History Learner wrote: ↑01 Dec 2021 01:09
I don't think the logistics are there for any sort of thrust from the Bulge itself; they tried and it floundered badly in February/March, April is the muddy season and then in May the forces are still too disparate. Attacking Orel and along the Mius seems like it leads to what you mentioned earlier, with the Germans forming firebrigades with AGC focusing on Orel and AGS focusing on the Mius. Do the Soviets have the accumulated reserves to maintain anything in AGS sector too, for that matter? The Germans could shut down the Mius attack as per IOTL and then pivot to defending Kharkov/Belgorod.
It would be tough to transition to the offensive, but as a distraction they could make things difficult in Orel even if they get slaughtered in an offensive; I highly doubt Stalin would wait around for them to properly prepare the offensive if by July it is clear that no German offensive is coming, but given the training and preparations being purely defensive getting ready for an offensive quickly is going to be quite difficult and result in heavy losses. So Orel is then not nearly as threatened in this scenario as the entire intact 9th army is now in their own prepared defenses and can properly support 2nd panzer army while Central Front is going to stumble quite heavily given the likely quite limited time for preparations. If they stagger their offensive to jump in after Bryansk Front has attacked to give themselves more time to prepare (which won't be that much more) that just means Bryansk Front can be fought by the reserves of two armies instead of one for a time and then resources can be shifted back to deal with Central Front. That said I agree that the situation was simply stacked against AG-Center too much to maintain the Orel position, but it is going to be a blood bath for the Soviets to push them out.
Agreed about your assessment of the Mius-Belgorod/Kharkov shifts, though with the Mius, Voronezh, and Steppe Fronts all available and attacking AG-South that could cause some issues. Plus then there is still Operation Huskey, which will likely happen before or at the same time as the Soviet offensives here. Does the II SS Panzer Corps still get broken up or not? And if not does that actually mean anything for the situation in Italy? Though LSAAH didn't fight in Italy its presence was supposed to make a political statement...though how much of that actually mattered is not clear.
History Learner wrote: ↑01 Dec 2021 01:09
RKKA has thousands more AFV's than OTL's post-Kursk offensives, Ostheer only a few hundred more. Ostheer has ~54k more men than OTL, RKKA has ~178k more. As KDF rightly reminds us, battlefield attrition basically always disfavored the RKKA, whose operational prospects were always best at the beginning of a period of fighting.
At Orel, the Germans achieved a 7:1 AFV loss rate in their favor; at Kursk it was roughly 5:1. No Citadel means the Germans have roughly ~320 more tanks and the Soviets ~1,700 more, not counting further production. Depending on how big German and Soviet production is, I see this as a wash.
At Orel ITTL it could very well end up being an even better ratio of losses given that there would be a lot of tanks in reserve and not awaiting repairs as a result of Kursk; though write offs were only ~320 AFVs many more were out of commission for longer term repairs.
Dupuy Institute has this to say about the matter:
http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/2018 ... -at-kursk/
Subsequently, the pendulum swung back, as research in German archives showed that no more than 278 German tanks were lost during the battle at Kursk 5-23 July.
....
The exchange ratios for armor are discussed in my book on pages 640-641, 744-745, 809-811, 1021-1022, and 1209-1211. The figures of 2,471 Soviet tanks destroyed, damaged or broken down and 1,536 German tanks destroyed, damaged and broken down comes from page 1210, among other places (pages 1338, 1339, 1340, 1367 and 1368). This is a 1.61 armor exchange, although the majority of tanks were probably not taken out in combat between tanks.
So while the Germans were able to repair a lot of them quickly, some large number of AFVs were longer term repairs and not available to deal with the Soviet counter-offensives.
It is rather amazing that Model was able to get the casualty ratios he did with the bulk of his combat power being unavailable for a lot of the initial parts of the offensive and then only showing up worn out after the fact.
History Learner wrote: ↑01 Dec 2021 01:09
If we shift the Soviet casualties exchanged for ~54k Germans at Kursk, from 3.31:1 (OTL Kursk defensive) to 5.65:1 (OTL post-Kursk offensives against AGS) that's ~125k additional Soviet bloody losses. Manageable for sufficient strategic gain.
But ~125k is certainly an overestimate because
armor mix changes the casualty ratio (see from page 80 of that report). That report is just one of several documenting the effect, which accords with common sense. An RKKA attacking with a much better armor mix sees lower losses.
If, in exchange for probably a <100k casualty delta, RKKA can reach the Dniepr and clear Donbas a few months earlier then enormous strategic benefits accrue: Germany loses more investment in the Donbas/Dnipro areas (Iwan program), RKKA gets booty soldiers earlier, Donbas/Dnipro come back online earlier, Soviet logistics for the trans-Dniepr push build up earlier (i.e. railroad repair), and RKKA has many more tanks for that later push. If Ostheer loses supply depots early then the casualty cost of this preemption (relative to OTL) is even lower - perhaps approaching zero.
I promise I'm not trying to be obtuse here, and I welcome being educated on the matter, but what I am supposed to see here with the link? I agree with the statement, if I am understanding it correctly, that being the attacker yields more captures and that having an armor heavy or supported thrust does likewise in benefitting the aforementioned gains. This is very sound theory, and I think anyone would be hard pressed to disagree with it. My issue is does this offset the advantage of the Germans being in well prepared defenses, with accumulated artillery and air munition stockpiles? Soviet doctrinal theory, IIRC, held the need for overwhelming superiority in men and machines in order to overcome well prepared defenses; even then, things could go awry as Operation Mars, Third Kharkov and Smolensk showed.
Smolensk is a decent model for what an ATL defense would look like, but remember even then the defense was compromised by AG-Center pushing the majority of its most effective divisions into 9th army for the Citadel offensive and then had them further ground up in Orel so that they weren't available for the Smolensk fighting starting at the end stages of Orel. Probably one of the more important elements here is after the Orel bulge is squeezed out are the Germans so worn down that the subsequent Bryansk operation still works or is that stymied? If so the Hagen Line might hold for a long time.
As to losses we should also allow for 'creative record keeping' that the Soviets did not just at Kursk but much of the entire war to hide losses and avoid consequences from Stalin.
