Was the Soviet Union beatable?

You lack continuity in your posts. You start of talking about how the Red Army could have seriously hindered the Wehrmacht's offensive, by successfully invading Romania in June 1941. Then you start writing about what the Soviets' plans were in 1940 or who knows what you were thinking, although it is irrelevant to the situation of June 1941. And then you are surprised that you are being reminded that Yugoslavia didn't exist anymore in June 1941 or that Hungary wouldn't attack Romania in June 1941 if the Soviet Union did? Show more rigor in your posts and arguments, before whining that someone has something against you.

Furthermore if you do not have the complete picture (meaning also the Soviet side), it is a little inappropriate to make claims that you cannot actually support with arguments. Sure, it will add some nonsense posts to your post count, but is this really more important than having a constructive and interesting discussion?

You can buy David Glantz's books easily from amazon.com, but I will post the following days the OoB of the Soviet armies on the Romanian border in June 1941 in order to help you.

Continuity aside, it's an interesting thread.

MMM posed a good one (June 20): "Question: Why didn't they invade Romania?????" ......It seems most of us agree the answer.

More curious though, are the Russian plans he alludes to: it seems they were real.
IMO, the thread gets confused when he (we) combine a discussion of those plans and the 1941 futility for the Reds to mount a real invasion.

It seems clear now the Soviets began to prepare for war with Germany in 1940, contrary to the popular myth they were asleep at the wheel.

Red Army philosophy called for "active defence and massive counter- offenses into enemy territory...to the astonishment of German forces, Soviet enginneers began to build fortifications in full view, right on the frontier itself." ...quote from Russia's War, Richard Overy, Penguin Books 1998; ( a book made from BBC/Russian (!) TV series which used post 1989 released KGB material)

Actually. it turns out plans went even further back; again drawing on post 89' data, in 1938 Stalin planned, to intervene in the Sudetenland crisis by sending 100,000 to cross through Romania (the only viable route) into Czechoslovakia, and forced Romania to agree to the "transit" at the time! (G. Jukes, "The Red Army and the Munich Crisis", Journal of Contemporary History 26 (1991) pp196-98.

Interesting indeed.

The invasion plans and preparations were real in 1940, but it's beside the point for what happened in June 1941. Like I said several times already, the situation was completely different.

In 1938, Romania did not allow Soviet troops to pass through its territory. The information in that article is false.

Still, there were a number of flights over our territory: bombers bought by Czechoslovakia from SU - just "testing the water"... And a number of private declarations (to Soviet officials) made by Romanian officials of the time, stating (essentially) that nobody would admit openly a Soviet trespassing, but if it were to happen ("fait accompli"), there would not be a big deal. Anyway, Stalin was more interested in "testing the water" (or "fishing in troubled waters") than in fighting the Germans too early (according also to Suvorov, before the world was in flames...) for his own purposes - aka world domination plan. :P
And, Victor, don't be so harsh with the foreign sources: they either keep repeating some biased oppinions, or just try to put the facts in a light favourable to whatever purpose they had at the moment. Look at our "history market" and see there's little difference (my "funny" oppinions included, as well)!

http://www.en.rian.ru/analysis/20090623/155328718.html

For those who have not read it, here is the link to my study related to this very topic, posted earlier on this site:
http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?sh...indpost&p=59110

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on June 26, 2009 08:43 am

Oh, come on, cnflyboy, look at a map! (of that time, surely!)
The really good route was through Poland - and they really didn't want to let the Russians through... Through Romania, there was only a small, very "detouring" route - much less than a backdoor to Cz.

Oh, come on, cnflyboy, look at a map! (of that time, surely!)
The really good route was through Poland - and they really didn't want to let the Russians through... Through Romania, there was only a small, very "detouring" route - much less than a backdoor to Cz.

Hey; I'm just reporting what I found in the literature; I believe the citation is to a peer reviewed academic publication. As far as I know, WW2.Ro is supposed to be a research oriented forum; I'm posting one tiny result of my little efforts is all.


Where's the beef? As implied, the "really good" route was not doable (viable) for reason you mention. The route cited apparently was such. (btw, neither I nor the source said it was used, merely agreed, Victor). MMM: I look at maps all the time, thank you.

No beef at all; no pork or fish either :) It's just the annoying fact that sometimes peopl take for granted sooooo many affirmations just because they're made by "scientists" or other "celebrities", without bothering to verify! I remember that in the last high-school year, when I had Romanian history classes, the teacher explained us that it was a great "boloni" the USSR-Romania-Czechoslovakia road - we just had to look at a map! That's why I assumed there were your oppinions. "Bonne chance!" :P

The Germans defeated the Czar! The czar had soldiers who crossed themselves to the czar and to god and went into battle.
In 1941 they were entering a war against a communist regime that was hated by most of its citizens because it had impoverished them and left them hungry. Stalin had killed most of its good generals. German equipment and tactics had defeated Russian equipment and tactics in Spain.
Arguments could be made that it was not case of Germany vs. Russia but a case of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania + the industrial shares of France, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Czechoslovakia and Poland vs. Russia!
So the conflict was far far far from one sided!

Granted England was a pain but they could never be a threat in western Europe in 1941! They had their hands full with the U-boats and 3 German divisions in Egypt!

Thank you for your response.

This is (mostly) a serious forum; seems like few blowhards here of the type you describe hang around for long, or are regarded as worth the pixels on your screen.

I've learned much here about what some of MY high school/college teachers might have called the "Eastern Front", almost as if it were secondary, and not the central European theater.

I'm still learning....... this time from the primary sources, so abundant on the many WW2.ro threads like this one.

cheers.

There were not all the Russian soldiers so dedicated to the Czar (if so, how could the Reds succeed?) and not so many people that hated the communist regime, as you picture it. If the communist regime in USSR was so weak and unpopular as the Czarist one, then sure, it would have crumbled under the combined factors of war and inside turmoil as it happened in WW1. The Russian peasants were hungry and impoverished under the Czar too. But the Soviet propaganda machine was much more effective in 1941 than any means available to the pre-Soviet regime, the communications, the presence of NKVD structures down to the lowest army units prevented the acts of crossing the line dictated by the party and so on. You can't draw an analogy between WW1's Russia and the Soviet Union in 1941.

Also the Soviet Union, while arguably lacking in doctrine, had superior equipment in 1941, both in armor and artillery, in efficiency and numbers. While this edge maintained over the course of the war, after the initial failures the Soviets also learned the proper tactics so by 1943 we could no longer discuss about the superiority of the German tactics.

Even if the combined force of Germany and her Axis' satellites had mathematical superiority in manpower, they were lacking the logistics needed to reach all the crucial objectives in time before the Soviets could turn back the tide, because the time was ticking in the favor of the latter. With each day passed after the launch of Barbarossa, the Germans were losing the advantage of surprise and chaos created in the ranks of the Red Army, while Stalin and his Soviet structures were gaining strength.

As for the Brits, for Churchill, the news of Germany's attack upon Soviet Union were for the first time a certitude that Germany would eventually lose the war.

There are info's that it didn't happened quite like that! Seems that many of those executed were party paper-pushers, in the army since 1917 or something! As for good generals, how about
Jukov or Malinovski, then?

Dragos,

Alot of people hated the Communist regime! Especially in Ukraine and Byelorussia both frontier areas where many battles would take place. But the Nazis saw these people as subhuman unless they were helping round up Jews.
Also if a soldier of the Czar was captured he was a prisoner. If a Red Army soldier was captured he was lucky to be sent to a labor camp! He would probably be killed especially if he was NKVD or Communist party. If he made it back to the Reds Stalin would end him to Siberia!

Tuckachevsky was executed in the purge. Stalin replaced the generals executed with Budenny, Voroshilov and other party hacks who had war experience on armored trains in the Russian civil war! Hardly useful in 1941! The Red Army generals that won the war were junior in 1941 when the war started!

After the initial failures the Soviets also learned the proper tactics so by 1943 we could no longer discuss about the superiority of the German tactics.
__________________________________________________________________

Really? The Soviets did no strategic bombing during the war! Terrible strategy because it probably cost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives! The Soviets used bombers to bom the fron but 1000 miles behind the line the Germans did as they wished! The whole Caucasus operation in 1942 relied on 1 bridge at Dnepropetrovsk for supply! Should it not have been bombed?