How close was the Soviet Union to collapsing during WW2?
Short Answer
If not for heroic action by the Soviet Army at Moscow, the coldest European winter of the 20th Century, a poor German logistics line, and massive western aid the Soviet Union might have collapsed. We know this because Stalin made peace overtures to Hitler through Sweden and gave orders to evacuate his Capital Oct 15, 1941. If Moscow had fallen the Soviet war effort would have been exponentially more difficult.
Detailed AnswerStalin had made an alliance with Hitler in the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Aug 23, 1939. Hitler broke that agreement June 22, 1941 when he invaded the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa.
Operation Barbarossa was code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union which was the largest military offensive in the history of warfare. From June to Dec of 1941 it claimed the lives of 5 million Soviet Soldiers or about 10 times as many lives as America lost in the WWII, European and Pacific theatres. The Soviet Union was pretty close to collapse after that onslaught. On Oct 15, Stalin ordered the Communist Party, the Army Leadership, and the Civilian Government to evacuate Moscow.
Hitler invaded in June, by Sept they were at the outskirts of Moscow. In the opening action in the Battle of Moscow Sept 1941, the Germans shattered the Soviet's first line of defense and took 500,000 soviet soldiers prisoners. Leaving only 90,000 Soviet soldiers and 150 tanks with no reserves to defend the Soviet Capital. Then the Russian Winter hit along with the German supply problems caused the Germans to halt their advance on the city for a month. By the Time the Germans continued their assault they were facing 30 new divisions and a greatly inforced Soviet defense. The Germans were turned away from Moscow, and then their advance was shattered in their defeat at Stalingrad, the turning point in the war in Europe.
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Joseph Stalin
Stalin was convinced of Hitler's integrity and ignored warnings from his military commanders that Germany was mobilizing armies on its eastern front. When the Nazi blitzkrieg struck in June 1941, the Soviet Army was completely unprepared and immediately suffered massive losses.
Stalin was so distraught at Hitler's treachery that he hid in his office for several days. By the time Stalin regained his resolve, German armies occupied all of the Ukraine and Belarus, and its artillery surrounded Leningrad. To make matters worse, the purges of the 1930s had depleted the Soviet Army and government leadership to the point where both were nearly dysfunctional.
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battle of Moscow
The first blow took the Soviets completely by surprise when the 2nd Panzer Group, returning from the south, took Oryol, just 121 km (75 mi) south of the Soviet first main defense line.[248] Three days later, the Panzers pushed on to Bryansk, while the 2nd Army attacked from the west.[276] The Soviet 3rd and 13th Armies were now encircled. To the north, the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies attacked Vyazma, trapping the 19th, 20th, 24th and 32nd Armies.[248] Moscow's first line of defense had been shattered. The pocket eventually yielded over 500,000 Soviet prisoners, bringing the tally since the start of the invasion to three million. The Soviets now had only 90,000 men and 150 tanks left for the defense of Moscow.[277]
The German government now publicly predicted the imminent capture of Moscow and convinced foreign correspondents of a pending Soviet collapse.[278] On 13 October, the 3rd Panzer Group penetrated to within 140 km (87 mi) of the capital.[248] Martial law was declared in Moscow. Almost from the beginning of Operation Typhoon, however, the weather worsened. Temperatures fell while there was continued rainfall. This turned the unpaved road network into mud and slowed the German advance on Moscow.[279] Additional snows fell which were followed by more rain, creating a glutinous mud that German tanks had difficulty traversing, whereas the Soviet T-34, with its wider tread, was better suited to negotiate.[280] At the same time, the supply situation for the Germans rapidly deteriorated.[281] On 31 October, the German Army High Command ordered a halt to Operation Typhoon while the armies were reorganized. The pause gave the Soviets, far better supplied, time to consolidate their positions and organize formations of newly activated reservists.[282][283] In little over a month, the Soviets organized eleven new armies that included 30 divisions of Siberian troops. These had been freed from the Soviet Far East after Soviet intelligence assured Stalin that there was no longer a threat from the Japanese.[284] During October and November 1941, over 1,000 tanks and 1,000 aircraft arrived along with the Siberian forces to assist in defending the city.
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Turning Point of World War II in Europe
More than four million combatants fought in the gargantuan struggle at Stalingrad between the Nazi and Soviet armies. Over 1.8 million became casualties. More Soviet soldiers died in the five-month battle than Americans in the entire war. But by February 2, 1943, when the Germans trapped in the city surrendered, it was clear that the momentum on the Eastern Front had shifted. The Germans would never fully recover.
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Stalingrad at 75, the Turning Point of World War II in Europe
Hitler and the German High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, or OKH), were confident that the Soviet Union would fall within six weeks. At first, their prediction seemed correct: the attack in June 1941 caught Stalin unawares, and the Red Army unprepared. By December, the Red Army had suffered nearly five million casualties.
But despite enduring staggering losses, the Red Army continued to resist. In August 1941, senior members of the Wehrmacht began growing increasingly uneasy. The Chief of the OKH staff, General Franz Halder, noted in his diary that ““It is becoming ever more apparent that the Russian colossus…. Has been underestimated by us…. At the start of the war we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360… When a dozen have been smashed, then the Russian puts up another dozen.”
In October, the Wehrmacht launched Operation Typhoon, the effort to take Moscow and end the war by Christmas. But as the weather grew bitterly cold, the German offensive ground to a halt, and was then pushed back by a Soviet counteroffensive. The front line froze in place some two hundred kilometers west of Moscow – and 1400 kilometers east of Berlin.
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Lend-Lease: How American supplies aided the USSR in its darkest hour
"Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said after the end of WWII.
"We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with."
Hitler vs. Stalin: How Russia Defeated Nazi Germany at the Gates of Moscow
Would the capture of Moscow have altered the outcome of World War II? Losing their capital has often led nations to seek peace. Moscow was more than the administrative capital of the Soviet Union: it was also a vital rail hub and production center. There was also the symbolic value: totalitarian dictators, like Hitler and Stalin, crafted images of themselves as all-knowing leaders of their nations. Losing Moscow would certainly have dented popular confidence in Stalin. In fact, Stalin apparently did put out discreet peace feelers to Germany through Sweden, which Hitler ignored. In October 1941, the Second World War teetered on a knife edge.
From Comments
from Agent Orange The essence of your argument seems to be that the Soviet Union was close to collapse because German propaganda convinced some journalists that it was so.
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So Moscow is about 800 miles from Warsaw the kicking off point for the German Invasion. It took three months for the Nazi's to drive through the meat of the Soviet Defenses. And as I said, the front line of the Soviet defenses of Moscow collapsed Oct 1941 with 500,000 soviet soldiers surrendering, leaving only 90,000 soviet defenders with no reserves and 150 tanks left to face off against the Germans.
Also Stalin did order the evacuation of the Communist Party, the General Staff and civil government offices from Moscow Oct 15 1941. Which caused panic among Muscovites. As told in "When Titans Clashed" by David M. Glantz chapter 6, pg 74
from Agent Orange #2
We know that the Wehrmacht was depleted and exhausted at the gates of Moscow, and we know that fresh Soviet troops were arriving in waves. You need to demonstrate that these historical facts are compatible with your thesis that Soviet collapse was in fact imminent (or nearly so). Why would the Soviet leadership be broken when they had clearly weathered the 1941 storm and had the situation under control around Moscow? –
It is true that the Battle of Moscow was the single largest battle of WWII. A Battle in which the Soviet's lost 4x the number of troops (killed, missing, captured) than the Germans. To put it in perspective the Soviet's lost more troops during the Battle of Moscow than the United States, Britain, and France combined in all of WWII. It was frankly the most important battle of the entire war.
What you left out is that the Germans had to stop their advance for a month due to weather and their own logistics problem. Without that pause the German force which had just taken 500,000 Soviet defenders of Moscow prisoners and killed 5 million soviet soldiers (total soviet losses in Battle of Moscow) would have only had to deal with the remaining 90,000 defenders with almost no remaining Soviet armor support. It's true the Soviets were re-enforced, but it was the weather which turned the roads into impassible gelatinous mud and then froze the Germans and finally buried them in snow which gave the Soviet's the time to transfer 30 divisions of Siberian Troops along with armor and logistics via rail to buttress Moscow.
By the time the Germans renewed their attack they were facing an entirely different Soviet defense.
Also I think it's important to note that Moscow was of vital strategic importance to the Soviet Union. It's not like in Napoleon's days when Moscow was lost and the Russians were able to come back. In Napoleon's days there weren't any railroads. Moscow was not only the Soviet's most populous city, but was also it's manufacturing, communications and transportation center. One of the few advantages the Soviet's had over Germans was the ability to use railroads to move troops and logistics efficiently, while the Germans had to rely on undependable roads. If moscow fell the Soviet's ability to use it's railroads would have been dramatically effected because Moscow was the central railroad hub of the entire country. Logistics, reinforcements, and western aid three important assets which allowed the Soviets to recover and eventually turn the table on the Nazi's would have been impacted.
I will preface all my comments on the heroism of the Soviet soldiers, that cannot be overstated.