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The most interesting two months of World War 2 - link
| ,.,,.,.,,,,,,..................... | 08/08/25 |
| ,.,,.,.,,,,,,..................... | 08/11/25 |
| ,.,,.,.,,,,,,..................... | 08/11/25 |
| ,.,,.,.,,,,,,..................... | 08/11/25 |
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Date: August 8th, 2025 3:14 PM Author: ,.,,.,.,,,,,,..................... On October 8, 1941, Hitler had his press secretary give a press conference claiming that Russia was now finished:
When on October 8, Orel, a key city south of Moscow, fell, Hitler sent his press chief, Otto Dietrich, flying back to Berlin, to tell the correspondents of the world’s leading newspapers there the next day that the last intact Soviet armies, those of Marshal Timoshenko, defending Moscow, were locked in two steel German pockets before the capital; that the southern armies of Marshal Budënny were routed and dispersed; and that sixty to seventy divisions of Marshal Voroshilov’s army were surrounded in Leningrad. “For all military purposes,” Dietrich concluded smugly, “Soviet Russia is done with. The British dream of a two-front war is dead.”
Shirer, William L.. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (pp. 1382-1383). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.
Less than two months later, even before Pearl Harbor, Hitler's top armaments adviser, who had looked closely at the weapons production of Germany and the USSR, told Hitler that not only had Germany not won the war, it could not do so:
As the leading German industrialist Fritz Todt explained to the Führer on November 29, 1941: “This war can no longer be won by military means.”
https://airmail.news/issues/2019-12-7/point-of-no-return
So from October 8, 1941 to November 29, 1941, everything changed. That makes that period by far the most interesting of the war. The US joining the war in December was just overkill.
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Date: August 11th, 2025 10:20 PM Author: ,.,,.,.,,,,,,..................... On 18 November, the Second Panzer Army, which had started the war with about 1,000 tanks and in the course of the campaign had received a further 150 reinforcements, now counted just 150 tanks in total.74 Given that even this pitiful sum could be supplied only with a quarter of the fuel required, one wonders just what convinced Bock and Halder that there was any prospect of closing the southern arm of the ring around Moscow.
Stahel, David. The Battle for Moscow (p. 158). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. |
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Date: August 11th, 2025 10:28 PM Author: ,.,,.,.,,,,,,..................... Nor was Rohland just concerned with the immediate matters at the front. He became convinced that the implications of rebuilding the Ostheer and supplying it for a war on such a vast scale was simply beyond Germany’s industrial and resource base. As he told Fritz Todt, ‘the war against Russia cannot be won!’. It was a conclusion that Todt himself had also reached,98 and together the two men confronted Hitler with the news. The dictator received the news calmly, perhaps well aware of the economic implications of his failed blitzkrieg. Before dismissing the two men, however, Hitler posed the question: ‘How then should I end the war?’ To which Todt replied: ‘It can only be ended politically.’99 In a war of attrition there was no military solution to the war in the east.100
Stahel, David. The Battle for Moscow (p. 163). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
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Date: August 11th, 2025 10:29 PM Author: ,.,,.,.,,,,,,..................... Figures reporting raw material estimates by the Reich Office for Economic Development make Todt’s conclusion abundantly clear. In November 1941, Germany could access 9.7 million tons of oil, while the United States and Britain could access 257.8 million tons and the Soviets 29.8 million tons of oil. Supplies of manganese ore were even less favourable, with the German sphere providing just 56.5 million tons as against 1,343 million tons for the western allies and 1,200 million tons in European Russia. Indeed, across a range of essential raw materials Germany’s own figures demonstrated a crushing allied superiority. Nickel ore saw the allies with access to twenty-five times more than the total German amount, copper ore thirteen times more, chrome ore nine times more and tungsten ore almost four times more. Even coal, one of Germany’s abundant resources, was still only half the allied total.
Stahel, David. The Battle for Moscow (p. 163). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
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