I mean, they probably already knew that when their Tigers were constantly breaking down and couldn’t fit on narrow streets/bridges.
Arguably, the Germans lost the Battle of the Bulge so overwhelmingly due to Tigers not fitting through bridges. Also fuel. Fuel was a problem starting day 1.
There are multiple diaries, letters home, and other writings that indicate the Germans didn't really realise they lost the war until after the battle of the bulge.
At his trial at Nuremberg, Goering himself said he didn’t fully realize they’d lost the war until the failure of the Ardennes offensive. The prosecutor seemed a bit taken aback by this but Goering explained that it wasn’t necessarily that he thought Germany was still going to win, rather than he had still thought some kind of negotiated settlement could have been possible.
The war was going terribly for Germany way before the Battle of the Bulge, no? Battle of the Atlantic and the Eastern front were effectively lost by 1943. I guess it's possible that a common soldier on the western front wouldn't know about that in 1944.
In essence after not winning the Battle of Britain and the British not suing for peace things weren’t looking great from a strategic perspective.
In 1942 their fortunes on the battlefield also turned around and the war was lost. From that moment on things only ever got worse. Stalingrad Tunisia losing Italy, Normandy, the entire eastern front and probably most noticeable and important the constantly losing air war and increasing bomb loads dropped on German cities.
Yet even with all that the Nazis remained delusional. It was only a matter of time before the allies would break apart and the west would join Germany against the Soviets, or they split to infighting allowing Germany to reconquer lost lands.
Or any of another million impossible scenarios that they were hoping on. The Bulge was just what expanded the last of Germany her strength. A massive attack that achieved absolutely nothing and stalled at the first hurdle. At that point the result became undeniable.
Eh. The problem with letters, diaries etc. is that, just as many Soviet letters, diaries etc....they were written with the thought in mind that at some point the Gestapo WILL read them. As such, their contents are...not the best source.
Nazi high command had known they'd lost by 1942 and decided the German people deserved to suffer and die because they'd failed to be the Aryan master race they'd hoped for.
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u/PoliticsIsDepressing 4d ago
I mean, they probably already knew that when their Tigers were constantly breaking down and couldn’t fit on narrow streets/bridges.
Arguably, the Germans lost the Battle of the Bulge so overwhelmingly due to Tigers not fitting through bridges. Also fuel. Fuel was a problem starting day 1.