What if Germany atacked the USSR in Spring 1941 instead of waiting until Summer?

[Bo]

I'd say Germany conquers the entire USSR and then probably proceeds with an invasion of Britain.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Probably doesn't matter. The moment Hitler decided to attack the Soviets, he was pretty screwed (well, that and declaring war on the US...). The bottomline is: You can win a world war
and you can be mental, but can't do both at the same time.

[Bo]

Probably doesn't matter. The moment Hitler decided to attack the Soviets, he was pretty screwed (well, that and declaring war on the US...). The bottomline is: You can win a world war
and you can be mental, but can't do both at the same time.

Wouldn't Hitler be able to capture Moscow if he had invaded sooner? If Hitler captures Moscow, the U.S.S.R. is screwed since railroads from all over the U.S.S.R. passed through Moscow and thus the Germans would have been able to use all those railroads and quickly conquer the rest of the U.S.S.R.

[J. J.]

Probably doesn't matter. The moment Hitler decided to attack the Soviets, he was pretty screwed (well, that and declaring war on the US...). The bottomline is: You can win a world war
and you can be mental, but can't do both at the same time.

Wouldn't Hitler be able to capture Moscow if he had invaded sooner? If Hitler captures Moscow, the U.S.S.R. is screwed since railroads from all over the U.S.S.R. passed through Moscow and thus the Germans would have been able to use all those railroads and quickly conquer the rest of the U.S.S.R.

Probably not.

The Balkans would have exploded while he was invading.  I could actually him fighting a British Expeditionary Force in Yugoslavia.

[ag]

Probably doesn't matter. The moment Hitler decided to attack the Soviets, he was pretty screwed (well, that and declaring war on the US...). The bottomline is: You can win a world war
and you can be mental, but can't do both at the same time.

Wouldn't Hitler be able to capture Moscow if he had invaded sooner? If Hitler captures Moscow, the U.S.S.R. is screwed since railroads from all over the U.S.S.R. passed through Moscow and thus the Germans would have been able to use all those railroads and quickly conquer the rest of the U.S.S.R.

You can see German mind at work: trains run on time,  don't they?

You seriously overestimate how easy it would be to use Russian railroads to do anything Hey, many of the railroads from the West were also converging on Mocow - but when it came to using them to move troups they proved to be far from decisive.  Once you move East of Moscow it would have gotten even worse. Hey, back during WWI/Civil War the "White Czechs" (the whole dozen of them) were able to nearly cut Russia into two by cutting the Transsib.  Railroads could have been useful for supplies on conquered land, but they would have been pretty useless for frontline advance (and pretty easy to disable even behind the lines, once you get beyond European Russia, with its relatively dense network).

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Don't forget the fact that the Soviets used  (and the the former Soviet states continue to use) a rail gauge different from Europe, which contributed to Germans not getting to Moscow before winter.  Even if Barbarossa started on time, whether the Germans could reach Moscow before winter is not certain, and there would have been no blitz from Moscow in the Winter.  Instead the likely result would have been the equivalent of the Battle of Stalingrad taking place in Moscow a year earlier.

[12th Doctor]

Probably doesn't matter. The moment Hitler decided to attack the Soviets, he was pretty screwed (well, that and declaring war on the US...). The bottomline is: You can win a world war
and you can be mental, but can't do both at the same time.

Wouldn't Hitler be able to capture Moscow if he had invaded sooner? If Hitler captures Moscow, the U.S.S.R. is screwed since railroads from all over the U.S.S.R. passed through Moscow and thus the Germans would have been able to use all those railroads and quickly conquer the rest of the U.S.S.R.

Not likely.

The Soviets would have sabotaged the rail lines and made them unusable to the Nazis anyway.  Military actions are not just about moving armies, you have to supply them as well.  The German supply lines were dangerously over-extended in real life, with them stalled west of Moscow, it would only have gotten worse if they had taken it.

War is not about seizing capitals, at least not in a total war situation.  In 1861, '62, '63 the Union made Richmond the objective... which is why they consistently failed.  Grant recognized that the objective of warfare is destroy the enemy army, not to take symbolic locations.  However, you can use key locations as a means to keep your enemy in place, and to force them to fight you, which is how Grant utilized Richmond.  In otherwords, it was more important for the Confederates to hold Richmond than it was for Grant to take it.  The Union gained almost no strategic advantage by capturing it.  Of course, the other factor was Sherman.  By depriving the Confederates of the ability to fall back into the vastness of the Confederacy, he ensured that he could hold them in Richmond (and thus made it even more important for the Confederates to hold it, because it was the last major production center they had left).

I bring that up, because that was not the case in Russia.  Historically, Russia has always relied on it ability to fall back into it's vastness to defeat its enemies.  Moscow was important, but taking would have not resulted in a Nazi victory, because the Soviet Army could simply fall back, and in fact, the Soviet's were easily able to move their industrial capacity east of the Urals.  You have to remember that Stalingrad and the Volga are still some two hundred miles east of Moscow... and the Urals are another 300 miles east of that.  The rail lines of Moscow weren't that important to the Soviets during the sieges of either Leningrad or Stalingrad because the Nazis had already overtaken those lines.  The important lines were the ones east of the Volga.  And so Moscow was of no vital strategic importance to either the Germans of the Soviets... it was merely symbolic and symbolic gestures don't win wars.

[12th Doctor]

A more modern example would be the Iraq War.  Apparently, US military planners had not learned the lessons of the last 200 years of warfare, and instead of destroying the Republican Guard (and risking more casualties at the onset of the war) they made Baghdad the objective, thinking that capturing it would end the war, and in the process side-stepped most of the Republican Guard units, allowing them to escape.  And instead of a couple hundred more casualties at the start of the war, we suffered a few thousand more casualties in the first year after we declared an end to the fighting before any Islamic extremists even showed up.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

War is not about seizing capitals, at least not in a total war situation.  In 1861, '62, '63 the Union made Richmond the objective... which is why they consistently failed.

While not wishing to hijack this thread into a Civil War thread, there were plenty of non-political reasons to wish to take Richmond.  It had the largest industrial complex in the South.   Had the Peninsular Campaign to take Richmond succeeded in 1862, but the Confederates retained control of Tennessee in 1862, the war would have ended sooner.  The South's problem was it could not afford any loss of territory or the productive capacity that accompanied it.

Also, in '61, '62, and early '63 the Civil War was not yet a total war for the North.

[Bo]

Not likely.

The Soviets would have sabotaged the rail lines and made them unusable to the Nazis anyway.  Military actions are not just about moving armies, you have to supply them as well. 

War is not about seizing capitals, at least not in a total war situation. 

The Germans could have just rebuilt the railroads if the Soviets destroyed them. It would have taken a little time, but still. BTW, if the German repaired the railroads, their problems in delivering supplies to the front would have been greatly reduced. BTW, if war is not about seizing capitals, then would you say that the French (and British) would have fought on in WWI if the Germans would have captured Paris?

[President Mitt]

It is not plausible to think that Germany would have had the ability to conquer and occupy the entire Soviet Union. There's too much space and too many people. Hitler simply wouldn't have the capacity.

[12th Doctor]

War is not about seizing capitals, at least not in a total war situation.  In 1861, '62, '63 the Union made Richmond the objective... which is why they consistently failed.

While not wishing to hijack this thread into a Civil War thread, there were plenty of non-political reasons to wish to take Richmond.  It had the largest industrial complex in the South.   Had the Peninsular Campaign to take Richmond succeeded in 1862, but the Confederates retained control of Tennessee in 1862, the war would have ended sooner.  The South's problem was it could not afford any loss of territory or the productive capacity that accompanied it.

Also, in '61, '62, and early '63 the Civil War was not yet a total war for the North.

Even though it was a major industrial center, it has not attained, in 1862, anything near the importance it would have in 1864.  The Confederates were fully prepared to evacuate Richmond in 1862, if the need arose... in 1864 they could no longer afford to do that.  As I said, part of that was due to the growth of Richmond (it's population more than doubled in four years), but that was also due, by and large to Confederate losses in the year prior.  By late 1864, the Confederates simply didn't have many industrial centers left, they had lost one of their most important states (Tenn.), and the country was divided at the Mississippi.  If the Confederates had lost Richmond in 1862 then they could have carried on the war for years. 

I disagree that losing Tennessee was not at least as large a blow, because it made the Confederates vulnerable in the Western Theater, which is where the war was really won and lost.  The loss of Tennessee also striped from them any chance of bringing Kentucky into the war on the side of the Confederacy, which almost assuredly would have ended the war.

As for the North not being at total war... it didn't act as though it were, but that was the only way it was going to bring a decisive end to the war.  By the Civil War, warfare had moved beyond the "massive set piece battle" mentality that many officers in the North still had.  Set up, shot at each other, then go home... that wasn't going to win the war.  Nor was simply out maneuvering you opponent to take one or two key locations, as McClellan an Hooker proved beyond a doubt.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

McClellan gets a bum rap.

To begin with, in '61 and '62 had the Confederates taken Washington, they would have won the war, as it would have crumpled Northern support and brought about foreign recognition of the Confederacy.  That meant that he couldn't afford to risk its loss, and he had to appease politicians who understood that fact, but not necessarily the art of war.

Secondly, he believed in the overestimates of Confederate strength his "intelligence" service gave him.  Had he had accurate intelligence, McClellan would not have been as timorous as he had been.  If the Peninsular Campaign had been waged with more vigor, he would have captured Richmond n 1862.  (That isn't to say that he could have ended the war in 1862, as I agree with you there that the war would have continued another year or two, but it would have been unlikely to have continued into 1865.

For one thing, had Richmond fallen in 1862, the Confederate threat to Washington would be gone.  The men and material devoted to defending that static position would have been freed up two years earlier.

[12th Doctor]

McClellan gets a bum rap.

To begin with, in '61 and '62 had the Confederates taken Washington, they would have won the war, as it would have crumpled Northern support and brought about foreign recognition of the Confederacy.  That meant that he couldn't afford to risk its loss, and he had to appease politicians who understood that fact, but not necessarily the art of war.

Secondly, he believed in the overestimates of Confederate strength his "intelligence" service gave him.  Had he had accurate intelligence, McClellan would not have been as timorous as he had been.  If the Peninsular Campaign had been waged with more vigor, he would have captured Richmond n 1862.  (That isn't to say that he could have ended the war in 1862, as I agree with you there that the war would have continued another year or two, but it would have been unlikely to have continued into 1865.

For one thing, had Richmond fallen in 1862, the Confederate threat to Washington would be gone.  The men and material devoted to defending that static position would have been freed up two years earlier.

The "Confederate Threat" to Washington was never a realistic one.  The ring of forts around the city ensured that it could never be taken by the Confederates without the Union Army blundering to an extent impossible even for it.  The only way the Confederates had a chance at posing any threat to Washington would have been by decisively defeating the Army of the Potomac somewhere north of Washington (to unintentionally quote the beginning of Gettysburg).  And even then, they were looking at some pretty long odds.  Baltimore was as well fortified as D.C. and fully capable of being supplied by sea.  Philadelphia was an unrealistic target, because of the difficulty of getting there, and of maintaining a line of supply and communication with Richmond.  Pittsburgh would have been an interesting objective, but without Confederate control of Western Virginia, would have been equally untenable.  Capturing Harrisburg would have been fruitless, other than it might have finally convinced the state government to move out of that stink hole.  And in order to enact any of this, Lee would have had to win a crushing victory against the Army of the Potomac, which was unlikely to happen north of the Mason-Dixon.  

Longstreet was right, the best hope the Confederates had was to somehow figure out a way to maneuver themselves between the Union army and Washington and force the Union to attack them, which was unlikely, because the roads in that part of the country simply don't allow for that possibility, because of the way the ridge lines sweep through that area... they favor vertical, but not lateral movement; offering no significant breaking point where the Confederates could have doubled back in a mass movement and positioned themselves on favorable ground, with favorable strength.  Rather, they put the Confederates on the "outside" of the 90 degree sweep... robbing them of the advantage of interior lines, and rapid reaction... just as they did at Gettysburg.  So long as the Union Army didn't over-pursuit, which was highly unlikely given the inertness of their command structure, they could merely wait until the Confederates either ran out of supplies, or places to go.

The best hope for the Confederates was to fight a purely defensive war in the East, and take the offensive in the West... instead, they did pretty much the opposite.

[12th Doctor]

Joe Johnston in command in Virginia.  Lee in command in Tennessee.  That's the combination that would have won the war for the Confederates.

[JSojourner]

I'd say Germany conquers the entire USSR and then probably proceeds with an invasion of Britain.

No.  The USSR was fully prepared to move production of war machinery beyond the Urals.  In fact, they did. There was vast territory and a huge population to rally.  They would have come screaming down from the Urals and slaughtered the Germans.  Conquering is not something you can do to Russia.  At least, not from without.  And I daresay the same would be true of China or the USA.

The Germans erred tactically in invading the USSR at all.  Instead, just as they carved up Poland together, they should have secretly agreed on a partial Soviet occupation of Persia and perhaps Iraq. This would be attractive to the Soviets because it would partially encircle the Turks and because of oil. This move would pin down Commonwealth forces in Iraq and Iran, while the Nazis presssed matters in Egypt. If Hitler could have controlled the Suez, and then bided (is that a word?) his time until the V-2 could be used en masse, I think an invasion and occupation of Britain (RAF superiority notwithstanding) might have worked. Of course, we'd be into 1944 by then, wouldn't we?  And what of the USA?  If the Japanese had played ball with Hitler and attacked only British, Dutch, French and Chinese territory -- carefully avoiding conflict with America -- well, one can only speculate.  But it is fun to think about.

[12th Doctor]

Not likely.

The Soviets would have sabotaged the rail lines and made them unusable to the Nazis anyway.  Military actions are not just about moving armies, you have to supply them as well. 

War is not about seizing capitals, at least not in a total war situation. 

The Germans could have just rebuilt the railroads if the Soviets destroyed them. It would have taken a little time, but still. BTW, if the German repaired the railroads, their problems in delivering supplies to the front would have been greatly reduced. BTW, if war is not about seizing capitals, then would you say that the French (and British) would have fought on in WWI if the Germans would have captured Paris?

Sorry, I kinda forgot that this discussion was supposed to be about WWII...

Anyway, the Germans could rebuild them, yes... so that the Soviets could blow them up again, or ambush the supply trains, or what have you.  That's the great thing about rail... you know exactly where it will be, and its can't escape.  The Germans had extreme difficulties supplying the army in the location it actually inhabited... that would have been made all the worse the further they tried to press into the Soviet Union.  One of the problems Germany faced throughout the war was finding and supplying their men with enough oil to keep their heavily mechanized army functioning.  I fail to see how that problem would have been helped by taking Moscow, indeed, it likely would have been further exacerbated.

Your point about capitals in WWI is an apples and oranges comparison.  The war was being fought over a narrow front that made maneuver impossible with the technology at hand.  If the Germans had taken Paris, it would have been because they utterly defeated the French Army.  Note that the Germans captured Brussels, and yet the Belgian Army remained in the fight right up until 1918.  Also, WWI was not a war of annihilation the way that WWII was, at least not at first.  If Germany had captured Paris in 1914, they waring parties would have signed a limp wristed punishment of France (probably handing over Belgium, some meager colonies and that's it), Britain would have gotten off Scot free, and then the major powers would have laughed about what a splendid thing it was, toasted brandy and went on with their ridiculous Victorian existences, at least for the time being.  It was a life and death struggle in 1942.  Granted, the Soviets would probably have gotten off with being able to keep what remained east of the Urals, but that would have been a fate worse than death anyway, especially given the genocidally low regard the Nazis had for Slavic peoples.

The better example isn't Paris in WWI, but rather Napoleon's invasion of Russia.  Napoleon broke the Russian army and marched on Moscow, so the Russians simply burned it down, and conducted a scorched earth campaign all around Napoleon to insure that his men couldn't resupply.  As I said, Russia's historic defense has always been its vastness, and its ability to fall back on itself... which would have been far from exhausted simply because the Germans took Moscow.

The far more important target, from a strategic perspective, was the Baku Oil Fields.  Capturing them probably would not have afforded the Nazis a huge boost in oil reserves, due to sabotage, but it would have deprived the Soviets of the same, rendering the Soviet T-34's all but useless.

[jokerman]

The far more important target, from a strategic perspective, was the Baku Oil Fields.  Capturing them probably would not have afforded the Nazis a huge boost in oil reserves, due to sabotage, but it would have deprived the Soviets of the same, rendering the Soviet T-34's all but useless.

Indeed at the very least, it would have completely enfeebled any attempts by the Soviet Union at a counter-blitz; a very large part in their advantage in the closing years of the war was their oil supply.  Their supplies, for example, were actually much more highly mechanized than the Nazi Army, which was still dependent upon horses for a great deal of provisioning.

Excellent postings, Chris.

[regertz]

Regarding the comments on railroads at the Moscow hub, it's not that Germany would gain use of Soviet railroads but that the Soviets at a desperate moment would lose them.  The Russian rail net was poor but a vital link for the various fronts.  British historian/journalist Alexander Werth, author of the best single volume account of WWII in Russia, "Russia At War" notes in many passages the importance of Soviet rail for Leningrad supply and the transport of oil from Baku and Grozny to the industrial areas.  Cut that net at its hub during the critical stages of the 41 campaign and Leningrad goes...Freeing Army Group North...And supply of the southern front is crippled.  I think the Germans might have achieved most of the Barbarosa objectives if the rail hub were secured by say late August or early September. 

Hitler's indecision and that fatal attack of dysentery.  Hitler was surprisingly cautious during the phase of the war in which he seemed to have an excellent chance of winning...Holding back at Dunkirk, refusing to go full blast on industrial production by conscription of women, hesistating to attack Malta (he personally told Student it would be too costly) and commit more forces to Rommel, hesitating to sanction an immediate drive on Moscow in mid July.  He suffered an attack of dysentery while the generals were begging to press on for Moscow and things hung for nearly a month followed by more indecision.