Overlord vs. Barbarossa vs. Bagration

Who will win?

  • Overlord vs. Barbarossa; Overlord wins

    Votes: 28 44.4%
  • Overlord vs. Barbarossa; Barbarossa wins

    Votes: 26 41.3%
  • Barbarossa vs. Bagration; Barbarossa wins

    Votes: 12 19.0%
  • Barbarossa vs. Bagration; Bagration wins

    Votes: 41 65.1%
  • Overlord vs. Bagration; Overlord wins

    Votes: 11 17.5%
  • Overlord vs. Bagration; Bagration wins

    Votes: 37 58.7%

  • Total voters
    63
Like others have already said the comparison is quite impossible. Especially Barbarossa is difficult to get on the scale with the two others.

Bagration and Overlord perhaps are easier (both operational and contemporary) and we could first try and see how the two forces would perform each others tasks.

Bagration crosses the English Channel and liberate Paris by late August: They can try an invasion like a river crossing on steroids. That was how the Germans (another land power) saw it in 1940, but against a much less prepared enemy and will anyway only have small and undersupplied forces across. Bagration is simply is no good at Overlord.

Overlord anihilates Army Group Centre by late August: All the effort put into landing craft will be wasted (but who cares when you have USA), but the 2 million men available for Overlord (N.France) actually outnumber Bagration by some 300.000 and will not stand back firepowerwise.

The W.allied armies in general weren't as battlehardened as the Red Army by 1944, but will anyway be so superior to the over stretched Army Group Centre that they stand an overwhelming chance. Considdering how the W.allies tricked the Germans at Overlord I guess they have at least as good a chance to deceive the Germans as Bagration had.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

If you count those 2 million you are really comparing the 2nd front with the whole eastern front.
 
apples and kangaroos more like but snake.

Allied losses
220k casualties in Overlord
750 k casualties in Bagration

German losses overlord
450k personnel
2,200 AFV
2000 a/c

German Losses Bagration
770k personel
2900 AFV
900 a/c

and you are calling Overlord a bloodbath?

The problem with 'model' soviet mechanized offensives is that they are in fact bludgeoning frontal attacks followed by feeding in reserve echelons on the (not unreasonable) assumption that the enemy will run out of reserves before you run out of echelons, and when they do your tank armies totally bugger up their rear and the infantry cant escape.
 
apples and kangaroos more like but snake.

Allied losses
220k casualties in Overlord
750 k casualties in Bagration

German losses overlord
450k personnel
2,200 AFV
2000 a/c

German Losses Bagration
770k personel
2900 AFV
900 a/c

and you are calling Overlord a bloodbath?

The problem with 'model' soviet mechanized offensives is that they are in fact bludgeoning frontal attacks followed by feeding in reserve echelons on the (not unreasonable) assumption that the enemy will run out of reserves before you run out of echelons, and when they do your tank armies totally bugger up their rear and the infantry cant escape.

Yes, proportionate to the forces involved. Overlord pitted a large WAllied force against two German armies, Bagration involved the total destruction of Army Group Center. German losses as per your own statistics were higher in Bagration as well as in Overlord relative to their Soviet counterparts, and to put it bluntly when we're talking millions of men in clashing army groups fighting, some of them are going to die. War means fighting and fighting means killing. That description of Soviet operations 1944-5 is a grotesque misunderstanding that shows no comprehension of what the USSR actually was doing. It massed huge armies in individual sectors of the front, focusing on operational goals. When the Germans launched their own breakthrough battles they also relied on bludgeoning frontal assaults but nobody ever points this out. Likewise when the Soviets launch a set of encirclements that annihilate entire army groups and sustain heavy losses, this is held against them, but presumably we are to find some kind of military genius in say, the Italian trench warfare campaign with WWII equipment or the Huertgen Forest.

I think people really need to realize that the Eastern Front was a bloodbath for both sides, but that the WAllies were often quite callous with human life themselves.
 
Like others have already said the comparison is quite impossible. Especially Barbarossa is difficult to get on the scale with the two others.

Bagration and Overlord perhaps are easier (both operational and contemporary) and we could first try and see how the two forces would perform each others tasks.

Bagration crosses the English Channel and liberate Paris by late August: They can try an invasion like a river crossing on steroids. That was how the Germans (another land power) saw it in 1940, but against a much less prepared enemy and will anyway only have small and undersupplied forces across. Bagration is simply is no good at Overlord.

Overlord anihilates Army Group Centre by late August: All the effort put into landing craft will be wasted (but who cares when you have USA), but the 2 million men available for Overlord (N.France) actually outnumber Bagration by some 300.000 and will not stand back firepowerwise.

The W.allied armies in general weren't as battlehardened as the Red Army by 1944, but will anyway be so superior to the over stretched Army Group Centre that they stand an overwhelming chance. Considdering how the W.allies tricked the Germans at Overlord I guess they have at least as good a chance to deceive the Germans as Bagration had.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

Except that we don't have any assurance whatsoever that this would be the case. Consider that in 1944 the Germans stopped the WAllies cold on the battlefield, where when Soviet logistics ran low, all that did was delay the USSR. In Italy and in France much smaller German forces inflicted prolonged, brutal battles on large democratic forces. Put those men against Army Group Center and you probably see the Germans go right back to Mozhaizk. If the troops in Italy could hold the Allies for months at Cassino and the Germans could halt the democracies at all on the Rhine, putting *that* against the Eastern Front armies is going to be an instance of relearning the lessons of 1941.

Your argument that they overwhelmingly outnumber the Axis is also unconvincing. That didn't work for the Allies in 1940 or 1941, why's it a guarantee this time?
 
The US armoured division was created in 1942, and transporting it was solved later. The force structure of the US forces was not limited by shipping limits but by conceptual choices. Of course once the work on creating the means to carry the 1942 model forces was done, changing the model would have messed with the transportation structure being implemented. But if you take the tables of equipment for 1942 PzD a US tank division and a Soviet Tank Corps you'll probably find out that the shipping requirements do not favor de US unit, since it as a lot more stuff to carry, being fully mechanised and tracked and having a "full extras" support structure.

Actually the shipping requirements do favor it, not least because IOTL the USA did manage to ship worldwide an army of millions. The one problem with this and with rating the Allies in the West v. the German Army Groups North, Center, South, and all the little ones in 1944-5 is that the democracies in Italy and in France showed no flash or ability to do more than execute crude, inelegant attrition battles. The only times they advanced far and fast was when their armies were the ones nobody was shooting at benefiting heavily from the bleeding done by those being shot at.

The argument that high Soviet casualties were ruinous is fair, it's worth noting that a good deal of the late WWII USSR reliance on firepower was from 1941 bleeding it of so many men in so short a timespan. However it's not sensible to say that in mechanized operations the Allies showed greater skill than the Soviet Union in WWII.
 
You can't compare this trio. Barbarrossa was a strategic level operation that attempted to take out a superpower with a single operation. Bound to fail because it violated the first rule of planning, never plann a mission for which you don't have enough forces.
Bragation is an operational level action that aimed at destroying AGC. It succeeded totally.
Overlord is a very large tactical level operation that aimed to secure a holding on France and capture a perimeter large enough to be a decent base for future operations. It succed through overwhelming force on the first but failed on the second.
So Barbarrossa is like seeing a guy try to jump a 30 meter gap btw tall buildings, you can marvel at the fact that he managed to reach 20 meters before crashing or shrug off the stupidity of the whole attempt.
Bragation is like watching Manchester United beat a 2nd division club. Solid performance, predicable outcome.
Overlord is like watching Manchester United playing with a 3rd division club and winning by just one to nil...

That is a fantastic summary.
 
Casualties

When people talk about westhern vs soviet casualties they should factor in that while the soviets were trying to liberate their land and later eastern Europe ASAP, the Wallies were taking their time while the Germans were killing millions of civilians. So I think that since the Wallies paid a smaller price in military lives but a much bigger price in time, we should count the holocaust victims from mid 1944 on as allied casualties.
Taking your time and progressing only when casualties could be minimised is only smart when there are no people waiting to be saved.
Remember desert storm.and how spending six months bombing the Iraquis and building up a perfect attack force seemed a smart use of time. See it from the perspective of the Kuawaitis. Six months being raped and tortured can seem very long...
The soviets took a lot of casualties in Bragation. The people of Bielorussia were certainly appreciative of the sacrifice. For people in the north of Italy in the winter of 43, for French Jews in east bound trains in June 44 the Wallies economical approach to breaking German lines must have been maddening...
 

Redbeard

Banned
If you count those 2 million you are really comparing the 2nd front with the whole eastern front.

No, the W.allies had 2.050.000 men in N. France by august 1944. Add to that s.France and Italy.

Those 2 million men were of course not ashore on day one of Overlord, that is the nature of amphibious operations, but they of course didn't pop out of blue air after 6th of June. In case the Overlord force had been deployed at Bagration (however ASB that is) a larger part of the 2 million men of course could have been engaged much earlier - that is the nature of land operations.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
When people talk about westhern vs soviet casualties they should factor in that while the soviets were trying to liberate their land and later eastern Europe ASAP, the Wallies were taking their time while the Germans were killing millions of civilians. So I think that since the Wallies paid a smaller price in military lives but a much bigger price in time, we should count the holocaust victims from mid 1944 on as allied casualties.
Taking your time and progressing only when casualties could be minimised is only smart when there are no people waiting to be saved.
Remember desert storm.and how spending six months bombing the Iraquis and building up a perfect attack force seemed a smart use of time. See it from the perspective of the Kuawaitis. Six months being raped and tortured can seem very long...
The soviets took a lot of casualties in Bragation. The people of Bielorussia were certainly appreciative of the sacrifice. For people in the north of Italy in the winter of 43, for French Jews in east bound trains in June 44 the Wallies economical approach to breaking German lines must have been maddening...

I think this is a view that also neglects how much Soviet casualties IOTL were the product of the failings and incompetence pervading the Soviet system in 1941. Starting with a terrible plan, MP-40, that showed no sign of paying the least attention to the evolution of WWI combat since 1939, worsened by the poor distribution of Soviet forces both in a sense of being distributed wrongly and in being distributed very poorly for combat, and then further exacerbated by in the actual battles the Soviets making horrific mistakes.......

The truly damning verdict of Nazism as a strategic-warwaging force is that it was totally unsuited to exploit these military mistakes. The reality of Soviet victory is that the loss of 10 million men in six months screwed it for not only WWII but ultimately were essential aspects of the long-term Soviet collapse. If the Soviets had at least made different military decisions, they would not have suffered anywhere near the egregious losses they did, while it's worth noting at the same time that in the one set of clashes equivalent to the Italian Campaign, the actions in the Siege of Leningrad the Germans *did* do to the Red Army what they did to the democracies in Italy.

TL;DR: The idea of casualties being the rate of military effectiveness is not a good way of looking at warfare, in and of itself. Even so, the Soviets were still going to take more casualties against much larger German forces than the democracies did against smaller ones.
 
No, the W.allies had 2.050.000 men in N. France by august 1944. Add to that s.France and Italy.

Those 2 million men were of course not ashore on day one of Overlord, that is the nature of amphibious operations, but they of course didn't pop out of blue air after 6th of June. In case the Overlord force had been deployed at Bagration (however ASB that is) a larger part of the 2 million men of course could have been engaged much earlier - that is the nature of land operations.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

OTOH, if we judge the WAllies by Italy and France, it's not so easy to say those guys would have replicated what the Red Army took years of experience and enormous casualties to get right. Nor is it simply easy to see the likes of Montgomery flourishing in a campaign that requires actual mobility, not being able to grind up the enemy in set-piece battles. In a real ASB scenario, give Monty command of the Leningrad sector and the Soviets grind up the Nazis probably a year earlier and more efficiently. Give Monty command of a mobile operation in either the central or southern portion of the Eastern Front and Arnhem is a best-case scenario. It's worth noting, however, that quite a bit of WWII worked in practice as horrific grinding battles as much as WWI did. For the Soviets, their Italy was the war with Army Group North. And of course the last enormous battles of the war in Budapest and Berlin were straightforward Verduns in the East.
 
1943/44

Soviet casualties up to mid 43 were the result of massive incompetence. Soviet casualties after that were the result of choices made on the conceptual level. You can't expect countries who are partially occupied to have the same priorities as countries who are safe from invasion. If the Germans were holding large portions of the USA the US would undoubtably have acted with much grater haste.

On the scope of the operation, I've so far talked about overlord only in the "securing the lodgement" phase. Thats why I've been calling it Normandy most of the time. If you take it to August you're broadening the discussion to encompass the whole French campaign and that changes the game and means you have to put Bragation in the broader context of operations on the eastern front in the Summer of 44.
 
Soviet casualties up to mid 43 were the result of massive incompetence. Soviet casualties after that were the result of choices made on the conceptual level. You can't expect countries who are partially occupied to have the same priorities as countries who are safe from invasion. If the Germans were holding large portions of the USA the US would undoubtably have acted with much grater haste.

On the scope of the operation, I've so far talked about overlord only in the "securing the lodgement" phase. Thats why I've been calling it Normandy most of the time. If you take it to August you're broadening the discussion to encompass the whole French campaign and that changes the game and means you have to put Bragation in the broader context of operations on the eastern front in the Summer of 44.

I don't think that quite holds true. Look, for instance, at the Battle of the Dnepr which was in the fall of 1943. Definitely a Soviet victory using the tools of modern warfare, but it was an inglorious and inelegant slugging match more akin to the democracies crossing the Rhine than anything else. Bagration had completely different requirements to Overlord and to other Allied campaigns of its timeframe, comparing it to either Overlord or Barbarossa can't work.

Barbarossa for its part was a fine example of the rule that armies will lose campaigns if directed badly enough.
 
OTOH, if we judge the WAllies by Italy and France, it's not so easy to say those guys would have replicated what the Red Army took years of experience and enormous casualties to get right. Nor is it simply easy to see the likes of Montgomery flourishing in a campaign that requires actual mobility, not being able to grind up the enemy in set-piece battles. In a real ASB scenario, give Monty command of the Leningrad sector and the Soviets grind up the Nazis probably a year earlier and more efficiently. Give Monty command of a mobile operation in either the central or southern portion of the Eastern Front and Arnhem is a best-case scenario. It's worth noting, however, that quite a bit of WWII worked in practice as horrific grinding battles as much as WWI did. For the Soviets, their Italy was the war with Army Group North. And of course the last enormous battles of the war in Budapest and Berlin were straightforward Verduns in the East.

Not Verdun. More like Amiens in the east.
 
I don't think that quite holds true. Look, for instance, at the Battle of the Dnepr which was in the fall of 1943. Definitely a Soviet victory using the tools of modern warfare, but it was an inglorious and inelegant slugging match more akin to the democracies crossing the Rhine than anything else. Bagration had completely different requirements to Overlord and to other Allied campaigns of its timeframe, comparing it to either Overlord or Barbarossa can't work.

Barbarossa for its part was a fine example of the rule that armies will lose campaigns if directed badly enough.

We're back at my starting, and mostly all pople on this thread, starting point. You can't compare this trio fairly.
Barbarrosa was not winnable with the forces avaiable. When you have two things you must do, and only have forces for one you've put yourself in a loosing position. Do what you want with Barbarrossa, from the start if you don't have forces enought to go Center and south at the same time you will loose. The Germans attempted objectives for wich they did not have enough means and that's a failing offence in any staff course. They only went as far because the Soviets did very very poorly in most of that campaign.
 
Not Verdun. More like Amiens in the east.

That's an understatement at least in the case of Budapest. It really did derail the Soviet offensive for several months, amidst some of the worst fighting of the last phase of the Eastern Front. The really moronic aspect of it was that it didn't do a thing for all this to affect the rolling juggernaut of Soviet victory one way or another.
 
That's an understatement at least in the case of Budapest. It really did derail the Soviet offensive for several months, amidst some of the worst fighting of the last phase of the Eastern Front. The really moronic aspect of it was that it didn't do a thing for all this to affect the rolling juggernaut of Soviet victory one way or another.

It was great practice for 1956 though...
 
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