Did the Germans expect a shorter war with the USSR and not have any long term plans for the winter months?

by keeganlol
yrotsiH

Yes.

A long war of attrition was neither desired nor anticipated. The OKW and Hitler were well aware that a long war on several fronts was hard to win.

To cite Weisung 21

"Die deutsche Wehrmacht muss darauf vorbereitet sein, auch vor Beendigung des Krieges gegen England Sowjetrussland in einem schnellen Feldzug niederzuwerfen (Fall Barbarossa)"

Literally : "The German Armed Forces must be prepared, even before the conclusion of the war against England, to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign ('Case Barbarossa')"

Obviously there is no exact planed timing for such huge campaign but Hitler expected the plans to be met in about 5 months. The Wehrmacht expected a decisive victory before the rasputitsa. That doesn't mean they expected the war would be concluded then but rather that major victories were won and the Red Army would have lost their capabilities to defend later expansion. The aim was the A-A line.

Regarding the bad preparation for Winter Warfare. I can't give you a detailed answer about this but i guess you know that there was a shortage of warm clothes for soldiers for example. Its hard to measure how these mistakes attributed to the overall loss. I feel that many people overestimate the impact of these mistakes in preparation for winter warfare. Mobility in winter is greatly reduced in all armies this is not only true for the Wehrmacht in front of Moscow. The problem was rather that they had to fight during the winter than how they did. Obviously combined arms campaigns during winter are far harder to conduct and are diminished in effectivness. The Red Army for example also didn't have major success with campaigns during the winter, except Stalingrad, which was to be fair mainly aimed against non german troops. Delaying the Barbarossa timing to June 22 and wasting time during the advance were the major issues.