Disaster at Stalingrad

-Peter G. Tsouras

I have often found the alternate campaign histories of various wars to be deeply fascinating, as the best of them draw on real-world details such as accurate orders of battle, and historical notes written by the commanders involved, in putting together a historical outline that could easily pass for real history, if it were true. To make it convincing, the author must avoid hand-waving as much as possible and outline events that could have happened, even if they didn’t. It is a very challenging task to make a convincing campaign history, and Tsouras - a well-known figure in the alternate campaign field - is a master.

The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the major turning points of the Second World War. It was a disaster made inevitable by a combination of factors, including Adolf Hitler’s poor understanding of logistics, contempt for his Slavic foes, American and British support for the soviet union, inherent weaknesses within the German war machine, and finally simple bad luck. It was decisive, in the sense it wrecked a German army and put the Germans on the back foot for the rest of the war. The Germans won tactical victories between 1943 and 45, but they no longer had the ability to turn those successes into strategic victories.

Could it have been otherwise? Tsouras argues so, pointed to a number of minor changes that could have evened the odds between the Nazis and the Communists and ensured the Soviets were unable to pull off a statistic victory at Stalingrad. He outlines a series of small dangers, which lead to much greater changes, and eventually produce a very different war. The German discovery of the Ultra secret in mid 1942 allows the Germans to pull off a far more successful ambush of the convoys supplying the Soviet Union, isolating the USSR - as merchant sailors refused to sail to the Soviet Union - and convince the Turks to join the war on the German side, allowing the Germans to take Egypt as well as thrust north into Baku and into Stalingrad itself from the rear. The German tactical victory becomes a strategic success when the Red Army starts to grind to a halt, because the shortage of supplies, and Russia is forced to leave the war.

It is difficult to evaluate how convincing this section is. Russia was always very dependent on British and American aid, no matter how much Stalin sought to downplay it. It is possible the Russians would have been unable to pull off a counteroffensive in late 1942, if they were cut off from the Western Allies, giving the Germans a chance to beat them. The early successes in the Mediterranean would have short-circuited Operation Torch, allowing the Germans - as Dale Cozort argues - to concentrate the airpower in Russia, rather than be forced to dispatch irreplaceable aircraft to the North African Battleground. On the other hand, the Germans really were reaching the end of their tether and it is unlikely that captured American supplies would have made up for their many weaknesses.

Furthermore, the Russians were in no doubt that losing to Hitler would mean the end of the world. The Germans had a brief opportunity to win friends and allies amongst the Russians who hated - with reason - the communist regime, but they chose to throw that opportunity away and convince the Russians that Stalin might bad, yet Hitler was the devil incarnate. Their industrial production would undoubtedly slow down in this scenario, and they would have real trouble mounting the 1934 offences in this timeline, but is unlikely they’d leave the war. Hitler would not let them, unless they conceded more than the book suggested.

It is also uncertain if Turkey would have entered the war, and - if she did - if her involvement would prove as decisive as Tsouras suggested. The Turks had a reputation for being tough fighters, and they had excellent reasons to wage war on Britain and Russia, but their government was reluctant to risk committing itself before there was a clear winner. If they had joined the war, their ability to advance north into Russia would be in some doubt. Their armoured forces and aircraft were not modern, by any reasonable standards, and the Red Army would have given them a very hard time. That said, a Turkish invasion would have galvanised Islamic populations groaning under the Soviet yoke and almost certainly led to uprisings.

More controversially, Tsouras argues that the German army - including a number of senior officers - would have plotted against Hitler in 1942, and successfully assassinated him and a number of high-ranking Nazis during the victory celebrations in Nazi-ruled Stalingrad itself. I find that section unconvincingly. The concept of the German army fighting a clean war, while the SS carried out all the atrocities, has been thoroughly debunked since the end of the Cold War (when it was no longer necessary to pretend otherwise). Historically, very few senior officers made any attempt to move against Hitler even when it was clear the Third Reich was going to lose the war. It is possible, in this timeline, that Hitler’s bodyguards would not fear internal enemies because it looked like the Reich was winning, but any assassination plan would need the generals to take that final fatal step. Why would they do it in a world where it seems the inevitable winner?

Tsouras digs deep into the poisonous crowd surrounding Adolf Hitler, pointing out the many flaws in his command style and noting that the Führer seems to have regarded Reinhard Heydrich as a son, of sorts. (I do not know if this is actually true; historically, Heydrich was assassinated in 1942.) Heydrich’s rise in this timeline, after using the chance discovery of the Ultra secret to boost his status, might have triggered off the assassination plot that ended the book. It is a reminder that, in many ways, Hitler and his crowd were their own worst enemies. Hitler’s belief he had saved the German army in 1941 led directly to the historical disaster in 1942. He also explores politics in Britain, Russia, and America, pointing out that even Churchill and FDR had to answer to their constituents, and that there were limits on just how much they could do for the Soviet Union.

In the long-term, this would lead to a very different world. A military-run German government would still be at war with the British and Americans, even if the Russians had backed out of the war. The Anglo-American counteroffensive of 1943 would almost certainly drive the Germans and Italians out of North Africa, bringing immense pressure to bear on Turkey or stationing forces in Britain for an offensive into France in 1944. The Germans would have to prepare for an invasion, despite having burnt through much of their mobile firepower in the final desperate battle for Stalingrad, and expended most of their airpower. The Germans would probably be able to bring more stolen resources online, as it would have more time to reopen lines and industrial facilities in Russia, but is unlikely they would have any counter to the atomic bomb, when it was finally ready in 1945. In this world, Berlin might have been the first city to feel atomic fire.

Overall, despite my quibbles with the setting and some of the details shown in this book, I enjoyed reading it. It is a fun mixture of real life detail and alternate history, with excerpts and quotes that belong to an alternate world and remind us, once again, why professional study logistics over tactics. And it also reminds us just how small details, seemingly almost insignificant, can snowball into a universe of change.

If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can download the book for free here.