what if the germans won at Stalingrad

i just read a book about the battle of stalingrad.
"Stalingrad 1942-1943 The infernal cauldron" by Stepen Walsh
(okay, i aready forgot half of it ) but what i found very interesting was how both armies changed of the way they were commanded.

in 1941 only stalin commanded the army while the german army was commanded by it's generals (and only a little bit by hitler)
after Stalingrad it's completly the opposite. hitler takes over the command of the amry while stalin let his general (more ore less) do what they want.

 

spot on, after stalingrad , the dual command ...political commisar , military
commander ...got scrapped , and the officer got their shoulder boards
back, a much hated symbol of the tsarist time .
meanwhile mr hitler was controling the situation map at the batallion level

anybody know of a good book for german military decision making at
the O.K.W. level ????

 

Hitler winning in Stalingrad would only be symbolic instead of stratetic. Russia is a country of land a space, losing a few hundred square kilometers means little as long as the Russians can preserve their troop strengths and industries. The russians have endless supply of men and capable commanders, as well as secured military industries in the rear Euro mountains, even if they lost in Stalingrad, they would still have emerge victories at the end of a war of attrtition. Take it 1 step further, even if Hitler "won" at Kursk, it would probably delay the demise of the 3rd Reich by 1 to 2 years.

 

Kursk was different than Stalingrad though. The latter had a great deal of strategic importance as a link between Russia's industry and the resources it ran on, and as such it wasn't just a few more miles of Russian space.

 

what i wonder is what of the russians waren't warned by the spy Lucy about the german attack at Kursk. would the Russians still have won or would they suffer a defeat?

 

If Blechley park didn't do its job, the Russians wouldn't have been able to concentrate their forces to meet the Germans, and probably would have gave up ground in Kursk instead of losing a few hundred thousand troops in the pincer. Although I doubt that the Germans can achieve further gains after that as they were already exhausted by that stage of the war. On the other hand, maybe Stalin in a rage would have executed his generals (Zhukov, Koniev....) and the Russians will lose the war.....kiddin :bang:

 

they will when Zjoekov, Rokokovsky, Tsjoekov and Jeremenko were executed. Stalin himlself would make him the new commander and you got the same kind of commando like in 1941 and that wasn't a very effective commando.

 

Stalin might be quick to execute people who failed, but he was well aware of which generals were valuable to him. He would have kept Zhukov and Koniev even if they failed to foresee the German counteroffensive, and they would deal with it.

By the way, the Russians had their own spies and intelligence services and they were well aware of preparations for Zitadelle even without Ultra.