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Stas Bush wrote:The Dark

And Hermann Goering's heaviest bomber (Greif) had a payload of 6000 kilograms.

Hermann Hoering's bombers could demolish everything if they wanted to because the ranges were on the order of 1500 kms and the Nazis captured many airfields in the initial offensive.

Bullshit. At 1500 kilometers, the only commonly used bomber with range would be the Ju-88 (bombload 1500 kilos) or He-177. For the Ju-88, on 20 July 1942, there were at most 317 flyable Ju-88, for a total bombload of under half a million kilograms, and 0 He-177. By the end of the year, there were 15 of the He-177, but the maximum number of Ju-88 had declined to 201, giving a bombload over 1500 km of under 400,000 kilograms. That's roughly the amount of payload used in the attacks on Dresden, spread across the entire Russian Front. Goering had enough bombers to carpet-bomb one target, and it would have required every long-range bomber he had with no replacements for losses.

However the Nazis did not start pounding the industry to the ground, because they wanted to capture some of it, or perhaps just by blunder.

Or because they didn't have the capability.

Goering himself was an addict, a hedonist, and a vain popinjay of a coward.

He was, however, not the worst chief for an Aif Force. His Luftwaffe continued fighing into 1945, when both Kriegsmarine and Wehrmacht were decimated so severely that they could not even put up a fight.

In other words, the Luftwaffe continued to exist after everything else had fought to destruction.

It would be much simpler to attack the oil fields and essentially cripple the Soviets the same way the Germans were crippled

The question is, weren't the original plans also directed at the oil of the USSR?
Of course they were:

And once again, the Germans didn't have the capability to carry through due to a lack of long-ranged bombers that could inflict damage on priority targets to slow Russian plans.

Ace Pace wrote:

MKSheppard wrote:

Stas Bush wrote:Yeah; the point is, the 6th SS Panzer Army and additional divisions were moved after the Ardennes Offensive, on 13-20th January. So my point still stands, how the hell did the Germans move an entire tank Army?

Without most of their tanks.

Got source?

From Ambrose:

Citizen Soldier wrote:Peiper's advance ended. That afternoon at 1700 hours he got an order via radio - withdraw. "When I recieved that message," Peiper told Hechler, "I realized that the only chance was to break out without any vehicles and wounded. Accordingly on 24 December, at 0100, we abandoned all our vehicles and started walking back." (p. 226)

Of course, that's only one division. Ambrose goes on to give a better reason for why the better part of a Panzer Army was able to move back into Germany, re-equip, and then move to the Eastern Front.

Citizen Soldier wrote:But the next day brought the frustration of being shut down. That was typical: in the thirty days between mid-December 1944 and mid-January 1945, only eight days were sufficiently clear to allow missions to be flown. (p. 227)

[/quote]

Goering had enough bombers to carpet-bomb one target

Why in the Empire should he do that instead of precisely destroying factories in many targets! That's exactly the type of silliness that the Germans were involved in - hell, the Germans did not even bomb the Factory 183 in Kharkov. Here's the situation: the Germans had used the following units, which planes had been used in 1941 for PURELY political bombings of Moscow instead of targeting precisely the industry in the regions:
I/KG4
II/KG4
III/KG4
I/KG28
III/KG26
KGr100
KG53
I/KG55
II/KG55
I/KG3
II/KG3
III/KG3

Full-scale assaults begun 22/07/41.

An example would be the Kharkov incident. II/KG54 had Ju.88s. It moved on an airfield under Belaya Tserkov 18.07.41. As you could see on any god damn map, Kharkov is well within reach. Factory 183 only started redislocating on 17 Sep 1941. What did they Germans do? Shit.

For instance - one heavy bomb dropped on GAZ facilities stopped their work for about a month. The Germans had payloads to make a Dresden; that would be enough to cripple select industries (for some ~1000 targets, it would be several dozen tons per flight, perhaps even more).

Tell about neglience.

Or because they didn't have the capability.

The problem is, they very well did. If instead of making terror bombing raids a-la Minsk, they made plans for specific attacks against major industries in range (like the Kharkov one which they totally ignored as I have shown above), they could seriously cripple the evacuation plans. It was not done.

And once again, the Germans didn't have the capability to carry through due to a lack of long-ranged bombers that could inflict damage on priority targets to slow Russian plans.

Um... what exactly prevented them from redislocating their bombers on airfields close to targets? Hell, their advancement tempo was very _good_, by Autmn 1942 they were so far into the South that they could attack the Caucasus with their bombing units - again, instead of doing shit, they should've made priority bombing on schedule.

Clearly this debate all comes down to which side in this alternate universe gets the trump card.

LordShaithis
TrueBrit is witty... but actually, ATOMIKA would rip them both a new one:

You know, part of the reason Germany didn't have a heavy bomber force was the production aspect of it; every Dornier Do 19 or Junkers Ju 89 produced would have taken the materials, money, and labor for approximately 2 1/2 Heinkel He 111s...

I would take Soviet Superman. British Superman just dosen't look right.

If Russia relocated all of its factories further east then they did in real life, and could keep up production they might stand a chance against the allies and their long range bombers. (did they have bombers that could reach past the Urals?)

Is the U.S. right out of this confict, or would there be "secret" negotiations going on favouring the Soviet or Allies. The U.S. may want to be an allie of whoever comes out on top.

Frank Hipper wrote:You know, part of the reason Germany didn't have a heavy bomber force was the production aspect of it; every Dornier Do 19 or Junkers Ju 89 produced would have taken the materials, money, and labor for approximately 2 1/2 Heinkel He 111s...

IIRC, a lot of why Hitler started the war when he did had to do with Germany reaching the end of what it could do economically in service of the buildup under peacetime conditions (read: without looting the other nations of Europe).

Part of it was that Hitler didn't seriously think the Allies were going to give that much of a shit about Poland.

If Russia relocated all of its factories further east then they did in real life

Why? They already moved a thousand factories some 2000-3000 kms and even further from Moscow. And anyway, redislocating them further to Siberia is certainly an option, if the bombing threat is realistic on such a distance.

did they have bombers that could reach past the Urals?

It depends on the airfields' location. Massive air attacks could be launched from airfields in Poland, but the problem is that the range would be more like 5000 km even for a 2000 km-from-Moscow factory. That's tops, not the usual range, for the LR bombers of the time, the usual range is somewhere between 2000 and 3000 kms. Thus it's hard to "reach" beyond the Urals if you don't have airfields somewhere close to Moscow. And then, NO USAF machines to make up the bulk of Combined AF attacking squadrons.

The U.S. may want to be an allie of whoever comes out on top.

That's the common and realistic US modus operandi, but the OP says US is submerged into isolationism and does not sponsor or interfere. So it's OUT.

Hitler didn't seriously think the Allies were going to give that much of a shit about Poland

The ole' bastard was sure smart enough to foresee the inept attitude of Franco-British politicians towards Poland.

Red Star wrote:I would take Soviet Superman. British Superman just dosen't look right.

Plus the British Superman caused hyperinflation and ruined the mining industry by compressing all of Britain's coal into diamonds.