Top 10 Reasons Why Hitler Lost WWII

[Bengalzona]

(01-28-2016, 03:58 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: Stallin was killing his generals and the Russian army wasn't much of anything, he wasn't well-equipped and his army had outdated equipment/weapons, and Russia had no allies, among other reasons.

Hitler would have been better off if the Russians tried to invade.

Documents released after the Cold War in Russia show that the actual numbers of officers involved in the 'purges' in the 1930's were dramatically lower than the West had reported for decades. The majority of those involved were not executed, but received only short jail sentences and were returned to duty afterwards.

That is not to say that the Red Army did not have issues with their officer corps. But those problems began shortly after the 1917 revolution and were more related to the attempt to destroy traditional class identifiers in the communist system. Additionally, the Soviets had problems training officers fast enough to keep up with the pace of their mobilization and recruitment after the war began.

The Soviets had decent equipment. Their main criteria was that the equipment worked regardless of the weather and field conditions. And their stuff did just that. As far as "dated", the T-34 was the most advanced tank in the world... bar none... when the Germans first ran into it in 1941. It was superior to anything the Germans had at that time and forced the Germans to go back and develop the Panther and Tiger tanks by 1943. The Soviets responded with the KV-85 and IL-2, 3 and 4 tanks in 1944. The IL-4 had a 122mm main gun, compared to the Tiger's 88mm. The Germans countered with the Tiger 2 design late in the war, but produced very few. The Germans didn't develop new tanks because they just wanted to. They developed new tanks because their old ones were outclassed and they were desperate.

If the Soviets would have invaded Germany, it would have been later than 1942, as they were forced to wait and see what Japan was going to do in the east. And if they had invaded west, it would have pretty much gone in the manner that the rest of the war actually did go after Stalingrad.