Barbarossa is well planned & executed, much like the sickle cut was.

in June 1941 the Soviet North Fleet had 116 planes (56 recce, 49 fighters and only 11 bombers), 15 subs, 15 submarine chasers, 8 destroyers, 7 patrol boats, 2 PT boats, 2 mine sweepers and 70 coastal guns (45 to 180 mm) and throughout the war they sank 262 vessels (transport and naval).

The ATL 300 LW warplanes already mentioned, plus 4 KM destroyers, 2 U-boats, a light cruiser and mines can clearly wipe out this weak fleet with 24 h light and airfields in Kirkenes and Petsamo.

 

If you mean "weak Black sea coast" in 1941 you must remember the most T-34´s were there as well as other armor, and actually Rundstedt was getting as the last man the returning troops and vehicles from Greece operation Marita which had no time to rest or repair their equipment, I am sure he was quite pissed.

 

No you have done nothing of the sort.

Do you have any idea what a "proof" is?!?

A proof requires detail, and you have provided none. You have not described anything in any detail. Nothing. Saying "300 planes" in the arctic, does not describe what types, where they are based, how many supplies you have, how they are going to be any more successful at Murmansk, than they were historically in dealing with the Red Airforce. They failed miserably, they didn't even surprise them on 22nd June, as the command there was very suspicious after the surveillance overflights, and took precautions. The attempt to bomb something in Murmansk (port? ships? city? who knows) failed utterly.

1) The paratroopers are in no shape to drop after Crete. (as repeated to you many, many times, from multiple posters), yet here you are, raving on about paratroopers (again).
2) The transport arm of the LW, has been torn to shreds, and is incapable of supporting another paradrop on the same scale in the time frae you are asking it to.
3) "Silberfuchs" has no great benefit from tanks, as repeatedy explained to you.
4) You are at every step, creating worse and worse logistical nightmare, from the Arctic, to the Baltic, to the Black Sea which you handwave away, as is your want. You never describe your route (or anything else) in detail.
5) You cannot host panzer forces in Finland: that is a political no-go. As stated, also by multiple posters, which you also continue to glaze over.
6) Your Baltic thrust is a logistical quagmire. (also explained; the Germans do not have the fleet to support the thrust as you want), Nor is the speed on those roads attainable.
7) Your Black Sea dash is never explained in detail other than some panzers arriving to aide Romanians, but then the panzers bypass Odessa never getting involved, but Odessa falls quicker, because of steam-powered UFOs from the moon base,
8) over 200 ships are sunk in the first few hours.... When they didn't sink that many Soviet Naval ships during the entire war... You need to provide proof, with a timetable, which assets, where, when, expected attrition, and not handwave!

Blathering on about Manstein, Guderian, etc, does not make this plan anything like a sickle cut. It just proves how weak the actual content is; you have no true grasp of the logistics inivolved, so you try to invoke names instead of actually putting together a proper timetable, as repeatedly requested.

Until you do so, it is all extremely vague.

The preponderance of the proof lies with you who are making these absurd claims. To prove something doable on this scale, you present details, and you actually take into account what people are telling you about Finland, politically and geographically. Such as the Finnish posters.... They know a tad more about fighting in Finland than yourself. The best literature on the Arctic War is in FInnish.

 

The Germans decided for a broad front strategy ,because a narrow front strategy was logistically impossible.They decided for a broad front strategy in may 1940,as did Eisenhower in the late summer of 1944,for the same reasons .

 

On June 22, 1941 most of the T-34 and K-! in the 1st and 2nd tiers in the Ukraine were near Brody and Kiev (north Ukraine, precisely the path taken by Kleist). In contrast, along the coast and the Romanian border there were so few tanks, that the Romanians rapidly liberated Bukovina and Bessarabia and penetrated the USSR toward Odessa. They suffered more causalties taking Odessa than in the previous advances, because the red fleet transported 300,000 men to reinforce it and provided naval artillery and air support. A rapid Panzer thrust past Odessa and destroying the fleet and planes ensures that Odessa falls promptly and with few axis losses. Bare in mind that the the bulk of the LW planes, which OTL covered AMC, ATL are deployed in the coasts.

 

As Patton tried to explain to strategically challenged Eisenhower, a broad front is completely inconsistent with Blitzkrieg, which depends on heavy armor, air support and logistics concentration for rapid advance. It was impossible to supply adequately a rapid advance over a broad front, even for the allies. Imagine for the Germans with only 600,000 captured trucks in 32 different models (all nationalities, including British), which rapidly wore out in the dust and poor Soviet roads and had few spare parts and 625,000 horses! As even minor generals like Heinrici tried to point out, before Barbarossa.

 

Just to nit pick a little Germany's primary objective during Barbarossa was not Moscow or any other city; it was to destroy/capture as many Soviet divisions in the open field of battle (with there pants down) as quickly as possible. What the Germans didn't/couldn't anticipate was how many divisions the Soviet Union would raise and how the Red Army would react. This was due to the fact that Stalin incorporated a boot camp system for civilian males (similar to the Israeli system today) in which at time off crisis they could be called upon and have at least some training. This proved invaluable. The Germans expected and we're ready to deal with 250 divisions, the Soviet Union raised almost 600. The pesky Ruskies were also more capable than they were given credit for (sub humans couldn't possibly withstand the mighty German war machine). In late June, the leading task force of the 13th Panzer Division ran into an ambush as it approached Rovno. This was the first time the Germans ran into massed Soviet artillery fire and suffered severe casualties. Reinforcements arrived and Rokossovsky was forced to withdraw two days later. This ambush delayed Army Group South for at least a week, helping to creat the situation that later tempted Hitler to direct part of Army Group Center away from Moscow in order to secure Ukraine.

Fortunately for all of us, none of what you propose would have any effect on the above.

As for the weather (winter especially) was absolutely wild and unpredictable. It's easy to look back on it with 20/20 hindsight. Even for Russian standards the winter was unusually cold and started early the first year. Spring rains lasted longer which turned the unpaved roads into either impassible rivers or just swamps. The above could not have been predicted.

Still trying to wrap my head around the "capture of Leningrad and Murmansk then converge on Moscow" idea. Please don't take offense but you do realize where Murmansk is right? Your planning to get there how?

PS

Destroying as many Soviet divisions in open battle was the preference of German generals (Manstein, Von Bocke and Guderian included). Blitzkrieg doesn't work well in cities

Cheers

 

A broad front is not inconsistent with " Blitzkrieg " (a meaningless word) .

the broad front strategy was used because it was impossible to supply adequately a rapid advance over a narrow front .

Patton was wrong, if he was saying this to Eisenhower .

 

Here are so many errors and inconsistencies here that it is the best to start from the beginning:

Wrong. On July 21, 1940 Hitler directed Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch to develop a plan for the invasion of the USSR. Preparation for the attack on the USSR diverged in different directions. There were essentially four concepts for invasion of the USSR:
1. Marcks' Plan
2. Lossberg Study
3. Paulus Study
4. Halder Plan
Then came Order 21
The final plan was adopted as a compromise between the OKH and OKW.

Wrong. He was ordinary von Paulus without "von" in front and von is never written with a capital letter, except at the beginning of a statement.

A list of errors may be very long.

 

von Brauchitz ,who was chief of the army and whose staff was charged with the planning of Barbarossa,said the following :

"Massive FRONTIER battles to be expected,duration up to four weeks,but in further development only MINOR resistance is then still to be expected."

That means
Hitler and his generals agreed about the planning
The campaign would be decided on the border

The campaign would be decided in july

After july it would only be a question of cleaning up

The disagreements started when the Soviets continued the fighting at the end of july ;but a solution was found quickly : Typhoon :the problem was : when could Typhoon begin ?Given the continuous Soviet resistance on the front of AGC and the threat by Budjenny on its south-western flank, Typhoon could not begin before october .

 

Personally, I think Barbarossa was reasonably well-planned and executed.
Well within the expected/perceived realms of possibility, despite the massive doses of hubris involved in anyone planning to conquer the 'Russian' territories at any point in history.

The story of Barbarossa is perhaps less to do with German command (again, for me... this is merely a view), given that initially the Red Army crumbled exactly as expected, and more to do with a fairly remarkable story of building resistance from almost nothing by those attacked. Moving military production beyond reach of the attack was the most herculean effort alone, among many others.
Admittedly, it was a response that could likely only have been mobilised by another intensely totalitarian regime, but credit where credit's due to an Army that reformed quickly after being extensively broken (both by previous purges and Barbarossa itself), to a Civilian population that endured the most extreme hardships in sieges, partisan work and industrial effort, and even to the bloody-minded Government from Stalin downwards, for whom, in truth, military pragmatism rapidly trumped much ideological and personal political nonsense for the duration. Potential annihilation quite the motivator,

Stalin learnt to delegate.
Political subordinates moved heaven and earth to achieve military strength.
Effective generals became trusted again.
The Army Reformed, became efficient & or effective.
Industry rallied in a remarkable manner.
Cities held out against unbelievable suffering.

While much of the above was certainly achieved by internal bloodshed and cruelty, it was nonetheless achieved, at a time when no more pleasant options might have worked.


I tire of any apparent astonishment that the Wehrmacht must have beaten purely by it's own bad planning, or General bleedin' Winter, or poor timing, or just dumb luck.
They were also beaten, like it or not, by the Soviet Union & the Red Army.
The 'Untermensch' didn't do so badly.

 

Sloniksp,

If destroying Soviet armies was the main goal and Moscow was a secondary objective, then why start with by far most of the Panzers and planes north of the Pripiet Marshes, advancing at high speed toward Moscow and a small force south of the marshes, instead of starting with the bulk of the forces south of the marshes and start the campaign with an enclirclement of the bulk of the red amy, which was in north Ukraine? That would have made a lot more sense than rushing toward Moscow and when the bulk of the Panzers and planes were a short distance form the objective, splitting them and sending then in opposite directions and for very long distances.

The main objective was crearly Moscow, even in Hitler's original plan, but the genius changed his mind at the worst possible time.

 

The red army did not crumble as expected. By far most German generals were surprised at the sustained resistance, despite extremely heavy Soviet losses. The KV-1 and T-34 took the Panzers and AT guns completely by surprise (despite the fact that the KV-1 had already been deployed in Finland in 1939). Kleist, Reichenau, etc, never expected to lose 200 of their 800 Panzers in the first week of the war. The Germans never expected Brest, Bialystok, Minsk, Smolensk, Raseiniai, Odessa, Kiev, etc, to take so long and to cost so many men, Panzers, guns, munitions, fuel, food, etc, Even the LW was taken completely by surprise. It expected weak AAA and fighter forces in Moscow, but it experienced extremely heavy losses on its first bombing raids, much more so than in the first raids on Britain, whose AAA was notoriously ineffective and whose fighters were far less concentrated.

Only Hitler, Halder, Brauchitsch, Keitel, Göring and other morons expected the USSR to crumble in 10 weeks and thought that the USSR had already crumbled in the first 8 days.

Isn't it ironic that although Halder, Brauchitsch, Paulus, Keitel, etc, had repeatedly rejected the sicke cut and had even sent Manstein to Poland to stop him from pestering them and that after the sickle cut provided the most stunning victory against formidable forces, with very limited deaths both of the attacker and defender and with meager use of fuel, munitions, food, tank wear, etc, in military history, that Hitler would not even consult Manstein, Guderian, etc, for Barbarossa, but he would use the above morons and himslef to plan Barbarossa and then that he would alter it completely at the worst possible time and against the objections of both the morons and Guderian?

 

Could it be that it depends on where you measure the ammo consumption? The figures for ammo used to replace consumption would actually lag the consumption a bit. Thus in June units using their basic stores would show little consumption if you were at a depot or indeed issuing replacement ammo. Especially sense they were moving forward pretty quickly during that period.

 

It's not exactly helpful to concentrate on one piece of the logistics chain. Both sides had the ability to move a limited amount of mass and/or cube to the front. One could prioritize ammo for instance and there would seam to be no logistical problems until one looked at other types of supplies. This is clearly illustrated at one point in the run up to Operation Desert Storm where ammo was given a priority and parts became an issue for a period of time. In that case combat operations didn't start before the shorts were made up but there were some people getting a bit nervous for a while.

Furthermore consumption and advance are not well correlated. The serious fighting often leads to a breakthrough with less ammo expenditure but greater advances. The ammo or other logistical limitations can also affect the fighting. An example of this would be Rommel's halt in front of El Alamein.

 

Please make an effort to use the quote function correctly. You have done it so you know how. Posts like this make it hard to follow:

Land transport can be efficient if railroads are adequate. The Baltic was afloat in mines making sea transport even with minimal manned opposition rather problematic. By concentrating in the North you allow the Soviets to move forces to support that area as well in addition to building secondary defenses and if necessary withdrawing to more defensible locations.

 

Missed this:

When did Manstein become Fuhrer?

 

What does the weight of VAL's bombs have to do with the issue at hand? If you are talking about battleships it was torpedoes and in the case of Arizona bombs from KATES that did the damage. You might also want to look at success rates for attacking shipping particularly if it is on a war time footing. Note for instance that the twins weren't sunk during their time in France and it was not for lack of trying on the part of the RAF.

 

In regards to the first I certainly haven't seen it. Please also note that the second wave at PH was not nearly as successful as the first. How many planes and sorties do you propose. What were German bomb stocks like at the time? Could they have supported this? What happens to the Heer when the LW devotes this much attention to the Soviet fleet? From what I recall only a few LW units were trained in attacking naval units and most of these are in the West how are you dealing with this?

In regards to the second. Again no. You have made that claim and waved your hands a bit while ignoring the questions and counter points raised. That pretty much holds for your third and fourth points as well.

As the posts here have shown avoiding Kiev was not as clear as you seam to think in part because of your fixation on Moscow in part because you can't seam to tell the difference between your opinions and facts and ignore the legitimate questions and concerns raised by others.