WI: UK sued for peace June '40 could Germany have beaten the Russians?

1) Whether Italy goes to war with Greece or not, Germany doesn't get involved; Barbarosa launches in mid-May instead of later June, and it launches with everything that historically was used in the Balkans and North Africa.

2) The Luftwaffe is in much better shape on the Eastern Front, with all the resources lost in the Battle of Britain, and with nothing needing to be left westward to defend against British bombing.

3) The Soviet forces will be readier than historically for Barbarosa, but they're still recovering from the earlier officer purges.

4) The Dutch almost certainly signed a peace along with the British, and will have a collaborationist government. So the Dutch East Indies will be supplying oil to Japan despite the US embargo. So Japan has plenty of oil and has no need to go to war with the US. Instead, the Germans will be able to play the Dutch oil card to get Japan to put an effort into Siberia. Probably a small one, but it means the Soviets will either be able to bring fewer troops west to defend Moscow, or Japan will seize much of the east.

5) Germany is able to freely import goods without having to run a British blockade. Even if the English-speaking powers refuse to do business, that means anything produced in South America or in the colonies of continental states. Food from Argentina, petroleum and rubber from the Dutch, tungsten from the Portuguese . . . Germany is going to be fully supplied with raw materials.

6) Germany doesn't have to spend any effort on U-boats; all the resources spent on trying to starve the British in the second half of 1940 and all of 1941 are instead spent on stuff to send east.

7) Without British bombing, German industry is more productive, spending more time producing and less time repairing.

Net effect is that the Germans are going to hit harder and earlier than they did historically, and will be significantly deeper into Russia at the end of '41. Moscow might well wind up besieged, or even fall.

Moving on past the campaigns of 1941, Soviet logistics will be seriously compromised by the lack of Lend-Lease motor vehicles, while the Air Forces of the Red Army are in much, much worse shape with no Lend-Lease aircraft. In 1942, there will be no split of effort between the Caucasus and Stalingrad; minus the need for Caucasian oil, Hitler will be able to send all of Army Group South to Stalingrad, and will almost certainly be more successful.

Could the Germans win? It seems possible. Not certain by any means, but possible.
 
7) Without British bombing, German industry is more productive, spending more time producing and less time repairing.


Point 7; in addition resources used for the defence of German cities would mean more resources for Russia particularly 88mm Flak units that would be used in a anti-tank role.

Also no disruption to Geman production would lead to greater motorisation and mechanisation to German ground forces
 

burmafrd

Banned
The margin of Soviet resistance in 1941 and 1942 was pretty thin. Its hard to see how all these changes that make the Germans much more capable could fail to defeat them.
 
The margin of Soviet resistance in 1941 and 1942 was pretty thin. Its hard to see how all these changes that make the Germans much more capable could fail to defeat them.

The problem is, Russia's just so big. Moscow falls, fine. Now you've still got to take Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod), two hundred miles deeper. Take that, and you still have to go on another two hundred miles to Kazan. Then Molotov (Perm), another three hundred miles in.

Okay, at some point things do start snowballing; maybe there's a revolt against Stalin or the USSR sues for peace or whatever. On the other hand, maybe at some point before that Germany is just bled dry. With Hitler refusing any strategic withdrawals to consolidate, and ever-increasing partisan activity as the Russians are abused by the Nazi administration, Germany winds up at its high-water mark on the outskirts of Gorky in '42, and then winds up getting driven back by the Russians anyway.
 

General Zod

Banned
The problem is, Russia's just so big. Moscow falls, fine. Now you've still got to take Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod), two hundred miles deeper. Take that, and you still have to go on another two hundred miles to Kazan. Then Molotov (Perm), another three hundred miles in.

Okay, at some point things do start snowballing; maybe there's a revolt against Stalin or the USSR sues for peace or whatever. On the other hand, maybe at some point before that Germany is just bled dry. With Hitler refusing any strategic withdrawals to consolidate, and ever-increasing partisan activity as the Russians are abused by the Nazi administration, Germany winds up at its high-water mark on the outskirts of Gorky in '42, and then winds up getting driven back by the Russians anyway.

The problem for Russia is that while it may be so big geographically, her manpower and industrial reserves are not spread equal. The more the Wehrmacht makes inroads towards and through Moscow, Stalingrad, Ukraine, the Donetz basin, and the Russian heartland, the more those polls will dry. Once the Soviet Union has lost everything of the above, it has lost at least the two-thirds of her manpower polls and industrial production, even assuming they have managed to rebuild the factories they packed and sent eastward, which by 1941-42 won't be the case. The idea that the Soviets can push back and overcome the whole manpower and industrial potential of Germany and indeed all of continental Europe with 25-40% of hers is simply ASB.
 
Once again, it isn't so clear cut as that. For one thing, the Soviets used their resources a hell of a lot more efficiently than the Nazis did; they produced as many weapons from 10 tons of steel as the Nazis did from 30(!). For various reasons, the German industry didn't take well to mass production; some of it was political interference, a lot was military, and some again was just how the industry was built up.

And with 1,500 companies and sixteen million workers moved East, the Ural/Western Siberia region soon contained 2/3 of the war economy.

(Numbers from Overy, Why the Allies Won, rounded off to even ends)
 
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