Post
by Lkefct » 02 Nov 2006 16:30
Adding additional production capacity gives you a lot more trucks to the army. In Russia, that does not necessarily lend itself to additional mobility. The total lack of any useful paved roads makes mobility rather marginal in many times of the year. "Finished" roads, often consist of wooden surface or simply laying down logs to act as traction points with a similar spacing to railroad tie's. What "Paved" roads that do exist are not built heavily enough to stand military movements, and even trucks caused them to break up under heavy traffic. Factor in the additonal fuel used, the lack of rubber, and the fact that additonal trucks don't drictly add any combat power to the German army. Not a substantial improvement in terms of mobility.
The other thing to consider about Russia was the nature of the campaign. The Gemran had a lightning advance, getting 2/3 of the way to moscow in about 6 weeks. Then Hitler divereted the Panzertruppen N and S to Kiev and Lnenningrad respectively. THe infantry across the army group Center front stopped their advance and held the line for voer a month while the tanks ran off for their encriclement operations. In that time static, they where under fairly concentrated artillery fire which didn't cause heavy causalties at any one time, but did slowly erode the # of combat effectives that where availible in the infatnry formation. IN this time, the rail troops did manage to catch up and replace or run dual tracks on the rail (to allow both German and Russian trains to run on the same tracks) so that supplies could reach the jumping off points for the next attacks.
The problem here is several fold. The rail troops cannot expand the tracks to being double lines everywhere. Any place where thye do switch to double would have to be at the expense of converting rail lines soemwhere else. IT takes a lot of additional construction to bridges and railbed to carry an extra track. Converting the existing russian guage to germn is just a matter of laying new rails on old ties. But you have to have a stable foundation to lay the new rails on, and that takes time. Additionally, thye need to sepnd time adding new places for trains to pull over and unload and turn around. This was beyond their capabilities in 1941. But it would allow for faster flow of trains and presumably that would increase the rate of supplies moving forward.
The number of tanks in the german army drop due to all the movement and lack of supplies to tank units in this time period. The vast distances covered, and not soviet action are leading to a huge proportion of the tanks lost. But even the ones that are receovered are having additional wear and tear that lead to breakdowns. BY sending the troops that far N and S, they are not going to have the strentght to drive on moscow later. Additional tanks in those untis only is a marginal help as those tanks would take additional wear and tear too, and a large proportion of those vehicles would break down too. Since all of the German tanks of that time period are fairly under armed, none of them are really helping the supply sistuation and if tanks are used in preference to other vehicles in the advance, it portentially means the german s are leaving behind more combat effective units do maintain the momentum of the advance.
The last thing to consider is the soviet sistation. In the units opposite Army group Center, the Germans have a sizeable advantage in force. They have more men, guns and vehicles due to the inital rapid advance. There are certainly soviets, but they are laregely disorganized remnaants and fresh but raw troops. Giving these troops time to organize themselves and give the Soviets time to reorganzie their forces and get ready for the impending battle. Soviet tank units benefit the most. They take what tanks they have left, and group them by type, so that there are finally large units of T-34 and KV tanks, which would later prove devistatingly effective around Moscow. Allowing the Soviets time to organzie thier units in the center gives them a chance to put together a force to oppose the drive on moscow. Historically, they where sitll forced to committ a large proportion of raw and untried troops in a very peacmeal fashion, but enough to stop the Germans.
The last thing is that the timing was exceedingly poor. The best time to move units on dirt roads is in July and August, as the timing of offensives later in the war proved. Giving the Soviets over a month of the best time of year wher ethe german panzer divisions are not advancing proved to be a big part of the difference in teh capign. German troops made very little headway at great cost in fuel during the fall. Since supplies didn't get moved up by rail into the newly occupied rail lines, there are few supplies getting forward, and insufficient capacity to keep so large a force supplied in any case.
if the germans wanted to push on Moscow, they needed to drive straight for it, and not take the time to go to Kiev. They would likely have taken the capital if they had kept their sizeable force together and push in when the soviets where still not organized, forcing them to expend thier untrained, undereqquipped units peacmeal letting the Germns destroy them one after another. But in waiting they lost that oppurtunity. Whther this would have decisively won the war is unknown, as the Germans owuld leave themselves in a huge sailient and not have destroyed sizeable chunks of the SOviet army. It would however, define what the likely area of the counter attacks would take place.
Attacking and destorying the Soviets at Kiev is an equally valid method of taking on the Soviets. In encriclement battles alone, there where almost 4.5 million soviets captured in the opening campaign of the war. Add into that battle causaulties and the soviets army is nearing the breaking point. But the Germans had an oppunrtunity to elave their army relatievley intact. Had they maintained only modest advances in the fall, not even trying to push onto Moscow and Rostov, they would have been able to quickly rebuild their army for the atnicipated Soviet winter offensive, and been well netrenched to meet it. As occured historically, the Soviet counter ooffensive outside of Moscow had very little supporitn git besides some sky troops and heavy tanks. There was very little, and in some places no artillery support. Entrenched German infantry with strong artillery would have been in a good positiont o destroy the Soviets attack had they dug in and gotten ready.
I don't think tank or any other production would have had any real outcome on the campaign. Germns put themselves in a precarious situation because they made bad decisions. Stopping the offensive before Typhoon and digging in would have minimized the casualties, and given the German army the opunrtunity to have a much larger striking force then was avalible for Blau. This would have givven them the oppurtunity to attakc and desotry the soviet army, or to secure the econmoic objectives that had Hitler making many of his poor decisions.
