Thanks Rising Sun, I did never hear of that before!
Just having a quick look over this thread - a number of interesting comments, to which I would like to revert when time permits. Regarding the second Soviet military purge - sometimes referred to as the “Air Force purge” in view of the prominence of Air Force luminaries like Smushkevich among the victims - it is truly remarkable that, some months into the German invasion, Stalin and Beria were still going out of their way to ensure that experienced (if occasionally turbulent/depressive/alcoholic) generals were duly shot, even as the Germans swarmed all over western European Soviet territories. If it was a question of just deserts, Stalin, Beria and company should have witnessed Guderian’s panzers rolling past the Kremlin at about the time that Smushkevich became acquainted with “Beria’s Basement”. Life, of course, has little to do with fairness, or what is justly deserved. Best regards, JR.
Not only did he purge his officers, he replaced them with reactionary yes-men idiots like Budyonny. It should be noted that Stalin wasn’t just purging people, he was purging the ideas and concepts of Deep Battle, and men like Zhukov not only survived because of their demonstrated competence but because they learned to keep their talk of things on a low profile while showing success on these ideas on the battlefields of Khalkhin Gol.
Stalin also refused to believe the Soviet Union was about to be invaded until the very last moments before Luftwaffe bombs fell. He threatened to execute any commander who put his unit on alert lest they might “provoke” the Germans massing on the border who warming their panzer engines up, tearing down barriers and removing barbed wire in front of their positions, etc. The war warning was only sent out on midnight the 21st of June, 1941 - much too late for most sleepy units to collect themselves and an order that was still worded timidly at that. Stalin refused to believe Hitler had duped him and was hoping against hope that Hitler only was trying to intimidate more concessions out of him and the intelligence chatter he heard regarding Barbarossa (such as the German ambassador, himself an anti-Nazi, telling his Soviet diplomatic contacts that war was afoot) was nothing but disinformation and an attempt of the British to spark a war. (I actually read over some of Beevors’ Stalingrad this morning. :mrgreen: )
There’s no telling how an adequately alerted and deployed Red military would have performed in the opening days, or even if they would have been much better than the unprepared roused forces encircled in “cauldrons” were. But almost certainly they would have offered better resistance and slowed the Wehrmacht a bit and inflicted more casualties…
Thanks for the link, I read on Tukhachevsky already before, the guy who developed a similar tactic as the Blitzkrieg, with some differences like more attacking columns instead of a few etc.
Tukhachevsky’s approach was, in my humble opinion, not so much a version of Blitzkrieg, as an alternative suited to countries like the Soviet Union. I tend to think of it as “Blitzkrieg for the Big Boys”. In his writings of the 1930s, Marshal T. actually ridiculed what became known as the Blitzkrieg idea. One example he used was the scenario of a Canadian “Blitzkrieg” army attacking the USA. The Canadians would, of course, have (in this scenario) been superbly equipped with tanks, motorised infantry, AT guns, tactical aircraft … Tuchachevsky’s question, however, was, more or less … could this Canadian force of perhaps 15 divisions prevail against perhaps 150 US divisions, even if the latter were a plodding, old-fashioned lot ? Tuchachevsky’s answer was, “no”.
It is worth bearing in mind that the concepts embodied in “Blitzkrieg” were developed by soldiers deeply scarred by the experience of WW1, as perceived from the cultural perspective of Britain, Germany and (to some extent) France and the USA. Fuller, Liddel-Hart, Lutz, Guderian, De Gaulle and Patton were captivated by the idea that it would be possible to win decisive victories (Clausewitz-pattern, sort of) with small but highly potent strike forces based on armour, motorised infantry and artillery and air power. Lurking obviously behind this was the fear of a repeat of the huge loss of life that occurred on the Western and Italian Fronts in WW1 - and abomination to western soldiers who had lived through the process and, indeed, who could blame the theorists for this preference ? What became known as “Blitzkrieg” offered the possibility for this.
Tuchachevsky came from a very different cultural background. It was the culture that proceeded on the assumption of availability of huge human and material resources, and a willingness to expend human life and material resources in much the same way as western commanders would consider expenditure of ammunition. I am not making this up. This is an approach that dominated (it would be unfair to say exclusively, but nonetheless) Russian military thought for centuries. What it boils down to is - if you have huge numbers of soldiers, and large quantities of materiél, and if you do not much care how many of one’s soldiers are killed in pursuit of the objective then, well, the considerations underlying Blitzkrieg become irrelevant.
Tuckhachevsky’s alternative was descrbed as “Deep War”, or “Deep Battle”. It was an uncompromisingly aggressive approach, but not depending on “skewer points” or similar points of finesse. It was supposed to work something like this. The Red Army would arrange itself, broadly, in two or three waves. The first wave - in WW2 terms, “Shock” forces, composed of second-grade troops, armour etc. - would slam into the enemy without any restraint or sensitivity to casualties. Remember - huge numbers, massive material assumed. The “Shock” forces would smash the enemy front at any cost. Stage 2 involved the advance of the élite troops - in WW2 terms, the “Guards”. These would sweep (sort of Blitzkrieg style) through the shattered enemy front, advancing as far as possible and destroying enemy divisions (motorised, armoured, whatever…) to the utmost degree. Third-grade troops would follow, cleaning up (if that is the term) the shattered enemy remains. Theoretically, the process would then be repeated, until victory was achieved.
One might suggest that, had Tukachechevsky survived the Great Military Purge (a contradiction in terms, since he was its main target) the Ribbentrop-Molotav Pact would never have happened, and the Soviet Union would have attacked and shattered the Germans on Deep Battle lines in, say, 1939. Impossible to say - this is an unhistorical speculation. The interesting thing is that, having survived “Barbarossa” through a combination of luck, German incompetence, skill and luck, “Deep Battle” returned to the fore, and triumphed over “Blitzkrieg” as the great success of grand tactics in WW2. They may not have been anxious to admit it (at least to Stalin) but the great Soviet marshals of WW2 were surviving disciples of Tukaschevsky - Zhukov not least among them. History has featured one great “Deep Battle” campaign - Operation Bagration which, in Summer 1944, followed this pattern as far as was practically possible. “Bagration” comprehensively destroyed German Army Group Centre - so comprehensively that it is almost difficult to believe. The campaign also revealed the limitations of “Deep Battle” - after one cycle of the process, immediate renewal of the pattern proved impossible until lines of command, communication and supply could be restored. Nonetheless, the 1945 Soviet campaigns towards Berlin had distinct elements of “Deep Battle” embedded in them also.
Was Tukhachevsky a threat to Stalin ? Did he need to be purged ? Again, who can say. What does seem clear is that Stalin was right about one thing - for all that he was, from one viewpoint, an uneducated pushy cavalryman who perhaps enjoyed himself too much, and was a bit over-devoted to personal publicity - Marshal T. was very highly respected among the Red Army officer corps. The improtant Soviet commanders of WW2 - again, intelligent products of the Red Cavalry - never lost sight of his inspiration, even if they had more sense ever than to mention it. Zhukov was very much a product of the Tukhachevsky legacy. Stalin, who had conspired with Beria to destroy Tukhachevsky and so many of his comrades, should have had good reason to thank Marshal T. for his contribution, albeit posthumous, to the survival of the Soviet Union. I doubt, mind you, whether the thought ever crossed his mind … Best regards, JR.
It’s also worth remembering that the first elements of Blitzkrieg (as personified by Fuller’s Plan 1919) were conceived at around the time of Passchendaele, as a reaction to (and misunderstanding of) the slow, attritional campaigns of the time. I can’t help but suspect there was a lot of wishful thinking going on, as well as a lack of understanding of the effect previous battles had had on the German army of the time. To give an example, German troops in late 1918 who had been cut off by rapid tank attack would probably have surrendered. Those of 1914/15 who had not gone through the battering of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele would probably have fought on, leading the tanks to surrender through lack of petrol.
Bear in mind that Bagration would not have worked so well…if the cream of Hitler’s ultra-modern armour/air forces hadn`t been in Normandy…
Those SS/Luftwaffe ‘fire-brigades’ which had been so useful in blunting Soviet assaults were sorely missed…
It is a fact that,[ akin to the U.S./C.S.A. civil war], massed allied industrial logistics attritionally overcame [nominally superior] Nazi military individual/local tactics by fairly wasteful/ponderous sheer brute force.[not to mention allied spying/intel superiority].
Another question is whether Europe [& the world] would have been much better off today, if it had not been devastated/dominated by Anglo-American & Soviet hegemony…
There are so many different answers to this question. For example if certain countries, like the Soviet Union, sided with Germany (and remained that way) then certainly yes Germany could have won the war. However, even if you consider all countries taking the side they took I still think there are a massive range of answers. I see there being many points in the war when with hindsight it could have gone very differently. For example, while the Battle of Britain was fought by heroes, and that can never be taken away from them, in the end there was luck on their side. If the Battle of Britain was won by the Germans it would not have necessarily resulted in victory for the Axis but it would have certainly tipped the scale in their favour.
I’m pretty sure that awhile ago we came to the conclusion that with the alliances as they were, the Axis could never have won the war - the USSR and the US were just too industrialized and too large to lose.
The previous poster brings up an interesting point though - what if the Germans never invaded the USSR and then the war continued on as it was going prior to June 1941? The Germans could have continued to focus on the UK. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December, it would have been interesting to see how the Soviets would have responded to the Germans declaring war on the US. In this world, it would be the UK and the US against Germany, Japan and possibly the USSR (though, since the ideologies of the Germans and Soviets were so different, I doubt that they really could have been true allies).
Allies, no - but Stalin was keen to swap Nazi-tech for strategic raw materiels.
U.S. policy meant bleeding Britian of its financials [Fort Knox was home to bulk British gold]& its hi-tech too [given away freely by Churchill] such as radar,aero-engines inc’ turbo-jets,proximity fuses,photo recon, ultra, & etc…leaving them broke,[paid off their last war debt `bout a year ago…] & compliant, economically & politically…
Actually, the Stalin mindset didn`t allow for ‘allies’ - all foreigners were suspect, & subject to degrees of hostile scrutiny, depending on what level of value they could provide…
Indeed, Stalin had more respect for Hitler, as a fellow, openly vicious dictator, than for the likes of pontificating arch-capitalists like Churchill…
Stalin may have appreciated Churchill’s ability to function while permanently pissed [as a “jew-ridden, 1/2 American, drunkard”] though…
Actually, in terms of jet fighters, the Germans were no further ahead than the British in jet technology. It’s true the Germans had operational fighters engaged in combat. The British had operational squadrons of Gloster Meteors which they sent to Belgium for reconnaissance missions but never employed them in combat. The Americans were perhaps a year behind them and their test bed - the Comet, I believe - was flying but a poor performer. Had the war gone on much longer, they would have locked horns sooner or later.
Missiles were another story. The Germans were way ahead in the technology, but from a “bang for the buck” point of view, the V2 was a huge waste of resources. About the only thing you could hit with it was a gigantic target like London without any more specificity than that. It was a terror weapon - there was no defense against it - but even there, it was too little too late.
I should also point out that the German jet engines were exceptionally poor - their expected life was something like 10 hours, and they were both excessively heavy and incapable of development. That’s why all the Soviet jet engines trace their lineage back to either the RR Nene/Derwent engines they bought after the war or indigenous Soviet work - they had the German engines plus a bunch of people who had worked on them, but couldn’t get them to work.
Incidentally, the engines were also the reason the Me-262 had swept wings - the turbine section was heavier than expected, so rather than shift the whole wing back they just increased the sweep of the outer section to move the centre of lift aft. The major aerodynamic effect of this would be to give it worse spinning characteristics!
It could also be pointed out that in mock combat, the F-80 Shooting Star often came out ahead of the Me262 postwar IIRC, and that while most pilots felt the aircraft were comparable in overall performance at speed - the P/F-80 tended to be more reliable…
Quite true. Adam Tooze in Wages of Destruction goes into some depth and adds it to his list of indictments of Albert Speer as an overrated Armaments Minister with an inflated “Armaments Miracle” that was as much self-aggrandizing propaganda as it was truth (though there is some truth to it). The V-2 was a massive net drain on resources and was ideologically driven by Speer rather than logically driven by sense. The Germans were essentially firing white elephants at Britain and Antwerp in absence of a real strategic bomber arm - though occasionally deadly ones…
We might start a separate thread on this, but what qualifies something as a ‘terror weapon’?
The absence of defence?
That covers every weapon from a peashooter to a nuclear weapon if you happen to be on the wrong end of it.
Were the planes on 9/11 terror weapons or should we just look at the people who took them over as terrorists?
IIRC, the Germans referred to Allied bomber crews about late 1943/1944 - 1945 as “Terrorflieger” or ‘terror flyer’. I don’t recall them using the same terms about their own bomber crews at Rotterdam, Coventry, etc when they were carrying the worst air raids the world had known to that point.
I’d suggest that whether or not a weapon is a ‘terror weapon’ depends very much upon whether you’re delivering or receiving it.
I always took the V1 and V2 to be pure terror weapons as they had no tactical or real strategic value (the V1 was deemed to be a more cost effective weapon iirc), they could only be used as indiscriminate area weapons.
Allied and Axis bombing could be termed as terror tactics (when targeting destruction of a city) but the weapons themselves (bombers) were not terror weapons, no more so than shelling a city to destruction (ie Warsaw, the weapons were not terror weapons but the tactics were, similar with Lidice and Ležáky in the wake of Heydrich’s assassination).
The Jumo 004A jet engine was developed in 1942 and was bench tested at over 250 hours continuous running and would have gotten ~80 hours life. It used a super alloy “Tinidur” that was 1/2 Fe and the rest strategic metals including 45% Chrome /nickel. With hollow blades they would reach > 100 hours.
An alternative was engine Jumo 004B was developed using a new alloy “Cromadur” that was 14% chrome and used no nickel at all substituting Magnesium. This was combined with hollowed turbine blades, to make a working engine. As pointed out it had average life of 10 hours but part of that was due to poor training when throttling up too fast, it dumped too much fuel ; overheating the engine. So improved jet engine models were developed with better controls that probably would have gotten 50 hours [?] .
By the end of the war an improved jet engine was in development using a new alloy “Vanidur”. This alloy used 2/3 Fe and 30% strategic alloys mostly nickel and Chrome ,but also molybdenum and vanadium. Post war Americans reconstructed a Jumo 004 engine with a similar alloy and got bench tests of 500 hours that projected a life expectancy of 150 hours.
So like all German weapons , given enough time they would have worked out the bugs.
The problem they had was not that they could not design the engines but that had a lack of the strategic resources to make them with the optimum materials. Same with many other equipments. They were forced to use sub-par components which is what affected the engine life more than anything else.
Even after making the engines there was a lack of capability for training pilots on the new jets (even for the well understood piston engined aircraft).
The Volksjager He 162 was an attempt to reduce the strategic materials useage (only one engine for a start) but despite supposedly being designed to be easy to fly it was a death trap for inexperienced pilots (German and British pilots who flew it during and post war claimed it was better than the Me 262 but required highly experienced pilots).
Production of engines as it was could not keep up with demand for operational units never mind increasing the amount of units (hundreds of airframes were captured with no engines being available). Even with an increased life span of the engines the detrimental problems of the first generation jet aircraft could not be overcome (poor acceleration, sluggish at low speed, poor dogfighting as they bleed speed quickly, requirements for piston fighters and massed AAA to defend the German airbases)
The British had their second iteration fighters coming into service in 1945 which were better than the Meteor, the US had the P80 in Italy, with the allies having better production, material availability and training than the Germans so they would not have had any advantage over the allies.