ColinWright
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quote:
ORIGINAL: briantopp
Personally I'm not in the "Kiev was a mistake" camp, in that regaging debate that has gone on since 1945. Capturing a 600,000-man army is hard to frame as a mistake -- and leaving it on your southern flank, ready to kick in a long salient to Moscow, feels like one. Stolfi certainly has many supporters in the ranks of German memoir-writers, however.
What fun. I'm similarly ambivalent -- 600,000 prisoners isn't chopped liver. However, I'm inclined to come down on the side of a drive on Moscow.
First off, in Russia Germany had a bear that it had momentarily knocked down. If you knock a bear down, you don't go for a contest of strength, you go for the jugular.
Secondly, I've been reading the first two volumes of Glantz's Stalingrad trilogy. It makes it quite clear that right through the end of 1942, reasonably fit German divisions could easily fend off even the most determined Soviet counter-offensives. See in particular the repeated -- and impressively unsuccessful -- attacks on the northern shoulder of the Stalingrad salient and attempts to recapture Voronezh. Until the Summer of 1943, the Russians were only able to achieve significant successes against German troops that were already exhausted and depleted by their own exertions or against the armies of German satellites. This won't be what Kirponos will run into if he turns north.
We can assume that the troops around Kiev would have posed a threat to the German flank. However, I think it would have turned out to have been a manageable threat. At the same time, I think the Soviet regime was tottering: Moscow falling at the end of the summer of 1941 could well have produced collapse. Aside from everything else, it's worth noting that at this date, the populace would still be unaware or unconvinced that the Germans were an even worse threat than Stalin. Moscow goes, and rebellion starts flaring all over the Soviet Union. The word's going to go out from mountain villages in the Caucasus to the slave camps in the Kolyma. By winter, there isn't going to be a Soviet state.
It's often argued that Russian defenses on the road to Moscow in August would have proved formidable. But I have a very hard time believing that. When the Germans did resume their advance in October, they almost effortlessly sliced these defenses to pieces. It was the onset of mud that gave the Russians some breathing room. So why would it be harder in August -- against defenses that had not had two months to be manned and prepared?
When I picture the 'what if' I see the Germans resuming their advance with great success. The Soviet forces to the south, whipped on by Stalin, struggle to disentangle themselves from their struggle with Army Group South and mount an offensive northwards. But this is the Soviet Army of 1941, and it's got to advance a considerable distance, against perfectly intact German defenses with considerable room to fall back. I don't see them making much progress.
The Germans roll triumphantly into Moscow in September and the Soviet Union collapses. Can't guarantee it, but that's the outcome I'd predict.
< Message edited by ColinWright -- 11/24/2010 10:08:08 PM >
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RE: "Battle for Moscow 1941-1943" - 
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