Germans doomed to failure

It was doomed from Day 1.

Even at its best they got to Moscow.

Moscow is half way to the Urals, and the Urals are <half way to Vladivostok. Generals Miles and Winter were FAR too strong.

 

Yes, an often forgotten reason. As I have stated before, "will" to fight is an important factor on the battlefield.

 

I've came around on my opinion of the winter issue. Going into winter quarters instead of launching Operation Typhoon and fielding cold climate gear instead of gasoline and ammunition would have saved some Wehrmacht soldiers at 1941 but the war would still be lost. By the end of Operation Typhoon, before the Russian counterattack and the really cold weather set in, the Germans already had almost all of their tanks inoperable due to combat losses or mechanical breakdowns & infantry strength down across the board. The Russians WERE better acclimated but that's hard to quantify as a factor and certainly does not appear decisive.

 

109 ID,19 PD and 14 Mot ID were earmarked for Barbarossa (the OKH reserves included),of these,88 ID
3 MotID
1 PD
were mainly equipped with French and other captured vehicles .
Thus,the possibility to give some captured vehickles to the allies was very limited .

 

I think there are useful comparisons to be made here but one has to be careful. The US for instance seemed to look very closely at what it could support and not raise more than that. For instance the US initially planned on raising 200 combat divisions. This was ultimately cut back to about half that the inability to support more being an important factor.

Earlier cold casulaties of the Soviets were mentioned. I remember reading somewhere that part of the problem in the first year is that a fair number of the new recruits were not trained well in how to handle the cold in particular sleeping in their great coats. Once the problem surfaced spreading the word around as to how to do it solved a lot of the problems. Unfortunately I don't remember where I read this except it was on the internet so it is certainly open to refutation.

 

A good point lwd, however; IMO it seems that Germany did not have the luxury of assessing the situation at hand and then scaling down. Germany was always short on men and supplies.

Ex: U.S. could raise 200 div. But scale down to 100 per logistics and allies....

Germany's problem usually resembled: 50 additional divisions needed could only raise 30 divisions and supply only 15 of them..

 

The problem was the shortage on men and material but it could had been better if they treated the people in their occupied countries much better. If they had done these, they were able to get some hardly needed Divisions for Barbarossa. But with their usual way to deal with the people, they built up only opponents not friends. Best sample was Russia at itself. The next was the immense coastline they had to guard for the fear of an allied landing. If you´re looking back onto their problems it makes you wonder that Germany was able to make their way to 1945 and haven´t surrender much earlier like 1943.

 

Agreed, Germany was forced to employ far too many troops on security/anti-partisan actions because of their occupation/race policies. Hard on the people they ruled, but a boon to the Soviets and Allies.

 

What doomed the German's was the two front war. Had Hitler not invaded Norway and allowed the British to send troops to Finland to help during the Soviet invasion, Germany could have had the British on their side and then Hitler could have his war against the USSR. If anything, he would not have had the two front war. With 100% of the war effort being against the Soviets, the Germans could have inflicted enough defeats against the USSR to force Stalin out and negotiations with the new government. The Germans could have done it but Hitler always bite off more than he could chew.

 

Once they attack the Soviets their options in this regard become very limited.

I'd agree but they did have some options that might have helped or they would have if they weren't lead by Hitler and his ilk. Indeed the behavior of the German ocupation troops as others have pointed out caused serious problems in several areas. Not only did it give rise to the partizans but it turned the fight from one between the Nazis and the Communists to one to save "Mother Russia" and ones family. You have mentioned the will to fight and I agree it was a critical thing. Nazi Germany shot itself in the foot in this regard IMO.

 

You hit it on the nail on all points but mainly in the first sentence.

 

lwd, great saying and they did it twice! One time at Russia and the other at France.

 

That's possible but IMO very unlikely. First of all the British may not have invaded. If they did they may not have sent troops to Finland. Even if they did and an acomadation wasn't reached before the Germans attacked it likely would have been very shortly afterward. Stalin IMO would have been more than happy to give back land taken from the Finns in exchange for British help vs the Germans. The net result of this would have been the Germans loosing an ally and the Soviets having one less front to worry about. Not to mention thier access to Swedish ore and metal has become a lot more problematic.

 

Agreed

 

I am not convinced by the Mother Russia thing,in the meaning that,with another occupation policy,millions of Russians would have deserted,or that there would be no partisans (BTW:the partisans were hindering the Germans only since 1943,when the German chance to win was gone). There is no proof that the Soviets were fighting different because of the German occupation policy .
Some exemples :the Germans used the 10 days periods for counting their losses and also for counting the number of Soviet prisonners.Well,the two 10 days with the most Soviet prisonners were
21-30 september:550961
11-20 october:499476
During these both periods,the excesses and the mass murderings of the Jews were already public knowledge,also the treatment of the POW,thus one should expect less POW than in the other periods .

 

Certainly there would have been partizans in any case. The dedicated Communist weren't going to give up easily. Nore would I expect millions to desert. However they may not have worked has hard, moved as fast, fought as stubborly, and they may have been more willing to surrender, provide intelligence, and aid to the Germans, etc.

I admit I have not seen proof but it doesn't seem unreasonable and things like Stalin making up with the church rather point to at least some effect in this regard.

Not necessarily. How widely was it know and believed? There's also the problem with what was the tactical situation.

 

Tend to agree with Sloniksp's rebuttal of the curious idea that Germany was in any position to provide Romania (or Hungary for that matter) with a meaningful amount of modern weapons. As Sloniksp correctly points out the Germans could not even adequately supply their own troops let alone overcome their allies' problems with obsolete weapons*
In any case, supposing that such an improbable event had come to pass, it requires a leap of faith to imagine the Romanian army justifying a costly investment in new artillery, tanks etc. Their army was hardly fit for purpose, and diverting newer weapons to them would have been a classic case of throwing good money after bad. I would exclude the rank-and-file from this criticism and lay the blame on their totally corrupt officer corps.

*the papers of Friedrich Paulus make this abundantly clear.

 

I agree, this is also a huge and multifaceted subject and not a simple proposition of Nazi occupation policy. The German Army commanders at all levels relied heavily on Hiwis. 6th Army at Stalingrad alone is reported to have 50,000 Hiwis, what does that say about the entire Eastern Front? Also worth mentioning were the Ostbattalions which was essentially what the Hiwis evolved into and by 1943 there for about 450,000 of them. You can also add the Cossacks that fought for the Germans and the many civilians that served in important capacities as well (Railroads being a key function for thousands of Russians.Ukrainians).

I would venture a guess that the level of collaboration exceeded the level of resistance and far exceeded the level of collaboration of any other conquered nation (unless you count Austria). Its also plausible that the level of determination or motivation of Red Army Soldiers had more to do with conventional thoughts related to level of individual training, unit training, esprit de corps, etc. The Red Army Soldiers defending the fortress at Brest that fought to the death had no clue about Nazi attrocities because they hadn't happened yet, but those were pre-war Soldiers likely with years of training (and political indoctrinanation). The millions of peasant Soldiers that died or surrendered in droves were Soldiers in name only for the most part, more like lambs for the slaughter.

 

I totally agree....

 

Who said anything about the urals the plan was to take Moscow (highly unlikely) Then hold off russian attacks from across the urals.