Exhausted by Stalin's regime Russians were ready simply to surrender to the Nazis

That the population of the occupied countries were hostile to the Germans,is not that important,they could not harm the Germand effectively,BTW :the partisans were operating effectively only in 1943 .
What more important is,is the attitude of the average Soviet soldier .

 

Of topic:about the scorched earth ne could argue that Manstein did only follow the exemple of
1)Stalin :who gave the order on the retreating Soviet Armies to destroy anything
2)the British :who used the scorched earth in South Africa
3)the US :wasn't there a scorched earth policy of the armies of Sherman and Sheridan when they 'were marching trough Georgia '?

 

Not claiming otherwise. Just to point out that German actions towards Jews and Slavs in general did not make a "favorable" impression on the Russians, in or out of the occupied territories. What is interesting to me is that antisemitism in Belarus was not strong enough for the population to support or tolerate German presence, and that is probably applicable to Russian troops in general.

 

Allan Clarke says that the Hitler thought that partisan resistance was a perfect excuse for the mass liquidation of whole areas of the East & describes what Waffen SS Divisions like Totenkopf plus Heer units did when they went on ''partisan'' hunts, makes for very grisly reading.

Soviet republics like the Ukraine, Belarus etc, etc, which could have been a valuable asset to the Germans, but due to the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime, the Hitlerites helped seal their own fate by being worse then life under Stalin.

It is important if the Wehrmacht has to contribute ever increasing numbers of divisions to combat ever increasing number of partisans, particularly if many of those same partisans [plus a whole lot more] might have been helping the Nazi's but for their insane genocidal policies.

As for the attitude of the average Soviet soldier, well I guess it was as good if not better then their opponents.

Two differant policies, scorched earth in destroying infrastructure that might be of value to the enemy is one thing, looking the other way while untold numbers of men, women & children are butchered because of their race or religeon is another.

 

Well I have still my doubts that,with a different occupation policy,the Germans would have won in the East.
There were a lot of people hostile to the communists,but that does not mean that they were willing to fight against the communists and risk their lives .Only a small minority would do it .And I see no possibility for the Germans to raise,arm and supply aRussian anti-communist army of millions of men .
Of course,the German occupation policy was stupid,but it would not make the difference,for me ,it is only a variant of the excuses invented after the war :the stupid Hitler,the Germans defeated by General Winter,by the Siberian divisions,by the Kiew decision,etc.,etc.

 

No one may know it for sure.
Russians always disliked foreign invaders, but if it turned out that the life under German occupation was significantly better, than under communists...
Well, it's a non-science fiction story. If Nazis really wanted to be liberators for Russia, they wouldn't have been Nazis, so the whole Europe history would have been different.

 

I don't think the Russians would have surrendered that easily... URAH!

 

Artema;
Precisely. Hitler's whole rationale for initiating the tragedy was ideologically driven in the extreme, and it would have required the removal of him and his fellow travellers to have changed the nature of the conflict. There were some attempts on the drugged up dictator's life but they did not meet with success. So no, the NAZI leadership did not go down easily and the homicidal lunacy went on until the final days. How homicidally determined was this regime? Well it's a fact badly needed railcars were diverted from the front to implement the so called "Final Solution."
JeffinMNUSA

 

However they could have held off the more extreme policies until after they had won. That wouldn't have been entirely out of character. Although perhaps thinking the "Slavs" were worth misleading may have been.

 

The Germans did not start out to clense the Slavik regions. The genocide came when the war started to turn and there were no easy choices left. Speer knew he needed workers . The Polish territories were not wanted by the german farmer. it was a clash of ideas and confusion. ultimately killing became the easiet avenue to pursue. were there no "good" germans. are all germans guilty. surely not

 

That's not quite accurate. The ethnic cleansing was planned from the beginning. Initially they may not have implemented the worst of the measures but it was certainly in the plan.

Needing workers and genocide do not correlate well. One is better off making sure the workers and their families are at least on survival rations. Again many of the measures were instituted before the war the massive reverses suffered by the Germans.

Perhaps though I'd like to see some support for this argument. In any case the "Polish territories" were clearly desired by the Nazi's for their "Reich".

Was it? I'm not so sure.

 

Generalplan Ost prepared in the years 1939-1940, gives a pretty horrific idea of what was in store for the occupied East.
It called for all of Poland, Czechoslovakia and large parts of the Soviet Union to be transformed into gigantic German settlement areas.

This would entail “resettling” or killing between 30 to 50 million of the present inhabitants of those areas: 80-85 per cent of the Polish, 75 per cent of the Belorussian and 65 per cent of the Ukrainian populations would be affected.

In the main the Slavic populations were to be starved & worked to death.

It was only the usual constant bickering & in fighting between different Nazi departments under Himmler, ReichsKommissar Koch, Rosenberg, & the the Kreisleiter heads, [some proclaimed that any Russian in their area who "show signs of intelligence will be shot"] & of course the problem of the Red Army, that the plan wasn't fully implemented.

Powered by Google Docs

 

the argument in the article is to me very thin. There was some form of resistance in every country the Germans occupied. The Germans of course, crushed every sign of rebellion from the civilian population, without mercy in whichever country it occurred.

Note that historically, in not even one occurence was any battle decided by civilian assistance or resistance efforts. Even the achievements of the Russian partisans were mostly minimal, their only real major achievement was in tying up significant amounts of German manpower. With the benefit of hindsight, most of the people fighting in these useless resistance movements would have done better to sit tight and wait out the war, rather then risk German atrocities on their entire village or town.
In fact German reprisals in several parts of Europe (notably after the assasination of Gestapo leader Heydrich in Czechoslovakia) were so ferocious that the British, sensibly in my opinion, ended support for several resistance movements when they realised the cost was too high for the results to be obtained.

 

I have come across several accounts which have statesd that due to partisan activity, the German suffered as much as 600,000 casualties. Such a figure can not simply be over looked and such contribution is far from minimal (IMO). Germany had a very difficult time replacing the men which she had already lost, im sure Germany would have very much liked to go about her business in the East with these casualties.

And lets not forget the morale the partisans had on regular troops stationed around the dense forests. The Germans simply wanted nothing to do with the Russian wilderness...

Tying up so many German troops for so long alone, is not a minimal achievement.

 

600000 ?That would be more than 10% of the German losses till end 1944 (5.5 million )

 

I will try to find the source (might be Erickson) though not sure. As far as I remember these were total casualties which the Germans suffered in the East, of course these are not just KIA's.

 

I would think that 600,000 would be reasonable as to casualties generally speaking, not just deaths. Casualties can include disease as well as physical confrontation. STDs anyone?

 

Exactly!

Lots of wilderness in Russia . Many Germans stationed behind the front lines in vilages were constantly surrounded by dense forests. After a little while many were terrified of the "terrorists" who lurked all around.

 

I am quite well aware that the Red Army went through not one but two transformations to ultimately become an instrument of war that rivalled and surpassed the much touted German war machine....

What I question is the incredible cost....

I ask the question, would this incredible cost have been borne well by a democratic nation? Would public opinion have brought the GPW to a rapid conclusion in a country not run by totalitarian dictatorship?

Would a democratically elected government of Russia survive?


I say that the very GRIP that Stalinism exerted on the people virtually guaranteed that victory would be purchased at ANY cost. So, Germany was fighting an enemy that just wouldn't quit until one or the other was completely destroyed. No Brest Litovsk Agreement or Fall down and play dead like the French did. It was a baroom brawl to the finish, with the winning regime left as the only one standing.

So, could they have pulled it off WITHOUT V.I. Stalin? The regime certainly had no qualms about spilling it's own blood. Stalin is on record as describing collectivization in the thirties as worse than the war they were currently fighting. That is, that their present difficulties with the Germans were triffling!!!

Considering all this, why then did the Red Army go from disaster to disaster without collapsing internally? The answer is that the GPW was exactly the type of war that the regime was specifically designed to win....and nothing else.

Damn the cost. We can just fudge the record anyway, as long as we beat the invader, what else matters?

People used in such a fashion only tow the line when they have no choice.

My sympathies are with the fallen.

 

Oh...to answer the question posed by the thread....an emphatic NO.

I submit that the SU was conquerable only by it's utter destruction, requiring nuclear weapons, which did not exist at the time.

I also submit that the Russian people gave in to an old proverb...

"BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW."