True :up:

i agree. rigth when hitler ordered operation barb it was over. His assets should have been dedicated to the war in the west. More uboats and more resources westward would have definately hindered the early sucesses of the British Army. If operation barb was postponed to the late years of the war, (1943-1944) i believe the British could have been delt with. In Africa Rommel would have overthrew the British and the Atlantic would have turned out results similar to those sucesses of the germans earlier in the war.

One Problem Hitler declared war on America.

america was already involved in the battle of the atlantic before germany considered america to be involved in the war. Roosevelt was inching america closer and closer with propoganda and false records of german brutality.

That was it to a tee.

Kursk would have worked but for one thing. The russians knew it was coming because of a spy in Hitlers headquarters. Nobody knows who the spy was to this day. People say Stalingrad was the turning point of the war when in fact it was Kursk.

Apart from the Lucy spy ring, even if the Germans had won half their armour would had been destroyed they would still had to face the Soviet Reserve force which was even greater. The result all for nothing, the time of offensive operations was over for Germany, and the battle of Kursk was waste of recourses which they needed in 1944 when the Soviets launched their massive operation Bagration.

Lucy- The code name for a group under Sandor Rado which transmitted information to Russia from a base in Switzerland until the Swiss authorities broke it up in 1944.

Battle Line up Kursk July 1943

German

Men 900,000
Tanks 2,700
Guns 10,000
Aircraft 2,000

Soviet

Men 1,300,000
Tanks 3,600
Guns 20,000
Aircraft 2,400

No, it wasn't the Lucy spy ring. I'll have to pull out my books and do some research.
That what I'm saying the russians knew about the Kursk offensive thats why they had that quantity of forces there, let alone the millions of mines, tank ambushes etc.
Von Manstein figured out they were waiting (not hard to do) and tried to call the offensive off but Hitler said it was too late and it had to go.
If things had of gone according to plan the russians would have been in a pincher and destroyed in detail thus eliminating a large part of the russian army which Hitler figured they couldn't recover from.
Course all that would have happened was the war would have been slowed down but the USSR would have recovered. Bodies was the cheapest commodity USSR had. The loss or capture of equipment would have been the worst hit.

Yes. Hitler and his staff underestimated everything the USSR had. Hitler and Stalin both knew they would end up in a war at some point and Hitler struck when least expected expecting an easy victory.
Russia did badly at first because for a large part the peasants didn't give a damn about the Soviet. That changed however when Stalin changed his propaganda from protecting the soviet to protecting the motherland.
That is what made the USSR start digging in it's heel and things started to go wrong for Germany.

(emphasis mine)

Wait a second, he had to make up stories about German brutality?

Yeah...I wondered about that too.

Another factor that lulled Hitler into thinking that all he had to was " break in the door and the whole rotten structure will come falling down" was the dismal performance of the Russians against Finland during the Winter War of 1940. The Red Army was essentially a headless giant after the purges of the 1930s and commanders were chosen for their spineless obedience to Moscow, not for personal initiative. This situation was starting to be rectified in 1941 with war looming but it was still too late. The Russians were really fortunate that Zuhkov and some others who could still think on their own without a commissars gun to their head had survived.

I don't think Hitler would have gotten away with not attacking the Soviet Union, either. The propaganda of the NSDAP pretty much made an attack on the Soviet Union unavoidable. If Germany had choosed not to attack the Soviet Union, I think the NSDAP would have quickly lost popular support.

But back to the Mediterranean and the forces deployed there. Would more German forces on the eastern front in 1941 meant that Moscow had fallen? Maybe, even probably if other events had been more favorable for the Germans. (Say, the Germans didn't have to save the Italian army's asses in Greece, and smaller losses during the Battle of Britain.)

But, had they done so, it would not have meant the fall of the Soviet Union. I think history would have repeated itself, and that the invaders would meet a burned-out city, and then be forced to retreat as a consequence of the winter and constant attacks from the Russians.

Then, later in the war, the Red Army would have had more to revenge and be even more brutal in their conquest of Germany.

The spy would had sent the info to Lucy? ("Werther", I believe?).


Any way you forget the new Panther tank was rushed in to the front line more Panthers broke down due to the engine over heating than being destroyed by the Soviets and Operation Citadle for delayed by four months. Result a Soviet victory hands down plus they saw it coming what would had worked some months early would had been this -


A better idea and less wastful.

Hitler didn’t trust his generals, so he gave orders a very bad move that turned out to be. And don't forget us the British we got every part of the plan the Enigma codes were broken at Bletchley Park and forwarded on to the Russians.

Another point was the 6 lines of defence, full of mines, AT-cannons and T 34 ´s. Very deadly. Also the soviet air force was rather well equipped now and Luftwaffe couldn’t take care of the tanks and other goals like 1941. As I stated, a waste of resources on an ill conceived battle.

IIRC, Operation Barbarossa has originally meant to be launched slightly earlier, so that the predicted advance would reach Moscow before winter. Even so, and even with the 200 mile advance the Wehrmarcht made in the first week, there would never be enough forces in the world to invade and hold Russia. The fact that Stalin ordered 'Scorched Earth' only exaggerated this problem, and that Soviet armies were content to lose 10 men to kill 1 member of the opposition.
Hitler (as usual) didn't help with the matter by ignoring the advice of his commanders in the field, that IMHO was his greatest drawback, that and his conviction that 'big is beautiful' but I digress. Hitler insisted on a drive south over a central advance to Moscow, whether the capture of Moscow would have actually had any affect on the Eastern war is up to histories speculation but it certainly didn't do Napoleon any favours.
Russia is so vast and in many parts so desolate that keeping control of it and stamping out resistance would have been pretty much impossible, especially with the technology of the 1940s, in fact, I should imagine that even today an invading army wouldn't be able to hold Russia.
Sure, the Soviets had some major disadvantages, most of their armoured divisions were antiques and their military organisation mostly decapitated. Stalin's paranoia and conviction (like Hitler) that he knew better than his generals, were to dog even Zhukov.
The neutrality pact with Japan helped too, as it freed up the Siberian troopers (gotta love those guys on skis, remind me of something out of a Bond film).
So, to return to the original topic of this thread, I think that had the British have been driven out of the Med, then Rommel may well have had a greater chance to push the British out of Africa, but the sheer strategic position of Gibralter meant that the British had a chokepoint to easily control the Med and so getting any German forces in there was near on impossible.
Chances are though, even if they had have made significant advances in Africa, Hitler would have screwed it up some how. He may have been good at politics and rising to power but his sense of strategy was crap.