Germany had piss poor intelligence about its enemies. Hitler’s experts estimated that the Russians had just about 200 front line divisions in 1941 (about 2 million men), with an additional 150 divisions of poor quality reserve troops. he also estimated that Germany and the USSR were about equal in terms of material-Germany had a slight edge in tanks, and the German equipment was judged substantially better than the Russian equivalents. The Germans also considered that their soldiers were better trained and led, such that a German soldier was equal to about 5 Russians. Given this, Hitler expected a 4 month campaign-he was even planning on demobilizing a large part of the German Army, once initial victory had been achieved.
It did not work out that way. After the initial victories, German forces and their allies started feeling threatened by November 1941. General Guderian remarked that the army had already identified over 380 Russian divisions. And, by December, German forces had taken over 400,000 casualties (250,000 dead).
German staff officers should have known this-Russia was more than twice the population of Germany-moreover, Russia was a much younger nation-Russia had many more young men in the 18-25 age group, and many more young men were born in the 1920’s 9while Germany had a huge reduction in the birth rate, due to the inflation/depression in the 1920s.
So, had Hitler known the huge advantage of the Russians, would he have launched his attack at all? The whole "lebensraum"idea was pretty stupid-where were all the German colonists (who were to settle Russia) going to come from? And Poland was huge-wasn’t that enough “lebensraum”?
Hitler should have held off-maybe waiting till 1943 or 45 would have been better.
From Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, by Paul Johnson, Chapter 11, “The Watershed Year”:
The whole idea was that Hitler was convinced that the USSR was a paper tiger- poorly equipped, poorly led, and likely to fall apart with enough pressure. Plus, they were kind of high off their previous blitzkrieg style victories in France and Poland, and figured that they could repeat the same performance in Russia.
What happened is that the initial blitzkrieg worked, but the USSR was just too large to keep it up, and the USSR didn’t fold like a house of cards. Instead they doubled down and fought like hell.
Once the initial blitzkrieg portion of the war was over (June-Dec 1941) the war settled into more of a mobile war of attrition, and the USSR was bound to win that if the Germans didn’t win some sort of decisive victory that would somehow hamstring the USSR.
That’s why they went south in 1942; if they could capture the oilfields in the Caucasus, they’d cut off oil to the USSR and complicate things severely for them.
Yes. In all probability he would have.
Hitler was crazy and wouldn’t listen to any information that didn’t fit with his plans. By this point in the war, he was convinced that he was the greatest military genius of all times. When anyone came to him with information suggesting that his plans wouldn’t work, he ignored them or convinced himself that it was part of some malicious plot.
Taking the oilfields in the Caucasus would do more to shore up Germany’s vulnerability than to complicate things for the Soviets. Romania was providing upwards of 3/4 of Germany’s oil during the war. The loss of the Caucasus and of the southern route for lend-lease through Iran would hurt the USSR, but the loss could always be made up by increased shipments of oil from the US via the Pacific route; over half of all lend-lease supplied to the USSR during WW2 went through the Pacific route.
Even if German intelligence had a more realistic appreciation of Soviet capabilities, I’d tend to think Hitler would still have attacked. Lebensraum in the East was the whole point of the war for Hitler, and regardless of it material strengths Hitler was convinced the USSR was morally weak, as he put it “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
And, Hitler over-emphasized those “facts” that suited his purpose. For example, he used the fact that ‘tiny’ Finland gave the Soviets a bloody nose during the Winter War to convince himself and his cronies that Soviet system was weak and rotten to the core (“We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten Russian edifice will come tumbling down.”). It was inconceivable, then, that German Army would not crush the USSR’s.
At least no one can say he wasn’t ambitious
Both Hitler and Stalin (and just about everyone else) seemed to accept that the USSR and Germany would go to war in the near future. So the question for Hitler wasn’t really what the relative strength of the two countries was, but whether the passage of time would increase those strengths in Russia’s favour or his.
Since the USSR was modernizing its army, recovering its officer core from the purges of the 30’s and outproducing Germany, the balance going forward looked likely to tip more and more in their direction as time went on.
And in 1941, Germany already had a mobilized, veteran army and had destroyed all the military threats to its West (Britain was still there, but wasn’t going to be up to invading anyone any time soon). And of course, by attacking in 1941, he’d make sure that it would be Germany that would surprise the USSR, and get to use the highly successful tactics of blitzkreig, instead of the other way around.
So not only do I think Hitler would’ve invaded even with accurate intelligence in 1941, I think he was probably right to do so (strategically, not morally, obviously). Waiting would’ve just made victory more of a longshot.
Hitler should have been a better reader of history, especially of Napoleon’s time in Russia.
Just as the USA and the UK should have re-read the history of Afghanistan, especially concerning the 2 British excursions there in the 1800’s
The problem with history is it’s full of lessons and it can be difficult to pick out the appropriate ones.
Hitler was certainly aware of Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. But he was probably thinking more about the successful German invasion of Russia in 1917 and 1918. People forget that invasion which demonstrated it was possible to win a war in Russia.
There was also Marshall Josef Pilsudski’s invasion of Russia in 1921. The Polish army beat the Red Army several times-a very humiliating defeat for the Russians.
Hitler might well have succeeded in invading Russia had Mussolini not screwed things up for him.
Mussonlini invaded Greece, without telling Hitler. Britain sent forces into the Balkans to defend Greece; this outraged Hitler, because he had seized the oilfields in Roumania. So now he had to divert his attention in the East from invading Russia to driving the British out of the Balkans (remember the movie The Guns of Navarone?); and this delay meant that his invasion of Russia would be delayed just enough to run head-on into the Russian winter.
The Guns of Navarone is a fictional novel not based on any actual events. There is no Greek island called Navarone. Hitler didn’t seize the oilfields in Romania, a fascist government underIon Antonescu took power in a coup on September 6, 1940 and officially joined the Axis on November 23, 1940, however Germany had already been supplied most of its oil from the previous Romanian regime. The primary effect of this was to allow Romania to be used to stage 11th Army from for Barbarossa.
There was no delay to Barbarossa caused by operations in the Balkans. Barbarossa was delayed from its initial start date of May 15 to June 22 due to the weather and logistical preparations. Spring 1941 had been particularly wet, and the rivers of Eastern Europe remained at flood until late spring. Even had it been a more normal spring the start date of May 15th was very optimistic. Operations in Greece were concluded by April 30, and German forces had already returned to positions to launch Barbarossa by the middle of May. The diversion of Commonwealth forces to be lost in Greece was a terrible blow for the British, both on its own and because these forces had been diverted from North Africa, where they had the Italians on the ropes and were pushing them back through Libya.
In 1941 (June) the USSR actually could field some 900 divisions-totally overwhelming when you consider that Barbarossa was launched with only 3.4 million soldiers (of which about 800,000 were allied nation troops). Germany could never match the USSR in manpower, and (as events turned out) could not match them in materiel, as well.
I got most of my information (that is, except for The Guns of Navarone) from The Young Students’ Encyclopedia, a set of volumes my Mom ordered through the mail for my younger brother (by thirteen years). The encyclopedia contained the information much as I posted it here.
As for the movie, OK, so it was fiction. And the Greek name of the Greek island may not be relevant; for all we know it could have been one of the Dodecanese Islands, which Italy had taken before World War II. Navarone, after all, sounds Italian.
I used to work with a German-born carpenter who had been in the Nazi Army, in Roumania; patriotic Roumanians (on the side of the Allies) captured him and he was a POW for the duration; so I know Germans were in Roumania, if not Greece.
As for Operation Barbarossa and the Russian winter–you tell me. I have no doubt that the approach of winter was more than the Germans could handle; perthaps Hitler, though he may not have known it, bit off more than he could chew at the outset.
- The OKW and OKH studied Boney’s invasion in detail. One of the thing they came away with was an opinion that the French had erred by marching single file to Moscow. The came to the conclusion that a broad front strategy was needed. Ironically, this probably hurt them.
- That I can agree with.
Navarone is a barely veiled variation of Navarino, site of a major naval battle in 1827 during the Greek War of Independence. The guns of Navarone claims to have been based upon the Battle of Leros during the Dodecanese Campaign, one of Churchill’s misguided brainchild’s, but any similarity is of the vaguest sort. After the Italian capitulation the British siezed several of the islands in the Dodecanese and tried to hold them against German counter-invasions. The Italian coastal artillery on Lemnos couldn’t even be brought to bear on the German invasion beaches, and the British and Italians were forced to surrender to the Germans. How that is anything like the plot of the Guns of Navarone is a mystery to me.
I just said the Germans were in both; they were invited in by a friendly fascist regime and staged the 11th Army there to work alongside the Romanians in Barbarossa. Prior to that Romania was already supplying German with most of its oil, Germany had no need to seize the oilfields. “Patriotic” Romanians as you define them (on the side of the Allies) didn’t exist until Romania was forced to capitulate by the USSR on August 23, 1944 and as part of the capitulation was forced to declare war on their former allies, the Germans. Prior to that Romania was Germany’s number one ally against the Soviet Union in numbers if not in quality; the number of Romanian troops committed to the Eastern Front exceeded the total troop contributions of all of Germany’s other allies combined. Germans were also in Greece for most of the duration of the war, but the forces sent there didn’t cause any delay in the launching of Barbarossa, the campaign was concluded by April 30th and they were back in place for the launching of Barbarossa by mid-May.
The winter didn’t help, but the Germans were already badly exhausted and at the end of a very strained logistical network when Operation Typhoon, their final drive at Moscow, was ground to a halt and much to their dismay they discovered that the Soviets had maintained a strategic reserve large enough to launch a massive, front-wide counteroffensive. Blaming the failure of Barbarossa on the winter fails on several fronts. It was no secret that Russian winters were extremely harsh, yet Germany pinned its hopes on dealing a knockout blow to the USSR before winter came. There were no provisions or preparations for the war lasting until winter, a foolish mistake. The Germans had grossly underestimated the strength of the Soviet Union (much of the rest of the world had as well) and its ability to continue to raise new divisions faster than Germany could destroy them and continue to bounce back undeterred despite losing millions of men in encirclement battles. Before winter even came 20% of the total German soldiers sent East were casualties, the equivalent of an entire regiment in every division. Aside from the casualties, the German logistical situation was very tenuous by the time winter came. There were nowhere near enough trucks in the German army to begin with, and only 1/3 were fully serviceable before winter, 1/3 were out of action in need of maintenance work, and 1/3 had become losses or write-offs from breaking down. The railheads from which supplies had to be moved forward from were far behind the front lines. The Soviet rail network used a broad gauge, meaning it had to be converted over to standard gauge before German trains could run on it. The conversion process was slow and tedious; it required far more than just replacing the rails themselves which was bad enough. The sleepers needed to be replaced and the distance between water and fuel stations changed among other things.
Good points. I saw a picture of a scene that typified the German’s problems: it was a Tiger tank in Russia (probably the most advanced tank of WWII). Next to it-a horse drawn cart…hauling ammo for the tank. Hitler was trying to fight a 1940’s war with (largely) 1890’s transport!
Very well…I heard about the Germans using horses against Russia (!!); And I had read years before about Russia’s rail gauge being different (wider or narrower?) from the 4’ 8 1/2" used in Europe and the U. S. and thus incompatible with German rolling stock…
These are things which Hitler should obviously have known, and I said he bit off more than he could chew. So there. 
Could you provide a cite for this astonishing number?