Barbarossa is well planned & executed, much like the sickle cut was.

There is no proof that with more gas Patton could have crossed the Rhine, we have as proof only the claim of Patton .

More gas was not needed : what was needed was the collaps of the Germans,and this did not happen:the Germans were able to send reinforcements and there was nothing the Allies could do about it (the situation in the SU was comparable) and when Patton got more oil, he still was not able to cross the Rhine . Thus the lack of gas was not the reason .
If the Germans collapsed there would be no need for more gas : the Rhine could be crossed by one division (here also the situation in the SU was comparable ) .

Both Guderian and Patton blamed supply problems for their failure to cross the Rhine /to go to the AA line;front generals always blame supply problems and are unwilling to admit that it was the enemy that stopped them .

 

A day late and a dollar short... I haven't read through the entire thread so if this has been covered please forgive me. It has always seemed to me that the German problem in the east was more ideological than strategic. Considering the horror that Stalin had inflicted on the people in the USSR during the 1930s, (in particular the Ukrainians), they could have presented themselves as an army of liberation and won them over. They would have gained strength as they gained territory and people.

If you doubt that, read what has come out since the USSR has fallen apart. In the past, you could only get a glimpse of that through Solzhenitzyn or Pasternak and those writers had to tread a fine line fearing retaliation against their families - you had to read between the lines. Now though, the full story is out in the open. Entire minority groups (Kazaks, Old Believer Christians) were deported, liquidated. The starvation inflicted on Ukraine was a near genocide, all food and property stripped away, killing millions. Belarus wasn't treated much better. Even the Russian people themselves lived in hunger and in a constant state of dread. The Soviet Union presented a propaganda picture of a growing union of ardent communists to the world, a successful state, expanding industry and agriculture, etc. Foreign journalists were only shown very staged and controlled "Potemkin Villages" which were a complete charade. The reality was different. Millions had starved to death and many millions more lived on the edge of starvation, constantly in fear of being taken away for any perceived lack of ardor for the party.

I was in the USSR in 1990 and 1991, training with the KGB Naval Frontier Guards (their Coast Guard) and even then when conditions were much, much better, people were contemptuous of the party, of the entire system. The only difference was that with Glasnost they could say it openly without fear, and they did, constantly. One night we were hosted at a restaurant by a bunch of university students and young sailors from the vessel we were training with. An old man, a professor of archeology sitting at our table was very quiet all night, only stepping in to clarify a subtlety once in awhile when the young English speaker who was acting as translator mashed up a point. Other than that, he was just very quiet while the younger people railed on and on, mostly about the lack of money, the lack of material goods.

One of our guys said something along the lines of life under communism surely must be better than what preceded it; life under the Czar. He was just trying to be polite and calm the waters a bit, but the older man suddenly became animated and in excellent English said some things I'll never forget. He told us that his work had taken him all over the USSR, particularly in Siberia and the Far East, and being one of the few people able to travel he had seen things which even then (during Glasnost) were rarely spoken of. In particular, he told us of a village of "Old Believers" that he known for several summers near Lake Baikal while doing a big dig there. This, I think, took place in the 1950s. They had been deported to this place from the west long before, and had a made a tidy farm village. This sect are like the Amish, living a 19th century lifestyle. Odd people, but communal by nature and philosophy so you'd think the Soviets would overlook the strong religious nature of their life since they were in effect, communists, long before Lenin came along. He grew to like them and they'd trade for fresh vegetables and so on. Sometimes the villagers would come over and help when the archeologists needed labor of various kinds. The professor was telling this story quietly, with little side details making it clear that at first he was a bit arrogant with them, but then growing to like and respect them very much. I don't think he was a strong communist even then, but he was a communist and it was a step for him to accept these people who lived outside the system. Through all of this, the translator was telling the professor's English story back to the Russians at the table in their language. Nobody said a word, it was obvious that he was a very respected man. Were we told later that he had headed a department at a large university in Moscow (or Leningrad?), and was now at this small shit university there in Petropavlosk, on the Kamchatka Peninsula where this took place. It was explained that he had become "politically unreliable" and banished to the end of the world, which in the USSR is Petropavlosk.

To cut to the chase, there was an interruption of the dig for several years and when he returned to Baikal the Old Believer village was gone. Every house had been razed, every fence, barn, sign of the village was gone and planted over with young trees. When he inquired in the larger town nearby to ask where his friends had gone, he was told not to ask that question again. No such village had ever existed. Shut your mouth or you will disappear also. He told us this with tears in his eyes. I suspect that was when he started to become politically unreliable. And remember, this had to have happened after Stalin because this gentleman was probably 65(ish), so this wouldn't have been in the purges of the 1930s but perhaps in the 1950s. He went on to speak of the Stalin years of his childhood and how after Stalin people had actually accepted the system, including himself. The horror (they thought) was now over. He said that Stalin had touched every single person in the USSR. Everybody. Every single person had lost family members, friends, neighbors. Entire families disappeared. They always came quietly in the night and took people away. You never knew why. Somebody had made an accusation, or perhaps they had just made a jest about some decree or a small complaint about the workmanship of some tool or machine. Anything could cause you to disappear and those people rarely came back. This event with the Old Believers showed him that the horror wasn't over. It had just slowed and become less obvious. The system was evil.

Sorry for the long side trip, but Hitler was a fool not to use the hatred of Stalin to his advantage. His own ideology made him treat the Slavs worse than Stalin. Even with that ideology, he could have simply manipulated them with promises and a soft touch until the war was finished; installed puppet governments with at least the illusion of some independence. The population as a whole would have been easily swayed to the German side. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have still become vassal states and drained of their resources as he intended, but he could have done so with a velvet glove instead of an iron fist. He could have used the manpower for his own armies and industry, just as he did with Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria. Burned villages and farms can't produce food. Burned industries can't produce material goods. Mass murder, wholesale looting and genocide don't produce allies.

That is why Barbarossa failed. Every advance made the German army weaker, when it could have incorporated the population and their production and made him stronger - until he didn't need them anymore.

 

No : hostility to the Soviet regime does no equal to fighting with the Germans against the Soviet regime . The populations of Western Europe were hostile to the German occupiers, but most of them did not resist to the German occupiers .

 

You're wrong. Lots of people in western Europe, because of the lighter touch, threw in with the Germans. That's something that Europeans don't like to talk about, but their industries supplied the German war machine and profited, while many young men joined the Wehrmacht. In fact, about two million non-Germans joined the Wehrmacht or Waffen SS. This would have been magnified in Eastern Europe because nearly everybody hated Stalin and the communist regime.

 

@KB
Let me recall you that historic facts and propaganda are two different subjects. Just look at the heroic resistance of Soviet peoples against the Nazi invasion and you may find out quite clearly which of two "regimes" was favorable. As the matter of fact, western view on eastern front is pure propaganda needed to drag the Cold War indefinetly. Western account of Operation Barbarossa isn't exception - it is a jewel of the post-war anti-Russian propaganda. To understand history of the eastern front you should first forget what you already 'know'. Get rid of propaganda and investigate facts if you wish to know what really happened at the east between 1941 and 1945. Otherwise, trust the propaganda and reiterate it to harden your view blinded by propagnda.

 

No : the number of people in western Europe who joined the WM was less than 100000.Most of the non Germans in the WM were east Europeans .Besides 2 million is much to high .

There was some opposition in the SU to the regime (but less than has been assumed:most of the inhabitants of the Gulag were common criminals),but that does not mean that everyone who was hostile to the regime was willing to fight against the regime .
Reality was that in 1941,after more than 20 years of existance, the communist regime was rather assured to have the support of the population,because on the average, the living conditions in the SU were better on 22 june 1941 than they were in Russia on 1 august 1914.

The majority of the Soviet citizens who joined the WM did not do this because of opposition to the regime,but to survive :a Soviet POW who joined the WM had more chances to survive than if he remained in a POW camp ;

 

There were a lot of Germans who were hostile to Hitler but this did not result in mass surrenderings and thousands of volunteers to fight against Hitler . It was the same in Italy . It was the same in WWI for AH (The Czech Legion became actif only in 1917), for Britain (there were no Irish who volunteered to fight against Britain ).

One exception (and even here my guess is that we encounter the usual exaggerations) was Yougoslavia : in 1941 the Yugoslavian army collapsed quickly, but I am not convinced that the reason was the desertion of the Croatians, it could also be that the reason was that the Germans arrived before Yougoslavia could mobilise .Maybe Tamino could give more explanations .

Whatever,during the existence of the Croatian state (41-45) a lot of Croatians fought against the Germans and maybe their number was greater than those who fought for Pavelic .

It was the same in WWI for the Poles in Russian Poland and in German Poland : how many did fight against the Germans/against the Russians , ?


As in WWI, in WWII(with a small exception) the non Russian units did not fight worse than the Russian units .Thus the mythical opposition against Stalin did not translate in a willingness to fight against Stalin ,what indicates that this opposition was mostly mythical .

The reason being that for the population of the SU liberty was a luxury ,something which is difficult to understand for an American who has been brought up with the story of : give me liberty,or give me death.

 

Only because of the treatment dealt them by the Germans, which is the entire point. The Ukrainians in particular would have readily thrown in with the Germans had they been treated well. Google "Holodomor" the Ukrainian term for Stalin's genocide in that nation.

 

1) There is no proof for this


2)there is no proof that the Soviet famine (wrongly called Holodomor by Ukrainian nationalists) was a genocide : look at the definition of genocide and try to prove that the famine was intentionally organised by the Soviet regime against the Ukrainian people .

 

l am really sory to tell you again that you simply swallow propaganda whitout asking does 2+2 really equal to 6.

 

Which propaganda are we not to believe and which propaganda are we to believe? Western propaganda, Nazi propaganda, Soviet propaganda, Ukrainian propaganda, etc. Unfortunately, it is almost all propaganda with regards to Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis - both pro & con, with each side only telling a partial truth, while leaving out what the given party considers, shall we say, "unpleasant truths."

 

The "proof" that it was a planned genocide doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what the Ukrainians believed, and they blamed Stalin. Even with the vicious treatment dealt to the Ukrainians by the Germans, many still joined them. Enough to form their own Waffen SS Division, the 14th, along with several other independent battalions and regiments and an unknown number dispersed into regular Wehrmacht units. If the Germans had come in with a lighter touch, there would have been many more.

 

None of them - Just historic facts.

Let’s leave propaganda aside now and get back to historic facts. You might don’t know that the Hunger Plan for Ukraine really existed but it was conceived by the Germans. The architect of the Hunger Plan was Herbert Backe, supported by the NSDAP elite and it was part of Operation Barbarossa. The reasons behind the (German) Hunger Plan were that (*):

1.) The war can only be continued if the entire Wehrmacht is fed from Russia in the third year of the war.
2.) If we take what we need out of the country, there can be no doubt that tens of millions of people will die of starvation.

In the (German) Hunger Plan it was stated (+):

Many tens of millions of people in this country will become superfluous and will die or must emigrate to Siberia. Attempts to rescue the population there from death through starvation by obtaining surpluses from the black earth zone […] prevent the possibility of Germany holding out till the end of the war.

(*) Nbg. Doc. 2718–PS, “Aktennotiz über Ergebnis der heutigen Besprechung mit den Staatssekretären über Barbarossa,” May 2, 1941, printed in International Military Tribunal, ed., Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof, Nürnberg, 14. November 1945–1. Oktober 1946, vol. 31. Sekretariat des Gerichtshofs, Nuremberg 1948, p. 84.

(+) Alex J. Kay: Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941. (Studies on War and Genocide, vol. 10) Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford 2006, p. 134.

 

Or less,as we don't know why Ukrainians collaborated with the Germans : how many of the WSS division were not POW who volunteered to escape from a certain dead in the POW camps ? And how many did not volunteer to have more food ?

The Germans came with a lighter touch in Western Europe and the number of volunteers was almost meaningless .

Everything is depending on the unproved claims that
the Ukrainian population was generally hostile to the Soviets(the hostility was limited to the former Polish Ukraine:Galicia )

that there was a mass repression against Ukrainian nationalism

These two points were spread after the war in the US by Ukrainian refugees (of which a lot with a bad reputation) and received during the Cold War a willing reception .

One should always be sceptical about the stories of refugees,because,as said a British statesman during the Napoleontic Wars : Ils n'ont rien appris, ils n'ont rien oublié : They learned nothing, they forgot nothing .

Much more Ukrainians fought for the SU than for Germany ,and the reason was simple : much more able male Ukrainians lived in territories controlled by the SU than in territories controlled by Germany .

You will find no exemples where soldiers were fighting for a negative reason = that they fought for A because they hated B .

The Irish did not fight for Germany, neither did the Czechs fight for Russia, or the Flemings fight for the Germans in WWI,although the colonial situation in the Belgian army and although the greatest part of Belgium was occupied by the Germans . Even the majority of the Baltic population did not fight for the Germans .

 

Indeed LJAD. Ukrainian "volunteers" were so miserable soldiers that they were considered as incapable participating a real combat and were transferred to the Balkans for anti-partisan actions i.e. reprisals against civil population. Brutal criminals - some of them were hunted down in the final battles, some of them have escaped across the Austrian border into custody of British occupation forces in South Austria. Later these predominantly war criminals have emigrated to North America. Noting serious to mention regarding their value as soldiers.

However, the former few posts indicate importance the German side gave to Ukraine in Operation Barbarossa. Occupation of Ukraine and starvation of Ukrainians was a prerequisite for the success of Barbarossa. Gentle treatment of Ukrainians from the German side was considered as "preventing the possibility of Germany holding out till the end of the war." Therefore, tthe KodiakBeers' "idea" of recruiting the Ukrainian "volunteers" is pointless - it is against the overall German brutal East strategy.

 

Yes, and if they hadn't come in with planned genocide? If they'd put those people to work growing more food, producing goods, forming more ost-regiments, etc? You seem unable to grasp the point that it was the planned brutality that alienated these people that already hated Stalin. Not so much in Russia itself, but in Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, they could have made alliances. Instead, they came in with more brutality than Stalin and threw away that opportunity.

It would hardly matter if they planned to betray them when the war was over, but in terms of Barbarossa and the following years they really blew it.

 

But people weren't that stupid to fall on such a trick - they knew the Germans bloody well from the World War 1.

 

LJAD, so you are suggesting that division would walk all the way to Berlin with out food ammo or any other supply. By the way the hunger plan is nonsense, the missing numbers of Germans were Volksturm and such who were allowed to go home

 

Hmmm...Let's see.

The food that feeds tens of millions of Ukrainians is going to feed 10 million Wehrmacht troops?
That will make for very fat Wehrmacht troopers, or an awful lot of wastage...Or is there more going on than what is being told?
Like eradicating the local population to claim their land.

 

You obviously don't know the basics - the surplus food was transported to the Reich, to improve the living standard of German civil population.