A potentially crippling blow to the USSR's ability to make war if Soviet counterattacks fail.off topic a bit, but how would you rate the consequences of this happening on August 29th, and Stalingrad basically falling in the following days/weeks?
Sorry, both stances are not right. If the Germans didn't plunder food and other supplies from the occupied areas of the Soviet Union, the Germans would have to ship and supply their troops from the rest of their controlled countries. The plunder in the East freed up the German economy for domestic usage and to avoid having to produce and ship the materials to the East when they had severe issues with keeping supplies to their forces in the Soviet Union without dealing with shipping a significant amount of food and other materials.
Yes I made that point in my posts as well (including the one you just quoted), but the claim was about Soviet resources being plundered and shipped back to Germany
Except that's not correct. User Garrison never made a claim that Soviet resources were being shipped back to Germany. The statement was (bolding added)
The only user that made a statement about the 'spoils of war' or materials getting shipped back to Germany was you in post #32.
Yeah, in the view point of June 42 it was a fair shot, unfortunately by late September the offensives everywhere, at the Grain Elevator, along the Terek at the Cement factory at Novorossiysk were pretty much stopped, I was wondering what the options were at this point, continuing the offensive was futile, and I can't see any German leadership just pulling back to the 1942 start line, if they can hold on to territory like the Kuban, there is the hope that the Soviets may be resource and population constrained in what they can do on the offensive and with some defensive successes, the Germans could negotiate a compromise peace with the Soviets.
To do that the Germans need to be more successful in the opening of Fall Blau.
TIK covers this in one of his Stalingrad videos. The TLDW is that it's not possible given the extent to which the Germans were pressed from the north.off topic a bit, but how would you rate the consequences of this happening on August 29th, and Stalingrad basically falling in the following days/weeks?
Well, if you are going to use TIK (Whose reliability is in question), he also notes that German reinforcements to Army Group B never were enough to make up for combat losses, despite the Ostheer's overall reinforcements surpassing losses from July to November 1942. By November, Stalingrad had essentially been taken, so a few thousand reinforcements could have tipped the balance. By November, Army Group B was operating with an approximate 56,000 man deficit—receiving the lowest number of reinforcements of all the army groups, despite taking the highest casualties out of all the Army Groups in that time frame. If proper attention had been given to replenishing the loses of Army Group B with fresh reinforcements, which Germany did have available, Stalingrad may well have been taken faster, and the disaster averted. Of course, it is still debated why Army Group B was given the lowest number of reinforcements despite taking the highest casualties from July to November, whether the reason was logistics, overprioritization of Army Group Center (Moscow), or just plain incompetent staff work. What could be done to improve the situation of Army Group B, depends on what caused it to receive the lowest number of reinforcements despite taking the highest losses. It does seem that Franz Halder was delusional about the poor state of affairs at Stalingrad, and that this may have been one of the reasons he was sacked.
Ah OK I took
To my knowledge his reliability issues are mostly down to his libertarian hyper partisanship. When it comes to simply positioning units on maps and noting what they're doing and when (which is what this question concerns) he's pretty reliable and even willing to admit when he has made a mistake.
Yes, that is all true, however the post I was replying to concerned the facts on the ground in late August 1942. It is possible that in another timeline where Army Group B has been adequately reinforced it could have made that pincer movement, but that would require an earlier PoD.
If we talk about population loses recovery being weak then one can argue that it is because the USSR became developed. Urbanization and family planing did a number on population growth. Had the Soviet Union remained un-developed it would have had demographics similar to a third world country.
