Hi, many say winter had a crucial role in operarion Barbarossa, because of this many say that The initial Arkanglesh Astrakhan line would have been reached if germany decided not to help italy and attack in april instead of june, do u think its correct?

Out of the Foxholes Questions
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Highly doubtful of that. The idea that Germany should just not have gone to war with the Soviets or later is a common misconception about the state of WW2. Both Hitler and Stalin new that war between the two was inevitable, they just had different ideas about when.

That a bigger effort on the mediterranean would have allowed them to secure it is also not a realistic concept in my opinion. There is no way they would have done that with naval superiority and that was just not in the cards. In order to succesfully reinforce North Africa you need to get stuff there first.

Also, the idea that oil was the Wehrmacht’s only or just biggest problem on the Eastern front in 1941 and 1942 is misguided. As others have pointed out, this was logistics by a long shot. From the very start of the war Germans were much less capable of replacing their losses than the Soviets. The Soviets outproduced Germany already as early as 1940!

The German war economy was only mobilized after they had figured out they were losing. German leadership was not fond of the idea of it to begin with and had they not been at war with the Soviets at the time that they did, it is not likely they would kickstart it any earlier. The Soviet war industry on the other hand faced no such limitations. Any later Barbarossa would have resulted mostly in a relatively better prepared red army in comparison to the Wehrmacht

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I think there are four factors at play here: planning, German invincibility, logistics and weather. The original plan was to start earlier in the year but events in the Balkans pushed the date into late June. The German high command, as well as Hitler, believed that the war would be over in just a few weeks, but the plan didn’t work out that way. The Soviet railways were a different gauge than the German ones, and had mostly single tracks between cities, which meant that if a train left from point A to point B, the train would need to return empty to load up again. A double track would be needed to efficiently move material forward, and there was not time to build new trackage. The roads also in many cases were not paved and with an army churning up the path would quickly prove to be quagmires if the weather turned out to be rainy. At this point in the war Hitler was not micromanaging the Wehrmacht and seemed to just move his hand over a map and the generals would implement his wishes. I am aware that some of these are sweeping generalizations, and that there are many other factors but this is my take at this point of the war.

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Hi a very heartfelt welcome :pray: to the forum let me/us know should there be any queries.

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I agree with you on most things but disagree slightly with you on the Germans handling of their economy during the war. I don’t think they looked down on mass production, I believe at the beginning of WWII they failed to realize they would need an all-out total production economy to wage this war. Albert Speer realized this but only later in the war when he became minister of armaments could he do anything about it. If the Nazis produced in mass starting at least in June 1940, they definitely could have done even better with the start of Operation Barbarossa than they did. Thankfully they didn’t.

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I don’t know how you interpreted my comment, but I think we were saying the same thing about Germany only switching to war economy in 1942/43

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only if they had spent 300 political power to switch to war economy in 1936.

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Read over my comment lol, I was clear. The Germans could have began mass producing in 1939, especially 1940 but didn’t realize they would need this type of economy. Only Speer realized this later in the war. If they realistically planned for Russia they would have produced way more tanks, troop carriers, planes, and artillery for the operation. They would have done even better, thank goodness for their overconfidence.

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I don’t accept the idea that Stalin thought that war with Hitler was inevitable. For the first 2 weeks of the war Stalin was in complete denial and was convinced that “claims” of the German invasion were part of an elaborate British plot that he refused to acknowledge.

Apart from that I agree with you.

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I am aware of that, but his disbelieve was much more focused on that he would do it so early rather than that he did it all. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was an alliance of convenience of which both parties were well aware that it wouldn’t last. Stalin figured he could stay amicable with the Nazis as long as they had bigger fish to fry, but he too knew that the ideologies were incompatible and would face off eventually. Hitler’s movement was build around anti-communist agitation and fighting them in the street. Stalin may have been a fool, but he wasn’t that big of a fool.

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Honestly, on this issue I side with Hannah Arendt. I see both Hitler and Stalin as being Totalitarians, with Nazism and Communism being not so very far apart when examined closely. I think the notion of an unholy alliance was possible, I mean, consider the intellectual loops a Nazi needed to jump thru to seriously consider a Japanese Fascist as a racial co-equal, (or those “half-black Italians” to quote the SS). Hitler’s alliances were often monumental acts of cognitive dissonance in light of his party’s stated ideology. Who’d have thought Hitler was a hypocrite? (jk)

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me! :slight_smile:

We went through this a while back (in lord knows what topic), but the sum of why the Nazis and Soviets hated each other while using almost the exact same methods, was they had diametrically opposed theories of politics.

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I think the hatred was overstated between them, as it so often is with fanatics. I mean, consider the similarities between ISIS and Neo-Nazis these days. They claim to hate each other, but actually have far more in common than either may want to admit. Is this an example of the narcissism of small differences? Needless to say I agree with you xfilesfc.

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That they do basically the same thing, but hate each other is quite typical of fascism as an ideology. The entire ideology is based on having an “us” on top and a “them” that needs to be squashed. If the “them” is squashed and no longer meaningfully present, then a new “them” needs to be formulated, otherwise the movement starts to crack.

There’s a reason Bolshevism in Nazi propaganda was synonymous with “Jewish conspiracy”

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Much like all those communist and socialist parties who would keep splitting over and over again over what to any outsider looked like marginal differences but to the people involved were matters of life and death.

Abrahamic monotheism, especially the christianic variant thereof has seen the same thing. Endless splits over often minute details to the point where Europe saw near perpetual war between the dying days of the (western) Roman Empire and the height of the colonial era.

Especially in the case of the latter, but certainly also in the former the end result was often gruesome crimes sanctioned by those in positions of power and influence. Entire native tribes, religions, traditions and cultures were often brutally wiped out.

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Agreed. In psychology this phenomenon is called the narcissism of small differences

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