What happens if Germany wins at Stalingrad?
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Just an opinion, okay?
To me, either way you slice it, it changes little for the Germans and their allies. To me, in the long run, they are still going get pushed out of the Volga region and they are still going to get pushed out of the Caucasus. Maybe it will happen later and in a different way and perhaps more lives will be lost. Either way, the Soviets are still hoisting the red flag over the Reichstag.
You suggest and ask us to assume the Germans and their allies manage to gain victory here without considering how they do it. Since the battle itself was a monumental undertaking for all involved its hard not to consider how the Germans and their allies would do it. To me, its very hard to ignore the hows in this situation, because its in those questions that will allow us to understand what a German victory here could mean.
Without considering the hows and such, I think a German victory at Stalingrad would be short-lived. Yes, they annihilate the last pockets of resistance in the burned-out carcass of the city itself. German troops are at the banks of the Volga River and can finally interdict supply lines moving up the river itself, generally being a massive thorn in the side of the Soviets. Propaganda wise it would be quite a victory and news coverage of the battle was not unknown during the time. Things were bleak for the Western Allies around this time as well. Even with the victory of El Alamein in November, news of a defeat in Stalingrad would surely sour British efforts in the Middle East and Asia.
It would be a blow to the Soviets... but one that would demand massive retaliation. The Soviets aren't just going to take this lying down and just give up. The Germans might take the city itself, but without a simultaneous victory in the Caucasus in taking the oil fields there I feel like Stalingrad would be a bitter victory. The Axis allies were at the extreme end of their logistics in this region and their reserves were already very close to being exhausted just trying to man this massive front. Germany's allies here were very hard pressed as well - the Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians were all sending pleas for reinforcements and requests to shorten their lines to effectively man their fronts before and during the battle. Even if the Germans took the city and those men were to be sent south into the Caucasus, there is the issue of who would be left to take their place. On top of that the German units that fought for the city were completely exhausted. You'd be sending a spent force of severely understrength units to another meat grinder in the south, replacing them, potentially, with allied units like the Romanians or Italians which are woefully under-equipped to deal with the Soviets. Even if you replace with Germans, there is still issue of where you would be taking them from and how long it would take to get them there and how many would be going. Its a massive strategic and logistical consideration that the Germans would be hard pressed to answer, especially on top of their critical supply problems.
If German units that took the city stay where they are though, then I don't believe they would be in any position to attack even further. The battle for the city itself was a terrible struggle and the Soviets put up a fanatical defense that can not be understated. The German units here would be in no shape to advance. They'd be the victors holding a ruined city, looking on across the Volga as the Soviets prepare for their counter-offensive. For Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians manning the flanks of the German army in this region the situation would still be grim for them. They would still be under-equipped, under-manned, and ultimately still be ill-prepared for any attacks by the Soviets in their sectors. They simply don't have the strength needed to hold back the Soviets and the Germans don't have enough supplies to equip them with what they need. They may have had the spirit and willingness to fight, sure, but that won't count for much if you have the supplies and equipment to fight.
Another thing to consider is German military intelligence and Soviet plans for a counter offensive outside the city. German recon and intelligence, for all their efforts, failed to realize just how many Soviet forces were massing on their northern and southern fronts around the city when winter set in. And the fact that they were going to strike at the Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians, allied units that even the Soviets knew from their own intelligence and experiences were woefully under-equipped to fight them head on.
There are a lot of moving parts for this battle and a lot to consider to stack the odds in the Germans' favor for victory. For me though, either way, it just changes the course of events in the short run for a brief time. The Germans might win at Stalingrad, but they are still going to lose the war.
I think Wiking argued that Baku was organized in such a manner that a protracted bombing campaign was not necessary. A few good bombings would make it a mess.
Probably not, as the Germans may lie to themselves yet again and say after the failed 1942 counter-offensives the Russians are out of manpower. As we saw in 1943, USSR had one more good year of conscripting millions of men before having to resort to forceful conscriptions of formally Axis-occupied territories.
History Learner
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To this I will add The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, which lists Germany and the USSR at 14.4% and 14.0% of Global War-making potential in their 1937 borders. The later German annexations up to 1941 gave it an industrial edge and their military success over the course of Barbarossa crippled the Soviets. Even without said crippling the edge is notable, in that Germany consistently had a larger production of coal and steel, as well as something like four times the amount of machine tools than the Soviets.
Just as a side note, and because I've always found it interesting, this is the root of the Speer Miracle myth; he basically just tapped into reserves rather than organically boosted German production.
It was thawing by February and no matter when the attack comes, it's still got the issue of having to do a contested river crossing against entrenched Axis forces with the Soviet logistics on the other side of the river. By January, the Germans probably will also have more than sufficient forces on hand to destroy any beachheads, given what Manstein had for Winter Storm and the II SS Panzer Corps assuming the second scenario. More important is the Stalin bit though. IOTL he was acting very irrationally and had to repeatedly be talked down from actions by Zhukov, as @wiking has noted before. Depending on which scenario of mine is used, the consequences can be grave.
Besides those directly opposite the Kerch Straits, what German forces were still in the Kuban after March? As well, what sources state production in the Kuban was not resumed?
You've left out some very important caveats to your claims here:
So no, general rations did not rise; select urban locations did and said rations were still starvation rations. Further on:
Most likely explanation for why urban locations got increased rations was Lend Lease was able to reduce the burden of feeding the Red Army but even that was not enough to prevent rations from falling for everyone in the Fall.
Except the Soviets made it through IOTL with the Kuban, East Ukraine and winning the Battle of Stalingrad. In the event of German victory none of that is true and indeed there is a very real chance the Germans cut the Persian and maybe Northern routes for Lend Lease as well. Add in the manpower difficulties at this juncture for the USSR and there is a very real prospect of total collapse.
At what point do they take it and under what circumstances? Napoleon technically took Moscow, but it had been ransacked, set alight, and abandoned by the Czar at that point. Though of course at that point Moscow wasn't the capital. Stalingrad isn't here either, but it is bad for morale when a city named for your leader BEFORE he became your ruler (it was named that because he took part in the defense against White forces), though so long as the Germans don't manage to get in hundreds of rivercraft and set up airfields it shouldn't wreck the war effort in Russia too bad. I don't really know anything about the Eastern Front, though. I'm just assuming a city blasted to pieces in our world wouldn't be of much use production wise to either side, unless either side managed to secure it quickly and without having to use the corpses of their comrades as barricades.
History Learner
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You find the data throughout this thread, which is where I directly cited it from; there's multiple links to the various statistics, so I figured it'd be easier to just give you the overarching source.
History Learner
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My understanding is that it was a crisis of shipping, which is also the reason no Cross-Channel invasion was attempted either.
Bengal famine was caused by a number of factors, none in themselves was critical, the small rise in the price of food, the disruption of the food supplies due to ww2, the poverty of the affected regions, bad harvests, the lack of food stores and incompetence of the authorities in dealing with the problem. It was only together this created a disaster and yes you are right that shipping was one of these factors. What happened with shipping is that once the extent of the famine became known, the shortage of shipping precluded sending out the desperately required food. However, it should be noted that before this the crisis had already occurred.
In ww2 oilfields proved not easy to destroy eg the US bombing of the Romanian oil wells failed. Mainly because of the lack of long-range fighters.
Baku is a long ways from Stalingrad 1200 km compare this to London to Berlin which is 1100 km. Unlike the Allies, Germany has no long-range fighters and no heavy bombers. I doubt the Germans could destroy much of the Russian oil by air bombing.
Deleted member 1487
The oilfields were not targeted, the refineries and railyards were. The bombing of the refineries did real damage, but the Romanians had an overcapacity due to declining production of oil, as they were trying to preserve their national resource; so while the bombing was effective in doing damage said damage did not result in a decline in fuel production due to the surplus of refining ability. It was somewhat similar to the situation with ball bearings; the bombing of production facilities did really bad damage to production, but due to huge stockpiles of ball bearings they were able to coast until production could be repaired and dispersed, which meant a limited at best impact on supply of ball bearings. In the case of Romania after the perceived failure of bombing the oil the moved on to bombing Bucharest and mining the Danube instead.
https://www.historynet.com/ploesti-the-rest-of-the-story.htm
You were right that they were oil refineries but I dispute that after which the net output of fuel reduced, it was in weeks greater than before the raid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave#Result
The other point is that the US had heavy bombers.
Deleted member 1487
Right...because the Romanians had spare refining capacity. Damage was done, but was rendered irrelevant by spare capacity.
Yes the US had heavies, as did the RAF, but if anything what was proven by the strategic bombing campaign was that accuracy was more important than tonnage capacity, as the majority of bombs by the heavies were misses, especially in 1943. Unless you're hitting an area target like cities or carrying really big bombs, tonnage capacity isn't necessarily a virtue. Range was the big benefit of the heavies compared to mediums. Ironically for the RAF the Mosquitos were far more accurate than the heavies, so achieved more with less in many cases.
From the point of this POD, Germany does not have the heavies, she does not have Mosquitos and she does not have the accuracy so the Soviet oil will not be destroyed by the German airforce. The Russian were also very experienced in damage control according to reports the oil well frequently had problems including fires as well.
Stalin is pissed and he orders on all out assault to take back his City no matter how heavy the losses are.
The Nazis have to defend it because of Stalingrad Falls the entire caucus region is cut off and I lose more than one Army group if that happens.
It will basically becomes a war of attrition which the Germans cannot win. End result a few million more dead Russians and the Russians meet the Wallies further to the East in Germany.
There is a major historical butterfly here Nikita Khrushchev was in charge of an NKVD in the Stalingrad area and the boss told him" if Stalingrad falls you die."
The Nazis have to defend it because of Stalingrad Falls the entire caucus region is cut off and I lose more than one Army group if that happens.
It will basically becomes a war of attrition which the Germans cannot win. End result a few million more dead Russians and the Russians meet the Wallies further to the East in Germany.
There is a major historical butterfly here Nikita Khrushchev was in charge of an NKVD in the Stalingrad area and the boss told him" if Stalingrad falls you die."
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Deleted member 1487
He111s and Ju88s plus KG100:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampfgruppe_100
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampfgeschwader_100#Crimea,_Black_Sea,_Northern_Caucuses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampf...ad,_Caspian_Sea,_central_and_southern_sectors
And historian Joel Hayward focused his studies on airpower in southern Russian in 1942 and actually looked extensively at the bombing of Baku's oil as an option; here is his paper on the subject:
https://ia600309.us.archive.org/13/...ersFailureInAugust/Too-Little-Too-Late.21.pdf
Long story short it was possible and very likely to do extensive damage that would have taken years to repair, but instead it was decided the Luftwaffe should be locked down as flying artillery for the army.
BTW do you have the reports about Soviet abilities for oil well damage control? Because it is highly unlikely they'd ever have dealt with massed bomber raids dropping incendiaries on a wide scale on the oil soaked soil. There is a reason the Allies planned Operation Pike after all.
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So medium-weight tactical bombers crudely repurposed for strategic bombing raids. Didn't work over Britain, probably won't work over Baku.
At no point does the linked too paper make the claim that the damage would have taken years to repair. Instead, the timeframe of disruption in production he gives is measured in months, which is more then enough for Soviet reserves to cover. It talks about the inability of anti-aircraft forces to halt a bombing raid, but the real metric in strategic bombing is the ability for the attacker to conduct a sustained campaign (and the Luftwaffe's record on sustainability is very poor) as opposed the defender to conduct damage control, mitigation, and repair. Neither is addressed.
Because they were in a period of delusion in their war planning and had not yet experienced how time consuming and expensive a meaningful strategic bombing campaign actually is.
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Deleted member 1487
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz
Yep no effect at all.
Honestly the problems of the Blitz were Hitler's constantly shifting priorities rather than willingness to focus on one set of targets and carry the campaign through to the conclusion rather than the ability of the bombers to do the job assigned.
If the defender cannot stop them, they have free reign to conduct a sustained campaign against the target if the choice is made to do so. We can debate the likelihood of that, but the point is it was possible had the choice been made. The sustainability of the bombing was possible not just because of the lack of defenses, but rather because of the actual historical record of the enormous sustained efforts the air units attached to AG-South and it's successors throughout 1942.
The output of oil in the Caucasus IOTL took nearly a decade to recover after WW2, so bombing of Baku is likely to make that situation far worse than it was IOTL.
Also OTL raids on Grozny from Hayward's paper:
In terms of the overall consequences of their bombing sure, but the target was highly vulnerable and susceptible to bombing damage..
Your very own quote declares the blitz to be "militarily ineffective". That rather sums it up nicely.
Incorrect. What affects the attackers sustainability is not whether the defender stops them (which is impossible: the Germans didn't manage to outright stop a single one of the Anglo-American air raids) but their ability to absorb losses which are inevitably taken in the course of executing their raids. Given that the paper makes entirely clear that the VVS/VPO would be able to inflict serious losses over Baku and the record of the Luftwaffe in being able to sustain their campaign in the face of losses is extremely poor, we can expect that the campaign would not be sustainable. The necessity of basing forward even to bring Baku in range would only exacerbate this problem as, as the paper observed, these bases were extremely vulnerable to counter-air raids by the VVS.
The paper you linked to does not say there was any lack of defenses. Quite the contrary, it states the antiaircraft defenses were strong, fighter defenses were established by July, and they were reinforced as the year progressed.
Furthermore, the historical record of the air units attached to AG-South and it's successor in terms of sustainability is, contrary to your assertion, extremely poor. The Luftwaffe couldn't even keep up it's tempos in the face of the routine wear-and-tear of their sorties, much less losses from actual combat.
The paper attributes the decline of oil production at the time and the long recovery period to a prioritization of non-Caucasus oil fields. Given this excess in capacity, that renders the end part of this sentence rather unlikely.
Notably, the provided quotes says that the disruption would be measured only in several months, contrary to your claim of several years, which is more then enough to be covered by Soviet reserves.
Still not demonstrated. The history of actually bombing industrial targets shows that even supposedly "highly vulnerable and susceptible" targets prove far more resilient then expected.
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Deleted member 1487
It is a vague term which depends on meanings. 41k killed and another >45k wounded isn't exactly ineffective, nor is forcing the dispersal of military production. Of course an oil field is a very different target than industrial production.
Where does it make it clear that the PVO and/or VVS could have inflicted those losses prior to the establishment of forces in the region? Despite in October the Soviets having said forces in the region they couldn't stop multiple attacks on Grozny's oil facilities despite the Luftwaffe choosing to use further afield bases for maximum safety.
It's funny though you claim that the Luftwaffe had a hard time with field sustainment of air units despite the record of heavy continuous combat support rendered by the Luftwaffe from April 1942 through 1943 in South Russia. Serviceability suffered, but losses were not prohibitive enough to shut down that support; the problems seems to have been if anything that they were launching so many missions that the air frames themselves were being worn out, not to mention the ground crews and pilots. That isn't indicative of their inability to sustain missions in the field as much as the insane amount of missions they were actually flying. There are reasons why you had many pilots flying over 1000 combat missions (some multiple thousands).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_history_of_the_Luftwaffe_(1939–45)#1942
Soviet counter air only started later in the year as noted in the linked paper and in Hayward's book, starting in September-October. If anything it is the Soviet losses that proved prohibitive and they had to virtually cease air operations until the Luftwaffe was worn down by so many missions and having to cover such a massive amount of space.
Established in July on paper, but the facts on the ground were grim for the Soviets; it wasn't until September or even October that defenses could be said to be strong.
Again the assertion that the Luftwaffe couldn't sustain operations is patently false; from the start of Blau to October they launched over 20,000 sorties. Meanwhile it was the VVS which was so smashed up that it had to virtually cease operations and restrict what was launched to the periphery to survive. And even in October when they were strong they still couldn't prevent the bombing of Grozny on multiple days with minimal losses to the Luftwaffe or stop the pounding of Stalingrad that resulted in virtually it's complete fall as of November. The Luftwaffe largely had the run of the show until the Soviet offensive in November around Stalingrad, because the Luftwaffe focused their main effort there and largely left the Caucasus to the army to deal with per Hitler's demands to focus on the city. Hayward notes that it was Hitler's fixation on the city rather than the Caucasus that prevented the bombing of Soviet positions and the oil rather than strong Soviet defenses; even the VVS revival in the Caucasus by October was a function of the Luftwaffe fixating on Stalingrad per Hitler's demands.
How much of this was Soviet production? At best 30% and even that number was a function of the fall in production in the Caucasus. Given that the central Russian fields were closer to sources of material production and the Caucasian fields had messed up infrastructure and were far away it was easier to focus on the smaller production region; still that only reinforces the point that actually getting the Caucasian fields back online would be a lot tougher than just trying to max out the fields in other regions, which even at max were still substantially less than that of Baku. It isn't an excess in capacity, rather an effort to try and max out something rather than dealing with the headache of repairing a peripheral resource over shitty infrastructure that was torn up by the war.
Could be, but given the historical effort by the Soviets to wait for the end of the war and focus on the central Russian oil fields instead, that would require years to repair, as was proven by the Maikop output, which took until 1950 to recover (IIR the year C).
The Soviets did have reserves, but they'd have to service the vital tractors working the agricultural fields as the men and horses had been reserved for the war effort. So the Soviets would have some room to coast, but to say it wouldn't be felt during the war is missing the facts.
Industrial targets aren't oil targets. When the bombs connected they did real lasting damage as proven by the Allied attacks on German facilities in 1944 when they were actually able to hit them. Even the Romanian refineries were seriously damaged and it was only the excess capacity that prevented output from dropping until the major repairs were done. Still 46% of production was damaged even if temporarily. Not bad for a single raid against the most well defended facilities in the world.