I've been watching the documentaries about this NAZI invasion of Russia. It appears that there was an opportunity fairly early on to attack and possibly capture Moscow, but Hitler decided to delay it. It makes me wonder what the effect on the war might have been if it had succeeded, and the Communists in the Kremlin had been eliminated. Hitler hated Communists, so any in leadership roles would have been neutralized.

The Russian military would have been very much against NAZI takeover due to Hitler's breach of the non-aggression pact. Would it have been possible to convert the Russian military machine to fight the Allies?

The Russian public, probably not hard-core Communists, would also have not been particularly keen on NAZI overlords, given the bad treatment they received during the war. NAZIs also considered Russians as inferiors and suitable for subjugaton.

So I am wondering what the outcome would have been if the NAZIs had won Operation Barbarossa.

flashguy

I've never placed that much importance on Moscow. The Russians would regroup in the east and the Germans likely would have stopped to wait for more favorable weather and flown in more winter clothing. It would have given the center group a much nicer place to ride out the worst of winter and tend to equipment.

Now Hitler taking the UK in the summer of 1940 would have been more pivotal and pretty damn devastating in my opinion.

Hitlers decision to invade Russia was a total disaster and contributed greatly to his defeat. And I also believe that his decision to forego invading England was a huge blunder. Without England to serve as a base to attack Europe, prosecuting the war would have been much more difficult.

Well, if we're going to play 'what if'...

If Hitler had believed more in hard science rather than bungling his resources and energies with his fixation in mysticism and the occult, the Nazis more than likely would've had The Bomb first by as much as a couple of years ahead of America's effort. Think about one of those puppies on top of the V2, then multiply the number of V2s. They would've ultimately had the entire world on its knees, and not just limited to the immediate and pressing thorns of Britain and the USSR.

But instead his military would wind up conscripting many of their nation's brightest and most talented young physicists to be nothing more than common expendable foot soldiers for the Wehrmacht. That shortsighted kind of devastating brain drain did more to derail Germany's nuclear efforts during the war years than the much more publicized lore of the sabotage and destruction of the Nazis' heavy water production efforts.

A point I hadn’t considered that made me think about a similar question…

The Russians and their western areas fough so hard because they KNEW what the Nazis were going to do to them.

If Hitler had entered the western areas as bringing freedom from communism rather than “I’m going to kill you all”, there may have been a very different outcome in Russia proper.

And if hitler had just gone for the oil instead of throwing everything at Stalingrad…that was an oopsie.

quote:

Originally posted by monoblok:
Well, if we're going to play 'what if'...

If Hitler had believed more in hard science rather than bungling his resources and energies with his fixation in mysticism and the occult, the Nazis more than likely would've had The Bomb first by as much as a couple of years ahead of America's effort. Think about one of those puppies on top of the V2, then multiply the number of V2s. They would've ultimately had the entire world on its knees, and not just limited to the immediate and pressing thorns of Britain and the USSR.

But instead his military would wind up conscripting many of their nation's brightest and most talented young physicists to be nothing more than common expendable foot soldiers for the Wehrmacht. That shortsighted kind of devastating brain drain did more to derail Germany's nuclear efforts during the war years than the much more publicized lore of the sabotage and destruction of the Nazis' heavy water production efforts.

I don't think the Nazis ever had a chance to develop the bomb before us, certainly not by years. And anything that they did create certainly wasn't going to make it on top of a V2 rocket. Not even close

quote:

The Russian public, probably not hard-core Communists, would also have not been particularly keen on NAZI overlords, given the bad treatment they received during the war.

My wife was born in southern Russia in 1952. Her mother was a front line doctor in the Russian army during the war. Her father died in 1955 & the only thing she knows is that he was shot through the jaws during combat. Her mother's first husband & first child died during the war. My wife's grandmother was shot by a Nazi officer because "she looked like a Jew".

Nazis, fortunately, made so many strategic blunders. Occupying Norway and tying up 700k troops for the majority of the war? Invade Russia, an ally? Yep. Not the best ally, and eventually there would have been war with them, but they probably could have operated with impugnity from mid-Poland west.

Moscow, like Stalingrad, had no real significance. Invading Russia was disasterous. So would have been invading England. And helping their worthless ally Italy in North Africa. More of the same. If they stopped with continental Europe from mid-Poland back, they could have consolidated.

Which would have allowed them to massacre even more Jews and undesirables. I'm Jewish, and glad they did not, obviously.

They would have eventually lost, or been forced to give back much territory. Nobody could contain the industrial might of the US, but they might have permanently negotiated and doubled or tripled the size of the empire. I have never been under the impression they were ever seriously close to an atomic weapon.

I saw a program a while back where Germanys' top nuclear research scientist who was trying to develop an atom bomb had two Jewish assistants who managed to escape and make it to Britain with his notes and equations... he had calculated it would take them something like 15 years of work to develop enough enriched uranium to make one bomb and so it was put on hold... the two assistance realizes the head scientist had made a mistake in his calculations and it should have been more like 1.5 years or something like that...... with all the slave labor that could be disposed of, if they had directed their attention to this it would have been probably even faster.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
If Hitler had entered the western areas as bringing freedom from communism rather than “I’m going to kill you all”, there may have been a very different outcome in Russia proper.

There were already large swaths of the Soviet Union that welcomed the Germans as liberators from Stalin's tyranny. There were a number of subcultures and minority groups that had been treated horribly by the Soviets, including several groups and regions that had been subjected to large scale genocides, and who were glad to toss their support behind the Germans. There were plenty of others who were just tired of the Communists' harsh tactics and bungled national policies over the preceding years/decades, which had (for example) resulted in widespread famine and starvation thanks to their abortive attempts at the forced collectivization of farming.

Anti-Soviet sentiment was most notable among the Cossacks, Kazakhs, and Ukrainians, as a result of Soviet treatment of those groups. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...e_of_1931%E2%80%9333
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decossackization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Well Napoleon took Moscow but it didn't seem to help him win his war. The days of winning a war by solely taking the other sides capital city are long past.

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Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Not even close

Nope.

Consider how long and difficult the process was in the United States despite the commitment (that was lacking in Germany for various reasons), the scientific talent available, and our resources that were not subject to interruption by enemy action. Soviet Russia’s being able to more or less catch up as quickly as they did after the war was simply due to the scientific hard work’s being handed to them on a platter by their spies and US traitors. In addition to all the other handicaps the Germans labored under, they had no assistance like that.

An excellent book on the subject (among many that make clear what an enormous project the development and fabrication of the atomic bombs was) is Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb by Thomas Powers.

It seems that I have been studying European Warfare since I was young. Plus most of my classes for my History degree revolved around either The battles of North Africa or the Eastern Front.

The idea of capturing Stalingrad fixated Hitler, and it became his obsession especially since Stalingrad had no strategic value. This obsession led him to ignore the reality on the ground and his general's advice.

Four weeks into the campaign, the Germans realized they had grossly underestimated Soviet strength along with their logistical preparations were grossly inadequate plus the German industrial preparations for a sustained war had yet to begin.

German Intelligence and planners did not prepare nor study the weather and what that weather would do to the terrain. In regards to logistics the men and machines were not equipped to deal with said weather and their supply lines could not keep up with depth and width of the battlefield.
((Three army groups with over three million German soldiers, 150 divisions, and three thousand tanks smashed across the frontier into Soviet territory. The invasion covered a front from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a distance of two thousand miles))

Plus, this fool hardy invasion decimated many of the elite Panzer and Panzergrenadier Divsions such as the The Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland (which was activated on 14 June 1939 and saw action in France in 1940) which was attached to Panzer Group 2 in the opening phases of Barbarossa, and was nearly destroyed in the Battle of Moscow in late 1941.

I've spent a lot of time in Germany and have met a few Stalingrad vets. I have as many friends there as in the US and I don't think I've ever known anyone there who did not have a male relative die on the Russian front. That section of the war was a total meat grinder that wore down the Germans' men and material faster than they would ever be able to replace it. If Hitler had left the war to the pros and not micromanaged everything, it may have turned out differently. But the Russians knew defeat meant extinction. So there was no downside in fighting to the last man.

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Originally posted by JoseyWales2:
Well Napoleon took Moscow but it didn't seem to help him win his war. The days of winning a war by solely taking the other sides capital city are long past.

The thing about the Soviet Union is that the majority of their population, industry, resources, and agriculture, are located in the western 1/3ish of the country.

The German plan was to invade, smash the bulk of the Soviet forces through encirclements, capture the important Western agricultural and industrial areas (including Moscow), and push whatever remains of the Soviet forces and leadership east of the Ural Mountains. From there, the Germans could set up a defensive line anchored on the mountains, and the remaining Soviets would have been bottled up in the eastern steppes and Siberia, with minimal remaining manpower, industry, food, and resources, and no capability to effectively rebuild into a military threat again. Basically turn the Soviet Union into third world vassal state east of the Urals.

So capturing Moscow wouldn't necessarily have been the key to German success, but it would have been a strong symbolic/morale victory, it would have thrown Soviet military leadership into even further disarray, and it would have been a big step towards the successful occupation of the important areas of the Western Soviet Union.

But obviously, things didn't go as the Germans planned. And it was a pretty long shot to begin with.

As for Stalingrad, it was saved, and the front secured and Nazis pushed back when Japan basically refused to engage in sustained land operations against USSR, freeing up VAST numbers of troops and material to go back west JUST IN TIME as the Stalingrad bloody debacle unfolded. Had they been tied up, Stalingrad would have been taken and held. But the Germans would still have been pushed back and out of USSR, but it might have taken another year or two tops.

Having read a LOT of books on Stalingrad. One person really doomed hundreds of thousands to a horrible death in that hell hole. Herman Goring. Hitler point-blank asked if he could reliably air-lift ammo and materials to support the army until it could be relieved.

He thought about it for under a minute, and to the shock of all of his luftwaffe subordinates and pretty much everyone else but Hitler. He confidently said it would be done.

Several people at that fateful moment noted that Hitler truly seemed ready to back down and let his army withdraw. They wrote if Goring emphatically, or at least honestly, said NOPE. The Army likely could have retreated in good order.

As for friends who lost male relatives in Stalingrad. a German-born wife of an old friend lost one of her grandfathers in Stalingrad. So there's some anecdotal support...

The front of Barbarossa was so broad that managing it was nearly impossible. The German army's logistics chain hadn't caught up technically to its combat arm's advances. While the blitzkrieg maximized mechanization and communications, the rear was still using horses to haul the beans, bullets and fuel.
My understanding is that Hitler wanted to bypass Moscow but the German general staff (heavy Prussian influence) was insistent that capturing Moscow had to be a priority which helped appeal to Hitler's ego, particularly after the capture of Paris the year before.

Had German combat power focused on the Southern front first, 'liberating' Ukraine, get their agriculture production up and running, utilize the Black Sea as a base and safe haven from the Med then, secure the oil fields around Azerbaijan, while isolating Moscow, things certainly would've been different.

Read William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

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Originally posted by parabellum:
Read William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

There is no better definitive history of the Third Reich. What a front row seat Shirer had for it all.

I knew a woman who lost her husband and a son on the Russian front. I have a good friend in Germany who's a cop and a genealogy buff with connections to the German Red Cross. He was able to track down the mass grave in Stalingrad one of his grandfathers is buried in. They recently had a ceremony there when they spruced up the site. They have a wall, sort of like our Vietnam Memorial, with about 60k names on it so far, but with a ton more of blank slates, knowing there are lots more to find and ID. Again, this is a cemetery in Volgograd for German war dead that's maintained by the Russian gov't. Definitely on my bucket list to visit.

It’s an article of historical faith that had Hitler not interfered with the running of the German war effort they would have done much better, and that’s no doubt true—assuming we look only at his bad decisions that the general staff objected to, and ignore the bad decisions they accepted and his good decisions they opposed.

It’s sometimes said that the Germans weren’t out-fought, but rather defeated by the allies’ superiority in materiel and other resources, as if the latter were somehow not an integral and vital part of warfare. An army does not consist only of privates and noncommissioned officers, and they can’t win wars by themselves no matter how motivated and competent they are. In his book that I highly recommend, The Second World Wars (sic), Victor Davis Hanson points out the failures of the German generals, including such things as poor preparations and planning. As I read Hanson’s analysis, I was reminded of the dog who had no idea of what he would do with the car he was chasing if he caught it.