Was Barbarossa Doomed from the start?

Deleted member 1487

Which is yet more argument that waiting until October was the right move, as in August/September, the Germans would not have those reinforcements and the Germans would not have operational surprise.
The only reason those reinforcements were necessary was the losses the Germans took sitting on the defensive in August-September and attacking on the flanks against strategically pointless targets. Operational surprise wasn't really that necessary in the aftermath of Smolensk, because of how disorganized and worn down Soviet forces were. Had the Germans focused their effort on another series of pockets they could have avoided the hammering they got by trying to hold on until the southern flank was cleared and Leningrad encircled by pocketing the Soviet forces to the direct East. As it was they were weaker in August than they were in October and the Germans stronger than they were. After all isn't the Stahel thesis that German forces eroded every month as it was and were weaker in October across the front than they were in previous months despite reinforcements? Plus as OTL showed the Panzer armies of AG-Center were more than capable of advancing and attacking despite tough resistance throughout August-September, while the infantry armies were able to defeat heavy attacks despite being stripped of their armor and air support.

Well, to be specific, they were a defensive reaction as a result of the failure of the strategic-operational plan. According to the plan, after all, the Soviets weren't supposed to have the forces to launch those heavy offensives.
The pre-invasion plan, sure. But that had gone out the window back in early July when the 2nd Strategic echelon appeared unexpectedly and Soviet reserves just kept appearing.

Compared to both OTL June 1941 and IATL 1942, the Germans were vastly weaker. This can be seen by the fact they could only launch an operation in the south. This in turn was a direct consequence of their decision to go for broke against Moscow the previous year.
What does June 1941 have to do with this discussion? Yes, the Germans were stronger and so were the Soviets in June 1941 as both their pre-war armies were intact; we're talking about the situations after major fighting happened in October 1941 and June 1942. Those two situations weren't comparable for a variety of reasons I already laid out and you've entirely avoided.

As a result of 2nd Kharkov.
And Stalin denying them replacements and two German preparatory offensives before Case Blue (Wilhelm and Fridericus II) to set up the conditions to allow Case Blue to succeed. So not simply because of 2nd Kharkov. Which makes it very different from the situation in October 1941 as the Soviets had gotten all the replacements that Stalin could generate and there weren't special extra offensives to weaken the Soviets before the main offensive in October; the fighting in August-September were all part of a series of offensives and counter attacks ongoing at the same time that culminated in the Soviet victory at Yelnya.

Those two offensives were not separate from Case Blue. They were an intimate part of it and their success too was conditioned by the German victory at 2nd Kharkov.
I don't think you understand was 'part of' means. They were separate from, i.e not occurring during. They were short, limited offensives launched to weaken Soviet forces before launching Case Blue to allow it to break through the Soviet lines. Without them the OTL breakthrough wouldn't have been possible like IOTL. So 2nd Kharkov alone was not enough to weaken Soviet forces to allow for the OTL success of Case Blue.

Soviet forces facing the Germans along the Moscow axis at the start of Typhoon were considerably weaker then those at the start of Case Blue in absolute terms at 1.7 million vs 1.2 million. Proportionally to the Germans, they were about the same (going with worst-case numbers for the Germans) when considering the inclusion of Axis minors in Operation Blau. German forces for Blau could have been considerably stronger had they preserved their strength by stopping on the Mius instead of pushing all the way to Rostov and kept their replacements priorities open during 1941. Once again, German decisions to go-for-broke and overextend proved to be a mistake.
How wide of a front are you counting? At the point of contact Soviet forces were considerably weaker in Ukraine, while if you include the entire region and time period that Case Blue covered that was eventually engaged them perhaps you could add up to 1.7 million men on the Soviet side, including the Caucasian Front:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Blue#Soviet_forces
Although the direction from which the Case Blue offensive would come was still defended by the Bryansk, Southwestern, Southern and North Caucasian Fronts. With about 1 million soldiers at the front line and another 1.7 million in reserve armies, their forces accounted for about one quarter of all Soviet troops.[7][27]
The breakthrough was achieved against a subset of those forces and eventually contacted all the above Fronts, but only at different periods and places. I'm talking about the fighting the happened in the breakthrough period in Ukraine, not the situation that happened a month later near Stalingrad.
If you applied to same standard to the fighting during Typhoon you'd have to count the Soviet forces that appeared after the pocket battles into November and December, which boosts them into the several millions.

In August-September OTL, Soviet forces are stronger and German forces are weaker then they would be by October. It was not weather and against the fiercer Soviet resistance without and with the German logistical chain much weaker, the Germans would hit the same culmination point they did OTL. The weather was not what made the difference (the Germans were able to operate just fine through the October mud in 1942 and '43 and even in 1941 until their logistics collapsed they were making fantastic progress through it without) and amounts to a massive red-herring which distracts from the logistical collapse caused by the Germans blowing past their culmination point, resulting in logistical collapse, that were the real reason.
This was covered in previous threads:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ands-more-trucks.409727/page-11#post-14281080
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ust-september-1941-work.415206/#post-14699631
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ptember-1941-work.415206/page-2#post-14700520
Plus per Stahel the German forces in the East were overall weaker in October than in August even with the reinforcements; in terms of trucks having stripped 5000 from AG-Center to give to South in September, AG-Center was considerably weaker logistically. And yes, while it wasn't simply weather that the Germans had to deal with in October, their number of operation trucks, aircraft, and AFVs had dropped considerably from August to October, weather made the tough logistical situation impossible and strangled the offensive during the brief window post-Vyazma where the defenses of Moscow were down to a handful of divisions posted along the few acceptable highway before reinforcements showed up. To ignore the impact of the weather on the roads and ground is to miss out on the critical component of the situation in October. If the wheeled trucks supplying the advance couldn't keep moving back and forth to supply hubs even the advance of tracked AFVs is going to bog down, as it did IOTL.

In 1942 and 1943 the Germans were not operating in front of Moscow on the offensive, so the situation was different, but even then it impacted them, albeit less because of being more on the defensive or at least static compared to leaping hundreds of miles deeper into Russia.


Yes, and as was the case then your supposition is fundamentally based on the same ground as that of the German generals at the time: the belief that the Soviets are weaker then they actually were and the Germans were stronger then they actually were. But they weren't and they weren't, so belief that the Germans can take Moscow in August-September is largely built more on wishful thinking then solid analysis. As Sun Tzu observed says "A victorious warrior wins and then goes to war. A defeated warrior goes to war and then seeks to win". Or in lay mans terms: a successful campaign is the result of choices made before it is executed, not during. This is a strategic principle that was as real in 1941 (or 2019) as it was in 500 BC.
Supposition? We know how strong the Soviet and German forces were in 1941. We know what each side was capable of offensively and defensively based on the actual history of the events. If all you have are general aphorisms and statements to support a point, you're not actually decent point. "Nuh-uh" isn't an actual counter argument.
 

Deleted member 1487

thanks for the link. maybe the LW could have promoted an AT rifle grenade? for paratrooper use?
What good would that do the forces that launched Barbarossa in 1941? The paras didn't show up until September and then were a single division around Leningrad not really fighting much armor.
 
thanks for the link. maybe the LW could have promoted an AT rifle grenade? for paratrooper use?

What good would that do the forces that launched Barbarossa in 1941? The paras didn't show up until September and then were a single division around Leningrad not really fighting much armor.

was suggesting a possible pre-war POD, that the LW/paratroopers be equipped with something to deal with fortifications and armor, and therefore it would already be in production in 1941 and available for army to adopt.
 

Deleted member 1487

was suggesting a possible pre-war POD, that the LW/paratroopers be equipped with something to deal with fortifications and armor, and therefore it would already be in production in 1941 and available for army to adopt.
They did:
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/Eben Emael.html
Dsc06181b.jpg


https://www.saak.nl/battlefield tour/2015 eben-emael/eben-emael en.htm
 
thanks for the link. maybe the LW could have promoted an AT rifle grenade? for paratrooper use?

What good would that do the forces that launched Barbarossa in 1941? The paras didn't show up until September and then were a single division around Leningrad not really fighting much armor.

was suggesting a possible pre-war POD, that the LW/paratroopers be equipped with something to deal with fortifications and armor, and therefore it would already be in production in 1941 and available for army to adopt.


from your article "By creating a hollow section in the explosive, the blast would form a jet of flame which would penetrate armor much more effectively than a standard explosive. Late in the war this technology would become common on weapons like the bazooka and the panzerfaust."

what would be the obstacle to equipping paratroopers with the shaped charge for rifle grenade then to have more firepower, as they had rather expansive ideas for their use pre-war? they designed a lighter more compact mortar and the shaped charge you highlighted.
 

Deleted member 1487

from your article "By creating a hollow section in the explosive, the blast would form a jet of flame which would penetrate armor much more effectively than a standard explosive. Late in the war this technology would become common on weapons like the bazooka and the panzerfaust."

what would be the obstacle to equipping paratroopers with the shaped charge for rifle grenade then to have more firepower, as they had rather expansive ideas for their use pre-war? they designed a lighter more compact mortar and the shaped charge you highlighted.
Perceived need and further development of the concept. The early HEAT tank shells were not...optimal.
 
I'd say it was doomed, as others have pointed out the logistical challenges involved. German plans depended on the destruction of the Red Army within a few hundred kilometers of the USSR's western border in 1941, there were massive numbers of POWs captured in the initial encirclements, but this never panned out to the extent imagined by German planners. All the amphetamines in the world can't make up for artillery pulled by horses and an enemy that out-produced them in terms of equipment.

The Red Army out-fought the Germans, casualty ratios favored the Soviets. The German advantage in casualty ratios disappeared in 1942, the Germans had basically lost before Lend Lease a significant effect. The history of the Eastern front has been distorted by an over reliance on the self-serving memoirs of German officers produced during the Cold War. They justified their military prowess by claiming that they were better soldiers and strategists, but they were just overwhelmed by superior logistics. Academia may have moved on, but pop culture is still informed by the "3 men, 1 rifle" and "human wave attack" tropes.
 
I'd say it was doomed, as others have pointed out the logistical challenges involved. German plans depended on the destruction of the Red Army within a few hundred kilometers of the USSR's western border in 1941, there were massive numbers of POWs captured in the initial encirclements, but this never panned out to the extent imagined by German planners. All the amphetamines in the world can't make up for artillery pulled by horses and an enemy that out-produced them in terms of equipment.

The Red Army out-fought the Germans, casualty ratios favored the Soviets. The German advantage in casualty ratios disappeared in 1942, the Germans had basically lost before Lend Lease a significant effect. The history of the Eastern front has been distorted by an over reliance on the self-serving memoirs of German officers produced during the Cold War. They justified their military prowess by claiming that they were better soldiers and strategists, but they were just overwhelmed by superior logistics. Academia may have moved on, but pop culture is still informed by the "3 men, 1 rifle" and "human wave attack" tropes.

The middle and late war red army outfought the germans; most of the time.

The 1941 and early 1942 Red army was a train wreck for any and all reasonable consideration
 
Soviet fuel was lower quality than the type the Germans ran on and was effectively useless without expensive and highly limited special additives and treatments, which of course was not available at the front and would take time behind the lines to make useful...unless used with Soviet equipment. Plus of course Soviet AFVs ran on diesel, the Germans on gasoline.

BTs and other earlier tanks ran on gasoline, the B-70 or KB-70, or even B-59, that ranged between 73 and 80 octane
 

Deleted member 1487

The Red Army out-fought the Germans, casualty ratios favored the Soviets. The German advantage in casualty ratios disappeared in 1942, the Germans had basically lost before Lend Lease a significant effect. The history of the Eastern front has been distorted by an over reliance on the self-serving memoirs of German officers produced during the Cold War. They justified their military prowess by claiming that they were better soldiers and strategists, but they were just overwhelmed by superior logistics. Academia may have moved on, but pop culture is still informed by the "3 men, 1 rifle" and "human wave attack" tropes.
The only point in the war where that was unqualifiably true was from January 1945 on. The casualty ratio gap closed in 1943-44, but was still against the Soviets. In no way did the casualty ratio disappear in 1942 or 1943/44, but it did close. LL was already having a significant impact in 1942, which was the decisive year of the war. Also the German narrative wasn't that they were overwhelmed by superior logistics, rather superior numbers, as combined the Allies heavily outnumbered the Axis power in population even with the population loss of the Soviets in 1941-42, and much larger production, a function of US output as it was the world's largest economy by far by the start of the war. The human wave trope was true to a limited extent early in the war, though that was a function of a variety of factors namely the breakdown in Soviet supply and distribution in 1941 and parts of 1942.
 

Deleted member 1487

BTs and other earlier tanks ran on gasoline, the B-70 or KB-70, or even B-59, that ranged between 73 and 80 octane
What is your source on that, I'm seeing much lower numbers for Soviet ground fuel and even avgas:
http://militera.lib.ru/research/melia_aa/10.html
Since the mid-1930s, the need to establish high-octane gasoline production, primarily for the needs of military aviation, has begun to be felt more and more acutely. The solution of this problem for a number of reasons met with considerable difficulties. The domestic oil refining industry hardly coped with the production of ever-increasing volumes of motor gasoline (octane number 59) for the national economy and aviation gasoline (octane number 70) for the rapidly growing aviation and tank park of the Red Army.

http://www.oilru.com/or/47/1006/
Of the 883,600 tons of aviation gasoline produced domestically in 1940, an overwhelming proportion was avgas with low octane numbers of 70 to 74. This was almost good enough for obsolete domestically-produced aircraft, but only 4% of the demand for B-78 aviation gasoline, the best of those produced in the Soviet Union and the one needed by the new generation of warplanes, was satisfied across the country.

Plus there was the German claims of not being able to use captured Soviet fuel without additives.
 
What is your source on that, I'm seeing much lower numbers for Soviet ground fuel and even avgas:
http://militera.lib.ru/research/melia_aa/10.html


http://www.oilru.com/or/47/1006/


Plus there was the German claims of not being able to use captured Soviet fuel without additives.
Depends on how the octane is calculated. There was no way that the M-17 engine in the BTs could run on 59 octane. Same for the T-26 with its Armstrong Siddeley designed powerplant. B-59 was the low octane AvGas. The Soviet automobile grade gas was lower octane than that
 
To have a chance the Axis must field a fifth Panzer Group rather than the OTL four, (with a proportional increase in other forces), have about twice the transportation capability and ensure that allied troops (Hungary, Romania, Italy, etc) perform to German Standards.
Basically, the Axis must be a 1941 version of NATO.
 
All the amphetamines in the world can't make up for artillery pulled by horses
It could if they gave the amphetamines to the horses:extremelyhappy:


Wiking and Nuker, I'm joking. No need to quote the journal of veterinary medicine studies on horse withdrawal synthoms...
 

Deleted member 1487

Why do you think 1942 was the decisive year of the war between Germany and the USSR instead of 1941?
It was the year in which the Soviet economy was pushed to the brink and they managed to recover with the Stalingrad counteroffensive. Though to be fair 1941 was probably more important in terms of Germany having a shot of knocking the Soviets out of the war relatively quickly and potentially being able to resist the Wallies when they came.
 

elkarlo

Banned
I was mainly thinking about the Soviet counterattacks in August and September around Smolensk. That was well short of what they had in mid-late October where according to Glantz they suffered around 100,000 casualties enduring Soviet offensives. My argument isn't that German forces wouldn't suffer proportionally less casualties than IOTL if they stopped after the Vyazma-Bryansk pockets when the weather stopped them, but then you're getting locked in to a long war with the US in and still a low guarantee of success.
Yes, Smolensk was a pretty serious counter attack.
I agree, fighting the US and the USSR at the same time was insanity. But if they kept their mobile reserve alive, ie no over reach in winter 41, strengthening/straigthening out the lines and maybe some small encirclement ala early case blue, then the Axis would be a much tougher nut to crack. Perhaps the Soviets can be stopped around the river defensive lines and be held there until the WAllies make a good case to surrender? I think that could be a very different world/result
 
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