The point of displacement supports the idea of a more rapid advance to reach Moscow which would create strategic disruption to the whole military and industrial mobilization.TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑25 Jan 2020, 01:19Appleknocker27 wrote: Disruption of mobilizations means less resistance during the critical time period of good weather.
Just to clarify - is your argument that the mobilizing forces would be encircled with the earlier loss of Vyazma/Bryansk? Or is that the forces wouldn't have mobilized at all? Some combination thereof?
The Soviet units mobilizing at Vyazma and Briansk were mostly mobilized but not fully and many men were taken before they were even close to combat ready.
I really don't now where people are getting the idea that if a unit's mobilization center is over run that those men can simply go somewhere else to mobilize. This is the USSR we're discussing, not the US and there is no lavish industrial support. If a unit's mob center is taken, so is it's equipment (all of it). So where do they go? Another unit's mob site and take another unit's equipment, supplies, etc? The Soviets didn't have enough equipment for the unit's they had at the start of the war and newly raised units were below their wartime MTOE in everything. If the Germans were able to over run pre-war mobilization sites, the displacement would be massive. Take or encircle Moscow and the hub of the whole process is out of play for the Soviets. The Red Army is railbound and their tactical mobility hamstrung by a severe lack of trucks. If Moscow is removed from the Soviet transport grid, just how does the winter counter-offensive build the requisite mass to threaten the Wehrmacht?