Aida1 wrote: ↑27 Sep 2019, 16:43
A clear mispresentation.If you start in the second half of august,you will always have more days of good weather than when you start much later.You have a much longer period to execute your offensive towards Moscow.When i talk about the enemy being able to use rail transport,it is about moving units from other areas to the area where a breakthrough has occurred.It is onviously not about tactical transport.Being fully supplied all the way to an objective is not necessary to attain it.Logistical issues will not automatically stop an offensive cold.Where the socalled lying memoirs are concerned,it is not surprising you give no direct quote.
First of all, we were discussing the Rasputitsa of Oct-Nov, specifically in relation to
MUD. You were complaining of the late start date for Typhoon, insisting the Germans lost because Hitler didn't start Typhoon until the Rasputitsa began. But I already showed that to be false, Art's posts prove that September was nearly as bad, or sometimes worse, than October. Now you are shifting back even further, trying to state that Typhoon should have started in August now to be totally free of mud.
You're such a dishonest poster, but its amusing so I'll play along.
An August launch date towards Moscow for Army Group Center has to content with the following:
- The Red Army's Western, Reserve, and Bryansk Fronts are all still intact, strong, and directly opposing Army Group Center's tenuous position after Smolensk, that saw both panzer groups SEVERELY WEAKENED. Launching Typhoon in August means the entire army group having to attack into that force. However, in the real timeline, by Oct, those fronts were severely weakened to the point the Vyazma and Bryansk encirclements were possible and not too hard to achieve. But it two months of near constant Red Army frontal assaults against Army Group Center's infantry armies to get to the point they were attrited enough that positional warfare could be broken, back to maneuver war.
- In August, Panzer Group 4 was still stuck fighting in the northern sector and was only relieved to support AGC's advance on Moscow AFTER Panzer Group 3 had previously assisted AGN to reach Leningrad. Without AGN at Leningrad, its strategic objective, Panzer Group 4 does not get to assist in any attack on Moscow, which means your beloved Halder is missing 1/3 of his mobile forces needed to advance. If they do use Panzer Group 4 for Moscow, it means even less progress for AGN.
- The encirclement and partial annihilation of the Bryansk Front in October was only possible because of Guderian's position at the start date for Typhoon in Oct, when and where he was in the perfect position to hit their flank and effect the encirclement with Panzer Group 4's support (which again, would not have been there for an August Typhoon).
- Also, since Panzer Group 4 wouldn't participating in an August Typhoon, say goodbye to the Vyazma encirclement too, or whatever corresponding operation happens, since that was impossible without Panzer Group 4. So at the very least, you're losing one of those massive encirclements, if not both.
- Next, since you want to go straight to Moscow in August, it means neither Army Group North nor Army Group South get any assistance in the form of panzer groups and infantry armies, so no Leningrad, and no Kiev (let alone all the way to Rostov and the whole of the Ukraine taken). So two of the three army groups fail their strategic objective. Nice job!
- Also, since the enemy in front of AGN and AGS are still intact, Army Group Center has to deal with them while they conduct a narrow and single thrust towards Moscow. That means entire fronts, like the Bryansk Front, are positioned perfectly to hit the underbelly of AGC as it maneuvers to Moscow. Not only them, but Southwest and Southern Front are both completely intact too, so Bock gets to deal with them.
What this means is a two side horizontal front extending eastwards from the Smolensk region to Moscow, which means the infantry armies have to protect roughly 800 meters of the flanks of the thrust to stop those Red Army fronts from cutting them off. First, that isn't even possible, its too much frontage for too few divisions. But even if they did have the divisions, that means nothing is left to be used later, in Moscow.
- As the battle of Smolensk itself revealed, and the rest of the war made perfectly clear, German panzer groups lacked sufficient manpower, especially in infantry, to capture hotly contested cities, ergo urban warfare and panzer divisions don't go together well. Moscow in 1941 was ABSOLUTELY HUGE. Even if only a sliver of the population defended it, even if only scraps of armies could be cobbled together to defend it, it would have been extremely difficult to take it without a significant portion of Army Group Center's already heavily depleted infantry divisions to be used. But they are also needed to guard those massive flanks, because General G decided to create a massive front that looks like this:
>
But even if the infantry divisions are present, they aren't close to full strength at that point, their supply situation still sucks, meaning they aren't getting enough ammunition (especially artillery shells). They aren't getting suffiicent infantry replacements to make up for losses. And we know for a fact that Aug-Dec the Red Army had far more reserves to continuously throw at the Germans to the point the comparison is silly.
- You will still need to factor in bad weather. There is no way in hell that Moscow falls in the length of time it takes two weak Panzer groups (2 and 3) and three slow infantry armies to fight across 400 kilometers of contested Russia and take the largest city in the Soviet Union before the September and Oct rain starts.
- Even if they do take Moscow, does it even matter? We are clearly aware in hindsight that Stalin was already evacuating it, so it wasn't that big of a deal to lose it. Not great, but not the end of the world, and certainly not the end of the war. Losing it wouldn't have led to the collapse of his govt, nor the collapse of the Red Army. Any armies lost defending it would continue to be replaced, just like all the other armies lost from Aug to Dec in the real timeline were replaced. By Dec 5, the Red Army still had 350 divisions in reserve ready to launch a counteroffensive. That was going to happen regardless of what Germany did.
So let's say Halder's misguided and incorrect suggestion is followed and AGC gets to Moscow earlier. It just means a Stalingrad-type massive encirclement and defeat of at least one army, if not the better part of an army group, happens in 1941 instead of 1942.
The sad part is, while Halder was an idiot, he wasn't writing his diary with the clarity of hindsight. General G, what's your excuse?
