Clash of Steel

[Jimbuna]

Dire staraits indeed had the Brits totally capitulated at Dunkirk but there would still have been the RN and RAF to deal with.

All hypothetical I agree.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Skybird

biggest tactical mistakes he ever made

Never mind about the tactical mistakes.

Biggest mistake made was that he didn't let his Generals command the Battles as they stood.

That, was the biggest mistake he made.

Constant interfering, had he let the Stars do the job, Germany would have had much better control of the various Theaters of War.

Controlling a battle from the table and map is one thing.
Controlling the battle on the ground, at the front is another.

[STEED]

I recall from one book a rather odd statement, After the fall of North Africa and the lost of the elite 6th Army at Stalingrad, Hitler felt weak and open to being toppled. This may have been a reason for this attack but even so after the defeat Hitler would have been far more open to being toppled after Kursk. I just can not see who, as all below Hitler needed Hitler and without him they were nothing.

The delays were without question plain stupid allowing the Soviets to construct a vast defensive belts. Rushing in the Panther was to prove a bloody reckless move as they lost more Panthers to engine troubles than too the Russians. As for the Ferdinand/Elefant with no machine gun left it wide open to attack by troops.


I have read these books on Kursk..

Kursk, 1943: The Tide Turns in the East, Mark Healy (Osprey Military Campaign)

Kursk: The Air Battle, Christer Bergstrom

The Battle of Kursk, David M. Glantz and Jonathan M House

The Battle for Kursk, 1943: The Soviet General Staff Study (Soviet Russian Study of War) David M. Glantz & Harold S. Orenstein

[Oberon]

Aye, the Panther, my favourite German WWII tank, but Guderians problem child alright. The Ausf G was the best version IMHO.

[Feld Grau]

From what I understood from V. Mansteins memoirs,the German offensive in '43 (whether a fronthand or backhand attack) was purely meant to delay the Red Army. Destroying the units in the Kursk salient( estimated to be 20% of the Red Army) would be a large enough setback to allow the Panther-Wotan line to be completed. Shortening the front and using the Dniepr river as a barrier,the Germans hoped to stall the Soviets long enough for them to sue for peace or to regain the initiative.

Whether or not the last part is feasible is beyond me. But it is interesting to speculate how the Germans would've handled the war if this situation had occurred instead of the huge defeat that was Kursk.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Feld Grau

From what I understood from V. Mansteins memoirs,the German offensive in '43 (whether a fronthand or backhand attack) was purely meant to delay the Red Army.

Believable. At best delaying was achievable.

the Germans hoped to stall the Soviets long enough for them to sue for peace or to regain the initiative.

Neither is feasable or believable.

speculate how the Germans would've handled the war if this situation had occurred instead of the huge defeat that was Kursk.

Speculating on the myths created is one thing.
Researching facts and concluding the inevitable is another.

[STEED]

Backhand was part of Manstein's operation to retake Kharkov, this was to be the final part of the operation which was canceled due to Hitler wanting a Kursk battle.

One documentary as I recall said after Stalingrad Mussolini said the Russian campaign is over we should make peace. How true is that I don't know, if true then clearly Mussolini wanted Hitler to move south to bail him out yet again.

[Feuer Frei!]

Hitler surrendering to Stalin?

[Feld Grau]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Neither is feasable or believable.

But the casualties the Soviets took crossing the Dniepr were enormous,estimates lay around 1.5 million. And that was with a weakened German defense. Had the line been properly prepared and manned, that number would most certainly have been higher. Even the Soviets could not sustain such losses for a prolonged period,and that was the motive behind the construction of the Panther line,to bleed the Red Army and buy time.

[donna52522]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Possible you meant 'Last Citadel' but either way a great read

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0553583123

That's very possible. It was a library book I read a few years ago, so I don't have it here on a shelf for reference.

[Skybird]

http://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweite...er-Zeiten.html

The article says that only few events in war have been distorted by lies and myths that tremendously, like the battle at Kursk. This is because the socalled standard works on this story were written by Wetsenr historians who blindly trusted in and based on the stories told by the Russians commanders. And they not only told fairy tales of single fights that never happened, but also exaggerated German losses, it seems. The huge number of Panthers and Tigers destroyed could not be true, because such huge quantities of Tiger and Panthers did not even participate, according to latest German historians research from over just the past couple of years - they simply were not available at that part of the front in that numbers. Modern versions of the Panzer IV were mistaken by the Russians for Tigers, and since they thought they could not hurt them from a distance, they raced towards these inferior tanks in the open, got shot into pieces or ran into their own anti-tank trenches.

The Russian general said that the heart of the German tank army had been ripped out at Kursk, and this statement has influences generations of historians later - but it seems to be an exaggerated boasting, it seems, when you look at the loss numbers as reconstructed by German historians in the past years:

the Germans lost 252 tanks, the Russians lost 1956. The Lermans lost 54200 men, the Russians over 300,000. 160 lost German planes are faced by 1960 lost Russian planes.

A decisive victory looks differently, the article concludes laconically.

After the initial Russian counteroffensive stalled due to Russian incompetence on behalf of Stawka, the army was forced to go onto the offensive, having faced terribly high losses in the opening phase already - with German units sometimes reporting, despite the fights, growing numbers of vehicle ready for action: they were still able to continue repair units with the battle already waging.

If a force of dramatical numerical inferiority is able to bring such loss ratios upon its opponent, then this illustrated a quantum difference in quality and competence between both sides. Quality cannot compensate any quantitative disadvantage, yes: but at least about Kursk any historian's "truths" should be taken with healthy scepticism. It seems the real story is very much hidden, distorted and changed by modern mythology.

But as they say: history is written by the victors. And the Russian victors were gifted in narrative talents, it seems.

The article loosely bases on volume 8 of the Bundeswehr's own historic analysis of the war, volume 8 was published just in 2012:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany...cond_World_War

[Jimbuna]

Point taken Sky but the real truth is the fact Russia could absorb and replenish their losses where the Germans couldn't.

[Oberon]

I think that it's generally acknowledged that in most battles involving Germany and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union took far greater casualties than Germany...but the Soviet Union could afford to.
Quantity has a quality of its own, as the saying goes.
If there is one thing I always dread doing whenever I play a WWII strategy game as Germany, it's invading the Soviet Union, I've only ever done it successfully once...and then Hungary broke it due to bad game mechanics.
I do question, to be honest, whether the Soviets would have sued for peace even if Germany had taken Moscow.
We'll never know.