Eastern front ww2

Having no real plan except "Just encircle a bunch of divisions, they'll surely surrender!" because his intelligence departments were fucking hopeless

I mean, a fuckload did surrender, but it didn't make a difference in the long run.

Doing it

Going in with the assumption that the Soviet rail infrastructure could be utilized when 85% of their locomotives escaped and the railroads were destroyed by combat or retreating armies.

What do you mean by "bring down"? Full occupation was impossible. Capture of Moscow was unimportant.
Best part of plan was economical collapse. Western regions were most developed, and Stalin couldnt recover capacities by itself because of recent repressions.
In fact Soviet dictatorship was completed by British and American supplies and (much more important) professionals (managers, engineers). Such mix allowed to deploy new plants, prevented famine.
Germany could seize Moscow, Stalingrad - it ment nothing, USSR became immortal. There was a possibility to peace agreement, but Hitler hadnt offered.

Honestly, I would've done the following

>Barter for peace immediately after reaching Moscow
>Literally constantly barter for peace
>Dig in and build more defences around the Dnieper
>Withdraw troops from North Africa and dig in fortress Europe
>Abandon Norway, or greatly cut defences there, and send them to the East
>Focus on installing puppet governments in occupied territories so they'll start defending their coasts themselves
>Don't focus on meme encirclements, just keep driving forwards
>Don't integrate the SS into the Einsatzgruppen, since it just alienates locals more
>don't try to recruit local Ukrainians, it's a waste of resources, but don't harass them either
>Try to send false reports of a Japanese attack to push Stalin into Fortifying the East more
>Send more equipment to the finns to put pressure on Leningrad
>don't fall for case blue meme, instead redirect equipment into digging in

sorry, life it's not paradox interactive games

What about my list was Paradox?

That doesn't really sound like a real argument, Reddit.

>>Don't focus on meme encirclements, just keep driving forwards
Gee, it's not like you need to defeat your enemy, refuel, or resupply ever, right?

No, I mean don't attempt massive encirclements in the first place. It isn't really a drain on equipment or manpower for the soviets and slows the advance.

Finland in WW2 is one of the greatest memes of history. A lot of facts say Fins were doing all that they could against Germany being formal friends.

>Barter for peace
This worked so well against Churchill
>Abandon North Africa
So Italy gets invaded earlier
>Leave Norway
So then Britain takes it and cuts your Swedish iron
>Just puppet them lol
Germany desperately needed the resources in its occupied territory, and judging from the performance of the Vichy French in Torch they aren't up to the task, let alone the Netherlands or Belgium being able to effectively resist
>Don't encircle enemy units
So there are more of them to fight
>Just keep going forward
How? On foot? Just keep stretching those supply lines, it worked out so well in North Africa didn't it?
>Send resources to your co-belligerents to take Leningrad
The Finns aren't really interested in anything except recovering Karelia, there's a reason the USA never bothered to declare war on them
>Let the Soviets build up even more all through 1942
This is what lost Germany Stalingrad in the first place, because they didn't have the fuel for a front wide offensive the Soviets could build up and prepare a fucking huge offensive

I know, but Germany didn't need friendship, they needed an advance. If the Finns can occupy Karelia, then it's suddenly much harder for the British to send allied lend lease through the north sea.

The Aim's to wear down the Soviets as much as possible until it's possible to barter for peace.

The idea was to destroy the Soviet army and force a surrender. Was it a good idea? Probably not. But it's stupid to make up alternative goals for Barbarossa when we know what the actual goal was.

Puppet governments in HOI can't go against you no matter what but in real life things are quite different.

The plan was to smash the Red Army so badly the government (which intelligence assured the OKW was massively unpopular and fragile) would simply collapse

I think you havent catched my point.
Official version is that Finland was really trying to fight and crush USSR with Germany. But several facts say about opposite thing.
Finland started demobilization during German's Moscow assault (critical moment). Finland havent tryid to cut your road between North and Center (critical place). Finland refused to provide their occupied land to German artillery against Leningrad.
Ofc, Hitler had butthert, but what could he do? Say "you motherfuckers, are trying to demonstrate war to avoid destiny of Norway"? Such country still was usefull, but it wasnt real German ally.

It's not as though anyone in Ukraine had an ounce of respect or loyalty to Stalin or the Soviets. If the Germans treated them much better and promised them some kind of meme country for their own they would've at least been helpful allies.

Too many people don't realize other countries had their own reasons for existing that didn't involve helping Hitler.

It's not as though Ukraine had an ounce of respect or loyalty to Hitler or the Germans. You don't just put your neck on the line and become someone's loyal dog because they are nice to you.

Total dictatorship is very stable and cant collapse without full occupation. Stalin had enough territory even out of Europe.

The Ukrainian resistance to the Soviets included like 5 different organizations and they all fucking hated each other

Mussolini's government collapsed easily enough.

That the Germans are superior to other nations.

Cruelty of regimes of Mussolini:Hitler:Stalin was about 1:4:16.

Mussolini should've won the war dammit.

Most glaring mistake they made was totally underestimating Soviets, in terms of numbers, organizational capacity, and regime stability/will to endure.
They were initially encouraged by Soviet incompetence and lack of preparation, but as they moved further and further it literally became a trap. When their armies were stopped and then almost destroyed after the Battle of Moscow, Soviet total defeat was a remote possibility.
After Stalingrad, their own defeat became a possibility. After that, Soviets improved further and Allied help started to arrive in significant quantity, which only sealed their fate.

So while Hitler and his generals made a lot of operational and tactical mistakes, their most important mistake was strategic, and that is ridiculously underestimating the Soviets, on the wings of their relatively cheap victory in France, and Soviet humiliation in Finland.

Germany expropriated massive amounts of food to feed their army and civilians, without which they'd have to put a much greater strain on their supply network. Doing that means the Ukrainians won't like you very much regardless of what you promise them.

Attached: 1496358577707.png (395x740, 211K)

Pic related sums up Barbarossa

Attached: Operation Barbarossa.png (1600x900, 1.73M)

>your intelligence states that the commies could only muster like 40 division tops as reserve
>they raise up 500 divisions to fight you
Oh no no no no

Every institution of Nazi state that was staffed with actual Nazis (as opposed to ''fellow travelers'') was either mediocre or downright incompetent. Really makes you think.

I remember reading on here before that Stalin sent peace negotiations during operation Barbarossa, is that true?

Yes, he tried something via Bulgaria IIRC. Or that was in 1943, I forgot.

I'm pretty sure that was a calculated move to show Britain and the USA he would negotiate a separate peace if they didn't play ball and open up another front

Uhh that's exactly what the Poles did for Napoleon

source?

Not allying with the Ukrainian people.

Apples and oranges, desu.
Revolutionary France could plausibly be seen as a liberating power. It was based on a universalizing ideology and they had in fact liberated themselves via the Revolution.
Nazi Germany meanwhile had a long history of not exactly liberating peoples, and its ideology was precisely the opposite of liberating random foreign peoples let alone the ones that were considered subhuman and not really worthy of living.
I doubt treating the Ukrainians a little better, aka killing and starving them less would've made them loyal to Germany.

The Soviets woulda blown it up just like all the other oilfields that the Germans did seize. Hitlers forces would not see a single drop of Soviet oil no matter what they did.

All going for the Caucasus woulda done would have collapsed the Southern Front when the Soviets inevitably counterattacked through the Stalingrad area.

>Revolutionary France could plausibly be seen as a liberating power
>centralizes all power more thoroughly than any other ruler in French history to ensure Parisian supremacy
Point is both movements were revolutionary and in their infancy. It's not like Germany was treating countries who willingly joined the Axis very poorly at all, except taking some of Romania to correct Trianon, at least compared to the British who literally sink French fleets and conquer Iceland. It was only when they started to actually lose did they all finally try to fuck over Germany to save themselves.

Not assassinating Stalin.

>Conquer Iceland
Literally no one died except a bong who killed himself en route

I guess that excuses it. If only Hitler found a way to conquer Poland while killing nobody, then Danzig would still be German!

I just don't understand why you'd bring that up in the same sentence as Mers-El-Kebir

I guess we'll agree to disagree but your arguments haven't shaken me from my belief that publicly espousing an ideology of conquest specifically of eastern lands and removal of the current inhabitants thereof to make room for German repopulation would have made it difficult for Germany to earn Ukraine's loyalty.

plan on it being a long campaign, dont genocide natives until its done, target economic areas

>slows the advance
As opposed to just frontally assaulting the Red Army?
Encirclement was the best strategy for Germany to inflict as many casualties as possible in relation to their own losses in limited manpower and resources.

Heres what i wouldve done and it would work

>Send tank to moscow to capture
>send another to stalingrad and this time win battle (very important)
>tag team st.petersburg with the mongols (insert bro-fist here)
>lol you mad stalin XD

Ive played A LOT of Hearts of iron and can usually beat the USSR on easy

If only the OKW had you user, can't believe they didn't try this

Not enough Tigers

thinking operation superiority translates to strategic superiority, or even political superiority.

Too many Tigers!

Shit man I still need cheat mods, how do you do it?

This
>they would not have been able to exploit it for several years anyway, if ever.
yet they managed to do so in the few months they held the area: youtube.com/watch?v=kVo5I0xNRhg (sources in the pinned comment)

should have done this

>yet they managed to do so in the few months they held the area
Erm, they never held Baku, what are you talking about?

the other oilfields of the Caucasus they did hold for some time.
What should be special about Baku that would make a difference?

It's a lot bigger.

The genocidal racist aspect of it, took way too much effort and it alienated the local population who would have otherwise gladly fought against the commies

so what?
despite the memes manpower wasn't that much of an issue for Germany, at least not in 1942 yet

>so what?
Are you seriously asking this? It matters because a bigger oil field has more oil in it to exploit. Germany got about 3.5 mil. barrels of oil from all sources in the USSR, which was like 5% of its yearly production. If that's all you can expect to get, it would have been cheaper to just expand your synth oil factories than to send multiple armies and extend your line to get it.
Also 3.5 mil. barrels used up their existing transport/ engineering capacities. Not much more was available.

Stalin made his personal train ready to go to Yekaterinburg in case the Germans made it near enough Moscow. Of course operation Barbarossa was possible

with time more could be extracted, but mainly:

Baku oil could be replaced with imports. USA was producting 8 times as much as the Soviets already and Venezuela was producing a little more. Remember also oil fields are usually not run at capacity. It would have put some additional strain on lend-lease shipping capacity but that was hardly worth a risky and expensive operation in a highly defensible terrain.

>despite the memes manpower wasn't that much of an issue for Germany, at least not in 1942 yet
It was a very pressing issue, and the Wehrmacht leadership knew it.

Attached: 1520165553436.png (701x1439, 213K)

source? I haven't been able to find anything on how much oil was actually extracted from the occupied USSR