Could the Soviets have won the war against Germany on their own?

Germany went into the war with almost no useful reserves. By barbarossa it had used up most of what it did have. To compound this there was no meaningful transfer of technology between the Reich and its allies, who could have provided reserves, until 1943. That includes both Italy and Japan and one look at the tanks both made would tell you they could have used pz 3 and 4 plans thrown their way. Throughout the invasion all german allies had to make due with whatever meager equipment their small nations could provide often times this meant captured allied materiel, particularly French.

Lastly the german intelligence arm in all aspects was undermanned, underfunded And downright incompetent and too often could not even tell who was in command of the opposing force while simultaneously being utterly oblivious as to enemy capabilities.

Russia would have won, even by Moscow they still enjoyed a manpower advantage of about 30 mil and the fact the germans had to rebuild every mile of railroad to the front helped them immeasurably. By then Germany had lost momentum anyway and that would have happened with or without the other allies.

>All this took German soldiers and resources away from the Soviet front
which was still 9/10 of all the action

Forgetting about cleaning up Italian problems in the Balkans and Greece.

The user has a point. Don't disregard it out of some pro-russian dogmatic spite. The strategic bombing of Germany was important to winning the war and even more important was its blockading.

>even more important was its blockading.
Forgot about this

Royal Navy pretty much made it so Germany had to nake due exclusively with what it could find in Europe or smuggle through Spain. No war with the British Empire or America means all its ports are open for business.

Practically irrelevant to the failure of Barbarossa. The Germans took negligible casualties in both Yugoslavia and Greece, and General Winter wasn't the biggest cause of the stalling of the German advance; merely another pain in the ass on top of a pile of other problems.

Mandatory

the casulties mounting up in poland, france, norway, balkans did have an impact, it meant the losses suffered during barbarossa were not replaceable

i mean, we are talking about thousands of thousands of ppl and loss of material aswell

plus the need to occupy those lands, meaning less presence in the USSR

On a long enough timescale, yes.

The Balkans and Greek campaigns, combined, amounted to less than 2,000 German dead.

Poland and France, yes.

Yugoslavia and Greece?

"No."

Bombing campaign can be described as 'too little, too late'.

Meaningful effects of the campaign showed up by the late 1944, when the war was basically won in Europe.

Allies focused too much on civilian targets (Bomber Command assumption that bombing cities will break morale of the Germans was wrong and during WW2 technology that made precision bombing possible wasn't there yet) and their intelligence was subpar (Germans used wired communication which couldn't be intercept and Allies to eagerly marked bombed targets as completely destroyed)

(((oy vey the soviets needed the help of international capitalism my fellow go-/pol/acks!)))

You forgetting it wasn't Germany alone.

Fuck no. They barely scraped by with the massively fuckhuge allied lend lease and materiel coming in through the persian corridor as it were. The stalemate would've gone on till mid-1945 or something, there was a planned summer offensive with the new wonder weapons (the atom bomb would've been fully ready too by then) which would've nullified the immense numerical advantage of the bolshevists and this in turn would've meant game over for stalin's zerg hordes

We basically did.

Also, without the threat of other fronts the OKW would not have worried about paratrooper operations anymore (the Crete thing basically prevented them from using them effectively during Barbarossa) so this too would have BTFO'd the soviets pretty quickly (the russian theater was perfect for these kinds of operations), they would've been encircled left and right by fast-moving paratrooper divisions just as they got BTFO by the far less skilled finns in the winter war

This is what the average LARPing vatnik actually believes from watching too much KremlincuckTV to go with his pickles and potato vodka, kek

>memes memes memes
haha classic

reminds me of when the wehrmacht raised their banner over the kremlin... oh wait

>Also, without the threat of other fronts the OKW would not have worried about paratrooper operations anymore (the Crete thing basically prevented them from using them effectively during Barbarossa) so this too would have BTFO'd the soviets pretty quickly (the russian theater was perfect for these kinds of operations), they would've been encircled left and right by fast-moving paratrooper divisions just as they got BTFO by the far less skilled finns in the winter war

Are you retarded? No, the Eastern Front is terrible for paratroopers. They might move fast in the tactical sense, but they're terribly slow in the operational sense, since jumping like that requires enormous amounts of stores and fuel and maintenance and manpower to move all those planes and gliders around in the first place. Then you have the problem that once deployed, they can only control a very small area,, and the main ATR of the Germans, the JU-52, doesn't fly all that far anyway.

>which would've nullified the immense numerical advantage of the bolshevists and this in turn would've meant game over for stalin's zerg hordes

>still believing russian strategy was to just run foward and not give a fuck cuz they had manpower

Sure the russians had a extreme numerical advantage and they used it but this meme needs to die. I'm sure the higher ups didn't give a fuck if they fought a battle and lost 3 times as many troops as the german, as long as they seceded in their objectives. Remember though a dead soilder means more than a lost life, it also means lost equipment that could have been better used. The Soviets needed all the trucks, guns, winter uniforms, regular boots, anything they, needed it. Especially during the beginning of the war.

>wehraboos actually believe this

>stalins's zerg horses
Germans where the ones zerg rushing.

It is hard to say, the Russians probably wouldn't have support from many countries but intervention would almost certainly happen and Russia would be saved by the other countries on the eve of destruction. It would then be paid compensation by Germany and be split up by the eastern European powers.

Yes, but German action in the Balkans delayed Barbarossa by 3 months.

If Germany invaded in March instead of June (assuming everything else went about the same), they would have reached Moscow in July instead of November, meaning "General Winter" wouldn't have been interfering with German operations.

>Yes, but German action in the Balkans delayed Barbarossa by 3 months.

Is this because Italy couldn't take Greece and needed Germany to do it for them?

>Yes, but German action in the Balkans delayed Barbarossa by 3 months.

More like 1.

>If Germany invaded in March instead of June

They would have invaded in the middle of the muddy season and gotten stymied quickly, allowing for the enormously rapid mobilization of the Soviet reserves to happen unmolested.

> they would have reached Moscow in July instead of November

They were already running into considerable logistic strain in the middle of August, well before the winter set in. In fact, Typhoon was only able to advance because of the early freeze that froze another spell of mud in the autumn.

>Is this because Italy couldn't take Greece and needed Germany to do it for them?

The anti-axis coup in Yugoslavia had a hell of a lot more to do with it.

>Meaningful effects of the campaign showed up by the late 1944, when the war was basically won in Europe.
Depends on where you're looking. In terms of industrial output, the strategic bombing campaign failed to keep up with Germany's own belated war mobilization until the war was already effectively won.

However, it managed very early on to force the Germans to devote massive amounts of resources to the defense of the Reich. Every shell fired over Germany was one not fired at a Russian soldier, and after the first thousand-bomber raid on Cologne in 1942, cities across the Reich were panicking and hoarding air defense resources. The end result was that you had tens of thousands of men and guns that could be used on the Eastern Front devoted instead to far less efficient duties in defense of the Reich. You also had factories forced to churn out far more anti-aircraft ammunition to keep these forces supplied than if they were supplying regular artillery, and countless pilots and planes kept domestically rather than fighting over the Eastern Front.

In terms of aircraft, the impact was pretty significant as well. As the war went on, the Luftwaffe pulled more and more planes and experienced pilots from the East to defend Germany, leaving those remaining increasingly overworked and stretched thin. In the Crimea in 1944, for example, just two fighter squadrons were left in the theater against at least 500 Soviet aircraft.

Short answer: yes

I don't remember where I heard the 3 months figure, but let's just assume it would have only been a 1 month difference.

Would arriving at Moscow in October (instead of November) made a difference in not freezing to death?

Not him, but don't overlook the logistical impacts of those decisions. It's enormously easier for Germany to field a squadron of fighters over Dusseldorf than it is over Vitebsk.

I actually agree with your core point, that strategic bombing was both A) important and B) primarily important by the diversion of materials that would otherwise be employed elsehwere, but it is extremely unlikely that all, or even most of those assets could be deployed to the Eastern Front if the strategic bombing campaign magically disappeared.

Also, you can make an argument that the inefficiency was bilateral; that the Western Allies could have used their manpower and industrial power in more efficient ways than just trying to bomb Germany flat; but that starts to get enormously complex and probably too much so to be dealt with on 2,000 character limit Veeky Forums posts.

It would have resulted probably in a stalemate.

The Germans have no way of taking urban centers like Leningrad, Moscow , or Stalingrad, Lend-Lease or not. The casualties in the end would be too terrible to ignore and unlike OTL Stalin would want peace, since he has no other support. The war there would last also much longer there, and the Germans have no way of keeping the vast territories the acquired after the initial wins in Barbarosa.

The Germans would probably keep the baltics, Ukraine and Poland but leave Russia. Finland also gets Karelia.

This is all assuming US and commonwealth do not engage the Germans in a land war.

>Would arriving at Moscow in October (instead of November) made a difference in not freezing to death?

Freezing to death wasn't the primary problem. The primary problem is that poor weather tends to hurt the attacker far more than it hurts the defender. Attacking powers in WW2 tend to have the predominancy in more resource intensive, mobile, and indirect forms of armaments, things like planes and tanks (which is why they can attack in the first place). The attacker, too, must advance and manage to resupply while continually moving further away from bases of support, and things like rail transport, nevermind animal and motor transport, are also adversely affected.

In our local case in Russia, cold and snow aren't the only forms of bad weather to deal with, and the mud was often worse. If you want to read about it in detail, I'd recommend this history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-21/cmhPub_104-21.pdf but thinking that the German invasion was going swimmingly and only stopped because of the November Freeze is simply wrong. The question, therefore, rests on a false premise.

I'd argue that there really wasn't anywhere else the Allies could have put those resources. There was only so many men you could pour into Italy and North Africa, and launching Overlord any earlier than it happened probably wouldn't have ended well. There definitely were points where the strategic bombing campaign was a net loss for the Allies and unsustainable, particularly during a brief period in 1943 when the Luftwaffe really got its shit together, but overall the net impact, at least in terms of fraction of the war effort, seems to be positive for the Allies.

You're right that the diversions wouldn't be a 1:1 exchange ratio, but it's still a major impact. Logistics were a huge problem for the Germans in the East, and even in the early days of Barbarossa they had to substitute artillery with aircraft. Once the campaign stagnated, having more artillery available definitely would have made an impact on blunting Soviet offensives (not necessarily stopping them though).

There's also the question of experienced personnel. Plenty of aces were called back to the Reich, and many of those were killed or at least put out of action for the rest of the war. Gunther Rall was one of those - he was recalled from Crimea in 1944 when III./JG 52 relocated there to fly in defense of the Reich only to be shot down and put out of action for the rest of the war on his third sortie.

The issue wasn't them freezing to death so much as the Wehrmacht just running out of steam. The only reason they got as far as they did was because the Red Army was such a shitshow at the time, and they were really outrunning their own logistics during Operation Typhoon hoping to capture Moscow before they ran out of supplies.

Attacking a month earlier would just leave them with a worse logistical situation, as they would have had less time to get everything in place.

Zhukov claimed they would have lost without the material aid from USA.

Where? would be a good quote to compliment the Khruschev one and the multiple Stalin ones.

>Yes, but German action in the Balkans delayed Barbarossa by 3 months.
Meme. Flooding in Poland delayed Barbarossa, not action in the Balkans.

No. Slavs are an inferior race to germans

>meaning "General Winter" wouldn't have been interfering with German operations.
Might have encouraged Stalin and the Stavka to actually release the Far East District forces for a counter attack, on top of the "Siberian" troops they used historically.

>Would arriving at Moscow in October (instead of November) made a difference in not freezing to death?
Logistics is what killed them and would still have killed them.

...

They wouldn't have been on their own, that I can assure you.

Stupid question, stupid thread.

No. Anyone familiar with the Soviet order of battle in 1941-43 would confirm this. It was a logistic and tactical wreck that would have, in the German worst case, stalled at Zitadelle lines or similar. Blau would have been a mixed bag in slight favor of the Germans without the American aid which allowed for the impossible mobility of Russia's millions of "soldiers".
Wehraboo myths dispelled in no particular order:
The NAZI atom bomb was abandoned before any construction. The bell does not and never did exist. The Aryan physicist who designed it lied to Kietel and Hitler himself about the resources needed and it was deemed unwise to attempt. It would have, however, worked as it bore late term Manhattan Project maturity of concept.
Germany never ran out of men. It ran out of experience and expertise. By 1945, only their tankers and fighter pilots (all 12 of them) were superior engagement-to-engagement to the Allies and even the Soviets. Germany never regained Reichswehr level of total quality because of the quick rearmament. Really no Power except USA was its former self. Tech bump, nothing more.
The SS was not at superior force to the Wehrmact until 1945. They had distribution preference from the beginning. It was never an "elite" force outside of maybe three impressive divisions.
I only dispel Wehraboos because literally every good thing you've heard about the Red Army is false outside muhslopes.

>I only dispel Wehraboos because literally every good thing you've heard about the Red Army is false outside muhslopes.

What about their operational ability to consistently attack in greater ratio of force than the frontwide ratio?

>literally every good thing you've heard about the Red Army is false outside muhslopes.
translates to
>"i've literally never read a history book"

Sure that's why the Heeresgruppe Mitte got absolutely rekd in Winter 41 without LL or a 2nd front, träum weiter Schnukki.

I rescind the totality of my statement. Deep battle doctrine is the way to go if you have more men. I just consider it the obvious choice for Soviet High Command so i don't drool over their relatively competent execution.
Its easy to do things by the numbers if you have the numbers in your favor and its superiority to German tactics resides in the incomprehensible decision to not equip every division with heavy artillery.
When space is your enemy, operate over the space, jesus christ.

>Germany never ran out of men

Holy shit the dumb pieces of trash who are permitted to post here.

I have read more about the Soviets than I have about the Americans and almost as much as the Germans, mostly biographies and reports. Argue or don't post.

>without the American aid which allowed for the impossible mobility of Russia's millions of "soldiers
The USSR mobilized millions of troops and had essentially defeated the German invasion before lend-lease even made a logistical dent.

Your "assertion" is dubious at best.

>I have read more about the Soviets than I have about the Americans
Nothing isn't more than nothing.

>Argue or don't post.
I recommend the same to you. Make meaningful arguments with sources or fuck off.

>I rescind the totality of my statement. Deep battle doctrine is the way to go if you have more men.

That has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.

I think he's ESL.

>mostly biographies and reports

Stop using these as facts and read a real book.

Tactical mobility, not mobilization. 41-43, the Soviets didn't move troops up and down the line of battle like the Germans did despite their horrible logistical situation. That was my point, not the raising of troops to begin with.
Units were dispersed more than they were destroyed. Germany and Germans in East Europe 1939: 80m-12m
Occupied Germany 1948, when the German expulsions were ended: 77m
Full mobilization never succeeded, dispersed units were hastily reformed or simply written off and the Volksturm never took numbers well. Combat effectiveness dropped like a rock, manpower wasn't the primary issue, it was never down to the last batch of 18-45 year olds. Not saying it didn't get close or wasn't a problem.
Soviet OOB is easily found and downloadable in PDF form for Barbarossa, Zitadelle, and Bagration (I'm sure they all are but I haven't looked), which is my source for an opinion, so, "no u".

>Soviet OOB is easily found and downloadable
Yes, and?
Their OOB don't back your opinions up. Make meaningful arguments or don't post.

>manpower wasn't the primary issue, it was never down to the last batch of 18-45 year olds

This is a flat out lie and disingenuous to state. Present one respectable source that backs up your claim.

That first paragraph is incomplete, it never establishes the cost ratio of planes to v2s to U-boats for a proper comparison, just throws numbers in the air. It's like missing a sentence or something.

Also the Soviets didn't use heavy bombers because they weren't effective. German manufacturing was not hampered by the bombing of civilians, and actually helped justify diversion of resources to the Wehrmacht, for example destroy a tea kettle factory and all the iron goes to tanks instead. Whereas normally the factory owner is too politically connected to fork over his business, but there's no arguing with a hundred two ton bombs.

>woulda coulda shoulda

Germany wasn't alone either.
They had supplies(and soldiers btw) from whole of Europe.

Without Romanian oil Germans wouldn't have been able to do much.

The western allies had the role of Romania, more or less. Brits and Americans will never admit this though.

Not him but even though the 'war' in Yugoslavia amounted to a drivethrough it still diverted the forces that could have been [and were planned to be] used for Barbarossa

A German atom bomb is one of the stupidest myths of the "German Superscience" narrative. Heisenberg didn't give a fuck and was just messing around in a basement with ten other guys on some basic proof of concept shit that was decades away from anything even close to a fissile explosive. Historians are pretty sure he was actually a Nazi hater, and deliberately wasted time, and refused offers from Speer to ramp up the project intentionally, but that's still up for debate. Compared to the American Manhattan project, which had a massive budget, the best physicists and engineers money could buy, a dedicated city and a carte blanche once the budget ran out, theres no way a German Atomic weapon was possible. The lab was the size of a large suburban basement, and had no more than twenty people at it's largest. Hitler didnt see the potential of nukes (they were described as "the largest explosion made by man", but he was unimpressed with the proposed product and couldn't imagine it being what it claimed). Plus, quantum physics was seen as a "Jewish science", and was discredited by several major German scientists for political reasons. Hitler was a romantic about war, and wanted to blow the military budget on other more superficially impressive weapons like V2s and train artillery, not follow some scientifically unfeasible sounding goose chase led by a guy who didn't seem to care much about the project to begin with

Those thread are usally garbage what ifs with idea to design scenario biased specific result without any through put into explaining how this scenario could happen or any details provided beyond vague.

I hate Krauts who disagree with me but I hate other Russians even more
t. Zhukov

>believing in general Winter

>if you blow up your enemy's factories, they win

Found the Canadian

>what is creative destruction
>what is salvage
>what is crowding out

Hitler's economic "miracle" depended on inflating the economy and cannibalizing any sector that had significant resources.

Someone should make a Russian version of that video

They did.