Had Japan joined in then I believe that Germany could have easily won. The Siberian divisions were key to defending Moscow and were only sent there after Russian intelligence confirmed Japanese neutrality over the area. If Japan had contested further it is likely those divisions would have never arrived or arrived too late to defend Moscow.What makes you think they could have easily taken moscow then? And what would that even achieve. Russia isnt france, its not a capture the flag game.
That being said, even without the Japanese I still don't think they could win due to the stretch of supply lines and size of Russia.
No, but Stalin was staying in Moscow as a show of support and strength. Had Moscow been overrun then it is presumable that the Soviet chain of command would have imploded or fragmented with his death or capture. The capture of Russia would have provided vital oil reserves to the Germans alongside huge agricultural yields. I'm not saying Moscow would be a total victory but it would definitely be a huge blow and potentially get a 'surrender' of some sorts.Had Japan joined in then I believe that Germany could have easily won. The Siberian divisions were key to defending Moscow and were only sent there after Russian intelligence confirmed Japanese neutrality over the area. If Japan had contested further it is likely those divisions would have never arrived or arrived too late to defend Moscow.What makes you think they could have easily taken moscow then? And what would that even achieve. Russia isnt france, its not a capture the flag game.
That being said, even without the Japanese I still don't think they could win due to the stretch of supply lines and size of Russia.
he may have come extremely close, (pounding Moscow with shells)
he may have come extremely close, (pounding Moscow with shells)
By your logic England was close to falling because Germany bombed London
No. The entire Eastern Campaign was the idea of a lunatic and completely doomed from the get go.
Capturing Moscow would not mean an immediate defeat for the Russians, sure, it would hurt the regime, as well as capturing Stalingrad, but Russia would not capitulate with its comeback potential (numbers, Ural)
I tested this in HOI4 with Japanese help and it didn't make much of a difference, I still lost as Germany. Japanese simply couldn't get through the Soviet-Mongolian line and my offensive stalled out.
You heard it here boys, proven by conclusive scientific data.
not securing moscow and instead encircling Kiev was also a big mistake, taking moscow would've hurt morale severely
not securing moscow and instead encircling Kiev was also a big mistake, taking moscow would've hurt morale severely
(https://hpd.de/sites/hpd.de/files/styles/head_crop_autoreuse/public/field/image/napoleon_zu_pferde.jpg?itok=_q-EhB0V&c=f608e01452449aa92ecf822693e9ad10)
This man disagrees.
If the italians hadn't been such Untermenschen and botched the invasion of greece and hitler had waited to invade yugoslavia. Then barbarossa would've gone ahead earlierand they would've had more time to complete their objectives and might have won the war.nah man, Hitler's army was overstretched, and it didn't help that they were the only competent army in the entirety of the Axis forces.
No. The entire Eastern Campaign was the idea of a lunatic and completely doomed from the get go.
nazi bad commie goodNo. The entire Eastern Campaign was the idea of a lunatic and completely doomed from the get go.
Wtf Caz, read to much american history books by the historical view of logistic fuck ups like Halder etc.? Whole point of the eastern campaign was to secure the oilfields in the southern area south of Stalingrad. Just Hitlers Generals were so ridicliously stupid to think that the taking of moscow would capitulate the UdssR and were constantly putting reenforcements to Herresgruppe Nord and Mitte, not to the South.
Stalin on the other hand was too smart for that move and just burned them fields down as soon as german forces got close to the area. He got to win the war with american importoil, powering his massive armoured forces and give them germans a push back to the Vaterland.
OF COURSE FORGET TO MENTION THE MAJOR OIL CRISIS GERMANY HAD TO GO THROUGH during the war. by 1941 already a process of demobilisation in the case of armoured forces would go on in germany, caused by the massive oil problems. (Switching armoured/mechanized Infantry with horses, using horses to pull arty and AT, AA guns etc.)
you say im wrong and then you write a paragraph that proofs my point. What a twistNo. The entire Eastern Campaign was the idea of a lunatic and completely doomed from the get go.
Wtf Caz, read to much american history books by the historical view of logistic fuck ups like Halder etc.? Whole point of the eastern campaign was to secure the oilfields in the southern area south of Stalingrad. Just Hitlers Generals were so ridicliously stupid to think that the taking of moscow would capitulate the UdssR and were constantly putting reenforcements to Herresgruppe Nord and Mitte, not to the South.
Stalin on the other hand was too smart for that move and just burned them fields down as soon as german forces got close to the area. He got to win the war with american importoil, powering his massive armoured forces and give them germans a push back to the Vaterland.
OF COURSE FORGET TO MENTION THE MAJOR OIL CRISIS GERMANY HAD TO GO THROUGH during the war. by 1941 already a process of demobilisation in the case of armoured forces would go on in germany, caused by the massive oil problems. (Switching armoured/mechanized Infantry with horses, using horses to pull arty and AT, AA guns etc.)
I think that he's implying that if Germany had stocked up on oil a bit more that the war against the soviet union would have been successful.you say im wrong and then you write a paragraph that proofs my point. What a twistNo. The entire Eastern Campaign was the idea of a lunatic and completely doomed from the get go.
Wtf Caz, read to much american history books by the historical view of logistic fuck ups like Halder etc.? Whole point of the eastern campaign was to secure the oilfields in the southern area south of Stalingrad. Just Hitlers Generals were so ridicliously stupid to think that the taking of moscow would capitulate the UdssR and were constantly putting reenforcements to Herresgruppe Nord and Mitte, not to the South.
Stalin on the other hand was too smart for that move and just burned them fields down as soon as german forces got close to the area. He got to win the war with american importoil, powering his massive armoured forces and give them germans a push back to the Vaterland.
OF COURSE FORGET TO MENTION THE MAJOR OIL CRISIS GERMANY HAD TO GO THROUGH during the war. by 1941 already a process of demobilisation in the case of armoured forces would go on in germany, caused by the massive oil problems. (Switching armoured/mechanized Infantry with horses, using horses to pull arty and AT, AA guns etc.)
but what if Germany had nukes? Would you still give the edge to Russia?They would have won, but considering the "rather" anti-semetic tone in Germany at the time, dis shit be a pipe dream yo.
Stalin was batshit insane. He would not have surrendered even if the whole country was subjugated and the remaining troops forced to conduct extensive guerrilla warfare.
Stalin really didn't suffer that much strategic defeats in the war... I mean... I was able to continue large-scale operations and grind down the Germans... sure the Germans captured tens of thousands of soviet troops and even 115k once... but those really weren't terrible losses for the soviets....
It’s plausible that Germany could have won the theatre, but holding a firm grasp on the USSR would surely have been near impossible.
It’s plausible that Germany could have won the theatre, but holding a firm grasp on the USSR would surely have been near impossible.
Far from impossible. The Soviet population and industrial capacity was heavily concentrated West of the Urals (essentially 'European Russia' and Ukraine). Once you hold that then you don't really need to go any further.
Far from impossible. The Soviet population and industrial capacity was heavily concentrated West of the Urals (essentially 'European Russia' and Ukraine). Once you hold that then you don't really need to go any further.
Far from impossible. The Soviet population and industrial capacity was heavily concentrated West of the Urals (essentially 'European Russia' and Ukraine). Once you hold that then you don't really need to go any further.
You'd need not continue further than that for all the resources... France was completely beaten and surrendered. Russia could still use guerilla warfare or unconventional means to harass the germans, especially if the Russians would still have land to lvie from. It would become a living hell for the Germans and they'd need a huge stabalization force to keep such attacks from happening.
Far from impossible. The Soviet population and industrial capacity was heavily concentrated West of the Urals (essentially 'European Russia' and Ukraine). Once you hold that then you don't really need to go any further.
You'd need not continue further than that for all the resources... France was completely beaten and surrendered. Russia could still use guerilla warfare or unconventional means to harass the germans, especially if the Russians would still have land to lvie from. It would become a living hell for the Germans and they'd need a huge stabalization force to keep such attacks from happening.
You're assuming the Germans would have personally occupied everything from the Polish border to the Urals. That's not how they did it in WWI after Brest-Litovsk nor how they did it in France. It's very simple: you occupy the valuable bits and set up satellite states over the rest.
What an intelligent comment.
I'm sure the fact the Soviets did the exact same thing in Eastern/Central Europe post-1945 is irrelevant too.
Far from impossible. The Soviet population and industrial capacity was heavily concentrated West of the Urals (essentially 'European Russia' and Ukraine). Once you hold that then you don't really need to go any further.
You'd need not continue further than that for all the resources... France was completely beaten and surrendered. Russia could still use guerilla warfare or unconventional means to harass the germans, especially if the Russians would still have land to lvie from. It would become a living hell for the Germans and they'd need a huge stabalization force to keep such attacks from happening.
You're assuming the Germans would have personally occupied everything from the Polish border to the Urals. That's not how they did it in WWI after Brest-Litovsk nor how they did it in France. It's very simple: you occupy the valuable bits and set up satellite states over the rest.
Dear failed leaders of mankind,
please follow this armchair advice brought to you by some random goy in an online forum when trying to form another global empire. Just make satellite states, whats so hard about it? I mean, you only need to click "vassalize country" and everything is going to be fine!
Love,
your mom.
I mean..... that what this man
(https://hpd.de/sites/hpd.de/files/styles/head_crop_autoreuse/public/field/image/napoleon_zu_pferde.jpg?itok=_q-EhB0V&c=f608e01452449aa92ecf822693e9ad10)
did to Spain, and it totally worked! Tremendous!
Let's just keep comparing Brest-Litovsk which was based on a revolution within Russia itself to another war where an enemy from the outside basically united a whole country by murdering its citizens in the millions.
If it was a one front war there is a chance they could have one? But not likely even then.
and everyone else allows them to do so
von Manstein, Guderian, and Rommel are drinking celebratory vodka shots in Moscow's Kremlin within half a year.
and everyone else allows them to do so
Reasonably plausible. We can see from these excerpts that the United States had, even then, a deep distrust of the Soviet Union, and that as late as September 1938 Britain and France were willing to do almost anything to avoid military conflict with Germany.
"The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in September and the “Winter War” against Finland in December led President Franklin Roosevelt to condemn the Soviet Union publicly as a “dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world,” and to impose a “moral embargo” on the export of certain products to the Soviets." - U.S.-Soviet Alliance, 1941–1945. Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.
"As Hitler continued to make inflammatory speeches demanding that Germans in Czechoslovakia be reunited with their homeland, war seemed imminent. Neither France nor Britain felt prepared to defend Czechoslovakia, however, and both were anxious to avoid a military confrontation with Germany at almost any cost. " -Munich Agreement, Encyclopaedia Britannicavon Manstein, Guderian, and Rommel are drinking celebratory vodka shots in Moscow's Kremlin within half a year.
Unlikely. German intelligence heavily underestimated the reserves available to the Soviet Union. Barbarossa was based around an assumption that in addition to the roughly 150 divisions available to the Soviets, only 50 divisions of reserves could be mobilized. In reality several hundred divisions worth of reserves were available to the Soviets.
"German intelligence failures played a large part [in the failure of Operation Barbarossa] on several levels. The Red Army had been viewed with distain, especially because Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s had removed thousands of its officers - albeit temporarily in most cases. Its poor performance against the Finns in the winter of 1939-1940 also encouraged the Germans. Soviet industry was deemed incapable of producing modern weapons. Most importantly, Russian troop numbers and fighting strength were continually underestimated, so that despite the losses inflicted in early encirclement battles, the Germans always faced yet more reinforcements. The High Command had only considered the Soviet western army groups in their planning, and the presence of reserve forces and uncommitted formations in the Russian interior or on the eastern borders were disregarded. Even after Operation 'Typhoon' ground to a halt in early December, the Germans still chose to believe that the Soviets had nothing left to stage a counterattack." -Senior Curator Ian Carter, "Operation 'Barbarossa' And Germany's Failure In The Soviet Union", writing for the Imperial War Museum
This erroneous assumption of a weaker Soviet Union was a major variable in the equation of Barbarossa. The goal of establishing the A-A Line and the dilution of German strength on the Eastern front can in some part be attributed to this faulty intelligence. The German High Command planned Barbarossa as a short-term campaign and assumed Soviet resistance would always be below par. This assumption allowed for generous distribution of troops along the Eastern front. Without significant troop concentration and facing the prospect of an 1800 mile front, the Wehrmacht was fighting an uphill battle from day one.
The German leadership continued to underestimate their foe in the East and place far too much confidence in their own capabilities well into 1942.
"There were daily quarrels all summer. The point upon which we had our final disagreement was the decision of an offensive on the Caucasus and Stalingrad - a mistake, and Hitler didn't want to see it. I told him the Russians would put in another million men in 1942 and get another million in 1943. Hitler told me that I was an idiot - that the Russians were practically dead already. When I told Hitler about Russian armament potentials, especially for tank materials, Hitler flew into a rage of fury and threatened me with his fists. " - Franz Halder, "The Nuremberg Interviews"
Of course other variables such as the weather, logistics, oil production, morale, and treatment of the local population by the occupant Wehrmacht should all be taken into account when forming an opinion on whether or not the German armed forces could have won in the East. In my opinion however, any tactical advantages gained by favorable adjustment of those additional variables is dashed by the simplest of mistakes; the Germans, like much of the rest of the world during that time, underestimated their opponent.
Could Germany have won WWII?
Yes, very easily. If they'd not allowed the British to escape at Dunkirk then Churchill would have sued for peace in 1940. The Eastern campaign would have been a walk in the park as a result.
Germany came very close to beating the Soviets in the East too. Hitler knew he needed a quick, psychological victory and he almost got one-had Moscow or perhaps only Stalingrad fallen then the Soviet state would have collapsed.