@ABWorsham:
@Enigmatic_Decay:
None of the above!
Then what is the worst Axis mistake of the War?
“Mistakes” is an ambiguous word that encompasses bad judgment and insufficient information. But in its primary sense, it is used to refer to bad judgment. When you make a “mistake” on a test, it is not because you could not have known the answer, it is because you should have studied more. When a server makes a “mistake” on your restaurant bill, it is not because the correct amount could not be known, it is because the server made a mistake. I, and likely some others in this thread, probably take your “mistake” to refer to an error in judgment based on faulty judgment. In other words, your question is “what is the stupidest thing the Axis did?”
If you think about things that way, almost none of the items on your list were particularly stupid, so they are inappropriate examples of “mistakes”.
If you wanted to ask “What was the single decision by the Axis that most negatively impacted their progress in the war”, the question of judgment is eliminated.
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For example, Dunkirk. People look back and say “lol retard”. Or they say Hitler was stupid, or trying to make some retarded political decision &c. Actually, there is no citation of why the Germans did not press. Without such citation, and documentation, nothing is really known.
There are any number of excellent reasons why the command not to press the attack could have been passed.
Consider the political situation. Suppose Hitler believed that a decision not to press at Dunkirk would lead to diplomatic negotiations with UK that would lead to a UK/German alliance against Russia. Consider the huge gains to Germany, and to the UK. Now consider what would happen if Germany slaughtered the crap out of over 200,000 UK soldiers. (Of the 330,000, about 200,000 were UK).
If you know the political situation, you realize that a Ger/UK alliance was hardly out of the question. It did not come to pass, but it COULD have.
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Probably the biggest “mistakes” were Germany’s misjudgment of the Soviet Union situation, and its failures in production.
Re: Soviet Union - insufficient intelligence regarding anticipated routes. Improper assessment of the Soviet Union’s mobilization capabilities. Failure to use anti-Stalin propaganda to recruit partisans.
Insufficient intelligence - they had maps. But maps are simply not enough when you are waging a war. You ideally want first hand reports from scouts. This could have been addressed by recruiting partisans, at the very least. Granted, gaining the level and detail of information that would have been “proper” would not have been easy. All in all, this is “understandable”.
Insufficient assessment of Soviet Union mobilization capabilities. In point of fact, the Germans beat the hell out of the Russians, man for man, achieving 13:1 casualty ratios in some battles, but regularly performing at . . . I forget, was it 8:1? Anyways, something stupidly massive. Plus the Red Army had gone through purges. Plus the Soviets didn’t have a particularly developed industrial sector (when comparing landmass to industrial development), although it did have a history leading up to WW2 of reversing that trend that Germany could have paid closer attention to. Again, Germany could be forgiven for its failures in this area.
Anti-Stalin propaganda - Soviet partisans did huge damage to the German war effort throughout the war, and if recruited to the German side, could have provided a massive boost in intelligence and power. In a way, this failure could also be forgiven, but the reasons are far less. Germany had initially purposed to obtain Lebensbraum quickly, with an anticipated effective collapse of Soviet resistance within one to two years. With the additional land, Germany purposed to feed the west. That is, Germany deliberately planned to kill off massive numbers in the east with starvation, to provide the food needed to feed the west. So there are reasons. But those are poor reasons. Recruiting Soviets would have benefited the Germans in any case (although they would of course have had to deal with sabotage, &c &c from within so integration would not have been possible . . . but still.) Killing civilians with starvation could and should have been planned for after the fact of conquest.
All in all, these are understandable errors in judgment, although the last is more along the lines of a true “f-up”. But COMBINED, they do not speak well for German preparedness against the Soviets. Granted, the Germans plowed through everyone to that point, granted the Germans actually plowed the heck out of the Russians. But they did not plow enough, or quickly enough, which was probably preventable if Germany had been appropriately prepared.
As far as Germany attacking Russia, there is decent evidence to support the position that Russia was going to attack Germany anyways. The idea was that Stalin planned to let Germany and UK screw with each other, kill off a bunch of imperialists, then sweep in and kick ass. Considering that view, the fact that Germany attacked Russia can’t really be considered a “mistake”. It was necessary. The “mistake” was the lack of proper preparation.
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Re: failures in production - Germany didn’t use its women in industry. Fail. Germany didn’t standardize production. Fail. Again, there were reasons not to. Maybe Germany considered its victory to be swift and sure, so didn’t try to prepare for the long term. Maybe there were political reasons not to do so. (Actually that is certainly true for production.) But as with Germany’s overall underpreparedness against the Soviets, such arguments only go so far. The need to boost and standardize production was clear.
