WW2 German military
- Thread starter Rommel
- Start date
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
Manstein was more qualified than Rommel to be commander in chief, but either way Germany still loses: they lacked the numbers, technology, and industrial base to wage a war against the Allies. Moreover, according to Tooze Germany's economy was dangerously unstable and probably would have imploded had she not been beaten on the battlefield first.
In short, Germany lost WWII on September 1, 1939, and there was little anyone could have done to change that.
In short, Germany lost WWII on September 1, 1939, and there was little anyone could have done to change that.
nbcman
Donor
You are mistaken; Rommel was far too junior to be in such a leadership position in 1941. He was a newly promoted Generalleutenant which would be a Divisional or maybe a Corps level command rank. It would be impossible to have such a junior officer give orders to Field Marshal level officers who were in charge of the Army Groups. If he did command a force in Barbarossa, he would be no higher than a commander of one of the Panzer Corps.
Alcsentre Calanice
Gone Fishin'
Really? Victory in France was luck, but it was a victory. If Hitler is killed shortly after, its German Europe + Axis USSR against GB.
The USSR is not going to go to war with Britain. And sooner or later (but more probably sooner), the British are going to drag the US in.
Alcsentre Calanice
Gone Fishin'
Would the US fight against Germany just because Germany has reached a hegemonic position on the European continent?
Imagine Germany simply making peace with Poland, France, Belgium and the Netherland after 1940, restoring the borders of 1914 and abondoning the genocidal plans.
I doubt the United States would intervene in such a war.
Problem with USSR as a partner in the Axis is that Germany was heavily reliant on the USSR for a lot of materials (right up until it tried to invade). In the long run, Germany is going to turn into an economic satellite of the USSR, something the vitriolic Nazi state probably won't be able to tolerate. But this is off track, as said above Rommel was not a senior enough commander to lead the Russian front and it would have made little difference to what was an essentially impossible scenario for the Germans.
It's absolutely inconceivable that Hitler would do so. His goal was conquest, subjugation, and genocide, and in any case he lost all diplomatic credibility after Polannd.
They would because the Germans would be torpedoing the vessels they are sending to aid Great Britain, which after Japan attacks Pearl Harbour is going to lead to all that American rage getting quite focused on Germany.
A Germany willing to do that would also be a Germany unwilling to start a general European war and thus be in no place to do anything the Germans did IOTL 1939-1940.
Many of the German staff still wanted to maintain control of the land they had gained anyway. If they had succeeded in assassinating Hitler but did it earlier on and stopped the genocide things could have gone a lot smoother in the long run. Churchill wanted peace but knew that Hitler wouldn't stop which is why Britain continuously denied peace claims. Eventually (if Germans hadn't fought at Stalingrad and went straight for Moscow upon realizing where the Russians were placing so many troops), Stalin may have died in the upcoming battle if he didn't leave. The USSR would be in shambles and would eventually surrender. Without the death camps the Russian populace would have been left alone and just aided in the reconstruction. If this happened a war against the UK and U.S. would have been a stalemate unless a miracle happened.
What are you basing this on?
Hitler sent him to Africa three months before Barbarossa was scheduled to begin (May 15, 1941 was the scheduled implementation date). He was only a Lt. General at the time (3 Star), not even a full Colonel General (Generaloberest), much less a Field Marshal. Moreover the Heer was already moving troops into staging positions when Rommel reached North Africa, you do not send the commander of a massive, multiple front offensive to a different continent while troops are moving into position for said offensive.
Rommel benefited greatly from Hitler's favor. He was promoted at least in part due to the Fuhrer's patronage, and he was (admittedly unintentionally) spared the reputation destruction that would have come had he been assigned to the East, rather than being in charge of a construction project (one that, BTW, was a massive failure). His legacy was also burnished by the fact that he was caught in the aura of the July Plot.
My god... the regurgitation of so many myths about the Nazi war effort and the German high command... it's downright painful.
The real answer to the OP is that the war either doesn't start, or goes worse for Germany.
While the orthodox view of the German officer class was that Germany would have to regain her power and position through offensive war against her neighbors, they dissented greatly on the specifics - namely, the "when." OKW wanted to delay war until some time around 1945/46 when they felt they'd be fully prepared.
Hitler called them a bunch of old women with no strategic insight, and overrode them. And he was right. What OKH had failed to realize was that Germany had stolen a march on the Allies with early re-armament, but France and Britain were catching up rapidly, while Germany's stocks of strategic resources, and her ability to sustain high rates of production was beginning to fall. By 1946 the military balance would have grossly favored the Allies. If it was to be war, Hitler had to strike fast while he still had the advantage.
The problem is that Rommel lacks both Hitler's strategic insight and his personal power. In 1939 he was just another general, and not a particularly senior one. In Poland he impressed Hitler greatly with his command of the Fuhrer's HQ, enough that he was granted a Panzer division for the Battle of France, but right now he lacks any personal authority over either the Wehrmacht OR the Nazi Party. Over the past several years, Hitler had created a system that was loyal to him alone and Rommel simply doesn't have the reputation or the contacts to slide into that and take over.
Chances are he dies in fairly short order to assassins sent by Himmler or Goering, or faces willful insubordination from the military itself which considers him an arrogant upstart and grossly undermines the war effort - if it even starts on schedule. The High Command may revert to demanding a longer period of build up, and Rommel will lack both the power and the insight to decisively overrule them. Accepting their favored timeline may well be Rommel's price for their support against Nazi Party backstabbing.
All in all, it'll create a total mess for Germany, and probably badly undermine their war effort. So a Germany under Rommel probably won't invade the Soviet Union but then it probably won't be able to defeat the British and French either.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
Basically what ObsessedNuker said. Even if the Germans went straight for Moscow and somehow managed to capture it (and that's a VERY big if, Moscow's a big city that could, like London, "swallow an army"), the Soviets would be far from finished. The Soviet government had by then relocated to Kuibyshev, much of their heavy industry had been relocated to the Urals, and Lend-Lease shipments were increasing. The Germans had no chance at all to win the war.
Even if it had been Germany vs. Britain (1 vs. 1, assuming no Barbarossa) the German economy would have collapsed. The groundbreaking work of Adam Tooze thoroughly demonstrates this. Conventionally, with Germany vs Great Britain and the United States, the Germans get stomped: from D-Day to V-E day the Western Allies achieved a casualty ratio of 7 to 1 over the Wehrmacht. Under that scenario if the Third Reich still existed by August 1945 the immediate consequences of war might have been even worse than in OTL:
War over.
The General Staff and Rommel were not friends. Rommel saw them as arrogant Prussians with sticks up their behind. They saw Rommel as a Swaban yokel who shouldn't have ever been made a general.
Rommel IMHO wouldn't have gotten into war the way Hitler did with a pact with Stalin against Poland, but if handed it and a political say he wouldn't have double crossed the Soviets with the British in the war. His goal in fighting in North Africa was to tire the British out, keep the U.S. from joining the war in Europe and come to a decient peace.
He preferred an alliance with France after its fall then an alliance with Italy.
Not just that, but the logistical problems are basically insurmountable: the Germans just don't have the logistical assets or infrastructure to supply their army all the way out to Moscow and the earlier they try an advance on it the worst it is going to be. Repeated official war games have found that the German limits of effective resupply were always west of Moscow and the earlier the date, the further west it was. Martin Van Crewald discusses these insurmountable difficulties in his book about logistics Supplying War. Furthermore, without the diversion to the north and south the Germans would be pushing a large salient towards Moscow with large Soviet forces on either flank of it and without the Kiev and Vyazma-Bryansk encirclements the Soviets would have millions more troops by the time winter rolls around. They would also be able to continue drawing upon the industrial, mineral, manpower, and agricultural resources in the Donbass and Kharkov-Orel regions which were lost IOTL when those regions were captured thanks to the diversion of the panzers from Army Group Center. All this is a recipe for a catastrophic, tide-turning encirclement of at least a portion of Army Group Center that completely alters how 1942 unfolds in the Soviets favor.
Hitler made a very good decision in diverting his forces after Smolensk and that his subordinates pushed for a rush to Moscow is indicative of how little the German general staff grasped either the logistical or economic situations of the war.
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only if it continued.
if hitler wasn't involved in military decisions then it is possible that the eastern war could have been delayed.
if it is delayed by a year you might find that with the USA fighting Japan no lendlease to russia as it would be politically impossible after fighting Japan with Russia remain neutral.
I agree that the German economy was unstable but any time of relative peace could give speer time to reorganise.
Basically what ObsessedNuker said. Even if the Germans went straight for Moscow and somehow managed to capture it (and that's a VERY big if, Moscow's a big city that could, like London, "swallow an army"), the Soviets would be far from finished. The Soviet government had by then relocated to Kuibyshev, much of their heavy industry had been relocated to the Urals, and Lend-Lease shipments were increasing. The Germans had no chance at all to win the war.
Even if it had been Germany vs. Britain (1 vs. 1, assuming no Barbarossa) the German economy would have collapsed. The groundbreaking work of Adam Tooze thoroughly demonstrates this. Conventionally, with Germany vs Great Britain and the United States, the Germans get stomped: from D-Day to V-E day the Western Allies achieved a casualty ratio of 7 to 1 over the Wehrmacht. Under that scenario if the Third Reich still existed by August 1945 the immediate consequences of war might have been even worse than in OTL:
War over.
Wait what? 7 to 1.... Dude even Wehraboo didnt say that about the Wehrmacht. You probably mean outproduce the Germans 7 to 1?
historynutty
Banned
Not so fast. There is good reason to believe that the 1941 German invasion of the USSR only preempted by days a planned soviet invasion of Western Europe.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
According to Ellis,
That's a total of 4,737,730 combat casualties, most of which were inevitably incurred from 1944 onward. What's more, Ellis neglects to include the huge defeats suffered by Germany in the Rhineland and the Ruhr after the start of 1945, which must add about a million additional casualties to the German total. In contrast, Western Allied casualties from D-Day to Victory numbered, according to Charles B. MacDonald's "The Last Offensive" pg. 478, 766,294 (586,628 Americans). Thus, subtracting the casualties from Hitler's overrunning of France and the Low Countries (about 160,000), we arrive at totals of:
Western Allies:
766,294
Germany:
~5,580,000
Ratio:
7.3 : 1 in favor of the Western Allies.