The Development of Cities

[JasonC]

Yep, you are totally wrong.

Russia had the correct grand strategy, total war, and emphasized the continual production of new fighting power from the start of the conflict. Germany had the incorrect grand strategy, betting on unbounded multipliers from manuever warfare to make an extended war avoidable. Which was an unsound gamble that predictably failed.

This then operated through the difference in the replacement rates both armies achieved. The Germans failed to replace losses that were 1/10 those the Russians suffered, while the Russians replaced their losses and actually grew in total strength in the field by mid November. When you can't make up ground in attrition terms despite inflicting 10 to 1 losses, your replacement stream is in the "off" position. Germany had the same industrial base as Russia and vastly better conditions to work with, in terms of enemy interference in the functioning of its war economy. It had half the manpower base, or more like 2/3rd or better with minor allies included, and nearly parity after occupying areas containing a large portion of the Soviet population. It also had more than 6 months advanced notice that the war would occur when it did. But was still out-mobilized by a huge margin.

This was not due to lack of productive capacity or total manpower, as its later achievements showed. 1944 war output matched Russia's, for instance, and it was able to field a huge army clear to the start of 1945 despite losses of millions of men in the meantime. That capacity and those men went unused in 1941 and 1942 because the Germans foolishly gambled that they would not need them and would win rapidly without them. This was a false premise for a grand strategy from the outset. All the later attempts to justify this gamble and to speculate about ways it might have succeeded despite its recklessness completely miss the point. Attacking a state as powerful as Soviet Russia without preparing for a long campaign and total war of attrition was stupid beyond belief.

That, and not delay or weather, is why Germany lost the war in Russia and failed in the 1941 and 1942 campaigns. There was no earthly reason why a side inflicting 10 to 1 losses throughout the 1941 campaign, should *decline* in relative combat power in the field. It did, merely because the German replacement stream was non-existent. If Germany had matched even half of the Russian mobilizing effort its combat power would have increased continually throughout the campaign. Its losses were low enough to easily do so.

It is a habitual complaint from the front line commanders from then on, that this or that operational goal was impossible because trench strength in front line units was on a shoestring due to losses, while the total figures involved barely hit 6 digits. A power that mobilized 18 million men over the course of the war loses its key battles for want of something like 1-2% more of that figure actually in the front line as combat infantry at key moments and along key frontages. This is a sign of war-economy and attrition-planning incompetence of world-historical proportions. Stemming at bottom from suicidal levels of overconfidence and contempt for the enemy.