What if the Germans attacked Moscow instead of Stalingrad?

If Stalin had'nt had 90% of his officers and generals shot, maybe Germany would'nt have even made it to Stalingrad. He should feel lucky that Zhukov survived his purge.

 

the great purge of 1937! that's the key!
do you know were the name "T" for soviet T34 tank comes from??? "T" stands for general Tukachevsky (that's what i read! is it really true?). He was executioned in '37 during stalis purge.

Back to the original question: Moscow or Stalingrad?

The point is that in 1942 there was nothing the nazi could successfully attempt
The soviet superiory was clear since the beginning in '41. After smolensk stop in '41 Guderian wrote "we were told by our intelligence that the russians had 200 divisions, but so far we already counted 377 of them! And their tanks (T34) are extremely dangerous, the armour is so strong that our artillery shots rebound on the surface"

Actually there was only one field were the nazis were better: the ability to use the tanks. This gap remained until '43.

Anyway in my opinion, among all absurd ideas from hitler, his arguments to support the blue operation made sense, somehow.

The oil shortage for germany was real and the loss of oilfield would seriously damage the soviets (ok, now we know that it was impossible to bring the caucasian oil to germany but that's another story).
Consider that an offence to moscow in '42 would be obvious and expected. Probably Hitler realized (strangely) that the fall of moscow would not finish the soviets. it was a better idea to steal all possible soviet resources.

The seige of stalingrad was a total nonsense but if you consider the blue operation on the whole it was not so bad, and actually it succeded more than the german deserved (after the fall of grozny it was panic on the russian side).

 

Dont know about a month but............. agreed.

It was not Stalin that prepared the defenses and then offenses at Kursk

A little short sighted dont you think?

Yes he shot some, very sad.

But look at who took their place

 

What if the Germans had attacked Moscow instead of Stalingrad?

They had died colder?
(not sure since I haven't bothered comparing the average temperature 'twixt Moscow and Stalingrad)

 

I was'nt sure if he meant won at kursk or won WWII. Yes, it was'nt Stalin who won at Kursk, he wanted to attack while Zhukov wanted to let Germany blunt itself against the defences and then attack.

 

SOme sources claim the Red Army had its main reserves around Moscow in summer 1942 so Hitler´s attack actually hit the right place where Stalin did not have that many men. Once these troops were activated and sent southwards it took time. So by attacking Moscow Hitler would have met more men/tanks than in the south.

 

That is the whole point. How can you defeat the Red Army if you don't engage them? The reason why Hitler's generals wanted to take Moscow in 1941 was because that the majority of the Red Army could be engaged and destroyed near Moscow.

 

Going back some days before, Ironcross, I can't believe you wrote this, somebody must be hacking your account!

As Slava said, the Russians were cold as well, but it certainly is not their fault if the Germans did not in their brilliant plans take Winter into consideration. And when they belatedly did, then we have Guderian's accusation (read HIS memoirs) that there was winter equipment after all, but it was all sidelined in Warsaw marshalling yards and other places as low priority! Perhaps, as Paul Carrell relates, the French wine bottles that were shipped by train to fatten the pockets of some REMFs who were making a lot of money with the Occupation and when they arrived were all shattered with the cold, were higher priority!

No sir, they were fighting German Army Group B, who was responsible for the whole shebang. It was not the idea of the Red Army if the Germans decided to put substandard troops on important sectors of the front. And before the Red Army started it's offensive, there were no complaints from 6th Army about lack of supplies. That came later.

Manstein's leitmotiv is "If Hitler did as I told him then...". Manstein is the most selfserving of all memoirists, he writes in a way to put himself in the best possible light, until you get smart and start cross-referencing with what others wrote.

The decision to remove II SSPzKorps had been taken long before the battle of Kursk in view of the eventuality of an Allied landing, it was not a case of Adolf getting cold feet. Read Glantz's Battle of Kursk for this, for instance.

Ah, but then the German Army decided not to attack the Red Army "in the right place, at the right time, and with the right plan", or did it?

 

Holy Grand Central Station, but that's exactly contrary to what Sun Tzu and Basil Liddell-Hart were preaching for years! Indirect Approach! Hit the enemy where he isn't, minimize your losses, dislocate him, take his initiative away, make him react to your moves, put him into the horns of a dilemma, etc., etc., etc!

Of course Hitler didn't know anything about this either, what he wanted was to prove his generals was that they knew nothing of economical war and there was no point in destroying armies but capturing economic assets. Which did hima a great service, with all the hullaballoo about capturing and keeping the Donbass region because of the minerals. The Germans sat on them for years and were never able to extract any significant amounts of anything, so Hitler might stick his notions of economical warfare up his donkey!

That's the reason why the advance up to Stalingrad along the Don by 6 Army was so easy: there was nobody (well, almost) there along the way! Well, when they reached the linestop it was another question, but the forces that won at Op. Uranus were precisely taken from the Moscow region defense system, removed as they weren't needed there after all.

 

One thing everyone has forgotten in this debate people and that Hitler appointed Generalmajor Erick Marckes Chef der Stab of the 18th Armee in 1940 to draw up plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union, this was done before the armistice of the French in June 1940, and so what was the Marckes plan.

Heers Gruppen Nord und Mittel were to launch spearheads in two massive pincers towards Moscow and to meet at Kazan deep in the rear of the Moscow Military District. Under the Markes Plan Heers Gruppen Nord was not to head towards Leningrad it was to be ignored until the capture of Moscow.

Heers Gruppen Sud was to launch a spearhead towards Stalingrad through the Donets Basin, during this the Crimea was to be blockaded not attacked, once Heers gruppen had reached Stalingrad the entire Heers Gruppen was to launch a devestating attack on the city, and after its capture then proceed to Astrakhan and then launch a drive into the Caucasus, not to split up Heers Gruppen Sud but to deploy it as one whole group.

Then once the Caucasus oilfields were captured then the whole German Army was to created an inpeneratable defensive line from Astrakahn in the South right up to Arkhangelsk in the North, then with that line established then divert troops to the rear to finally attack Leningrad and eradicate the last of the Soviet forces from Leningrad right up to Murmansk.

The time for this offensive was to be around 12 to 14 weeks. But Hitler being Hitler appointed a shadow planner which bowed to Hitlers personal request to go after Leningrad and not Moscow, thus the Germans had lost the Battle of Russia even before the French Surrendered

 

True, but the aim of which must be to destroy the enemy. It is nearly impossible to destroy the Soviet Union by capturing its lands, in view of its size. So the main task should have been to destroy the enemy force with indirect approach, instead of to capture the enemy's land with indirect approach.
If Germany was fighting a war of attrition, then capturing lands might have been useful, but it was never meant to be a war of attrition, it was meant to be a blitzkrieg, in which enemy force should be violently engaged at strategic level, with the use of indirect approach at tactical level.
By the way, I think we both know that the Siberian divisions which the Soviet Union used in 1941 were much better equipped and clothed than the Germans for winter warfare. The Germans in the city of Stalingrad were, in fact, winning. As for Citadel, if it wasn’t for the delay, I believe the result could have been different.

 

Once again you have chosen to deliberately ignore the Markes plan. Imagine the combined pincers on Moscow by Heers Gruppen Nord und Mittel and supprt troops, had the Marckes plan proceeded then by mid September 1941 German forces would be entering Moscow after surronding it at least three weeks earlier, three months before the most extreme winter in living memory had hit, and even as the most severe winter in living memory hit, the Germans would be in Moscow mopping up the last of the resistance, this time scale of the Markes Plan would negate any deployment of any of the Central or Eastern Asian forces, the Soviets could not transfer that many troopss in that short of time.

 

Sounds like a good plan. You must realize that in order to defeat the Soviet Union, more than one operation was needed. All of that in one operation don't seem practical. Personally, I think at least four operations were needed in order to achieve victory. An Operation to take Moscow with the aim to engage and destroy the majority of the Red Army in 1941, an operation with the aims to defend Moscow against new Soviet recruits and to construct a better transportation system in 1942, an operation to engage and destroy new Soviet recruits west of the Ural mountains in 1943, and an operation to clean up the remains of the Red Army in 1944. This plan would have never been considered by Hitler, because he thought that the Soviet Union was another France.

 

Actually believe it or not but Hitler thought that it would take longer to win in Russia then some of his Generals, such as Jodl.

Also for Moscow, most of the Soviet staff believed that Moscow would fall. As a result special partisan units were set up by the NKVD. These units were to disrupt any form of communication and transportation. All of the important Government building along with many factories the Moscva Hotel and even the Balshoi theatre were rigged with explosives as those were the places that the German high command were the most likely to visit if the city was captured and then would be blown up with the buildings. Hopefully killing Otto Skorenzy who would be put in charge of capturing the Communist buildings (such was the plan anyway )

There was even a unit set up to kill as many Germans officers as possible with a theatrical performance on stage by a girl, in which she would pull the pins out and toss the grenades at the audience.

 

There you go again. They weren't winning, they were being attracted deeper and deeper into the trap.

Or do you suppose that the Russsians were lacking for troops? No, they kept Chuikov's 62nd Army in the city on a shoestring, fed only with enough reinforcements and resources to avoid obvious defeat. Meanwhile large forces were being amassed in the flanks in view of the imminent Op. Uranus.

By the way, Chuikov was informed that there was going to be a counter-offensive just 2 days before!

 

To me, comparing '41 and '42 is totally absurd. everything was different.

- in '41 the surprise was the key for the nazis; in '42 the surprise was over

- in '41 stalin's conduct of war was simply a disaster; in '42 it couldn't be worse, and actually stalin was fairly good, sometimes brillant

- in '41 the nazis, thank to its ridicoulous intelligence, didn't know the truth about the real mighty of soviet forces; in '42 the nazis were aware that they were fighting overwhelming forces.

- in '41 russian people were not ready to die for stalin's regime; in '42 russian people had already tasted the nazis barbarian and were fully aware that losing the war would mean losing their lives (pls read what nazi generals wrote about the fury of the russians soldiers)

- finally i want to add this: in '41 russians (especially in november/december) were seriously worried that japan could have opened a new front in the far east; in '42 stalin knew for sure japan would have never attacked. and the nazis knew that too.

So that, attacking moscow in '42 would have been a total suicide for the nazis. In my opinion, even the mad guys sitting in berlin realized that, that's why the attack in the south was then conceived: basically no alternatives were feasible in '42.

The nazis were never really winning in russia, at any point of the war.

 

That is why I admire and respect the Russians so much, they just don't give up (unlike the French). Indeed a worthy foe of the Reich.

 

Just remembered, when I was younger, my father told me a story of how he had bumped into a group of 3 old Germans on the way to get some lunch in the 70's.......

And after a brief conversation ( as they spoke broken Russian ) they revealed that they were involved in the siege of Leningrad and came to visit the city which they at one point were ordered to capture. Upon hearing this he was shocked, as he lost two would have been older sisters in that devistating siege. But after a few more minutes his heart was filled with "pride" he said . They simply could not understand what it was about this city which they for so desperately tried to enter for 3 years and failed to do so.

An amazing story....

 

The man of steel + the people of steel= the nation of steel
The man of arrogance and illusion + the people of steel = a waste of steel
A waste of steel vs. the nation of steel = tragedy

 

Very correct (i gotta stop agreeing with you, people might start to talk), the main strategic failure began when the German Army and Luftwaffe almost leveled the city thus creating exceptionally great hiding spots for the Soviets, that is why it became the war of the rats or "Rattenkriegen". Another point in the failure of the German was the they could not stem the 10's of thousands of Soviet troops being ferried across the Volga which allowed the Soviets to continually reinforces the tenious riverhead they had. Also another tatical failure on the German side was the deployment of the Panzers within the city itself they eventually had no room to move and many had to ditched as the became hopelessly trapped by debris.

If the Marckes plan had been chosen and carried out and that Heers Gruppen Nord und Mittel had gone solely after Moscow this is what would have confronted the defenders of Moscow

Strength of the German Army drive towards Moscow as of 22nd June 1941

Heers Gruppen Nord

16th Armee=
8 infantry divisions

18th Armee=
7 infantry divisions

Panzer Group Four=
3 panzer, 3 motorised, 2 infantry division

Attached
3 infantry division

Heers Gruppen Mittel

4th Armee=
12 infantry divisions

9th Armee=
8 infantry divisions

Panzer Group Three=
4 panzer, 3 motorised, 4 infantry divisions

Panzer Groups Two=
6 panzer, 2 motorised, 6 infantry, 1 cavalry and 1 infantry regiment.

Attached to OKH reserve
2 motorised, 7 infantry divisions.

Strength of German forces on its drive towards Stalingrad as of 22nd June 1941.

Heers Gruppen Sud

6th Armie=
5 infantry divisions

11th Armee=
10 infantry, 1 air landing divisions, 4 mountain, 3 cavalry brigades

17th Armee=
7 infantry, 3 light, 1 mountain divisions

Panzer Group One=
7 panzer, 2 motorised, 6 infantry, 1 light divisions.

Attached to Heers Gruppen Sud

2nd Armee (arrived after 4th July 1941)
2 panzer, 1 motorised, 11 infantry divisions