How late could Nazi Germany have turned the tide of war?

April 1944, according to Halder and before you dismiss him as a deranged lunatic bear in mind that he is the guy who edited the history of the Eastern front fist published in English and which has influenced all history since then and can be just as deluded about the prospects for success at any other date.

The part missing in your post is the one in which you acknowledge that the source you quoted actually doesn't say anything about the importance of the Soviet military success in the fall of 1942, or about the importance for the economy of regaining ground.

Of the consequences of German Actions in the occupied areas. In fact that particular source is a musing on psychology not economics, the main book not so much.

Are you actually going to claim that if the front lines remained static through Spring 1943 that the Soviet economy would have been just fine sans the millions of workers it recovered and millions of new men it could recruit for the military...or the arable land and raw material deposits in those territories?

I presume what you mean is if Blue was successful and the Caucusus oilfields taken, and the offensive by Don, Southwestern and Stalingrand Fronts beaten back the Soviets would have been worse off, yeah fine,

How you going to do that then?
 

thaddeus

Donor
June 21st, 1941 Going into USSR was a bad idea for various reasons well talked about on forum. Once war expanded unless USSR collapsed there was no way UK was going to exit war. I believe USSR could be defeated but its highly unlikely to just collapse in 6 months; possible but unlikely.

December 10th, 1941. A case could be made that that its over December 7th as once USA is at war sooner or later a reason will be found for US to declare war on its own. Declaring war just removed all doubt at final outcome.

my view there is a chance to set the Soviets back from waging offensive war for a number of years, then an open question whether the US/UK would invade against the kind of force available?
 
my view there is a chance to set the Soviets back from waging offensive war for a number of years, then an open question whether the US/UK would invade against the kind of force available?

If the soviets are in the war but German defenses are deemed to strong in the west then an AEF on Eastern front is a consideration. This aside I dont see how the Germans could strong defend Northern France, entire Med Coast line (France, Italy and Greece) and Norway. There would be a weak point and the US and British would attack there.

Michael
 

Deleted member 1487

I presume what you mean is if Blue was successful and the Caucusus oilfields taken, and the offensive by Don, Southwestern and Stalingrand Fronts beaten back the Soviets would have been worse off, yeah fine,
How you going to do that then?
Nope, just the Axis holding on the Don and Stalingrad as well as in the Caucasus. Really just have them take Stalingrad early and then don't burn up their strength in the city fight and over focus their forces and reserves in that one small area.
 
Nazis are screwed, whether its because of the bureaucracy, ideology, corruption, stupidity, arrogance, etc.
You need a team of GODs to save Nazi Germany from complete and utter destruction.
You also need another team of GODs to guide Hitler, make him appoint the right people, say the right things, make the right military decisions.
And you need Lady Luck herself sitting beside Germany, making sure it doesn't fall and shatter into a zillion little pieces.
That's why Axis victory/Nazi victory TLs are so unplausible.
 
'Winning' the war might be a stretch. Stalemate is not.

Case Blue is probably the only option to 'turn the tide'. It must be able to deny the Baku oil to the Soviets. That alone is a game changer. Baku supplied 80% of Soviet oil and even a slight degradation of this would have been felt. Let us be generous and say the oil production goes from 80% to 40% of Soviet oil? Major offensive actions would have been near-impossible and that would mean no Kursk build-up.

IF the summer part of case Blue goes reasonable (Stalingrad invested, Caspian sea reached and oil supply disrupted) we could look at 'Torch'.

(on that account it would have been 'smart' if Malta had been occupied in 1940).

Monty's battle was hanging in the balance, French resistance was stronger than anticipated, Casablanca was simply just too far away from the real action.
Would a stalemate (no Stalingrad as we know it) have released additional troops for North Africa? Logistics?

If Torch is not a success or failure, but simply a fizzle, then what?

Could we see a German effort being turned to Med instead of Russia (supposing this is a stalemate in 1943 and 1944).
 
The Germans and Italians have a problem in the Mediterranean concerning logistics which is called 'The Royal Navy has some submarines too and the Royal Airforce also has anti-shipping aircraft.'
They also have a further problem which is that fighting in North Africa is at best a rather slow way to attrite UK manpower. Sure they can conquer lots and lots of nice dry desert though. They can maybe even get to the Suez Canal (which the British aren't using anyway, except to move stuff to Cyprus and Alexandria 'the long way around'.)
But to dispose of the UK, they need to break the UK economy and/or the UK manpower.
Sticking a bunch of fighter aircraft in the air over western Europe, ramping up anti-aircraft batteries and giving Arthur Harris the finger and taunting him 'Come on if you think you're hard enough' is probably going to do more towards breaking the UK economy and/or manpower than becoming the proud owners of a lot of sand and stones. (Shooting down lots of British bomber planes will also provide a constant supply of scrap metal for German industry...)

Oh yes; grabbing enough sand and stones might topple Churchill. The problem is that the House of Commons' preferred replacement for Churchill, in the summer of 1942, was something which was heading in the direction of a royal military dictatorship (they wanted to put the Duke of Gloucester in charge of the war, if I remember my history books correctly.) Removing Churchill by conquering sand and stones so that the UK government topples him does not put a 'dove' who desires peace in charge in the UK.
 

thaddeus

Donor
there is logic to the "Panther-Wotan Line" and "Festung Tunisia" if German forces had not been destroyed at Stalingrad and Second Battle of el-Alamein?
 
If we take a potential allied mistake into account it would be mid 1942, via a combination of case blue being more competently commanded, leading to Stalingrad being captured off the march, allowing the Volga to be the stop line with follow on efforts being used to push into the oil producing regions, and the Americans slamming their foot down for Operation roundup/sledgehammer instead of Operation torch. Roundup would have a high chance of being defeated and giving the allies very heavy manpower and shipping losses, which could allow the Germans a lot of breathing space in the west that they didn't historically have, after Stalingrad and Tunisgrad there wasn't even a chance of stalemate or a ww1 type surrender in place
 
The Germans and Italians have a problem in the Mediterranean concerning logistics which is called 'The Royal Navy has some submarines too and the Royal Airforce also has anti-shipping aircraft.'
They also have a further problem which is that fighting in North Africa is at best a rather slow way to attrite UK manpower. Sure they can conquer lots and lots of nice dry desert though. They can maybe even get to the Suez Canal (which the British aren't using anyway, except to move stuff to Cyprus and Alexandria 'the long way around'.)
But to dispose of the UK, they need to break the UK economy and/or the UK manpower.
Sticking a bunch of fighter aircraft in the air over western Europe, ramping up anti-aircraft batteries and giving Arthur Harris the finger and taunting him 'Come on if you think you're hard enough' is probably going to do more towards breaking the UK economy and/or manpower than becoming the proud owners of a lot of sand and stones. (Shooting down lots of British bomber planes will also provide a constant supply of scrap metal for German industry...)

Oh yes; grabbing enough sand and stones might topple Churchill. The problem is that the House of Commons' preferred replacement for Churchill, in the summer of 1942, was something which was heading in the direction of a royal military dictatorship (they wanted to put the Duke of Gloucester in charge of the war, if I remember my history books correctly.) Removing Churchill by conquering sand and stones so that the UK government topples him does not put a 'dove' who desires peace in charge in the UK.

Lol, instead the Luftwaffe handed 2000 planes worth of scrap metal to the RAF.
I think that means they are Goering to lose the war.
 
Top