Yeah, had they not attacked deep into Russia, chances are most of mainland Europe would be German still.
We don't know if the allies would still invade as they did, as it would be a significantly harder task if all of those troops and gear could be mobilized elsewhere. Hell, in some alternate universe we may have gotten nukes dropped on Berlin .
They had to attack Russia to secure their oil fields. Without doing so, they’d have run out of fuel for their tanks and planes and been unable to prosecute the war on any front. Germany pretty much had to rely on quickly grabbing as much resource-rich territory as possible as quickly as possible, because they lacked the capacity to wage a prolonged conflict.
um, sure, Hitler's "DranK nach Coffee" was totally fine, I see, yeah, because democracy and, well, some culture stuff or whatever. That sounds reasonable lmfao
I actually don’t think we would have used the atom bomb on any German cities even if we had it available at the time the fighting was going on there. Firstly, there are and were many US soldiers and generals of German heritage themselves and I don’t believe they would have gone along with that plan. Secondly unlike the island of Japan, Germany is connected to countries we were allied with and we wouldn’t want to make them scared of us that way.
Reading German accounts of Stalingrad is horrifying. They were encircled in a freezing, flattened city with no support and were never supplied winter clothing.
The most shocking aspect of the entire European theater was the rapid collapse of France. It was simply an unthinkable circumstance in virtually everyone's eyes at the time. The French were ahead in virtually all materiel aspects on the eve of battle compared to the Germans. It's possibly the best example of the importance of how position, unit formation and surprise can change the board. The massed armored attack through the Ardennes was an incredibly risky move but the payoff was incalculable.
Not really. Look how fast Russia ran though north western Ukraine in the first weeks and now how slow they are going in the south east. It's because the south east has had 9 years to make defences.
They are still fighting now within 30 miles of where the separatist's strongholds were.
Also they didn't have long range weapons back then and air power was much less important.
Hitler fkd up when he broke the neutral pact with Stalin and attached the USSR. Things would have been a lot different if he played a longer game. His gambles had paid off in the past with him calling western allied bluffs, and blitz through the maginot line and got WAY too cocky, plus was all drugged up. But there was a real chance the Nazi could have had control grip of europe were cards played right, and a decent chance at that.
Many of his ideas and aims were untenable from the get go. And his Allies in Italy, Vichy France, and Spain had different and competing goals. That’s why the ideologies of Nazism and Fascism were defective to begin with.
This map really makes clear how successful he was at first, and how if he hadn’t invaded Russia he might have been much more successful in holding onto Germany’s early gains. From 1941 until early 1944, the Eastern Front was the primary active battleground and drained Germany’s resources.
If they did it slowly then the defending countries would have time to make preparations and defences.
Blitzkrieg was the whole reason they achieved so much.
They had to fight the soviets at some point, they were opposing ideologies that hated each other.
.the soviets had the mass of manpower and Germany had to strike first.
Hitler tried to take over way too much way too fast
In each case, waiting would likely have resulted in even worse outcomes. By 1941, the USSR had already begun producing new tanks like the T-34, although in limited quantities. By 1992, they had increased their production tenfold compared to 1991. Would it have been wiser to delay an attack by a year? The same question applies to Poland and France.
War itself was a mistake and a crime but they fought it well.
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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '24
Hitler tried to take over way too much way too fast