Moscow the impossible dream

That's exactly what was I thinking about today. About Guderian's 1,25 M Reichmarks reward from Hitler and Guderian's intentions to became new Nazi aristocrat with a large estate in freshly conquered Poland. A fresh Nazi Junker.

Lets get back to the business.

Now, we are dangerously close to the impact of "Siberians" on the outcome of the Operation Typhoon. Let me just remind others that that myth was discussed in detail before.

I would like just to add few words on the impact of cold weather. Every Central European knows that winters in Germany may be extremely cold and that Russian winter isn't much different from the Central European. My location isn't that far from the Mediterranean and yet, almost every winter temperatures plunge for 2-4 weeks 20 centigrades and lower below the freezing point. Now, don't tell me that the Russians are much better adapted to frost than Germans. How? Genetically?

For Germans it is difficult to admit that their numerically superior army with superior equipment and air-superiority was stopped and beaten by the army of poorly armed conscripts.

 

The cold (real cold) weather started at the end of november,when Typhoon had already failed .

After the war, it has been claimed that

a) it was the coldest winter in 1,2,3 centuries



b) that the Ostheer received no winter clothing

If a and b were true,the Ostheer would have perished and the Soviets would have been in Berlin in may 1942.As we know that this did not happen, our conclusion must be that a and b are false :the winter was not that cold as has been assumed and the Ostheer received winter clothing with some delay .

 

Achtung Panzer is an excellent book, because it is a proper account with out the self serving nonsense. Guderian was very important in creating a tank force that did wonders. His key parts were radios in each tank, a large enough crew so that no person had multiple jobs and combined arms. The post war Guderian was desperately trying to cover up his avid Nazi past by pretending he was Anti Hitler. He could not have survived as long as he did with out being able to convince Hitler he was a genuine Nazi.

 

Tamino stated that we were "dangerously close to the impact of the Siberians"

And wouldn't you know it? The account I'm reading by Geoffrey Jukes, which includes a full account by Georgi Zukhov, does not mention, even once in it's entire 150 odd pages, does not mention anything to do with Siberians, period, much less give them credit for saving Moscow.

The Red Army did not need to give specialized ski training to many of it's sub units. They already lived in parts of the soviet Union where skis were as much a part of the cabin furniture as the wood pile at the back of the living room. Much of the mistakes that road bound troops make by sticking to roads, and bunching their vehicles nose to tail, had already been made in Finland.

It was the turn of the Germans to encounter the Suolmusalmi Experience, and for the Nazis to feel as if their equipment and conditioning was totally inadequate, just as the Soviets had in the winter of 39. And how do we gauge that this was so? From the overwhelming numbers of first person accounts that mention the German infantry having to strip Soviet dead of warm clothing; of them suddenly seeing the Russian velenki (felt boots) as something to be prized. The many measures that needed to be put in place to make German equipment operable, right down to the lack of 'anti-freeze' liquid to keep bolts and mechanisms working.

It was like the flip side of a coin. Remarkably, the same thing was to happen to them in 1942 when they found their street fihting tactics were underdeveloped. It was an even bigger shock, because the tactical side of the war was supposedly where the German Army outstripped it's rivals.

And none of this was due even in part to Siberians.

 

Stalin decided to stay in Moscow. What are the odds that he could have been captured if the Germans surrounded Moscow. How difficult would it have been to get a plane in and out of Moscow if the Germans surrounded it?

Does anyone have more details about Guderian's plans?

 

Surrounding Moscow and taking it are two diffent things. I doubt Stalin would have let himself be captured however.

 

I would go easy on the Guderian bashing.

His statement on halving the panzer strength per division is to basically correct, though the effects were not immediate. , The reality in 1941 was closer to a 25% to 33% cut as unit lost one battalion or if 3 or four, the Germans moved from a two tank regiments to a single tank regiment unit in 1941/42, details are complicated and each unit has it' own story. Later a lot of units found themselves operating with a single tank battalion on strength.

Looking at the Barbarossa OOB the only ones above the 200 mark look to be the ones with Czech tanks, (6, 7, 8, 12, 19 and 20 Panzer) plus 18th that had 99 37mm Pz III, most of those with more modern German equipment are closer to having 150 or so.

 

Most of the early armored organizations were tank-heavy, and all the major mechanized armies reduced the proportion of tanks to infantry after their early combat experience. Britain and the US, not hampered by shortages in production, did almost the same thing as Germany, halving the tank strength of their armored divisions. The Soviets supplemented their tank corps with mechanized corps, having slightly fewer tanks and significantly more infantry. They all concluded that around 200 medium tanks was appropriate for an armored division (or tank/mech corps).

 

It seems that the right question is not whether Moscow was unconquerable by the Germans in 1941, but whether the military campaign had been based on the right premise. The entire effort was geared towards a swift victory in border battles, after which the rest of the country would be undefended and conquered quickly and at low cost in lives and materiel. The first part of the premise proved accurate in reality. The second part was wrong. Germans were simply not prepared for a slow grind that ensued victories in the first few weeks of the war. However, the latter part of the premise was even more critical than the former. For instance, if border battles had been tough but decisive, Moscow would have been taken regardless of climatic and logistical challenges. However, as it were, the border battles were just the beginning of what would prove an exhausting campaign, which had not been in the script. While the details are invaluable to explaining what happened, they should be observed through the correct lens, in my view. Now, why would a change in the circumstances have been so damning for he campaign? Surely,German Army was far superior to the Red Army. However, it was not superior enough in all aspects that mattered and that is why the advance eventually faltered at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. Now this begs a question of whether a different military strategy would have yielded better outcome for the Germans. Perhaps, but for that, Germany would have needed more time, during which the Red Army would have in all likelihood upgraded its capabilities too. At the end of the day, Hitler took a gamble and lost. Granted, he could have won if the Soviets simply rolled over or if he had made no mistakes. Equally, he might have lost the war in 1941 if Stalin had not carried out the great purge and if the USSR had taken far better defensive positioning than they did. My view is thay Hitler was very lucky to have got as far as he did, but not lucky enough to crush the USSR.

 

A salute with some reservations .

 

The Germans were superior in some aspects, the two key were communications and the ability of commanders on the spot to make decisions.