If you were a German general in command of the whole Eastern Front...

Hi,If you were a German general in mid 1943 in command of the whole eastern army what plans would you use to slow down the SU advance.?

 

i would retreat back and rienforce germanys border, as i would be willing to sacrifice new lands to keep my homeland

 

sue for peace and focus on the West

 

that makes since, because you have less area to conquer in the west...

 

True true but why did the Germans even want to invade SU when they could of used France for space.

 

you could have taken a majority of the west anyway such as france....in my opinion, the leadership got to hitlers head, and he thought he oculd take over russia....not going to happen, and not worth it my opinion. plenty enough in the west...

 

Not follow through with Kursk.

 

Retreat all troops to the gates of Berlin
And the SU will suffer the bloodiest defeat in the history of man.
The dream of Hitler will be fulfilled

 

Hitler wanted living space for his vision of a greater German Reich the seeds lay in Hitler’s book, Mein Kamf only a dream at this stage in Hitler's life. Latter on when Hitler came to power the dream came real, only to turn in to a nightmare. The great gambler had played out his last big gamble and lost.

As to you’re your question there only one answer, kill Hitler and end the war on all fronts.

By the way I don’t recommend reading Mein Kamf. I found it to be long winded and a very droll book, what do you expect from the ramblings of a mad man.

 

Fair point but what Germany really needed was oil from the Caucasus. Their lack of control over the sea lanes made oil their Achilles heel.

Lebensraum means something more than its literal translation in English - it's more than just 'space to live', it can also mean 'space to achieve their ambitions'.

 

Yes,

the big areas were meant to be given to the loyal Germans especially from SS as ranches where subhumans ( those that were seen as valuable servants;others would be terminated ) would do the work and aryans would live and prosper and lead.

 

They thought they needed the oil from Caucasus!

Two points to ponder:
- it would be feasible to increase synthetic oil production (assuming it could be protected from bombig);

- *if* they could get to the oilfields it would be an enormous effort and time taken to extract useful quantities (even if the wells were not sabotaged) due to lack of German oil extraction know-how (no technical base);

- assuming they managed to extract useful quantities, it would be a problem bringing the oil home all the way from the Caucasus. No pipelines extant, few or no rail-links to the Caucasus, whatever rail network there would be would already be clogged with military traffic. This might be achieved, but due to the time and effort this would require, only after a hypothetical German victory.

That makes three points, not two

As a practical example of all this, see Hitler's obsession with the Donbass mines. He went to great lengths to maintain possession and after all the effort only marginal amounts of manganese came out of it, possibly only from the extracted mineral stockpile. Why would it be better with the oil?

 

The vast amount of oil that Germany used in 41 invaded Russian and covering 1000 miles must of put a dent in their oil supplies.I cant believe that just 1 panzer did over 1 gallon of petrol per mile if you times that by the amount of tanks and miles thats alot of oil needed.It would be intersting to work that out if any one knows the precise figures then please reply.

 

Attention was turned to the West. A bad move I'd say. If Hitler had devoted all of his attention to the East perhaps he could have held off Soviet forces long enough to let the Western forces take Germany. Without a doubt, many Germans - soldiers and civilians alike - would have been spared from the Soviet invasion.

I think Hitler stayed away from this plan because to follow through with this one must accept that defeat is innevitable. I know his intentions were to defeat the West so he could focus completely on the East. Very foolish that he thought he could prevail against the West, especially after a strong foothold was established in France.

 

yes but if Hitler turned his back from Russia then its likely that the Russians would get to Berlin much faster by the time the Germans defeated the west.

 

If you want to do your own sums, a PzIV guzzled 300lt/100km.

 

If you want to do your own sums, a PzIV guzzled 300lt/100km. </font>[/QUOTE]what about the other kinds of tanks in the German army in 41.

 

If you want to do your own sums, a PzIV guzzled 300lt/100km. </font>[/QUOTE]what about the other kinds of tanks in the German army in 41. </font>[/QUOTE]The panzer IV was the workhorse and primary battle tank of the German Army in 1941.

 

Sorry, it wasn't, it was the PzIII as the Pz IV F2 (the first long gun version) only started coming on service in March'42.

 

very unlikely. Even if the russians were beaten at Berlin doesnt mean they will not win the next battle.