Why didn't Soviet Union choose to fight a guerilla warfare-focused war in WW2 (like Communist China did)

by jackfrost2209

Like Russia did in the Napoleonic War? With the advantage of superior numbers, the weather plus the fact that German troops need a lot of supply ,would something like relocating the capital and drawing the German troops further from Germany help Soviet Union better?

King_of_Men

Your terminology is confused. You seem to be mixing up "guerilla warfare" with "trading space for time". Guerilla warfare involves having no fixed front, and not attempting to permanently hold any territory including industrial cores. It is not a way that one Great Power fights another; guerilla warfare is what you do when you're simply not strong enough to hold any territory that your enemy chooses to commit forces to. The purpose of guerrilla warfare is to become strong enough to hold territory and engage in regular warfare. Partisan warfare, with small parties behind the enemy's lines, uses many of the same methods, but is conceptually a different thing; it means supporting your regular army by striking at supply lines and isolated parties, it is not your main effort.

Moving on from this issue of terminology, what you seem to be suggesting is that Stalin should have traded space for time, voluntarily retreated perhaps even behind the Urals, and maintained his whole army in being. To some extent the USSR did do that, as in the famous factory-moving operations. But there are limits to the approach. Industry is not that mobile; you couldn't pick up the whole population and capital infrastructure of the USSR and evacuate them. What would they all eat while you were moving them, and in the spring of 1942 when they were away from their farms? For that matter, how are you going to just physically move 80 million people; are they going to walk? Noting that railroads are needed to move ammunition to the people shooting at the Germans! And some resources, like mines and oil wells, are just not mobile at all. Houses are also in this category; having moved them to the Urals, what are you going to offer these people for shelter in the unusually harsh winter of 1941? True, if they freeze to death that may solve part of the food problem...

As for keeping his army intact, that would of course be an excellent thing to do; but Hitler, that dirty dog, he had a plan too. Barbarossa was a really great example of strategic surprise; the frontline Red Army units were chopped to bits before Stalin and the top USSR leadership really managed to react. So yes, if the Red Army had withdrawn in something like good order across the Ukraine, instead of a scrambling rush to save some broken remnants of shattered regiments, that would have been great. It wasn't exactly that Stalin planned what happened, though.

Finally, consider that Hitler had a great advantage that Napoleon didn't: Railroads. Although it's true that every kilometer added to the strain on his logistics, still, the difficulty was far less; if he'd been able to march all the way to Moscow, or even the Urals, without having to fight his way there, he could have managed the supplies somehow. For a logistical strategy to work, you have to make the enemy use up his ammunition and fuel; that means fighting. Tanks don't motor across the countryside if they don't expect to fight; you put them on rail carriages or trucks with a much better mileage. They only move under their own power when in or near contact with the enemy.

ColbyStein

I swear this has been posted here before. I still don't understand the question.