If the Germans had captured Moscow, what do you think would have happened?

for fact we are fighting a combined military force of several nations, not guerillas in the mideast, as we did in Nam. the VC was not a guerilla force nor was the particpation by China whom when we dragged there carcass's off the field were always taller than the dead VC

 

define combined military force? Iranian weapons going into Iraq? foreign terrorists? left overs from Saddam Hussein's military? I'm saying we aren't fighting a force that wears military uniforms, Vietnam we were fighting the NVA, the North Vietnam Army, we were in fact fighting a well trained army unlike Iraq. I don't like Vietnam and Iraq comparisons.

 

If the germans took moscow, I like the red army had plenty of men to retake it, as was said another staingrad, or kursk, i think sheer weight of numbers would drown the germans just imagine, that could have been the bloodist battle in history, larger then the largest tank battle, or the battle for berlin. Russian would have prevailed in the end.

 

Yeah the Eastern front was a war of attrition and the side with more numbers was sure to come out victorious.

Alot of people think that the day Hitler invaded Russia was the day he lost WWII. Think of the numbers:

Germany: 50 million people
USSR: 150 million people

When you really think about it, even with thier allies there was no way the Germany could occupy the soviet union. In a war of attrition like this the Russians would almost surely retake moscow if it was taken. Also, consider the supply lines; German supplies were stretched out because of the distance they had to travel to get to the front lines, and they could not produce as much material as the Russians did because they worked material to exceptionally high quality.

 

no doubt, they wouldn't have the troops to garrision all the cities as well as all the borders, plus have enough troops to combat any other nation, even if they did conscript ostuppen troops. These troops would have to kept at a bare miniumin, because you can't have them outnumbering your own men, they'd probably revolt.

 

I agree, the invasion of the Soviet Union was his downfall. But the 150 million Russians, I mean its not like the Germans were up against 150 million Red Army soldiers though. If they could have shock and awed them and blitzkrieged them to death the millions of Russians would have submitted to the foreign invader don't you think?

 

lol however somehow I don't think I would have worked

 

34,476,700 Russians were mobilized, about 9 million of them died and 16 million wounded.
13,600,000 Germans were mobilized, about 3.5 million of them died and 4.6 million wounded.

The Russians waged a total war from the very beginning. Those people who didn't join the army worked in the factories like "animals"(As Hitler put it). The point is, every pair of hand was used from the start.
The Germans, on the other hand, didn't wage a total war until 1943 - one year before the allied invasion and too late to win the war. After the call for a total war, Germany was able to triple its war production even under heavy strategic bombing.
So you get the picture....

One major weakness the German army had was that only a small portion of the army was mobile. The panzers, in many cases, had to wait for the infantry to catch up. That's one of many reasons why the speedy defeat of Russia didn't come.

 

Great stats, so even with the german generals tactics and there superior technology couldn't have held back the red army tide at moscow(should it have fallen) or through germany all the way back to berlin.

 

Actually the total German casualties on the Ost Front were at 10.1 million.

The Soviet casualties were closer to 16 million.

 

I wonder how many of those Russians were killed by their own people too.

 

Do thos casualties include osttruppen? (Rumanians and Italians)

 

No, strictly German.

 

No, Bullcrap.. Your number is the Total Casualty of the Wehrmacht. MIA & KIA & WIA.

 

Yes Sturm, the total German ( not only Wehrmacht ) permanent losses on the Eastern Front were at 10,758,000 out of 13,488,000. Accounting to 80% in the east
(Dead, Missing or Disabled ).

Plus an additional 1,725,000 Axis allies....

This grim toll brought the total Axis losses in the Soviet-German War to the gruesome figure of 12,483,000 soldiers killed, missing, captured or permanently disabled

The total Soviet casualties are actually at 14,700,000

http://www.strom.clemson.edu/publications/sg-war41-45.pdf

Pages 13-15

 

Not too many, a great number of Russians were gunned down by German machine guns while trying to "Human Wave" their way to victory.

PS: Don't take what people in the forum say too personally, you are doing just fine.

 

Actually, there was a significant number of Red Army deaths by their own men. However these were primarily penal units who were ordered to repay the "Motherland" for their sins with their own blood.

As for Human waves...... after 41, this was really no longer the case.

 

Yeah in Antony Beevor's book it says that the Russians executed the equivalent of an entire division of thier own men at Stalingrad alone.

 

Unfortunately human waves attacks never ceased completely. However from my knowledge, they were minimal in scale and number compared to 1941, not to metion that even these waves had the backing of Artillery and/or Air Cover.

In later years the majority of human waves ( while still minimal in comparison to 41' ) were predominantly penal units, who were expected to die by the STAVKA. I believe that around 700,000 suffered that fate(?).

As for several hundreds of thousands of men rushing blindly into battle with nothing but a rifle..... well that simply didnt happen after 1941 early 42'