In 1941-1945, events went according to the least likely possible scenario. A more logical result of the Soviet-German confrontation would have been the Brest-Litovsk Mir-2 in 1942.
Was the victory of Hitlerite Germany over the USSR possible? The answer depends a lot on what counts as a victory. If the full occupation of the country, then Germany, of course, had no chance. However, other understandings of victory are also possible. So, after the Great Patriotic War, a strong stereotype has developed in the minds of the Russian generals that to win is to hang your flag on the largest building in the enemy capital. This is exactly how our generals who planned the storming of Grozny in December 1994 thought, and the Afghan epic, in fact, began in the same paradigm: we will storm the Shah’s palace, put our man there (analogous to the flag on the roof) and we won. The chances of the Germans for such a victory were quite real - most historians admit that if Hitler had not delayed the attack on the USSR because of the fierce resistance of the Serbs in the spring of 1941, the German troops would not have had to fight, in addition to the Red Army, with the autumn thaw and early frosts. and the Germans would have taken Moscow. Recall that the Soviet command also seriously considered the possibility of surrendering the capital - this is indicated, in particular, by the mining in November of the 41st largest Moscow buildings, including the Bolshoi Theater.
However, one of the greatest strategists in world history, Karl Clausewitz, back in the 19th century, issued the coined formula "The goal of war is the world most comfortable for the winner." Based on this understanding, Hitler's victory over the USSR would have been the conclusion of a peace treaty beneficial to him, a kind of Brest-Litovsk Peace-2.
Logic time
September 3, 1939 - the day England and France declared war on Germany - was a turning point in the life of the head of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler. If earlier he planned his actions in accordance with his desires, then from that day on all his key decisions were rigidly dictated by severe necessity. And the occupation of Norway to preserve Germany's access to the main source of iron ore; and the conquest of Luxembourg and Belgium to strike at France (which, we repeat, itself declared war on Germany), bypassing the Maginot Line; and the capture of Holland in order to deprive the Anglo-Saxons of a foothold for the landing of troops in North-Western Europe - all these were actions necessary for the survival of Germany in the current situation.
But by the summer of 1940, having won a number of brilliant military victories, Hitler was in a difficult situation. On the one hand, Germany was at war with Great Britain, so the natural direction of the Third Reich's military efforts was to defeat the British. On the other hand, in the east, the Soviet Union was increasing its military power every month, and Hitler had no doubt that if he got bogged down in a war with Britain, Stalin would attack Germany, regardless of the peace treaty.
The alignment was clear: the Third Reich had two enemies - Britain and the USSR, Germany, due to a lack of resources, could only wage "lightning-fast" wars, but a blitzkrieg with a landing on the British Isles was impossible even in theory. There remains one possible blitzkrieg - against the USSR. Of course, not with the aim of occupying a gigantic country, but with the aim of forcing Stalin to conclude a new peace treaty, which, on the one hand, will make it impossible for the Soviets to attack the Third Reich, and on the other, will provide Germany with access to Russia's natural resources.
For this it is necessary: first, to defeat the main forces of the Red Army in a border battle. Secondly, to occupy the main industrial and agricultural regions in Ukraine, in the Central and Northwestern regions of the USSR, to occupy or destroy Leningrad, where about half of the Soviet heavy industry was concentrated, and to break through to the oil fields of the Caucasus. And finally, thirdly, to cut off the supply channels to the Soviet Union of military aid and strategic materials from the United States and Britain through Murmansk and Iran. That is, to break through to the White Sea (ideally - to Arkhangelsk) and to the Volga (ideally - by capturing Astrakhan).
Left without an army, without major industrial facilities, without the main breadbasket and without Anglo-American assistance, Stalin will most likely agree to conclude a new "obscene peace" with Germany like Brest-Litovsk. Of course, this peace will be short-lived, but Hitler only needs two or three years to stifle Britain with a naval blockade and bombing and obtain a peace treaty from her. And then it will be possible to unite all the forces of "civilized Europe" to keep the Russian bear on the border of the Ural Mountains.
It was only by a miracle that the Germans could not block the path of the northern Allied caravans.
Photo: Robert Diament. From the archive of Leonid Diament
Two months after the victory over France, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht command to prepare a calculation of forces and means for the implementation of this plan. However, during the work of the military, the plan underwent significant changes: one of the main goals was the capture of Moscow. The main argument of the German General Staff in favor of taking the Soviet capital was that in order to defend it, the Red Army would have to collect all its reserves, respectively, the Wehrmacht would have the opportunity to defeat the last Russian forces in one decisive battle. In addition, the capture of Moscow, the largest transport hub in the USSR, will significantly complicate the transfer of Red Army forces.
There was logic in this consideration, however, in fact, the military tried to reduce the Hitlerite concept of a war with economic goals to a classic war of "crushing". Given the resource potential of the Soviet Union, Germany's chances of success with such a strategy were significantly lower. As a result, Hitler chose a compromise: the plan for an offensive against the USSR was divided into two stages, and the issue of an attack on Moscow was made dependent on the success of the first phase of the offensive. The Directive on the concentration of troops (plan "Barbarossa") stated: "Army Group Center is making a breakthrough in the direction of Smolensk; then turns the tank forces to the north and, together with the Army Group "North", destroys the Soviet troops stationed in the Baltic. Then the troops of Army Group North and the mobile troops of Army Group Center, together with the Finnish army and German troops deployed for this from Norway, finally deprive the enemy of its last defensive capabilities in the northern part of Russia. In the event of a sudden and complete defeat of the Russian forces in the North of Russia, the turn of the troops to the north disappears and the question of an immediate strike on Moscow may arise (Highlighted by us. - "Expert")».
Nevertheless, from that moment on, in all plans of the German command, the central direction began to be considered the main one, it was here that the main forces of the German army were concentrated to the detriment of the "peripheral" directions, primarily the northern one. So, the task of the German troops, which were to operate on the Kola Peninsula (Army "Norway"), was formulated as follows: "Together with the Finnish troops to advance to the Murmansk railway,to disrupt the supply of the Murmansk region by land communications. " Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces, spoke out sharply against such metamorphoses, trying to explain to his colleagues that “Murmansk, as the main stronghold of the Russians in the summer, especially in connection with the probable Anglo-Russian cooperation, should be given much more importance. It is important not only to disrupt its land communications, but also to seize this strong point … ".
However, ignoring these reasonable arguments, Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces Franz Halder and Commander of Army Group Center Fyodor von Bock enthusiastically set about planning the seizure of Moscow. Hitler did not intervene in the dispute between his military leaders, hoping that the course of the war during the first phase of Operation Barbarossa would show which of them was right.
Abnormal rout
The directive for the concentration of troops under the Barbarossa plan was signed by Hitler on February 15, 1941. And on March 23, the intelligence department of the Red Army, in a summary for the country's leadership, reported that, according to a trustworthy source, “of the most likely military actions planned against the USSR, the following are worthy of attention: as of February 1941, three army groups: 1st group under the command of Field Marshal Leeb strikes in the direction of Leningrad; The 2nd group under the command of Field Marshal Bock - in the direction of Moscow and the 3rd group under the command of Field Marshal Rundstedt - in the direction of Kiev. A "credible source" was Ilsa Stebe (Alta's agent pseudonym), an employee of the German Foreign Ministry, who regularly provided Moscow with first-class foreign policy information - in particular, she was the first to report in December 1940 that Hitler was preparing a plan for an attack on the USSR.
Note: in the historical and near-historical literature there is a constant debate about why the Soviet command did not guess the date of the attack. As an explanation, the fact is mentioned that, according to the calculations of some historians, intelligence gave Stalin 14 dates for Germany's attack on the USSR, and, naturally, he could not know which date was correct. However, the direction of the main blows is much more important information: it allows planning not only a direct reaction to aggression, but also the entire course of the war. And in subsequent reports from various intelligence sources said the same thing: the Germans are planning to deliver three main attacks - on Leningrad, on Moscow and on Kiev. All of them were ignored by the Soviet leadership. According to the head of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, Philip Golikov, even on June 21, 1941, Lavrenty Beria told Stalin: “I again insist on the recall and punishment of our ambassador to Berlin Dekanozov, who is still bombarding me with misinformation about Hitler’s allegedly preparing an attack on the USSR. He announced that the attack would begin tomorrow. Major General Tupikov, the military attaché in Berlin, radioed the same thing. This stupid general claims that three groups of the Wehrmacht armies will attack Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, citing Berlin agents."
Events on all fronts developed according to the same pattern: an attempt to fulfill Directive No. 3 - confusion due to its complete inadequacy - defeat
Photo: ITAR-TASS
Such an emotional reaction of Lavrenty Pavlovich was explained simply - by fear. The fact is that in the fall of 1939, at the suggestion of Beria, Amayak Kobulov (pseudonym Zakhar), the brother of Beria's deputy Bogdan Kobulov, was appointed a resident of Soviet intelligence in Germany. Zakhar did not know German, but he was lucky - in early August he met in Berlin with the Latvian journalist Orest Berlinks, who, as Kobulov told Moscow, “soberly assesses the establishment of Soviet power in the Baltic States” and is ready to “share information received in the circles of the German Foreign Ministry. . Soon a new source began to report that the main interests of Germany were the war with Britain and the occupation of Iran and Iraq, and the build-up of the armed forces by the Reich along the Soviet borders was intended to exert political pressure on Moscow in order to obtain the right to participate in the exploitation of the Baku oil fields and the possibility of passage through Soviet territory. German troops to Iran. In fact, Berlinks was an agent of the Gestapo and fed Kobulov with misinformation fabricated in the General Directorate of Imperial Security. Kobulov conveyed misinformation directly to Beria, who reported to Stalin. Lavrenty Pavlovich simply could not admit that he had misinformed the leader on a key issue for several months - he knew better than anyone how it could end.
Meanwhile, on June 22, Dekanozov and Tupikov's information about Germany's attack on the USSR was fully confirmed, and it could be concluded that the second part of their information - about the direction of the main blows of the Hitlerite army - would also turn out to be true. Nevertheless, on the evening of June 22, 1941, the People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal Timoshenko, sent directive No. 3 to the command of the western fronts, which stated that “the enemy is delivering the main strikes on Alytus and on the Volodymyr-Volynsky-Radzekhov front, auxiliary strikes in the Tilsit-Siauliai and Sedlec directions -Volkovysk ". The most powerful blow of the Germans - on Minsk and Smolensk - is not mentioned in the directive at all. And what is referred to as "an auxiliary strike in the direction of Tilsit-Siauliai" was in fact a strategic offensive against Leningrad. But, proceeding from the pre-war plans of the Soviet command, this directive ordered the Red Army to capture the Polish cities of Lublin and Suwalki by June 24.
Further events on all Soviet fronts developed according to the same pattern. First - an attempt to act in accordance with directive No. 3 and pre-war scenarios and general confusion when it turned out that the real situation had nothing to do with the plans of the command. Then - impromptu counterattacks on the advancing Germans by scattered Soviet units, without the support of aviation and logistic services, without reconnaissance and communication with neighbors. The result - huge losses in manpower and equipment, defeat, decline in morale, indiscriminate retreat, panic. The result was the collapse of the fronts and numerous encirclements, in which hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers and officers found themselves.
In Ukraine, where Red Army units outnumbered German troops by five to seven times, this process dragged on until autumn, and there was no encirclement. In Belarus and the Baltic states, everything was decided in a few days: here the Soviet troops were pulled in a string along the border, which allowed the Germans, concentrating their forces on the directions of the main strikes, to create a six- or seven-fold superiority in the number of troops, which was impossible to resist. Breaking through the Russian defenses in several places, German tanks rushed towards Moscow and Leningrad, leaving the encircled and demoralized units of the Red Army in their rear.
Miracle near Murmansk
The only direction in which the Germans failed to achieve their goals was Murmansk. Here, during Operation Silver Fox, it was planned to break through the Titovka River with the forces of the Norwegian Army, capture the Sredny and Rybachy peninsulas, and then the cities of Polyarny (where the main base of the Northern Fleet was located) and Murmansk. The offensive began at dawn on June 29, and by the evening of that day, after a heavy and bloody battle, our 14th Infantry Division, which was defending the Titovka crossing, was defeated. The remnants of the division in groups of 20-30 absolutely demoralized fighters retreated to the fortified area on the Rybachy Peninsula.
Only fifty kilometers in front of the fascist troops lay Murmansk, absolutely not covered from land by troops. And then a miracle happened: instead of a rapid offensive to the east, to Murmansk, the Germans turned north and began to break through the fortifications located on Rybachye and Sredny. The commander of the Norwegian Army Eduard von Dietl, probably until his death in 1944, cursed himself for this mistake, which became fatal for the entire German army: while the Germans were fighting against the fortified areas, the 54th Infantry Division closed the way to Polyarny and Murmansk. The Nazi troops had to fight unsuccessfully for more than two months on the defense of this division. On September 19, the bloodied units of the Norwegian army were forced to retreat back beyond Titovka, and three days later Hitler ordered to stop the attack on Murmansk.
After that, the Germans postponed their attempts to attack to the south, to the Kandalaksha direction, in order to cut the Murmansk railway. But here, too, all their attacks were repulsed. As a result, on October 10, 1941, the Fuhrer was forced to issue a new directive - No. 37, which recognized: “In order to occupy Murmansk before winter or cut the Murmansk railway in Central Karelia, the combat strength and offensive ability of the troops at our disposal there insufficient; besides, the right time of the year has been missed. The attack on Murmansk was postponed until the next summer, and now Hitler did not even mention his exit to Arkhangelsk.
In February 1942, the conclusion of an armistice was the most realistic
Photo: ITAR-TASS
Meanwhile, on October 1, an agreement on mutual supplies was signed between the USSR, the United States and Great Britain, according to which Britain and the United States undertook to supply the Soviet Union monthly from October 10, 1941 to June 30, 1942, inclusive of 400 aircraft (100 bombers and 300 fighters), 500 tanks, 1,000 tons of armor plates for tanks. And also gunpowder, aviation gasoline, aluminum, lead, tin, molybdenum and other types of raw materials, weapons and military materials.
On October 6, Churchill sent a personal message to Stalin: “We intend to ensure a continuous cycle of convoys, which will be sent at intervals of ten days. The following cargoes are already en route and will arrive on October 12: 20 heavy tanks and 193 fighters. The following cargoes are dispatched on October 12 and are scheduled for delivery on the 29th: 140 heavy tanks, 100 Hurricane aircraft, 200 transporters for Bren-type machine guns, 200 anti-tank rifles with cartridges, 50 42 mm guns with shells. The following cargoes are dispatched on the 22nd: 200 fighters and 120 heavy tanks. In total, during the war, 78 convoys arrived in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, including a total of 1,400 ships and delivered more than 5 million tons of strategic cargo. The Northern Corridor remained the main channel for supplying allied aid to the USSR until the end of 1943, when the Americans built a new Trans-Iranian railway, and Stalin began receiving up to a million tons of strategic cargo every month through Iran.
Logic time-2
On August 4, 1941, Hitler flew to Borisov, to the headquarters of Army Group Center. The main issue at the meeting of the Fuhrer with the military leaders was where to concentrate the main effort - on the attack on Moscow or on the capture of Kiev. “I expected that Army Group Center, having reached the Dnieper-Western Dvina line, would temporarily go on the defensive here, but the situation is so favorable that it is necessary to quickly comprehend it and make a new decision,” Hitler said. - On the second place after Leningrad in importance for the enemy is the South of Russia, in particular the Donetsk basin, starting from the Kharkov region. The entire base of the Russian economy is located there. The seizure of this area would inevitably lead to the collapse of the entire Russian economy … Therefore, the operation in the southeastern direction seems to me a priority, and as for actions strictly to the east, it is better to temporarily go on the defensive here. " Thus, Hitler was going to return to the concept of war for economic purposes. The military again opposed. “An offensive eastward towards Moscow will be launched against the main forces of the enemy,” von Bock said. "The defeat of these forces would have decided the outcome of the war."
And yet Hitler's final decision was economic: “The most important task before winter is not the capture of Moscow, but the capture of the Crimea, industrial and coal regions on the Donets River and blocking the Russian oil supply routes from the Caucasus. In the north, such a task is to encircle Leningrad and join the Finnish troops. " In this regard, the Fuehrer ordered to turn the 2nd Army and 2nd Panzer Group from the Moscow direction to the Ukrainian one, to help Army Group South. This caused ambiguous assessments among the German command. The commander of the 3rd Panzer Group, Hermann Goth, took the side of Hitler: “There was one strong argument of operational importance against the continuation of the offensive on Moscow at that time. If in the center the defeat of the enemy forces in Belarus was unexpectedly quick and complete, then in other directions the successes were not so great. For example, it was not possible to push back the enemy operating south of Pripyat and west of the Dnieper to the south. An attempt to throw the Baltic group into the sea was also unsuccessful. Thus, both flanks of Army Group Center, while advancing to Moscow, were in danger of being hit, in the south this danger was already making itself felt …"
The commander of the 2nd Panzer Group, Heinz Guderian, who had a 400 km march from Moscow to Kiev, was against: “The battles for Kiev undoubtedly meant a major tactical success. However, the question of whether this tactical success was also of major strategic importance remains in doubt. Now everything depended on whether the Germans would be able to achieve decisive results even before the onset of winter, perhaps even before the onset of the autumn thaw period”.
Practice proved that Hitler was right: the blow of Guderian's group to the flank and rear of the Southwestern Front led to the final defeat of the Soviet troops in Ukraine and opened the way for the Germans to the Crimea and the Caucasus. And then the Fuhrer, to his misfortune, decided to please the military leaders a little.
Miracle near Moscow
On September 6, 1941, Hitler signed Directive No. 35 authorizing an attack on Moscow. On September 16, overjoyed von Bock gave the troops of Army Group Center an order to prepare an operation to seize the Soviet capital, code-named Typhoon.
The offensive began on September 30, October 13, the Nazis captured Kaluga. On October 15, Erich Gepner's panzer group broke through the Moscow defense line; in the combat log of the group, an entry appears: "The fall of Moscow seems to be near."
However, the Soviet command reinforced the defending troops with units transferred from Siberia and the Far East. As a result, by the end of November, the German offensive was completely exhausted, and on December 5, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive with the forces of three fronts - Kalinin, Western and Southwestern. It developed so successfully that on December 16, Hitler was forced to give a "stop order", which prohibited the withdrawal of large formations of the ground army over large areas. Army Group Center was tasked with pulling together all reserves, liquidating the breakthroughs and holding the defensive line. A few days later, the main opponents of the "war with economic goals" lost their posts - Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces Walter von Brauchitsch, Commander of Army Group Center von Bock and Commander of the 2nd Panzer Army Guderian. But it was already too late.
The defeat of the Germans near Moscow became possible only due to the fact that the Soviet command transferred divisions from the Far East. This is a fact that no one disputes. The transfer of divisions became, in turn, possible after the Soviet command received reliable intelligence data that Japan did not plan to attack the USSR. The very decision of the Japanese to refrain from war against the Soviet Union was largely the result of pure chance, or, if you like, a miracle.
At the beginning of 1941, a new special correspondent of the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, Emo Watanabe, a talented philologist, connoisseur of the Russian language, and a fanatical admirer of Russian literature, was traveling by train Moscow-Vladivostok to the capital of the USSR; he looked out of the window at the Siberian expanses and froze with admiration. His admiration for Russia grew even more when, among the passengers on this train, he saw Natasha, a student at the Moscow Fur Institute, who was returning to the capital from vacation. They met, and it was this chance acquaintance that largely predetermined the outcome of the Moscow battle. The fact is that after arriving in Moscow, Emo and Natasha continued to meet, and this friendship did not pass by the attention of the competent authorities: Natasha was invited to the Lubyanka and asked to introduce an NKVD officer to Watanabe. Of course, she could not refuse and soon introduced her Japanese friend "Uncle Misha, father's brother." Watanabe was well aware of the realities of Soviet life and immediately realized that the prospect of his meetings with Natasha directly depended on his friendship with "Uncle Misha." And he became one of the most valuable agents of Soviet intelligence.
Already in March, Watanabe (who himself chose the agent pseudonym Totekatsu - "Fighter") conveyed invaluable information: in Berlin, the Germans and Japanese are discussing the possibility of a simultaneous attack on the USSR in the summer of 1941. A few days later, the Japanese Ambassador to the USSR Matsuoka was invited to a conversation with the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov. To the surprise of the Japanese diplomat, Chief of the General Staff Georgy Zhukov, whom the Japanese knew well from Khalkhin-Gol, also joined this conversation. Molotov and Zhukov bluntly accused Japan of conspiring with Hitler for the purpose of aggression against the Soviet Union. Apparently, during the conversation, Matsuoka got the impression that, firstly, Soviet intelligence is privy to all the secrets of Hitler, and secondly, the Red Army is ready to take preventive measures by arranging a second Khalkhin Gol for the Japanese. The direct result of this was the signing of the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact on April 13, 1941, the main factor that kept Japan from entering the war.
On October 10, 1941, the resident of Soviet intelligence in the Land of the Rising Sun, Richard Sorge (Ramsay), announced that Japan would not enter the war against the USSR, but would fight in the Pacific against the United States. Stalin did not trust Ramzai, so Watanabe was asked to check the information received from Sorge. A few days later, Totekatsu confirmed Ramsay's information: Japan is going to attack the United States, and the Japanese Kwantung Army is not planning any active actions against the USSR. And the Soviet command began the transfer of Siberian divisions to Moscow.
In 1946, Watanabe returned to Tokyo, where he continued to work at the Mainichi Shimbun, and at the same time became a resident of Soviet intelligence in Japan instead of the deceased Richard Sorge. In 1954, KGB officer Yuri Rastvorov, who fled to the United States, turned over the Fighter to the Americans, and they reported him to Japanese counterintelligence. Watanabe was arrested, brought to trial and … was acquitted: the judges admitted that the information he passed on to the Soviet Union harmed the United States, but not Japan. The soldier himself said at the trial that in this way he took revenge on the Americans for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, for us two fundamental points are more important: Emo Watanabe greatly contributed, firstly, to the conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact, and secondly, to the transfer of Siberian divisions to Moscow. But what if Natasha got on a different train?
Exit points
On January 5, 1942, at a meeting of Headquarters, Stalin said: the Germans are at a loss from defeat near Moscow. They have not prepared well for the winter. Now is the best moment to go on the general offensive. Our task is not to give the Germans this respite, to drive them westward without stopping, to force them to use up their reserves even before spring. On January 7, 1942, the front headquarters received a directive letter from the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command: "Given the successful course of the Moscow Region counteroffensive, the goal of the general offensive is to defeat the enemy on all fronts - from Lake Ladoga to the Black Sea." The troops were given only a week to prepare for the general offensive - it began on January 15th. And it soon failed: despite the fact that Stalin brought the strategic reserves of the Headquarters into battle - the 20th and 10th armies, the 1st shock army, other reinforcement units and all aviation - the Red Army did not manage to break through the German defenses in any sector … Chief of the General Staff Alexander Vasilevsky, in his memoirs about Stalin's venture, responded briefly: “In the course of the general offensive in the winter of 1942, Soviet troops spent all the reserves created with such difficulty in the fall and early winter. It was not possible to solve the set tasks”.
On the Soviet-German front, a strategic balance was established - both sides spent their reserves and did not have the resources for active action. It was clear to Hitler that the blitzkrieg had failed and the war was entering a protracted stage, for which Germany was not ready economically. The Soviet Union, in turn, suffered colossal losses in people, military equipment, economic potential, and the prospects for the restoration of all this seemed very vague. The best way out for both sides in this situation could be a long truce, and there is no doubt that if one of the parties had come up with such an initiative, the other would have seized this opportunity with joy. But no one showed the initiative, and Hitler decided to make another move in the game: in June, the German army launched a general offensive in the South and broke through to the Caucasus and the Volga.
Historians assess the unprecedented brutality of the battles for Stalingrad as senseless from a military point of view, trying to find an explanation for the stubbornness of both sides in the Battle of Stalingrad by the symbolic significance of the city. This is mistake. For the Red Army, the loss of Stalingrad meant one thing: it would be almost impossible to return to the western bank of the Volga. For Hitler, the capture of Stalingrad could become a decisive trump card for starting negotiations on an armistice: Germany was running out of resources to continue the war, primarily human resources. The Fuhrer was even forced to appeal to his allies with a request to send troops to help and put Italian, Romanian, Hungarian divisions in the first line, although everyone understood that they were not able to withstand a more or less serious blow from Soviet troops (as it was, in the end, and It happened).
The Red Army was not doing much better. The famous Stalinist order No. 227 "Not a step back" of July 28, 1942 was a desperate call from the command to the minds and souls of the soldiers: "Brothers, stop skimping!" - and demonstrated the complexity of the situation in the Soviet troops. However, the long-term prospects for the Russians were obviously better than for the Germans - the difference in resource potentials (and even taking into account the allies' aid coming to the USSR) was already felt very clearly. No wonder, according to the testimony of the German Minister of Armaments Albert Speer, in the fall of 1942 (but even before the start of the Soviet offensive near Stalingrad), the second person in the Reich - Hermann Goering - told him in a private conversation: “Germany will be very lucky if it can keep its borders 1933 of the year".
During this period, when both opponents were balancing on the blade of a knife and it was impossible to accurately predict who would win, Hitler had a second real chance to achieve an armistice and thus allow Germany to get out of the war with more or less dignity. Trying to get the main trump card - Stalingrad - the Fuhrer missed this chance. And in January 1943, at a conference in Casablanca, the United States and Great Britain accepted the demand for the unconditional surrender of Germany, and peace, more or less honorable for the Germans, became impossible. So the Third Reich was doomed to defeat.
