Moscow 1941: The Ost-Heer goes from defeat to disaster

When people talk about the German ''failure'' before Moscow on AH.Com they tend to imply it was more due to German mistakes rather than hard fighting by the Red Army. This very much unterates the massive shock the Ost-Heer suffered before Moscow and the efforts of Red Army's winter counter-offensives.

In late 1941 the Red Army had broken through German line both north & south of 4th Panzer Army and in general Army Group Centre's position was parlous to say the least. The Ost-Heer had no reseves at all. Tragically Stalin's dangerous over-optimism in late-1941/early-1942 caused the Red Army to disapparate it offensive power in counter-attacks along the entire Eastren Front.

So the POD is what if instead of this the Soviets High Command/Stalin (for whatever reason) decided to focus all major efforts on Army Group Centre with minimal counter-offensives elsewhere along the front to disrupt German efforts to move their depleted formations to reinforce Army Group Centre and this turned a battlefield defeat before Moscow into a rout of Army Group Centre?
 
Can Army Group Centre survive?

When people talk about the German ''failure'' before Moscow on AH.Com they tend to imply it was more due to German mistakes rather than hard fighting by the Red Army. This very much unterates the massive shock the Ost-Heer suffered before Moscow and the efforts of Red Army's winter counter-offensives.

In late 1941 the Red Army had broken through German line both north & south of 4th Panzer Army and in general Army Group Centre's position was parlous to say the least. The Ost-Heer had no reseves at all. Tragically Stalin's dangerous over-optimism in late-1941/early-1942 caused the Red Army to disapparate it offensive power in counter-attacks along the entire Eastren Front.

So the POD is what if instead of this the Soviets High Command/Stalin (for whatever reason) decided to focus all major efforts on Army Group Centre with minimal counter-offensives elsewhere along the front to disrupt German efforts to move their depleted formations to reinforce Army Group Centre and this turned a battlefield defeat before Moscow into a rout of Army Group Centre?

Clearly Army Group Centre is going to have it worse than they did in reality. One question: Can the Germans adapt and shift forces from other areas before the Red Army chops up AG Centre like mice in a mincer? If forces are diverted to prevent disaster regardless of the minimal counter-offensives elsewhere then how much more damage will those other attacks do then they did in reality?:confused:

Second question: If AG Centre is pulverised without Soviet losses being so high that the victory is Pyrrhic how bad will the "It's all your fault for not having My Iron Will!" :mad: "No Mine Fuhrer its all your fault for being a Bohemian Corporal!" argument get? Just mass firings or are we talking radical shake up/assasination and military coup level here?

Hopefully the tendency on this site to interpret ANY change in WWII as automatically making things better for the Germans can be kept under control.
 
Clearly Army Group Centre is going to have it worse than they did in reality. One question: Can the Germans adapt and shift forces from other areas before the Red Army chops up AG Centre like mice in a mincer? If forces are diverted to prevent disaster regardless of the minimal counter-offensives elsewhere then how much more damage will those other attacks do then they did in reality?:confused:

In 1941 German manpower was overstretched, they had no strategic reserves. Or indeed sufficient replacement troops. That fact that during 1941 General Fromm head of the Home Army was preparing to send training units to the front is indicative of a certain amount of desperation in some quarters of the Wehrmacht.

The Germans also faced severe logistical constraints and were badly overstretched manning the enitre length of the Eastern Front. So their ability to shift forces, particularly in winter 1941/2 is limited. So even small Soviets counter-offensives would disrupt such efforts.

Second question: If AG Centre is pulverised without Soviet losses being so high that the victory is Pyrrhic how bad will the "It's all your fault for not having My Iron Will!" :mad: "No Mine Fuhrer its all your fault for being a Bohemian Corporal!" argument get? Just mass firings or are we talking radical shake up/assasination and military coup level here?

The OTL Soviet winter counter-offensives were Pyrrhic and sometimes led to outright defeats like Kharkov. An outright victory and rout of AGC would be of incalculable benefit to the Soviets. As for Hitler I don’t see him getting overthrown, at this point his grip on power was much more secure and he had proven the generals wrong vis-à-vis Czechoslovakia and France. A major shake up of the German command on the Eastern Front would be inevitable (but I dont see anyone getting shot), morale on the German home front would also be badly shaken far earlier in the war,

Also Germany’s lesser Axis allies particularly Finland would also start looking for a way to quit the war ASAP..

Hopefully the tendency on this site to interpret ANY change in WWII as automatically making things better for the Germans can be kept under control.

It'd be quite hard in this case if AGC gets routed there isnt much you can do to spin things in the Wehrmacht's favour.;)
 
Have you read BW and I's Failure before Moscow? It deals with this sort of victory in the winter of 1941/42 and the Germans are competent for most of it. ;)
 

King Thomas

Banned
I can just imagine Army Group Centre disintigrating in the -50 weather and being chasedby a vengeful Red Army and an even more vengeful NKVD all the way back to Berlin.Could we see the German Army chased into France in 1942 and all of Europe except the UK and the Swiss falling to the Soviets? With no nukes until 1945 and no Army in the West the US can't stop the Red Army.
 
as red pointed out, we have a tl on this board where army group center is crushed in 1941 :-D


on your op

if the POD is just the winter counter attack is less ambitious and better organized I would say this is not enough for several reasons

1. despite the long service of the siberian divisions MANY of the forces Zhukov used where inexperienced which could lead both to officer overzealousness (ie the mongolian cavalry attacks into german machine gun lines) or in ability to sieze tactical opportunities
2. army group center's forces where veterans, despite their exhaustion and the failure of their equipment they where not going to be an easy force to stampede or compel their surrender
3. the weather worked both ways... hyper snow drifts eliminated paths of advance and made coordinating forces or maintaining momentum difficult
4. russian numerical superiority was probably not marked enough for that level of advance (ie they couldn't bring decisive enough numbers in enough places to get where they needed to go after Kiev and Bryansk disasters)
5. the germans had a good line to retreat to in the rear on the oka which zhukov underestimated so unless he seperated the 4th army from being able to retreat to this line, even if smashed, they would catch their breath and stop the russians there (as they did in otl)
 
I can just imagine Army Group Centre disintigrating in the -50 weather and being chasedby a vengeful Red Army and an even more vengeful NKVD all the way back to Berlin.Could we see the German Army chased into France in 1942 and all of Europe except the UK and the Swiss falling to the Soviets? With no nukes until 1945 and no Army in the West the US can't stop the Red Army.

Well, that's certainly the opposite of the tendency to have the Germans do better in any eastern front scenario.

I've toyed with the idea of a smashing Soviet victory in winter 1941, and it sort of works, but it doesn't lead to them winning the war in 1942. Reasons: (1) While the Soviets were improving rapidly, they didn't have the depth of logistics capability, training, or organization to just keep on going. At some point they were going to have to stop, which gives the Germans time to build a line. Take the biggest of their victories in 1944 and look at far they were able to advance. Now subtract some amount for the fact that their mobility was mostly horse-drawn in 1941-42 and mostly truck-borne in 1944-45. That's the extent of their initial advance. (2) While the Germans didn't have immediate reserves on the eastern front, given a major enough threat, as in the German heartland being in danger, they would have certainly moved units from France, North Africa, the Balkans, and Norway. Now granted, those units weren't of great quality, but they would be fighting Red Army units at the end of their rope, exhausted, at the end of a fragile supply line some number of hundreds of miles from their source of supply. The further the Red Army advances, the longer those supply lines are. (3) The front narrows as the line gets further west.

None of that is to say that the Soviets couldn't advance. It's just that they weren't going to advance further and faster in 1941/42 than they did in 1944/45. They would probably still be inside the Sept 1939 borders of the Soviet Union at the end of 1942. That's a lot better than they did historically in that period, but not 'Soviets reach France by 1942' good.

The Western Allies would react to a crushing Soviet victory and major advances. Lend Lease wouldn't officially go away, but in reality the Soviets would get nothing because the Western Allies would have no intention of facilitating a Sovietization of Europe. The West would also write off the war against Japan in favor of pouring anything they would have sent to the Pacific to Europe, with the idea of getting boots on the ground in France as quickly as possible. By Soviet/German standards that wouldn't be a lot of men or material, but by the standards of the Western Allies in early 1942 it was quite a bit.

British and US weapons that historically went to the Soviets would be used to build up forces of the western allies more quickly. Western shipping historically used for convoys to the Soviets would also go to that build-up.

With the Western allies not an immediate threat and the Soviets definitely threatening, the Germans would give defense against the Soviets even more of a priority than they did historically. U-boats get less priority. Tanks get more.

My guess: War ends in early 1944 with the Western Allies/Vichy French and the Soviets meeting somewhere in Germany. Rationale: The better the Soviets do, the more German power is drawn east, which makes the western Allies task easier. The timing can differ, but the outcome in terms of where the Western Allies and the Soviets meet is difficult to realistically change much.

What happens in the Pacific in this scenario is actually a bit more interesting. The Soviets would probably let the west and Japan bleed a bit, and then jump in sometime in early 1945. If the war in Europe ends in early 1944 but the Pacific War goes into mid-1945, which it probably would, the European colonial powers would probably end up with more power on the ground in their former colonies when the war ended. That probably doesn't stop the end of European colonization, but may make it bloodier.

There would be an impact on the Chinese civil war. The Nationalists would get less support than they got in 1942-early 1944 (which was minimal anyway) but would probably get more in 1944-45, which makes the inevitable Chinese civil war more bloody.
 
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