Does anyone know how many Russian and German troops died at Stalingrad?

@Wicked:

Don’t forget, unlike France or Norway surrender was no survivable option for the Russian population. Hitler made very clear quite early that he considered them “subhuman” and GeStaPo and SS did their deadly job in notorious german thouroughness in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. So I’m not sure if taking the capital would have ended the war in Russia - perhaps the regular war, but not the need for massive amount of troops there. I’m pretty sure the long term need and lack of administrational staff and police for this vast area with millions of deads causing disobeyance and riots would have been more than a pain in the a… for the Reich.
The Nazi dictature based on nationalism including/featuring hatred towards Jews and Slaws, denunciation and a powerful police - that wouldn’t have worked there. But on second thought, they might have been able to get some russians to help and give some incentives like surviving a month longer… It would have been hell on earth.

In the end Hitler had not enough of his beloved true blood Germans to realize his megalomaniac ideas - you don’t make many friends by hating them constitutionally.

An important part of German planning for the postwar period included the intention of forcibly relocating 30 - 50 million Poles eastward, to make room for German expansion. Had the Allied food blockade still been in effect, the deaths of large numbers of Poles along the way would have been considered an acceptable way of relieving pressure on Germany’s food supply; thereby preventing the starvation of an equal number of non-Poles.

During the war, the combination of the Allied food blockade and Stalin’s scorched earth tactics made it impossible for Germany to feed all the people within the lands it had conquered from the Soviet Union. The physical impossibility of Germany feeding those people proved a boon for Soviet propagandists; who took advantage of the situation by claiming that Germany planned to starve or kill all the people of the conquered Soviet Union. Soviet propagandists were not normally considered a highly reliable source of information. In this instance, however, the fact that large numbers of people in German-occupied portions of the Soviet Union were actually starving seemed to lend a hint of credibility to these claims.

As the war in Europe became increasingly less favorable for Germany, large numbers of Soviet civilians fled west into Germany. The westward flight of many Soviet civilians demonstrates that not all Soviet citizens believed Soviet wartime propaganda.

@General:

Don’t lose your interest for we also are getting fewer and will go the way of the veterans. Gaming carries on remembering those that sacrificed to allow us to be here today at this moment.

Yes and I think that, as more and more WWII veterans pass on, it’s important for those of us with an interest in WWII to sustain that interest on behalf of the people who actually lived through the conflict.  Their departures will inevitably lead to the sad day when first-hand experience of WWII will no longer be within the living memory of anyone around us – but there are no limits to the duration of second-hand interest in WWII, which will go on for as long as anyone cares to study the subject and to recognize its enormous importance in the course of world history.

@KurtGodel7:

As you pointed out, actually capturing the city was unnecessary. But having captured the city, Hitler was very determined to hold onto it. Abandoning it would have presumably meant having to recapture it later; and once again suffering that same 1:1 ratio during the recapture.

One thing I’m wondering: why would Germany have to (or even want to) recapture at great cost a city that it was unnecessary (and indeed counterproductive) to capture in the first place?

Brilliant!
Thank you. Have not watched any news yet.

I’d announce to the Allies that I had the bomb and that It was ready to deploy at any sign of invasion. I’d have Goebels make a film as if I had several and film it as I blew up Moscow.

@balungaloaf:

i heard on a show lately that the german army lost 1/4 of all supplies and material that the germans ever produced in the ENTIRE SECOND WAR!

i was like whaaaaaaa?!

is this accurate?  it makes sense of a lot of things for me.  by number losses of troops alone i always thought that the germans should be able to recoup their losses by their volunteer campaigns in occupied territories, or by forcing human labor in the territories occupied to free up more german men to be put into the wehrmacht.

1/4 of all supplies produced lost is staggering.

makes you wonder why in the hell Hitler didnt allow a tactical retreat from the area after the soviets counterattacked en masse.

the question is this. is the 1/4 loss number accurate?

I think this may be be reference to a line in the “Stalingrad” episode of “The World at War”.  Towards the end of the episode, as the narrator describes the German losses in men and equipment at Stalingrad, he says that enough equipment was lost to equip one-quarter of the German army.  So it’s not a reference to one-quarter of the equipment produced, which would be a much larger number.

they used every tank they could spare all makes and models,not like the movie,the king tigers were the spearheads

KurtGodel7, very good post, thank you.

I’m still not convinced however, I’ll reply to a few of your points below further:

Germany desperately needed the Russian oil by 1943 (as well as Russian grain which I will discuss further below).  That they failed to take the Caucasus during this time was their last realistic chance at victory, IMO.  However, had they taken the oil wells, but with the Russians destroying them in the process as was quite likely, would the Germans be able to restore the flow of oil in sufficient time? It might take months, even years to rebuild the necessary infrastructure in the best of circumstances, let alone during a brutal war.  The German industry was already hard pressed to supply the necessary armaments and did not have a great deal of experience with oil industry in the first place.  I think they would not have been able to do this.

The same idea goes for the chromium, vanadium, etc., though this would be less difficult for the Germans to accomplish (or mitigate as you also suggest) than the oil problem.

While Germany might have been able to supply an equivalent amount of money, material and engineers to work on their atomic program, there simply were much fewer top nuclear physicists in all Europe than existed in the US.  Consequently, it would have probably cost more and taken longer than the US program for this reason alone.  I have no doubt they could have eventually done it, but I don’t see how they develop nuclear weapons before the allies developed a delivery system that could get through their defenses.

The German V-2 was a technological marvel, but other than size, no more advanced than the rockets being built by Dr. Goddard.  After the war, when Dr. Goddard was able to examine a captured V-2, he was convinced the Germans had stolen his work.  And the Germans might have because most of his designs were on file in the US patent office, available for public viewing (which the Germans did prior to the war).  I think had the Americans wanted to (and Dr. Goddard certainly did) they could have built a superior rocket in a couple months and have it mass-produced in six.  As the A-bombs designs at that time were quite heavy, it might have taken longer than that to build a nuclear capable rocket…but how much longer?

Alternatively, the Allies could have either copied the German jets to enable a delivery system, or devise other means (boats/submarines? special ops?) to deliver these weapons.

In addition, I consider the German attack on Russia to be about food as well as oil  The Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, and helped the Germans tremendously in 1943.  But food was scarce in 1944 and onward.  Partly this was due to Russian recovery of territory.  But it was also because the Ukraine was normally not sufficient by itself to feed Germany (the year of the capture of Ukraine by the Germans was one of the best years for Ukrainian agriculture as the weather was nearly perfect).  Of course, the poor treatment of the Ukrainians by the Germans did not lend itself to helping this problem either. In order to assure itself of adequate food, I think the Caucasus (the next logical food source) was needed.