Was invading the Soviet Union a stupid idea? - Barbarossa without Hindsight

Rico

Rico

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The German Invasion of the Soviet Union 1941 is often called "just stupid" by various people, although the operation clearly failed, the statement woefully ignores the knowledge of the time, since even the Allies assumed a German victory, which is not so "stupid" considering both the Soviet & German track record in Summer 1941.

 
In retrospect, it was stupid. But it is not unreasonable that if the Wehrmacht would have taken Moscow, the Soviets might have fallen. Moscow was the head of the regime, you take Moscow, you force the Soviet bureaucracy to flee, the USSR would have been so severely disrupted I suspect it would have been very hard for them to continue. However, the way the Nazi's treated the population they would have had a serious guerilla war on their hands.
 
HOA_KSOP said:
In retrospect, it was stupid. But it is not unreasonable that if the Wehrmacht would have taken Moscow, the Soviets might have fallen. Moscow was the head of the regime, you take Moscow, you force the Soviet bureaucracy to flee, the USSR would have been so severely disrupted I suspect it would have been very hard for them to continue. However, the way the Nazi's treated the population they would have had a serious guerilla war on their hands.
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I think you touch upon an interesting point there; the Germans did not leave much choice to the common Russian man/woman/child but to fight. They sent a clear message that they were only conquering the land, not the people. The people were treated with utmost disrespect, and unlike the West which was already brutal in it's own way, in the east people's lives were considered less then animals even... With such an attitude you give no option but fighting, making it very hard for a nation to surrender.

To a certain degree the same was true the other way around towards the end of the war. Russians were far from kind (which to a certain degree was understandable after 4 years of horrors) to the German population and soldiers, giving them in turn very little choice but to fight until the bitter end.
 
HOA_KSOP said:
However, the way the Nazi's treated the population they would have had a serious guerilla war on their hands.
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That wouldn't have been a problem for the Nazis, as their goal was to eradicate the native population anyway. Guerilla warfare is only really a problem for non-genocidal nations. It's no good for a partisan or an insurgent to blend in with regular villagers if those villagers are the main target.

As I see it, the problem with Barbarossa is not that it was stupid, but that it was morally abhorrent.
 
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Well, from a geopolitical standpoint, Germany was going to be fighting the USSR sooner or later. It was no secret that the USSR wanted to take over the West. The only reason that the Red Army didn't sweep into the West in 1920 was that the Poles defeated them. Poland, BTW, is the only country to defeat the Red Army.
 
Hitler may have reasoned that we have to fight Russia sooner or later, and there's no better time than now. We are at nearly peak military strength and 2 years of experience have nearly perfected our warfighting style, Britain can't hurt us for the foreseeable future, America is not in the war yet, and Russia's military is a complete mess. We don't have the manpower or industry for a drawn-out multi year war, maybe we can knock out Russia and remove the threat from our east. The longer we wait the worse the balance of factors becomes against us. I think that's an understandable chain of thinking. But it also rested on an enormous amount of hubris and believing your own bullshit as the kids say. It ignored geographic reality and Russian manpower and industrial potential. It ignored the fact that Stalin was as hostile or more hostile towards Britain than Hitler was and Stalin would have been more than happy to keep providing raw materials to Germany indefinitely to support the war effort against Britain. It risked literally everything on being able to crush Russia in 3 months like the Germans had crushed Poland and France, despite the vast distances involved. And for what? To satisfy Hitler's deranged thinking about an ultimate showdown with communism and his equally deranged thinking about "living space." Germany could have co-existed with the Soviet Union for decades without risking everything on attacking it. Add to that his inability to refrain from meddling in military affairs and all the fatal mistakes he imposed on Germany by overruling his professional general staff. So, yes --- stupid decision.
 
There's actually a very interesting (secret) recording of Hitler discussing his decision and thoughts on Russia's invasion with Field Marshal Mannerheim (Finnish supreme commander). While the video below focuses on his "real voice", I find the content to be far more interesting. Dare I say you detect a form of regret of the decision already in 1942? A "had I known then what I know now I would have either invaded them sooner or not at all" undertone in his voice?

 
I have a book that I bought 20 years ago called "Hitler's Panzers East" in which the author argues that not only could Germany have defeated the USSR, they actually HAD defeated the USSR by early September 1941, and then Hitler threw it away by diverting the panzer forces south to capture Kiev. His argument is that they could have destroyed the remaining Russian armies in the north and captured Moscow and the strategic space (as he calls it) around and east of Moscow.
 
HOA_KSOP said:
In retrospect, it was stupid. But it is not unreasonable that if the Wehrmacht would have taken Moscow, the Soviets might have fallen. Moscow was the head of the regime, you take Moscow, you force the Soviet bureaucracy to flee, the USSR would have been so severely disrupted I suspect it would have been very hard for them to continue. However, the way the Nazi's treated the population they would have had a serious guerilla war on their hands.
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Napoleon took Moscow. Didn't do him any good.
 
jobu88 said:
I have a book that I bought 20 years ago called "Hitler's Panzers East" in which the author argues that not only could Germany have defeated the USSR, they actually HAD defeated the USSR by early September 1941, and then Hitler threw it away by diverting the panzer forces south to capture Kiev. His argument is that they could have destroyed the remaining Russian armies in the north and captured Moscow and the strategic space (as he calls it) around and east of Moscow.
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I have that book. I enjoyed it.

Yes, good point about Napolean.
 
HOA_KSOP said:
Yes, good point about Napolean.
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Napoleon didn't have a railway reaching well inside Poland. Little thing which increased logistics the railway gauge is different in Russia. He should have concentrated right away to the south. Reason Ukraine was more on the West European side till the present day. Hitler blew it because of race policies. Second World War was an oil war. He needed the Caucasus and the Middle East. Once Stalingrad and El Alamein were lost it was just a matter of time. From hindsight, it is easy to become a millionaire my father used to say.
 
ChuckDyke said:
Napoleon didn't have a railway reaching well inside Poland. Little thing which increased logistics the railway gauge is different in Russia. He should have concentrated right away to the south. Reason Ukraine was more on the West European side till the present day. Hitler blew it because of race policies. Second World War was an oil war. He needed the Caucasus and the Middle East. Once Stalingrad and El Alamein were lost it was just a matter of time. From hindsight, it is easy to become a millionaire my father used to say.
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Hmmm, then makes you wonder why Hitler didn't give Rommel a Panzer Armee instead of a Panzer Korp and have him drive into Irag and then into the Caucasus from the south. If Rommel almost takes N. Africa and the Suez with a corps, he surely would have taken it with an army.
 
HOA_KSOP said:
Hmmm, then makes you wonder why Hitler didn't give Rommel a Panzer Armee instead of a Panzer Korp and have him drive into Irag and then into the Caucasus from the south. If Rommel almost takes N. Africa and the Suez with a corps, he surely would have taken it with an army.
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Axis would've needed to take Malta first then.
 
Rico said:
Axis would've needed to take Malta first then.
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I'm not so sure about that. Rommel cuts the Suez and takes Alexandria, the Royal Navy is kicked out of the eastern Med. That only leaves one way to Malta and it makes it much easier for the Italian air force, navy, and the Luftwaffe to blockade the island and starve it into submission. Or you just airdrop onto Malta instead of Crete, since your plan is to own the Eastern Med, to begin with.
 
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