Germany winning on the Eastern Front

[Der Alte Fritz]

Back to the original question, not sure what people have said before, but for the Germans to have won the war, I would say they needed some or all of the following:

1. More incompetence on the Soviet side. The reason they did as well as they did in the opening stages of Barbarossa was sheer Soviet incompetence, at all levels. The Russians had almost 10 times as many tanks as the Germans, for starters.

2. Supporting invasion by the Japanese to tie down the eastern troops that were shifted to defend Moscow.

3. Switch to a total war economy well before 1943. Clearly, 1941 or earlier would have been best.

4. Start the invasion earlier. The Yugoslavia/Greece campaign meant that the bad weather kicked in just as they were within striking distance of Moscow. Another two weeks or a month and they could have been 20 miles east, not west of Moscow when the weather went to hell.

With some or all of the above its quite easy to envisage Leningrad and Moscow falling, which might not have ended the war, but would certainly have greatly improved the Germans' chances.

All of these factors are important but the fact remains that Germany was used to fighting major wars with neighbours contiguous with her own borders, France, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and that she only conducted minor operations at a distance, North Africa, Greece, Norway, Italy, Balkans, Ukraine. This applies right through the C19th and the Great War. Most major German campaigns achieve their objective within 300 km of the German border. All of the early campaigns follow this rationale.

The war against the Soviet Union is the first time that Germany tried to project her economic and military power at a distance, Fall Barbarossa envisages two bounds of 300 km to destroy the Red Army (MInsk and Smolensk) and in fact required 3 bounds of 300 km to reach Moscow. Not only that the jumping off point is not in Germany but in Poland 600 km to the east (500 km from the Warthegau to the border) for 2 of the three Heeresgruppen while only East Prussia provides a closer starting point. But even here it is still 250 km from Goldap to Lida the East Prussian border to the original Soviet border of 1938.

Germanys underlying problem is that she fails to invest in strategic and operational level transportation so that she can project her economic and military power at a distance. She fails in the Moscow campaign in 1941 because she cannot ship troops and material forward to Moscow and she fails again at Stalingrad in 1942 as she is unable to ship men and material to sustain the advance southward at the same time as she secures the Don river line. Spend money, men and steel on the railways and Germany's military success becomes easier. The barrier to that is a lack of awareness of logistics in the General Staff who consistently under estimate the effort required to project military power at a distance greater than 300 km with which they have operated since time immemorial.

[steverodgers801]

it was not unawareness on the staff, it was Hitler refusing to accept that there would be issues since he had decided that the Soviets would just collapse so there would be no problems later on

[ljadw]

Both Hitler and the staff were aware that the only possibility to defeat the SU was a short campaign which would be decided between the border and the D-D line.This was implicitly mentioned in Weisung 21: the withdrawal to the east of fighting able parts of the Red Army must be prevented .

For the rest, every one is as usual argueing as if there was no Red Army .

[Der Alte Fritz]

Both Hitler and the staff were aware that the only possibility to defeat the SU was a short campaign which would be decided between the border and the D-D line.This was implicitly mentioned in Weisung 21: the withdrawal to the east of fighting able parts of the Red Army must be prevented .

For the rest, every one is as usual argueing as if there was no Red Army .

True except that decision not to pour more resources into the railway in the Spring of 1942 for the Stalingrad campaign was decisive. Especially when the Quartermaster Wagner told the Staff that he could only support 1 line of advance and not 2.

[doogal]

der alte fritz wrote =except that decision not to pour more resources into the railway in the Spring of 1942 for the Stalingrad campaign was decisive. Especially when the Quartermaster Wagner told the Staff that he could only support 1 line of advance and not 2.

I assume you mean that the lack of railway capacity diametrically effected the outcome of the Stalingrad campaign, and as a contributing factor i am sure it played its part in reinforcing the Strategic mistakes, but the fact is that Stalingrad became a major operation in itself when it should have been an operation which supported a drive into the caucasus. The problems of rolling stock track gauge and capacity would have seemed ok when planning as no one would have assumed a scenario where Hitler split his main strategic advance and gave the capture of Stalingrad more importance than the original strategic reason for the original operation.
Railway capacity was always a problem for Germany in the SU, what they really needed were mass produced trucks and more fuel

[ljadw]

What was the reason of the supply problems ? Was it the lack of railway capacity or was it a shortage of supplies ? And was it not so that Germany had only supplies for a short campaign,which implies that for AGB to succeed ,it had to succeed in july ? Was it not so that the failure to defeat the opposing Soviet forces created the supply problems ?

It was assumed in november that it would be very difficult,even impossible,to supply the 330000 men of AGB at Stalingrad IF the fighting continued,but, if Stalingrad had fallen and if these 330000 men would be stationed between Stalingrad and Archangelsk,without bitter fighting,would it not be possible to supply them ? After all, in 1941 the Germans were convinced that they could supply during the winter the 50 divisions who would guard the A-A line, thus,why should they not be able to supply the 22 divisions who would guard the Wolga between Stalingrad and Astrachan ?

[Boby]

Do you mean Blau failed when Soviet forces were not defeated west of the Don?

[ljadw]

Yes : this is the POV of H.Magenheimer in "Hitler's War " where he said that the only chance for Blau to succeed was to defeat very quickly the opposing Soviet forces.

I would add also the following : not only had these forces to be destroyed, but the SU could not have the possibility to replace them and to continue the war behind the Wolga, as the German forces who had to guard the Wolga were much to weak .

[BDV]

Yes : this is the POV of H.Magenheimer in "Hitler's War " where he said that the only chance for Blau to succeed was to defeat very quickly the opposing Soviet forces.

I would add also the following : not only had these forces to be destroyed, but the SU could not have the possibility to replace them and to continue the war behind the Wolga, as the German forces who had to guard the Wolga were much to weak .

So then a deep strike was nonsense (it would not destroy enough Sovjet forces and the Axis could not support the switch to defensive).

Instead, a number of short strikes at exposed sovjet positions, leading to establishing a defensible and easy to supply line and to severe weakening of the RKKA; while focusing on bringing auxiliary equipment up to par; was the ticket.

[Mauser K98k]

If Hitler would have avoided being lured into bailing out Mussolini in Africa and used what became Rommel and the Afrika Korps as an arm of Operation Barbarossa, They likely would have taken Moscow before Winter set in. If Rommel's Panzers had been deployed in the Kiev region under Von Rundstedt, for instance, Hitler would have had no need to send Guderian's forces south to help eliminate Kiev Pocket, and the drive to Moscow would not have been "put on hold".

Whether or not the war would have been won if Moscow was taken before winter is debatable. Probably so if AH had not been so stupid as to declare war on the US. But the overall problem was this: Hitler bit off more than he could chew. Just not enough manpower for the scope of his many undertakings, especially with England still alive and pissed off.

[Guaporense]

A major mistake was to assume that they would have won in 1941 with 100% certainty since they attacked without mobilizing their industry to produce plenty of guns and ammunition in case the USSR survived Barbarossa.

This is shown here:



Clearly, they should have focused on increasing ammunition and weapons supply earlier so that they could reach 1944 levels of output earlier. Here is a comparison of artillery and mortar ammunition expenditures between Germany and the USSR's field armies in metric tons:

USSR / Germany
1942 - 446.133 / 709.557
1943 - 828.193 / 1.121.545
1944 - 1.000.962 / 1.540.933

Source: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads ... w2.308559/

If in 1942-43, even if Barbarossa failed, they had greater per capita supply of ammunition, maybe they could have pounded the USSR harder with additional firepower and won in terms of pure attrition. Although historically the per capita supply and consumption of ammunition by German divisions doubled from 1942 and 1944 but I don't think their effectiveness improved much.

Also, as Der Alte Fritz points out, it would be also required that more attention be paid on the railroads.

[azulon1]

First off I have read a ton of books at his point which all but prove the Soviet production numbers to be complete fluff. This is likely Stalin’s wish to skew the numbers heavily in his favor. I can recommend some books on the matter which emphasize how wrong and fluffed the Soviet numbers always have been, not just during this war but even before it. He quality control of the T-34 were also horrible, a hundred hours of use if your lucky and also no planned logistics for spare parts. Please read up on this.

[stg 44]

First off I have read a ton of books at his point which all but prove the Soviet production numbers to be complete fluff. This is likely Stalin’s wish to skew the numbers heavily in his favor. I can recommend some books on the matter which emphasize how wrong and fluffed the Soviet numbers always have been, not just during this war but even before it. He quality control of the T-34 were also horrible, a hundred hours of use if your lucky and also no planned logistics for spare parts. Please read up on this.

Care to name some books?

[randwick]

.
The allies armor and artillery was miserable , they were equipped with inferior national production like Italy or hand me down from what the Wehrmacht didn't care to have
quite a lot of French gear went to the Romanians

[AbollonPolweder]

In my opinion, if Hitler listened to his generals and pushed all the way onto Moscow, successfully captures it and then proceed to swing around North and South to divide Russia into different parts will have probably won the Eastern front.

Good premiss: if Hitler ...! But he did not.