Why couldn't the Germans take Stalingrad?

they didnt 'rek' the RAF. The Brits won by the skin of their teeth.

bitch is ugly af

Why are Amerilards so obsessed with Nazis and WW2?

>win by the skin of their teeth

So fucking what?

WWII is endlessly fascinating

Military history is easy.

That's also why it is looked down upon by many historians it is literally kindergarden tier history.

+ Americans have a huge war and weapon fetish that's probably why.

Focusing on the same handful of battles over and over again is extremely shallow though.

this

Ehhhm that's exactly what I said.

It is easy and boring from a historian standpoint.

Every retard is able to understand it after watching a few documentaries that's why hobby historians love it and do everything in their power to not have to talk about anything else.

They repeat the same dumb questions over and over ( while not even understanding ww2 ).

They talk about tanks weapons and battles while completely ignoring that wars are rarely (as far as I know never) won by superiour equipment or a won battle.

They ignore politics logistics and overall strategy, they circlejerk about tacitcs and love to watch pictures with gigantic red and blue arrows.

It's pathetic.

Because what made the Wehrmacht good at what they did wasn't like some FPS where their guys shoot faster or better or whatever. Their real strength was in coordination between different arms of service. Sure, their tanks and artillery pieces might not have been as good from an engineering perspective, but that's not as important as your infantry communicating to the artillerymen where that barrage is needed quickly, or in putting your tanks at the weak point in the enemy line right as they waver.

But that kind of tactics require space, and a certain relatively slow pace that you can have information relay up and down the chain of command and control before it becomes obsolete. Urban combat didn't generally allow for that. The lines were all mixed up and right on top of each other, making it hard to call in fire support, and the pace of taking house by house and room by room was often fluid enough that by the time reinforcements were sent somewhere, it was too late, the struggle had been won or lost already.

The Germans generally did badly in urban combat against the Soviets, Even places like Minsk, Odessa, Vitebsk, and Smolensk was a much tougher nuts to crack than the surrounding surrounding countryside, and that was in the first weeks of Barbarossa, when the Soviets couldn't do anything right. By late 1942, the overall balance of force had tilted much in favor of the Soviets, and they couldn't crack the city, in no small part because unlike the aformentioned cities, they couldn't surround it and cut the place off from reinforcement.

>Given more time, they would have taken the city at great cost.

Unlikely. The bulk of the German advances in Stalingrad were in the first two weeks. After that, they battered away for months without making any significant progress.

>It's not so much that they were pussies, but that they were severely under-equipped to deal with Russian armor among other things.
Definitely not as motivated as Germans either.

There's also the thing about them being stretched so thin that you had on average 1 platoon per kilometer of front.

Please, not all military history is on the shallow crap. Militaries as organizations and how they communicate and respond to problems is endlessly fascinating.

>Please, not all military history is on the shallow crap. Militaries as organizations and how they communicate and respond to problems is endlessly fascinating.

Yes, but this is about 0.5% of every military history conversation.

In general it is extremely shallow and boring, it attracts amateurs to history which should be a postive thing but almost everybody sticks to it and just learns about a few new battles and details they never evolve from this kindergarden level.

That's why I avoid conversations about

>battles
>infantry weapons
>tanks
>ships
>tactics (rome total war level of tacics)
>what would happen if
>if hitler would have x would he win the war?

they still had better chances then, than pre-Barbarossa GB did to win the war.

No they had no chance to beat GB.

If 0 is more to you than 0 well fine.

GB air superiority domination of every drop of water on this planet, infinite manpower provided by British Raj endless will to fight.

GB probably didn't have a chance to end the war by itself but that really doesn't matter since Japan drew the US into the wa,r sooner or later the US would have joined anyway (yes even without Hitler declaring on the US).

Because front line was overextended which give advantage to USSR with bigger population.
The only exit was to stop after occupation of Baltic, Belorussian and Ukrainian Soviet republics. Such line could be held before absorbation of acquisitions and reaching of demographic equality.

>Because front line was overextended which give advantage to USSR with bigger population.

Oh the good old 5:1 ratio mass assault meme.
Do me a favour and educate yourself on the manpower levels in the east.

The superiority was 1.5 most of the time and rarely exceeded 2.

German logistics was fucked up that was the main issue ( not saying they ever had a chance).

>. Such line could be held before absorbation of acquisitions and reaching of demographic equality.

This is a joke right?

>how
because it was downhill from there, yunno with England and France declaring war

Can you distinguish between actual army and reserves?
Germany could not conquer Egypt because millions of Arabic lemmings. Similar situation was in Burma with Indian knifemen against small Japanese expedition.
USSR was glad to exchange by losses and the optimal German strategy was to do it in shortest prepared fortifications.

>Germany could not conquer Egypt because millions of Arabic lemmings

Not him, but wtf? There were barely any Arab troops enlisted with the British, and what ones there were usually were on second echelon duty, not direct combat with the Germans.

> Similar situation was in Burma with Indian knifemen against small Japanese expedition.

No, the CW forces, who were largely Indian, did in fact have weapons. Even artillery pieces! In fact, one of the reasons Slim did so well is he abandoned a lot of the heavy kit which was just too hard to move around in the damn jungle.

>USSR was glad to exchange by losses and the optimal German strategy was to do it in shortest prepared fortifications.

So.... don't overrun the largest concentrations of Soviet industry and civilian manpower, and allow them to build up at will? And even your "shortened" line, if you're taking the Baltics, Belorussia, and the Ukraine, is going to extend about 1,800 kilometers, or a smidge less if you stay out of the Pripet and accept the way it divides you. Good luck fortifying an entire expanse like that, I'm sure the Soviets will be too dumb to just focus on a single point and breach it.

>Arab troops enlisted with the British, and what ones there were usually were on second echelon duty
But they were and Hitler understood fastly that every German refinforcement would trigger additional portion of Arabic meat.

Do you really belive in occupation of whole USSR by Germans? German army were melting with every garrison. Listed republics could give nationalistic reserves and it was good to concentrate on its defence.
Germans were catched in Stalingrad because werent able to cover all sectors of frontline.

More global problem that USA and Britian were observing and balancing situation. After Soviet defeats they started supply. Further fails could trigger sending of troops. Ural and Caucasus were limits of German expansion. On the one hand its easy defende mountains. On the other whole front length would be huge, with possibility of USA and UK to hit whatever they want.

>But they were and Hitler understood fastly that every German refinforcement would trigger additional portion of Arabic meat.

I have no idea what you're even trying to say. The Arab contribution to the defense of Egypt was almost nonexistant. Germany failed to defeat it because of predominantly British, Australian, and Indian troops, not the Arab locals.

>Do you really belive in occupation of whole USSR by Germans?

Of course not, that's like occupying the Atlantic Ocean.

>Listed republics could give nationalistic reserves and it was good to concentrate on its defence.

The HiWis were almost useless in combat. And concentrating on defense was not likely to be a winning strategy against an enemy who still has more manpower and industry than you do, especially if you're not moving to attack its heavier pockets.

>. After Soviet defeats they started supply.

You mean, like, years afterwards. LL didn't get big until 1943.

>Further fails could trigger sending of troops.

Unlikely, given the relatively low numbers of land forces the Anglo-Allies had available compared to the amount of bodies the USSR could pull.

>Ural and Caucasus were limits of German expansion.

I thought you were talking about stopping at the Baltics, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. That's like a thousand km short of the Urals.

The Germans did take Stalingrad. They just couldn't hold it

Soviets had a complete disregard for the lives of their soldiers and wouldn't stop until the city named after Stalin was liberated.
Politix and sheeeit

Finally this. Germans could stop at yellow line, tryed to reach greedy blue, but was catched in red. As you see, there was a lot of space between yellow and blue to hit.
Stalingrad was defending because of British supply ships with gunpowder.

...

You're retarded. They couldn't hold the "Yellow" line either. You can't just dig a straight line from Talinn to Rostov, there's a fuckton of terrain that you'd have to craft your defenses around.

Not that it matters anyway, since again, if you don't move to overrun the Soviet concentrations of industry and mobilizeable (i.e. Russian) manpower, the Soviets eventually crush you anyway, since they can turn out tanks and planes and artillery a hell of a lot faster than the Germans can.

>Stalingrad was defending because of British supply ships with gunpowder.

[citation needed]

So, Germany would have won if it had had more blue arrows? As a hobby historian this puzzles me.

If the Germans hadn't shifted to targeting civilian targets, the RAF would have been wiped out.

No

Not even close. Even if the Germans started doing better, the Brits always had the option of calling down FG 11 to the south, or if worst really came to worst, of pulling their bases back to the Midlands, accepting a worse flight response time, and staying out of range of the 109s escorting attacks on the airfields.

>how DARE you discuss history on a history board
no one is stopping you from making a thread about whatever wars your irrelevant shithole you come from. You don't even know if anyone in this thread is American.

>wiped out
how? GB consistently outproduced Germany in terms of new planes and had far less losses of aircrew considering the fighting was over their own territory.

Absolutely not. Putting aside production of planes, the advantages of fighting an air war over your own territory are massive. If a British plane got shot down, if the pilot didn't get hit or pass out, he bails out, lands in friendly territory, and is drinking in the pub an hour later. If a German gets shot down, he's taken captive and sits out the rest of the war.

When you consider how instrumental veterans are in training new pilots, that adds up over a few years.

Don't forget how for both the UK and the Germans (and almost everyone else in the war) plane production outpaced pilot training by quite a lot.

Caesar's Commentari is all about logistics. Dude couldn't get enough grain and supplies.

Rudel was one badass motherfucker. He destroyed a Soviet battleship by dropping a bomb down the smokestack.

Because Army Group North lost the 4th panzer Army to Center and was in no shape to take a heavily fortified city that the defenders would fight to the last human for.

So Army Group North's only option (without losing so much men and material it renders the army unoperational) was to besiege Leningrad.

This board is full of pretentious people like yourself who strawman to 'victory' after inciting an argument from nowhere. It's pathetic. If people want to learn about stalingrad then they can do so. It's just annoying that you always have to come along or one of your homunculus to do this in every thread.

If you want to talk about the logistics behind the battle then do so, don't just throw a shitfit about how nobody has done it and brand everyone else as pseuds; Even if it could be true. Ww2 is generally a starting point for young people to get into history so encouragement and discussion is more important than looking for fights

slavs*

>Ww2 is generally a starting point for young people to get into history

They never evolve from lets talk about this battle of ww2.

I see I triggered you very well, insecure because all your knowledge is concentrated on the lowest tier of history?