Is it plausible for the Soviets to be defeated - WW2
- Thread starter General Mosh
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considering the manpowershortage the Red Army was begining to show in 45(retaken POWs not sent to Gulag, but given a few hot meals and an update of tactics and thrown back into the fight etc etc) would a more flexible defence by the Germans(not throwing most of their tanks forward at Kursk etc) have created a situation were the front becomes a stalemate and a separate peace is made based on June 1941 borders? Look at a population pyramide regarding Russia/Soviet union from the late 80ths, early 90ths and see how the generation that fought ww2 has a overrepresentation of women
Well, being 'nice' to the various nationalities of the USSR would probably require the Germans not to use them for forced labour and pillage their lands, which would impair the Reich's own war effort. (Of course the fact that the Nazis viewed these people as subhumans squatting on Germany's rightful living space didn't help.)
The issue of flexible defence has been raised several times here and agreement is that it wouldn't work.
Kongzilla
Banned
Could the Germans have held back the Soviets at the volga. I'm not sure of the topigraphical features and such but if it's deep enough to float ships I don't think tanks and infantry can cross without bridges or boats. So if the Germans blew the bridges and kept an eye out for any boats could they have stopped the soviets.
Also @Zaius is there any chance the Germans lie until they have conquered the place. Used the Men that sign up as cannon fodder and instead of mass executions of jews can they use them all as slave labour.
Kongzilla
Banned
If we're gonna go down the Evil Nazi path can the Nazis potentially use the Concentration camp victims and then when they die they feed them to the Jew/blacks/gypsies/whoever without telling them and use it as propaganda as them being sub human and eating each other.
(Don't ban me for that even though it is disturbing it's just a thought.)
Couldn't the now nicely treated ukrainians also use their farm land.
(Don't ban me for that even though it is disturbing it's just a thought.)
Couldn't the now nicely treated ukrainians also use their farm land.
I know about all this. The Soviets used 6000 trucks to support their operations in one of the '39 border skirmishes. The Japanese only had 9000 in all of Manchuria. However, I believe by late 1941 most modern Soviet tanks had been taken to the west, and the ones that were left behind were fairly limited and old.
I did not know that. I'll try not to do again. In my defense, I used it as a shortened version of Japanese, because I was using my Kindle to type. You'll notice in the exact same sentence I also used "Sovs" and "Amis".
BlondieBC
Banned
A small group like the Baltic people is doable with a change in racial classification, which was almost random anyway after one got past Jews, Roma, communists, and homosexuals. And the new living space was not really oriented towards the Baltics which are second class land. The Axis of where Hitler wanted to settle the new Germans is really more Warsaw/Lemberg, Kiew, Rostov-on-Don towards the better lands. You just need the Baltic people doing something to help Hitler, and he would change policy on their racial status to a higher status. Something as simple as Finland wanting to annex Estonia or a exile group of Baltic "Free Legions" helping Germany before the war would be enough. Note: They also have to treat jews badly.
BlondieBC
Banned
You just need to look up old threads. You can probably search mine or Wiking post history, and you will pickup most of these threads. The short answer is that we don't really agree on this board, like most topics. Everyone agrees the Germans could have done better or worse. We don't agree on if the change is big enough to matter, and what the results are. IMO, the Germans using plausible series of POD could slow the Russians down about 1 year, maybe 18 months. Broad TL:
1) 1941 went about as well as it could go, realistically. It is rolling 96 on the percentile dice, why take a reroll?
2) The 1942 South attack plan could be better. Basically combine air strikes on Baku while the LW is still strong enough to do them well with holding more troops in reserve. With less fuel, counter attacks are harder for the soviets, at least exploiting them. The slower pace of attacking south (more reserves) leaves the Germans with more soldiers to try to stop Stalingrad from being encircle. You hold the bulge through the winter though German counter attacks or retreats in limited areas.
3) 1943: Germans will be transferring LW fighters west this year to deal with allied bombing. There will be a huge battle like Kursk, but farther east. Say near Kharkov, part 4. With less fuel, fewer men, and fewer tanks combined with some better German decision making, we can have the Germans with a better attrition ratio. Germans also hold more food producing regions and USSR has less fuel.
4) By 1944, the USSR is the one on the offensive, if they are strong enough. The question becomes more about how much weaker have the changes in 1942 and 1943 really made them. Then how does this effect Stalin's will to fight. The problem writing a German "win" in the east is I need both much better German performance and the USSR will to fight to lose.
IMO, what you get here is the Soviets with a fairly light attack plan in early 1944 and late 1943 waiting on the second front. Then once the USA has drawn away enough land units, the USSR attacks. So all we do here is change the postwar map of Europe a bit and use the early nuke on Berlin. I can't give you X, but I think the outline will be something like this. If USSR takes X more casualties and has Y less fuel in 1942 and 1943, it will pause it attacks. If it takes 5X more dead and 2Y less fuel, it will seek peace. If I had to bet, I would go with X being about 4 million KIA/POW and Y being 25% less fuel.
BlondieBC
Banned
Probably using the existing OTL plan which was to keep the collectives ups will maximize grain extraction from the Ukraine. And no to the one time effect of eating people or feeding them to Pigs. And no to the propaganda.
And the Germans were exhausted, freezing their asses off, had a supply line which had snapped, and were suffering rather acute manpower shortages. Had the Soviets concentrated their assets on fighting Army Group Center, especially the better trained and led Siberian Divisions, instead of diluting them across the entire front they could have inflicted a much more deisive blow against the Germans no matter what the Nazis did.
Zhukov had a good plan, the problem was Stalin's decision for a front-wide offensive meant he didn't have the resources to pull it off.
I figured, which is why I gave a modest warning instead of completely jumping down your throat over it.
The Soviet manpower problems in '45 were real, but not anywhere on the urgency and scale of the Germans. The Soviets still had plenty of powerful forces they could use if they were willing to weaken their defences against Japan* and could get more raw recruits if they were willing to put women in the factories. The problem for the USSR is that heavier manpower losses means that post-war demographic pyramid you were referring too is that much worse...
*And by late-42 (at the earliest), Stalin is going to be sure the Japanese won't even be contemplating an attack northward any more.
Deleted member 1487
The Soviets did concentrate on AGC, but couldn't do more than they did because they still had to deal with AGS attacking in Ukraine, capturing Rostov and very important economic centers in East Ukraine like the Donetz Basin.
I highly suggest you read David Glantz's numerous books on the subject; the Soviets were horribly exhausted too and suffered even more from the winter than the Germans, losing many more men to frostbite and the like. Soviet vehicles, better prepared than the Germans, still suffered badly in the cold too. The Soviet Siberian divisions were a minority of the divisions employed and everything the Soviets threw and the Germans got smashed in the process. Pretty much both sides were punch drunk boxers stumbling on to the bell with nothing more to throw at each other. As it was the Soviets achieved everything they could have in the Winter of 1941-2, given their own manpower problems (their army had been virtually wiped out and was manned by undertrained conscripts).
Seeing as how the Soviet forces mainly relied on newly raised divisions, they had serious problems exploiting the holes created in the German lines, both because of their own logistics problems, but the virtual non-existence of experience of their forces. As it was even the Siberian divisions were smashed in the process, so I'm not sure what else they could have done to 'win' around Moscow.
And the myth of the Siberians:
http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Busters/Mythbusters3.html
Volga can't be crossed without bridges or ships, that's true.
Approximate place of main landing site
and Volga from Mamaev Kurgan
but Volga isn't the problem, Don is. And even then Uranus was launched from Soviet held bridgeheads which Germans failed to clear in summer.
The main tank the Japanese used at Khalkhin Gol was the Type 95 Ha-Go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_95_Ha-Go
up against Soviet BT-5s and 7s, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT-5 which in 1939 were becoming obsolete by European standards, were more than match for the Japanese AFVs. There were even a few 1st generation T-34s employed.
In 1941, the Japanese were too engaged elsewhere to invade Siberia, even if they wanted to. Their best tanks would have been no better than peers to obsolete Soviet designs and would still be hampered by inferior doctrine in their use.
Only at first. The better-then-expected success in the December offensive (as opposed to the successive January Offensive) is what led Stalin to get all overoptimistic and try to start a general front-wide offensive.
Case-in-point: Stalin transferred an entire field army which was key in Zhukov's plans from outside Moscow to the north for the attempt to relieve Leningrad.
This is true and where I do get somewhat uncertain on the matter. My impression of the sequence of events is that the offensive which retook Rostov began before the Moscow Offensive, was initially a secondary attack, and it was Stalin's decision to go over to the offensive theater-wide that increased its importance (and consequently the degree of supplies and forces it recieved).
I do think that you will agree, however, that a greater Soviet victory over Army Group Center would help condition a recapture of the industrial regions in the Ukraine at a later date.
I have, and his input features heavily into my assessment.
The weakened state of Soviet logistics actually supports my view: Stalin's decision for a front-wide offensive not only dispersed Soviet forces but also dispersed Soviet logistics assets.
The weakened state of the Red Army in 1941 is an arguement for them to concentrate their efforts instead of dispersing them.
I will say that what I think is the Soviets could have put themselves in a better position and inflicted more casualties upon the Germans had they not tried to do to much too soon. Maybe not achieve a war-winning blow, but certainly one that would have put them in a better place by the spring then IOTL.
While I see the whole point, I'm a little skeptical of calling the whole thing a "myth". As far as I am concerned, those formations were raised, trained, and equipped in Siberia and which showed the best fighting ability in the Soviet 1941-42 Winter Campaign are the "Siberian Divisions". If the shoe fits, after all (maybe that isn't the right saying)...
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Possible, yes, plausible, not so much.
It is really difficult to get the conditions to allow the Reich to win. Taking Moscow is slightly easier to achieve, but is still quite difficult.
As a minimum you need the following to allow for Moscow:
All of the above assumes that Hitler doesn't interfere with the main goal of obliterating the Red Army any more than IOTL (which is, frankly, a stretch). If you get all of these in place, and they are at the far edge of possible then there is a shot at Moscow. To defeat the USSR, well, that is a different matter.
To have any hope of the Reich winning you have to take Stalin out of the picture before he calms down and starts to listen to the people telling him that it isn't always a mortal sin to withdraw major formations before they are encircled and destroyed but after he has allowed all of the great double envelopments to take place. If you somehow manage have him execute Zhukov, Konev, and and a few more senior Generals before he dies, so much the better.
Stalin is the key, no one else in the Soviet leadership had a strong enough grip, and sufficient personal power (and inspired so much fear) to keep the country fighting. Without him, the in-fighting among the Soviet leadership for the crown might allow the Reich to impose terms. Unlikely, but barely possible.
It is really difficult to get the conditions to allow the Reich to win. Taking Moscow is slightly easier to achieve, but is still quite difficult.
As a minimum you need the following to allow for Moscow:
- Earlier start to the offensive, no later than mid May 1941
- No diversion of effort into Africa or Yugoslavia
- Better logistical support (this is probably the most important, but it ties closely to the first two requirements)
- Around a third of the forces used OTL to garrison Norway to be used in Barbarossa.
All of the above assumes that Hitler doesn't interfere with the main goal of obliterating the Red Army any more than IOTL (which is, frankly, a stretch). If you get all of these in place, and they are at the far edge of possible then there is a shot at Moscow. To defeat the USSR, well, that is a different matter.
To have any hope of the Reich winning you have to take Stalin out of the picture before he calms down and starts to listen to the people telling him that it isn't always a mortal sin to withdraw major formations before they are encircled and destroyed but after he has allowed all of the great double envelopments to take place. If you somehow manage have him execute Zhukov, Konev, and and a few more senior Generals before he dies, so much the better.
Stalin is the key, no one else in the Soviet leadership had a strong enough grip, and sufficient personal power (and inspired so much fear) to keep the country fighting. Without him, the in-fighting among the Soviet leadership for the crown might allow the Reich to impose terms. Unlikely, but barely possible.
Deleted member 1487
What was a myth was that they were brought west for the winter offensive, when the very last transfers happened in October, while most were transfered well before than starting in June. By the time of the battle for Moscow in November-December the vast majority of the transfered 'Siberians' were already shattered. The remainder offered no better performance for the most part than the hastily raised replacement divisions, and were pretty much wiped out in the counterattack. Thus the 'Siberian' divisions offered little that the Soviets hadn't already been getting from their remaining and new divisions, especially as the Siberians were a small minority of the counterattack, as they had most been already employed and destroyed before it; during it they did not perform any better than any other division.
I thought you were referring to the December battles; we pretty much agree on the above, but the limits in January, by which time the lines were pretty much stabilized, on Soviet success still prevented a serious victory. They could have inflicted more casualties, but were not going to do much better territory-wise. Its just going to be more like the Rzhev meatgrinder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Rzhev
And yes the Rostov counter offensive started in November, but was necessary for economic reasons over focusing around Moscow, which was already heavily defended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow
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