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wosung -> RE: Could Germany have defeated the USSR? (7/4/2009 8:22:36 PM)
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Interesting discussion.
Could Germany have defeated the USSR?
Which role did the Wallies played? Why did Hitler declared war on the USA?
What about the victory conditions for War in the East?
Retrospectively it sounds funny, but Wehrmacht planners and NS elite thought the Campagn in the West to be the really hard campaign, NOT the one against Russia or a war against the USA.
All military planning, the hassle about Mansteins Sichelschnitt, and the postphoning of the starting date of Fall Gelb show how nervous high command and political leadership were. Would it be a repetition of WW1?
On the other side Wehrmacht planners and NS elite planned/started Operation Barbarossa in a highly optimistic mood and there was no deeper discussion or planning inside the inner circle of the regime before Hitler declared war on the USA.
In both cases (USSR/USA) the NS inner circle ignored warnings from German technocrats, who first hand knew about production capabilities and technological standards of the future enemy. In spring 1941, an official German airforce delegation was shown around in USSR aircraft industry by aircraft desiger Mikoyan, the brother of People’s Commisssioner of Trade. Deeply impressed they came home, but nobody believed them.
Some the most important decisions in WW2, like the German DOW against USSR and USA, or the Japanese DOW against the Wallies were based on a narrow racist world view and on mainly operational considerations. For Axis leaders jewish bolshewik Untermenschen, American jewish plutocrats and rotten white colonial powers weren’t able to stand superior will, spirit and blood nor to produce decent weapons. To put it bluntly: They just didn’t take USSR and Russia serious. For the NS/Wehrmacht elite the only tough enemy were the Brits, (includinge white CW states), somehow aryan, the founders of the largest colonial empire and a tough opposition in WW1.
BTW: Same racist world view resulted in moderate Nazi occupation regimes in Western and Nothern Europe, (administered mostly by the Wehrmacht), but murderous occupation regimes in Eastern Europe (administered by NS ideologues, with the help of Wehrmacht). Differences in occupation policy resulted from racist hirarchy and were NOT a sign of ideological agility. Thus any retrospective contemplation about softer occupation policies misses the core of Nazi-Germany (and Late Imperial Japan). Plus any late war experiments to create puppet regimes immediatly were made hollow by acts of brutality, commited in victorious times.
Could Germany have defeated the USSR?
The plan for Barbarossa was to destroy the Communist Regime in 8 weeks of intense fighting by smashing the Red Army. Apart from some tactical refinement, it was the same operational technique, like in Poland, Norway, the Benelux-countries and France. As before, logistically and economically it was do or die: transport columns were sent directly behind the fast divisions into Russia, before the main body of Wehrmacht infantry divisions. Before Barbarossa even started, armament industry had been re-focussed towards navy and airforce for a gigantomaniac maritime strategy against the Wallies.
After eight weeks the Communist Regime was still fighting and Wehrmacht started to improvise for the next four years. After the first winter German losses of men and materiel were already so high that for the second summer offensive Wehrmacht wasn’t able anymore for a broad offensive, like in 1941. Now it only came down to one offensive thrust in the South, which even had to be covered by weak Italian, Romanian and Hungarian armies. Nevertheless the 1942 offensive started as a success because Stalin and Stavka concentrated their main forces around Moskow.
That the Wehrmacht managed to keep on fighing until 1945 arguably had four reasons:
1. Superior Auftragtaktik and operational abilities, especially, when maneuver was involved.
2. German soldiers fear of asian hordes reaching the motherland.
3. The slow evolution of a post-blitzkrieg concept against infantry antitank defense backed up by armor.
4. German ability to get ahead in the armor technology race in 1943, producing the Tiger and the even faster and better gunned Panther (75 mm KwK extra-long).
But in Summer 1941 in Russia the German blitzkrieg concept failed. Arguably this concept worked best/only in Western Europe, with its good, compatible infrastructure and were the capitals are in reach of a high speed offensive, before logistics and mechanical break downs stop the panzer division for at least a month.
And arguably, the answer for the question if Germany could have defeated the USSR (or, if Japan could have defeated the USA, or China) might lie not so much in the field of military but in the field of organization and politics. Russian stubborness was the will of the regime to fight on and its ability to organize it’s people in a militarily meaningful way.
Arguably, the closest the USSR came to its downfall was not in Nov/Dec 1941 at the gates of Moscow, but in June 1941, when, for a brief moment, Stalin and thus the Stalinist leadership was absent, when he flet the Cremlin to his datcha in disbelieve for the, in terms of Realpolitik, senseless German attack, awaiting to be catched and shot by the Politbureau.
But such a political impact can not be modelled in a game.
As for victory conditions:
It should be easier to model them, than in WitP, because the Pacific war was much more one-sided, than the Russo-German war
As for other critical aspects of the new Grisby game:
1. Logistics, for sure
2. The interface: Managing division-sized pieces, without being a total clickfest.
3. Last not least an AI, which isn’t overburdened by managing it’s division sized army (again: see the detailed and beautiful WitP), but is also capable of simulating historical blunders, like Stalin’s, and later Hitler’s no retreat orders.
Regards
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