Did the nazis loose the war at stalingrad or did they loose it a Kursk later that year?

From what I read, Hitler had a very personal hatred of gas from his exposure to it during WWI.

Also authorizing it is just opening pandora's box. Once you use it, you're guaranteed to have it used against you.

>Something that I tend to think about is.. why didn't Hitler sanction the use of gas? Clearly they viewed the Soviet people as untermensch and they didn't care about the treatment of Soviet pows, why not, when you're so desperate, use gas?

Because gas is actually a pretty shitty weapon and easy to counter. You're better off in terms of returns by just lobbing explosives.

Yeah, clearly Hitler had some standards after WW1, but he'd rather see his country lose the war than try every measure, even in his most desperate hour? That seems odd to me, considering what happened during WW2, seeing tens of millions of dead Soviets as necessary to win and all that.

They lost it at Smolensk, their panzer losses were too heavy to recover, leading to their Moscow defeat, whereas Russia just shat out more zerglings. Stalingrad was the nail in the coffin.

After that it was impossible for Germany to win, the best they could have hoped for was a ceasefire and return to the antebellum borders. Even that was unlikely.

An attrition war with Russia was literally impossible to win because Russia had factories in Siberia safe from bombings that could just pump out more tanks and weapons. Germany could only win in quick decisive campaigns, and its impossible to take a country like Russia in a single campaign before winter. Because of how huge it is

They lost before the war began. The logistics needed to occupy all of Russia while maintaining overwhelming momentum was impossible with Germany's infrastructure.

Pretty much this, after the first time you use it the element of surprise is gone and its effectiveness decreases dramatically. In WW1 the first major deployment at 2nd Ypres was very effective but before long there were counters in play and it became a mere component to warfare rather than a game-changer.

He never thought they were going to lose, up until the last few weeks of the war when he became obsessed with taking Germany with him, but even then it's unlikely gas would've been used even if he ordered it. He told Speer to set about destroying all of Germany's industry but Speer just paid lip service to it and quietly countermanded the madness.

Hell he was right about immediate retaliation in kind, stocks of chemical weapons had been brought into ready reserve to be ready for it in Italy, with rather tragic consequences as it turned out.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari

It depends on how you want to frame it.
Stalingrad was the beginning of the end, it significantly reduced Germany's military power, but they still retained the initiative and it's unlikely any Russian offensives would have seen success.
It's why the Russians declined to press offensives even after Stalingrad, they still felt the Wehrmacht was too much of a force for them to tackle in their current state.

Kursk broke the Wehrmacht, sent it in full retreat, and gave the moment squarely to the Soviets. Stalingrad was a major turning point in the war and a massive shift in the balance of power, but Kursk shifted the balance of power squarely in favor of the Russians,

I find that total victory after 1941 for Germany would have been quite impossible. By 1942 the Germans still were in a position to come out the victors in a manner similar to the Prussian-Franco War. By the end of 1943 victory was a foregone possibility in any stretch. By 1944 total defeat was an inevitability.

Poor assessment of American generals. Keep in mind Nazis had been curb stomping since 1939 though

>loose

They lost at the Battle of Britain

>That seems odd to me, considering what happened during WW2, seeing tens of millions of dead Soviets as necessary to win and all that.
He wasn't worried about the how the Slavs died, he didn't want any Germans during like that from soviet reprisals

Manstein who was there and understood the situationd own to the details said afterwords that he knew the war was lost at Moscow.

Hitler himself thought the war was going to work because the Soviet government would collapse in the opening stages of the war. Taking moscow would have likely caused this because Stalin stayed in the city.

But, Manstein also believed that Kursk could have regained the initiative or atleast brought Stalin to consider a negotiated peace with Nazis negotiating from the position of strength and gaining a significant portion of their war aims.
Goebbels and other Nazi leaders were very into this idea after Stalingrad, though Hitler wasn't naive enough to believe the Russians would negotiate.

Hitler's whole reason for war was
1. prevent the Soviets from attacking weakened europe
2. Show the UK that the soviets would not save them

Peace after Kursk would have established these two realpolitik goals and given hitler the lebensraum he wanted but really had satisfied enough to become a legen with poland and Czeckoslavakia.

Guderian however didn't think the situation after Stalingrad was very bad. He didn't even think the attack at Kursk should happen as they had good defensive positions and would be in a stronger position the year after next for an offensive.

Goebbels interestingly was pessimistic right from the start of Stalingrad and lost it when the Whermacht propagandist kept talking about the fall of the USSR and imminent capture of Stalingrad. He personally felt Stalingrad was risky, and that the loss their meant the end of any hope of outright victory in the east.

I think most expected a WWI style internal collapse but I guess the purges worked.

Germans lost as soon as the US became involved and started giving out shit to the allied powers like candy

People like to say Stalingrad, because it's when the Soviets finally took an offensive that they held for most of the remaining war, but Kursk was probably more important.

Kursk was the moment when the Nazis lost the potential for winning the war.

gas sucks

Germany lost once they invaded Russia while Britain was still in the war, this only really became clear between 1943-1944 though.

>Was the resilience of the USSR a complete surprise to everyone?

Lets see... the Russian Empire did poorly in WWI. The Red army does get credit for kicking out the foreign forces during the civil war. But what about the rest of the mess of the that period?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_westward_offensive_of_1918–19
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_War_of_Independence
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Soviet_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_War_of_Independence
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian–Soviet_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_War_of_Independence

and for its success's of the era...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_invasion_of_Georgia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian–Ossetian_conflict_(1918–20)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian–Azerbaijani_War

Later on they did not give a good showing of themselves in the Spanish civil war,or the Winter War. In the Soviet invasion of Poland they did alright but not as well as the Germans.

When the Germans started its war with the USSR the ratio of industrial output was more favorable to the Russians then before but the ratio of manpower was less favorable for Russians.

So yes, it was surprise.