Was Germany "defeated" before D-day?

Many people look at D-day as the turning point. Others argue that she was just a shadow of her former self in 44. Was Germany really that crippled after Kursk and Stalingrad? Would the Russians have defeated them even without the "second front?"

 

There was already a second front on 22 june .

Germany was already cripped before Stalingrad.

No second front was out of the question,as Germany was already at war with Britain,BEFORE 22 june 1941.

 

I used the term second front in reference to the Normandy landing and breakout.
Can you explain why Germany was crippled before Stalingrad?

 

Probably because invading the Soviet Union in the first place was a crippling move, followed by declaring war on the US after the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor sealed their doom. The war for Germany was over in 1941 for the most part. The Whermact was being fed into a meat grinder on the Eastern Front, and what was left in the west was slowly being pounded by the Western Allies. No way in hell they could win with those two incredibly stupid moves by Hitler.

 

Hitler did not think so. His plan for 1944 was to defeat the second front and then turn on the Russians with his entire force.

No one will know how close the Soviet Union was to running out of troops or whether the 50 divisions on the West front could have held the Red army or defeated it.

 

Hitler was very delusional. He couldn't defeat the Western Allies. Even if his only opponent war the Soviet Union, the Soviets would have eventually prevailed. Besides, the A-Bomb was being developed with Hitler's name on it. If the ground war in the ETO would have gone much longer, we would have dropped them on his head instead of Japan. If you really want to get technical about it, Germany was finished when Hitler invaded Poland. It triggered the events that led to his demise.

 

At the end of 1942,Germany had already lost 2 million man on the Eastern Front .

The Barbarossa plan had as aim to defeat the SU in a short and quick campaign of a few weeks,between the border and the line Dnepr-Dvina .When this failed,it was over for Germany .And,even if the SU was defeated in 1942,the Germans still would be faced by a war against Britain and the US,which they would lose.Already before the start of the Stalingrad battle (august 1942),Bomber Command was attacking Lübeck,Rostock,,Cologne,etc .

 

Yup, Germany was defeated when Hitler invaded the USSR. He underestimated the Soviet's ability to fight. The Germans could have reached the Urals but keeping them would be impossible. If Hitler had not mistreated the occupied people, they would have joined his cause and maybe then, he could have won. But that is a what if. Based on what happened, it definitely was when Hitler invaded. That was not a quick war scenario as he found out and quick wars was Germany's only capability.

 

His earlier victories skewed his view of what Barbarossa would bring. The breaking of the pact with the Soviets was the beginning of his demise. The allied invasion of France just forced the nail deeper.

 

One interpretation of the OP is when the Germans themselves thought they were defeated. "Soldaten", by Soenke Neitzel and Harald Welzer is a study of the attitudes of German PW from the secret recordigns made in PW camps in Britian and the USA.

This offers some interesting insights. There is a difference between the services. The Luftwaffe was more optimistic than the Navy which was more optimistic, by 1944 than the Army. The milestone events were the Blitzkrieg victories, Stalingrad, and D Day. The key point may not have been D Day, but the allied break out and the losses at the famlaise gap. A survey of 112 German PW in Fort Hunt USA in June 1944 found that 45% of PW thought that the Germans would win the war. By August that had fallen to 27 out of 148 and by September only 5 out of 67. Losing France brought it home that Germany would lose.

 

Defeated? All very good in theory but try telling this to the troops trying to get off the Normandy beaches. Brian

 

As a slight aside.
Agricultural boss Herbert Backe, 2nd May 1941:
"The war can only be continued if the entire Wehrmacht is fed from Russia in the third year."
Well... urrrm... ah...

Many, quite possibly including Adolf, knew achieving the full original war aims was most unlikely after the stall before Moscow, but hope perhaps sprang eternal that 'terms' could still be forced onto the enemy.
Ideology and curiously strong self-belief can carry a nation surprisingly far.

 

Those troops charging through the snow at the Bulge as well.

 

From what I have read many of the German troops believed they would win until pretty late in the war (late 44, 45). Besides being fed propaganda, many of them thought that the mysterious "super weapons" Jets and what not would save them.

My grandfather (who was a tale gunner on a 17) told me how surprised he was to see a Jet for the first time in battle. Really it does make you wonder what those weapons would have done if they came out in 41,42 and were perfected.

But I dont think by D-day the objective was to win so much as to force a situation where they could negotiate better terms of surrender. But who knows, in Adolfs mind he probably did think they could achieve full victory?