Interesting, on other threads people are always going on about how crappy the Germans were at logistics while praising the Sovs and Wallies.
Wagner’s Germany: An Axis Victory TL
- Thread starter CrimsonKing
- Start date
Well I guess in hind sight it does make sense to a certain degree. As I was reading your post it occurred to me that the demands on the steel industries for these countries was a tad bit strained. Infrastructure often requires a lot of steel, so you probably don't have 4 or 5 thousand miles of railroad track lying around waiting to be used. With the steel required for bridges, railcars and such they were probably told to make do with what they had or could scrounge.
Obergruppenführer Smith
Banned
That's the thing about logistics, like gravity she is a cruel bitch.
A small suggestion, if you don't mind. Rommer's nickname of Mountain Fox sounds a bit awkward/clumsy, so I was thinking since the Germans have their new Lion heavy tanks, how about Mountain Lion? As one of Germany's premier armored commanders the allusion to the new heavy tanks would fit Rommel, to say nothing of his AOR being the Caucasus. And also, it could be a subtle historical dig at the British, who are usually associated with the lion.
Just throwing it out there.
Just throwing it out there.
Sir Chaos
Banned
Doesn´t sound like a clever commander, though, the way "Desert Fox"/"Wüstenfuchs" does.
"Die Berglöwen"/"The Mountain Lions" would work very well for a division or other force that distinguished itself in the fighting there, though - analogous to the Desert Rats.
Yes, but a desert fox is at least a real animal, as is a mountain lion. A mountain fox isn't so it doesn't really make sense as a nickname.
Obergruppenführer Smith
Banned
How about Kaukasusleopard? The Persian Leopard was also called the Caucasian Leopard, so it should fit.
Sir Chaos
Banned
A bit unwieldy, I´d say.
That could work. Either Puma or just Fuchs (fox).
Also Berglöwen (mountain lions) for a particularly distinguished force, and/or Bergziegen (mountain goats) for a force that manages to cross terrain no such force was thought to be capable of crossing.
This is a fair point.
I agree, but him doing a good job isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with him claiming credit for things which were at least in part due to others.
It was one of their greatest failings, no doubt. One thing which should be kept in mind, though, is the extent to which the Red Army was universally regarded as a paper tiger, British intelligence estimated that it would take the Germans a maximum of six weeks to reach Moscow, while American intelligence estimated that the war as a whole would take a maximum of three months, and possibly just one, to complete the USSR's defeat. There was also the precedent of the "railway advance" on the Eastern Front during WWI which followed the collapse of the Russian Empire's war effort.
This is also worth keeping in mind, many of the logistical limitations which manifested themselves during the course of German advances were also present for Allied advances, but to a lesser extent because their margin of error was so much greater.
Also, IIRC the Stavka made the deliberate decision to prioritize action elsewhere.
As it is true that Mountain Fox does not refer to a specific animal, I have decided to change to Mountain Lion for now.
Glad you like the new sobriquet.
Here is the next update. I have not forgotten about the paratrooper operation, it will be covered when the narrative next reaches the fighting in the Caucasus.
(Section 2)
A knocked-out Soviet tank near the pre-war border.
A knocked-out Soviet tank near the pre-war border.
While the struggle for control of the Caucasus proceeded relatively favorably for the Axis, on the main portion of the Eastern Front between the Black and Baltic seas, hopes for a quick breakthrough were to be rapidly dispelled. Nowhere was this trend more prevalent than in Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group Left, which as mentioned previously was the weakest of the four ETL army groups, consisting of two German armies, one Polish army, and the First Panzer Group under the command of Hermann Hoth, with a total of around 500,000 men. They were arrayed, in that order, from left to right along a frontage of approximately 120 miles, that is, with Hoth’s force just north of the armored spearheads of Army Group Center. Opposing AGL was the Soviet Northern Front under Mikhail Kirponos, with four infantry armies and one tank army in reserve, totalling around 600,000 men. Rundstedt’s plan was for Hoth to achieve a rapid penetration of the Soviet defenses in his sector, then drive in an arc to the northeast with the objective of trapping the Northern Front against the Baltic and destroying it.
Stukas flying on a ground-support mission.
Meanwhile, at the headquarters of Army Group Center, Franz Halder had considerably larger forces to operate with, consisting of three German armies, a French army, several other contingents from smaller ETL members, and the Second and Third Panzer Groups led by Heinz Guderian and Ewald von Kleist respectively, with a total of around one and three-quarter of a million troops. On the other hand, the opposing Central Front under Fyodor Kuznetsov possessed no fewer than eight infantry and three tank armies, with over two million in its ranks. Halder, remembering the manner in which a willingness to act boldly had paid dividends during the campaign against France the year before, envisioned that his two panzer groups, positioned on the far left and right of Army Group Center respectively, would slice through the Western Front’s defenses and push rapidly into its deep rear east of Minsk, thereby achieving its wholesale destruction in one great blow. “It surely cannot be that the Bolsheviks will prove themselves more capable than the French,” he said.
Stalin speaking at a rally in Moscow, reiterating his conviction to stop the invaders before they won much ground.
Neither Rundstedt nor Halder anticipated the actual course of events during the first one-to-two weeks of the war, which proved to be a bitter disappointment for their respective army groups. The ETL forces found themselves subject, in many places, to determined counterattacks, and everywhere to tenacious defenders who fought to the death far more often than did the western Europeans the previous year. In particular, the panzer groups, the locations of which had been identified by the NKVD in spite of the Abwehr’s best efforts, were subject to ferocious assaults from their Soviet counterparts, which turned their forward movement into a grinding advance. Had Stalin taken the advice of many of his generals and approved a phased withdrawal further to the east, the Axis timetable might have been thwarted for at least a few months and perhaps longer. However, he insisted on a strategy of “not one step back” and committed all available assets to that approach. The lack of initial territorial losses concealed the dangerous reality that the counteroffensives were unsustainable, large mechanized formations having been reintroduced in the Red Army only a few months previously meant that their training could not compare with the Volkswehr’s panzer divisions, nor could the Red Air Force effectively contest control of the air when the Luftwaffe was determined to hold it. As a result, loss ratios were enormously skewed towards the Axis with a minimum of 5-1 and often more, wrecking the Soviet tank force once it ran through its reserves.
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Ah, so the progress of the war's going to be one that looks good for the Soviets right up until it doesn't then. It's a highly risky strategy trying to stop the Axis flat like that, but if the NKVD learned about how dangerously low on reserves some parts of the German military ran after the War in the West I can see Stalin taking hold of the idea that he could leverage his larger manpower to break the invasion and go on the attack immediately instead of having to launch a counteroffensive into his own territory first.