Sbiker
Gold Member
The idea of Stalin being totally surprised by the German attack is political motivated and only aims to shuffle a "sole blame" onto Germany. In reality, German soldiers reported they stormed the Soviet attack preparations.I have enjoyed this discussion, and I agreed with your response except for these two items.
I don´t think so. The sheer masses of red army soldiers literally bunged up the long frontiers. If Stalin was about to attack Germany, it would have been better to destroy the spearheads and then fall back to a well fortified defensive line.
I am saying that as of June 1942, Hitler still could have led a successful war in the Soviet union. The Soviets began running out of able bodied men toward 1945 and started making units composed of all women. This bleeding out could have happened earlier, with most of the Russian population under German control had Hitler focused on taking Moscow. Had that happened the Germans could have flanked Soviet lines by going to the east and then south to cut them off. This would have forced Soviet withdrawal to the south to avoid encirclement. This is what I meant when I spoke of rolling up the Russian line.
Leningrad would have fallen of its own accord as it would then have been completely out of supply. With no Moscow, Leningrad, or Stalingrad population or any of the European Russian population west of those three cities, the Russians would have started runing out of people much earlier and Germany would have won.
There was no choice. Not only have the Americans already started to shoot at German ships (like usual without declaration of war) but the declaration was necessary in order to continue to attack the ship convoys supplying Great Britain.
OF course Hitler had a choice. The USA and Germany were in a campaign of harsh harassment with each other, but our Congress wanted blood, Japanese blood, for the Pearl Harbor sneak attack. They had no desire at all to diverting our attention to a second war, forcing us to fight on two fronts simultaneously.
Hitler brought us into the war at least two years earlier than we would have, probably.
Hitler should have ignored the USSR and strengthened his hold on Western Europe
In 1941, the Red Army was the largest force on earth, with 5,7 million soldiers, 20000 armored vehicles, 17000 aircraft and 34000 field and artillery guns. The Wehrmacht lost more soldiers in the first two weeks of the war against the Soviet Union, than in all prior campaigns together.
And only 2,8 millions at Western front. Soviet Union had really long borders, including border with Japan
