Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

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ljadw
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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#31

Post by ljadw » 24 Nov 2017, 13:59

wm wrote:Then who were the competent people at that time?

?
Everyone was as (in)competent as the others, but the strongest won .

Saying that some were competent, is also saying that others were incompetent .And that is very questionable .

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wm
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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#32

Post by wm » 24 Nov 2017, 15:21

BDV wrote:Unfortunately, it seems British themselves suffer of DAKsnobbery.

Much like the HawkerHurricane doing the most damage in BoB, Italians did most of the damage in North Africa fighting.
Isn't that true without The Afrika Korps the Italian "damaging" efforts would have ended very early on - resulting in another example of gross incompetence?
And that the Germans were the prime mover there, the Italians themselves weren't especially aggressive?
That there were more Italians than Germans in Africa is generally known, I think.


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BDV
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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#33

Post by BDV » 24 Nov 2017, 16:44

wm wrote:"BDV":Unfortunately, it seems British themselves suffer of DAKsnobbery.
Isn't that true without The Afrika Korps the Italian "damaging" efforts would have ended very early on - resulting in another example of gross incompetence?

That is speculation. My comment was based on what transpired historically.
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

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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#34

Post by maltesefalcon » 24 Nov 2017, 17:40

wm wrote:Then who were the competent people at that time?

The British, who despite having naval supremacy, "ruling the waves", and even advance warnings allowed the game changing naval invasion of Norway to succeed?
Or the small German force to rampage through North Africa for so long?

Or the French, who having more tanks, soldiers, artillery, basically more everything were defeated so ignominiously that even today for many the French equals cowards (once dropped, never used)?

Or the Americans and their numerous allies who allowed Japan to conquer vast territories, to be laboriously reconquered later at the price of 364,748 casualties.

Or even the Germans or the Japanese, starting their unwinnable wars?
Looks like I’ll be doing the quote thing after all...
The OP had this statement:

“Basically, what a hypercompetent USSR might do differently to achieve a quick victory late 30s on.”

It implies something has changed to make the USSR hypercompetent, thus also implying that it was not, IRL. I asked for further details on what changed in the country and how it happened. Those comments were addressed to the OP.

You chose to reply instead. Here’s one of your statements:

“I would say the USSR was competent, they didn't make any major mistakes.”

To this I disagreed, based on casualties at least.

Then you made this followup regarding the Soviets:

“Napping or not, their army and their military leaders were simply bad or mediocre at best.”

You are arguing both sides now.

The statements re: the competence of Allied or enemy nations may be up for debate but that would be a separate issue. In any case, arguing that USSR must be competent because other nations made mistakes as well; is pretzel logic. Despite their potential, the Soviets suffered more casualties in the European theatre than its opponents and Allies combined. There was definitely something lacking.

In any case we will have to agree to disagree. I will not comment further until the OP chimes in with a better scenario.

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wm
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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#35

Post by wm » 24 Nov 2017, 23:51

maltesefalcon wrote:It implies something has changed to make the USSR hypercompetent, thus also implying that it was not, IRL. I asked for further details on what changed in the country and how it happened. Those comments were addressed to the OP.
Basically I've said it isn't true they "made huge military and diplomatic mistakes which nearly ended their regime" - from the point of view of the regime, which obviously is the only that counts.

I've said "their army and their military leaders were bad or mediocre at best" in response to "they were caught napping when warnings from several sources told them a German attack was imminent", i.e. it wasn't napping but incompetency of the army and its commanders.

BTW even the Polish Underground, which was there let's say "personally", wasn't sure what was going on till the few last weeks before the invasion. The rest of the "warnings" were some suspicious he-said/she-said spies reports.

The army and its commanders were bad or mediocre, and it was the best they could have achieved. They was no room for improvement. It's not a huge mistake if you can't do nothing about it.

maltesefalcon wrote:There was definitely something lacking.
A huge but poor country, full of barely literate peasants and former peasants is lacking by definition.

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BDV
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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#36

Post by BDV » 29 Nov 2017, 16:31

wm wrote:Basically I've said it isn't true they "made huge military and diplomatic mistakes which nearly ended their regime" - from the point of view of the regime, which obviously is the only that counts.
Depends what you mean by "huge". The attacks on Finland are a pretty big deal given the cost they entailed. Same for the removing the Latvian speed bump.

antagonizing the Romanians didn't help either; and for what, ultimately? So Ukraine has a direct say in Danube business?
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

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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#37

Post by wm » 02 Dec 2017, 23:47

All the annexations were long standing Soviet political goals.
Hitler allocated the annexed territories to Stalin in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in exchange Stalin gave Hitler free hand in Romania. It would be unreasonable to reject such one in a million opportunity. And it was pointless to be friendly towards the Romanians after they had been given to Hitler earlier.
There was no point in signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and then not consuming its benefits.

The Nazis weren't nice to Romania too, they forced the Romanians to cede Northern Transylvania to Hungary (and southern Dobruja to Bulgaria). Some say it was much greater shock to the Romanians than the half-expected Soviet annexation of Bessarabia.

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Yuri
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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#38

Post by Yuri » 03 Dec 2017, 08:31

wm wrote:All the annexations were long standing Soviet political goals.
Hitler allocated the annexed territories to Stalin in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in exchange Stalin gave Hitler free hand in Romania. It would be unreasonable to reject such one in a million opportunity. And it was pointless to be friendly towards the Romanians after they had been given to Hitler earlier.
There was no point in signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and then not consuming its benefits.

The Nazis weren't nice to Romania too, they forced the Romanians to cede Northern Transylvania to Hungary (and southern Dobruja to Bulgaria). Some say it was much greater shock to the Romanians than the half-expected Soviet annexation of Bessarabia.
More correctly not political, but territorial goals/
In addition to Bessarabia, USSR demanded Northern Bukovina, which in Soviet-German Treaty of 23 August 1939 was not mentioned.

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Lars
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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#39

Post by Lars » 08 Dec 2017, 21:32

One of many weaknesses of the German invasion was their surprising dependency of the Russian rail roads. This wasn't meant to be as all the Germans had to was to "kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would come tumbling down".

So, hide a few thousand NKVD soldiers in the forests adjacent to rail roads, have them gun down the German rail road troops who were converting the rails to German standard and sabotage converted rail roads. This will do a lot of damage to the Germans in the fall and winter at very little costs.

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Lars
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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#40

Post by Lars » 08 Dec 2017, 21:35

More than 7 years since my last post. Oh well..

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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#41

Post by maltesefalcon » 08 Dec 2017, 22:24

Lars wrote:More than 7 years since my last post. Oh well..
Should that not have read "3 minutes since my last post"?

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Re: Best possible strategy for the USSR against Nazi Germany

#42

Post by Lars » 09 Dec 2017, 10:46

Ha, ha. Yeah, it should have been in the first post.

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