German war production without war with West

davebender said:

Historically the Soviet Union held on during 1941 because Germany didn't quite have enough military assets to finish them off in a single campaign season and Anglo-American assistance started arriving during August 1941. Neither condition applies in this scenario. Anti communist coalition invasion force should be at least a third larger and there will be no Anglo-American economic assistance.

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Plus they'd have at least an extra month to work with. Move everything up a month: suddenly the September halt is an August halt, Typhoon now starts in September, and the Germans take Khimki - 5 miles from Moscow, 20 miles from the Kremlin - November 1 instead of December 1. The winter hell of 41-42 didn't really kick into full gear until late November. All this assumes that the larger force the Germans have in this scenario will advance no faster than the historical force.

The question then becomes: with the loss of Moscow, does the USSR collapse? Even if no, they just lost their communications and transport center, the brain of the USSR if you will, making anything they try after that much more difficult.

stona said:

A woman in a food queue in Berlin in 1944 once compared the Nazi state to a snake, when urging her neighbour to stop talking about "the camps". "Tread on its tail and it will bite you" she said. The Soviet state, like any totalitarian state, was the same. Tread on its tail and it may well bite you.Cut off its head and it will die. Then anything is possible.
Cheers
Steve

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Berliners were also saying that Hitler did in fact keep one of his promises: that if he were elected in 10 years you wouldn't recognize Berlin (or was it Germany? either way, you get the point).

GrauGeist said:

Totally agree...

Had Hitler insisted on a "winning hearts and minds" of the occupied territories during his push to Moscow instead of fostering his hatred, the people would have swelled the German's ranks with determined people that wanted to be free of Stalin and his crowd. He already had the White Russians as a special fighting unit.

That was surely an opportunity lost.

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He couldn't. I always recommend that people read Mein Kampf, a turgid read indeed, but essential in understanding Hitler's mindset. Basically everything he wrote he did (or tried to do).

In his mind the 'East' was like the US's 'West'. A land full of 'savages' (or inferior people) to be cleared for Germans. Their role was to die, get out the way with the (few) survivors becoming uneducated slave labour, etc (usually worked until they died, though some would be allowed to live to give German women plenty of servants and the new settlers labour).

He was urged by some NAZI leaders to exactly what you suggest, but he was having no truck with that.
In his mind: "how can you ally yourself with sub-humans that are in the way, sitting on land that people of good Germanic stock should have'?

So it was never going to happen. And here is the scary thing, the death program, as unimaginably horrific that actually happened, was just a warm up for the real event after they beat the USSR. The Slavs were going to go.

Could they have beaten the USSR with a different strategy? Maybe, but personally I think it would have required a joint attack with Japan and even then it could have gone on for years before a result.
But another strategy was not going to happen as long as Hitler lived.

wiking85 said:

Why not?



Again, why not?


There were night actions on the Eastern Front, the Soviets had night bombers and night fighters, both things that the LW would need to fight.


Why? The Soviets didn't have an air force? Historically the Germans used radar extensively on the Eastern Front, though in the more mobile variety than fixed stations because of the mobile front lines. Pre-war the Germans developed radar seriously. The war in the West didn't change that trajectory, so its absence wouldn't mean it would suddenly ratchet downward. In fact the Germans would have need for night time guidance bombing and defense against Soviet night and day attacks from the air, not to mention jamming of Soviet radar.


Depends on whether the Germans adopt higher level bombing that needed escorting. The Soviets had high altitude fighters. Also it would be interesting to see the way the Me109 and Fw190 would evolve with only the need for lower altitude fighting (no slow G series for the Me109? perhaps the FW190A series actually speeds up instead of getting loaded down with heavier anti-bomber weaponry).


The LW developed pretty rapidly pre-war, so that's not much different from what the historical pace was during wartime. Also the LA-5 showed up in 1942, so that's not a lot of time before the LW picks up the pace if they stick to your prediction.


Also no disaster in Holland or losses in Norway, so the FJ are still a surprise. They weren't publicly revealed until the Norwegian campaign.



AFAIK the most important lessons were mostly learned in Poland, with France just honing the weapon further.



That's important too.



Funny that people ignore Stalin's meddling in the war early on, which led to a lot of disasters. Both Hitler and Stalin were hands off when things went well, but in bad times they interfered. So if the Soviets are doing worse, would Stalin lay off his generals?

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All good points. I was simply speculating and limiting my time period to the end of '42. I suspect that the events developing from your scenario would be over by then and things will have turned to issues of occupation rather than conquest.

silence said:

Stalin's fear was the Politburo (sp?). At one point early in Barbarossa he was deathly afraid that he was going to be arrested. As far as "encouraging the troops", remember that the NKVD squads were right behind the regulars ready to shoot anyone who did anything other than try to fight: the Red Army soldiers faced certain death from their own or the possibility of death from the Germans.

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stalin was paranoid pure and simple. he purged the ranks of the military ( of many officers who were loyal to him and the party ) and hunted down and assinated his political rivals. just because he was afraid doesnt mean the threat was real. i would be interested to hear of any real plots against him....they could be there...just never heard of them.

OldSkeptic said:

He couldn't. I always recommend that people read Mein Kampf, a turgid read indeed, but essential in understanding Hitler's mindset. Basically everything he wrote he did (or tried to do).

In his mind the 'East' was like the US's 'West'. A land full of 'savages' (or inferior people) to be cleared for Germans. Their role was to die, get out the way with the (few) survivors becoming uneducated slave labour, etc (usually worked until they died, though some would be allowed to live to give German women plenty of servants and the new settlers labour).

He was urged by some NAZI leaders to exactly what you suggest, but he was having no truck with that.
In his mind: "how can you ally yourself with sub-humans that are in the way, sitting on land that people of good Germanic stock should have'?

So it was never going to happen. And here is the scary thing, the death program, as unimaginably horrific that actually happened, was just a warm up for the real event after they beat the USSR. The Slavs were going to go.

Could they have beaten the USSR with a different strategy? Maybe, but personally I think it would have required a joint attack with Japan and even then it could have gone on for years before a result.
But another strategy was not going to happen as long as Hitler lived.

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Even those allowed to be slaves would probably be sterilized. The one big effect, I think, if Japan gets involved in '41, is that you're not going to see the Siberian troops reinforce Moscow: Stalin wouldn't release them until he was sure Japan was staying out, and as it was they just barely got there in time.

bobbysocks said:

stalin was paranoid pure and simple. he purged the ranks of the military ( of many officers who were loyal to him and the party ) and hunted down and assinated his political rivals. just because he was afraid doesnt mean the threat was real. i would be interested to hear of any real plots against him....they could be there...just never heard of them.

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I don't know of any, but I think there had to be some kind of foundation for his fear. I don't think this came out of his paranoia, but rather out of real fear, and if he thought it was possible then it probably was. I think we'd really have to delve into his mind to find out. and that is one place that I for one have no desire to visit.

There would have been little guerrilla action against the Germans because unlike in Afganistan the Germans were going to just kill everybody on sight.
The Japanese wanted oil and that meant war with either Russia or the USA and opinions were divided within Japan over which way to go, history proved that Japan starting a war with America was a very bad idea. I'm pretty sure the Japanese were not anywhere close to being well equipped enough to tackle the Russian's and their supply lines would have been long. The Japanese would have needed to accept that their part in a joint German Japanese war with Russia was only going to be to draw the Russians off the Germans and not a glorious advance.


I don't know how important the German capture of Moscow would have been, perhaps it would have been symbolic and more of a trophy than anything else.

silence said:

I don't know of any, but I think there had to be some kind of foundation for his fear. I don't think this came out of his paranoia, but rather out of real fear, and if he thought it was possible then it probably was. I think we'd really have to delve into his mind to find out. and that is one place that I for one have no desire to visit.

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Stalin's purges before the Soviets went to war cost him dearly in the series of wars with Finland. After the dismal performance of the Red army against the Finns, he again "thinned" the ranks costing him even more experianced leaders.

By the time the Germans rolled across the Soviet frontier, Stalin was in serious trouble as far as seasoned leaders in his military is concerned.

pattle said:

There would have been little guerrilla action against the Germans because unlike in Afganistan the Germans were going to just kill everybody on sight.

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Plenty of that in the Balkans and they were totally ruthless there too. And behind German lines in the East, partisans as we call them now, did a lot of damage.
Problem is that that level of ruthlessness becomes counter productive, because people will fight, if you are going to die anyway, or you have lost all your family, might as well take some with you.

The Soviets were about as ruthless as you can get in Afghanistan, still lost and no one accused the British of being 'nice' there too in the past .. again still lost.
And it is a Western myth that somehow we keep losing because we are 'too nice' or something like that.
History has shown that Western countries can (and have often been) just as ruthless as any dictatorship. Britain, Holland, France, US, et al.
Read about against the Boers for example, the old saying goes, you don't get the biggest empire the World has ever seen by being 'nice'. The Boers made a strategic mistake of leaving their families where the British could get at them.

Problem is that the force multiplier has closed permanently. You could do that sort of stuff putting rifles (etc) up against spears. But the AK-47 (and a moderate skill with explosives and the like) closed the gap enough to where a battle of attrition happens, which means you will lose, if by nothing else economically (you will run out of money before they run out of people). The colonial days have long disappeared, unfortunately a lot of people have not woken up to that fact.

You might be able to pull it off if you use nukes and gas, trouble is what do you win? Can't exactly use the land for a long time.

silence said:

Even those allowed to be slaves would probably be sterilized. The one big effect, I think, if Japan gets involved in '41, is that you're not going to see the Siberian troops reinforce Moscow: Stalin wouldn't release them until he was sure Japan was staying out, and as it was they just barely got there in time.

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IIRC 30 million people were supposed to be spared and used as slaves for the German settlers, which suggests they wouldn't be sterilized, rather used as chattel slaves like in the US prior to the Civil War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost#Phases_of_the_plan_and_its_implementation

OldSkeptic said:

You might be able to pull it off if you use nukes and gas, trouble is what do you win? Can't exactly use the land for a long time.

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Nerve gas disperses quickly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin#Degradation_and_shelf_life

At high pH, sarin decomposes rapidly to nontoxic phosphonic acid derivatives.[10][11]

Sarin degrades after a period of several weeks to several months. The shelf life can be shortened by impurities in precursor materials. According to the CIA, some Iraqi sarin had a shelf life of only a few weeks, owing mostly to impure precursors.[12]

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It was derived from DDT a pesticide; these don't leave the ground toxic, otherwise the food its used on would be poison. So the Germans could use nerve gases against partisans and not have to worry about poisoning the ground; one good rain or use in swampy areas would break the residue down into non-toxic derivatives.

pattle said:

There would have been little guerrilla action against the Germans because unlike in Afganistan the Germans were going to just kill everybody on sight.

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that would be the only way they even had a chance to succeed....BUT that also brings in a couple other problems....and other strategies. the west is out of the picture at this point. i doubt they would sit back for very long if there was wholesale genicide. yes we can argue that it was happening to a fair degree....to certain ethnic groups and races...but not to the entire population. i dont see that ( genicide of the entire pop as viable). the "better" alternative would be to round them up and put them into large camps as forced labor. but again, i think you would end up with another warsaw ghetto scenario being replayed. if i were the leader and knew my country was going to be over run and nothing i could do would stop it. all the people would be taught how to make explosives, guns, and the guerrilla tactics. i would then give them supplies to bury and tell them to welcome the germans in with open arms and nazi flags waving. be diligent servants of the reich by day....slit their throats at night.

Oldskeptic I don't disagree with all you said, but the Nazi way of dealing with things was to round up all the people you don't like and kill them all. The Nazis unlike the Russians in Afganistan, the Americans in Vietnam or the British Empire did not have native populations in their future plans, they were not to be controlled they were to be made extinct, had the Russians of surrendered that would have been the next job of the German troops. This is not about losing wars because you are to nice to people this is a completely different concept where the argument over how much force should be used to control a population is simply not there because the plan was to depopulate these countries by killing all who were there. There would be no attempt to separate the Partisans from the farmers like in Afganistan, all would die as simple as that. It would take time yes, but the Nazis had won the war and so they had the time.

pattle said:

Oldskeptic I don't disagree with all you said, but the Nazi way of dealing with things was to round up all the people you don't like and kill them all. The Nazis unlike the Russians in Afganistan, the Americans in Vietnam or the British Empire did not have native populations in their future plans, they were not to be controlled they were to be made extinct, had the Russians of surrendered that would have been the next job of the German troops. This is not about losing wars because you are to nice to people this is a completely different concept where the argument over how much force should be used to control a population is simply not there because the plan was to depopulate these countries by killing all who were there. There would be no attempt to separate the Partisans from the farmers like in Afganistan, all would die as simple as that. It would take time yes, but the Nazis had won the war and so they had the time.

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Remember though that the Germans, or should I say the Nazi leadership, planned on executing Generalplan Ost over a 25-30 year time frame. There are limits to what their army could achieve or would put up with in terms of a lengthy partisan war, especially as Himmler's plan hinged on 'warrior farmers' to settle the East and fight as part of the defense force to protect against the Soviet incursions plans from beyond the AA line. It was at best a pipe dream that would very likely to play out in reality, as historically it was only talked about among a small cabal of the SS leadership and was not known to the Wehrmacht. There is a limit to what the non-Nazi armed forces could tolerate and I doubt that a 30 extermination campaign, along side settlement of warrior colonists (who would be that crazy???), and the kidnapping of Slavic children of 'aryan appearance' for absorption into the German gene pool is not exactly what even the most hardened German soldier would long tolerate without the pressures of a world war in which Germany was losing suppressing moral concerns about the behavior of the German military in the East. Also its not like the anti-Nazi officers would stop trying to kill Hitler and they might succeed here too, especially if the German military got fed up with the Eastern Campaign. Contrary to popular history not all Germans were blood thirsty killing machines that would tolerate extended periods of atrocity participation; the Einsatzgruppen had a very high alcoholism and suicide rate after all, which is a major reason that their mass extermination activities were replaced by concentration camp murder.

Well its just my opinion, and you have to remember that only in modern values is it unacceptable to murder and enslave whole races and destroy civilisations. It was once accepted and expected as the social norm to do all these things and people were people then as much as they are now.

Yes and we in so many countries have a long and shameful history of that.

But I always maintain that the availability of cheap guns, especially of the automatic variety and communications has changed that permanently. It is no longer possible to completely overpower small groups one at a time, the traditional way of doing this (the British were masters of that). That is kill them with zero casualties. News travels too fast and even if you take out one group, another will be warned. Sheer fear will create coalitions between even long time enemies. Cheap guns (and explosives) means it is no longer a zero cost pastime, as the perpetrator will take at least some casualties.

Now while humans (or at least a significantly large enough minority) seem able to quite happily slaughter other people if there is no cost or risk, even small losses tend to diminish the ardour for slaughter considerably. Quite quickly costs build up since you need ever more resources to achieve your aim.

From the Western history side we also don't have our great ally ... diseases to sweep away huge numbers at no cost any longer.

Plus there are just so many people now. Wiping out a an isolated village of a couple of hundred is one thing, killing thousands, let alone millions is quite another.

silence said:

The citizens in the Baltic states were more than happy to help the Germans with this - or even do it themselves, especially in Latvia. My parents had an exchange student from Latvia for a year in the early 90s, several years after the collapse: my God, her hate for the Russians was downright frightening.

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In Nazi terms, a different racial group. It absolute nonsense of course, the racial ideology was manipulated to suit political aims on several occasions. Look at the hoops Himmler jumped through to prove the Japanese "Aryan"......whatever that was supposed to mean.
Cheers
Steve

Where's the idea that the Nazis planned to eliminate the Slavs and other "untermenschen" come from? Certainly not Mein Kamf. Calling it a turgid read is being very kind, but I have ploughed through it. There were fairly unpleasant plans for them but they were needed. All the world's historical empire's had benefited from slave labour in one form or another and the Third Reich was to be no different. These people were to be expendable but not to be eliminated. The Soviet political class was to go (as Pol Pot tried in Kampuchea) in an effort to eradicate (or uproot, eliminate.....ausrotten) Bolshevism. Obviously the Jewish population and certain other groups were also to go, but not everyone. The rest would be a sustainable resource of slave labour.

Hitler admired the way that the British managed to retain control of India, but it was done by enlisting Indians to run the Raj on behalf of the British. Maharajah's sent their sons to Oxford and Cambridge for a "proper" education. Somehow I can't see the Nazis adopting such a system in their eastern conquests. They were poisoned by their own ideology.

Cheers

Steve

wiking85 said:

It was at best a pipe dream that would very likely to play out in reality, as historically it was only talked about among a small cabal of the SS leadership and was not known to the Wehrmacht. There is a limit to what the non-Nazi armed forces could tolerate and I doubt that a 30 extermination campaign, along side settlement of warrior colonists (who would be that crazy???), and the kidnapping of Slavic children of 'aryan appearance' for absorption into the German gene pool is not exactly what even the most hardened German soldier would long tolerate without the pressures of a world war in which Germany was losing suppressing moral concerns about the behavior of the German military in the East. Also its not like the anti-Nazi officers would stop trying to kill Hitler and they might succeed here too ....

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Very true. You know when you read this stuff (and it only needs to be done once to get the historical context, repeated reading would turn your brain to mush and it is hard not to laugh or chuck ...both??...at various parts) it is absolute ga-ga land stuff.
You then understand why they went to war so unprepared, carrying all that fantasy baggage and why they did what did.

You know they were lucky (the rest of us were unlucky) that they had the great German Army. If the NAZI's had inherited (say) the French army their mad dreams would have died very quickly.
Yes they built it up, but all its training, tactics, mission command, et al were all from past efforts, in sheer military competence the finest army in the World, bar none.
Seldom equaled (the UK 8th Army at its best was about the closest), but never bettered overall.

Agree about the majority of Germans, some estimates are that 10% of the population are sociopaths, or at least potential ones. I suspect less than that, plus significant differences between countries, early age brain damage from the environment (lead may be a major factor) or lack of food or accidents or diseases seems to be an issue ... except at senior management levels of course.....
So your killers (and torturers, etc) have to be taken out of that pool of non-empathetic people.

Ordinary people can't keep it up, oh in the heat of the moment .. or at a distance (say flying over at 30,000ft) ... or being stirred up in a mob they can.
But face to face, day after day, week after week .... turns normal people into gibbering wrecks after a while.

Humans are social creatures, to do that they have to have empathy (mirroring as some call it) in face to face encounters.
To give a personal example, I remember meeting a guy in the early 70's, just back from Vietnam and doing a holiday tour. Got drunk in the pub one night and (I think he was desperate to talk about it all) told me some of things he saw and did. One in particular I'll never forget. It's burned into my brain I can picture it today ... and I was just told about it! God knows how he has coped. I have always hoped that he made it ok, such a nice guy, but he'd be carrying quite a burden.

But that is a fairly standard empathetic response, it is burned into my brain, not so much because the actual event was so bad for me, but because of the obvious incredible emotional pain he expressed at the time.


Part of the absurdity of the mad NAZI dream was to create a society of non-empathetic people, ie a population of sociopaths, like this 'warrior farmer' nonsense. No society can function like that, chaos would be a mild description.

As for those reading this and thinking 'this has nothing to do with military stuff'. Not true, the best armed forces have very tight bonds between their people and deliberately foster them.
An army of sociopaths would be thumped by an equivalent one composed of normal people. Teamwork and trust is the key, if everyone is a sociopath then that is impossible.

In WW2 terms you can contrast the German army against the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe was a NAZI organisation and, as such, treated its people terribly and was chaotic, which contributed greatly to its collapse.
Even in the worst days the German Army made sure its troops got rests and breaks (along with their teammates) training, et al. They fostered team loyalty. British did too.
The Luftwaffe never did, fight until death. Their 'great aces' were just the extreme end of a Pareto curve, heck there was even a Lancaster that survived more than 100 missions ... long tail statistics is like that. Technically it is the statistics of survival analysis.

No need to comment on what was the most effective German fighting organisation.

OldSkeptic said:

As for those reading this and thinking 'this has nothing to do with military stuff'. Not true, the best armed forces have very tight bonds between their people and deliberately foster them.

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The Sacred Band of Thebes comes to mind.