Is it true that Germans had better strategies than Allies?

[Qvist]

The 1942 recovery was wasted on the stalingrad /Caucusus debacle. Tikhvin wouldve been the best route. After the destruction of Vlassovs army and with the 11th Army in Place in Northern Russia it was very feasible to retake Tikhvin. This woouldve led to the cutting of the Northern Lend Lease route and the establishment of strategic bases for an aerial assault on the ural and moscow production regions. Fortifying the Dneiper Line And retaking Rostov - establishing a bridgehead into the ukraine to target russian oil supplies with air power. Creating a heavy mobile offensive capability from dnepr bridgeheads and shifting the focus of their efforts to the capture of Leningrad in the north wouldve enabled a realistic bombing campaign and bought em the time they needed to create a supply infrastructure for future offensives.

In 1942 the Germans were facing year 2, and their very last chance for avoiding losing the war, in the largest land campaign in the history of warfare. And you are seriously suggesting that they would have spent it well to have focused, essentially, on acquiring aerial bases for an air force who wasn't able to make a dent in British aircraft production or when they were fielding larger forces in a more concentrated fashion with infinitely better access to their targets over England in '40?

Specific points:
1. The line from Murmansk doesn't actually run through Tikhvin.
2. Perhaps it's time you looked up the operational range of German bombers, and compared it to a map?
3. Retake Rostov and fortify the Dnepr line? Have you looked at a map of The Soviet Union recently? You are in effect arguing that the Germans should pull back half way to the pre-Barbarossa frontier, and then they are supposed to maintain bombing bases to take out the Caucasus oil production with?

The second recovery was 1943 that was wasted at Kursk.

What recovery was that? There was an operational pause of a few months, at the end of it the German position had deteriorated further, as very quickly became evident once operations started again. Nothing was "wasted at Kursk", it was merely one of a long line of major battles from Smolensk to the Black Sea that summer, and neither the largest or the costliest.

The 3rd Recovery was after Bagration, Korsun and Kamenets. when the germans rebuilt their forces and reestablished a solid continous front. With the caucusus as an anchor it was the shortest the eastern front had ever been. pulling out of courland and if the romanians hadnt defected and allowed the russians to flank the defenses in southern hungary the germans stood a darn good chance at holding the bad guys off for as much as a year. THe revolts of slovakia,romania,hungary,poland and bulgaria as well as the explosion of partisan activity in yugoslavia following italian defection were the root causes for the failure of the recovery. The allied strategic bombing that isolated the ruhr makes that a moot point though as the forces wouldnt have been able to hold long

Sorry, but this is totally clueless - "Recovery after Bagration"?! Do you have any idea what the force relation was on the Eastern Front in late fall 1944? The Soviets were bringing up their logistics, once they had it was onwards again, and the Germans were completely powerless to stop them. Obviously, the defection opf German allies (which, incidentally, does not include Hungary) didn't help, but if you think that was the root cause I invite you to acquaint yourself with the actual state of the Ostheer at this point.

as far as allied experiences - they dont hold water - allied air power was fighting an entirely different animal..

And? That means we can just go on and assume that none of the undeniable difficulties they experienced in attempting to knock out industries (despite vastly superior resources and a bomber force incomparably better configurated for strategic warfare) would have just magically evaporated in front of the Luftwaffe?

This is nonsense. And in saying that, I am being polite - if I wasn't I would call it Science Fiction.

cheers

[Andreas]

Easy enough - Germany survived the most massive bombing campaign in History - Production was not only relatively unaffected but grew enormously.

Highly simplistic analysis. How much material would Germany have produced if no bombing campaign had taken place, but the same re-organisation had been introduced? Also wrong - once the bombing campaign went after the synfuel plants it was game over for the Germans in terms of moving all the kit they produced. So to say that Germany survived the campaign is misleading, because it focuses on one single element, production of kit on machinery, against production of other materials, transport effort, etc.

The first massive raid was flown on 12 May 1944 and directed against five plants. Other raids followed successively and continued into the spring of 1945. The severity of the raids was immediately recognized by the Germans. Between 30 June 1944 and 19 January 1945, Albert Speer directed five memoranda to Hitler which left no doubt about the increasingly serious situation. Speer pointed out that the attacks in May and June had reduced the output of aviation fuel by 90 percent. It would require six to eight weeks to make minimal repairs to resume production, but unless the refineries were protected by all possible means, coverage of the most urgent requirements of the armed forces could no longer be assured. An unbridgeable gap would be opened that must perforce have tragic consequences.32 Continued attacks also negatively influenced the output of automotive gasoline, diesel fuel, Buna, and methanol, the last an essential ingredient in the production of powder and explosives. If, Speer warned, the attacks were sustained, production would sink further, the last remaining reserve stocks would be consumed, and the essential materials for the prosecution of a modern technological war would be lacking in the most important areas.33

In his final report, Speer noted that the undisturbed repair and operation of the plants were essential prerequisites for further supply, but the experience of recent months had shown that this was impossible under existing conditions.34 Behind Speer’s warnings was his awareness that once production of fuels was substantially curtailed, once reserves and the fuel in the distribution system were depleted, the Germans would be finished and the end could be predicted with almost mathematical accuracy.35

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airc ... becker.htm

Of course, how you can claim that Germany shrugged off the bomber offensive with no effects, but at the same time argue that a strategic campaign would have finished the Soviets, is not quite clear to me.

All the best

Andreas

thats a very poor analysis. The strategic bombing was very effective, but the element that crippled the german economy was the viaduct and waterway attacks in conjunction with the loss of silesia. Methanol was produced from wood and the plants were never endangered as they were difficult to get at and fairly small. Buna was primarily produced from natural gas which was piped in and not exposed to air attack. The element that was key to explosives was nitrogen not methanol. - key being that to get the nitrogen you needed hydrogen ( Haber Process ) which was produced by the same coal that couldnt be moved to the synth plants to produce the fuel. You had many different types of synth plants running in germany and a few were heavily interdicticted. tose were mainly the ones using the F-T process and brown coal. Aviation fuel used tetra and that was the only source the germans had. fuel was available but the tetra supply dried up. Aviation fuels were a mix of both synth and mineral fuels with a tetra boost. The german coal that was needed to power these plants was stuck behind blown viaducts and piled up at riverports between blown canal locks. Materially the factories stayed online - even the hardest hit functioning at nearly 30% till the supplies dried up.

your author really didnt do his homework you shouldnt quote till you check the basic facts.

What the fuel is made from is irrelevant, if it can not be made because the hydrogenation plants don't work after an attack, so I fail to understand how that matters. Silesia was overrun in 1945. I think it is arguable that the war was lost before then, and that production had started to decline before then as well. Finally, the offensive against the hydrogenation plants occurred before the offensive on the transportation system, and it was effective.

Production from the synthetic plants declined steadily and by July 1944 every major plant had been hit. These plants were producing an average of 316,000 tons per month when the attacks began. Their production fell to 107,000 tons in June and 17,000 tons in September. Output of aviation gasoline from synthetic plants dropped from 175,000 tons in April to 30,000 tons in July and 5,000 tons in September. Production recovered somewhat in November and December, but for the rest of the war was but a fraction of pre-attack output.

The Germans viewed the attacks as catastrophic. In a series of letters to Hitler, among documents seized by the Survey, the developing crisis is outlined month by month in detail. On June 30, Speer wrote: "The enemy has succeeded in increasing our losses of aviation gasoline up to 90 percent by June 22d. Only through speedy recovery of damaged plants has it been possible to regain partly some of the terrible losses." The tone of the letters that followed was similar.

Note that all this happens during the early summer, before the attacks on the railways got into full swing, and that despite the degrading of the transport system from September (see below) the production actually recovers a bit.

Although prior to September 1944, there had been sporadic attacks on the German transportation system, no serious deterioration in its ability to handle traffic was identified by the Survey. The vastly heavier attacks in September and October 1944 on marshalling yards, bridges, lines, and on train movements, produced a serious disruption in traffic over all of western Germany. Freight car loadings, which were approximately 900,000 cars for the Reich as a whole in the week ending August 19 fell to 700,000 cars in the last week of October. There was some recovery in early November, but thereafter they declined erratically to 550,000 cars in the week ending December 23 and to 214,000 cars during the week ending March 3. Thereafter the disorganization was so great that no useful statistics were kept.

The attack on the waterways paralleled that on the railways; the investigation shows that it was even more successful. On September 23, 1944, the Dortmund-Ems and Mittelland canals were interdicted stopping all through water traffic between the Ruhr and points on the north coast and in central Germany. By October 14, traffic on the Rhine had been interdicted by a bomb that detonated a German demolition charge on a bridge at Cologne. Traffic in the Ruhr dropped sharply and all water movement of coal to south Germany ceased.

Both quotes from the USSBS

So in reaction to your comment, no I do not think the author needs to check his figures, and no I do not think I am wrong in quoting him.

All the best

Andreas

[bobbyhill]

Neither Stalin nor the communist party were loved at that time. If Hitler and his troops had entered as liberators and treated the populace with kindness and courtesy, they might well have won very easily as various disaffected bodies (probably everyone who wasn't a communist) would have rallied to him.

And if pigs had wings, your breakfast rashers would be delivered by air.

If Hitler and his lot had in the least intended to treat the population with kindness and courtesy, they would not have invaded the Soviet Union in the first place.

All the best

Andreas

So true.
But maybe the Germans should've faked it, after they defeated the Red Army, they could always turn on the civilians.

[Bronsky]

But maybe the Germans should've faked it, after they defeated the Red Army, they could always turn on the civilians.

The problem is that the Germans need to actually stop taking resources away from the civilians if they want the fake to be convincing. This has a military cost.

If the Germans are not prepared to pay that military cost i.e. the Wehrmacht stops earlier because its logistics don't benefit from "requisitions" off local civilians then the locals are still going to be starved which is unlikely to make them feel like they've been liberated for long.

And yes, some of the atrocities (like mass shootings) were both 'out of character' for a force passing itself off as liberators and took (very few, but still...) resources away from the real fight. But just not doing these is still going to leave many discontented people. If nothing else, the food situation will be even worse (more mouths to feed).