Originally posted by Ed Cogburn
None of these were in modern times, where industry and manpower resources were so important. In 1812 the Russians could afford to let Napoleon take Moscow, losing it was not a terrible blow to their ability to fight on. They let Winter and the Cossacks do their number on Napoleon's La Grande Army. In WWI the Germans didn't penetrate so far into Russia, they didn't have to. The Bolshevik Revoultion came along and Russia agreed to terms with the Germans long before they got close to Moscow. In WWII however things were different. This was a war of industrial attrition, much more so than WWI, and because of that, the Soviets losing Moscow would have been an unmitigated disaster. Losing Moscow meant losing huge industrial complexes, a large chunk of the Russian population, being cutoff from Murmansk, and cutting off supplies to most organized resistance north of Moscow, meaning Leningrad would fall too if it hadn't already by this point.
I was just fleshing out the details for Czerpak who had said Moscow had been taken "many" times without specifying. How many folks knew the Poles held Moscow for three years?? Do Russians eat kielbasa?
As discussed on the Entrenchment thread before, the Germans planned on Barbarossa succeeding by crushing the Red Army quickly, and in the western approaches. To quote Adolf in Directive 21 (from Glantz,
Barbarossa, Appendix 1, p. 234):
"Only after the accomplishment of these offensive operations, which must be followed by the capture of Leningrad and Kronshtadt, are further offensive operations with the objective of occupying the important Centre of communications and of armaments manufacture, Moscow.... Once the battles south or north of the Pripiat Marshes have been fought, the pursuit is to be undertaken with the following objectives:
In the south, [italics in original] the rapid occupation of the economically important Donetz Basin,
In the north, the speedy capture of Moscow. The capture of this city would be a decisive victory from both the political and from the economic point of view; it would involve, moreover, the neutralization of the most vital Russian rail Centre."
If you look at Moscow from the German perspective, five things had to happen first: the total collapse of Russian resistance in the Baltic States and Belorussia, prevention of enemy forces retreating into the interior, and the fall of Leningrad and Kronshtadt.
I'll let you guys play the what-if's.
Ciao
