Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (27 page)

The
firepower of the standard infantry division in both offensive and defensive action rested largely with its artillery complement. This placed a premium on its ability to be used in as much concentration as possible and be kept well supplied with shells. The width of the front and depth of operations did not afford such beneficial conditions and its overall employment was complicated by the comparatively small number of German guns, and an alarming shortfall in the production of ammunition. Soviet field armies operated some 32,900 guns and mortars of all calibres over 50mm, while the whole
Red Army together possessed the startling figure of 76,500 guns and mortars over 50mm.
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By comparison, the Germans could muster only 7,146 artillery pieces along their whole front.
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As with their tank forces the Soviets were let down by poor organisation, training and support services, which initially compensated in some measure for the German numerical inferiority.
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German ammunition shortfalls were most starkly observed in production of armour-piercing shells for the infantry anti-tank guns, whose output was only 50 per cent of projected targets. Batteries of other calibres were likewise affected, although there were exceptions where production exceeded projections.
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From the very beginning of Barbarossa, the infantry also suffered from obsolescence in certain key areas. The standard 3.7cm anti-tank gun was to prove largely useless against the new medium and heavy Soviet tanks, acquiring the unflattering nickname ‘door knocker’ in certain divisions.
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To rectify the problem, captured French 4.7cm anti-tank guns were pressed back into service and the army distributed its new 5cm anti-tank guns to units in ones and twos to offer a small, generalised boost. Nevertheless these proved only makeshift solutions and many companies had to be supplemented by field guns from divisional artillery.
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Just as the necessity of a short war affected Germany's strategic, operational and economic plans, it also had a fundamental bearing on the personnel situation, through the need to keep infantry and panzer divisions at full strength. As studies by Bernhard Kroener have well demonstrated, the importance of manpower shortages in 1939/1941 were bound up with what he called the ‘Blitzkrieg plan’, which juggled Germany's scant manpower resources between its army and factories both to meet economic objectives and win successive short campaigns. This, however, ran the double-edged risk that high losses in the eastern campaign would, in each case, require replacement of both a trained soldier and a skilled worker, while the longer the campaign dragged on the longer industry would suffer manpower shortages.
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By the summer of 1941 some 85 per cent of German men aged between 20 and 30 were already in the Wehrmacht and those remaining were judged to be too important to the war economy to be drafted for military service.
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The commander of the Replacement Army, Colonel-General Fritz
Fromm, outlined the limitations to
Halder in a discussion on 20 May 1941. With surprising candour Halder noted that 275,000 casualties were expected in the initial border battles, with a further 200,000 expected in September. Going into Barbarossa the Replacement Army was left with just 385,000 men, after deducting a share for the Luftwaffe (90,000 men). Thus, by Halder's own figures the Replacement Army would not suffice for the demands of the campaign through to the end of September and nothing at all would remain if the
war dragged on longer. The seriousness of being without trained reserves in the middle of a major campaign forced Halder to consider an early call up of the 1922 generation, but ultimately he decided the risk ‘could be
borne’.
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Yet again, the inability of Germany to sustain anything but a short, decisive campaign was strikingly clear.

Between the invasion of
France in 1940 and Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the army raised an additional 52 divisions, but the increase did not translate into increased striking power as no fewer than 49 divisions were required for occupation details or in Northern
Africa. By contrast, in May 1940 only 14 divisions were required for this purpose, leaving a far greater share of German manpower in the attacking armies or the
factories.
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In
the post-war era the size of the Red Army and the allegedly inexhaustible human resources of the Soviet Union were often cited as central reasons behind Germany's defeat. The image frequently portrayed presents a picture based more on the defensive battles taking place from 1943 until the end of the war, in which the hard-pressed German infantry fought tenaciously against an enemy with a vast numerical superiority. This representation, however, cannot be applied to the earliest stages of the campaign when Germany was the dominant military force, but its pervasiveness has helped build the perception of the army as an expert military organisation which operated a masterful ‘blitzkrieg’. In truth, the size of the Red Army in 1941 overstated its value and effectiveness, which in any case numbered less than the invading Germans in the western military districts.
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The success of the German infantry armies and panzer groups was greatly aided by the lamentable state of the Red Army – a point too often overlooked or under-emphasised in much of the existing literature focusing on the German experience in Operation Barbarossa. The immense quantity of equipment seized, the enormous areas overrun, and the Red Army's losses, soon to number in the millions (killed, wounded and captured) appeared to present the virtue of the German armies and their operational art as self-evident. Yet more recent scholarship by Roger Reese, Mark von Hagen and David Glantz, on the organisation and internal functioning of the Red Army, has supported the view that the military disasters of 1941 were at least as much a result of Soviet ineptitude as German military prowess.
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Such insights
go a long way towards reconciling the initial successes enjoyed by the Wehrmacht, with its own considerable shortcomings and deficiencies.

The
success of the German blitzkrieg depended firstly on the role of its armoured formations, with aircraft and the formula of close air support forming an important second. Like all major powers of the 1930s, the rejuvenated German air force placed strong emphasis on strategic bombing, but what distinguished the new Luftwaffe was its close integration with army operations.
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Given Germany's geographic position, confronting potential enemies in both east and west, there was less opportunity for the Luftwaffe's planners to pursue a doctrine that ignored the predominance of the army in overall German strategy. There were also practical factors to consider. The development of an effective long-range, strategic bomber had floundered because of design and production errors, and the high demands it placed on limited resources. As a result, shorter-range aircraft, better suited to tactical rather than strategic uses, were produced, although the notion of the Luftwaffe as an overtly tactical air force was only one element in its intended service.
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The principal aircraft employed by the Luftwaffe to support Operation Barbarossa can be broadly categorised into three types; fighters, dive-bombers and bombers.
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The fighters were important for winning aerial superiority, protecting bombers and strafing ground targets. For this the Luftwaffe was well served by the fast and manoeuvrable Me Bf-109 (series E and F), a single-engine fighter that could perform well against the new Soviet models, including the Iak-1, LaGG-2 and MiG-3.
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The twin-engine fighter known as the Me Bf-110 or ‘destroyer’ (
Zerstörer
) was less numerous and not as proficient, but able to operate at much longer ranges.
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The standard German dive-bomber, which operated with such devastating effect in the first two years of the war, was the
Ju-87, commonly known as the ‘Stuka’.
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Against the
RAF in the
Battle of Britain the Stuka had suffered heavily, lacking speed and armament but, given adequate protection, or in the absence of serious opposition, the Stuka could provide remarkable accuracy, while its screeching air brakes had an often terrifying psychological effect on ground forces.
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A number of different bomber designs saw service in Operation Barbarossa, performing a variety of roles and proving more effective than their largely obsolete Soviet equivalents. The principal aircraft were all twin-engine, medium bombers with limited range and payload. These included the hardy and versatile Ju-88 A, the Do-17 Z, Do-217 E and the He-111 H and He-111 P.
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In contrast to the army, from the opening of the campaign against France in May 1940 through to the invasion of the Soviet Union the following year, the Luftwaffe was required to perform in almost constant combat, fighting a long and costly campaign over Britain. Figures for the period between May and September 1940, covering both the defeat of France and the Battle of Britain, illustrate the toll these operations took on the Luftwaffe. Taken as a percentage of the early May total, losses for single-engine fighters amounted to 57 per cent, twin-engine fighters 94 per cent, bombers 64 per cent and dive-bombers 50 per cent.
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Such an erosion of strength was clearly unsustainable in the long term and boded ill for the further commitment of the Luftwaffe in the campaign over England as well as the expansion of aerial operations into new theatres. The chief of the operations department of the Luftwaffe, Major-General
Hoffman von Waldau, reported to Halder in October 1940 that operations against Britain would have to be scaled back over winter to stem losses, while force levels could not be replenished until early 1941 at best. The prospect of the Luftwaffe fighting a two-front war, to include the Soviet Union, was dismissed outright by Waldau who regarded the prospect as ‘impossible’.
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Such a shrewd assessment did not, however, meet with the required orders of the German political and military leadership. Hitler's War
Directive 21 of December 1940 gives a clear indication of the lurch towards over-extension that Barbarossa represented for the Luftwaffe. The new tasks were outlined as follows:

The air force will have to make available for this Eastern campaign supporting forces of such strength that the Army will be able to bring land operations to a speedy conclusion and that eastern Germany will be as little damaged as possible by enemy air attack. This build-up of a focal point in the east will be limited only by the need to protect from air attack the whole combat and arsenal area which we control, and to ensure that attacks on England, and especially upon her imports, are not allowed to lapse.
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Given the Luftwaffe's high losses and related difficulties in attempting to subdue England from the air in 1940, it seems absurd to believe that those efforts could be matched in 1941, while at the same time embarking on a war with the scale and scope of Barbarossa. To make matters worse, in late 1940 X Air Corps was being transferred to the Mediterranean which, as Horst Boog has observed, was leading the Luftwaffe towards a three-front war by the summer of 1941.
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Between
autumn 1940 and the spring of 1941 the bombing of Britain and attacks on British shipping resulted in a reduced, but still steady attrition of German aircraft. January 1941 recorded the minimum monthly loss with 4.8 per cent of the German bomber force lost and 2.1 per cent of the fighter force. As the year wore on, each month recorded a new increase in the Luftwaffe's losses.
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The spring 1941 Balkan campaign and the subsequent aerial invasion of
Crete placed significant demands on the Luftwaffe's resources, while in the final months preceding Barbarossa, the Luftwaffe was ordered to intensify the air war against Britain to camouflage German intentions in the east and feign that a German invasion of Britain was finally at hand.
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Not surprisingly, aircraft losses rose correspondingly and by May 1941 bombers were suffering 12 per cent and fighters 6.8 per cent losses a month.
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In practical terms, from the beginning of August 1940 to June 1941 the Luftwaffe had lost 3,700 aircraft (all types) as well as almost 3,700 members of flying crews killed, 3,000 missing and 1,500 wounded.
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As Williamson Murray aptly points out, the demand on the Luftwaffe's resources even before Barbarossa began, and the great strain that would be subsequently added by the war in the east, left many fundamental questions concerning the Luftwaffe's
capabilities unanswered.
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Adding further concern, the great bulk of the Luftwaffe's aircraft were due, or even overdue, for replacement by a new generation of models. The battles against the
RAF made this painfully clear, although the technical gap was much less evident on the eastern front in 1941. The problem was that many of the Luftwaffe's new models proved hopelessly inadequate, wasting precious time and millions of Reichsmarks, and giving the Allies an overall qualitative as well as numerical superiority against German
aircraft.
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