10. Assault
While it was perhaps the last move one could expect from the SPD-heavy cabinet currently in charge of the Weimar Republic, the
Reichsheer was fully mobilized once more, early in the year 1941. There are debates as to the reasoning behind this move, but the most common theory is that the government ordered it in response to Soviet posturing. Joseph Stalin had never forgiven the Reich for taking Poland and not letting him in on the spoils. Russians, and Georgians as the case may be, had long memories. The Soviet Union had never forgiven Poland for taking so much 'Russian' territory in the early '20s. The main reason for the secret negotiations Stalin had craved with the Republic was a desire to regain this land.
With that land now securely under a German-controlled Polish Republic, there was no way that the Soviets could get it without a full-scale war. Such was believed out of reach in most circles in the Reich. The Soviet military was a joke they said, crippled by Stalin's paranoid purges. Other members of the Cabinet and OKR had different, and perhaps more long-term views. It was only a matter of time until the junior officers remaining from the Purge trained and restored the Red Army. Germany could never hope to compete, even with the Pact behind her, against a fully equipped and well-trained Red Army.
In addition, there were threats going back and forth from both the Baltic States and Finland, with the Soviets. Stalin wanted the Finn's Karelian territories, and the entirety of the Baltics. These states refused to budge, and the Soviets grew more and more forceful with every message. Admiral Canaris' spy network indicated
that much.
And thus, the
Heer was mobilized...defensively, admittedly.
This defensive mobilization was still enough to frighten the paranoid French leadership. They well knew that Alsace-Lorraine was considered a core territory of Germany, under the name of
Elsäss-Lothringen. They truly believed that Weimar would eventually come for this territory in a 'New 1871'. Belgium felt much the same about Eupen, but made no moves to draw German attention themselves.
As it turned out, the Reich had no intentions of fighting France. Fighting the Allies was not needed...yes, it burned to lose core territory. But it was not worth a war with the leading
Democratic powers. The German people would never support such a war. They had only supported the Polish War, because Poland had been a Republic in name only. Fighting France, even over core territory, would never pass.
Nonetheless, the French move necessitated leaving a significant force in the West Wall, in the event the French made the first move.
In the end, the Great Staring Contest as it was called derisively, was broken in the East, not the West. None truly know who broke the peace first. All that is known, is Polish and Soviet forces clashed near Minsk. There were attempts to downplay the event, but Stalin took this act of 'blatant Imperialist aggression' as the opportunity he had needed for a justifiable war against the Weimar Republic and her Polish puppet. War was declared on April 1 1941, leading some to call it the April Fools War.
Regardless of what one called it, it developed another name in the
Heer...Barbarossa. The name of a plan for a strike against Russia devised by OKR...now put into practice.
As Operation Barbarossa began, German and Polish troops began to cross into Soviet territory...specifically into Belarus and the Ukraine. In both cases, the time of the year was an advantage for the attacking forces, more so than the defenders. The highly mobile German forces had the edge, in that neither the mud of early Spring, nor General Winter, could help the Soviets at the moment. The terrain was almost perfect for Panzer warfare, excepting the Pripyat Marshes in the center of the line. This seeming problem, of having a wide open portion of the line in Central Poland, perhaps helped more than it hindered the German/Polish advance.
For it allowed greater concentrations of men and Panzers in the north and south...and revealed something that none in OKR, even in their wildest dreams, had ever considered.
The expectations of having to fight a massive number of Soviet soldiers, the infamous Russian Swarm, did not come to pas. In fact, outside of a very few exceptions, the German/Polish forces had
numerical superiority. Even the town of Minsk, capital of the Belorussian SSR, was defended by a single meager, and undermanned, division. By contrast, the German force was seven fully-equipped divisions. Further south it was slightly different, where the Germans and Poles were instead fighting with 5 divisions to the Soviet 3. But even there, it was the opposite of what planners expected.
Most plans anticipated a long slugging match against masses of Russians. Where it would be needed for troops to be shuffled around, especially the Panzers, to break through relatively weaker points in the lines and encircle the stronger defenders. Such plans were in place for Minsk herself. And yet...
They didn't seem to be needed. Minsk fell within a day, and the same was true for large portions of the front line. No matter where the Germans and Poles fought, the Reds fled. It was not anticipated, and the
Heer had to rapidly adjust plans.
Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, by any definition. Hundreds more Russians died than Germans or Poles, as the surprising fact began to filter back to Berlin. With the knowledge that, against all odds, the
Heer had numerical superiority, new orders came through. The troops would move forward quickly, to encircle what few Soviet forces were on the border. If these divisions could be destroyed, it would provide a gap in Soviet resources. The running assumption was that the main part of the Red Army was on the Chinese border, worried that the one nation that could throw
more men at a problem would join the war. After all, was China not allied to Germany?
This would cost the Reds. It left their Western Front grievously weak, and enabled the Germans to push further and faster than would otherwise have been possible.
Thousands of Russians were killed or captured, as some of their precious armored formations were surrounded with the weakened infantry. These surrendered divisions revealed two things:
1. The Soviet forces were demoralized and lead by officers far too inexperienced to fight the much more hardened German and Polish forces. Stalin's purges had spread further and wider than even Canaris had discovered. Red Army formations were ill-organized, and far to easy to shatter. It was possible the crack Siberian forces were better off. But if they were, it would matter little. They were in Siberia, and all it would take was asking Chiang Kai-Shek to join in the War, and there would be no way Stalin could pull these troops back without leaving his Eastern flank exposed.
2. They were ill-equipped. While the Germans were phasing in newer machine-pistol designs in addition to early-production semi-automatic rifles, the Soviets primarily used old Imperial Russian Mosin-Nagant rifles. Modernized admittedly, but still old rifles. The Poles were better equipped, as older German stores had long-since been transferred to their former foes. With the so-called
'Sturmgewehr' in advanced stages of testing, the gap would only increase even if Soviet industrial might could presumably reequip their forces with the new SVT-40 rifle and the PPD-40 submachinegun.
The Red Army's armored forces were further behind. They used the BT series of tanks, for the most part, with the T-26 light being another common design. While the former were fast and agile designs, well-capable of beating Panzer II tanks, they were no match for the newer Panzer III and IV. There were rumors of a Soviet medium design, superior even to the Panzer IV with its sloped frontal armor. These were rumors however...other than a handful of confirmed battles with these 'T-34' tanks and the equally rare KV-1 and 2, the Soviets used old and weak armor. Much like with the small arms, the Reds would need their industry to build more of their currently rare designs, should they want to win. Especially as a new tank, codenamed 'Panther' began testing in the German heartland.
Perhaps seeing the Russian collapse as a chance to finally secure their independence (and, perhaps, gain the rest of Karelia) the Finns petitioned to join the Hamburg Pact. This would normally not have been considered. The Finns were brave...but entirely too sparsely-populated to help much. However, Canaris came through...and found out something interesting.
Karelia, down to even Leningrad, was nearly undefended as the Soviets rushed to plug the line in front of Moscow. If the Finns were to join...the Soviets would have a nearly-undefended Northern Front, wide-open to the Finns. Needless to say, Finland was admitted to the Pact...albeit not called into the war.
Yet.
The combination of all these events lead to a
Reichsheer and
Wojska Lądowe (Polish Land Forces) that had pushed deep into Russia and Ukraine- and completely overrun Belarus -by the time a single month had gone by. The Soviets were collapsing...and none were sure if they could recover.
_______________________________________________
I'll be honest. I don't know
what was up with the Soviet AI. I don't know if not having Molotov-Ribbentrop (and by extension no Baltics/Winter War) really messed up their programming or what. But regardless of the reason, they
really failed HARD. It's telling when I have numerical superiority, despite my Glorious Naval Expansion (TM).
