When did Germany lose the war?

The story of the generals ready to depose him during Munich,is one the the countless post war inventions,with as meaning to blame the British :if Chamberlain was not capitulating at Munich,Hitler would be deposed

 

LJAd
See "The nightmare Years" by Shirer on the Halder Plot (p366) or for more detail "Red Orchestra" by Anne Nelson (p123). This plot involved Canaris and Oster and another circle of conspirators.
Where can I find the information that these plots were fabracations? And why were they made post-war?

 

Shirer is the last person to use :his credibility is zero .
The plot only was blahblah .
It was made post-war
1) to shift a lot of the war guilt on the allies :saying:if Chamberlain had not capitulated at Munich,we(the German generals) would have deposed him
2)to create the myth of the good German (usefull when West Germany joined Nato) who always opposed Hitler .
Halder had no authority to move even ONE batallion,this was reserved to Brauchitz(who did nothing).Oster was a mere lieutenant colonel (called out from a forced retirement) and given an administrative job in the Abwehr (nowhere else would he be accepted).
The socalled "conspirators" were talking,but never were doing anything :after Munich,they all were collaborating ,wholeheartedly with the regime,no one was sending his resignation,they were promoted,and received medals:after Munich,there even was no more an appearance of opposition to the regime .

 

I find it hard to accept these arguments.
1)von Manstein (among others) testified at Nurenberg that Germany would have been badly beaten at the time of Munich. Afterward inspection of Czech defenses
raised questions about Germany's ability to breach them.( Hitler joined his officers on this). In any case it's clear that Chamberlain did save Hitler, not intentionally.
2) "the good German" concept fails to logic. They never said they opposed an agressive war, they only object to a war they felt they would lose. Hardly a strong moral position or recommendation to anyone.
3)Canaris and Oster were in no position to benifit from anything in 1945,being executed. But Canaris did have the means to arrest Hitler at the time. Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer had standing - an arrest warrant and medical documents - and of course links to Beck. Beck still had clout with old line officers.
4) the von Stauffenberg plotters were made up of relatively less powerful officers (they failed, but not for lack of effort)
5)The main point remains-after a series of stunning successes (for various reasons) running from the Rhineland and Austria to the attack on USSR Hitler's prestige was so strong and popular he was in unquestioned control until after 1942. It wasn't until later that foward commanders planned to shoot/arrest him, to shorten or save a lost war. Troubling that there was still no moral imperative.

 

About von Manstein at Nuremberg:I should be very carefull any Nuremberg statement of a German general:these were statements of persons who were accused of war crimes .Whatever,IMHO,Manstein (who was a mere division commander at that period)was wrong:the status of the Czech defenses is irrelevant :the Czech army would dissolve and only the Czechs would remain(the Sudeten and the Slowaks would desert),and,who could be certain that they would fight? They did NOT.

 

I forgot :the moral argument :this was used after the war,to defend the German participation on Nato :the German generals were decent people,because they tried to eliminate Hitler (on moral grounds)in 1938,they failed,because Chamberlain capitulated at Munich .
Well,this was their argument .
But,they were concealing the fact that they were doing NOTHING in the summer of 1939,before the attack on Poland,while, the reasons for eliminating Hitler in 1938(moral,or the fact that Germany would loose) had not disappeared in 1939:these reasons remained.
Maybe,the fact that they did nothing in 1939 ,can be used as an argument that they would have done nothing in 1938?
The same for 1941 (Barbarossa)

 

A few operation Typhoon pics.

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6106/panzersinrussia2xm5.jpg
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/5751/moscaueh2.jpg
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/1703/moscau2oc8.jpg

The first three are the panzers fast advance to Vyazma/Briansk along dry packed earth roads.

http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/9072/015aaeem2.jpg

Forth is some of the aprox. half a million POW's heading back West, & the next is after the rains came.......

http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/6608/horse20drawn20supply20wnx8.jpg

And the last few are later when the freeze started, Ziemke mentions that the Germans lit fires under their tanks as the quickest way of freeing them after the night freeze, I thought that it sounded a tad risky, but as it shows, thats what they did.

http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/8626/boggeddownpanzerkd1.jpg
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/5746/panzer3117rw9.jpg
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9836/stugiiicolour600vz6.jpg
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/581/theroadtomoscowkg1.jpg
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/371/pic003et2.jpg
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/8821/towardsmoscowud3.jpg
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/8576/soldaten52ka9.jpg
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/39/german20troops20and20arkh9.jpg

The pages that follow dont specify 'Typhoon' just rasputitsa in Russia, some may or may not be from October '41, but they give a good idea of what
rasputistia means.

Axis History Forum • View topic - German vehicles and "Rasputitsa"

 

Just out of interest, do you have any source for that statement on why the Germans were allowed to join Nato? Interested in seeing that written down in the way you state it somewhere. Not that it may not be, just I have the original Nato and US UK memorandums of understanding from 40's to present day. Would love to add that particular source to my files.

 

I did not say that this was the reason why the Germans were allowed to join Nato,it is more nuanced :after WWII,West Germany and the Bundeswehr had a bad image,public opinion was not making any difference between the Wehrmacht,the nazis ,the SS;there was a lot of opposition to the return of Germany as a civilised nation,and to allowing Germany an army (the communists of course were exploiting this situation):Germany urgently needed some "decent,good Germans" =people who had opposed Hitler .The result was the sactification (or the attempt to sactify) Beck,Canaris ,Rommel,Stauffenberg who were presented to the Western (and German) public opinion as irreductible opponents from the beginning to national-socialism and, who always had sabotaged Hitler's war (see the Indian tales about Canaris collaborating with MI 6).While I am not arguing (as the communists who did not shrink from using former Wehrmacht generals) that the generals of the Bundeswehr were unrepented nazis,who never should be allowed to lead the Bundeswehr,I think that the opposite(=presenting them as honourable,decent men,who always opposed the regime) is a big exageration .If all these men had opposed Hitler,why was Germany dominating Europe from the Pyrenees to the suburs of Moscow ?

The truth is much more nuanced .

 

I can follow you,partially,because I think that the possibility of a prèwar military coup was very remote .And,as long as Hitler was alive,any revolt was(IMHO) impossible :the coup of july 1944 failed,essentially,because Hitler was not dead:when it was known that Hitler was alive,all potential support for the revolt disappeared immediately .

 

I'm not sure what you think we should be discussing:
A) Germany building subs instead of a surface fleet.
B) Germany building 500 subs no matter what.
I don't think the fist gets them anywhere near 500 subs. The latter doesn't leave them in a position where they are all that useful.

Or not. If they start building a massive uboat fleet in 35 how are other countries going to react? I'm not at all sure that Germany comes out ahead in this.

 

IMO more subs would have been helpful. The 500 number is irrelevent to the discussion, which is what I have been saying. If you want to know how we got on that jag, follow the thread.http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/53345-when-did-germany-lose-war-8.html#post591130
I have no desire to continue with that.

The rest of the world's navies are still battleship oriented in '35, if laying down battleships didn't slow down the appeasment process, I doubt if building more subs would have made a difference.

 

It is difficult to see any practicle course of action Germany could take from a naval position that would insure victory, that did not iclude a way to cross the channel and place supplied troops on the British Isle. Enough aircraft of the right type used long enough and properly could overcome the Royal Navy, but you must still have German troops marching though Picadilly Square to put England out of the war, and this requires amphib capability.

For all praticle purposes Germany lost the war when she gambled on crushing Russia before finding a way to defeat England. Until this point Germany could not lose the war to Britain, even with the aid of the USA.

 

Perhaps or perhaps not. It depends very much on what they didn't build in order to get them and how other nations reacted to it.

Actully you have been argueing that that number was possible. I'll agree with you that it's of marginal relevance without more details anyway. But the relevant question is how many subs would it have taken to defeat Britain and what would this cost in terms of other capabilities that would suffer in return. Also relevant are questions about the reactions of other nations as increased ASW assets could push the number up even more and Germany was also rather vulnerable to trade boycotts.

The British weren't worried about a few battleships. With their WWI experiance a large submarine force on the otherhand was a threat aimed right at them. The US wouldn't have been happy either. Take a look at the terms of the Anglo German naval treaty if you doubt me on this.

 

I agree.

If I recall the Anglo-German naval agreement capped the German Navy at 35% the total British tonnage. Submarines could be built up to 100% of all Commonwealth navies. It's true that the goal was to encourage the Germans into building a conventional navy, which was to the British advantage, and also what Hitler wanted for the prestige. By '38 the German planners were calling for more subs.

 

Although the Kriegsmarine was nearly always third cab of the rank after the army & Luftwaffe, actual spending on the Naval program between 1933 & 1939 was 8,289,000,000RM, more then Japans 6,913,000,000RM & not a long way behind Britains 10,061,000,000RM.


The Bismark class cost over 200,000,000RM per copy [compared to 2,000,000 for a mark V11 U-boat] & to try & match the RN was never realistic & Hitler in 1939 canceled the big ship program, reduced funds were to be channeled into a U-boat program.

Krupp's Germaniawerft AG U-boat works at Kiel had been laying almost dormant since the end of WW1 after building many of the 400 U-boats of the first war, & was eager for orders, & eventually recieved a contract for five boats in '39, it only got the green light for full production in'41, & eventually went on to build 131 U-boats.

By '41 other shipyards such as Blohm & Voss, Hamburg [224 built] F Schichau GmbH, Danzig [94] Werft, Bremen-Vegesack [74] Deutsche Werke AG, Kiel [69]
& many others built almost 1,000 U-boats between 1941-'44.

1174 German built U-boats were launched overall.

So I guess the 'what if' question is, what if a considerable part of that funding was spent on a U-boat program starting earlier then '41, even if it took time to set up, [it seems it took about two years for most yards to gear up even with minimal funding] how many boats would be facing Britain in '39?

Considerably more then the 26 ocean going U-boats that the Kriegsmarine started with, & along with surface raiders etc sank 6,000,000 tons of shipping in '39-'41 & for August 1942, [nearly 3 years after the war began,] the number of U-boats at sea finally reached 100 & together with raiders sank 11,000,000 tons in '42-'43.

That doesn't automatically mean that two or three times as many U-boats are going to sink two or three times as much tonnage, but I wonder what figure could you reasonably come up with?

Donietz estimated that sinking some 700,000 tons of shipping a month for a year would break Britain but needed at least 300 boats to do it.

Would Donietz be able to pull it off with the required number of boats?

Maybe, maybe not, perhaps it's just as well that it wasn't put to the test from '39.

 

I would probably have to say...All of the above. Funny because after Hitler took personal command of the Wermacht they began to lose the war..Go figure!

Hitler was found as great because he brought Germany back off of it's knees and got it up and running again. Read Sun Su's the art of war and compare that to Hitlers foolish tactics..That is why he lost the war!

 

One has to be very careful with such numbers. The Nazi's kept the Mark significantly overvalued during the 30's. To the point where they had a serious foreign exchange problem.

So what do you suggest be cut? And how do you think Britain would react to this? France and the US for that matter.

That depends at least in part on how Britain reacts. If Germany starts building a bunch of u-boats that would look to be pretty well aimed at the British. If they cut major naval units as well at that point then doesn't this also free up a lot of British cash for ASW escorts and planes?

 

This is a onesided argumentation,because it neglects the fact that the British merchant navy was stronger on 1 january 1941 than on 1 september 1939.