Could the Reich have plausibly pulled this off assuming Hitler didn’t meddle like IOTL?
If they did pull it off could this be a war winner or merely something that hurts the USSR but doesn’t cause them to collapse?
A USSR starvation stragegy for Barbarossa, could it had worked?
- Thread starter Anti-GrammarNazi
- Start date
If they did pull it off could this be a war winner or merely something that hurts the USSR but doesn’t cause them to collapse?
Deleted member 1487
More likely than not IMHO without Hitler's meddling.
Hard to say for sure. I'm of the opinion it would be a potential, possible way to avoid defeat/survive, but not a 'win' in the sense of being able to win total victory, that chance was gone in 1941 in front of Moscow.
How plausible in your opinion is the AANW POD where the Reich takes Stalingrad causing Stalin to launch wasteful offensives and purges eventually leading to his assassination and the collapse of the Red Army (which forced Molotov to sign a crippling treaty and retreat past the Urals)?
IOTL Stalin wasted hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops in 1941/1942 and executed 300+ commanders in October 1941 and another 46 officials in February 1942 so it isn’t like it has no basis in reality. Something like losing a major city named after him would likely cause him to lose his temper and make rash decisions.
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Deleted member 1487
Everything up to the point of Stalin purging everyone and Molotov taking over and signing a peace agreement.
Millions actually.
You have a source for the 300+ executions in October 1941?
Losing Stalingrad though would probably result in some bad stuff though.
To be fair in the story Malenkov and Beria were the most serious contenders but they both ended up assassinated in the civil war leaving Molotov as the surviving Politburo leader with the most support.
Here’s the source.
What specific operations did Stalin launch before Stalingrad that were the most wasteful in terms of Soviet losses?
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Deleted member 1487
Winter offensive.
That included everyone who had been sentenced from the start of the war IIRC, not just people sentence from the start of October.
Not exactly. Things didn't really get bad until Case Blue and the Kuban was lost.
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Remember Stalin is in charge. anyone not being useful to the effort will not get food. Some segments of the population will be considered expendable, particularly those that Stalin didn't like and they will not get food.
Stalin starved millions of his political enemies once he would do it again
Deleted member 1487
IOTL they did to that and millions still starved; there are accounts of factory workers still dying in 1944 from starvation and I can provide sources if you really want, so more starvation over OTL is going to be catastrophic.
do you mean the initial winter offensive in Dec 41, that pushed the German's back or the follow up ones Mid Jan 42 onwards that saw increasingly diminishing returns for expended losses?
Either way I think you have to judge the results of both in teh context of the time. Frankly at this point large Soviet losses is just a given, the big story here iss that not only is the Red army capable of mounting a counter offensive after fighting ths German for 6 months and suffering millions of looses but that they actually pushed the Germans back.
Remember the German mindset and thus he entire plan for Barbarossa and the invasion of Russia in general is built on 2 key assumptions:
1). The Red army will not be able to resist the German advance enough to stop it
2). The red army will be quickly reduced by inflicted looses beyond any ability to mount any significant further resistance.
Importantly key things like resource allocation, long term goals and logistics were based on these in key ways.
You wont need huge resources because all the serious fighting will be done in 3 months
Long logistics chains won't be problem because they'll be run through compliant and docile occupied territory replete with intact transport infrastructure and since you'll just be mopping up you won't need that much anyway since the fighting won't be fierce and you won't be suffering losses
You will be seizing all those luverly soviet resources anyway, in fact we expect to see teh flow of resources to be the other way, etc, etc
Those underlying key tenets impact pretty much everything that happens 1941 onwards, and even if some German commanders begin to realise the problem it doesn't really matter because teh entire campaign was planned and run based on them and thus they're already locked into their mistakes.
The Winter counter offensive basically further underlines that these key tenets of German thought were wrong, and thus those aspects of the campaign tied to them are really going to unravel e.g. logistics and resources. Now don't get me wrong Stalin gets cocky mid Jan 42 onwards and loses forces he didn't need to in further offensives that achieve little, and that in turn makes teh German renewed offensive easier.
The above is important for the two things you bring up
Stalingrad first and then the caucuses. and not trying to pocket large number of Soviet troops. Only its pretty much has the same issue as the idea of just drive to Moscow ignore everything else in 1941.
1). The plan was still destroy the red army so they can't resist so no they're not going to ignore pocketing the red army (in terms of Germany beating the red army the Germans greatest successes came from doing this their not going to not do it now).
2). Logistically Germany is going to struggle to support a quicker thrust to Stalingrad (you have to wait for teh roads as well) , especially as going for Stalingrad risk your thrusts flanks. As per above the red army has now been shown to mount counter offensives of increasing effectiveness compared to last year, and the article you linked to makes the point the Caucuses aren't empty of Soviet troops. I,e you can't ignore everything but Stalingrad but that doesn't mean everything will ignore you. I,e. Red red army general crapiness and ability to respond early on does mean the Germans can to an extant go where they want, when they want. But that become less and less true towards the end of 1941, during the winter of 1941/42 and then on into 1942. (not just because the Red army gets better because that's a slower progression, but also because the German forces degrade due to loses, supply and requirements of having to hold down teh vast amount of territory they had occupied)
3). Germany wants the caucuses firstly to deny them the enemy and secondly for it's own needs, you can't ignore that
4). it's all still based on this idea that reaching certain points on a map and the USSR will curl up and die
Ultimately its the same old problem, I can see why it's tempting to concentrate limited resources and logistics for single pushes and knock out blows, but these single pushes still have to operate within a larger context of invading a massive and still actively resisting country and resource demands from back home. The German forces are being pulled in too many directions at once.
Bombing Baku, yes in theory it possible in that August window (or before if they don't try to occupy the fields at all). but again a few points.
1). bombing campaigns against oilfield's did not have great history of actually long-term stopping production, (but the fear of it also drives the German attacks on Crimea) especially here as:
2). the LW itself was operating at the end of a long supply chain. In fact most LW bombing campaigns against Russian key resources tended to follow the same pattern a few relatively small in size attacks that inflict damage that is quickly made good, because they couldn't run long ongoing campaigns to keep the damage going. why can't they do this? because the LW has the same issue as the rest of the German forces, namely too many targets and increasingly effective resistance.
3). It involved redirecting LW assets from the Stalingrad attack, this would have had implication for that attack OTL and for your idea above. Especially as as per point 2 this won't be temporally diverting planes in the area for just one quick raid then back to Stalingrad, but to be effective a long ongoing bombing campaign.
3). The Germans need that oil production. We know they were unlikely to get much in time, even if they did take the fields, but that doesn't change the fact they needed it and will try
4). The premise in the article is of the Germans attacking towards the oil fields in June, realising they can't get it by early enough in Aug to then have time to decide to flatten and muster the forces to actually do it within Aug. That requires an amount of self realisation and changing of gears on the Germans part that frankly they had displayed to a stunning lack of in Russia up until then, I find it hard to believe this will be the moment they develop it
5). The soviets are just going to let it happen, no adjustment to their OTL?
In summery there is I think a belief that for Germany to change it's fate in Russia it just has to reverse specific results, e.g. getting to Moscow in 1941, keeping Stalingrad in 1942 etc, but this supposes that not only where these the only things that stopped the Germans from winning (or not losing as time goes on), but that these OTL results are the only ways the Germans can lose in Russia.
Stalingrad is a interesting one because we tend to hold it up as the iconic moment when "it all changes", and while it's a good deal more complicated than that I can kind of see why we do it. But it more whet teh end result of Stalingrad signifies in terms of the changing situation in the east that matters. Not Stalingrad in abstract. I.e. the end result of Stalingrad is because the situation had changed, Stalingrad didn't cause the situation to change.
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Only how much more starvation of the bits of Russia they don't occupy can the Germans engineer here?
Deleted member 1487
They'd just be holding over 60% of the food producing regions of the USSR, the best arable land in the USSR. IOTL the Soviets recovered Kuban and East Ukraine in early 1943 and had LL help in replanting it as well as recovering population (labor) and transport infrastructure. In the course of summer 1943 Ukraine up to the Dniepr was recovered, which was a massive gain in terms of high quality land for growing crops as well as recovering part of the 1943 harvest. If the Axis can hold the areas seized in 1942 then by the end of 1943 the Soviets are going to be in a bad place in terms of food.
Ok but how are they going to keep them (sorry have I missed a POD on this).
Also while I get your basic point it goes both ways as well, as the Soviets recovered territory yes they recovered arable land by they also recover more mouths to feed and having been under German occupation those mouths were very hungry. I'm not saying one cancels the other out but it's not all 100% gain in terms of food vs. need.
As mentioned earlier one of the worst times for Russian food supply was 1944 (after the OTL above) when the Russians were taking back land that had been occupied since 1941 and 10m's of starving Russian who had been under German occupation.
Plus while you can't rely on LL to cover all ATL gaps here 1943 onwards is when LL really gets going in terms of supply.
Also the retreating Germans tended to practice their own scorched earth policy so it's not just soviet gain back land and reap.
Deleted member 1487
OP.
I get your point, but the land produced much more than sustainment levels for the populations left in them. Don't also forget that the Soviets evacuated 27 million people in 1941-42, but lost over 60% of their food production at the same time. So they retained about 80% of their pre-war population by the end of 1942 even accounting for war deaths on top of occupied population areas, but until early 1943 they were reduced to ~38% of pre-war food production. Even accounting for the increase in LL and 'victory gardens' they were badly short of calories even in the army. I just got a memoir of a Soviet soldier who fought through the Stalingrad campaign and talked about his unit and surrounding ones starving for extended periods and having to rely on raiding the Germans or capturing supply drops during the Stalingrad pocket. At one point they even were eating horse food and suffering intestinal damage from all the fiber.
In 1944? No way. 1942-43 was the worst period. In 1944 they were leaps and bounds ahead of where they were in the previous 18-24 months, but still people were dying from starvation related problems (a lot of it was the lasting damage from 1942-43 even with LL help allowing for refeeding in 1944). LL more than made up for the additional mouths to feed, as it not only provided calories, but also seeds and farming equipment to repair the damage the war did to farmland in Kuban and Ukraine.
Yes and even with OTL LL, which was about maxed out, there was still not enough to go around and millions died as a result of starvation. It wasn't really until late 1944-45 that the starvation problem was under control...but even in 1946-47 there were famines that killed over 1 million people in the USSR.
Scorched earth was highly uneven and mostly impacted industry; the retreats in 1943 were so rapid that farming areas weren't that badly impacted, the issue was more a labor shortage, though US LL help, especially in terms of farming equipment like tractors, really made a huge difference.
Ah OK
Starvation related deaths were at their worst 1943 -1944
"One of Filtzer’s claims is that wartime starvation is best analysed as part of a “starvation-tuberculosis complex”, which became the dominant cause of excess deaths (over the 1940 figures) in every home-front region except Moscow in 1943 and 1944."
(siege of Leningrad running all though 1943 but ending in Jan 1944 skews the 1943 numbers here). Don't get me wrong some of this is due to accumulated malnutrition since 1941, as starvation deaths take time to mount. But while malnutrition had been accumulating in unoccupied Russia, it had been accumulating faster in occupied Russia
Was LL maxed out? Not sure that's true LL increased year on year (1945 is a truncated year and tails off for reasons other than max capacity). If were going to change the OTL to one where the soviets aren't steaming through eastern Europe by 1945 then LL is likely to continue apace.
the retreating Germans tended to burn or destroy what every they could, I'm not sure farming areas were particularly let off lightly
Deleted member 1487
I am well aware, I've had the book in question (and another on the same topic) for several years.
1943 was still starvation induced, in 1944 things improved substantially, but the accumulated damage continued to take a toll throughout the year.
In terms of LL being maxed out the reason I say that is shipping shortages in 1942-43 and port/internal infrastructure capacity throughout the war. The Wallies spent more upgrading infrastructure to get supplies to the USSR than they actually were even able to get to the USSR. Now in terms of being able to have theoretically gotten more to the USSR without sinkings of transport ships or whatever, theoretically yes if they were able to dock ships around the clock more could have gotten in, but the problem was the lack of ships, escorts, crews, etc. to actually do so. It only increased over the course of the war due to all the years of infrastructure investments to make it happen.
As to the scorched earth stuff the reason it wasn't so bad in 1943 was how quickly the Germans retreated, which prevented a thorough effort to wipe everything out. The Soviets did capture some stuff intact.
Let me get this straight, you think that your enemy, one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world, is secretly also a strong unitary state , capable of outlasting your strongest hammerblows, and your plan is to siege this nation?
Good luck.
Good luck.