Bernd 04/19/2021 (Mon) 16:05:43 No.43340 del
>>43337
>How he sees it, during '41 summer to winter the Red Army suffered giant losses (from Wikipee I see numbers about 2,5 million Soviet POWs captured during Barbarossa, plus all the dead, and newspapers probably were flooded with news about the depletion of the enemy), and they needed the whole 1942 to recover, draining manpower even from Siberia. So I don't think he considered any more units could have been mustered after a Soviet defeat in the crisis-area.
To some point the German high command also underestimated the USSR's ability to replenish its losses and continually expand its military power. Which was probably first because the Soviet system allowed a fast transition to a very high % of economic mobilization, and then later scaled back because it was unsustainable, and kept alive by Lend-Lease.

>He says the Soviet must have recognized their attack would fail on the German lines if it was directed towards west. He attributes this partially to the limited resources available to the Soviet, the insufficient power of their units, but chiefly to the excellence of the German units, both in training and equipment. This is why they picked other Axis units, because they were sub par in comparison. He also points out, that after a quick and decisive reorganization, the Soviet was stopped by the Germans at the 2nd Kharkov battle.
That's logical and he must've remembered the Brusilov offensive shattering the Habsburg Army. But because of his limited frontline information he couldn't see that there were offensives against both the Germans (center) and their weaker allies (south), and it was where they could exploit the weakness of the allies that they had success.