WI: Germany conserves its forces after the Fall of France - Britain is left alone

[KDF33]

OTL was the best case for them in this regard; Stalin was doing everything he could.

The historical Barbarossa was in no way the best case for the Soviets, and Stalin most definitely wasn't 'doing everything he could' prior to the invasion. Indeed, I would argue that the Soviets made mistakes in the 12/40 - 6/41 period as decisive to the outcome of the war as the Germans did.

[TheMarcksPlan]

[*]Impact on Stalin? Increased Soviet preparations for Barbarossa can make more of a difference than a stronger LW.

OTL was the best case for them in this regard; Stalin was doing everything he could.

RKKA had 5.5mil men on June 22, mobilized 10mil by the end of the year. They obviously could have done more.

Whether it was politically feasible for them to approach full wartime mobilization status is debatable but between their OTL June 22 forces and the maximal effort is a ton of room.

[KDF33]

Whether it was politically feasible for them to approach full wartime mobilization status is debatable but between their OTL June 22 forces and the maximal effort is a ton of room.

My view is that Stalin should never have tolerated an unregulated situation where Germany was fully mobilized, whereas the USSR was in an awkward undermobilized, 'armed peace' state. He should have pushed for a general agreement with Germany, with clear, verifiable mechanisms to check any build-up on his western frontier.

When Germany didn't bother replying to Stalin's proposal to join the Tripartite Pact on 11/25/40, the latter ought to have drawn the prudent conclusion and prepared accordingly. Instead the Soviets barely did anything for the next 7 months, and got jumped by Axis forces that were predictably larger than the RKKA at the border.

[TheMarcksPlan]

Whether it was politically feasible for them to approach full wartime mobilization status is debatable but between their OTL June 22 forces and the maximal effort is a ton of room.

My view is that Stalin should never have tolerated an unregulated situation where Germany was fully mobilized, whereas the USSR was in an awkward undermobilized, 'armed peace' state. He should have pushed for a general agreement with Germany, with clear, verifiable mechanisms to check any build-up on his western frontier.

When Germany didn't bother replying to Stalin's proposal to join the Tripartite Pact on 11/25/40, the latter ought to have drawn the prudent conclusion and prepared accordingly. Instead the Soviets barely did anything for the next 7 months, and got jumped by Axis forces that were predictably larger than the RKKA at the border.

That's clearly a much better path for Stalin than OTL. Even if mobilization provokes war with OTL Germany, winter 1940-41 isn't a time when Germany can get very far. That enables SU's initial armaments boom to work from nearly all its prewar base rather than ~half of it as in OTL during Barbarossa.

I recognize the challenge to the broader narrative of WW2 I'm advancing - basically that Hitler "should" have won taking the M-R Pact as a PoD. It's a serious challenge and helpfully causes me to refine the thesis.

First, note that I've always said Hitler could and should have been crushed in the '30's, the last opportunity being the Franco-British-Soviet talks in 1939. Concerted opposition to Hitler - backed by unblinking acceptance of the horrors of a general war - was always necessary. Of course the reason this resolve didn't cohere is that few clocked Hitler for what he was: a chaos demon who - inconceivably to any sane person - actually wanted a Second World War. All national leaders are sane, they thought, even if they've written a book declaring they are not. So far you've heard this a million times, that standard narrative sets up my next point.

While (most of) the West properly understood Hitler as something alien by 1940, Stalin did not. What had Hitler done besides exactly what Stalin did or would have done? He made demands on small countries possessing territory lost in WW1, attacked those who didn't comply, and fought back against big countries who declared war on him. To Stalin's mind, there's nothing revealing Hitler to be a chaos demon obsessively compelled to conquer Europe or die trying.

So in saying that Stalin should have clocked Hitler's insane ambitions in 1940/41 is to say he should have had the moral/psychological epiphany that evaded most of the world until Hitler started wars with them. I don't (with hindsight) disagree but it's asking a lot of Stalin. Whatever we think of Joe, he wasn't a chaos demon and had trouble seeing that Hitler was. The Soviet mobilization counterfactual requires making explicit that Hitler's incomprehensibility was still a factor in 1940-41 in the East.

Setting aside, for argument's sake, the post-epiphany mindset that it's best to face up to what Hitler is and and grab your gun, consider Stalin's thinking as if he's facing the minimally house-broken German leader he imagined. Stalin feared a two-front war including Japan and a Germany that his intel credited with a much larger army (286 divisions) than any of my ATL's have approached (the West similarly overrated German numbers, not realizing Germany's half-assing it). Japan wasn't actually committed to "Go South" until mid-41 and that looked even less likely to Stalin. He isn't sure Britain won't join Germany if it comes to war; he's even less sure Britain would be a co-belligerent for long in that war. The US is absent. Had a maximally-mobilized Germany and SU gone to war in 1940, and had Japan joined that war while the US stayed neutral (Go North precludes Go South), I'm pretty sure the SU loses. More importantly, even winning that war is a bigger catastrophe than the catastrophic victory Stalin actually got. Most importantly, that's probably about what Stalin believed.

With that context, Stalin's #1 option is to stay out of war unless/until it's an easy smash-and-grab. His #2 option is to prepare for war. But options 1 and 2 contradict each other because preparations can provoke war. If, as was true, Stalin thinks 1942 is a far better year for war, then maximizing his survival chances in 1940-41 means tilting more towards #1 until 1942. That means, after an appropriate interval conveying sub silentio rejection of Molotov's November proposals for partnership, seeking a modus vivendi with Hitler. Again it's nonsense if Hitler is Hitler (negates Option 1) but that's not Stalin's mindset.

One of Hitler's key traits was to be not just a chaos demon, but a secret chaos demon [an old book aside]. As AJP Taylor and others argue, many viewed sympathetically Hitler's critiques of the Versailles settlement as unfair and hypocritical for leaving millions of Germans under non-German rule. Hitler also constantly spoke against "war-mongers" etc. He sprinkled crazy shit about Jewish people in there but, again, people resistant to seeing him for who he was - with all that entailed for one's responsibility to fight - had plenty to confirm themselves (especially if they weren't exactly philo-semites).

None of this is to disagree about what Stalin should have done, given who Hitler actually was. But solving the Hitler problem was easy, had he been properly understood. My thesis is not that Hitler should have won full stop, but that he should have won given his opponents' inability to understand his real program, consequently their unwillingness to give battle until what should have been too late.

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Another element I'd push back on is focusing on Stalin's decisions to the exclusion of how Hitler managed them. Hitler was always playing competently a strategic game that avoided premature confrontation with the SU for fear of provoking it prematurely. When Mussolini wanted to invade Yugoslavia in August/September 1940, for example, Hitler told him it would be too provocative to the SU. By the time Hitler went into Yugoslavia and Greece, it was probably too late for the SU to have taken steps sufficient to avert defeat by a properly-prepared Germany. By that time, Hitler had disseminated abroad a clever ruse that his eastern buildup was anticipatory to a demand for concessions. This was exactly what Stalin wanted to believe (opportunity for a modus vivendi) and was in line with Hitler's prior pattern of asking first (Poland, Austria, Memel, Munich). In a military/strategic sense, Hitler partially created the conditions he faced in Barbarossa.

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Between (1) a general mobilization that provokes an earlier war that the SU probably loses to a properly-prepared Germany and Japan without US help or with belated US help, and (2) OTL Soviet Barbarossa defenses, there remains a "slightly stronger Barbarossa defenses" scenario where Stalin listens to various proposals to improve his western borders. I haven't thought a great deal about this but my general sense is that, up to a point, the SU just loses more soldiers in the initial encirclements against a properly-prepared Germany. I'm thinking of Kleist's drive through SWF, where force ratios were probably ~twice as favorable as north of Pripyat. PzGr1 still advanced rapidly; had another PzGr been present there would have been a Kessel. If we stack ATL Western and Northwest Fronts with SWF density, it seems likely that Minsk-Bialystok is just a bigger Kessel than OTL.

Your thoughts?

[glenn239]

I am not so sure about that. OTl Barbarossa started with just 3000 aircraft of which just 2000 were operational. In this ATL the Germans have 7000 of which at least 5000 are operational - thats 2.5x their OTL strenght. The additional damage inflicted on the Soviets by these thousands of aircraft might well be enough to shift the balance in 1941 or 1942.

The additional aircraft would not have made much of a difference. The narrative in the east was endless Russian reserves and the depth of the front, and a couple thousand more German aircraft spoke to neither.

[Peter89]

I am not so sure about that. OTl Barbarossa started with just 3000 aircraft of which just 2000 were operational. In this ATL the Germans have 7000 of which at least 5000 are operational - thats 2.5x their OTL strenght. The additional damage inflicted on the Soviets by these thousands of aircraft might well be enough to shift the balance in 1941 or 1942.

The additional aircraft would not have made much of a difference. The narrative in the east was endless Russian reserves and the depth of the front, and a couple thousand more German aircraft spoke to neither.

What these gentlemen are not keen to realize (and you are unlikely to convince them) is that mechanized warfare doesn't mean that if you have 5000 planes, then it is 5000 planes available for continous action day and night, in dust, sand, snow and ice, in bombing, recce, intercepting, etc.

Germany always struggled to keep 3000 combat aircraft in the air. They only exceeded this strength in times when there was a lull in operations - then over and over again the number of operationally ready aircrafts fell sharply; the avgas consumption skyrocketed, the stocks dwindled, the attrition rates climed up.

Germany could not keep 5-7000 combat aircrafts in operating condition for action heavy months in 1941-1942. This is really simple; if the Germans had fuel for 2000 planes in the east, they could not 2.5x their operational aircrafts. They couldn't operate 5000. Even if they could, they would run out of fuel pretty soon. Let's see what really happened:

(in thousand tons)

1941
June: 515 stocks + 68 production - 148 consumption
July: 453 stocks + 76 production - 141 consumption
August: 388 stocks + 74 production - 140 consumption
September: 322 stocks + 86 production - 128 consumption
October: 280 stocks + 99 production - 122 consumption
November: 257 stocks + 85 production - 96 consumption
December: 246 stocks + 90 production - 82 consumption

1942
January: 254 stocks + 89 production - 86 consumption
February: 257 stocks + 92 production - 81 consumption
March: 268 stocks + 100 production - 105 consumption
April: 262 stocks + 111 production - 116 consumption
May: 257 stocks + 107 production - 132 consumption

Let's see what would have happened if the Germans tried to use 2.5 times the planes in 2.5 times of sorties:

1941
June: 515 stocks + 68 production - 370 consumption
July: 231 stocks + 76 production - 352.5 consumption
August: -45.5 stocks

game over.


As for the saved fuel, even if Germany never attacks Britain via air, she had some commitments that had to be met. 27-41 avgas was consumed even when operations against Britain were virtually nonexistent. Between the nine months of July 1940 and March 1941, the total consumption was 684. About half of that was inevitable consumption; this huge save was to be somewhere around 3-400. Thus, a month's intensive operation for the 5000 planes in the east. Doesn't change a bit.

How about spare parts or ground personnel? After 50 operating hours, the partial overhauls had to be done. The aircrafts are not free to take off anymore, so that's that. Even if those planes were present, operationally ready, fully crewed, etc. in June 1941, the extra strength they would mean would melt away in a few months.

[glenn239]

Interesting figures. That's the gasoline consumption and reserves for the German army and air force combined, or just the air force?

[Peter89]

Interesting figures. That's the gasoline consumption and reserves for the German army and air force combined, or just the air force?

Just airforce, but it doesn't matter.

The Heer stood down after the fall of France (thus was in a fuel-conserving mode), right? The production data for June, July and August of 1940 are corrupt, because they contain the captured stocks, but:

September 1940 - March 1941: total production: 1,017 (monthly average: 145), total consumption 1,178 (monthly average: 168)

1941
June: 546 stocks + 178 production - 318 consumption
July: 406 stocks + 281 production - 237 consumption
August: 450 stocks + 238 production - 279 consumption

(We can see that the July and August figures are also corrupted by the captured stocks.)

In an ATL where the "Ostheer has 2.5 times utilized motorization", there the numbers are the following:

1941
June: 546 stocks + 178 production - 168 (basic consumption) - 374 (2.5x consumption)
July: 182 stocks + 281 production - 168 (basic consumption) - 172.5 (2.5x consumption)
August: 122 stocks + 238 production - 168 (basic consumption) - 277.5 (2.5x consumption)
September: -85.5 stocks

game over.

We can refine the numbers from this day until judgement day, but it will not change the picture.

Then again, the repair jobs done on German tanks involved spare part useage in 70% of the cases. Thus, an operational "5000 tank" at the startline of Barbarossa would be far, far less at the Volga, even with no Soviet resistance.

The Germans could only do one thing: repair, fill up and reorganize their mechanized forces, and then use them for a limited time, by which time a decisive battlefield victory had to be achieved.

[History Learner]

RKKA had 5.5mil men on June 22, mobilized 10mil by the end of the year. They obviously could have done more.

Whether it was politically feasible for them to approach full wartime mobilization status is debatable but between their OTL June 22 forces and the maximal effort is a ton of room.

Which ignores the logistics system was already on the verge of collapse on the border for the existing units, in addition to weapon shortages. Mobilizing more men would do nothing but allow the Germans to achieve their end goal of destroying the Red Army in the first 400 km or so of the advance.

The historical Barbarossa was in no way the best case for the Soviets, and Stalin most definitely wasn't 'doing everything he could' prior to the invasion. Indeed, I would argue that the Soviets made mistakes in the 12/40 - 6/41 period as decisive to the outcome of the war as the Germans did.

Stalin did everything he could, there was literally nothing else he could do given the state of the Soviet military.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Raeder and Dönitz convince Hitler that an invasion of Britain is not possible even with air superiority - as a result there is no BoB and Germany conserves as many forces as possible for the confrontation against he Soviet Union - the U boat campaign continues though - how does this change the course of the war?

-Germany saves around 3000 Pilots and 4000 aircraft that were lost against Britain in the July 1940 to May 1941 period
- Less US support for Britain because there are no pictures of a bombed London - perhaps this prevents Lend-Lease from being passed?
- Germany saves a lot of aircraft fuel

IMO this is a serious threat to the Soviets in 1941 and could alter the outcome of the 1941 campaign.

That's improbable because-

1) Without giving it a shot, Germany wouldn't want to leave an undefeated enemy across the channel while they have a go against mighty USSR.
2) Britain and Italy would inevitably slug it out in Africa and that would bring Germany in, as it did in the actual event.
3) Britain would bomb Germany, BOB or not. Actually they set the ball rolling by bombing German civilian targets before Hitler diverted the attacks on strategic targets towards London.

Cheers
Sandeep

[TheMarcksPlan]

the logistics system was already on the verge of collapse on the border for the existing units, in addition to weapon shortages. Mobilizing more men would do nothing but allow the Germans to achieve their end goal of destroying the Red Army in the first 400 km or so of the advance

Logistics is not a set metaphysical quantity unresponsive to inputs of labor and material, as I so often remind folks re Barbarossa. Earlier Soviet mobilization would have meant many more trucks, horses, etc. with the fronts - as flowed to them later.

Had Ostheer run into 6mil RKKA after the Border Battles instead of 3mil, Stalin being in Berlin in 1942 is within the realm of possibility.

[History Learner]

the logistics system was already on the verge of collapse on the border for the existing units, in addition to weapon shortages. Mobilizing more men would do nothing but allow the Germans to achieve their end goal of destroying the Red Army in the first 400 km or so of the advance

Logistics is not a set metaphysical quantity unresponsive to inputs of labor and material, as I so often remind folks re Barbarossa. Earlier Soviet mobilization would have meant many more trucks, horses, etc. with the fronts - as flowed to them later.

Had Ostheer run into 6mil RKKA after the Border Battles instead of 3mil, Stalin being in Berlin in 1942 is within the realm of possibility.

Which ignores there is a serious lag time between making those inputs available, among other issues. I agree if you make the resources available, you can effect serious changes; the problem is the time to do such. The prevailing global thinking up until France collapsed was a prolonged World War I style slog, which means that, even presuming Stalin makes the right choices from June of 1940 onward, is a year. Your proposed scenario for the Germans involves the creation of what is effectively another Panzer Armee but what we are talking about here is you suggesting an outright doubling of the standing RKKA, which is a matter of magnitudes greater. It also ignores that Stalin was already mobilizing and increasing industry as fast as it could be done. If you're seeking to increase industrial output faster, that necessarily means fewer manpower available for the RKKA.

[TheMarcksPlan]

Stalin was already mobilizing and increasing industry as fast as it could be done.

The Soviet values in this table, especially in relation to Germany, say it all:

[maltesefalcon]

If Germany did not launch an attack on Britain in the summer of 1940; it would give the UK time to rebuild their land forces and strengthen the naval and air components.
There is no guarantee that the UK would sit back and not attack Germany themselves. RAF forays into France at least, were quite likely. These attacks would challenge DKM traffic in the Channel, and along the coastline of north west Europe.
It is highly unlikely that Germany would tolerate this situation for long. Invasion plan or not; an air battle at least was inevitable sometime in 1940. Some sort of naval confrontation would depend on the progress and outcome of that air battle.

[TheMarcksPlan]

If Germany did not launch an attack on Britain in the summer of 1940; it would give the UK time to rebuild their land forces

In what specific ways, backed by citations, did the Battle of Britain impede UK's ability to rebuild its land forces?