The Soviet Union Would Have Lost to Nazi Germany in WWII Without Marshal Zhukov

REBUTTALApologies for an extremely late response. I might have to keep this a bit short. My opponent brings up good points in his argument, however his flaw is incomprehension of how combat worked in the 1940’s. His overarching argument is that the Soviets had great superiority over the Germans and it was inevitable, despite big loses, that the Red Army would succeed. He also cites Hitler’s major mistakes as more impactful upon the outcome of the war than anything Zhukov did. For my rebuttal I will attempt to disprove these two parts of my opponent’s argument. Let’s begin! My opponent claims that “Zhukov made a manoeuvre to fight back the enemy, majorly through 'encirclement and destroy', however, this manoeuvre, even with Soviet superiority, failed miserably”. While we may not conclude whether Zhukov signed the directive or not, we can at least say that the Red Army did not under any means have superiority over the Wehrmacht in 1941. Following the Great Purge in 1937, the Red Army was plagued by lack of leadership and hardly any senior generals. 45% of senior officers were eliminated in the purge, 5 out of 16 army commanders, 50 out of the 57 corps commanders, 154 out of the 186 divisional commanders and 401 out of 456 colonels were killed. The results of the purge were catastrophic, made apparent by the disastrous Finnish Winter War. Finland, with an insignificant army, managed to hold off any sort of Soviet offense for over three months, and consequently portrayed the Red Army as weak and disorganized. Truthfully, when Hitler attacked the Soviets were stronger than anticipated. However, their weaknesses were far greater than any strength. Although the Soviets possessed the best tank in the world at the time, the T-34 (and these were not even available at the start of Barbarossa), the lack of radios meant that they had no way to communicate with other tanks except with flag signals. This led to disastrous encounters with better equipped Panzers. Due to lack of supplies, the Red Army was forced to disband all of their Mechanized divisions, greatly hampering their mobility. Red Army training was also subpar, which had disastrous consequences in the face of the well trained Heer soldiers. The VVS (Soviet Air Force) was the largest in the world, true. However when in combat with the Luftwaffe they stood no chance whatsoever. Essentially, the Red Army was greatly inferior to the Wehrmacht in every way. Con then goes on to say that it was Winter and not enough manpower, not Zhukov, that stopped the Germans advance to Moscow. The ladder part is countered by my opening argument, showing that the German Army Group Center was more powerful than their Soviet opponents. As for the former, the winter may have been demoralizing, however it also meant that the roads would be clearer than in October, albeit somewhat difficult to navigate. And given that the Germans were just ten miles outside of Moscow on the 5th of December, this would not have been a major detriment. My opponent argues multiple times that the Soviets had the numerical advantage to beat the Germans, and therefore would have won regardless of Zhukov. However, the Red Army had numerical superiority for the entire duration of the war. It was only half way through Barbarossa did the Reds start making gains. This is because in modern conventional warfare numbers have a much lesser impact on combat. In fact having too large of an army proved to be detrimental since there were simply not enough officers required to organize and lead the armies. What is most important is training and leadership, and to a lesser degree equipment. The Soviet war turned from a defensive war to an offensive one exactly when Zhukov was appointed C in C, highlighted with the Battle of Stalingrad. This is because Zhukov provided the Red Army with much needed leadership, organization, and discipline which could never have been provided by Stalin. Another red flag presented by Con is his argument under “Overall Situation”. He says that even if the Germans had taken Moscow in 1941, there would be little effect on the war. He cites that the Soviet Union still occupied a huge swath of land, and the loss of one city would not impact anything. This is an incorrect statement on multiple regards. In the words of a Russian soldier named Klochkov, “Russia is big, but there is nowhere to retreat”. For one, losing Moscow would, quite obviously, mean losing the capital. Although there are still many other cities in the Soviet Empire, Moscow is truly the most important. This would result in a huge drop in morale amongst the Red Army, as well as the whole populace. With a low morale there would be a slightly decreased production rate, and the armies would be less motivated for offensive or defensive operations. Also, losing Moscow means losing the seat of government and the STAVKA. Stalin, if not captured, would be forced to move his government to the East and would result in tremendous disorganization of the government and the army. As seen by the beginning of Barbarossa and the Finnish Winter Warm, disorganization is a killer to the army. Without effective leadership, morale will drop further and the army’s combat ability will plummet even further. Therefore the loss of Moscow would lead to more territory losses, most importantly in the key cities of Leningrad and Stalingrad. At this point the Soviet Union would be devoid of all its important cities with perhaps the exception of Vladivostok. Although their industry may still be relatively unhampered due to the relocation of the industrial bases past the Urals at the start of the invasion, the soul of the country would be gone, and with it the war effort. My opponent then states that the Nazi’s could’t hold on to all the territory anyways, which I acknowledge as true. However, Hitler did not want to annex all of the Soviet Union, but only take the land west of the “A-A Line”; the line that stretches from Astrakhan to Arkhangelsk, and leave the Soviet Union with their rather barren Asian possessions, which Hitler deemed “useless”. However, say he could’t control all the land west of the A-A line, the Soviet Union would have still technically lost their “Great Patriotic War”, and I would have fulfilled my BoP ;) In conclusion, It is clear that the Soviet armies were far inferior to the Wehrmacht at the time of invasion. Although they may have possessed greater manpower than their Fascist foes, this did not at all give them a significant advantage until much later in the war. Without Zhukov’s defense of Moscow, it is doubtful that the Russians could have held back Hitler’s armies for much longer. Zhukov’s victory at Moscow allowed him to improve the Russian army to the point of contending with Hitler. His appointment as Commander in Chief right at the time of the first major successful Soviet counter-offensive at Stalingrad is a clear indicator of this. Back over to you, Con.