Germany could not win ww2?

[FranzAncheNo]

Only that plan was to go through then neutral Italy, while France is still fighting. OLT event will scupper that plan, as Italy will not be neutral for long.
Also politically Chamberlain is busted flush (unfairly in my opinion), he also had no illusions about Hitler and trusting him!

I was referring to the linked page as a source for Halifax being anti-war. Probably should have precised that.

Rule 1 , Wikipedia is not the best source. Hitler had proved his word was worthless repeatedly, Chamberlain/Halifax's position had been undermined massively. The Conservative Party might vote for someone other than Churchill, but it is not bowing out of the war. This is why Halifax , who Chamberlain would have wanted to be his successor did not even try and fight for the job.

While not the best source, Wiki has and lists sources.
I too agree that it wouldn't be likely at all, but I don't feel sure enough to rule out the possibility.

 

[TDM]

I was referring to the linked page as a source for Halifax being anti-war. Probably should have precised that.
...

Oh Halifax was anti war, but most people are. The problem is that once you are in a war and you can't a trust word coming out the other side's mouth even if you wanted to negotiate, it's not just matter of anti war people sue for peace and only pro war people continue to fight.

 

[jamesownz]

While I'm not sure if they could win I dont like the first video and outright rejection of it.

I think if Moscow falls then it is certainly over for Russia despite what Stalin wants...some sort of deal would be made

 

[James Ricker]

You cannot separate the Nazis from their racist ideology.

Temporarily it might have been possible.
Treat the Ukrainians good ,get them to sign up and fight against Hitler for you when The War is over demobilize Ukrainian army or what is left of it then start acting like Nazis

 

[TDM]

Temporarily it might have been possible.
Treat the Ukrainians good ,get them to sign up and fight against Hitler for you when The War is over demobilize Ukrainian army or what is left of it then start acting like Nazis

Problem is that relies on Nazism being ideologically sensible/flexible enough to do that, and it really wasn't.

German forces went into Poland on day one with lists of names to be killed, and attacks on Jews and other targeted groups started almost immediately, the same happened in the USSR.

Basically killing "solving" undesirable people is as inherit to the German/Nazi plan as invading these countries. The two ideas are also inextricably linked in other ways. The Nazis thought they would beat the soviets because they and their ideology was superior, and they justified killing all these inferior people for the same reason. To the Nazis the invasion of USSR wasn't just an attack against a country, but an attack against several larger ideas (usually summed up as Judeo-bolshevism, but there's a hearty dose of Slavic/Asiatic untermench hordes as well). So it was never just going to be just an attack on the Soviet state, but an attack a wider range of enemies that were the people themselves.

There's other issues here as well for German softly, softly in occupied USSR, that aren't directly tied to Nazi ideology.

The vast amount of area the Germans conquered in USSR meant that rearwards security divisions were stretched extremely thin. But their requests for reinforcements were rejected (all spare manpower/resources was going to the three fronts). What they were told to do was instead of having more men/resources, rather to use more draconian methods to extort compliance. This didn't endear them to the local populous and not only encouraged further resistance but quickly showed the local populous where they stood.

On top of that, since the German army was basically reduced to living off the land a lot of the time not just for food, but also transport and beasts of burden as well as other resources, that also didn't endear them too much to the local populous. Needless to say these two didn't combine very well either! i.e. people resisting having their stuff taken, such resistance was dealt with extremely harshly, such harsh repression drove further resistance etc.




tl;dr in many ways Germany invades Poland and the USSR in order to kill millions of people it didn't like, it wasn't an after thought but a driving goal. On top of that their plan was they'd beat the Soviet armed forces in 8-12 weeks, so they never dreamed it would be a matter of either/or goal anyway.

 

[steamboy]

Yeah the moment you go into "If Hitler and co treated X nice then..." territory then you're not dealing with Nazis, plain and simple. They set out, wrote down and planned to kill untold millions of 'untermensch' had been priming their people and armed forces for such 'necessary acts' for over a decade and it wasn't just the cornerstone but the foundation, floorplan and support beams of Nazi ideology and that's not just something you can turn off or make go away at the drop of a hat.

*edit*

Also the 'Clean Heer' thing is a myth.

 

[JohnBooth1900]

Potential History and his quixotic takes on WW2 are insufferable. His videos are littered with a ridiculous number of errors, and yet you still see them being posted everywhere by edgy teenagers. PH has become a leader of this cargo cult of faux historians, vaulted to the top by his ignorant followers. His work is representative of the 'meme history' that has become all too popular on Youtube and other websites. Teens today have a bizarre need to distill their understanding of literally everything down into meme format. This behaviour is very jarring to encounter: It seems to leaks into almost everything they do. Anyway... According to PH, the Germans capturing Moscow would have absolutely no affect on the outcome of the war. Why does he think that? Because, he draws an utterly facile comparison with the French capture of Moscow in 1812 (which did not yield a victory).

The fact that he thinks this illustrates just how little PH actually knows about history. How can someone talk so much about a subject while knowing so little? He doesn't understand how different these two wars were. The Germans did far more damage to the Soviets in 1941 than the French ever did to the Russians in 1812. Why? Because the Heer advanced over a much broader front than the Grand Armee, sowing unimaginable chaos and destruction along the way. [1] The Soviets left nothing untarnished in the wake of their retreat. Scorched Earth tactics can be hit or miss, because you have to burn down the farms & towns that are directly in the path of an invading army. This works fine if an enemy is only moving through a small part of your country (as Napoleon did). But when an invading army is moving across a large part of your territory, scorched Earth tactics will cripple you. The Soviets found this out to their chagrin during the war, when their economy was pushed to the breaking point.

PH also ignores how much larger and more important Moscow was in 1941 as compared to 1812. If Hitlers marauding thugs had captured the city, it would have had grave consequences for the Russians. This was explored in a wonderful book by David Downing, called The Moscow Option. He uses the Operation Typhoon in August 1941! trope [2] to show how enormously disruptive Moscows fall would be to the Soviet railway net, and their ability to deploy and supply their field armys. (Among other things, it would lead to the fall of Leningrad) Losing both of their capital citys would be a huge blow to the prestige of the Soviet Union, and would seriously hurt the Red Armys morale. Another thing PH ignores was Stalins declaration that if the Germans captured Moscow, he would be forced to make peace with Hitler.


[1]The Germans were also able to fight decisive battles with the Red Army close to the border, which is something that the French were unable to do. The Russians kept escaping from them and retreating deeper into the interior, where their resistance would have a more meaningful impact on an overstretched invader.

[2] This particular scenario has come under alot of skepticism in the last decade or so, with critiques coming from David Glantz and David Stahel.

 

[Deleted member 90563]

How can someone talk so much about a subject while knowing so little?

Dunning-Kruger effect?

 

[TDM]

Potential History and his quixotic takes on WW2 are insufferable. His videos are littered with a ridiculous number of errors, and yet you still see them being posted everywhere by edgy teenagers. PH has become a leader of this cargo cult of faux historians, vaulted to the top by his ignorant followers. His work is representative of the 'meme history' that has become all too popular on Youtube and other websites. Teens today have a bizarre need to distill their understanding of literally everything down into meme format. This behaviour is very jarring to encounter: It seems to leaks into almost everything they do. Anyway... According to PH, the Germans capturing Moscow would have absolutely no affect on the outcome of the war. Why does he think that? Because, he draws an utterly facile comparison with the French capture of Moscow in 1812 (which did not yield a victory).

The fact that he thinks this illustrates just how little PH actually knows about history. How can someone talk so much about a subject while knowing so little? He doesn't understand how different these two wars were. The Germans did far more damage to the Soviets in 1941 than the French ever did to the Russians in 1812. Why? Because the Heer advanced over a much broader front than the Grand Armee, sowing unimaginable chaos and destruction along the way. [1] The Soviets left nothing untarnished in the wake of their retreat. Scorched Earth tactics can be hit or miss, because you have to burn down the farms & towns that are directly in the path of an invading army. This works fine if an enemy is only moving through a small part of your country (as Napoleon did). But when an invading army is moving across a large part of your territory, scorched Earth tactics will cripple you. The Soviets found this out to their chagrin during the war, when their economy was pushed to the breaking point.

PH also ignores how much larger and more important Moscow was in 1941 as compared to 1812. If Hitlers marauding thugs had captured the city, it would have had grave consequences for the Russians. This was explored in a wonderful book by David Downing, called The Moscow Option. He uses the Operation Typhoon in August 1941! trope [2] to show how enormously disruptive Moscows fall would be to the Soviet railway net, and their ability to deploy and supply their field armys. (Among other things, it would lead to the fall of Leningrad) Losing both of their capital citys would be a huge blow to the prestige of the Soviet Union, and would seriously hurt the Red Armys morale. Another thing PH ignores was Stalins declaration that if the Germans captured Moscow, he would be forced to make peace with Hitler.


[1]The Germans were also able to fight decisive battles with the Red Army close to the border, which is something that the French were unable to do. The Russians kept escaping from them and retreating deeper into the interior, where their resistance would have a more meaningful impact on an overstretched invader.

[2] This particular scenario has come under alot of skepticism in the last decade or so, with critiques coming from David Glantz and David Stahel.

How does scorched earth cripple your economy when you giving up that ground to the invader? Plus of course the Russians managed to evacuate a sizable chunk of their economy east of Moscow while doing this.

"Found out to their chagrin", you get the soviets out produced the Germans in almost everything that mattered right?

However you do raise a key point here. The Germans (being well aware of 1812) deliberately* try to avoid Napoleon's single unsupported thrust. Hence the three army groups which could not only support each other if needed, prevent flanking attacks, but also find and destroy more Soviet armed forces (the actual key objective) and deny more resources to the Russians by seizing more territory on a broader front. But that comes with a trade off which was you are splitting your resources and forces. ironically something Napoleon was well aware off as well. German logistics were in trouble from the get go, and the whole thing was under resourced so trying to support three groups only made it worse. (Which is why pretty soon they can only muster enough logistics to allow one group to advance at a time). That 8-12 week time period to defeat the red army was also funnily enough about the length of time the German logistics staff reckoned they could maintain initial invasion supply levels, and they didn't build in much of a reserve! I. e they're doing this operation on a shoestring resource budget with very little margin for error.

So the Germans had two bad choices, and they picked the other one.


What compounds the issue is the Germans make two big underestimations when it came to the Russians/red army.

1). they massively underestimate the actual size of the red army in 1941, this means they assumed that the red army was at breaking point from really early on from all the losses they were inflicting on it. But it wasn't true. It also meant the Germans kept with this idea that if they just pushed on they would destroy all armed resistance any day now, and at that point could pretty much do what they wanted vis a vis Moscow, Leningrad, oilfields without logistics issues being problem etc. this was also wrong. They also didn't just underestimate the actual size of it in 1941 but also underestimated the Soviet resources for maintaining and equipping it even in the face of massive losses of men material and territory on an ongoing basis. More importantly the Germans were unable to do the same.

Which is why Axis armed forces start off at 3.7m outnumbering the Russians in western Russia, but once the Russians start up they more than double their troop number in at the front and keep it around 6.5m all though the war even despite massive losses inflicted on them (and during all that scorched earth, lose of territory etc, etc). But the Germans can only really maintain their initial numbers despite lighter losses compared to the Russian, until those axis numbers fall of a cliff mid 1944.





2), they massively underestimate the Russian willingness to fight/struggle. this is partly for ideological reasons underpinning their planning (i.e. their plan needs it to be true), and because the red army had not exactly covered itself in glory recently (Finland). However the problem is when you march into a country and start killing its citizens in 6 figures something odd happens that country becomes quite whiling to fight and endure an awful lot while doing so.


This is key because of your claim that "The Germans were also able to fight decisive battles with the Red Army close to the border", because while the German's certainly thought they were, because they thought they were destroying the Russian army in terms of it's available strength and long-term ability to operate. But actually they weren't. This is why when you read the German reports back from the advancing front even early into Barbarossa, you tend to get one of two common themes:

'how are the more Russians in uniform in front of us, when we've left so many killed/captured behind us'

or

"how are they fighting so vigorously, don't they know their beaten by us just being here and advancing as quickly as we are'


So the Germans become kind of trapped by their assumptions, because they have no plan B. So plan A has to work because they are not only materially but ideologically invested and committed to it. So when Plan A fails (the red army is not destroyed in 8-12 weeks by sheer Nazi awesomeness etc) they just Plan A harder, in the hope that it will work eventually. And all the while all the inherent issues with Plan A for the German forces just keep on kicking in harder and harder. Namely the resources and logistics, because as above just because Plan A now requires more maximum effort for longer than planned doesn't mean the resources available magically increase to accommodate that. Plus the whole maximum effort advance as quickly and decisively as you can all the time is a really resource intensive way to fight. (but equally you not going to seek out and destroy the red army by hunkering down and waiting for the foot plodders to catch up with the tuck wagon, so it's a catch-22)

Loss of prestige you think they're going to care about prestige?!

When it come to morale if the Germans were offering anything other then death camps, slavery and mass starvation that might be true, but the reality is the soviets know they're in a fight to the death, so that's what they'll fight to.


P.S. yeah PH can be a bit silly and meme-tastic, but frankly so are arguments for how Germany almost won !




*although if you look at the evolution of the planning for Barbarossa in the opening stages they go back and forth on this since the planners at least are aware of the issues and benefits of both options for different operational goals.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

1). that assumes the Soviets don't wreck the Moscow rail hubs just like they wrecked the rail infrastructure in the west. It also assumes the soviets don't just wreck the lines coming out of the Moscow hub further down the tracks (Moscow hub is no use to the German's if it doesn't go anywhere).

I'm not sure which rail hubs you think the Soviets wrecked IOTL in 1941, but there weren't many if any. What they did was successfully evacuate their functional rolling stock. Plus ITTL there wouldn't be time to actually wreck the rail hub in Moscow given that the Soviets would need it to the last second before it fell. Sure they do damage to the easy stuff to damage, but not the hard to repair stuff like the rail beds. After all during Operation Typhoon there wasn't a problem converting the rail and getting it going again, it was clearing out the enemy troops to let the work crews in and dealing with the weather.

Similarly after the Smolensk pocket was finished off that city was taking rail shipment within a couple of weeks; they were being hampered by the operational 'tidying up' of Soviet troops after major combat operations were over in the city.

2). Germany has still got a massive logistics problems, just from lack of resources. Plus unless every battle they then fight is right next to an (intact) railway line just having the trains doesn't help logistics as you still have to move stuff on from the trains. As you say "plus of course the huge distances". Similarly even if they capture an intact Moscow hub, and the rail system into the Russian interior from there is magically untouched, if they still don't have tracks to Moscow from their side it doesn't matter much. Basically for the resource strapped German forces you are talking about basically recreating the Russian railway system from scrap under constant sabotage efforts in the west and from Moscow eastwards likely red army pressure.

You're ignoring the truck transport system that allowed German forces to routinely operate 300km or more from their rail heads during the campaign.
Resource strapped German army? The resource strapped ones were the Soviets, who only had manpower in excess. Also the partisan effectiveness was greatly exaggerated and at it's weakest in 1941-42...and in 1942 only got as far as it did due to being organized and sustained via Moscow. Moscow falls and the partisan movement west of the city falls apart. No insurgency survives without constant reinforcement and resupply from an external organized nation-state.

3). The amount of losses they had suffered just getting a few units close to Moscow (without taking it) were not long term sustainable, even if they take and hold Moscow without lots of losses, going further in just looks like 1942 and 1943 only worse because they'll be operating on even longer supply lines. Because the ridiculous thing is that bit of western Russia before Moscow, that huge bit of territory the scope of which just almost undid them by itself is small compared to what they'd now face. Remember the German thinking was if they got to Moscow the soviets would already be beaten because their armed forces would already be destroyed on the way to Moscow. They weren't ever planning on fighting hard past Moscow, because Moscow itself was going to be the victory lap.

What losses exactly? Losses in October-December were vastly less than suffered in June-August. In fact the best casualty ratios of 1941 were achieved in October-December.
If Moscow falls the Soviets lose their major rail, communications (telephone line), production, electrical generation, etc. hub. Unlike OTL 1942-43 Moscow being out of Soviet hands means the Soviets are heavily weakened (Moscow alone was about 10% of Soviet industrial production and a huge chunk of the defense industry) and not able to resist nearly as well as they did IOTL...which was pretty bad through 1942.

I'm not sure what sort of distance beyond Moscow you're talking about, but I'm not talking about advancing to the Urals, just Gorki-Yaroslavl, which is less far than Stalingrad was from Rostov. Infrastructure on the way there from Moscow is quite a bit better too.

4). Holding Moscow isn't as easy as just arriving there and popping a panzer hatch in red square. It's a massive city of millions of people just securing and holding the civilians will tie down huge numbers. They're going to fight and resist, the red army are going to counter attack.

Given that IOTL the population panicked and tried to flee, the civilians weren't going to do anything. The Soviet government was able to maintain it's grip on the city with a couple of divisions of NKVD, which were quite a bit less powerful than a single panzer division. If you think the civilians are going to fight and resist, why didn't they do so in Smolensk, Kiev, Kharkov, Rostov, Orel, etc.? Sounds like a lot of wishful thinking on your part that is not borne out by the historical record. Before you point to Leningrad you have to remember it was held by a heavy concentration of soldiers, not civilians. Plus you need to consider what happened to the Moscow militia divisions that defended the path to the city in October (hint they were wiped out with minor effort). So the civilians who were primed to fight were already dead or captured outside the city.

With the capital gone the ability to counterattack is basically gone for the foreseeable future too given the dearth of rail, communications, basing, production, etc. that were all used to set up OTL counteroffensive armies in December...which incidentially were butchered when they attacked. David Stahel makes the strong case that the German retreat in December, which basically had ended after a couple-few weeks, was largely due to a collapse in German morale due to failing to take Moscow before winter rather than Soviet offensive prowess. That wouldn't be the case in the event of Moscow falling, while the Soviets would be the ones to take the morale hit.

You kind of can't, as you just pointed out these "nice" nazis" weren't given any room to do anything. so the mere fact that a few still existed post night of the long knives really doesn't mean anything. This also buys into the old myth that the German armed forces were morally opposed to killing millions of Russians, but were forced to by Hitler and the upper echelons i.e they just need an excuse or slight change at the top to not be a key part of all the killing. But the reality is German armed forces were told to and didn't offer much resistance to doing so after the various Fuhrer directives came down. There's also the point that "strasserist" (itself a pretty broad term especially after the purges when we're really just talking about a diverse and eclectic group of individuals) might mean not quite as bad as Hitler but that still leave plenty of room for them to be bad in their own right and in terms of Russia.

No one is saying they were nice, just more pragmatic and less ideological to a fault.
The rest of what you've written is just a strawman you've invented rather than a response to anything I wrote.

Vlasovs army of Russian liberation is late war anyway at which point it's just a desperate German move to find more warm bodies between them and the red army because they're losing. The joke is the 'Russian liberation army' was even at it's for lack of better term height, dwarfed by the numbers of Ostenheiten anyway. The Ostenheiten who had been mainly used for rear echelon security (and all that entails in occupied Russia) so really the opposite of the Germans being nice. Of course the irony is come 1944 they where mutinying more and more because the Germans are losing.

And? People were pushing for it pre-invasion, Hitler blocked it. It was possible to create it in 1941 had there been an interest in it from leadership. Russian attitudes changed by 1943 after it was clear the Germans were going to lose, but prior to that they took millions of PoWs and had by some estimates over 1 million volunteers just in 1941:

Collaboration in the German-occupied Soviet Union - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So with Hitler dying for some reason you could very well see a different policy in the East. It wouldn't be a majority of occupied ex-Soviets joining in, but the Axis didn't need the majority to make a difference.

Really this idea that there was some grand white Russian army just waiting unutilised by the nazis is a myth.

Unsupported opinions aren't evidence.

 

[dilbert113]

Germany made one stupid, obvious, and very easy to avoid mistake that cost them the war, and that was opening up a second front against the USSR before getting England out of the war. Had they not done that, they almost certainly would have won. It took the combined might of the US, the USSR, and the British Empire to defeat Nazi Germany, and even then it was a close-run thing early in the conflict. Some members of German leadership knew that a two-front war was suicidal for Germany in WW1 and would inevitably lead to defeat again in WW2. In Real Life the Germans appeared to have mistakenly thought that the USSR was somehow convincing the British not to surrender, and that the key to ending the war in the West was by launching a war in the East. The second big mistaken assumption the Germans made was that the Soviets would be easy to quickly defeat. By their actions, the Germans turned the war from a fight with Great Britain, that they were slowly winning, into a fight with GB, the USSR, and the USA, that they could not possibly win.

 

[Cymry-Korean]

Germany made one stupid, obvious, and very easy to avoid mistake that cost them the war, and that was opening up a second front against the USSR before getting England out of the war. Had they not done that, they almost certainly would have won. It took the combined might of the US, the USSR, and the British Empire to defeat Nazi Germany, and even then it was a close-run thing early in the conflict. Some members of German leadership knew that a two-front war was suicidal for Germany in WW1 and would inevitably lead to defeat again in WW2. In Real Life the Germans appeared to have mistakenly thought that the USSR was somehow convincing the British not to surrender, and that the key to ending the war in the West was by launching a war in the East. The second big mistaken assumption the Germans made was that the Soviets would be easy to quickly defeat. By their actions, the Germans turned the war from a fight with Great Britain, that they were slowly winning, into a fight with GB, the USSR, and the USA, that they could not possibly win.

Well then they run out of oil within 6 months to a year. The German military machine was not sustainable.

 

[dilbert113]

Some say that it was absolutely inevitable that Nazi Germany would attack the Soviet Union. I do not think this is the case, for a variety of reasons, but even if one assumes that sooner or later war with the USSR was coming, there is nothing that says it had to start in the summer of 1941, while air and sea battles between Germany and Great Britain were still ongoing. It is entirely possible that Hitler and his staff could have decided to wait a year, and concentrate on bombing Great Britain and deploying U-boats against its navy and merchant fleet. Eventually the Germans would have developed V1 and V2 rockets, and without wasting so many resources on an unwinnable fight with the USSR, they could have rocketed England with terror attacks sufficient to cowe its people into coming to the negotiating table. Who knows, perhaps their V-3 cannon even could have been successfully used against Great Britain in this scenario.

 

[dilbert113]

Well then they run out of oil within 6 months to a year. The German military machine was not sustainable.

Going to war with the USSR made their oil shortage much worse, not better. The USSR was exporting large quantities of oil, along with other important raw materials, to Germany right up until they day after the invasion, literally. Without the threat of massive allied bombing Germany's domestic production of oil would have increased over time as well. Germany chose to lose WW2, a war it was handily winning for the first couple of years.

 

[Cymry-Korean]

Going to war with the USSR made their oil shortage much worse, not better. The USSR was exporting large quantities of oil, along with other important raw materials, to Germany right up until they day after the invasion, literally. Without the threat of massive allied bombing Germany's domestic production of oil would have increased over time as well. Germany chose to lose WW2, a war it was handily winning for the first couple of years.

Even with those imports Nazi occupied Europe was still using more oil than they were importing and producing. The USSR was also requesting, demanding really, further German technical support and assistance, requesting whole factories and other major industrial systems that Germany was loath to just give up.

 

[TDM]

I'm not sure which rail hubs you think the Soviets wrecked IOTL in 1941, but there weren't many if any.

I didn't say rail hubs in the west I said rail infrastructure,

What they did was successfully evacuate their functional rolling stock.

and destroyed the tracks

Plus ITTL there wouldn't be time to actually wreck the rail hub in Moscow given that the Soviets would need it to the last second before it fell.

Does anything about the action in 1941 tell you they had issues with hanging around too long?! Also it's your assumption that Moscow will fall that quickly.

Sure they do damage to the easy stuff to damage, but not the hard to repair stuff like the rail beds. After all during Operation Typhoon there wasn't a problem converting the rail and getting it going again, it was clearing out the enemy troops to let the work crews in and dealing with the weather.

As I said resistance and pressure, from the red army. but you are way underselling how much work it took to rebuild the railways

Similarly after the Smolensk pocket was finished off that city was taking rail shipment within a couple of weeks; they were being hampered by the operational 'tidying up' of Soviet troops after major combat operations were over in the city.

it was taking it in, not passing it on so much, they still had to rebuild as they went. Also not only is Moscow not Smolensk, but germen army in front of Moscow is very much not in the same state as the army that started the battle of Smolensk.

You're ignoring the truck transport system that allowed German forces to routinely operate 300km or more from their rail heads during the campaign.

you have to be joking, the German logistics constantly struggle with doing it because there wasn't enough trucks or fuel or tyres

Resource strapped German army? The resource strapped ones were the Soviets, who only had manpower in excess.

And yet the Soviets transported umpteen hundred factories east and out produced the Germans.

Also the partisan effectiveness was greatly exaggerated and at it's weakest in 1941-42...and in 1942 only got as far as it did due to being organized and sustained via Moscow. Moscow falls and the partisan movement west of the city falls apart. No insurgency survives without constant reinforcement and resupply from an external organized nation-state.

Only if you assume the fall of Moscow is the same as the fall of soviet Russia as organised state. Also the resistance was still plenty strong enough to disrupt things in 1941

you can post what you like about the partisans but read the reports coming back from German officers who were dealing with it. Or the logistics groups trying to operate though those regions.

What losses exactly? Losses in October-December were vastly less than suffered in June-August.

That more point to the fact the losses were high early on, not that there were no losses Oct-dec Also oct-dec had chunks of time where fighting slowed due to conditions. and no assault on Moscow. But yes I meant up to that point

In fact the best casualty ratios of 1941 were achieved in October-December.

it doesn't matter of the Germans can't sustain the ongoing loses long term and the soviets can. you are very good and finding very narrow things to focus on but ignoring the bigger picture

Hyper specific windows on casualty ratios are bit meaningless anyway as casualties weren't suffered or inflicted in a steady stream for all sorts of reasons.

(also I'm not even sure you are right even in your specific claim anyway).

If Moscow falls the Soviets lose their major rail, communications (telephone line), production, electrical generation, etc. hub

and yet they evacuated a huge amount of industry east of Moscow and still kept it supported there.

. Unlike OTL 1942-43 Moscow being out of Soviet hands means the Soviets are heavily weakened (Moscow alone was about 10% of Soviet industrial production and a huge chunk of the defense industry) and not able to resist nearly as well as they did IOTL...which was pretty bad through 1942.

again they moves a lot of the stuff east , hell they already lost loads in the west and yet still out produced the Germans.

also pretty bad through 1942, what particular campaign changing sucess of the German would you like to point too?


The Russian lost approximately the same amount of troops in 1942 as they did in 1941, only of course the fighting didn't start until half way through 1941

.I'm not sure what sort of distance beyond Moscow you're talking about, but I'm not talking about advancing to the Urals, just Gorki-Yaroslavl, which is less far than Stalingrad was from Rostov. Infrastructure on the way there from Moscow is quite a bit better too.

so OK what then just sit there waiting for the USSR to capitulate because you believe losing Moscow mean the Soviets can't resist?

. Given that IOTL the population panicked and tried to flee, the civilians weren't going to do anything. The Soviet government was able to maintain it's grip on the city with a couple of divisions of NKVD, which were quite a bit less powerful than a single panzer division. If you think the civilians are going to fight and resist, why didn't they do so in Smolensk, Kiev, Kharkov, Rostov, Orel, etc.?

Who do you think made up a some of the resistance mentioned earlier, I know you like to downplay the effects of this but they'll fight. Just because they're not going to throw themselves under panzer tracks doesn't mean the Germans won't have their hands full.

. Sounds like a lot of wishful thinking on your part that is not borne out by the historical record. Before you point to Leningrad you have to remember it was held by a heavy concentration of soldiers, not civilians. Plus you need to consider what happened to the Moscow militia divisions that defended the path to the city in October (hint they were wiped out with minor effort). So the civilians who were primed to fight were already dead or captured outside the city.

And yet the Germans in this apparently great position and Moscow standing defenceless before, didn't push on, maybe they were more aware of the realities of seizing a city of 6m people and their own capabilities at that moment, then you are

.With the capital gone the ability to counterattack is basically gone for the foreseeable future

why, government and command can move even if cities can't, again there is this assumption that is Moscow falls the war is all but done.

. too given the dearth of rail, communications, basing, production, etc.

see above

.that were all used to set up OTL counteroffensive armies in December...which incidentially were butchered when they attacked.

No the initial counter attacks pushed the germens back a fair way, the later ones got greedy and were impulsive and less effective, and even then it as because the Germans took up defensive positions and the poor weather conditions.

TBH you seen to cling to this idea that the Germans are going to kill their way out of this. and they killed a lot of Russians but again that ignores the overall reality of the mobilised numbers. even though teh Germans killed significantly more Russians than the other way round it doesn't matter because the Germans can't sustain the loses they suffer.

. David Stahel makes the strong case that the German retreat in December, which basically had ended after a couple-few weeks, was largely due to a collapse in German morale due to failing to take Moscow before winter rather than Soviet offensive prowess.

German morale was low long before they failed to get to Moscow because they had failed to destroy the red army in the promised 8-12 weeks. Morale was poor because they were stuck in piss poor conditions having basically walked the distance, been fighting constantly for five months and suffering losses often to less than 50% of their starting unit strength I'm not expecting you give teh Russians credit for anything of course but a lot of the reason the German weren't in great shape was because of the Russians.

That is Stahel's argument about morale not that it magically disappeared because they weren't allowed to take Moscow.

.That wouldn't be the case in the event of Moscow falling, while the Soviets would be the ones to take the morale hit.

see above

.No one is saying they were nice, just more pragmatic and less ideological to a fault.
The rest of what you've written is just a strawman you've invented rather than a response to anything I wrote.

no I know what you were saying

.And? People were pushing for it pre-invasion, Hitler blocked it. It was possible to create it in 1941 had there been an interest in it from leadership. Russian attitudes changed by 1943 after it was clear the Germans were going to lose, but prior to that they took millions of PoWs and had by some estimates over 1 million volunteers just in 1941:

Collaboration in the German-occupied Soviet Union - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

those were exactly the troops I mentioned you seem to have ignored my points there. The reason why the pre-1941 ideas were knocked back was becasue Hitler and co knew what they were going to do once they invaded.

.So with Hitler dying for some reason you could very well see a different policy in the East. It wouldn't be a majority of occupied ex-Soviets joining in, but the Axis didn't need the majority to make a difference.

only it not just Hitler this idea of a good Germans suddenly undoing all the killing is wishful thinking

.Unsupported opinions aren't evidence.

Oh really so support yours with evidence for a German backed Russian army of liberation that never happened. I'm arguing form what actually happened (a conspicuous lack of such an army) you the one arguing from some spurious what if based on ignoring the inherent nature of the German regime in 1941.

 

[TDM]

Some say that it was absolutely inevitable that Nazi Germany would attack the Soviet Union. I do not think this is the case, for a variety of reasons, but even if one assumes that sooner or later war with the USSR was coming, there is nothing that says it had to start in the summer of 1941, while air and sea battles between Germany and Great Britain were still ongoing. It is entirely possible that Hitler and his staff could have decided to wait a year, and concentrate on bombing Great Britain and deploying U-boats against its navy and merchant fleet. Eventually the Germans would have developed V1 and V2 rockets, and without wasting so many resources on an unwinnable fight with the USSR, they could have rocketed England with terror attacks sufficient to cowe its people into coming to the negotiating table. Who knows, perhaps their V-3 cannon even could have been successfully used against Great Britain in this scenario.

Hitler had been planning to invade Russia from the 30's, and he's being going on about Judeo-Bolshevism for longer. Germany is going to invade. But you are right it doesn't have to be in June 1941 though. But the longer they wait the stronger the Soviets will be, and Germanys resource issues will only increase

but a few points, Germany tried bombing Britain it didn't work (see BoB), in fact by the summer of 1941 it's Britain bombing Germany!

They tried starving Britain but it didn't work (see battle of the Atlantic). also the longer the battle of the Atlantic goes on for the greater the risk Germany will bring the US into the war fully.

V1's rockets were quickly negated by counter measures

V2's couldn't be countered but were massively inefficient in terms of damage dealt.

 

[Luciano7477]

Nope , 1941, only if taking Moscow would have caused a Russian collapse, Heer thought it would , history says otherwise ( 1812 ). 1942 they went for the oil but never realistically had enough themselves in hand to do the job, the forces that got closest to an intact field were all but out of supply ( and the Russians were too good at demolishing them for them to get enough to make a difference ).

The capacity of the red amy to fight would be affected, but they would continue fighting to the end. Remember that they moved the industry to the urals.

 

[Luciano7477]

1812 is a bad comparison, primarily because the nature of war had massively changed. No longer could you supply an army of 100,000 via a cottage industry of muskets, but instead required thousands of miles of railway and an extensive industrial net to meet the needs of a military in the millions. The capture of both Moscow and Leningrad, which nearly happened in both cases, would've collapsed much of the Russian railway network and much of their production, outside of the loss of the C&C both cities provided and their morale value.

As for 1942, it's not the oil that I'm talking about but the grain production afforded by the Kuban and the bits of Ukraine. The USSR's output was reduced right down to to the bottom in 1942-1943 and they were utterly dependent on Lend Lease to survive; had the Germans retained control of the Kuban, it's likely mass starvation would've broke the Soviets.

In 1941 some worker's in the soviet union factories was working 12 hours per day, without vacations, hollidays or days off

Participantes da Segunda Guerra Mundial – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre

pt.wikipedia.org

 

[Luciano7477]

No oil and Germany cannot not only keep attacking but has to pull back ( or get destroyed as per OTL, its why Germany was so limited in mobile war by 1942 ), USSR survived OTL and would realistically in any scenario that Germany does not have more oil.

What is OTL?