At what point did Germany lose WW2?

[ljadw]

NO :except for a miracle,Germany could not defeat the USSR . This is a fact .

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

All discussions must start with this premise .

On the contrary, all discussions should start by examining whether the premise is true.

No : it is also the opinion of the German historian Christian Gerlach, who wrote in ''Operative Planungen der Wehrmacht für den Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion'' the following : ''die Hoffnung auf einen sowjetischen Zusammenbruch ,wie auf einen deus ex machina .''
the hope on a soviet collapse,as on a deus ex machina .
It was also the opinion of Bock, Keitel AND Hitler, yes :Hitler !!
After a meeting with Keitel, Bock wrote the following in his diary :
The hope from the Führer that Japan sees that its big hour has come, seems not to be fulfilled :Hitler,who explicitly forbade to inform Japan about Barbarossa ,was,already after a month,hoping that Japan would save him .
A quick collapse of the Soviet Union is necessary for the interests of Germany,as we can not conquer Russia .
And the anxious Führer asks himself : how many time is remaining to finish Russia and how many time do I need to finish Russia ?
That was what Keitel, the mouthpiece of Hitler,told Bock .
The Germans HOPED, against better judgement,that a quick defeat of the Red Army would cause the collapse of the regime and that the collapse of the regime would cause the defeat of the Red Army .

[KDF33]

No : it is also the opinion of the German historian Christian Gerlach

Two points:

1. Christian Gerlach can be wrong.
2. You aren't situating the quote in context.

It was also the opinion of Bock, Keitel AND Hitler, yes :Hitler !!
After a meeting with Keitel, Bock wrote the following in his diary :

Again, you're not providing the wider context of the quote.

Beyond that, the optimism of the German military leadership fluctuated widely during the conflict. A few months later, after the fall of Kiev, Hitler and Halder thought that the Red Army was on the brink of collapse:



Ultimately, quoting the impressionistic reactions of the participants is futile. Unlike them, we have access to archival documentation, both German and Soviet, and it is on the basis of said documentation that we should determine whether or not Soviet victory was preordained.

Now, I ask you again: on the basis of what we know today, why should we start from the premise that Soviet survival, and eventual victory, was inevitable?

[ljadw]

That Hitler's optimism was fluctuating does not negate the fact that in July he panicked and hoped on a Japanese intervention .
And on 24 September ,Goebbels said that Hitler BELIEVED,which means that Hitler had no proofs for what he said , but was doing wishful thinking .
To say that heavy fighting would last til 15 October and that on 16 October,the Russians will start to run away is wishful thinking based on the hope of the appearance of a deus ex machina and implicitly or explicitly,Hitler admitted that victory in the East depended essentially or exclusively ,on the Soviets :if they were running away,he won,if they did not run away, he lost .And although there were no indications that they would run away,he still BELIEVED that they would run away,because his optimism was based on the ''argument ''that he would and should win,because he could not lose .

[Aida1]

That Hitler's optimism was fluctuating does not negate the fact that in July he panicked and hoped on a Japanese intervention .
And on 24 September ,Goebbels said that Hitler BELIEVED,which means that Hitler had no proofs for what he said , but was doing wishful thinking .
To say that heavy fighting would last til 15 October and that on 16 October,the Russians will start to run away is wishful thinking based on the hope of the appearance of a deus ex machina and implicitly or explicitly,Hitler admitted that victory in the East depended essentially or exclusively ,on the Soviets :if they were running away,he won,if they did not run away, he lost .And although there were no indications that they would run away,he still BELIEVED that they would run away,because his optimism was based on the ''argument ''that he would and should win,because he could not lose .

The usual trolling.

[KDF33]

That Hitler's optimism was fluctuating does not negate the fact that in July he panicked and hoped on a Japanese intervention .

The point isn't that Hitler's opinions in September negated the existence of different views in late July. The point is that nobody should base their understanding of the conflict on the subjective, fluctuating views of the participants, blinded as they were by the fog of war.

Again, I ask: on the basis of both German and Soviet archival evidence, why should we start from the premise that Soviet survival, and eventual victory, was inevitable?

[ljadw]

Soviet and German archival evidence are not needed to start from the premise that Soviet survival and eventual victory was inevitable, or better that German failure and defeat was inevitable .
Because archival evidence can not prove this as Soviet survival and victory depended essentially on political and psychological factors : it is :as long as the hostility of the Soviet population to the German invaders was greater than its hostility to the communist rulers,the Soviet Union was invincible : failure or success of Barbarossa was in the hands of the Soviet population : as long as it was willing to suffer, to fight, to die not for the communist rulers,but against the German invaders, Germany had no chance at all:the Germans failed with 150 divisions, they could have failed with 200 divisions and have won with 100 divisions .
The fact that the Red Army did not desert or rebel,that the civilians did not desert or rebel proves that Germany had no chance .
And the Germans knew this (Halder lied, as usual, when he said that Germany failed because it had underestimated the Soviets ) and that's why they planned a short campaign with a military decision on the border,which would cause and be caused by the desertion and revolt of the Red Army and the civilians . That's why Hitler claimed, hoped that a successful attack on Moscow would result in the collaps of the Soviet forces that defended the capital .
When this did not happen, Hitler invented something else :he said that the capture of the oil of the Caucasus would result in the fall of the USSR,but,we know that there are no proofs, no indications that after the capture of Baku the Red Army and the Soviet civilians would stop the war and hang the communists .
The Germans hoped that a victory at the border would result in the capitulation of the Red Army and the revolt of the population ,because they assumed rightly that victories east of the border would have no deciding effect and history proved that they were right and that all those postwar and Cold War would be historians who 80 year after the events try to rewrite history and say that with X more tanks, X more divisions,Germany would have won, are wrong .
Technology is only one of the things and a minor one, that decide the outcome of a war . See what happens in Ukraine .

[KDF33]

Soviet and German archival evidence are not needed to start from the premise that Soviet survival and eventual victory was inevitable, or better that German failure and defeat was inevitable .

Yes, it is needed. Otherwise, your assertion is little more than religious belief.

Soviet survival and victory depended essentially on political and psychological factors

Evidence?

[ljadw]

Archival evidence is very unreliable . They are figures written by Soviets and Germans always with an aim and thus not objective and when they are interpreted 80 years later by Anglo-Saxon historians, these interpretations have also an aim . You can prove anything with archival evidence :the German generals said,after the war of course,that everything was the fault of Hitler and the Soviet generals said,after the death of Stalin,that they won,notwithstanding the interventions of Stalin . Archival evidence is as unreliable as diaries and memoirs . Look at the false archival evidence from Speer .
Evidence ? See what has happened : if in the Summer of 1941 the Soviet army and population had revolted against the regime, Barbarossa was a success,they did not revolt and Barbarossa failed .
See what happened when the Taliban fought first against the Soviets and won and than against the US and won .
They won in both cases because the population supported them .

[KDF33]

Archival evidence is very unreliable . They are figures written by Soviets and Germans always with an aim and thus not objective

Yes, they were written with an aim: that of managing the war effort.

You seem to conflate 'archival evidence' with 'postwar memoirs'.

Look at the false archival evidence from Speer .

Speer offered a narrative, not archival evidence. German archival evidence, in fact, debunks Speer.

Evidence ? See what has happened

Again: do you believe in contingency, or are you a strict determinist?

See what happened when the Taliban fought first against the Soviets

The Taliban never fought against the Soviets. They were founded in 1994.

[ljadw]

Archival evidence is very unreliable . They are figures written by Soviets and Germans always with an aim and thus not objective

Yes, they were written with an aim: that of managing the war effort.

You seem to conflate 'archival evidence' with 'postwar memoirs'.

Look at the false archival evidence from Speer .

Speer offered a narrative, not archival evidence. German archival evidence, in fact, debunks Speer.

Evidence ? See what has happened

Again: do you believe in contingency, or are you a strict determinist?

See what happened when the Taliban fought first against the Soviets

The Taliban never fought against the Soviets. They were founded in 1994.

The aim is not to manage the war effort, but to cover their behind if they lost or to claim victory for themselves if they won .
Archival evidence is not evidence ,besides it can be interpreted in countless ways .An increase of tank production can result in a worse situation than a decrease of tank production and figures about tank production prove thus nothing and can not be used to prove something . The same for aircraft, ammunition, etc production .
Speer used the lies from Wagenführ which had as origin the German archives .
Figures from the German archives were also used to propagate the lie that Göring was very bad as commander of the Luftwaffe.
The USSBS used the German archives to provethe lies that the German economy was already a war economy before 1939, that the Nazis were inefficient in economic affairs and that liberal democracy was better .US and Soviet archives were used to prove the lie that it was the US who won the war in the East because of Lend-Lease,
Etc ...

I do not believe in contingency ,neither in determinism .
Those who fought against the Soviets were the same as those who fought against the US ,that they called themselves Taliban in 1994 is irrelevant .
In both cases they won against opponents with technology available because the population supported them,not because they loved the Taliban ,but because they disliked foreigners who invaded their country to change their way of life .
Something no American can understand ,because Americans are convinced that those who dislike communism,support liberal democracy made in the US .History has proved that this is not so .
Germany failed in the East, not because it did make mistakes,but because the population of the USSR refused to give up .

[Ponury]

Germany failed in the East, not because it did make mistakes,but because the population of the USSR refused to give up .

And here you are wrong. The population of the USSR wanted to surrender to Germany, but Hitler disregarded it, he was guided only by their racial criteria and other nonsense. Cossacks, Ukrainians (a government in Kiev in 1941 who Germans arrested), auxiliary units from Belarusians, Georgians, etc. The Germans did not use this opportunity. In addition, the general general and Ron. Nothing too. Only the Germans woke up in the second half of 1944. But it was too late ...

[KDF33]

In addition, the general general and Ron.

?

[Ponury]

General Wlasow and RONA

[ljadw]

Germany failed in the East, not because it did make mistakes,but because the population of the USSR refused to give up .

And here you are wrong. The population of the USSR wanted to surrender to Germany, but Hitler disregarded it, he was guided only by their racial criteria and other nonsense. Cossacks, Ukrainians (a government in Kiev in 1941 who Germans arrested), auxiliary units from Belarusians, Georgians, etc. The Germans did not use this opportunity. In addition, the general general and Ron. Nothing too. Only the Germans woke up in the second half of 1944. But it was too late ...

NO :there is no proof for your claim that the population of the USSR wanted to surrender to the Germans, but there are a lot of proofs for the opposite .
About Ukraine :the OUN had in Soviet Ukraine only a small support and more Ukrainians fought with the Red Army than against the Red Army . Besides :the OUN fought also against the Germans .
And the Cossacks were only a small minority of the 180 million people who lived in the USSR .

[Aida1]

Archival evidence is very unreliable . They are figures written by Soviets and Germans always with an aim and thus not objective

Yes, they were written with an aim: that of managing the war effort.

You seem to conflate 'archival evidence' with 'postwar memoirs'.

Look at the false archival evidence from Speer .

Speer offered a narrative, not archival evidence. German archival evidence, in fact, debunks Speer.

Evidence ? See what has happened

Again: do you believe in contingency, or are you a strict determinist?

See what happened when the Taliban fought first against the Soviets

The Taliban never fought against the Soviets. They were founded in 1994.

The aim is not to manage the war effort, but to cover their behind if they lost or to claim victory for themselves if they won .
Archival evidence is not evidence ,besides it can be interpreted in countless ways .An increase of tank production can result in a worse situation than a decrease of tank production and figures about tank production prove thus nothing and can not be used to prove something . The same for aircraft, ammunition, etc production .
Speer used the lies from Wagenführ which had as origin the German archives .
Figures from the German archives were also used to propagate the lie that Göring was very bad as commander of the Luftwaffe.
The USSBS used the German archives to provethe lies that the German economy was already a war economy before 1939, that the Nazis were inefficient in economic affairs and that liberal democracy was better .US and Soviet archives were used to prove the lie that it was the US who won the war in the East because of Lend-Lease,
Etc ...

I do not believe in contingency ,neither in determinism .
Those who fought against the Soviets were the same as those who fought against the US ,that they called themselves Taliban in 1994 is irrelevant .
In both cases they won against opponents with technology available because the population supported them,not because they loved the Taliban ,but because they disliked foreigners who invaded their country to change their way of life .
Something no American can understand ,because Americans are convinced that those who dislike communism,support liberal democracy made in the US .History has proved that this is not so .
Germany failed in the East, not because it did make mistakes,but because the population of the USSR refused to give up .

All soiurces are rejected by you as you refuse to read anything.