If Hitler had been smart, would Germany have won?

If Hitler had invaded and finished off Britain in 1941, which he could have done, not easily, but it was doable. Then Ireland, Spain, and Portugal would have dropped their pro German neutrality for more active alliances and Hitler would have been in a much better position. That does not mean that he would have won, or that he was smart, but he would have had more options.

0 Replies

prometheus13 wrote:

I'm sorry. I don't quite understand what you mean by singular point of view.

As for the issue of crossing the Polish Border, I agree that ultimately going to war with Russia was a foolish decision, but that doesn't rule our the possibility of a successful invasion. The main reason for the failure of the invasion was the poor timing. Hitler had planned to launch the invasion in May, but it didn't happen until June. Still, the German Army managed to advance as far Leningrad and Stalingrad, but because the winter slowed them down, this gave Stalin enough time to regroup his forces and mount a counter-attack at Stalingrad. If the wehrmacht had continued to advance, they most likely would have overwhelmed the Red Army.

I don´t really believe that the wehrmacht could ever have overwhelmed the Red Army. Atleast overwhelmed is not the right word. As long as the Japanese didn´t have a chance occupying the Trans-Siberian Railroad Germany didn´t stand a chance. And as it was seen in 1939, the Japanese couldn´t launch an effective offensive against the Soviet Union while waging war against China. If however Japan could have concentrated their efforts against Soviet Russia and conquerd the Trans-Siberian Railload, Pacific Russia would have fallen. That together with the German push in west would have meant the collapse of Soviet Russia. But as it turned out Japan and Germany didn´t attack Soviet Union simultaneously which was a great fault and alltogether odd because of the antikomintern pact. So if Germany would have pushed even further east, there would have just been millions or atleast hundreds of thousands of new recruits from Mongolia and other eastern parts of the Soviet Union.

So to conclude, Germany couldn´t have overwhelmed the Soviet Union without significant Japanese support. And as it was seen, the Soviets weren´t eager to surrender so I think they would have kept on fighting even after the loss of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad. But after the loss of those cities, the Wehrmacht could have easily pushed to the line of OKWs attack plan. (the Astrakan-Volga-Archangelsk line) And maybe then would have Stalin agreed to make peace with Hitler. But in a long war it all comes to resources and manpower, two things in which Germany didn´t stand a chance against the Soviet Union plus the wehrmacht was also busy in the west and south. German plan of blitzkrieg just didn´t work in so long distances. And it seems that the goals of operation Barbarossa were impossible to achieve. Maybe the success early in the war blinded Hitler but I don´t think that even he thought that the wehrmacht could have fought a long war against Soviet Russia. Operation Barbarossa relied too much on blitzkrieg tactics and Hitler was too sure on his quick victory over the Soviet Union which was seen in the lack of winter equipment. However I agree with you that the Soviet Union could have been beaten but that would have required Germany and Japan both competly honoring the antikomintern and tripartite pacts.

"Hitler had planned to launch the invasion in May, but it didn't happen until June. Still, the German Army managed to advance as far Leningrad and Stalingrad, but because the winter slowed them down, this gave Stalin enough time to regroup his forces and mount a counter-attack at Stalingrad."
I´m not sure if I undrestand what you are saying but the offensive started in June 1941 and the 6th armee reached Stalingrad in the fall of 1942 so the wehrmacht had 1½ summers to attack and they still failed to reach their objectives which they were sure to reach in a matter of weeks.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

When Germany invaded Poland, they forced France and Britain to declare war on them. The Soviet Union subsequently invaded Poland as well, to erect a buffer between themselves and Germany. That the military response of France and Britain was initially pathetic does not alter the fact that Hitler had attempted to annex Poland, and present it to the rest of Europe as a fait accompli from which Poland's erstwhile allies would then back down. He badly misjudged the English. Although the allies missed a golden opportunity during the "sitzkrieg," they eventually got their act together, and put of a pretty good fight in Norway, despite the logistical difficulties they faced, and the logistical advantages which the Germans enjoyed in that campaign. As it was, the German navy sacrificed nearly their entire destroyer force in the fight for Narvik. Each further step down the road of war took them that much closer to destruction. Hitler was a good judge of gutter politics, as i have mentioned time and again, and he correctly judged the lack of will on the part of Le Brun and Chamberlain in the 1938 Czech fiasco. But he was completely unable to understand the British, and what their reaction would be to the fall of France. Churchill mystified and enraged him.

The only thing that disallowed Hitler to conquer England was the switch of bombing military targets to bombing civilian cities due to revenge to a German city bombing. The misjudging has nothing to do with what happened. The British thus quickly rebuilt their entire Air Force.

Hitler wanted the piece of Czechoslovakia for 3 reasons.

1.To throw off the west into thinking that he was going to attack east first since that's what France and Britain were hoping for due to being very weak from WWI.

2.The Sudetenland, the piece that Hitler got had an enormous percentage of Germans.

3. Czechoslovakia had THE most modern weapons including machine guns and others, and if he had attacked it, he would have been the laughing stock of Europe.

Quote:

That war with the Soviet Union was inevitable should not be doubted: Hitler had already told in Mein Kampf of his plans to find "living space" for the German people in the Ukraine, and Stalin accepted it as a given that the Germans would invade. Recently released documents show that Stalin believe such an invasion would come in 1943, and was therefore caught unprepared, while he was fighting the Finns and the Japanese. (See Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Montefiore.)

Stalin had been preparing since the day he made the Non Aggression pact with Hitler. (Stalin was from Georgia by the way).

Quote:

The title of this thread suggests that a "smart" Hitler could have won that war. I consider that nonsense. With the invasion of Poland, Hitler assured that Roosevelt would eventually find a way to come into the war against Germany. That Hilter was not smart, and in fact was stupid, is evinced by his declaration of war on the United States after the Japanese attack on Hawaii. Had he done nothing, Roosevelt would have had to play a waiting game, seeking a provocation for a declaration of war on Germany. Admiral King and Admiral Kimmel were wrangling over ship assignments in the Atlantic and the Pacific even before the United States entered the war, because the administration was actively helping the Canadians to patrol the northwest Atlantic, so as to get the convoys through to England. When the English decided to go after and sink Bismark, American Coast Guard search aircraft, operating out of England tracked her down. American Coast guard weather ships left their stations to track Bismark so that the English would not lose her. The United States was already involved in that war in 1940, and American naval officers in the Atlantic sourly referred to it as "waging neutrality." Our "lend-lease" agreement with England gave the United States control of the English naval bases in the Carribean, the purpose of which would be to establish forward bases to combat the German submarines which would inevitably attack American coastal shipping. The Boeing 299, which became the Army Air Force's B-17, was shipped to England before we entered the war (although their pilots did not like it, and the asked for no more of them). The United States routinely sold Curtis Kittyhawk and Tomahawk fighters to Canada, which were then shipped in their original crates to England.

The US didn't enter the war against Germany until Hitler had foolishly declared war on it due to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack (Unknowingly to him, the US rebuilt their navy within a year). The US would have tried to remain neutral as said by Roosevelt himself that they would have taken George Washington's advice of "Alienating themselves of foreign alliances"

Quote:

It is not justifiable in my opinion to suggest that the Germans could have taken Moscow, even if they had launched their invasion on the originally scheduled time table. German armored vehicles were not designed to operate in those conditions, and the example of Leningrad strongly suggests that they could not have successfully laid seige to Moscow even if they had made it that far. Stalin was able to transfer troops from the far east to confront the Germans because the Japanese had negotiated an armistice with the Soviets--which just underlines what an idiot Hitler was to delcare war on the United States on behalf of his Japanese "allies," who did absolutely nothing for the Germans in that war. The Germans were not prepared for the winter of 1941-42. Their vehicles were not winterized, their troops were not supplied with winter clothing, they made no effort to improve the road network on which their communications depended in anticipation of the coming winter.

The Russians had no such armistice with Japan. The only way they knew that Japan wouldn't attack them was because they had a spy there who confirmed that. The release of the entire 350,000 Russian army from guarding against a possible Japanese invasion encircled the 300,000 german army at Stalingrad.

Quote:

After Napoleon defeated Kutusov at Borodino in 1812, he waited around for a day to accept the surrender of Moscow. It never happended. While his badly battered army licked its wounds, and he wrote yet another phoney bulletin, Kutusov marched right through Moscow, past the Kremlin and across the river. When the bridges over the Moscva became jammed with civilian as well as military carts, he lined up his artillery, restored order, and then allowed one civilian vehicle to cross after each military vehicle. Kutusov then moved by his left to put himself between Moscow and his base of supply in the south. When Napoleon finally entered Moscow, there were, perhaps, 10,000 people left in a city which had held two days before, more than a million souls. Most of those left were the aged, the homeless, the infirm and the insane. It is a mistake to believe that taking Moscow would have resulted in a German victory any more than that was true for Napoleon. By the way, the Germans did not reach Stalingrad and the Volga river until the late summer of 1942, they were no where near it in 1941.

The causes for Napoleon's and Hitler's attacks were two entire different scenarios. Napoleon only attacked Russia because he knew that its opposition would lead to revolt around the newly conquered continental Europe. He knew he had a good chance of losing, but he though that he would lose eventually if he didn't do it.

0 Replies

Hitler's only mistake was going overboard, meaning fighting in the east and fighting in the west.
Adolf could've just dealt with Russia at a later time; that was his mistake. end of storey.

0 Replies

The implication behind the question is that Hitler was dumb. He wasn't. Neither was he mad. He was a fanatic for sure, but he wasn't psychotic.

Hitler's undoing in my view was that he was too loyal to his foreign allies. He delayed the start of Barbarossa to pull Mussolini out of the mire in the balkans (would that have made the difference at Moscow in December 1941?), and round about the same time he supported his Japanese allies by declaring war on the United States.

If Hitler had just presented a more moderate less ideological face to Britain (Ribbentrop had been ambassador!) I think it possible after the evacuation from Dunquerk and the defeat of France, that some accommodation could be found with a British government under Halifax. Had that happened, its quite possible Hitler could have won. But Churchill was prime minsiter. Britain fought on.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

By the way, the answer to your titular question is no.

If Hitler had been smart, he would not have invaded the Soviet Union while he already had a serious shooting war on his hands. He was committed in Norway, in North Africa and in the occupation of France, and had major assets stationed in the Pas de Calais.

Hitler was an idiot.

I came to this thread late and have barely read any of it but this quote of Mr Setantas is especially interesting.

Are you saying that a leader who commits troops to more areas than he should and stretches himself thin is an idiot? Hmmmmm. Interesting.

0 Replies

I dont think Hitler was an idiot, but he certainly allowed his fanaticism to cloud his judgement. Had he defeated the USSR by November 1941 he could have turned his attention again to Britain and probably forced some sort of deal without having to invade. Then there would have been a standoff between the USA and German- led Europe. Had it come to war, by say 1950, Germany would have intercontinental missiles and almost certainly nuclear weapons.

0 Replies

123rock, in response to my post, wrote:

The only thing that disallowed Hitler to conquer England was the switch of bombing military targets to bombing civilian cities due to revenge to a German city bombing. The misjudging has nothing to do with what happened. The British thus quickly rebuilt their entire Air Force.

This smacks a great deal of "Battle of Britain" heroic mythololgy. The Royal Navy was a rather significant something "disallowing" an invasion of England. The use of air power, however, might have covered both airborne and seaborne landings--Adolf Galland proved this when as Luftwaffe fighter commander, he managed the protection of Scharnhorst, Gniesenau and Prinz Eugen as they ran the Channel in broad daylight. Who was bombing whom and for what reasons were militarily irrelevant to the fact that absolutely no contingency planning had been finalized for covering an invasion. As Kurt Student's falschirmjaeger proved on Crete, German airborne troops were prepared to make huge sacrifices to take and hold an airhead--but doing so would have required Hitler and Jodl to actually have thoroughly contemplated the ramifications of a possible invasion. To cover the invasion boats from the air required fighters, not bombers, and Hitler was obsessed with bombers and contemptuous of fighter aircraft. He was a devoted and rather clueless follower of Doheny's fantasies about crushing an opponent from the air, breaking the will of the people to fight. Both the heroic couple in Buckingham Palace, and the tough Eastenders of London demonstrated that in fact the opposite is likely to occur, hardening the resolve of the defenders. Hitler ought to have learned this lesson from the bombing of Warsaw, but the fool wasn't out to learn, he thought he knew all about military operations from his extensive service as a messenger boy in the First War.

Galland describes the operation to run the German battlecruisers through the Channel under fighter cover in his war memoir, The First and the Last. For an invasion of England to have worked, the German Navy would have had to go in harm's way with a will. German destroyers proved they were willing to make such a sacrifice in the operaitons off Narvik in 1940. Bismark dispatched Hood so quickly, that it is a reasonable proposition to suggest that the German Navy could have fought the Royal Navy to a standstill, which was all that would have been required.

The RAF were never on the ropes in the manner the Battle of Britain mythology would have us believe. Fighter squadrons in the Midlands, the North, Scotland and Northern Ireland were intact and ready for service. In the Home Counties and Kent and Sussex, the aircraft factories of Hawker and Supermarine were already moving equipment and relocating operations when the Battle of Britain began, assuring the continued manufacture of Hurricanes and Spitfires. The RAF did not even risk that much of its personnel in the campaign--about forty percent of their pilots were Polish (and 40% of aircrew casualties were Polish, as well), and another ten percent were Belgian, French, Dutch and Norwegian, along with Dominion volunteers (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). It helps the heroic image to suggest that the RAF were near destruction in September, 1940, but it is not a true picture. Neither the nightly area bombing by the Germans, nor the same by the English over German cities, were significantly effective in destroying either the means or the will of their respective enemies to prosecute the war.

Quote:

Hitler wanted the piece of Czechoslovakia for 3 reasons.

1.To throw off the west into thinking that he was going to attack east first since that's what France and Britain were hoping for due to being very weak from WWI.

2.The Sudetenland, the piece that Hitler got had an enormous percentage of Germans.

3. Czechoslovakia had THE most modern weapons including machine guns and others, and if he had attacked it, he would have been the laughing stock of Europe.

Your first contention is complete chimera. That the English and French military establishments were starved is not to be wondered at, both nations had been obliged to release as many men as possible in 1919, to assuage public opinion. In both nations, politicians pandered to public sentiment with talk of disarming from 1918 onward. A great many people in Europe longed for such a circumstance from the end of the First War. The Germans differed because they had bought--hook, line and sinker--the Ludendorf betrayal myth, which contended that the German Army had not been defeated in the field, but had been sold out by politicians and bureaucrats. Part of Hilter's appeal, and a core necessity of his bellicose rhetoric was to be seen as a militarist. When the Allies were obliged to send so many men home in 1919, they unwisely relied upon the Freikorps to "keep the peace" in the Baltic region, and this only convinced the German people all the more that their Army had been invincible, but had been sold out. Hitler rolled into the Rhineland on the heels of the departing French as though he had driven them out; then he effected the aunchluss with Austria, and promised to create a Greater Germany. He was politically committed to this program--neither sound military policy nor intricate strategems ever played a part in his thinking.

Which leads us to your second point. The "Sudeten" Germans had never been part of Germany, and had always been residents of Bohemia. There had been some noise about uniting them with Germany in Paris in 1919, but it was quickly brushed aside, and the German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia quickly came to appreciate living in a relative prosperous and stable country as they looked at the chaos of Germany in the 1920's. The very term "Sudentenland" is a politically manufactured term which only came into being at the end of the First War.

Your third statement is a sweeping generality which would not stand up to detailed scrutiny. Czechoslovakia certainly had modern manufacturing facilities, it was a part of their prosperity, and this region had been the manufacturing heartland of the old Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy before is dissolution at the end of the war. In point of fact, however, the best light infantry machine gun available at the time was Italian, the best, most modern armored vehicles were French, and Supermarine's Spitfire and Hawker's Hurricane were both able to perform with the Messerschmitt 109, and were newer models. No single nation had a lock on the best new equipment. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Germany would have paid heavily if they had invaded Czechoslovakia and the Czechs had made a stand, but they still would have overwhelmed them. The very reason that Czechoslovakia caved in was because Hitler had correctly judged the spineless character of Neville Chamberlain and of LeBrun. The Czechs knew they couldn't go it alone. You're confusing cause and effect.

Quote:

Stalin had been preparing since the day he made the Non Aggression pact with Hitler. (Stalin was from Georgia by the way).

That Stalin considered war with Germany inevitable is not to be doubted. That he had "been preparing" for such a war is hardly supported by the evidence, however. He was in 1939 fighting both the Finns and the Japanese, and the Red Army was in a shambles at the command level due to the purges. I am quite well aware of the origins of Josef Dugashvilli.

Quote:

The US didn't enter the war against Germany until Hitler had foolishly declared war on it due to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack (Unknowingly to him, the US rebuilt their navy within a year). The US would have tried to remain neutral as said by Roosevelt himself that they would have taken George Washington's advice of "Alienating themselves of foreign alliances"

You need to read the passage of mine which you quoted again, and try to understand what i am saying. Both Roosevelt and Marshall had Europe on their minds as the principle theater in a war they both considered inevitable. Roosevelt did all that he could in conjunction with Marshall and King to support the English war effort against Germany, without involving the Congress or securing a declaration of war. And for your information, in his final state of the union message to Congress, Washington advised them to "avoid foreign entanglements."

Your remarks suggest that the American Navy was destroyed at Pearl Harbor and had to be rebuilt. Given that we are discussing Hitler, who had no clue about naval operations, and did his best to avoid the subject, your remark is rather a non sequitur. It is also as naive as the contention the the RAF faced destruction in the Battle of Britain. The great tragedy of Pearl Harbor was the loss of life. The old battleships which were attacked were quickly replaced because they were 20 to 30 years old, and new construction had already begun to replace them. The Japanese missed the American carriers altogether, and that was their eventual downfall. In fact, so much naval shipping had been diverted to the Atlantic by December, 1941, that Kimmel was constantly complaining to King that his best assets were being taken from him, and that he was increasingly unprepared to face the Japanese. Nevertheless, he immediately began planning for a response after the Japanese attack, but none of his plans were carried forward when he was relieved. Roosevelt and King still had their eyes on Europe, even after the Pearl Harbor attack.

As i have written elsewhere in these fora, the Japanese attack on Hawaii deserves to be understood as one of the greatest military coups in naval history. They put together and executed one of the finest operations in the history of naval warfare. But Yamamoto, who was responsible for the attack, had no illusions. He simply wished to eliminate the American threat to the flank of the Imperial Navy's Southern Operation, and he had no illusions that the effect would only be temporary. His contemporaries did not understand this, and apparently, neither do you.

Quote:

The Russians had no such armistice with Japan. The only way they knew that Japan wouldn't attack them was because they had a spy there who confirmed that. The release of the entire 350,000 Russian army from guarding against a possible Japanese invasion encircled the 300,000 german army at Stalingrad.

Once again, you have made a completely false statement, and apparently a statement from authority, an authority no better than that you have written it. Anyone who doubts that the Japanese and the Russians concluded an armistice in 1939 is free to look it up, in a library or online, whereupon they will discover the truth of my contention. The Germans arrived before Moscow in October, 1941. The battle for Stalingrad did not begin until September, 1942. The two events are unrelated, and took place more than a thousand miles apart. I'm sure Von Paulus would have liked to have had 300,000 troops in his Sixth Army, but at full strength (which the army was not), he would have barely had half that number. Did you make up the part about the saavy spy in Japan, or did you read that online somewhere? Perhaps in a novel?

Quote:

The causes for Napoleon's and Hitler's attacks were two entire different scenarios. Napoleon only attacked Russia because he knew that its opposition would lead to revolt around the newly conquered continental Europe. He knew he had a good chance of losing, but he though that he would lose eventually if he didn't do it.

My remarks about the German attitude toward the capture and Napoleon's attitude toward the capture of that city are related simply on the basis of demonstrating the bad judgment of both men. They have nothing to do with the causes of either war. Napoleon certainly understood that Russia's challenge to his Continental System would have to be answered lest the entire house of cards come tumbling down. That is not, however, good reason to suggest that he invaded against his better judgment. He was a very complex man, and the reality of his writings and statements differs greatly from the mythology surrounding him. Nevertheless, both he and Hitler operated under the delusion that taking Moscow would end Russian resistance. Napoleon was bisabused of the notion by having taken Moscow, and having then lost his army. Hitler was never disabused of his delusions, and more frantically ranted about cowards and traitors as an army completely unprepared for a Russian winter hung on by the skin of it's collective teeth after just managing to reach, without taking, Leningrad and Moscow.

0 Replies

!!

Good post Setanta. You're in sparkling form.

I had a feeling something like that might be on its way.

I think I now have to revise my position on Hitler from someone who "allowed his judgement to be clouded by his fanaticism" to maybe as you say "idiot" Smile

0 Replies

Cheers, Boss . . . i'm putting too much strain on my peepers right now, but i'm enjoying myself.

0 Replies

Setanta
Glad to have you back if only occasionally. Your posts as usual are pearls of wisdom.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

[
he thought he knew all about military operations from his extensive service as a messenger boy in the First War.

This is not a fact but wasn´t Hitler taught by his generals about the conduct of war after him rising to power?

0 Replies

Quote:

That war with the Soviet Union was inevitable should not be doubted: Hitler had already told in Mein Kampf of his plans to find "living space" for the German people in the Ukraine, and Stalin accepted it as a given that the Germans would invade. Recently released documents show that Stalin believe such an invasion would come in 1943, and was therefore caught unprepared, while he was fighting the Finns and the Japanese. (See Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Montefiore.)

What does this mean? That the invasion came when the Soviet Union was fighting the Finns and the Japanese? The Soviet Union didn´t have a state of war existing with any country at the time of German invasion. The last mentionable engagements with Japan ended in the autumn of 1939 and the Winter War with the Finns ended in March of 1940. As we all know, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941. It might be true that Stalin was caught unprepared but it had nothing to do with the previous engagements with the Finns and the Japanese. Stalin knew when the invasion was going to take place but he didn´t want to believe it, even few hours after the invasion had started. That´s why no actions were taken to prepare for the oncoming invasion.

0 Replies

mipeni wrote:

This is not a fact but wasn´t Hitler taught by his generals about the conduct of war after him rising to power?

No. But you might have sources for this?

0 Replies

That, and the fact that he had gutted the officer corps of the Red Army in the 1930's purges. Stalin certainly had enough to do without also replacing the function of a military staff. This statement of mine above, which you have quoted, without attribution, is a simplistic statement. Writing something like this in a single paragraph is an oversimplification, and avoids the necessity of a longer, more detailed explanation.

Whereas it is true that the Winter War was ended, significant Russian resources remained concentrated in Karelia, because even the surrender of territory which Finland had made in March, 1940, had not satisfied Stalin. Certainly the Finns were not satisfied--they declared war on the Soviet Union within a few days of the commencement of Operation Barbarossa. In the far east, your reference to "last mentionable engagements" with the Japanese is quite misleading. The Russo-Japanese non-aggression pact was not signed until April, 1941. The largest concentration of experienced, well-equipped Russian troops in the Soviet Union was in Irkutsk and the surrounding region. Even with the signing of a non-aggression pact, those resources were left in place. When war with Germany did come, it required months to get them back to the west. They barely arrived in time to stabilize the Soviet line, and even then Moscow was saved as much through German fumbling as it was the arrival of troops from the far east.

My point was that Stalin was caught flat-footed by the German invasion. His military resources had been strained by the Russo-Finnish war, and by the brush-fire skirmishes with Japan over several years. He had crippled his army with the purges of the high command. Having gotten his pound of flesh out of Poland, he left his western frontier woefully under-manned militarily. Even the German moves in the Balkans seem not to have alerted him to his potential danger. Having a competent, experienced general staff might well have saved a lot of Russian lives, because there then would have been people with genuine military expertise keeping an eye on the situation.

I guess i should not take short-cuts like this, but i so often get the feeling here of exhaustion, of not being up to the task of providing more specific detail--and of people not being willing to read long post, and my posts get quite long even when i don't provide a lot of specific detail.

In regard to your question in which you actually did quote me by name: Hitler had indeed served as a runner in the trenches. He had gone to Bavaria and joined a Bavarian regiment. Although those who admire him make him out to have been some kind of valiant soldier in the trenches, in fact, he was acting as a regimental runner (messenger) at the time he was gassed in the Ypres salient.

My remark was sarcastic. Hitler had reached the exalted rank of corporal. The suggestion that he learned anything from his officer corps is absurd, although i'm certain that you made the remark in good faith. Admiral Raeder hated the Nazis, and privately expressed contempt for Hitler, although he publicly supported Hitler because of his (Hitler's)desire to recreate German military might. Hitler understood very little of naval affairs, and was sceptical of the value of a navy. Goering squabbled constantly with Raeder for resources. Hitler wanted to use naval resources for commerce raiding, which ended by squandering Raeder's large surface assets, such as Bismark and Graf Spee. Tirpitz was bottled up in Norway for much of the war, and Scharnhorst was lost attempting to stop the arctic convoys to the Soviet Union in December, 1943. She had been operating with Lutzow, Tirpitz and Hipper, and when these ships failed to achieve what Hitler had wanted, Raeder was fired and replaced by Doenitz in January, 1943. Doenitz was a sycophant much on the order of Goering, and no major operations by the navy were conducted under his command after the loss of Scharnhorst in December of 1943.

Goering had become a German hero in the Great War, taking over von Richtoffen's flying group after he had been shot down. He was a clown; he dressed up in ridiculously ornate uniforms of the kind Kaiser Wilhelm had favored, and he spent a good deal of his time playing the great lord, entertaining guests at his hunting lodge, and appearing in public with well-known Germans and foreign visitors whenever possible. Although trained as a fighter pilot and possessing sufficient intelligence to have known better, he acquiesced in Hitler's obssession with bombing and bombers. He threw tantrums to always get as much of limited resources as possible, even to the ludicrous extent of being given his own panzer division, which was allegedly an "airborne" panzer division. The Herman Goering division got the best of everything, and they fought hard in Sicily and Italy, but the resources diverted to the Luftwaffe for huge numbers of ground troops might well have been used more effectively elsewhere. Student's airborne troops had suffered horrible casualties in the operation on Crete, but they had nevertheless accomplished their mission--but Hitler would never again allow the airborne troops to be used in that role. Goering, however, continued to expand the airborne troops, and got the first choice of equipment for troops who ended the war slogging it out on foot as infantry. That they were first-class infantry does not lessen the fact that this was just one more case in which the Wehrmacht went begging while Hitler's cronies squabbled over resources. Essentially the same thing happened with the SS.

Galland begged for more resources for the fighter arm of the Luftwaffe, until relations between him and Hitler became so acrimonious that Goering assured that Galland would not meet with Hitler again. Although certainly first-class aircraft, the Me109 and the FW190 were increasingly outmoded designs, and were replaced by no new designs during the war. The Me262 was available for a production model in the spring of 1943, but its deployment was delayed for a year and half as engineers at Messerschmidt attempted to make it into a bomber--but the turbine power plants simply did not have the power to lift the aircraft off the ground with a significant bomb load. After the war, before he took his own life, Goering was interrogated, and is reputed to have responded to the question of when he knew the war was lost by saying: "When I saw the first Mustangs over Berlin."

When Soviet tanks, especially the T-34, made a mess of the outdated Panzerkampfwagen on the eastern front, German officers pleaded for OKH to simply order a German model of the same vehicle. Instead, they were given the over-built Tiger and Panther series of tanks. Although certainly expressions of highest art of the manufacturer, they were slow and costly to build, required frequent expert maintenance, and large supplies of spare parts. The Germans built a few thousand of these tanks. On the eastern front they faced tens of thousands of T-34's, and on the western front, they faced tens of thousands of Sherman tanks. The increasing effectiveness of American daylight bombing assured that even those Tiger and Panther tanks which had been deployed could not adequately be maintained.

Hitler insisted repeatedly that positions must never be abandoned. He promoted von Paulus Field Marshall and then observed that no German Field Marshall had ever surrendered (he apparently did not consider the 1918 armistice to have been a form of surrender). Surrounded in Stalingrad, his Sixth Army reduced to a skeletal force, von Paulus surrendered. Rommel considered the commitment of more resources to Tunisia to be a waste, and is reputed to have said privately that Tunisia was the largest self-supporting prisoner of war camp in history. Wishing to believe that the main Allied landings in Europe would be in the Pas-de-Calais, the most heavily defended area in the world at the time, Hitler was easily duped by the circus antics of Patton's non-existent army in Britain, which at that point was a collection of jeeps and radio operators (before you jump me for this, i know he was later given a real army). The Fifteenth Army stayed in postion in the Pas de Calais while the Seventh Army was ground to dust in Normandy. The Fifteenth Army did not leave its coastal fortifications until Horrock's XXX Corps was poised to invade Holland.

I know that you asked your question in seriousness, and i mean you no insult, but the contention that Hitler was taught anything by anybody made me laugh out loud. He never considered that he need to learn anything, and never showed any interest in being taught.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

In the far east, your reference to "last mentionable engagements" with the Japanese is quite misleading. The Russo-Japanese non-aggression pact was not signed until April, 1941. The largest concentration of experienced, well-equipped Russian troops in the Soviet Union was in Irkutsk and the surrounding region. Even with the signing of a non-aggression pact, those resources were left in place. When war with Germany did come, it required months to get them back to the west. They barely arrived in time to stabilize the Soviet line, and even then Moscow was saved as much through German fumbling as it was the arrival of troops from the far east.

Although trained as a fighter pilot and possessing sufficient intelligence to have known better, he(Goering) acquiesced in Hitler's obssession with bombing and bombers.

My remark was sarcastic. Hitler had reached the exalted rank of corporal. The suggestion that he learned anything from his officer corps is absurd, although i'm certain that you made the remark in good faith. Admiral Raeder hated the Nazis, and privately expressed contempt for Hitler, although he publicly supported Hitler because of his (Hitler's)desire to recreate German military might.

Quote:
The Russians had no such armistice with Japan. The only way they knew that Japan wouldn't attack them was because they had a spy there who confirmed that. The release of the entire 350,000 Russian army from guarding against a possible Japanese invasion encircled the 300,000 german army at Stalingrad.

Once again, you have made a completely false statement, and apparently a statement from authority, an authority no better than that you have written it. Anyone who doubts that the Japanese and the Russians concluded an armistice in 1939 is free to look it up, in a library or online, whereupon they will discover the truth of my contention. The Germans arrived before Moscow in October, 1941. The battle for Stalingrad did not begin until September, 1942. The two events are unrelated, and took place more than a thousand miles apart. I'm sure Von Paulus would have liked to have had 300,000 troops in his Sixth Army, but at full strength (which the army was not), he would have barely had half that number. Did you make up the part about the saavy spy in Japan, or did you read that online somewhere? Perhaps in a novel?

I respect your educated answers.

There might have been some skirmishes around Manchukuon and Mongolian borders even after 1940 but I´m referring to the Khalkhin Gol battle between the Soviet Union and Japan between May 14 and September 16 of 1939 when a cease-fire agreement was signed. After that the Japanese were afraid of embarking on any more major battles with the Soviet Union as I said.

When Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the Japanese were tempted to join the assault, but the shadow of Khalkhin Gol haunted them. With the influence of the Strike North group at an end, Japanese military planners began to look at British, French and Dutch colonial possessions in Southeast Asia as offering greater prospects for expansion.

Stalin remembered the fierce fighting in Mongolia as well. Even as he summoned 1,000 tanks and 1,200 warplanes from Soviet Far Eastern forces to battle the German invaders who were making spectacular gains, 19 reserve divisions, 1,200 tanks and some 1,000 aircraft remained in Mongolia to confront the Japanese. Although small by the standards of later World War II battles, the fighting between Soviet and Japanese forces at Khalkhin Gol cast a long shadow over subsequent events in the Pacific theater and on the Russian Front.

You are wrong about Goering acquiescing in Hitler´s obsession with bombers. Goering himself was a supporter of Douhet´s theories about strategic bombing.

You are right about Raeder. Although he wasn´t so keen on Hitler, he was the key element in Hitler getting the power. When Hindenburg was dying, Hitler asked whether wehrmacht and kriegsmarine would support his intentions about combining the chanchellor´s and the president´s offices. Knowing that Hindenburg´s wish was that the Hohenzollers would get the power back and that the kriegsmarine and the wehrmacht were supporting Hindenburg, Hitler promised them to revive the German war machine to a bigger extent than never before. Raeder and everyone else supported Hitler. As it was, Hitler kept his promise and secured the power after a difficult situation.

In the Stalingrad encirclement there were nearly 300 000 Romanian and German soldiers. That fact was found in a Finnish book by a rtd colonel. It´s called "Ilmatorjunta Ilmasodassa 1794-1945" by Ahti Lappi if you want to look it up.

0 Replies

The Roumanian troops were on the flank of the Sixth Army, they were not with von Paulus in Stalingrad. The Russian 64th Army Group, which had reeled back before the Germans, managed to hold against the Roumanians. When, on about November 14th, the Volga froze sufficiently to allow the movement of vehicles on the ice, the Red Army punched through the Roumanian line in a matter of days. The Sixth Army was not surrounded in Stalingrad until the Roumanian line had collapsed. Although once again, i am certain you report this in good faith, you either have gotten incomplete information, or you have not applied perspective to the situation. With Sixth Army cut off, and the Roumanians shattered, the Germans moved quickly to stabilize the line. The Roumanians who were rounded up by the Soviets were the shattered remnants of that army, they were not in Stalingrad, and by the time they were rounded up in droves, the Germans had stabilized a line behind their former position, and the Soviets were unable to drive any further west.

I also think your remarks about Goering are rather naive. Goering was like so many people in history who have occupied visible positions in society, he was sycophantic. He held the opinion currently which corresponded to that of the last important person he had spoken to. I have not the least doubt that he talked up Doheny's theory when in the presence of Hitler. When in the presence of Adolf Galland, he bemoaned with him the "step-child" treatment given the fighter arm. I have simply said that Goering ought to have known better, and likely did know better--but he was a toady, and it was a particular skill of his that he could quickly ascertain just what he needed to say to get in or stay in the good graces of those around him. It would likely be no too difficult at all to find instances of Goering's opinion on air power resources boxing the compass from one extreme to any other.

Your comments about the Japanese and their decision on the southern plan are not well-informed. The Southern Operation was in the planning stage by 1940. Yamamoto became the Commander, Combined Imperial Fleet in late 1939. At some point in early 1940, he conceived his plan to attack Pearl Harbor. No such plan would have been necessary, were it not anticipated that Japanese operations would elicit a bellicose response by the United States. The mineral and petroleum resources known to be available in the Soviet far east at that time were miniscule in comparison to the known mineral and petroleum resources of Borneo, Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. The Japanese and Soviets signed an armistice in 1939. They did not sign a non-agression pact until 1941. By then, planning for both the Pearl Harbor attack and the Southern Operation were well along. From the very beginning, Yamamoto had to deal with opposition to his Pearl Harbor plan because the First Bureau of the Imperial Navy were already devoted to the implementation of the Southern Operation.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

The Roumanian troops were on the flank of the Sixth Army, they were not with von Paulus in Stalingrad. The Russian 64th Army Group, which had reeled back before the Germans, managed to hold against the Roumanians. When, on about November 14th, the Volga froze sufficiently to allow the movement of vehicles on the ice, the Red Army punched through the Roumanian line in a matter of days. The Sixth Army was not surrounded in Stalingrad until the Roumanian line had collapsed. Although once again, i am certain you report this in good faith, you either have gotten incomplete information, or you have not applied perspective to the situation. With Sixth Army cut off, and the Roumanians shattered, the Germans moved quickly to stabilize the line. The Roumanians who were rounded up by the Soviets were the shattered remnants of that army, they were not in Stalingrad, and by the time they were rounded up in droves, the Germans had stabilized a line behind their former position, and the Soviets were unable to drive any further west.

I also think your remarks about Goering are rather naive. Goering was like so many people in history who have occupied visible positions in society, he was sycophantic. He held the opinion currently which corresponded to that of the last important person he had spoken to. I have not the least doubt that he talked up Doheny's theory when in the presence of Hitler. When in the presence of Adolf Galland, he bemoaned with him the "step-child" treatment given the fighter arm. I have simply said that Goering ought to have known better, and likely did know better--but he was a toady, and it was a particular skill of his that he could quickly ascertain just what he needed to say to get in or stay in the good graces of those around him. It would likely be no too difficult at all to find instances of Goering's opinion on air power resources boxing the compass from one extreme to any other.

Your comments about the Japanese and their decision on the southern plan are not well-informed. The Southern Operation was in the planning stage by 1940. Yamamoto became the Commander, Combined Imperial Fleet in late 1939. At some point in early 1940, he conceived his plan to attack Pearl Harbor. No such plan would have been necessary, were it not anticipated that Japanese operations would elicit a bellicose response by the United States. The mineral and petroleum resources known to be available in the Soviet far east at that time were miniscule in comparison to the known mineral and petroleum resources of Borneo, Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. The Japanese and Soviets signed an armistice in 1939. They did not sign a non-agression pact until 1941. By then, planning for both the Pearl Harbor attack and the Southern Operation were well along. From the very beginning, Yamamoto had to deal with opposition to his Pearl Harbor plan because the First Bureau of the Imperial Navy were already devoted to the implementation of the Southern Operation.

I suppose you were there at Stalingrad? I am not saying that I am right but perhaps neither should you. Information doesn´t just pop up in your head. We learn from what we read. I learned that ´fact´ by reading a strictly historical and factual book. If that contains false information then I am sorry. Although I believe that most of what you say is based on some books also. From what I read, encircled in Stalingrad were the whole German 6. army, parts of the German 4. panzer army and the Romanian 4. army. Also in Stalingrad were some 12 000 Luftwaffe soldiers along with the 9. AA division.

I believe that what you say about Goering is true but I meant that initially, when Goering and others started building the Luftwaffe at the first place, he supported Douhet´s, not Doheny´s as you wrote, doctorine of building an armada of stratetic bombers and striking against the enemy´s people´s morale and industry with them. The main body of the Luftwaffe was largely based on these views. And from what I gather, Goering had a mind of his own and didn´t like Hitler so much that he would have flattered him so much as it was seen in the last days of the Third Reich. Also as Douhet believed that wars could be won with simply overwhelming air power regardless of land or sea power, can similar believes be found in Goering´s boasting. And in fact, Hitler himself was a supporter of blitzkrieg. He believed it would be faster to accomplish his goals rather than a long-term strategic bombing campain. That is why Hitler wanted Luftwaffe to have a tactical mission, not strategic as Goering insisted.

When I at the first place said that there were no mentionable engagements between the Soviet Union and Japan, I merely meant that Soviet Union´s hand weren´t tied by Japan or that Japan didn´t somehow effect Soviet Union´s war effort against Germany as you suggested. Although the 19 reserve divisions, 1,200 tanks and some 1,000 aircraft left in Mongolia might have done something in the western front.

0 Replies

Yes, you are absolutely correct to point out that I have written Douhet's incorrectly. I do that often, and should make a better effort to get that correct. I think perhaps what we have at issue here is a definition of Stalingrad. From the several sources i have read, you are correct to place the Sixth Army there, supported by the 4th Panzer, as well as by some self-propelled gun units ("Stugs") and mechanized combat engineer (pioneer) units. I further have read of the FLAK units, which were intended to have been placed on Mamayev Kurgan, but the possession of that commanding height changed to often for either side to have put even a semi-permanent gun emplacement there. However, what i have read is that the Roumanians were north of the Krazny Octyaber factory, and the northern suburbs of the city. I have read that von Paulus pushed his army into the city and to the banks of the river, but that the Roumanians were unable to push that far. So we may in fact be saying the same thing, but you are referring to the entire salient created by Sixth Army and the Roumanians, while i am referring soley to the city, as the map below illustrates:

http://users.pandora.be/stalingrad/maps/9.jpg

On either flank of the Germans were the Roumanians, as the map below illustrates:

http://users.pandora.be/stalingrad/maps/9a.jpg

So i suspect that we have read the same information, but that i refer soley to the 6th Army occupying the city of Stalingrad, and you are referring to the entire salient, which would have included the Roumanians.

0 Replies

As for Goering, i would suggest to you once again that his talent for telling people what they wanted to hear is the most likely reason for him to have supported a strategic bombing policy. This we can never know, and i do not for a moment deny that Georing publicly supported bomber programs--i just suspect, especially in light of his conversations privately with the officers of his fighter division, that either he was simply telling Hitler what he wanted to hear, or telling those officers what they wanted to hear--or both.

0 Replies

If Hitler had been smart, would Germany have won?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know