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What war aims did the germans achieve? They achieved victories a plenty, certainly, but according to Moltke, the great german theorist on warfare, "war is an extension of policy". That is a truism that holds as much today as when it was first written. The Germans could not claim to have achieved any of their main war aims because they were so utterly defeated at the end of it all. In the narrower context of the war in the east the claims to success are even less. In terms of the Barbarossa objectives, none of the geographic, political or even military objectives were ever achieved. These were incidentally, the capture of western Europe, in particular Moscow Leningrad (and subsequently) Stalingrad. The political objectives of the campaign was the collapse of the communist regime, whilst the miltary objectives was the complete destruction of Russian military machine. None of these objectives were achieved, though it was not for want of trying. In large measure it was the failure of the machines of war that contributed to this failure, for example, the extremely low serviceability rates of their tanks is often stated as a reason for their failure in Taifun.
Later, the objectives were modified to encompass the capture of the olifields, and the capture of Stalingrad (as well as a minor objective of the capture of Crimea....which they did achieve). This campaign like all the others failed, utterly, and disastrously
In the following year, the objective was changed yet again, this time the objective became the military destruction of the Soviet military machine. This objective failed. Forced onto the defensive from this point, German war strategy lost way from this point, but seems to have revolved around inflicting such a high attrition rate as to blunt the Russian attack capability. But instead the Russians just got stronger and better at what they did. Again the Germans get an enromous fail inthe pursuit of their strategic war objectives. If you are talking about tactical objectives, then you have a point, but the reasoning for my whole post in this thread was to put the strategic issues into perpsective. And to say the T-34 was not part of that strategic outcome is to deny fundamental facts. I dont know how you can say equipment performance is unimportant to the strategic context. The t-34 was as important to the Russian victory as the Zero was a factor in the early Japanese victories
In every campaign similar threads emerge. The machines of war, are a part of the tools of war, and ultimately they played their part in the respective victories and defeats of each nation. Understanding the details behind those successes and failures is the key to understanding why.
So heres the conundrum. The Russians lost something like 12-20000 T-34s in the war, whilst the germans lost a total of more than 32000 AFVs of all descriptions. I estimate that approximately half those losses will be attributable the T-34s, though if you have better numbers, please advise. Please, therefore explain to me how the T-34, with such a reasonable overall exchange rate can be then rated as grossly inferior, or that their ease of production should not be included as a factor in them winning their war????
To say that Germanys defeat was the result of strategic decision is partly true, but so too are the equipment decision. The choice of equipments is in fact part of that overall strategic mismanagement that you talk of, but your position is still trying to shift the total blame of defeat to a very few. In fact that defeat was a defeat of the whole, in which the command echelon played a significant part, but not the whole or even the dominant reason. Your position is yet another attempt at perpetuating the lie that germany was robbed of her rightful victory....that is just untrue, they were defeated comprehensively on the field of battle as much as the corridors of power. The failure of her procurement program is an element of that defeat.
You mention the cost effectiveness of SPGs compared to Tanks, which is true, but compared to the production costs of the T-34, German SPGs were still expensive. A Stug III with the long 75mm ATG still cost more than twice the cost of a T-34. Thats a lot better cost relationship than the Panther, but it is still a lot more expensive.
Finally you mention the possibility that Germany would have been no better with T-34 than using their own suite of tanks. You immediately dismiss this as ridiculous, and yet in 1941-2 serious consideration was given to just that expedient, that ultimately led to the panther development. Speer time and again advocated the production of cheap, mass produceable tanks like the Sherman, because of the numbers that would be available if they did adopt that strategy. Rommel, after 1943 advocated the total abandonment of turreted tanks altogether, and thought the emphasis should be on the production of towed AT weapons. There are a lot of eminent German leaders who support that very notion..cheap, easily produced items of hardware over the super exotic behemoths that the germans ended up favouring
