when (if any) is the turning point on Eastern front ?

Thanks Kai.

 

The eastern front by the end of 1942 was a sealed defeat for the Germans they couldnt advance on the whole front like they did in 1941 they were just too weak and there goes any remote chance of winning or drawing on the eastern front I guess.

 

I don't think there is any need to be so deterministic about it. I have no doubt at all that a force inferior in numbers can defeat a larger force. Othewise we are reducing the art of strategy to aligning all our troops along the front line and pushing, the one with more troops wins. This is not so. A smaller force can win if it is better commanded, the correct decisions are taken and you have the means to sustain your operations.

The Soviets did not win simply because they had the larger nmbers. We can say that they won because they were the side that made the least mistakes (or were smarter).

And I do not believe "The eastern front by the end of 1942 was a sealed defeat for the Germans". The Germans could still have won if they took the correct decisions in 1943, and if they could collect the resources to maintain operations.

 

Your point is well taken ZA. The German forces could have managed to pull victory from the Eastern Front with the right kind of resource support and with the right decisions.

 

Even 1942 was recoverable still. 6th Army should have pulled back from Stalingrad - hard to convince them do as they were already in posession of 90% of the place - and the Caspian / Caucasus oilfields could have sustained a persistent bombing campaign.

The former would have avoided the disaster, the latter while not bringing the SU to its knees would cause immense difficulties.

Further North they had the entire Ukraine to play with, Manstein could see-saw the Red Army to exhaution there.

But no, the Gröfaz knew better.

 

Up to spring – july 1943, Germans were able to mount large scale offensive (Kursk) in spite of their important defeat and withdrawal during winter 42-43 and unti Mannstein managed to stop the tide in february IIRC).

It is right to point out the fact they were no longer able to launch an offensive on the whole front but :

- always remember that Kursk looks like a small scale offensive on the map, but it engaged a very large number of units in infantry, planes and tanks. (Some authors actualy believe that, among other factors, the extreme concentration of forces in such a small and hardly maneuverable front was in itself a reason for operation citadel’s failure).

- there was no more full front scale German offensive in may 1942.

***
As we are now talking about quantities, I’d like to say one factor has not been really discussed so far in this post, it’s the casualties numbers.

More precisely : we draw conclusions about the turning point of the war (if any) but I think German HQ at this time, was drawing its own conclusions taking in acount the losses inflicted to the Red Army.

I’m not saying it’s something likely to change one’s conclusions, but maybe it can help to understand decisions taken during the course of the war.

Example :

- after the huge loses and captures inflicted to Red Army in summer and fall 1941, many German generals believed the push towards Moscow could inflict tremendous losses to Red army and bring it on its knees.

- during the Soviet counterstrike to protec Moscow during winter 41-42, the soviet losses suffered were HUGE (I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I remember they were really high. Germans could seriously believe that, with such a loss rate, the Red Army could not fight much longer),

- although the german’s May 1942 offensive proved very disapointing from this point of view (no more entire armies getting encircled and destroyed, Russians knew when and how to fall back – you can’t compare 1941 and 1942 figures), staggering losses and capture in east Crime (Kerch area) in spring and Sebastopol later on, could make germans believe, they could resume inflicting enormous losses to Red Army, in Stalingrad area.

My point is to remind that many large scale strategical choice made by germans from fall 1941 to end of 1942 were made having ALSO this factor in mind : “no matter where we attack, the point is to meet strong opposition and, if we inflict as many losses to the Red army as we did in summer-fall 1941, we’ll eventualy destroy the Red army”.

The above was wrong, but could sound smart at these times, especialy when the germans had a very rough insight of USSR’s military and industrial potential.

At the start of winter 1942, even with the successes in Crimea, the German HQ realized that, according to what they knew about USSR reserves, they were now losing the game of numbers.

This factor is important to understand German decisions when you ask yourself : why the hell Moscow, why the hell Kiev, why the hell Stalingrad etc

 

One must also remember , in my view, that these decisions were made by Hitler or at least the last word was his. Hitler believed that in the summer 1942 when no strong Red Army forces were captured that the Red Army was running out of men. Hitler´s favourite motto of the time was " Der Russe ist tot!" ("The Russian is dead!").
How wrong the man was...

 

Actually, the Soviets were running out of men but this was only really felt in late 1944 when this was becoming academical for the Germans. But in any case as the Red Army was advancing it was being able to find new recruiting bases, such as recovered territory, reintegrated partisans, POWs recaptured, etc.