Stalin captured and moscow lost 1941

I can't argue with your logic. Taking Moscow worked out well for Napolean, I'm sure it would do the same for the Germans.

 

If Moscow did fall, then I think people west of the Urals would become partisans. Everybody east of the Urals, will hold the line there. I truly do not believe that Germany, fighting a war on two fronts, will be able to take the Urals.

 

Taking Moscow worked out well for Napoleon???

Uhm, well I guess if one doesn't mind losing one's entire Army and being forced to retreat clear back to France, one could take that view.

 

Stalin's HQ under the Moscow stadium was supposed to be able to hold out for 6-8 month until relief came. I would think that if Moscow was lost, the Red Army would have been able to retake it quick enough to releive him.

 

Stalin did not care about anybody life but his. He will certainly escape from Moscow if situation become critical.
Napoleon in 19th centaury and Poles in17th centaury took Moscow and what happened? We all know….
I think that Russian resistance will continue…

 

I wouldn't really see Moscow falling completely so easily. Barring a surrender (which it's deeply unlikely that Stalin would), it would be easy for Moscow to turn into an early Stalingrad or Leningrad - even if the germans reached there, it would still be winter, the germans would still have their supply problems, there would still be pockets of tenacious defenders all over the city tying down german attackers, and there would still be the potential for relief forces to encircle the exhausted invaders and cut off their logistical lines.

Stalin would certainly not allow himself to be captured alive. He may value self preservation, but he knows well enough that his fate in german hands is likely worse than death.

 

At that time (1812) Moscow wasn't anything.

In 1941, Moscow concentrated about 10% of the soviet union industrial capacity and was the main transport hub of the country. It was the main communications center.

Without Moscow the soviet union would not be able to coordinate major strategic operations in Europe. And without this capability, the Nazis win the war.

Capturing the European part of the soviet union with its 150 million inhabitants and its large natural resources, including tens of millions of tons of petroleum per year, would mean the end of Germany's problems of raw materials. And with hundreds of fully manned and trained divisions to defend against the rather puny armies of the west, there is no possibility of allied victory. In fact, Germany would have the resources to make a massive fleet and challenge the RN and bring the western allies to their knees.

 

hitler would have sent the ss to get stalin and they would have hanged him in public

 

But can Germany concievably *hold* Moscow in 1941? I mean, it's one think asking if Blitzkrieg could have made it an extra hundred miles or so. But it's another to say that the wermacht could exert enough force at that range to take the city and hold it against the inevitable Russian counterattack, without merely getting their attacking force encircled and destroyed like Stalingrad.

 

yea i don't now much about Stalin(personality wise) so i think he would stay in Moscow, Hitler would probably kill him as there was no need, but i think Russia would fight on, and would still beat back the Nazi's eventually.

 

Stalin actually had an armored train car prepared for his evacuation if necessary.

An excellent point often overlooked.

 

Guaporense,

I suggest you read these threads fully before posting further:

http://www.ww2f.com/russia-war/3482...t-yet-stalingrad-more-talked-about-why-2.html

If the Germans had captured Moscow, what do you think would have happened?

what if........Hitler captured Moscow???

 

If you look back into the urban battles between the Russians and the Germans one thing is clear there was an immense amount of destruction where ever the battle was. Another point is although Staliingrad was the city that Bore the Soviet leaders name, it was Moscow that was the Capital of the motherland Russia. Look what they did at Stalingrad, I would expect nothing less from the Soviets in Moscow. You can use examples all throughout History about Nations holding there last city or there Capital city, it is always the most heavily guarded and always tough nuts to crack, a great example is the Battle of Berlin and the lengths the Germans went to to hold it, despite there eventual lose.

 

As usual you are missing the point. Moscow was still Napoleon's target, but after he took it, he wasn't able to hold it and was forced into a disastrous retreat. The fact that Napoleon held one of Russia's major cities didn't keep the Russians from launching a counter-offensive which was ultimately successful.

Even if that were true and I'm skeptical, losing 10% of their manufacturing capacity wouldn't have destroyed the Soviet's will to keep on fighting. They were beginning to receive aid from Britain and the US by then, and were quite capable of expanding their productive capacity to compensate for the loss of fraction of their industrial plant.

Sure Moscow was a communications center, but not the only means of communications within the country. Other communications networks could be quickly set up.

This is an entirely unsupported claim.

Why wouldn't they be able to coordinate military operations? The Soviets had already set up an alternative capitol. There were already in existence several military headquarters (with full communications and staff facilities) in other locations. Do you really think that the only maps in the Soviet Union were those pinned up in Stalin's map room?

Possibly, but we are talking about one city, not the entire Caucasus. There weren't 150 million Russians in Moscow, nor large deposits of natural resources. I'm not aware of any significant POL sources in Moscow or it's environs. Capturing Moscow was a symbolic political gesture which wouldn't have appreciably changed the strategic balance in the USSR, even if the Germans had managed to hold the city.

And you forget, those "hundreds of fully manned and trained divisions" are confined to continental Europe. They can't project Germany's power beyond the high-tide line of Europe's coasts, and can't even touch Britain or the British Empire, let alone the US. But both of the Western Democracies can deploy huge fleets and massive air forces to isolate and pound Germany. And never forget, the clock was always ticking for Germany because the US was serious about the Manhattan Project.

 

The mythical vitality of Moscow as a railroad hub had been so throughly debunked it isn't even funny anymore. Look at the alternative Soviet capital's railroad system as of 1940 here.

I personally see the death of Stalin as, on the long run, a good thing for the Soviet war effort. Without the paranoid delusional great leader, Beria would have been quickly bumped off by the surviving members of the STAVKA--this is war time after all--and the Soviets would benefit immensely from having better leadership. If you look at Russian veteran's memoirs, they were actually rather ambivalent about Stalin, and when asked what did they fight for, they almost aways answered: for the Motherland, and for the liberation of their kith and kin.

Moscow had little military value. The evacuation of critical industries from European Russia had been completed by late 1941, and Soviet war production would not be affected in anyway by the fall of European Russian cities. The relocated Russian factories actually outproduced the Germans in tanks, planes and guns, which said a lot about the superior strategic depth of Russia compared to Germany.

 

I think that to some extent, the target of taking Moscow is based on an application of what happened in France. In the French campaign, taking Paris led to victory, because the defenders would be expected to surrender instead of fighting on to the bitter end. With the Soviets, while the loss of Moscow would be a blow to morale, the Russians cannot be expected to surrender. They cannot be expected to go to the negotiating table. Not after what the Germans did to the Russians they conquered all throughout the campaign.

 

Well, if you look at the pre-war plans, the Germans vastly underestimated Soviet manpower reserves and striking Moscow was not about taking the city but to annihilate the largest concentration of Red Army troops possible by attacking a center of gravity. In other words, the Germans expected that if they took Moscow, they would have wiped out the last of the Soviet reserves which was not a correct assumption. I believe Prof. G. Megaree 's book on the war in 1941 made that point, and even in Guderian's protests he mentioned the mass of Russian troops deployed in the Moscow military district as a reason why Kiev should have been ignored.

 

You may very well be correct that taking Moscow wasn't as important to the Germans as breaking the back of the Red Army. But by December, 1941, it should have been painfully obvious to both Hitler and the Army General Staff that the Red Army was far more resilient than originally thought, and that the Soviets would simply keep falling back, trading space for time until the German Army was exhausted.

If you are correct, then there was no point in trying to force the issue at Moscow. It would have made more sense to seize as much of the Caucasus oil and Ukrainian wheat as possible and set up defensive lines to have some chance of holding those resources.

Hitler's original rationale for attacking the East was to gain Lebensraum to be colonized by German peasant farmers, thus extending German culture into a new area. But in order for that to be feasible, the Russians, not just the Soviets, had to be permanently defeated. As of the winter of 1941, it should have been obvious to the Germans that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

 

Sarcasm, my friend. I assumed everyone would have caught it since I am agreeing with Guaporense and I am not an idiot.

 

I see. Sometimes in a forum like this it's difficult to distinguish sarcasm from outright ignorance, and it appears that I was not the only one to make the wrong guess.