Fighting on the eastern front: WWII

[Brenus]

Let’s see: 22 of June 1941, the Germans attacked Russia. December 1941, first defeat in front of Moscow. No material came at the time from UK or US 9wich wasn’t at war at the moment, or not for so long). Did the Germans had a chance to win, probably yes, like the French against the Germans in 1940 when the Air reconnaissance did actually spot and took pictures of the Panzers in the Ardennes. The French missed the opportunity, and the Germans did the same. But, could have they done better? Where and when?

The Germans deployed 3,439 tanks (181 Pz1, 106 T35, 746 Pz2, 772 T38, 965 Pz3, 349 Pz4, 230 Panzer 3 Befehlswagen) in 19 Panzer-Divisions, plus Panzerjager and others Sturmgeschutz in autonomous units.
The Soviets had between 20,000 – 21,000 tanks, most of them BT-5 and 7, T-26, T-28 and T-35, with only 27% ready to fight. Evaluation gives around 15,000 tanks of which 967 t-34 and 508 KV-1 and KV2. On the 13,500 old tanks, 3,650 are really ready, which still made a total of 5,000 against 3,500 Germans.
The objective of Barbarossa is to destroy USSR. The plan is simple: To destroy the Soviet Army in the open field. The primary objective is to avoid Napoleon mistake, so to take Moscow wasn’t a priority. To achieve this goal, big Soviet formations would be encircled and destroyed as near as possible from the borders. It was essential to forbid a Russian withdrawal.
3 Army Groups: North with aim to Leningrad
Centre: Ukraine (1st economic area of the Soviets)
South: going for the Oil field.
Barbarossa is based on two phases: Destruction of the Soviets armies in Byelorussia and Ukraine the advance to Leningrad at the North and the Black Sea at the South. Then, the road to Moscow will be open and the town will fall by itself. No offensive against Moscow was planned.
The only problem is nothing, no B-plan if the Red Army sustained the lost.
The surprise worked. Due to first direct order from Stalin NOT to fight, the first Russian Units surrendered, then when finally Stalin realised, the Soviet Doctrine to counter-offensive proved disastrous, especially when prepared by Timochenko without any knowledge of the situation on the field… Paralysed by fear and the souvenir of the purges, Kousnetsov,Pavlov and Kirponos tried to follow orders and were slaughtered. BUT, the 24 of June, the 20th Armoured Division attacked the 13th and 14th Pz-Division and obliged the 2 Germans Divisions to give back terrain.
So from the beginning, it is clear that the Russians won’t gave-up easily, and when attacked by surprise, the Germans effectively killed and captured a lot of soldiers; it became more difficult when the Red Army had time to prepare, as showed in the assault against the fortress of Brest-Litovsk.
The great battles gave superb victories to the Germans (Minsk, Bialystock) BUT the Soviets succeeded to withdraw in good order in the North, to Leningrad even sustaining heavy casualties. Not only the Russians didn’t collapse, but counter-attacked at each opportunity. The lack of coordination between Soviets Units is exploited by the Germans who will reach Leningrad, Minsk and Smolensk in July.
The 10th of July Stalin took command of the STAVSKA and the front is reorganised. Vorochilov took North West Front (Leningrad), the Western Front went to Timochenko and the South-West to Boudienny.
After 14 days of fight, the Germans had all the reasons to be optimistic: 89 of the 164 Soviets divisions are destroyed; the Red Army Air Forces are annihilated
However, the German lost are higher than expected (the 15th of July, Gal Halder indicated that 100,000 men killed, injured or lost) the Pz Divisions had lost 41% of their tanks, by enemy or breaks.
AND the Red Army is NOT destroyed.
And finally, the Germans will fail in front of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad.
The Germans had lost from the 22nd of June to the 8th of October 1941, on the Eastern Front 564,727 men (119,464 killed and 24,792 MIA), 17% of the effectives, and 50% of its tanks. The Soviets lost more (according the OKW, 2 500 000 soldiers, 18 000 tanks, 22 000 guns and 14 500 planes, according to the STAVSKA 230,000 killed, 178,000 MIA –POW most of them- 720,000 injured a total of 1 128 000 men, 7 000 tanks, 8 900 guns and 5 316 planes). Nowadays, it is generally admitted that the Russians suffered 5 times the Germans lost.
But the failure of the Blitzkrieg was obvious.
In December the Germans will start to loose the initiative and the disaster in front of Moscow will avoided by first, the order of Hitler to keep the line, second the bad weather which will nail on the ground the Russian Stormovick and the snow, so deep than even the T 34 couldn’t manoeuvre.
So could the Germans done better? I doubt. And when, is never. They gambled and lost. Like the Japanese against the US, when the manpower and industrial resources of USSR kicked on, Germany didn’t stand a chance.

[cegorach]

[QUOTE=Brenus]

The Soviets had between 20,000 – 21,000 tanks, most of them BT-5 and 7, T-26, T-28 and T-35, with only 27% ready to fight. Evaluation gives around 15,000 tanks of which 967 t-34 and 508 KV-1 and KV2. On the 13,500 old tanks, 3,650 are really ready, which still made a total of 5,000 against 3,500 Germans.

These 'old tanks' were not older than more than 50 % of Axis tanks - just a note.

In addition there wer 19 000 combat airplanes and about 100 000 cannons (includes mortars, anti-tank and anti-airplane artillery + probably some larger granade launchers and machine guns which sometimes could be not added to this number). Navy had over 200 submarines and there were between 5 and 10 paratrooper corps (various stages of organisation, 5 were ready for sure) - there were severla independent brigades as well.

An offensive army as we see.

Soviet losses seem to be reasonable if we remember about those numbers.

[Rodion Romanovich]

The Soviets didn't have nearly the same mobility for their divisions as the Germans at the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa, even despite advantage in number of tanks and planes. They hadn't developed motorized divisions of the same kind as the German and hadn't practised and planned for a mobility of that type in their military doctrine - something that is worth a thought, it's not only about numbers in equipment. Another important point is that Stalin had sent a lot of the more capable generals to death camps because they weren't communists, replacing them with less able generals. Operation Barbarossa was a shock operation including the element of surprise in the attack, a careful plan for missions for the aircraft and tanks taking advantage of precise intel about the distribution and strength of the Soviet forces. The initial advances were planned according to this accurate intel so that in almost every initial engagement the Germans would engage a smaller, weaker Soviet force isolated from others. The victories won during the first two days were entirely due to shock effect and backstabbing, a luxury not often given to commanders. It wasn't any brilliant achievement other than in perhaps intel, recon, and an ambitiousness in taking advantage of the element surprise rarely seen in other military operations. The more important thing was what came after the initial few days of Barbarossa. There, the Germans did a job that could be considered strategically impressive, but you could also blame it more on the Soviet lack of experience in fighting blitz tactics previously. While the Germans had had practise wars vs Spain, Poland, France and Britain previously, the Soviets had only fought the Polish and had some engagements to the east, but hadn't had any practise similar to the German practise. If you look at the war after Zhukov was brought back from the camps, he quickly reestablished the crumbling Soviet lines in a withdrawal operation that I would consider one of the most impressive military operations of the 20th century warfare.

The first interesting event was when Hitler ordered to reinforce the offensive to the south instead of pushing forward more aggressively towards Moscow. Instead he fell for the temptation of pursuing the rapidly retreating southern flank, crossing the Dnepr, wasting much energy in the river crossing and even more in the following advance, where neither supplies nor Luftwaffe could keep up and provide very good support. In not capturing Leningrad, the Wehrmacht didn't only lose the chances of taking Moscow, but also lost the support from the Finnish troops who had much experience in fighting the Russians and fighting in the difficult terrain to the north. The Finnish troops thus aborted the attempts to capture Murmansk, and as a result this important harbor was kept open during the entire war, allowing allied convoys to supply the Soviets with tanks and weapons. In losing the battle for the northern flank already in 1941 and the reestablishment of the Soviet line, many Germans already saw the war as lost when the first Soviet counter-offensives begun. If you look at some of the commander changes in 1941, you'll see that first one commander requests to be replaced because of "disease". Shortly afterwards a great number of other German commanders resign with similar excuses. You get the impression of a fear of Hitler even among both the ranks and the command, due to the terror of the SS, Gestapo and other institutions. Nobody dared argue against Hitler's decision to redirect the main offensive south even if it was a big mistake, hardly a nice work climate. And in 1941, many rightly believed that German defeat was near. The Soviet early raids on Berlin and the Ploesti oilfields had also been important propaganda victories for the Soviets, with the full result being visible in Germany by the winter 1941, when also the strategical situation for the Wehrmacht got critical.

However then comes the second interesting event of the Eastern front war. The Soviet counter-offensives by Zhukov had nearly encircled and eliminated the northern German panzer spearhead, when Stalin intervened in a way similar to Hitler's intervention during the autumun. Instead of continuing to concentrate the offensives to the north, Stalin ordered offensives along the entire line as a propaganda action similar to how Hitler believed terror and propaganda would be more important than strategy in defeating the enemy. As a result of Stalin's orders, none of the offensives got strong enough to break the German lines, and the northern panzer spearhead survived the winter. While the early offensives seem to have had quite low Soviet casualties while inflicting many German casualties, the following offensives were powerless and gained nothing else than worthless ground for the massive loss of lives and equipment such as tanks for the Soviets. As a result of the offensives, the Germans could soon prepare a spring offensive against a weakened and exhausted Soviet army, and in 1942 pushed on towards the Volga. However because they had given up the war on the northern flank after the defeats in 1941, the rest of the war was thereby without doubt lost, considering that pushing on to the south could only take them to another river line, the Volga, where the Soviet artillery and infantry based armies were extremely effective when used to defend river crossings.

The German spring offensive of 1942 was admittedly well-coordinated and tactically impressive on the way towards the Volga, but again Hitler made a strange intervention, repeatedly ordering one of the key panzer units back and forth along the line and preventing it from taking part in any of the action while the other units took more damage than would otherwise have been necessary. By the time the Germans got close to the Volga, their advance was already slowed down, and it was hardly surprising that they would stand no chance in pushing on much further after crossing the river. The fact that the Soviets chose to strike the Romanian, Italian and Hungarian parts of the axis line in their counter-offensive was hardly surprising, because the auxiliary regiments had arcaic tanks and equipment of much lower quality than the Germans. It's normal military procedure in such a situation to strike the part of the line believed to be weakest. That doesn't mean the line wouldn't have been broken if held by German forces. It's possible that it was even benefitial for the Germans that it wasn't German-held lines that were attacked by the first powerful wave of the Soviet offensive, because if so they would no doubt have been lost just like the auxiliary regiments were. So it can hardly be blamed on the auxiliaries that the line was broken, seeing as the Soviets had amassed an enormous superiority for the counter-offensive and the Germans were already exhausted by the river crossings. After the Volga line and Stalingrad encirclement, Hitler's interference again proved counter-productive, as he prevented any quick counter-operation from being carried out by not allowing the army in Caucasus to give up ground and retreat. If it had retreated quickly, it could possibly have encircled the Soviet pincers over the Volga and challenged the Soviet counter-attack at an earlier stage. Instead, the 3 German key units for a long time fought isolated in 3 different locations without being able to support each other - a crucial mistake when fighting a numerally superior opponent with lower-quality equipment and training (the Soviets were mostly levies). One group was captured in the Stalingrad pocket, another in the Caucasus, and a third near Kharkov. However even if Hitler hadn't intervened, the German defeat would have been certain after the Stalingrad encirclement, seeing as they would then hardly have had the offensive power to launch another offensive over the Volga, which would have resulted in a similar situation to that before the Kursk offensive.

The Kursk offensive was the final interesting event. The Soviets knew the Germans would have to win on the eastern front to have any chance at all of winning the war, even if the allies weren't keeping their promise of opening another front to the west, so a German attack was inevitable. The Soviets did the right thing in just waiting for it, so that they could stop it by defense in depth + switft counter-attacks - the anti-blitz tactic the Soviets had developed and perfected by 1943 - and in the process eliminate much of the German key elite units used for the offensive, to enable a quick Soviet advance in response. When Operation Zitadelle finally came, the Soviets took full advantage of their intel and the low-quality troops they had at their disposal, and managed to win a crucial victory where a large portion of the crucial German tank reserve was wiped out.

In summary I think both the Germans and the Soviets suffered a lot from bad decisions made by their political leaders who knew nothing about warfare. The generals of both sides did a quite good job given the orders they received from above, but I would hardly say the Germans or Soviets were superior to their opponents. I also would say that even if the Germans hadn't received the contra-productive orders from Hitler that were devastating to their forces, they wouldn't have been capable of winning in the long term. Holding the Soviet Union would have been impossible with the war to the west, the blockades and the trade embargoes, even if the British, French and Americans together were a much smaller threat than the Soviet Red Army. It would have been difficult to enforce the surrender and handing over of all Soviet equipment, and easy for Soviet partisans to hide weapons, tanks and other equipment for partisan activities even if Stalin had signed a surrender. That the Germans would have been able to press on past the Urals doesn't seem anywhere near realistic, and if there would have been a Soviet defeat it would only have been temporary. On the other hand if Stalin hadn't intervened in 1941 I don't think the Soviet would have been able to win the war that much faster, perhaps winning by 1943 or 1944 at the earliest.

[Brenus]

“An offensive army as we see”: Yes, it was. The Soviet doctrine was to counter attack at any opportunity, and to be very aggressive. The first task for the Red Army was first to learn to fend, then they succeeded to over-come the best trained German crews… When the tactic known as the shield and the sword (Kursk) was implemented, it gave them victory and they took the initiative. The German will never got it back.

[Pontifex Rex]

Victory was possible ... in fact, victory only ceased to be possible following Operation Citadel, the battle of Kursk. At that point, the Germans finally went on the defensive, however, prior to that, they had the chance. In fact, had it not been for Hitler's intention to rip Yugoslavia apart and aid Italy in Greece, he would have had that extra month that the Germans needed. As it turned out, the Eastern Front was one series of bungles following a series of bungles. It was like that on both sides, except that Stalin learned to listen to his officers ... Hitler never did.

Not really true accept in being true to the myth. The spring of 1941 came late and the rains stayed longer than normal. Guderian himself has stated that they could not have attacked sooner since the rivers were still swollen (in particular the Bug) and the ground too soft in Poland and East Prussia for large scale movement of armoured units.

The German's weren't supersoldiers. However, on their side they had discpline, training, equipment and skilled officers. The Russians had numbers, numbers, numbers, ruthless but efficient soldiers, weather, weather and will.

It should also be added that the Red Army was in the process of a series of reforms and that the purges of the army had hurt badly. The learning curve was steep but one can clearly see the improvement in the combat techniques as early as Nov 1941. By late 1942 they are beginning to put into practice the operational doctrine known as "Deep Battle" which would prove to be far superior to blitzkrieg and better than anything developed by the western allies. The weather and Russian numbers are the old excuses of the defeated German officers and offer only a simplistic view of a hugely complex issue.

Now, the Russians could have won a lot earlier, too. The battle for Moscow was their second chance (the first was the defensive line abandoned following the conquest of Poland) ... had Stalin not ordered an attack across the front, the Soviets could have punched through German lines and driven them a fair way back, threatning Army Groups North and South's flanks.

That is debatable. The numbers in front of Moscow were not all that much in favour of the Red Army but the expansion of the effort to a front-wide offensive did weaken the advantages that the Red Army had. In June 1941 the Red Army was simply not properly trained or supplied to take the offensive and by December, while some of the less talented officers were gone the unit commanders were generally two grades above their skill level (battalion commanders commanding brigades or divisons) and thus there was a need for tighter controls. The Red Army would learn and it was in learning that they were able to defeat the Nazis. After all, if it was just numbers the Red Army would have won in 1941.

[Pontifex Rex]

Hitler's Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted, by Russell H.S. Stolfi. University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Hardcover. 280 pages. Photographs. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

-- argues that the Wermacht had the tools and Hitler had the will, but that Hitler did not have the nerve to follow through properly with a Blitz.

Stolfi is not a good source for examining the events of 1941 or the war in the east. He all but ignores the open Russian archives, uses German sources too heavily, ignores logistical realities and the role they played in the campaign in 1941, and on and on. His work has been roundly criticised as heavily biased and has been taken apart by his peers quite vigorously.

Slaughterhouse: Handbook of the Eastern Front, by David Glantz, et. al. Aberjona Press.

-- a more conventional view, but emphasizing the many operations that have not received the publicity of major actions such as those at Lenigrad and Stalingrad. Some interesting things on Soviet defeats in '42 and '43 as their new mechanized forces learned their trade.

This particular volume by Colonel Glantz is a reference guide and not really meant as a text on the war. I would suggest his "When Titans Clashed", "Before Stalingrad" "Stumbling Colossus" and " Colossus Reborn". I would also think that the work of Glantz is far more controversial in that he does much to undo the "weather and Hitler" excuses of German officers and post-war writers such as Liddel-Hart and others.

Glantz and others have gone a long way towards dispelling the myths left to us by Manstein, Guderian, v Luck, v Mellenthin and others about the war in Russia. Since the opening of the Russian archives in 1990 plus other newer works based on de-classified western and German sources the idea of weather and "Russian hordes" has, rightfully, been put aside.

[Pontifex Rex]

Interesting tidbit ... the USA provided trucks for what would become the famed Katyusha. The words USA were stenciled on the truck above the white star. The Soviets repainted the star red, but the letters remained (they didn't have that much time), so the common agreeance among the soldiers was that the letters stood for: to kill that son-of-a-bitch Adolf.

Sorry Keba but that is simply not true. The Kats were first used in mid-1941 and were based on a Russian chasis. Perhaps some were later used but the majority of the trucks (more robust and with larger cargo capacity) supplied by the US were used to haul troops and supplies. I have not seen any photos of a Katyusha on a US truck chasis.

[Pontifex Rex]

Ok, let's begin with the invading armies in Barbarossa. First of all, the German troops entered operation Barbarossa with 3500 tanks, whereas the Soviets had approx. 20,000.

Ok, lets As others have posted this number in closer to the 14,000 mark and of these as many as 2/3 were "off the road" due to maintenance and spare part probalems (varied between units). Further, since most units were not concentrated on June 22, they could not and did not fight as divisions, oftern the ammunition or fuel depots were 100 miles or more from the tank parks, sub units could be even further apart.. The poor maintenace levels have their roots in the five year plans and the emphasis on numbers,...but not spare parts. So,...many tanks, not enough widgets to keep them running.

As well as tank superiority though, let's take at the numerical advantage.The German army mobilized 3.2 million men for the operation. The soviets? 5 million.

Nope. It was 4.4 million Axis troops in the attacking zones (including airforce personnel) versus 2.6 million Soviet army and air force troops in the western military districts. The total of 5.5 million Russian troops was for the entire country. Here are some stats for just the ground troops (in millions):

June 22 - 3.7 Axis vs 2.2 RA
Sept 11 - 4.02 Axis vs 3.46 RA
Nov 1 - 3.5 Axis vs 2.2 RA
Dec 1 - 3.4 Axis vs 4.19 RA

Add in strategic surprise, poor Red Army training, poor equipment, poor supplies and the results are not hard to understand.

Operation Barbarossa started on June 22, 1941 and lasted until December of the same year, but there is a smaller operation (or battle) in this period called the battle of Bialystok - Minsk. As this part of the operation commenses, key targets are taken out by German air campaigns allowing the German ninth and fourth armies to cross the border. General Pavlov assembled his army and within two days were in the game. They counter attacked the Germans with the 6th, 11th Mechanized and 6th Cavalry Corps.

Alex,...please. The Bialostok defences were not taken out by any air attack but by the attacks of 4 German armies possessing strategic surprise, numerical advantage, better tactical and doctrinal method.

The Soviets had completely encircled the 6th army, as well as many of the Axis death toll numbers come from Hungrian, Romanian and other countries rather than German, shows more of the German strength. Moreover, the casualties STILL do not add up. Even when encircled and lacking much needed supplies the axis casualties hold up at around 740,000 killed, while the Russians, with many advantages manage to again lose 750,000 + soldiers. Take into consideration only 400,000 of the axis casualties were German.

Hmmm,...don't build your shrine to Nazi Germany just yet Alex. The axis armies lost some 1.5 million troops between August 1942 and Feb 1943 from five axis armies (German IV Panzer and VI Army, Rumanian III and IV and Italian VIII). Thirty-two divisions and three brigades were destroyed entirely, 16 more divisions were shattered and another 20+ abandoned their heavy equipment and transport. 3500 tanks (7 months production) along with 12,000 guns (6 month production) and over 3000 aircraft (4 months production) were also lost. The Germans and their allies allies lost enough equipment to outfit some 75 divisions by the end of campaign. Soviet losses, both civilian and military, are pegged at about 1.0 - 1.1 million with equipment losses being far less than that of the axis armies.

[Keba]

Not really true accept in being true to the myth. The spring of 1941 came late and the rains stayed longer than normal. Guderian himself has stated that they could not have attacked sooner since the rivers were still swollen (in particular the Bug) and the ground too soft in Poland and East Prussia for large scale movement of armoured units.

It isn't as much that spring came late, it was the Balkans that stalled the Germans. It cost them as much as a month of fighting ... more since the troops had to be moved to the borders with the SU. The weather may have been bad, I don't really remember, however the employement of troops after the beginning of the attack came out wrong ... the panzers were concetrated north, in terrain that didn't suit them, foolish orders for the tanks to wait for the infantry to catch up cost Germany a decisive victory. Now, while Moscow may not have been a vital position ... it's fall would have destroyed Soviet morale, just like Stalingrad would have. The Germans also wanted to strike south, at the oil fields first, but Hitler demanded the attack be concentrated on Moscow. Now, that decision was a mixed blessing, the Soviets were expecting a strike at the oil fields, and had concentrated their forces accordingly, however, in 41, those forces would have been insufficent.

It should also be added that the Red Army was in the process of a series of reforms and that the purges of the army had hurt badly. The learning curve was steep but one can clearly see the improvement in the combat techniques as early as Nov 1941. By late 1942 they are beginning to put into practice the operational doctrine known as "Deep Battle" which would prove to be far superior to blitzkrieg and better than anything developed by the western allies. The weather and Russian numbers are the old excuses of the defeated German officers and offer only a simplistic view of a hugely complex issue.

It was an idea on paper as early as '34, I believe. The reforms were intiated following the Winter War, where the Soviet army showed it's lack of ability. However, in the initial stages of the war, the proponents of static defense were more numerous and powerful, in general. By the time that the concept was actually employed, Stalin had learned to listen to his commanders, something that Hitler never did.

Sorry Keba but that is simply not true. The Kats were first used in mid-1941 and were based on a Russian chasis. Perhaps some were later used but the majority of the trucks (more robust and with larger cargo capacity) supplied by the US were used to haul troops and supplies. I have not seen any photos of a Katyusha on a US truck chasis.

Dunno, it was in one of the books I read on the subject ... IIRC, the Russians did order a whole lot of trucks from the USA as part of the war effort. The book claimed that they were used for Katyushas, however, I can no longer remember which book it was.

[Pannonian]

It isn't as much that spring came late, it was the Balkans that stalled the Germans. It cost them as much as a month of fighting ... more since the troops had to be moved to the borders with the SU. The weather may have been bad, I don't really remember, however the employement of troops after the beginning of the attack came out wrong ... the panzers were concetrated north, in terrain that didn't suit them, foolish orders for the tanks to wait for the infantry to catch up cost Germany a decisive victory.

Arras is an example of what happens when the panzers disregard their infantry support completely. The Soviets later solved the problem of necessary infantry support by having the accompanying infantry ride on the tanks themselves, something made possible perhaps by the position of the turret.

[Pontifex Rex]

It isn't as much that spring came late, it was the Balkans that stalled the Germans. It cost them as much as a month of fighting ... more since the troops had to be moved to the borders with the SU.

Hmmm,... I do not believe this is so. Back in late 1940 the original date for the invasion was set for May 15 but it was the weather that delayed the invasion not the Balkan attack. The troops that were used for the invasion of Yugoslavia and then Greece in April 1941 were drawn almost exclusively from Army Group South and the OKW reserves and almost all were back in their start positions in time for the June 22 start date. Casualties had been minimal and the troops were ready on the date of the assault.

The weather may have been bad, I don't really remember, however the employement of troops after the beginning of the attack came out wrong ... the panzers were concetrated north, in terrain that didn't suit them, foolish orders for the tanks to wait for the infantry to catch up cost Germany a decisive victory.

Again, one needs to examine what the plan called for, which was the destruction of the Red Army west of the Dnepr River. Truth be told, the Soviet high command believed the UKraine to be the strategic objective and had deployed the bulk of their best formation in the south. However, the Germans were deployed in a manner that put Moscow as a priority, at least initially, and the results do show how effective the three northern panzer groups were.

As for "foolish orders for the tanks to wait for the infantry" I think the records agains show that the tanks alone were not capable of poreventing the Red Army from making its way out of encirclements. The further the Germans pushed east the worse their supply situation became and no sooner had they reach Smolensk than the logistics system all but collapsed. Coupled with serious Red Army counterattacks east of Smolensk Army group centre was forced onto the defensive, forcing a 4 week halt to offensive operations.

Now, while Moscow may not have been a vital position ... it's fall would have destroyed Soviet morale, just like Stalingrad would have. The Germans also wanted to strike south, at the oil fields first, but Hitler demanded the attack be concentrated on Moscow. Now, that decision was a mixed blessing, the Soviets were expecting a strike at the oil fields, and had concentrated their forces accordingly, however, in 41, those forces would have been insufficent.

Actually it was the German generals who wanted to strike for Moscow and it was Hitler who wanted to strike for the Ukraine and the Donbas. The debate that raged in late July and early August was only settled when Hitler gave the following order:

OKW Order 21
The OKHs 18 August considerations regarding the further conduct of operations in the east do not agree with my intentions.
I order:
1. The most important missions before the onset of winter are to seize the Crimea and the industrial and coal regions of the Don, deprive the Russians of the opportunity to obtain oil from the Caucasus and, in the north, to encircle Leningrad and link up with the Finns, rather than capture Moscow.
2....

This is the point were Hitler actually made the correct move but for the wrong reasons. Had the Germans struck eastward in September they would have done so with their railheads further west than they were while the panzer moved further east. The supply system simply would not have allowed it. More importantly, Army Group South would not have been in position to cover the southern flank as it did historically and the troops destroyed in the Kiev pocket would have been available to attack the salient towards Moscow once the poor weather arrived.

Good discussion.

Cheers.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

My eyes hurt badly!

[Pontifex Rex]

My eyes hurt badly!

Not sure I understand the comment but might I suggest Visine.

[Watchman]

I've been given to understand that when Operation Barbarossa was initiated it caught the Soviet brass completely napping. Stalin, a ruthless and unscrupulously calculating pragmatist, simply could not fathom someone would try an invasion that crazy just because. Then again, Hitler believed his own rubbish fervently while Stalin didn't, had some rather inflated ideas about his own and German abilities and somewhat wistfully low regard of Soviet resources and capabilities.

Anyway, what this meant on the front was that not only were the Soviet forces woefully unprepared and poorly positioned, they were actually expressly told to not fire on the Germans - the panicking Stalin figured the Germans were trying to provoke a provocation or something along those lines. Ergo, initially the attacking Germans could destroy Soviet formations virtually at their leisure and Soviet air assets suffered especially badly. Understandably enough not a few troops nonetheless fought back as well as they could and orders be damned, and one senior Soviet officer reputedly later drily observed that what saved Mother Russia during those early dark times was the insubordination and poor discipline of the rank and file...

Personally I suspect if the Soviets had been in readiness and allowed to fight a proper defensive, the Germans wouldn't have gotten too far beyond the Soviet part of Poland or thereabouts. A lot harder to mount a Blitzkrieg if the other guy isn't saddled with some dozen major and absurd handicaps, methinks.

In any case Barbarossa was something of a "it's so crazy it just might work" thing. It sort of failed for about the same reason too. Nazism was a weirdly Nietzschean ideology (Communism, at least in the forms it appeared in the USSR and China, was in some ways rather similar); Hitler for example seems to have been under the delusion that enough will really could overcome any obstacles and conquer all adversity. What this showed in was the crappy logistical planning of the whole endeavor - indeed, making war on something the size and power of the USSR with the resource base of Germany in the first place was by itself something of a sign that Adolf didn't quite comprehend that in modern warfare resources and logistics are the king.

His weird ideological biases were another thing. The Germans could have created an entire class of small landowning peasantry in captured Soviet territory by dismantling the kolhoses and distributing the lands to the populace; the Soviet state wasn't exactly unconditionally liked in the first place, and such newly established private landholders would no doubt have been quite happy to help against their natural enemy the USSR. I've been told some German generals specifically suggested this to Hitler too.

Why the idea got turned down apparently gets interesting. Partly it was the Nazi regard of Slavs as sub-human helots to be afforded no rights; more concretely, however, the Germans immediately needed the sovhoses and kolhoses for the exact same purpose the Soviets had once established them in the first place, namely producing foodstuffs for state use. Around the same time the Germans were also confiscating agricultural produce in occupied France for the war effort (which understandably started pissing off the previously rather indifferent Frenchmen something fierce); in other words, the Reich was not able to feed its armies without pillaging consumables from conquered regions. This doesn't say much about the level of planning or resources the campaign was being waged on; to boot it rather helped to alienate the initially potentially sympathetic East European populace and thus rather help the efforts of assorted partisans and resistance fighters nevermind now to create increasing friction for further German projects.

The ethnic cleansing programs didn't help one bit. The locals were often only too willing to help slaughter Jews and Gypsies (who for assorted socioeconomic reasons were widely loathed in Central and Eastern Europe), and indeed occasionally cheerfully did it themselves before the Germans had even turned up. Nazi mass killings weren't limited to such despised minorities though, and German brutality against Slavs caused resentement. Moreover, all that playing around tied up troops and other resources that would have been better employed at the front. The later decision to enact the notorious Final Solution via designated extermination camps only exerbated the problem - indeed one argument against the whole project in the decision-making circles was specifically that it would tie up massive amounts of logistical, organisational, industrial and transportation capacity sorely needed for the ongoing war effort. Looting the possessions of the victims and the creepy attempts to process the corpses to something useful (soap gets mentioned often) didn't quite make up the difference, and indeed probably further tied up resources that would have been more sensibly spent elsewhere.

I've read some German dissidents in fact tried to get a word of the death camps out to the Allies through embassies and suchlike already quite early on, but they quite simply weren't believed. That's understandable when you think about it. Even the Soviets, kooky paranoid as they were, were operating on relatively rational paradigms; not only was the very idea of the extermination camps too obscene to be fully believed (even for the Soviets), rational thinkers no doubt found it difficult to comprehend a state locked in an all-or-nothing total war really would waste resources for something so insane that afforded absolutely no practical benefits.

Hitler was also toying with harebrained ideas about building long-range transatlantic bombers to strike at New York, and had the major aircraft manufacturers try to procure suitable planes (again pointlessly tying up capacity). Goes to show how reality-deficient his ideas could be.

[Keba]

What you say is, essentially true. Germans also had the option of recruiting a great number of soldiers against the communists, but Hitler and the brass refused, and those that did join were sent off to other parts of the world, where they had absolutely no reason to fight.

Hitler was also toying with harebrained ideas about building long-range transatlantic bombers to strike at New York, and had the major aircraft manufacturers try to procure suitable planes (again pointlessly tying up capacity). Goes to show how reality-deficient his ideas could be.

Actually, by the end of the war, schematics were complete for bombers that could do just that ... some also believe that they were meant to drop 'dirty' bombs on U.S. cities. Not so harebrained an idea, but the technology was only developed by the war's end.

[Pannonian]

I've read some German dissidents in fact tried to get a word of the death camps out to the Allies through embassies and suchlike already quite early on, but they quite simply weren't believed. That's understandable when you think about it. Even the Soviets, kooky paranoid as they were, were operating on relatively rational paradigms; not only was the very idea of the extermination camps too obscene to be fully believed (even for the Soviets), rational thinkers no doubt found it difficult to comprehend a state locked in an all-or-nothing total war really would waste resources for something so insane that afforded absolutely no practical benefits.

The Soviets saw prisoners and other undesirables as dispensable resources, but resources nonetheless. Beria investigated the labour camps and actually recommended that rations should be raised to increase their efficiency. Compare with German labour camps where the diet was deliberately fixed at a level below basic survival to encourage "natural wastage". And that's without considering the specialist death camps like Treblinka and Birkenau.

[Sarmatian]

I'm wondering why hitler didn't try to present his attack as war against communism, not russians or slavs. Some soviet battalions (particularly in ukraine and estonia, lithuania...) actually surendered to the germans cause they've seen germans as "liberators", or just not worse than the communists. But after death camps and persecution of slavs, even die hard anti-communists took up arms to defend SU. Stallin was much smarter. He reconciled with russian orthodox church, agreed to stop repressing it and got a powerful ally. When both stallin and patriarch started calling russians to take arms and defend rodina, it had much greater impact on the russians...

[Keba]

IIRC some high-rankers wanted it so, but Hitler and his rather fanatical cronies decided that Russia was to become lebensraum, living space, with Germans living in fortified cities, while the subhuman slavs did the work in the fields, kept completely primitive and uneducated.

The other proposal included the establishment of independent (more-or-less) nations between Germany and the Communist Siberia as a buffer. This plan presented itself as a liberation plan of sorts, employing the locals against the commies.

There were volunteers, a lot of them, in the early stages, but after the Nazis showed their intentions, people actually joined the Soviets in their war. Stalin was simply pragmatic, as the outer lands were lost, the war increasingly became a Russian one, and since the communist forms of motivation failed, he turned to the traditionally strong patriotic feeling of the Russians, presenting it as a Patriotic War.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The Soviets saw prisoners and other undesirables as dispensable resources, but resources nonetheless. Beria investigated the labour camps and actually recommended that rations should be raised to increase their efficiency.

Compelling evidence of their differing attitudes -- after all, Beria was not a noted humanitarian was he?

[Sarmatian]

Yes, but he used deception in the past, and quite succesfully. He didn't even bother to try agains the su. Probably because he realy believed that the "master race" can not possibly lose against a "subhuman race". Myth of the german invincibility was strong at the beggining of the invasion of the soviet union...

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Not sure I understand the comment but might I suggest Visine.

I'm partially grounded from internet forums and such and when I came I had a lot of reading to catch up to. Gah!

[Kraxis]

The Soviets later solved the problem of necessary infantry support by having the accompanying infantry ride on the tanks themselves, something made possible perhaps by the position of the turret.

Actually they learned the practice from the Germans in Barbarossa. If you look up the pictures from that campaign you will often see German infantry riding tanks.

But where the German infantry rode for comfort and tactical advantages, the Russians devised the idea to be an entire doctrine for certain shock troops (generally the tank-riders carried only submachineguns). Similarly the Katyusha was taken in as a result of the effectiveness of the Nebelwerfer.
But in both cases the Russians took a good idea and expanded on it. For isntance the German Nebelwerfer was a number of tubes on a small carriage. Pretty simple, but the Russians did like they did with everything else, thought of how to make it faster and simpler. Easy, remove the spin and add fins, and mount it on a truck, just like the masses of AA guns.
Then it was the turn of the Germans to learn, and they did as they always did. How could eh weapon be made better in ALL aspects? Well mounting the rockets on a fully armoured halftrack would make it a lot easier to use (six tubes had been mounted on the sides of an open halftrack with limited success), and a lot better protected. But that was expensive... as usual...

But riding tanks was a specific task for specific infantry. A lot of stories surround these shocktroops, and not all are nice, in fact they were supposedly the worst of the lot.

[Pontifex Rex]

...Anyway, what this meant on the front was that not only were the Soviet forces woefully unprepared and poorly positioned, they were actually expressly told to not fire on the Germans - the panicking Stalin figured the Germans were trying to provoke a provocation or something along those lines. Ergo, initially the attacking Germans could destroy Soviet formations virtually at their leisure and Soviet air assets suffered especially badly. Understandably enough not a few troops nonetheless fought back as well as they could and orders be damned, and one senior Soviet officer reputedly later drily observed that what saved Mother Russia during those early dark times was the insubordination and poor discipline of the rank and file...

Watchman,

I think you may be confusing this with the numerous reconnaissance flights and border provocations that took place along the border throughout the spring of 1941. Stalin's deliberate blindness aside, there were many other subterfuges employed by the Germans that planted false leads and offered "plausible" reasons for the German build up in the east (including the Balkan campaign).

Nonetheless, the warning orders had actually been dispatched from Moscow on the early evening of June 21 but were somewhat convoluted and took time to work their way through the intricate communications system. Below is order NKO Directive No 1 issued by Timoshenko and Zhukov from the Red Army High Command on June 21st:

NKO Directive No 1 "Concerning the Deployment of Forces in Accordance with the Plan for Covering Mobilization and Strategic Concentration."

To: The Military Councils of the Leningrad, Baltic, Western and Kiev Military Districts.
Copy to: The People's Commisar of the Navy.

1. A surprise attack by the Germans on the fronts of the Leningrad, Baltic, Western Special, Kiev Special and Odessa Military Districts is possible during the course of 22-23 June, 1941.
2. The mission of our forces is to avoid provocative actions of any kind, which might produce major complications. At the same time, the Leningrad, Baltic, Western Special, Kiev Special and Odessa Military Districts' forces are to be at full combat readiness to meet a surprise blow by the Germans or their allies.
3. I order:
a) Secretly man firing positions of the fortified regions on the state borders during the night of of 22 June 1941;
b) Disperse all aircraft, including military planes among field airfields and thoroughly camouflage them before dawn on June 22 1941;
c) Bring all forces to a state of combat readiness without additional call up of conscript personnel. Prepare all measures to black out cities and installations.

Take no other measures without special permission.

[signed]
Timoshenko
Zhukov

Received by the the Western Special Military District at 0045 hours, 22 June 1941.
Dispatched to subordinate forces at 0225-0235 hours, June 22, 1941

NKO Order No. 2 was dispatched at 0715 hours on June 22 ordering all means necessary to repel the invasion but not allowing permission to cross the frontier or overfly Finland or Romania but permitting the bombing of East Prussia.

NKO Order No. 3 was sent at 2115 hours ordering specific counterattacks of areas that had been penetrated and the encirclement and destruction of German forces including the crossing of the borders from East Prussia to Hungary.

And so it goes. The Germans were able to quickly penetrate due to the fact that the frontier was guarded by the NKVD and not the army. In some cases the larger infantry formations were as much as 60 kilometers from the borders. That being said,....the armed forces had been given clear orders to defend themselves and no orders forbidding engaging the Nazis had been given.

Personally I suspect if the Soviets had been in readiness and allowed to fight a proper defensive, the Germans wouldn't have gotten too far beyond the Soviet part of Poland or thereabouts. A lot harder to mount a Blitzkrieg if the other guy isn't saddled with some dozen major and absurd handicaps, methinks.

The may have inflicted more casualties but the outcome would likely have been much the same. The Red Army was simply not ready for war, much less to stand its ground and fight a defensive war.



Cheers.

[Kraxis]

Agreed...

And if we assume te Russians knew a war was coming soon (rather than knowingthe specific time), and had moved up the available troops, I'm pretty certain the first weeks would have been even more brutal, but also even more decisive.
I doubt the Russians could have stopped the German advance and would liekly just have suffered the infamous Kiev encirclement near the border and much earlier instead.

[HunkinElvis]

In addition to the things mentioned above (including Stalinrad and Kursk), the war front stretched longer as the Germans moved east. This left holes for the Russians to go through. The Germans could've done better if they concentrated their attacks at one or two areas. Instead, Hitler spread his tank divisions too far to assist each other. If the Germans went on the defensive at Kursk, they might've had a better chance. In an earlier battle, the Germans were able to stop a Russian counter-attack near Moscow.

During the early stage of the war, the Germans had tanks that were heavy and ate lots of gas. They took a long time to manufacture. USSR's T-34s made these tanks obsolete. In addition to this, much of the German tanks were not Tigers but older tanks that had weaker armour. The T-34's sloping armour deflected shells that hit it, while the German Tiger Tanks didn't have sloped armour. Although the later German models had sloped armour, these expensive and heavy tanks took too long to make. The T-34s were easier and faster to make. There were even T-34s that went to war straight from the factory. The German tanks were heavily outnumbered by the Russian tanks.

[Sarmatian]

It is a german trait to make things to last. While I like that in german cars, it proved to be a big mistake when it came to tanks. I read somewhere that german tanks were of a such a good quality that they could last a couple of decades. That was unneccesary as, on average, they survived only several months on the front. End even if they survived, they would become obsolete long before they become non operationl. And production of such tanks was both costly and time consuming. One panther tank probably costed several times more than a T-34. Okay maybe it was better than T-34, but surely wasn't better than two or three T-34s.

[Kraxis]

That's true, the German tanks had plenty of little things in them that were suberbly made. For instance, the ball bearings were just excellent and could last a long time.

[Brenus]

“Okay maybe it was better than T-34, but surely wasn't better than two or three T-34s.” The Panther was a improved copy of the T34, so it was better design… However, the Panther had so kind of troubles with gear box and sometimes taking fire without reasons.
And if the German tanks were so good, why nobody used them after the war? I found a manual for the maintenance of the Panther in French, and I know the French Army used them for a while, however, comparing with the Sherman and the T34, it is just a foot note in history.
The best tank produced was the T34. From the first model up to the latest model, it proved its adaptability. New turret, new gun, increasing the crew number, largest caterpillars, it proved itself as tank, tank hunter, artillery platform. It worked under all climates, from Leningrad to Rostov, going in Manchuria, Korea then in Vietnam.

The problem is when we debate of the Eastern Front, we, westerners –excluding here the former Communist countries- are still under influence of the re-writing of history by German generals and historians.
History isn’t writing by the winners, but by the survivors. That lead the German generals to blame Hitler, Himmler, Goering for all mistakes, even theirs. Because the Russians were al well communists, and because communists were BAD, no skills and heroism could be given to them, and of course all their production was a copy of what we, westerners produced…
So, no, sorry, the concept of mechanised troops was designed by the Russians. To combine of infantry and tanks was a Russian concept, not a German one. The proof? Most of the German artillery was still horse-powered, even in 1941.

The so-called German supremacy came from surprise and gambles. It worked against France when the attack came from the Ardennes. But if the French HQ had given a real look of the aerial pictures taken by the Block 174, it would have been a disaster for the Germans.
The gamble to finish off the Red Army near the borders failed and, as predicted by people as von Rundsedt (who recognised that the Blitzkrieg concept couldn’t work in countries like Russia).

[Sarmatian]

“Okay maybe it was better than T-34, but surely wasn't better than two or three T-34s.” The Panther was a improved copy of the T34, so it was better design… However, the Panther had so kind of troubles with gear box and sometimes taking fire without reasons.
And if the German tanks were so good, why nobody used them after the war? I found a manual for the maintenance of the Panther in French, and I know the French Army used them for a while, however, comparing with the Sherman and the T34, it is just a foot note in history.
The best tank produced was the T34. From the first model up to the latest model, it proved its adaptability. New turret, new gun, increasing the crew number, largest caterpillars, it proved itself as tank, tank hunter, artillery platform. It worked under all climates, from Leningrad to Rostov, going in Manchuria, Korea then in Vietnam.

The problem is when we debate of the Eastern Front, we, westerners –excluding here the former Communist countries- are still under influence of the re-writing of history by German generals and historians.
History isn’t writing by the winners, but by the survivors. That lead the German generals to blame Hitler, Himmler, Goering for all mistakes, even theirs. Because the Russians were al well communists, and because communists were BAD, no skills and heroism could be given to them, and of course all their production was a copy of what we, westerners produced…
So, no, sorry, the concept of mechanised troops was designed by the Russians. To combine of infantry and tanks was a Russian concept, not a German one. The proof? Most of the German artillery was still horse-powered, even in 1941.

The so-called German supremacy came from surprise and gambles. It worked against France when the attack came from the Ardennes. But if the French HQ had given a real look of the aerial pictures taken by the Block 174, it would have been a disaster for the Germans.
The gamble to finish off the Red Army near the borders failed and, as predicted by people as von Rundsedt (who recognised that the Blitzkrieg concept couldn’t work in countries like Russia).

I agree. I said "maybe it was better", but in my opinion T-34 was by far the best all-round tank of the ww2. Reliable, easy to use, good armor, good penetration, cheap... But a lot of people say that panther was better, so I leave to everyone to make their own mind.

I think one of the important reasons of french defeat was their own commanders. They were veterans from the ww1, and they didn't adapt to the new type of warfare. They prepared to wage defensive war against the germans, like they did in ww1, relying on the maginout line. Only de Gaulle advocated for a new approach, but being a young general at that time, no one listened.
So when Hitler encouraged Stallins purge of the army, maybe in a way, he was doing him a favor. Maybe introduction of the more flexible and more willing to learn young commanders is why russians adapted so quickly the german tactics and produced so quickly effective counter-tactics, which the germans couldn't counter.

[Pannonian]

So when Hitler encouraged Stallins purge of the army, maybe in a way, he was doing him a favor. Maybe introduction of the more flexible and more willing to learn young commanders is why russians adapted so quickly the german tactics and produced so quickly effective counter-tactics, which the germans couldn't counter.

The officers who were purged were precisely those who advocated the new style of warfare. Tukhachevsky, the prime exponent of Deep Operations, was purged, as were most of the others. Rokossovsky was lucky to survive. Without the purges, the Soviets would have had the same doctrine that they later adopted with great success, but with officers at all levels versed in that doctrine.