Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
So I was thinking that sometimes when we talk about epic failures we do it from the standpoint of, wow this was a failure.
But sometimes I think that we have to think about it sometimes as wow that was fortunate.
So I'm going to add onto it.
Operation Barbarrosa, but it wasn't just the singular mistake of Hitler opening a massive war up on another front, He was already facing the allies in the West, and and in the South. But opening up a third front into the Soviet Union was a massive mistake that I'm sure that every member of the German Command Staff that was half way competent were muttering into their drinks every night that this was a stupid franking idea.
Lets face it, if Hitler would have fortified his forces to the West and to an extent the South and continued to keep Stalin neutralized via diplomacy in the East we would be living in a far different world today. In fact the biggest massive mistake was not offering the Russians even more aid and reassuring worlds. At some point we would have seen the American's probably key focus on the Japanese who were the bigger threat, and England would have been left hanging by itself.
But there were a lot of mini mistakes that made this an even more painful mass error on the Soviets part.
Originally the plan for Barbarossa was simple. Slice off a huge piece of the pie in Russia, drive on the Oil rich Caucasus and the rich farm lands of the Western Soviet Union. But Hitler's ego got the best of him here, and he wanted to take Moscow and Stalingrad and Leningrad especially. Hitler took a extremely powerful invasion force and split it to try to destroy cities that he didn't need to destroy. Tactically the German's should have taken the Oil and taken the agricultural wealth, and fortified. Instead they ended up falling into the trap of Stalin's strategy of destroying everything of use, and falling back. This did two things.
The German's expected that the Soviets would collapse after a few solid blows, so they didn't have a good logistical plan for a long war and a long drive. By over reaching the weather flipped to winter, and while common military logic states that you should avoid winter warfare and use those months to fortify and build up your supplies for a spring offensive, Hitler and the General Staff were too enamored with the concept of initiative and speed, and by following that doctrine they played into Stalin's hands.
The other massive mistake. People need to remember that the average peasant in Western Russia hated Stalin and the Soviet Government, they were brutal and merciless to their own people who save themselves as enslaved. So when Hitler's forces started taking territory the Russian's greeted the advancing army as liberators. Hitler and the German's due to their racial policies enslaved them, starved them, worked them to death or just plain murdered them. Hitler threw a massive opportunity out the window in terms of being able to supply his troops, and add to his manpower. What had been succesful for Hitler in the past was he was able to appeal to certain groups of people to join his cause and you got German Military formations of different nationalities. if he would have said, we're going to topple Stalin it might have been the same thing. Instead his actions galvanized the Western Russians to Stalin so when he did the scorched earth policy they were too happy to comply to hurt the hated germans. It also created groups of partisans that harrassed and slowed down any resupply effort.
The German shortsightedness and poor strategies and I'm going to call it victory fever caused the utter destruction of entire army groups that could have been used in the defense of the West.
Lets also not forget the fear of Hitler by his General Staff. Hitler had peculiar sleeping habits, he liked to stay up late watching movies and sleep in late. So on the early morning when the D-Day invasion took place the General Staff was terrified, though there were reports of ships hitting the beaches and a need to move the German reserves to re-enforce the beaches, including a powerful tank regiment, the commanders refused to do anything without Hitler's permission, and nobody wanted to wake him up, maybe because the little psychopath just was crabby in the morning.
The re-enforcements were eventually moved, but it was long after the allies had established a foothold on the beaches and they began to re-enforce the landings.
|
I agree with a good deal of what you say here. However, the problem for Hitler was always going to be what the Soviets were going to do once their army was modernized and re-established.
The USSR armed forces in 1940 were a farce. The war with Germany taught Stalin and his army some tough lessons.
I don't believe that the USSR was going to quietly sit there and do nothing while Hitler conquered half the world on their doorstep. While it was obvious that Stalin wasn't in a position to attack in 1940, a few years later he definitely could have.
Many people speculate that Stalin could have been placated with diplomacy in the long term. Let me ask, if the allies invaded in the west, or the south of Europe, people really believe the USSR wouldn't have declared war in the East in an attempt to take as much territory as it possibly could?
Obviously pushing into Russia cost the German army dearly. It stretched them way too thin, and they were not prepared. However, I don't think even if that had been avoided forever that Stalin would have allowed Hitler to just sit on his doorstep.
"Ivan's War: Life and death in the red army 1939-1945" - is a great book on the Soviet war effort in ww2. I highly recommend it.