Could Russia have won alone?

[Falcon988]

Let's do a what if scenario shall we? It's May 1940 and the British agree to a cease fire after the Dunkirque evacuation as Hitler hoped they would. Therefore when Operation Barbarossa begins later that year or in 1941 the German Army can focus entirely on the eastern front. It's unlikely the United States will fight against Germany anytime in the near future.

What would have happened? A lot of people think Russia would have won on its own, and my question is why? Perhaps the Germans would've won. This is a subject that interests me greatly so I ask you all to give your thoughts on the matter. Personally I think the German troops freed from the western front would've helped them out dramatically in the 1942-43 era and they may very well have won.

[Chipaev]

Lend-Lease, Africa, Cracking Enigma, Strategic Bombing, it would've been close but the Germans would've prevailed in all likelihood.

[Tom Murphy]

KG_Chipaev..... Good points that people often overlook. Most notably lend-lease and the British and US bombing campaigns that pretty much destroyed the industrial base of Germany.

As for lend lease, the Soviets belittle the British and US arms, but aside from that, between October 41 and May 42 alone, the Allies supplied the Russia with 4700 aircraft. But the bigget contribution was trucks, trains, food, and raw materials (metals) to make the weapons of war.

By the end of the war, 2 out of every 3 trucks in Russia was foreign made. The allies shipped 409,000 trucks, 47,000 Willys Jeeps, and 11,800 railroad cars. Those Soviet T-34s would not have gotten far without the fuel, parts, and ammo hauled by the trucks and railroad cars. Throw in 34 million uniforms, 14.5 million boots, and 4.2 million tons of food and you start to realize the importance of lend-lease.

[Aragorn2002]

I'm not sure whether Germany could have won. More likely the war in the east would have ended in a stalemate, with huge gains in land and resources for Germany. On the other hand 30 or 40 German divisions more might have made the difference. I've studied it for years, but it is difficult to predict what would have happened. Russia could take a lot of punishment and was well-prepared for the war, no matter what some historians say.

[Grisha]

I'm sorry if I don't really nibble on the bait too much. Suffice to say that it was the uniqueness of the alliance that defeated Germany. Could the USSR have gone it alone? I suspect not. But, then again, nor could've an isolated UK or USA (and if I had to choose one of the three allies as an isolated opponent with Germany, it would be the Soviet Union).

I would suggest that rather than focusing on why the Soviets were not as powerful as many claim them to be in WWII, it might be more illuminating to consider just why the Soviets actually did survive, then defeat, Germany - with the western allies. You may just end up killing two birds with one stone.

[JasonC]

With the bone head strategy, stupid play, slow mobilization, and insane political military relations the Germans actually had? Easy as pie. The Russians would have beaten them alone, easily. Might have taken a little longer, but not by much - a year maybe.

Western bombing did not "destroy German industry" - their production peaked in mid 1944. They lost the war on the ground before that. While collapsing, yes eventually western air smashed their oil industry and that helped hasten the end. But they lost because they ran out of army inside Russia, and out of tanks. (Also, Britain would have been helping regardless, with its night bombing campaign, etc).

Lend lease helped, particularly with supply issues and logistics. In weaponry is was a bit player and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The logistics help did allow the Russians to put more of their manpower in the field, but they would have anyway if the war required it (the civilian population had it rougher than any other power - they would have had it marginally rougher still).

And longer logistic reach increased the size of the "bounds" the Russians managed to get every time they cracked the front wide open. But they would have cracked them open just the same if the bounds were only 2/3rds as far each time. But none of that would have stopped them.

The sheer strategic pointlessness of attacking Russia in the first place, the madness of trying it without mobilizing the economy and ramping tank production in particular, rallying Russians to a nationalist cause through brutality, bone head operational play like the division of effort in 1942, fixation on Stalingrad, weak flanks, insane no retreat orders, throwing away armor in grandious offensives whenever it accumulated, failure to leave reserve armor as "linebackers" instead of scarfing it all up for the crisis de jour or another one of those adventures, unwillingness to rationalize lines to terrain, unwillingness to prepare defensive positions, waiting for disaster to pull out the rear area manpower stops, cashiering every general with enough of a brain to say what was really happening - these are not faults that would be corrected by Russia only having British help.

The Germans had a good basic doctrine at the start of the war, excellent tactics throughout, and a high quality officer corps and similar organizational strengths. But their strategic direction of the war was abysmal. Both political and military.

Their supposed operational virtuousity is a myth, as anybody would can read military maps and has studied the Russian campaign in detail can tell. The Russians outplayed them from 1942 on - maybe from October 1941 on. They had a few occasions of brilliance after that (Manstein's work after Stalingrad). But most of their successes were entirely tactical, sometimes scaling up sometimes not, but not founded on superior direction at higher levels.

The single biggest mistake Germany made was simply to take on too many enemies with too much power between them, especially economic power. It wound up - predictably - as a war of attrition or total war in which raw potential was the main thing. And their whole strategy was a gamble that it wouldn't be, that quality "multipliers" would be unbounded and numbers and production just wouldn't matter, or have time to matter.

The biggest mistake they made in the war against Russia came directly from overconfidence. It was the decision not to fully mobilize the economy for maximum armaments output, at the expense of longer term investment etc, until after Stalingrad. They consistently underestimated the Russians. They believed their own bull**** about them. (Plenty of people still do, to this day).

They should have planned for a long war, for a war of attrition, a total war, to be decided by armaments output with some advantage for their tactical abilities and the like. If the fast way worked, fine. But they'd have been ready when it didn't. They weren't, and it was entirely an "own goal", due to sheer cockiness. "Victory disease", the wags call it.

There was also nothing they could do to keep the US out. FDR wanted in and it was only a matter of time before he arranged it. And they never had any realistic way of dealing with the Americans, in the long run. Making all of the above rather moot.

[Andreas]

Consider that the German high command (Halder) considered the war lost when Fall Blau had failed in September 1942. The official German history suggests he got himself sacked on purpose when that had happened. The problem for the German war effort was that they did not have the oil to sustain it. Fall Blau was supposed to change that, but failed.

I am not sure how much of an impact lend-lease had had by late summer 1942. Anything after that was cleaning up - long and messy cleaning up, but realistically there was no chance Germany could win the war after that date. There probably was not before then either, but that is a different story.

[Ant]

And they never had any realistic way of dealing with the Americans, in the long run. Making all of the above rather moot.

They didn't think they'd have to. The Germans figured that even if the US did enter the war they'd be powerless to do anything in Europe unless they could get supplies across the Atlantic to the UK. At that time the battle of the Atlantic was still going in Germany's favour and the U-boats were having a field day, so it was logical at the time to think that the US would be powerless to intervene in Europe; particularly as the US navy was also busy fighting Japan.

Of course the Germans didn't anticipate that the battle of the Atlantic would turn so heavily in favour of the allies in such a relatively short space of time.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by aragorn2002:

On the other hand 30 or 40 German divisions more might have made the difference.

I think you may be wrong. In 1941 at least, the problem was not that there weren't enough German divisions on the front, but that they could not be supported or sustained adequately. The Germans lost the logistics war because they didn't understand that they would need to fight one. Hitler and most of the generals were expecting to decisively destroy the Soviet army within 200 miles of the border. That's the kind of war they were set up to fight. But when they got there, there were always yet more Soviet divisions to fight while they themselves were steadily being worn down.

It's really impossible to say for sure, but I think the Germans might have had two chances to win the war. The first was to capture a line running Leningrad-Moscow-Stalingrad before the muds set in. This means overrunning the war factories before in most cases they can be dismantled and evacuated to the east. Under those circumstances, whatever Soviet government remained might have offered terms that Hitler would have accepted. This is really a long shot, but might just be possible if the German army is completely motorized and has the logistical muscle to move all the materiel of war that far that fast. But this would have required complete restructuring of the German economy and war production. It wasn't going to happen in our time line.

The second is along the lines that Jason suggests: the Germans have to realize that they aren't going to win in one campaigning season. They advance only as far as they can without wearing their troops out and without straining their lines of supply to the breaking point, then they dig in for the winter. If they have chosen good lines, they can repel the Soviet counter-offensives without too much sweat. Then it basically settles down to a war of attrition with opportunistic offensives when they detect a weakness in the Soviet dispositions. If done skillfully, they have a chance to wear the Soviets down to the point where the front cracks and mobile warfare on a large scale may be possible. But this too requires changes in the German way of making war that it would not be realistic to expect.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Ant:

The Germans figured that even if the US did enter the war they'd be powerless to do anything in Europe unless they could get supplies across the Atlantic to the UK. At that time the battle of the Atlantic was still going in Germany's favour and the U-boats were having a field day, so it was logical at the time to think that the US would be powerless to intervene in Europe; particularly as the US navy was also busy fighting Japan.

Of course the Germans didn't anticipate that the battle of the Atlantic would turn so heavily in favour of the allies in such a relatively short space of time.

The original question that was posed to us postulated that Britain was out of the war as of May, 1940 (although he might have meant June since he specified "after Dunkerque"), thus in this scenario there is no Battle of the Atlantic going on. He also says that the US will not get involved, though without specifying a reason. If we want to assume that a combination of isolationism and a war with Japan, that seems reasonable to me.

Michael

[Screeny]

Basically Germany lost once they invaded Poland in september '39?

[Alkiviadis]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

... the problem was not that there weren't enough German divisions on the front, but that they could not be supported or sustained adequately. The Germans lost the logistics war because they didn't understand that they would need to fight one. Hitler and most of the generals were expecting to decisively destroy the Soviet army within 200 miles of the border. That's the kind of war they were set up to fight. ...

Michael

I think Michael hit the 2 key points: 1. Wehrmacht doctrine...and how it ties into...2. Logistics.

The Wehrmacht was designed to win within 200 kms of it's jumpoff positions, if one considers the countries surrounding Germany a 200 km advance into those countries pretty much conquers them.

Consider that the Wehrmacht took operational pauses at about the 200 km point after Dunkirk & the Capture of Smolensk. Consider that recovered tanks were sent back to the factories for refurbishment rather than in the field in '40 & '41; hardly an option in Russia given the low German tank production rates vs. the need for "tracks on the ground". Consider that the transport net in NW Europe was/is far more developed than in Western Russia. The Germans just weren't adequately prepare to build a logistics net behind them...the effort was probably beyond them.

Even in '43 this was a major problem. The Battle of Kursk illustrates: there were major ammo/fuel shortages in all arms including the Luftwaffe at the start of this offensive despite months of prep because the logistics net couldn't handle the required load. These were areas that had been behind the German lines for 2 years.

[Mad Russian]

I think that the Germans had a very good chance of winning the war but not in Russia.

Had the Germans sent and supported an infantry corps in North Africa and taken Egypt. They would have had oil and more than likely Turkey.

Now Russia falls. German industry has the oil. With Turkey they have the ability to strike deep into the Russian oil fields to disrupt their supply and the situation just about reverses itself.

With England out of the war with a ceasefire, as was originally asked, and no other considerations, the Russians win.

Russia can get help from the US through the southern Iraqi route for Lend Lease. There have been some comments about the impact of Allied Lend Lease equipment. Think about this...the number of tanks that were supplied to the Soviets amounted to about 20% of their combat tank strength. How is that insignificant? That is one in five tanks. I don't care if they were inferior to the T-34 it allowed them to have tanks everywhere. That is part of why the Germans were caught off guard with tank production short falls.

Take out British help and NO strategic bombing if England is out of the war and I think it is a close run battle with the Russians finally winning but a stalemate likely.

Panther Commander

[Alkiviadis]

Originally posted by Panther Commander:

I think that the Germans had a very good chance of winning the war but not in Russia.

Had the Germans sent and supported an infantry corps in North Africa and taken Egypt. They would have had oil and more than likely Turkey.

Now Russia falls. German industry has the oil. With Turkey they have the ability to strike deep into the Russian oil fields to disrupt their supply and the situation just about reverses itself.

With England out of the war with a ceasefire, as was originally asked, and no other considerations, the Russians win.

Russia can get help from the US through the southern Iraqi route for Lend Lease. There have been some comments about the impact of Allied Lend Lease equipment. Think about this...the number of tanks that were supplied to the Soviets amounted to about 20% of their combat tank strength. How is that insignificant? That is one in five tanks. I don't care if they were inferior to the T-34 it allowed them to have tanks everywhere. That is part of why the Germans were caught off guard with tank production short falls.

Take out British help and NO strategic bombing if England is out of the war and I think it is a close run battle with the Russians finally winning but a stalemate likely.

Panther Commander

The Brits would never have made peace with Germany, simply because their entire strategy re: Europe was balance of power politics. Pitt vs. Napoleon is a perfect example. Germany had to beat Britain. They could possibly have won the airwar in '40 or '41 if it hadn't been mishandled, but the Luftwaffe would have been gutted, as would the surface Kriegmarine. The fighting in Britain would have been savage; never underestimate the Brits or any of The Commonwealth. Given the effort & the cost, I think a June '41 invasion of Russia would have been out of the question. Which means The Red Army is fully reorganized & somewhat retrained, with fleets of T34s & Kvs. Frontal Aviation is re-equipted with Yaks & Migs & IL2s & Pe2s.

The fortified frontier zones are much deeper & more heavily fortified. You can't take out Britain without delaying the strike against Russia.

[stikkypixie]

Originally posted by Panther Commander:

I think that the Germans had a very good chance of winning the war but not in Russia.

Had the Germans sent and supported an infantry corps in North Africa and taken Egypt. They would have had oil and more than likely Turkey.

Now Russia falls. German industry has the oil. With Turkey they have the ability to strike deep into the Russian oil fields to disrupt their supply and the situation just about reverses itself.

With England out of the war with a ceasefire, as was originally asked, and no other considerations, the Russians win.

Russia can get help from the US through the southern Iraqi route for Lend Lease. There have been some comments about the impact of Allied Lend Lease equipment. Think about this...the number of tanks that were supplied to the Soviets amounted to about 20% of their combat tank strength. How is that insignificant? That is one in five tanks. I don't care if they were inferior to the T-34 it allowed them to have tanks everywhere. That is part of why the Germans were caught off guard with tank production short falls.

Take out British help and NO strategic bombing if England is out of the war and I think it is a close run battle with the Russians finally winning but a stalemate likely.

Panther Commander

If they had attacked Afrika first, the Russians would have had time to prepare for war themselves, i might be wrong but the Red Army wasn't fully prepared for war when Germany invaded the USSR. That's assuming that the conquest of North Africa went smoothly to plan, because fighting in the dessert presents its own logistical problems, methinks.

[JasonC]

On U-boats keeping the US out, they might not have expected how fast they'd lose the B of A but that they were going to lose it eventually was pretty much written in stone. The US simply produced ships faster than the Germans could sink them. At the height of their successes the Germans only matched the rate of Allied launchings. The US doubled the entire world's merchant marine during the war, on top of replacing all losses. The US is 45% of world steel output in 1939. It is going to show up somewhere. Japan was at most a temporary distraction. No, the Germans thought they'd win inside Russia and that the US wouldn't dare take them on afterward, which was pure fantasy.

As for the middle east first it doesn't decide anything. Russia was not logistically weak. "Then Russia falls" is not an argument. An advance into Egypt would complicate British defense of India and strain its shipping, and keep the Med and Italy safe for a while. But none of these are decisive theaters or even have any appreciable impact on the decisive theaters.

As for lend lease tanks mattering, the stat is simply false. Lend lease was about 7% of Russian military output. And in tanks, they got 8,000 while they produced 102,000 domestically, of a superior weight and mix. They started with 23,000. Of the total 133,000, lend lease was a tiny fraction.

Nor was German output hurt by "tank production shortfalls", as though those were unplanned rear area failures. Tank production rose continually until the middle of 1944. It didn't rise farther, faster, because the Germans simply did not bother to fully mobilize the economy for war until after Stalingrad. They made only minor increases in the focus of the economy on armaments output after the war in Russia began, before they started losing it. In the fall of 1941, factories were being diverted away from army output because they thought it was already over. The level of overconfidence and unreality is phenomenal, unprecedented.

You have to understand that until the Stalingrad counterattack hit the high command thought they were winning and thought it was almost over.

In October 1941 when they lost contact with the Russians between Kiev and Tula, they thought the Russians were out of troops and could no longer hold a continuous front. They thought only remnants remained in front of them. In fact the Russians had lost the bulk of their prewar force but had fielded new forces equal to those lost. The Germans had no conception this was even possible, let alone that it had already happened.

When Typhoon kicked off, the farther you get from the front the greater the unreality. Front line forces knew the Russians were as strong as ever. Army commanders thought their own men were in poor shape but that the Russians must be even worse off. The high command couldn't understand why the war wasn't already over after all the collosal losses the Russians had sustained and all the glowing reports they had heard and read about it, and suspected treason in the upper officer corps was delaying the final win. No joke.

When Typhoon failed the senior officers resigned, or were cashiered for bringing the real story to the high command. Hitler thought they were panicking and his hold at all costs order restored the situation simply by refusing to be stampeded into defeatism. He probably never had any adequate conception what it required of the men and what weaknesses on the Russia side barely enabled it to work.

When the Russians attacked again in the spring of 1942, they had every reason to expect success, if you look at the forces they assembled and the opponents they were up against. But the Germans were still tactical tigers, and the Russians did not yet understand combined arms tactics. Attacks that at any other point in the war would have worked failed disasterously with huge losses. Not due to any great operational virtuousity in how the Germans were commanded.

Their lower level units were simply man for man worth gobs of Russians, who were still fighting stupid, lacking low level officers with any experience or brain power, and saddled with their own understandable misestimates (like thinking their own forces were basically equal to Germans ones of the same echelon size).

The German commanders read this as confirmation that the Russians were hopelessly stupid and would be easy to defeat again. Implicitly, the difficulties of the winter were ascribed to poor preparedness and planning, not to any great strength on the Russian side. The subsequent German offensive ripped the front wide open again and they thought it was over. It was going to be another year like 1941 and there was no way in heck the Russians could take 7 million casualties year after year without evaporating.

They only worried about how to exploit it properly. The division of effort in the south in 1942 - in hindsight disasterously stupid - was primarily caused by overconfidence again. They thought it was a simple pursuit against an evaporating enemy. They conducted it as a cavalry romp - send something however weak to every important point to secure it before any serious resistence can form there.

They also effectively transitioned from "hit 'em where they ain't" to "hit 'em where they are". Because where they ain't was limitless and it seemed pointless to send the best German forces there - as well as logistically impossible. Since they imagined the only Russian forces in the whole southern theater were those at strongpoint "hold outs" like Stalingrad, they thought little of screening the rest of the front with thin allied formations or small motorized patrols.

They thought the bulk of the remaining Russian army was sitting on its backside around Moscow, protecting a panicky leadership from a repeat of the scare of 1941, and that the remaining forces in the south just had to be finished off, and nothing would remain but scattered opposition and fortified pockets.

They had no conception that the Russians were accumulating 10,000 tanks in reserve for counterattacks. The number itself dwarfed the entire German tank fleet. They had no idea the Russians could lose 1000 tanks a month and still double their fleet size in less than a year. The feats of Russian production and mobilization we all take for granted in hindsight, were absolutely without historical precedent. And they violently clashed with the internal German picture of Russians as subhuman idiots and barbarians, saddled with a ridiculous system - which all of their successes up to that point seemed to validate.

Staff officers paying attention to the actual reports saw the danger and warned against it. They called for forming a mobile reserve of armor to backstop the long lines in the south. They called for a focus of effort on either Stalingrad or the Caucasus but not both. By October they even predicted a counteroffensive and correctly guessed what its immediate direction would be.

But their reports were systematically ignored by a senior command structure that did not believe anything of the kind was even possible. They sounded like panicky chicken littles predicting another 1941 winter, when "obviously" that had been an affair of lamentable German unpreparedness, but not of any great Russian strength. Nobody can understand what happened next, thinking that the German high command had a basically correct picture of things and knew they were close to losing the war (in Russia I mean, obvious) at that instant. They did not think anything of the kind. They thought, in fact, that Stalingrad had finally fallen.

When the Stalingrad counterattack hit, the command shock was total. There was utter disbelief. Nothing they had thought about the Russians for a year and a half was compatible with the events transpiring on the maps in front of them. Commanders were sacked, stupid orders were issued, tantrums were thrown.

They still could not wrap their minds around the concept, "all this time we were fighting their last remnants in the ruins of Stalingrad, the supposedly idiot Russians were accumulating reserves bigger than Army Group South" and *not using them*, for *months*, while preparing a meticulous offensive patterned on everything the Russians had learned from the Germans themselves over the previous two summers.

It was as though a chess expert playing some kid he's never seen before, probably a high school player with a 1400 rating, thinks it will be a walkover and suddenly notices at move 20 that the kid's name is Bobby Fischer.

Manstein was called in and put together the rescue operation. Which went forward in an atmosphere of unreality, because the high command still would not accept what was really happening. The order not to break out of the pocket reflected this. When it had to be called off because of the next Russian blow - proof that all of AG South was the target, not just 6th Army - they were resigned to letting Manstein do whatever was necessary, but had no conception of events, themselves.

It wasn't until February of 1943 that they started making speeches about total war and full mobilization for it. We are talking serious, deep, fantasy-land overconfidence. They thought Soviet Russia was Poland with a bigger backyard. When it was one of the strongest political entities on the planet (and in all of history) and was already kicking their ass, despite being caught flat footed the previous year. They had no idea what hit them.

[ May 08, 2004, 02:55 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Screeny:

Basically Germany lost once they invaded Poland in september '39?

Well, that happens to be my opinion as well, but it sort of spoils the fun for the speculators, doesn't it?

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Panther Commander:

Had the Germans sent and supported an infantry corps in North Africa and taken Egypt. They would have had oil...

I wish we could finally drive a stake through the heart of this argument. For some reason it keeps popping up and it is fantasy of the purist sort.

What would an infantry corps do in North Africa? I mean, I could see them guarding static installations like ports and landing grounds and things like that. But you don't need a corps for that, a handful of regiments would do that job. And anyway, Rommel already had all the Italian infantry he could use.

Sending more troops to NA just puts more of a strain on the logistical lifeline. Rommel might could have used another Panzer division, but even more than that he needed a steady stream of supplies. Until the conundrum of logistics was solved, the Axis was far better off just fighting a strictly defensive battle in North Africa.

As for the Middle East oil, even assuming the Axis somehow manages to capture the oilfields, what are they going to do with them? You don't think the Brits are going to allow them to be captured intact, do you? And once the drilling and pumping equipment is wrecked, what then? Production of that kind of equipment had never been a high priority in Germany. I don't know if they made any at all.

But let's say that a miracle happens and they capture the oil fields intact. What then? How do they get the oil to where it's needed? It has to be transported, you know. The Germans had few tankers and so far as I know none in the Mediterranean. The Italians had some, but not enough to meet their own needs, let alone Germany's.

If you can present a plan that effectively answers all these objections, I want to hear it. So far I've never come across one, and I've discussed it with people who are better informed than I am.

Michael

[ww2steel]

Good topic so my quick 2c.

Interesting points brought up here. My opinion-= victory Soviets. (Many of these already mentioned) 1) Our bombing was helpful but not 100% effective. 2) The huge amounts of land and material lost were expendable and loosable in order to tie up the Germans 3) any country with 16 MILLION workers building tanks, I say has the advantage (even if they were women, kids, and elderly). 4)The German units 'guarding' the west front were often units being rebuilt from the east front battles and had to be off of the front anyway (though africa could have been diverted). That's my main points, not to rehash everything already discussed.

G'day,

Mike

[JasonC]

It also just reflects fundamental misunderstandings about the limits on Germany. They were not raw materials based. It was not dependent on oil imports. And there wasn't much oil in the middle east yet, anyway.

Oil in Saudi was developed for the first time only in the 1920s. There was a limited amount in Iran as well. But it was not the center of world oil production. The United States was, the lower 48. Indonesia was the major 3rd world oil area - and the target of Japan's grab. Russia and the various parts of the British Empire had most of the rest.

The German economy did not run on oil. It ran on coal, which Germany had in abundance - enough to export huge quantities of it to Italy to help support its own economy. The internal economic system did not use motor transport to move industrial goods around. It used rail. So did the military logistical system. The trains ran on coal. Most of the front line army did not use motor vehicles either. They had horses, millions of them, that operated between railheads and the front lines.

Only about a quarter of the army used motor vehicles. The other big user was the air force, which consumes fuel in huge quantities, and demands fuels of very high spec (high octane etc). These were supplied in part by a small amount of imported Romanian oil. But the main source was the giant synthetic fuel plants that German built before the war, precisely to obtain self sufficiency in the area in case of war.

The synthetic fuel plants used coal and coal tar feed stocks and transformed it into liquid fuels. It is expensive but a straightforward operation, once designed. Most of it could also be dispersed in a large number of small operations - converted breweries and the like. In practice, huge amounts of it were fed through large industrial plants, as well.

And that was the only real bottleneck. The highest octane fuels required either the special processes only a top of the line handful of these plants performed, or natural oil (imported). Av gas depended on imports *or* output from the biggest hydrogenation plants. (Diesel level fuel is much easier to get by the synthetic route than av gas level fuel). The latter were enough to keep thousands of aircraft flying, as the Germans showed in 1943 and early 1944.

German oil production only collapsed after the air force lost in battle in the course of 1944, letting daylight bombers hit the oil target set hard enough to knock av gas production out. The western allies did not know how vulnerable the av gas link was. They drastically underestimated how hard a plant had to be hit, and how often, to prevent meaningful levels of production after emergency repairs, etc.

There is no way they were going to knock this stuff out early, knowing what they knew. And if by hypothesis the US were out of it, then it wasn't going to get knocked out period. What they had was perfectly sufficient to drive their tanks around. If the Luftwaffe hadn't needed enough to hold of the USAF, they would have had that much more for the tanks.

Also, oil investments are long term affairs. They pay off over 20 years, paying most in the first 10 perhaps, but not recovering their own costs until they have been working a while. That is without counting stuff like tranportation infrastructure to move the oil obtained. Which there was no prospect of, in the case of the middle east, on any time scale that would matter during the war.

The Caucasus and Caspian oil, transported by rail after being repaired, might have helped marginally. But the Germans were not going to sputter to a halt without it. They didn't sputter for years, despite fielding more and heavy tanks and many more planes in later years. They were not running down some giant stockpile that only gave out in late 1944. They were producing right along, synthetically, from their basically inexhaustible domestic coal, until US bombers knocked out the hydrogenation plants. That is why they eventually ran out, not lack of control of raw materials areas.

They lost the war because they ran out of military manpower and of running tanks. They lost the manpower after the tank fleet had been driven too low to resist major offensives by the larger Russian tank fleet - effectively enough, at any rate.

And they got into that situation because they didn't ramp AFV output until late. Their peak AFV output rates were about as high as the Russians. They just only got to them in 1944, while the Russians got there in 1942 (and basically leveled off there, marginal later increases).

This was not a lack of raw capacity. German had the same industrial potential as Russia before the attack, or better, and took territory that had contained 40% of Russian industrial output, at their high water mark. They also had access to all of continental Europe. But the Russians outproduced them in tanks by 2:1 overall, and by much larger ratios in the critical period from the invasion to the end of 1943.

How, why? Because the Russian grand strategy was total war, a planned war of attrition, from the get go. They dropped everything to push immediate output of armaments and especially land armaments and especially tanks, to the moon. The Germans still had about the same civilian standard of living in 1942 as before the war, and were still engaged in all sorts of long term investment projects. For example, in 1942 only about 2/5ths of German steel production went to all military purposes combined.

They cut back on construction to fund the war effort, which basically focused on replacing losses and supplying plenty of ammunition for the existing weapons stock. They did not ramp output and did not sacrifice everything else to do so, until after they thought they might lose - which they didn't think until after Stalingrad. This was a political and economic decision. It was not forced by anything. The feats the German economy later performed in 1944, even under heavy bombing, show how much slack there was in 1942.

In short the limits on German output were political-economic and by choice of strategy, not objective raw materials constraints or hard economic capacity or growth limits. They didn't produce more because they didn't think they needed to, because they planned on a short war not a long one. As mentioned before, in the autumn of 1941, a few months into the biggest land war in history, they were switching plants *away* from army armaments production because they thought they had already won.

[ May 08, 2004, 04:51 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[dieseltaylor]

"Let's do a what if scenario shall we? It's May 1940 and the British agree to a cease fire after the Dunkirque evacuation as Hitler hoped they would. Therefore when Operation Barbarossa begins later that year or in 1941 the German Army can focus entirely on the eastern front. It's unlikely the United States will fight against Germany anytime in the near future"

There have been arguements, seemingly off the basic premise postulated, which says Russia wins. This may be so but nobody has covered the morale effects of Britain being out of the war. Could the Germans had a more willing occupied territories labour force, more volunteers, marginal effects to be sure. A better prepared psywar showing a crusade against communism as a western civilisation necessity .............

On the military side I think the dismissal of the strategic raw materials and transport provided too glib. Four million tons of food must have been exceedingly useful given that the most productive areas of Russia were not producing for Russia.The comparison of Lend Lease to total production figures seems to ignore the timing of the leased equipment arriving and bad logic.

The Italian Army, for what it is worth would have been available, the Mare Nostrum would have facilitated trade. The Spanish government might have considered it time that Gibralter was returned..... The revolt in Iraq must be assumed to succeed - a curious thought about how easy it might be to bomb into the Russian oilfields from Iraq .... just an idle thought. Transhipment through the Balkans via Turkey could supply the material for the attempt.

I do not see it as a Russian win as we also have to take into account the Germans getting to nuclear power before , and if, Russia overwhelms them. Given they held out to 1945 fighting all the Allies it would seem a reasonable chance. Jet engine technology and rocjketry may also had more resource ... so nothing is certain.

My 2cents worth

[JasonC]

It has now descended to um ... let me just say "dreams", and it is time to put it to bed. The Germans lost in Russia to the Russians because they thought the Russians were clueless morons and actually that shoe was on the other foot.

[ May 08, 2004, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Mad Russian]

Hello Jason,

See Soviet Tanks and Combat Vehicles of World War Two by Steven Zaloga page 206. I know that just because it is in print doesn't make it so, but Steven Zaloga has been a recognized expert on the Russian war machine in WWII, for many years now, and since you don't quote any sources for any of your statements it is hard to verify anything.

"Lend-Lease armorued vehicles amounted to about 20 percent of the total number of armoured vehicles manufactured by the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. These shipments were equivolent to 16 percent of Soviet tank production, 12 per cent of self-propelled gun production, and all of Soviet armoured troop transporter production, because the Soviet Union did not produce armoured troop carriers during the war."

The Med is a decisive theater because of oil for Germany. I thought that was a major item in the posts here. If Germany takes the Med and turns the Med into an Axis bathtub AND that brings Turkey into the war how is that not decisive?

The German industry and all other military industries run on oil. Why were the Germans making sythetic oil if they had all they needed? Why bomb the oil refineries if the Germans didn't need oil? Why would the Germans go to the Caucasus for the oil if they didn't need it? How do you fly planes and drive tanks with no oil? The whole point is that with more oil they could get more mechanization with more mechanization they had a chance to win.

All war industry is oil based because without oil you can't play with the toys your industry can produce. It is why Hitler launched the late war offensives into Hungary to preserve what little oil was left. If you read many divisional histories, or after action reports, you will see how many German vehicles were abandoned on the battlefield, because of a "Lack of Fuel". Most of the reports I see that give numbers show more lost to abandonment by their crews than combat losses.

I never said that Russia was logistically weak. I said that if the Med falls that Turkey comes in and Russia has a much harder time. I also said, that I believed that the Germans would still lose, or more likely the war would result in a stalemate.

You say in one place that, "Nor was German output hurt by "tank production shortfalls", as though those were unplanned rear area failures. Tank production rose continually until the middle of 1944." While at the same time in another spot you state "in the autumn of 1941, a few months into the biggest land war in history, they were switching plants *away* from army armaments production because they thought they had already won." Those Army Armaments that you quote, were at least in part, German tanks. And you are correct the Germans did cut back because they thought they had won. You would have thought you had won too if you had destroyed as many divisions, tanks and aircraft as the Germans did from June to December when the Russians counterattacked.

Panther Commander

[ May 08, 2004, 11:24 PM: Message edited by: Panther Commander ]

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Panther Commander:

Had the Germans sent and supported an infantry corps in North Africa and taken Egypt. They would have had oil...

I wish we could finally drive a stake through the heart of this argument. For some reason it keeps popping up and it is fantasy of the purist sort.

What would an infantry corps do in North Africa? I mean, I could see them guarding static installations like ports and landing grounds and things like that. But you don't need a corps for that, a handful of regiments would do that job. And anyway, Rommel already had all the Italian infantry he could use.

Sending more troops to NA just puts more of a strain on the logistical lifeline. Rommel might could have used another Panzer division, but even more than that he needed a steady stream of supplies. Until the conundrum of logistics was solved, the Axis was far better off just fighting a strictly defensive battle in North Africa.

As for the Middle East oil, even assuming the Axis somehow manages to capture the oilfields, what are they going to do with them? You don't think the Brits are going to allow them to be captured intact, do you? And once the drilling and pumping equipment is wrecked, what then? Production of that kind of equipment had never been a high priority in Germany. I don't know if they made any at all.

But let's say that a miracle happens and they capture the oil fields intact. What then? How do they get the oil to where it's needed? It has to be transported, you know. The Germans had few tankers and so far as I know none in the Mediterranean. The Italians had some, but not enough to meet their own needs, let alone Germany's.

If you can present a plan that effectively answers all these objections, I want to hear it. So far I've never come across one, and I've discussed it with people who are better informed than I am.

Michael </font>

[Grisha]

I think if the Soviet Union had any reason to seriously believe that Turkey was going Axis they would've invaded Turkey. Regardless of the outcome, it ends up a stalemate for Germany, or worse. If the Soviets take Turkey, bad for Germany. If the Soviets get bogged down, then they entrench - stalemate. If the Germans assist the Turks, stalemate due to overstretched resources. It should be pointed out that throughout the war the Red Army always had forces in place along the transcaucasus border.

I remember reading an article on Rommel's lack of operational expertise. I believe Rommel once asked for more troops so that he could sweep into the Middle East. A German General staff officer asked him in disbelief just how he expected to supply just an enterprise. Rommel's response was basically something to the effect of "that's not my problem!" And that pretty much wraps up WWII German operational and strategic doctrine in a nutshell.

The Germans were very good at pulling off an operation, but quite poor at following up an operation's success in a manner that followed a methodical and well thought out plan for eventual strategic success. The Soviet's were by far their superior in that regard, and once the Red Army developed a formula for tactical success, the war was as good as done.