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 djones520 wrote:
Because we're talking about tactical decisions that cost Hitler an early victory, when it was strategic decisions made long before by the Soviet's that set up the scenario.

Hitler's interference in Barbarossa was minimal. In fact it's the failure of Barbarossa to swiftly achieve victory that prompted his regular interference into military affairs. The German military machine didn't need his help to come up short at the height of its power.

If you want to what if about how the Soviets could have changed things, you're going to have to go back to 1930, or even earlier.

That's rather obtuse. If we're not treating the political and strategic decisions of Germany as set in stone, it's rather obtuse to demand that we consider Soviet decisions set from 1930 onwards. We could easily say that Germany's course was set in 1932 when Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, but then that wouldn't allow anyone to play silly little "but Germany could have won!" games. It's fun and all to talk about what might have happened, but people seem to get obsessed with talking about what might have happened to the point of utterly forgetting what did happen, which seems more pertinent to this topic.

There is always a danger of a fallacy when looking at history that because we know the result, we tend to see it as inevitable.

The people of the time often did not see the to them future result as inevitable, and in many cases it probably wasn't.

However to expand the theme of causes and results, if we see WW2 as an extension of WW1, we can also see the Cold War as an extension of WW2 resulting from the Western Allies treacherously abandoning their Soviet partners to illegitimately preserve western Germany and Europe with the final objective of overthrowing the Soviet Union.

And it worked. Germany was reunited and integrated into the community of nations, and the SU was destroyed and consigned to history.

Therefore in the fullest historical terms the Germans won WW2.

 Kilkrazy wrote:


Therefore in the fullest historical terms the Germans won WW2.

And they have even managed to get Europe under their heel without a single shot! And destroy Yugoslavia! They even managed to separate Czechslovakia!

Makes you wonder who did win.

2016: All of Europe is under German control...

But, no! A small island of irrreductible Brits has recently voted Brexit, having been made invincible through bad cuisine, tea and something else.


Maybe the romans shouldn't have settled with the Rine, maybe they should have kicked their filthy asses up to the Volga or something.

 aldo wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:


Therefore in the fullest historical terms the Germans won WW2.

And they have even managed to get Europe under their heel without a single shot! And destroy Yugoslavia! They even managed to separate Czechslovakia!

Makes you wonder who did win.

2016: All of Europe is under German control...

But, no! A small island of irrreductible Brits has recently voted Brexit, having been made invincible through bad cuisine, tea and something else.


Maybe the romans shouldn't have settled with the Rine, maybe they should have kicked their filthy asses up to the Volga or something.

Its the tea.
However if we lack tea we go totaly crazy and form entire empires just regain access to tea..

So... Tea.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There is always a danger of a fallacy when looking at history that because we know the result, we tend to see it as inevitable.

A lot of things that occurred in the past were inevitable. Contemporary perception is only relevant to the context of the world that contemporaries saw it in, and how that context influenced events. Hindsight affords those in the now a greater capacity to understand that past, if only because we have a lot more time to understand it than those who lived it as a present could.

And I'm not really arguing inevitability anyway, but rather pointing out the absurdity of starting a game of what ifs where one actor acts in a manner completely out of line with their historical character while positing no other actors do the same. If things were different they'd be different, not just for one but for all. The ability to tackle what if scenarios from a historical perspective is extremely limited. The more out of line with what was we get, the more uncertain what could have been becomes. It delves more into the realm of fiction than history. EDIT: And I'll point out there is an entire line of historical thought that says history is inevitable. Human ignorance of the present is simply such, and events unfold as they do because they can unfold no other way given the variables (whether we understand said variables or not).

Therefore in the fullest historical terms the Germans won WW2.

That's not even close to historical terms, but it is a funny happenstance

 djones520 wrote:
Because we're talking about tactical decisions that cost Hitler an early victory, when it was strategic decisions made long before by the Soviet's that set up the scenario.

If you want to what if about how the Soviets could have changed things, you're going to have to go back to 1930, or even earlier.

You think there is person on Earth who could study the Barbarossa campaign and think all the tactical mistakes were German? What an incredible thing to say.

The forward deployment of so much of the army, leaving it in striking distance of the initial attacks. Especially having so many airfields within striking distance - 3000 planes lost in the first 3 days, almost all of them on the ground. The Soviets unsupported, inadequately prepared counter offensives that drained valuable defensive reserves. Losing 650,000 troops in Kiev through the no retreat order.

The Soviet defence in Barbarossa is the definition of a bungled operation. There is more focus on German mistakes because changing the outcome of the war is inherently more interesting than ending the war sooner. But to see that focus on German errors and conclude they were the only ones who made errors... wow.

 sebster wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Because we're talking about tactical decisions that cost Hitler an early victory, when it was strategic decisions made long before by the Soviet's that set up the scenario.

If you want to what if about how the Soviets could have changed things, you're going to have to go back to 1930, or even earlier.

You think there is person on Earth who could study the Barbarossa campaign and think all the tactical mistakes were German? What an incredible thing to say.

The forward deployment of so much of the army, leaving it in striking distance of the initial attacks. Especially having so many airfields within striking distance - 3000 planes lost in the first 3 days, almost all of them on the ground. The Soviets unsupported, inadequately prepared counter offensives that drained valuable defensive reserves. Losing 650,000 troops in Kiev through the no retreat order.

The Soviet defence in Barbarossa is the definition of a bungled operation. There is more focus on German mistakes because changing the outcome of the war is inherently more interesting than ending the war sooner. But to see that focus on German errors and conclude they were the only ones who made errors... wow.

These are all things that having the initiative in a massive invasion cause. You catch units unprepared - capture armies - and achieve massive victory. You can chalk it up to Russian blunders but in the end Stalin had those units there to discourage Hitler from attacking - it had the opposite effect and the Blitzkrieg was yet again seriously underestimated. Now lets get past that - Russian main line completely broken...no suitable force to stop German tanks from Rolling right into Moscow and the German Generals knew it...because they had the intelligence. At this point Hitler orders the Central wedge to support attacks in the south rather than winning the war by taking Moscow without any credible resistance...This isn't a military blunder but an act of sheer insanity. To give the Russians any credit for repelling the Germans is foll hearty - Hilter defeated the Germans. Here is where we can agree - once the Germans were bogged down in a long war against Russia - who had practically unlimited manpower - the war was over.

 Xenomancers wrote:
To give the Russians any credit for repelling the Germans is foll hearty - Hilter defeated the Germans.

That's looking at the issue to simplistically. The German military machine and Hitler both made the same mistake in 1941 that Napoleon made; they horrible misunderstood how big Russia is. By the end of Barbarossa, the Germans had lost nearly a quarter of their force as casualties. 800k is a paltry sum compared to Russia's 4 million loses, but as has been pointed out numerous times, Russia could afford the loses. The defense was buggered, but it can't be dismissed because the casualties were high. the Red Army simply threw reserves into the line of fire as speed bumps every step of the way, and it hurt the German advance as its supply lines grew longer and longer (and mostly drawn by horse). Meanwhile, Red Army supply lines kept getting shorter and shorter, and the Germans became increasingly bogged down in every town along the way. Before this decision was even made the Germans had in fact suffered a operational failure; Blitzkrieg hadn't worked. Sure they'd slammed through the Soviet defenses and were inflicting huge casualties, but the Red Army kept throwing more men and material at them, and the German military was unable to achieve the operational freedom that had occurred in France. They'd failed at every step to break the Red Army's capacity to operate, which was the entire point of the war doctrine the Germany military had adopted.

Further, there's no reason to see Hitler's decision as actually causing any strategic failure. First off, it's extremely well understood now that losing Moscow would not have resulted in a Soviet capitulation. People get so tied up in "Hitler made bad military decisions" they miss the one that actually made sense. Hitler knew taking Moscow was important but that it wouldn't end the war. Encirclement after encirclement had forced staggering operational loses on the Red Army, but the Soviets just kept sending more. It's not the most brilliant defense, but it worked. Taking the Caucasus, Kharkov, and Donbass on the other hand would cripple Soviet industrial capacity and give it to Germany. Strategically, this was a sensible decision. It failed because again, Russia is a big freaking place. By the time Germany even got close to any of its strategic objectives, the Red Army had gotten its gak together. Of course, the Soviets had begun shipping their industry into the Ural mountains further east, and had achieved a significant amount of the migration before any of this would have mattered but as far as I know the Germans didn't know about this at the time.

Maybe Hitler had made a huge blunder in his decision, but that isn't apparent given what we know and you can't fully account for Barbarossa's failure just looking at the Germans which I'd think would be obvious.

 Xenomancers wrote:
These are all things that having the initiative in a massive invasion cause. You catch units unprepared - capture armies - and achieve massive victory.

Having the initiative helps, but it doesn't somehow excuse the defender from tactical blunders. Especially when the first response wasn't for consolidation or trading troops and ground for time, but for a general counter-offensive. Especially when so many armies were encircled and lost, gaining little time relative to the value of the unit. These are obvious blunders, which make djones520's comment clearly wrong.

You can chalk it up to Russian blunders but in the end Stalin had those units there to discourage Hitler from attacking - it had the opposite effect and the Blitzkrieg was yet again seriously underestimated.

It wasn't to discourage Hitler from attacking, but because it was standard Russian doctrine to deploy in an offensive formation because Russian doctrine was offense above all else. It was a disastrous policy that gifted countless Russian units to German offensives before it was finally abandoned.

Now lets get past that - Russian main line completely broken...no suitable force to stop German tanks from Rolling right into Moscow and the German Generals knew it...because they had the intelligence. At this point Hitler orders the Central wedge to support attacks in the south rather than winning the war by taking Moscow without any credible resistance...This isn't a military blunder but an act of sheer insanity. To give the Russians any credit for repelling the Germans is foll hearty - Hilter defeated the Germans. Here is where we can agree - once the Germans were bogged down in a long war against Russia - who had practically unlimited manpower - the war was over.

Meh, capturing Moscow was important, but it wasn't the only thing. As LordofHats points out the industrial regions east of Kiev were far more important. And if Army Group Centre had pushed forward, while facing continuing decline in supply, and then with incredibly long flanks, then even with Moscow captured it would have the Germans in a very vulnerable position. Being reluctant to advance on Moscow in that situation is not "sheer insanity". Nah, the Germans made plenty of blunders, but they're the simple ones that the Germans always made - refusing to accept logistical realities, poor intel meaning they were surprised about the quality and quantity of much Russian gear etc...

motyak wrote:Ketara, if you're not going to take this seriously and use God's own referencing system (APA 5th, if you're curious) then just don't bother

All kidding aside, this has been quite the informative thread so far

sebster wrote:
I wouldn't go that far, but what you posted was very interesting. Thanks

I know it's something of a tangent, but our discussion prompted me to delve a little deeper into Russian munitions production at the time, and I found some interesting stuff. Whilst what I knew was broadly correct, I was a little off on some fine detail. I also found one or two other interesting things.

Firstly, on the railway supplies on land, there were large problems for the Russians throughout the conflict. To supply over 200,000 men by October 1904, the Trans-Siberian railway had a limit of ten trains in one direction (single tracked) per day. During the winter, light tracks were laid across Lake Baikal to increase capacity, and they'd managed to double the number of trains on the normal line by modifying the track by the end of the conflict, but there were massive supply issues throughout the conflict. The Russians only managed to even begin to fight their campaign by supplying through Vladivostock (which was effectively cut off after Tsushima). Even then, there were continuous shortages of food for the troops, boots, high explosive shell, and machine guns.

With regards to the Maxim gun (since you were interested), apparently a license was negotiated from Vickers in 1904 to have a single state factory produce them.

Russia did actually have a number of well equipped plants turning out modern munitions, but the war completely overwhelmed their capacity, and they were unable to expand to a war-time footing effectively. Virtually all of them were state controlled, all were absolutely crippled throughout the latter half of the war by strikes, and many simply assembled components made abroad into armaments (meaning without an increased foreign supply, little could be done). Production was initially doubled by the simple expedient of instituting night shifts, but this resulted in much increased wear and tear, which led to another gaping deficiency; namely the fact that the machine tools which manufactured munitions had themselves been bought from abroad, and domestic industry couldn't replace them or manufacture more effectively. They could only be sourced abroad. There were also difficulties in bringing in more staff, due to the fact that the Russian population was poorly educated; unlike Britain or America in latter wars, most Russian labour was highly unskilled and therefore acquiring manpower to increase production was very problematic.

The obvious conclusion reached is that the Tsar's government reached the high point of their munitions manufacture and supply effectively towards the end of 1904, and it was all downhill from there with an increasing reliance upon foreign manufactories. Domestic disturbances, worn out machinery, and insurmountable supply problems dictated that a rapprochement be eventually reached with Japan, because carrying on the conflict was impossible from a logistical perspective alone even had Tsushima not happened. With the subsequent material losses of Mukden, and Vladivostock cut off, there was little Russia could do to carry on operations even in the short term.

With regards to a potential Russian counter-attack two years later, it would appear to be the case that Russia would have had great difficulty doing so, on account of the fact that the Tsar's finances were actually in as bad a state as Japan's due to massive foreign loans incurred. Whilst they could afford a certain level of re-armament post-war, actively carrying on another campaign so soon would have sorely stretched their fiscal capabilities.

 Ketara wrote:

With regards to a potential Russian counter-attack two years later, it would appear to be the case that Russia would have had great difficulty doing so, on account of the fact that the Tsar's finances were actually in as bad a state as Japan's due to massive foreign loans incurred. Whilst they could afford a certain level of re-armament post-war, actively carrying on another campaign so soon would have sorely stretched their fiscal capabilities.

Ironically, Japan was one of the sources of Russia's financial woes. You'll find stripper clips for Arisaka's all over Russian WW1 battlefields.