Sea Lion ….. No Really

[TDM]

Usually it's not a good idea to do exactly what the enemy expects you to do.


How is Moscow in size compared to Stalingrad? I'm guessing it would be larger.

A lot larger, the population of Stalingrad in 1939 is roughly 450k, the 1939 population of Moscow is about 4.5m

Also Stalingrad is kind of long and skinny with one long side anchored on the river bank, and has some very separated "chunks" (probably a by-product of it almost increasing in population by 10x since 1900 and the deliberate building of big factories and workers housing districts under the soviets etc)

Going back to the earlier point about tanks in the streets, because of the narrowness of Stalingrad the approaches to the important bits of the city was well suited for tanks, and the idea was to use armoured thrusts across the relative narrow bits of the city to cut Stalingrad into isolated pieces trapping and handicapping the defenders (which is what kind of happened).

trying to find a nice map of Moscow that has WW2 boundaries, this one is OK;

(you want the orange and yellow outline)

it more what you'd expect from a big inland city on a river but with no other hard geographical boundaries, basically a big splodge

You can expect the battle of Moscow being at least as fierce as Stalingrad. It took the Germans about 4 months to (almost) completely take the city. Given that the Soviets prepared for a German attack, I guess you're looking at at least 6 months. The question is when they can start. Fuhrer directive 41 for Fall Blau was issued 5 april 1942. Fall Blau started 28 june. You'll be looking at about the same time for preparing the advance and the weather being good enough. Fall Blau was further south, where it's warmer, so it's possible the weather will delay it. 28 June + 6 months mean christmas in the Kremlin (nice christmas present for Hitler) if all goes well. And then the Soviets counterattack (if not earlier).

Yep weather and operating season is always going to be a factor

 

[Post]

A lot larger (pop. Stalingrad 1939 is roughly 450k, 1939 population of Moscow in 1939 is about 4.5m

That's a lot larger than I thought (I thought maybe twice as large). If there's a Stalingrad-type battle there, the Germans are totally and utterly screwed.

 

[TDM]

That's a lot larger than I thought (I thought maybe twice as large). If there's a Stalingrad-type battle there, the Germans are totally and utterly screwed.

Certainly not as easy as some seem to think (let alone those odd scenarios that we sometimes get were the Germans take it off the march in Sep/Oct 1941 by getting their forward units there a touch earlier!)

 

[Post]

Certainly not as easy as some seem to think (let alone those odd scenarios that we sometimes get were the Germans take it off the march in Sep/Oct 1941 by getting their forward units there a touch earlier!)

I'm gonna file it as about as likely as a succesful Sealion.

 

[TDM]

I'm gonna file it as about as likely as a succesful Sealion.

Eh I wouldn't go quite that far (I'd go pretty far though!)

There is at least a large capable axis army in the USSR at the time, but Sea lion requires capabilities that are so far out of German reach, it's funny,

 

[Alien and Sedition Bat]

I meant the logistics would certainly be far more favorable than the operations in the caucasus. They would only have to support one axis of attack instead of three as in 1941. Of course the distances involved in a press for Moscow would be astronomically closer than the 800 km advance in the south. That being on top of the distance they already were from "the fatherland". Moreover this also avoids sticking ones head out into a giant noose by ignoring the flanks as we witnessed during the ill-fated otl campaign.

Again not saying its a win persay, but never the less inearly 1942 the soviets didnt appear to have things figured out with respect to stonewalling the Blitzkreig. It wasn;t really until late 42, and of course with the benefit of Germany asininely allowing themselves to get sucked into a giant street fight house to house, which ultimately allowed the Soviets the neccesary respite and time to build up a major counter offensive. Even then Richtofen had correctly recognized and reported back to Berlin time and again his recon intel that the Russians were mounting preperations for a major counter offensive but everyones favorite morphine addict inhibbited such relevant information from being used in a valuable fashion.

And despite all these dissadvantages the Reich actually won in Stalingrad. The street fight (which is often correctly considered NOT the strength of the german army, that being mobility) they did take much of the city, a bloc or two may have been holding out but the street fight was essentially won. This victory being at half strength btw after uncle adolf thought it a grand idea to split the 6th army and airforce, considerably weakening the available forces for the battle. Yet they still took the city. And then came the counter attack. On the unguarded flanks. Why? Because Paulaus (a man who shouldn't be playing toy soliders or Call of Duty, was put in charge of the operation due to the fact that Hitler didn't quite appreciate the previous, more independent minded commander Guderian actually telling the Fuhrer when he was wrong and should shove it, and in many cases just ignoring stupid orders) had decided to put all the tanks in the street instead of protecting the flanks as he shouldve. Its almost incomprehensible that the Romanian Rifles were left to gaurd the flanks and no one actually stopped that.

All this to say that despite the logistical challenges, the over extension, the massively outstreatched flanks, the ungaurded flanks, and the spliting of the 6th army, the Reich still had one hell of a showing in Stalingrad. Certainly when these condidtions are dramatically improved one cannot flipantly say that theres no chance of Moscow 42 being a sucess. An infinately shorter distance needed to advance, full army groups not split and therefore strength not dilutted, and in all likeyhood someone more fit for the job than Paulas, may just be the decisive battle for which they strove. In fact, the Reich always endeavored for the "decisive battle" that would win the campaign. They achieved this in France, they thought Barbarossa would deliver this to them on a silver platter, but in reality this may be their best shot for them to play to go all in and throw the cards down on the table. That is to say the best prospect at a decisive battle victory.

"the Reich actually won in Stalingrad"....you must be kidding. Taking most of the streets was not victory because the battleground was not just the city itself but the flanks of the city and also the other side of the river where the Soviets were building up their forces and pounding the Nazis with artillery, and where the Nazis did not have the air power or the gunboats and ferries to launch a major attack. Putting oneself in a trap which then closes on you is not a victory in any meaningful sense. But even without the trap, your assertion is like saying Lee won the Battle of Gettysburg because he temporarily seized the town of Gettysburg--as if that was the battleground, not the nearby hills and ridges where the Union troops swiftly became entrenched.

 

[Belisarius II]

As the battles of Leningrad and Stalingrad proved.

Those are apple & oranges comparisons. The Germans stalled near Leningrad because the marshy & wooded areas around it impeded mobile operations, and the Soviets were always able to maintain at least a tenuous supply line into the city. In Stalingrad the Soviets controlled the far bank of the Volga and continued to feed men and supplies into the city as well as shell the Germans from the other side. Encircling Moscow is a whole other matter. Stavka would never permit itself or an army to be trapped in the city. If the city was about to be encircled, they'd pull out with as many troops as they could. The city can't feed itself or supply the needs of a defending army. If the city is encircled, they've already lost.

 

[Belisarius II]

Only by Sep 41 they already had to give up advancing on three axis and concentrate on one even before they got close to Moscow, because they had already gone past their logistical ability to supply all three advancing at teh same time.



If you mean at Stalingrad, thing is they risk the same happening at Moscow (only likely on larger scale)



Only you suggesting giving up on blitzkrieg and going to besiege Moscow so like Stalingrad but bigger



They invaded the city but they couldn't hold it and then they got trapped and lost, that is not winning it certainly not winning a siege.



Despite your insult Paulus at least had the nouse to realise the plan risked getting stuck and cut off before he went it, then he realised he was about to be surrounded and cut off and he requested to withdraw. Either way you blaming Paulus for not ignoring Hitler leading to the result at Stalingrad ignores the issues are far more fundamental for the axis in the USSR and for your plan. and those issue often involve the Soviets a lot more than your response seems to indicate*

Also Guderian was master of being right after the fact and at other's expense. And if you think he going to lead the axis to victory by ignoring Hitler (but also besieging Moscow which would be the very last thing in the world he's want to be involved in) then you need to read more books than Panzer Leader

As an aside If you think the tanks being in the street was the problem I think it again because you don't really understand the harsh reality of trying to take defended cities like Stalingrad, and you better believe there will be tanks in the Moscow streets with your plan not just conveniently defending the flanks.



Because war is not a game were you have the best of everything everywhere just in case and the plan was to get to the city take it and secure the river ASAP

It kind of like the tanks point , you want to have absolutely ironclad flanks to protect against whatever possible Soviet counter attack could come assuin you still fighting a month later, OK cool, but you just made your job taking the city much harder,



One hell of show doesn't mean anything, winning and losing matters




Nothing flippant about it I gave the reasons (and I have more), and you haven't addressed them instead blaming German Generals and Hitler, and repeating that Stalingrad is further than Moscow (which it is but that doesn't mean the issue with logistics to Moscow are now solved)_



You know a big reason why Axis forces often got split a lot in the east? It's because there wasn't the infrastructure or logistics to mass and then move them all in one place. So they had to be split so they could actually move. This isn't a computer game were all you divisions can over lap each other and happily move about by themselves. You try and pile all the Axis forces towards Moscow you will end up with a mess of epic proportions

Go look at the opening moves in 1942 even with those reduced forces moving into the caucuses they had this issue


None of this addressed the points I made, and just because you pile all your men into the same place and call it decisive it doesn't mean you are going to win.

Also go look at the French campaign what is the single decisive battle there? They did what they planned to do in Russia they out manoeuvred and then defeated the French armies ability to fight, that then left the road open to Paris. That was the plan for Barbarossa not some single heroic decisive battle.

In the opening months of Barbarossa in 1941 they out numbered the red army in European Russia and were operating within the planned engagement zone with operational surprise against an enemy with at that point clay feet, that was their chance of decisive victory.

Respectfully you're drawing the completely wrong conclusion from military history. By your logic the way to defend a city is for the defending army to hold up in the city and wait for the enemy to fight you block by block room by room. A great city can't feed itself and an encircling army would just lay waste to the city by bombing and shelling. The Nazis had no interest in capturing Moscow Hitler wanted the city raised to the ground. The Germans would hold a cordon around the city like they did in other Caldron battles and leave the defenders to die or surrender. All they have to do is prevent a breakout of a relief effort from the outside getting in. What do you think happened to the 6th Army trapped in Stalingrad, they wasted away.

 

[TDM]

Respectfully you're drawing the completely wrong conclusion from military history. By your logic the way to defend a city is for the defending army to hold up in the city and wait for the enemy to fight you block by block room by room. A great city can't feed itself and an encircling army would just lay waste to the city by bombing and shelling. The Nazis had no interest in capturing Moscow Hitler wanted the city raised to the ground. The Germans would hold a cordon around the city like they did in other Caldron battles and leave the defenders to die or surrender. All they have to do is prevent a breakout of a relief effort from the outside getting in. What do you think happened to the 6th Army trapped in Stalingrad, they wasted away.

Respectfully you can stop putting words in my mouth about the red army that at that point out numbers the Axis army just dumbly sitting sitting in Moscow and compliantly waiting to starve and maybe answer some of the points I made that are relevant to the wider context in 1942.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Respectfully you're drawing the completely wrong conclusion from military history. By your logic the way to defend a city is for the defending army to hold up in the city and wait for the enemy to fight you block by block room by room. A great city can't feed itself and an encircling army would just lay waste to the city by bombing and shelling. The Nazis had no interest in capturing Moscow Hitler wanted the city raised to the ground. The Germans would hold a cordon around the city like they did in other Caldron battles and leave the defenders to die or surrender. All they have to do is prevent a breakout of a relief effort from the outside getting in. What do you think happened to the 6th Army trapped in Stalingrad, they wasted away.

I dunno regarding encircling the city - I don't think the Heer had it in them and they did better than they should have IMO - by the end of Oct most of the committed Infantry formations of the Heer were at between 33 - 50% fighting strength and motor transport was 1/3rd of what they had started with.

When Barbarossa was being planned despite what their memoirs might claim all of the senior leadership of the Heer were totally up for it - except, curiously enough, for those responsible for the Heer's logistics (for whom the slide rule does not lie) - who were correct in pointing out that it was impossible to support the Heer in enough force more than 500 KMs from the German boarder.

I mean Moscow is a major transport hub with LOC from the rest of Russia pretty much going through the city - it would prove easier for the Russians to move forces to Moscow and the area around it and support them logistically than it was for the Heer whose logistics stretched back into Germany and proved to be problematic (with the issues of distance, rail gauge etc and poor planning for such an extended war etc) and so it proved with the OTL failure to encircle Moscow let alone capture it.

The only real chance IMO for a victory as suggested by the OP is one where the Russian Government throw in the towel - and given who the Government was that's a big ask!

 

[Post]

When Barbarossa was being planned despite what their memoirs might claim all of the senior leadership of the Heer were totally up for it - except, curiously enough, for those responsible for the Heer's logistics (for whom the slide rule does not lie) - who were correct in pointing out that it was impossible to support the Heer in enough force more than 500 KMs from the German boarder.

I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that wargames before Barbarossa showed that after 6 weeks the Germans would have trouble supplying their forces and sustaining the advance. Which is pretty much what happened.

 

[jlckansas]

The Germans knew their logistics in the Soviet Union would not work if Barbarossa lasted into the fall when the Rasputitsa stated because of how their logistics had to work. The limiting factor is how fast they can reach the objectives and how fast the USSR surrenders, if at all. Once the wheels start to come off it created problems exponentially in the supply chain all the way back to inside of Germany. Remember Germany was not on a full wartime economy until 1942 after what happened in Barbarossa and then there was the problem of what to do with Western Europe after stripping them for supplies and ways to haul the supplies.

 

[Post]

The Germans knew their logistics in the Soviet Union would not work if Barbarossa lasted into the fall when the Rasputitsa stated because of how their logistics had to work. The limiting factor is how fast they can reach the objectives and how fast the USSR surrenders, if at all.

If you told Hitler and Halder in april 1941 what they would have achieved by late august/september 1941, I'm pretty sure they would have thought, "well, that went way better than we expected, surely this is the winning move." Because by all means up till then Barbarossa was an astonishing win for the Germans. The biggest victory up till then (ever). They defeated more Soviets than thought there were, progressed further than they realistically expected. Surely the Soviets must be on their last legs. They can't possibly have much left, right?

Once the wheels start to come off it created problems exponentially in the supply chain all the way back to inside of Germany. Remember Germany was not on a full wartime economy until 1942 after what happened in Barbarossa and then there was the problem of what to do with Western Europe after stripping them for supplies and ways to haul the supplies.

Germany's economy was pretty much all geared up for war. That it wasn't is one of these myths Speer created to make himself look better.

 

[Normal for Norfolk]

Remember Germany was not on a full wartime economy until 1942

Not true although oft repeated. Please see Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" if you ever get the chance.

 

[Garrison]

Not true although oft repeated. Please see Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" if you ever get the chance.

Second this, the idea that Germany only fully geared up in 1943 is part of Speer's self mythologizing.

 

[Hammerbolt]

Again it was more a matter of making it more eficiente.

 

[Garrison]

Again it was more a matter of making it more eficiente.

Well it really wasn't, this is part of Speer's mythology. There were some efficiency gains, but these largely came from the aero industry over which Speer had no control of and were achieved in no small part in because they froze designs to take advantage of long series production, which had a major downside as the aircraft became increasingly obsolete. Most of the increases in other areas were the result of new capacity laid down prewar coming online.

 

[Belisarius II]

I dunno regarding encircling the city - I don't think the Heer had it in them and they did better than they should have IMO - by the end of Oct most of the committed Infantry formations of the Heer were at between 33 - 50% fighting strength and motor transport was 1/3rd of what they had started with.

When Barbarossa was being planned despite what their memoirs might claim all of the senior leadership of the Heer were totally up for it - except, curiously enough, for those responsible for the Heer's logistics (for whom the slide rule does not lie) - who were correct in pointing out that it was impossible to support the Heer in enough force more than 500 KMs from the German boarder.

I mean Moscow is a major transport hub with LOC from the rest of Russia pretty much going through the city - it would prove easier for the Russians to move forces to Moscow and the area around it and support them logistically than it was for the Heer whose logistics stretched back into Germany and proved to be problematic (with the issues of distance, rail gauge etc and poor planning for such an extended war etc) and so it proved with the OTL failure to encircle Moscow let alone capture it.

The only real chance IMO for a victory as suggested by the OP is one where the Russian Government throw in the towel - and given who the Government was that's a big ask!

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm not talking about the 1941 Battle of Moscow. I'm arguing the offensive toward Moscow should've stopped when the mud season started. I'm talking about a summer 1942 attack on Moscow.

Respectfully you can stop putting words in my mouth about the red army that at that pint out numbers the Axis army just dumbly sitting sitting in Moscow and compliantly waiting to starve and maybe answer some of the points I made that are relevant to the wider context in 1942.

That's a lot larger than I thought (I thought maybe twice as large). If there's a Stalingrad-type battle there, the Germans are totally and utterly screwed.

That isn't how the battle would go. They wouldn't go from house to house, they'd encircle the city and raise it to the ground. The Nazis had no interest in occupying Moscow, they just wanted to destroy it and the industries around it.

 

[Belisarius II]

Well it really wasn't, this is part of Speer's mythology. There were some efficiency gains, but these largely came from the aero industry over which Speer had no control of and were achieved in no small part in because they froze designs to take advantage of long series production, which had a major downside as the aircraft became increasingly obsolete. Most of the increases in other areas were the result of new capacity laid down prewar coming online.

Production of armored vehicles, ammo, U-Boats, artillery, motor vehicles, bombs, small arms, and advanced weapons like missiles increased dramatically. Shifting industrial priorities from civilian uses to military purposes freed up resources for war production. Aircraft like the Bf-109 and FW-190 were never near obsolete. Their later versions were competitive with the latest Allied fighters of the war. The biggest limiting factor for fighters was engine technology and the quest for more powerful engines never stopped.

 

[Belisarius II]

Respectfully you can stop putting words in my mouth about the red army that at that pint out numbers the Axis army just dumbly sitting sitting in Moscow and compliantly waiting to starve and maybe answer some of the points I made that are relevant to the wider context in 1942.

Ok I'll make it more explicit. The Soviets outnumbered the Germans in manpower, tanks, artillery, and aircraft in 1941 and it didn't do them any good. The Germans could punch holes in the front and exploit with armor to encircle and destroy most of the Soviet army. Since most of the men with any pre-Barbarossa training were dead or dying in prison camps most of the Red Army in the spring of 1942 was made up of raw recruits. They haven't mastered any brilliant strategy to prevent the Germans from doing the same thing again. Breaking through wasn't the problem for the Germans it was where to go that was the question.

Talking about the Germans being stopped in a street battle in Moscow because they lost the Battle of Stalingrad is an analogy looking to support a conclusion. If the Germans make a breakthrough which is a near certainty and encircle Moscow, why would they fight block by block though a massive city they only wanted to destroy? There isn't going to be a street battle in Moscow. By driving south, the Germans gave the Red Army a chance to catch its breath, train men, and buildup it's material strength. Between 1942 and 43 the Soviets understood that the only way to hold the Germans was a dense defense in depth with massive reserves. They had that at Kursk they couldn't do that in 1942.

Just having more men than the Germans in 1942 ignores the qualitive difference between the two war machines. The Red Army couldn't take on the Heer in a head on fight in 1942. The Red Army lost in the Kharkov offensive, they lost in the Crimea, AGC held its front, AGN held the siege lines around Leningrad. No where in early 1942 did the Red Army show it had any mastery over the Germans. As the weather improved Stavka realized the Germans would be on the offensive again, and their biggest fear was an attack on Moscow. They breathed a sigh of relief because they could retreat in the south and trade space for time, they couldn't do that if the attack was against Moscow.