How Germany could of defeated the S.U. during Barbarossa?

[Carl Puppchen]

There are many books out there that claim varying degrees of information on Stalin's plan to attack Hitler. Go to google and look for them. I hold the one by Pleshakov in my hand. Suvorov is a long standing proponent of this theory, but he has an axe to grind, clearly.

Now I am not in a position to put in the hours needed to judge whether these people are right or wrong, and I can't read Russian, but I have been reading military history for 25 years and the # of these books has definitely increased over time, if that is any type of indicator.

One thing that is tangibly clear is that the Soviet positions of their forces make no sense from a defensive war standpoint but a lot of sense from an offensive war standpoint. This isn't a smoking gun, of course, but it is a piece of data. It is also tied to their military doctrine, as well.

It is also interesting that people expect to find a smoking gun. Stalin operated in intense secrecy on many topics and was extremely paranoid. The Soviet Union today under Putin has no incentive to go into his plans because they remove the sole girder of respectability that holds up the communist historical edifice - that they stood as a bulwark against Hitler. Clearly, the Soviet people defeated Hitler, but the communists derive their legitimacy (such as it is) from their defense against an aggressive war that was forced upon them by an evil dictator.

I don't think that there will ever be a clear answer to this question, but to me, if in fact (not proven) the war was going to come to Germany and Stalin was going to attack, then the Germans played not their best hand but a decent hand in striking first.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Carl Puppchen:

There are many books out there that claim varying degrees of information on Stalin's plan to attack Hitler. Go to google and look for them. I hold the one by Pleshakov in my hand. Suvorov is a long standing proponent of this theory, but he has an axe to grind, clearly.

Thanks, I think that reply rather shows how serious you take this yourself. Unwillingness to provide sources is a good indicator of lack of seriousness to me. If you can't be bothered to give some info on where you got your opinion from, I'll take the opinion with a lump of salt.

A planned attack in summer 1941, as supposed by Suvorov, would have been a walk-over for the Germans defending. Anyone with a passing acquaintance of the state of the Red Army in summer 1941 knows that. It was undergoing a complete transformation in terms of organisation and equipment at the time. It is simply not believable that they were planning to attack that year. 1942, maybe. 1943, possibly. 1941, not a chance. I suggest checking Glantz' works on the Red Army.

As for your repeat claim that the Germans played a 'decent hand by striking first', I point you to my previous post. How could any other hand that they did not play have possibly resulted in a worse outcome than the one that they got for playing the unprovoked attack hand? Why do you assume that a Soviet attack in 1942 would have been a desaster for the Germans?

All the best

Andreas

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Andreas:

How could any other hand that they did not play have possibly resulted in a worse outcome than the one that they got for playing the unprovoked attack hand? Why do you assume that a Soviet attack in 1942 would have been a desaster for the Germans?

Soviets were only going to grow more powerful, while Nazis most likely had already experienced their peak of power. who's to say that the Iron Curtain would not have been put up at the Atlantic if Soviets would have attacked in 1943 or so? at that point Soviets wouldn't have needed Germans in potential East vs West faceoff and could have sent 90% of Germans to Siberia or Valhalla, if Stalin would have so desired. with the version that happened Germans got to see another day, both sides the Curtain, if nothing else.

if Nazis wouldn't have gone East, they would have most likely used their resources elsewhere. built a silly navy & tried to invade UK or North Africa or sumfink.

[Andreas]

I can also create fantasy scenarios all day. Whose to say that the Wehrmacht would not have given the Red Army a good kicking in 1943?

Do we have anything but 'I made this up while poking my nose' on the matter?

The Wehrmacht seems to have done perfectly okay at defeating/delaying Soviet counter-attacks well into 1943 (Operation Mars anyone). Why is there an assumption that with two years to strengthen their position on the demarcation line, with no losses incurred during Barbarossa/Blau/Stalingrad the Wehrmacht would just have fallen over when the Red Army attacks? What is it based on? I can not see anything.

All the best

Andreas

[Grisha]

There are some good rebuttals to Rezun's (aka Suvorov) "Icebreaker" theory. First, there is Glantz' "Stumbling Colossus," then there is Gabriel Gorodetsky's "Grand Delusion." Of the two books I think Gorodetsky does a more convincing job, though Glantz' treatment is certainly more well known. Also, there was an article authored by the late John Erickson in History Today that discusses this very subject. It used to be freely available from FindArticle.com, but that's no longer the case. The title is "Barbarossa 1941: Who Attacked Whom?" All three are very respectable historians who have put an enormous amount of time and research into the study of the Soviet-German War. Given what Rezun has published since his sensational book, I would be more inclined to consider him a hardcore nationalist than an historian.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Why is there an assumption that with two years to strengthen their position on the demarcation line, with no losses incurred during Barbarossa/Blau/Stalingrad the Wehrmacht would just have fallen over when the Red Army attacks?

i agree it would be silly to make such an assumption. in my honest opinion it would be just as silly to assume that Germany would go on defence in 1940.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by undead reindeer cavalry:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Andreas:

Why is there an assumption that with two years to strengthen their position on the demarcation line, with no losses incurred during Barbarossa/Blau/Stalingrad the Wehrmacht would just have fallen over when the Red Army attacks?

i agree it would be silly to make such an assumption. in my honest opinion it would be just as silly to assume that Germany would go on defence in 1940. </font>

[NameUsedBefore]

I think if Germany wouldn't have invaded, the Soviets would have. When? I don't know.

I also have my own theories that if the Western Allies didn't land in France then Russia would've gladly "liberated" it for the 'cause' and the Cold War may have had a different picture.

They're all just theories, but I believe strongly in them.

[John Kettler]

I thought I had every book Suvorov wrote, so what's the title of the one advancing the theory some of you are referencing?

Van Creveld, in SUPPLYING WAR:Wallenstein to Patton, was of the firm opinion that the Germans, considering the limited transportation network and their logistics capability, did as much as was possible in their advance into Russia.

The Russians very nearly did abandon Moscow, as attested by Stalin's personal telegrapher who was already on Stalin's evacuation train, only to be ordered off at the last minute. Also, on at least two occasions after Barbarossa began, the Russians were seriously attempting to arrange a peace treaty with Germany. The interview and the documents evidencing secret attempts to negotiate a peace treaty were shown on the History Channel, as was a chilling interview with a former Chekist who, when Stalin had a change of heart, received an order to use "all measures" to combat "defeatism." Let's just say he didn't stint!

Speaking of Stalin, I highly recommend you find and watch the HBO movie of that title starring Robert Duvall. It was shot in the Kremlin one floor above Gorby right before the Soviet Union collapsed.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Grisha]

Would the Soviets have attacked Germany, if the Germans did not do so first? Yes, but a year, possibly two years, later. And, likely only if the Germans were engaged in other theaters. The Soviets and Germans had no illusions of their non-aggression pact. It was precisely that, a non-aggression pact, a promise not to attack one another for a period of time. Stalin had no wish to be bled white while the western allies looked on, and tried to arrange some sort of alliance with the Brits and French, hinging on German aggression. The western allies weren't biting at the time, being satisfied, instead, with going along with Hitler's plans of 'peacefully' incorporating Czechoslovakia. The Germans then came knocking on Stalin's door, emphatically pushing for a non-aggression pact. With the West seemingly not interested in an alliance, Stalin was determined not to be the West's 'fall' guy, and so began negotiations with the Germans.

Soviet ideology and politics viewed itself as forward-looking, dynamic, and driven by the people--sort of how Napoleon's France and army were motivated as a revolutionary force of commoners. Because of this dynamic quality to the new Soviet State, the Soviets thought in terms of attack based on ideological and political principles. Defense was not an option. No longer were the Soviets going to allow aggressors to invade their country--much like the West did in the Civil War. Rather, any hint of invasion would be met by preemptive attack, if possible. Thus, should the Soviets determine that a nation intended to invade the Soviet State, immediate attack was their default military strategic course of action.

By 1939 it was obvious who would be the most likely nation to attack the USSR. Hitler had been quite vocal from the mid-1930s of his long term goals for the Soviet State wrt German colonization. It was no secret. The non-aggression pact merely saved both sides a little time from the inevitable. Stalin was hoping that the Germans would first get mired in a conflict with the West before he would play his military hand--a hand that couldn't be played until mid-1942 at the earliest. As it turned out, Hitler called first, and to make things worse, Stalin was obsessed that Hitler was bluffing.

[Grisha]

John,

I think the book in question is "Icebreaker."

[Grisha]

If you are a Russian who has pride in his country's contribution to defeating Germany in WWII, the whole Barbarossa episode can be very distasteful, especially since it makes Stalin look like he was duped. Suvorov's fantasy offers a more agreeable explanation to some for Stalin's seeming gaff to the whole German invasion: he was planning to attack all along, but was beaten to the punch by a few months. Others also find this theory very attractive, because it turns the Germans into pseudo-saviours of European culture.

The problem is that there is no way the Soviets could've attacked anybody along their western border with any semblence of competence in 1941. The Red Army that first attacked Finland in 1939 had been in better shape than what was lined up along the Baltic, Western, Kiev, and Odessa Military Districts.

[Mikko H.]

JasonC,

very interesting stuff regarding the 'what-if' of full German mobilization of economy. Just one question: would Germany have had fuel for all those extra tanks, halftracks etc?

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Carl Puppchen:

The Soviet Union today under Putin

You're silly.

[Xenophile]

Was Hitler's motivation for invading the Soviet Union not primarily the creation of a genuinely imperial Germany? To annex territories and resources which he believed would ensure Germany Great Power status in perpetuity? And this while destroying the ideological enemy of the Bolshevik state and subjugating the supposedly racially inferior Slavs?

It would have rum counter to much of the meaning of the Eastern campaign to genuinely promote Ukrainian or any other nationalism in the struggle against the Soviet Union. The point was not to liberate these peoples but to replace Soviet rule with Nazi rule. And the model for their administration of the conquered Soviet territories was the brutality of the German occupation of Poland, not their relatively light administration of France and the other occupied Western European states.

That the people of the conquered territories might easily have become German allies if they had been given even a little motivation by the Nazis may be be true, and that perhaps a war of liberation rather than conquest might have been a more winnable one - but that ran counter to the Nazi philosopy of race. Rather the Slavs were to become the uneducated serfs and helots for the Nazi Empire and their resources were to secure German economoc Autarky.

(As an ideology founded on the error of racial superiority, it seems appropriate that that error itself helped lead to Nazism's downfall. I believe that it is a recent historical tragedy beyond any other that it succeeded at all and cost so much.)

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Xenophile:

Was Hitler's motivation for invading the Soviet Union not primarily the creation of a genuinely imperial Germany?

It can be seen as his ultimate dream. But there were other reasons as well, at the moment the most acute being to get rid of the only other European power that could challenge German military. With Red Army crushed and Soviet Union broken, all these things would have been solved - except that I find the colonization of the east to not have been workable any more than such great agricultural projects worked in Soviet Union.

It would have rum counter to much of the meaning of the Eastern campaign to genuinely promote Ukrainian or any other nationalism in the struggle against the Soviet Union. The point was not to liberate these peoples but to replace Soviet rule with Nazi rule.

That didn't prevent Germans from, say, creating a Slovak (slavic) proxy. The same in Yugoslavia. Divide and rule.

[Xenophile]

Originally posted by Sergei:

[/qb]

That didn't prevent Germans from, say, creating a Slovak (slavic) proxy. The same in Yugoslavia. Divide and rule. [/QB]

[JasonC]

Mikko H - yes, the oil question is a fair one, and the answer is they would have had to invest somewhat more in the synthetic fuel business particularly to support any expansion of the Luftwaffe, but yes they could easily have supported the larger force.

The basic German economy ran on coal, not oil. Coal drove industry directly and was the fuel for electric power. The main civilian transport system was not truck borne but the rail system, and the locomotives ran on coal. Germany had abundant coal resources, even to export significant amounts to Italy to run its industry as well as its own. While they occasionally had temporary shortages of good coking coal for high quality steel, there was no shortage of coal for raw energy. And additional inputs to the sector could get more, on favorable terms.

Oil was needed for motor fuel. Most of that was diesel, which is relatively easy to get by synthetic processes. Synthetic diesel is made from coal feedstocks. The exchange was not economic is pure world-value terms - it is like paying $60 or so per barrel for relatively low quality diesel fuel (not high octanes etc). But the quantity could be varied and the plants widely dispersed. In fact, the machinery of typical breweries sufficed with modest additions, and when Speer deliberately dispersed the target set to avoid bombing later, many breweries were converted to making synthetic diesel.

Oil was also needed for aviation gasoline, a much more demanding task. Av gas needs very high octanes. It was possible to get these synthetically, but only through the hydrogenation process which required very large dedicated plants. Germany invested in those throughout the 30s precisely to achieve oil independence in the event of war. Here you are paying more like $100 a barrel and there are much longer lead times, because the investment takes the form of large plants, and you need good estimates of required capacity or you effectively pay still higher prices.

Germany was able to increase synthetic oil production continually throughout most of the war. German domestic oil output peaked in 1944. The peak was not economic but military - the USAF finally found the right target set and hit the hydrogenation plants (as part of the whole broad oil target set - they did not know how critical the few large hydrogenation plants were for the Luftwaffe in particular). As there was no prospect of the USAF physically smashing the plants in 1942 or 1943, there would have been no issue here for supply of a larger German tank fleet.

Note that small amounts of crude imported from Rumania were important to the Germans first just economically, because it was a lot cheaper to get than synthetics and thereby freed up a lot of economically useful coal etc. But also, it greatly relieved the pressure on high octane av-gas demand. As long as the Rumanian fields and the line between them and Germany were safe, the Luftwaffe was not going to be absolutely grounded by oil problems. (And in the actual event, that was a trigger, because once the fighters were down, the rest of the oil target set could not be protected).

The German tank fleet did expand in the second half of the war anyway, and through mid 1944 (the oil peak, when the bombers started breaking the plants) it was adequately supplied. It ran 8000 full AFVs and more than that again in light armor. The number of mobile divisions was around 50. They were not immobilized by fuel difficulties. The Germans went into Russia, in contrast, with a fleet of 3500 AFVs, and with 25 mobile divisions. So it was perfectly possible to supply an expanded vehicle fleet, and they in fact did so.

To get a still larger one they might have needed to expand investment in synthetic oil as part of the economic mobilization drive. You have to plan things so that shortages in one area do not constrict overall achievements but only total capacity. They way you do that is to throw additional inputs (manpower, capital, spending) at the bottlenecks, to get matched sets of resources. For an advanced economy like Germany's, and if rationally run (as Speer for example ran his portion of it), overall value is the limiting factor not mix. You make one less FW-190 and put the value saved in synthetic diesel, for example, and thereby ease the supply-demand balance for oil, and indirectly increase the number of tanks you can support. Basic economic substitution thinking.

In 1941 through 1943, Germany was nowhere near overall capacity constraints. Key plant was being used 10 hours a day, most women were not in the labor force, 40% of steel production was going to civilian industry. The armaments program was funded by cutting back long term investments and construction spending through 1941. In 1942, the first minor inroads into civilian consumption occurred, but the standard of living was basically the same for those not mobilized, as it had been before the war. In contrast, in Russia hours worked doubled and civilian consumption fell by half, as everything was focused on armaments. The Russians worked their butts off, the Germans sat on theirs. Until Stalingrad.

[JasonC]

On German motivation and political strategy, we don't have to guess. The subject is overrun by crank ideologies trying to posthumously cover various backsides. Here are the essentials the ideologues never tell you.

The origin of the pre-emption claim is simply Hitler's public speech defending the attack. It was the official German propaganda line. We know it was a conscious lie because we have contemporaneous private letters from Hitler, including one to Mussolini, explaining the grand strategy involved, that completely contradict the public relations spin.

Publically, he says Russia has been detected preparing to attack us, because Germans still needed to be spoon fed such moralisms. Privately, he says Britain won't make peace because they hope to win through allies in the old British pattern. They can hope for help only from the Americans or the Russians. We can't get at the Americans, though the Japanese might be able to keep them busy. But we can get at the Russians. That's it.

As for the political strategy within the war in Russia, Hitler intended it to be a war of extermination, and made quite a point of it. He wanted to use the occasion to radicalize the army, which was still full of old fashion mere nationalism, and hadn't bought into the full modern racist "murder everybody else" ideology Hitler was selling. They were to become Nazis by committing crimes together.

He also simply believed in the power of ruthless cruelty. He thought it was a form of strength and a source of it in war. Many evil men have. The way you will something more powerfully is to throw aside all moral restraints in pursuit of it. He believed they were more likely to attain their goals with cruelty than with kindness or political appeals to new subjects. It was stuff happening inside German heads, not Russian ones, that mattered to him in this. He wasn't trying to scare Russians into submission, though he probably expected that too. He was trying to toughen Germans into determined killers.

Those who point out the political stupidity in this overlook who they are dealing with. Hitler's entire political life was based on that idea. If he thought the way you achieve political ends was by appealing to the just wishes of the governed, he would have remained a house painter. He simply did not agree that being nicer to the Russians or the Ukrainians would have made things easier. He thought it would mean slack Germans invading half-assed while trying to be nice to their slaves.

He was a nasty piece of work and a moonbat, any way you slice it, and if he weren't, none of it would have happened. Thus my previous moot-point comment.

As for the Russians, they were surprised for the simplest of reasons. The attack was clearly a blunder of the first magnitude. It lost Germany the war. All German grand strategy since Moltke had been based on avoiding war on two fronts. Hitler jumped into one out of overconfidence.

Russia's initial calculation in 1939 was that France and Germany would fight for ages in a WW I style battle of attrition, and that Russia would do well to turn the Germans loose to do so, and sit it out, collecting minor spoils in the meantime. They thought Finland would be easy, they took a piece of Rumania, the Baltics, their slice of Poland. They expected a long draw in the west.

When that didn't happen and France instead collapsed rapidly, it was a shock. They responded by a campaign of appeasement, offering Germany whatever it wanted. Germany asked for Russia to enter the war on their side and help them divide the British empire, e.g. by taking Iran or pressuring India. (Russians and Brits came within a month or two of fighting each other in Finland. Germany's Norway campaign cut the Brit route to help the Finns).

Um, no thanks, was the response. Stalin was interested only in stuff in Europe, and was not looking to fight Britain. He offered economic support to Germany instead, and Hitler took it. The Russians thought the Germans had been fishing for a closer alliance but had been bought off anything further - which they wouldn't expect anyway, because they saw the German's remaining problem as successfully wrapping up their war with Britain, and then enjoying their spoils.

They did not expect the Germans to "double up", court a two front war, add one of the most powerful states on earth to their enemy column gratuitously, etc. It played into British hands, Churchill was happy as a clam. Hitler thought it was the right move anyway because he expected to win decisively inside six months.

Germany had beaten Russian in WW I with one arm, now it was nearly alone. He knew Germany was stronger now than it had been then. He thought communism was rotten from top to bottom and expected Russia to be weaker than in 1914, relatively speaking (all tech having of course advanced etc). Fiascos like the winter war seemed to confirm this. The easy win in France made him think he had magical new methods of warfare that nobody could stop.

And the initial successes seemed to confirm all of the above, so he saw no need to pull out the stops and try hard, economically speaking. Such overconfidence is really quite rare in history, it is one of the all time outliers. But it made perfect sense to him, fit every corner of his world view. Russians were inferiors following a slavish ideology of leveling and nothing great could be expected of them. Germans were superiors following the true and natural ideology of ruthless cruelty to the weak and inferior and would sweep all before them.

Pride is a weakness, as well as a vice. It is like tearing your own eyes out.

[MikeyD]

JasonC, excellent post.

I've 'debated' more than a couple people who believed "Germany didn't really do XYZ because it would've made no logical sense for them to have done so." Ergo, history is a lie because associated historical facts aren't logical. But to understand history you have to get inside the heads of the people making it, and oftentimes what's inside the head of a fanatical leader is as crazy as a screaming bloody nightmare.

[John Kettler]

Egad! According to this link it would appear that Suvorov wrote at least five books other than ICEBREAKER, not one of which is available in English. Drat!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3T3C8RI629MML/102-4925595-9252913?_encoding=UTF8

Regards,

John Kettler

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Andreas:

So it is not as if the Wehrmacht would have had to sit on its rear scratching its head what to do, if Hitler had decided to do one thing after the other, instead of conflating the open issue of Britain with his ideologically driven attack on the SU.

And as a final thought, I'd be willing to bet money that this periphery approach could not possibly have resulted in something worse than the attack on the SU for the 3rd Reich.

it would have meant that Germany would have lost resources while USSR would not. Germany would be weaker, USSR stronger. Germany would have practically no buffer zone at east.

i agree with you that Germans would be likely to offer good resistance when Soviet invasion comes. Germans would have shorter front (at east at least) and lesser logistical problems (both distance and POL resource wise, unless they have wasted on navy etc) and Soviets would not have yet learned the lessons they needed to learn (or did they just need to get thru the transformation that was under way?). but is it enough, would Stalin give up? wouldn't Hitler underestimate Soviet strength and be ill prepared for the massive invasion? and more importantly, why would Germans not invade USSR in 1941?

unlike you and JasonC, i don't find that German plan to invade USSR was insane and based on irrational racism (i am not talking about Nazi ideology here, but the military operations). Germans were right that their forces would show superior performance compared to Soviet ones. German decisions were relatively sound if you look at them with the data they had in their hands. German plans failed because they did not know about the Soviet troops further east & the huge Soviet industrial capacity. it is contrary to basic logic to expect Germans to make decisions that are contrary to the data they have available.

what i find more acceptable is a scenario in which Hitler realizes early 1942 that he has underestimated the Soviet strength and that USSR is not about to collapse easily. still i wouldn't expect Germany to be defensive, but perhaps advance a bit more carefully and straighten the front first.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Mikko H.:

Just one question: would Germany have had fuel for all those extra tanks, halftracks etc?

they didn't have even for those that they fielded. their 1941 invasion didn't fail because of lack of tanks or halftracks but because of lack of logistics. they had to move their units like pieces in chess, one at a time. if they would have had more vehicles it would have been only worse. they might have actually done better if they would have had LESS vehicles. German problem wasn't as much the lack of production as it was the lack of strategical transportation. it was true still in 1942, and after that the war is lost anyway.

[JasonC]

URD tries to ride to the defense of his uncle Adolf. Lame.

Of course Germans knew Russian industrial capacity, knew and relied on. They were receiving raw materials from them up to the day of the invasion.

There weren't unknown troops "farther east" that Germany "didn't know about". The Russians created new forces from scratch as fast as the Germans destroyed the old ones. Those forces were not sitting around in barracks outside Moscow on the day of the invasion, they were peasants working in the fields.

What defies basic logic is expecting to fight a state as powerful as Russia to the death in a planned war of extermination, without mobilizing your own economy.

German logistic limits in the east were not oil shortages, they were rail gauge changeover issues. They could get as much as they needed to the gauge changeover points. They could move those points eastward by relaying track, but it takes time. They could move stuff beyond those points with captured rolling stock, but they didn't capture all that much.

The main issue was simply that they were in an all fired hurry, for no decent reason, other than not bothering to plan for a longer war. If they had, they could make their own Russian gauge rail cars, have all the winter clothing they wanted (just have to ask for it), replacements for all the vehicles that fell out before December, etc.

The Russians lost 40% of their country and tens of millions of citizens, from the same size industrial base. And they fielded an army as big as the one they had on the day of the invasion, new, in six month. The Germans are richer and supposedly smarter and know modern mobile everything better, you say yourself. So why on earth can't they match the Russian logistical achievement?

Because they weren't trying. Didn't think they'd need to. Tried to do it on the cheap. Which was, no matter how the spinners spin trying to save their dear uncle, dumb as a bag of rocks.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by JasonC:

URD tries to ride to the defense of his uncle Adolf. Lame.

you make similar comments further down the post, trying to imply i would be a Nazi sympathizer. why does a smart fellow like yourself fall this low?

Of course Germans knew Russian industrial capacity, knew and relied on. They were receiving raw materials from them up to the day of the invasion.

no, they did not know Russian industrial capacity. they were greatly surprised by it. e.g. the whole scale of Soviet tank production totally blew their minds off.

There weren't unknown troops "farther east" that Germany "didn't know about". The Russians created new forces from scratch as fast as the Germans destroyed the old ones. Those forces were not sitting around in barracks outside Moscow on the day of the invasion, they were peasants working in the fields.

i am well aware that Soviets created new and eliminated units from scratch, like i have already explained on this thread. Germans wrongfully thought that Soviets had most of their forces in west. they thought a couple of times already in 1941 that they had just destroyed the last meaningful Soviet units. like they would do again in 1942. Germans did not know the full strength of USSR.

What defies basic logic is expecting to fight a state as powerful as Russia to the death in a planned war of extermination, without mobilizing your own economy.

like said, Germans didn't know the full strength of USSR. they did implement their pre-made mobilization plans when they realized the true Soviet strength.

German logistic limits in the east were not oil shortages, they were rail gauge changeover issues.

yes, but it translated into POL shortages. more tanks would have only made it worse.

The main issue was simply that they were in an all fired hurry, for no decent reason, other than not bothering to plan for a longer war.

If they had, they could make their own Russian gauge rail cars, have all the winter clothing they wanted (just have to ask for it), replacements for all the vehicles that fell out before December, etc.

yes, like i said, the problem was with strategical transportation - not with production.

Germans did plan for 10 years of war. just not with Soviets.

The Russians lost 40% of their country and tens of millions of citizens, from the same size industrial base. And they fielded an army as big as the one they had on the day of the invasion, new, in six month. The Germans are richer and supposedly smarter and know modern mobile everything better, you say yourself. So why on earth can't they match the Russian logistical achievement?

why such a smart fellow as yourself falls to writing such trivial bull****? i haven't said that Germans were smarter or "knew modern mobile everything" better.

Soviets outsmarted and outperformed Germans in the end, but in 1941 they performed just like Germans had estimated they would perform.

Because they weren't trying. Didn't think they'd need to. Tried to do it on the cheap. Which was, no matter how the spinners spin trying to save their dear uncle, dumb as a bag of rocks.

with all due respect, you, sir, are the one doing the spinning, both regarding what i have written and regarding known history.