Maybe that means even without Malta the North African campaign goes better for the British at least initially?
Ghastly Victories: The United States in the World Wars
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Part 6-62 Desert War
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…The British invasion of Italian Somalia began on January 3rd. Two British divisions attacked two reinforced Italian colonial divisions, who while numerically superior had inferior equipment and were operating under British air superiority. Rather than make a stand in the flat plains of the border with Kenya the Italians had left only skirmishers west of the Juba, with their main force concentrations being the towns of Gelib and Bardere.
After a four week running battle the British reached the Juba and captured the port of Kismayo on the 31st. After a week to pause and refit the British moved to force the Juba near the coast and threaten Gelib from the rear. By the 13th they were threatening to leave the Italian position inviable and the division at Gelib withdrew to Mogadishu.
The British pursued and on February 22nd reached Mogadishu. Rather than make a final stand the Italians once more fought a delaying action and withdrew on the 25th up the Imperial road to the Ethiopian border. This retreat saw the Italian force lose about 50% of its native strength due to desertion and the British take an impressive number of prisoners, mostly native Somalis. It did not however weaken the Italians enough that the British could simply waltz into Ethiopia unopposed and after a cursory action on March 6th the British decided not to press the pursuit while waiting for more supplies.
A second British division routed the other Italian concentration at Bardere on February 16th, but with more difficult logistics found it more difficult to pursue and after a brief fight with the remaining Italian troops at the border town of Dolo, the British once more decided to wait for a deliberate attack. This however would not be quick in coming.
The primary theater of Egypt, and other operations in the Mediterranean, were eating up a great deal of the supplies that were available in the East African and Middle Eastern theaters and had a much higher priority. What was left for East Africa would only support a single large offensive operation at a time. It was decided that an attack on Eritrea would have more utility and impact than a push into Southern Ethiopia, now that forces in Sudan would suffice to support such an attack. Furthermore it was thought that Ethiopian guerillas and desertion would wear down the Italian forces in Ethiopia, thus making it wise to delay an attack there to focus on Eritrea where that was not the case.
Fighting in the southern portion of the East African Theater would from mid March into summer consist of isolated company and battalion actions as the British slowly pushed up through Somalia…
…Following the capture of Sidi Barrani Sanna established Mersa Matruh as the next objective for his army in Egypt. He had given up on trying to destroy the British army in Egypt after it had proved better at mobile warfare than his own forces. Rather he was interested in territory for securing his bargaining position and Mersa Matruh controlled the road action to the Siwa Oasis and taking it would force the British to have to withdraw from there, in addition to being closer to Alexandria.
The British under General Pope had a relatively strong blocking position at El Negaila about halfway between Sidi Barrani and pickets further west at El Tarfaya. They had more ability to contest the Italians in the air at any point prior and more heavy firepower as well. The only relative deficiency compared to earlier in the campaign was in tanks, with the British only having lights and older model cruiser and infantry tanks, while the Italians not only had more tanks than before but a higher portion being the more powerful M22/41. The British also had fewer anti tank guns but had made up for that with the practice of mounting them on trucks “portee style”, providing additional mobility and reducing the chance of being lost in a rapid withdrawal.
Sanna originally wanted the attack to start on January 20th shortly after the capture of Malta, which was at that point expected to occur on January 15th. However successful interdiction of supplies by British submarines and deep raids by British special forces in light off road vehicles disrupted the preparation and the attack was not ready until the 17th of February, after the much delayed capture of Malta.
The Italians under Marshal Garabaldi started by moving recon forces backed by heavy units closely behind east along the coastal road to push back the British pickets. This allowed them to overwhelm the British screening forces without suffering excess casualties to their own less dexterous light forces, but left them more exposed to ambushes, mainly mitigated by the lack of effective long ranged AT weapons on the British part.
These ambushes served to delay contact with the main line of resistance at El Negaila until February 21st and the beginning of the assault to February 24th. Once more the Italians conducted a relatively orthodox attack, a deliberate assault by an infantry heavy force with plenty of artillery support on the main British position, followed by an armor heavy flanking attack to the south after the majority of the British forces had been fixed.
The attack began much as the attack on Sidi Barrani had, with the only difference being fewer air strikes and a greater amount of British counter battery fire. General Pope once more were found himself overstretched and forced to commit his reserves to buy time for a withdrawal. Compared to Sidi Barrani however he was better prepared with a number of minefields laid specifically to cover such actions.
The British completed their withdrawal on the 26th and immediately positioned themselves just in front of the Mersa Matruh-Siwa road in prebuilt defensive positions. A number of ambushes delayed the Italian attack on this new line to March 4th. Knowing that the Italians had not the time to build up a supply reserve for a major set piece attack General Pope concentrated his heavy firepower in concealed positions where he expected the armored thrust to come from in order to savage the Italian flanking attack.
Pope guessed correctly and on March 6th the expected Italian armored flanking thrust found itself running into dug in infantry supported by artillery pieces firing over open sights and took heavy losses. Marshal Garabaldi recovered quickly and realized that Pope had to have stripped his forces near the coast to provide the reserves needed to blunt the attack and he ordered his armored reserves to instead attack near the coat on the 7th.
The Italian tanks quickly broke through the British positions and Pope ordered a withdrawal in the afternoon to be completed during the night. Pope left screening forces at Garawlah while his main body withdrew to Fuka to dig in and reorganize. Garabaldi captured Mersa Matruh on the 8th and paused to regroup and reinforce…
…The fall of Mersa Matruh saw the evacuation of the Siwa Oasis ordered on the 10th, with the British defenders falling back to Lake Sitra 90 miles to the east…
…Mersa Matruh marked the first time that the British had traded evenly with the Italians in terms of personnel losses all campaign on a large scale. Improvements in tactics and a reduced deficiency in firepower allowed the British to better take advantage of the strength of their defensive position…
…Following Mersa Matruh Sanna set his objective as Alexandria, something he thought was ambitious but doable in stages provided the British did not heavily reinforce the region. The capture of Alexandria would force the British to withdraw their heavy units from the Mediterranean and would provide a major port that could handle any possible logistical needs of the Italian Army in Africa. With Alexandria for a supply base the fall of Egypt and the Suez canal were merely a matter of time, given the difficulty the British faced with supplying Egypt around Africa.
Even if Alexandria could not be taken due to British reinforcements, pushing back the British would place his air bases further east and the British ones further west, securing Italy from air attack and allowing him to project considerable power into the eastern Mediterranean…
…After Mersa Matruh the British were bloodied once more but not beaten. More convoys with replacement equipment were on the way and reinforcements from India, Australia and New Zealand had already arrived in Egypt and were nearly ready to deploy. The RAF had stood up more squadrons with several Glaive units in the process of standing up, once ready they would give the British parity in the skies and allow them to give back some of what they had received.
The additional reinforcements were still not enough for the British to maintain a line long enough to reach the Qattara depression and avoid being outflanked, but they would force the Italians to make a longer flanking maneuver and stress their supply lines more. Combined with parity in the sky and what was probably an effective superiority in artillery and Pope felt he had a good chance of stalemating the Italians despite his inferiority in numbers and especially in tanks.
Pope’s reinforcements soon found themselves with other tasks…
…The most notable deficiency in British equipment was that of tanks. The Italian offensive forces in Libya were equipped with a mix of L6/38 and L6/40 light tanks at the start of the war. The two were broadly similar to British Mark VI or VII light tanks, with the both being slightly superior in armament to the British designs but the L6/38 having a worse arrangement, both were inferior to the Mark VIII in armament with a 20mm autocannon instead of a 40mm 2pdr gun. At the start of the war British light tanks in Egypt consisted entirely of Mark VI’s or older units on training duties. After casualties in the opening attack these were replaced with more Mark VI’s with the Mark VII and VIII not arriving until December and serving to replace losses after Sidi Barrani. The Mark VII was functionally no superior to the Mark VI, while the Mark VIII’s were pressed into the role of cruiser tanks, while the Italians gradually increased the proportion of their light tank force that was the modern L6/40 over the course of 1941 and 1942. Only the quality of the British crews prevented the Italians from dominating the recon battle
The British would only rectify the gap in light tank quality in October when the first American light tanks with a high velocity 25mm gun arrived in quantity, enabling them to have a vehicle that both outmatched the L6/40 and could afford to be used against it.
The situation in larger tanks was however rather worse for the British. At the start of the campaign the Italian tank force consisted of the M16/39, with a 47mm gun and adequate speed and armor, while the British forces in Egypt had Mark II infantry tanks and Mark II and III cruiser tanks. The Mark II infantry tank while effectively invulnerable to the Italian 47mm gun from the front was very slow and only as well armed as a Mark VI light tank, thus incapable of harming the Italian medium tanks save from the side at very close range. The Mark II and III cruisers had a similar armament to the M16/39 but less armor and while faster were less reliable. The Italians over the course of 1941 and 1942 began supplementing and replacing the M16/39 with the M22/41 which was armored against the British 2pdr at combat ranges and featured a 65mm gun that could kill a Mark II infantry tank in the frontal arc at 300 yards. The British meanwhile were forced to use Mark I infantry tanks which were slower and less well armed and Mark I and II Cruisers and Mark VIII light tanks as replacements until February 1942 when the first Mark III Infantry Tanks and Mark IV Cruisers arrived.
The Mark IV Cruiser proved no significant improvement over its predecessors while the Mark III Infantry tank was. Rearmed with a 2pdr AT gun it could hurt Italian medium tanks while retaining the front armor of its predecessors and being able to resist 47mm AP from the sides at all ranges. The Mark III however still was more vulnerable to the M22/41 than vice versa thanks to its much weaker gun and arrived after the Italians had began issuing HEAT shells which allowed their 47mm guns to penetrate its side armor at any range and the new M16 derived Semovente 75/18 to do the same to its front armor, and its slow speed led to it often being outflanked.
The Mark III Infantry Tank and Mark IV Cruiser would be the primary British tanks in Egypt in 1942, facing Italian M22/41s. Better British skill generally did make up for the difference in quality, but it was not enough to make up for the superior quantity of Italian tanks, namely that the British were outnumbered by 3 to 1 on average, a situation maintained by the Italian ability to recover their losses and the British inability to do the same. The introduction of the Mark IIIa infantry tank and the Mark IVa cruiser tank in June made up some of the gap. Using the engine of the Mark IV and V, undeployable due to insoluble suspension issues, allowed the Mark III to become more maneuverable and the Mark IV to gain protection from 47mm AP rounds at longer ranges. This however only made the two somewhat more competitive and did nothing for the fact that the M22/41 was much better armed.
The Mark V Infantry Tank and Mark VI cruiser were supposed to fix the suspension issues of the Mark IV and V, and thus provide the forces in Africa with a 6pdr armed tank that could effectively match the armament of the M22/41 in September 1942. The Mark V and VI, while solving the suspension issues of their predecessors instead came with cooling and filter issues that made them unsuitable for Desert climates without a hefty redesign. This led to the deployment of the Mark IIIb and Mark IVb in October with modified turrets allowing the older chassis to carry 6pdr guns, ending the firepower gap but at the cost of deleting a third man from the turret and forcing the commander to serve as gunner, severely impacting efficiency.
It was only with the arrival of the redesigned Mark VI Infantry tank and Mark VII Cruiser tank in February alongside American medium tanks in January that allowed the British to gain parity in quality with the Italians, coming just as the Italians were introducing the M26/42 with a powerful 75mm gun…
…The Long Range Desert Group was a highly successful unit, achieving striking results despite its small size. Raiding in unarmored all terrain vehicles guided by expert desert navigation skills the LRDG was able to repeatedly penetrate deep into Italian lines. There they destroyed supply depots, attacked airfields and provided a remarkable degree of intelligence. Their actions provided General Pope and his successors with an accurate view of the Italian order of battle, delayed multiple Italian offensives and mitigated Italian Air superiority…
…The Long Range Desert Group was in some ways too successful. It served as the catalyst for the transformation of the Independent Companies which had been raised as maritime raiding forces into the Commandos, as well as the formation of several other Special Service Units . Thousands upon thousands of the best troops in the British military were skimmed off into these units, far more than were actually needed, diluting the quality of the regular forces in the process and encouraging the launch of a number of dubious operations…
-Excerpt from The Desert War, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2001
A/N Okay that went on longer than I expected
After a four week running battle the British reached the Juba and captured the port of Kismayo on the 31st. After a week to pause and refit the British moved to force the Juba near the coast and threaten Gelib from the rear. By the 13th they were threatening to leave the Italian position inviable and the division at Gelib withdrew to Mogadishu.
The British pursued and on February 22nd reached Mogadishu. Rather than make a final stand the Italians once more fought a delaying action and withdrew on the 25th up the Imperial road to the Ethiopian border. This retreat saw the Italian force lose about 50% of its native strength due to desertion and the British take an impressive number of prisoners, mostly native Somalis. It did not however weaken the Italians enough that the British could simply waltz into Ethiopia unopposed and after a cursory action on March 6th the British decided not to press the pursuit while waiting for more supplies.
A second British division routed the other Italian concentration at Bardere on February 16th, but with more difficult logistics found it more difficult to pursue and after a brief fight with the remaining Italian troops at the border town of Dolo, the British once more decided to wait for a deliberate attack. This however would not be quick in coming.
The primary theater of Egypt, and other operations in the Mediterranean, were eating up a great deal of the supplies that were available in the East African and Middle Eastern theaters and had a much higher priority. What was left for East Africa would only support a single large offensive operation at a time. It was decided that an attack on Eritrea would have more utility and impact than a push into Southern Ethiopia, now that forces in Sudan would suffice to support such an attack. Furthermore it was thought that Ethiopian guerillas and desertion would wear down the Italian forces in Ethiopia, thus making it wise to delay an attack there to focus on Eritrea where that was not the case.
Fighting in the southern portion of the East African Theater would from mid March into summer consist of isolated company and battalion actions as the British slowly pushed up through Somalia…
…Following the capture of Sidi Barrani Sanna established Mersa Matruh as the next objective for his army in Egypt. He had given up on trying to destroy the British army in Egypt after it had proved better at mobile warfare than his own forces. Rather he was interested in territory for securing his bargaining position and Mersa Matruh controlled the road action to the Siwa Oasis and taking it would force the British to have to withdraw from there, in addition to being closer to Alexandria.
The British under General Pope had a relatively strong blocking position at El Negaila about halfway between Sidi Barrani and pickets further west at El Tarfaya. They had more ability to contest the Italians in the air at any point prior and more heavy firepower as well. The only relative deficiency compared to earlier in the campaign was in tanks, with the British only having lights and older model cruiser and infantry tanks, while the Italians not only had more tanks than before but a higher portion being the more powerful M22/41. The British also had fewer anti tank guns but had made up for that with the practice of mounting them on trucks “portee style”, providing additional mobility and reducing the chance of being lost in a rapid withdrawal.
Sanna originally wanted the attack to start on January 20th shortly after the capture of Malta, which was at that point expected to occur on January 15th. However successful interdiction of supplies by British submarines and deep raids by British special forces in light off road vehicles disrupted the preparation and the attack was not ready until the 17th of February, after the much delayed capture of Malta.
The Italians under Marshal Garabaldi started by moving recon forces backed by heavy units closely behind east along the coastal road to push back the British pickets. This allowed them to overwhelm the British screening forces without suffering excess casualties to their own less dexterous light forces, but left them more exposed to ambushes, mainly mitigated by the lack of effective long ranged AT weapons on the British part.
These ambushes served to delay contact with the main line of resistance at El Negaila until February 21st and the beginning of the assault to February 24th. Once more the Italians conducted a relatively orthodox attack, a deliberate assault by an infantry heavy force with plenty of artillery support on the main British position, followed by an armor heavy flanking attack to the south after the majority of the British forces had been fixed.
The attack began much as the attack on Sidi Barrani had, with the only difference being fewer air strikes and a greater amount of British counter battery fire. General Pope once more were found himself overstretched and forced to commit his reserves to buy time for a withdrawal. Compared to Sidi Barrani however he was better prepared with a number of minefields laid specifically to cover such actions.
The British completed their withdrawal on the 26th and immediately positioned themselves just in front of the Mersa Matruh-Siwa road in prebuilt defensive positions. A number of ambushes delayed the Italian attack on this new line to March 4th. Knowing that the Italians had not the time to build up a supply reserve for a major set piece attack General Pope concentrated his heavy firepower in concealed positions where he expected the armored thrust to come from in order to savage the Italian flanking attack.
Pope guessed correctly and on March 6th the expected Italian armored flanking thrust found itself running into dug in infantry supported by artillery pieces firing over open sights and took heavy losses. Marshal Garabaldi recovered quickly and realized that Pope had to have stripped his forces near the coast to provide the reserves needed to blunt the attack and he ordered his armored reserves to instead attack near the coat on the 7th.
The Italian tanks quickly broke through the British positions and Pope ordered a withdrawal in the afternoon to be completed during the night. Pope left screening forces at Garawlah while his main body withdrew to Fuka to dig in and reorganize. Garabaldi captured Mersa Matruh on the 8th and paused to regroup and reinforce…
…The fall of Mersa Matruh saw the evacuation of the Siwa Oasis ordered on the 10th, with the British defenders falling back to Lake Sitra 90 miles to the east…
…Mersa Matruh marked the first time that the British had traded evenly with the Italians in terms of personnel losses all campaign on a large scale. Improvements in tactics and a reduced deficiency in firepower allowed the British to better take advantage of the strength of their defensive position…
…Following Mersa Matruh Sanna set his objective as Alexandria, something he thought was ambitious but doable in stages provided the British did not heavily reinforce the region. The capture of Alexandria would force the British to withdraw their heavy units from the Mediterranean and would provide a major port that could handle any possible logistical needs of the Italian Army in Africa. With Alexandria for a supply base the fall of Egypt and the Suez canal were merely a matter of time, given the difficulty the British faced with supplying Egypt around Africa.
Even if Alexandria could not be taken due to British reinforcements, pushing back the British would place his air bases further east and the British ones further west, securing Italy from air attack and allowing him to project considerable power into the eastern Mediterranean…
…After Mersa Matruh the British were bloodied once more but not beaten. More convoys with replacement equipment were on the way and reinforcements from India, Australia and New Zealand had already arrived in Egypt and were nearly ready to deploy. The RAF had stood up more squadrons with several Glaive units in the process of standing up, once ready they would give the British parity in the skies and allow them to give back some of what they had received.
The additional reinforcements were still not enough for the British to maintain a line long enough to reach the Qattara depression and avoid being outflanked, but they would force the Italians to make a longer flanking maneuver and stress their supply lines more. Combined with parity in the sky and what was probably an effective superiority in artillery and Pope felt he had a good chance of stalemating the Italians despite his inferiority in numbers and especially in tanks.
Pope’s reinforcements soon found themselves with other tasks…
…The most notable deficiency in British equipment was that of tanks. The Italian offensive forces in Libya were equipped with a mix of L6/38 and L6/40 light tanks at the start of the war. The two were broadly similar to British Mark VI or VII light tanks, with the both being slightly superior in armament to the British designs but the L6/38 having a worse arrangement, both were inferior to the Mark VIII in armament with a 20mm autocannon instead of a 40mm 2pdr gun. At the start of the war British light tanks in Egypt consisted entirely of Mark VI’s or older units on training duties. After casualties in the opening attack these were replaced with more Mark VI’s with the Mark VII and VIII not arriving until December and serving to replace losses after Sidi Barrani. The Mark VII was functionally no superior to the Mark VI, while the Mark VIII’s were pressed into the role of cruiser tanks, while the Italians gradually increased the proportion of their light tank force that was the modern L6/40 over the course of 1941 and 1942. Only the quality of the British crews prevented the Italians from dominating the recon battle
The British would only rectify the gap in light tank quality in October when the first American light tanks with a high velocity 25mm gun arrived in quantity, enabling them to have a vehicle that both outmatched the L6/40 and could afford to be used against it.
The situation in larger tanks was however rather worse for the British. At the start of the campaign the Italian tank force consisted of the M16/39, with a 47mm gun and adequate speed and armor, while the British forces in Egypt had Mark II infantry tanks and Mark II and III cruiser tanks. The Mark II infantry tank while effectively invulnerable to the Italian 47mm gun from the front was very slow and only as well armed as a Mark VI light tank, thus incapable of harming the Italian medium tanks save from the side at very close range. The Mark II and III cruisers had a similar armament to the M16/39 but less armor and while faster were less reliable. The Italians over the course of 1941 and 1942 began supplementing and replacing the M16/39 with the M22/41 which was armored against the British 2pdr at combat ranges and featured a 65mm gun that could kill a Mark II infantry tank in the frontal arc at 300 yards. The British meanwhile were forced to use Mark I infantry tanks which were slower and less well armed and Mark I and II Cruisers and Mark VIII light tanks as replacements until February 1942 when the first Mark III Infantry Tanks and Mark IV Cruisers arrived.
The Mark IV Cruiser proved no significant improvement over its predecessors while the Mark III Infantry tank was. Rearmed with a 2pdr AT gun it could hurt Italian medium tanks while retaining the front armor of its predecessors and being able to resist 47mm AP from the sides at all ranges. The Mark III however still was more vulnerable to the M22/41 than vice versa thanks to its much weaker gun and arrived after the Italians had began issuing HEAT shells which allowed their 47mm guns to penetrate its side armor at any range and the new M16 derived Semovente 75/18 to do the same to its front armor, and its slow speed led to it often being outflanked.
The Mark III Infantry Tank and Mark IV Cruiser would be the primary British tanks in Egypt in 1942, facing Italian M22/41s. Better British skill generally did make up for the difference in quality, but it was not enough to make up for the superior quantity of Italian tanks, namely that the British were outnumbered by 3 to 1 on average, a situation maintained by the Italian ability to recover their losses and the British inability to do the same. The introduction of the Mark IIIa infantry tank and the Mark IVa cruiser tank in June made up some of the gap. Using the engine of the Mark IV and V, undeployable due to insoluble suspension issues, allowed the Mark III to become more maneuverable and the Mark IV to gain protection from 47mm AP rounds at longer ranges. This however only made the two somewhat more competitive and did nothing for the fact that the M22/41 was much better armed.
The Mark V Infantry Tank and Mark VI cruiser were supposed to fix the suspension issues of the Mark IV and V, and thus provide the forces in Africa with a 6pdr armed tank that could effectively match the armament of the M22/41 in September 1942. The Mark V and VI, while solving the suspension issues of their predecessors instead came with cooling and filter issues that made them unsuitable for Desert climates without a hefty redesign. This led to the deployment of the Mark IIIb and Mark IVb in October with modified turrets allowing the older chassis to carry 6pdr guns, ending the firepower gap but at the cost of deleting a third man from the turret and forcing the commander to serve as gunner, severely impacting efficiency.
It was only with the arrival of the redesigned Mark VI Infantry tank and Mark VII Cruiser tank in February alongside American medium tanks in January that allowed the British to gain parity in quality with the Italians, coming just as the Italians were introducing the M26/42 with a powerful 75mm gun…
…The Long Range Desert Group was a highly successful unit, achieving striking results despite its small size. Raiding in unarmored all terrain vehicles guided by expert desert navigation skills the LRDG was able to repeatedly penetrate deep into Italian lines. There they destroyed supply depots, attacked airfields and provided a remarkable degree of intelligence. Their actions provided General Pope and his successors with an accurate view of the Italian order of battle, delayed multiple Italian offensives and mitigated Italian Air superiority…
…The Long Range Desert Group was in some ways too successful. It served as the catalyst for the transformation of the Independent Companies which had been raised as maritime raiding forces into the Commandos, as well as the formation of several other Special Service Units . Thousands upon thousands of the best troops in the British military were skimmed off into these units, far more than were actually needed, diluting the quality of the regular forces in the process and encouraging the launch of a number of dubious operations…
-Excerpt from The Desert War, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2001
A/N Okay that went on longer than I expected
A North Africa where the Italian tanks are better than the British, what a wacko world this is! Italy is definitely doing better, but unless they reach Alexandria it is not consequential.
That last paragraph is interesting an ominous. A British high command that gets drunk on the belief that commando units are superweapons?
That last paragraph is interesting an ominous. A British high command that gets drunk on the belief that commando units are superweapons?
IIRC the British had to pull troops out of the RAF Regiment for replacements in late 44 in OTL. If their SF formations are getting the best the remaining formations are really going to suffer and I wouldn't be surprised that if by the third year of the war the British Army is up the creek.
As long as the Italians don't outright loose, them fighting the Desert War on their own is already consequential by itself.
That's three extra divisions for the Germans to chuck at the Soviets. While not enough to win the war for the Germans, its going to cause the Soviets at lot more pain.
People always say that the Africa Korps took 3 divisions from Barbarossa. It didn't, it only took one actual division that would've likely been involved(15th Panzer). The others came about by taking other divisions and selectively taking some of their troops and equipment and meshing them into two whole new divisions. They literally only existed because of the Africa Korps otherwise they would've just been one apart of the OTL divisions involved in the invasion. As is an extra 30,000 or so troops, given the sheer numbers involved in the Eastern Front isn't even enough to plug a gap in the front anywhere. The real issue is Stalin's purges having been worse and IIRC the only really great generals left for the USSR are Rokossovsky and Konev.
But that's the crux of the problem, like Hitler with the Germans, Stalin was willing to sacrifice every last Soviet for victory, as long as doing so did not endanger his own power position, or overall survival, so no ammount of more Germans in the East will ever fix the manpower inequality unless you have a POD way, way before and things go much wors for Russia for much longer then just during, or after the Civil War, Holodomor, or Great Patriotic War in general. Really a WW1 internal infighting, civil war and collaps is the only reason the Central Powers, or anyone else for the matter could ever achive any nagotiation peace, let alone total victory over such a massive terrain and population whielding nation state (at least until the nuclear bobm comes around, but that's a game changer for all conventional wars and heavily also depents on who has it overall, or better yet lacks it while the other nation has it, so ...)
Which might have already happened, as it's implied in some of the earlier entries that the USSR had a more extended power struggle between Stalin & Trotsky and is generally significantly behind in industrial capacity [compared to OTL]. That along with the greater purges and the more intense Winter War is just part of a number of small changes adding up as it goes.