Sorry, trouble shutting up lately, working way too much on way too many projects (getting to sleep before 4am would just be an ace), some sort of “constant overactive mode”, If I try to wrote one line, hundred pours out… 
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he did spend a lot of resource on weapons that arent very useful through out the war, like the A-4 missiles and the giant tank (i forget the name).
i think is biggest mistake was not giving the commanders on the ground more control over the troops the man one the grounds knows what is going on in there ops
That’s a good one, especially thinking about the Western Front 1944-1945 makes one mad.
Although there are also some opposite cases: i.e. some argue that when Hitler ordered tank forces to be relocated from Leningrad sector to Moscow sector (for the Operation Wotan), Leeb should have thought about the big picture - and not his glory as a conqueror of Leningrad - and release tank forces sooner (and in better shape).
Somebody once commented that when Hitler was doing the correct decisions (Poland, Norway, France, early part of Barbarossa) generals were not obeying him, and later, when Hitler was doing a mistake after a mistake, there were only the yes-men left doing exactly as ordered.
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his biggest mistake was invading france before russia believe it or not! i would’ve invaded rusia first! taking poland and all the other counties with it! once in russia he would have had the resources ie OIL! to build a huge defense around the French-German Border meaning little chance of france trying to invade germany, and to build a colloussus army that would of litterally stormed through france and demolished england! he would then of had the resources to be able to an even stronger atlantic wall, and more defenses surrounding russia and more resources to use in the fight agains partisan and freedom fighters!
This is very popular point in post-war memours of GErmans gernerals like Manstain, Gudderian and ets…
Unfortinatelly this point doesn not hold the any critic.
Hitler was a SINGLE strategist in whole German army. He was forced to keep in mind too much considerations and thoughts. He ONLY know the whole situation.
He thought about all aspects- political,economical not just military (unlike most of his generals).
So indeed he was right in most cases, but generals were wrong.
The tupical complain of generals was- Hitler did not give them the enough rights to command and enough troops:)
This is a childish- the GErmans resources and troops were not the endless.
In every compain - even in Barbarossa Hitler took all considerations - he ordered to concentrate on attack of Moscow but it was delayed for 2-3 weeks by the liqudation of Pocket in Ukraine.
The Soviets had enough time to prepeare the Moscow for defence.
I personaly have already expressed my point- Hitler did all right.
He did not make the mistakes, coz Germans lead this war with limited military resources.
All their plans were about superior of GErmans Army- untill winter 1942-43 they reached it succesfull.
Aye, uh, didn’t Hitler order his troops to stand and fight to the last man which pretty much allowed the Allies to slaughter them in battles of annihilation that the Wehrmacht could not win?
Only for the SS, and on very small circumstances! If the cituation was desperate then he would send out that order! He wasn’t an idiot… why would he order his army to be slaughtered for pointless objectives?
It was Stalin who ordered that mainly! He ordered that if you took one step back you would be shot by your own officers! He’s the bloody lunatic! he didn’t even care for his own countrymen!
Thank you for your input oh wise stratigist.
Hitler would still be at war with Britian and the rest of the Western European countries though. His invasion of Poland brought many of them in to the war.
Do you actually know what you are talking about or are you just writing down your brain farts?
Hmmm. Let’s look at history.
Stalingrad. Go away, read, come back. They you realise how much of an idot Hitler was at times, and that he would often tell units to fight to the death.
These orders were far more regular than you appear to belive and didn’t just cover the SS.
And yes. Why would he order his armies to be slaughtered for pointless objectives.
i know what happened in stalingrad, any person with a arsehole knows what happened in SStalinggrad, and btw ive read too much on the war, ive studied the war in school, college and im currently in the process trying to get into uni for a history degree.
The fatc is i dont just read about the war from the eyes of the western countries! like 90% of people do, nearly every book written by an american or englishman and mostly western civlisation isn’t entirly factual! about 75% of it is proven fact! the other 25% wasm just what was learned from propaganda and other shit like that.
Stalingrad yes that once the first major f*ck from hitler and yes he did order pointless things to the german sixth army and the rest, because one he was desperate, and two he was trying to break through to the south west and save them but, the soviets had completly surrounded the sity and his forces couldn’t push through. He ordered them to fight to the death because in his eyes there ws no other option, his men were surrounded and cut off from supply, the soviets were to cpture them and therefore he has lost an army group. At last witht the order of fight to the death the might still be that little tiny glimer of hope for them and him!
So ordering an Army to die was the best option available at the time?
Not, I don’t know. Surrender (thus increasing the burden on the enemy)? Or maybe fight your way out?
You may have read a book on WW2 but you don’t seem to grasp some of the concepts. Nor do you seem to seperate the facts of the situation from the shiny pages.
You are talking about the deaths of so many men.
It if fortunate they chose to surrender against Hitlers orders.
Do you know why (with your omnipotent view on things) why Hitler promoted Paulus, the commander of the 6th Army to FieldMarshall rank, days before the order to stand and die?
Surely he promoted Paulus to manipulate him to carry out his orders, and what was they poin t in trying to breakout when the advance in the south west of the city was brought to a complete halt, one they wouldnn’t be able to breakout and two if they did breakout what would they have done? The army would have been mauled that they would have been useless for a good prt of two years.
In hitlers eyes surrendering would have been pointless, he would loose an army! Now if he ordered them to fight to the death he would stil loose an army but, hopefully manage to take alot more of the soviets with them. You might aswell go out guns balzing.
Very good, take a gold star. He did indeed promote Paulus to maniupulate him. Not only in to carrying out his orders but also in to committing suicide. No German FM had, at that point, ever surrendered. Hitler was, in his own way, issuing a sentance of death on Paulus.
Or so it is believed.
You might aswell go out guns balzing? Rigghhhhttttt. Yet another mong who thinks wars are cool, and dying is somehow romantic.
The greatest mistake was not defeating Great Britain.
If Germany had managed to conquer or at least bring Great Britain into line then resistance to German operations North Africa would be greatly reduced. Allowing for a pincer movement in to the Caucasus.
The USA (If Hitler still declared war) wouldn’t have a jumping off point into Europe and would have no bases for it’s strategic bombers. Meaning no bombing of strategic targets i.e. factories or airfields and no invasion of Festung Europe for the forseable future.
This in turn would allow Germany to concentrate its forces on the destruction of the USSR. Which had a greater possibility of success.
Hitler’s Biggest Mistake?
Where do you start, there’s enough to fill a book.
For starters…
Amazingly not putting Germany on a complete war footing until 1943, [after Stalingrad,] meant Germany not realizing it’s full war potential until to late.
Some of the the figures in German production in '41 and '44 speak for themselves…
Tanks '41 - 1,500 '44 - 8,000
Recon Vehicles '41 - 5,800 '44 - 32,000
Assault Guns '41 - 550 '44 - 5,000
Air craft '41 - 11,500 '44 - 39,000
manpower '41 - 5m '44 - 9,500,000
He broke the cardinal rule of the Army General staff that under no circumstances should Germany ever again fight a war on two fronts.
[it’s almost unbelievable that the Hitlers plan for European [or world] domination was probably defeated by a 22 mile channel of water]
Attacking Russia was inevitable, [Mien Kampf] but the invasion of such a vast country with a force built for a short war, not total War, was a monumental blunder.
Declaring war on the U.S. was the last nail in the coffin…
Those three blunders, made his myriad of other mistakes like getting rid of of some of the best commanders of modern warfare, and leading the most potent military in the world around by the nose, more or less redundant.
Screwing with the Russians!
Yeah… look at napoleon and look where it got him.
I found this on another site, and it just about sums it up for me…
The Germans…
Tactical experts, poor strategists and logistics is a dirty word.
If you consider that the invasion of such a vast country with a force built for a short war, not total War, then it was indeed a folly from the start.
I have yet to see a convincing statement that shows Germany could have won in the East without changing the whole German premise for the invasion and the building of German Armed Forces and industry in the late 1930’s. To have succeeded would have required differences that the Nazi’s and their leader would never have adopted.
No matter how good your forces are operationally and tactically, if they do not have a strategy that is sound they cannot win.
Germany proved this in two wars.
Sorry guys, this bloated a bit…
Population is not be the definitive parameter in prediciting success or failure - France had the largest population in Europe during centuries past and never managed to defeat England or Spain or Holland…
The Soviet population came from fourteen quite separate republics - the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS was strengthened to the tune of a few hundred thousand Eastern recruits from all republics (including Russia itself) during the war, there is an interesting treatise on the subject here - http://www.feldgrau.com/rvol.html.
Given the run down state of the Red Army in 1941 (beaten off even by wee Finland) one could argue strongly that a German victory was very definately possible.
The Kaiser managed to beat the vastly more numerous Russian Army in submission and surrender during the first worldwide difference of opinion, so the numbers alone don’t tell the story.
Even if numbers are the last word consider the following, my belief is that having to defend the Western Front by having not successfully invaded Britain in 1940 was Herr Hitler’s biggest mistake - a mistake Hitler himself recognised as being one reason for the lost of the first world wide difference of opinion.
German order of battle by 1944 was some 157 (understrength) divisions in the Soviet Union and 6 in Finland on the Eastern front and in the west - 12 in Norway, 6 in Denmark, 9 in Germany, 21 in the Balkans, 26 in Italy and 59 in France and the low countries.
In the event of Britain capitulating in 1940, with no air or seaborne threat from the west, with the inevitable subsequent fall of North Africa and the Mediteranean and the wilting on the vine of the resistance movements in western Europe (all pretty much dependant on suport from Blighty), that would leave up to 133 divisions free to head east.
Without considering Italian divisions not required for battle against the 8th Army.
The Luftwaffe resources consumed garrisoning northern france by day, manning the Kamhuber line against Bomber Command by night and deployed in support of the DAK would similarly be freed for redeployment with yellow wing tips and white distemper paint.
The Deustche Afrika Corps would be available to manoeuvre east of Suez; Army group ‘even further south?’ (more likely Armee gruppe Kaukaus) - so one of Germany’s main Bêtes Niores, access to oil, would be rather well sorted with access to Persian/Mespotamian/Caucasian oilfields.
And with sod all to oppose them.
Would Turkey and Spain have remained Neutral? Hard to imagine Turkey missing the chance to restore some semblance of the former Ottoman Empire, a union with oil rich Azerbaijan would be tempting without there being any repurcussions from occupied Britain and France…
Maybe Spain would have been happy to Garrison England - pay back for that wee armada of theirs coming a cropper in the English Channel and for having acquired Gibraltar.
The Luftwaffe’s weakness in mounting strategic air offensive given a shot in the arm by virtue of the heavies already in the pipe line in Britain.
There’s also the question of capturing a geared up nation’s weapons production for one’s own benefit.
All the resources used on the Atlantic Wall redeployed east, how handy would a few thousand extra 88s have been?
Ultra removed from the Allied inventory (unless Bletchley Park could have been packed up and spirited way - even so, hard to imagine the Gestapo failing to learn of ultra’s existance and Enigma being reconsidered).
In fairness not much of the information from Bletchley Park was disclosed to Stalin and his Tovarichskiy.
Without having to bother about interdicting convoys to Britain, the Kreigsmarine would have been soley concentrated on interdicting convoys to Russia - without the risk of antagonising the US (as occured historically) by hitting the odd USN convoy escort (which stopped sailing east where?, Greenland or Iceland if memory serves my correctly)
Or just not built at all, and the steel and production capacity invested instead in greater numbers of Panzer mkV and VI.
With the ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ captured, whatever American intentions may have existed in joining the fight in Europa, those would surely have evaporate (how would an invasion force be mounted from North America, with any hope of success, even if the US and Canada could be arsed?)
Maybe more Indians would have been supportive of joining the Japanese against the colonial rule of the remaining Brits with support from Britain gone - a powerful shot in the arm for the Imperial Army. (India today has the third largest defence force on the planet).
more distant speculation - Would Japan have consequently felt the need to strike down Malaya or through Burma toward india if Britain had capitulated to an ally? There would no doubt be terms of reference to that in the surrender documents…
What then of Japanese intentions? Even the Siberian infantry can’t be in two places at once…
Last point - you don’t have to invade and occupy all of Russia to claim a victory, Once you’ve gotten everything as far east as Moscow (or Kazan if you’re on a roll) subdued, you have the bulk of Russian population and industry under control - East of Ural war production is all well and good, but even in Komrade Stalin’s Glorious Balshoy Traktor Faktory retooled to knock up T-34 tanks, there is the question of feeding the workers.
Look at Google Earth and go figure where that food is grown - not in central Siberia, where things grind to a halt in summer because the frozen rivers that double up as highways thaw and melt (or get too thin to drive on in any case).
A lot of what ifs in that list, but all would depend on the successful outcome of Op Seelowe. The biggest mistake was the one Hitler was keen to avoid in the first place - fighting on two fronts. That means not invading Britain was the cock-up that sealed it.
So to quote one Winston Churchill after the dust settled over the Battle of Britain - ‘…Never was so much owed…’