I came across this interesting video discussion with a historian specializing in Operation Barbarossa. He argues that the Germans never could have won in Operation Barbarossa. I'm a little skeptical. Operation Barbarossa was only a few months, and during it the Soviets lost five million men. At the start of the war, they only had a little over two million in service. The Soviet losses were so great in such a short period of time, I think it really crippled them. idk, imo some people underestimate the importance of experience among soldiers on the front line. And if the Germans had pushed just a little further, w/o the worst winter of the 20th century, then they would have denied the Soviets most of their population and production centers.
I think that Europe and especially America would have done whatever it took to keep Russia afloat and ultimately would have defeated Germany no matter what. But, hey you never know. If Germany would have beat America to the Atomic bomb, that could have changed the war. Germany, especially Hitler and Japan were willing to do anything to win. Such determination and resolve can be tough to beat. Not many guarantees in war , best to avoid them if at all possible.
I like historical "ifs"....if Hitler had told Goering to take a hike and sent in the panzers at Dunkirk, destroying the better part of the British Army, then getting over his indecision and invading England, once a beachhead had been established have pretty good odds of subduing the country. May even had Irish help with the promise of "home rule", (to be dealt with later). What would Stalin be doing while all this was going on? We now know Stalin trusted Hitler to honor their nonaggression pact and busied himself with his endless purges. Now with just feeble resistance at their rear Operation Barbarossa would have been a success. The big IF... if Hitler had let his General Staff conduct the war instead playing a two-bit Napoleon at every turn Germany would have won.
I'm far to be a specialist on the question, so what I give is just an opinion : Yes, the german could have won if they had someone else than a psychopath such Stalin in front of them that had no remorse to send almost all his population die.
What a bizarre pespective. Stalin was certainly ruthless, but the idea that he 'sent almost all his population to die' has zero basis in fact. Stalin understood what many people outside Russia still do not - Germany was fighting a war of annihalation. Half of all Russian deaths in WW2 were civilians. Stalin didn't 'send' them to die, overwhelmingly they were killed by Germans or died as a result of German actions. Stalin & most Russians knew that there would be no cozy traitor's government like France was permitted and no one was going to come and save Russia. Hitler planned to erase Russia & much of its population from the face of the earth. The phrase used in generalplan ost was 'surplus eaters'. In that situation there is no choice but to fight until you can no longer fight. No giving up after a few weeks and licking German boots in hopes of a gentle occupation - it was fight or die. Perhaps a less ruthless leader would have given up, and the result would have been as many or more dead Russians exterminated by Germany and the effective end of Russia. Fortunately for humanity Stalin did not give up.
If they'd have been able to take Moscow in '41, that would have beaten 'the soviets'. 'Greater Russia' would have then splintered into factions that we could debate about whether they would have posed any further meaningful threat or resistance to the Nazi's, but either way, this would have solidified the gains the Nazi's had made up to that point. Failing to take Moscow was effectively the end of the Reich, they just weren't ever willing to admit it. It was always known by everyone including the Nazi's that the vast lumbering unending behemoth that was the Russian military, bolstered by an authoritarian collectivist imperialist state that could funnel resources into it at a rate only matched by the Nazi's themselves had only one weakness- speed. The blitzkrieg was a tactic taylored specifically toward defeating the much larger but much more static Russian foe. And it actually very nearly succeeded. There's several times prior to that point that the Nazi's, and usually specifically Hitler, made a critical, often baffling mistake that cost them precious time and the actual acheivement of reaching Moscow. Tho, to be fair, the Soviets also turned out to not be quite as slow to react to the Blitz as the Nazi's had planned, and by the end of '41 had mastered the tactic themselves. But at the end of the day, yes, there were any number of things that could have gone only slightly differently to have changed the outcome of operation Barbarossa and turned it into a Soviet defeat, prior to the end of 1941. After 1941 however, the Nazi's had obviously lost any chance at all, and might've tried to sue for some sort of peace at that point if they'd had any sense left in them whatsoever. But, of course, such 'defeatism' was treason.
So many "ifs", so few realities. "If" Germany had started earlier in the year (not invaded Yugoslavia first) and "if" they had concentrated on securing oil and if the Japanese had tied up a part of the red army in the east, things could have been quite different. "If" Germany and Britain had a accepted a stalemate and "if" America steered clear of confrontations, there might have been a lull. Maybe the most fascinating "if" is entirely different. Germany defeats Russia but can't subdue England and the U.S. Japan loses to America. the U.S.S.R. is out of the picture. The U.S. has the bomb, so further German expansion is checked. Hitler gets old and dies. The German people prosper and the young wake up to the stupidity and unscientific non-sense of Nazism. No proxy wars in Asia and elsewhere mean less militarism in the U.S. Peace breaks out between the western peoples who have much more in common than differences. Germany feels guilt for its racist past the way America does. The modern world is totally different and the entire human race benefits.
First, thanks for the video. To my shame I was unaware that one of my countrymen was doing such good work in a field of great interest to me. I am chasing down more of his work. Based on other historians I have read & listened to I think he is 100% on the money. The problem Germany had in 1941 is simply that it lacked the capacity to push a 'little further' and he makes clear why. Part of it is tha tthe ysimply lacked the logistics, the other part is tha tthe Red Army fought harder for longer than the traditional narrative (heavily shaped by postwar German accounts) has ever given them credit for. As he also pointed out, the Russians were able to stand up double their losses in a matter of months. The Germans simpy didn't have the numbers. Indeed, they underestimated Russian strength by something like 100 divisions! Had the Germans reached Moscow there is no guarantee they could have held it. The Russians had more troops and supplies available to feed into what could easily have become a Stalingrad in 1941. Had the yeventually taken it that would have left large formations in the centre & south of Russia capable of counterattacking a very long flank. Put simply, the traditional Western view of the Eastern front is too heavily shaped by the presence of German narratives & the absence of Russian ones. We spend FAR too long looking at why the Germans failed & not enough at why the Russians held on. Germany simply couldn't move enough troops & equipment far enough, fast enough to match Russia's abilty to both transfer troops from the Far East and stand up its massive reserves. Good as German units were, the Red Army still fought hard enough to slow them down & attrit them to the point where they could not reach their ultimate objectives. There might be a really unlikely set of circumstances that could have produced a German victory, but it is a very small chance. Think about how much went right for Germany - Russian forces caught out of position & unready, Russian Airforce all but destroyed on the ground, massive surrenders of troops - yet Germany still couldn't win. That alone suggests how unlikley a win was,
What counts as Germany beating Russia? They were never going to be able to maintain control over it, so what are the victory conditions?
Going to disagree with this. If Hitler had sent the panzers in it would have taken time. The gorund around Dunkirk was not great for tanks and the city itself would also have been bad. Had the Germans attacked many of the 150,000 French troops embarked at Dunkirk would likely have been left to fight, slowing down the German advance. A worst case scenario would have seen over 100,000 British troops evacuated of the 180,000+ who ultimately got evacuated. Additional to those evacuated at Dunkirik another 190,000 British troops were evacuated from other French ports plus tens of thousands of Allied troops. Add those to the troops still in the UK & those arriving from Canada and you have a decent sized army. By late August there were 1 million men under arms in Britain. Had the panzers gone in at Dunkirk that would still have been 900,000. It is possible that the blow to morale would have been enough for Britain to sue for peace, but short of that it would have had no impact. I won't go into detail on the impossibility of Operation Sealion (though I am happy to if requested), but suffice to say that no major operation attempted or planned by the Germans was less likely to succeed. Britain had more naval forces in the invasion zone than the entire German Navy could deploy. Within a couple of hours they would have had multiples, within a day or two 10 times the forces. And remember that the RN operated at night. The invasion force would have been destroyed at sea or isolated and captured. The best case scenario is Germany loses 50-60,000. Worst case is 3 times that. The Irish military was about as heavily armed as most US police forces. Britain could afford to temporarily lose a bit of Ulster. The payback would have been swift and brutal. Mama De Valera didn't raise no fool. Ireland would ahve sat this out.
I don't agree. They might have won if a dilettante like Hitler hadn't been in command of the armed forces. The Brits planned to have Hitler killed by secret agents. But when they recognized how incapable he is, they rejected the plan.
Absolutely right. The Nazis were never in a position to invade Britain. They had no way of securing the Channel against the Royal Navy, never achieved air supremacy over the RAF and didn't even have any landing craft. Their ''plan'' was to tow troops across the sea in open barges which would have been slow and hopelessly unprotected. The Operation Sealion was intended only as a threat to force the British to sue for peace leaving Hitler free to pursue his invasion of Russia which Mein Kampf made clear was his main objective due to the need for Lebensraum.
Indeed. The more detail you know about the plan the clearer it is that it would never have worked. I actually laughed when I read how many horses they planned to transport. The lack of understanding of amphibious warfare was spectacular. I'm going to disagree with the highlighted bit. Hitler and the Heer were serious about Sealion and the Luftwaffe was serious about trying to destroy the RAF in order to give them the opportunity. There is enough documentary evidence avaiable to make that clear. Huge amounts of shipping that could have been used for something more productive was parked in ports from Cherbourg to Antwerp awaiting troops. Hitler wasn't bluffing, he just had no concept of how difficult the landings would be. The Kriegsmarine knew, and they tried desperately to talk him out of it. In the end it was the failure to suppress the RAF that stopped him trying, which undoubtedly did all Germans who would have been involved a huge favour.
The Germans could have beaten the Soviets if it were not for the Allies attacking them from the other side. In fact, it's very likely the Germans would have won had the US stayed out of the war.
A major issue for the Germans is that most of their resources were spent occupying other territories they had captured. It took a large army, spread out across Europe to protect that wide land area. That left them with much fewer resources available for a navy. In any case, by this time it was mostly about control of the skies. The fleet of German U-boats was about just enough to fight the Royal Navy, but ships sent by the US probably were enough to tip the war at sea in the Allies favor. The war at sea was kind of like a game or "rock, paper, scissors". Airplanes beat surface ships, but had a limited effective range. Small surface ships had a slight advantage against submersibles / U-boats, which in turn were very effective at preventing large transportation ships which could launch a land invasion. In addition, large battleships easily beat small surface ships, but were very vulnerable to U-boats and airplanes so were not very effective during the war.
By the time Germany started invading people it was too late to build a competitive navy. That had to start years earlier and required resorces Germany was using constructing fortifications on the Polish border. Plus, getting the majority of available units sunk in Norway didn't help. Years to build, minutes to sink and not enough replacements on the way. By mid-1940 Germany had a whole 8 destroyers, one cruiser and a bunch of torpedo boats and subs. Not enough to stop the RN sinking the invasion fleet. It was certainly enough to threaten shipping, provided the U-boats avoided taking on the RN directly. Those 50 US destroyers helped fight the Battle of the Atlantic. Dozens of escort carriers helped to win it. I'd generally agree with that except for the last bit. Battleships/heavy cruisers weren't as effective as had been hoped, but they played a major role in the Pacific, the Med and the naval war in the Arctic. They were also very important to amphibious landings, which played a key role in Allied campaigns. Also don't forget how important air power was against subs. Not so much sinking them as finding them for surface forces.
Disagree strongly. Germany had one shot and that was over by the end of 1941. At that point the impact of the Western Allies on Germany was very limited and not relevant to the reasons Germany failed to beat Russia in 1941. That doesn't mean the Western Allies didn't have a significant impact on how the Eastern front played out after that, but Germany wasn't going to be able to beat Russia. Too much of everything and rapidly learning how to use it well.
