Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironduke
One thing to keep in mind is that though the Germans were on the defensive and took heavier casualties than they did in the summer and fall, Soviet casualties were still higher, and furthermore, the advance of the German line to that point denied huge numbers of personnel (in the most thickly populated portions of the USSR) and resources to the Soviets. As the Soviets advanced as they historically did, the rate at which they enlisted new soldiers accelerated as they brought more territory back under their control. This helped to allow them to increase their momentum.
In establishing the Rzhev salient, Soviet losses were 500,000 to 1 million while German losses were half that. The Battle of Moscow was even more lopsided, with Soviet casualties at 2.5 times the rate of the Germans. The winter of '41-42 didn't gut the German Army, that would have been 42'-43. If they'd halted on the lines of mid-September, the Soviet Union would have had millions of additional prospective recruits with which to attack the Germans during that winter.
I think whatever advantage there may have been to a German halt would have made for an even greater advantage for the Soviets.
The reason why the Germans kept going and lacked winter preparations is that they expected to be able to, for all practical purposes, knock the Soviets out of the war before the end of the '41 campaigning season. The rationale for a German halt when and where you say would not have come about so that the Germans could better prepare themselves for the long, arduous winter, but would rather have to come from the awareness that they could not conclude major operations against the Soviet Union in 1941.
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While we overall agree that halting the German advance would have benefited the Soviet Union, I still must nit pick a little..
The Red Army began to grow from the very beginning of the war. The communist state had established a draft of sorts (similar to what Israel has with her population today) in which roughly 14 million men would have at least basic training (boot camp). There was simply no way for the German intelligence to foresee this. As a result, the Soviet Union had virtually a bottomless pit of volunteers with at least basic training when war broke out.
In the first 6 months while successful, the German war machine suffered 800,000 casualties and was only able to replenish 200,000 of them. The Red Army while taking far greater casualties was actually able to grow in size. This continued to be the case for the duration of the war even before volunteers from liberated countries became available.