O.K., so whitch army would move in there soonest?
The Soviets, the Germans simply don't have the manpower to maintain such a broad front.
O.K., so whitch army would move in there soonest?
Ah, so not quite a lighting counter offensive, but a good start.The Soviets, the Germans simply don't have the manpower to maintain such a broad front.
Ah, so not quite a lighting counter offensive, but a good start.
So this would be more like a slow inexorable creep.There was no lightning counter offensive in Failure before Moscow. An attempt to cut-off Army Group North and win the war there and then was considered but eventually shelved due to logistical difficulties.
So this would be more like a slow inexorable creep.
The Germans simply don't have the means to hold it either though, they'll have to retreat.
That's pretty much par for the course for Blair's WWII TLs in general, whether it's Manstein/Rommel/Nazi/Axis-wanks or Soviet-wank. He's certainly prolific, but logistics is indeed something that only happens to others in his TLs, not to his Axis- (or Soviet) supermen. CalBear he ain't.
True, though in this case the prestige of destroying an entire Army Group might conceivably lead Stalin to avoid holding off on a big general offensive if one local one could produce results this dramatically (that German mistakes played a huge part in this, of course, the Soviets won't admit to themselves).
Even if they wanted to it's unlikely, the problems with logistics were rather large, there are stories of Soviet divisions on the front that spent their free time being trained how to fight, a breather would be appreciated.
If I were a soldier i nthe German Heer, that would scare the crap out of me.The Germans would be moving pretty fast, the Soviets cautiously following.
Except that, to repeat, I said that in this case the Soviets crushed an entire army group with a local offensive. This might well lead Stalin to decide he should work entirely with local offensives, not repeated and idiotic attempts to win the entire Eastern Front in one single grand swoop.
While Churchill and some hawks definitely did fear Soviet domination of Europe, most people (as in Americans, Britans, and Soviets. the people on the ground had much different opinions) didnt really think like that until the late war. They saw the big 3 nations as all in the fight together, not competing with each other.Except that politically the pressure to do *something* may not be resistible ITTL. The democracies may rather sorely misread the scale of victory at Moscow, the USSR is almost certainly guaranteed to make at least a few mistakes due to this (especially in the Leningrad sector). It would not be very easy to resist this pressure, if for nothing else than the fear of a sudden Soviet conquest of all of Europe (which is not logistically feasible for them to do, but since when does fear rely on reality?).
Working with the guy on several projects, I wouldn't say there's anyone with a better knowledge of the Eastern Front on this site. There were obviously implausible, sometimes very implausible parts of Failure before Moscow, but like Calbear's AANW, that in no way should divert respect from BW's personal knowledge.
In any case, wanks of any kind, be they military or political, bore the crap out of me frankly.