How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

[Marcus]

The recent uncivil exchange has bern cleaned up. Get back on topic.

[histan]

Given that Hitler had declared that his strategic objective for 1944 was the defeat of the Allied Invasion why wasn't that firepower deployed to achieve this objective?

Two more facts to add to the mix - in early June 1944 the Western Allies were in the South of England. In early September 1944 they were on the German border.

Yet I am repeatedly told that the Germans had all the equipment that they needed, they had all the ammunition that they needed, that they were better soldiers than the Western Allies, that they inflicted more casualties, that allied air power was totally ineffective, etc, etc

Regards

John

[Kingfish]

horde of Mosin-Nagant armed conscripts decided to start marching westward.

The Soviets weren't a horde of riflemen. Not in 41, not in 44. While LL made them more effective in the upcoming years, the term "Rifle Division" does not imply that they were just a horde of riflemen.

I know, I was just over-dramatizing to get my point across.

[Carl Schwamberger]

...
Yet I am repeatedly told that the Germans had all the equipment that they needed, they had all the ammunition that they needed, that they were better soldiers than the Western Allies, that they inflicted more casualties, that allied air power was totally ineffective, etc, etc

Regards

John

Just curious; who is repeatedly telling you these things?

[Richard Anderson]

Just curious; who is repeatedly telling you these things?

Carl that has been the major themes of the OP since he started posting here eight years ago. He simply recapitulated them here in this thread.

[Guaporense]

\Yet I am repeatedly told that the Germans had all the equipment that they needed, they had all the ammunition that they needed, that they were better soldiers than the Western Allies, that they inflicted more casualties, that allied air power was totally ineffective, etc, etc

I never said allied air power was totally ineffective. But it certainly wasn't as effective as they expected it to be or as pop. historians like to think it was.

But well, even if we assume allied air-power was totally ineffective it doesn't change anything considering the massive numerical superiority in terms of infantry the allies had.

And of course the German army was superior to the armies of the US and UK. That's basic historical knowledge and I find it completely obvious. It's a good example of chauvinism when people from these two countries deny that obvious fact.

Let's look at the numbers shall we? From NPW let's look at two key engagements in the Western fronts in 1940 and 1944:

Sedan 1940 - 45,000 French versus 48,000 Germans, French combat effectiveness was estimated at 76% of the German level by Dupuy's model.
Cobra 1944 - 126,000 Americans versus 30,700 Germans, American combat effectiveness was estimated at 73% of the German level by Dupuy's model.

Relative to the Germans from these two data points it appears the Americans were slightly more inferior to the Germans than the French, however, they were fighting with an absurd level of numerical superiority while the French were fighting on roughly equal numbers. It's pretty weird actually that the Germans were still fighting in 1944 given the ludicrous level of numerical discrepancy in all fronts at that point in time: that they were having battles at such completely impossible odds was because the war was already long lost (since Kursk in July-August 1943 if not earlier).

[Paul Lakowski]

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- if the Allies in my scenario try to attack Normandy, without having fought once Germany, and facing a well-equipped and veteran force, IMHO they would have serious difficulties. It isn't impossible that the landing would evolve in a meatgrinder.

As I have said many times 'what-ifs' should be given the proper name of 'Ways to refight WW2 so Germany wins'
This is the common theme of all what-ifs- the assumption that Germany can not be beaten in a 'fair fight'.
I have no idea where this absurd claim comes from because both WW1 &WW2 show numerous German defeats.
In essence debate is pointless because the whole 'what-if' industry is impervious to reality. Its a religion.

That's funny. I always figured 'what ifs' , were ways to refight the war to achieve an objective. The German side & allied side always follow what little they know through dogma to their religious conclusions.

Too bad they can't learn from these exchanges.

[Carl Schwamberger]

Just curious; who is repeatedly telling you these things?

Carl that has been the major themes of the OP since he started posting here eight years ago. He simply recapitulated them here in this thread.

Gotcha. I thought perhaps it was aimed at sources like the History Channel or the glossy history magazines.

[Guaporense]

Common sense should tell you that the Western Allies just would not offer up men as casualties in the numbers the Soviets did. They could not afford to and they could (and did) develop methods to mitigate and degrade German offensive firepower. Believing the Western Allies would sacrifice men in such avoidable manner is an absurd assumption and so stupidly pointless that you have to wonder at the sanity of anyone who could actually believe it. I could accept the main proponent would think it a possibility but am certain his (only) supporter is just agreeing to create friction with other posters.

They actually did exactly what the Red Army did in WW2, in WW1, when they had to fight against 200 German divisions.

Their casualties were not low in WW2 vis WW1 because they "developed methods to mitigate" German firepower since they actually suffered casualties at the same level as in WW1 in proportion to the number of enemies or in proportion to their own forces. It's just that in WW2 the western front battles were smaller and shorter than in WW1 and so casualties were smaller. Why they were smaller and shorter? Because the German and Allied armies were smaller and the German army in western front WW2 was 60 divisions in 1944-45 compared to 200 divisions in 1918.

Of course I fully agree with you the US and UK wouldn't sacrifice 15 million men required to liberate continental Europe from the Nazis. That is because they would not liberate Europe: they would just let the Nazi regime dominate it, make peace and that's it.

[Michael Kenny]

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Just curious; who is repeatedly telling you these things?

The ill-informed poster has been saying (for a couple of months at least) that German production was very finely tuned so that it produced just the right amount of guns/tanks etc that it needed and not any extra. He seriously believes that there was no panzer shortage because his gut feeling tells him that if the Germans needed more tanks then they would have simply produced more tanks. In his universe the fact they only produced X+13 tanks is because that is the precise number they needed. He can not comprehend a scenario where Germany was outproduced other than by a deliberate self-denial on the part of Germany.

[Guaporense]

I don't understand how dividing one input by another input tells me anything more about outcomes

It is about the ability of an army to hail down fire on its opponent, you know, perhaps a very important factor, besides logistics and food. Infantry Divisions are the backbone of every Army. This rain of fire would be pointed towards the WAllies if not for the USSR tanking it, but I am sure I am going to be told that the WAllies did indeed face the majority of the Wehrmacht and excelled during the engagements, all data and quantified history done by military analysis is just "Prussophile" bias.

Logic is very hard to come by when talking about history with most people (specially people from the countries that were involved in the discussion, such as the common denial of American defeat in Vietnam by Americans or the German stabbed in the back myth of WW1).

The claim made is: that what changed between 1940-1941 and 1944-1945 was that the Allies improved qualitatively relative to the Germans and that quantitative improvement was not enough to win the war. The data shows that they improved quantitatively and they didn't appear to improve qualitatively relative to the Germans. And I don't think you need to improve qualitatively if you increase your numerical superiority by a sufficient degree.

Actually I might have the impression that on a tactical level the Red Army divisions of 1941 might have been less inferior in quality to the Germans than in 1944. That's because most Red Army casualties in 1941 were POWs captured after encirclement battles while all Red Army casualties in 1944 were on a tactical level, while a large fraction of German casualties were POWs in 1944 captured after the Bagration encirclement and they suffered none of these "operational level" casualties in 1941. So the difference between the German and the Soviet casualty infliction ratio in 1941 was smaller than in 1944. Hence, I conclude that qualitatively the Red Army in 1941 was relatively better than the Red Army in 1944.

It's just that in 1941 the Germans had numerical parity (or a slight numerical superiority in the beginning) over the Soviets while in 1944 they were outnumbered 3 to 1.

[Michael Kenny]

. It's pretty weird actually that the Germans were still fighting in 1944.....................

I think I found your error. You seem to conflate 'fighting and being beaten' with 'fighting and winning'. The Germans gained nothing by fighting in 1944-45 and perhaps instead of comparing casualties you should instead compare leadership IQ. Germany surely was at the bottom end of any 'common sense index'.

[Michael Kenny]

Of course I fully agree with you the US and UK wouldn't sacrifice 15 million men required to liberate continental Europe from the Nazis. That is because they would not liberate Europe: they would just let the Nazi regime dominate it, make peace and that's it.

Well you seem to be unaware of The Liberation of North Africa, The liberation of Sicily and The Liberation of Italy.
Africa was liberated first and then Europe was being 'liberated from 1943. Quite successfully and in the face of German soldiers who failed to inflict the claimed 4:1 kill ratio that ill-informed people seem to believe would be the norm in such situations.

[T. A. Gardner]

I would say that the Allies got better and better while Germany continued to get worse. That situation is magnified more and more the higher you go in terms of strategy. By 1944 all the Germans could hope to do was score a tactical victory over their opposition. If they really put everything into a offensive effort, they might get a temporary reprieve at the operational level. That is, they could delay Allied offensive operations by a few weeks at most if they really put a major effort forward. Otherwise, all they saw were tactical successes.

The big difference between Allied operations in WW 1 and 2 was that in the later, the Allies regularly did score breakthroughs against the Germans. These became more common, and costly to the Germans as the war progressed. On the other hand, from late 1942 on, the Germans never saw a decisive breakthrough and major defeat of an Allied army again.

Just in terms of from Normandy to the end of the war:

Normandy saw a decisive Allied breakthrough. They landed in France, crushed the "Atlantic Wall" at the site of the landings, and created a large lodgment on the coast of France giving them the room to build up for their next offensive. The Germans were completely unable to make even a dent in the Allied position.
Then came the Allied offensive with the Breakout. The US romped across France while the British provided a "anvil" to hammer the Germans. The German Mortain counteroffensive was a complete bust and the Falaise encirclement saw the Wehrmacht in France largely destroyed.
The Germans then tried a counter offensive against the US in the Nancy / Lorraine region. That ended in total defeat having accomplished nothing but the destruction of their remaining available mobile forces.
The Allies halted when their supply situation dictated they could advance no further without consolidation.
Market-Garden at that point worked halfway. Again, the Germans proved unable to defeat the offensive but rather stopped it more by running it out of steam so-to-speak.
There were a few other minor Allied offensives like Hurtgenwald that didn't work, but at the same time didn't do any favors to improve the German situation.
Then comes the Ardennes and Nordwind. These are the operational stalls I mentioned earlier. The Germans stalled the Allies for about 60 days at most while losing their remaining mobile and armored forces in the process. After that, it was just a matter of the Allies motoring across Germany until the Germans surrendered.

It's the same in North Africa from Alamein on. In the East from Stalingrad on. In the Med from Sicily on.

Anzio is probably the best example of the impotence of German forces after 1942. At Anzio, the Germans did attempt a major offensive against what was a small and relatively weak Allied landing only to see their offensive forces ground up and halted with nearly zero success. Even with the
Allies lacking air superiority and having Luftwaffe support there, the Wehrmacht proved incapable of shattering that beachhead and driving the Allied forces off.

It is interesting to note that in the West after the fall of France, that the with one exception, German infantry divisions proved incapable of decisive offensive action against their US and British counterparts. The one exception is the 106th US infantry division in the Ardennes, a unit that had been in combat for all of a week at that point. Put another way, roughly 80% of the Wehrmacht was combat ineffective for offensive operations from late 1940 on in the West.

[Aber]

The turning point against the western allies was earlier - Rommel was held on 1 July 1942, before being decidedly beaten in October.