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Rather then derail the July 20th thread where this was brought up I decided to put it in a seperate thread.

Rommel opposed the attack on the Kursk salient and tried unsucessfully to promote in early and mid 1943 for the East pulling back to more defensible positions after setting up massive anti tank and anti personnel obstacle courses for the Red Army to have to contend with as the new front.




The goal being to bleed the Red Army enough so where Stalin starts to have major manpower shortages and comes to the peace table.

Keep in mind he developed this plan while in the hospital in Germany after being recalled from Africa (his health was a wreck from the stress of two years at war) and it was based almost entirely on the battlefield reports he was reading from the East at the time not from his actual experience fighting in the East as he had none.

Mind you none of this would have happened with Hitler in charge, but had the bomb on his plane worked in early 1943 then its possible you would have a government that might agree to go on the defensive like this so for the sake of this possible timeline assume that it did work and some compromise figure was picked to lead.

The question being would it have been a stupid idea to try to play defense in such a way in the East.
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