Wi only Easter front?

Debatable, really. On the one hand, there was just too much land to conquer, too much manpower to grind through, and the Germans could never really make Barbarossa work under the circumstances they faced, especially since they didn't have enough fuel or forces for proper encirclements. On the other hand, the whole reason D-Day was set up was to take some of the weight off the Soviets and force the Germans to fight on multiple fronts.

The African front was only a sideshow, with Italy mainly running the show and the DAK being the spearhead. After that, while the Italian front did take up a bit of German effort, it didn't work as well as its planners intended, and it only took a dozen divisions to hold off the Allied offensive until official German surrender. While those units may have been useful on the Eastern Front, they weren't the large diversion the Allies intended.

Also, D-Day was launched when it became clear the Germans weren't going to roll the Soviets back after Bagration, so by then the Soviets had already blunted the worst of the German assault.
 
I don't know exactly how. Poland is in the way and attacking Poland would cause the western allies to declare war on Germany, especialy after the annexation of rump Czechia and thus the violation of Munich. You need a very different road towards the start of the war in which German diplomacy actualy tries to carefully avoid war or angering the western allies, while simultaniously either diplomatically isolates Poland (to be able to attack without the west caring) or manages to convince Poland to become an ally with Germany for attacking Russia (which means that Germany can't recover its former eastern border, including a corridor).

Simply put, I don't think Hitler or the Nazi party would be able or would want to do something like that. Also you would need time to do it. Diplomacy costs time. And Nazi Germany did not have time. The economy would basicly collapse if Hitler didn't start a war. So even if the Nazi's tried it, Germany would collapse before it would be in position to attack Russia.
 
My assumption was that somehow, the Nazis make a separate truce with the British after crushing France (yes, extremely unlikely if not outright ASB, but I just made the assumption). The ideas given in the above link seem... implausible.

It took at least a year for Germany, using Czech factories in addition to its own, to jump-start tank production in preparation for the invasion of Poland. Once the Reich had the industrial power of all of Europe, it was deemed ready to take on the USSR.

In the given link, it would limit it to just Germany and whatever allies it could manage. Unless Poland and Romania are both on Germany's side, the invasion is going to be funneled through a very thin strip of East Prussia, something making it easier to contain.

Plus, in a bizarre twist, the Fall of France was what triggered the messy state the Soviet army was in right when Unternehmen: Barbarossa started. Stalin had organized his army along the lines of attrition warfare; masses of infantry, static defenses, and trenches, supported by tanks and artillery. Ever since the failure of Soviet maneuver warfare in taking Warsaw during the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-21, Stalin was convinced maneuver warfare was a passing fad, and set up his army to fight in WW1 style. When the defensively-oriented French Army was crushed by the offensively- and maneuver-oriented German army, there was suddenly this rush to switch everything over to maneuver warfare before the Germans overwhelmed them too. Had Stalin stuck to positional/attrition warfare, he might have had a better chance to fight off Barbarossa, or at least contain the damage from the early stages.
 
I think the crux is Poland. They need that territory to close the space between their borders. They need to invade Poland but then they have war with the west. The west is not going to accept occupation of Poland. Whatever they do with Poland decides how they fight the Soviets and when.
 
If the Poland question could somehow solved... How the war would look like if the West could sell arms to both Germany and Soviet Union? There would be a bloodbath going on somewhere in Ukraine and both would have access to everything they could afford. West would probably sell arms to SU a bit cheaper to balance the powers and ensure that neither of them would get it too easily.
 

nbcman

Donor
Would I be banned if I stated that article is full of it?
So much this. The author blissfully ignores the huge amount of loot the Nazis got from Western Europe plus the equally huge amount of trade they got from the Soviets between 1939 and 22 June 1941.

EDIT: not to mention the experience of those campaigns honed the German forces as compared to the Soviets.
 
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