few questions about ww2

Command couldn't guarantee a schnitzel supply to the frontline so they put an invasion on the backburner
 
A few factors really.

The biggest is time: Hitler was impatient to invade Russia. He expected to have invaded Britain by spring 1941, which would allow him to invade Russia without fighting a war on two fronts. However, the luftwaffe could not break down the RAF in the same way that he had expected.

Regarding the air war, Britain had a "lucky break" in that Hitler shifted the focus from destroying airfields to blitzing cities, after a British raid on Berlin (in Aug 1940). Although bombing of the cities caused massive damage and heavy loss of life, it ultimately saved fighter command who were not able to replace their losses sufficiently quickly.

The biggest stumbling block though was the British navy, which was at that time the second biggest navy in the world (behind the US). A large proportion of ships were concentrated around the channel, which would have made reinforcement of any landing difficult.

Finally, just one point, someone earlier said that British aircraft were "way better" than the German aircraft. This isn't exactly true; the fighters on both sides were roughly evenly matched (trading the lead in key areas like top speed, rate of climb, rate of turn etc). The luftwaffe also had far more aircraft at the time The advantage from the British perspective was mainly location, and radar. Fuel considerations meant that the Germans would only have a brief time in dogfights before they needed to head back. Also, any German pilots who bailed out over the UK were effectively lost to the Nazis, whereas British pilots could be picked up and put back into the rotation. The radar system was also absolutely essential; it gave the British an early warning, so they could get their planes in the air, to avoid being caught by surprise and slaughtered.


You can think of it like this:

Surviving the air war for as long as we did put a damper on Hitlers plans, which were basically to achieve local air superiority, then use air power to take out the navy, then begin the invasion - operation sealion. Because we were taking too long to fall, Hitler focused his attention east, on Russia. Russia had always been Hitlers main overall goal, and we were getting in the way. He "needed" to attack Russia before their military gained enough strength to crush him.
 
Duff-Man said:
A few factors really.

Surviving the air war for as long as we did put a damper on Hitlers plans, which were basically to achieve local air superiority, then use air power to take out the navy, then begin the invasion - operation sealion. Because we were taking too long to fall, Hitler focused his attention east, on Russia. Russia had always been Hitlers main overall goal, and we were getting in the way. He "needed" to attack Russia before their military gained enough strength to crush him.
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Then when they tried attacking russia they got caught in the Russian winter and none of the german troops had enough warm clothes/equipment to survive the cold and there tanks etc stopped working normally.

Also couldn't handle the russian special forces who are trained for combat in the snow.
 
Cybermyk said:
I was lead to believe Hitler thought if they could defeat Russia then the UK would fall in line.
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If Hitler had defeated Russia, then no-one could have stopped them taking over all of Europe (the UK included). The world would have descended into a dark time, with the US and Nazi Europe as the two world superpowers. I guess that only atomic weapons would have broken the stalemate, probably leaving Europe as a smouldering wasteland.
 
nex20 said:
Then when they tried attacking russia they got caught in the Russian winter and none of the german troops had enough warm clothes/equipment to survive the cold and there tanks etc stopped working normally.
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Yep. Hitler decided to take the oil and gas fields around the Ukraine, rather than pushing straight towards Moscow. When they eventually did push to Moscow they got within about 40 miles or so before the cold completely stopped the tanks from moving, and they had to just dig in. This allowed Stalin time to bring in his Siberian troops, who were equipped and trained for "arctic warfare". They drove the Germans backwards.

I guess that wasn't really the turning point of the war (that came at Stalingrad), but it was the first real defeat for the German army.
 
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