[smc]

Originally Posted by tslust

I've read from multiple sources saying that the failures at Stalingrad, Kursk or even Normady were the "death nail" Wehrmacht. I believe it was the failure to capture Moscow, in 1941.

Okay, so you mean culminating point of defeat, not victory? If that's true, you can understand the confusion.

I'm no military expert, but it has always seemed to me that the failure of the Nazis militarily cannot be attributed to any one event, and hence there is no specific "point" to which defeat can be attributed (unless you want to be hypertechnical and ascribe that to the official moment of surrender).

I agree with you that one of the most important turning points in the war (yes, a turning point despite how early it came) has to do with the Soviet Union, but I'm not sure it's the failure to capture Moscow in 1941. Rather, I think it was the defeat of the Nazis by the Red Army in the Battle of Stalingrad, ending in February 1943.

The Germans had to devote enormous resources to this battle, which waged from late August 1942, and suffered tremendous losses of its fighting force. After this defeat, the Germans were unable to win a single important victory on the war's Eastern front.

However, the importance of this defeat wasn't strictly measured by specific military losses, in my opinion. I think the Germans were very demoralized by the fact that despite holding 90 percent of the city, they couldn't beat the Russian holdouts in building-to-building conflict. It wasn't lost on German rank-and-file soldiers that the Russians were fighting for something they believed in -- the defense of their nation (despite the rapidly and increasingly hated Stalinist bureaucracy at its helm) -- whereas the Germans were all conscripts and increasingly saw themselves as cannon fodder.