Stalingrad?

[spence]

There is never any way to prove a historical "what if".

The question boils down to whether or not Stalin's grip on power was so strong by late 1942 that no one would dare to usurp his power. There were and are some who dream of the "good ole days" of his rule. But there were also millions whose father/mother/brother/sister/uncle/aunt/cousin were taken away by the NKVD or who were given the "opportunity" to explore the frontiers of the Soviet Union by that same leader and who may not have been so enamored by his continued position of leadership. The Germans were certainly able to convince a significant number of individuals that Stalin's days were numbered.

There are some who reduce WW2 to a computer program's summation of guns and men and industrial production. They might do well to remember the Pentagon computer's answer to Richard Nixon's 1969 query as the appropriate strategy to win the war in Vietnam: "The war was won in 1965".

[rustysi]

Playing the Devil's advocate is what I do.

The world becomes very bland if everyone agrees on everything.

Yeah, I got that, its cool, and kinda fun just to banter back and forth.

[rustysi]

There is never any way to prove a historical "what if".

Yup.

[btd64]

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

ORIGINAL: rustysi

It's quite easy to draw comparisons with the Soviet Union in 1941 - with the shambles of the Red Army in 1941 and the failure to hold Stalingrad in 1942 providing the motivation for some of the Soviet High Command to seriously consider replacing Stalin.

Don't doubt for one minute that Stalin would have been history, may have been one of the best things to ever happen to the Soviet people. Just don't believe the country would have given up.

The problem is that once Stalin goes, the entire framework of loyalty, fear and suspicion that Stalin's regime was founded on goes with it.

That's fine if it's peacetime and there's no aggressive external threat to worry about.

It's quite another matter when you're in a fight-to-the-death with a major power, and losing.

On top of that, you also have Stalin's role in Soviet propaganda. The cult of personality around Stalin had him in the center of the fight against the Germans - make it known that Stalin is no more, and that's a blow that's going to have an impact on the factory floor as well as the meeting room of the politburo.

After Stalin was gone, the soviet government would have sued for peace and cut there loses. Then quietly built up their army and kicked the Axis out. Just my thoughts. Also as mentioned, Stalingrad was a symbol of the leadership of the USSR. That being said, The people may have taken matters into there own hands. My two cents....GP

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: spence

There is never any way to prove a historical "what if".

The question boils down to whether or not Stalin's grip on power was so strong by late 1942 that no one would dare to usurp his power. There were and are some who dream of the "good ole days" of his rule. But there were also millions whose father/mother/brother/sister/uncle/aunt/cousin were taken away by the NKVD or who were given the "opportunity" to explore the frontiers of the Soviet Union by that same leader and who may not have been so enamored by his continued position of leadership. The Germans were certainly able to convince a significant number of individuals that Stalin's days were numbered.

There are some who reduce WW2 to a computer program's summation of guns and men and industrial production. They might do well to remember the Pentagon computer's answer to Richard Nixon's 1969 query as the appropriate strategy to win the war in Vietnam: "The war was won in 1965".

Vietnam was largely an insurgency which is a very different military situation than a standard army on army. Insurgencies take a completely different modeling approach if you want accurate answers. I don't think the US military had anywhere close to the right models in the 1970s. I won't talk about more recent conflicts. Let's keep modern politics out of this.

Bill

[geofflambert]

Even in WWII cavalry (the real kind on horses) can be quite useful. The Mongols and the Cossacks as well. I know a lady who was in Wien when Cossack cavalry arrived to take possession of the city. To her it was very much like the arrival of Ghengis Khan. The clopping on all those bricks by all those hooves!

[jmalter]

ORIGINAL: spence
Volume 1 of "Eisenhower's Lieutenants" discusses the prewar/early war planning for troop strength.
It speaks of plans for quite a few more divisions than were actually raised although I have forgotten exactly how many. Roughly 200 or so seems about right. In the event, IIRC the US raised 95 divisions but had enough extra bits and pieces (independent regiments and battalions) to amalgamate another 60 or so divisions and provide enough manpower for a large air force and navy and an "arsenal of democracy".

I think you're right, spence.
But the USArmy was never able to provide enough riflemen to make up for troop-losses in the combat-capable divisions. Draftee replacement-depot troops added to an InfDiv & new OCS-graduate officers could fill out the numbers of the TO/E, but have a negligible effect to a formation that had previously suffered large losses.

[Jim D Burns]

We're forgetting the impact that the fall of Stalingrad would have on Russian morale and internal politics.

1941 had been an absolute disaster for the Russians, and 1942 hadn't exactly been the annus mirabilis either. Leningrad was still under siege and despite the gains made around Rzhev, the Germans had still managed to come up trumps at 2nd Kharhov. A great deal of the Soviet Union was still under German/Axis occupation.

Stalin was throwing the kitchen sink into defending the city with his name. If it had fallen, it's easy to see that a sense of defeatism could have crept into the Soviet High Command - they'd thrown the Germans back from Moscow, but the Germans had bounced back and Case Blau looked like it was going to be 1941 all over again.

Stalin knew that the GPW was a fight for his own life, let alone anything else, so the most likely scenario would be a coup that puts him out of the picture and sends overtures of terms to the Germans allowing the Soviets to cut their losses and run for the Urals to bide their time.

Khrushchev, probably more than any other Soviet figure, was ideally placed to judge both the military and the political situation during the Battle of Stalingrad. If he says that the Soviet Union would have collapsed if the city had fallen, I'd be inclined to take his word for it. Granted - with a pinch of salt: it does his reputation and ego no harm to be known to have been involved in the battle that decided the fate of the Soviet Union.

For all intents and purposes, the city was captured from a war production and transportation point of view. As soon as the Germans reached the outskirts of the city in September the only war production that took place was done using what materials were already on hand. No new raw materials arrived and what was produced rolled off the lines and entered the fight within the city to be lost in short order in the street fighting.

So from September until February, Stalingrad no longer served as a production hub and transportation through the city on to other parts of the country no longer occurred. Even so, the Soviet Union showed no discernible drop in transportation efficiency due to oil shortages nor a major drop off in production. They found ways around the logjam in their transportation net.

Given these facts I doubt the permanent loss of the city would have made any difference as the effect of the Germans occupying Stalingrad was already baked into the pie as it were during the period of fighting between Sept.-Feb. There would have been a prestige hit and Stalin would have probably insisted on major efforts to retake the city, but the cities loss would have been a minor effect overall to the war effort I’d think.

Jim

[Bearcat2]

FYI railroads in the USSR during WW2. Stalingrad looks more important for river transport than rail transport. From the map, Stalingrad is not a bottleneck, there is rail to the east of Stalingrad.


http://users.tpg.com.au/adslbam9//Railways1941.png

[HansBolter]

Kharkov changed hands SIX times....the most fought over city of the war.

Neither side collapsed as a result in any of the six iterations.

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Kharkov changed hands SIX times....the most fought over city of the war.

Neither side collapsed as a result in any of the six iterations.

Kharkov wasn't the Russian "line in the sand", nor did it have the strategic and political importance of Stalingrad.

[spence]

If one looks at the map today one finds that it is not even Russian but rather part of Ukraine.
I might add that it was also not the namesake of any particular "fearless leader".

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

We're forgetting the impact that the fall of Stalingrad would have on Russian morale and internal politics.

1941 had been an absolute disaster for the Russians, and 1942 hadn't exactly been the annus mirabilis either. Leningrad was still under siege and despite the gains made around Rzhev, the Germans had still managed to come up trumps at 2nd Kharhov. A great deal of the Soviet Union was still under German/Axis occupation.

Stalin was throwing the kitchen sink into defending the city with his name. If it had fallen, it's easy to see that a sense of defeatism could have crept into the Soviet High Command - they'd thrown the Germans back from Moscow, but the Germans had bounced back and Case Blau looked like it was going to be 1941 all over again.

Stalin knew that the GPW was a fight for his own life, let alone anything else, so the most likely scenario would be a coup that puts him out of the picture and sends overtures of terms to the Germans allowing the Soviets to cut their losses and run for the Urals to bide their time.

Khrushchev, probably more than any other Soviet figure, was ideally placed to judge both the military and the political situation during the Battle of Stalingrad. If he says that the Soviet Union would have collapsed if the city had fallen, I'd be inclined to take his word for it. Granted - with a pinch of salt: it does his reputation and ego no harm to be known to have been involved in the battle that decided the fate of the Soviet Union.

I disagree. The Soviets had very little invested in Stalingrad in the first place. Only enough troops to keep the Germans busy. Most of the city was already destroyed, the population dead or evacuated and the industry moved. Aside from a block of the Volga, the Germans stood to gain little from a strategic standpoint. Even if they were thrown out of the city the Soviets were massing monster tank armies on both flanks. Those tank armies would not have packed up and headed for home. Forget the morale issue. The Russians had already lost Kiev, Smolensk and most of Western Russia (not to mention millions of lives) and never really flinched. If they had not caved by then what makes it so certain that the loss of another city would have made any difference? There was a chance in 41 but by then end of 1942 the population was in it to the bitter end and the leadership was more than recovered from the disasters of the previous year. They knew that they were already outproducing the Germans and were thinking about winning. I suspect that the loss of Stalingrad would have just adjusted the lines back a bit and the Soviets would have picked themselves up and gotten back to the business of killing Germans.

Perhaps the Axis could have won the war in 41 (but I doubt it) but by the end of 1942 they were already losing.

The Soviets had very little invested in Stalingrad? While it was a Soviet victory in the end one shouldn't forget that with 250,000 wounded, killed or MIA on German side, the Soviets had twice of those losses. They could afford it, like they could afford all their victories, but until late in the war, those victories always cost more Russian losses than German ones. I'd say at the time of Stalingrad the Soviets were trying all they could and invested all they could in that area. If they would have invested very little there, the front would have been 500km further East of Stalingrad as it wasn't all that easy to defeat the German Army in 42.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Kharkov changed hands SIX times....the most fought over city of the war.

Neither side collapsed as a result in any of the six iterations.

Kharkov wasn't the Russian "line in the sand", nor did it have the strategic and political importance of Stalingrad.

Sorry you missed the point entirely. I'll spell it out more clearly. No one city on the eastern front would cause the collapse of one side or the other.

This includes Moscow. Try asking the short Frenchman with his hand tucked in his jacket how he faired after taking it.

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Kharkov changed hands SIX times....the most fought over city of the war.

Neither side collapsed as a result in any of the six iterations.

Kharkov wasn't the Russian "line in the sand", nor did it have the strategic and political importance of Stalingrad.

Sorry you missed the point entirely. I'll spell it out more clearly. No one city on the eastern front would cause the collapse of one side or the other.

This includes Moscow. Try asking the short Frenchman with his hand tucked in his jacket how he faired after taking it.

Alexander abandoned Moscow.

Stalin didn't.

That's the key difference.

[HansBolter]

You can belabor this all you want and it won't invalidate the point that no single city falling on the eastern front was going to cause the collapse of either side.

[pontiouspilot]

A German victory ot Stalingrad would not have outright won the war but made the possiblity of a separate peace with USSR a possibility. Conversly however the Russian victory sealed Germany's ultimate fate.

Has anyone read any historical work written about the behind the scenes poltics of the war in Russia during these years?

[Lecivius]

ORIGINAL: pontiouspilot

Has anyone read any historical work written about the behind the scenes poltics of the war in Russia during these years?

A good question, and one I would be interested in the answer as well.

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: pontiouspilot

A German victory ot Stalingrad would not have outright won the war but made the possiblity of a separate peace with USSR a possibility. Conversly however the Russian victory sealed Germany's ultimate fate.

Has anyone read any historical work written about the behind the scenes poltics of the war in Russia during these years?

Beevor's Stalingrad touches on the political concern Stalin had over it. From what I understand of Khrushchev's memoirs (not read it), it only touches breifly on his service in Stalingrad. Khrushchev saying that Stalingrad was the "deciding point" is pretty good evidence, but his testimony could be self-serving.

[Symon]

Boy, oh boy, that’s something that touches close to home for those of us who were on the Sov desk way back when. From the contemporary Sov sources, I think you have it right.

It was not a tactical, or even operational imperative, as much as it was a political one. Just take a few moments to review the minutes of Stalin’s meeting with Zhukov, and the STAVKA orders for StAK. Very informative.

[ed] pay particular attention to the text of the STAVKA authorization for Uranus on 4 November.

Ciao. JWE