IceBreakChron VI: UNBEARABLE DECISIONS

Started by JasonPratt, April 14, 2020, 12:31:35 PM

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JasonPratt

The Final Straws
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November 12, 1940: in a conference with Hitler in Berlin, Molotov presents a long list of territorial claims on behalf of the Soviet Union, especially for German forces to withdraw from Romania. Hitler refuses, claiming a need to garrison his ally, in other words to protect Romania against attack. There is only one probable, or even possible, nation who might attack Romania at this point: the Soviet Union. Hitler asks Stalin, through Molotov, to withdraw Soviet troops from the Danube delta. He gives them a few weeks to consider; but they will not agree to withdraw.

November 13, 1940, Molotov asks Stalin for instructions "about China, Turkey, and our interests regarding the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea." Stalin advises, "Do not expose our interest in Persia... If the Germans suggest a division of Turkey, you can show our cards." Stalin adds that Hitler should be told that the Soviets could propose an Alliance with the Axis but that this "[would] not be possible without a guarantee of our control of Bulgaria and the passage of our troops into Bulgaria." (From the "Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation", Fund 059, Index 1, Case 2314, Sheets 32-33; also from Storage 059, List 1, File 2315, Sheet 35-35a.)


November 13, 1940: this evening, the British air force bomb Berlin, despite assurances from the Nazi government that this could not and would not ever happen. Hitler's diplomatic meeting with Molotov which starts in a luxurious reception room, ends in an underground bomb shelter.

During the meeting, Molotov repeatedly reminds Hitler that without Soviet raw materials, German victories in Europe would have been impossible, and that it will be impossible to continue: "The current status would not have been achieved without the influence of the German-Russian agreement [of August 1939] on the great German victories." (from "It Must be Published: USSR-Germany 1939-1941", p.112.) From the "Foreign Affairs Documents: 1940 thru June 22, 1941", 21:2:61-62, "As far as Germany is concerned, these [1939] agreements secured a safe rear for Germany and played a major role in the development of a military campaign in the West, including France's defeat." From "It Must Be Published", p.112, "Germany, not without the help of the pact with the USSR, was able so quickly and with military glory to execute its operations in Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and France."

Don't let that wash by without special notice: the Soviet Union is formally and repeatedly acknowledging here that the Nazis would have been unable to wage war effectively without Soviet supply help! The Soviet government insists upon this for diplomatic leverage reasons; and the Nazi government accepts this is true but is regarding that to be beside the point of threatening the Romanian oil supply.

In reply, Hitler tells Molotov that Germany has conquered so much territory in one year of war, that Germany will need one hundred years to develop it. In other words he has no reason to be looking for more living-room (lebensraum) in the direction of Russia. This is true! -- and factors into what Hitler's goals must be in Barbarossa next year, i.e. NOT TO CONQUER AND CONTROL THE LAND (yet).

Moreover, Hitler offers for Germany and the Soviet Union to both move to the south of their borders if space is needed. Molotov agrees to this, in principle at least, but adds that the issue of the Danish straits Store Baelt and Lille Baelt must be discussed, as well as the straits between Denmark and Sweden and Norway (Sund, Kattegat, and Skagerrak). These straits however are a strategic necessity for Nazi Germany who already occupies Denmark.

Hitler tells Molotov, "While the war is going on, Germany is extremely interested in receiving nickel and timber from Finland." Hitler wants to know if Stalin is preparing another war against Finland; and, if so, could it be postponed to a later date? Molotov answers that Finland is already in the Soviet sphere of influence, as per the original 1939 Pact, and so Hitler must remove his troops. Molotov "did not understand why Russia had to postpone the realization of its plans by six months or even a year. After all, the German-Russian pact did not contain any time limits and within their respective spheres of influence neither of the countries had its hands tied." (per "It Must Be Published", p.115.)

Hitler replies that, if Molotov is talking about violating spheres of influence and positioning troops, Stalin has already violated that agreement by invading northern Bukovina and putting troops into it. Why would Stalin bother doing that? The Soviet Union has more than enough oil for both its own internal needs and for export (as Hitler himself benefits from); whereas Nazi Germany absolutely depends on Romanian oil, and will fight to protect it at any cost, including sending a huge number of German troops to Romania -- hinting that Stalin should move away from the Romanian oil. (See also "The Year 1941" Vol.1, p.377.)

Molotov acknowledges that the Soviet Union did indeed take something from Romania, and did indeed violate the 1939 pact on spheres of influence. But the Soviet Union will not give up what it has taken; and also, by the way, Stalin now wants Southern Bukovina and Bulgaria! "The fate of Romania and Hungary also interests the Soviet Union, and under no condition can it ever be indifferent to it!" (per "It Must Be Published", p.125)

Hitler reminds Molotov that they had agreed about the division of Europe in 1939. Molotov replies, "The USSR considers last year's agreement fulfilled, with the exception of the question of Finland... Now it is time to talk about a broader agreement between the USSR and Germany." (from the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation, Fund 059, Index 1, Case 2315, Sheet 35.)

During these talks tonight, Molotov does not raise questions about the security of the Soviet Union, but Hitler brings up questions of safety from a Soviet invasion of territory crucial to Germany. He receives no satisfactory reply. In the morning, Molotov returns to Moscow. "After Molotov's departure, Hitler gathered his most trusted subordinates, and clearly let them understand that he planned to invade Russia." (Basil Henry Liddel Hart, "The Second World War", Moscow edition, 1976, p.145.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

November 25, 1940: the Soviet Union proposes, to the German ambassador in Moscow, a peace pact between Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USSR -- and repeats the list of demands handed over by Molotov to Hitler 13 days ago. Stalin demands the following areas to be handed over to the Soviet Union:

1.) Pechenga, the only Finnish port on the Barents Sea, and Porkkala-Udd, the strategically located peninsula on the Baltic Sea controlling the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. (Germany has no business requiring Finland to give up anything of the sort, of course.) Also, all Nazi troops must leave Finland.

2.) Naval bases on the Danish side of the straits of Kattegat and Skagerrak, controlling access to the North Sea and to the Baltic. (This would allow the Soviet Union immediate access out of the corked bottle of the Baltic, and would totally surround Hitler's Scandavian naval supply lines.)

3.) A Yugoslavian naval base on the Adriatic Sea. (This would give Stalin a diplomatic pretext to insist upon transition rights for Soviet Naval forces out of the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean.)

4.) A naval base in the Greek port of Thessaloniki. (Ditto! -- and these bases, as per Stalin's invasion of the Baltic States, would be staging grounds for Soviet infantry to erupt from.)

5.) The province of Southern Bukovina in Romania. (Not simply to complete a set! -- this would allow Stalin to stage forces within the Carpathian mountains themselves, instead of only near the mountains. Also, of course, nearer to those all-important Nazi oil fields.)

6.) Bulgaria. Not ceding the whole nation of Bulgaria per se, but relinquishing Nazi interest in favor of being in the Soviet sphere of influence. This has some historical weight at least, in regard to prior Russian pan-Slavic diplomacy, although Bulgaria would be pressured by the Nazis into signing a direct Soviet alliance, which of course would be an immediate permission for Stalin to put in all the troops he wants.

7.) Turkish bases in the Bosporus and Dardanelles. (These would ensure the Soviet Navy could get out to the other Mediterranean bases, and also serve as staging areas for Soviet land forces. The Axis powers have no business ceding Turkish bases, of course.)

8.) Iranian bases in the Persian Gulf. (This would instantly control the flow of Middle Eastern oil to the rest of the world; though again the Axis have no business ceding Iranian territory.)

9.) Land territories south of the Baku-Batumi line (in eastern Turkey, north of Iraq and Iran) transferred to the Soviet sphere of influence. (This isn't the same as ceding actual territory -- belonging to other nations outside the diplomatic agreement! -- but rather just an agreement that the Nazis won't complain if Stalin invades and conquers those areas, as staging for further conquests into the Middle East.)

10.) Last but not least, Japan's renunciation of its oil concessions in the province of Northern Sakhalin. (Essentially undoing Russia's loss to Japan back in their own war before WW1.)

As you might expect, the Axis Powers have no interest, or even capability in some cases, of meeting such ludicrous demands -- not unless Italy and Germany conquer Turkey and Iran first, for example! (Admittedly, they were making plans to get around to that eventually.) The Axis do not bother responding.
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!

JasonPratt

November 25, 1940: on the same day that Stalin sends that list of insultingly preposterous demands to the Axis Powers (as part of an offered Axis Alliance with the USSR), the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko, and Chief of General Staff of the Red Army General K.A. Meretskov, sign a directive to the staff of the Leningrad Military District (Meretskov's former post before and during the Winter War). Only one original is produced, no copies, and it is labeled top-secret and "of special importance" (a label applying to military operations in wartime).

This directive, extensively quoted by Suvorov in "Chief Culprit", effectively establishes a Northern Front (north of Lake Ladoga in effect, up to the Arctic Ocean), and a Northwestern Front (run from the LMD), for conquering Finland in the event of a war against Finland alone. This plan of action is given the name "S.3-20", and the potential Fronts are ordered to go into action at the moment of a receipt of a coded telegram with the signature of the chief of the general staff reading, "Commence execution of plan S.3-20." (per "The Year 1941", Vol.1, pp418-23.) The directive has no defensive language, such as the typical qualification "if the enemy wages war upon us". Soviet armed forces, land and sea and air, are simply instructed how and where to advance, upon receipt of the command, to the Gulf of Bothnia, to the Aland Islands, and to the Swedish border. The other significant Finnish nickel mines used by Hitler, are at Aland, and of course the Petsamo mines already have a Soviet division standing guard on them; moreover, once the Aland Islands are taken, they act as a sea and air base to obstruct (or redirect!) Swedish iron ore from reaching Germany.

These instructions formally refute the notion that Stalin needed to conquer and occupy the Baltic States to protect himself from Hitler. On the contrary, had Hitler been fool enough to attack them, Soviet forces would have had two or three days to prepare to receive visitors at the Fortified Sectors along the Baltic borders, while Stalin would have easily launched naval and air raids, along with infantry action, to shut down Hitler's access to crucial levels of iron, nickel, and wood. True, Hitler could still have tried with a two week balance of supplies in reserve, but in that case he would not be catching the Red Army (and naval and air force and marines) completely out of defensive arrangement, nor would he be capturing empty Soviet Fortified Sectors for his own use. He would have bounced off the Soviet defenses, and two weeks later that would be the end for him.

A mere announcement from Stalin about the obvious results might have prevented any foolhardy Nazi expeditions. Regardless of what Hitler thought about the Winter War's performance originally, by summer 1940 (when Stalin was taking the Baltic States) Hitler and his generals had decided that Stalin's armies were far too dangerous to meet with German defenses, much less to meet within Soviet defenses, and so must be pre-emptively attacked at their own forming-up areas out of defensive arrangement. Had Stalin in the summer of 1940 declared "Baltic territory will be defended from Nazi aggression as if it was our own," Hitler would have had a reasonably clear object lesson from anything he had learned about Japanese incursions into Mongolia. (Certainly Japan had learned that lesson!) But had Hitler tried anyway, it wouldn't have mattered: Stalin could have shut him down in the attempt, without invading and occupying the Baltic States himself.

But of course, the Soviets had invaded and occupied the Baltic Republics less than 25 years ago already -- while declaring them to be a proper springboard for conquering Imperial Germany in the name of world revolution!
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!

JasonPratt

November 26, 1940, from Wehrmacht Chief of Staff Colonel-General Halder's diary, "Horse-drawn carriages for anti-tank weapons." To be fair, they have to break some of their non-direct artillery into pieces for horse-drawn carriages, too. "We have no limbers." Oh. Well, if you don't have any Puerto Rican frozen fruit treats, then maybe you should try conquering Puerto Rico and seizing its property and resources for the people of... wait, wait, sorry! -- he means two-wheeled carts to lift the weighted tail of an artillery piece off the ground (the tail which backstops the gun from rolling when shot, usually), so it can be pulled by a horse.

Soooo, you're going to have to draw your anti-tank guns with horses, but you'll be dragging the tail of the gun behind on the ground...? Oh, no no no no, it's much worse than that! -- because cannons are drawn pointing backward so they can get into position properly for shooting! Your horses will have to pull the guns backward against the tail of the guns! :hide: Sure hope there won't be any mud where you'll be dragging those guns with their tails digging forward into the ground like a plow!

Anything else to report? "We have no capacity to supply our troops in Bulgaria with mountain equipment." Nazis must avoid fighting in Bulgarian mountains; or Nazi troops in Bulgaria must avoid fighting in mountains; got it, don't start a fight in Romania then.

"We have not a single snow-cleaning machine." Be done before it snows, that's the plan.

What if you have to take over some cities along the way? "It is impossible to maintain a strict control over the large cities of France." Hm, you'll need to be done and gone fast enough not to need to control any large cities like for example Smolensk. Or literally any city on the road to Moscow. Or Moscow, of course, but you should win long before then.

"The empire's railroads in the future will be unable to work under such strain as today." This quote doesn't make much sense; Suvorov should have included some context! But his point of course is to debunk the idea that Nazi Germany won by being an amazing technological powerhouse against the primitive backward Slavic goofballs and their goat trails for roads. (Though the goat trails for roads is correct enough at this time.)

November 27, 1941, Halder's diary again: "Operations to take over the endless Russian spaces will not be successful." Well, to be fair, you haven't heard details about the actual operational goal yet, but yes, of course, obviously. (Or maybe Suvorov has omitted some context showing that Halder knows the plan and is commenting on why the Nazis won't in fact be trying to conquer the endless Russian spaces...?)
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!

JasonPratt

November 29, 1940: a large strategic game on maps starts in Berlin, supervised by Major-General Friedrich Paulus, the First Oberkvartirmeister (Over-quartermaster) of the General Staff of the Ground Forces. This game is divided into three stages: first, the invasion of Soviet territory by Nazi troops with border battles; second, the Nazi advance to the Minsk-Kiev Line; third, the destruction of the Red Army's final reserves, assuming any are to be found east of that line. The German team doesn't work out how they would reach Kursk, Moscow, or Stalingrad. Here, by the way, Suvorov explicitly acknowledges (in "Chief Culprit") that Hitler was not desperately trying to do something he could never have done, by conquering Russia, or even west of the Urals, or even as far east as Moscow, in one autumn. "The generals thought that one blow would bring down the entire Soviet Union and send the Red Army on the run." This is a reference to Hitler's famous quip about kicking in the door to collapse the whole rotten house. The main debriefing of all stages of the game ends on December 13th.

The game is run in real-time, so two full weeks to December 12th, with another day for final debriefing. This is highly direct evidence that, regardless of any further goals, Hitler and the Oberkommand intends to achieve their victory over Stalin in three weeks: two weeks nominally with a cushion of a week.


End of 1940: east of the Trans-Baikal and (to some extent) Siberian Military Districts, is the Russian Far East region. Starting toward the end of 1940, whole divisions and corps along with their generals and other officers are being secretly transferred westward from the Far East at an ever-increasing pace. This includes many top-level commanders without equivalent or even sometimes any replacements; for example, Major-General Kotov, the Chief of the Operations Division of Far Eastern Front HQ, was called back west and no one took his place.

Colonel Grigoryenko at the Far Eastern Front HQ, later a Major-General himself, will recall (unsourced directly by Suvorov) that along with many other top field commanders, Soviet High Command called away Lieutenant-General (later Marshal of the Soviet Union) Ivan Stepanovich Konyev, commander of the original Soviet 2nd Army, assigned to the creation and deployment of a mountain-strike army (the 19th Army) in the Northern Caucasus MD, after a brief stint commanding the Trans-Baikal MD, to be deployed on the Romanian frontier; and Lieutenant-General (eventually four-star Army General) Markian Mikhailovich Popov, commander of the original Soviet 1st Army.

Lieutenant-General Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov will be sent to command the 4th Army, where by next year he will be dryly joking with Sandalov about how obvious the Soviet fortifications are on the border where the Nazis can see them! Popov will be commander of the Northern Front on the western border before June 22nd, 1941.


December 3, 1940, Halder's diary again: "The fuel situation is bad. The tire situation is very bad." Unclear if this also applies to the wargame operation the Nazis are currently testing, but yep, that's why you're planning to win in three weeks! With two weeks of supplies!


December 4, 1940, Halder's diary again: "Too little artillery." Again, unclear about whether this also applies to the ongoing operational wargame.


December 13, 1940, the same day as the general debriefing of the Nazi wargame simulating Barbarossa, Halder's diary again: "Capturing Moscow does not have much significance (in Hitler's opinion)... the air forces are facing a war on two fronts." While the main air war will be on the East Front, the British will be steadily scaling back up their own attacks on the mainland -- and moreso if the United States ever gets into the war! The Nazis must at least try to defend their industry from being harassed, or bombed back to the horse and cart age (...moreso than they already are...  ::) ), and that will divert air power from the Eastern Front.
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!

JasonPratt

December 18, 1940: five days after the general debriefing of the wargamed invasion of Russia, Hitler approves plans and preparations for "Operation Barbarossa", drawn up since he and his generals agreed in July that they would have to fight and beat the Soviet Union sooner rather than later. Expected time to win: three weeks. Operational supplies available: two weeks. (Moreso for some crucial supplies than for others, of course.) Colonel-General Jodl reports somewhere that in an argument with Guderian about Barbarossa, Hitler snipped, "You want to invade without oil! -- well, we shall see what comes out of this."

The great British war historian Liddle-Hart, having exhaustively researched this topic, later agrees with the conclusion reached by Hitler and his generals back in July 1940: if the Soviets will not withdraw, then the only way to defend the Romanian oilfields must be to launch an invasion somewhere else, strong enough and damaging enough divert the Red Army from the oil fields.

The attack must be powerful, sudden, and so strong that the planners eventually had to assign virtually all German ground forces and most of the air force. It cannot simply divert a threat to Romanian oil: it must outright win by shattering the Soviet armed forces beyond the government's ability to stay in power, and it can only win if the attack takes advantage of Stalin being similarly out of position to defend himself from attack.

The attack will be so large that German forces can only bring two weeks of supplies; but they know they can capture more at the border thanks to Stalin massing his own forces in a similar arrangement to their blitzkrieg preparations. They estimate they will need three weeks to win -- but their wargame, just played, ended in two weeks.
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!

JasonPratt

In the Open Directive #21, ordering Barbarossa, Hitler included, "The end goal of the operation is the creation of a protective barrier against Asian Russia along the line Volga-Astrakhan. In this manner, in case of need, the last industrial region the Russians have left in the Urals could be paralyzed using aviation."

Three weeks to conquer all of Russia!? Of course not. Three weeks to conquer Russia out to the Volga-Astrakhansk line? Not possible. Three weeks to simply conquer Moscow?! Not that either. Three weeks to reach the Caucus oilfields, capture, and secure them against Soviet reprisals?! Even less possible than conquering Moscow.

A handful of Nazi tanks might reach the right bank of the Volga, beyond Moscow, before autumn mud arrives, starting from the Polish or Romanian border, without any resistance, in late June. Walking there, maybe not possible; driving there in a tank, maybe. However, German tank motors don't have the range to reach that distance in one drive without falling apart and needing to be replaced -- twice! -- which naturally would take a day or two, twice. But they might get there by then, on Russia's notorious goat-path roads, and offroad where that might be better, if someone could reliably fuel them along the way.

To get long-range bombing bases on the other side of the Volga, Hitler has to solidly conquer and control Russia that far. Even without resistance, that's now a front line longer than the United States eastern coastline driving eastward. Those tank motors will still have to be replaced twice, even without military resistance; only now we're talking two or three weeks at best for each replacement, twice! That's assuming the motors are available, and can be gotten eastward in time (farther eastward each time.) This also assumes fuel can be kept going for all those tanks that far -- through friendly territory? Enemy?

Once the panzer corps arrive (around October, if everything goes right) and they secure the Volga-Astrakhansk line (on the right side of the Volga, having crossed the bridges of course), there are few air bases in the area, none of which are suitable for long-range bombers; and long-range four-engine heavy bombers will be needed to shut down Ural production from this range. Thus long-range bomber bases will need to be built. In October, the area is a bare, wet steppe. One month later it will be a bare, frozen steppe. All the equipment for making these bases must be brought out over the Volga, and supplied of course.

Now it is March 1942, let us say, and bases with personnel exist for enough long-range bombers to do the job, all of them being supplied by occult rituals researched by the Nazi magicians through more-or-less hostile territory between the eastern Volga area and Nazi-occupied western Europe thousands of kilometers away. Opps, Hitler has no long-range bombers in production yet! He has plans for them, but they won't arrive until 1943, assuming he can secure materials and manpower to construct them; meanwhile he has some very respectable medium-ranged bombers which can't do this job: they can do overflights for scouting the Ural production regions, carrying only fuel, no bombs, from bases on the Volga.

Now it is September 1943, and Hitler has the bombers. Meanwhile he has been building fuel lines from captured Caucasus regions to refineries to create fuel and lubricants for the bombers. Suppose he now has a minimum of one thousand all-weather long-range high-altitude bombers capable of operating in Russian steppe autumn rains and winter ice. How many bombs should he have on hand to get his bombing campaign going at last? Thousands of tons? Hm, no, far too little. Hundreds of thousands of tons? Getting there. There might need to be more than Hitler could throw at Great Britain from August 12th, 1940, to May 12th, 1941 -- which wasn't sufficient to shut down UK production! How are these bombs going to arrive on the eastern Volga region? -- they can't be piped in like oil! In fact they have to be carried by rail, and then by trucks where there aren't any rails. Hopefully the rail network is sufficient in this area for this purpose. (It probably is, despite Suvorov's assertion of few rail lines: after all, Stalin will be shipping an unimaginable number of rail cars through this region bringing the Second Strategic Echelon, and the eastern portions of the First Echelon.)

Suppose the rail lines offload near the new airbases (reasonably placed), so that transport trucks don't have to burn much fuel to get them to the airbases and onto the bombers. The Nazis might be strong enough to keep control of the gigantic front line, but they'll be spread very thin trying to keep control of enough rail line to supply the bombs and other supplies, and the personnel, to the airbases. Have we accounted for fighter escort, and combat air patrols to ward off counter-bombing?

None of that is happening in three weeks. Hitler and his generals know this. The end goal for this operation isn't something they intend to achieve in an "operational" timeframe. On the other hand, some of Hitler's generals didn't seem to grasp the concept, or maybe had a more pessimistic opinion about the whole rotten structure crumbling. Colonel-General Hermann Hoth, commander of the 3rd Tank Group, will write in his memoir "Tank Operations", Smolensk edition 1999, p.34, "The objective of destroying the centers of the war industry located farther east was delegated to the air force. These were utopian plans. The radius of action of German bombers then was one thousand kilometers. Even if it had been possible to reach the projected Volga-Arkhangelsk line (which was planned for one campaign, i.e. three to four months [unclear if this is his parenthesis or Suvorov's]), the bomber radius was not sufficient to disrupt the functioning of industry in the Ural and the Sverdlovsk regions. And even Sverdlovsk is not the end of the world." All true! -- but the feasibility of reaching that 'utopian plan' depends on whether the Soviet government can be made to collapse by destroying the vast bulk of its army quickly.

Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, commander of the 2nd Panzer Group, will recount (in "A Soldier's Memoirs", p.191), "When they unfolded a map of Russia before me, I could not believe my eyes. Everything that I considered impossible, I was supposed to make into reality?" Blumentritt, in "The Wehrmach's Fateful Decisions", p.76, reports General Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt, Commander of Army Group South, complaining, "Just look at these vast territories! We cannot crush the enemy and occupy all of Western Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea in just a few months!" But if the Red Army is crushed in three weeks, you don't have to occupy anything this year; you can go home for the autumn and the winter, let the Russians fight among each other over the corpse of the Soviet government (and over Lenin's tomb and Stalin's drawn and quartered body in the street), and come back later for a more focused campaign.
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!

JasonPratt

#37
Once revolts are inspired against Stalin's cruel tyranny by destroying his military power, the oil in Romania is secure, and Hitler can focus on getting to more oil in the Caucuses and Middle East, at more leisure. He doesn't have to focus much on shutting down war production in the Urals (not to say the unspeakable distances beyond the Urals), because with the Soviet government in turmoil from civil war and revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary) uprisings, there will be very little organized industrial action against the Nazis for several years. By the time there might be organized industrial warfare again, airbases can be ready to go. (Maybe.)

All the Nazis have to do to win World War Two at this point, at least in Europe, is not be Nazis.

Also, it will help if Stalin doesn't have a giant wad of more armies already starting their deploying westward from beyond the Urals, with God forbid another giant wad of more armies scheduled to start on the way after that! If that happens, the Nazi invasion will probably fail, although having started up those steppes (figuratively and literally) to Leningrad, Rostov, and Moscow, they'll have to keep trying anyway and hope for the best. On the other hand, if Stalin has destroyed all his internal defenses, which would seem the height of insanity with Nazis on his border now (but which in fact Stalin has been doing since September 1939), then as long as the Nazis stop being Nazis, they still might be able to win if they can keep catching weak and untrained rookie armies de-training.

Spoiler: Hitler and the Nazis don't even try to stop being Nazis.  ::) L:-) :crazy2: :uglystupid2:

And they will have no idea about the Second Strategic Echelon already on the way to the western border, much less the Third Strategic Reserve Echelon trained for occupational usage against civilian uprisings on a continental scale -- nor any idea about the totally separate air-mobile armies being prepared in the depths of Russia off to the side, which are not even being planned for deployment yet. They will not even be fully aware how large the First Strategic Echelon is!


Suvorov thinks Stalin has made a rare foolish move here, provoking Hitler by threatening that Romanian oil. Perhaps; but Suvorov can't figure out why Stalin made such an apparent blunder. Stalin could have triggered Germany's collapse by rolling on immediately to Ploeshti, or by waiting to see if Hitler would ever get around to invading Britain and then hitting the oil. However, Stalin takes one step into Romania (or two if the Danube fleet area counts), making preparations, and stops, clearly signaling his interest in the oil.

So, why would Stalin take that step at all and stop?

I think the answer is that Stalin, in accordance with his overall post-Leninist political strategy, and in concert with the other preparations which Suvorov reports, was thinking of taking all of Europe at one swoop. For that purpose, even just to hold the territory and pacify it, he needed not just the 1st Strategic Echelon, already gathering on the borders in the summer of 1940, along with the airmobile armies preparing to deploy behind the 1st Echelon for leaping over them, but also the 2nd Echelon he is starting to move in December of 1940, and the 3rd Reserve Echelon armies he is already working on. The 2nd Echelon has some quality troops, as well as a lot of merely warm bodies to overwhelm defenses and to hold ground; the 3rd Echelon mostly has warm bodies to hold ground, nearly useless in defense except as road-bumps for an enemy to waste resources climbing over.

But these are freakishly huge numbers of troops, being built up from Soviet universal conscription. They not only need to win Europe, they basically have to loot Europe to survive: as Suvorov reports elsewhere, Stalin's mobilization efforts during harvest season of 1939 mean that the harvests of 1939, and moreso 1940 and 1941, have been greatly curtailed. Stalin has to go in summer 1941 or send the troops back home to not-starve, probably with some real danger of disaffected troops staging a revolution against him (not unlike what happened when Lenin called for two million troops to lay down arms and come home, back in 1917.) If Stalin goes in 1941, that means the harvest will definitely not be cropped, so he must capture all of Europe and take their harvests.

Thinking on this larger scale, how can Stalin be sure to beat Hitler's military as quickly as possible? -- only if he goads Hitler into massing a similar invasion force on Stalin's border, far out of defensive arrangement, to be clobbered by Stalin's vastly much larger blitzkrieg preparations.

And Zhukov's limited invasion of Bessarabia decisively triggers that Nazi move.

It might still be a timing mistake, although on this plan the main timing mistake is that Hitler seems to have realized what Stalin was looking for (evidence of winter invasion preparations) and spoofed him on that, practically guaranteeing that Stalin would be caught off guard. However, Stalin would be well aware that (as Michael Caine puts it, playing Stalin in "When Lions Roared") "they [the Allies] will never accept so much red on the map. Never. Never!" Stalin and his regime have been declaring their intention to conquer the whole world as a constant political goal since at least 1919, even with the design of their diplomatic flag! A quick strike in 1940 might easily stop World War 2 by killing the Nazi supply of oil; but if the Nazi regime falls, and he doesn't have overwhelming force to swallow Europe immediately without German troops and equipment still in the way (and needing much less oil to defend their territory), the Germans might very well be supplied by the Allies to stop him in turn! Which, eventually, is what practically happens in 1945.

Stalin's best shot at taking all of Europe is to get the Germans in position to be totally and quickly wiped off the board before they can be bolstered by Allied aid, the way he himself has been bolstered by Allied aid.

And the step toward the oil just so happens to trigger the exact situation Stalin needs to win it all.

If he can strike with overwhelming power first.


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