Re Defeating the SU: Another Big-Picture Look at the Subject
The Conventional Wisdom that the SU could not have been beaten (too many men, too much space) is deeply-ingrained, even among folks who have more-than-History-Channel interest in WW2.
Therefore, another post (of a series) on what a defeat of Stalin's SU would look like and how close Germany came to achieving it during WW2.
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Critical to understanding how to beat the SU are two ineluctable facts:
1.
The size of the SU's field army was proportional to its economic/demographic base
and
2.
The SU's economic/demographic base shrank as it lost territory
Point #1 is well-analyzed in "The Soviet Home Front 1941-1945" [hereinafter "SHF"] and other works by John Barber and/or Mark Harrison (co-authors of Home Front but have published other works on SU economy solo). They lay out how the SU was mobilized to such an extent that the absolute maximum proportion of its workers was involved in fighting and building weapons. Sending more to the front or putting more in the factories would mean a collapse of food production, basic industries, and/or transport. See SHF Chapter 8, "Labor: The Ultimate Bottleneck", pages 143-157.
During 1942, in fact, the SU reached levels of war mobilization (proportion of soldiers and military workers) that was unsustainable and which caused, among other things, food shortages and resulting famine and famine-induced disease. The SU was forced, during 1942, to order "reverse mobilization" of troops/workers back to the farms. SHF p.151. Over 1942-1943, the proportion of war workers and soldiers dropped from 47% to 35%. See Exhibit A.
Exhibit A is a table from SHF on the working population of the SU and its distribution during WW2:
This is really just basic economics: given a certain level of productivity in various sectors, X workers will be needed to produce Y goods. Given that Z soldiers require Y goods (food, weapons, ammo, etc.) there's a basically linear relationship between X (total workers) and Z (total soldiers). For a brief period of time the Z:X ratio can go higher as you exhaust stocks but in the long run X:Z has a sustainable level for a given country (aside: this ratio differs between countries because some have higher productivity than others. SU was disadvantaged in having a mostly peasant rear, a fact that somewhat reduces its first-order population edge over Germany). Given that 1943 was sustainable and 1942 was not, I'll use the 1943 X:Z ratio for the SU's ability to put men in the field, given its working population. As Ex. A shows, that ratio was almost exactly 5 workers for each soldier; or ~17% of the working population in uniform. Note that 5:1 is a ceiling for SU's long-term X:Z ratio, as I'll discuss further below.
So on to Point #2: The SU's shrinking demographic/economic base as it lost territory.
As Ex.A shows, the SU's working population declined from 85.1mil in 1940 to 53.3mil in 1942 (average values for the year). The SU's OTL 1943 working population ticked slightly upward to 55.6 million as it recovered territory, mostly in the Ukraine. Note that the 1940-42 decline in workers (37%) is in line with Harrison's figure for the 1940-42 decline in population (37%) given here:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4171/7 ... cc0b11.pdf (table on page 23). So while the Soviets were able to evacuate some workers, evacuated workers did not represent a disproportionate portion of overall evacuees. This is probably because a lot of evacuees were children and even in the most totalitarian state it would be difficult to force workers to move with their factories and leave their children orphaned and defenseless in German-occupied territory. That's probably the point at which threats of death no longer motivate broad compliance.
I'll take the July 1943 front line as representing the 1943 average (SU recovered territory before and after July). The front line in July 1943 looked like this:
The Germans controlled the Baltics, Belorussia, most of Ukraine, but very little of Russia proper (mostly Pskov, Smolensk, Bryank, and Orel regions). Given that most of the heavily-populated Eastern Ukraine was free, the pre-war population of the July 1943 unoccupied SU would be equal to the Russian SFSR plus Central Asia and the Caucasus, minus irrevocable war losses: about ~135 million. I calculated this based on census figures for Russia (110mil in 1940
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia), Central Asia (Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkmen, Kyrgyz population of ~15mil per Wikipedia), and the Georgian/Azeri/Armenian populations in 1940 (~10mil per Wikipedia). I can't give exact figures because the 1937 USSR census and its 1939 restatement are notoriously unreliable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937)
My ATL moves the front line to the Archangel-Volga line by the end of 1942. What was the pre-war population of the territories remaining to Stalin in this ATL? Detailed breakdowns of Soviet population during the 1926 census are available here:
http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/census.php?cy=1. I did a very rough comb-through and compared to modern figures for the distribution of Russia's population. Basically there isn't a huge trend in migration east-west except for Mosocw Oblast's large increase. Like today, there were about 40mil living from the Urals west. To that figure we add the Central Asian republics (~15mil) and Russia between the Volga and the Urals (Perm, Ufa, Atyrau regions), which I generously estimate at 10mil population. So in ATL 1943 Stalin begins with territory with a pre-war population of ~65mil or ~half of what he had OTL.
OTL SU had 55.6mil workers in 1943, pro-rating working population by prewar population ATL SU would have ~25mil workers (65/135 * 55.6).
But my ATL also specifies greater irrecoverable losses during 41/42, to the tune of 4-5mil additional POW. Subtracting all of these POW from the worker population would double-count territorial losses, so let's subtract half of the marginal losses from SU's workforce.
That leaves 22-23mil workers.
There would of course be some evacuees from the occupied territories but not more than a few million workers. Why? Well the SU has lost all of the grain-surplus regions of the Black Earth Region stretching from Western Ukraine towards Saratov. The SU was barely able to feed its population while in possession of most of this region, losing it would be a severe blow.
Nonetheless, we can add ~2mil evacuated workers and call the ATL 1943 SU workforce 24-25mil.
At the worker:soldier ratio of 5:1 described above, that leaves only ~5mil soldiers.
But not all of those soldiers can fight against Germany. For reference, here's a table of the SU's breakdown of military personnel from Glantz
Colossus Reborn
Of the SU's 11.1mil men in uniform in July 1943, only 64% were with operating fronts (i.e. fighting against Germany/Finnland).
The non-operating fronts facing Japan/Turkey and occupying Iran had 1.4mil men (12.5%) in July 1943.
The internal military districts had 2.5mil men (22%), most of whom were undergoing training.
If we stick with 64% of uniformed RKKA on the Eastern Front that leaves Stalin only ~3.2mil men (of 5mil) to fight Germany and its allies.
But that assumes that the operating fronts have only 1.1mil men (22% of 5mil). Given the need to occupy Iran, that leaves maybe half the OTL force in the Far East. Not sure Stalin would take that risk. Lend Lease would be the only sliver of hope for SU at this point and showing weakness against Japan would invite losing most of Lend Lease aid (Murmansk/Archangelsk are lost already).
The 64% ratio also assumes that only 22% of RKKA men are training in the internal military districts. That's a dubious assumption because it's not like the Axis would be killing fewer Russians; so the flow of replacements as a percentage of the army would have to be higher.
So a 3.2mil RKKA on the Eastern Front during ATL 1943 seems the absolute upside of the projection; depending on assumptions about evacuees and training needs it might be as low as 2.5mil.
Even if it's 3.2mil RKKA, however, that's nowhere near enough to stop an Ostheer of ~2.5mil supported by ~1mil Axis allies (they haven't been eviscerated and demoralized during 1942). Not only would the RKKA be smaller, it would also be less-experienced and competent (more of its officers have been killed/captured than OTL) and its morale would be atrocious.
Another word on the Axis allies: IMO Turkey joins the Axis once it looks like the SU is cooked and especially once German troops are nearing its eastern border. It'll require another post to explore this factor but briefly: (1) Axis can use the Black Sea to support the Ostheer, (2) UK's position in the Middle East is untenable, as they don't have enough shipping to support a force large enough to hold off a big German/Turkish drive on Mosul and Suez. (3) Turkey has a lot of troops (~1mil) though they'll need equipment. In addition to Turkey, greater German success in the East would have positive effects on SS recruitment of anti-communist foreign units. I'd expect a few hundred thousands more French, Dutch, Norwegians etc in the Ostheer in this ATL.
BTW: The envisioned 1942 advance from just west of Moscow and from Rostov to the Volga or even the Ural river's southern course is a shorter advance than the OTL Barbarossa distance:
BTW2: Although it's not essential to my argument, I think it's likely the SU collapses if it suffers military and territorial losses as described here. See, for example, Mark Harrison's work on the proximity of SU collapse in 1942:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics ... ar2005.pdf
Besides the factors in Harrison's paper, the loss of all its grain-surplus regions would lead to famine; the loss of its oil (Caucasus and Kuibyshev) would exacerbate famine through lower agricultural productivity.
In addition, more losses make unrest in Central Asia likely, especially if Turkey joins the war under the banner of Pan-Turkism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmachi_movement
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Given the SU's weakness once it has been pushed behind the Volga, driving it behind the Urals during 1943 would require less than half of Germany's land forces - meaning the Allies can't do anything successfully in Europe in 1943. Once the SU is behind the Urals, it's no longer a significant threat and can be screened with a small fraction of Axis forces.
In short, Hitler didn't need - and didn't seek - unconditional surrender from the Bolsheviks. He can marginalize them in Asia or, should favorable terms arise, make peace.