Deleted member 1487
Which is why its silly to say the Soviets or Germans were good or bad at something, because you cannot divorce it from the context and take one piece of it and make pronouncements. OKH/OKW could have done things a lot differently from 1942 on in the East and changed how that campaign was fought and played out, but by that point it was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The thing was due to Hitler the German military was constantly called on to do what it did not have the resources to achieve realistically, but due to Hitler's magical thinking and the purged military's adherence to orders, no matter how crazy they did it against their better judgement. The German military could have fought the war in the East significantly better divorced from Hitler's interference, which is why I'm saying that saying their operational skill was terrible is not fair, but the situation being what it was they went along with orders and suffered as a result.The snag is that you can't ignore the influence of Stalin or Hitler on Soviet and Nazi operational planning. It doesn't matter to an objective analysis of events on the Eastern Front why German operational planning sucked, the outcome is it did. Maybe in an ideal world where the old Great General Staff ran the military, Germany could produce plans capable of beating the USSR. Then again, that Germany wouldn't be Nazi Germany and it probably wouldn't have attacked the Soviet Union in the first place. Moreover, wasn't the Schiefflen Plan one that broke down on logistics? So who knows, or can know, how a traditional German military-run campaign would have gone?
Taking on three powers, two of which can outproduce you and third match you, is a definite Strategic NO-NO. It explains adequately why Germany lost the war. But operations planners have to deal with this reality and Nazi German ones couldn't. The evidence is that Nazi Germany couldn't or wouldn't match its plans to resources. Being by far the best at the tactical level of land warfare wasn't enough.
The reality is that war is not a technocratic exercise divorced from wider issues. Saying that OKH would have made a better job of running the campaigns on the Eastern Front without Hitler may be true but it is unprovable. And Halder's plans for Barbarossa don't fill me with confidence.
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As to having an AT division, it would seem it was really only useful as a parking lot/logistics management for extra AT units to be distributed by army command as needed; perhaps that would be useful to have those extra units if available in that configuration, but I don't think we can say for sure without extensive study of operational engagements and wargaming that option.
Clearly it wasn't going to have a strategic effect on the war, but it could have been an interesting option given the situation, moreso than the artillery division, which IMHO really only made sense for offensive operations, which was not an option after Kursk in the East. It might have been an interesting experiment in a constricted battle zone like Narwa, Smolensk, or Normandy, but did not make sense in Ukraine in 1943-44.