@CWO:
Agreed, assuming that the cloned Frederick the Great would get to replace Hitler as Germany’s leader. The year given in the poll is 1942, which is the point at which a great leader and a great general would have made a crucial difference. John Keegan’s book The Mask of Command has a chapter on Hitler, which focuses on his “generalship” at the mid-point of the war (specifically during the Stalingrad campaign). Keegan finds this period a better test of a leader’s ability than the early phase of the war (which was marked by easy victories against ill-prepared enemies) or the late phase of the war (in which Germany was basically on the defensive and reduced to fighting delaying actions). At the war’s mid-point, Hitler was in a position of having relatively free but appreciably constrained strategic choice, and it was here that he got himself into trouble. The Stalingrad campaign was originally just meant to be a supporting operation to secure the flank of a main drive into the Caucasus region (which had important oil fields), and its objective was originally just supposed to be to reach the city and surround it on the western bank of the Volga. Hitler lost sight of his strategic objectives, however: he simultaneously stripped Von Paulus’ 6th Army of much of its armour (sending it to support the Caucasus drive) and gave Von Paulus the supplementary mission of actually capturing the city (which was a much tougher proposition than just besieging it). During the arduous month-long fighting which followed, Hitler made the additional mistake of thinking too much like a corporal and not enough like a general: being too concerned about whether this company had captured that neighborhood rather than stepping back to wonder whether the campaign as a whole was serving Germany’s larger strategic interests. Frederick the Great would presumably have had more good sense if he’d been in command.
Good post.
I’d initially voted for the Type XXI U-boats. But now I want to change my vote to Frederick the Great!
To add to what you’ve written: in the summer and fall of 1941, the German Army achieved a staggering 10:1 exchange ratio against its communist opponent. By 1943, improvements in the Red Army had caused the usual ratio to decline to 3:1 or (at best) 4:1.
But in the street-to-street fighting to capture Stalingrad itself, the exchange ratio was 1:1. 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. Germany’s pre-war population was 69 million; as opposed to 169 million for the Soviet Union. It simply could not afford anything close to a 1:1 exchange ratio!
The flanks of the Stalingrad force were protected by soldiers from non-German Axis nations (Romania, Italy, etc.). After the Soviets overcame those soldiers and surrounded the German force at Stalingrad, Goering promised Hitler that he could resupply it by air until the siege had been broken. Hitler believed Goering’s promises because Goering said exactly what Hitler wanted to hear. A better leader (such as Frederick the Great) would have known better than to trust Goering’s promises.
On the other hand, there’s something to be said for all those type XXI U-Boats in '42. The United States was making massive deliveries to Germany’s enemies: tanks, planes, trucks, and machinery to the Soviet Union, fighters and bombers to Britain. Type XXIs were very difficult to detect via radar or sonar (rubber-coated hulls). They could have sent a large portion of that aid to the bottom of the sea. Not only would that have weakened the Soviet Union’s ground war against Germany. It would also have lessened the Anglo-American ability to conduct their air war. (Planes were being delivered via transports.)