Biggest Mistakes the Axis made iyo.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Ned
It was pointed out earlier in this thread that Britain could have been essentially knocked out of the war had the Germans developed and deployed a long range bomber. The fact that they didn't have a long range bomber indicates also that Hitler had no intention of making war on Great Britain.

Hitler never planned ahead in detail. He wanted to take over the world and he thought he could do it simply on will alone.

The fact that the Germany didn't have the right equipment to do the job means nothing.

What you're saying is like saying that since Hitler didn't supply winter clothing for the German troops in 1941 then he never wanted to attack the Soviet Union.

[Ned]

Tingkai, you seem to ignore the essence of Hitler's philosphy. He was a manic anti-communist and a racist who viewed the Slavs as some sort of untermenschen. His primary goal all along was an attack on the USSR.

[Micha]

Originally posted by Tingkai




Hitler never planned ahead in detail. He wanted to take over the world and he thought he could do it simply on will alone.

The fact that the Germany didn't have the right equipment to do the job means nothing.

What you're saying is like saying that since Hitler didn't supply winter clothing for the German troops in 1941 then he never wanted to attack the Soviet Union.

Hitler considered the English his friends, linked by a common "race" and history (German and English royalities were interlinked, good relations out of war, ...). In his strategic plan the English would have been allowed to reign their Empire, simply because he couldn´t afford grapping colonies in Africa or Asia. But then, with the "unforseen" resistance of the British, the policy changed and propaganda switched sides. Churchill was IMO the main factor of the new agenda; He signalled he would never sign a peace without Germany surrendering. This was not expected by Mr. Mastermind, the greatest leader of all times ( ).

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Tingkai




Hitler never planned ahead in detail. He wanted to take over the world and he thought he could do it simply on will alone.

The fact that the Germany didn't have the right equipment to do the job means nothing.

What you're saying is like saying that since Hitler didn't supply winter clothing for the German troops in 1941 then he never wanted to attack the Soviet Union.

Ned's point makes sense. Hitler didn't equip his troops with winter clothing because he had expected Russia to have surrendered by October. It can be argued that the German failure to design a long range bomber was not due to them underestimating the British, but rather as a lack of will to fight them.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


Ned's point makes sense. Hitler didn't equip his troops with winter clothing because he had expected Russia to have surrendered by October. It can be argued that the German failure to design a long range bomber was not due to them underestimating the British, but rather as a lack of will to fight them.

No, Ned, as usual, is completely wrong.

The Germans never developed long-range bombers because they never a saw need for them, unlike the British and Americans who had to develop these bombers.

German medium-range bombers could strike Britain from Northern France, a distance of about 250 kilometers, and they did so quite easily during the Blitz with two-engine bombers.

For Britain to hit Berlin, the Brits needed aircraft that could fly 1,800 km, there and back. This required four-engine aircraft. As a result, the Brits developed the Lancaster and the Halifax, both of which were developed after France was defeated.

Before the war, the Americans needed long-range bombers to support the western Pacific holdings, an aircraft that could fly from the U.S. West Coast to Hawaii and beyond.

Once the war started, the U.S. needed long-range bombers for Europe for the same reasons as the Brits.

The development of heavy bombers, or lack thereof, was a result of geography.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Micha
But then, with the "unforseen" resistance of the British, the policy changed and propaganda switched sides. Churchill was IMO the main factor of the new agenda; He signalled he would never sign a peace without Germany surrendering. This was not expected by Mr. Mastermind, the greatest leader of all times ( ).

In the summer of 1940, Churchill was talking about Britain never surrendering, not Germany surrendering.

Hitler chose the war with Britain.

[Micha]

Originally posted by Tingkai
In the summer of 1940, Churchill was talking about Britain never surrendering, not Germany surrendering.

Hitler chose the war with Britain.

Erm, if two parties are at war, and one of them won´t surrender nor sign peace at status quo (as was proposed many times by Hitler), it implies that this faction will accept nothing but a surrender of the other one.

I don´t see where you falsify my point...

[Mr. Harley]

Ned - Stalin eventually wanted to turn all of Europe into a great Commintern. In fact a hypothetical scenario I once designed titled Weimer assumes exactly that - shooting Hitler and Goering in that uprising leads to eventual Soviet attack in the 1940's.

But Stalin had NO timetable. It was something he just wanted to do. The problem was that he was actually involved in what very may have well become another purge of generals in 1941 (or a low level continuation of the 1939 purges) - the German attack stopped it. His army was reorganizing, and updating equipment. Given that much of this was prompted by the Winter War (Russo-Finish 1939) and the disastrously bad showing of the Red Army, that will occur no matter what happens in the rest of Europe.

I am guessing, but given the rates of redeployment, etc. but the earliest the Soviets could have attacked Germany would have been 1943. And their leadership would have been as bad, maybe even worse, than the Winter War, albeit with first class equipment.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I think that even if the Axis had taken Malta getting past El Alamein would not have been possible. Getting supplies from Tripoli acroos the desert to the front in Egypt proved to be as difficult as getting them across the Mediterranean under British interdiction. The British had raiding forces in the western desert that sometimes were as efficient as the subs and planes of Malta.

this alleged suppy issue is such BS

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Tingkai

There's more to strategy than deciding which country to attack.

When the Germans decided to invade the Soviet Union, they had to decide how. The initial plan was relatively vague with three main thrusts, but no defined end goals.

(from Wikipedia's Barbarossa entry)

Operation Barbarossa was largely the brainchild of Hitler himself. His general staff advised against fighting a war on two fronts. But Hitler considered himself a political and military genius, and indeed at this point in the war he had achieved a whole series of lightning victories against what appeared to be insurmountable odds, while the generals wanted to prove that they were needed at all.

Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev / Ukraine were the immediate goals of the three thrusts. This is more the realm of operations than strategy. The actual strategy never seemed very clear and it varied depending on Hitler's mood. Was the strategy to occupy the important places of the Soviet Union first or to destroy enemy forces first? The original plan had Army Group Center heading along the Orsha land bridge for Moscow. Hitler intervened and had Guderion move south along the East side of the Pripet marshes in order to surround the Soviet forces holding the line around Kiev. In the end this doomed the thrust for Moscow, even as it produced large numbers of enemy casualties and POWs. The plan is Hitler's as is the deviation from the plan. Both were resisted by the Generals on hand and in both cases Hitler prevailed.

Originally posted by Tingkai

When the German achieved the initial victories and were charging forwards, the generals should have been making plans about how far to go. Instead, they simply use a gas gauge as a plan - we'll go as far as we can. By the first week of September, they were already over-extended, but they kept going (one could argue that they were already over-extended by mid-August). The fault here lies with the generals, not Hitler. The failure to take logistics into account was gross incompetency.

They knew how far they had to go, and in almost every case it was too far. They were ordered to take Leningrad and Moscow and failed. The orders were from Hitler and the lapdogs he placed on the General staff to carry out his will. There are numerous instances of generals complaining about the logistics and other operational limitations which made their goals in the end unrealistic. Several were sacked immediately while others were made to understand that their orders were not negotiable. It was Hitler who insisted on constantly pushing the spearheads forward rather than waiting for more logistical support and combat power to advance.

As for logistics, it is ridiculous to accuse the Germans of not taking them into account. The big failure was the amazingly poor intelligence about the state of the Soviet road network. It seems likely that someone in Germany knew that most of those "highways" on the map were simply dirt tracks with no vehicle traversible secondary parallels in many instances, yet amazingly no one on the German side seems to have been aware of just how much of a struggle they were in for simply moving across Russia. The closest thing they had experience of was the Western half of Poland in 1939, which had a much better road network which of course was well-known as it had been part of Germany 20 years earlier.

This sort of intelligence failure is in fact very reminiscent of recent events in the U.S., where information which seemed to contradict the policy initiatives of the executive branch was dismissed as weak (and it generally was) while information which was just as weak or weaker (but supportive of the great assumption) was touted as undeniable fact.

The inadequacy of the road net slowed both the combat units and their supplies. The effect on supplies was particularly hard on the plan, as the effective range of the supply wagons from the rail was about half of what it would have been elsewhere, leaving huge swaths of the country out of or inadequately supplied.

The largest failure of German logistical planning was in fact the lack of a plan to equip their huge army with winter gear in time for the winter of 1941-42. I pin this partially on the atmosphere of overconfidence that Hitler encouraged and partially on the confusion of planning enormous operations with a cowed staff depleted by political appointments of yes men and an organization which was prone to constant (often seemingly random) interference from the top. The normal oversight function of the top layer was lost in the resulting chaos.

Again the lion's share of these failures belong to Hitler, not his field generals. Field generals have their orders, they don't just go joy riding off into the Siberian sunrise unless they are ordered to do so. They are responsible for moving supplies within their own area, but can't be expected to perform miracles when their area expands to a huge size while the transport provided is completely insufficient. Pre-war intelligence gathering is beyond their perview.

Originally posted by Tingkai
Now a lot of this is because they assumed that the Soviets were like the French. The Germans seemed to believe that if they could just get one tank into Moscow then Russia would surrender. Given what had happened in France, it is understandable why the Germans though this way.

The Soviet winter offensive prove beyond any doubt that the Soviets were not like the French.

Soviet bungling in the Winter War also had a large impact on their thinking.

Originally posted by Tingkai
Despite knowing this, the Germans repeated the mistakes of 41 in the summer of 42 with the attack in the southeast. Once again, the German over-extended themselves, particularly during Sept to Nov. While Hitler intervened in ordering troops forward, the commanders on the ground could have moved forward at a slower pace, one that protected their flanks. Instead they pushed forward as hard as they could without paying any consideration to the strategic picture (ie what's happening on the left and right, and can I hold the ground I take). The stupidity of the German generals was to focus only on attacking and driving as far as they could, with scant regard to what would happen once winter arrived. Even if the Germans had been able to achieve their goals for the 42 offensive, they would not have had the resources to hold the captured ground.

Of course, after the war, the generals blamed Hitler rather than taking responsibility for their own stupidity.

Again you blame the generals for things that are beyond their authority in most cases. The Caucasas safari was pure Hitler, as was the fixation on Stalingrad, the no-retreat orders etc. In any event it wasn't individual units which were destroyed as they advanced unsupported in 1942 as you seem to imply, but a prolonged bleeding at the end of the supply chain followed by an enemy offensive that destroyed the weakest links in the German line. The Germans were overextended at the highest level, not destroyed piecemeal by the idiocy of individual commanders.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse


this alleged suppy issue is such BS

Is not.

[Alexander's Horse]

is too

[Ned]

Originally posted by Tingkai




No, Ned, as usual, is completely wrong.

The Germans never developed long-range bombers because they never a saw need for them, unlike the British and Americans who had to develop these bombers.

German medium-range bombers could strike Britain from Northern France, a distance of about 250 kilometers, and they did so quite easily during the Blitz with two-engine bombers.

The development of heavy bombers, or lack thereof, was a result of geography.

Tinkai, you support my point while denying that you do. The point I made is that the Germans did not develop heavy bombers because they didn't think they would need them. You make the same point. So, we have no fundamental disagreement.

Others here have said that had Germany had long range bombers, it could have taken Britain out of the war effectively by bombing its industry, expecially is plane factories, which was beyond the range of the medium bombers based in France.

But, you say, Hitler could have invaded, but chose not to. But, on the contrary, such an invasion was never part of German planning as they did not have the naval means to do so, and further never was able to achieve air supremacy that such an invasion would have required precisely because they could not knock out the Brit plane factories.

All this adds up to one conclusion: Germany was not planning to make war on Britain. It was forced into the war by Brits after their encircling policy of defensive alliances in 1939. To Hitler, this move by the Brits was quite unexpected since thier policy was one of appeasement since '36.

[Ned]

Dr. Strangelove, et al., could the Germans have changed the dynamics of the North African campaign by building up airpower in Cyprus and bombing the Suez canal and Brit bases in Egypt? Could they have achieve air superiority over Egypt?

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Ned
Tinkai, you support my point while denying that you do. The point I made is that the Germans did not develop heavy bombers because they didn't think they would need them. You make the same point. So, we have no fundamental disagreement.

No Ned, you claim that the lack of heavy bombers is proof that Germany did not want to fight Britain. That is completely wrong.

The German medium-range bombers were able to hit British targets, including aircraft factories. One of the major Spitfire factories was near Birmingham which got plastered during the blitz.

More than that, if theory was right then Germany never planned to attack the Soviet Union because one of the German's great failure was not having long-range bombers to hit distant Soviet factories.

Your theory, Ned, has been pwn'd