At what point in WW2 was the Wehrmacht broken?

September 1st 1939

>If we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks exactly as it were not there.

Not sure on that post's validity, but it certainly is not out of the realm of possibility for Zhukov.

The Wehrmacht never had more a tiny tiny chance of winning the war. It was doomed when Nazi Germany fell behind the Allies in the race to build nukes - a race that the Nazis didn't even really realize they were in. Even if the Wehrmacht had been wildly successful, come 1945 German cities would have started getting nuked and it would have all been over.

>a race that the Nazis didn't even really realize they were in
The Germans knew about the possibility of nuclear weapons, but were unable to make them in a timely manner due to both a lack of resources and most of their best scientists fled to America. Speer estimated that they would have been able to complete the project in the early 50s, so they just didn't bother.

>not January 30th 1933

There's a saying that goes

> how many mines do you need to make a minefield
> none, you just need a sign that says "warning, minefield"

That's exactly what you are supposed to do. The US field manuals also have the same decree if the CO believes time is of the essence.

Minefields are not a weapon that destroys the enemy physically, but rather an economic tool to slow the enemy advance so you can deal with the enemy piecemeal.

If an advance is halted or slowed so combat engineers can remove a minefield, the attack is wasting valuable time, and time is lives. If a successful attack can end the battle sooner, it saves far more resources than lives lost to mines.

It makes sense in a ruthless way. You may take more casualties overall by not assualting through the minefield. Either by having to stop and clear it (possibly under fire), divert to a more passable (but more heavily defended) area, or by the fact the two options waste crucial time that the attack cannot tolerate.

I don't think it was anything as smart as that. Zhukov knew that the only thing he had over the Germans was manpower, and he used that advantage to the fullest.

most of their best scientists? Who? (((Einstein)))?

lol

>if the Wehrmacht had been wildly successful
>then USA completes the atom bomb in the exact same time frame, and the Nazi's never accelerate research

Realistically speaking, the Wehrmacht being wildly successful would have meant beating the USSR in a war and occupying it - which was a long shot but at least within the realm of possibility. Taking the UK was not realistic, ever. Doing any serious damage to the US was 10 times less realistic. Japan also had to way to truly damage the US. And I don't see any way that a successful German occupation of the USSR would have enabled Germany to accelerate its nuclear program enough to beat the Allies.

oops, I mean "Japan had NO way to truly damage the US"

Frees up resources and manpower for sure.

But certainly, strategic bombing is an issue. Unmolested time to research deeply into ballistic missile and jet technology would be a major boon though.

Russians never EVER outnumbered Germans more than two to one in the field and those were rare occurrences.
Hell they pushed Germans out of Stalingrad with 5% difference, unlike what buttblasted Chaplin admirers dreamed up in their heads with movie scenes of literal tsunami of slavs falling down on like 3 germans with machineguns and still failing.

>Frees up resources and manpower for sure.
Even in the most optimistic realistic timeline, beating the USSR could not have happened until 1942 or so. That's around the same time as the US Manhattan Project started, and by that point the US and UK were already significantly ahead of Germany in the nuclear race. It would have taken some scientific leaps forward for Germany to overcome the US/UK lead. Possible, but unlikely given the fact that the US/UK had more and better scientists, with a head start on top of it, and easier access to necessary resources.
>Unmolested time to research deeply into ballistic missile and jet technology would be a major boon though.
Yes, but if the Western Allies developed nukes first it wouldn't have mattered one bit.

Russian didnt really outnumber the german on paper,yet deep battle permits them to gain overwhelming local superiority
They had like 10:1 ratio in some part of Dnieper offensive and Bagration

>developed nukes

yes, but you rely on bombers as a delivery system.

Heavily outnumber*

True. I don't know how well US/UK attempts to penetrate German defenses with nukes would have worked in 1945 and onward if facing a strong air defense system.

Important part of that statement is 'if'
And the Nazis never had a strong air defense system.

never had =/= never could have had if x

Yes, but we're discussing an alternative timeline in which the Nazis managed to successfully occupy the USSR in 1942, then had to try to defend against US/UK nuclear attack in 1945.

It's not like the alternate timeline changes much. An occupied Russia is nothing but a resource drain dealing with partisans, an uncooperative population they have to round up and exteminate, and any industry would have been destroyed before being handed over the the Nazis. Britain alone outproduced Germany in terms of aircraft, US and UK combined could still fairly easily establish air superiority.

EVERY operational strategy allows for local superiority where the big push is made. Germany had slight inferiority vis a vis the French and British in 1940 during Fall Gelb, but that didn't stop them from getting a 3:1 advantage during the battle of Sedan.

>most of their best scientists fled to America
Partly true but that was AFTER Germany capitulated.

December 7/8, 1941.

Ack ack Girls were hot.

Germany wasn't at war in 1933 so they weren't doomed to lose a war that hadn't started yet.

>Frees up resources and manpower for sure.
Because occupying vast swathes of land doesn't take up resources and manpower. Why just look at Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Cheap wars with very few soldiers deployed.

this desu

I would argue that the Germans had a chance in the Ostfront if they utilized nationalist and anti-communist feelings of Eastern Europeans instead of being racist shitheads and ethnically cleansing them after they pointed out Jews.

I mean, shit, they probably could have gotten away with killing Jews no problem. Slavs didn't like them either. It could have been a coup.

Hell, they could have just waited on rounding up Slavs for when the war was done.

Never go full Nazi.

doesnt matter, their fate was sealed

Can someone explain to me why Germany wasted so much time at Leningrad? Surely they knew about that river-path since it was literally the only road out. Why waste so much time and resources up in bum-fuck nowhere when they could've sent troops down to another army group? I get it's a massive city and German's hated close-quarter fighting but the city was mostly civilians that were eating each other. Were the front defenses really that good?

I don't know, but I think that at least one facto which played into it was that Hitler was extremely touchy about his Axis allies, including Finland. As late as 1944, he was making military decisions about Army Group North's operations with one eye on the need to keep Finland in the war.