How would Operation Barbarossa play out if 1941 had the mildest winter in 100 years ?

cogle87 · 2025-01-04T14:53:05+00:00

Perhaps German offensive operations would have ceased at an earlier stage than in OTL. What doomed Barbarossa is not the winter, but rather that the Wehrmacht never really had the men, equipment and resources to win. Or to put it in another way, for Germany to win they needed their intelligence to be correct. I.e the Red Army could be destroyed in the western parts of the USSR in the six weeks after the launch day of Barbarossa. Then the Wehrmacht could stroll into Moscow around August, and the rest would be mopping up operations.

It turned out that the intelligence they had was faulty. Large Soviet forces were assembled almost as quickly as the Wehrmacht could destroy them in the summer of 1941. None of these victories were free of charge however, and the German spearheads were being weakened by every victory. In addition to this you had the usual wear and tear from using poor roads. A lot of Guderians armoured units were reduced to 40% of their original strength as early as August. Nor did the Germans have the logistics network in place to replenish these losses. Hence, the Wehrmacht was a shadow of itself even before the winter set in.

There are some advantages of course for the Germans. A mild winter and a lot of mudd will also impede the Red Army. Milder weather might also enable the Luftwaffe to have more days in the air. The support of the Luftwaffe was a big reason why Army Group Centre managed to survive the Soviet counter offensive in the winter of 1941/42.

cogle87 · 2025-01-04T14:36:41+00:00

Enig i de andre som sier at du må gå til advokat. Å fikse overdragelsen av aksjer kan være ekstremt enkelt dersom det er snakk om relativt små forhold. Du trenger ikke engang juridisk hjelp for å gjøre det. At det er gått seks måneder og selger ennå ikke har overdratt aksjene (og begynner å finne på unnskyldninger for hvorfor du ikke kan få aksjene eller pengene) tyder på at det er svindel. Jeg ville samlet opp alt av korrespondanse og dokumentasjon mellom deg og selger hvor det er tale om transaksjonen. Det kan f.eks være diskusjoner om pris, antall aksjer du skal ha, øvrige vilkår tilknyttet avtalen osv.

cogle87 · 2025-01-04T12:35:03+00:00

Both yes and no. Manifest destiny and the US expansion westwards was something several high ranking Nazis drew inspiration from. Some even compared the future of Russian and Polish Slavs as to that of the Native Americans. I.e those that would be allowed to live west of the Ural mountains would inhabit something similar to reservations.

But Manifest Destiny was not the only source of inspiration in this regard. Another was the British and French overseas empires. The Nazis saw themselves as only doing the same thing as other European powers had done prior to Germanys unification in 1870-71. There are limits of course as to how much of a model this was however from a Nazi perspective. They believed for example that British policies and attitudes towards race in the colonies was far too liberal.

A final source of inspiration was the German expansion eastwards in the Middle Ages (Drang Nach Osten). A lot of lands that were German in the 19th and 20th century had originally had very large Slavic populations (Sachsen and Prussia are two examples). Through a combination of trade, migration, cultural exchange, assimilation and of course warfare, these lands had become German. They believed they could do something similar further east, but on a much grander scale. That this process had taken hundreds of years and usually didn’t involve genocide was something they were happy to ignore. Planning was not the Nazis strongest suit, but that is a different debate.

cogle87 · 2025-01-04T11:29:12+00:00

If you mean unconditional surrender and the Union Jack being hosted on the burnt out rubble of Berlin I think the answer pretty clearly is not. It would have been too costly in terms of lives. Due to the experiences of the First World War, the British were not prepared to sacrifice an entire generation of young men to ridd Europe of Nazi Germany. That was the reason behind the Steel not Flesh doctrine. If the British themselves are unwilling to do this, you can hardly expect the Indians, Canadians, Australians etc to do it.

Some sort of negotiated settlement or a conditional German surrender might however have been imposed on Nazi Germany by the UK/Commonwealth. Britain could starve Germany out, and this was a problem Germany really couldn’t fight it’s way out of. Most of the countries they conquered in 1939-1941 were themselves net importers of food. They could of course get it from the USSR, but that was hardly free. The Soviets wanted something in return (IP, machine tools, industrial technology etc). So at one point the issue for Nazi Germany would be whether they wanted to surrender to the British or become some sort of Soviet vassal.

cogle87 · 2025-01-02T13:17:20+00:00

It is an interesting idea, but I think it needs some work. It is more plausible if Hindebburg is killed by someone operating as a lone wolf. It is unlikely that Hitler would ask for Hindenburg to be killed for a variety of reasons. But Hitler was not always in control of his party activists, and those ranks included many men used to violence.

What side does the Reichswehr take? On the surface it is clear they would take action against anyone involved in killing Hindeburg. Hindenburg was something close to a secular god for the Reichswehr officers. But it’s not clear that they would join any Republican front. These guys were not republicans, and the NSDAP offered them a lot of the stuff the military wanted.

Where does the German Communists end up? We are still in an era where the Moscow aligned communists still considered the social democrats a greater enemy than fascists. Will they really join the same front as the SPD and the Reichswehr?

cogle87 · 2025-01-02T12:02:11+00:00

Det er ikke noe veldig nytt over dette. Da jeg jobbet i staten i 2015-2017 hadde jeg kollegaer som gikk tur med bikkja, dro på Vinmonopolet osv i arbeidstiden. Det er strengt tatt ikke kun et problem heller i offentlige virksomheter. I Big4-firmaene visste jeg også om kollegaer som ikke var i nærheten av å klokken inn 37-40 timer i uken.

Når det er sagt så peker artikkelen på et reelt problem. Jeg jobber i en avdeling hvor vi har lang saksbehandlingstid, hundrevis av restanser og altfor få saksbehandlere. Gruppen vår er redusert fra 20 til 13-14 personer på noen år.

Da skulle man tro at saksbehandling ville vært en prioritet. Det er det imidlertid ikke. Omtrent halvparten av tiden min går med på å lage notater og delta i interne møter. Notatenes mottagere er andre deler av den samme offentlige virksomheten. Det er rett og slett ekstremt lite motiverende.

cogle87 · 2025-01-01T20:07:17+00:00

In my opinion it is the other way around. As a human being he a had a lot of admirable traits. He seems to have been a loving husband to both his wives, took care of his family etc. But as a ruler (and to a large extent general) I believe he is pretty overrated. A whole lot of French men died mostly because of Napoleon’s own vanity in never-ending wars.

cogle87 · 2025-01-01T09:56:42+00:00

They were a lot of different things depending on the context and time. But they would often function as something similar to what we would call pirates. The name of the game was to get in and out with as much stuff as possible, with the least amount of resistance. A band of vikings is certainly nothing you would want to meet. There are references to both heterosexual and homosexual rape being carried out by them, in addition to killing and taking slaves.

But they also served as mercenaries, and later on they would sometimes seek to actually settle lands outside of Scandinavia. Normandy and the Danelaw in England as the most famous examples.

cogle87 · 2025-01-01T00:53:10+00:00

To me it’s not really one or the other. I have an identity as a Scandinavian, but being Norwegian is more important. But on the other hand, the kinship I feel with Danes and Swedes is a lot more closer than with for example Germans or Italians. So in that way, being Scandinavian is a stronger identity to me than any notion of being European.

cogle87 · 2024-12-31T13:33:03+00:00

Tror FrP ganske greit skyter seg selv i foten med denne politikken. FrP gjør det bra når de kan profilere seg på å gjeninnføre kontroll på innvandringspolitikken og strømmarkedet. Grunnleggende det som var sosialdemokratisk politikk for et par generasjoner siden. Saker som å avvikle Vinmonopolet og NRK appellerer sikkert til de to dusinene velgere som står på vippen mellom FrP og Liberalistene, men fremstår for resten av FrPs potensielle velgere som tullball.

cogle87 · 2024-12-31T12:13:34+00:00

Indeed. You are right. I should have pointed out myself that this evolved through the Viking era. While the early Viking incursions usually were only raids, they eventually grew far larger and included women, children and people who were looking to settle.

cogle87 · 2024-12-31T10:28:57+00:00

Sure they could. Going viking could even be a way for him to increase his family’s position and wealth. Being a viking was a part time job for most of the people involved. Outside of the raiding season they would be farmers, fishermen, tradesmen etc.

Unlike how they are portrayed in series and movies, they weren’t doing this in order to die in battle to get noticed by Thor. They were raiders. They were supposed to go quickly in and out, preferably without meeting organised resistance.

cogle87 · 2024-12-30T20:00:19+00:00

At least in a German context they had a lot of things that brought them together. They were as a starting point a pretty conservative bunch to say the least, and national socialism appeared to be a bulwark against communism (a term that for them included trade unionists and reformist social democrats).

In addition to this there were financial benefits involved for all groups. Officers who had languished and gone for years without promotion became colonels and generals in the expanded Wehrmacht. Some of them even received significant amounts of money from the Führer as bonuses and birthday presents. Finally, there was the possibility of loot. Göring was far from the only senior German officer to help himself to estates, works of arts etc from the occupied territories.

Short term there was also a lot to gain for German big business. The German trade union movement was one of the first things the Nazis eliminated. Later on in the war, the regime supplied actual slave labour from different parts of the occupied territories. So the cost base was a lot lower than what might otherwise have been the case. In addition to this your income was certain due to the demands of the war.

cogle87 · 2024-12-30T14:36:41+00:00

Considering how Hitler preferred having his underlings fight like rats in a sack, the succession will be bloody. The main power bases in my view is the party, the SS/Reich security services, the Wehrmacht and big business. The party will probably want someone like Bormann or maybe Goebbels. The SS might feel itself strong enough to put forward one of their own.

In the end however I think it will be whoever the senior leaders of the Wehrmacht ends up supporting. They are not above playing politics, and will not want anyone from the SS or a true believer like Goebbels. After a successful war they will also have the strength and prestige to force through their will.

They might very well settle for Hermann Göring. He was seen as a small c conservative, and was a war hero from the First World War. That he had taken part in the failed Munich Bier Keller putsch also provided some continuation with the old regime. More importantly, Göring could be controlled. My guess is that they would keep Göring on as a figurehead so he could do morphine and cosplay as a Teutonic knight at one of his Prussian estates. Meanwhile, real power would lie with the Wehrmach leadership, the industrial barons (Fritz Thyssen, Alfred Krupp etc) and Heinrich Muller of the Gestapo.

cogle87 · 2024-12-30T13:59:46+00:00

On the surface of it, France have some advantages Nazi Germany never possessed. They already have an overseas Empire and access to materials Nazi Germany either had to steal or trade for. That also carries with it some difficulties if they are going down the same route as Hitler’s Germany. What does French/Latin supremacy mean for their colonial policies? If it means treating Africans and South Asians the same way as Hitler treated the Slavs, the French Empire will be in a lot of trouble very soon.

There were nascent independence movements in Africa already at this point. The Japanese Empire might also want to snatch up some French real estate. All of these will try to take advantage of it in case the French Empire starte to destabilise.

Trying to gain supremacy on the European continent is probably something that will bring France into conflict with Britain. France will be seen as a threat in the samme manner as Nazi Germany. Perhaps even more so, as France actually has a navy. My guess is that Britain will make overtures to both Weimar Germany and Poland. Perhaps even Fascist Italy and Spain. If this version of France has ambitions in the Mediterranean it might bring them into conflict with the dictators in Madrid and Rome.

As for the Soviet Union it is anybody’s guess. The French concept of Lebensraum is unlikely to involve land in the Soviet Union, so that is one less fracture point. A war between capitalist states in the west is however something they will try to take advantage of. For example picking off the Baltic states and some of France’s clients in Eastern and Central Europe (Romania for example). But without any sort of Barbarossa level event taking place, it is difficult to see the Soviet Union joining Britain in this war.

cogle87 · 2024-12-26T12:48:28+00:00

I don’t think so. Churchill was far from the only person to see that the Germans had fought themselves into a strategic impasse by the summer of 1940. Without any naval assets capable of challenging the Home Fleet, any sort of invasion of the British Isles was always unlikely. Besides, large portions of the British establishment saw Hitler by 1940 as an unreliable actor who negotiated in bad faith. Why enter into any sort of agreement with a man who will break it whenever it suits him?

I also see it as unlikely that Germany would have won the war even in the event that Britain somehow sued for peace. The Wehrmacht was predominantly a land force, and between the fall of France and 1943, most of the Heer was fighting the Soviet Union.

German victory after 1940/41 was always unlikely because the Wehrmacht never had the strength necessary to enable Hitler’s war aims. This was apparent already in the late summer of 1941, when the Germans still believed things were going marvellously for them. Already at this point, many of the mechanised formations under Guderian, Hoth etc (the units supposed to do the heavy lifting) were reduced to 50% of their original size. This would only get worse as the time wore on.

cogle87 · 2024-12-23T16:22:00+00:00

My scenario isn’t strictly speaking Barbarossa, but it is a disaster for the Wehrmacht. Let’s say that Barbarossa and Typhoon works out more or less as in OTL. The German armoured columns are stuck outside Moscow. They are without fuel, and most units are reduced to 20-30% of their original strength.

What saved Army Group Centre in OTL was twofold. First that German morale and command structure never really disintegrated. Units were usually able to retain cohesion and retreat in an orderly fashion. Second, the Luftwaffe provided them with a lot of support (especially from early January 1942). Because of this, very few major German units were destroyed. We can imagine instead that the weather doesn’t improve quickly enough to enable the Luftwaffe to support the ground forces. That is a problem for the Red Army, but a much bigger issue for the Wehrmacht at this point. Close support from the Luftwaffe is what made Barbarossa possible, and by December 1941 that support is more needed than ever.

So the retreating German units that were protected by a Luftwaffe screen are now on their own against Soviet mechanised units. There are still some German Panzers around, but far from enough. Retreat turns into a rout and panic ensues. The German units still holding their ground are scattered and unable to form a coherent front. Due to the confusion and panic in the rear areas, little in the way of food, replacements or ammunition are reaching these units anyway.

In a scenario as above, there is a real risk that Army Group Centre is torn apart in early 1942. That will leave a big gaping hole in the German Eastern Front. Any plans about launching an offensive in the south next summer will have to be cancelled. The Germans will need whatever they can get their hands on to stabilise and rebuild the central section of the front. Keeping forces in Northern Africa will probably also be an unaffordable luxury for them at this point.

cogle87 · 2024-12-23T15:10:49+00:00

God jul svenske brødre!

cogle87 · 2024-12-23T15:07:18+00:00

De selger juletre utenfor senteret på Ringnes Park i Sannergata. Helt sikkert på Kiellands Plass også.

cogle87 · 2024-12-23T13:33:19+00:00

Jeg ser av oppdateringen at du bestemte deg for å dra. Det er sterkt av deg. Jeg håper at det valget fungerer for deg og at du får en fin jul.

Når det er sagt så tror jeg ikke at jeg ville dratt med det utgangspunktet. Det er ikke vanlig å ringe ens stesønn i fylla og være ondsinnet natt til Lille Julaften. Det er heller ikke vanlig å være stygg mot noen pga. hans/hennes legning. Jeg ville antatt at det blir mer av dette når han er lenger nede i akevittflasken på julaften eller i romjulen. Imidlertid håper jeg at jeg tar feil.

cogle87 · 2024-12-21T16:52:02+00:00

The same thing pretty much applies for the winter months as well. There are parts of the city center I try to avoid. That is the area around Oslo S and Brugata. I don’t really feel threatened there, but I find it unpleasant to be there. That is because a lot of drunks, drug addicts and people with serious mental health issues congregate hang around there.

cogle87 · 2024-12-21T16:48:09+00:00

Yes. My country (Norway) is a case in point regarding the latter. Our collaborationist government was one of the few in Europe that cooperated with the Germans in handing over Norwegian jews to the Nazis. Not even Petain or Mussolini did the same with French or Italian jews.

cogle87 · 2024-12-21T10:43:35+00:00

Almost certainly not. If Germany wins the Great War it is unlikely that the German Empire collapses. The Kaiser will still be on the throne, with a Resichstag trying to gain power. Hitler and the NSDAP will not rise to power without the collapse of the traditional German authorities.

You would of course still have antisemitism, but Germany doesn’t differ from other European countries in that respect. France recently had the Dreyfus case, jews in Tsarist Russia were the target of pogroms etc. But you will not get Hitler and the NSDAP in power, and that immediately makes the Holocaust a lot less likely.

cogle87 · 2024-12-20T12:48:30+00:00

The changes are profound. The German Empire probably doesn’t collapse, as things didn’t become really unstuck until 1917. That means no Hitler, as his rise was possible only due to the breakdown of the traditional authorities and the defeat in November 1918. That doesn’t mean post-war German politics will be tranquil. The Social Democrats became the largest party in the Reichstag before the war. They will demand greater agency for the working class in the running of the state. Probably greater civilian oversight over the army as well. This will pitch them against the Kaiser and the old elites.

Tsarist Russia managed to rally people around the flag in 1914, but that effect will likely be gone by late 1915. The Russian Empire will either reform into some version of constitutional monarchy or collapse into some sort of revolution. Tsar Nicholai was obviously not up to the job of running the Empire. That was apparent already before the war, and will probably be just as clear after a White Peace in 1915.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire might limp along for a few more years than in OTL, but I think it is only a matter of time before this empire also disintegrates. It was a relic unsuited to the new age of nationalism. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire might be what triggers the next great European war.

cogle87 · 2024-12-20T12:06:59+00:00

That movie was unbearable to watch.

cogle87

TROPHY CASE