Leningrad/Stalingrad switch

[oberdada]

Sounds like ASB, but that's not what I meant.

Just imagine Zarizyn (Volgograd) beeing named Leningrad in 1924 and St.Petersburg beeing named Stalingrad in 1925 or maybe a bit later in this TL.

I doubt this POD would cause important butterflies soon, so I imagine *Stalingrad would be ab even more important target during Barbarossa and the Wehrmacht would definetly try to take the city and the Red army would defend it at all costs.

This assumption is based on the OTL theory that both Hitler and Stalin considered the battle for Stalingrad so important, because the city was named after Stalin.

To my knowledge, there where plans to complete level Leningrad and give the territorry to allied Finnland. I think this is even more likely to happen to *Stalingrad...

any thoughts?



(BTW, I really think this astrix system is quiete usfull, haven't used it so far)

[Monty Burns]

Originally Posted by oberdada

I doubt this POD would cause important butterflies soon, so I imagine *Stalingrad would be ab even more important target during Barbarossa and the Wehrmacht would definetly try to take the city and the Red army would defend it at all costs.

This assumption is based on the OTL theory that both Hitler and Stalin considered the battle for Stalingrad so important, because the city was named after Stalin.

I really doubt that theory.

Stalingrad was a transportation hub of major importance. That likely won't change in your POD. Actually, the city named after Lenin would bring it more into the focus pre-Stalin and pre-war, thus the city might even be more important than IOTL.

Taking OTL Leningrad was obviously unneccessary. It's blockade was a major atrocity, but your POD won't change Nazi policy. And if the plan is to level the city anyway, I don't see a reason not to act as IOTL. From a propaganda viewpoint, parading through Stalingrad is as good as showing that Stalin isn't even able to feed the people in his city.

[b12ox]

Assult on Stalingrad was purely strategical, the name is accidental. Leningrad was the place where bolshevik revolushion started, and this, apparently, infuenced Nazis in choosing iti as immediate target The Nazis spliced the war buisness with political propaganda. Leningrad was the asiatic portal to Europe and as such must be closed, as Goebbells said. Political propaganda was useful to recruit eventual volonteers from abroad and keep high morale in population. It was not useful for strategical war making. I beleave Leningrad and the waste of resources on the north front was the biggest mistake the Nazis made in this campaign.

[Snake Featherston]

Stalingrad mattered because successfully capturing it would have isolated the Caucasus from the USSR, which was the goal of Operation Blue all along, that is securing the oil fields of the Caucasus. It's why the Whites kept attempting to capture it when it was called Tsaritsyn.