The "success" of the nazis in Russia is the example of why "turning the military loose" doesn't work

[howard112211]

It often gets repeated by the right wing (and some pro-war "centrists") that the reason why Afghanistan (and Vietnam) are/were not won is because of "those pesky terms of engagement" that "hamstring our troops". The way to "win" these wars, by their reasoning, is "turning the military loose" ergo letting the military leadership alone decide what ever measures they deem appropriate and completely dropping all standards of international law.

The nazi invasion of Russia is the best example of how such an approach lead to total failure. The nazis had all those neat little tools at hand
that the right wishes american troops in Iraq and Afganistan should have. They could haul people off to camps at will or simply execute them as they saw fit. A common approach to dealing with "anti-german terrorism" i.e. guerilla attacks by irregular forces was to go to a local village and simply round up a certain number of people and execute them as punishment for the local population for allowing guerilla activity.

The result was an uprising of the population who were willing to sacrifice themselves by the millions to stop the onslaught of the invading army (and ultimately did). And until this day elections are won in former Sovjet countries by appealing to "anti-german" sentiments. Furthermore, ultimately, it was this approach which caused the rest of the world to decide that it was necessary to take measures against nazi germany.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Yes, Russian Winters, Long supply lines, and invasions by allied

forces pulling troops away from the Russian Front had nothing to do with it.

[blindpig]

2. Troops were not pulled to the West until 1944.

Even as Western forces crossed the German border 75% of German troops fought in the East.

In truth, the Germans lost the war at the gates of Moscow. Failing to take Moscow, it was only a matter of time.

[NutmegYankee]

4. Occupying Greece caused the invasion to slip one month.

Had it happened on time, The German army might have taken Moscow.

[JackRiddler]

7. Yes! Never forget my motherland's sacrifice!

And tenacious Greek and Yugoslavian resistance at horrific cost provided another front of partisan warfare comparable to what the Germans faced in the occupied parts of the Soviet Union.

The Greeks were liberated by a forced withdrawal of the Wehrmacht to the Eastern Front. The Greeks' own resistance forces took their own capital - and they were pushed out by British forces in the Christmas battle of 1944, which started the Greek Civil War. That killed even more people than the German invasion.

With Greece in the headlines now as a "backwards" country, and being pilloried by the Germans and the Anglosphere alike, i.e. by those who back then set it back by half a century: How do you like that reward?

[Whoknows44]

27. yeah but....

Keep in mind the Wehrmacht was split from Egypt to Greece to Finland to Norway to France to Morocco to modern day Georgia and Armenia. I mean, can't speak for anybody else but that's one big damn chunk of real estate to manage. Token resistance by partisans I'm sure helped bring the Nazis down, but I doubt the effect was that big.

[JackRiddler]

30. The partisan resistance was anything but token in Greece, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.

Granted that the attempt by Germany and its far weaker allies to conquer everything from Egypt to Norway and from Britain to Moscow and the Caucasus was ultimately bound to fail - point is, they had to be fought by most everyone before they were stopped. Please read up on the partisan resistance in those three countries, these were by far the most significant. The Greek partisan forces were large enough that when they fell out amongst each other, four years of vicious civil war ensued and the government was able to prevail only with massive US aid (the original Cold War battlefield). The size of the resistance in these three countries was a function of culture and history as well as geographic factors and development (imagine what Greek roads were like back then, in areas that even had them) and, as many on this thread point out, these were peoples targeted as subhumans in the Nazi ideology who saw from the atrocities committed on them from the start that they could expect no quarter, and were therefore very motivated to fight.

Of course, all three also had significant forces of collaborators, which formed in every country the German Reich occupied.

[Whoknows44]

31. You'll have to pardon me....

I'm German ethnically but my family were rabid socialists and anarchists. My great uncle was put in a camp by the fuckers for protesting their consolidation of power. So you can understand my phobia of anti-German statement. Not that I think anything the Nazis did in Europe wa sgood.

Sure partisans helped bring them down, but the Allies, the winter, the huge territory that had to be managed, and many factors contributed to the Nazis falling.

As a German, I laugh when I hear Russians acting like we're devil incarnate when their own country is rife and full of murderous hacks and communist butchers. My pt. being -- everybody's hands were dirty. Not just ours.

And many had a part in bringing the Nazis down. And when I hear Russian-Americans take pride in basically giving that maniac Stalin more power -- it's kind of a mixed bag, you know what I mean?

[blindpig]

9. Not just time, but troops

The unanticipated Mediterranean/Balkan front diverted much, including a Panzer Army. Transferring a Panzer Army from Army Group Center to Army Group South to go after the oil fields left Center unable to fulfill it's mission. Thank you, Mussolini, you stupid dick.

That said, we should always give first credit to the unbelievably heroic effort of the Soviet people.

[Selatius]

5. Even if they took Moscow, it's not clear that would put away Stalin's Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union was vast, and the Red Army was many times larger than the Wehrmacht. It could simply absorb the damage and still move forward, and the land mass was large enough to afford mistakes along the way, even colossal mistakes that sacrificed a lot of land to German occupation. Stalin could simply move operations further into Siberia as well as move his manufacturing centers beyond Germany's bombers. Hitler would have to dig ever deeper and deeper to get at Stalin and waste supplies and men doing it.

[blindpig]

11. Moscow was THE rail hub

Moscow lost, Leningrad's precarious supply line would be fatally compromised, the Soviets would be pushed back to the Urals. The psychological effect would be devastating, the Soviet Union might survive but Stalin might not. Don't think the Germans could conquer the entire Soviet Union but they could severely cripple it and dictate terms.
Damn close thing.

[cliffordu]

3. Uh, complete and utter bullshit.

The Russian winter killed the German Army.

Books are good, and they can be your friends forever.

[JackRiddler]

8. O really? So how come they were still around in 1942?

Please let us know which books you read, that attribute the German defeat (or the killing of the German Army, as you put it) solely to the "Russian winter" and not also to the resistance of the Soviet people - as soldiers and as partisans and as workers and as saboteurs and non-compliers - against the endlessly genocidal attack on them by the Wehrmacht and SS.

[cliffordu]

10. Bzzzt.....Wrong numbah. Go read this for a simplistic version of it:

http://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-fronts-and-campaigns-1940-19414.htm



'Specially the part titled "Failure of the German Plan"

Hitler fucked up, the russian winter froze everything to stone and the Russians had time to fortify their lines. But it was the winter that killed that German Army. Make no mistake.

[JackRiddler]

12. Ah, so I could have replaced my WW2 history education (and my own book)...

which involved reading several dozen books in German and English, as well as a number of archival sources...

with howstuffworks.com!

I thought above you urged the OP to read "books."

[cliffordu]

13. Why not?

Tell the class how many operable tanks the Germans had at the beginning of that winter and how many came back to life that next spring. Quote your own books if you want to.


Stalin sacrificed millions to be sure, but if Hitler hadn't pissed away the good weather the Russians would have continued folding like they had all summer.

Russian winter one, Tiger tanks zip.

And then there's that two front thingy, but we'll ignore that for now.


Didn't Some other European general have issues with the cold in Russia some time before WWII??


Hmm....

[JackRiddler]

18. It's funny, because I delved into some of this...

The shortage of military trucks after the battles at the gates of Moscow in Dec. 6-8 was also very big issue with the high command and the Nazi leadership, and it figures in the following:

Reinhold Billstein, Karola Fings, Anita Kugler and Nicholas Levis
Working for the Enemy
Ford, General Motors and Forced Labor
in Germany During the Second World War

Edited and Translated by Nicholas Levis
Published by Berghahn Books, New York 2000
Hardcover, 350 pages, 59 illustrations, select bibliography, index. ISBN 1-57181-224-5

Almost anyone in Europe or North America who has ever held a steering wheel or a television remote control can name two U.S. carmakers, market leaders on both continents, and their German subsidiaries. General Motors, the largest corporation on earth, has been the owner since 1929 of Adam Opel AG, Russelsheim, the maker of Opel cars. Ford Motor Company, founded by Henry Ford in 1903, is currently the world's third largest corporation by revenues. In 1931, Ford Motor built the Ford-Werke AG factory in Cologne. Ford Werke still thrives today as the headquarters of European Ford.

In "Working for the Enemy," historians tell the astonishing story of what happened at Opel and Ford Werke under the Third Reich, and of the aftermath to the present day. The book also serves as a general introduction to the topic of forced labor in Germany during the Second World War and covers the more recent legal controversies concerning restitutions to the victims of Nazi-era forced labor. The longest section consists of interwoven interviews with people who were kept as forced laborers at Ford Werke's company-owned labor camp in Cologne during the Second World War.

More...
http://www.summeroftruth.org/enemy/enemy.html

Hilariously enough all of those statements about GM and Ford were true when first published in 2000!

No one here is denying the significance of the Russian winter - or of the Vietnamese jungles, or of the harsh Afghan terrain, or of the comparable ease for military purposes of the Iraqi desert.

But why would you want to downplay the enormous fight put up by the Soviet forces and people, the tremendous sacrifices they made? The winter wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't fought like they did, not even after 1941. You can be certain the Germans' conduct of total war and commission of atrocity without limits helped motivate that tenacity and readiness to do all on the part of the Soviet people.

[cliffordu]

21. I wasn't trying to downplay the struggle of the Russian people -

More of them died than the rest of the allied combatants put together, IIRC....


My only point was that Hitler dithered before rolling the rest of the way into Moscow and his tanks froze in place within sight of the Kremlin.....See this:


http://www.2worldwar2.com/when-hitler-lost.htm


This is again a down and dirty overview.

Without the winter mistake, Hitler could well have ended Stalin and the Russian ability to build tanks and Kalishnikovs before the population could be fully armed.

The real heroics of the Russian people came just a little later, when the Red Army could hold the lines no more, IIRC. And those people were really something else.

Still, the winter gave the Russians the breather they needed.

[Whoknows44]

28. I downgrade Soviet 'sacrifices' because.....

while they did help defeat the Nazis they also helped enslave half of Europe. And who in their right mind thinks the average Russian benefited at all from conquering half of Europe. The Politburo and the hordes of the Red Army were the only beneficiaries of that. Oh, and American defense corporations who made bank building weapons to defend against the supposed threat.

The Red Army were incompetent boobs rife with poor discipline, bad training, little to no supplies(many Russian soldiers didn't even wear shoes before the Americans gave them shoes via Lend Lease and other such programs), bad direction, and stupid leadership.

Plus "Soviet" is a loaded term. Ukrainians and Belarussians and Moldovans and Latvians, etc. all despise the Soviet conquering and raping of their countries. There's a difference between being a Russianophile and observing facts of history.

Lots of things helped bring down the Wehrmacht.

Including incompetence on the part of Hitler, the winter, long supply lines, and like I said, managing a piece of land that stretched across north Africa all the way up thru the Balkans over to Armenia and up to St. Petersberg and up into Norway and South to France and Italy.

I'd like to see the American Army hold up to that. The Red Army folded like a lawn chair until Hitler's mistakes caught up with him.

The Nazis ironically were first greeted by many of "Soviets" as liberators. Especially Ukrainians and many others who traditionally don't like Russia or Russians. It wasn't until the specialized SS asshole came up on the rear after the Wehrmacht passed thru and started killing and slaughtering everybody and everything in sight that the Nazis lost their liberator status.

Many Russians still want 'recognition' for helping 'liberate' Europe but they forget most Europeans still don't like them. Especially Eastern Europeans who had to live for 50 years under the sole of their authoritarian jackboots.....

The myth that Russia's military single-handedly defeated the Wehrmacht is laughable. The Wehrmacht bit off too much at once. Had Hitler wanted to he could have taken Moscow and had the Japanese hit the Russians from Siberia the govt. would have collapsed over night.

Russian incompetence continues today. Look at the Kursk. There's a damn good reason their technology is by and large considered sub par to American and European and even Chinese products.

Their best exports these days are laundered Russian mafia money, oil and natural gas to Europe, resources to the Chinese, and mail order brides to Western Europe and the United States.

[Thothmes]

32. One point. The Japanese Army along the Siberian

and Mongolian border had alread had the shit kicked out of them at Kalkan Gol. They had absolutly no intention of attacking Soviet forces in the far East. Once the Japanese went to war against the Americans, the Soviets started pulling divisions out of Siberia and sending them to the fronts around Moscow.

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. You are correct here, JackRiddler

The simplistic version of the "Russian winter" is largely nonsense. In fact, the initial German actions in Ukraine sparked a widespread revolt that German officers across the board peg as one of the key factors leading to the Russian victory. Indeed, this was recognized early on (pre-Stalingrad), with attempts to mitigate the same features that led to partisan uprisings (particularly in Army Group South). As early as 1942, the majority of the German officer class - in the Wehrmacht and the SS - considered the actions taken by both the Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht itself during the initial occupation of Ukraine (pre-Moscow) to be a deciding catastrophe. O)f course, this produced a kind of vicious circle of reprisals, as the Wehrmacht was legitimately concerned about partisan disruption of the supply lines, and therefore authorized ever more atrocious reprisal actions, which of course engendered more partisan activity, in a cycle we've all come to know quite well (with the exception that German officers were somewhat obsessed with the problem of "partisan activity in the rear," and allowed the most depraved activities by the Special Action and SS units who were putatively seeking to reduce "partisan threats" to the frontline troops). If anything, the role that partisan activity played in the way many of the units justified their activities (and I'm talking specifically about the Einsatzgruppe contribution to the Holocaust) has been underestimated.

[Whoknows44]

29. The partisans offered token resistance....

The SS and even later the Wehrmacht cleaned out entire regions of men who they suspected of resisting.

But please, to say that a few ragtag Russians rebels with little to no supplies or military training and a basketcase hollowed out military plagued by Stalin's murders defeated the Wehrmacht is laughable. I don't know what books you're reading but they sound like Russian/Slavic propaganda to me.

[JackRiddler]

34. You just don't get it, do you?

Nothing is monocausal. You try to factor in everything that made a difference. Partisan sabotage, supply line disruptions and outright liberation of areas in the three countries with the strongest partisan movements were a factor in the war as it played out. You can always say, Russia and US together outproduced Germany by like 15 to 1, so the final outcome was likely. But how did it play out? What actually happened and when?

This isn't about coming up with a mathematical model where you assign percentages to each factor as though they were all cleanly separable: X percent for the winter, Y percent for Lend-Lease, Z percent for strategic bombing, n percent for delays in the launching of Barbarossa, m percent for the multitude of Nazi mistakes, p percent for insurgencies, q percent for Normandy, r percent for Russia's sacrifice, s percent for Germany having insufficient raw materials and not enough people to conquer all Europe and the Mediterranean - and then the biggest slice WINS! The biggest slice gets ALL the credit!

The sneering, dismissive way you write about the peasants who fought for their lives oozes with something unpleasant, that's for sure. And I'd like you to point out anywhere I implied the partisans defeated your mighty Wehrmacht by themselves.

[inna]

22. Your comment certainly is,

complete and utter bullshit.

[JackRiddler]

6. Good points, except for the last sentence...

Well, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war on the United States may have also been ever-so slight factors in the US entry to the war.

In reality, until the Axis powers suicidally forced the US into the war by way of attack, many in the US political class were celebrating the spectacle of the hated Bolsheviks at war with the Nazis. There's a famous quote from a Senator Truman to the effect of: let them kill each other, the more on both sides, the better for us.

Right, I found it:

On June 23, 1941, the day after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Senator Truman declared: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word."

via wikipedia to source at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,815031,00.html

This of course is the visionary who presided, sort of, over the creation of the postwar world "order," the launching of the National Security State and the beginning of the Cold War after Roosevelt's sudden death. One of recent history's greater tragedies, I believe.

[nemo137]

14. So much missing of the broader point in this thread.

Yes, trying to fight a land war in an inhospitable climate was a bad idea. Yes, having to hold down Greece and the Balkans took away resources. That was not, as far as I can tell, the point of the OP.

The point is, even with the freest possible hand, you can still loose, and loose badly. It becomes another handicap, not an advantage.

[LostInAnomie]

15. Nope

I really don't even know where to start.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. Vietnam is a better example of a "War of the Fleas" and why Afghanistan is a lost war.

In Vietnam the North Vietnamese and NLF knew they could win by simply keeping up the struggle and waiting us out. The Taliban may be fanatics, but they aren't stupid. They know that, eventually, the American people will wake up to another lost war and demand that we get out.

Now Obama is following Nixon's failed strategy of "Peace with Honor" by escalating the war and claiming victories and "The Light at the End of the Tunnel".

All to the cost of the Afghan people, the American economy, and a general worldwide revulsion of our pathetic attempt to show our "toughness".

[Imajika]

17. The German Army performed magnificently...

..it was Hitler that screwed things up.

Your entire post is just wrong. Completely wrong actually.

Had Hitler listened to his generals the Soviet Union would probably have crumbled entirely. Hitler's list of errors in ignoring his generals is epic. The special action killing groups (Einsatzgruppen) were also mostly opposed and often despised by Hitler's generals. The Wehrmacht was not much interested in killing civilians and ethic/racial cleansing and understood very well the value of keeping the local populace viewing the Germans as liberators. As bad as it got, the people in the Baltic States, Ukraine, etc still largely supported the Germans over Stalin, but the level of partisan activity would have been FAR less had Hitler waited till final victory to start his killing operations.

Hitler ordered his generals to do idiotic things like fight for cities that could just be avoided - symbolic fights, needlessly split forces, refusing to tactically retreat, etc. Hitler routinely overruled and/or ignored his best generals, read up on Stalingrad as just one example of an entire Army Group wasted due to Hitler's military incompetence.

In fact, had Hitler just "turned his military loose" in Russia, Germany would have won. Thank God Hitler was a military fool.

Hitler had charisma (populist, nationalist appeal) for a time, and he understood that most of his targets/adversaries did not have the heart for war with Germany. Some of his most risky gambits early on worked ONLY because much of the world just didn't have the will to fight Germany. Once the die was cast, and his enemies (Britain, Soviet Union, France, US, etc) were forced to fight for real, Hitler proved to a completely miserable military tactician/strategist. He was so bad in fact that as the war progressed and Germany was headed to defeat, his generals simply began ignoring his orders which allowed Germany to at least execute a very effective fighting withdrawal from their previously won territories.

[JackRiddler]

19. Hitler's no-retreat orders saved the Wehrmacht in the winter of 1941.

Something his generals acknowledged. The likely outcome of a fallback would have been a disorderly rout on the Center front.

So that much at least saved the Wehrmacht for another three years of mass murder and support in the SS genocide. (Some of what you write smacks of Wehrmacht revisionism - the SS did all the bad things! Or, as the German post-war exonerating slogan had it: "Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich") The most extreme of the strategic errors on his part that you list came after 1941. The "no retreat" tactic ultimately backfired at Stalingrad.

They went into Russia still thinking him a military wunderkind after the initial successes of the Blitzkrieg.

Anyway, your points are not really addressing the OP, which is making a comparison the right-wing's current ideas of "turning the military loose" to commit any atrocity whatsoever in the cause of victory. You seem to mean that if Hitler had let his military commanders do the commanding, the Germans might have won. But there was no moral compunction or limit to what they were allowed to do, only mistakes in strategy and tactics. In that sense, yes, they were fully "unleashed."

[Imajika]

24. No..

The OP was just wrong on nearly every level. It just isn't accurate.

The German army was not "unleashed" to do what competent German generals in a professional army would do.

The division of forces from the outset, particularly the huge number of forces diverted to Army Group South from Army Group Center and the delays this involved, probably caused the failure to seize Moscow. Just the time lost alone could very well have resulted in this, not to mention the armor diverted to the South.

The point is, Barbarossa is not an example of the military just having its way. The failure to win the war in Russia is much more likely due to political leadership making incompetent military decisions. Hitler tried to play general and failed. Left up to the German military, the Soviet Union would likely have fallen.

"Some of what you write smacks of Wehrmacht revisionism..."

None of what I wrote smacks of Wehrmacht revisionism. There is no question that the Wehrmacht supported the Einsatzgruppen, Waffen SS liquidation units and other special police detachments - especially as the war dragged on. The point is, the professional military would not have introduced those units in the first place till after the war was won. These killing units interfered with the business of winning the war against the Soviet Union, and did nothing to further that goal. The Wehrmacht wished to win and THEN leave the political murder to the fanatics. Remember, the Wehrmacht fought against even allowing the Waffen SS much of a role in Poland, France and the Soviet Union at the outset (though the Waffen SS did prove themselves so useful in the order of battle that in time the Wehrmacht began to view the Waffen SS much more favorably as far as combat goes).

"You seem to mean that if Hitler had let his military commanders do the commanding, the Germans might have won. But there was no moral compunction or limit to what they were allowed to do, only mistakes in strategy and tactics."

Yes, they probably would have won. And no, the professional army did not wish for its soldiers to spend a lot of time supporting the slaughter of Jews, suspected partisans and political enemies. In addition to just being a distraction, those actions take a severe mental toll on regular soldiers not steeped in the kind of indoctrination more common in the SS.

The German army was not unleashed in the Soviet Union, it was very frequently micromanaged by incompetent political leadership (Hitler).

As I previously pointed out, what Hitler had right was his initial assessment of his opponents will to fight Germany. Left up to the professional army, Germany would still be preparing for the war and may have never actually marched off to battle. What people don't really understand is that very often professional armies want the budget, want the guns, want the soldiers, but don't actually want to go off to war within a realistic political time frame. The German army did not believe they could march into Poland, France, etc and draw such little fight from the allies. Hitler had that right, and by getting that right he bought himself so much political capital amongst everyone from the Government to the military brass, that it was very difficult to seriously question him till the war was obviously lost.

[JackRiddler]

26. Your obviously very knowledgable post isn't addressing the point of the OP, however.

Clearly, you've studied your stuff. And it's all correct in itself. Note that your concluding sentences coincide with what I said about Hitler having won the right to be thought of as a wunderkind by his staff during the Blitzkrieg of Sep 1939-Dec 1941: "The German army did not believe they could march into Poland, France, etc and draw such little fight from the allies. Hitler had that right, and by getting that right he bought himself so much political capital amongst everyone from the Government to the military brass, that it was very difficult to seriously question him till the war was obviously lost." It also made a megalomaniac think he really was an untouchable genius. It's very bad when reality temporarily confirms a megalomania, the fall will be all the worse.

Nevertheless, this is not the point of the OP. It's not about "unleashing the military" in the sense of listening to the advice of experienced military commanders, which might be as you say to show strategic restraint. What the OP meant by that, however, was the willingness to commit any crime in the pursuit of "victory," including wholesale fully planned massacres of large civilian populations, razing of cities and so forth. No moral limits. Anything we do is right and good.

Whether or not this is militarily useful is not the point. The OP's argument is that this is the fantasy of modern-day right-wingers who think US forces have been too restrained in Iraq and Afghanistan - I have heard several people specifically say that US forces are "just pussyfooting around" with the lowlife Mooslims - whereas they should have just killed and burned everything in sight until nothing was moving, and continued to do so for a few months more to make sure. I hope you can acknowledge this difference in meaning, because there's nothing incorrect far as I can see in your review of the WW2 military history per se.

[Cid_B]

33. Your last paragraph is truth...

Well said...

Hitler's initial conquests, both political and military, were bludgeoned through with his will against opponents that turned out to be weak and ineffective.

That streak only held out so long and once competent opponents came to the scene he was outmatched, especially in military matters.

[troubledamerican]

20. No, they mean "turn the military loose" on us, the domestic citizens. To be fair.

[Pavulon]

23. Far more complex.

the germans were not prepared for supply lines, weather, or soviet tactics evolving so quickly. There were people who worked with the germans (not just the cossacks) and they were killed by the soviets if caught.

The destruction of japan is closer, you had people who were 100% willing to die for the cause, did not adhere to the rules of war and were still destroyed.

War is very complex, comparing conflicts gets very hard very fast.