If there's no Yugoslav coup in early 1941, does Operation Barbarossa succeed?

[SloveneLiberal]

If i may return to the First question of mr. Futurist. It was not the Case of bad weather which was responsible for failure of Barbarossa but much more important was that German army in First three months of the their offensive was not going enough against economic targerts, such as war industry etc. Any concentration on Moscow was wrong in fact. So in this view Yugoslav coup would not help Germans losing nor Soviets winning.

[ljadw]

Yes and no .
Yes :the delay of Barbarossa had nothing to do with its failure.
No : not being able to capture the war industry at the Urals was not the reason why the Germans failed . It was the result of the German failure .
The Germans knew very well that they could not capture the war industry as long as the Soviets were not defeated .
The Soviets could only be defeated in a short and fast campaign . After this,there would be sufficient time to capture the war industries , IF NEEDED .And this (the need ) was considered as unlikely .

[SloveneLiberal]

Military industry in Donets basin was the most important here or right German strategy in 1941 to capture or destroy it. That was crucial for the question how the war in the east Will Continue, specially when Japan decided not to help Hitler with an attack on USSR in the far rast.

[ljadw]

The Soviets lost the Donets and ...continued the war .Thus it was not essential .

[SloveneLiberal]

War industry was removed from it still at the right time.

[ljadw]

The importance of the removal of the Soviet War Industry to the East has been much exaggerated .Even without this dislocation,the Soviets would have won .Magnitogorsk existed already before the war .

[SloveneLiberal]

http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1580/1/WRAP_H ... erp603.pdf

[ljadw]

I disagree with Harrison: the title should be : why did the Soviet Union not collapse in 1941, NOT in 1942 .
1941 was the most critical year of the war for the Soviets, NOT 1942 .
The answer is that the Soviets were saved ( on production ) in 1941 by the industries in the east.In the Urals .The industries that were relocated to the east in 1941 ( a minority )were mostly operational in 1942 only .And,when they were ready in 1942,they were dependent on the raw materials on the East .
The Soviets could do in 1941 without the industries of the West,it was the same in 1942 .
Even for the oil of the Caucasus .

[SloveneLiberal]

I remain on the position that the evacuation of industry from the west to eastern parts of USSR which was very successful also of course because of German mistakes during Barbarossa, together with allied help was crucial for economy of USSR in 1942.

Concerning oil in Caucasus however USSR and Britain reacted soon enough and together occupied Iran and made direct contact between the two armies, which also enabled of course trade and military help.

[SloveneLiberal]

With no coup Yugoslavia would perhaps have been in a similar position to Bulgaria. With no British intervention in Greece it may have been spared a German occupation or maybe only the northern part would have occupied as with France.

This post from mr. Steve I do not understand very well. Bulgaria was in war with UK in WW2, but not in war with USSR. War in Greece, which was started by Italy in 1940 after the fall of France was crucial for German intervention in Balkans yes. Also in Yugoslavia northern part with Croats was much more pro-German, than southern part. Ustasha regime declared war on both UK and USA and sent troops in USSR. It would be occupied by the Red army after the defeat of Germany as was Bulgaria which did not enter in the war with USSR.

The leaders of the Yugoslav coup in fact sent their delegation in Greece to prepare strategy for defense together with the British and Greeks. Delegation was led by general Radivoj Janković. His proposal at the meeting with Greeks and the British officers, A. Eden was present too, was that joint attack would be made on German forces during their offensive toward Solun. At the same time Yugoslav army would attack Italians in Albania.

So from this we can see that in the case that Germany would not attack Yugoslavia, but just Greece, Yugoslavia would join allies. That was also the crucial difference with the agreement which was made by Berlin with former Yugoslav government led by knez Pavle, which left in fact the doors open that in the case of German attack on Greece Yugoslavia might occupy port of Solun after German victory.

[ljadw]

I remain on the position that the evacuation of industry from the west to eastern parts of USSR which was very successful also of course because of German mistakes during Barbarossa, together with allied help was crucial for economy of USSR in 1942.

Concerning oil in Caucasus however USSR and Britain reacted soon enough and together occupied Iran and made direct contact between the two armies, which also enabled of course trade and military help.

Those who argue that the evacuation of the Soviet industries to the East was essential,crucial and deciding ,should look at the following questions .
1 What was prior Barbarossa the percentage of the Soviet war industry that was located west of the Urals ?
2 What was the part of these plants that was evacuated ?
3 How many plants were totally evacuated ?
4 When they arrived in the east,did these plants have electricity,manpower, raw materials,railways ?
5 From what I have read,only 13 % of the Soviet economy was evacuated.If west and east had each 50 %, the evacuated plants were only 25 % of those in the west.If the percentage of the west was higher,the percentage that was evacuated was lower .Thus: the majority of the industry in European Russia was not evacuated .
6 One should not forget that during the war the Soviet GDP decreased by 35 %,which debunks the claim that the evacuation was essential .
7 The same for the oil : the Soviet oil production of 1945 was only 60 % of that from 1940 .
The conclusion is that opposite to the US, the Soviets were able to win the war with a smaller GDP which proves that the amount that was produced was not decisive .
It is not so that with a bigger GDP the Soviets would be in Berlin in 1943 or that with a smaller GDP the Germans would be at the Urals in 1943 .
Those who look at the Soviet production only,forget that the war in the east was not decided by the Soviets only ,but by both sides .
This applies for all wars .

[ljadw]

About the oil : why should the oil of the ME be crucial for the Soviets ? If it was crucial, that means that the Soviets were short of oil,and that is not correct ,because the Soviets needed less oil during the war than before the war .

[SloveneLiberal]

The occupation of Iran and establishment of direct contact between USSR and UK was made because of the danger that Caucasus oil fields might fall or be destroyed.

Evacuation of industry from the west was a huge project. Some numbers are in the article bellow.

Concerning industry beyond Urals it was not big enough to sustain USSR war efforts by itself. Soviet leadership realized few years before the war that industry is to much concentrated in the west and tried to built more of it beyond Urals, yet they did not have enough time to do this until the start of WW2. Not enough that it would be able to sustain war efforts without western part.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/151494

[ljadw]

I know the article from Lieberman, but I am not impressed .His numbers are meaningless .
Lieberman's mistake is to think that the Soviets needed more of everything to win the war , but this is not so : the Soviet GDP decreased by 35 % during the war, but still the Soviets won .
33 % of the Soviet economy was in the evacuation zone ,of which 38 % was evacuated ,which is 13 % of the total .And only 20/40% of the workers were evacuated .
Sources :
Ask historians :how did the Soviet Union manage to transfer its industries to the east during WW2 ?
Space of Survival :the Soviet evacuation of Industry and Population in 1941 ( by Robert Argenbright ) P 231
About the occupation of Iran in August 1941 : at that moment the oil fields were not in danger and the occupation of Iran would not prevent the occupation of the oil fields .
And this danger is exaggerated : almost half of the oil production of the Caucasus was lost, but still the Soviets paraded in Berlin .

[SloveneLiberal]

Also this article written by mr. Mark Harrison is confirming that in 1942 Soviet economy was near collapse and this was despite much of important military industry was saved from the west and despite allied help.

Problems concerning labour force:

Roughly 14 million defense workers in material production can be identified in 1942 – a quarter of the working population – compared with nine
million in 1940. If we combine this change withthe change in military personnel (excluding internal troops of the NKVD), we find
that numbers generally employed in supplying military goods and services grew by at least 11 millions in two years. On the supply side was a decline of 32 million in the available working population over the same period. Adding these figures together gives an astonishing total of at least 43 million to be subtracted from prewar nondefense employment.

In fact, by 1942, the Soviet economy was excessively mobilized, and still on the brink of collapse. Everything that had been done to save the defense industry and expand its output had made matters worse for the economy as a whole. In particular, the celebrated evacuation of defense factories from the zone of German occupation had plunged the interior regions into crisis, since the demands of the new war economy instantly outstripped the workforce, industrial supplies, and residential, service, and transport facilities available in the interior. Throughout 1942
the foundations of war production in the civilian economy remained dangerously unstable. The output of basic industrial materials and power remained limited to one-half or one-third of prewar levels; agriculture and food processing appeared locked into an unstoppable decline, which threatened the basis of human existence throughout the country.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics ... tprint.pdf

Also Iran was important for allied help coming to desperate USSR too, not just for oil and Caucasus. 27% of help was delivered via this way.