Who was Germany's most valuable ally in ww2? Would Germany have been better off going solo?

This.

>Extensive trade links before 1941
>The Soviets allowed Germany to bypass Versailles by building weapons factories deep into Russian territory allowing Hitler to rearm in secret
>Divided Eastern Europe in Molotov-Ribbentrop
>BOTH invaded Poland together

Stalin was tsundere towards Hitler.
Thank God Hitler was a total autist because a Red-Black Soviet-Nazi unholy alliance would have been unstoppable. The Western Allies would have been doomed, or Europe at least.

Germany's greatest undoing has always been its massive hubris and misguided obsession with the "March to the East". Wilhelm II did the same thing, antagonizing Tsarist Russia and throwing them into the arms of France.

already in the beginning horthy secretly told his officers to bring back as many hungarian soldiers alive as possible.
>I do not want to hear about field commanders who think they can win without shedding blood
t. clausewitz

therefore hungarians never wanted to win

While mostly true, that last point isn't. The USSR invaded on the 17th of September, by which point Poland's resistance had pretty much crumbled except around Warsaw itself.

>The Soviets allowed Germany to bypass Versailles by building weapons factories deep into Russian territory allowing Hitler to rearm in secret
That program predated Hitler, the Weimar government loved training in Russia

Romania. Highest number of contributing troops (~600k) and especially the Romanian oil for the German war machine.

>All they accomplished was getting BTFO at Odessa and Stalingrad and planting a flag at Sevastopol against orders
Greatest allies

>By the end of Barbarossa USSR's resistance pretty much crumbled except close to Moscow inself

Let's also not forget about stuff like Lipetsk where the USSR actually helped train the Germans.

>Country that's already had its back broken and no reserves left to commit is the same as the Soviet Union in 1941
What are you even trying to say here?

>Country that's already had its back broken
Just like USSR, right?
>no reserves left to commit is the same as the Soviet Union in 1941
Source - my ass. I guess after 17th September there were no more battles except siege of Warsaw?

Except that's not true; you had holdouts in Leningrad, and a rather large force in the south. Hell, they would be counterattacking and retake Rostov around the same time Typhoon was grinding to a halt.

You didn't have the same situation you had in Poland; Soviet armies retained lateral communication. The capital was not surrounded. They had reserves and manpower they could draw on. Poland had none of those things.

>I guess after 17th September there were no more battles except siege of Warsaw?
Not even him. But no, you imbecile. The difference is that Poland had 0 army level formations in lateral communication by the end of the 13th of September, and that meant they could be swallowed up at the Germans leisure. The USSR was not in a comparable position.

I don't think you understand, the Polish Armies were already busy fighting the Germans and losing (despite doing far better than the Germans thought), everything they had was already engaged so the Soviets didn't even really fight them except in areas where the Germans handed over control to them like Lwow

>Who was Germany's most valuable ally
valuable doesn't mean "greatest". The mere fact that Ploiesti (oil refineries city in Romania) was the most heavily defended airspace in Europe says a lot about how valuable an ally Romania was. As for the military side of things, all allies or co-beligerents on the eastern front were just cannon fodder, so the largest quantity wins, I'd say.

I vouch for Romania, despite being hindered by very poor coordination and communication. They based important treaties on word and good faith.

> They had reserves and manpower they could draw on. Poland had none of those things.
Poland wasn't fully mobilized by 1st September. They had 100'S of thousand soldiers on the East.
>13th of September, and that meant they could be swallowed up at the Germans leisure.
That goes for many Polish armies, but not all of them. After Warsaw have fallen, there were still battles and fighting, even in october. And how the hell is that moving goalposts, I have no idea.

German army was already low in fuel and ammo by then, and their advance slowed a lot. If they had to fight to capture another half of Poland, in the end they would obviously win, but German casualties would just pile up. And guess which army couldn't afford that.

>croatians
contributed few combat units, eentually lost to partisans
>romanians
probably the most combat effective ally, too bad they switched sides
>cossacks
allies of oppertunity, made littel difference overall
>kalmyks
who?
>...
>galicians
you mean teh ones the germans we planning to exterminate?
>hungarians
they made a decent contribution given thir overall capabilities
>italians
lol

Since OP used a picture of Spainish volunteers, were they actually useful to Germany and how numerous were they?

Good luck getting anywhere without Romanian oil

>Poland wasn't fully mobilized by 1st September.
Irrelevant, as we are talking about the situation at the time of the Soviet invasion, i.e., when most of the country had already been overrun.
>They had 100'S of thousand soldiers on the East.
They had roughly 5/7ths of their army posted against Germany. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland#/media/File:Dywizje_wrzesien_1.png

>That goes for many Polish armies, but not all of them.
No, all of them. Please name one Polish corps level formation that had a clear line of communication to another one on the morning of the 14th.

>After Warsaw have fallen, there were still battles and fighting, even in october.
Irrelevant.

>And how the hell is that moving goalposts, I have no idea.
Yes, I suppsoe you must be very stupid to equate "No more fighting" with "cannot raise new reserves". Please, show me a reserve formation that was called up and organized after the 18th of September.

>German army was already low in fuel and ammo by then, and their advance slowed a lot. If they had to fight to capture another half of Poland, in the end they would obviously win, but German casualties would just pile up.
Their advance slowed because they took everything they were going to take. Hell, they had to give back territory on the Soviet side of the line.

You have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about. Read this.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/DA-Poland/DA-Poland.html

Poland pretty much stood no chance and was crushed.

>Yes, I suppsoe you must be very stupid to equate "No more fighting" with "cannot raise new reserves". Please, show me a reserve formation that was called up and organized after the 18th of September.
The very fucking same link you linked
>The peace strength of Poland's Army consisted of 280,000 men, and it was estimated that she could muster about 2,500,000 trained reserves
>Poland's complete mobilized strength probably never exceeded 900,000 or 1,000,000 troops.
>at the time of the Soviet invasion, i.e., when most of the country had already been overrun
not even close to "more than 50%"

>Several major cities were still in Polish hands, such as Warsaw, Lwów, Wilno, Grodno, Łuck, Tarnopol, and Lublin (captured by the Germans on 18 September). According to Leszek Moczulski, approximately 750,000 soldiers were still in the ranks of Polish Army (Polish historians Czesław Grzelak and Henryk Stańczyk claim that Polish Army still had 650,000 soldiers[73]), including twenty six infantry divisions and two motorized brigades. (One of the latter, the Warsaw Armoured Motorized Brigade, had not yet taken part in combat, and on 14 September began to move southwards, to join Army Kraków.)[76]
With French supplies on the way, totally fucking irrelevant.

>Poland pretty much stood no chance and was crushed.
I agree. But with your logic, Poland was defeated already in 1st September, because it decided to defend indefensible borders.
And Germans were defeated in '41, when they didn't have any reserves left.

>not even close to "more than 50%"
And they were not called up. The Soviet invasion on the 17th did not impact this, because the most populous and developed parts of Poland were in the west, not the east.

>With French supplies on the way, totally fucking irrelevant.
When the claim is that they were in an equivalent position to the USSR at the end of Barbarossa, yes, it is fucking irrelevant that there were unswallowed pockets. You'll note that I mentioned things like the Rostov counterattack, not the various formations hiding in the pripet.

>ut with your logic, Poland was defeated already in 1st September, because it decided to defend indefensible borders.
No. My logic is that the Poland army, as a military organization, had disintegrated by the time the Soviets invaded, and that therefore the Soviet invasion was not a meaningful factor in the loss of Poland. My support for this is the fact that by the end of the 13th, every single Poland Corps sized formation had been separated by German troops from every other corps sized formation. That is a level of disintegration that you do not recover from. Poland "lost" by the 13th, not the 1st. And if you apply that to Germany, that means they lost sometime in April of 1945, not in 1941 when "they didn't have any reserves left", which isn't true, as they had operational reserves even in battles like Bagration, which went to the Western Front.

>galicians
>you mean teh ones the germans we planning to exterminate?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)

>kalmyks
who?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmykian_Cavalry_Corps

Italy provided them with the most soldiers, but also opened another theater where valuable resources were wasted.
Romania gave them oil and not much else besides some troops to guard their flanks during large scale advances.
Hungary tried to gtfo as soon as the war reached their borders.
Bulgaria did fuck all.
Finland jerked off while precious German troops and materials were wasted sitting outside Leningrad.
Japan was too far away and dragged USA in to the war, although Hitler intended to fight them eventually.
Germany's best shot at victory would have been to align with the Ukrainians and coerce them into stirring shit in the USSR.

>Germany's best shot at victory would have been to align with the Ukrainians and coerce them into stirring shit in the USSR.
Doing this pretty much necessitates not taking all their food for years, at which point your otherwise net food deficient empire starts running into serious starvation problems.