Interesting animation of German invasion of Soviet Union…

@ABWorsham4

So the what if is “What if the Finns mobilised more troops that would free up German forces?”

And the question is where I would send them. Okay.

I think it might be easier by saying where I would not send them.

I am also assuming that the “Mountain Corps” are just infantry, not Gebrigsjager or Alpini, considering the corps were entirely made up of regular infantry divisions.

Italy (Germany’s doing really well here, no hope of pushing the Allies out with one corps, so just do what we did historically)

Norway (almost nothing there except the sabotaging of the heavy water plant, but any hope of redoing the bomb is long gone)

The Atlantic Wall (Allies aren’t landing there until 1944, other areas are much more dire)

Leningrad Front (Feels like the time for storming Leningrad is long gone and a corps wouldn’t make a difference, maybe if the Kursk attack was cancelled entirely and was redirected, but tanks don’t work well in cities)

So that leaves:

Army Group South

Balkans

Kursk

Mainly because I’m more knowledgable about this area I would probably give it to Kursk (to strengthen the attacks) or Army Group South (to hold the line against the Soviet counteroffensive, allowing Manstein’s guys to continue pushing on Kursk rather than racing southwards to defend). I also have an odd affinity for Kursk out of all the Eastern Front battles.

And I feel there’s no way to get Tito.

As we both know, this wouldn’t change much in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully Manstein does better though.

@abworsham4

I read that, and is one of my sources. Funny enough, KaLeu put a link to Quora asking the same question, and one of the answers just copied and pasted the article you sent me.

@KurtGodel7:

As you pointed out, actually capturing the city was unnecessary. But having captured the city, Hitler was very determined to hold onto it. Abandoning it would have presumably meant having to recapture it later; and once again suffering that same 1:1 ratio during the recapture.

One thing I’m wondering: why would Germany have to (or even want to) recapture at great cost a city that it was unnecessary (and indeed counterproductive) to capture in the first place?

@abworsham4

I think there are two possible problems with this strategy:

Firstly, whilst it would have been indeed much easier to produce, could Germany have produced enough of them to match Soviet production with Western Allied bombing and fighting in North Africa and later in France and Italy? At least Germany would have a qualitative advantage due to crew training.

Secondly, could Germany hypothetically had enough manpower to equip those tanks? I admit this is a lesser problem, as I would favour having one tank than 3-6 infantrymen.

@Imperious:

For a few days, then we clobbered them. Italy not so much.

The terrain of ITALY is very difficult do not forget…  AND  the forces deployed there were serverly short of supplies and new troops due to the build up for OverLord.

@CWO:

A similar situation existed in the Confederacy in the early stages of the U.S. Civil War, where it was believed that the material advantages of the North (in terms of industrial capacity, natural resources and sheer population numbers) could be overcome by (if I recall the quote correctly) “the gallantry and fighting spirit of the Southern Gentleman.”  The contrary (and ultimately correct) view was expressed by a certain Northerner to a friend he had in the Confederacy: “No nation of agriculturalists has ever defeated a nation of industrialists.  You are bound to fail.”

That’s an excellent example. I looked up the Civil War and found that the North experienced twice as many combat deaths as the South. That ratio would seem to partially justify Southern leaders’ faith in their strategy. However, the overall ratio of military deaths was 1.4 to 1. The reason for this is that so many soldiers on both sides died from disease, exposure, and other causes.

Later in the war, the North increasingly benefited from activities which did not necessarily involve a clash between the main Northern and Southern armies. The increasingly effective naval blockade is a good example of this, as are some of the coastal raids the North performed later in the war. The Southern economic collapse which resulted from the naval blockade is still another example. Later in the war, Grant capitalized on the Northern advantage in manpower by sending several secondary forces to invade the South, while the main Southern forces were occupied by their Northern counterparts.

You should…

No, The back half of russia is much like Alaska, a frozen wasteland. It would take them forever to get troops north of manchuria, and supplying them would be nearly impossible. There werent any natural resource up there so the japanese had no interest in “capturing” (if you can even call it that) north russia. It would be smarter to send troops into china or inda, where the resources were.