Quote:
Originally Posted by Raptor1
The Balkans were never a fatal delay to Barbarossa, it could only have been launched a couple of weeks before it actually was because of the weather, as the late Russian mud season only ended in early June.
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Statements from Field Marshal Keitel:
Link:
http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Keitel/Keitel.zip, page 153
Quote:
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Of course one can only muse on what might have been had things only worked out differently. Even if it was too much to ask of our good fortune that Italy should have stayed out of the war altogether as a benevolent neutral, just consider the difference if Hitler had been able to prevent
their irresponsible attack on Greece. What would we not have saved by way of aid to Italy for her senseless Balkan war? In all probability there would not have been any uprising in Yugoslavia in an attempt to force her entry into the war on the side of the enemies of the Axis, just to oblige Britain and the Soviet Union. How differently things would then have looked in Russia in 1941. We would have been in a far stronger position, and above all we should not have lost those two months. Just imagine: we would not have frozen to a standstill in the snow and ice, with temperatures of minus forty-five degrees just twenty miles outside
Moscow, a city hopelessly encircled from the north, west and south, at the end of that November. We should have had two clear months before that infernal cold weather closed in - and there was nothing like it in the winters that followed anyway!
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And also (from the Nuremberg Trial, Ithink): "The unbelievable strong resistance of the Greeks delayed by two or more vital months the German attack against Russia; if we did not have this long delay, the outcome of the war would have been different in the eastern front and in the war in general, and others would have been accused and would be occupying this seat as defendants today".
Anyway, even If the rivers were swolen they wouldn't just put one of the largst invading forces ever "on hold" just outside the Soviet borders. Call it "mobilization inertia" (
) if you want, but they would have pressed on.
I still maintain, though that even if they succeeded in fullfilling Barbarossa's objectives it would not be enough in the end.
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