Es Geloybte Aretz Continuation Thread

[haider najib]

On the subject of prussian militarism how has it evolved? Is it similar to the modern US military relationship with the country massive budget that too big to be justified and a concerted effort by the state and media to make the public more militaristic and patriotic.

 

[Tibi088]

On the subject of prussian militarism how has it evolved? Is it similar to the modern US military relationship with the country massive budget that too big to be justified and a concerted effort by the state and media to make the public more militaristic and patriotic.

I dont think prussian military budget was unjustified. They losing OTL WWI indicates it wasnt big enough.

 

[carlton_bach]

On the subject of prussian militarism how has it evolved? Is it similar to the modern US military relationship with the country massive budget that too big to be justified and a concerted effort by the state and media to make the public more militaristic and patriotic.

No, not really. The United States public is very wary of the military-industrial complex and concerned over state intervention in their lives. ITTL Germany is enthusiastic about it. The fact that they had a top-notch military saved their existence as a country twice. The ability of their government to intervene in every aspect of life made modern war possible to the extent that they could beat Russia. It has also improved everybody's lives. It is no coincidence that the one modern political movement that has almost zero traction in the Reichstag is classical liberalism. The Germans love Leviathan.

 

[Falecius]

Wonder what the german version of it would it be?

I would assume that Kurd Lasswitz's Auf Zwei Planeten is written ITTL with minimal changes, and is likely a lot better known since here there's a Kaiser in charge who likes that kind of things.

 

[carlton_bach]

I would assume that Kurd Lasswitz's Auf Zwei Planeten is written ITTL with minimal changes, and is likely a lot better known since here there's a Kaiser in charge who likes that kind of things.

Unless butterflies intervene, it sounds like this would be imperial reading matter. It's already established that Hans Dominik will enjoy all-highest favour

 

[LeCHVCK]

If we're talking about science fiction in this alternate timeline one should also note that modern fantasy won't exist as Tolkien will not spend his youth at the western front and Lord of the Rings was written during the second world war.

 

[Stendhal]

You fiddle while The Cheops Pyramid Burns. Please get on with it.

 

[Stendhal]

I am often cranky; I apologize. I would like to know what has been going on in Russia over the last three decades:
In the original series we had the country girl given access to political education by the PU -- I thought then she might make a good female Stalin.

 

[carlton_bach]

The positioning of forces in the weeks before the fateful night of October 02, 1944 has been studied in every staff college in Europe, and interpreted variously as a German strategic masterstroke or a blunder of the highest order in the face of Russian cunning. In fact, a dispassionate analysis of the kind now offered by Andrew Sudalkin in his new book suggests it was neither.


As Berlin decided to deploy forces to the Russian border in the autumn of 1944, the primary objective was speed. Available troops – active formations from V and VI Korps along with Prussian guards regiments – needed to be seen in readiness within weeks, and the available traffic infrastructure limited the range of options. Poland's railway network allowed rapid east-west movement, but limited the necessary rapid response to developments in either Lithuania or Wolhynia. The Warsaw-Brest-Bobruisk line served as the primary supply artery of the concentration of both Polish and German army forces on the Beresina frontier. Polish forces defending Minsk already found their supply lines constrained by the logjam this caused on the Warsaw trunk line as shipping on the Dvina proved inadequate and ultimately vulnerable to interdiction. All of these concerns were well understood by the German general staff and plans to address them were under way by October, with Lithuanian and Livonian forces readying to deploy and the Königsberg-Vilna-Minsk line expanded for military traffic. The delays in this movement – closely followed by Russian intelligence – became the 'ticking clock' that eventually convinced the Russian generals their window for a successful attack was narrowing and set off the thrust into Lithuania.


Meanwhile, the Russian general staff found its own options similarly constrained by their dependence on supply lines radiating out from Moscow. The troop concentrations to the north and south of the German schwerpunkt were not, as has variously been suggested, a brilliant prelude to a pincer movement or the final overextension of Russian hubris encouraged by wily Berlin strategists offering up their army as bait. STAVKA was deeply worried about its own inability to defend Gomel and Mogilev against what they feared would be a German thrust for Moscow. They concentrated forces via the lines Moscow-Smolensk-Borisov and Moscow-Orel-Chernigov because they lacked the robust transport links to place them directly in or beyond the Pripyet. Ultimately, both sides misread both the capabilities of the other and the possibilities they had in the situation – something that is common in warfare, but rarely acknowledged in military history.


Sudalkin also addresses the state of forward-deployed forces, frequently subject of close to satirical exaggeration of unpreparedness. Studies of recently declassified operation reports and supply lists show that while certain deficiencies existed, German forces were well equipped and had set up defensive positions that allowed them to withstand the Russian attack. The fact that their strategic concept failed, that light Panzerwagen proved inadequate to the rigours of the modern battlefield and the Luftmacht could not deploy its strategic reach over enemy supply lines, does not detract from this. It is, in fact, hard to see what detractors of the German military expected two hastily deployed corps to do when the hammer blow fell.


It is the final, all too brief chapters that make the most enlightening reading. After Czar Mikhail reluctantly ordered the attack, military leaders on both sides reacted to events with shock and consternation. STAVKA several times considered halting the advance, convinced the enemy were drawing them into an ambush. The victorious thrust to Grodno that put Russian spearheads on the open flank of the Polish army almost never materialised for fear that the divisions that would soon crumble before the assault in their back would move north to cut off the front units from their precarious tether. The Berlin general staff meanwhile found its effort to move units in the accustomed strategic chess game frustrated by the parlous state of roads and the unexpected efficacy of Russian frontal aviation. Russia's armies had never intended to link up the famous 'handshake of Pinsk', and while 'Hammer und Zange' became a common concept for generations of military planners, the idea that this was a valid scheme was developed in German brains. No Russian strategist ever thought of it as viable prior to the shock of '44.


(Times Literary Supplement, March 1996)

 

[HanEmpire]

Wait so the TTL Russians invented Deep Operations doctrine by accident?

 

[avernite]

I find the intro paragraph the most tantalizing bit - as in, that it was called a possible German masterstroke to, apparently, get two ill-prepared (but well-supplied) corps plus the Polish army annihilated to draw the Russians into an offensive.

Really gotta wonder what happens next; the Russians advance on Warsaw while the Germans launch an even larger pincer through Prussia to annihilate the Russian armies in Poland, securing their advantage without a long slog into the vast Russian interior?

 

[carlton_bach]

Wait so the TTL Russians invented Deep Operations doctrine by accident?

I wouldn't go that far. Everybody ITTL knows that depth is the next step in military operations. Different doctrines exist to achieve it. The German answer is a complex combined arms system that depends on a greater degree of coordination and communication than is realistically possible. They have 'heavy' units to achieve breakthrough and 'light' units to exploit it (Durchbruchstaktik vs. Ausbruchstaktik). The Russians can't manage that level of complexity and instead rely on the idea of independently operating units at division level, with an overall doctrine of supporting success rather than designating winners.

The thing is, neither side in the war expected the breakthroughs and the consequent depth to be so considerable. Nobody had any real appreciation of what motorised, even partly motorised forces could do once they were through the enemy's defences. It is the reverse of the experience with strategic bombing which everyone expected to be devastatingly effective - learning on the fly how to deal with success on a previously unimaginable scale.

I find the intro paragraph the most tantalizing bit - as in, that it was called a possible German masterstroke to, apparently, get two ill-prepared (but well-supplied) corps plus the Polish army annihilated to draw the Russians into an offensive.

Really gotta wonder what happens next; the Russians advance on Warsaw while the Germans launch an even larger pincer through Prussia to annihilate the Russian armies in Poland, securing their advantage without a long slog into the vast Russian interior?

Let's just say selling life insurance to the troops of the Russian Army Groups Kiev and Dvina is a losing investment.

The Germans did not 'lure' the enemy into a trap. They expected to beat it into submission in a series of battles while their air forces smashed their supply structure. Of course that did not work, but the German army is still better than the Russian one in terms of training, equipment, and communication. At the end of an overextended supply network, that will tell quickly.

 

[GOU Limiting Factor]

ITTL has supplied, if anything, even more persuasive lessons in why Russia needed to reform and in shorter order, and not having alienated France, Russia likely got the benefit of some of Saint-Cyr's thinking on the subject as well.

As Carlton mentioned, TTL's Russians got the benefit of learning all their lessons well in advance of when they had the equipment to put them into practice. That can actually be salutary for a military force (as OTL's Soviet Union found in a similar situation; 'Deep Operations' were a theoretical breakthrough before the 1944-45 Red Army finally had the ability, buoyed by Lend-Lease, to apply it to the Wehrmacht's tender behind like a giant spiked leather strap), because it means you spend a lot of time testing the edge cases of your theory, making all the parts of your military machine as simple and reliable as possible, planning to make up for deficient hardware and supply. OTL's Soviet and TTL's Integralist Russian armies used very basic building blocks; plentiful infantry with rifles, simple, reliable tanks, large formations of tough, short-ranged fighters and bombers, massive formations of artillery.

ITTL, unlike OTL, the vast fleets of Studebaker US6s and small mountains of canned Spam that Lend-Lease provided are absent on the Russian side. Perennial shortage of motor transport and corresponding shortages of everything from dry socks (well, foot wraps - portyanki are surprisingly comfortable and can be nicer than socks if you like to hike) to fresh food to ammunition at the front is likely to be the crippling factor that stalls out these breakthroughs. A huge, powerful force with short legs vs. a large, long-legged force that can never, quite, land a powerful enough blow.

 

[Stendhal]

Wait so the TTL Russians invented Deep Operations doctrine by accident?

They sleepwalked into it.

 

[carlton_bach]

They wrote that we got a 'nasty surprise' when we found that we couldn't crack the Russian armour, but in truth it went much farther than that. For one thing, we could crack the Russians, and we did, all the way to the end. A 55mm did for almost anything they threw at us back then, even a Svyatogor if you know what you're doing, though you really wanted something bigger for that. No, the real surprise was that armour simply didn't work the way we thought it did. And there were enough people who told us so – to their credit, mostly in diplomatic terms afterwards – but we loved the idea so much. You haven't been young and irresponsible if you haven't ridden a Panzerwagen unbuttoned at top speed. It is the most exhilarating feeling in the world, a loping wolfpack chasing its prey to ground. And then you actually go out there and the enemy doesn't have targets painted on and you feel a right idiot.


What we learned the day we faced off against the Russians wasn't that they were bigger and badder than us. They were, I guess, but they were just as scared. Everything else was big and bad. The world was full of things that could kill you. Every barn and hut could shelter a PAK, every haystack enemy armour, each molehill and piece of brushwood a mine. Speed was good strategically speaking, but at the sharp end, the Hauptmann said, it just gets you to the funeral faster. When you're inside that wagon trying to spot whatever Ivan was hiding in the next village, you cursed every centimetre of armour sacrificed for another kph you couldn't use. 'Speed is armour' sounds really good, but on the drawing board you tend to forget that only works as long as you're moving across their field of vision. And you never do that if they are any good at their job.


What saved us in the end wasn't the extra steel plate we bolted on or the new guns they put in our turrets. It was good to have. Every bit kept some Kameraden from getting cooked. But what did it was our radios. The Russians were better at using terrain – we learned every lesson at a steep price – but they never managed to get their act together for a coordinated fight. If they saw us, they engaged or snuck away. If we spotted them, more often than not we would run a distraction, call in friends to loop around behind them, or grab them between us. It was still a crappy business, often enough it was about who Ivan blew up first and who got to return the favour. But they never adapted to that. It went even better when you coordinated with the infantry. Ivan could never stop himself from chasing a running panzer, and that was one time when speed helped. We couldn't hit anything while running, but neither could they, so as long as you kept an eye on their dust cloud and had somewhere to duck when they stopped, you were safe enough. It was one hell of a game, but once you drew them inside the field of a dug-in Flak, the fireworks got spectacular. We killed more of them that way than we did hand to hand.


(Interview with Oberleutnant 'Hansi' Staller, panzer ace, for Motorwelt 10/64)

 

[Deleted member 94708]

What the hell was the German armored doctrine entering the war? Overgunned light tanks and tank destroyers, sounds like?

 

[carlton_bach]

What the hell was the German armored doctrine entering the war? Overgunned light tanks and tank destroyers, sounds like?

Durchbruchstaktik - artillery-affiliated heavy, slow GKWs to batter the enemy front into submission and Ausbruchstaktik - light, fast Panzerwagen for 'cavalry' ops. Staller was in a Panzer, not a GKW.

 

[Jito]

Where there any precursor conflicts where German and Russian military strategists got to field test strategies/designs? Any equivalent to the Spanish Civil War OTL?

 

[Oda]

So Germany tank doctrine is basically like Britain tank doctrine beginning of ww2 With heavy infantry tanks and light “cavalry” tank which is fine problem is the light tanks more often than not get wrecked by anti tank guns and heavier tanks.
in this ATL the Germans are actually doing abit better in coordination with infantry support and using radios to overwhelm the Russians. The French in OTL don’t really used radios most of the time ( other than one way radios for a few of their tanks) fearing Germany breaking their radio codes and British light tanks more often than Not Outpace infantry ( which is fine that’s their role anyway exploiting breakthrough) problem is anti tank guns and the heavier Germans tanks AND lack of coordination

 

[carlton_bach]

Where there any precursor conflicts where German and Russian military strategists got to field test strategies/designs? Any equivalent to the Spanish Civil War OTL?

There was the Balkans, and a lot of highly unpleasant situations that were Absolutely Not Wars, but altogether, not really. The Balkan conflict was the closest you came, and while both sides tried to read the tea leaves, ultimately it was a different world. Everybody assumed that a war between real powers wold look totally different because of the weight of technology they would be able to throw at it.