Admiral Canaris
Banned
Casualties would probably be in the same region as the losses taken in OTL being hammered outside Moscow with no defense from the elements. The Soviets wouldn't surrender but their official forces were nearly gone and barely trained militia can only do so much. This isn't the same as Stalingrad.
Right. But how did Leningrad hold out, then? I imagine the troops there weren't better than those in Moscow by orders of magnitude, especially as resupplying them was difficult as hell (that they could do so at all was because the Finns wouldn't do their part of the job and seal off access across the frozen lake). Even militia can fuck things up in house-to-house warfare. And I imagine more reinforcements from the Far East would be pouring in if Moscow was directly threatened.
I don't know exactly how much Germany got out of Ukraine in the winter of 1941-2 but I doubt it was so valuable that they could not get on without it if they had secured Moscow. They can close the Kiev pocket later on once the situation in Moscow is beyond doubt, assuming Army Group South has not managed to defeat them alone.
Arguably. But at the very least, it gives the Russians more time to wreck shit and organise partisans. And they might need to prop up the Romanians if they don't want backlashes.
How valueable another half a million Soviet Soldiers with largely out-dated equipment would prove is somewhat debatable. They cannot all easilly be withdrawn without abandoning Ukraine to Army Group South. As it is that force would be in position to harry any withdrawl.
But they might not be concentrated in Kiev either and give the Germans the kind of knock-out that pocket was IOTL (600,000 prisoners do make a difference, even if their weapons are shit). Saner deployment of them will delay their advance. And time is what the Germans are short of in virtually every scenario.
Heart attack? Stroke? Bad fall down a flight of stairs? Anyway works, its your POD. Its a bit contrived perhaps, but its hardly impossible. Stress can do that to a person.
All right, it's fiat. Well, I guess it's not impossible, but that's a very favourable scenario (Stalin became quite old, and I think it's still debated whether he was poisoned).
No you don't. Because in 1941 Stavka was not nearly as confident and adept as it would be later on in the war. They were in abject disarray suffering defeat after defeat. The Purges had ensured that it was not a well oiled machine that could run without Stalin. The complete failure to act in the first week of Barbarossa demonstrates this quite clearly. The Red Army had essentially been stripped of any initiative because to act on your own authority was to sign your own death warrant. Everyone needed authority from someone. That someone was nominally the Party by by this time it was only Stalin and his political commissars. If you remove him at the very least the Party will have to get together and either have a new leader establish his authority or form a council. That will take time. A new leader will involve alot of backstabbing and councils are rarely effective in times of war.
Read again. Stavka had authority second only to Stalin; would people start rebelling all over the place against their legitimate orders? Prominent Old Bolsheviks like Zhukov, Timoshenko, Voroshilov, Molotov? With inherent Russian xenophobia, Bolshevik hatred of "Fascist Gitlerism" and the Nazis making asses of themselves in the occupied lands, mobilising the people and army against them shouldn't be terribly difficult.
The relations between Commissars and military commanders weren't overall as bad as the popular view has it; sure, there were archetypical "No retreat, and I'll hang everyone who dies on his watch" bastards, but they were fairly rare. Remember, the Commissars had been part of the forces since the Civil War; they often knew a little about how things worked in the military, and most were willing to simply countersign orders as a matter of fact. And the Purges weren't as devastating as is commonly put forth, either; the Army was hurt far worse by the assimilation of the Territorial Forces in the mid-to-late '30s, which together with the general massive expansion as the war approached created an unsuppliable need of officers. Only 20,000-30,000 officers were purged, and most of those were merely fired, not shot; they were reactivated when the Motherland was threatened. (In fact, the larger part of those purged in the Army were Commissars, not true military men).
The civilian administration was only slighter better than under Hitler because while Hitler let people build their own private fiefdoms Stalin suffered nothing of the kind. Beria comes close but he has nothing on Himmler. The result of this was that the inter-deparmental competition was lessened although still not removed entirely. As it is you still had alot of personalities who did not get on and were unlikely to put aside those differences so someone could become the big cheese.
The Soviet civil service is admittedly not my area of expertise. I cannot comment on it. I do think Stavka would be able to maintain overall control, though, with the rest of the mechanisms still in place. Wasn't most of the bureaucracy evacuated from Moscow IOTL?
All in all the chaos may only last for a couple of weeks or months. This is time however which the Soviet Union and the Red Army does not have.
The Germans won't be able to achieve unsurmountable advantages in such a span of time; even positing disorganised resistance, shit'd be breaking down by itself, and land does take troops and equipment to pacify and supervise. In addition, Stalin's death would supposedly happen in the winter or late autumn, which would make it very difficult for the Germans to advance and capitalise on this massive gain. By springtime, Stavka would've sorted things out; they are not fools.