The road to Moscow

G

glock glockler

New member
That is the title of a war strategy game I saw recently, interesting concept. Ok, here's one for all you Military History buffs: You are the commander-in-chief of all German Armed forces in 1941, your mission is to attack and defeat the Soviet Union.

You are limited to the weapons and intelligence available at the time, so no AKs, Nukes, or eliminating Richard Sorge. You are allowed to make political decisions like peace treaties w/England and/or not declaring war on the US.

The USSR will definatly be a tough nut to crack. Can it be done?
 
Sure, treat all those Russian citizens you "liberate" as allies. When Germany invaded the USSR they were greeted as heros, when the Germans started treating the Russians worse than the Commies did, the citizens united against them.

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Ne Conjuge Nobiscum
"If there be treachery, let there be jehad!"
 
The road to Moscow is littered with the bones of would-be conquerors.First check that winter is not near-not much of a choice for the Germans tho'.
I think the only way is by using a massive aerial bombardment on Moscow itself and sending in paratroops(Germany had these).Next,again with air support,a flat out run to Moscow,by road,Tanks etc.Meanwhile
when Moscow is secured fly in the regular troops to garrison and fortify.You'd need to be quick--no pissing around.
 
Avoid a winter campaign but if you must then equip your troops accordingly.
Stay mobile. If you get let the Russians bog you down, you've lost. They will also out-stubborn you during the winter and/or in siege fighting because, Heck, they're Russians and used to making do and surviving lousy conditions.
Your command and control is much better than theirs so use it just as the Germans did in France. The French, I believe, had more troops and better tanks but were snatched up piecemeal. Mobility and coordination.
You will have to decide if you want to take the whole country or simply the western third and snatch the oil fields to the south as , I believe, was Hitler's plan. If you decide to take the whole country you may try to do it incrimentaly, each third a year. Move during spring/summer/fall, then dig in and fortify controlling roads and bridges.
Good luck.
Oh, and if you see anything that looks like a dog with an antenna- shoot it!

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Those who use arms well cultivate the Way and keep the rules.Thus they can govern in such a way as to prevail over the corrupt- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
 
Apologize, turn around, and leave posthaste. The Germans had run ahead of their supplies by the fall of '41, and had no choice but to pull up short of Moscow. Hitler knew winter was coming; it comes every year around late October or early November. It's always near in that part of the world. The invaders waited until June 22nd because the spring thaw didn't dry out until then. They wanted passable roads for their horse-drawn artillery.

Anyway, conditions at that point favored the Russians. They had warm winter coats, superior numbers, and the Germans had stopped moving. It was over, it just took the Germans another 4 years to figure it out. Maybe, if the the Japanese had invaded Siberia at the same time, instead of attacking America, maybe the Russians would have lost. But the Japanese were reluctant to attack the Russians again, after having been defeated by them in 1937 in a series of border skirmishes.

[This message has been edited by Cypselus (edited September 04, 2000).]
 
Taking Moscow is rather meaningless or bombing it flat - that' a militarily naive statement.

Unless you defeat the military might of the Soviet Union and destroyed it's political structure and then replaced it - you are sunk.

The Germans never had the ability to do that.
They might have won some more victories but that's all.

If Stalin wasn't a military dope they would have had their clocks cleaned earlier on.

German victories were agains ill-prepared opponents both psychological or technologically. They were lucky in the early stages. A competent French army wouldn't have fallen so quickly. A mobilized and competent
Soviet force (not handicapped by Stalin) would
have held them and inflicted more causalities then they could have borne.

To win, you have to come up with bizarre scenarios that have the Russians defeat themselves.
 
Talk Japan out of bombing Pearl Harbor. That would have kept us out of the war for another year at least. Get Japan to invade from Manchuria. Do not declare war on the US. Remember, after Japan attacked the US, Russian was no longer threatened by the Japanese and pulled most of its troops off of the Manchurian border, freeing them to fight the Germans. Could this have happened in reality? I don't know, the Japanese where dead set on having a Pacific empire, and saw our fleet as their biggest threat.

Cut a deal with England, even if you have to lie to do it. Back off of them. Quit bombing them. Say your beef is with Russia.

Keep pumping money into making an A bomb. Then in about 1945 or so drop a nuke on London when they don't expect it. They might have pulled it off if we weren't bombing the heck out of Germany the whole time. A few years latter when your working on the V-4 or V-5 generation of rockets start nuking the heck out of New York and Washington D.C. That same Summer have the Japanese let loose millions and I mean millions of their balloon fire bombs. They didn't work in real life mostly because they where released in a wet year.

I'm with Jim V, treat your "liberated" Russians as friends. Feed them. Lots of Russians didn't exactly like Stalin, seeing how he killed millions of them. Use good old fashioned propaganda.

Avoid city fighting like Stalingrad & Leningrad. I can't recall the name of the city, but there was a northern port city (Novgorod?) that was better defended than Stalingrad with lots more troops there. However the Germans concentrated most of their heavy artilery there. They destroyed the city gradually, with low losses. Stalingrad was taking place at the same time, but without enough heavy stuff they couldn't effectively dislodge the defenders.

Winter time, hole up. Don't try to manuever, pull back to defensible positions. Make them come to you. The Russians are just better with cold.

And start building more Me262s. That way when/if America decides to come a calling you have a more effective way of knocking their heavy bombers out of the sky.

Ok, enough rambling. Can you tell that I've thought about this a little. I'm a big fan of alternative history sci-fi like Harry Turtledove.
 
As Correia said, KEEP THE U.S. OUT OF THE WAR! Don't break the treaty with Russia till you've conquered those limey British. Then when you really do have a fortress europe, you'll probably have jet airplanes developed by then and if you have nukes, moscow doesn't stand a chance. Attack Russia in managable weather. Improve your vulcanization process so that your tires don't crack and shatter in the winter. Agreed, in the winter hold up and in the managable weather blitz the heck out of Stalin.

Of course, from what I've seen on the History channel, Germany wasn't even close to having an A-bomb by 1945. They didn't even have a "bomb program" going. We were far ahead of them and the japs in A-bomb technology. The germans did have some good jet fighter technology that would have been awesome if they hadn't had to worry about us on the west and their lack of fuel reserves.

Scary to even think about what could have been. :eek:

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The first step is registration, the second step is confiscation, the final step is subjugation.
 
Good points above. I agree that Hitler needed to beat the English, at least to the point of getting a strict treaty out of it. Also, Germany needed to convert over to a fully motorized army. There weren't enough draft horses in the world to move the materiel needed to take on the Russians. To address the "capture and coopt" approach, Germany should have absorbed the many non-Russian regions (Estonia, Latvia, Georgia etc) first. Needless to say, avoid provoking the U.S.
 
Invading Russia/Soviet Union conventionally has been a fast track to defeat (historically).

During WWII the Soviet's real weakness lay in ethnic/racial divisions which could potentially have been exploited by Hitler. The Soviets would have been quite content to kill each other. Furthermore, the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Ukranians were pretty ticked at the Russians and if Hitler had played it right, he could hav had more allies in the Soviet Union than enemies. That would have required him to back away from his "super-race" stuff but it could have been done.
 
Jim V is correct. Allied Russians would have numbered in the millions. Germany made a big mistake.

DS1973 is also correct. Keeping the US out of the war would have made a huge difference.

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The Alcove

I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
As I recall there were PLENTY of SS regiments manned by estonias, ukrainians and other ethnic groups in the Soviet Union.. its ONE ofthe reasons the Soviets cracked down HARD on the baltic states and the ukraine after the war.

Only a fool invades Russia.

Why? The allies of the Russians Colonel Winter and General Snow. The ONLY 3 successful invasions of Russia were commited by vikings (the founder of the RURIK dynasty that ended with Ivan the Terrible) and twice succesfully by the Monguls (who forced Russia to move its capitol from Kiev to Moscow) both invasiuons from the east sued Russia for "peace" rather than fight in the harsh northern winters.

The biggest German blunder was invading at all. German ships could not close russian ports getting lend/lease weapons and its luftwaffe had no heavy bombers to cross the urals to bomb the factories that had been moved back east out of range. For all the talk of blitzkrieg the germans still relied heavily on horse carts and railroads to get supoplies to the front. Luckily the horses left them something to eat in the cold winter around Stalingrad, Moscow and Leningrad.

Had they held off the ivasion until AFTER defeating/Alling with Britain maybe the story would be diferent. But really.. look at history. Its unlikely Germany could have HELD Russia.. even if its major cities had been taken. The Russians left very little behind and had the luxury of bombing german supply lines with the famous Sturmavig fighter/bomber while the lines were being moved up.

that's my 2¢

Dr.Rob
 
"As I recall there were PLENTY of SS regiments manned by estonias, ukrainians and other ethnic groups in the Soviet Union.. its ONE ofthe reasons the Soviets cracked down HARD on the baltic states and the ukraine after the war."

These units were never large and were never trusted by the Germans. The fact is that once partisans began operating in Russia the SS let loose a reign of terror that lost them sympathy among the general population.

The problem with the whole thing was always Hitler. He simply lacked the necessary military knowhow to succesfully command. The same could be said of Himmler and other high ranking Nazis that had authority of the German military.

You also need to remember the Nazi state was a disorganized collection of competing interests. Hitler didn't get up till noon, had a long lunch, religiously watched a movie or two, and then napped! This was hardly the hard working leader that propaganda portrayed him as. Therefore decisions were based on hearsay, on people wanting to please him to get ahead, and not on sound tactical considerations. Stalin on the other hand, was the complete opposite. He was the ultimate paper king, pouring over every little detail. Thus power and decisions were centralized, a crucial thing in times of war.

Actually if the Germans ha moved quickly after Dunkirk they could well have taken England and ended the possibility for a counterattack from the US on European soil. They didn't and lost a major opportunity.

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"Get yourself a Lorcin and lose that nickel plated sissy pistol."
 
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