Through a victory at Kursk, can the Germans win WW2?

Nothing scared the British and Americans more than the prospect of the Soviets making a separate peace. To prevent it, Lend Lease would have been stepped up and action taken on the continent (perhaps in the Balkans or southern France or even in Norway--to cut off crucial Swedish supplies to Germany--but perhaps also on the Atlantic coast of France

The Allies finished off the Axis in North Africa before Kursk and landed in Sicily around the same time. IIRC Lend Lease had already been stepped up when removal of Germans from the Caucasus area enabled the allies to send more supplies via the Persian gulf. I think the Allies were doing all they could pretty much as fast as they could but Stalin still wasn't satisfied until D-Day.
Dieppe btw showed it was unwise to land in France without lengthy, careful preparations.


to draw enough Germany troops west and/or south to give the Soviets breathing room (meaning, no attack on Moscow). And the bombing campaign against Germany and the Rumanian oil fields would be stepped up, regardless of the cost, to keep the Germans from exerting effective air power on the Eastern front. So Kursk would end up not as a pyrrhic victory but rather as a tour de force that goes nowhere. And Stalin would get what he wanted: Western allies with more boots on the ground earlier than 1944 and more equipment for his own armies. I think how the Allies react to the hypothesized Manstein victory would make a fascinating scenario.

I dunnoo.... had the Germans won at Kursk with minimal/acceptable losses, the Soviets would probably have become demoralized or gotten ideas. Stalin might've reasoned that if he made a separate peace, the Germans and western allies would beat themselves up for a year or two so a rebuilt Soviet army could then recapture remaining occupied territories with ease and even sweep into eastern Europe.
 

PlasmaTorch

Banned
No, they can't. But, what it will do is make sure that the Western allies meet the Red army at the Vistula, rather than the Elbe. So, massive butterflies on the Cold War.

More or less. With a favorable POD (maybe a change of plans some weeks beforehand), the germans could absolutely turn out a better performance at kursk. Its possible that they could score a 'tactical victory' by inflicting even heavier losses on the soviets, and withdrawing in good order before they can counter-attack... And then somehow blunting/stalemating the soviets during the battle of the dnieper, and the battle of smolensk. That would definitely take the wind out of their sails, and stabilise the eastern front for the rest of the year.

But as you said, germany would still go on to lose the war, and the anglo-americans would take more of europe than they did OTL.

WW2 was decided the moment that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Eh, not quite. War is too unpredictable too tell with perfect precision what will happen in advance. Random chance is a powerful influence in the course of history, we merely fool ourselves with our belief in a deterministic human world.

Not happening the German military was mortally wounded at this point.A victory at Kursk would only slow down the German collapse would be delayed by a month or two A little less if Hitler tries something stupid like going back on the offensive.

Yes. A tactical victory at kursk would throw a major wrench into the soviet offensive plans for 1943. But the western allys would be able to pick up the slack, and defeat germany by june-july of 1945. The upside is that there won't be an iron curtain for them to worry about after the war.

Wait..why have the Nazi's got nukes now? Folks do know that there was no risk of the nazi's getting a nuke by 45, hell there was no risk of the nazi's getting a nuke by 2045 considering the way they were looking at them.

It depends on the POD. If the nuclear program had remained under the control of the army (instead of splitting from it in july 1942), they would have retained their organisational cohesion and steady funding. The germans made significantly more progress at uranium enrichment than they did at building a reactor. If the army hadn't relinquished control of the nuclear program, its not inconceivable that the germans could develop a gun type bomb sometime in 1946. Still too late to influence the war, of course. ;)
 
I just thought of a nice idea for a POD equip and train some soviet POW's as special forces teams before the battle of Moscow and send them into the Soviets rear to destroy infrastructure i.e the transiberian railway in multiple places and multiple times and bingo no reneforcements at the critical time so you get an early Stalingrad type battle in Moscow and if stalin blinks a temporary peace while the German lose focus killing all those they dont like!
 
Is it possible, if the Germans are able to defeat the Soviets at the Battle of Kursk (How they do this does not matter to me; no matter how many times I will be urged to explain how they do so), that they could do damage similar to that inflicted upon them at Stalingrad, and capture Moscow in 1943, thus exhausting the Soviets enough so they surrender, allowing the Germans to focus on places like Italy?

By coincidence, I was just reading this article, calling Kursk "the most overhyped battle in history" (personally, I would give Waterloo that honor) and arguing that "The Red Army had become too competent to let the German Panzers slice and dice them as in 1941. And unless Germany could win the sort of victories it achieved in 1941, and filled the POW cages with a million Soviet prisoners, it is hard to see how Kursk could have been decisive. If the Germans had destroyed a few Soviet divisions and eliminated the Kursk salient, the Soviets would merely have rebuilt their strength and attacked somewhere else. By 1943, there were simply not enough German troops to conquer the Soviet Union or to solidly defend a thousand-mile front." http://nationalinterest.org/feature...-why-kursk-the-most-overhyped-17334?page=show
 
If the Germans achieve the sort of victory at Kursk the OP is suggesting, then of course they go on to win the war given that they apparently have divine powers on their side.
 
If the Germans had destroyed a few Soviet divisions and eliminated the Kursk salient, the Soviets would merely have rebuilt their strength and attacked somewhere else. By 1943, there were simply not enough German troops to conquer the Soviet Union or to solidly defend a thousand-mile front."

That kind of depends on how bad the defeat is. If the Germans only get a few (or less) divisions, then yeah that summation is pretty accurate. If they however manage to inflict a total defeat, on the other hand, the complete destruction of Voronezh, Central and Steppe fronts would have cost the Soviets nearly 2 million men and over 5,000 armoured vehicles, including some of the Soviet Union's most skilled commanders. It would have been the single most catastrophic defeat in the history of warfare, would have gutted the Red Army's offensive potential, and would have promptly changed the strategic balance on the Eastern Front. The Soviets would have been thrown back on the defensive. Certainly there would be no Bagration the next year. Beyond just the raw numbers, the Soviets would need time to replace all the skilled commanders and men that sort of catastrophe at Kursk would have cost them, and simply wouldn't have the experience remaining to conduct maneuvers like that.

Though just in case it needs saying, and it really shouldn't, there was no conceivable way the Germans could have achieved this kind of result against the Red Army of 1943. Even the scaled down offensive victory is beyond the capacity of German forces. A defensive victory is more plausible, but only marginally so.


Number 7 way oversells it. In fact, by convincing Hitler to call off Citadel when he did, the Anglo-Americans probably reduced the scale of the Soviet victory at Kursk. On the night of 15 July, the 27th and 53rd Armies of the Steppe Front were closing on the SS divisions at Prokhorovka, with orders to launch a general counter-offensive to crush the German spearhead. Between them these armies had a tank strength of over 800 AFVs, some 500 of which would be ready to attack on 17 July. They would have been assisted by the remaining nearly 1,000 AFVs of the Voronezh Front, most notably the remaining tanks of the battered but not beaten 5th Guards Tank Army. Against this Leibstandarte could muster just 57 tanks, 18 tank destroyers and 28 assault guns remaining operational, with the other two SS divisions in little better shape. Even more importantly, the men were on the verge of total breakdown having fought for weeks straight with practically no rest. Manstein's plan in the absence of a cancellation was to follow up his failed envelopment of the 69th army by launching a frontal assault against the 5th Guards Tank Army, so German operational armored strength would have likely declined even further for pretty much no gain. And without the redeployment of panzer forces to Orel and the Mius, the defense of those regions would be critically undermined.

Hitler may not have called off the offensive for the right reasons, but it was the right call to make. The withdrawal of the Germans pre-empted what could have been a very, very bad day for the exhausted SS divisions and greater catastrophe for the Eastern Front as a whole.
 
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PlasmaTorch

Banned
ObssesedNuker. I see you lifted that entire quote from IXJac, over on this thread at spacebattles.com. Nice going.

If they however manage to inflict a total defeat, on the other hand, the complete destruction of Voronezh, Central and Steppe fronts would have cost the Soviets nearly 2 million men and over 5,000 armoured vehicles, including some of the Soviet Union's most skilled commanders. It would have been the single most catastrophic defeat in the history of warfare, would have gutted the Red Army's offensive potential, and would have promptly changed the strategic balance on the Eastern Front. The Soviets would have been thrown back on the defensive. Certainly there would be no Bagration the next year. Beyond just the raw numbers, the Soviets would need time to replace all the skilled commanders and men that sort of catastrophe at Kursk would have cost them, and simply wouldn't have the experience remaining to conduct maneuvers like that.

Though just in case it needs saying, and it really shouldn't, there was no conceivable way the Germans could have achieved this kind of result against the Red Army of 1943.

Compare your quote above with IXJacs quote below. There are only a few differences which I've bolded.

IXJac said:
Well, the complete destruction of Voronezh, Central and Steppe fronts would have cost the Soviets nearly 2 million men and over 5,000 armoured vehicles, including some of the Soviet Union's most skilled commanders. It would have been the single most catastrophic defeat in the history of warfare, would have gutted the Red Army's offensive potential, and would have promptly changed the strategic balance on the Eastern Front. The Soviets would have been thrown back completely on the defensive, and the Germans would have been free to pursue other limited offensives, such as the planned push to finally capture Leningrad. Certainly there would be no Bagration the next year. Beyond just the raw numbers, the Soviets would need time to replace all the skilled commanders and men the catastrophe at Kursk would have cost them, and simply wouldn't have the experience remaining to conduct maneuvers like that.

Just in case it needs saying, I should point out that there was no conceivable way the Germans could have achieved this kind of result against the Red Army of 1943.

Just an FYI, but if you're going to copy and paste someones commentary at length, you should put "quotation marks" in there to let people know it isn't your words.

I myself took some inspiration from the OP in that thread, lloyd007. He summarised the 'tactical victory' quite nicely. :)
 
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Wait..why have the Nazi's got nukes now? Folks do know that there was no risk of the nazi's getting a nuke by 45, hell there was no risk of the nazi's getting a nuke by 2045 considering the way they were looking at them.

Someone in this thread mentioned something about the Nazis using 7 A-bombs to defeat Russia in 1943 and winning the war if they were dropped on Leningrad, Moscow, etc. and there was debate if that would win them the war.

I think if they had them (obviously they wouldn't) they would use one on London and that would knock them out of the war
 
Is it possible, if the Germans are able to defeat the Soviets at the Battle of Kursk (How they do this does not matter to me; no matter how many times I will be urged to explain how they do so), that they could do damage similar to that inflicted upon them at Stalingrad, and capture Moscow in 1943, thus exhausting the Soviets enough so they surrender, allowing the Germans to focus on places like Italy?
No. Far, far too late. They'll be bludgeoned into submission by Allied materiel and manpower superiority, plus nuclear weapons.
 
Eh, not quite. War is too unpredictable too tell with perfect precision what will happen in advance. Random chance is a powerful influence in the course of history, we merely fool ourselves with our belief in a deterministic human world.

They are going to need a whole lot of powerful random influences to defeat the US, thats always been the point of people saying the war was over the moment the US got involved. Basically they need ASB help.
 
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