Which world war did Germany have a better chance of winning?

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

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...

This is true, though it is easier said then done, it's because even though the US was essentially neutral, even neutral policies by their nature favored the good guys, since they were primarily economic in nature, the British and French could do much more with the Americans by way of trade and commerce than the Central Powers ever could.

This was a liability to the Germans, which lead directly to policies like unrestricted submarine warfare.

 

[Jason222]

If US stay out Germany would have won.

 

[Sarantapechaina]

This is true, though it is easier said then done, it's because even though the US was essentially neutral, even neutral policies by their nature favored the good guys, since they were primarily economic in nature, the British and French could do much more with the Americans by way of trade and commerce than the Central Powers ever could.

This was a liability to the Germans, which lead directly to policies like unrestricted submarine warfare.

That only holds true as long as the British still had American dollars with which to buy American goods. And the British ran out of those in 1916.

 

[frozenpredator]

This is true, though it is easier said then done, it's because even though the US was essentially neutral, even neutral policies by their nature favored the good guys, since they were primarily economic in nature, the British and French could do much more with the Americans by way of trade and commerce than the Central Powers ever could.

This was a liability to the Germans, which lead directly to policies like unrestricted submarine warfare.

France and Britain the good guys?

WWI had no good guys, just shades of gray.

On topic: WW2 Germany barely stood a chance due to many factors, WWI Germany could've won

 

[Byzantine]

Should have broken off relations with Japan before tensions with the US rose too much or something, and they would've gotten even closer (let alone invading USSR).

Hmmm.... pay closer attention to what the nature of the German-Japanese alliance was. The initial Anti-Comintern Pact (1936) between the two powers mainly ensured that they would co-ordinate efforts against the Soviet Union. And both powers agreed to never sign political treaties with said foreign power. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939) breached the terms of the previous pact.

The subsequent Tripartite Pact (27 September, 1940) both improved relations between the two powers and was a full alliance. According to one of its terms "Japan, Germany, and Italy agree to cooperate in their efforts on aforesaid lines. They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict."

By most interpretations, said unnamed Power was always intended to be the United States. The Export Control Act (July, 1940) had cut American "oil, iron and steel exports to Japan", threatening the Empire's ongoing war effort. While continued trade relations between the British Empire and the United States ensured a stable source of supplies for the British.

The Pact would serve as a threat to the United States not to enter the War, and possibly cease supporting the British. Something beneficial to both major signatories. While Germany was well aware that Japanese expansionistic efforts would target the British colonies in South-East Asia and the Pacific. Which would undermine British efforts to transfer troops and supplies from these areas to the war fronts in the Mediterranean Sea and North Africa.

The Pact was thus a product of existing tensions, not the opposite. While the lack of a German ally in the Pacific Ocean would leave the British colonies safe and more than able to further support the British war effort.

The basic question for Germany would be: how can somebody neutralize the British Empire without allies?

 

[Fabius Cunctator]

Hmmm.... pay closer attention to what the nature of the German-Japanese alliance was. The initial Anti-Comintern Pact (1936) between the two powers mainly ensured that they would co-ordinate efforts against the Soviet Union. And both powers agreed to never sign political treaties with said foreign power. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939) breached the terms of the previous pact.

The subsequent Tripartite Pact (27 September, 1940) both improved relations between the two powers and was a full alliance. According to one of its terms "Japan, Germany, and Italy agree to cooperate in their efforts on aforesaid lines. They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict."

By most interpretations, said unnamed Power was always intended to be the United States. The Export Control Act (July, 1940) had cut American "oil, iron and steel exports to Japan", threatening the Empire's ongoing war effort. While continued trade relations between the British Empire and the United States ensured a stable source of supplies for the British.

The Pact would serve as a threat to the United States not to enter the War, and possibly cease supporting the British. Something beneficial to both major signatories. While Germany was well aware that Japanese expansionistic efforts would target the British colonies in South-East Asia and the Pacific. Which would undermine British efforts to transfer troops and supplies from these areas to the war fronts in the Mediterranean Sea and North Africa.

The Pact was thus a product of existing tensions, not the opposite. While the lack of a German ally in the Pacific Ocean would leave the British colonies safe and more than able to further support the British war effort.

The basic question for Germany would be: how can somebody neutralize the British Empire without allies?

Though a good point, if the intent was to keep the US out of the war, at the point where Japan attacked the US, Germany and Italy should have broken off relations and made a deal to attack Japan if they could. Had Germany not made the strategic mistakes that allowed two previous neutral to non-aggressive forces with large resources to ally against it, it could have won the war. In fact, as mentioned already, it practically did win WW2 up until that point. All that Germany had left to do was to have won the Battle of Britain and/or suffocate British oil supplies from the middle eastern regions for itself.

I consider it coming closer to winning when you defeat france instead of when you don't defeat france, when you have conquered continental europe instead of when you have not, when you have Italy as an ally instead of older former powers, and when a few final battles could decide the fate of western civilization (and eastern).

World War 1 was a slow-moving process that Germany could not win because it was not a fast-moving war that led to sudden victories/defeats.

Germany was doomed in WW1 to be ground-down.

That was not the case in WW2, Germany nearly avoided being ground down.

Germany was fortunately defeated in WW2 in the end, but it did come close to dominating Europe. Had it been quicker and better supplied, it may even have been able to get away with betraying the USSR and conquering it quickly before Russia's zukhov had the supplies he needed. Imagine all those resources in German hands and a war aimed at Japan instead of at the US. Germany came close to winning the largest confrontation in modern history. WW1 Germany couldn't win even without the same 2-front war. there was no normandy needed in ww1. it was just a matter of time: when and where would germany surrender ww1?

Ironic that both times the US served as England's "reserve army," to join Britain, France, and Italy during WW1, and to save Britain against Germany/Italy (with a conquered france) during WW2.

 

[I Blame Communism]

How can people use 'England' and 'Britain' as synonyms in the same sentence?

More relevantly: 'if they had been quicker and better supplied' doesn't explain any new success. I could say 'If Germany had had rayguns in WW1, they would have won,' and that would be true. Thing is, they didn't. And if Germany did not have the logistical resources to conquer the USSR, it did not have the logistical resources to conquer the USSR.

And leaving aside the question of how the flying flip Germany gets to Iraq or Iran, Britain had America's oil-supplies to call on. I find it rather odd that the Germans, who performed prodigies on a fuel-budget so tight that the senior allied officers repeated dismissed reports of its extent with 'No don't bullshit us this is serious', only have to cut off supply from fields that were a fraction of the global production we had available, but Germany, chugging along on synthetic fuels and Romania, will be just fine.

Germany clearly operates under different rules.

 

[Sarantapechaina]

Amazing how quickly we forgot about this thread.

 

[BlairWitch749]

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.

Capturing Leningrad and eventually Archangel and Murmansk was deemed army group north's campaign objectives; the plan was to wipe out the Red Army at the border yes; but the AG's did have objectives of cities and river lines; and the plan to shift PG 2 and PG 3 north is discussed with backing from OKH war diary documentation to back it up in Alan Clark and John Keegan's work

The battle of Smolensk proved nothing of the sort; the army failed to bag everyone because they became too overextended and exhausted and the infantry couldn't keep up with the mobile divisions without a pause to consolidate, bring up supplies and fix some of the rail lines. German formations demonstrated a strong ability to operate 300 miles from a rail head; the problem was that at Smolensk many of their units had advanced 500 miles from their rail heads in only 4 weeks and they simply couldn't go farther forward without a consolidation period.... this was a rate of advance and success superior to sickle cut and it is wrong to consider this a failure of German operational doctrine; no army of that period could fight 500 miles from a rail head at all, the germans did so and achieved a significant but not ultimately decisive victory

The Germans achieved several major cauldron victories after Smolensk including but not limited to crimea/kerch, kiev, bryansk, vyzama, 2nd and 3rd kharkov, vorenzeth, east prussia 44... and creating cauldrons was still a major objective in battles such as Kursk

I wouldn't read much into the Yelena victory allowing a few units to escape... once the Germans consolidated (that consolidation period allowing the 4th and 9th army to rest and restore supply whilst Guderian and Kliest eliminated the Kiev military district) Guderian destroyed the saliant; captured all the divisions in it, and then subsequently captured nearly all the troops who escaped in the Bryansk and Vyzama encirclements

 

[Elfwine]

I am not sure I can say that Germany ignored logistics. But it had a really, really bad case of biting off more than it could chew - Barbarossa being an extreme example.

So what if it killed/captured say, ten million Soviet soldiers? There are more.

And attrition brutally ground down Germany there. Not to say the Russians didn't do the winning on their own merits, but taking a look at how many tanks a panzer division had as things dragged on for instance and it becomes obvious that capable Soviets will win.

WWI is just barely within Germany's resources, in a "for a given definition of win" sort of way - 1917 is the year both sides are looking like this will end with mutual collapse (not necessarily Russia-level, just "No one is willing to continue this, except the crazies."), which may be enough for something but isn't exactly occupying London and Paris. WWII would inevitably overstrain them to the breaking point, by the nature of Nazi ambitions. "Nazis don't do something stupid like Barbarossa" is...counter to everything about that poisonous ideology and the warped minds which really believed that the Slav(e)s would just run away from German bayonets.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Capturing Leningrad and eventually Archangel and Murmansk was deemed army group north's campaign objectives; the plan was to wipe out the Red Army at the border yes;

Meaning when the Red Army was in fact not wiped out at the borders that the plan had failed, yes or no? Only answer yes or no.

but the AG's did have objectives of cities and river lines; and the plan to shift PG 2 and PG 3 north is discussed with backing from OKH war diary documentation to back it up in Alan Clark and John Keegan's work

Yes, but this was after the Red Army was destroyed first. There was no expectation that capture of individual cities would take out the USSR, there was the expectation that destroying the Red Army would produce political collapse *and then* capturing cities so as to starve them all to death.

The battle of Smolensk proved nothing of the sort; the army failed to bag everyone because they became too overextended and exhausted and the infantry couldn't keep up with the mobile divisions without a pause to consolidate, bring up supplies and fix some of the rail lines. German formations demonstrated a strong ability to operate 300 miles from a rail head; the problem was that at Smolensk many of their units had advanced 500 miles from their rail heads in only 4 weeks and they simply couldn't go farther forward without a consolidation period.... this was a rate of advance and success superior to sickle cut and it is wrong to consider this a failure of German operational doctrine; no army of that period could fight 500 miles from a rail head at all, the germans did so and achieved a significant but not ultimately decisive victory

Actually it's wrong to consider this a victory for the Germans in anything but a narrowly tactical sense. The Soviet Union stopped the advance of Army Group Center, they did in fact make their first local victories in this battle, and most crucially the Germans realized they had not destroyed the Red Army along the border as per the original requirements of the Barbarossa Plan. This was a strategic victory for the Soviet Union, I am not in the least disputing that it was a tactical victory for the Germans. The Soviet attempt at a co-ordinated counteroffensive here was an utter and complete failure from a tactical standpoint, strategically this marked the German shift to the Soviet economy as opposed to the Soviet army.

The Germans achieved several major cauldron victories after Smolensk including but not limited to crimea/kerch,

Erm, no. Kerch *might* qualify, but that has far more to do with Lev Mekhlis than it does with the Germans. The Soviets successfully evacuated the bulk of their troops from Sevastopol in their own version of Dunkirk, which is not a cauldron battle but an evacuation. The Kerch offensive was a result of Mekhlis's complete incompetence, had the Soviets been even more marginally prepared as at Sevastopol they might well have held out for quite some time, the Sevastopol garrison was besieged from October-July, and it fell because of Mekhlis. At the height of its power relative to that of the Red Army, the Germans could not capture that garrison. At the height of the Red Army's power to that of the Germans the same place that held out for over 200 days fell in a little over a month.

kiev,

This was not Army Group South's doing alone, this was a set of Soviet mistakes due to Stalin's stubborn misreading of the situation and the inability of Soviet generals in 1941 to convince Stalin he was wrong. This particular victory was as much from or more due to Soviet mistakes as it was due to Nazi action. In Kiev, even Marshal Budenny was telling Stalin he needed to get those troops out of the pocket, and Stalin was unwilling to listen to one of his own cronies. When Stalin was being that willfully stupid, that ain't a German victory, that's Soviet stupidity making it so easy an army of cavemen could have done it.

bryansk, vyzama,

And yet the Germans were yet again surprised by a tremendous number of Soviet troops from behind Moscow. Once more the Germans made the idiotic damn fool stupid mistake of assuming that the Soviet army, far more resilient than the Barbarossa plan allowed for, was destroyed in these two battles. Once more they completely, utterly, abysmally, and totally failed to read the situation in any sense approaching the truth, and only in German military history does this get called brilliance of any sort. With any other army it'd be called willful stupidity at best.

2nd and 3rd kharkov,

No, not in either of these two cases. In both cases what happened was a German strategic counteroffensive against Soviet troops overextended from their own offensive, and the German victory was due to skillful use of tactics plus Soviet inexperience in offensive operations and overstretch. This is not what qualifies as cauldron battles even by German conceptions of the term. In Second Kharkov you had an overextended, undermanned Soviet force committed to over-optimistic objectives into the teeth of German strength, in Third Kharkov you had overxtended, undermanned Soviet troops taken by complete surprise by the last successful German counteroffensive of the war. The Germans very much did not get a Kesselschlacht in Third Kharkov as the same forces they defeated here formed the north wing of the Kursk Bulge.

vorenzeth, east prussia 44... and creating cauldrons was still a major objective in battles such as Kursk

East Prussia in 1944 was not a cauldron battle, it was the result of another Soviet offensive made over-optimistically with little regard for the capacity of German troops to resist. It only qualifies as a cauldron battle if the defeat of the UK in Market Garden does. The Germans also failed at the Kursk battle to come anywhere near an encirclement or breakthrough on either end of the line, though only in German military history does a failure so complete as to permit the enemy to begin his first strategic offensive even as the German strategic offensive reaches nearest the mirage of success qualify as a "victory" of any sort. Only the Germans can claim with a straight face that running into a self-inflicted buzzsaw is testament to the wondrous skill of the army that exalts tactics uber alles when in reality tactically they were curbstomped.

I wouldn't read much into the Yelena victory allowing a few units to escape...

As one of the resident Wehrmacht-wankers on the forum, I'm sure you read nothing into Soviet victories anyway and have an extreme difficulty admitting the Soviets ever can win, so this is not a surprise. Yelnya was a major boost for Soviet morale and bought them months to strengthen the defense of Moscow, and Smolensk had much more impact on the actual Wehrmacht leadership than you allow for. But hey, when Soviets win battles it's really Hitler ensuring the Wehrmacht could not win, because the Germans' enemies don't win wars, the Germans lose wars.

once the Germans consolidated (that consolidation period allowing the 4th and 9th army to rest and restore supply whilst Guderian and Kliest eliminated the Kiev military district)

If the Germans were so invincible, why did consolidation matter any at all? If Smolensk was such an easy, simple victory, why did logistics matter any at all? If the Germans were in fact so unstoppable, why do the forces around Kiev or in Leningrad matter any at all? Or perhaps instead it really was a Soviet strategic victory, and the Soviets might well be winning battles strategically when losing them tactically, a phenomenon that has applied in many wars.

Guderian destroyed the saliant; captured all the divisions in it, and then subsequently captured nearly all the troops who escaped in the Bryansk and Vyzama encirclements

And then he, like everyone else, was stunned when they realized that the Soviets were able yet again to find reservoirs of troops they did not know existed, just as in the Battle of Smolensk. But it's OK, I understand. The Germans are completely and utterly invincible, the Soviets don't win any battles, the Soviets are incapable of strategic victories in tactical defeats. Instead the Germans are completely unstoppable except for the fact that they were smashed and their country was divided into two separate states. The Germans were totally invincible and unstoppable, Soviet defensive victories are irrelevant.

You keep saying you're not a fan of the Wehrmacht but you keep acting like the exact opposite.

 

[Mikestone8]

I consider it coming closer to winning when you defeat france instead of when you don't defeat france, .

How about when you defeat Russia as against when you don't defeat Russia?

 

[BlairWitch749]

Yes the plan to wipe out the red army at the border failed because the entire red army and it's reinforcement capability was not at the border; all the Germans could do was destroy all of the units AT the border, which they did

Capturing cities and river lines where pre barbarossa and operationally given during the battles as well; motivations or whatever aside, the generals where ordered to take these places

The Russian army didn't stop army group center at Smolensk; the German's own exhaustion and over extension and the precarious nature of their right flank stopped them. Following a rest period to restore their formations and secure their supply lines, they could have advanced relatively unimpeded (other than the danger to their right flank due to the 2nd army's inability to capture Gomel and screen off the Kiev military district); the Red army in front of Bock after Smolensk was heavily disorganized and weakened... he had no problem slicing through them like shit through a goose 6 weeks later without even resting the panzer formations

Bryansk and Vzama where brilliantly handled battles on the German side and did eliminate most of the remaining strength of the red army in white russia; the problem was advancing after that; the troops where tired, and the front had displaced another 250 miles forward requiring additional consolidation which proved impossible as the weather turned; the proper operational and tactical decision after bagging those 600k men would have been to withdraw back to the Oka line and take winter quarters with the assumption of resuming the offensive in the spring... Hitler, and Bock decided that it was worth running the risk to try and get to Moscow after that battle; it's hard to blame them for reading it this way; the entire red army in white russia after Vyzama had only 800k men left in it (pending arrival and formation of reserves) and less than a 1000 running tanks;

Yelena didn't buy the Russians anything; the Germans would have had to pause no matter what; Guderian destroyed the Yelena forces, and the forces they helped to escape in later battles anyway... this is like calling the stand of the 150th brigade at Gazalla a victory because they repulsed Rommel the first time... He still maneuvered around them, cut them off and compelled their surrender

I have no problem giving the Red Army their due in well handled battles; but Smolensk doesn't qualify as one of them... Rostov yes Smolensk no. You don't get to lose massive amounts of territory and 350k men whilst having the remaining part of your army be highly disorganized and beaten and get to call that a victory.... all the escape of forces does is reduce Smolensk from Decisive German Victory to just German Victory; but it is a victory for only one side in that battle

 

[Elfwine]

How about when you defeat Russia as against when you don't defeat Russia?

Not to mention that listing WWII Italy as a better ally than WWI Austria-Hungary is...interesting.

Blair: How about a victory for the side that lost 350,000 men and yet left the Germans too exhausted to continue by being stubborn enough to actually fight back?

 

[John Farson]

All the tactical victories in the world do you no good if your armies end up destroyed and your country is occupied/dismembered by foreign armies and you end up in the gallows (if you don't manage to flee to South America).

See: CSA 1865, Germany 1945.

EDIT: Why these two get wanked again and again and AGAIN is beyond me.

 

[Elfwine]

All the tactical victories in the world do you no good if your armies end up destroyed and your country is occupied/dismembered by foreign armies and you end up in the gallows (if you don't manage to flee to South America).

See: CSA 1865, Germany 1945.

EDIT: Why these two get wanked again and again and AGAIN is beyond me.

Because the whole "amateurs study tactics" issue means "What if this army which accomplished amazing feats accomplished _____. Somehow, all the things in the way of victory would disappear, right guys?" what ifs are popular and easy.

That's my theory.

Also, not nearly enough Confederates ended up nearer a gallows than participating in a lynch mob. Minor nitpick, but...

 

[Fabius Cunctator]

Great discussion going, I maintain my position and will respond to more soon after some business/errands.

Let me end for now with this quote:

'Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.'

Still came closer during WW2, of course.

 

[Sarantapechaina]

All the tactical victories in the world do you no good if your armies end up destroyed and your country is occupied/dismembered by foreign armies and you end up in the gallows (if you don't manage to flee to South America).

See: CSA 1865, Germany 1945.

Both of which possessed armies that are consistently tactically overrated, too.

 

[BlairWitch749]

Both of which possessed armies that are consistently tactically overrated, too.

How is the German army of WW2 tactically overrated? Their infantry doctrine is still in use today by nearly all modern armies and their maneuver actions are still studied today at everywhere from West Point to the Frunze military academy;

The active combatants all rated the German army as a rigorous and tough opponent as have post war historians from all sides (even those with an axe to grind)

 

[Snake Featherston]

Yes the plan to wipe out the red army at the border failed because the entire red army and it's reinforcement capability was not at the border; all the Germans could do was destroy all of the units AT the border, which they did

There's a problem with this sufficient to send an aircraft carrier through it: the Germans thought the only Soviet troops that the USSR had were the ones on the border. They had no concept of Soviet strength in reserves, and this is everything to do with what Barbarossa was supposed to do. The Germans had no strategic thought whatsoever in either war, and Barbarossa is the most egregious example of this in WWII.

Capturing cities and river lines where pre barbarossa and operationally given during the battles as well; motivations or whatever aside, the generals where ordered to take these places

They were ordered to take them only after the Soviet army was destroyed in the frontier battles. Barbarossa was a tactical plan, to be followed by the capture of Soviet cities and the starvation of every single inhabitant of those cities, and in the cases of Moscow and Leningrad their total destruction. As it was the Germans did not even destroy the Soviet army.

The Russian army didn't stop army group center at Smolensk; the German's own exhaustion and over extension and the precarious nature of their right flank stopped them. Following a rest period to restore their formations and secure their supply lines, they could have advanced relatively unimpeded (other than the danger to their right flank due to the 2nd army's inability to capture Gomel and screen off the Kiev military district); the Red army in front of Bock after Smolensk was heavily disorganized and weakened... he had no problem slicing through them like shit through a goose 6 weeks later without even resting the panzer formations

*wishes for a smiley of banging one's head against a brick wall*

Yes, Blair, I know this. This is what's called a tactical victory. As you seem unaware of the difference, tactics is how one fights battles, strategy is the overall means to win a war with all resources at the disposal of a belligerent. Tactically the Soviet counteroffensive, though co-ordinated, failed, and the Germans' superiority in firepower and the concentration of the great bulk of German armor in Army Group Center more than sufficed to handle the counteroffensive. Strategically this fight ended the drive in the center and forced the Germans to shift their strategy to destruction of the Soviet economy, not to defeating the Soviet army. Is this clear enough for you or do I have to go into full detail of the difference between tactical victories and strategic victories, and why Smolensk was in every way a Soviet strategic victory, and for the Germans was more of a Battle of the Coral Sea scenario?

Bryansk and Vzama where brilliantly handled battles on the German side and did eliminate most of the remaining strength of the red army in white russia; the problem was advancing after that;

So where the fuck did that 1,000,000 soldiers sent in the winter 1941 counteroffensive come from? The Germans did not eliminate the bulk of Soviet strength at any point in the war. This is an obvious fact, it was obvious to those generals themselves, that you claim this in the wake of say, the Battle of Moscow that succeeded Briansk and Viazma indicates a certain willful ignorance of the reality of the Ostfront from the German perspective, let alone the Soviet.

the troops where tired, and the front had displaced another 250 miles forward requiring additional consolidation which proved impossible as the weather turned; the proper operational and tactical decision after bagging those 600k men would have been to withdraw back to the Oka line and take winter quarters with the assumption of resuming the offensive in the spring... Hitler, and Bock decided that it was worth running the risk to try and get to Moscow after that battle; it's hard to blame them for reading it this way; the entire red army in white russia after Vyzama had only 800k men left in it (pending arrival and formation of reserves) and less than a 1000 running tanks;

No again. What actually happened was Hitler wanted to call the offensive quits, but in his standard pattern Halder ensured the generals willfully disobeyed Hitler's orders, the army was overstretched, then the Soviets smashed into them with a huge number of troops that theoretically did not exist and after six months of his orders generally being ignored by his generals Hitler went Jeff Davis on their asses and took over the war down to the last detail.

Yelena didn't buy the Russians anything; the Germans would have had to pause no matter what;

Yelyna did buy them an increase in their own morale as it was their first victory in the war. But I forget, Soviet armies don't win battles, the Germans lose them in this war. Soviet morale is irrelevant, any fact that doesn't suit a twisted, distorted image of the Germans as supermen and ignores the reality of what the German army was or was not must be disregarded with full and blatant ignorance of the truth.

Guderian destroyed the Yelena forces, and the forces they helped to escape in later battles anyway... this is like calling the stand of the 150th brigade at Gazalla a victory because they repulsed Rommel the first time... He still maneuvered around them, cut them off and compelled their surrender

I said that it was a local defensive victory and that it raised Soviet morale as part of a defensive strategic success. You, in a pattern typical of Wehrmacht fanboys obsess about tactical details and have no attention to the broader strategic picture. This, incidentally, is why Germany lost both World Wars: it focused far too much on splendid battlefield victories and not how to turn a victory into a campaign, much less a won war.

I have no problem giving the Red Army their due in well handled battles; but Smolensk doesn't qualify as one of them... Rostov yes Smolensk no. You don't get to lose massive amounts of territory and 350k men whilst having the remaining part of your army be highly disorganized and beaten and get to call that a victory.... all the escape of forces does is reduce Smolensk from Decisive German Victory to just German Victory; but it is a victory for only one side in that battle

Again, to bang my head against the brick wall: I know the Germans won Smolensk tactically, I have said this throughout. Army Group Center defeated all the Soviet attacks, it ultimately encircled a good number of troops though a great deal also escaped the encirclement. The victory was a tactical German victory, it was a strategic Soviet victory, and the key Soviet strategic victory of the war as it prevented a rapid German conquest of Moscow that might well have truly brought a collapse of the Stalin regime. Strategy and tactics are two different things, and if anyone wants to examine war, this must be kept in mind. Refusal to do that is why Germany went down to inglorious defeat in both wars.

All the tactical victories in the world do you no good if your armies end up destroyed and your country is occupied/dismembered by foreign armies and you end up in the gallows (if you don't manage to flee to South America).

See: CSA 1865, Germany 1945.

EDIT: Why these two get wanked again and again and AGAIN is beyond me.

It might also be noted that the German obsession with tactics was itself flawed, as the German concept tended to require rather more mobile forces than the German army actually had, and in practice German victories were heavily dependent on the enemy making the right mistakes at the right time to enable German troops to win. Like Joe Johnston the Germans only won if their enemies screwed up abysmally. In any other situation the Germans got shitcanned.

How is the German army of WW2 tactically overrated? Their infantry doctrine is still in use today by nearly all modern armies and their maneuver actions are still studied today at everywhere from West Point to the Frunze military academy;

The active combatants all rated the German army as a rigorous and tough opponent as have post war historians from all sides (even those with an axe to grind)

The German army is tactically overrated for five reasons:

1) Its very tactics required it to be vastly more mobile and truck-dependent than it actually was. The German army had a tiny minority of troops that had panzers and trucks, the rest were still horse-and-footbound. An over-ambitious tactical concept without the means to achieve always has and always will result in only partial tactical victories.

2) The German army of WWII failed to comprehend minor matters like guarding its flanks or logistics, meaning that its tactical victories offered opportunities to any sufficiently aggressive enemies to seize. That these enemies did not seize them reflects on their weaknesses of leadership far more than actual German strength.

3) The German army was ludicrously factionalized, overly politicized, and did not have a single plan of operations or even an ability to obey the orders of its commander-in-chief Adolf Hitler in a fashion that ensured he trusted it. Through 1941 Halder kept deliberately disobeying Hitler's orders, and one does not have to be Hitler to thereafter have a great deal of skepticism about generals whose concept of obeying orders is non-existent and who are incapable thus of being trusted. As a result when the generals *were* giving strategically and tactically sound advice they inflicted Hitler's unwillingness to listen to them as much on themselves as it had anything to do with Hitler.

4) The German generals had a tendency to focus obsessively on local gains at the expense of their rivals regardless of economic pictures or economic sanity. In particular this really repeatedly bit the Germans in the ass in 1941 over and over and over and over again, particularly when it came to the slaughter of 90% of the three million Soviet POWs of 1941. The generals also kept wanting to stick their dicks in the meat grinder of urban combat and when they got their chance Hitler's judgment, not theirs, was accurate.

5) The generals in the finest, unscrupulous, immoral fashion of the German army created a Dolchstosslegende to blame all their tactical and particularly strategic mistakes on Adolf Hitler. Not one of them had the balls to admit they did anything wrong in the history of ever, they all lied about how they reacted to atrocities during the war, as almost all of them deliberately did them to vie for Hitler's favor, they all refused to admit that the Soviets kept smacking them around in signals intelligence over and over again, creating the impression of a Soviet army far more numerous than it actually was, and so on. The German generals, in short, created the myth that they were very good when in reality their enemies were very bad at war-waging at the start of the war.

Edit-This last is far from a uniquely German failing. The US Army and Navy refused to admit that Japan had some very good security precautions in 1941, the Soviets wrote out almost all their major strategic and tactical defeats after 1941 from their histories of the war and added to this by obfuscating the precise sequence of the 1941 defeats, the Allies in Asia in general created a Japanese superman myth to avoid admitting how shitty their leadership was in 1937-41, the USA in Vietnam preferred to avoid facing up to its own war fought with no concept of strategy, only focusing on winning battles, and so on. As a rule generals and societies don't like dwelling on defeat, few of them are as egregious about it as the Wehrmacht and Imperial German forces were.