I recognize that German tanks were expensive and included too many features to be reliable; but this can’t be the only reason.
I recognize that German tanks were expensive and included too many features to be reliable; but this can’t be the only reason.
Lots of things you could point to but if had to choose the single biggest reason, it would be supply/logistics. The German doctrine of blitzkrieg relied on them beelining and quickly capturing major objectives like Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad etc., they didn’t have the fuel, trucks or infrastructure to sustain a massive frontline. All the Soviet Union had to do was successfully defend their major cities during the early stage of the war and from there on out Germany was doomed.
To expand of the logistics a bit: German arms and other equipment was produced by multiple private companies, thus their was no overall standardization. In addition they also used a lot of captured equipment (Austrian, Czeckslovakian etc.) and made use of captured industries. This resulted in german logistics having to deal with multiple different infantry small arms calibres, heavy arms calibres, vehicles replacement parts of multiple producers that were not interexchangeable ontop of long supply lines, not having remotely enough vehicles for said supply lines and not enough fuel for either the number of vehicles needed or the ones they actually had.
It was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
That, plus German companies kept designing new vehicles, so vehicle production was always slow and constantly wasted resources on retooling. whereas the Soviets, for the most part, just refit designs that worked to do a different job. Which had a minimal impact on their production efficiency, and required less retooling.
War material produced in occupied territories was also often tampered with; I’m not sure of the specifics but I know the resistance would try to send faulty material out of the factory. Apparently you could get ammunition that would explode in your face if you were in the Wehrmacht.
Did they ever think that maybe their plan could go wrong?!
The more I learn about the war; the more I realize how fucking stupid the Nazis were.
Probably. At the very end of the war, right around the time Hitler killed himself and organisation broke down, SS leaders started fleeing occupied countries but told their troops to remain there. For maximum fascist fuckery, they even ordered them to carry on with the executions in the camps. Generals knew too, but they didn’t abandon their posts that I know of.
But the way fascism worked in Germany (and in most instances of fascism) was that they required war to keep money coming in. It’s not unlike slave economies of the past in this regard. Germany especially inherited an absolutely destroyed economy and the plans they had like the MEFO bills were gonna collapse eventually. They turned their whole industry to war production before even invading Poland as this was a solution they found to “fix” the economy. Of course it also made lots of money for the German bourgeoisie.
Fascism is a death cult because down the line it will always lead to war.
Maybe the objective never was to win the war, but simply to murder as many soviet people as they could. Maybe to deal such a devastating blow to the Communist block, so that it could never compete with the Capitalist block?
Blitzkrieg wasn’t a new idea. It was based on Prussian tactics that worked well against Napoleon, then refined and worked well in WW1 on a local level, and then refined further for combined arms warfare. And again they worked really well against what was seen as the strongest and most advanced military of mainland Europe, France.
They acted stupid (thankfully) because they overestimated their supply capabilities and readiness. They did not take into account what the Red Army was capable of, how it fought, or even how it was equipped (to the point where T34s were a complete surprise). And from their perspective things didn’t start going bad until after Stalingrad.