[Barbarossa] The Major Errors and Blunders - Or why Barbarossa Failed 

Military History Visualized have you done any videos on the Korean War, the one that followed ww2?

not yet, will definitely happen, but right now I probably will cover some other stuff, because my library is now quite extensive on various topics outside of the Korean war, but maybe I stumble across a great paper. My content process is actually extremely chaotic.

Military History Visualized would be perfect timing for it...considering current events. Understanding the Korean War, what led up to it, and how it's gone to present day. It's an incredibly important and forgotten war

RU-vid's ad policies are just the latest step in an Orwellian push by Google to further their own interests, and suppress those they consider dangerous or unsavory. Thanks for all the videos man, I'm not too familiar with Patreon and I'm currently in college, but I'll look into what I would be able to donate :)

Explain what youtube is doing to impact your ad revenue?

best part it was unintentional

Illuminati Confirmed.

Kek wills it.

such a coincidence, that will create a butterfly effect... one coincidental length of a video will mean that a tsunami will happen in east asia in 2019.

Just one more second... Ah, a man can dream, a man can dream...

yeah, that is something covered in my recent video. Where I have numbers for one Panzer Division: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-K5Cgy6oiVY4.html

Thanks for the link! Yeah, I think a good military historian could write an interesting book solely about the logistics of Barbarossa. There HAD to have been some crazy, desperate improvisations and innovations to have kept it together as long as they did!

Agreed. I seem to recall reading that Paulus, a logistics specialist had suggested in writing that the army couldn't field enough troops to conquer the USSR, and couldn't properly supply an army the size they had 200km beyond the start-line rail-heads. Has anyone else read that? I can't remember where. I've read so much material over so many years, I cant always recall what author cited it.

THAT was a giant problem - thanks for pointing that out

The whole of Europe and even the USA worked on the Wehrmacht. I think there were no problems with spare parts. Moreover, the Germans are known for their practicality and scrupulous attitude.

and genius studies both?

seeing as he had a army bushwacking in his back yard for over ten years you'ed think he'd have burned the forests joisey, but hey he did win because Carthage had no idea how to run a war so...

well, the best plan is usless if your soldiers are hungry thusty and have no ammo + the plan is always the first how lies dead on the ground

an oversimplification, popular because it sounds clever. Only an idiot would think studying tactics is amateur, here's an idea, study both.

Bad tactics can lose battles, but bad logistics can lose wars.

Not to mention impossible communications

Jim Jones His generals were actually pretty dumb they never should have focused on Moscow. Also they could have NEVER made it to the Urals.

@@melvillesperryn9268 agreed.

@Jim Jones Germany's logistic insufficiency argues strongly for a strong, concentrated drive at Moscow, rather than an advance on a broad front. Taking Moscow would've split the rail network in half. They might have been able to seize the factories in Moscow before they could be moved to the Urals. Half of the Russian front would have had very limited access to Ural production. Also, this advance would be along the best transport routes into Russia, Germany would still have had to deal with the different gauges (perhaps they could have prepared suitable rolling stock?). The main problem was German arrogance and over-confidence: kick in the front door and Russia would collapse. The result is they never planned for their own known deficiencies. By the way, Hitler was more aware of the problems of raw material supply than his generals, who were all trained in a long tradition of fighting near their own borders so that logistics was less of a problem. Hence the plan to ship equipment back to Germany for repair, which presupposes excellent communications. The German generals never planned for a long war and their plans couldn't cope with one.

@@melvillesperryn9268 they needed the oil and food in the south. Just one army group south and the rest stays on the border

Barberossa was fantasy. We couldn't be conquered, we couldn't be defeated.

Except you were in the Firsy World War.

Not exactly, the Russians failed to invade Germany but Germany never attempted an invasion of Russia during WW1 and for good reason.... although Barbarosa was initially successful until Hitler derailed it with his ego and hatred of Stalin

Operation Barberossa was guaranteed to fail. You can't blame Hitler.

SgtMoss There was no need invade Russia because the Russian army was utterly shattered. It was combat ineffective by that point and the men needed to occupy it were better used in the west.

That’s what dopamine overload will do to you, especially if you’ve already had a few big victories before 1941.

*Arkhangelsk

The biggest disaster here is the millions of our people killed, even if many of them were soldiers, still it doesn't mean they all had a choice and a free will in the Soviet Union, they were young and many of them were not soldiers before the war.

@@KatyaLishch That hurts me the most. The Soviet commanders threw waves of young men to break the German defenses. The soviet commanders didnt seem to care about human life. In the end, the victory cost the soviets 27 million lives , 10.6 million were soldiers. The NKVD shot 300,000 soldiers who were trying to retreat. I hope the commanders who sent young men to their deaths are burning in hell.

@@KillerofWestoids Where did you get this 300,000 from? I thought it was mostly officers who actually disobeyed orders and around 13,000.

Hitting the supply lines has always been the easiest, and most effective, way to defeat an enemy force. They are never as strong as the front line, so as the enemy pushes in, you circle around and cut the supply lines. By the time the front line realizes what has happened, they are already fuc*ed.

The minute the US entered the war it was over for the axis.

correction-U.S. entered the war in Europe BECAUSE and WHEN it was over for the axis,in fear of Soviet Union beating them to the spoils.And even then their performance had left much to be desired.

mazanakaUA No, the outcome of the war was not certain at all until we entered the war. Even then it wasn't until maybe 1942 that the germans were clearly on the offensive and didn't really have a chance at winning.

There was no substantial US military presence in Europe until 1944. Their substantial aid to USSR nothwistanding, the Nazis were losing badly way before USA really joined the European theatre.

People forget that USSR moved the capitol> Moscow wasn't the capitol during the first half of the war.

@@sillymesilly But Moscow was important in another way: many major roads and railroads all converged on Moscow. Look at any map of Russia during ww2 (even today), Moscow is at the very center of what looks like a giant spoked wheel. Given how so few usable roads there were, it's easy to understand why generals desired to take this hub.

Here is a map showing the Soviet railway system in 1941 users.tpg.com.au/adslbam9//Railways1941.png. As you can see, Moscow was indeed the major railway hub of the USSR, but there still stood a very dense network behind the capital. Take, for instance, the red-colored section of the Western Trans-Siberian which could effectively connect the Ural industrial area with the southern Soviet Fronts. Note the dense net of parallel tracks in the general area of Tambov and, in particular, directly to it's north. Of significant interest is the generally poor rail support in the extended area where the battle of Stalingrad took place. This didn't prevent the Soviets from massing and supplying over 1.1 million men for the Uranus counter-offensive. The situation was even worse in the Caucasus, where the Soviets were down to 1 single-track railroad bordering the Caspian Sea plus the port of Baku to bring supplies to the 800,000 men of the Transcaucasus Front. Yet the Soviets succeeded in supplying them, albeit they were generally under-supplied compared to those of comparably large Fronts Soviet centralized logistical system has reduced the effects of their bad infrastructure towards their logistics

Not exactly but it would have been a desaster for the Wehrmacht like Stalingrad.

funny that you say that, there is an Russian documentary about the war. they point out that the Germans waited with their attack on Moscow, that way the Russians rushed in the Siberian army of Zhukov, besides that. the Germans if they didn't siege Minsk and went straight for Moscow, they most likely would have overrun Russian defences. crippling their logistics, which overall would have made the siege on Leningrad even tougher.

could you elaborate a bit on that? (I only read Guderians but that was about 16+ years ago).

Halders Biography is written by his grand daughter. It is largely an attempt to wash Halders name clean and since he was a very facetted man and she is related to him I don't blame her. It is worthwile in the sense that it goes to greath lenght to describe the culture of the high command of the Wehrmacht. It describes people like Beck, Brauchitsch and Halder as principled soldiers who think of themselves as tools for the political leadership. Since they were socialized in the Kaiserreich, they conceived the social order of the Reich as organically grown. To them the aristocracy was an outgrowth of the character of the German people, which legitimized them acting purely unpolitical. The book let's Halder argue that since Nazi rule wasn't bound to tradition and acted completely irresponsible towards both Germans and Europeans those soldiers turned the acolytes of a death cult because they couldn't escape their social conditioning. The author tries to describe Halder as a military visionary, close to the troops, responsible and ever critical of the Nazi regime. It has a short chapter on the "Komissarbefehl" and doesn't spend any time on the Einsatzgruppen. So it is heavily, and in my view irresponsibly biassed. From halders letters to his wife and his diary the author quotes interesting things nontheless. He quotes that Hitler strategically placed people like Keitel and Jodl in the OKW because he knew they basically adored him and would always support his plans. Hitler also continuosly undermined soldiers like Beck and Brauchitsch who he apparently brought close to nervous breakdown numerous times because he deemed them "too religious, politically unreliable". This atmosphere of distrust, according to Halder, was one of the reasons for a lacking unified strategy. He complains often about Hitler having no clue about grand theory but insisting that major resources be used to deal with what he thinks is important. In this sense Halders biography tells a similar story as Guderians does. Hitler had no specific ideas but a specific ethos. He consistently eliminated or undermined people who didn't fit into those plans. Guderian, who was fired by Hitler once as threatened his abdication another time, said that over time, Hitler made sure that everyone in the room was either 'hypnotized' by him or shut up. If he noticed somebody was strong willed or against him, he removed him from his post. Guderian also noticed that seasoned soldiers would criticize Hilter under 4 eyes but noone would do so in front of a group to not undermine his authority. So Hitler made sure that at least several people were in the room to prevent criticism from being uttered. Guderians view on the war is mostly influenced by his relation to the Panzer troops. He clearly loves his men and his troops and he goes into great lenghts of Panzer production and theories of mobilized warfare. He said that the strenght of the Russian tank forces was basically just guesswork. Guderian himself wrote a boot about the Russian tank armies and strategy and estimated the production of tanks Russia was able to achieve at 1300 per week in 1935 (I'm quoting from my memory, this might not be completely accurate.) He quotes Hitler is basically disregarding Guderians warnings, that the Russian were able to ouproduce the entire German tank industry in basically just one single factory, later admitting that it was a horrible mistake to him. Guderian also mentions that Hitler strategially placed people to undermine the cohesion of the leadership of the Wehrmacht because he feared them as his only powerful political enemy. (Which, given the numerous attempts to stage a coup against him, was accurate.) Something that must have hurt Guderian was Hitlers insistence to develop ever new and exotic tank models, weakening standardization of the production effort. He criticizes that Hitler basically changed his mind constantly about how tanks have to be prioritized. The experts favoured heavily armed and mobile tanks and Hitler agreed one day, just to change his mind the next day. This gave birth to the Tiger II and the Maus.

For some reason, I can't edit in paragraphs :(

thank you very much! About Guderians prediction of Soviet tanks in his book, well that is funny, I read that he didn't even mention the Soviet Union... luckily, I got a copy of it: it is for motor vehicles and in percent: USA, England, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, "the rest" (übrige Länder)... so it seems Guderian was referring to book he didn't wrote ;) or maybe there were really two. My source: "Die Panzerwaffe - Ihre Entwicklung, Ihre Kampftaktik und ihre operativen Möglichkeiten bis zum Beginn des großdeutschen Freiheitskampfes" (which I think is the "war title" of "achtung Panzer" / the 2nd edition from 1943.) In the part about Russia he assumes 10 000 tanks and 1200 armored cars.

Can you provide the names of the books. Currently trying to find good books to read on WW2. Specifically Soviet and German Generals.

Jacopo Abbruscato . So you think that the entire Soviet Union and it’s government systems, it’s transportation systems and its civilian systems would remain calm and carry on despite the capital falling to defeat?

@@mattkierkegaard9403 Why would they surrender? They knew the Germans wanted to exterminate them.

@@mattkierkegaard9403 They would just make even more propoganda about needing to fight on. Grate power totalitarian states are uncapitulatable they will fight to the end.

@@ReachForTheSky Yes They new they would not fare well under German rule and the blood of their russian serfs is expendable.

@Soaring Hawk Dont get me wrong, I do not support the boļševiks or the other side of that coin, but Im being a realist, the USSR would not capitulate if Moskva fell they would fight on.

thank you!

I AGREE.

Well the Germans and Russians both expected war with each other. It was just a question of who would double cross the other first.

Except Germany was fighting 2 other superpowers at the same time, constantly bombing german industries and cities. Nice try tho

Yeah, the Russians were like Rocky or Hulk Hogan. Taking an impossible beating early on, but then getting super motivated and even more impossibly shrugging it off and waging an unstoppable comeback.

@@IrishCarney No it wasn't like that at all. That is a Hollyweird fiction. In real life something went seriously wrong in Germany, and those SOBs started a war they couldn't possibly survive. From a now very distant perspective it looks insane, and may well have been. But some think things got out of control. The Germans had nothing. No strategic vision in their air force, no navy, no trucks, and no oil. Yet they used a horse army to started a war with half the globe. I'm not sure it went as planned for them. Or they were idiots one or the other.

@@duster0066 from trade with Soviet union Germany only had oil reserves up to late 41 so if they failed to knock the Soviet out of the war, the war is lost

"The German Army's records indicate the Germans likely inflicted 20-to-1 casualties on these robotic, predictable Soviet attacks all through 1941." TheWersum did not directly address this point by stating "Russians actually won the war." The central time period of my thesis above is 1941, not 1941 - 1945. I wholeheartedly believe that if Germany did not defeat the Soviet Union by end of 1941, or perhaps 1942, the weight of Soviet troops and industry, along with British, American, and other Allied contributions, made Germany's defeat inevitable. The accounts of the fighting in 1941 that I have read repeat that: 1) Russian generals failed miserably against Finland in 1939 - 1940, so Stalin had many of them shot. 2) This followed the 1930's purge of the Soviet senior officers - making it clear that Stalin would have little fear of an attempted military coup d'etat 3) By June of 1941, any living Soviet general clearly understood that remaining alive meant doing what Stalin said - or else. In August 1941, Stalin issued Order Number 270 in desperation, making it a crime for Soviet officers to order a retreat anywhere under any circumstances. According to the many accounts I have read, if you combine the obedience of the Soviet generals, the elimination of the option to retreat, Soviet offensive doctrine as of 1941, and Germany's considerable advantages at the time (good radios, air superiority, active reconnaissance assets, recent battle experience from Poland, the Low Countries, France, and so on), then you get Soviet counterattacks that closely followed their script as spelled out in Soviet Army manuals for motorized warfare. When the Germans kept seeing the same sequence of operations over and over, they felt as if they were fighting against "robots". It also meant that they could optimize their responses, much like Wellington's sequence for countering the standard Napoleonic tactical sequences that Wellington developed in Spain from 1809 - 1814. It would be rather like playing against an AI opponent in a video game where the human player had learned the exact approach always taken by the AI opponent. After the crisis point had passed with the German retreat from Moscow during the winter of 1941 - 1942, Stalin began to yield more and more control to generals like Zhukov, Rokossovsky, and Voroshilov as the war went on. These commanders eventually led the Red Army to the heart of Berlin using greatly improved tactics and weapons as compared to the desperate days of 1941. The Red Army of 1945 was far from "robotic" in its methods and means of waging front-level operations. Understand that the German soldiers always had immense respect for the hardy "Ivan" who was ready to die for the Motherland and glad to take some Fascists with him. It's just that "Ivan" was badly misused in 1941

Like Great Britain, the Soviet Empire is no more. For modern, patriotic Britons and Russians, the victory in WWII ("Great Patriotic War") is a touchpoint for when all was right with being at the head of the empire as it overcame Germany in a life-and-death struggle. Since then, the maladies of socialism and other sources of decline have made the present day version of each nation seem like shadows of their former selves. As a result, for modern, patriotic Britons and Russians, any criticism of how they waged that war is considered an attack on their sense of identity in the present. There are similar dynamics in the USA as the nation has changed in so many ways since December 7, 1941. As a Russian history and military history enthusiast and former practicing military intelligence officer, I don't feel like I have the luxury of defending military mistakes, no matter who has made or is making them. Tuning out change leads to a debacle like the Franco-British campaign against Germany in May - June 1940. I agree with you that I have a pretty limited knowledge of the Eastern Front in WWII since: 1) virtually all of the participants did not speak or write in English 2) Operation Paperclip and the rapid embrace of West Germany allowed the losers to write most of the early histories while the other side's historians were quite constrained under Stalin. 3) Both the German and Soviet armies of WWII were waging war for dictators whose grip extended deep into propaganda and other forms of media. However, let's look at population numbers. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, these were the populations (from Wikipedia) of the eventual combatants in the European Theater of Operations still fighting in 1944: Germany: 79 million Soviet Union: 169 million Great Britain: 50 million United States: 132 million This leaves out the many other nations that made contributions to both sides such as Hungary, Italy, and Romania on the Axis side and France, Poland, and the Baltic states on the Allied side. Total Germans in 1939: 79 million Total Allies (USSR, UK, and USA) in 1939: 351 million This means the Germans began WWII while outnumbered by the great powers at more than 4-to-1. Yet they came fairly close to victory over Great Britain and then the USSR, requiring nearly four years to defeat after rolling so deep into Russia that reconnaissance troops could see the spires of the Kremlin just four months after Operation Barbarossa began. Yes, Germany ultimately failed (thank you Jesus), but they provided material that serious military historians should examine for decades to come. One more thing everyone should consider: military history is probably the least reliable history of all the areas of study. Most of it is written by "the winners," many of the eyewitnesses are dead and the survivors have all manner of emotional and other reasons for providing highly filtered versions of what happened. The Greeks essentially didn't try - dubbing the history of the Trojan War as a collection of legends and myths. We really shouldn't take "the facts" provided by military history all that seriously, but it is interwoven with national histories, national identities, and all manner of stories, books, movies, plays, and so on. Ultimately, it is a search for the meaning of a series of events that consumed millions of our fellow human beings. It is a constant reminder that all glory is fleeting and the grave awaits us all.

Like Great Britain, the Soviet Empire is no more. For modern, patriotic Britons and Russians, the victory in WWII ("Great Patriotic War") is a touchpoint for when all was right with being at the head of the empire as it overcame Germany in a life-and-death struggle. Since then, the maladies of socialism and other sources of decline have made the present day version of each nation seem like shadows of their former selves. As a result, for modern, patriotic Britons and Russians, any criticism of how they waged that war is considered an attack on their sense of identity in the present. There are similar dynamics in the USA as the nation has changed in so many ways since December 7, 1941. As a Russian history and military history enthusiast and former practicing military intelligence officer, I don't feel like I have the luxury of defending military mistakes, no matter who has made or is making them. Tuning out change leads to a debacle like the Franco-British campaign against Germany in May - June 1940. I agree with you that I have a pretty limited knowledge of the Eastern Front in WWII since: 1) virtually all of the participants did not speak or write in English 2) Operation Paperclip and the rapid embrace of West Germany allowed the losers to write most of the early histories while the other side's historians were quite constrained under Stalin. 3) Both the German and Soviet armies of WWII were waging war for dictators whose grip extended deep into propaganda and other forms of media. However, let's look at population numbers. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, these were the populations (from Wikipedia) of the eventual combatants in the European Theater of Operations still fighting in 1944: Germany: 79 million Soviet Union: 169 million Great Britain: 50 million United States: 132 million This leaves out the many other nations that made contributions to both sides such as Hungary, Italy, and Romania on the Axis side and France, Poland, and the Baltic states on the Allied side. Total Germans in 1939: 79 million Total Allies (USSR, UK, and USA) in 1939: 351 million This means the Germans began WWII while outnumbered by the great powers at more than 4-to-1. Yet they came fairly close to victory over Great Britain and then the USSR requiring nearly four years to defeat after rolling so deep into Russia that reconnaissance troops could see the spires of the Kremlin just four months after Operation Barbarossa began. Yes, Germany ultimately failed (thank you Jesus), but they provided material that serious military historians should examine for decades to come. One more thing everyone should consider: military history is probably the least reliable history of all the areas of study. Most of it is written by "the winners," many of the eyewitnesses are dead and the survivors have all manner of emotional and other reasons for providing highly filtered versions of what happened. The Greeks essentially didn't try - dubbing the history of the Trojan War as a collection of legends and myths. We really shouldn't take "the facts" provided by military history all that seriously, but it is interwoven with national histories, national identities, and all manner of stories, books, movies, plays, and so on. Ultimately, it is a search for the meaning of a series of events that consumed millions of our fellow human beings. It is a constant reminder that all glory is fleeting and the grave awaits us all.

Another thing, that is important, in matter why Germany in 1941 was unstoppable and Russia was like Robots, and after 1943 was opposite, beside that Zukov, Rokossovsky and other brilliant generals start using German tactic and become unstoppable, was that Wehrmacht had several thousands of Panzers, but no fuel for them... While Russian Generals can do Blitzkrieg like Germans in his best days... Germany was in 1942 desperate for oil, and in war with two major economic powers with enormous industrial capabilities and with endless resources, and of course, with oil for their tanks...

I'm one of those who is skeptical of the idea that if the Germans who were teetering at the end of very long and very tenuous supply lines had somehow managed to seize and to hold Moscow in 1941 that alone guaranteed the defeat and the inevitable collapse of the Soviet system. It didn't work that way for Napoleon in 1812 because, just like the German forces in 1941, long before either the season of mud or the winter set in, the "mere" act of moving large forces for those great distances in inhospitable territory, and winning battles against a determined enemy was steadily depleting his army and limiting its striking power and its effectiveness.

*Licks Kanade's Chest* (o_O

Same xD

Same here! What a find! :)

Me too

The Germans used large carts pulled by teams of horses. The large hard cart wheels and horses feet cut up the Russian roads. The Red army used horses and carts but the small peasants carts with one horse designed to weave between the trees in the forests on undamaged earth. The USA supplied the the USSR with 0.5 million tons of steel rails to rebuild the tracks together with 2k Russian gauge locomotives and tens of thousands of box cars and flat bed cars to replace the rail equipment destroyed by the Germans. The USA and Canada supplied the Red army with 600,000 trucks designed for the frozen north and deserts of North America. Germany did scour the occupied counties for every vehicle they could get but a small van designed for the well made roads of suburban France fell to bits carrying heavy munitions on the unmade roads of the eastern front

my grandmother in a small village in Bulgaria told stories about how friendly the German soldiers were to her, giving food and benches when they left.. And in contrast the communists who were raping and killing people, so her family had to hide in their house. And they also killed they mayor of the village and left his body in the town square as an example.. Germany should've won

Russian gauge (5ft) was there as a standard long before the Soviets come to a power. For an example, as a former part of the Empire Finland has the same gauge.

@@RustedCroaker because Finland used to be part of Russia. Europe minus Spain used the same Guage that USSR didn't use.

thank you!

thank you! yeah, analysis is the fun part, the other fun part is to make it as accessible as possible. Welcome to the Channel!

If if you think World War II historical facts involve opinions then good luck on your paper

Its hard to interchange German/English nuance and inflection. I have a limited experience in this and can't imagine going any deeper.

I briefly misread "sadistic."

The reason media portrayes things like history but also science simple is, that the average idiot has no clie about the complexity and also no interest in knowing what's going on.

@@projectpitchfork860 thank you Captain Obvious. Spelling needs attention, too.

thank you!

Yes, German generals shown perfect tactical and strategical art at the begining of war. But the main problem was that Soviet generals learn German strategical art quickly. And Soviet General Stuff already demonstrated more advanced skills than German couterpart in 1943, 1944, 1045

+Дима Серов 1045 ;-)

I agree with all but point 2. Stalingrad was VERY important it was a city, that if conquered could have opened the transcaucases, an oil rich area, and southern russia, a enormous fertile piece of land

Jonath Martin Yes your point is true but what I meant by personalizing is Hitler did not care about strategy when it came to Stalingrad. German excellence was in open country not house to house fighting. He did not think resonable about the situation and wasted 300+ thousand well trained soldiers for nothing in an unwinnable situation. Even if only 2 out of 3 had been able to break out they could have made a decisive impact later. But we also have to give the Russians credit they used the situation to it`s full potential.

Renowned author Antony Beevor said Hitler's "Hold your ground" directive during the battle outside Moscow may actually have saved the German army's collapse, as it was close to exhaustion and dropped heavily in morale with winter, casualties and the sudden attack by fresh Siberian divisions.

yeah, the major railway lines could be an important factor, after all the Germans also didn't manage to cut off Leningrad completely. Would be interesting to have some expert in economics/logistics look at that matter.

By the way, I read somewhere that for the attack Germans gathered 500-600 thousand of cars and trucks not only German but also gathered from conquered nations. If this is true then it would also be a logistical nightmare in itself. How do you get spare parts for repair and tires to the front when you posses all this models from different countries (French, Czech, British)??

not sure about the number, but yeah, they took quite a lot and yeah, logistical nightmare.

thank you!

In other words, it was a feature, not a bug. Am I getting that right?

But Why the roads can't defeat Russian arny? :-) Or maybe "bad road myth" or "deadly frost myth" is just excuse of loosers?

That was a joke comrade. Besides my grandpa was in the Red Army during WWII. And the roads in Russia are indeed bad. Don't get so offended. :o)

The Russian strategy is to keep many of their facilities in a state that Western militaries would find totally unacceptable. The runways of Russian airbases, for example, are often overgrown with vegetation. This is because Russian military equipment can handle it, but Western-built equipment, with it's much tighter engineering standards, cannot. This means that a Western invasion force would not be able to immediately use captured airbases to extend their airpower, but would instead have to spend weeks defoliating those airbases, or building their own. Either one would result in a loss of momentum that could then be used by the Russians in an enveloping counterattack. Dima, militarily speaking, this area denial strategy is a GOOD thing, and no more so than in a country the size of Russia.

lol I beg to disagree..italians used the same "tactic" about shitty infrastructure..it didnt work.

Russia today is not half as difficult a place to invade. For one thing Russians are no longer the tough patriotic men they were back then. Now they are spoiled and rich like the rest of the first world countries. Also technology has passed the point where cold weather can win you a war.

thank you!

thank you!

that and arrogant leadership that forgot the first principle.... IF IT SEEMS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE -IT PROBABLY IS.

Not his fault the moment you do Germany versus Russia pretty much becomes that it was the defining moment of ww2

+Jimmy De'Souza In addition, in 1941, it was the centre of logistics and communication. If the Soviets lost it, everything could easily have come crashing down around it.

+frjoethesecond Moscow was just a city it's capture would make no difference. Infact IF Axis forces captured Moscow the Soviets would just encircle Axis force's in the city. Another repeat of Stalingrad.

Stalin had a train ready to flee Moscow and almost got on it - what would that have done to the soviet apparatus if the soviet government had to flee? Just look at a map of the Russian railways of the time, Moscow was critical, there was no other rail line that ran north-south from one end of Russia to the other east of Moscow. The symbolism of Moscow was great, its loss would have encouraged anybody who opposed the communist regime to more open resistance. It was also a production centre.

Not only losing Moscow materially would have been devastating, but the moral effect would have been just as great. After a series of disasters and losing millions of men, the fall of Moscow might've been too much of a blow to morale for Soviet war effort to take. Such a prestige loss and with how much the Soviet government was hated, it gave the best possibility of victory for the Germans.

You also have to understand logistics. During the nopoleonic era, moscow was just a symbol. But before the third riech, railways were constructed and cities lost their self sufficiency. With railways, lenningrad no longer had to plant on harsh soil because it could easily get resources from Stalingrad, while stalingrad now could devote its time to agriculture on its rich plains and get its manufactured goods via lenningrad, something that was unheard of in the napoleonic era. But during the third riech this was the way russia operated. Amd guess what the centre of communications was. Guess were all these trains that supplied these no longer self sufficient cities had to cross through. Thats right.moscow

what's the source on this? I forgot to take a look at the original, when I was at the library and got the reprint from the war. (And I move) Hence I can't check if the original had this number.

It has been a while,but I read it in Hiter Moves East by aurthor Paul Carrel I believe.A very good account of the war in Russia and case barbarrosa.Later in the war Hitler told Guderian "Had I known then that your numbers were right,I would have not started this war with Russia"

There is a short video clip on you-tube of a recorded conversation between Hitler and Field Marshal Mannerheim in the winter of 1942 where Hitler tells Mannerheim that up to that point the german army had already destroyed 35,000 soviet tanks thus far.

the problem is Paul Carell made up quite some stuff: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Carell

Yes,that could be true,though I have read from 3 different sources where Hitler told Guderian that he would have not started the war with russia had he known that Guderian's estimate of soviet tank numbers was correct.

thank you!

thx, yes. I think it is indirectly mentioned by changing the focus all the time. His "we gonna win" to "all doom and gloom" behavior had major impacts, see also the Dunkirk decision.

Can I suggest you, to look some documentaries about fuel crises in Germany before and during ww2? After you take the oil, as a primary resource and his desperate shortage in not just Wehrmacht, but Germany at whole, you will change the opinion of Hitler from Idiot, to military genius in second... All his orders will make perfect sense...

Thank you so much, especially coming from yourself, you Rock Out! It REALLY means a lot to me, and I'm sure 100’s more! I really do appreciate it...🤘

nice one, didn't know of that, but for TO&E of the Red Army, I actually have probably one of the best sources out there: Sharps 9 Volumes on the OOB. But I guess Zaloga offers a lot of other information that is just mentioned briefly by sharp.

The Nazis would have executed Rammstein and banned their music - it is explicitly sexual and explicitly left-wing, with plenty of songs directly critical of right-wing authoritarianism. They even have a song describing gay men having sex, and chose a black woman to represent Germany as a clear rejection of ethnic nationalism.

Just bring the songs along on records - and this was the pre LP vinyl era so we're talking a whopping 12 inches of clumsy fragile shellac for only three minutes of music on one side. Perfect for tank crews!

Djiti Djiti too bad it's still God awful "music"

They did have the methamphetamines.

+SuperShaihulud do you have a source for this? One of my professor told me something similar, so I assume it is true, but I never read it. Which means I won't use it in my videos.

I'm very sorry but it has probably been 30 or 40 years since I read that and a thousand books and articles past. It's just one of those little factoids that stuck in my memory.

As a native speaker I'd like to ask you how you interpret von Schlieffen's words on his deathbed. Was he saying ONLY make the right wing strong and disregard the left/center? Or just a simple admonition to remember to make the right strong? I've wondered if he had some premonition that his original plan would be watered down, as actually happened.

I know nearly to nothing of Schlieffen, hence my interpretation would be pretty worthless. Also "native" is quite relative more than a century.

Ok. But your research and videos are wonderful displays of your insights, just the same. Regarding 'native speaker', I was asking if the language he used was open to interpretation, or misinterpretation. For example your opening sentence in the last post, "I know nearly to nothing" is understandable but a native English speaker would say 'I know NEXT to nothing'.. I know only what a English speaker has translated of von Schlieffen's words, reputedly "Only keep the right strong!'

And why was most of that? Because there was no oil.... Why producing more tanks, ships, planes, trucks,...? Why to produce them, and in same time at the beginning of 1942 you order demotorization of Wehrmacht, cause you dont have the fuel to run existing trucks and tanks....

@Bill Carson the question is does those supplies are sufficient enough to supply such large forces in the eastern eastern front while they're also fighting in the Africa in the same time

Somarik Green . When Napoleon attacked Russia the Russian capital was Saint Petersburg, not Moscow. So your comparison is misplaced.

Germany needed food, oil, steel and aluminium for a pro-longed war, and just sitting and doing nothing would give allies the upper hand as they outproduce Germany. And falling back and making the front shorter would have saved up German troops for other uses, but on the other hand would the enemy be able to do the same, so no real advantages would have been gained by falling back. During the first months alone of Operation Barbarossa did the German army crush over 150 Russian Divisions, and yet had intellligence observed that the Russians did possess atleast 150 more Divisions. So the decision to take Southern Russia instead of Moscow did make sense, since crushing the industrial war potential of an enemy could have brought the Russians to their knees just as in World War 1. It would also provide Germany with raw materials, industrial capacity, food, territory to launch bombers on the Ural mountains, crushing the Black Sea Fleet and thereby securing the Black Sea chrome trade with Turkey... as well as bringing in Political Presitige and threatening the middle east with German troops, air attacks and support for rebel groups.

You are completely missing my point. I am talking about operational and tactical withdrawals to bring the Soviets out of defensive positions, and make it even harder for the Soviets to maintain order. With such deceptive operations, then it would be easier for the Germans to fake future advances and making it even harder for the Russians to trust their intel. about a coming decisive battle at Kursk. In the long run this played into Soviet hand, as German operations to a degree became predictable, and was why the Soviets could keep improving, while the Germans lost more and more initiative. The lack of flexibility hurt both the Soviets and the Germans, but the Soviets could take more losses, so in the long run it was pyrrhic victories for Germany. It was a problem that territory and resources needed to be conquered, but it was also a problem that there was a lack of mind games from the German forces, when they still completely could control, when and how to fight. Of course not only the practical reasoning, but also the post-WWI mindset, nazi ideology, earlier successes in the West, doctrine, schooling etc. made this logically impossible, but there was a reason for mentioning Hannibal in this. A lot of lessons could theoretically have been learned from him and his alpine elephants (both on what to do, and not to do) that would have given the Germans a lot more advantages at all levels. There is no simple one solution, best solution, or final solution that could have solved everything, but it is often a problem with WWII history that people look for one. Germany needed to win in the East and that is really the only thing that mattered, as winning in the East would bring the most important resource for Germany to the Western Front in time for an allied invasion: loyal German manpower.

+nattygsbord Bombing the Urals? Germany had no bombers capable of reaching the Urals and that's exactly why Stalin moved his industry out of harms way.

The book "Ostront" by Charles Winchester mentions German bombing raids on Russian industries in the Ural mountains right before the Stalingrad battle took place. When that battle begun, the airforce had to change their focus for ground support for the troops for obvious reasons.

The most interesting plan the Germans had for attacking Russian industry was attacking its power plants, Operation Eisenhammer, but it was never carried out.

You beat me to it!

Divisions raise themselves.

By WW2 it was no longer Soviet Russia. It was Soviet Union.

All you need to say is ' Yelena Salient'. That should work..