Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (2 page)
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Authors: David Stahel
Tags: #History, #Military, #General, #Europe, #Modern, #20th Century, #World War II
Acknowledgements
This book constitutes a revised version of my doctoral dissertation, which was submitted to the Philosophical Faculty I of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin with the title:
And the World Held its Breath. The July/August 1941 Crisis of Army Group Centre and the Failure of Operation Barbarossa
. The process of researching and writing this study was enormously rewarding, for which a good deal of thanks belongs to my supervisor Professor Rolf-Dieter Müller of the German Military Research Institute in Potsdam. His patience and selfless devotion to the project allowed me the benefit of his years of research and tremendous knowledge in the field. The end result is, I hope, a reflection of his faith in me and the project.
A number of others deserve special mention for their time, services and friendship. The distinguished American historian Colonel David M. Glantz provided useful commentary and promptly replied to all my questions during the research process. He also kindly agreed to allow the reproduction of his own privately produced maps for publication in this study. They are the most detailed and comprehensive maps available on the German/Soviet war, and an invaluable asset to my work. Historians Dr Alex J. Kay and Dr Jeff Rutherford both read drafts and provided much critical commentary and useful feedback. Their respective expertise in the area of Germany's eastern front also led to many enlightening discussions of the field.
During my first year of postgraduate studies at Australia's Monash University I wrote my first substantial research project on the eastern front under the skilled tutelage of Dr Eleanor Hancock. She went on to recommend future study at King's College Department of War Studies and throughout my time in England and Germany has remained a constant source of both helpful advice and encouragement.
My deepest gratitude also extends to two German families without whom my desire to undertake this research would not have been possible. Upon my arrival in Germany the Mogge family in Köln took in a simple friend of the family and made me feel like one of their own. The
whole family tirelessly taught me German throughout my initial year in Germany and even supported me financially in that period. Furthermore, I would like to thank the Graichen family originally from Bonn, whose great kindness has provided an education in itself. They provided me with accommodation to do the bulk of my primary research at the military archive in Freiburg. More particularly, to my old friend Jakob Graichen, who provided technical assistance and cast a critical eye over my many translations, I owe a special debt of thanks. I should also like to add my thanks for the many years of friendship, good humour and countless travel adventures. Likewise, his lovely wife Mariana, who never failed in her interest for this project leading to much support and, at times, welcome distraction.
Anna Held did some excellent last-minute translations for which I was very grateful. Thanks also to Isabella Kessel for providing me with accommodation in Freiburg at short notice and to Stefan Sonneberger for numerous favours.
On a more personal note, I should like to thank my aunt Priscilla Pettengell for her thorough correction and commentary on the draft, as well as for all the years of loving dedication she has devoted to my education. To my father Warren and my brother Andy, my heartfelt thanks for all the blissful memories together in Cheltenham and everything else since.
Finally to Paddy Stahel who passed away in 1998. An extraordinary woman of strength, wit and compassion, who never failed to recognise the important things in life. I was privileged to call her my mother. This work is dedicated to her.
Glossary of terms
BA-MA
Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (German Military Archive)
Einsatzgruppen
‘Action groups’ of the SD and Security Police, used mainly for mass killings
Eisenbahntruppe
Railroad troops
FHQ
Führerhauptquartier (Führer Headquarters)
Gestapo
Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)
Grossdeutschland
‘Greater Germany’ Infantry Regiment
Grosstransportraum
‘Large transport area’. Referring to the transport regiment responsible for bridging the gap between front-line divisions and railheads
Kleinkolonnenraum
‘Small column area’. Referring to the transportation unit belonging to a division
KTB
Kriegstagebuch (War Diary)
Landser
German infantry man
Lebensraum
Living space
Luftwaffe
German Air Force
MGFA
Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Military History Research Institute)
NCO
Non-commissioned officer
NKVD
Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennych Del (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs)
NSDAP
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party)
OKH
Oberkommando des Heeres (High Command of the Army)
OKW
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces)
Panzerjäger
Anti-tank unit
POW
Prisoner of war
Pz. Div.
Panzer Division
RAF
Royal Air Force
Das Reich
‘The Reich’ 2nd SS Division
Reichsbahn
German railways
SD
Sicherheitsdienst
(Security Service)
SS
Schutzstaffel
(Protection Echelon)
Stavka
Soviet High Command
UK
United Kingdom
USA
United States of America
USSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Wehrmacht
German Armed Forces
Tables of military ranks and army structures
Table of equivalent ranks
Source:
Karl‐Heinz Frieser,
The Blitzkrieg Legend. The 1940 Campaign in the West
(Annapolis, 2005) p. 355.
Structure and size of the German Army
Note:
a
Wide variations of these figures occurred especially after 1941
Source:
Own records.
Introduction
On 3 February 1941 Hitler hosted an important military conference in preparation for Operation Barbarossa – Nazi Germany's upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. Although
Hitler was determined to crush the Soviet Union in a short summer campaign, this was destined to become a titanic clash between two ruthless empires, leading to the largest and most costly war in human history. Hitler was sufficiently aware of the profound scale of the conflict and the momentous consequences it would induce, even in the shortened form that he conceived for it that by the end of the conference he ominously pronounced: ‘When Barbarossa begins the world will hold its breath.’
1
Nor was this just another bombastic outburst, typical of Hitler's unrestrained hubris. In a radio address on the day of the invasion (22 June 1941) the British Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill, told his people:
So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation…And even the carnage and ruin which his victory, should he gain it – though he's not gained it yet – will bring upon the Russian people, will itself be only a stepping stone to the attempt to plunge four or five hundred millions who live in
China and the 350,000,000 who live in
India into that bottomless pit of human degradation over which the diabolic emblem of the swastika flaunts itself. It is not too much to say here this pleasant summer evening that the lives and happiness of a thousand million additional human beings are now menaced with brutal Nazi violence. That is enough to make us hold our breath.
2
If the spectre of an expanding Nazi empire caused the world a sudden collective gasp, Churchill's words of defiance signalled
Britain's
determination to go on opposing Nazism and at the same time offered an open-ended alliance to the
Soviet Union. It was an alliance born more of necessity than of pre-existing goodwill, for these were the darkest days of World War II. Nazi Germany had amassed the greatest invasion force in history. In the string of preceding campaigns the opposing nations of Europe had fallen in short order to German aggression, leaving the Soviet Union as the sole remaining continental power. With the planned conquest of Soviet territories, Hitler stood to gain immeasurable raw materials, freeing him forever from
Britain's continental blockade and providing him with the strategic freedom to wage truly global warfare.
Yet the Soviet Union was a very different adversary from any of Germany's previous opponents and Hitler was well enough aware that Germany's internal constraints, most notably on the economic front, necessitated a short, victorious war. Thus Operation Barbarossa was designed to defeat the Soviet Union decisively in the summer of 1941.
The importance of Hitler's new war in the east was understood by all sides at the time as the definitive moment in the future fortunes of the expanding world war. Either Hitler would soon stand almost untouchable at the head of an enormous empire, or his greatest campaign would falter (something no government at the time believed to be likely) resulting in the dangerous Allied encirclement Hitler was aiming to eliminate forever. It is therefore not an overstatement to say that the German invasion of the Soviet Union represents an extraordinary turning point in world affairs, central not only in our understanding of World War II, but indeed as one of the most profound events in modern history.
Many histories have sought to understand the failure of Operation Barbarossa by tracing the movement of armies through to the great battle of
Moscow in the winter of 1941/42. The central importance of this climactic battle in studies on Operation Barbarossa is effectively explained by its common acceptance as Germany's first major defeat in the war against the Soviet Union. Germany's sequence of unprecedented battlefield victories, ending in the ill-fated drive on Moscow, has sufficed to persuade many historians of its fundamental significance and fixated their attention on the winter battle as Operation Barbarossa's crucial point of demise. Long before the first snows of winter began to fall, however, and even before the first autumn rains brought most movement to a halt, in fact as early as the summer of 1941, it was evident that Barbarossa was a spent exercise, unavoidably doomed to failure.
Germany's failure in the early weeks of the campaign is perhaps not immediately apparent because it does not include the conventional historical benchmark of a great battlefield defeat. Indeed, according to most histories, the period is characterised by apparently extraordinary successes for the German armies. Encirclements at Belostok–Minsk,
Smolensk and Uman are often framed by emphatic references to the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. Accordingly, it is with a measure of scepticism that some readers may first judge the paradoxical claim that it was in fact Germany whose demise was being assured in the summer of 1941. A short explanation of Germany's defeat in this period might best be provided by a simple theoretical concept devised by the renowned German strategist and historian
Carl von Clausewitz. Based in large part on his first-hand observations of the Napoleonic wars, Clausewitz's timeless study
Vom Kriege
(
On War
) established numerous maxims of war, which in many cases are still upheld today. Clausewitz's theory of the culminating point of the attack provides a useful intellectual framework through which to view Operation Barbarossa. Put simply, Clausewitz established that most attacks diminish in strength the longer they continue, whereupon a critical point is eventually reached at which the power of the attack is superseded by the strength of the defence. This he determined to be the culminating point or climax of the attack, which he then added was usually, but not always, followed by an extremely powerful enemy counter-blow.
3
This basic hypothesis formed an intriguing theoretical starting point for my own questioning of the literature concerning Operation Barbarossa and posed the problem of whether it was possible to pre-date the German military failure in 1941. As a result, Clausewitz's culminating point formed a conceptual beginning to what I believe subsequent research has confirmed – that German operations in the east had failed by the middle of August 1941.
