Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Military History not Visualized"
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@Topfblende : I still think the Nazis were doomed. This or that different decision only affected the timetable, not the eventual outcome. I think the Germans vastly underestimated the extent of Soviet forces in the Far East, as well as the ingenuity and dogged determination of the Russian people, in general. They moved entire factories from one side of the Urals to the other, and kept right on manufacturing.
Yes, MAYbe if they'd won the Battle of Britain, they'd've had enough resources to take out the Soviets, but the tide of battle had already turned long before the Normandy landings in 1944. Like Napoleon, I think they choked on the sheer expanse of territory gained, and like Napoleon, they created some of the fiercest partisans in history, from Poland to the gates of Moscow. Such ferocity hadn't been seen since Spanish guerrillas forced the French to side every baggage train with an entire army. Multiply that by a factor of 10 and you get some idea of what prosecuting that war was doomed from the first burned village.
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@xxxlonewolf49 And the U.S. military-industrial complex doesn't WANT to go that route, because it cuts into their obscene profits producing very expensive "super weapons" that can't be deployed at scale
We knew this in WW II, with the Germans emphasizing Tiger tanks, which had the best guns, but were very expensive, unreliable, hard to repair, and too big or too heavy to be worth a damn on maneuver.
The Americans could build thousands of Sherman tanks for every 10 or 100 high-dollar Tigers. The Soviet T-34's were cheap to build, very simple, superior track/propulsion design (from an American engineer who was rejected by our government), and easy to repair.
"Bells and whistles" is what the MIC wants. Auto manufacturing has gone the same direction. We've forgotten how to "Keep it simple, stupid."
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I'm no historian, but I've run simulations of Operation Barbarossa in a game called "Russian Campaign." And with the benefit of hindsight, you can see quite clearly that the war is strategically over in the Winter of 1941. When Moscow doesn't fall, it's all over for the Nazis. And even if they do take Moscow, and let's assume with light losses, there are vast reserves of men and materièl to the East. With Moscow in hand, the Nazis can then take Leningrad followed by Stalingrad or vice-versa, and then the 3rd city must fall. But how long that would last is anyone's guess. In the game, it is possible to achieve "victory conditions" by seizing Moscow and killing Stalin. But you have to attack by or before the last week of May or first week of June, and your opponent needs to blunder, badly.
But even with Moscow in hand, Germany's still more or less in Napoleon's shoes, with very long supply lines and hostile Soviet partisans threatening every inch of those supply lines, much like Napoleon in Spain. I think the Germans very much underestimated the Soviets, based on their intelligence on what the Soviets had on their Western frontier at the outbreak of war. Stalin didn't trust Hitler, but he thought he could at least temporarily focus on the Japanese threat in the Far East (and maybe pick up some territory?), which it turned out were not a very serious or long-lasting threat in that region, despite successes farther South in China and SouthEast Asia.
All that being said (maybe half of it true), Rzhev was were more real fighting took place than in the more famous battle for Stalingrad. I think another piece of this is because Army Group South was the only part of the attack that was making any progress after the Nazis were turned back at the gates of Moscow. To all but the men involved, things just appeared static, everywhere but down South.
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