IceBreakChron IV: IGNITING THE WAR

Started by JasonPratt, April 08, 2020, 07:54:47 AM

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JasonPratt

#30
There is another subtly important detail: this universal conscription level is planned for only two years.

While Suvorov may lean a little too heavily on this, the fundamental point is that Stalin and his high command have started a ticking clock (one of several to come) ending two years from now.

Why? -- can't the conscription be extended? Sure, under various circumstances: to give the most obvious possible example, conscription won't end on September 1st 1941 with a Nazi invasion grinding more than two months already through western Russia! But Stalin and his high command don't know yet that he'll be dealing with a Nazi invasion at that time.

Isn't a two year conscription just standard flexible protocol? Yes and no: this is the first universal conscription in the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the closest parallel being the prior Civil War while World War I was still finishing out, before the USSR per se even existed), so there's nothing "standard" about this at all!

What does regularly happen around this time, which would have a bearing on practical conscription limits, is Russia's harvest. Stalin has been murderously starving his people since the mid-20s, in order to gear up his military-industrial base; and his radical socialist plans haven't turned out to be most efficient (to say the least) in growing the crops which he has been selling off to (partly) fund this expansion -- and storing to feed his ever-expanding military. Stalin does have something like a strategic food reserve, but it's slated for military use.

Thus, as long as Stalin just cycles his conscripted reservists in and out on relatively short-term cycles of training, or never calls them in at all (even for training, much less for actual mobilization), then Soviet harvest plans (such as they are), and industrial plans, can continue with only proportionate added strain: the strain of absent workers off on training, and the strain of clothing, feeding, equipping, and housing at least one million new soldiers, not only in production but also in the logistics of getting the soldiers and their supplies together for training.

But, if Stalin ever starts truly mobilizing his universal conscription -- and plans are being laid here to do just this, within the two year limit! -- then he will smack headfirst into Shaposhnikov's long-running mobilization theory (keeping in mind that Shaposhnikov is very much involved in the political setup here, including a week ago with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact): a modern nation the size of Russia must go to war once mobilization starts. If so many men are in arms when a harvest time comes, under the dangerously thin circumstances of Soviet harvest practices in past years, a mass starvation will happen, among soldier and civilian alike, unlike anything yet seen, even by the Soviet Union through the millions of deaths of the Five-Year Plans!

Stalin and Shaposhnikov worked out back in 1929, that you can mask your mobilization by cycling your universal conscription in and out; but if Stalin ever starts seriously mobilizing his universal conscription, the Soviet Union must go to war -- and go to war somewhere else, where there's food to raid -- or else the Soviet Union will perish, at least as a government and also somewhat literally in its population.

The only way the Soviet Union might survive without invading someone else (someone with enough food to even thinly feed the Soviet Union another year), would be if someone else invaded the Soviet Union so strongly as to kill off or imprison (and so take over feeding) enough of those mouths for even a lack of Soviet harvest and strategic reserves to survive. Which would be a much different kind of disaster.
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JasonPratt

Ideologically, however, this first Soviet universal conscription resolution is no mere casual training flexibility for potential usage someday (like the parachuting infantry training program among Soviet civilian men over the past decade, to give a very successful prior ongoing example). Soviet theories about the final revolutionary world war, require such a universal conscription as necessary to prepare for this final, ultimate war.

The Politburo and Supreme Soviet are well aware of these ideological implications, because this collection of the extended congress was summoned for an emergency session precisely on the ground that the second world war has (somehow) already started! -- the second world war which Lenin, and after him Stalin, have been expecting since the end of World War One, and which Stalin has been ideologically training Soviet citizens about. In Soviet social-military ideology, this Second Imperialist War (as they like to call it) is necessary to break down the power of the property owners so that a worldwide revolutionary militant uprising of the workers and peasants can (and 'scientifically' will) succeed.

So conceptually, this universal conscription has an ideological goal of converting exactly into a level of mobilization which will be fatal to the Soviet Union if they don't go seize national and international levels of property and resources from somewhere else! -- an invasion on the grandest possible scale which happens to be the ideological plan anyway!

Would five million troops be enough for the grandest possible scale? No of course not; that would be silly. Prior Soviet theories about their role in the final revolutionary world war estimated ten million troops being necessary at a minimum.

But don't worry! -- the universal conscription law just happens to allow for, and thus foresees a need for, EIGHTEEN million troops!

They don't all have to be ready in time for the two year limit, but that's the goal the conscription is aiming at: a goal totally in line with Soviet ideology about conquering the nations of the world. For the people, of course.  ::)

And this conscription isn't only an ideological lip service (of potentially suicidal intensity): resolutions here include plans to conscript, create, train, and then mobilize westward (eventually) several dozens of divisions in Russian interior military districts, within the next two years.

As an example, a little later this month the Urals Military District will create the 85th and 159th Rifle Divisions. On the day before Barbarossa, where will these Ural divisions be? All the way westward across the entire eventual theater of the Great Patriotic War! The 85th will be bumped up to the border near Augustov, watching elements of an NKVD mobile response division cutting down Soviet barbed wire. (The Nazis will have started cutting their wire for invading Russia a few weeks prior, as the Soviets on the border will be well aware!) The 159th will be sitting on the Romanian border, in Rava-Russkaya, as part of the 6th Army (about which more later). The 85th and 159th Divisions being over there, at a border which (largely) doesn't exist yet in September 1939, is no historical accident: their appearance and redeployment fit precisely into the ideological plan of universal conscription being implemented now. (So does the creation of much of that future border, by the Soviet Union joining and exploiting the Nazi invasion of Poland this month.)

Later in 1939, the Urals MD will create the 110th, 125th, and 128th Rifle Divisions, all to be eventually parked on a German frontier which doesn't yet exist. According to Soviet sources (unsourced by Suvorov), 125th will be "right on the border" of Eastern Prussia, i.e. in Baltic nations which Stalin will order captured next year in 1940.

While these particular divisions will be part of the First Strategic Echelon, the Supreme Soviet formalizes plans here for the eventual creation of the Second Strategic Echelon, too. Not counting the divisions already moved, another seventy-seven will be grouped into armies on June 13th, 1941, and start moving westward -- based ultimately on this resolution (and the Politburo resolution of August 19th, 1939).

The Soviet government isn't starting World War II here: in their (political and ideological) estimation, that started already back before Zhukov was invading Manchuria! Instead, they're planning to start a war AFTER the (ideologically expected) Second World War. Specifically, they're planning to start the final revolutionary world war for bringing all property and resources and means of production, including all people as the ultimate key means of production, under the control of the Communist International and its leader(s).

And they're planning to start this final, ultimate world war, sometime before September 1st, 1941.
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JasonPratt

Meanwhile, getting back to the current world war... ;)

September 3, 1939: Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany due to his invasion of Poland, pledging to guarantee the sovereignty of Poland and to rescue the nation from Nazi invasion. After all, the USSR hasn't teamed up with Hitler, so there is not much reason to be frightened of Nazi Germany yet by itself -- even Italy has not yet joined Hitler's war!

Stalin will however order the Communists of the Western democracies to oppose the war -- specifically, to oppose the western democracies going to war against Hitler!

Stalin will portray this as a plot by capitalist imperialists to use Hitler's invasion of Poland as an excuse to go in and take over Germany. The Comintern also orders its members to organize worker strikes at western armament and airplane factories. Hitler, on the other hand, is promoted in Communist propaganda as a fighter for the working classes, launching revolutionary action. (The Comintern doesn't bother ordering its members to organize worker strikes at Nazi armament and airplane factories; partly because Hitler destroyed the German Communist Party already.)


September 3, 1939, Hitler notices that Stalin has still not invaded, and sends a reminder of their treaty obligations. After all, the whole reason Hitler had felt safe declaring war to seize Poland, was because Stalin had told him Britain and France weren't prepared to fight him for Poland (except Stalin had instead received numerous strong assurances they would); and the whole reason Hitler had called off his initial invasion of Poland more than a week ago, intending to beat Stalin to the punch in seizing Polish territory, was that Britain had given him a final ultimatum not to invade.

Consequently, Hitler had waited to stage a joint invasion with Stalin, so that Britain and France might be leery of teaming up against both of them together; and now Stalin isn't invading! -- leading both western nations to feel safe declaring war on Hitler!
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JasonPratt

September 4, 1939, in his opposition bulletin for this month (page uncited by Suvorov), Trotsky reminds the world that "the Kremlin had fed oil to the Italian campaign into Abyssinia... Is it unclear why Hitler began the advance on Poland immediately after the embraces between Ribbentrop and Molotov? Stalin knew very well what he was doing. For an attack against Poland and a war against England and France, Hitler needed favorable 'neutrality' from the USSR -- plus Soviet raw materials! The political and economic agreement provides Hitler with one and the other."

Suvorov claims that this is the point at which Stalin starts sending out assassins; Trotsky has shed too much light on the situation.

Without Soviet petroleum, chrome, tin, nickel, platinum, iron ore (Hitler doesn't have a gun to Sweden's head yet), cotton, grain, manganese, copper, vanadium, molybdenum (both together important as an alloy for making submarine and aircraft equipment, not only screwdrivers!), and tungsten, Hitler would not have been able to unleash war in Europe. Cut him off, and Hitler must fail his war soon.

But Stalin has no plans to cut Hitler off anytime soon.


September 5, 1939: the (official) head of the Soviet government Vyacheslav Molotov, also acting as its chief foreign minister, replies to the Nazi reminder of joint invasion (after another two days have passed  >:D ), "We agree with you that concrete action has to be taken at an appropriate time. However, we consider that such time has not come yet. It is possible that we are mistaken, but it appears to us that excessive haste could cause us harm and facilitate unification among our enemies." (cited in Yury Felshtinsky, ed., "It Must Be Published: USSR-Germany 1939-1941, Documents and Materials", 1991, p.90.)

This is a masterful level of diplomatic trolling! Stalin has left Hitler holding the bag for the public start of World War II, and Hitler is reduced to begging them to keep their promise and invade Poland with him! However, there is a real rock of truth in Stalin's reply through Molotov; and a very serious concern, to be addressed by Stalin's government a few days from now...
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JasonPratt

#34
September 7, 1939: Georgi Dimitrov, the general secretary of the Comintern, records in his diary today how Stalin (in the presence of Molotov and Zhdanov) explained to the leaders of the Comintern his new line of foreign policy! -- i.e. why is Stalin now promoting Hitler as a socialist hero striking a blow for workers' justice against capitalist oppression?! And why has Stalin directed Molotov to sign a non-agression treaty with secret protocols for dividing up Poland (which hasn't started yet and won't for more than another week)?

"The war," explains Stalin, "is between two groups of capitalist nations," -- flipping over again to regard Hitler's National Socialist Workers' Party as capitalist, by the way. "But we are not against it, if they fight a bit and weaken each other. It would be good if Germany could destabilize the positions of the wealthiest capitalist nations, of England especially. Hitler, without knowing it, is weakneing the foundations of the capitalist system... We, in the meantime, are able to maneuver, to nudge one country on against the other, so that the fight will be more intense." (per Lev Bezymenskiy's "Hitler and Stalin before the Fight", 2000, p.290; also found  in A.O. Chubarian, ed., "War and Politics, 1939-1941", 1999, pp.38,97.)

This echoes the gist of the secret August 19th Politburo meeting where Stalin declared universal conscription must start, on the basis that the second world war had already begun -- where on that day, Stalin had ceased diplomacy with Britain and France, to offer to split up Poland with the Nazis!

However, Stalin has also quietly suffered some unease about his plan. After all, he has been supplying Hitler with the means to make this war for some time already; and he has directed the Soviet trade delegation in Berlin to strongly extend that trade agreement; and he did this just after ceasing negotiations with Britain and France, and inviting Ribbentrop to Moscow; all of which the other nations can easily see or discover (even though the specifics of the non-aggression pact and its secret protocols remain secret for now). Plus now Stalin has changed his propaganda about Hitler to defending him as a hero for the working class against property owners! And now the other nations can easily see that he is not demanding Hitler to cease invading Poland -- nor is Stalin cutting off Hitler's warmaking supplies! On the contrary, Stalin has directed his foreign diplomatic service to agitate other nations along the line that Britain and France instigated this war in order to gang up and conquer Germany, and so Stalin's Communists have been calling for peace on that ground: a peace for leaving Hitler alone to do what he wants with Poland (thus brokering Hitler's offer of peace to the initial allies against him).

How, after all, will Britain and France and their own allies read this? They must realize by now that Stalin is supporting Hitler's war more-or-less directly, even though he has not invaded Poland himself from the other side. Will they try to woo Stalin over to their side with diplomatic carrots? Or will they take a hard line and extend their war declaration to the Soviet Union?!

And these questions must only be amplified by Stalin's plans to indeed invade Poland sometime soon: to keep his pact with Hitler, to forestall Hitler taking all of Poland on Russia's current border, and of course to enact a "liberation crusade" of the typical Soviet sort onto as much of Poland as he can get -- which he knows full well will not be the heroic rescue of Poland that his propaganda will paint it as, and which he knows the western allies will also know (even if they won't quite know for decades to come, the extent of how many murders he will hide).
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JasonPratt

Just to be safe, on this same evening of September 7, 1939, Stalin executes a BUS order.

Under the People's Commissar Decree No.2/1/50698 of May 20, 1939, the acronym BUS (in Russian with English letters) was set up as a coded signal for covert mobilization; in English the acronym would be something like BTC, "Big Training Call-up". BUS with an "A" designation means deployment of individual units with the operational readiness date of up to ten days for their support elements to reach war-level strength.

This BUS order is to be executed with maximum secrecy, or as much as possible when Stalin is quickly calling up for "training" the headquarters of:

twenty-two rifle corps;
five cavalry corps;
three tank corps;
ninety-eight rifle divisions;
twenty-eight tank brigades;
three mechanized infantry brigades;
fourteen cavalry brigades (because if you're going this far already then why not?!);
and one airborne brigade.

These are to be deployed in the seven military districts along Russia's western frontier.

Naturally, the headquarters just start the process as containers for the arrival of troops. But in total, 2,610,136 men are drafted.

This is on top of another draft Stalin's government already instigated a couple of days ago! Under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Decree #1348-268cc, a new military draft was supposed to start from September 5th to reinforce the troops in the Far East region, plus one thousand men for each newly formed division -- looking forward to the divisions being authorized today, a few days later!

Under the new universal conscription duty, the call-up period for 190,000 soldiers already drafted in 1939 was extended by one year.
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JasonPratt

September 16, 1939: Hitler has been repeatedly reminding the USSR government about their obligation to invade Poland together, but Stalin keeps refusing, requiring more delays of two or three or four days! This has lasted two and a half weeks.

NKVD SOF battalions have been assembled on the Polish eastern border, and are awaiting orders, according to a report filed by the political section of the Kiev Military District border guards. These will be the first to cross the borders during the Soviet invasions, not only of Poland, but over the next ten months also in Bessarabia, Bukovina, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland (not in that order, however -- Finland first, Bessarabia and Bukovina last).

As expected from SpecOp invasions, their job is to secure invasion routes by knocking out enemy border posts, cutting communications, eliminating minor enemy concentrations, and terrorizing area inhabitants to prevent them lending aid to defenders. Once the Red Army catches up with them, their job is to cleanse the territory, catching and executing undesirables, handing others over to security convoys to send back behind Soviet lines for imprisonment. Notably most will be kept imprisoned by the NKVD security convoys under the authority of the SOF, and never handed over alive even to the Gulags!

September 17, 1939: the Red Army invades Poland. Secret police units launch operations under orders from NKVD Brigade Commander Bogdanov, "At dawn on September 17, 1939, Byelorussian front armies will go on the offensive to support the insurgent workers and peasants of Byelorussia."

The idea is that thanks to Hitler's invasion over the past two and a half weeks, the worker revolution is now underway in Poland, and so the Red Army is going in to lend a hand to the peasants in their efforts. As part of this "support" program, thousands of Polish soldiers, priests, doctors, and intellectuals, will soon be massacred by the Soviet invaders in the Katyn Forest, to be blamed on the Nazis, and only acknowledged by Moscow as a Soviet atrocity in April of 1990.


September 18, 1939: Pravda prints a Soviet TASS radio announcement from Molotov explaining the invasion, "Poland has become a convenient staging-area for all kinds of accidents and surprises that might threaten the USSR... The Soviet Government can no longer remain neutral in the face of these facts... In view of this situation the Soviet Government has notified Red Army General Headquarters to order troops to cross the border and place the lives and property of the population under their protection... to free the Polish people from the disastrous war, into which they were plunged by foolish governments, and to give the people the chance to settle down to a peaceful life."

Who made Poland such a convenient staging-area for the Red Army to invade under the pretext of reducing all kinds of accidents and surprises that might threaten the USSR? Which "foolish leaders plunged" the Polish people (as Molotov puts it in this propaganda) into "a disastrous war", so that the Red Army must come "pull the Polish people out" and "to give them the chance to settle down to a peaceful life"?

Hitler, of course; but also Stalin, when he directed Molotov himself to sign a Pact inviting Hitler to invade and divide up Poland with Stalin.

This is another example of Stalin's propaganda preparing the Soviet people to expect military "surprises" of some kind coming from this direction.
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JasonPratt

September 19, 1939: Soviet SOF units send around 600 prisoners in a convoy back through one small NKVD border post, to be executed later by the SOF or under their authority, including "officers, landowners, clerics, gendarmes, police". Suvorov notes that the official border guard history cuts off the sentence here, indicating some kind of censorship to a report which didn't mind clerics and landowners being sent back through the prior Soviet border to their deaths! (He doesn't speculate on what was censored instead.)


September 20, 1939 (typo'd by Suvorov apparently to read 1940?), the Red Army's strength, not counting border guards, interior counter-insurgency troops, or the navy, has reached 5,289,400.  :o

They are by far NOT in position to fight! They lack all support; logistics would take many months to get them to the front line. But just in case Britain and France and their friends regard Stalin's invasion and abuse of Poland as a final straw and lump him into the war declared on Hitler, the paperwork has at least started to get them on the way.


September 23, 1939: under the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and People's Commissar of Defense Decree #177, the 2,610,136 men called up in the draft back on September 7th are declared mobilized until a "special instruction".
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JasonPratt

September 24, 1939: (from a wiki article) warships of the Soviet Navy appear off Estonian ports, and Soviet bombers start patrolling the skies.

No shots are fired yet, but Moscow demands that Estonia must allow the USSR to establish Soviet military bases on Estonian soil as protection against Hitler, or else face invasion and conquest before Hitler gets to them.

Estonia is unaware that Hitler has already ceded interest in the region to Stalin during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but realizes that if Great Britain and France can't (or won't) come help Poland they won't be able to help the Baltic Coast states either.


September 28, 1939: (from wiki) Estonia agrees to the Soviet ultimatum. 25,000 Soviet troops start basing in the nation.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

End of September: Poland has been destroyed, mostly by Nazi Germany. Indeed, the Nazis will be required by their secret treaty to give the Soviet Union a number of important cities the Nazis actually conquered!

Britan and France do not declare war on the USSR. After all, Stalin is only reacting to put some more room between himself and the aggressive Hitler, while he still has time! -- right?  ^-^

Also, the western allies want to prevent Germany from using Soviet strategic resources, so they must turn a blind eye to Soviet atrocities to keep Stalin on their side (sort of). Stalin will send Hitler strategic resources necessary to continue the war anyway.

Poland will remain under socialist slavery for decades to come: the specific purpose for which Britain and France entered the war, to rescue Poland, will not be achieved during the Second World War -- and not in the lifetimes of the officials of Britain and France.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

Analyzing Lightning(s)
-------------------------

Comparing the Poland blitz to the Mongolian blitz, in numbers of people the Nazi operation surpassed the Soviet operation by 28 times (1.6 million troops vs only 57,000). But the Nazi blitz only had 4 times more airplanes and 6 times more tanks -- a proportion of concentration much favoring the Soviet blitz in equipment to manpower!

The Soviets also spread their tanks around more liberally in the Mongolian blitz: each Soviet Rifle Division had its own tank battalion, which isn't much but also isn't nothing (and this standard will be continued, since Stalin likes to have more tanks than God!) -- but there is not a single tank in any of the thirteen German motorized divisions in the Nazi invasion. Sure, the Soviet infantry had a battalion of T-26 tanks, but the Germany infantry don't have tanks at all! -- except in the sense that the Nazi 'panzer' (or 'armored') divisions are mostly foot infantry.

The Soviets used long-range bombers; not even 50 of them, true, but the Nazis had no such planes. He-111 medium two-engine bombers had to fill this role. The Soviet SB close-support bombers are closer to the excellent Ju-88 medium bombers in capability, but are much simpler to produce and operate.

Hitler goes to war with field artillery developed at the end of World War I, the justly famous -18 models (in two calibers, mostly the smaller). They are drawn by horses mainly. The Soviets blitzed with the best cannons, howitzers, and mortars available in the world at this time, developed only in the past few years!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

The most prevalent Nazi tank was the Panzer I, meant to be a training tank originally! -- it did not even have small 20mm cannons, only a pair of machine guns, and only its latest packages came with a 100 horsepower motor! Many still had the original 57hp. Hitler fought with 1445 of these.

His second most numerous tank was the Panzer II, with an actual but pitiful 20mm cannon. Some have 130hp engines, others the later 140hp. His heaviest tanks are 211 PzIVs, and 98 late in production PzIIIs. (They had been delayed over disputes about what kind of anti-armor gun to use, currently the "door-knocker" 37mm as found on the Nazis' own despised towed anti-tank weapon.) Some of the later models have 300hp engines, but some still have the original 250hp. The PzIV has no anti-armor gun yet, being intended as an infantry support weapon. For every thousand Nazi soldiers there were fewer than two tanks.

(Suvorov leaves out 244 Pz-35(t) and around 100 Pz-38(t) models, which I think is rather unfair, as they are reasonably good tanks even though Hitler didn't use a lot for Case White in Poland. Leaving out the "Skoda" models also skews Suvorov's stats sometimes. The (t) in parenthesis is short for the German word for Czech, thus designating a Czech model.)

The Soviet blitz used BT-5 and BT-7 tanks in the most numbers, out of 498 tanks total. Motors, 400hp and 500hp respectively. Practically all were armed with the most powerful tank cannon in the world at this time, the 45mm with the L-46 barrel (46 times the caliber in length). Even Soviet armored cars are armed with this cannon! -- and 385 such armored cars were brought to the blitz. No army in the world has anything comparable at this time. (The PzIV's 75mm short-barrel gun is not meant to fight tanks, and cannot do so effectively yet.) For every thousand Soviet soldiers, there were almost nine tanks much more powerful than Nazi ones! This gets close to the experimental ideal of 86 troops per tank determined by Soviet statistical science during WW2 later.

The BT tanks did have some unexpected problems, due to being designed with motors too strong for their transmissions on rough ground, and their tracks being designed for shedding like a parachute after only a short travel -- which led to them throwing off tracks by accident a lot. Lessons were learned about attacking a dug-in enemy, too, such as more artillery being needed than aviation for that.

Consequently, from September 1939 Stalin authorizes the unfolding of new artillery formations and the construction of new ammunition factories. Soviet strategists also take to heart the corollary, that a blitz works best on an enemy who is out of defensive alignment in their own blitz preparations!
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PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#42
Soviet troops during the Mongolian blitz may have been 26 times fewer in number than the Polish blitz, but neither were they trying to conquer and control a nation the size of Poland; and compared to the Nazi blitz they were armed to the limit with the most sophisticated modern weapons of the day.

Moreover, Poland in the very early autumn of 1939 was ripe blitzkrieg territory, with the Polish armies spread thin around a perimeter that they had been ordered not to fall back from. (Eastern Poland is not so great for blitzing, but the Soviets were able to easily get through this time due to Polish troops being drawn off to meet Hitler.) The Poles had to defend two thousand eight hundred kilometers against the Nazis -- and then had to defend the Soviet border against both the Soviet and Nazi invasions! The only serious water barrier was the Vistula, and Hitler arranged for his troops to attack on both sides of it to capture crossings.

From the main Germany border to the capital Warsaw, was 230km; from Eastern Prussia, was only 110km. No need to relocate supply bases close to the borders; peacetime supply bases would suffice. A thrust at Warsaw would not even need refilling the fuel of the tanks, aside from Polish defense resistance! -- but there were no good natural defensive areas and few fortifications. Aviation bases did not need to be moved up before the attack. Only small groups of mobile commanders (such as Guderian and his famous commanders) had to be moved forward to start the attacks.

With all these advantages, Hitler's blitzkrieg failed.

His conquest succeeded, thanks to the blitz, but he couldn't keep the blitz going. By September 15th, the Nazis were almost completely out of fuel; and without fuel, the tanks had to stop rolling forward, and the air force activity dropped off sharply. Hitler had gotten far enough by then to chip onto the green and putt in, so to speak, but suddenly the question of whether Poland could be conquered in time to be prepared for rescue attempts by Britain and France, was gravely in doubt!

Nazi high command adjusted accordingly on future operations -- one result being that they underestimated what could be accomplished in France! But another direct result of this experience, and subsequent calculations, was a grimly realistic expectation of how far they could hope to feasibly blitz in Barbarossa later: a calculation they will nail exactly. (More on this later...)

In any case, Stalin's propaganda about entering Poland to prevent Hitler from invading Russian territory was manifestly a lie for several reasons, but for this reason, too: the Polish campaign had expended the Wehrmacht, and Soviet high command knew that Nazi high command knew the lesson of Napoleon about trying to invade across the endless steppes in autumn against General Mud and General Winter. On the contrary, Soviet high command timed its entry into Poland right as the Nazi blitz was running out of ammo, bombs, and fuel! By finally coming in, as an ally to Hitler not an enemy, Stalin allowed Hitler to transfer forces tasked for conquering Eastern Poland, over to finishing off Warsaw and the western pockets. Suvorov thinks with the tanks and planes out of fuel, the surviving Polish cavalry might have foiled the invasion without Stalin's timely help! (Unlikely, in my estimate: the cavalry had already been butchered and weren't numerous enough to cause real problems to the Wehrmacht infantry; they might have counter-blitzed early against Nazi supply lines, but that time had passed.)

The Nazi blitz and its aftermath also failed in two grand strategic senses: first, it left Hitler at war with two mighty nations plus potentially the United States, with only Stalin watching his back; and second, it didn't even knock Poland out of the war!

Polish resistance starts immediately (despite Stalin trying to disband Polish partisans, more on this soon), and the Polish government evacuates with a conservative count of 350,000 trained and experienced troops including officers. At any given time afterward, around one million Polish troops will be fighting against Hitler until 1945 -- when ironically the Soviet Union will know Poland permanently out of the war and into a more brutally effective occupation for decades! But before then, the 1st and 2nd Polish armies will be part of the final assaults from the East Front into the main German homeland and into Berlin.


[Next up: HELL FREEZES OVER]
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!