Moscow the impossible dream

There was no oil in the Ukraine

 

I am one in the camp that believes that Germany could reach and take Moscow, and yes I accept that I am in the minority on this. It would have required a total effort aimed at this goal however, even to the point of scaling back the efforts of Army Groups North and South.

Oktam is correct to point out that the disruption to the Soviet war effort would be severe. Severe, but not fatal in itself. Stalin would have moved his court to a new location in the event the city was about to fall, or even if Stalin were killed another devoted communist would have taken over. Nazi Germany could not long outlive Hitler, but Communist Russia could and did survive Stalin.

JeffinMNUSA is also correct, the single biggest obstical to German success was not Soviet numbers or German logistics, but Germany's race policy towards the people and lands of the east. The Russian people loved their land, and despised their communist overlords. Hitler, the politicly astute statesman, could not see the Russians as people, but rather as cattle in the way of his conquests. You can put a uniform on the back and a rifle in the hands of a man, but thdoes not in turn create a soldier or give him the will to resist. Germany and her policies did nearly as much to create the Red Army as did Stalin himself.

As a practicle matter the capture of Moscow, absent of a more elightened policy by Germany, would have re-arrainged the scenery a bit on the stage so to speak, but was not likely to alter the final outcome. Perhaps we would have seen a East and West Poland with more of central Europe in the camp of the west. Conversely Soviet Russia would be even more paranoid about the west than they historicly did without so great a victory against the Thrird Reich.

Paranoid people with nuke's are not a happy prospect.

 

I should not exagerate the discontent/hostility in the SU in 1941,there also are no proofs that the Russians despised the regime .The hostility was,IMHO,limited to the recently (in 1939/1940) annexed regions,where there were some cases of units that were surrendering .On the average,the Soviet Army was not surrendeing ,but was fighting,stubbornly.The fact that there was hostility to the regime does not mean that soldiers would surrender or collaborate with the Germans .In the elections of march 1933,a majority of the Germans still did vote against Hitler,and,these voters had not disappeared in 1939,there still was a latent opposition/hostility,but,that did not result in desertions/surrender by German soldiers .

 

We had a debate in another thread about what a 'Russian' was and should be called. Russia, technicly is not the Soviet Union. The SU was a polygot empire of sorts that had very large ethnic minorities who as a general rule did not much care for their Russian masters. The Ukraine is a case in point. The Ukrainians were very badly treated by Stalin in the decade prior to the war. Ukrainian insurgents were still fighting Soviet forces after the defeat of Germany.

It is also a little misleading to compare Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union. The election you speak of in Germany was a free election in its truest sense, Under communism there were no true elections as we would understand them. Further if you compare the Waffen SS to the NKVD there are differnces as well. The Waffen-SS was primarily a combat force and when it took on security tasks it did so in occupied countries. The NKVD numbered some 15 divisions in 1941 and expanded to some 53 divisions and 26 brigades by the wars end. A country that needs 60+ division equvilents to maintain internal security after conscripting virtually every ablebodied male with a heartbeat is not one that feel very confident about the loyalty of its people. For all intents and purposes Stalin viewed the Soviet Union as a country needed to be occupied itself.

 

The Waffen-SS was the field combat subdivision of the SS, which is precisely why you can't compare it to the NKVD. The proper comparison would be NKVD to SS overall.

 

NKVD is more like the Gestapo.

 

Yeah, Indeed. Even Stalin wasn't aware of this delicate difference. During his conversation with Ribentrop he said: "Beria is my Himler", although more precise should have been: "Beria is my Heydrich"

 

Not all Russians hated Stalin, far from it.

No Germans were greeted as liberators in Russia (this occured only in the surrounding countries like Belarus but mainly in the Baltic states and Western Ukraine).

Germany would be getting no oil from Ukraine.

 

Capturing Moscow was not really Hitler's dream in the first place. He desired landmass in the East and "had no need for large cities like Moscow" in that area. His hope was the Moscow would be easily overrun en route to the AA line. That was hugely optimistic considering the Soviets' resources and their resolve, as well as the logistical limitations and weather conditions. Ultimately, those four factors combined made the conquest of the entire European USSR mission impossible for the Nazi Germany.

 

It was not the combination of these 4 factors which caused the failure of Barbarossa .It was the resolve of the Soviets only :if the SU had collapsed in july (which was the German expectation)nlogistical limitations and weather would be unimportant : they became only important when the campaign continued after july .

 

First off, welcome to the forum Baybars!

I can agree that the capture of Moscow was not Hitler's "greatest dream", but he often would show a fixation on specific locations and their capture/defense that made no real tactical, operational or strategic sense. Stalingrad being the most obvious of these.

Frankly Hitler's psyche was such that it was equally possible to to argue both pro and con on a multiple number of issues. Many contemporaries have commented that over a period of 24 hours he could tell 3 different people, three different and contradictory things with each coming away from such encounters with an impression of complete sincerity from the Fuhrer.

 

Nothing special : this is the basics of politics,but Adolf was an expert and a lot of politicians envied him .

To the diplomats,he was talking about new weapons,to the generals he was talking about secret negociations :something for everybody .

 

Aside from not having enough men, the Germans needed to overcome a minor obstacle before surrounding Moscow. How were they going to battle the Volga?

 

Germans failed to reach beyond Rostov in 1941, so they were not able battle their way to Volga. It's been pointed out already in the forum that the Germans had hoped to obliterate the Red Army in massive encirclements in the first few weeks of border battles and then stroll in all the way to the vaguely defined AA line. Of course, despite the grand victories in the border battles, the objective of the campaign was not achieved, as the Red Army was not destroyed as a functioning fighting force. Partly, it was due to insufficiently effective encirclements, as many a Soviet soldier would escape to fight another day. Also, the Red Army was getting replenished with reserves that the Wermacht could not destroy completely due to a host of different factors. Consequently, the German military advance was stopped cold outside Moscow and they even got pushed back quite significantly. Now, there are a ton of speculations as to what the Germans could have done differently to have been able to achieve all of the Barbarossa's objective. However, we are yet to come across a sufficiently convincing one.

 

Yes, it is often stated that victory in the west was achieved by the Germans driving for the Channel and not Paris

 

Yeah they came into the outskirts of Moscow

 

Germany absolutely trashed the Red Army during Barbarossa and those counter attacks you talked about was all failed with heavy losses on the side of the SU. The fact is that if the SU was the size of, let's say France, the war would've been over by August and September. Russia's size, together with its huge manpower saved the SU

 

Those failed Soviet attacks cost the Germans dearly. The Germans had ran out of infantry replacements by August and were having severe losses of trucks and critical shortages of tanks. How exactly were the Germans suppose to surround Moscow when they didn't have the manpower to defend the flanks and attack the city?? Truck levels were at 35% in September/ October and what they did have were needed to transport supply, meaning their ability to move reinforcements was severely curtailed. tank units cannot hold territory, which had been demonstrated clearly by the ability of Soviet infantry to escape pockets that were not sealed by infantry divisions.

 

Zhukov was a cool and calculating General, and his suggestion that Stalin agreed in July 1941 that the frontline troops will be sacrificed ( the first line of troops on 22nd June ) and the next defensive line being created some 300 kilometers behind the lines was a good but also very costly decision. Many other armies would have lost their reserves probably in order to save the frontline troops wheras the Red Army now concentrated on making new defensive lines and creating units that were at least in some way able to operate like normal army units. Unfortunately Stalin again demanded troops to keep their position and Germans did not have too many problems to surround these new units and capture them.

For Moscow it would have been a different situation if Rundstedt had been able to keep up with the other Army Groups and there had been no threat of a Red Army flank attack. Now Guderian was forced to turn south towards Kiev by Hitler´s order and some two months were lost to remove the threat in the south.

 

The Volga is about eighty miles north of Moscow, flowing east for several hundred more miles before curving south, eventually to drain into the Caspian Sea, so it would not be an obstacle to troops either advancing on Moscow or seeking to encircle it. Indeed in the latter case it would screen their left flank. German troops did cross to the left/north bank around Rzhev and Kalinin, but these were screening the assault on Moscow rather than participating in it directly.

The Moscow Canal, which extends almost due north from the city to the Volga, was across the Germans' path and is about where their advance was halted, although I do not know what role the canal played in that.