Germans doomed to failure

I recall that several Generals incl von Bock were worried that from the start of Barbarossa there was no clear-cut goal after the first stage of operation meaning time period mid to late July and forward. After that they needed a goal like Moscow or some other objective that they´d go for all the way but instead it was Leningrad, then Kiev and Ukraine, and then Moscow.

 

I think von Bock was always clear on the objective he was after (Moscow), but was often at odds with OKH about clarification or when the objective was changed. It seems that for the most part he was right, even if he really had no idea of Red Army force generation. This is the impression I get from Halder's Diary and from Turney's "Disaster at Moscow, von Bock's Campaign's 1941-42"

 

I am thinking even after moscow did the Germans have a chance of winning? Stalingrad was now the new front if Hitler surrounded the city and cut off the defenders and take it and then move down south to the oil fields would the germans have a chance of a massive victory on the eastern front?

 

It would be folish for the Germans to first capture Stalingrad and then move south ?
With,or without,hindsight,on the end of august 1942 it was obvious that AGA had failed to capture the oil fields.
I doubt very much that the SU would give uo if the oil fields were lost,this for the following reasons
1)the SU was not that dependent on oil (coal was more important):the importance of oil for the SU and Germany has been overestimated by western authors
2) the oil fields of the Caucasus were not that indespensable :there were other ones .

 

Care to ellusidate on that a bit? It certainly seems at odds with what I understand about the the technology of war at the time.

 

In theroy lets say the germans did capture Stalingrad what about the moral blows it would cause the soviets? Plus i think capturing the oil fields were very important for the germans considering the upcoming winter were the Soviets would launch a counter attack. Also by this time I belive the Western allies would start bombing german oilfields and refiineries.

 

Stalingrad is on the west bank of the river. If they capture it it's no longer an open sore but it's hardly a decisive victory either. Note that not taking Stalingrad had little impact on the failure to take the oil fields.

 

Ahhh "ellusidate", an excellent vocabulary word!

 

But the capture of Stalingrad would allow the Germans to send more divisions in to the oil fields and not only that allow thier flanks to be secure also some Soviet troops would probably lose thier nerve after hearing the defeat and surrender. In a event of a Soviet counter attack you would have a good idea of where thier main objective is.

 

In my simple opinion Stalingrad wouldn´t been of interest. And if you want to have it enclose it and wait. To get the military important Industrial zones would have been much more important.

 

during the war ,Britain and the US needed a lot of oil:the bombers needed oil,the battleships consumed enormous amounts of oil ...
The SU needed oil for the aircraft (but the importance of the SU and German aircraft on the east front was limited),the tanks and the trucks ,but it is not so that more oil would mean more aircraft,tanks trucks;one does not need oil to produce tanks,aircraft,trucks.There was no shortage on oil for the SU.
But the whole war and civilian economy was depending on coal :a shortage of coal would result in less tanks,trucks,artillery ...problems with the railways ...
The same for Germany :the Germans attacked with 1000 more tanks,but with less artillery and aircraft than in may 1940:this was not due to a shortage of oil .
The fact that the German army (and the Soviet army) was only partially motorised was not due to a shortage of oil :there was enough oil in june 1941,and,if there was more oil,there would not be more motorization .
As the SU,Germany was depending on coal :for the war economy,for transport,for heating .But,there were big problems,although some 350000 people were working in the coal mines before the war .
A last poin t:before the war ,there were in Germany (proportionally) less cars than in Britain,France,Belgium,Holland,Ireland,Denmark,Sueden,Switserland .There was no important German automobile industry,resulting in a lot of problems in the war,and,as there were (proportionally) not that trucks,.......the need on oil was not that important .

 

On the other hand the Germans thought it important enough to pay what 10 times the going price to obtain it through conversion to coal. I suspect the German tankers in fighting the Battle of the Bulge also considered it of some import. While coal may have been the major energy source for both the Soviets and the Germans it doesn't follow that petrolium was "not that important".

 

I forgot :that's why the whole importance of the Caucasus oil fields for Germany is,IMHO,what the FRench would call a "faux problème" =a myth,suppose that the Germans could exploit the oil fields,what would be the result ? More oil .But,did they need more oil ? Was there any shortage on oil in 1942-1943 ? Was there any shortage on oil for the offensives against Stalingrad,against the Caucasus ? Was there any shortage on oil for Kursk ?

 

No, the shortage was on well trained men and on enough good material. Ah and not to forget on a good tactic too.

 

A winter pause certainly had its attractions for some German field commanders who were concerned about the exhausted condition of their units. They made their opinions heard at a conference chaired by Halder on November 13, 1941 at Orsha near Smolensk.
Plainly this was an argument they were never going to win, despite the exhaustion of their units and despite all the problems that were mounting up in logistics, manpower, production etc.
The reason was that the capture of Moscow was - and still remained - the single most important military objective of Operation Barbarossa. So fixated was Hitler and OKH (and certainly Fedor von Bock) with seizing the Russian capital that all misgivings about resuming the offensive on Moscow were simply brushed aside in the belief that Soviet resistance must eventually crack under the weight of the German juggernaut.
Remember also that at the time such optimism was justified up to a point. Especially when it is recalled that in the opening phase of the attack on Moscow the Germans had blown a 300-mile wide hole in the Soviet position in front of the city. They had absolutely no reason to believe that 'one more push' would not leave Moscow at their mercy. It was a very seductive argument and no surprise that this was the view that prevailed.

 

Halder was the wrong man for such an operation. Next problem was that the Generals weren´t able to show Hitler the real important targets and the most ones feared themselve to tell him the truth. Some knew that "Barbarossa" was on an wrong way with wrong targets. Why Moscow or Stalingrad instead of important industry or traffic points

 

my question was a rhetoric one

 

One important problem between Hitler and the Generals was that Hitler was politician and the Generals were not. This is usual and the result is a conflict in thinking, planning, targeting. Although Germans are professors in 'geopolitics' i have no idea if anything about geopolitics was teached in the military academies of Germany. Hitler knew well the theories of Haushoffer about the Heartland and the Vital space.
About the direction to Caucasus and Stalingrad it is not only the oil fields in the area.
Hitler tried very hard to put Turkey in the war in Axis side. Turkeys were unbalanced and a critical victory of a big German army just out side of their border was a very good motive.

 

You create a war plan based on what you are capable of and what you think your enemy is able to do. Germany's Strategic goal was to inflict a rapid and devastating blow to the Soviet Union the likes of which that they could not recover. Their tactical plan to achieve this involved the destruction of as much of the Red Army as was possible.

What they actually did was a mix of this and a attempt to capture the nerve centers of the USSR, Leningrad and Moscow. For a brief period AGN did try to take Leningrad, but was called off to effect a seige. And of course Operation Typhoon tried to capture Moscow in the fall and early winter 1941. Germany failed in both the original plan and its ad hoc amendments.

If Germany truely believed that its original plan to destroy the Red Army was the correct one than it should have fallen back to defensible lines in the fall of '41 and let the Red Army come to them over a waste land and attack at the very end of their line of supply. The problem is of course than this negates the Strategic Plan of a quick and devastating victory for a prolonged war of 2 or more years.

In retrospect I would submit that the better way of achieving the Stategic goal would be to show less concern for the Red Army and more for Soviet Command Authority.

The USSR was a totalitarian state, run on a one party system and a maximum leader. Just like Hitler's Germany. Perhaps the best way to defeat an enemy like youself is to ask the Question, what would you do if attacked in the same way that you planned to do? If Hitler had done this honestly he would conclude that armies are just chess pieces to be moved about the board reguardless of the loss so long as you won in the end.

So long as the Heart, Leningrad/Moscow (industry and Communist Party apparatus) and the Brain, Stalin/Stavka, remained intact, the USSR would always be able to raise new armies to put into the field as they did historicly. Perhaps a better tactical plan to achieve German's Strategic goal would have been an all out assault to take Russia's capitol and 2nd city in an effort to decapitate the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union was a diverse nation in which much of its population was niether Russian or Communist. Had Germany successfully captured Belorussia, Leningrad and Moscow, and effected the death or dislocation of Stalin and his Communist party cohorts, then that may have been enough to achieve the Political and psychological effect to destabilized the Soviet Union.

It does not seem that Germany had the resources to destroy the Red Army faster than it could be reconstituted in 1941. So that it seems to me that the best way to win a quick victory was to aim at the head rather than the body of the USSR.

 

One of hitlers biggest mistakes IMHO
1 Fooling around St.petersburg(liningrad)
2 failing to supply troops with winter gear
3 not surrounding stalingrad and taking before moving on to the oilfields
4 trusting flanks to Italians Romanians and Hungary no offense to anyone
5 launching the kursk offensive
I know I am missing alot but thats all I can remember.............