Could Germany and the Axis powers have Won the Second World War?

Email Me When A New Comment Is Made
Show Only Poster Name and Title Newest to Oldest

Pages: PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 NEXT

bsl RE:Railways 10/16/2004 8:29:00 PM

"the Russians would have had to walk or drive on roads that didn't exist" That they could have done. Moving supplies would have been vastly more difficult.

Quote Reply

fall out RE:Railways 10/16/2004 10:37:49 PM

and then the lufftwaffe picks them off at will.

Quote Reply

fall out RE:bsl 10/17/2004 6:49:04 AM

"There are many very likely "what ifs" that could have made Barbarossa an absolute rout for the Germans" - such as?

Quote Reply

AchtungLagg RE:bsl 10/17/2004 4:53:09 PM

1. Having anywhere from 24 hours to a week of foreknowledge of the attack-AND not having said information suppressed by Stalin. Stalin gave a hold fire order to all border armies. They didnt disobey Stalin because they were explicitly told not to antagonize the germans. 2. Soviet Air Force (VVS) flies CAP during the attack. Instead of being mostly on the ground, soviet interceptors/ground attack aircraft might not totally disrupt the luftwaffe, but results would be very different. 3. Defense in depth of choke points, likely avenues of attack. The soviet army of 6/22/41 wasnt that bad, just very badly deployed. in fact the damage caused by the first week of the war was not rectified until about mid 43, and even then, not totally.

Quote Reply

Gods-army RE:bsl 10/17/2004 6:01:08 PM

frankly answering the question the british made it in the second world war 'cos the jerries got thrashed in russia and that is a historical fact. fighting in russia during the winter is the mother of all bad deciscions hitler ever made

Quote Reply

lone wolf RE:Worldbuilder 10/17/2004 10:18:56 PM

Germany would have WW2 if a republican had been ellected in 1936 and 1940. The supply shipments to the UK and Russia kept both of them in the war. The tanks used to win in north Afica were made in the USA and simply given to the UK under lend lease. Food shipments, radios and other things quite simply kept Russia going. Their tanks we able to out fight the german tanks thanks to American made radios shipped to northen ports. (I am not saying russian tanks sucks, on the contrary they were much better than the german tanks, but the Germans had much better trained crews for the first couple of years.) If Republican had been prez, or the Germans captured those northen ports, it would have been the end of the war for russia and hense German victory. Thanks god Hitler was a moron when it came to supplies. Derek

Quote Reply

Ehran RE:Gods-army 10/18/2004 5:22:12 AM

the german failure to amass the needed landing vessels and to achieve air superiority both happened before hitler turned his attention to the russians. the germans had no idea what was needed to pull off sea lion and their window to do it closed well before the russian campaign began.

Quote Reply

Ehran RE:Lone Wolf 10/18/2004 5:26:18 AM

take a look sometime at the tonnages of lend lease provided to the russians and more importantly the timing of those shipments. Lend lease was not a massive factor until the later part of 1943 by which time the russians had pretty much stopped the germans and started pushing them back. as for "giving" the british paid back their lend lease bill.

Quote Reply

AchtungLagg dont underestimate russia/bsl 10/18/2004 9:45:25 PM

*bump* do you have any further response to my assertions?

Quote Reply

bsl RE:dont underestimate russia -Achtung 10/19/2004 4:14:08 AM

I don't know Tukachevsky's writings. But, generally, given the opinions of the Politburo, the Central Committee, and Stalin, himself, there was simply no realistic way to create a Red Army before the war which could have operated along the lines I think you're suggesting. The issue, in the USSR, was political and the bottom-line concern of the people in charge was maintaining the absolute control of the Party. The sort of doctrine your thinking of was seen as necessarily granting the high officers too much independence from Party control For that matter, the doctrine, if deeply established, would have tended to foster a general ideal of independence in thought and action in the whole Red Army. Until the very worst threat was, almost literally, at the gates of Moscow, this just wasn't on the mental horizons of the Party leaders as anything save a sure sign of treason brewing. Even after pure panic led to granting Zhukov a lot more effective independence in many areas, the Party was paranoid about the perceived threat from the military. They never removed the zampolits, as far as I know. And, postwar, worked for a generation to rein the Red Army back into what they defined as it's proper position relative to the Party. That was a real difference between the Nazis and the Soviets. While holding control of the political end of the equation, Hitler did, for some time, grant a much higher level of effective autonomy to his generals. The German military doctrine demanded independent thought and a willingness to seize opportunities and improvise at all levels, down to the privates. They still proposed to exercise leadership from the top, but weren't remotely as rigid as the Soviets. Hitler's later grab of all the controls he could exercise is, IMO, what doomed the Wehrmacht. I continue to believe that while the political decisions were bad, the military task was not hopeless. Not until America entered, anyway. I still believe a victory against the USSR, without adding the Americans, was conceivable.

Quote Reply

PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 NEXT