WI: German-Soviet Peace Treaty Winter 1941

FB34D4D2-D2C9-4738-913F-A95EE3BA63D5.jpeg What if Hitler offers Stalin a peace treaty on December 1, 1941 where Germany gets everything west of the line, everything on the line is a jointly administered DMZ, and everything East of the line is Soviet territory? Would Stalin accept? Would he be coup’d if he did not? Would Hitler even consider such an offer? What would be the affect on the rest of the war efforts if he did accept? (Please answer the last question even if you think that the deal occurring is virtually impossible)
 
Assuming Hitler would offer it, which I doubt, I don't think Stalin would take it. The Germans have failed to take Moscow and Leningrad, and General Winter is coming in on the side of the Soviets. There is no advantage to taking a deal now when things will be relatively static until the end of the spring mud season, and the winter is going to hurt the Germans worse than the Soviets. Even if Hitler offers it 12/1, before any decision would come down PH happens and the German DoW on the USA which means the USSR has a new ally, and a new source of supply which will give Stalin a boost.

If the USA and Germany are not at war, Stalin might consider this request seriously - a lot depends on what goes along with "stop fighting along a given line". If the US is only fighting Japan, there will still be LL to the UK as the USA and UK are fighting as allies in the Pacific but I doubt the USA focused on Japan will send any LL to the USSR. I, like most folks here, think that even if no DoW by Germany in December, 1941, that with 6-12 months there will be fighting - but Stalin will have decide based on the conditions he faces today.
 

Wimble Toot

Banned
Hitler intends to destroy the USSR. Stalin has been publicly betrayed by Hitler. Diplomatically, politically, Stalin is a busted flush if he agrees to anything like this.

A peace imposed by the Third Reich isn't worth the paper its printed on.
 
View attachment 389714 What if Hitler offers Stalin a peace treaty on December 1, 1941 where Germany gets everything west of the line, everything on the line is a jointly administered DMZ, and everything East of the line is Soviet territory? Would Stalin accept? Would he be coup’d if he did not? Would Hitler even consider such an offer? What would be the affect on the rest of the war efforts if he did accept? (Please answer the last question even if you think that the deal occurring is virtually impossible)

The map is pretty small but it looks like you gave the Germans some stuff they didn't actually have, ie. Leningrad, and demilitarized Moscow? I don't think Stalin would go for that at all. Certainly not the Moscow bit.
 
The map is pretty small but it looks like you gave the Germans some stuff they didn't actually have, ie. Leningrad, and demilitarized Moscow? I don't think Stalin would go for that at all. Certainly not the Moscow bit.

I think the line is west of Moscow, but I can look again
 
I could see due to some extra German strength (perhaps less Luftwaffe losses in Battle of Britain, or Panzer divisions being released earlier, Crete goes better or something), by the middle of October, the Germans are able to put Moscow under artillery fire. With his capital under fire, the sea of Azov encirclement completed, the Tikvin offensive starting. Moscow in panic, Stalin requests an armistice with Hitler via Bulgaria. Soviets are going to start regaining confidence by November, December is definitely too late.

Terms:
Germans pull back from Moscow and Leningrad, no demolitions, return POWS.
Soviets evacuate undamaged Maikop and Kuban areas to Germany, and returns POWs.
Soviets grant some limited transit rights Germany to Japan.
 
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Very sorry. Part of my disabilty is my hand slips, I have severe cerebral palsy. But I will be extra careful
In that case, mind removing the previous post, or most of it? Otherwise I would need to put you on mute for a while, as my screen seems to stutter when going over your long post.
 
Hitler can't possibly obtain the territory occupied as of 1 December 1941. Russia does not give up territories, ever. You'd be more likely to get the Americans to cede Hawaii and perhaps Alaska to Japan than you would to have Stalin give up sacred Russian earth simply because it was under fascist occupation. The best possible outcome for Hitler is that they get the September 1, 1939 borders plus all of Poland, including the M-R Pact's Soviet portion of Poland. Even then, one does not simply ask for a white peace once they realize their offensive (Barbarossa) isn't going to end well.

Also, 1 December 1941 means that the US is coming into the war (even if they are not at war with Germany) next week. The political and diplomatic acts required to end the war could well take more than a week to complete. The looming threat of a Japanese DoW against the USA was palpable on 1 December, as well. Pearl Harbor wasn't entirely a bolt out of the blue, the US knew war was coming but just didn't know exactly what Japan would do. Hitler may well have been aware that Japan was about to enter the war. At any rate, if the armistice is offered on 1 December and is somehow accepted, things will change drastically on the seventh, and the sides might reconsider the peace offering.
 

The manpower and resource situation of the Soviet Union precluded such.

Food:

The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World War II, by William Moskoff -

"The central fact behind the increased importance of the collective farm market was the drastic drop in food production, especially in 1942 and 1943, and the diminished proportion that went to the civilians. In 1943 overall agricultural production was only 38 percent of the 1940 level. In 1943, however, the Red Army began to recapture agricultural areas of the Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Caucasus and by the next year, 1944, agricultural output had risen to 54 percent of the 1940 level. Not surprisingly, the collapse of the food economy led to astonishing increases in prices. The most rapid rate [Emphasis by author] of increase in prices took place in 1942 and began to taper off in mid-1943."

The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945, by Walter Scott Dunn -

"By November of 1941, 47% of Soviet cropland was in German hands. The Germans had 38% of the grain farmland, 84% of the sugar land, 38% of the area devoted to beef and dairy cattle, and 60% of the land used to produce hogs. The Russians turned to the east and brought more land into cultivation. In the fall of 1941, the autumn and winter crops increased sharply in the eastern area. But despite all efforts, farm yields dropped from 95.5 million tons of grain in 1940 to 29.7 million tons in 1942. Production of cattle and horses dropped to less than half of prewar levels and hogs to one fifth. By 1942, meat and dairy production shrank to half the 1940 total and sugar to only 5%. Farm production in 1942 and 1943 dropped to 38% and 37% of 1940 totals."

Food production in 1943 was actually lower than in 1942 slightly, due to the failure of the potato crop in the Urals, despite the recovery of the North Caucasus and the East Bank Ukraine; the recovery of these territories was the only reason why mass starvation didn't totally breakout at that point even though mass death was being reported, particularly among factory workers. Rations were cut at the lowest possible amount and the only thing keeping the Red Army fed at this juncture was American Lend Lease, as told according to Hunger and War: Food Provisioning in the Soviet Union During World War II. In the event of separate peace, those American supplies will be lost and the Soviet state will be unlikely to survive the coming winter without Ukraine and said supplies.

Production:

A review of production vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and the Reich will find that the Reich consistently outproduced the USSR, which makes sense give the disparities of steel and coal production between the two. More critically for our purposes, however, is the specific production totals of the Soviets, which I shall highlight by selecting the year 1943:

Germany/USSR

1943:
Tanks and SP guns: 12,063 / 24,092
Armored cars: 806 / 1,820
Half-tracks: 16,964 / 0
Trucks: 109,483 / 45,545
Cars: 34,478 / 2,546
Locomotives: 5,243 / 43
Train cars: 66,263 / 108

As you can see here, while the Soviets maintained an advantage in things like tanks and armored cars, their production of trucks, half-tracks, cars, locomotives, and train cars was negligible or non-existent. This can be explained by Lend Lease, which in the event of a separate peace the Soviets will be, again, shorted. Given that it would take a long time to retool their machines tools, that 25% of said machine tools during the war were of American origin (Whole factories were shipped to the USSR), and the limits of their steel and coal output, it is doubtful they could ever meet their material needs especially given that IOTL the Germans managed to destroy the entirety of their production in 1943 and nearly did so again in 1944.

Raw Materials:

The loss of the Ukraine and other occupied areas had engendered shortages of coal (The Donbass was home to roughly 60% of Soviet output by itself), aluminum (Main Soviet facility was along the Dnieper, about 60-80% of production), iron ore (60% of production), steel (50% of production), electric power (30% of output), manganese ore (30% of production), and nickel (30% of production). Overall output of the machinery and metal goods sector had fallen by 40%. In addition, the USSR was also unable to meet the demand for copper, tin, zinc, lead, aluminum, and nickel with remaining sources; Lend Lease was sufficient to meet all of these demands except for aluminum and nickel. Antimony, tungsten, cobalt, vanadium, molybdenum, tin, and magnesium were also almost entirely lacking. In short, there is no way, even presuming the industrial base was there for it, that the USSR could resume the war from a lack of raw materials alone.

Manpower:

Two reports that I am aware of were prepared for Stalin on the manpower situation over the course of the conflict, the first in September of 1942 and the second in February, 1943. The second report is summarized here:

The second report from Tschadenko submitted on 14 February 1943, situation as of 1.1.43:

In Army, Navy, NKVD troops - 10 947 000 (*) men plus 851 000 in hospitals
class of 1925 in process of call-up - 817 000
recruits transferred to industry work - 2 541 000
discharged or on leave for medical reasons - 982 000
nationalities exempt from military service - 250 000
irrevocable causalities - 5 950 000
lost on occupied territory - 5 631 000 + 965 000 (classes of 1924-1925)
A remainder (not called up yet) - 3 724 576 (of them about 2.5 million reserved in economy)

GULAG, NKPS troops and other minor military seem to be forgotten

(*) Breakdown of military:
On the front - 6 191 350 men
Far East - 1 131 696
internal military districts - 1 932 995 (including 1 422 659 in replacement, training units, and military schools)
others - 744 901 (reserves, units in transfer, airborne forces, separate air force and air defense elements)
Total Red Army - 10 000 942
About 946 000 in Navy and NKVD (calculated from the difference)

Those data were not necessary accurate and must contain some guesstimates and double counting, still they provide the general idea.

So in general, the Soviets had about ~3.7 Million left to call up, of whom 2.5 Million were needed to keep the economy going and most of the rest were Central Asian natives, whom were not exactly ideal to call up due to reliability issues. Even if they do call them up, that's just an additional 1.2 Million, which for reference is essentially the casualties incurred at Kursk and Smolensk in 1943 alone.
 
The Soviet government went along with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in WWI with significant cession of "Russian" lands. Why? Because the other option, not accepting a stoppage of the fighting was worse. Saving communism, if it means sacrificing some Russian territory, is the most important thing. It all depends on how Stalin sees the situation. If he thinks some sort of armistice gives a better chance of Soviet survival that is what he will do - there is no trust between Stalin and Hitler...
 
The Soviet government went along with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in WWI with significant cession of "Russian" lands. Why? Because the other option, not accepting a stoppage of the fighting was worse. Saving communism, if it means sacrificing some Russian territory, is the most important thing. It all depends on how Stalin sees the situation. If he thinks some sort of armistice gives a better chance of Soviet survival that is what he will do - there is no trust between Stalin and Hitler...

Any chance stalin would be couped if he turned it down?
 
While some sort of coup or coup attempt is certainly possible, I tend to say no. The facts facing Stalin are obvious to anyone that might want to lead or support such a coup. Also, in 1941, especially under difficult circumstances, Stalin IS the USSR. Get rid of Stalin and the morale of the Soviet Union will plummet. There is no replacement for Stalin. It would be bad enough if he "died valiantly at his post defending the Rodina" (really - not of close range lead poisoning"), but to be deposed would paint the new leaders as traitors. In 1941 there is no way a claim of treason against Stalin will be believed by most of the Soviet population - if the Vozd felt an armistice with the Nazis was necessary, so it was.

having said all that, a coup is still possible - but who would lead it? Molotov - not likely, after all he has negotiated deals with the Nazis before. Beria - not ever, too many enemies. Some generals - unlikely.
 
Would Stalin accept?

No. By December 1st, the German armies on the edge of Moscow had clearly stalled and are bleeding themselves to death on the city's defenses, while he has fresh reserves on the verge of taking the offensive. From his perspective, he's on the verge of at best launching a tide-turning offensive and at worst delivering a blow to the Germans that he would buy necessary breathing space to rebuild the Red Army to meet another German offensive in the summer. In such a context, he has no reason to take such a unreasonable deal, particularly not one which gives up so much Soviet resources as HistoryLearner noted.
 
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