At what point did Germany lose WW2?

[HistoryGeek2019]

So Germany did not in fact have more economic resources than the Anglosphere. The pre-war GDP of conquered countries is meaningless, and not because of "mobilization problems" or "bottlenecks", but because of the British blockade and the fact that Germany stripped those countries of everything it could get its hands on. The pre-war GDP of conquered countries was dependent first and foremost on international trade, which ceased to exist the moment they came under the British blockade. After German occupation, the conquered countries were stripped of every available resource, the effect of which we can already see in the increased GDP figures for Germany during the war that I posted above. Tooze is clear that the only other significant economic benefit Germany received from conquered countries was forced labor, which factored into Germany's GDP that I posted above. In sum, we can already see the economic benefit Germany acquired from conquering Europe in Table 1.3 in Harrison - which gives Germany one third the economic output of the United States, and roughly one fourth the economic output of the United States and Britain combined.

Germany would not have been able to extract any meaningful amount of oil from Baku. Germany had no infrastructure (or labor force) in place capable of harvesting and then transporting oil 3,000 km from Baku back to Germany. Handwaving away this issue as "1-2% of Germany's GDP" does not answer the question of how long it would take Germany to put the labor force and infrastructure in place to actually build a reliable system for harvesting and transporting the oil. And seeing as the Caucasus was at the extreme end of Germany's logistical capabilities, there is no way Germany was going to push into Persia against British forces, and it will be the first place the Allies build up in your ATL, meaning Baku will be reduced to rubble. The Russians relied on ships in the Caspian to transport oil from Baku, and the Allies would have sunk every single one in your ATL.

The other missing strategic resource in your ATL is chromium, a necessary component for jet engines. If the war goes past 1945 in your ATL (which is very likely), then the Allies will have jets too, only Allied jets will have all the necessary metals to make their jets fly for more than a dozen hours. Which means the Allies will have even greater air supremacy than they did in the OTL, and eventually we are getting to a scenario where the Allies have Korean War era technology against a rudimentary Wehrmacht for which jet-level weapons are just experimental toys.

In answer to your questions:

(1)(a) Yes
(1)(b) I have no idea

(2) The Western Allies had at least a 4x economic advantage over Germany in OTL based on Table 1.3 from Harrison, and I don't see that meaningfully changing simply because the USSR has dropped out of the war. Maybe the ratio improves in Germany's favor closer to 3:1 at best.

(3) I don't know what casualty level the Western Allies would tolerate. I think a lot of us have this fantasy of the popular will being against war, and in favor of peace, but history tells us differently. For the most part, a nation's leaders are able to drag their populations into war whenever they want for as long as they want. The only exception seems to be Vietnam, but even that dragged on for over a decade. A decade of Allied blockade and strategic bombing using Korean War era technology would have left Nazi occupied Europe a smoldering ruin. War against Germany would have been a lot more popular than against Vietnam, the main reason being Hitler's insistence on using offensive terror weapons (uboats and V2 rockets) that would have made western populations terrified of him, and therefore all the more insistent on ridding the world of this menace. The Allies could pick and choose their battles to ensure a series of easy great victories (take Italy one year, then Greece, then the Caucasus, then Norway, etc.) to keep their populations' morale up.

The best case scenario for Germany is that the western Allies passively contain Hitler through blockade and encirclement similar to the Cold War that eventually results in the internal collapse of the Nazi system, but I don't think the Allies have any reason to remain passive when they can easily strike at bits and pieces of Hitler's far flung empire one at a time (and since Hitler wouldn't remain passive but would have constantly agitated the Allies with uboats and rockets).

[Globalization41]

[…the loss of Hood is greatly exaggerated.]  Battleships were definitely overrated.  The expensive Bismarck was stopped by a cheap divebomber.  … Crete crowded the headlines during the Battle of the Bismarck.  German infantrymen parachuted into Crete while divebombers picked off British cruisers and destroyers.  German U-boats were active against convoys in the Atlantic.  A German defensive detachment in Africa turned offensive, advancing across Libya to Egypt.  British Empire troops in Tobruk were under siege by Rommel. London had recently been firebombed. Yugoslavia and Greece had fallen to Hitler's aggression. … The British were maxed out while most of Germany's troops were concentrating along the Nazi-Soviet demarcation line.

Globalization41.

[TheMarcksPlan]

So Germany did not in fact have more economic resources than the Anglosphere.

No, they did. Labor productivity is usually the most important resource, ATL post-USSR Germany controls by far the most industrial labor in the world.
But as I've repeatedly said, there's a mobilization problem and the Nazis will almost certainly be outproduced by the Anglosphere.
The issue is to what extent, specifically whether that extent is sufficient to achieve the overwhelming advantage required for a successful invasion.
The point of highlighting approximate total resource equality is to illustrate that it would be difficult - not impossible - for the Anglosphere to successfully invade Europe.

The pre-war GDP of conquered countries is meaningless, and not because of "mobilization problems" or "bottlenecks", but because of the British blockade...

Production is a matter of labor and raw materials. One or the other is always a bottleneck.

And seeing as the Caucasus was at the extreme end of Germany's logistical capabilities, there is no way Germany was going to push into Persia against British forces

It's also the extreme end of Allied logistics.
Montgomery took months to build up for the Second Battle of El Alamein, in which he committed ~12 divisions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Ba ... _of_battle
Let's say the Allies can support twice Monty's force in Persia in late 1942 when a German threat to the area emerges: 25 divisions.
The Axis was supporting ~200 divisions (inc. Axis allies) ~1,000km from Germany during 1942. The Persian border is ~twice as far; linear extrapolation of supply lines would imply ~100 divisions, which means Allied catastrophe.
Of course it wouldn't be 100 divisions but even numerical parity of German forces versus Allied means Axis victory with ~25% of the ton-mile logisticial burden of supporting the OTL Ostheer.

You of course will make a point about infrastructure towards the Persian border:

Germany had no infrastructure (or labor force) in place capable of harvesting and then transporting oil 3,000 km from Baku back to Germany. Handwaving away this issue as "1-2% of Germany's GDP" does not answer the question of how long it would take Germany to put the labor force and infrastructure in place to actually build a reliable system for harvesting and transporting the oil

I know it's fashionable in this forum to respond to my top-line claims about resources with accusations of "handwaiving"; I'd encourage you to avoid following the prevailing intellectual fads on this board.
You're referring to my earlier argument that it would cost <2% of German annual steel (not GDP) to build a double-track railway to Baku.
Specifically, I argued it would take at most 600k tons of steel to build such a railway, which would in any case be duplicative of and/or supplemental to already-existing railways for which the Eisenbahntruppen only needed to move rails a few inches closer (something they were able to do at ~30km/day).
Is there precedent for such an infrastructural investment by the Third Reich? Yes:

in April 1940 the Reichsbahn started the Otto Program to upgrade the tracks using 30,000 workers and 300,000 tonnes of steel

https://www.hgwdavie.com/blog/2018/3/9/ ... r-19411945

This isn't handwaiving; this is extrapolation from rail capital projects that the Nazis executed prior to Barbarossa.
If the Nazis of 1940 were able to put 300k tons of steel into the Polish railroads, why is it beyond the pale for the Nazis of 1942, with far greater resources at hand, to put 600k steel into Ukrainian/Caucasian railroads? It's not like Operation Otto has been credibly cited in any analyses as undercutting the German war effort by occupying too many resources (indeed hardly anybody mentions Op.Otto). Plus it's pretty clear to us, and would have been clear to them, that the war hinged on oil. Re timing, if Baku and its infrastructure comes online by 1944 that's fine. Before that, the oil of Maikop and Grozny, which weren't vulnerable to bombing, would have amplified German oil resources by ~50%.

The other missing strategic resource in your ATL is chromium

Germany satisfied its chromium needs from Turkey until late in the war, despite Allied attempts to buy off the crop. With Nazis ascendant in Europe and in the Caucasus, obtaining Turkey's chromium would not be a major worry.

(3) I don't know what casualty level the Western Allies would tolerate. I think a lot of us have this fantasy of the popular will being against war, and in favor of peace, but history tells us differently. For the most part, a nation's leaders are able to drag their populations into war whenever they want for as long as they want. The only exception seems to be Vietnam, but even that dragged on for over a decade.

Agreed. Surveys showed that actually much of the American populace opposed the Vietnam war long before Cronkite admitted it or Nixon called it quits. In fact, contrary to stereotype, older Americans were more skeptical of the official line than younger. My interpretation is those older Americans were from before the pre-Cold-War brainwashing of the American populace about American And Capitalist Virtue but that's another story...

Nonetheless, Vietnam isn't the only example of American accommodation to military difficulties in lieu of millions of dead: The Korean War also ended with armistice (still the de jure state) rather than absolute victory. America acceded without much rancor to Bush 41's decision to push Saddam out of Kuwait rather than pursuing him into the stupid quagmire that subsumed his son. Even in November 1864, when the North was clearly winning, 45% of Americans voted for a candidate who was perceived as favoring peace and settlement with the Confederacy.

Your points against a naive reading of American foreign policy decisions is right but one needn't rely on a naive view to suppose that the American populace - and by extension the couriers of its favor - would have recoiled in the face of the prospect of five million dead or vaporizing much of Europe with atomic bombs. We were, after all, a horribly racist society in 1945 that still forbid most blacks to vote or fight in the same units as whites, still banned all Asian people from immigrating to the U.S., and wouldn't accord equal legal racial status until over two decades after Hitler swallowed his own bullet. That's not to say we weren't better than Nazis - of course we were - but the universe of things acceptable in 1945 is different from today.

Would Americans have died by the millions to oppose Hitler's racism, even while we maintained our own (less-evil) racism at home? I think not but again I think it's an open question whereas you seem to take it for granted that the political choice would have been easy.

BTW - my argument is harder re Roosevelt but once he's dead you're talking Truman, who was much less internationalist. He famously said that we should help Hitler if Stalin was winning and vice versa. Roosevelt never equivocated about who was worse.

(1)(a) Yes
(1)(b) I have no idea

That's basically my answer, though I have some hypotheses about (b).
Given those fundamentals, I'd suggest we view this discussion as one in which you have an intuition and I have the opposite intuition.
I have said all along (i.e. in my "minimal Barbarossa" threads) that I'm less confident that beating Russia means Germany can avoid defeat.
There's no way to demonstrate it until "The End," but I'd be happy to concede, after all the analyses have been done, that Germany had no chance in WW2. That was my stance for most of my adult life. I've spent more than a few nights yelling at Wehraboo IRL friends that Hitler was a deluded idiot who never had any chance to win, so part of me would be happy to lose this argument.

[TheMarcksPlan]

The Allies could pick and choose their battles to ensure a series of easy great victories (take Italy one year, then Greece, then the Caucasus, then Norway, etc.) to keep their populations' morale up.

Forgot to address this in last post...
Except for Norway, this strategy is doomed.
If Allies put their OTL force in Italy they're fucked:
The Germans don't have an active Eastern Front and have lost many fewer men in the East up to that point (any feasible narrative of German victory in the East means at least a million fewer permanent German casualties).
The Allies had ~30 divisions in Italy. In these conditions, Germany can outnumber them by 2:1 easily on the peninsula. Good night AEF.

The Allies might have been able to take Norway, Sicily, or other places in which Germany couldn't concentrate its army without naval/air superiority. But that's it. Any place with a German-controlled rail line can't be held unless the Allies come with their whole army.

[checkov]

My point of bringing out the pre-war concentration of aircraft production in Moscow was simply to show Moscow had great tangible assets and that taking it would have hurt the SU. I don't know how many plants were successfully moved by August 41.

Also the SU may have had reserves near Moscow in August but not as many as in October nor as prepared, surely some of you can admit that?

[ljadw]

Hurting the Soviets would not help the Germans, besides the aim of Taifun ws not to capture/conquer Moscow, but to defeat decisively the Soviet forces east of Smolensk and then to go to the AA line, Guderian had as mission to go to Gorky .
The aim of Taifun was not to advance,or to conquer a city . The aim was to destroy what the Germans hoped were the last Soviet reserves,which would cause the collaps of the SU and would make possible to go to the AA line .
The fall of Moscow would not cause the collaps of the SU;otherwise Stalin would not have the intention to abandon Moscow.
The collaps of the SU ,caused by the destruction of the last Soviet reserves,would result in the fall of Moscow .
The strategy behind Taifun was the same as the one behind Barbarossa .Taifun was only a small rehearsal of Barbarossa .
That the SU would have less reserves in August than in October is irrelevant as
a the Germans were much weaker in August than in October
b the SU had always the option not to fight east of Moscow, or even not to fight in Moscow and to retreat east of Moscow where the Germans could not defeat them.

[Paul Lakowski]

Germany mismanaged a good deal of their precious metals needs. The amount of chrome & nickel needed to build 100,000 high temp/pressure propeller/jet engines was available throughout 1938-44, but was squandered building tens of thousands of machine gun/observation copulas and armored doors installed along the WESTWALL/EASTWALL/ATLANTIC WALL from the late 1930s through early 1940s .

Maybe worse than that was the estimated ~200,000 tons of armored steel installed along these same fortifications throughout this same time period. That resource could have been directly applied to the programme of semi tractors built for the Wehrmacht throughout this time period. Going on Hahn work WAFFEN UND GEHEIMWAFFEN, this effort produced .....

ZgKw 1t x 7862...each with 1/2 ton "bolt on armor" , unless SPW-250 in which case that's 1.3t armor each .
plus the historical 7454 SPW-250 & SPW-252/253/254...
ZgKw 3t x 9028...each with 3/4 t "bolt on armor" , while SPW-251 was 1.5t each.
Plus the historical 15252 SPW-251
ZgKw 5t x 3660...each with 1.25 t "bolt on armor" . A scaled up SPW should be with~ 2.5t armor each.
ZgKw 8t x 12,497...each with 1.75 t "bolt on armor" . A scaled up SPW should be with~ 3.5t armor each.
ZgKw 12t x 3450...each with 2t "bolt on armor" . A scaled up SPW should be with~ 4t armor each.
ZgKw 18t x 2727...each with 3t "bolt on armor" . A scaled up SPW should be with~ 5t armor each.

53,000 tons "bolt on armor" plus 32,568 t SPW 250/2/3/4 armor. Alternatively 104,087t 1/2" SPW armor plus 32,568t SPW-251 = 136,655 t armor

Since the main armor alloys used in semi-tractor/SP programs were low alloy, they didn’t even use chrome or nickel, meaning the specialised chrome/nickel could still go to build the masses of better aero engines.

To make this semi-tractor/SP program into AFVs ; they would also need guns /artillery/FlaK

The SPW 250 APC were historically armed with machine guns & some with 75L24 gun or 37L45 Pak or 81mm mortar. Some even had 20mm FlaK mounted. Certainly the ZgKw 1t could mount the same weapons.

The SPW-251 APC were also historically armed with machine guns and some with 75L24 gun or 37L45 Pak ; 50L60 Pak ; 75L46 PaK and even 81mm mortar. An armored ZgKw 3t should be able to mount these same weapons.

Hitler demanded –mid war – that the 105mm le FH18/40 be mounted on the ZgKw 3t semi tractors. But given the SPW-251 could barely handle the 75L46 PaK-40, it’s likely the ZgKw 5t semi tractor would be a better mount for the 105mm howitzer and the 75L46 PaK-40.

The ZgKw 5t semi tractor was used to mount the 37mm FlaK, while the armored ZgKw 8t also mounted the 37mm FlaK and the Quad 20mm FlaK. There is photo evidence of armored ZgKw 8t experimentally mounted with 75L70 gun PaK-42; although other sources claim it’s an 88mm PaK-43.

A few ZgKw 12t & ZgKw 18t semi tractors ..were built mounting the 88mm Flak 36 gun, plus 4-5t of "bolt on armor" . As FlaK they had gun elevation of 85o , requiring the 88mm pedestal mount bring the AFV height up to 3.5m and the AFV mass to 25 tons.

Given the 88 flak 36 was 5 tons and it had height of 1.7m & 5m length, this is bigger than the 5.5 ton 150mm s FH-18, which was 1.5m high and 4.5m length. Thus it’s reasonable to assume the same semi tractor could operate the 150mm s.FH18 howitzer.

[Peter89]

Germany mismanaged a good deal of their precious metals needs. The amount of chrome & nickel needed to build 100,000 high temp/pressure propeller/jet engines was available throughout 1938-44, but was squandered building tens of thousands of machine gun/observation copulas and armored doors installed along the WESTWALL/EASTWALL/ATLANTIC WALL from the late 1930s through early 1940s .

Maybe worse than that was the estimated ~200,000 tons of armored steel installed along these same fortifications throughout this same time period. That resource could have been directly applied to the programme of semi tractors built for the Wehrmacht throughout this time period. Going on Hahn work WAFFEN UND GEHEIMWAFFEN, this effort produced .....

ZgKw 1t x 7862...each with 1/2 ton "bolt on armor" , unless SPW-250 in which case that's 1.3t armor each .
plus the historical 7454 SPW-250 & SPW-252/253/254...
ZgKw 3t x 9028...each with 3/4 t "bolt on armor" , while SPW-251 was 1.5t each.
Plus the historical 15252 SPW-251
ZgKw 5t x 3660...each with 1.25 t "bolt on armor" . A scaled up SPW should be with~ 2.5t armor each.
ZgKw 8t x 12,497...each with 1.75 t "bolt on armor" . A scaled up SPW should be with~ 3.5t armor each.
ZgKw 12t x 3450...each with 2t "bolt on armor" . A scaled up SPW should be with~ 4t armor each.
ZgKw 18t x 2727...each with 3t "bolt on armor" . A scaled up SPW should be with~ 5t armor each.

53,000 tons "bolt on armor" plus 32,568 t SPW 250/2/3/4 armor. Alternatively 104,087t 1/2" SPW armor plus 32,568t SPW-251 = 136,655 t armor

Since the main armor alloys used in semi-tractor/SP programs were low alloy, they didn’t even use chrome or nickel, meaning the specialised chrome/nickel could still go to build the masses of better aero engines.

To make this semi-tractor/SP program into AFVs ; they would also need guns /artillery/FlaK

The SPW 250 APC were historically armed with machine guns & some with 75L24 gun or 37L45 Pak or 81mm mortar. Some even had 20mm FlaK mounted. Certainly the ZgKw 1t could mount the same weapons.

The SPW-251 APC were also historically armed with machine guns and some with 75L24 gun or 37L45 Pak ; 50L60 Pak ; 75L46 PaK and even 81mm mortar. An armored ZgKw 3t should be able to mount these same weapons.

Hitler demanded –mid war – that the 105mm le FH18/40 be mounted on the ZgKw 3t semi tractors. But given the SPW-251 could barely handle the 75L46 PaK-40, it’s likely the ZgKw 5t semi tractor would be a better mount for the 105mm howitzer and the 75L46 PaK-40.

The ZgKw 5t semi tractor was used to mount the 37mm FlaK, while the armored ZgKw 8t also mounted the 37mm FlaK and the Quad 20mm FlaK. There is photo evidence of armored ZgKw 8t experimentally mounted with 75L70 gun PaK-42; although other sources claim it’s an 88mm PaK-43.

A few ZgKw 12t & ZgKw 18t semi tractors ..were built mounting the 88mm Flak 36 gun, plus 4-5t of "bolt on armor" . As FlaK they had gun elevation of 85o , requiring the 88mm pedestal mount bring the AFV height up to 3.5m and the AFV mass to 25 tons.

Given the 88 flak 36 was 5 tons and it had height of 1.7m & 5m length, this is bigger than the 5.5 ton 150mm s FH-18, which was 1.5m high and 4.5m length. Thus it’s reasonable to assume the same semi tractor could operate the 150mm s.FH18 howitzer.

Regarding the steel allocations, the Germans couldn't operate way more mechanized formations effectively.

The lack of proper air cover, fuel shortages, poor crew training and the lack of spare parts caused most of the problems. The German armoured attack with Panthers and mechanized infantry (in local superiority!) failed miserably at the Battle of Arracourt.

Allocationg steel to static defense installations was actually a reasonable choice after 1943. I think.

The precious metal allocation is a different matter; the war industry tried to cope with the manufacturing reality (just look at the late version of Pz IV), but they couldn't make proper prioritization between important and less important parts.

[Paul Lakowski]

Since the number of semi-tractors mentioned above are EXACTLY the same numbers as historical- it should not consume any more spare parts & fuel+ training as historical case!

At all time trough out the war most of these assets were already in use and if anything they were under utilised. Throughout the eastern front they were the only AFV providing air-cover to the mechanized troops- until the last year of the war when they were supplemented by tank mounted versions.

In most cases the tractors towing these guns could be used as a self propelled mount , since the mass of the towed artillery is reduced to about 1/3 its original size when it doesn't need the gun limber or the wheels & trailers needed to stabilize the gun in the firing position. EXAMPLE.

150mm sFH-18 is a divisional 5.5 ton artillery piece which needs an 8 ton towing tractor ;since its weight -with gun and limber- is actually 8.5 tons. Likewise the gun and recoil system is less than 1/2 the weight of the artillery pieces , or the gun would be unstable. So this sFH-18 gun could be reduced to 2.2 tons -with out the split trains and wheels. However the gun crew and ammo has to be accounted for as well as any "bolt on armor".

The 8 ton French Lorraine Schlepper was able to mount and operate 2.2 ton sFH-13 OLD howitzer , with the "Spade" extended it was unstable, but was used in the western front.

The 8 ton ZgKw VIII was listed with 1.8 tons payload and max weigh of 11.5 tons. However these must be guidelines since it was able to operate a 1.5ton Quad 20mm flak with 360o rotation and 100o elevation plus 10 man crew and 600 shells. That's about 11.5 tons. It also appeared with armor on the 1.75 ton , 37mmflak version that must have been over 13 tons .

It does look like they could have mounted these guns on the tractors that towed them.

[checkov]

"Hurting the Soviets would not have helped the Germans"....ahh, I really don't know how to answer that.

The Germans were much weaker in August? How so? The Soviets had just had catastrophic defeats. Their Red Air Force for example nearly decimated, huge losses in men and tanks. Moscow, as I've pointed out, nearly undefended compared to what it would be in late October.

Moscow wasn't just a little dot on a map. Abandoning it to set up defenses East would have had serious consequences. Staying to fight with unorganized defenses, freshly raised units with little training in good weather against mobile German forces very possibly would have resulted in a major German victory.

Again I point out Moscow was a MAJOR communications, command and control, an enormous population center and significant manufacturing base. Taking it would have caused all sorts of problems the USSR never had to deal with and opportunities Germany never enjoyed. In other words it would have been a "game changer".

From a Mr David Payne who wrote an article in the National Interest magazine on how Germany could have defeated The USSR in WW2. This quote is in direct reference to the effect of losing Moscow on the USSR in 1941:

"In his excellent book Hitler’s Panzers East, R.H.S. Stolfi estimated that would have taken away up to 45 percent of the Soviet industrial base and up to 42 percent of her population making it extremely difficult for the Soviets to recover and take back lost territory."

There you have it.

Once this HUUUGE loss in manufacturing, communications and population happened the rail system would have severely hampered the distribution of lend-lease goods to make up for losses in production.

It would have been game over. Hitler was a radical megalomaniac with the military ability of a corporal. But for his poor decisions like stalling the invasion for a side show of little military significance in Greece and then squandering his one last opportunity. That is driving for the heart of the S.U., i.e. Moscow in good weather while Soviet forces were in disarray, the Germans could have defeated them.

That's my two cents on the matter".

[ljadw]

Not wise to use Stolfi as a source:Stolfi used Suvorov and Carell as sources ,and everyone knows that these were only charlatans .
Mobile forces could not make it to Moscow in August 1941: this is confirmed by AGC staff.
Mobile forces could not even make it to Moscow if the Soviets were defeated,because of logistics and distances .Only small infantry units could do it, using Soviet railways .And, if the SU was defeated in July 1941, there was no need to go to Moscow.
The truth is that the fall of the SU in the summer would result in the capture of Moscow, the capture of Moscow would not result in the fall of the SU ( this is proved by the initial decision of Stalin to abandon Moscow AND to continue the war )

[Aida1]

Not wise to use Stolfi as a source:Stolfi used Suvorov and Carell as sources ,and everyone knows that these were only charlatans .
Mobile forces could not make it to Moscow in August 1941: this is confirmed by AGC staff.
Mobile forces could not even make it to Moscow if the Soviets were defeated,because of logistics and distances .Only small infantry units could do it, using Soviet railways .And, if the SU was defeated in July 1941, there was no need to go to Moscow.
The truth is that the fall of the SU in the summer would result in the capture of Moscow, the capture of Moscow would not result in the fall of the SU ( this is proved by the initial decision of Stalin to abandon Moscow AND to continue the war )

You are completely wrong here. Fedor von Bock wanted to attack towards Moscow in august and orders were ready for that when Hitler ordered he operation to the south which von Bock disagreed with (Fedor von Bock Herbig 1995 pp 254-255). Mobile forces could certainly reach the area around Moscow.
Accusing authors of being charlatans is your usual tactic to avoid answering them on substance.

[TheMarcksPlan]

"Hurting the Soviets would not have helped the Germans"....ahh, I really don't know how to answer that.

Word of advice... just don't answer. Putting that user on ignore makes reading almost any thread much, much easier and more productive.

[Aida1]

"Hurting the Soviets would not have helped the Germans"....ahh, I really don't know how to answer that.

Word of advice... just don't answer. Putting that user on ignore makes reading almost any thread much, much easier and more productive.

You generally know what you are talking about but you are in the bad habit of ignoring those that contradict you.

[ljadw]

Not wise to use Stolfi as a source:Stolfi used Suvorov and Carell as sources ,and everyone knows that these were only charlatans .
Mobile forces could not make it to Moscow in August 1941: this is confirmed by AGC staff.
Mobile forces could not even make it to Moscow if the Soviets were defeated,because of logistics and distances .Only small infantry units could do it, using Soviet railways .And, if the SU was defeated in July 1941, there was no need to go to Moscow.
The truth is that the fall of the SU in the summer would result in the capture of Moscow, the capture of Moscow would not result in the fall of the SU ( this is proved by the initial decision of Stalin to abandon Moscow AND to continue the war )

You are completely wrong here. Fedor von Bock wanted to attack towards Moscow in august and orders were ready for that when Hitler ordered he operation to the south which von Bock disagreed with (Fedor von Bock Herbig 1995 pp 254-255). Mobile forces could certainly reach the area around Moscow.
Accusing authors of being charlatans is your usual tactic to avoid answering them on substance.

Suvurov is a liar and a charlatan : there were no Soviet flying tanks before June 1941 .
The nazi Carrell is on the same level : I have read his three books about the war in the east who are only fantasy written for a public with the intellect of a child of 10 years .It is only pulp . Carrell said that Barbarossa was a preventive attack to forestall a Soviet attack, something which is a lie and he said also that Germany was fighting a clean war( the dead of Oradour will disagree ) and lost the war because of HItler .
That Bock wanted to attack,is irrelevant, because it does not prove that the attack could succeed ,the mobile forces from AGC could not go to Moscow .In August 1941 the Soviet forces opposite AGC were still not defeated and as long as they were not defeated and on the run, an advance to Moscow ( which was not needed ) was out of the question . And even if the Soviet forces opposing AGC were defeated,it was out of the question that mobile forces could advance to Moscow, for logistical reasons : mobile forces needed POL,and there was no POL.Only small infantry units could advance to the region east of Moscow using the Soviet railways .