Would Germany done better if

[George Parr]

I'm not sure I'd agree with that last bit. Conquering the Soviet Union while having to guard your western areas and with SU getting support from other nations was almost impossible. Beating them while those two factors don't exist, would very much have been a possibility. Especially if you keep the "lets kill everyone" approach until you have won the war. What ended any chance of victory for Germany was starting a new war before the old one was settled, and then going full retard by declaring war on the USA. In other words, you don't need a grand alliance to beat the Soviets, what you need is not to face a grand alliance yourself.

The Soviet Union was hardly unbeatable. Conquering the entire land, yes, but knocking it out wasn't out of the question. Most of the manpower and much of the industry and resources where in the European part of the Soviet Union. Holding Siberia is nice, but there simply isn't enough in those areas to change the fortune of the war, especially when German bombers get in range of the Ural industry. Taking the entire country was never the goal in the first place. What couldn't be done, was beating the Soviets while not being able to put all of your resources into the battle. Not to mention that alienating the local population by acting even worse than the Soviets wasn't the way to go.

 

[Zinegata]

The Germans could not act in any other way because Nazi policy was in fact to utterly genocide the Soviet people. That people keep thinking that the Nazis fought the Soviets as some kind of grand crusade against communism when in reality Hitler was in fact simply out to genocide what he saw were inhuman Slavs is just the result of the jilted post-war retelling that turned the Soviet Union into a villain in the West.

 

[D Inqu]

The German army also relied heavily on French trucks to supply the motorised sections of army in 1941. This was not an option without conquering Framce and looting its trucks. On the up side the Germans had a lot less motorised forces to supply in 1939 so the 'missing' trucks would not be noticed. On the downside this makes blizkreig on a lage scale more or less impossible.

Let's also not forget about the major reorganisations that followed Poland and France. Without them, the Panzer divisions are far less mobile, the tanks have less infantry support and therefore vulnerable, and finally they would be only half as many Panzer divisions due to them still having 2 panzer regiments each.

 

[krieger11b]

I find the French strategic situation at this point a bit difficult and cetainly not a no brainer.What if you bleed your army dry against the German trenches ? Better let the Germans do that.In hindsight they should have attacked of course.
Personaly I think the Maginot line removed to many options from them. Like the Schliefen plan removed to many options from Germany a few years earlier.A smilar psychological trap so to speak.

It wasn't Maginot line, but the French general unwiligness for war. The French just didn't want to go to war. Their guarantees given to Poland were designed to deter Hitler, not to fight him. When Hitler attacked nevetheless, France tried to weasel back by proposing some "last chance talks" on September 2nd. They were pretty much draggedn into war by UK.

Then people would be asking why France was so stupid as to waste it's manpower assaulting fixed defensive positions and leave themselves defenseless in the north. Why didn't they learn the lessons of WWI?

There is a saying in sports, no team looks good losing, no team looks bad winning.

I am not judging the French. Their sentiment after the bloodbath and shock of WW1 is understandable. I am just citing the reason why France was passive. Because of massive unpopularity of war in general and any dangerous action in particular.

All of you are forgetting something extremely important, for a decade before 1940 the French military had it's budget drastically cut. Soldiers on the front lines were severely short on weapons, and ammunition. The French Air Forces was quite small also. There is a reason that after September 1939 France made huge orders of guns and aircraft. Most of which could not be delivered in time to help them, but it came in right when the British needed them the most.

Much of this was the fault of earlier governments, so don't be so hard on the government and military at the time for not going in an all out assault without enough guns, planes, and ammunition.

 

[AegonVLLI]

You're all missing the point. None of the germans would be on board attacking people who had nothing to do with the Versailles treaty; especially because their "enemies" still existed. The treaty of versailles was their lifeblood. More importantly, what does germany stand to gain and how much could they even gain?

The people back then didn't want any war at all. No one really wanted that war and many were terrified by the prospect of an other war with Germany against the western Allies. This attitude only changed after the victories against Poland and France. There were almost no scenes like the ones which took place prior to WWI which weren't faked by propaganda. This was also the reason for the Nazis to fake some incidents which laid the blame on Poland. The official statement of the government in Germany was more like "We didn't want this, but we must!" what only later changed to "This war was inevitable, but they started it." In a pre-WWI atmosphere, such incidents would be useless, or directed at other countries (to keep them neutral) instead of the own population (who would have been already in favour of a war).

Edit: I don't want to sound appolegetic here. The germans were to blame for accepting such a government and even voting for it, but you still have to differ between war-lusty barbarians and a population which was deceived by the government.

 

[unmerged(31881)]

The Germans could not act in any other way because Nazi policy was in fact to utterly genocide the Soviet people. That people keep thinking that the Nazis fought the Soviets as some kind of grand crusade against communism when in reality Hitler was in fact simply out to genocide what he saw were inhuman Slavs is just the result of the jilted post-war retelling that turned the Soviet Union into a villain in the West.

Wehrmacht policy as well - killing thirty million Soviet civilians [to start] was army planning. It was also integral to the implementation of the mass murder.

Without splitting hairs as to how many and how widespread were Hitler's willing executioners outside the Nazi party, they were there in significant numbers and positions.