Hitler's Meddling

[dmz23]

Hitlers interference did indeed cost Germany the war.
Less than two months into the Barbarossa campaign,the German army stood on the doorstep of the greatest military victory in history.Soviet commanders still elected to fight on the frontiers inviting encirclement and destruction.Once the germans were through the front line defences,the pace and depth of their attack stopped the soviets forming coherent defensive fronts leaving isolated pockets to be cut off and destroyed.Everywhere the panzers stood victorious,having come further and faster than any armed force in history.
At that moment,Moscow and victory lay in Hitlers grasp.All four soviet armies arrayed against Army group centre had been encircled and annihilated,the Germans wrecked 114 of 160 Soviet divisions.Soviet commanders from division to front level were arrested and shot.Divisions were ground into dust.Timoshenko reports to Stalin stated,'We have no trained forces of adequate strength covering the Vyazma-Moscow axis;the main deficiency--no tanks'.Soviet forces to the North and south were fighting for their lives,unable to send reinforcements to Moscow.Columns of panzers roamed deep in the Soviet rear,sowing panic and confusion.Witn six more weeks of good flying and dry roads,the panzer commanders and the German infantry had plenty of time to rout the Soviet remnants standing between them and the Ultimate prize-the Kremlin.
The German military commanders had already recognised that Moscow should be the principle objective.But,Hitler would not listen.He diverted the armour of Army group centre to the Ukraine and the advance toward Moscow slowed to the pace of the weary infantry as the panzers moved off to their new task.The time wasted in sealing the Kiev pocket allowed the Soviets two months in which they transformed their capital from an easy prize to a concrete studded fortress.Hitler quite simply threw away his best and perhaps only chance to achieve a decision in the east and victory in WW2.
Issues regarding Barbarossa:
1]Logistics,if logistics made an August advance to Moscow impossible,in dry weather,how could Von Bock do so in autumn and early winter,in appalling weather,with six fewer hours of daylight each day and against ever increasing opposition.For advance he did,driving slowly forward after the battles in the Ukraine,through mud and snow,with fresh Soviet divisions springing up overnight,over broken down roads and rails that grew worse by the day.Operation Typhoon exceeded the Kiev pocket battle by crushing eight of the nine soviet armies defending Moscow-600,000 troops,1242 tanks,and 5412 artillery pices were written off the Soviet order of battle.
2]Moscows importance,Some people believe that Stalin could have survived the fall of Moscow as the czar had in 1812.However much had changed since the days of Napoleon.In 1941,Moscow was the communications hub of European Russia,the only significant lateral communications ran through Moscow;without them,Stalin would lose the ability to shift strategic reserves to meet the gravest threats.With Moscow lost,a defensive campaign west of the Volga would be impossible at a strategic level.
3]Industry,If Hitler had not been quite so idiotic and allowed the Wehrmacht to continue its drive on Moscow in August,Soviet industry would be in grave danger.20 per cent of Soviet industry was located around the Moscow oblast and much more would lay in the path of the advancing German armies.In later months,the Soviets made heroic industrial relocation efforts,but in the Summer of 1941 much of their industry remained in the path of the hard-marching German army.If they could be taken or destroyed,the Red army would likely never rise again.
4]Relief efforts-Without the Kiev pocket significant Soviet forces would remain in the South.Some people argue that Army group centre could be attacked on its Southern flank by a soviet thrust from the Ukraine, if the Germans had advanced toward Moscow in August 1941.This arguement is not really supportable.Army group south had already destroyed much of the Soviet armour in the Ukraine in the battle of Uman.In any case,by attacking North against Army group centre,the Soviets would be in grave danger of having their weakened position overrun by Army group South.

The evidence is overwhelming that given the Operational freedom,the Wehrmacht could have captured Moscow in September, 1941 and knocked Russia out of the war for good.Germany in 1941 made many good choices,but its undoubted Military excellence was offset by the fact that its commander-in-chief was an amateur.Hitler could not focus on a single strategic objective-whose capture or destruction would lead to a decisive victory.The decision to seal the Kiev pocket resulted in a great victory but time was lost as the Wehrmacht commanders realised,but Hitler choose to ignore their warnings.The disruption to barbarossas time schedule doomed the Nazi regime.In a real sense the war for Germany had ended,for although the Wehrmacht would fight another 40 months,inflicting terrible casualities on the Red army,true victory lay forever beyond its grasp.

 

[Agrippa]

Agrippa

Actually the Germans had a fully operational trans-atlantic heavy bomber in the later half of 1942 it was the Me-264 Amerika Bomber, it was capable of delivering a heavy bomb load on a one way trip to Washington D.C or a light bomb load on a round trip, Messeschmitt had argued for over two years for the large four engined heavy to go into production but Goering and Hitler would not allow the bomber to go into production, and on another aircraft the He-177 Greif Heinkel like Messerschmitt ran up against a wall of indifference by Goering to allow the He-177 to be converted into a four engined heavy rather than the coupled twin heavy, and again they were denide until it was too late.

Germany had the aircraft, the technology, and the know how but thay lacked one crucial ingrediant and that was capable leaders with foresight.
Again incorrect about Germany's industrial capacity.

The He-177 program was indeed a complete disaster. Designing a heavy bomber that can also serve as a dive bomber? Was anyone thinking that day? I will say I admire the engineer willing to go to work everyday if he has to deal with that project.

I'm not too familiar with the Amerika bomber program and when it would realistically be available (the US didn't get its intercontinentals until the B-36 in c. 1950), but, even assuming a functional bomber in '42, Germany could not have launched a sustained bombing campaign against the US or USSR. To put things in perspective, the US lost nearly 7,000 heavy bombers in the Europe during the war. There is no reason to expect the 264 to be any more immune to fighter interception than the B-17s and B-24s. (They would face even heavier losses, since many damaged bombers would never make it back over the Atlantic or the steppes or Russia.) Additionally, strategic bombing requires that you keep hitting targets multiple time, else the user simply repairs it. Germany could not build a few hundred heavy bombers and shut down, say, the NY factory system with one surprise raid. It would need thousands of them. And each heavy bomber means two, three, or four fewer 109s or 190s for the Luftwaffe.

A force of a few dozen heavy bombers may have been cost effective - launch a raid on NYC and the USAAF is forced to station a few fighter groups on the East Coast for a year instead of deploying it overseas (much like fear of a Japanese invasion after Pearl Harbor lead to the creation of useless fortifications and AA batteries on the West Coast). They could also have joined the declining force of Kondors in search for Atlantic convoys. But the sinking of a few more merchant ships and the delay in the deployment of a few dozen fighters to the South Pacific or North Africa isn't going to win the war for Germany - delay the end by a few days/weeks, perhaps, but nothing more.

 

[Agrippa]

It wasn't impossible for Germany to be better prepared, but Hitler forbad any further war preparations - he was convinced that his bluff would work one more time. For instance the army's stocks of artillery ammo were depleted after the Polish campaign and not refilled again until spring 1940. It is true that German finances were in a mess, but we can't expect the consequences of that to be like those in a capitalistic free society. Try to have a look on Soviet economy, and they shouldn't have been able to exist at all. In the end they didn't, but for decades such systems simply can squeeze much more out of the poor people of the country.

The ammunition problem was one of those inefficiencies that could have been solved. Ammunition production ramped up and then cooled down as several points in the years before the outbreak of the war. Part of the problem was never knowing when war was going to break out: would it be Austria? Czechoslovakia? Poland? But a large part of the problem was balance of payments. Rearmament rose and fell with iron imports. It wasn't that Hitler forbad further preparations, but he concentrated production on weapons systems rather than ammunition. That meant that the winter of '39-'40 had to focus on ammunition production rather than weapon production.

One big failure came in the last months of 1941, when it looked like Operation Typhoon would take Moscow. The German high command was planning next years armament initiatives and slashed the Heer's share, chosing to focus on the air force and the navy to focus on Britain and what they saw as an imminent air war with the US. The army, interestingly enough, agreed with the measure. Of course, when Typhoon failed, everyone realized just how screwed they were and the plans for the next year had to be redone.

The line from PzI to VI appear quite stringent, and the Pz IV was in production for all of WWII. The same applies to Bf 109, the most numerous plane in WWII. The focus on very heavy tanks or bombers instead of fighters (Me 263) had its origin in Hitler and proved very expensive, but that is another matter than many different models. The great diversity came mainly though impressing captured materiel.

If you want many different models and intricate design go to UK.

I was thinking more the many sub-varieties of all the weapons systems produced by the Third Reich. The US standardized as much of its production as possible; IIRC, the US Army used only four different engines in its vehicles. Contrast this approach with the Germans, where, for example, the PzKfw IVF-1 shared only 40% of the parts with the PzKfw IVF-2! By constantly adding small, little improvements the Germans got a minor improvement in combat capability but greatly magnified their logistics problems and hindered mass production.

Here I agree. Large strategic bomber forces were very expensive, and probably wasn't worth the effort. I wonder however if a limited campaign early in the war could have diverted significant resources to US home defence. Something like a floatplanes dropping bombs now and then at night over eastcoast cities. The floatplanes could be refueld at sea by "Milkcows".

That would have been a viable strategy. Just get the US population a bit panicked and keep a hundred or so fighters from the front for the loss of a few unimportant aircraft.

The allies for much of the war actually thought the Luftwaffe was two or three times bigger than it actually was. I agree that Germany just couldn't double the Luftwaffe but putting even more emphasis on technology like SAMs might have paid off. I wouldn't call the Bf 109 obsolete for any time during the war. Like the Spitfire it had a tremendous potential for upgrading, and keeping it on the production line IMHO appear very sensible.

I agree, Germany couldn't afford to shut down its assembly lines so continuing the production of the 109 was the right call. But it just goes to show that major increases in the size of the Luftwaffe were impossible. Speer did it in '44, but only by sacrificing Germany's last stores of raw materials and inflicting some rather horrific treatment on the factory workers.

The 109 was show its age by the end of the war. Even the Model G and K couldn't compete with the high performance Allied fighters. The 190 and the Ta-152 were much better performers at the end, but Germany couldn't afford the loss in production.

Agree, commando units were handy in many instances, and if not for other things then for cool hero images. Anyway I think the Germans were quite well off in this regard. Just think of Eben-Emael (sp?) or the crossings of the Meuse in 1940

Eben-Emal was indeed a remarkable operation - especially since the mission was actually conducted by a small fraction of the force that had been assigned to it (the rest landed in the wrong area).

Had Case yellow bogged down in 1940 the Germans would have been doomed, the British alone by a great margin outproduced the Germans in 1941. The greatest mystery IMHO is how unprepared Germany was in 1939, not even Blitzkrieg was at hand, but evolved by co-incidence during the French campaign. Apparently the German leadership was shocked when UK and France declared war, and considering how much focus Hitler and the Germans in general before the war had to a two front war being the doom of Germany, it is quite remarkable that the Germans by themselves got that much invloved in exactly that.

German abilities in strategy and diplomacy apparently was in deep coma between Bismarck and Adenauer.

German diplomacy was truly horrendous - I can well imagine Bismarck turning in his grave at what Hitler was doing. To paraphrase something I once heard: "The genius of the Third Reich was that it was able to hold off the combined forces of the US, UK, and USSR for four years; the incompetence of the Third Reich was that it had to." A war with Poland may have been inevitable - the Polish Corridor did make the defense of East Prussia a nightmare. And taking Austria might be defendable - a Germanic region that could be easily assimilated into the Reich. The Sudetenland is pushing it - and breaking the Munich Agreement is completely insane. Czeckoslovakia couldn't do anything against Germany without the Sudetenland; it was wide open to invasion. Play up the British belief that the Versailles Treaty was unfair; don't rub your rearmament in their face and openly break agreements with them.

 

[Wozza]

Germany had the aircraft, the technology, and the know how but thay lacked one crucial ingrediant and that was capable leaders with foresight.
Again incorrect about Germany's industrial capacity.

Well, they did'nt have the technology becaue they did not get any of these weapons actually working. If we make a list of half done German projects it's all very impressive.

Germany's industrial capacity was completely inadequate to meet the needs of fighting THE REST OF THE WORLD. It's as simple as that, it is dwarfed by the USSR or USA alone, and without the rest of Europe to expoit was not particularly superior to the British Empire. There is no way round this fact, Germany conquered a continent with an oil shortage and a food shortage, iron walls around any effort to build a self-sustaining superpower.

 

[Prinz Richard Eugen]

The debate on a bomber to strike America seems the least of Hitler's "mistakes". The amounts of raw materials and time involved in building the bombers would be detremental to the German war effort. Sure, the time and materials could have been taken from a useless project - but they also could have crippled a useful one. The German war economy is limited.

Next, how many planes could have attacked? A few dozen, carrying a ton or two of bombs each. The Allies regularly hit German cities with thousands of tons at one time. Assuming the first attack is a surprise, physical damage would be minor. Psychological damage would be great - assuming the story was not kept secret. The press was not as powerful as today.

Finally, what if the US has to assign fighters to protect the East Coast? When you are producing 5000 to 10000 planes per month, it would be easy to come up with a few hundred to station in the US. By the later part of the war, the US is graduating too many pilots. Again, sending several hundred to this duty is reasonable. I don't think there would be any reduction in US airpower in Europe - although a small percentage may be used to attack the bombers at their source. Radar equipped ships and planes could be sent to the Atlantic so the surprise would not occur again.

 

[Earling]

It all comes down to whether closing and reducing the Kiev pocket was sensible or not. Even then its argueably how much of that can be blamed on just Hitler.

People who argue it should be ignored have to demonstrate that the Soviet armies could not have pushed north across the already extended supply lines of Army Group Centre as that force attempted to encircle/take Moscow. This would not in my oppinion have required a great deal, if any armour, to accomplish against relatively minimal resistance. If German forces turn to deal with this threat before advancing on the Soviet capital, you have much the same situation as OTL. So the South is lost for the Soviets? It was lost in OTL with the encirclement of Kiev.

If Army Group Centre is stuck at the gates of Moscow with shattered supply lines, the better part of a million Soviet soldiers between them and the homeland meanwhile forces from all over the Soviet Union rushing to defend Moscow then things could have gone very badly for Germany. That was the threat Hitler saw and to believe he alone felt it is to buy far too much into the memoirs of Generals attempting to establish their reputation for posterity.

 

[Calgacus]

Germany conquered a continent with an oil shortage and a food shortage, iron walls around any effort to build a self-sustaining superpower.

Hence the 'necessity' of invading the SU, which had lots of both. Unfortunately for the Germans, they never had teh time and space to reap the benefits.

 

[Riain]

Closing the Kiev pocket didn't lose Germany the war. Being outbuilt in tanks and trucks by Britain in 1940/1, a country with an army 1/3 the size of Germany's, is what lost them the war. If the Pz divs all had 4 tank btns instead of 2, if there were 30 mot inf divs instead of 14, if the supply services were well equipped instead of poverty stricken, if the assault division had their full compliment of transport available in April instead of June. These are the things Germany needs to to beat Russia. All the changes to strategy and operations conducted with 3500 tanks against 15,000 is going to fall short.

 

[Calgacus]

Closing the Kiev pocket didn't lose Germany the war. Being outbuilt in tanks and trucks by Britain in 1940/1, a country with an army 1/3 the size of Germany's, is what lost them the war. If the Pz divs all had 4 tank btns instead of 2, if there were 30 mot inf divs instead of 14, if the supply services were well equipped instead of poverty stricken, if the assault division had their full compliment of transport available in April instead of June. These are the things Germany needs to to beat Russia. All the changes to strategy and operations conducted with 3500 tanks against 15,000 is going to fall short.

If they could somehow have the same railway gauge as SU that would help as well.

 

[Peter Cowan]

To a large extent the "meddling" is self justification by the German general post-war. For instance the "Halt" order which came from von Rundstedt but which is often attributed to Hitler. Other times, the meddling was a sure fire loser - the "No retreat from Stalingrad", pouring troops into Tunisia after Torch, Zitadelle. However, until the mid war he had often been proved right while the generals were wrong. In many ways he was like a compulsive gambler who, having won a bit, loses a lot then carries on playing because just one more win will see him up again.

And, when all is said and done, good thing he meddled...would you really want Hitler to win the war? Stalin was bad enough but if the Germans had come to an arrangement with Stalin after bleeding the USSR dry, I doubt the Western Allies could have won on land.

Of course, The Manhattan project would have rendered any German gains null and void. Once that was on track Germany was doomed regardless of how sucessful it would be in the rest of the war.

 

[Riain]

The gauge was only one of the compatability problems. Russian engines had larger water capacity, so they had less less top up tanks trackside which meant German engines on regauged tracks ran their boilers dry. Also their steam pipes were routed internally and thus kept warm to prevent condensing or freezing in winter, which is what happened to the steam in the external steam piping on German engines. Looked at closely the complete Nazi subjugation of the SU looks like an impossibility, the task is too big.

 

[Max Sinister]

I wonder whether if Hitler attacked Moscow instead of north and south of Russia, the Russians could've attacked the flanks of Heeresgruppe Mitte. The main power of Germany would be cut off somewhere in the center of Russia. Things would be very confused, but a good part of German forces would be in danger of being destroyed.

 

[esl]

I wonder whether if Hitler attacked Moscow instead of north and south of Russia, the Russians could've attacked the flanks of Heeresgruppe Mitte. The main power of Germany would be cut off somewhere in the center of Russia. Things would be very confused, but a good part of German forces would be in danger of being destroyed.

If the blitzkrieg is planned and excuted properly , what enemy counterattacks that do develope usually lack the power to do anything operational other than temporary delays, with little strategic significance.

 

[merlin]

The German invasion of Russia was a massive and risky undertaking. Hitler couldn't quite make up his mind - on the one hand 'one mighty push and the whole rotten lot will colapse', yet too often restraining his panzer generals with hold orders.
If Hoepner was allowed to keep going, & in the direction he felt was most effective, then Leningrad could have been taken late July - before the Russians had time to organise its defense. once taken, the Finns would have tried harder to link-up, and re-inforcements could have been flown in, before the Russian counter-attack. Perhaps too, the Leningrad tank factory could continue production - imagine Hoepner with KV's!? Though it's likely that the city would react against the Germans after awhile, it could still act as a supply centre (with it's port).
In OTL Hitler ordered its destruction by artillery, air-attack, and starvation.
But it would act as a magnet for Russian forces to re-take the city, and the subcequent battles would weaken further the Russian forces around the Capital.
And just as Hoepner was more successful, so would Guderian.
Whether as a result of this or in a non-Kiev pocket option, a capture of Moscow with the leadership fleeing would surely have meant that Russian forces in the South would either hold fast or move east, rather than attack Army Group Centre - no Russian command & control left plus morale is colapsing. Either way Kleist is now moving east fast, with little co-ordinated opposition.
Only Russian hope is to hold Kubishev (please excuse any spelling cock-ups) and the East, with it's re-built factories.
The following spring the Germans take Stalingrad traveling down both sides of the Volga, and on to Baku.

 

[Roddoss72]

The He-177 program was indeed a complete disaster. Designing a heavy bomber that can also serve as a dive bomber? Was anyone thinking that day? I will say I admire the engineer willing to go to work everyday if he has to deal with that project.

I'm not too familiar with the Amerika bomber program and when it would realistically be available (the US didn't get its intercontinentals until the B-36 in c. 1950), but, even assuming a functional bomber in '42, Germany could not have launched a sustained bombing campaign against the US or USSR. To put things in perspective, the US lost nearly 7,000 heavy bombers in the Europe during the war. There is no reason to expect the 264 to be any more immune to fighter interception than the B-17s and B-24s. (They would face even heavier losses, since many damaged bombers would never make it back over the Atlantic or the steppes or Russia.) Additionally, strategic bombing requires that you keep hitting targets multiple time, else the user simply repairs it. Germany could not build a few hundred heavy bombers and shut down, say, the NY factory system with one surprise raid. It would need thousands of them. And each heavy bomber means two, three, or four fewer 109s or 190s for the Luftwaffe.

A force of a few dozen heavy bombers may have been cost effective - launch a raid on NYC and the USAAF is forced to station a few fighter groups on the East Coast for a year instead of deploying it overseas (much like fear of a Japanese invasion after Pearl Harbor lead to the creation of useless fortifications and AA batteries on the West Coast). They could also have joined the declining force of Kondors in search for Atlantic convoys. But the sinking of a few more merchant ships and the delay in the deployment of a few dozen fighters to the South Pacific or North Africa isn't going to win the war for Germany - delay the end by a few days/weeks, perhaps, but nothing more.

Yes the He-177 was a disaster but that was compounded when both Goering and Hitler would not allow Heinkels engineers to redesign the bomber into a four seperate engined heavy, which when Heinkel did so on a secret testbed aircraft the He-177 then designated the He-277 was a fantastic aircraft.

The Me-264 Amerika Bomber became fully operational by 1942 and could have gone into full production in early 1943, it had the capacity to fly heavy bombloads well beyond the Urals where the bulk of the Soviet aramaments industry had being relocated, but once again the potential war winning bomber was ignored by Goering and Hitler. Also the aircraft was fully pressurised and was capable of reaching 40,000 feet. Well now the USA was sheer folly, but with several thousand Me-264 the Soviet and British industrial capacity would certainly have been severely damaged.

Messerschmitt had wanted to actually cull the Bf-109 to replace it with the Me-262 and thus freeing up at least one aircraft factory to solely produce the Me-264.

I'll add more later.

 

[Riain]

Germany didn't have the industrial capacity to build, and more importantly sustain through combat operations, a large heavy bomber force, it is a non-option. Germany, like the SU, Japan and Italy pursued a limited air strategy, rather than the total air strategy of Britain and the USA. Germany could have won the war with its limited air strategy, it lost the war on the economic, political, diplomatic and grand strategic fronts rather than in operational and tactical battle fronts.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Germany didn't have the industrial capacity to build, and more importantly sustain through combat operations, a large heavy bomber force, it is a non-option. Germany, like the SU, Japan and Italy pursued a limited air strategy, rather than the total air strategy of Britain and the USA. Germany could have won the war with its limited air strategy, it lost the war on the economic, political, diplomatic and grand strategic fronts rather than in operational and tactical battle fronts.

How did Germany NOT have the industrial capacity but Britain DID, especially considering that Germany, ah 'acquired' a lot of the industrial capacity of other nations of Europe through conquest ?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Wozza]

How did Germany NOT have the industrial capacity but Britain DID, especially considering that Germany, ah 'acquired' a lot of the industrial capacity of other nations of Europe through conquest ?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Arguably the UK gets a higher degree of external support from US/Empire than Germany does from its conquests, but leaving that aside, the fundamental consideration is this

Number of army divisions:
Germany - 251
UK - 34

 

[Agrippa]

Messerschmitt had wanted to actually cull the Bf-109 to replace it with the Me-262 and thus freeing up at least one aircraft factory to solely produce the Me-264.

I'll add more later.

German industrial capacity in regards to the Me-264 has already been touched upon, so I'll take up this. Germany had to keep the 109 production lines going because they couldn't afford to lose them for 9 months while 262 production ramped up. Moreover, the Germans lacked raw materials needed for jet production and couldn't get the bugs in the aircraft sorted out until '44. Jets weren't going to come online until it was too late for them to make an impact. And even if they were operational earlier, they weren't going to win the war for Germany, only delay the outcome for a while.