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Originally Posted by smc
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.
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I probably should've used the word attack instead of victory. What I was meaning was at what point was it no longer for Hitler to achieve victory and should've begin attempts to sit down and negotiate with the Allies and the Soviets.
Stalingrad was a major turning point. That coupled with the failure in the Caucasus campaign (which was going on during the Stalingrad operations) ment that Army Group South was severly weakend also all the gains in the summer had to be abandoned. It still seems almost preposterous that the handful of Red Army survivors and Chuikov's 62nd Army were able to hold out against the entire German 6th Army. A couple of factors come into play. Firstly, Paulus was not the ideal commander. He was the replacement to Walther von Reichenau (who died of a heart attack) who was by many accounts a far better general. Secondly, when the Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad to ruble, the Germans were not able to bing their decessive weapon (the tank) into the battle. Lastly, the Soviet defenders were fighting out of desperation. Whereas before, they might have withdrawn in the face of overwhelming German attacks. Stalin's "not a step back" order and the use of blocking attachments to shoot anyone trying to retreat gave the Red Army soldiers two grim choices, stand and fight until killed by the Germans or get shot by their own soldiers.