At what point did German defeat in WW2 become inevitable?

[Alexander's Horse]

Egypt was there for the taking. Compared to logistical problems Germany faced in Russia, desert warfare was child's play. Even a small supplementation of Rommel's force would have been decisive.

But Rommel was starved of troops and supplies not because they could not be delivered, but because the desert war was not a priority and he had to beg for everything he got.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Egypt was there for the taking. Compared to logistical problems Germany faced in Russia, desert warfare was child's play. Even a small supplementation of Rommel's force would have been decisive.

But Rommel was starved of troops and supplies not because they could not be delivered, but because the desert war was not a priority and he had to beg for everything he got.

A. He lost decisively at El Alamein. He needed a significant supplement.
B. No, axis logistics couldnt supply much more than they did
C. So what? So he takes Egypt? What is there in Egypt thats decisive? Egypt has about zero industry. So the Reich gets a bunch of cotton, so what? So they cut the Canal, thus keeping the RN out of the Med? So what?

[Shogun Gunner]

Capturing Eygpt gives Germany a chance for the oil fields in the Middle East. Any success in the middle east, starts to pressure Russia from the south around the Caspian sea. Also, the British could feel too comfortable with the box starting to close between Japan in Burma/India and Germany near or in Persia.

Lastly, success in the Middle East may have been enough to convince Turkey to join the Axis. Another threat to Russia near the Caucaus area.

[Alexander's Horse]

The Germans never worked out that Britain was obsessed with the ME, Egypt and the Suez canal because of their concern with the defence of India and communications with their Asian and African empire.

If Churchill had lost Egypt, capping off 2 years of military reverses and the fall of Singapore, the appeasement camp would have been in a very strong position to topple him. Appeasement was about preserving the empire and a longstanding British policy which Churchill overturned.

The Germans could have easily put the forces on the ground but only the German navy grasped the significance of controlling the Mediterranean and they were not influential with either the army high command or Hitler.

[Ted Striker]

Yep, taking Egypt would have cut the British Empire in half. That would have been both a strategic and morale blow big time.

Germans could have easily wiped the map in North Africa had they really wanted to.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Sikander,

Well, actually, the US DID reach it's peak potential forces, given the priorities set at the beginning of the war - that is, "only" 89 Army and 6 Marine divisions, with a major emphasis on specialist forces, naval forces, and army air forces, as well as industrial production (the US pretty much outproduced the rest of the world combined from 1941-1945).

By 1944-1945, US forces were suffering from a shortage of infantry, and US generals were arguing for a larger number of infantry divisions. Thank God those arguments did not prevail.

This is really a question of setting the bar too low rather than reaching our true potential. Without the Russians eating up supplies we could have increased our forces by reducing our production (we wasted an incredible amount during the war as it was) and by further utilizing our population to create more formations. Women and African Americans could have been utilized to a much greater degree than they were for instance.

The infantry shortage was silly for several reasons. Firstly it should have been obvious that units would need to replace a lot of infantry just from all of the previous combat experience we had in the war. The fact that we did an abysmal job of training and integrating replacements simply exacerbated the problem, as many of them became unnecessary casualties. We also killed off a lot of good veterans by running them into the ground in terms of stamina and by sending understrength infantry elements into action.

Another large reason that we suffered so many infantry casualties was our "hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle" mentality at all levels. If anything the grunts learned more quickly to try and bypass strongpoints and take terrain with maneuver than the brass did, though with so many green units being fed into the meatgrinder and no successful means of disseminating this information to incoming units everyone pretty much had to learn the hard way. Ike's insistence on pushing the Germans back step by step rather than attacking the shoulders of "the bulge" caused a huge number of infantry casualties, and still mystifies me to this day. Patton was exactly right about this. Attack the shoulders and they'll fall all over themselves giving away the terrain that took months and tens of thousands of casualties to regain. And we'd have bled them a lot more in the process.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

and supposing they take Suez, and Churchill falls - why should a successor Brit goverment make peace? Suez doesnt matter, the Brits arent moving anything through the Med other than for the defense of Egypt anyway.

Maybe they shouldn't make peace, but it's a huge strategic blow nonetheless. For starters how about axis submarines loosed in the Persian Gulf and all over the Indian Ocean?

[Alexander's Horse]

Its isn't just Suez but you have to understand that Churchill desperately needed victories to justify his belligerent policies in 1941/2.

[Mr. Harley]

Nice posts. Ok, I've read the same data people have noted here. My only disagreement, and it's simply over terminology, would be the British consideration of the Suez canal as a critical asset (versus obsession). The fall of Egypt, the loss of Arabia, the creation of an Iraq friendly to Germany (which actually happened for short while), would have split the British Empire in two. The Nazis never realized the simple strategic issue - while they did not need the Mideast, i.e. oil production was not that high yet - Britian HAD to have the Mideast. The Kreigsmarine realized this vulnerability, but since they were not part of Hitler's inner circle.. (see earlier posts). And yes, with the Uboats based out of ports off the Indian Ocean, the British Empire would have been split in two.

Now - hard data. We need two pieces of hard data to assess the ability of the Axis to take the Mideast. The tonnage figures per day for a mechanized divisoin I can dig up easily. But what merchant tonnage did the Italians have deployed in the Mediterranean? Secondly, and I've sceen the figure somewhere years ago, number/tonnage analysis of the British submarine warfare in the Med, with attempts to correct for Malta as an Axis airbase.

You can assume negligable Axis ASW via warships, they had never geared up for it and by the time they learn the necessary lessons, it will be decided. An interesting comparison would be British submarine warfare against the Japanese, whose navy was more effectively employed than the Italians but still weak in ASW. You can figure in this scenario efficiency somewhere betweent the two since you are adding Malta as a factor in the Axis favor.

Sikander, unfortunately, and I posted this in our Russia versus US post WW2 thread, Ike's insistance on grinding the Germans down was standard policy. Since Grant's successes in the Civil War, engaging and directly destroying the enemy had been the official US Amy doctrine. Patton was the maverick, and he and some other US generals had understand what the Blitzkreig meant to the old doctrine (after the success in France 1940). Unfortunately Ike did not. The US Army is always terribly slow to adjust doctrine, and often take decades to adjust to new types/styles of conflicts. Very often it is the grunts who figure out that the standard manual is going to get me killed, and they come up with their own solutions, i.e. hedgerow cutters.

One other problem with US Army combat soldiers in WW2 was that the Air Force and Navy essentially got first dibs on the best conscripts. Plus many volunteered when they realized they were going to be drafted, and leveraged that to stay out of the infranty. Add in the cleverer individuals who were also gaming the system, and you end up with a GI who is not on par with the average German combat soldier. Conversely the policy did work when you look at the quality and success of our maintenance units, navy, etc. It's a matter of where you put the assets.

You are correct that they ignored numerous signs, as early as 1943, about the nature of the war and the probable losses. Those errors kept dogging us for the rest of the war. I had never considered it in this aspect, but it is interesting how the US did such a superlative job of managing it's material assets while doing an adequate job of managing it's human assets (I am also including the idiotic policy of having green formations committed to battle rather than the German system of working them into existing units) versus the Germans doing a poor job of managing material assets but yet the Wehrmacht, until losses/committments caused it to break down, did such an excellent job managing it's human assets. I had to change that last statement, the Nazi policy on Untermenschen meant I had to keep it carefully delimited.

[Mr. Harley]

edit - double post of version I had rewritten

[Dr Strangelove]

As I said in a previous post, you also need to figure in the ability of the axis to transport supplies by road from Tripoli to the front. Normally German and Italian army formations relied upon rail to bring supplies from a main depot to some point relatively near the front, then animal drawn transport carried them the rest of the way. This wasn't possible in North Africa, there wasn't any rail system, and there was a dearth of suitable draft animals. The axis was forced to rely upon motorized transport to carry supplies more than one thousand miles from port to the troops in Egypt. The British became very good at interdicting those supplies routes both by air raids and by fast raiding parties, and gradually longer range fighters were introduced, pushing back the point at which the supply convoys were forced to travel at night at a mere 10 miles/hour. Convoys which were able to lay low during the day and avoid the air patrols were often picked off by "desert rats" during the night.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Nice posts. Ok, I've read the same data people have noted here. My only disagreement, and it's simply over terminology, would be the British consideration of the Suez canal as a critical asset (versus obsession). The fall of Egypt, the loss of Arabia, the creation of an Iraq friendly to Germany (which actually happened for short while), would have split the British Empire in two. The Nazis never realized the simple strategic issue - while they did not need the Mideast, i.e. oil production was not that high yet - Britian HAD to have the Mideast. The Kreigsmarine realized this vulnerability, but since they were not part of Hitler's inner circle.. (see earlier posts). And yes, with the Uboats based out of ports off the Indian Ocean, the British Empire would have been split in two.

Now - hard data. We need two pieces of hard data to assess the ability of the Axis to take the Mideast. The tonnage figures per day for a mechanized divisoin I can dig up easily. But what merchant tonnage did the Italians have deployed in the Mediterranean? Secondly, and I've sceen the figure somewhere years ago, number/tonnage analysis of the British submarine warfare in the Med, with attempts to correct for Malta as an Axis airbase.

You can assume negligable Axis ASW via warships, they had never geared up for it and by the time they learn the necessary lessons, it will be decided. An interesting comparison would be British submarine warfare against the Japanese, whose navy was more effectively employed than the Italians but still weak in ASW. You can figure in this scenario efficiency somewhere betweent the two since you are adding Malta as a factor in the Axis favor.

Take a look at how bad the Italian shipping losses were during the campaign in North Africa and you'll have some idea of their supply potential. Good enough to supply a lot more than they did in the actual event had they approached the campaign with a more serious and concerted mindset. But the commitment which would have been necessary to ultimately succeed was not present in either the German or Italian high commands. In fact their mutual distrust and lack of respect diluted their effectiveness quite considerably.

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Sikander, unfortunately, and I posted this in our Russia versus US post WW2 thread, Ike's insistance on grinding the Germans down was standard policy. Since Grant's successes in the Civil War, engaging and directly destroying the enemy had been the official US Amy doctrine. Patton was the maverick, and he and some other US generals had understand what the Blitzkreig meant to the old doctrine (after the success in France 1940). Unfortunately Ike did not. The US Army is always terribly slow to adjust doctrine, and often take decades to adjust to new types/styles of conflicts. Very often it is the grunts who figure out that the standard manual is going to get me killed, and they come up with their own solutions, i.e. hedgerow cutters.

One other problem with US Army combat soldiers in WW2 was that the Air Force and Navy essentially got first dibs on the best conscripts. Plus many volunteered when they realized they were going to be drafted, and leveraged that to stay out of the infranty. Add in the cleverer individuals who were also gaming the system, and you end up with a GI who is not on par with the average German combat soldier. Conversely the policy did work when you look at the quality and success of our maintenance units, navy, etc. It's a matter of where you put the assets.

You are correct that they ignored numerous signs, as early as 1943, about the nature of the war and the probable losses. Those errors kept dogging us for the rest of the war. I had never considered it in this aspect, but it is interesting how the US did such a superlative job of managing it's material assets while doing an adequate job of managing it's human assets (I am also including the idiotic policy of having green formations committed to battle rather than the German system of working them into existing units) versus the Germans doing a poor job of managing material assets but yet the Wehrmacht, until losses/committments caused it to break down, did such an excellent job managing it's human assets. I had to change that last statement, the Nazi policy on Untermenschen meant I had to keep it carefully delimited.

Good point about the quality issue. The real crux was the lack of good small unit leaders in the Army, and one of the prime areas to which they were shunted was as crew members on AAC heavy bombers. A B-17 effectively carried (in terms of quality and quantity) the entire leadership cadre of an infantry company, the vast majority of whom only fired machine guns or pounded German farms with bombs and operated the radio. The AAC should have been forced to make do with less (plenty of people would have been capable of firing machine guns) and the Infantry should have been able to build a decent Officer / NCO contingent to lead the masses of infantry.

The Wehrmacht as you say were a lot more efficient both in their initial disposition of personnel and with their replacements. But the nature of the Nazi regime also ensured an immense amount of waste as both Himmler and to a lesser extent Goering were given large ground forces, which generally constituted an extravagent waste of manpower considering the German situation. The late war Luftwaffe divisions were a complete waste of good manpower, while the Waffen SS formations IMO never quite justified their expense on the whole. The Wehrmacht could have done more with those men.

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Shogun Gunner

Capturing Eygpt gives Germany a chance for the oil fields in the Middle East.

Its gonna take Rommel quite awhile to accumulate the supplies to move from Egypt to Iraq. and he doesnt have the trucks to move those supplies. Meanwhile the Brits will destroy the oil fields. IIRC it took the japanese months to get the east indies fields working again, after the Dutch blew them. And the Japanese were in better position to move equipment in then the Germans were. By the time the Germans have the fields working it will be too late, as the allies will be coming on their rear in North Africa.


aside from which, assuming the Germans DO get the fields working, how do they transport the oil? They dont have the tankers to do it - and if they did the Brits would shoot up the tankers in the Indian Ocean. Are they going to use the presumably destroyed pipelines to the Med? And they dont even have enough tankers in the Med. Or maybe theyll use the first class Turkish railways, huh?

Any success in the middle east, starts to pressure Russia from the south around the Caspian sea.

They cant cross the Caucasus mountains, they cant cross the Caspian sea.

Also, the British could feel too comfortable with the box starting to close between Japan in Burma/India and Germany near or in Persia.

assuming the Japanese had moved. That has its own problems.

Lastly, success in the Middle East may have been enough to convince Turkey to join the Axis. Another threat to Russia near the Caucaus area.

Turkish railways to weak to support much offense in that area. In OTL the brits were trying to get Turkey to join the allies, joining the axis was way to risky for Turkey.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
The Germans never worked out that Britain was obsessed with the ME, Egypt and the Suez canal because of their concern with the defence of India and communications with their Asian and African empire.

If Churchill had lost Egypt, capping off 2 years of military reverses and the fall of Singapore, the appeasement camp would have been in a very strong position to topple him. Appeasement was about preserving the empire and a longstanding British policy which Churchill overturned.

there was no appeasement camp anymore in 1942. the last gasp for that was the attempt by Musso to mediate in 1940, and even Chamberlain opposed that (though Halifax didnt) If Churchill falls in 1942 the new UK govt continues the war. There was PLENTY of criticism of WSC, especially after the Greek disaster, but no important critics calling for peace.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sikander


Take a look at how bad the Italian shipping losses were during the campaign in North Africa and you'll have some idea of their supply potential.

assuming they only have to move stuff to Libyan ports, which was NOT the case. the stuff still needs to get to the front.

also this assumes shipping was the only constraint - the capacity at the ports was as well, IIUC.