Soviet Union prepared for Barbarossa

What if on January 1941 Stalin ordered preparation for defensive war against Germany? How these few months could affect war?
 
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Ramontxo

Donor
There are here experts far more learned than myself (Obsessed Nuker waiting for you...;)) But it is my ,(really) humble opinion, that a ready for the war URSS that decides to change space for time and gives Zhukov full operational control would radically diminish the scope of the initial Nazi success and shorten (a lot) the war. ..
 

Deleted member 1487

But it is my ,(really) humble opinion, that a ready for the war URSS that decides to change space for time and gives Zhukov full operational control would radically diminish the scope of the initial Nazi success and shorten (a lot) the war. ..
I.E. exactly what Stalin wouldn't do.

What if on January 1941 Stalin ordered preparation for defensive war against Germany? How these few months could affect war?
He did do that IOTL. MP41 was the defensive plan that they came up with and the Soviet military had serious issues carrying it out. I assume you mean Stalin orders mobilization, which he wouldn't do in January 1941, he'd probably wait until say April-May if he was convinced for sure that Hitler was coming and still he'd try to avoid war as hard as possible, because he knew the Soviet military was unable to actually fight a successful defensive war in 1941 because all of the reforms he ordered in 1940 were only partially complete. The issue is how does he sell this mobilization to the public, as the army sits around for months and Hitler is invading Yugoslavia and Greece and not attacking the USSR. Does he agree to Zhukov's plan to attack Germany first while they are conducting the Balkans campaign?
 
I think the official start of mobilization of the Soviets was in April or May. Way too late. There is talk it was all actually an attempt to do a pre-emptive strike, but thats debatable. If they had been fully mobilized before June, there might be an attack though.

He did do that IOTL. MP41 was the defensive plan that they came up with and the Soviet military had serious issues carrying it out.

MP41 was the mobilization plan, srated in May 1941 and supposed to be completed in mid-1942. DP41 was the defensive plan.
 

Deleted member 1487

I think the official start of mobilization of the Soviets was in April or May. Way too late. There is talk it was all actually an attempt to do a pre-emptive strike, but thats debatable. If they had been fully mobilized before June, there might be an attack though.
Secret mobilization of 800k reservists happened in April and was not complete as of June 22nd. Full mobilization only happened after the Nazi invasion. All the talk of it being prep for a preemptive strike is based on a lot of faulty 'evidence'. Had they been fully mobilized, assuming that was even possible by then or that Stalin would even want to risk war, would create a ton of butterflies.

MP41 was the mobilization plan, srated in May 1941 and supposed to be completed in mid-1942. DP41 was the defensive plan.
MP41 was enacted in 1941 and was the plan for war in 1941 that coupled with the defense plan; practically speaking MP41 wasn't supposed to have to be used until 1942, but it was the plan in case of war in 1941.

Edit: despite being ordered in August 1940, MP41 wasn't even finished with planning IOTL until July 20th 1941! A huge part of the problem for the Soviets is how badly their military was mangled by Stalin's purges and the reforms enacted in 1940. Ordering an entirely new mobilization plan was a ton of work for a military and country the size of the USSR and unsurprisingly given the damage that was done all sorts of ways leading up to 1941 (and the ongoing purges of 1941-42) the planning was no where near complete IOTL even at the start of the invasion; the mobilization plan was enormously simplified by the fact that huge parts of the Soviet military were gone by July 1941, so with the remaining forces it was easier to plan, especially given that they were not having to plan very intricately: just stick reservists in the field at Smolensk and worry about the rest later.

With a January 1941 'start date', whatever that means, it is nowhere near enough time because they hadn't even submitted preliminary draft of the mobilization plan until February 1941! It was continually altered as the reality of planning kicked in and still incomplete at many levels even come mid-June. For details check out Stumbling Colossus pp. 100-102 just in terms of MP41. PP. 102-107 were the steps taken for partial mobilization IOTL from April-June 1941 that were nowhere near complete by the time the invasion started and even if they had been Soviet forces would still have been grossly under-equipped/-supplied and lacking plans for actually conducting any sort of coherent defense.
 
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What if on January 1941 Stalin ordered preparation for defensive war against Germany? How these few months could affect war?

It very much matters what sort of defense Stalin prepares for. Some choices could actually worsen the Soviet position. And even a slightly worse Soviet position could conceivably lead to the Germans winning in the East.

Better preparation and then attempting to place a strong defensive line right on the Soviet-German border (which lacked fortifications and good logistics), would have helped the Germans. Better preparation and then building up on the old 1939 border would be far better.

Whatever the Soviets do at such a late date, the German invasion will still penetrate hundreds of miles into the USSR and will have a final death toll in the millions. The Soviets will mess up and pay for each mistake in blood. However, OTL's mess ups were so huge that lessening them decreases losses and shortens the war by years potentially.

Soviets who are better prepared to defend well back from the '41 frontier will mean that the Red Army will retain equipment and men they lost OTL (and the millions of men the Soviets suffered captured were doubly damaging, since these men could then be worked to death to feed the German war machine). That would mean that even if the Germans penetrate as deeply as OTL (so outskirts of Moscow and Leningrad), the Soviets will be able to push them back earlier and faster. That in turn means less death in the German occupied areas and a Red Army that learns faster (due to losing men at a lower rate). I've seen detailed wargames of such a scenario that ended up with the Soviets taking Berlin in late '43.

And of course, the war ending so much earlier has interesting implications all over. For example, if Germany falls to the Red Army while the WAllies are still in Italy, France might be liberated by the Resistance, not by the WAllies and DeGaule (with fascinating implications for post-war French politics). A shorter war would give the Germans less time to scale up their experiments in industrial murder, meaning many millions of Jews and other groups live through the war. A faster Soviet advance could also mean Yugoslavia is liberated by the Red Army or the Royalist guerillas, not Tito, each option leading to a very different Yugoslavia.

And an earlier end to the war also means Europe has more time to recover before the disastrous winter of 1946-1947, which not only caused mass starvation in the East, but also put the West under grueling financial pressure (the winter of '47 did enormous damage to the British financial position, as well as killing 1-1.5 million Soviets).

And if the Soviets do well enough to stop the Germans on the Dneipr, it's as the above, but even better (though I don't see Germany falling before early 1943, I don't see the division of Germany post-war as being too much different and I don't see France, Belgium or the Netherlands coming under Soviet occupation).

However, it is possible that a better Soviet performance in the war might lead to a Red Denmark, a larger East Germany and a Soviet occupation zone in Italy.

Better Soviet performance against Germany might also lead to Sinkiang remaining in the Soviet sphere - in OTL, the dictator of Sinkiang expelled his Soviet advisors and pledged allegiance to Republican China when the Germans appeared on the verge of taking the Soviet Union in late '41. If Sinkiang doesn't pledge allegiance to NatChi, then it may remain independent after the Chinese civil war ends. That in turn could also mean the Soviet Union builds up its nuclear arsenal faster than OTL during the Cold War and the Chinese (Communist or otherwise) gain nuclear weapons later than OTL (Sinkiang was the location of some important uranium mines and an important Soviet nuclear lab, which the Chinese studied when the Soviets pulled out of Northern Sinkiang).

Also, if Sinkiang remains a Soviet client, then the Soviets don't have to launch rockets into orbit at an inefficient angle to avoid overflying China.

The main benefit for the Soviets, however, is avoiding as much death as they can. Total Soviet losses due to WW2 were absolutely staggering - greater in proportional terms than the death toll caused by both Mao's crimes AND Japan's crimes in China. The loss of intelligent capable people is probably one of the reasons why the Soviet Union was never able to imagine a Socialist system that wasn't basically Stalinism, while the Chinese proved able to imagine a Chinese Communism that wasn't Maoism. A Soviet Union that suffers less death in WW2 would be a very different Cold War opponent for the US.

fasquardon
 
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The USSR did use defense in depth at Kursk and Khalkhin Gol with counter strike or counteroffensives in either case used as well. It would be actually inaccurate to call counteroffensives a part of the defense in depth as it was a seperate operational form but the two were basically linked. Linked because the counteroffensive comes in support of the defense. Why was Khalkhin Gol a defense in depth you may ask? It is because the depth of the defense was 150 miles. Defense in depth was used during Barbarossa by the USSR and the force structure or anything else allowed for it to actually function. The Kursk model as discussed by myself and @wiking could be immediate counteroffensives or in the case of Kursk draw them into the defense first. There is the Khalkhin Gol model which relies on counterattacks that are a seperate thing from counteroffensives. Counterattacks can be on the operational level but do not have something known as strategic mobility whereas having instead operational mobility. Of some significance to why the USSR was the way it was. Tukhachevski was a proponent of defense in depth and deep operations. Georgi Zhukov and Stalin both were of the same mind. Had they moved the Soviet forces mostly back to the Stalin line then they would have much better logistical and operational infrastructure to work with as @ObssesedNuker mentioned things may have been entirely different. Depending on interpretation of "defensive war" in OP Party doctrine may also change. Trotsky already was at the opposite of this in relation to Stalin even more than Gorbachev.

The Molotov line or Stalin line in conjunction with Soviet reliance on operationally echeloned forces (echelons composed of armies) all meant that defense in depth was used during Barbarossa by the USSR.
 
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