WWI Germany had a very serious advantage: the Italians.
LOL, trade you a France for an Italy?
(Oh mighty Roman Empire, didst thou lie so low? Good thing for soccer.)
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Which world war did Germany have a better chance of winning?
- Thread starter BlairWitch749
- Start date
LOL, trade you a France for an Italy?
(Oh mighty Roman Empire, didst thou lie so low? Good thing for soccer.)
This recalls a famous exchange between Ribbentrop and Churchill.
Ribbentrop: "And remember, Mr Churchill, that in the next war the Italians will be on our side".
Churchill: "Well, that's only fair. We had them last time".
Snake Featherston
Banned
When the Nazis believe that in the two weeks prior they've destroyed the entire Russian army, the bulk of troops in that pocket actually escape (with the 350k prisoners indicating how many were in the reserve fronts) and the fighting lasts for almost a month and produces a local Soviet defensive victory, that's how this battle started to unravel Blitzkrieg. The Nazis were extremely surprised by the presence of those armies, by surprised I mean that they did not know those armies existed, and the result of Smolensk was Hitler's decisions to go for broke in the north and the south and halt the offensive in the center.
And when the Germans shifted for Kiev and Leningrad, this meant Barbarossa, targeted at the Soviet Army, had failed.
WW1, obviously. The Central Powers almost won in the first few months and again in 1917-18, and in all situatations it would have left Germany as dominant in Europe. In 1939-1945 the only time when even a very limited German victory was realistically possible was in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of France - and it would have required a negotiated peace with Britain. Germany would still be surrounded by powerful enemies and potential enemies. Also, it is aguable that in 1940, "WW2" hadn't even started yet. Germany would have won "The European War of 1939-40" and it would be pretty speculative to predict that anything similar to our "WW2" - especially one with active US participation in Europe would follow. Once Germany is fighting a war against the USA and USSR it's goose is cooked.
BlairWitch749
Banned
The plan was always to shift the panzer armies (north and south wasn't the plan, it was supposed to be just north but Kiev presented a unique tactical opportunity)
So because Nazi intel was lazy and ignorant of even their own sources (they could have just read Guderian's pre war periodicals to get reliable numbers on the size and reinforcement capabilities of the Russian tank park) blitzkrieg failed?
Smolensk was a major success that captured a huge swath of prisoners and territory; the Russian's ability to have some elements escape from Kluge's pincers had as much to do with German exhaustion/overextension (Having moved 500 miles from their jump off points in 4 weeks; a rate even higher than sickle cut) than it did Soviet skill
Some Germans manged to elude the Falaise pocket; that doesn't undercut that it was a major allied victory
and considering the Germans won two more massive battles in Blitzkrieg fashion after Smolensk which netted over a million prisoners it's hardly fair to say that they had been derailed much if at all
They didn't win France or England at that time, and by your definition that was not much of a "WW1" without the US yet. During WW2 there was a victory over France and Russia fought Poland and Japan had the treaty with the Axis, so it was a World War (and let's not forget North African fighting was involved, India, etc).
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Mikestone8
Member
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fabius Cunctator
LOL, trade you a France for an Italy?
(Oh mighty Roman Empire, didst thou lie so low? Good thing for soccer.)
This recalls a famous exchange between Ribbentrop and Churchill.
Ribbentrop: "And remember, Mr Churchill, that in the next war the Italians will be on our side".
Churchill: "Well, that's only fair. We had them last time".
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^^^ Clever quote, by the way. I like how it undermines the threatening intent.
The Soviets lost the equivalent number of troops during 1941 as filled out their army at the date of Barbarossa, they then lost roughly the same number of troops in 1942 (casualties and POWS for both years) They then, essentially, ground the Germans to a standstill and began their counterattacks in 1943.
So in terms of 'blitzkrieg' and normal military schwerpunkt, they (the germans) achieved what they sought, but it wasn't enough.
Quite an achivement of material success, even before Lend lease started to have major impact (equipping more than double the size of their complete army within 12 months).
So in terms of 'blitzkrieg' and normal military schwerpunkt, they (the germans) achieved what they sought, but it wasn't enough.
Quite an achivement of material success, even before Lend lease started to have major impact (equipping more than double the size of their complete army within 12 months).
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World war one of course. They were at least equalish in terms of power with who they were fighting and actually had some allies who could do something albiet very little.
I think it depends on how loose your are with defining WWII if simply having Germany never go to war with The Soviet Union and forcing Britain to the peace table after the fall of France counts then I'd say WWII. But if they have to go for the whole shebang and defeat the USSR as well then WWI would be the safer bet.
Snake Featherston
Banned
No. The plan was to wipe out the Soviet armies on the border. There was no concept of targeting cities to hit the Stalin regime.
Yes, both Blitzkrieg and Barbarossa failed. The concept was to wipe out the Soviet army out of the starting gate. The goal of Barbarossa was a purely military one, wipe out the Soviet army, kill all European Jews (and yes, in the real Nazi way of war these two goals were one and the same), and the elimination of the Soviet army immediately was an extremely crucial goal. The Battle of Smolensk indicated this failed.
No doubt that Smolensk was a German victory, but it was a Coral Sea/Perryville victory. The Soviet army's unexpectedly greater size and resilience, that it took a month to do a massive encirclement that saw Soviet troops escape, and the Soviet local defensive victory at Yelyna were all combined to be a Soviet strategic victory. The Battle of Smolensk saved Moscow and forced the Germans to recognize destroying the Red Army would not work, hence the Soviet economy and industrial resources were now major targets, then ultimately the capital. Smolensk was a tactical victory only.
Actually it does, as a successful encirclement of *all* those troops would have collapsed German defensive power in the West. Falaise marks an example of the serial democratic failure to execute a proper mobile operation or mobile tactics.
No, what happened was Blitzkrieg disappeared, the Germans conceded destroying the Soviet army in cauldron battles failed, and the Germans shifted to targeting the Soviet economy. Barbarossa was an attempt to wipe out the Soviet army, it was expected that actual combat would end on the USSR's borders. The shift to Leningrad and Kiev indicated the German realized that concept was no longer valid.
No, for them to have achieved what they sought, the Soviet army, all 22 million men of the whole thing raised during the war, would have had to be destroyed in two weeks and then Stalin's regime collapsed. And then Soviet cities would all be starved to death and European Jews would no longer exist. They never came close to what they sought, fortunately for humanity in general and Europe in particular. Barbarossa is a spectacular example of German war: brutal, tactics exalted at the expense of any strategy at all, and logistics completely, utterly, and profoundly ignored in the most willfully stupid fashionof any military in human history.
Snake Featherston
Banned
That's nonsense. The real German army focused obsessively on tactics, had some real skill in operations, had no strategic concept whatsoever, and its logistics frankly sound like teenage fanfic concepts of logistics (i.e. ignoring it and dealing with it in an improvised, ad hoc fashion when the shit hits the fan), and the German military in practice like its Japanese imitator was too mighty for its own good. German generals as tacticians are the most brilliant in their wars, as operational generals they are really good. As strategists there never were German strategists worth speaking of.
The World War I German army repeatedly ignored matters of logistics, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff in particular were tacticians only. The World War II German army was right in the spirit of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. If we want an efficient fighting machine, Vietnam's is the best 20th Century war machine, not the Germans. They lost both major wars and did so in a fashion that indicates they could see only how to win battles and had no concept of how to win wars or operations.
Well, put it this way: WWI Germany got to within 6 weeks of starving Britain out. WWII Germany, if it had poked Britain hard enough, could potentially have had the British government sigh, decide that enough was enough, and start promising self govt to colonies in return for The Big Push required for an Empire spanning 1/4 of the world to really show its strength. Add on USSR, the USA, even France and Czechoslovakia if you want to go down the AH route, and it becomes increasingly unbalanced.
HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
The problem with Hitler was he had no taste for alliances that actually helped him, he betrayed or left to hang the people who would have best served as either allies or at the very least non-belligerents (mostly the Soviets, an argument could be made for Poland and Romania as well) or made alliances with fools who brought him nothing but trouble (i.e. the rest of the big Axis powers), Hitler originally wanted an alliance with the anti-Soviet (by then anyway) Kuomintang, he deeply respected the Chinese and never quite forgave the Japanese for attacking them. And in the end, he still followed ungrateful, useless allies into a war against the last remaining great power that was not as of yet involved in the war.
As for the Stalin backstabbing theory, honestly Stalin didn't really need to do it at all. Germany got the vast majority of its grain, and after the Soviets nabbed Bessarabia, the vast majority of its oil from the Soviet Union. He just needed to keep pumping the Germans until they ran out of money, and, once the Germans realized they had nobody else to turn to who would play ball with them, they would have to start slowly-but-surely granting concessions to the Soviets in exchange for the Soviets overlooking German deficits, that means ever more of Eastern Europe falls into the Soviet sphere until Nazi Germany ends up with nothing left and is, in all but name, a vassal of the Soviet Union.
All Germany had to do in WWI was not provoke the US into entering the war, which would seem a fairly simple thing to do...
I frankly think WW2. WW1 would end in stalemate, at best, for Germany and the Central Powers. In WW2, they caught everyone with their pants down, and had they had a cooler head, kept on destroying Britain's ability to make war before they could rally, not incited the Soviets, and not gone to war against America, may have managed to create a Fortress Europe with the rest of the world not fighting back.
elkarlo
Banned
Yeah Germany was def still a super power in WWI. It was still one into WWII, but it was def losing ground to the US and the USSR
elkarlo
Banned
Honestly, I love this quote. People should find ways to work this into all movies involving any war.