Feldgrau.net

Was the North Africa campaign in the end an oil war? No. And trying to fit this theory into the historical record is disingenuous, to say the very least. The North African campaign started because Mussolini, believing British power to be fatally weakened by the defeat in Europe, thought it would be...

Hi every1: I was wondering about the far reaching implications if england would've capitulated under German threat.. A very difficult question to answer, especially in a forum dedicated to discussion of that most land-locked of military organizations - the German army. The shortest answer is: Proba...

In addition to the above-mentioned factors - great blame for the failure of Barbarossa can be laid at the door of the vaunted Foreign Armies West intelligence organization. While the 1941 OKW intelligence estimate put Russian strength at not more than 200 effective divisions (as it turned out a fair...

The best book I've found that deals with this subject is Alistair Horne's "To Lose a Battle". Part of his trilogy of Franco-German conflicts (also covered are the war of 1870 and the battle of Verdun), it begins with the Paris Victory Parade in 1919, and continues through the capitulation ...

would the US have been able to defeat Germany on its own? An almost impossible hypothetical question. If you are talking about the green, poorly officered US army of Kasserine Pass - absolutely the Wehrmacht would have routed them. But the tough, resourceful, and well-led GIs of Bastogne and (let u...

You can make a very convincing argument that Market Garden was perhaps the perfect offensive operation - but deployed at perhaps the worst possible time, and with unfortunately predictable results. Given the totality of the situation faced by the allied commanders in late 1944, it was an amazingly b...

The idea that Stalin was planning an attack on Germany in 1941 is preposterous. For one thing, consider the confusion and disbelief that hampered Red Army commanders in the early days of Barbarossa. Repeated orders went out forbidding any sort of action that could be considered "provocation&quo...

I doubt that there ever would have been a time after the Soviets linked up that 6th Army could have made a succesful break-out. For one thing, by the time the Soviets launched Operation Saturn virtually all German combat troops were heavily engaged inside the city. It would have difficult, if not im...

Antwerp fell to the British on September 4, 1944. However, due to the failure to clear the German defenders from the Scheldt estuary (which were covering the seaborne approaches to the port) the first Allied convoy did not arrive there until November 28th - less than a month prior to the start of th...

Barbarossa failed for a number of reasons, both strategic and tactical. First, there was a severe failure on the part of the much-vaunted Foreign Armies East. The Soviets had almost twice as many divisions as the Germans thought. Secondly, the Germans had no idea of the existence of the T-34 tank, a...

I place the date when Hitler lost the war for Germany as October 23, 1940; when he met with Generalissimo Franco of Spain at Hendaye. Here Hitler tried (and failed) to persuade Franco to join the Axis, seize Gibraltar; and close the Mediterranean to the British. Consider what would have happened if ...

Were German forces very badly organised in 1944,if they needed so great support? Hitler was fascinated by numbers - and to him the measure of military strength was the number of divisions he had available. For this reason new "Divisions" were constantly being created, but with fewer and f...

my position is this: Overlord was unnecassary because of the major victory at Stalingrad The two battles were separated by almost a year and a half, so making a direct causative argument one way or the other is difficult. But consider this: Had Germany not had deploy as many divisions as it did in ...

The Germans would have had an extremely tough time carrying out an amphibious invasion of the British Isles at any time during 1940 or thereafter. First, to discuss the Italian navy. In order to leave the Mediterranean it would have had to pass through either the Straits of Gibraltar or the Suez Can...

Was there ever any chance that the Luftwaffe could defeat the Combined Bomber Offensive? There was always a chance. But the general problem that the Luftwaffe had, along with so many other German institutions of the period, is that it was terribly badly managed. And for the source of that bad manag...