01-27-2016, 10:59 PM
(01-27-2016, 08:01 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: People think that the campaigns in Greece, North Africa and Italy kept huge amounts of German troops off the frontlines in the Soviet Union. It did keep some troops from there. But the numbers were not huge. Panzerarmee Afrika (a.k.a. the Afrika Corps) never had more than 3 or 4 under-strength and ill-supplied divisions. The invasion of Greece and the Balkans was conducted by Kleist's Panzer Group (9 divisions), which was then moved to the Russian front to fight at Kharkov (BTW- the main concern for the Germans in Greece and the Balkans was not that the British would be able to assemble and invade there. Britain was too weak for that and the U.S. had not entered the war yet. The main German concern was to prevent the British from building airfields there to attack the oil fields in Romania. The Americans would eventually do that from North Africa and Italy with long-range bombers anyway). Italy was defended by the 10th German Field Army (roughly 80,000 men at most). Now, this was a large number of troops, no doubt. But it is nothing compared to the half million men that Germany committed to defending Norway throughout the war.
The fact is, numbers of troops was not the problem for the Germans on the Eastern Front. They had sufficient troops to accomplish the invasion. The problem, as SSF noted, was the constant shifting of objectives on that front. Had they concentrated on Moscow over the South rather than vacillating, they probably would have seen better results.
Which brings us back to Germany's allies. The problem with the Romanian, Italian, Hungarian, etc. allied troops in Southern Russia is that they were over-extended to support the 6th Army at Stalingrad. The line was stretched too far for them to effectively defend. It was not so much a matter of out-dated equipment.
Moving large number of troops, weapons, and armor over long distances burned up resources that could be better used on the battlefield.
The military planning got worse and worse as Hitler lost his shit. But their biggest mistake was trying too take too much territory too fast. It wasn't like he was liberating the masses from oppressive leaders or uniting a group of people with some shared religious beliefs. So the citizens had no reason to support the invading forces. It takes lots of resources to occupy captured areas when they have no reason to support the invaders. In fact sometimes it can take more resources to hold the land than it did to overthrow its government with military force.
