Was the Soviet Union preparing to attack Germany?

[steverodgers801]

Omegian, so how many hours have you spent in the Soviet archives to know that Glantz is wrong. Sandkeep. taking the Suez canal does nothing to win the war, it only places an even greater burden on AK logistics

[steverodgers801]

Omegian, a complete difference from building units from scratch and splitting up experienced ones, which is what the Germans did. In the case of the 30's the Germans had years to work out the issues of building their forces, the Soviets didnt

[sandeepmukherjee196]

........................................

Sandkeep. taking the Suez canal does nothing to win the war, it only places an even greater burden on AK logistics

Yes Steve, it does go a long way towards getting a favourable outcome please.

German logistics would be a different ball game with the fall of Malta, which is central to this option. In case that is thought to be a big deal...well it was not.

Malta was to be taken in a Crete like FJ operation. With the Suez sealed off, the Mediterranean would have become an Axis Lake. Supplies aplenty would have unloaded. ..no more at Tripoli...but in any and every port on the coast on the way to the Suez.

Just to remind you. ..how many Panzer divisions were landed and supplied in Tunisia later, in a lost cause? And that in the face of complete allied air and naval superiority?

Cheers
Sandeep

[Appleknocker27]

Omegian, a complete difference from building units from scratch and splitting up experienced ones, which is what the Germans did. In the case of the 30's the Germans had years to work out the issues of building their forces, the Soviets didnt

Exactly.

To really put this to bed, consider these 2 points:

1) Soviet built trucks were 2 wheel drive and had a limited carrying capacity. Throughout the war the Red Army relied on pack animals and Lend Lease trucks (4wd, larger, more capable) for tactical mobility to supply their offensives and/or deal with ice/mud/snow. The Red Army in the western districts in summer 1941 was deficient in numbers of trucks and there was no order in place to mobilize the trucks from the civilian economy, at least not until Barbarossa started.

2) The Soviet rail system as it stood in summer 1941 was inadequate to handle the necessary volume that a mobilization and deployment would require in order to mass for a strategic invasion of Germany. The Germans had put "Plan Otto" in place the year before Barbarossa in order to accommodate their build up, the Soviets had no equal to plan Otto.

Clearly these are two huge issues (in addition to many others) that fly in the face of any argument that the Soviets were capable of a strategic attack. These two issues demonstrate that they weren't seriously preparing, otherwise these issues would have been addressed rather than completely ignored.

[stg 44]

Omegian, a complete difference from building units from scratch and splitting up experienced ones, which is what the Germans did. In the case of the 30's the Germans had years to work out the issues of building their forces, the Soviets didnt

What nonsense is that??? The Soviets had no military restrictions on them, the Germans did until 1935 officially. In fact the Germans had to secretly come to the USSR to try and work out some of their problems in the 1920s because the USSR didn't have restrictions on their ability to work out issues domestically.
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/boo ... 0100610430
The above book is all about how the Soviets were working out their force issues in the 1930s and failed to do so for practical and political reasons. The Germans had the ability to learn from the conflict with Poland, in Norway, and in France, but the Soviets had experience in Mongolia, Poland, and Finland to draw experience from and adapt their doctrine. Same with observing German victories. The fact is the Soviets had more room to develop, but failed to correct their problems due to Stalin's influence and his purging of his forces and industries repeatedly, effectively lobotimizing them so they couldn't develop in time for Barbarossa. By the time they had figured out some of what was wrong Stalin, instead of just having them fix organizational issues, instead forced them to do that plus modernize technology and expand the armed forces all while initiating another purge.

Edit: plus unlike the Germans the Soviets have heaps of experience in the 1920s to learn from due to the Civil War and war with Poland.

[Omeganian]

The issue of the condition of the Red Army's tanks is just a small piece of the overall picture of Soviet operational readiness. It takes years of education coupled with practical field experience to produce battalion level and above staff officers who are critical to the functioning of large mechanized units. The USSR tried to raise 29 mechanized corps in such a short period of time so as to make it impossible for those units to be effective in the field. Most disintegrated within days of first contact with the enemy.

Considering how little of that disintegration seems to have been from enemy actions, it's something more than that.

Omegian, so how many hours have you spent in the Soviet archives to know that Glantz is wrong.

Glantz writes in the Stumbling Colossus that Rokossovsky was most likely arrested in 1937 for being connected to Blucher. Do you need to spend time in the archives to know it's bullshit? Or is it enough to just open any book on the subject, and see that Blucher wasn't arrested until a year afterwards?

Omegian, a complete difference from building units from scratch and splitting up experienced ones, which is what the Germans did. In the case of the 30's the Germans had years to work out the issues of building their forces, the Soviets didnt

Who said they were building them from scratch?

1) Soviet built trucks were 2 wheel drive and had a limited carrying capacity.

And the Germans had divisions with 200 different types of trucks. How do you manage logistics with that?

Throughout the war the Red Army relied on pack animals and Lend Lease trucks (4wd, larger, more capable) for tactical mobility to supply their offensives and/or deal with ice/mud/snow.

The Germans had their share of horses too.

The Red Army in the western districts in summer 1941 was deficient in numbers of trucks and there was no order in place to mobilize the trucks from the civilian economy, at least not until Barbarossa started.

Nearly three hundred thousand. Over two hundred thousand more were transferred in the first week after mobilization was announced. The actual units often lacked them, but that's a different type of deficiency. And of course, when a tank division has problems right where it's stationed (or before the fuel can physically run out), truck shortage can have nothing to do with that.

2) The Soviet rail system as it stood in summer 1941 was inadequate to handle the necessary volume that a mobilization and deployment would require in order to mass for a strategic invasion of Germany. The Germans had put "Plan Otto" in place the year before Barbarossa in order to accommodate their build up, the Soviets had no equal to plan Otto.

The concentration of Soviet forces was scheduled to be complete by July 10th.

[BDV]

The concentration of Soviet forces was scheduled to be complete by July 10th.

Details and source, pls.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Any so called concentration of Russian forces had a reluctant defensive intent for the time being. If there was any aggressive intent for the near future, the Russians wouldn't have cold shouldered British intelligence so thoroughly and consistently. They would have gone on stringing them along with polite noises till they were ready.

No one in the world, in their right minds, would have been approaching the business of attacking the Germany of 1941, so casually and amateurishly.

[Omeganian]

The concentration of Soviet forces was scheduled to be complete by July 10th.

Details and source, pls.

http://militera.lib.ru/h/1941/02.html

Any so called concentration of Russian forces had a reluctant defensive intent for the time being. If there was any aggressive intent for the near future, the Russians wouldn't have cold shouldered British intelligence so thoroughly and consistently. They would have gone on stringing them along with polite noises till they were ready.

According to Stalin's own intel, the Germans have barely concentrated a third of their tanks on his border. Naturally, messages from a government led by Churchill (who didn't like the Soviet Union and made no secret out of it), were of lower priority.

No one in the world, in their right minds, would have been approaching the business of attacking the Germany of 1941, so casually and amateurishly.

Change "Germany" to "Soviet Union", and you'll get a description of Barbarossa.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Well whatever else it was... Barbarossa wasn't casual or amateurish. Strategically shallow..yes, based on a hollow and vacuous ideological precept..certainly...but amateurish?

[Omeganian]

Well whatever else it was... Barbarossa wasn't casual or amateurish. Strategically shallow..yes, based on a hollow and vacuous ideological precept..certainly...but amateurish?

The T-34s and KVs came as a total surprise, so yes, the intel level must have been childish.

[Boby]

Why childish? Do you expect an intel agency to know everything about a foreign country?

T-34s and KVs were mot the main tanks in 1941.

[BDV]

Well whatever else it was... Barbarossa wasn't casual or amateurish. Strategically shallow..yes, based on a hollow and vacuous ideological precept..certainly...but amateurish?

well, Adolf said once that "Churchill is the most bloodthirsty of amateur strategists that history has ever known" . As they say around here, it takes one to know one ...

We went over Barbarossa and yeah, amateurish, or amateurisch if you will, fits the bill, IMO.

It was a combination of the panzer-jockeys overpromising, and Adolf hoping, needing, one more lucky break.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Well whatever else it was... Barbarossa wasn't casual or amateurish. Strategically shallow..yes, based on a hollow and vacuous ideological precept..certainly...but amateurish?

The T-34s and KVs came as a total surprise, so yes, the intel level must have been childish.

German Intel and Pz experts like Guderian had indicated the presence of heavier tanks in the Russian armoury. They had indicated the huge numbers too.

Hitler didn't believe them. He didn't believe anything that would go against his pet project of lebensraum in the east . Just like he didn't believe in the possibilities in the Mediterranean option.

However by July, he was telling Guderian that he would never have undertaken the Russian project if he had believed the latter's estimates of Russian armour, that were coming true by then.

Barbarossa was based on shallow geo political vision. So the grand strategy was shallow. However as an operational strategy it succeeded up to a point. In August it was undermined by its own sponsors. That's again because the understanding of the depth of Russia's potential was shallow.

Even if the August fracas didn't happen and the Germans took Moscow by storm before winter, Germany would still have failed in the long run.

[Boby]

German Intel and Pz experts like Guderian had indicated the presence of heavier tanks in the Russian armoury. They had indicated the huge numbers too.

Hitler didn't believe them. He didn't believe anything that would go against his pet project of lebensraum in the east.

German intel? What exactly? FHO, Abwehr? When?

Sources of this please (contemporary, not post -war bla bla bla from Guderian and co).