Factors needed for successful Nazi invasion of the Soviets

Underemphasized is the horrible condition of the Soviet civilian economy during the war.
http://books.google.com/books?id=dcAgT_2uiYgC&dq=dunn+soviet+economy+red+army&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The Soviet production miracle came at its expense. Without the transportation hub of Moscow, armies can't be moved around as well AND the civ. economy takes one more big hit. At the very least, much more lend lease becomes direct food aid, farm tractors, machine tools and rail stock, as opposed to trucks, uniforms and aluminum. Economic planners will have to cut back on the war economy At worst, the morale and economic shock sends the Soviet system into worse chaos than they experienced in October '41 (if I recall correctly, that was the bad month), and find themselves pushed out of too much of European Russia by the time they recover.


Also underemphasized was the Soviet manpower shortage. Not so much an absolute shortage of people who could hold guns as trying to keep the economy and the army running. Recaptured, unevacuated territory was a vital source of manpower for the red army.

http://books.google.com/books?id=t2xaTzpCVQQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=stalin's+keys+to+victory+dunn&source=bl&ots=DvKJ6jGWlp&sig=5ElIvi3GPIUnKdjwHRgT4J2-0_s&hl=en&ei=Eq-aS9nJCIjWsQP-stCdAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAkQ6AEwAA
 
Only the most boring and diffuse things can see the Nazis beat the Soviets, and they are so unlike the Nazis and even better Germans govts to do that the question is ASB.

The Germans had resource shortages, so long term stockpiling of resources in peacetime and development of resources which will only become viable in wartime (coal into avgas being one) mitigates against this.

Stimulating sectors of the economy that will become crucial in wartime, the auto industry being one as the army will need hundreds of thousands of trucks ready on the day of Barbarossa.

Politics that allows women and conquered people to assist the German war effort instead of being marginalised and slaughtered.

Once war starts; a decent fucking strategy to lay Britain low. The uboats, blitz and a decent Med campaign over winter 1940-1 could have laid Britain low with minimal resources, feeing the Nazis hand for Russia.

Proactive weapons development; the tanks that went into Russia on day 1(in May not June 41) should have been well and truly upgunned, and accompanied by SP arty and AT guns using older chassis.

Germany should have mobilised their economy for war in Sept 39, so Pz Divs had 3 or 4 Pz btns each rather than 2 and shitloads of trucks to supply them deep into Russia.

I won't go on, this list shows how hard it is and thats enough.
 
2) People pull together when their country is invaded. Everyone seems to go further than "people have to eat and make little compromises with the occupier" when it comes to occupied Soviets and assume they were apathetic and had no patriotic feeling at all.


What happened the previous world war? Czarist regime fell to a violent revolution for loosing in 3 years what the Soviet-Union had in 6 months, that despite less weaponery available.
The individuals who had famillie members killed where only a minority when operation Barbarossa occured, that is the reason they just wheren´t able to cause major troubles.

Total chechens and Inguch population where only 500 000 yet the insurgency there caused a hell of a lot of troubles. In some regions up to 80% of the men where involved in the rebellion and the Soviet gov had to use bombers. Only 5000 took service in the red army and many of these deserted because of the insurgency.
 
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What happened the previous world war? Czarist regime fell to a violent revolution for loosing in 3 years what the Soviet-Union had in 6 months, that despite less weaponery available.

That assumes that ordinary Russians are looking at the strategic maps and saying "Zhukov is a twit!", which is not what ordinary people do when they've been raised in a totalitarian society that instills loyalty (the Tsarist regime was vanilla tyrannical) and they're threatened with imminent extermination.

You're missing the vital fact that the revolution which overthrew the Tsar's regime intended to (and did) continue the war. In fact, it was widely thought by Russia's allies that the new republic would be more effective and a better ally. Overthrowing your incompetant government in order to better wage the war is very differant from actively collaborating with an invader eighty-four times worse than the kaiser.

And leaving aside the complex issue of their respective levels of popular support, both 1917 revolutions depended to a considerable extent on the decisions of a few men. You're proposing hundreds of Russians voting (for their own extermination) with their desertion, not a palace revolution.

And having a revolution in 1917 (either of them) didn't threaten anyone with extermination. The Soviet people knew perfectly well that their entire society and national existence was under attack. When it became apparent how dire the situation was (Molotov's famous broadcast and all that), there was a moment of disbelief, and then a stampede to enlist.

My central point was a complaint that people imagine Soviets didn't have any reason to be biased towards their own regime (I mean, besides the fact that the Nazis would kill or enslave them all), which is disproved by a thousand personal stories and, in fact, by the Soviet war effort as a whole. You've used an entirely flase comparison, and note that the revolution against the Tsar was patriotic. They wanted to save Russia. Even the Bolsheviks had no desire whatever to see Imperial Germany take any part of the country.

The individuals who had famillie members killed where only a minority when operation Barbarossa occured, that is the reason they just wheren´t able to cause major troubles.

This is utterly contradictory, since you go on to say that the tiny Chechen and Ingush populations did cause major trouble, so I really don't know what you're trying to say. I can only suggest you check out the story I posted of a dissenter in ten years GULAG he volunteered for service in what amounted to a suicide squad.

Total chechens and Inguch population where only 500 000 yet the insurgency there caused a hell of a lot of troubles. In some regions up to 80% of the men where involved in the rebellion and the Soviet gov had to use bombers. Only 5000 took service in the red army and many of these deserted because of the insurgency.

And of course the situation in Chechnya and Ingushetia wasn't differant from the Soviet norm at all.
 
Gulags during World War II

I'm afraid I can't buy the "Gulags were a safe place during World War II" bit. If nothing else, the Soviets were desperately short of food in the early war years and the Gulags were at the end of the line in terms of food. I can see someone taking desperate measures to avoid starvation and maybe even convincing himself that it was patriotism.

I'm not saying that there were no patriotic Russians. There obviously were. Whether that patriotism would have manifested itself to the extent it did after the years of Stalin without the German atrocities is of course unknowable. We can know that soldiers faced with a choice of surrendering or dying are more likely to fight to the death if they know that captivity means death anyway. The Germans really blew it by making captivity seem like just a slower, more lingering way to die.
 
I'm afraid I can't buy the "Gulags were a safe place during World War II" bit. If nothing else, the Soviets were desperately short of food in the early war years and the Gulags were at the end of the line in terms of food. I can see someone taking desperate measures to avoid starvation and maybe even convincing himself that it was patriotism.

People starved everywhere, but the GULAG death rate for Germans was 30% (upper estimate). If you were a strong Russian in your twenties, your chances were better than that, but even 70% compares favourably with the survivability of the penal battalions.

I'm not saying that there were no patriotic Russians. There obviously were. Whether that patriotism would have manifested itself to the extent it did after the years of Stalin without the German atrocities is of course unknowable. We can know that soldiers faced with a choice of surrendering or dying are more likely to fight to the death if they know that captivity means death anyway. The Germans really blew it by making captivity seem like just a slower, more lingering way to die.

The Germans were starving their Soviet prisoners (just below 60% death-rate, meaning a Soviet PoW had a slightly better chance than a European Jew) because they couldn't afford to feed them. The food did not exist. It was even under the aegis of the regular army. Their habit of shooting any Jewish prisoners or political officers didn't endear them either, and that was another keystone of the whole Nazi warplan against "Jewish Bolshevism", which the regular army was again up to its necks in.
 

burmafrd

Banned
It is hard to argue that if the Germans had not acted like they did when they entered the Ukraine and elsewhere that there would not have been less partisan activity and less trouble for the occupying forces. Hard to quantify that but still it could very well have been significant.

When you think how the Ukraine had been raped and abused by Stalin and the Communists I find it hard to believe that many would not have reacted differently if the Germans had shown them any hope that it would be better then things were under Stalin. Considering the utter bestiality shown by Stalin I really doubt that most would not have taken anything they thought might be better.
 
(the Tsarist regime was vanilla tyrannical)

The Czarist regime wasn´t that much of a tyranny because it did not have the support and the organisation needed.

My central point was a complaint that people imagine Soviets didn't have any reason to be biased towards their own regime (I mean, besides the fact that the Nazis would kill or enslave them all),

How and through who, exactly, would they know that? Namely because they trusted their governement enough to tell at least parts of the truth, you tell me if they still would have had that trust if Stalin´s purges had killed millions every years since 1937 simply for teh evulz.
The Soviet=Nazi line is that the axis wasn´t worst against the sovietic populations than the Sovietic governement itself.
I do not agree with the Soviet=Nazi line, in fact I found it outrageously ridiculous, with all the common sens of a Dali painting.

which is disproved by a thousand personal stories and, in fact, by the Soviet war effort as a whole. You've used an entirely flase comparison, and note that the revolution against the Tsar was patriotic. They wanted to save Russia. Even the Bolsheviks had no desire whatever to see Imperial Germany take any part of the country.

Point is that the Soviet-regime survived much worst defeats than Czarist Empire and yet survived.
Simply not possible if a number of fancie tales about Stalin of Lecter where anything but cheap propaganda.

I can only suggest you check out the story I posted of a dissenter in ten years GULAG he volunteered for service in what amounted to a suicide squad.

See, that particular case is yet another blow to the Soviet=Nazi line, according to the Soviet=Nazi line he should not have survived even a few years of it.
As Vladimir Frolov would say, the name was GU.lag, organe of organisation of camp, word "gulag" is of western use derived from that, in the Soviet-Union itself never was used as a name for the camps.

And of course the situation in Chechnya and Ingushetia wasn't differant from the Soviet norm at all.

Oh but it was, it show what happen when a population is in its majority hostile to a governement.
 
The big thing for me is logistics. One of my old threads was what if the Soviets had a more modern road system (alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=137553).

One thing that would help is that the German's take a good look at just how _huge_ the Soviet Union is, the utter lack of paved roads and the primitive conditions. Getting the railroads converted to German gauge was difficult, it would have been better if enough Soviet rail stock could have been siezed and reused. Of course, if you can't keep the rails intact they're of no use.

The Luftwaffe had crews designated specificially to fix captured airfields for reuse, but there weren't nearly enough of them. If enough of the local population can be convinced to do this that's a huge help.

But the German's were at the end of a logistical tether that was stretched beyond the breaking point and there's no getting around that.
 
The Czarist regime wasn´t that much of a tyranny because it did not have the support and the organisation needed.

The OED defines a "tyrant" as an exerciser of "oppressive, cruel, and arbitrary power", with no mnetion of organisation or support. If you mean that the Tsars weren't totalitarian I agree; indeed, that's exactly what I was saying.

How and through who, exactly, would they know that? Namely because they trusted their governement enough to tell at least parts of the truth, you tell me if they still would have had that trust if Stalin´s purges had killed millions every years since 1937 simply for teh evulz.

Letters from GULAG asking the People's Leader and Teacher for his intervention against the buffoons in his service say yes, Soviets still mostly trusted "the Soviet system", "communism", or "Stalin", even if they were aware that the parts of the system they interracted with were massively abused.

Given that the Nazis made no secret whatever of their intentions, it took days for incidents to come up confirming the Soviet propaganda.

The Soviet=Nazi line is that the axis wasn´t worst against the sovietic populations than the Sovietic governement itself.
I do not agree with the Soviet=Nazi line, in fact I found it outrageously ridiculous, with all the common sens of a Dali painting.

I agree.

Point is that the Soviet-regime survived much worst defeats than Czarist Empire and yet survived.
Simply not possible if a number of fancie tales about Stalin of Lecter where anything but cheap propaganda.

Sorry, could you rephrase that? Not really following.

See, that particular case is yet another blow to the Soviet=Nazi line, according to the Soviet=Nazi line he should not have survived even a few years of it.
As Vladimir Frolov would say, the name was GU.lag, organe of organisation of camp, word "gulag" is of western use derived from that, in the Soviet-Union itself never was used as a name for the camps.

Exactly. It seems we actually agree on a lot of things without realising it. :)

Oh but it was, it show what happen when a population is in its majority hostile to a governement.

I was being sarcastic there; sorry for being unclear.
 
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