Oh yeah, I bet you can find tons of Axis equipment with Allied origins. I remember reading a book talking about Sea Lion and the Germans put together what very little landing craft they had and it turned out these craft in origin were all US and British that was sold prior to WWI.
Nazi Germany VS The Soviet Union
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but the question is about Germany vs. Soviet Union. The fact remains that the VAST majority of the German divisions were fighting the Soviet Union and the battle of Stalingrad and the German decline after their defeat suggests that they would have lost the war against the Russians even if the Americans and British had nto been involved.
Yea and Germany invaded the Soviet Union June 22 1941, and Stalingrad was about 1.5 years latter, what about THIS time period. Who cares about AFTER Stalingrad? Nobody is or can argue that Germany would win after Feb 1 1943, unless at Kursk Hitler started earlier and didn’t wait till the Soviets built 5 lines deep of fortification lines it perhaps can be argued that it may have bought time but not changed the outcome.
The only period of constructive discussion of a German victory would be her operations from June 41-about autumn 1942. Lots of possibilities were possible for Germany.
It is also an unassailable point that after Kursk the Soviet Union alone could have defeated Germany w/o no further help from western allies. If Germany stripped all her fronts and left them bare it would not have even dented the eastern front. The Soviets would have rolled all the way to the Spanish border
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I would agree with IL’s last statement. I concur with it. The Russians didn’t need anyone’s help at all near the end. However, it needs to be pointed out -if it hasn’t already- that the Lend-Lease by the UK/US did help the Reds quite substantially. I know this is getting off topic, but for the first little while during 41-42 and probably a bit afterward, the Russians didn’t have a lot of transports and similar vehicles to help them get around. I can’t remember the numbers, but the Lend-Lease program gave the Russians quite a lot of vehicles to help them with their battles.
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@The:
However, it needs to be pointed out -if it hasn’t already- that the Lend-Lease by the UK/US did help the Reds quite substantially. I know this is getting off topic, but for the first little while during 41-42 and probably a bit afterward, the Russians didn’t have a lot of transports and similar vehicles to help them get around. I can’t remember the numbers, but the Lend-Lease program gave the Russians quite a lot of vehicles to help them with their battles.
Aircraft 14,795
Tanks 7,056
Jeeps 51,503
Trucks 375,883
Motorcycles 35,170
Tractors 8,071
Guns 8,218
Machine guns 131,633
Explosives 345,735 tons
Building equipment valued $10,910,000
Railroad freight cars 11,155
Locomotives 1,981
Cargo ships 90
Submarine hunters 105
Torpedo boats 197
Ship engines 7,784
Food supplies 4,478,000 tons
Machines and equipment $1,078,965,000
Non-ferrous metals 802,000 tons
Petroleum products 2,670,000 tons
Chemicals 842,000 tons
Cotton 106,893,000 tons
Leather 49,860 tons
Tires 3,786,000
Army boots 15,417,001 pairscourtesy of Wiki
This is from the U.S. alone, and does not include U.K. numbers.
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It does not have the most important thing on the list:
Russian blood and toil
22 million Russians dead paid for victory, while we lost like 450,000 dead by comparison.
Payment in “tanks or machine guns” can only get you so far. lives are what count in statistics.
I think w/o Lend Lease Russia could still win, but more lives would be lost but if the campaign went the same way the result would be the same too.
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35k motorcycles! damn it I want one of those back!
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That’s a lot of boots. Did they have insulated sandals before the boots arrived?
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Yes, Germany could beat the U.S.S.R out rightly if no other fronts existed. The Germans would still need the surprise factor and the results of the summer of 1941 to pull this off.
Without surprise the war would have drained Germany quicker than the vast U.S.S.R. I’m curious how German war material and fuel production would do without the hamper of bombing raids.
What a great question!
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If Germany did over run Moscow do you think they would have kept going? What would they have gained my taking SFE?
LT
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Also didn’t the US kind of have to hold off on Berlin and let the Russians take it?
LT
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Germany was not interested in going farther than the Urals… Archangel to Astrakhan was the line drawn by OKW the rest would have been left to rot because it was useless land except for forest
Its like the Roman Empire…they didn’t have the desire to fight Barbarians when they were sitting in good farm lands
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Stalin had many haters living within his borders. If Germany had treated the people living in the far western parts of the U.S.S.R fairly and given these people the idea that the Germans were liberators. Germany may have created an strong ally in the millions willing to fight againist their former country. It would secure the vast rear areas, which would protect supply lines.
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Thats kind of what I thought. Germany wanted a lot but their wants did have limits.
LT
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This may have been pointed out already but what if England and France had not lived up to their promise to Poland. No Western front. Now you have a scenario were Hitler could focus souly on the USSR.
Many Ukranians looked upon the Germans as liberators at first. Then reality set in. With fair treatment and the right propaganda who nows how many soldiers Hitler could have drawn from the western nations living under Soviet occupation.
It’s incorrect to say these people would have been fighting their former countrymen if they had decided to kill some Russians. The USSR was an empire guided by an ideology and dominated by Russia. The provinces, territories, what have you, of the USSR were nations before the USSR. Now that the USSR has collapsed they are nations again. People in these lands would have gladly fought against their former oppressors.
In this scenario Germany wins no sweat.
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Yes if Germany adopted a Anti-Commitern crusade and dropped the actual intent of what the Ukraine would eventually become, then they would have turned Russia into the situation that existed in 1917. But the Nazis didn’t really mask their intentions to their enemies. So its not possible to have it turn out that way unless Hitler was replaced. Many of his Generals were hard core Nazi ideologues ( Von Reichenau) who had their own polices to exact on the Soviet people.
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Could the U.S.S.R survived a winter without Moscow?
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depends on when the Germans take Moscow.
If they get it in October 41 no, because the Germans fan out and take all the rail points east of Moscow before the snow falls and deny Soviet logistical support on her north/south rail axis.
If its something from Typhoon in Dec 41, the Germans were too exhausted to push further allocating the last Battalion in that effort. Soviets hold for sure.
If Germans went for Moscow again in Summer 42, which is what the Soviets expected… then It would have been basically Kursk a year earlier with no hope of victory. However, the Soviets totally failed in Operations Mars and if Hitler was prepared for the Soviet attack he could have captured Moscow in early 1942 and could have really changed things back to Germany.
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germany reached its full potential in 1943.
it invaded in 41. and if it took ALL of its forces east b/c it wasnt at war with US, UK, and european nations, it would have smashed right into moscow.
people would have given up on the soviet government. its not like the gov’t ever did anything good to the soviet people.
I completely agree. They were at Moscows door even with valuable resources being pulled west in defense of the Father Land. All they had to do was take that Soviet Government down and the rest would have been easy. Most towns in the beginning, looked at the SS brigades as liberators. In fact it was grateful Russian citizens who showed the Luftwaffe how to mix oil to get proper visocity when it was 60 below and they taught them about liting small gasoline fires under the engines in that weather so they would start. The Russian government and especaillly Stalin himself, had been so horrific, that their may have been a civlian uprising once Moscow was taken.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/29th_Waffen-Grenadier_Division_der_SS_(1st_Russian)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Division_Totenkopf
Also take into account that the entire organisation was declared a criiminal organisation by the International Military Tribunal during the Nuremburg Trials. There’s more than enough blood on the hands of the SS to paint the whole damn lot with the same brush.
thank you. some one with some sense. all nazzi’s are evil. anyone who commits or supports genocide is evil. communist russia was 200 times better than germany. the still wouldn’t be able to take over such a large country.
You um, do know that, the Communists under Stalin killed much more civilians in mass murder and extermination purges than the Nazis ever could have killed? A modest estimate puts the death toll at 20 million, but estimates range from 12 million to 40 million it seems. Yet, “all Nazis are evil” but Communist Russia ain’t so bad. Makes perfect sense… since the victors write history.
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@Rakeman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/29th_Waffen-Grenadier_Division_der_SS_(1st_Russian)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Division_Totenkopf
Also take into account that the entire organisation was declared a criiminal organisation by the International Military Tribunal during the Nuremburg Trials. There’s more than enough blood on the hands of the SS to paint the whole damn lot with the same brush.
thank you. some one with some sense. all nazzi’s are evil. anyone who commits or supports genocide is evil. communist russia was 200 times better than germany. the still wouldn’t be able to take over such a large country.
You um, do know that, the Communists under Stalin killed much more civilians in mass murder and extermination purges than the Nazis ever could have killed? A modest estimate puts the death toll at 20 million, but estimates range from 12 million to 40 million it seems. Yet, “all Nazis are evil” but Communist Russia ain’t so bad. Makes perfect sense… since the victors write history.
That is very insightful Rakeman. My opinion exactly. “All Nazis are evil” is a sweeping and uneducated generalization. The Nuremburg trials were successful at giving justice to many Nazis that were absolute monsters however the rest was a witchhunt. They put to death military commanders who were no where near the death camps. Just generals of the Weirmacht that thought they were doing the right thing by serving their country.
It should also be known that the Weirmacht were disgusted with the atrocities they knew about. They actually filled grievances that went to Hitler himself. They filled report after report of violations of Human rights and unethical and criminal behavior. Soon Hitler grew so angry he replaced the Weirmacht General with an SS one who the complaints went directly to so they could be torn up.
Early on in the war, some of the the SS Honour Brigades that knew about the atrocities commited by the Einzatsgruppen were secretly leaking information to Jews in Germany to warn them they probably needed to flee immediately.
The Luftwaffe were not war criminals and most of them had no knowledge of the camps. They were simply pilots defending their country. So you call them Nazis and therefore, criminals. An uneducated sweeping generalization.
It sould also be noted that their was only one news source in the Reich. A certain camp was liberated by the US. The mayor and his wife of a nearby town hung themselves because they could not believe murder was happening so close to their home and they had no idea.
This is a great example of how close these camps were in certain cases, to other military units and civilians and their being no knowledge of what was going on. I don’t believe in “guilt by association” in these cases. Men were drafted into the military and were fighting a war. That is not a crime. What the Einzatsgruppen units did was a crime. What SOME of the SS units did were war crimes.
I have yet to know what Goerrings charges were at the Trials of Nuremburg. He was the Luftwaffe leader and had no part in the holocaust. His men commited no crimes other than flying planes against the Allies. My theory is, he was sentanced to death because he stould up for hitler in court. He could not believe that Hitler would have ordered “The Final Solution.” He simply could not believe it and he told the courts that he believed it was done without Hitlers knowledge. He was working with the Allies to help smooth things over when Germany surrendered. His death sentance has no legitimate charge other than being a high ranking Nazi officer. He should have been charged as an art theif. Which should not warrant an execution.
I HATE how the Russians “labor camps” (ie: concentration camps) and all their horrific atrocities are completely overlooked because they were our allies. Anyone that says “All Nazis are evil” is completely uneducated on the 3rd Reich. It’s not that simple. Why don’t to just call all black people the “N word” becuase of the violence black gangs are guilty of?
Get your history down and read all sides. Find the truth and stop making predjudice remarks about anyone affilated with the Nazis (IE: AMOST EVERY GERMAN) After all, doesn’t that make you as predjudice some of them were?
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The book: The Blonde Kight of Germany, a story of Erich Hartmann, goes into detail concerning the Soviet labor camps. Six million German POW’s would never return home from Siberia. This is a largly forgotten fact.
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