How would a Barbarossa "South" approach work?

Anti-GrammarNazi

I was watching a youtube video about the myth of the failures of Barbarossa being on Hitler. The video claims that Hitler wanted to the main attack of Barbarossa be South, and indeed it was South where most of the Red Army was concentrated and the defenses were prepared, also where there was most of the USSR breadbasket and eventually the oilfields. Also the plains of the South were better suited for Blitzkrieg with open plains all over. With other objectives like Moscow being secondary and only to be attacked once the other ones were completed.

The video claims, Halder lied to Hitler and maneuvered behind his back putting more troops and resources in the Center attack towards Moscow, so when Barbarossa started or was about to start, there really was no choice but to attack as OTL, with the main push being center.

So let's assume Barbarossa happened with the main strike being South, where most of the Red Army was located and where while, the Germans would had faced more resistence than OTL would also had provided for a better opportunity to damage the Red Army the most.

How would this strategy work? Better or wose than OTL?
 

Post

Ir's just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. It doesn't solve the fundamental issues the Germans had to cope with, which were, their logistics, the fact that the Russian army was larger than they though, their logistics, the fact that the Russians had more reserves than they thought, that the Russians would be able to mobilize new armies sooner than they thought, their logistics, that the Russians could trade space for time and did I mention their logistics?

Barbarossa succeeded in its initial goal: destroying the Russian army. Unfortunately for the Germans there was more Russian army than they accounted for. Their next best shot was to capture Moscow and hope the Russians would collapse after that.
 

TDM

Anti-GrammarNazi said:
I was watching a youtube video about the myth of the failures of Barbarossa being on Hitler. The video claims that Hitler wanted to the main attack of Barbarossa be South, and indeed it was South where most of the Red Army was concentrated and the defenses were prepared, also where there was most of the USSR breadbasket and eventually the oilfields. Also the plains of the South were better suited for Blitzkrieg with open plains all over. With other objectives like Moscow being secondary and only to be attacked once the other ones were completed.

The video claims, Halder lied to Hitler and maneuvered behind his back putting more troops and resources in the Center attack towards Moscow, so when Barbarossa started or was about to start, there really was no choice but to attack as OTL, with the main push being center.

So let's assume Barbarossa happened with the main strike being South, where most of the Red Army was located and where while, the Germans would had faced more resistence than OTL would also had provided for a better opportunity to damage the Red Army the most.

How would this strategy work? Better or wose than OTL?
Click to expand...
a few points

1). about the only immediate benefit is you can concentrate your forces and logistics in one attack, but even with this there's the problem that you can move only so much stuff so quickly on the transport infrastructure there. You will risk making a huge traffic jam.

2). More long term and to counter the traffic jam issue if you don't try and squeeze all 3.7m men down only one of the three OTL attack routes it does mean you can go in with less thus giving yourself more strategic reserves and less logistics issues. But the Germans knew they needed to win quickly or the Russians would just out produce and mobilize them in a war of attrition if it took too long, so winning quickly was the goal. This last is really key no one certainly not the Germans wanted to re-fight WW1, they want Barbarossa to go like the 1940 invasion of the west.

2). During the planning stage they recognized logistics was going to be an issue the further in they went so setting a victory point at Baku is very far away indeed. Again win quick vs. lose slow.

3). With point 2 above in mind the plan was to find and destroy the vast majority of the Red army close to the border, this is why they went with the broad attack in order to engage and destroy it (again win quick vs. lose slow). Of course that plan was inherently flawed because they underestimated how big the red army was even in June 1941, where it was, how willing the Soviets were to keep fighting and just how quickly the USSR could turn on mobilization even in the face of huge loses and the disarray caused by a broad front attack by 3.7m men. The problem is none of the above errors makes only go south any better either!

4). a narrow attack front in the south is vulnerable to a counter attack along it's northern flank.

5). a narrow single pronged attack makes it easy for the Soviets to mobilize defensive positions in front of it because their attention is not split.

6). The broad attack plan was not only known but agreed, Halder had originally been for a drive to Moscow and later when the broad attack had failed to achieve it's goals brought it up again. (the whole broad front vs. narrow front dilemma was a key point in the planning stage)
 
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Finbarr the Fair

Basically what @TDM said. A narrow front attack doesn't meet German strategic goals or their operational constraints. Easier to supply 3 Army groups using 3 main rail routes than supply that force through only one. (Over simplification for emphasis.)

It should be possible to weight the attack more to the Southern axis though. Especially if a stronger force could be based in Romania and supported in an advance along the Black Sea Coast.

IIRC the Germans had 10 or 11 Panzer Corps with only three used in Panzer Gruppe I to support Army Group South. Take a couple from AGC and put them in Romania. After capturing Odessa more quickly this force could swing north to unhinge the defences of Kiev. Before resuming the advance towards the Donbass and Rostov.

The downsides of this plan are:
1) supplying the new PzGr from Romania and ideally finding extra motorised divisions . (No DAK probably the POD.)
2) The operaions of Army Group Centre would be hindered and OTL cauldrons at Minsk and Smolensk less effective. Greater numbers of troops and material will escape as the panzer forces will be insufficient in hold the ring.

All of which just goes to show the fundamental problems of Barbarossa. The Germans lacked the forces to achieve their goals and couldn't supply their advance beyond 500km anyway. Changing how it's conducted is fun but unlikely to do more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
 

user23123

A south approach to Barbarossa doesn't not necessary mean the same thing with a narrow front attack, you can still have the main force been AGC,beacuse of logistics or ...,but with different objectives,while in the otl AGC was suppose to push towards Moskow,the ATL AGC is made of the AGC-A and AGC-B which is suppose to take Smolensk and AGC-B which is suppose to swing south.

Now there is also the question of how much they consider ALT Barbarossa to be a short campaign to be over before the arrival of autumn/winter,
 
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