I find alot of this discourse very tiresome. The determinists which make the variations of cases the Nazis were inevitably going to lose (British historians in my experience are the worst about this for reasons I do not understand) and pretend the war was not a close run thing really have to reckon with how much the German army overperforms for the entire war. I'd recommend you look into the work of one Colonel trevor Dupey who is the father of modern quantitative military analysis, McMeekin also makes a very compelling summary case for how bad the Soviet military situation was in by late 1942 in Stalins War, and Kotkin also has some some interesting statements on how close the Soviet industrial base came to collapse in 1941-42 but I forget which book it was in. Glantz who you cite in this has done very good work in correcting how incompetent Soviet high command has been viewed in WW2 but this makes the German accomplishment more impressive not less.
To address the substance of the post even with all the structural problems with the German war economy and retarded blunders Hitler and his commander at made at various points you rightly point out they somehow make it within TWENTY MILES of the Caspian Sea. If the front line froze at high point of Case Blue and they fail to advance any further which is not that hard to imagine not much has to change for Uranus to turn out like Mars, its extremely feasible for Germans to win a war of attrition given the disproportionate Soviet casualties experienced through all stages of the war. By late 1943 the Red Army was extremely dependent on conscripting more or less every man of fighting age in territory they recaptured and even then by the end of the war they were pretty close to literally running out of men of fighting age in sectors non-critical to the war effort. As you mention yourself the Soviet leadership were vary conscious of how close to catastrophe they came.
The primary reason I care about these arguments and Determinism generally is it gives people the impression human decision making and therefore human capitol generally dont really matter that much and that attitude is one of causes of our leadership class becoming noticeably less capable. Say what you will of the FDR admin being completely infiltrated by Communist spies but those people knew how to run complex systems, they could build things, our current leadership class has repeatedly shown they cannot.
I link to my review of Stalin's War at the bottom of the piece
I make an explicitly non-determinstic argument and also recognise the impressive military prowess of the wehrmacht considering what they were up against
Kind've you certainly imply it was inevitable. My central point is you don't to have to change many decisions Hitler or his people plausibly could have made (unlike say being nice to the Ukrainians) for dramatically different outcomes.
Go to total economic mobilization 2 years in like they their predecessors had in ww1 instead in 1943 after Stalingrad(The British did almost immediately), proactively campaign in the Mediterranean after the Fall of France instead of waiting for Churchill to admit defeat and clean up after Mussolini's disasters. Not declare war on America. Strike Baku as soon as it was within range of their bomber fleet. I'm not saying any of these in isolation would've won the war but any of them individually could have and I'd be happy to expand on any of them.
PS: I forgot but this one but it ties into my original reply, providing anti tank weapons to the allied forces guarding the 6th armies flank at Stalingrad.
1. Most but not all of the logistical problems you cite in your piece during 1941 and 1942 are downstream of the delayed mobilization in 1944 after the decision is made despite the air campaign the sucking nearly half the defense budget to the air force and the bombing depressing production the German production of key equipment increases enormously.
2. The British position in the Mediterranean in 1940 is terrible its very hard to see Malta and Egypt not falling if serious German resources particularly air assets are not devoted there instead of over Britain itself. They not only gives access to ME oil but strongly encourages Turkey to at some level join the war and open a front directly to the caucuses.
3. It would be politically very difficult for FDR to justify a war of choice in Europe after Pearl Harbor, much justify continuing the levels of support already being provided to the Russians and British until Japan is destroyed. His entire strategy was provoking Hitler into declaring war first, which he succeeded at.
4. The Soviet economy was almost totally dependent on energy from Baku and those fields were initially very vulnerable to air strikes in mid 1942 when they were in bomber range. The only reason the Luftwaffe did not hit them was the knowledge such a strike would depress output for years therefore denying themselves the energy. Such a strike would not only create a massive shock to the entire Soviet industrial base but force an enormous increase in oil from Lend Lease crowding out other vital material.
5. The Romanian and Hungarian units actually performed pretty well against the Soviets ( low bar even the Italians performed well against the Red Army) but its difficult to stop mass Armored formations without anti tank guns. Its very easy to see Operation Uranus failing with even modestly better preparation.
1) Nazi germany can’t win a war of attrition because they are on the clock versus the western allies. They needed to knock out the Soviets fast and bring their natural resources into the Nazi economy. As long as the Soviets are still in the war they can’t turn their forces west or fix their economy. Getting to the caucuses is meaningless as long as the Soviets are still in the field. They will never be able to repair, secure, and transport the oil back to Germany if the Soviets are still in the field, and America could replace the oil for the Soviets via lend lease.
2) I recommend “the Anglo American Nazi war” as a good alternate history of “Nazi victory”. Losing at Stalingrad makes Stalin go crazy and kill his generals and he gets deposed and the Soviets sign a peace with the nazies.
End result, they still end up losing a war against the anglos in the 1950s.
3) the inevitability thesis is important because it proves Hitler was wrong to start the war *on his own terms*. Hitler believed will alone was enough for his people to conquer the world.
If victory is just material circumstances + luck then he never stood a chance and he failed the German people by leading them into an unwinable war. It also invalidates his whole worldview of how struggle is ennobling of the spirit or somehow determines who’s cosmically fit to survive. It’s just a math puzzle.
They dont need to turn their forces west as long as they can occupy western Russia the entire purpose of doing so is to bypass the resource constraints imposed by the blockade. Sure there's long term consequences to cannibalizing all civilian consumption maintaining total mobilization as Churchill and Attlee discovered after the war but there's also pretty long term consequences to losing a world war.
You raise an important that if the Germans capture the oil fields it would realistically be years before they can approach the levels of production achieved by the Reds but they can use them to supplement needs of front line units and more importantly deny them to the Russians. Sure they can replace the supply by the Americans in theory but shifting the makeup of lend lease would itself take a serious amount of time but even once that is done that crowds out other supplies. The ports in Karelia, Siberia, and Persia and the rail lines reaching them were very serious bottlenecks the Soviets had to manage the entire war.
The book looks interesting but I do not see the Anglos winning a ground war in western Europe without the Russians tying down the best 75% of their army the entire war, even with Nukes.
To your final point sure Hitler was a meth addict in charge of death and his ideology was retarded but this Whig history we've internalized the last 70 years where we are bound to win any conflict has not served us well.
The Allies could bomb Baku and the Germans couldn't do anything to stop it. The allies were almost about to do it even when the Germans and Russians were aligned. In the middle of a conflict it would be incredibly easy. There is no way the Germans are getting that oil back to Germany.
As long as the Soviets are in the field the Germans can't turn western Russia into anything but a giant resource sink. It's not even clear they could do otherwise if the Soviets imploded, but at least that's a hypothetical. If they somehow turned the Volga into a defense line they would still be fighting a war of attrition thousands of miles from Germany in hostile territory.
The thesis of the linked book is that the allies try doing a Cold War with a Germany that controls western Russia. Eventually Hitler makes it a hot war. Even though it takes like a decade they eventually use superior air and naval power to whittle down the Nazi's to the point they can invade Europe. Casualties are several times what they are OTL and the Germans even use poison gas which gets them nuked. Its a grimdark future.
Your first point is very dependent on how ME looks but I'll grant you for the remainder of the war meaningful quantities of oil are not getting back to Germany but it doesn't need to.
I reject the premise, the German counter insurgency record was very strong and even with the various forms of mismanagement from the top Goring and forms of non compliance from the bottom for needlessly alienating locals from their retarded racial policies its just a matter of extracting ore and grain. If the Bolsheviks could manage it with all the dysfunction involved in collectivization I dont see any reason to think it is in principle impossible.
I understand I am telling you that would not be possible. I would encourage you to read more on Korea. The PLA and KPA were so primitive they communicated largely by trumpet lacking radios and meaningful air sea and armored forces and we were unable to push them back to the Yalu despite our naval and air supremacy and local fire superiority for the entire war and even achieving that stalemate required the ROKA acting as a meat shield throughout most of the line. I dont care how degraded the German economy has become or how far back their technical edge is. Without the Russians an Allied conventional victory on continental Europe would be impossible. The reverse is also true without the blockade, air campaign, and lend lease it's possible the USSR survives but they do not reach Berlin.
Ah, the old "When was Operation Barbarossa cooked?" debate. The answers range from doomed from the start to Kursk. I've heard people argue later than Kursk, but I don't think that case is minimally serious. I tend to agree with you. The Axis never really had a chance, but even if there were one it was long gone when they couldn't take Moscow in 1941. Hitler thought the summer of 1941 was as good as it was ever going to get for their chance of victory. It probably was, but the best chance still wasn't anywhere near good enough.
My favorite factoid about land-lease is that many British airplanes were simply cannibilized for spare parts because they were not very good and Soviet pilots would rather not fly them.
There was an anecdote that I read from a book by Gregor Hens on Nicotine:
“The man… was a journalist, a critic, and – more importantly – a smoker. He was overweight as well, and as he gave his spiel he sweated and puffed acridity into my smarting eyes. In order to prevent myself from punching the insensitive bastard in his fat self-indulgent face, once the event was over I asked him – in a polite and non-judgemental way – about his obviously unhealthy lifestyle: the glass-after-glass of wine he was knocking back, the canapés he was shovelling down, and of course the smoke which plumed from his porcine snout. 'It's perfectly simple,' he explained 'almost every morning I wake up feeling shit and think about packing in my drinking, my eating and my smoking. But then I remember my grandfather, who was in the Wehrmacht and died at Stalingrad, and I contemplate the terrible suffering and deprivation he must have experienced for months before finally being killed. Surely, I admonish myself, it's up to you to experience all the pleasures he was denied? And then I reach for my cigarettes.”
Almost sounds like a character from the classics, a son of some Delian League veteran who drinks as if to repay a debt of pleasure owed to his father. I think there will come a time when something like the Eastern Front — its scale, its heroes, its villains, its horrors, its chroniclers — will seem so fantastical and remote that it appears as strange and distant as the Peloponnesian War.
There’s a large TikTok account that begins with a photo from Nazi Germany, then lowers it to reveal the same place today. The twentieth century would feel like a dream if not for the scars it left in demography and continents.
If you’re still interested in books on the Eastern Front, I’d highly recommend Curzio Malaparte’s Kaputt.
I largely agree with the points in this article, but I do not agree that Soviet victory was inevitable. The most difficult factor to determine before a war starts is how hard a people are willing to fight. Many armies have collapsed under far less pressure than the Soviets faced in 1941-42.
If the Russians and Ukrainians had not wanted to fight, they could have simply surrendered. There is a lot of evidence that they had little support for the Soviet regime.
If the Germans had treated the Russians and Ukrainians as liberators would, I think that their reaction would have been very different. Many would have switched sides and that might have happened, it might have caused a cascading effect.
Yes, if you change nothing in history, then the results of actual history are always inevitable, but that gets us nowhere.
I don’t think that there was anything inherently anti-Slavic about the ideological combination of Nationalism and Socialism. The regime could easily have pretended to support Russian and Ukrainian anti-communism until it consolidated control.
Your argument essay is clearly already moving into Alternate History when you discuss possible alternatives outcomes, so I am not sure why my alternative is so unrealistic.
The Nazis were remarkably more restrained in their treatment of French, Norwegians, Danes, and other occupied territories for example.
Yes interested in alternates, but Nazi attitude to Western front / powers was fundamentally different in kind to the Slavs - going back to at least Mein Kampf. East was a war of colonisation and annihilation, West was just a standard war. Would be like asking for an alternative to Nazism that was philosemetic.
But agree German behaviour in east radicalised locals and Red Army against them
Excellent write up. I would also recommend Dan Carlin's ostfront series of Hardcore History to pad out your reading. The usual epic work he does, mind you I think his WW1 series was his finest work.
Excellent work. You’ve deployed the relevant numbers quite convincingly. Question: did Allied brass and pols apprehend them at the time, or perhaps as the final drive to Berlin shaped up? Or ever, given Soviet PR and propaganda efforts? And, now that I think of it, when did they first learn of the Hitler / Stalin agreement in the first place? I’ve never been clear on that, and you seem like the right person to ask.
Jonathan Dimbleby's book Barbarossa actually spends the first 130 pages in a detailed account of the history from the end of WW1 that explains the strategy and politics of of all involved, including detailed first hand reports of how the Germans and Russians got together then fell out. It's fascinating stuff.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union was so catastrophic and strategically ill-advised, one wonders what could have impelled them to do it. At the end of the day I think the answer, like the explanation for most of Hitler’s other actions, is found in Mein Kampf.
I think a part of thus article helps explain the strategic need fir Barbarossa - never heard this thesis presented before (it is not main thrust of article): https://substack.com/home/post/p-164819024
1) Germany goes total war footing pretty early, say within the first month of the operation.
2) Hitler stops Operation Typhoon after the first huge encirclements and digs in for winter.
3) Somehow or another the Nazi's coordinate with the Japanese to get them to go north, or at a minimum not go south and remain a threat in being to the Soviets.
4) Maybe some better choices in the Leningrad front.
Not sure that's enough and as you say (pretty much all the lucky breaks already went their way), but that's the only changes I can see that might make a 1942 push on Moscow work.
Common alternatives are:
1) Ignore Kiev and push to Moscow.
I'm indifferent on this one. Kiev is a huge problem and it's not like the logistics of army group center were ready for a push.
2) Recruit Ukrainians to fight Russia.
Helps with attrition, but attritional war is a loser anyway. Fundamentally, there isn't enough food for everyone on the eastern front and somebodies going to starve.
I don’t intend the following comparison to be inflammatory nor offensive, only illustrative:
Hitler wanted his ideology to have its place in a future a world and realized Germany wasn’t big enough nor were there enough Germans to ensure that. It was surrounded by hostile enemies that would eventually grind it down - either ideologically or militarily or demographically - communism and liberal humanism.
It seems like you’re saying (and perhaps not wrong to say!) “well, life’s not fair, just gotta give up the dream, bud. Just assimilate or convert to one of them”. I wonder, are there any modern countries or situations to which you’d apply that advice and for similar reasons? Or would you say “some chances are worth dying for”?
I think it was more like “we have to conquer them or they’ll conquer us”. Which, in a world without atomic weapons, in which the Soviet Union had already attempted or completed multiple wars of conquest, is not entirely groundless.
Even if that were true it would not alter the strategic threat: a much bigger, better resourced, ideologically hostile, militarized society on the border that *only* conquers its neighbors when it seems opportune. How comforting!
But it’s not true. The Soviet Union launched an invasion of Poland in 1919, sent the Red Army into Mongolia in 1921 and 1932 to establish then to retain a communist state, took over the Left half of the Spanish Civil War with a series of bloody purges, and was pouring weapons into China including a couple corps-sized battles against the Japanese in the late ‘30s.
I don’t say any of this to apologize for Hitler, I only say we must examine these events from the perspective of their participants.
It was not clear in the early years after WW1 which new nations might or might not be born from the Russian empire or what its borders were. Civil War is more apt then invasion.
The Soviet Union was also still a revolutionary movement at that time seeking world revolution. Socialism in one country was adopted as policy in 1925/26.
The Japanese were the aggressors against Russia.
The bottom line is that there was basically a 0% chance that out of the blue Stain was going to declare war on a peaceful Germany in order to spread the revolution.
Yes, but *again*, you must see it from the perspective of the Nazis. How much can you trust a man and a system as ruthless as Stalin’s? Is what’s true today going to be true tomorrow?
We have already established, as Misha’s post demonstrates, the SU had *vastly* more military potential than Germany. So if you’re a believing Nazi - that the race is to the fastest and the world to the strongest, the life of nations is struggle, etc - it’s not a question of “if” but “when”. And since Germany had no ability to compel Britain to surrender, well, do it now and not in 5 years when the SU has digested its purges etc.
The nazies need to win against Russia because they can’t run a society. What was the big plan without the war? Admit to the German people they were broke by 1939.
Inevitably the economy is going to collapse, or the people are going to want electoral reform, or a new generation is going to grow up and do that young people did in The 60s.
Getting to autarky and being in a perpetual war probably doesn’t solve this but it’s at least an idea in the Nazi mind.
Ww1 Germany had a better chance at victory because it was capable of running a peacetime society. If it knocked out France it could have come to some kind of agreement with the entente to withdraw with some territorial adjustments and turned inward to continue its own development.
When the nazies conquered France what were they going to do with it? If Hitler agreed to withdraw from Western Europe for peace with brittian, he’s still got the problem of having no vision for what a peacetime Germany should look like.
It's funny you say that because we know what happened to the USSR in the next few decades. Germany could well have emerged victorious through sheer tenacity and playing the two sides against each other.
Germany succeeded against France & Britain in 1940, whereas Soviet-Finnish Winter war went very poorly for Soviet Union, even if in the end, Soviet Union was kind of successful lite. Hitler had all the reason to be confident after the Fall of France in June 1940 that he would succeed. In addition to Land-Lease extended to Soviet Union, it was also lucky that American intervention prevented a full scale mobilization of France, Sweden, Finland and Spain on the German side. Plus, Hitler (and most Germans) imagined Final Solution would make winning against Soviet Union easier...
It's the same hubris that informs West's MSM media that the war in Ukraine is going not too badly.
Had Germany fully mobilised its war economy prior to the invasion - something the Soviet Union had done - could the Germans have won in 1941?
This is considering that iron and steel production was considerably higher in Germany than Russia, just Germany was still operating on a peace economy until 1943.
I find alot of this discourse very tiresome. The determinists which make the variations of cases the Nazis were inevitably going to lose (British historians in my experience are the worst about this for reasons I do not understand) and pretend the war was not a close run thing really have to reckon with how much the German army overperforms for the entire war. I'd recommend you look into the work of one Colonel trevor Dupey who is the father of modern quantitative military analysis, McMeekin also makes a very compelling summary case for how bad the Soviet military situation was in by late 1942 in Stalins War, and Kotkin also has some some interesting statements on how close the Soviet industrial base came to collapse in 1941-42 but I forget which book it was in. Glantz who you cite in this has done very good work in correcting how incompetent Soviet high command has been viewed in WW2 but this makes the German accomplishment more impressive not less.
To address the substance of the post even with all the structural problems with the German war economy and retarded blunders Hitler and his commander at made at various points you rightly point out they somehow make it within TWENTY MILES of the Caspian Sea. If the front line froze at high point of Case Blue and they fail to advance any further which is not that hard to imagine not much has to change for Uranus to turn out like Mars, its extremely feasible for Germans to win a war of attrition given the disproportionate Soviet casualties experienced through all stages of the war. By late 1943 the Red Army was extremely dependent on conscripting more or less every man of fighting age in territory they recaptured and even then by the end of the war they were pretty close to literally running out of men of fighting age in sectors non-critical to the war effort. As you mention yourself the Soviet leadership were vary conscious of how close to catastrophe they came.
The primary reason I care about these arguments and Determinism generally is it gives people the impression human decision making and therefore human capitol generally dont really matter that much and that attitude is one of causes of our leadership class becoming noticeably less capable. Say what you will of the FDR admin being completely infiltrated by Communist spies but those people knew how to run complex systems, they could build things, our current leadership class has repeatedly shown they cannot.
I link to my review of Stalin's War at the bottom of the piece
I make an explicitly non-determinstic argument and also recognise the impressive military prowess of the wehrmacht considering what they were up against
Kind've you certainly imply it was inevitable. My central point is you don't to have to change many decisions Hitler or his people plausibly could have made (unlike say being nice to the Ukrainians) for dramatically different outcomes.
Yes disagree with that. What decisions could they have made to have won?
Go to total economic mobilization 2 years in like they their predecessors had in ww1 instead in 1943 after Stalingrad(The British did almost immediately), proactively campaign in the Mediterranean after the Fall of France instead of waiting for Churchill to admit defeat and clean up after Mussolini's disasters. Not declare war on America. Strike Baku as soon as it was within range of their bomber fleet. I'm not saying any of these in isolation would've won the war but any of them individually could have and I'd be happy to expand on any of them.
PS: I forgot but this one but it ties into my original reply, providing anti tank weapons to the allied forces guarding the 6th armies flank at Stalingrad.
Dont think those move the needle bud!
1. Most but not all of the logistical problems you cite in your piece during 1941 and 1942 are downstream of the delayed mobilization in 1944 after the decision is made despite the air campaign the sucking nearly half the defense budget to the air force and the bombing depressing production the German production of key equipment increases enormously.
2. The British position in the Mediterranean in 1940 is terrible its very hard to see Malta and Egypt not falling if serious German resources particularly air assets are not devoted there instead of over Britain itself. They not only gives access to ME oil but strongly encourages Turkey to at some level join the war and open a front directly to the caucuses.
3. It would be politically very difficult for FDR to justify a war of choice in Europe after Pearl Harbor, much justify continuing the levels of support already being provided to the Russians and British until Japan is destroyed. His entire strategy was provoking Hitler into declaring war first, which he succeeded at.
4. The Soviet economy was almost totally dependent on energy from Baku and those fields were initially very vulnerable to air strikes in mid 1942 when they were in bomber range. The only reason the Luftwaffe did not hit them was the knowledge such a strike would depress output for years therefore denying themselves the energy. Such a strike would not only create a massive shock to the entire Soviet industrial base but force an enormous increase in oil from Lend Lease crowding out other vital material.
5. The Romanian and Hungarian units actually performed pretty well against the Soviets ( low bar even the Italians performed well against the Red Army) but its difficult to stop mass Armored formations without anti tank guns. Its very easy to see Operation Uranus failing with even modestly better preparation.
Are we talking about the same McMeekin who cites a fake Stalin speech published in France as an explanation for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?
1) Nazi germany can’t win a war of attrition because they are on the clock versus the western allies. They needed to knock out the Soviets fast and bring their natural resources into the Nazi economy. As long as the Soviets are still in the war they can’t turn their forces west or fix their economy. Getting to the caucuses is meaningless as long as the Soviets are still in the field. They will never be able to repair, secure, and transport the oil back to Germany if the Soviets are still in the field, and America could replace the oil for the Soviets via lend lease.
2) I recommend “the Anglo American Nazi war” as a good alternate history of “Nazi victory”. Losing at Stalingrad makes Stalin go crazy and kill his generals and he gets deposed and the Soviets sign a peace with the nazies.
End result, they still end up losing a war against the anglos in the 1950s.
https://www.amazon.com/Festung-Europa-Anglo-American-Nazi-War-ebook/dp/B015URFGEC?dplnkId=ab9fadbc-794c-423a-9f14-1ef1bef7cf58&nodl=1
3) the inevitability thesis is important because it proves Hitler was wrong to start the war *on his own terms*. Hitler believed will alone was enough for his people to conquer the world.
If victory is just material circumstances + luck then he never stood a chance and he failed the German people by leading them into an unwinable war. It also invalidates his whole worldview of how struggle is ennobling of the spirit or somehow determines who’s cosmically fit to survive. It’s just a math puzzle.
They dont need to turn their forces west as long as they can occupy western Russia the entire purpose of doing so is to bypass the resource constraints imposed by the blockade. Sure there's long term consequences to cannibalizing all civilian consumption maintaining total mobilization as Churchill and Attlee discovered after the war but there's also pretty long term consequences to losing a world war.
You raise an important that if the Germans capture the oil fields it would realistically be years before they can approach the levels of production achieved by the Reds but they can use them to supplement needs of front line units and more importantly deny them to the Russians. Sure they can replace the supply by the Americans in theory but shifting the makeup of lend lease would itself take a serious amount of time but even once that is done that crowds out other supplies. The ports in Karelia, Siberia, and Persia and the rail lines reaching them were very serious bottlenecks the Soviets had to manage the entire war.
The book looks interesting but I do not see the Anglos winning a ground war in western Europe without the Russians tying down the best 75% of their army the entire war, even with Nukes.
To your final point sure Hitler was a meth addict in charge of death and his ideology was retarded but this Whig history we've internalized the last 70 years where we are bound to win any conflict has not served us well.
The Allies could bomb Baku and the Germans couldn't do anything to stop it. The allies were almost about to do it even when the Germans and Russians were aligned. In the middle of a conflict it would be incredibly easy. There is no way the Germans are getting that oil back to Germany.
As long as the Soviets are in the field the Germans can't turn western Russia into anything but a giant resource sink. It's not even clear they could do otherwise if the Soviets imploded, but at least that's a hypothetical. If they somehow turned the Volga into a defense line they would still be fighting a war of attrition thousands of miles from Germany in hostile territory.
The thesis of the linked book is that the allies try doing a Cold War with a Germany that controls western Russia. Eventually Hitler makes it a hot war. Even though it takes like a decade they eventually use superior air and naval power to whittle down the Nazi's to the point they can invade Europe. Casualties are several times what they are OTL and the Germans even use poison gas which gets them nuked. Its a grimdark future.
Thank you for engaging in good faith.
Your first point is very dependent on how ME looks but I'll grant you for the remainder of the war meaningful quantities of oil are not getting back to Germany but it doesn't need to.
I reject the premise, the German counter insurgency record was very strong and even with the various forms of mismanagement from the top Goring and forms of non compliance from the bottom for needlessly alienating locals from their retarded racial policies its just a matter of extracting ore and grain. If the Bolsheviks could manage it with all the dysfunction involved in collectivization I dont see any reason to think it is in principle impossible.
I understand I am telling you that would not be possible. I would encourage you to read more on Korea. The PLA and KPA were so primitive they communicated largely by trumpet lacking radios and meaningful air sea and armored forces and we were unable to push them back to the Yalu despite our naval and air supremacy and local fire superiority for the entire war and even achieving that stalemate required the ROKA acting as a meat shield throughout most of the line. I dont care how degraded the German economy has become or how far back their technical edge is. Without the Russians an Allied conventional victory on continental Europe would be impossible. The reverse is also true without the blockade, air campaign, and lend lease it's possible the USSR survives but they do not reach Berlin.
Ah, the old "When was Operation Barbarossa cooked?" debate. The answers range from doomed from the start to Kursk. I've heard people argue later than Kursk, but I don't think that case is minimally serious. I tend to agree with you. The Axis never really had a chance, but even if there were one it was long gone when they couldn't take Moscow in 1941. Hitler thought the summer of 1941 was as good as it was ever going to get for their chance of victory. It probably was, but the best chance still wasn't anywhere near good enough.
Good article - thanks for sharing it.
In the context of the inevitability of German defeat, I would add that in the background - often forgotten - there was always the Manhattan Project.
My favorite factoid about land-lease is that many British airplanes were simply cannibilized for spare parts because they were not very good and Soviet pilots would rather not fly them.
There was an anecdote that I read from a book by Gregor Hens on Nicotine:
“The man… was a journalist, a critic, and – more importantly – a smoker. He was overweight as well, and as he gave his spiel he sweated and puffed acridity into my smarting eyes. In order to prevent myself from punching the insensitive bastard in his fat self-indulgent face, once the event was over I asked him – in a polite and non-judgemental way – about his obviously unhealthy lifestyle: the glass-after-glass of wine he was knocking back, the canapés he was shovelling down, and of course the smoke which plumed from his porcine snout. 'It's perfectly simple,' he explained 'almost every morning I wake up feeling shit and think about packing in my drinking, my eating and my smoking. But then I remember my grandfather, who was in the Wehrmacht and died at Stalingrad, and I contemplate the terrible suffering and deprivation he must have experienced for months before finally being killed. Surely, I admonish myself, it's up to you to experience all the pleasures he was denied? And then I reach for my cigarettes.”
Almost sounds like a character from the classics, a son of some Delian League veteran who drinks as if to repay a debt of pleasure owed to his father. I think there will come a time when something like the Eastern Front — its scale, its heroes, its villains, its horrors, its chroniclers — will seem so fantastical and remote that it appears as strange and distant as the Peloponnesian War.
There’s a large TikTok account that begins with a photo from Nazi Germany, then lowers it to reveal the same place today. The twentieth century would feel like a dream if not for the scars it left in demography and continents.
If you’re still interested in books on the Eastern Front, I’d highly recommend Curzio Malaparte’s Kaputt.
POV: You're a German who thought you were going to win... and you were so wrong.
Stalin: Meybee yu feil yu encountèŕ stŕinghk uvf bæd louk. Băt, tŕut es, (Stalin raises gun, barrel a perfect black circle) gæm wes ŕigged from stät.
I largely agree with the points in this article, but I do not agree that Soviet victory was inevitable. The most difficult factor to determine before a war starts is how hard a people are willing to fight. Many armies have collapsed under far less pressure than the Soviets faced in 1941-42.
If the Russians and Ukrainians had not wanted to fight, they could have simply surrendered. There is a lot of evidence that they had little support for the Soviet regime.
If the Germans had treated the Russians and Ukrainians as liberators would, I think that their reaction would have been very different. Many would have switched sides and that might have happened, it might have caused a cascading effect.
Yes. But that was my point about asking Nazism to be something it was not!
Yes, if you change nothing in history, then the results of actual history are always inevitable, but that gets us nowhere.
I don’t think that there was anything inherently anti-Slavic about the ideological combination of Nationalism and Socialism. The regime could easily have pretended to support Russian and Ukrainian anti-communism until it consolidated control.
Your argument essay is clearly already moving into Alternate History when you discuss possible alternatives outcomes, so I am not sure why my alternative is so unrealistic.
The Nazis were remarkably more restrained in their treatment of French, Norwegians, Danes, and other occupied territories for example.
Yes interested in alternates, but Nazi attitude to Western front / powers was fundamentally different in kind to the Slavs - going back to at least Mein Kampf. East was a war of colonisation and annihilation, West was just a standard war. Would be like asking for an alternative to Nazism that was philosemetic.
But agree German behaviour in east radicalised locals and Red Army against them
Excellent write up. I would also recommend Dan Carlin's ostfront series of Hardcore History to pad out your reading. The usual epic work he does, mind you I think his WW1 series was his finest work.
Interesting.
Excellent work. You’ve deployed the relevant numbers quite convincingly. Question: did Allied brass and pols apprehend them at the time, or perhaps as the final drive to Berlin shaped up? Or ever, given Soviet PR and propaganda efforts? And, now that I think of it, when did they first learn of the Hitler / Stalin agreement in the first place? I’ve never been clear on that, and you seem like the right person to ask.
Jonathan Dimbleby's book Barbarossa actually spends the first 130 pages in a detailed account of the history from the end of WW1 that explains the strategy and politics of of all involved, including detailed first hand reports of how the Germans and Russians got together then fell out. It's fascinating stuff.
Excellent
The German invasion of the Soviet Union was so catastrophic and strategically ill-advised, one wonders what could have impelled them to do it. At the end of the day I think the answer, like the explanation for most of Hitler’s other actions, is found in Mein Kampf.
I think a part of thus article helps explain the strategic need fir Barbarossa - never heard this thesis presented before (it is not main thrust of article): https://substack.com/home/post/p-164819024
There was no strategic “need” for Barbarossa, it was an unnecessary and self-defeating move, given the circumstances.
Did you read the article? Doesn't seem like it because the writer gives excellent military advice makes a strong case fir Germany’s predicament.
Yeah it was a super dumb idea no matter how you square it.
Let's take the best case for Barbarossa.
1) Germany goes total war footing pretty early, say within the first month of the operation.
2) Hitler stops Operation Typhoon after the first huge encirclements and digs in for winter.
3) Somehow or another the Nazi's coordinate with the Japanese to get them to go north, or at a minimum not go south and remain a threat in being to the Soviets.
4) Maybe some better choices in the Leningrad front.
Not sure that's enough and as you say (pretty much all the lucky breaks already went their way), but that's the only changes I can see that might make a 1942 push on Moscow work.
Common alternatives are:
1) Ignore Kiev and push to Moscow.
I'm indifferent on this one. Kiev is a huge problem and it's not like the logistics of army group center were ready for a push.
2) Recruit Ukrainians to fight Russia.
Helps with attrition, but attritional war is a loser anyway. Fundamentally, there isn't enough food for everyone on the eastern front and somebodies going to starve.
This is one of the more informed counter factuals. https://bigserge.substack.com/p/overthrowing-fate-barbarossa-revisted
I don’t intend the following comparison to be inflammatory nor offensive, only illustrative:
Hitler wanted his ideology to have its place in a future a world and realized Germany wasn’t big enough nor were there enough Germans to ensure that. It was surrounded by hostile enemies that would eventually grind it down - either ideologically or militarily or demographically - communism and liberal humanism.
It seems like you’re saying (and perhaps not wrong to say!) “well, life’s not fair, just gotta give up the dream, bud. Just assimilate or convert to one of them”. I wonder, are there any modern countries or situations to which you’d apply that advice and for similar reasons? Or would you say “some chances are worth dying for”?
Ye if your ideology is we have to conquer our neighbours and exterminate and enslave large swathes of them, not sympathetic!
I think it was more like “we have to conquer them or they’ll conquer us”. Which, in a world without atomic weapons, in which the Soviet Union had already attempted or completed multiple wars of conquest, is not entirely groundless.
There's some truth to this, but i think its massively overstated by Hitler apologists
Lots of reasons he wanted to conquer the Soviets
The Soviet Union didn’t attack anyone until Hitler attacked Poland.
Except for Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania
All of these things happened after Hitler invaded Poland, and all were in the agreed Soviet sphere.
The Soviets just didn’t do much between their revolutionary years and 1940. Stalin did not take a bunch of chances in foreign policy.
No, before!
Even if that were true it would not alter the strategic threat: a much bigger, better resourced, ideologically hostile, militarized society on the border that *only* conquers its neighbors when it seems opportune. How comforting!
But it’s not true. The Soviet Union launched an invasion of Poland in 1919, sent the Red Army into Mongolia in 1921 and 1932 to establish then to retain a communist state, took over the Left half of the Spanish Civil War with a series of bloody purges, and was pouring weapons into China including a couple corps-sized battles against the Japanese in the late ‘30s.
I don’t say any of this to apologize for Hitler, I only say we must examine these events from the perspective of their participants.
Poland was part of the Russian Empire.
It was not clear in the early years after WW1 which new nations might or might not be born from the Russian empire or what its borders were. Civil War is more apt then invasion.
The Soviet Union was also still a revolutionary movement at that time seeking world revolution. Socialism in one country was adopted as policy in 1925/26.
The Japanese were the aggressors against Russia.
The bottom line is that there was basically a 0% chance that out of the blue Stain was going to declare war on a peaceful Germany in order to spread the revolution.
Yes, but *again*, you must see it from the perspective of the Nazis. How much can you trust a man and a system as ruthless as Stalin’s? Is what’s true today going to be true tomorrow?
We have already established, as Misha’s post demonstrates, the SU had *vastly* more military potential than Germany. So if you’re a believing Nazi - that the race is to the fastest and the world to the strongest, the life of nations is struggle, etc - it’s not a question of “if” but “when”. And since Germany had no ability to compel Britain to surrender, well, do it now and not in 5 years when the SU has digested its purges etc.
It is important not to follow an idiotic strategy.
The nazies need to win against Russia because they can’t run a society. What was the big plan without the war? Admit to the German people they were broke by 1939.
Inevitably the economy is going to collapse, or the people are going to want electoral reform, or a new generation is going to grow up and do that young people did in The 60s.
Getting to autarky and being in a perpetual war probably doesn’t solve this but it’s at least an idea in the Nazi mind.
Ww1 Germany had a better chance at victory because it was capable of running a peacetime society. If it knocked out France it could have come to some kind of agreement with the entente to withdraw with some territorial adjustments and turned inward to continue its own development.
When the nazies conquered France what were they going to do with it? If Hitler agreed to withdraw from Western Europe for peace with brittian, he’s still got the problem of having no vision for what a peacetime Germany should look like.
The problem of (lack of, or if present than idiotic) German strategy is older than Hitler.
It's funny you say that because we know what happened to the USSR in the next few decades. Germany could well have emerged victorious through sheer tenacity and playing the two sides against each other.
Germany succeeded against France & Britain in 1940, whereas Soviet-Finnish Winter war went very poorly for Soviet Union, even if in the end, Soviet Union was kind of successful lite. Hitler had all the reason to be confident after the Fall of France in June 1940 that he would succeed. In addition to Land-Lease extended to Soviet Union, it was also lucky that American intervention prevented a full scale mobilization of France, Sweden, Finland and Spain on the German side. Plus, Hitler (and most Germans) imagined Final Solution would make winning against Soviet Union easier...
It's the same hubris that informs West's MSM media that the war in Ukraine is going not too badly.
Had Germany fully mobilised its war economy prior to the invasion - something the Soviet Union had done - could the Germans have won in 1941?
This is considering that iron and steel production was considerably higher in Germany than Russia, just Germany was still operating on a peace economy until 1943.
Dont think so. Even they had more goods they didnt really have the supply chain to get it to the front, or the manpower to win