What did the Germans lack for a quick victory in Stalingrad?

Not sure if you are being serious or not. If you are the question becomes where do the resoucres come from to build the long range bombers? If they come from the tactical airforce then the conquest of Poland and France may both be longer and more costly. Indeed they may not succeed in taking France. This may result in a better outcome for Germany as it would preclude an attack on the Soviet Union but ....

 

The Germany's industrial base could not sustain both a tactical airfleet and a strategic airfleet. They could have a strategic bombers by neglecting the tactical fighter, but without tactical aircrafts, strategic capabilities are meaningless. I can see them finding the excess fuel and capacity to get a bomber force airborne without thinning down their tactical aircraft strength which was already at the breaking point by as early as 1942.

 

Paulus was a slow and cautious decision maker. Much of his decision making fell into the "too little, too late" category. His complete lack of experience was also a large part of the problem.

 

For the city fight in Stalingrad, I see no way in hell that the Germans could have done better. Contrary to popular imagination of the Wehrmacht as to have fought a bumblingly inept tactical battle, their offensive tactics against Russian defense in depth and constant infiltration is a masterpiece of infantry tactics on both sides.

The Germans met their match in Stalingrad. But the Russians had far more reseserves than they used. All disengaged forces were in reserve beyond the Volga, waiting for Paulus to spend himself. Small reinforcements were fed into the city only when the front was in danger of imminent collapse.

Russian strategy was not even holding the city. They were just sending enough me to stave off collapse and keep the fight going on, trading territory for time and enemy kills. Unless the Germans make Stalingrad their sole operational focus for 1942, Stalingrad won't fall. But what would be the point of that?

 

I'm afraid the whole issue falls in the What if Walther Wever Chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff was not killed in a flying accident in 1936. It was he who favored the Do19 and the Ju89 long range bombers and on his death the idea was no more.

We will never know what could have happed, as pointed out if this did they would need long rang fighters.

 

Germany's industrial base couldn't even sustain a tactical airfleet.

But, as far as strategic bombers go Germany could never have had much of a fleet of these. Their aircraft industry was just too small to construct any large number of highly complex large aircraft.
If you look at the large four engined aircraft Germany did produce you find:

* That at best any single manufacturer might have turned out a single bomber per day and probably less.
* That the fuel required for a mission would have increased expotentially over smaller bomber aircraft. The He 177 required about 8 tons of fuel. An Fw 200 carried about 9. The Ju 290 toted about 11.
* That losses even at just 2% on a force of 100 aircraft was unsustainable (2 per day of operations).

When you compare this to what the US or British were doing in this field production-wise the German effort looks just simply pathetic. Ford's Willow Run plant turned out 24 B-24 a day in full production. The Convair - Goodyear complex in San Diego and Arizona was able to just about match this.
That meant if the US lost 40 + B-24 in a single day there were replacements for them the next day. Industrial warfare like that in WW 2 required industrial planning and execution. This was something the Germans were grossly deficent in.

 

The Germans had some 4-5 years to build it all ready for war and also to create the industry in the country to back it all up and you´d also have to build something for the people as well with all the iron and other resources.

It is quite astonishing they got as far as they did, but must admit I don´t believe they could have created the heavy bomber version of Luftwaffe. You had to decide where the iron goes and it seems a whole lot of it actually goes into cartridges, and I am sure TA can tell more about that.

 

A long range bomber had how many hundreds of noninterchangeable parts? And you thought building a Panther was hard, huh?

 

From what I have read, the Germans lacked better aircraft, which they would have had if not for internal sabotage. Professor R.P. Oliver wrote (January 1991):

 

Watched the Military Channel today about Stalingrad, good show. Something I found amazing was that prior to commanding the 6th Army, Paulus never commanded anything larger than a regiment in battle.

 

I read something very recently from Alan Clarke's book on Barbarossa that applies directly to this topic.

Paraphrasing, the 17th Army under Kleist was engaged with the Russian divisions in the Donetz basin. OKH was persuaded that the 4th Panzer army be attached to Kleist in order to help him cross the Don river, and possibly encircle the Russians there. What ended up happening was that the 17th and 4th arrived at the Don like "...a prodigious sledge hammer...to crush the tiniest of snails. For the Don crossings were virtually undefended."

Kleist was later quoted "The 4th Panzer Army...could have taken Stalingrad without a fight at the end of July, but was diverted to help me in crossing the Don. I did not need its aid, and it simply got in the way and congested the roads I was using."

Whether or not they would have been able to hold Stalingrad is another matter, but this was clearly a blunder.

Reference: Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict 1941-1945 by Alan Clark.

 

I agree with this.

Had the entire 4th panzer army been there, I think outcome might have been different. But how many German army's are needed to take one city, especially after such successful operations in the past? Perhaps the German High Command was under the same impression?

 

German equipment, especially Panzers, were never designed for city fighting. I don't think its a question of how many - they could have eventually taken Stalingrad. Remember Paulus had control of the whole western side and the real problem was Zhukov surrounding him during Uranus.

The real sillyness was that the Germans during the war recognized (most of the time) that they were vastly outnumbered in every category on every front, and they had no hope of winning a war of attrition. That is why the Allies sought to engage them at every point while the Wehrmacht chose its battles carefully.

Had then even taken Stalingrad it would not have removed the real problem, that simply the operation in the Caucases stretched a line that was already at its breaking point. OKH was quite shocked when Hitler unveiled the plan, and rightly so. Too many objectives, too much space to cover. They had to draw on Romanian and Italian allies to watch the flanks, and they got burned.

Rattenkrieg was not the style the Heer was designed for. They excelled in kesselschlact (cauldron battles, surrounding and annhilating) and allowed Ivan to grab them by the belt buckle during the winter in that bloody place.

The original intention of the plan, actually, was to "close the Volga with gunfire". Which, looking back, seems to be the better option.

 

Im not sure that we are disagreeing here.


As for being outnumbered, while this might have been the case and "we" can reinforce this by simply looking back in history, The Germans did not have such luxury. The Germans simply never saw the steady and very secretive build up around them, and this can ( for the most part )only be accredited to the Red Army.

 

No matter how you cut it the Germans had no chance after they failed to obtain their objectives within the first year of the war. They were not going to defeat the Soviet Union once it got mobilized and got some combat experience under its belt. Germany had a professional officer corps unlike the Soviets and this gave them a huge edge coming out of the gate. Once the Soviets got organized it was over.

 

Yes, well put.

The Soviets learned their lesson in '42 in that they would attempt to retreat from the German pincers to trade space for casualties. In '41 it was just the opposite and that is why you saw the major disintegration of the Soviet army.

 

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I am waiting for an up-dated Stalingrad book which actually mentions and acknowledges that von Paulus' full battle plan was provided to Moscow by the Communist spy ring the "Red Orchestra" HQ'd in Switzerland, which had a mole in the OKW, as revealed in more recent access to archives and also presented in interviews of surviving spies on The History Channel. The Red Orchestra also provided the full battle plan for Kursk beforehand. This is now documented and to me completely changes the discussion about whether the Red Army was superior to the Wehrmacht, especially since it is also known that von Paulus did not change the battle plan at all.