D-Day "myths". Actually not a bad article at all...

[Valmy]

Britain came far closer to defeat in the battle of the Atlantic in WW1 than in WW2.

They didn't really come that close to losing in WW1 so...oh wait I get what you are saying.

[dps]

Moscow and Stalingrad had no real strategic value... 

...If Moscow falls, they move further East, that is all.  The supplies line of the North are still intact. 

Stalingrad I'll grant you, but as for Moscow, take a look at the Soviet rail net in 1941.  Pretty much everything ran through Moscow--the supply lines to the North wouldn't really be intact if Moscow fell.

I used to think that the idea that the Soviet Union would have collapsed/fallen if the Germans had taken Moscow was just an Axis fantasy, but now I'm not so sure.  Had the Germans managed to take it in 1941, it might have won them the war (at least until the U.S. developed the A-bomb).

The 1942 campaign, though, had no possibility that I can see of winning the war for Germany, even if Germany had won the campaign (which I would define as capturing the entire Caucasus region and having their main line facing the Soviets anchored on the Volga roughly from Stalingrad south to the Caspian).  That wouldn't have won the war, just left them in better shape for 1943, and possibly only marginally in better shape at that--I'm not sure that they could have held the Caucasus and the oil fields long enough to get significant amounts of oil production out of them--Axis forces in the Caucasus and along the Volga would have still been vulnerable to a Soviet counter-offensive from north of Stalingrad toward Rostov.

[Valmy]

Yeah if Moscow had fallen the Soviets would have been fucked it was the key to their entire system. Hitler noted that capturing Moscow didn't help Napoleon but 1941 was not 1812, the rail road links between different parts of the country wouldn't run if they lost it.

[CountDeMoney]

The English, however, were not "reasonable" and just said "Yeah, we are going to just keep fighting. Sure, we have no way of getting back onto the continent, but we don't care. We can blockade you and be a pain in your ass, so take your peace feelers and shove them."

I still maintain that this was the crucial turning point in the war, the decision made that doomed the Axis - the UK just giving Germany the bird and fighting on even when it seemed pretty reasonable for them to make a deal.

Clear historical precedent there from the Napoleonic Wars. 
A cursory review of that precedent might also have suggested the potential downside of responding via a massive invasion of Russia.

Lulz, good one.


I do agree with Berkut's premise; and as I have stated before, I have no problem sticking with Lukacs-inspired hyperbole when it comes to those crucial days in May, 1940, when Churchill very much saved the world.

[CountDeMoney]

No one in the Whermacht pushed for Barbarossa.  They kept telling Hitler how bad an idea it was, but they said the same for France...

I don't think this is true.

What, regarding Barbarossa?  The professional generalship of the Wehrmacht did not appreciate having to fight a war with Russia that Hitler had all but promised them wasn't going to come until 1944. 

[grumbler]

You see the same argument with the decision of Germany to focus on making fewer, but much more capable, armored vehicles. (For now I am ignoring the related issue of just making too damn many different vehicles, which was much more clearly a mistake).

On the one hand, it is easy to point out that they needed to build a LOT more tanks, and producing much fewer, but presumably much better tanks was foolish.

On the other hand...well, was there any chance that Germany could product enough tanks to compete with the USSR on a quantitative basis anyway? If they had focused on the basic PzIV instead of the Panther, or just didn't build any Tigers and used those resources to build another few thousand PzIVs? Would that have been better? Would being outnumbered 2:1 in equivalent vehicles be better than being outnumbered 3.5:1 but have much better vehicles?

I suspect maybe not - could 3 PzIV's have done a better job than the job 1 Tiger did, for example (assuming that is the trade off)? I don't really know, I do know that the threat of the Panthers and Tigers meant that they had an effect on battles they were not even in - the existence of them as weapons forced Allied commanders to account for them. And there are many examples where small numbers of these vehicles had incredible results (and of course plenty of examples where they just broke down and did nothing as well).

I don't think it is a simple answer. I suspect each combatant made decisions that aligned with their capabilities in some fashion, and I hesitate to conclude that their choices were wrong for their situations...even if the overall result was defeat.

I don't think that one could argue that the Tiger I was a waste/unnecessary dispersion of German effort, given that it was produced in limited numbers for a limited role, and filled that role well.

The Panther was more arguably a mistake, given that it cost much more in terms of man hours and resources to produce than the Pz III and PZ IV.  It was also significantly more fuel-thirsty and significantly less reliable.  However, a driving factor in the decision to produce it was that it was capable of being upgraded, whereas the Pz IV was at the end of its life in terms of upgrades and the PZ III (which was the tank being replaced by the Pz V) was obsolescent and also not upgradable.  If the Germans had known, when the decision to go ahead and convert to Pz V production was made, that they wouldn't even have two years of war left, they might have converted from Pz III production to Pz IV production, and left the PZ V on the drawing table.  But they couldn't know that.  They were going to pay conversion costs anyway going from the Pz III to Pz IV.

Probably the biggest problem the Pz V faced was that, by the time it was a mature design with the teething problems sorted out, it was no longer manned by effectively-trained crews.  Creighton Abrams's armored regiment with 75mm Shermans killed Panthers at a ratio of something like 4 Panthers for every Sherman lost, because the German tank crews were so green.  Even fifty percent more PzIVs with green crews would have fared no better; maybe worse.

[Razgovory]

No one in the Whermacht pushed for Barbarossa.  They kept telling Hitler how bad an idea it was, but they said the same for France...

I don't think this is true.

What, regarding Barbarossa?  The professional generalship of the Wehrmacht did not appreciate having to fight a war with Russia that Hitler had all but promised them wasn't going to come until 1944.

I'm pretty sure at least one member of Wehrmacht did.  My understanding is that much the professional generalship were in favor of it at the time, though they changed their tune after the war when they wanted to shift all blame for defeats on Hitler and all glory of victory squarely on themselves.  Like the Germans officers of the first world war, they weren't entirely honest.

[grumbler]

Britain came far closer to defeat in the battle of the Atlantic in WW1 than in WW2.

They didn't really come that close to losing in WW1 so...oh wait I get what you are saying.

They came very close to defeat in WW1.  In April 1917 more than one in four ships bound for Britain was sunk, and Britain's armaments industry was six weeks away from shutdown due to the lack of strategic materials.  Convoys starting in May 1917 turned the tide (though losses remained unsustainable), but one can imagine the possibility that an earlier resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare may well have led to Britain's defeat.

Britain never really came close to such a defeat in WW2, though the Germans did inflict losses greater than replacement capacity in multiple months of the war.

[CountDeMoney]

I'm pretty sure at least one member of Wehrmacht did.  My understanding is that much the professional generalship were in favor of it at the time, though they changed their tune after the war when they wanted to shift all blame for defeats on Hitler and all glory of victory squarely on themselves.  Like the Germans officers of the first world war, they weren't entirely honest.

Save it, Himmlerazgovory.

[Razgovory]

I'm pretty sure at least one member of Wehrmacht did.  My understanding is that much the professional generalship were in favor of it at the time, though they changed their tune after the war when they wanted to shift all blame for defeats on Hitler and all glory of victory squarely on themselves.  Like the Germans officers of the first world war, they weren't entirely honest.

Save it, Himmlerazgovory.

  Invading in 1941 was probably the optimal time for the invasion.  Later on Russian industry would eclipse Germany, the army would have time to reform and get settled down and the new fortifications on the frontier would be complete.  Hitler had a knack for hitting at the right time to cause maximum destruction.

[alfred russel]

Yeah if Moscow had fallen the Soviets would have been fucked it was the key to their entire system. Hitler noted that capturing Moscow didn't help Napoleon but 1941 was not 1812, the rail road links between different parts of the country wouldn't run if they lost it.

To add to that, the major cities were the power base of the Soviets in the civil war - and the two most important were obviously Moscow and Petrograd/Leningrad. Leningrad was effectively neutralized, and had Moscow fallen, the Germans would have had a real opportunity to see the Soviets undermined from within.

Though as Malthus and others have noted, German behavior didn't facilitate such a reality.