Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

[ljadw]

I like to see a proof for the claim that he was mentally instable when e became, at the age of 39 !!,LW chief of staff in 1939 .And who picked a colonel of 39 as chief of staff and why ? Probably it was Goering himself who made the choice, as ,from what I remember, there was a very bad relation between Milch and Jeschonnek : before the war Milch wanted to court martial Jeschonnek .
Other point : the fighters : I doubt that Jeschonnek was impressed by the fighter losses, as he was a bomber man .
Whatever, it was not Jeschonnek,neither Milch or Goering who would decide to shift the aircraft production from bombers to fighters, but Hitler, in function of the military situation .Already in 1941 there were more fighters produced than bombers and in 1943 it was more than the double ( 10900 against 4650 ) , besides the production of 1943 was decided in 1941 .

[ljadw]

About the strength of AGC ,mentioned in post 217 : I have no faith in what Surpin is sayting, because the fact that AGC was stronger than the others is caused by the fact that a stronger AGN could not operate in the area where it operated .The same for AGS : the distances were to great and the railways could not supply a bigger AGS and the Romanian units .Thus only in the center was it possible to operate with a stronger AG .
There was also no need : AGN had as mission to defeat the opposite Soviet forces,which would cause the capture of Leningrad and to advance with small units to the Wolga . More divisions would not help the Northern AG .AGS had as mission to defeat the opposite Soviet forces which would make possible an advance ,with small forces, to the Wolga . Why would AGN/AGS needed more units ,at the cost of AGC ?

[Alexandra W]

I like to see a proof for the claim that he was mentally instable when e became, at the age of 39 !!,LW chief of staff in 1939 .And who picked a colonel of 39 as chief of staff and why ? Probably it was Goering himself who made the choice, as ,from what I remember, there was a very bad relation between Milch and Jeschonnek : before the war Milch wanted to court martial Jeschonnek .
Other point : the fighters : I doubt that Jeschonnek was impressed by the fighter losses, as he was a bomber man .
Whatever, it was not Jeschonnek,neither Milch or Goering who would decide to shift the aircraft production from bombers to fighters, but Hitler, in function of the military situation .Already in 1941 there were more fighters produced than bombers and in 1943 it was more than the double ( 10900 against 4650 ) , besides the production of 1943 was decided in 1941 .

Corum mentioned that in Richthofen’s biography, and Suchenwirth suspected him to have bipolar disorder (which, given that he once in 1941 bursted in tears in public and once punched the podium while given speech, makes quite a sense to me)

Also it was Walther Wever who chose Jeschonnek as his successor. In one of Mason’s book Kesselring even felt surprised to be the next CoS for he thought it would be Jeschonnek.

[Max Payload]

I do not think OKW was directly breaking some orders of Hitler but rather going more against Moscow by making army group center to strong at the start of Barbarossa

That is considerably different to “OKW made AGC in fact to strong before the operation Barbarossa started. Quite contrary to wishes of Hitler who wanted Soviet war industry to be captured before being moved beyond Ural.” (Quoting you from #213 but my emphasis)
Nothing in the link you provided (to a document I had previously seen) suggests that Hitler was dissatisfied with AG Centre’s force structure on 22/6/41, or that it was contrary to his wishes. In fact Directive 21 clearly stated, “The main effort is to be placed north of the Pripyat”, and there is nothing in the link document (or, I suspect, anywhere else) to suggest that over the subsequent six months to June ‘41 Hitler changed his mind on that aspect of the operation.

[SloveneLiberal]

Max Payload Germans had in advance information that Soviets are building their forces at Pripyat marshes. So that's why AGC should strike there. But that does not mean they should continue from there to Moscow. This was the wish of OKW yet Hitler prefered going first after strategic areas in the south in planning of Barbarossa and very directly in his orders from August 1941.

See also in the diary of Halder note for 17 March 1941 that Hitler at a confference with generals said that AGC and AGN will push as far as Dniepr river and then take defensive positions there. Moscow is of no importance Hitler said.

http://militera.lib.ru/db/0/pdf/halder_eng6.pdf

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi SloveneLiberal

You post, "See also in the diary of Halder note for 17 March 1941 that Hitler at a confference with generals said that AGC and AGN will push as far as Dniepr river and then take defensive positions there. Moscow is of no importance Hitler said."

Hitler appears to have said this in the context of a push north, rather than east after the Dnepr line had been reached. He appears to mean that Moscow was not an immediate priority at that point.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Max Payload]

Hi SloveneLiberal

You post, "See also in the diary of Halder note for 17 March 1941 that Hitler at a confference with generals said that AGC and AGN will push as far as Dniepr river and then take defensive positions there. Moscow is of no importance Hitler said."

Hitler appears to have said this in the context of a push north, rather than east after the Dnepr line had been reached. He appears to mean that Moscow was not an immediate priority at that point.
Cheers,

Sid.

Exactly.

Hitler prefered going first after strategic areas in the south in planning of Barbarossa and very directly in his orders from August 1941.

You are conflating plans made in preparation for Barbarossa with plans made in August. Strategic areas are not necessarily the same as economically strategic areas. And ‘the south’ is a big place in the context of the Soviet Union.

See also in the diary of Halder note for 17 March 1941 that Hitler at a confference with generals said that AGC and AGN will push as far as Dniepr river and then take defensive positions there.

That is a bit of a mis-quote. What Halder wrote was that they would use the river as cover in preparation for a thrust to the north.

Moscow is of no importance Hitler said.

That is one quote from a diary entry on discussions at a Fuehrer conference, and follows the comment above about the thrust to the north, that is, Leningrad is the priority, not Moscow. From the same diary referring to another Fuehrer seminar nearly two weeks later: “Our goals in Russia: crush armed forces, break up the state.”

[SloveneLiberal]

Sid i agree that finaly also Moscow should be reached. As it is said in directive 21 mentioned before that should happen only afrer Leningrad was captured. There was no hurry for Hitler to go after Moscow neither in the planning of Barbarossa and also not in summer 1941. Yet OKW and OKH had different opinions.

[SloveneLiberal]

Max Payload you should ask yourself a question in this way. Was for Hitler in the Barbarossa planning more important to reach Donets Basin with war industry without delay or it was for him more important to capture Moscow as soon as possible? Note also that after Donets Basin there is possibility to cut off Caucasus.

[SloveneLiberal]

To make a summary:

OKH made plans for offensive against Moscow as priority already during Barbarossa planing. Hitler clearly was not for this option. Plan which was accepted pointed out that the bulk of Red army should be destroyed in first two months of Barbarossa. Then German army will go in the second stage of offensive with pushes toward Moscow and toward Donets Basin and Volga. Mostly because OKW/OKH highly underestimated Soviet army that was of course not going so quick. Hitler seeing this then decided in August 1941 to go after Ukraine, Donets Basin and Caucasus clearly showing what was more important for him. OKW/OKH trying to persuade him othervise ( to go after Moscow ) in July/August but without success. So Hitler was against the delay in capturing Donets Basin as he pointed out also in Barbarossa planning that it should be reached without delay. Yet he did not see so important the delay in not capturing Moscow according to plans. That is logical if we take in to the account that he was thinking a lot more about economic targets than his generals did. But capturing Soviet economic targets was in fact the only way for the Barbarossa to be successful.

[ljadw]

Max Payload Germans had in advance information that Soviets are building their forces at Pripyat marshes. So that's why AGC should strike there. But that does not mean they should continue from there to Moscow. This was the wish of OKW yet Hitler prefered going first after strategic areas in the south in planning of Barbarossa and very directly in his orders from August 1941.

See also in the diary of Halder note for 17 March 1941 that Hitler at a confference with generals said that AGC and AGN will push as far as Dniepr river and then take defensive positions there. Moscow is of no importance Hitler said.

http://militera.lib.ru/db/0/pdf/halder_eng6.pdf

Brauchitz ( nominal superior of Halder ) agreed with what Hitler said on March 17 ,as the Marcks and Lossberg proposals already indicated that a period of recuperation would be needed when the DD line was reached .
A summary of the Marcks and Lossberg plans ,as mentioned by Stahel on P 55 :
victory rested on the rapid elimination of the Soviet forces positioned west of the DD line .
Further operations would be conducted in secondary phases ,after periods of recuperation ( what Hitler said on March 17 )and bases on indeterminate factors as Soviet strength,position of neighbouring army groups and distance to major population strength .
After the recuperation, one would go to the Wolga,and meanwhile Moscow would fall without major fighting .
Brauchitz wrote :massive frontier battles to be expected with a duration up to four weeks .But in further development only minor resistance is then still to be reckoned with .
And , on December 17, there was a new document,alterated by Hitler's orders :''the main weight of the attack will be delivered north of the Pripet Marshes with 2 AGs,after the elimination of the enemy forces in the Baltics ands the occupation of Leningrad,the attack ( of AGC ) will continue with the intention of occupying Moscow . ''
But Moscow was not the final aim ,the final aim was the Wolga .
On July 3 ,Halder noted : the war is won,but not over, the following day, Hitler agreed .
A lot of the so-calld divergences between Hitler and Halder is post-war invention : never forget that after the war for more than 10 years Halder dictated on German side what happened before and after June 22 and of course blamed Hitler for everything that went wrong .
It was also the same Halder who said during a conference that the roads and railways in the south were bad, thus this obliged to concentrate most of the mobile divisions in the center .

[ljadw]

To make a summary:

OKH made plans for offensive against Moscow as priority already during Barbarossa planing. Hitler clearly was not for this option. Plan which was accepted pointed out that the bulk of Red army should be destroyed in first two months of Barbarossa. Then German army will go in the second stage of offensive with pushes toward Moscow and toward Donets Basin and Volga. Mostly because OKW/OKH highly underestimated Soviet army that was of course not going so quick. Hitler seeing this then decided in August 1941 to go after Ukraine, Donets Basin and Caucasus clearly showing what was more important for him. OKW/OKH trying to persuade him othervise ( to go after Moscow ) in July/August but without success. So Hitler was against the delay in capturing Donets Basin as he pointed out also in Barbarossa planning that it should be reached without delay. Yet he did not see so important the delay in not capturing Moscow according to plans. That is logical if we take in to the account that he was thinking a lot more about economic targets than his generals did. But capturing Soviet economic targets was in fact the only way for the Barbarossa to be successful.

Hitler was clearly not for this option : no :see the document of DEcember 17 .
It is not so that things were not going well because the OKW/OKH underestimated the Sovjets ;this is Halder's assertion, which is only an attempt to deny the Soviets the fruits of their victory .
Hitler seeing this : NO : the reason was that meanwhile there was nothing else to do,and that the threat from Budjenny in the south had to be eliminated .
If there was a delay for the capture of Moscow,its importance was irrelevant, as nothing could be done about the delay and it is not so that the OKH tried to persuade Hitler to go to the Wolga in August, as this was impossible ,and the OKH knew it .
About capturing Soviet economic targets being the only way for Barbarossa to be successful : NO : it was maybe the only way for a
long war, a war of attrition against the SU,to be successful, but not the real war ,the war Germany fought in the summer of 1941 = a short campaign which would be successful in a few weeks .

[SloveneLiberal]

Ljadw but you can see that OKW/OKH underestimated Soviet military strenght for about 100 divisions. In which way and order Hitler wanted Moscow to be captured it was explained according to his orders. OKW/OKH wanted it to be done on another way. Hitler was going after Volga and south targets in August 1941 not the OKH. War against Soviet union can not be short because SU was underestimated in the planning of Barbarossa.

[SloveneLiberal]

Readers can see also here about OKH plans for Barbarossa, how directive 21 was in fact a compromise. Hitler in fact had quite different vision than Halder, Paulus and Marck. On page 10 it is written that Hitler was contrary to OKH generals going more after economic targets and protection of army group center flanks, which means army group south should be made stronger than generals wanted. Generals wanted more to go after Moscow. OKW later joined OKH in trying to persuade Hitler to go after Moscow. Yet they succeded only in September 1941.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a279709.pdf

[SloveneLiberal]

Here are also some interesting informations. For example on page 20 it is written that assigment of divisons to army groups reflected Halder's influence. He made army group center the strongest. On page 18 it is written about Halder's vision for the war. He planned a short war and wanted Soviet union to be broken with offensive against Moscow. This was very risky as it is written and could easly lead to failure in achieving of Hitler's objectives that main economic targets should be captured.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1039919.pdf