RandomAttack
Posts: 235
Joined: 7/23/2009 From: Arizona Status: offline
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I have always enjoyed playing WWII & Eastern Front type games, but the simple fact is that it took an almost perfect storm of Soviet blunders at an obscene level for the Germans to even have a CHANCE at victory. One of my favorite books on this topic is "Inferno" by Max Hastings. In it he describes: "In Berlin on 28 November [1941], a conference of industrialists chaired by armaments supremo Fritz Todt reached a devastating conclusion: the war against Russia was no longer winnable. Having failed to achieve a quick victory, Germany lacked resources to prevail in a sustained struggle. Next day, Todt and tank-production chief Walter Rohland met Hitler. Rohland argued that, once the United States became a belligerent, it would be impossible to match Allied industrial strength. Todt, though an ardent Nazi, said, “This war can no longer be won by military means.” Hitler demanded, “How then shall I end this war?” Todt replied that only a political outcome was feasible. Hitler dismissed such logic. He chose to convince himself that the imminent accession of Japan to the Axis would transform the balance of strength in Germany’s favour. But the November diary of army chief of staff Franz Halder records other remarks by Hitler that acknowledged the implausibility of absolute triumph. For the rest of the war, those responsible for Germany’s economic and industrial planning fulfilled their roles in the knowledge that strategic success was unattainable. They drafted a planning paper in December 1941 entitled “The Requirements for Victory.” This concluded that the Reich needed to commit the equivalent of $150 billion to arms manufacture in the succeeding two years; yet such a sum exceeded German weapons expenditure for the entire conflict. Whatever the prowess of the Wehrmacht, the nation lacked means to win; it could aspire only to force its enemies to parley, together or severally." It's quite clear the Soviets *were* that bad initially. So while I enjoy playing a bit of "what if" as much as anyone, barring things like assassinations of major leaders, Superman landing in Heidelberg instead of Kansas, etc., a straight-up military victory by the Germans after Dec 41 just wasn't going to happen. But hey, Stalin could have had a stroke. Hitler took a calculated risk, and lost. He tried to play out the clock, hoping for a miracle. As Agent Maxwell Smart would say: "missed it by THAT much".
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