If there's no Yugoslav coup in early 1941, does Operation Barbarossa succeed?

[TheMarcksPlan]

Interesting to read British intelligence thinking on a German attack, they make Hitler look like a pessimist with his three month campaign.

Anti-slav racism was also a British thing, as was a hysterical anti-communism that denied Stalin's ability to construct a durable state.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi TMP,

You post, "Anti-slav racism was also a British thing,....." You'll have to flesh that out a bit. While I appreciate that the second-string, under-villains in British popular novels of the 1920s and 1930s had a marked propensity to be swarthy Balkan types, I was not aware that anti-Slav racism was a British thing. Britons had plenty of other more adjacent or subordinate peoples over whom to exercise any sense of racial superiority.

I would also question, "a hysterical anti-communism that denied Stalin's ability to construct a durable state." I would suggest the exact opposite - that the ruling castes and classes in the UK feared that Stalin might be able to construct a durable state and it was this that engendered their heightened anti-Communism. (My father was born on 1 May 1926, the first day of the National General Strike, while my grandfather, as a small trader, was out volunteering to drive strike-bound buses.)

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

If the Luftwaffe had 2,510 combat aircraft for Barbarossa then assuming the British intelligence figure of well over 2,000 is referring to combat aircraft it is a very good estimate. Presumably if the British thought the figure was 3,000 or over they would have used the number 3,000 not 2,000.

According to this very informative site page 22 bottom, the Luftwaffe front line strength in the east at the start of the invasion was about 2,700 aircraft.
http://www.ww2.dk/Dan%20Zamansky%20-%20The%20Study.pdf

Interesting to read British intelligence thinking on a German attack, they make Hitler look like a pessimist with his three month campaign.

There is no proof that British Intelligence figure was referring to combat aircraft .
And a three months ,or a six months campaign does not indicate pessimism : Hitler and Halder were convinced that the Soviets would be defeated in a few weeks and that the whole campaign ,which would decrease in intensity the farther the Germans advanced, would last only 3 or 4 months .But how long the campaign would last was irrelevant .
About the LW ''front line '' strength ( a very vague word ) ,the figures I have given come from Unternehmen Barbarossa ( W.Post ) P 253 and his source is Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg Bnd 5.1 Der Rüstungsstand der Wehrmacht and also Bnd 4.

[Steve]

As I said the British report did not say combat aircraft but that the Luftwaffe with over 4,000 aircraft in 1941 would commit less than half its total strength to Barbarossa is hard to believe. It is a very reasonable assumption that the report meant combat aircraft especially as it said well over 2,000 which you would think means perhaps hundreds more. Everyone seems agreed that the Luftwaffe had around 2,500 combat aircraft at the start of Barbarossa so a good estimate.

It was a humorous remark that Hitler was being pessimistic about a three month campaign. It is not irrelevant how long the campaign would last as Barbarossa was predicated on a short campaign. Russia would be smashed in 1941 not 1942 or 43.

That the British were racist towards the Slavs is not something I have come across before so I am looking forward to seeing the proof.

[historygeek2021]

In Enduring the Whirlwind, Chapter 2, Gregory Liedtke gives the following high/low estimates for German aircraft committed to Barbarossa:

Luftwaffe Barbarossa.png (179.84 KiB) Viewed 1488 times

He states that this represented 69% of the Luftwaffe's strength, and that a further 1,766 aircraft were deployed elsewhere.

[ljadw]

It depends on what you are counting : combat aircraft only or everything, including courier aircraft .

[EKB]

You overlook that isolationism in American politics limited assistance to material over direct action. All that changed when a failed artist from Austria declared war on the United States, unleashing a massive U.S. military response.

Well, that's one way to interpret events.

Another is that on 17 November 1941, the U.S. repealed multiple sections of the Neutrality Acts, thus allowing:

1. U.S.-flagged merchant vessels to directly resupply opponents of Germany
2. U.S.-flagged merchant vessels, as well as warships and aircraft, to enter war zones
3. U.S.-flagged merchant vessels to be armed

This, coupled with the U.S. escorting Allied convoys as well as Roosevelt's 'shoot-on-sight' declaration of 11 September 1941, confronted Germany with the choice of either unilaterally abandoning the war at sea, or getting into repeated combat with U.S. vessels, therefore giving Roosevelt his pretext to enter the war.

By the beginning of December 1941, whether Germany declared war on the U.S., or the other way around, was essentially an academic question.

Hitler was Roosevelt’s top military leader. The Vienna art school reject managed to eliminate nearly all isolationist sentiment in the U.S. Congress, which was beyond the ability of anyone serving in the U.S. armed forces.

[EKB]

About Krosigk : it was claimed that he had no financial experience when he was appointed. That he could not prevent ''out-of-control '' military spending does not mean that he was a bad minister of finance .

It doesn’t prove that he was good.

A completely meaningless statement.

Krosigk was the best informed man in Germany in financial matters (Schacht). He was a very capable and competent minister, stop talking about things you don't know.

To reply that Krosigk was “well informed” is meaningless in a police state, where posers like Göring and Speer controlled the spending. Hjalmar Schacht was cast aside and made irrelevant, while useless bureaucrats like Krosigk did their best to prolong the unsustainable, vampire economy of Nazi Germany.

[Boby]

About Krosigk : it was claimed that he had no financial experience when he was appointed. That he could not prevent ''out-of-control '' military spending does not mean that he was a bad minister of finance .

It doesn’t prove that he was good.

A completely meaningless statement.

Krosigk was the best informed man in Germany in financial matters (Schacht). He was a very capable and competent minister, stop talking about things you don't know.

To reply that Krosigk was “well informed” is meaningless in a police state, where posers like Göring and Speer controlled the spending. Hjalmar Schacht was cast aside and made irrelevant, while useless bureaucrats like Krosigk did their best to prolong the unsustainable, vampire economy of Nazi Germany.

The job of Krosigk (one of them) , in the PREWAR years, was to control the reich budget and raise taxes. And he was very competent in doing it. He was not the one who decided to spend 60 billion RM directly or indirectly in the military.

[ljadw]

Krosigk was already minister of finance in 1932,under von Papen and Schleicher,and von Papen took him because he was competent . If he was not competent, Papen would have taken another one .

[EKB]

About Krosigk : it was claimed that he had no financial experience when he was appointed. That he could not prevent ''out-of-control '' military spending does not mean that he was a bad minister of finance .

It doesn’t prove that he was good.

As far as I can tell, Krosigk did not hold a banking job in the private sector. Apart from his role in the theft of property and money laundering, what was his signal achievement as minister of finance?

Marriner Eccles was a successful banker and millionaire before Roosevelt appointed him as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Henry Morgenthau was not a banker by trade, but his work history as Secretary of the Treasury looks pretty good next to Krosigk.

ALL Foreign Secretaries are amateurs

Not really. Cordell Hull was elected to the U.S. Congress for 24 years prior to his appointment with the State Department. Ribbentrop had just two years as an ambassador before his foreign minister posting.

Being a member of Congress does not prove to have any knowledge about foreign affairs.
It is the opposite . Members of Congress are bot interested in foreign affairs, because foreigners can not vote for them .
As a member of the House,Hull was only interested in the population of his congressional district,and,when he was a senator, in the people of Tennessee.
As Secretary of State, he received his orders from the White House : it is the Potus who determines the foreign policy of the US .
Kissinger was an exception . He knew more about foreign affairs than all 535 members of Congress and more than Ford .
Morgenthau followed the orders of FDR, if he disagreed, FDR would fire him .
One can not say that Morgenthau was a good minister of finance and Krosigk bad , because there are no parameters to indicate that Morgenthau was good and Krosigk bad : ministers of finance do not decide how the economy will go .

Members of the U.S. Congress are expected to study foreign policy issues before they cast a vote. You cannot claim that a member of Congress, with more than two decades of service, knew nothing about shaping foreign relations. That said, other Nazi miscreants like Ernst von Weizsäcker were more qualified than Ribbentrop.

You waste page after page making absurd arguments. Such as claiming that a peace treaty is not a compromise to fighting. Such as claiming that military spending in Nazi Germany was not out of control. Such as insisting that Adolf Hitler could do nothing to avoid a military defeat.

Going from a chart in The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison: By 1943, German military outlays equalled 70% of national income compared to 42% in the U.S.A. The Nazis also relied heavily on slave labor and systematic theft of private property, both of which artificially propped up the paper strength of a vampire economy.

Hitler had other options to stave off certain defeat and early exit from the world stage. No one forced the Nazis to start a race war in Europe. No one forced the Nazis to invade the Soviet Union. No one forced the Nazis to issue an official declaration of war against the United States.

[ljadw]

Members of Congress are also expected to be honest ! The aim of Members of Congress is to be reelected ,and knowledge of foreign affairs does not gain votes .
The Treaties of Brest Litovsk and Versailles were not compromises, but what the Germans called ''Diktats'' : dictates .
Military spending in Germany was not out of control : Hitler could always order to decrease the military spending .And, German military defeat was certain ,already on September 3 1939 .
What other options did Hitler have to stave off certain defeat ?
No Barbarossa would change nothing, no DOW on the US would change nothing ,besides if there was no German DOW on the US,there would be an American DOW on Germany .
Germany against the SU,with B+ F and the US being defeated or being neutral : Germany would lose .
Germany against B+F with the SU and the US being neutral or defeated : Germany would lose .
Germany against the US with B+ F and the SU being defeated or neutral : Germany would lose : Germany could not nuke US cities, but US could nuke German cities .
There was no scenario possible where Germany could win . It was the same for WWI.
And, if by miracle,Germany would win,its victory would only hasten its collapse : a victorious Third Reich would not survive longer than 1953 .

[ljadw]

EKB : you are confounding competence/incompetence with power : Krosigk had less power than Morgenthau ( there was no Department of Economic Affairs in the US ) but that does not mean that he was less competent than Morgenthau : would Morgenthau have done better than Krosigk if he was Reichsfinanzminister ?Would Schacht have done better than Morgenthau if he was Secretary of the Treasury ?.
A Secretary of the Treasury is not a Reichsfinanzminister .
And a Secretary of State is not a Reichsaussenminister .
Ribbentrop was arrogant ( as a lot of foreign secretaries and diplomats ) ,but that is not the same as being incompetent .
There is no proof that Ribbentrop was incompetent and there is no proof that Weiszäcker would have been better as foreign secretary .

[Avalancheon]

TheMarcksPlan has shown evidence that the weather was not an obstacle for an early Barbarossa: Only the invasion into Yugoslavia was. Without the coup or the distraction that came with it, the Germans can abide to their original invasion date of May 15. That gives them a 6 week headstart over OTL. [] 6 extra weeks of campaigning time in Russia. This time around, there is a real possibility that they could take Moscow (and perhaps Leningrad too). What do you guys think?

[] Plus they have the stronger 12th Army stationed in Romania.

[TheMarcksPlan]

TheMarcksPlan has shown evidence that the weather was not an obstacle for an early Barbarossa: Only the invasion into Yugoslavia was. Without the coup or the distraction that came with it, the Germans can abide to their original invasion date of May 15. That gives them a 6 week headstart over OTL. [] 6 extra weeks of campaigning time in Russia. This time around, there is a real possibility that they could take Moscow (and perhaps Leningrad too). What do you guys think?

[] Plus they have the stronger 12th Army stationed in Romania.

It mostly comes down to real force ratios, including the effects of logistical over-extension. Weather's biggest impact, IMO, comes in the Rasputitsa period rather than winter and most decisively impacted logistics rather than combat. Logistik im Russland Feldzug has a decent narrative about this but it's a difficult book to find.

If we assume that everything is transposed 40 days earlier, than the post-Taifun advance has a decent shot of taking Moscow. Nearly as important, AGS's trans-Dniepr advance into eastern Ukraine isn't hamstrung by reliance on panje carts due to road conditions. So Voroshilovgrad and environs fall, Rostov may even be taken in September.

Now the question is whether the Germans can hold any of these additional gains and I just don't see how they can. Not having Moscow and Voroshilovgrad for a month or two before the counterattack doesn't seem sufficient to change fundamentally the force ratios and German rail deliveries will be marginally worse than OTL due to longer hauls.

There is a very good chance of Hitler trying to hold Moscow in this ATL and a Stalingrad-style catastrophe unfolding.

In addition, Ostheer's equipment status on May 15th would have been worse than June 22 due to 40 fewer days of production. To assume no Marita and a few more divisions from OTL 12th army cancels that out might be generous.

Combining all those factors, I can't see a valid claim that delay alone caused Barbarossa's failure.