At what point did Germany lose WW2?

[ljadw]

That the German economy was overheated is not the same as that it would collaps .
Germany had debts ( to its own population ) as had most countries ,and these debts would be paid , or postponed, ...by the next generation .
The billions Germany is now paying to help Ukraine will be paid also by the next generation .
And, the amount /lack of foreign currencies had only a very small influence on German imports .
Trade with the US
1937 :409 million RM (import : 287,export 227 )
1938 : 572 million RM ( import : 412, export 160 )

[Globalization41]

[If Hitler had not declared war on the US, US would have declared war on Germany: there was already a de facto war between both countries before Pearl Harbour.]

After Pearl Harbor, Congress gave Roosevelt a blank check to fight in the Pacific. With no declaration by Hitler, it would have been more difficult to divert America's No. 1 war priority in the Pacific as time moved forward. There would have been opposition in Congress to war with Germany. F.D.R. lucked out when Hitler quickly declared war. ... It might have turned out better for Tojo and Hitler to fight a few skirmishes with the U.S. instead of declaring war. ... Tokyo and Berlin should have ignored Roosevelt's provocations (but both Tojo and Hitler had bad cases of rabbit ears). Only Congress could declare war.

[There would be no stalemate near Minsk without a German DOW on the US as the Soviets would be in Berlin without the help of the US. Germany could not afford a long war, while the USSR could afford such a war.]

This must have been a typo. The road to Berlin would have been more easily defended without U.S./U.K. support to the Soviets. The Red Army would have stalled due to increasingly difficult logistics against a more dangerously concentrated German Army. The Nazi-Soviet War would have stalemated with the demarcation line possibly near Minsk.

I believe Hitler was more interested in exploiting the Ukraine than the fall of Moscow or the occupation of northwestern Russia. It seems possible he could have defended the Ukraine from Russian incursions by concentrating his forces more to the south and not declaring war on the U.S. ... Of course, regardless of which strategic (northern or southern) directions might be taken, tactical operations called for wiping out as many Soviet Armies as fast as possible, as ljadw pointed out. Hitler often assumed the Red Army was running on empty. Once the early battles were won, he figured he could probably fight off a few nuisance raids with no problem.

Globalization41.

[ljadw]

Already before PH the Atlantic Fleet was chasing German submarines to destroy them .
The 1940 presidential election candidates were both very anti-German (Willkie even more than FDR ) .
In 1941 the industrial,financial and political center of gravity of the US was the North East ,the 13 original states ,dominated by the WASPS and there the mood was very anti German .
Isolationism was already dead before PH and Lend Lease was approved by Congress already before PH .

[KDF33]

The Red Army would have stalled due to increasingly difficult logistics against a more dangerously concentrated German Army. The Nazi-Soviet War would have stalemated with the demarcation line possibly near Minsk.

No. Absent U.S./U.K. support, the Soviet Union was doomed.

[ljadw]

The Red Army would have stalled due to increasingly difficult logistics against a more dangerously concentrated German Army. The Nazi-Soviet War would have stalemated with the demarcation line possibly near Minsk.

No. Absent U.S./U.K. support, the Soviet Union was doomed.

No :even if the US/UK/France remained neutral, Germany would lose :Barbarossa failed in the Summer of 1941 before the arrival of British/US deliveries for the USSR .
Lend Lease did help the USSR, but nothing more .

[pukovnik7]

2. Nazis, being socialists themselves, completely devastated Germany's economy.

This is wrong. The German economy was in no way "devastated" in 1941.

it was an economic necessity, the only way to prop up the failing economy without abandoning socialism.

How?

Yes, it was. Not "devastated" as such, perhaps, but it was overheating, all foreign currency reserves were gone. What Nazis did was to issue "bills of exchange" to service debt and pay industry. Hjamar Schacht warned Hitler the economy would collapse if it continued on that course. When Hitler refused to listen, Schacht resigned in 1937. And he was absolutely correct. "Bills of exchange" have a service date or pull date - date after which the bills are drawn and issuer is asked for real money. Except, there was no real money. The entire operation was a scam.

In order to prevent complete economic collapse, Nazi government desperately needed influx of money from outside the German economy. That, or it would suffer the same - or worse - fate that the Weimar Republic did. Add to that the Nazi ideological focus on autarky, and armed conquest of Europe was the only possible solution. Annexation of Austria and Czech Republic helped a bit, but it wasn't enough. No single conquest was enough: because of how the Nazi economy worked, Germany just had to gobble up country after country to stay afloat.

In short, Germany lost the war the moment Nazis came to power.

1 Barbarossa in 1941 had nothing to do with the Nazi ideology

It had everything to do with Nazi ideology:
1. Nazis believed that Communists were just looking to export Communism into Europe and were about to attack (correct while Lenin ruled, not so sure about Stalin's time)
2. Nazis, being socialists themselves, completely devastated Germany's economy. Lebensraum was not just a crazy ideological project, it was an economic necessity, the only way to prop up the failing economy without abandoning socialism.

1 is wrong :the Abwehr said that there were no Soviet plans to attack Germany and Goebbels also said the same .
2 is wrong : Nazis were not socialists (the socialist Strasser was eliminated in 1934 ) and the 25-points program was hidden in 1933.
It is also not so that on 22 June 1941 the German economy was destroyed and it is also not so that Germany needed the oil and grain of the USSR to survive .
3 The real reason for Barbarossa was the hope,assumption,wishful thinking ( you can chose ) that a defeat of the USSR before the entry of the US in the war ,would result in the capitulation of Britain .
The LW, KM, Heer had failed to force Britain to give up .The only remaining solution was to defeat the USSR .
Hitler said this several times during his conferences with his generals .

1. Abwehr may have said so. I'm talking about what Hitler believed, as stated in Mein Kampf. For example:

During my sojourn in Vienna I used to look upon Germany as an imperturbable
colossus; but even then serious doubts and misgivings would often disturb me. In my
own mind and in my conversation with my small circle of acquaintances I used to
criticize Germany's foreign policy and the incredibly superficial way, according to my
thinking, in which Marxism was dealt with, though it was then the most important
problem in Germany. I could not understand how they could stumble blindfolded into
the midst of this peril, the effects of which would be momentous if the openly declared
aims of Marxism could be put into practice. Even as early as that time I warned people
around me, just as I am warning a wider audience now, against that soothing slogan of
all indolent and feckless nature: NOTHING CAN HAPPEN TO US. A similar mental
contagion had already destroyed a mighty empire. Can Germany escape the operation
of those laws to which all other human communities are subject?
In the years 1913 and 1914 I expressed my opinion for the first time in various circles,
some of which are now members of the National Socialist Movement, that the problem
of how the future of the German nation can be secured is the problem of how Marxism
can be exterminated.
I considered the disastrous policy of the Triple Alliance as one of the consequences
resulting from the disintegrating effects of the Marxist teaching; for the alarming feature
was that this teaching was invisibly corrupting the foundations of a healthy political
and economic outlook. Those who had been themselves contaminated frequently did
not realise that their aims and actions sprang from this WELTANSCHAUUNG, which
they otherwise openly repudiated.

Sure, German intelligence may have stated that Soviets had no plans to attack Europe - but for Hitler, that was just a pause. Conflict was always coming, and so Hitler wanted to exterminate Communism before Communists could strike themselves.

2. Yes, they were. At the very least, they established socialist-like centralized/governmental control of the economy. As for economy, see my reply to KDF33.

1 What Hitler said was about a period when there was no Communist state and the Marxist danger in Germany before 1914 was almost an invention .
2 Government war control of the economy does not mean government control of the peace economy .Krupp had nothing to fear .
Besides what you call socialist-like centralized/governmental control of the economy was much stronger in Britain than in Germany .
3 The same Hitler who said that he wanted to exterminate Communism before Communism could exterminate him, did very good business till June 1941 with the only Communist state = the USSR .
There were people who said that in the long way Nazism and Communism could not coexist, but for Hitler war with the Soviets could only happen in the 1950s, in the long way and in the long way, we are all dead .
No stronger anti-communist than Reagan, and one of the first things he did was to resume the grain exports to the USSR,which had been stopped by Carter after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan .
4 Kinzel ( chief of FHO ) said :
''Da jedoch aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach die Russen nicht mit einem Krieg beginnen werden ....''
''As following all probability the Russians will not start a war...''
Source : DRZW, Bd 4 , P 336 .
The Soviets refused to fight for Poland in September 1939 ,they could have easily invaded Germany in May 1940, thus why would they have attacked Germany in June 1941 ?
The decision to start Barbarossa had nothing to do with the fear for a Soviet attack or for a Marxist invasion of Europe,and such an invasion never happened,even when the Soviets could have succeeded .

1. Socialist - though not necessarily Marxist - danger in Germany before 1914. existed, it just wasn't anywhere as pronounced as after the First World war. IIRC, a lot of Bismarck's policies were driven by the need to suppress the socialists.
2. It doesn't, necessarily, but Nazi Germany had governmental control of the economy since it became Nazi Germany.
3. Of course he did. For Germany at the time, that was just "business as usual" at that point. Soviet Union had been assisting with German rearmament since 1919. - entire Heer armored doctrine was a result of joint operations with the Red Army. Said cooperation was cancelled once Nazis came to power, precisely because of Hitler's anti-Communist rhetoric - but resumed soon after as both sides realized that they are each other's best trading partners. Accident or no, but Germany would have never been able to start Second World War without Soviet help.
4. I'm talking about the worldview here. But first: Soviets refused to fight for Poland in 1939. because they were too busy dividing it with Germany. Why fight for something when they could just let Germany do the dirty work and then take their slice of the cake free of charge? Which is precisely what happened. At any rate, the state of Red Army in 1939. meant that it was doubtful Soviets could have defeated even the Polish Army by themselves - this would become rather obvious during the Winter War. So even if Soviets did want to fight for Poland, they simply had no means to do so at the time.

At any rate, I never suggested that Soviets were planning to attack Germany in June 1941. Fact is, Red Army simply wasn't ready for something like that. But that does not mean that Soviets were not a threat. Soviet Union had done its best to invade basically entire Europe back in 1919., and in the interwar period it continued to support various Communist cells and insurrections around the world. And while Stalin himself had given up on establishing worldwide socialism, impression left by Lenin's offensives of 1918. - 1920. was more than enough to cement Communism as an existential threat to entire world. And that in turn played a large role in rise of Nazism and Fascism, which offered a "Third Way" alternative - which would prove just as bad as Communism itself, but most people failed to realize that at the time.

[KDF33]

No :even if the US/UK/France remained neutral, Germany would lose :Barbarossa failed in the Summer of 1941 before the arrival of British/US deliveries for the USSR .
Lend Lease did help the USSR, but nothing more .

That Barbarossa failed to accomplish all of its (overambitious) objectives did not doom Germany to lose the war.

[ljadw]

Barbarossa was a desperate attempt to avoid defeat against Britain and the US .It failed to accomplish its goal,there was one objective only, not several goals .
And we know ,as did a lot of Germans in the Führung groups,that an successful Barbarossa still would result in the defeat of Germany .
Britain and US could easily win,even without Overlord .

[KDF33]

You: "Germany was doomed fighting the USSR alone."
Me: "You are wrong."
You: "I am not. Britain and the U.S. would defeat Germany even if Barbarossa succeeded."

How dense can one be.

[ljadw]

You : Germany could win WW2 even if it failed to defeat the Soviets .
Me : Germany would lose WW2 even if it defeated the Soviets .
and :Germany would lose WW2 even if it defeated Britain and if the US remained neutral .
Me : Germany would always lose, whatever the possible cases .

[KDF33]

You : Germany could win WW2 even if it failed to defeat the Soviets .

I never wrote that.

Why are you here?

[Peter89]

It is very ashistorical to debate whether Germany could defeat the SU without Wallied help. Germany was engaged in a war against the Wallies already. The Wallies did help the Soviets even without the Lend-Lease.

[ljadw]

Yes :the Wallies did help the Soviets (most of their help arrived after Stalingrad ) and this help was not decisive ,as the Germans failed in the Summer of 1941,before Western help arrived in the USSR .

[ljadw]

You : Germany could win WW2 even if it failed to defeat the Soviets .

I never wrote that.

Why are you here?

You said in post 262 :that Barbarossa failed did not doom Germany to lose the war .
Translation , in other words : Germany could win against the Wallies even if it failed to defeat the Soviets .
But the reality is that
a Germany would lose against the Wallies even if it defeated the Soviets /or if the Soviets remained neutral.
b Germany would lose against the Soviets even if it defeated the Wallies/or if the Wallies remained neutral .
c Germany would lose peace even if it defeated and the Wallies and the Soviets .
d The Wallies did not need the Soviets to win .
e The Soviets did not need the Wallies to win .

[KDF33]

You said in post 262 :that Barbarossa failed did not doom Germany to lose the war .
Translation , in other words : Germany could win against the Wallies even if it failed to defeat the Soviets .

No.

What it means is that Germany could still defeat the USSR after the failure of Barbarossa.