Keith Willshaw <keithwillshaw@gmail.com> wrote:

The basic strategic problem was that if Stalingrad
was abandoned the armies in the Caucasus could be
encircled and destroyed.

Two problems with this:

First, trying to hold Stalingrad required a major
relief effort by German forces (Kampfgruppe Hoth),

Second, the Stalingrad pocket was formed on 23
November, but Army Group A in the Caucasus did not
start to withdraw until the beginning of January 1943
- five weeks later. If instead of insisting on trying
to hold Stalingrad, Hitler had ordered the troops
there to break out and retreat, then he could also
have recognized that Army Group A was dangerously
exposed and should retreat immediately. That would
have removed any risk to that force.

Since in fact he did realize that and order the retreat
a month before the end of the Stalingrad pocket, it
seems probable that he would have done so when he ordered
retreat from Stalingrad.
--
Nous sommes dans une pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés.
--- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870.

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On Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:40:46 -0600, Rich Rostrom
<rrostrom@comcast.net> wrote:

Two problems with this:

First, trying to hold Stalingrad required a major
relief effort by German forces (Kampfgruppe Hoth),

Second, the Stalingrad pocket was formed on 23
November, but Army Group A in the Caucasus did not
start to withdraw until the beginning of January 1943
- five weeks later. If instead of insisting on trying
to hold Stalingrad, Hitler had ordered the troops
there to break out and retreat, then he could also
have recognized that Army Group A was dangerously
exposed and should retreat immediately. That would
have removed any risk to that force.

Since in fact he did realize that and order the retreat
a month before the end of the Stalingrad pocket, it
seems probable that he would have done so when he ordered
retreat from Stalingrad.

My reading suggests that most of what few casualties WERE suffered by
Army Group A (or whatever the force was called by then took place
during the withdrawal across the Kerch peninsula in the Crimea in Feb
1942 with MOST of the withdrawal taking place via Rostov during Jan
1943.

Thus my suggestion that if those troops had been available either due
to a stoppages say perhaps half as far as they went in the Caucasus
(or never having attempted to go there in the first place) they could
handily have beaten the troops that in OTL closed at Kalach and
trapped 6th Army.

Probably it would have been a blood bath similar to Kursk 9 months
later but this time with the Germans with all the trump cards.
Obviously NOT losing 6th Army would have made things less of a
stalemate than OTL's 1943 was but even though the Russians were facing
a manpower shortage in late 1944 I still don't see Hitler turning
Moscow and Leningrad into lakes as per his pre 6/22/1941 fantasy.

(More than likely the net effect is that with a stalemate in the east
we would have seen a German surrender after Dresden and Berlin or
wherever Little Boy and Fatman would be used - and no question nukes
WOULD have been used over Germany if Germany was still fighting when
nukes were available. The postwar evidence is quite strong on that
point as the "Germany First" policy would have required first use of
nukes against them if they were still fighting - whether that would
also have brought about immediate Japanese surrender is doubtful as
the Japanese would only have their own diplomats rather than first
hand evidence as they did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

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"Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> wrote:

Secrets discovered by cryptanalysis needed a credible cover story that
they had been discovered by other means to keep the enemy from
changing the code, for example a search plane "happened" to notice and
be noticed by a located U-boot before it was attacked.

ULTRA intelligence provided target information for the
British aircraft at Malta attacking Axis shipping to
North Africa. However, to protect the source, the air
command would precede each strike with three search
missions - one to the known location of the target
ships, and two to other plausible locations.

(At least one search mission was needed anyway, to ensure
that the target actually was there.)

The extra two missions were to conceal the source from
Allied personnel. If every strike mission found a target
with no preliminary search - then everyone in the units
would figure out that the Allies had advance knowledge.

Some would fall into enemy hands, be interrogated, and
perhaps say foolish things about matters that they hadn't
been briefed and warned on. Others might be transferred
to other areas where Axis intelligence was operating, and
"spill the beans" in conversation with civilians.

One of the great achievements of the war was the work
of the Special Liaison Units established by Wing
Commander Winterbotham to deliver ULTRA intelligence
to operational commanders in the field. Each SLU had
to make sure that the commander they supplied
maintained security and carried out cover activities
as required. Since the commanders far outranked the
SLU men, this required very delicate managing, but it
was done successfully.
--
Nous sommes dans une pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés.
--- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870.

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In article <qt91fh$h54$1@dont-email.me>, muratlanne@gmail.com (Jim
Wilkins) wrote:

Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe plans reached Moscow very quickly,
sometimes before they arrived at German field units. Only
operations developed entirely at field headquarters could surprise
the Soviets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_spy_ring

If a German staff officer was the leak source he took the secret to
the grave. However;

"In 1981, it was alleged by Anthony Read and David Fisher that Lucy
was, at its heart, a British Secret Service operation intended to
get Ultra information to the Soviets in a convincing way
untraceable to British codebreaking operations against the Germans."

There is a nearly-plausible hypothesis that the source was Erich
Fellgiebel, the head of Heer signals from 1938, and Chief Signal Office
to OKW 1942-44. He was definitely a member of the resistance within the Wehrmacht.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fellgiebel

The hypothesis is that he arranged for the Lucy ring to have an Enigma
machine, plus a legitimate German call-sign and a place on signal
distribution lists. The operators who sent out signals from OKH and OKW
only saw cipher texts; the people who encoded the signals didn't see distribution lists.

The problem with this hypothesis is that "Lucy" would need new Enigma key material regularly. The most plausible way to get it to them during
wartime would be a leak from the German embassy in Berne.

John

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In article <1581qtbwa4qkc.1g4abrbk2ckdj.dlg@40tude.net>,
SolomonW@citi.com (SolomonW) wrote:

If say Hitler had ordered the army at Stalingrad to withdraw, the
German army there would have lost most of its equipment. Many of
his troops would be lost anyway, many would-be wrecks too sick to
do any more fighting.

They might well have lost a lot of equipment, but the men weren't in bad condition at the time of the encirclement. They were by the time of the surrender, but that was a result of several months of very limited
rations.

John

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On Sun, 9 Jan 2022 15:37 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), jgd@cix.co.uk
(John Dallman) wrote:

In article <1581qtbwa4qkc.1g4abrbk2ckdj.dlg@40tude.net>,
SolomonW@citi.com (SolomonW) wrote:

If say Hitler had ordered the army at Stalingrad to withdraw, the
German army there would have lost most of its equipment. Many of
his troops would be lost anyway, many would-be wrecks too sick to
do any more fighting.

They might well have lost a lot of equipment, but the men weren't in bad >condition at the time of the encirclement. They were by the time of the >surrender, but that was a result of several months of very limited
rations.

I agree with Solomon - 6th Army took a lot of time to die and if the
air supply effort had been spent supplying a retreating army 6th army
could have gotten back to the new German front line badly damaged but functional.

I am skeptical that would have helped the Germans much given the type
of fighting that was 1943 which was all about mobility and not
infantry attacks against fixed objectives. It probably WOULD have
meant survival of 100000 or so German soldiers most of whom in OTL
ended up dying in the Kolyma and similarly "hospitable" places

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