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Originally Posted by Doppleganger Hello Monty.
I feel you are not properly taking into consideration what the fall of Moscow would mean to the ability of STAVKA to direct large scale operations or what the impact would be on the civilian population. | But lets face it the impact is an unknown to both sides as the capture of Moscow may well have led to a Stalingrad only a year earlier. Quote:
The only way your suggestion would have worked was if Barbarossa had been planned as a 2 season campaign. Sure they would have secured Kiev and the Donets basin but there is simply not enough time for the Germans to reach the Baku oilfields and secure them before the onset of winter and the expected Soviet winter counter-offensive. Take a look at a map and see how far it is from the initial Russo-German border to the Caucasus area - it's a bloody long way even just to drive, never mind having to fight your way through hostile armies operating a scorched earth policy.
So, if it's a 2 season campaign then it's a viable strategy. If not then it's mission impossible and folly. The German armies would be even more extended than they were historically (assuming they got that far) and the resultant losses would probably be even more decisive than they were historically.
| Hard to say but had they had the extra 6 weeks that were wasted bailing the Italians out in the Balkans it may have made the plan a possibility.
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If horses would have hands and could paint with their hands and create works of art like the humans, then horses would form and paint the gods with the shape of horses and they would build sculptures according to their own bodies.
- Xenophanes
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