Is Russia too big to be one Country?

Tony EH

Tyrone212 wrote: »

Operating barbarossa was supposed to commence on May 15th. However this was delayed by 6 weeks because Hitler diverted his attention to a Yugoslavian uprising and invaded. The crucial blunder.

There's an argument that Barbarossa may have indeed fared worse than it did if it was launched in May as the Ukraine experiences what they call the Rasputitsa around April/May and a lot of the "roads" become seas of mud due to heavy rainfall in the Spring/early Summer. It experiences it again in the Autumn, where the Germans were ground to a halt in real life. The Rasputitsa is, in fact, more responsible for slowing the Wehrmacht advance than the Russian winter was.

This is what a lot of Ukrainian roads looked like in May.




I remember interviewing a German soldier about 15 years ago. He was captured by the Russians in late 1943 and spent the next 10 years in labour camp. Interestingly enough, his main occupation during that time was the restructuring of rural roads as the Russians had embarked on a huge project to upgrade the country's rural road structure. He said that him and other German POWs were tasked with building roads using crushed shells and bitumen.

He remarked "it was a terrible ordeal getting into Russia, and here I was building a fine road out of it".

JasonStatham

AMKC wrote: »

In my honest opinion I think it is.
I know there is lots of little states in it but not like the USA where they can set there own rules and so on.
If was broke up into to six or so small countries or maybe more maybe 12 it would be better.
So what is other peoples opinion on this?

But a lot of it's Siberia is it? Like uninhabitable?

1874

Interesting and all that the WW2 history of Germany and Russia is, and I disagree with the OP in his original assertion, he hasnt stated exactly why s/he thinks this.

But there are 9 references to Hitler, 3 to Barbarossa, since they posted??
Now if the OP said, Russia is too big to make it easy to invade for a foreign power and it would be much more convenient to invade for foreign powers then Id understand the tangent.

mad-for-tar

31B3E239-2F99-4837-8A2A-FAFFBC657349.jpeg
Has to be one of my most memorable or favourite moments from my number of times spent in Russia. The statue of Mamayev Kurgan or The Motherland Calls.
It’s a massive country no doubt. Spent time in regions surrounding Moscow, Stalingrad/Volgograd, Omsk, Never been further east than Novosibirsk.
Spent alot of time in rural regions in places you’d normally never go as a tourist, some of the most hospitable and friendliest people I ever came across that always made you feel welcome.
Some day I will tpreturn when this COVID ****e is all over....

EndaHonesty

JasonStatham wrote: »

But a lot of it's Siberia is it? Like uninhabitable?

No. Watch Bald & Bankrupt on YouTube. Fascinating insight into the various parts of Russia.

EndaHonesty

AMKC wrote: »

In my honest opinion I think it is.
I know there is lots of little states in it but not like the USA where they can set there own rules and so on.
If was broke up into to six or so small countries or maybe more maybe 12 it would be better.
So what is other peoples opinion on this?

The USA is too big, it should be broken up into 50 countries.
At least 40 of them would be basket case, crazy fundamentalist rogue states.

It'd be some craic...

Fritzbox

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

After that it was only a matter of time as the Russians had seized the means of production, stuck it on every available eastbound train meaning that they would out produce Germany.

The Soviet Union never "out produced Germany". How many U-boats did the Soviet Union produce during the war?

DraftDodger

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm not sure what anyone would do with a gigantic area of inhospitable wilderness.

Yeah yeah but that's enough about Roscommon what about Russia

1874

EndaHonesty wrote: »

The USA is too big, it should be broken up into 50 countries.
At least 40 of them would be basket case, crazy fundamentalist rogue states.

It'd be some craic...

And thats why in some countries it wouldnt be a good idea, in many instances, breaking up exisiting nations into smaller groups, doesn't necessarily result in better outcomes, they are there for other reasons, political, military buffers.
A broken up Russia would be a significantly worse country, weaker and the lands more susceptible to intervention and terrorism, the people left even worse off, see Libya.
I wish the OP well, the Russians have at least 5k Nukes still, and Id hazard a guess they have substantial conventional forces still too.

Capt'n Midnight

Fritzbox wrote: »

The Soviet Union never "out produced Germany". How many U-boats did the Soviet Union produce during the war?

Those U-boats came in handy at Stalingrad and Kursk.


The bit I should have said was that Germany was fighting on two fronts so the Russians only need to out produce for their front. Land and air.

Overall it was about 2:1 for armoured vehicles. There were also over thirty thousand Il-2 Shturmovik ground attack aircraft. And lots of artillery. Having the US provide trucks and jeeps really helped. But it's a big country so long journeys. During WWII Iran was taken over by the UK and Russia, for the oil and warm water ports.

Tony EH

Fritzbox wrote: »

The Soviet Union never "out produced Germany". How many U-boats did the Soviet Union produce during the war?

As an example of erroneous this is, the Soviet Union with one single production facility, managed to produce more T-34's than Germany's entire tank production for the whole war.

Duckworth_Luas

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

What was Hitler thinking...

... sending the Wehrmacht in that early?

Thing about the Heer is, they always try to walk it in!

Wanderer78

AMKC wrote:

In my honest opinion I think it is. I know there is lots of little states in it but not like the USA where they can set there own rules and so on. If was broke up into to six or so small countries or maybe more maybe 12 it would be better. So what is other peoples opinion on this?

You can be the one to tell Putin, we 'll be right behind you!

Fritzbox

Tony EH wrote: »

As an example of erroneous this is, the Soviet Union with one single production facility, managed to produce more T-34's than Germany's entire tank production for the whole war.

You're being erroneous, not me.

Nobody denies that Soviet tank production was over twice that of Germany, but the fact is German industry outproduced the Soviet Union in many other categories of military and industrial goods - a prime example being submarines and other types of naval vessels. If Germany had converted their submarine production to producing tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles they could have doubled production of such vehicles.

RandomViewer

Fritzbox wrote: »

You're being erroneous, not me.

Nobody denies that Soviet tank production was over twice that of Germany, but the fact is German industry outproduced the Soviet Union in many other categories of military and industrial goods - a prime example being submarines and other types of naval vessels. If Germany had converted their submarine production to producing tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles they could have doubled production of such vehicles.

If the Germans had gotten more type21 u-boats in the water the tank count wouldnt have really mattered

Capt'n Midnight

Fritzbox wrote: »

If Germany had converted their submarine production to producing tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles they could have doubled production of such vehicles.

And every V2 could have been a fighter or fighter bomber and they wouldn't have had to use up a large part of the potato harvest to make the alcohol for the rocket fuel even though food was scarce.

They could have got women working in the factories earlier.

They could had put the 12 million people they killed into some form of economic activity to free up manpower.

They could have outproduced the Russians on the Eastern Front.

But they didn't.

Fighting different types of wars on different fronts isn't easy.

JJayoo

Global warming = enormous tracts of land will become available for farming

Capt'n Midnight

RandomViewer wrote: »

If the Germans had gotten more type21 u-boats in the water the tank count wouldnt have really mattered

Given 90% of the German casualties were on the Eastern Front the U-boats wouldn't have made that much of a difference. Overall they sank just 1% of the shipping and the UK was never as short of food and material as the continent was. (Post war rationing was about keeping currency at home.)

Besides they wouldn't have affected the supply of stuff to Vladivostok or to Persia. The Japanese didn't interfere with the Russian ships on the US routes.

Capt'n Midnight

Russia isn't that big in the grand scheme of things.

ablelocks wrote: »

Less than 30% of the 510 million square kilometers of area on the Earth's surface is covered by land.

The largest countries by surface area are Russia (3.35%), Canada (1.96%), and China (1.88%).


more info here

Tony EH

Fritzbox wrote: »

You're being erroneous, not me.

Nobody denies that Soviet tank production was over twice that of Germany, but the fact is German industry outproduced the Soviet Union in many other categories of military and industrial goods - a prime example being submarines and other types of naval vessels. If Germany had converted their submarine production to producing tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles they could have doubled production of such vehicles.

Except for the fact Germany NEEDED her U-Boats to prosecute the war in the Atlantic. So her scrapping her naval program wouldn't have helped one iota. It might have helped them give the Russians a harder time, but it certainly wouldn't have won the war for them.

Into the bargain, Germany needed more, MANY more, U-Boats not less. Her war in the Atlantic was even less successful than the war in the east.