Hitler lost the war because he picked a fight with 3 economic titans, 2 of which were practically on his borders.

Hitler didn't trust his generals, because they botched the planning and execution of the invasion of the Soviet Union.  Hard as it is to hear (and to say), Hitler had a much better appreciation of the strategic situation in the East at the start of the war than did the German military staff.  Hitler's vision for the invasion of the Soviet Union involved the early seizure of the oil fields, because Germany in 1941 lacked the oil to supply the economy and military just to maintain the areas it had already taken.  The German military staff, skilled as they were in the tactical and operational levels of warfare, had little appreciation for the strategic goals of the campaign, and deliberately allocated less forces to the oil campaign because they believed the war would be won by a drive on the capital, much like it was in France, and completely ignored the fact that Napoleon tried the same thing and lost his army even AFTER successfully capturing Moscow.  Capturing Moscow would have done nothing to provide Germany with the oil it needed to run its economy.

Was Hitler a paranoid micromanager?  Sure, especially later in the war (although in his defense, his generals DID try to kill him at least once).  Operation Watch on the Rhine (leading to the Battle of the Bulge) was an unrealistic plan with little or no chance of success, but even then, the staff that planned it really didn't expect or plan the operation through to its intended conclusion.

The German war machine lost its war for several reasons, and no one reason "cost them the war."  Germany wouldn't have won the war if Hitler listened to his generals, because those generals were unable to grasp the STRATEGIC requirements of the nation and orient their plans and operations to attain them.  On the other hand, even though Hitler had a better grasp of the strategic requirements, he failed to see that Germany simply was not in a position to carry out its strategic goals against the opposition against them.  Germany's early successes were completely due to the unwillingness of the other European nations to recognize that war was required to stop Germany's aggression (the Sudetenland, annexation of Czechoslovakia, etc)  and their general unpreparedness once it was finally forced upon them.  Germany's requirements were such that they simply could not be satisfied before the other nations came to a full war footing, and Germany's position was such that they would never be able to defeat their opponents once that happened.  The conflicts between Hitler and his generals certainly didn't HELP Germany during the war, but since they were never in a position that would have allowed them to win the war they picked anyway, it certainly didn't COST them the war.

Mike

I think a Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union would have been logistically impossible. At worst, they could have drawn forces east to defend the few ports.

In no particular order...

Attacking Great Britain
Declaring war on the USA
Bailing out the Italians in Africa.
Failing to have sufficient numbers of U-boats.
Invading Norway.
Invading the USSR.
Failing to develop strategic bombers.

not being fully mechanized
not developing/finishing aircraft carriers

Crazy and overzealous yes, dumb ass no. He managed to take over a country through rhetoric and policy while sacking most of Western Europe in the process. It's a terrifying history lesson that the world should never forget.

This, it wouldn't have been sustainable and his empire though would have eventually crumbled either way. The 2nd half of the 20th century would have looked very different in Europe though.

Hitler's time in Landsberg would have been better spent with a map and reading a German translation of War and Peace instead of writing Mein Kaumph

this could be said of any tyrant.

That would make for a bad ass sci fi series.

Well, that simply isn’t true.  That may have been its effect, but not its purpose.  The problem with its purpose is that it was written by lots of people who all wanted different things and couldn’t agree.  Wilson wanted his Fourteen Points, which the Germans seized upon as salvation when they agreed to sign the Armistice.  France wanted Germany held down forever and a military alliance against Germany in the future, not that I blame them.  England and France wanted to carve up Germany’s colonies, Wilson wanted to end colonialism.  England and France had lost millions of men and wanted some form of reparation.  Belgium and been blown into pieces but wasn’t even included at the big table.  Wilson wanted to re-draw the map of Europe to ensure ethno-linguistic harmony, that proved to be impossible.  It was a Gordian knot.

I sort of agree/disagree. I completely agree that Germany underestimated their oil needs by thinking it would all be over quickly. The success they had in Western Europe didn’t help, Mussolini getting them involved in North Africa, a greater priority on Moscow over the oil fields to the south all helped doom Hitler.

That said, Hitler calling a halt to the advancement into Russia screwed them. They lost what, 6 weeks? It gave the Soviet’s time to catch their breath, restock and dig in. By the time Germany got rolling again it was too late. Winter was on its way and Russia had too much time over the winter to get prepared and the factories moved/up and running in the East. Had Hitler not called a stop nothing lay in their way to Moscow, nor on to the East. Taking Moscow would have put those factories within range of his bombers.

The defeat in Russia, for either side, depended on who controlled Moscow over that first winter, imo. Had they rolled on into Moscow and pushed the soviets out nothing would have stopped Germany from linking up with Rommel in NA and taking the oil fields.

Any socialism in the Nazi party died with Ernst Röhm.

that would have been enough to keep Stalin from flinging dozens of Siberian divisions at the Germans in the winter of 1941-42.

Don't start war with the USSR in the short term, consolidate gains on the European continent and build even larger.  Also get Japan to sue for peace with the US and not attack Pearl Harbor.   Build nuclear weapons, jets, ect.  Then attack the USSR with a lightning strike, including using said nuke on Moscow, and Japan driving in to the far East.   Make it be seen that you are wiping the "scourge" of Communism off the face of the planet, which hopefully causes the UK and US to stay neutral.

They had to stop to let logistics catch up. They were out of ammo food and replacement parts. They didn't even give them preps from winter occupation/ conquest. Clothes. Oil. Lubricants. And they were pretty much exhausted as well. There were some mighty fine points that helped with their overall fail, but I still have a desire that they played it out a bit better so more on both sides died. Commies and Nazis.

And Strasser.

Died around the same time. But so did monarchists and even other SS.

There was no general halt in 1941. What you're referring to a couple different halts that affected Army Group Center primarily, in its drive east.

After the battle of Smolensk, Army Group Center had no choice but to halt, and there was nobody that was actually against that halt. They had to take a couple weeks to halt and recover. The mobile divisions were in horrible shape, in terms of losses and broken down vehicles. Weakened units needed to reconstitute, amalgamate existing units with survivors and insert fresh reserves of replacement battalions. Spare parts barely across the Polish borders needed to reach the front and be used to fix broken tanks. Etc.

Meanwhile, the infantry divisions were not combat ready to start another 250 mile march to Moscow (as the crow flies). They'd forced march for hundreds of miles already and then just fighting a devastatingly destructive battle at Smolensk, that while resulting in massive Red Army losses also battered the German to the point that they reached over 100,000 casualties. Those infantry divisions couldn't take a break until the mobile divisions were rested, because they're the ones who relieved them and allowed the panzer and motorized infantry divisions to rest in the first place, so they too needed weeks to recover. Not just the men, the horses too, who were dying in droves and needed to be replaced.

Then there was the extremely precarious supply system that was absolutely impractical for further movement east. The Soviet rail gauges all had to be rebuilt to use German trains, there weren't enough captured Soviet engines and cars to rely on them, the rail line bridges were often too weak to support fully loaded trains, and there was major partisan issue because the speed of the drive thus far was largely the result of bypassing entire armies worth of soldiers, who were all still in the rear causing trouble. Supply trucks belonging to the mobile division, to bring a single gallon of fuel and a single artillery shell, were required to DRIVE ALL THE WAY BACK TO POLAND and then back just for resupply, which was destroying the truck fleet as they were in no condition to drive on the dust filled roads of central Russia.

Then there was the issues that Army Groups North and South faced. The former was stationed in terrain that made grand encirclement operations nearly impossible, while in the south they faced the bulk of the Red Army. Plus, they had less than half the mobile divisions of Army Group Center. Both were essentially stuck too, which resulted in a front line trace that had the center far too forward, with extremely exposed flanks.

Thus the decision was to delay Army Group Center's infantry armies advance while the two panzer groups went north and south respectively and assisted their compatriots. Which worked flawlessly. With the help, Army Group North was able to drive onto Leningrad, while in the south it resulted in the largest mass encirclement in human history at Kiev, which bagged over 3/4 of a million Red Army troops.

Even after that, the positioning of Guderians panzer group, coming from the south, greatly assisted him when the general advance toward Moscow was resumed, resulting in the massive encirclements at the Vyazma-Bryansk, which couldn't have happened if everyone drove straight west to east. That operation bagged another 600,000 Red Army troops.

The only way to defeat the Soviet Union was not about capturing a city that they were already planning on evacuating already, it was about destroying the Red Army and making it impossible for them to continue operations. The way to achieve that was to smash fronts and field armies, not drive deeper and deeper into Russia before winter.  

Neither Germany nor Japan were in a position to delay their wars, and for the same reason:  Oil.

Japan needed a large supply of oil both for their economy and to enable their military operations in Chine.  The US embargoed Japan and convinced the other oil-supplying nations to do the same because of those military operations, and Japan was going to have to abandon their plans sooner rather than later if they didn't get oil.  Germany was in exactly the same position, as they also were nowhere near self-sufficient in oil production, and England's Royal Navy prevented them from importing it via sea trade, leaving the Soviet Union as the only supply they could possibly reach.  The only thing that could convince Japan to hold off on attacking the US would have been a supply of oil, and Germany was in no position to supply it.  Both nations were therefore left with the choice of abandoning not only their expansionist plans, but the territories that they had already gained, or expand the war to get the resources they needed to carry on.  Both chose to expand their wars, and both found that to be a very bad idea in the end.

Mike

Remember Dresden.

Again, the Nazis being the Nazis guaranteed they would never create nuclear weapons during the war.

Totalitarian control of the economy is no minor commonality when discussing their economic stupidity.

I'd actually say, that if Germany had no allies at all in the war, they would have had more success.

Italy will do dumbass stuff in Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Albania and Greece.  

Japan will be of no help against the Soviets, they will fight your somewhat allies in the nationalist Chinese, and of course pick a fight with the biggest sleeping giant - USA.

If Germany wasnt bogged down bailing out Mussolini, they would have had the resources to fight the Soviets and had a much better shot at winning.

First of all, it's worth noting that even with all kinds of strategic mistakes (everyone makes them!) Germany was close to defeating the Soviet Union. Therefore, it might not have taken much to make a big difference. IMO, they would have been in a much better position if:

1. They had fully embraced / loved Jewish people. Not joking, the Jewish people could have done a LOT to support Germany's war effort. Hell, the scientists and business leaders alone had incredible value. But even the grunts... Israel's wars have shown that Jews can fight pretty damn well...and Germany needed all the good fighters they could get.

2. They had made the entire effort a European war against RussianCommunism rather than a "Germany Uber Alles / take over everyone" plan. The fact is, there just wasn't enough Germans to beat the Soviets in the field, but Germans + a good chunk of the rest of Europe could have.

3. Much better strategic coordination with Italy and Japan. Italy especially was a cluster. Their botched / untimely Yugoslavia invasion and their complete unwillingness to use their Navy to secure the Mediterranean was seriously problematic. Not to mention Japan refusing to close down Vladivostok, which they essentially had surrounded and yet acted like traffic cops waving in a never ending stream of American supply ships.

4. Honestly, this is the hardest one: getting kraut designers to focus on production efficiency rather than over engineering the HELL out of everything. Seriously, look at the STG-44 trigger assembly if you want to see a textbook example of wartime inefficiency.

IMO, those 4 would have been sufficient to defeat the Soviet Union. Wouldn't have been easy, but a world war never is.

Bonus: free the German army to fight a truly mobile war. Avoid urban warfare as much as possible. Surround it, and use NBC if necessary, but don't waste anyone in fighting street to street, where the Soviet soldier has the advantage. Screw symbolic victory and taking capitals. Make defeating the red army the ONLY objective. Which isn't to say that you don't destroy industrial centers, but fighting to the last man to hold a city is stupid. Scorched Earth and leave before the enemy attacks makes much more sense.

First thing:  Execute the guy who invented the interleaved wheel assembly for panther and Tiger tanks.

Yep, it's like they can't help themselves. If they can over engineer it, they did...right up until the last 6 months or the war or so. I like the STG44 example because we're all familiar to common triggers (AR, AK etc.) and the gun was designed late in the war when they needed max production with min resources in the worst possible way.

He fucked the Japanese by signing a peace agreement with Russia while they were still shooting each other.  The Japs returned the favor shortly after.

So the history books written by the victors tell us.

What is the Golden Rule?

He with the gold, makes the rules.

From mid 1916 onwards, Britain and France we economic hostages of the United States.

Little known fact most people don’t know is that in 1916, Britain, France and Germany all wanted to stop the war.

They had no more national sovereignty, being that they would now have to go cap in hand to America for their war loans to prevent their economic collapse.

The 2 best things that ever happened to America economically were:

WW1

WW2

Follow the money, it never lies.

Furthermore, whenever the Dulles brothers are involved with something, there is always some seriously shady shit going on.

OST

AJP Taylor actually had a much different analysis:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_the_Second_World_War

https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Second-World-War/dp/0684829479

Fantastic book, and highly regarded by historians - a classic of most 20th century history courses.

TL;DR:

-Hitler had a lot of ideas, but was pretty loose / opportunistic in implementing them.

-Hitler did NOT expect to fight WW2. This is the #1 conclusion of AJP's book.

After his easy success in Czechoslovakia, and the totally cucked response from Chamberlain ('peace in our time'), Hitler fully expected that Poland would be CZ 2.0.

When Britain and France did not cuck out over poland, and instead declared war, Hitler was shocked and that then lead to a scrambled but hugely successful invasion of France, kicking off WW2 in earnest.

Basically, his argument was that WW2 was not a diabolical, well thought out Nazi master plan, but rather a more or less improvised, slap dash effort taken about after a surprise declaration of War by Britain and France after the invasion of Poland.

Needless to say, AJP's work was hugely controversial at the time, and remains so today. But it's an interesting hypothesis, and meticulously researched and written.


As far as 'needing to absorb other Nations to sustain themselves,' that is not true. France is some of the most fertile growing lands in Europe / the world. Combined with Poland, Belgium, CZ, Austria + All of the Global French colonies (Algeria, Vietnam, etc) Germany would have had more then enough to be self sufficient.

The proof of that is the modern EU of today; Hitlers territory in 1940 is the most productive parts of the modern EU today.

Had 1940 Uber Reich been able to achieve a separate peace with Britain, and avoided a US entry into the war, by 1950 we would have seen Uber Reich resuming major exports / manufacturing to Britain and the US, much in the way Germany alone had been doing in the pre-WW1 era, where Germany was the 'China of Europe' for manufacturing exports.

A truly shrewd Uber Reich may even have managed a military alliance with UK + US as a 'bullwark against communism.' Arguing that yes, we're a bunch of evil nazi's, but we're keeping the Soviets penned in Russia.

Notably, the US partnered extensively with former Nazis after the war precisely for that purpose - to be used against the Soviets.

The problem with this is that no one sane is absolutely sure about something so complicated...and i don't believe Hitler was insane. Even if you're really really sure that some other country is going to respond to certain inputs in a certain way, there's always some degree of "but what if they don't?", especially when you're talking about something with such high stakes. France had to be punished for Versailles, and the Communist horde in the east were dangerous subhuman scum that had to be fought as well.

Also, France and England did cuck out over Poland. Setzenkrieg was a thing...the limeys and frogs didn't actually do anything but talk tough and move some troops around...not like they stormed the Rheinland.

He wasn't such a bad guy. I mean he did kill Hitler after all.

Anyone who thinks Chamberlain was an appeaser shouldn't be taken seriously.  

Britain couldn't have done anything in 1938 even if they had wanted to.

Britain had only 2 squadrons of modern fighters at the time.  By the outbreak of war it had almost 40 squadrons of modern fighters.  

The British Army more than doubled in size from Munich to the outbreak of war.  

Chamberlain came home from Munich and instituted the largest British peacetime rearmament program in British history.  Appeasers don't do that.

Chamberlain bought Britain the time it needed to actually be able to fight a war.  Chamberlain had no choice but to play for time.  

The man most responsible for British victory in the Battle of Britain, was Chamberlain, not Churchill.  

The British are some shady fucks, if they tell you they are doing something nice, watch the fuck out.  

Will watch later.

LOL, or with the US Government.  I think we were fully prepared to go either way (Hitler/Stalin) at that point

Yeah, still not seeing the difference.  Communism killed a shitload of Slavs, too.  And drop the "whites" crap, we're talking about WWII times, here, not modern communist movements.  "Whites" as a race didn't even exist back then outside of America, and "browning the world" sure as hell was never part of Soviet policy.

Fascism directly led to the worst destruction Europe had seen since the Dark Ages, and they were hand-in-hand with communists until the bullets started flying between them.  You really think it was all about protecting "Western Ideals" (whatever those are), and that it was only because they had a mirror-image opponent to spar with that things went so wrong?  It wasn't simply a struggle over who got to call the shots in Italy, Germany, or Spain; local upstarts or the Ruskies?

Fascism has a real bad habit of going batshit insane and crashing-out so quickly it is rarely able to realize the sorts of totalitarian controls seen under generational communist regimes (has a fascist regime ever lasted beyond the first cult of personality ruler?  If so it's quite rare).  That's the only reason you don't see travel bans, widespread expropriation of industry, all-seeing intelligence orgs, et cetera; areas like Spain that suffered under relatively stable fascist rule also had many restrictions similar to communist areas (travel permits, police state shit, etc) within the limitations of Spaniard incompetence.  Gestapo is the same thing as Stasi, and nothing about the fascist ideology precludes equally totalitarian policy (therefore it's equally inevitable)

But least the Nazi's believed in family values, eh Walter Sobchak?  This conversation seems real familiar too, of me explaining why both ideologies are equally awful for equal reasons, and you trying to defend the ideology of the goddam Nazis.

No tech or machinery was gonna save them once America was involved.  War with Russia was inevitable (Stalin would definitely pounce if Germany came off its war footing).  The only smart move the Germans could have made was to force an armistice and very quickly work to repair relations with the Allies (because Stalin was an implacable foe).  Unfortunately, by the time the war was much under way at all, Hitler had so provoked the world that suing for peace on his terms was unlikely.  Really, he should have worked toward better relations with the US over Russia prior to the war (we were always going to be kingmaker) and not needlessly linked himself with the Japanese, strategically.  But lingering feelings over WWI of course made that impossible, so he had to side with Stalin in order to neutralize that threat instead of allowing WWII to start by Stalin's hand (which was also incompatible with the blitzkrieg strategy).  Of course such foresight would have been positively superhuman, and he'd have had to have been more like Putin than Hitler to pull off such a delicate strategy; his personality simply wasn't suitable for finding a viable long-term path to victory for Germany.  He was all about identifying enemy weaknesses & attacking them, when a more patient focus on addressing Germany's weaknesses & defending them would have likely been more successful in the long run --but defense isn't as sexy as offense, and fascism is even more about image than communism.

They'd simply outsourced a lot of it to allies in Switzerland and Spain

Delay of game until such time as it can be decisively won by one of the players (mass airpower being the 'x factor' missing in WWI)

He also had a grudge.  It'd be like us conquering Brazil randomly to assert our sovereignty, instead of Mexico; sure they're a more significant strategic threat and their elimination would open the door to taking all of South America, but good luck convincing people to go along with it for very long when we have no real history of conflict to riff on.

Very well put; Hitler was ultimately crying for the moon.  The combination of ingredients he had to work with simply couldn't resolve any other way (his meteoric rise to power by force of personality, rapid ambitious expansion, anger/betrayal of powerful players now on his margins, and collapse once they finally turn to address his threat with their full might)

Nazis press on to capture Moscow
Soviet government collapses (I think it's a realistic outcome at that level of disruption, similar to their exit in WWI)
Nazis buttfucked by Allies in their moment of over-extended triumph
Nazi government collapses

Hard to imagine what the aftermath of so many power vacuums would be (I don't see us Marshal Planning all of Europe AND Russia AND Japan) but Russia would be far more likely a far more significant and far less malevolent player on the world stage today.  Probably a cluster of ethno-basketcase states under an assortment of little-Stalins, but with 3-5x its current population and therefore a larger global presence (possibly even a powerful one after eighty years of relative stability).  It'd be interesting to consider what impacts that would have had on China; I don't know if the fall of Russia would have helped strengthen Chang Kai-Shek enough to hold off the Maoists, or possibly diverted the Japanese to Soviet lands over Chinese ones.   The Pacific seems to have fewer alternate endings than the European theater, but the loss of the Soviets would have definitely changed things.

So the difference between the ideologies is entire races, religions and classes wiped out vs. allowed to live and you still think they’re the same?

One ideology has no capitalism and the other tolerates some capitalism.

If they were the same why would the Catholic Church bend over backwards to help the Nazis.  

Your comments regarding the history or communism and the goals even then show how little you know of the plan for communist subversion of Western Civilization.  Moscow directly funded and directed basically every other communist movement, including some very famous Americans leaders in the US.  Even before the war Moscow directly controlled large numbers of British politicians on BOTH sides advocating the break up of the Empire.

Look at the Cambridge 5.  

How is that conclusion even possible for someone who has actually read some of the primary source documents regarding each ideology.

You sir are WAY out of line.  Just because I bring attention to the fact that it is intellectually lazy to label 2 ideologies as the same and list the differences between them, mean I am “defending Nazis”.

Please list one time where I have ever defended national socialism.  

I have expressed my views many times on this board that the British Empire should have NEVER been allowed to fall.  

But I get it, anyone who disagrees with your binary 8 year world view is: “literally Hitler”.  



Can we have an intelligent discussion without the insinuations.  



I would really recommend you read the primary source documents on this subject, like any good historian does.  Your posts reflect that you don't even know what you don't even know.  

You wrote a lot of nonsensical filler in your post but didn’t even address any of my points.

lol, no

Yeah... No biggie. Meh.

Perception is reality.

This perception of Eastward expansion was a Germanic one held by numerous influencial political and social sphere people pre-dating the rise (or even birth) of Hitler. A very popular one with the monarchists and other Nationalist groups to return to an earlier idealized mythological territorial possession  by Germanic tribes.

Poland. It had been divided up in the 18th Century and partitioned out to the Habsburgs, Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian empire. There had been a hard push to Germanize the Poles pre-WW I. Without success. After WW I the state of Poland was reconstituted by the League of Nations. Which created a bitter point of resentment with post-war Germany.

Germans had been immigrating Eastward for millennia. And they lived in substantial numbers there since the mid-1700s. As had the Jews escaping persecution from Christianised Europe from the early Middle Ages.

The reasons for German eastward expansion were many fold. The consolidation of all Germanic people into one Germanic superstate. The elimination of bad influences on Germanic race (cohabitation and having offspring with inferior races- Poles/ Slavs and Jews). A return to a mythologic time of purity of the Germanic Race as the superior and dominant civilization rightfully subjugating it's inferiors (Social Darwinism) for it's own benefit and their detriment.


Additionally, lebensraum was to provide a buffer between rural Germans in the East with the more suburbanized, more modernized Germans of the West. This was part of the Volkish appeal. A return to an earlier life pre-industrial and community centered, absent the badness of the moral restrictions of slave mentality Christian religion.

Your rationalisation of the lack of or motivation for Eastern conquest is at odds with Germanic thought in the moment.

Germany was an industrial powerhouse with a severe lack of cashflow. But they were very clever in how they got the buildup done. Mefo bills, Gestapo integration into workforce, slave labor and Keynesian economics moved shit right along. The outsourcing and the closed society control of resources, possessed and acquired, for their war economy got shit done. Pillage and plunder to be the payoff.

Yep. The Treaty of Versailles was probably the one salient point that brought all Germans together in agreement.

Subbed for later purview.

The day he declared war on The United States of America was the day he lost the war.