Would a smaller barbarossa work?

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steverodgers801
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#106

Post by steverodgers801 » 19 Dec 2014, 06:34

The Finns did not have the ability to do what the Germans asked which was help them out, more then they did. The Finnish front also is not a good example since so little of it was actually useful for large scale fighting.

ML59
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#107

Post by ML59 » 20 Dec 2014, 16:13

The entire concept of a "smaller" Barbarossa is completely meaningless and un-historical, due to the real nature of the Nazi regime and its war in the east.
Barbarossa was not aimed to knock-out of the scene a potential enemy or competitor, even if in typical wishful thinking Hitler and other nazi official argued that to quickly defeat USSR would result in breaking any hope, for Great Britain and USA, of having Germany involved in a long attrition war that could relief their position. The German war aim was to establish a colonial empire up to the Urals, destroying any semblance of organized state and, in the process, to kill or to starve about 30 millions of Slavs to make land available for German master-farmers. With such an agenda, that was clearly unrealistic and, actually, proved to be unachievable (other than, unfortunately, the almost 27 millions soviet citizens that actually died as a consequence of the German attack) no "smaller solution" could work.
A political compromise of the type reached between Imperial Germany and the Bolsheviks in 1918 was simply not acceptable by Hitler and, in any case, could not improve German position in any way.
It was a "all or nothing" situation, and one the Hitler could not win.


Boby
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#108

Post by Boby » 20 Dec 2014, 17:26

The German war aim was to establish a colonial empire up to the Urals, destroying any semblance of organized state and, in the process, to kill or to starve about 30 millions of Slavs to make land available for German master-farmers.
Evidence?

Please, not the "Hunger-Plan" nonsense!

steverodgers801
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#109

Post by steverodgers801 » 20 Dec 2014, 21:22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan yes wiki is of questionable use, but this one has plenty or sources to reference. http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/tol/ge ... unger.html If you also need more proof, why were the 3 million some Soviet Pow's allowed to die within a year of capture??

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BDV
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#110

Post by BDV » 21 Dec 2014, 03:26

phylo_roadking wrote:So the armor dashed away/forward again and again (with its fuel guzzling supply trucks in tow) instead of assisting in the destruction of the Soviet units.

But...they weren't supposed to do that ;) That's what blitzkrieg was about; and how it was "done" in Poland, and France. You're seeing it as a tactical mistake on the Germans' part - but what it was was a cohesive part of an overall strategy. It's the strategy that was out of scale with the problem faced....not the tactic.
Not true, hence the endless whining over Dunkirk/Dynamo. In Barbarossa cooler heads a la Runstedt were muzzled and hotheads a la Erich "120 wristwatches" Manstein got to dash forth to failure. Bloody farce it was, not Blitzkrieg.

Incidentally Dynamo and the surrounding events were probably the worst thing to happen to Adolf's field exterminators, as it filled their craniums with a misconception of when the job is done. At Dunkirk and north, in the Netherlands something like 3/4 million soldiers removed themselves from battle, at a cost of a few medium-sized LW sorties. In the Bolshevik conquests and West Russia it took slightly more gunpowder and landser lives to achieve the same effect. Also the Do17s and He111s that had been so useful for "smoking out" polish infantry at the Battle of Bzura, had been thinned out by Sir Sydney Cam's plain and sturdy devices.
Nobody expects the Fallschirm! Our chief weapon is surprise; surprise and fear; fear and surprise. Our 2 weapons are fear and surprise; and ruthless efficiency. Our *3* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency; and almost fanatical devotion

steverodgers801
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#111

Post by steverodgers801 » 21 Dec 2014, 12:15

There was a bitter dispute between tankers and non tankers over the use of armor. Despite their claims of being invincible while moving, the reality was the infantry could not keep up with the tanks and guard their flanks while trying to eliminate the pockets the tanks created. Guderian makes light of the threat these by passed units posed, but they were a very serious threat to supply columns and with out tank support the by passed infanty often made their way back to their lines. this need to stop and finish off the pockets is what helped the Soviets gain time to set up the next line, weak it may have been and contributed to the wearing down of the Germans

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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#112

Post by Boby » 21 Dec 2014, 12:21

steverodgers801 wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan yes wiki is of questionable use, but this one has plenty or sources to reference. http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/tol/ge ... unger.html If you also need more proof, why were the 3 million some Soviet Pow's allowed to die within a year of capture??
Distorted evidence.

It can be easily explained: Germans plan was to exploit conquered territories economically. In this scenario, they calculated "X" millions of deaths as a result.

Historians has simply taking it uncritically. There is no evidence NS-Germany wanted 30 million civilians to die. There is no evidence that this extraction of ca. 3 million tons of grain per year would cause a massive famine; it didn't happened in 1941, much to the surprise of economic experts.

As for the POW, same. There is no evidence of any plan to exterminate them. All that happened was a mix of logistic crisis, food shortages and a certain negligence from German authorities. One has to take the big picture in the autumn of 1941. Isolating the POW crisis from it is just wrong.

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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#113

Post by ML59 » 21 Dec 2014, 14:57

Very, very distorted thinking!
So,since there was no order to actually "kill" 30 millions people but "only" a calculation that the exploitation of the Russian resources could cause up to 30 million deaths, it means that nobody was responsible for the millions that actually died as a consequence of German actions?

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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#114

Post by Alixanther » 21 Dec 2014, 15:18

ML59 wrote:Very, very distorted thinking!
So,since there was no order to actually "kill" 30 millions people but "only" a calculation that the exploitation of the Russian resources could cause up to 30 million deaths, it means that nobody was responsible for the millions that actually died as a consequence of German actions?
You shouldn't only see the Eastern conflict as a two-sided Russian vs. Germans match. There were actually two wars going on. The first one, Wehrmacht versus RKKA is very well known. The other one you could call it a civil war, if the factions would have been the same ethnic group. However, since most of the participants (Poles former occupied by Soviets, Baltic people, Belarus, Ukrainian and Russian ethnic groups, muslim minority groups - turks, tartars, etc., jewish minority groups - khazars, etc.) were waging a free-for-all survival fighting because the Soviet ideology was no longer in effect. As a comparison, check what happened after dissolution of Yugoslavia - serbs fighting croats, croats fighting bosnians, serbs fighting bosnians, bosnians fighting both croats and serbs. Same happened in Soviet space - only several times deadlier. RKKA and Wehrmacht were aware of the in-fighting, they both encouraged the franc-tireurs to escalate the conflict. That makes BOTH of them guilty however they did not killed them directly (unless they were in the way of a military operation) and I would hate to assign percentages to them (which one of them was more responsible for most killings) because I don't think that's the point however because the Soviets emerged as victors, all these kills from the infightings were attributed to the Wehrmacht, which is bull.

Boby
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#115

Post by Boby » 21 Dec 2014, 16:20

ML59 wrote:Very, very distorted thinking!
So,since there was no order to actually "kill" 30 millions people but "only" a calculation that the exploitation of the Russian resources could cause up to 30 million deaths, it means that nobody was responsible for the millions that actually died as a consequence of German actions?
Of course Germany was fully responsible, in the first place for invading another country and causing a massive damage: human and economic.

But the question is that there never was a deliberate plan to starve millions of civilians. They just said "X" (Zig), not even a concrete figure of 30. And only as a result of extracting millions of grain tons. It was just a calculation, a what would happen if? scenario, typical of working-papers.

ChrisDR68
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#116

Post by ChrisDR68 » 22 Dec 2014, 15:01

ML59 wrote:The entire concept of a "smaller" Barbarossa is completely meaningless and un-historical, due to the real nature of the Nazi regime and its war in the east.
Barbarossa was not aimed to knock-out of the scene a potential enemy or competitor, even if in typical wishful thinking Hitler and other nazi official argued that to quickly defeat USSR would result in breaking any hope, for Great Britain and USA, of having Germany involved in a long attrition war that could relief their position. The German war aim was to establish a colonial empire up to the Urals, destroying any semblance of organized state and, in the process, to kill or to starve about 30 millions of Slavs to make land available for German master-farmers. With such an agenda, that was clearly unrealistic and, actually, proved to be unachievable (other than, unfortunately, the almost 27 millions soviet citizens that actually died as a consequence of the German attack) no "smaller solution" could work.
A political compromise of the type reached between Imperial Germany and the Bolsheviks in 1918 was simply not acceptable by Hitler and, in any case, could not improve German position in any way.
It was a "all or nothing" situation, and one the Hitler could not win.
I agree with this 8-)

Yes the Wehrmacht may have been able to dig in and not suffer the losses it did in Dec 41-Feb 42 due to being in exposed positions in the teeth of the Russian winter but the Soviets would still have raised millions of new soldiers and would have had more of their production plants in full operation unlike in the otl.

Ultimately 1941 was too early for Hitler's Germany to attempt a conquest of European Russia. Even had they delayed the invasion by a year it was still likely to fall short but launching it in 1941 (either this smaller version of the full scale one of the otl) was always doomed to failure imo.

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BDV
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#117

Post by BDV » 22 Dec 2014, 15:39

ChrisDR68 wrote:Yes the Wehrmacht may have been able to dig in and not suffer the losses it did in Dec 41-Feb 42 due to being in exposed positions in the teeth of the Russian winter but the Soviets would still have raised millions of new soldiers and would have had more of their production plants in full operation unlike in the otl.

Ultimately 1941 was too early for Hitler's Germany to attempt a conquest of European Russia. Even had they delayed the invasion by a year it was still likely to fall short but launching it in 1941 (either this smaller version of the full scale one of the otl) was always doomed to failure imo.

The problem is not the losses of Winter 41-42, but the losses in Summer 1941, where both undergunned german infantry and undergunned german armor attempted (and ultimately failed) to trade lives for speed of advance. Not to mention the losses to the core of (poorly armed) trained military cadres of the Romanian and Hungarian armies.

As to time, and end-of-June attack on Soviet Union was obviously too late, forcing the crazy timetable that left "light and fast" as the only military option. Spring 1941 is only slightly better, mid-August 1940 is probably the last date The 3rd Reich can attack Bolshevik Russia with any modicum of chance of military success. Standing fast by the Baltic Countries and Romania is probably the best flip-flop move Germany can attempt in light of the Franco-English debacle in the Flanders in end of May 1940.

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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#118

Post by Alixanther » 22 Dec 2014, 17:47

Well, the "smaller Barbarossa" concept of this thread is in effect to especially mitigate this late implementation of the plan. Fully commited head on would lead to unsustainable losses for the Deutsches Reich, so let's try to define this "smaller Barbarossa", shall we?

First, the aims of the campaign. Barbarossa proper (plan A) meant to dismantle the Soviet regime and divide the teritorry into several manageable nation-states. While putting this into effect, let it be a contingency plan (plan B) which is the "smaller Barbarossa". Which means plan A has failed (Stalin regime is still intact) and all it implies. That's the meaning: smaller does not mean less resources or less divisions; a smaller scope instead.

Second, the spread of military forces. While arguably understandable from a military point of view, the thinly spread of Axis military over the "infinite spaces" of Russian steppe is a strategic failure. Hitler wanted resource-laden provinces, his generals - RKKA assets. They settled for an even worse solution: prestige targets. What I propose of a would be "smaller Barbarossa" implies blockading Murmansk and Leningrad in the North, Odessa, Sevastopol and Novorossisk in the South (in order to guard their flanks and prevent Soviet asset' transport) while the main thrust goes Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow. This would be "a smaller Barbarossa" from a military standpoint.

Third, instead of the typical "divide and conquer" attitude in Soviet land, the "smaller Barbarossa" would attempt to mitigate the potential conflict between different opposing camps (religious, political, ethnic denominations) at least until the main opponent (Soviet apparatus) is broken.

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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#119

Post by ljadw » 22 Dec 2014, 18:20

Your interpretation of plan A is not correct.

There was essentially no difference between Hitler and the OKH:they both agreed on Typhoon .

ML59
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Re: Would a smaller barbarossa work?

#120

Post by ML59 » 22 Dec 2014, 20:46

There was a deliberate plan to starve Soviet population, in primis POWs, then city dwellers. The only thing that was not really planned in detail was how much should die, because, in typical nazi fashion, a lot was left to local initiatives of zealous subordinates. Even in the Heer, everybody from Halder down to the common Landser was fully aware that the Soviet population was to be spoiled of everything and left to starve by themselves. Luckily for the occupied regions, the Germans lacked sufficient forces to impose their draconian dreams of ethnic cleansing and mass starvation, so millions found a way to stay alive, through black market, bartering and any other form of compromise that could work for the purpose.
If the Germans were not able to actually killing 30 million (they came pretty close, nevertheless, if we put in the calculation also the military losses) it was not for a lack of motivation but only because they had not enough resources.

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