Delayed Barbarossa

[Patukov]

Let's say that for some reason (Maybe France holds longer and keep fighting,or Greece or Yugoslavia) Hitler is forced to delay Barbarossa until February/March 1942 and the Soviets don't ignore the obvious Axis mobilization and makes some preparations....

What happens then?

[adam888]

It would be curious what the Germans would have done if Pearl Harbor
had occurred as scheduled in this scenario.

[Shaby]

It is hard to see that even in this situation - US in active belligerence against Germany they would have chosen to be dependant on Soviets. Come May '42, Germans roll over USSR and fare worse than in OTL.

[MattII]

By may 1942 I doubt it would be a roll-over, there would be probably several thousand more T-34s, which even if the Germans had got their 7.5 cm KwK 40 in place, would still have slowed the Germans down quite a bit. Possibly the Yak-7 will be available by the time the war starts as well, which I assume will be a nasty surprise to the Germans. The Pe-2 and Tu-2 will also be a nasty surprise for the Germans.

[Montanian]

Bevin Alexander's recent series of books rethinking the Soviet-German war brought up that Stalin was mobilizing for an attack within a few months of Barbarossa and German intelligence was somewhat aware of that, prompting Hitler's "strike first" rather than "what the hell?" attack. That does explain the massing of Soviet troops near the border and the level of surprise and disorganization when the planned attack turns into defense.

So if Hitler did decide to hold Barbarossa back, quite reasonably to acquire more supplies and munitions to rebuild what had been deeply depleted in the Western Europe campaigns, see Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction", and at least initially he was reacting to a Russian offensive into Poland, that's intriguing. Maybe the German's strengths with elastic defense and shortening supply lines allows the same vast encirclements of Soviet forces and the results are roughly the same but the battles are fought in Poland instead initially (which might affect Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgarias' actions or not really given where they'd be in relation to the Russian advance in 1941-2.

Simply attacking the Soviets later would mean:
1. U.S. support of the Allies was significantly retarded by Soviet spies/useful idiot supporters/direct funding of media and government officials. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, that vast "give peace a chance, stay out of the war" campaign became stridently interventionist in a day or two after Barbarrossa commenced. Do it later, the U.S. is even less mobilized by Pearl Harbor, some of the aid to Great Britain probably isn't allowed, maybe the American draft isn't extended, probably puts the U.S. about 3-12 months behind OTL in mobilization.
2. The pressure on Hitler from both deals with Japanese and internal issues as well as the Battle of the North Atlantic, probably still has Germany declare war on the U.S. shortly after Peal Harbor. That occurring before declaring war on his Russian allies is really intriguing. Stalin wouldn't be getting a flood of American trucks, planes, tanks, food, munitions, locomotives, etc. that sustained his war effort far more than Soviet propaganda admitted...so the Russian war effort is considerably weaker in 1942 and possibly after that, how it unfolds seems likely to change considerably.
3. Timing for Russian mud, permafrost, and winter are big deals and it's mostly forgotten how many German officers had trained in Russia, particularly on armored tactics/equipment testing in the 1930's before Hitler was able to ignore the Treaty of Versailles' weapons limitations, that's considerably different experience with terrain and conditions than a vague knowledge it had been hard on Napoleon as seems often implied. Holding back probably would mean Spring 1942.

[MattII]

Originally Posted by Montanian

Bevin Alexander's recent series of books rethinking the Soviet-German war brought up that Stalin was mobilizing for an attack within a few months of Barbarossa and German intelligence was somewhat aware of that, prompting Hitler's "strike first" rather than "what the hell?" attack.

Without getting into an argument over that particular situation, I'll point out several point that Alexander seems to have missed:

1) Lend-Lease was signed into law on March 11, so it's around for more than 3 months before Barbarossa.

2) There wasn't a whole lot of Lend-Lease going into Russia in 1941, and Russia wouldn't have needed it anyway since it would have had a lot more factories to work with, and wouldn't have lost production in moving the ones they managed to evacuate OTL.

3) The longer they delay, the longer the Soviets have to build up.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Montanian

Bevin Alexander's recent series of books rethinking the Soviet-German war brought up that Stalin was mobilizing for an attack within a few months of Barbarossa and German intelligence was somewhat aware of that, prompting Hitler's "strike first" rather than "what the hell?" attack. That does explain the massing of Soviet troops near the border and the level of surprise and disorganization when the planned attack turns into defense.

So if Hitler did decide to hold Barbarossa back, quite reasonably to acquire more supplies and munitions to rebuild what had been deeply depleted in the Western Europe campaigns, see Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction", and at least initially he was reacting to a Russian offensive into Poland, that's intriguing. Maybe the German's strengths with elastic defense and shortening supply lines allows the same vast encirclements of Soviet forces and the results are roughly the same but the battles are fought in Poland instead initially (which might affect Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgarias' actions or not really given where they'd be in relation to the Russian advance in 1941-2.

Simply attacking the Soviets later would mean:
1. U.S. support of the Allies was significantly retarded by Soviet spies/useful idiot supporters/direct funding of media and government officials. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, that vast "give peace a chance, stay out of the war" campaign became stridently interventionist in a day or two after Barbarrossa commenced. Do it later, the U.S. is even less mobilized by Pearl Harbor, some of the aid to Great Britain probably isn't allowed, maybe the American draft isn't extended, probably puts the U.S. about 3-12 months behind OTL in mobilization.
2. The pressure on Hitler from both deals with Japanese and internal issues as well as the Battle of the North Atlantic, probably still has Germany declare war on the U.S. shortly after Peal Harbor. That occurring before declaring war on his Russian allies is really intriguing. Stalin wouldn't be getting a flood of American trucks, planes, tanks, food, munitions, locomotives, etc. that sustained his war effort far more than Soviet propaganda admitted...so the Russian war effort is considerably weaker in 1942 and possibly after that, how it unfolds seems likely to change considerably.
3. Timing for Russian mud, permafrost, and winter are big deals and it's mostly forgotten how many German officers had trained in Russia, particularly on armored tactics/equipment testing in the 1930's before Hitler was able to ignore the Treaty of Versailles' weapons limitations, that's considerably different experience with terrain and conditions than a vague knowledge it had been hard on Napoleon as seems often implied. Holding back probably would mean Spring 1942.

There are rather more mundane reasons for that Soviet massing on the borders and their poor preparation. The Soviet wars of aggression at Polish and Baltic and Finnish defense meant the USSR had to push its army further forward to secure its new borders, or otherwise it was basically in a position of doing much to gain nothing at all. This, however, meant the USSR had to start from scratch with defenses. The Purges explain the dislocation as Soviet generals were very inexperienced and Moscow's command and control and communications systems broke down altogether in the first two weeks. The surprise factor was due to the Soviets having had so many cries of wolf that they missed the wolf coming down upon the fold when it finally happened.

Soviet concepts in the MP-40 Plan were defensive, but were structured on a very bad basis, namely the belief that they would have two weeks to prepare for any Nazi assault and then would be able to conduct WWI-style mass offensives against it. The reality was that this meant their deployments were very stupid ones, the collapse of C3 meant their armies flailed the first two weeks for massive casualties and no positive results, and tactical flailing against Germans is a route to being bitch-slapped.

[Xhavnak]

Depends whether Stalin is as bone headed as OTL (ever possible) and still ignores all the warning signs. If he does then this might even favour the Germans because of extra preperation time.

[Snake Featherston]

This is what happened in my A Sound of Thunder TL. Barbarossa is delayed a year because Hitler decides on a gamble of more submarines and a joint naval offensive intended to force the British to surrender. What actually happens is Japan inaugurates the Pacific War and the joint stress of Hitler's submarine offensive and the Imperial Japanese Navy are what enable the Nazis to secure a cease-fire from British overstretch. But by the time they launch Barbarossa their economy is in the middle of returning to producing the equipment for a land campaign, the campaign is very poorly designed, and they're plunged into a massive attrition battle that sees the USSR begin a series of rippling offensives that steadily destroy German logistics and thus the war ends with rather little fighting because Germany's logistical and economic power spiraled into a total collapse.

However to get that situation required the combination of British mistakes and the challenge of Japan's Two-Ocean offensive and thus it wasn't really the Nazis doing that. Only Hitler viewed it that way, but since it was *Hitler* viewing it that way......