this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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I just want to say, for all the discussion of 'could they have...' it's important to remember that Germany was never going to conquer Russia, it was a stupid (racist) idea to get Hitlers 'lebensraum' and take out Stalin's 'Jewish Bolshevist' nation (heavy on the eye-roll there). Keep in mind that Germany didn't even get Moscow, which Napoleon had actually managed to (mostly) do, and Napoleon still lost for the same reason that Germany would have regardless -- they did not have the logistical ability to support an army in an area the size of Russia. Partisan/army elements would absolutely pick apart a logistical train that long, which Germany couldn't have done any way. We have to remember Germany wasn't an actual mechanized army, it was entirely dependent on horses, and to try to use horses to haul ammunition/food/clothes/medical supplies/artillery shells/etc ~1500 kilometres from Germany to Moscow alone would be insane, especially with the millions of men and women the Soviet union had constantly attacking you.
The entire invasion was never going to work, and people give the idea it could have worked way too much credit. And this is all assuming no other nation would step in either; it's entirely on the 'nobody is in an alliance anymore' sort of fantasy world. This failed for the exact same reason that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has -- they planned for a short, easy war, because their entire ideology requires that they underestimate their foes at every available opportunity.
One aspect that is often overlooked is how reduced in strength the German forces were at the start of Barbarossa. Sure, they took Poland and France very quickly, but they suffered enough losses that Barbarossa started at reduced strength, and once the initial maneuvers of the invasion were over Germany was pretty much running on fumes manpower-wise.
And, ironically, fuel-wise
Germany's main problem wasn't manpower (at this point), it was materiel. Germany's generals (mostly) wanted to go as quickly as possible to mitigate this. The problem was their ancient supply train running on ~350,000 ('supply trucks') and 2.75 million horses. In their glee to send the army attacking everyone they could around themselves to fuel their extremely inefficient economy with more loot, they got into a cycle of needing to be fast, but having no reserve of fast moving vehicles to facilitate that.
And to be clear, I am not a 'pro-Russia' person, I've just read everything I could on the issue, and I've never read a way for Germany to get out of Russia that didn't involve them making zero mistakes.
I'm just extremely wary of people saying 'Nazi Germany could have won if...' and the reason would require them to not be fascist and racist, and we start to sort of legitimize Nazi Germany. The fact was they were always going to pick stupid fights, because fascist governments always do. And they idea that they could somehow *hold *Russia while also constantly picking fights with everyone else is insane.
Seriously, they had an awful economy, their logistical train was terrible, the leader of each area would just outright lie about their capabilities (see Goering's Stalingrad Airlift)
If you want to talk about what 'Nazi Germany could have won if...' how about: - If they didn't expend time, resources, and their own souls making literal mobile gas chambers for the civilians of the Soviet Union ('Accordingly, it was a partially secret but well-documented Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land west of the Urals with Germanic peoples, under Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) The Nazis' belief in their ethnic superiority pervades official records and pseudoscientific articles in German periodicals, on topics such as "how to deal with alien populations."; if they didn't alienate every single ally they could have had by invading smaller neighbours as a stop-gap for their crumbling finances; if they weren't constantly fighting Partizans and Resistance members (thanks Grandma!); I read (but can't find the article) that British Intelligence credits Nazi Germany's sadism and want for torture as key reasons the Nazi's lost the information war, as their Information networks were terrible.
So yes, anyway, there wasn't a way it was going to work unless they un-became Nazi Germany.