Delayed Barbarossa

[sharlin]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

encounters with british tanks would likely bring about this change anyway

They already had the measure of our inferior tanks, the Panzer III was superior to the British tanks in all aspects other than speed, thicker armour, better gun and at the time we was still stuck producing 2lber armed tanks.

In the desert war we had yet to introduce a 6lber armed vehicle.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by kalamona

Help me out, but did the Japanese commanded the german logistic or what?

I dont really get your make believe in theory thingy, but i do not remember, that anytime slaves handled the germans logistic either.

So, please: why do you think, that the "German concept of logistics was "Clap your hands if you believe, then machine gun people until they're willing to be slaves.""

Give me a reasoning, not these babbling bollocks.

My statements aren't babbling bollocks. The Nazis did not plan logistically. If we look at how their generals repeatedly demanded perfectionist changes for a huge slate of weapons where spare parts did not exist, the Nazis relied on looting from six or seven different armies without ability to replace those parts or even considering this ability to matter, a deliberate Nazi orientation *away* from basic mass production on a US-Soviet style fashion, and their concepts of how to make up shortfalls in labor meant impressing people to work in factories to make this unwieldy system "work." To repeat, Germans had no logistical system worthy of the actual meaning of system. They produced too many high-quality weapons of too many divergent types without enough spare parts for any of them. They had no less than three competing systems producing these weapons. They had not enough labor to produce them, meaning they impressed slaves from all over Europe to have to make this up, and this produced issues like slave workers deliberately producing dud weapons instead of ones that actually fired. Nazi economics in fact required impressing huge quantities of slaves and wishful thinking over any kind of rational planning.

The Nazi economy is subject to a lot of wishful thinking and wankery on this board, it did not function in any fashion appropriate to what people who understood basic economics would have been able to do with the resources of all of Europe under their control. The Soviets were already outproducing Nazi Germany by themselves IOTL during the Battle of Moscow, after losing 10 million men and the great bulk of their richest, most densely populated territory.

I get that a lot of people on this forum want to make Nazis into magic supermen but they weren't that. They were blithering idiot menchildren who got a string of successes from weak enemies and those enemies repeatedly making similar mistakes. I get it that a lot of people simply can't comprehend how fragile OTL German successes in both world wars were. It puzzles me, but they can't look beyond the smoke and mirrors.

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

And what I'm arguing is that this capability you speak of never existed, and the ability to stalemate itself is outside German capacity to force by themselves. Your only arguments rely on distorted understandings of the psyche of Adolf Hitler, claims not-Nazis might have done better (in which case what we aren't discussing is anything like OTL Barbarossa) and blatantly false overestimations of the Nazi modernization approach and ability to plan at anything approaching a war, as opposed to a tactical-level approach. German strategy, as both WWI and WWII showed, never existed. German logistics was a fairy tale.



Nonsense. They used it with impunity on civilians of all stripes, including ethnic Germans. There was no fear of gas warfare or use of gas beyond Hitler's scruples from WWI.



It was not Communism, but Slavs that was the central tenet. The Nazis viewed Communism as a Jewish-Slavic cultural virus it was their duty to "cleanse" by the means of machine gunning women and children in the back. The Soviets also had gas warfare, and the Nazis frankly put had no scruples using gas on German WWI veterans who were disabled and later on Jewish civilians in their murder factories. It was not fear of the British chemical warfare arsenal that deterred them from using it IOTL, not given that they were perfectly happy to use it to murder civilians in carload lots (literally) IOTL.

well it was both for what it's worth

I don't see a response to my actual point

In a Germany vs Russia only conflict... German wmd's would be a significant advantage for them; not just generally due to their superiority in those weapons, but because taking large cities was one of the inherrant weaknesses of blitzkrieg, and gassing them into submission eliminated the need to try and take them by force

This was an objection I had to your TL... if there is no British response to be feared, gassing the Russians would fit perfectly in line; especially if they where losing and needing something to give them breathing space

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by sharlin

They already had the measure of our inferior tanks, the Panzer III was superior to the British tanks in all aspects other than speed, thicker armour, better gun and at the time we was still stuck producing 2lber armed tanks.

In the desert war we had yet to introduce a 6lber armed vehicle.

the desire to knock out matildas and crusaders from longer range would still create need

the gun wasn't a reaction to the t-34's gun, but the thickness and layout of it's armor

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

well it was both for what it's worth

I don't see a response to my actual point

In a Germany vs Russia only conflict... German wmd's would be a significant advantage for them; not just generally due to their superiority in those weapons, but because taking large cities was one of the inherrant weaknesses of blitzkrieg, and gassing them into submission eliminated the need to try and take them by force

This was an objection I had to your TL... if there is no British response to be feared, gassing the Russians would fit perfectly in line; especially if they where losing and needing something to give them breathing space

Yes, I know you don't. I'm pointing out that what the Nazis objected to was not, strictly speaking, the Communist ideology or system as most people understood them, but rather they conflated them with Russians in particular and Slavs in general, as well as with Jews, who were both Russians and Slavs at the same time. The Nazis also again are not going to employ gas so long as Hitler alone is in charge of their war effort, if he's not the only mind (or what passes for it) on the German side then they won't wage a Barbarossa to start with so the whole question's moot.

The reason it never happened in my timeline is the Nazis never established a consistent base and ran out of means to deliver the gas. They wanted to, they did not succeed in transforming desire into reality. That is a gap I almost never see in ATLs because plenty of people seem to mistake wanting something to be so with making that thing so. It seems the mentality of a five year old, as surely experience in real life would teach people the opposite invariably applies, and surely that should pop up at least once in a while in an ATL somewhere, at some point.

[kalamona]

Sweet holy jesus, again these bollocks.

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

The crude reality is that Germany was never able to wage a war with the Soviet Union.

Yet, they did it for 4 years, 3 of it mostly in soviet lands.

It could and did inflict major defeats in individual battles on the USSR, but in terms of warfighting Germany never had the strategic, let alone operational, conceptions required for that.

All they had are conceptions. A lot of them. None of the worked.

Germany had no overall strategic planning outside of Hitler's brain farts, it had no consistent logistical approach to providing a consistent supply of weaponry.

Why? Based on what? On one of the biggest gambles in ww2 (Op. Typhoon) or an encirclement? (Stalingrad)? On other occasions, while the logistics and supply situation were far from flawless, they could keep it on a manageable level. (And they did it understaffed and underequipped).

[/QUOTE]
The WWII German army relied more on horse and mule power than the WWI German Army did.
[/QUOTE]

Apples and oranges.

Germany's strategic concept for Barbarossa collapsed when Smolensk showed destroying Soviet border forces was not how the war ended, so the Germans shifted to a strategy of targeting individual cities, culminating in the third strategy of a double-envelopment of Moscow.

Targetin individual cities... you are not a big friend of geography and logistics, are you? You think, they wanted to capture Moscow L'art pour l'art, yeah? And Tikhvin for the lulz?

When the Germans adopted two successive strategies in a row, they forfeited whatever chance ever existed for them to win against the USSR.

Ohh, sucessive german strategies? Hmmm... without the strategic conception? Those nasty jerries, full of dirty tricks all the time.

They then were doomed to an escalating collapse in their own ability to wage war and the reality that the USSR grew stronger whether or not it won or it lost battles.

Congratulations, captain Obvious!

Take your lollypop.

[kalamona]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

encounters with british tanks would likely bring about this change anyway

I think, those encounters would not needed. The path to develop at least the Pz4f2 was clear from about France or even Poland. They had to combine anti tank and anti-personal/anti obstacle etc gun in one vehicle, and the 50mm simply did not sufficed.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by kalamona

Yet, they did it for 4 years, 3 of it mostly in soviet lands.

Actually what they did was rather different than that. They "held" onto Soviet lands chiefly because Moscow took a long time to realize that trying to win the entire war with a single offensive was no longer possible in a modern age, enabling the Nazis to "survive" on grounds of Soviet dumbassery. Again, German enemies' mistakes, not German strength.

Originally Posted by kalamona

All they had are conceptions. A lot of them. None of the worked.

So you say, but where I provide actual examples you resort to flailing and saying what I say is bollocks without anything else to prove it. At least Wiking can provide actual examples for his points.


Why? Based on what? On one of the biggest gambles in ww2 (Op. Typhoon) or an encirclement? (Stalingrad)? On other occasions, while the logistics and supply situation were far from flawless, they could keep it on a manageable level. (And they did it understaffed and underequipped).

Originally Posted by kalamona

Apples and oranges.

In other words "Don't argue from German military reality and intrude on my fantasies of WWII." The German army of WWII inherited a *lot* of weaknesses from the WWI Army, not that its fetishizers on the forum ever consider this.

Originally Posted by kalamona

Targetin individual cities... you are not a big friend of geography and logistics, are you? You think, they wanted to capture Moscow L'art pour l'art, yeah? And Tikhvin for the lulz?

Yes, as Barbarossa was about destroying the Soviet army and Hitler himself said "Moscow is of no great importance." But I get it, Germans are magic-men who can't do anything wrong even when they deliberately resort to blatant lies and fraud about how they said they conducted their war v. the reality behind it. Soviet mistakes play no role in German "Strength", only the superiority of Aryans less mechanized a generation later than they had been in the first go-round explained things. The German "recoveries" had nothing to do with the Stavka making the same mistakes in the same pattern, it's German magical powers.

Originally Posted by kalamona

Ohh, sucessive german strategies? Hmmm... without the strategic conception? Those nasty jerries, full of dirty tricks all the time.

More like Hitler wanted no less than three separate concepts, and none of them together did a fraction of what was required to actually defeat the USSR. You could in actual fact find a point somewhere the way Wiking's doing, but that requires actually making an argument which to judge by your rhetoric you're not interested in. I never said that there was no German planning at all, what I said was that Hitler provided what passed for it. His judgment was not by any means poor, given he has all the actual credit for any victories the generals rewrote history to claim they were for when they were against them at the time.

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

Yes, I know you don't. I'm pointing out that what the Nazis objected to was not, strictly speaking, the Communist ideology or system as most people understood them, but rather they conflated them with Russians in particular and Slavs in general, as well as with Jews, who were both Russians and Slavs at the same time. The Nazis also again are not going to employ gas so long as Hitler alone is in charge of their war effort, if he's not the only mind (or what passes for it) on the German side then they won't wage a Barbarossa to start with so the whole question's moot.

The reason it never happened in my timeline is the Nazis never established a consistent base and ran out of means to deliver the gas. They wanted to, they did not succeed in transforming desire into reality. That is a gap I almost never see in ATLs because plenty of people seem to mistake wanting something to be so with making that thing so. It seems the mentality of a five year old, as surely experience in real life would teach people the opposite invariably applies, and surely that should pop up at least once in a while in an ATL somewhere, at some point.

Communism was just as much a scapegoat in Nazi nomenclature as the Slav's Jews and other victims... it was right in the commisar order "anyone found to have a communist party card is to be immediately turned over to the einsatzgruppen)

Hitler's views on gas are extremely bereft of credible sources... and all his OTL statements are based on his fully briefed knowledge of British countermeasures... it's not acemedically honest to assume he would feel exactly the same way if there will not be gas retalation over german cities at night

And your TL is off base on that. The Germans had dozens of fixed hard metal runway airfields on their own national territory that could be used for gas bombing, and just hitting major bridgeheads over the vistula alone would cause logistical hell for the Russians, even if the Germans were too disorganized to hit troop concentrations

[sharlin]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

the desire to knock out matildas and crusaders from longer range would still create need

the gun wasn't a reaction to the t-34's gun, but the thickness and layout of it's armor

The 50mm gun could easily punch through crusaders outside the range of the 2lber and the Matilda was slow as sin and could be out fought or dealt with by an 88.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

Communism was just as much a scapegoat in Nazi nomenclature as the Slav's Jews and other victims... it was right in the commisar order "anyone found to have a communist party card is to be immediately turned over to the einsatzgruppen)

Hitler's views on gas are extremely bereft of credible sources... and all his OTL statements are based on his fully briefed knowledge of British countermeasures... it's not acemedically honest to assume he would feel exactly the same way if there will not be gas retalation over german cities at night

And your TL is off base on that. The Germans had dozens of fixed hard metal runway airfields on their own national territory that could be used for gas bombing, and just hitting major bridgeheads over the vistula alone would cause logistical hell for the Russians, even if the Germans were too disorganized to hit troop concentrations

No, it reflected a peculiarity of Nazi ideology that tied in ideological terms with ethnic groups. There was no gap between the Russian and the Jew in Nazi terms, nor was there a gap between the Jew and the Bolshevik. If you made the least study of modern views of German atrocities you'd know this already.

Yes, but if the Germans have no fuel to fly the planes, what does that matter? I'm amazed at how people in the TL forget that what happened was the Luftwaffe taking major hits from logistical disorganization (a key element of the ATL being when the Germans chosed to attack) and the fall of Ploesti steadily collapsing German ability to use what machines remained to them. You'd think they had only an ability to focus on the tactical level and not on logistics......

[wiking]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

And what I'm arguing is that this capability you speak of never existed, and the ability to stalemate itself is outside German capacity to force by themselves. Your only arguments rely on distorted understandings of the psyche of Adolf Hitler, claims not-Nazis might have done better (in which case what we aren't discussing is anything like OTL Barbarossa) and blatantly false overestimations of the Nazi modernization approach and ability to plan at anything approaching a war, as opposed to a tactical-level approach. German strategy, as both WWI and WWII showed, never existed. German logistics was a fairy tale.

The physical, material capabilities existed to beat the Soviets, but the conceptions either weren't there or plans just changed too often/politics and ideology trumped strategy. Funny that you haven't actually debunked any of my 'Nazi modernization approaches', yet you claim that my arguments are based on nonsense. Prove it.

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

Nonsense. They used it with impunity on civilians of all stripes, including ethnic Germans. There was no fear of gas warfare or use of gas beyond Hitler's scruples from WWI.

Not in combat they didn't. Do you seriously believe all of the nonsense posted on the internet? Hitler did not hold back because of his experiences in WW1; there was major analysis done by German intelligence about opponents' retaliatory capabilities and as a result there was a rational decision made not to engage in chemical warfare so long as the Allies had the ability to virtually lay waste to German cities and had declared their intention to do so if the Germans used gas. Without this very real threat hanging over there heads, the Germans would have turned to gas very quickly because especially against the Soviets, it was a trump that the Soviets couldn't respond effectively to.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by wiking

The physical, material capabilities existed to beat the Soviets, but the conceptions either weren't there or plans just changed too often/politics and ideology trumped strategy. Funny that you haven't actually debunked any of my 'Nazi modernization approaches', yet you claim that my arguments are based on nonsense. Prove it.

I have debunked them by noting the reality of the German army of WWII, reliant primarily on footpower and horse-drawn artillery, with only a tiny minority of its forces, vastly smaller than any of the Allied forces, modernized and toward the end of the war most of these were SS, not Wehrmacht. What you do is refuse to listen when someone points this out and rely on a lot of emotional rhetoric and claims about things that don't matter.

Starting with the claim that the resources existed to defeat the USSR: sure they did. Nazis were incapable of using them, however, to do more than win individual battles or make short-term gains. Having the resources is not the same as the ability to employ them properly. Your statements rely on a lot of the old nostra that the USSR was somehow run by inferiors and the Nazis were run by superior military wizards, contrary of little unfortunate realities like the Barbarossa planning explicitly noting that Soviet cities did not matter, only the Soviet army did, meaning when the Nazis shifted to cities they confessed their plan failed and they needed a new one that did not exist.

But see, this requires actual research and a willingness to see behind the smoke and mirrors and Stab-In-the-Back legend of the new German army, which most Nazi fanboys aren't willing to do either.

Originally Posted by wiking

Not in combat they didn't. Do you seriously believe all of the nonsense posted on the internet? Hitler did not hold back because of his experiences in WW1; there was major analysis done by German intelligence about opponents' retaliatory capabilities and as a result there was a rational decision made not to engage in chemical warfare so long as the Allies had the ability to virtually lay waste to German cities and had declared their intention to do so if the Germans used gas. Without this very real threat hanging over there heads, the Germans would have turned to gas very quickly because especially against the Soviets, it was a trump that the Soviets couldn't respond effectively to.

So you say, but you provide no evidence about Soviet chemical warfare capabilities or why the Nazis failed to use these magic weapons when they were already doomed and knew they were and what's more wanted Germany razed to the ground so nobody else could have it after them. I see no evidence in your assertions that is convincing at a level beyond "Nazis awesome Germans epic".

Your claims on German modernization are silly, they don't reflect the reality that due to Lend-Lease the Soviets ran tails around that "modern" army, which was less mechanized than the USSR at its height in 1941. It neglects that the German army was in fact neither one force (Waffen-SS troops were a whole separate army with their own separate logistics), and it neglects that the USSR always had far larger quantities of machines of war than the "modern" Germans did.

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

No, it reflected a peculiarity of Nazi ideology that tied in ideological terms with ethnic groups. There was no gap between the Russian and the Jew in Nazi terms, nor was there a gap between the Jew and the Bolshevik. If you made the least study of modern views of German atrocities you'd know this already.

Yes, but if the Germans have no fuel to fly the planes, what does that matter? I'm amazed at how people in the TL forget that what happened was the Luftwaffe taking major hits from logistical disorganization (a key element of the ATL being when the Germans chosed to attack) and the fall of Ploesti steadily collapsing German ability to use what machines remained to them. You'd think they had only an ability to focus on the tactical level and not on logistics......

I don't even follow what you are disagreeing with me about... the USSR for whatever label Hitler felt like apply that day was at the near top to actual top of Hitler's perceived group of "enemies" requiring harsh liquidation; so gassing them is plausible if there is no fear of retaliation

I have to call bullshit on that concept... Ploesti represented only 35ish percent of German oil supplies; so even losing it fairly early in the campaign (which is not particularly likely given the terrain and otl huge German build up there but whatever).... the germans without barbarossa 41 would not have had a huge drain on their fuel reserves, and would certainly have enough on hand to maintain a vigorous defense of their field army, and if that desperate gas the bridgeheads over the vistula to disrupt the red army's supply and movements to give the army time to catch it's breath

[kalamona]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

My statements aren't babbling bollocks. The Nazis did not plan logistically.

Half truth. They placed operations before logistics but they did their homework on logistics.

If we look at how their generals repeatedly demanded perfectionist changes for a huge slate of weapons where spare parts did not exist,

For example?

the Nazis relied on looting from six or seven different armies

Yap, the took the opportunity to loot. Have something is better than have nothing.

without ability to replace those parts or even considering this ability to matter,

wrong, they produced spare parts (or ammo) for what they used

a deliberate Nazi orientation *away* from basic mass production on a US-Soviet style fashion,

they had the affinity for "colorful" develpoment and production, but looted vehicles/weapons/etc have nothing to do with it. And they were awful at standartization, since once they have something, they cannot afford to lose it.

and their concepts of how to make up shortfalls in labor meant impressing people to work in factories to make this unwieldy system "work."

Nazi ideology. IMHO counterproductive as hell.

To repeat, Germans had no logistical system worthy of the actual meaning of system.

Uhm, they supplied their armies clapping their hand, yes?

They produced too many high-quality weapons of too many divergent types

true

without enough spare parts for any of them.

not true

They had no less than three competing systems producing these weapons. They had not enough labor to produce them, meaning they impressed slaves from all over Europe to have to make this up, and this produced issues like slave workers deliberately producing dud weapons instead of ones that actually fired. Nazi economics in fact required impressing huge quantities of slaves and wishful thinking over any kind of rational planning.

The Nazi economy is subject to a lot of wishful thinking and wankery on this board, it did not function in any fashion appropriate to what people who understood basic economics would have been able to do with the resources of all of Europe under their control. The Soviets were already outproducing Nazi Germany by themselves IOTL during the Battle of Moscow, after losing 10 million men and the great bulk of their richest, most densely populated territory.

I get that a lot of people on this forum want to make Nazis into magic supermen but they weren't that. They were blithering idiot menchildren who got a string of successes from weak enemies and those enemies repeatedly making similar mistakes. I get it that a lot of people simply can't comprehend how fragile OTL German successes in both world wars were. It puzzles me, but they can't look beyond the smoke and mirrors.

Blahblahblah, i translate it:
"Why all the people thinks that the nazis are cool and not the soviets?"
I tell you: because the Hugo Boss Uniforms.
The Red october Cloth Manufactory cannot compete with Hugo Boss.

[Snake Featherston]

1) Then provide evidence for it. I'm noting the no less than three rival economic production systems and the overall three military systems of the War (Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, and Luftwaffe) combined with the inability of the Germans to conceive of how to produce a sufficient quantity of weapons to go along with quality. These are all specific elements solidly grounded in what actually happened. What you're doing is five year old playground rhetoric that shows nothing of an argument at all.

2) Well, to use the obvious examples those Tiger and Panther tanks Nazi fanboys fap to. The generals made so many demands on perfecting them that the result was overengineered equipment that broke down at the drop of a hat.

3) And in logistical terms this is self-defeating as it sets up a long-term problem. Six armies' equipment that can't be interchanged or replaced by one part for another is a disaster. This is real logistics.

4) Not enough and not for all categories of weapons, when the demand far outstripped the supply. Again, if you've ever read a book about this, you'd know it, but what I see is someone flailing because someone disagrees with you and provides specifics which you are not doing.

5) So you say, but in the timeline I'm from how many "German" tanks were actually stolen Czech and French tanks?

6) So in other words we agree that Nazis launching a Nazi invasion, which any Barbarossa will be, are doomed to fail because they are in fact Nazis, and that Nazis will plan for a Nazi invasion in a Nazi fashion? Then what the Hell are you whining about?

7) Yes, for the most part. Their armies ran out of supplies and the abilities to use them on a semi-regular basis the more the war went on. This is in fact why the Hammer and Sickle was raised over the Reichstag and Rokossovsky's armies met the US Army on the Elbe. Congratulations, you're learning why the people that lose wars in fact lose them.

8) Again, you need actual evidence and "not true" based on no more than your say-so is not enough.

9) If all you've got to contribute is this, I'm happy to illustrate the difference between someone who knows what he's talking about, namely nuanced points that reflect actual reality, and someone who's idea of a contribution is expressed by "Blah blah blah" and "quit the bollocks." My statements show a reference framework derived from the actual war and combat on the Ostfront. Yours, OTOH, rely on personal insults and complaints that gasp, someone disagrees with you on the Internet. At least Wiking and Blair are speaking in terms of actual knowledge. You are not. Either put up or shut up.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

I don't even follow what you are disagreeing with me about... the USSR for whatever label Hitler felt like apply that day was at the near top to actual top of Hitler's perceived group of "enemies" requiring harsh liquidation; so gassing them is plausible if there is no fear of retaliation

I have to call bullshit on that concept... Ploesti represented only 35ish percent of German oil supplies; so even losing it fairly early in the campaign (which is not particularly likely given the terrain and otl huge German build up there but whatever).... the germans without barbarossa 41 would not have had a huge drain on their fuel reserves, and would certainly have enough on hand to maintain a vigorous defense of their field army, and if that desperate gas the bridgeheads over the vistula to disrupt the red army's supply and movements to give the army time to catch it's breath

1) But not if the Nazis lack the planes to deliver them or the fuel to supply those planes.

2) In the alternate timeline the Nazis de-mobilized their army as per OTL, spent their timeframe knocking the British out producing not tanks and rifles but airplanes and submarines, and with the aid of Japan and British stupidity got a cease-fire. This meant that what you're talking about from OTL does not apply in the ATL, so an OTL analogy is false. If you actually read my timeline you'd have noticed this being stated there, but since you evidently only showed up there to complain about poison gas......

[KACKO]

As to German poison gas. As far as I know, there was around 70 000 t of it at the end of War.
Soviet Union on the other side between 1940-45 manufactured around 110 000 t. How much they had before that year I do not know, but sure a lot. Even small countries like Czechoslovakia had it.

[wiking]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

I have debunked them by noting the reality of the German army of WWII, reliant primarily on footpower and horse-drawn artillery, with only a tiny minority of its forces, vastly smaller than any of the Allied forces, modernized and toward the end of the war most of these were SS, not Wehrmacht. What you do is refuse to listen when someone points this out and rely on a lot of emotional rhetoric and claims about things that don't matter.

Also by totally ignoring the effects of airpower, because the Soviets were so shitty in that regard and this goes against your Soviet-wank concepts. So far your arguments are based on some emotional attachment to Soviet superiority, ignoring areas that the Germans had advantages in to maintain your bubble of Soviet invincibility. You're just as bad as the Nazi fanboys that you're railing against. Basically I'm seeing you accuse me of everything you're doing to hide the fact that you are just using emotional rhetoric and claims about things that only matter to your argument.

You've totally ignored the vast resources the Germans poured into the Luftwaffe, more in fact that the Germany army, because of the critical nature of airpower, as Barbarossa demonstrated. Instead you only focus on the one area that you can favorably compare the Soviets to the Germans. Guess what? The Germans purposely focused on airpower for a reason and destroyed the Soviets with it in 1941. Without Britain in the war 5000 aircraft are going to be on the eastern front, roughly double what they had OTL in 1941. About 1000 more are going to be in reserve. And its going to destroy all of your fancy T34's and KV1's just like OTL. Plus gas is going to drench the Soviet masses and break their morale.

I know you like to ignore all of this because it doesn't fit into your rants about how its the Nazi fanboys that are stupid and can see the 'real truth' in your eyes of how the Soviets are unbeatable if just given the chance to reorganize, modernize, train up and prove themselves far better than those evil German.

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

Starting with the claim that the resources existed to defeat the USSR: sure they did. Nazis were incapable of using them, however, to do more than win individual battles or make short-term gains. Having the resources is not the same as the ability to employ them properly. Your statements rely on a lot of the old nostra that the USSR was somehow run by inferiors and the Nazis were run by superior military wizards, contrary of little unfortunate realities like the Barbarossa planning explicitly noting that Soviet cities did not matter, only the Soviet army did, meaning when the Nazis shifted to cities they confessed their plan failed and they needed a new one that did not exist.

Great, glad you see what I'm getting at. The Germans made major campaign gains and scored huge operational victories, bringing them close to strategic victory. But you're right strategic flaws in German leadership prevented those resources from being used properly, just as Stalin screwed up Soviet efforts for years; its just that the Soviets had far more room to make mistakes.

And then you delve into accusing me a loving the Nazis and thinking Slavs inferior. Guess what? I'm part Eastern European. I don't have any nostalgia or desire for the Nazis to win in real life; I like exploring what different worlds would look like the the bad guys won. I know the Germans and Nazis were not geniuses or magical, but guess what, neither were the Soviets. The Soviets were immensely inexperienced in modern warfare with Western powers, which Finland of all things demonstrated. Its not that the Soviets were incapable of learning, which obviously they did, but it required several brutal years of fighting to develop a military capable of winning decisive victories. There was much more to their organizational, technological, and conceptual problems than just what was obvious in 1941.

Instead you use arguments about how stupid, ignorant, and mindless the Germans and Nazis were, pretty much accusing them of what you're claiming I'm saying about the Soviets. The situation is far more nuanced than you are allowing for because you making absolutist, emotional arguments to appeal to some idea that I'm a secret Nazi that harbors racist fantasies that I live out through Alternate History. I consider that extremely offensive. I've read a lot of history of WW2 from all perspectives and my nuanced conclusion is that the Soviets had deep flaws in the military that 1 extra year isn't going to fix, just as the Nazis aren't going to conquer the Soviet Union and live out their genocidal dream.


You've not allowed for the Germans to develop at all in 1 year, which they demonstrated immense capability to do after the learned from their failures in Poland in 1939, against some of my ancestors. Technologically and organizationally they improved a lot between 1939 and 1940, so why wouldn't they from 1941-1942? They were building factories, trucks, new tanks, lots of airplanes and innovating based on their experiences. OTL 1940-1941 the Germans made major changes to their armed forces, so why not in 1 more year, especially if the British are out?

I find it interesting too that in earlier posts you totally dismissed the major efforts the West made in pinning the Germans down from 1941-1945 OTL, so that they couldn't use their best weapon, their air force, in the East, not to mention diverting major supplies and equipment from the Eastern Front.
Its obvious that you are a Soviet-wanker.

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

But see, this requires actual research and a willingness to see behind the smoke and mirrors and Stab-In-the-Back legend of the new German army, which most Nazi fanboys aren't willing to do either.

Again, accusing others of what you are doing to try and hide your own biases. Your accusations of closet Nazism aren't going to save your facile arguments.

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

So you say, but you provide no evidence about Soviet chemical warfare capabilities or why the Nazis failed to use these magic weapons when they were already doomed and knew they were and what's more wanted Germany razed to the ground so nobody else could have it after them. I see no evidence in your assertions that is convincing at a level beyond "Nazis awesome Germans epic".

I've provided plenty of reasons, as has Blairwitch about why the Germans did not use gas. Hitler did authorize gas use in the end, but was ignored by his commanders.
http://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Weapo...6410623&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.com/War-Nerves-Che...6410610&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Germany-Second...410756&sr=1-15

http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Form-Ki...6410642&sr=1-1

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

Your claims on German modernization are silly, they don't reflect the reality that due to Lend-Lease the Soviets ran tails around that "modern" army, which was less mechanized than the USSR at its height in 1941. It neglects that the German army was in fact neither one force (Waffen-SS troops were a whole separate army with their own separate logistics), and it neglects that the USSR always had far larger quantities of machines of war than the "modern" Germans did.

So now its LL that enabled the Soviets to motorize, not their own efforts at production.
1944-5 is vastly different than 1941-2. And again you ignore airpower.

[wiking]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

1) But not if the Nazis lack the planes to deliver them or the fuel to supply those planes.

2) In the alternate timeline the Nazis de-mobilized their army as per OTL, spent their timeframe knocking the British out producing not tanks and rifles but airplanes and submarines, and with the aid of Japan and British stupidity got a cease-fire. This meant that what you're talking about from OTL does not apply in the ATL, so an OTL analogy is false. If you actually read my timeline you'd have noticed this being stated there, but since you evidently only showed up there to complain about poison gas......

The Germans didn't demobilize their army in 1940, they expanded it.

Originally Posted by KACKO

As to German poison gas. As far as I know, there was around 70 000 t of it at the end of War.
Soviet Union on the other side between 1940-45 manufactured around 110 000 t. How much they had before that year I do not know, but sure a lot. Even small countries like Czechoslovakia had it.

Source?