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RE: Fighting without Britain in the war.
Britain came extremely close to surrendering in 1940 when completely unexpectedly their main ally with the land army without which they had no hope of fighting on the continent collapsed. At this point the Soviets were on the wrong side. Plenty of powerful Germanophiles in the UK too including the Royal family (who famously damaged Britain's negotiating position in the run up by assuring in person to top Nazi's what Britain would and wouldn't go-to war over).
Your assertions about British policy are correct but this relied on the British having another friendly European power to back - this time there were no Prussians or French or Austro-Hungarians to side with and the situation with the Soviet union was one of mutual suspicion and animosity - Britain was set to intervene against it in the Finnish winter war just before this. The only hope was the US, 3000 miles away and broadly isolationist. If it hadn't have been for Churchill and his relationship with Roosevelt Britain may well have struck a deal with Germany - Britain keeps its global empire - Germany gets Europe and deals with all that troublesome communist stuff that can get out of hand and lead to Aristocrats and the powerful hanging from lampposts.
Even when Hitler turned on the Soviet Union the British expected them to collapse within weeks and the British supplied them with what it could as a delaying tactic only |
I keep seeing logistics being brought up. It is definitely key to why Germany would NEVER have won the war. Operations management which goes in tandem with logistics but includes the cultural/industrial capacities of the combatants can help color the bleak picture that was Germany's fate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ
I agree with what AvNY is trying to tell some of these wehraboos (I went through as similar phase with the American Civil War). The numbers for victory simply do not add up for Germany no matter how you fudge it.
Ill have a go - Britain surrenders after Dunkirk or is brought to heel (early) by a more successful Battle of the Atlantic. Entire Luftwaffe available for Russian campaign, far fewer garrisoned soldiers in France, Norway, Greece etc. plus more pliant populations. No bombing of industry, no pouring millions of man hours into the atlantic wall and less undercover shenanigans stirring up problems, no enigma cracking, no lend lease via Murmansk and if you play the deal right the British supply Germany with petroleum from Persia and raw materials from their empire. Does the US also prop up Russian supplies in this situation with no Western option? Perhaps Turkey joins in on the German side too with the promise of rebuilding a bit the old empire
I think they still might not have conquered the whole of the Soviet union but might have taken a big chunk and held it as they did after WW1
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I believe that the British were very close to surrender post Dunkirk to the point that the US ambassador had been informed that this was the case the vote was then carried 3 to 2 in favour of not doing so with Churchill the deciding vote.
One issue with the what ifs is the huge unexpected what ifs that had already occurred. The fall of France so quickly was totally unexpected and extraordinary |
I heard about it. Yet, every third Soviet soldier guard border with Japan.
Well there's troops and there's troops - Im presuming they moved some of the experienced, well trained and equipped ones. I haven,t seen the figures elsewhere but that bastion of truth wikipedia claims that in addition to the soldiers 1,500 aircraft and 1,700 tanks came too - if accurate that's fairly significant.
Just curious - are you from Russia / ex-Soviet states? It's always interesting to hear different perspectives and sources. |
In 1941 USSR keep the border with Japan more solders then UK, USA, French, Italy, and Reich taken together have in North Africa.
In 1942-1943 USSR keep the border with Japan as much or more solders then UK, USA and Reich taken together have in Normandy 1944.
So that "A spy in Tokyo report" sounds pretty funny.
The Germans just destroyed it as they did with Stalingrad and Warsaw.
Well the soviet states did have a lot of troops. The spy was called Richard Sorge and I have read several sources that describe this intelligence as the most significant on the entire war. |
Then of course we could discuss the notion that the Stalinist regime would ever sign any kind of peace treaty anyhow. I find it highly implausible. Such an agreement would just mean a complete destruction of the Communist experiment and the top brass not having much options but suicide. I doubt they would do that in Yaroslav, perhaps in Kamchatka.
Well Lenin signed one but your probably right and I suspect Hitler wouldn't have settled for anything but total annihilation either. It think it would depend on whether not signing would result in the end of Stalin perhaps from a coup or break-up of the remainder of the union when they saw the central power diminished (i.e. Crimea, Ukraine, Caucasus split and Siberia turn into Fiefdoms like before the Reds conquered them all). Probably happy to sacrifice millions for the cause but the leadership themselves not so much |
All these thing are good general answers to questions what can go wrong with an invasion as the Operation Barbarossa. But this doesn't answer that specific question about why the Germans according to your opinion could not have reached little further if the conditions would have been better.
I am not a specialist on military logistics, therefore I want to know these things. If you claim that I have wrong because of I don't have knowledge of logistics, then it is good if you can prove your arguments for me. As I said earlier, I don't understand why the Germans could not reached further in case of good weather, if they tried so hard in bad weather and conditions and wasted resourses on that.
Another factor was losses due to frostbite - in the last couple of weeks before the soviet counterattack German losses to frostbite soared greatly exceeding those from combat. Different weather might have eased supply for some periods but bear in mind that the frosts also made the ground hard enough to drive on after the mud in autumn.
One thing not mentioned (I think) so far in this thread was the impact of the Siberian divisions that entered the battle at this point. A spy in Tokyo reported that the Japanese had no intention of attacking Russia in the East and so the Soviet command were able to shift a large number of fresh veteran units, experienced in fighting in cold conditions to Moscow where they joined in the December counter attack. |
Fair points all, but you don't need to kill the tanks to stop a tank formation. They are so vulnerable without the soft support that they verge on useless. "soft support" isn't just spare parts and supply units, it is fuel, supporting infantry and artillery, ammunition. All things a tank force in combat consumes in large quantities and without which renders them ineffective. In fact the vulnerability of the soft targets have a great deal to do with the piecemeal nature of the German response.
Yes I agree but if those forces had already been close as Rommel wished the supplies would have been up with them close.
Imagine a scenario where Rommel got his way and had more divisions close and they acted swiftly on the day arriving in greater numbers during the morning or midday when infantry was the only thing really ashore in any depth (and then only 2-3 miles) - I don't think much heavy equipment would have got off the beach until perhaps naval fire had dealt sufficient attrition and if they Germans could bring up fresh artillery (and use the stuff they had once the paras had been snuffed out) to shell the beaches (and ships) in that time it would have been a disaster . The allies nearly abandoned Omaha due to getting stuck - I think they would have had to pull back and come back another day somewhere else - once they had re-planned the whole thing of course |
You have said this before in an another discussion. Can you give some proofs to your strong claims that the Germans were incapable in doing this?
My objection is primary logical. If Germans did advance almost to Moscow (that is a fact), what could have prevented them advancing 100km further if they had got more better conditions or started a little earlier? How can further 100km matter, so that it is according to your opinion completely impossible to acceive this? Or is it so, that advancing 100km further doesn't matter at all?
The problem is that the Soviets could keep retreating all through Siberia to preserve their forces and then counterattack. Taking Moscow would have made a difference and perhaps might have forced the soviets into a surrender conceding large parts of the country but the Germans couldn't destroy the Soviet army in being to cause complete surrender as was part of the plan - it was too big and they had underestimated its size and it could trade space (lots of it as others pointed out) for time. The German belief was that hopefully the initial defeats would cause a political and military collapse rather like WW1 where army discipline dissolved and parts of the population revolted which if you look at the Russian civil war was not that far fetched. |
Frankly I don't think there is anything in these circumstances that could have saved the Germans. They were doomed from the start. Even the largest allied blunder of Normandy (in my opinion), the lack of preparation for battle in the Bocage, didn't do more than delay the allies for a few weeks. They were not going to be able to put up the kind of defense needed to stop what the allies could land on the beaches and bring to bear, not under the protection of allied air support.
My reading of it is that early German armour in force would have been a major problem . The air supremacy was in fact not that useful in regards to tanks - obviously it could spot them and all soft skinned support vehicles were vulnerable to strafes but tanks were mostly immune to anything but bombs. I believe that the typhoon anti-tank rockets had a hit rate of about 1%. Contrary to popular belief the vast majority of German armour was destroyed by ground forces including in the famous Mortain counterattack. Having said this heavy bombers and naval fire were effective against static tank concentrations and the navy might have been able to break up any large scale armoured counterattack - though they didn't stop the 21st Panzer division on the day
Therefore I think the delays to armour were important after all the Germans did keep bringing them into the fight after the beach head was established and they helped hold the line for 6 weeks- what they were unable to do was assemble them in a large striking force behind the lines for a co-ordinated attack that might have broken the beachhead - Allied pressure and presumably dealys meant that all reinforcements were fed in piecemeal. I recall one particular case of tigers already in France but the resistance had drained the oil from the train bogey axles and replaced it with abrasive powder and the train seized up - in the end they took 3 weeks to reach the battle. |
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