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alternatehistory.com
Here's the start of my latest project which involves a POD provided by Von Manstein having a brilliant flash of insight . More will follow. Enjoy my new WW II TL .
The Long War
Chapter I: Fall Blau and Peace in the East, June 1942 – January 1943.
It was June 1942 and the fascist legions of German dictator Adolf Hitler had swarmed out all over Europe, implementing his vision of a German dominated Europe and conquering him his coveted Lebensraum or Living Space in the east. After a rise from obscurity as a corporal of Austrian descent, he attained massive popularity through his oratory skills and he eventually became chancellor of Germany. He had restored Germany as a great power after the humiliation of Versailles. He had rebuilt the army, navy and air force and through threats of war and diplomatic skills gained Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938 while bringing Italian dictator Mussolini into his fold as an ally. He had, however, crossed a line with his invasion of rump Czechoslovakia which revealed to all western leaders that he would never stop if they kept on appeasing him. When he invaded Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war. Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France had all been vanquished in a matter of weeks and general Rommel was dispatched to Africa to reap more glory for Germany. In June 1941 the vaunted Wehrmacht had invaded the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin which was woefully unprepared for any kind of war. Here the war had become truly spectacular with the Germans advancing thousands of kilometres in the steppes, fighting bloody battles at places like Kiev and Minsk. The Red Army resisted tooth and nail only to have the Germans stand before Moscow. Here, general Zhukov and the Russian winter defeated German forces, but the war wasn’t over. After the failed Soviet Rzhev-Vyazma offensive, Hitler was planning a new strategic summer offensive in which he wanted to capture the vital Baku oilfields and the Volga river, a significant logistic waterway. He was toying with the idea of splitting Army Group South into two (A en B) two attain both goals simultaneously, but this area was a poorly developed area of operations and the Germans were facing five Soviet fronts (equal to one German army group). Some generals realized this would cause massive logistical bottlenecks due to the poorly developed road network. General Von Manstein who was still busy with conquering Sevastopol, would develop an alternative.
He knew that Fall Blau as Hitler envisioned it had a high chance of failure and proposed another possibility that could potentially end the Soviet Union’s ability to wage war. He presented it as a possible end to the war in the east which enticed Hitler and his victory in Sevastopol would give him the leverage he needed. The latter was in fact so enthusiastic that he appointed Von Manstein to carry it out while Wilhelm List was given the command at Leningrad instead. Von Manstein’s idea was not to split Army Group South and instead head for Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, thereby cutting off the Red Army’s fuel supply from Baku. Without fuel, the Red Army wouldn’t be capable of large operations and mechanized warfare. Soviet tanks would come to a dead stop and all those Lend-Lease trucks from their American allies would become useless. Hitler approved the offensive which was scheduled to start on June 28th 1942 under the command of recently promoted field marshal Erich von Manstein. It commenced on said date with the Fourth Panzer Army under general Hermann Hoth and the Second Hungarian Army attacking between Kursk and Voronezh which they took quickly, thereby avoiding street-to-street combat. They continued to advance to anchor the northern flank of the main operation. The Sixth Army under Paulus attacked toward the Volga and Stalingrad while the First Panzer Army, the Seventeenth Army and the Fourth Romanian Army cleared out the lower Don river, covering the southern flank and taking Rostov. By the end of July the western bank of the Don had been cleared of Red Army forces and this had been done with ease by the German army. Stavka was totally unprepared because due to German deception they had been in the dark about where the German strategic summer offensive would take place. Stalin himself was convinced that Hitler would attack Moscow again and so only a small part of the Red Army was in the region to defend the Volga. Von Manstein made good time since with his southern flank in the Don region clear, the First Panzer Army, the Seventeenth Army and the Fourth Romanian Army could support the Sixth Army which stood on the Volga at Stalingrad by the end of July. The Luftwaffe was ordered to attack Zhukov’s 76 mm batteries on the right bank because Von Manstein didn’t want to waste time with destroying Stalin’s city. Despite the 62nd and 64th Armies resisting tooth and nail, Stalingrad was surrounded after a week of intense combat by August 25th in spite of the defensible terrain around the city. Stalin had forbidden any evacuation of the city named after him and ordered the soldiers to hold it at all costs. Stalingrad had lots of supplies and instead of wasting troops in bloody street-to-street combat, Von Manstein decided to besiege the city instead while the main body of his forces moved on. Stalingrad, like Leningrad, would hold until the end of the war which was not far away now.
By September 1st German screening forces were already at 75 kilometres from Astrakhan, the operational goal, and no significant forces were available to stop the Wehrmacht even if it was experiencing tough supply problems with bad roads and the like. Nonetheless, the oil supply was in danger and even Stalin knew it. Zhukov, however, couldn’t stop the Germans. After heavy battles with severe casualties against Zhukov’s battle hardened troops, the Sixth Army, the Seventeenth Army, the First Panzer Army and the Fourth Romanian Army reached the outskirts of Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. They surrounded the city and cut off the oil supply from Baku to the north. Commandeered fishing ships, merchants and Red Navy patrol vessels tried to supply Astrakhan by sea under fire from the Luftwaffe and land based German artillery. Food and ammunition supplies dwindled as the supplies that did reach the city were inadequate. Starving from lack of food (they were eating their horses already) and with only a handful of rounds per soldier, per artillery gun and per tank, the garrison commander surrendered and committed suicide because he knew what Stalin would do if he ever got his hands on him for losing the Red Army’s fuel supply. The city fell on October 23rd 1942.
The fall of Astrakhan was disastrous for Red Army operations and Stalin made cutting the German salient imperative above everything else because the oil flow had to be restored. The only other source of oil in the USSR was the Turkmen SSR and construction on the oil rigs had only just begun. It would take a lot of time before they could take over from Baku and supply the Red Army and until then the Germans could do as they pleased because there was no way to get the oil around the Germans. There were no oil tankers in the Caspian Sea to transport the oil and Lend-Lease aid coming in through Persia and Murmansk only gave the Red Army a small percentage of its needs. With the last fuel reserves, Stalin ordered Zhukov to launch a last-ditch counteroffensive. What little Soviet forces were south of the salient were supposed to attack the Germans from there and Zhukov would attack from the north. Von Manstein was hard-pressed to stop the attack even with the forces at his disposal. A 800.000 strong Soviet force with most of the Red Army’s armour and heavy air support attacked his lines which threatened to buckle under the sheer weight. The Sixth Army, the Seventeenth Army, the First Panzer Army and the Fourth Romanian Army fought and inflicted heavy casualties as the Luftwaffe was still the better in the air. Reinforcements arrived in the shape of the Fourth Panzer Army, several Hungarian divisions, the Third Romanian Army and Italian troops, all under Hermann Hoth. The counteroffensive threatened German lines at certain points and caused the Germans and their allies heavy losses too, but the mounting casualties and the Red Army’s fuel supplies running out led to it petering out in mid-November. Several more smaller scale follow-up attacks took place against Army Group South by remaining Soviet forces which had regrouped, but these failed to do serious damage. The Red Army’s fuel was gone and therefore its ability to wage a modern offensive war was dead. Stalin was enraged at the loss as now his country was under threat more than ever. What was next, Leningrad, or worse, Moscow? Stalingrad was barely clinging on by now and it was unsure if the Red Army would be able to stop the Germans if they wanted to go to Moscow.
Therefore, Stalin decided to make peace and bide his time. Once he had rebuilt and the Western Allies and Germans had bled each other white, he would come back, or so he thought. Neither the British nor the Americans had opened a second front to assist him and so he didn’t consider it betrayal. Rather, they had failed to help their ally in a time of need. He could and would use them as a scapegoat in his propaganda. The Soviet Union requested an armistice in order to come up with a ‘compromise peace’. Hitler was reluctant to accept, but Von Manstein bluntly told him that this was as close to victory as Germany was ever going to get. Logistics did not allow for any further advance and lines were tenuously overextended. Now that Stalin was on his knees, Hitler should act because if the Soviet Union got an opportunity to pull itself back together they could still wage a war of attrition. Hitler accepted the peace known as the Peace of Königsberg which was signed in the East Prussian capital on January 19th 1943. With this peace, Hitler gained the Baltic States, Belarus, the Crimea, Ukraine and the Don, Rostov and Kuban regions. The last one was thrown in by Stalin so he would get access to his oil back in return. Transnistria and Bessarabia were annexed by Romania and Finland retook Karelia. A prisoner exchange was agreed upon although neither side would fully uphold this part of the bargain. Stalin very reluctantly signed the treaty vowing that he would take revenge some day. The war in the east was over, which left only the Americans and the British to fight against.