I don’t really disagree about much you have written, losses dont occur in a vacuum they occur at certain places and as a result of combinations of events. Men fought these battles, they didn’t just happen by themselves.
I’d quibble with your implication though that the German losses at Stalingrad and Kursk were somehow especially significant features of the ‘wearing down’. The frightening thing about the eastern front is that losses of this magnitude had already been repeatedly incurred, and would be again. There is nothing magical about the circa 400,000 men the Germans lost at Stalingrad (you earlier quoted 850,000 men which is roughly correct for the total axis losses including the Rumanians and Italians, the German component was a bit less then half this). There is no inherent quality making the significance of these men’s death and injuries more important then the 900,000 men the Germans lost in 1941 or the 300,000 men the Germans lost in the Rzhev salient in 1942 or the hundreds of thousands of men the Germans lost elsewhere in 1942 outside the Stalingrad campaign. The Germans were just relentlessly ground down and Stalingrad was part but only part of that.
Stalingrad was not even the biggest operation occurring on the Russian front at this time. The Soviet offensive strategy for 1942 consisted of two prongs, the Stalingrad counter-offensive (Operation Uranus) and another even larger counter-offensive (Operation Mars) launched at the same time in the north near Moscow, the latter operation led by Zhukov himself. The latter element is largely unknown in the west because it failed with massive losses to the Red Army (up to half a million men were lost in this operation alone) and the Russians have always downplayed it and prefer to celebrate their victory in the south.
From earlier posts:
Actually, highlighting the point that it was not particular operations but cumulative attrition that wrecked the Germans, the Wehrmacht did regain the initiative and was on the offensive again within 3 weeks of the surrender at Stalingrad. Manstein launched his famous backhand counter-offensive on February 21st, destroyed the Soviet offensive spearheads and the Germans advanced, recaptured Kharkov on March 14th and remained on the offensive until the spring thaw put an end to operations. This was what allowed the Germans to be in a position to launch their Kursk offensive in July.
Actually the Soviets considered Stalingrad a failure as well. They hadn’t been trying to capture just the Sixth Army in Stalingrad - their plan had been to cut off the entire southern front (which would have cost the Axis seven armies instead of just one). The Red Army came very close but the Germans counterattacked and were able to keep a corridor open long enough for the majority of their troops to withdraw.
I doubt it. The Soviets were aware Moscow was vulnerable and had already made plans for its loss.
Well, maybe, but there were armies in the way. Those had to be dealt with. And, by doing what you suggested, you run into two additional problems. First, tanks break down easily, and sending them behind enemy lines means cutting them off from supply and support, and second, tanks aren’t good for taking cities.
Right. On the average you can’t advance faster than your supply. Local breakthroughs can be made by units carrying extra supply but that can’t last long and the supplies are always subject to being expended faster than you planned.
I know that this is a zombie thead (zombie commienazis!!!) but, I mist disagree with this assessment. In 1941, the majority of railway lines went through Moscow and the surrounding countryside. How the hell were the Sovs expected to undertake operations with such a little transport capability after the loss of Moscow? It was moreover the center of the Communist Party and government, moving mi istries is not going to change that.
I think it would have been game, set match and possibly war.
The rail lines around Moscow were vital for supplying Moscow. If the Soviets had lost Moscow, they wouldn’t have needed to worry about supplying it anymore. Considering the regime, they wouldn’t have even worried about the Germans being unable to supply the city.
The Germans kept telling themselves that all they had to do was capture Moscow and the Soviets would surrender. It was mainly useful as propaganda to keep the army moving forward - it convince them that they were approaching the end of the fighting.
I’m sure Napoleon told his troops the same thing in 1812, “Just a few more miles and then we’ll be in Moscow. And then the war will be over and we can all rest.” But the French found you can capture Moscow and the Russians just keep fighting without Moscow.
This occurred in 1941, and is considered by many authorities to have fatally delayed Barbarossa later in the same year. It did not have anything to do with Kursk in 1943.
Incorrect. The T-34 was the best tank in the world when first introduced in the summer of 1941. All other tanks were obsolete in comparison. Unfortunately most if not all other USSR models available in 1941 fared poorly in comparison with the Germans, and it was some time before Soviet tank production converted more fully to the T-34. After that constant upgrades and vast numbers allowed the T-34 to hold its own against German armor for the duration. Finally, the JS series heavies introduced in 1944 gave the Soviets a tank which stood a chance one-on-one against the Tiger.
Germany was forced into a permanent strategic defensive after Kurst, and the USSR was able to weather two more years of heavy losses without suffering anything like exhaustion.
One way to look at the battle was to look at the pre-battle plans of each side and see which ended up closer to what happened. Kursk is somewhat unusual in that both sides anticipated a battle there: the Germans planned on attacking there and the Soviets knew the Germans were going to attack and planned a counter-attack.
And in the aftermath of the actual battle, it’s clear the Soviet plan is what happened. They had set up a defensive line for the initial German attack and then had troops in reserve for the counter-attack. The Germans could have claimed a decisive victory if they had broken through the Soviet lines completely like they had wanted to. Failing that, the Germans could have at least claimed some success if they had forced the Soviets to send in their reserves to stop the Germans and call off their counter-attack.
But the Germans didn’t even reach that limited level of success. The Soviets were able to stop the German attack with their initial forces and didn’t have to commit their reserves to the defense. The fact that the Germans were defeated while the Soviets still had reserves in waiting shows that the Germans didn’t come close to winning the battle. The Soviets were able to launch their counter-attack as planned and mop up the German forces that had survived the first half of the campaign.
The Balkans didn’t delay Barbarossa, the weather did. The rivers in eastern Europe were at high flood in May and early June; the proposed start date of May 15 was entirely unrealistic. The operations in the Balkans didn’t push back the start of Barbarossa; its primary effect was putting miles on German tanks and motorized transport just before the invasion.
Although the role of Lucy was mentioned in terms of giving the Soviets vital intelligence before Kursk, no one has talked about the role of Ultra. Together, these two sources allowed the Soviet forces to know when and where the Germans would be. How many tanks is that sort of intelligence worth?
I have come across this opinion also, although it seems to have originated in the post Shirer era, and Shirer ought to have been aware of mention of bad weather in May-June 1941.
It is a plausible view but one I have never seen never documented, and documentation should certainly be available from both German and Soviet sources. One of these days I am going to shell out the $69-199 for a translation of Halder’s diaries, where the weather would have been mentioned if it was bad enough to delay operations.
Thanks for reviving this thread…at any rate, if I were a high ranking member of the Nazi ruling class, I’d be getting ready to quit Germany ( by August 1943). It was obvious (after Kursk) that Germany wold lose the war…and having a nice safe place in Argentina, would be a top priority by then.
Escape wasn’t an option for the very top ranks. Argentina wouldn’t have gotten away with offering sanctuary to somebody like Himmler or Goering or Goebbels (or Hitler himself). The middle-ranked Nazis might have been safe in exile but the Gestapo was watching them and executing people who were “defeatist”.
The guys at the top knew they were facing death when the war ended so they had no motive to surrender. Every month they could prolong the war was another month of life for them and they didn’t care how many other people had to die to give them that month.
Although I agree with the thrust of your post, even well past “July 20” and into 1945, there were those in the German High Command who fully expected the US and Britain to ‘come to their senses’ and join the Reich to defeat Bolshevism. And, even those who believed that Germany would have to labor on by itself, still anticipated game-changing new weapons to be arriving ‘any day’ and besides, Der Führer had always found a way in the past, and he would surely find a way now.
It should be noted that not all “the guys at the top” knew they were facing death. One specific example of a “top guy” who seemed not to be aware that he would be facing death upon surrender is Heinrich Himmler. As late as April 28, 1945, he was trying to decide whether he should give Eisenhower the Nazi salute when he greeted him. (cite buried in link about 12 paragraphs above where Gudrun Burwitz’s story begins)
It’s not opinion, it’s fact. The Bug River was at high flood on May 15, 1941, there is no possible way Barbarossa could have been launched at such an optimistic date. It’s easily documented, Operation Barbarossa:
I’m not being facetious about the primary effect being mileage put on German tanks and trucks; Barbarossa was a logistical nightmare and Germany never had enough trucks to go around. The number of panzer divisions had been doubled for Barbarossa. The shortfall of tanks was dealt with easily enough by halving the number of tanks per division. This still left a shortage of motor transport that Germany was hard pressed to make up for. The German Army was using motor transports impressed into service from every occupied country in Europe which added to the maintenance problems with the need for diverse spare parts.