Moscow the impossible dream

You continue to cling to outdated theories of mobile warfare,encirclments and pursuits which were legion and decided WWII.

 

How would they intercept, the Siberians. THe Germans were logistically challanged in front of Moscow, how would they supply the troops on the other side of Moscow and how would they be able to move troops around if the trucks were used for supply. Moscow was not saved by the Siberians, the Germans were forced to stop due to exhaustion, lack of supply and lack of front line troops.

 

I believe the Germans only got as far as they did due to the unexpected collapse of the Red Army in the early weeks of the war. If the Red Army had been allowed to undertake even basic defensive preparations and withdraw some of the armies from the subsequent encirclements of Army Group centre, (which Stavka, left to itself, might have achieved), the Germans would have been in far worse shape before the start of any Moscow operation.
I believe the Germans were also lucky to avoid far more serious damage to AGC in the Red Army's winter counter-attacks. They might have been less fortunate, had the Red army been better led and its commanders given the freedom to decide on & call off attacks.

 

I think that "collapse" is not the good expression: while the Germans succeeded to eliminate the Russian forces on the borderthe result was irrelevant : after these forces were destroyed, the Germans were face by an other (numerically even stronger) Russian army.
About the Russian winter offensive , there is an other (forgotten ) factor that caused the failure of that offensive : the weather: the snow was hindering more the Russians (the advancing party) than the Germans .
Other factors are, that, while the offensive capacity of the Germans was exhausted, their defensive capacity still was intact, while it was the opposite for the Russian Army .

 

Perhaps but all the evidence IMO points to said theories being quite accurate.

 

Yes, on reflection, `collapse' was perhaps too strong a word. I do however believe that far too many Red army divisons & aircraft were deployed too far forward and without even basic defensive preparations being undertaken, suffered a loss that was greater than what German planners might have war-gamed.

While winter warfare does favour the defender, my point was that the Red army was asked to achieve what they were simply not capable of in the winter of 41-42. They might have been better off planning more shallow penetrations, at fewer places, with better preparation.

 

Of course, with hindsight, the strategic disposition of the Red Army on the border was not good .But, the reason for this disposition was the Soviet doctrine:if the SU was attacked, the Red Army immediately would counterattack and fight the war on the territory of the enemy.
About the winteroffensive :that is correct:the offensive capacities of the Red Army were insufficient for a massive attack on the whole front: the Red Army was not strong enough to do what it was ordered to do, and, the defensive capacities of the Ostheer still were very strong . A more limited attack would produce better results .

 

Conquering Moscow was more than possible. The problem Hitler committed was simultaneously going after three objectives, diluting his eastern armed forces' power. He shouldn't have split the Army Groups into three groups, but combine them into one single motorized phalanx that unremittingly grinds towards and whereupon captures Moscow.

 

Although this has been discussed ad nauseam,2 replies
1)There was no motorized phalanx available: of the some 150 divisions that were committed for Barbarossa,there were 17 Panzer and 14 motorized divisions .
2)It was logistically impossible to supply an attack by 31 motorized and Panzer divisions over a distance of 1000 km .This would be the same as an advance by 31 motorized and armoured divisions from Normandy to Berlin .

 

Let's assume that they even might have captured Moscow, but:

1. At which costs?
2. What the benefits for Germans would have been from just holding Moscow?

Costs would have been enormous for both sides and even in case of victory; Axis forces would have been broken one year earlier. Needless to say; benefits would have been negligible.

The siege of Moscow would have just led into a premature end: a shortcut for the Red Army towards Berlin would have been opened in spring 1942 without the need for detour across Stalingrad and Kursk.

 

The Soviet Union was a highly centralized country. Losing Moscow means to lose the very heart of the country. The other parts would have a harder time to organize forces to repel Germany with their main commanding hub destroyed, making it easier for Germany to win on the eastern front who now with the paralysis of the Soviet Union can later on concentrate on invading Leningrad or the oil fields in the Caucasus.

 

That's true but Stalin, along with all his comrades was prepared to leave; he was even at the railway station and his armored train was ready to leave. At that point nobody except him knew that he has decided to stay in the city. To hold a capitol without the leadership of a country is pointless. For morale of ordinary Russian peasant or worker even the existence of Moscow is of no relevance because they all knew that the defeat means death. They had nothing to fear or hope from Moscow.

 

Sounds nice from an armchair general's viewpoint, but very far from a practical reality. Terrain dictates what you can do militarily both offensively and defensively, chokepoints, bottlenecks, etc. will inevitably occur and can be identified in wargames and avoided during planning. What you're suggesting is not feasible in the context of the time. There were only so many usable roads, bridges, trucks, etc. and putting all of your assets in one place immediately creates total gridlock. This happened to Army Group Central historically, so are suggesting adding more forces to the central axis?

 

I also would like to add the following
1°If one is strenghtening AGC,one is weakening AGN and AGS
2° Essentially (and mostly ignored ) :success /failure of the Germans was INDEPENDENT from what they would,could,should do or should have done :it was depending on what the Soviets could do :if the Soviets could mobilize their superior manpower/industrial resources very quickly ,it was over for the Germans,the end would be the Soviets in Berlin .And,this happened :every month in 1941the Soviets were sending an average of 1 million men to the front,and,nothing could change this.

 

Although it was a different time (1812) Napoleon's army managed to capture Moscow not that it ended up doing him any good because like in 1941/42 the Russians refused to give up , and the french found out how big Russia was when they had to walk home as they froze and starved. The German army had to knock the Russians out of the war fast to have any chance of victory as it was with the Japanese vs the U S A. Like the little guy sneaks up behind a really big guy and hits him a couple of times with a piece of pipe than celebrates like he won only to find out all he did was make the big guy mad.. I believe Hitler once said about the Soviet Union " you only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will collapse" , well it fell on his head...

 

It doesn't matter if the leadership escapes; losing a major communications and industry center and reestablishing it somewhere else takes time, time where it would be harder to coordinate the forces in the north and south. The created temporary disarray can only help Germany going after any other war goal of Barbarossa.

There was a battle of Moscow, so it's not that the German weren't at the capital's doorstep. It was Hitler who made the blunder by diverting armor towards Kiev first and then resuming toward Moscow. If he stuck to the original plan, Moscow's fall would be possible.

 

There is nothing that is indicating that on 1 september,the Germans could start an advance to Moscow , it is the opposite :every thing indicates that on 1 september,an advance to Moscow was logistically impossible,btw :there was on 1 september also a big Soviet army,that would block (as after october) an attack on Moscow .
On 1 september,the Germans already had lost the game .It was over .

 

A collapse of political will in the USSR could have turned the Moscow battle in the Axis' favor. Unfortunately for Hitler's legions the will to resist in the USSR was hardening as it became clearer just what Hitler's intentions in the East were.

 

Yes, that was Hitler's biggest problem: putting ideology over pragmatism. Russians hated Stalin. The first German troops in Russia were greeted as liberators. He should've capitalized on that and defeating the Soviet Union would be more than a possibility. He would have gotten the Ukrainian SSR on his side (and with it oil) only based on promising them revenge for the Holodomor.

 

"Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" all right. If Hitler would have come East as a liberator he probably would have won. But here we are asking that Hitler not be Hitler. I was reading a partisan account a while back and the Gestapo called a meeting of some local Ukrainian farmers-the officer berated the farmers and accused them of holding out, then just to prove his point the Gestapo man shot one fellow dead. Not a good way to win friends! And these excesses were rampant in the Occupied territories and even officially sanctioned. The assaults on the Jewish populations were even more horrendous and then there was the mass starvation of the Red Army POWs. It was a choice between Hitler and Stalin and it is not surprising that most chose Stalin-"better our criminals than theirs" the Frontovik saying from Sohlzhenitsyn goes.