Millitary Mistakes

Is/was Operation Barbarossa the greatest blunder in military history?

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No. That would be declaring war on the U.S.A.

Yes, on both sides as well.
They had already lost by the time they declared war on Usa

Stalin had his armies on the border in 1941,it was a spoiling attack that went wrong when Hitler refused to attack Moscow in September before the bad weather

This. Also the delays from fucking around in the Balkans/Greece didn't help ether.

the army was diverted south for good reason

Wouldn't matter in the long run. Even if they did beat the Soviets, America could solo Japan and germany.

>Also the delays from fucking around in the Balkans/Greece didn't help ether
The attack couldn't have realistically started any earlier because of the spring muddy season.

Everything germany did in WW2 was so retarded it becomes hard ranking it

>hurrr lets invade and/or declare war on everybody, but only at once so we have to fight on multiple fronts, until the whole planet is fighting us. what could go wrong

Literally wrong. Stalin was quite happy with the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement and forbid any serious preparations for war with Germany, so far as to not shoot down German reconnaissance flights.

Germany benefited with the Soviets in invading Poland then stabbed them in the back. The stab in the back that ended nazism

I'm not convinced Germany could have ever defeated the Soviets. Even after capturing literally hundreds of thousands of men and making huge pushes east, they weren't even close. Russia simply had too much depth and population. It was always a matter of time before Russia won.

The only circumstance I can Germany winning is if they were not at war with Britain, and had the hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in Western Europe/Norway shipped East. Along with all the material/vehicles obviously. But even that's a stretch.

You'd be right in that assumption. The Soviets just had too many men and resources for the Germans to reasonably compete. Just look at the 1941-42 winter General Offensive the Russians launched. Even after losing millions of men and being thrown into complete disarray, the Soviets were still able to launch an offensive across the entire Eastern Front.

Germany's total war/genocide the russians concept was retarded and doomed the nazi regime. If they sought a limited war to capture Belarus/Baltics/Ukraine from the USSR then force a peace settlement, it could have worked.

But then again that would have required Hitler and co. to not be idiots. People characterize Barbarossa only falling apart due to the miracle general winter, but in truth cracks were showing from the very first weeks when the key objectives were rewritten several times and it became chronically behind schedule (by the time Kiev fell, Moscow was supposed to have fallen according to the original timetable). Even if the Germans took Moscow, the Soviet government would have simply left for Samara and continued the war there. Now Germany has to advance another 1,000 kilometers. Have fun with those supply lines!

>Is/was
What's the matter, can't make up your mind?

see
The Germans couldn't have won militarily, but they could have won on account of the Soviet military (and state) crumbling if the Germans treated the local population adequately.

The 30s had just ended, and had objectively been a shit time for everyone - thus, offered any sort of alternative to Bolshevik rule, I suspect a majority of the USSR population would have continued to see the Germans as delivering them from Red Terror.

Basically they just had to not fuck up the good will they had when they just invaded - being greeted as liberators, in some places moreso due to carrying the cross as military insignia (yes, that was taken by the locals to mean they were Christian warriors defeating the godless Reds more than once).

Sure, the Soviet government would try and instill hatred against the occupiers through partisan warfare, but if the Germans didn't chimp out against mostly blameless locals (blameless at first, anyway) - see Belarus - the resistance would have died out eventually.

Then again, they starved POWs, went full "YOU LOOKED AT ME FUNNY, UNTERMENSCH", kept the Kolkhoz's and so on - and the Soviets managed to come out as the patriotic side.

Then again - was any of this ever a feasible ideological alternative? Given the number of screws loose in the brains of German ideologues, I guess not.

The problem is nazism isn't nazism if you treat the slavs like humans. Nazism was incompatible with victory.

They could have portrayed Slavs as victims of filthy filthy Jewish Bolshevism... maybe?

Who am I kidding.

yes,i've put an argument that the Germans should've stopped somewhere near in the line of Rzhev, Vyasma, Bryansk, Kharkiv and Rostov on Don

Wouldn't have been possible. A war of attrition against the Soviets wasn't going to work, as they had more than enough men to keep going long after the Axis would have been bled dry. And the Soviets learned fast, so a static line of defense would only last one major offensive if it was lucky before the Soviets would have figured out how to crack it.

its less against winning the war against soviet as to delay the war as long as possible
also a defensive line would be more or less a defense in depth rather than a huge continous line,most of the massive german victories came from exploiting attacking units and pincering them
the parity wouldn't be as bad as in the later years,and the circumstances of soviets attacking dug out Germans would be more akin to Operation Mars

Neo-Nazi's have given Hitler's ideology a fair bit of revisionism. He absolutely despised slavs and targeted them for racial annihilation in well-documented plans.

But neo-nazism is more popular in eastern europe than western these days, so they need to go through some mental gymnastics to justify why you're not a self-hating cuck for being a Russian neo-nazi. Here comes something /pol/ often claims, that Hitler truly only hated Jews and was okay with everyone else. Which of course is nonsense if you look at his statements and actions.

> be near moscow
>fuhrer decides to be a retard and tells the lads to go south to help some other fools
God damn you, god damn you all to hell!

The Soviets had enough men, sure, but
were on the verge of internal collapse during the entirety of 1941 and up until early 1942.

The question is whether there was anything the Germans could have done anything to push them over within this window.

Economically the Soviet managed to save nearly half of the industry in the German occupied zone, but it would resume production only mid-1942.

Ideologically the Germans begin feeding the Soviet patriotic propaganda effort by day 1 - could this have been averted? Maybe? If news gets out POWs get adequate treatment, churches reopen (which they did), peasants are given farmland etc., that would make the Soviet 180 on patriotism and running the military look like much more of a sham, and whole units could keep surrendering like they did in summer 1941 - I'd say German treatment of POWs did more to bolster resistance than Order 270.

Could the Germans sustained the war effort without shamelessly pillaging occupied areas of the USSR? A question with no clear answer - but it does tend to be the case that productivity rises, after an initial drop, if you provide actual initiative.

So autonomy + restoration of private land/industrial ownership, allowing use of national symbols, freedom of religion, curtailing other freedoms under pretense of "while we defeat the Red menace"?

The issue is that the Germans can't maintain a defensive line strong enough to hold off the Soviets everywhere, and defense in depth wasn't going to work for more than one or two Soviet thrusts. They tried exactly what you described at Third Kharkov. The Soviets broke the line and overextended themselves, and the German counterattack caused a Soviet retreat that led to the Kursk salient. But that only worked once. From that point on, the Soviets were extremely careful to make sure that it didn't happen again - even to the point that they would spend months consolidating their gains at the end of the war before marching on Berlin despite having rushed from the Vistula to the Oder in less than a month.

The Kuban was another great instance of German defense against the Soviets, and it showed that all the Germans could really hope for was delaying actions - nothing to actually win them the war. The Soviets could make massed attacks over wide areas, and, although the Germans could usually dislodge many of those attackers, they could never stop all of them.

>were on the verge of internal collapse
Surely you've got some source for that claim. I see that thrown around all the time but there never seems to be any evidence to back it up. And no, Stalin having a breakdown doesn't mean that the Soviet Union was going to collapse.

Working overtime today I see RIDF

That is, of course, true - but the Nazis themselves were willing to do a fair amount of mental gymnastics when the war started going bad for them - entire nations were requalified from "fit for manual labour" to "you're now related to Aryans, congrats, now go fight".

But you're right, the war seemingly going fantastisch at that point, they wouldn't have seen any reason to do anything any different. And by 1943 the damage was irreparable.

>this meme again
Leaving a million men in a massive salient on your flank isn't a good idea, you retard.

And so what if they were "near" Moscow? Getting into Moscow wouldn't mean the city would fall. Leningrad and Stalingrad both forced the Axis to devote ridiculous amounts of men and resources to take the cities, and there's no reason to think that Moscow would have been any easier to take.

>Surely you've got some source for that claim.
I do not, and I shouldn't made that claim.

My point was they were closest to collapse in this period (nice backpedalling, eh?) - so if the Germans were to have had a shot (which I doubt they did anyway), it was in the first 9 months of the invasion or never at all.

Get a load of this guy

legit all they had to do was take Moscow, but Hitler was retarded and went for Legrad and Stalingrad. If he simply lisen to his generals orders and charge straight to Moscow, blockade Leningrad, and bombard the shit out of Stalingrad, and simply wait out the Russian winter. Taking Moscow would have destroyed the Russian moral and many troops would find no sense for fighting.

...

I don't know what's worse, that post or that map.

America would wipe Japan and treat Germany as its cold war ideological partner in the new bipolar world.

The Nazis would've won if they weren't such fucking Nazis. This is true.

>forbid any serious preparations for war with Germany

Who did you think you're fooling?

What did the push from the soviet border to stalingrad look like? Im a bit of a brainlet

You need to read up more on the war, it would have made no difference.

...

Like shit

It could have worked, but there were several delays due to shit in the Balkans and the Army was in a weird position in September of 1941. Taking Kiev did take several weeks that could have been used to get at Moscow, but bypassing Kiev would have given Germany a long front across Ukraine

A sea of mud

barbarossa was in 41, the stalingrad offense was in 42, its not one push

Invading Poland was the key blunder. Everything from that point on was just the denouement.

If im gonna argue for a chance for the Germans to win im just gonna go off and say that theyve lost chance by starting WW2
Having strong defensive lines which they gradually fall back to if one fails means that they any intiative to the soviets if the push fails
What im implying is a German force stopping just after Bryansk and settling down for the winter,they wouldnt be so massively overstretched going for Moscow and even though the situation is less than desirable it wouldnt be dire
And keep in mind that those massive russian successes in destroying the Germans like after Typhoon,Blau and Citadel which are German drives.
Even if you say that the Germans have no capability to defend two lines the soviets would also be unable to really have a massive theatre wide assault,look at how the Germans still managed to just cling on the Dnieper even with 4 millions Russians assaulting the front with 5:1 parity in tanks and 3:1 in guns

shut up brainlet

>Could the Germans sustained the war effort without shamelessly pillaging occupied areas of the USSR
Probably not. They were able to feed the massive army in the East through wholesale expropriation of foodstuffs in the occupied USSR, and also in Germany itself by sending a smaller amount. This eased both the supply lines from Germany to the front lines and the precarious food situation in German occupied Europe where agricultural production had declined since the start of the war and more and more stringent rationing was being introduced. This is what many who say "just go easy on the Ukrainians" don't realize; you will have to perform large scale expropriations of foodstuffs and keep collectivization intact if you want your supply lines at a more manageable level and prevent Germany and the other occupied countries from suffering potential starvation and mass discontent. Both actions mean the local population will invariably be against you.

>neo nazis
You do realize Russian fascists fought for Hitler right? They even had their army - ROA.

commies should be exterminated

>ITT: people forget that there were talks about letting the USSR into the Axis in late 1940

>itt armchair generals discussing tactics and strategies made by military geniuses and people with tens of years of the best military schools and experience

Amusing.

Exactly.
Germans lack logistics to do it.

Except of course that the Germans were facing severe shortages of all sorts of materials, especially food. One of the major reasons to invade in the first place is to seize the Ukranian fields, and use their agricultural output to feed places like Germany and occupied France. You're not simultaneously going to be able to embark on a confiscatory food policy that you need and keep the local population in your camp at the same time.

Also, the Germans weren't defeated by rear line partisan operations. They were beaten in a very conventional manner by a conventional red army. To assert that a nicer occupation policy, even if it was plausible to have one, would have beaten the USSR is not supported by the available facts.

Kursk and Stalingrad come to mind.

>war over by 1945 and not 1949
>no difference

The way the war was prepared and then waged spelled total disaster from the beginning.

The wargoal should have never been major urban centers, maybe I can grand that most of the operations in 1940 were a sucess for the Germans, bar Moscow, but the ensuing stalemate and that huge overextended line and the salients it involved spelled slow death for the Wehrmacht. The operational outdatedness of tactics in trying to defend such a huge front like it's WW1 , and not doing maneuvers to take the extremely important parts like the oil fields in the Caucasus , were major failings in strategy. Had it been prepared differently with different wargoals in mind I think the war would have been salvageable , but still extremely difficult to win. And I ain't even going into the whole Stalingrad debacle, or the shit diplomatic co-operation they had with Japan, ensuing zero Japanese help. So much would have to change for the Germans to be able to win that war that it is nearly impossible, bar only the hindsight we have today not to say that it was major disaster.

If Germany had not pursued war in 1940 and still traded with Soviet Union, it would have to thoroughly defeat Britain first, this was entirely possible North Africa with land superiority and by taking over Yugoslavia, Crete and Malta, going to Egypt and closing the canal. Then, maybe do a deal with Soviets on Iran oil. After that it would have been a waiting game on the next European theater, the Americans would have to conclude Pacific war first, but the Germans would have 5 years to prepare on waging a possible defensive war.

The greatest mistake was the Police not stopping this Autist, because of this retard we had World War 1 and events that would eventually lead to World War 2.

It was the most costly strategic failure in military history.

Always remember that, despite massive Soviet casualties, it failed in all of its major objectives.

no, thinking Goering could take care of british soldiers in Dunkerque, attacking with the luftwaffe
was the greatest blunder

You're vastly underestimating how much partisan action in such a large occupied territory interdicted German supply lines.

No, I'm not. It was a problem, to be sure, but German logistical difficulties were often far more caused by distance and by insufficient local infrastructure than they were by resistance movements. That's why you get them all over the place, even in "friendly" territory like Libya, or in the opening phases of Barbarossa, before such resistances formed.

Germany was beaten by the Red Army on the Eastern Front, not little bands of guerillas.

>blaming princip when Austria was using the assassination as an excuse to invade Serbia

All the more reason, because of that incident they got all that they needed.

In recent military history, yes.

Hitler made a mistake in trying to fight a war on more than one front, misusing his military resources by overstretching them and taking command away from his senior generals, demonstrating his loss of focus.

With pressure coming from the invading Western forces, he was losing his game there as well.

Bad tactics on Hitlers part.

Most of them were reluctant volunteers who just wanted to avoid rotting in a camp. Many deserted as soon as possible.

>mfw thinking of Nazi/America cold war alt-history

>Is/was Operation Barbarossa the greatest blunder in military history?

No, by the time it was ordered, it was a strategic necessity. It was poorly executed and ultimately a failure, but it wasn't a mistake.

The biggest mistake the Germans made was made a few years earlier.

The war against the USSR could have been executed without any western intervention or support, with the USSR having absolutely no hope of victory, if the Germans had made one concession to their egos and not tried to conquer everything at once.

The mistake specifically was the isolation, and eventual invasion of Poland.

By the mid 1930s Pilsudski's government had become on good terms with Hitler and Germany, as they were systemically similar (Poland could be regarded as pseudo-fascist under Pilsudski). On the other hand, the Poles, and the Polish government in equal measure, hated the USSR with ferocity, as the USSR had already tried and failed once to invade and subjugate Poland.

As a result of this, Poland was relatively militarised, with a large (over a million men) if poorly equipped army, and a significant amount of static defences along the Soviet border.

If, from 1934 onwards, Germany had cultivated a military alliance with Poland, there is no reason to believe a joint invasion of the USSR would have failed.

The Germans would have had access to unobstructed Polish transport infrastructure (which alone would have solved many of Germany's logistical issues), access to Polish food supplies (food being a major issue for Germany), access to over a million men to bolster their numerical superiority, and they'd have had to commit no resources to occupying Poland, which significantly hurt their war effort.

On the USSR's side, they'd have no support from the UK, France, or the USA, as all of the western allies were vehemently anti-Communist. Germany would not have to commit occupation forces to France and the Netherlands, they would not have to fight in Africa or the Balkans.

Cont.

The USSR was desperately dependent on imports from the UK and USA via lend-lease, without which they would not have survived the war as it happened in reality. With no invasion of Poland, the UK would not likely declare war on Germany (especially under Chamberlain), nor would France, and without the participation of the UK, the USA would have no real reason to break their isolationist foreign policy, providing the USSR with no materiel support.

In essence, what the USSR would face would be thus: Operation Barbarossa BUT with >1 million Polish troops in support of the German army; with no German logistical problems in transiting Poland, with no German occupational forces spread throughout Europe, several hundred thousand more Germans, with the beginning of the campaign not being central Poland, but the eastern Polish border, with no massive economic lend-lease support, with no allied bombing on German infrastructure, and with no German deployments (specifically Luftwaffe) against Britain in France or the Mediterranean or Africa.

The resulting situation from such a German-Polish combined invasion of the USSR in 1939 or 1940 would be the rapid and complete collapse of the USSR. The end result would be the partitioning of it between newly independent nations, and the German, Polish, and perhaps even Finnish annexation of large parts of strategically important land (Leningrad would most likely be ceded to Finland if they participated in the war, the Baltic states and most of central-northern Russia would be ceded to Germany, Ukraine and southwestern-central Russia would be ceded to Poland, or balkanised to prevent further threats from the east).

After all this, Germany would be free to backstab Poland, or follow any other course, as they would have removed the only real threat on the continent, and would face little or no opposition from France or Britain, or eventually the USA.

The Heer, if I recall, lost more men in 1941 than they had replacements, and it only got worse.

Keep in mind the Nazis forces that launched Barbarossa were the absolute best army they ever had and it was all down hill from there. And they werent even fully equipped because their economy was still complete ass. Of that was the best they could do, and they still lost, theres no way they could have won. They were gonna run out of either guns or troops at one point or another, all while pushing farther east and covering a greater and greater frontage.

The Germans would have won if Russia attacked and vice versa. Its actually that simple.

>Even if the Germans took Moscow, the Soviet government would have simply left for Samara and continued the war there.

The Soviet railway system was not equipped to handle the loss of Moscow.

If Moscow falls, Soviet supply lines crumble, and resistance becomes more and more difficult to mount without tanks and artillery.

If Moscow falls, it's game over for the USSR as far as realistically resisting the German army goes.

No.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign

>le preemptive strike meme
How does it feel to fall for 80 year-old literal nazi propaganda? The Red Army was a fucking joke in 1941 and everyone knew that it was utterly incapable of invading anyone. Recall that Finland fended them off just the year previous.

>if
Germans could not take Stalingrad or Leningrad and you expect them to take Moscow?

Which he deliberately withdrew miles back when political tensions were heating up.

>Nazi Propaganda
So you're saying that the Wehrmacht itself was scaring their own troops and officers?

>On the other hand, the Poles, and the Polish government in equal measure, hated the USSR with ferocity, as the USSR had already tried and failed once to invade and subjugate Poland.
You know the Poles signed the exact same pact with the Soviet Union? 2 years before Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Polish_Non-Aggression_Pact

And there was never a military alliance between Germany and Poland. Please stop making things up. We were not friends with Hitler.

No, that was the official causus belli Hitler gave to the world after he invaded.
The officers and soldiers were being told that the campaign was going to be a cakewalk and all they had to do was kick in the door for the whole rotten structure to come crashing down.

>Is/was Operation Barbarossa the greatest blunder in military history?

No, the greatest blunder in military history was Stalin refusing to accept that a German invasion was imminent when all indicators were clearly pointing towards this conclusion. He received multiple reports, for various sources, that all warned that the Germans would soon be launching an attack on the Soviet Union, and he dismissed all of them as false alarms. These reports were based on the findings of Soviet spies in Germany and several other nations; that Germany was starting to shift huge numbers of soldiers, aircraft, tanks, and warships away from Britain and towards the east. Stalin obstinately refused to take these reports seriously. Churchill even sent him a direct message stating that Hitler would invade the USSR in the near future (Churchill knew this because Britain had cracked the Enigma code, but he didn't share that information with Stalin, he simply warned of an impending invasion in the near future without revealing how he'd discovered this). Stalin still refused to take any precautions.

>first six months
>more than 3 million Soviet soldiers surrender
>occupied nations hate the bolsheviks
>lol, we wuz aryans an shit
>exploit Ukraine, burn villages in anti-partisan actions, starve deserters and prisoners of war

The Axis could fight the Allies or the Comintern, but not both at the same time. It was a great blunder.

Austria would have found any other pretense for war by spring of 1915. Austria was going to start WW1 regardless

without the Poland and French invasion they wouldn't trust the more radical strategy proposed by Henz Guderian and others, more radical pro armored assault commanders. It would have been too risky to do so. Furthermore, the soldiers would lack experiences to carry out such a massive operations, same with logistics skills and other.
Furthermore, assuming no war with France and Poland occur, the invasion of USSR happen sooner, like 1940, which the Red Army would fair better due to not being in the midst of reorganization

Haha no. Poles would not allied with Germany as their policy was to keep distance between both Germany and USSR.
Beck just continue Pilsudski policy.
Also Stalin would not move first. Even in 1939 against Poland he wait until Hitler was balls deep and Allies declare war on him before waltzing into Eastern part.
After France fall Allies beg him to move against Germany offering him anything - then Hitler attack and again Russia bleed.
Stalin would no move until Europe is in flames.

I didn't say anything about Stalin attacking first or Poland allying with Germany?

It was blunder but Stalin had reasons to suspect all of it.
Brits beg him to join war against Germany - so all information from them were questionable - they have clear motive to cause conflict between Germany and USSR who at the time was at friendly footing.
Reports from spies were also unreliable in Stalin eyes as he still suspect that at last some of them are pawns in hands of the old sponsors of bolshevik party. He could also suspect some of party or army elements to provoke war for their own gain.
Germany still was not on war footing and were barely prepared for war in Russia and there were no preparing for Russia winter. Who could expect that Germans just would rely on elan and attack.
Then what do you mean?
No war between German and West? Stalin do not invade.
If you mean that Germany attack USSR without allying Poland? How? Using teleportation?
Man, get your shit together.

this

I was criticizing the other poster for thinking that somehow having Poland on Germany side would help alleviate the problem of Barbarossa in any way. Those invasion benefit the Wehrmacht in experience and help cultivates their generals's strategy, without it it would gone even worse.
>implying SU wouldn't fight Germany one day
they were reorganizing for a reason, using some other bullshit excuse to expand

Hitlers switch to bombing the cities was a blunder.

To bad Ribbentrop fucked it all up.

Still USSR expansion before and after war was pretty tame.
I mean Stalin not his successors.
If so it would be Germans that broke their pact not Soviets(unless Germans would be on last legs).

lmao
who do americans think they are/were

>when Hitler refused to attack Moscow in September

god you really want stalingrad to happen in 41

annexing Baltic and the half of Poland are not that small compares to his successor

Well, Baltic was taken without war and were part of former Russian Empire. Old clay.
Poland the same , not even mentioning that Poland did not even declare war against USSR in all that confusion.
Both acquisition were part of the deal with other regional power.

>muh clay

Kill yourself Russian, before your alcoholic liver does for you.

This. People often forget that 'le soviet manpower' thing is true, but the USA only had around 35 million less people than the soviets at the start of the war, and wayy better production power. Japan never stood a chance, and once they were gone, we could have taken Germany on easily. No idea how we'd get onto mainland Europe, though.

I am Pole actually.
I may not like Russians or SOviets in general but this not mean that I can not see reason behind their actions other than muh imperialism/communism.
Also fuck off burger.

Here's how.

sci-hub.bz/10.1177/096834459600300404

tl;dr, wholesale destruction of the rail network, probably somewhere in France. It doesn't matter how many troops the Germans have if they can't get them to the landing zones or supply them when they're there.

those are rather substantial land expansion, more so than any of his successor tried to expand, and don't forget Finland
Stalin also installed communism in Eastern Europe, expand it into China, push NK into war, started communist insurgencies in colonies. It might not be land grab, but it is ideological invasion, one of which hail Stalin as God in this specific version of communism
Compare to everyone else that either failed to expand, or only maintain, Stalin did the most expansion

Stalin didn't even let the Soviets shoot down German reconnaissance planes flying over the USSR

stop getting your knowledge from /pol/