History Question- Barbarossa starting date

[Krautman]

It somehow seems apparent that Barbarossa was Hitler's fatal mistake that made him lose the war. As far as i know, there had been serious discussions among the military leaders whether the Wehrmacht was ready for such a large operation in June 41 or not, and many demanded more time for preparation. Hitler, however, was determined to attack the USSR and wanted to march as soon as possible.

But, apart from the problems concerning motorization & logistics, the germans where somehow unprepared, as CMBB shows, in terms of technical development, if you compare the lower amount of automatic weapons among the infantry and the early/mid-war tanks. Soviet infantry squads, while lacking good AT capability, usually have considerably more firepower and/or ammo rating in CM than their german counterparts, and god did T-34/KV-1 tanks give me a pain in the ass in early war scenarios playing the german side.

So if Barbarossa had been postponed, would the germans, being able to test ground warfare equipment&tactics in Africa, have benefited from that or rather the soviets, since their (presumably larger?) arms industry had just even started producing modern tanks in 1940/41?

[Sergei]

Soviets would have benefited more from the extra time. Especially when it comes to the human factor, that is recovering from the purges of high level officers.

Anyone wanna guess how many T-34's and KV's would Soviet industries have been likely to produce during one extra year of peace time?

[Bone_Vulture]

Germans are usually the underdogs in the early war matches, since CMBB doesn't realistically simulate the real-life air superiority and envelopment tactics, unless the opponent is wiling to accept handicaps.

[Corvidae]

I could be wrong, but i suspect that the german failure to set up their economy for arms production may have been the mistake that cost them the war, that and stalingrad destroyed their offensive capabilitys,

Also the failure to exploit manufacruring capabilitys in occupied russia,

All this, combined with their failure to even attempt to win over the people of russia, made the eastern war a fiasco,

Add political interference in military planing and you get disasters,

*******************

in the spring of 41, the germans were still focusing on the production of civilian consumer goods, Arms manufacture was a poor second, this continued untill 43,,, German soldiers were being deprived of essential equipment, so that german houswives could have cosmetics, This was a recipe for failure,

The luftwaft had no long range OR heavy bombers,

and was therefore unable to hit hard enough to truely knock out the enemys economy,

The reich's failure to respond inteligently to churchills deccision to make civilians a target for air attack, a potential propaganda victory,, wasted by the decision to respond in kind, thus sacrificing any moral high ground they might have otherwise been able to claim,,(and refocusing the war from a purely military exercise, to a terror campaign)...

Chancelor Adolf Hitlers personal obsession with the city of stalingrad, ,, and the usual assortment of racial ideology and religious lunacy that squandered the german reich's opportunitys and resources,

All these factors plus the german armys poor long range attack capabilitys, cost them the war in the east, The actual timing of the barbarosa offensive, was only a small part of the problem.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Imho, we're fortunate its original starting date was postponed until June. I think if it had started earlier, the Germans would have had a good chance to beat the weather, take Moscow and points east, thus creating a whole different story on the eastern front.

[Krautman]

Corvidae wrote

"Also the failure to exploit manufacruring capabilitys in occupied russia,

All this, combined with their failure to even attempt to win over the people of russia, made the eastern war a fiasco [...]"

The human factor is another thing i am wondering about. In the northern part of the occupied SU, the german occupation administration treated the population considerably better than in the Ukraine, where german rulers displayed senseless brutality to a horrible extent. Thus, the north did contribute much more to the german war effort than other, potentially more productive, areas.

I once read that the germans would have had an easier time in Russia if they hadn't treated the people that bad; they also might have supported local separatist movements, since Stalin's yoke was a tough one to bear as well. But instead, their "racial superiority" made them suppress the people who became desperate, thus swelling the ranks of the partisan movement. What would've happened if the population were treated in a humane way?

Some other writer said the russians loved their rodina too much to ever seriously collaberate with the germans, but i suppose there were enough people who would have felt freed if they had been treated better.

[Alech]

About German tanks: AFAIK the Germans had stopped development of new designs after France, because they where convinced they had the best tanks in the world. This didn't change until they met the T-34 and KV-1 in the field.

If you want to change history in any meaningful way, you can't just have the Germans waiting 6-12 months, you need to give them better intel about Russian tanks.

And remember, the Russians had only just started production of the T-34 and KV-1. One of the reasons the drive on Moscow failed was that the Russians finally managed to get large numbers of them to the front. For every month Germany waits, the Russians get mote steel monsters.

[von Lucke]

Oooh, look! Another "what if the Germans had XXXX, could they have whipped the Russkis" thread!

Points to ponder:

In 1941 the Wehrmacht was at it's operational peak: Full of veterans from Poland, France, and the Balkans Campaigns. They'd just overrun most of Europe in a year, and morale was high.

The Sovs, on the other hand, had just begun the long road to recovery after 5 years of purges. It had only recently opened back up the officer service schools, and the very first class would make it to the front lines just in time to be decimated by Barbarossa. So too with it's industrial weight: The Red Army had only that year begun to completely renovate it's artillery and armor branchs, attempting to swap out WW1 era equipment for the new stuff just rolling off the production lines.

In short, the Germans hit the Sovs at probably the best, most oportune moment they would ever have: Not only did the Sovs have their pants down around their ankles, but they had their backs turned, and a big "kick me commrade!" sign on it.

Much is made of the T34 / Panzer Mk III gap. Until you consider that the Red Army didn't have that many in operational condition in June '41. Only about a divisions worth, IIRC, and they were split up into support brigades, mostly in the North. Even less KV's. The Germans didn't have to fight 1:1 --- they were the combined-arms masters, remember? Call in the Luftwaffe, and go around.

As for the Sov infantry squad having an edge in automatic weapons, errr, huh? Not early war, they didn't. Most Sov infantry still toted the venerable Moisin-Nagant bolt-action their daddies used in the Great War. There was actually a shortage of squad-level LMG's, resulting in only the Company HQ being assigned one --- if that. OTOH, the German squad was built around the MG34. (If yr thinking of the insufferable numbers of SMG's the Russkis fielded, that wouldn't be for another couple of years).

And finally, the weather issue: The Germans getting a late start actually worked to their benefit. The spring thaw and fall rains (rasputitsa) in Russia render the roads impassable --- you've all seen the pictures. And it had been a very wet spring. A boggskrieg wasn't in the OKW's plans.

Sooooo, to sum up:

If the Germans were going to jump, Summer 1941 --- through lucky circumstance, if nothing else --- was the perfect time to step off that cliff.

As to whether they ever had a hope in hell of winning, that's a different somovar full of borscht --- or sumfink.

[Krautman]

Hi von Lucke,

i was basically aware that this kind of thread wasn't really new to this forum... yet i wanted to start it anyway... forgive a curious newbie

I suppose you are correct with what you wrote, it matches with what i know about Barbarossa. The PzIII vs T-34 thing is surely true, in France, they had Pz I and II against Char-B's-no chance in a head-on tank duel. But those were rather seldom, IIRC, and the germans made their way, as they did in the early Barbarossa days. CMBB simulates the rarity of the early war T-34 quite well, i think. In QB's June-October 41, i mostly encounter T-26s and BT-7s when playing the german side. About the automatic weapon issue-in some book it said that up to mid-'42 the soviets sent units in the field without even enough rifles, save any heavy support stuff. Even boots were rare among these poor units. Whole battailons were sent into battle without arms, they were ordered to get themselves a rifle on the battlefield. But soon, the soviets took great pains in supplying their units with smgs, and, i think it was late 42, each 9500-men-division had 2000 of them(or was supposed to).

However, the soviet infantry in CMBB is truly well equipped, right from the start, and their distinctive superiority (yet low point cost) was also what i was wondering about, not only their actual state of equipment.

[ October 24, 2004, 05:15 AM: Message edited by: Krautman ]

[Michael Emrys]

I agree with von Lucke. Attacking at any other time, either earlier or later was not apt to improve the Germans' chances.

The whole German strategy hinged on Hitler's assumption that the Soviet army would be essentially destroyed at the border, leaving nothing but a mopping up action to follow. This strategy was defeated by the Soviets' ability to continue to replace their losses and to fall back into the Russian and Ukrainian heartland.

The German army was not set up to conduct an operational bound of more than about 300 kilometers at most before having to pause to perform maintenance and bring forward supplies and replacements. This was not a deficiency peculiar to them. Only under unsually favorable circumstances were other armies able to do better, and circumstances in the USSR were emphatically not favorable. The rail net required regauging and the road net was more or less nonexistent.

If the Germans had advanced, say, 600-700km in and dug in for the winter, they might have had much better prospects of avoiding the horrendous losses of 1941-42. But I don't think that would have won them the war either. They could have captured Kiev and Odessa in the south, Minsk and Smolensk in the center, and Riga in the north. Probably they could at least have invested Leningrad in the north. The Soviets would at a minimum have been launching winter counter-offensives and preparing a fortified line against a renewed German offensive come the next campaign season. Hard, if not impossible, to say what happens then.

In short, unless the Germans do everything perfectly (which almost never happens in the real world) and Stalin makes even bigger blunders than he did historically (which strains the imagination), there is practically no possiblity of Barbarossa achieving its stated goals.

Michael

[Mad Russian]

Attacking later would have taken away the advantage the Germans held over the T-34/KV-1's early in the war. An often overlooked fact, is that the weapons were so new that the ammunition wasn't being made fast enough to supply them during the first few months of the war. Often, they went into combat with no AP ammo and only half their basic loads. If the Germans had waited, even a couple of months, Russian manufacturing capacity would have corrected that problem.

Then there was the issue of training. The

T-34/KV tanks were so new that the crews had vitually no training on them. Experienced drivers were ones who had more than a few hours in the machines. There were no experienced gunners because there was no ammunitions to train them with.

There had also been no maneuver training with the new tanks. There were instances, when the

KV-2 tanks arrived on the battlefield and panicked the Russian infantry, because they had never seen them before. It appears that most of the early war losses to the T-34/KV tanks were do to the crews not knowing how to operate them and abandoning them. How ever many were abandoned in this fashion is more than would have happened later after the crews had gained experience with their equipment.

No, IMHO, going into Russia later would have been an unmitigated disaster. Summer 1941 is the time to go.

Good Hunting.

[stikkypixie]

And what about the modernisation programs for the T-34, how much of an impact would that have made?

[Sergei]

Originally posted by stikkypixie:

And what about the modernisation programs for the T-34, how much of an impact would that have made?

No modernization without any perceived need for that.

[stikkypixie]

Ah i thought the russian were planning to build a T-34M, well could be wrong.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by stikkypixie:

Ah i thought the russian were planning to build a T-34M, well could be wrong.

Oh, that. It might have entered production in '41, true.

[Foreigner]

Just a couple minor points on the timing of the attack...

June 22nd of any year is the shortest night/longest day, and even now armies prefer to fight in the daylight.

In 1941 June 22nd also happened on a Sunday, and attacking during a holiday/celebration is a time-honored tradition. Too good a combination to pass up?

I'm not sure about the effects of personal factors. Hitler (as quoted) wanted a war before he turned 50. Guess what - he turned 50 in 1939. "Beware what you wish for..." Those Chinese sure knew their one-liners.