Wehrmacht Best Infantry Weapon Upgrade


  • Another knowledgeable post from KG7.  Good stuff.  :-)


  • @Narvik:

    @ABWorsham:

    Winter wear would have helped greatly.

    If the Huns had panzerfaust or assault rifles in the summer of 1941, they would not need winter gear, since the war would end in October.

    You, sir, are correct.  That’s what the Huns had in mind.  Take Moscow by Fall.


  • Tight vote.

  • 2007 AAR League

    Sticking to the poll I think Panzerfaust would have helped more during 1941 with idea of mobility in mind to just continue knocking out tanks and keep on moving and not getting bogged down.

    Winter Gear as mentioned would have been great, but so would have just invading 2-3months earlier instead of being stuck frozen in the snow in December outside of Moscow.

  • '17 '16 '15

    IDK if they could have started 2 to 3 mnths earlier. If I remember right it was a bad winter resulting in a wet spring. A month earlier would’ve been better but they had to secure their southern flank.

    Hindsight would seem to say they had enough time they should have just kept the panzers rolling towards moscow. Who knows tho?


  • The start of Barbarossa was delayed by about five weeks, if I recall correctly, due to the German invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia.  Once Barbarossa was underway, the drive on Moscow was further delayed because at one point Hitler temporarily diverted many of his central army group’s forces southward to support the southern component of the invasion.  If both those factors were changed, the Wehrmacht could possibly have gotten to the outskirts of Moscow more than a month earlier – and perhaps as much as two months earlier – than was actually the case (they got within sight of the Kremlin on December 2, 1941).  Would this have enabled the Germans to take Moscow?  It’s hard to tell; as I recall, it was around October that Zhukov started receiving reinforcements from the Siberian troops who were released for service on the European front following Richard Sorge’s intelligence that the Japanse were planning to go to war against Britain and the U.S. rather than Russia.

  • 2007 AAR League

    Yeah it was Greece and Yugoslavia that delayed the invasion as they had to help out Italy, I don’t think that occupying those countries helped at all plus I think the partisans in Yugoslavia where some of the hardest ones to deal with?

    If they had an extra 1-2 months to take Moscow it would have been an interesting fight anyway; even if they took it (or was contested all winter) I’m not sure they win the war against the Soviet Union anyway. A lot of the Soviet factories were moved out further East, each spring, fall + winter always killed the Germans “momentum” and they didn’t have the resources/logistics/man-power to continue to re-start large attacks each summer.

    I apologize for commenting outside of the topic of the poll.


  • The winter of 1940/41 was harsh. The spring melt was late. This would have prevented a successful invasion in April or May. The Germans may have got a few weeks head start.

    The spring thaw caused dirt roads of Russia to become soup and rivers to flood out of banks. This would have been no condition to launch a attack upon.

    Lets remember, had the Germans not invaded Greece then Rommel’s adventure in Africa is much different. His role would have been to save Tripoli, instead of counter-attacking and driving to Egypt.


  • @ABWorsham:

    Lets remember, had the Germans not invaded Greece then Rommel’s adventure in Africa is much different. His role would have been to save Tripoli, instead of counter-attacking and driving to Egypt.

    I’m not sure Greece was the cause.  As I recall, when Hitler originally sent Rommel to Africa he basically gave him orders to simply dig in and hold the line.  If that was indeed Hitler’s intention, then he made a serious mistake in his choice of generals because Rommel was definitely not a dig-in-and-hold-the-line kind of commander.  Rommel was even prepared to interpret his orders in creative ways which technically adhered to their letter but not to their spirit: for purposes of paperwork, for example, he described first major offensive in North Africa as simply a “reconnaissance in force.”  He ended up routing the British and driving them practically back to Egypt – and with those kinds of results, of course, Hitler was happy to overlook the fact that Rommel hadn’t done what Hitler had wanted him to do.


  • @CWO:

    @ABWorsham:

    Lets remember, had the Germans not invaded Greece then Rommel’s adventure in Africa is much different. His role would have been to save Tripoli, instead of counter-attacking and driving to Egypt.

    I’m not sure Greece was the cause.  As I recall, when Hitler originally sent Rommel to Africa he basically gave him orders to simply dig in and hold the line.  If that was indeed Hitler’s intention, then he made a serious mistake in his choice of generals because Rommel was definitely not a dig-in-and-hold-the-line kind of commander.  Rommel was even prepared to interpret his orders in creative ways which technically adhered to their letter but not to their spirit: for purposes of paperwork, for example, he described first major offensive in North Africa as simply a "reconnaissance in force."  He ended up routing the British and driving them practically back to Egypt – and with those kinds of results, of course, Hitler was happy to overlook the fact that Rommel hadn’t done what Hitler had wanted him to do.

    All true.

    Had the 6th Australian, 2nd New Zealand and British 1st Armored been in North Africa instead of Greece, Rommel may have been forced to ‘obey orders’ with his 5th Light Division.

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