The Germans in Operation Barbarossa pretty much got a fairly ideal run at things, they mounted a surprise attack against a really poorly placed Red Army that was ideally placed in very forward positions without even rudimentary defensive positions, aircraft lined up to be destroyed etc they got a massive free shot at a Red Army lying down with it's throat exposed. For most of the opening months, the Soviets made almost every mistake imaginable and the Germans got a dream run. Trouble is, the Germans were never prepared in the long run for a war of attrition with the Soviet Union. Once they started to face double the Red army reserves and heavier resistance in more and more battles, they were doomed.
@@jaywhite38 Indeed, imagine being in the Germans shoes in December 1941, you're approaching the gates of Moscow, confident from victory upon victory, high morale etc then suddenly you hear a report from the German high command that says *"THE SIBERIANS ARE COMING!"* And then before you know it over a million battle-hardened winter soldiers from the Far East ( who had already defeated the Japanese before) are launching a massive counter offensive... the same troops who you thought were well and truly beaten on the borders a few months earlier, only they've returned for revenge and they are now kicking your arses 100 miles back. Must have thrown the Germans off guard big time. So much for kicking in the door and the whole structure will collapse eh?
It went south when Hitler stopped the drive on Moscow to take Kiev. It cost him 2 months he couldn't afford to lose. and he made the same stupid mistake again in '42.
Disagree. Most of the industries were already east. Even the Moscow underground was wired for demolition. It would have been a setback, but by that time the Soviets had powerful allies. The outcome was really never in doubt. The Germans overstepped their capabilities
Even by Yelnya, the 7th Panzer Division was down to 5 Mark III tanks, 2 Mark II tanks, 0 Mark IV tanks -- the astounding reduction entirely due to wear and tear. The technology back then, could not tolerate the sand and grit. Air filtration was based on motor oil, which had to be discarded after so many hours, as in every night. Consequently, the mechanics skipped oil changes in the crankcase -- because they were ordered to. (Fundamentally, by Guderian, Hurrying Heinz!) Said engines started seizing up. While doing so, their fuel consumption, per km, went wild. The Krauts also -- to an astounding degree -- ignored the centrality of advancing their railways. The gauge change was a snap, no problem moving one rail closer to the other by a few inches. The absolute killer, read the accounts, was that the Reds were destroying every dang last trestle -- with the critical ones -- because of their number -- being less than 10 meters across. These were made entirely of wood, so easy to dynamite. The Nazis, in their wisdom, never stockpiled anywhere near enough seasoned wood to replace that which would inevitably be destroyed in front of their advancing legions. The Nazis started stripping railway assets from France, Belgium, Holland PDQ. What else could they do? Did I mention the number of sleepers/cross-ties that the Reds destroyed? The ploughed/plowed them into shreds. (That tactic dates from the American Civil War.) Mud Season, Winter Season was worse for the Krauts -- because the Reds had destroyed all of the railways before retreating. So, the Red Army still had trains able to roll all the way to the front -- so long as the Luftwaffe could be hazarded. (Not always the case.) Because of Luftwaffe attacks, the Reds really did run critically low on rolling stock, but they still had their railway. In 1942 the absurdity of the Kraut 'plan' was to ignore railway advancement. THIS is the real reason that the Krauts lost at Stalingrad. They couldn't even bring up their stuff by rail. In all the key fighting, their stuff was being trucked up some 500 km! (road km, crappy, unpaved km.) The Guderian fantasy died when the ENTIRE Ju-52 fleet became grounded while landing on unprepared farmland. Yes, laden cargo planes lose their landing gear when this is attempted. The USAAF always prepared its strips -- usually with landing mats, too -- but not always. (See: first strips in Africa.) Even after the war, Nazi generals omitted this ultra fiasco, which utterly terminated Plan A. THIS fiasco is the reason that Adolf even flew out to the front -- and then ordered his boys to go north and south. It was because of logistics. The Reds had not destroyed the rails going north and south -- because the Reds were still using them -- whereas the Krauts kept ignoring movement to the north or south.
That's only the operational at one point in time. Operational units fluxuated at all times as they were repaired. You need a larger snapshot of the situation over a period of months to get the real view of things. But since the Germans were still able to advance clearly the number of panzers operational was of limited significance all things considered. Nigel Askey suggested the main striking power was not the panzers, but the motorized infantry, with the panzers as useful support.
A small fact about the German wargames that Mr Harward is talking about at (7:25) is that they were lead by Paulus. It's not very important but it's one of those small historical "aha!" moments where one of the most famous "victims" of German overreach was also the one who predicted they were overreaching.
Lend Lease is highly important in that an early shipment of machine tools to replace those they bought from the US in the 1920's and are worn to the bone, makes a significant different in production capacity. Everything else is a nice bonus, and the real stuff doesn't really arrive until late 1942 and into 1943, where it can make a marked contribution.
@@Shad0wack It takes a load off the Soviets and allows them to focus production even more. By 1943 they have things more or less sorted out production-wise, and things like US and British/Canadian trucks allow the Soviets to build more SU-76 for example since that was often devolved to truck factories. The Red Army would be on the offensive no matter what, it probably would have been a wider spread of "home-grown" equipment Lend Lease is a significant bonus for the Soviets, but we walk a thin line between the Allied Cold War narrative "We supplied them everything they needed to survive and help win the war" vs the "Lend Lease ? Never heard of her, comrade." Soviet negation of LL. You shouldn't forget that the Soviets launch offensives from 1941 onward. Lend Lease in late 1943 is a large volume that the Soviets have trouble moving to the front, some Lend Lease equipment delivered in 1942 only reaches the front in 1944 or even 1945 because like the Germans before Moscow, anything that isn't a weapon, ammo or other vital essentials doesn't make it to the front lines like winter coats. The US delivers something like a million pairs of boots but only a fraction are actually sent to the front lines and a slightly larger percentage are sent to training and staging areas where new units are being equipped. When Moscow does greenlight moving stocks to the front line in the hopes that it will help with the great offensives of 1944, it still takes a while for equipment to arrive and it's only near the end we do see lots of Russians in nifty new boots and other equipment. Something the leadership soon picks up as they make contact with the Allies and units that make use of too much Allied gear and rotated away as fast as possible, often swapping them with units with equipment worn to the bone leading Allied observers to note that the Soviets look pretty ragged and that it must have been a very close fight. Lend Lease is a boost for the Soviets, not in the way many think it did, it wasn't their key to victory, it just gave them more elbow room and reserves of useful kit as well as vital supplies like the aforementioned machine tools, which help increase production and make better equipment. Another major help are ball-bearings, rubber, even food to some degree.
@@rotwang2000 LL was HUGE! The USSR was able to mobilise peasant farmers en masse because they got all their food from Canada! Very few guys needed down on the farm. In the critical period of late '41, UK LL might well have tipped the balance between further German advance and holding the line. I remember reading 14% of Russian army tanks in Dec 41 were British supplied. USSR was politically shaky at that time and even slightly better Axis progress at that time might have lead to a coup. Many of the later Russian offensives were only possible due to trucks & oil supplied primarily by the US. The Soviet armies had mobility while the Axis ones did not; especially true of Bagration.
@@coffeebreakchat2450 Exactly I actually think barbarossa was a close run thing. Not because a complete military victory was likely(i don't like historical determinism but a snowball has a better chance in hell than panzers headed to the pacific.) but because IF things had gone just a bit differently Stalin may have been deposed. Or he may have been pressured in to making peace. From what i've read they made an offer to the Germans in 41 to give them Ukraine and the baltics for peace but Germany did not respond. I mean it's not that crazy that in August-September after the massive defeats all along the front they'd look to peace out. It was never that close militarily but poltically yeah it was pretty close. I also heard a story where some men came to get stalin after the first weeks of the invasion and he thought they were there to arrest him. Im not 100% its true. But I could believe it and I think it illustrates my point.
The war in Russia was not something that Germany was ever going to win. It was more about whether the Soviets were going to lose (in other words ,collapse). It was not out of the questions. From what I read, Stalin was surprise he survived politically. The establishment rallied around him rather than throwing him to the wolves. Had this going differently, they may have collapsed. Counting on the enemy giving up is a bad war strategy. It takes victory out of your hands.
Stalin's rule wasn't ever really in question. I meant to include that point but rushed by it. Kotkin shows in his recent biography volume II how Stalin went from dictator to despot. No one was left who would've challenged him. Thus, a political collapse wasn't in the cards either.
@@lascargroup Really? I would argue it was entirely due to Stalin. Unless we want to question the truth around Stalins hiatus to his datcha. From what i've read the Sovjet leadership had to go out there and plead with him to come back. The fact that Stalin himself appeared and held a speech and stayed in Moscow meant a collapse was avoided.
@@lascargroup just because no one challenged him does not necessarily mean they would have rallied around him. Political collapse isn't a simple matter of infighting, it can also just be simple nihilism about the future of the polity.
I remember a discussion between some historians ages ago, mostly from Russia, Belarus, Czech Republic. They all have come to conclusion that Barbarossa could have succeded in one way only: if the Germans decided to treat the population differently and waved the banner of anti communism ( or anti Stalin at least ) and national liberation from the day one then the regime perhaps could have collapsed from within and Germans would get the resources they needed after some form of arrangement. However, the German approach was completely opposite from the day one, so this would not have actually happened.
Another point is that they wargamed the Soviet invasion and knew that ther would be problems in logistics after a 300 kilometer advance and the general who pointed this out was Paulus Finally both Hitler and Halder thought they would conquer the USSR in 4 to 8 weeks and that was because the Soviets would collapse. This would mean the invasion would be over by September1 well before of winter. We know how that worked out.
Hitler was determined that military production should not cut too much into consumer production. Hence Germany was in no way as well equipped as it might have been. In particular, the trucks and their associated logistical tail could have been more heavily invested in. This might just have got the german spearheads further, faster and pose the possibility of a Soviet coup or revolution. Or maybe not!
I's go as far as Germany lost 'Barbarossa' in August 1941. That's when it became clear that logistics were failing (of which the Germans were warned.)and that the operational pace of the respective elements of 'Barbarossa' became stretched too far apart (through lack of discipline of the leading armour and motorized commanders) to allow for a cohesive offensive.
Yep, one could argue that the very invasion plan was too ambitious and optimistic from the start. Sure, hindsight is 20/20 but still, they were aware of the logistical challenges. And still went on with the plan.
Also, the losses in 1939, or in 1940 were high only during the very campaign and pretty low when major operations were not taking place. Attack on France also meant high casualties for the Wehrmacht, but within six weeks it was over. Barbarossa meant that the meatgrinder was not only rolling, but it was rolling weeks and weeks, with no pause at all for a long time. @@Larrymh07
I've long believed that the "Great Patriotic War" ought to be renamed the "Great Existential War." The peoples of the Soviet Union were fighting for survival against an enemy who had declared his intention to exterminate them. Against an enemy that determined, what chance did the Germans ever have?
Only many of the repressed peoples of the Soviet conquest took up arms with fascists to fight the Russian Soviets because they believed it couldn't be as bad as Russian Soviet rule.
The only hope the Germans had to win was to play a political angle as a liberator from Bolshevik-Great Russian tyranny, which their ideology of extermination and enslavement voided that option. They didn't even have the acumen to set up a puppet Russian government, besides alienating their most fervent admirers and past sponsor of their nationalist aspirations, the Ukrainians.
IMO so much of the WW2 German outlook of war with Russia was based on WW1, they really envisioned every encirclement as another Tannenberg and designed their campaign around that assumption. Each time another Russian army fell, dreams of capitulation and a speedy "rail war" would abound, you read it in all the journals, only for hopes to be squashed by constantly increasing resistance and reserves the deeper in Russia they went.
I've wondered how much the German experience in WW1 influenced the campaign in the Soviet Union. All of the German military leaders would have been veterans of WW1. In 1914-18, the French and British armies had held Germany at bay and eventually worn the German military down. Now, in 1940, they had completely defeated France, forced it's surrender, and driven the British back across the Channel; all in just TWO MONTHS, with only a fraction of the losses from WW1. They'd also swept through Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, and Greece. The men leading the German military must have been riding a huge wave of feeling invincible. At the same time, the Soviet military had initially performed poorly in its invasion of Finland in November 1939-March 1940. The Russian military had collapsed in 1917. The military had suffered a purge of its leadership by Stalin. Add in the inherent belief of the racial inferiority of Russians by Nazi ideology, and most of German leadership must have been convinced of another easy victory.
German horses could not digest the grass and fodder in the Ukraine and the Byelorussia. Consequently, German rail transport was carrying massive amounts fodder to keep the horses fed. Fodder and veterinary stores were taking up more volume (not weight) than ammunition and personnel.
On June 6th the German army was forced into invading Greece this meant that the start date for Barbarossa was put back until June 22nd. This time and the troops with their logistics could not be overlooked when we see how close to Moscow that the Germans got. It should also be rembered that the Soviets relied on the Allies to keep fighting. The Soviets produced few trucks during the war but relied on 20 thousand trucks from the Allies. The Soviets also relied on the Allies to feed all their soldiers. German never stood a chance against the Allies but in a straight fight against the Soviets alone they would have prevailed. Only my opinion.
Alan Clark's novel says it all. According to him, before the war even started, the German command knew they only had enough fuel and ammunition for six months of operations. And low and behold, five months after the invasion began, the German offensive sputtered and ran out of steam at the gates of Moscow.
My understanding of Lend Lease was that the Russians weren't impressed by the tanks(though they used them). Planes... they used the P-39 extensively. Mainly... the TRUCKS were a godsend.
Lend and lease was not a big factor the way Americans and Brits like to talk about. Chinese Nationalists both against the Japanese and the Communists during the Chinese Civil War, South Vietnamese military during the Vietnam War , Iraqi military against Isis, Afghan military against the Taliban all got a gazillion of dollars of weapons, ammunition, money and support from the US and the UK against enemies who were way way weaker than Nazi Germany in WWII and guess what? They all ended up losing and losing badly. As a matter of fact most countries who end up receiving US military equipment, money and weapons end up losing their wars even though they have all lost way less men and suffered way less losses than the USSR did WWII. The USSR did not win WWII because of lend and lease. They won because of the shere tenacity, determination, selflessness, sacrifices and devotion of the Soviet soldier.
Don’t know why you mentioned all the others, but 400,000 trucks did have a huge impact. Especially after Stalingrad. It enabled the Soviets to rapidly move troops, taking advantage of weak spots in the German lines.
@@duaneaikins4621 I mentioned them because the Russians did use them, they just weren't impressed by most of it. Any tanks or planes would be valuable if you were fighting a massive conflict. I know they used the Hurricane, but they had to rearm it and the inferior fuel they used caused performance issues.
Complete NON-FACTOR in 1941 when the matter was decided (and the subject of the video, another phony cold war era ideological trope divorced from facts and timeline)
Barbarossa actually _was_ a close-run thing, and that's because war is a chaotic system, where slight changes in the initial conditions result in huge changes later on. A lot of people assume that if the Germans had, say, 15% more forces at the start, it would just mean that the Soviets would take a week or two more to reach Berlin, but it doesn't work like that. It's just as likely to see hordes of German tanks rolling through Moscow. Probably Hitler's worse mistake was sending German troops to Africa: although they were not numerous in terms of personnel, the Afrika Korps absorbed a disproportionate amount of armour, transport assets, and fuel - which might have been enough to shift the balance on the Eastern Front. The second reason why Barbarossa failed is down to the short-sightedness of the German generals, as compared to Hitler. Originally, Hitler wanted to strike for the Ukraine and Caucasus, but Halder sabotaged this logical strategy due to a foolish belief that the Soviets would surrender when their capital was taken, as the French did. This illustrates the fact that in both World Wars, German commanders saw fighting as an end in itself, but were unable to string battles together to win the war. If the Germans had struck towards the south, they might not have captured so many prisoners, but they'd have done far more damage to the Soviet war-effort. Reaching the oil-fields was an entirely practicable objective if they'd devoted the bulk of their mechanised and motorised divisions to the task, and even if the fields had been destroyed, it would still have benefited the Germans since it would put the Russians on a level playing-field where both sides were very short of fuel. The British and Americans could supply a relatively small amount of 100-octane aircraft fuel, but they were totally unable to replace the output of the wells in the Caucasus, since they themselves were sometimes managing on a hand-to-mouth basis. It would also have greatly reduced the importance of Lend-Lease; the Western Allies could send all the trucks they wanted, but they'd be no good without fuel.
A couple of thoughts 1/ They could have started earlier if not for Yugoslavia and Greece, but the consensus I have seen is we are talking 1-2 weeks because of the late spring. 2/ No the USSR wouldnt have collapsed if they had taken Moscow, the main advantage of taking Moscow was that it was the central supply hub, everything ran through it 3/ The main objection I have seen about Barbarossa is that they wanted to much given the forces they had, and the target they shouldnt have gone for is Leningrad. They would have had a much greater chance of success if they had gone for Caucasus and Moscow only. 4/ The only valid criticism that I have read about Hitlers orders was that a lot of Generals, like Guderian, when they didnt go for Moscow after the fall of Smolensk, is that they should have taken a defensive position until the spring because the chnace of reaching Moscow was slim at best.
If one reads Ostkrieg by Fritz, or any other solid book about the Eastern Front, you get a sense of the huge risk taken by Hitler in invading the Soviet Union. One comes away from Fritz with the feeling Barbarossa was launched with less than a 50% chance of success.
@@patrickporter1864 Well. Let's face it, Germany could only win a war against the Sovjet Union in a short war. Planning a war with logistics (the famous "winter clothes") was the same as planning for defeat before the operation even started. The most important point that is avoided by almost every historian is the question around what an alternative would be to what really happened. Once the UK and France declared war on Germany(not the Sovjets for some reason) Europe was going to be Stalins...
@@lightdampsweetenough2065Hitler seemed to believe that if Germany hit the Soviets hard enough, there would be a political collapse similar to 1917 due to the inherent weakness of communism. What he didn’t seem to account for was the fact that (1) the Soviets were much less likely to surrender to a German government that openly talked about committing genocide against them instead of just taking some land, and (2) even if there had been political instability, the Soviet internal security apparatus was far more effective at brutally suppressing dissent than the Russian Empire ever was. Stalin certainly always had designs on Eastern Europe, or at least the parts which the Russian Empire had conquered and then lost in WWI (the Baltic states, Poland, and a few extra bits). I doubt he ever imagined that he would also be able to make most of Central Europe into a Russian colony though. He probably would have backed down had the US kept large forces in Europe immediately after WWII, or even if the US had been more hard-nosed diplomatically as Churchill advised, but Truman was understandably focused on getting troops who had served for 3-4 years either home, or to Japan to finish the war.
The contrast with the Western Campaign in 1940 is instructive. The British and French had a preconceived notion of what the Germans were going to do, and thought they had to send their best troops into Belgium and the Netherlands to keep those nations in the war. Then the Germans attacked, the British and French were wrong-footed, the Dutch and Belgians were taken out of the war anyway, and the Western leadership was ill-equipped to salvage the situation. It was a military collapse that brought on a political collapse. Leading to the 1941 campaign, the Soviet leadership also made many mistakes, not realizing the danger they were in, mispositioning their troops, etc. And these failures were genuinely bad! Stalin himself had a nervous breakdown for the first two weeks and thought that he would be taken out and shot. They shot some generals for incompetence, but the political leadership refused to collapse into infighting and reorganized. Political collapse could have happened, but it did not happen, and that made the difference.
Good comparison. The USSR also had vastly more strategic depth to retreat into. So that bought the Red Army time to learn. The French army never got that time to improve.
Also, France had this problem that much of its industry and important bases was located around Paris and in the eastern part of the country. Germans relatively quickly took control of them, denying the French any real chance of regrouping. @@executivedirector7467
I didn't realize before that I had picked up so many misbeliefs. More and more I'm encountering in books how the Germans didn't engage in detailed operational planning during the war and were very impulsive and erratic with their strategies. For example, in 1940 Raeder wanted to bomb strategically critical targets in the Caribbean and focus on fuel and metal disruption while Donitz wanted to maximize total tonnage and both were allowed to split their efforts and forces to do as they wished.
It looked to many at the time that Operation Barbarossa would be successful, but that was largely based on impressions that proved incorrect. The Germans were overconfident and substantially underestimated the Soviet to mobilize personnel and developing technologies. Many of the early success of the Germans were because of the massive transitions, both in leadership and in deployment at the new 1939 frontiers, that were in progress in the Soviet army, and those successes could not be repeated once the Soviet military started rebuilding itself. And fundamentally the strategy - which had no backup plan - was to force either economic or political collapse rather than a traditional military defeat.
Another interesting thing that Zhukov said in his memoirs was that the German general, contrary to popular mythology, were not that good. He also sead that after the war the Generals were still around to blame their own failures on Hitler and, of course, Hitler wasn't around to say anything different
@@garybono Zhukov himself was clearly better than the average German general, but he's delusional if he thinks the Soviet generals of 1941 were even close to their German counterparts. In 1941 the Soviet fighting man was not the problem, the Soviet equipment was not the problem, but the Soviet leadership resulted in a 12:1 ratio of Soviet:German casualties and captures, despite the defense generally being favored in war. How else to explain the disastrous 1941 numbers other than Soviet leadership? On the other point, Hitler was probably not to blame for 1941 or most of 1942 (until Stalingrad). From late 1942 to the war's end, Hitler could be blamed for poor decisions. But Hitler apparently understood that the key to the USSR was capturing the Ukraine wheatfields, the Donetsk Basin industry, and the oil of the Caucasus - all in the south. Yet Hitler's generals wanted to push north, to politically interesting but economically useless places such as Leningrad and Moscow.
I was raised in the Soviet Union. The elephant in the room is that the Germans did reach the gates of Moscow. Now, capturing Moscow was never the highest priority yet they did get pretty close. Hitler was not keen on putting resources into this, mindful of the fate of Napoleon but who knows what would have happened if they did capture Moscow?
In the greater scheme of things, it’s tempting to say that the Germans gained Greece and lost Russia. Here’s why. Although casualties in the former were negligible, equipment losses were not. The Germans had deployed nearly half of their armored divisions and a third of their mechanized divisions. Neither category had anything like the vehicle strength required, and after two weeks of mobile warfare, more than one-third of the wheeled vehicles were out of action because of mechanical failures. Mobile warfare in rough terrain was particularly hard on tires and treads, two items in short supply. Among the many failures of German tank design was a woefully insufficient tread life. The relatively short distances the tanks had to travel in Poland and France masked this deficiency. But the dash through Greece made it all too obvious. After three weeks of such movement, a German tank needed a complete overhaul, and the time between the end of Marita and the onset of Barbarossa simply didn’t allow for the level of maintenance the tanks demanded. For that matter, it hardly allowed for the divisions to get to their new start line. As it was, one of the armored divisions was still stuck in Bulgaria when the attack began in late June. Although overall casualties were light, airborne casualties were a serious problem. In every campaign thus far, the Wehrmacht had made use of airborne troops through some combination of parachute, glider, and transport-plane delivery. But the losses in Crete meant that Barbarossa would have to proceed without an airborne component-in precisely the situation where it would have had the greatest impact. Of all these setbacks, the loss of time was the most significant. In northern Russia there was only a limited period of good weather between the cessation of the spring thaw and the onset of fall rains, basically a 110-day window that began about the middle of May. Despite a quarter of a century of Communism, Russian roads were still generally unpaved, and a great many of them lacked even the most rudimentary of weather-proofing, a covering of crushed rock. The logic of meteorology was compelling. A war of rapid movement was over once the rains came, which meant, in this conflict, the middle of September at the latest. By delaying Barbarossa until the end of June, the Germans lost a crucial third of their window. Nor should it be forgotten that in the essentially impossible aerial attack on Britain, the Luftwaffe was decimated.
Hitler should not have 'give in' to his generals and attacked Moscow. Stalin traded blood and space for time. Surgery in Japan won the war for Stalin. Great video!
TIKHistory details the deception of Halder and that Hitler instructed the Army Grup South to go South not engage Soviets in the East. His you tube has references in the slides so one can check them.
@@user-ih1mo8vv7o Nice catch on the "surgery" comment. Information from Sorge allowed Stalin to release the Siberian reserves for the battle of Moscow.
Just to underline one of the main points, I read a statistic that after Barbarossa the Soviets added 500,000 soldiers to their armed forces every month, through the end of the war !!! Include the vast distances in the Soviet Union, and just how can any other nation compete with that ?
Yup. The Soviets ended up raising more than *300 divisions* . This was the most overwhelming land force on Earth, evidenced by the way they rolled over the Wehrmacht and the Japanese Kwangtung Army in Manchuria in the last year of the war.
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony-The Soviets lost about 300 division or equivalents by Dec 1941 and raised close to 800 Division or equivalents by the end of the war.
@@brucenorman8904 The Battle of Berlin shows just how one sided it was, over 2.3 million Soviet troops against just 766,000 battered remnants of Army Group Centre, some Volksturm, Hitler Youth and Police men.
We tend to think of communism as a failure -- because it did fail in the end, and because it facilitated, while it existed, many injustices and shortages and atrocities. But it does seem to have created some big thinkers and organizers who were adept at dealing with hundreds of thousands or millions of people at a time. Organizers who could create and equip entire new armies and move entire industries across continents like an ordinary person might move a wheelbarrow. Communism also teaches people to obey and commit and sacrifice, if necessary, for the greater good. Long term, the ideology is bad, but it seems be tailor made for fighting a bitter large-scale war.
British aircraft production (by themselves) outperformed German Production significantly by the end of the Battle of Britain. The British Navy crippled the Kriegsmarine during the battles for Norway. German Logistics were NEVER "fit for purpose"
Germany did not go on a warfooting until 1943. The UK and it's empire was on a warfooting in 1939and it also had access to American output. Logistics was and is everything.
I agree that Germany did not got to a war economy until 1943, I was referring to the overall British economy, Germany didn't have anything close to the manufacturing base that the British had. The German economy certainly had an industrial base but it was FAR smaller than the British. Britain had a base that could build and maintain the only world naval superpower ( at the time ), the British manufacturing base supplied the Commonwealth and competed with the Americans. You're comment on Logistics is spot on.
Surely this is the wrong way round! There was a 'phoney war' period after the declaration in 1939. Germany was building massively armed Panzershiffen ! Graf Spee Tirpits Bismark!@@patrickporter1864
How many armies in history have achieved as much as the Wehrmacht before the operational pause in August of 41? Over 4 million Soviet soldiers killed and captured, so much land it took three years for vast Soviet army to recapture. Germanys fixable problem was lack of wartime footing meant too many soldiers had to walk. Needed more transport. Needed tank repair parts and facilities traveling closely behind the front. Unfixable problem was lack of oil. Maybe needed to drive main thrust through Army Group South. Basically the goals of Case Blue in 1942 minus unnecessary Stalingrad fiasco. Gain oil while depriving opponent of the same. Barbarossa deeply interesting topic.
I’m not sure the commissars forcing soldiers to fight was a complete myth. The Soviets executed 13,500 soldiers during Stalingrad. At least according to several sources I’ve read. I am no scholar though.
For Germany to have any chance, Stalin dying during the first six months would have been at least one needed factor along with many others. Look, this has been gamed out this massive war in the eastern front so long between the most destructive totalitarian regimes (along with Imperial Japan), and Hitler was simply out-totalitarianed.
The Germans were bleeding from the beginning..by Dec 1 , 1941 they had over 250,000 dead, another 760,000 seriously wounded. The German Army could not replace these men..plus, only 1/3 of their tanks were still functioning...and gasoline was in short supply. The Russians could make up their losses-and eventually produced 55,000 T-34 tanks. So once their chance to capture Moscow was gone, the Germans would lose..just a question of time.
Even most ideal German plans had assumed to stop at A-A line West of the Urals. No consideration of British Indian forces moving into Central Asia to continue war of Attrition the Germans were not prepared for
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but you do have to wonder about German planning for Barbarossa - poor logistics, poor intelligence, poor materiel supply & refurbishment & insufficient mechanised forces given the ground they would have to cover. As an additional factor Germany was still having to devote resources to the Atlantic Coast as well, due to the failure to subdue the U.K.
I do not see this as a myth busted; Hitler's blunders/changes in plan had real-world effects on the conduct of the war. Halting the advance on Moscow, in order to execute a double-envelopment of Soviet armies in the Kiev region, gave the Red Army a good 5-6 weeks to shore up defenses of the capital region. In 1942, Operation Blau had also staggered the Red Army, but Hitler again made changes to the plan that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. So if in 1942, Hitler's changes of plan and interference in operations wrecked his own offensive, it stands to reason that Hitler's conduct in 1941 accomplished much the same.
The biggest mistake of Barbarossa was launching it at all, at least in 1941. Even if they had stuck to the plan and executed it perfectly, it wouldn't have knocked the USSR out of the war. The Soviet Union was simply too vast, with too much population and resources, to be knocked out in a 6 month campaign.
Following the current Russo-Ukrainian War, it's almost chilling seeing names in the news of so many infamous locations that were enveloped by so much death and destruction just 80 years before. It's both tragic and haunting.
@@adamesd3699 Western spelling. They are pronounced about the same but they now need to emphasize the difference. More propaganda nonsense. (By the way, 2 of my grandparents and father born in Ukraine. lived through WW2, an infant did not make it, and my father, a teen then, saw what western Ukrainian Nationalists (our current and Canadian Parliament's "heroes") were up to "behind the lines" so he taught me actual history and not this new cold war history,
If the Wehrmacht had made it to Moscow in late 1941, it would have been another Stalingrad. Moscow was too far away to adequately supply a German occupying army and the Soviets would have encircled them and cut them off.
The Germans could have taken Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow and still they would have lost the war. Taking those objectives would have been almost as costly as was losing them; and the Germans had no way to replace what they lost, nor any logistical way to maintain what they did replace. They thought Barbarossa would be over in weeks. And they had no concept of what the titanic land area of Russia would cost just to move across, much less fight across. And of course they misunderstood their opponent, and what they were capable of.
I agree with much of what was said and yet I think Barbarossa was, nonetheless, a close -run thing. Had the Germans managed to capture Leningrad and Moscow in 1941 there is every reason to think that Soviet morale would have collapsed. Certainly Stalin was very concerned about this. OKH understood the importance of these two centers and had they not been overruled by Hitler there is every reason think they would have fallen in the Fall of 41. Moscow was the logistic and transportation hub of the USSR. How would Stavka and the Communist Party have maintained effective control over the Soviet Union had Moscow been captured?
I have never studied this deeply enough. This is to the folks that have studied this conflict throughly . Do you believe that Hitler thought that if he did not invade the USSR, that the USSR would launch an attack on the West eventually? Therefore he felt threatened by that possibility? Thank you
Problem: how to keep going when your logistics suck? Blitzkrieg worked in small countries like Poland and France which were right next to Germany. But by the time they got outside of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, they were too far from Germany. They didn’t have enough trains, trucks and cargo planes to get stuff to the front. The Soviet Union had inadequate railroads and highways, and Germany didn’t build enough new ones. A horse drawn army can’t keep up with tanks and Stukas.
There's also matter of space. In Poland they had approx 300 km from the bases to the points they aimed to reach and they were starting from the Reich's territory. The East was covered by the Soviets, anyway. In France they managed to cripple the French army when they were still relatively close to Germany and the logistics wasn't THAT much of an issue.
Germany's poor logistics meant it was not good at projecting power over long distances. To keep the armies moving you needed to extend the rails (different gauge) and a lot of trucks. They didn't know how to do that well. Germany hadn't even mobilized. If I recall from Speer's book it wasn't until 43 or 44 that Hitler began mobilizing. The thinking was always quick victories and a short war. The American genius was logistics and long term sustainment. And Lend Lease was very important. The trucks we supplied kept the Soviets supplied and moving.
Had Hitler not interfered with the campaign, Army Gruppe Center would have taken Moscow. Moscow was the communication and transport hub of western Russia. The taking of Moscow would have collapsed the Russian front. Leningrad was totally dependant on Moscow and Leningrad would have fallen as well. Russia was primitive in many respects then, the cities, railways, and roads were critical. Would have the Soviets survived? More or less, but they would have been knocked out of the war.
Barbarossa not being a near run thing may be intended to belittle the Nazis but it also belittles the achievement of the Soviets. The Red Army hung together despite bad training, bad doctrine, obsolescent equipment and leadership learning on the job. What other army or people could have endured so much without breaking? This assumes that their holding on was inevitable.
@@WW2TV Some Red Army units performed decently in 1941 but its performance overall in 1941 started at terrible and improved to mediocre by the end of the year. This was demonstrated by their uniform lack of success once the Germans consolidated their defenses during the Winter and again in the Spring. There really isn't much good to say about the Red Army's performance in 1941 except that it did not collapse. That last bit is no small thing though. It is one thing to hang together when buoyed by success (any success) but another when failure is your most common (near constant) companion. How they managed that is the question I would love an answer to. I've been loving these short myth shows even when I partly disagree.
@@AdamMisnik I guess for whatever performance they made up for that with pure resilience. I think most nations would have broke sustaining the kind of losses that the Red army did, they lost the equivalent of the entire German army in the first few months of Barbarossa and STILL bounced back. Probably the greatest "They had us in the 1st half" in History.
In re British involvement, securing the Africa theatre and the middle east was crucial to ensure supplies to the USSR. Iran is always ignored, as well as whatever they suffered despite having no real reason to be involved in this war. They were just in the wrong place in the wrong time and got invaded by two superpowers and unnecessarily broken. That however, helped save the Soviet Union allowing the western allies to send supplies through Iran, right into the Caucausus. This couldn't have been done without the British Empire. Now imagine a scenario in which Barbarossa happens where Egypt fell and Italy and Germany expanded into the levant, maybe flipped Iraq over to the Axis. The Soviets would be starved of supplies from the South, leaving only the baltics and the pacific route open while battering the British supplies too, which weakens Allied efforts in the bombing campaign over Germany.
Note: that Hitler by demonizing Ukrainians shoved them into active resistance. Note also that Stalin was the Ultimate MBA by being cheap, just like Hitler. The key to note is that Hitler didn’t recognize that French victory was a one off.. it really took a lot more than Hitler realized would be required to achieve victory.
9:08 -- one of the mistakes hitler made was failing to recognize the consequences of the fact that the Soviet railway gauge was wider than the European standard, which meant that captured railway had to be re-gauged to use Reichsbahn rolling stock, an ongoing drain on resources.
The winter in december-januari1941 was a lot more severe than average. Here in the Netherlands, the cold record of minus 27 Celsius is from januari 1942. So that was a German disadvantage. The surprise attack of June 1941 was a German advantage. However, untill the end of 1942 the Germans broke through every front. Also with no surprise advantage. After 22 June 1941, the Germans again surrounded lots of Russian soldiers at Kiev in september and Viazma-Briansk in oktober. If the Germans had given the Ukrainians an independent state and used them as allies, they would probably have defeated the Soviets. That is the biggest game changer possible, i think. Very unrealistic of course, with the Nazi ideology. Also, everything that Britain and the USA did is of course also decisive. They neutralized 25 to 50 percent of the German war-potential with troops, the U boat war and strategic bombing. And they increased the Soviet war potential by 15 percent with Lend Lease.
There is the fact that Hitler and others had asked the German weapons manufacturers to produce larger calibre weapons for their tanks and anti-tank guns in 1938, but that wasn't carried out until after the French and Low Countries campaigns, had been invaded. If the German tanks and anti-tank guns had been higher calibre, the T34s' and KV1s' wouldn't of been such a problem. Obviously, other weapons could of been up graded as well.
Note that Russians guessed wrong. The reason was that.the Russia expected D Day to be later than 6-22-41 so trains and tanks were in motion after German attack, also note that Stalin, in a speech to Russian graduates from Frunze spoke of destroying the Getmns. German victory threw Stalin’s plans into a bucket because he expected a Somme type situation in Western Front which would allow him to hit the Germans when they were occupied with Somme 2.
Ugh, I meant to try to squeeze in a mention of the fourth, forgotten army group of Operation Barbarossa, Romanian Army Group Antonescu that existed for a month or so, and the talk I did with OTD Military History. th-cam.com/video/m1basdKJ7Oo/w-d-xo.html
A. Couldn't because those forces needed elsewhere to guard coasts or occupy. Nazi Germany already overextended. B. The Wehrmacht already lacked enough logistical infrastructure for what it had. Adding more men, weapons, & equipment would've just overburdened its motor transport & rail transport even more. One reason why the Germans don't try to stop Romania from partially demobilizing in the fall is that they couldn't supply a larger Romanian force.
Japan? Russia was also at war with Japan, but after some disastrous losses Japan turned elsewhere and the Russian forces in the east were freed to reinforce those in the west. If Japan had of kept up the pressure from the east who knows? instead they get America involved in the war. But it seems no one ever mentions Japans part in this.
German logistics sucked. The real issue was that the war was to deal with the inadequacies of the NSDAP economic system by seizing oil and food from the Soviets, and the German lack of oil for transport made the attempt impossible.
Barbarossa was NEVER close to succeeding. The Soviet Union was too big, the logistics too difficult. It may- (emphasis: MAY) have worked had the Chancellor not declared war on the USA without consulting his cabinet, thus giving the Soviets American manufacturing capacity, American food, American trucks and American money.
All that from the USA plus American bombing of Germany (and Romanian oil fields) which reduced Nazi production and fuel. Plus of course the eventual 2nd front, which meant large amounts of troops and equipment couldn't be used in the east. So a question remains "what if" Germany hadn't declared war on the USA after Pearl Harbor? Would the American public have supported the war in Europe just because Japan was a German ally? And what if Japan had not hit Pearl Harbor or the Philippines but had only gone after Dutch Indonesia (for the oil and resources) with Holland being under German control? We'll never know. But we do know that US involvement in the war greatly aided the Soviets. My guess is that without US aid (and bombing), the East Front would have bogged down much like WWI, because the Soviets lacked mobility without lend-lease. And frankly Germany might have eventually won, with greater production and no involvement by the USA. But yes, Barbarossa itself (the initial phase) could not have succeeded, unless Stalin voluntarily threw in the towel, which he was not going to do.
Depends on the war aim I suppose. Here's the thing, from what I have read Barbarossa led Stalin to essentially offer a WW2 version of the WW1 Brest-Litovsk. If the Germans take that they win. I've seen many different views about Germany's inability to win the war and for sure Germany's size/GDP/oil issues relative to the Allies and the Soviet Union make a protracted war of attrition impossible for them to win, but there WERE opportunities for the Germans to 'quit while they were ahead' and Barbarossa is one of them.
The amazing thing about the Wehrmacht is they kept winning against superior numbers. Suprise victories First Poland and then France. They have to delay the start, a major diversion of resources into Yugoslavia, and they need the rail transports in Romania; their aren't any in the middle of Poland because there's a huge swampland there (Katherin had brought in Dutch to build dikes and reclaim farmland. Amazing they went as far as they did.
Hitler knew that Germany would always live under the heel of British and French dominance if Germany didn't secure all vital resources. Caucasus oil, and Ukrainian agriculture in between were the key to true German independence. Untainted by Rome, there is a core egalitarianism and duty to the community baked into German-descended people. They're more like what the American Indian would've evolved into. You follow your leader by consent and you're free to leave or change allegiance if what the chief does isn't working. That's counter to the Roman model, and the whole divine right of kings thing.
He mainly offers his opinions and hypotheticals. We will never know whether the Germans would have achieved a better outcome with a drive on Moscow in Aug 41. Or what if the Oct rains had arrived later? To suggest that the mud in Oct 41 effected both sides equally is wrong. The Soviet positions were defensive and more static, they had much shorter supply lines and they held the central position which made it easier to shift reserves. The histories written prior to the 1990s were clearly biased towards the Germans however it seems the pendulum has swung far in the other direction.
Sorry, no mention of the oil issue, no mention of the railroad “hubbing” out of Moscow or issues with Hague changes. Very incomplete and not convincing, sorry.
I do not know, if it was close. But there is a general problem. This Russia is huge. :D And every "game" when You are not allowed to make faults, and the enemy is, is a bad game for You.
Yes, I've often thought that, basically, Germany had to bowl a "300" to win. But this is to speak, and for your point as well, of winning in that very first year, which turned out to be close to impossible due to Russia's size and other factors. I'd say the German odds would have gone way up if the campaign had been viewed as a multi-year effort, and if America had been persuaded to remain neutral. Then the Germans could have focused on simply conquering a new chunk of land every year, confident in the end that eventually this would lead to a collapse of Russian resistance. This was, in a sense, the strategy Japan was using against China before getting mixed up in the great Pacific War.
@@polarvortex3294 National Socialist doctrine prevented the regime from bowling that "300". They did get a "turkey" in the spring of 1940, but this allowed Stalin in July 1940 to occupy the Baltic States and a Rumanian province that wasn't agreed to under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939. When a "war of annihilation" is espoused, the opponent is backed into a corner where resistance is the only option. The world held its breath when Barbarossa was launched and gave hope to the citizens of the occupied countries that Germany COULD lose the war. Opening declaring war on USA on 11 Dec 1941 allowed FDR to pursue a "Germany First" strategy and to silence critics that wanted to emphasize the war effort against Japan instead. Hitler erroneous believed that Japan would reciprocate by declaring war on USSR. Germany, Italy, and Japan were strategically uncoordinated and doing their own things.
I think one of the underappreciated factors behind the lack of Soviet collapse: Gearing up for a war by the numbers. By the time the Barbarossa kicked off, the Soviet Union had about 14 million mobilizable population. This was done in order to prepare for a drown war of attrition. Soviet planners expected that an entire field army unit (equivalent to Western army corps) would have to be replaced after several months of intense fighting. Thus, in the second half of 1941, the Soviets assembled 40+ field army units, while 10 in 1942, which allowed the Soviets to not only survive the initial German onslaught, but also rebuild. In a way, Soviet planners had a more realistic approach compared to their German counterparts. It was by no means elegant, let alone pretty, but you gotta make to do with what you have and the Soviets did a better job than the Germans in this regard. As for the German planners, they became a bit too enamored with maneuver warfare, something even today's military professionals and enthusiasts should avoid. Any proponents and fanboys of maneuver warfare out there? Iraq serves as a cautionary tale. 1991 Desert Storm: Maneuver warfare worked, because the Iraqis were not as capable as they were portrayed in the Western media; the scale and the scope of the Desert Storm was limited, both militarily and politically. 2003 Iraqi Freedom: Worked almost like a charm up to the capture of Baghdad. However, things started to go sour once the Iraqi Freedom turned into war of insurgency. By the time ISIS emerged, maneuver warfare no longer had much relevance. Afghanistan should also serve as a cautionary tale. In this instance, 20 years of worth of military operations exposed a major US weakness--i.e., its high-tech and well-trained forces turned out to be very good as an initial shock force, but not particularly impressive as an occupation force. Just because you are very good at winning the initial battle, it does not mean you are equally good at finishing the war. (A while back, I even encountered an analysis comparing the number of boots on the ground per 100,000 population. In case of post-WW2 Germany, the figure was 900+ per 100,000. However, in case of Afghanistan, it was 100- per 100,000. If you are darn serious about occupying someone else's turf, you better have lots of boots available. Warplanes and AFVs cannot compensate for the lack of boots.)
If you look at Stahel's work he gets in to the logistics and state of the panzer groups in the opening weeks of the campaign and it paints a sorry picture for the Germans. Up to 70% losses in tanks, little spare parts, inadequate and stretching supply lines. A great bulk of the tanks were obsolete mk 1's and 2's. In retrospect it seems like Barborossa had 0% chance of success.
It is amazing how in 2023 you are not understand the situation. Now we know exactly the production of tanks of the USSR for each year from 1927 to 1945, etc. It is known that only 84,000 T34s were built in the factories in the Urals. If you add the other types of Soviet armored vehicles, it exceeds 100,000. Compare these numbers with the approx. 1400 Tigers built by Germany, which was "super prepared" for war by a crazy leader. So stop presenting us that the USSR, which was left behind technologically and "unprepared" and taken by surprise by the German attack. A weapon built by the USSR in 1938 is still part of the equipment of modern armies, including the US army (M1938 mortar).The factories in the European USSR had already been captured by the Germans. All German armored vehicles of all types built in Germany during WW2 are a little over 50,000. These data are not stories but real statistical data. All this meant a colossal industrial effort, starting from 1927, made by the communist party of the USSR for the subjugation of Europe. These data cannot be disputed and show like Hard Evidences the intentions of the USSR. How they did it exactly is described in books, books that for you seem to have remained a mystery. I will briefly explain what is said in them. It was obvious(1939) and it is so obvious now(2023), that strategically Germany could not fight against an alliance formed by the USSR, the British Empire and the USA and win. And then how did Germany end up in this position? The answer has been given for a long time, but it contradicts the official narrative of the victorious powers. The answer is Hitler's deception by Stalin by concluding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Hitler declared in Mein Kampf since 1925 that if Germany fights on two fronts, east and west (as in WW1), it will lose the war because it does not have the resources for a conflict on two fronts. Who was in the east? USSR. Who was in the west? France and Great Britain. Who does Hitler "declare" to be the "natural" enemy of Germany for hundreds of years? Frankreich. Not on England who are Aryan brothers and not on Russians who are subhuman but have resources. And then Hitler makes a "compromise": he allies Germany in the east with the USSR in order to have his back covered and to have a free hand in the west to recover Alsace and Lorraine. This is what the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is for; of non-aggression with the USSR. Of course, Stalin wants something in exchange: the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, a part of Finland as the Finns were too close to Leningrad, a part of Poland that did not exist for approx. 100 years. By doing this Hitler hoped to restore Germany as it was before WW1 even bigger because now it also had territories from the former Austro-Hungarian empire. It is obvious to any rational person that without the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact Hitler would not have ventured to attack Poland alone, with the potential threat for Germany of a war on two fronts, which he wanted to avoid at all costs. But Stalin was preparing his country for war since 1927 from the first five-year plan. The production of tanks handed over to the Red Army in 1938 is over 2400 tanks; in 1939 the red army receives over 3500 tanks from the industry. It is obvious that the USSR did not build this production of tanks to fight with Finland! Germany will attack on June 22, 1941 with 3410 tanks. Compare these numbers of the two "unprepared" combatants! Happy and naive Hitler rejoices: he is allied with the USSR (they have common territorial objectives) which secures his back from the east, he has their resources at his disposal, an invincible land army, a capable air force, he is weak at sea. But England can do nothing to him on land. And then, in agreement with Stalin, on September 1, 1939, he attacked Poland from the west, while Stalin was supposed to attack from the east. But the Surprise, the red army is not "prepared", and he is not informed about it. So, on September 3, 1939 Great Britain and France declared war on Germany because Germany had attacked the Polish ally. From now on, Germany was at war with France and its empire and Great Britain and its empire (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, "the empire on which the sun never sets" ). On September 17, 1939, the "prepared" Red Army attacked Poland. But, surprise again, France and Great Britain did not declare war on the USSR, which had attacked their ally. Hitler does not realize that the trap has closed. He is just a naive painter and eloquent orator. The deception with the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact had its effect. The situation described by Hitler in Mein Kampf with the war on two fronts (as in WW1) happened again. Germany is in the position of Sisyphus. No matter how hard Germany tries, it will lose the war. At sea, only the UK alone beats Germany at any time. In the air, only the US air force with its superfortresses and modern fighter planes beats Germany at anytime. Only on land, the situation seems a little more balanced, but if we consider only the 84,000 T34s compared to the 1,347 Tigers, the situation becomes clear. So oil, V1 and V2, Me262, Stalingrad, etc. are just details of a clear strategic situation that cannot be changed. A naive painter and eloquent orator (Hitler) who talked too much was deceived by a bank robber (Stalin) psychologically built to make his plans secretly. When Stalin attacked Finland on November 30, 1939, he sent Goering to "convince" the Finns to give in to the territorial claims of the Russians according to the secret annex of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (of which the Finns did not know); in this way the Germans "honored" their word given when signing the pact. After the capitulation of France in June 1940, the USSR gave an ultimatum to Romania on June 26, 1940 in which it demanded Bessarabia and northern Bucovina. After the advice received from Germany and Italy, the Tatarescu government agreed to submit to the Soviet conditions (Hitler again honored his word given to Stalin). In August 1940, when all the Luftwaffe and the land army were concentrated in the west and the Battle of England was taking place (July 10-October 31, 1940), and the Russians occupied the Herta land, which did not appear on the map as part of the territory that was supposed to be given to the USSR, Hitler also "achieves" the situation. The Russians were near Galati, 150 km from the Ploiesti oil area. Through a surprise attack, they occupied Ploiesti in 48 hours. For Germany, the war would have ended immediately without Romanian oil. After the Abwehr reports show the concentration of Red Army forces in Bessarabia, Hitler finally orders the preparation of the Barbarossa plan. In May 1941, Hitler, knowing from now on that he will fight on two fronts and trying to prevent this from happening, sends his secretary, Rudolf Hess, to try to conclude a separate peace with the British. The British will arrest him and keep him in captivity until 1987 as a great war criminal (he who was only a simple secretary and who had not participated in WW2). He will be "found" committed suicide in the prison with only one inmate, only him. But, because he was a fanatic obsessed with sports(in 1987 he was 93 years old) and loyalty who could not support the narrative of the victorious powers as others did (Paulus for example) he was never released except for dead. All this narrative is supported in books written by Suvorov and others such as Stalin's Missed Chance (Mikhail Meltyukhov) and which obviously contradict the official narrative of the victorious powers in WW2. Can these certain data be suppressed in 2023?
You don't have to believe me. Hitler says it to Mannerheim, the German generals say it, Western historians say it when they analyze the balance of forces in every operation carried out by the Red Army against the German Army, etc. At Stalingrad, 300,000 Germans fought with 500,000 Russians in the city. The front of the armies that attacked north and south of the city and that made the encirclement included 800,000-1,000,000 soldiers. In the north they were opposed by 70,000-80,000 Romanians and other allies of the Germans, in the south by 50,000-60,000 Romanians and others. In this operation called Uranus, 4 tank armies took part, including approximately 900 Soviet tanks. The Romanians had no tanks, only some cannons. This data is real; what will prevent you from interpreting them correctly? th-cam.com/video/WE6mnPmztoQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=LgSkCtyqdlu28QPO
If Germany's ally Japan had decided to settle accounts with the USSR (as the Japanese army wanted) and attacked along with the Germans then the Soviet Union would have been defeated. No one can deny that, and David Glatz freely admits it.
Interestingly, the Japanese had a plan to launch seven armies into Siberia in 1941. *Operation Kantokuen* . basically the Japanese version of Barbarossa.
Great primer for thought and discussion in future. I, for one, am glad that Germany invaded the USSR. Talk about turning points! This was the best thing that could happen in that it pretty much guaranteed that Germany was doomed to lose the war. It may have seemed dramatic and worrisome to the western powers at the time, but in reality Hitler and his regime gave the world a gift with Operation Barbarossa. It was pure hubris and arrogance at best.
If you watch @TIK at all, Germany lost the war basically when they started it. They were running out of resources and needed to get to the Ukraine for food and the Caucasus for Oil. The good thing about the Soviet Invasion is that it wastes so many troops in the East which couldn’t be used against the western allies.
Possibly around Ural mountains. All territories east of Ural do not have that much population so even with the industry moved there the Red Army would have had hard time replacing human losses. However, getting to Ural...
The two ways to win a war are to stop your opponent's ability to make war or to have them internally fall apart due to lack of support for the war or revolt on the goverment.. Germans never had a hope to stop Russia from making war and threw out all possibilities of a revolt when they openly liquidated every Russian civilian in its path... then it became a patriotic war and there was in my estimation zero chance of Germany winning in the eastern front.
I agree that Barbarossa as designed was almost certainly going to fail. But as an academic exercise, I wonder if a different plan than Barbarossa might have succeeded. The economic wealth of the Soviet Union (on the European side) was in the grain fields of the Ukraine, the industry and minerals of the Donets Basin, and the oil fields of the Caucasus. Instead of the goal of an Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan line, what if they'd drawn up a Riga-Smolensk-Voronezh-Stalingrad-Astrakhan line? This would be a fairly straight and possibly defensible line, would not include Leningrad and Moscow, and would separate the ethnic Russians from the rest of the European SSR's. Furthermore it would put the most economically valuable assets in German hands, while ignoring the less useful northern areas. It would probably have to be accomplished over 2 years in the south, as the 1941 phase likely wouldn't take them beyond Rostov. Convert/improve the rails in the conquered areas of the south to German (European) gauge during the winter, resume in summer 1942, it might have been possible. Another factor would have been to treat people in the conquered areas better, as many - including Ukrainians - hated the Soviet government and thought initially that they were being liberated. Once the Nazis were understood to be planning to either relocate or exterminate the people of European part of the Soviet Union, there was no way that those people were going to give up and accept a political change (as they had in France). Had the Nazis treated the USSR people better and acted as "liberators" from the Bolsheviks, they might have won at the political level. But then, they wouldn't have been Nazis if they'd treated people better in those conquered areas.
A stop-start approach from the beginning would've immediately led to a war of attrition and that was not how the German Army was built, it was made for quick victories using momentum to cause quick collapse in the enemy. The entire purpose of Germany's approach to war was to avoid situations like the western front in WW1. On top of that just getting across Ukraine and into the Caucasus would've required outrunning supply lines regardless of when it was attempted, a stop-start there would not have worked as there just wasn't enough infrastructure leading back west. Capturing the oil fields in the Caucasus was a compromised desperation approach only after Typhoon finally failed to cause a military defeat of the Red Army, it wasn't going to cause the Soviet war effort to collapse so much as be there to give Germany a fighting chance to survive the war. They couldn't then concentrate their best units on driving south because if the Soviets aren't taken out then they would continue to be a threat at driving into their now 1,200mi flank. If they wanted to win the war and take out Britain they needed Moscow to be a permanently neutral trading partner. Many did view the Germans as liberators but most of those were closer to central Europe/Baltics, as the Germans advanced they moved into territory occupied by ethnic/cultural Russians that would resist regardless of what flag was being waved and that includes eastern Ukraine and all of the areas east of that.
@@drencrum Good points, and yes Plan A for the Nazis was to make the Soviet government collapse. But we can see that the plan didn't work, the Soviet government didn't collapse. However, the 2nd part (1942) was not a desperation approach, as it was always the plan to take the Caucasus oil. Hitler favored an economically driven approach, while his generals wanted to force the political collapse. They wound up doing a bit of both in 1941, and they were decently positioned for 1942's "Fall Blau" especially after the Soviet disaster at the 2nd Battle of Kharkov in early 1942. But even in 1942 the southern strategy was compromised by having too much men and equipment in the north (north of the Pripyet marshes), not enough in the south. The focus should always have been the south, in hindsight. I'm thinking that if the Nazis "knew" that the USSR would not surrender even if Moscow had been taken (still unknown), then they still might have been victorious if they'd put more into the south. Maybe have the drive north be mostly infantry, put most of the panzer divisions in the south. Have the rail crews ready to convert rail to German trains in the south. And yes it would take two parts, but the "second blitzkrieg" did work in 1942, up to a point. Avoid trying to take Stalingrad mano-a-mano as this became an attrition battle, and of course led to the Germans being surrounded during the Soviet Operation Uranus. Cut the Volga shipping from a point south of Stalingrad, take the oilfields, etc. Go into defensive mode, especially if Stalingrad and Voronezh can be fully or partly taken (both were partly taken in 1942). At that point, the Soviet-controlled population would have been about on a par with Germany's and their European allies, and the important Soviet resources would be in German hands. Could the Soviets have still won from there? Possibly, but only with US and UK help. I do agree that the Baltics were more likely to support the German cause, so instead of stopping at Riga, perhaps the Nazis could have taken Estonia too (as they actually did), and threatened Leningrad, which would make the Finns feel part of the war. With a possible fall-back to the Riga line if necessary. It's all moot now, but from an economic perspective, the southern strategy makes sense - especially if the political collapse of the USSR was not possible.
@@andrewfurst5711 Fall Blau worked in part because both sides simply had fewer forces in the south after the destruction of the Red Army forces at Kiev and so many forces from both sides were tied up in the center. In addition Timoshenko got chewed up trying to cross the Oskol River and flank Kharkov from the south at the beginning of summer 1942, once his lead forces got destroyed it created a huge imbalance that the Germans took advantage of to create a rout to the Don River where the Red Army was able to mount a defense for a prolonged period (long enough to build defenses at Stalingrad; for the Wehrmacht's part they were preparing to launch their offensive when Timoshenko attacked, likely they win anyways but it just made life so much easier for Army Group South until they reached the Don when it became a slog). I wonder if the Germans hadn't advanced as far as they did in the center in 1941 that they would've been able to attack Kiev from the north and encircle all of those Red Army forces who were using the Dnieper River as a natural defense barrier and in addition without Operation Typhoon and the subsequent Battle of Moscow to chew up and occupy the bulk of Red Army reinforcements in 1941 that they wouldn't then just deploy south and create river defensive barrier after river defensive barrier all the way to Stalingrad and Rostov. So assuming the Germans drive north regardless in order to get Finland back into the war and occupy Red Army forces at Leningrad that leaves a weakened center group that probably stops at the Dnieper north of Kiev and sets up defensive positions but still enough forces to keep the Red Army honest and likely an assault on Smolensk to make that happen. Without hindsight the Germans drive to the Dnieper but now have to try and encircle the Red Army at Kiev only from the south, those forces are able to then retreat north and east and rejoin Red Army reinforcements now coming south. Fall of 1941 culminates in a battle for Kursk and Kharkov to the north and Sevastopol in 1941 to the south as the Germans aim to stabilize their flanks in preparation for 1942. Assuming they reach the Don they could prepare for defenses in the winter of 1941-42, of course assuming that they planned for a war of attrition. Assuming Germany was not on a war footing prepared for a war of attrition on any front at this point and most of the Wehrmacht by 1941 has been expanded quickly built off the forces deployed in 1939 and 1940 then the best they could hope for is to force a retreat from Kiev by storming the Dnieper from the south and then trying to encircle and destroy as many Red Army forces on that northern flank near Bryansk/Kursk/Kharkov and give their infantry and artillery time to man the front and prepare for any tank battles and Red Army reserves to counter attack, this leaves the drive eastwards in jeapordy and thus a stall happens before the Wehrmacht can reach the Don. If they're unable to encircle and destroy Red Army forces with their lighter tanks then it becomes a rather huge blunder obviously as those forces now really can't drive eastwards anytime soon. Likely by mud season in October German forces are stuck in the south and an attack to take the Don has to wait until 1942 anyways and we're kind of not that far off from what ended up happening anyways. I think there must've been a political/intelligence subterfuge element to Barbarossa that was supposed to work that simply didn't. I think the Red Army was definitely preparing for an offensive into Romania as the bulk of their armor was in the south but the Red Army wasn't planning on launching the attack possibly until the fall of 1941. You also had the military purges which led to a change in philosophy for the entire Red Army on the western front to a squarely offensive mechanized approach to warfare, the officer corps was starting over and logistics were completely scrambled as a result. You had Stalin's political purges in the late 1930's that likely created a large number of people motivated to finally take out Stalin and the transition in the Red Army created a massive opportunity for an outside force to break the Red Army and create the political crisis that conceivably would lead to Stalin himself getting purged. In conjunction with the fact that the Soviet Union had invaded the Baltic States in 1940 and Galicia always wanting to leave Russian rule and the newly created Red Army positions in Poland being exposed and mostly indefensible you had a perfect storm to create chaos. There's a chance the Germans might've been fed intelligence by the anti-Bolsheviks in all these bordering areas that painted too much of a biased view that didn't portray the Soviets' strengths and only their weaknesses. A.H. himself was recorded talking to Mannerheim about how he was shocked by how many tanks the Soviets had in 1941 and how much resistance they were putting up and how he wouldn't have ordered the invasion if he knew what they knew then. He was absolutely convinced Soviet Leadership would crumble though and I wonder if there was an inside job waiting to happen that just didn't fire off because the whole thing backfired politically as it just rallied the nation instead and the Soviets were able to give up land without losing their factories. You see similar 3rd pillar war aims all the time in other conflicts where military might is used as much to scare the other side into capitulation as it is meant to truly destroy the enemy from existence.
![[Barbarossa] The Major Errors and Blunders - Or why Barbarossa Failed](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/A_3R-Rkn_98/mqdefault.jpg)
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The Germans in Operation Barbarossa pretty much got a fairly ideal run at things, they mounted a surprise attack against a really poorly placed Red Army that was ideally placed in very forward positions without even rudimentary defensive positions, aircraft lined up to be destroyed etc they got a massive free shot at a Red Army lying down with it's throat exposed.
For most of the opening months, the Soviets made almost every mistake imaginable and the Germans got a dream run. Trouble is, the Germans were never prepared in the long run for a war of attrition with the Soviet Union. Once they started to face double the Red army reserves and heavier resistance in more and more battles, they were doomed.
The Germans really underestimated their opponent.
@@jaywhite38 Indeed, imagine being in the Germans shoes in December 1941, you're approaching the gates of Moscow, confident from victory upon victory, high morale etc then suddenly you hear a report from the German high command that says *"THE SIBERIANS ARE COMING!"*
And then before you know it over a million battle-hardened winter soldiers from the Far East ( who had already defeated the Japanese before) are launching a massive counter offensive... the same troops who you thought were well and truly beaten on the borders a few months earlier, only they've returned for revenge and they are now kicking your arses 100 miles back.
Must have thrown the Germans off guard big time. So much for kicking in the door and the whole structure will collapse eh?
It went south when Hitler stopped the drive on Moscow to take Kiev. It cost him 2 months he couldn't afford to lose. and he made the same stupid mistake again in '42.
No, not really. Had they kept driving on Moscow, it would have been all over but the executions.@@jaywhite38
Disagree. Most of the industries were already east. Even the Moscow underground was wired for demolition. It would have been a setback, but by that time the Soviets had powerful allies. The outcome was really never in doubt. The Germans overstepped their capabilities
Even by Yelnya, the 7th Panzer Division was down to 5 Mark III tanks, 2 Mark II tanks, 0 Mark IV tanks -- the astounding reduction entirely due to wear and tear. The technology back then, could not tolerate the sand and grit. Air filtration was based on motor oil, which had to be discarded after so many hours, as in every night. Consequently, the mechanics skipped oil changes in the crankcase -- because they were ordered to. (Fundamentally, by Guderian, Hurrying Heinz!) Said engines started seizing up. While doing so, their fuel consumption, per km, went wild.
The Krauts also -- to an astounding degree -- ignored the centrality of advancing their railways. The gauge change was a snap, no problem moving one rail closer to the other by a few inches. The absolute killer, read the accounts, was that the Reds were destroying every dang last trestle -- with the critical ones -- because of their number -- being less than 10 meters across. These were made entirely of wood, so easy to dynamite. The Nazis, in their wisdom, never stockpiled anywhere near enough seasoned wood to replace that which would inevitably be destroyed in front of their advancing legions. The Nazis started stripping railway assets from France, Belgium, Holland PDQ. What else could they do?
Did I mention the number of sleepers/cross-ties that the Reds destroyed? The ploughed/plowed them into shreds. (That tactic dates from the American Civil War.)
Mud Season, Winter Season was worse for the Krauts -- because the Reds had destroyed all of the railways before retreating. So, the Red Army still had trains able to roll all the way to the front -- so long as the Luftwaffe could be hazarded. (Not always the case.) Because of Luftwaffe attacks, the Reds really did run critically low on rolling stock, but they still had their railway.
In 1942 the absurdity of the Kraut 'plan' was to ignore railway advancement. THIS is the real reason that the Krauts lost at Stalingrad. They couldn't even bring up their stuff by rail. In all the key fighting, their stuff was being trucked up some 500 km! (road km, crappy, unpaved km.)
The Guderian fantasy died when the ENTIRE Ju-52 fleet became grounded while landing on unprepared farmland. Yes, laden cargo planes lose their landing gear when this is attempted. The USAAF always prepared its strips -- usually with landing mats, too -- but not always. (See: first strips in Africa.) Even after the war, Nazi generals omitted this ultra fiasco, which utterly terminated Plan A.
THIS fiasco is the reason that Adolf even flew out to the front -- and then ordered his boys to go north and south. It was because of logistics. The Reds had not destroyed the rails going north and south -- because the Reds were still using them -- whereas the Krauts kept ignoring movement to the north or south.
That's only the operational at one point in time. Operational units fluxuated at all times as they were repaired. You need a larger snapshot of the situation over a period of months to get the real view of things. But since the Germans were still able to advance clearly the number of panzers operational was of limited significance all things considered. Nigel Askey suggested the main striking power was not the panzers, but the motorized infantry, with the panzers as useful support.
A small fact about the German wargames that Mr Harward is talking about at (7:25) is that they were lead by Paulus. It's not very important but it's one of those small historical "aha!" moments where one of the most famous "victims" of German overreach was also the one who predicted they were overreaching.
Lend Lease is highly important in that an early shipment of machine tools to replace those they bought from the US in the 1920's and are worn to the bone, makes a significant different in production capacity. Everything else is a nice bonus, and the real stuff doesn't really arrive until late 1942 and into 1943, where it can make a marked contribution.
I'd argue the offensives started by the red army after 1943 would not be possible without lend lease.
@@Shad0wack It takes a load off the Soviets and allows them to focus production even more. By 1943 they have things more or less sorted out production-wise, and things like US and British/Canadian trucks allow the Soviets to build more SU-76 for example since that was often devolved to truck factories. The Red Army would be on the offensive no matter what, it probably would have been a wider spread of "home-grown" equipment
Lend Lease is a significant bonus for the Soviets, but we walk a thin line between the Allied Cold War narrative "We supplied them everything they needed to survive and help win the war" vs the "Lend Lease ? Never heard of her, comrade." Soviet negation of LL.
You shouldn't forget that the Soviets launch offensives from 1941 onward. Lend Lease in late 1943 is a large volume that the Soviets have trouble moving to the front, some Lend Lease equipment delivered in 1942 only reaches the front in 1944 or even 1945 because like the Germans before Moscow, anything that isn't a weapon, ammo or other vital essentials doesn't make it to the front lines like winter coats. The US delivers something like a million pairs of boots but only a fraction are actually sent to the front lines and a slightly larger percentage are sent to training and staging areas where new units are being equipped. When Moscow does greenlight moving stocks to the front line in the hopes that it will help with the great offensives of 1944, it still takes a while for equipment to arrive and it's only near the end we do see lots of Russians in nifty new boots and other equipment. Something the leadership soon picks up as they make contact with the Allies and units that make use of too much Allied gear and rotated away as fast as possible, often swapping them with units with equipment worn to the bone leading Allied observers to note that the Soviets look pretty ragged and that it must have been a very close fight.
Lend Lease is a boost for the Soviets, not in the way many think it did, it wasn't their key to victory, it just gave them more elbow room and reserves of useful kit as well as vital supplies like the aforementioned machine tools, which help increase production and make better equipment. Another major help are ball-bearings, rubber, even food to some degree.
@@rotwang2000
LL was HUGE!
The USSR was able to mobilise peasant farmers en masse because they got all their food from Canada!
Very few guys needed down on the farm.
In the critical period of late '41, UK LL might well have tipped the balance between further German advance and holding the line. I remember reading 14% of Russian army tanks in Dec 41 were British supplied. USSR was politically shaky at that time and even slightly better Axis progress at that time might have lead to a coup.
Many of the later Russian offensives were only possible due to trucks & oil supplied primarily by the US. The Soviet armies had mobility while the Axis ones did not; especially true of Bagration.
Machine tools, trucks, precise instruments, some medicine. People tend to forget that an army does not fight with weapons only.
@@coffeebreakchat2450 Exactly I actually think barbarossa was a close run thing. Not because a complete military victory was likely(i don't like historical determinism but a snowball has a better chance in hell than panzers headed to the pacific.) but because IF things had gone just a bit differently Stalin may have been deposed. Or he may have been pressured in to making peace. From what i've read they made an offer to the Germans in 41 to give them Ukraine and the baltics for peace but Germany did not respond. I mean it's not that crazy that in August-September after the massive defeats all along the front they'd look to peace out. It was never that close militarily but poltically yeah it was pretty close. I also heard a story where some men came to get stalin after the first weeks of the invasion and he thought they were there to arrest him. Im not 100% its true. But I could believe it and I think it illustrates my point.
The war in Russia was not something that Germany was ever going to win. It was more about whether the Soviets were going to lose (in other words ,collapse). It was not out of the questions. From what I read, Stalin was surprise he survived politically. The establishment rallied around him rather than throwing him to the wolves. Had this going differently, they may have collapsed. Counting on the enemy giving up is a bad war strategy. It takes victory out of your hands.
Stalin's rule wasn't ever really in question. I meant to include that point but rushed by it. Kotkin shows in his recent biography volume II how Stalin went from dictator to despot. No one was left who would've challenged him. Thus, a political collapse wasn't in the cards either.
@@lascargroup Really? I would argue it was entirely due to Stalin. Unless we want to question the truth around Stalins hiatus to his datcha. From what i've read the Sovjet leadership had to go out there and plead with him to come back. The fact that Stalin himself appeared and held a speech and stayed in Moscow meant a collapse was avoided.
Without lendlease, Germany would have won. Deathride by Professor Mosier on Amazon
@@lascargroup just because no one challenged him does not necessarily mean they would have rallied around him. Political collapse isn't a simple matter of infighting, it can also just be simple nihilism about the future of the polity.
I remember a discussion between some historians ages ago, mostly from Russia, Belarus, Czech Republic. They all have come to conclusion that Barbarossa could have succeded in one way only: if the Germans decided to treat the population differently and waved the banner of anti communism ( or anti Stalin at least ) and national liberation from the day one then the regime perhaps could have collapsed from within and Germans would get the resources they needed after some form of arrangement.
However, the German approach was completely opposite from the day one, so this would not have actually happened.
Another point is that they wargamed the Soviet invasion and knew that ther would be problems in logistics after a 300 kilometer advance and the general who pointed this out was Paulus
Finally both Hitler and Halder thought they would conquer the USSR in 4 to 8 weeks and that was because the Soviets would collapse. This would mean the invasion would be over by September1 well before of winter. We know how that worked out.
Lesson: Beware the siren call of a "Short Victorious War" tm.
Hitler was determined that military production should not cut too much into consumer production.
Hence Germany was in no way as well equipped as it might have been.
In particular, the trucks and their associated logistical tail could have been more heavily invested in. This might just have got the german spearheads further, faster and pose the possibility of a Soviet coup or revolution. Or maybe not!
I think it was 500/600 km then pause, they thought would be enough
It was calculated at 500/600 km, they knew it was a gamble, many commented that from March Hitler was very nervous
General Georg Thomas is another voice expressing concerns about logistics.
I's go as far as Germany lost 'Barbarossa' in August 1941. That's when it became clear that logistics were failing (of which the Germans were warned.)and that the operational pace of the respective elements of 'Barbarossa' became stretched too far apart (through lack of discipline of the leading armour and motorized commanders) to allow for a cohesive offensive.
Yep, one could argue that the very invasion plan was too ambitious and optimistic from the start. Sure, hindsight is 20/20 but still, they were aware of the logistical challenges. And still went on with the plan.
I read that the largest casualty rate for the Nazi army was July 1941. So the Red Army was giving as well as taking. I agree with you.
Also, the losses in 1939, or in 1940 were high only during the very campaign and pretty low when major operations were not taking place. Attack on France also meant high casualties for the Wehrmacht, but within six weeks it was over.
Barbarossa meant that the meatgrinder was not only rolling, but it was rolling weeks and weeks, with no pause at all for a long time.
@@Larrymh07
I've long believed that the "Great Patriotic War" ought to be renamed the "Great Existential War." The peoples of the Soviet Union were fighting for survival against an enemy who had declared his intention to exterminate them. Against an enemy that determined, what chance did the Germans ever have?
Only many of the repressed peoples of the Soviet conquest took up arms with fascists to fight the Russian Soviets because they believed it couldn't be as bad as Russian Soviet rule.
The only hope the Germans had to win was to play a political angle as a liberator from Bolshevik-Great Russian tyranny, which their ideology of extermination and enslavement voided that option. They didn't even have the acumen to set up a puppet Russian government, besides alienating their most fervent admirers and past sponsor of their nationalist aspirations, the Ukrainians.
Practically none. Even if Moscow, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Sevastopol, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, etc. etc. fell, the Soviets would continue to fight.
IMO so much of the WW2 German outlook of war with Russia was based on WW1, they really envisioned every encirclement as another Tannenberg and designed their campaign around that assumption. Each time another Russian army fell, dreams of capitulation and a speedy "rail war" would abound, you read it in all the journals, only for hopes to be squashed by constantly increasing resistance and reserves the deeper in Russia they went.
I've wondered how much the German experience in WW1 influenced the campaign in the Soviet Union. All of the German military leaders would have been veterans of WW1. In 1914-18, the French and British armies had held Germany at bay and eventually worn the German military down. Now, in 1940, they had completely defeated France, forced it's surrender, and driven the British back across the Channel; all in just TWO MONTHS, with only a fraction of the losses from WW1. They'd also swept through Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, and Greece. The men leading the German military must have been riding a huge wave of feeling invincible.
At the same time, the Soviet military had initially performed poorly in its invasion of Finland in November 1939-March 1940. The Russian military had collapsed in 1917. The military had suffered a purge of its leadership by Stalin. Add in the inherent belief of the racial inferiority of Russians by Nazi ideology, and most of German leadership must have been convinced of another easy victory.
Another great short (from Grant this time) that needs expanding on when you both have the time.
yes phil i completly agree
@@jimwalsh1958space Please excuse me James if I sometimes appear to get a bit pissy.
German horses could not digest the grass and fodder in the Ukraine and the Byelorussia. Consequently, German rail transport was carrying massive amounts fodder to keep the horses fed. Fodder and veterinary stores were taking up more volume (not weight) than ammunition and personnel.
Very interesting..
On June 6th the German army was forced into invading Greece this meant that the start date for Barbarossa was put back until June 22nd. This time and the troops with their logistics could not be overlooked when we see how close to Moscow that the Germans got.
It should also be rembered that the Soviets relied on the Allies to keep fighting. The Soviets produced few trucks during the war but relied on 20 thousand trucks from the Allies. The Soviets also relied on the Allies to feed all their soldiers.
German never stood a chance against the Allies but in a straight fight against the Soviets alone they would have prevailed. Only my opinion.
German logistics general basically predicts the advance will break down after 800-900 miles
Hitler was a student of Napoleon's Russia invasion ,the German army walked at the same speed as Naps army just as far and as soon.
Alan Clark's novel says it all. According to him, before the war even started, the German command knew they only had enough fuel and ammunition for six months of operations. And low and behold, five months after the invasion began, the German offensive sputtered and ran out of steam at the gates of Moscow.
My understanding of Lend Lease was that the Russians weren't impressed by the tanks(though they used them). Planes... they used the P-39 extensively. Mainly... the TRUCKS were a godsend.
Lend and lease was not a big factor the way Americans and Brits like to talk about.
Chinese Nationalists both against the Japanese and the Communists during the Chinese Civil War, South Vietnamese military during the Vietnam War , Iraqi military against Isis, Afghan military against the Taliban all got a gazillion of dollars of weapons, ammunition, money and support from the US and the UK against enemies who were way way weaker than Nazi Germany in WWII and guess what?
They all ended up losing and losing badly.
As a matter of fact most countries who end up receiving US military equipment, money and weapons end up losing their wars even though they have all lost way less men and suffered way less losses than the USSR did WWII.
The USSR did not win WWII because of lend and lease.
They won because of the shere tenacity, determination, selflessness, sacrifices and devotion of the Soviet soldier.
Don’t know why you mentioned all the others, but 400,000 trucks did have a huge impact. Especially after Stalingrad. It enabled the Soviets to rapidly move troops, taking advantage of weak spots in the German lines.
@@duaneaikins4621 I mentioned them because the Russians did use them, they just weren't impressed by most of it. Any tanks or planes would be valuable if you were fighting a massive conflict. I know they used the Hurricane, but they had to rearm it and the inferior fuel they used caused performance issues.
Complete NON-FACTOR in 1941 when the matter was decided (and the subject of the video, another phony cold war era ideological trope divorced from facts and timeline)
Barbarossa actually _was_ a close-run thing, and that's because war is a chaotic system, where slight changes in the initial conditions result in huge changes later on. A lot of people assume that if the Germans had, say, 15% more forces at the start, it would just mean that the Soviets would take a week or two more to reach Berlin, but it doesn't work like that. It's just as likely to see hordes of German tanks rolling through Moscow. Probably Hitler's worse mistake was sending German troops to Africa: although they were not numerous in terms of personnel, the Afrika Korps absorbed a disproportionate amount of armour, transport assets, and fuel - which might have been enough to shift the balance on the Eastern Front.
The second reason why Barbarossa failed is down to the short-sightedness of the German generals, as compared to Hitler. Originally, Hitler wanted to strike for the Ukraine and Caucasus, but Halder sabotaged this logical strategy due to a foolish belief that the Soviets would surrender when their capital was taken, as the French did. This illustrates the fact that in both World Wars, German commanders saw fighting as an end in itself, but were unable to string battles together to win the war. If the Germans had struck towards the south, they might not have captured so many prisoners, but they'd have done far more damage to the Soviet war-effort. Reaching the oil-fields was an entirely practicable objective if they'd devoted the bulk of their mechanised and motorised divisions to the task, and even if the fields had been destroyed, it would still have benefited the Germans since it would put the Russians on a level playing-field where both sides were very short of fuel. The British and Americans could supply a relatively small amount of 100-octane aircraft fuel, but they were totally unable to replace the output of the wells in the Caucasus, since they themselves were sometimes managing on a hand-to-mouth basis. It would also have greatly reduced the importance of Lend-Lease; the Western Allies could send all the trucks they wanted, but they'd be no good without fuel.
A couple of thoughts
1/ They could have started earlier if not for Yugoslavia and Greece, but the consensus I have seen is we are talking 1-2 weeks because of the late spring.
2/ No the USSR wouldnt have collapsed if they had taken Moscow, the main advantage of taking Moscow was that it was the central supply hub, everything ran through it
3/ The main objection I have seen about Barbarossa is that they wanted to much given the forces they had, and the target they shouldnt have gone for is Leningrad. They would have had a much greater chance of success if they had gone for Caucasus and Moscow only.
4/ The only valid criticism that I have read about Hitlers orders was that a lot of Generals, like Guderian, when they didnt go for Moscow after the fall of Smolensk, is that they should have taken a defensive position until the spring because the chnace of reaching Moscow was slim at best.
An excellent abbreviated Cliff Notes version of Operation Barbarossa. For those not in the US look up Cliff Notes.
If one reads Ostkrieg by Fritz, or any other solid book about the Eastern Front, you get a sense of the huge risk taken by Hitler in invading the Soviet Union. One comes away from Fritz with the feeling Barbarossa was launched with less than a 50% chance of success.
They ignored the logistician who laid it out for them. Will was everything.
@@patrickporter1864 Well. Let's face it, Germany could only win a war against the Sovjet Union in a short war. Planning a war with logistics (the famous "winter clothes") was the same as planning for defeat before the operation even started. The most important point that is avoided by almost every historian is the question around what an alternative would be to what really happened. Once the UK and France declared war on Germany(not the Sovjets for some reason) Europe was going to be Stalins...
@@lightdampsweetenough2065Hitler seemed to believe that if Germany hit the Soviets hard enough, there would be a political collapse similar to 1917 due to the inherent weakness of communism. What he didn’t seem to account for was the fact that (1) the Soviets were much less likely to surrender to a German government that openly talked about committing genocide against them instead of just taking some land, and (2) even if there had been political instability, the Soviet internal security apparatus was far more effective at brutally suppressing dissent than the Russian Empire ever was.
Stalin certainly always had designs on Eastern Europe, or at least the parts which the Russian Empire had conquered and then lost in WWI (the Baltic states, Poland, and a few extra bits). I doubt he ever imagined that he would also be able to make most of Central Europe into a Russian colony though. He probably would have backed down had the US kept large forces in Europe immediately after WWII, or even if the US had been more hard-nosed diplomatically as Churchill advised, but Truman was understandably focused on getting troops who had served for 3-4 years either home, or to Japan to finish the war.
The contrast with the Western Campaign in 1940 is instructive. The British and French had a preconceived notion of what the Germans were going to do, and thought they had to send their best troops into Belgium and the Netherlands to keep those nations in the war. Then the Germans attacked, the British and French were wrong-footed, the Dutch and Belgians were taken out of the war anyway, and the Western leadership was ill-equipped to salvage the situation. It was a military collapse that brought on a political collapse.
Leading to the 1941 campaign, the Soviet leadership also made many mistakes, not realizing the danger they were in, mispositioning their troops, etc. And these failures were genuinely bad! Stalin himself had a nervous breakdown for the first two weeks and thought that he would be taken out and shot. They shot some generals for incompetence, but the political leadership refused to collapse into infighting and reorganized. Political collapse could have happened, but it did not happen, and that made the difference.
Good comparison. The USSR also had vastly more strategic depth to retreat into. So that bought the Red Army time to learn. The French army never got that time to improve.
Also, France had this problem that much of its industry and important bases was located around Paris and in the eastern part of the country. Germans relatively quickly took control of them, denying the French any real chance of regrouping.
@@executivedirector7467
I didn't realize before that I had picked up so many misbeliefs. More and more I'm encountering in books how the Germans didn't engage in detailed operational planning during the war and were very impulsive and erratic with their strategies. For example, in 1940 Raeder wanted to bomb strategically critical targets in the Caribbean and focus on fuel and metal disruption while Donitz wanted to maximize total tonnage and both were allowed to split their efforts and forces to do as they wished.
It looked to many at the time that Operation Barbarossa would be successful, but that was largely based on impressions that proved incorrect. The Germans were overconfident and substantially underestimated the Soviet to mobilize personnel and developing technologies. Many of the early success of the Germans were because of the massive transitions, both in leadership and in deployment at the new 1939 frontiers, that were in progress in the Soviet army, and those successes could not be repeated once the Soviet military started rebuilding itself. And fundamentally the strategy - which had no backup plan - was to force either economic or political collapse rather than a traditional military defeat.
For the algorithm!!! Another great one Paul, thank you brother!
My pleasure!!
Another great show dispelling myths.
These videos are fantastic, thanks so much
I believe that Hitler realised the game was up in October 1941. But he couldn't admit it to himself and kept doubling down.
Another great episode, love these shows❤
IIRC a journalist asked Zhukov after the war when he thought the war had turned decisively against the Germans? Zhukov's reply: "22nd June 1941."
Another interesting thing that Zhukov said in his memoirs was that the German general, contrary to popular mythology, were not that good. He also sead that after the war the Generals were still around to blame their own failures on Hitler and, of course, Hitler wasn't around to say anything different
@@garybono Zhukov himself was clearly better than the average German general, but he's delusional if he thinks the Soviet generals of 1941 were even close to their German counterparts. In 1941 the Soviet fighting man was not the problem, the Soviet equipment was not the problem, but the Soviet leadership resulted in a 12:1 ratio of Soviet:German casualties and captures, despite the defense generally being favored in war. How else to explain the disastrous 1941 numbers other than Soviet leadership?
On the other point, Hitler was probably not to blame for 1941 or most of 1942 (until Stalingrad). From late 1942 to the war's end, Hitler could be blamed for poor decisions. But Hitler apparently understood that the key to the USSR was capturing the Ukraine wheatfields, the Donetsk Basin industry, and the oil of the Caucasus - all in the south. Yet Hitler's generals wanted to push north, to politically interesting but economically useless places such as Leningrad and Moscow.
I was raised in the Soviet Union. The elephant in the room is that the Germans did reach the gates of Moscow. Now, capturing Moscow was never the highest priority yet they did get pretty close. Hitler was not keen on putting resources into this, mindful of the fate of Napoleon but who knows what would have happened if they did capture Moscow?
In the greater scheme of things, it’s tempting to say that the Germans gained Greece and lost Russia. Here’s why. Although casualties in the former were negligible, equipment losses were not. The Germans had deployed nearly half of their armored divisions and a third of their mechanized divisions. Neither category had anything like the vehicle strength required, and after two weeks of mobile warfare, more than one-third of the wheeled vehicles were out of action because of mechanical failures. Mobile warfare in rough terrain was particularly hard on tires and treads, two items in short supply. Among the many failures of German tank design was a woefully insufficient tread life. The relatively short distances the tanks had to travel in Poland and France masked this deficiency. But the dash through Greece made it all too obvious. After three weeks of such movement, a German tank needed a complete overhaul, and the time between the end of Marita and the onset of Barbarossa simply didn’t allow for the level of maintenance the tanks demanded. For that matter, it hardly allowed for the divisions to get to their new start line. As it was, one of the armored divisions was still stuck in Bulgaria when the attack began in late June.
Although overall casualties were light, airborne casualties were a serious problem. In every campaign thus far, the Wehrmacht had made use of airborne troops through some combination of parachute, glider, and transport-plane delivery. But the losses in Crete meant that Barbarossa would have to proceed without an airborne component-in precisely the situation where it would have had the greatest impact. Of all these setbacks, the loss of time was the most significant. In northern Russia there was only a limited period of good weather between the cessation of the spring thaw and the onset of fall rains, basically a 110-day window that began about the middle of May. Despite a quarter of a century of Communism, Russian roads were still generally unpaved, and a great many of them lacked even the most rudimentary of weather-proofing, a covering of crushed rock. The logic of meteorology was compelling. A war of rapid movement was over once the rains came, which meant, in this conflict, the middle of September at the latest. By delaying Barbarossa until the end of June, the Germans lost a crucial third of their window. Nor should it be forgotten that in the essentially impossible aerial attack on Britain, the Luftwaffe was decimated.
Saw a documentary about the Afrika Korps recently, Rommel's biggest handicap wasn't Montgomery it was logistics
Hitler should not have 'give in' to his generals and attacked Moscow. Stalin traded blood and space for time. Surgery in Japan won the war for Stalin. Great video!
Sorge
TIKHistory details the deception of Halder and that Hitler instructed the Army Grup South to go South not engage Soviets in the East. His you tube has references in the slides so one can check them.
@@user-ih1mo8vv7o Nice catch on the "surgery" comment. Information from Sorge allowed Stalin to release the Siberian reserves for the battle of Moscow.
thank you grant and woody another brill show.
Just to underline one of the main points, I read a statistic that after Barbarossa the Soviets added 500,000 soldiers to their armed forces every month, through the end of the war !!! Include the vast distances in the Soviet Union, and just how can any other nation compete with that ?
Spot on.
Yup. The Soviets ended up raising more than *300 divisions* . This was the most overwhelming land force on Earth, evidenced by the way they rolled over the Wehrmacht and the Japanese Kwangtung Army in Manchuria in the last year of the war.
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony-The Soviets lost about 300 division or equivalents by Dec 1941 and raised close to 800 Division or equivalents by the end of the war.
@@brucenorman8904 The Battle of Berlin shows just how one sided it was, over 2.3 million Soviet troops against just 766,000 battered remnants of Army Group Centre, some Volksturm, Hitler Youth and Police men.
We tend to think of communism as a failure -- because it did fail in the end, and because it facilitated, while it existed, many injustices and shortages and atrocities. But it does seem to have created some big thinkers and organizers who were adept at dealing with hundreds of thousands or millions of people at a time. Organizers who could create and equip entire new armies and move entire industries across continents like an ordinary person might move a wheelbarrow. Communism also teaches people to obey and commit and sacrifice, if necessary, for the greater good. Long term, the ideology is bad, but it seems be tailor made for fighting a bitter large-scale war.
British aircraft production (by themselves) outperformed German Production significantly by the end of the Battle of Britain. The British Navy crippled the Kriegsmarine during the battles for Norway.
German Logistics were NEVER "fit for purpose"
Germany did not go on a warfooting until 1943. The UK and it's empire was on a warfooting in 1939and it also had access to American output. Logistics was and is everything.
I agree that Germany did not got to a war economy until 1943, I was referring to the overall British economy, Germany didn't have anything close to the manufacturing base that the British had. The German economy certainly had an industrial base but it was FAR smaller than the British.
Britain had a base that could build and maintain the only world naval superpower ( at the time ), the British manufacturing base supplied the Commonwealth and competed with the Americans.
You're comment on Logistics is spot on.
Surely this is the wrong way round! There was a 'phoney war' period after the declaration in 1939. Germany was building massively armed Panzershiffen ! Graf Spee Tirpits Bismark!@@patrickporter1864
Something I've heard once: logistics is like the laws of physics. You want to ignore them, good luck to you sir. @@patrickporter1864
Howdy folks. One Russian-German rabbithole demolished by a WW2TV alumnus with an arsenal of facts. Need more like this. Great series.
I can’t keep up with all this great content
Given the distances involved a Blitzkrieg offensive was never going to work the same way
How many armies in history have achieved as much as the Wehrmacht before the operational pause in August of 41? Over 4 million Soviet soldiers killed and captured, so much land it took three years for vast Soviet army to recapture.
Germanys fixable problem was lack of wartime footing meant too many soldiers had to walk. Needed more transport. Needed tank repair parts and facilities traveling closely behind the front.
Unfixable problem was lack of oil. Maybe needed to drive main thrust through Army Group South. Basically the goals of Case Blue in 1942 minus unnecessary Stalingrad fiasco. Gain oil while depriving opponent of the same.
Barbarossa deeply interesting topic.
Wehrmacht had very good successes in Barbarossa, but winter was biggest issue
I’m not sure the commissars forcing soldiers to fight was a complete myth. The Soviets executed 13,500 soldiers during Stalingrad. At least according to several sources I’ve read. I am no scholar though.
For Germany to have any chance, Stalin dying during the first six months would have been at least one needed factor along with many others. Look, this has been gamed out this massive war in the eastern front so long between the most destructive totalitarian regimes (along with Imperial Japan), and Hitler was simply out-totalitarianed.
The Germans were bleeding from the beginning..by Dec 1 , 1941 they had over 250,000 dead, another 760,000 seriously wounded. The German Army could not replace these men..plus, only 1/3 of their tanks were still functioning...and gasoline was in short supply. The Russians could make up their losses-and eventually produced 55,000 T-34 tanks. So once their chance to capture Moscow was gone, the Germans would lose..just a question of time.
Barbarossa: David Vs. Goliath where David loses.
Even most ideal German plans had assumed to stop at A-A line West of the Urals.
No consideration of British Indian forces moving into Central Asia to continue war of Attrition the Germans were not prepared for
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but you do have to wonder about German planning for Barbarossa - poor logistics, poor intelligence, poor materiel supply & refurbishment & insufficient mechanised forces given the ground they would have to cover. As an additional factor Germany was still having to devote resources to the Atlantic Coast as well, due to the failure to subdue the U.K.
Excellent
I do not see this as a myth busted; Hitler's blunders/changes in plan had real-world effects on the conduct of the war. Halting the advance on Moscow, in order to execute a double-envelopment of Soviet armies in the Kiev region, gave the Red Army a good 5-6 weeks to shore up defenses of the capital region. In 1942, Operation Blau had also staggered the Red Army, but Hitler again made changes to the plan that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. So if in 1942, Hitler's changes of plan and interference in operations wrecked his own offensive, it stands to reason that Hitler's conduct in 1941 accomplished much the same.
It’s like never get into a land war in Asia; same applies to Western Russia.
The biggest mistake of Barbarossa was launching it at all, at least in 1941. Even if they had stuck to the plan and executed it perfectly, it wouldn't have knocked the USSR out of the war. The Soviet Union was simply too vast, with too much population and resources, to be knocked out in a 6 month campaign.
Grant H. makes some very pertinent observations. ;)
Grand Slam banger of an episode!
Following the current Russo-Ukrainian War, it's almost chilling seeing names in the news of so many infamous locations that were enveloped by so much death and destruction just 80 years before. It's both tragic and haunting.
I’ve been thinking the same thing. The spelling of some places has been changed, though. Kharkov to Kharkiv, Kiev to Kyiv, etc.
History repeats itself and modern wars are fought for natural resources and oil
@@adamesd3699 Western spelling. They are pronounced about the same but they now need to emphasize the difference. More propaganda nonsense. (By the way, 2 of my grandparents and father born in Ukraine. lived through WW2, an infant did not make it, and my father, a teen then, saw what western Ukrainian Nationalists (our current and Canadian Parliament's "heroes") were up to "behind the lines" so he taught me actual history and not this new cold war history,
There was a suggestion that USSR was expecting to attack and therefore wasn't as prepared for defence
Barbarossa in 23 minutes. Done and done. Great job synthesizing the latest information. Another myth rightfully busted. Thanks.
great presentation
If the Wehrmacht had made it to Moscow in late 1941, it would have been another Stalingrad. Moscow was too far away to adequately supply a German occupying army and the Soviets would have encircled them and cut them off.
The Germans could have taken Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow and still they would have lost the war. Taking those objectives would have been almost as costly as was losing them; and the Germans had no way to replace what they lost, nor any logistical way to maintain what they did replace. They thought Barbarossa would be over in weeks. And they had no concept of what the titanic land area of Russia would cost just to move across, much less fight across. And of course they misunderstood their opponent, and what they were capable of.
I agree with much of what was said and yet I think Barbarossa was, nonetheless, a close -run thing. Had the Germans managed to capture Leningrad and Moscow in 1941 there is every reason to think that Soviet morale would have collapsed. Certainly Stalin was very concerned about this. OKH understood the importance of these two centers and had they not been overruled by Hitler there is every reason think they would have fallen in the Fall of 41. Moscow was the logistic and transportation hub of the USSR. How would Stavka and the Communist Party have maintained effective control over the Soviet Union had Moscow been captured?
I have never studied this deeply enough.
This is to the folks that have studied this conflict throughly . Do you believe that Hitler thought that if he did not invade the USSR, that the USSR would launch an attack on the West eventually?
Therefore he felt threatened by that possibility?
Thank you
It's certainly a plausible theory, and Stalin definitely had aspirations in that direction
@@WW2TV thank you!
The Soviets were never going to surrender until the Germans got at least to the Volga. The Germans were never going to reach that goal.
Problem: how to keep going when your logistics suck? Blitzkrieg worked in small countries like Poland and France which were right next to Germany. But by the time they got outside of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, they were too far from Germany. They didn’t have enough trains, trucks and cargo planes to get stuff to the front. The Soviet Union had inadequate railroads and highways, and Germany didn’t build enough new ones. A horse drawn army can’t keep up with tanks and Stukas.
There's also matter of space. In Poland they had approx 300 km from the bases to the points they aimed to reach and they were starting from the Reich's territory. The East was covered by the Soviets, anyway.
In France they managed to cripple the French army when they were still relatively close to Germany and the logistics wasn't THAT much of an issue.
I really enjoy your Eastern Front shows.
Germany's poor logistics meant it was not good at projecting power over long distances. To keep the armies moving you needed to extend the rails (different gauge) and a lot of trucks. They didn't know how to do that well. Germany hadn't even mobilized. If I recall from Speer's book it wasn't until 43 or 44 that Hitler began mobilizing. The thinking was always quick victories and a short war. The American genius was logistics and long term sustainment. And Lend Lease was very important. The trucks we supplied kept the Soviets supplied and moving.
Had Hitler not interfered with the campaign, Army Gruppe Center would have taken Moscow. Moscow was the communication and transport hub of western Russia. The taking of Moscow would have collapsed the Russian front. Leningrad was totally dependant on Moscow and Leningrad would have fallen as well. Russia was primitive in many respects then, the cities, railways, and roads were critical. Would have the Soviets survived? More or less, but they would have been knocked out of the war.
Stalin never moved any Factories until well later, Scorched earth was his only defense.
Good info combined with the word record of using “you know” every 20 words…
Barbarossa not being a near run thing may be intended to belittle the Nazis but it also belittles the achievement of the Soviets. The Red Army hung together despite bad training, bad doctrine, obsolescent equipment and leadership learning on the job. What other army or people could have endured so much without breaking? This assumes that their holding on was inevitable.
But the Soviet defence was one of Grant's key points. Despite their losses they performed better than some historians have claimed
@@WW2TV Some Red Army units performed decently in 1941 but its performance overall in 1941 started at terrible and improved to mediocre by the end of the year. This was demonstrated by their uniform lack of success once the Germans consolidated their defenses during the Winter and again in the Spring. There really isn't much good to say about the Red Army's performance in 1941 except that it did not collapse. That last bit is no small thing though. It is one thing to hang together when buoyed by success (any success) but another when failure is your most common (near constant) companion. How they managed that is the question I would love an answer to.
I've been loving these short myth shows even when I partly disagree.
@@AdamMisnik I guess for whatever performance they made up for that with pure resilience.
I think most nations would have broke sustaining the kind of losses that the Red army did, they lost the equivalent of the entire German army in the first few months of Barbarossa and STILL bounced back. Probably the greatest "They had us in the 1st half" in History.
In re British involvement, securing the Africa theatre and the middle east was crucial to ensure supplies to the USSR. Iran is always ignored, as well as whatever they suffered despite having no real reason to be involved in this war. They were just in the wrong place in the wrong time and got invaded by two superpowers and unnecessarily broken. That however, helped save the Soviet Union allowing the western allies to send supplies through Iran, right into the Caucausus. This couldn't have been done without the British Empire. Now imagine a scenario in which Barbarossa happens where Egypt fell and Italy and Germany expanded into the levant, maybe flipped Iraq over to the Axis. The Soviets would be starved of supplies from the South, leaving only the baltics and the pacific route open while battering the British supplies too, which weakens Allied efforts in the bombing campaign over Germany.
Note: that Hitler by demonizing Ukrainians shoved them into active resistance. Note also that Stalin was the Ultimate MBA by being cheap, just like Hitler. The key to note is that Hitler didn’t recognize that French victory was a one off.. it really took a lot more than Hitler realized would be required to achieve victory.
9:08 -- one of the mistakes hitler made was failing to recognize the consequences of the fact that the Soviet railway gauge was wider than the European standard, which meant that captured railway had to be re-gauged to use Reichsbahn rolling stock, an ongoing drain on resources.
Hitler again? Did he have to check the railway gauges himself?
The winter in december-januari1941 was a lot more severe than average. Here in the Netherlands, the cold record of minus 27 Celsius is from januari 1942. So that was a German disadvantage.
The surprise attack of June 1941 was a German advantage. However, untill the end of 1942 the Germans broke through every front. Also with no surprise advantage. After 22 June 1941, the Germans again surrounded lots of Russian soldiers at Kiev in september and Viazma-Briansk in oktober.
If the Germans had given the Ukrainians an independent state and used them as allies, they would probably have defeated the Soviets. That is the biggest game changer possible, i think.
Very unrealistic of course, with the Nazi ideology.
Also, everything that Britain and the USA did is of course also decisive. They neutralized 25 to 50 percent of the German war-potential with troops, the U boat war and strategic bombing. And they increased the Soviet war potential by 15 percent with Lend Lease.
Whatever can be said about Barbarossa it certainly appeared at the time to the whole world that Russia was about to collapse.
There is the fact that Hitler and others had asked the German weapons manufacturers to produce larger calibre weapons for their tanks and anti-tank guns in 1938, but that wasn't carried out until after the French and Low Countries campaigns, had been invaded. If the German tanks and anti-tank guns had been higher calibre, the T34s' and KV1s' wouldn't of been such a problem. Obviously, other weapons could of been up graded as well.
If...
Note that Russians guessed wrong. The reason was that.the Russia expected D Day to be later than 6-22-41 so trains and tanks were in motion after German attack, also note that Stalin, in a speech to Russian graduates from Frunze spoke of destroying the Getmns. German victory threw Stalin’s plans into a bucket because he expected a Somme type situation in Western Front which would allow him to hit the Germans when they were occupied with Somme 2.
Ugh, I meant to try to squeeze in a mention of the fourth, forgotten army group of Operation Barbarossa, Romanian Army Group Antonescu that existed for a month or so, and the talk I did with OTD Military History. th-cam.com/video/m1basdKJ7Oo/w-d-xo.html
Also, Hitler and his commanders only launched 76% of their forces at Russia. What would of happened if 90-95% of the German land forces had been used?
A. Couldn't because those forces needed elsewhere to guard coasts or occupy. Nazi Germany already overextended.
B. The Wehrmacht already lacked enough logistical infrastructure for what it had. Adding more men, weapons, & equipment would've just overburdened its motor transport & rail transport even more. One reason why the Germans don't try to stop Romania from partially demobilizing in the fall is that they couldn't supply a larger Romanian force.
Didn't have the logistics to support them
Japan? Russia was also at war with Japan, but after some disastrous losses Japan turned elsewhere and the Russian forces in the east were freed to reinforce those in the west. If Japan had of kept up the pressure from the east who knows? instead they get America involved in the war. But it seems no one ever mentions Japans part in this.
German logistics sucked. The real issue was that the war was to deal with the inadequacies of the NSDAP economic system by seizing oil and food from the Soviets, and the German lack of oil for transport made the attempt impossible.
Barbarossa was NEVER close to succeeding. The Soviet Union was too big, the logistics too difficult. It may- (emphasis: MAY) have worked had the Chancellor not declared war on the USA without consulting his cabinet, thus giving the Soviets American manufacturing capacity, American food, American trucks and American money.
All that from the USA plus American bombing of Germany (and Romanian oil fields) which reduced Nazi production and fuel. Plus of course the eventual 2nd front, which meant large amounts of troops and equipment couldn't be used in the east. So a question remains "what if" Germany hadn't declared war on the USA after Pearl Harbor? Would the American public have supported the war in Europe just because Japan was a German ally?
And what if Japan had not hit Pearl Harbor or the Philippines but had only gone after Dutch Indonesia (for the oil and resources) with Holland being under German control? We'll never know. But we do know that US involvement in the war greatly aided the Soviets. My guess is that without US aid (and bombing), the East Front would have bogged down much like WWI, because the Soviets lacked mobility without lend-lease. And frankly Germany might have eventually won, with greater production and no involvement by the USA.
But yes, Barbarossa itself (the initial phase) could not have succeeded, unless Stalin voluntarily threw in the towel, which he was not going to do.
"Lend-Lease Wasn't A Big Deal to the USSR" - another myth deserving of an episode.
We've talked about LL a few times
TIKHistory has all the numbers on his you tube site. It's excellent. The USA provided MASSIVE amounts of virtually everything!!
I don't watch Tik
@@WW2TV why not? He’s done a load of empirical work!
He also claims Hitler was a socialist. I liked him when he stuck to battles, but stopped when he got political. But respect his knowledge
Best Soviet leaders...
Marshall Mudzinski
General Winterov
Colonel Distancekaya
Major Logisticki
Captain Resourcesko
Sums it up 😆
Depends on the war aim I suppose. Here's the thing, from what I have read Barbarossa led Stalin to essentially offer a WW2 version of the WW1 Brest-Litovsk. If the Germans take that they win. I've seen many different views about Germany's inability to win the war and for sure Germany's size/GDP/oil issues relative to the Allies and the Soviet Union make a protracted war of attrition impossible for them to win, but there WERE opportunities for the Germans to 'quit while they were ahead' and Barbarossa is one of them.
The amazing thing about the Wehrmacht is they kept winning against superior numbers. Suprise victories First Poland and then France. They have to delay the start, a major diversion of resources into Yugoslavia, and they need the rail transports in Romania; their aren't any in the middle of Poland because there's a huge swampland there (Katherin had brought in Dutch to build dikes and reclaim farmland. Amazing they went as far as they did.
Hitler knew that Germany would always live under the heel of British and French dominance if Germany didn't secure all vital resources. Caucasus oil, and Ukrainian agriculture in between were the key to true German independence. Untainted by Rome, there is a core egalitarianism and duty to the community baked into German-descended people. They're more like what the American Indian would've evolved into. You follow your leader by consent and you're free to leave or change allegiance if what the chief does isn't working. That's counter to the Roman model, and the whole divine right of kings thing.
He mainly offers his opinions and hypotheticals. We will never know whether the Germans would have achieved a better outcome with a drive on Moscow in Aug 41. Or what if the Oct rains had arrived later? To suggest that the mud in Oct 41 effected both sides equally is wrong. The Soviet positions were defensive and more static, they had much shorter supply lines and they held the central position which made it easier to shift reserves. The histories written prior to the 1990s were clearly biased towards the Germans however it seems the pendulum has swung far in the other direction.
Thanks for the feedback
Hypothetical point and opinion about pendulums swinging. Can you quote sources?
I wrote that "it seems". I didn't claim it was a fact. @@neilritson7445
Sorry, no mention of the oil issue, no mention of the railroad “hubbing” out of Moscow or issues with Hague changes. Very incomplete and not convincing, sorry.
These myths shows are short for a reason, but they can't cover everything. We have long format shows for that
I do not know, if it was close. But there is a general problem. This Russia is huge. :D And every "game" when You are not allowed to make faults, and the enemy is, is a bad game for You.
Yes, I've often thought that, basically, Germany had to bowl a "300" to win. But this is to speak, and for your point as well, of winning in that very first year, which turned out to be close to impossible due to Russia's size and other factors. I'd say the German odds would have gone way up if the campaign had been viewed as a multi-year effort, and if America had been persuaded to remain neutral. Then the Germans could have focused on simply conquering a new chunk of land every year, confident in the end that eventually this would lead to a collapse of Russian resistance. This was, in a sense, the strategy Japan was using against China before getting mixed up in the great Pacific War.
@@polarvortex3294 National Socialist doctrine prevented the regime from bowling that "300". They did get a "turkey" in the spring of 1940, but this allowed Stalin in July 1940 to occupy the Baltic States and a Rumanian province that wasn't agreed to under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939. When a "war of annihilation" is espoused, the opponent is backed into a corner where resistance is the only option. The world held its breath when Barbarossa was launched and gave hope to the citizens of the occupied countries that Germany COULD lose the war.
Opening declaring war on USA on 11 Dec 1941 allowed FDR to pursue a "Germany First" strategy and to silence critics that wanted to emphasize the war effort against Japan instead. Hitler erroneous believed that Japan would reciprocate by declaring war on USSR. Germany, Italy, and Japan were strategically uncoordinated and doing their own things.
Surprise attack? Not hardly.
It is a sad truth that Finland was the lone Axis democracy.
I think one of the underappreciated factors behind the lack of Soviet collapse: Gearing up for a war by the numbers. By the time the Barbarossa kicked off, the Soviet Union had about 14 million mobilizable population. This was done in order to prepare for a drown war of attrition. Soviet planners expected that an entire field army unit (equivalent to Western army corps) would have to be replaced after several months of intense fighting. Thus, in the second half of 1941, the Soviets assembled 40+ field army units, while 10 in 1942, which allowed the Soviets to not only survive the initial German onslaught, but also rebuild. In a way, Soviet planners had a more realistic approach compared to their German counterparts. It was by no means elegant, let alone pretty, but you gotta make to do with what you have and the Soviets did a better job than the Germans in this regard.
As for the German planners, they became a bit too enamored with maneuver warfare, something even today's military professionals and enthusiasts should avoid.
Any proponents and fanboys of maneuver warfare out there? Iraq serves as a cautionary tale.
1991 Desert Storm: Maneuver warfare worked, because the Iraqis were not as capable as they were portrayed in the Western media; the scale and the scope of the Desert Storm was limited, both militarily and politically.
2003 Iraqi Freedom: Worked almost like a charm up to the capture of Baghdad. However, things started to go sour once the Iraqi Freedom turned into war of insurgency. By the time ISIS emerged, maneuver warfare no longer had much relevance.
Afghanistan should also serve as a cautionary tale. In this instance, 20 years of worth of military operations exposed a major US weakness--i.e., its high-tech and well-trained forces turned out to be very good as an initial shock force, but not particularly impressive as an occupation force. Just because you are very good at winning the initial battle, it does not mean you are equally good at finishing the war. (A while back, I even encountered an analysis comparing the number of boots on the ground per 100,000 population. In case of post-WW2 Germany, the figure was 900+ per 100,000. However, in case of Afghanistan, it was 100- per 100,000. If you are darn serious about occupying someone else's turf, you better have lots of boots available. Warplanes and AFVs cannot compensate for the lack of boots.)
They nevah hadda chance too many Soviets no where near enough trucks or Germans
Kick the door in....
Words spoken before the worst military decision in history.
Probably.
NAPOLEON did better than Hitler did in Barbarossa : he took Moscow!
If you look at Stahel's work he gets in to the logistics and state of the panzer groups in the opening weeks of the campaign and it paints a sorry picture for the Germans. Up to 70% losses in tanks, little spare parts, inadequate and stretching supply lines. A great bulk of the tanks were obsolete mk 1's and 2's. In retrospect it seems like Barborossa had 0% chance of success.
It is amazing how in 2023 you are not understand the situation. Now we know exactly the production of tanks of the USSR for each year from 1927 to 1945, etc. It is known that only 84,000 T34s were built in the factories in the Urals. If you add the other types of Soviet armored vehicles, it exceeds 100,000. Compare these numbers with the approx. 1400 Tigers built by Germany, which was "super prepared" for war by a crazy leader. So stop presenting us that the USSR, which was left behind technologically and "unprepared" and taken by surprise by the German attack. A weapon built by the USSR in 1938 is still part of the equipment of modern armies, including the US army (M1938 mortar).The factories in the European USSR had already been captured by the Germans. All German armored vehicles of all types built in Germany during WW2 are a little over 50,000. These data are not stories but real statistical data. All this meant a colossal industrial effort, starting from 1927, made by the communist party of the USSR for the subjugation of Europe. These data cannot be disputed and show like Hard Evidences the intentions of the USSR. How they did it exactly is described in books, books that for you seem to have remained a mystery. I will briefly explain what is said in them.
It was obvious(1939) and it is so obvious now(2023), that strategically Germany could not fight against an alliance formed by the USSR, the British Empire and the USA and win. And then how did Germany end up in this position? The answer has been given for a long time, but it contradicts the official narrative of the victorious powers. The answer is Hitler's deception by Stalin by concluding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Hitler declared in Mein Kampf since 1925 that if Germany fights on two fronts, east and west (as in WW1), it will lose the war because it does not have the resources for a conflict on two fronts. Who was in the east? USSR. Who was in the west? France and Great Britain. Who does Hitler "declare" to be the "natural" enemy of Germany for hundreds of years? Frankreich. Not on England who are Aryan brothers and not on Russians who are subhuman but have resources. And then Hitler makes a "compromise": he allies Germany in the east with the USSR in order to have his back covered and to have a free hand in the west to recover Alsace and Lorraine. This is what the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is for; of non-aggression with the USSR. Of course, Stalin wants something in exchange: the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, a part of Finland as the Finns were too close to Leningrad, a part of Poland that did not exist for approx. 100 years. By doing this Hitler hoped to restore Germany as it was before WW1 even bigger because now it also had territories from the former Austro-Hungarian empire.
It is obvious to any rational person that without the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact Hitler would not have ventured to attack Poland alone, with the potential threat for Germany of a war on two fronts, which he wanted to avoid at all costs.
But Stalin was preparing his country for war since 1927 from the first five-year plan. The production of tanks handed over to the Red Army in 1938 is over 2400 tanks; in 1939 the red army receives over 3500 tanks from the industry. It is obvious that the USSR did not build this production of tanks to fight with Finland! Germany will attack on June 22, 1941 with 3410 tanks. Compare these numbers of the two "unprepared" combatants!
Happy and naive Hitler rejoices: he is allied with the USSR (they have common territorial objectives) which secures his back from the east, he has their resources at his disposal, an invincible land army, a capable air force, he is weak at sea. But England can do nothing to him on land. And then, in agreement with Stalin, on September 1, 1939, he attacked Poland from the west, while Stalin was supposed to attack from the east. But the Surprise, the red army is not "prepared", and he is not informed about it. So, on September 3, 1939 Great Britain and France declared war on Germany because Germany had attacked the Polish ally. From now on, Germany was at war with France and its empire and Great Britain and its empire (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, "the empire on which the sun never sets" ). On September 17, 1939, the "prepared" Red Army attacked Poland. But, surprise again, France and Great Britain did not declare war on the USSR, which had attacked their ally.
Hitler does not realize that the trap has closed. He is just a naive painter and eloquent orator.
The deception with the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact had its effect. The situation described by Hitler in Mein Kampf with the war on two fronts (as in WW1) happened again. Germany is in the position of Sisyphus. No matter how hard Germany tries, it will lose the war. At sea, only the UK alone beats Germany at any time. In the air, only the US air force with its superfortresses and modern fighter planes beats Germany at anytime. Only on land, the situation seems a little more balanced, but if we consider only the 84,000 T34s compared to the 1,347 Tigers, the situation becomes clear. So oil, V1 and V2, Me262, Stalingrad, etc. are just details of a clear strategic situation that cannot be changed. A naive painter and eloquent orator (Hitler) who talked too much was deceived by a bank robber (Stalin) psychologically built to make his plans secretly.
When Stalin attacked Finland on November 30, 1939, he sent Goering to "convince" the Finns to give in to the territorial claims of the Russians according to the secret annex of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (of which the Finns did not know); in this way the Germans "honored" their word given when signing the pact. After the capitulation of France in June 1940, the USSR gave an ultimatum to Romania on June 26, 1940 in which it demanded Bessarabia and northern Bucovina. After the advice received from Germany and Italy, the Tatarescu government agreed to submit to the Soviet conditions (Hitler again honored his word given to Stalin).
In August 1940, when all the Luftwaffe and the land army were concentrated in the west and the Battle of England was taking place (July 10-October 31, 1940), and the Russians occupied the Herta land, which did not appear on the map as part of the territory that was supposed to be given to the USSR, Hitler also "achieves" the situation. The Russians were near Galati, 150 km from the Ploiesti oil area. Through a surprise attack, they occupied Ploiesti in 48 hours. For Germany, the war would have ended immediately without Romanian oil. After the Abwehr reports show the concentration of Red Army forces in Bessarabia, Hitler finally orders the preparation of the Barbarossa plan.
In May 1941, Hitler, knowing from now on that he will fight on two fronts and trying to prevent this from happening, sends his secretary, Rudolf Hess, to try to conclude a separate peace with the British. The British will arrest him and keep him in captivity until 1987 as a great war criminal (he who was only a simple secretary and who had not participated in WW2). He will be "found" committed suicide in the prison with only one inmate, only him. But, because he was a fanatic obsessed with sports(in 1987 he was 93 years old) and loyalty who could not support the narrative of the victorious powers as others did (Paulus for example) he was never released except for dead.
All this narrative is supported in books written by Suvorov and others such as Stalin's Missed Chance (Mikhail Meltyukhov) and which obviously contradict the official narrative of the victorious powers in WW2.
Can these certain data be suppressed in 2023?
You don't have to believe me. Hitler says it to Mannerheim, the German generals say it, Western historians say it when they analyze the balance of forces in every operation carried out by the Red Army against the German Army, etc.
At Stalingrad, 300,000 Germans fought with 500,000 Russians in the city. The front of the armies that attacked north and south of the city and that made the encirclement included 800,000-1,000,000 soldiers. In the north they were opposed by 70,000-80,000 Romanians and other allies of the Germans, in the south by 50,000-60,000 Romanians and others. In this operation called Uranus, 4 tank armies took part, including approximately 900 Soviet tanks. The Romanians had no tanks, only some cannons. This data is real; what will prevent you from interpreting them correctly?
th-cam.com/video/WE6mnPmztoQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=LgSkCtyqdlu28QPO
Ww2 was shorter than this post.
If Germany's ally Japan had decided to settle accounts with the USSR (as the Japanese army wanted) and attacked along with the Germans then the Soviet Union would have been defeated. No one can deny that, and David Glatz freely admits it.
Maybe not see kalkhin gol.
Interestingly, the Japanese had a plan to launch seven armies into Siberia in 1941. *Operation Kantokuen* . basically the Japanese version of Barbarossa.
No..ifs....There is a you tube video by an American author which details the 20million Chinese casualties that stood in their way.
when did stalin receive his first lend lease shipment?
The summer of 1941
Great primer for thought and discussion in future. I, for one, am glad that Germany invaded the USSR. Talk about turning points! This was the best thing that could happen in that it pretty much guaranteed that Germany was doomed to lose the war. It may have seemed dramatic and worrisome to the western powers at the time, but in reality Hitler and his regime gave the world a gift with Operation Barbarossa. It was pure hubris and arrogance at best.
If you watch @TIK at all, Germany lost the war basically when they started it. They were running out of resources and needed to get to the Ukraine for food and the Caucasus for Oil. The good thing about the Soviet Invasion is that it wastes so many troops in the East which couldn’t be used against the western allies.
How far East ought Operation Barbarosa have been aiming to conquer have a reralistic chance of striking a fatal blow to Stalin's Red Army ?
Possibly around Ural mountains. All territories east of Ural do not have that much population so even with the industry moved there the Red Army would have had hard time replacing human losses.
However, getting to Ural...
The two ways to win a war are to stop your opponent's ability to make war or to have them internally fall apart due to lack of support for the war or revolt on the goverment.. Germans never had a hope to stop Russia from making war and threw out all possibilities of a revolt when they openly liquidated every Russian civilian in its path... then it became a patriotic war and there was in my estimation zero chance of Germany winning in the eastern front.
I agree that Barbarossa as designed was almost certainly going to fail. But as an academic exercise, I wonder if a different plan than Barbarossa might have succeeded. The economic wealth of the Soviet Union (on the European side) was in the grain fields of the Ukraine, the industry and minerals of the Donets Basin, and the oil fields of the Caucasus. Instead of the goal of an Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan line, what if they'd drawn up a Riga-Smolensk-Voronezh-Stalingrad-Astrakhan line?
This would be a fairly straight and possibly defensible line, would not include Leningrad and Moscow, and would separate the ethnic Russians from the rest of the European SSR's. Furthermore it would put the most economically valuable assets in German hands, while ignoring the less useful northern areas. It would probably have to be accomplished over 2 years in the south, as the 1941 phase likely wouldn't take them beyond Rostov. Convert/improve the rails in the conquered areas of the south to German (European) gauge during the winter, resume in summer 1942, it might have been possible.
Another factor would have been to treat people in the conquered areas better, as many - including Ukrainians - hated the Soviet government and thought initially that they were being liberated. Once the Nazis were understood to be planning to either relocate or exterminate the people of European part of the Soviet Union, there was no way that those people were going to give up and accept a political change (as they had in France). Had the Nazis treated the USSR people better and acted as "liberators" from the Bolsheviks, they might have won at the political level. But then, they wouldn't have been Nazis if they'd treated people better in those conquered areas.
A stop-start approach from the beginning would've immediately led to a war of attrition and that was not how the German Army was built, it was made for quick victories using momentum to cause quick collapse in the enemy. The entire purpose of Germany's approach to war was to avoid situations like the western front in WW1. On top of that just getting across Ukraine and into the Caucasus would've required outrunning supply lines regardless of when it was attempted, a stop-start there would not have worked as there just wasn't enough infrastructure leading back west. Capturing the oil fields in the Caucasus was a compromised desperation approach only after Typhoon finally failed to cause a military defeat of the Red Army, it wasn't going to cause the Soviet war effort to collapse so much as be there to give Germany a fighting chance to survive the war. They couldn't then concentrate their best units on driving south because if the Soviets aren't taken out then they would continue to be a threat at driving into their now 1,200mi flank. If they wanted to win the war and take out Britain they needed Moscow to be a permanently neutral trading partner. Many did view the Germans as liberators but most of those were closer to central Europe/Baltics, as the Germans advanced they moved into territory occupied by ethnic/cultural Russians that would resist regardless of what flag was being waved and that includes eastern Ukraine and all of the areas east of that.
@@drencrum Good points, and yes Plan A for the Nazis was to make the Soviet government collapse. But we can see that the plan didn't work, the Soviet government didn't collapse.
However, the 2nd part (1942) was not a desperation approach, as it was always the plan to take the Caucasus oil. Hitler favored an economically driven approach, while his generals wanted to force the political collapse. They wound up doing a bit of both in 1941, and they were decently positioned for 1942's "Fall Blau" especially after the Soviet disaster at the 2nd Battle of Kharkov in early 1942.
But even in 1942 the southern strategy was compromised by having too much men and equipment in the north (north of the Pripyet marshes), not enough in the south. The focus should always have been the south, in hindsight.
I'm thinking that if the Nazis "knew" that the USSR would not surrender even if Moscow had been taken (still unknown), then they still might have been victorious if they'd put more into the south. Maybe have the drive north be mostly infantry, put most of the panzer divisions in the south. Have the rail crews ready to convert rail to German trains in the south.
And yes it would take two parts, but the "second blitzkrieg" did work in 1942, up to a point. Avoid trying to take Stalingrad mano-a-mano as this became an attrition battle, and of course led to the Germans being surrounded during the Soviet Operation Uranus. Cut the Volga shipping from a point south of Stalingrad, take the oilfields, etc. Go into defensive mode, especially if Stalingrad and Voronezh can be fully or partly taken (both were partly taken in 1942).
At that point, the Soviet-controlled population would have been about on a par with Germany's and their European allies, and the important Soviet resources would be in German hands. Could the Soviets have still won from there? Possibly, but only with US and UK help.
I do agree that the Baltics were more likely to support the German cause, so instead of stopping at Riga, perhaps the Nazis could have taken Estonia too (as they actually did), and threatened Leningrad, which would make the Finns feel part of the war. With a possible fall-back to the Riga line if necessary. It's all moot now, but from an economic perspective, the southern strategy makes sense - especially if the political collapse of the USSR was not possible.
@@andrewfurst5711 Fall Blau worked in part because both sides simply had fewer forces in the south after the destruction of the Red Army forces at Kiev and so many forces from both sides were tied up in the center. In addition Timoshenko got chewed up trying to cross the Oskol River and flank Kharkov from the south at the beginning of summer 1942, once his lead forces got destroyed it created a huge imbalance that the Germans took advantage of to create a rout to the Don River where the Red Army was able to mount a defense for a prolonged period (long enough to build defenses at Stalingrad; for the Wehrmacht's part they were preparing to launch their offensive when Timoshenko attacked, likely they win anyways but it just made life so much easier for Army Group South until they reached the Don when it became a slog). I wonder if the Germans hadn't advanced as far as they did in the center in 1941 that they would've been able to attack Kiev from the north and encircle all of those Red Army forces who were using the Dnieper River as a natural defense barrier and in addition without Operation Typhoon and the subsequent Battle of Moscow to chew up and occupy the bulk of Red Army reinforcements in 1941 that they wouldn't then just deploy south and create river defensive barrier after river defensive barrier all the way to Stalingrad and Rostov.
So assuming the Germans drive north regardless in order to get Finland back into the war and occupy Red Army forces at Leningrad that leaves a weakened center group that probably stops at the Dnieper north of Kiev and sets up defensive positions but still enough forces to keep the Red Army honest and likely an assault on Smolensk to make that happen. Without hindsight the Germans drive to the Dnieper but now have to try and encircle the Red Army at Kiev only from the south, those forces are able to then retreat north and east and rejoin Red Army reinforcements now coming south. Fall of 1941 culminates in a battle for Kursk and Kharkov to the north and Sevastopol in 1941 to the south as the Germans aim to stabilize their flanks in preparation for 1942. Assuming they reach the Don they could prepare for defenses in the winter of 1941-42, of course assuming that they planned for a war of attrition.
Assuming Germany was not on a war footing prepared for a war of attrition on any front at this point and most of the Wehrmacht by 1941 has been expanded quickly built off the forces deployed in 1939 and 1940 then the best they could hope for is to force a retreat from Kiev by storming the Dnieper from the south and then trying to encircle and destroy as many Red Army forces on that northern flank near Bryansk/Kursk/Kharkov and give their infantry and artillery time to man the front and prepare for any tank battles and Red Army reserves to counter attack, this leaves the drive eastwards in jeapordy and thus a stall happens before the Wehrmacht can reach the Don. If they're unable to encircle and destroy Red Army forces with their lighter tanks then it becomes a rather huge blunder obviously as those forces now really can't drive eastwards anytime soon. Likely by mud season in October German forces are stuck in the south and an attack to take the Don has to wait until 1942 anyways and we're kind of not that far off from what ended up happening anyways.
I think there must've been a political/intelligence subterfuge element to Barbarossa that was supposed to work that simply didn't. I think the Red Army was definitely preparing for an offensive into Romania as the bulk of their armor was in the south but the Red Army wasn't planning on launching the attack possibly until the fall of 1941. You also had the military purges which led to a change in philosophy for the entire Red Army on the western front to a squarely offensive mechanized approach to warfare, the officer corps was starting over and logistics were completely scrambled as a result. You had Stalin's political purges in the late 1930's that likely created a large number of people motivated to finally take out Stalin and the transition in the Red Army created a massive opportunity for an outside force to break the Red Army and create the political crisis that conceivably would lead to Stalin himself getting purged. In conjunction with the fact that the Soviet Union had invaded the Baltic States in 1940 and Galicia always wanting to leave Russian rule and the newly created Red Army positions in Poland being exposed and mostly indefensible you had a perfect storm to create chaos. There's a chance the Germans might've been fed intelligence by the anti-Bolsheviks in all these bordering areas that painted too much of a biased view that didn't portray the Soviets' strengths and only their weaknesses. A.H. himself was recorded talking to Mannerheim about how he was shocked by how many tanks the Soviets had in 1941 and how much resistance they were putting up and how he wouldn't have ordered the invasion if he knew what they knew then. He was absolutely convinced Soviet Leadership would crumble though and I wonder if there was an inside job waiting to happen that just didn't fire off because the whole thing backfired politically as it just rallied the nation instead and the Soviets were able to give up land without losing their factories. You see similar 3rd pillar war aims all the time in other conflicts where military might is used as much to scare the other side into capitulation as it is meant to truly destroy the enemy from existence.
@@drencrum Great comments, thanks. A fascinating "puzzle" involving the biggest conflict in history (i.e. the WWII Eastern Front).