Barbarossa AHC

Emperor Casey

Banned
So I had tried something like this when I first joined the board but didn't do it too well so I am going to try again! Please be supportive and optimistic :)

So you have been transported back to Germany and are tasked with planning the invasion of Russia. You must come up with an invasion plan and strategy (no ifs ands or buts) Hitler is open to all your ideas (he is having a good relaxed week) so your challenge is to come up with the best Barbarossa plan you can!
 

lycan

Concentrate on Moscow for 1941 and don't let the Wehrmacht get distracted from Operation Typhoon.

Maintain defensive position for early '42, then follow with Case Blue in the summer.

pull back in winter '42-3 and reach possible stalemate at Kursk.
 
Dan

Dan

My first thought is to post simply "see my signature". :p

I think they key though if you're going to go after somewhere like the Soviet Union is to do it in bite sized chunks with reasonable points you can say "That's all we want" while silently adding "for now", as you need to defeat the Soviet Union politically as well as militarily.

Possibly the best bet, is while you can invade the Soviet Union, do not go as far as what is now modern Russia.

Step 1:
Poland - Take secure and hold, make political overtures that this is all you want and conclude a "peace" with Stalin. He'll be weakened by this, only a tiny amount, just as he was in the first Winter war.

Step 2: Diet Barbarossa, (all of the conquest, but half the loss of the Reich). Baltic States, most of Belarus and most of the Ukraine. Then Stop.
At that point don't be surprised if Stalin is gone, either a tragic accident or straight up coup. As soon as that happens, conclude a treaty, even if it means returning a chunk of Ukraine, (funnily enough, the bits that seem to be pretty much pro Russian now), and fortify the border big time.


However the best version - see my sig.
 

Gudestein

Emperor Casey said:
So I had tried something like this when I first joined the board but didn't do it too well so I am going to try again! Please be supportive and optimistic :)

So you have been transported back to Germany and are tasked with planning the invasion of Russia. You must come up with an invasion plan and strategy (no ifs ands or buts) Hitler is open to all your ideas (he is having a good relaxed week) so your challenge is to come up with the best Barbarossa plan you can!
Click to expand...

Obsessed Nuker is going to come and nuke this thread, but here is a few suggestions I had considered in another timeline and would also appreciate an early evaluation of:
Pattersonautobody has a thread where the delays of Yugoslavia and Greece don't prevent two extra panzer corps from participating on the Southern Front. This will potentially lead to a major Minsk style encirclement in the south and remove the need for the Kiev encirclement by army group center of OTL.
Obsessed Nuker will argue that this momentum can only be used to stretching the resources a bit further (e.g. an earlier stronger Typhoon) leading the a stp at a similar place before Moscow, maybe best case an encirclement and then a Stalingrad like defeat when the overstretched armies are beaten in the Russian winter counteroffensive. IMHO this is to skeptical but in any case it could be countered by army group center turning north, in stead of south, finishing of Leningrad, opening a new supply line by ship through Leningrad and then take Moscow from the west and the North.

If you take a step back at the challenge, the real feat would be to have the Germans not underestimating the Soviets. Don't expect their fighting capacity to collapse in 6 weeks.
From that follows winter equipment, strategic plans for the rail transportation, and maybe also a desire to take Leningrad first.

Having said this, taking Moscow would be very valuable beyond propaganda as it destroys soviet mobility while strengthening German mobility and probably leads to the fall of Leningrad afterwards.
No matter in what order, taking Leningrad effectively collapses the Soviet Northern front and the allied aid for the Soviets.
 

Gannt the chartist

Based on the information and beliefs of the Wehrmacht at the time nothing wrong with the OTL plan.

Based on reality.

Any attack on the USSR does two things immediately. First it stops all imports to Germany from the USSR second it creates an alliance between the British Empire, USSR and the US Economy with the probability that the US will enter the war later on.

Planning to fight a multi year campaign vs the USSR is planning for a materielschlact which the german army is not set up to do against an enemy that massively outnumbers and outproduces you.

Reaching a voluntary stop line and holding on for the winter means surrendering the initiative to a numerically superior enemy in Russia who can dictate the pace of his operations to suit his needs. There is no guarantee you will ever be able to regain the initiative.
 

Gudestein

Gannt the chartist said:
Based on the information and beliefs of the Wehrmacht at the time nothing wrong with the OTL plan.

Based on reality.

Any attack on the USSR does two things immediately. First it stops all imports to Germany from the USSR second it creates an alliance between the British Empire, USSR and the US Economy with the probability that the US will enter the war later on.

Planning to fight a multi year campaign vs the USSR is planning for a materielschlact which the german army is not set up to do against an enemy that massively outnumbers and outproduces you.

Reaching a voluntary stop line and holding on for the winter means surrendering the initiative to a numerically superior enemy in Russia who can dictate the pace of his operations to suit his needs. There is no guarantee you will ever be able to regain the initiative.
Click to expand...

I agree on all of these. Tactically, you probably should avoid sretching to the limit before winter, but otherwise, starting this war means trying to break the Soviets for good.
 

pattersonautobody

The best, realistic POD I can think of is an early invasion of Greece in 1940. It pretty much butterflies away the Blitz, and sheer momentum make make Crete a little less horrible for the Germans. Yugoslavia probably never has a coup as a result, so all of this clears the way for a slightly stronger German attack somewhere around June 7th-10th, 1941.

The attack may achieve an identical element of surprise, because Britain is in the war, and mass encirclements in AGS become not just possible, but probable. After this point, Germany's best chance (presuming butterflies that do not lead to much larger than OTL German advances, or negative butterflies that the Germans advance farther but get encircled worse) is to prepare for a two year war, making Kharkov, Rostov, Sevestapol, Smolensk, and Leningrad first year objectives. They probably can't get Leningrad, but after this point, the Germans pursue an attritional strategy.

It can possibly be sold to Hitler as the historic end-times battle for humanity against mongrel hordes or some crap. Now, Hitler not looking for total victory on the cheap is ASB in of itself, but the OP seems to lend to this possibility.

If this occurs, the Germans find themselves without the heavy equipment losses of 1941, more aircraft, and 200,000 to 300,000 more experienced men, which is nothing to sneeze at. With Sevestapol in German hands early and Rostov capture and actually prepared for defense, a strike against Baku is likely in 1942, which really does not help the Germans. However, without the heavy 1941 losses, it makes the Germans all the more intimidating. Plus, much of their seige equipment probably gets tried out against Leningrad instead of Sevestapol in 1942, the result being that the Russians never break through ans establish a corridor to supply the city. This makes the fall of the city at least possible, or at the very least, things all the more horrific for the Russians.

Being that these "small victories" still do not definitely win Germany the war, it is easy to see why Hitler went all in. It's all in or nothing. Germany didn't want to gamble that they could win a war of annihilation if they had to. It is only when they found themselves in a war of annihilation by mistake that evaluating how much Germans were at killing Russians and kill ratios becomes relevant.
 
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kclcmdr

What year does the person in question be available to start reforming the German economy and industry to build APCs, trucks, halftracks, better tanks and ACs and lots of railroad construction battalions among with security battalions to defend the rear from Soviet Partitions and capture escaping Soviet remnant units?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
There's some line from a S.M.Stirling book which goes "It's when you have the smaller army with the more experienced troops that you have to gamble, and hope you win big".
That's basically OTL...
 

Gannt the chartist

Pootling in Greece and fordism in Germany

Is irrelevant, all it achieves is advancing the start date by 2 weeks.

It changes nothing the limiting factors, German generals post war excuses notwithstanding go to the contemporary unit diaries, are the wastage on German strength as they advance which is a function of a) mileage travelled and b) growing Russian strength after they start to mobilise both of which apply whatever date you begin.

Even the wildly optimistic German planning assumed there would be no effective Russian forces beyond 400 miles of the border after 6 weeks. Its because the advances beyond that point are railway marches they become possible. Change that and the whole thing falls apart.


And they succeeded in destroying what they believed to be the strength of the Red Army in those parameters. However it is one of the two most spectacular cases of Optimism Bias in history.

While there may be a possibility of changing Germany in the mid 19th century to the assort of society that uses mass automobile transport put it in ASB, and everyone else will too. After WW1 there is essentially no money to do that and the other things like build up an air force and a navy.

Actually creating the plant and personnel infrastructure to support a motorised society will tend to integrate Germany into world trade (need fuel) reduce the ability to spend on pure military projects ( forex is going to the UK or US not buying materials for the Wehrmacht) steel is going to make VW cars for export to pay for the fuel and tend to butterfly the Nazis in the first place.
 

pattersonautobody

Gannt the chartist said:
Is irrelevant, all it achieves is advancing the start date by 2 weeks.
Click to expand...

THe rest of your post is pretty irrelevant as it pertains to the short term effects of an earlier Barbarossa where a mass encirclement of Russian forces in Ukraine occurs. It definitely puts the Russians in a worse sport and makes for the most successful Barbarossa possible. However, for reasons discussed ad nauseum here, it is still probably not enough for the Russians to lose the war quickly and without a quick victory there, the Germans lose the war.
 

Dunning Kruger

Weighing in from the peanut gallery.

1) No German troops in North Africa. The additional forces might not matter but in a big gamble every bit helps.

2) Go straight for Moscow and hope the fall of Moscow leads to the collapse of the Soviet government with Stalin getting a bullet during the chaos. Negotiate with the survivors.
 

lycan

Dunning Kruger said:
Weighing in from the peanut gallery.

1) No German troops in North Africa. The additional forces might not matter but in a big gamble every bit helps.

2) Go straight for Moscow and hope the fall of Moscow leads to the collapse of the Soviet government with Stalin getting a bullet during the chaos. Negotiate with the survivors.
Click to expand...

The Germans would have needed to defeat Britain in the Med before going after Russia. After a successful Typhoon, they would probably still needed to go through with Case Blue in '42, and even then the Red Army could counterattack the following winter.
 

ObssesedNuker

lycan said:
Concentrate on Moscow for 1941 and don't let the Wehrmacht get distracted from Operation Typhoon.
Click to expand...

Dunning Kruger said:
2) Go straight for Moscow and hope the fall of Moscow leads to the collapse of the Soviet government with Stalin getting a bullet during the chaos. Negotiate with the survivors.
Click to expand...

Supply lines breakdown while fighting through the Soviet defenses between Smolensk and Moscow. In the mean time, Soviet forces on AGC's right flank reorganize and attack through the gap, leading to large sections of AGC getting encircled and wiped out.

These kinds of moves basically turn the tide of the war decisively in the Soviets favor by the end of 1941.
 
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