callumf

So was thinking the other day about Hitler's decision to invade the USSR - which with hindsight was incredibly foolish.

Background reading : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

But what would have happend if Nazi Germany hadn't invaded the USSR in 1941?

Speculate , discuss , disseminate!

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Angst

The question is what should Hitler have done instead. Doing nothing would have been equally crazy. After conquering France in 1940 he tried to invade Britain but gave it up, couldn't get command of the seas or even local (UK) control in the air (Battle of Britain).

The mistake was more likely going one step too far and precipitating the world into war in 1939. Once he went beyond bringing all (well almost all) Germans into the Third Reich - occupying Bohemia and Moravia and then making a pact with Stalin and partitioning Poland between them he stepped well beyond the ethnic issue that had some legitimacy, laying bare his fantasy of world domination and must have known that Britain and USSR (and even USA) would eventually combine and overwhelm him.

The astonishing thing was how close he appeared to come to knocking out the USSR using the blitzkrieg tank strategy, coming within 30 miles of the Kremlin and next autumn reaching Stalingrad seemingly unopposed. "Appeared" because as Napoloen found out to his cost even if he occupied Moscow it wouldn't have ended the war. Like the Russian Czar before him, Stalin was planning a long war.

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Ta'Samsca'Rial

Ofcourse its worth remembering that Moscow wasn't the capital in Napoleon's time. While it may have been considered the heart of Russia its much easier to force a peace treaty when you have captured the Tsar and he can either yeild or watch his government (and subsequently nation) collapse.

Also in Napoleons time you didn't have trains.

If Moscow had fallen (or atleast the bulk of it occupied) then the Soviets would be in a very poor strategic position since Moscow is such a vital railroad hub. Moving the same vast amounts of both people and supplies across the huge front without such would be very difficult if not impossible. If Stalin is captured or killed the political chaos (I don't buy the concept of Beria, let alone any General, taking over as if nothing has happened) may shatter the USSR.

Not totally convinced attacking Russia was terribly foolish (well.. not more foolish than getting into the war to begin with). Britain cannot easilly be defeated (Napoleon found that one out too). While moving a greater number of German divisions into Africa might have lead to taking Egypt and the British effectively giving up its questionable whether such would be logistically possible. Invading Turkey (to get at the middle east from above) would almost certainly see the USSR declare war.

What does not attacking give Germany? Another year for the Red Army to expand and grow would leave Germany in an inferior position relative to the situation at the time. The chances of defeating the Soviet Union are unlikely to ever get better and theres a significant risk if substantial German forces leave Europe that it shall be Germany who gets stabbed in the back. Interestingly the same arguement which inspired German military thinkers in the first world war.

Obviously the best hope for Hitler is that Italy with a little more German support (than happened in our version of events) defeats the British in North Africa and takes Alexandria. While I don't think the loss of Suez and the Med wouldn't be the deathblow to the Empire some people imagine(lots of shipping did go around South Africa to avoid Submarines) it would probably point out to the British they are unlikely to ever accomplish much against the Axis without allies. If the USSR is a pro-Axis neutral then a year or two of relatively ineffectual bombings may lead to a peace in the same style as the treaty of Amiens. Ofcourse its likely that like Napoleon and Alexander, Hitler and Stalin are bound to go to war at some point and the British (and other governments in exile) are bound to return to war with the Axis powers as soon as its possible to do so.

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Angst

I agree with the later parts, and would only make a few comments on this part:

Although this was true for WW1, the rail net was becoming less dominantly important by WW2 as road transport -far less vulnerable - increased, particularly noticable in the vast flat areas of Russia. Even under the most hostile conditions it proved possible to keep a trickle of supplies going during winter to Leningrad using the ice road across Lake Lagoda, under the very noses of the enemy.

Its certainly the case that had the Wehrmacht captured Moscow it would have been a very heavy blow (I can't see Stalin being captured, though Hitler may have hoped to do so). Yet as Stalingrad showed, "capturing" a city isnt enough. The Red Army fought house-to-house and even room-to-room in Stalingrad. This would no doubt have been repated in Moscow and Leningrad if necessary.

And apart from that, Russia is vast and Stalin was clearly determined to fight on east of Moscow. The further east the Wehrmacht pushed the more tenuous its lines of comunication would be. They were already badly stretched at Moscow and just managed to hold their positions during the Moscow counter-offensive of Winter 1941/2.

Very telling of Soviet strategy is that a major evacuation and relocation of key Soviet industries (especially military) began almost as soon as the invasion started. This was a monumental achievement, moving whole industries from the Ukraine, Belorussia, Leningrad and Moscow to the Urals, Siberia and the far east - often under intense an continuous air attack.

callumf

Good points - but what strikes me is that if Hitler had kept the USSR at peace he would have been able to concentrate his armies in other areas as discussed above.

"Another year for the Red Army to expand and grow would leave Germany in an inferior position relative to the situation at the time."

With France defeated and a sea borne invasion from the west almost impossible to achieve against a full strength German army why and how would the German army be in an inferior position?

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Ta'Samsca'Rial

The question is if Moscow falls.. where can the Soviets draw the line? There isn't really anything to defend up to the Urals.. and there isn't much behind them. If Moscow falls, the logistical situation becomes much worse for the Soviets. Wasn't a significant volume of the heavy material carried by train from beyond the Urals to Moscow and other places before being taken to the various fronts? Obviously this could be replaced by lorries.. but the lorries were already stretched beyond capacity.

Because the Red Army is likely to better use the time than the German army in terms of re-equipping and the expansion of army size. The Soviets were reforming after their sub-par performance in Finland and while such reforms would be difficult to calculate, Russian equipment was often better than German equivelents (sloping armour on tanks for example) and so letting Russia get on with their reforms while Germany waits seems unwise. I seem to remember a source from somewhere (although I cannot remember where) saying the Red Army intended to reach 500 divisions by the summer of 1942.. a significant increase and far beyond what Germany could realistically muster.

Basically Germany must either go to war with Russia now (and if you assume Hitler believed what he said.. this is unavoidable) or be worse off for subsequently forcing the issue in the immediate future. Since Hitler also appeared to be convinced he had to be the leader to see Germany expand he is unlikely to wait. While fifty two may not be ancient.. it isn't young. If you want to be there yourself as leader you don't have the time to wait for the long term decline of the Soviet Union.

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Jessica Nubtus

If Hitler hadn't attacked the USSR, Britain would have fallen. Simple as that. The logistical requirements of a war on two fronts were obscene, but if he'd had it all to level at Britain, we'd have fallen in a year. Then America wouldn't have had a staging point for the Battle for Europe.

The world could well have been very different.

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Lil'alure

Now, we've got to remember had a nifty sense of humour that could have won any country over!



But I don't think the Wehrmacht could have taken Russia, 'cause they weren't equipped for Russian climates. He could perhaps have taken Britain, but could he have held it? Not likely, IMO. He needed 400,000 soldiers in Norway (that's more soldiers than there were inhabitants in the capitol) to pacify the southern parts.

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Angst

I doubt if a successful seaborn invasion would have been possible in such a short time-span (if ever) as Hitler would have needed to gain control of both the air and the sea before the invasion could be launched (Operations Eagle and Sealion). But that is just my opinion, the Battle of Britain was won because Hitler gave up the attempt, though he came close to gaining control of the skies. Defeating the Home Fleet would have been far harder and even if successful would have taken much longer. Then the actual invasion and conquest would have used up another year at least.

But even if the UK had been defeated it would have taken too long. Ta'Samsca'Rial's point about the growing power of the Soviet Army is the critical factor that would have still resulted in a major face-off in 1943 at the earliest, by which time the odds in favour of the Red Army would be at least as favourable as they were in the Soviet 1943 offensive that started with the encirclement of the 6th Army in Staligrad. A major difference being that the start-line of the Soviet offensive would have been the Vistula, not the Volga - over 1,500 miles further west.

But you are quite right that either way world history would have been very different.

Angst

Good point, Lil. German occupation troops across the whole of Europe - plus Britain - would have spread their strength even more thinly.

But I wonder if it would affect the balance of power (in terms of fighting units) more than marginally? Much would depend on the strength of the resistance movements. Countries like Norway, Greece, Yugoslavia tied down significant numbers of troops. I've never seen an analysis of this issue.

Rabid Bogling

Deviating from the original topic, but keeping to the theme...

Had Nazi Germany not invaded Poland or initiated the Holocaust (and simply expelled it's Jewish population as initially planned), and generally have avoided provoking the war, would we have seen conflict against the Soviets instead? Would an alliance between Germany, Italy, France, Britain, and others have been possible? More importantly, could this have left Europe more open to fascism?

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Kaelith

There's a lot of questions there!

Had Germany not invaded Poland then the war might not have started so soon.

As for the holocaust, I don't think anyone really knew just bad it was until the end of the war, but I'm not sure of that. But even by just expelling the Jewish population it was going to make Germany's political stance difficult and potentially aggressive towards other European countries.

And then if by whatever chance war was not declared on Germany then would there have been a war against the USSR instead? I don't think so. But the cold war may well have come earlier.

I'm afraid I'm only answering because I'm bored, I don't really know much about this period in time.

Ta'Samsca'Rial

I don't really buy Britain "falling". A negotiated peace (which would be slow and might not get anywhere) is possible but a successful German invasion is unlikely. Possible, practically everything is after all, but the odds are massively stacked against it.

The RAF needs to be wiped out as an effective force. Given German bombers couldn't reach the north of the country such was impossible. The RAF could and would have abandoned the south to remuster, rebuild and subsequently to sally during the invasion.

Secondly, the RN has to be destroyed almost to a ship. Again.. much of it can be relocated beyond the reach of German attacks. Again, sally forth during the invasion, break any link across the channel meanwhile gutting the German Rhine barges by simply driving near them. The only logistic support (and heavy equipment) for the invaders would have to be dropped by air.

Third, the British army may have been in chaos but by the time a German invasion could realistically been mustered they should have been more than capable of opposing the initial handful of divisions who could make landfall by simple weight of numbers if nothing else. Dads army may not have been much good in actual combat.. but they are more than capable of guarding pill boxes, strong points, train stations and so on while the regulars provide a tactical reserve against an opponent with minimal heavy equipment.

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Angst

The politics behind the arms race is important and interesting in its own right, and played a vital part in the outcome of WW2.

As the earlier part of this thread suggests, the Red Army would eventually gain the huge predominance against Germany that it lacked until the tide was first checked in 1942 then turned in 1943. Germany was seen as the aggressor, plain and simple. It was the German occupation of Bohemia that was the critical watershed. Czechoslovakia was indisputably a non-German ethnic country in a way none of the earlier annexations were. It was here that Germany irrevocably crossed the line. Stalin was asked by both Britain and France to help defend Czechoslovakia. Stalin was willing to do so, but the Czechoslovaks didn't want Russian intervention.

So Chamberlain bought "peace for our time" by giving Germany the Sudetenland (German-speaking western borderlands of Bohemia), so stripping Czechoslovakia of its defences. Once Hitler broke this agreement by occupying all of Bohemia and setting up a Slovak puppet regime, and then began escalating his threats against Poland over the Danzig Corridor, Britain and France felt obliged to guarantee Polish independence ("this far and no further"). This meant that Stalin could enter a pact with Germany and if Hitler did invade Poland, Stalin could let Britain and France go to war with Germany, leaving the Soviets time to rearm, hence the political carve-up of Eastern Europe known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

It was this pact that enabled Hitler to invade and occupy Western Poland while Stalin moved in on the Baltic States and Eastern Poland (yet another of the several “Partitions of Poland” down the centuries). The Pact also covered Hitler's back so that once Britain and France had declared war, Hitler attack Norway, the Low Countries and elsewhere (then France and Britain), while Stalin opened the Winter War against Finland.

Hitler soon realised that Britain could not be quickly defeated, if at all, unless morale cracked and Britain caved in. Once Churchill had ousted Chamberlain as PM, this became increasingly remote. Further east, Stalin needed 3 or 4 years to rearm to the point at which Hitler could be military challenged. So in my view, Hitler abandoned what was appearing to be a half-hearted attempt at Britain. He couldn’t afford to let Soviet military strength grow behind his back, while he tried to defeat Britain in a long drawn-out war.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact benefited both parties. German’s jump-off would be that much further east while Soviet defences would be that much further west. Stalin bought a breathing-space to rearm but Hitler turned east sooner than Stalin hoped (despite desperate attempts to appease Hitler, diplomatically and with rush deliveries of strategic exports), and the USSR paid a heavy price.

Angst

Something I've often wondered about is what effect the easy conquest of France in 1940 had on Hitler's strategy.

This campaign must rank as one of the most brilliant and successful in military history. Its secret was in the abandonment of fixed position battles and instead relying on the use of what then was modern technology to accomplish a rapid tank and motorised advance, leaving more traditional follow-up forces to mop up.

Blitzkrieg was more than this, though. It involved a total re-organisation of warfare by creating fully-motorised divisions and concentrating them in all-arms panzer armies of tanks, infantry, artillery, engineers, etc. acting as the spearhead, with the traditional foot troops and their horse-born support following after. The spearhead was accompanied by close-support precision dive-bombing from the air. Its main aim was to bypass local strongpoints and surround whole armies before the enemy could react. It also used radio-communications to co-ordinate and adapt rapidly to circumstances.

The German army must be given full credit for developing and practically implementing this organisation and its accompanying military strategy, especially Manstein and Guderian, even though the core of the idea was first developed in Britain by Fuller and others.

The execution was also brilliant, a concentrated and suprise attack through the lightly-held Ardennes to cut off the French and British armies in the Dunkirk pocket. Over 2 million French soldiers were captured, the British only escaping across the Channel with their expeditionary force thanks to their Naval and maritime resources.

My question is "Did this stunning success make Hitler believe that British morale would be as low as that of the French and that a quick conquest of Britain would also be possible?" At the very least, perhaps Hitler hoped that Britain would sue for terms and accept a negotiated peace.

My suggestion is that the attack on Britain was to see if a quick victory would be possible there, too. That would also explain why it was abandoned fairly soon and the German redeployment from the west to the east undertaken already during the first winter (1940/41). Hitler could not have attacked the USSSR earlier than 1941 in any event as the declaration of war by Britain and France forced him to turn west first.

Blitzkrieg was, of course, deployed on a far vaster scale in the invasion of the USSR. There were many "pockets" created, some of them involving the capture of staggering numbers of Red Army soldiers.