Slitherine

"Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics."

I don't think we can say choosing Egypt was the wrong choice. Nobody know how Operation Herkules would have ended. Let's say the Germans had managed to take Malta. Then what? In order to hurt the British you need to get to Egypt and beyond.

I can understand why Hitler was reluctant to make a paradrop on Malta. Germany had lost many paratroopers in the invasion of Crete.

GogTheMild wrote:"Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics."

tactics win battles - logistics win wars

Stauffenberg wrote:I don't think we can say choosing Egypt was the wrong choice. Nobody know how Operation Herkules would have ended. Let's say the Germans had managed to take Malta. Then what? In order to hurt the British you need to get to Egypt and beyond.

I can understand why Hitler was reluctant to make a paradrop on Malta. Germany had lost many paratroopers in the invasion of Crete.

Actually both Eygpt & Malta were both bad idea & Egypt was the wrose one which was proved by history .

another reason why Hitler give up Malta is that Hitler didn't trust Italian Navy ! He was afraid of Italian navy 's bad performance when Germany's transport try to land in Malta !

Morris wrote:

Stauffenberg wrote:I don't think we can say choosing Egypt was the wrong choice. Nobody know how Operation Herkules would have ended. Let's say the Germans had managed to take Malta. Then what? In order to hurt the British you need to get to Egypt and beyond.

I can understand why Hitler was reluctant to make a paradrop on Malta. Germany had lost many paratroopers in the invasion of Crete.

Actually both Eygpt & Malta were both bad idea & Egypt was the wrose one which was proved by history .

another reason why Hitler give up Malta is that Hitler didn't trust Italian Navy ! He was afraid of Italian navy 's bad performance when Germany's transport try to land in Malta !

that is not a universally held view - some would say the southern route to the oil fields was the right strategy

I agree with Duncan on this one. Going for Egypt was more logic, then invading USSR.
If axis control Suez in 1941 UK could just accept peace on German terms and "world" war ends with it.

Then main problem with going for Egypt to force UK submission is that the main reason for Hitler to start his offensives in the first place was that he wanted to crush USSR. He needed to take Poland to get a common border with USSR. Fighting in the west was a necessity to give him free hands to deal with the Russians.

So Hitler would never have been content with ending the war before he had reached his ultimate goal. His desire for Lebensraum meant he wanted to see Germany stretch all the way to the Urals. Unrealistic, of course, but that was his master plan.

So war between Germany and USSR would have been inevitable. I also don't think Churchill would have sued for peace if Germany had got to the Suez.

Stauffenberg wrote:Then main problem with going for Egypt to force UK submission is that the main reason for Hitler to start his offensives in the first place was that he wanted to crush USSR. He needed to take Poland to get a common border with USSR. Fighting in the west was a necessity to give him free hands to deal with the Russians.

So Hitler would never have been content with ending the war before he had reached his ultimate goal. His desire for Lebensraum meant he wanted to see Germany stretch all the way to the Urals. Unrealistic, of course, but that was his master plan.

So war between Germany and USSR would have been inevitable. I also don't think Churchill would have sued for peace if Germany had got to the Suez.

1 Hitler & Stalin were two monsters who planed to attack another in 1941 . Hitler believed UK will accept peace whenever He would defeat USSR & If he won't crush USSR in 1941 , Stalin will crush Germany in 1942 or later . IT was wrong but He had no better choice ! The fatal damage for the Third Reich was Pearl Habour ! After that no one can change the result but take some time .

2"I also don't think Churchill would have sued for peace if Germany had got to the Suez" I do agree with it !

Well,

I don't believe Hitler wanted to attack USSR. It was not really his target (anyone read Mein Kampf?) Primary target for Germany was to crush Western Allies. Victory with France (revenge for WWI) and peace with England would be dream for Hitler - if that happened then Germany would be world's superpower again (and could take France's colonies which would be more than satisfactory for Germany at that time). This explains Dunkirk and very low aggression towards UK (in the background peace attempts were made).

But Stalin's plans that he had plotted since mid 20-es was to conquer of the whole Europe as a liberator - something similar to WWI, but this time Russia was to be much, much stronger (in 1935 USSR made air drop of tanks while other countries had parachute units of regiment size at most). This explains many strange movements USSR made between WWI and WWII. Do you see how Hitler went to power? Why communists didn't support their natural ally in Reichstag and supported nazis which gave power to Hitler? Why USSR opened its frontier so wide towards Germany, why it deinstalled all fortifications on Polish borders, why it had only offensive air, only offensive tanks, why it attacked Finland (to cover another step of mobilization) in 1940 USSR, a country at peace had almost 3 millions soldiers, similar to Germany who was fighting with France and UK for almost a year.

My opinion is that in 1940 Hitler realized the trap Stalin put him and had no choice but to attack USSR before Stalin attacks him. This is what he said to one of his general when asked why attack a country that nobody never conquered. He answered: "I have no other choice"...

And please don't compare me to Montgomery - a general who would never do anything without resources and connections he had.

I do wonder what would have happened if Hitler had disavowed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour and offered to ally with the US against Japan . Or at least stood back and said "Nothing to do with me". I don't see how the US could have declared war on Germany because it had been attacked by Japan .

GogTheMild wrote:I do wonder what would have happened if Hitler had disavowed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour and offered to ally with the US against Japan . Or at least stood back and said "Nothing to do with me". I don't see how the US could have declared war on Germany because it had been attacked by Japan .

I don't think that was possible. Ally of our enemy is our enemy. Roosevelt would have come up with something to get US into war with Germany. You just need to send enough merchant ships to UK without escorts so one of them is sunk accidentally sooner or later...

Kragdob wrote:

GogTheMild wrote:I do wonder what would have happened if Hitler had disavowed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour and offered to ally with the US against Japan . Or at least stood back and said "Nothing to do with me". I don't see how the US could have declared war on Germany because it had been attacked by Japan .

I don't think that was possible. Ally of our enemy is our enemy. Roosevelt would have come up with something to get US into war with Germany. You just need to send enough merchant ships to UK without escorts so one of them is sunk accidentally sooner or later...

Hitler certainly made his fair share of grand mistakes but certain political events outside Germany were a little out of his control - I do wonder if he had some form of degenerative mental illness (aside from being a megalomaniac!) as his judgement declines steadily throughout his time in power

on the southern oil route, I do think there is a good chance that the UK would accept a peace proposition in mid 41 if the Axis has secured the med and oil then its very hard for the UK and US to intervene to support Stalin if he attacks Germany or if Germany waits until 42 to attack

richardsd wrote:on the southern oil route, I do think there is a good chance that the UK would accept a peace proposition in mid 41 if the Axis has secured the med and oil then its very hard for the UK and US to intervene to support Stalin if he attacks Germany or if Germany waits until 42 to attack

This is not CEAW

Even if Egypt was conquered there was still long way to Iraq. Even if Iraq was conquered to assure safe and steady inflow of oil it was a venture for years. If Italy/Germany was not able to secure supplies for DAK how do you see securing transport of oil from Iraq to Germany? And how do you see Brits would have seen peace with Germany after Battle of Britain was won? They didn't do it after fall of France I don't believe they would - Britain's policy was always aimed at keeping equilibirum in Europe they simply couln't afford single power ruling Europe, and they had US behind and USSR coming into the party so from GDP perspective the war was won already - it was just the matter of time.

For USSR, again it is not CEAW . No wait till 1942. USSR was ready for war in 1941. It is just Hitler who was completely unpredictable (who attacks Russia without winter equipment?) and somehow luckily managed to score pre-emptive strike. If you look at order of battail Red Army was positioned for a pincer strike (Lvov and Bialystok army groups) which turned out disastreous when Germans made mirror move first. From what my grandpa told me, how Lvov looked like in 1941, everyone was ready for war - the surprise was only that Germans started it and they were seen as liberators at that time.

Kragdob wrote: USSR was ready for war in 1941.

Thats questionable thesis. Red Army was in the middle of rearming in 1941. It is more logic to stick with older weaponry then give soldier something he can't use at all right before invasion.
Also high % of soviet tanks, plains and other armaments needed repairs (and had to be left behind when Wehrmacht actually attacked). It is also not natural for agressive army.

USSR was ready for war in 1941

LOL. You read too much Suvorov. The USSR was nowhere near ready in 1941 and only those who really want to see it as such say that it was prepared for war in 1941. As far as 1942 or 1943 are concerned, I say that a Soviet attack on Germany was a plausible option. They would have enough time to prepare and a German-Soviet showdown was inevitable, anyway. However, an attack in 1941 was delusional and even Stalin wouldn't do it.

Cybvep wrote:

USSR was ready for war in 1941

LOL. You read too much Suvorov. The USSR was nowhere near ready in 1941 and only those who really want to see it as such say that it was prepared for war in 1941. As far as 1942 or 1943 are concerned, I say that a Soviet attack on Germany was a plausible option. They would have enough time to prepare and a German-Soviet showdown was inevitable, anyway. However, an attack in 1941 was delusional and even Stalin wouldn't do it.

even if you accept:

1. Russia had the potential to be in a position to attack
2. Could prepare its armaments
3. Could prepare and support the necessary logistics

(none of which I would agree with) but if you do accept that position

the Russian battlefield leadership wouold simply have seen the Russian forces decimated by superior German battlefield tactics (lets not even mention no Russian winter, no long logistics chain for the Axis)

simply put the Russian command structure was barely functional through 41 and didn't really reach an acceptable state until late 42 early 43

now I am not saying that Russia couldn't win a war against Germany, just that I don't see how they can make any headway in 41

Russia was not prepared for war in 1941 in my opinion. The main reason for the forward deployment of Russian forces was the Russian doctrine. It was an offensive doctrine meaning that wars are supposed to be fought on your enemy's territory, not your own territory.

Russia got a big bloody nose in the Finnish winter war. They realized then that their army was not well suited for modern warfare so they started to reorganize their army. In June 1941 the reorganization still had a long time to go. In 1942 I think you would have seen a quite different Red Army.

To make matters even worse the Russian army had to deal with Stalin's purges where a big percentage of the officers were killed.

Stalin was buying time with Hitler by being "cordial" so Russia could strike in 1942. They agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact the get territory back. After that the Russians seemed friendly with the Germans. Stalin ignored reports of German soldiers massing near the Russian border. Stalin didn't want to provoke the Germans into attacking by mobilizing. He knew that the Russian mobilization dragged them into war with Germany in WW1.

Stalin was so shocked when he heard the Germans had attacked on June 1941 that he fled to his datcha and was out of communication for one week. When they finally reached him Stalin was convinced they were there to arrest him for allowing the Germans to invade. So Stalin panicked in June 1941. He didn't anticipate they would attack so late in 1941.

So it doesn't make sense to me that Russia laid a trap for Germany and were waiting for them to invade. If that had been true then they would surely not have been in their forward positions. They would instead have fallen back like we always do with the Russians in GS.

I don't think for a second that Russia actually were about to attack Germany in 1941. If that would have been the matter they would have attacked in May 1941 when the Germans were fighting in Yugoslavia and Greece. They could have used that as an excuse to save their Serbian brothers from German aggressors. No, Russia were not prepared to fight in 1941. They were gearing up to fight in 1942 and hoped Germany didn't have time to look to the east in 1941.

Lot's of valuable information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deep_battle

Kragdob wrote:And please don't compare me to Montgomery - a general who would never do anything without resources and connections he had.

Ok ! I see . How about Model ?

I don't think for a second that Russia actually were about to attack Germany in 1941.

Strategically, it would have been even better to attack in 1940, while Germany was still fighting in France. Of course, the Red Army was even less prepared for war in 1940 than in 1941, but few expected that France would fall so quickly, either. A two-front war was Germany's biggest nightmare. That's one of the reasons why they favoured quick, decisive strikes. A prolonged German-French struggle would have been perfect for Stalin. The funny thing is that you can see this in many WWII strategy games as well - if Germany gets bogged down in France, it's the end. For this reason, France is usually unrealistically nerfed, because most devs want it fall quickly in order not to disrupt balance. Unfortunately, the players realise this and they expect France to be a pushover, while the RL Germans expected the opposite. In CEAW context, this means that if the Axis player fails in France, he/she usually quits the game.