I'm not sure which rail hubs you think the Soviets wrecked IOTL in 1941, but there weren't many if any.
I didn't say rail hubs in the west I said rail infrastructure,
What they did was successfully evacuate their functional rolling stock.
and destroyed the tracks
Plus ITTL there wouldn't be time to actually wreck the rail hub in Moscow given that the Soviets would need it to the last second before it fell.
Does anything about the action in 1941 tell you they had issues with hanging around too long?! Also it's your assumption that Moscow will fall that quickly.
Sure they do damage to the easy stuff to damage, but not the hard to repair stuff like the rail beds. After all during Operation Typhoon there wasn't a problem converting the rail and getting it going again, it was clearing out the enemy troops to let the work crews in and dealing with the weather.
As I said resistance and pressure, from the red army. but you are way underselling how much work it took to rebuild the railways
Similarly after the Smolensk pocket was finished off that city was taking rail shipment within a couple of weeks; they were being hampered by the operational 'tidying up' of Soviet troops after major combat operations were over in the city.
it was taking it in, not passing it on so much, they still had to rebuild as they went. Also not only is Moscow not Smolensk, but germen army in front of Moscow is very much not in the same state as the army that started the battle of Smolensk.
You're ignoring the truck transport system that allowed German forces to routinely operate 300km or more from their rail heads during the campaign.
you have to be joking, the German logistics constantly struggle with doing it because there wasn't enough trucks or fuel or tyres
Resource strapped German army? The resource strapped ones were the Soviets, who only had manpower in excess.
And yet the Soviets transported umpteen hundred factories east and out produced the Germans.
Also the partisan effectiveness was greatly exaggerated and at it's weakest in 1941-42...and in 1942 only got as far as it did due to being organized and sustained via Moscow. Moscow falls and the partisan movement west of the city falls apart. No insurgency survives without constant reinforcement and resupply from an external organized nation-state.
Only if you assume the fall of Moscow is the same as the fall of soviet Russia as organised state. Also the resistance was still plenty strong enough to disrupt things in 1941
you can post what you like about the partisans but read the reports coming back from German officers who were dealing with it. Or the logistics groups trying to operate though those regions.
What losses exactly? Losses in October-December were vastly less than suffered in June-August.
That more point to the fact the losses were high early on, not that there were no losses Oct-dec Also oct-dec had chunks of time where fighting slowed due to conditions. and no assault on Moscow. But yes I meant up to that point
In fact the best casualty ratios of 1941 were achieved in October-December.
it doesn't matter of the Germans can't sustain the ongoing loses long term and the soviets can. you are very good and finding very narrow things to focus on but ignoring the bigger picture
Hyper specific windows on casualty ratios are bit meaningless anyway as casualties weren't suffered or inflicted in a steady stream for all sorts of reasons.
(also I'm not even sure you are right even in your specific claim anyway).
If Moscow falls the Soviets lose their major rail, communications (telephone line), production, electrical generation, etc. hub
and yet they evacuated a huge amount of industry east of Moscow and still kept it supported there.
. Unlike OTL 1942-43 Moscow being out of Soviet hands means the Soviets are heavily weakened (Moscow alone was about 10% of Soviet industrial production and a huge chunk of the defense industry) and not able to resist nearly as well as they did IOTL...which was pretty bad through 1942.
again they moves a lot of the stuff east , hell they already lost loads in the west and yet still out produced the Germans.
also pretty bad through 1942, what particular campaign changing sucess of the German would you like to point too?
The Russian lost approximately the same amount of troops in 1942 as they did in 1941, only of course the fighting didn't start until half way through 1941
.I'm not sure what sort of distance beyond Moscow you're talking about, but I'm not talking about advancing to the Urals, just Gorki-Yaroslavl, which is less far than Stalingrad was from Rostov. Infrastructure on the way there from Moscow is quite a bit better too.
so OK what then just sit there waiting for the USSR to capitulate because you believe losing Moscow mean the Soviets can't resist?
. Given that IOTL the population panicked and tried to flee, the civilians weren't going to do anything. The Soviet government was able to maintain it's grip on the city with a couple of divisions of NKVD, which were quite a bit less powerful than a single panzer division. If you think the civilians are going to fight and resist, why didn't they do so in Smolensk, Kiev, Kharkov, Rostov, Orel, etc.?
Who do you think made up a some of the resistance mentioned earlier, I know you like to downplay the effects of this but they'll fight. Just because they're not going to throw themselves under panzer tracks doesn't mean the Germans won't have their hands full.
. Sounds like a lot of wishful thinking on your part that is not borne out by the historical record. Before you point to Leningrad you have to remember it was held by a heavy concentration of soldiers, not civilians. Plus you need to consider what happened to the Moscow militia divisions that defended the path to the city in October (hint they were wiped out with minor effort). So the civilians who were primed to fight were already dead or captured outside the city.
And yet the Germans in this apparently great position and Moscow standing defenceless before, didn't push on, maybe they were more aware of the realities of seizing a city of 6m people and their own capabilities at that moment, then you are
.With the capital gone the ability to counterattack is basically gone for the foreseeable future
why, government and command can move even if cities can't, again there is this assumption that is Moscow falls the war is all but done.
. too given the dearth of rail, communications, basing, production, etc.
see above
.that were all used to set up OTL counteroffensive armies in December...which incidentially were butchered when they attacked.
No the initial counter attacks pushed the germens back a fair way, the later ones got greedy and were impulsive and less effective, and even then it as because the Germans took up defensive positions and the poor weather conditions.
TBH you seen to cling to this idea that the Germans are going to kill their way out of this. and they killed a lot of Russians but again that ignores the overall reality of the mobilised numbers. even though teh Germans killed significantly more Russians than the other way round it doesn't matter because the Germans can't sustain the loses they suffer.
. David Stahel makes the strong case that the German retreat in December, which basically had ended after a couple-few weeks, was largely due to a collapse in German morale due to failing to take Moscow before winter rather than Soviet offensive prowess.
German morale was low long before they failed to get to Moscow because they had failed to destroy the red army in the promised 8-12 weeks. Morale was poor because they were stuck in piss poor conditions having basically walked the distance, been fighting constantly for five months and suffering losses often to less than 50% of their starting unit strength I'm not expecting you give teh Russians credit for anything of course but a lot of the reason the German weren't in great shape was because of the Russians.
That is Stahel's argument about morale not that it magically disappeared because they weren't allowed to take Moscow.
.That wouldn't be the case in the event of Moscow falling, while the Soviets would be the ones to take the morale hit.
see above
.No one is saying they were nice, just more pragmatic and less ideological to a fault.
The rest of what you've written is just a strawman you've invented rather than a response to anything I wrote.
no I know what you were saying
.And? People were pushing for it pre-invasion, Hitler blocked it. It was possible to create it in 1941 had there been an interest in it from leadership. Russian attitudes changed by 1943 after it was clear the Germans were going to lose, but prior to that they took millions of PoWs and had by some estimates over 1 million volunteers just in 1941:
en.wikipedia.org
those were exactly the troops I mentioned you seem to have ignored my points there. The reason why the pre-1941 ideas were knocked back was becasue Hitler and co knew what they were going to do once they invaded.
.So with Hitler dying for some reason you could very well see a different policy in the East. It wouldn't be a majority of occupied ex-Soviets joining in, but the Axis didn't need the majority to make a difference.
only it not just Hitler this idea of a good Germans suddenly undoing all the killing is wishful thinking
.Unsupported opinions aren't evidence.
Oh really so support yours with evidence for a German backed Russian army of liberation that never happened. I'm arguing form what actually happened (a conspicuous lack of such an army) you the one arguing from some spurious what if based on ignoring the inherent nature of the German regime in 1941.