Whenever we talk about World War II, we would almost always account the Allies’ victory to the Soviets, the turning point being the Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Kursk. The Internet and social media would instinctively compare the Germans’ failure to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 to Napoleon’s failure to conquer the Russian Empire in 1812, with many memes mocking both rulers of their own countries. The most obvious thing about every of such memes is how they underestimated the drastically cold Russian Winter, and hence became the turning point for both demises. However, is the Russian Winter really the main reason for Hitler’s failure to conquer the USSR? After all, plain weather patterns cannot explain the loss of a powerful nation, …show more content…
there are many other factors which could be the main cause and explain the real reason for the Reich’s failure to conquer and defeat the ‘Russian Bear’. Let’s say the Russian Winter is the main reason for the failure of the Germans to conquer the USSR.
A lot of evidence does seem to prove this. Source A shows the fact about the winter of Russia, in which claiming that 1941 and 1942 were the coldest winters in the entire 20th century. Source B shows that in December 1941, during the Battle of Moscow, temperatures reached -37oC, with recounts of soldiers having their fingers being completely frozen or fingers freezing at the triggers if they weren’t wearing a glove. This shows how the extreme coldness of the winters in 1941 and 1942 and greatly affected the performance of the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, not only causing them deep pain due to frostbite, which even caused their fingers to be frozen or break off, but also caused soldiers to use fuels which was supposed to be used for the vehicles and tanks to warm themselves up. The Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Moscow, battles that happened during the winter, had relatively more deaths than previous battles, such as the Battle of Kiev and Battle of Minsk. Source C shows the total deaths in each battle other than Minsk. The battle of Stalingrad had about 1.1 million axis casualties, the battle of Moscow had about 180,000 to 400,000 deaths while the Battle of Kiev only had 128,000 deaths. Moreover, these ‘winter battles’ also took a longer time to finish compared to the Battle of Minsk while only last 2 weeks and Kiev lasted 1 month whereas the Battle of Moscow took 3 months …show more content…
and Stalingrad took 5 months. Rasputitsa, from the Russian Winter, was one of the reasons for the slowing down of the Germans. Rasputitsa is a condition in Eastern Europe during the autumn and winter seasons where the mud reappears and this mud results in the slowing down of vehicles like the tanks and armoured cars, the resulted in delays and the Wehrmacht taking a longer time to advance during the Battle of Moscow, which could have saved the capital from collapse. Moreover, Source D shows the German advances in 1941 and 1942 from its original position at around Warsaw from the General Government. The light blue shows the advances of the Germans in 1941 and the even lighter blue shows the advances of the Germans in 1942. It shows 1942 advance being considerably lesser than the 1941 advance, mostly likely due to the Battle of Moscow which completely stopped the Germans’ progress. Hence, further proving the winter being the main factor to the weakening of the Wehrmacht in Moscow and resulting the total defeat in Stalingrad. The argument that the Russian winter was the main reason for the failure of the Nazis to conquer the USSR seems convincing. However, there are other factors that could have the main reason. And one of them is because the severe underestimation the Soviets. For a start, the Germans believed that the Soviet Union would be defeated within a few months, due to the effects of the Great Purges led by Stalin which resulted in the executions of many highly-skilled generals, which led Hitler to believe that the USSR would quickly fall to German blitzkrieg, hence the rush to quickly invade the USSR in 1941 rather than 1942. In fact the USSR was even planned to be invaded in July 1940. The underestimation of the time needed resulted in too little resources for the soldiers which led to insufficient supplies, especially winter clothing for the soldiers, which resulted in the cold torture of hundreds of thousands of men. Hitler also underestimated the resistance and morale of the Soviets, and he did not realise that the Russians have enough people to replace millions of dead soldiers easily unlike the Germans in which heavy losses are deadly to their entire progress. Source E showed the manpower in the Eastern front midyear records. It shows how the Germans are outnumbered with only 3.3 million compared to the Soviets having around 5 million every year, this shows even with superiority of German fighting and military power, the Soviets were able to replace such losses easily. With the lack of resources and the Soviet ‘scorched earth’ policy, the Germans could not replace losses easily. Another major factor is the meddling of the German Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.
After the successes of the Fall of France in 1940, Hitler decided to promote himself as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, controlling every operation. This was a huge mistake considering Hitler’s short military campaign in the First World War. After all, he was only a corporal after 4 years in the Great War, in fact he was only a dispatch runner, meaning his role was to send message from fronts to fronts. Hence, meaning that he has very little combat experience let alone commanding an entire army. However, he felt he was superior to the other generals, such as Guderian and Manstein, despite them actually carrying higher ranks than him from the First World War, and it was their plans and strategies that brought about the success of blitzkrieg in Poland and the Low Countries. This resulted in many military blunders committed which had resulted in deadly consequences. One of these, is the invasion of Stalingrad. Stalingrad had little military purpose, most believed Hitler only wanted to conquer the city for the sake of conquering a city with the name of the Soviet leader. And the result was deadly due to splitting of forces, which resulted in the turning point of the war. Not only that, Hitler’s defeatism attitude, not allowing soldiers to retreat and to fight to the last man, resulted in many unnecessary deaths. This is the main reason for the destruction of the 6th army, the army that
was to fight in Stalingrad. When the entire 6th army was encircled by Soviet forces due to Operation Uranus, Hitler demanded them to stay in Stalingrad and fight to the last man while supplies are to be sent through air despite the fact that the army had the potential to break out of the encirclement and retreat, which could have saved many lives. Eventually, the general of the 6th army, Friedrich Paulus, surrendered the army in February 1942. This is shown by Source F. In fact, Operation Barbarossa was rushed in 1941 due to Hitler wanting to achieve lebensraum. Lastly, the main reason could be the wrong tactics used against the Soviets. Blitzkrieg was wrongly used in the middle of the campaign. Blitzkrieg, meaning lightning war, mainly relied on the concentration of armoured and infantry forces to perform a pincer attack upon the enemy. The constant shifting of fronts will confuse the enemy which results in quick victory for the Germans. At the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German blitzkrieg pincer attacks resulted in quick victories against the Soviets, with the conquest of Minsk and Kiev. However, later on, blitzkrieg was misused. For example, there was huge splitting of forces due to gigantic 1800 mile front the Germans had to defend. There was splitting of forces to between Leningrad and Moscow in 1941, as well as the splitting of forces between Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Such splitting of forces weakened the Germans significantly as they do not have as much men and resources as the Soviet Union and thus would lose terribly in all those campaign. The overstretched front resulted in the weakening of defences of the Germans, and the In conclusion, despite the Russian winter directly resulting in many many causualties, but it is still not the main cause of the Germans’ failure to conquer to USSR. With enough preparations, and
Hitler’s conduction of the Battle of Stalingrad was his biggest mistake. The decisions that Hitler made during the Battle of Stalingrad influenced the outcome of following battles and World War 2. Adolf Hitler kept sending men into the front line even though generals advised him to withdraw the troops and surrender. According to William L. Shirer, “When General Zeitzler got up enough nerve to suggest to the Fuehrer that the Sixth Army should be withdrawn from Stalingrad, Hitler flew into a fury. ‘Where the German soldier sets foot, there he remains!’"(The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Document 1) Hitler aspires to take over the world so a loss could make his leadership appear to be weak and expose flaws to the rest of the world creating a downward spiral of his reputation, of being
General Guderian termed the conflict as a critical setback. The losses experienced in the battle could not be simply replaced and the Soviets were now outnumbering the Germans with armoured vehicles. By August, the Red Army had 8200 tanks on the battlefield, whilst the Germans scraped the surface with 2500. Overy states that, “The struggle for Kursk tore the heart out of the German army, Soviet success at Kursk, with so much at stake, was the most important single victory of the war. It was the point at which the initiative passed to the Soviet side.” Overy clearly defines that the battle of Kursk undoubtedly changed the course of the
... control under allied empower, Hitler appeared to look nervous from the actions that had taken place. Hitler’s force couldn’t resist the cold of Russia of which they had pushed too far into for further enhancements. Hitler would soon learn an enduring lesson since the push he had made in Russia would eventually backfire on him. The deceptive strategy by the Soviets would work perfectly on the German force. For example, Stalin let Hitler’s force into Russia but for the better of the Allied union. He knew that Hitler’s army would suffer and die from the extensive cold and lack of nourishment in Russia. He would then play an offensive move by counter-attacking and pushing all the way back into Germany. The devious tactics played by the allied force surely was a significant lesson learned from the raid, which in the end made Hitler surrender to its “Fortress Europe.”
The battle of the bulge was the final battle to defeat Nazi Germany in Europe. Russia did not have actual soldiers in the battle however, it was their strong efforts that drove Germany west enough for Great Britain and the United States to attack Germany on two sides.
As winter set in, many German rescue missions were attempted and failed. Temperatures dropped to 30 degrees Celsius. Because of the lack of supplies, the daily ration for soldiers was dropped from 100 grams of bread a day to 50 grams a day, which is less than 200 calories(). One German soldier said, “My hands are done, and have been ever since the beginning of December. The little finger of my left hand is missing and – what’s even worse – the three middle fingers of my right hand are frozen.
“The Battle of the Bulge, fought over the winter months of 1944 – 1945, was the last major Nazi offensive against the Allies in World War Two. The battle was a last ditch attempt by Hitler to split the Allies in two in their drive towards Germany and destroy their ability to supply themselves” (Trueman).
Health and diseases also had an incredibly large impact on the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad and is also a factor as to why the German’s were so ineffective. Due to the mass amount of deaths due to bleeding out. German officials had developed a tactic in which stated that the German soldiers were to restrict from eating before fighting. This was developed as restricting would reduce the amount of blood loss if a soldier were to become injured. This tactic weakened the German soldier’s immune systems and caused many of their soldiers to die due to malnourishment. The deaths that related back to malnourishment hastily came to light, causing German officials to desperately try to refeed their soldiers; prompting the deaths of many German
In one month’s time, the Allies lost 34,000 men to either death or capture. Germany, by contrast, lost 100,000 men and 800 tanks. Hitler has failed to recognize the manpower resources of the American army and had misinterpreted the effect that Autumn Mist would have on the front. In reality, all it did was delay the impending break into Germany by a few months time. With Russia getting closer to Berlin by the day and the Rhine the only obstacle in the way of Montgomery, Hitler’s time was running out. The Battle of the Bulge is best concluded by Sir Winston Churchill, who said “It was without any doubt the greatest American battle of the Second World War and it will, I believe, always be considered as a great American victory.”
After a two year stalemate, both the Russians and Germans awaited major confrontations that would define the momentum for either side. Up until this point in the war, although the Germans had captured many European countries and were victoriously advancing with their keen tactics, such as the blitzkrieg and their cogent weapons, battles on the Eastern front seemed impossible to win. Upon a dismal loss at the Battle of Stalingrad earlier in 1943, German morale was greatly lowered and the German forces finally apprehended the strength of the Russian troops. The momentum would finally be settled with the decisive battle near the town of Kursk, a town on the Moscow-Rostov railway, in Southern Russia. The goal of the Battle of Kursk was to regain German morale and to pinch off a large salient in the Eastern front, which would make Russians much more vulnerable to German attack. Being such an important battle to the overall success of the Germans, they formulated several unique plans; however, due to the lack of good judgement, these plans were doomed from the very start.
The battle fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazi Wehrmacht over the “city of Stalin” for four long months in the fall and winter of 1942-3 stands as not only the most important battle of the Eastern front during World War II, but as the greatest battle ever fought. Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad ended three years of almost uninterrupted victory and signaled the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. In this way, Stalingrad’s significance was projected beyond the two main combatants, extending to all corners of the world.
Throughout the destructive and bitter winters during the time span from December 1777-February 1778, many men at the Valley Forge Camp were catching an illness or dying. Studies from researchers at the University of Michigan show that over the course of 3 months almost 50% of the soldiers (3989 out of 8000) were sick, and 10% were dead by the time they were ready to fight again (Doc. A). If I was a soldier back then I wouldn’t want a 50% chance of catching an illness because medical issues weren’t as easily cured during that time period. Although only 10% resulted in death, out of 8000 soldiers that took a pretty significant toll on the Continental
World War II was seen around the globe as a war to end all wars. Combat like this had never been experienced before and it was the largest scale battle in recent history. The death tolls for all sides skyrocketed to heights that had never been reached in any battle ever before. There was one man at the center of it all, one man who came to personify the root of living, breathing evil. That man was Adolf Hitler and to the rest of the world, he was a superhuman military machine who had no other goal but to achieve world domination through destruction. But the roots of the Battle of Stalingrad all began in 1941 when Hitler launched operation Barbarossa. Hitler’s powerful army marched across the east, seemingly unstoppable to any force. Stalin’s Red Army was caught completely off guard and their lines were completely broken apart. A majority of the country’s air force was destroyed when airfields were raided and many of the planes never even got the chance to leave the ground. Hitler’s army finally came to Leningrad where the city was besieged. The city held for 900 days and never gave way to the relentless Germans. At the cost of 1.5 million civilians and soldiers, the Red Army stopped Hitler from advancing further and postponed his plan to sweep over the south. Another cause for the retreat of Hitler was the brutal Russian winter, which Hitler and his army were completely unprepared for and the icy cold deaths would continue to haunt the Germans.
In the spring of 1940 Europe was enveloped in war. The German military machine had already conquered Poland, Denmark, and Norway. However, not content with northern and eastern expansion, Adolf Hitler wanted to control the western countries in Europe. Hitler had long been obsessed with attacking and controlling France. After their defeat in World War I, the German people, government, and military were humiliated by the enormous post war sanctions leveraged against them from the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler wanted to defeat and humiliate the French people in the same way that his country had to experience. For him, revenge was necessary. The German plan was to swing into France using a new tactic know as Blitzkrieg or “Lightning War”. Blitzkrieg used speed and surprise along with highly concentrated tank corps, supported by mechanized infantry and airplanes.
...cy lead to the defeat and severe losses, which were unreplaceable. Hitler was weakening his own strength, whilst he was strengthening that of his opponent by declaring war on another great power, the United States. The declaration of war on the US proved very costly. Hitler’s alliance with Italy was also a burden to Germany as they were too dependable on Germany and became more of a liability than an asset. Plus after the overthrow of the Italian Government, the new Italian government joined the allies, which opened up a new front and threat of attack. Hitler continually underestimated the strength of his opponents and overestimated the strength of his own army. Diverting his troops to different fronts too often and weakening the German force. Hitler’s pursuit of the Final solution, which drained the army of manpower and resources, and his failure to recognise the need for total war before it was too late and Germany was already facing defeat, can also be attributed to bad leadership and judgement by the Fuhrer which would eventually lead to the downfall of the Third Reich. Therefore the leadership and decisions of Hitler make him responsible for Germany’s defeat in World War Two.
During the start of the Operation, the weather was in favor of the invading German Forces. As the months passed, heavy rains began to slow the German Army due to the mud stopping armor and slowing the troop’s forward movement. As winter approaches, the ground hardened making it possible to continue pressing forward but the bitter cold of Soviet winters interfered with the operation of military equipment. The German Army was unprepared for the cold. Lacking winter supplies, such as uniforms for the soldiers make it very difficult to complete tasks. The German Army is too far from German supply lines, in order to make timely drops of much needed supplies. The lack of supplies led to thousands dying of hypothermia and casualties from frostbite (The Siege of Leningrad, 2014). The weather also hindered the ability of the Luftwaffe to take part in daily