Operation Bruhbarossa
Comment on A kick right in the selbstbild
Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 4 months agoArguably their biggest mistake was trying to fight both world superpowers at once, in the USSR and Great Britain backed by the US.
I can't imagine how they thought that would go well, but thank fuck they did, cause I wouldn't want to see the world they envisioned.
Agent641@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
In their defense, they kicked the everliving shit out of one world power (France) already
redisdead@lemmy.world 4 months ago
France at that point was not a military superpower. Or even a superpower at all. When WW2 started, France was barely out of ww1 shellshock.
I don’t think people realize how fucking BRUTAL ww1 was on France.
There are still areas today (not a lot thankfully) that are considered inhabitable today because of the vast amount of bodies (animal and human), unexploded ordinance, chemical damage… en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge
Farmers still find unexploded ww1 ordinance when plowing their fields. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest
Entire forests and villages razed. And I mean, razed down to the ground. Nothing left standing. Not a tree, not a brick.
When I was a kid growing up in my village, the one advice our parents gave us almost every day was ‘if you find something shiny, don’t touch it.’
Last year I was having a walk in the forest after a good rain and found, half buried in the mud, a German grenade, right in the middle of a path I used to ride my bike almost every day. A friend lost a hand when he found one when we were kids.
BTW, this is what Gazan kids are going to deal with, Ukrainian kids too. Anyone who supports Israel, anyone who supports Russia, supports the future suffering of the kids.
someguy3@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You can get into pedantics of what constitutes a “super” power, a word thrown around without much care since the cold war. But suffice to say France was quite powerful at the start of WW2. Its defeat was not a side note.
Eheran@lemmy.world 4 months ago
They almost did win against the USSR. A harsh winter perhaps was the only thing that stopped them. If that happened, those millions (most were there) would have been freed up to fight in the West.
sparkle@lemm.ee 4 months ago
What makes you say they almost won? They certainly did not. They could’ve taken Moscow and it would’ve made no difference. The USSR had way too many people, people who really didn’t want to be taken over by Nazis, and way too many resources from the US/UK for Germany to overpower them. And Germany was doing extremely poorly on resources (especially oil and steel) even by 1940– the entire reason they invaded the USSR to begin with was because they didn’t have enough oil to meet their demands and they would collapse without seizing the USSR’s oil reserves. The British cutting them off from North African oil made the issue signicantly more urgent.
Germany practically signed their own death warrant the moment they invaded France. They just didn’t have the resources or arguable even the manpower to sustain that kind of war, even when controlling most of Europe outside of the USSR and a large portion of Africa.
I’ll give some numbers to help visualize: During WW2, Germany’s peak oil production was 71,000 barrels per day (1944), mostly synthetic oil from coal. For comparison, the United States’ peak oil production was 1,875,000 barrels per day (1944) and the USSR’s was 700,000 barrels per day (1941). Germany’s peak steel production was 29.3 million tons (1944); the United States’ was 89.6 million tons (1944). The USSR produced less, about 8.5 million tons at peak (1943), but they also received about 400,000 jeeps, 7,000 tanks, 5,000 other armored vehicles, 12,000 aircraft, and a bunch of other supplies totaling up to about USD$150 billion injusted for inflation, so steel wasn’t really much of an issue. Comparing populations, Germany’s was 69 million. The US’ was 132 million and the USSR’s was 190 million.
Considering that, it may become easier to see why Germany had absolutely no chance in the long-run, even in a hypothetical (impossible) scenario where they only fought either the USSR or the US.
Eheran@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Without American grain shipments, the loss of Ukraine (who wanted to be freed from the soviets, those people were happy they came), the Soviet breadbasket, would have severely weakened the USSR’s war capabilities. Likewise, the Western Allies primarily provided the Red Army’s motor transport and lots of other things. These supports allowed the Soviet Union to deploy more military-age men in combat roles instead of agricultural or industrial work. Imagine if the West were not willing to do that. This or other differences could have changed the outcome of the war. Things happened as they did, but the USSR was not unbreakable.
It was even more crazy in the Pacific, where single engagements could have turned the tides. Where it even comes down to single spotting of fleets and assessing which fleet that is based on pure luck essentially. I would say Midway was the last chance they had.
Pechente@feddit.org 4 months ago
If you’re brainwashed by your own propaganda, this probably feels like a good idea
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I don’t think they wanted to do that. I believe the plan was to pressure the UK to make deal and once that was done they’d be free to attack USSR
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
My understanding is that Hitler always imagined that the UK would be an ally of his: Germany would be the superpower on the European continent, the UK would have its overseas empire.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Should’ve known the Brits were way too proud for that hah
GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Hitler was actually an admirer of the British and initially sought an alliance or other non-hostile arrangement. Only when that didn’t work he went to war with them
someguy3@lemmy.world 4 months ago
He considered Britain to have effectively been defeated, in all except a deal having actually been reached. He thought he would have a quick victory over the USSR (always the flaw), then Britain would finally give up and sign a peace treaty.