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

[Grimly Fiendish]

Krautman, could you please put up those Haffner links again? I don't see them up there.

thanks in advance!

[JasonC]

John K thinks if he read something in his Spartacus Youth training manuals it must be true. Not worth any rational person's time.

Dave S thinks everyone knows Hitler was stupid. He obviously hasn't been reading the thread, because lots of people claim otherwise. I've already said repeatedly that the wonder of it is that my common sense claim that the Germans lost in Russia out of victory-disease hubris is debated at all, rather than simply acknowledged as obvious. He pretends it must be acknowledged because he has no rational argument against it, but the fact that this thread now spans 7 pages with precious little agreement proves to a demonstration that he is wrong. It is not acknowledged. True, but not accepted, that is an accurate description of its status. Resisted even. If not by you personally, all I can say is who cares about you personally? None of it is about you.

As for his attempt to pass off "it couldn't have succeeded" with throw away lines, it doesn't wash. My whole point was, from the begining, that the campaign was entirely winnable but not won. The unforced error that produced the historical outcome was not trying very hard economically speaking, aka not being ready for a long war of attrition should that arise, as it predictably did. On standard Clausewitz principles, they should have been prepared for it even if it weren't predictable, as some have maintained, plausibly enough. (Though I disagree and think it was predictable, those posters have made a reasonable case).

What is not a reasonable case is to pretend none of the foregoing occurred and that it is somehow common sense or accepted by all that Germany could not win. On the contrary. Not winning and not being able to win are two entirely different things, and the gap between them in the actual subject of the thread.

Then Dave S's own attempt at an explanation is the "I don't care if I lose" defense, surely one of the more extravagent yet offered on Hitler's behalf. Mike does a reasonable job of demolishing it - it is flimsy enough. Here is another way of putting it. If blowing your brains out counts as "accepting", what constitutes "refusing to accept"? And what choice in the matter did the Allies leave him? If he decided after say Stalingrad that no, he did not accept defeat as glorious and actually wanted to win, is that supposed to mean he then would or could have? He did, you know, order full economic mobilization at that point.

Andreas records the actual historical fact that up through November 1941 they thought it was in the bag. I'll go further, and point out that they thought the same thing again in the late summer of 1942. "The Russian is finished". That is a direct quote from Hitler himself after the breakthrough in the south. His own understanding of the winter crisis was a failure of nerve on the part of his commanders, not looming defeat. He did not remotely think "if we don't win in 1941 we can't win" - that was later hindsight from German officers.

He not only though they could win in 1942, he thought they had. He thought the Stalingrad battle was consuming the Russian's last reserves and that they were so weak at that point they could not longer hold a continuous front. Some staff officers warned of the weakness and overextension of the Stalingrad position, but where shot down as defeatists with weak nerves just like the previous winter.

The notion that the Russians might be hording literally thousands of T-34s and entire army groups for massive counterattacks, never cross their minds. When it came, the command shock was total. Everything they had believed about the war for a year and a half was obviously rubbish, but for a week they could not admit it to themselves.

Then Dave wants to pretend he wasn't engaging in tendentious politics that belong out on the general forum, not in here, in his comparison to Iraq. He tries to make that a reasonable comparison by saying "It was meant to illuminate how easily even people who are not demonstrably insane can be tempted by ideology to do really stupid things with other peoples' lives."

Um, Dave, you have nowhere established that there is anything remotely stupid about Iraq. Nor have you established that anything the US is doing there is motivated by ideology. Nor have you shown that any of it leads to any kind of failure or defeat, of which there is not the slightest sign in Iraq. You are simply spraying your own ideological prejudices around and pretending everyone agrees with them or that they are obviously true. They aren't. Nor do they have anything to do with CM, or the subject under discussion.

"my comment about Jim Crow was not speculation."

No, it wasn't about the subject of the thread, nor is it remotely true. It is just another piece of irrelevant ideological spittle directed at the rest of us, as yet another red herring.

[Grimly Fiendish]

Jason, you have totally lost me and I will not bother to respond to you again, although it does appear that you are trying hard to make a point. I respect that.

But the fact is that I am not a historian, not a journalist, not a blogger, and not a scholar of WW2. I'm not sure you are either. I don't have time to write whole articles for you to spit on. I can't do anything but make fairly superficial remarks about an amazingly deep subject, pointing to whatever scraps of evidence I have at hand that seem relevant and interesting.

I don't even care if my suggestions are proven false and you may have noticed that I have not actually tried to argue for them. I have merely presented and clarified them so that if they are knocked down, they are knocked down by someone who grasps them, not by someone who thinks arguments are won by shouting louder than anyone else. Apparently you can't handle that.

I would hate to see you perform at a cocktail party---you would demand systematic evidence that the hors d'oeuvres are indeed delicious. You would bore everyone with your knowledge of hors d'oeuvre production until they all ran away. You don't seem to understand that you are posting in a wargamer's forum, not a scholarly forum. And you are acting like a troll.

[JasonC]

Dave likes to imagine straw difficulties in those he argues with because nothing real offers as firm a hold.

Yes your substantive arguments have all been addressed and have all been shot down as without historical foundation, by people who actually know the history. No there is no equality of opinion in an historical debate between whatever absent minded musing enters your head and the considered opinion of people who have disgested all of the history and thought about it for years to decades. Silly shallow and wrong is silly shallow and wrong, any way you slice it. Hitler wanted to win in Russia, not minding losing had nothing to do with any of it.

As for how entertaining I am at cocktail parties, Dave simply knows nothing about it. If he goes back to page one he will see a few posts that are actually on point for the overall subject raised by the thread, that both advance and defend an evidentally still provocative but entirely defensible thesis. Which some minds might find slightly more interesting than vapid nonsense tossed out without even being believed by those who profess their own ignorance of the subject matter. Heck, some nasty sorts even find the spectacle of the Daves of this world going down in flames more than slightly amusing.

[zmoney]

Originally posted by Dave Stockhoff:

You don't seem to understand that you are posting in a wargamer's forum, not a scholarly forum. And you are acting like a troll.

Um, Dave this is a historical thread and a lot of scholarly people post here. I don't think any of Hitler’s actual political plans has anything to do with the way I play CM. So this isn't a hints and tips thread, it’s a historical discussions thread.

I think its cool though if you post your opinions so people can read them and try to correct them.

I just think JasonC along with a bunch of others on this site are tired of people trying to tie the evils of the world in particular the evils of Hitler in with something the US did. Like the US encouraged Hitler to be evil or something. The invasion of Iraq has absolutely zero in common with the German invasion of Russia ideologically. Militarily, as well for that matter.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Dave Stockhoff:

[QB] But the fact is that I am not a historian, not a journalist, not a blogger, and not a scholar of WW2.

Then why on earth come here to discuss Second World War history and complain when those that are all those things take you to task?

I can't do anything but make fairly superficial remarks about an amazingly deep subject, pointing to whatever scraps of evidence I have at hand that seem relevant and interesting.

If this intended to be ironic, I'd say its closer to the mark. If its meant to be true, see the question I raised above.

I have merely presented and clarified them so that if they are knocked down, they are knocked down by someone who grasps them, not by someone who thinks arguments are won by shouting louder than anyone else. Apparently you can't handle that.

I thought he did quite well.

I would hate to see you perform at a cocktail party---you would demand systematic evidence that the hors d'oeuvres are indeed delicious. You would bore everyone with your knowledge of hors d'oeuvre production until they all ran away. You don't seem to understand that you are posting in a wargamer's forum, not a scholarly forum. And you are acting like a troll.

JasonC is presenting stuff that is well known if not widely agreed on; you are in the position of offering new takes on subject matter. JasonC doesn't need to prove the status quo; however, since you wish to challenge these widely held notions, it is incumbent on you to accept a somewhat higher burden of evidentiary proof, I should think. To date you have not done that.

On the other hand, those with a grounding in these issues (the historians that you claim no kinship with) don't really need to have the accepted wisdom spelled out yet again.

In short - you can come here and claim the sky is red, but those of us that feel the sky is blue can point to years of acceptance on that score and not feel the need to provide substantive proof that it is blue. It's kind of a given.

The notion that Hitler didn't mind losing kind of flies in the face of "blue sky" notions such as his actual perceived beliefs and motivations. Granted, we may argue about what shade of blue the sky is, but it is definitely blue...

[Grimly Fiendish]

Michael, I haven't complained about anything except Jason's use of his posts as a blunt instrument. (Actually, I should thank him for forcing me to clarify my thoughts.) Still, he has sent out a platoon of Tigers to swat a Greyhound. In addition, forgive me if I take being called a Hitler apologist a little bit personally. Maybe I'm just not used to it. Lucky I'm not a "historian"!

I still have heard nothing that has contradicted anything I have thrown out there. I appreciate all the comments of course, but they miss the point. I do not argue with them, but I did not base my thoughts on their not being true. I based them on suggestions other posters have made that have been otherwise mostly ignored. And I can't respond usefully to posts that misquote me. (I didn't say Hitler didn't mind losing. That would be stupid!) BTW, I see no consensus here on Hitler's being stupid. So much for red vs blue.

zmoney, I am glad you don't mind my posting incorrect statements! Whether or not you think the Iraq war was badly planned---and I would really have to be an idiot to think there would be no hostile opinions on that topic here---nevertheless the idea has been fully discussed in the media. If you or Jason disagree with it, then obviously you understand it pretty well.

Therefore, I need only point to it, I don't need to re-argue it, to say IF it is true (and I think it is), THEN it is an example we could compare/contrast Barbarossa to/with. And then people could point out differences---relevant ones---that address my comparisons and cripple the assertion. "Why didn't they prepare for a longer war?" remains a question you could ask about both invasions. "Why did the invader lose?" is not.

And frankly, leaving the US out of it for a moment, if you guys think war ministers and defense secretaries don't play political games with defense policies and war plans, you are hopelessly naive and should limit your historical analyses to what goes on in the airless, sterile, digital world of a great 3D strategy wargame.

[JasonC]

They did prepare for a longer war, silly, and they are winning it too. Incidentally the "they" involved are the military not the pols, who are pretty much letting professional officers call the shots. And once again, you import dubious political red meat as a red herring, in a desperate attempt to change the subject. Can the political crap already.

[Grimly Fiendish]

Jason, I think I've finally figured out your angle on this. Let me know if I get it wrong---oh, of course you will. You can't help it.

(1) You fear being stupid more than anything else.

(2) Therefore, being stupid is the worst thing a person could be.

(3) You have proven to your satisfaction that Hitler was stupid.

(4) Therefore, any competing or even slightly different analysis of Hitler must amount to a lesser charge than that of stupidity.

(5) Therefore, any criticism or description of Hitler other than simply "he was stupid" is an apology for him and an excuse for him.

I get it! Now I see where I went wrong. Thank you, Jason.

[zmoney]

Dave, I'm asking please stop this nonsense. He may flame you as he makes factual points that deal with this topic. You just flame while making no point on topic. Who cares if JasonC isn't fun at parties, this isn’t a cocktail party. I really wasn’t trying to be mean when I posted I thought it was cool that you posted your opinions to learn the truth. You posted the same thing yourself. So when people try and give you truths don’t come up with some political speculative comparison that some how in your mind ties in with the US. No one likes to talk politics on this site and no one comes to this site feeling like they have to defend their respective Nation. So again please stop.

[Richie]

Originally posted by Dave Stockhoff:

Jason, you have totally lost me and I will not bother to respond to you again, although it does appear that you are trying hard to make a point. I respect that.

Yeah, I would have left it at that.

This is a public forum. People post ideas and thoughts, you have to be prepared that if you step up to the plate to bat, you might cop a fast one in the head.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

It is a sad thing indeed when someone of your considerable intellect fails so signally to use it by resorting to wholly inappropriate labeling, name calling and outright fabrication of my and others' views rather than discuss the issues in a calm, rational and adult manner. For a further discussion

on what I perceive regarding your extremely opposite observed behaviors, please see my post in the CMAK Honour in Combat thread.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Grimly Fiendish]

zmoney, I agree that this thread has degenerated into nonsense, where it might once have had a chance of being a good discussion. But please allow me 2 points, and I promise not to flame:

(1) Ideology matters. Some people wish it didn't. It especially matters when the discussion centers on how important a single person's decisions were (as in Hitler vs General Staff), because then you have to wonder about all sorts of things that aren't clean and neat. Some of those people like to say "keep the politics out" because it makes them uncomfortable for various reasons. I feel I have safely and respectfully restricted my remarks to ideology and avoided partisan politics.

(2) It's really, really important that 1 person not be allowed to dominate a thread---any thread, anywhere---just by posting accusations of Nazi sympathy every hour on the hour. This isn't politics, but common sense. I felt it was important to address that, so I did.

[Krautman]

There you go Dave:

Originally posted by Krautman:

For those that have a genuine interest in the history of Hitler and Germany. You'll find answers to the issues discussed.

Sebastian Haffner. (excellent entry into the topic, easy to read, short book, brilliant writer)

Haffner

Was Hitler stupid? See esp. chapter "Achievements"

Joachim Fest. (huge work, advanced, excellent writing, great references, still benchmark in many aspects. Bullock is obsolete by now)

Fest

Wehler and Aly, sadly, are not available in English.

Edit: Links shortened

[Grimly Fiendish]

thanks!

[Son of Hamchuck]

musings on this excellent but maybe winding down thread:

1. Hitler may have really believed that his wonder weapons ( V series rockets,heavy water experiments,jet aircraft, etc. ) would come on line in time to save Germany whatever transpired in the field. This COULD have been reality if he had an extra couple of years.

2. Hitler really could have belived he had a thousand year Reich ahead of him, and was destined by divine(?) right to win come what may.

3. Hitler could never rest until he outdid Napolean and actually conquered Russia ( megalomanics are very competitive ) .

4. Or he believed none of the above, and used it merely for propaganda purposes. He was a lunatic, and he's dead, we'll never know for sure.

5. The German general staff had no great strategic brains, they had a number of excellent operational minds, but the grand strategy was left to Hitler ( for better and worse ). This left a vacumm with no counterweight to Hitler's uneven thinking.

6. Germany lacked strategic depth ( both in resources, and territory ), that the Russians ( and the Allies in general ) possessed. When advancing into Russia she fought on lengthening supply lines, while the Russians fought conversely on shrinking supply lines. The greater the German success, the greater the strain on supply and the higher risk the operation became.

7. Blitzkreig was an excellent tool for winning short campaigns/operations but not total war against an enemy with sufficient strategic depth. Against weak & small countries it worked very well, but it's shortcomings became evident in Russia.

8. If Hitler had been a colonel instead of a corporal, things might have turned out VERY differently.

The above doesn't address the original posters question directly. I'll give it a crack. I don't belive the SU could have been defeated in the Barbarossa timeframe ( Spring - Winter 0f 1941 ). My reasons in no particular order:

1. The extremely long supply/comm lines required just to maintain forces in European Russia.

2. Lack of a definative objective GUARANTEED to force the SU to capitulate.

3. Lack of adequate SU rail guage compliant transport ( as pointed out earlier, locomotives primarily).

4. Ruthlessness/determination of Soviets ( Stalin ) to survive. Compare this with France for example.

5. Ability of the Russian people to bear extreme burdens unflinchingly, and the soldiers to defend like demons. Devotion to "Mother Russia" carried a lot of weight with these folks.

6. The lack of adequate frontline repair facilities for the mechanized forces ( shipping tanks back to Germany for heavy repair was the norm ).

7. Lack of trucks/halftracks for the infantry divisions ( what were they thinking? )

8. Lack of appreciation for the wear and tear on vehicles that even if not previously engauged in Balkans campaign would need downtime for refit.

9. Winter of 1941 being one of the worst in recorded history wasn't a good way to end it ( Barbarossa ) coupled with "General Mud".

Some of the above, but not all could have been addressed by moving to a total war footing earlier ( if started after invasion, would have had small impact in limited Barbarossa timeframe ).

[Physim]

As with most meglamaniniacs, Hitler eventually bit off more than he could chew. With considerable resources already tied up garrisoning conquered areas and fighting in North Africa, I don't think he ever had the manpower or industrial resources to beat the Soviets too. Due to his racist view of them he underestimated them and due to his own meglamania overestimated his own abilities and those of his country. I think even with a total war scenario it was only a matter of time.

[JasonC]

No Dave, you didn't stick to ideology instead of contemporary politics. Discussing 1940s ideology with the understanding most concerned were raving lunatics is fine, just one piece of the historical equation. Pretending Iraq is similar to Barbarossa doesn't have anything to do with 1940s ideology, it is just tendentious contemporary politics. Which you have been repeatedly urged to drop as inappropriate, but you can't grasp the distinction. Here is a hint - 60 years old equals history, 6 years old or less equals politics. Pretending contemporary pols are Nazis, inexcusable and moronic politics.

As for the various more recent posters saying the Germans could not possibly have ... they are missing the point about actually trying. No, commitments in North Africa were not significant, they were so tiny they did not matter at all. No, garrisoning captured areas is not a strain, it is where units reformed or trained, and acted as a strategic reserve. Not to mention the fact that conquered areas provided 7% of German war production, as much as the Russians got in lend lease. Citing them as a drain is quite off base, they were an asset.

As for manpower, the Russians never had more than 2 to 1, and with Axis minors included and the Russian losses of 1941 (in manpower and territory), they were closer to equality. Certainly not more than 3 to 2, had Germany mobilized an equivalent portion of its own manpower. Germany proved it could do so by eventually doing it - but not until 1944.

You can't win a war of attrition through overwhelming manpower reserves, when you take 5 to 1 losses and only start with a 3 to 2 manpower base.

Also, the German army in front of Moscow in November 1941 had absolute numerical superiority. It lost it by December. The reason is the Russians were mobilizing a million men per month and the Germans weren't mobilizing even enough to replace their own losses, which were a tenth those of the Russians.

As for industrial production and the logistics idea, Germany had as much industrial capacity as Russia did, the day the war started. Germany got as much from captured areas as the Russians got in Lend Lease. Once it actually tried, in 1944 Germany matched the Russians in AFV production - despite heavy bombing. It was a technologically much farther advanced society and economy, as well. There is no reason Russia should have been able to outproduce or out perform logistically, relative to Germany - particularly when you take into account the loss of territory containing 40% of her prewar industry in the first six months.

Russia outproduced Germany 2 to 1 in tanks even from the same industrial base, simply by focusing exclusively on armaments production sooner than Germany did. Russia gets a high rate of tank production in 1942, 1943, and 1944. Germany gets a high rate of tank production in 1944, and half that rate in 1943. Result, same peak but twice the integral for the Russians - rectangle vs. triangle.

Logistic defeat was an "own goal". Reduced relative strength in front of Moscow was an "own goal". You don't lose relative power while inflicting 10 to 1 losses just because the other guy has 3:2 manpower reserves. You have to help, by not using your own. The Germans didn't because they didn't think they would need to. Overconfidence, victory disease. Not "impossibility". Nothing the Russians accomplished logistically was beyond the capacities of Germany.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

While I certainly do not dispute your Russian AFV production figures, I think it is important to note

that, thanks to Lend-Lease, the Russians really didn't also have to produce trucks or, to a lesser degree, locomotives either, whereas the Germans had to build both and still crank out tanks. Am sure someone will be along shortly to provide the exact quantities supplied.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Son of Hamchuck]

Assuming that the only reason Hitler failed to convert to a total war footing before 1943 is because of the political cost ( hardships for German civilians,etc. ), is to say he totally misunderstood his relationship with the German people. For a politician of his abilities, that seems unlikely, not impossible, but unlikely. What then might be another reason? Every action has a cost, could he have done more, sooner towards a TWF, absolutely. The question then is how much, and not incur other difficulties.

Also, the way the Germans operated in general wasn't particulary efficent ( lot's of private fiefdoms, turf wars,etc. ), and Hitler was loath to get inbetween those actors. Remember, his rise to power was a divide and conquor strategy, united only on the surface. Only when the specter of defeat loomed large( Russian reverses and the Allied invasion threats forthcoming ), was Speer given a free hand. It was Speers "genious" that was able to churn out the prodigious rates of production that otherwise would have seemed quite ordinary.

One final thought, assuming all that increased "early" production materialized, there's still the problem of getting it to an ever lengthening front along what is mostly dirt track roads, and a less than efficient rail system, against a backdrop of scorched earth and a growing partisan threat. The Soviets should have given up after the hammer blows inflicted on them, that they didn't indicates to me that they would have to have been annihilated completely. This was what the Germans hadn't counted on. Something as titanic a struggle as this was, rarely turns on just one aspect, I think that is the case here. It's nice to hash out in comfort from one's easy chair, but we'll never know for certain.

[John Kettler]

Here's the complete Lend-Lease list. Finding and extracting the needed data is tricky, though.

http://www.geocities.com/mark_willey/lend.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

f-k - not only was it something the Germans "counted on", Hitler absolutely insisted on conducting the war as a war of extermination. Including the notorious order than no German soldier would be prosecuted for any crime committed in the east. The Russians knew it was kill or be killed because the Germans insisted on fighting the war that way.

Speer was a good organizer but he was not remotely given complete control over production after Stalingrad. Goering and Himmler continued to run massive independent fiefdoms that worked at cross purposes with each other and with Speer. But to dispell any notion that great genuis was required, understand that the Germans were still working only a single shift at critical war plants in the fall of 1941, that over 40% of steel output went to civilian industry in 1942, that women were never mobilized into the workforce, and that Hitler was directly ordering war plants producing army ammunition to stop and switch to other forms of production in October of 1941, because he thought they would not need more.

It was victory disease, not an economic constraint.

As for the road story, rails not trucks were the basis of German logistics and industry. Only the western allies were remotely rich enough to dispense with the far greater thruput and economic efficiency of rail transport, for the greater flexibility of trucks. And they did so in large part by relying on shipping instead, for their own major transport links, leaving trucks only a "lighter" role of final delivery from port to front.

As for the supposed importance of lend lease to Russian production, economic historians have studied the question in detail. LL made up 7% of Russian war output by value. Meanwhile, Germany received in loot and tribute from conquered territories of western Europe, 7% of its own industrial output. In addition, a rising portion of labor in Germany proper was performed by foreign nationals - conscripted labor, POWs, and others simply attracted by higher wages than were available in the managed financial extraction regimes Germany imposed in occupied Europe. Germany got as much from looting Europe as Russia got from the west. Its production was no lower than Russia's.

Until the main western front was opened in France, Germany was not facing significantly higher productive capacity than she herself possessed, had she actually used it. And Germany was certainly able to match Russian production in 1941 and 1942, having greater advanced notice of the coming fight and far fewer economic disruptions, than having 40% of its territory seized by a hostile power. It did not do so because it did not try, not because it could not.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by frenchfried_krautdog:

Assuming that the only reason Hitler failed to convert to a total war footing before 1943 is because of the political cost ( hardships for German civilians,etc. ), is to say he totally misunderstood his relationship with the German people. For a politician of his abilities, that seems unlikely, not impossible, but unlikely.

LOL. Is this the same Hitler who thought the German people would be overjoyed to exterminate themselves as unworthy once it was clear the war was lost?

Originally posted by JasonC:

Speer was a good organizer but he was not remotely given complete control over production after Stalingrad. Goering and Himmler continued to run massive independent fiefdoms that worked at cross purposes with each other and with Speer.

Don't forget he even had to fight with guys in his own ministry. Hitler had the whole nation set up like that for the express purpose of making them compete with each other. Speer was competing with other architects, other ministers, especially with Bormann - Speer relished the day in April 1945 when Bormann came cap in hand to ask Speer to insist the whole group move to Berchtesgaden. It meant Speer had finally gotten the upper hand. Goering and Himmler were just the tip of the iceberg.

[David I]

Puts eye on where this thread is going. About what was expected. Grunts. Rolls over. Tries to go back to sleep.

DavidI

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

I'm in no way gainsaying value received by Germany from captured teritories, factories and the like. What I am saying, though, is that by not having to do so many things at once, Lend-Lease allowed the Russians to focus war production on key combat production areas, in effect increasing the already significant advantages of an entire controlled society focused solely on winning the war, whatever the cost.

Regards,

John Kettler