WW2 Eastern Front?

Why did Nazis fail so badly on the Eastern Front? What could have they done differently? Does Jow Forums have any ideas?

PS: thread music... Panzerkampf by Sabaton: youtube.com/watch?v=HF3pv6WsJrs

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Axis_talks)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage
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>Bunch of skinny, untalented faggots who couldn't win a gay bar fight singing about the glory of combat

Fuck off.

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1. don't listen to your generals
2. don't listen to your generals
3. listen to your generals give impassioned arguments for 4 hours and then decide to do whatever you were originally going to do (happened often from first-hand accounts)

go back achmed.

>Drive deep into hostile territory
>Fuck up all logistics
>give the enemy time to develop tactics and strategy designed specifically to counter yours with the resources they have
>have no capability to fight a war of attrition
They could have taken Poland up on that offer to ally with them against the Reds and maybe not get drawn into a war with the West. But Hitler was a nut and would have found some way to fuck it all up.

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>thinking the Nazis could have actually won on the Eastern Front

they can't even win a soccer game vs mexicans on the eastern front, there's no way they would have taken moscow

>How could the Nazis have conquered 11 timezones of frozen hellscape filled with hard people who dgaf?

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11 times zones? That's ridiculous. It's not even funny.

They made the mistake of invading a nation with massively greater industrial capabilities than theirs, a much greater resource base especially in terms of manpower, while already at war with one of the biggest world powers of the era and starving for fuel and manpower.

Germany could not have won in operation barbarossa. It simply wasnt possible. They hoped if they kicked in the door that the government would capitulate, but a fanatacized political populace doesnt capitulate because youre slaughtering them, they draft up and fight back. Once the soviets were fully mobilized and under good command the war was fucked.

>what if they took moscow!
Nothing changes. Taking the capital of russia does not make it capitulate. Napoleon tried that and got his ass whooped.

>what if they made more tanks!
They barely had the fuel to run the tanks and aircraft they had. The germans could not mass a more sizeable armored corps until they had fuel; the thing they hoped to get my capturing the caucuses

>what if hitler stopped making bad decisions! The generals could of won the war if they had full control!
Hitler’s worst decision was signing off on the generals plans to invade the soviets. Also, the german generals were no masterminds of perfect planning. They were skilled, yes, but they could not win an unwinnable war

>what if they got the british out of the war first!
The brits made it clear peace was not an option until poland and france were back under british allied government control and the nazi regime fell. The nazis did vye for peace multiple times. Invading the british isles was mere speculation for the tiny and inexperienced kriegsmarine ; operation sealion would have gotten its shit kicked in as the british home fleet was bigger than the entire german navy

Germany was fucked. Their best chance would have been to hold what they had, dig in, and prepare for the coming hordes when russia followed thru on their invasion plans.

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Another one of these threads. The fight on the Eastern Front wasn't a complete failure, it was incredibly close and much of what Hitler did during the first two years was surprisingly reasonable. The big point where people argue they made a mistake was Stalingrad, it's true that Hitler made a mistake here in splitting up Army Group South. It would have likely been a victory if he hadn't done this. The question is what then, Moscow and Leningrad were still holding and the Soviet military was becoming stronger everyday. It's hard to say if the Germans ever could have won in the East

>The question is what then
Baku, that was the entire point of Army Group South

This. the main thing people forget was Germany's oil shortage. They could make all the tanks they want, didn't mean shit if they couldn't keep em fed.

The one thing that might have worked would be buttfucking the brits real hard and taking time to dig in against the reds, since let's be real, Stalin didn't plan on invading Germany immediately, but Germany had no way of knowing that.

On top of all of that, German Military superiority was exposed as the meme it was after the Soviets started pushing them back. Turns out leaving your experienced officers and NCOs high dry will adversely affect your readiness while a horde of fresh troops lead by recently battle hardened NCOs is going to do some serious damage.

I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to be a part of the 6th Army after encirclement, I wonder if they were told that Hitler pretty much left them for dead

See bottom part
Stalin threw russian bodies into the nazi tree grinders until they stopped working

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Yep. Welcome to the jungle, bitch. Only a complete retard would try to invade this shit and that's exactly what Hitler did.

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kek'd

Should of just made a mad rush to the Urals and puppeted the baltic states and Ukraine. Why didnt the allies declare war on the soviets for invading poland again? Better idea would of been to chill out with czechoslovakia and austria annexed and wait for the UK and Soviets to get in a cold war and hang out like franco did.

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russia's huge. pretty sure they're the largest country on earth.

youtu.be/U06jlgpMtQs

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>Listening and believing in Goering’s promise that the Luftwaffe will manage to supply the VI army during the winter

>Why didnt the allies declare war on the soviets for invading poland again?

Because they specifically warned Germany they'd declare war if they attacked Poland. As of August of '39 the Soviets had really only been responsible taking the Karelias away from the Fins (which they did poorly).

tbf they wouldn't have had to have gone past the Urals. Any part of the USSR capable of putting up a serious fight was west if the mountains, no matter how much uncle Joe tried to get industry moved. They would have lost too much equipment and too many men and cities to rebuild and put together a legitimate counteroffensive.

Germans didn't even inflict a 2:1 kill ratio on the red army and were already losing 5 months into the war.

They really didn't stand a chance no matter how many civilians they killed

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>threw bodies

This is a myth beyond a few early engagements, see . The death discrepancy between Nazi Germany and USSR is largely due to the germans killing large numbers of civilians & POWs

Except for the part where they DID put together a legitimate counteroffensive and the Nazis got
Blown
The
Fuck
Out

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Did I miss some part of history where the Germans took everything west of the Urals?
do you even know where the Urals are?

truth right there.

also, another WW2 factoid: Japan didn't capitulate because the US dropped two nukes on them, they capitulated because they didn't want to surrender to Russians.

>If the Nazis won then the Nazis would've won
Oh wow what an insightful piece of military history.

They didn't because they couldn't, and that was ALWAYS the case.

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If Germany had put all it's resourced in the 1930s Kreigsmarine into building more submarines, instead of surface vessels like Bismark they had a shot.

In a world where Germany decisively destroyed the British Army on the continent, where they could not escape at Dunkirk, and one where British shipping is suffering ever worse loses in the battle for the Atlantic than they did in reality, I believe the UK would have accepted a peace.

Army destroyed, Island slowly being starved and it's merchant fleet sunk, they would have sued for peace.

Only if the UK is out of the war can Germany even hope to win Barbarossa.

It was in response to the idea that the Germans would have to go through 11 time zones. They sure as shit didn't need to push to Vladivostok to cripple the Soviets.

>>How could the Nazis have conquered 11 timezones of frozen hellscape
In all fairness, they could have taken Russia if that was the only front. The concept of Britain being universally against Germany from the beginning is revisionist rubbish. Britain had been fairly well allied with Germany so Hitler's unawareness of how well Britain had recently been prepared against him was - though unfortunate to his cause - very understandable given his scope of understanding. The British king being deposed and HP Long being assassinated prior to the war were likely cognizant preparations of which causes Hitler was probably ignorant. In retrospect it seems pretty obvious that a lot of preparation was being done to congeal a solid Allied Force prior to the war.
tl;dr: Hitler only ever counted on there being a single front in the East

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>Japan didn't capitulate because the US dropped two nukes on them, they capitulated because they didn't want to surrender to Russians.

Even though the Soviet Union had no way of carrying out an invasion and they were already preparing for an American one? Even though they were being bombed relentlessly around the clock, they were completely cut off from the rest of their imperial holdings, and they lost two cities to a weapon that turned them into parking lots in a single moment? Yeah, they totally surrendered because they lost Manchuria, which they could no longer reach from the mainland, and they feared an invasion that literally couldn't be conducted.

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>building more submarines, instead of surface vessels like Bismark they had a shot.
No.
I agree that they shouldnt buiding more big battle ship but building more submarine woundnt do them any good.

U-boat was pretty much useless after mid 1943

>If Germany had put all it's resourced in the 1930s Kreigsmarine into building more submarines, instead of surface vessels like Bismark they had a shot.

Building more U-boats isn't the answer as they were bottle necked by their facilities.

Vacillating during the retreat cost a lot of good men, also. A solid retreat would have saved many of them.

There are many correct answers. I think there is truth to all of the previous posts.
Here is another Avenue to explore.

The loss of Stalingrad was already determined back in June 1941.

The Germans lost about 200 Ju 52s over the skies of Crete and lost another 70 on the ground. That's 1/3 of their total aircraft logistical capacity.
Goering promised Hitler he could keep the eastern front supplied with his aircraft. In reality, he couldn't.
The warehouses at Tatsinskaya had plenty of supplies, but they just couldn't deliver it to Stalingrad fast enough.
Stalingrad required 700 tons a day. Because they were short on Ju 52s they could only deliver 107 tons a day on average. They even started using the He 177 for cargo. On their best day they only delivered 262 tons in 154 flights. They lost 200+ Ju 52s trying to keep stalingrad supplied.

Crazy to think about, huh?

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>oil
Totally true but we would not be discussing this if the Soviets had not skillfully sabotaged the oil fields that Germany had seized during their initiative. Had they been able to use that oil the results may have been much different.

Rommel trying to conquer all of northern Africa was a pretty big fuckup, also. If Rommel had just held fast like he was told then a lot of German losses could have been prevented.

Today RuMOD has declassified reports and orders of the first day of Soviet-German war (22 june 1941).

june-22.mil.ru/

Everything in russian, of course

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you realize that's an opinion column right

First, thats an opinion piece. Second, you didn't even post a full article.

The first one basically says that Germans might attack on June 22nd or 23rd and for everyone to take defensive positions, get the air force ready and prepare for possible conflict on the night of the 22nd of June, 1941.

Then after that? The German army could only go so far

They were kicking ass at first, but Soviets had a scorched earth policy which meant the Germans had to stretch a ridiculous supply pipeline to sustain their war effort which made them slower and the only way they could have won this way was if they had successfully taken Stalingrad really quickly and had been able to push the front closer to the Urals

>They could have taken Poland up on that offer to ally with them against the Reds and maybe not get drawn into a war with the West. But Hitler was a nut and would have found some way to fuck it all up.
I think youre confusing hearts of iron scenarios with reality

the thing is that it could have been viable for Germany and Poland to ally if Poland still had the leadership previous to the one that they had at the start of the war

Honestly, Germany's biggest downfall was making enemies out of nations and peoples that very well could have been friends or at least assets.

Many Ukrainians, Russians, and other Slavs had major grievances against the Reds; Germany didn't leverage the manpower of these people until it was much too late in the war, and by then it had already committed enough atrocities to give the Soviets enough propaganda material against them.

Except for the fact that Germany was looking to get its lost territories back and then some, you know, what they said they were going to do.

>As of August of '39 the Soviets had really only been responsible taking the Karelias away from the Fins (which they did poorly).

No. Soviet-Finnish conflict happened later that year, after Poland had been already wrapped up

>Germans didn't even inflict a 2:1 kill ratio on the red army and were already losing 5 months into the war.
Holy shit you're a moron, right?

Literally in the opening months of the war Germany caused over 6 million total casualties on the Soviets who had had an initial force of little above 3 million men facing Germany

Germany was genuinely friendly with the previous Polish leadership. It's true that they were butthurt about lost territories but that's not the only reason Hitler sperged out, not to mention if that was the only reason he should have done it first to not allow tensions to develop

Well, I'm an idiot. The whole "Winter War" thing probably should've reminded me.

>Why did Nazis fail so badly on the Eastern Front? What could have they done differently? Does Jow Forums have any ideas?

Harder thrust earlier, prevent italy from starting shit in the balkans or greece

Given that as is they caused 200% casualties in the first months compared to initial soviet strenght had they pushed further and faster they could've collapsed the entire soviet military apparatus

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>Why did Nazis fail so badly on the Eastern Front?
They simply fought a war they couldn't win. With the Soviets holding out (which should've been predictable), the Allies could make use of their huge advantage in resources and industrial output and crush Germany in a war of attrition.
>What could have they done differently?
It was already stupid to start the war in 1939, but if I were Hitler in 1941, I would've either tried to get the Soviets into the Axis (there were such negotiations, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Axis_talks) or conduct Operation Barbarossa, but without the deliberate "war of extermination", which drove Soviet citizens into the arms of Stalin. Initially many greeted the German army as liberators. Germany couldn't win a war of attrition against the USSR, but I read that Stalin was willing to cede large territories including the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine to Germany during the initial successes of the 1941 and 1942 summer offensives. Maybe with such a buffer Germany would be able to build up enough of a defense to force a favorable peace treaty. Without being the first nation to produce nukes (something Germany was never close to), I don't see how Germany could win this war.

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>Even though the Soviet Union had no way of carrying out an invasion and they were already preparing for an American one? Even though they were being bombed relentlessly around the clock, they were completely cut off from the rest of their imperial holdings, and they lost two cities to a weapon that turned them into parking lots in a single moment? Yeah, they totally surrendered because they lost Manchuria, which they could no longer reach from the mainland, and they feared an invasion that literally couldn't be conducted.
According to US intel Uncle Joe was massing troops for japanese incursion when the bombs dropped

Fucking this.
I hear this bullshit about Germany's generals being able to win the war if they had only been given more control, and I cringe every time.
There are several excellent, well detailed essays and videos that explain why Germany could never have won WWII.

Fucking Wehraboos oversimplifying history.

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actually, regarding grand strategy, the German army would've probably even fared a tad better if Hitler got his way instead of his generals.

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>Without being the first nation to produce nukes (something Germany was never close to)
U sure? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage

>a tad better
Sure, they may have dragged on the war a year or two longer, but is that really a good thing for Germany?
The quicker the Germans lose the war, the quicker they'll stop sending young men to die.

Also, there were times when Hitler actually had better sense then his generals, ex. Operation Citadel and the idea capturing Moscow = victory.

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The problem with German bomb project was that at the time it was deemed to take too long to develop one ie. it wouldn't help with the current war so they didn't go balls deep on the project right away and after that US had run with it full steam

Also Heisenberg either goofed up with the math or sabotaged intentionally by calculating it would take a hundred times more material than in reality was required or some shit

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>you realize that's an opinion column right
Are you retarded? History's just an opinion substantiated with some facts.

>The quicker the Germans lose the war, the quicker they'll stop sending young men to die.
yes, given how crazy the war aims were in the first place I think this is true
>Also, there were times when Hitler actually had better sense then his generals, ex. Operation Citadel and the idea capturing Moscow = victory.
yes, that's what I was trying to get across

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>Sure, they may have dragged on the war a year or two longer, but is that really a good thing for Germany?
If the soviets take some more extra casualties early on into the fighting and if stalin shoots a couple soviet generals too many then its all over for the soviets, complete collapse of the front and only thing limiting german advance is their confidence

They didn't have access to the required materials in Germany, that's why they had to create a facility in Norway, which was sabotaged and destroyed by british SOE and norwegian rebels. If it weren't because of this, they could have certainly have created at least a prototype, which could have changed the mind of Hitler, just like the Stg44.

>If the soviets take some more extra casualties early on into the fighting and if stalin shoots a couple soviet generals too many then its all over for the soviets, complete collapse of the front
no, even if the leadership collapsed there was so much room to retreat, resistance was bound to continue, especially with the genocidal behavior of parts of the German army which made it a matter of life and death
>and only thing limiting german advance is their confidence
and their already massively overstretched logistics

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>US

Don't act as if the majority of the work on the Manhattan Project wasn't done by the combined Allied forces nuclear scientists. Germany was trying to solo it and got close as hell, if not achieved a successful nuke, before they got slapped.

Maybe because they weren't used to the cold climate

It would have come too late anyway, maybe having an arado or something drop a small nuke at a few russian cities could have given the germans some breathing room though

If they actually went ahead and put the hammer down on Dunkirk the British would've been a smaller problem.

>They didn't have access to the required materials in Germany
Czechia had an active uranium mine at the time

>no, even if the leadership collapsed there was so much room to retreat, resistance was bound to continue
retreat for soviets was verboten, most of the troops would've gotten encircled and forced to surrender, or forced to be partisans instead of field troops == good as losing the fight in this scale

>Germany was trying to solo it and got close as hell
No, they determined the project to take too long and didn't fully fund it at any point of the war

It worked against the japanese who were not going to surrender, so I think It would have worked against the russians too, seeing several cities completely wiped out overnight + some nazi propaganda about having thousands more on the way.

>retreat for soviets was verboten,
only as long as Stalin was in charge, and only in 1941. In 1942 Stalin allowed retreats. Assuming your scenario with a collapse of the leadership, the troops would be free to retreat.

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>the japanese who were not going to surrender
This is a meme, the japanese were willing to surrender even before being nuked

They needed heavy water from Norway.

Proof

Germany was too blinded by it's racial ideology to make decisions like that. They were willing to play ball with Pavelic to get Yugoslavia out of their hair but Hiter's hateboner for the USSR on racial terms was so large he was never going to authorize using people pissed off at the CPSU to his advantage long-term because they're the same Slav and Jewish scum he wanted dead ASAP. There was no way they were going to leverage the locals to their advantage, unless you consider gunning the locals down in mass graves "leveraging them".

>that's why they had to create a facility in Norway, which was sabotaged and destroyed by british SOE and norwegian rebels.

There's a pretty great miniseries about this, by the way.

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>only as long as Stalin was in charge, and only in 1941
And as is, soviets took +6 million casualties in the opening months of the war while only having ~3 million strength in the German facing front. Had they took more casualties earlier there would've been no coming back from it

and how exactly should Germany inflict more casualties?
would you just tell them to "do better"?

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>Honestly, Germany's biggest downfall was making enemies out of nations and peoples that very well could have been friends or at least assets.

well, that's one of the downsides of having an oppressive authoritarian regime.

Instead of going to balkans and greece, attack soviets earlier before fall rasputitsa

>leave your southern flank open to British/Yugoslav/Greek offensive
sounds like a great idea

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>leave your southern flank open to British/Yugoslav/Greek offensive
You're trolling right? The british didn't have forces to spare for such things and yugos and greeks wouldn't have started shit if Italy had stayed out too

“Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan.”, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, 2005

well, Italy didn't stay out.
And the Yugoslav army was very large (although it performed horribly against Germany in 1941). Also these positions could've been used as very close airbases against Germany. It was necessary to take out these areas before attacking the USSR.

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>On 28 November 1940 the Yugoslav Foreign Minister Aleksandar Cincar-Marković met with Hitler at Berghof.[6] Hitler spoke of his plans of the "consolidation of Europe" and called the Chief of Yugoslav diplomacy to conclude a non-aggression pact with Germany and Italy.[6] When the Yugoslav government agreed, Hitler immediately answered that this was however not enough, as it did not meet the need for the improvement of relations with the Axis powers as it left the question of Yugoslav accession to the Tripartite Pact open.[6]
why do you troll me so?

there was a coup in Yugoslavia replacing the pro Axis with a pro Allies government

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..Which might have not happened had Hitler agreed to NAP

yes but it did happen. See this is the problem, the idea of Axis victory always turns to a trillion unlikely what-ifs

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And with what sea transport would the Soviets bring those troops over to the Japanese home islands? Oh wait, they had to get landing craft from the US.

>yes but it did happen. See this is the problem, the idea of Axis victory always turns to a trillion unlikely what-ifs
Nope, just don't go to fucking balkans/greece and youre all set, do not postpone barbarossa (like it was postponed in IRL timeline)

>Sure, they may have dragged on the war a year or two longer, but is that really a good thing for Germany?
No, since that would most likely result in Berlin being the first ever target for a nuclear weapon and not Hiroshima.

Soviet Pacific Fleet and fishing vessels pressed into service

>Ar 234 payload weight: 1500kg in 3 external racks
>Little Boy weight: 4400kg
Yea nah.

>Underestimating Russians
>No proper winter equipment
>Too stretched logistic lines
>War on multiple fronts
>Offensive stopped very often because mechanized units were ahead of everyone else with no fuel left and had to wait
>German generals doing stupid shit stretching lines/moving units too much


Germans had no chance to win this war. As always they wage war against entire world, a war they simply can't win.

>This is a meme, the japanese were willing to surrender even before being nuked
Except the terms of that 'surrender' included keeping all their prewar conquests and they would prosecute their own war criminals (aka not do shit). The US wasn't going to accept those terms in the slightest.

Yea no, that's not how attempting an amphibious landing works