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  1. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Again, books written since 1991 by people like Fritz and Glantz disagree entirely with this assertion, as does Beevor's book on Stalingrad. The entire offensive was launched with the aim of defeating the USSR, but did not have either the manpower or the logistical support to do that with a drive...

  2. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Especially because Hitler doesn't want to defeat the UK, he wants Tommy Atikins to butcher women and children with machine guns like the average Gefreiter and his SS counterparts did.

  3. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    So you have no idea that IOTL the Germans' explicit orders in the event of capturing Stalingrad were the wholesale slaughter of the city, as per the more modern books on this by both Glantz and Beevor? In that case I'm going to ask if you've read anything on this campaign not written since the...

  4. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Blair, if you're unaware of the degree to which OTL Case Blue was launched on a shoestring, I have to seriously question if you've actually read a thing about the campaign written since say, the height of the Cold War. Both David Glantz *and* more modern German-POV histories note this. You're...

  5. WI: Northern Greece largely abandons for more defensible position

    If the Yugoslav Coup never happens and with it an Axis Yugoslavia, this is what the Greeks would have done IOTL. It wouldn't have impacted Barbarossa one way or the other, however.

  6. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Blair, you repeated yourself for a fourth straight time and offered no explanation of how, only another reptition of the exact same point in spite of repeatedly asking that you not do that. I'm giving up on this at this point as once again it's clear that there's no discussing logistics with...

  7. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Um, no. Just....no. Generalplan Ost was targeted to the entire Soviet population. The Germans would have been the minority intent on eradicating the majority, that majority being the Slavs in that discussion. And in practical terms the seizure of Stalingrad means the entire population of the...

  8. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Blair, I repeat: your scenario takes no Soviet actions under advisement, and I'm getting that feeling of talking to a brick wall again. All you're doing is repeating yourself, so I'm going to ask you again, how does your plan 1) handle the logistics problem, 2) account for Soviet actions, 3)...

  9. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    They would have held on a narrow sector of the Volga. The question as per the title of the OP, which people don't seem to be reading here, is of the Germans ONLY SEIZING STALINGRAD. This means the entirety of the Operation Blue forces get crammed into that one narrow sector of the front. Not the...

  10. Is USSR doomed if Japan invades?

    Namely the argument that the Nazis taking more Soviet territory would see the Soviets withdraw from the war without the Nazis occupying all of the USSR. By their own standards, their minimum goal was Astrakhan and Archangelsk, as a prelude to the total destruction of Russian society, so there's...

  11. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    And why didn't they do that? Because the Soviets didn't repeat their 1941 mistakes (instead they made completely different ones). Your plan again takes no account of anything the Soviets do, treating them as non-existent, and ignores just how vast the territory you're requiring these troops to...

  12. Plausibility Check: Alternate Russo-Japanese War

    Russia can do better on land against Japan, but I don't think it's realistic for it to do any better on sea. As to whether or not a Tsushima-alone scenario would gain for Japan the prestige that Tshushima and Mukden together did......

  13. Pat Buchanan: How Far Can He Go In Politics?

    Handwavium.

  14. Is USSR doomed if Japan invades?

    To which the answer is no, as the collapse of Japan's logistics that a defeat of that magnitude would produce would end Japan's war effort by winter 1942 at the latest, by which point the Soviets are going to be focusing purely on the Germans. And given Nazi goals, they actually do have to take...

  15. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    The most detailed argument is Hitler's demented genocidal plan and refusal of all Soviet peace offers IOTL. Unless Germany's run by people actually looking for peace, not Manifest Destiny to the A-A Line with the Soviets dying off to make way for a demented variant of a German Empire, no peace...

  16. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    If we look at the fate of Army Group North, it is the most thorough deconstruction of any idea that different Axis actions against the USSR produce Axis victory. It retreated intact into the Courland Pocket, the Soviets never won a Bagration-level victory over it, it had the most continual...

  17. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    We do, however, know that Hitler's blunders were strategic on a scale that was much more crippling than Stalin's were. The assumptions are always tilted in favor of Soviet blunders, never Axis blunders, and with the usual statistical pretense that events that can never be proven are likely to...

  18. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Kursk actually was not vulnerable to the Germans at any point, no matter when Citadel would have been launched Soviet weight was more than sufficient to achieve it. The claim that Stalingrad rapidly falls neglects a huge number of factors, first and most vital among them that strictly speaking...

  19. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Um, not really. Your plan is virtually the same one as what was actually intended, and takes into no account either the huge space involved, or any possible actions/counteractions by the Soviets. It'd work just as badly as the one actually adopted. It's Caucasus or bust, the Volga is just a...

  20. What if the Germans in 1942 only seized Stalingrad in 1942 and did not go south.

    Strictly speaking when they're facing Hitler and the Nazis, there's no way for them to lose. There are ways where their winning amounts purely to clearing their territory and there are a few ways to avert their participation altogether, but otherwise, you're guaranteed to see some form of the...
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