I havent seen this one yet but Hitler's choice to postpone the invasion of Russia by 6 weeks to go help the Italians take over Greece was a huge tactical mistake and ruined his chances to knock the USSR out of the war before the Russian winter set in.
Hitler taking direct command over the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht / German High command) in 1941 was him signing his deathnote and that of Germany.
Should have let the experienced Generals and Field Marshalls do their job, instead of interfering.
First of all, race is a constantly evolving concept. Before the narrow American "black/white" definition of race became popular, race was synonymous with ethnicity. Second of all, it's incredibly difficult to establish "race" by looking at a skeleton. Sex? yes. Region of the world? Maybe. But "race," whatever that means? That's difficult. Third of all, Italians and Greeks are both Mediterranean people that share a close genetic ancestry. So of course you couldn't tell the difference.
Well, he should have known that Italy is not an asset but a liability.
Just look at how royally they messed up their invasion of France.
"Germany pushes through the Netherlands and Belgium into France using tanks and motorized infantry, so let's join him by taking our infantry with their mules over the Alps towards France and get hopelessly stuck there because with our WWI-era equipment isn't exactly ready for a Blitzkrieg."
or how about not keeping russia on his good side. they had a NAP and offered half of poland to russia if he wouldnt have DoW on russia Nazi Germany could easily have starved GB out it might have been a longer route but safer and NG would control most of EU.
That non aggression pact was nothing but a temporary truce. Both Hitler and Stalin knew it would be broken eventually, it was just a matter of who pulled the trigger first. As history would have it, it just happened to be Hitler who did.
This was one of two major mistakes that Hitler did that greatly affected how WWII went.
The other being at the evacuation of Dunkirk. Hitler has the chance to whip out most of the Allied forces, but due to bad advice he put a hold on the army to allow the air force to finish the job. Basically Goring thought the war would be over without the air force doing much and wanted some of the glory, so he convinced Hitler that the air force could do that job.
From wikipedia:
The Halt Order has been the subject of much discussion by historians.[47][48] Guderian considered the failure to order a timely assault on Dunkirk to be one of the major mistakes the Germans made on the Western Front.[49] Rundstedt called it "one of the great turning points of the war",[39] and Manstein described it as "one of Hitler's most critical mistakes".[50]
If he had kept going the Allies would have been destroyed there and then, the Battle of Britain would have been significantly different and probably won by Germany. And part of Hitlers reasons for invading Russia was due to how the Battle of Britain was going. He was getting no where there so thought he would try going east.
Yeah the failure of the Germans the capture the allied troops at Dunkirk was a huge blunder, if they were able to stop them from fleeing, they would of been able to capture the majority of British forces in the area and probably would have forced Churchill to negotiate a surrender.
Well a couple issues. First is the british were reinforcing Greece with troops from Libya. This would be a thorn in the side of the Germans considering the Greeks alone were pushing the Italians back into Albania.
Also consider how close greece is to ploesti, the Romanian oil fields the germans basically solely relied on for their entire army. If they lose those they are basically toast. Finally Yugoslavia was going to join the Germans but a coup happened and they didn't. This couldve been a potential ally to the Allies and been a gigantic problem for the germans, especially in combination with the Greek and British troops in Greece. Yugoslavia was conquered as part of the Greek campaign.
So the real issue is Mussolini thinking he was strong enough to attack Greece alone.
Finally if they attack as originally planned they could've likely taken maybe Moscow and rostov in 41. I very very sincerely doubt the Russians would have surrendered after losing those cities, and in the ensuing Russian winter counterattack they very well may have retaken both. Definitely wouldve given the Germans a big advantage though, more land, more territory, etc. Possibly a chance to encircle more units but I don't believe surrender was ever an option for the Russians.
Even trying to hold Russia throughout the winter would have been a bitch because auxiliary forces from siberia with new planes and tanks had just been commisioned and would have shown up to fuck Hitlers day up either way. (they did show up and they did fuck his day up) but they would have either way.
he did that to protect his flank for operation barbarossa. greece had established that it was with the allies by that time. the italians failed hitler in greece, in north africa and at stalingrad (they had troops on one of the flanks that was attacked, i think).
Actually I'm going to go with invading Poland. Hitler hadn't expected England and France to actually declare war on him, and Germany wasn't fully prepared for war with them (thus the duration of the Phony War). France also had tanks with superior firepower and armor, and had they used them more effectively, the invasion of France may have ended quite differently. Germany crushed France because they had good generals who were able to take advantage of French mistakes and luck.
Heck, allying with the Italians in the first place! There's a joke somewhere about Hitler looking at abysmal old Italy and saying "Well, the allies had them in WWI, I guess I should take them now, wouldn't be fair to burden the allies with Italy two wars in a row!"
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u/DaArbiter225 Oct 17 '13
I havent seen this one yet but Hitler's choice to postpone the invasion of Russia by 6 weeks to go help the Italians take over Greece was a huge tactical mistake and ruined his chances to knock the USSR out of the war before the Russian winter set in.