Thanks for the replies.
I also point out that by November 1941, the German Army had taken over 500,000 casualties (including 250,000 dead)! This was something like 20% of their forces-even the msot optimistic German general must have been apprehensive at this point.:eek:
Operation Barbarossa could have been more successful than it was historically, just as Japan could have won several of the major battles against the United States navy that it lost. Unfortunately for both Germany and Japan, doing better in Barbarossa, or winning Midway, would not have altered the realities of the overall strategic situation. Germany could not beat Russia long term–I’d probably try to turn traitor to set myself up with a nice villa or something in Sweden.
Did you read my posts? Germany couldn’t have beat France long term either, and yet they won. That’s the whole point.
Yes, and your posts are essentially incorrect. Beating France and beating Russia were fundamentally different tasks. Taking Moscow would not have been the end of the War in the East, and it would not change the fact that the Soviets simply had more resources than the Germans did.
War isn’t a video game or the game of Risk, if you look at a map of Europe during WWII, at its height the German conquests colored in a lot of the map. However not all of those areas were giving all of their pre-war productivity to the Nazi war machine. Germany hadn’t been able to materially benefit yet from its massive conquests of Russian lands. In fact, it would probably have taken a decade of German rule before they really got those areas back to full productivity, during that time they would have still been fighting a war with Russia, the UK, and the United States.
Moscow was a hub, but again, unlike a video game or a game of Castle Risk, it wasn’t a knock out blow. The Russian land mass and the vast amount of manpower and materials the Russians had to continue fighting against the Nazis with meant that no matter what the Germans did during Barbarossa they didn’t have the ability to deliver a knockout punch.
It was a flawed plan in Russia. France is a lot smaller than Russia, France was offered much better terms than Russia, the French leadership had no where to flee from, no where to move their industrial base to or etc. Further, Germany was in it to destroy the Russian people, Germany did not wish to destroy the French people (and this is explained in Hitler’s writings), they just wished to permanently castrate France so it would never again be a strategic rival of Germany’s.
Everyone knows how Blitzkrieg works, and it could not work against Russia. No Army on the planet at that time was capable of delivering a knock out blow to all of Russia in a timely enough fashion to have won the war. There was no way to have defeated Russia by the end of 1941, and because of that there was no way Germany could have won.
Comparing this to the campaign in France is folly. Yes, prior to the war most military analysts thought France would whip Germany. Their assessment was wrong. The reality is that France was not able to stop Germany and Germany was able to conquer too much French territory that was too psychologically important too fast for the French regime to keep fighting. In Russia the situation was just not such that this scenario could have played out.
Germany made mistakes in its war against Russia, but they ultimately did not matter. Germany never could have beaten Russia, ever.
Germany’s plan was akin to a boxer who goes into a fight with a plan to knock his opponent out by the third round, and puts all of his energy into every single punch, delivering a monstrous flurry of blows to overwhelm and defeat his opponent. Except his opponent is able to take every thing he has and then some, for 12 rounds, and is still standing at the end. At that point the aggressive boxer is essentially dead from exhaustion and it is easy to knock him out, his strategy failed because he was wrong about how much of a beating the other guy could take before going down. Even at the highest points of the match, he wasn’t close to knocking the guy out, but he was still expending tremendous amounts of energy trying to make that happen.
This is highly unlikely. In the fanciful scenario that Germany beats the Russians, they just did not have the ability to hold onto all that land. They had the wrong method of government and their military resources were also not adequate for such a task. The Soviets maintained an empire by propping up ideologically aligned forces in satellite states and using interventionist actions to help suppress any rebellions. The Germans didn’t operate that way, their rule would have meant long term unsustainable levels of military activity and oversight of conquered territory.
Further, the UK and the US would be unlikely to accept peace with a Germany that controlled all of Europe. Just as with Napoleon 130 years prior, the world is not accepting of that much power in the hands of one country. Germany would have been bled to death much the same way Napoleon had been bled to death. As that happened you’d see Germany’s grip on Eastern Europe fall away very quickly, the Russian lands even quicker, you’d see Italy go into doubt, insurgencies in France would intensify.
With no Eastern front it is unlikely allied forces would have tried landing at Normandy, but they would still be grinding a slow advance up the Italian peninsula, would still take all of the Mediterranean back, and would probably eventually launch an offensive on Southern France designed to link up with the Italian offensive at some point.
The way Hitler was running Germany is a lot different from the Soviet system that ended up working enough to keep the country going for 90 years. For Germany to have persisted as “alternate history Soviet replacement in the Cold War” it would need a fundamentally different type of government. Which would mean removing Hitler from power, which in itself would mean the state would be at risk of collapsing due to various internal factions (many of whom opposed part of the larger Nazi war aims.)
Actually, it would have been disproportionately damaging to the Soviet effort; the railroad network of the Eastern Soviet Union pretty much centered on Moscown; capturing it would have been absolutely crippling, considering that the road network was rudimentary at best and that the vast majority of freight was carried by rail.
That’s the real reason to capture Moscow, not because the government was there.
I disagree with this mainly because I dont think that Stalin would have survived to lead a government in exile. internal or other wise, Every state has some sort of succession plan, just in case and I dont doubt that the soviets had one. But I am more expecting some sort of civil war at some point, than I am seeing an orderly succession.
Moscow falls, and I doubt that lend lease happens and the soviets dont get the gas or the trucks that bought the time for them to bring their war machine up to speed. That leaves Germany in control of everything in the west, and a number of little rump states that are controlled by warlords.
At that time , the Japanese should be at least looking at the possiblity of invading, if the soviet military is fragmented or simply reduced to fighting various brushfire rebellions on one side, while attempting to retake territory.
Declan
One thing I would have done in December 1941 is have gotten a quid pro quo with Japan. If you want us (Germany) to declare war on those Americans that you cowardly and dastardly attacked
]at Pearl Harbor, you have to declare war on Russia. But no, the Austrian paper hanger felt compelled to declare war on the U.S. of A. for some strange reason.
I heard a BBC History podcast recently with Max Hastings and he mentioned that Germany should have concentrated on Moscow, instead of frittering away strength on lesser targets.
I’d have gone south. Take away the Caucasus oil fields and the best farmland in Russia. That would render Russia mostly helpless. The next year I can push south into Iran and deprive Britain and empire of fuel.
Two birds, one stone.
I didn’t say it wouldn’t have been bad, but it would not have been a knock out blow.
Keep in mind the Soviets advanced over a thousand miles into Germany itself with a lot of marching the old fashioned way. You don’t have to have that rail hub to win the war.
Not 100% true-a lot of these troops rode on 200,000 US-built Studebaker and Chevrolet trucks (supplied via Murmansk).
Can’t happen in the 1941 time period described-the logistics and distances involved simply won’t allow it. I’ve wargamed this across several sims, and even with the Russians completely rolling over in the south you can’t get much beyond Rostov before December. Note that the next year, with time in the spring to consolidate supply depots and refit/rearm, and with Stalin anticipating another thrust towards Moscow, that they weren’t able to pull it off.
As for Moscow in 1941, even if the Germans did get to the outskirts with time to spare in the fall, it just would have become another Stalingrad 1 year early; no way to take such a huge metropolitan center in such a short period of time, at the end of a long frayed inefficient logistics chain, their position easily compromised (probably moreso than in our timeline) by the impending Russian counter-offensive. I keep coming back to that because people often give logistics short shrift, preferring to discuss intricate strategic manuevers, the use of shiny new weapons, and various other what-if’s, but once the initial reserves of supplies from June '41 were used up, the Germans literally spent the rest of the war trying to scrape up what supplies they could, typically running big deficits, only able to adequately supply those parts of the front where they planned or expected action. Partisan activity didn’t help either.
I would offer Russia generally favorable peace terms as well as offer independence to any state conquered so far like the Baltic states, Ukraine etc.
I would then retreat back to Polish borders and support the newly created states as much as possible.
Points for choice 5, I didn’t expect you to include that. That is what I was thinking as I read the OP.
Start with (2) fall back. Prepare for (5). I don’t think (4) was happening, and I doubt (3) was possible. (1) is madness; Muscovy would be much less useful to Germany than would be Ukraine, and as hard to take or hold.
I’ve heard that the “Italians fatally delayed launch of Barbarossa” account is basically untrue - that the timing of the invasion was set by the late spring rasputitsa which made the roads impassible, and that the Italian adventures did not set the timetable back one jot - for maximum shock value, the invasion had to take place after the mud dried.
Anyone know the current historical consensus on this issue?
Can anyone explain in simple terms why the Germans didn’t just go around Stalingrad?
Very good point. It is a mystery as to why the German Army didn’t simply beseige it and pass on by (6th Army was supposed to strike south).
It wasn’t as if there was not precedent (Hitler wisely decided against taking Leningrad). Plus, getting bogged down in Stalingrad negated the German’s one advantage (mobility).
Of course, Hitler had ceased to be rational-and he was in command. So he ordered Gen. Von Paulus to take the city.
This of course, led to disaster-6th Army was totally destroyed, and that was (essentially) the end of offensive operations in Russia.
Simple terms? OK, Hitler had a woody to conquer Stalin’s namesake city.
Case Blue (the 1942 attack into the Caucasus) was designed to secure the flank of Army Group South by taking Vornezh and Stalingrad. However, once the 6th Army got to Stalingrad, Hitler succembed to the mystical symbolism of taking away ‘Stalin’s City’ and the effort started to suck up resources and attention that hadn’t originally been planned on.
Plus, about a week before the Soviets launched Operation Uranus to cut off the 6th Army, Hitler announced the conquest of Stalingrad at a nazi Prty shindig celebrating the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. After that, he wasn’t about to give up and withdraw (which 6th Army still MIGHT have been able to do. MIGHT.) And after about two-three weeks of being surrounded, without adequate supplies, 6th Army became unable to save itself.
So, in a nutshell, Stalingrad was a sideshow that grew into the tail that wagged the German Army dog due its name.
End? Well, I’d say the end of German offensive operations was their defeat at Kursk in the summer of '43. It may have signalled the end of any hope of Germany’s stopping the Soviets, but it certainly wasn’t Germany’s last offensive.
That is exactly what I was looking for. 