Reasons germany lost the war

[becktelj]

yea, then you've got another 30-40 million bodies to get rid of.

[ML59]

I thought Hitler's plan was to expended the Slavic peoples to rebuild western Russia and Eastern Europe, liquidating 30-40 million Slavs in the process?

Yeah, that was the so called "hunger plan". In reality it was not a clear, definite plan, it was more a study carried out by the WH Economic Office that foresaw, as a consequence of the planned, ruthless, brutal economic exploitation of the occupied territories, up to 30 millions deaths of worthless bread-eaters: children, old people, white collars, state or party functionaries, any form of intellighenzia.

[becktelj]

wasn't this the estimate of starvation deaths after assigning all food production in the ukraine to german civilians?

[ML59]

Yes, it is. The plan was to seal off all major cities, cutting all connections with the country side and let the population die for starvation or move into the deep of Russia (after the end of the military campaign). Actually the Germans were never able to completely isolate the towns under their control for lack of resources and also because it proved highly impractical. Nevertheless, some of the major urban centers were massively depopulated by force or by hunger, for example Kharkov.

[ML59]

double sending, sorry

[ljadw]

GB didn't have the manpower neither the financial resources to win over Germany alone. The reasoning of Adolf Hitler that without the force "in being" of USSR threatening Germany GB could not hope to win is absolutely realistic; moreover, with USSR crushed and all of Western regions in German hands, the war making capability of the German continental bloc could increase ten-fold. In case of victory on USSR, the 3rd Reich could have enough manpower, foodstuff, raw materials and oil to defend the continent against any attack; its geopolitical situation could improve dramatically and influence heavily all the nations of Europe still not directly controlled by Germany, for example Turkey, and extend its influence way beyond the border of continental Europe.
So, the truth is that Germany was far than doomed in 1940 or in June 1941; but the window of opportunities was so narrow that already in December 1941 it was clear to many that Germany was doomed.

I must disagree : the few benefits of success of Barbarossa would be outweighed by the big disadvantages:it would take at least 10 years for Germany to start the economic exploitation of the occupied parts of the SU and in the not long term,this economic exploitation would ruin Germany .

Germany was to small to control Europe from Gibraltar to the Urals .

[stg 44]

GB didn't have the manpower neither the financial resources to win over Germany alone. The reasoning of Adolf Hitler that without the force "in being" of USSR threatening Germany GB could not hope to win is absolutely realistic; moreover, with USSR crushed and all of Western regions in German hands, the war making capability of the German continental bloc could increase ten-fold. In case of victory on USSR, the 3rd Reich could have enough manpower, foodstuff, raw materials and oil to defend the continent against any attack; its geopolitical situation could improve dramatically and influence heavily all the nations of Europe still not directly controlled by Germany, for example Turkey, and extend its influence way beyond the border of continental Europe.
So, the truth is that Germany was far than doomed in 1940 or in June 1941; but the window of opportunities was so narrow that already in December 1941 it was clear to many that Germany was doomed.

I must disagree : the few benefits of success of Barbarossa would be outweighed by the big disadvantages:it would take at least 10 years for Germany to start the economic exploitation of the occupied parts of the SU and in the not long term,this economic exploitation would ruin Germany .

Germany was to small to control Europe from Gibraltar to the Urals .

What? Germany was successfully economically exploiting the USSR during the war. The occupation of Ukraine was hugely beneficial to Germany in terms of food and raw materials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskom ... ploitation
Also as a source of labor the East was critical to Germany.

[becktelj]

If Britain did not give up when there were air attacks on London,and when Britain did not give up when the U Boats attacked the convoys, why would Britain give up if the Germans were in Moscow,at the AA line,at the Urals ?

The occupation of the European part of the SU in 1941 would not make Sea Lion easier in 1942.

The best the Germans could hope for was a long war,but they could not sustain a long war .

The Germans launched Barbarossa in the hope that very soon the SU would collaps due to a Deus ex Machina (= a miracle) and that the fall of the SU in the summer of 1941 would result in a palace revolution in Whitehall = Churchill out and Hoare/Lloyd George (or some one else ) in = an other Deus ex Machina .

If Barbarossa failed,there was no hope to win;if Barbarossa succeeded but Britain continued the war,it was all a wast: a loss of 500000 men and countless tanks,aircraft,.....

One thing WW2 proved is that bombing cities (terror bombing) do not bring victory. It didn't happen with GB, it didn't happen with Germany and it didn't happen with Japan. And Germany never intended to flatten GB to get it out of war, she simply lacked the resources to do that; compared to the bombing campaign of 1943/45 on Germany the BoB seems more an amateurish effort to apply psychological pressure on the enemy than a real destruction campaign (with respect to the thousands that lost their lives under the bombs).

Anyhow,the point is that by June 1940 Germany was not hopeless: there were still chances and opportunities to finish the war started by her in a favorable position. Unfortunately for the nazis and luckily for the rest of the world (not for the soviet citizens!) they simply choose the wrong path and took the wrong decisions. But the political and racial prejudices against communism and slavic culture were so strong in Germany, at that time (and not only among nazis), that it was only too natural to turn east as a way to resolve the strategic dilemma of summer 1940.

One thing WW2 proved is that bombing cities (terror bombing) do not bring victory.

i'll rephrase this if i may?

"One thing WW2 proved is that bombing some uk cities and many german cities did not prove decisive to the war effort and it isn't really clear how effective it was against japan."

perhaps several factors influenced this, one of which is certainly the size and number of bombs. as for japan, maybe the us had a manufacturing problem with the largest bomb (i.e., not enough . . . yet). another confusion factor of course was the presence of all those ussr boots in manchuria. as for germany, area bombing (to use the gentler name) was not decisive, but i think the german(?) saying was "it's better to have a russian on your belly than an american over your head". on the us side the strategic bombing campaign was a painful learning experience but once they found the right equipment (p51) and targets (oil, transportation) it was successful. and bomber harris probably should have been retired for his intransigence (i.e., failure to cooperate fully).

[ljadw]

GB didn't have the manpower neither the financial resources to win over Germany alone. The reasoning of Adolf Hitler that without the force "in being" of USSR threatening Germany GB could not hope to win is absolutely realistic; moreover, with USSR crushed and all of Western regions in German hands, the war making capability of the German continental bloc could increase ten-fold. In case of victory on USSR, the 3rd Reich could have enough manpower, foodstuff, raw materials and oil to defend the continent against any attack; its geopolitical situation could improve dramatically and influence heavily all the nations of Europe still not directly controlled by Germany, for example Turkey, and extend its influence way beyond the border of continental Europe.
So, the truth is that Germany was far than doomed in 1940 or in June 1941; but the window of opportunities was so narrow that already in December 1941 it was clear to many that Germany was doomed.

I must disagree : the few benefits of success of Barbarossa would be outweighed by the big disadvantages: it would take at least 10 years for Germany to start the economic exploitation of the occupied parts of the SU and in the not long term,this economic exploitation would ruin Germany .

Germany was to small to control Europe from Gibraltar to the Urals .

What? Germany was successfully economically exploiting the USSR during the war. The occupation of Ukraine was hugely beneficial to Germany in terms of food and raw materials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskom ... ploitation
Also as a source of labor the East was critical to Germany.

No ,you are forgetting what Germany was obliged to invest in the east to restart the economy in the occupied territories : one exemple : til 1943 : 7000 tractors were sent to the east,10000 civilian specialists,

And, the results were pitiful:

only 10 % of the prewar electricity production,2.7 % of the prewar coal production . In 1943 the non-military transports from the occupied territories to Germany were 4,795,OOO ton,and the transports from Germany to the east 4O37,OOO ton .

For the grain production:the imports (not only from the Ukraine) were in 41/42 only 12 % of the German production, for 42/43 22 %.

From Germany and WWII Tome 5/2 (German edition) P 472 : The European agriculture was dominated by Germany,but,economically,the situation for Germany did not improve Germany remained depending on the production capacity of its own agriculture .til on the long run, a decisive relief could be expected from the occupied countries.

For the manpower : without Barbarossa, Germany would not need the Ukrainian manpower .

From an economic POV, Barbarossa was a loss-making sector .

And if Germany had won the war, the result of Barbarossa would have been catastrophic .

Hitler was fascinated (a were countless young Europeans) by the Conquest of the West and wanted to imitate this,but,he forgot that the Conquest of the West was only possible by the colonisation of the West,which was made possible by the arrival of millions of European immigrants .There would be no millions of European immigrants available to colonize the occupied territories in the East,after the autochtones had been exterminated:the whole plan was doomed to fail and would ruin Germany .
Who would buy the Ukrainian grain,which would be more expensive than the German grain ? And if the Ukrainian grain was cheaper than the German grain, the German agriculture would be ruined .

[michael mills]

Yeah, that was the so called "hunger plan". In reality it was not a clear, definite plan, it was more a study carried out by the WH Economic Office that foresaw, as a consequence of the planned, ruthless, brutal economic exploitation of the occupied territories, up to 30 millions deaths of worthless bread-eaters: children, old people, white collars, state or party functionaries, any form of intellighenzia.

No such figure was ever mentioned in that planning document written by Herbert Backe.

What Backe said was that if Germany extracted from the food-surplus regions of the Soviet Union all the food it needed to feed the population of Europe, "zig-Millionen" (= tens of millions) of inhabitants of the food-deficit regions would starve, if they did not move to Siberia (which was in fact a food-surplus region).

No categories of persons to be allowed to starve was mentioned.

Yes, it is. The plan was to seal off all major cities, cutting all connections with the country side and let the population die for starvation or move into the deep of Russia (after the end of the military campaign). Actually the Germans were never able to completely isolate the towns under their control for lack of resources and also because it proved highly impractical. Nevertheless, some of the major urban centers were massively depopulated by force or by hunger, for example Kharkov.

Apart from Leningrad, which was under siege and not under German control, the Germans did not seal off any city. They did not place any obstacle in the way of city-dwellers leaving the cities and moving to the countryside to look for food; such a movement was in fact in their interest, since they wanted to increase the number of food producers, ie people living in the countryside and working on farms, and reduce the number of urban consumers.

What the Germans did do was to prevent city-dwellers bringing food back into the cities, since that would encourage them to stay in the cities rather than move permanently to the country.

It needs to be borne in mind that it was not difficult for city-dwellers to move to countryside since most of them were of peasant origin and had moved to the cities only in the previous two decades. Many of them had relatives living in the country, so it was not difficult for them to find shelter.

Thus, the massive reduction in the populations of cities such as Kiev and Kharkov was primarily a result of their inhabitants moving to the countryside in search of food, rather than of mass starvation in the cities themselves. The only city in which there was mass starvation was Leningrad, which was under siege.

Another major factor that reduced the population of cities like Kiev was the mass evacuation carried out by the Soviet authorities before the arrival of the Germans. Thus, the great majority of the Jewish population of Kiev was evacuated, leaving only a small minority to fall victim to German exterminatory measures.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

Welcome back.

You write, "Thus, the massive reduction in the populations of cities such as Kiev and Kharkov was primarily a result of their inhabitants moving to the countryside in search of food, rather than of mass starvation in the cities themselves."

You imply it was a voluntary act by the inhabitants in an effort to better themselves. In fact they had to do so in numbers to escape starvation. This conformed nicely with the rather nebulous long term Nazi policy of reducing the populations of the ReichsKomissariats to under-educated peasant agricultural workers prior to displacing them with ethnic German immigrants. The closing of universities in the cities was part of this, and the retention of collective farms was another. (Neither was necessarily advantageous, as the Romanians showed in Transnistria).

Cheers,

Sid.

[Paul Lakowski]

similar things are reported to have happened in India under 'British home rule' .Churchill promised not to ration bread in Britain during the war, but in 1943 in order to keep that pledge he had to force starvation on these India lands. I've heard upwards of 3 million Indi people died so Churchill could keep his pledge.

[ljadw]

This is not correct : Winston did not force starvation on India

[Paul Lakowski]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters ... india.html

http://www.logos-publishing.com/Hunger-5.htm

You may choose what you believe but the CinC is responsible for all decisions made. In History it was true for Hitler as much as it must be true Churchill.

[ljadw]

"Churchill's Secret War " is a lot of nonsense : there was a famine in Bengalen (not for the first time) but there was nothing Winston could do to prevent this famine, neither could he alleviate the sufferings of the population :we are talking about more than 40 million people ,about 1943,about wartime .

Britain could do nothing about the Irish Famine, Stalin could do nothing about the 1932 famine, the Negus could do nothing about the famine in Ethiopia in 1973,since WWII millions have died from starvation,and there was nothing we could do .

Nature is stronger than mankind.

Besides, I would not give the BBC much credit,or even any credit,given its anti-western attitude .