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Operation Barbarossa Ever Winnable?


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2 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Well, he did, didn't he?

The only thing they had in common was a liking to alcohol. Stalin was even disowned by Nikita Khrushchev. A system which was not sustainable but had the power to make people's lives miserable for a few generations.  

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31 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

The only thing they had in common was a liking to alcohol. Stalin was even disowned by Nikita Khrushchev. A system which was not sustainable but had the power to make people's lives miserable for a few generations.  

Churchill trusted Stalin as far as he could throw him and vice versa. It was Roosevelt who delivered hundreds of millions in Stalin's claws. I think Churchill would have prevented that if he could, but Roosevelt preferred Stalin over Churchill. God knows why.

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9 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

God knows why.

Yalta Conference the last dirty trick. Roosevelt was on borrowed time and was not fit. Britain was broke, and already handed the US the baton for post war Europe. Yalta was close to the Soviet Union and the same can be said about Alaska. 

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Barbarossa's win conditions were more reasonable than Russian and some Western Historians have summarized, however the greatest irony of them all is that as long as the Nazis were in charge-the plan was unlikely to succeed. (This is not to say that a hands off approach toward OKW as claimed by German Generals after the war would've enabled victory.) In spite of all of the dehumanizing rhetoric, death squads, and starvation policies some one million Ukrainians, Balts, Latvians, etc still turned up at German recruitment posts to fight for the Wehrmacht. This number potentially could've been much higher had the Nazis not fired up everyone in Germany on their dehumanizing race rhetoric-but it's hard to tell. The Wehrmacht did not outnumber the Red Army overall-but they did possess a temporary numerial and material advantage over the Red Army contingents in Belorussia and Ukraine during most of the invasion. This is a big reason why the Nazis were so unmotivated to recruit anyone. Even through the Red Army was proving larger and more formidable than planned-there was still little discernable reason to foresee catastrophe. 

One thing is certain, Stalin's decision not to abandon the Kremlin and Moscow was probably the single most important move in the Soviet's defense of the city. The decision fight on-ruthlessly-probably saved the entire Union and it just goes to show how flimsy the whole plan for Barbarossa was and how fragile the entire German War Effort was if Just Anyone happened to decide to fight to the end rather than just give in that the entire invasion could be derailed. Forcyzk was pretty livid that Polish Leaders conspired to simply abandon their country when faced by invasion-because the Army was clearly quite willing to fight to the end and who knows what the consequences of that might've been if they hadn't just surrendered? Victory most certainly not but the whole war would've looked a lot different if the Germans had emerged from Poland without their precious myth of invincibility. Look what the consequences of Red Army troops fighting down to the last foxhole had on all of Barbarossa and Nazi Germany in the end...

Just look at what Mers El Kebir did for the British in the long run. No single event turned around public attitudes and ended the mythology of Defeated Britain faster than blowing up the Navy of their former Ally. For all their bluster-the Nazis and their grip on power was quite fragile-and they depended considerably upon the flimsy willpower or even sympathy of their enemies to enable quick victory and subsequent plunder. When they ran into a bunch of other authoritarians who were far more serious about maintaining their Authority With a Capital A than just robbing people in their country like most European Dictatorships and running away...they couldn't really win. The Soviet regime was bloody awful but when faced with annihilation they made the correct choice. When we run out of tanks go to the cannon. When we run out of cannon go to the guns. When we run out of guns go to the bayonet. When we run out of bayonets go to your fists. Return with your shield or upon it as the Greeks used to say...

 

Edited by SimpleSimon
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  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/20/2021 at 2:22 AM, SimpleSimon said:

Barbarossa's win conditions were more reasonable than Russian and some Western Historians have summarized, ... When we run out of guns go to the bayonet. When we run out of bayonets go to your fists. Return with your shield or upon it as the Greeks used to say...

 

I always find your insights worth reading :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

For those interested, dipping again into the writings of @JasonC, from years ago in these forums (and BGG):

"Germany was the first great power to know there was going to be a war, but it was also the last to mobilize its economy. Predictably, therefore, it lost catastrophically.

"It was an article of faith for Hitler that Germany should not compete in all out "material struggle" as it had in WWI, but should instead rely on Aryan superiority, quality and tactics to achieve cheap and rapid victories.

"The decision to attack Russia in the first place showed a singular contempt for the military importance of odds. The British empire, Germany, and Russia were approximate equals in industrial and economic terms. The Germans drastically underestimated Russian military power. The idea was indeed annihilation battle, but it was also to defeat Russia in one swift campaign of a single season.

"The hope was that Germany's new methods of warfare had made a war of attrition unnecessary - the complete mobilization, the millions cycled through the fronts, the massive expenditure of treasure and blood through munitions to grind down enemy armies. At the operational level, the Germans were seeking annihilation much more by maneuver than by battle. At a tactical level, they had come to believe in armor as the restorer of shock in the old sense, and the decisive arm, always to be employed offensively.
"The German 1941 performance was outstanding in every military sense, with the Russian moves initially dismal and barely passable later on. The cards were stacked as neatly as you please.

"The basic story of 1941 is the Germans chop the Russian army into pieces and gobble those pieces up. By the time they finish swallowing, there is a new Russian army in front of them. Repeat until the Germans miss a step and stall. People debate which step was the one that missed.

"What defies basic logic is expecting to fight a state as powerful as Russia to the death in a planned war of extermination, without mobilizing your own economy.

"The main issue was simply that they were in an all fired hurry, for no decent reason, other than not bothering to plan for a longer war. 

"The German army in front of Moscow in November 1941 had absolute numerical superiority. It lost it by December. The reason is the Russians were mobilizing a million men per month and the Germans weren't mobilizing even enough to replace their own losses, which were a tenth those of the Russians.
"Germans were still working only a single shift at critical war plants in the fall of 1941. Key plant was being used 10 hours a day, most women were not in the labor force. 40% of steel production was going to civilian industry. 

"The Russians were much closer to losing in pure attrition terms than people often realize, because a 5 to 1 loss rate is one heck of a headwind to try to make up.
"The Russians had been treating formations like ammo. The 1941 Russian economy was working much better than anything else in the picture - they were mobilizing, the Germans weren't; they got massive quantities of war material; they fielded new armies reliably and got them where they were needed, strategically speaking. And those armies milled around, in total chaos, until destroyed - under cockamamie orders and utter confusion. Chaos and confusion reigned in the "near rear" - roughly, railhead to front line in the active sectors. But the next lot were getting off trains 100 miles further east. 

"The Germans overran areas that contained half of the Soviet prewar population. While something like 12 million workers were evacuated and men inducted beforehand and refugees, still around 50 million people passed under German rule. There wasn't any numerical discrepancy left to speak of, in the two population bases, by November.

"Yes the Russians could pull back in space terms. But there weren't a lot of additional recruits to be had in the Urals. Not a million a month. They could keep up the huge mobilization rate for a while anyway, but not forever. Not at 1941 loss levels.

"The sustainability of all the Russian offensives of the second half of the war depended on mobilizing manpower from the last areas cleared, and getting them into new units within 6 to 12 months. Those provided half or more of the new recruit flow. The loss rate simply wasn't sustainable without the front moving their way.

"The Germans are wiping out over three quarters of a million men per month and the Russians are replacing it, but not gaining. The Russian force in the field has a half life on the order of 60 days. And it isn't the October mud pause that stops this - October is just as disastrous as the months before it, and the respite from the mud is too short to matter.

"No, the key thing is that the Germans aren't getting anything themselves. 50k replacements in a time period when the Russians get more like 3 million. It is the sheer scale of the Russian mobilization rate that is the strategic shock to the Germans, and they don't even know it is happening. Every million men they wipe out, they think is the last. When it is just another month or so.

"If the Germans had mobilized as they attacked, they'd have had double the Russian force by November and as many additional tanks as they produced in 1942. What happens in November is the German logistics start giving out, that lets the Russian loss rate fall and the front stabilize, the rear area chaos clears up somewhat (or at least, is matched by equal chaos in German logisitics by then), and Russian front line strength soars.

"The Germans have 2.7 million men in the field and the Russians have only 2.2 million, on November 1. A month later the Germans are weaker not stronger, and the Russians have 4 million. The Russians just don't lose a million men in November - that is all it takes.

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3 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

"The basic story of 1941 is the Germans chop the Russian army into pieces and gobble those pieces up. By the time they finish swallowing, there is a new Russian army in front of them. Repeat until the Germans miss a step and stall. People debate which step was the one that missed.

"What defies basic logic is expecting to fight a state as powerful as Russia to the death in a planned war of extermination, without mobilizing your own economy.

Very succinct summary.  Thanks for the excerpt.

Don't have to read the book now.  :)

 

Edited by Erwin
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45 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

For those interested, dipping again into the writings of @JasonC, from years ago in these forums (and BGG):

"Germany was the first great power to know there was going to be a war, but it was also the last to mobilize its economy. Predictably, therefore, it lost catastrophically.

"It was an article of faith for Hitler that Germany should not compete in all out "material struggle" as it had in WWI, but should instead rely on Aryan superiority, quality and tactics to achieve cheap and rapid victories.

"The decision to attack Russia in the first place showed a singular contempt for the military importance of odds. The British empire, Germany, and Russia were approximate equals in industrial and economic terms. The Germans drastically underestimated Russian military power. The idea was indeed annihilation battle, but it was also to defeat Russia in one swift campaign of a single season.

"The hope was that Germany's new methods of warfare had made a war of attrition unnecessary - the complete mobilization, the millions cycled through the fronts, the massive expenditure of treasure and blood through munitions to grind down enemy armies. At the operational level, the Germans were seeking annihilation much more by maneuver than by battle. At a tactical level, they had come to believe in armor as the restorer of shock in the old sense, and the decisive arm, always to be employed offensively.
"The German 1941 performance was outstanding in every military sense, with the Russian moves initially dismal and barely passable later on. The cards were stacked as neatly as you please.

"The basic story of 1941 is the Germans chop the Russian army into pieces and gobble those pieces up. By the time they finish swallowing, there is a new Russian army in front of them. Repeat until the Germans miss a step and stall. People debate which step was the one that missed.

"What defies basic logic is expecting to fight a state as powerful as Russia to the death in a planned war of extermination, without mobilizing your own economy.

"The main issue was simply that they were in an all fired hurry, for no decent reason, other than not bothering to plan for a longer war. 

"The German army in front of Moscow in November 1941 had absolute numerical superiority. It lost it by December. The reason is the Russians were mobilizing a million men per month and the Germans weren't mobilizing even enough to replace their own losses, which were a tenth those of the Russians.
"Germans were still working only a single shift at critical war plants in the fall of 1941. Key plant was being used 10 hours a day, most women were not in the labor force. 40% of steel production was going to civilian industry. 

"The Russians were much closer to losing in pure attrition terms than people often realize, because a 5 to 1 loss rate is one heck of a headwind to try to make up.
"The Russians had been treating formations like ammo. The 1941 Russian economy was working much better than anything else in the picture - they were mobilizing, the Germans weren't; they got massive quantities of war material; they fielded new armies reliably and got them where they were needed, strategically speaking. And those armies milled around, in total chaos, until destroyed - under cockamamie orders and utter confusion. Chaos and confusion reigned in the "near rear" - roughly, railhead to front line in the active sectors. But the next lot were getting off trains 100 miles further east. 

"The Germans overran areas that contained half of the Soviet prewar population. While something like 12 million workers were evacuated and men inducted beforehand and refugees, still around 50 million people passed under German rule. There wasn't any numerical discrepancy left to speak of, in the two population bases, by November.

"Yes the Russians could pull back in space terms. But there weren't a lot of additional recruits to be had in the Urals. Not a million a month. They could keep up the huge mobilization rate for a while anyway, but not forever. Not at 1941 loss levels.

"The sustainability of all the Russian offensives of the second half of the war depended on mobilizing manpower from the last areas cleared, and getting them into new units within 6 to 12 months. Those provided half or more of the new recruit flow. The loss rate simply wasn't sustainable without the front moving their way.

"The Germans are wiping out over three quarters of a million men per month and the Russians are replacing it, but not gaining. The Russian force in the field has a half life on the order of 60 days. And it isn't the October mud pause that stops this - October is just as disastrous as the months before it, and the respite from the mud is too short to matter.

"No, the key thing is that the Germans aren't getting anything themselves. 50k replacements in a time period when the Russians get more like 3 million. It is the sheer scale of the Russian mobilization rate that is the strategic shock to the Germans, and they don't even know it is happening. Every million men they wipe out, they think is the last. When it is just another month or so.

"If the Germans had mobilized as they attacked, they'd have had double the Russian force by November and as many additional tanks as they produced in 1942. What happens in November is the German logistics start giving out, that lets the Russian loss rate fall and the front stabilize, the rear area chaos clears up somewhat (or at least, is matched by equal chaos in German logisitics by then), and Russian front line strength soars.

"The Germans have 2.7 million men in the field and the Russians have only 2.2 million, on November 1. A month later the Germans are weaker not stronger, and the Russians have 4 million. The Russians just don't lose a million men in November - that is all it takes.

In my understanding that's more or less true.

I would add that USSR was far behind in terms of technology (they put a lot of effort into closing the gap and achieved some success but it still wasn't enough). Hence the casualties ratio. 

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Jason again:

"In pure materiel, the Russians had forces sufficient to stop Barbarossa cold. Before the purges, the thinking of the leading staff was actually *ahead* of the Germans in mobile warfare doctrine, including realism about what could and could not be expected from single operations.

"Russia invested far more heavily in mobile forces, sooner, than German did. They had the largest airborne force in the world, the largest tank fleet by an order of magnitude, the best tank designs. They had a fully elaborated all arms formation built around high theory hashed out over about a decade, far in advance of anything the western allies had. 

"On the other hand, the Russian quality advantage existed only at the top of the distribution of tank types. The Russians had an enormous number of tanks when the war began, but 85% of them were thinly armored, 45mm gun armed lights, split between T-26s (by far the most common type) and the BT "fast" series.  All these were entirely vunerable to every tank gun in the German AFV fleet, and every field gun they had as well. Their own guns were dangerous to the lighter half of the German fleet, but needed flank shots at relatively close ranges against the better half (the newer 50mm front armor Pz IIIs, IVs, and StuGs).  The better Russian tanks were a more serious matter, but there weren't all that many of them after early breakdowns (or "never rans") are taken out of the mix, and they were "spent" in penny packets.

"The officer corps also had suffered a a deliberate politically paranoid campaign against some leading mech theorists as smelling fascist and maybe pro German, incomplete personnel for their ambitious mech arm, low readiness, a poor maintenance culture, and peacetime training that avoided stressing critical support elements.

"To be fair, it is not typical to deliberately "stress" CSS in peacetime exercises. More of them are conducted in open plain regions than in swampy forests with limited road nets.

"So what happened to the Russian tank fleet? Glantz had shown from previous operational studies that basically half of it is gone by the end of the summer. They are outnumbered in armor throughout the fall battles. Even though the Germans don't have much (3300 to start and falling). Did the Germans just kill every tank in battle, because T-26s are so bad?

"They indeed made catastrophic mistakes. They were on the defensive and nobody yet knew how to stop modern all arms forces with proper doctrine when they were on the offensive. They tried the obvious, reasonable things, like coordinated mech counterattacks against the shoulders of penetrations - but their mech arm fell apart on them within days, without result.

"You find there are serious Russian counterattacks with armor. Tank corps strength, and prewar TOEs thus those are big formations. One operation on the Smolensk axis involves well over 1000 tanks. Occasionally there is some early effect, but never anything real to show for any of it. What's going on?

"Whole mechanized corps report they are out of gas.

"We are not just talking failure to use combined arms in a doctrinally correct manner. We are talking about launching attacks with major formations that push ahead for 2-3 days, and nobody has organized their regular resupply. As in, CSS non-existent.

"At Smolensk, 5th and 7th Mech have 1036 tanks apiece (!), and their attack fails. Glantz offers that many of them are T-26s or BTs (so what? If half of them were BTs it would still be awesome. Lack of adequate recon and tank infantry cooperation is cited for their failure, against the well prepared AT defense of - one panzer division. 7th Mech alone lost 832 tanks within five days and withdrew in disorder beset also by a host of command and control and logistical problems.  Another corps cites swamps and air.

"Higher ups gave nonsensical orders. Lower officers obeyed them to the letter. They drove off to point B. No gas arrived to meet them (the route may not have existed, the enemy might have been between, any of a hundred reasons the original order was  nonsense). They screamed for gas. The front moved. The crews got out and walked.  That is how "swamps" consume entire Mech corps.

"So what does Stavka do? They abolish the Mech corps. This is usually regarded as a big step back to penny packet thinking, but I believe it was correct, indeed absolutely essential. It is vastly harder to move a 1000 AFV glob in a coordinated fashion than it is to move a brigade of 50 T-34s. A reliable brigade of T-34s at the right place and time is more valuable than a wallowing CF of an out-of-gas Mech corps. Let alone half a dozen of those brigades.

"This retied the tanks to the infantry formations. Which were lasting long enough to protect and use them. It restored tank infantry cooperation."

Edited by LongLeftFlank
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20 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

In pure materiel, the Russians had forces sufficient to stop Barbarossa cold

In my opinion, that's a popular misconception. 

I would share some of my thoughts on the reasons why USSR failed so badly in 1941.

People usually pay attention to the number of tanks and planes - which is a relatively easy thing to do - but it is misleading. There were much more impactful factors.

1) The number one is RADIO. What WW2 researchers often don't realize is that Germans success was very much due to the superiority in command and control system (C2), and how Soviets lagged behind in terms of C2. When you start digging deeper into war history the difference becomes striking. In many aspects it was  struggle between modern and antiquated armies. 

Soviet units almost didn't have radios, and even if they had the quality was so bad, that they couldn't hear anything. Soviet commanders relied on telephone cables, that proved highly unreliable. The cable communication was very vulnerable to artillery, and usually broke down after first artillery strike leaving the hole regiments and armies without control.

Soviet officers often didn't know where the enemy was, and what even more important - where their one units were situated. When the telephones go silent they used  communication personnel to deliver orders on foot, which if the person with the paper order stayed alive and managed to deliver it, took hours and even days. In most cases those communication officers came to the area where they thought Soviet troops would be, but to their surprise they saw Germans. 

C2 situation like this couldn't be simulated in game like Combat Mission, where you always watch the battlefield from the bird's eye and can pass the order to every soldier in the matter of moments. 

2) The Germans had it the other way around. They excelled in radios and communications systems to the point when they could use COMBINED ARMS strategy. They have the perfect aviation intel, knew precisely where enemy and their own forces where, and coordinated their actions very well.   

3) AVIATION superiority. It was absolutely daily and ordinary situation when German officer could call pinpoint airstrike from the frontline tank or observation post and STUKAs could deliver it with great precision in the matter of hour or  minutes! 

Soviet aviation in turn was deaf. The orders to strike took literally days and after Russian planes took off from the airfield they lost contact with ground troops and each other. Ground observation posts used giant white sheets on the ground to communicate with planes and give them directions!

Not to mention that Soviet planes where much inferior to Germans in terms of engines, armament, production quality and pilots training.

In result in 1941-1943  Germans gained absolute superiority in the air. All those years Russian troops had to operate under permanent airstrikes and observation. 

4) AMMO.

Do you know that 90% of all T-34 in the beginning of Barbarossa didn't have  armor piercing shells? No matter how T-34 was better than TIII, it couldn't fight it without AP shells. 

Germans had huge advantage in numbers of artillery shells. In 1942 the Germans fired 18 million  105mm  shells, Russians - 10 million 76mm shells. The gap in terms of 152 mm was even greater: Russians - 2.3 million, Germans - 4.8 million. Even in 1944 the ratio was 3.7 million to 7.5 million in favor of the Wehrmacht.

To sum it up USSR fought Germany in the dense fog of war with inferior aviation and weaker artillery support. Only the personal qualities of Russian soldier could compensate it and eventually win the war. 

 

 

 

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That is all quite correct, although I don't know that it particularly contradicts the prior.

Great stuff on shell counts, quite important thanks. Does your 1944 figure include all calibres though? I do find it a little hard to believe the Germans outshot the Russians 2:1 by then (on the Ostfront, or on all fronts?), but it's big if true. As we know, German war production peaked in 1944.

...Luftwaffe-Army coordination, while it certainly existed and was highly effective, may be a little overstated. There were plenty of friendly fire attacks, for example, and fog is fog and muddy airfields suck (literally). It wasn't a resource available 'on call' to tactical formations, like artillery. The late '44 'cab rank' system notwithstanding, even the Americans had to wait for Korea for tactical air strikes to be called in in timeframes of much less than a day.

A little more from Jason that builds on your points:

"The Germans had the best radio direction finding systems in the world in the first half of WW2. They regularly knew where any powerful radio transmitter was broadcasting from in hours, and could arrange to strike any concentration of them within 1-2 days. They used this to good effect in France in 1940 and Russia in 1941-2. The Russians got paranoid about ever getting on the radio, and that hurt their comms in its own right.

"German tanks see and hear better - they have commander cupolas, 3 man turrets, radios, and better optics. On a large battlefield with cover available, this tends to let the Germans get many on few fights first here and then there. They can get "piecewise" numerical superiority in sequence, even with the overall numbers on the field even.

Edited by LongLeftFlank
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1 hour ago, dbsapp said:

C2 situation like this couldn't be simulated in game like Combat Mission, where you always watch the battlefield from the bird's eye and can pass the order to every soldier in the matter of moments. 

I can be overcome with some house rules, I agree with what you are saying, scout discovers a foxhole and simsalabim the map is automatically updated. 

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3 hours ago, dbsapp said:

 

Germans had huge advantage in numbers of artillery shells. In 1942 the Germans fired 18 million  105mm  shells, Russians - 10 million 76mm shells. The gap in terms of 152 mm was even greater: Russians - 2.3 million, Germans - 4.8 million. Even in 1944 the ratio was 3.7 million to 7.5 million in favor of the Wehrmacht.

Do you have a source for this? Sound pretty unlikely.

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2 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Do you have a source for this? Sound pretty unlikely.

https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2017/06/22/695479-krasnaya-armiya

5 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Great stuff on shell counts, quite important thanks. Does your 1944 figure include all calibres though? I do find it a little hard to believe the Germans outshot the Russians 2:1 by then (on the Ostfront, or on all fronts?), but it's big if true. As we know, German war production peaked in 1944.

I encountered the notion that Russians spent much less artillery ammo than Germans multiple times.

Like recently I read Isaev's book on Bagration, where he cites Soviet and German sources and says ( Google translated):

"The main role in the success of the German defense was played by two things in the battles of the autumn of 1943 and the winter of 1943/44. Firstly, it is the armored vehicles used to fight Soviet tanks, and secondly, howitzer artillery, including heavy weapons. The review compiled by the headquarters of the 3rd Panzer Army following the results of the battles directly stated:

“The consumption of ammunition in the amount of 1510 tons per day for the corps located in the direction of the main attack, and 2910 tons per day for the entire TA in most cases was significantly higher than that of the Russians. Often it was possible to smash an enemy penetration exclusively with artillery fire.

Especially high in comparison with the ammunition was the ammunition consumption of heavy field howitzers mod. 18 y., 21-cm mortar arr. 18 and heavy field howitzers 414 (f) ".

As 15.5-cm 414 (f), the Germans designated the captured French 155-mm Schneider howitzer arr. 1917 However, the share of these guns in the total shot was small.

Here I would like to note that the volumes of shells launched by the German artillery exceeded those at the height of the storming of Stalingrad in September - October 1942. For example, on September 27, 1942, on the first day of the next offensive, the entire 300,000 personell 6th Army of Paulus released 1077 tons of ammunition. Actually, the Seydlitz corps, which stormed the city, released 444 tons that day.

At the same time, September 27 was the day of peak ammunition consumption, in the following days it dropped quite sharply.

The corps defending near Vitebsk shot three times more shells than the one advancing on Stalingrad. Near Rzhev, in the midst of defensive battles, Model's 9th Army shot about 1000 tons of ammunition per day". 

And:

Tolkonyuk (he was Deputy Chief of the Operations  of the 33rd Army in 1943 and left one of the most interesting wartime memoirs) recalled: “Although we had numerical superiority over the enemy in artillery of small and medium calibers in the direction of the main attack, the enemy fired twice as many shells at the same time than we did. In counter-battery artillery, the Germans outnumbered us by one and a half to two times, which allowed them to reliably suppress our counter-battery artillery groups."

Throughout the war USSR had severe shortage of TNT and relied heavily on lend-lease supply. 

 

 

 

Edited by dbsapp
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The artillery figures are misleading.

One of the reasons why the Germans had a high inventory is because they produced a large number of shells in winter 1939-40 because they thought the war would be repeat of WW1. Once France fell, they had a huge inventory and cut way back on shell production.

On numbers of guns and mortars the numbers I have for the Russians are:

-June 41: 91,000

-December 41: 22,000

-November 42: 72,000

-June 43: 103,000

-June 44: 92,000

-January 45: 108,000

Numbers for Germans are: 

-November 42: 70,000

-January 45: 28,500

Germans lost most of their artillery in 44 when combat losses far outstripped production. Remember also that German figures are for all fronts.

source: Walter Dunn, “Hitler’s Nemesis, The Red Army 1930-45”, 1994.

The other issue is that Russian artillery doctrine was different and less flexible than the German, US or CW. The Russians required a lot of planning, so for major offensives they would group large numbers of guns in massive pre-planned barrages to blast holes in the German front, but in quiet sectors or in between offensives, were not able match the Germans for on the fly artillery calls, which are more typical for CM battles. 
 

When the 31st Guards division attacked in Bagration, June 44, it was supported by 254 guns: 92 x 76mm, 64 x 122mm, 36 x 120mm, 50 x 203mm and 12 x 280mm. Each gun would have had 100-150 shells available for the initial offensive.

Dunn gives the example of a 10 day period in November 44 when all front were quiet, the Russians fired an average of 2 shells a day from 13,000 guns while the Germans fired an average of 9 shells a day from 4,800 guns which works out to 2x as many shells.

Edited by Sgt Joch
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12 hours ago, Sgt Joch said:

The artillery figures are misleading.

One of the reasons why the Germans had a high inventory is 

... of 2 shells a day from 13,000 guns while the Germans fired an average of 9 shells a day from 4,800 guns which works out to 2x as many shells.

Great info, cheers, but is your data necessarily contradicting @dbsapp?

...In 1942-43 one would assume the vast bulk of German consumption to be in the east (with Med front/Africa negligible), but with the second front (plus, e.g. Cassino-Anzio) in 1944 some of that usage would be in the West.

Also, could some of the German shell expenditures be losses? captured, or demolished to prevent capture? Although I doubt it would account for the 2:1 ratio.

Edited by LongLeftFlank
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On 10/1/2021 at 7:27 PM, dbsapp said:

To sum it up USSR fought Germany in the dense fog of war with inferior aviation and weaker artillery support.

Their aviation was not inferior by mid-1943. For instance, over the Kuban bridgehead, the German senior command started remarking that the Soviet air forces were able to do "whatever they wanted" by around the middle of the year. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/2/2021 at 11:06 PM, LukeFF said:

Their aviation was not inferior by mid-1943. For instance, over the Kuban bridgehead, the German senior command started remarking that the Soviet air forces were able to do "whatever they wanted" by around the middle of the year. 

The most devastating consequence of which was the shutdown of the Luftwaffe's aerial reconnaissance. Photo recon was about the only reliable source of military intelligence the Wehrmacht possessed (The Abwehr was a useless organization) and it's loss left the Germans blind to the buildup of operations as large as Bagration. People on the other side of the world knew where the Russians were going by word of mouth alone-but a combination of blindness and Hitlerian denial naturally meant the German Army didn't. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, SimpleSimon said:

The most devastating consequence of which was the shutdown of the Luftwaffe's aerial reconnaissance. Photo recon was about the only reliable source of military intelligence the Wehrmacht possessed (The Abwehr was a useless organization) and it's loss left the Germans blind to the buildup of operations as large as Bagration. People on the other side of the world knew where the Russians were going by word of mouth alone-but a combination of blindness and Hitlerian denial naturally meant the German Army didn't. 

 

 

Germans moved large chunk of their aviation to the West due to increased bombing campaign and - after D-day - the opening of the 2nd front. Plus by 1944 they lost lion share of their higly trained pilots, which were replaced by less experienced newcomers. 

 

 

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28 minutes ago, dbsapp said:

Germans moved large chunk of their aviation to the West due to increased bombing campaign and - after D-day - the opening of the 2nd front. Plus by 1944 they lost lion share of their higly trained pilots, which were replaced by less experienced newcomers. 

 

 

... that they didn't have any fuel for to train them properly.

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On 10/2/2021 at 3:27 AM, dbsapp said:

C2 situation like this couldn't be simulated in game like Combat Mission, where you always watch the battlefield from the bird's eye and can pass the order to every soldier in the matter of moments.

I think that could actually be done, in a campaign format using branching, ie: between big battles you have smaller scenarios replicating attempts to communicate orders/intel between bigger formations.....The outcomes of these would affect the starting forces & intel for bigger battles.

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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