A very interesting debate.
I also voted that the Germans would have beaten the Russians.
There is also a couple of other points that I don’t believe where mentioned but could have helped Germany achieve greater Military success in the war. If Hitler let his generals actually be generals and gave them more free reign, they could of done a lot more damage. The Germans were master tacticians, they were always outnumbered.
The extra Airpower alone the Germans could have used against the Russians instead of guarding the coast/raiding the atlantic/fighting off bombing raids would have been huge.
So my Points are:
If the Generals had more free reign (to many times on the eastern-front they could have done more…or have coordinated better attacks if it wasn’t for Hitler calling all the shots)
If they actually done any planning and prepared for a winter war… (I know they thought the war would have been over before Winter but seriously…no plan for winter fighting at all?? wow)
if Germany could have used her full-power early on, Russia would have been falling so fast they wouldn’t have much time to create defensive lines/counter-attack and sit-back and buildup in the rear…
Yes all of Russia would have been very hard to keep under control… But I think they had plans to “control” the population… Most likely kill a lot of them…, use a lot of them as slave workers and mass re-locations. Hitler wanted the land for his people so they could expand there…
20% of German ammunition production was for the air defense system to fight the British. Thousands of 88mms where deployed to defend against the British and U.S. bombing campaign. 99s where excellent anti tank weapons, and could have wrecked havoc on Russian armor. Not even the famed T34 could stand against an 88. Hundreds of thousands of men where deployed just to operate the 88s of the air defense network, and thousands more for the recovery operations after allied raids.
If Germany has only fought Russia, there would have been no allied air war, German factories would have been immensely more productive, hundreds of thousands of personnel would have been freed up, as well as tons of weapons and munitions.The Luftwaffe deployed thousands of aircraft for the air defense network, all of which where annihilated once the P-51 Mustang showed up. Even with the air campaign, German production still went up, because Hitler had failed to begin a war economy until 1942. Imagine the matterial the Germans could have produced without the air war.
:-o
I vote No.
My reasons are posted in the Barbarossa thread, but I will reiterate here. Germanys’ industry just was not geard up for a war of this magnitude in “41”. And since Poland was already a done deal, and the French and British were already at war with Germany, they had to hold men and equipment on the "Western Front’ even if it was “All Quiet”.
The biggest problem for the Germans in the far expanses of the Soviet hinterlands was supply. The more men out there the more supplies are required for them and this requires more resources to get it there, a compounding effect. The drain is enormous! Another point about supply is that even in the modern era, armies still required the land that they were in to help supplyment their food supply. The Russians practiced a "scorched earth’ policy. They burnt everything that they couldn’t take with them; Homes, barns, fields, and even outhouses! They slaughtered livestock, and put the carcuses in the wells. They created a ‘no mans’ land as they retreated, starving even their own people. This all put an even greater strain on an already streached supply network. An Army moves on its’ stomach is a famous quote, I don’t remember who said it, be he knew what he was talking about.
So, it does not matter how many guns you have at your disposal, if you can’t feed your troops in the feild to shoot them.
And it is a given, if Hitler had not interfered with his Generals, the war would have draggedon another 3 to 5 years perhaps.
And a lot more human suffering.
Crazy Ivan :roll:
Napoleon said it. i knew excataly who said it when i saw it ( pretty sad but i did have to be napoleon for my science project)
:-o
Ah Yes!
It was the little corperal!
Who became an Emperor.
:roll:
Sorry M36 was it not an SS unit that massacered US troops at Malmady?
I was unaware of this.
But regardless of what the bastards did, you cannot label an entire military organization because of the actions of one unit. There are Marines who have done such things, that does not make the Marine Corp an evil organizations. We are still the best warriors on the planet.
@M36:
I was unaware of this.
But regardless of what the bastards did, you cannot label an entire military organization because of the actions of one unit. There are Marines who have done such things, that does not make the Marine Corp an evil organizations. We are still the best warriors on the planet.
What about le grand armee?
@Crazy:
So, it does not matter how many guns you have at your disposal, if you can’t feed your troops in the feild to shoot them.
And it is a given, if Hitler had not interfered with his Generals, the war would have draggedon another 3 to 5 years perhaps.
And a lot more human suffering.
Crazy Ivan :roll:
will with the Germans taking moscow and other cities (Stalingrad and the Caucauses) and Leningrad more easily and fast they could have setup more logistics support for there troops (more railroads setup to supply and move troops fast back and forth)
the question was if it was just Germany vs Russia then the Russians would have lost to much ground and troops to fast to fight back.
if they burn there fields in the fall/winter, by spring they are growing nicely again…
it’s the extra civillians that would have suffered to feed the advancing german army.
@M36:
I was unaware of this.
But regardless of what the bastards did, you cannot label an entire military organization because of the actions of one unit. There are Marines who have done such things, that does not make the Marine Corp an evil organizations. We are still the best warriors on the planet.
This was not merely the actions of a rogue division or a “Bad Apple” company of soldiers, the SS organization as a whole was committing atrocities all across the board wherever they went.
Also a notable difference between the Marines and the SS is that the Marines punish soldiers who commit a crime, the SS encouraged it.
The SS was a volunteer unit and trained to be the best and were around before World War 2 started… I am under the understanding they knew full well what the “SS unit” was all about… and even more so when the war was going on.
A lot of German soldiers were condemmed for not following orders (like shooting Jews or civilians for no reason)
it was the SS unit that was the worst…
Most Germans had no choice but to serve there country and this is where I think a lot of them were actually good men and women…
Actually I think everyone had to fight unless there was a pretty good reason why you couldn’t (some bad medical condition)…I mean they were recruiting children near the end of the war in the very last days…
Hitlers plans of extermination where well kept secrets. Privates where not made privy to these secrets just by joining the SS.
@M36:
Hitlers plans of extermination where well kept secrets. Privates where not made privy to these secrets just by joining the SS.
nazi is a nazi no matter how you spin it and nazi’s are evil.
Yes … Nazis are Nazis but normal soldiers in the Army were not necessarily Nazis
@AJ:
Yes … Nazis are Nazis but normal soldiers in the Army were not necessarily Nazis
Thank you AJ! Yes, the SS may have been trained and brought up to trample everyone without discrimination, but the regular average joe in the German army was not quite the same type of brutal, merciless soldier.
It was SS units which hunted down Jews, political criminals, and other “rotents” in areas recently captured by Germany. Einstatzgroupen I believe they were called, which located and eliminated inferior groups of people. They comprised the fanatics, who were hitlers personal guard, who believed the shit he spouted whereas the wehrmacht was the army which was the most likely to not know about the atrocities of SS.
It was SS units which hunted down Jews, political criminals, and other “rotents” in areas recently captured by Germany. Einstatzgroupen I believe they were called, which located and eliminated inferior groups of people. They comprised the fanatics, who were hitlers personal guard, who believed the sh*t he spouted whereas the wehrmacht was the army which was the most likely to not know about the atrocities of SS.
there like the revolutionary guard for Iran. just as guilty.
It was SS units which hunted down Jews, political criminals, and other “rotents” in areas recently captured by Germany. Einstatzgroupen I believe they were called, which located and eliminated inferior groups of people. They comprised the fanatics, who were hitlers personal guard, who believed the sh*t he spouted whereas the wehrmacht was the army which was the most likely to not know about the atrocities of SS.
there like the revolutionary guard for Iran. just as guilty.
I don’t see how they’re “just as guilty” if they actually didn’t know about it.
Okay, I am in the Republican party. If George Bush suddenly revealed that he had a final solution for Jews, I must be just as guilty as he is. :roll:
Being a soldier in the SS does not make someone an evil person.
That’s a very childish comparison M36.
Hitler had declared numerous times before that the Jews and other non-aryans should be considered sub-human ‘things’ not worthy of any compassion.
There had been countless individual incidents of state agression against Jews, Gypsies, and dissenters against the state. From the act of stripping German Jewry of their citizenship, to the forcible expulsion of Polish Jews near the Polish border, and the Kristalnacht pogrom.
One can hardly say that aggression against Jews was unheard of in Nazi Germany, or that rumors of camps geared toward exterminating Jews were being built and put into operation (ghettos were common knowledge by the time the death camps began their grisly work).
I have yet heard President Bush declare that if there were to be war in Iran that it would result not in the destruction of the United States, but the destruction of American Moslems. Have you? I have yet heard of widespread violent discrimination against moslems by burning out their mosques and shooting the head imam. Have you?
But I digress here. My point being that the SS cannot be held to being merely partially responsible, as they were formed for main purpose of “purifying” conquered territories. The Wermacht took a lesser role in this respect, yet each still bears blood on their hands for the atrocities that had been committed.
