Russia's success hinged on two things: their massive geographic advantages and the use of scorched earth tactics.
I don't want to minimize the fact that Russia bore a lot of casualties (more than any other country) in the process of defeating the Germans and pushing east, but frankly most wars are won and lost by the factors that existed before the first shot is fired, including population, logistics, and geography. If Stalin had done a better job, maybe Russia wouldn't have suffered so many casualties; if Hitler had done a better job, maybe they would have suffered even more. But there's no way Germany could have actually won, just as there's no way the South could have actually won the American Civil War.
Yes. The last chance for the Germans to win was in the first world war. And that would have been only by keeping Britain and America out of the war, and minimizing involvement with France.
The South certainly couldn't have won the Civil War in the sense of invading and subduing the North. I think odds are good they could have "won" a political victory, in the sense of dragging the conflict out with superior generalship (which they had) until people in the North got tired enough of it and the North simply gave up and recognized the Confederacy, which was all they really wanted in the first place.
It's one thing to concede defeat and peacefully coexist with a tiny country in southeast Asia. That's not a hard sell, politically. A country that represents half of your former territory, borders your capital and has a very long border with you, and has a history of warfare against you is not so easy.
The South had enough of an industrial base to sustain a 1:1 kill ratio for years. Their mistake was to provoke a hot war instead of a cold war, causing most of their capacity to be diverted to fighting, instead of to industrial build-up and R&D. The time was ripe to replace slavery with automation, and instead they blew it all on a swinging dick attack on Fort Sumter.
The time was ripe to replace slavery with automation
Remember the Jevons paradox--any technological advance that increases the efficiency a given good can be utilized (including labor) results in an increase in the demand for that good. This is why slavery was even around back then--it was on its last legs until the cotton gin made it profitable again.
> Their mistake was to provoke a hot war instead of a cold war
True, except I'd replace 'cold war' with 'continued legislative compromise'; the North was damnably willing to compromise with the South, allowing them to get much of what they wanted with rather little sacrifice. There was, in fact, a compromise in the works when the South attacked Fort Sumter and, from a larger perspective, a lot of 19th Century American politics prior to the Civil War was an increasingly desperate dance done by the North to placate the South to prevent the inevitable war.
> The time was ripe to replace slavery with automation
Read the Cornerstone Speech, given by the Vice President of the CSA. It lays out the reasons they wanted to secede and slavery was foremost among them. Slavery, by that point, wasn't just an economic engine, it was a cultural imperative. Preserving slavery was so ingrained in the Southern mindset that I feel fairly certain the plantation owners would have gone through a certain amount of economic dislocation if that meant keeping the slaves and the social system built on slaves.
Besides, even if you're right, the CSA still would never have allowed former slaves equal rights. Not without a race war that successfully toppled the post-slavery CSA establishment by force of arms. In the real world, it took the direct threat of Federal force of arms to ensure the reality of Civil Rights in the South nearly a century after the Civil War. (Admittedly, this is at least partially because Reconstruction didn't go on long enough or go nearly far enough.)
> Besides, even if you're right, the CSA still would never have allowed former slaves equal rights.
Was the civil war a better outcome? After the war former slaves were still agricultural workers, working long days in the fields. Only now they faced random violence and Jim Crow laws. Lynchings occurred well into the 20th century. Oh and the cost of the civil war was 600,000 lives, unbelievable destruction and a complete abandonment of all of the principles this nation was founded on(self-determination).
> Not without a race war that successfully toppled the post-slavery CSA
Why not? It almost happened before the invention of the cotton gin. Slavery was in serious decline.
> After the war former slaves were still agricultural workers, working long days in the fields. Only now they faced random violence and Jim Crow laws.
This happened because Reconstruction was stopped too early. There was a period, from 1865 to 1876, where blacks were in state-level political office across the South, there were no Jim Crow laws, and the Klan was killed off by focused Federal action.
Secondly, slavery was horrible. Slavery involved much of what went on in the Jim Crow era, plus it meant a slave's life to try to escape the South. The Jim Crow South never managed to track down and forcibly return all the blacks who escaped to Detroit or Harlen.
> complete abandonment of all of the principles this nation was founded on(self-determination).
No. No. No. No. We fought this war and as it turns out, self-determination has to include everyone, not just the people lucky enough to be born rich and white. Read the Cornerstone Speech if you still doubt the primary cause of the Civil War was the CSA's insane determination to hold on to slavery.
> It almost happened before the invention of the cotton gin. Slavery was in serious decline.
If it's the CSA doing the inventing, there would have been another invention that saved slavery. And another. And so on. (After all, can't slaves work in assembly lines?)
Just so you know, I imagined you yelling this and slamming your shoe on the table.
> We fought this war and as it turns out, self-determination has to include everyone
What about the first civil war? The one between Great Britain and its american colonies? At the time the colonies had slavery and GB eliminated the slave trade in 1807 and all slavery in 1833. Why were the slave-holding american colonies justified in rebelling in 1775 but a different group of slave-holding americans not justified in rebelling in 1861? Was that self-determination for all?
How did the Second Civil war ensure self-determination for everyone? The fact is that it did not. Many blacks in the south were denied the right to vote for decades through a variety of tactics including literacy/law tests and threats of outright violence.
> After all, can't slaves work in assembly lines?
It's way cheaper to employ people for industrial work than it is to enslave them. Slaves are expensive and are a major capital investment, with significant risk of loss if they become injured or killed on the job. With employees you just replace them when they cannot work and you do not have to invest capital in buying them.
If you believe that the US invaded the south to free the slaves, the only reasonable conclusion is that they failed, at an enormous cost of lives, liberty, and property.
"Preserving slavery was so ingrained in the Southern mindset that I feel fairly certain the plantation owners would have gone through a certain amount of economic dislocation if that meant keeping the slaves and the social system built on slaves."
Yes, and that's OK. Free men with tractors were about to tear out the foundations of slavery. We know that slavery was economically infeasible by 1920, and that's with a decade or two of lost progress due to War losses. With a balls-out effort for industrial independence, that could probably have been accelerated to 1890.
That didn't happen because the abolitionists decided that it was better to kill one man today than to free two men tomorrow, and because the CSA let the abolitionists choose the terms of the conflict.
"Besides, even if you're right, the CSA still would never have allowed former slaves equal rights."
And that's OK too. In a Christian nation, the master is responsible for his estate's dependents, even if there is no use for them. After farm automation, most plantation owners would have freed them in desperation to escape the room and board costs. (In short order there would have been nothing left but lifestyle slaveholders and the obscenely rich, and the Southern abolitionists would have taken care of them.)
"Admittedly, this is at least partially because Reconstruction didn't go on long enough or go nearly far enough."
It has been argued that Reconstruction had to wait for the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program, which diverted vast amounts of resources into Southern industrialization.
> Free men with tractors were about to tear out the foundations of slavery.
Slaves can build tractors.
> We know that slavery was economically infeasible by 1920
This was a generation after it was abolished and the South had had to do something else. It's my contention that had the South been able to hang on to slavery, it would have found ways to work it into niches it never filled in the real world. Assembly line labor, for example, or mining, or fishing.
> the CSA let the abolitionists choose the terms of the conflict.
The abolitionists, by and large, thought they could win enough seats in Congress to outlaw slavery if they could prevent slavery from expanding into the new Western territories. That's why such expansion was the main topic of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and why Bloody Kansas was so bloody, and so on. There were certainly militant abolitionists, but they were the minority; the CSA chose its own war.
> In a Christian nation, the master is responsible for his estate's dependents, even if there is no use for them.
In a Christian nation, slavery either doesn't exist or is infinitely gentler than what actually occurred.
> After farm automation, most plantation owners would have freed them in desperation to escape the room and board costs.
Farm automation means machinery, and slaves can make machinery. Maybe that would involve plantations being turned into factories, but it isn't a slam-dunk that it would involve freeing slaves.
> It has been argued that Reconstruction had to wait for the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program, which diverted vast amounts of resources into Southern industrialization.
I doubt they can do it well. Machinery is hard enough for enthusiastic people who are being showered in money.
> It's my contention that had the South been able to hang on to slavery, it would have found ways to work it into niches it never filled in the real world.
Perhaps. My experience is that skilled industrial jobs are hard. Even in the time of Henry Ford, high wages had to be paid to attract good enough people. If slaves could get the job done, then auto workers at minimum wage could do it, which seems absurd to me.
> In a Christian nation, slavery either doesn't exist or is infinitely gentler than what actually occurred.
Southern slaves were not treated nicely (slavery, duh), but they were treated well in comparison to many other examples of slavery. Elderly, worn-out slaves were a reasonably common sight, despite the fact that their economic output was near zero. Slaves were given the very important job of child care (creating the Southern accent in the process), which is not a job given to a sullen, mistreated drudge. Compare this to the Arabs, who use slaves completely up and plow the bodies under as fertilizer. (See Dubai for a modern example.)
> This is an interesting idea. Who argues that?
TVA, Oak Ridge, Huntsville, and so forth. Huge amounts of resources were poured into creating technology projects from scratch. By the time of Apollo, Southern senators were good at bringing home the money and economic development.
I don't want to minimize the fact that Russia bore a lot of casualties (more than any other country) in the process of defeating the Germans and pushing east, but frankly most wars are won and lost by the factors that existed before the first shot is fired, including population, logistics, and geography. If Stalin had done a better job, maybe Russia wouldn't have suffered so many casualties; if Hitler had done a better job, maybe they would have suffered even more. But there's no way Germany could have actually won, just as there's no way the South could have actually won the American Civil War.