laklak wrote:Adolf rolled the dice, but it was a calculated gamble, not a strategic mistake. His mistake came later, when he rolled on Kiev rather than Moscow after Smolensk. He wanted the Ukrainian oil fields, but his general staff disagreed, arguing that Moscow was the heart of the USSR. He ignored them, to his detriment. Had he taken Moscow before the winter of '41 world history might be very different.
Oh, look, another armchair general with a should/could have been done thesis. Yes, the Wehrmacht had superior training, superior leadership and superior equipment, but crucially, those advantages did not make up for its lack of staying power and resources. Once the short, sharp shock of yet another Blitzkrieg sank into the mud before being able to deliver its knockout blow, Germany's defeat was no longer a matter of if. It became a question of when. As in Napoleon's case 125 years earlier, taking Moscow would not have won the war. The bulk of the Soviet Union's manufacturing industry had already been moved east of the Urals. For the administrative part to do likewise, if necessary, would have been easy in comparison.
Initially, both men and machinery of the Soviet forces were literally ordnance absorption devices, to be eliminated at will. Men were sent in to attack the invaders regardless of whether they even had a rifle or not. Tanks, some without shells for their cannon, accompanied the infantry, and the lot was pulverised without being able to do a lot of damage to the enemy. So what, if the Germans knocked out four or six tanks for the loss of one of their own. No matter if entire divisions, even armies, got minced into non-existence in exchanger for just a few thousand Landsers and nary an officer. The point of the exercise was to slow the Hun down, to buy time for more equipment and human cannon fodder can be moved up to the front. Stalin could afford to do that. Lost half a million men in eight weeks? No worries, here come another million, and another, and another. 400 tanks? No worries, another 800 coming straight up from behind them. They may be rough and rushed to the point of some of them not even getting a coat of paint before leaving the factories, but there are an awful lot of them. Quantity more than made up for quality, and then things got worse for the Germans: Quality improved...
A huge handicap for the Germans was that intelligence was really shit. Their maps were sketchy, and nobody knew how crappy the roads that actually did exist were until they got there. As for the railway, well, the railway's gauge was different to the German system. Everything that went east had to be unloaded from one wagon and reloaded on to another at least once. The biggest intelligence failure was probably something else to do with the railway. OKHQ was led to believe that only one track crossed the Urals. In fact, there were three. Result? Massive miscalculation by the Germans in regard to the volume of war personnel and material they could bring online. Nobody should have been surprised that the wonder army was brought to a halt, then inexorably driven back in the east. Despite the qualitative inferiority of the Reds they inflicted 80% of German casualties. Of course it comes as no surprise that the Soviet Union also suffered the brunt of allied losses. The roll-up of western Europe by the allies was of course very photogenic, and Hollywood wasted no time exploiting that, adding attention focusing on the war in the west, but in comparison to the east, human and material losses by both the allied and axis powers were comparatively light.
Yes, I know that Hitler expected to win Operation Barbarossa hands down. he famously told one of his generals during the planning stage that it takes only one kick through the door and the whole rotten hovel will come crashing down, and plenty of important people among the allies feared that he was most probably right. They all ignored the historical fact that economic capacity will always prevail over military power in the long run. There is only one exception, the Roman Empire, but the Romans managed their expansion rather differently. With the notable exception of the Carthaginians, they did not destroy their enemies. They integrated them as allies to the point that many of the leaders of their former enemies actually became Roman citizens. Eventually, some Roman emperors were not even born anywhere near Rome. So, no matter how many people thought the Third Reich had a realistic chance of winning the war outright, it was never on as soon as the Blitzkrieg started to run behind schedule, and that wasn't long time coming.
Everything became unexpected. Only a few weeks into the invasion the German forces encountered unexpected resistance. Having to fight into the winter was unexpected. That's why so many soldiers froze to death. Nobody expected them to be still there when winter gear was needed. A year after the campaign started, the elite shock troops couldn't believe their ears when some of their units were ordered to execute a small, temporary, tactical withdrawal. The need for retreat was unexpected. The 6th army did not expect to get surrounded, and when that happened it did not expect to be abandoned.
Eventually, China will be economically much more powerful than the USA and its allies. It will then start controlling the USA and if it encounters undue resistance it will use force of arms I bet that nobody expects that. Fools.