup to invading Russia.
As I said, we obviously sit here with full knowledge of what happened, but I'm not convinced German defeat is the foregone conclusion it's made out to be. A smarter plan, that sees Germany stop, dig in, and consolidate at a certain line, could have shaken down the Soviets for a negotiated peace.
It was absolutely a foregone conclusion. Stopping, digging in, and consolidating at a certain line does absolutely nothing to mitigate the problems they were facing and was totally contrary to how blitzkrieg was supposed to work. You're basically asking the Heer to do something it wasn't designed to do.
I'm not so sure about your third point, because some of those generals loathed Communism as much as Hitler did, so they may have attacked anyway
Generals do not decide foreign policy, the head of state does. We've seen how easily the army leadership rolled over whenever they disagreed with Hitler, suggesting that they would be willing and able to attack on their own initiative is pretty farfetched IMO.
They were damn close to victory in 1942.
They were nowhere near victory in 1942. Taking Stalingrad would not have forced the capitulation of the Soviet Union, and there is absolutely no reason to believe they would have been able to use the oil fields in the Caucasus even if they had captured them. The Russians had turned scorched earth into an art, and they had already sabotaged some of the refineries in the path of the Axis advance.
And let's not forget the Barbarossa plan was a sack of gak and that it was drawn up by military professionals
Let's also not forget that Hitler interfered incessantly with those plans. His generals were far more conservative about their targets, but they were overruled repeatedly by the Fuhrer himself until he settled onto the overly ambitious three prong attack.
womprat49 wrote: One of the German Army groups was fighting on the outskirt suburbs of Moscow late in the fighting season. They came pretty close to dissolving the Soviet governent to go into hiding, and perhaps break the Russian morale into destruction.
It was the Russian Winter & more TIME that saved the Russians.
If you ever play Axis & Allies as the Axis- you don't have the luxury of playing attrition against the Allies. If Germany can't break Russia in early game it's usually game over.
Why would the Soviet government have to go in hiding? If the Germans had broken through the Soviet defense lines then the government would simply have gone on the train to Samara and set up shop there. The functioning of Soviet government would barely have been impeded. In fact, the vast majority of the government was already evacuated and operating from Samara by the time the Germans reached Moscow, and large part of the population of Moscow and symbolical objects (such as Lenin's body) had also already been evacuated. Samara remained the temporary capital of the Soviet Union (complete with luxury bunker for Stalin) until midway 1943.
The fall of Moscow would have barely affected Soviet morale, which remained very high throughout the war. As I said, Moscow is just a city, and there are many cities in Russia. Russia isn't a very sentimental country in that regard. With the powerful Soviet propaganda engine running at full speed, I doubt the fall of Moscow would even have registered with many Russians. The story would have been of how the Germans had taken great casualties in taking a useless pile of brick whose industries, people and government were already gone and continuing the fight from the cities to the east.
Bran Dawri wrote: In addition, wasn't it Hitler who ordered the Luftwaffe to stop bombing RAF airfields and bomb civilians after an RAF counterbombardment made a navigational error and accidentally bombed a German town?
IIRC, this in turn led to the RAF getting a breather, rebuilding, and eventually winning the Battle for Britain.
If that hadn't happened, the British might have lost the battle, and, if not surrendered, at least sued for/accepted peace, closing down at least one front for the Nazi's in the buildup to invading Russia.
The best the Luftwaffe could have hoped for realistically was to force the RAF to abandon Kent, but that wouldn't necessarily have been all that disastrous since relocating those squadrons north of London would have put them all out of range of the Bf109s that were essential to the Luftwaffe's daylight operations. It would have been a political and propaganda victory for the Germans, at least short term and probably would have put political pressure on to seek peace terms, but militarily it wouldn't have been all that crucial really particularly if someone could convince Trafford Leigh-Mallory to lose his fixation on Big Wing tactics at the exclusion of everything else.
KTG17 wrote: Watch this video it does a pretty good job summing up how WWII was influenced by oil:
It's a good video, and there's no denying the importance of oil when it comes to waging modern war, but it doesn't explain every crazy decision that both sides made.
The Germans could have potentially won the war at Dunkirk, if not for the halt order. Oil had nothing to o with that. And sticking with the Eastern Front, Oil doesn't explain some of the crazy command decisions made by Bock and Hoth.
womprat49 wrote: One of the German Army groups was fighting on the outskirt suburbs of Moscow late in the fighting season. They came pretty close to dissolving the Soviet governent to go into hiding, and perhaps break the Russian morale into destruction.
It was the Russian Winter & more TIME that saved the Russians.
If you ever play Axis & Allies as the Axis- you don't have the luxury of playing attrition against the Allies. If Germany can't break Russia in early game it's usually game over.
Why would the Soviet government have to go in hiding? If the Germans had broken through the Soviet defense lines then the government would simply have gone on the train to Samara and set up shop there. The functioning of Soviet government would barely have been impeded. In fact, the vast majority of the government was already evacuated and operating from Samara by the time the Germans reached Moscow, and large part of the population of Moscow and symbolical objects (such as Lenin's body) had also already been evacuated. Samara remained the temporary capital of the Soviet Union (complete with luxury bunker for Stalin) until midway 1943.
The fall of Moscow would have barely affected Soviet morale, which remained very high throughout the war. As I said, Moscow is just a city, and there are many cities in Russia. Russia isn't a very sentimental country in that regard. With the powerful Soviet propaganda engine running at full speed, I doubt the fall of Moscow would even have registered with many Russians. The story would have been of how the Germans had taken great casualties in taking a useless pile of brick whose industries, people and government were already gone and continuing the fight from the cities to the east.
What a load of Communist Propaganda! I joke of course.
I agree that Stalin would probably have fought on beyond the Urals, but the loss of Moscow would have been a huge morale boost to the Axis. And it's a railway and communications hub. Yes, it's a pile of bricks, but if Moscow falls, who's to say that Japan wouldn't have jumped in?
As I said, we obviously sit here with full knowledge of what happened, but I'm not convinced German defeat is the foregone conclusion it's made out to be. A smarter plan, that sees Germany stop, dig in, and consolidate at a certain line, could have shaken down the Soviets for a negotiated peace.
It was absolutely a foregone conclusion. Stopping, digging in, and consolidating at a certain line does absolutely nothing to mitigate the problems they were facing and was totally contrary to how blitzkrieg was supposed to work. You're basically asking the Heer to do something it wasn't designed to do.
I'm not so sure about your third point, because some of those generals loathed Communism as much as Hitler did, so they may have attacked anyway
Generals do not decide foreign policy, the head of state does. We've seen how easily the army leadership rolled over whenever they disagreed with Hitler, suggesting that they would be willing and able to attack on their own initiative is pretty farfetched IMO.
They were damn close to victory in 1942.
They were nowhere near victory in 1942. Taking Stalingrad would not have forced the capitulation of the Soviet Union, and there is absolutely no reason to believe they would have been able to use the oil fields in the Caucasus even if they had captured them. The Russians had turned scorched earth into an art, and they had already sabotaged some of the refineries in the path of the Axis advance.
And let's not forget the Barbarossa plan was a sack of gak and that it was drawn up by military professionals
Let's also not forget that Hitler interfered incessantly with those plans. His generals were far more conservative about their targets, but they were overruled repeatedly by the Fuhrer himself until he settled onto the overly ambitious three prong attack.
I disagree. Victory wasn't beyond the Germans. Soviet losses were huge in 1941-43, and the Red Army had a huge manpower shortage from 1944 onwards. The Soviets can't keep retreating and losing forever. They had to fight back sometime, and it wasn't foregone conclusion they would win. Even Kursk was close.
I mean... I guess it really depends on how you define 'victory.' If you take it to mean destroying the enemy's ability to resist you and fight back, then yes victory was absolutely beyond the Germans. Losing Moscow would have had little effect on Russia's ability to continue fighting, and even that particular goal was beyond the Ost Heer's ability. Yes, Soviet losses were substantial in 1941-43, but they were able to weather those losses much better than the Germans. No one had a manpower shortage as desperately felt as the Heer.
As to the 'Soviets can't keep retreating and losing forever' - that's not wrong, but they still had PLENTY of ground to give up before the Germans got anywhere near the bulk of Russia's industrial capacity beyond the Urals. The Heer was a very long way off from a decisive victory over the Soviets.
Kursk was close? So what? Kursk was meaningless. That the entire ambition of the Heer in the summer of 1943 was to close a salient shows just how badly things had turned out for them after two years on the Russian steppe. The ultimate goal of Kursk was to shorten their line of defense, that's it. It wasn't a war-winning battle by any means.
What a load of Communist Propaganda! I joke of course.
I agree that Stalin would probably have fought on beyond the Urals, but the loss of Moscow would have been a huge morale boost to the Axis. And it's a railway and communications hub. Yes, it's a pile of bricks, but if Moscow falls, who's to say that Japan wouldn't have jumped in?
The Japanese general staff, who needed everything they had and more to keep up their current campaigns and had zero manpower to spare for an attack on the Soviet Union, for which the Japanese army also was not equipped, since they did not have tanks, artillery or logistical vehicles in the required numbers. The Japanese army had been routed quite easily in previous battles against the Soviet army. The Japanese army was a light infantry formation, they could put up a good fight in the jungles and islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, but it did not stand a chance on open terrain against the Soviet formations of the Far East (which in 1945 rolled over much of the Japanese army in Manchuria in a short time).
And to be honest, even if the Japanese had invaded and somehow had managed to occupy the Far East, that is just that. They would not have been able to go any further. It is the most sparsely populated, least valuable area of Russia outside of the high arctic. As long as the Russian industrial heart, resources and major population centres of west and central Siberia remained intact the Soviet Union would be able to keep up the fight with full efficiency.
As I said, we obviously sit here with full knowledge of what happened, but I'm not convinced German defeat is the foregone conclusion it's made out to be. A smarter plan, that sees Germany stop, dig in, and consolidate at a certain line, could have shaken down the Soviets for a negotiated peace.
It was absolutely a foregone conclusion. Stopping, digging in, and consolidating at a certain line does absolutely nothing to mitigate the problems they were facing and was totally contrary to how blitzkrieg was supposed to work. You're basically asking the Heer to do something it wasn't designed to do.
I'm not so sure about your third point, because some of those generals loathed Communism as much as Hitler did, so they may have attacked anyway
Generals do not decide foreign policy, the head of state does. We've seen how easily the army leadership rolled over whenever they disagreed with Hitler, suggesting that they would be willing and able to attack on their own initiative is pretty farfetched IMO.
They were damn close to victory in 1942.
They were nowhere near victory in 1942. Taking Stalingrad would not have forced the capitulation of the Soviet Union, and there is absolutely no reason to believe they would have been able to use the oil fields in the Caucasus even if they had captured them. The Russians had turned scorched earth into an art, and they had already sabotaged some of the refineries in the path of the Axis advance.
And let's not forget the Barbarossa plan was a sack of gak and that it was drawn up by military professionals
Let's also not forget that Hitler interfered incessantly with those plans. His generals were far more conservative about their targets, but they were overruled repeatedly by the Fuhrer himself until he settled onto the overly ambitious three prong attack.
I disagree. Victory wasn't beyond the Germans. Soviet losses were huge in 1941-43, and the Red Army had a huge manpower shortage from 1944 onwards. The Soviets can't keep retreating and losing forever. They had to fight back sometime, and it wasn't foregone conclusion they would win. Even Kursk was close.
German losses were also huge, and the Soviets were able to replenish their losses much quicker and even continually increase their strength from 1941-1945 whereas the German army continually became weaker and weaker. They could have kept retreating for a very long time. With the industries being in western Siberia, retreat in fact only made the war easier since supply lines became shorter. For the Germans it became continually harder the farther they went east, and by the point they reached Moscow, the German front and supply lines were already stretched beyond the breaking point. Let alone the troubles they would have faced in crossing the Volga and advancing towards the Ural mountains. And crossing the Urals would have simply been impossible.
Basically, the farther east they went the weaker the German army became while the Soviet army only gained in strength.
creeping-deth87 wrote: I mean... I guess it really depends on how you define 'victory.' If you take it to mean destroying the enemy's ability to resist you and fight back, then yes victory was absolutely beyond the Germans. Losing Moscow would have had little effect on Russia's ability to continue fighting, and even that particular goal was beyond the Ost Heer's ability. Yes, Soviet losses were substantial in 1941-43, but they were able to weather those losses much better than the Germans. No one had a manpower shortage as desperately felt as the Heer.
As to the 'Soviets can't keep retreating and losing forever' - that's not wrong, but they still had PLENTY of ground to give up before the Germans got anywhere near the bulk of Russia's industrial capacity beyond the Urals. The Heer was a very long way off from a decisive victory over the Soviets.
Kursk was close? So what? Kursk was meaningless. That the entire ambition of the Heer in the summer of 1943 was to close a salient shows just how badly things had turned out for them after two years on the Russian steppe. The ultimate goal of Kursk was to shorten their line of defense, that's it. It wasn't a war-winning battle by any means.
I'm not blaming you for this, but in my experience, when people talk about defeating Russia in any war, they seem to think that you need to capture every square inch of Russia for victory. Not so IMO.
Czarist Russia was defeated in WW1, not because of significant territorial loss, but because the system collapsed under the pressure of war. Stalin's Russia in WW2 was a tough, ruthless machine, but it wasn't invincible and came close to collapsing quite a few times in 1941. In the darkest days of 1941, it probably occurred to Stalin that a peace treaty that gives Germany big chunks of the Ukraine, some land to Finland, but keeps Stalin and the Soviet Union alive, might be a price worth paying. I'm sure it probably crossed his mind. The man was a political survivor all his life, after all.
In that scenario, Germany doesn't need to capture all of Russia or kill every Red Army soldier to gain a meaningful 'victory.'
And people also forget that denying something to the Germans also denies it to the Russians and effects them as well. So the Germans never got the oilfields at Baku or wherever because they were destroyed? But by that logic, Russia won't get them either, so they too are effected.
As for Kursk, you should never underestimate the effects of a major victory on morale, and we all know how important morale is in warfare. After Stalingrad, Germany's allies such as Hungary, Romania, and even Finland are wavering on the Eastern Front. A victory at Kursk allows Hitler to head off the doubters, and makes up for the loss of North Africa and the incoming invasion of Sicily.
What a load of Communist Propaganda! I joke of course.
I agree that Stalin would probably have fought on beyond the Urals, but the loss of Moscow would have been a huge morale boost to the Axis. And it's a railway and communications hub. Yes, it's a pile of bricks, but if Moscow falls, who's to say that Japan wouldn't have jumped in?
The Japanese general staff, who needed everything they had and more to keep up their current campaigns and had zero manpower to spare for an attack on the Soviet Union, for which the Japanese army also was not equipped, since they did not have tanks, artillery or logistical vehicles in the required numbers. The Japanese army had been routed quite easily in previous battles against the Soviet army. The Japanese army was a light infantry formation, they could put up a good fight in the jungles and islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, but it did not stand a chance on open terrain against the Soviet formations of the Far East (which in 1945 rolled over much of the Japanese army in Manchuria in a short time).
And to be honest, even if the Japanese had invaded and somehow had managed to occupy the Far East, that is just that. They would not have been able to go any further. It is the most sparsely populated, least valuable area of Russia outside of the high arctic. As long as the Russian industrial heart, resources and major population centres of west and central Siberia remained intact the Soviet Union would be able to keep up the fight with full efficiency.
As I said, we obviously sit here with full knowledge of what happened, but I'm not convinced German defeat is the foregone conclusion it's made out to be. A smarter plan, that sees Germany stop, dig in, and consolidate at a certain line, could have shaken down the Soviets for a negotiated peace.
It was absolutely a foregone conclusion. Stopping, digging in, and consolidating at a certain line does absolutely nothing to mitigate the problems they were facing and was totally contrary to how blitzkrieg was supposed to work. You're basically asking the Heer to do something it wasn't designed to do.
I'm not so sure about your third point, because some of those generals loathed Communism as much as Hitler did, so they may have attacked anyway
Generals do not decide foreign policy, the head of state does. We've seen how easily the army leadership rolled over whenever they disagreed with Hitler, suggesting that they would be willing and able to attack on their own initiative is pretty farfetched IMO.
They were damn close to victory in 1942.
They were nowhere near victory in 1942. Taking Stalingrad would not have forced the capitulation of the Soviet Union, and there is absolutely no reason to believe they would have been able to use the oil fields in the Caucasus even if they had captured them. The Russians had turned scorched earth into an art, and they had already sabotaged some of the refineries in the path of the Axis advance.
And let's not forget the Barbarossa plan was a sack of gak and that it was drawn up by military professionals
Let's also not forget that Hitler interfered incessantly with those plans. His generals were far more conservative about their targets, but they were overruled repeatedly by the Fuhrer himself until he settled onto the overly ambitious three prong attack.
I disagree. Victory wasn't beyond the Germans. Soviet losses were huge in 1941-43, and the Red Army had a huge manpower shortage from 1944 onwards. The Soviets can't keep retreating and losing forever. They had to fight back sometime, and it wasn't foregone conclusion they would win. Even Kursk was close.
German losses were also huge, and the Soviets were able to replenish their losses much quicker and even continually increase their strength from 1941-1945 whereas the German army continually became weaker and weaker. They could have kept retreating for a very long time. With the industries being in western Siberia, retreat in fact only made the war easier since supply lines became shorter. For the Germans it became continually harder the farther they went east, and by the point they reached Moscow, the German front and supply lines were already stretched beyond the breaking point. Let alone the troubles they would have faced in crossing the Volga and advancing towards the Ural mountains. And crossing the Urals would have simply been impossible.
Basically, the farther east they went the weaker the German army became while the Soviet army only gained in strength.
Like I said above, Japan doesn't need total victory over Russia to gain a victory of sorts. The threat of a two front war, or even the very thought of Japanese intervention at a crucial time, might have forced Stalin to the peace table to work out any sort of deal that allowed him to hang on in the short term.
Though i agree with you that Manchuria is vastly different from South-East Asia.
I'm not blaming you for this, but in my experience, when people talk about defeating Russia in any war, they seem to think that you need to capture every square inch of Russia for victory. Not so IMO.
Well on that we can agree, but I wasn't advocating for that either. I was merely stating that for the Germans to achieve actual victory, they needed to destroy the Soviet Union's ability to resist and wage war against them - which is what they did with France, Norway, and all their other military conquests. It's not something they did with the Soviet Union, and were nowhere close to achieving with that particular adversary.
Czarist Russia was defeated in WW1, not because of significant territorial loss, but because the system collapsed under the pressure of war. Stalin's Russia in WW2 was a tough, ruthless machine, but it wasn't invincible and came close to collapsing quite a few times in 1941. In the darkest days of 1941, it probably occurred to Stalin that a peace treaty that gives Germany big chunks of the Ukraine, some land to Finland, but keeps Stalin and the Soviet Union alive, might be a price worth paying. I'm sure it probably crossed his mind. The man was a political survivor all his life, after all.
In that scenario, Germany doesn't need to capture all of Russia or kill every Red Army soldier to gain a meaningful 'victory.'
I would argue that Stalin's regime was much more politically stable than Czarist Russia, considering it endured the war without even a threat of political upheaval or revolution even when Stalin secluded himself after Barbarossa began. In any case, we're straying into the political side of things here which, per your original post, is outside the scope of the discussion.
And people also forget that denying something to the Germans also denies it to the Russians and effects them as well. So the Germans never got the oilfields at Baku or wherever because they were destroyed? But by that logic, Russia won't get them either, so they too are effected.
The problem with this line of thinking is that Russia was being propped up by the USA and the UK, one a superpower and the other with custodianship over a huge swathe of the world, while Germany was being propped up by slave labor from occupied territories. One would feel the loss much more keenly than the other.
As for Kursk, you should never underestimate the effects of a major victory on morale, and we all know how important morale is in warfare. After Stalingrad, Germany's allies such as Hungary, Romania, and even Finland are wavering on the Eastern Front. A victory at Kursk allows Hitler to head off the doubters, and makes up for the loss of North Africa and the incoming invasion of Sicily.
I think you're seriously overestimating how important Kursk would have been to the Axis. None of the nations you mentioned parted ways with the Germans after Kursk failed, and even if they did they provided little more than token assistance to the Germans anyway. Morale only takes you so far, and the Red Army was famously stubborn in the face of crushing defeats. A victory at Kursk would have meant very little for the outcome of the war. It would have done almost nothing to address the total imbalance of strength on the Eastern Front between the two sides and there was no crucial resource to be had in the Kursk salient. It's only notable because it's the last major offensive the Germans launched in that theater and holds the distinction of hosting the largest tank battle in history.
Apparently getting to this late, but I think Hitler/Germany put to much emphasis on the symbolic wins up north, and didn't focus on the vital resources in the southern parts of the USSR that they should have. More forces should have been devoted to pushing towards the Caucasus harder, and cutting that oil supply off.
That would have likely forced a beneficial peace treaty with the Soviets, though owing to Hitlers idiocy, he would have likely opted to continue pushing and overextended himself in the end anyways.
Hitler being at the wheel cost the Germans that war, plain and simple. HIs policies to alienate the Slavs who would have welcomed the Germans over the hated Russians/Soviets, his no retreat policy costing him hundreds of thousands of veteran soldiers, and his need for "symbolic" victories are places like Stalingrad all cost him the eastern front.
Japan was in no condition to intervene by the time the Soviets withdrew troops from the Manchuria front, it had been sucked into China and had already been spanked once before. Japan was in no condition to fight a modern war even if they could bring more of their strength to bear. Soviet troops only left once Japan had also drained its troops from the area.
As for Kursk, it wasn't even close. The German advance rapidly stalled and the Soviets still had a massive force in reserve. On paper the offensive looked scary, but in practice the German advantages had been lost.
I would argue that Stalin's regime was much more politically stable than Czarist Russia, considering it endured the war without even a threat of political upheaval or revolution even when Stalin secluded himself after Barbarossa began. In any case, we're straying into the political side of things here which, per your original post, is outside the scope of the discussion.
Just to note, the Stalin secluding himself part is a myth. Historians have looked into it and notes and planners have shown that Stalin was very busy planning in the opening days of Barbarossa with his government. Its likely the myth came out of the destalinization.
I would be a complete and utter idiot if I said that resources were not an important part of winning any war or battle. None the less, let's not fall into the trap of thinking that resources are the be all and end all of warfare. Resource inferior armies/nations can and have won wars. I think we can all agree on that.
by every metric, the British Empire outstripped Germany, Italy and Japan when it came to wealth, and yet, Britain loses battle after battle in the early days of the war.
Had it boiled down to resources, Britain and France would have won WW2 on 4th September 1939, and Alexander the Great would never have conquered the Persian Empire.
And so it is the case with the Eastern Front. The Red Army has thousands of T-26s and BT-7s to field against the Germans (and they could hold their own against the Czech tanks and Panzer IIIs), and millions of men, but they're pushed all the way back to Moscow, and the T-26s are destroyed or abandoned by the bushel. Why? Because we know despite their inferiority in numbers, better training and tactics is carrying the Germans, though I admit it wasn't an arm chair ride for the Germans.
Point is this: Russia having more resources than Germany does not guarantee a Russian victory.
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djones520 wrote: Apparently getting to this late, but I think Hitler/Germany put to much emphasis on the symbolic wins up north, and didn't focus on the vital resources in the southern parts of the USSR that they should have. More forces should have been devoted to pushing towards the Caucasus harder, and cutting that oil supply off.
That would have likely forced a beneficial peace treaty with the Soviets, though owing to Hitlers idiocy, he would have likely opted to continue pushing and overextended himself in the end anyways.
Hitler being at the wheel cost the Germans that war, plain and simple. HIs policies to alienate the Slavs who would have welcomed the Germans over the hated Russians/Soviets, his no retreat policy costing him hundreds of thousands of veteran soldiers, and his need for "symbolic" victories are places like Stalingrad all cost him the eastern front.
IMO, Army Group North linking up with the Finns near Leningrad is not the bad move that it's been made out to be. If it had been executed properly, they could have threatened the vital port of Murmansk and all the British and American convoys dropping off supplies for the Russians.
The issue with just pinning it on resources is that it ignores the other three key parts, industrial capacity, manpower and strategic depth. Britain wasn't geared for the scale of WW2, sure it had a good army, but it was quite small and had to prop up a very incompetent French army. France didn't have the space to trade for time and there was little political will in France for the war. French troops fought hard, but the war was already lost. Alexander is also a bad example, a highly trained professional army that fought against what in essence was a levy army dependent on the leadership of a coward/extremely incompetent man, there is just no modern comparison to draw with Alexander.
Even at the wildest of successes in 41 and 42 the Germans were sustaining casualties at an unsustainable rate while Soviet industry vastly outproduced German industry even during the worst years. That was just a single front, Germany was also losing that race against Britain and the US. Even winning the German army was slowly dying from little cuts.
As for the Finns, they never intended to push for Murmansk and the forces the Germans could spare were insufficient.
Disciple of Fate wrote: The issue with just pinning it on resources is that it ignores the other three key parts, industrial capacity, manpower and strategic depth. Britain wasn't geared for the scale of WW2, sure it had a good army, but it was quite small and had to prop up a very incompetent French army. France didn't have the space to trade for time and there was little political will in France for the war. French troops fought hard, but the war was already lost. Alexander is also a bad example, a highly trained professional army that fought against what in essence was a levy army dependent on the leadership of a coward/extremely incompetent man, there is just no modern comparison to draw with Alexander.
Even at the wildest of successes in 41 and 42 the Germans were sustaining casualties at an unsustainable rate while Soviet industry vastly outproduced German industry even during the worst years. That was just a single front, Germany was also losing that race against Britain and the US. Even winning the German army was slowly dying from little cuts.
As for the Finns, they never intended to push for Murmansk and the forces the Germans could spare were insufficient.
I'm not casting doubt on Soviet industrial capacity being better than German industry, but even having the best equipment in the world, and more of it, is no guarantee of success if your troops are useless, non-existent, or unwilling to fight.
Look at the T-34 in 1941. Many were lost to breakdowns, fuel shortages, crew abadonment, or the simple fact that the Germans, with inferior tanks, knocked them out because they had better tactics, training and/or combat experience.
Disciple of Fate wrote: The issue with just pinning it on resources is that it ignores the other three key parts, industrial capacity, manpower and strategic depth. Britain wasn't geared for the scale of WW2, sure it had a good army, but it was quite small and had to prop up a very incompetent French army. France didn't have the space to trade for time and there was little political will in France for the war. French troops fought hard, but the war was already lost. Alexander is also a bad example, a highly trained professional army that fought against what in essence was a levy army dependent on the leadership of a coward/extremely incompetent man, there is just no modern comparison to draw with Alexander.
Even at the wildest of successes in 41 and 42 the Germans were sustaining casualties at an unsustainable rate while Soviet industry vastly outproduced German industry even during the worst years. That was just a single front, Germany was also losing that race against Britain and the US. Even winning the German army was slowly dying from little cuts.
As for the Finns, they never intended to push for Murmansk and the forces the Germans could spare were insufficient.
I'm not casting doubt on Soviet industrial capacity being better than German industry, but even having the best equipment in the world, and more of it, is no guarantee of success if your troops are useless, non-existent, or unwilling to fight.
Look at the T-34 in 1941. Many were lost to breakdowns, fuel shortages, crew abadonment, or the simple fact that the Germans, with inferior tanks, knocked them out because they had better tactics, training and/or combat experience.
But that is kind of the point, 41 and 42 represented an almost best case scenario with massive Soviet losses but Germany was still losing the war of attrition. Two years of massive victories didn't give the Germans enough to win the war, what iffing to the point they would have is just unrealistic. You need a perfect German war effort and an even more incompetent Soviet Union to even get near the chance of a German victory. In a 'perfect' world Japan might have even won the war, but reality doesn't pick sides.
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Of course, the Mongols started out IN what is now Russia in the first place. They roamed all over north-central Asia for centuries even before Genghis Khan...
To go off at a tangent, Japan's strategic war plan was to destroy enemy forces in the Pacific, set up a defensive perimeter around the western Pacific, and ask for peace negotiations to recognise the new status quo.
As with Germany, when you look at the war production of the two sides, it's impossible for Japan to win that scenario as long as the USA stays in the war.
Admiral Yamamoto knew this from before the war began, and was not a supporter of the strategy.
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Of course, the Mongols started out IN what is now Russia in the first place. They roamed all over north-central Asia for centuries even before Genghis Khan...
I'm pretty sure that the Mongols started out in, you know, Mongolia.
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Of course, the Mongols started out IN what is now Russia in the first place. They roamed all over north-central Asia for centuries even before Genghis Khan...
I'm pretty sure that the Mongols started out in, you know, Mongolia.
It depends on how you define "Mongols". What Medieval chroniclers called "Mongols" was not quite the same as the modern Mongolian people. And Genghis Khan's empire actually consisted largely of people who were not Mongolian at all (but rather of Tatars and many other Turkic steppe peoples). There is several Mongolian peoples such as the Buryats and Kalmyks who live in modern-day Russia as well.
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Of course, the Mongols started out IN what is now Russia in the first place. They roamed all over north-central Asia for centuries even before Genghis Khan...
I'm pretty sure that the Mongols started out in, you know, Mongolia.
It depends on how you define "Mongols". What Medieval chroniclers called "Mongols" was not quite the same as the modern Mongolian people. And Genghis Khan's empire actually consisted largely of people who were not Mongolian at all (but rather of Tatars and many other Turkic steppe peoples). There is several Mongolian peoples such as the Buryats and Kalmyks who live in modern-day Russia as well.
They also did not defeat all the Russians either. Russia was smaller states, when the Russians united against them, they did defeat the Mongols.
We are also ignoring the impact of Lend-Lease. It is easy to both over-play, and under-play the importance of Western supplies to the Soviet Union, but my personal opinion is that they played little part in Soviet survival (arriving too late), but an enormous part in the ability of the USSR to push all the way back into Berlin (providing much of the logistical support to the Soviet armies, and allowing the Soviet economy to focus on military production and gain maximum econimies of scale).
Without it, the Eastern front may well have degraded into a sort of stalemate akin to WW1, with neither side having the logistical capability to make large strategic gains. Germany may even have been able to negotiate a ceasefire of some kind.
Any other significant changes to the outcome of the Eastern front would probably have to go back to pre-war strategy. In particular, if the Axis had heavily invested in the intelligence services early on, and if they had actually worked together to create a coherent strategic vision across all three major powers, informed through the intelligence, then they might have had a chance at achieving a large scale victory. Still a big if.
Thankfully for the world, that lack of coordination and intelligence cause the Axis warmachine to waste resources it didn't have to spare, and open fronts it couldn't afford to fight. Italy's entire conduct in the war is probably the most obvious example of this, but other areas could've been avoided through better intelligence, planning and strategic coordination. The German surface fleet, Battle of Britain, the North African campaign, the Japanese split between Navy and Army objectives, pulling the US into the war early etc etc etc.
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Of course, the Mongols started out IN what is now Russia in the first place. They roamed all over north-central Asia for centuries even before Genghis Khan...
I'm pretty sure that the Mongols started out in, you know, Mongolia.
It depends on how you define "Mongols". What Medieval chroniclers called "Mongols" was not quite the same as the modern Mongolian people. And Genghis Khan's empire actually consisted largely of people who were not Mongolian at all (but rather of Tatars and many other Turkic steppe peoples). There is several Mongolian peoples such as the Buryats and Kalmyks who live in modern-day Russia as well.
They also did not defeat all the Russians either. Russia was smaller states, when the Russians united against them, they did defeat the Mongols.
Most of Russia at the time was a sort of feudal state (Kievan Rus), but was loosely ruled from Kiev, and had been declining and slowly fragmenting for a century. The various individual states were technically in homage to Kiev, and the Mongols did have to fight some pretty major battles to defeat Kievan Rus. Following that, they reduced the individual city states one by one, with a few agreeing to vassalage to avoid destruction (such as Novgorod, which had gained independence from Kiev a century before). The Mongols decapitated the head and then enhanced the divisions, but that doesn't mean they didn't break up a large, still powerful Russian polity.
Russia has been attacked and defeated on plenty of other occassions (such as the Crimean war, Russo-Japanese war, WW1). The successful wars generally do the same thing- widen internal divisions and cause a political defeat. I think that is the only feasible way to fight very large countries in any case- cause a political surrender and peace treaty. Most wars in modern history do not involve a state totally crushing another, but are more often a waxing and waning of power in either direction. This was the case right up into the 20th century, so it was not unreasonable to have a aim to force peace treaties.
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Yes, but the Mongols invaded Russia back when it was still a relatively small area, and before it became a country. Russia back then was just a general area with lots of small independent states. The Mongols obviously had no trouble subjugating all those tiny independent city-states (with the exception of Novgorod which was protected by a marsh). The reason why it is stupid to invade Russia is not simply because it is Russia, but because Russia is a massive country that mostly consists of vast empty spaces, meaning it is almost impossible to control without ridiculous amounts of manpower and a logistical nightmare. Back in medieval times this was simply not true yet because the Russian states were all very small and compact.
Both faced a defence in depth. The Red Army lost almost all of its trained manpower and advanced equipment in the first days of the war when the Germans attacked by surprise (due to Stalin's errors in judgement, the secret services had warned him of what was coming but he ignored it). This made a defence in depth a sheer neccesity. The strategy of the Red Army was to slow down and hinder the German advance as much as possible to prepare the next defense line and allow for the army's strength to be rebuilt. It is a classical example of a deep defence.
Hitler's aim was never to ""free" Russia. His aim was to take the European part of Russia as Lebensraum for ethnic Germans and lock up the Russians behind the Urals in Asia (where according to the German race theories, the Russians belonged). Hitler did get support of anti-communist elements, but outside of Ukraine and the Baltics that support never amounted to anything meaningful.
The two points are connected. Anti-communists didn't rise in sufficient numbers BECAUSE Hitler had no plans to free Russia. A 'liberation' campaign carried the only chance of Nazi victory, as it could bypass the insurmountable obstacle of Soviet resolve.
Go in with a solid plan to deal with the Soviet sttength of numbers or not at all. Given an imperative of 'must attack Stalin' this is how I would do it.
The only remotely viable alternative is to stockpile *vast* numbers of chemical weapons and go balls out for an extermination campaign from the outset and gas any sizable encounter you come across, military or civilian. This would be utterly ugly, but Exterminatus has its strategic benefits.
Once Hitler invaded Russia proper even many monarchist, anti-communist groups such as the Cossacks joined up with the Red Army. If Hitler had put aside all of his wacky race theories and had positioned himself instead as as the defender of "old Russian values" and had for example aimed to restore the imperial regime in Russia (as a Nazi puppet state), then he would have enjoyed a great deal more support, and if his armies had not been so murderous on top of that he might even have enjoyed enough local support to overthrow Stalin and the Bolsheviks. But instead, the Nazis did not really hide their race theories and genocidal aims, and their armies massacred millions of innocent Russian civilians just for the hell of it. And so he never really enjoyed any meaningful support.
This is where we agree and was my original point. In my opinion it was the truly only workable option, excepting chemical Exterminatus, which doesnt bear thinking about much. Hitler could be pursuaded to pretend to like Russians, he already did in 1939, and he had so many other enemies to kill. Hitler even harboured a deep hatred for the Swiss, but he never got round to actioning it, though a conquest of Switzerland was planned. Ultimately there was pretty much nobody Hitler didn't hate. He liked Germans, including Austrians, he liked the English (until we educated him otherwise) and didnt mind Scandinavians, Americans, Canadians and Australians too much. Pretty much everyone else was hated by him. We never really got to know what he actually thought of Spaniards, Italians and Japanese, but even he had some limits for the sake of diplomacy. Hence my belief that a propaganda backed invasion of the Soviet Union was not impossible.
Except again in Western Ukraine,where the Banderites were busy with their own little genocide and which unfortunately remains a Nazi stronghold to this day.
Edit: Cant say I agree with this assessment. Is this how Ukrainians are being seen now, a throwback to the Enemy in the Great Patriotic War? Troubling new ideology if this is so.
I think this really comes down to how you break responsibility. Hitler made a lot of bad choices (invading Russia in the first place being one of them), but his generals didn't exactly help. Even at their best they only managed to stem the tide.
And that's without addressing the material side of things, where Germany faced a foe that out manned, out gunned, and out produced them. Overcoming material and manpower limitations is the stuff military legends are born of, and half the time they still lose they just lose like bad asses so we cut them slack
Iron_Captain wrote: No. Ultimately it was Hitler's call to invade the Soviet Union. Once they did that their defeat was inevitable. "Do not march on Moscow" isn't said to be the first rule of war for nothing. Trying to wage a land war in Russia is just a really dumb thing to do.
Mongols didnt have too many problems. There are always exceptions.
Of course, the Mongols started out IN what is now Russia in the first place. They roamed all over north-central Asia for centuries even before Genghis Khan...
I'm pretty sure that the Mongols started out in, you know, Mongolia.
Is that like how Indians only lived in Indiana?
Don't confuse the boundaries of a modern nation with the area a HIGHLY nomadic group of tribes inhabited in a part of the world that wasn't (at the time) known for strict border control.
Nope (or yep?). The mogols started out in Xinjian, which is a good deal not modern Mongolia. They spread out and eventually lived in what is now Mongolia but that's not their ethnic origin point.
People seem to be hung up on the idea that Hitler didn't have to attack Russia, yet both Stalin and Hitler knew their Non Aggression pact wasn't going to last and one would attack the other, coming off the back of the Purges/ Winter War / general poor showing from the Red Army, it makes sense to go for it.
The delay is shoring up the Balkan underbelly didn't help, Stalin packing up his things and moving over the Urgals didn't help, but as far as conditions go, you either go when you've got control of continental Europe and the British stuck in Britain and the Red Army looks like a bunch of bumbling incompetents, or you give them the time to get themselves sorted and let Stalin be the one to attack first.
Mozzyfuzzy wrote: People seem to be hung up on the idea that Hitler didn't have to attack Russia, yet both Stalin and Hitler knew their Non Aggression pact wasn't going to last and one would attack the other, coming off the back of the Purges/ Winter War / general poor showing from the Red Army, it makes sense to go for it.
The delay is shoring up the Balkan underbelly didn't help, Stalin packing up his things and moving over the Urgals didn't help, but as far as conditions go, you either go when you've got control of continental Europe and the British stuck in Britain and the Red Army looks like a bunch of bumbling incompetents, or you give them the time to get themselves sorted and let Stalin be the one to attack first.
In Soviet Russia Stalin attacks you.
I concur that the pact would have ended in one side invading the other. The difference is that without the pressing need to defend the homland Soviet resolve would be far less. Finland was defended successfully and the last ant-German human wave offensive in 1917 was stopped. Without the dep sense of national outrage plus the long Great Patriotic War to take the Soviets to Berlin it would be far harder to get to Berlin just because Stalin says so. Also mistakes would continue to be made as per 1941 wheras the Germans already understood the tactics needed to defend themselves. They climbed the learning curve rapidly in almost every situation.
The one stumbling block would be if Stalin led his attack with a horde of IS-2's or equivalent before the Germans understood which way the Soviets were going in tank production. If the Soviets learned radio doctrine by themselves in the peace before Stalin's attack they might be prepared and face the Nazis with something they cannot hope to counter. The Germans did have schwerepanzer designs prior to Barbarossa, but it wasnt their core thinking, they were inefficient and lazily produced. Panzer III's were apparently perfectly good enough for their need.
Chute82 wrote: Didn’t finish off the UK, then starts a land war in Asia....to put the cherry on top declared war on the USA in 1941.
The initial problem here is they didn't actually have any way of finishing off Britain. There was no way for the Luftwaffe to win the Battle of Britain; no way for them to push the British out of North Africa, and certainly not out of the Middle East; and Sealion was a pipe dream that would've been an unmitigated disaster. As it was, the preparations they already did before cancelling Sealion cost the German warmachine a considerable amount.
The closest strategy to success was the Battle of the Atlantic, but Germany couldn't produce enough submarines in the early war before they lost the arms race. Maybe if they hadn't wasted resources on a surface fleet...
Of course that would probably degenerate into a stalemate and eventual ceasefire without other powers getting involved, but Germany could not defeat Britain alone, only draw with them.
Hitler is surely to blame. If Hitler did not divert his center army marching on Moscow. There would have been no Stalingrad.
There is no telling what would have happened but from all the literature I have seen. There is no way Russia could have repelled a siege at Moscow in the early stages of Barbarossa. Hitler (fearing for the loss of oil supplies) Directed his center army supposed to take Moscow (which was mostly undefended) to assist in the Southern front. This Delayed the siege on Moscow by approximately 2 months - Put the Russian winter into the equation.
Imagine for a second that the center army was not diverted and the Germans were able to take Moscow quickly (Realistically they should have) I don't know if that means Russia surrenders (Maybe-Maybe not) I don't know if that means Stalin would have been captured or killed. It certanly would have hurt production and Morale all over the Country.
This was surely Hitlers fault.
Hitler also hasted the defeat of his eastern armies by not allowing them to make tactical retreats. He also wasted resources trying to devlop super weapons when what they really needed was more Tiger 1's.
If germany invested more heavily in tiger 1's instead of terror weapons and projects like the tiger 2's. They probably could have heald the Russians back for another year or so. It also would have helped the western front too.
The problem with focusing all your efforts on Moscow is that your flank security goes up in smoke. Even 2 weeks after Barbarossa started, 21st Russian army cobbled together 10 divisions for a counter-attack on Army Group South's flank. I remember that scenario well from Combat Mission
And people forget that yeah, the Panzer Divisions raced behind the Russians and created huge cauldrons, or Kessels as the Germans would call them, but these Kessels need to be reduced by German infantry divisions, and that takes time and a lot of hard fighting.
Panzer divisions could have zoomed ahead to Moscow but that was likely to end in disaster without infantry divisions backing you up, and those infantry divisions had to walk from Poland to Moscow.
Mozzyfuzzy wrote: People seem to be hung up on the idea that Hitler didn't have to attack Russia, yet both Stalin and Hitler knew their Non Aggression pact wasn't going to last and one would attack the other, coming off the back of the Purges/ Winter War / general poor showing from the Red Army, it makes sense to go for it.
The delay is shoring up the Balkan underbelly didn't help, Stalin packing up his things and moving over the Urgals didn't help, but as far as conditions go, you either go when you've got control of continental Europe and the British stuck in Britain and the Red Army looks like a bunch of bumbling incompetents, or you give them the time to get themselves sorted and let Stalin be the one to attack first.
In Soviet Russia Stalin attacks you.
I concur that the pact would have ended in one side invading the other. The difference is that without the pressing need to defend the homland Soviet resolve would be far less. Finland was defended successfully and the last ant-German human wave offensive in 1917 was stopped. Without the dep sense of national outrage plus the long Great Patriotic War to take the Soviets to Berlin it would be far harder to get to Berlin just because Stalin says so. Also mistakes would continue to be made as per 1941 wheras the Germans already understood the tactics needed to defend themselves. They climbed the learning curve rapidly in almost every situation.
The one stumbling block would be if Stalin led his attack with a horde of IS-2's or equivalent before the Germans understood which way the Soviets were going in tank production. If the Soviets learned radio doctrine by themselves in the peace before Stalin's attack they might be prepared and face the Nazis with something they cannot hope to counter. The Germans did have schwerepanzer designs prior to Barbarossa, but it wasnt their core thinking, they were inefficient and lazily produced. Panzer III's were apparently perfectly good enough for their need.
Panzer IIIs were perfectly good for the Germans from 1939-42, though.
If you listen to David Willey from the tank Museum Bovington, he makes the point that infantry and tanks that train together, and get used to each other in combat scenarios, more often or not will beat better armed opponents, even if their tanks are INFERIOR to the enemy.
So, German Combat Veterans + better doctrine/training + inferior tanks = victory over superior T-34s and inexperienced Red Army troops.
Naturally, the Red Army learns the hard army and gets better itself, but as I say, better equipment is no good if the troops are badly trained, unused to their equipment, or poorly led/motivated.
Steven Zaloga, another tank expert, makes the point that the worst thing France did in 1940 was introduce new tanks to the troops. They had to re-train, re-learn and get used to the break downs and unfamiliarity.
The French army would have been better sticking to the older equipment that they knew inside out and that the tank crews knew like the back of their hands. A lot of French losses with their new tanks were not COMBAT losses, but fuel shortages and mechanical breakdown.
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Mozzyfuzzy wrote: People seem to be hung up on the idea that Hitler didn't have to attack Russia, yet both Stalin and Hitler knew their Non Aggression pact wasn't going to last and one would attack the other, coming off the back of the Purges/ Winter War / general poor showing from the Red Army, it makes sense to go for it.
The delay is shoring up the Balkan underbelly didn't help, Stalin packing up his things and moving over the Urgals didn't help, but as far as conditions go, you either go when you've got control of continental Europe and the British stuck in Britain and the Red Army looks like a bunch of bumbling incompetents, or you give them the time to get themselves sorted and let Stalin be the one to attack first.
Not even the need to capture Moscow IMO. Capture Ukraine, gran the Baltics, and dig in, because you have all the land and resources you need. Could even have shaken down Stalin for a negotiated peace.
Even when on their last legs, we saw how skilful the Germans were in defence. A fully functioning German army, free from defeat at Moscow and Stalingrad, might have been a bridge to far for the Soviets.
I don't know either. Stalin did not like Hitler at all, but he genuinely believed he could team up with him to defeat the common Bourgeois-capitalist foe. He was really shocked when Hitler broke his word and invaded the USSR, despite having been told for months by the secret services that this was coming. He kinda saw Hitler as his only ally in a war against Great Britain (which Stalin hated far more than the Nazis).
Stalin must have known the core Nazi ideology was incompatible with Communism and the USSR though, at least in the long run. After all, the Nazis came to power by first killing off the German Communist party, and were explicit in their objectives for the east.
I think it is entirely fair to suggest that Stalin did not expect Germany to attack when they did, or even for quite some time. But he must've known they would attack eventually.
I was under the impression Stalin had the strategy of allowing Hitler to exhaust themselves and the UK, before rolling into the void, and he was beginning to rearm for this very purpose when Barbarossa began. Any Soviet attack would be some years later than Barbarossa, and may never happen, but I thought it was the ultimate goal. After all, it also matches with Bolshevik doctrine of a revolutionary war.
A German-British stalemate peace without significant loss to either would probably be the worst case scenario for Stalin (a resurgent Germany stripping resources out of occupied Europe without resistance), so it would be in his interests to prepare a first strike whilst Hitler was distracted. Of course, Hitler beat him to it...
No matter how you look at it Germany didn't have the production capability much less the resources to sustain said production further than taking France comfortably. Germany almost sucker punched a victory in the East, but again that was miraculous.....to actually accomplish that sucker punch is relatively unfathomable. A million things had to go right for that to happen, Germany got 999,950 of them to swing their way.
All Germany needed to do was stop they would have owned mainland Europe from Poland to France.......I think it it would have been hard enough for them to sustain that occupation much less push on and defeat Russia. Had they actually accomplished taking out Moscow.....who knows. Most Russians not from major cities (which was most of them) could have could not have cared less who was in power, given a choice between Hitler and Stalin; I really see the Russian government and military having a very hard time if Moscow is taken.
You can go into the details or keep it very basic, Hitler is not unfairly blamed.
You can also blame some of the Generals for doing so or not trying to tell him is fails.
The very basic problem always was that Hitler had a plan for a War
It was a good one and it would have worked, but this plan was always against the Soviets only (the Plan B for France was there, but the won easily because France made a lot of mistakes)
There was no concept how to handle Britain or the US.
There was not even a basic idea on what should happen if Italy needs help
Malta, Greece and North Africa happend because they did not know what else to do
And of course those needed time and resources that were needed in the East.
The original plan, executed with the original planned manpower and without delay would have worked.
Andrew1975 wrote: No matter how you look at it Germany didn't have the production capability much less the resources to sustain said production further than taking France comfortably. Germany almost sucker punched a victory in the East, but again that was miraculous.....to actually accomplish that sucker punch is relatively unfathomable. A million things had to go right for that to happen, Germany got 999,950 of them to swing their way.
All Germany needed to do was stop they would have owned mainland Europe from Poland to France.......I think it it would have been hard enough for them to sustain that occupation much less push on and defeat Russia. Had they actually accomplished taking out Moscow.....who knows. Most Russians not from major cities (which was most of them) could have could not have cared less who was in power, given a choice between Hitler and Stalin; I really see the Russian government and military having a very hard time if Moscow is taken.
Why do you attach so much importance to Moscow? Moscow was only important because it was the seat of the Soviet government. However, the Soviet government during WW2 led the country from Samara, not from Moscow. Moscow is very far to the west, so it was vulnerable. The Soviets realised this early and evacuated the city. If the Germans had taken Moscow, all they would have gotten was an unrecognisable pile of rubble since the Soviets would have destroyed everything behind them as they retreated.
The leadership and the resolve of the Soviet Union would not have wavered for even a moment. In fact it would have just given the Soviet propaganda machine new ammunition with which to sweep up the people in even greater rage and patriotic fervour. The Soviets were highly skilled propagandists and experts in sweeping up the masses. Soviet morale remained very high all throughout the war, even when massive losses were suffered in 1941-1942. That is how the Soviets were able to put army after army of soldiers into the field, despite their forces being continually decimated throughout the first years of the war.
And contrary to what you say, most Russians, including those not from major cities, cared very much who ruled them. Russians have always been a xenophobic bunch, but I don't think you quite understand the intense hatred of Germans that washed over Russia after the Nazi invasion. Most people from Western Russia (and that is a big part of the Russian population) had witnessed German brutality first hand. They wanted to see the Germans suffer as much as possible, there was no question about serving them.To this day, many Russians still believe the Germans got away easy with their crimes. In other words, the Soviet Union or the Russian people would never have surrendered or accepted any sort of peace deal with Germany. The genocidal aims and brutality of the Nazis was too well known for that. They would have fought to the death regardless of who controls the former capital of Moscow. Most people in Russia never liked the city of Moscow and its people anyways.
Andrew1975 wrote: All Germany needed to do was stop they would have owned mainland Europe from Poland to France........
Not true. The occupation was sapping oil from Germany and it was going to end up crashing their economy. At the time 70% of the world's oil came from the US. The Royal Navy blockaded Europe. The only place Germany had to go for Europe at this point was the Caucasus.
Watch the video I posted. It answers all of your questions.
Andrew1975 wrote: All Germany needed to do was stop they would have owned mainland Europe from Poland to France........
Not true. The occupation was sapping oil from Germany and it was going to end up crashing their economy. At the time 70% of the world's oil came from the US. The Royal Navy blockaded Europe. The only place Germany had to go for Europe at this point was the Caucasus.
Watch the video I posted. It answers all of your questions.
If they negotiated peace that could well re-open international trade though. Then Germany could potentially get on with plundering Europe for resources and selling it abroad to finance their next military build-up.
The problem is that Germany bankrupted itself preparing for the war. Once the German war machine got rolling, it couldn't stop because it depended on the resources conquered, so there it went rolling until it finally crashed and burned.
Honestly, it got much farther than any right it originally had.
Hitler was definitely to blame for how bad the war went. Namely that he bit off way more than he could chew, and in the later stages of the war went completely crazy/junkie and micromanaged everything in that state.
Germany would have done far better had Hitler played the long game. He needed to leave the actual warfare to his generals, as he was completely garbage at that. He was a master political manipulator, but he deluded himself into thinking he was also a brilliant strategist.
First off, Dunkirk needed to be where the British army was totally destroyed or used as a bargaining chip. Immediately give Britain an ultimatum and sue for peace. Either after destroying the British forces on the beach or capturing them. Britain likely would have accepted a peace even at the cost of losing all of mainland Europe at that exact moment, simply due to the shock of the rapid defeat. Its even possible that Britain might have ceded much of the middle east at such a conference, which is what Germany really needed.
This gives Germany control over pretty much all of mainland Europe, and they no longer have an active enemy on the Western front. Let Britain sit on their island, they're not going anywhere and will hardly object to an eventual Soviet/German war.
And of course, a war with Russia would have to be put off while Germany consolidates their gains in Europe and whatever colonies Britain gives up for peace. Build up a bigger army, develop more advanced weapons and tactics based on what was learned. Indoctrinate the populations of France and the Benelux to your beliefs so you have access to their cooperation and manpower. 10 years or so would have been enough that you'd now have the youth of the occupied country's indoctrinated and on your side.
This would let Germany become stronger without bleeding itself dry in the process. Russia might get stronger too, but they would be isolated. Britain and the US wouldn't feel any need to prop them up if there wasn't an active war at that exact moment. Plus Japan would have been at war with the US at this point, as well as making Russia nervous on their own eastern front.
Hitler is to blame in the sense that he started the war. But in terms of strategy he was actually more often right than wrong. Germany would never had defeated France it it hadn't been for Hitler.
Also, at the end of the war many of his generals were still alive, so everyone started blaming him to make themselves look good.
I often go through historical what-ifs. Had Germany and the Soviet Union not attacked each other, or at the very least declared some kind of formal no-man's land cutting across Poland, I think things would be different, and messier.
If the soviets weren't fighting Germany, Germany could focus on the Western Front. We'd have likely still beaten them, likely taking an extra couple years. Likely not a total surrender either. Hitler may have even remained as Chancellor. What really worries me is the Pacific.
Without Germany to fight, the Soviets would focus on Japan, likely teaming up with China and working their way down from the north. Both Russian and China showed they were willing to drown the enemy in bodies. Japan showed they were willing to fight to the last man/boy. I think this would have put the northern half of the Japanese mainland into a total bloodbath.
With the Soviets more focused on Japan, and the need for more support in Europe, Americans would likely have diverted troops from the Pacific to Europe.
The US would still have taken many outlying islands, but I think the Russians would have taken mainland Japan, and they weren't known for giving up territory. Imagine Warsaw like conditions in Tokyo.
US influence in the Eastern Hemisphere would be close to non-existent outside of the Philippines, Japan would look like modern day Mexico, Communist empires would be spanning, and fascism embedded in Europe.
Instead of Korea and Vietnam, I think conflicts in the Balkans would have been likely.
Peregrine wrote: Why are we talking about peace as a win for Germany? Germany has two possible options:
1) Lose the war before 1946-47.
2) Cease to exist as nuclear armed bombers flying directly from the US annihilate anything of value in a single day.
There is no scenario where Germany wins.
Continuing to exist is a victory in this hypothetical scenario. And that is indeed the goal of any nation.
The US only entered direct conflict with Germany because they declared war immediately after Pearl Harbor, along with the sinking of merchant shipping heading to Britain. If you remove those variables, the US would have no incentive to go to war with Germany. If Germany and the UK sign a truce, the US doesn't need to prop up Britain and Germany has no need to raid shipping. Germany also wouldn't declare war when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.
If we define "win" as conquer the whole world in the span of a few years, then no. Nazi Germany doesn't win. But they would still exist today, and likely be considered a super power.
Remember that there was little support for entering WW2 until Pearl Harbor. And even once the war started the Nazis weren't viewed with the massive negativity they have today. They were just another expansionist European government starting yet another war in Europe.
In the scenario where Nazi Germany is more cautious and conservative in their aggression, they perform much better than what actually happened. They probably end up being the first to develop and use Nuclear weapons as well, the Soviets being on the receiving end.
Hitler's idea of the Third Reich was a plan that would require hundreds of years to accomplish and would require slow and steady progress, but he tried to accomplish it overnight, and thats why it failed so spectacularly.
Best case scenario is probably that Germany replaces the USSR in the Cold War. The US and Nazi Germany squaring off against each other, with the Cold War lasting possibly indefinitely without end as Nazi Germany's economy wouldn't have the fatal flaws that the Soviet Union had.
Peregrine wrote: Why are we talking about peace as a win for Germany? Germany has two possible options:
1) Lose the war before 1946-47.
2) Cease to exist as nuclear armed bombers flying directly from the US annihilate anything of value in a single day.
There is no scenario where Germany wins.
Peace would be a win for Nazi Germany because that means they would continue to exist, since there is no way they could have won the war in the long run. If they had made peace Germany might well have developed nuclear weapons before the US, considering the US project would have had a lot less resources without the pressure of war and the German project a lot more. Although it would probably have been the British, since their project was ahead of the US' but failed because the war stretched British resources far over their limits (British war debts have only been paid off in 2006). Without the strains of war the British team would have had a lot more funds to work with and they would not have been forced to pool their knowledge with the US instead. Also, the Soviet Union would have developed nuclear weapons much sooner, since they knew everything about the Manhattan Project (it was riddled with Soviet spies) but historically could not start building a nuclear weapon of their own until the war was over because keeping up the war effort took up all resources. But most importantly, if they had made peace then the US would not have felt the need to send over nuclear bombers. Because you know, they would be at peace. And finally, the bombers would just be shot down unless there is a massive conflict first to take out most of the enemy air force.
Nazi Germany's economy was about to collapse on the eve of WWII. Unless they heavily restructured after capturing France, they would still be at heavy risk of collapsing economically. The only way to avoid this was more war. War was inevitable for Nazi Germany because it was the only way they could sustain their economy.
If they did consolidate most of Europe, I'd give them ten years max before they had to invade someone else to sustain their economy. Probably the USSR at that stage.
Also, for the Soviets to take the Japanese home islands, they would actually need a Navy... What they had in the East was pitiful.
Grey Templar wrote: Continuing to exist is a victory in this hypothetical scenario. And that is indeed the goal of any nation.
The point is that the only way that Germany can continue to exist is to lose the war and surrender before the US removes it from the map.
The US only entered direct conflict with Germany because they declared war immediately after Pearl Harbor, along with the sinking of merchant shipping heading to Britain. If you remove those variables, the US would have no incentive to go to war with Germany. If Germany and the UK sign a truce, the US doesn't need to prop up Britain and Germany has no need to raid shipping. Germany also wouldn't declare war when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.
This theory is contradicted by history. The US was developing the B-36 (with a specific intent of bombing Germany directly from the US) before they even entered the war, as a backup plan for the UK falling. If anything a hypothetical fall of the UK (and yes, a truce in the face of military defeat is a fall, and a temporary truce at best) makes the US more aggressive in developing the means to remove Germany from the map. And with no need to build and deploy a conventional army the US has even more resources to devote to the task.
They probably end up being the first to develop and use Nuclear weapons as well, the Soviets being on the receiving end.
The German nuclear program was nowhere near success, and had critical errors that likely made it impossible for it to ever succeed.
as Nazi Germany's economy wouldn't have the fatal flaws that the Soviet Union had.
Germany's economy was already in trouble, and unlike the USSR Germany gets vastly out-produced by the US. A cold war never develops into a stalemate, even ignoring the potential for nuclear war the US can simply through its superior resources at the problem and win.
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Iron_Captain wrote: And finally, the bombers would just be shot down unless there is a massive conflict first to take out most of the enemy air force.
Unlikely. Remember, the B-36 is not the B-17. Even late-war German interceptors under ideal circumstances would have had questionable at best chances of reaching its cruising altitude, and those interceptors are not on 24/7 standby alert. And the US strike would be arriving as a complete surprise. One day you're going about your life thinking you won the war, the next day ever major German city and industrial area is under a mushroom cloud.
Peregrine wrote: Why are we talking about peace as a win for Germany? Germany has two possible options:
1) Lose the war before 1946-47.
2) Cease to exist as nuclear armed bombers flying directly from the US annihilate anything of value in a single day.
There is no scenario where Germany wins.
Continuing to exist is a victory in this hypothetical scenario. And that is indeed the goal of any nation.
Peregrine's solution to every scenario is "US nukes everything". German makes peace with UK? Nuke the German!
But yeah if Nazi's and UK had made peace treaty very unlikely US would ever have got bothered with whole Europe in WW2.
Bigger Q would have been would UK make a deal or try to basically siege out the Nazi's out of resources? Nazi's didn't have resources to just consolidiate and wait out. Did UK know it? Or would they have been worried Nazi's get those from elsewhere like succesfully invading Russia? If they figure nazi's won't be short of resources peace treauty would look lot more appealing...
tneva82 wrote: Peregrine's solution to every scenario is "US nukes everything".
Because it's the historical answer to the question. Why do you think the US was developing nuclear weapons and bombers explicitly designed to reach Germany from bases in the US? The plan was already that the UK being forced to surrender would only change the means by which Germany is destroyed.
German makes peace with UK? Nuke the German!
Any "peace" with the UK would be a temporary delay in the war resuming. The UK may be forced to concede military defeat but that doesn't make them like Germany. Germany is still the enemy, and as soon as the UK has the ability to do so they will resume the war.
If the UK surrenders after Dunkirk, before the Tizard mission, then the US likely never gets any of the Tube Alloys research, and their own project is likely delayed by years.
Also, just having the capacity to fly a nuclear bomber across the Atlantic doesnt guarantee the capability to successfully nuke Germany. They would be flying without escort, potentially against jet interceptors. The Allies are likely to be much less integrated as a force, so there is no guarantee of using Britain as an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Haighus wrote: If the UK surrenders after Dunkirk, before the Tizard mission, then the US likely never gets any of the Tube Alloys research, and their own project is likely delayed by years.
Why would you assume that? The UK isn't going to surrender with the intent of long-term peace, and they know (as in the real world) that the US is key to winning the war. Much like the farce of US "neutrality" before officially entering the war the UK would probably remain "neutral" while sharing information with the US.
Also, just having the capacity to fly a nuclear bomber across the Atlantic doesnt guarantee the capability to successfully nuke Germany. They would be flying without escort, potentially against jet interceptors. The Allies are likely to be much less integrated as a force, so there is no guarantee of using Britain as an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Again, the B-36 is virtually immune to interception even against late-war German fighters. It's just too high for anything to reach it.
Yes, the 1948 B-36 flew at ~40,000ft. The 1945 Me262 had a ceiling of 37,500ft. That is a full three years later, and it barely flew any higher. It wasn't until 1954 that the B-36 was able to operate at 48,000ft. Assuming the B-36 would be uninterceptable is dangerous, and liable to cause a disaster. Strategic bombing theorists thought the same thing in the 30's- strategic bombers would be immune to interception.
The British would be unlikely to share all their tech, including Tube Alloys, if they were no longer in imminent risk of invasion. They would be preparing for future Nazi aggression, sure, but things wouldn't be so desperate as to share key technology with a strategic rival.
Another aspect to consider, would Germany have been able to succeed in it's goal of linking up with its allies in the Middle East? If they could have done that, not only would they have a large and steady source of oil, but also minerals needed for more advanced alloys. This could make Germany a much larger threat.
I agree with Peregrine, the Germans are lucky the war ended when it did. Peeps like to debate how close the Japanese were to surrendering and whether the atomic bombs were worth it, but Hitler's decision is not in doubt. If he had been able to hold off the Russians for another year Berlin would have been nuked.
I can't understand how no one is commenting on the youtube video I posted. I will post the link again. It is absolutely fascinating and explains the whole war in 30min.
The problem about reading up on WWII is that most authors interview generals but the generals only know so much. They rarely understand the economics of it, and are credited with the win or loss when there is so much out of their control.
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cuda1179 wrote: Another aspect to consider, would Germany have been able to succeed in it's goal of linking up with its allies in the Middle East? If they could have done that, not only would they have a large and steady source of oil, but also minerals needed for more advanced alloys. This could make Germany a much larger threat.
Actually the middle east wasn't producing a lot of oil at the time. The English controlled it and got very little from it. Watch the video! It talks about this. The only option for Germany was southern Russia.
KTG17 wrote: I agree with Peregrine, the Germans are lucky the war ended when it did. Peeps like to debate how close the Japanese were to surrendering and whether the atomic bombs were worth it, but Hitler's decision is not in doubt. If he had been able to hold off the Russians for another year Berlin would have been nuked.
I can't understand how no one is commenting on the youtube video I posted. I will post the link again. It is absolutely fascinating and explains the whole war in 30min.
The problem about reading up on WWII is that most authors interview generals but the generals only know so much. They rarely understand the economics of it, and are credited with the win or loss when there is so much out of their control.
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cuda1179 wrote: Another aspect to consider, would Germany have been able to succeed in it's goal of linking up with its allies in the Middle East? If they could have done that, not only would they have a large and steady source of oil, but also minerals needed for more advanced alloys. This could make Germany a much larger threat.
Actually the middle east wasn't producing a lot of oil at the time. The English controlled it and got very little from it. Watch the video! It talks about this. The only option for Germany was southern Russia.
No one is doubting that Germany had no realistic chance of winning a long war- it is pretty common knowledge that Germany was crippled by material shortages, especially oil.
The debate has moved to talking about possible outcomes following Germany achieving a quick negotiated truce (forcing Britain out of the war)*, and what the outcomes of that are. I think Germany being immediately nuked into submission become much less likely in that scenario, depending on how they use the few years this buys them. Eventually nuked into submission is probably still the likely end result, but I think there is a likelihood that WW2 would be fought a few years later, with a whole lot more nukes, rather than the US simply steamrolling Germany in one attack wave.
*Not saying this was likely, but it was a possibility.
What people forget about Germany being nuked out is, that the US only had enough resources to build 2 bombs in 1945
And some of those resources came from captured German facilities
There was no chance to nuke Germany out of the war by 1945 and doing the same with Japan
And no one knows what would have been possible until 1950 if Germany had survived that long (while the US developed bombers to attack Europe from the states, Germany planned intercontinental rockets)
I just don't see how Germany is supposed to achieve a truce with the UK. I mean, we are talking about a nation whose response to being bombed was to fight harder.
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
Haighus wrote: Yes, the 1948 B-36 flew at ~40,000ft. The 1945 Me262 had a ceiling of 37,500ft. That is a full three years later, and it barely flew any higher. It wasn't until 1954 that the B-36 was able to operate at 48,000ft. Assuming the B-36 would be uninterceptable is dangerous, and liable to cause a disaster. Strategic bombing theorists thought the same thing in the 30's- strategic bombers would be immune to interception.
But we're also talking about an alternate future where the US doesn't put B-36 development on hold when it becomes clear that the UK is not going to fall. Development priorities change if the strategic situation changes, and the US is no longer going to be going with the approach of building thousands of "good enough" bombers and overwhelming Germany with sheer numbers.
The British would be unlikely to share all their tech, including Tube Alloys, if they were no longer in imminent risk of invasion. They would be preparing for future Nazi aggression, sure, but things wouldn't be so desperate as to share key technology with a strategic rival.
And what's the best way to prepare for future Nazi aggression when you've been so badly beaten that you have to surrender? Appeal to your ally (who is already "neutral" in name only and blatantly aiding your side) with an invulnerable strategic position and obscene industrial capacity, give them the tools to win, and hold out for a few years before the Nazi threat is removed from the map.
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kodos wrote: What people forget about Germany being nuked out is, that the US only had enough resources to build 2 bombs in 1945
That's why the timeline is 1946-47, when the US had a lot more bombs. Germany has to lose the war by then or they cease to exist.
(while the US developed bombers to attack Europe from the states, Germany planned intercontinental rockets)
They did not, however, have the nuclear weapons for those rockets. Throwing ICBMs with conventional explosives at the US is going to make them mad. Throwing nuclear-armed B-36s at Germany is going to erase Germany from the map.
Tyran wrote: I just don't see how Germany is supposed to achieve a truce with the UK. I mean, we are talking about a nation whose response to being bombed was to fight harder.
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
I thought the same way - that's how it's presented in high school history books certainly, but reading memoirs of the time period really does show Neville Chamberlain in favor of peace rather than continued armed conflict. I don't think anyone would have blamed the British - America was not yet a heavy military presence in the war and France was clearly lost. Setting up a truce to buy a decade of rearming and recovery probably seemed like a good idea - after all there was a good chance that the Nazis would be destroyed by within if left to thier own devices. Remeber that the Cold War hadn't occurred yet and nobody alive truly understood what a 10 year military standoff could be like.
Losing the British Expendintary force at Dunkirk would have been an unmitigated disaster. It's unlikely that Germany could have ever invaded the British Home Isles in their current state, but the British/polish/french surivovrs of Dunkirk were the veteran core around which the Africian and Equropean fronts were established. Moreover, Britian was already at the brink when it came to finding soliders. Wipe 330,000 soldiers off the pages of history and that really changes things.
When it comes to using the bombing of Britian as an example of british resolve, that mostly shows Hitler's misunderstanding of how terror tactics work. The threat of constant attack worked only as long as there was somewhere to retreat to - an critical component that lead to Dunkirk in the first place. Once the British civlians, on their lone island, were faced with no ability to avoid danger they became as resolved as their military counterparts. The same thing happened in the late days of Berlin, where the eastern Berlin citizens would commit themselves in deadly street to street fighting, often attacking tanks and other vehicles in hand to hand combat attacks. The Russians made it clear that surrender wasn't going to happen and for that part of the city the resistance was bitter and resolute. On the other hand, the Russians complained that the American/European push had faced very little resistance, with their policy of accepting surrender having been well known. Despite the fact that the US Marines often failed to honor any surrender terms (a stated policy at the time), the Germans still flocked to American lines to turn over their weapons and request food.
Hitler should have looked at 'bottling' Britian instead of invading it, but that wasn't in line with his philosophy.
Tyran wrote: I just don't see how Germany is supposed to achieve a truce with the UK. I mean, we are talking about a nation whose response to being bombed was to fight harder.
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
I thought the same way - that's how it's presented in high school history books certainly, but reading memoirs of the time period really does show Neville Chamberlain in favor of peace rather than continued armed conflict. I don't think anyone would have blamed the British - America was not yet a heavy military presence in the war and France was clearly lost. Setting up a truce to buy a decade of rearming and recovery probably seemed like a good idea - after all there was a good chance that the Nazis would be destroyed by within if left to thier own devices. Remeber that the Cold War hadn't occurred yet and nobody alive truly understood what a 10 year military standoff could be like.
Losing the British Expendintary force at Dunkirk would have been an unmitigated disaster. It's unlikely that Germany could have ever invaded the British Home Isles in their current state, but the British/polish/french surivovrs of Dunkirk were the veteran core around which the Africian and Equropean fronts were established. Moreover, Britian was already at the brink when it came to finding soliders. Wipe 330,000 soldiers off the pages of history and that really changes things.
When it comes to using the bombing of Britian as an example of british resolve, that mostly shows Hitler's misunderstanding of how terror tactics work. The threat of constant attack worked only as long as there was somewhere to retreat to - an critical component that lead to Dunkirk in the first place. Once the British civlians, on their lone island, were faced with no ability to avoid danger they became as resolved as their military counterparts. The same thing happened in the late days of Berlin, where the eastern Berlin citizens would commit themselves in deadly street to street fighting, often attacking tanks and other vehicles in hand to hand combat attacks. The Russians made it clear that surrender wasn't going to happen and for that part of the city the resistance was bitter and resolute. On the other hand, the Russians complained that the American/European push had faced very little resistance, with their policy of accepting surrender having been well known. Despite the fact that the US Marines often failed to honor any surrender terms (a stated policy at the time), the Germans still flocked to American lines to turn over their weapons and request food.
Hitler should have looked at 'bottling' Britian instead of invading it, but that wasn't in line with his philosophy.
This. It is easy to look back with hindsight, and say the British would never agree to a ceasefire, but it was a close run thing after the Battle of France. This would be due to a political loss, not a military conquest, in many ways similar to the French treaty (France was not militarily done when it surrendered- it was the political will that ran out). It is easy to see why- WWI had been fought 20 years ago, and the UK was still feeling the effects nearly as much as France. A peace treaty would probably see the Empire preserved, because terms were likely to be fairly generous (peace benefited Hitler at this stage). Therefore, it was a fairly attractive option for the UK. If Churchill had not become Prime Minister, it could well have happened.
In this position, the US is still a rival just as much as an ally- the UK was only forced to ceed as much power as it did to the US because of the desperate position it was put in by choosing to continue prosecuting WWII. The incentive to share key technologies with the US is far less when invasion is not imminent and the Empire now has the time and resources to develop them again. The UK would probably be the first nuclear power if peace was brokered in 1940.
Peregrine wrote:
Haighus wrote: Yes, the 1948 B-36 flew at ~40,000ft. The 1945 Me262 had a ceiling of 37,500ft. That is a full three years later, and it barely flew any higher. It wasn't until 1954 that the B-36 was able to operate at 48,000ft. Assuming the B-36 would be uninterceptable is dangerous, and liable to cause a disaster. Strategic bombing theorists thought the same thing in the 30's- strategic bombers would be immune to interception.
But we're also talking about an alternate future where the US doesn't put B-36 development on hold when it becomes clear that the UK is not going to fall. Development priorities change if the strategic situation changes, and the US is no longer going to be going with the approach of building thousands of "good enough" bombers and overwhelming Germany with sheer numbers.
Except the US is also under no direct threat from Germany, and is not in the same position to make a bid as the world hegemon. They also previously had a fairly isolationist policy, which is why it took so much to drag them properly into WWII. I don't think developing intercontinental strategic bombers is going to be as much of a priority for a peacetime US as it is for a wartime one- it would probably just take the peace dividend. It also would not have the same wealth of research in operating strategic bombers that it gained form operating in Western Europe.
The British would be unlikely to share all their tech, including Tube Alloys, if they were no longer in imminent risk of invasion. They would be preparing for future Nazi aggression, sure, but things wouldn't be so desperate as to share key technology with a strategic rival.
And what's the best way to prepare for future Nazi aggression when you've been so badly beaten that you have to surrender? Appeal to your ally (who is already "neutral" in name only and blatantly aiding your side) with an invulnerable strategic position and obscene industrial capacity, give them the tools to win, and hold out for a few years before the Nazi threat is removed from the map.
Britain would probably still be in a strong position after a negotiated peace with Hitler- see above. They'd be unlikely to even lose any territory to Germany. They'd also still be a rival, as well as an ally, and it took Nazi aggression to fully push the US into being a full ally. Prior to that they were more than neutral, but not actively in alliance. Giving the US the tools to win also gave them the tools to become global hegemon, a position previously held by the UK, and still up-for-grabs following WWI. Peace would allow the UK the time and resources to focus on their own nuclear program in a period of rearming prior to WWII starting a few years after the Anglo-Franco-German war of 1940.
Negotiated peaces were pretty common in European politics between the great powers right up until the 20th century- WWI and WWII are unusual in that they resulted in the near total subjugation of the losing side. Therefore "so badly beaten" more likely means "bloodied nose and left to lick wounds".
cuda1179 wrote: With the Soviets more focused on Japan, and the need for more support in Europe, Americans would likely have diverted troops from the Pacific to Europe.
Ah... 90% of American warfighting effort went to Europe in our history. And given that the war in the Pacific required LOTS of (relatively) expensive ships and planes, but not all that much manpower compared to the number of men sent to Europe, well, there wasn't all that many troops TO divert from the Pacific.
Instead of Korea and Vietnam, I think conflicts in the Balkans would have been likely.
Unless someone quite firmly has a boot on their neck (be it the Romans, the Byzanties, the Austro-Hungarians, or the Russians) there is ALWAYS conflicts in the Balkans. Go a thousand years in the past, there's a Balkan crisis. Go a thousand years in the future, there will be a Balkan crisis. Go to any point in between, there's another Balkan crisis. Those people just cannot get along.
cuda1179 wrote: With the Soviets more focused on Japan, and the need for more support in Europe, Americans would likely have diverted troops from the Pacific to Europe.
Ah... 90% of American warfighting effort went to Europe in our history. And given that the war in the Pacific required LOTS of (relatively) expensive ships and planes, but not all that much manpower compared to the number of men sent to Europe, well, there wasn't all that many troops TO divert from the Pacific.
Instead of Korea and Vietnam, I think conflicts in the Balkans would have been likely.
Unless someone quite firmly has a boot on their neck (be it the Romans, the Byzanties, the Austro-Hungarians, or the Russians) there is ALWAYS conflicts in the Balkans. Go a thousand years in the past, there's a Balkan crisis. Go a thousand years in the future, there will be a Balkan crisis. Go to any point in between, there's another Balkan crisis. Those people just cannot get along.
To be fair austria -hungary massively fethed up in their balkans policy. They never should've just annexed bosnia, because A)that annexation isolated them diplomaticaly and B) made the recently new and independent states in the Balkan fear them.
They easily could've gone down and split bosnia with serbia or release bosnia as a puppet state and the whole situation would've been easier to handle.
Secondly: the hungarian part should 've never been allowed the magyarization politicy since they massively destabilized the empire.
Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, multinational countries require a government of legitimacy and a chain of loyality from the local region to the state to the country, if you can achieve this chain via federalization and autonomy then such a state is golden, albeit politically a bit slower.
Elbows wrote:Something the size and scope of the war in the East during WW2 is far too large to provide a simple answer.
Aye. If there's one thing the years of plugging away in military archives to uncover the tiniest shred of certainty has taught me; it's that history is very much a coin with several interdimensional angles. I'd require at least twenty five years of constant dedicated study before I'd venture to make some of the statements being made with sweeping conviction in this thread.
Haighus wrote:
Negotiated peaces were pretty common in European politics between the great powers right up until the 20th century- WWI and WWII are unusual in that they resulted in the near total subjugation of the losing side. Therefore "so badly beaten" more likely means "bloodied nose and left to lick wounds".
The idea that the 1918 Treaty of Versailles was the 'near-total subjugation of the losing side' has been one of the greatest propaganda coups of the Nazis and anti-war campaigners to still survive. It was nowhere near as bad as the terms of the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which the Germans imposed on Russia for peace. Frankly, it was basically a re-run of the 1871 Treaty of Versailles; in which part of France was temporarily occupied by the German forces, Alsace-Lorraine got swapped around like Pokemon Cards, and the French had to foot a massive reparations bill. The difference is that the French knuckled under, paid up, and picked themselves back up again without feeling the need to fight their neighbour a second time.
Whereas the Germans used it being visited back on them as an excuse for WW2. Then in trying to assess why the world wars happened and ensure that large-scale conflict didn't happen again, various peace campaigners seized upon the Nazi rhetoric and promulgated it throughout the West from before WW2 and long past it.
The Treaty of Versailles was really nothing particularly exceptional for terms of surrender in historical context. It wasn't overly cruel or taxing; despite what your average History GCSE might tell you. Certainly not a 'near-subjugation of the losing side'.
Tyran wrote: I just don't see how Germany is supposed to achieve a truce with the UK. I mean, we are talking about a nation whose response to being bombed was to fight harder.
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
I thought the same way - that's how it's presented in high school history books certainly, but reading memoirs of the time period really does show Neville Chamberlain in favor of peace rather than continued armed conflict. I don't think anyone would have blamed the British - America was not yet a heavy military presence in the war and France was clearly lost. Setting up a truce to buy a decade of rearming and recovery probably seemed like a good idea - after all there was a good chance that the Nazis would be destroyed by within if left to thier own devices. Remeber that the Cold War hadn't occurred yet and nobody alive truly understood what a 10 year military standoff could be like.
Losing the British Expendintary force at Dunkirk would have been an unmitigated disaster. It's unlikely that Germany could have ever invaded the British Home Isles in their current state, but the British/polish/french surivovrs of Dunkirk were the veteran core around which the Africian and Equropean fronts were established. Moreover, Britian was already at the brink when it came to finding soliders. Wipe 330,000 soldiers off the pages of history and that really changes things.
When it comes to using the bombing of Britian as an example of british resolve, that mostly shows Hitler's misunderstanding of how terror tactics work. The threat of constant attack worked only as long as there was somewhere to retreat to - an critical component that lead to Dunkirk in the first place. Once the British civlians, on their lone island, were faced with no ability to avoid danger they became as resolved as their military counterparts. The same thing happened in the late days of Berlin, where the eastern Berlin citizens would commit themselves in deadly street to street fighting, often attacking tanks and other vehicles in hand to hand combat attacks. The Russians made it clear that surrender wasn't going to happen and for that part of the city the resistance was bitter and resolute. On the other hand, the Russians complained that the American/European push had faced very little resistance, with their policy of accepting surrender having been well known. Despite the fact that the US Marines often failed to honor any surrender terms (a stated policy at the time), the Germans still flocked to American lines to turn over their weapons and request food.
Hitler should have looked at 'bottling' Britian instead of invading it, but that wasn't in line with his philosophy.
The loss of the BEF would be a disaster, but it would be strategically irrelevant. The British still controls the sea and Germany is still incapable of invading. The UK has no reason to accept a truce, because they know that they still have the economic and strategic advantage.
As for manpower, the British still have plenty of untapped reserves like their colonial forces. Even their own population is still capable of supplying much more manpower. A year after Dunkirk the British had increased their army by more than a million men, by the end of the War the UK had mobilized more than 3 million soldiers. The 250k men of the BEF, while significant, are only but a small part of the UK's armed forces.
The lack of a core of veterans would hurt, but the British were still learning the art of modern warfare, so it is debatable how much it will hurt. But the lost of the BEF, as painful as it could be, is not enough to put the UK out of the war.
I've been thinking about the '1948 America nukes Germany off the map no matter what' argument... and I don't think it holds water.
Why? If it were true, that America nukes Germany off the map in peacetime, then why didn't America nuke the Soviets off the map in 1948? After all, the Soviets had no real way to return the threat against mainland America until the ICBM was developed in the sixties.
And the simple answer is this: it was peacetime. The beginning of the Cold War, certainly, but still officially peacetime. Along with a nation that believed in the propaganda line 'we don't start wars; we finish them'...
Vulcan wrote: I've been thinking about the '1948 America nukes Germany off the map no matter what' argument... and I don't think it holds water.
Why? If it were true, that America nukes Germany off the map in peacetime, then why didn't America nuke the Soviets off the map in 1948? After all, the Soviets had no real way to return the threat against mainland America until the ICBM was developed in the sixties.
And the simple answer is this: it was peacetime. The beginning of the Cold War, certainly, but still officially peacetime. Along with a nation that believed in the propaganda line 'we don't start wars; we finish them'...
It also presupposes that Germany just doesn't develop during all those years of peace and never develops a way to counter high-attitude bombers, invents the atomic bomb itself or finds another way to retaliate against the US. Which is kinda silly imho.
I think if Nazi Germany had made peace with the UK and never invaded the Soviet Union, it would have been an early start to the Cold War, except of course now it would have been a threeway of US vs Germany vs SU.
Haighus wrote:
Negotiated peaces were pretty common in European politics between the great powers right up until the 20th century- WWI and WWII are unusual in that they resulted in the near total subjugation of the losing side. Therefore "so badly beaten" more likely means "bloodied nose and left to lick wounds".
The idea that the 1918 Treaty of Versailles was the 'near-total subjugation of the losing side' has been one of the greatest propaganda coups of the Nazis and anti-war campaigners to still survive. It was nowhere near as bad as the terms of the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which the Germans imposed on Russia for peace. Frankly, it was basically a re-run of the 1871 Treaty of Versailles; in which part of France was temporarily occupied by the German forces, Alsace-Lorraine got swapped around like Pokemon Cards, and the French had to foot a massive reparations bill. The difference is that the French knuckled under, paid up, and picked themselves back up again without feeling the need to fight their neighbour a second time.
Whereas the Germans used it being visited back on them as an excuse for WW2. Then in trying to assess why the world wars happened and ensure that large-scale conflict didn't happen again, various peace campaigners seized upon the Nazi rhetoric and promulgated it throughout the West from before WW2 and long past it.
The Treaty of Versailles was really nothing particularly exceptional for terms of surrender in historical context. It wasn't overly cruel or taxing; despite what your average History GCSE might tell you. Certainly not a 'near-subjugation of the losing side'.
Fair points, although Germany also lost the entiriety of it's overseas colonies, and much of it's European continental holdings were stripped away, with Poland and Czechoslovakia becoming independent. Germany ceased being an empire following WWI. France did not cease being an empire following the Franco-Prussian war. The country was also considerably more affected in the proportion of manpower and resoruces lost, in comparison to France after 1871- the scale of the warfare was simply much larger.
Further, if the Entente had wished, they could've forced the break-up of the entire German state into its constituent regions, and Germany would've been totally unable to resist this. I don't think Prussia wielded sufficient power over France to be able to do the same after the Franco-Prussian war. Germany almost collapsed into revolution, and was utterly unable to continue waging war against the Entente- so I think it is true that the Entente had subjugated Germany, and only chose not to impose extremely harsh terms (probably largely due to the US).
Therefore I think the position was quite different to 1871, in that the conditions imposed on Germany were notably harsher, and the potential of Germany to resist was basically non-existent.
Elbows wrote:Something the size and scope of the war in the East during WW2 is far too large to provide a simple answer.
Aye. If there's one thing the years of plugging away in military archives to uncover the tiniest shred of certainty has taught me; it's that history is very much a coin with several interdimensional angles. I'd require at least twenty five years of constant dedicated study before I'd venture to make some of the statements being made with sweeping conviction in this thread.
Haighus wrote:
Negotiated peaces were pretty common in European politics between the great powers right up until the 20th century- WWI and WWII are unusual in that they resulted in the near total subjugation of the losing side. Therefore "so badly beaten" more likely means "bloodied nose and left to lick wounds".
The idea that the 1918 Treaty of Versailles was the 'near-total subjugation of the losing side' has been one of the greatest propaganda coups of the Nazis and anti-war campaigners to still survive. It was nowhere near as bad as the terms of the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which the Germans imposed on Russia for peace. Frankly, it was basically a re-run of the 1871 Treaty of Versailles; in which part of France was temporarily occupied by the German forces, Alsace-Lorraine got swapped around like Pokemon Cards, and the French had to foot a massive reparations bill. The difference is that the French knuckled under, paid up, and picked themselves back up again without feeling the need to fight their neighbour a second time.
Whereas the Germans used it being visited back on them as an excuse for WW2. Then in trying to assess why the world wars happened and ensure that large-scale conflict didn't happen again, various peace campaigners seized upon the Nazi rhetoric and promulgated it throughout the West from before WW2 and long past it.
The Treaty of Versailles was really nothing particularly exceptional for terms of surrender in historical context. It wasn't overly cruel or taxing; despite what your average History GCSE might tell you. Certainly not a 'near-subjugation of the losing side'.
Agreed. Compared for example to the treaty of Trianon that was forced upon Hungary, Versailles let Germany get away with a light bop on the nose.
Vulcan wrote: I've been thinking about the '1948 America nukes Germany off the map no matter what' argument... and I don't think it holds water.
Why? If it were true, that America nukes Germany off the map in peacetime, then why didn't America nuke the Soviets off the map in 1948? After all, the Soviets had no real way to return the threat against mainland America until the ICBM was developed in the sixties.
And the simple answer is this: it was peacetime. The beginning of the Cold War, certainly, but still officially peacetime. Along with a nation that believed in the propaganda line 'we don't start wars; we finish them'...
It also presupposes that Germany just doesn't develop during all those years of peace and never develops a way to counter high-attitude bombers, invents the atomic bomb itself or finds another way to retaliate against the US. Which is kinda silly imho.
I think if Nazi Germany had made peace with the UK and never invaded the Soviet Union, it would have been an early start to the Cold War, except of course now it would have been a threeway of US vs Germany vs SU.
Especially so as most of the jet and rocket fighters produced by Germany at the end of WWII could reach around 40,000ft, which was where high-altitude bombers operated at till the mid 50's. They already had the capability to intercept bombers at that height, albeit at their combat ceilings.
The US nuking Germany is silly. But the US would have no problem grinding Germany into bloody dust because the difference in population, economy and industry is insane.
Fair points, although Germany also lost the entiriety of it's overseas colonies,
Germany's overseas colonies were all but non-existent. That was half of the Kaiser's reason for going to war. 'Place in the sun', etc. It looks like a lot on a map if you look; but in reality it mostly consisted of a little gunboat sailing past and waving a flag at black people twice a year and the odd international merchant setting up shop to do business. Nothing of any real substantial economic worth or colonisation. That was one of the German complaints pre-war; that all the good bits were already taken!
Furthermore, much of what little was lost went to the Japanese, as opposed to the British or the French and had little to do with Versailles. Losing a handful of expensive ghost towns/market stalls in the middle of nowhere was not a particularly harsh burden. Even Hitler didn't bother pressing to regain the colonies, they figured so little in the German mind post-war. The Nazi Office related to the concept actually got closed down in '43 it was deemed so irrelevant as an issue! The colonies thing was one of the Kaiser's bugbears more than anything, and it left the building as something of significance when he did.
Additionally, the Prussian Army in 1871 did actually want to strip France's colonial possessions; it was only Bismarck that held them back. So that one almost did make it to the table in 1871.
and much of it's European continental holdings were stripped away, with Poland and Czechoslovakia becoming independent. Germany ceased being an empire following WWI. France did not cease being an empire following the Franco-Prussian war.
These events had little to do with Versailles, and were more to do with a paper acquiescence by Germany of what was effectively already the case in territories unrelated to the Entente.
Poland's partition wasn't 'imposed' on a 'subjugated' Germany by the Allies, or her land stripped from her as retribution; it was the mere acknowledgement of the result of a bloody domestic insurrection initiated six months prior before Versailles was signed. The German Army had been mostly thrown out of Poland.Versailles is not the reason that chunks of Polish territory were lost to Germany, and it's demeaning to the men and women who fought for their independence to ascribe the success of their struggle to the Allies at the peace table. Furthermore, the entire southern section of Poland was actually torn from the dead (legally as of 1918) corpse of Austria-Hungary. The only bit actually ceded by Germany at Versailles was the Polish corridor which; let's be honest, would likely have been seized within a month or two regardless of what was said in a train carriage in France. In some regards, Versailles was a favour to Germany. It stopped Poland taking even more land off of them.
Czechoslovakia meanwhile, like Southern Poland, was primarily extracted from Austro-Hungarian lands (even the Sudetenland didn't actually belong to Germany). Being compelled to the terrible tragedy of acknowledging somebody else's empire is being broken up is hardly a mortal blow to pride and honour.
In both cases, being forced to acknowledge reality relating to third parties on a bit of paper is hardly an onerous treaty condition; anymore than accepting the current situation with Russia was. Neither was anything particularly to do with the 'subjugation of Germany' by the Allies. Alsace-Lorraine in both instances (1871 & 1919) was far more relevant and painful.
The country was also considerably more affected in the proportion of manpower and resoruces lost, in comparison to France after 1871- the scale of the warfare was simply much larger.
Just because more men were killed on both sides does not mean that the agreement is suddenly so much harsher. They were quite happy to impose very similar conditions on France in 1870; and France didn't feel the need to go on Napoleon II: Electric Boogaloo twenty years later.
Further, if the Entente had wished, they could've forced the break-up of the entire German state into its constituent regions, and Germany would've been totally unable to resist this. I don't think Prussia wielded sufficient power over France to be able to do the same after the Franco-Prussian war. Germany almost collapsed into revolution, and was utterly unable to continue waging war against the Entente- so I think it is true that the Entente had subjugated Germany, and only chose not to impose extremely harsh terms (probably largely due to the US).
Therefore I think the position was quite different to 1871, in that the conditions imposed on Germany were notably harsher, and the potential of Germany to resist was basically non-existent.
Firstly, I was primarily addressing the claim that Versailles was a particularly unusual and harsh imposition on the German people; worse than what would usually be expected in this sort of circumstance. Given that it was far more lenient than what Germany made Russia sign beforehand, and about on par for what France signed in 1871? The answer remains; no, not really, not in a wider historical context. Versailles wasn't 'unusual', and it didn't 'subjugate' Germany; any more than the 1871 version subjugated France.
Secondly, as a follow up point; France in 1870 had no real capacity to resist any longer. Napoleon had been captured, Paris besieged by new long range artillery which it couldn't fight, and every one of their field armies effectively thrashed. Germany was already occupying their country. The thing about industrialised warfare even in 1870, is that your average citizen with a musket from 1810 stashed in the family attic is completely unable to fight a needle rifle. Enough citizens died sallying from Paris getting gunned down like dogs to prove that. With the government fled, captured, or ineffective, no substantial standing armies remaining (the last one got smashed at Lisaine before fleeing abroad to be disarmed by the Swiss), and 500,000 enemy troops on their soil? In some regards Germany in 1918 was actually in a better position than the French in 1870. So no dice there again.
Vulcan wrote: If it were true, that America nukes Germany off the map in peacetime, then why didn't America nuke the Soviets off the map in 1948?
There was actually a significant argument in the US that we should reach Berlin and keep going, nuking the Soviets as needed. It was overruled in large part because we'd be betraying our allies, a situation that doesn't exist with Germany.
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Haighus wrote: Especially so as most of the jet and rocket fighters produced by Germany at the end of WWII could reach around 40,000ft, which was where high-altitude bombers operated at till the mid 50's. They already had the capability to intercept bombers at that height, albeit at their combat ceilings.
It's not that simple. First of all, the ME-262 can't even get that high, and the rocket planes can only get there for a very brief moment before they become gliders. Then the interceptor has to actually get into position to attack, which is easier said than done. If the bombers don't fly right over the rocket interceptor's launch position it doesn't have the range to intercept. If the bombers are identified too late the interceptors can't reach them in time, a very real threat given that they would be operating at the extreme edge of their performance limits. And then even if the interceptors get there they have to face the fact that the B-36 is more maneuverable than a fighter of that era at 40,000' and is armed with far superior guns.
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Tyran wrote: The loss of the BEF would be a disaster, but it would be strategically irrelevant. The British still controls the sea and Germany is still incapable of invading. The UK has no reason to accept a truce, because they know that they still have the economic and strategic advantage.
Exactly. Even complete annihilation at Dunkirk is strategically irrelevant. The RAF is untouched, the Royal Navy still makes any attempted invasion nothing more than a very efficient method of drowning the entire German army in an afternoon, and even losing the ground forces required for an invasion of Germany just makes it more likely that Germany is erased by nuclear weapons. The UK was not anywhere near being forced to surrender, and they had to have known that giving Germany the ability to consolidate their gains and secure uncontested control over Europe would only weaken the UK position in the future. Any "truce" is nothing more than stalling long enough to recover and resume the war.
And contrary to what you say, most Russians, including those not from major cities, cared very much who ruled them. Russians have always been a xenophobic bunch, but I don't think you quite understand the intense hatred of Germans that washed over Russia after the Nazi invasion. Most people from Western Russia (and that is a big part of the Russian population) had witnessed German brutality first hand. They wanted to see the Germans suffer as much as possible, there was no question about serving them.To this day, many Russians still believe the Germans got away easy with their crimes. In other words, the Soviet Union or the Russian people would never have surrendered or accepted any sort of peace deal with Germany. The genocidal aims and brutality of the Nazis was too well known for that. They would have fought to the death regardless of who controls the former capital of Moscow. Most people in Russia never liked the city of Moscow and its people anyways.
Many rural Russians had little love for Stalin's Soviet Union.....living in the middle of nowhere has advantages, choosing one megelomanic over the other whos government isnt even going to be seen in your village.......didnt really matter to you as long as you could tend your fields in peace.
Ok, fair enough- Versaille was no worse than 1871. However, Germany was subjugated, they still had absolutely no way to resist. If the Entente had chosen to gut Germany, would Germany have had any way to stop them? I recognise this was also an option in return in the Franco-Prussian war, which was clearly a prelude to WWI.
Versaille was lenient, but it didn't have to be. The Entente just chose to be lenient, rather than tear the country apart. Germany was subjugated, but then was given a chance. Poland would not have been able to gain it's independence if Germany was not militarily and economically devastated by 4 years of war on two fronts.
Haighus wrote: Especially so as most of the jet and rocket fighters produced by Germany at the end of WWII could reach around 40,000ft, which was where high-altitude bombers operated at till the mid 50's. They already had the capability to intercept bombers at that height, albeit at their combat ceilings.
It's not that simple. First of all, the ME-262 can't even get that high, and the rocket planes can only get there for a very brief moment before they become gliders. Then the interceptor has to actually get into position to attack, which is easier said than done. If the bombers don't fly right over the rocket interceptor's launch position it doesn't have the range to intercept. If the bombers are identified too late the interceptors can't reach them in time, a very real threat given that they would be operating at the extreme edge of their performance limits. And then even if the interceptors get there they have to face the fact that the B-36 is more maneuverable than a fighter of that era at 40,000' and is armed with far superior guns.
The Me262 was shy by about 3000ft with the Jumo engines. The He162 could reach over 39,000 with the BMW engine. This was during the incredibly desperate final few months, when reaching extreme altitude (for the time) was not a priority. I don't think it would be overly difficult to eke out a few thousand more feet of altitude, and those distances put the bombers in range of the rocket-cannons anyway. Even the rocket plane actually had 4 minutes of powered flight at 40,000 feet (longer than it took to achieve that altitude).
Both the Shooting Star and the Gloucester Meteor were able to reach over 40,000 feet too, as contempories. A bomber at 40,000ft was not going to be safe for long, and indeed wasn't when the B-36 was introduced in 1948 (the MiG 9 could already reach over 42,000 ft based on German jet-engine tech, and the MiG 15, brought into service in 1949, over 50,000ft).
Ok, fair enough- Versaille was no worse than 1871. However, Germany was subjugated, they still had absolutely no way to resist. If the Entente had chosen to gut Germany, would Germany have had any way to stop them? I recognise this was also an option in return in the Franco-Prussian war, which was clearly a prelude to WWI.
Versaille was lenient, but it didn't have to be. The Entente just chose to be lenient, rather than tear the country apart. Germany was subjugated, but then was given a chance. Poland would not have been able to gain it's independence if Germany was not militarily and economically devastated by 4 years of war on two fronts.
I just want to to open here by apologising if I sounded a bit rough/dismissive in my last post. Re-reading, I came across as a bit of a dick with the way I phrased it; and that's completely on me.
I also think that perhaps we might be having different definitions of the word 'subjugated here'. To me ( & the Nazis), subjugation in this case meant enslavement to the will of another. That's usually considered as being a spot more long-term/hands on than being presented with a bill and a temporary occupation.
I suspect the reason the idea of Versailles as being unusually harsh was swallowed by the German public for much the same as the reason as why they went for the 'Stab in the Back' mythology; that is to say, it blamed somebody else for their troubles. Thus, the reason that hyperinflation and political strife was occurring in Germany wasn't because of their own actions. It was because of those horrible Allies and their terribly harsh and cruel subjugation of Germany and their exaction of unreasonable concessions at Versailles. Etc.
Like I said before, this tends to have been one of the longer running WW1 myths, and one that's crossed borders to boot. The funny thing is that France actually wanted Germany to pay less than they were billed; but America insisted upon a larger sum. They were also happy to leave Germany with a larger Army. France's real interest was in annexing a chunk of territory; both for the implicit wealth/future economic potential in it and as an additional buffer. Something that frankly; had much precedence in European wars (check out the result of the Prusso-Austro war which effectively formed Germany).
Yet Wilson is the one that commonly goes down in history as holding a rabid France bent on revenge back!
Ok, fair enough- Versaille was no worse than 1871. However, Germany was subjugated, they still had absolutely no way to resist. If the Entente had chosen to gut Germany, would Germany have had any way to stop them? I recognise this was also an option in return in the Franco-Prussian war, which was clearly a prelude to WWI.
Versaille was lenient, but it didn't have to be. The Entente just chose to be lenient, rather than tear the country apart. Germany was subjugated, but then was given a chance. Poland would not have been able to gain it's independence if Germany was not militarily and economically devastated by 4 years of war on two fronts.
I just want to to open here by apologising if I sounded a bit rough/dismissive in my last post. Re-reading, I came across as a bit of a dick with the way I phrased it; and that's completely on me.
I also think that perhaps we might be having different definitions of the word 'subjugated here'. To me ( & the Nazis), subjugation in this case meant enslavement to the will of another. That's usually considered as being a spot more long-term/hands on than being presented with a bill and a temporary occupation.
I suspect the reason it was swallowed by the German public was the same as the reason why they went for the 'Stab in the Back' mythology; that is to say, it blamed somebody else. Thus the reason that hyperinflation and political strife was occurring in Germany wasn't because of their own actions. It was because of those horrible Allies and their terribly harsh and cruel subjugation of Germany and their exaction of unreasonable concessions at Versailles. Etc.
Like I said before, this tends to have been one of the longer running WW1 myths, and one that's crossed borders to boot. The funny thing is that France actually wanted Germany to pay less than they were billed; but America insisted upon a larger sum. They were also happy to leave Germany with a larger Army. France's real interest was in annexing a chunk of territory; both for the implicit wealth/future economic potential in it and as an additional buffer. Something that frankly; had much precedence in European wars (check out the result of the Prusso-Austro war which effectively formed Germany).
Yet Wilson is the one that commonly goes down in history as holding a rabid France bent on revenge back!
No worries! I think the use of the word subjugate is the issue here! Short-term vs long-term. Although I have learnt something about the Treaty of Versaille too. So thanks
Blaming someone else is a common theme in modern politics, when things are not going well domestically- that bit does not surprise me one bit.
And contrary to what you say, most Russians, including those not from major cities, cared very much who ruled them. Russians have always been a xenophobic bunch, but I don't think you quite understand the intense hatred of Germans that washed over Russia after the Nazi invasion. Most people from Western Russia (and that is a big part of the Russian population) had witnessed German brutality first hand. They wanted to see the Germans suffer as much as possible, there was no question about serving them.To this day, many Russians still believe the Germans got away easy with their crimes. In other words, the Soviet Union or the Russian people would never have surrendered or accepted any sort of peace deal with Germany. The genocidal aims and brutality of the Nazis was too well known for that. They would have fought to the death regardless of who controls the former capital of Moscow. Most people in Russia never liked the city of Moscow and its people anyways.
Many rural Russians had little love for Stalin's Soviet Union.....living in the middle of nowhere has advantages, choosing one megelomanic over the other whos government isnt even going to be seen in your village.......didnt really matter to you as long as you could tend your fields in peace.
Just because a few leftover kulaks had Nazi sympathies at first doesn't mean that extends to the vast majority of the Russian peasant population, who had been oppressed by those exact same kulaks for generations. I will note that the article uses a lot of German sources, which makes it highly suspect. Of course the Germans are going to write that they were welcomed like liberators. And initially, that may have been true in some places. Russia at the time was a country that had only just come out of a devastating civil war. Of course there are still going to be plenty of people with White sympathies. However, it doesn't mean that this is anywhere near the majority of the population. The Reds always enjoyed a lot of support in the countryside as well, and that is quite clear from the formation of Red partisan groups everywhere the Germans passed. Anyways, whatever initial support the Germans enjoyed from anti-communist Russians quickly evaporated when the Germans showed their true face. As I said, even the Cossacks, the most fervently anti-communist people in the entire country, gave up their resistance and joined the Red Army on a large scale. Loyalty to the Soviet Union was enough that Soviet authority could be re-established very quickly behind German lines. Which is another thing that massively contributed to the German defeat. The Germans could only hold any area as long as they were actively guarding it. As soon as they left, the Soviets came back. This means that the Germans were never able to secure their rear and they needed vast amounts of reserves to garrison all of the territory they captured.
But as I said before, if the Germans had abandoned their genocidal attitude, and had presented themselves as liberators and defenders of "Old Russia" and the tsar instead, they would have enjoyed significant support from the Russian people and would have stood a far better chance at winning the war. Luckily, the Germans were suicidally stupid and never were able to capitalise on anti-communist sentiments. In which they actually made a huge contribution to the Soviet Union, since the experience of the war and Nazi brutality united the Russian people like never before and made everyone a fervent patriotic 'communist', even those who had been anti-communists before.
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
except wouldnt it have been likely that the British would have sacked Churchill?
And why would they?
The Germans didn't sack Hitler when they lost forces larger than the BEF, the Russians didn't sack Stalin when they lost the entire western border, the Americans didn't sack FDR when they suffered Pearl Harbor.
To suggest that the British would give up when history is full of examples of people enduring greater loses and continue fighting is calling the British cowards, and the British were not cowards.
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
except wouldnt it have been likely that the British would have sacked Churchill?
And why would they?
The Germans didn't sack Hitler when they lost forces larger than the BEF, the Russians didn't sack Stalin when they lost the entire western border, the Americans didn't sack FDR when they suffered Pearl Harbor.
To suggest that the British would give up when history is full of examples of people enduring greater loses and continue fighting is calling the British cowards, and the British were not cowards.
Don't let your feelings for British Culture get in the way. Neville Chamberlain had incredibly strong support until he didn't over the course of a week. I don't think Churchill would have been sacked - he easily made the argument that the Dunkirk was the fault of the French and there was no effective French Government to gainsay him until long after it mattered. Dunkirk surivors did form a good portion of his powerbase within the military and the media focus on the civilian boatsmen gave him a lot of leverage when it came to wartime rationing and laws - if your fellow countrymen were enduring enemy strafing runs to rescue the boys in butternut, what could you say to a mere increase in taxes and some wartime rationing?
And contrary to what you say, most Russians, including those not from major cities, cared very much who ruled them. Russians have always been a xenophobic bunch, but I don't think you quite understand the intense hatred of Germans that washed over Russia after the Nazi invasion. Most people from Western Russia (and that is a big part of the Russian population) had witnessed German brutality first hand. They wanted to see the Germans suffer as much as possible, there was no question about serving them.To this day, many Russians still believe the Germans got away easy with their crimes. In other words, the Soviet Union or the Russian people would never have surrendered or accepted any sort of peace deal with Germany. The genocidal aims and brutality of the Nazis was too well known for that. They would have fought to the death regardless of who controls the former capital of Moscow. Most people in Russia never liked the city of Moscow and its people anyways.
Many rural Russians had little love for Stalin's Soviet Union.....living in the middle of nowhere has advantages, choosing one megelomanic over the other whos government isnt even going to be seen in your village.......didnt really matter to you as long as you could tend your fields in peace.
Just because a few leftover kulaks had Nazi sympathies at first doesn't mean that extends to the vast majority of the Russian peasant population, who had been oppressed by those exact same kulaks for generations. I will note that the article uses a lot of German sources, which makes it highly suspect. Of course the Germans are going to write that they were welcomed like liberators. And initially, that may have been true in some places. Russia at the time was a country that had only just come out of a devastating civil war. Of course there are still going to be plenty of people with White sympathies. However, it doesn't mean that this is anywhere near the majority of the population. The Reds always enjoyed a lot of support in the countryside as well, and that is quite clear from the formation of Red partisan groups everywhere the Germans passed.
Anyways, whatever initial support the Germans enjoyed from anti-communist Russians quickly evaporated when the Germans showed their true face. As I said, even the Cossacks, the most fervently anti-communist people in the entire country, gave up their resistance and joined the Red Army on a large scale. Loyalty to the Soviet Union was enough that Soviet authority could be re-established very quickly behind German lines. Which is another thing that massively contributed to the German defeat. The Germans could only hold any area as long as they were actively guarding it. As soon as they left, the Soviets came back. This means that the Germans were never able to secure their rear and they needed vast amounts of reserves to garrison all of the territory they captured.
But as I said before, if the Germans had abandoned their genocidal attitude, and had presented themselves as liberators and defenders of "Old Russia" and the tsar instead, they would have enjoyed significant support from the Russian people and would have stood a far better chance at winning the war. Luckily, the Germans were suicidally stupid and never were able to capitalise on anti-communist sentiments. In which they actually made a huge contribution to the Soviet Union, since the experience of the war and Nazi brutality united the Russian people like never before and made everyone a fervent patriotic 'communist', even those who had been anti-communists before.
Its an interesting proposition. Many Russians were very patriotic.....however quite a few of them were basically rounded up and forced to fight with squads of machine guns behind their backs. I think if Moscow falls there is a much greater resistance to fight for a crumbling and brutal regime. My Russian teacher was one of the soldiers released from a political camp and forced by gunpoint to walk across minefields, he survived the war because his unit got shelled so badly that they basically got buried waste deep in mud and couldn't pull themselves out. Germans came and started executing his comrades stuck in the mud.......before the Germans could shoot him, being an educated and worldly man he started reciting German poetry.....remarkably, the Germans decided to spare him and send him to a prison camp. From there he went to Argentina knowing he would never be welcomed back in his country again.
The Germans reprisals on Soviet citizens absolutely did not do them any favors for sure. I still don't understand how The Russians were able to coral so many people to fight.
I'd have to say that if Dunkirk had been a wipe out then Churchill would have had a much harder time keeping his hold on the War Cabinet,
especially if Germany had offered peace with a swift return of the large number of (British) POWs they would have just grabbed,
the strong incentive to stay at war would have been gone, after all those countries we'd had treaties with had all surrendered (there wouldn't have been all the free French, Poles etc to argue against it) and if we were offered an 'honourable' way out we might have taken it
and without Britain rushing over to the US with money to spend (and then cap in had for lend lease) I suspect the US military ramp up would have slowed, it's a lot harder sell when there's not an active war going on and U-boats aren't making trouble in the Atlantic
I still think things fall apart for Germany in the short to medium term
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: I'd have to say that if Dunkirk had been a wipe out then Churchill would have had a much harder time keeping his hold on the War Cabinet,
especially if Germany had offered peace with a swift return of the large number of (British) POWs they would have just grabbed,
the strong incentive to stay at war would have been gone, after all those countries we'd had treaties with had all surrendered (there wouldn't have been all the free French, Poles etc to argue against it) and if we were offered an 'honourable' way out we might have taken it
and without Britain rushing over to the US with money to spend (and then cap in had for lend lease) I suspect the US military ramp up would have slowed, it's a lot harder sell when there's not an active war going on and U-boats aren't making trouble in the Atlantic
I still think things fall apart for Germany in the short to medium term
Really depends, if he can stabilize vichy France.
He potentially had also to resolve the whole hungarian mess after trianon and especially keep romania in line.
There would also be the question of switzerland, yes we were also a target and if you ever have read the insult that Calls itself book "mein k(r)ampf" he'd still have a problem with the soviets.
Logistically speaking he can't win that war offensivly. Ideologically however he is forced in that conflict.
And contrary to what you say, most Russians, including those not from major cities, cared very much who ruled them. Russians have always been a xenophobic bunch, but I don't think you quite understand the intense hatred of Germans that washed over Russia after the Nazi invasion. Most people from Western Russia (and that is a big part of the Russian population) had witnessed German brutality first hand. They wanted to see the Germans suffer as much as possible, there was no question about serving them.To this day, many Russians still believe the Germans got away easy with their crimes. In other words, the Soviet Union or the Russian people would never have surrendered or accepted any sort of peace deal with Germany. The genocidal aims and brutality of the Nazis was too well known for that. They would have fought to the death regardless of who controls the former capital of Moscow. Most people in Russia never liked the city of Moscow and its people anyways.
Many rural Russians had little love for Stalin's Soviet Union.....living in the middle of nowhere has advantages, choosing one megelomanic over the other whos government isnt even going to be seen in your village.......didnt really matter to you as long as you could tend your fields in peace.
Just because a few leftover kulaks had Nazi sympathies at first doesn't mean that extends to the vast majority of the Russian peasant population, who had been oppressed by those exact same kulaks for generations. I will note that the article uses a lot of German sources, which makes it highly suspect. Of course the Germans are going to write that they were welcomed like liberators. And initially, that may have been true in some places. Russia at the time was a country that had only just come out of a devastating civil war. Of course there are still going to be plenty of people with White sympathies. However, it doesn't mean that this is anywhere near the majority of the population. The Reds always enjoyed a lot of support in the countryside as well, and that is quite clear from the formation of Red partisan groups everywhere the Germans passed.
Anyways, whatever initial support the Germans enjoyed from anti-communist Russians quickly evaporated when the Germans showed their true face. As I said, even the Cossacks, the most fervently anti-communist people in the entire country, gave up their resistance and joined the Red Army on a large scale. Loyalty to the Soviet Union was enough that Soviet authority could be re-established very quickly behind German lines. Which is another thing that massively contributed to the German defeat. The Germans could only hold any area as long as they were actively guarding it. As soon as they left, the Soviets came back. This means that the Germans were never able to secure their rear and they needed vast amounts of reserves to garrison all of the territory they captured.
But as I said before, if the Germans had abandoned their genocidal attitude, and had presented themselves as liberators and defenders of "Old Russia" and the tsar instead, they would have enjoyed significant support from the Russian people and would have stood a far better chance at winning the war. Luckily, the Germans were suicidally stupid and never were able to capitalise on anti-communist sentiments. In which they actually made a huge contribution to the Soviet Union, since the experience of the war and Nazi brutality united the Russian people like never before and made everyone a fervent patriotic 'communist', even those who had been anti-communists before.
Its an interesting proposition. Many Russians were very patriotic.....however quite a few of them were basically rounded up and forced to fight with squads of machine guns behind their backs.
Those were penal battalions, made up of criminals and political prisoners. Basically, people Stalin wanted dead and instead of letting them rot in a camp he figured he could just send them on suicide missions and still get some use out of them. Normal army units were absolutely not like that. The NKVD did have units in place to prevent unauthorised retreats in unreliable regular units as well (keep in mind the army at this point was mostly untrained conscripts, not soldiers, so some of course got scared and fled when exposed to enemy fire), but there they would just send people back to their unit or arrest them in case of desertion. People were normally only executed after a court martial.
Don't believe the portrayal of the Red Army you see in Western movies or video games. It is very inaccurate and quite frankly insulting.
Andrew1975 wrote: I think if Moscow falls there is a much greater resistance to fight for a crumbling and brutal regime.
Why? Nobody cares for Moscow, except for the Muscovites (but nobody likes Muscovites). It was an empty city by 1941. Everything remotely valuable was evacuated, most of the population had fled. The Soviet government was anything but crumbling, and the fall of Moscow would change nothing about that, since there was no government presence in Moscow anyway.
Andrew1975 wrote: The Germans reprisals on Soviet citizens absolutely did not do them any favors for sure. I still don't understand how The Russians were able to coral so many people to fight.
You do not? Then you do not understand Russians apparently. Would Americans not fight to the last man, woman and child if the US were ever invaded?
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: I'd have to say that if Dunkirk had been a wipe out then Churchill would have had a much harder time keeping his hold on the War Cabinet,
especially if Germany had offered peace with a swift return of the large number of (British) POWs they would have just grabbed,
the strong incentive to stay at war would have been gone, after all those countries we'd had treaties with had all surrendered (there wouldn't have been all the free French, Poles etc to argue against it) and if we were offered an 'honourable' way out we might have taken it
and without Britain rushing over to the US with money to spend (and then cap in had for lend lease) I suspect the US military ramp up would have slowed, it's a lot harder sell when there's not an active war going on and U-boats aren't making trouble in the Atlantic
I still think things fall apart for Germany in the short to medium term
Why would UK accept a peace offering? Germany had proven, repeatedly, to be untrustworthy. The UK would know that any truce would be temporary at best and it would only allow Germany to consolidate its forces to start again. Keeping the naval blockade while the UK still has unrestricted access to global trade is too much of an advantage.
And contrary to what you say, most Russians, including those not from major cities, cared very much who ruled them. Russians have always been a xenophobic bunch, but I don't think you quite understand the intense hatred of Germans that washed over Russia after the Nazi invasion. Most people from Western Russia (and that is a big part of the Russian population) had witnessed German brutality first hand. They wanted to see the Germans suffer as much as possible, there was no question about serving them.To this day, many Russians still believe the Germans got away easy with their crimes. In other words, the Soviet Union or the Russian people would never have surrendered or accepted any sort of peace deal with Germany. The genocidal aims and brutality of the Nazis was too well known for that. They would have fought to the death regardless of who controls the former capital of Moscow. Most people in Russia never liked the city of Moscow and its people anyways.
Many rural Russians had little love for Stalin's Soviet Union.....living in the middle of nowhere has advantages, choosing one megelomanic over the other whos government isnt even going to be seen in your village.......didnt really matter to you as long as you could tend your fields in peace.
Just because a few leftover kulaks had Nazi sympathies at first doesn't mean that extends to the vast majority of the Russian peasant population, who had been oppressed by those exact same kulaks for generations. I will note that the article uses a lot of German sources, which makes it highly suspect. Of course the Germans are going to write that they were welcomed like liberators. And initially, that may have been true in some places. Russia at the time was a country that had only just come out of a devastating civil war. Of course there are still going to be plenty of people with White sympathies. However, it doesn't mean that this is anywhere near the majority of the population. The Reds always enjoyed a lot of support in the countryside as well, and that is quite clear from the formation of Red partisan groups everywhere the Germans passed.
Anyways, whatever initial support the Germans enjoyed from anti-communist Russians quickly evaporated when the Germans showed their true face. As I said, even the Cossacks, the most fervently anti-communist people in the entire country, gave up their resistance and joined the Red Army on a large scale. Loyalty to the Soviet Union was enough that Soviet authority could be re-established very quickly behind German lines. Which is another thing that massively contributed to the German defeat. The Germans could only hold any area as long as they were actively guarding it. As soon as they left, the Soviets came back. This means that the Germans were never able to secure their rear and they needed vast amounts of reserves to garrison all of the territory they captured.
But as I said before, if the Germans had abandoned their genocidal attitude, and had presented themselves as liberators and defenders of "Old Russia" and the tsar instead, they would have enjoyed significant support from the Russian people and would have stood a far better chance at winning the war. Luckily, the Germans were suicidally stupid and never were able to capitalise on anti-communist sentiments. In which they actually made a huge contribution to the Soviet Union, since the experience of the war and Nazi brutality united the Russian people like never before and made everyone a fervent patriotic 'communist', even those who had been anti-communists before.
Its an interesting proposition. Many Russians were very patriotic.....however quite a few of them were basically rounded up and forced to fight with squads of machine guns behind their backs.
Those were penal battalions, made up of criminals and political prisoners. Basically, people Stalin wanted dead and instead of letting them rot in a camp he figured he could just send them on suicide missions and still get some use out of them. Normal army units were absolutely not like that. The NKVD did have units in place to prevent unauthorised retreats in unreliable regular units as well (keep in mind the army at this point was mostly untrained conscripts, not soldiers, so some of course got scared and fled when exposed to enemy fire), but there they would just send people back to their unit or arrest them in case of desertion. People were normally only executed after a court martial.
Don't believe the portrayal of the Red Army you see in Western movies or video games. It is very inaccurate and quite frankly insulting.
Andrew1975 wrote: I think if Moscow falls there is a much greater resistance to fight for a crumbling and brutal regime.
Why? Nobody cares for Moscow, except for the Muscovites (but nobody likes Muscovites). It was an empty city by 1941. Everything remotely valuable was evacuated, most of the population had fled. The Soviet government was anything but crumbling, and the fall of Moscow would change nothing about that, since there was no government presence in Moscow anyway.
Andrew1975 wrote: The Germans reprisals on Soviet citizens absolutely did not do them any favors for sure. I still don't understand how The Russians were able to coral so many people to fight.
You do not? Then you do not understand Russians apparently. Would Americans not fight to the last man, woman and child if the US were ever invaded?
I do understand Russians......most in the outskirts really could care less which corrupt awful person is oppressing them on any given day as long as they are left alone. The Russians I've met here and in Russia have no particular loyalty to any government, their loyalty always seems to be more with their land/city/village/family/ancestral home.........The actual government....whether its Gorod (city) Oblast (region) or national.....is usually looked at with a pretty high amount of disdain.
Lots of those conscripts had guns pointing at their heads by the commissariat. I lived in Volgograd (Stalingrad) for some time and interviewed a few old vets......their stories were pretty horrid. These were guys from the region itself.......the chukchas that the army brought in from out east were treated even worse.
Americans would fight for the most part because we believe in our Government (maybe a little less now) I don't se that being the issue with Russians especially during that era. The government did little but brutalize people at every level of society. Between the purges, the forced migrations, and flat out corruption the only thing I could see making most people fight for Russia is straight out fear of what they might do to your family and village if you didn't. Your claims of patriotism dont hold water for me for most Soviet citizens. Metropolitan Russians possibly, but not the vast majority of people.
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
except wouldnt it have been likely that the British would have sacked Churchill?
And why would they?
The Germans didn't sack Hitler when they lost forces larger than the BEF, the Russians didn't sack Stalin when they lost the entire western border, the Americans didn't sack FDR when they suffered Pearl Harbor.
To suggest that the British would give up when history is full of examples of people enduring greater loses and continue fighting is calling the British cowards, and the British were not cowards.
never said they were. Their PM position is much more volatile than the president of the US. its my limited knowledge that at the time Churchill wasnt that popular, and wagered on the rescue of Dunkirk. take that away and it seems like he could have lost the support that elected him
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
except wouldnt it have been likely that the British would have sacked Churchill?
And why would they?
The Germans didn't sack Hitler when they lost forces larger than the BEF, the Russians didn't sack Stalin when they lost the entire western border, the Americans didn't sack FDR when they suffered Pearl Harbor.
To suggest that the British would give up when history is full of examples of people enduring greater loses and continue fighting is calling the British cowards, and the British were not cowards.
never said they were. Their PM position is much more volatile than the president of the US. its my limited knowledge that at the time Churchill wasnt that popular, and wagered on the rescue of Dunkirk. take that away and it seems like he could have lost the support that elected him
Why would they get rid of someone who had been in charge for a month and had had no hand in the disaster that had befallen the BEF? That's nonsense. Though Churchill was not popular amongst the members of his party he was given power by the head of the Tories (ie. his predecessor) and the chief whip. He was not elected until 1951.
It would have depended on the mood of the general public.
If the British people had decided to give up after a failed Operation Dynamo, then it would not have mattered who was in charge of the cabinet. If Churchill had refused to give up, presumably he would have been replaced.
Losing the BEF at Dunkirk would have been a significant shock, to be sure, however the public may have felt that the RN and RAF would be able to defend the UK while the Empire and allies mustered replacements.
While we are speculating on these lines, we can imagine that the loss of the BEF might have emboldened the Germans into an unwise attempted Operation Seelowe which would have been massacred in the Channel by the RN and RAF, re-invigorating British and Imperial morale and challenging German assumptions of superiority, leading to a postponement of Barbarossa.
Kilkrazy wrote: It would have depended on the mood of the general public.
If the British people had decided to give up after a failed Operation Dynamo, then it would not have mattered who was in charge of the cabinet. If Churchill had refused to give up, presumably he would have been replaced.
Losing the BEF at Dunkirk would have been a significant shock, to be sure, however the public may have felt that the RN and RAF would be able to defend the UK while the Empire and allies mustered replacements.
While we are speculating on these lines, we can imagine that the loss of the BEF might have emboldened the Germans into an unwise attempted Operation Seelowe which would have been massacred in the Channel by the RN and RAF, re-invigorating British and Imperial morale and challenging German assumptions of superiority, leading to a postponement of Barbarossa.
It wasn't an election year so the only way the public would have a say is via riots and mass desertion and that is as unlikely as it sounds.
As you say even if the whole of the BEF had been lost it wouldnt have taken long for the strength to have been replenished in its entirety as the Regular army was being withdrawn from both Palestine and India, the forgien legion forces were being embodied (about two divisions?), troops were being withdrawn from Norway and the Dominion divisions were well on the way. By the end of July the army was back to strength though sorely lacking in heavy equipment (though with more tanks) but fighting at home, with the LDV, naval superiority, air superiority and behind the largest anti-tank ditch imagniable the German army would not have much of a chance especially as they lacked any specialist landing craft. So if they had tried and tried in earnest it would have been inteesting to see if they even would have had the strength for Barbarossa in '41, from memory they had some 25 division earmarked for Sea Lion? Sure someone will correct that.
Operation Seelowe when wargamed by Paddy Griffith in the 1970s resulted in a loss of 90,000(?) men for the Germans. They had to face the rump BEF as well as RN and RAF, but the main difficulty was getting over the Channel.
That's a surprising amount of sod all, I will have to see if I can track down a report of that as it should make interesting reading. I cant imagine that would effect Barbarossa then as it pretty much balances the forces the Germans sent to oppose British troops that wouldn't exist in the ME and Balkans.
Yes, it's a small number of men and not much heavy equipment because one of the problems of Seelowe was the lack of proper landing ships to carry tanks and artillery.
So from the angle of balance of forces, a flop at Seelowe would not have materially affected the Easter Front. it would however have been a big morale boost to the UK and a dampener on German morale and prestige, which might or might not have prevented or postponed Barbarossa.
I was thinking last night, and I am sure this will be a bit controversial, but imagine if Hitler hadn't been as evil as he had. Imagine if his rise to power wasn't partly based on blaming the jews, and the Nazi's weren't as extreme as everyone later found out. Sure invading Poland was not nice, but imagine if the Germans had gone into Ukraine and didn't massacre everyone, and actually treated the populations well enough for them to support the German effort against Stalin. Lets say there were no concentration camps, and definitely no final solution. How would we view the war on the Soviet Union?
The reason I say this is that WWII sure did make some odd bed fellows. I hate the extreme left as much as I do the right, but I would be hard pressed to find an example of where the far right killed as many as the far left did (Lenin, Stalin, Mao). And these weren't other populations that were murdered, but their own populations. And if they were going to treat their own populations that bad, imagine how little regard they would have had for other nations? (aka China today)
The big thing about communism is how it encourages itself to spread. I don't doubt had the US and UK NOT been in Europe at the end of WWII, that Stalin would have rolled right through to Portugal. And I don't doubt he had ambitions to do it sooner.
So in that regard, imagine how Germany might be thought of today had Hitler and Co had not been as evil as they had. They might have been seen as the first country to defend the world against the spread of communism (although in a sense they ended up helping it spread), similarly the way that the US got involved in Korea and Vietnam, and a whole host of places in Central and South America. Even Patton wanted to re-arm the Germans to fight the Soviets. That sounds mad of course, but obviously they knew back then how much of a threat communism was.
Not trying to be a revisionist here - I know Hitler was a POS, but I can imagine how different history might have judged those guys had they just played their cards right. Had they been nicer to the populations of Ukraine and others, they certainly would have had their support against the Soviets. Now, I am not sure this ultimately would enabled them to win, but given what we know about Stalin today, we might have thought it was a nice try had the Germans had been more noble about it.
Also, I recently heard that Khrushchev may have had a hand in Stalin's death. Even if not directly by murdering, but not helping in his final moments/days. Going to see if I can't dig up more info on that. If anyone has heard the same let me know.
KTG17 wrote: I was thinking last night, and I am sure this will be a bit controversial, but imagine if Hitler hadn't been as evil as he had. Imagine if his rise to power wasn't partly based on blaming the jews, and the Nazi's weren't as extreme as everyone later found out. Sure invading Poland was not nice, but imagine if the Germans had gone into Ukraine and didn't massacre everyone, and actually treated the populations well enough for them to support the German effort against Stalin. Lets say there were no concentration camps, and definitely no final solution. How would we view the war on the Soviet Union?
The reason I say this is that WWII sure did make some odd bed fellows. I hate the extreme left as much as I do the right, but I would be hard pressed to find an example of where the far right killed as many as the far left did (Lenin, Stalin, Mao). And these weren't other populations that were murdered, but their own populations. And if they were going to treat their own populations that bad, imagine how little regard they would have had for other nations? (aka China today)
The big thing about communism is how it encourages itself to spread. I don't doubt had the US and UK NOT been in Europe at the end of WWII, that Stalin would have rolled right through to Portugal. And I don't doubt he had ambitions to do it sooner.
So in that regard, imagine how Germany might be thought of today had Hitler and Co had not been as evil as they had. They might have been seen as the first country to defend the world against the spread of communism (although in a sense they ended up helping it spread), similarly the way that the US got involved in Korea and Vietnam, and a whole host of places in Central and South America. Even Patton wanted to re-arm the Germans to fight the Soviets. That sounds mad of course, but obviously they knew back then how much of a threat communism was.
Not trying to be a revisionist here - I know Hitler was a POS, but I can imagine how different history might have judged those guys had they just played their cards right. Had they been nicer to the populations of Ukraine and others, they certainly would have had their support against the Soviets. Now, I am not sure this ultimately would enabled them to win, but given what we know about Stalin today, we might have thought it was a nice try had the Germans had been more noble about it.
Also, I recently heard that Khrushchev may have had a hand in Stalin's death. Even if not directly by murdering, but not helping in his final moments/days. Going to see if I can't dig up more info on that. If anyone has heard the same let me know.
You might want to change your avatar before postulating BS like that unless you want to come across like an utter donkey-cave.
Yeah I read it, I have read similar from far right donkey-caves for years and your avatar is the deaths head, a symbol of far right donkey-caves hence my comment. I want to hope that you don't support or condone such disgusting beliefs but the rhetoric combined with choice of avatar is pretty damn unfortunate.
ingtaer wrote: Yeah I read it, I have read similar from far right donkey-caves for years and your avatar is the deaths head, a symbol of far right donkey-caves hence my comment. I want to hope that you don't support or condone such disgusting beliefs but the rhetoric combined with choice of avatar is pretty damn unfortunate.
Edit; for language filter.
LOL. Wow. Okay.
This is the Death's Head:
This, is a pirate flag:
How you got this far in life not knowing the difference is beyond me.
2nd, I am not far right, I even stated I hate them too. So you either skipped over that, or chose to ignore it. If you skipped over it, you obviously didn't read it. If you chose to ignore it, it was to support your BS narrative.
Seriously, can't believe you 'read' what I wrote and chose to pick this fight. But if you want to continue and keep making yourself look ignorant I am up for it.
Now, if you want to accuse me of attacking merchant ships, plundering gold, and making people walk the plank, you got me.
Sorry for that bit of confusion, as you are obviously not aware the far-right (especially neo naxzs) take as justification their defence of Europe against the Soviet menace, the fact that the Germans didn't kill as many people as the Reds and the fact the Commies killed more of their own people as a justification for holding and espousing their beliefs. They also use the skull and cross bones in any aspect as a symbol.
Hence my comment that its unfortunate that you should spout similar rhetoric whilst having their symbol as your avatar even though I don't believe you hold such filthy views.
Clear?
And leave my shipping alone you git, I need the doubloons.
ingtaer wrote: Sorry for that bit of confusion, as you are obviously not aware the far-right (especially neo naxzs) take as justification their defence of Europe against the Soviet menace, the fact that the Germans didn't kill as many people as the Reds and the fact the Commies killed more of their own people as a justification for holding and espousing their beliefs. They also use the skull and cross bones in any aspect as a symbol.
Hence my comment that its unfortunate that you should spout similar rhetoric whilst having their symbol as your avatar even though I don't believe you hold such filthy views.
Clear?
If you want to argue that Hitler and Co were justified in killing all the Jews and so on because they took on communism, then I could understand your argument. I didn’t do that. I said
imagine if the Germans had gone into Ukraine and didn't massacre everyone, and actually treated the populations well enough for them to support the German effort against Stalin. Lets say there were no concentration camps, and definitely no final solution.
and strictly for gaks and giggles. We’re debating hypotheticals here. At no point did I say Germany was justified for their actions.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: I'd have to say that if Dunkirk had been a wipe out then Churchill would have had a much harder time keeping his hold on the War Cabinet,
especially if Germany had offered peace with a swift return of the large number of (British) POWs they would have just grabbed,
the strong incentive to stay at war would have been gone, after all those countries we'd had treaties with had all surrendered (there wouldn't have been all the free French, Poles etc to argue against it) and if we were offered an 'honourable' way out we might have taken it
and without Britain rushing over to the US with money to spend (and then cap in had for lend lease) I suspect the US military ramp up would have slowed, it's a lot harder sell when there's not an active war going on and U-boats aren't making trouble in the Atlantic
I still think things fall apart for Germany in the short to medium term
I disagree. Glad those chaps got out but if that army was destroyed or surrendered. I think US enters the war a whole year sooner as the overall threat would have been much more apparent. We all know what happens then. There was probably a large contingent of American political leaders that thought this would be another WW1 with trenches and stalemates - If England lost their army that early - it would have been more clear that this war had the potential to be much faster. A slow war - you can make a lot of profit supplying an ally - an ally that gets sunk quickly can't make you any money and now you are in danger...lose you most important trade partner. That's my thinking.
Probably nothing as the UK would have been minus three hundred thousand men (twice as many as would actually be captured through the whole war in Europe) it couldn't otherwise spare (and who then would basically be hostages at a point where casualties on all sides were still relatively limited) and the war probably would have been forced into a negotiated peace. The US wouldn't be mobilized or run up yet for war for some time, and with a dramatically weakened UK, any launch point for an invasion would have been much less viable. Also, the Eastern Front, which consumed 90% of all German ground forces casualties, hadnt opened up yet. That would have been a dramatically different military and political calculus, particularly with US isolationism reigning strong still.
I do understand Russians......most in the outskirts really could care less which corrupt awful person is oppressing them on any given day as long as they are left alone. The Russians I've met here and in Russia have no particular loyalty to any government, their loyalty always seems to be more with their land/city/village/family/ancestral home.........The actual government....whether its Gorod (city) Oblast (region) or national.....is usually looked at with a pretty high amount of disdain.
Aye, if you understand that, then you should also understand why the Soviet government had no shortage of willing bodies to throw into the meat grinder. There is little love or loyalty in Russia for whatever distant regime sits in Moscow lording it over our vast nation. Most Russians couldn't care less about the government and about distant nation-level politics. I guess that is a logical result from having a country that is so massively huge. On the other hand, most Russians are fiercely loyal to their own family and proud of their city/region, as well as to a more abstract, communal concept of the nation as a whole (what in Russian we call "rodina", literally "birth-land" or "family-land", but usually translated to motherland in english). So while people are not necessarily loyal to the Russian government, they are fiercely proud of and loyal to Russia itself. And when some foreign barbarians come in and threaten that abstract, idealistic concept of the motherland then people set aside their grievances against the government and join it to help defend the motherland, family and native city. Just for fun, if you have any Russian friends or acquaintances (as in actually living in Russia, not expats like me), start criticising Russia and Putin to them. They are likely to react defensively, even though they normally are critical of Russia themselves as well. It is just an automatism because the criticism is coming from a foreigner and therefore threatens the abstract communal concept of Russia. Be careful though, it is easy to get into a fight this way.
Andrew1975 wrote: Lots of those conscripts had guns pointing at their heads by the commissariat. I lived in Volgograd (Stalingrad) for some time and interviewed a few old vets......their stories were pretty horrid. These were guys from the region itself.......the chukchas that the army brought in from out east were treated even worse.
Americans would fight for the most part because we believe in our Government (maybe a little less now) I don't se that being the issue with Russians especially during that era. The government did little but brutalize people at every level of society. Between the purges, the forced migrations, and flat out corruption the only thing I could see making most people fight for Russia is straight out fear of what they might do to your family and village if you didn't. Your claims of patriotism dont hold water for me for most Soviet citizens. Metropolitan Russians possibly, but not the vast majority of people.
Actually, it is the metropolitan Russians in Moscow or Peterburg that are less patriotic and more liberal than average. It is the population of smaller, provincial towns that tends to be the most nationalistic and supportive of the government in Russia. But don't understand me wrong. The Soviet government did enjoy a lot of support, especially under Stalin. Stalin was and is the most beloved leader in Russian history. He was practically worshiped like a living god after WW2. There were a lot of fervent communists back then (there still are) who did not need any sort of encouragement to rise up en masse against the Nazis. So to answer the question as to how the Soviet government was able to motivate so many people to fight, they had a three-pronged strategy: Through appealing to the strong innate sense of patriotism in the Russian people, through appealing to communists by casting the war as a great ideological struggle and finally through using fear and intimidation to coerce those dissidents that refused to respond to the patriotic and ideological messages.
What if the various appeasers and Nazi-sympathisers in the UK had been successful in pushing for peace after the Fall of France? The May 1940 cabinet crisis was over whether the UK should sue for peace after the fall of France, and while Halifax believed Germany couldn't be trusted (and had supported the armaments programme Chamberlain initiated while continuing appeasement) he also believed Nazi Germany couldn't be defeated.
That would have led to peace in the Western Theatre in 1940 and the UK isolated on the coast of a fascist Europe. Would Spain and Argentina, both fascist regimes with close ties to the Nazis, have stayed out of the war or would there have been a new Axis stretching across the Atlantic?
Another what if would be what if the Business Plot had been much better organised, or the German American Bund or Fascist League of North America had been better organised and more strident. There was no shortage of sympathisers with the Nazis in America at the time and people eager to do business with and promote Hitlers regime.
If Roosevelt hadn't won against Hoover in 1932, there would have been no New Deal, and would the US have been in any state to fight a war at that point?
Would the Democrats have chosen another candidate for 1936? Would the America First Committee have prevented any opposition to Hitler's foreign policy and seen the US take a supportive neutral position towards Hitler?
Ben2 wrote: Would Spain and Argentina, both fascist regimes with close ties to the Nazis, have stayed out of the war or would there have been a new Axis stretching across the Atlantic?
I am surprised the Spaniards stayed out of WWII. Sure they were already wasted from their civil war, but Franco was in power because of German support. I don't understand why the Germans didn't drive right down to Gibraltar. I am sure that would have helped them out in Africa. And what resistance would the Spanish really have provided if the Germans had? Unless you figure it was true that Hitler really didn't want war with England and by the time he settled for it, his eyes were on Russia.
Spain did send 18,000 troops to the Russian Front (the Blue Division), but they wanted to wait until Britain was on the ropes before joining the war to avoid getting places like the Canary Islands taken off them. While there were discussions of an alliance and a joint attack on Gibraltar, it never went anywhere particularly as the Vichy French did fight the Allies in North Africa and Hitler already had a less than stellar ally that needed carrying in Mussolini.
That ended up preserving fascist rule until the 70s, as the Western powers were completely comfortable allowing Franco to continue to rule and even armed him.
I understood that the Blue Division was more a group of volunteers which were allowed to go and join the fight against Communism rather than a force sent by Spain. As it was, AFAIK Spain was still reeling from the aftermath of the Civil war and was pretty divided into the 40s. Whilst the Spanish militarily probably couldn't have done much to resist a German invasion, my guess is that the Germans probably judged quite wisely that directly attacking an ally like that (I'm assuming that this is pre-Barbarossa and in any case the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was far more a marriage of temporary convenience rather than a genuine alliance) would alarm other allies and co-belligerents and in any case the cost of invading, occupying and pacifying Spain would probably outweigh any advantage gained by doing so compared to having a friendly nominally neutral neighbour. Why not push for an attack on Gibraltar? Same reason Malta didn't get invaded when the defences there were on the ropes I'd guess, Germany's main focus was elsewhere and they didn't think it'd really ultimately matter or was worth the effort.
Spain would have been more of a drag on the German war effort than an aid, they were an absolute mess. They were in no position to help or do much of anything, and lots of logistical issues (like mismatched rail line gauge) would have proved a nightmare. In terms of taking Gibraltar, that would have been an enormous expenditure in resources to take and with the RN commanding the seas, easy to supply and reinforce.
Spain was far more useful as a trading partner of raw materials, food, intelligence clearing house, and generally non-belligerent partner than she would have been as an active co-belligerent, where she would have been a dead weight.
Vaktathi wrote: Spain would have been more of a drag on the German war effort than an aid, they were an absolute mess. They were in no position to help or do much of anything, and lots of logistical issues (like mismatched rail line gauge) would have proved a nightmare. In terms of taking Gibraltar, that would have been an enormous expenditure in resources to take and with the RN commanding the seas, easy to supply and reinforce.
Talks went pretty far though. Spain started WW2 as a neutral, and then after the Hitler-Franco meeting of 1940 changed his stance to non-belligerent and the Spanish military occupied Tangiers on the same day Paris fell to the Germans.
Still, all Spain could spare at the moment were men, and it was implied that Germany would've had to supply any Spanish troops with everything from uniforms to weapons (as the Blue Division eventually fought) so Germany probably thought it wasn't worth the effort.
There are conflicting stories about which demands were the ones pushing the agreement off (Hitler wanted a base in then-Spanish Morocco plus one island in the Canaries and probably also Fernandoo Poo in current Eq. Guinea, while Franco wouldn't just settle for Gibraltar he wanted to redraw the border with France - Roussillon- the whole of Morocco plus Oran a whatever they could get from Allied possessions in Africa).
Plus while Serrano Súñer and von Ribbentrop got along sufficiently enough Hitler was left with a dismal impression of Franco, down from an already bad image of a "little man".
It's not that simple. First of all, the ME-262 can't even get that high, and the rocket planes can only get there for a very brief moment before they become gliders. Then the interceptor has to actually get into position to attack, which is easier said than done. If the bombers don't fly right over the rocket interceptor's launch position it doesn't have the range to intercept. If the bombers are identified too late the interceptors can't reach them in time, a very real threat given that they would be operating at the extreme edge of their performance limits. And then even if the interceptors get there they have to face the fact that the B-36 is more maneuverable than a fighter of that era at 40,000' and is armed with far superior guns.
B-36 wasn't fully operational even by Korean war, so I think it is very unlikely it would have been of much use in any plausible WW2 scenario.
I think the "US will nuke Germany anyway" scenario is always vastly overblown in these discussions. Actual conventional bombing of Germany during WW2 was equivalent to about 100 Hiroshimas.
Backfire wrote: B-36 wasn't fully operational even by Korean war, so I think it is very unlikely it would have been of much use in any plausible WW2 scenario.
Only after US priorities changed to manufacturing an endless swarm of shorter-ranged bombers using the UK as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. Remember, the B-36 was originally designed for the specific purpose of bombing Germany directly from the US if the UK fell. Once it was obvious that the UK was not going to fall the B-36 became a much lower priority. In a hypothetical scenario where the UK is out of the war priorities don't change and the B-36 is probably ready significantly earlier.
Xenomancers wrote: Shouldn't we be talking about the B-29? The late war bomber that was actually used?
No, because if you change the entire premise of the war then you change which weapons are developed to fight it. The B-29 was used because it was good enough for the job and the B-36 was needed. If the UK is no longer available as an unsinkable aircraft carrier to bomb Germany from then the B-36 becomes the priority because the B-29 can't do the job.
Backfire wrote: B-36 wasn't fully operational even by Korean war, so I think it is very unlikely it would have been of much use in any plausible WW2 scenario.
Only after US priorities changed to manufacturing an endless swarm of shorter-ranged bombers using the UK as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. Remember, the B-36 was originally designed for the specific purpose of bombing Germany directly from the US if the UK fell. Once it was obvious that the UK was not going to fall the B-36 became a much lower priority. In a hypothetical scenario where the UK is out of the war priorities don't change and the B-36 is probably ready significantly earlier.
B-36's engine issues were very acute and were never truly solved because the engine was designed to be tractor configuration, but B-36 used them as pushers. Even in the 50's SAC struggled to maintain adequate supply of R-4360 engines for its fleet. Given this, seems extremely doubtful B-36 would have been war-ready before 1948 even assuming best case scenario, much less 1945 as sometimes suggested.
Its rather moot that the US can bomb Germany when there is a lot of evidence that they wouldn't be bombing Germany in the event that the German's do not actively attack the US.
If Britain sinks there is little motivation for the US to enter the war. Isolationism was very strong at the time, and the only reason the US got involved was because of Pearl Harbor. And we only got involved in Europe because Germany immediately declared war on the US right after the attack. If Germany does the sensible thing and lets the US and Japan duke it out then the US has no reason for attacking Germany. At the time the German Reich might not have been particularly well liked, but they weren't the definition of evil at that time. The Soviets were actually closer to holding that title. If the Germans and Soviets ended up fighting on the eastern front, its even entirely possible that the Germans might receive aid from the US to fight Communism.
Xenomancers wrote: Shouldn't we be talking about the B-29? The late war bomber that was actually used?
No, because if you change the entire premise of the war then you change which weapons are developed to fight it. The B-29 was used because it was good enough for the job and the B-36 was needed. If the UK is no longer available as an unsinkable aircraft carrier to bomb Germany from then the B-36 becomes the priority because the B-29 can't do the job.
Ideally you don't want to do intercontinental strategic bombing anyways though right? Not only is it way more resource intensive - it would also be less effective because of things like in predictability of weather. More than likely we would have just turned north Africa into our unsinkable aircraft carrier. Otherwise if that wasn't an option I don't think strategic bombing would have been effective. It was barely effective enough with England being the launch point.
KTG17 wrote: Hitler/Germany had a huge issue with oil. As a matter of fact, the invasion of western Europe and Norway and all had a huge impact on oil reserves. That is why they stopped pushing into Moscow and went to south in Operation Blue or Case Blue whatever it was called. Once Hitler knew the war wasn't going to end quickly, oil became a priority. But Germany would have run out of oil even if it has not invaded Russia.
People tend to think Hitler was mad and over-ruling his generals all the time but the truth is the vast majority of his generals were only looking at the war in a tactical sense from battle to battle, and not strategically.
It is a popular misconception that Hitler dragged German General Staff to Barbarossa crying and screaming, but it is completely incorrect. It may have been somewhat true on Battle of France, which lots of the generals were dreading beforehand "oh feth, there is no way we can pull this gak off". However Soviet Union was seen as militarily quite weak. Western military analysts too believed that Germany would defeat Soviet Union.
Operation Barbarossa was based on the idea that Red Army should be destroyed. Once it was out of the way, Germans could march to where they wanted and take Moscow, Leningrad, Caucasus etc.
And that plan worked beautifully! Red Army was almost completely wiped out in short time. But by the time that was achieved, Stalin had another army on the field...nobody in Germany, or in the West, had foreseen that. Military strength of the Soviet Union was far greater than anyone would have thought possible - I think they had like 50% of all the tanks in the world.
I am skeptical of the "Germans were treated as liberators" claim. Sure thing, some 'White' minded natives were happy to see Communist regime driven out. But it is much exaggaration to think entire population was waiting for Soviet yoke to be thrown off. When Finns conquered Karelia during 1941-42, the native population - who were ethnic cousins of the Finns, with mutually intelligeble language, and who had horribly suffered in Stalin's purges - were completely apathetic. Finns were expecting that the Karelians would rise up together with their brothers, and nothing like that happened. So I very much doubt that anything like that was going to happen in Ukraine or Russia either.
An argument could be made that Germany might have managed to win some Soviets over to their side with the right propaganda and public management. Of course Germany grand strategy called for the annihilation or removal of non Germans, so they didn't really try that hard. The heavy hand of the German War machine instead had the opposite effect with people throwing support behind Stalinist Russia, not necessarily because they suddenly liked Stalin or the Soviet State, but because the alternative looked apocalyptic. Emphasis on "looked" mind you.
LordofHats wrote: An argument could be made that Germany might have managed to win some Soviets over to their side with the right propaganda and public management. Of course Germany grand strategy called for the annihilation or removal of non Germans, so they didn't really try that hard. The heavy hand of the German War machine instead had the opposite effect with people throwing support behind Stalinist Russia, not necessarily because they suddenly liked Stalin or the Soviet State, but because the alternative looked apocalyptic. Emphasis on "looked" mind you.
Yup. The Nazis did a terrible job of public perception. A smart ethnic cleanser would wait till you'd actually won to start the purge.
LordofHats wrote: An argument could be made that Germany might have managed to win some Soviets over to their side with the right propaganda and public management. Of course Germany grand strategy called for the annihilation or removal of non Germans, so they didn't really try that hard. The heavy hand of the German War machine instead had the opposite effect with people throwing support behind Stalinist Russia, not necessarily because they suddenly liked Stalin or the Soviet State, but because the alternative looked apocalyptic. Emphasis on "looked" mind you.
Yup. The Nazis did a terrible job of public perception. A smart ethnic cleanser would wait till you'd actually won to start the purge.
We should note, German policy was not new. Germany treated the East like it's African colonies in WW1. WW2 treatment was worse, but only by degree.
The BBC was asked to not give the impression that Soviet resistance would last longer than two months in their broadcasts at the time.
I don't know how many of you have already seen it, but Soviet Storm is a twenty-part docuseries on the Eastern Front that is available with English commentary. I'd recommend it. Also the BBC docuseries When Hitler Fought Stalin.
EDIT - No, Hitler is not unfairly blamed for anything.
Tyran wrote: I just don't see how Germany is supposed to achieve a truce with the UK. I mean, we are talking about a nation whose response to being bombed was to fight harder.
Even if the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed in Dunkirk, it wouldn't have changed the strategic situation of the war.
I thought the same way - that's how it's presented in high school history books certainly, but reading memoirs of the time period really does show Neville Chamberlain in favor of peace rather than continued armed conflict. I don't think anyone would have blamed the British - America was not yet a heavy military presence in the war and France was clearly lost. Setting up a truce to buy a decade of rearming and recovery probably seemed like a good idea - after all there was a good chance that the Nazis would be destroyed by within if left to thier own devices. Remeber that the Cold War hadn't occurred yet and nobody alive truly understood what a 10 year military standoff could be like.
It wasn't Chamberlain you need to concern yourself with, but timing and Churchill. The German high command was on a roll in 1940 Hitler was unstoppable politially. It was only after the Battle of Britain that German staff began to vocalise second thoughts. By which time Hitler had already tried to subdue Britain and failed.
From early 1941 there was numerous attempts by senior German officials to contact the British government via Madrid. Churchill was promised a coup removing Hitler and a return to 1871 borders in france and a retreat from Poland in return for peace. Churchill flatly refused.
Churchill was himself very hawkish he didn't start wars but was happy to continue them especially post Blitz. Had Chamberlain or Halifax been in control in early 1941 there would have been a peace settlement and Hitler would have been removed. I strogly suspect the entire Nazi party would have been replaced by a Wehrmacht coup, and allowing for who was in control of the wehrmacht at the time, elections would have followed..
Losing the British Expendintary force at Dunkirk would have been an unmitigated disaster. It's unlikely that Germany could have ever invaded the British Home Isles in their current state, but the British/polish/french surivovrs of Dunkirk were the veteran core around which the Africian and Equropean fronts were established. Moreover, Britian was already at the brink when it came to finding soliders. Wipe 330,000 soldiers off the pages of history and that really changes things.
When it comes to using the bombing of Britian as an example of british resolve, that mostly shows Hitler's misunderstanding of how terror tactics work. The threat of constant attack worked only as long as there was somewhere to retreat to - an critical component that lead to Dunkirk in the first place. Once the British civlians, on their lone island, were faced with no ability to avoid danger they became as resolved as their military counterparts.
Very true.
- Give your opponent a bridge of gold by which to retreat.
- When in death ground, fight.
The same thing happened in the late days of Berlin, where the eastern Berlin citizens would commit themselves in deadly street to street fighting, often attacking tanks and other vehicles in hand to hand combat attacks. The Russians made it clear that surrender wasn't going to happen and for that part of the city the resistance was bitter and resolute. On the other hand, the Russians complained that the American/European push had faced very little resistance, with their policy of accepting surrender having been well known. Despite the fact that the US Marines often failed to honor any surrender terms (a stated policy at the time), the Germans still flocked to American lines to turn over their weapons and request food.
The British were preferred choice to surrender to, by no means a certain thing but the option with the best chances, = however not many Germans realised this as thoughts on surrender could not be vocalised. Some did and went out of their way to surrender to British soldiers.
Hitler should have looked at 'bottling' Britian instead of invading it, but that wasn't in line with his philosophy.
Operationally others realised though. The U Boat campaign was largely about bottling Britain. It is said that the UK was two convoys away from loss at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. I don't believe that. Two convoys away from a catastrophic shortage is possible. Russia had several catastrophic shortages, but they carried on, so did Germany itself. The U-boat almost starved out Britain but the rations never actually failed and had actual starvation occurred the British would likely have fought on anyway, one way or another.
The U-boats failed to redline the civilian populace, though they got close, it would have taken a lot more to flatline them. When things get really gak people find hidden reserves. The UK nearly ran out of tea, but wasn't resorting to eating rats. Leningrad was, and it held.
Th U-boats were competently led and the achievable goals of bottling Britain were effectively met for a while.
The idea that the 1918 Treaty of Versailles was the 'near-total subjugation of the losing side' has been one of the greatest propaganda coups of the Nazis and anti-war campaigners to still survive. It was nowhere near as bad as the terms of the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which the Germans imposed on Russia for peace. Frankly, it was basically a re-run of the 1871 Treaty of Versailles; in which part of France was temporarily occupied by the German forces, Alsace-Lorraine got swapped around like Pokemon Cards, and the French had to foot a massive reparations bill. The difference is that the French knuckled under, paid up, and picked themselves back up again without feeling the need to fight their neighbour a second time.
Whereas the Germans used it being visited back on them as an excuse for WW2. Then in trying to assess why the world wars happened and ensure that large-scale conflict didn't happen again, various peace campaigners seized upon the Nazi rhetoric and promulgated it throughout the West from before WW2 and long past it.
The Treaty of Versailles was really nothing particularly exceptional for terms of surrender in historical context. It wasn't overly cruel or taxing; despite what your average History GCSE might tell you. Certainly not a 'near-subjugation of the losing side'.
I bought that lie also.
Versailles was draconian and unfair, but not to the extent of treatise at the time when looked at in comparison.
There was a difference however, and that was that the German army was not defeated. In November 1918 the Germans marched home from the trenches under their own banners. The German army never surrendered or was facing defeat in the field, the economy was defeated.
Hitler made great play of this, and on blaming the economic defeat on Jews. There was just enough truth in that to bite, some economic leaders in Germany were Jews, but Jews did not control the German economy.
Its an interesting proposition. Many Russians were very patriotic.....however quite a few of them were basically rounded up and forced to fight with squads of machine guns behind their backs.
Those were penal battalions, made up of criminals and political prisoners. Basically, people Stalin wanted dead and instead of letting them rot in a camp he figured he could just send them on suicide missions and still get some use out of them. Normal army units were absolutely not like that. The NKVD did have units in place to prevent unauthorised retreats in unreliable regular units as well (keep in mind the army at this point was mostly untrained conscripts, not soldiers, so some of course got scared and fled when exposed to enemy fire), but there they would just send people back to their unit or arrest them in case of desertion. People were normally only executed after a court martial.
Don't believe the portrayal of the Red Army you see in Western movies or video games. It is very inaccurate and quite frankly insulting.
Human wave tactics were very Russian rather than very Stalinistic. There were similar advances against the Germans in 1917 as the last gasps of the Tsarist government.
Also Stalin cultivated the ethos of expendability with the 'not one step back' doctrines, and reinforced that with brutal enforcement.
How did it go; "it takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army."
Also, I recently heard that Khrushchev may have had a hand in Stalin's death. Even if not directly by murdering, but not helping in his final moments/days. Going to see if I can't dig up more info on that. If anyone has heard the same let me know.
Amongst others one of the nice benefits of Stalin's death is you got a twofer' with Beria.
When it comes to using the bombing of Britian as an example of british resolve, that mostly shows Hitler's misunderstanding of how terror tactics work. The threat of constant attack worked only as long as there was somewhere to retreat to - an critical component that lead to Dunkirk in the first place. Once the British civlians, on their lone island, were faced with no ability to avoid danger they became as resolved as their military counterparts.
Very true. - Give your opponent a bridge of gold by which to retreat. - When in death ground, fight.
Hitler did not favour terror bombings against Britain. In fact, he specificially ordered Luftwaffe to NOT carpet bomb cities without his explicit permit. Hitler well knew how much bad PR Zeppelin "baby killing" bombings had brought Germany during WW1. Also, ideologically, he didn't hate Britain in same way as he hated USSR or "international Jewry". He saw British Empire as 'master race' of their own, just slightly misguided. Terror bombings were adopted only after strategic target bombings had already failed.
Also, I recently heard that Khrushchev may have had a hand in Stalin's death. Even if not directly by murdering, but not helping in his final moments/days. Going to see if I can't dig up more info on that. If anyone has heard the same let me know.
Amongst others one of the nice benefits of Stalin's death is you got a twofer' with Beria.
There is no proof that Stalin was poisoned; Radzinski speculated that it might have been possible, however he is prone to over-speculating and even then, stopped short claiming it as a fact. Of course, it is not impossible or anything, but Stalin was an old man with very unhealthy lifestyle, so his death is hardly mysterious.
No. Uncle 'dolf was obsessed with crushing stalingrad simply because it was named after Stalin. It was like he somehow believed in some almost voodoo like principle where crushing a city named after Stalin would somehow magically defeat Stalin himself. He threw away tremendous resources on the style for stalingrad when every competent advisor begged him to just bypass the damn city and take Moscow. Hitler refused to abandon the effort to capture stalingrad and literally threw away vast numbers of soldiers and resources until Paulus surrendered to safe at least a few of his men.
Hitler seemed to believe "grand gestures" and "mythic heroism" would win a war rather than sound, logical tactics and strategies. He may actually have been a good imperial general in warhammer 40,000, but in the real world he was a disaster. Real war is not a Wagner opera, Hitler seemed to feel otherwise. He deserves all the blame he gets.
Technically speaking, Paulus never formally surrendered (just bringing up because it's one of those neato history things). He went to sleep and woke up to find the Soviet troops inside his headquarters. His own immediate command elements had defacto stopped fighting and it created a somewhat odd situation in the immediate moment as German troops hadn't surrendered, and thus were still armed, but simply weren't fighting Soviet troops anymore who were inside the command head quarters with them. A Russian general, whose name I forget, who went to accept surrender received none. German troops simply gave up their arms and pointed him to Paulus.
Even after the German soldiers at the location surrendered their arms, Paulus refused to issue a formal surrender, or to tell his men to stand down. In fact his only order at the time was to explicitly forbid his men from killing themselves, which was tantamount to ordering them to fight and die, or surrender, as they saw fit. Paulus himself was taken into custody without ever surrendering himself.
LordofHats wrote: Technically speaking, Paulus never formally surrendered (just bringing up because it's one of those neato history things). He went to sleep and woke up to find the Soviet troops inside his headquarters. His own immediate command elements had defacto stopped fighting and it created a somewhat odd situation in the immediate moment as German troops hadn't surrendered, and thus were still armed, but simply weren't fighting Soviet troops anymore who were inside the command head quarters with them. A Russian general, whose name I forget, who went to accept surrender received none. German troops simply gave up their arms and pointed him to Paulus.
Even after the German soldiers at the location surrendered their arms, Paulus refused to issue a formal surrender, or to tell his men to stand down. In fact his only order at the time was to explicitly forbid his men from killing themselves, which was tantamount to ordering them to fight and die, or surrender, as they saw fit. Paulus himself was taken into custody without ever surrendering himself.
The Soviets would not have accepted a surrender. They had offered Paulus opportunities to surrender earlier on, but he refused those (or rather, he had wanted to surrender but was denied by higher command). By the 31st January, the Soviets were in almost total control and it had become too late for surrendering. Because surrendering would have meant that Paulus still had any authority he could surrender. But by that point he did not, he was merely a Soviet prisoner. The general did not come to accept a surrender, he only came to inform Paulus of the fact that he had been captured and placed in custody. But yes. Technically Paulus therefore never surrendered.
IDK about that. There's definitely an account from a German Staff officer reciting a Soviet general requesting Paulus' formal surrender and Paulus refusing to do so... or maybe I'm confusing that with the general asking Paulus to order his troops to stand down and Paulus refusing to do so? I'd have to go back and look.
EDIT: And you are correct Captain it would be the later. Paulus refused to order German forces still fighting in the North of the city to surrender when requested, but no one ever explicitly asked for his surrender after his capture.
Well, the details of Paulus' actions aside, the salient point that Hitler was obsessed with the capture of stalingrad to the point of insanity and wasted a vast amount of men and material on it remains.
LordofHats wrote: IDK about that. There's definitely an account from a German Staff officer reciting a Soviet general requesting Paulus' formal surrender and Paulus refusing to do so... or maybe I'm confusing that with the general asking Paulus to order his troops to stand down and Paulus refusing to do so? I'd have to go back and look.
The account of Paulus' aide (Whilhelm Adan) who was present in the room at the moment only says that the general told them that they were his prisoners and were to prepare themselves for departure at 9:00 AM. The commander who arrived at 9:00 did ask Paulus to tell the remaining northern German pocket of troops to surrender, but Paulus did refuse that arguing that since he had been taken prisoner he was no longer their commander. Maybe you were thinking of that. It is the commander of that northern pocket (General Strecker) who surrendered the remains of the 6th army two days after Paulus was captured.
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Techpriestsupport wrote: Well, the details of Paulus' actions aside, the salient point that Hitler was obsessed with the capture of stalingrad to the point of insanity and wasted a vast amount of men and material on it remains.
True dat. And not just Stalingrad, but Leningrad and to a lesser extent Moscow as well. All of those weren't valuable targets. Basically, a major problem with the German strategy was they were focused too much on decisive pushes to take critical cities and other objectives. But in Russia there are no critical objectives you can take. There are always more cities, airfields and bases where the defenders can retreat to. And the countryside is so vast that just holding the cities doesn't mean you control much. The Germans had a big problem in that Soviet authority was just being re-established behind their backs in the countryside (and even in some cities, such as Odessa) as soon as the German army had passed. This meant that partisan activity could be centrally coordinated and that the Germans basically were fighting a two-front war within Russia itself.
To be fair, people often overlook that Stalingrad was a strategically valuable city, and not just for it's name. The city was a vital river crossing, a major entry point for British and American aid through the Persian Corridor, and a major industrial base in it's own right. There were in fact valid reasons to target Stalingrad, and Leningrad and Moscow for that matter. And it's not like Hitler was the only one who thought so. His intractability became a problem, not in the selection of targets so much as his refusal to withdraw when prudent, a problem that was arguably shared across the Wehrmacht. Even Manstein thought the city could hold well into the winter of 1942. He didn't give up until arial resupply failed and the Germany military remained dedicated to fighting around the city until Army Groups A and B came under threat of being surrounded themselves.
Arguably Hitler's choices were irrelevant.
1942 and Case Blue, which were not wholly his conception and had the support of the German military after the push to Moscow stalled out, represented the point that the German military machine reached it's limit and had entered a realm where it was no longer capable of victory. The lines were stretched too thin. A Soviet breakthrough somewhere was inevitable.
Also Hitler personally underestimated both the Russian nation and the Russian people. In his view on Russia, it was a case of
“We have only to kick in the front door,” Adolf Hitler said, predicting a swift victory in Russia, “and the whole rotten Russian edifice will come tumbling down.”
Hitler based a great deal of his strategic thinking on the fantasy of racial superiority and inferiority. He views the so called "Aryan" German people as "The master race" and it was simply, naturally inevitable that they crush and dominate the so called "subhumans" like the Slavics and "mongoloid Russians".
He viewed German victory over those he deemed inferior races as a matter of natural law. He based his strategy on the premise that the German people were racially superior and the other nations were filled with inferior races and it was simply natural the superior races would win.
Admittedly both America and British was guilty of similar attitudes towards the Japanese, believing the smaller Japanese people to be no threat to them. Once evidence to the contrary was made painfully clear, however, america and England ceased to base military strategy on such thinking.
Hitler did not. No matter now many times Russians proved themselves equal to the Germans on the battlefield, Hitler continued to believe that "Aryan superiority" would inevitably triumph as a matter of natural law.
He was not unfairly blamed for nazi germany's defeat. If there was any unfairness of blame in the matter of he nazis, I would say that Heinrich Himmler is not blamed enough for the holocaust and other nazi atrocities.
Admittedly both America and British was guilty of similar attitudes towards the Japanese, believing the smaller Japanese people to be no threat to them. Once evidence to the contrary was made painfully clear, how ever, america and England ceased to base military strategy on such thinking.
Did anybody in America or Britain ever base strategy on that? I've never heard of anything like someone hinging a strategy around Japanese being physically inferior to Caucasians. Certainly there was racial prejudices, but I never heard of anybody basing American/British strategy around the pseudoscience of racial deficiencies. That seems to have been almost entirely the purview of Nazi Germany, and the Japanese themselves as well.
I think he's referencing the interwar politics, where Japan was openly derided along racial lines. Japan wanted to have equal footing with other great powers when the League of Nations was forming and pushed for the adoption of language supporting race neutrality in the organization's dealings. This was nixed by Woodrow Wilson, who proceeded to publicly chide the Japanese delegation for suggesting it (EDIT: Australia kindasorta joined in). The Washington Naval Treaty was seen as a further slight not just for the 5:5:3 naval tonnage ratios but because the American delegation made US cooperation conditional on the end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. These events paved the way for Japan's rejection of the London Naval Treaty and growing hostility toward the US and Britain.
Admittedly both America and British was guilty of similar attitudes towards the Japanese, believing the smaller Japanese people to be no threat to them. Once evidence to the contrary was made painfully clear, how ever, america and England ceased to base military strategy on such thinking.
Did anybody in America or Britain ever base strategy on that? I've never heard of anything like someone hinging a strategy around Japanese being physically inferior to Caucasians. Certainly there was racial prejudices, but I never heard of anybody basing American/British strategy around the pseudoscience of racial deficiencies. That seems to have been almost entirely the purview of Nazi Germany, and the Japanese themselves as well.
American pilots were trained early on to attack Japanese planes from the sides because the Japanese perportedly bad no peripheral vision. The British believed the Japanese could not see very well at night, and thus incapable of night time operations, another "slanty eye" stereotype. Many military instructors assured recruits a Japanese soldier could be knocked out or even killed with a single normal punch from an american or British soldier.
on a related note the US army officially considered blacks inferior to whites and suited only for less intellectually demanding tasks. The tuskegee airmen disproved this. The american military revised its policies in the face of solid evidence.
Techpriestsupport wrote: The american military revised its policies in the face of solid evidence.
Hitler kinda did that as well, actually, in his own twisted way. His racial beliefs explain a lot of the crazy, destructive orders Hitler gave towards the end of the war. He had a very social darwinist view of things. In his view, if the Germans were defeated by or surrendered to the supposedly inferior Russians, that meant those Germans had proven themselves to be even more inferior and therefore not worthy to be part of the 'master race' or to continue living. If Germany could not win the war, Germany should be destroyed and belong to the 'stronger Eastern nations' that had defeated it. Thankfully, Speer and others who were responsible for carrying out those orders often were a bit more sensible, but beliefs such as these did play a big part in the refusals to allow troops to retreat even when retreat would have been strategically sound. Hitler wanted his troops to win, or die trying. If they could not win then clearly they were not worthy enough.
A notable tangent to this is that Hitler was essentially deteriorating mentally and physically during his reign. Some attribute this to advancing syphilis, others to prolonged use of meth amphetamines, some wonder if he had Parkinson's.
Regardless of the actual reason, his ability to deal with reality was notably deteriorating as the war dragged on. The fact was the huge tanks he favored such as the tiger were losing out in the long run to smaller, easier to mass produce, maintain and replace tanks like the T-34 and the Sherman. His response was to demand larger tanks like the king tiger, an utter disaster in terms of cost vs effect, and even the utterly inane Maus tank that was never going to be more than a joke.
But Hitler was making bad decisions free on day one. WW2 was the age of the submarine and the aircraft carrier. Hitler demanded battleships like the Bismarck. He never authorized a carrier and he underfunded the uboat program.
He wasn't that great a military mind to begin with, and whatever was eating his brain only exacerbated his lack of rational military thought. He demonstrated clear paranoia in blaming everyone else for his failures and ineptness.
Hitler was at fault for the failure in the east. He was to blame for nazi germany's failure, but so we're he people who supported him. There's plenty of blame to go around, but no one is being unfair to Hitler.
Techpriestsupport wrote: No. Uncle 'dolf was obsessed with crushing stalingrad simply because it was named after Stalin. It was like he somehow believed in some almost voodoo like principle where crushing a city named after Stalin would somehow magically defeat Stalin himself. He threw away tremendous resources on the style for stalingrad when every competent advisor begged him to just bypass the damn city and take Moscow. Hitler refused to abandon the effort to capture stalingrad and literally threw away vast numbers of soldiers and resources until Paulus surrendered to safe at least a few of his men.
Moscow and Stalingrad are almost 1000km apart...
'Case Blue', German offensive of 1942, was developed by OKH, not Hitler. It was based upon the ruse that Soviets surely believed that Germans would attempt to retake Moscow, but instead strike to the South, conquer Caucasus region and its enormous oil and coal resources. Maikop, Groznyi and Baku produced about 90% of Soviet petroleum so to capture them would be enormous boon for German war industry, and crippling strike on USSR. The ruse worked perfectly: bulk of the Red Army reserves were defending Moscow and subsesquently southern fronts were much weaker, allowing Germans to make huge gains. However Germans never managed to deliver similar hammer-blows to Soviet forces as they had in previous year. Soviets had learned to retreat when threatened by encirclement and the massive maneuvering victories of 1941 were not repeated.
Then Hitler made a gamble - he split the offensive in two, directing one to capture Stalingrad and other for oilfields. Gamble failed - 6th Army was too weak to capture Stalingrad and whilst Maikop was captured, before retreat Soviets had destroyed the oil fields so throughly Germans never managed to put them back to operation.
Realistically one could say 6th Army did capture Stalingrad. By October of 1942 the entire city infrastructure was either destroyed or in German hands. Issue was there were still reds everywhere and the Germans never managed to clear the city cause the Red Army kept throwing bodies into it. One way to look at it is the world's most drawn out, and ultimately futile, clean up operation because neither side was willing to quit and one had more bodies to throw at the problem
But Hitler was making bad decisions free on day one. WW2 was the age of the submarine and the aircraft carrier. Hitler demanded battleships like the Bismarck. He never authorized a carrier and he underfunded the uboat program.
Well, the Naval decisions of Germany weren't really Hitler's doing. Everybody, not just Germany, at the time the Bismarck and Tirpitz were built still believed naval warfare would revolve around Battleships. Once the Bismarck went down, Hitler did abandon Plan Z and shift towards Karl Dönitz's plan for U-boats. He can't really be blamed for the early focus on Battleships, everybody was focused on battleships at the time. The Germans, the British, and even the Japanese. The U-boat program wasn't really underfunded so much as it was just late to the party.
Really the only people to embrace Carriers was the US and Japan, and even Japan still built the Yamato and Musashi.
Really the only people to embrace Carriers was the US and Japan, and even Japan still built the Yamato and Musashi.
The US was largely still committed to battleship doctrine as well in terms of planning. We kind of stumbled into carriers because in 1942 we didn't have any battleships and carriers are faster to build, especially our little aux carriers. We built hundreds of the dang things and by the time the war returned to the Phillipines we noticed carrier planes were sinking boats left and right before big gun battles got to start most of time.
LordofHats wrote: Realistically one could say 6th Army did capture Stalingrad. By October of 1942 the entire city infrastructure was either destroyed or in German hands. Issue was there were still reds everywhere and the Germans never managed to clear the city cause the Red Army kept throwing bodies into it. One way to look at it is the world's most drawn out, and ultimately futile, clean up operation because neither side was willing to quit and one had more bodies to throw at the problem
I would say they never captured it. You only "capture" something when you control it. The Germans never were able to establish any sort of control over Stalingrad. Most importantly, they were never able to secure the Volga river bank or cross the river anywhere, which meant that the Soviets could continue to send in reinforcements without interruption until winter hit and ice floes made the river unnavigable. The Germans came close to capturing the city, they controlled about 90% at one time (although fighting continued even in parts they supposedly controlled), but that was just before the big Soviet counteroffensive came and surrounded and wiped out the almost entire 6th army and supporting formations in a few months. So the Germans never managed to capture the entire city. Of course, you could argue that by that time, there really wasn't any city left to capture though. It was just a pile of rubble.
Iron_Captain wrote: So the Germans never managed to capture the entire city. Of course, you could argue that by that time, there really wasn't any city left to capture though. It was just a pile of rubble.
There is that famous picture of the city center after the battle's conclusion where it looks like they were fighting over two buildings and a shed rather than a city.
I don't think even Berlin, or Warsaw were so leveled as Stalingrad. You have to basically go to Dresden or Leningrad to find corresponding amounts of destruction.
One does need to remember something in conjunction with the prewar 'carriers vs. battleships' debate. In general, prewar carrier aircraft lacked the range, payload, and speed to deliver a fatal blow against a battleship before said battleship could close the range and kill the carrier. As late as 1940, carrier aircraft simply could not be relied on to kill a battleship fast enough.
And as often happens with technology, that changed with such speed it caught many naval officers flat-footed.
Yes, Billy Mitchell sunk a WWI German battleship with post-WWI bombers. It should be noted that said battleship was anchored and unmanned (so no damage control, no evasive maneuvers, no AA fire). It also took quite a lot of bombing, with land-based bombers, to sink. His 'victory' was considered by naval officers of the time to be a freak circumstance you'd never be able to duplicate in actual battle... and at the time, they were 100% right. It wasn't until the aircraft of the (very) late thirties and early forties came online that Mitchell's theories of airpower finally came true.
Iron_Captain wrote: So the Germans never managed to capture the entire city. Of course, you could argue that by that time, there really wasn't any city left to capture though. It was just a pile of rubble.
There is that famous picture of the city center after the battle's conclusion where it looks like they were fighting over two buildings and a shed rather than a city.
I don't think even Berlin, or Warsaw were so leveled as Stalingrad. You have to basically go to Dresden or Leningrad to find corresponding amounts of destruction.
Warsaw was something like 97% totally flattened in WWII, because the Germans started systematically demolishing the entire city. I doubt any major city in WWII was as flattened as Warsaw, excepting some of the Japanese cities (which were largely wooden and considerably more vulnerable).
But Hitler was making bad decisions free on day one. WW2 was the age of the submarine and the aircraft carrier. Hitler demanded battleships like the Bismarck. He never authorized a carrier and he underfunded the uboat program.
Well, the Naval decisions of Germany weren't really Hitler's doing. Everybody, not just Germany, at the time the Bismarck and Tirpitz were built still believed naval warfare would revolve around Battleships. Once the Bismarck went down, Hitler did abandon Plan Z and shift towards Karl Dönitz's plan for U-boats. He can't really be blamed for the early focus on Battleships, everybody was focused on battleships at the time. The Germans, the British, and even the Japanese. The U-boat program wasn't really underfunded so much as it was just late to the party.
Really the only people to embrace Carriers was the US and Japan, and even Japan still built the Yamato and Musashi.
Pre-WW2 German naval strategy was two-pronged: main aspect was the trade war which would have been undertaken mostly by long-range raiding cruisers like those of Deutschland class. Second, Kriegsmarine wanted a battleship fleet both for strategic purposes vs French and UK navies, and also to help aforementioned raiding cruisers to break through Royal Navy blockade. Submarines, by contrast, were thought to have only auxiliary role in this doctrine. Many naval officers thought that convoy system and ASDIC had much reduced submarine effectiveness and that great tonnage war of WW1 had been an anomaly not to be repeated.
Hitler had nothing to do with any of the above. In 1935 he negotiated Anglo-German Naval Agreement which limited German surface fleet to 35% of the Royal Navy tonnage. Admiral Raeder, C-in-C of Kriegsmarine, did not like the treaty as he was very much a battleship admiral and thought that the fleet allowance was too small. Hitler didn't care as with the treaty he achieved amazing double score - he both repudiated the Versailles treaty AND appeased the Brits. It turned out to be irrelevant - before the war broke out Hitler told Raeder to ignore the treaty and aim for parity with the Royal Navy. This led to famous 'Plan Z' which never materialized.
Hitler was somewhat of a battleship skeptic. As Great War infantryman, he held some disdain to hugely celebrated and hyped but in practice quite inefficient Imperial Hochseeflotten. He did see great warships as signifant prestige assets for a nation but he was hardly a big ship fanatic (unlike Stalin who had truly hare-brained naval expansion schemes). Even before the infamous 'Scrap the Kriegsmarine!' fit in 1943 he thought that the services of the surface fleet had been modest compared to submarines. In which he wasn't totally wrong.
By the way, Hitler authorized not one but TWO aircraft carriers before the war, first of which was nearly completed:
Iron_Captain wrote: So the Germans never managed to capture the entire city. Of course, you could argue that by that time, there really wasn't any city left to capture though. It was just a pile of rubble.
There is that famous picture of the city center after the battle's conclusion where it looks like they were fighting over two buildings and a shed rather than a city.
I don't think even Berlin, or Warsaw were so leveled as Stalingrad. You have to basically go to Dresden or Leningrad to find corresponding amounts of destruction.
Warsaw was something like 97% totally flattened in WWII, because the Germans started systematically demolishing the entire city. I doubt any major city in WWII was as flattened as Warsaw, excepting some of the Japanese cities (which were largely wooden and considerably more vulnerable).
Yeah, I think Stalingrad wins.....there is a museum in the city that has a 3-d model of the city before and after the battle. essentially there was one building and one tree left surrounded by rubble.
about Vietnam itself. It was just a convenient battlefield to fight a proxy war with Russia. And that makes it a lot harder to care about the war or find the will to continue fighting despite high casualties. That's not at all the case with WWII and defeating Germany. There it's our closest allies, militarily and culturally and politically, being invaded and occupied. The US is going to have a much more personal stake in liberating England and France than fighting over some random country most US citizens couldn't even find on a map. That's going to translate directly into a much greater willingness to keep fighting, and the US automatically wins the war once it gets involved as long as it doesn't voluntarily surrender.
