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What if Hitler had gone for Moscow? (Part 1)

"Professionals talk about logistics."

Barbarossa focused on Moscow has been gamed out several times at Sandhurst. Each and every time, the German forces get so far, and then stall. Supplies, lack of infantry support, and all the rest bring it to a standstill.

Moscow was a chimera, and all the handwavium in the world won't let tanks drive any further without fuel. To say nothing of the problems of tanks operating in a city with infantry support a hundred miles and more to the rear.
 
It's a smaller issue, but having ATL-Torch getting its ships ripped to pieces by U-Boats is also unrealistic. German attacks on defended cross-Atlantic convoys (and the Americans deliberately prioritized their then-scarce escorts for those early in the war) were simply never that successful.
 
On balance I think that the Germans cannot take Moscow but probably do end up inflicting at least a few crushing defeats on the Soviets along the way to failure and the result is a grinding attrition battle before Winter sets in.

Whether its a better or worse situation for the Germans depends entirely on the breaks.
 
David Flin said:
"Professionals talk about logistics."

Barbarossa focused on Moscow has been gamed out several times at Sandhurst. Each and every time, the German forces get so far, and then stall. Supplies, lack of infantry support, and all the rest bring it to a standstill.

Moscow was a chimera, and all the handwavium in the world won't let tanks drive any further without fuel. To say nothing of the problems of tanks operating in a city with infantry support a hundred miles and more to the rear.
Click to expand...
Max Sinister said:
All in all good to know. Just two nitpicks:
- Hadn't the Soviets already started in 1941 to evacuate the bureaucracy to Kuibyshev (Samara)?
- Wouldn't the Vichy French have to fear repercussions for dealing with the Ukrainian nationalists?
Click to expand...

The article is about "Case Blue" going after Moscow in 1942, not the 1941 Operation Typhoon. Specific to the issue of logistics:

The fundamental problem facing the occupying Ostheer during its time in Russia was that everything it needed, apart from food and fodder, had to come from Germany, and it simply lacked the railway transport in order to carry this. Each Heeresgruppe required 75 trains a day, the economy required trains to move materials toward the Reich, the occupied population required substantial train traffic as the northern zone was a food deficit area, and the railways themselves imported good-quality coal and finished products from home. The economic traffic for Quarter IV 1942 was: into Russia 557,192 tonnes, within Russia 2,400,980 tonnes, and into Germany 1,471,808 tonnes, with 613,900 head of cattle,67 which is approximately 14 trains a day into Russia, 58 trains moving within Russia, and 36 trains heading toward Germany. In January 1943, the traffic crossing the border into GVD Osten per day was 76 trains HBD Nord, 87 HBD Mitte, 67 HBD Süd, plus nine trains crossing from Romania to Odessa plus 81 trains carrying coal, construction materials, and equipment for the railway.68 This would indicate that the railways were only just meeting minimum demand, with little extra capacity — for instance, when the 305 Infanterie Division was moved from France in May 1942, ‘the bulk of the division’s motorized units drove all the way from Germany… . The vehicles would not reach Kharkov for another fortnight’.69​
​
Traffic was researched extensively post-war by Oberreichsbahnrat Eugen Kreidler, who interviewed former railway officials from the Reichsbahn, Gedob, and GVD Osten to obtain as complete a picture as possible. He reported that the seven tracks in the Gedob area carried 210 Wehrmacht and 21 freight trains daily plus in RBD Königsberg (East Prussia) approximately 110 trains on two tracks. The traffic crossed between Gedob and the Eastern territories on nine border crossings with another two crossings for RBD Königsberg with a target of 100–170 train pairs for 1941, 200 for 1942, and rising to 240 for 1943 onwards. The average number of border crossings was 47.5 train pairs daily for the last four weeks of 1941, 108 for 1942, and for the first 20 weeks of 1943 there were 124. The extensive work carried out during the Ostbau programs made the railway more resilient to bad weather and flooding, as the daily variation in 1942 was between 35 and 144 train pairs daily, and for 1943 it was only between 103 and 147. This traffic comprised two-thirds Wehrmacht trains, one-fifth coal and one-seventh freight trains — for instance, on 2 November 1942, a fairly typical day, the trains crossing from the Gedob to the East were 108 Wehrmacht and 53 service trains. The border crossing points carried different amounts of traffic, with 25 percent Terespol (Warsaw–Minsk), 17 percent Malkinia (Warsaw–Vilnius), 16 percent Brody (Lemberg–Kiev), 15 percent Podwoloczysha (Lemberg–Odessa), and the other five carried small amounts except for Platerow (Warsaw–Lida), which would grow in importance during 1943.70​

Army Group Center (HBD Mitte) was receiving 116% of its daily needs. Most of the logistical goals that plagued the Germans in 1942 were, ironically, in the South; the other two Army Groups were actually surpassing their needs. I haven't read all the way through the article yet, but logistics isn't a constraint in terms of advancing upon Moscow at this time (1942)
 
This is a decades-old scenario, and there are several parts that I don't, all these years later, consider remotely feasible. Among them: (1) the u-boat bit that someone mentioned further up, (2) An allied summer offensive in Burma in 1942 (wrong time of the year--monsoons made traveling, much less moving armies around, nearly impossible from June until November given the primitive roads of the time) and quite a few other things. This wasn't a bad effort for over twenty years ago, but I've learned some things since then.

I've revised this scenario a couple times since the version this came from, most recently a year or two ago, removing the implausible stuff and expanding the scenario to book-length, incorporating a lot of stuff about the Pacific theater and making the ending more plausible. You can find the revised version serialized in Best of Space Bats and Butterflies book one and two, or a standalone book: The Moscow Option - 1942. Last year, I also wrote a novel set in this timeline's 1949. It's called Marsh War and involves a proxy war between Soviet partisans and US occupation forces in what is now the Western Ukraine. In the novel, I mention the Donets War, a Nazi last stand agains the Western Allies in the Donets Basin in 1947, which gives you some clue ast to where this ends up.

If you're interested in any of those books, feel free to check them out on Amazon. The links are:

https://www.amazon.com/Moscow-Option-1942-Dale-Cozort-ebook/dp/B0B3BK1JXS/ (Moscow Option 1942 as a book)

https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Treasure-Hunt-Book-One-ebook/dp/B09KQC1BT6/ (Marsh War. Alternate history fiction set in the Moscow Option - 1942 universe.

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Space-Bats-Butterflies-Alternate-ebook/dp/B08H4HHCNH/ (The first of my Space Bats & Butterflies anthologies - has part one of Moscow Option - 1942, plus a bunch of other stuff)

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Space-Bats-Butterflies-Book-ebook/dp/B08LDQBNY6/ (Has the second half of Moscow Option - 1942, plus a lot of other stuff)

I also do a weekly AH column on my Wordpress Blog, if you're interested. The latest column is at: https://dalecozort.wordpress.com/20...n-indians-in-the-american-southeast-1492-1939
 
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