Feasability of Operation Pike, 1940

[phylo_roadking]

Anyhow, you seem to be ignoring the point that the French plans seemed to be fuelled as much by calls for action to break the strategic stalemate of the war

Wasn't the British version? Does the article for instance discuss the months' long call for and discussion of various Middle Eastern ideas and options in London? There were several months' discussion for instance over the option of an Allied intervention and establishment of a new Salonika Front...driven of course by Winston Churchill

[Mark V]

I wouldn't call Baku area backwater by no means. Atleast Soviet supply lines to area would had been much shorter than for Anglo-French, and communications links well developed, railways, waterways of Don/Volga/Black Sea/Caspian Sea. Donets with its armament industry is in Soviet terms rock throw away.

Soviets could shore up their forces very fast in the area.


Regards

[phylo_roadking]

Atleast Soviet supply lines to area would had been much shorter than for Anglo-French

Really? The British intended launching their offensive from a well-established air base, and their supply route was back to the Delta and the RAF establishment there....which was not inconsiderable.

and communications links well developed, railways

Actually, Osborn specifically comments on this railway network, in the Caucasus at least - as being "rickety" at that time, and judged not worth the effort of bombing!

Atleast Soviet supply lines to area would had been much shorter than for Anglo-French, and communications links well developed, railways, waterways of Don/Volga/Black Sea/Caspian Sea. Donets with its armament industry is in Soviet terms rock throw away.

Soviets could shore up their forces very fast in the area.

As Osborn discusses - exactly! And they had to come from somewhere...the British doubted they'd risk transfers from the border facing the Japanese, the armistice there having only recently been concluded when this idea was first mooted. Transfers away from the new border in Poland??? Equally unlikely. The only other place where experienced Soviet troops were available would be in the West, facing Scandanavia...

[Jon G.]

Anyhow, you seem to be ignoring the point that the French plans seemed to be fuelled as much by calls for action to break the strategic stalemate of the war

Wasn't the British version?

Not in the same way, no. It was a prime objective for the French that the war be drawn away from their eastern frontiers and fought elsewhere. That is a strong reason why they were casting around for secondary fronts to open.

Does the article for instance discuss the months' long call for and discussion of various Middle Eastern ideas and options in London? There were several months' discussion for instance over the option of an Allied intervention and establishment of a new Salonika Front...driven of course by Winston Churchill

Funny you should mention it, the re-run of the WW1 Salonika Front was a brainchild of Admiral Darlan's and had been down through the 1930s.

We can't really accuse Darlan of being a closeted Communist, but for all his other shortcomings and errors of judgement, he saw quite clearly that the Germans would fail in the USSR, and well before most others did. If he hadn't then maybe we would have seen a Vichy version of Operation Pike launched in 1941, who knows.

wouldn't call Baku area backwater by no means. Atleast Soviet supply lines to area would had been much shorter than for Anglo-French, and communications links well developed, railways, waterways of Don/Volga/Black Sea/Caspian Sea. Donets with its armament industry is in Soviet terms rock throw away...

I agree, in infrastructure-terms the area wasn't a backwater, close as it was to mineral-rich territories and the southern end of the Urals, where the Soviets had been industrializing head over heels since the late 1920s, and expanding their rail system since the mid-1930s.

...As Osborn discusses - exactly! And they had to come from somewhere...the British doubted they'd risk transfers from the border facing the Japanese, the armistice there having only recently been concluded when this idea was first mooted. Transfers away from the new border in Poland??? Equally unlikely. The only other place where experienced Soviet troops were available would be in the West, facing Scandanavia...

Actually, the conclusion of the Finnish-Soviet armistice in March coincides quite nicely with this. Apart from that, the Red Army was huge - had to be, with that immensely long border to cover - and other fronts (perhaps not so much the front facing Finland, but the front in Mongolia would certainly qualify) could well have provided experienced leadership, rather than troops in great numbers.

[phylo_roadking]

Funny you should mention it, the re-run of the WW1 Salonika Front was a brainchild of Admiral Darlan's and had been down through the 1930s.

Jon, maybe so - very early in the war Daladier suggested it...as early as the 17th of October IIRC....and Weygand was in favour of the idea - OR an occupation of Istanbul! - but at that time the British military names were against it; Ironside (then CIGS) in particular was vehemently against it. It was some weeks after this that Winston began pushing the idea...along with the rest of his Bulgaria/Hungary/Turkey/Yugoslavia "Balkan Entente" idea.

Actually, the conclusion of the Finnish-Soviet armistice in March coincides quite nicely with this.

Yes....but the British despaired at this - as I've mentioned elsewhere, and can be seen in the CAB files, the Cabinet was pushing the Finns hard in the last few days before the armistice was signed to continue the fight and to request direct British military aid; it was a great disappointment, and a suprise, when their opportunity to enter the existing war there with the USSR evaporated in a couple of days...but you can see in Osborn that the idea of events in the Caucasus as an distraction and diversion allowing a more favourable British involvement in the West had been ongoing for some weeks before the armistice was signed.

Apart from that, the Red Army was huge - had to be, with that immensely long border to cover - and other fronts (perhaps not so much the front facing Finland, but the front in Mongolia would certainly qualify) could well have provided experienced leadership, rather than troops in great numbers

Huge, yes - but it also had, as I noted before, some MAJOR commitments right at that point.

[phylo_roadking]

Looking round the Net - and puzzling my way through another one of those excreble automatic translations - I've found that im April 1940, Massigli also reported that his counterpart in Moscow had in fact ALSO been told that as well as the Soviets asking the Americans for advice on how to fight oil fires...the Americans HAD replied!

Their advice was "...that, as a result of the manner in which the oil fields have been exploited, the earth is so saturated with oil that fire could spread immediately to the entire neighboring region; it would be months before it could be extinguished and years before work could be resumed again."

Looking in Osborn again - Baku's wooden derricks were mainly sited only 70 feet or so apart - often interspersed with pools of raw crude laying between them!

There's probably more gold buried in the Russian sites I found, but my brain's hurting trying to make sense of those horrible translations!

[Jon G.]

Funny you should mention it, the re-run of the WW1 Salonika Front was a brainchild of Admiral Darlan's and had been down through the 1930s.

Jon, maybe so - very early in the war Daladier suggested it...as early as the 17th of October IIRC....and Weygand was in favour of the idea - OR an occupation of Istanbul! - but at that time the British military names were against it; Ironside (then CIGS) in particular was vehemently against it. It was some weeks after this that Winston began pushing the idea...along with the rest of his Bulgaria/Hungary/Turkey/Yugoslavia "Balkan Entente" idea.

There had been considerable French-Turkish detente in the 1930s, including some border revisions which ceded bits of Syria to the Turks, so an occupation of Istanbul does not seem to have been in the cards by 1940. For the Salonika front, Greek cooperation seems to have been taken for granted - probably because the Greeks were at odds with the Italians, but the Italians' decision not to join the war in 1939 may have complicated things somewhat.

The French rendition of the Salonika plan called for three divisions - one from Tunisia and two from the Levantine army, elite colonial formations, that is - to be landed at Salonika under cover of the Royal Navy which is not too different a scale of commitment to the one the British ended up trying the year after, with disastrous results.

Actually, the conclusion of the Finnish-Soviet armistice in March coincides quite nicely with this.

Yes....but the British despaired at this - as I've mentioned elsewhere, and can be seen in the CAB files, the Cabinet was pushing the Finns hard in the last few days before the armistice was signed to continue the fight and to request direct British military aid; it was a great disappointment, and a suprise, when their opportunity to enter the existing war there with the USSR evaporated in a couple of days...but you can see in Osborn that the idea of events in the Caucasus as an distraction and diversion allowing a more favourable British involvement in the West had been ongoing for some weeks before the armistice was signed.

Yes, but the fact remains that by the time the Allied plan was ready for execution, hostilities in Finland had ceased.

Apart from that, the Red Army was huge - had to be, with that immensely long border to cover - and other fronts (perhaps not so much the front facing Finland, but the front in Mongolia would certainly qualify) could well have provided experienced leadership, rather than troops in great numbers

Huge, yes - but it also had, as I noted before, some MAJOR commitments right at that point.

By mid-March 1940, no larger commitments than it normally had - that is, guarding the USSR's very, very long border. Swallowing up bits of Finland, the Baltic states, eastern Poland, Bessarabia and other territories handed over to the Soviets via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was not a large or lengthy commitment in military terms.

[phylo_roadking]

Yes, but the fact remains that by the time the Allied plan was ready for execution, hostilities in Finland had ceased.

Granted, but when the plans were being formulated, all the factors influencing those plans still existed.

And while the "need" for a diversion to assist the Allies getting to grips with the USSR in Finland may have vanished with the armistice....the need to distract the Germans from the mobilised shipping for Norway didn't.

[Mark V]

the Cabinet was pushing the Finns hard in the last few days before the armistice was signed to continue the fight and to request direct British military aid; it was a great disappointment, and a suprise, when their opportunity to enter the existing war there with the USSR evaporated in a couple of days...

Finns did not had choice at that moment. Front in Karelian Isthmus was at collapse point. Troops were totally exhausted after over an month of continuous battle.

Whatever "relief" Anglo-French could had made in month/months time, any of which is very doubtfull, would had come way too late. In any case, main purpose of all this messing with USSR, securing Swedish iron mines for Allied was blatantly obvious. British and French did had some credibility problem for anyone who could read map, shut eyes to newsprint, and plug ears from sirene calls of western diplomats...

In the end. It was good it ended this way. WW2 could had developed quite nasty ways if Hitler/Stalin marriage would had been fostered by west, even if they eventually would had ended jumping on each others throats...


Regards

[phylo_roadking]

Whatever "relief" Anglo-French could had made in month/months time, any of which is very doubtfull, would had come way too late. In any case, main purpose of all this messing with USSR, securing Swedish iron mines for Allied was blatantly obvious.

Well...

1/ We were already getting ore from Gallivare - three ore ships a week out of Narvik...in addition to the nickel from Petsamo.

2/ the troops were already on the ships! We could have been in Narvik in 18 hours, across the border in as long as it took to disembark and get in order...the question THEN would become - with all that barrelling down on them, what would the Soviets do - halt operations to see how things played out, or dash to complete them? And in turn - would the Finns break off talks and try to hold out a few more days?

(I've also always wondered what the Swedes would do! IIRC they sent the vast majority of their four divisions towards the FInnish border when the Winter War began - what would their reaction to an Allied incursion be??? The bulk of the Swedish army would be cut off rapidly from the rest of the country...but let's NOT discuss that aspect of it now!!!))

[Mark V]

2/ the troops were already on the ships! We could have been in Narvik in 18 hours, across the border in as long as it took to disembark and get in order...the question THEN would become - with all that barrelling down on them, what would the Soviets do - halt operations to see how things played out, or dash to complete them?

The value of Allied intervention preparations was that. The potential, for Soviets, that simple "border-straightening" operation was starting to escalate seriously.

There is still long way from Narvik to deciding theaters of Winter War. Too long. But at the same time, Soviets could ill-afford politically to wait and see. They wanted to collect the ripe fruits of European war some day. Going to battle against Germanys enemies, even before the Germans were properly committed, was not their plan, actually it was more like nightmare , even if at short term, Anglo-French posed very limited direct military danger to USSR.


Regards

[Marcelo Jenisch]

Looking round the Net - and puzzling my way through another one of those excreble automatic translations - I've found that im April 1940, Massigli also reported that his counterpart in Moscow had in fact ALSO been told that as well as the Soviets asking the Americans for advice on how to fight oil fires...the Americans HAD replied!

Their advice was "...that, as a result of the manner in which the oil fields have been exploited, the earth is so saturated with oil that fire could spread immediately to the entire neighboring region; it would be months before it could be extinguished and years before work could be resumed again."

Looking in Osborn again - Baku's wooden derricks were mainly sited only 70 feet or so apart - often interspersed with pools of raw crude laying between them!

There's probably more gold buried in the Russian sites I found, but my brain's hurting trying to make sense of those horrible translations!

Reading this, I make a connection with the following:

In autumn 1940, high-ranking German officials drafted a memorandum on the dangers of an invasion of the Soviet Union. They said Ukraine, Belorussia and the Baltic States would end up as only a further economic burden for Germany.[45] Another German official argued that the Soviets in their current bureaucratic form were harmless, the occupation would not produce a gain for Germany and "why should it not stew next to us in its damp Bolshevism?"[45]

Hitler ignored German economic naysayers, and told Hermann Göring that "everyone on all sides was always raising economic misgivings against a threatening war with Russia. From now onwards he wasn't going to listen to any more of that kind of talk and from now on he was going to stop up his ears in order to get his peace of mind."[46] This was passed on to General Georg Thomas, who had been preparing reports on the negative economic consequences of an invasion of the Soviet Union — that it would be a net economic drain unless it was captured intact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

The Soviets were ready to trow fire in the oil fields if they were to be captured? If such a need existed, they would be able to do it to a point it would deny the quantity the Nazis needed?

[phylo_roadking]

If such a need existed, they would be able to do it to a point it would deny the quantity the Nazis needed?

Jenisch - of you;ve seen the material upthread, then you'll know that this wasn;'t exactly 21st century oil technology A pockmarked landscape with wooden framed derricks too close together, with pools of petrocarbons and crude spilled all voer the landscape???

IIRC Baku actually suffered several VERY large and damaging fires in the 20th century; intentionally, with enough separate ignition points....it would actually have been difficult to STOP too much damage being done!

The same comment of course applies to the number of missions actually needed to ignite a conflagration...!

[Marcelo Jenisch]

Yeah.

This is a major reason that show us how unlikely it would be for the Germans won that war. Even with Baku captured, the Germans would still have a lot more of territory to still capture, logistical nightmares to have, and much Soviet military force to confront before the Soviets start to felt the oil shortages (and the Germans also would felt oil shortages, by the inability to extract Baku's oil, and by the Allied bombing of the Romanian oil fields, certainly more than historically because their more deep penetration in the USSR). And there was still the Lend-Lease, that perhaps could have improved the Soviet oil situation in this scenario.

Anyway, the Germans would went into all 1943 still deeply commited in the East, while the Western Allies would be already with the massive air campaign ongoing, and certainly closing any hope of victory for Germany. In the worst case Germany would be nuked in '45.