Unh ? I’m saying that even without the delay, the Germans were screwed. Oh, they might have been able to encircle Moscow, but the Siberian reinforcements would have fought their way into the pocket and destroyed more units. And before you say : “We saw how well it worked at Leningrad”, the situation was different. In a Moscow encirclement, the Germans would be in a more precarious logistic situation, farther away from resupply and reinforcements. The war might have been shortened appreciably, like maybe by a year, or lenghtened, if Adolf decided that he had his hands full and that he couldn’t support the Japanese by declaring war against the US in December, hence no American involvement in Europe, Britain, its Commonwealth and the USSR are left to face Germany and Italy by themselves.
There were several factors in the Finnish Winter War, some relevant, some irrelevant to operation Barbarossa.
Forest warfare and Fenno-Scandian terrain. The long columns of tanks on the forest roads just wouldn’t win any war. Totally irrelevant to Barbarossa, as irrelevant as the Norvegian campaign. There’s plenty of room for tanks in Russia.
Depth of defence. Very relevant. At that time everybody was still trying to to make one WWI-style strong line of defence which is easy to pierce with determination. Finns were so few it was not always possible to try to hold any line and retreated to soften the effect of artillery and troop concentration. The results were catastrophic to Russians at times. This message was lost to everybody at the time.
The general condition of the Red Army. This is relevant, but after seeing how terrible their performance was, a reorganization was started before the main attack came. Professionalism was introduced as opposed to politics, neglectance and corruption.
Tanks. By strange twist of fate the Russian tanks were shit before winter 41-42, but excellent after that. They were able to outproduce the Germans by something like 5-1, but their earlier tanks were probably so bad they couldn’t have beaten the German tanks even with those odds. If Hitler drew any conlusions of the Russian tanks in the Winter War, they were probably logical but still wrong.
Winter. The Russian preparedness to winter campaigning was bad, but this is something they easily fixed. Again, if the Germans do the reasonable conclusions, it worked against them.
It wasn’t that long before that Russia had collapsed, so it wasn’t unreasonable to figure they (the Germans) could do it again, this time with more and better troops and equipment and less trouble from the western countries. During WWI, just 30 years before, the Russian military had all but surrendered, then they fought a horrible civil war for years, then Stalin purged the military leadership. It was sort of reasonable to assume the Soviet Union was ripe for the picking.
The Russo-Finnish war was a bit of a wake-up call to the Soviets but the big war wasn’t won by tactics learned there. WWII was won by ruthless determination and industrial might.
All they had to do, according to Hitler, was “kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will collapse”.
Not.
Hitler with his obsessions destroyed his own ambitions.
As has been alluded to by Marxxx,having just endured the purges many Soviet citizens including Russians were very anti Soviet .
The people from the Baltic states welcomed the Germans as liberators and there was a huge resistance to the Soviets mentality in the Ukraine.
But they all got butchered,terrorised,murdered by the Germans and so were driven into fighting for mother Russia even though it was controlled by a murderous,despotic regime.
People who would have gladly taken up arms against the Soviets were given no other choice but to fight against the Germans .
Hitler was basically a moron.
There have been some comparisons between Napoleons capture of Moscow and the potential of Das Heer taking Moscow.
In Napoleons time it was just a capital,in Stalins time it was a major transport nexus and the capture of it would have been a major hindrance to the Soviet war effort.
Sorry to double post.
Ref the above, not many years earlier Russia withdrew from the first world war because of a revolt by people who didn’t wish to carry on fighting for a cause they didn’t believe in.
Thats probably where Hitler got his optimism from.
A lot of people forget that Germany invaded Russia in World War I (1917-1918)and were quite successful. They occupied a large part of the country and the Russians signed a treaty recognizing the loss of territory*. The people who say that invading Russia is crazy forget about this. However Hitler, a WWI veteran, saw it could be done. In late 1940, he could look around and think, “We couldn’t beat France in four years of fighting in World War I and I just it in six weeks. We were able to beat Russia in World War I, so that’s got to be even easier. I can probably do it in three weeks.”
*There had also been a major German/Austrian victory in Italy in November 1917 and Romania surrendered to Germany in December 1917. If Germany could have stopped the war in the Spring of 1918, they would have won it. But instead they tried to duplicate their victories on the Eastern and Southern Fronts with a major offensive on the Western Front in 1918. They lost this campaign and the war and were forced to give up all the gains they had achieved in the East as well.
Yes, but not for the reasons you seem to think. The entire point of Barbarossa never was to conquer Russia - not only weren’t the Germans crazy enough to think they could pull it off, they had little interest in doing so : the land was crap, and the populations were hated and despised, fit only for ethnic cleansing.
The whole point of the invasion was to keep Russia at arm’s length (and hopefully knock it down swiftly) so the German army could veer south and capture the oil fields of the Middle East, which Germany needed badly. And from there, they could of course have crushed Allied forces in North Africa, which would have given them full control over the Med.
With that done, Europe would have been firmly locked within their grasp, and there was little the Brits could have done to hinder them from then on.
And that’s why they were so dead set on getting Stalingrad (and Sevastopol before that). It wasn’t a dick waving contest - well, not just that in any case. Stalingrad was the one thing that stood in the way of Lots and Lots of Free Oil.
With that in mind, I would have done exactly the opposite of what you suggest : more or less ignore the North & Centre, and pour every resource into blasting the way for Army Group South. North and Central armies to act only as barriers against Soviet counter-attacks from Moscow (both into Germany-held Balkanic states and the flanks of AG South). Harass them, keep them busy while the real army goes for the *real *prize. And when that’s done, negotiate peace with Stalin. Give him Finland in return, or a piece of the oil pie or something. Maybe even the promise of helping him get a slice of China down the road.
Better yet : not attack Russia at all, and plow through Turkey instead (with Italy providing help via Greece and Crete). They sure as heck weren’t going to be more resistance than frakking Russia… Granted, Turkey’s no good tank country, but so what ? German Gebirgsjäger and Fallschirmjäger were great mountain troops (the latter illustrated themselves in that regards during the invasion of Crete).
Aaah, if I were a ruthless & genocidal military dictator. I’d get shit done, let me tell you 
Huh? What do you base this theory on? Hitler was quite clear on what his goals were and conquering Russia was definitely high on the list. He didn’t see the invasion of Russia as a means to win the war in Western Europe or the Middle east - it was the reverse; he fought in Western Europe and the Middle East so he could better invade Russia (and he complained that those other fronts were a distraction from Russia, where he thought the real war should be). Hitler wanted to conquer Russia, eliminate most of the Russians, and resettle the land with German colonists. As far as Hitler was concerned Africa and the Middle East could go to the Italians or the British or the French.
I dunno, it’s not as if Russia and Germany didn’t plan on stabbing each other in the back at the easiest opportunity. If the attack on Turkey faltered, I’d prepare to see heavy Russian demands (and their military tech just keeps getting better and better the longer you don’t attack them.)
Which isn’t to say what you are describing is impossible, but Germany would be overextending itself with Russia undefeated.
While I’m no expert on the subject, the response I’ve heard in the past to ideas like that is that it was logistically impossible. That the railway setup in Russia meant that the Germans couldn’t concentrate any more of their forces in any one Group, because if they tried there would just be a lot of equipment sitting around without the fuel and other supplies to run it.
Three points :
- I misspoke, or rather (as usual) went from A to C and forgot to tell you about B : the immediate goal indeed weren’t the middle eastern oil fields, but the ones in the Caucasus region (specifically : Baku, Azerbaijan). However, those would have in turn IMO led Army Group South to go right on trucking into the Middle East, since there was little opposition thataway and even more oil to be had. Plus, ask FinnAgain, he’ll love to tell you aaaall about the “Arab-Nazi alliance” to overthrow the British
B) I should admittedly not have been so categorical, as there were indeed two (well, three) sides to the invasion :
First, the crackpot racial theories of Hitler et al., and their wish to use Slavs as slave labour to fuel the newly Lebensraum’d Reich certainly factored in. That was as you say the end plan, however their initial goal was the fabled “Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line”, not to conquer the whole of Russia (least, not just yet).
Secondly, the more pragmatic and short term side of things, which was clearly focused on Caspian oil fields first and foremost (Speer went on to state it was eventually the factor which decided the invasion to happen sooner rather than later), with “Fortress Europe” as a secondary goal - German military minds knew that a two front war was dicey at best, nevermind three. Locking down Europe would have let them pour almost everything into Russia. This is where Hitler and his staff clashed : he wanted to kill Russians NOWNOWNOW, they wanted a sound grand strategy to do so, preferably one that didn’t involve getting their asses thoroughly kicked.
The third factor was of course, as **Ludovic **says, that Russia and Germany were always going to go to trade blows eventually, ever since the invasion of poor Poland. Might as well get things going before Russia could backstab them first. In their minds, it was win-win : get the oil, and mess with Stalin at the same time by cutting him off from both a major source of his oil, and the Black Sea.
And this is where I butt in to say : get the ME oil through Turkey first. Sweep Montgomery from the map. *Then *worry about getting Stalin by taking the Caucasus from the south. I expect they could have achieved that with one Army Group’s worth of troops, while keeping the other two and the Finns as invasion deterrent.
That is, if they really couldn’t have negotiated safe passage through Turkey with Atatürk (possibly in exchange for former Ottoman lands in the Balkans) : I admit my knowledge of the political situation in that part of the world at the time is very much lacking. I.e I know Turkey was and remained neutral, but not why.
III) In the end, whether the Germans would have moved north, south, or both (yay, more fronts ! :p) had they succeeded in taking Stalingrad and Baku is anyone’s guess I suppose. A victory at Stalingrad could possibly have alleviated a bit of Hitler’s paranoia and mistrust of his generals and made him listen to them for once.
<loud dictator voice> I don’t CARE if you have to send them fuel with mule convoys and *personally *carry their crates of ammunition on foot, in the snow and without boots on ! I order, you figure out the way to execute ! Don’t bother me with **details **! </ldv>
Rassum frassum logistics, always getting in the way of a good plan…
As I recall, the german Army relied on horse-drawn transport, for well into the mid-40’s.
had they had enough trucks, they probably would have been able to advance faster, and might have been able to avoid the supply bottlenecks that stalled their advances in early 1942.
I have seen pictures of horse dying in harness, trying to haul wagons through the muddy Russian roads.
Versus trucks getting stuck and breaking down in the muddy Russian roads? Besides, the German fuel situation was strained as it was. Replacing the horses with trucks would have been prohibitive.
Yes, but horse transport must be incredibly slow and iefficient-a horse eats quite a bit of food (which must be carried as part of the load).
Horses are slow as well, and not to string.
I would think the simplest motor truck would have been much more efficient.
It boggles my mind that the mighty German Army was still using horses in 1944!
The United States, which probably had the most mechanized army in World War II, also used horses and mules. Mules were, in fact, vital, for the US campaign in Burma. In terms of payload and strength, a draft horse could pull about 1600 pounds, a mule less so.
In retrospect, the smart thing to do would have been to build a few thousand tracked transport vehicles (like this) before invading Russia.
True, but horse fodder is much easier to produce or scrounge along the way than vast fuel reservoirs. Every two bit farm the army “liberates” along the way becomes a possible supply point, but there were scant oil drills in Poland, France or Russia 
Not necessarily. As as been mentioned, horses can manage broken terrain much better than deuce trucks. And trucks aren’t particularly faster than horses when they’re in a convoy, on a shitty road, swamped with refugees etc… Which is why railways were so important.
Horses also don’t need maintenance parts to be shipped from the other side of Germany (to be found not to be the right kind when the crate is opened). Finally, horses make other horses. Trucks don’t make other trucks :D.
All armies were, at the time. Not on the actual front, of course (then again, there’s those Polish lancers…), but as a logistic asset ? You bet. It’s cheap, it works, it’s already there. That’s three strikes in the horse/mule favour.
To address the OP: not a disaster, no. The Nazis could certainly have learned a lot more from it than they did, such as proper winterisation - if they’d conceived that they wouldn’t win before winter. The Russians learned more from it than the Germans did, no doubt.
One upside for the Germans was it meant they had the Finns on their side, more or less, and that held a lot of Russian troops away from the main front. Once Leningrad was surrounded the Finns were part of that - they may not have very actively prosecuted the siege but they didn’t let supplies through their side either.
No, the 1944/5 British Army was the only fully mechanised army in the war. But yes, all armies use animal transport where it helped. I think the point here is the Germans used it in Russia because they had to, suitable or not - every truck meant 1 fewer tank, more or less.
Not at all. The choice wasn’t horses or trucks, it was horses or nothing. Yes horses have to carry (or forage for) their feed, but their feed was reasonably easy to grow or come across as they advanced. Oil, not so much.
I’d say the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921) was more of an influence on Hitler’s thinking than the Finnish war. Polish–Soviet War - Wikipedia
Poland demolished the Soviet invasion. They not only kicked the Soviets out of Poland, they took and kept large amounts of formerly Soviet territory.
This is the same Poland that, 18 years later, collapsed in 5 weeks when attacked by Nazi Germany. It’s also worth mentioning that J Stalin was in charge of a large Soviet Army group in the Polish–Soviet War and proved himself to be a terrible general.
The humiliation that the Poles gave the USSR was the biggest reason that, during and after WW2, the Soviets treated the Poles just as badly as the Nazis did. The Katyn massacre was direct revenge for that defeat.
It’s kind of a forgotten conflict now, but I feel certain that it made a big impression on Hitler at the time, and played a major role in forming Hitler’s opinion of Soviet fighting ability: humiliated by Poland.