It's Sometimes Alleged that Nazi Germany Lost WWII due to Hitler's Meddlings on the Eastern Front. How accurate is this?

by reddfloyd

By this, I mean that in media and conversation concerning Germany's defeat, it's often depicted that Hitler and his generals frequently quarreled on the matter of operations on the Eastern Front; e.g., Hitler's unwillingness to greenlight a push into Moscow before other cities such as Leningrad were captured, in contrast with the wishes of some generals.

The documentary which prompted this question, Soviet Storm: World War II on the Eastern Front, invites a secondary question: Joseph Stalin is rarely depicted in such a way in the programme, i.e. of being a meddlesome politician contradicting his generals and botching the war on an operational level. How involved was Stalin (militarily speaking), and how far can one say that his involvement contributed to or confounded the Soviet victory in that war?

superchthonic

Martin van Creveld wrote a book called Supplying War in which he looks at the logistics of Barbarossa. IIRC, he concludes that the Germans had their work cut out for them at the very least, and that the idea of knocking out the USSR in a single lightning campaign (something the army went along with) was misguided. If there are more recent sources on this, I don't know of them. Logistics isn't a very popular subject, even in military history, unfortunately.

Regarding the war in general: Timothy Wray writes, in Standing Fast: German Defensive Doctine on the Russion Front During World War II, that Hitler's meddling had a serious negative impact, though there might have been some situations (resisting the call for a general retreat in the Winter of '41) in which it might have been useful (counterfactuals are tricky, though). Also, one of the big things Hitler is blamed for is diverting forces for operations around Kiev during 1941 instead of driving straight to Moscow, but others (I believe Glantz has argued this -- perhaps others will remember a citation) have pointed out that this was actually the best strategy at the time.

So, the answer is a resounding 'sort of'. Better questions would be: was Operation Barbarossa ever feasible; if so, under what conditions; and what role did the German General Staff and senior commanders play in approving it? This opens up a whole can of worms, and gets to the issue of the role (and moral responsibilty) of senior German Heer (army) officers vis-a-vis Hitler.

brrtmew

Hitler quarreled with his generals always (Invasion of France, Standing firm in Winter 1941/42), but his meddling grew more detrimental to the military as pressure increased.

Stalin's pre-war persecution of the military, early war assumptions of his army's role as attackers only, and overly forward positions caused huge catastrophes. He backed off after millions were killed and captured due to these policies, but it appears he didn't stop his demands for constant attacks until convinced by Zhukov in 1943 before the German offensive.

COL (Ret) David M. Glant has a lecture on youtube for the US Army war college channel that goes into some detail on this issue.

The largest factor in the defeat of Germany in World War II is the incorrect assumption of the uber/untermensch.

Viewing Slavic peoples as sub human would prove to be a horrible Achilles heel to the German war machine. German High Command strategies assumed racial true-isms of the Nazi ideology. When these plans dealt with reality, they were warped and all of these high powered men failed to react properly because of the "inferior race" assumption.

I have stated this in a post previously but I find it illustrates the incorrect assumption of racial supremacy and how deadly that can become.

The offensive for 1943. Even though Hitler did not directly plan this offensive, his polices and politics were used to break all of the rules of Blitzkrieg. Remember the concept of "lightning war" requires timing, concentration of overwhelming forces, and surprise to be effective.

Operation Citadel came in a place both sides knew likely (Kursk), the German army attacked with less men then the defenders(~900K Ger, ~1.900 Soviet), with less mobility (~2,900 Tanks, ~5,000 Tanks), and even included delays. The Soviets had time to plan for the attack and create an amazing defense in depth.

The reason the High Command thought of defeating the Soviets at all...They were Germans fighting a Blitzkrieg against inferior people.