German strategic blunders

The impossibility of SL has been demonstrated on a lot of forums,and on several forums it is not politically correct to reopen this thread

 

look for 'yes or no the Germans take Gibraltar '(brilliant post by Brndirt who prooved that the ME had no value for the Germans )

 

About Dunkirk :the halt order was not given by Hitler;Dunkirk was not left to the Luftwaffe;it has never been proved that the Germans could capture Dunkirk and it has never been prooved that Britain would give up if the BEF was lost

 

Awwww come on how can the ME have no value.

 

Given the resources known and exploitable at the time and the value of it's location strategicaly at the time what value do you think it has?

 

Fisrt it will cut off commonwealth troops in india. Plus the oil in the region and the local inhbitants would had probably be been allowed to join the whermatch or the SS ( their was a divison of SS made completely of arab men). Giving the germans badly needed man power.

 

Will it? It's not at all clear to me how taking the middle east is going to put much of an axis naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

Most of which was either not known at the time or not being extracted and well beyond the Axis ability to extract and utilize in the near future.

Weigh this against the cost of taking and maintaining control of the Mideast. Consdier especially the advantages that the British have due to their control of the Indian ocean. The Mideast is in all likelyhood a resource sink for the axis powers especially if Japan is not involved.

 

There was NO SS division of Arab men,but a division of Moslims (with a very low fighting value) of Bosnia:the Handschar Division .

 

was it von Kluge ?Iread the same history(better myth) about von Rundstedt

 

What Commonwealth troops do you mean here? The territorial forces in India continued to fight in their east against the Japanese. How will moving the Nazis into the mid-east change this? Then what Mid-east oil after 1940? For the UK, British Isles oil imports in 1939 were as follows:

46.2% - Caribbean - mainly Venezuela, but includes Trinidad and Mexico
30.8% - Middle East - Persia (Iran), & Iraq
19.2% - US
(the rest came from Rumania)

Then with Italy entering into the war in mid-1940, and the Central Med. a war zone, middle east oil became more expensive since it had to be shipped around the Cape. In consequence by 1942, no middle east oil was sent to the home islands, both Persian and Iraqi oil production/refining was scaled back short term (civil unrest didn't help), and that which was produced was used "in house", i.e. the MTO, plus some sent to India, especially after the loss of the Far East oil producers; NEI, Burma, Borneo and Malaya to the Japanese. So this is the picture for UK petroleum by 1942:

60.0% - US,
40.0% - Trinidad, Venezuela and Mexico (Rumanian oil purchases stopped in 1940, but they had accounted for only 4.2% of British imports that year anyway)

By 1944, 79% of Britain's oil imports would be from the US; 21% from the Caribbean, as those sources could be shipped cheaper. The Suez Canal have been of no import to the UK for supplying the home islands (they had been shipping over 90% of all goods around the Cape since the opening days of the war), since Italy was holding Ethiopia and "air-patrolling" the southern entrance to Suez only warships and supply ships for the troops in Egypt used the canal, the UK didn't receive any substantial percentage of their oil from their holdings in the mid-east after 1940.

The British Isles themselves received the bulk of their oil and petro-products for most of the war from the US, still the world's leading oil exporter at the moment. The US supplied (from our own fields) nearly 75% of all the oil and its products used by ALL the western allies for the entire war. Note how very different the petro-world was then! The British had also been sending between 85% and 90% of all their commercial shipping around the "Horn of Africa" since the outbreak of war, both to and from their dominions and commonwealth partners in the Pacific area.

That Suez canal connection was most generally used for military shipments to the troops in Egypt and the RN in the Med., but the Levant area and eastern Mediterranean islands could be as easily supplied through the protectorates of Syria, Persia (Iran), and Iraq. And India wasn’t ever going to be either "cut off", nor of much true import even if it was as to the overall outcome of the war. The anti-allied factions in the mid-east weren’t so much pro-Nazi/fascist as they were anti-colonial; both the French and British were detested equally. They were so poorly equiped and organized their "mutininy" was quickly put down, and their leaders imprisoned for the duration.

 

I i know it has nothing to do with this conversation but what is the purple heart next to my name for?

 

You will receive "medals" for your post totals. It increases in number of medals as a recognition of your posting participations. That is it, nice recognition of your contributions is what you are seeing.

 

Ah i see this is the only time during the day i get to talk about ww2.OK back to the post was the Germans even close to taking Stalingrad if Hitler shut up and let his generals work? example slitting army up and not surrounding Stalingrad.

 

That is hard to say, the need for taking Stalingrad is difficult to rationalize at any level other than "prestige" of taking the namesake of his enemy. Hitler also tied a HUGE number of troops down in the seige of Leningrad which was of little to no worth militarily.

Moscow might have been of little value either, other than the old Napoleonic era concept of "take the enemy capital, win the war", which even Napoleon realized was false.

Taking non-strategic cities is of little import. Staligrad may have been at least semi-justified in that it contained a tank factory, and possession of it would close the Volga down to river barge transport. But the rail system (north/south) ran on the east of the Volga, and another one ran north/south even further east.

Another justification for taking Stalingrad might have been to close a left flank vulnerabilty to his Caucuses campaign to take the Soviet oil fields. But even the two he did take (Mailkop/Gorsny?) never produced a single barrel of oil for the Nazis. The West Baku fields (Baku I) on the west bank of the Caspian Sea had been completely closed down and sabotaged with cement injections to the point that even the Soviets didn't get them producing again until post war.

Hitler's design on the Soviet Union was flawed, and doomed to fail in the long run. Not just because of Hitler's interference alone on the military side, but his draconian treatment of the Slavs and other occupied peoples in the conquered areas. He would never make them produce what he needed to sustain his Reich.

 

The Germans could had crush Leningrad but never did. i know Hitler ordered it blasted of the face of the earth but they could had capture it.

 

Hey Clint,

Don't you mean the Cape of Good Hope? The "Horn of Africa" sticks out into the Gulf of Aden and is comprised of present day Somalia. The Gulf of Aden is at the entrance to the Red Sea. Doesn't make much sense for the British to send their commercial shipping that way unless it was in support of their position in Egypt.

 

Yupper, typo on my part. Sorry 'bout that, didn't proof read my post before I put it up. Again, my apologies. Mea culpa, just not paying attention when I hit "submit" I plead laziness.

 

The Germans did not have the man power to take Russia and did not have enough naval and air strength in the Mediterranean sea to keeps Rommel covered in Africa.

 

It has always amazed me that the German army, so brilliant at the tactical and operational level during World War II, was so inept at strategy and grand strategy.

(You have a very good post and i shall throw my two cents into your argument point by point and maybe we both learn something?)

The reason for that is regularly laid at Hitler’s feet – with good reason. Hitler had a #1 commander of the German army until the failure of operation Typhoon (German attack to seize Moscow) in 1941. After this, Hitler simply fired his C-I-C heer (i forget the man's name now) and declared that HE was now Commander in Cheif of the armed forces and proceeded to act in that capacity. The former corporal, who had no formal General officer training or background, but did have unlimited power, chose to believe that he and he alone was qualified to command the huge German armies fighting on several fronts. Even if Hitler had had the background and ability of another Von Manstein (who Hitler called "my most capable General") all the tasks he took on were too much for two men let alone just one.

Despite popular impressions Hitler DID listen to his Generals before making decisions, and almost always took their professional opinions into argument before ordering troops to this front or that. Unfortunately cronyism, in-fighting, emotions, and the fog of war often clouded his decision making, and with millions of German lives at stake, it was inevitable that the former Corporal would make huge blunders that would cost Germany the war.


There remains the fact that German strategic planning for the most part ranged from unimaginative to disastrously unrealistic. The plans often display overconfidence, a lack of appreciation of enemy strength and capabilities and a failure to grasp the logistics requirements of the campaign.

Hitler again. Almost every Field Marschall and General opposed Barbarossa - Keitel threatened to resign if Hitler launched it (Hitler ignored him and Keitel did not resign after all) and even Goerring tried to talk him out of it, but failed. Goerring explained to a German General, "The Fuehrer has made up his mind, and nothing on earth can now change it".

Most highly placed German Generals, many of whom had foughtthe Czarist russians in WW1, realized Germany could not possibly win such a conflict - one need only look at a map of Russia as it opens up to the east like a gigantic funnel spanning thousands of miles wide and long, a region with brutally cold winters, blazing hot summers, and some of the worst terrain for offensive fighting in the world, almost no roads, and even a different railway gauge than Germany used - to realize the extreme rashness of Hitler's over-confident and emotion charged decision to launch Barbarossa.


From there, it was all downhill. When the Germans had defeated France in June 1940, they realized that a plan was necessary for knocking the British out of the war. Why they didn't start such contingency planning in September 1939 is mystifying.

Probably because they could not envision achieving such tactical success as they did, so quickly.


The plan they came up with was ambitious and totally unrealistic. It called for a landing on a wide front with nine divisions, plus a supporting airborne division. An operation on such a scale would have strained the resources of the Allies in 1944, and was totally beyond German capabilities in 1940. Because they lacked the purpose-built landing craft that made Allied invasions so successful in both Europe and the Pacific, the Germans intended to conduct the troops across the Channel with a motley collection of coastal steamers, tugboats and barges.

Hitler was never really very interested in conquering Britain. He admired the British, considered them a "good Germanic race" and thought the British empire was a "stabilizing influence" on the world. Hitler and many other Nazis, saw more similarities then differences between the Nazis and the British. (At one point, before the start of the war in 1939, the British ambassador went to see Herman Goerring and to question him about the existence and nature of the German "concentration camps" he had heard about. In reply, Goerring simply reached behind his desk and pulled a book out, that described the similar British Concentration Camps used to imprison the South African Boers during the Boer war of 1900 - and from whom the Germans had gotten the idea to build them! His hand called, the British ambassador questioned Goerring no further on the matter.)

While considering German strategic failures, it is interesting to speculate on a road not taken that could have led to Britain's demise. Instead of planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union, and leaving Britain unconquered and threatening a second front, the Germans could have pursued a Mediterranean strategy. With only a small percentage of the resources they poured into Russia, Germany could have moved south and driven the British from the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East. They could have worked out an agreement with Franco for the capture of Gibraltar from the landward side, taken the key British stronghold of Malta, instead of the bloody and pointoless assault on Crete, and landed a strong and well-supplied force under Rommel in Libya to drive eastward across Egypt, capture the Suez Canal and take control of the Middle East. While not certain of knocking Britain out of the war, this strategy was certainly worth trying with the limited resources available to Germany, and it would have avoided the two-front war that Germany found itself in after Barbarossa.

Grand Admiral Erich Raeder proposed exactly the strategy you describe. Raeder was one of Hitler's visionaries, and Raeder had greatly endeared himself to Hitler when he saved the German invasion of Norway in 1940 when it was about to turn bad.

Instead of attacking Russia, which Raeder also realized was a horrible idea, Raeder proposed turning the German military against the Mediteranean - as it was almost certain to achieve very good results with minimal resources, as you describe. Hitler could have captured Gibralter, driven the British from the Middle east from bases in North Africa, Italy and Greece, and captured the oil fields in Iraq and Saudi Arabia possibly all within a year (and with probably about half the resources used against russia).

Moreover Stalin would now be less likely to attack Germany (Hitler's fear and the main reason for Barbarossa)for the Soviets would now be faced with German troops on their Northern (Finland and Norway) Western (Europe) and southern (newly-German middle east) borders, as well as a German controlled Baltic sea.

Hitler decided to attack Russia instead, since he chose to believe that the British would be neutralized by the U-boats, and America would continue to stay out of the war for at least another year, or two. Hitler was, of course, wrong about all of this but the victorious Germans had tasted nothing but victory up to that point, and this no doubt clouded Hitler's judgment.

As for Barbarossa itself, it was another example of unrealistic planning that underestimated the enemy forces and the logistics requirements of a massive campaign. It could only have worked if the plans for a lightning campaign, conquering the Soviet Union in a few weeks or months, had been realized. But the blitzkrieg that had worked so well in France would have to work on a far larger scale in Russia.

General Heinz Guderian, the German panzer genius, was also against Barbarossa but realized Hitler was not going to be talked out of it. Therefore to help Germany win, Guderian knew he had to come up with a plan that was most likely to succeed, and that it would necessarily involve using masses of armor in conjunction with support from the air.

The strategy Guderian proposed in 1941, was exactly the same general strategy used in Operation Iraqi Freedom by the Americans against Iraq in 2003: Send masses of armor forward, forward, forward, never stopping, never losing their momentum, never halting their advance. Destroyed and broken-down armor would simply be left behind to be gathered up and repaired by support units, along with the masses of Russian prisoners sure to be taken. German infantry would be following close behind in trucks, riding the tanks or even by train, keeping up with the endless German tank advance East.

The Panzer divisions were to be supplied by massive airdrops (where Guderian proposed this part would come from, i have no idea, since resupplying dozens of Panzer divisions was probably beyond the capability of the Luftwaffe even in 1941.) The point was that there would not be one schwerpunkt in this massive panzer operation, but many, and the Panzers would simply move so far, so fast, the attack would totally overwhelm the Russians before they could properly respond.

For whatever reason, Guderian's plan gained no traction with Hitler, and Hitler chose a multi-front, conventional attack instead. In light of how history ultimately unfolded, you can't help but wonder just how Guderian's strategy would have played out, if executed as designed!

Another problemfor the German troops was the failure, through overconfidence or incompetence, to provide winter clothing, leading to many unnecessary casualties in brutal winter of 1941-42.

This was the fault of both Hitler and Keitel. They foolishly decided the campaign would be over before winter. Therefore there was no need to send the troops winter clothing. Other German leaders such as Feldmarshall Erhard Milch of the Luftwaffe, realized this was not going to happen - and he did order sufficient quantities of cold weather clothing sent to luftwaffe personnel in time for the brutal Russian winter.

One of the factors leading to the Barbarossa disaster was the failure of German intelligence to provide basic, accurate data for the campaign. German estimates gave the Soviets only half the divisions they in fact had and badly overestimated the condition of the Soviet road net.

Yep even Hitler admitted how badly German intelligence had under-estimated the Russian capabilities. When told how many tanks the Russians really had, and how good the new T-34 was and how badly it outclassed all the German tanks, Hitler replied "If i had known they had so many tanks, i would never have started this war." (!)

The 1943 Kursk offensive was again a completely unimaginative attack against the sides of a Soviet-held salient. Any chances of success were ruined by several months of delays so that Hitler could throw his cherished Tiger tanks into the attack.

The 900,000 German troops tried mightily at Kursk (the best account of this may be the book Citadel by Robin Cross). But as you infer, it was fought at the wrong time (the window had long passed and the Russians knew, via Ultra transmission intercepts relayed them by the British, that the Germans were attacking there for certain), in the wrong place (the Russians had built 9 layers of heavily defended seperate defensive lines, miles apart), for the wrong reasons (Hitler thought he needed a victory in 1943 for German morale).

In his book Panzer Battles Von Mellenthin gives the opinion that the "magnificent" panzer divisions were simply wasted at Kursk, and should have been employed to draw the Russian tanks into battle in "lightning attacks" of maneuver warfare, on terrain and under conditions more favorable to the German armored forces.
Hitler's heavy hand again.


The failure at Kursk not only wiped out German armored reserves, it opened them up to a devastating Soviet summer offensive that threw them back across the Dnieper River and led to the loss of Kiev. From this point, strategic planning became pretty much a thing of the past for Germany, with the initiative passing permanently into enemy hands on the Eastern Front and defensive operations in the West as their enemies closed in on the borders of the Reich.

Although Germany began the war brilliantly with the invasions of Poland, Norway and Denmark, France and the Low Countries and the Balkans, it failed both because of lack of resources and the intelligent use of those resources. Failures in campaign and war production planning early in the war condemned Germany to defeat despite the operational and tactical brilliance of the German army.

Yes one German General commented in retrospect after the war "The tasks chosen for it, and the demands made of it during the war, were simply too much for the relatively small nation of 80 million people that was Germany".