generic-user-1 said:
it was the endpoint of 300 years of military tradition, and it has nothing to do with todays conflicts or the new german army... |
It wasnt just the officers.. German troops up untill the end of the war had better supoly for ammunition and weapons (the russian standard equipment were lackluster in comparison. You must know that in stalingrad rifles were scarce for the russians so in deployment only every other soldier were handled a rifle while the next one was handed just a clip of ammo) then there were german air superiority allowing for bombing raids aswell as the overwhelming armor. The turning point came when stalin took a chance and diverted his forces near the asian borders away to help on their european front. Japan was aiming south further into china and stalin rightfully foresaw that the chinese would keep the japanese occupied. They arrived just in time to prevent the capture of both moscow and stalingrad. With the german armies ground to a halt in fierce combat its blietzkrieg tactics became a death trap. Overstreching its troops only to get cut off from its other divisions and eventually encircled. This led to hitler having to relocate much of its west front garrison in order the create balance on the eastern front again. Furthermore there was the infamous lack of winter clothing which inflicted heavy casualties on german infantry and even caused many of its tanks to get stuck in the snow which wasnt really that good at traversing difficult icy terrain but instead favoured hull thickness and firepower. Soviet tanks and infantry however were built to handle the soviet climate and since the germans were outnumbered it was devastating when they lost their firepower advantage.
As the soviets slowly reclaimed its land it became clear that the german reich would eventually fall. The allies began thinking about the post war and the consequenses a soviet (liberation) of german invaded countries would have.
Then the western front was reignited after the landing in normandy and an invasion of italy from north africa which had seen the italians being pushed into the sea by the UK. Now it became a matter of reaching berlin first for both the allies and soviets. The allies rightly predicted conflict on territories post war and so liberating western europe was vital to keep russia (was viewed as unreliable) from moving to become the new occupiers. The soviets were advancing rapidly towards the german capital and it became clear the allies couldnt reach the capital before them. Instead they made a rush to northern germany to cut off soviet acces into the danish strait where they would have a great strategic point for which to control the entire north sea aswell as isolating all of scandinavia from the allied navy. Another benefit for the soviets was securing a coastline from denmark all the way up to leningrad. The allies succeded and also wentured further into europe in the south.
With no clear strategic advantage for either side the iron curtain came down as suddenly there were no reason to set aside ideological differences anylonger.
