Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim B.
I think actually it was in the winter '42- '43, when it was over. Stalingrad and von Paulus' 6th armee showed the end.
Some people think they should have driven to Moscow and captured it.
But AH wanted to go south to the Don and the Caucausus (sp?) and try to grab all the manganese, oil fields etc.
I would really like to drink bier with you in Conn one day (or Calif if you ever came there) and discuss some of this with you. You are really up on it, a lot more than me, and this stuff fascinates me.
The Eastern front was totally under reported in the west, and in sums, men and materiel spent, and in suffering, it dwarfs the Western front by far.
Russia was, in the end, just too god damned big. It goes all the way to Vladivostok and the Pacific, too much to occupy and hold, the supply lines alone couldn't take it.
They couldn't even take Leningrad after over 900 days of siege.
Maybe AH would have stopped marching east, then sued for peace when he had enough lebenstraum, who knows?
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AH had no intention of capturing all of Russia, the Volga river was the stop point. They would have set up a defensive position along this river and sued for peace, or started a cold war scenerio. If they had followed the pointes I laid out in another post this was a very do able in 1942.
I'm going to be in SD from the 20th-26th. If your near there I'm up for some beer.