Barbarossa what-if

All in all it is amazing as well to see some stats for the artillery barrages before the attack like the Red Army offensive at the Karelian front against Finland June 1944 ( and many other places too). The Russians pounded the front for two days with all they got, artillery and planes, and still loadsa Finnish men survived to fight another day even if they could not hear so well anymore. Amazing to think of the amount of granades/bombs per square meter alone...You´d think not a living soul would survive.

This is just to show that even in situations you thought you´ve secured every detail ( like in operation Goodwood ) you cannot be sure you have truly wiped out the enemy beforehand really...!!

 

What was the biggest 'barrage' of the war? Bagration....Berlin? maybe.

 

Berlin and Ihna Inhantala (spelling?)… Almost 30.000 guns involved!

 

That was more than close Friedrich!

The place is called Ihantala or Tali-Ihantala.

Just think about the amount of metal in the air...

 

Hitler may have been able to make up a mobile reserve but he would have to gamble by stripping divisions guarding the west. He could have bypassed Stalingrad Leaving a holding force. Then drive onto Moscow. Although this would have been a demoralizing blow to the Russians, they would simply have moved further back in retreat and using Moscow as another Stalingrad as one of the others mentioned. They needed to consolidate lines to be able to use their panzers to full effect in the summer and fall for offensives.

 

By concentrating his forces either to the Caucasus or Stalingrad region the Wehrmacht might have had the power to take either target in sight, the Baku or the Stalingrad. Also the tactics used for taking Stalingrad by fighting in the city can be discussed.

The Red Army reserves were in the Moscow area and originally there because believed that Germans would attack Moscow first. These reserves later on beat the Germans in the Stalingrad area and sent the AGS a long way back. So a continued attack from the Stalingrad area towards Moscow would probably be stopped in its early phases.Also the Germans had fought for almost two months ( early september ) while the Red army had "rested", so another factor favouring the Russians there.

 

What if Hitler concentrated on the Caucausus resources and only made feints to Leningrad, Moscow and while keeping a secure flank at Stalingrad he would not attempt to take the city, only force back the Red Army and inflict losses. Was it possible to also launch a seaborn invasion in coordination from the Black Sea?
What if he used the Luftwaffe to help its navy trying to blocade the North Sea supply route and deal a blow to the Royal Navy that destroyed them?

I think the real problem was Italian mistakes earlier. If Italy hadn't foolishly attacked Greece (which was neutral and didn't have many resources to plunder), but concentrated on Arfica and the Middle East perhaps they could have taken Egypt (with German help) or at least the Middle East resources. If Greece was to be attacked then securing an alliance with Turkey had to be mustered to provide a backdoor to both the Caucausus and the middle east. I think that is the most promising plan to deal a blow to the oil reserves of both Britain and the USSR.

At any rate I think Hitler overextended himself. Capturing Crete was a waste of resources that could be used in the north sea or Russia since Crete would only pay off dividents IF it allowed for the defeat of British in the Med. As it was they gained nothing. They merely forced the British to withdraw to Egypt. Why did Italy attack Greece anyway?

 

This was EXACTLY the plan. Of course, the Red Army was now avoiding German envolving (pincer) movements and withdrew on time. If we add to this the German's lack of enough mobile forces and air support, then the Soviets can in fact withdraw and make the Germans fight wherever they chose. They chose Stalingrad, where they could fight better and inflict many losses on the enemy.

Not at all. Given the German's lack of amphibious experience and almost absolute Soviet naval superiority at the Black Sea.

He did. And he failed.

 

I'm saying that if Russians chose to entrench in Stalingrad and wait for a fight, let them and don't engage them much. Concentrate on Caucasus. As I recall the Germans did waste a lot of effort into trying to take the city (which would have been little gain if they did).

Couldn't Germany concentrate their Air Forces near the Black Sea and defeat (or neutralise during the operations) Russian Navy? I'm imagining a land attack combined with air drops (and paras) and bombing and whatever sea forces could be scrounged up in Romania/Hungary/Bulgaria coast and Odessa and Sevastopol. Could the Germans plan and create some sea forces to there from German factories by land (ie train) for quick assembly?
Also Germans did retake the Greek isles (after Italians gave them to the British) so amphibious warfare was not totaly unthought for them.

As for the 'he did and he failed' bit, I was thinking of a more elaborate commitement. As far as I can see Hitler tried to win everywhere with as little forces as possible. If he chose to cut his losses in a few places and reinforce others he would not lose so many battles. For example instead of only using 50% (just guessing at the number) of the airforce to help the navy, how about using almost all of it. Sure other fronts would be handicaped for a time, but after that battle was won for sure they could be sent back and the Russians would face a total cut off of supply as well. In the short time it would take to win that battle, other fronts could afford to not gain as many breakthroughs as they did. Supply lines were already stretched so the wait would be appreciated.

 

You can't do that. You simply can't have a whole active Soviet front (an Army) with a bridgehead (Stalingrad) on the northern flank of your main offensive. You have to: either destroy that force (something the Germans miserably failed to do at the open steppes of the Don) or deprive them of their bridgehead, or doing both (if you do the first, you automatically get the second).

No, it couldn't. Let's see:

The Baltic Fleet during the siege of Lieningrad was never completely neutralised, even with absolute air and naval supremacy: torpedo boats and submarines kept operating.

At the river Volga, during the Battle of Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe owned the skies, but never managed to stop Soviet barges from transferring men and matériel from one side to another.

How is that going to happen in the gigantic Black Sea, where the Red Navy had absolute supremacy?

 

Albeit very ineffectively. The Soviet submarine force was singularly the worst and least accomplished such force of any major combatant. For instance, the largest warship ever sunk by a Russian submarine was the HMS Vittoria off the Seiskär Islands on 31 August 1919 weighing in at just at 1000 tons.
In WW II the Soviets lost at least (by best estimate) 109 submarines sinking, again by best estimates, 108 merchant ships and 28 small auxiliary naval vessels for a gross tonnage of about 250,000 tons. This is a pathetic record. Their torpedo boats did no better. Realistically, the Soviet Baltic fleet was a bigger threat to itself than the Germans.

The above includes actions in the Black Sea. The Soviet navy was singularly ineffective there too when opposed.
Another instance: The British provided a number of ASDIC sets for installation on Soviet destroyers. Because the plans for their destroyers were state secrets the Soviets refused to allow the British to advise, help or, install the sets provided. The result was that Soviet destroyers were almost universally incapable of ASW as their ASDIC sets on the few occasions where they were installed performed very poorly due to amaturish attempts to install them.

If anything, the biggest contribution the Soviet Navy made to fighting WW II was providing naval infantry to the Red Army. That pretty much sums up their naval contribution in a nutshell.

 

The Soviet Navy largely performed ground support duties, as it was uneccessary to risk sorties under great risk when opposed by the Luftwaffe. Note that gunfire support greatly aided the defence of Leningrad.

The Black Sea fleet performed admirably during the amphibious landings on the Crimea in 1942, a role for it was largely unprepared and had to improvise. They also supplied and reinforced Sevastopol for the very long siege it endured and amidst heavy Luftwaffe attacks, and successfully evacuated many wounded and troops fighting there once the fall of the city was inevitable.

Both fleets also had integrated air armies that performed some rather skillful operations with skip- and dive-bombing attacks, and torpedoes, on Axis shipping. For example, note the highly coordinated and determined attack on what the Baltic Fleet thought to be the Väinimönen (spelling? I'm sure Kai will correct me). This resulted in the sinking of the German 3500 ton flak-ship Niobe.

Well, they didn't have much opposition on the sea to perform against, did they? Not that I'm saying they would do a great job, but evidence suggest they did an adequate one given resources and opposition.

 

All I'm saying about Stalingrad is instead of wasting so many resources trying to take it, use less to keep it reasonably occupied to not launch any major offense, or at least dig in to defend against such offenses. This should leave more troops for the push to the Caucasus. Getting Stalingrad through bloody street warfare wouldn't give anything to the Germans anyway, it was scorched earth.

How big was the Black Sea Red Navy anyway? From what I recall it had 1 cruiser the Shayuman(?) and that was sunk too. So it was only smaller boats that could be perhaps matched by forces from the coasts I mentioned, plus the airforce. Anyway this is secondary as the main push would be the strenghtened land forces and the air drops. The Germans should simply take a more defensive posture in other fronts to conserve forces instead of wildly going forward for little gain and stretching their supply lines (requiring air drops). Places like Leningrad and Stalingrad would go to defense instead of offense.

PS: Could submarines of either side pass through the Vosporous straights?

EDIT: I'm not being antagonistic and I don't know as much as you guys. I'm just asking questions because that is the best way to learn, even if some of them may be stupid.

 

The Baltic Fleet was almost totally encircled by mines and also there was a huge net stopping the subs from leaving the Gulf of Finland. This net was removed in autumn 1944 after which the Soviet subs were able to attack German ships again.

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Soviet submarine operations

http://users.tkk.fi/~jaromaa/Navygallery/Background/Wartime/Sovietsub42.htm

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The year 1943 was dominated by operation "Walross", the submarine net across Gulf of Finland. It was assembled and guarded mostly by Germans. Not a single Soviet submarine managed to break through this obstacle and so shipping in Baltic Sea was relatively safe.

http://users.tkk.fi/~jaromaa/Navygallery/Background/Auxiliaries.htm

 

OK, point taken. The Soviet Navy was incredibly uneffective. But that could be understood by Russia's geography. Its professional battle fleet went down at Tsushima and it was always outmatched at the Baltic. Then, at the Black Sea it never had any serious oponents, except for the Göben and Breslau in WWI.

But in WWII, specially at the Black Sea, the Red Navy carried out many important ground-support operations against the Germans, including numerous amphibious assaults.

Also, the guns of the Baltic Fleet increased the German's problems at Lieningrad.

The thing is that, no matter how incompetent the Soviet Navy was, the Axis didn't have the ships and weren't precisely the most clever or competent either for a couple of affairs…

 

The Black Sea Fleet was really just not effective. Here is a short list of its vessels:

6 light cruisers. 3 were sunk, 2 were crippled and spent most of the war in dock.

15 destroyers. 11 were sunk. The fleet received 2 more ex-Italian Navy DD's in late 43 as lend-lease.

44 Submarines. 24 were sunk. These collectively sank 32 ships of which 20 were Turkish (a neutral) for a total of 86,009 tons.

2 torpedo boats

6 minelayers. 5 were sunk.

13 minesweepers 3 sunk.

119 merchant ships including 19 passenger ships, 84 cargo vessels and, 16 tankers. 88 of these were sunk during the war.

Approxmately 525 small craft and MTBs, etc. About 425 were lost. Note, there are many discrepancies in this category of vessel as many of these did not maintain logs or records of operations etc.

The majority of those vessels sunk occured in 1941 and 42. Essentially, the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was destroyed by the end of 1942. At that time it consisted of 1 light cruiser, 4 destroyers, 23 submarines and, a polyglot of small craft capable of only local and coastal operations.
The handful of amphibious and army support operations conducted made little difference after late 1941 when this fleet was primarily engaged in resucing units trapped at Odessa and Sevastopol. In the late war period small landings of no more than regimental size were occasionally staged. These were costly in naval equipment as few suitable landing craft were available. The lack of shipping in general also limited the size of the units that could be embarked.

As for the Axis, the Germans had at least 2 U-boats operating in the Black Sea along with several S-Boats, MFP's and Seibel Ferries. The Germans also used ex-Yugoslav ships in the Black Sea. The Romainians had an actual navy with two destroyers and a submarine for major units.
The Italians put in at least one or two submarines along with a number of torpedo boats.
It was the Luftwaffe however that did most of the damage through either aerial attack or mining operations.
The bottom line is that a very good argument can be made the Soviet Navy lost its war in WW II.

 

OK, say Hitler simply by-passed/went around Stalingrad and headed south.
That leaves an extremely long flank to defend.
Might add that Hitler did'nt believe Russia would or could defeat his German Army.They'd surrender just like Poland, France,etc.
Hence his decision to not invest in long-range bombers or amphibious vessels.

 

See below on its size. The crusiers in that fleet were:

Komintern A training cruiser 10 x 130mm 1.5" deck 23k. Crippled on 2/7/42 in a air attack and later scrapped at Poti.

Krasny Krim 15 x 130mm, 1" deck, 2" turrets, 12 torpedo tubes 29K. Survived the war largely undamaged. This was the only cruiser in the Black Seas Fleet that was normally operational during the war.

Krasny Kavkaz 4 x 180mm 10 x 100mm AA, 1.5" deck, 3" turrets, 29k. Damaged by German heavy artillery fire 29/12/41 at Feodosia. Severly damaged 4/1/42 by an air attack. Heavily damaged 1/43 in air attack. Spent nearly the entire war in yards under repair.

Chervonaya Ukraina 15 x 130mm, 1" deck, 12 torpedo tubes, 29k. Wrecked in air attack 2/4/42. Constructive loss.

Voroshilov 9 x 180mm, 6 x 100mm AA, 3" belt, 2" deck, 4" turrets, 29k. Badly damaged in an air attack 30/11/42. Not repaired until 11/44.

Molotov Armament same as Voroshilov, same class. Torpedoed by Italian MTB early 1942. Not repaired until 1/45.

Yes, submarines can transit the Bosporous but they must do so surfaced. This is how the Germans and Italians got submarines into the Black Sea. I'm also sure the Turks were not overly hostile to this seeing as how they had a fair number of their own ships sunk by the Russians in mistaken attacks due to the poor quality of Russian naval crews.

 

Why must Subs transit the Bosposous surfaced? Isn't it deep enough? Did any of the UK/Greek subs cross it? (my guess is no).
The official status of the Bosporous straights after the war was free to all shipping. What was the pre-war status? Free or Turkish and cut off for all?

 

Impossible...no but extremely difficult to accomplish. The depth in the middle ranges between 100-400 ft deep. While this may seem deep enough consider that a fully loaded aircraft carrier would have a draft of about 35-40 ft to start with not to mention what fully loaded tankers and supply ships might have. This makes for a very tight fit in the shallower parts of the straits. Also the Bosphorous has very nasty cross currents and is a mix of salt water and fresh water which all combine to make a submerged transit and precise depth control needed for a transit back then even more difficult. A quick check on google shows that there were 27 successful submerged transits of the straits during WWI by Allied submerines, the first of which was accomplished by the British sub, AE-2. However of the 13 subs that attempted the transits, 8 were eventually lost.