N/A

Is it that one where the Red Army brings the war to German soil within half an hour and starts offensive hits against German cities immediately after the beginning of hostilities with full effectiveness?
 
I think a lot of scenarios like this are based on the propaganda of Soviet era historians who held out that Stalin was planning to attack Hitler, when if you read Gorodetsky for instance he was doing no such thing

From all my reading, the Red Army would have advanced to its doom if it had attacked the Axis in 1941 - I say 'the Axis' because the USSR would have had to take into account Hungary and Rumania sitting on its borders, and probably Finland too.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Markus

Banned
Theres a very precise book by Mikhail Ivanovich Meltyukhov on a possible pre-emptive strike on the Wehrmacht preparing for Barbarossa. He says that the Red Army would be in Berlin by 1942, and may even have reached Paris, like Tsar Alexander. The novel was highly praised, but what would the world look like after such a conflict? Assuming the USSR win?

Just for the record: Fighting on the defensive is considered less difficult than conduction offensive operations, especially in mobile warfare(deep battle aka. Blitzkrieg). The Soviets were bested by the Germans in mobile warfare as late as summer 1943, in 1941 they will be cut into pieces if they stick out their necks.
Politically it will be even worse. Now it´s Stalin who´s the agressor and the Nazis who fight to save europe from communism.

edit: The average soviet division was badly equipped -especially with the critial communications gear- and the leaders on all levels lacked experience. The latter is bad because the divisions were huuuge formations and as it turned out too big and complicated to be lead by the personnel the Red Army had. Same goes for the Red AF. Lost of planes, but most obsolescent, just a few new designs slowly entering service.
 
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Markus

Banned
So, are we all saying that if Stalin takes the plunge, the waters full of sharks?

Not just any sharks, but great whites of the Spielberg type, just harder to kill. :eek:

A fighting a delaying action, trading territory for time and waiting until a well prepared counteroffensive can be lauchned against an enemy who´s outrun his logistics and whose equipment start to break down from constant wear and tear would have been the thing to do. Given the remarkable success of the winter counteroffensive such a strategy would have cost the Germans probably an entire Army Group.
 
Possibly...but not definitely. It may well turn out to bite Stalin in the ass, just as likely. Just as Hitler's attack could have gone either way, with victory or defeat (The latter being the actual outcome, of course.)
 

Markus

Banned
If the Wehrmacht is in France when Russia strikes, and that is the most likely scenario, the Germans are pretty screwed. They simply don't have the manpower in the east to stop the Russians.

Stalin attacking Hitler right after the Winter War fiasco? No,... no way.
 
I think you have to take into account many different things.

Have the purges still happened as usual or not? Otherwise this greatly depletes their offensive strength, consider that the Red Air force has been gutted of many of its trained and experienced officers, as well as the Army. The massive losses suffered from Barbarossa allowed the the Soviet high command to implement changes necessary for better leadership and communication within the forces, as well as learning from past mistakes.

Then again, the Red Army has much more population and resources to play with from a pre-emptive strike. The heavy industries never need to be moved to the Urals, the peace time Red Army is still intact as well as large urban population. This also means the Wehrmacht has less manpower from ethnics fleeing the Soviet regime and joining the Germans.
 

bard32

Banned
Stalin's Missed Chance

There's another book similar to that written by Bill Yenney a few years ago. It's called A Damned Fine War. It's about Patton meeting the Red Army in post-
war Germany right after the end of World War II. There are also two more books in a similar vein by Douglas Niles and his coauthor, I can't think of his name right now, called Fox At The Front and Fox On The Rhine, both of which are about Rommel. Fox On The Rhine is about a very different
Battle of the Bulge.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
If the Wehrmacht is in France when Russia strikes, and that is the most likely scenario, the Germans are pretty screwed. They simply don't have the manpower in the east to stop the Russians.

Sure they do.

The Red Army of June 1941 bore little resemblance to the 1944 version, in skill, mobility and equipment. It would have walked into the Heer, supported by aircraft that made Finnish pilots aces while flying Brewster Buffalos:eek: It's easy to kill invaders who lack rifles, artillery, ammunition, air cover, boots, compentent commanders, and the like.

There is a reason that the Heer got to within cannon range of Moscow in the first five months of the war.
 
Sure they do.

The Red Army of June 1941 bore little resemblance to the 1944 version, in skill, mobility and equipment. It would have walked into the Heer, supported by aircraft that made Finnish pilots aces while flying Brewster Buffalos:eek: It's easy to kill invaders who lack rifles, artillery, ammunition, air cover, boots, compentent commanders, and the like.

There is a reason that the Heer got to within cannon range of Moscow in the first five months of the war.

The reason was that the German army was ACTUALLY IN Eastern Europe! With the army in France it is toast. You don't need a good army if there is nothing in the way to slow you down.
 
Germany immediately releases Poland as an independent nation, so that it gets massacred stopping Red Army, and then the Wehrmacht, back from France, steps above Polish deads, and pushes back Soviets. :D

OR

Germany signs peace with Western Allies and everyone join forces against the Communism. :D
 
So hang on, the entire Soviet Army, rather than messily and with little discipline retreating before the German Army, just messily and with little discipline walked into the German Army? That should make it easier to wipe the Soviet military out.

This could be a good POD for "survival of Nazi Germany" or somesuch.
 

Stalker

Banned
Sure they do.

The Red Army of June 1941 bore little resemblance to the 1944 version, in skill, mobility and equipment. It would have walked into the Heer, supported by aircraft that made Finnish pilots aces while flying Brewster Buffalos:eek: It's easy to kill invaders who lack rifles, artillery, ammunition, air cover, boots, compentent commanders, and the like.

There is a reason that the Heer got to within cannon range of Moscow in the first five months of the war.
Oh, stereotypes again!:(
Red Army of 1941 lacked many things: competent noncoms, mid-rank commanders, training, flexible tactics but what they were not short of was ammunition, artillery, tanks, airplanes, trucks and discipline.
By the quality of their fighter planes in 1940 they fell behind Western states but after experience of war in Spain and samples of Me-109 captured they started to produce much better fighters and don't forget the quantities of al that! They had advaced tanks (although badly furnished and with many shortcomings in their design, and unreliable chassis - typically in Russian manner) and T-34 and KV-1,2 among them (about 1200 by the end of 1940) which were superior of any tanks in the world, they had advanced artillery unified in calibres and hand fireweapons (rifles, light, mid and heavy muchine-guns. submuchineguns etc) enough to arm 10 million army. And discipline. Please, tell me, do you know any army in the world that suffered such huge blows (hundlreds of thousands KIA, wounded, milions of POWs) in early war without its morale and discipline completely annihilated? If you find any example for that, I'll gladly accept your point of view.:p
 
Stalin wasn't planning on attacking in 1941; he was far too cautious to do that with an army he knew to be inferior.

1942, however, would be another matter entirely. By then the armoured divisions would have been reorganised, and the T-34 tank would be in the mainstay. The Red Air Force would also have seen quite some upgrades by then. Stalin was bargaining for time; another year, and the offensive might well have gone the other way.

Of course, Hitler attacked well before that, so the point is moot...
 
This is a persistent one. Am I wrong it was actually fabricated by Heidirch & his boys to justify Germany's attack?
 
They wouldn't have reached Berlin or anything, however it would be a marked improvement from OTL. Meltyukhov was right about the Germans having no defensive plan which may have thrown the German army into disarray for a short time. Also the Soviets armies and air forces which were tragically in the first days of Barbarosaa might still suffer high casualties, however they will inflict much more significant casualties on the Germans than in OTL. tHIS SCENARIO WOULD PROBABLY SEE THE WAR ENDING IN 1943/44.
 
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