How badly did the winter effect Germany in WWII?

Is it over exaggerated? Would they still have lost to Russia in better conditions or just roll over them like everyone prior?

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Yes, they still would have lost.

>Napoleon invades Russia during freezing winter
>Hitler does the exact same thing

How come mainland Europeans don't know that Russia is a frozen wasteland shielded by nature itself

Didn't the Russians suffer as badly?

Yes, but they were more prepared for fighting in winter, and had better supply lines (later on).

>How badly did typhus infect jews in the war

yes

the real problem was that the germans didnt expect such a large winter, which was very stupid on them in the first place, they didnt think about the rough terrain, many of there vehicles and tanks would get stock in mud and other shitty conditions causing a clog in movment prolonging the invasion force. the food lines were shit many german soldiers starved to death. one of the biggest problems was that they where largely underequipt ie alot of them froze to death. if the germans invaded at a more proper time they would have most likely taken moscow no problem i mean shit they where basicly at the edge of the city.

grandpa had only 4 months to get to moscow
If you know about the russian west you know that you only got a 4 month window between the plain being a swamp or a frozen waste.
Operation Barbarossa could have smashed into moscow, effectively killing their main rail hub and winning the war if the winter didnt crush them. after that the momentum was gone and the Wehrmacht had no Chance to win the war after that

>yes
Germans are retarded more news at 11

An attrition war between a nation with 65 million people and the other having 110 million. Who would win?

Also, the Germs lost 1/3 of their Barbarossa invasion force before the first snow fell. Old man winter is a maymay.

germany should have never invaded russia , if they had the commies at hitlers helm they could have easily won the war by man power alone. but what do you expect of a methhead

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they had no choice. Both nations were pretty much in deathgrip by the others.
And Germany had the Problem that the only available oil resources they had were the fields in Romania. If the soviets had invaded there western europe would have run dry for oil in a matter of weeks and would have been easy picking for the soviets. A offensive attack using the fact that the russian army was still badly organized and had bled out their good officers in 1941 was the only possible option

it's a history channel meme. perpetuated by historically illiterate wehraboos on congolese carpet sewing forums. wehrmacht was exhausted, overstretched and lost the bulk of its experienced officers by september 1941. hence, hitler's halt order.

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Extremely bad. Very very badly. The Russians would mix gas and oil to keep their weapons from jamming, the Germans did not know about this. Also, the Germans had almost no supply or logistical way of resupply. They took what they could from who they could WHEN they could, and a lot of ppl died and starved to death. Lastly, many Germans froze to death, many only had summer BDU, and we're ill equipped for winter unlike the Serbians and Russians from the Taiga and Urals.

The first winter could have actually destroyed the wehrmacht. The Germans had not planned on the offensive taking so long. Barbarossa was supposed to begin in June of 1941, but the unexpected Italian attack into Greece, the Yugoslavian coup, and the possibility of seeing Britain on their southern flank forced Hitler to divert important troops and supplies to the Balkans to mop up Mussolini's mess. This diversion pushed back plans for the start of Barbarossa. Then during the invasion, the Germans did not have a clear operational objective. Some officers felt the objective was to capture the most infrastructure/war industry possible, others values insfrastructure/political objectives, others felt it was best to destroy the soviet army.

Hitler followed bad advice and diverted his best Panzerkorps to the south to complete the enclosure of the Kiev pocket and capture over 700,000 Soviet troops. This delayed the impact of army group center by at least 3 weeks and allowed the Russians to prepare and strengthen defenses on the other side of Smolensk. The Germans started realizing ~ late September that they would be stuck in Russia for the winter. They had not produced winter clothing for their troops or looked deeply into what effect winter of the kind seen in Russia would have on their equipment. The had mass drives in Germany to gather up civilian winter coats to send to their troops, but it was not enough to properly outfit everyone. The offensive ground to a halt with advanced elements of army group center able to see the spires of St. Basil's cathedral in Moscow, and bitter cold set in when the Germans officially had to take some steps back and go on the defensive in late November-December.

Panzer IV and earlier models experienced issues with frozen fuel lines on their diesel powered tanks. If the engines could not run, the systems which powered their advanced turret controls would not operate normally. It was a catastrophe.

Well don't forget Stalins Order No. 227 "not one step back". Stalin effectively was throwing dirt back into the hole he was digging, by constantly killing what fighters he had. Zhukov luckily was a good tactician,

you are very right about the oil situation

the 227 was issued in july 1942. my morbidly obese, melanin enriched gringo

>Would they still have lost to Russia in better conditions
German equipment was very much "good weather" equipment but yes, they still would have lost. The Russian army (something like 34.5 million different men over the course of the war) beat Germany, not the winter.

>they had no choice.
germany had chemical weapons. of course they didn't have to do it. the logic of neither russia or germany attacking the other is sound, the war would destroy both. hitler = moron.

>Hitler invades in winter
>Operation Barbossa
>Jun 22, 1941 – Dec 5, 1941

Hitler could have invaded earlier, but I don't think it would have made a difference.

The winter in 1941 was the coldest in the entire century dont forget that.

Correct, and people forget that a lot of supply drops never made it to where they were intended. The logistics of resupply near the Volga under such harsh conditions was extremely hard, especially when it came to drops in the harsh Russian winters. Then you had lice, Typhus, Paratyphus, Frost Bite, Gangrene, the list goes on. The Russians and the Germans fought under some truly horrible hellish conditions.

Just as big of a factor as the winter however could be the mud. It was said Russia had 3 seasons, summer, winter, and mud. Barbarossa began to grind to a halt as soon as mud set in on the Russian terrain. Most people think that most mud is more or less the same which is not true. Russian mud was a new experience for the Germans. There were few well paved roads to use in the Soviet Union so even the best of "highways" were typically dirt paths which turned to seas of mud as soon as September-October rolled around, and it was thick, slippery mud which gunked up tanks, trucks, and everything else.

Much of the German army was NOT mechanized at this time, contrary to popular belief. The vast majority of German forces were using horse drawn artillery, anti-tank weapons, and other support weaponry. If it was difficult for a heavy Panzer IV to traverse a slippery, muddy incline imagine what kind of a pace horses strapped to artillery guns made. Movement was slowed drastically by bad weather, especially in 1941. The fall and early winter of 1942 was actually quite favorable to the Germans by comparison, and they were also far better equipped by that time. The mud of the fall of 1943 as the Germans withdrew past the Dnieper was allegedly of monumental proportions and made the fighting that much more confused and vicious on both sides.

By the time 1944 drew, the winter was actually Germany's best friend. In fact, much of the early success of the Ardennes offensive was due to the cold weather and cloud cover which prevented allied air support from intervening as heavily. The entire German plan counted on capturing intact allied fuel depots in the area which did not happen as retreating Americans set fire to their fuel reserves and the Germans ran out of fuel to properly extend the point of attack - Bastogne or not.

Overrated. I belive that during the battle for moscow, the germans wanted the ground to freeze so their tanks had solid ground. The only really bad consequence of the cold was wasted fuel to keep the engines running and maybe tens of thousands of deaths(out of millions) to the weather.

More importantly, the russian railroads had a wider gauge than western ones. The germans anticipated capturing many russian trains to secure their logistics; however, they failed at that and had to modify their own trains, which was not terribly functional. So the german supplies were fucked up during the winter of 41.

Also, germans had the winters of: 41, 42, and 43 in russia. Just for perspective.

god was not on their side, regardless of what u worms like to believe

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>An attrition war between a nation with 65 million people and the other having 110 million. Who would win?

That's really dumb. We managed to colonize India, China and Africa with combined population much larger than anything we had.

The reason was bad climate and everyone else ganging up on Germans.

+1. Werhmacht losses were ~60k per month from June 41 to May 43. (they only lost 50k in the entire Western theatre from 39 to 40.) Its a problem with the "untermensch" theory - you might find your adversary is as tough as you are

If they they started a few months earlier they would have likely beaten Russia, even with all the help they were receiving from America. That's really the main reason, they couldn't feed, arm or transport their own soldiers so the USA gave them food, ammo, guns, clothes, tanks, trucks, etc to prolong the war until they entered it themselves. Fuck FDR, Churchill and Stalin those kike faggots.

>communist believing in God

hearty kek

>Mussolini tried to invade Greece during the winter and failed
>Hitler thought it was such a fantastic idea that decided to repeat the retardation
Snowniggers are such brainlets when it comes to war and strategy.

Climate played a huge role, the mud especially, but I would say the biggest factor might have been not having a clearly laid out and concise operational objective. The German high command was divided on what they felt was the most important goal to achieve in order to crush the Soviets. In hindsight, if they had managed to focus on Moscow, they would have cut off vital Russian rail support to other major cities due to the design of Russian rail infrastructure largely running through Moscow. Supplied from Archangel for example could not have arrived more or less directly at the front in Leningrad in 1941, or Stalingrad in 1942 whether the Germans achieved victory with Barbarossa alone in 1941 or not. Causing Stalin and his government to relocate would have been a pretty big blow as well. Going after war industry was not a great idea since the Russians boxed up entire factories essentially and moved them back to the Urals, and others mentioned Hitler's idea of destroying the Soviet army in the field as a means to victory was the dumbest possible idea of the three.

>Its a problem with the "untermensch" theory - you might find your adversary is as tough as you are
I know you think that sounds cool and all but it has nothing to do with that, it's the scale. soviets were getting slaughtered 3 to 1, 4 to 1, sometimes 10 to 1 against the germans. The problem was that the Germs were expecting to fight ~150 divisions, not 820 or whatever it was.

>Italians are apparently not mediterranean anymore and are "snowniggers"
>a German invasion launched in June is somehow invading during the winter
The absolute state of Greek education

The encirclement at kiev was a wise decision. The german rear would have been unguarded had they not done that, and the loss of ukraine basically shutdown all of the soviet's coal production for several months.

No, Napoleon left Russia as winter set in.

>r*ddit tier WWII historian
Lol don't invade RUSSIA in the winter guys!!! Hitler should have listened to his generals!

Small changes and we would all be speaking German instead of English right now.

Not just that, but Heinz Guderian had toured some Soviet facilities and met with Soviet commanders while the two nations had technology treaties in the 30s and he estimated in his book Achtung Panzer that the Soviets would be fielding ~15-20 thousand tanks by 1941. Hitler read this estimate and assumed that Guderian was greatly over-inflating the actual estimate to panic German leadership into more seriously adopting tank warfare theory. In reality Heinz had estimated accurately, and the Russians had something like 17,000 tanks and armored cars at the onset of war to Germany's 3500 or so. I'll give 1 chance at guessing whether or not they ever made up the difference.

>Italians are apparently not mediterranean anymore and are "snowniggers
The fascists were mainly roman celts from the northern parts of Italy.

The encirclement was not the problem, diverting their best and fastest mobile forces in the middle of an invasion which was essentially a race against the clock to deliver a knockout blow before winter 1941 was the problem. The Germans could have closed the noose and handled it with the large infantry formations they had in the area, but would have likely allowed 1/4th of the Soviet troops or more to escape. It was not a rear guard action which brought the Panzerkorps down, it was the school of thought that destroying or capturing as many Soviet military formations as possible was going to lead to victory, which obviously was a massive miscalculation.

TIL the Greeks think Romagna (Mussolini's home region along the Apennines) is celt and not Mediterranean

Rule #1 for imperialists: Dont Invade Russia
Rule #2: Dont Invade Afganistan
(And apart from anything elso, whats the point of capturing these couple of shitholes?)

And at Kursk? With proper equipment and (finally) military leadership, the Slavs fought the Werhmacht to a standstill.

Why do Europe invade Russia and dont think about winter.
>deus vult
Destroyed on frozen lake in 1242
>france
Napoleon sucked in winter
>England after killing Nikolai 2
Still can find their tanks in Arkhangelsk
>Nazi Germany
You already know

Russian resources are vast. If you convinced yourself it was a rotten structure which only needed your army to kick in the door in order for it to collapse, you might start eyeing the oil fields in Baku, especially if you felt the main problem holding you back from curb stomping the British was the fact that you didn't have enough oil. As for the Afghans who the fuck even knows. Nothing of value resides there and yet they've destroyed the ambitions of powerful nations from Alexander to the Soviets to the US

mongols didn't mind the winter

If you look at the actual data, by December 1941 Germans were overstretched and their divisions experienced quite heavy casualties. Winter was why they didn't start cityfighting in Moscow, but those fights would be quickly over and they'd have to retreat anyway because the previous 6 months of almost constant fighting wore them down too much.
The USSR had a conscription. They've had far more than enough time to prepare in pre-war times to endure winters there(not to mention that they've had experiences from Imperial Russia in the very same thing). They may have preferred to not fight on their own ground but the peacetime military had to operate there. As such they didn't suffer that much.

Mongols are tough guys. They dont care about winter like european pussys

Kursk was telegraphed into oblivion. It was a failure of command. The Russian defense in depth at Kursk was like ramming all their shiny new panzers through 25 consecutive stone walls and hoping to come out on top. The salient itself was another example of trying to destroy the Red Army in the field rather than go after proper operational targets, and I'd have to agree with Guderian again when he asked Hitler "why must we take the offensive in 1943 at all?".

The Soviets had always had proper equipment. The meme about 1 man to a rifle 1 man to its ammo from Enemy at the Gates is a massive exaggeration meant to convey the desperation of the Red Army on the Volga at the time. They were churning out Mosins, munitions, PPSHs, all order of small arms, and they were receiving metric tons of equipment via the allies. The difference as the war drew on was that their leadership recovered from the purges, they managed to mobilize large numbers of men and women more effectively, and they prepared defenses much better as the Germans got desperate and easier to bait/predict.

I'd also like to point out that estimates put German vs. Soviet strength for Kursk at 800k vs 2 million so a bit over a 1:2 disadvantage to the attacking Germans, and they managed to kill roughly 250k Soviets while suddering 50k killed themselves, which is a 5:1 KDR. They also lost 760 tanks and assault guns while destroying over 6,000 which is almost an 8:1 KDR

In other words, the Germans still greatly outclassed the Soviet forces. They just had nowhere near the quantity of troops, equipment, and resources to sustain an attack through a prepared defensive position like that. They blew their load in the wrong place and failed miserably.

Hitler being a WW1 veteran knew what chemical weapons meant and he refused to use them.
Unlike Churchill who thought about using them on germans.

It wasn't really the winter per se that fucked them, it was the autumn muds that bogged down the advance. The casualities caused by the winter were horrific, but the war was already lost by that point.

If there had been less severe autumn muds, then army group center would have captured Moscow and pushed on to Gorki before winter set in. After losing Moscow and being pushed back beyond Gorki, the CCCP has no good strategic options and would either collapse or surrender.

Alternatively, if the invasion was started earlier (so no Greece intervention) then maybe Moscow Gorki could have been taken before the muds developed. Other possible ways to win the war would be for Army Group North to continue the blitz over the Divina when Manstein found himself alone, and to capture Leningrad in a coup de main. That would free up North to help Center, and even with Center detatching men to help South, the rate of advance would have been sufficient to capture Moscow before a defensive line could be established and reserves (mostly in T-34s) brought to bear.

People don't realize how close the plan came to working, they just parrot the 'herr derr muh General Winter' meme. Literally any one of several minor changes in the original timeline and Barbarossa works.

the threat of chemical weapons would be enough to dissuade a Russian invasion, it's like a nuclear deterrent.

Of all people, you should know russians aren't impervious to winter.

The pre winter phase and the short spring after are even harder conditions. Mud, mud everywhere.

I agree, but I think this is only obvious in hindsight. Leaving a fucking huge concentration of soviets in your rear area, even if notionally contained by a few infantry divisions, must have seemed pretty fucking dicey, because it was. If Manstein had actually blitzed over the Divina when he captured the bridges intact, he could have taken Leningrad alone, waiting for the rest of North once he was in possession of the city. Then there would have been plenty of resources to both continue a non-stop push to Moscow, and detach forces to reduce the southern encirclement.

There was also a 3 week delay in early August that was not related to either closing the southern encirclement, or refitting (which should have only taken 10 days at the most). If that was obviated or reduced (down to 10 days), then the blitz would still have reached Moscow before reserves were brought up and the roads turned to mud. I agree that Hitler's seige mentality was a major problem-- he should have trusted the Heer's instinct to go for a knockout political victory.

Concur

Best post, imo

Was it wider? I always thought it was narrower. And I've read that the supply problems during Barbarossa were somewhat exaggerated post war. There were only a few days in the entire campaign where marshalls noted shortages of ammunition or fuel.

> People don't realize how close the plan came to working, they just parrot the 'herr derr muh General Winter' meme. Literally any one of several minor changes in the original timeline and Barbarossa works.
Hmmm. Not really. My sources would be alan clarkes Barbarossa and Scheiders Bloodlands. Russia was simply to big to crack, and Blitzkreig didnt work. With proper lSoviet leadership (allowing troops to withdraw in '41, and an encirclement of Army Groiup Centre in the 41 winter, Stalingrad would have been a year earlier.

they probably would have still lost, but germans were losing 10k soldiers a day to the cold

barbarossa was launched in summer. they were expecting for some reason the same level of weak resistance they encountered in western europe, and therefore failed to equip their troops for the winter. the soviet scorched earth policy did not help

apparently hitler never studied napoleon's invasion

it wasn't the germans' only critical strategic mistake

no, it's a fool who doesn't expect winter to be frigid in Russia. the Germans expected to have won by then. their arrogance cost them dearly

Mine is Stolfi's 'Hitler's Panzers East'

Good slim volume with excellent sources. Quick read if you want to get the other viewpoint-- that victory was possible and nearly achieved.