Global Warming?
even if that was their plan they would need the caucus region for the oil!
Why did Operation Barbarossa fail?
- Thread starter Magnus Imperator Rex
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even if that was their plan they would need the caucus region for the oil!
Yes, the Red Army largely failed in presenting a unified defense in 1941 and the first months of the war were particularly disastrous for the unprepared Red Army. But in those 4 million losses are some 2,5 million PoWs and in those tens of thousands of lost aircraft and tanks are broken down vehicles that could not be recovered. Let me be up front about the fact that Barbarossa was a disaster for the Red Army and it suffered immensely from it, but among those 20,000 tanks lost a large portion were broken down tanks that were left to the enemy and an even larger portion were sadly antiquated tank designs from the 1920's (the T-28 was the far and away most common tank in the Red Army in 1941 and it was, even with its' 37mm cannon upgrade, utterly lacking compared to the German designs from the mid-30's). The same is largely true for aircraft, where most VVS aircraft in 1941 were design from the 20's or early 30's and were both utterly antiquated compared to Germany's airforce designed in the mid-30's as well as tragically under-maintained. That's not to say that the numbers aren't awful (because they are), but it puts some perspective on the supposed superiority of Germany, since the Red Army was chiefly equipped with vehicles that were a decade or older, whereas the German vehicles were only half a decade or younger. Many of those Soviet vehicles were not fit for a war in the 40's, which is why they were lost in such great numbers.
However, as the defenses of Kiev, Leningrad and Moscow, just to name a few, showed, the Red Army could still put up one hell of a fight when its' leadership got their act together, when they got the supplies they needed and got half a chance to organize a defense. Leningrad was supposed to be taken by early September, yet it never fell. Kiev was supposed to fall in a week, yet held on for a month. That Germany lost 1/4th of its' initial strength on the Eastern Front should tell you that the Red Army did not go quietly in those first months of the war, no matter how much the Red Army itself suffered. That German officers themselves lamented how Barbarossa cost them "the best of their army" because they lost veterans from previous campaigns should say enough about what the Red Army actually did in the fall and winter of 1941.
That's not to say that the Red Army performed well, because apart from a few cases, like those I mentioned above, they didn't. It does say however that the Red Army fought ferociously and that it managed to disrupt the German plans and bleed the German army enough that Germany could never fully capitalize on their successes in Barbarossa. Had the Red Army not fought as stubbornly as it did Germany might have taken Leningrad and Moscow, Kiev might have fallen faster and the entire war might have ended differently. Keep in mind that the primary reason the Germans had to stop in front of Moscow was because their front line units were depleted from constant fighting. Had the Red Army not fought tenaciously all the way up to that point, Germany could have been in a better position to launch a quick attack.
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But the focus was to grab the Caucus oil fields.
I've never understood why the Germans didn't roll up to the Volga and Don rivers, and then just surround enough of Stalingrad to keep it bottled up, bomb the bridges, and keep air superiority over the rivers to hinder the movement of Soviet stuff while other forces turned south to grab the oil fields.
Of course, it would have been easier to run Case Blue in general if the coast of the Black Sea was properly secured by December of 1941 so the Italians could ship desperately needed supplies through there instead of moving that stuff by rail and truck. The logistics difficulties were substantial.
The only chance of this succeeding was to establish a defence line of Don and Volga. And guess which city sits at the narrowest point between the two rivers.
They did. It wasn't enough. The Soviets counter-attacking from both the north and from inside the city.
There wasn't one to bomb.
They tried. The Soviets contested and moved more stuff at night.
The Italians had trouble supplying their divisions across the pond in Africa. They were not going to handle an entire Panzer Army on top of that.
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Yes, but we're talking about establishing a defensive line along the rivers, not pissing away the 6th Army in a large urban offensive. As long as the other lines north and south of the city are secure and on the river, there's no reason to get suckered into a massive urban combat.
If you are talking about Operation Uranus with regards to the counter-attacks from north and south, the Germans had invested so much into Stalingrad proper that the other portions of the line were too weak.
Did I hallucinate pontoon bridges used by the Soviets at Stalingrad, in addition to river barges? Or am I getting mixed up with the German pontoon bridges?
Yes, but until the weather turned, they were enjoying some success. More air power applied at that location would have made a difference.
In fairness to the Regia Marina, they were trying to supply North Africa with Malta more or less interdicting half the potential routes. The RN was literally in their backyard; the failure to take Malta in the opening 24 hours of the war ruined logistics of North Africa for the next couple of years. If the Black Sea was secured, it would have been much easier to ship things to the Black Sea ports. Even if the RN wanted to help, they would have to sail into waters held tightly by the Axis and Axis air power to interdict the convoys. That would have been far more dangerous than playing tag with Italian convoys off the coast of Libya.
And the Italians don't have to supply the entire Panzer army. Even some help would have been great. How many times were German and Axis forces waiting for fuel for days at a time during the advance towards Baku, never mind the fighting around Stalingrad.
And where that air would come from? Materialize out of thin air? Come from Africa? Other parts of the Eastern front?
Other parts of the Eastern Front. Although I suppose you could rob air power from North Africa, too. I understand there are trade offs here, but I consider them worthwhile to make. If we don't get the oil, even Hitler says it's over.
I'd rather have a protracted air campaign over Stalingrad with army forces bottling up the city than pushing into the city.
I figure once you start pushing into the city, you are committed to taking it. But it will take too long and cost too much and distract from the push to the south. The historical Germans during Case Blue aren't trying to grab VPs to "win" the war like in HOI3. They are just trying to grab the oil.
I suppose this is where someone says, "None of these plans are feasible; Germany was already doomed." I would agree, but I like my chances better this way than the historical outcome.
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Because Stalingrad was a logistical hub that was well-suited for launching counter-attacks. Not taking Stalingrad but merely "containing" it would have resulted in lots of German troops getting encircled when the attack from the Stalingrad area eventually was launched. For German troops to operate safely in Caucasus the military threat that Stalingrad posed as had to be neutralized, which meant taking Stalingrad proper.
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Since Stalingrad was the large infrastructure hub at the narrowest point between the Volga and Don, so capturing wit was a necessity, otherwise it was simply a dangerous bridgehead.
The Soviet counter-attacks started in September, were constantly putting pressure on the Germans. They had to either retreat and give up the area or take the city to free up those divisions.
The soviets did set up some small pontoon bridges, but they were basically pedestrian only. Useful, but not critical. They were bombed several times, but easily repaired.
The Germans already invested the bulk of the bomber force at Stalingrad. They could not apply any more, without denying it to other areas of the front.
Had the UK fallen to Operation Sealion it could have been a major factor in the defeat of the USSR. No UK means no safe crossing through the Atlantic to Lend Lease to Murmansk. No proper British government operating and all the government in exile leaders would have lost their provisional HQ. This would mean that Iraq's Axis Coup d'etat would have not been defeated by British forces and that North Africa could have fallen thus blocking the Suez Canal and obtaining more access to oil through Iraq. Also the UK falling would probably mean no Tizard Mission arriving to the US, maybe even falling to German hands granting them modern radar technology capabilities. With a defeated North Africa perhaps Italy would have had more free troops to mobilize and attack Greece with maybe not needing Germany's help thus Operation Barbarossa starting in April as originally planned. Perhaps even if Germany had the Magnetron 12 from Britain they would have sent Italy and Japan a copy which would have helped a lot and maybe Japan would have had a large advantage over the US in the Pacific Theater thus blocking off Lend Lease from Vladivostok and Iran.
Take the oil? And how would you transport it from the Caucasus? Via a non-existant oil pipeline? Non-existant tankers? Trucks? Overwhelmed rail lines? All you can do is deny Soviets 2/3 of their oil supply.
Because the Soviets counted their casualties differently. All the way to 1944 Soviet losses were higher than the Germans if you look at the totals but Soviet losses included sick and minor wounds. German losses meanwhile counted primarily permanent losses - dead and seriously wounded only - and as noted many, many times already these figures were severely understated with the leading expert Overmanns thinking the total casualty count is off by at least 1 million dead.
The kill ratios were simply never a good measure of how both armies performed. The German Army had fewer men, but it had more ammunition and even fuel all the way to 1943. Hence a lot of the German "kill ratio" was mere stat-padding; encouraged in the Cold War by a delusional NATO thinking there would be a conventional ground war. It's no coincidence that the US Army fought Vietnam with the kill rate mindset (that proved disastrously incapable of winning the war) when they and the rest of NATO became so obsessed with the Wermacht fanfiction in the Eastern Front.
This isn't a hard concept to understand. Even videogamers who kill AFK enemies understand this is stat-padding and not any real measure of skill.
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Because there just weren't enough forces to do all of the above and go into the Caucasus to begin with. That's why they overstretched the Romanians to begin with, who got massacred when the Soviets launched the counter-offensive.
If Case Blue had been a spoiling attack, then it could have been judged as a great success - surprise was achieved and a lot of Soviet armies were shot up. The problem was that the plan wasn't for a spoiling attack. It was instead premised on nearly doubling the length of an already stretched frontline followed by an assault up one of the world's greatest mountain ranges. That plan was so insane that the Soviets couldn't believe that the Germans would even consider it; which is why they got so surprised by the initial Case Blue offensive to begin with.
Barges, towed through the Black Sea and then up through the Danube. That said that implies the neutralization of the Soviet Black Sea fleet - which everyone forgets but actually performed rather well - and that would require large-scale control of most of the Caucasus to deny the Black Sea Fleet any port to operate out of.
The bigger issue really was production restoration. The Germans actually took Maikop which was one of the largest oil cities in the USSR, but they only coaxed 10 barrels of oil per day out of the facility. The Soviets basically blew up everything and poured concrete down the wells. Plans to restore production proved farcical. The Germans could only spare something like 30 engineers - many of whom were murdered by partisans after their arrival - and none of them had any equipment to begin with since all the existing drilling bits were already working 24/7 in Germany/Romania and no additional equipment could be had since they had imported most of it from America before the war.
Turns out Hitler and his sycophantic generals might have wanted to think about their oil production gear before they started drawing arrows on a map.
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SU counted losses as permanent and non-permanent. Non-permanent (or sanitary) losses were those sick, injured or wounded, who were returned to duty. Permanent were those, who were not, and included KIA, MIA, and those discharged due to severity of their wounds.
Germans were very imaginative with how they counted their losses. First, they only counted the Germans, and not loads of other nationalities they had in Wehrmacht ranks (Czechs, Poles, etc). Then, those wounded who died of their wounds, but were who were transffered out of their units to higher echelon hospitals, were not counted as dead - just as wounded. I am sure they had other ways of hiding the truth.
If the UK has fallen in Sea Lion, then next most obvious target would be SU. This time Stalin would have been prepared. Prepared Red Army means no successful Barbarossa, no 3 million POWs, no 1 million losses within first 6 months of war. Main reason Barbarossa succeeded to reach Moscow was unpreparedness of Soviet Union.
Would that be guaranteed to be true? Everything points to Stalin trusting the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact at least for the most part.
If Germany sensed that the USSR felt an attack was coming and that the Soviets would bee organizing themselves then perhaps they wouldn't have attacked or would have done something else.
Side note: Also Franco told Hitler he'd join the Axis if UK were to fall. Perhaps a combination of UK, Spain, half of France, Italy, Germany, and others would have persuaded Portugal to join in too.
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Stalin was counted on MR pact and Hitler being busy with Britain. This was the only situation Red Army was not prepared. When Barbarossa begins Stalin couldn`t even believe it and ordered not to attack without really knowing. Red Army artillery doesn`t have ammunition, planes are parked neatly almost like bomb me targets, divisions are in peace time strength etc. Within a first few days of campaign Soviet command structure was like paralyzed. Germans used this confusion and shock to the maximum and reached Minsk in a week, POW-ed like 3 millions within couple of months.
Barbarossa success was not hinged entirely on the Wehrmacht, it was more like Stalin and Soviet Union allowed themselves to be invaded in this manner. We can say Hitler really stabbed Stalin in the back.
Barbarossa success was not hinged entirely on the Wehrmacht, it was more like Stalin and Soviet Union allowed themselves to be invaded in this manner. We can say Hitler really stabbed Stalin in the back.
In addition Romanian refineries were maxed out. Even if the oil reached Romania they can't do anything with it. The Danube oil raft fleet (the only sensible way to ship the oil) was also at maximum capacity so even if the oil reached Europe it can't be moved to Germany.
The German military was stunningly good at winning victories, but the German state was stunningly bad at waging war.
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