Soviet-german war began "traditionally"

Redbeard

Banned
There's an advantage of attacker and Soviets were very big on "deep operations". Even most stupid and rigid Red Army operation is bound to destroy everything between Bug and Vistula before being bogged down by it's own weight.

There is no universal advantage of the attacker. An attack usually is necessary to achieve a decisive victory, but it might also be the main waypoint on the shortest road to a decisive defeat.

After the Spanish Civil War the deep operations doctrine, armoured corps etc. were abandoned, it was thought that the war had proved that a detailed distribution of armour among the infantry units was superior. When that transformation had just been completed came the Germans rolling over the French in May-June 40 and the deep operations incl. armoured corps were ordered to be reinstated. This happened alongside a huge expansion plan and by 1941 the result was utter chaos in the Red Army.

A large part of the staff, field (major-colonel) and general grade positions were vacant, and those in place were often totally inexperienced. On top of that much materiel was in bad maintenance, new equipment was expected soon, and in order to fulfill the high priority orders to reinstate the armoured corps most trucks and tractors had been stripped from the artillery units elsewhere. That was a major factor behind so many Soviet guns being captured by the Germans in 1941.

This also means that a Soviet attack in 1941 most likely would have been a number of armoured columns bogging down as they moved out of support range from the initial positions. Initially that would of course create some chaos in German ranks, but by 1941 the Wehrmacht was too flexible and swift reacting to collapse under the pressure. Some of the forward infantry Divisions will suffer heavy casualties, but they will be relatively easy to replace, and when the panzer groups go on the offensive, only stationary Soviet units will be there to defend and the Germans probably won't need to shift panzer groups between armygroups to deal with perceived Soviet concentrations.

An attack in spring 41 will btw be handicapped by heavy rainfall, but when the ground is dry by mid June, the Germans have dealt with a large part of the total Soviet war capacity than in OTL June 41, and so have a greater chance of reaching Moscow before the rain sets in again in mid October.

Regards
Steffen Redbeard
 
Drawing comparison between Holocaust and "Stalin's persecution" is like comparing being stabbed to death with friendly pinch. I know. My family experienced both.

No disputing that the Nazis, and their local collaborators, were bent on murdering all Jews as a race, making the Holocaust unique compared to other atrocities. And for most people in areas occupied by the Soviets, being fully obedient meant not being targeted for repressions.

However, if your family members were some of the millions starved to death on purpose (Ukraine, 1932), or intentionally worked/starved/frozen to death (Kolyma and other places), or shot to death (Katyn), you can't say it's just a friendly pinch, because it wasn't caused by a vile racial theory.
 
I remember reading an article which suggested that a Soviet attack in the spring of 1941 could actually bring on Soviet defeat, because the Soviets simply were not capable at that point of conducting a successful major offensive against the equally strong and much more flexible Germans. In this scenario, they push the Germans back through most of Poland but then have most of their armored forces cut off and totally annihilated by German counterattacks in late summer. At this point, the Soviets would have lost most of their best divisions, and the German attack into Russia would meet mostly reserve and newly-raised corps thrown against them piecemeal, allowing the Germans to smash through everything, take Moscow, and force an armistice by December.

It seemed a little too optimistic for the Germans, but it made a good case that the Soviets could end up losing most of their best armor and infantry before Germany even invaded.
 
On the military possibilities: it's hard to imagine the Soviets would have attacked in 1941. Stalin's own political position could have been endangered, since he would have been discredited by failure. After the difficulties with the Finnish invasion, and given that the border changes 1939-40 from the Molotov-Ribbentropp alliance meant there was a major strategic restructuring of army positions in the west, attacking Germany would have been a stretch.

But eliminating the element of surprise from Barbarossa would have been quite a game-changer. If the Germans had run into more dug-in resistance as at Brest or Sevastopol, and the front had moved more at the speed of 1915, it could have been very different.

Then again, if the Red Army of 1941 had stood its ground, would the Soviet system have come up with its most successful innovations? It seems like it was the fight for survival that led to the Katyusha, the fully automatic infantry weapon, the punishment battalions, the rapid production of the T-34, etc.. And replacing Budyennys with Zhukovs.

And on non-military questions: no Germans in their right mind mourn the 3rd Reich and wish, if only we had won. But Colonel Putin is nostalgic for the USSR, and at most takes the "mistakes were made" view. Holocaust denial is wicked (rightly so), but 'Gulag denial' is just another point of view. And mass murderers like Ivan Serov lived comfortably and died in old age.
 
And on non-military questions: no Germans in their right mind mourn the 3rd Reich and wish, if only we had won. But Colonel Putin is nostalgic for the USSR, and at most takes the "mistakes were made" view. Holocaust denial is wicked (rightly so), but 'Gulag denial' is just another point of view. And mass murderers like Ivan Serov lived comfortably and died in old age.

There's any amount of such cryptonazis anywhere, the internets especially. And direct comparison between the two is disgusting moral equivocation.
 
And replacing Budyennys with Zhukovs

The purge took care of that i believe eliminating dead wood for the newer though inexperienced gemerals. There were just a few old guards left that were just not with the times that the war took care of.
 
There's any amount of such cryptonazis anywhere, the internets especially. And direct comparison between the two is disgusting moral equivocation.

I think my earlier post, responding to Goose, makes it clear I don't equate the two. Still, my point about e.g. Serov is still valid, and many normal people who aren't crypto-Nazis, in the countries affected, will be poisoned by bitterness for generations.

Of course there are still Nazis (crypto, neo, or other) around; that's why I added "in their right mind".
 
The purge took care of that i believe eliminating dead wood for the newer though inexperienced gemerals. There were just a few old guards left that were just not with the times that the war took care of.

Most accounts I've read take the view that the officers killed in the purges weren't dead wood, but were suspected of disloyalty or having been on Trotsky's side. Whether their expertise, which grew out of the Russian Civil War, would have been helpful in 1941 is an interesting question.
 
Well your more qualified than me in that field. I dont know much about the purges so ill take your word for it.
 
It's still a good question you raise. Lots of heroes of 1914-1920, from a variety of countries, just weren't up to the new face of war. Maybe Tukhachevsky and the others killed in 1937-38 would have done no better defending against Barbarossa. I think Suvorov argues that point of view.
 
It's still a good question you raise. Lots of heroes of 1914-1920, from a variety of countries, just weren't up to the new face of war. Maybe Tukhachevsky and the others killed in 1937-38 would have done no better defending against Barbarossa. I think Suvorov argues that point of view.

Suvorov argues lots of strange things.

But Tukhachevsky was from the same school as Budyenny etc., just more talented. He was a breakthrough-and-encirclement kinda guy, and the Soviets were still lacking the elastic defense that was necessary to be able to stage the above.

And other former First Cavalry people were left be - Voroshilov was techinically in charge in Finland, later replaced by Timoshenko. They were no better in Barbarossa, but they survived.
 
It seems like it was the fight for survival that led to the Katyusha, the fully automatic infantry weapon, the punishment battalions, the rapid production of the T-34, etc..
Katyusha had been conceived pre-Barbarossa. Prototype launch system was played with since 1939 and rocket had been officially adopted in 1940 (as attack plane's weapon). SMGs were more or less wartime improvization (there were some plans to adopt it after Winter war, where Soviets were on business end of Finnish Suomi SMGs), autoloader SVT was supposed to become main infantry weapon. Penal battalions are greatly overrated. T-34 entered mass production in early 1941 and, if not for Stalingrad and Kharkov evacuation, rate of production would be better than OTL.
And replacing Budyennys with Zhukovs.
Yes and no. Most of capable WWII Soviet generals started their ascention pre-Barbarossa, but war did speed up their promotion.
no Germans in their right mind mourn the 3rd Reich and wish, if only we had won. But Colonel Putin is nostalgic for the USSR, and at most takes the "mistakes were made" view.
Could you honestly say that no German mourns cleansing of Germans from Eastern Europe (including Eastern Prussia) post-WWII and no one mourned Germany's separation between GDR and FRG? Same here. Don't mix nostalgy for Communist system with nostalgy for a country.
Holocaust denial is wicked (rightly so), but 'Gulag denial' is just another point of view.
No one in their right mind deny that GULAG existed and that many peoples perished (unlike Holocaust denialists, who challenge the very idea of "death camps", claiming, as Latvian state authorities recently, that killing fields were merely "re-education camps"). Saner (read "mainstream") version of "Gulag denialism" concentrates on trying to figure out what really happened (as opposed to blindly parroting outlandish claims of Western Cold War propagandists). "Holodomor denial" is a good example. Anyone who challenges Yushchenko's claim about "10 millions perished" is branded denialist, although Ukrainian statisticians couldn't prove more than 3 mln, as hard as they worked to interpret any data to deliver maximum possible headcount (you do know that statistical analysis of census data is very creative thing, almost like Enron accounting, don't you).

And mass murderers like Ivan Serov lived comfortably and died in old age.
I could have mentioned someone like Gehlen or Speer or Von Braun, but I mainly agree with you. De-stalinization wasn't as effective as de-nazification. Then again, internal cleansing is not often as complete as one organized by occupational forces.
 
Quoted: "Could you honestly say that no German mourns cleansing of Germans from Eastern Europe (including Eastern Prussia) post-WWII and no one mourned Germany's separation between GDR and FRG? Same here. Don't mix nostalgy for Communist system with nostalgy for a country."

I think the point still holds. Even the Germans who protest against the Oder-Neisse line (whom mainstream politicians avoid like the plague) don't wish the Nazis were still in power.
 
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The main problem the Germans would have was that in the spring of 1941 they had no real defensive plan and would be caught in preparation.

It would kinda be like a overweight kid jumpping you when youre back is turned.

This is probably worth it,the Soviets cant do any worse than OTL and divisions that are going to collapse might at least kill some more Germans.
 
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