Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

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Hanny
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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#31

Post by Hanny » 16 Jan 2019, 10:49

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics ... ar2005.pdf
The USSR and Total War: Why Didn’t the
Soviet Economy Collapse in 1942?
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Max Payload
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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#32

Post by Max Payload » 16 Jan 2019, 18:00

Hanny wrote:
16 Jan 2019, 10:49
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics ... ar2005.pdf
The USSR and Total War: Why Didn’t the
Soviet Economy Collapse in 1942?
I hadn’t seen this paper from Harrison before, thanks for posting it.
It can hardly be denied that in any ‘total war’ scenario a society could reach a point of collapse, but Harrison’s conclusion that the SU had almost reached that point by late 1942 seems largely subjective as the graphs and tables of data in this paper are not particularly relevant to such a conclusion. The Soviet people endured incredible hardships but the fact that there were military defections, civilian self-help and black-market activity do not represent proof of anything very profound. As Harrison himself admits, “We cannot measure the distance of the Soviet economy from the point of collapse in 1942 ...”
Yet he goes on to state, “... but it seems beyond doubt that collapse was near.”

I remain unconvinced.


Hanny
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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#33

Post by Hanny » 16 Jan 2019, 18:05

Max Payload wrote:
16 Jan 2019, 18:00

I hadn’t seen this paper from Harrison before, thanks for posting it.
Hi Max
Your welcome. Btw are you related to Max Headroom.... :)
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

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Attrition
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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#34

Post by Attrition » 16 Jan 2019, 20:52

I read a book by John Mosier once but I would recommend Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (2007) for analysis of the macroeconomic aspects of the war.

Max Payload
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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#35

Post by Max Payload » 16 Jan 2019, 23:22

Hanny wrote:
16 Jan 2019, 18:05
Hi Max
Your welcome. Btw are you related to Max Headroom.... :)
Regretfully not; neither do I have his wit or wisdom :wink:
Attrition wrote:
16 Jan 2019, 20:52
I read a book by John Mosier once but I would recommend Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (2007) for analysis of the macroeconomic aspects of the war.
IIRC Mosier doesn’t have the highest reputation for accuracy and objectivity. Tooze’s book was one of my Christmas presents and is next on my reading list.

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Attrition
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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#36

Post by Attrition » 16 Jan 2019, 23:36

Yes, my tongue was firmly in cheek, I hope you enjoy Tooze a much as I did.

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stg 44
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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#37

Post by stg 44 » 17 Jan 2019, 20:31

Max Payload wrote:
16 Jan 2019, 02:32
stg 44 wrote:
14 Jan 2019, 05:56
According to Mark Harrison the Soviet economy was driven to the point of collapse by late 1942. Germany had hit the vital point of the USSR economically speaking and it was the offensive to push them back into Ukraine that prevented collapse. Arguably they just had to hold on to their gains in Summer 1942 into Summer 1943 to initiate an economic collapse, which could be hastened by bombing Baku ...
I haven’t seen the the data that would justify such a conclusion but it seems to me that an economy ‘driven to the point of collapse by late 1942’ would have been unable to support Operation Uranus, Operation Mars, Operation Little Saturn, the Ostragozhsk-Rossosh Operation, Operation Spark, the Krasnodar/Novorossiysk Offensive, the Taman Peninsula Offensive, the Alekseyevka Offensive, the Voronezh-Kastornoe Operation, Operation Leap, and Operation Star all in the space of a few months from November ‘42 to February ‘43, and in so doing push the Wehrmacht back from the Volga and the Terek almost to the Dnepr.
Any economic advantage the SU gained from the recovered territory would have taken months to fully realise and I fail to see how that recovered territory was instrumental in the avoidance of an ‘economic collapse’ during the summer of ‘43.
Bombing Baku from Nalchik would have required a 1,200km sortie. Seriously interrupting Baku’s oil production from such a range would have been a tall order for a Luftwaffe that was losing control of the airspace over the southern axis by January ‘43.
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1580/1/WRAP_H ... erp603.pdf

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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#38

Post by Attrition » 18 Jan 2019, 12:01

Has Harrison replied to later work that undermines his thesis?

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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#39

Post by SloveneLiberal » 22 Jan 2019, 16:20

In the summer 1942 German situation was maybe not so bad, but the fall of Caucasus region would not knock the Soviet union out of war, because they were able to get at that time the oil also from Iran, which was under joint Soviet-British occupation and control already from summer 1941. Yet after colapse of Case blue in autumn 1942 in fact the strategic initiative of WW2 changed.

However it would be much more serious if German generals would listen to Hitler in 1941 and would then occupy Caucasus oil fields as a priority instead of trying to reach Moscow which was not so important in the big picture. In Case blue Hitler decided to remove important units of German army and sent them to the north which was a strategical failure, but one year before his generals, specially Halder were to blame for even greater strategical mistake, because they concentrated on the Moscow not on the Caucasus oil fields. In that case Germany would have plenty of oil and Soviet economy would not be able to recover from the affects of Barbarosa without much problems.

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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#40

Post by Attrition » 22 Jan 2019, 17:02

Barbarossa was based on an assumption that the invasion would be a catalyst for the destruction of the Red Army and the dissolution of the Soviet state. By the time of the battles around Smolensk the jig was up; Brbarossa had failed and Germany was doomed.

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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#41

Post by SloveneLiberal » 22 Jan 2019, 17:44

Well Germany was in great need of oil already before the attack on Soviet Union and one of the goals of Barbarosa was also to get more natural resources. Oil fields in Romunia were very vonurable for the Soviet attack and not sufficient enough to continue the war against UK. Soviets also knew very well about the oil crisis in Germany because at that time they had an alliance of a kind and Germany was constantly trying to trade more oil.

Stalin understood that oil fields of Caucasus were greatly more important then Moscow in 1941 and even offered the British to deploy their troops in Caucasus. Also Hitler understood this but his generals were concentrated on Moscow. Case blue was an attempt to repair the mistake. Hitler was now in personal control of the offensive with generals having much less autonomy. Yet as i said even if succesfull it would not bring the results wanted because
Soviet economy recovered from Barbarosa and joint Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran allowed the import of neccesary oil plus also tanks, ammunition, artillery, aviation etc. Almost half of tanks on Caucasus for example during the time of Case blue were British and American. Soviet pilots there were the first to use American A-20 Boston bombers.

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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#42

Post by Max Payload » 23 Jan 2019, 13:14

SloveneLiberal wrote:
22 Jan 2019, 16:20

However it would be much more serious if German generals would listen to Hitler in 1941 and would then occupy Caucasus oil fields as a priority instead of trying to reach Moscow
Army Group South would not have had the resources to have secured the oil resources in 1941. By the end of September it had advanced 600-800km to reach Dneproptrovsk. Maikop was a further 700km and Baku 1500km further on. It would have not have simply been a question of concentrating the panzer forces on the correct axis, a rapid advance to the Caucasus would have faced considerable logistical problems - Army Group South had major logistical problems even reaching as far east as Rostov. It may have been possible, depending on the degree of resistance that it faced, for an appropriately configured Army Group South to have reached Maikop, but, as in 1942, such an advance would have been vulnerable to a Soviet flanking offensive from west of the Don.

SloveneLiberal wrote:
22 Jan 2019, 17:44

Stalin understood that oil fields of Caucasus were greatly more important then Moscow in 1941 and even offered the British to deploy their troops in Caucasus.
Stalin's preoccupation after the Smolensk battles was the Moscow axis and he refused Zhukov's request to divert resources from the central axis to the Ukraine. IIRC Stalin requested up to 30 British divisions to be shipped to Archangel or sent to the SU via Iran for military cooperation with Soviet troops on Soviet soil. It was in 1942 when the Axis were close to breaking through the Caucasus passes that the British proposed sending troops specifically to the Caucasus, a proposal that Stalin rejected.

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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#43

Post by SloveneLiberal » 23 Jan 2019, 13:31

I agree that in summer of 1942 Soviet leadership was feeling much more secure than the previous year. But big fear existed in 1941 about Caucasus. Now tactically it can be that the German generals were seeing Caucasus oil fields in 1941 as to far to reach, yet they were ordered by Hitler to reach them but they rather concentrated on Moscow to his great anger. Strategically it seems very right decision to concenrate on Caucasus in 1941. Germany would get oil and Soviet economy would surelly get a very big blow. It is questionable if it even could recover. Surelly not so fast as it did after or in fact during winter 1941/42.

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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#44

Post by Max Payload » 23 Jan 2019, 15:59

SloveneLiberal wrote:
23 Jan 2019, 13:31
the German generals were seeing Caucasus oil fields in 1941 as to far to reach, yet they were ordered by Hitler to reach them but they rather concentrated on Moscow to his great anger.
It may well have been the case that a strategic effort in the south during the autumn of 1941 (with appropriate planning in Aug/Sept) would have provided a better outcome for the Wehrmacht than the humiliation it suffered in front of Moscow, but we will never know. Yet it is wrong to suggest that German generals acted in contravention of Hitler's orders with regard to Moscow. In August Hitler had been inclined towards a strategic effort in the south but by early September he had been persuaded otherwise and it was his decision to go for Moscow.

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Re: Was Germany’s situation THAT bad in the summer of 1942?

#45

Post by ljadw » 23 Jan 2019, 16:06

SloveneLiberal wrote:
23 Jan 2019, 13:31
I agree that in summer of 1942 Soviet leadership was feeling much more secure than the previous year. But big fear existed in 1941 about Caucasus. Now tactically it can be that the German generals were seeing Caucasus oil fields in 1941 as to far to reach, yet they were ordered by Hitler to reach them but they rather concentrated on Moscow to his great anger. Strategically it seems very right decision to concenrate on Caucasus in 1941. Germany would get oil and Soviet economy would surelly get a very big blow. It is questionable if it even could recover. Surelly not so fast as it did after or in fact during winter 1941/42.
It is very questionable that the capture of the Caucasus would help Germany,because
1 If Germany needed a lot of oil (which is not proved ),it would take years before this oil could be transported from the Caucasus to Germany
2 If Germany did not need the oil of the Caucasus,why was it going to the Caucasus ?
3There was no proof (only hope ) that the SU would collapse without the oil of the Caucasus : the German oil experts warned for this hope which was only an illusion ,an idée fixe .

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