German-Soviet Front

[mighij]

Meh, people really overestimate what the Russian army was. The Germans didn't come to a standstill because of any Russian resistance, it was a combination of launching their attack too late in the year (end of summer), not having winter equipment, and constant changes in High Command's focus for the campaign. The Russian army circa Operation Barbarossa was a joke. ESPECIALLY if you attack well before the starting date for Operation Barbarossa, as the Russian military would still be recovering from the officer purges.

Then why was the Wehrmacht already in a critical situation before the onset of Winter?

The General Staff's own assement of combat effectiveness in early november 1941 was 65% for infantry and 35% for Panzers.
They had lost (KIA, MIA, WIA) more then 1 in 5 soldiers during the 5 first months. Many of the more experienced frontline troops had to replaced by reservists and recent recruits. They lost nearly half their tanks (TL and OL) and 1/5 of their motorized equipment.

Don't forget that Nazi Germany have had only minor losses for several major successes. Between september 1939 and June 1941 they conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourd, France, Yugoslavia, Greece while losing roughly 200.000 men. (50k-60K KIA). When they invaded the USSR they lost 800k in only 5 months. Althought the losses they inflicted on the red army were greater in actual numbers, the USSR had a far greater ability to sustain prolonged warfare then Nazi Germany.

I think it's quite disrespectful and ignorant to claim that Germans didn't come to a standstill because of any Russian resistance.

 

[Suor]

For Germany it must be a race. If they slow down or halted its game over. Soviet Giant awakened and pissed off.

 

[shri]

War had changed so much in the time between Sun Tzu and Hitler that I don't think any quotes have a point. If Wu had advanced as far into Chu as Germany did to the Soviet Union, the Soviets would've folded.

I will give another quote-
The more things change, the more they remain the same.

 

[Shatterfury]

Red Army started pushing the Wehrmacht back BEFORE any meaningful amount of LL reached the front-line. That's proven. The SPEED of Soviet advance is the variable for LL.

Pushing the Germans from the gates of Moscow is one thing, pushing them back to Berlin in another.
I don`t know how it would have turned out without but arguing that USSR could take on Germany by itself, without LL, will take a lot of research.

 

[Uniform764]

Germans stopping short in 1941 - how short? No Vyazmya kessel? That's 650,000 soviet troops who are not POWs.

Around that time period. Eliminating the pocket and then digging in to resupply/reinforce, or perhaps even falling back slightly to pre prepared lines for example, shelter the troops from the cold, try and improve the supply lines ready for a spring offensive (Case Blue shows us one was possible).

There was a two week pause shortly after Vyazmya anyway. At the start of November the Wehrmacht waited for the mud to freeze and the supply situation to become less critical, so that would be a reasonable point at which they could have dug in and postponed the offensive. It can't have gone worse than flogging troops and machines to the limit through November and December to reach the Kremlin

I am of course speaking with the benefits of 20/20 hindsight, I can see why the commanders on the day did what they did

 

[Suor]

So many german revisionists in thread))) USSR would crush Third Reich even without LL or Allies Second Front. Yes, Soviet Union would suffer even greater losses, but still be in shape to end this war in own terms year or two later in Berlin. Deal with it.

Also, I don't recall thousands of Stuarts, Matildas, Valentines in Eastern Front. Couple of hundreds shitty brittish and american tanks don't outweights endless thousands of Т34 (they still standing in yout sities by the way, not Shermans). LL was drop in the ocean.

 

[Jongmaster]

Pushing the Germans from the gates of Moscow is one thing, pushing them back to Berlin in another.
I don`t know how it would have turned out without but arguing that USSR could take on Germany by itself, without LL, will take a lot of research.

All things being equal the most important item LL gave the Soviets was foodstuffs, and most of that was given to the Soviets in 41-42. Can't have the mighty Russian bear fighting the good fight if it is to hungry to move. A lot of people forget the importance of foodstuffs and while it isn't as flashy as planes, tanks, trucks, ect. it is every bit as important. So without Lend Lease I would wager that the war would have turned out drastically different. I don't think you need to do a lot of research to come to this conclusion.

And before anyone jumps down my throat, I am not saying the Soviets would have just sat on their asses, I am just making a reasonable assumption that without LL they would not have reached Berlin before the US/UK

Also, I don't recall thousands of Stuarts, Matildas, Valentines in Eastern Front. Couple of hundreds shitty brittish and american tanks don't outweights endless thousands of Т34 (they still standing in yout sities by the way, not Shermans). LL was drop in the ocean.

Dude there were 4000 Shermans sent to the USSR that is like a fairly large contribution

 

[Suor]

Dude there were 4000 Shermans sent to the USSR that is like a fairly large contribution

And how many T34 (only T34) was produced in wartime by USSR?))))

PS: Its like modern war with ISIS))))) Russia and USA sent hundreds of aircrafts to bomb terrorist and also Dutch or Canada who sent whole 4 jets! Victory now is certain!

 

[Jongmaster]

And how many T34 (only T34) was produced in wartime by USSR?))))

Around 80,000. My point still stands, on the Eastern front there was a 1/20 chance that any medium tank you saw was a Sherman, which is a good tank by most standards (and some would even say a better tank than the t34, but that is an entirely different discussion)

 

[Uniform764]

And how many T34 (only T34) was produced in wartime by USSR?))))

PS: Its like modern war with ISIS))))) Russia and USA sent hundreds of aircrafts to bomb terrorist and also Dutch or Canada who sent whole 4 jets! Victory now is certain!

In total the UK and US sent around 12,000 tanks. Fag packet maths says the Russians produced around 110-120,000 tanks during the war, so around 1/10th of their armour was LL sourced. With Russian armour prioritised to the Moscow front, it was more common in secondary theatres. For example in the Caucuses foreign armour made up nearly half the Soviet strength in 41.

It didn't win the war for th Soviets, but to call it insignificant is just a lie

 

[Suor]

Around 80,000. My point still stands, on the Eastern front there was a 1/20 chance that any medium tank you saw was a Sherman, which is a good tank by most standards (and some would even say a better tank than the t34, but that is an entirely different discussion)

So, if USA sent 80 jets in Iraq and Dutch 4 their - it also be 1/20 ratio. It is large contribution? For Dutch - maybe. For USA - hardly. Same for USSR.

 

[Jongmaster]

So, if USA sent 80 jets in Iraq and Dutch 4 their - it also be 1/20 ratio. It is large contribution? For Dutch - maybe. For USA - hardly. Same for USSR.

That's not an equal comparison in any stretch of the imagination (when considering the US has 150+ jets bombing ISIS). The US made 50,000 Shermans, and they gave the USSR 8% of the Shermans made. So all things being equal I don't think your situation of the Dutch giving the US 4 fighters (of which they would more than likely be of US origin) is a good comparison

 

[Opanashc]

In total the UK and US sent around 12,000 tanks.

Until Shermans - of such quality, that Stalin directly asked them to send trucks instead of piece of sh*t tanks.

 

[MGL 86]

Lend Lease helped Soviets. But not really decisive factor in ultimate victory.

 

[GundamMerc]

Look at all these Soviet lovebirds. And they call me a revisionist.

 

[GundamMerc]

I have relatives who survived that war. They all say, that everybody around them was determined to fight the Germans. Not a large selection, but quite definitive.
PS Purge was a drop in the bucket compared to expansion of the 1939-41. 10,000 of officers were fired from the army in1937-38, but in 1941 there was a shortage of ~80,000 officers. You saying, that a shortage of only 70,000 would have significantly changed anything? Or are you going to play "best and brightest" card? That is bullocks. In fact, percentage of officers and generals with college education INCREASED due to the purge. How about them apples?

You're a person on the internet claiming these things. Nice try. Also, you realize that the purge was still ongoing during this time, and only exacerbated an existing issue. Also, human memory is fickle at best, and your relatives will likely remember the more positive memory (coming together to fight a common foe) over the more negative (oppression by own government). It's the same reason why people constantly say old music is best, even though over a specific time period there is an equal amount of crappy music made as in another time period, it just gets filtered out by our minds. There are many studies on this phenomenon and it has been shown to exist as a societal bias.

 

[MGL 86]

Look at all these Soviet lovebirds. And they call me a revisionist.

At least I didn't present ridiculous claim like Soviet offensive in Manchuria destroyed Japan while some like to claim how USA saved the world

 

[MGL 86]

Ohoh. Someone even started a thread about why Western allied AI is the most important part of the game

 

[GundamMerc]

Ohoh. Someone even started a thread about why Western allied AI is the most important part of the game

*facepaw* While I agree it's important to have good Western Allied AI, I'd say having good Axis and Soviet AI is extremely important so that the war isn't over by the time the Allies get involved (barring player interference).

I think that with the AI running things on Historical path specifically, the game should be balanced to be mostly a replay of historical events outside of naval invasions happening in different places than real-life (because of the lack of a front in that case). This is of course without any input from a player that might push things into an ahistorical path.

 

[SDSkinner]

So with that in mind and either way the Germans would have lost whether on the offense or defense, perhaps the only thing Hitlers invasion did was beat up the Red Army enough so that by the time it got to Berlin they weren't going to overrun the rest of Western Europe.

Stalin was as wily as the German dictator and the Red Army was the tool to free Westernn Europe.
Perhaps the most revealing of these speeches is Stalin's address to a Politburo meeting on August 19, 1939. Delivered to an intimate circle of associates, it shows his astute but utterly cynical evaluation of political forces, and reveals his cunning foresight. (To this writer's knowledge, no American historian has yet taken public notice of this speech.

You are misreading what Stalin was planning. The idea was a rerun of the Russian Revolution and 1919, but this time with Soviet troops strong enough to support the revolutionaries (unlike previously where the Bavarian and Hungarian SSRs were crushed). Stalin vastly overestimated the inevitability of the communist cause; he appears to have originally agreed to democratic rule in Eastern Europe because he thought the communist party would win there (and proceeded to coup and fix when that turned out not to be the case).