The Military History Group discussion

To get the group interactive in discussion, I thought I'd ask a question that gets asked often: How, why, and when do you think Germany lost the Second World War? I want to hear from you all, the group members.

My opinion, It's hard to pinpoint, but here are my several theories:
1. 1942, Germany's failure to secure the oilfields of the Caucasus, and it's failure to defeat the British in North Africa is when the war turned against Germany and it subsequently lost. (I could go into more detail later)

2. 1941. Why, do I ask? Well, for the weeks that lead up to the end of the battle of Kiev, Germany had conducted many encirclements and had captured many whole Soviet armies, which was the plan for them. They banked on this idea that the Soviet state would collapse and that they could defeat and capture the whole Red Army (or most of it) to the west of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers. They failed to do that, and in my opinion, after Barbarossa failed, Germany lost the war.

I have more, but I'll write later

I agree that those events are important and applaud your emphasis on the eastern front but I think Germany, under Hitler's leadership, was always fated to lose because of the racist ideology that was the foundation of the state; Hitler also had a very narrow, uneducated mind and both of these would lead to his making incredibly flawed decisions.

First the racism, aside from being utterly repugnant, it blinded Hitler (and use the figure of Hitler as an individual but also as a stand in for saying 'the Nazi regime') so that he could not accept the strengths of the USA - as 'mongrel' and 'polyglot' nation he could not conceive or accept how powerful its economic forces were. This same racist insistence on viewing most of the people of Europe as 'subject' people fit to be no more then helots meant that he failed to harness the vast resentments in the peoples he conquered in Eastern Europe, particularly in Ukraine, Belarus, etc., toward the Soviet regime. By offering them only a fate worse than what Stalin had provided he gave them no choice but to resist.

Hitler's lack of education, of any deep reading, of any interest in learning is reflected in so many decisions (such as his penchant for wasting scarce resources on gigantic guns and tanks that couldn't operate on the roads or ground available) including his belief that aside from the German masters the rest of could be treated as slaves - not understanding that treating people as slaves was no way to get useful work from them. You could throw thousands of lives away on moving rocks but you can't beat someone into building an aeroplane.

Of course specific battles and decisions played a part but I think he was doomed even before the USA came into the war - The UK's command of the sea and the vast resources the empire provided are only now being recognised. Britain never stood 'alone' although it was a convenient myth to maintain home-front morale. Germany had luck for a brief time but it was always short of resources - remember when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union he relied on horses for moving ,men and equipment almost as much as Napoleon had done. He never had a properly mechanised army.

That the USA was able to produce enough trucks and jeeps for themselves, the British and the Russians and export and deliver them all over the globe shows the disparity in resources between the two and it just got greater as time went by.

Again Hitler relied on terror to get into and stay in power and to run his continental empire. Once he stopped winning he vanished from public sight - again in contrast to the UK where Churchill was probably most prominent and important at the lowest point of the war. Although I would not say that there was no one in the UK governing circles who wanted a separate peace in the early war years they never amounted to anything because no one trusted or believed in anything Hitler said. The population in the UK backed the war, the conquered peoples of Europe couldn't wait to rebel. Neither victory nor a permanent settlement are built on fear.

Sorry for going on and if this is off topic please let me know because I don't mean to be!

Liam, Hitler did know about the US power. The attack on Pearl Harbor came as a total surprise for him because Japanese hadn't warned him or Italians. The pact between Italy, Japan, and Germany stimulated that if any of these countries had been attacked, others would have had to side with the victim. American public intended to stay out of war, and that could be achieved even after Pearl Harbor, but Germany, out of sheer enthusiasm, declared war on USA on the 11th of December. Hitler wanted to defeat the US before the American economy went fully onto the military regime.

Hitler's demise started with underestimating British forces, then overstretching its fronts, then invading the Soviet Union.

Darya Silman wrote: "Liam, Hitler did know about the US power. The attack on Pearl Harbor came as a total surprise for him because Japanese hadn't warned him or Italians. The pact between Italy, Japan, and Germany stim..."

I agree and it is probably a difference in emphasis - my point was that Hitler's ideological view of the world, his racist thinking, led him to dismiss the USA as a fighting force. My point is that he could have won the war because the nature of his beliefs made compromise impossible and ensured there was no reason for enemies to trust him. Of course there were strategic decisions, such as turning to the Caucasus for oil rather than capturing Moscow, which were important. I don't think he could have pushed the Soviets behind the Urals but losing Moscow would have had tremendous repercussions - it would probably have given him access to the oil wells - and the war would have lasted longer - but I can not see Hitler winning because he was unable to compromise or view the rest of the world as anything other than lesser beings to Germans. There was no advantage to the allies making peace with Germany and I wonder if Hitler really wanted 'peace' s anything other then a temporary stage to further conquest.

Liam wrote: "Darya Silman wrote: "Liam, Hitler did know about the US power. The attack on Pearl Harbor came as a total surprise for him because Japanese hadn't warned him or Italians. The pact between Italy, Ja..."

I wouldn't say Hitler dismissed the USA as a fighting force entirely, in fact, he respected and understood the USA was a self sufficient and industrialized nation which he sought to emulate. Hitler needed to take the Caucasus oilfields in order for his war machine to continue, and he wanted to subjugate the Soviet Union because in his mind it would intimidate Britain into making peace with him, and plus, in his mind, he was actually preparing for war with the USA. The USA was slowly moving away from isolationism, and became more sympathetic with Britain, and by 1940-1941, Germany was involved in an undeclared naval war with the US, so by that point, Hitler saw himself as already at war with America.

I wouldn't entirely blame Hitler for the defeat of Germany, I would say that the German generals were just as culpable. At first, they were cautious, but after the victory in France, they developed "victory fever" and so ambitiously planned Barbarossa without sitting and thinking about the logistical nightmare it would cause or the idea that the Red Army might not give up within a few weeks. I think the Battle of Smolensk truly was the turning point and it showed that the Red Army was not going to give up.

To conclude, Hitler's decisions and views on things all coincided with his racialist vision.

That being said, I am sorry if my statements are all over the place and I probably should've organized this better, but I just try to let it all out.

Creighton wrote: "Liam wrote: "Darya Silman wrote: "Liam, Hitler did know about the US power. The attack on Pearl Harbor came as a total surprise for him because Japanese hadn't warned him or Italians. The pact betw..."

You say it very well and when posting these ideas it is easy to over emphasise or simplify various points. Various strategies and battles were important and you are particularly right in saying that the German generals and army had responsibility - they chose to follow Hitler, they chose to plan an invasion and occupation on the basis that the army would live off the land and millions of Soviet citizens would have to die, non of them are free of guilt, even Stauffenberg and others July conspirators went along with Hitler when he was winning, it was only when he started that losing they rediscovered their ability to oppose him (again I don't mean any disrespect but the men who tried to kill Hitler were problematic in many ways and almost none of them believed in democracy).

Hitler may have been aware of the potential of the USA but he didn't really accept its importance and his arrogance led him to declare war on the USA - which made things easier for Roosevelt because because otherwise it would have been hard to concentrate American resources on Europe first and the Pacific second. He didn't expect or demand a quid pro quo from Japan for this - which left Stalin free to withdraw troops from the far east which stopped Hitler's advance on Moscow.

Of course the events of WWII are vast and complex and everything I say is reductive but it is good to re-evaluate events - Pearl Harbour did bring the USA into the war against Japan and war with Germany probably would have followed but Hitler's deceleration of war was a gamble and an escalation and was not inevitable, not even because of treaty obligations, etc.

You all have made some great points and pretty much touched on my thoughts about Germany's loss. Let me add a couple of things.

*Declaring war on the US was a disastrous decision. Surely, as you all mention, he was aware of the technical abilities of the country but I wonder if he chose to ignore that and base his opinion of USA military on WWI (in which Hitler was involved). Then the US Army was unprepared and undertrained.
*Rommel could possibly have won Africa but Hitler took men, machines, etc. from the Afrika Korps to use in Barbarossa, leaving Rommel with a depleted army and chances missed.
* A very weak partner in Italy. Their army had outdated or little weaponry, poor planning. and bad military leadership. They were more a hindrance than a help.

But my biggest question for you all is this: Could Hitler have overcome Britain with Operation Sea Lion which he shelved to cut his own throat with Barbarossa? And if he did conquer them, then what?

Not finishing the job against Great Britain was a big failure. The battle of Britain was lost at sea, not only in the air where the strategic decisions made by Goering were flawed. Operation Sea Lion was an amateurish plan which did not have the support of the Wehrmacht or the Kriegsmarine; officers had learned not to confront Hitler directly after the success in France which meant that the decison making process was inevitably poorer for a lack of quality discussions. But as mentioned by Liam here Hitler started Barbarossa for purely ideological racist reasons and of course early successes were related to Stalin's own paranoia as he did not believe his own intelligence and had a majority of senior officers imprisoned or shot during the great purge of 1936-1939 depleting the military leadership. The war was probably already lost for Germany when Hitler declared war gainst the US on December 11, 1941 , a Christmas gift for Churchill. Hitler, again because of his racist ideology thought the Americans soft and incapable of hard fighting, general Tojo also believed that the Japanese soul and commitment to fight was superior to the americans. The Japanese Cabinet had requested a study by its own experts which made the case that Japan could not win in war against the USA. Japan had a GDP of about 12% of the US in 1941, when plants were still not at full capacity. Logistics win (or lose) wars. For instance, Japan was not prepared to defend its own lines of communications against submarine attacks so gaining territory with oil was worthless if tankers are sunk and cannot not be replaced.

As Daniel has said the whole invasion plan was pretty amateurish and also depended on command of the air and sea. Hitler's amateurish ways and the sheer chaos and lack of co-ordination within the Nazi government apparatus can be seen in the failure to develop a really proper U boat fleet. Germany never had the time or finance to create battleships sufficient to challenge the UK but with the U boat they had a real weapon - but lack of co-ordinated strategic planning meant they never had sufficient numbers and vast amounts resources were wasted on vanity projects.

Even in terms of the battle of Britain in the air Hitler moved to bombing cities away from airfields and although it caused immense harm was ineffective as a means of driving the UK to surrender (just as the allies bombing of German cities did nothing substantial to ending the war (which doesn't mean it was ineffective - but that is another long story and debate).

Personally I don't believe that an invasion of Britain was ever possible - I think it was meant as a threat to encourage negotiations.

Liam wrote: "As Daniel has said the whole invasion plan was pretty amateurish and also depended on command of the air and sea. Hitler's amateurish ways and the sheer chaos and lack of co-ordination within the N..." Again Hitler in his hierarchy of races considered the British as another superior race and was willing to concede the existence of the British Empire in exchange for British neutrality in Europe. An invasion of Britain was never in the cards for the German military leadership but the objective was to strangle the UK by using the destruction of its lines of communications with the US and Canada. Again as you point out if The Kriegsmarine would have had a full fleet of U boats available from 1939, the pressure on the British would have been very difficult to sustain which might have led to negotiations.

Daniel wrote: "Liam wrote: "As Daniel has said the whole invasion plan was pretty amateurish and also depended on command of the air and sea. Hitler's amateurish ways and the sheer chaos and lack of co-ordination..."
Absolutely - I agree very much with what you say about Hitler's hierarchy of races because I believe (and I am not being original I am sure I got it from Mark Mazower's 'Hitler's Empire' about how the Nazi's governed their conquests) the racist beliefs of Hitler and his regime undermined and prevented any honest and realistic strategic planning.

In his book Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War by F.W. von Mellenthin this question is addressed. According to von Mellenthin many in the German General Staff and the Nazi government felt the end was only a matter of time when the Wehrmacht was unable to take Moscow in 1941. The thinking here was Germany would be unable to logistically sustain a multi-year war on the Eastern Front in addition to holding the territories gained prior to Operation Barbarossa, and the on-going campaign in North Africa.

This concern over supplying the war effort resulted in the German decision to drive towards the Caucasus oil fields in 1942 vs. continue to press on Moscow. This decision came with its own ramifications of greatly extending the Front far to the Southeast and resulted in the conflagration that was Stalingrad. Many students of the Eastern Front say it was Stalingrad which was the turning point of the military campaign in the East, and the war in Europe overall.

From my reading I'm not sure the grand strategy of Rommel capturing the Middle Eastern oil fields was something the German General Staff really bought into. Even if Rommel had taken Cairo, the struggle for the Middle East and its oil would have significantly impacted Germany's military ability to prosecute the war with Soviet Russia during the same timeframe.

Whether von Mellenthin's comments in his book regarding Germany's future in Dec '41 was convenient post war 20/20 hindsight, or a real concern by German leadership we'll never know for sure.

Jill wrote: "But my biggest question for you all is this: Could Hitler have overcome Britain with Operation Sea Lion which he shelved to cut his own throat with Barbarossa? And if he did conquer them, then what?"

Jill, from what I've read most probably not. The Wehrmacht hadn't developed an amphibious warfare doctrine and trained the troops in this doctrine to a point that they would have been able to carry off a large scale amphibious assault. Germany didn't have the amphibious craft to lift the number of troops and supplies needed to create a sustainable beach head. In addition, the German Navy would have had significant challenges protecting the landing operations from the British Royal Navy. Finally, the airspace over the landing area was highly contested which would have introduced further complications for the Germans.

Jill wrote: "You all have made some great points and pretty much touched on my thoughts about Germany's loss. Let me add a couple of things.

*Declaring war on the US was a disastrous decision. Surely, as you a..."
With regards to operation sea lion others have given excellent answers about why its success impossible I would simply add that you have only to consider the vast armada and resources that the USA, Britain and the other allies brought to Overlord to see what paltry efforts the Germans had invested in the invasion of the UK. I personally think it was never more than a threat or potential bargaining chip and/or means of exerting pressure.

Thanks to you all for your comments on Sea Lion. My thoughts have always been that Hitler was using that threat to force Britain into some type of bargain which Liam mentioned.. Britain knew that Hitler broke every bargain he ever made and this would have been no different although I have read the Churchill gave it brief consideration. Besides, what would have been the effect on the countries of the Empire if a bargain was struck.......another Vichy France situation?