Would Germany Attack a stronger Ussr

Would Germany attack a stronger Soviet Union

  • Yes

    Votes: 51 78.5%
  • No

    Votes: 14 21.5%

  • Total voters
    65
No great pruge and the Soviet Union quickly and easily takes over and annexs Finland.would germany still Attack the Soviet Union. It's was the soviets poor performance in the winter war that encouraged him.
 
No great pruge and the Soviet Union quickly and easily takes over and annexs Finland.would germany still Attack the Soviet Union. It's was the soviets poor performance in the winter war that encouraged him.

Does Stalin still tell Hitler about Churchill's telegram? How is Germany's war vs the UK going?
 
The way I see it they would rationalize their way around it and attack, if everything else goes per OTL.

The question is will everything go as per OTL and will Germany get into position to attack the USSR at all?
 
Would they have started a two front war if Stalin looked significantly stronger then he did to the German High Command in 1941. Maybe, but then again maybe not if the British Empire is still in the war and America is moving towards war, but if they did their war aims would be a fair bit more limited if they really believe rolling the USSR in one or two campaigning seasons is out of the question.
 
I've play-tested this out numerous times on SPI's old "War In Europe". The end result is a well-trained Red Army that gives up ground grudgingly rather than seeing most of its frontline formations destroyed with little loss for the Germans.

End result? At heavy cost, the Germans just manage to reach a line of clearing out the Baltics (no Siege of Leningrad), Smolensk, and a line holding on the Dneipr River. The Crimea is held, much of the Ukraine breadbasket remains in Soviet hands.

Case: Blue reads like another bloodbath with at best the Germans reaching their 1941 stop line in 1942, though without the wild breakthroughs of OTL they are saved from the disasters of Typhoon (less General Winter), the Caucasus, and Stalingrad.

After that, 1943 requires a Not-Hitler Hitler, otherwise its Citadel on steroids, since the Heer won't have suffered the total destruction of whole divisions, corps, and armies. More like ghastly attrition as was suffered against the Western Allies in France 1944-45.

AISI, its good news for the Soviet People, with far less territory controlled by the Nazis, and PERHAPS good news for the Heer, without the disastrous LOCs and supply lines of OTL. A stronger Red Army in terms of manpower earlier in the war, with the manpower pool not as bottomed out by VE-Day as OTL.

The absolute unknowable is how does Hitler react to the news starting almost from D+1 that the whole rotten edifice of Bolshevism has a front door made of stainless steel reinforced concrete:eek::mad: rather than termite infested wood?:rolleyes: And how quickly does an ATL Valkyrie form ITTL?:confused:
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Isn't this basicallya situation where the German best case is

http://lparchive.org/War-in-the-East-Don-to-the-Danube/
1-amdlFfa.gif

/
 
Isn't this basically a situation where the German best case is

http://lparchive.org/War-in-the-East-Don-to-the-Danube/
1-amdlFfa.gif

/

Hmm. This ATL shows a better German performance for AGN & AGC, but it appears that ITTL Finland is Axis. The OP has Finland Soviet-annexed. So no Northern Front except on a very narrow line of advance. On AGS they seem to match the same line of advance as the SPI play-tested one I described.

I couldn't describe what happened in 1944-45 because it depended too much on actions in the West and because admittedly SPI's game system regarding the War in the West was horribly outdated (it was designed in the 1960s). But the game system for the War in the East was and (mostly) is still viable, except for the economics of German War Production (no recognition of German Strategic Resource Restrictions).
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Hmm. This ATL shows a better German performance for AGN & AGC, but it appears that ITTL Finland is Axis. The OP has Finland Soviet-annexed. So no Northern Front except on a very narrow line of advance. On AGS they seem to match the same line of advance as the SPI play-tested one I described.

I couldn't describe what happened in 1944-45 because it depended too much on actions in the West and because admittedly SPI's game system regarding the War in the West was horribly outdated (it was designed in the 1960s). But the game system for the War in the East was and (mostly) is still viable, except for the economics of German War Production (no recognition of German Strategic Resource Restrictions).
Yeah, it's got Finland Axis because it's basically a competent USSR but starting from OTL Barbarossa.
Good Let's Play, and you actually see in the LP itself where the Germans shoot Hitler - suddenly the army falls back and gives up ground to maintain a safe line!
http://lparchive.org/War-in-the-East-Don-to-the-Danube/Update 70/
 
Isn't this basicallya situation where the German best case is

http://lparchive.org/War-in-the-East-Don-to-the-Danube/
1-amdlFfa.gif

/

Actually, it goes better then that. Because in that TL, the purges basically still happened. It's just the Soviet high-command (which fundamentally means Stalin) who has an attack of the sanes and authorizes a fighting retreat instead of a "hold at all costs and counter-attack whenever possible!" kind of deal. Much of the tactical dysfuntionality remained as per IOTL, although ITTL the Soviets should have improved much faster tactically without such ginormous losses... that's a function of the fact a lot of such stuff in-game is based on time triggers rather then responses to events on the ground.

Good Let's Play, and you actually see in the LP itself where the Germans shoot Hitler - suddenly the army falls back and gives up ground to maintain a safe line!

Actually, that was a function of the games AI. The German AI is programmed to act offensively in the summer campaign of '41 and '42 while acting defensively otherwise. In the specific scenario (a variant of the '41-'42 campaign), the AI also is programmed to try and maintain powerful thrusts all along the line rather then eventually shifting weight to purely one axis. The thing is that the summer of '42 basically saw the Germans with completely inadequate strength to conduct an offensive and instead the Soviets crushed AGS. By the time October rolled around,

What would have likely happened IRL is massive stripping of AGC and AGN to boost up AGS, something that the AI resolutely refuses to do until the Soviets had already annihilated so many German forces that when it went into defensive mode it panicked and simply started running until the Soviets had already rolled through Poland.

BTW: War in the East and it's scenarios packs can be bought on Steam now. Can't wait until they put up War in the West.

Anyways, the answer to the OPs question is "maybe".

End result? At heavy cost, the Germans just manage to reach a line of clearing out the Baltics (no Siege of Leningrad), Smolensk, and a line holding on the Dneipr River. The Crimea is held, much of the Ukraine breadbasket remains in Soviet hands.

Case: Blue reads like another bloodbath with at best the Germans reaching their 1941 stop line in 1942, though without the wild breakthroughs of OTL they are saved from the disasters of Typhoon (less General Winter), the Caucasus, and Stalingrad.

That 1942 is hopelessely optimistic for the Germans as it simply ignores the qualitative and quantitative boon not losing all those military and economic assets east of the D'niepr in '41 are. More plausibly, ITTLs Case Blau turns into Citadel-on-steroids.
 
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Case: Blue reads like another bloodbath with at best the Germans reaching their 1941 stop line in 1942, though without the wild breakthroughs of OTL they are saved from the disasters of Typhoon (less General Winter), the Caucasus, and Stalingrad.

After that, 1943 requires a Not-Hitler Hitler, otherwise its Citadel on steroids, since the Heer won't have suffered the total destruction of whole divisions, corps, and armies. More like ghastly attrition as was suffered against the Western Allies in France 1944-45.

AISI, its good news for the Soviet People, with far less territory controlled by the Nazis, and PERHAPS good news for the Heer, without the disastrous LOCs and supply lines of OTL. A stronger Red Army in terms of manpower earlier in the war, with the manpower pool not as bottomed out by VE-Day as OTL.

I don't like when a POD gives a side a clear advantage (here the USSR) and yet in the long term it has no real positive benefit on their war effort.

The POD in the original thread is huge. It means that Kharkov and much of Ukraine does not fall. This means the USSR has a huge manpower and industrial advantage. The USSR might win the war by the end 1943, having millions of more men not killed o captured by the Nazis and an intact industrial capacity. The Nazis would be fairing so poorly by mid 1942 that by the time the US gets serious in the war, Torch might be in France instead of Africa and the British 8th army will take Africa on their own.
 
The invasion of the Soviet Union was necessary, for both practical and ideological reasons. Germany was running behind on its payments for M-R Pact shipments, which they needed to keep their war machine running. And the situation where Stalin held Germany's war effort by the balls couldn't continue forever. Ideologically Hitler viewed the Soviet Union as the home of "Jewish-Bolshevism" and the place where the German people would finally gain Lebensraum. This invasion was one of Hitler's goals from almost the very start, and I doubt he'd let practical considerations like strength get in his way (this is Hitler we're talking about).
 
Did this have anything to do with why Germany didn't put its economy on a war footing until it was too late?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Did this have anything to do with why Germany didn't put its economy on a war footing until it was too late?
This is largely a myth - Germany was actually on a war footing earlier than other nations, it's just that it took a while for them to get enough access to strategic materials (and build enough machine tools to use them) to get full productivity.

See Tooze, Wages of Destruction.
 
I don't like when a POD gives a side a clear advantage (here the USSR) and yet in the long term it has no real positive benefit on their war effort.

The POD in the original thread is huge. It means that Kharkov and much of Ukraine does not fall. This means the USSR has a huge manpower and industrial advantage. The USSR might win the war by the end 1943, having millions of more men not killed o captured by the Nazis and an intact industrial capacity. The Nazis would be fairing so poorly by mid 1942 that by the time the US gets serious in the war, Torch might be in France instead of Africa and the British 8th army will take Africa on their own.

My own analysis was crippled by the bad game design inherent in the old SPI game. There was a game-balancer called the "Hitler No-Retreat Rule", that on a tactical level forced the Germans to stand and defend no matter what. No "DR" results.

Historical perhaps, but SO disabling for the Germans that players wouldn't use it. The problem then becoming that the Germans built up to such a point in the West that they had an impenetrable line. That, and near-unlimited fortifications and a ridiculously overblown sense of import for river lines. The Rhine being no more (or less:rolleyes:) a barrier than 20 other rivers in Western Europe.

So for studying WWII beyond 1943, SPI's "War In Europe" really sucks.:rolleyes:

That makes just about any axis victory alt.hist ASB.

Agreed
 

Saphroneth

Banned
That makes just about any axis victory althist ASB.

The best hope for the Germans, frankly, is that at least one of their enemies undergoes a collapse of morale.

This is possible but unlikely for the UK (it would represent what amounts to a Peace of Amiens, but world market access is very useful), and possible but unlikely for the USSR (basically Stalin snaps under the stress, STAVKA mounts a coup to avoid him shooting them all, and in the chaos a New Brest Livotsk happens one way or another).
It's basically impossible for the USA.
 
Yes, because regardless of how strong the USSR actually was, Nazi ideology would have insisted that sub-human Bolsheviks would never match the German fighting man in skill and German industry in the ability to produce superior weaponry.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Yes, because regardless of how strong the USSR actually was, Nazi ideology would have insisted that sub-human Bolsheviks would never match the German fighting man in skill and German industry in the ability to produce superior weaponry.
I recall that OTL an objective look would have shown that the USSR was too powerful to risk attacking, but the assumptions were tweaked until an attack was possible... barely.
(The OTL weaknesses were not actually apparent or something that can be assumed - especially "total strategic and tactical surprise".)
 
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