Any way for the Germans to win the Eastern front?

[Valmy]

Didn't Stalin send out peace feelers sometime in '41 or '42?

True but we are not sure what exactly his game was right?  Isn't it a bit controversial as to what Stalin was up to with that?  In any case Hitler was not interested.  And it was later than that, 1943 IIRC.

[11B4V]

Though I'm not really sure what you mean by "weapons of national annihilation" anyway.

Ooooo, Pretty lights, pretty lights

[Malthus]

Ok, but how do they do that? Weren't they basically forced to halt their central thrust towards Moscow because of logistical constraints? The turn south turned out pretty well for them didn't it?

I was not aware it was because of logistical constraints, but strategic ones.  And all it may have taken is having their army equipt for winter action.

Or invading earlier. If Germany started the invasion even a few weeks earlier, they could have arrived much closer to Moscow before the autumn rains started. The original invasion date was in may, IIRC, and it was delayed because of the Balkans campaign. Also, once the invasion began the army group aiming for Moscow was at some point diverted southwards to support the campaign in Ukraine, which delayed their advance towards Moscow.

Also, the nazis had no problem justifying the cuddling of slavic populations when it suited their needs, so they could have done the same in Ukraine if they wanted.

Story I've heard is that the "the Italians (fatally) delayed 'em" account is pretty much a myth - that because of a late spring Rasputitsa, the invasion could not have been launched earlier than it was.

[Drakken]

No peace was possible with Hitler, because Hitler had already framed Fall Barbarossa as a war of annihilation and extermination, and he genuinely believed the Wehrmacht only needed to kick in the door for the whole rotten Russian structure to fall down.

Besides, signing a truce with Stalin would only served to allow him to bide time to rebuild his forces for a new round, and Stalin would never have signed a treaty that required him to step down, the Communist Party to dissolve, and Russia to become a puppet ally of Germany.

[Viking]

Well, I think the relevant factors are that

- Stalin would only make peace if his own personal political power was threatened. IMHO the only possible candidate for this during a German victory would be a victorious general or obvious sabotage to the war effort by Stalin. The former would suggest that Germany was not winning and the latter was resolved by Stalin in the fall of 1941 when he gave up army control.

- German occupation policy means that at least 3 million men would be required to merely hold occupied Soviet land. (I got the 50-1 ratio from Gen. Eric Shinseki)

I don't really think anything could really have been done differently. If you are going to make the changes that might be necessary to win the war in the field would mean abandoning the central war aim; the conquest of the east; the destruction of bolshevism, judaism and less than enthusiatically pro-nazi attitudes and; the enslavement of the slavs.

The kinder gentler hitler might have won the war but he certainly wouldn't have started it.

So, is there any mistake or choice the Germans made that lost them the war? The only plausible one I can think of is to spend September 1941 going from Smolensk to Moscow rather than the historical option of going from Smolensk to Kiev. Even that one isn't very likely since the movement of the government was prepared and half completed from moscow to the urals. The Soviets were prepared and probably expected it. However, I think losing the Ukraine caused the Soviet Union more economic and manpower harm than a potential loss of moscow would have been.

Apart from the seriously foolish mistake of starting the war in the first place the OKW usually made the best choices available to them at any time. GRÖFAZ, however, kept taking credit when the Heer exceeded it's own expectations and whenever the Heer had successed GRÖFAZ intervened. When the Heer failed GRÖFAZ blamed the Heer.

Another question is could the Germans force a separate peace on the Soviets or fight them to a standstill if the western allies made a separate peace? I think so, fighting a mobile defense bleeding the Soviets like Mannstein did in the Kharkov offensive before Kursk could have turned the Ukrain and Belarus into deathtraps for the Soviets possibly getting the Soviets to agree to a white status quo ante bellum peace. 

[The Brain]

My impression is that there was a way. The Soviets took a severe pounding and almost lost some very important cities. Who knows what would have happened if they lost them and/or took an even harder pounding? It seems unlikely to me that what happened historically was at an extreme pro-German end probabilitywise.

[Admiral Yi]

Probably the what if with the highest chance of success is no diversion of Guderian to the Kiev pocket.

[Darth Wagtaros]

A better question woudl be would the soviets have held out if Trotsky had emerged victorious rather than Stalin?

[The Brain]

A better question woudl be would the soviets have held out if Trotsky had emerged victorious rather than Stalin?

Or what if they had been ruled by a circle of liche false Dmitris?

[The Larch]

Ok, but how do they do that? Weren't they basically forced to halt their central thrust towards Moscow because of logistical constraints? The turn south turned out pretty well for them didn't it?

I was not aware it was because of logistical constraints, but strategic ones.  And all it may have taken is having their army equipt for winter action.

Or invading earlier. If Germany started the invasion even a few weeks earlier, they could have arrived much closer to Moscow before the autumn rains started. The original invasion date was in may, IIRC, and it was delayed because of the Balkans campaign. Also, once the invasion began the army group aiming for Moscow was at some point diverted southwards to support the campaign in Ukraine, which delayed their advance towards Moscow.

Also, the nazis had no problem justifying the cuddling of slavic populations when it suited their needs, so they could have done the same in Ukraine if they wanted.

Story I've heard is that the "the Italians (fatally) delayed 'em" account is pretty much a myth - that because of a late spring Rasputitsa, the invasion could not have been launched earlier than it was.

IIRC that was in june, if Barbarossa had begun in may as initially planned the late spring rains would have caught them already around Smolensk.

[Zanza]

I mean, thing is, as long as Germany was at war with Britain, Germany was going to wind up at war with the United States.  The United States gets the bomb in 1945.

Any reasonable scenario that has Germany winning the war with the Soviet Union has a very quick victory by Germany, so the war would be over by 1942 or so. Even if Germany would need huge amounts of manpower to occupy the East, it would free virtually all of the air force to fight in the West. With more resources devoted to air defense, Germany wouldn't be nearly as vulnerable as it was in reality, especially not by 1945 when it should have jet fighters. And it might still have enough resources to retalitate with chemical weapons in V2s to nuclear strikes...

[Malthus]

Ok, but how do they do that? Weren't they basically forced to halt their central thrust towards Moscow because of logistical constraints? The turn south turned out pretty well for them didn't it?

I was not aware it was because of logistical constraints, but strategic ones.  And all it may have taken is having their army equipt for winter action.

Or invading earlier. If Germany started the invasion even a few weeks earlier, they could have arrived much closer to Moscow before the autumn rains started. The original invasion date was in may, IIRC, and it was delayed because of the Balkans campaign. Also, once the invasion began the army group aiming for Moscow was at some point diverted southwards to support the campaign in Ukraine, which delayed their advance towards Moscow.

Also, the nazis had no problem justifying the cuddling of slavic populations when it suited their needs, so they could have done the same in Ukraine if they wanted.

Story I've heard is that the "the Italians (fatally) delayed 'em" account is pretty much a myth - that because of a late spring Rasputitsa, the invasion could not have been launched earlier than it was.

IIRC that was in june, if Barbarossa had begun in may as initially planned the late spring rains would have caught them already around Smolensk.

The issue is - was the ground dried out in May? If not, it would make sense to delay until is was, as bogging down in mud would reduce the shock value the Germans were relying on to knock the Soviets out of the war.

[Razgovory]

Oh sure, they could have won.  An insidious plague strikes the Soviet Union, a giant volcano erupts under Moscow etc.  While remotely possible these aren't really plausible or likely.  I think the Germans got about as far as they were likely to get in destroying the Soviet Union.  I'm not convinced that an earlier Barbarossa would have actually helped much.  They still would have run into fresh reserves at the gates of Moscow, and I don't know when the Spring mud clears.  While it's easy to criticize the Germans for not being prepared for winter, carrying along those big coats and antifreeze would have further taxed the supply system.  They would have moved even slower if they had to carry all that stuff, and they were operating on a tight time table with a somewhat chaotic supply system.  It coasts gasoline to move material like that, which is not something the Germans had in abundance.

I think it's true that Germans could have gotten a peace deal where they took some western Soviet territory (such as the Baltic states, the Ukraine, and Belarus), but Stalin would bide his time building up his forces in preparation of a strike to take it back.  It would be hard to defend, and difficult to classify.  In the end, I don't know if it would have helped them that much.

[Ideologue]

Any reasonable scenario that has Germany winning the war with the Soviet Union has a very quick victory by Germany, so the war would be over by 1942 or so. Even if Germany would need huge amounts of manpower to occupy the East, it would free virtually all of the air force to fight in the West. With more resources devoted to air defense, Germany wouldn't be nearly as vulnerable as it was in reality, especially not by 1945 when it should have jet fighters. And it might still have enough resources to retalitate with chemical weapons in V2s to nuclear strikes...

Chemical weapons aren't really in the same league.

I also suspect that V2 delivery of WW2-era chemical weapons would be a pretty lossy affair.

And while Germany might have more resources to devote to air defense, the U.S. and Britain may as well, since an invasion of France would probably have to be abandoned.  The Brits had a jet, too (Gloster Meteor), and stopping one specific bomber is a difficult task--although the expense and sensitivity of the bombs may have made them demur from the prospect of it being destroyed (at least it'd give 'em cancer ), or maybe even captured.

The Germans could perhaps win a war of attrition against conventional bombing with the Schwalbe, the extra flak, and an asymmetric KIA/POW ratio due to operating over home soil, but nuclear war is not a long grinding struggle.  I think we'd have managed to get a few bombs through by 1946.

The possibility for German victory would lie in, I suppose, the prospects for the Western Allies to negotiate a peace.

[KRonn]

As the movie Wargames WOPR learned, this goes for Germany - "The only way to win is not to play."  "How about a nice game of chess?"