Originally Posted By: LoneRanger
I'd say the wehrmacht pushing to 20 miles outside of moscow and causing 1 million russian casualties tends to qualify as nearly handing them their [censored].
Not really. What that shows is that it was somewhat idiotic to attack the Soviet Union because they could take those losses and still mount a huge comeback (albeit with significant Western Allied aid). Mainly, the Soviet Union outnumbered Germany in resources and manpower at a ratio of about 3:1. Combine that with a vast expanses of the Soviet steppes and Britain on Germany's Western Front, you have a recipe that says there's no way to win a war of attrition.
The German Army (Heer) was also a largely rail-bound, and horse cart supported army that lacked mechanization despite the much storied panzers at the front. The idea of Blitzkrieg is largely a myth...
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Had Hitler not been an insane evil megalomaniac (then of course none of WWII would have happened anyway...) and micro managed his generals Germany would have prevailed on the eastern front.
Then what was Stalin? The Generalissimo was also an evil megalomaniac that not only "micromanaged" his generals, he EXECUTED HIS BEST ONES!! You can't give the German military as pass because of Hitler anymore than you can mock the Red Army with Stalin breathing down their necks...
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Plenty of those under the boot of stalin in the satellite holdings of ussr saw the German army as liberators, not conquerers (because they were conquered by stalin...)
True to an extent, until the Heer and SS started stealing their clothes and food. Because Operation Barbarossa was little more than a huge war crime that was predicated on the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Russian and Soviet civilians to work because the Wehrmacht knew they could never maintain the necessary logistics any other way. And while Hitler could be a military idiot, many on his general staff (even the ones that hated him) agreed that if the Heer got to the Dnieper Dniester Rivers, that the Red Army would be destroyed. They did, and it wasn't. The Soviets had massive reserves of manpower and some solid weapons' systems like the T-34...
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Read How Hitler could have won WWII: The fatal errors that led to nazi defeat by Bevin Alexander before you heap too much glory on the former ussr in WWII.
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There's almost no way Nazi Germany could have won WWII. They didn't have the navy to take England, and they didn't have the manpower and resources to conduct a prolonged war against the Soviet Union. Once the United States entered, they were finished...