**/net/global/http:co.na/uchronia/forum/high-modernity-1848-to-1946/
Thread: “How can the Germans Win the Battle of Moscow? What Happens Next?”**
(OP) SharpesRifles: In his memoir Panzer Leader , Guderian characterised the ultimate failure of Operation Valkyrie as ultimately caused by Hitler’s increased meddling in the High Command and operational planning. He argued that Hitler was ultimately opposed to the operation, and when he relented to the OKH’s insistence, ensured that resources and reserves that could have been better put to use in Army Group Centre were instead given to Army Group South for subsequent spring campaigns against the Kuban region and the Caucasus.
While Guderian conceded that Hitler was ultimately right in insisting that by this stage in the war, the capture of Moscow would not in itself cause the Soviets to capitulate, Guderian considered it the fulcrum of Communist defences, and the capture of the central railway hub to be a death blow to the coordinated defence of European Russia.
After the RKKA was obliterated at Smolensk and Kiev in the summer, they had an open goal against the capital. The Soviets could put about 1.2 million troops in a second echelon in an arc from Kursk to Demyansk, with maybe 1,400 tanks and 9,000 large guns and mortars. Most of these formations were still organising and undersupplied. The WFRA could put the mauled remnants of the Separate Mech. Army, with maybe 350 serviceable tanks, and two more armies for a total of about 400,000 men.
Against that, almost 2.5 million German and Italian troops, supported by some Hungarian second-line divisions! Obviously, they’re worn down from the heavy fighting in the summer, hence the operation pause until late September, but it really does seem bleak for the Russians, and that their ultimate success had a lot to do with the Germans botching the offensive.
RitterStahl : Kill Hermann Göring.
Only half-joking. The Luftwaffe wasted so much of its time and strength in October and November on strategic bombing campaigns against Moscow and surrounding points of interest, to the detriment of the coverage of ground forces. The Reichsmarschall convinced Hitler that his air power could smash the railways, marshaling yards, and industrial plants, and cause a civilian exodus that would choke the roads from terror bombing. The terrible attrition prevented keeping pressure on IntRev airbases.
By the time Operation Barrikady began, the Soviets could get operational air superiority along their axis of advance. Air cover, particularly aerial reconnaissance, allowed operations in depth, including deep penetrations by Soviet and American paratroopers to facilitate the routing of the Ninth Army.
AdmiralSanders : Ritter, your response to everything WW2 related can’t just be “Kill Göring”
TheYugoslavJovian : Unless the Germans had a time dilation device no amount of supplies or air superiority would’ve allowed them to encircle Moscow before October 2nd’s rasputitsa, which turned the land into a giant mud bath that wrecked Germany’s armour, slowed their advance to a crawl and bought Frunze and Eisenhower’s reservists enough time to prepare a solid defence of the city.
ComradeQWERTY : While realistically, with hind-sight in mind, there was very little chance for the Germans to actually succeed in taking Moscow, if we wanted to play devil’s advocate - or something like that - you could argue that there is a chance that army collaboration between the WFRA and Red Army could deteriorate due to personality conflicts. It’s no secret that many of the military commanders of the GPW were notorious for their chauvinism and ego, and if you could goad the Soviet and American commanding officers into getting into it and disagreeing on strategic objectives, it could give the Germans a window of opportunity to take advantage of theoretical chaos in the ranks.
The best example I can come up with is the ego clashes between Marshal Blyukher and General Patton as elaborated in Georgy Zhukov’s personal memoirs. Blyukher was one of the main Soviet commanders of the defense of Moscow, and Zhukov’s memoirs noted his incredibly stubborn personality coming to full front when Patton made several suggestions about how best to coordinate the defense of the city.
One could consider that it wasn’t Patton’s place to directly challenge the presumptions of Blyukher, but one could also make the argument that Patton was best equipped to assist the Marshal in the set-up for the defense of Moscow, considering Patton had more recent experience in commanding urban defense strategies, owing to his own performances in the SACW.
If, perhaps, you have Zhukov and Stalin’s mediation attempts fail, and have a breakdown in the resolve of the American and Soviet defenders, you could theoretically cause Moscow to fall - but that’s a lot of assumptions and personalities being at their absolute worst. I’m sure there are easier ways to have Moscow fall, but honestly unless you’re going for pure Wehraboo garbage…
Well, this probably works.
SkaelingQueen : What I’m wondering is if they had succeeded at Moscow, how much further they might’ve gone. It seems to me that they would’ve struggled to keep the momentum going after Moscow.
Especially if the FBU enters the war as OTL.
UncleLemaysInstantSunshine: What could the Soviets have done worse? That’s easy, not build the Tu-4 and instead wait for America to take the lead on building it.
If the VVS takes a “not invented here” approach to Red Star Seattle’s design and insists on building their own high altitude bomber, then the Germany supply lines would be able to operate inimpeded.
As it was, the Tu-4’s operational ceiling meant that German fighters could rarely intercept it without destroying their engines with booster additives that would require an engine rebuild afterwards.
Today we look back at the B-23 project as this marvel of ComIntern cooperative development, when the truth is more like the Red Star design bureau in Seattle didn’t like the answer they got from the WFRAAF and just took it to whoever would tell them what they wanted to hear.
Even though the Tu-4 wouldn’t be built in large numbers until 1942, that the VVS knew it was waiting in the wings meant they could be far more aggressive with the older Pe-8’s and TB-3’s to attack enemy supply lines and deny reinforcements.
DeOppressoLiber : The relative correlation of forces at the start of Operation Valkyrie is misleading. The Soviets were moving in fresh formations from the Urals, Siberia and the Far East already, and the en masse deployment of the WFRA to Russia was already underway. Most of these troops were sent to the second and final defense lines rather than being thrown into battle unorganised.
Soviet munitions production had recovered from the disasters of 1940. This meant that in the final crucial phase of the defense, after the ground had frozen and the Germans began bewegungskrieg again, the SSV was able to bring a truly fearsome level of firepower to bear from all their artillery, and so close to the main rail hubs, it was possible to expend trainloads of shells.
By the time Frunze’s famed “backhand blow” fell the ruination of Army Group Centre had largely been achieved. The counteroffensive could have been accomplished with regular foot infantry; AGC had already expended much of its combat power and materiel and was ill-equipped for any elastic defense, but obviously the use of mechanised troops greatly expanded the scale of penetration and subsequent overrun of German forces.
EmpireOfEndlessMonologues : People need to understand why the Red Army won before they can figure out how to make them lose. I think this is pretty poorly understood in European popular consciousness. EBC documentaries still make reference to the myth of “General Winter”. Whether it’s video games or pop history books, the campaign is treated as the Wehrmacht winning strongly until they failed to take into account the bitter Russian winter and got punished for it.
The campaign began in late September. The Red Army counterattack started in late December and ended in mid January. The “Battle of Moscow” lasted over four months, and there was hard fighting the entire way. After the debacle with Operation Potemkin, Frunze had convinced Stalin to relinquish more operational control to him and reduce political interference in the military. Frunze was effectively Soviet commander-in-chief, and oversaw the defensive operation. It was his strategy of elastic defence that bled Army Group Centre on the long road to Moscow.
Stavka eschewed risky attempts at massive encirclements favoured by Stalin, which the Red Army was not capable of effectively securing against enemy mobile forces in favour of deep operations breaking the enemy into smaller concentrations unable to effectively combine for defence.
SkaelingQueen : Maybe Frunze is sacked prior to the war? That seems to be the biggest counterfactual I’ve encountered.
They put him on the “retired list” for political reasons, but maybe he gets fully caught by the Yezhovschina? He’d be the most prominent victim, sure, but prominence did not save Bukharin or Tukhachevsky. If he did die before the war, who rises in his place? His protege Zhukov gets mentioned most, but I find that unlikely. Zhukov was too bullish and it took a long time serving under Frunze to get him to be a good team-player. If it’s part of Stalin’s buddies in the cavalry-clique I don’t think that bodes well for the Soviets.
Ma’at : Actually, it just occurred to me that we’re thinking about this all wrong. I think most people zero in on “what could have the Germans done better” or “What could the Soviets have done worse”, but the real answer is getting Imperial Japan drawn into the war.
Now the Japanese Empire had its reasons for declaring war on America in 1942. The IJN asked for a 9 month delay at the Imperial Conference in July 1941. This was related to the desire to build fuel oil reserves, and bring the Taihō and the lead ship of the Unryū -class into commission for combat operations in the Pacific.
But if they had gone to war then to stop the flow of trade and supplies to the Republic of China, they would have choked off Vladivostok. Obviously we know that even with almost a year of additional prep the IJA was not ready to make any serious gains in the Soviet Far East, but the real deciding factor in the war against Germany was how many divisions the WFRA was able to deploy to the Soviet Union beginning in late 1941. More than just the ones that took part in the Battle of Moscow, but also the ones that were able to relieve Soviet troops in the Far East and Central Asia, freeing them up for the battle.
I don’t think this makes taking Moscow quick or easy, or even puts Germany on the road to victory though. Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world. In 1941 it had some of the most impressive defensive works constructed around it. The kind of bypass/encirclement the Germans were contemplating, that far into Russia…I don’t see them being able to complete it. It would be another Leningrad, a long and protracted siege against a determined enemy continually reinforcing by any means necessary. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
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