Lately I have been reading alot about the Eastern Front and I would like to hear the opinions of others on this subject. According to what I have read there are some key reasons for the defeat of the German army. I am going to list just a few. Feel free to add more and give your own opinions.

1 The quality of the road system.
2 Lack of preperation for winter.
3 Foolish use of units. (such as Stalingrad, kursk)
4 Two fronts.

I would love any information that anyone could provide and also your opinions.

1. Total underestimation of the enemy
2. Total lack of preparation for a war lasting longer than 3-4 months
3. T-34
4. The Soviet soldier "Ivan" and his underestimation
5. Army Group South in trouble from the start leading to Guderian having to turn south to create the Kiev pocket

Just to name a couple...

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Got it in a nutshell Kai !!!.
But IMO T 34 was not that significant, while not going so far in "T34 bashing" as some other people here, I believe the KVs had probably more impact than the T 34 in the critical first months.
I would add the racist policies agaist the local population instead, had the Germans set themseveves up as credible "liberators" in the Baltic states and Ukrainia ........

number 2- thee germans new abuot thee winter comming up,it was not really lack of preperation for winter,it was that thee russian winter was very bad it had been in years!

i would bet,if thee germans knew of this,they wuold have avoided thee russians alltogether.
thee germans had no idea it was giong too be thate bad.

Those German officers/Generals who had fought in the eastern front 1914-1918 knew all about the winter etc there. But Hitler was sure the war would be long over before the autumn would begin. He would not listen to v Rundstedt/Guderian etc who told it was madness to attack the USSR.

That is something that has been speculated that if Hitler had served in the east would he ever have thought of getting the lebensraum from there....

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Here's mine:

1. Terrible military intelligence which led a gross underestimation of the Russian Army's capabilities

2. Bad roads, great expanses

3.Germany's economic weaknesses (lack of motor vehicles, general motorization, and inadequate logistics)

4.Different railroad tracks used by the Russians

5. Multi-front war that dissipated the German military's strength.

6. Wasteful, expensive pre-Barbarossa adventures like the Battle of Britain, Crete, etc.which decreased German military options (loss of many planes/pilots and an entire parachute division, etc.)

7. Small size of the German military compared to the Soviet one

8. German equipment not having a big enough edge over the Soviet ones

9. Fighting a war of destruction when it wasn't necessary (particularly with the Ukrainians) and generally wasted German military assets

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So do most of you believe that the front was doomed from the beginning or that a battle decided its fate later on? Like say Stalingrad etc?
And I can see how Germanys economy may have effected it in the early years but in the last year of the war the military industry was pumping out more equiptment than any previous year, despite the allied air campaign. I would have to say that a lack of gas would definetly be a factor.
And would you say it was an underestimation of the Russian's tactics or of their numbers? Or both?

War is more often a contest of will than of physical force, the best way to beat an enemy is to force a collapse of national or leadership morale.
Total war removes that option so all you have left is chasing your enemies down to the last man, the war in the east required a complete soviet collapse for Germany to win and Germany had zero chance of achieving that especially with a limited campaign like the original Barbarossa plan. Stalin was never going to surrender, he knew all too well what awaited him had he done so, so Germany needed to force a collapse of the soviet regime but made no effort to that end and with it's brutal occupation policies pushed the USSR's population into backing Stalin instead. The WW1 Germans used Lenin as a weapon to knock Russia out of the war, the WW2 ones were nowhere as farsighted. Hitler underestimated the soviet military but most of all he underestimated the capability of the communist regime to "hold" in the face of miliary reverses and so embarked in a war of attrition he could not win against practically the whole of the rest of the world.

I have never thought of it that way. That is a very good point. Thank you. Would you then say that had the Germans started a "Russian" army group that this would have held sway with the local populations?

One word 'Logistics'

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If you look at the number of "Hiwis" (soviet citizens working with the German army) at Stalingrad or at Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army that happened despite the occupation forces's brutality it's possible a better treatement of the local population might have prevented Stalin from selling the "great patriotic war" concept to his citizens. And without that unifiing idea the red army would be a lot less effective than it historically was.
But it's a very far fetched scenario and would require a very different German political leadership, nazi ideology contained the seeds of it's own destruction, it inexorably pushed the Germans to overestimate themselves and uderestimate their enemies until they ended up at war with practically every other existing nation with predictable results.

Having horse power is not what I call a smart move nor having standardize trucks instead a mixed batch from there allies and those they conquered must have been a bloody nightmare for the mechanics for spare parts.

Going in to the very country that was giving aid to Germany was not very smart move...to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

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To go along with the logistics part, would you say that the allied air campaign had a poor, moderate or major influence on the outcome?

probably a moderate influence.

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Not so much a battle but Hitler's lack of understanding of the Russians. The politics imposed onto the population turned them against the Germans. The whole idea of the untermensch and publicly announcing that the Russians would be serfs to the Germans just forced the Russian people to resist.

As previously stated, the nation's will played a huge part. Finally, one cannot fight the Russians with a second front behind you.

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General Gotthard Heinrici, commander of the German Fourth Army's XXXXII Arrmy Corps at Moscow and by wars end the Wehrmacht's premier defensive specialist, congently assessed the reason for the German failure even before the Red Army's Moscow counteroffensive began, stating:

The goal set for the Eastern Campaing was not achieved. The enemy's armed forces were defeated, but the Russian state structure did not collapse. The threat of a two front war stood at the door. The attack on Russia did not prevent this from happening; on the contrary, it conjured up its possibility.

The basis for this failure rested on the following:

1. Politically, Hitler underestimated the inner stability or the Bolshevik system. It proved to be tenacious and consolidated. The spirit within the Russians to defend 'Mother Russia' was stronger than their rejection of the Communist dictatorship.

2. Economically, Russia was also better established than Hitler was willing to admit.

3. Militarily, the Russian armed forces were surprisingly capable. They often defended with a stubborn tenacity and they had an astounding ability to improvise, even in the technical arena. These qualities consistently made up for the inability of the senior Russian leadership.

4. Most decisive was the operational decision of August 1941, which shifted the main emphasis of the operation from Army Groupe Centre to Army Group South and in part, to the north. This forfeited the best chance to conduct a decisive battle with the enemy during the direct attack on Moscow. I stress 'best chance ,' because there has been no evidence to the contrary.

5. The motorized problem must also be considered. The German Army did not have the necessary motorized units and air transport formations or the required fuel reserves for a campaign in an area with the depth of Russia.

6. The width and depth of Russia had a decisive significance.

7. The Russian climate and terrain also complicated matters. The effect of the mud period was surprising in its significance. The coming of the Russian winter did not correspond with German expectations. And the difficulty of the terrain, with its wide marshes and impasssible regions, the great primeval-like forests complexes, the few good roads and the wide, unregulated river courses may not have stopped the offensive, but they did cause considerable delays.



Notice how the weather and logistics are at the bottom of his reasons....

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

Double post

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

How do you believe a mobile defense would have done instead of the static defense? As was shown the Russians where susceptible to mobile counterattacks even with a vast superiority of men and tanks. Such as Mansteins counterattack against the Russain assault at the beginning of 1943. The division ratio was, I believe something like 8:1. Yet the Germans destroyed almost 700 tanks and captured 1,000 guns. Is it possible had they been allowed to give ground that the German forces could have withdrawn and counterattack to bleed the Russian forces white? Would this have changed the outcome or just delayed it?

1.Extreme overconfidence on the part of Hitler.
2.Underestimation of the Red Army's resolve.
3.Cruel treatment of the occupied populations.
4.Hitlers unwillingness to give up territory, even when it was clear it was impossible to hold.

In my opinion, the greatest mistake made by the Germans was believeing that they could win the war in under a year. Even if everything went well, that was just impossible.

The Russians could pump out tanks faster than Germany could carry out quality inspection on there’s.

Russia industry was greater than Germany's and not being disrupted by bombing helps.

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You are over esitimating the German capability and under estimating the Russian capability.

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

I have heard that the kill ratio between German and Russian tanks was at least 5:1 in favor of the Germans. True or a dream? In one instance, 23 German tanks attacked around 100 Russian tanks, the Germans had 63 confirmed kills with a loss of none. Is this possible or has it been blown out of proportion? And also is it true that German production was at its highest in the last years of the war?
I'm not meaning to give more credit to one side. Its just I was part of another forum with a supreme dislike for anyone who picked a German view point so it was hard to get anything out of it besides, Russia rules.

There is a lot of mis infomation out there from all sides, Russian, German, Allied etc. The point of this forum is to try to correct these myths and im sure that if you stick around here a for a bit, you will come to appreciate the tightly nit group of members we got here (with the exception of those damn Texans! ) who are commited to correcting these miss interpretations.....

Not sure what the tank kill ratio between the Germans and Russians really was. I would imagine that in the beginning of the war margine was far greater then it was towards the as the tides had turned and it was now the Germans who virtually suffered from all of the same shortages and set backs which the Red Army had in the beginning. I do know that the ratio of soldiers killed was more on the lines of 2:1 and not 10:1 which other forums claim.

Hope this helps and welcome aboard.

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

Thanks. Can anyone suggest a couple book or website about the Eastern Front?

What is it your after?

A good start to finish or certain battles?

A good general one from start to finish....

Barbarossa
The Russian-German Conflict 1941-45
by Alan Clark

I belive David Glantz one When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler is simular and all his books are a good read.

The Battle of Kursk 1943 is one of his ones on a single battle.

Antony Beevor's
Stalingrad & Berlin: The Downfall 1945 are worth buying.

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