Operation Barbarossa : a close call or Germany was simply outmatched

CalBear

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Seeking terms is not very attractive when the terms on offer are, "We kill literally everyone and take all your land."

Well it wasn't kill everyone or ALL the land. About 70% of the USSR would still have existed, all the Reich wanted were the productive parts.

They also intended to let about 35% of the Slavic population survive as slaves. So...

But, ya, sub optimal deal.
 

Deleted member 1487

Well it wasn't kill everyone or ALL the land. About 70% of the USSR would still have existed, all the Reich wanted were the productive parts.

They also intended to let about 35% of the Slavic population survive as slaves. So...

But, ya, sub optimal deal.
Its not like Hitler intended to seek terms, it was to destroy the regime and sweep up the mess, basically fighting an endless war of colonization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrbauer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-A_line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural_Mountains_in_Nazi_planning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa#German_invasion_plans
 
Moscow and Russia were radically different places in 1812 and 1941 with vastly different value and importance.


And the hub of their communications network too; they lacked substantial radio communications to make up for the loss of their land line core.
Yes. The Russia Hitler faced was far more powerful?
 
Napoleonic Moscow was a small town and had not been the capital for long and had zero impact on the Russian ability to wage war.

Soviet Moscow was the rail hub for all of European Russia, had substantial industries and a huge population.
Even if they had taken Moscow (and that's a big if) it wouldn't mean a Russian defeat. Over 1,500 factories and 25 million people had been moved beyond the Urals to work them.
 

Deleted member 1487

Even if they had taken Moscow (and that's a big if) it wouldn't mean a Russian defeat. Over 1,500 factories and 25 million people had been moved beyond the Urals to work them.
Kind of hard to organize them at the front when 60% of industry was still West of the Urals, including a major portion in and around Moscow; plus if Moscow falls supplying Leningrad becomes pretty much impossible and it falls over the winter while the counter attack there can't get off. Generally with the fall of Moscow the damage to the land line communications infrastructure and lateral rail movement will prevent all but limited local counterattacks in the winter of 1941 and prevent STAVKA from organizing resistance during the relocation and attempts to get communications reorganized at the new capital.

Stalin was planning on evacuating to Samara:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara,_Russia
http://users.tpg.com.au/adslbam9//Railways1941.png
Moscow was pretty core to rail movement too.
 
The Germans have to take Moscow by October 1941. In October the rains hit and everything turned to mud, allowing the Red Army to reorganize. And while the Germans potentially could have taken Moscow that winter the Central Asian (not Siberian as is popularly supposed) troops were reinforcing it and the Germans were suffering from serious supply issues (as well as suffering from the effects of the harsh winter). From October 1941 to the end of Stalingrad the best they can hope for is a Brest-Litvosk style peace but that won't happen unless Hitler is out of the picture. After that they are pretty much screwed.
 
Kind of hard to organize them at the front when 60% of industry was still West of the Urals, including a major portion in and around Moscow; plus if Moscow falls supplying Leningrad becomes pretty much impossible and it falls over the winter while the counter attack there can't get off. Generally with the fall of Moscow the damage to the land line communications infrastructure and lateral rail movement will prevent all but limited local counterattacks in the winter of 1941 and prevent STAVKA from organizing resistance during the relocation and attempts to get communications reorganized at the new capital.

Stalin was planning on evacuating to Samara:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara,_Russia
http://users.tpg.com.au/adslbam9//Railways1941.png
Moscow was pretty core to rail movement too.
Through the Winter? By November General Wagner acknowledged that they were at the end of their resources in both material and personnel. The Winter will give the Russians time to regroup and reorganize themselves and the longer the war lasts, the worse things would get for the Germans.
 
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Given how horribly the German's had underestimated both the Soviet military and the logistical burden of driving into the Soviet interior, the most astonishing thing is not that they ultimately failed but that they made it as far as they did before doing so. Part of this is because of the German's ability at improvising at the tactical-operational level, but another part is because the Soviets basically made the worse of a very bad situation during the summer of '41.

Leaving aside that taking Moscow was outside of the German's capability, it is extremely debatable whether successfully taking it would have collapsed the Soviet Union. The Soviet government had not only already largely relocated to Kuybyshev, but operated just fine from there. Many did not return to Moscow until 1942 and a few stayed in Kyubyshev all the way into early-'43. I'm not completely ruling out the possibility that had the Germans managed the impossible and took Moscow it would have caused the USSR to crack, but it seems more likely it just would have been another big blow.
 
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takerma

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It was really really close.

If Moscow falls it is game over. Things were falling apart, it is really a miracle that USSR survived continued disasters of previous month. Stalingrad is really the turning point before that everything is up in the air.
 
Its outside Germany’s control. The Russians can lose/collapse but apart from a very few days early in the campaign that’s not on and at that point the Germans think they are winning decisively so why accept anything but total victory.

On its own terms Barbarossa succeeds. It does destroy what the Germans believed was the Red army in the area they intended to. Its not until late 42 or possibly mid 43 that OKH institutionally understands the scale of the fight it has.

By the time to you get to Typhoon the German army simply does not have the logistics. The german divisional reports make that clear even if higher command levels are still pushing on and propaganda campaign says victory was just around the corner.
 
Well it wasn't kill everyone or ALL the land. About 70% of the USSR would still have existed, all the Reich wanted were the productive parts.

They also intended to let about 35% of the Slavic population survive as slaves. So...

But, ya, sub optimal deal.

Was that known at the time? - I mean we know how evil the Nazis are now but in 1941/42 had the Russians been under different leadership terms might have been sought even if the Germans lied (yeah I know not like them at all) and sought to totally defeat the 'Slavs' at a later date.

After all it wasn't like Hitler had not done the same thing in France in 1940?
 
A guerrilla campaign only works when the enemy is not aiming to kill you anyway. The SS would likely have very little moral quandaries about massacring village after village until the Russians would be too scared to try anything. The primary flaw of guerrilla resistance is that it relies on the humanity of the enemy.

How is that so? If the enemy is going to kill population regardless of what they do, then the best and, in fact, the only way is to try to do something against them. Anything would do down to throwing stones and trying to poke their eyes out with pointed sticks, since they are going to die anyway.

Guerilla warfare relies on the enemy getting tired of not being able to relax anywhere and having to look in all directions and not being able to supply their troops.

By the time SS got to their third or fourth village, fifth would already be up in arms.
 
How is that so? If the enemy is going to kill population regardless of what they do, then the best and, in fact, the only way is to try to do something against them. Anything would do down to throwing stones and trying to poke their eyes out with pointed sticks, since they are going to die anyway.

Guerilla warfare relies on the enemy getting tired of not being able to relax anywhere and having to look in all directions and not being able to supply their troops.

By the time SS got to their third or fourth village, fifth would already be up in arms.

Exactly my point. The Warsaw Uprising is a perfect example.By 1944, the Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto fully understood what was being done to them and figured that if they were going to die any way, it was better to die fighting and take as many of those murdering bastards with them as possible, as opposed to simply waiting to be shipped off to Auschwitz and gassed. That's pretty much what will happen in Russia.It's possible that the Soviets will go down regardless, but they'll go down swinging because they know exactly what the Nazis plan to do to them.
 

Deleted member 1487

Guerilla warfare relies on the enemy getting tired of not being able to relax anywhere and having to look in all directions and not being able to supply their troops.
Partisans required supply from friendly or exploitable peasants to survive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_partisans#Controversies
To survive, resistance fighters largely relied on the civilian population. This included access to food, clothing and other supplies. However, in the areas they controlled, there was limited opportunity to operate their own agriculture. As is typical in guerrilla warfare, Soviet partisans requisitioned food, livestock and clothes from local peasants; in some cases the supply was voluntary, in others coerced. The results of such requisitioning were made more severe by the fact that Axis occupation forces had been already carrying out their own requisitions. This led to conflicts with partisans in areas hostile to Soviet power, mostly in territories annexed by the Soviet Union during 1939–1941.


Among the targets of Soviet partisans were not only Axis military and their collaboration units, but also civilians accused of being collaborators or sometimes even those who were considered not to support the partisans strongly enough.[47]
So if the Nazis are simply mass murdering the civilians that partisans rely on the pond has been drained and partisan efforts cannot be sustained. Especially if the Nazis aren't worried about retribution from the Soviets they will just use chemical weapons as an area denial weapon and be able to fight 'on the cheap' by dousing any village in a partisan operating area with Tabun, Mustard gas, or any other chemical agent to remove civilian support for partisan efforts.

By the time SS got to their third or fourth village, fifth would already be up in arms.
Not really, I've read first hand accounts from the German side of being able to just roll in and slaughter everyone repeatedly without meeting resistance. Its not like there were simply guns floating around in all of these villages; resistance was mostly from soldiers caught behind the lines in 1941, paras caught there from any number of disastrous Soviet airborne ops, and Soviet deployed agents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_partisans#Formation_of_anti-German_Soviet_resistance
The first partisan detachments, consisting of Red Army personnel and local inhabitants, and commanded by Red Army officers or local Communist Party activists, were formed in the first days of the war, including the Starasyel'ski detachment of Major Dorodnykh in the Zhabinka district (June 23, 1941) [2] and the Pinsk detachment of Vasily Korzh on June 26, 1941.[3] The first awards of the Hero of the Soviet Union order occurred on August 6, 1941 (detachment commanders Pavlovskiy and Bumazhkov).


In 1941, the core of the social base of the partisan movement were the remains of Red Army units destroyed in the first phases of Operation Barbarossa, personnel of destruction battalions, and the local Communist Party and Komsomol activists. The most common unit of the period was the detachment.


The "seed" partisan detachments, diversionist and organizational groups were formed and parachuted into German-occupied territories in the summer of 1941. Urban underground groups were formed as a force complementing the activities of partisan units, operating in rural areas. The network of underground structures was actively developed on German-occupied territories to control activities, and it received a steady influx of specially chosen party activists. By the end of 1941, more than 2,000 partisan detachments (with more than 90,000 personnel) operated in German-occupied territories.[4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_partisans#German_reprisals
While the partisan movement in some regions greatly contributed to the outcome of the Eastern Front, some historians argue that the price for this was too high.


Partisans are often accused of provoking brutal countermeasures from the Nazi occupiers. Trying to limit partisan activities, German command employed mass killings of hostages among the residents of areas supporting partisan forces. In the case of partisan attack or sabotage, a number of locals would be executed. Such hostage operations happened in the form of preliminary arrests, post-attack retaliation actions, and/or compulsory "watch-groups" deployed on vulnerable sites and killed if they did not avert the attack. In Belarus alone, according to historian Christian Gerlach, German anti-partisan actions killed an estimated 345,000 people, mostly civilians.[48]


According to Soviet sources,[citation needed] the partisans tried ways to limit hostage executions or other murders in retaliation for their actions, like targeting uninhabited areas, developing their own forest agriculture and evacuating the whole population of the villages at risk. However, some historians believe that such attempts were of little effect.
Activity and its effect on local civilians was a permanent issue of controversy among partisans.
Ultimately guerrilla warfare in the East depended on being sustained by civilian farmers and external supply from the USSR; if the Soviet government is simply to disorganized as the result of Moscow being lost and the political leadership being fractured then being able to support operations in Belarus and Ukraine is impossible and they wither when there isn't external supplies coming in both of weapons and trained manpower. Also the Nazis using genocide as a weapon to remove the civilian support of the guerrillas would pretty much starve out the partisans.

Exactly my point. The Warsaw Uprising is a perfect example.By 1944, the Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto fully understood what was being done to them and figured that if they were going to die any way, it was better to die fighting and take as many of those murdering bastards with them as possible, as opposed to simply waiting to be shipped off to Auschwitz and gassed. That's pretty much what will happen in Russia.It's possible that the Soviets will go down regardless, but they'll go down swinging because they know exactly what the Nazis plan to do to them.
That's the thing, they didn't know in 1941 so didn't really do much until 1942; even then it was operatives left behind, troops caught up behind the lines, and agents parachuted in that did the bulk of the partisan effort, especially organizing civilians to fight. Without external support from Moscow or whatever rump is left the partisans cannot get going:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_partisans#Formation_of_anti-German_Soviet_resistance
The "seed" partisan detachments, diversionist and organizational groups were formed and parachuted into German-occupied territories in the summer of 1941. Urban underground groups were formed as a force complementing the activities of partisan units, operating in rural areas. The network of underground structures was actively developed on German-occupied territories to control activities, and it received a steady influx of specially chosen party activists. By the end of 1941, more than 2,000 partisan detachments (with more than 90,000 personnel) operated in German-occupied territories.[4][5]


However, the activity of partisan forces were not centrally coordinated and supplied until spring of 1942. In order to coordinate partisan operations the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement under Stavka, headed by Panteleimon Ponomarenko (Chief of Staff) and initially commanded by top Politburo member Kliment Voroshilov, was organized on May 30, 1942. The Staff had its liaison networks in the Military Councils of the Fronts and Armies. The territorial Staffs were subsequently created, dealing with the partisan movement in the respective Soviet Republics and in the occupied provinces of the Russian SFSR.[6]


Initially, in Ukraine and Belorussia some of the local population were supportive of the German occupation that they hoped would bring about the end of Stalinist rule.


Later, the NKVD, SMERSH and GRU began training a special group of future partisans (effectively, special forces units) in the rear and dropping them into occupied territories.[citation needed] Candidates were chosen from among volunteers from the regular Red Army, the NKVD Internal Troops, and Soviet sportsmen. Behind the German front-line, the groups were to organize and guide the local, self-established partisan units. Radio operators and intelligence gathering officers were essential members of each group since amateur fighters could not be trusted with these tasks. Some commanders of these special units, such as Dmitry Nikolaevich Medvedev, later became well-known partisan leaders.[citation needed]
Without coordination and external support they don't form to the same degree or really have much effect until run down, which they will be without a major Eastern Front tying down German combat troops and preventing them from launching anti-partisan sweeps. Plus the general use of Mustard Gas as an area denial weapon and means of mass murdering civilians in partisan areas will swiftly cause major supply problems for partisans. The total lack of morality of the Nazis in their conduct of anti-guerrilla warfare would make them an extremely problematic force to counter for partisans denied an external source of support.

The Warsaw Uprising is a prime example of why that is a bad option for guerrillas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising
Casualties and losses
German
At least 17 killed, 93 wounded (German figures)

Jewish
About 13,000 killed, 56,885 deported, mostly civilians (German estimate)

According to Stroop's unofficial account, 71,000 people in all were killed or deported. The 16 killed on the German side do not include Jewish forced collaborators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising
Casualties and losses
Polish resistance:
10,000 KIA[7]
5,200–6,000 MIA[7]
5,000 WIA[7]
15,000 POW[7]

Berling 1st Army: 5,660 casualties[7]

150,000–200,000 civilians killed,[8] 700,000 expelled from the city.[7]

German forces
:
7,000–9,000 KIA[7]
7,000 MIA[7]
9,000 WIA[7]
2,000 POW[7] 310 tanks and armoured vehicles, 340 trucks and cars, 22 artillery pieces, one aircraft[7]
Remember too that the Warsaw Uprising was in the context of Nazi German collapsing, Normandy being successful, Army Group Center being virtually destroyed, and the Soviets outside the city.

These were hugely lopsided murder fests for the resistance. They can inflict some damage, but the Nazis without a front line to worry about and no concerns about using chemical weapons would just butcher any resistance.
 
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Even if Berlin had managed to force the UK out of the war, the Reich could only achieve its desired outcome if the Soviet leadership broke (of course forcing the other side to blink and concede to demands is what constitutes victory in almost any war).

Which is, in a way, how they had beaten the Russians in the Great War.

Which of course inspired Hitler's arrogant insistence that “You have only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
 
Most people tend to say "Germany will lose in the end" Or "Soviet manpower is unlimited" and so on and say Germany was far from winning it.

But in the end,Germany was stopped just in front of Moscow. and germany high mobility make saving Stalingrad a possibility.

So is it fluke or fate?

Russians win every time. The only question is where the front line is when the Anglo-Americans roll into Germany from the west.
 

Deleted member 1487

I found this about the effectiveness of partisans in killing German soldiers IOTL:
http://translate.google.com/transla...a.org/wiki/Sowjetische_Partisanen&prev=search
Losses and "effectiveness"



According to Soviet sources, were killed by guerrilla attacks 600,000 enemy soldiers and another 50,000 were taken prisoner. 1,100 aircraft and 2,500 trains were destroyed. [13] Recent research has shown, however, that claims like these to critical scrutiny not withstand the basis of the extant sources. In his study of guerrilla warfare in Belarus of the Polish historian comes Bogdan Musial for comprehensive Quellensichtungen to the conclusion that there only 6,000 to 7,000 German soldiers have been killed by partisans, although official Soviet claims to more than 282,000 partisans to have been active there. Although the partisans would have represented a certain danger, above all for the German supply lines, its military results in total were but greatly overestimated and mythologized by Soviet Nachkriegshistoriografie. The main activity of the partisans is not usually been the fight against the German aggressors, but the procurement of food. Above all, fell the partisan war mainly totally innocent civilians victim, where there was also the part of the guerrillas to acts of violence against real and suspected collaborators. Overall, it never succeeded in the Belarusian partisans, so Musial, becoming a really war-resolving power, which would have been able to build in the back of the German troops to a real "second front". Therefore, they never made ​​it to jeopardize supplies to the fighting on the Eastern Front German troops or block so that the fighting capacity of the same would have been severely limited. [14]
Basically Soviet partisans IOTL were minimally effective and more of a danger to Soviet civilians who were deemed collaborators or hostile to the resistance than the Germans.
http://www.amazon.de/Sowjetische-Partisanen-1941-1944-Mythos-Wirklichkeit/dp/3506766872
http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/type=rezbuecher&id=14304&view=pdf
Musial, Bogdan: Sowjetische Partisanen 1941-1944. Mythos und Wirklichkeit. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag 2009.
Musial cites, and seems to trust, formally classified Soviet documents that conclude that there were in the territory of present-day Belarus over 282,000 Soviet partisans – most of whom lived there before 1941, lacked a formal affiliation with the Communist party, and took up the fight in or after 1943 (pp. 320-322). He believes they did not make a choice to enlist, but joined because partisans threatened them with violence or death (p. 329). How this can be reconciled with the statements to the effect that a „large part“ was forced to join by Nazi occupation policies (pp. 443, 218) remains unclear.


The partisans in this book are presented as mainly a pointless failure. They mostly hunted for food (p. 288) and achieved little else. They generally obtained little classified German information. With reference to specific periods, the book refers to „remarkable military successes“ and „great“ or „acute“ threats to German supply lines (pp. 136, 222, 225); but the overall „military results“ were „everything but satisfactory“ (p. 190), certainly in view of the large number of partisans. It was also Stalin’s failure: „The Soviet leadership did not manage to turn the mass of partisans into a battle-ready armed force, to erect the second front, and to endanger the German supply lines to an extent that would affect the actual front.“ (pp. 442-443; see also p. 230)


The partisans killed only 6,000 to 7,000 Germans (p. 292), while countless innocent non-Germans died. Many were killed as alleged traitors by the partisans, who deemed them their „main opponents“ (p. 255). Others were killed by Germans who otherwise might have spared them, the books states: „Without the partisan war, the losses of the ethnic Belarusian civilian population brought about by direct German terror would probably have remained small.“ (p. 377) Thus I am not convinced when the final paragraph of the book warns that the above „in no way“ diminishes the merits of those who fought the Nazi occupants „courageously and decisively“ (p. 443).
 
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Russians win every time. The only question is where the front line is when the Anglo-Americans roll into Germany from the west.

So assuming this close call happens to go Ther Germans way, due to a POD or several PODs, Typhoon suceeds, Germans take Moscow, Leningrad falls to a winter siege, 1942 Germans take Stalingrad and Grozny, bomb from the air Baku and the Caspian sea traffic.

Soviet Union is crippled and can only make local counter attacks. After November 1942 Germans become increasingly concerned about the west and just try to hold what they have in the East.

The Germans have several advantages when dealing with the Allies then. Even if almost all the forces in the east in OTL are kept in the east to hold the territory gained and hold down partisans.

1) No Demanysk airlift
2) No Stalingrad airlift meaning a bigger Tunisia airlift in the November - February 42 time range.
3) No November - December 1942 crushing of the minor Axis forces in the east along with the political advantages means Mussolini might not fall in July 43.
4) Strategic supplies of Nikopol Magnesium and Finnish Nickel, Estonian Oil Shale and the Galacian oil fields and the Romanian oil fields lost during 1944 would still be available.
5) East front attrition would not near be as crushing as OTL meaning at least a handful of extra divisions might be available in France in 1944.
 
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