Deleted member 1487
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.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 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.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.
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.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.
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.As a result of 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.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.
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: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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Blue#Soviet_forces
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.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]
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.
This was covered in previous threads: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.
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.
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.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.