let me rephrase, they didn't invade Russia in the winter but by time they reached Stalingrad ect... it became winter which slowed them down.

Well thats the comment of the century, but the Heer got to Stalingrad in late 1942 at least 16 months after the intial invasion and you are talking about the winter of 42/43 not 41/42, not the original aim of the Marckes plan to reach the A-A Line within 12 weeks or so, no whatever you do the fact is that the Germans dramatically over estimated their capabilities, as pointed out, it is one thing to fight in western Europe with paved roads and available road maps, but it is another to fight in the Soviets Union where a goat track is considered a major highway, and no maps of the area.

What the Germans did achieve was remarkable, but to defeat the Soviets they need at least 3 times the men and equipment and an unlimited amount of fuel to do it, that they neve had and a huge amount of good luck and leadership.

I completely agree, plus you cant fight a two-front war. Going back the winter, for example I was watching a documentary on the History channel and it was talking about the Battle of Stalingrad and how close they came to Moscow and the person commenting talked about how the winter/cold effected them greatly.

The common conception that the Russian soldier was an improved adversary is vastly overrated, The Russian soldiers bravery and heroism is largely derived from lack of education and due to the fact that Stalin's tyranny was an equal hell for Hitlers Germany.

Hitler gave his german a lot, Stalin was a horrible man, if Britan never covered up all Stalins war crimes we could know what Mass Murders stalin did

Everyone´s got right for his own opinion. Mine is that the Red Army soldier was a very tough opponent never giving up. Their motto was " take at least one with you!". And even if Stalin´s politics did affect the army early in the war by june 1941 Stalin had created it into a battle for Motherland.

For instance try telling a soldier of a Western Allied nation " attack, die , but take at least one enemy with you!" How many soldiers would continue attacking....

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I am going to assume that you mean on the battlefield in the first 6 months?

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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

the Germans should have defeated Russia, I do not believe Russia did anything clever or intelligent to win, they had sheer numbers and bitter cold on their side is all. -Scorched earth was a good tactic though. We all know Stalin used the Nazi invasion as a excuse to invade Europe and communize it.

Well, Hitler disagrees with you here. He personally said in the bunker that the victorious Slavic nations will rule Europe, the Germans don´t deserve to live anymore because their race was inferior and lost. Hitler wanted a battle to the end and got it.

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This thread seems to have veered a bit off-course from the OP original question...

While I respect the rights of Soviet advocates and German advocates to argue their sides of the age-old question..."Who should have won the war, or who was worse, etc" the reality is that the Soviet Union utterly and completely defeated Nazi Germany (with the help of the Western Allies) and BOTH regimes were inherently EVIL and committed many atrocities against military personnel and innocent civilians. This forum does not seem to be the place to argue these points endlessly...

Now to the original "what if"...it probably would not have made any difference to the ultimate outcome of the war. The Soviet Union was too strong for the Germans to defeat in a prolonged conflict. The wild card would be if the Germans had captured Moscow because of the earlier start along with the possible capture of Leningrad...would this have caused a political upheaval resulting in the ouster of Stalin and peace overtures being made to Germany? That would have been the only way Germany could have been victorious.

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It is sometimes harder to fight my superiors than the French.
-Heinz Guderian

One thing I haven't seen mentioned directly yet is the fact that the Russian railway system was designed with a different scale then that of Europe, so all other things discounted, Germany still would have had a hard time with getting fresh supplies to their troops due to the fact that they had to tear up and re-lay hundreds of miles of track.

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Mark Manchester
USAF 1989-1993

they wouldn't have HAD to rip up and relay the rail lines right away. THe could have unloaded and then reloaded supplies from one rail line to another using slave labor from captured civilians as a stop gap.

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"Goddam it, you'll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me!" Captain Henry P. Jim Crow

But they DIDN'T do that, which is part of the reason they had such a hard time as it was. The tried to move things by truck and horse-drawn wagons which bogged down in the mud when the weather turned. The Germans were having trouble keeping supplies to their troops even before the weather changed due to a lack of quality roads. So although using slave labor would have been a viable alternative, if the Russians hadn't sabotaged their own rail system in retreat, it's one that wasn't used.

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Mark Manchester
USAF 1989-1993

I've always heard about the different rail gauges...but how did they handle the Berlin-Moscow express train that ran regularly and even passed through the lines just before the attack on June 21.
Was that line a similar gauge throughout the line?

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It is sometimes harder to fight my superiors than the French.
-Heinz Guderian

No, it seems.

Polish State Railroads Summer 1939 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Passenger rail connections between the Soviet Union and Western Europe required a change of trains due to the difference in gauge. If one travelled towards Moscow, it was necessary to change at the Soviet border station Niegoreloje. Travelling from Moscow, the change took place at the Polish station Stolpce.

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Actually the main reason for the difference in the rail gauge was for exactly that, protection.....

Even today a train coming from Europe into Russia would have to be lifted (boxcar) and a new set of wheels would be placed underneath. This is why there is always a delay when coming from Europe to Russia by train.

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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

Perhaps some reading is in order then eh?

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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 agree 100% with this one.

The only two things that stopped the Nazis complete victory or Russia was the winter and the Soviet sniper division. But I will say even if the red army was defeated there would be a bitter guerrilla war. I wonder if they were defeated if they would be able to send some of the Wehrmacht back to France to repel the Allied onslaught?

Damn those "sniper divsions". Had those snipers frozen to death Germany might have won the war. Less Russian snipers means higher moral for the Germans, and moral was all that's needed for that final push towards Moscow.
Keep up the good work. Hail Hitler