Second Kharkov? Soviets attacked there because they though Gemrans will go for Moscow again so attacking in south was good combination of not bleeding forces along expected german push and doing something. It was wrong line of thinking but anyway....
If Soviets don't attack then forces get encircled. Since they are lost to Soviets either way there is little difference.
So it's not practical to change the amount of units destroyed? I don't live in post-1900, so I may be speaking from ignorance, but my impression had been that "beaten back with severe losses" was a much less serious problem than "encircled and destroyed."
On the other side, I've read in a couple places that part of the cause of Hitler's increasing micromanagement was tied to his perception that this offensive was failing to produce the decisive encirclements of the previous year. If that's the case, the generals might have been allowed a little more leash until they inevitably got bogged down somewhere (or - this being the Caucasus campaign - maybe "bogged down everywhere"). Whether they'd have done better or worse with the increased freedom is beyond my ability to judge.
Could better intelligence actually have made things worse? The Russians were expecting an attack on Moscow; if they're convinced of the southern offensive, that averts second Kharkov, and might result in more and higher quality formations sitting in the Germans' path. If the Germans run into those in the early days of the campaign, when things were still going well (to all appearances), that opens up the possibility of more damage to the Russian military, the Germans playing more to their strengths, an earlier check to the advance resulting in more realistic mid-campaign objectives, who knows?
Seriously, who knows? Again, by post-1900 standards I have a hopeless lack-of-obsession in the details of how all this works.
i think there were limited counterattacks but Soviets weren't able to do much, being disorganised and all
Fair enough, but there has to be a limit to this way of thinking, right?
Yes, they attacked before they were ready and failed. Yes, they attacked when they were ready and succeeded. But where's the middle ground? Obviously if they'd attacked a week earlier they'd still have been prepared enough to give the Germans serious worry, but the Germans would have been better off (at that point only by inches).
I'm not saying "WI they went in a week early?" I'm saying that as you scale the start of their attack earlier and earlier from OTL, there would inevitably be points when they'd be ready enough to go, but less ready. Can we approximate what would be the worst moment to make the attempt?
Always a possibility though Stalin and STAVKA weren't shy about removing generals who failed (or "failed"). Of course it's possible that instead of OTL commanders who ended up in charge others get appoited and Soviets simply don't hit on right personel soon enough.
Again, Soviets weren't shy about removing generals. So if there is sense of "plot" generals just get removed. Though once generals proved their worth their survivability increased and by 1942 there was a good core of competent generals who were trusted.
Heh. This was actually my original thought. Good to see I made some amount of sense!
Who were the people whose absence would have been felt the most if they weren't able to contribute to the Soviet defense and counter attacks?
Your last sentence hits the nail on the head for me. What if there
actually was a plot - even if it was only that a half dozen people said some very inappropriate/treasonous/reactionary things one night years ago during a bout of heavy drinking. Something that even in the heat of things Stalin just couldn't find it in himself to ignore, and that involved some of the proven commanders? Something that wasn't caught because the people ended up loyal, lucky, and competent - that basically slipped through the cracks? Stalin wasn't everyone's best friend - after all - real plots probably did get swept up along with "that guy who stopped clapping early" from time to time.
AFAIK they wrecked oilfields enough so that production didn't restart fully until 1950s
Oh certainly. But other oil fields they
didn't wreck, because the Germans never overran them. Those are the ones I'm wondering about.
Just for example, let's say the Germans made a beeline for Baku, with the only diversion being a split off to the north to watch the flank facing Stalingrad. Hypothetically, this allows some lead elements to get all the way across the Chechnya-Dagestan border before they run out of steam.
Further suppose that there was a moment of hysteria in Baku, where rumors snowball until people on the ground are sure the Germans are only a day or two away from the northernmost oil fields. The fellow preparing for the destruction of the oil industry had been threatened with death personal and of his family; taking no "risks", he gives the go ahead to light it all up. Wouldn't that mean a much larger portion of Soviet oil production is wrecked for a decade?
Or maybe Baku is a couple bridges too far, but in that case: were there any major oilfields where that kind of mistake could have been made?
