Loss of Stalingrad for the Soviet Union

In our reality those same generals were very willing to fight to the bitter end and see Germany destroyed. In case you missed it, Germany lay devestated at the end of the war. It's cities burned to cinder and that did fuck all to encourage the Generals to throw in the towel.

If they had really cared about the well being of The average Germans they would have turned on Hitler and Co. And surrendered. Instead they fought until they were ground in the dust and hid behind the bullshit excuse of having sworn an oath.
A good portion of that was due to the knowledge of the Morgenthau, plan, but here, the utter destruction will come a bit at a time until surrender, not after it. They are quite different things.

And that's the point. There's been nothing in this WI to change that so the Germans would resist as hard in this TL as in ours. Atomic Bombs don't change that because atomic bombs don't have the power to inflict that much destruction in any reasonable time frame.

If anything, the continued dropping of a-bombs only feeds into Nazi propaganda about Wallied plans for genocide. It doesn't significantly change the general's thinking. I genuinely believe it would take until the 50s for enough damage to be done for that to happen.
That's if they're dropping bombs for sheer terror, but if they scratch a major industrial area each time, how long can Germany keep going?

Of course, there are other ways too, like bombing Baku and Romania, starve the Germans of oil. In fact, economic warfare would probably work better than outright destruction, especially if other nations could be persuaded to allow allied troops onto their land.
 
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That's if they're dropping bombs for sheer terror, but if they scratch a major industrial area each time, how long can Germany keep going?

Longer than you seem to think because they don't scratch a major industrial area each time because a-bombs don't have that destructive capacity as per the graphic. It's more like every 10 bombs scratches a major city, and at the rate of production the allies had at that time, that's a few months per city, which takes a while. This, to the German perspective, looks pretty similar to genocide.
 
Longer than you seem to think because they don't scratch a major industrial area each time because a-bombs don't have that destructive capacity as per the graphic.

That graphic illustrates nothing. I thought it was a comparison of the sizes of the clouds, but that scale is just megatons, it's just a worthless comparison of yield.

You need to explain the destructive area of a 1945 bomb against European architecture and industry, relate that to the expected accuracy and then estimate the number required to destroy an industrial zone of stated area.
 

Deleted member 1487

That graphic illustrates nothing. I thought it was a comparison of the sizes of the clouds, but that scale is just megatons, it's just a worthless comparison of yield.

You need to explain the destructive area of a 1945 bomb against European architecture and industry, relate that to the expected accuracy and then estimate the number required to destroy an industrial zone of stated area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy#Conventional_weapon_equivalent
Apparently the US estimated the bomb was really inefficient, so a fraction of conventional bombs spread out would have had the same effect on the city.
I've read that German cities had more wood than the equivalent British ones, but there was a lot less than existed in Japanese cities. It was unlikely to burn as much and much of the blast effect would be wasted in the vertical plane. So the issue is getting accurate bursts on German industrial sites to melt the equipment. Given that German industry was already dispersing that may be difficult and the best option might be ground bursting rail yards to stop up the transportation system.
 
I appreciate the difficulty in destroying many heavy industrial tools via conventional bombing, but requiring them to be melted is probably too much - the physical damage cause by being thrown tens of metres by blast should be sufficient.
 
That graphic illustrates nothing. I thought it was a comparison of the sizes of the clouds, but that scale is just megatons, it's just a worthless comparison of yield.

You need to explain the destructive area of a 1945 bomb against European architecture and industry, relate that to the expected accuracy and then estimate the number required to destroy an industrial zone of stated area.

Okay fair point, and I'll admit right now I did rather oversell the destructive capacity, or lack thereof, of the a-bomb.

What I'm trying to say though, is that as a demonstration weapon to an already defeated enemy, atomic weapons can tip the balance. As a strategic bombing instrument against an enemy with a more or less intact army, that, as wiking pointed out, was already starting to disperse its industry, and has a huge defensive advantage a-bombs are not necessarily the difference makers.
 

Deleted member 1487

I appreciate the difficulty in destroying many heavy industrial tools via conventional bombing, but requiring them to be melted is probably too much - the physical damage cause by being thrown tens of metres by blast should be sufficient.
Both the British and Germans found that HE pretty much required a direct hit to sufficiently damage/destroy industrial equipment. Heat was much more effective in causing damage. Part of the problem though was the advent of underground and dispersed factories that made WW2 era nukes inefficient at destroying production not concentrated above ground. And WW2 nukes were inefficient at dehousing via city destruction, especially of European cities with concrete. You're better off then with the RAF style firestorms and using nukes as ground bursts against rail infrastructure that couldn't be moved. And probably dams.
 
Dang it. Late to the party again.

My opinion is that the situation on the Eastern Front would have been more or less unchanged. Even barring the ~300,000 men lost during the encirclement, axis losses during the attritional phase were enormous, indeed, probably too much for the overextended and exhausted Germans to have followed up with anything meaningful. North Africa, Italy, and the Western Front probably take place as in OTL, Soviet progress is slowed by a matter of a few weeks, possibly one to two months. Kharkhov and Kursk play out differently, or not at all. Germany does NOT survive long enough to get nuked.
 
Dang it. Late to the party again.

My opinion is that the situation on the Eastern Front would have been more or less unchanged. Even barring the ~300,000 men lost during the encirclement, axis losses during the attritional phase were enormous, indeed, probably too much for the overextended and exhausted Germans to have followed up with anything meaningful. North Africa, Italy, and the Western Front probably take place as in OTL, Soviet progress is slowed by a matter of a few weeks, possibly one to two months. Kharkhov and Kursk play out differently, or not at all. Germany does NOT survive long enough to get nuked.

I simply can not believe "that the situation on the Eastern Front would have been more or less unchanged." You're telling me that Stalingrad falling and the Axis being up by 300,000 troops (plus weapons and equipment) won't change anything? I'm not saying it's a war winner for the Germans, but it definitely prolongs the war by more than one or two months.
 
I simply can not believe "that the situation on the Eastern Front would have been more or less unchanged." You're telling me that Stalingrad falling and the Axis being up by 300,000 troops (plus weapons and equipment) won't change anything? I'm not saying it's a war winner for the Germans, but it definitely prolongs the war by more than one or two months.

Said 300,000 troops would still be stuck in the grind against both Russian reserve armies and the Russian winter. While their historical loss was a body blow, the overall damage was small relative to the 3 million men fighting on each side. Basically, had the Germans managed to take Stalingrad they would have done so only by impaling themselves on the teeth of the Soviet defenses, leaving a major effort over the Volga out of the question for some time. Most likely they would have held onto the west bank before having their positions compromised from an attack from the north, south, or both (similar to URANUS). The fact that the major German effort was still focused on downtown Stalingrad and that the 6th Army's flanks were still guarded by second rate forces would leave them just as (if not more) vulnerable to a Soviet counteroffensive should they actually secure the city. In the event that such a thing took place, Paulus' head would have been even farther into the noose.
 
WI - early in the battle for Stalingrad - General Paulus had assigned his second-line troops (Rumanian) to batter their way into Stalingrad, while he kept his best troops moving in pincher arcs north and south of the city. He could only starve out defenders by cutting Russian supply lines.
 
WI - early in the battle for Stalingrad - General Paulus had assigned his second-line troops (Rumanian) to batter their way into Stalingrad, while he kept his best troops moving in pincher arcs north and south of the city. He could only starve out defenders by cutting Russian supply lines.

The Rumanians and Italians would have been incapable of fighting the kind of vicious and protracted street fight needed to evict Chuikov's 62nd Army from Stalingrad. Both those armies were plagued by corruption and inefficiency, and having the Germans guard their flanks would effectively relegate the 6th Army to a junior role in the fighting, absurd from a military point of view.
 

Ian_W

Banned
While possible, this whole timeline doesnt answer the question of 'How does a German 1942 offensive aimed at the Volga, but not attacking the Soviet oil supplies, win the war for Germany ?'.

Its abandoning the options of Moscow and Leningrad in order to merely disrupt river traffic on the Volga and capture a couple of not-very-important industrial cities.

Stalingrad as a flank security operation, to protect a War Winning Offensive (tm) ) (*) at the Caucus oil makes sense.

Stalingrad as a stand-alone operation ? It just buys Stalin another 12 months.



(*) Asking how you'll get the oil from Baku to Germany, and how it will be refined, is defeatism. It also involves thinking about logistics as important, which is also likely to get your file marked 'lacking offensive spirit'.
 
That's assuming you can even keep the wells, but with the overwhelming superiority of the allies in terms of bombers I'd say that wasn't actually certain in itself.
 
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