IceBreakChron XI: AGAINST THE POWER THAT RISES IN THE EAST

Started by JasonPratt, July 08, 2020, 09:12:37 AM

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JasonPratt

The legendary Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky (formerly of the gulag, and in the fight for the western border since before Hitler even invaded) gets promoted to Lieutenant-General in charge of the overall operation on the Don. Soviet doctrine (correctly, in Suvorov's estimation) emphasizes that artillery must be secretly gathered to be unleashed by surprise upon narrow strips of territory by sudden, intense strikes.

To finally and decisively break the Nazis' own defensive line at Stalingrad, Rokossovsky focuses upon a strip of only twelve kilometers, less than six miles across. Before sending twenty-four rifle regiments, supported by tanks, on the assault, he gathers thirty-six artillery regiments for a preparatory barrage.

What does thirty-six artillery regiments tasked to a 12km frontline mean? Specifically, that means he focuses an average of 135 guns on every linear kilometer, or 1.35 guns for every ten meters.

Every ten steps you might take along the front would only put you under another gun! -- with some overlap!

To be sure, this spread is only an average not accounting for the spread of shells behind the linear front nor for concentrations in primary locations compared to any less important locations which would naturally receive less bombardment. In the primary locations, by the way, he assigns an average of 1.67 guns every ten steps. That's only an average; some areas have more.

It will not be long after this that Soviet staffs start using kilotons as units of measurement for calculating the power of their artillery attacks.

Not coincidentally, beginning to reckon the power of their artillery attacks in the language of the atomic age, also marks the start of Stalin's steady drive to Berlin.

Nevertheless, the Nazis have one more chance to win... perhaps...
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

July 12, 1943: the Nazis are now more than one hundred and five weeks into their three week war (on two weeks of supplies).

The Nazis have been beating themselves into hard stony scars killing Russian bears and yetis -- those hard-core Guards Rifle Divisions and Armies -- that keep showing up to foil Hitler's plans to finally, at last, destroy Stalin's ability to make war, and thus destroy his regime.

At this point, the haunted steel of the wolves' grey Aryan eyes can see that these legendary Guards, coming from apparently nowhere, have bought Stalin enough time to create a truly modern classical Slavic defense line, behind which the red volcano has been safely building up steam. The Nazis have nothing like the same defensive line; if Stalin goes first this summer, Hitler will lose, and keep on losing, maybe to lose it all as the enemy he has made of himself to the world.

What can the Nazis even do?!

One more win. Just one more. A win for the Nazis here, and the faith of Stalin's regime, after making this supreme effort at a restoration, might shatter. Maybe the Nazis can arrange a true truce, and take the time to properly consolidate their gains.

The wolves have panthers now; and tigers, too. These heavy sabretooths cannot blitz, but all together perhaps they can claw their way through both sides of the throat of the Kursk Salient, and trap the bulk of the Soviet forces one last time, seizing again the backfield resources to finish off the remaining Soviet armies in the region in lesser bite-sized chunks.

The Kursk Salient, however, is six continuous lines of Soviet defense, each one hundred kilometers in length, stacked one behind the other to a total depth of 250 to 300 kilometers. Every single square kilometer is saturated with trenches, communication tunnels, covers, firing positions; averaging seven thousand anti-tank and anti-personnel mines per linear kilometer of front line. Soviet anti-tank weapons have been brought up to a mind-blowing level: forty-one cannons per linear kilometer! -- not even counting field artillery, and anti-aircraft artillery, and dug-in tanks acting as bunkers!

It doesn't seem possible...

...but the Nazis have been eating the impossible for breakfast, again and again and again, across one hundred weeks of their three week war!

Two more weeks. Maybe three. That's all they need.

They start on the 5th of July. Slowly tearing out the throat of their enemy -- vorwarts!

...yes? It is working?! Sort of!?

The northern jaw might not yet be accelerating, but it's digging along through flesh and blood and steel. The southern Soviet defense, however --

-- yes! It is starting to crumble! The heavy cats and wolves are chewing toward the main arteries now!

No Nazi strategic offensive has ever once failed to reach disastrous depths. Stopped afterward each time, it's true, and maybe this time, too, eventually, but Stalin has bet too often and too hard: too much of his remaining strength has gathered here, and their defenses, while certainly meeting the epic standards of centuries past, could not after all withstand the focused power of all the Nazi wrath and frustration and... and... yes, finally, they're going to do it!

One last crushing effort, against the power that has arisen in the east -- the Red Hordes are starting to rout -- this at last, at very last is the end, nothing can save them n---!

---! no. no! NO NO NO!! The boss music is starting up again! How can Stalin keep doing this?!

The mighty 18th Guards Rifle Corps has arrived! -- fully equipped, staffed with the best men!

'Koroshego dnya, O Comrades of the 13th Army! Would you like some help on the north?'

'Ah, well, as long as you're here, roll up, there is plenty of Nazi despair for all to drink!  O0 :notworthy: But comrades, where did you come from? Where have you been?! Did you pop out of some alternate reality through a wormhole created by Soviet scientific supremacy!? And, come to think of it, perhaps our comrades to the south might be better served by your arrival?!'

'Ah, but we didn't arrive alone, comrade! The 5th Guards Army is not far behind us! And the 5th Guards Tank Army! The 2nd and 5th Guards Corps, with their unbreakable steel divisions, along with the 2nd and 10th Tank Corps, and the 6th Tank Corps, will soon... what's that? Have we ever heard of "manpower limits"? What are those!? Oh, you must be asking in code about the 4th Guards Army! -- they will be here soon from the strategic reserve. Yes, yes, they have the best soldiers and officers, and are fully manned, just like the 5th Army and the Armored 5th Army, naturally. Say, would you like to launch a summer offensive now?'

By this day, July 12th, 1943, the Nazi offensive had broken against the arrival of these elite Guards units.

A Soviet offensive followed.

It didn't entirely succeed -- the grey wolves and panthers of the tall Germanic forests could not be routed in only a few weeks, and once both sides had fought to exhaustion the Soviets had suffered significantly more casualties.

Tactically the Nazis have still, amazingly, won.

But strategically? --

-- the Nazis have reached, at last, the limits of the impossible.

Against the power that rises in the east, there can no longer be a strategic offensive, and thus no more chance of rupturing the Soviet regime.

Two years after Barbarossa, Stalin's reign has been at last secured. Not only over Russia, but over Eastern Europe -- sooner or later.
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

The war continues to devour its lives -- day after week after month after season after year.

Whenever a crisis arises again, another miracle occurs! Stalin always somehow has a fresh, new elite Guards division, or Guards corps, or even an entire Guards army (or two, or three) in his strategic reserve.

Germany produces nearly 1500 of the best fighter aircraft in the world at the time, by far: the jet-powered Me-262, surpassing all others in speed, weapons, and armor. But there is not enough kerosene for more than two hundred of them to fly in battles. The others remain on the ground.


January 12, 1945 through February 2, the Vistula-Oder operation. The butcher of blood Tukhachevsky had been unable to continue onward, in his beachhead past the Vistula; his successors will push forward about 300 miles to the Oder during this operation, only 43 miles from the currently undefended Berlin, liberating (and capturing for their own exploitation) Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, and other Polish cities.

During this operation, the Soviet command will use 34,500 artillery pieces (including mortars). In the strip assaulted by the 3rd Guards Army (acting as a "covering" army, to allow others to deploy more safely past their breakthrough), the concentration will reach 4.2 guns per ten meters. During the same operation, the area "covered" by the 5th Shock Army expends an average of 15.2 shells of medium and large caliber on each linear meter of front: twenty-three thousand tons of ammunition per kilometer -- twenty-three tons of explosive and shrapnel, for every single step along the front line.

This is delivered in 25 minutes.

Originally the plan is to bombard for 55 minutes, adding another thirty tons per linear meter! -- but by then the forward scouts can see that any further ammo would be wasted. Penal battalions are force-marched through the breakthrough, just in case; but they meet no opposition.

When the Soviet armies eventually reach Berlin, 42,000 artillery guns and mortars will be used in the final operation against the city. Marshal Ivan Konev will break through a 36 kilometer front line using 8626 artillery guns: 2.39 guns averaged per ten linear meters of front. Marshal Zhukov brings fewer artillery to his 30 kilometer front line, only 7318: 2.44 guns per ten meters. Not the record, though! Back during the East Prussian campaign, the Soviet 381st Rifle Division of the 2nd Shock Army had concentrated 468 guns and mortars on one kilometer of front line: easy math, 4.68 guns every ten linear meters. This does not count rocket salvos from Stalin's Pipe Organs, the Katyushas, of course!

Who could possibly stand against such overwhelming firepower?!
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

#33
March 3, 1945: the Nazis are one hundred and ninety-two weeks into their three week war -- which they launched with two weeks of some of their mission-critical supplies.

The Red Army has earlier this year captured the last significant source of oil in Hungary. Hitler urgently stops his desperate counter-offensive against American and British troops, the last blitzkrieg, the Battle of the Bulge, and sends his final strategic reserve, the 6th SS Tank Army, to Hungary. There, in the Lake Balaton region, he begins his final offensive.

But there is a ray of hope.

A slim one, perhaps, but here at the start of the campaigning season, Stalin has no fresh troops in view. As Goebbels notes in his diary today, "Their troops are extremely well armed, but they suffer more and more from lack of people. Their attacking infantry consists of eastern factory workers, and Poles taken from our eastern regions."

If the SS 6th Panzer Army can retake the Hungarian oil... well, Hitler is deranged, frantically dreaming of future victories for the Thousand Year Reich, but some of his generals wonder if this will allow them to negotiate a surrender from strength with the more civilized Western forces. Perhaps the generals could even stay in power, under Western oversight. Perhaps Berlin will not be lost to the rival socialist tyranny. Perhaps Stalin cannot pull out one last miracle, no one could reasonably expect --!

-- of course he can.

Stalin draws a trump ace out from his sleeve for the final time in the game, and throws the 9th Guards Army onto the table, consisting of the 37th, 38th, and 39th Guards Rifle Corps, each with three Guards Rifle Divisions.

Perhaps this is a chaff, paper army? Why, no Comrade, the 9th Guards Army is fully manned by elite soldiers and officers, from the top down! -- "extremely well armed", or moreso perhaps than those factory workers from the Soviet Far East.

The Ninth Guards executes the SS Sixth Tank Army with a classic flank and rear attack. Even in this final defeat, the Nazis force the Soviets to pay with 50% casualties.

But Stalin doesn't know what manpower limits even means.

After that... the triumphant march of the Ninth Guards Army: Vienna. Prague. The Elbe River, to meet with the Americans as Soviets once met Nazis in eastern Poland, for comradely good fellowship over a beaten foe.
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

Where did Stalin get his never-ending miracles, again and again dashing the celebration of an ultimate (or at least final) Nazi victory?

Private V.A. Kirpichenko, eventually a Lieutenant-General of the KGB, recalls (in an article for "Krasnaya Zvezda", September 25, 2002), "I served in the air assault troops elite. We were trained and then practiced continually, but sent into action only in January 1945, not as airborne assault troops but as ordinary infantry. We broke the German blockade around Balaton [three months later after arriving at the front], and earned Stalin's praise by stopping the last German offensive during the course of the war. To achieve this, we lost half our troops."

Stalin trained around two million parachute-capable assault infantry, maybe more. Some he deployed immediately as the first five airborne assault corps, out at the front line in June of 1941; others he finished raising as the next five airborne assault corps for the first airborne assault army in the world, in August 1941. But those 100 or 150 thousand troops (depending on the count), he had to deploy as mere infantry to put the brakes on the Nazi blitz, most crucially near Smolensk.

The others he kept in reserve, continually training as air assault infantry, although now also with strong defensive training, too, so that they could be multi-purpose. Only a few ever got to be used as airborne troops, briefly during the Moscow counter-offensive, or down in the southern front. The rest were dealt out from under Stalin's sleeve, from his strategic backfield reserve -- not as paratroops, nor as glider assault shock troops, nor as airmobile transport troops, but as rock steady, rock hard guards of the Motherland, boots firmly on the ground: building the core of the elite, heroic, legendary Guards Divisions, Guards Corps, and Guards Armies.

As Yury Nenahkov, for example, explains in his "Airborne Troops in the Second World War", 1998, p.194, this is why, ever since 1943, whenever a Soviet air assault rifle division is formed, they are given the honor of also being designated "Guards Division", in recognition of the feats of their predecessors who were sacrificed in the catastrophic defenses of 1941 and 1942, and as an advance expectation for their future military contributions.

Suvorov's critics like to make fun of the idea of two million paratroops on the western border ready to go on June 21, 1941. But that isn't Suvorov's claim at all; only a few tens of thousands of paratroops were there. More remained in the backfield, but not two million more parachute assault troops. Suvorov never claims that.

He cannot be blamed for calling the first ten airmobile divisions "airborne corps", either, since those were in fact the official container organizations -- apparently intended for expansion after June or August 1941!

But the two million parachute-trained elite troops aren't fictional either. And their contributions should never be dismissed by any patriotic Russian, nor by anyone willing to appreciate the heroism of Russians in finally hacking back the Nazi government.

They did save the Motherland.

And also, along the way, they foiled Hitler's plans, again and again, to crack the Soviet tyranny and to institute his own.


"Future historians will come to the conclusion that, if one considers the military situation, the invasion of Russia was a political mistake and all military efforts were doomed from the start." Colonel-General Hermann Hoth, "Panzer Operations", p.163.

But the Nazis did have a reasonable basic idea for victory (although Suvorov couldn't consistently see it, at least so far as "Chief Culprit").

They just could not defeat the power rising in the east -- not least rising upon the wings, clipped though they were, of the hero Russian Guards.
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

Some After Math
-------------------

You might be wondering: if Stalin kept playing aces from his airborne assault forces to save the Soviet Union time and time again, and if the Nazi blitz started stalling out -- as the Nazis themselves had expected! -- around three weeks into Operation Barbarossa; then why exactly did the Nazis keep coming back to nearly shatter the Soviet Union again and again, requiring Stalin to grudgingly play his aces, leaving none for any surprise assaults on unsuspecting neighbors?!

Suvorov sort of answers this, but does so in a schizophrenic fashion (being unwilling to acknowledge consistently that Hitler did have multiple opportunities to win). Many factors could be considered for why the Nazis could hold onto their three week war for so long against the power arising in the east; but this might be the decisive delay, at least in Suvorov's account:

During their side of the war, the Red Army used 427 million artillery shells (including artillery mines), and 17 billion cartridges. To this you can add a proportionate number of hand grenades, land mines, and air bombs. This was despite Stalin losing 85% of his Ammo Narkomat factories and materials.

Some machines were evacuated, but consider the difficulties in moving even one furnace thousands of kilometers on tracks (only railroads could carry it) chocked full of troops and supplies trying to move westward -- or trying to flee eastward! Consider being given the order: in this forest near the border, captain, one thousand tons of ammunition are lying out on the ground. No, don't think about why they are there, pay attention! -- the fascists are about to overrun it! You are to secure and transport this ammunition from the forest on the border, back to a railway station, load this thousand tons onto a train (maybe onto more than one train, by Soviet standards in 1941), and escort the ammunition on the railway to safety. You will doubtless be under enemy fire until you reach safety. We do not know what the minimum safe distance will be.

As you might expect, most of the thousands of tons of ammunition lying out on the ground on the morning of June 22, 1941, were either captured by the Nazi government, or else detonated by Soviet captains with no other options.

According to Boris V. Sokolov's "The Cost of Victory" (aka "Great Patriotic: The Unknown About the Known"), 1991, pp.64-66, from mid-1941 to mid-1945, the production of explosives in the USSR came to 600,000 tons. According to R.H. Jones' "The Roads to Russia: United States Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union", 1969, in his appendices, the United States supplied 295,600 tons of explosives. According to "Soviet Foreign Policy in the Period of the Great Patriotic War", 1946, pp.145-47 (an official Moscow publication, no author cited), Great Britain and Canada delivered 22,300 tons of powder. Therefore, Western explosive production for the Soviet Union reached 53 percent of the total volume of Soviet production.

It must be added that the Soviets, having lost the machinery to produce the bombs, shells, and ammunition, needed Western help for replacing that machinery. For example, in June 1942, the western allies delivered to the Soviet Union the most modern equipment for the daily production of 10 million 7.62mm rounds. In other words, 3.5 billion such rounds could be produced per year (if provided with sufficient other materials).

Suvorov's estimate is that without this truly crucial assistance, the shell and round shortage that struck the Red Army in the fall of 1941 would not have been overcome.

He does not seem to reconcile this, however (as late as "Chief Culprit" anyway), with his repeated insistence that Hitler could never have won against the Soviet Union and only launched a desperate gamble doomed to fail!

You might say rather, that even against the power rising in the east, Hitler could have won, and very nearly did win, not once but several times; but the industrial might of the United States gave Stalin, and his several Echelons, including his reserve of "Guards", the bullets and other basic supplies they needed to shoot the Nazis with -- and to sustain control, and morale, over their people for victory.

It is however worth wondering what would have happened had Hitler delayed another thirty-six hours, to give Stalin's activating Fronts and General Headquarters their chance, with one hundred percent of the Ammunition Narkomat factories supplying them...?
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

Thus ends the main series of entries. 208,580 words, more or less, for anyone who has gotten this far.  :buck2: O0

I might (probably) have a short followup in this thread, regarding the Nuremberg Trial and how it connects to Suvorov's Icebreaker Thesis, particularly in regard to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

I might also proceed from here to some thread entries comparing the thesis with some of its opponents and critiques -- though probably I will take a break for a while first!

Still, anyone who has gotten this far should be in a better position to evaluate Suvorov's thesis in comparison with other accounts of Stalin's Grand Strategy intentions and actions, and with complaints and critiques of his thesis.

I learned a lot along the way of sorting out this chronology (possibly including some things that aren't true, or not sufficiently true, which I should be on the watch for!) Hopefully this series has been at least entertaining, and at least a little helpful, along the way, for any readers.
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!