What Book Are You Reading at the Moment?

[Smitty-48]

The Russians have the exact same problem right now on the exact same terrain in East Ukraine

Crimea is defensible terrain, but beyond Crimea, where do you stop ?

You basically have to go all the way to the Dnepr river, that's the first natural barrier that is defensible

[TheReal_ND]

I think there are two unsung heros for the good guy side in WWII; Finland and Romania. Italy was dead weight. The axis was a joke.

[Smitty-48]

At the operational level, the problem for the German's is terrain

The problem is that it is not only exponentially vast, but also largely featureless

There's nothing to hold on to, there's nothing to pin the Soviets down upon

The Soviets can just keep backing up forever, there's no English Channel to pin them against to force a resolution

There is also no high ground, to dig in on, and then defend, it's just an ocean of grass

I think this is why they become irrationally fixated on Stalingrad, it's the only thing there, so they go there.

Makes sense. I think if it was taken it would have crushed Soviet moral more than Moscow. Everyone knew taking Moscow didn't mean anything. It wasn't as important as Stalingrad perhaps. The Germans left a road of life out of Stalingrad to be used for evacuation. That's part of the reason it was never taken. If they were ruthless they would have cut it off. Apparently there were ethnic Finns in Stalingrad that were removed by the Soviets before the Germans showed up. Finns would have been a second army against the Soviets.

Stalingrad wasn't important at all, the oil field was the objective

But there again, an oil field is not a defensible position

How do you secure it ? There's no natural barriers, there's no high ground to dig in on

[TheReal_ND]

There was no air cover either. There were no German long range bombers. Fuel issues aside, Germany had nothing that could get all the way there with bombs and fuel at the same time.

[Smitty-48]

Even tho it is on a grand scale, at the end of the day, the Germans are fighting Greek Decisive Warfare

The operating word being decisive, the Greeks have to get back to their farms, so there has to be a decision

Hitler has no end game, no mechanism to force a resolution

Thus it degenerates into war of attrition and then he just runs out of Germans

[Smitty-48]

The event which shapes the German military thinking in both Wars is 1870

The Germans take France in a lightning war, and crown their Emperor at Versailles

That's the Holy Grail, in both wars the Germans are trying to repeat 1870

So in France in 1940, they pull it off again

But it's all scaled and specific to France

The model doesn't work when you are trying to take Eurasia

[Hastur]

Hitler lost when he invaded Soviet Russia with GB undefeated in his back.
Stalin was stopped by the bomb and allied air force.

[Smitty-48]

The British were not the problem, if it had just been the British, the British would have capitulated

[Hastur]

But America was there because Britain was undefeated.

[Smitty-48]

But America was there because Britain was undefeated.

No, Britain was undefeated because America was there.

For Hitler to win the war, he needed an America Firster in the WH, like Irish Joe Kennedy

The Anglo-American Empire of Liberty actually dates from 1917 not 1941

America bought the British Empire in the First World War, paid cash.