AHC: Army Group Center Annihilated at Moscow, then what?

Ah, so not quite a lighting counter offensive, but a good start.

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.
 
The Germans simply don't have the means to hold it either though, they'll have to retreat.

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).
 
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.

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.
 
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.
 
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.

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.
 
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.

Stalin wasn't exactly the best Marshal in the Red Army but it would have been pretty clear that this was a likely one off. With the front much smaller and further west, 'local' offensives may lost their appeal as well.
 
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?).
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.

The west might invade Europe, but it would be out of a sense of "the nazis are beatable after all!", not "OMG Commies!"
 
Last edited:
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.

Maybe he is knowledgeable, but he isn't the only one on this site who knows things about the Eastern Front.

In any case, wanks of any kind, be they military or political, bore the crap out of me frankly.
 
Top