Operation barbarossa

AXIS.

I wouldn’t attack.

I’d spend my time pulverizing england, subduing Europe, North Africa, and the Middle east.

Sometime 5 to 10 years later, when I had better numbers, higher local support, improved equipment, jet fighters, and the atomic bomb,  I’d assassinate Stalin, as as much upper brass as possible.  Driving in as a liberator, to free the people from the clutches of communism.

@Gargantua:

AXIS.

I wouldn’t attack.

I’d spend my time pulverizing england, subduing Europe, North Africa, and the Middle east.

Sometime 5 to 10 years later, when I had better numbers, higher local support, improved equipment, jet fighters, and the atomic bomb,  I’d assassinate Stalin, as as much upper brass as possible.  Driving in as a liberator, to free the people from the clutches of communism.

Now you got it Gar! Dont forget about eliminating hitler.

@Gargantua:

AXIS.

I wouldn’t attack.

I’d spend my time pulverizing england, subduing Europe, North Africa, and the Middle east.

Sometime 5 to 10 years later, when I had better numbers, higher local support, improved equipment, jet fighters, and the atomic bomb,  I’d assassinate Stalin, as as much upper brass as possible.  Driving in as a liberator, to free the people from the clutches of communism.

yes, and Stalin would be doing nothing all that time :D

@special:

yes, and Stalin would be doing nothing all that time :D

You are correct to assert that the Soviet Union would have been a tougher opponent in 1944 -1946 than it had been in 1941. But Gargantua is correct to assert that the German war effort would have improved at a faster pace during this time than the Soviet.

The three facets of military strength in such a conflict are 1) quantity of weapons produced, 2) quality of weapons produced, and 3) size and effectiveness of infantry forces.

In 1942, Germany produced 15,000 military aircraft, compared to 25,000 for the Soviet Union. Germany produced 5,500 armored fighting vehicles in 1942, compared to over 20,000 for the Soviet Union.

But things were different in 1944. Germany produced 41,000 military aircraft that year, compared to 40,000 for the Soviets. Germany produced 19,000 armored fighting vehicles that year, compared to about 28,000 for the Soviets. Germany’s E-Series program would almost certainly have narrowed or reversed this production gap. The E-Series was a series of German armored fighting vehicles designed to be simpler and far more easily mass produced than Germany’s existing tanks and fighting vehicles. Additionally, the E-Series tanks represented qualitative upgrades over the tanks they were intended to replace. The E-50 would have been an upgrade over a Panther or Tiger I, the E-75 an upgrade over a Tiger II, and so on.

The second factor to examine is weapon quality. I have seen it credibly asserted that in 1942 - '43, the Soviet infantry force may actually have had a better and heavier weapons mix than did their German counterparts. (More generally, the Red Army was in many ways more technologically advanced than its German counterpart.) As the war went on, the Germans did their best to catch up to the heavy weapons mixes being used by the Soviets. Toward the end of the war, the Germans achieved very limited deployment of the world’s first assault rifles. These allowed them to cut through Soviet soldiers like a hot knife through butter. However, there were too few of these weapons to materially affect the outcome of the war.

By 1944, Germany had also developed a qualitative advantage in handheld anti-tank weapons. The easily-manufactured, single use Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon had significantly more ability to penetrate enemy tank armor than the bazooka. Bazookas were virtually useless against heavier tanks like Panthers and Tigers, and of dubious value even against medium tanks.

Initially, both Panzerfausts and bazookas were plagued by very short ranges. But the Panzerfaust 30 (30 meter range) was soon replace by the Panzerfaust 60 (60 meter range). Later, Germany deployed the Panzerfaust 100, and limited numbers of the Panzerfaust 150. By this point, the weapon could be reused up to ten times, had multiple sight holes marked with luminous paint to allow targeting at differing ranges, and could penetrate well over 200 mm of tank armor. Germany had initiated development of an even more advanced Panzerfaust 250 by the time the war ended.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, most of the military aircraft the Soviets had deployed were obsolete. These planes were quickly destroyed, and Germany soon achieved air supremacy over its Eastern front. However, the Soviets had already begun manufacturing non-obsolete designs in 1941. Those aircraft, in combination with American aircraft sent by Lend-Lease, allowed the Soviets to gradually improve their fortunes over the aerial battlefield. By 1944, the Soviets were mass producing La-7s, which were considered among the best piston-driven fighters of the war. The last vestiges of Germany’s qualitative advantage in piston-driven aircraft had been eliminated.

But 1944 was also the year that Germany began manufacturing jet aircraft. Jet engines had also been developed by the British, who later shared the technology with the Americans. The Soviets did not develop jet engine technology during WWII. In 1946, they were able to license this technology from a pro-Soviet British Labour government. After WWII, both the Soviets and Western democracies benefited from captured German aeronautical engineers, blueprints, and German jet aircraft. Western democratic jets were tested against their Soviet counterparts in the Korean War. WWII-era Western democratic jets proved obsolete against the Soviet MiG. However, the F-86 Sabre was superior to the MiG. The F-86 Sabre represented the abandonment of earlier British and American designs in favor of a design modeled on the Me 262. Put another way, even if the Germans had made no major improvements to their Me 262 jet design, it would still have been among the world’s best jet fighter designs of the early 1950s! The Me 262 was significantly ahead of its time.

The German engineers who designed the Me 262 were impatient to begin work on the next generation of jets. Significant progress on that next generation of jets and jet engines had already been made by the time the war ended. Had this next generation of jets been put into production, it would have been significantly qualitatively superior to any jets deployed by either the Western democracies or the Soviets. This would still have been the case even if the Soviets had been able to obtain the non-Soviet technology required to develop the MiG, and even if the Americans had been able to develop a plane as good as the F-86 Sabre even without recourse to captured German technology.

Additionally, Germany had the world’s most advanced rocket program. Germany’s Aggregate Series rockets represented a dramatic leap forward in rocket technology. The most famous of the Aggregate Series rockets was the A4, also known as the V-2. In 1944, Germany expended a significant amount of its industrial capacity on V-2 production. V2 attacks resulted in almost no damage to the British war effort, and did not alter Britain’s resolve to win the war. While the V-2 was a dramatic failure in its intended role, the underlying technology had other potential uses. Other rockets in the Aggregate Series included the A-9 (a three stage rocket capable of delivering a payload to the United States) and the A-12 (a four stage rocket capable of boosting a 10 ton payload into low Earth orbit). The war ended before development of these more advanced rockets had been finished. After the war, Werner von Braun and his team of engineers were regarded with suspicion. But after several years of delay, they were put to work designing the Saturn V rockets that would eventually take men to the Moon.

In itself, Germany’s nascent space program might not have had significant initial military value. Technological advancements in other areas would also have been required. For example, the A-12 could have been used to boost spy satellites–but only if Germany had been able to develop the other technology required to build the spy satellites in the first place. Similarly, had Germany been able to build nuclear weapons, the A-12 could have been used as an ICBM.

Germany’s rocket program also offered near-term benefits. Toward the end of the war, Germany had developed the Wasserfall–a surface-to-air missile intended to shoot down Allied bombers. The Wasserfall had the potential to be highly effective if deployed in large numbers. Albert Speer said, “To this day, I am convinced that substantial deployment of Wasserfall from the spring of 1944 onward, together with an uncompromising use of the jet fighters as air defense interceptors, would have essentially stalled the Allied strategic bombing offensive against our industry.”

Toward the end of the war, Germany had begun limited deployment of R4M air-to-air missiles. These weapons allowed German jets to attack American bombers outside the range at which the bombers’ weapons could return fire. The result was a 10:1 kill ratio, at least in the very limited use the missiles saw. Additionally, the Germans had developed guided air-to-surface missiles, useful for attacking enemy ships and enemy tanks. During WWII, the Soviets had also deployed airplane-mounted rockets. However, these rockets lacked guidance systems, and did not represent a significant improvement over the guns and cannons typically used by fighter aircraft.

The third factor to consider is the size and quality of the German and Soviet infantry forces. In the summer of 1939, Germany’s population was 69 million people, as compared to 169 million for the Soviet Union. In late '39 - ‘40, the Soviets added additional territories in the form of Eastern Poland, the Baltic States, and 10% of Finland. This expansion further expanded the scope of the Soviets’ (forcible) recruitment efforts into their army. In the spring of 1941, the German Army consisted of 150 divisions; 100 of which were used on its Eastern front. By the fall of ‘41, the Soviets had used recruitment efforts to increase their army size to 600 divisions. Soviet soldiers were only 33% as combat-effective as their German counterparts; but that was not enough to offset the Soviets’ advantage in quantity.

As though the numerical disparity Germany faced was not bad enough, a significant portion of Germany’s army was tied down in places like France, Norway, and North Africa, and therefore unavailable for use on its eastern front. American involvement gradually increased the pressure on Germany’s non-Soviet fronts. Americans invaded Algeria in 1942. In 1943, the Axis lost its last holdings in North Africa, and hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were captured. The U.S. and Britain then invaded southern Italy that same year. 1944 was the year of the D-Day invasion and the Allied conquest of France.

It could be pointed out that the cold war between Japan and the Soviet Union took some Soviet divisions away from its western front. But after Japan went to war against the U.S. and Britain in December of 1941, the Soviets knew that Japan would be too preoccupied to engage in yet another major war. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Soviets shipped 100 divisions west across the Trans-Siberian railway. These divisions arrived on the Soviets’ western front in the dead of winter, and came as a complete surprise to the Germans.

But, had Germany followed Gargantua’s suggestion of a) not declaring war on the U.S., and b) conquering large portions of British colonial territory, the quantitative disparity between German and Soviet forces could have been reduced. Taking away many of Britain’s colonies would have reduced its recruitment base. It is also possible that Germany might have been able to recruit a portion of North Africa’s population into its army. The Soviets’ official religion was atheism, and they had engaged in religious persecution against Christians and Muslims alike. German recruitment posters could have conveyed a message of, “help your Muslim brothers and sisters in their time of need,” or something of that sort. A large Muslim force stationed in Persia, and invading the Soviet Union from the south, would have created another problem for the Red Army to worry about. Meanwhile, the absence of the American Army would have meant that the German Army would have had fewer non-Soviet problems to draw it away from the eastern front.

i would very well have done what hitler have done, except the slaughter of slavic brothers and jews :P

instead of attacking Poland I would have told them to join in a attack against russia
got the french and the blokes to go along too
and if things went bad have the Americans bail our ass out
pound those commie bastards into the ground the world would truly be a better place
would have to commit suicide alot sooner as hitler though

@Axistiger13:

Choose your side(axis or allies) and your strategy

Russians - one of the main factors concerning the success of Barbarossa was that Stalin actually believed that the Germans would not attack before 1942 and ignored the reports of the German build-up. The Soviet High Command also made a serious strategic mistake after the Soviet-German Pact by moving its armies from their prepared defensive positions to new areas on their now extended borders (E. Poland, Bessarabia, Baltic States) where they were vulnerable to an attack.
I think it was 3 days before the German attack that a German deserter turned itself to the Soviets at the border and said the date of the German attack. Upon hearing the report, Stalin ordered him shot for spreading false rumours - imagine what could have happened if he had finally listened.

@Hobbes:

@Axistiger13:

Choose your side(axis or allies) and your strategy

Russians - one of the main factors concerning the success of Barbarossa was that Stalin actually believed that the Germans would not attack before 1942 and ignored the reports of the German build-up. The Soviet High Command also made a serious strategic mistake after the Soviet-German Pact by moving its armies from their prepared defensive positions to new areas on their now extended borders (E. Poland, Bessarabia, Baltic States) where they were vulnerable to an attack.
I think it was 3 days before the German attack that a German deserter turned itself to the Soviets at the border and said the date of the German attack. Upon hearing the report, Stalin ordered him shot for spreading false rumours - imagine what could have happened if he had finally listened.

he would have ordered an assault, which the germans could easily counter causing huge damage and many casualties to soviet forces…

@Frontovik:

@Hobbes:

@Axistiger13:

Choose your side(axis or allies) and your strategy

Russians - one of the main factors concerning the success of Barbarossa was that Stalin actually believed that the Germans would not attack before 1942 and ignored the reports of the German build-up. The Soviet High Command also made a serious strategic mistake after the Soviet-German Pact by moving its armies from their prepared defensive positions to new areas on their now extended borders (E. Poland, Bessarabia, Baltic States) where they were vulnerable to an attack.
I think it was 3 days before the German attack that a German deserter turned itself to the Soviets at the border and said the date of the German attack. Upon hearing the report, Stalin ordered him shot for spreading false rumours - imagine what could have happened if he had finally listened.

he would have ordered an assault, which the germans could easily counter causing huge damage and many casualties to soviet forces…

Stalin and the Soviet High Command knew that the Red Army in 1941 was in no condition of mounting an assault but it could have started its mobilization earlier and move to protect the airforce and pull back major units from frontier, avoiding their encirclement and destruction at the beginning of the German offensive. By October/November 1941 the Germans started realizing that they had greatly underestimated the number of Soviet divisions that could be deployed, even with the huge Soviet losses during the initial invasion. With those forces alerted and properly deployed against a German invasion, and the Germans could have probably been stopped sooner or forced to focus their advance on a single axis towards Moscow/Leningrad/Kiev. Germans could win an operational victory but would suffer a strategic defeat by failing to bring down the Soviet Union as quickly as possible before it turned into a war of attrition that it couldn’t win.