Could the Soviets have dealt better with Barbarossa? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The Second World War (1939-1945).
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#14308408
Jessup wrote:The Germans actually done the Russians the biggest defensive favour when they levelled Stalingrad creating an almost impenetrable maze of rubble.


With the other option being, standing building providing more fortresses and more sniping points, it was hardly a favor or game changer. Urban warfare is just like that.

Layman wrote:The Soviets were overated.

5.7 million taken prisoner and they call the French cowards


Everything should be put in context.

Axis took 5.2 million soviet prisoners while soviets took 5.4 million within a four year span whereas Germans took 1.9 million French prisoners in six weeks. Obviously even this data sidelines many important contexts but the point is such statistical juggling could prove anyone's preconceived notions about war.

French were obviously not cowards (that is just stupid) but if anything Soviets were underrated.
#14308415
fuser wrote:With the other option being, standing building providing more fortresses and more sniping points, it was hardly a favor or game changer. Urban warfare is just like that.

Buildings aren't fortresses and sniping points are less obvious but far more effective in ruined city's. But the biggest difficulty was that German tanks could only crawl through the city streets making them sitting ducks for Russian infantry. The Germans also found it nearly impossible to sweep the city as they went often missing out on pockets of Russian resistance hidden in the maze of rubble leaving their flanks exposed to ambushes and counter attacks as they moved.
#14308418
Jessup wrote:Buildings aren't fortresses


Pavlov House It was the most famous one, various buildings can be fortified with barb wires, machine gun nests etc.

But the biggest difficulty was that German tanks could only crawl through the city streets making them sitting ducks for Russian infantry.


Tanks aren't suitable for urban warfare anywhere specially during that era, a city being rubble or not doesn't change the fact. Precisely because city can provide ample of hiding space for anti tank infantry to take a shot at close range and restriction on movement of tanks because of various obstacles in the form of standing buildings.
That is like warfare 101.

Beside Soviets had tanks too and they were useless too.

Generally large tank formations avoid capturing a city, that task is left for Infantry and that was true in ww2 too. The only time Germans tried to storm a major city with Tanks was Warsaw and it wasn't a pretty result with more tanks destroyed in that single operation than entire polish campaign.
#14308455
fuser wrote:So, for shorter line of communication a country should place her strategic regions at risk?


They'd be in even greater danger if much of the strength need to protect them was squandered trying to defend less important territory. Trying to defend their whole country was a mistake the yugoslavs made in 1941. Similarly the Egyptians blundered badly by opting for a forward defense of Sinai. Iraqi forces too, in '91, were too close to the frontier. Given the strength of the reich, virtually all available forces should've been conserved to protect vital areas, instead of allowing the enemy to destroy them piecemeal i.e. first the frontier units.

While fighting, not when you leave your region undefended for enemy to just cross.


That's what worked in 1812.
#14308478
Starman wrote:They'd be in even greater danger if much of the strength need to protect them was squandered trying to defend less important territory.


Do you know what hindsight is? Your theory is filled with just wild assumptions. As I said before and you haven't replied yet :

There was nothing guaranteeing the encirclement of Red Army at border
There was nothing guaranteeing that Red Army will obviously not get encircled standing further east.

You want a Country to make their policy on such defeatist hypothetical assumptions? As I said this is absurd.

What was guaranteed was :

Large areas given to enemy at virtually no cost.
Enemy is at your capital and strategic areas more rapidly.
No experience for your troops
Loss of manpower and industries
politically a very bad decision, abandoning citizens to their own fate.
No attrition for enemy.
etc etc.

These facts were guaranteed, solid military and political reasons whereas yours is just hypothetical musings.

Trying to defend their whole country was a mistake the yugoslavs made in 1941. Similarly the Egyptians blundered badly by opting for a forward defense of Sinai. Iraqi forces too, in '91


You obviously don't know about ww2, if you are comparing Iraqis in 1991 and Yugoslavs in 1941 to USSR.

That's what worked in 1812


You can't compare post industrial warfare to pre industrial warfare. Try something after Crimean war. During those times, it was norm for an army to enter inside an enemy territory before getting her first fight unlike post industrial warfare.

Beside, then also you have a very wrong notion of 1812. Russians didn't simply abandoned their territory, they were fighting Napoleon from day 1 and actually stopped French at Polotosk through conventional warfare preventing France from marching to their capital i.e. st. Petersberg.
#14308989
fuser wrote:There was nothing guaranteeing the encirclement of Red Army at border
There was nothing guaranteeing that Red Army will obviously not get encircled standing further east.


I didn't say guarantee. But encirclement of the red army at the border was more likely since it had less reaction time, and enemy intelligence about frontier dispositions was likely to be better. Deployment farther east granted more time to identify the enemy's axis of attack and deploy to meet it.
#14309211
starman2003 wrote:Not necessarily. Shorter lines of communication can be advantageous.

If you're giving up the Soviet Union's resource base to do this, those lines of communication are less useful - the logistical problems will be worsened by loss/lack of material.

starman2003 wrote:Deployment farther east granted more time to identify the enemy's axis of attack and deploy to meet it.

The Red Army wasn't exactly agile in 1941 so I think expecting it to be able to do this without placing itself into an even more dangerous situation might be expecting a bit much. Giving up enough territory to afford the time and space to do it properly would be going way too far, especially as this would be likely to be a long war and you're talking about sacrificing Soviet industry, resources and agricultural zones.

Also the German army could probably shift that axis of attack much more easily in 1941 than the Soviet Union could meet it.
#14309458
Smilin' Dave wrote:If you're giving up the Soviet Union's resource base to do this, those lines of communication are less useful - the logistical problems will be worsened by loss/lack of material.


Not all that much of it--if the plan envisaged positioning most troops just east of the dneiper and within 300 or so km of Moscow. That would mean losses of ukrainian agriculture--which wasn't fatal in real life--but leave the bulk of industry and oil production in soviet hands. Also the soviets in real life transferred some industry beyond the urals.

Also the German army could probably shift that axis of attack much more easily in 1941 than the Soviet Union could meet it.


Well, if the soviet air force were similarly moved out of initial reach of the Luftwaffe, as I said, it could've done much more to slow down German mobile units and hamper logistics. Which would've given soviet ground forces more time.
#14309527
Sure, they could, perhaps if they had had someone like Trotsky as head of state, or commander in chief, instead of Stalin, and if the Red Army hadn't been decapitated right before the war. It wasn't the material shortage, if there was any at all, that caused the catastrophe on the Soviet side, it was the shortage of competence.
#14309529
Sure, they could, perhaps if they had had someone like Trotsky as head of state, or commander in chief, instead of Stalin, and if the Red Army hadn't been decapitated right before the war. It wasn't the material shortage, if there was any at all, that caused the catastrophe on the Soviet side, it was the shortage of competence.

There's also the point that the Soviet commanders on the ground were terrified to show any initiative of any sort under any circumstances. When the Nazi war machine smashed into the Soviet Union, the front-line Soviet commanders jammed up the telephone system, desperately requesting permission from the Soviet authorities to start shooting back at the German forces, who were officially still the Soviet Union's allies....
#14309533
Potemkin wrote:the front-line Soviet commanders jammed up the telephone system, desperately requesting permission from the Soviet authorities to start shooting back at the German forces, who were officially still the Soviet Union's allies....

It must have been the wonderful memories of handshakes with Wehrmacht officers in Poland that paralyzed them.
#14309534
Nah, they knew this day would come sooner or later, it's just that, despite the fact that the Germans were obviously invading and shooting people and blowing shit up 'n' stuff, they didn't want to pre-empt the Soviet government's decision that Germany and Russia were now officially at war. Bad things tended to happen to Soviet commanders who did stuff like that.
#14309539
Perhaps they were told to be careful and not go for any provocations.

They were told this, and they took it to heart.

However, I'm sure they were expected to be able to distinguish between provocation and full-scale invasion.

You would think so, wouldn't you? However, Stalin often found that his *ahem* imposition of discipline on Soviet society was more effective than he had anticipated or even wanted. This, after all, is why he had to have Yezhov removed from his post and shot in 1938.
#14309563
starman2003 wrote:if the plan envisaged positioning most troops just east of the dneiper and within 300 or so km of Moscow.

As this map highlights, the Donbass region, along with mines, industry etc. extends over both sides of the Dneiper.

starman2003 wrote:That would mean losses of ukrainian agriculture--which wasn't fatal in real life

This was in part because of Lend-Lease deliveries of food, which pre-Barbarossa 1941 wasn't guaranteed. Abandoning territory might have even been seen as something that would deter allied support in 1941. This is the sort of hindsight stuff fuser is talking about.

starman2003 wrote:Also the soviets in real life transferred some industry beyond the urals.

Which was a leading cause of a production slump from 1941 to around 1942. Moving production to the Urals was better than losing it completely, but it was hardly desireable. Short term it could lower operational tempos due to shortages of spare parts for vehicles.

starman2003 wrote:Well, if the soviet air force were similarly moved out of initial reach of the Luftwaffe, as I said, it could've done much more to slow down German mobile units and hamper logistics. Which would've given soviet ground forces more time.

Soviet airpower was never exactly stellar at ground attacks, particularly the sort of tactical strikes needed for the operations your suggesting. I think it is also worth remembering the German divisions had decent ground based (and often mobile) AA weaponry. Since the Soviets didn't have a large body of dedicated ground attack plans (like the Il-2, of which only 249 existed prior to Barbarossa) in 1941 that AA is probably going to be particularly effective.
#14309703
Smilin' Dave wrote:Soviet airpower was never exactly stellar at ground attacks, particularly the sort of tactical strikes needed for the operations your suggesting. I think it is also worth remembering the German divisions had decent ground based (and often mobile) AA weaponry. Since the Soviets didn't have a large body of dedicated ground attack plans (like the Il-2, of which only 249 existed prior to Barbarossa) in 1941 that AA is probably going to be particularly effective.


Shirer quoted a German as saying "At several stages in the advance, my panzers were handicapped by lack of cover overhead." And that despite the initial clobbering of the soviet air force. With hundreds more planes the effect would've been more pronounced. Btw as Pollack mentioned in a different context (the arab-Israel wars) it wasn't necessary for planes to actually inflict damage to have an effect. Just forcing troops to disperse and head for cover can slow them down considerably. And that could've given soviet defenders more time to deploy (or reposition) to meet the spearheads.
#14309709
fuser wrote:Pavlov House. It was the most famous one, various buildings can be fortified with barb wires, machine gun nests etc.

Pavlov house was one building which had actually been partially destroyed in the bombardment. Barbed wire and gun nests aren't very effective obstacles for armoured columns and advancing infantry, crumbling buildings and roads blocked with debris and craters are.
fuser wrote:Tanks aren't suitable for urban warfare anywhere specially during that era, a city being rubble or not doesn't change the fact. Precisely because city can provide ample of hiding space for anti tank infantry to take a shot at close range and restriction on movement of tanks because of various obstacles in the form of standing buildings.
That is like warfare 101.

When used in concert with infantry tanks were the ultimate urban weapon and Germany adopted this doctrine when fighting urban warfare throughout WW2, especially during early WW2 as at this time hand-held anti tank weapons were still only in their infancy.
fuser wrote:Beside Soviets had tanks too and they were useless too.

Yeah they were useless for the same reason the German tanks were, because the German army had turned Stalingrad into a concrete quagmire with their preliminary bombardment.
fuser wrote:Generally large tank formations avoid capturing a city, that task is left for Infantry and that was true in ww2 too. The only time Germans tried to storm a major city with Tanks was Warsaw and it wasn't a pretty result with more tanks destroyed in that single operation than entire polish campaign.

It is no surprise that the battle for Warsaw, Poland's capital would be the most intense. The Germans used both tanks and infantry together in urban combat. The Germans needed to take Stalingrad fast before the winter set in, this task was made almost impossible by the maze of rubble and craters that Stalingrad was, also when the winter did come the ruins left the Germans exposed to the elements.

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