All true. While the race for Berlin gets the most discussion, fear of Stavka or commissar reprisals led many poor decisions.

The Western front was largely irrelevant by that point anyway. The true lesson the Western allies learned from Stalingrad was that the Soviets could win this war by themselves if necessary. That's what truly prompted them to speed up their plans for an invasion, so that not all of Europe falls to the commies.


The reality of the war is that based on population potential and industrial strength, on territory, natural resources and geography, Germany only had an incredibly slim window of opportunity for winning this war. The war was effectively lost as soon as the initial German assault failed to capture Moscow. The strategic failure of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor* was the final nail in the coffin. Since December 41, the Axis defeat was only a question of time. Stalingrad was the symbolic turning point of the war and the moment when the nazis lost the strategic initiative, but the war was already unwinnable, and very likely to be lost, by that point.





*dragged the U.S. into the war and failed to make American naval operations in the Pacific impossible for at least several years

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 10 2022 05:22pm

I'm not sure that's a completely fair assessment. Western air power significantly reduced the rate with which Germany could pour men and materiel into the Eastern Front, and the allied assault on Sicily coincided with Operation Zitadelle and pulled several German divisions off the line when they were needed most. I think Kursk was the turning point, and that Germany could have recovered well enough to force a negotiated end to the war.

let me add to your posts before this one that the soviets only survived with MASSIVE allied material support

the british and soviets invaded iran just to secure another big supply line

for me the turning point was hitler dividing forces during the 1942 summer offensive, both spearheads ended up just a little bit short of their objectives

not that it matters too much, things would never have lasted anyway



thats fair and it was a massive mistake to retract forces from kursk, but we are still talking about the wehrmacht going all in with no reserves

Asterisk: I do not for a moment actually think Hitler would have negotiated with the USSR like he was willing to do for the UK.

Does anyone have any up to date on the ground facts source?

Everything I was getting the latest updates from has gone silent.

Ukraine has lost complete communication with the Chernobyl plant. Russians using it to create boom boom

RIP duckduckgo.

ducking political addendums no more.

This post was edited by lodd222 on Mar 10 2022 09:07pm

The Soviet Union had a huge advantage when it came to population potential and natural resources. It took them quite a while to really ramp up their production of tanks, aircraft and other military equipment. It took them a while to get their training of new recruits up to an acceptable standard. It took their field commanders some time to get down how to operate in the field, how to use their strategic depth to their advantage and so on.

At the start of the war on the eastern front, the Germans had a huge edge in terms of equipment, tactics and experience. All of these advantages quickly faded away once the Soviets had withstood the initial onslaught. After the war, the Red Army went on to become so strong that it was a menace for the entirety of Western Europe for several decades. No way Germany (and its useless, incompetent, cowardly allies from Italy, Romania etc.) could have withstood them while also keeping large parts of Europe occupied and having to deal with the British thorn in their side.



But it's of course true that the Soviets relied heavily on Allied supplies and leases.