Amongst the senior German generals, Guderian and Model opposed the attack, but Manstein was an enthusiastic supporter of the attack; it was not just Hitler.
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Amongst the senior German generals, Guderian and Model opposed the attack, but Manstein was an enthusiastic supporter of the attack; it was not just Hitler.
Even without the espionage... it was the obvious place with a huge buildup time, so the Russians have to be totally blind not to see it coming. The Germans just gave up the key advantage of the attacker, that they choose the field of battle and timing, while the defender have to fight it from a suboptimal deployement (because there are always alternatives for an attack).
And it was a loss at all level (excluding the bodycount probably), the Germans lost irreplacable men and material, while at the same time they failed to prevent the Soviet counteroffensive and their whole front fell in a disarray. The best usage of that force would have been an "army in being"... as long as it exist the Red Army have to be careful (which they were, they waited till the Germans made their attack).
I'm not sure, I don't think Britain would have capitulated in the same way as France.
There were plans to move the government to Canada and continue the war from there in the event of a successful German invasion. It would have been harder to maintain the blockade of Germany but it would definitely be possible considering the Royal Navy's supremacy.
As far as I know he preferred a counterattack and when he realized that for Hitlers this was not an Option he instead argued against the delays of Zitadelle because it allowed to Soviets to prepare.
AFAIK Hitler was not at all enthousiastic about Zitadelle... he just wanted an attack (which might not have been such a bad idea, given that Germany still had a mobile reserve, so achieving local superiority was still an option). But somewhere else. As far as I know this was his preferred variant
http://codenames.info/operation/panther-v/
"Blame it all on Hitler" was nothing but a shameless tactic employed by German Generals post war to hide their own and Germany's very own Industrial and manpower shortcomings.
In all post war memorials (which were and are still quite popular) all these generals will do exactly three things a) I will not talk about war crimes with which I had nothing to do anyways b) All military disaster was Hitler's fault. c) If only I had been given free hand Germany would had been victorious.
And of course on closer scrutiny all these points doesn't match the reality of the situation but given the immense popularity of these memoirs particularly in west these points are quite well ingrained in popular culture even though they are incorrect.
In all post war memorials (which were and are still quite popular) all these generals will do exactly three things a) I will not talk about war crimes with which I had nothing to do anyways b) All military disaster was Hitler's fault. c) If only I had been given free hand Germany would had been victorious.
And of course on closer scrutiny all these points doesn't match the reality of the situation but given the immense popularity of these memoirs particularly in west these points are quite well ingrained in popular culture even though they are incorrect.
Yeah and they can have a real fun time controlling India when the locals figure out that UK's capacity to fight an uprising is drastically reduced. Japan might also try and pull the same thing there as Indo-China with France. Not a good combination.
If Germany did the unthinkable and take the British Isles, then the West has lost it's last place near Europe with good enough infrastructure to take on Germany.
There are also some more windfall benefits to at least the British Isles being knocked out. Blockade runners will now have a much easier time passing through to Germany when at least the Eastern North Atlantic would be hard and extra dangerous to patrol. Much of the needed steel and fuel for other war efforts the Navy was getting can be largely redirected. I highly doubt the USSR would get the badly needed Artic Convoys given the UK I don't think would have the range to escort them with ships all the way from Iceland, at least properly. The UK's ability to make capital ships is also dropped to zero I think, I don't know of any Canadian built warships bigger than Destroyers made in WW2. Germany also doesn't station 100,000 troops in Norway after the UK launched a really successful raid there in 1940 or 41 I think it was. Then there are all the factories, coal and iron mines all over the UK. Labor would be a problem though, historically the populations of the British Isles have never been easy to tame when angered. However I imagine a lot of important engineers and scientists end up either trapped or unwilling to abandon their families. The importance of the R&D by the UK in WW2 cannot be understated.
Then you have no bombing of Europe. Those thousands of 88mm Flak guns and the hundreds of thousands of rounds they used could instead be made into AP rounds where they were badly needed on the Eastern Front. No massive disruption to infrastructure making the already insanely daunting task of supplying their troops in the USSR that much more a problem. No diversion of resources to help out the millions made homeless and without more than the clothes on their backs. The many skilled workers intentionally killed in bombing raids. Factories staying at full capacity, I mean the list is endless.
Does this guarantee the USSR doesn't win anyways in the end, well any imaginable poorly thought out strategy that makes Germany lose is possible when you have a amphetamine addict megalomaniac with absolute power in charge of Germany.
Edit* Here is a great example of how badly Hitler was running the war, all the way until Stalingrad he had a large labor force and material going to building what would have been the biggest art museum in history in what I think it was Innsbruck. Absolute madness
Manstein's initial intention was to push on immediately after his "Backhand Blow" counteroffensive at Kharkov, but this was unrealistic due to several reasons: lack of reserves, the losses incurred during his successful counterattack (Hausser's II SS Panzer Corps had lost around half its tanks and more than 11,000 men), and the fact that the spring thaw was about to start, which risked turning the attack into a gruelling struggle amongst the mud.
On 13 July, Manstein resented Hitler's order to stop his attack, he managed to convince Hitler to continue his attacks for 2 more days (an exercise in futility) and in his post-war memoirs he claimed that Kursk was a "lost victory" and tried to suggest that Hitler snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with his call for a stop in the attack.
Other German generals were opposed to the attack on principle (Guderian was against any German offensive in 1943, and Jodl wanted send forces to the Mediterranean and the West), and otehrs because they saw the Soviet defenses as too strong (like Model, who had very little faith on Zitadelle from the start, or Hoth, who was one of Manstein's commanders). But Manstein wanted to attack even when it became perfectly clear the magnitude of the Soviet defences.
Precisely! And that's the problem with the entire question set that is posed by "Were there any events in WWII that could've led to an Axis victory?" The answer is only ever going to be "no", because Germany had no strategic plan to defeat the one adversary they absolutely needed to: the British Empire. Prior to, and during, WWI the French were the primary strategic opponent of the German armed forces. Quite in spite of the many military plans that were pored over in the back-rooms of palaces and military schools, the latter did not understand until far too late in the war what was necessary to defeat this enemy, even though the general pattern of future combat (positional, industrialised warfare) had already been set if they were paying any attention to the American Civil War. For WWII, the German strategic enemy was the British and for the second time, there was a failure in the very highest German circles to understand what was required to vanquish the enemy.
Neither France nor Britain were immune to early knockouts. Their armed forces development between the wars is well-documented and it is clear that in 1939 they were preparing to fight the last war in terms of tactics and technology. Indeed, when the BEF was forced to evacuate they left behind such a massive amount of equipment and weapons that there were absolutely no guarantees that they could fight off a Germany amphibious assault without the intervention of the RN. They were short of every type of weapon, ranging from anti-tank guns to Bren guns, needed to fix and counter-attack an enemy bridgehead. Their equipment problems became easier over time of course, not least because Hitler broke off the fight.
You juxtapose Barbarossa by saying it's a rational move but also a desperate gamble. The two are not compatible. Resource-wise, there was no need whatsoever for Barbarossa. By the end of 1940, when Hitler first initiated planning for invasion of the USSR, the Italian army was crumbling against Metaxas' troops and Mussolini was about to request assistance from Germany. Once they invaded, assimilating Yugoslavia in the process, they would have uninterrupted control over most of Europe and the resources that came with it. While there is an argument to be made that the breadbasket areas of Russia and their rich oil deposits in the south would've been helpful in any future German expansion, they were not absolutely necessary.
On point 1: the UK did out-produce Germany prior to the war but in terms of land forces, this was swept away with the Anglo-French continental defeat. There was a key moment there where Germany out-gunned and out-produced the UK for a time, then fell behind again. The UK could certainly build ships faster but they'd hamstrung themselves by signing a series of naval treaties with the US, France, Japan and Italy in the interwar years that limited tonnage quite a distance below what they were capable of producing. If Hitler had placed his bet on Plan Z when he came to power in 1933 and not when it was far too late in 1939, the naval picture could well have ended up being very different.
On point 2: no it was not. They did not have a "nice enough margin" as they were out-gunned and out-numbered. The key component in defeating France was military reform, helped along by a dash of ventre faible. The Heer prioritised auftragstaktik over centralised C2, which meant they were allowed to operate faster in the most critical times of action. Even when the Allies clearly enjoyed superior firepower they could not bring it into action quickly enough before German troops and tanks penetrated, or merely bypassed, the forward lines. The Luftwaffe were also surge-deployed; they had all their available combat aircraft in the air when it mattered most, as opposed to the Allies keeping many squadrons well back from the front lines in the mistaken belief that they would be re-fighting WWI. The Germans thus went on to enjoy the air superiority needed to support ground troops.
As for removing one of the three armoured thrusts, why would that lead to butterflies? The final two versions of Case Yellow envisioned the decisive breakthrough at Sedan. Once that happened, there was no coming back because the French were not prepared to mobilise a counter-strike towards Kleist's exposed flank and neither were the BEF in any position to make a breakout south. It is the Dyle Plan which ultimately killed them off therefore I seriously doubt removing any of the Panzerkorps would've made enough of a difference.
The bare minimum they needed to build and deploy between 1933 and 1941 was four CVLs. All four would be used in CSGs to secure the North Sea for an amphibious assault between Great Yarmouth and Clacton-On-Sea. Once the British have then surrendered (or otherwise been rendered incapable of decisive action) then they would be deployed as according to need, but primarily based in and around British and continental waters.
Sorry but yes it was [impossible for them to win]. It wouldn't have taken a "slightly difference outcome" at those points but a vastly, overwhelmingly different outcome. Things like Churchill suffering a heart attack and dying much earlier, like the US never becoming involved, like Germany not attacking the USSR, like, as I have been making the case, the massive expansion of the Kriegsmarine. Historians take great pains to stay well away from fatalism and indeed to expose its flaws, but the battle lines for this war were drawn some years before it actually began, the seeds of which were sown of course with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Having failed to make the correct strategic observations and decisions, there was never going to be a way for the Axis to achieve total victory barring only the most fortuitous circumstances and opportunities appearing. Luck is no way to fight and win a war.
By all rights Germany should indeed have been dragged into another conflict of attrition. Had the BEF and French Armies made a large-scale assault as far as possible into German territory upon declaring war, there would most probably have been no WWII to speak of. But this doesn't demonstrate how or why the Axis could win, it demonstrates how much of a hair's breadth they always were from losing. That they went on to eliminate the Allied military presence in Europe speaks above all else to Allied failures, not Axis strength. Wiping the BEF out before escape at Dunkirk would've been a considerable morale blow to the British and would certainly have affected future invasion plans. But it would not have destroyed the Allied war effort, for there was still plenty of manpower invested in the RAF and RN; more than enough to continue attacking Germany at sea and from the air. It would end up merely as another testament to Allied failure but again not Axis strength.
If this outlook seems deterministic, it is because the final, fatal strategic situation was indeed determined when Germany made her choice to wage war. There was never any prospect, for instance, of America joining the Axis. And so by attempting to gain mastery of the continent and declaring war on the Anglo-French in the process, they simply added another inevitable enemy to the growing list. When they then declared war on the USSR, they made it absolutely impossible to even bring this mess to a stalemate. When Japan and Italy hitched their wagons to Germany's Mercedes, they simply fell into the same melting pot on account of their own similarly-poor choice set.
There were opportunities during the war for the Axis to alter the outcome to one a good deal less severe than what was experienced historically. That's not in doubt. What is in doubt is their abilities to alter the outcome absolutely in their favour. They overreached, massively, not only in being unprepared to fight a war in depth but also by being unprepared to follow a particular set of strategies that might lead, if not to total victory, then at the very least not to total defeat.
Very true, the only "Axis" power entering the war with a strategic plan was Japan. They even had a sound pre war strategy which ironically led them into that mess.
Im not really sure that Japan's pre-war strategy can be described as sound, they got bogged down in large scale conflict against China that demanded lots of resources but couldn't really be forced into a decisive victory. Basically excessive greed, if they had limited their actions to North-China then whole thing would have been far easier to manage.
The Japanese had even less understanding on the relations of the dog (country) and the tail (military) than the Germans. The German High Command had at least control over the theater commanders and when insubordination happened it was according to the generally agreed operational plan. The Japanese Army in China just gone plainly wild and pulled Tokyo into a conflict they did not want (at least not in a fashion it unfolded).
Every Axis party had such a plan: let it be the Tausendjähriges Reich or revival of the Roman Empire
And Japanese attempt on the USA was even more ridiculous than all Hitler's gambles...
The plan or concept itself was sound, not the execution.
The Japanese realized that they cant compete with the US industrial power and identified the US as their new main competitor.
The plan was to gain markets to sell their products and access to resources to funnel their industries.
They also wanted to inspire an asian identity for a united effort to shatter the colonial empires and a SE asian trade zone.
The irony here is that their attempt to build an economy to compete with the US dragged them into a war with the enemy they realized they cant compete with.
Yeah but they had a strategy at leastEvery Axis party had such a plan: let it be the Tausendjähriges Reich or revival of the Roman Empire
And Japanese attempt on the USA was even more ridiculous than all Hitler's gambles...
Can you imagine if Mussolini had sat the whole thing out and NATO had to deal with him like it did with Franco?
Ugh. Did the world a favor.
Ugh. Did the world a favor.
Well imagine if he just started his own wars in the balkans hoping the Brits would look the other way.
With Germany on the march and a med relatively peaceful would the Allies step into a Italian-Yugoslav war?
With Germany on the march and a med relatively peaceful would the Allies step into a Italian-Yugoslav war?
Sat out? Why think so small? Il Duce would disapprove! He still wants his seat at peace conference, so obviously the masterstroke would be joining Allies around the time they broke out from Normandy and Germans prepare to abandon Paris. Allies would probably welcome Italians drawing German divisions away from Rhine, and Churchill would love to have Italians helping to counter-weight Soviet influence in Balkans. The Alps and air superiority should keep Italians safe from total military rout, and then Germany starts collapsing on all fronts the Italians should be able to make their own advances.
While all this probably wouldn't be enough to give Mussolini a seat among Big Three, standing on level of France and China should be achievable. So we are talking here about a well earned occupation zone in former 3rd Reich, like Austria for example, and obviously an Italian permanent seat in UNSC. If we add a generous assumption that Il Duce would gracefully leave office one way or another within next 10 years, before decolonization gets too nasty, then his legacy would be safe. He would be regarded as the most clever leader of Second World War, and the greatest Italian politician since Cavour.