Nazi Germany vs. USSR: Schools of Thought

Schools of thought about Germany's chances against the USSR

  • Germany came very close to knocking out the USSR.

    Votes: 33 21.2%
  • The best the Nazi's could have done was a Brest-Litovsk like peace.

    Votes: 50 32.1%
  • Germany maybe could have won but not with Hitler.

    Votes: 49 31.4%
  • Germany never had a chance of beating the USSR.

    Votes: 24 15.4%

  • Total voters
    156
Indeed. What disturbs me is that since any scenario in which the Germans "win" in a traditional sense (as opposed to hold out longer, fight a differant war, or make a seperate peace with some party at some point) basically has to be contrived and implausible, somebody is going out of their way to put people under Nazist rule. Why? Sometimes the motive is an innocent one, to explore the consequences of Nazi victory and thus to make clear the true nature of the Nazi regime to those who have forgotten it.

But others just brush off the fate of Nazi victims with a vague murmur about Madagascar.

Let the witch hunts begin!

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Nazi or someone who speculates that the Nazis could have beaten the USSR in WWII. That is all.
 
Indeed. What disturbs me is that since any scenario in which the Germans "win" in a traditional sense (as opposed to hold out longer, fight a differant war, or make a seperate peace with some party at some point) basically has to be contrived and implausible, somebody is going out of their way to put people under Nazist rule. Why? Sometimes the motive is an innocent one, to explore the consequences of Nazi victory and thus to make clear the true nature of the Nazi regime to those who have forgotten it.

But others just brush off the fate of Nazi victims with a vague murmur about Madagascar.

Let the witch hunts begin!

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Nazi or someone who speculates that the Nazis could have beaten the USSR in WWII. That is all.
 
Indeed. What disturbs me is that since any scenario in which the Germans "win" in a traditional sense (as opposed to hold out longer, fight a differant war, or make a seperate peace with some party at some point) basically has to be contrived and implausible, somebody is going out of their way to put people under Nazist rule. Why? Sometimes the motive is an innocent one, to explore the consequences of Nazi victory and thus to make clear the true nature of the Nazi regime to those who have forgotten it.

But others just brush off the fate of Nazi victims with a vague murmur about Madagascar.

That also applies to people who propose Confederate victories in 1862 or 1863 when a fair portion of the Confederacy was dealing with Unionist guerrilla wars.
 
I think the bigger thing is simply that when Hitler's armies succeeded in a one month victory that accomplished what four years of Imperial German struggle by the kind of staff that fought in World War II failed to do, he reasonably looked at the poor Soviet performance against Finland and decided he would be able to win the war quickly.
In the context of OTL 1941 Hitler's decision was entirely rational and as it was the collapse of the USSR nearly happened anyway.

Of course there was reason behind it. I think that the driving force behind the decision to mobilize as softly as possible was the fear of an event akin to the November-Revolution of 1918. The Nazis believed the right-wing lie that the German war effort had been stabbed in the back by its own population and saw this as the Reich's Achilles-heel.

On the other hand, he apparently didn't look at a map. :D


Analyses of how and why the Allies won show that was the case, yes. The defeat of France in 1940 was due to a cumbersome inflexible command structure that was given a complete strategic surprise and had neither the depth nor the reserves of the Soviet Union to eke out survival.

...and most of all not the psychology. As the "Westfeldzug" has its 70th anniversary these days, it is unbelievable to see how the French leadership (with some exceptions) simply lacked any initiative to stop happening what they saw was their own defeat.
It seems as if they had accepted to have lost the war as soon as something unexpected happened.
(Some reports said that the same happened to Stalin directly at the beginning of Barbarossa, but he had a bit more time and space, you are right.)

It would be an open question as to whether or not the very different war that would ensue in 1942 would create a geopolitical world we'd recognize. A 1939-1941 period that leaves UK military power even weaker with a USSR much less dependent on Lend-Lease aid and a USA that would have struggles doing half of what it did without British assistance is going to leave Communism after the war in a vastly stronger position relative to liberal democracy.

An intriguing possibility is if the USSR wins the war against the Germans in mid-1943 and then turns around and deals an August Storm to Japan in say, 1944. If the Soviets are slamming into the Kwangtung Army at the same time as the USA is invading either Formosa or the Philippines.....

It might bring Japan to either fight still more desperately in which case it'd be rather clearer how much nukes on their own would do to make Japan surrender or World War II overall might end in 1944.

The butterflies, of course, of a much more effective Soviet response and then the rollback of the Germans for things like the Holocaust will be immense. If those millions of Soviet dead IOTL are never dead that itself changes the demographics of the USSR post-war somewhat. And of course a Holocaust aborted with lots more Jews alive might mean no Israel at all if the anti-Zionist Jews are saved by the USSR.

That would indeed be an interesting discussion, but should belong into a new thread. Something like "What if Barbarossa failed and Sovjet counteroffensives pushed the front back to the Molotov-Ribbentrop-line by the end of 1942"?
 
Of course there was reason behind it. I think that the driving force behind the decision to mobilize as softly as possible was the fear of an event akin to the November-Revolution of 1918. The Nazis believed the right-wing lie that the German war effort had been stabbed in the back by its own population and saw this as the Reich's Achilles-heel.

On the other hand, he apparently didn't look at a map. :D

From my POV as I said, he'd overthrown Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece all in one go. Given that the French had better equipment and more skilled leaders than a first impression would have said of the USSR in June of 1941 he did have a fairly rational view of it. It was only by the time of the Battle of Moscow that the misjudgment became apparent to him.

Hörnla said:
...and most of all not the psychology. As the "Westfeldzug" has its 70th anniversary these days, it is unbelievable to see how the French leadership (with some exceptions) simply lacked any initiative to stop happening what they saw was their own defeat.
It seems as if they had accepted to have lost the war as soon as something unexpected happened.
(Some reports said that the same happened to Stalin directly at the beginning of Barbarossa, but he had a bit more time and space, you are right.)

I think the problem was less that French leadership went into shock than a trifecta of errors as bad as the Soviets but with far less room to maneuver and much less willingness on the part of the population and the government to sanction losses (and in fact less room, period, for that). The French, as per the Maginot Line were banking on styming the Germans on their side of the border and expected the Germans to strike with the means of 1918.

Then the Germans struck through the Ardennes with much more power and much faster-organized power than anyone at the time in the Allies had reason to believe. With the complete strategic surprise and complete lack of strategic reserve, the Germans beat a larger army with better equipment in the space of a single month.

Hörnla said:
That would indeed be an interesting discussion, but should belong into a new thread. Something like "What if Barbarossa failed and Soviet counteroffensives pushed the front back to the Molotov-Ribbentrop-line by the end of 1942"?

Well, this thread *is* about Germany v. the USSR and there's multiple ways that the war could have gone different and strengthened the complete monsters v. the scumbags.
 

King Thomas

Banned
For Germany to win, they need to not treat the Russians as subhumans. Then they can get, with a bit of tact,alot of Russian support.
 
For Germany to win, they need to not treat the Russians as subhumans. Then they can get, with a bit of tact,alot of Russian support.

Pfeh....all they really needed to was use their new conquered industrial resources properly after attacking in June. Niceness doesn't always get a conquering power somewhere. Just look at Genghis Khan's Empire.
 
For Germany to win, they need to not treat the Russians as subhumans. Then they can get, with a bit of tact,alot of Russian support.

Of course then they wouldnt be Nazi's hence chances are no war in the east. Also the old line that ''if only the Germans had been slightly nicer and only enslaved the Russians rather than killing then & burning all their stuff they'd all turn against teh evol commies in Moscow'' is BS.

The Nazi regime no matter what it dose cannot win over popular support even if the SS men/garrison troops deployed in the east dedicated themselves solely to the task of handing out chocolate, cigarettes & vodka to the Russian peasantry.

Germany is after all an imperialist invader no matter how you look at it. At best they can slow down the formation of partisan armies, as sans the insane levels of Nazi brutality most average people will try to ride out an occupation rather than risk fighting it.
 
People often under-estimate the impact of the atrocities committed by the SS and the Wehrmacht.

These atrocities were so bad that they succeeded in achieving the near impossible: turning the rabidly anti-Soviet Ukrainians pro-Soviet. The atrocities were so bad that thousands of people became partisans and those partisans tied down dozens of German and Axis divisions that could've been used on the front line. The partisans also severely disrupted German communications and supplies.

The atrocities also tied up a lot of German manpower, rolling stock and weapons that were desperately needed on the front lines.

The most important aspect of the atrocities, though, is that they led the Soviets to fight to the death rather than surrender to the Germans because they knew what fate awaited them if they did. They also stiffened the resolve of the Soviets to fight back so they could get revenge for the mass murders committed against them.

If the Germans had waited until after the war was over to commit atrocities they would've defeated the Soviet Union.
 
People often under-estimate the impact of the atrocities committed by the SS and the Wehrmacht.

These atrocities were so bad that they succeeded in achieving the near impossible: turning the rabidly anti-Soviet Ukrainians pro-Soviet. The atrocities were so bad that thousands of people became partisans and those partisans tied down dozens of German and Axis divisions that could've been used on the front line. The partisans also severely disrupted German communications and supplies.

The atrocities also tied up a lot of German manpower, rolling stock and weapons that were desperately needed on the front lines.

The most important aspect of the atrocities, though, is that they led the Soviets to fight to the death rather than surrender to the Germans because they knew what fate awaited them if they did. They also stiffened the resolve of the Soviets to fight back so they could get revenge for the mass murders committed against them.

If the Germans had waited until after the war was over to commit atrocities they would've defeated the Soviet Union.

I call BS, only in west Ukraine (annexed in 1939-40) was that a factor the rest of Ukraine was loyal or at the very worst ambivalent towards the regime despite Stalinist oppresiveness.

The idea that if the Germans had been nicer they've won the war in the east is Cold War agi-prop. The facts are that Soviet solders in many cases did fight to the death right from the start, only surrendering ift they’d been hopelessly cut off. Generally speaking there were well recorded cases of Gulag prisoners volunteering for service in penal battalions (read suicide) the worst job in the Red Army, as soon as news of the invasion became public.

No the Germans would not have won if they'd been ''nicer'', at best the partisan armies dont grow quite so fast but it'll still happen regardless.
 
Generally speaking there were well recorded cases of Gulag prisoners volunteering for service in penal battalions (read suicide) the worst job in the Red Army, as soon as news of the invasion became public.

1. Quite understandable if you ask me considering life in a Gulag.
2. Being a red army solider during the first months of Operation Barbarossa was generally suicidal (during battle as well in the case of being taken prisoner by the Germans)
3. One has to take into account that the purges had brought a lot of people into the Gulag who were actually not only supportive of the Sovjet Union, but spent their life building that state. Not only would this kind of prisoner still be willing to risk his life for the Sovjet Union, maybe even for Stalin, but would crave at any possibility to redeem himself (because he was only sent to the Gulag due to some sort of tragic misunderstanding, of course).

---

On the general question of "niceness".

1. The degree to which the German planning from the outset intended to break most rules of civilized warfare in Russia would demand a change of a degree which is impossible to combine with NS-leadership.

2. To make use of such a situation, a complete programme of what we call today "nation-building" for diverse ethniticies would be needed, with a fine balance of X's, Y's and Z's independance and Germany's interests. This would fail due to apprehensiveness on the side of people which have only seen the worst side of history for some time, but as well due to incompetence/over-ambitiousness/greed and other miscalculations on the German side.

3. As had been pointed out in other threads: in how far would the German war effort really benefit. A war economy which isn't producing enough output to beat the Sovjet Union in its reduced state of 1942 couldn't have enough material to arm many followers.
Also, one would have to cynically calculate the costs and benefits of niceness as opposed to the costs and benefits of OTL's genocidal occupation.
 
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