The problems of 1942 – possible causes and solutions – The Red Army

[Speedysteve]

The irony and sadness of that last statement.........both cruel cruel ********.....anyhow not to get off topic and political.......

[Helpless]

To the Soviet prisoners, Hitler was still less scary than Stalin, as they knew if they ever returned to the Soviet Union, there was a fair chance they'd be arrested or executed by the NKVD. After the war, former prisoners got special ID mentioning they were former prisoners, which doomed them to do jobs nobody else wanted.

Slave labour can still be a better prospect than death.

What a wrong statement..

[Flaviusx]

Pieter, I get what you are saying about mistreatment of repatriated prisoners and DPs.

But the bottom line is the average Soviet citizen concluded fairly early on that as bad as Stalin was, Hitler was worse. And they were right to conclude this. Hitler's crazed lebensraum program legitimized the Soviet state. If the Germans had put themselves at the head of some kind of war liberation, who knows what might have happened? There were indeed plenty of folks in Soviet Russia who hated the Soviet state, victims of purges, gulags, and collectivized agriculture.

But Hitler wasn't in the business of liberating people. His idea was to kill off millions of slavs (including wiping out the entire urban populations of places like Moscow and Leningrad), reduce the rest to the status of helots, that is to say, slavery, and divide the lands conquered among the herrenvolk. It was sheer barbarism. It took a lot to make Stalin look like a good option, but Hitler was very much up to the task.

[Empire101]

Thanks Tarhunnas.

I still believe the flaw in this fantastic game, is wholesale evacuation in 1941, leading to the problems in 42.

( I hate using the term 'game' for such a terrible conflict. Simulation would be better, but there are too many pieces missing from the historical jigsaw puzzle for my liking).

[ComradeP]

What a wrong statement..

Wrong how? The NKVD didn't exactly welcome former prisoners, often branded as traitors for surrendering, with open arms. Many former prisoners were outcasts at least until destalinization.

One former concentration camp prisoner, Genrich Naoemovitsj, said that the Germans had told him that they could do with them what they wanted as Stalin no longer cared for them. Upon returning to the Soviet Union and NKVD questioning, he understood what they meant.

Michail Petrovitsj Devjatajev, a Yak-7 pilot was send (after switching identity with a dead Soviet soldier, so it appeared he was a member of the army and not a pilot) to the island of Usedom to work in a V weapons facility. Together with 9 other prisoners, he escaped from the island by stealing a German plane from the runway in early February 1945. They flew towards the Baltic states/East Prussia and landed next to Soviet troops of the 61st Army. The men who found them hailed them as heroes, which would be the logical reaction and probably how they would be treated in many other countries. Unfortunately, they were now back under the care of the Soviet Union.

The NKVD arrived, interrogated them for days and said that what they claimed they did wasn't possible. Devjatajev spend a year in solitary confinement, including in the former concentrationcamp Sachsenhausen. The 9 other members of his escape party were send to penal battalions. 5 of them died in the final weeks of the war. After a year, the NKVD admitted, after interrogating German and Soviet prisoners who had also worked at the rocket base, that his story was true. He was demobilized, but still couldn't find work due to being a former prisoner. It took until 1957 for his heroic act to be officially accepted and he was made Hero of the Soviet Union.

Their stories are far from unique, although they were sort of lucky as they were not shot or send to forced labour camps in the Soviet Union.

Note that I'm not saying anything along the lines of Hitler being less bad than Stalin, all I'm saying is that for many former prisoners (the 43% that survived Nazi imprisonment), going back to the Soviet Union wasn't necessarily a pleasant experience. Stalin was more than happy to add another dose of misery to their lives.

Flavio: that's perhaps one of the worst ironies of the Second World War: until they were captured/ended up in German territory, Soviet citizens (eventually) justifiably thought living under Nazi rule would be a nightmare. When they were under Nazi rule/in Nazi camps, it was indeed a nightmare for many, but being "liberated" could mean that the nightmare didn't quite end when they thought it would.

[PeeDeeAitch]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

Oh, I thought it was a wordplay on hysterics and histrionics, so I found it kind of funny. I thought it was one of your better jokes actually, and then it turns out it was unintentional [;)].

I ain't that funny! [:D]

[Speedysteve]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP
Flavio: that's perhaps one of the worst ironies of the Second World War: until they were captured/ended up in German territory, Soviet citizens (eventually) justifiably thought living under Nazi rule would be a nightmare. When they were under Nazi rule/in Nazi camps, it was indeed a nightmare for many, but being "liberated" could mean that the nightmare didn't quite end when they thought it would.

Irony indeed P...............

[kvolk]

Talking about mind set I would add that people expecting the soviets to quit because of the lose of a city or two even if it is moscow need to review the revolution and how lenin and stalin etc fought against what seemed to be impossible odds to win control of the country. They would not have given up if there was any part of soviet union left for them to fight from or any people left to sacrifice. I don't think anyone can go wrong estimating the brutality of either side in this conflict.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Panama

ORIGINAL: 76mm

ORIGINAL: kvolk

Another issue I think is an issue is that with the knowledge of how the weather falls and the build up of the soviest you can start building forts way before they would be done especially lvl 3 and 4. having multiple lines of fortifications behind lines does seem unrealistic as most of the reading I have done has forts on the main line and then maybe one other line being built behind that main line. Which I think means the forts need to be a more scarce resource. Maybe with a system like is used for rail repair.

Cue TD's favorite quote about the Sovs building fortifications several hundred km behind the lines. I don't know why you think that it is unrealistic that the Sovs built multiple lines of fortifcations. That said, I don't think brigades should be able to build forts for three rifle corps, and so think that fortif should be done on a per unit rather than a per hex basis.

Since the civilian population doing the digging isn't represented by a counter I would think the brigade digging for three rifle corps would be quite acceptable and a fair representation of a population drafted to dig.

You should be limited to level 1 fortifications (trench lines, dugouts, and anti-tank ditches) if engineering officers, troops, and resources are not involved.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: herwin



You should be limited to level 1 fortifications (trench lines, dugouts, and anti-tank ditches) if engineering officers, troops, and resources are not involved.

That would be ignoring history. I can understand engineers. But how many overseers does it take to make earthworks? Not that many. Resources used were those at hand. They were earthworks. Not concrete bunkers. Why troops? That's why they used the civilian population, so troops could be where they needed to be, fighting the Axis.

[76mm]

And how many engineers would it take? Presumably a couple to plan the works, and then they had some construction types, etc. supervise the digging. It's not rocket science...

Moreover, I don't think that Level 1 fortifications represent trenches and anti-tank ditches.

[ComradeP]

Most divisions also have some sort of engineer/pioneer and/or construction troops attached to them, and you don't need an engineering degree to create, say, a log bunker. Field manuals also tend to include detailed descriptions of how to create various kinds of defences with natural materials.

[Empire101]

I know what you are saying but in my opinion the loss of Moscow would have been such a body blow to the Soviets, that they may not have recovered from it, bringing the nightmare of Nazi victory in the East one step closer. Imagine the loss of face to their own people, all their promises have turned to dust.

The Russians are a hardy people, well versed in facing up to hardship and adversity. But even the ordinary man ( and woman ) would be having second thoughts about Stalin and his cronies if millions of their soldiers were dead or missing, that half the country had been occupied by a brutal oppressor with ( in their eyes ), comparitive ease, that Nazi feelers had jolted Nationalist sentiment in the Ukraine, Baltic etc into believing that they had a chance of forming their own automonous states, ( not that Hitler would have contemplated them for one second, they would have just deluded them ), and to top it all, the heart of Government has been taken out??

Not until they had gone under the hammer and been occupied by the Nazi's would the realisation of the true horror of their new masters intentions been fully appreciated, but by then it would be too late.

Even in a brutal dictatorship, people will start asking questions.

Anyway, back to me moaning about Soviet military evacuations in western Russia in 41.

I demand a 'I Win the Game Button' [:D]

[kvolk]

ORIGINAL: Empire101

I know what you are saying but in my opinion the loss of Moscow would have been such a body blow to the Soviets, that they may not have recovered from it, bringing the nightmare of Nazi victory in the East one step closer. Imagine the loss of face to their own people, all their promises have turned to dust.

The Russians are a hardy people, well versed in facing up to hardship and adversity. But even the ordinary man ( and woman ) would be having second thoughts about Stalin and his cronies if millions of their soldiers were dead or missing, that half the country had been occupied by a brutal oppressor with ( in their eyes ), comparitive ease, that Nazi feelers had jolted Nationalist sentiment in the Ukraine, Baltic etc into believing that they had a chance of forming their own automonous states, ( not that Hitler would have contemplated them for one second, they would have just deluded them ), and to top it all, the heart of Government has been taken out??

Not until they had gone under the hammer and been occupied by the Nazi's would the realisation of the horror of their new masters intentions been fully appreciated, but by then it would be too late.

Even in a brutal dictatorship, people will start asking questions.

Anyway, back to me moaning about Soviet military evacuations in western Russia in 41.

I demand a 'I Win the Game Button' [:D]

Yo make some good points and the what if's of this conflict is the fun part of this game and the debate it ingenders. I will add that you only have to look at how hitler responded to the over whelming attack of the soviets. He didn't stop until the soviets blew up his bunker in berlin. That being said I think the loss of Moscow would have caused issues that would have made it harder on the soviets without a doubt.

I think that button shows up around turn 226[;)]

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Most divisions also have some sort of engineer/pioneer and/or construction troops attached to them, and you don't need an engineering degree to create, say, a log bunker. Field manuals also tend to include detailed descriptions of how to create various kinds of defences with natural materials.

This is a very good point. And one of the most important things these engineer troops brought with them was a wagon load of tools specifically meant for digging in. While a wagon load of tools may sound silly, a real shovel is magnitudes better than your typical entrenching tool.

Everywhere I read the Soviets impressed the civilian poplulation into digging earthworks. Women, children, old people, men not able to fight.

[Lieste]

A WW1 German Infantry Regt carried:
1200 small shovels (entrenching tools) on the men (1 in 2), 30 Shovels in the combat unit, 230 shovels in the trains, 120 pickaxes on the men (1 in 20), 15 picks in the combat unit, 65 in the trains.
60 hatchets on the men (1 in 40), 15 hatchets and 24 axes in the combat unit, 30 hatchets and 30 axes in the trains, 12 cross cut saws in the combat unit, 2 cross cut and 6 hand saws in the trains.

The engineers were separate, and carried their own equipment.

The two wars are different, but much is similar, particularly in the low level formations in the infantry...

[Mehring]

If the Germans had put themselves at the head of some kind of war liberation, who knows what might have happened? There were indeed plenty of folks in Soviet Russia who hated the Soviet state, victims of purges, gulags, and collectivized agriculture.

It's a safe bet that the end result would not have been turned by the dressing given to their predatory designs. As the bolsheviks re-learned Robespierre in their foolish attempt to turn a defensive war against Poland into an offensive war of liberation, nations do not appreciate liberation at the point of a bayonet.

The republics of the "Soviet Union" had little sense of independent national identity or history of organic independence movements (see E.H Carr The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-23 vol 1) to which an invader might appeal, even in the most popular area of counter-factual speculation, the Ukraine.

As in Germany, the Russian population had been defeated and cowed by their ruling class, organisationally atomised and enslaved. At such a point, psycological mechanisms come into play which help people endure their indignity, hardship and proximity to death. As the mind lags behind the event, such mechanisms as "identification with the oppressor" endure after a liberation, supposed or real. How many people "loved Stalin" years and decades after he was gone? How many beaten and abused children "love their father" to their own dying day?

One technique of nation subjugation is to create a privilaged native buffer stratum between the invader (or domestic ruling class) and mass of the population. This is a complex operation and requires the surrender of some of the loot, just to grease enough palms to make it work.

Germany could not afford such compromises, given the very non-ideological foundations for their invasion. Even if the nazis had abstained from their ideologically driven mass executions and vile reprisals, I can think of no historically analogous situation which might make plausible, the prospect of the Axis bringing anything but a small minority of Russians on side.

[Flaviusx]

Mehring, I'm agnostic on the issue. I actually do not know what would have happened.

My main point is this: it didn't happen. Whatever possibility existed for winning over the peoples of the Soviet Union was thrown away from the getgo. That's why making comparisons with Brest Litovsk don't fly. The Nazis weren't interested in Brest Litovsk mark 2, their aims went well beyond that, and their means precluded any kind of negotiated settlement or even setting up a cluster of dependant protectorates around a rump Russian state. Nor do I believe the Soviets would throw in the towel just as a result of Moscow.

[Mynok]

The republics of the "Soviet Union" had little sense of independent national identity or history of organic independence movements

Completely false for the Baltic States and Ukraine.

Look how fast the Soviet Union split up after perestroika. Blindingly fast. Nope, I don't buy that lack of national identity at all. In fear of the army, sure.

[Klydon]

Yeah, I agree with Mynok. Think you have to go republic by republic. The Baltic states especially since they were occupied for less than 2 years. The "Russians" (be it the Czar or Communists) had been having issues with the Ukraine for a long time. While "Russia" itself perhaps may not have been a target for becoming "allies" with the Reich to overthrow Communist rule, then certainly some of the republics were keen on getting rid of Russian rule, but not at the expense of German rule. What most average US and Western people do not realize is just how ethnically diverse the Soviet Union was and along with that, the amount of persecution that went along racial lines as well.