No, that's not goalpost shifting and we both know it because otherwise you wouldn't have tried that bit with AFVs.
No, It's quite transparently goalpost shifting. Indeed, the reason I went to AFV numbers is because I did what any rational person would do and assumed you were referring to German AFVs, seeing as Panzer forces = armored forces = German AFVs. And it is AFV numbers, not tank specifically, that matter here anyways.
I only said Panzer force because that's exactly what my citation said; further, are we now going to be pedantic over calling Panzer Divisons by their names? Because that's your logic here.
Your citation said tanks, not panzers, and in terms of tanks it does seem to fit the numbers I've seen. If it means "armor", which means armored fighting vehicles... well, then it doesn't. And I'm not sure what your on about with the panzer divisions, as those divisions also included other AFVs beside tanks (indeed, some of the panzer divisions by 1944 only had tank destroyers and assault guns). I mean, if your trying to claim that 50% of the panzer divisions were in the west... well, that's rather obviously wrong given that the Germans deployed 7 panzer divisions to Normandy and another 2 to Italy. The corresponding number on the Eastern Front at the time of Bagration was 16. Including PanzerGrenadier Divisions adds another 7 in the east, the 4 in Italy I mentioned, and 2 elsewhere.
Prior to D-Day, yes. The percentage increased after.
Doesn't fit with what the numbers say. Between D-Day and the end of July, the number of tanks deployed to Normandy comes out to about 1,500. This is roughly the same as that deployed in the east throughout this period.
Which is utterly false and contradicted by every serious review of the time period in question. For just one example, German Plans for Victory, 1944-45 by Gerhard L. Weinberg, Central European History, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1993), pp. 215-228
Reading through, I see nothing cited about actual plans. It says plenty about the German assessments, but assessments are not plans. It also makes rather clear that by all evidence all of the German assessments were delusional, with the only one which approached reality being British war weariness but even there it elaborates that with hindsight we can see that even this expectation was grossly overblown, so it makes for a rather poor foundation to rest your claims on.
The divisions in question had been stripped from the East and as you already noted Italy already had Panzer Divisions. German thinking over the entirety of late 1943 and early 1944 also called for attention to return to the East after the West had been secured.
Return of attention? Sure. Return of every last panzer and panzergrenadier division? Hardly. Hitler is likely to see this as the opportunity to maybe drive the WAllies from Italy, so down do some of the panzer divisions go to Italy... possibly with some delusional offensive thrown in there. Additionally, even with the immediate landing defeated, the Germans would still be acutely aware that WAllied air and naval supremacy means they could theoretically try another landing at any time and thus be compelled to retain some of those divisions in the west.
Two divisions constitutes a mass deployment as well sending an additional seven for some odd reason? Be serious.
Two divisions? The numbers I gave come out to six divisions, unless you live in some sort of world where 2+4=2. And where did I say the Germans would send another seven? I expect they'd send another few, but all seven would likely be gross overkill in Hitler's eyes.
The only way D-Day can fail is if Ike postpones it until the 18th, which is when the OTL massive Channel storm hit without warning and shut down air support, reinforcements, and resupply for days. Given the miserable spotting conditions and the state the sea was in, NGL was effectively ended as well IIRC.
It's not the only way D-Day can fail, but here I was figuring we were talking about the IOTL D-Day.
Manpower losses don't explain it away when we had Spring Awakening several weeks later and notice I specifically said logistics not just fuel.
Spring Awakening? Which also failed catastrophically in large part due to lack of infantry and fuel and... well, everything else? How does that in anyway contradict the idea that manpower losses led to a shortage of infantry? In fact, the fact that Spring Awakening was able to take place just a few weeks later rather contradicts your claims about the collapse of German transport network, since that network was needed to shift those German forces from the western front to the eastern front in the such a short timespan.
If one looks at individual sectors, one can find falls in German industrial production dating back to the very beginning of the war. On the whole, though, German industrial armaments output kept climbing until December 1944... and only then did it start to collapse. And again, the transport campaign was but one factor in a whole bunch that are still as applicable IATL as they were IOTL.
You're, not your. If you're going to accuse someone of ignornance, at least be grammatically correct in doing so.
I see we're reaching the part where you can't actually summon up coherent points about the actual arguments and have to just nitpick the other sides grammar.
Literally nothing in this contradicts anything I've said or speculated upon. We're both well aware of the planning both sides did but said planning is irrelevant in the event of a changed strategic picture.
Then clearly you lack reading comprehension: by the time D-Day occurred, the
decisions have already been made and the planning flowed from those decisions, not vice-versa. So no, the planning is not irrelevant (especially since the strategic picture post-D-Day failing is really no different then the strategic picture pre-D-Day failing) and you've basically given no reason as to why the planning going to change other then because you say it will.
Or, you know, the overstretched Soviets get said bridgeheads eliminated by fresh Panzer forces.
Yes, yes. The German
ubermensch are suddenly going to succeed at something they've conspicuously failed to do for the past year despite operating at similar levels of numerical overkdisadvantage. And surely, Steiner's counter-attack will relieve Berlin any day now.
TIL combat crossing of rivers are easy.
The Soviets certainly made it look easy enough, given the huge number of river crossing operations they conducted in 1943-45 that the Germans comprehensively failed to defeat or even contain.
Alternatively they could just drive over them. By January-February 1945, the Bug and Vistula is frozen solid in a lot of places.
Except for nearly 10 additional Panzer or Panzer grenadier divisions by August or the 500,000 men used in the Ardennes by January.
So in other words: odds with which the Germans tended to lose in 3-4 days IOTL 1945.
Also, TIL again that crossing a minor river is the same as crossing the Vistula.
Pretty much is when you can rapidly bounce the crossing sites with fast moving mobile forces fresh into the exploitation. Terrain only matters when the troops are there to defend it.
It was such a delusion that when they actually did the different defensive schemes you saw...
The defenses totally collapse inside of 4 days and the defenders completely eradicated while inflicting losses that didn't even scratch the Soviet's overall strength.
… the Soviets get a bloody nose at Seelowe Heights. As for the operational stretch, when combat operations resume they'll have to break the border fortifications on the 1937 border, clear out Pomerania and Silesia (which IOTL took weeks), then cross another major river and then advance on Berlin. In effect, you've added another operation of the same caliber as OTL Vistula-Oder just to reach the, well, Oder.
When the operations resume, the Soviets will overwhelm, encircle, and annihilate the German forces in Pomerania and Silesia (which will honestly be the biggest delay compared to OTL), push through the unmanned border fortifications, cross the undefended Oder, and advance on Berlin. The Soviets easily overran the German border fortifications IOTL and that was for the same reason as they were able to smash across the Vistula so easily: German forces just didn't have the strength to hold them.
I'm not talking about just 2nd Tank Army, I'm talking about all of 1st Belorussian. They are the farthest forward, their logistics net is now massively overextended, and their troops and equipment are exhausted and in need of rest. The introduction of a fresh Panzer Army means you could very well see the Germans smash them up entirely and that is something the Soviets cannot afford going into the Fall of 1944.
So basically Fuhrerbunker delusionalism. The bulk of 1st Belorussian that had moved up to the Bug-Vistula region was still perfectly capable of holding their ground as, unlike the spearheads, they had maintained coherency and mutual support during their advance and when the German counterattacks which had driven in the spearheads pushed on to try and throw back the rest of the front, that bulk stopped them stone-dead with a dogged anti-tank defense in depth. Even with reinforcements from Normandy, the whole of 1st Belorussian Front is still going to massively outweigh the counter-attacking Germans and while they may be able to push in the forward spearheads even better then they did IOTL, their still going to founder on the vast follow-on formations with far more men, tank, and artillery then they can deal with. This is without consider that coming up beside 1st Belorussian is 2nd Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts, who add another million-and-a-half men, tens of thousands of more guns and mortars, and thousands of more AFVs that the Germans are going to have to deal with if they want to inflict a reverse serious enough for the Red Army to
really feel it.
No such conclusion was reached and it's pretty hilarious we now take single posts as such. Remind me the next time you do a thread to make a single post saying X won't work for some reason and I can thus claim your entire thesis is debunked.
Huh? Yes it was. It's clear you didn't actually read the thread, otherwise you would have seen the posts towards the end there by not just me but Julian and Seleceus. Maybe you could try and actually muster a response to the points raised, but that seems too difficult for you for some reason.
FNB is well fortified and connected into the local terrain, allowing for an integrated defense along the extent of the Carpathians... As for the how, again, you've changed the strategic picture entirely; a Hitler focused on the successes of the Western Front and willing to see potential elsewhere could accent to such.
Again, you've not posited any real connection between D-Day's failure and why Hitler is so suddenly wholesale changing his entire operational methodology on the Eastern Front. You just say he'll do because D-Day failed but provide no causality whatsoever. Until you do, you're really just blowing smoke. If anything, I'd imagine that D-Day failing would reinforce Hitler's inclination that he is always right and his generals always wrong, since he predicted that D-Day would surely fail, and thus cause him to double down on holding every inch of ground in the east.
By late July, the commanders on scene were requesting to do exactly as I said too, so I'm not sure what you're talking about at the end there.
Which does not indicate they were expecting an immediate offensive. On the other hand, the day before over a million men and a thousand tanks fell upon his forces, the German general in charge of the sector reported he only expected a minor attack by small forces...
Ah, so in other words you have nothing to cite and thus were indeed making things up. Good to know.
Huh? What's there to cite? Anyone can go back and read your posts on this very thread and you talking about how it's gonna radically change the air war in Germany's favor and will cause the WAllies to suddenly stop bombing important strategic targets. That's very much claiming major alterations to the German strategic situation.
This would come as a hell of a shock to the 8th Air Force, given the six month bombing halt over Germany from late 1943 to early 1944.
Seeing as that halt wasn't imposed by German AAA, so what? Is the new shell suddenly going to summon up the thousands of trained pilots the Germans had in 1943 and the fuel expended in that?
