IS Seelöwe The Only Way To German Victory?

[Grimm Reaper]

loughery111, that link can charitably be described as utterly worthless even among the normal low standards of Axiswanks.

From the absurdity of more than a million men killed by nerve gas without the use of poison gas even being realized for weeks to the Axis being able to go from Kursk to an assault on Moscow in barely a month.

I would class that alongside something showing the British winning in 1939 by spraying Germany with anthrax, with the British doing this 'just because'.

[Dave in St. Louis]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

Since no one has yet explained how Malta and especially Gibralter are gone in the first place...

I mentioned this in the kickoff post for this thread. See War And Remembrance (paperback edition pages 276-7) by Herman Wouk for a starting point.

[Dave in St. Louis]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

You have not established that this wins the war for Germany and you have made no effort to show why this dramatic change of policy takes place, without which it is not plausible.

Context?

IOW who and what are you replying to here?

[Grimm Reaper]

Dave, you refer to an author who states that a Med strategy could have worked while giving no details as to how this would happen.

In particular you make some peculiar comment about Raeder being able to take Gibralter, when only a massive air/land force requiring either an Axis Spain or a Spain conquered by the Axis could have made that work.

You weren't the one who offered the claim that the moderate battle of Kursk could somehow be turned into a war winner.

[Dave in St. Louis]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

Dave, you refer to an author who states that a Med strategy could have worked while giving no details as to how this would happen.

Sorry, but I'm not going to retype long passages out of a paperback book. You've been given the reference - go read it.

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

In particular you make some peculiar comment about Raeder being able to take Gibralter, when only a massive air/land force requiring either an Axis Spain or a Spain conquered by the Axis could have made that work.

You weren't the one who offered the claim that the moderate battle of Kursk could somehow be turned into a war winner.

Crete was thought to be impossible as well. Why is Gibraltar impossible?

[Grimm Reaper]

Dave, beyond that Raeder and the Kriegsmarine had very little to do with Crete, which was also much closer to Luftwaffe bases and vastly more vulnerable to boot? And still nearly ended in disaster for the Germans.

[loughery111]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

You have not established that this wins the war for Germany and you have made no effort to show why this dramatic change of policy takes place, without which it is not plausible.

Ok let's try this then: Use the POD as described in the link I posted. Seems like it would do the trick. If it wouldn't, I'd like to see a specific reason why you think not.

Now, let's take a quick look at Kursk. If the Germans win there in such a fashion as to kill the overwhelming majority of Soviet troops while leaving their equipment and supplies largely intact, it will do the following: kill 10% of the Red Army's manpower in 1943, capture 25% of its modern armored units, capture 25% of its artillery pieces of virtually all types, capture significant stores of ammunition and other support infrastructure for the above, and, most importantly, convince the Soviets that they can keep doing this.

Looking at whether the above is possible or not, my conclusion is that it is. Dispersing nerve agents is difficult, but no more so (significantly less, in fact) than dispersing conventional chemical warfare agents. WWI Germany had the knowledge necessary to create wide-ranging saturation bombardments of extremely large sections of Allied lines with mustard gas. Given that the toxicity threshold for nerve agents is lower by orders of magnitude, it is therefore easier, though no simpler, to arrange for a bombardment that will do exactly the same thing with a nerve agent.

A quick aside: Astrodragon, I looked into in briefly and it looks (on the basis of extremely cursory examination) like the Soviets' problems stemmed from trying to plan out long-range nerve gas engagements using ballistic missiles as a delivery system. The US eventually settled on airbursting a missile to scatter bomblets in a saturation pattern, which would then themselves burst a hundred or so feet up. In any case, the Germans are fighting an engagement where several thousand pieces of artillery with nerve gas-filled shells and several hundred dive bombers with nerve gas-filled bombs were available and within range.

Astrodragon is right, in that the Germans can't take down the entire salient with nerve gas alone. It is, indeed, too big, now that I've had a chance to look. But what they can do is saturate the areas they need to break through, then send in decontamination teams to keep an eye on when they can move. The Russians can't very well pull out of the salient through the contaminated zone, and the Germans can continue pounding the crap out of their now cut off men. Provided they hit the big concentrations of armor and artillery with nerve gas early on, the Russians cannot break out at all, and the Germans will know when they can move to cut off the surviving troops because they know what they've done to the place. This means that the Germans can capture much of the salient-deployed armor and artillery and kill or capture absolutely huge numbers of troops at no more than minimal (set against the Russian) losses to themselves. This isn't the 3- or 4-1 of OTL Eastern Front battles in 1942 and '43... this is the 20- or 30-1 of total defeat.

Now, what happens after Kursk? Well, the Germans have, for the moment, used up their entire stocks of Tabun and Sarin. The good news for them is that those stocks were the result of 5 years of extremely desultory production. In the case of Sarin, they can be producing at least 10 times their total output to date every month, within a few months of Kursk. I can't find the figures for Tabun, but given that they were able in OTL to produce something like 9,000 tons of it between 1943 (1000ish tons available) and war's end (10,000 tons captured by the Allies), they shouldn't have a problem there either.

What does that mean? It means that the Soviets can no longer use their only advantage: numbers. Simply put, any Soviet army that concentrates to either beat off a German attacker or to conduct an offensive will henceforth be pounded with Tabun and Sarin. The countermeasures at the time were essentially nonexistent, given that the suits required to avoid exposure cannot really be worn for more than half an hour of combat (reclamation is a different story, not as strenuous), not enough time to get out of the effect radius of a dispersing nerve gas. This all means that the Soviets simply cannot engage a concentrated German army on anything resembling equal terms. If they try, they're looking at casualties they just cannot survive. If they don't, the Germans have complete and total tactical and strategic initiative. Either way, the paradigm of Russians wearing down the German forces is now dead and gone. The Germans can push offensives as fast as their logistical capability will allow and still not run into serious opposition, either because they destroy it or because it never concentrates against them.

But, if they're smart, they'll take certain areas (Leningrad, Stalingrad, any existing salients, defensible terrain) and use the nerve gas to prevent the Red Army from taking anything back or even concentrating for an eventual offensive. This allows them to pull back dozens of divisions and sit them on the Atlantic Wall, making D-Day quite impossible. Obviously, they cannot use nerve gas in Italy against Western troops, or in the UK itself, because the retaliation will consist of weaponized anthrax that will more or less depopulate Germany. But they can certainly use the troops and armor from back east to beat off any landing attempts or moves up the Italian peninsula, and transfer aircraft from the Soviet Union as well. While they cannot win in the West, neither can the US and UK. And, having demonstrated that they can hit the UK at will with the V2, the US will not be allowed to start dropping atomic weaponry; it will be viewed as an attempt to "fight the war to the last Briton." Thus, a peace treaty in the West is inevitable. When they partly demobilize, the Germans can go back to kicking the USSR into submission.

[Dave in St. Louis]

Originally Posted by Astrodragon

The issues of the volume of supplies was never interdiction, it was port and transport capacity.

Really? Major Hatton writes on http://www.almc.army.mil/ that Tripoli was capable of doing 1500 tons a day, Benghazi 2700 tons a day and Tobruk 1500 tons a day. However, due to RAF interdiction and other factors, Benghazi and Tobruk could only manage 750 and 600 tons a day respectively. If you get rid of the bottlenecks at Benghazi and Tobruk, you double the tonnage available for transport on a per day basis. That has to make a big difference.

[loughery111]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

loughery111, that link can charitably be described as utterly worthless even among the normal low standards of Axiswanks.

From the absurdity of more than a million men killed by nerve gas without the use of poison gas even being realized for weeks to the Axis being able to go from Kursk to an assault on Moscow in barely a month.

I would class that alongside something showing the British winning in 1939 by spraying Germany with anthrax, with the British doing this 'just because'.

I'm not saying you need to listen to the whole link as if he is God... just the fact that the Germans can win Kursk and keep winning if they're willing to use nerve gas in a tactical sense. See above, and tell me what is wrong you think is wrong with my (much less Axiswanking) take on things. Normally I'm among those arguing that the Axis aren't going to win... and with their OTL level of incompetence, they aren't... but a few altered decisions make that a possibility.

[Adam]

So they break out chemical weapons just like that?

You do realize that's a serious escalation of the conflict right?

[Dave in St. Louis]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

Dave, beyond that Raeder and the Kriegsmarine had very little to do with Crete, which was also much closer to Luftwaffe bases and vastly more vulnerable to boot? And still nearly ended in disaster for the Germans.

Admiral King had very little to do with a lot of things, but he still argued for certain strategies in the highest councils.

[Dave in St. Louis]

Originally Posted by Adam

So they break out chemical weapons just like that?

You do realize that's a serious escalation of the conflict right?

From a leader and a military that seemed to specialize in escalation of the conflict? The biggest mystery is why they didn't, not why they would.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Dave in St. Louis

From a leader and a military that seemed to specialize in escalation of the conflict? The biggest mystery is why they didn't, not why they would.

Because I'm pretty sure Herr Hitler didn't want to die an early, choking death.

[Grimm Reaper]

loughery111, allow me to explain how this works. You've made an extremely dubious series of claims without absolutely nothing to support any of these claims except a bit of writing of exceptionally low quality even for Wikipedia. It is your job to establish the plausibility of a concept, not that of others to disprove it.

Now you've moved on to an 'improved' concept which would attribute to the Germans unrivalled precision and efficiency using thousands of tons of nerve gas in a massive operation for the first time in history, followed by an entire series of strategic developments which somehow none of the Allied powers ever respond to or even try to respond to I'm seriously doubting your interest in the facts.

Dave, and they can't remove the bottlenecks without first winning in the Med and they can't win in the Med because of the bottlenecks. And your post stated specifically that Raeder would be the one taking Gibralter.

[Dave in St. Louis]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

And your post stated specifically that Raeder would be the one taking Gibralter.

"The claim is made that Raeder made a case for taking Gibraltar in 1940."

I fail to see how "made a case for" translates into "would be the one taking" Gibraltar.


Peeve: Can you start spelling Gibraltar correctly? It is driving me (more) nuts.

[loughery111]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

loughery111, allow me to explain how this works. You've made an extremely dubious series of claims without absolutely nothing to support any of these claims except a bit of writing of exceptionally low quality even for Wikipedia. It is your job to establish the plausibility of a concept, not that of others to disprove it.

Now you've moved on to an 'improved' concept which would attribute to the Germans unrivalled precision and efficiency using thousands of tons of nerve gas in a massive operation for the first time in history, followed by an entire series of strategic developments which somehow none of the Allied powers ever respond to or even try to respond to I'm seriously doubting your interest in the facts.

Ok... I really fail to see how "unrivaled precision" enters into this anywhere; the damned delivery system is a ballistic artillery shell, the behavior of which has been understood since the 1700's, followed by gas dispersal, which, though it cannot be precisely modeled on the fly in this time period, can certainly be predicted based on wind speeds and direction. So it's not exactly ridiculous to say that they can get the stuff on target the first time they use it... there are exactly zero fundamental new principles involved. They've also been testing its properties since 1938, so they know, within reason, how to conduct operations around it. Yes, it is the standard nightmare of introducing a new weapons system; no, it is not used perfectly; yes, it works pretty damned well nonetheless, because they're at least aware of what it is and know how to treat it with caution. The Soviets do not.

Now... how exactly are the Allies supposed to respond to this? The Western Allies were not ready for D-Day in mid-1943. Assuming that they notice (which I admit they will) that the Germans are shifting divisions around to meet them if they try to land, and that the Soviets are reeling, WHAT EXACTLY are they supposed to do about it? They can't exactly invade Europe through Italy, and they certainly cannot land in Normandy at this stage. So no second front. A step-up of the air campaign? Maybe, but they're already running at full tilt there... so they do as they did in OTL, not because they're not responding, but because everything intelligent that they can do to respond was already being done as quickly as possible.

For the Soviets, what countermeasures do you propose they use against the nerve agents? Obviously, they will retaliate with every chemical weapon they have; but these are conventional and German troops are already equipped and trained to deal with them. Mustard gas is not a game-changer here; Sarin very much is. So while the Germans take some (heavy) casualties due to Soviet chemical retaliation, the fact of the matter is that nothing in their arsenal will even come close to rivaling the casualties the Germans can inflict using nerve agents.

Aside from not going into enough detail to mention that the Germans' plans don't actually work absolutely perfectly, what exactly am I overlooking? If you asked me to sum up the Allied plans in WWII in as short a space as I used above, it would sound like everything went perfectly for them, too, even though it didn't. So just because I didn't mention every minor setback doesn't mean the Germans miraculously used everything they have perfectly.

Now, quit being patronizing and actually tell me why you think my last argument, and, I'm sure, this one, are wrong. I would really like to hear what fundamental flaw there was in anything I said in my last post.

[Grimm Reaper]

Dave, you'll never fit in here if you insist on clinging to those last vestiges of sanity. I let mine go long ago and you can see I'm fine*.

*Not to be taken as suggesting fine in the psychological sense.

And how precisely was Raeder to take Jibralah when Spain would not enter the war on the Axis side and Hitler was unwilling to conquer a fellow fascist nation?

[Adam]

For one, it would invite the Western Allies to respond with their own stocks of biological/chemical weapons. OTL, the US shipped two thousand mustard gas bombs to Italy in preparation for such an event. Here after the German nerve weapons usage in Ostfront, its going to be a lot more than just those tons - theatre commanders will not only get them in quantities, but the authorization to use them at their own discretion. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

Then we have the spectre of Anthrax. British Anthrax. As the likelihood increases of Germany responding with more and more biochem attacks, so too does the day approaches when massive use of Anthrax turns Central Europe into a literal No Man's Land.

[Dave in St. Louis]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

Dave, you'll never fit in here if you insist on clinging to those last vestiges of sanity. I let mine go long ago and you can see I'm fine*.

*Not to be taken as suggesting fine in the psychological sense.

And how precisely was Raeder to take Jibralah

Once again, Raeder (and the Kreigsmarine) wasn't.

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

when Spain would not enter the war on the Axis side and Hitler was unwilling to conquer a fellow fascist nation?

You've been given a starting point to look at. It is clear that you haven't (because you haven't had time). There isn't much point in going forward until you do.

[Grimm Reaper]

Dave, if you actually believe any suggestions you make can't be challenged until such time as anyone challenging them first takes the time to obtain and read any particular book you refer to...