Originally Posted by War_nerd

I really don't think this would have been the situation. The Soviets were already planning on moving the base of operations further eastward. A lot of the heavy industry seemed to have already moved that direction after the big Soviet losses early in the conflict. The only way to completely defeat the Soviets would have been to cripple the red army and their war production capacity. All of which was a very heady task considering the limited luftwaffe support at the time and the tenacity of the Soviet military once they figured out the logistical weaknesses of the German war machine.