AHC/WI: USSR Invades Nazi Germany

What would have to happen for the USSR to invade Germany? I understand that they were preparing for war when Hitler invaded and that they would have attacked eventually.

Who is likely to win? And what happens if the Russians invade completely and the Allies don't get enough momentum to manage to get (far) into Germany (presuming they join in and launch a D-day style attack, or the USSR invades before the fall of France)?

Edit: What would post-war Europe look like?
 
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What would have to happen for the USSR to invade Germany? I understand that they were preparing for war when Hitler invaded and that they would have attacked eventually.

Who is likely to win? And what happens if the Russians invade completely and the Allies don't get enough momentum to manage to get (far) into Germany (presuming they join in and launch a D-day style attack, or the USSR invades before the fall of France)?

If the USSR invades while Germany is preparing troops on the border for Operation Barbarossa, then the Germans will probably get torn apart have to retreat. The USSR will eventually win in this scenario.
 

Pangur

Donor
IMHO

Short term the Germans stop the USSR cold. They would have their armies intact, a relatively short line to hold and short secure supply lines. In the longer term it would have been the same slaughter on both sides with Germany bleeding out and it may well have made it easier for the western allies to invade France
 
IF you have the Soviets in 1941 attacks the German Wehrmacht in their prepared positions during the months of April thur June..

The Soviets were in the process of transformation of modernizing and upgrading their armed forces during this time from late 1940 towards early 1942...

in OTL, The Soviet Union Frontline units were blitzed by the 1941 Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe..

If Stalin had agreed to follow Zhukov's plan to attack the German Army and their Axis allies in early April or May...

The Soviet Army ... again ... was in the process of re-organizing among with their Soviet Army Air Force and the majority of their equipment were still the obsolete tanks and aircraft and their logistical capabilities were below par as were the combat efficiency of their troops as they were in the process of expanding their Armed Forces and didn't have enough weaponry, armaments, equipments and logistical sundries needed to sustain an Army in peacetime, let alone launching an offensive into prepared positions of the German Wehrmacht..

And don't forget...
the German Luftwaffe were still sending their Air Recon forces deep into the Soviet Frontier zone to check out where the Soviet Troop concentrations were...

If they had noticed that more and more Soviet Troops and equipment were moving forward towards to the new Soviet frontier...
This would give the Germans and their Axis Allies more time to prepare their forces...

The Best Soviet Units ready despite not fully organized with newer equipment nor having the necessary Logistical tail to maintain them for combat against German and Axis Troops concentrated in prepared positions plus stockpiles of Depots ready for Operation Barbarossa..

again...

The Almost barely prepared Soviet Armed Forces attacking into prepared German and Axis Allied fortified positions...

This would be very interesting..
 
If for some reason the Germans delayed thier invasion or decided to defeat Britain first I can see the Soviets attacking in June/July 42 if the USA was in. Stalin wouldn't take big risks and once the USA is in there is no risk of losing.
 
First have the Red Army do much better in the war with Finland. Say the Soviets roll over them and annex the whole country in about two months. That gives Stalin an overinflated sense of his military's power and also prevents the reorganization that happened in OTL.

Second have him be just a bit more paranoid and distrusting of the Germans and take the reports on the military build up along the border at face value. This won't be hard as Stalin had a distrusting and paranoid nature. It would be completely in his character to believe Hitler was about to attack him. How he behaved in OTL was actually highly unusual for him.

If Stalin expects Hiter to betray him and feels his military to be a well oiled machine then the logical choice is to strike first as soon as possible.

The results might be very interesting.

After their initial surprise the Germans would have to fall back some but would probably have no trouble halting the initial attacks. They have short supply lines and will be fighting to defend their homeland. They will not be spread out but will be able to concentrate three million men under a sky completely controlled by the Luftwaffe.

Hitler will be screaming about a crusade to defend Europe against the communist hordes and with the Soviets being the aggressors might have some support. Stalin can't call for a Great Patriotic War when the Red Army is invading Poland, Germany, and Rumania. certainly he will talk about destroying Fascisim and liberating the oppressed workers of Europe, but it doesn't have quite the same ring.

A very interesting question is does FDR extend Lend Lease to the USSR under these circumstances? He didn't want Hitler to dominate Europe. The same applied to Stalin. How would congress and the public react to supply the Soviets who had just attacked the Nazis and looked early on to be winning? Wouldn't conservatives scream he was trying to Bolshevise Europe?

If the Soviets launch a war of aggression and are then driven back with heavy losses what happens to their morale? It's one thing to ask men to make sacrifices in a war where your country was attacked. It's a lot harder to make the same demands in a war where your side was the aggressor.
 
First have the Red Army do much better in the war with Finland. Say the Soviets roll over them and annex the whole country in about two months. That gives Stalin an overinflated sense of his military's power and also prevents the reorganization that happened in OTL.

That works double in my opinion. Firstly Stalin thinks more of his own military, and secondly, Hitler does too so will take longer to organize his invasion, leaving time for Stalin to strike.
 
Keeping the front line away from the USSR's industrial heartland will definatly help them and make them stronger than OTTL - they will have a much easier time of improving their forces even if the invasion isnt a sucess.
 
The Soviets take the Germans by complete surprise. Operation Baroass is strictly a plan of offense, presuming the war will take place on Soviet soil, there's no recorded plan, however basic, of defending the Reich against the Soviet Union. I doubt the Luftwaffe will be shot up on the ground as heavily as the Soviets were despite being able to subject German airfields to continuous airstrikes, German reaction times should be better, but they remain outnumbered 4 to 1.

The Soviets have good tanks, and more of them, although as OTL Barbarossa shows that doesn't guarantee, there's a lot of rot in the Soviet officer corps and problems with equipment as well, it won't be the curbstomp that occurred in 1944/45, but the Germans will eventually be overcome and earlier than OTL. The Red Flag might appear over Berlin in 1942 rather than 1945.

The effects this would have on the post-war world would be interesting. America's role in the European War would probably remain that of a co-belligerent, Germany wouldn't be so willing to make new enemies when the Soviets are approaching Berlin, and FDR would still have a battle to directly involve American in a European War, one that looks like it's almost over anyway. Britain will be less debt ridden than OTL but won't be able to match the Soviets on their own, and certainly can't afford a Marshall Plan style recovery of Europe. France and Italy most likely go Red, even if they remain outside Soviet occupation. I can't see Britain falling to communism, although some sort of NAFTA style organisation would be necessary. The Pacific War will probably still happen, although it will be much quicker, with the USA, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union able to focus their resources on Japan much earlier. Hopefully that will drag the USA out of isolationism, if not the world may look very red indeed,
 
Oh c'mon people, most of you are just posting utter crap here with no historical backing or reasoning.

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Historically Stalin and the 3rd Reich had good relations, Stalin giving quite a bit of help to the 3rd Reich. Much of this in military terms can be seen from the development of tank use in that Ural Tank School.

2 Weeks before the invasion of Poland would be a good POD whereby the Molotov-Ribontrop pact doesn't end up coming to pass, but Stalin is tipped off of the invasion of Poland. Thus starting a downward diplomatic spiral that results in the Soviets taking their 'sphere of influence' by force.


Source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z5B4pMFUQI
 
The offensive can't go ahead in 1941; Soviet mobilization plans had been out of date for years and changing them would only confuse what was essentially already a clusterfuck. At least another year is needed to give the new officer cadres the basic training needed to ensure that they can handle large formations and complicated logistics. Further supply depots and vehicle maintinence was a mess in 1941; most Soviet tanks were out of action or didn't have any way to refuel near where they were stored. Same for aircraft. Finally STAVKA actually held war games and studies in spring of 1941 and decided against offensive action due to basic structural problems in the Red Army.
 
Tannenburg Mark 2. The Red Army Officer Corps and training have suffered due to Stalin's purges. Some of he new equipment like the new KVs will be a nasty surprise for the Germans but the battle experienced Wehrmacht will work out ways to deal with these. German operational superiority will enable them to cut off and destroy over extended Red Army armoured forces. This will be followed up with something like Barbarossa only easier for the Germans
 

b12ox

Banned
What would have to happen for the USSR to invade Germany? I understand that they were preparing for war when Hitler invaded and that they would have attacked eventually.
Why Soviets would want attack? They have nothing to gain by attacking. Commies were not Nazis. The Soviets didn't want to conquer Germany only to become enemy of the world. They didn't need lebensraum. They didn't want slave labour. They had enough to boot. They didn't have their balls in a shredder the way Hitler had in 1941 after making all out mess in Europe. They are pretty smart. It would require a very devoted politburo to invade Europe in the name of communism. Stalin was not into occults.

Theoreticly, the Soviet Army of 1941 would fall apart somewhere in Poland even if the road ahead was not blocked by 3 million of Werhrmacht.
 

Pangur

Donor
Why Soviets would want attack? They have nothing to gain by attacking. Commies were not Nazis. The Soviets didn't want to conquer Germany only to become enemy of the world. They didn't need lebensraum. They didn't want slave labour. They had enough to boot. They didn't have their balls in a shredder the way Hitler had in 1941 after making all out mess in Europe. They are pretty smart. It would require a very devoted politburo to invade Europe in the name of communism. Stalin was not into occults.

Theoreticly, the Soviet Army of 1941 would fall apart somewhere in Poland even if the road ahead was not blocked by 3 million of Werhrmacht.

It is quite true that the USSR was planning to attack and the reason was quite simple, attack before being attacked. It had nothing to do with spreading communism
 

b12ox

Banned
It is quite true that the USSR was planning to attack and the reason was quite simple, attack before being attacked. It had nothing to do with spreading communism
Considering the risk of failure and political implications as an agressor they rather wouldn't.
 
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The Soviets have good tanks, and more of them, although as OTL Barbarossa shows that doesn't guarantee, there's a lot of rot in the Soviet officer corps and problems with equipment as well, it won't be the curbstomp that occurred in 1944/45, but the Germans will eventually be overcome and earlier than OTL. The Red Flag might appear over Berlin in 1942 rather than 1945.
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The Soviets will have good tanks after 1942..
Right now in 1941... they have very few T-34s and KV-1s in their inventory..

They have alot of obsolete tanks ; they are still using hand flags to communicate between their tanks as the Soviet Union's industrial system doesn't have the full capacity to build good radios in quantities..

The Soviet Union Army and Air Force is in a transformation from their obsolete equipment to newer equipment but training and using the new equipment is slow and sporadic...

The Expansion of the Soviet Army is also increasing their quantity of units but reducing their quality as a fighting Army in whole..

The expansion gives them manpower but not the technical skills to run them...
They won't have enough truck and vehicle transport available in quantity until the Allies in 42 had started shipping trucks and jeeps in huge quantities via Murmansk and thur Iran during Lend-Lease..

And the Soviets will be attacking from their positions possibly into prepared fields of fire against fortified and battle ready German units in Poland...

German Reconnaissance planes are still flying deep into the Soviet Frontier and will probably not fail to notice the upbeat of troops moving forward among with trucks and trains moving supplies to new depots up front...

It's going to be very interesting if Zhukov finally gets approval to attack the Germans to pr-empt their own assaults but the Germans notice the activities and decide to either strike ahead or wait and attrite the attacking Soviets... very interesting...

And don't forget..

Stalin's purges in both the Soviet Political, Cultural and Military sphere has been quite brutal, especially for the top Military Officers..

Many of the Top Soviet Military Officers have either been purged, reduced in ranks, sent to the Gulag or given a coupla grams of lead in the head by Beria's NKVD security grunts..

So the majority of the surviving Soviet Military Officers are those men that have escaped the purges and probably will not do anything to make waves and follow orders by the book and won't have the necessary years and months practicing in their newly promoted ranks to replace the officers either executed or sent to the Gulags........................
 
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Considering the risk of failure and political implications as an agressor they rather wouldn't.

The political implications would be big for a 1941 attack, not so much for a 1942 attack assuming the U.S. and UK are both in the war against Germany. The U.S. enterence into the war might be delayed a fair bit as its quite possible if Stalin was seen as the agressor in 1941 there would be no multi billion dollar loans from the U.S. to the USSR along with Lend Lease.

Hitler I think expected the U.S. would come to the UK's aid which is why he didn't declare war on the U.S. after Lend Lease was passed. But, supporting the Soviet's I think he didn't expect and that was what I believe convinced him to declare war after Pearl Harbor. If there was no Lend Lease to the Soviet's at that time which wouldn't have happened if the USSR attacked I think war between the U.S. and Germany would be delayed until FDR can use a major U-Boat sinking to rally the public for a two front war.

Honestly if the USSR attacks Germany in 1941 I think they get clobberd and Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow all end up in German hands by 1942. If the USSR attacks Germany in 1942 it would be a very different story and while they wouldn't roll over Germany the fighting would be mainly on Poland and German soil not Soviet soil. If the USSR attacks Germany in 1943 they roll over Eastern Poland and Berlin quite fast. This was why Hitler's window for a successful attack on the USSR was 1940 or 1941 (had German forces been more ready). After that point the war would go much worse then OTL for Germany as the USSR was fast on its way to becoming a much more powerful military force.
 
The Soviets will have good tanks after 1942..
Right now in 1941... they have very few T-34s and KV-1s in their inventory..

The Soviets have around 1000 of each by mid-1941 and more on the way. The T-26 and various BT types are the main tanks in the Soviet arsenal in mid-1941, whilst inferior to the Pz 3 and 4 they could deal easily with the Pz-1 and 2 types which still made up a large bulk of German armour, and even when we remove the tanks written off by breakdowns, they still heavily outnumber the more advanced German designs. As the Germans found out in OTL, quantity has a quality all of its own. ;)

The Soviet Union Army and Air Force is in a transformation from their obsolete equipment to newer equipment but training and using the new equipment is slow and sporadic...

The Soviet Air Force is the biggest in the world at this time, but as you say it has shortcomings. They have some modern fighters at hand, around 400 Yak-1's and 200 Il-2's with more to come. The vast numerical superiority in planes the Soviets have allows them to essentially attack continuously and perhaps more importantly, take heavy losses in the short term and still remain effective. The Germans have no such security, if they're caught napping during the initial Soviet attack (quite possible considering the disregard for defensive preparations the Germans made in OTL ) the Luftwaffe might be dealt a blow from which they'll never fully recover. Even if ground losses are minimal the Germans, they'll have to maintain a high kill ratio for several months just to remain competitive in the skies.

And the Soviets will be attacking from their positions possibly into prepared fields of fire against fortified and battle ready German units in Poland...

German Reconnaissance planes are still flying deep into the Soviet Frontier and will probably not fail to notice the upbeat of troops moving forward among with trucks and trains moving supplies to new depots up front...

The Germans had no such preparations in OTL, the idea that the Soviets might launch a pre-emptive strike seemed to be relegated to propaganda. The Germans would face the same problem that the Soviets had in OTL, having no plan other than offense and having your armies torn apart in their aggressive formations by aircraft and artillery.

The Soviets were excellent at Maksirovka during the war, although I doubt Stalin would be as willing to turn a blind eye to 'accidental incursions' as he was in OTL.

So the majority of the surviving Soviet Military Officers are those men that have escaped the purges and probably will not do anything to make waves and follow orders by the book and won't have the necessary years and months practicing in their newly promoted ranks to replace the officers either executed or sent to the Gulags........................

Those in the Gulag can be brought back, such as Rokossovsky, and experienced commanders who lost their lives in the Barbarossa catastrophe such as Shtern, might remain alive.
 
this wont end good for the red army, as they are still suffering a severe officer shortage in 41.

experienced officers cant be mass produced in factories behind the ural mountains.

any ideas what happens to the great mobilization? defending or attacking plays a big role in convincing your "estranged" comrades that they should die for you.
 
could the USSR really hide or explain away the massive troop movements needed to prepare for an invasion of Germany like the Germans before Barbarossa?

Despite many of the advantages that they would gain from a pre-emptive attack, the shortcomings of their armed forces at the time combined with the fact that the Germans would likely see the attack coming wouldn't result in a steamroll in any way.

In the long run the Germans would likely loose but only because of their exhaustion. Someone with more knowledge on the tactics and commanders of the wehrmacht could say how well they could exploit a massive counterattack on a totally disorganised Soviet army that doesn't have the ability to turn around once it starts rolling forward.
 
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