[Smilin' Dave]

Never said Germans were halted there by airpower.

Clearly your intent, unless you posted the material in the thread completely off topic. So perhaps instead of being contradictory you are just spamming the History sub-forum?

Rommel could not be fluid at El Alamein because it was a 40 mile wide chokepoint with Med sea on one side, & Quatarra depression on the other. No one can be fluid in a narrow sector such as that, physically impossible.

The position near El Alamein was a chokepoint that had been selected by the Allies as an emergency fall-back position, only 40 miles long from the coast to the massive impassable Qattara Depression on the south end.

El Alamein is just one example of the fighting over mountain passes that took place in North Africa. Try Operation Battleaxe for example. Also, Rommel was still ultimately road-bound as previous stated. Much of his 'fluid' movement were relatively short outflanking moves to get around the British line.

1st SAS raid was failure, 2nd was success.

If you think high casualty, low impact raids, are a good thing, more power to you. It doesn't detract from the simple fact that they were not decisive. In fact, if you thing the LRDG and SAS were so terribly clever, why are you insisting what the Germans needed were more Panzer divisions? Why didn't Rommel have more raiding units like this?

Look where it says Russian Federation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cauca ... _baseb.gif

This map clearly depicts several significant belts of mountains. Your first linked map shows no topograhy and was completely pointless to include. Once again you didn't look at your own sources and appear to hope you can snow me out of the debate by volume.

[cowofzot]

Mtns surrounded by plains. Plain & simple. None of the oilpumps & oilfields were in the MTns.

Didn't state SAS were decisive, ( it WAS effective however. Rommel certainly thought so when he met the captured leader). The head of the LRDG asked the same question, why Rommel didn't have similiar arm.


Clearly not my intent, I love it when people tell me what my intent was. What I said was; Lend Lease was an important factor in that sector & pointed out 1 3rd of the VVS airforce was composed of Lend Lease aircraft in that sector. That's a long ways from saying Lend Lease aircraft were the decisive factor in German defeat in that sector, which again, I never stated.

[Smilin' Dave]

Mtns surrounded by plains. Plain & simple. None of the oilpumps & oilfields were in the MTns.

Stalingrad had open spaces too (like the Mumayev Kurgan), does that make it less of an urban area?

Some of the desired oilfields are on the other side of the mountains, like Maykop. Good luck getting any oil out of there when the existing transport infrastructure goes over the mountains... which could well be in artillery range of the refineries. You could ship equipment etc. in to re-route the pipelines etc. but that means shipping them in through your already stretched logistic tail (eg. too few ports/trucks for the scheme you proposed). Fair chance the pumps/refineries will need rebuilding too, since the Soviets tended to blow them up rather than allow their capture (again, like at Maykop).

Didn't state SAS were decisive

Clearly not my intent, I love it when people tell me what my intent was.

Then you have a bizarre habit of posting seemingly irrelevant information without adequete explanation.

So I'll sum up my position because I'm tired of bickering with you about this rubbish:
- Deploying more units to North Africa won't necessarily win that front, because of the logistical limitations imposed by the terrain and infrastructure.
- That rolling through Egypt and the rest of the Middle East won't be a simple procedure at all.
- That your plan relies upon either the invasion and occupation of Spain or cooperation Franco historically refused.
- Your plan requires either total acquiensence (unlikely) or invasion (costly/time waste) of Turkey.
- The southern route into the USSR is likely more difficult than that undertaken by Barbarossa.
- That this plan cannot possibly be completed in 1941. An earlier start in Africa was unlikely due to political and material situations. Even dismissing that the distances involved would necessitate delays. That means the US will enter the war and the Soviets will have another year to prepare.
- In short the 'southern route' is unlikely to be successful, and will likely leave the Axis is an even more difficult position by 1942 than they were confronted with historically.

[cowofzot]

Part of the plan was to use Turkish railroad to reach Baku. It goes through the small neighboring countries to Baku. Stalingrad? Mostly flat. Not "my" Southern route per se, Raeder, Goering & Kesselring all were in favor of it for what its worth.

The Baghdad Railway (Turkish: Bağdat Demiryolu, German: Bagdadbahn), was built from 1903 to 1940 to connect Berlin with the (then) Ottoman Empire city of Baghdad with a 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) line through modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

Funding and engineering was mainly provided by German Empire banks and companies, which in the 1890s had built the Anatolian Railway (Anatolische Eisenbahn) connecting Istanbul, Ankara and Konya. The Baghdad Railway was to connect Berlin with Baghdad, where the Germans wanted to establish a port in the Persian Gulf.[1] The Ottoman Empire desired to maintain its control of Arabia and to expand its influence across the Red Sea into Egypt, which was controlled by Great Britain. The Germans gained access to and ownership of oil fields in Iraq, and with a line to the port of Basra would have gained better access to the eastern parts of the German colonial empire, bypassing the Suez Canal.



The railway also threatened Russia, since it was accepted as axiomatic that political influence followed economic, and the railway was expected to extend Germany's economic influence towards the Caucasian frontier and into north Persia where Russia had a dominant share of the market



Construction resumed in the 1930s and was completed in 1940

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Baghdad_Railway



Roll through Franco, Hitler often went places without others permission.


Turkey would join Axis when Panzers roll up to Syria, ( they had previously been allies of Germany in WW 1).


Deploying more units to Africa would no doubt tip the balance in favor of the Germans circa 1941. Brtish were not built up as they were in 42 through US, ( Lend Lease), shipments. British could not barely contend with 2 Panzer units, no hope against 10,( plus quadruple Luftwaffe).

[pugsville]

All railways are not equal, Turksih railways arnt great now (ww1 they were a joke, ww2 I'm bettkng there were pretty poor), supporting a panzer army at one end of a single track railway through hostile terrain and possibly hostile locals could be problematic. I'm not an expert at logistics, but I've done some research, but how many tons a month do you need to support ten mechnised divions in combat, and how much you could get through the railway is at least has to be considered rather than just assumed it would work. The Russian Transcaucsus Military district (tiblisi) had 15 divisons, (2 armoured, 7 mountain) the Causcasus Military District had another 7 (2 armoured). The Causcasus is a very mountainious region, not well suited for rmoured warfare or wide mobile warfare, very limited supply routes, well suited for defence. The Russian garrision was pretty formidiable in that terrain,

Just because Government is right wing means they re going to fall into line with the Nazi's, look at Greece, the Turks and Spanish both were cautious and di not want involvment in world war 2, and would both be very reluctant to get involoved, and both would resent and resist strong arm tactics. Both if subjected through intimidtion or outright military force would require serious garrison forces (10-20 divisons) as would the suez to prevent the british intervening from India. SO for such a grand sweep, you would need 40 odd divisions for garrions , secruing the supply route etc,

[cowofzot]

In addittion to Greece, you must also look at Bulgaria & Romania. Germans & Turks worked well together in WW 1, ( including rail traffic), no reason it couldn't work in WW 2 with the rail system much improved. If you look at the map, going through Armenia & Azerbaijan is fairly flat, the big mountains are north where Georgia borders Russia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cauca ... _baseb.gif


Here you can read about the Turkish advance on Baku in 1918
http://wargamedesigner.blogspot.com/200 ... -1918.html

[pugsville]

I was wrong.

I said "Hart was an over-hyped crackpot."

sorry I mixed up my British Armor advocates. Hart was NOT a crackpot, I was thinking of Fuller who was a crackpot.