What type of preparations could have made Barbarossa successful?

For all this you need a POD prior to the 30 years war. Its not Germany in this reality's 20th century you are describing.

What Snake says is true.

Also

No minor fiddling with a few more trucks or train tracks will matter. In case you missed it the trains run through areas where Corps and Army sized Soviet forces were still fighting into August - with air support, artillery barrages and so on. Panzergenadiers were being moved into battle in confiscated French municipal buses. Germany does not have the industrial plant to sustain the level of motorisation they actually achieved in 1940 which is why they demotorised prior to Barbarossa to create the mobile forces they did have.


Mass murder of Ukrainians is, whatever the Nazis thought, also a specific Wehrmacht policy both as part of the economic programme to depopulate the Ukraine (foods for germans not Ukrainian city dwellers - 35 million or so of them) and casually as in order to relieve their immediate supply situation German Army Groups ordered their formations to 'wild loot' for foodstuffs from day 1.

For the avoidance of doubt this means taking the food from the peasants, taking the seeds for next year from the peasants and leaving them to starve to death - without the supervision of officers so there could be a little bit of rape and murder along the way.

Way too early a POD. Rather you need a POD more in the timeframe of WWI that either leaves a much stronger USSR with the USSR also trending into the Tuchachevsky-style development of an extremely powerful ultra-modern and very big army that it clearly intends to use against its neighbors, or a simpler variant of a weaker USSR and a stronger German Empire which would seek the relatively more reasonable goals of imposing a successor of Brest-Litovsk, which would have its own pitfallls but at least leave borders more akin to those of OTL, and which would in the grand scheme of things at least have the advantage of having already been done once.
 
No, as the issue was food or ammunition, and that issue is not going to be helped by trying to supply advances deep into the Soviet interior *and* repairing railways *and* getting logistics where it needs to be when it needs to be there.
Well the first 2 were happening anyway IIRC, and once you have some engines and wagons converted to Russian Gauge actually converting the rails is much less critical than it was. Besides which, most trains ran on coal, not oil, so you save that for shifting the stuff from the rail-heads to the front lines.
 
Well the first 2 were happening anyway IIRC, and once you have some engines and wagons converted to Russian Gauge actually converting the rails is much less critical than it was. Besides which, most trains ran on coal, not oil, so you save that for shifting the stuff from the rail-heads to the front lines.

Except that the problem is less this than that the Germans didn't have the ability to project past a certain point, knew this, and chose to strike beyond it anyhow. There is no getting past Georg Thomas's analyses here, a man in the Wehrmacht presumably knew more of that force's capabilities than people 60 years later.
 
It is a lot of good input on this here.

In terms of preparations, I thnk we can conclude that the rail business is critical. The food supply part is just as critical.

in terms of execution It comes down to:

1) Contain Hitler, if possible - No "untermensch" stuff
2) Realistic objectives
3) Leave the US alone

Snake is right. Contain Hitler may take away the whole reason for Barbarossa. However Were not serious basic differences which would anyway have caused Barbarossa (or Stalin invading Germany)?

WWII could be seen as unfinished business, which means that it is the form of Barbarossa, not whether it will go ahead or not. So, Hitler may not be important in this context (well, sort of yes, but let's go with this for a moment).

Would Weimar have invaded Russia? well, maybe not. But the moment a Weimar Germany is flexing its muscles, which would have happened, then Stalin would not have been too happy.

Hurling nuclear bombs at germany if Germany has not declared war at US is a bit of a stretch.

So, If Germany is gearing up for the war with Russia from 1930 and onwards? piling materiel, trining, Ural bomber, the works?

Designing the Opel with a better air filter? designing ME 109 for Russian conditions? etc etc etc

Ivan
 
You cannot do this without fundamental changes to the regime that would make this untenable, short of somehow getting Anglo-French participation in the war on the side of Germany, which itself is flirting with the accursed bats.
 
Except that the problem is less this than that the Germans didn't have the ability to project past a certain point, knew this, and chose to strike beyond it anyhow. There is no getting past Georg Thomas's analyses here, a man in the Wehrmacht presumably knew more of that force's capabilities than people 60 years later.
So what, running trains a couple hundred miles closer to the front does absolutely squat to get ammunition delivered to the forward units of the Heer?
 
The Germans tried converting Russian Gauge to Standard Gauge, a slow process under any circumstances. Having some Russian Gauge trains would have allowed them to move supplies further forward than OTL without the frantic work of actually having to convert the railways, just repair them and keep them repaired.
 
The Germans tried converting Russian Gauge to Standard Gauge, a slow process under any circumstances. Having some Russian Gauge trains would have allowed them to move supplies further forward than OTL without the frantic work of actually having to convert the railways, just repair them and keep them repaired.

Then they get less food *and* less ammunition when they need as much of it as is possible for them to get, while having still to transfer goods from German gauge and railcar to Soviet, overtaxing the Soviet engines while leaving German ones useless.
 
Apparently German locos had problems in the Russian winter due to design differences. The Russians had less fedwater tanks along their routes so Russian locos carried more water with them. They also has their water and other piping internally where the heat of the engine kept them warm so they didn`t freeze. So it`s more than just gauge that`s the problem.

That said, Van Creveld says that the Germans more or less got the balance between strategic rail transport and tactical road transport right in the circumstances. The problem was on of absolute resouces, which is harder to put right.
 
Then they get less food *and* less ammunition when they need as much of it as is possible for them to get, while having still to transfer goods from German gauge and railcar to Soviet, overtaxing the Soviet engines while leaving German ones useless.
Firstly, how the f*** do you figure they get less food? Secondly, did you read the part where I suggested they convert some of their own trains?

Apparently German locos had problems in the Russian winter due to design differences. The Russians had less fedwater tanks along their routes so Russian
You could still use German trains in Ukraine though I assume.
 
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