Was this the stupidest decision in military history?

If DDay had failed. That probably would have destroyed the west/east alliance. The west probably wouldve sued for peace.

Operation bagration wouldnt of been as succesful. Germans probably wouldve won on the eastern front, if not at least settled with the soviets

>The west probably wouldve sued for peace.
>Germans probably wouldve won on the eastern front
Nice bait, made me reply.

>If
>probably

technically
yes

hitler was not using well the ceasefire agreement with soviet
he should focus attacked britain because that could be major moral attack to brit armed forces in enitre world, including the north africa one as well

>hitler was not using well the ceasefire agreement with soviet
>he should focus attacked britain because that could be major moral attack to brit armed forces in enitre world, including the north africa one as well

That was painful to read

>I'll just leave my entire southern flank open to the reserves that are mobilizing around Kiev. I'm sure that won't have any negative consequences whatsoever.

>If DDay had failed.

That's already a big If, but ok.

>That probably would have destroyed the west/east alliance.

Why would it? Hell, why would it even slow down the other attack on France they were gearing up to do, down with Dragoon?

> The west probably wouldve sued for peace.

Why? Hell, by this point the Eastern Front alone has tipped almost irrevocably towards the Soviets, and they can still supply the USSR pretty much at will. Why would they agree to a seperate peace? Germany has no means of hurting them.

>Operation bagration wouldnt of been as succesful

Probably not. A world in which D-Day fails still almost certainly commits the strategic reserve west, where they'll be out of the action at Bagration.

>Germans probably wouldve won on the eastern front, if not at least settled with the soviets

Why on earth would you think that? Bagration wasn't the only successful Soviet offensive in 1944.

Oh wait, you're a tripfag and therefore retarded.

Please kill yourself so that the board quality will improve.

Ignore the haters, I got what you said.

[1] Napoleon's idea to invade Russia was not a bad one. The execution was.

[2] Egypt trying to do [anything] through the Sinai Peninsula in the 6 Days War

[3] Any event where people have tried to fight nature; China's 4 Pests Campaign

t. Alberto Barbarossa

Hitler lost the war as soon as he invaded Russia. There was no way to fully conquer them. Even had he taken Moscow in 1941, Stalin would have moved east and simply counter attacked like they did that winter. Moscow would have turned into a Stalingrad type situation.

The only way that Hitler could have had a chance would have been had the Germans gone in as true liberators and had the populace turned against Stalin. Even if Hitler planned to betray them later, there was no pure military solution to Russia, much less Russia, Britain and the US at the same time.

That being said, Germany attacked at the perfect time when Russian forces were still in transition (after the order to reform the mechanized corps). If they had attacked later (such as in 1942), they would have not nearly gotten as far as they did. Even so, it wasn't enough.

I don't remember the details, but if this seems familliar to anyone please post the name of the battle or the wikipedia link or anything.

There was this tribe of zulu's (or some other South African tribe) that tried to fight the British. One of their nobles/prophets had a vision that if they burned all their cows, the British would be driven into the sea. So they all burned their cows... and starved.

>[1] Napoleon's idea to invade Russia was not a bad one. The execution was.
Check Von Clausewitz. Napoleon's logistical planning was perfect down to the last bottle of wine. The problem was Russia's "irrational" behavior in not defending anything but burning whatever could be used by either the French military or its own subjects.

Khwarazmians killing the Mongol ambassadors.
>but user I've never even heard of Khwarazmians
Yeah, because of the Mongols.

that was arguably the stupidest decision in diplomatic history, it wasn't a military matter

>Operation bagration wouldnt of been as succesful
lolwut

Bagration wasn't even the main objective of the summer offensive. The Soviets followed up Bagration with an offensive at Lvov - exactly where the Soviet Maskirovka attempts signaled their focus to be. So even with their main focus at Lvov, the Germans couldn't even hold off the Soviets.

After Kursk, even had Hitler abandoned the Western and Italian fronts, the Germans still wouldn't have had the divisions to hold the line. The problem was that Hitler wouldn't allow a mobile defense, which while wouldn't have won the war, may have prolonged it a tad longer. Again, it really didn't matter after Kursk. The Russians would attack everywhere on the front and the Germans couldn't be strong everywhere, so they were bound to break somewhere.

I'm a dumbass piece of shit with zero WW2 knowledge. Why was Kursk so instrumental that you consider it the turning point of the Eastern Front? What was the battle "about", what changed when the Soviets won and what would've changed if the Germans had won?

I was always under the impression that Stalingrad was the turning point, and that the SU would've more or less collapsed had it fallen.

After Kursk the Germans never again could have the initiative. Soviets went completely on the offensive.

>China's 4 Pests Campaign
was Mao a genuine dumbass or what. like I get that he did a tremendous thing in transforming China and sacrifices need to be made, but it seems like he did some dumb and unnecessary things

Stalingrad entailed germany losing 300k of its most experienced troops, alongside one of its best equipped armies. This was in dec 42/jan 43. Up until then the strategic initiative had been Germany's; after Stalingrad they could not afford to pick and choose battles at will until they had regrouped and replenished. The Soviets went on the attack in February, retaking Kharkov but losing it to the Germans again. The soviets failed to exploit their recent advantage, and the Germans fended them off. By summer of 43 the German army was again - sort of - prepared to seize initiative. They did this by pooling together reserves from other army groups, weakening them. When the germans struck at kursk and lost, it meant losing not only a substantial amount of reserves taken from a single army, but from the entire eastern front. After this, the soviets were in fact able to exploit their advantage, and pressed several succesful offensives, and gained and kept the strategic initiative until the end of the war.

tl;dr:
Pre Stalingrad germans are in control, post Stalingrad soviets are in control but fumble. Germans then try to seize the initiative again, but fails massively and are never again able to seriously challenge the soviets.

Yes, Mao was dumb. If Mao died soon after the revolution like Lenin, he'd be considered much more of a hero.

After Kursk Russia was in the driver's seat of the war.

Shortly? After Kursk germans lost any momentum they had left.

Are you aware that by D-Day the allies allready had footholds all over Italy?

What would have happened if operation barbarossa was successful and the soviets got defeated by winter 1941?
what would be germanys next step?
would the allies have sued for peace?

Even if the Germans had captured Leningrad, Moscow and held Rostov in 1941, they would still have lost. Stalin would have kept fighting and the Germans in Moscow would have been ever more overstretched than they were that winter when they were forced back.

Mao thought that broken glass would make a good fertiliser and forced the peasants to use it.

You are completely correct. The other reason Kursk was so important was the time frame it happened. The Allies invaded Sicily shortly after it started and this marked the start of Hitler withdrawing veteran (particularly the well equipped SS Panzer Korps) from Russia when they were most needed to fight first in Sicily/Italy and the next year in France.

Losing a massive battle that for the most part loses you all of your reserves, then take away some of your best forces in addition allowed the Soviets to inflict further defeats one after another against the Germans. It also didn't help that the war had been going on by two years at that point and the Russian leadership had gotten a grasp on mobile operations while Hitler, still thinking in terms of world war 1 trench warfare, would rarely allow his forces to retreat. What you have then is a repeat of 1941, but reversed, where Germany troops are repeatedly encircled and captured/killed during attempted breakouts.

>Was this the stupidest decision in military history?

People talk about 'invading Russia' as though it is some futile expedition, pointless in the beginning.

The problem is, and this has been the case in continental Europe for over 2 centuries, is that, ever since Britain achieved naval dominance of the continent, in any war it became involved in, it becomes an issue of never ending blockades, amphibious raids, rebellion funding and insurgent warfare. This -can- be potentially managed, at least in the short term, by a continental power focusing all its efforts on the task, but it is extremely difficult without the ability to retaliate.

Russia presents the same issue, or at least, it did in the past. It is too large for focused attacks to be meaningful, and it stretches fronts too far to maintain momentum and cohesion over hundreds of miles. But, like Britain on an island, Russia within it's landmass can't be ignored, and takes an immense effort to fully overrun, particularly with the Russian emphasis on defence in depth.

The problem comes when these two countries, realising this, banded together, whether against Napoleon or Hitler, one is unconquerable without naval (and air) superiority, which a continental power has never achieved, the other is -almost- unconquerable without an enormous ground invasion, around which they plan their strategy. No continental power can maintain protracted war against both nations, so it becomes a necessity to defeat one quickly in order to focus on the other. Hitler and Napoleon chose Russia. Not because they wanted to conquer Russia, but because they had no choice.

For more info on this, and other topics concerning invading Russia, see here: youtu.be/R_Pdkv16BFo?t=1650

>For more info on this, and other topics concerning invading Russia, see here: youtu.be/R_Pdkv16BFo?t=1650

Oh you can't link times on the Veeky Forums embed.

The part pertaining to the political situation that causes Russian invasions is at 27:30.

Not the dude you were replying to, but Stalin was getting really pissed at what he saw was a lack of effort by the western allies, he apparently threatened to leave the alliance a few times, especially when they were taking forever to nail down a date for Overlord/Neptune. He saw the Italian front for what it really was, a bogged down mess that wouldn't really be making much of a difference.
To answer your next point, if Overlord/Neptune had failed or didn't happen, Dragoon was to be basically called off. The one reason it really worked was because the other invasion had drawn the Germans reserves into the fight, something that wouldn't have happened had it failed. If D-Day had failed, they wouldn't most likely had shifted some of the units that were due to go back east to the western reserve.

>Xiaoqi and Xiaoping are wrong
>With enough IDEOLOGY, you can solve any problem!
Mao thought he was a shounen anime protagonist.

The issue being is that they weren't doing anything or going anywhere. The German and ISR defense of Italy really was masterful. They were able to basically cap the allies while expending a minimum of troops.

Which is why they committed more divisions than the Allies did to the theater and still were losing men faster than the Allies.

lol no
Moscow would've been simply symbolic. Stalin had moved as much industry behind the Urals as he could and the Soviets wouldn't have surrendered until their army was broken or their leaders were dead.
Not to mention an occupation of Russia would've been hell for the Germans
Stalingrad and Baku would've given them the oil to continue but without effectively taking everything up to the Urals and beyond it would've been impossible to collapse the SU
Side note, they could've gotten a lot farther if hitler hadn't sperged out and called the Ukrainians (who welcomed the Germans and were quite supportive) untermenschen and began removing them. That's just another in a long line of Hitler putting ideology before military

Mao's problem was that he was a literal addict for revolution. He was constantly watching mass movements in order to get his revolutionary fix. He believed that a society that was not in a constant state of revolution would stagnate.

One of the Ming emperors who got himself caught (it wasn't part of his plan) or was it Tang...

W E W
E
W

I assume you're talking about Tumu crisis? I wouldn't put that on the same level as Barbarossa, for the Ming it was strategically necessary to do what they did, they just fucked it up.

No. They would have won if the Japs helped from the other side.

ITT Wehraboos BTFO again

You're two years out

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War

If Britain and France had launched a mass offensive into Germany in 1939 it would almost certainly have ended the war in a couple of weeks. Needless to say, the decision to wait behind the Maginot line and hope a peaceful settlement could be reached proved disastrous for everyone concerned - even Germany, for that matter. The largest Empire the world has ever seen (and the 6th largest empire, the French) collapsed due to the pressures of WW2. As mistakes go, I think it can be classified as both the stupidest - it's not as if the allies didn't know that they had a huge numerical advantage along the german border - and the largest ever made.

This is why I despise pacifists. They never have any effect on the warmongers, they just get in the way of people trying to stop the warmongers.

>this is what stormfags actually believe in

Not to mention, they just chose a new Emperor because the cunt who got captured was a drooling Idiot. The Mongols also failed to fucking capitalize on it by hostaging him or something and was forced to return him.

No, that would be attacking Neptune

That was merely a jest.

t. Caligula

No. The stupidest thing was doing that while simultaneously being at war with the British Empire and then declaring war on the United States when your armies are just barely holding their ground during the winter of 1941 because they didn't bring any winter clothes or other winter equipment with them.

>>After Kursk, even had Hitler abandoned the Western and Italian fronts, the Germans still wouldn't have had the divisions to hold the line.

Yeah no. Germany had enough men and war material to fight off the Soviets in 1943 and get at least a return to the status quo before the conflict. What they didn't have was enough of men or resources to do that while simultaneously defending Italy and France from invasion and their own cities from bombing raids.

>If DDay had failed
If my grandpa had three balls he would have been a pinball machine. what's your point?