World War II: Decisive Point in Nazi Defeat

At what point did the Nazi's snatch defeat from the Jaws of victory?

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#1
T

therealUT

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#1
Had a discussion with a few buddies on this, found the mixed opinions very interesting, so I thought I would throw this out to all you history of warfare buffs.
 
#2
#2
One, not having a long range bombing forced killed them.

Two, they were spread so far out across Europe and North Africa.

Three, they started the war probably 6 years too early. Their navy was not prepared to fight a war. Besides I would have loved to have seen a H-44 Super Battleship at a couple 100,000 tons.

Four, Hitler should have went south and east toward the oil fields and forgot about the central cities in Russia.

Five, those darn tanks. So complicated to make and repair.

Six, obsession with super weapons or even weapons of large scale, I.E. the H-44 Super Battleship or King Tiger. I mean they had a plan for a 100 ton tank, why?

Finally Hitler, if any military person would have been in charge Europe would still be under Nazi control.

Battleship Design H44
 
#3
#3
Their military industrial complex was more of a peacetime mentality than anything. When they should have been rapidly producing and upgrading they essentially got cocky and lazy comparatively speaking.

And yes, leaving Britain intact gave us the ability to pound away. Take Britain out and the whole Atlantic Wall and build-up there could have been downgraded and forces dispersed to other areas. Instead a door was left open in both the front and back and we made a way through the basement as well.
 
#4
#4
There are certainly valid and compelling arguments for all the choices. Dunkirk was an error of epic proportions fed by Hitler's delusion that Winston Churchill would be replaced and he could negotiate a settlement with the "Brother Aryans" of England.

Stalingrad was the beginning of the ascendency of the Red Army in the East. It was a massive and irreverisible defeat for the Krauts. It also demonstrated to Stalin that he had a winning team in Zhukov, Konev, and Chuikov.

The BOB, while important, I have problems with as a "turning point." I agree, to an extent, with Stephen Ambrose that the real turning point in the west was D-Day and the German failure to stop the invasion. As Ambrose put it in the preface to his book D-Day, "Prior to D-Day the question was not whether democracy or totalitarianism would prevail, but which form of totalitarianism would win."

My choice is actually the "Big Week" campaign by the 8th Air Force in February, 1944. Beginning with those four missions the demise of the Luftwaffe began in earnest. It has to be remembered that in the late fall/early winter 1943, the 8th was essentially defeated by German fighter defenses losing an average of 15-20% of bombers dispatched on missions into the German heartland. The Luftwaffe owned the skies over the Reich.

The deployment of the P-51 Mustang in squadron and group strength allowed what was possibly the greatest piston fighter* of all time to escort 8th Air Force Bombers all the way to Berlin and beyond. In a series of epic air battles in the Spring of 1944, the 8th Air Force broke the back of the Luftwaffe.

In less than six months, the Luftwaffe went from owning the skies over Germany and Occupied France to Ike's proclamation to his boys going into Normandy, "If you see planes overhead, they will be ours."

The Allied air forces flew 15000 sorties (one flight by one aircraft = one sortie) on June 6. The Germans managed to launch TWO.

WWII was the first war where the side that owned the air owned the battlefield.

In 1933, Hitler had boasted "Give me ten years and you won't recognize your towns!"

It was one promise he was able to keep.

I apologize to the Eastern Front mavens, but an intact Luftwaffe in the summer of 1944 stops the Russkies in their tracks and makes D-Day impossible.

Historian Edward Jablonski documented "Big Week" in two excellent works: Flying Fortress, and AirWar.
 
#5
#5
I see your reference to the BofB, but the failure of the Germans to take Britain allowed for huge logistical buildup from the US, which would have been otherwise nearly impossible. The fact that the Germans were forced to maintain two enormous fighting fronts, each with enormous logistical trains was, in the end, their downfall. They could have won on either front in a singular assault, but had no prayer fighting them simultaneously.
 
#7
#7
Agreed. But then, the RAF (helped out immeasurably by the idiocy of Hermann Goering) stopped the Luftwaffe over Britain in 1940. Had the Brits lost the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk would simply have been a footnote.
 
#9
#9
The Battle of Britain failed because of a lack of insight as to waging a massive air campaign. Low production rates, poor flight training, low numbers in recruiting for new pilots, and an evolving air fleet to compensate for Britain's evolving air fleet made the BoB a failure before it even began.
 
#10
#10
volinbham said:
The 1944 bombing of the Lederhosen factory was key...
Click to expand...

On 14 October 1940, the Luftwaffe sent bombers to the small village of Luton. They scored direct hits on the town's main factory and seriously damaged it.

The factory produced women's hats.

The Battle of Britain - Home Page

One of the main problems the Germans faced was the range of their Bf-109 fighters only allowed about 10-15 minutes over southern England. This problem could have been solved easily by using external "drop tanks." The Germans had these available but Goering would not approve their use.

On a related note:

My bad, guys, when I wrote "BoB," I was thinking Battle of the Bulge - not Battle of Britain.

The late sixties Battle of Britain movie is still one of the best war movies ever. The late sixties "Battle of the Bulge" movie is one of the worst war movies ever filmed. The studio execs who approved the latter should have been sent to the Eastern Front.
 
#11
#11
What? You didn't like blonde Robert Shaw and his drive at the end to get the fuel dump?
 
#12
#12
OneManGang said:
Agreed. But then, the RAF (helped out immeasurably by the idiocy of Hermann Goering) stopped the Luftwaffe over Britain in 1940. Had the Brits lost the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk would simply have been a footnote.
Click to expand...
The Germans should have finished the the battle, even if it included full blown invasion, and THEN focused on the Soviets. Leaving that rear flank vulnerable while they fought with Zhukov and Co. actually defeated them on both fronts. The German high command wrote Britain when a simple air campaign wouldn't make the British go away. The sheer logistics of driving to Moscow required a singular focus and the Germans were never allowed that luxury because the British Isles were the staging base for the US. US buildup there, plus skirmishes in North Africa, forced the Germans to commit large numbers forces in the West.
 
#14
#14
volinbham said:
The turning point was when they pissed us off enough to enter the war...
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They might have withstood us had they sequenced the Europe takeover a bit better. Had they taken Britain and held off until completion for the invasion of USSR, they had a very good chance. We might have been content to fight the eastern front and let them do their thing for quite a while in Europe. Overestimating the effectiveness of their Uboats in keeping our transports from Europe was a severe miscalculation as well. Effectively handing the US a staging base on the back door spelled their doom.

Long story short........The turning point was when they pissed us off enough to enter the war...
 
#15
#15
CSpindizzy said:
What? You didn't like blonde Robert Shaw and his drive at the end to get the fuel dump?
Click to expand...

I still laugh out loud when Telly Savalas' M-24 takes a direct hit in the turret from an "88" and everybody survives.

This was the more usual result:

M4-6.jpg
 
#16
#16
Speaking of Telly, you can always rely on Kelly's Heroes for good military realism and historical accuracy as well.

Regardless, had the Germans taken Britain out, would we still have run supply lines in the Atlantic to the USSR and given the Russians the full resources? Would Stalin have become our British replacement? Or would we have relied on full focus in the Pacific? Had Britain been conquered our little 'aircraft carrier' in Britain would have been removed. Spain probably would have turned fully in the Axis. More resources would have been available to allow the Germans to capture the Suez. It would have made life much easier for the Germans up to that point. With those events, had Pearl Harbor have happened the Japanese would have faced a potentially more prepared America. I imagine that without Britain, FDR would have geared the US up much faster and been a little more prepared for eventual war.
 
#17
#17
Of the options listed above, Stalingrad was the clear turning point of the war. Until Stalingrad, the German army seemed invincible. Afterwards, the German army had lost 850,000 men (granted the Soviets lost 1.1 million, but their manpower resources were vastly superior). I believe it was Army Group South that was decimated.

Other reasons that could be listed above:

1) The timing of Operation Barbarossa. If the invasion had started a month or so earlier, it may have given the Germans time to take Moscow before the onset of the Russian winter. If Moscow is taken, it gives the Germans a shelter of sorts for the Russian winter, which they were ill-prepared for due to Hitler's underestimation of Russia's strength and the time it would take to conquer them.

2) Failure to commit forces in waiting during the D-Day invasion. If German field commanders were able to attack with their panzer divisions when the invasion started, instead of waiting from orders from Berlin, then the Allies may very well have been pushed back out into the ocean.

3) The battle of Britain. Instead of going after military targets and production, the Luftwaffe decide to wage a war against the British people directly. There was a time when the Luftwaffe was winning BoB, yet they changed course.

4) During Operation Barbarossa, the Germans did not take advantage of the anti-Communist sentiment that existed within the captured Soviet land and military. Who knows what impact an anti-Soviet contingent fighting alongside German forces would have had, but it would have certainly gotten better results than treating all Slavs as sub-human.
 
#18
#18
Oh yes, the Battle of the Bulge was the most wretched piece of WW2 cinematic filth to ever hit a big screen. They couldn't even get the weather conditions right, which played such a major role in the actual battle.
 
#19
#19
Our tanks lit on the first try............ :cray:

I'll argue that their Blitzkrieg was not as effective as every one wants to believe.

I mean, Russia occupied most of Poland at a cost of what?
 
#20
#20
CSpindizzy said:
Speaking of Telly, you can always rely on Kelly's Heroes for good military realism and historical accuracy as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but then Kelly's Heroes never claimed to be a definitive historical film, despite the fact that it WAS loosely based on an actual incident toward the end of the war where a group of Americans discovered a bank full of gold near the Swiss border. They put it in a truck and hopped over to Switzerland where they invested the money and lived well for the rest of their lives.

That being said the Tigers in the film (built on T-34 chassis) were pretty cool.

"Always with the negative waves, Moriarity!"
 
#21
#21
I always thought Kelly's Heroes was a fun movie. I liked the fact that Eastwood parodied his own spaghetti westerns in the showdown scene near the end.
 
#23
#23
Ironically, you can sum it up with a quote from a movie, The Sum of All Fears, in which a fascist terrorist declared the fall of Germany was because Hitler was an idiot and stupid. He said Hitler tried to fight Russia and America. "A smart man" would have got America and Russia to fight each other.

Basically, the downfall of many. Greed. Spread himself to thin. Human and industrial resources wouldn't support it at such a fast pace.
 
#24
#24
For the sake of discussion, i said Dunkirk, if i had to choose a singular moment.

The Wermacht destroying and forcing the surrender of the BEF at Dunkirk would have simply knocked the snot out of the war effort in Europe, and in all likelihood, the war in Europe would have been fought only on the Eastern Front.

The destruction of the best the Brits had to offer on the coast would probably have forced the UK governement to sue for peace, as, with no Army, they really wouldn't have stood a chance if the evacuation at Dunkirk never happened, and the BEF was destroyed in the field.

I feel that the invasion of the USSR was the turning point in the war, of course, but if Britain had fallen/surrendered beforehand, this might not have been the case.
 
#25
#25
If Germany destroys the cream of the British land force at Dunkirk, then Germany effectively solidifies Fortress Europa and more than likely occupies the British Isle before turning their complete focus towards Russia.
 
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