Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa), also known as the German invasion of the Soviet Union, was the code name for the attempted invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and some of its allies, which began on Sunday, June 22, 1941, during World War II. The operation put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union in order to repopulate it with Germans. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered as slave labor for the Axis war effort while acquiring stocks of oil from the Caucasus, as well as the agricultural resources of Ukraine. Their ultimate goal included the extermination, enslavement, Germanization, and mass deportation to Siberia of the Slavic peoples, thereby gaining more lebensraum (living space) for Germany.
In the two years prior to the invasion, both countries had signed various political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. After the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, the German High Command began planning the invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the code name Operation Otto), which Adolf Hitler authorized on December 18, 1940. 1940. Over the course of the operation, some three million Axis forces—the largest invasion force in the history of warfare—invaded the Soviet Union along a front of more than 1,800 miles. The offensive marked a massive escalation of World War II, both geographically and in the formation of the World War II Allies, by drawing the Soviet Union into the conflict.
The operation opened up the eastern front, committing more forces than in any previous theater of war. The area was the scene of some of the largest-scale battles in history, with numerous war crimes resulting in the highest number of casualties the world had ever known, all of which would play a decisive role in the course of the conflagration. and the subsequent history of the 20th century. German armies eventually captured some five million Red Army soldiers. Nazi Germany deliberately starved and massacred large numbers of civilians, as the Hunger Plan worked to solve Germany's food shortages and exterminate the Slavic population through starvation. Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by the Nazis or willing collaborators, murdered more than a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust.
The failure of Operation Barbarossa sealed the fate of the Third Reich. Operationally, German forces achieved significant victories and occupied some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union (mainly in the Ukrainian SSR) and inflicted heavy casualties on the Red Army as well. Despite these early successes, the German offensive stalled at the Battle of Moscow in late 1941, and the subsequent Soviet winter counteroffensive drove the Germans back some 250 km. The Germans expected a rapid collapse of Soviet resistance as had occurred in the Invasion of Poland, but the Red Army was able to withstand the heaviest blows from the German Wehrmacht and bogged down the fighting in a bloody war. of attrition for which the Germans were not prepared.
After the failure of Operation Barbarossa, the decimated Wehrmacht forces could no longer carry out major attacks along the entire eastern front, and subsequent operations to retake the initiative and penetrate deep on Soviet territory, such as Operation Blue in 1942 and Operation Citadel in 1943, ultimately failed, resulting in the withdrawal and eventual collapse of the Wehrmacht.
Background
Political and military motivations
Eastward expansion was part of Hitler's ideology as part of his policy of "living space" (lebensraum in German), although this was already a German aspiration prior to World War I.. In 1918, at the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the high command of the Imperial German armies on the Eastern Front had imposed its conditions for the armistice that the Bolsheviks had requested. For practical reasons of survival, the communist leaders had desisted from extending their rule to the ex-Russian Empire regions of Poland and the Baltics, handing them over to the Kaiser's Reich (considered the Second Reich). As can be read in Hitler's book My Struggle, the war against the Soviets is a "culture war" steeped in anti-Slavism, and a crusade of Europe against Asia: it is about sending the continent to the Slavs, thus creating a "New Order", thus making a comparison with Attila's Huns, who at the time threatened Roman Europe. The German invasion of the Soviet Union was defined by the German historian Andreas Hillgruber as "Hitler's real war." they had drives more akin to animals than to civilized humans.
Hitler's statements about the Russian people on July 5, 1941:
By instinct, the Russian does not go to a form of superior society. Certain peoples can live in such a way that among them the whole of the family units does not form a State. If Russia adopted in spite of this a way comparable to what we understand in the West, it does not mean, in any case, that this is the biological thing in it. [...] Energy is necessary to dominate the Russian. The counterpart is that the harder the regime is, the more convinced it is that equity and justice are practiced in it. The horse that does not feel constantly subject forgets to open and close the dome elements that were inculcated to him. The same goes with the Russian: there is in him an instinctive force that leads him invariably to his natural state. Sometimes the case of those horses that, having escaped from a ranch in America, had once again formed, a few dozen years later, immense flocks of wild horses. It takes so little for an animal to return to its origins! For the Russian, its return to the natural state consists of forms of elementary life. The family exists, the woman watches over her children, like the female of the hare, with all the feelings of a mother. But the Russian wants nothing more.H. Trevor-Roper, Hitler's private talks (2004)
Despite the great ideological distance between the two countries and Hitler's stated intentions of expansion to the east, in 1939 the Soviet Union and Germany signed the so-called Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. In this pact, Germany ensured neutrality from the Soviet Union in exchange for ceding half of Poland, Bessarabia, and the Baltic countries. In addition, the Soviet Union claimed control of the Dardanelles Strait, Finland, and the possibility of opening bases in Denmark. This agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany was preceded by the Rapallo Treaty of 1922, as well as the Treaty of Berlin neutrality of 1926. Kissinger, in his book Diplomacy (1996), states that the agreement between the two parties in 1939 was more like a document of the century XVIII than to one of the XX, and that both, Hitler and Stalin set out to try to achieve unconventional goals, applying the ideology of My Struggle on the one hand, and the global expansion of communism on the other, through conventional means.
The Soviet advance in the Baltic, however, caused an erosion of the neutrality agreement, by endangering, from the German point of view, the supply of iron from Sweden and nickel from Finland. Although the Soviet Union had generally respected the agreement, and in particular the shipment of raw materials to the Third Reich, Soviet territorial ambitions worried Hitler. As early as the end of May 1940, although the British historian John Keegan notes in his book Operation Barbarossa, invasion of Russia (1970) which was on July 2, 1940, when Hitler began to discuss with his collaborators the possibility of launching a preventive attack against the Soviet Union for July 1941. Halder was commissioned by Hitler to draw up the invasion plan, who in turn delegated to General Marcks. However, the Führer tried to exhaust diplomatic channels to attract the Soviet Union to the german orbit.
In order to satisfy the traditional Russian interest in access to ice-free ports, Hitler tried to dissuade Stalin by offering the Soviet Union a passage south through Afghanistan and Iran towards the Persian Gulf. Ribbentrop offered Molotov this way out: "[...] if, in the long term, Russia would not also turn to the south, as a natural outlet to the open sea that was so important for Russia." Hitler in turn told Molotov: «After the conquest of England, the British Empire would be divided like a gigantic bankrupt universal estate [...]. On this bankrupt estate, Russia would have access to the ice-free, truly open ocean. Until then, a minority of 45 million Englishmen had ruled 600 million people in the British Empire. But Hitler himself was on the verge of crushing this minority [...]». Germany was unsuccessful with this offer, as Molotov showed little interest as Germany could not offer what it did not already have.
In a meeting between Hitler and Mussolini on October 28, 1940, the Italian duce went so far as to affirm that if they managed to unite the Soviet Union with the Axis powers, it would soon evolve towards a "Slavic fascism". In addition to the Baltic, Romania was also another point of friction between the two countries as Germany depended on its oil refineries. Another point of friction between the Soviet Union and Germany was the Winter War, between 1939 and 1940, due to contacts between the Soviet Union and Germany. Finland with Germany. This contest caused significant losses to the Red Army, and highlighted the deficiencies that they still had in their armored warfare doctrine. On November 13, 1940, Molotov returned to Moscow with the proposal to unite the Union Soviet to the Axis. The Soviet foreign minister declared that month that Bulgaria, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Finland were in the sphere of Soviet interests. Hitler responded by ordering his generals to begin preparations to invade the Soviet Union. The German invasion of the Balkans the following spring was, for British historian Ronald E. Powaski, a prelude to an invasion of the Soviet Union itself. Between November 1940 and March 1941, in the words of Paul Schmidt, the decision for an attack by Germany on the Soviet Union began to be perceived in the environment.
There was no unanimity about the advisability of invading the Soviet Union. Erich Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine, insisted on the need to finish off Britain first, a view shared by the Reichsmarschall of the Luftwaffe >, Hermann Goring. Hitler would finally impose his decision on the chiefs of staff of the Army High Command (OKH). The conquered territory would become the living space that would satisfy the needs of land and raw materials for the German population for centuries. Álvaro Lozano, a Spanish historian, points out in his book Operación Barbarossa (2006) that it is probable that Mackinder's thesis on the Heartland Theory influenced Hitler's thinking. Lozano, citing John Lukacs, points out that among other causes that would explain the German attack, there would be, on the one hand, the fear that the Soviet Union would attack sooner or later, and that Great Britain had pinned its hopes on that country.
The most important planner for exploiting the economic resources of the Soviet Union, once invaded, was the Staatssekretär in the Reich Ministry of Agriculture and Food Herbert Backe. From Soviet territory not only raw materials had to be extracted but also food for Germany, essentially grain, very important due to the naval blockade of the Royal Navy. In early 1941, Hitler commissioned Hermann Göring, head of the four-year plans, to found an organization designed to profitably exploit Soviet resources. This new economic organization, finally founded on February 21, 1941 and subordinated to Göring's Four-Year Plan, received the name "Oldenburg".
Major General Hans Nagel, one of the founding members of the Eastern Economic Team, later noted: “Economic objectives [now] have to differentiate between long-term economic policies and the use of land for the war economy». The war economy became the main function during Operation Barbarossa, while other activities were considered as goals that could be achieved after the blitz campaign. In the month of May 1941, the German food plans with respect to the Soviet Union materialized in what was known as the "Hunger Plan". A meeting of secretaries of state, where Backe was also present, held on May 2, made clear the German view of the impending war. The Wehrmacht invasion forces would be fed entirely from the resources of the occupied Soviet territories. This would mean that millions of Soviet people would starve to death.
In December 1940, the Führer signed Directive no. of months. Hitler's final plan was to advance simultaneously with three Army Groups, which were to fight continuously, to encircle the Soviet armies in enormous pincer maneuvers and sackings, to later annihilate them. Hitler named her after Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor during the 12th century 12th century, nicknamed Barbarossa by the color of his beard.
His reign represented the height of the Holy Roman Empire, considered the First Reich by German nationalists. The fame and modern significance of Frederick I Barbarossa is linked to the German pan-Germanism of the 20th century. Barbarossa was a reference point for German nationalists who wanted to reunify the country under a strong power, like that of the emperor. As mentioned, Adolf Hitler had decided to view the war on the Eastern Front as a crusade, and he warned his generals of this, reminding them that the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva conventions, and that it was not a question of showing off. of a chivalrous spirit. The Führer planned to put the conquered territories under a severe German administration, "de-Bolshevize" the country and see the Soviet regime collapse, when it found itself in possession of what are called the "citadels of Bolshevism": Leningrad and Stalingrad.
At the time of the attack, the aforementioned Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 was still in force, by which both powers defined their spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. But the pact was broken at the moment when the troops of the Third Reich crossed the Soviet border.
Situation in June 1941
By then, the Third Reich militarily controls Belgium, Bohemia and Moravia, Denmark, France (except the part ruled by Vichy), Greece, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland (except the part invaded by the Soviets) and Yugoslavia (except for Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia controlled by the puppet government of the Independent State of Croatia), while Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Italy, and Romania are allies of Germany. In addition, it is expected to have the determined logistical support of the populations to be liberated from Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine, as well as the Don Cossacks and German settlers residing in the Soviet Union. Thus, the Wehrmacht boasts of quick victories on the entire extensive front; However, serious problems already arise for the provisional winner:
- The British Empire has not been militarily defeated. Operation Lion Sea, (Unternehmen Seelöwe in German) the plan to invade Britain, has postponed sine die, the air bombing campaign, the battle of England, is waged with a failure for Luftwaffe and underwater war operations have not defeated the British.
- The United States has abandoned its state of neutrality by a non-belligerent. After the fall of France, the USA. The U.S. started the first recruitment in peace time of its history and significantly increased its military budget. It was a matter of time that the Atlantic battle was dragging the United States into war and U.S. military aid was a threat to which Hitler was very conscious.
- The Soviet Union had annexed the eastern part of Poland, Besarabia of Romania, as well as the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and had obtained important territorial concessions from Finland as a result of the 1939-1940 Winter War, so a confrontation between the two powers seemed inevitable; it was only necessary to clarify who would take the first step, and it is Hitler who gives it.
The OKH (German High Command) raised the campaign under the idea of blitzkrieg for the summer of 1941, which would conclude with the collapse of the Red Army in a couple of months, for which the Forces German navies were not equipped to fight in winter nor were they prepared for a long war. Likewise, the logistics that were going to be put in place to maintain the broad battlefront were not dimensioned under a real holistic view of the breadth of Soviet space, nor of the deficiencies in communication routes.
British espionage had alerted the Soviet Union to the impending invasion, but Stalin believed it was a desperate attempt by Churchill to get him into the war with the Allies. Despite the fact that the Soviet spy Richard Sorge managed to give Stalin the exact date of the attack, the attack took the Soviet Army by surprise, since the Stavka (the High Command of the Red Army), under Stalin's orders, he did not dictate any type of preventive war measure that could be interpreted as bellicose by his German counterpart.
Stalin, although he had no doubts that the German-Soviet conflict would be inevitable, believed that Hitler would not open a second front before the end of the war with Britain, and in any case Soviet defense plans were foreseen. for a confrontation with Germany at the earliest in the spring of 1942.
Hitler firmly believed that the communist government would collapse at the first blow and contemptuously called it “the Giant with the feet of clay”: the Austro-German dictator assumed that the great subjugated and demoralized mass would it would turn against its leader, Stalin, due to the great famines and massacres carried out under the Four Year Plan and the Great Purge. Hitler was unaware or badly misinformed of the true extent of the Soviet war potential, the exact number of tanks and divisions, and their extraordinary ability to overcome military setbacks.
Zhukov's experience on the pre-invasion situation:
On 13 June, in my presence, Timoshenko telephoned I.V. Stalin requesting authorization to order that the troops of the border military regions be apprehended for the battle and deployed the first steps as envisaged in the coverage plans.“We will think,” Stalin replied.
The next day we went to see Stalin again. I informed him of the over-high spirits in the military regions and of the need to put the troops in combat.
"Do you propose to mobilize in the country, to lift the troops now and to take them to the western borders? But that's war! Do you two understand this, or not?
(...)
I alleged that, according to the information service data, the German divisions were formed and armed according to the wartime templates, with troops from 14 000 to 16 000 men. While ours, even those of 8000 men, only possessed, in reality, half of the potential that the Germans possessed.
Stalin commented:
- You can't believe in everything the information service says...Gueorgui Zhúkov, Memories and reflections (1990)
Preparations
German preparations
Operation was originally designed in December 1940, after the failure of the Battle of Britain. Hitler wanted to divide his forces and not repeat Napoleon Bonaparte's mistake of invading such a large country with a single block of troops; Likewise, various aerial reconnaissance missions were carried out along the German-Soviet border. The Marck plan provided for the formation of two large army groups that would advance from Poland in the direction of Moscow and kyiv. Lossberg's plan proposed the idea of three army groups, with Leningrad, Moscow, and kyiv as targets. Between December 3 and 7, a war game Kriegspiel was staged, to determine which plan would be carried out. The plan of the three army groups was finally chosen.
The three army groups would have the following objectives at the start of the invasion:
- The North Army Group was assigned to the conquest of the Baltic and Leningrad countries (ideological objective).
- The Central Army Group, the most powerful in men and materials, would conquer Belarus, would participate in the Smolensk taking before heading towards the conquest of Moscow and the occupation of the central regions of the Soviet Union (political objective).
- The South Army Group had to take the entire Ukraine, with Kiev as its main objective and continue to the Volga River. Once the largest agricultural area of the Soviet Union had been conquered, they would advance towards the Caucasus region, rich in oil (economic objective).
Franz Halder, head of the OKH, in a conference before an audience in which Hitler was, where he recommended advancing with three groups and not with two, but with primacy of the one that was going to Moscow.
The most important Russian weapons centres are in Ukraine, Moscow and Leningrad. The entire area of operations is divided into two halves, North and South, by the Pripet marshes; in the South half, the road network is bad; in the North, the road and rail links are in better condition in the Warsaw-Moscow area. This North sector also has greater contingents of Soviet troops, which reach massive features in the line of Soviet-German demarcation (through occupied Poland). The Dnieper and the Dvina are the most eastern lines that the Russians must defend, as if they go back further they expose their industrial regions. The German army must prevent the formation of centres of resistance to the west of these rivers through the introduction of armoured units. A particularly powerful assault force must attack from Warsaw in the direction of Moscow. Of the three proposed Army Groups, the north will have as a point of focus Leningrad and southern Kiev; the latter will advance an army from Labun another from Leópolis and a third from Romania. The objective of the entire operation will be the Volga and the Archangel region: they will employ 105 infantry divisions 32 panzer and motorized, of which they will highlight large contingents (of armies) at the beginning of the second wave.John Keegan. Operation Barbecue, invasion of Russia (1970) p. 38
This was the proposal presented to Hitler on December 17, 1940 that would later determine Operational Directive No. 21, which in turn outlined Operation Barbarossa. Although this was an important objective, Moscow was never a priority in Hitler's plans; however, the destruction of the Red Army was. It had as a precedent that during the invasions of Poland and France, both countries surrendered before the fall of Warsaw and Paris. Some generals, such as Franz Halder, however, thought differently, as did a large part of the officers who wanted clear objectives towards which to march. Pauld Adair, in his book Hitler's Great Defeat (1994), notes: «The Army began planning the campaign in the east, and the OKW did not get involved until the Army presented its strategy to Hitler, on December 5; but then a difference of opinion arose between Hitler and those responsible for the OKW plan: although both agreed on the need to crush the Soviet resistance on the border, the General Staff believed that the main objective should be Moscow".
On May 15, all invasion troops were to be in position along the border with the Soviet Union. By the end of the preparations, the Wehrmacht had mobilized about 3, 2 million soldiers towards the Soviet border, together with a million soldiers from allied and satellite countries, all prepared to start a general offensive from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathians, counting for this with the entry of Romania, Hungary, Finland and Slovakia in the war. Hitler did not get Japanese support for the campaign; After the start of the invasion, consultations were held with the Japanese government, which nevertheless declared its neutrality.
The mobilization of citizens for the Wehrmacht was so massive that it caused a shortage of labor in Germany. This mobilization increased the number of troops, but overall the quality of the army worsened. Each new recruitment added lower quality troops, as there were not enough professional officers and NCOs and the average age of the soldiers increased. Part of the weapons and equipment provided to the Wehrmacht came from loot from previous campaigns. In short, the infantry forces that launched the attack on the Soviet Union were no better than those used in previous campaigns against the West.
The army was divided into two groups: the Ersatzheer or Reserve Army and the Feldheer or Field Army. Before the start of the invasion, the Ersatzheer transferred to the Feldheer 90,000 men. Some 475,000 men would remain in Germany for the Ersatzheer, of which 90,000 belonged to the Luftwaffe. Expected casualties were 275,000 men for the border area (July and August), and 200,000 in September. It was decided that the 1922 fifth would not be mobilized until November so as not to damage Germany's productive capacity and to be able to dispatch troops to the front with minimal training.
Composition of a German infantry battalion 1939-1940:
| Battalion headquarters | Communications platoon | Supply train | Machinery Company | Company train | Mortar platoon | Machine Gun | Machine Gun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 officers | - | 2 officers | 1 Officer | - | 1 Officer | 1 Officer | 1 Officer |
| 15 men | 19 men | 32 men | 20 men | 14 men | 36 men | 36 men | 30 men |
The German infantry division theoretically consisted of: 17,098 troops, 516 machine guns, 147 mortars, 20 light guns, 54 field guns, 75 light AC guns, {{esd|12 DCA, 1,539 vehicles, and 4,842 horses.. Although it was not always possible, it was intended that each German unit would be recruited in the same region to help the group cohesion and perform better on the battlefield.
Regarding the armored units, all kinds of vehicles were involved in the campaign. On one side were the already obsolete Panzer I and Panzer II. Panzer III, Panzer IV and Sturmgeschütz III assault guns also participated. In 1941 the Panzer I was still part of the inventory with about 800 units, although it was already withdrawn from active service. Its chassis were used for the manufacture of other special vehicles, picking up anti-tank guns or anti-aircraft machine guns. On June 22, 1941, there were operations in the German Army 235 Panzer IIIs armed with a 37mm gun, and 1,090 armed with a 50mm gun, of which 965 were operational. However, the Panzer III, the backbone of the Panzer forces in Russia, soon became obsolete in the face of the best Soviet tanks. When the campaign began there were 439 Panzer IVs, all of them integrated into the 17 Panzer divisions as escort vehicles or support. Various reports from the troops would later alert that this tank was not suitable against the T-34 and the Soviet KVs due to its slowness and less mobility on irregular terrain. Its gasoline engine was not prepared to withstand the winter cold either. During the campaign, and since their guns were not capable of penetrating the armor of the Soviets, they received the recommendation to try to fire at the open embrasure of the driver, the hatch and the running gear. Czech tanks such as the Panzer 35(t), and the Panzer 38(t).
The German military industry had difficulties supplying the Panzertruppen at a good pace for a company of this size: in 1940 the production of armored vehicles was 2,589, and in 1941 it was 5,890. Germany was not only producing cars at a slower rate than the Soviet Union, it was also no better than Great Britain at that time. Martin Kitchen, citing a 1945 article by Kenneth Galbraith, points out that after the fall of France, the idea circulated among the German ruling class that the war was practically over and that the campaign in the East would be very short. For this reason, according to Galbraith, no plans were made for a longer campaign. Among the data in the article, it is noted that in December 1941 Germany produced 30% less weapons than a year before.
At the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union, 68% of German armored units were made up of models 35 (t), 38 (t), III and IV, making a total of twenty divisions in June. Each also had two motorized rifle regiments of two battalions, and in all but four, part of this infantry marched on tracked vehicles. Each had a motorcycle battalion and a reconnaissance battalion. One of the advantages of supporting motorized divisions integrated into armored units was that they could keep up with a higher rate than infantry marching on foot. As has already been said, a significant fraction of the rolling stock was spoils of war, which allowed Germany to equip part of its units but at the cost of suffering subsequent logistical chaos. To assess combat capability (Kampfwert), the German Army had a scale of one to five. On June 20, 1941, 100% of armored and motorized units received full marks. 60% of the rest of the divisions also obtained it. The German General Staff did not have good information about the military and industrial capacity of the Soviet Union. This lack was caused on the one hand by the secrecy of the Soviet Union, and by the numerous prejudices that existed in Germany towards the Slavs.
German tanks for Operation Barbarossa in June 1941:
| Pzkpfw model | I | II | III 37 mm | 35 (t) | 38 (t) | III 50 mm | IV | PzBefw | StuG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 152 | 743 | 259 | 155 | 394 | 707 | 439 | 167. | 200 |
The Luftwaffe had suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Britain, and also had many units committed in the West and the Mediterranean. By June 1941, only 68% of its units were stationed on the Eastern Front. Air support was organized into three Luftflotten ("air fleets"), numbered 1st, 2nd and 3rd for Army Groups North, Center and South respectively and totaled 5,000 aircraft. The Kriegsmarine, in turn, was tasked with absolute control of the Baltic and prevent the Soviet fleet from leaving the Gulf of Finland.
Logistic preparation was insufficient for the needs of the operation. When the campaign began, the German Army only had three long-distance transport regiments. The Economic Department of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (in Spanish «High Command of the Wehrmacht», OKW) requested the Oberkommando des Heeres (in Spanish «High Command of the Army», OKH) 360,000 men, 10,000 trucks and 4,000 cars, but it was denied. To pursue partisan activity in the rear, nine Security Divisions were assigned, which turned out to be insufficient for the entire territory to be covered.
German General Staff
Formed by the high command of the German Army (Oberkommando des Heeres), chief of the high command of the Army and commanders at the head of each Army Group between June 22 and December 5, 1941:
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Hitler's way of intervening in military affairs was the OKH section called Wehrmachtführungsstab led by Alfred Jodl. Ordinary control of the armies on the battlefield will be carried out by the OKH, but it will be in the OKW where Hitler will hold his two daily conferences and where the OKH officers will also go to present their reports. The two top leaders of the OKH were Brauchitsch and Halder. Brauchitsch had built his career on not contradicting Hitler. He had succeeded Werner von Fritsch in 1938. Halder understood the problem of Hitler curtailing the OKH's powers, but he also did not have the strength to oppose the Führer. The first open confrontation between Hitler and the generals will be on July 8, when he expressed his opinion on the convenience of attacking Ukraine first instead of Leningrad or Moscow. In reality, the position held in the political and military structure of the Third Reich did not matter as belonging to the inner circle of the Führer, where Hermann Göring, Albert Speer and Heinrich Himmler excelled, was more important.
German deployment on June 22, 1941
In the first assault, Germany employs 80% of the forces available for the campaign. The deployment of German troops before the invasion was as follows:
- North Army Group: Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb, with exit point in the Eastern Prussia. He had the mission to take Leningrad across the Baltic coast. Leeb had 7 infantry divisions, 3 armoured divisions and 2 motorized divisions, as well as other complementary units. They totaled 130 000 men. The armoured were in charge of Colonel Erich Hoepner (4th Panzer Group). Ernst Busch commanded the 16th Army (infantry). Georg von Küchler commanded the 18th Army (infantry). Nikolaus von Falkenhorst commanded German forces in Norway and the central area of Finland. Alfred Keller was in charge of the Luftflotte 1 (air force). Hans-Jürgen Stumpff was in charge of the Luftflotte 5 (air force) to operate in the Arctic area. Emil Mannerheim was in charge of the Finnish forces.
- Central Army Group: Marshal Fedor von Bock. He had as a mission to take Moscow through Minsk and Smolensko. It had 42 infantry divisions and 9 armoured divisions. They totaled 700 000 men. The armoured forces were in charge of Heinz Guderian (2nd Panzer Group) and Hermann Hoth (3rd Panzer Group). Günther von Kluge and Adolf Strauss were in charge of the 4th and 9th Army respectively. Albert Kesselring was in charge of the Luftflotte 2 (air force).
- South Army Group: Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. It had 37 divisions of German infantry, 17 Romanians, two Hungarians, two Italians, a Slovak. It also had 5 German armoured divisions. They totalled 800 000 men. Ewald von Kleist was in charge of the armoured (1.er Panzer Group). Walter von Reichenau and Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel were in charge of the sixth and seventeenth. Armies respectively. Eugen von Schobert was in charge of the 11th Army. General Ion Antonescu was in charge of the forces of Romania. Alexander Löhr was in charge of the Luftflotte 4.
In addition, Nazi Germany had the support of its satellite countries. Romania contributed the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies; Between them they included twelve infantry divisions and ten mountain, cavalry and tank brigades. Hungary's contribution was more modest and consisted of a rapid army corps, made up of a motorized brigade and two cavalry brigades. Slovakia participated with a motorized brigade and two light infantry divisions. All Allied units were subordinate to German Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.
On June 26, the first contingent of the Italian expeditionary force departs for the Soviet Union. On July 2, Mussolini announces the total Italian contribution to the campaign: three divisions called Torino, Célere and Pasubio, with a total of 50,000 men. The chief in command was Giovanni Messe. German diplomacy unsuccessfully tries to convince the Japanese government to join the invasion of the Soviet Union. Japan was not interested in North Asia as its sights were on China and Southeast Asia. When Stalin realized this, he was able to move troops from the East to Europe just in time for the defense of Moscow.
Experience of Albert Speer, German architect and Minister of Armaments and War of the Third Reich, about the months before the invasion:
Molótov appeared in Berlin in mid-November 1940. Hitler had fun with his comensals at the expense of his doctor's derogatory report, Dr. Karl Brandt, according to which the entourage of the Soviet Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, for fear of bacteria, had made all the dishes boiled before using them. In the Berghof living room there was a great globe in which, a few months later, I saw the consequences of the failure of these talks. With significant gesture, one of the attendees of the Wehrmacht indicated a simple pencil stroke: a line that ran from north to south along the Urals. Hitler had drawn it as a future border between the territory he was interested in and the area of Japanese influence. On June 21, 1941, on the eve of the attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler called me to his living room of the Berlin residence after the meal and made me hear a few compasses of the Liszt Preludes. Then he said to me: "In the coming months you will hear this often, for it will be our triumphal march for the Russian campaign. Funk chose it. What do you think? We will bring from there all the granite and the marble we want”. Now Hitler openly showed his megalomania: what had already been insinuated years ago in his works, now he had to be sealed by a new war or, as he said, with "blood."Albert Speer, Memorias (2001), pp. 334-35
Otto Skorzeny, an engineer and future Waffen-SS colonel, wrote years after the war about his experience deploying to the border with the Soviet Union in the days leading up to the start of Operation Barbarossa:
We installed our batteries near the Bug, trying to camouflage us under the cover of the field's bushes. I took advantage of the moments of rest to walk along the banks of the river in the company of some comrades. We saw the advanced Russian posts on the other side of the river and looked similar to ours. It was the first time we saw, lined up all along the Russian border, the high guard towers that drew our attention. Our sentries were hidden among the branches of the tall trees; I spent many hours with them sharing their concerns and revealing them. We were able to verify that the Russians, like us, had concentrated a large number of troops on the Polish border; their positions, half masked, taking advantage of the undulations of the land, offered us perfectly visible.Otto Skorzeny, He lives dangerously
Experience of Curzio Malaparte, Italian journalist, on the appearance of the Soviet shore in front of the Romanian town of Galați, on June 18, 1941:
Between the Soviet Russia and my hotel room, no more than the stream of the Prut: a slow and yellowish river, which here, already in the mouth, stretches to form almost a lake, an immense peggy pond, the Bratese, broken here and there by the green cobbles of reeds and cobbles that arise between the banks of mud. The Prut seems strangely deserted these days: no tugboat, no boat, not even a bark, the current arises. Only some fishing boat, stuck on the Romanian shore, rocks over the muddy streams. But woe unto him that is far from the shore woe unto him that goeth in the midst of the river:: the Russians shoot immediately. The night-time Soviet sentries make fire to the first noise, to the slightest rumor; enough to take care of them, the slight noise that the waters of the Prut make as they clash against the shore. At naked eye, from the window of my room, you can see the houses on the Russian bank, the wooden warehouses, the smoke of some tugboat stuck in the river port. By the street that costs the river, you can distinguish, with twins, groups of people, surely soldiers; car columns, cavalry patrols. During the night, the Soviet shore appears black and blind. It seems that the night begins down there, on the other side, which rises down hard and smooth as a black wall, facing the sparkling Romanian edge of lights. At dawn, the Soviet shore seems to be an open eyelid that opens slowly, leaving a pale, discolored and extraordinaryly sad and disturbing look on the river.Curzio Malaparte, the Volga is born in Europe (2015) pp. 16-17
Soviet preparations
Tanks
Soviet defense plans in 1941 were still heavily influenced by the experience of World War I, with all their units spread out evenly along the border and in close proximity to it. One of the problems of the side that adopts a defensive position is being able to stop the break in the front at the point where the aggressor can concentrate all his forces. There were no reserve troops in the rear who could quickly close the breakout points at the front, allowing the Germans to break through at full speed once the invasion began.
Ten years before Operation Barbarossa, theories of motorized warfare had already captured the attention of the Soviet high command. Mikhail Tukhachevsky then warned that a fast tank would allow an uninterrupted offensive. In 1935 the Soviet Union possessed 7,000 main battle tanks, 100,000 military trucks, and 150,000 tracked vehicles. As in other armies of the day, supporters of motorized warfare met with resistance from the military drawn from cavalry such as Zhukov who, however, came to show that he was very competent when it came to moving large armored units on the battlefield. In 1941 they had about 24,000 main battle tanks, although most were already outdated.
Arms production was increased in previous years within the general European climate of rearmament. In the year of the invasion, the Soviet Army surpassed the German one by a large margin in number of soldiers and material, being the models of tanks, the T-34, the KV-1, on many occasions technically better than their counterparts. german peers. As of June 22, 1941, 1,225 T-34s had been built. Most of them were deployed in the kyiv district. Likewise, the number of tanks (seven times more numerous than their German opponents), long-range guns and combat aircraft available in the Soviet Union, turned out to be greater than what Germany and all its allies could mobilize with respect to those same weapons. All that remained was to modernize military tactics and improve the maintenance and direction of the team. Despite sometimes having better material, deficient logistics and poor condition of the equipment meant that in some cases the tanks barely had 15% of the ammunition needed once the invasion begins.
Soviet tank numbers in June 1941ː
| Type | T-27 (tankette) | T-26 | BT-5 BT-7 | T-35 | T-28 | T-34 | KV-1 | KV-2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 3 110 | 9 686 | 7 502 | 61 | 503 | 1 244 | 424 | 213 |
The experience of Ivan Cherniakhovsky, Soviet tank general, according to the book by Akram Sharipovː
Colonel General F. Kuznetsov heard the considerations of the heads of the armies (...) then gave the floor to Cherniakovski:"Camarada colonel," the commander in chief asked. Could you, in the role of head of the army, communicate your considerations about the use of the machined body in the defensive operation carried out in a Front?
- I can, Comrade General. It is known—Iván Danílovich said—that in Germany our military theory, developed and tested in experimental maneuvers and exercises has already been successfully applied. This theory envisages the cooperation of mechanized troops and tanks with large infantry, artillery and aviation units. With the particularity that a high rate of offensive is planned. The operational success becomes strategic with the introduction in the break-up of a powerful tank grouping and launching an aerial landing to the rear of the enemy. Hence the fragmentation of the Machined Body and the resubordination of tank divisions to infantry bodies, as some comrades have proposed, seems inconvenient to me. They listened to Cherniajovski with refocused attention. The most absolute silence reigned in the room. Ivan Danílovich continued: — In the West, the German army practically carried out our theoretical-military postulates last summer, throwing its battleships over Sedán and then against Cambrai, also achieved strategic success, piercing the Franco-belga defensive strip. In that battle, the Germans clashed with the British and French tanks. These were defeated because they were not able to use the mass cars, had a weak direction of the large armoured units and were not properly protected from the air (...) — It is natural that the question is imposed – he said Cherniajovski – of why our military theory, now verified in the battlefields of the West, we cannot use it ourselves, subjecting it, of course, to a critical analysis, not forgetting to pay attention to the problems of leadership and how to ensure the entry into the battle of the mechanized Body...Akram Sharipov, Cherniajovski: General T-34, (2009); pp. 97-99
Air Force
The Air Forces of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (VVS-RKKA) were in the process of modernization when Operation Barbarossa began. In 1941, most of the fighter units were equipped with Polikarpov I-16 or I-15 aircraft. These devices were good models in their day, but they were already out of date in 1941. The central districts were equipped with more modern devices, but lacked officers trained with these new models. The bomber aviation had a similar problem, being equipped for the most part with Tupolev SBs and still with few more modern units such as the Petliakov Pe-2. The objective by the end of 1941 was to have 106 fighter wings, of of which at least 22 should be made up of state-of-the-art aircraft. In 1939-1940, Soviet engineers were already producing excellent fighter models such as the Yak-3, the Mig-1, the Ilyushin Il-2 or the LAG 3. Another problem for the Soviet air force was the lack of bases in general and near the front in particular, so many were congested on the day of the German attack, facilitating their destruction on the ground. German Intelligence had calculated that between 1939 and 1940 the USSR had produced 5000 planes a year. Soviet figures were much higher, 10,382 in 1939, and 15,565 in 1940. By mid-1941, 3,700 new models had been produced. During the battles of Smolensk and Moscow, the USSR would eventually produce four aircraft for every device produced in Germany.
The experience of Aleksandr Yakovlev, a Soviet aeronautical engineerː
We were bitter that our aviation still has very few new devices: the process of its serial production only began to be deployed. In 1940 only 64 Yak-1 and 20 MiG-3 hunts were produced. The Pe-2 biting pump existed only in two specimens. In the first half of 1941, 1946 MiG-3, Yak-1 and LaGG-3, 458 Pe-2 bombers and 249 Il-2 assault planes were manufactured. For the time being, most Air Force fighters were old marks. But we had a lot of gadgets like that and that reassured us a little.Alexandr Yákovlev, The meaning of my life. Memories of an airplane builder, (1972), pp. 172, 173
Army
Soviet infantry (called riflemen) made up 75% of the bulk of the Red Army. There were 303 divisions when the invasion began, of which 178 were infantry, 18 mountain, 31 CEMZ motorized riflemen, and 2 independent motorized riflemen. The Soviet rifle division consisted in July 1941 of 10,859 men, with about 2,500 horsepower, and 200 trucks. He had various support weapons: 18 45 mm C/C guns, 10 37 mm A/A guns, 28 76 mm guns and eight 122 mm howitzers, as well as 80 mortars. The Soviet soldier stood out for his ability of resistance and determination, something recognized even by the Germans themselves.
During the first three months of the German offensive, the USSR lost more than 100 rifle divisions. Many of these soldiers came from the last levy of the spring and had little preparation. The rifleman's basic weapon was the 7.62mm Mosin-Nagant 1890/1930 bolt-action rifle. It was a robust and precise rifle, in addition the Soviet infantry had the SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle also 7.62 mm. By the start of the German invasion in 1941, the SVT-40 was widely deployed in the Red Army. In a Soviet division's Organization and Equipment List, one-third of the rifles were supposedly SVT-40s, although in practice such a standard was rarely met. The most widespread light machine gun was the 7.62mm Degtiariov DP-27, and the heavy machine guns, the DS-39 and the Maxim M1910, both 7.62mm. There was a serious shortage of anti-tank weapons during the first months of the war. This problem began to be solved with the production of the Simonov PTRS and Degtiariov PTRD anti-tank rifles, both 14.5 mm, in 1941.
Each unit of battalion size or larger had a kommisar (commissar), in addition to the usual commander. This was a joint command system introduced during the 1917-21 Civil War to keep professional officers, most of whom had served in the tsar's army, in check. The commissar was required to authorize any major order from the unit commander. Although some commissars used their position to intimidate the officers, quite often they turned away from purely military tasks in which they had no experience to devote all their time to the political and morale education of the soldiers. In January 1941, the Red Army began to modify the uniforms to better adapt them to the war conditions. The showy collar insignia gradually became subdued, and the enameled ones were replaced by metal ones.
After the first months of combat after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the most frequent thing was that the insignia of the entire Soviet Army were already adapted to the new standard. Soviet model 1935 field uniforms typically sported a muted khaki color called zashchitniy tsvet in Russian. The most common element in the field uniform was the gymnastiorka, a jacket similar to the traditional peasant shirt. The pectoral pockets of the officers' gymnastiorka descended in a "V" under the buttonhole, while those of other ranks were straight. There were two types of gymnastiorka, summer and winter. The summer one was made of cotton and a light khaki color, and the winter one was made of wool and a darker khaki color. The officers also wore a Sam Browne type belt with a red star on the buckle. The other ranks wore the same leather belt but without the star. Both officers and soldiers received trousers called sharovari, flared at the hip, similar to jodhpurs. Officers received black leather boots, and the rest could receive either an ancient model of boots with leggings, or other calls sapogi of leather or canvas and high cane. In 1936 the new steel helmet model was introduced to replace the earlier model based on the French Adrian helmet, although improvements were made to this new model in 1940. Officers generally wore a peaked cap even in helmeted units as a way of distinguishing their rank.
The Soviet rifle division in April 1941 was theoretically made up of: 14,483 troops, 3,000 horses, 558 trucks, 10,420 rifles, 1,204 submachine guns, 392 light machine guns, 166 heavy machine guns, 33 anti-tank rifles, 54 AA guns 45 mm guns, 12 37 mm AA guns, 34 76 mm guns, 32 122 mm guns, 12 152 mm howitzers and 150 Mortars. Although rare was the division that reached these figures.
Artillery
Artillery played a very important role in the Red Army thanks to the large number of pieces. However, because of their dispersal by infantry units, they suffered heavy losses during Operation Barbarossa. They were also in the process of modernization and homologation when the invasion began. Old-fashioned material from the time of the tsars was still in service: models like the 00/02 76.2mm, or the 1910 107mm. There was more modern material, such as the 1902/30 and L30-L/40, 76.2mm. Among the lightest pieces, the most modern was the Pushka obr. 1936. In the heavy artillery, the 152 mm model 1920/1930 field gun and the newest model of 1937 stood out. There was also artillery of 203 mm. There were few operational units of Katyusha rocket launchers in June 1941.
As already noted, the actual number of Red Army tanks, warplanes, and divisions was unknown to the German OKW and thus to Hitler. The analyzes of the situation of the Soviet Army by the German generals and by Hitler himself were based on the dismal performance of the Soviet troops during the 1939 Winter War against Finland, in which the Red Army suffered heavy losses in men and material on the front. to the much smaller and worse equipped Finnish army, which they were fighting. However, it was not all bad news. In the Far East, at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in the summer of 1939, Zhukov won an important victory against Japanese troops.
Navy
At the time of the invasion, the Soviet Navy numbered three battleships, seven cruisers (including four modern Kirov-class heavy cruisers), fifty-nine destroyers (including forty-six modern Gnevny-class and Soobrazitelny-class destroyers), 218 submarines, 269 torpedo boats, 22 patrol boats, 88 minesweepers, 77 submarine chasers, and a wide variety of other smaller vessels.
In various stages of completion there were another 219 ships, including three battleships, two heavy and seven light cruisers, forty-five destroyers and ninety-one submarines.
Included in the above totals are some pre-WWI ships (the Novik-class destroyers, some of the cruisers, and all battleships), some modern ships built in the USSR and Europe (such as the destroyer Taskent and the partially completed former German cruiser Lützow). During the war, many of the ships in the shipyards in Leningrad and Nikolayev were destroyed (mainly by aircraft and mines), but the Soviet Navy received captured Romanian destroyers and Lend-Lease small craft from the US, As well as the old Royal Navy. the battleship HMS Royal Sovereign (renamed Arkhangelsk) and the United States Navy cruiser USS Milwaukee (renamed Murmansk) in exchange for the Soviet part of the captured Italian navy.
The Purges
It had been thought that the Red Army was at a numerical disadvantage compared to the Wehrmacht precisely in the garrisons of the western regions of the Soviet Union, although adding the totality of available Soviet soldiers resulted in a higher figure than that mobilized by Germany and its allies. The Red Army could mobilize nearly five million ready-made soldiers as early as June 1941, but for such a difference to be visible in combat it was necessary first to mobilize large numbers of Soviet troops from Karelia, Siberia, Central Asia, and the Russian Far East region., mainly from the troops guarding the Japanese advances in Vladivostok.
The only major Soviet handicap seemed to be the lack of tactical preparation of its commanders for a German invasion, the shortage of officers, and the rigidity of command. After the "Great Purge" of 1938, Stalin had strengthened his power within the Soviet Union but for this he had ordered the imprisonment or execution of several thousand highly competent Red Army officers such as the aforementioned Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky, (whose ideas had influenced Heinz Guderian), to the point that of 90 Army generals, only six survived the purge, and of 180 military district chiefs, only 57 lived after the purge, almost two-thirds of the division and corps commanders. of the army had been arrested or executed. Among the minor officers the effect was less (less than 0.5% of Red Army officers were indicted during the process), however, they had to face the fact that between 1936 and 1940 rearmament policies were carried out that they doubled the number of units without increasing the number of officers at the same rate, so there was a shortage of officers. The officers were marked for the future, creating an environment of mistrust, apathy and lack of leadership, which would have consequences during the German invasion.
From the point of view of the USSR government, the purges were justified by the conviction that there was a plot under way against Stalin in the high command of the Red Army. Ludo Martens, a Belgian historian, points out in his book Another look at Stalin (1996), that there was an ongoing conspiracy between the revisionists of the communist party such as Bukharin and a group of Soviet soldiers. With the purge he had eliminated most of the remaining bloc of ex-Tsarist officers, but it also eliminated many revolutionary commanders who had emerged during the Civil War. It has been suggested that behind the alleged Trotskyist conspiracy would be the hand of a German officer named Reinhard Heydrich, who would have leaked to Stalin the apparent intentions of said Soviet officers.
Vladimir Fiodorovich Alliluev's assessment:
Stalin was a tough and severe person. Although we can say without fear of mistake that in those circumstances he had no choice. What happened in the years 1936 and 1937 was a difficult, extreme situation with intrigues, conspiracy, theft and sabotage. Similar elements were given to the current situation. But Stalin did not choose to shut up. Otherwise, he chose to act. The existence of the USSR was at stake. When reading my father's diary, I realized what the situation in Georgia or Kazakhstan was for example in those years. The situation was hellish, terrible. You can talk about an internal, corrosive fence that poisoned the job, did not let people work and did not allow to organize the economy. And it came in 1937. And even though Stalin had warned several times before that the intrigues and conspiracy had to be put aside, which should not be robbed, which had to form pictures and organize the economy, these groups continued on the same path and with the same attitude. And it all ended up as it's known. Without the arrests and judgments of those years, what people call the repressions of 1937, I don't know if we could win the war later. Even military commanders accused each other and sought compelling evidence and documents against each other. It is impossible to establish a single cause. On the one hand the conjures and conspiracy of the military and the politicians. We must not forget that some soldiers were very close to carrying out the military coups they were organizing. They may have lost the fact that they did not agree and there were several military groups that distrusted and faced each other.Antonio Fernández Ortiz, Go and fight!: Stalin through his close circle (2012) p. 74
In relation to the purge in the Red Army, the English historian John Keegan gives the following figures in his book Barbarossa, Invasion of Russia (1970):
Red Army in 1937, before the purge:
| Mariscales | Army commanders | Army Corps Commanders | Generals of division | Brigade Generals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 15 | 85 | 195 | 406 |
Red Army after the purge:
| Mariscales | Army commanders | Army Corps Commanders | Generals of division | Brigade Generals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 2 | 28 | 85 | 186 |
Kliment Voroshilov was removed from command in the General Staff in May 1940, being replaced as Defense Commissar by Semyon Timoshenko, who would become USSR Marshal along with Shaposhnnikov and Kulik. In June 1940, 1,000 new senior officers were promoted, including Zhúkov, Meretskov, Tyulenez, Apanasenko or Gorodovikov. These new senior officers undertook various programs to modernize the Soviet forces. They were still working on that task when Operation Barbarossa broke out.Both Timoshenko and Zhukov had proposed to Stalin a plan for a pre-emptive attack against Germany, which, however, he rejected because he did not believe that the USSR was still ready.
The Stavka
The General Headquarters of the USSR Armed Forces was composed of the following members as of June 23, 1941:
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Until August 8, 1941, Stalin will not take charge of the Great General Headquarters or Stavka. With relative frequency, military hierarchies will be altered by the direct intervention of Stalin.
Soviet deployment on June 21, 1941
Red Army general order of battle in June 1941:
- North: Lieutenant General Markián Popov, with headquarters in Leningrad. It had three armies (7th, 14th and 23rd), in addition to air force and defense. It had two army bodies (CE) mechanized the I and the X, two divisions and a brigade of independent riflemen. It also had fortification divisions, three NKVD regiments, two bus regiments and three engineers.
- Northwest Front: Lieutenant General Fiódor Kuznetsov, with headquarters in Riga. It had three armies (8th, 11th and 27th), in addition to air force and defense. It was composed of two army bodies (CE) machined on the III and the XII, and of the V airborne body (general I. S. Bezugliy). It also had other NKVD units (border guards). A total of 26 divisions were deployed, of which six were decorated.
- West Front: Army General Dmitri Pávlov, with headquarters in Minsk. It had four armies (3rd, fourth, tenth and thirteenth), although the 13th Army had no assigned military units, it had only one headquarters. In addition to the above-mentioned army, Pávlov had six machined bodies, the VI, XI, XIII, XIV, XVII and XX, and the IV aeroported body. It also had artillery and infantry units for the defence of fortifications. A total of 36 divisions were deployed, of which ten were adorned.
- Southwest Front: Lieutenant General Mikhail Kirponós, with headquarters in Kiev. It had four armies (5o, 6.o, 12.o and 26.o), as well as air force and defense. It had eight mechanized bodies, the IV, VIII, IX, XV, XVI, XIX, XXII and XXIV, and the I aeroported body and several artillery regiments. In total, 14 divisions were deployed, of which two were adorned.
- Front Sur: (formed June 25) Army General Ivan Tiulenev, with headquarters in Odessa. It had two armies (9th and 18th) in addition to air force and defense. It also had two mechanized bodies (II and XVIII), and the third airborne body and several artillery regiments. In total, 14 divisions were deployed, of which two were adorned.
- Stavka Reserve; It had six armies (16th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and 24th) and five machined bodies (V, VII, XXI, XXV and XXVI)
The border, with hardly any natural obstacles, still did not have adequate fortifications. In an effort to avoid any provocation against Germany, Stalin had ordered a large part of the units to stay away from the front line.
State Defense Committee since June 30, 1941
After the invasion began, and at the request of a group of Stalin's collaborators led by Beria, the State Defense Committee was established.
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Start of the invasion
German delays
The invasion was initially scheduled for May 15, but Mussolini's intervention in East Africa against British Somalia and, above all, his frustrated invasion of Greece during the winter of 1940 caused the operation to be postponed, as Hitler was forced to to help his ally by decreeing the invasion of Greece (Operation Marita).
On the other hand, as a response to the coup in Yugoslavia that replaced the pro-German government that had signed the Tripartite Pact, Hitler ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia (Operation 25). Taken together, the intervention of the Third Reich in Greece and the Balkans delayed Operation Barbarossa by four vital weeks. Heavy rains in May delayed preparations for another ten days. After this short campaign in the Balkans, the vehicles needed repairs, the men rest, and it took time to move them back to the eastern border. Many authors maintain that this delay was fatal in the long run for the German advance, as the High Command had already warned at the time.
On June 6, 1941, Hitler issues the Commissars Order drafted by Franz Halder Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command (OKH) and his staff, which ordered all political commissars to be executed immediately upon their death. captured without trial and without fear of possible liability later on. At about this time the German High Command also issued the Barbarossa Decree (signed on 13 May 1941) which allowed German soldiers to execute Soviet citizens for any reason, thereby which led to numerous war crimes and atrocities during the campaign. The decree exempted German soldiers from any form of prosecution for war crimes committed in the East. Halder also insisted that a clause be included in the Barbarossa Decree giving officers the right to level entire villages and execute their inhabitants.
That same day, June 6, Ion Antonescu, Prime Minister of Romania (1940-44), went to Berlin to receive instructions. On June 17, given the growing rumors of a concentration of troops on the Soviet border, Hitler set the invasion for the 22nd at 04:00 in the morning with the code name "Operation Barbarossa". Previously, other names such as "Otto", a name given by the OKH, or "Operation Fritz" had been considered. On June 18, Germany and Turkey sign a non-aggression pact. On Saturday the 21st, at 4:45 p.m., the Soviets pick up a radiogram addressed to von Kleist's 1st Panzer Army: “Narrations about Wotan's heroes. Don't play 15”. However, they fail to crack it.
Excerpt from a speech by Hitler to German generals in March 1941:
The war against Russia will not be a cavalry war: racial ideologies and differences are at stake, and will therefore be conducted with an unprecedented, implacable and inflexible hardness. All officers will have to get rid of outdated ideologies. I know that many of you, generals, cannot understand the need to use such means to make war, but... I insist that all my orders be fulfilled without discussing them. The commissars support ideologies totally opposed to national socialism; therefore, they must be liquidated. The German soldiers guilty of breaking international laws will be excused. Russia did not take part in the Hague Convention and therefore has no right.John Keegan. Operation Barbecue, invasion of Russia (1970) p. 49
Diplomatic activity
Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich, meets with Hitler on the afternoon of June 21 to finalize details. A radio message would be broadcast at 5:30 a.m. That same night, the German embassy in Moscow receives news about the arrival of an important message sent by the Reich Foreign Office. At that time, Ambassador Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg and his deputy Gustav Hilger were alone in the diplomatic headquarters, as the Nazi government had ordered days before that all German citizens and their families should leave Soviet territory. It is possible that Ambassador Schulenburg had already had indications that a German invasion was being prepared against the USSR for several weeks, so he could not have been surprised by the content of the message that would arrive from Berlin that night. That same day in the afternoon, Hitler sent a letter to Mussolini informing him of the decision to invade the USSR. At 03:00 in the morning, the German ambassador in Italy, von Bismarck, contacts Ciano, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, to deliver Hitler's letter where detailed the reasons that justified the aggression against the USSR. The minister phones Mussolini at dawn, who is angry that he was woken up in the middle of the night. The letter stated: "Whatever happens now, Duce, our situation cannot worsen as a result of this step; It can only get better." Mussolini gives immediate orders for Italy to declare war on the USSR.
Meanwhile, in Berlin the Soviet ambassador Vladimir Dekanózov, who had complained insistently throughout the afternoon about the constant violations of Soviet airspace by German planes, receives a phone call at his residence in Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, to be summoned to the office of Nazi minister Joachim Ribbentrop. Moments before the match, P. Schmidt recalls: «I had never seen Ribbentrop so nervous as during the five minutes that preceded Dekanosov's arrival. Striding like a caged animal, he measured from one side of his office to the other. "The Führer is absolutely right to attack Russia now," he said to himself rather than to me, as if he wanted to reassure himself in some way with such words. An officer surrounded by other German diplomats and officials handed him a formal declaration of war in which the Third Reich alleged a "Soviet betrayal" that forced the Hitler regime to "take military measures for its defense". The Soviet ambassador replies: "You will regret this insulting, provocative and absolutely rapacious attack on the Soviet Union! They will pay dearly for it!" As Dekanozov left the office without shaking Ribbentrop's hand, Ribbentrop addressed him one last time and said: "Say in Moscow that I was against the attack." After the meeting, Dekanozov he is interned along with the rest of the diplomatic personnel and then sent to the USSR.
There is no consensus among the authors as to whether the USSR was indeed preparing an attack against the Third Reich in the short term. Among German officers there were cases of generals denying that there was evidence on the Soviet side to suggest an imminent invasion, as was the case with von Rundstedt. On the day of the invasion, most of the states of alert decreed along the Soviet border came from local commanders without the knowledge of their superiors regarding the movements they could hear and in many cases see on the German side. The lack of preparation on the Soviet side, with many tanks or artillery batteries with hardly any ammunition, seems to indicate that at least the USSR did not have an imminent attack planned.
In Germany, at this time, Goebbels looks at his watch at 3:30 a.m. and says: “Our cannons will be thundering. May God bless our army."
When in Moscow Ambassador Schulenburg receives the message sent by his superiors from Berlin, he destroys the code books and secret documents and rushes to the headquarters of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, where shortly before dawn, he can meet with the Soviet minister Viacheslav Molotov, giving him a declaration of war in similar terms to the one delivered to Dekanózov in Berlin. Molotov receives the statement and comments to the German ambassador: "Do you think we deserve this?", with a tone of betrayed complicity. He accuses the National Socialist government of "bad faith and ingratitude", alleging that he had news that before the arrival from the German diplomat the Luftwaffe had begun attacking Soviet villages along the border.
Thus, on Sunday, June 22, 1941, at 3:15 in the morning, on a gigantic front of 1,600 km between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, the Germans mobilized 4,136,000 men: 3.5 million Germans and 1 million allies (Romanians, Finns, Hungarians, Italians and Slovaks), grouped into 225 divisions, along with 4,919 tanks and 4,006 aircraft, 49,592 artillery pieces, 629,200 transport units and 680,000 horses, making it the largest ground operation in history. The allied troops of the Germans do not have the same fighting spirit, but they will be useful both in occupation tasks and holding the front in secondary sectors. Initially, the Soviet surveillance posts were slow to react to the huge movement, it seems incredible that, despite the statements of the official Stalinist propaganda, Germany was actually attacking the USSR. To face them, the USSR had deployed 3,300,000 men, 15,470 battle tanks, 10,775 aircraft, 63,833 artillery pieces, 173,000 transports and 700,000 horses.
The German tank commander Otto Carius remembered the day of June 21, 1941:
When in June 1941 we were given our basic emergency rations we knew that something was about to happen [...] We moved to the border on June 21. After receiving a situation report, we finally learned of our next role in the events that were about to take place. A cold calm settled among the members of the division even though, in the background, we were all very excited. The tension became almost unbearable during the night. We practically left the heart of the chest when we listened to the bomb squads and Stukas bramar about the division in the east. Our commander had installed a civilian radio in his car, which proclaimed the start of the Russian Campaign five minutes before Time X.Otto Carius, Tigers in the mud (2012) p. 22
A few hours after the invasion began, Hitler left in his private armored train Amerika in the direction of East Prussia, where the barracks known as Wolf's Lair were located. > to direct operations.
Evolution of the invasion (June-November 1941)
The breaking of the front
Georgui Zhúkov, Marshal of the Soviet Union, on the day Operation Barbarossa began:
The morning of June 22, Timoshenko, Vatutin and I met at the office of the defense commissioner. At 317 hours I am telephoned by the head of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral F. S. Oktiabrski: "The anti-aircraft observation and surveillance system of the fleet communicates the approximation by the sea of many unknown planes; [...] At 3.40 hours the head of the Baltic district, General F.I. Kuznetsov, telephoned the enemy aviation flight on Kaunas and other cities. The sheriff ordered me to phone I.V. Stalin. I did it. [...] About three minutes later, Stalin took the headphone. I informed him of the situation and asked him for permission to undertake counterattack operations. Stalin kept quiet. I only heard her breathing. Did you understand me? He followed the silence. Finally, he answered: Where is the Commissioner of Defense? [...] - Come to the Kremlin with Timoshenko. And tell Poskrebiyshev to notify all members of the Political Bureau. [...] At 4.30 a.m. all members of the political bureau were present. The defense commissioner and I were invited into the office. Stalin was pale, sitting behind the table, with the pipe full of tobacco in his hand. He said, "The German embassy must be telephoned immediately. From the embassy they answered that the ambassador, Count Von Schulenburg, asked to be received to make an urgent communication. V.M. Molotov was commissioned to receive the ambassador. Meanwhile, the first deputy chief of the General Staff, Vatutin, announced that the German land troops, after a strong artillery preparation, had gone into the offensive in several sectors of the north-west and western directions. Soon after, Molotov rushed into the office: —The German government has declared war to us.Gueorgui Zhúkov, Memories and reflections (1990)
The experience of Mikhail Neishtadt, a signal operator at the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District, after receiving an urgent communication from the Red Army headquarters at 04:00 in the morning stating: "German troops have crossed the border of the Soviet Union»:
Still under the effects of shockThey had decided that our army—which was suffering from a demolishing attack—had not to respond. Perspectively, this reaction was clearly stupid, but we believed that somehow that would remain in nothing. My shift had to end at eight in the morning, but the municipal authorities had us locked up in the building until noon. In those horrible early hours, they did not want anyone to know about the German invasion; they clung to the vain hope that it would be some kind of misunderstanding that still had a solution.Michael Jones, The site of Leningrad: 1941-1944 (2016)
Soviet military defenses collapse as planned. The Luftwaffe managed to shoot down or destroy 1,200 aircraft before 12 noon that same day, of which 800 did not even take off. Hundreds of Heinkel He 111s, Dornier Do 17s, and Junkers Ju 88s unloaded their bombs on planes, runways and installations. In turn, Ju-87 dive bombers perform low-altitude precision strikes against targeted targets. All were protected by squadrons of Me-109. In the belief that there was no German attack to fear, the General Staff of the Soviet Air Force had saturated its western bases with a large number of aircraft, without also giving them sufficient anti-aircraft protection, and without establishing communication systems that would allow quickly warn of an attack. Because of all these mistakes, Soviet aviation is easy prey for enemy bombers and fighters. German pilots have good advance information on Soviet airfields, allowing them to hit their intended targets with great efficiency. Some Soviet pilots try to engage the German planes, but most are quickly shot down by Soviet pilots. Luftwaffe. However, the Soviet pilots managed to shoot down a total of 143 German planes in the first 24 hours. The Luftwaffe only recognizes 30% of that amount.
Experience of Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Stuka pilot:
Faithful to our tactical mission, we were continually at the forefront of our first stages of the offensive. [...] Our objectives did not vary: armoured, vehicles, bridges, fortified positions and DCA batteries. From when we are asked to cut a railroad or re-pack one of the armoured trains that the soviets both like to use and artillery support. In one word, it is annihilation of all resistance that opposes the advancement of our offensive battles. The Russians defend themselves as they can. Its anti-aircraft, heavy or light is almost always frightening. On the contrary, their aviation is not at all dangerous. As far as their hunting is concerned at the moment they have only old-fashioned planes: the Rata J-15, which are far from worth what our Messerschmidt 109. Every time these bastards stumble with our hunt, they fall one after the other. [...] Often the Soviet airmen make nocturnal incursions on our positions, in order to make it difficult for us to find reinforcements and supplies and also to prevent us from sleeping. Although they only get small results, they don't get discouraged.Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Pilot of Stukas (2009)
Simonov's experience, a Soviet citizen, about the beginning of the German invasion:
"For my generation, those who were eighteen years old around the time when Hitler ascended to power in 1933, the war with Germany was always imminent," Simonov recalled in the 1970s. For us that war did not begin in 1941, but in 1933. »Orlando Figes, Those who whisper: The Repression in Stalin’s Russia (2009)
The experience of Guena Iushkévich, a Soviet citizen, about the beginning of the German invasion. On June 22, 1941 I was 12 years old:
The morning of the first day of war... Our neighbor was married to a military man. He went out to the courtyard with his face bathed in tears. He whispered something to my mother and signaled her to keep it a secret. Everyone was afraid to utter the events aloud, even though they were all already informed. They were afraid of being accused of agitators. Of troublemakers. That could be worse than a war. They were so afraid of a complaint... I see it now. So, of course, nobody just believed in the possibility of a war. Our army protects borders, our bosses are in the Kremlin! The country is protected, it is impenetrable for enemies! That's what I thought then... He was a young pioneer. We put the radio to full volume. We were all waiting for Stalin to give a speech. We needed his voice. But Stalin didn't say anything. Mólotov spoke. We all listened. Mólotov said: "War." But no one believed it. Where was Stalin? Suddenly some planes appeared... Tens of unknown planes. With drawn crosses. They covered the sky, covered the sun. The bombs began to fall everywhere... (...) No one around us spoke the word "war", another word was heard: "provocation". They all repeated it. It was said that our troops would go through the attack from one moment to another. Stalin had already given the order. They all believed that.Fragment of the book Last Witnesses: The Children of World War II, (2016) written by journalist Svetlana Aleksiévich
Coordination between the Wehrmacht's ground and air weapons allows the Germans to rapidly defeat surprised Soviet garrisons. In less than 24 hours, the Germans managed to advance between 10 and 60 kilometers depending on the location. On the contrary, the Soviet units suffer from lack of coordination mainly due to the oversizing of the size of the Red Army, the lack of competent officers, as well as the subordination of tactical orders to political interest. In addition, due to a ruling by the then commander of the Western Front, General Pavlov, the armies of the front were left in positions that favored their pocketing through three salients. Bombers and artillery dropped their bombs on a specific sector of the front, opening a gap in the enemy lines that allowed the penetration of panzers and mobile infantry. Immediately afterwards, they surrounded the Soviet units from the rear, sowing chaos. German grenadiers supported by tanks, anti-tank guns and artillery surrounded the villages within range. The Soviets are unable to deal with these coordinated attacks with waves of Stuka dive bombers. “Russians are fleeing everywhere, and we are following them,”, says Fuchs. "We all have faith in a speedy victory". Sometimes the Germans break into cities so quickly that the trams are still running.
During the first hours, Stalin and his generals thought that Hitler was blackmailing the USSR, and that in a few days he would present a series of demands that could perhaps give rise to a new treaty of Brest-Litovsk. His first reaction is to order not to go on the offensive and not try to cross the Bug. However, at 8 in the morning, 4 hours after the start of the invasion according to Moscow time, the Soviet government became aware of that this is a real large-scale invasion of the USSR. The first order not to respond to the attacks is cancelled, and the order is given to go on the offensive with the bombing of cities such as Königsberg and Memel.
The British historian Antony Beevor, in his book Stalingrad (2004) states: “The leader most famous for his ruthless cunning had fallen into a trap that was largely the product of his own actions». Eric Hobsbawm, historian of British origin, states in his book History of the XX century (1999): «It was such a crazy operation —since it forced Germany to fight on two fronts— that Stalin did not imagine that Hitler could attempt it. But in Hitler's logic, the next step was to conquer a vast land empire in the East, rich in resources and menial manpower, and like all military experts except the Japanese, he underestimated the Soviet capacity for resistance. /i>.
The British historian John Keegan states in his book Operation Barbarossa, Invasion of Russia (1970) that Stalin and his General Staff were not totally surprised by the German attack and even went so far as to issue orders alerting the staffs of the military districts but with very little margin so that the pertinent measures could be taken. This, together with another problem, that the Soviet borders of 1941 had been occupied a short time before, in 1939, and were not yet properly organized, helped to collapse the Soviet defenses. The British historian Robert Service, in turn, points out in his work Stalin (2006), that Stalin came to believe at first that the invasion order could not come from Hitler himself, but from a conspiracy within the Wehrmacht.
When Timoshenko expressed his doubts about this, Stalin said: "if it were necessary to organize a provocation, the German generals would be capable of bombing their own cities". Service points out in turn that although it is true that there were many reports indicating German intentions to Moscow, there were also indications to believe that the Germans would not attack so soon: «Although he had humiliated France, Hitler had not managed to mortally strike England. His armed forces had also been in trouble in the Balkans in the spring, when Yugoslavia's resistance to German occupation kept troops needed for Operation Barbarossa busy. There were also some reports from Soviet agents denying that a German attack was imminent.
June 22 was the last time Stalin saw his son Yakov Dzhugashvili. When they said goodbye, Stalin told him: "Go and fight". On July 16, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. Despite being upset by the news of the start of the invasion, the following day he kept a tight schedule of meetings with members of the Supreme Command or Stavka. On June 23, it was configured as follows: Timoshenko took over the presidency. This body also included Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Budionny, Zhúkov and Kuznetsov.
Mentally overwhelmed by the situation, Stalin retired on June 29 to his dacha in Blízhniaia. After remaining missing for more than 24 hours, a group of personalities headed by Molotov decided to go looking for him to try to get him back. When Stalin receives the entourage, he at first thinks that they are coming to arrest him. However, Molotov immediately raised the need to create a State Defense Committee, and proposed that Stalin preside over it. Beria suggested adding himself and Molotov, Voroshilov and Malenkov to the committee.
On July 1, the news was communicated to the press, and Stalin was once again at the head of the country. During a speech by Nikita Khrushchev before the XX Party Congress in February 1956, he said: "After the first disaster and the first serious defeat suffered at the front, Stalin thought that the end had come. In one of the speeches he gave at that time, he assured: "We have lost forever what Lenin created! & # 34;. After that, he spent a while doing nothing at all ». Khrushchev implied that Stalin fell into inaction between June 21 and 29. However, Steven Main, in a work carried out at the University of Edinburgh, affirms that, reviewing Stalin's meeting diaries, it cannot be proven that this story was real. According to Main, on June 27 Stalin worked approximately ten hours, and on the 28th about five. Between June 22 and 28, and according to what Main found in the diaries, Stalin worked 168 hours.
In the following weeks and months and as a consequence of the German invasion of the USSR, the international map of alliances is being reorganized. The allied countries and satellites of the Third Reich are declaring war or breaking with the USSR: Italy and Romania do so on June 22. Slovakia does it on the 24th. Finland does it on the 26th. Hungary does it on the 27th. On the 30th there is a diplomatic break between Vichy France and the USSR. In turn, on June 22 and 23, the British and US governments declare their support for the USSR. On July 7-8, US troops arrive in Iceland. On July 12, the USSR and the British government sign a cooperation agreement. On July 28, Finland and Great Britain break relations. On July 30, the USSR government and the Polish government in exile sign an agreement in London to train a Polish army on Soviet territory. On August 14, Roosevelt and Churchill agree in the text of the Atlantic Charter to defeat the Axis. On August 16, the Soviet and British governments sign a trade agreement. The USSR accepts help from the US and Great Britain. On September 17 USSR and British forces occupy Tehran (see Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran). On November 12, Bulgaria declared war on Great Britain, although it would remain neutral in the war against the Soviet Union. On December 7, Japan attacks the US at Pearl Harbor. Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese government declares war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. On December 11, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States.
In five weeks, the Soviet Army loses approximately one million soldiers between the Bug and Smolensk. Many of the units are trapped and surrounded by the German columns, and after a short time, without supplies or communication, they end up surrendering. The Soviet tanks exhausted their reserves of armor-piercing ammunition in a short time and were powerless to stop the German panzer. Because the Panzerdivisionen had the order to advance at full speed, leaving the infantry the task of finishing off the Soviet pockets trapped in the rear. The rapid defeat of the Soviet forces causes panic among the civilian population. The Politburo, shocked by the events, maintains open radio communication with the German Foreign Office, and tries in vain to mediate Japan. Hundreds of thousands of people escape to the east however they can, by train or on foot. However, in non-Russian regions, the rapid German advance sparked anti-communist sentiment among the population. Many Soviets, including Jews, who did not know much about the Nazis, greeted German troops as "liberators". In the Ukraine, a woman declared years later: "The girls offered flowers to the soldiers and the people offered them bread." "We were very happy to see them. They were going to save us from the communists who had taken everything from us and left us to starve."
Churchill receives the news on June 22, at eight in the morning. He immediately asks that the BBC be informed that he will address the British people at 9pm. He spent the whole day preparing the speech. He finally declared: «I have been throughout those twenty-five years the most determined enemy of communism, but it is about destroying Hitler and the Nazi regime. The attack on Russia is the prelude to the attack on the British Isles... The combat of every Russian who defends the soil of his homeland is the combat of all free men». He soon offered help to the USSR. On July 12, the first tripartite agreement for the large-scale delivery of weapons, materiel and raw materials was signed, both from Great Britain and the USA. The Americans, in turn, offer a loan of one billion dollars without interest. The aid from the United States to the USSR had to initially overcome the reluctance of the State Department, which reacted coldly to the request to collaborate with the Soviet regime, and the War Department, which did not believe that the invasion campaign was to last more than three months. Roosevelt, however, preferred to listen to Ambassador Davis, who opined that Soviet resistance would "shock the world". Roosevelt viewed Stalin in 1941 more as an imperialist figure with territorial lusts akin to the former Czars than as a revolutionary champion. He thought that a realistic policy taking into account military power more than ideology would finally allow for a diplomatic understanding between the United States and the USSR.
Excerpt from Churchill's speech:
Hitler is a monster of evil, insatiable in his appetite for blood and pillage. Not happy to keep under his boot all over Europe, or to terrorize its regions with different forms of abject submission, he is ready to now perpetuate his commitment to butcher and emissary of desolation between the vast multitudes of Russia and Asia. The terrible military machinery, which so stupidly, abúlica, and foolishly we have allowed us to accumulate year after year—both we and the rest of the civilized world—to the Nazi mafias, which were almost zero, cannot remain inactive, as otherwise it would be filled with oxide or would end up torn apart. It must remain in constant motion, obscured in shattering people's lives and trampling the homes and rights of hundreds of millions of people. For all this, these blood-threatening sabandijas are now preparing to launch their mechanized armies over new fields of slaughter, looting and devastation.Andrew Roberts (2019) Churchill: The biography
In Germany, the news of the start of the invasion of the USSR is received by the people with resignation, hoping that it would be the last major offensive of the war. At 07:00, Gobbels reads a message from Hitler: «Sentenced to months of silence, German people, now I can finally speak freely. Right now a march is taking place, which in its length is compared to the largest the world has ever seen. I have once again decided to place the fate and future of the Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers. May God help us, especially in this fight". Despite initial gains, Stalin's declaration of "Patriotic War" causes concern among some German officers. The German Army Chief of Staff notes: «Everywhere, the Russians are fighting to the last man. They only capitulate occasionally". Gudrun Himmler, daughter of Heinrich Himmler, was 12 years old when the German invasion of the USSR began. On June 22, she wrote to her father: «It is terrible that we wage war on Russia. They were our allies. Russia is sooo big! If we take all of Russia, the fight will be very difficult. » Himmler, unlike his daughter, was very clear about the ideological and racial motivations of the Third Reich's aggression against the USSR.
In a speech to a reinforcement group of the Waffen SS leaving for the front during the first month of the campaign, he said: "To you SS men, I need not say For a long time — for more than a decade — we, the old National Socialists, have fought in Germany against Bolshevism, against Communism. Today we can assure one thing: what we predicted in our political battle was not exaggerated in a sentence, not in a single word (...) It is a great heavenly blessing that, for the first time in a millennium, fate has given us this Fuehrer. It is a stroke of luck that the Führer, in turn, decided, at just the right time, to upset Russia's plans, thus preventing a Russian attack. This is an ideological battle and a race struggle».
Hundreds of anti-communist volunteers who want to participate in the invasion of the USSR come to the recruitment offices all over Europe: French, Danish, Belgian, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Swiss... In Spain the news of the invasion provokes On June 23 and 24, two Councils of Ministers in El Pardo where the international situation is analyzed to determine what role the Franco regime will adopt in the following days. A demonstration in front of the General Secretariat of the Falange is used by the minister of Foreign Affairs, Serrano Súñer, to lean out on the balcony and launch the phrase: «Russia is guilty of the Spanish Civil War!». The Franco regime decides to send a division of volunteers to the Russian Front, which would end up being mixed between professional soldiers and Falangists. Spanish casualties in the entire Soviet-German conflict amounted to 22,700 - 3,934 deaths in battle, 570 deaths from disease, 326 missing or captured, 8,466 wounded, 7,800 sick and 1,600 frozen. On the other hand, after a trip by the Falangist Gerardo Salvador Merino to Germany, the Spanish government signs an agreement with the Deutsche Arbeitsfront to send 100,000 workers to the Third Reich. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Spaniards will attend the offer. Despite the German wishes to unite Spain with the Axis powers, the dispatch of this division will not be the prelude to the Franco government's formal declaration of war against the USSR. Ribbentrop invited Franco to make his commitment more formal, however he claimed that he could not because Spain could not withstand an allied naval blockade. When Samuel Hoare, British ambassador to Spain between 1940 and 1944, reproached Franco for sending the volunteer division, he replied that there are two wars underway: on the one hand against the allies, and on the other against Russia. Spain took sides in the second without declaring war on the Western allies.
On July 3, Stalin addressed the Soviet people for the first time to warn that this was not a conventional war, but that the survival of the USSR itself was at stake. He does not appeal to the revolution or the communist regime, but comes out in defense of the "Motherland" while invoking national heroes. That same day, General Pávlov and his General Staff were tried in a court martial for incompetence and shot.
June-July
Never in history has an operation of this magnitude been launched. The organization, communications and transportation techniques of the early 1940s XX century enabled the largest invasion operation to date. One of Hitler's statements prior to the start of the operation was: "When Operation Barbarossa begins, the world will hold its breath." Sixteen days after Operation Barbarossa began, the German army had captured 300,000 prisoners, 2,500 tanks, 1,400 guns and 250 aircraft.
After the rupture of the Stalin Line, Hitler and his generals would face the dilemma of going north or south. In the immense areas that are falling under German control, a program of persecution of people considered by undesirable Nazis such as Jews or partisans acting in the German rear. The five motorized divisions (they also had tanks) of the Waffen SS involved in Operation Barbarossa, under Himmler's orders, will act with great zeal and ferocity to carry out military operations on the one hand and on the other his mission of extermination. By the end of 1941, the fame of the Waffen SS as effective and brutal units would be known throughout the German army.
In the face of rapid advances, the feeling of victory is contagious among the commanders of the German Army. On July 3, 1941, Halder states: "It is not an exaggeration to say that the campaign against Russia has been successfully concluded within a fortnight." This feeling of victory contrasted, however, with the logistical problems that were beginning to arise in the invasion forces. Some units do not even receive enough rations already in July.
Excerpt from Pravda reporting on the creation of the Constitution of the State Defense Committee on July 1, 1941:
Constitution of the USSR State Defense Committee: The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Central Committee of the PC and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, in view of the extraordinary situation and in order to quickly mobilize all the forces of the peoples of the USSR to resist the enemy that has attacked our homeland, have recognized as necessary the constitution of the State Committee of Defense under the presidency of comrade Stalin. In the hands of the State Defense Committee, the fullness of powers is concentrated in the State. All citizens and all organs of the Party, the State, the Komsomol and the military are obliged to comply absolutely with all the resolutions and provisions of the State Defence Committee.(Pravda1 July 1941)
Experience of Vasili Grossman, Soviet writer and journalist:
The German hordes advanced from the west. Its tanks exhibited as emblematic skulls with cross tibias, green and red dragons, wolf mouths, fox tails and deer heads. Each German soldier carried in his pockets photographs of the defeated Paris, of the destroyed Warsaw, of the dishonored Verdun, of the Belgrade reduced to ashes, of Brussels and Amsterdam, of Oslo and Narvik, of Athens and Gdynia invaded. [...] And tens of millions of men stood up to face them, men from the lipid Okah and the breadth Volga, the grim and yellow Kama, the sparkling Irtysh; the steppes of Kazakhstan and the Donetsk basin; the cities of Kerch, Astrakán and Voronezh. The people organized their defense: tens of millions of faithful arms dug anti-tank ditches, trenches, shelters and wells; [...] the fences wrapped the territories of the factories and companies; the iron bars became anti-tank hedgehogs, closing the squares and streets of our small and dear cities, full of greenery.Vasili Grossman, Years of War (2009)
Excerpt from an interview conducted with a Soviet veteran by the Belarusian journalist Svetlana Aleksiévich:
"Year 1941... They surrounded us. With us was Lunin, the political instructor... He read before us all the decree saying that the Soviet soldiers did not surrender to the enemy. Comrade Stalin had said that among us there were no prisoners, only the traitors. The boys pulled the guns... Then the political instructor said, “Do not do it. Live, boys, you are young.” And he shot himself..."Fragment of the book War has no woman's face, (2015) written by journalist Svetlana Aleksiévich
Army Group North. Marshal von Leeb notes that he does not encounter much resistance and advances between 30 and 40 kilometers a day through Lithuania. This will be true with armored units, but for infantry units, these first few days will in fact be some of the most difficult. bloodiest of the campaign.
In the northern sector, artillery preparation begins at 03:05 in Germany, 04:05 in Moscow. 280mm rail guns with a range of 14 kilometers are used. The sappers clear the obstacles on the border and behind them the infantry advances followed by the vanguards of the panzer units. In the early hours of the morning of the first day of the invasion the Germans capture the bridges over the Niemen River intact. Soviet forces around Raseiniai, 75 kilometers from Kaunas, were attacked by units of the XLI Panzer Corps commanded by Generaloberst Erich Hoepner after a previous attack by the Luftwaffe .
Colonel Kuznetsov orders a counterattack maneuver flanking the German units. The Germans are surprised when they face the Soviet KV-1 and KV-2 tanks for the first time. The German panzer received the order to immobilize them by attacking from behind with fire focused on their chains and then concentrating the 88 mm anti-aircraft guns on the Soviet tanks. A single KV-2 tank located at a crossroads in the vicinity of Raseiniai manages to stop the advance of the 6th Panzer Division for a few hours. After the end of the day, the Soviets around Raseiniai have lost more than half of their 1,400 tanks, although the majority were the now obsolete T-26s. On June 23, the Germans continue their advance and take Kaunas and Vilna on the 24th.
On Thursday the 26th they capture Daugavpils and on the 27th Liepāja, a city located to the west of Latvia, in the Baltic Sea. On July 1, Leeb's forces took control of Riga, the capital of Latvia, to then advance in the direction of Pskov, which fell on the 3rd of that same month. The Soviets unsuccessfully counterattacked on July 6 with the aim of stopping the German advance towards Pskov, losing 140 tanks in the action. On July 14 Luga falls, allowing German forces to be only 200 kilometers from Leningrad. The Soviets mobilize all the soldiers and inhabitants of the city to raise the defenses at full speed: anti-tank ditches, blockhouses, barricades, trenches...
On July 18, food rationing was established for the population. On July 20, the Soviets counterattacked for 48 hours in the Novgorod area, although the Germans hold their positions. On July 30, the Wehrmacht reaches the shores of Lake Ilmen. Leningrad is only 120 kilometers away.
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On June 22, on the Norwegian front, the German 2nd Mountain Division began Operation Renntier, reaching Liinakhamari, in Soviet territory. On June 25, the Swedish government consented to the German 163rd Infantry Division crossing its territory from Oslo to Finland. The German major general, Eduard Dietl, with the objective of advancing towards Murmansk, 100 kilometers away, captured Titovka, but two Soviet counterattacks prevented him from advancing further. At the Soviet request, the British sent two aircraft carriers to the White Sea on July 23, two cruisers and six destroyers. On 30 July, British aircraft bombarded Kirkenes, Petsamo (present-day Pechenga) and Liinakhamari but soon after, after suffering heavy losses, returned to Scapa Flow.
The Baltic Fleet forms a group of destroyers and patrol boats under the command of Rear Admiral W.P. Drozd to attack German convoys in the Gulf of Riga. On July 12 and 13, they attack the barges that transport material without being able to finish them off. The Soviets fire at a long distance for fear of the German torpedo boats.
Army Group Center. At 01:00 a.m. on June 22, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov telephoned Dmitri Pavlov, commander of the Western Front, to inquire about the situation on the border. Pavlov informed him that there were important troop movements on the German side. He is ordered not to respond to any provocation. At 03:05 (German time), after intense artillery preparation, units of the German 9th Army and Panzergruppe 3 penetrated the territory of the Soviet Union, followed not far behind by the vanguard. of the 4th Army and Panzergruppe 2. They are a total of 51 divisions, which added around 1.2 million soldiers. Pavlov received a call from Lieutenant General Vasily Kuznetsov, who informed him of the following: «...Artillery and automatic weapons fire has been opened on all fronts. Over Grodno up to 50-60 planes bomb the headquarters... I have to take refuge in the basement...». Pavlov orders his troops to implement the "Grodno-41" plan in response to the attacks. Ten minutes later, he received a new call, this time from the army located in Kobryn to inform him of the artillery attack they are suffering. He orders them to counterattack. Immediately afterwards, communications are interrupted.
Although the German divisions do not have difficulties in the assault on the positions behind the Niemen and Bug rivers, although it is true that it was the German aviation that helped the assault decant on the German side, they find themselves with significant resistance at the Brest-Litovsk fortress. A force estimated at around 4,000 fighters hold off the assault by the German 45th Infantry Division for weeks. The Brest-Litovsk Fortress is subjected to a heavy artillery barrage at 03:15 with «Karl» guns and 150mm Nebelwerfer rocket launchers plus three 210mm mortar batteries. Four minutes later, German troops cross the Bug with launches. The Germans try to immediately capture the Terespol bridge, but are met with significant Soviet resistance. At 04:00 the German bombardment fire concentrated on the barracks, accesses and bridges of the fortress. Two battalions remain inside due to the impossibility of leaving the compound.
The fortress has walls, towers and a moat, which unexpectedly serve as protection against assaults and artillery fire. Even after opening several breaches, the German infantry suffer heavy casualties as they fight their way through the narrow streets under sniper and machine gun fire. At 12:00 Schliepper communicates to the Army Corps that the citadel is still in Soviet hands and that the German casualties suffered in the assault up to that moment are high. At 18:30 Günther von Kluge orders the assault to stop in order to subdue the city through a prolonged siege and reduce German casualties. The division used has had as many casualties in 24 hours as in the six weeks of the campaign in France. For the Spanish historian Álvaro Lozano, the assault on Brest-Litovsk could be considered a foretaste of what the Germans would find in Stalingrad in 1942. On the night of the 22nd or 23rd, Timoshenko telephoned Lieutenant General Ivan Boldin, Pavlov's second in command, and ordered him again not to counterattack the Germans. Many Soviets limited themselves to waiting in a critical situation for a offensive order from Moscow. German radio stations intercept Soviet communications asking what they should do about the Germans.
In the area from Bielostok to Brest, the forces of the German 4th Army are advancing. At dawn they have already advanced between 4 and 5 kilometers. 35 kilometers south of Bialystok, a witness recounts: «...the population of Bielsk Podlyaski woke up from the cannonade and gathered in the square trying to find out what was happening. Then Ju-87 dive bombers flew over the city. In a matter of 5 to 7 minutes a concentration of twin-engined bombers made their appearance. The bombs fell on the center of the city [...] Finished the bombardment, the Germans "sprayed" with machine gun fire the streets of Bielsk. They caused dozens of deaths and injuries among the civilian population». In the forests of Pratulin, at 04:45 on day one of the invasion, 80 panzers specially adapted for fording deep rivers plunge into the waters of the Bug. In its advance, only a breathing tube for the crew and the engine protrudes. Once they reach the opposite shore, the cars gather at the same point. Stalin is eager for accurate news from the front. He orders Marshal Shaposhnikov to go in person to the renowned Zapadny-Front (West Front) to get first-hand information.
Soviet units fought bravely, but the front crumbled as the hours passed. Hitler was in the "Wolf's Lair" observing the situation maps and proposing that the panzers return to the surroundings of Bialystok to encircle the Soviet 10th Army caused the first conflict within the OKW. Bock, Halder and von Brauchitsch are of the opinion that stopping the panzers is a mistake, however it is carried out. On June 25, Army Group Center was fighting three encirclement battles: one at Brest-Litovsk, another at Białystok, and the third around Vawkavysk. Not counting the delay of the encirclement of Brest-Litovsk, the German advance is notable although not as planned since the Soviet units did not automatically surrender: they surround twelve Soviet divisions in Biaystok and Volkovysk. On Sunday the 29th they surround another sixteen divisions west of Minsk, which hold out until July 9. Many soldiers and officers go into the Pripet swamps, starting a guerrilla war against the enemy occupation forces. The fall of Minsk It was a major setback for the Red Army. The Germans captured 287,000 prisoners. In turn they captured or destroyed 2,500 tanks and 1,500 artillery pieces (see Battle of Białystok-Minsk).
On July 8, tanks from the 17th Panzer Division skirt potato and corn fields around Sianno in the Byelorussian SSR, on the banks of the Dnieper. The Panzer IIIs have been fighting uninterruptedly for sixteen days and their tired crews are ordered to economize due to the shortage of ammunition. During a rest stop, the silhouette of a tank unknown to the Germans appears in the cornfield. Several Panzer IIIs come out to meet him and find their shots ricocheting off his turret. The Soviet tank continues its advance, overrunning a German 37mm anti-tank gun, leaving a Panzer III in flames. It moves freely for 14 minutes in the German rear until a 100mm gun manages to destroy it from behind. This is the first contact between the 17th Panzer Division and a Soviet T-34. These encounters are repeated all along the front and undermine German confidence in the capabilities of their own tanks.
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Guderian's chariots continue to Smolensko where they arrive on the 10th, the date on which the battle to capture this city officially begins. However, he must wait for the arrival of the infantry before he can storm the city. These waits they prove disastrous for the overall objectives set for the campaign. Once the forces are regrouped, von Bock orders the assault. From Vitebsk the 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups advanced in the direction of Dukhovschina, and from Orsha towards Yelnia with the idea of dividing and encircling the Soviet Armies Sixteen, Nineteen and Twenty located in the center of Timoshenko's front. At the same time, the left wing of the 3rd Panzer Group advances from its bridgeheads on the banks of the Dvina River towards Velíkiye while Guderian's right wing advances towards Roslavl. During the assault, the German troops encounter stiff Soviet resistance, a heavy artillery concentration, and a new weapon, the Katyusha rocket launcher.
Colonel General Yeremenko writes in his diary: "The effect of dozens of simultaneous explosions far exceeded all expectations. The enemy troops fled in panic. But our advance guards closest to the explosions also turned their faces, running, because they had not been warned of our intention to use the new weapon, in order to preserve secrecy." His presence, like the KV-1 and the T-34 was another danger warning for the German Army about the real military capacity of the Soviets. The Germans persevere in their attacks on the city and fissures begin to appear at different points in the Soviet defenses. On July 11, Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group captured several bridgeheads over the Dnieper south of Orsha and north of Novy Bikhov and from there launched the jump to Smolensko and Krichev the next day, overflowing from the north and from south to Soviet 13th Army. Part of the remnants of this army that do not manage to withdraw to the east entrench themselves in Mahiliou, delaying the advance of the 2nd Panzer Group for two weeks in its advance towards Roslavl.
On July 27, a meeting of Army Group Center commanders is convened in Nowy Borissow. Guderian comes hoping that they will order him to continue advancing towards Moscow, or at least Briansk. But he receives a memorandum from von Brauchitsch, instructing him that he must march towards the destruction of the Soviet 5th Army at Gomel. Guderian, who is promoted at the same meeting to Army Commander, is annoyed by the task of finishing off an enemy pocket located to his rear, a task, in his opinion, more typical of the infantry. But von Brauchitsch's orders emanate from Hitler's instructions embodied in Directive No. 33. Guderian, having been promoted, becomes independent of Kluge, commander of the 4th Army, against whom he had an antipathy, and falls under the direct orders from Bock. To evade the orders received for the moment, Guderian decides to take a delaying action in the assault on Roslav. That same day, Guderian receives a visit from Hitler's aide-de-camp, Rudolf Schmundt, under the pretext of to impose the Oak Leaves of his Iron Cross on him, but his main intention is to discuss his plans with him. He informs him that Hitler has not yet made up his mind whether he wants to give priority to Leningrad, Moscow or the Ukraine although in reality, shortly after Hitler would issue Directive No. 34 in which Army Group Center would be ordered to go on the defensive.
The 29th Motorized Division captures Smolensk on the 29th. For the Germans, the Battle of Smolensk is still not looking bad at the end of July, although it is becoming clear that the road to Moscow will not be easy. Among the prisoners from Smolensko was Yakov Dzhugashvili, Stalin's eldest son. The Germans were forced to halt the advance because of a force of 700,000 Soviets to the east of the city, isolated but well equipped, as they could cut the route of German supplies. Said force is not defeated until the end of August, disrupting the German calendar in its advance towards Moscow. Historian Robert J. Kershaw states in his book Tank Men: “By July 17 the vanguard pincers closed again on Smolensk, this time ensnaring three Soviet armies in a pocket. [...] It was at this moment that the Blitzkrieg gasped. There were no more German mobile units of appreciable size available with which to continue the advance eastward while the infantry divisions lagged so far behind. Despite brutal Soviet losses, the momentum of the Blitzkrieg had died just beyond the Smolensk "land bridge", the historic starting point in the direction of Moscow from previous invasions." Douglas Orgill, in turn, points out in his book The German Armored Forces (1974) that Hitler and his staff relied too much in 1941 on scarce, sometimes mediocre, German war material, both in vehicles such as aviation, and excessive confidence in the capabilities of the Wehrmacht. They did not pay much attention to essential aspects such as logistics or the reinforcement of the panzer divisions that were losing tanks as they advanced.
On July 21, the Luftwaffe launches the first bombardment of Moscow. The force consists of 195 bombers and their escort. However, given the large concentration of anti-aircraft fire, they fail to fly over the center of the city.
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Army Group South. At 03:15, German batteries and mortars open fire along the border. At the same time, German troops from the 57th I.D. regiments are crossing the Bug River in small rubber boats. In a few minutes they capture the Sokal bridge intact. I Panzer Group is the spearhead made up of three motorized groups and one infantry group. Marshal von Rundstedt is targeting the kyiv industry. On June 25 they take Dubno to immediately advance towards Rivne. On July 2, Germans and Romanians advance from Bessarabia (present-day Moldova) towards Odessa, while Kleist's armored units approach Zhytómyr and Berdýchiv. On July 10, von Rundstedt's forces are only 15 kilometers from kyiv. The Soviets counterattacked from Kórosten, being repulsed. In Uman, 50 kilometers south of Kiev, Germans and Hungarians close in on the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies, who hold out until August 8. At the end of July, the Hungarians manage to take Chisinau, in Bessarabia.
On July 8, Halder presents a very optimistic report: he affirms that of the 164 known Soviet divisions, 89 had been annihilated and that, of the rest, 18 were deployed on secondary fronts, of another 11 they had no news and that only 46 were fit to fight. On 12 July, a single StuG III assault gun commanded by Michael Wittmann managed to destroy six Soviet T-34/76s. On 19 July, Hitler, despite Brauchitsch's advice to the contrary, He made a decision of great importance in the entire approach to Operation Barbarossa: faced with the problem of having numerous troops compromised in the Smolensk pocket and not being able to advance towards Moscow, he ordered armored units of Army Group Center to move south to support von Rundstedt's forces in their advance towards Kiev. The result was OKW Directive No. 33, issued on 19 July, specifying that once the actions on Smolensko were completed, Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group and 2nd Army infantry would advance southeast. to finish off the Soviet 21st Army.
He also orders Army Group South to cross the Don to seize the Kharkiv industrial region and then advance towards the Caucasus. On July 23, a conference between Hitler, Brauchitsch and Halder takes place. The latter reports that the Soviet army still has at least 98 divisions, 13 of them armored. It is almost double the previous report, two weeks ago. Before Hitler's plans to continue advancing at the same pace but with less means, with panzer forces halved in a single month of fighting, Brauchitsch and Halder left in disgust. and they drafted a joint document where they expressed their discrepancies with Hitler. It was not possible to quickly take Moscow with infantry alone, and Panzer Groups 2 and 3 would only be available again at the beginning of September. OKH continued to argue that the best strategy was to continue advancing towards Moscow with all possible resources as the headquarters of the government, an important industrial pole and the nucleus of the railway network. With his capture, according to the OKH, the Soviet Union would be split in two. Hitler replied to these suggestions that none of his generals had a good understanding of wartime economics and that Moscow was a secondary target.
In the Black Sea the Soviets lose the destroyer Moscow during the bombardment of Constanta on June 26. The Leningrad-class destroyers Kharkov and Moscow, protected by the cruiser Voroshilov and the destroyers Soobrazitelny and Smyshleny, fired 350 shots at 19 and 20 kilometers away against the port's fuel depots without causing any damage. damage to their main target. The Romanian destroyers Marasti and Regina Maria counter-attack with twelve broadsides ten kilometers away. They have the advantage of clearly distinguishing Soviet ships thanks to the light of dawn. Both the Moscow and the Kharkov are hit, which begin their withdrawal pursued by Romanian torpedo boats, the Viforul and the Vijelia. At 04:24 in the morning, the Moscow entered a Romanian defensive minefield colliding with one of them. Following the explosion, she splits in half and sinks with 268 of her crew.
Some peoples like the Ukrainians or the Lithuanians receive the Germans as liberation forces. But Hitler, based on his racist doctrine of Aryan supremacy, despises the support of the Slavic peoples as unnecessary. As for the Russians or Ukrainians, Nazi ideology considered them Untermenschen or "subhumans", destined for exploitation and slow extermination by starvation, the Führer ordering that the Slavic population receive especially cruel and cruel treatment. brutal, to the extent of providing through written orders that there would be no punishment for Wehrmacht soldiers who commit crimes against civilians, however savage or atrocious (see Barbarossa Decree). This violent oppression, based on sheer Nazi racism, it caused the attitude of the civilian population to turn very quickly against the invaders, eliminating any option for the Third Reich to gain any degree of sincere collaboration. In addition, as soon as the German attack began, Himmler's special SS units, dedicated to the persecution and murder of Jews in the occupied Soviet territory, acted.
Stalin, in contrast, abandons the intimidating image that he had forged during the Great Purge and appeals directly to Soviet citizens calling them "brothers and sisters" in his radio speeches, to achieve through propaganda a firm adherence of the masses to the regime. Conquered peoples, sickened by German brutality, were inspired by Soviet propaganda that invoked all-Russian nationalism in opposition to the German threat (leaving aside ideological adherence to the regime). Both the Germans and the Russians brutally treat their prisoners, letting them starve to death—even registering cases of cannibalism—or directly shooting them. What was later called by the Soviets the Great Patriotic War began to show never-before-seen Dantesque edges of ferocity, impiety and mercilessness towards the enemy, justified from the propaganda point of view on the basis that the Soviet soldiers themselves had been able to see the type of brutalities committed by Nazi soldiers on Soviet civilians (including their families).
Experience of the German Field Marshal, Erich von Manstein, on the day of the start of Operation Barbarossa:
On 21 June, at 1 p.m., we received the order at the General Command to launch the offensive at 3 p.m. in the following morning. Luck was thrown! The small space we had in the forest sector of the north of the Niemen to deploy the Corps, allowed us to place only the 8th Panzer Division and the 290th Infantry Division for the attack on the enemy border positions that we knew garrisoned, while still leaving the 3rd Motorized Infantry Division south of the river. (...) already on that first day of struggle showed us his true face the enemy. One of our uncovered soldiers, whom the enemy had cut off, was later found dead and atrociously mutilated. (...) And it should not be the only revealing detail in the soviet way of understanding war, but very often the case in which the Russian soldiers would raise their hands in a sign of surrender would be given, so that the weapons would be taken by surprise as soon as ours approached them. As well as the treasury of the wounded who pretended to be killed to shoot mansava over the German soldiers who were leaving.Erich von Manstein, frustrated victories (2007)
Waffen-SS Kurt Meyer's experience of first seeing German soldiers executed on the Eastern Front:
I marched behind the avant-garde section and scrutinized the ground with my binoculars. I thought I'd distinguish an abandoned cannon on the slope. For the first time we had found an abandoned German weapon on the battlefield. [...] No soldiers, no living or dead. We slowly climb the slope. [...] we could clearly distinguish a large and a small stain. I dropped my binoculars, rubbed my eyes and caught them again. [...] Could it be true what I just saw? We traveled quickly the last two hundred meters. [...] The naked bodies of a company of brutally slaughtered German soldiers lay before us. His hands were tied with wire. His very open eyes stared at us. The officers of this company had perhaps had a more cruel end. [...] We found their bodies soaked and torn apart.Kurt Meyer, Farms (2016) pp. 103-104
The experience of Wehrmacht Lieutenant Heinz R. passing through the Ukraine with the 93rd Infantry Regiment on June 26, 1941:
We started again with the first lights of the dawn. The roads were bad, but, as it had rained, there was less dust. On not a few occasions we went through the countryside, because the roads were in a sad state. The houses were primitive, but they were not particularly dirty. [...] The roads had more and more mud [...]. Often they were invaded with weed, but still we managed to advance. [...] When the night fell, we arrived in the small town of L. On the periphery, ruins of houses were burning. The inhabitants had not fled. In a short time there were many soldiers questioning with insistence a Jew who, terrified, was unable to defend himself. He was lying on the ground, begging. They said he had been accomplice in the mutilation of two German airmen who had had to make an emergency landing. Soon afterwards I heard several shots. The next night I slept very well in the truck. In the morning, I found fuel and we could continue the trip with Berndt. At noon, we saw infantry soldiers combing the cereal fields and the farms, looking for the soldiers who had fled. Suddenly, strong detonations were heard. Snipers wouldn't let themselves get caught. In the end, fire was set on the farms where they hid. Then I continued my path on a motorcycle. At one point, I saw many Russians dead. But besides that I found nothing but dust and sun.Heinz R., Wehrmacht Letters: The Second World War Counted by Soldiers (2015)
Hitler's plans for the conquered territories revealed to his closest associates on September 17, 1941:
We need to master this region of the east with two hundred and fifty thousand men framed by good administrators. Let us take an example of the English, who with a total of two hundred and fifty thousand men — of them fifty thousand soldiers — govern four hundred million Hindus. Space in Russia must be forever dominated by the Germans. Our biggest mistake would be to educate these masses. All we're interested in is that these people are limited to interpreting road signs. They are currently illiterate and so they must stay. But we have to do, of course, that they can live with decency, something that interests us too. From southern Ukraine, particularly Crimea, we will make a colony exclusively German. It won't give me much work to disperse its current residents. [...] We will provide cereals to all those who in Europe lack them. Crimea will give us the fruits of the south, cotton and rubber (40 000 hectares of plantations will be enough to ensure our independence). [...] Ukrainians will be provided with cloths, glass beads and everything that colonial peoples like. The Germans, this is essential, must constitute a closed society as a fortress. Our last coacher must be superior to any indigenous. For German youth, this will be a magnificent field of experiences. We will draw Ukraine to the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish. The army will find maneuvering fields there, and our aviation will find the necessary space.H. Trevor-Roper, Hitler's private talks (2004)
August
Due to the complexity and need for resources and forces that the invasion is acquiring, it was decided to mobilize all males between the ages of 15 and 55 in Germany. The vast expanse to be controlled is beyond the capacity of the Wehrmacht. The front, which initially started with a length of 1,200 km wide, expanded to 1,600 km as it approached Moscow, a target located at a depth of 1,000 km. According to one estimate, such distances required 280 divisions to cover the entire front; the Germans invaded the Soviet Union with 127. German tanks were not sufficient for the mission entrusted to them in Hitler's Instruction No. 21. Douglas Orgill states in his book Russian Armored T-34 (1973): «If Hitler had been able to dispose of 2000 T-34s instead of 2000 Panzer IIIs the history of the war could have changed." The Wehrmacht soldiers begin to wail in their letters sent home. One can often read in emails that "three campaigns in France are preferable to just one in Russia". Contrary to popular belief, German casualties will be higher in summer than in autumn and winter.
In the occupied areas of the Soviet Union there is an increase in partisan activity. There are already approximately several thousand organized in small groups in the marshy areas of Pripet, in the rear of the German 6th Army. Throughout the following months your organization will grow. Moscow will send in specially trained officers and in turn will send supplies by air. At the end of the war it will have airfields, workshops, supply depots, etc. The German forces left behind to fight the partisans are made up of men between the ages of 35 and 45 considered too old to be part of the combat units. When partisans attack a German column, they usually do so far from the villages. They kill the driver and passenger of each vehicle since they do not take prisoners, and then look for valuable material and burn the remains. Because the distances are very large, it sometimes takes several hours for the military commander of the district to discover the attacks. Although still small, this partisan activity in the Pripyat marshes worried Hitler and the German General Staff as they perceived it posed a threat to the flanks of Army Groups Center and South.
In August Hitler falls ill for the first time in several years. His assistant, Ligne, finds him with a high fever in his bed in bunker number 13 of the "Wolf's Lair". Because of this disease, whose symptoms resemble dysentery, the Führer cannot attend a meeting scheduled with Keitel and Jodl for that same day. It will take him 24 hours to meet again with the General Staff. During those hours, the German generals try to act quickly and dispatch orders to the front following their own criteria and not Hitler's. When they meet again, and upon discovering that they have acted without following his instructions, the following conflict breaks out between him and the General Staff related to the priority of Moscow. Hitler did not consider it a priority, but his generals did...
Von Leeb's Army Group North maintains its advance towards Leningrad. On August 12, at Staraya Rusa, south of Lake Ilmen, the Soviet 24th Army launched a second counterattack against the right flank of the German advance. They are repulsed, although the German troops suffer significant losses and begin to show signs of fatigue. After repelling the counterattack, General Erich Hoepner's tanks entered Novgorod on Tuesday the 17th. That same day, the troops advancing through the Baltic took Narva. On the 20th Gatchina is occupied, 50 kilometers from Leningrad. The Soviets retreat to Leningrad, leaving behind 20,000 prisoners. The Germans take the important Mga railway junction on August 30, thus cutting the Moscow-Leningrad railway line. To the north, the Finns advance and on the 16th take Vyborg in the Karelia area. The Soviets evacuate the rest of their forces from Karelia and withdraw to Leningrad. Finnish Marshal Gustaf Emil Mannerheim aims to recover the territories lost in 1940, without advancing further into Soviet territory. Hitler will try to dissuade him from continuing, although without success.
On July 31, they take Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The Soviet naval base in the city had previously been evacuated by Baltic Fleet Admiral Vladimir Tributs, losing five destroyers and three patrol boats during the evacuation to mines and Luftwaffe attacks.
On the Norwegian front, on August 2, the Germans decide to attack the Litsa River again. On August 19, the British dispatch a second naval force to the Arctic: the cruisers Aurora and Nigeria, plus the destroyers Icarus, Antelope and Anthony and a passenger ship, the Empress of Canada, under the command of Rear Admiral Philip L. Vian. Its mission was to evacuate the 3,200 Soviet and Norwegian inhabitants of the island of Spitsbergen, the largest in the Svalbard archipelago, and to destroy the Barentsburg coal mining facilities. On August 31, the first of the allied convoys arrived in Arcángel from Hvalfjör∂ur, in Iceland. They drove six merchantmen, and the already outdated aircraft carrier Argus deposited 24 Hurricanes at Severomorsk, 25 kilometers from Murmansk.
Army Group Center maintains pressure on the Smolensk pocket, which holds out until August 25, for a total of 40 days. The delay will be of vital importance to the Soviets in preparing the defenses of Moscow. In his advance towards kyiv, Guderian faces various setbacks. The first of these, on August 1, is the Soviet 28th Army defending Roslavl. Three days later the city falls, leaving 38,000 prisoners. The captured enemy materiel, barely 200 guns, proves to Guderian that the city's forces were not a serious threat. The second is the 21st Army stationed around Gomel. The assault on this city will last 16 days due to the tenacious resistance of the Soviet soldiers.
On August 4, Hitler arrives in Nowy Borissow to see the situation at the front in person. Hitler did not know it, but during that visit he took certain risks since some of the officers of the Bock barracks began to consider the idea of seizing power from the Führer . The first conference since the start of the invasion takes place where Hitler, Schmundt, Field Marshal von Bock, the OKH representative, Colonel Heusinger, Hoth and Guderian are present. He then meets separately with Heusinger, representative of Halder, Bock, Guderian and Hoth. Everyone recommends the offensive on Moscow. Bock indicates that he is ready to start immediately but not his tank commanders, Guderian and Hoth, who demand a few days to be ready. Guderian recommends August 15 for the start of the attack on Moscow, and asks him for his part for motors for cars and new cars. Hitler does not grant him new tanks, which he prefers to reserve in Germany for the formation of new units, but he reluctantly gives up 300 engines, a figure that Guderian considers insufficient. Hitler acknowledges to Guderian that if he had listened to his 1937 report on the actual situation of the Soviet armored forces he would not have started the invasion. Historian Geoffrey Jukes states that such a statement by Hitler seemed to indicate that he himself The Führer also began to have doubts in the summer of 1941 about the final victory of the Third Reich.
On August 18, von Brauchitsch tries to convince Hitler to immediately resume the offensive against Moscow, pointing out that winter begins at that latitude five weeks earlier than in Ukraine, that is, in mid-October, and that the concentration of troops that are currently in front of the capital would allow its capture. Hitler replies that the panzer divisions advance too far from the infantry and that they are not effective in encircling the enemy, who often manages to escape encircling maneuvers. To settle the matter, Hitler, who considered himself a great strategist since the victories in the West, issued Directive No. 34 ordering Army Group Center to stop the advance towards Moscow and go on the defensive to in turn send forces from here in aid of Army Group South. The priority would be Ukraine, the Donetz basin, Crimea and the Caucasus oil fields. It is a crucial decision. The idea of taking Leningrad and Moscow is abandoned to devote all efforts in the Ukraine and the Soviet 5th Army.
On August 23, a conference is held at Army Group Center Headquarters where Halder outlines the details of the order. Hitler had finally decided neither for Leningrad nor for Moscow, but for the Ukraine and the Crimea. Halder exposes the risk of extending the campaign until the winter of not capturing Moscow soon. Guderian, in turn, testifies about the problems presented by the roads both for the approach to kyiv and for supplies. After a long discussion, they decide that Halder and Guderian would fly to Hitler's Headquarters to try to convince him to continue the offensive against Moscow. They left that same afternoon and landed in Lötzen at dusk. Guderian immediately goes to meet von Brauchitsch who tries in vain to dissuade him from the fact that he could inform the Führer about the situation of his Panzertruppe , but he should not discuss with him the matter of the assault on Moscow. Immediately afterwards, Guderian meets Hitler, who is accompanied by Keitel, Jodl, Schmundt (among others) and explains the situation of his Armored Group without mentioning Moscow. After the presentation, Hitler asks him: «Do you consider your troops, after the performance they have given up to now, capable of greater fatigue?» Guderian answers: «If the troops are set them a great target, understandably for all the soldiers, yes!» Hitler answers him in turn: «Your opinion, of course, Moscow!» Guderian admits that yes, that he thinks of Moscow, and taking advantage of the fact that it was Hitler who brought up the subject, he addresses the matter of the assault on the Soviet capital. In his opinion, advancing south would mean a waste of time and a waste of material and men, and he adds that his forces were ready to assault Moscow.
The capture of the capital would deprive the Soviets of a central point of communications and would have a negative effect on enemy morale. Hitler does not give in. He replies that he will not order the assault on Moscow until the operations in the south are finished. He also accuses German generals of not understanding wartime economics. He argues that the German army must gain control of the southern industrial zone, from kyiv to Kharkiv. And also from the Crimea, where the Soviets have airfields from which they can threaten the Romanian oil fields. Guderian, faced with the determination of the Führer and the silence of the rest of those present, and with the uncomfortable position of being the only subordinate in the meeting who is contradicting a superior, finally and resignedly accepts the idea to storm Kiev before Moscow. He suggests Hitler use his entire panzer division and not just part of it to ensure success. At dawn the next day Guderian meets Halder and tells him the final decision. Halder, upon hearing the news, suffers a "nervous breakdown". Russell Stolfi, in his book Hitler's Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted (1992), opines that if Hitler had ordered Army Group Center forces to assault Moscow in August instead of ordering them to stop, the Third Reich could have won the war against the Soviet Union by cutting off rail communications to the Soviet capital. Both the Soviet forces facing the Baltic countries, and the forces deployed along the Volga Valley, would have been isolated from each other.
On August 18, General Zhukov observes less activity in German troops in front of Moscow and begins to suspect that the Germans are gathering to march south. He contacts the Stavka suggesting to deploy more forces in Bryansk with the intention of hitting Guderian's division in the flank. On August 24, the forces of the 21.er Soviet Army make a desperate counterattack, being annihilated against the German defenses. After the capture of Gomel, Guderian continued his advance towards kyiv, 250 kilometers to the south.
Army Group South manages to wipe out the Soviet forces, the 6th and 12th Armies, who were holding out in Uman, capturing 103,000 soldiers. Mastering this pocket costs four weeks of combat and a great wear and tear of soldiers and material, as well as numerous casualties. During the first ten days of August, the Germans regroup in front of kyiv while waiting for Guderian's tanks, which, however, are bogged down in front of Gomel. On August 21, von Rundstedt decides to launch the assault, starting the fighting that would last nine days. At the same time, the Germans marching along the Black Sea captured the Nicolaiev base on the 16th, and Kherson fell on the 20th, very close to the entrance to the Crimean peninsula. On the 22nd, Nikopol was captured, where one of the manganese industries, and the 26 Dnipropetrovsk.
By the end of August, a large part of the territory and population of the Soviet Union had already been captured, but Stalin had initiated a grand plan for the transfer of industries beyond the Ural Mountains. Around Chelyabinsk will rise the complex called Tankograd, the Tank City. The working conditions will be very harsh, with temperatures of up to forty degrees below zero, working 16 hours a day in warehouses covered with canvas. On August 12, Italian reinforcements arrive. Reinforcements also arrive from Germany and the Netherlands.
Assessment by German General Franz Halder on August 11:
The global situation makes it increasingly clear that we have underestimated the Russian colossus... [Russian] divisions are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, if we crush a dozen of them, the Russians just put another dozen... they're close to their own resources, while we're moving further and further from ours. And so our troops, spread over an immense line of front, without any depth, are subject to the incessant attacks of the enemy.David Glantz & Jonathan House, When the titans hit: How the Red Army stopped Hitler (1995)
Franz Halder, who rose to Colonel General during the war, noted in his diary in August:
"I believe that the situation created by the Führer's interference is unsustainable to the OKH. No one but the Fuehrer is responsible for the advance in zigzag caused by his successive orders, nor can the OKH, who is now living his fourth victorious campaign, tarnish his good name with these last orders."Franz Halder, 1941
Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister of the Third Reich, noted in his diary in August about the relationship between Hitler and his generals:
"Brauchitsch has much responsibility. The Fuehrer only spoke of him with disdain. A bewildered, cowardly and vain who was neither able to assess the situation, not to mention directing it. With its constant interference and continued disobedience, it completely ruined the entire plan of the eastern campaign as the Fuehrer had designed it with absolute clarity. The Fuehrer had a plan that would most likely have led us to victory, and if Brauchitsch had done what was being asked and what he should have really done, our position in the East would be completely different today. The Fuehrer had no intention of going to Moscow; he wanted to isolate the Caucasus and thus attack the Soviet system for its most vulnerable point. But Brauchitsch and his staff were smarter. Brauchitsch always insisted on arriving in Moscow: he wanted successes that gave him prestige, instead of real victories. The Fuehrer slashed him as a coward and a papanat."Joseph Goebbels, 1941
The experience of Marina Tikhonovna Isaichik, a Soviet citizen, on the persecution and murder of Jews by German troops:
The Germans entered our village... They were young and cheerful. The noise was unbearable. They arrived in huge trucks and motorcycles that were on three wheels. I had not seen a motorcycle in my life (...) The Germans imposed their rules from the very beginning... There were many Jews in the village: Abraham, Yankel, Morduj... The Germans gathered them all and locked them up. I saw them go through their pillows and blankets when they were taken. They were pitylessly beaten. On the same day they gathered all the Jews of our region, they shot them. They threw the bodies in a ditch. Thousands and thousands of Jews...Fragment of the book the end of the “Homo soviéticus” written by journalist Svetlana Aleksiévich, p. 111
Vasili Grossman's experience in August 1941:
We spent the night in a huge multi-story building. It was desert, dark, terrifying and sad. [...] At night we woke up a dreadful buzz and went out to the street. German bomb squadrons flew east over our heads [...] He heard the roaring of the engines when they took off, dust and wind, that special wind of the planes, crushed against the ground. The planes went up into the sky one after the other, they turned around and left. And immediately the airfield remained empty and silent, like a classroom when the pupils leave it. [...] Finally, after a successful attack on a German column, the fighters return and land. The leader plane of the squadron had human flesh stuck in the radiator, because the support plane had reached a truck with ammunition that exploded at the time the leader flew over it. Poppe, the pilot, he's taking out the meat with some papers. They call a doctor, who carefully examines the bloody mass and finally says, "Carne aria!" Everyone laughs at the joke.Antony Beevor, Years of War (2015)
September
September brings various unforeseen events for the invasion forces, such as the lengthening of supply routes and the drop in temperatures. The wear and tear of the material and the growing fatigue of the troops is widespread because they have been fighting non-stop for 9 weeks. Armored divisions have only 50% operational tanks. The Germans generally have good equipment, but inadequate for the type of terrain where the fighting took place. On the other hand, the German command calculates that in September the Soviet Union has already lost 14,000 aircraft, 18,000 tanks, and 2,500,000 soldiers.
Army Group North is in sight of Leningrad. The aerial bombardments begin on September 1, and on the 4th the long-range artillery begins at the same time that the armored units reach their suburbs. Hitler decides to postpone the full-scale assault for fear of suffering many casualties from street fighting and opts to starve the city's population. The following attacks will be on a smaller scale with the objective of probing the defenses and looking for weak points. On September 8, the Germans capture Shlisselburg, thus managing to close the siege. The siege of the city begins, which will last 900 days, until January 27, 1944. Stalin decides to send Zhukov to take control and organize the defense, who flies from Moscow to Leningrad on September 10, along with a small number of helpers.
On the 11th, the Germans capture Dudernof, an elevation twelve kilometers from the city center. On the 14th, von Leeb decides to stop the ground assault since he does not have the necessary tanks, to have an important part allocated to the assault operation on Moscow. However, the bombardments of the city continue. The Blue Division that was supposed to participate in the assault on Moscow, however, is dispatched to the northern sector, next to Leningrad. The Spanish forces are disappointed when they march forward not in motorized columns, but on foot and loading their equipment into slow-moving animal-drawn wagons. For the Germans they will never be a vanguard unit, but will be deployed adopting a defensive position in a secondary sector of the front.
In the Baltic, the Kriegsmarine puts Otto Ciliax in order to deal with the Soviet fleet. It has the battleship Tirpitz, the heavy cruiser Scheer, the light cruisers Köln, Nürnberg, Emden, and Leipzig, plus three destroyers and four torpedo boats. After the capture of the Estonian islands Muhu, Saaremaa, and Hiiumaa, the Soviet fleet was surrounded in the Gulf of Finland and withdrew to Leningrad to defend the city.
On the Norwegian front, on September 8, Dietl informs Jodl that he can capture Murmansk but not Kandalakcha before winter sets in, and that it would be impossible to supply the troops if they remain in Murmansk. On September 15, Hitler considered the capture of Murmansk impossible. It is proposed that the Kriegsmarine carry out coastal bombardment, but finally on September 18 Dietl stops the offensive and orders the withdrawal of all troops on the opposite bank of the Litsa river. The German attack in this sector had cost 10,290 casualties for advance only 30 kilometers. The reasons were, on the one hand, the OKW's scant interest in the territory up to Murmansk, considered of little importance from a military point of view, and on the other, greater Soviet resistance than expected.
Army Group Center loses Yelnia, which is recaptured by Soviet forces. Zhúkov manages to eliminate the German salient at the cost of many Soviet casualties although he also causes many casualties to the enemy. Guderian is so short of troops that he even begins to use the same guard from Guderian's headquarters for combat on occasion. On September 5, the withdrawal of the 4th Army is ordered, simplifying the German defensive line. Soviet counterattacks in this sector will stop when Stalin sends Zhúkov to defend Leningrad.
In the central sector the German advance had stopped, which went from traveling from 28 to 32 kilometers a day to between 6 and 8 in August, and in some points such as Yelnia they even had to retreat. It is already clear that the total destruction of the Soviet Army west of the Dnieper-Dvina line was unattainable on schedule. Hitler made the decision on September 16, after the Directive that would trigger "Operation Typhoon", to re-allocate the tanks committed in the assault on Kiev for the central group, but the attack on the city would last until the 26th., forcing the postponement of the assault on Moscow until October. For the assault on Moscow, three Panzer Groups would participate: Guderian's 2nd, Hoth's 3rd, and Hoeppner's 4th. Bock has 78 divisions, of which 14 are panzer, 8 motorized and 46 infantry grouped into three Panzer Groups and three armies.
Facing the German forces are three Soviet fronts: the West with six armies; Briansk with three and an operational group, and reserve with six armies. Each Soviet army is at a disadvantage in firepower and number of troops against the German armies. On September 30, two days before the start of Operation Typhoon, Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group plunged northwest in the direction of Orel with the intention of breaking into the rear of Yeremenko's troops. The Soviet forces defending Orel are caught by surprise and the town is easily captured by Guderian's panzers.
Army Group South attacks kyiv in waves and hard. On September 15, Guderian's wagons meet Kleist's wagons at Lojvitsa. In parallel they capture Poltava and Kharkov on the other side of the Dnieper River. Kirponos decides to remain in kyiv to defend it, but Timoshenko and Khrushchev abandon it despite Stalin's orders. On September 17, the Stavka orders the evacuation of kyiv, but it is too late. Soviet troops try to break through the German encirclement to no avail. On the 26th the Germans capture kyiv. The Soviet Union loses 600,000 soldiers, of whom 330,000 are killed or wounded. They also lost 884 cars and 3,718 guns. Von Kleist's wagons cross the Dnieper, dealing with the growing problem of mud. Myrhorod is captured in mid-September, and Krasnohrad a week later. On the 21st the Wehrmacht began to enter the Crimean peninsula. On the 27th they already control access to the peninsula. For these dates, the Luftwaffe has lost 1,603 aircraft out of the 2,715 with which the campaign began. Most of the shootdowns have been over Soviet territory, so the pilots were killed or taken prisoner. Ernst Udet, inspector general of the Luftwaffe commits suicide after arguing with Hermann Göring over the apparent failures of German aviation. By the end of 1941, the Germans will have only 1,700 operational aircraft on the Eastern Front. At the end of the month, the Romanian 4th Army began the assault on Odessa, which nevertheless resisted.
The experience of the Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte in the Ukraine in September 1941:
I look closely at these Soviet boys of 1941, so different from those of 1929, of 1921.[...] One question:Cto eto takoie? What is it?" "It's a lemon," I respond. "A lemon, a lemon", the boys repeat themselves. The one at first tells me they've never seen a lemon. There, near a farmer's house, a girl stands by the door, signals us to enter. «Pajalauista, chaplainPlease, please," he says. We're in. On a bench are sitting an old man and a young man [...] The young man has a sick foot, all red and swollen, must be arthritis. He looks at me regretting:Manié boulnoIt hurts." And in the meantime watch the lemon, the girl and the old man watch it. The old man says, "But this is a lemon!" More than twenty years ago he had no lemon before his eyes. The old men, forty years old and up, remember the lemons. They are part of the memories of the old regime. But young people don't, they don't even know what they are. [...] The road is a mud stream. The rain has ceased, now blows a cold, insistent, arid and rough wind, like a cat tongue. [...] A half hour of rain is enough to change those Ukrainian paths in deep swamps. The war is debated in the vicious oppression of the mud, the German soldiers run from one horse to another, from one truck to the other, screaming. Nothing can be done. You need to wait for the roads to dry. The cannon thunders down there, behind that forest. Hey, war in Ukraine! Fuck the dust, you fucking slug! From the hills down a confusing estrépito, formed by voices and relinques. They are troops that arrive, they cannot go down, they must spend the night up there, tomorrow morning the roads will be dry.Curzio Malaparte, The Volga is born in Europe (2015)
October
On October 1, the German Army had 2,572 main battle tanks and assault guns in its inventory, although between 30 and 40% were not operational due to maintenance problems as a result of a lack of spare parts. On October 2 In October, an Anglo-American mission headed by Lord Beaverbrook and Averell Harriman signed a collaboration agreement with Stalin with the Soviet Union consisting of a commitment to send the Soviet Union 3,000 planes, 4,000 tanks, 30,000 trucks, 100,000 tons of fuel, etc.
Army Group North, the siege of Leningrad is maintained, although without planning any major assault or offensive, since most of the armored forces and the Luftwaffe are committed to the advance towards Moscow. Therefore, the German troops maintain a defensive position waiting for hunger and low temperatures to take their toll on the resistance capacity of the city located, the warlike actions are limited to the bombing of both civilian and military objectives.
On October 11, the second Allied Arctic convoy with supplies for the Soviet Union arrives in Archangel. On October 15, the Kriegsmarine creates the post of Arctic Admiralty (Admiral Nordmeer), with the Admiral Hubert Schmundt in front. The admiral's mission was to lead the naval forces in northern Norway, including U-Boat submarines. The Spanish historian Santiago Mata affirms in his book Kriegsmarine (2017) that the allied convoys to the Soviet Union, of great importance for its war effort, were partly possible thanks to the fact that the Germans did not manage to capture Murmansk.
In Army Group Center, on October 1, in Smolensk, the military chiefs met to finalize the preparations for Operation Typhoon, which would begin the following day. The attack starts from Smolensk towards Kalinin, northwest of Moscow, and along the highway in the direction of Moscow itself. To the south, Guderian's chariots march towards Briansk and Oryol. Both cities were taken in 48 hours. Initial success is important. In just five days, the Germans break through the Soviet defenses. On 6 October, the 4th Panzer Division launches a tank-supported infantry attack, sweeping away the Soviet motorized infantry units, forcing their retreat beyond the Oka River. Colonel Katukov sends Lavrinenko, who will stand out during the war for his skill in ambushing the Germans, to cover the gap that threatens Mtsensk with four tanks, temporarily slowing down the German advance and destroying 15 enemy tanks. Lavrinenko will be promoted to lieutenant for this action.
In Viazma they manage to encircle the 19th, 24th, 30th and 32nd armies on October 7, making a total of 500,000 men. In Briansk, in turn, they manage to encircle the 3rd and 13th Armies. But on the 7th the first snowfall falls (although other authors place the first snowfall on the 8th) which melts into the ground, causing the mud of the first autumn rains. German rolling stock is stuck: tanks, trucks, artillery guns, field kitchens... The German advance is almost halted. As of October 16, Army Group Center reports that they only have 1,217 operational tanks left. Some commanders feel that their troops are not acting with the ferocity expected of them in the occupied areas. On October 10, Walter von Reichenau, commander of the 6th Army, harangued his forces, recalling that in addition to being soldiers, their mission was to persecute Jews.
Stalin sends Zhukov from Leningrad to entrust him with the defense of Moscow while the Siberian divisions are still on their way and at forced marches to reinforce the defense of the capital. These are forces experienced by the combats against the Japanese in 1939 and accustomed to the rigor of the climate in Siberia. However, the German advance caused a large part of the Muscovite civilian population to try to escape to the east, causing great chaos on the roads. The authorities are forced to establish strict police control, even executing looters who are caught stealing without trial.
On the 12th the Germans capture Kaluga, and on the 13th Kalinin. Both cities are less than 200 kilometers from Moscow. The German forces are trying to surround the city with a large clamp. On the 13th, the Party Committee in the capital decides, given the seriousness of the situation, to organize battalions of workers in each of the urban districts and in a few days they achieve a force of about 12,000 men. Simultaneously, another 100,000 workers in the capital receive military training in their spare time. 17,000 women from the capital receive health training to serve as nurses in the different Soviet units. 500,000 Moscow workers, most of them women, are mobilized to erect the defenses of the roads leading to the capital.
On October 14, the Germans capture Borodino. On the 15th they regroup and try to continue advancing towards Moscow although they encounter an unexpected adversary; Siberian forces have finally reached the front of the capital and are being deployed in front of the German columns. On the 15th the resistance in the Viazma pocket ceases, and on the 25th the same happens with the Bryansk pocket. Although these are German tactical victories, they have delayed the advance long enough to allow the deployment of the Siberian units. The bad condition of the roads means that the German tanks can only advance 3 kilometers per hour. The Central Committee of the Party and the State Defense Committee decided to start evacuating the state treasures from the capital on the night of the 15th. Zhúkov affirms that the most critical moment occurred from October 18 after the closure of the Viazma and Bryansk stock exchanges and with the accesses to the capital unguarded. Fortunately for the Soviets, the famous rasputitsa decisively delayed the German divisions.
The Battle for the Capital by Marshal G. H. Zhúkov:
At the beginning of October 1941 I was in Leningrad, where I commanded the forces of that front. I will omit, however, these details, because now it is not my mission to speak of what the Nazi plunderers planned for the city that bears the name of the great Lenin, or of the September fights on that front. In October the enemy launched an offensive with the purpose of conquering the capital of our homeland. [...] The Germans managed to break through our defensive lines and their assault groups were launched at great speed, isolating the entire Vyazma force group from the Western and Reserve fronts from the North and South. [...] Without stumbling on any special resistance, Guderian's army sent some of its troops over the Orel where Briansk's front had no strength to reject it. On October 3, he took over the city. [...] The commander of the Western Front, General Konev ordered General I. V. Boldin's Operating Group to counterattack the enemy over the North, but failed at the evening of October 6. [...] That night the supreme commander Stalin telephoned me to ask me how things were going for Leningrad. I informed him that the enemy had ceased to live in the face of the serious losses suffered, as the prisoners reported, and that he had desisted the offensive. [...] Stalin listened to my information, remained a moment in silence and then explained to me that we were having serious trouble on the Moscow axis, particularly in the Western Front. "I leave his chief of staff, General Khozin, in his position, as an interim commander of the Leningrad Front, and fly to Moscow." [...] On October 7, at night, I landed in the central airfield and headed for the Kremlin. Stalin was in his rooms. He was not well; he had a cold. He greeted me with a head inclination and, pointing out a map, said: "See, the situation is very serious, but I can't know exactly how things go in the West Front." He told me that he should present me immediately at his headquarters, visit his lines, take careful note of the situation and telephone him at any time of the night. [...] At 02:30 on the night of 7-8, I telephoned Stalin, who was still working. Not well he was told the situation of the Western Front, I added: The main danger now is that access to Moscow is dismantled [...]”.Gueorgui Zhukov
In order to stop the general retreat at the front, Stalin took a firm stand with his generals and officers. For example, Commissar Stepanov telephoned the Stavka to request to move the headquarters to the east of Perjushkovo. The request infuriated Stalin, who informed the commissar that he would in no way authorize such a withdrawal:
Stalin: Comrade Stepánov, find out if your comrades have shovels. StepánovHow do you say, Comrade Stalin? Stalin: Do comrades have shovels? Stepánov: Comrade Stalin, what kind of shovels do you mean: those who wear the shoes or some other type? Stalin: No matter what type. StepánovComrade Stalin, of course they have shovels, but what should they do with them? Stalin: Comrade Stepánov, tell your comrades that they have to take their shovels and dig their own graves. We're not leaving Moscow. The Stavka will remain in Moscow. And they're not leaving Peijushkovo.Robert Service, Stalin: A biography (2006) p. 453
Stalin remains in Moscow, but orders the transfer of the government to Kuibyshev, 850 kilometers to the east. Molotov tells the US and British embassies to prepare to be evacuated. On the 19th a state of siege is declared, and after the days of chaos the government manages to restore order. On the 18th, German units take Mozhaisk, on the Smolensk-Moscow highway, just 100 kilometers from the capital. On Saturday the 25th, the first big snowfall of autumn falls. The German soldiers begin to suffer from the intense cold, since they lack adequate winter clothing. On the 28th, Guderian tries to take Tula, south of Moscow, but because of the mud that has not yet frozen and the fierce resistance of the Soviet 50th Army (Ivan Boldin), the advance is stalled. That same day, to the north, the Germans capture Volokolamsk, but the momentum of the Wehrmacht is clearly running out of steam. To prevent it from falling into enemy hands, Lenin's body was secretly transferred to Tyumen, although the guard was kept in his mausoleum so as not to discourage the population.
Army Group South will be the one that achieves the greatest advances in the month of October. Von Manstein's tanks are deployed on the Crimean peninsula en route to Sevastopol. At the end of the month the city is already practically surrounded, its supply being possible only by sea or by air. Simultaneously, the Germans advance along the Azov Sea coast towards Melitopol. Further north, the German advance is targeting Kharkiv. The Italians capture Stalino, threatening industry in the Donets Basin. On October 10, the 9th and 18th Armies surrender at Mariupol, leaving 100,000 prisoners. On the 16th, Soviet troops evacuated the port of Odessa. The invasion of the Crimean peninsula by Nazi troops, under the command of General Erich von Manstein, made the defense of Odessa unsustainable, with which the Soviet High Command ordered a withdrawal to the port of Sevastopol, a withdrawal that was made orderly and with few casualties.
During the assault on Taganrog, on the shores of the Azov Sea, German soldiers arrive in time to observe in the distance the systematic destruction that the Soviets carried out of the cities that they had to abandon before the German advance. Public buildings and factories were demolished in full view of the enemy by blasting using the "scorched earth" tactic. Ships in port were also sunk, some even before their last occupants could escape. Beyond the city, on the horizon, it was possible to see the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus. Icy winds were sweeping the sea heralding the approach of winter. Kurt Meyer of the Waffen-SS attends a briefing at the Lachanoff command post with von Kleist, Josef Dietrich and oil experts. In this meeting, the need to capture the Baku oil wells in order to continue the war and the importance of capturing Rostov as a previous step is reported. However, there is pessimism among the officers about the ability of the German forces to hold Rostov once captured because of the poor health of the German soldiers and their poor equipment for that type of terrain and climate.
The German victories throughout the month of October are notable, but they are very close to their limit. This reality will be evident in the assault on Moscow throughout the month of November.
The experience of Léon Degrelle, a Belgian Waffen SS officer, passing through occupied Ukraine in October 1941:
"In October 1941 two or three weeks were needed to go from the Reich border to the Russian front. We left Lemberg behind, with his trams scrambled with white and blue Ukrainian banders, and we did not enter the fields, to the southwest, we understood the magnitude of the military disasters inflicted on the Soviets. Infinity of armoured cars were dumped along the way; each crossroads was a scrapyard. The show lasted a half hour; then the footprints of the fight were disappeared. [...] In the face of the small farms, they were going and coming young boys with woven blonds and blond hairs in red or blue scarves, with bayette jackets that looked like laplane divers. [...] The train stopped hours and hours in the countryside or at the lost houses. We bought chickens and cooked them in the locomotive's water. Ukrainian girls taught us ufanos their German duties. In the same book, the first pages read: “Stalin is the first man in the world”; then, the last ones, the formula corrected by the prudent teacher: “Hitler is the first man in the world”. Which seemed to matter to the chiquillería a bundle."Léon Degrelle, The Russian Campaign (2004)
Otto Skorzeny's experience on the effect of mud on the motorized units of the German army as they advanced into the interior of the Soviet Union:
We keep moving along the banks of the Dnieper. And an unexpected rain, which lasted several hours, gave us an idea of what awaited us. We had to face with real mud and mud mountains, which were our biggest obstacles. The first of our vehicles made such large potholes on the ground, that those who followed them stuck in them. In this regard, all our preventions were ineffective. We cut off several tree trunks and covered the ground with them. But in spite of everything we only managed to advance very slowly. We had countless breakdowns and "pannes"; several crossbows of our trucks were broken. We had already exhausted all spare parts and we didn't know where we could supply new ones. We even had to leave many vehicles on the road. We dismantled everything we considered was usable and left the rest. Shortly afterwards all the roads in Russia were flanked by car skeletons and abandoned trucks.Otto Skorzeny, He lives dangerously
Experience from Walter N. of the 59th Artillery Regiment:
Fifteen days have passed since the start of operations. You can already make an idea of what that means, with this cold. Since we have not yet received our winter uniforms, each soldier will be beaten as he can. We use fabrics and skins or remove gloves from prisoners. The one who hasn't done it will have to prepare to freeze his bones. The first snowflakes fell on the 6th of this month. [...] At the dawn of October 2, the offensive began, which was successfully waged again thanks to the terrible power of our heavy weaponry. The irreproachable work of the Russians also awakes here astonishment and admiration. The Russians are teachers in the construction of advanced positions and camouflage, and they do not make it easy for us to chain victories. The first day they came in mass. And every day the image is repeated. They're still resisting. [...] The roads are in a deplorable state. One of the advantages of frosts is that at least they harden the mud of the roads. In addition, hunger and cold bring the Russians out of the woods. On October 7 we went several kilometers along the track and at one point we were already covered with cinnamon. That's what the mud dust has.Walter N., Wehrmacht Letters: The Second World War Counted by Soldiers (2015)
November
In the middle of the month, Order HM 1128 is issued with instructions to paint all vehicles deployed in Norway, Finland and the Soviet Union white. Many units, not having white paint available, were forced to wrap their cars in white sheets, paint them with chalk or lime, etc. In some cases and due to the total lack of resources, they used newsprint.
Army Group North is subjected to constant waves of Soviet assaults on the Volkhov River front. German troops do not cede ground, but at a very high price. In Possad, Posselok and the Otenskig Monastery suffer up to 50% casualties. The Germans capture Volkhov and Tikhvin, with the aim of cutting the railway between Leningrad and Moscow, but on the 29th they must abandon their positions due to the counterattack of the 54th..º Soviet Army of General Ivan Fediúninski. In Leningrad, famine rages. Hundreds of deaths a day due to malnutrition are counted. On the 26th, the Germans redoubled the bombardments of the city and the deaths became thousands a day. However, the frozen surface of Lake Ladoga allows opening a precarious supply route to Leningrad and evacuating civilians in the opposite direction. Keeping this route open will come at the cost of many casualties and loss of materiel.
Army Group Center has been paralyzed since November 1 because of the mud. Hitler receives several worrying reports for the Wehrmacht. They have suffered heavy casualties trying to subdue the Viazma and Briansk pockets. The German Army had only two options left, either they withdrew to winter positions, or they tried to storm Moscow in a last ditch effort. Both were risky options, as von Manstein would declare. The specter of Napoleonic defeat began to float among the German leaders. On November 6, Stalin addressed the Soviet people: "The German fascist invaders are facing disaster." The Red Army paraded that day in Red Square like every year with Stalin in the stands. After the parade, the troops march directly to the front. Little by little the frosts are arriving. On the 12th, 22 degrees below zero are reached. With the mud hardened, the German tanks rushed back towards Moscow. The attack is three-pronged: Hoeppner's tanks are advancing to the north, starting from Kailin.
Guderian's chariots are advancing from the south towards Tula. Von Kluge, replacing von Bock, advances through the center. Hoeppner occupies Krasnaya Polyana 27 kilometers north of Moscow, although the forces of Lieutenant General Rokossovski recapture it 24 hours later. Keep dropping the temperature. Everything freezes, oils, fuels, food, engines... The Germans are advancing with many difficulties. The combats fought between the 19th and the 20th are described by members of the 2nd SS Das Reich Division as the toughest and bloodiest of the Eastern campaign. On the 22nd, 32 degrees below zero will be reached.
On November 25, more than 100,000 mobilized workers from Moscow complete the outer defensive ring. It has 1,428 artillery emplacements and machine gun nests. 160 kilometers of anti-tank ditches, 112 kilometers of triple wire fencing and numerous other obstacles. The morale of the Soviet soldiers rises to see so much dedication shown by the inhabitants of Moscow to organize their own defense. Citizen mobilization in the capital is total: hundreds of volunteers attend hospitals, thousands are part of the Civil Defense teams located on the roofs, all the production of the factories works to provide resources and equipment to the Soviet troops... Ordinary citizens From all corners of the Soviet Union they send telegrams and packages with letters of encouragement and warm clothing to the soldiers at the front, amounting to more than 450,000 packages and 700,000 items of clothing. Packages even arrived from as far away as Mongolia. On the 28th the Germans conquer Visikova, and on the 31st they reach the Moscow neighborhood of Polevo, just twelve kilometers from Red Square. Guderian's tanks fail to capture Tula. The Germans are very close to their objective at the end of November, but the advance is halted.
For 67 days, Army Group Center has not received any reinforcing divisions. In that same fraction of time, the Stavka had formed 75 divisions with a total of 271,395 soldiers. Given the debate about whether the weather conditions or the actions carried out by the Red Army to stop the German Army were more decisive, Zhúkov believes that they were its soldiers the main culprits. For his part, Guderian would allege that the winter clothing requested for his forces before the assault on Moscow never arrived, and that enduring temperatures between 28 and 35 degrees below zero was too much for his forces with cotton coats.. However, Guderian is of the opinion that if Hitler had allowed him to attempt an assault on Moscow in August, first in anticipation of the rainy season and then the cold and snow, he might have had a better chance of success. Historian Geoffrey Jukes notes however that, although the offensive capacity of the Soviet Army caught Hitler and the OKH by surprise, the harshness of the Russian winter was no secret.
Army Group South is not as punished as Army Group Central. It occupies all of Crimea except Sevastopol, which will resist until July 2, 1942. On November 14, the assault on Rostov is ordered, beginning several days later. Minimum temperatures reached -30 °C, and the counterattack by Soviet T-34s threatened to break the front. However, on November 21, the Germans manage to capture the city. Von Mackensen congratulates his troops for the action, but they must cover too much ground. This fact, together with constant Soviet counterattacks, will cause the evacuation of the city in December.
The German commanders face December with numerous reports that draw a rather bleak picture. Germany could not resist a war of attrition against the Soviet Union, demographically superior, much larger than Germany and with weapons of an unexpected quality. Hitler did not want to see the reality that lay ahead. After the fall of 1941, he launched into various decisions that turned out to be highly detrimental to the German army.
British historian Eric Hobsbawm, in his book History of the XX century (1999) He states: "Since the battle of Russia had not been decided three months after it began, as Hitler expected, Germany was lost, since it was not equipped for a long war nor could it sustain it. Despite her triumphs, she owned and produced far fewer planes and tanks than Britain and Russia, not to mention the United States ».
With the enemy outside Moscow, Stalin phoned Zhukov on November 19:
Stalin: Are you convinced we can defend Moscow? I ask you with all the pain of my heart. Tell me honestly, as a communist. Zhukov: Of course we will defend Moscow. But I'll need at least two more armies and 200 cars.Robert Service, Stalin: A biography (2006) p. 454
The experience of Anna Iósifovna Strumílina, a Soviet partisan in the occupied zone:
We were told that the Germans had entered the city and I realized that I am Jewish. Before the war we had lived in harmony: Russians, Tatars, Germans, Jews... We were all the same. I didn't even hear the word "Jew," I lived with my dad, my mom, with my books. And suddenly we were lepers, they threw us everywhere. Some acquaintances even stopped greeting us. His children didn't greet us. The neighbors told us: “Leave us your things, you will no longer need them.” Before the war they were family friends: Uncle Volodia, Aunt Ania... what's going on! My mother was shot dead... It happened a few days before our transfer to the ghetto.Experience of Anna Iosifovna Strumílina. Fragment of the book War has no woman's face, (2015) written by journalist Svetlana Aleksiévich
Denouement of the operation (December 1941)
In December, in front of Moscow, Germany's military limitations were once again revealed. Stalin already has enough forces to launch a full-scale counterattack. The Siberian divisions and 1,700 tanks, many of them T-34s, will put the German units and their panzers in serious difficulties. Zhukov was accumulating the units that were arriving from Asia to launch them all at the same time. On the morning of December 2, Stalin calls Zhukov and asks: "What opinion is there at the front about the enemy and his chances?" Zhukov replies that the enemy has run out of breath.. Hearing this, Stalin told him: "Perfect. I'll call you another time». After hanging up the phone, Zhúkov affirms that he understood that the Stavka was preparing new operations. An hour later Stalin calls again to ask him what plans were for the troops for the following days. Zhukov replies that they are preparing for the counteroffensive. Indeed, Zhukov was right. The German Army has been losing military potential since June. Despite Hitler's desire for a final effort, von Kluge gives the order to halt the offensive on December 4. Operation Barbarossa was coming to an end.
Zhúkov orders the advance of the seventeen Siberian divisions, which organized as the 10th, 20th, and 1st Armies march between December 5 and 6 towards the German lines. They counterattack from Tula in the south, from Krasnaya Polyana in the north, and along the Moscow-Smolensko highway in the center, in what will become known as the Battle of Moscow. The Germans try to resist, but after a few days they begin to give ground. At the time of the counterattack, the Soviet Union had 2,000 tanks against the 1,500 Germans, with 3,600 planes against the 2,500 of the Luftwaffe, and with 4,190,000 soldiers against the 5,000 000 Germans.
Years later, in 1966, Zhukov made the following assessment of the battle of Moscow: "In the Battle of Moscow, the Red Army caused, for the first time in the six months of war, a major strategic defeat to the main group of German troops. He had previously achieved local successes, but they were not comparable in magnitude to the results of the battle in front of Moscow, in which a solid and well-organized defensive against a superior enemy and the sudden launch of a counter-offensive enriched the Soviet art of war. and revealed the growing operational and tactical maturity of their military commanders. [...] In harsh circumstances, sometimes catastrophically difficult and complicated, our troops hardened, emboldened, accumulated experience and, at the moments in which they were given an essential minimum of technical resources, they stopped retreating and defending themselves to Go on a powerful offensive. Those hard days of the Russian people will not be forgotten, nor will the military achievements of its fighters. In the Battle of Moscow the solid foundations for the subsequent defeat of Nazi Germany were laid." Douglas Orgill, in his book T-34: Russian Armored Vehicles (1973), states that the victorious defense of Moscow was one of the crucial points of the war and vindicates the effort made by the Soviet soldiers against the arguments that give more importance to the type of terrain and weather.
In Germany, the Führer recognized that the war was not going to end in 1941 and issued orders to contain the Soviets as much as possible and to prevent a general rout. In December, Guderian flew to Rastenburg to explain his situation to Hitler and to insist that his forces be evacuated to more defensible positions. Faced with complaints, Hitler decides to remove all the generals who opposed his way of making war.On December 12 he dismisses von Rundstedt, whom he assigns to France. Von Leeb and von Bock are relieved. Hoeppner is demoted. Von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, is replaced by Hitler himself who personally assumes command of the Army on December 16. While these changes in the command of the German Army take place, the Soviets recapture Kalinin in the north, and Tula and Kaluga to the south. On the Smolensko highway they also recapture Klin. The Wehrmacht threat to Moscow is over.
Paul Adair states in his book Hitler's Great Defeat (1994): "The failure to take Moscow was the first major defeat suffered by the German Army during World War II World." On December 20, Hitler published an appeal to the German people asking them to send warm clothes for the troops fighting at the front. Outrage spread rapidly among the German population, shocked and shocked to discover that the government had not made adequate preparations to protect its soldiers fighting on the front lines.
In the north, although the siege on Leningrad is maintained, the situation of the besieged improves remarkably. In the south, the Soviets recapture Rostov after the German withdrawal ordered by von Rundstedt, contradicting Hitler's orders to resist at all costs. Von Rundstedt is dismissed by Marshal von Reichenau. Kurt Meyer, who would become a brigadier general of the Waffen-SS, will point out years later that if the army had not withdrawn from Rostov and established a defensive line on the Mius River, the Russian southern front could have collapsed in December 1941.. The Italians manage to capture Stalino and Gorlowka, but a Soviet counterattack forces them to abandon the second and retreat to the first, where the front would stabilize.
The world situation changes radically on December 7, 1941. A Japanese fleet attacks the American port of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Germany declares war on the US on December 11. Although Operation Barbarossa had not achieved most of its objectives, the feeling of defeat was not perceived by the Germans who on the map felt that they still controlled a large territory of the Soviet Union. The human and material losses were appalling for the Wehrmacht, absolutely exhausted after six months of uninterrupted war. Stalin had lost ground and part of the population to gain time. By December 1941 he had the whole country in full military and industrial mobilization, and the plants moved beyond the Urals would soon begin full-scale production. Germany would reap some victories again in the summer of 1942, even threatening the oil fields of the Caucasus. But the defeat at Stalingrad will again thwart the purpose of ending the Soviet Union. At the beginning of 1943, Germany will face the foreseeable defeat that will come two years later.
Jean Meyer points out in his book Russia and its empires (2007): «Hitler failed because his troops had started too late and also because the Non-Aggression Pact between Japan and the USSR allowed the arrival to Moscow excellent Siberian troops." For Meyer, what ultimately saves the Soviet Union from total invasion is its size and its population, two elements that neither Poland nor France had.
Hitler would later apologize, stating that he had misinformation about the Soviet Union before deciding to attack. The truth is that in 1936 and 1937 he had received reports from the high command indicating that German victory was only possible in the first three months. If Leningrad, Moscow and Baku were not occupied, the German Army would be doomed to failure. There is debate about to what extent the Russian winter affected the German Army, or whether conditions in 1941 were worse than other years. Oberst Erhard Raus of the 6th Panzer Division recorded the temperature daily. From his notes it is known that on December 1 against Moscow the thermometer marked -7 ° C, which a week later marked -37 ° C to rise again to -8 ° C two days later. In the middle of the month the thermometer reached -45 °C. Soviet records indicate -20 °C on average at the end of the month and temperatures of -50 °C in Yakroma, north of Moscow. In these conditions, the fluids of the artillery or vehicle mechanisms froze. Rifles and machine guns were also affected. The lack of supplies forced many commanders to turn to their personal contacts in the German military industry for parts.
Otto Skorzeny's experience during the assault on Moscow:
The great Stalin, who in 1941 proved to know how to solve the difficult situation in Russia when the German Army arrived at the gates of Moscow, [...] The possibility of ending such an incomparable and bloody campaign revived our deteriorating strength. We conquered a small town. [...] It was 15 kilometres north-east of Moscow. From it, in clear days, we could see the towers of the churches, and the cannons of our batteries constantly bombed the suburbs of the capital of Russia. But we realized that the time had come to stop our offensive. The unit next to ours, Panzers Division number 10, had only ten tanks. Most of our heavy artillery lacked drag trailers and the trucks had to tow them hard through the fields. Now we knew equally that the enemy was at the limit of his strength, exactly as we did. For this reason, the impossibility of continuing to advance caused us an immense sense of impotence, a depressing feeling, more painful than any defeat. The goal, our desired goal, was very close to us and we couldn't reach it!Otto Skorzeny, He lives dangerously, p.120
Experience of Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Stuka pilot:
The fight against the cold is harder than the most fierce fighting against the enemy. [...] We are in the month of December and the thermometer remains between -40.o and -50.o. [...] As in Kalinin, our main adversary is winter. The Soviet soldier certainly defends himself with courage and even fiercely, but he is, like the German, weakened and almost at the limit of his strength. Even the new Siberian divisions that the Russian command now launches into battle could not for themselves force a decision. But the German armies are detained by the cold. The rail transports are practically detained and hence the impossibility of bringing the supply to the front line and evacuating the injured to the rear. We lack the most indispensable things and it is necessary to leave vehicles and cannons, because we no longer have any gasoline. For a long time, no truck, no locomotive has reached the first lines. [...] Our squadron is reduced to a truly ridiculous number of devices. With such cold, our engines can't work.Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Pilot De Stukas (2009)
Georgui Zhukov's opinion on the German defeat during the assault on Moscow:
The Nazi High Command, in projecting a complicated and large-scale strategic operation, such as the so-called Typhoon, significantly underestimated the Red Army's troops, situation and possibilities in its defense of Moscow, while overestimating the ability of its own concentrated forces to break the defensive front and capture the Soviet capital. He also made several serious mistakes in forming the assault groups for the second phase of Operation Typhoon; those of the flanks, especially those that acted in the area of Tula, were not powerful and had few infantry personnel. In so doing, depending on the Panzer formations in that particular situation, it was a serious mistake because, as it happens in reality, when it was worn out in the struggle, they would suffer large casualties and lose their ability to advance.Gueorgui Zhukov
Characteristics of armored warfare
Luis Alberto Sanz Salanova states in his book Armored Warfare (2017) that although there is a widespread idea that Soviet tank crews lacked experience before engaging in combat, this was only true for a brief period of time in 1942. Just before the start of the invasion, Salanova claims, Soviet tanks might be flawed or outdated, but their crews were quite competent. On the other hand, there are authors like Douglas Orgill who do highlight the lack of competence in many of the Soviet tank crews at the beginning of the German invasion. He goes so far as to state that at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, some Soviet tank crews had only had an hour and a half or two hours of training in the actual handling of battle tanks.
Life inside the tanks was, in general, very uncomfortable as well as dangerous: they suffered from cold or heat depending on the season of the year, dirt, darkness or poor ventilation. To kill the lice, they used to boil the clothes or wash them with diesel. To protect the head from vibration shocks or enemy projectiles impacting against the steel armor, they had a padded leather cap called a tankoshlem.
Not everything was worse as a car driver; Soviet Union tankers received twice as much pay as an infantryman and although it was not put into practice during Operation Barbarossa, from November 1944 they were awarded for each German tank they destroyed. Sometimes, to rest at night, the crews dug a trench under the car or placed it on a crater opened by explosives, where they inserted and covered the holes with a tarpaulin in order to avoid drafts; In this way they had more space to sleep and were sheltered from inclement weather or shrapnel or explosions from enemy bombardments. They could return to the car through a hatch located in its floor. Using a coal stove, they were heated and at the same time prevented the engine oil temperature from falling below -25º.
Among the Soviet front lines were many elite units, and cruelty to the surrendered enemy or civilians was rarely reported. These acts were frowned upon by officials and were frequently punished. Most of the excesses or acts of cruelty that occurred in the Red Army during the war were caused for the most part by soldiers of the "second line", much less disciplined. The food of the tankers was, as a general rule, better than that of the infantry. Although the consumption of vodka was relatively frequent before the attacks in the infantry units, the soldiers of the tanks were strictly prohibited, and could only drink at the end of the operation.
When they spotted an enemy they had to destroy it with the cannon. The commander of the tank indicated to the artilleryman the type of ammunition needed. In the case of the T-34, its complete ammunition consisted of 100 shells: 75 were breakers and 25 armor-piercing. Of the armor-piercers, four had tungsten cores and were intended against heavy tanks. In order to be able to shoot accurately, the chariot had to come to a complete stop. This maneuver could not last long as the completely immobile own tank became an easier target to destroy. For Richard Simpkin, a former British Army officer, it was necessary for a tank, in addition to having good combat qualities, to be comfortable for its crews. In his opinion, both the KV-1 and the T-34 lacked some essential characteristics that would allow them to fully exploit their technological advantage in 1941: good vision from inside the tank once closed, easy maintenance, functionality in its interior design., better living conditions, physical contact between crew members and better ability to escape from the car if it was hit. The T-34 had an awkward two-man turret, unlike the Panzer III, which was a bit roomier and could accommodate three men. One of the major disadvantages of the Soviet tanks against the Germans in 1941 was the communication system. German radios were much more advanced, allowing for more coordinated operations.
Operation Barbarossa had an unexpected positive effect on the armored forces of the Red Army. The destruction of the bulk of the outdated Soviet armored armies in 1941 allowed the Soviet Union to start anew in the spring of 1942. New units created thereafter were equipped almost entirely with T-34s and KV-1. They also added attachment points on the outside so that they also served as infantry transports. Each tank could move a dozen soldiers to the front. The average life of Soviet tanks was four months. On average, the Soviet Union was forced to replace 20% of its heavy war materiel each month, although from a certain moment on this average was cut. If during Operation Barbarossa the Soviets lost six tanks for every German tank destroyed, in 1944 equality was reached. The exclusive manufacture of T-34 and KV-1 allowed the specialization of engineers and significantly simplified Soviet logistics..
The whirlwind of experiences of the Russian front resulted in changes that gave new shape to the structure of the armoured forces and the men who formed them. The battle was evolving into a strenuous clash between chariot and cannon; it was also inevitably linked to the dilemma of having to reconcile quality with mass production. As a result of such lessons, the combat car changed shape. A larger cannon was needed, in addition to a larger turret to house it and thicker armor to protect it from more effective cannons. All these improvements had to be fitted into larger chassis with more powerful engines that propelled them and with wider chains to give them the mobility that so heavy vehicles needed to get through soft and windy terrain. Both the German experience in the East and the British in the desert convinced some and others of the need that there should be enough space in the turret and that they could operate there the trio formed by commander, gunner and charger, supported from below, in the chassis, by driver and radio operator. Once the Germans realized that the Russian models, considered derogatory, were actually better than theirs, began a technical arms race.Robert Kershaw, Tank men: the human history of tanks in the war (2011)
For their part, German tank drivers faced similar problems as the Soviets but with the aggravating factor of having technically inferior tanks at some points on the front and serious supply problems as they progressed. In summer, when the campaign began, they suffered inside the cars due to the lack of ventilation and the heat. As they advanced, their equipment and weapons became dirty with dust, which diminished their effectiveness. The dust and little space inside the wagons could also make it difficult to read the maps. The crews also suffered from fatigue resulting from advancing relentlessly for several weeks at a time at the start of the invasion. As there was a fear of poisoned water, they were forbidden to drink from the wells that were along the way. Once the water reserves were exhausted, if the unit was not supplied on time, the tankers took advantage of the stops to get out of their vehicles and drink from any puddle on the road. As happened in Soviet tanks, if the steel was of poor quality, splinters flew inside the vehicle at high speed when they were hit even by impacts that did not go through the armor. These splinters could cause serious injuries to the crews of the cars.
In the winter, when they were not fighting, so that the tank engines would not fail due to the cold, they were turned on every four hours for ten or fifteen minutes until they reached 60º. Units that obtained antifreeze were surprised to discover that it also froze. Another way to prevent the engines from freezing up was by lighting small fires under their hulls. Low temperatures could significantly affect the technical qualities of German war materiel. On one occasion Guderian wrote in his diary: «This morning, 5 degrees below zero. Tank turrets immobilized by ice, serious casualties from limb frostbite, artillery fire now erratic because gunpowder burns differently."
The vanguard of a panzer division was made up of a mixed unit made up of light tanks and infantry transported on motorcycles and sidecars. They acted as scouts for the next group, a battalion of medium and heavy panzers that in normal conditions had more than 100 tanks and were accompanied by infantry transported in trucks or armored half-tracks. Bringing up the rear marched a battalion or sometimes a regiment of motorized towed artillery. The wagons marched in Keils or wedge formation. The rest of the vehicles advanced in two columns in parallel. Often the enemy was only visible as small black dots on the horizon. This meant that only if they saw flames and a black plume of smoke after the first shots could they assume they were in a tank battle. Identifying an enemy tank for the first time could simply consist of a turret advancing over a field of corn. Then, inside the car, nervous shouts followed one another informing about the distance, direction and type of projectile required, followed by the deaf "bang" that hit the chassis of the car while a shaking sound indicated that the projectile advanced cutting the corn in its path. trajectory before hitting its target with the characteristic "plunc". All this happens in a few seconds while the turret of the firing tank fills with gases. A click indicates that yet another round has been slid and sealed into the chamber; a ready voice announces the next shot. They fired as many shots as necessary until the crew believed they had destroyed their adversary. Sometimes they knew it because they saw the enemies leave their chariot or flames came out of its interior. If they reached the enemy tank's ammunition compartment, a series of large explosions would normally be triggered that could even blow up the turret. Sometimes when a crew lost a wagon they were forced to fight as infantry; Since they did not have adequate training, they suffered many casualties if they found themselves in this situation.
The tank crews, both Allied and Axis, consumed stimulant substances that helped them stay awake for many hours at a time. As happened in the French campaign, pervitin pills were provided to the German tank crews for this purpose. However, this substance could have psychosis, overexcitation and loss of strength as side effects. A few months after the invasion of the Soviet Union began, an order was issued to stop its consumption because it prevented men from sleeping normally during the stops. Mobility and speed was one of the advantages of the panzer divisions. While the infantry could march thirty to forty kilometers a day, the panzer divisions could gain a head start of more than a hundred kilometers a day. This meant that the armored vehicles had to stop for three or four days so that the infantry marching on foot could reach their position. On occasions, this great distance between the panzer divisions and the rest of the divisions was taken advantage of by the Soviets that were surrounded to find weak points and break through the encirclements, as for example happened to Guderian's Panzer Group 2 on June 24. Many Soviets managed to escape to the Pripyat marshes before the impotence of the OKH.
Causes of the first Soviet defeats
“They gave the order: “To form!” We lined up by height, I was the smallest. The commander was walking the line, watching. He approached me.»—What is this Pulgarite doing here? Why don't you go back to your mom until you grow up a little? "I no longer had a mother... My mother had died in a bombing...
»What impressed me most... For life... It happened during the first year, we were in retreat... I saw—we were hiding in the weed—how suddenly our soldier, shot in hand, hurled against a German tank and began to pound the body with the cane of his rifle. He slammed, screamed and cried until he fell. Until the German gunmen wrote him down. The first year we fought with rifles against German tanks and hunting planes...».Polina Semiónovna Nosdrachiova, health instructor. Fragment of the book War has no woman's face, (2015) written by journalist Svetlana Aleksiévich
Experience of tank sergeant Semyon Matveev on the chaos that reigned in some Soviet armored units at the beginning of the German invasion
My body had less than half of its regulatory strength. We only had loose elements. My tank battalion was actually lower than a company. We didn't have trucks or tractors at all. An army is a huge organism. The Germans had theirs in full operation, and would say that it worked well; ours had hardly begun to be built. So we shouldn't be ashamed that then they were stronger than us. They were much stronger. This is why we were repeatedly defeated during the first year of the warSenior Car Sergeant Semion Matveev
The causes of the initial Soviet defeat are limited to the new tactic of blitzkrieg or blitzkrieg[citation needed], based on mobile warfare and the use of armored pincer tactics, something relatively new to the rest of the world (although it had already been used in the 1939 German invasion of Poland and the 1940 battle of France, as well as in the battle of Khalkhin Gol).
A splendid summer helped the German divisions make spectacular advances, but the winter of 1941 severely hampered them. The German armies suffered greatly from the low temperatures, especially since they had few coats (almost no German general expected the war to continue until winter). The Eastern Front lasted four years, resulting in 4 million German deaths and 9 million Soviet combat casualties, plus another 14-16 million Soviet civilians killed by massacres, disease, and starvation. Stalin at first did not react to this new scenario that he was facing and only two weeks later he was able to take control of the problem; he did not have much competent officers because he himself had purged the army of excellent generals. The Soviets had a very large arsenal against the German, but why would they have suffered such an initial defeat? There were numerous reasons that are often overlooked or not known to everyone:
- German technology was not the best of the moment in terms of combat vehicles. The T-34 and KV-1 cars were far superior to the best of the Germans, who were their precious Panzer III, Panzer IV and Stug III. Author Robert J. Kershaw in his book Tank Men He claims that at the time of the German invasion, at least 1 700 of his combat cars were lower than the best Soviet cars. However, of the 19 500 Soviet cars, only 5% were first-generation T-34 and prone to failures for their short life and 2% were KV-1, with the same problems. To all this, it should be added that the old T-26 and the fast vehicles of the BT series had a useful life (before needing a motor change or large repairs in it) of about 100 hours of use, after which great maintenance work was required. This made in the first week, 50% of the Soviet cars were out of combat without even fighting.
- The huge Soviet vehicle park was in a poor state of repair around 1941, where more than 29 % needed spare parts and 44 % a reconstruction. These were quickly out of service in the early days of the invasion due to breakdowns.
- Stalin was surprised by the fact that Germany was really attacking the Soviet Union, believing that the Third Reich would not violate the Ribbentrop-Mólotov Pact of 1939 without having first defeated Britain and therefore took several days to realize the gravity of the situation and to begin preparations for the war that had already begun with a surprise factor. But in addition, the Stalinist “purges” (such as the Great Purga of 1935) caused many good officers not to be available because they were imprisoned or shot, so the Soviet tactics were deficient during a good part of the war.
- On the first day more than 1800 Soviet planes were destroyed, many of them on land without even taking off, and on the second day there were about 2700 destroyed in total. In addition, the German planes were faster than the Soviets and had the sky under their rule, which propitiated the task of locating enemies and exploration to be a point for the Germans, depriving the Soviets of this necessary task.
- The German tactics were quite evolved and the chains of command were shorter than in any other army, for in the Red Army without orders from the highest-level commands the smaller units could not act, not even in the most elementary defensive tasks; this caused the entire regiments of Soviet soldiers to stand still in the forehead without taking initiatives for attack or defense, vainly awaiting instructions from the Stavka even when the enemy was very close, for in the event of self-employed action, or counter-attack without permission, the officers in charge were intended to be subjected to a war council and shot.
- The lack of ammunition was a very important point. Only 12 per cent of the Soviet cars had drilling shells, while the rest seldom had a complete shipment of breakthrough or high explosive ammunition, which made the clashes between vehicles disastrous for the Soviets for the first few weeks.
- The dispersion of the Red Army tanks between several units against the cohesion of the armoured divisions of the Wehrmacht It was also an important point, as the German tanks concentrated to eliminate the enemies individually, while the Soviet tanks (dispersed in small units) were seen in inferiority in their battles, even though the global number was greater. This same often happened in the desert, where General Erwin Rommel used to be less effective, but more concentrated than on the British side, which increased German efficiency.
- Another crucial aspect was the poor quality of Soviet troops, neglecting the preparation of soldiers for real operations. The Germans were tanned in the battles of the western front and were also well educated in the basic trainings. This was a great advantage in the fighting, where some Soviet vehicles received countless impacts without even locating the enemy.
| Type of casualties | German losses | Soviet losses |
|---|---|---|
| Dead and wounded | 97 253 | 350 000 |
| Prisoners or missing persons | 5335 | 819 000 |
Causes of German strategic failure
Experience of Otto Carius, German tank commander, about the first contact with the Soviet T-34 tanks:
Another event that caught us as if we had fallen over a ton of bricks was the appearance of the first Russian T-34 cars. We were completely surprised, how was it possible that “the above” did not know the existence of this superior car? [...] What were we supposed to do against such monstrosities that the Russians threw at us in large quantities? [...] Our only salvation was 8.8 cm Flak. Thanks to those cannons we could face even these new Russian cars. [...] With Moscow almost within our reach — in our opinion — we began to realize that it was no longer possible to have a quick end of the campaign.Otto Carius, Tigers in the mud (2012) p. 29
The experience of Kurt Meyer of the Waffen-SS on the first time they faced a T-34, on October 7, and the psychological effect it had on the soldiers:
Franz Roth, the war correspondent coming with us, shouted as if something had bit him. He pulled from me until he put me behind the hedge, and it wasn't gentle. [...] Less than twenty steps away from us to the left there was a monstrous combat car that seemed to start or shoot at any time. The street emptied in an eye open and close. The Untersturmführer Bergemann took a load of demolition and paved through a small orchard with the protection of the cover fire to destroy the car. [...] I saw Bergemann fall while the cargo rolled through the sand a few meters from the armoured. A gun shot from the steel monster had killed our comrade a fatal blow. [...] An assault cannon was put in position and fired projectile after projectile on the steel giant at a distance of just twenty-five meters. Nothing happened; the shells could not penetrate. The Russians seemed invincible. [...] Finally we managed to destroy the first T-34 we had just had the pleasure of knowing it from fuel and fiery.Kurt Meyer, Farms (2016) pp. 171-72
Experience of a Russian veteran collected in 1992 by the Belarusian journalist Svetlana Aleksiévich:
Sometimes we were in combat sharing a rifle between four. They killed the first and the second took the rifle; they killed the second and replaced the next... The Germans did not: they carried their ninety machine guns... The Germans behaved with altitude at first. They had already doubled all over Europe and taken Paris. They thought the USSR would fall into their hands in a couple of months. When they were injured and made prisoners, they spit in our nurses in the face and the bandages were torn to the cry of "Heil Hitler». But his behavior changed at the end of the war. "Don't shoot, Russian! Hitler kaputt», they implored.Fragment of the book the end of the “Homo soviéticus” written by journalist Svetlana Aleksiévich, p. 257
Among the causes of the failure of the first phase of consolidation to take control of the Soviet Union include:
- The lack of reliable information on the number of divisions, armaments and location on the Red Army stage, resulting from the limited work of the German Abwehr on this issue and a dangerous excess of confidence on the part of Hitler. The high cost of war life and material suffered by the Red Army in the Winter War greatly helped the German OKH to despise the Soviets: to see the Soviet Union losing more troops than Finland in that conflict fueled Hitler's dismal confidence. Before the war the Germans had calculated 200 divisions; by early August 1941 they had already identified 360.
- The lack of supplies: the German logistics did not meet the needs of the front. By a miscalculation Hitler believed it possible to annihilate the Red Army in six weeks and gave no orders for the German troops to prepare for a prolonged war. This caused serious difficulties in dressing, arming and feeding the troops while fighting in places far away from each other.
- The vastness of Soviet space made it difficult for the Wehrmacht to control it entirely while at the same time fighting. To this it is added that every German advance involved increasing supply and communication lines, which was the most important work for the Germans. The same geographical vastness allowed the chiefs of the Red Army to prepare maneuvers in spaces of dozens of kilometers without being limited by small territories that contained large urban centers, as happened with the military leaders of Poland or France.
- Hitler's underestimation of the fighting morals and the Soviet military industry: it was not taken into account that forced industrialization in the Soviet Union was accompanied by a great improvement in the internal communication channels of Soviet territory, which not only allowed Stalin to consolidate his power throughout the country but to mobilize large masses of soldiers and to concentrate them on the fronts since 1942. Note that reference is made to internal communications, rather than those of the borders or peripheral areas, which were, in general, smaller or less developed, which was another factor to delay the German advance (unlike what happened in France, where its good terrestrial system allowed for rapid penetration of the German army).
- The lack of flexibility in making crucial decisions by taking command Hitler personally over operations: such a decision was wrong as Hitler made decisions 5000 km away from the battle front, frequently disobeying his most experienced advisors such as Gerd von Rundstedt or Erich von Manstein.
- The lack of experience on the ground by Hitler, who made technical military decisions without being a professional officer, and disobeying the advice of his most expert generals. Stalin also wanted to show himself to the masses as a political-military leader of the Soviet Union, but in tactical and technical matters he left the initiative to professional officers such as Gueorgui Zhúkov or Konstantin Rokosovski. Hitler's constant changes of thought about the goals to which he marched upset his generals.
- Hitler's dismissal of competent officers such as Fedor von Bock, Heinz Guderian and Walther von Brauchitsch, removing them from command in the midst of major campaigns.
- The information of the German communist spy Richard Sorge, established in Japan, allowed Stalin to remove numerous Soviet troops from the border with Mongolia and his most capable commander, General Gueorgui Zhúkov. Knowing from Sorge that Japan would try to avoid a simultaneous conflict with the Soviet Union and the United States, and that the Japanese military effort would be directed towards the South (towards the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies but not to Siberia), Stalin was able to mobilize without fear much of his reserve units stationed in Asia, along the Chinese border.
- The "general winter" of 1941-1942, with historically extreme temperatures that limited the military and moral capacity of the German fighter. To this it is added that Hitler did not expect a long-term conflict against the Soviets and that the Wehrmacht had no plans, as mentioned above, to supply ammunition, fuel and supplies for the winter, deciding on the armament because of the need to keep steady progress. Note that the previous victorious campaigns of the Wehrmacht had always been developed in spring or autumn of the northern hemisphere, but never in winter until 1941. The Red Army also suffered seriously from the harshness of the winter, but its logistics had provided for this possibility and its staff was adapted to the weather.
- The flaws in the German logistics, because it was not predicted that the German railways would have to be adapted to the Russian track width while advancing on the front, which was a sign that sooner or later the advance should be stopped or turned slow, which occurred after the battle of Smolensk. The lost time (from one to two months) allowed the Soviets to prepare their defenses in the face of the crucial battle of Moscow. Nor was the shortage of paved roads foreseen, since the majority were of land, which with the rains became barrizals (the rasputitsa).
- And mainly the reorganization and with it the reaction of the Red Army and the entire Soviet Union, to the German army, where the government and the entire nation were engaged in the defensive struggle, calling themselves the conflict as the Great Patriotic War, and taking care not to repeat the mistakes of the Winter War. In this desperate national defense, the Soviets were forced to create methods and mechanisms of defense never seen before, such as the feared multiple rocket Katiusha or Katiushka, the powerful automatic PPSh-41 sub-fusil, the precise Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle (although it is a modified version of a rifle from the end of the centuryXIX), among others[chuckles]required]. The propaganda of inspiration was also developed, in which patriotism was publicized and encouraged, as is the case of the publications of the prowess carried out by the famous sniper Vasili Záitsev, and the continued parallels that Stalin made between the Nazi invasion of 1941 and the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, exciting the patriotism and the nationalism of the masses.
| 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Force of Soviet cars | 22 600 | 7700 | 20 600 | 21 100 | 25 400 | |
| Force of German cars | 5262 | 4896 | 5648 | 5266 | 6284 | |
| 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 | Total | |
| Production of Soviet cars | 6274 | 24 639 | 19 959 | 16 975 | 4384 | 72 231 |
| Production of German cars | 3256 | 4278 | 5966 | 9161 | 1098 | 23 759 |
| Production ratio | 1:2 | 1:5.6 | 1:3.3 | 1:86 | 1:4 | 1:3 |
| 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 | Total | |
| Loss of Soviet cars | 20 500 | 15 000 | 22 400 | 16 900 | 8700 | 83 500 |
| Loss of German cars | 2758 | 2648 | 6362 | 6434 | 7382 | 25 584 |
| Statement of losses | 1:7 | 1:6 | 1:4 | 1:4 | 1:1.2 | 1:4.4 |
Consequences
War crimes
Although the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention, Germany had signed the treaty and was therefore obliged to offer Soviet prisoners of war humane treatment in accordance with its provisions (as generally they did it with other allied prisoners of war). According to the Soviets, they had not signed the Geneva Conventions in 1929 because of Article 9 which, by imposing racial segregation of prisoners of war in different camps, contravened the Soviet constitution. Article 82 of the convention specified that "In the event that, in time of war, one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall remain in force between the belligerents that are parties thereto." Under such mandates, Hitler called for the battle against the Soviet Union to be a "fight for existence" and emphasized that the Russian armies must be "annihilated," a mindset that contributed to the widespread commission of war crimes against Soviet prisoners of war.. A memorandum of July 16, 1941, recorded by Martin Bormann, quotes Hitler as saying, "The gigantic [occupied] area must naturally be pacified as soon as possible; this will happen at best if anyone who looks the slightest bit suspicious is shot." Conveniently for the Nazis, the fact that the Soviets did not sign the convention served as their perfect excuse, as they justified their behavior accordingly. Even if the Soviets had signed, it is highly unlikely that this would have stopped the Nazis' genocidal policies towards combatants, civilians and prisoners of war.
Before the war, Hitler issued the notorious Commissars Order, which called for all Soviet political commissars taken prisoner at the front to be immediately shot without trial. German soldiers participated in these mass murders along with members of the SS-Einsatzgruppen. On the eve of the invasion, German soldiers were informed that the upcoming operation "demands ruthless and forceful measures against the Bolshevik inciters, guerrillas, saboteurs, Jews and the complete elimination of all resistance both active and passive." Collective punishment against partisan attacks was authorized; if a perpetrator could not be quickly identified, the burning of villages and mass executions were considered acceptable reprisals. Although most German soldiers accepted these crimes as justified due to Nazi propaganda, which depicted members of the Red Army as Untermenschen, some prominent German officers openly protested, most of them, however, accepted such orders without question. An estimated two million of Soviet POWs starved to death during Operation Barbarossa alone. By the end of the war, 58 % of all Soviet POWs had died in German Captivity. A figure that contrasts sharply with the barely &&&&&&&&&0450600.&&&& &0450,600 German prisoners of war who died They went during their captivity with the Soviets.
Joachim Lemelsen, commander of the XLVII Motorized Corps, informed the Wehrmacht High Command about the executions of Soviet prisoners of war during the early phases of Operation Barbarossa:
I am repeatedly learning about shootings of prisoners or deserters, carried out irresponsibly, foolishly and criminally. This is murder. Soon the Russians will realize the innumerable bodies that lie along the paths of advance of our soldiers, without weapons and with their hands on high, dispatched to burn with gunshot in the head. The result will be that the enemy will hide in the forests and fields and continue to fight, and we will lose countless comrades.
Organized crimes against civilians, including women and children, were carried out on a large scale by German police and military forces, as well as local collaborators. Under the command of the Reich Security Main Office, the Einsatzgruppen (death squads) carried out large-scale massacres of Jews, communists, and suspected partisans throughout the conquered Soviet territories. Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg puts the number of Jews killed by "mobile killing operations" at 1,400,000. The original instructions to kill "party Jews and those holding state positions" were expanded to include "all Jews males of military age" and then expanded once more to "all male Jews regardless of age." By the end of July, the Germans were regularly killing women and children. On December 18, 1941, Himmler and Hitler discussed the "Jewish question", with Himmler noting the outcome of the meeting on his diary: "To be annihilated as partisans".. According to historian Christopher Browning, "annihilating the Jews and solving the so-called "Jewish question" under the pretext of killing partisans was the convention agreed between Hitler and Himmler". In accordance with Nazi racist policies against "inferior" Asian peoples, Turkmen were also persecuted. According to a post-war report by Prince Veli Kajum Khan, they were imprisoned in concentration camps in appalling conditions, where those deemed to have "Mongolian" features were killed on a daily basis. Asians were also targeted by the Einsatzgruppen and were the subjects of lethal medical experiments and murder at a "pathological institute" in Kiev. Hitler received reports of the mass murders carried out by the Einsatzgruppen which were first transmitted to the RSHA, where they were aggregated in a summary report by the Head of the Gestapo Heinrich Müller.
Burning houses suspected of being partisan gathering places and poisoning water wells became common practice for soldiers of the German 9th Army. In Kharkiv, the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, food was provided only to the small number of civilians working for the Germans, with the rest designated to slowly starve to death (see Hunger Plan). Hundreds of thousands of Soviets were deported to Germany to be used as slave labor beginning in 1942.
The citizens of Leningrad were subjected to heavy shelling and even a siege that would last 872 days and starve more than a million people, of whom approximately 400,000 were children under the age of 14. Access to food, fuel and raw materials and rations reached a minimum, for the non-working population, of four ounces (five thin slices) of bread and some watery soup per day. Starving Soviet civilians began to eat their domestic animals, along with hair tonic and petroleum jelly. Some desperate citizens resorted to cannibalism; Soviet records list 2,000 people arrested for "the use of human flesh for food" during the siege, 886 of them during the first winter of 1941-1942. The Wehrmacht "planned to seal off Leningrad, starve the population, and then demolish the city completely".
Sexual violence
Although cases of rape committed by Red Army soldiers against German women have been repeatedly denounced by Western historians, the point is that rape was a widespread phenomenon on the Eastern Front, as German soldiers regularly committed violent sexual acts against Soviet women and girls. Entire units were occasionally involved in the crime with more than a third of the cases being gang rape. Historian Hannes Heer relates that in the world of the Eastern Front, where the German army equated Russia with communism, all was "fair game"; therefore, rape went unreported unless entire units were involved. Often, in the case of Jewish women, they were killed immediately after acts of sexual violence. Historian Birgit Beck emphasizes that military decrees (see Barbarossa Decree), which served to authorize outright brutality on many levels, essentially destroyed the basis for any prosecution of sexual crimes committed by German soldiers in the East. She also argues that detection of such cases was limited by the fact that sexual violence was often inflicted in the context of civilian housing accommodations.
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