Hitler Gives More Control To Generals?

Surely, attacking Calais was Guderian's fault. The PoD isn't about him.

Besides, the BEF still had enough firepower left (including the Royal Navy, potentially, if an attack came), and a handy marsh, to make a respectable fight of it at Dunkirk. Whether the men would actually fight is another matter; what I know about their morale is decidedly mixed. There was definitely a rearguard, but you also hear of officers forcing their men into ranks at gunpoint. EDIT: I confess that this is researched from Stardestroyer, where I sometimes lurk, rather than a proper source; it's somewhere in their 'History' section.
 
People refuse to listen to the fact that the Germans were out of ammo/fuel and couldn't assault Dunkirk anyway....

And that they actually *did* try to attack it but it was the first demonstration of what the 20th Century proved over and over again, that air power on its own is not equal to the task of destroying a sufficiently strong ground force.
 
No, they weren't, there were a lot of Soviet defeats that were covered up in the official historiography, and the Red Army suffered horrendous losses. The Soviets won because they had the support of the West, better logistics, and because they knew that if they lost, they would be exterminated. However, the mythical German general staff wasn't as good at waging war as the popular mythology holds. However, you have a point that the Soviet army was far more competent than it was depicted in the West during the Cold War.

A distinction has to be made on what levels was the Red Army superior to the Wehrmacht. On a tactical level, the Germany army was almost always better than the Red Army. They had a much stronger NCO cadre, often better equipped (debatable), and had a better doctrine. On the local battlefield, Germans could usually inflict massive damage on Soviet soldiers even in battles they lost (some of this was also due to them being on the defensive).

However, on the highest levels, STAVKA really pounded the hell out of the OKH/OKW after Barbarossa. They continually excelled as maskirovka (concealing their armies build up behind lines), fooled the Germans into where they were attacking, and had fantastic success 1941-1945 (the Moscow counterattack, Uranus/Saturn, Kursk, Bagration, and the attack into the Balkans pretty much pulled down the pants of the Germans. Germany was not able to do anything like this after the summer of 1945.

At the operational level, Germany was initially superior, but the Red Army caught up to them by 1943 and surpassed them in 1944-1945.

Yes, the Red Army had its faults even late in the war, and they had some notable failures. And they continued to use up far more men than they should have.
 
Evil loses in the end because it's short-sighted.

Several facts are indisputable:
Hitler's plan to attack the USSR was stupid, insane, and cost him the war.
The various Wehrmacht generals AFAIC fell into three camps-
German patriots who wanted Germany to avenge the wrongs of the treaty of Versailles. eg Rommel, Beck, Canaris
Self-seeking careerists who liked combat and earning their spurs Guderian, Skorzeny, etc.
True Nazis with all the racist baggage.
Membership fluctuated between the camps based on conscience, opportunities, and expediency.

AFAIK under more professional military leadership, the Wehrmacht could have done much better in defending themselves in the Eastern Front, but real professionals wouldn't have invaded Russia a la Barbarossa in 1941 or any other time. A vague scanning of Nappy's Russian campaign using the resources of a united western Europe and still failing would've been instructive, but they thought they had the technology, Aryan will, and so forth to go smash the Bolsheviki once and for all without anyone else's help. To a man the Wehrmacht were all delusional on that score. (No hate on the Italians, Spaniards, Romanians, and others that often fought well on the Eastern front on Germany's side, but they were treated badly, equipped worse, and coordination with OKW was a grim joke from the git-go and never improved.)
Later, the Wehrmacht were hampered not only by Hitler's increasingly crackpot meddling but Himmler's SS and other players who could've cared less about military victory as long as the Final Solution was carried out and the occupation was as brutal and silly as possible. There were pragmatic exceptions, such as Heydrich as well as humane exceptions to a very brutal and self-defeating rule.
Plus let's not forget the logistical muddle the Wehrmacht was in from 1939-1943 while Germany kept trying to wage war on the cheap w/o gearing up for full war production. That was the whole point to blitzkrieg. They wanted to win the war in twelve weeks. Once that wasn't happening, things went downhill, because Germany's economy was in no shape for an ongoing war of attrition with 3/4 of the planet. Even with sane, competent leadership on the battlefield, they had too much wrong elsewhere to make much of a difference in a total war.

Hitler's leadership style was to have self-defeating intramural squabbling between different factions to keep them from developing a consensus to depose him. Giving the generals opportunities for their men to develop competing loyalties to their commanders was anathema to Nazi doctrine.
You didn't swear loyalty to Germany in the Wehrmacht, you swore it to Hitler personally.
Only after five years of war and two years of noticing that there were way too many Soviets, Yanks, Brits, and other folks coming over the hill for them to fight off (and German cities going up in flames) did you see dissension in the ranks.

Listening to Canaris would've been smarter, allowing the captured Soviet POWs to organize into units dedicated to liberating the USSR and establishing non-communist Russia, Ukraine, et al. Allowing them to liberate and rule themselves would've saved the endless drain of resources
partisans inflicted on the German rear. However, you'd need capable, non-ideological pragmatists in charge, not racist loons like Himmler or corrupt kleptomaniacs like Goring in charge of running the civilian economy in occupied territory, but then we wouldn't be talking about Nazis, would we?
 
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Hkelukka

Banned
Forgoing the obvious ethical implications of having a state like the nazi state win the war. Had H not been on meth, that victory is, while not assured. Certainly a strong possibility. That of course depends on definition of win.

One of the easiest times would be during 1940 to 1941. Simply accepting that while the war MIGHT be over before winter 1941, the occupation and mop-up operations will certainly last for years. So long term winter war is a certainty. Get at least a cursory idea of what winter war is like. Get some Finns or someone with experience in winter warfare to help you.

During the 1941 fall, start moving most of the heavy equipment off the field and start digging in with infantry. Go to a Infantry defense in depth while keeping the heavier equipment out of being frozen solid. Then once spring rolls along move it back to the front. That way you'll save a lot of firewood and petrol that would have gone to keeping tanks running in weather that is much much better for infantry anyway.

With the spring of 1942 rolling by, a even partially prepared Germany will be at least 1 infantry army stronger, potentially 2 or 1 armor army simply due to less winter losses and better preparation. And I'd hate to see what happens if instead of Romanians and Hungarians guarding the vulnurable flanks. You'll have a entire german army, with years of experience on the flanks to Stalingrad. And what that would mean for the oil of Baku and the whole caucasus region.

It is very probable that both Stalingrad and Baku would fall, neither in working order and by that point. Su would be in a awful situation indeed.

Anyway, this topic has as many opinions as there are alters. War is such a guessing game.
 
All of the above falls into the usual stupid AH assumption that the German supermen can prepare better and perform better than OTL. Whilst the hairy Russian sub-humans will do nothing to alter their OTL actions based on this altered situation.


If the Germans suffer less during the Soviet winter counter-offensives, then there is a good chance the Soviets/Stalin won’t be as dangerously over-optimistic as they were OTL, after the near-rout of Army Group Centre, when it stalled before Moscow. So the Red Army will be vastly stronger in 1942 than OTL, while the German advance into Soviet territory will be far shorter at least on the Central Front.


Also on the main point of this topic giving greater powers to ''the generals'' implies they were a coherent group instead of a pack of arrogant, squabbling self-aggrandizing drama-queens riven by personal rivalry and trying to screw each other over (And seeking favour to do so). It is notable that the Kaisereich was pretty much ruled by the generals from 1916 onwards during WW1. The results were utterly catastrophic.
 
As was said above, Germany could well have defeated the Soviets relatively quickly if they had portrayed themselves as liberators of the Ukraine and Bielorussian from Bolshevism and Russian tyranny. There were many in the Wehrmacht who advocated such a strategy and I'm sure there would have been plenty of Petain and Quisling analogues in those areas who would have been happy to run puppet states. But of course Nazi ideology, based on Lebensraum and regarding Slavs as "sub-human" made such a strategy impossible.

Hitler's other great failure was not just that his strategy was wrong but that he tried to intervene in command decisions right down to the lowest levels. Stalin had a better approach, "I want "X" done, how you do it is up to you but if you screw up I'll have you shot!" I have a feeling that the ease of Germany's triumphs from 1939-41 made Hitler complacent and he began to believe his own bullshit that he was a military genius and "The Power of the Will" could prevail over such trivial matters as logistics!
 
As was said above, Germany could well have defeated the Soviets relatively quickly if they had portrayed themselves as liberators of the Ukraine and Bielorussian from Bolshevism and Russian tyranny. There were many in the Wehrmacht who advocated such a strategy and I'm sure there would have been plenty of Petain and Quisling analogues in those areas who would have been happy to run puppet states. But of course Nazi ideology, based on Lebensraum and regarding Slavs as "sub-human" made such a strategy impossible.

Hitler's other great failure was not just that his strategy was wrong but that he tried to intervene in command decisions right down to the lowest levels. Stalin had a better approach, "I want "X" done, how you do it is up to you but if you screw up I'll have you shot!" I have a feeling that the ease of Germany's triumphs from 1939-41 made Hitler complacent and he began to believe his own bullshit that he was a military genius and "The Power of the Will" could prevail over such trivial matters as logistics!

*Sigh* This old fable again...I'll tell you why that is quite wrong at length.

If you count Hiwis, the total numbers who supported the German war effort was probably in excess of the 200k. But this only tells one side of the story. The other side is the number of partisans who formed resistance movements within the occupied zones long before the central government thought to harness such efforts. Just in the Ukraine, where the population had PLENTY of reason to hate the Soviets and Stalin (somewhere around 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 had died during a famine) partisan numbers exceeded 100,000. More than one hundred thousand volunteer fighters supporting the government in a region where Stalin et al STARVED up to six million people to death. That is not the profile of a populous waiting to revolt.

Across the USSR the total number of partisans dwarf the 200k who decided to support the Reich. For every volunteer to support the Germans (and BTW, get far more, and better, food for themselves and their families, and avoided getting killed by the Nazis) there were at least two who volunteered to live in the forests and eat pine needles so they could oppose the invader.

The fable is that the vast majority of Soviet peoples hated the government enough to betray the Rodina. They didn't, as the almost unbelievable sacrifices of the Soviet people demonstrated. Had the various subject peoples been as disaffected as some, including, it would seem, you imagine, the Germans would have been able to walk into Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, and every other city without firing a shot. There were not enough NKVD, NKGB, and GRU troops to prevent a mass uprising if the desire was there in ANY of the cities across the war zone. It simply wasn't.

Even in Leningrad (a city where the loyalty of the population was deeply questioned by the Communist Party), where the suffering was beyond description, the civilian population was supportive of the war effort even as some segments of the populous began to eat the dead (several hundred cases of cannibalism were documented in NKVD records). If you are in a circumstance where you are eating wallpaper (or worse) and the populous still supports the war effort in overwhelming numbers, the desire to revolt simply isn't there.

Hitler thought the Soviet peoples would revolt. He was wrong, as were all others who believed the same, not because the people loved the Communist Party (they didn't), but because they loved the Motherland.
 
But Hitler went about it in completely the wrong way, the trick is not to incite a mass revolt but to get a big enough section of the people to if not fight for you, to acquiesce to your rule. That means you ensure that they are fed, planning to appropriate just about all the food supply for your own needs and leaving them to starve as the Nazis planned to do is totally counter productive. It's also not a good idea to subject people to vicious collective punishments for the slightest infraction and carry out widespread repression. I'm sure you know about the well documented cases of peasants in the early days of Barbarossa greeting German soldiers with traditional gifts, the potential for a divide and conqueor strategy was there but Nazi ideology meant that it couldn't be used.

I can't remember where I read it but someone wrote that the supreme irony of Barbarossa was that by making the elimination of Slavic culture as well as Communism a key war aim Hitler forced people who were otherwise hostile to the regime to fight for it because they would have been exterminated along with the Bolsheviks. You mention the Hiwis, yes there numbers were relatively small but is that surprising considering the way they were treated as absolute scum by the Germans? Whatever they did in the war at the end of it they would have been sent to the gas chambers at the War's end, they could have been much better employed in an expanded version of Vlasov's ROA, if you could get Vlasov to ditch his ideas about Russian nationalism.

And surely the reason why there were no mass revolts in Kiev, Minsk and the other cities is that the people were too disorganised and their natural instinct was to get into the cellar and wait for the fighting to pass. To use a modern example there was no mass rising in Baghdad in 2003 despite the scale of Saddam's repression, nor did any German cities revolt on any large scale as the Allies closed in. If you do take part in such an insurrection you run the risk that if the regime regains control there is going to be serious retribution meted out as we are seeing today in Deraa and Misratah. Most people in Kiev in 1941 probably hated the Soviet regime intensely but after years of brutal repression they were also scared of it and thats why the best option is to keep your head down.
 

Hkelukka

Banned
And the same argument would continue for a century.

Some adamant that yes, germany could have won.

Some equally adamant that no, germany could not have won.

All in all, read the arguments and then make up your own mind. I've made up mine.

To answer the OP. Your question has a million potential answers.
 
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