but didn’t Hitler invade Poland, when his country was on the verge of Bankruptcy? The way the Nazis had setup their economy which was splurge on the military spending and make it up for conquering countries.
So Hitler and the nazis would have to pay out of their own pockets, if they had to wait any longer.
I think Poland was a “target of opportunity” - far away from the Western Allies, and he made a last-minute surprise deal with the Russians. I think he thought he’d get away with it, like he’d gotten away with Austria and Czechoslovakia. (And to a certain extent, he did; the Western Allies did declare war, but major military operations didn’t happen until Hitler attacked them.
Economically, Hitler cheated. He imposed price controls, so he could print money and have no inflation. He jiggered the banking laws to give him ready access to cash. It was all unsustainable in the long term (20 years on), but while he needed rearmament money, it was there.
My first point would be that Adolf Hitler is not a great judge of what is and is not strategically valuable.
Secondly a railway line can be cut at any point on it’s length.
My point is that neither the railway line nor the Volga River traffic needed to be cut at Stalingrad. There was no added value in taking Stalingrad rather than bypassing it and cutting the transport links elsewhere.
If the Germans had another 1,000 tanks and aircraft for Barbarossa would they not just have run out of fuel quicker?
You bring up a good point - the “backend” of having extra everything. For tanks, here’s the steel come from (the Germans bought iron ore from Sweden, because they didn’t have enough)? Where’s the fuel come from (Romania; what happens if the Allies bomb it with more gusto)? Where’s the crews come from (they’re taken out of the workforce, basically permanently) Where’s their food come from (The Germans were chronically short)? Where’s their maintenance people come from (they’re highly proficient, and are also removed from the work force)? Where do the wounded go (you’re going to have many more)?
For aircraft, the same, but technical prowess is even more crucial, and fuel refinement has fewer tolerances. And trains, and anti-aircraft, and so on.
The manpower distribution is a balance that cannot be pushed too far in any direction.
Unless…
The US had a significant advantage in all this in that they had plenty of excess production capacity at the beginning of the war, spare finances (through taxation: something the Germans were unwilling to do until it was too late - and bonds), with a couple of million people that could be taken out of the work force for the military without affecting production, and industries and workers weren’t getting bombed (except in bars). Not for nothing was WWII sometimes described in the US as “the good war” - at home.
1000 more tanks is not really what he was talking about. He was saying that with full wartime production they could have upgraded the tank force to have 1000 more modern tanks. Get rid of the Panzer 1’s and 2’s totally and go with all Panzer 3’s and 4’s. This makes supply easier even though heavier tanks use more fuel. Unless you go with the Panzer divisions with double the tanks like they had in France. Then you send a lot more tanks and burn through fuel faster.
Germany was a country full of shortages. The biggest probably was manpower of all training types. This was never going to be solvable for a long war. They had to beat Russia quickly and imho, it was not possible. They maybe make the war last longer and millions more die.
No doubt the US had tremendous advantages for the war. Good reason not to pick on countries twice your size plus. Maybe the hardest part of the war for us was crossing the oceans. They also made us safe so it was a huge advantage.
I’m not just arguing the ministers would make that decision, they’d have to convince Hitler and the other heads of government that mass production was what would have to be adopted. And I disagree with you because there is no reason why Stalin would act any differently than he did. He wanted more time for the Red Army to beef up before any war with Germany and honestly I believe was afraid of a war with Germany. I don’t see his behavior being any different. Besides like I said he wouldn’t know Germany would have adopted mass production. I believe the Germans take Leningrad because as things played out they lacked the offensive punch to ensure it fell. With greater panzer divisions and artillery this would have been accomplished. And to me even if things play out with Hitler diverting Guderians panzers to take down the Soviets around Kiev the Germans would still have plenty of strength to take Moscow in 1941. With greater panzer armies maybe their speed at moving east is greater than it was in reality. As things played the Germans got to within 5-12km of Moscow and that was with a not as well prepared as it could have been and ignorant army. It would have been scary to see what the Germans could have done with a realistically planned and prepared for campaign in Russia.
Well… here is a video from Military history not visualised that sums up why Stalingrad was taken and not bypassed or encircled.
And another one from TIK (Well… I better brace myself for the angry replies)
Here is a TL;DR in case you don’t have time: The main objective of Fall Blau was to take the Oil, Stalingrad is not important. As the campaign progresses it goes from optional to necessary objective. So… why not encircle it? Well… Paulus believed he could take the city. You also need to know that the Volga is a big river. So it is going to take time to make bridges across the river. Which makes encirclement all the more harder. And since Stalingrad is a cities with huge factories… there has to be rail links to it, thereby improving the supply issue. So taking it makes sense
German plans didn’t call for crossing the Volga, so the bridge issue is irrelevant.
Does it matter if Paulus believed he could take Stalingrad; he could have given it a quick try and then stopped when he found out his beliefs were over optimistic.
Stalingrad had factories, Luftwaffe had bombs.
Stalingrad was never a necessary objective; but it became an obsessive objective.
Other way around - the Germans didn’t want a bridgehead/ferry crossing across the Volga coming their way. But yeah, the name made it the obsession of both Hitler and Stalin.
And I talked of more than just a greater number of stronger tanks like the Panzer IV Dan, you should read again my economic shortages post. The pak38 gun the Germans should have produced more of before Barbarossa, prime tracked movers, heavy infantry weapons, field artillery, etc. You guys especially Dan keep talking about german shortages but I’ve researched this, they had the capacity to produce far more weapons. Aka why I say they didn’t realize they’d need a mass production economy for WWII, not producing a certain amount of each weapon as they did. We are lucky for this mistake on their part.