Operation Barbarossa E-Book

David M. Glantz

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 508

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

On 22 June 1941 Hitler unleashed his forces on the Soviet Union. Spearheaded by four powerful Panzer groups and protected by an impenetrable curtain of air support, the seemingly invincible Wehrmacht advanced from the Soviet Union's western borders to the immediate outskirts of Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov in the shockingly brief period of less than six months. The sudden, deep, relentless German advance virtually destroyed the entire peacetime Red Army and captured almost 40 percent of European Russia before expiring inexplicably at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. An invasion designed to achieve victory in three to six weeks failed and, four years later, resulted in unprecedented and total German defeat. David Glantz challenges the time-honoured explanation that poor weather, bad terrain and Hitler's faulty strategic judgement produced German defeat, and reveals how the Red Army thwarted the German Army's dramatic and apparently inexorable invasion before it achieved its ambitious goals.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Preface

1 Plans and Opposing Forces

2 The Border Battles, 22 June–9 July

3 The Soviet Response

4 The Battle for Smolensk, 10 July–10 September

5 The Battle for Leningrad, 10 July–30 September

6 The Battle for Kiev, 10 July–30 September

7 Viaz’ma, Briansk, Tikhvin and Rostov, 30 September–30 October

8 To the Gates of Moscow, November

9 Barbarossa Contained, December

Conclusions

Maps and Tables

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Appendices

   I  German planning documents associated with Operation Barbarossa

   II  Soviet planning documents associated with Operation Barbarossa

   III  Summary orders of battle, 22 June 1941

   IV  Detailed opposing orders of battle, 22 June 1941

List of Illustrations

Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  1      Adolf Hitler.

  2      Colonel-General Franz Halder, chief of OKH.

  3      Joseph Stalin.

  4      Army-General G.K. Zhukov, Chief of the Red Army General Staff, commander Reserve Front, commander Leningrad Front and commander Western Front.

  5      Marshal-of-the-Soviet-Union B.M. Shaposhnikov, Chief of the Red Army General Staff.

  6      Lieutenant-General A.M. Vasilevsky, deputy chief of the General Staff’s Operational Directorate, deputy chief of the General Staff and Stavka representative.

  7      Lieutenant-General N.F. Vatutin, deputy chief of the General Staff and chief of staff Northwestern Front.

  8      Red Army T-26 light tank.

  9      Red Army BT-7 tank.

10      Red Army T-34 medium tank.

11      Red Army KV-1 heavy tank.

12      Hitler, Halder and von Brauchitsch.

13      Red Army artillery on parade in Red Square, 1 May 1941.

14      German infantry on the attack in a Soviet village.

15      German artillery moving forward.

16      German troops fighting on the outskirts of Brest.

17      Red Army mechanized corps counterattack.

18      Red Army infantry deploying to the front, June 1941. The sign reads: ‘Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. The victory will be behind us.’

19      Red Army soldiers taking the oath, summer 1941.

20      Red Army poster, 1941: ‘The Motherland Calls!’

21      Women manning the arms industry assembly lines.

22      Colonel-General Herman Hoth with junior officers.

23      The ‘Road of Life’ across Lake Ladoga.

24      A Katiusha multiple rocket launcher battery in firing position.

25      Workers at the Kirov factory erect a barricade.

26      German troops and Russian roads.

27      German artillery in firing position near Kiev.

28      Soviet heavy artillery firing.

29      Soviet infantry on the attack with grenades.

30      Red Army cavalry on the attack, November 1941.

31      Russian civilians constructing defensive lines west of Moscow.

32      Troops passing in review for Stalin during the Red Square parade, 7 November 1941.

33      The 1st Guards Tank Brigade attacking German positions near the Volokolamsk road.

34      Soviet placard, 1941: ‘We will defend Mother Moscow.’

35      Red Army troops deploying into winter positions.

36      A captured German artillery position, December 1941.

37      Red Air Force fighters defend the sky over Moscow, December 1941.

38      On the forward edge of Moscow’s defense, December 1941.

39      Soviet placard entitled ‘Pincers in pincers’. The torn document reads, ‘OKH Plan for the Encirclement and Seizure of Moscow’.

40      Red Army infantry assault, December 1941.

41      Zhukov meets with Rokossovsky, commander of the 16th Army.

All illustrations are fron the author’s collection

PREFACE

The sudden, deep and relentless advance of German forces during Operation Barbarossa has long fascinated military historians and general readers alike. Spearheaded by four powerful panzer groups and protected by an impenetrable curtain of effective air support, the seemingly invincible Wehrmacht advanced from the Soviet Union’s western borders to the immediate outskirts of Leningrad, Moscow, and Rostov in the shockingly brief period of less than six months. Historians have described the German advance as a veritable juggernaut; a series of successive offensives culminating in November 1941 with the dramatic but ill-fated attempt to capture Moscow.

As described by Western military historians, the Barbarossa juggernaut began in June and July when the German Army smashed Soviet border defenses and advanced decisively and rapidly along the northwestern, western, and southwestern strategic axes. By early July German forces had shattered Soviet forward defenses, encircled the bulk of three Soviet armies (the 3rd, 4th, and 10th) west of Minsk, and thrust across the Western Dvina and Dnepr rivers, the Soviet’s second strategic defense line. Once across the two key rivers, the panzer spearheads of German Army Groups North and Centre lunged deep into the Baltic region along the Leningrad axis and toward the key city of Smolensk on the Moscow axis. To the south, Army Group South drove inexorably eastward toward Kiev against heavier Soviet resistance, while German and Rumanian forces soon invaded Moldavia and threatened the Soviet Black Sea port of Odessa.

During Operation Barbarossa’s second stage in late July and early August, German Army Group North raced through Latvia into Estonia and Soviet territory south of Leningrad, captured the cities of Riga and Pskov, and subsequently pushed northward toward Luga and Novgorod. Simultaneously, Army Group Centre began a month-long struggle for possession of the vital communication centre of Smolensk on the direct road to Moscow. In heavy fighting, the army group partially encircled three Soviet armies (the 16th, 19th, and 20th) in the Smolensk region proper and fended off increasingly strong and desperate Soviet counterattacks to relieve their forces beleaguered near the city. All the while, Army Group South drove eastward toward Kiev, destroyed two Soviet armies (the 6th and 12th) in the Uman’ region southwest of Kiev, and blockaded Soviet forces in Odessa. This stage ended in late August, when Hitler decided to halt his direct thrusts on Leningrad and Moscow temporarily and, instead, attack and eliminate Soviet forces stubbornly defending Kiev and the central Ukraine.

In Operation Barbarossa’s third stage, from late August through September, Army Groups Centre and South jointly struck Soviet forces defending in the Kiev region, while other Army Group South forces attacked eastward deeper into the Ukraine. Within a period of two weeks, German forces encircled four of the Soviet Southwestern Front’s armies (the 5th, 21st, 26th and 37th) east and southeast of Kiev. The elimination of the Kiev bulge and its over 600,000 defenders paved the way for the Germans’ final triumphant drive on Moscow.

The German High Command commenced Operation Typhoon – its final assault on Moscow – in early October. While Army Groups North and South continued their advance on Leningrad in the north and toward Khar’kov and across the Dnepr into the Donbas in the south with reduced forces, the reinforced Army Group Centre mounted a concerted offensive to capture Moscow. Attacking across a broad front from north of Smolensk to south of Briansk, three German panzer groups tore gaping holes through Soviet defenses and quickly encircled five Soviet armies (the 16th 19th, 20th, 24th and 32nd) around Viaz’ma and three Soviet armies (the 50th, 3rd and 13th) north and south of Briansk. Having destroyed the bulk of the Soviet Western, Reserve and Briansk Fronts, by the end of October German forces had captured Rzhev, Kalinin, Viaz’ma, Briansk, Orel, Kaluga and Volokolamsk, Mozhaisk, and Maloiaroslavets on the distant approaches to Moscow. Further south, General Heinz Guderian’s Second Panzer Army drove eastward through Orel toward Tula, the key to Moscow’s southern defenses. All the while, an increasingly frantic Stavka threw hastily formed reserves into battle to protect its threatened capital.

After a brief respite prompted by November rains and mud, Operation Typhoon culminated in mid-November when the German High Command attempted to envelop Soviet forces defending Moscow with dramatic armoured thrusts from the north and south. However, in early December 1941, the cumulative effects of time and fate combined to deny the German Army a triumphant end to its six months of near constant victories. Weakened by months of heavy combat in a theatre of war they never really understood, the vaunted Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe finally succumbed to the multiple foes of harsh weather, alien terrain and a fiercely resistant enemy. Amassing its reserve armies, in early December the Stavka halted the German drive within sight of the Moscow Kremlin’s spires and unleashed a counteroffensive of its own that inflicted unprecedented defeat on Hitler’s Wehrmacht.

Western historians have described Operation Barbarossa in panorama, focusing primarily on the notable and the dramatic while ignoring the seemingly mundane incidents that formed the backdrop and context for the more famous and infamous actions. Although they have argued among themselves over the motives, sequencing, timing and objectives associated with each stage of the operation, they have, nevertheless, tended to emphasize the offensive’s apparently seamless and inexorable nature. This is quite natural, since they lacked Soviet sources. Precious few of these historians have been able to discern Soviet military intent or the full scale of Soviet actions during this period. Lacking Soviet sources and perspectives, these historians have agonized over the paradox that the Wehrmacht’s string of brilliant offensive successes ended in abject defeat in December 1941.

Today, over fifty years after the war’s end, newly available Soviet sources together with more detailed analysis of existing German sources permit us to address and answer many of these and other questions that have frustrated historians for more than half a century.

David M. Glantz

Carlisle, Pennsylvania

January 2001

1

PLANS AND OPPOSING FORCES

Plan ‘Barbarossa’

In the year of our Lord 1189, Frederick I Barbarossa (Red Beard), Emperor of Germany and self-styled Holy Roman Emperor, took up the cross and led the Third Crusade against Saladin’s Muslim armies that had just captured Jerusalem. Led by ironclad knights, the armies of Frederick’s First Reich swept eastward through Hungary, the Balkans and Asia Minor, intent on liberating Christianity’s holy places from infidel control. Over 700 years later, Adolf Hitler, Führer of his self-styled German Third Reich, embarked on a fresh crusade, this time against the Soviet Union, the heartland of hated Bolshevism. Inspired by historical precedent, he named his crusade Operation Barbarossa. In place of Frederick’s ironclad knights, Hitler spearheaded his crusade with masses of menacing panzers conducting what the world already termed Blitzkrieg (‘lightning war’).

When Hitler began planning Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1940, Germany had been at war for almost a full year. As had been the case throughout the late 1930s, Hitler’s diplomatic and military audacity had exploited his foes’ weaknesses and timidity, producing victories that belied the real strength of the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) and Luftwaffe (Air Force). Before the Second World War began on 1 September 1939, Hitler’s fledgling armies had reoccupied the Rhineland (1936), annexed Austria (1938), dismembered Czechoslovakia (1938) and annexed Memel’ (1939), all bloodlessly and with tacit Western approval. Once the war began, Hitler’s armies conquered Poland (September 1939), seized Denmark and Norway (April 1940) and vanquished the West’s finest armies to occupy the Netherlands, Belgium and France (May-June 1940), driving the British Army from the continent at Dunkirk in utter defeat. Protected by its formidable moat, the English Channel, and its vaunted High Fleet, Britain survived Hitler’s vicious and sustained air attacks during the ensuing Battle of Britain, but only barely.

It was indeed ironic, yet entirely characteristic of Hitler, that military failure in the Battle of Britain would inspire him to embark on his crusade against Soviet Bolshevism. Even though defeat in the skies during the Battle of Britain frustrated his plans to invade the British Isles in Operation Sea Lion, Hitler reverted to his characteristic audacity. Inspired by his army’s unprecedented string of military successes, he set out to achieve the ambitious goal he had articulated years before in his personal testament Mein Kampf, the acquisition of ‘living space’ (lebensraum) to which he believed the German people were historically and racially entitled. Conquest of the Soviet Union would yield that essential living space and, at the same time, would rid the world of the scourge of Bolshevism.

Militarily, however, the ground invasion and conquest of the Soviet Union was a formidable task. The German Wehrmacht had achieved its previous military victories in Western Europe, a theatre of operations that was well developed and distinctly limited in terms of size. It had done so by employing minimal forces against poorly prepared armies that were utterly unsuited to counter or endure Blitzkrieg and whose parent nations often lacked the will to fight and prevail. The conquest of the Soviet Union was an entirely different matter. Plan Barbarossa required the Wehrmacht to vanquish the largest military force in the world and ultimately advance to a depth of 1,750 kilometres (1,050 miles)* along a front of over 1,800 kilometres (1,080 miles) in an underdeveloped theatre of military operations whose size approximated all of Western Europe. Hitler and his military planners assumed that Blitzkrieg would produce a quick victory and planned accordingly.

To achieve this victory, the Germans planned to annihilate the bulk of the Soviet Union’s peacetime Red Army before it could mobilize its reserves, by conducting a series of dramatic encirclements near the Soviet Union’s new western frontier. Although German military planners began contingency planning for an invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940, Hitler did not issue his Directive 21 for Fall [‘case’ or ‘operation’] Barbarossa until 18 December (see Appendix I). When he finally did so his clear intention was to destroy the Red Army rather than achieve any specific terrain or political objective:

The mass of the [Red] army stationed in Western Russia is to be destroyed in bold operations involving deep penetrations by armoured spearheads, and the withdrawal of elements capable of combat into the extensive Russian land spaces is to be prevented. By means of rapid pursuit a line is then to be reached from beyond which the Russian air force will no longer be capable of attacking the German home territories.1

Two weeks before, in one of many planning conferences for Barbarossa, Hitler had noted that, in comparison with the goal of destroying the Soviet armed forces, ‘Moscow [is] of no great importance.’2 Both he and his military advisers were confident that, if his forces did destroy the Red Army, Stalin’s communist regime in Russia would collapse, replicating the chaos of 1918. This assumption, however, woefully underestimated the Soviet dictator’s control over the population and the Red Army’s capacity for mobilizing strategic reserves to replace those forces the Germans destroyed in its initial vital encirclements. Only later in 1941, after the Red Army and Soviet government displayed resilience in the face of unmitigated catastrophes, did the Germans began believing that the capture of Moscow was the key to early victory.

To destroy the Red Army, Hitler massed 151 German divisions (including 19 panzer and 15 motorized infantry divisions) in the east, equipped with an estimated 3,350 tanks, 7,200 artillery pieces and 2,770 aircraft.3 The Finns supported Barbarossa with 14 divisions and the Rumanians contributed4 divisions and 6 brigades to the effort, backed up by another 9 divisions and 2 brigades.4 The German Army High Command [Oberkommando des Heeres – OKH] controlled all Axis forces in the Eastern Theatre. The OKH, in turn, subdivided these forces into an Army of Norway operating in the far north and Army Groups North, Centre, and South, with four panzer groups deployed from the Baltic Sea southward to the Black Sea. A German air fleet supported each of these four commands. Plan Barbarossa tasked Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Centre, which included two of the four panzer groups (the Second and Third), with conducting the main offensive thrust. Advancing precipitously along the flanks of the Belostok salient, Bock’s two panzer groups were to link up at Minsk to create the campaign’s first major encirclement. Thus, the mass of German offensive power was located north of the Pripiat’ Marshes, the almost-impassible ground that effectively divided the theatre into northern and southern regions.

German military planners sought to exploit Russia’s lack of decent roads and railroads laterally across the front and into the depths to prevent the mass of Soviet troops from regrouping from one sector to another or withdrawing eastward before they were surrounded. However, German intelligence overestimated the degree of Red Army forward concentration and was totally unaware of the groups of reserve armies that the Soviets were already deploying east of the Dnepr river. Once the border battles had ended, Plan Barbarossa required the three German army groups to advance along diverging axes, Army Group North towards Leningrad, Army Group Centre toward Moscow and Army Group South toward Kiev. Thus, from its inception, Plan Barbarossa anticipated dangerously dissipating the Wehrmacht’s military strength in an attempt to seize all of Hitler’s objectives simultaneously.

Soviet War Planning: The Answering Strike

Ironically, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-Aggression Pact, which Stalin and Hitler negotiated in August 1939, actually contributed to the catastrophic defeat the Red Army suffered during the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa. By signing the infamous agreement, Stalin hoped to forestall possible German aggression against the Soviet Union and, while doing so, create a buffer zone by seizing eastern Poland and the Baltic States. However, the Soviets’ subsequent occupation of eastern Poland in September 1939 and the Baltic States a year later brought the Soviet Union into direct contact with Germany and forced the Red Army General Staff to alter its war plans fundamentally. Beginning in July 1940, the Red Army General Staff developed new war plans identifying Germany as the most dangerous threat and the region north of the Pripiat’ River as the most likely German attack axis.5 Stalin, however, disagreed with these assumptions and in October 1940 insisted his General Staff prepare a new plan based on the assumption that, if it attacked, Germany would likely strike south of the Pripiat’ River into the economically vital region of the Ukraine.6 With minor modifications, this plan became the basis for Mobilization Plan (MP) 41 and associated Red Army operational war plans.

Ordered by Stalin and prepared in early 1941 by G.K. Zhukov, the new Chief of the General Staff, State Defense Plan 1941 (DP 41) reflected the assumption ‘that the Red Army would begin military operations in response to an aggressive attack.’7 Therefore, while defensive in a strategic sense, the plan and the military thought that it echoed was inherently offensive in nature. DP 41 and its associated mobilization plan required the Red Army to deploy 237 of its 303 divisions in the Baltic Special, Western Special and Kiev Special Military Districts and the 9th Separate Army, which, when war began, would form the Northwestern, Western, Southwestern and, ultimately, Southern Fronts.8 As a whole, Red Army forces in the western Soviet Union were to deploy in two strategic echelons. The first was to consist of 186 divisions assigned to four operating fronts, and the second was to include 51 divisions organized into five armies under High Command (Stavka) control. In turn, the four operating fronts were to deploy their forces in three successive belts, or operational echelons, arrayed along and behind the new frontier. The first operational echelon formed a light covering force along the border, and the second and third echelons, each of roughly equal size, were to add depth to the defense and conduct counterattacks and counterstrokes.

Mobilization difficulties in early 1941, however, precluded full implementation of DP 41. Consequently, on 22 June 1941 the first strategic echelon’s three operational belts consisted of 57, 52 and 62 divisions, respectively, along with most of the Red Army’s 20 mechanized corps deployed in European Russia.9 The five armies deployed in the second strategic echelon under Stavka control, which ultimately consisted of 57 divisions assembling along the Dnepr and Dvina rivers, was virtually invisible to German intelligence. Its mission was to orchestrate a counteroffensive in conjunction with the counterattacks conducted by the forward fronts. However, by 22 June 1941 neither the forward military districts nor the five reserve armies had completed deploying in accordance with the official mobilization and deployment plans.10 As in so many other respects, the German attack on 22 June caught the Soviets in transition. Worse still, Soviet war planners had fundamentally misjudged the situation, not only by concentrating their forces so far forward, but also by expecting the main enemy thrust to occur south of the Pripiat’ Marshes. Thus the Red Army was off-balance and concentrated in the southwest when the main German mechanized force advanced further north.11

The German Army and Luftwaffe

Even though the German Army seemed at the height of its power in June 1941 by virtue of its stunning victories in 1939 and 1940, it was by no means invincible. The German officer corps had traditionally prided itself on its doctrine, a unity of training and thought that allowed junior officers to exercise initiative because they understood their commander’s intentions and knew how their peers in adjacent units would react to the same situation. Although disagreements about the correct employment of armour had disrupted doctrinal unity in the mid-1930s, subsequent victories vindicated the minority of younger German theorists’ faith in mechanized warfare. The Wehrmacht’s panzer forces clearly demonstrated that massed mobile offensive power could penetrate enemy defenses in narrow front sectors, exploit to the rear, disrupt enemy logistics and command and control, and encircle large enemy forces. While follow-on infantry then destroyed the encircled forces, the panzers could continue to exploit success deep into the enemy rear area.

In practice, however, earlier campaigns also demonstrated that the enemy could often escape from these encirclements if the infantry failed to advance quickly enough to seal the encirclement. This occurred because Germany never had enough motor vehicles to equip more than a small portion of its infantry troops. The vast majority of the German Army throughout the Second World War consisted of foot-mobile infantry and horse-drawn artillery and supplies, sometimes forcing the mechanized and motorized spearheads to pause while their supporting units caught up by forced marches.

Since panzer forces were vital to the implementation of German offensive doctrine, Hitler created more of them prior to Barbarossa by reducing the number of tanks in existing and new panzer divisions. The 1941 panzer divisions consisted of two to three tank battalions each with an authorized strength of 150 to 202 tanks per division (in practice, an average of 125 operational tanks). In addition, the panzer division included five infantry battalions, four truck-mounted and one on motorcycles. Few of these motorized infantry units were equipped with armoured personnel carriers; hence the infantry suffered higher casualties. The panzer division, which also included armoured reconnaissance and engineer battalions, three artillery battalions equipped with guns towed behind trucks or tractors, and communications, antitank and anti-aircraft units, totalled roughly 17,000 men. The slightly smaller motorized infantry divisions consisted of one tank battalion, seven motorized infantry battalions and three or four artillery battalions.12 The organization of the first four Waffen (combat) SS divisions was identical to that of regular army motorized infantry divisions, although they later evolved into lavishly equipped panzer divisions. The 1941 motorized (panzer) corps consisted of two panzer and one motorized infantry division, while two to four of these motorized corps formed a panzer group. During Barbarossa, several panzer groups, augmented by the addition of army (infantry) corps, were renamed panzer armies.

Since German operations in 1939 and 1940 were predominantly offensive, defensive doctrine was based largely on 1918 practices. Defending infantry relied on deep and elaborate prepared defenses, kept the bulk of forces in reserve and relied on elastic defense and rapid counterattacks to defeat the attacker. Defensive doctrine rested on three assumptions, all of which proved invalid in Russia. The assumptions were that sufficient infantry would exist to establish defenses in depth, that the enemy would make his main attack with dismounted infantry, and that German commanders would be allowed to chose where to defend and be permitted to defend flexibly as the situation required. The typical German infantry division consisted of three regiments each of three infantry battalions, plus four horse-drawn artillery regiments, with a strength of 15,000 men. Since the division’s principal infantry antitank weapon, the 37mm antitank gun, had already proven inadequate against French and British heavy armour, infantry divisions had to employ their 100mm or 105mm medium artillery battalion and the famous 88mm anti-aircraft guns against enemy tanks.13

The German Luftwaffe (Air Force) shared in the German Army’s lofty reputation. The 2,770 Luftwaffe aircraft deployed to support Barbarossa represented 65% of Germany’s first-line strength.14 Although the Messerschmitt Bf-109f fighter was a superb aircraft, other German models were rapidly approaching obsolescence. The famous Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber could survive only when the enemy air force was helpless while the Dornier-17 and Ju-88, Germany’s primary bombers, as well as the versatile Ju-52 transport, were inadequate both in range and load capacity. Since German industry had not made up for losses during the Battle of Britain, Germany actually had 200 fewer bombers in 1941 than it had possessed the previous spring.15 Given these shortages and the requirement to operate from improvised forward airfields, it was exceedingly difficult for German pilots to provide effective air superiority or offensive air strikes over the vast expanse of European Russia. In short, the Luftwaffe was primarily a tactical air force, capable of supporting short-term ground offensive operations, but not a deep and effective air campaign.

Germany’s greatest weaknesses lay in the logistical realm. Only 40,000 miles of hard-surfaced, all-weather roads and 51,000 miles of railroads spanned the vast Soviet Union, and the railroads were of a wider gauge than those found in Germany. Even though they frantically converted captured rail-lines to western gauge as they advanced, German logistical organs had to transfer most of their supplies forward employing whatever Soviet-gauge rolling stock they could capture. Nor did the panzer and motorized divisions possess adequate maintenance capacity for a long campaign. The mechanical complexity of the tanks and armoured personnel carriers coupled with numerous models with mutually incompatible parts confounded the German supply and maintenance system. Worse still, earlier campaigns had depleted stocks of repair parts, and trained maintenance personnel were also in short supply. Therefore, it was no wonder that the German Blitzkrieg had lost much of its sharp armoured tip by late 1941.

Perhaps Germany’s most fundamental logistical vulnerability was the fact that it had not mobilized its economy for war. Severe shortages of petroleum and other raw materials limited German production and transportation throughout the war. The German industrial economy was already dependent on three million foreign workers by June 1941, and the labor shortage became more acute with each new draft of conscripts for the army. As in the previous campaigns, Hitler was banking on a quick victory rather than preparing for a prolonged struggle. In fact, he was already looking beyond the 1941 campaign, planning to create new mechanized and air formations for follow-on operations in North Africa and Asia Minor. Hitler dedicated virtually all new weapons production to such future plans, leaving the forces in the east chronically short of materiel. The Wehrmacht had to win a quick victory or none at all.16

The Red Army

Despite its imposing size, the Red Army was in serious disarray in June 1941. It was attempting to implement a defensive strategy with operational concepts based on the offensive deep battles [glubokii boi] and deep operations [glubokaia operatsiia] theory developed in the 1930s, to the detriment of effective defense at the operational level. In addition, it was attempting to expand, reorganize, and re-equip its forces, simultaneously, in the wake of the Red Army’s abysmally poor performance in Poland (1939) and the 1939–1940 Finnish War. Worse still, the military purges, which began in 1937 and were continuing, produced a severe shortage of trained and experienced commanders and staff officers capable of implementing any concepts, offensive or defensive. In contrast to the German belief in subordinate initiative, the purges and other ideological and systemic constraints convinced Red Army officers that any show of independent judgement was hazardous to their personal health.17

Red Army troops also suffered from the political requirement to defend every inch of the existing frontier while avoiding any provocation of the Germans. The Red Army had already largely abandoned and cannibalized their pre-1939 defenses along the former Polish-Soviet frontier and were erecting new ‘fortified regions’ in the western portions of the so-called ‘Special Military Districts.’ Despite prodigious efforts, however, the new defenses were incomplete when the Germans attacked. The bulk of forward rifle forces were garrisoned as far as 80 kilometres (48 miles) east of the frontier, and NKVD border troops and scattered rifle elements manned frontier defenses.

While the Red Army’s logistical system was in disarray, its soldiers were at least fighting on their own terrain. Even before the harsh Russian winter arrived, Red Army soldiers demonstrated their ability to fight and survive with far fewer supplies than a typical Western soldier required. As German forces lunged ever deeper into European Russia, Soviet supply lines shortened, while German forces struggled with ever-lengthening lines of communication and having to deal with millions of prisoners and captured civilians. At the same time, however, the rapid German advance overran many of the Red Army’s logistical depots in the Western Soviet Union. In addition, since much of the Soviet Union’s vital defense industry was located west of Moscow, Soviet authorities had to evacuate 1,500 factories eastward to the Urals before German forces arrived, often in near-combat conditions. Although the evacuation effort was ultimately judged successful, the Soviets abandoned vital mineral resources and suffered enormous disruption of their wartime production in the process.

Organizationally, the Red Army’s structure reflected its doctrinal and leadership deficiencies. First, it lacked any equivalent to the panzer group or panzer army that were capable of conducting sustained deep operations into the enemy rear area. Its largest armoured formation was the mechanized corps, a rigid structure that contrasted unfavorably with the more flexible German motorized corps. Formed hastily in late 1940 and still forming when war began, each mechanized corps contained two tank divisions and one motorized division. Since the former, which had a strength of 10,940 men and 375 tanks, was tank-heavy and lacked sufficient support, the mechanized corps also included a motorized division and various support units. At least on paper, each of the unwieldy mechanized corps totalled 36,080 men and 1,031 tanks.18 Worse still, most mechanized corps were badly deployed, occupying scattered garrisons with the corps’ divisions often up to 100 kilometres (60 miles) apart. Some corps were subordinated to army headquarters with the mission of conducting local counterattacks in support of the army’s rifle corps, while others were to conduct major counterstrokes under front control. This made it impossible for the corps to perform the decisive offensive operations required of them by the State Defense Plan.19

At least superficially, the Soviet rifle division, which had an authorized 14,483 men organized into three rifle regiments of three battalions each plus two artillery regiments, a light tank battalion and supporting services, was similar to the German infantry division.20 On paper, a Soviet rifle corps contained two to three rifle divisions; a field army consisted of three rifle corps (with three divisions each), one mechanized corps, several artillery regiments and an antitank brigade. In practice, however, the Red Army was woefully under-strength, with most divisions numbering 8,000–10,000 men or less even before the German onslaught.21 In late May 1941, the Soviet government attempted to remedy this problem by calling up 800,000 additional reservists and accelerating the graduation of various military schools. These additional personnel were just joining their units when the attack came. In practice, most field armies mustered only six to ten divisions organized in two rifle corps, with an incomplete mechanized corps and little maintenance support.

Thus, although Germany possessed clear qualitative and even quantitative advantages over the Soviet Union in a short struggle, if its first onslaught failed to knock out the Red Army, the Soviet Union was capable of overwhelming Germany in the long term. In the first place, but unrecognized by the over-confident Germans, the Soviets had sizeable forces available in the internal military districts and Far East and an immense mobilization potential. In addition, the Red Army was beginning to field a new generation of weaponry, including multiple rocket launchers (the famous ‘katiushas’) and new tanks (T-34 mediums and KV heavies) that were markedly superior to all current and projected German vehicles.22

The Red Air Force (Voenno-vozdushnikh sil – VVS) posed little immediate threat to the Luftwaffe even though its approximate 19,533 aircraft, 7,133 of which were stationed in the western military districts, made it the largest air force in the world. Its equipment, like that of the Red Army, was obsolescent and suffering from prolonged use. The Great Purge had struck aircraft manufacturers and designers as well as military commanders, ending the previous Soviet lead in aeronautics.23 Newer types of aircraft, such as the swift MiG-3 fighter and the excellent Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack airplane, which were, in some ways, superior to their German counterparts, were just entering service in spring 1941, leaving the Air Force with a mixture of old and new equipment. Transition training to qualify pilots to fly these new aircraft lagged since Air Force commanders feared that any training accidents would lead to their arrest for ‘sabotage.’24 Thus when Barbarossa began, many Soviet fighter pilots in the forward area had as few as four hours’ experience in their aircraft. The changeover to new equipment was so confused that numerous Soviet pilots had not become familiar with the appearance of new Soviet bombers and erroneously fired on their own aircraft on 22 June.

Doctrinal concepts for the employment of massed air power expressed by A.N. Lapchinsky, the ‘Russian Douhet,’ the occupation of eastern Poland in 1939 and Soviet successes in the air during combat against Japan and Finland in 1939 and 1940 generated a false sense of superiority among many senior aviation officers. In the event of war, they expected to launch a massive air offensive from the new territories. However, relatively few airfields in the forward area were operational, with many being torn up for expansion in the spring of 1941, and the few that existed lacked revetments and anti-aircraft defenses to protect the crowded parking aprons. The VVS was also plagued by disunity of command and severe command turbulence. Some air divisions supported specific ground armies or fronts, others were directly subordinate to the general staff, and still others were dedicated to the regional air defense of the homeland. In the context of the chaotic opening campaign, where tenuous communications and chains of command evaporated, such divisions made it difficult to bring coordinated air power to bear at key points. Nor did most Soviet aircraft have radios in 1941. Worse still, the purges liquidated three successive Air Force commanders and many other senior officers, and the rippling effect of promotions left inexperienced officers in command at all levels. Few of these officers were capable of correcting the VVS’s overly rigid and essentially outdated tactics.25

Warning of War

The most vexing question associated with Operation Barbarossa is how the Wehrmacht was able to achieve such overwhelming political and military surprise. We now know that Stalin received ample warning of the impending attack from a wide variety of sources, including diplomatic, NKVD, intelligence and many other seemingly credible sources.26 Nor did the Germans take any special precautions to conceal their massive force build-up in eastern Poland. In fact, German high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft flew over Soviet territory on more than 300 occasions, prompting repeated diplomatic protests but little defensive action, while German espionage agents and German-backed Ukrainian guerrillas infested the western Soviet Union in the spring of 1941. The German Embassy in Moscow evacuated all non-essential personnel as early as 16 June 1941, and by 21 June no German merchant ship remained in Soviet-controlled ports.

At first glance, therefore, it is easy to accept the standard interpretation that Joseph Stalin’s obstinate blindness was responsible for the debacle. June 1941 is often cited as a classic example of a leader ignoring evidence of an opponent’s capability to attack because he doubted the intention to attack. Undoubtedly, Stalin was guilty of wishful thinking, of hoping to delay war for at least another year in order to complete the reorganization of his armed forces. He worked at a fever pitch throughout the spring of 1941, trying desperately to improve the Soviet Union’s defensive posture while seeking to delay the inevitable confrontation. In addition, however, there were numerous other reasons for Stalin’s reluctance to believe in an immediate German offensive. First, the Soviets feared that Germany’s other enemies, especially Great Britain and the Polish resistance, would provide misleading information in order to involve Moscow in the war. Similarly, the Soviet leaders were concerned that excessive troop concentrations or preparedness in the forward area might provoke Hitler, either by accident or as a pretext for some limited German action such as seizure of border lands and demands for more economic aid. Stalin was not, after all, the first European leader to misunderstand Hitler, to believe him to be ‘too rational’ to provoke a new conflict in the east before he had defeated Britain in the west. Certainly Hitler’s own logic for the attack, that he had to knock the Soviet Union out of the war to eliminate Britain’s last hope of assistance, was incredibly convoluted.

This Soviet fear of provoking, or being provoked by, a ‘rational’ German opponent goes far to explain the repeated orders forbidding Soviet troops to fire even at obvious border violators and reconnaissance aircraft. It also helps explain the scrupulous Soviet compliance with existing economic agreements with Germany. Stalin apparently thought, or hoped, that by providing Hitler with the scarce materials so vital to the German economy, he would remove one incentive for immediate hostilities. Thus in the eighteen months prior to the German invasion, the Soviet Union shipped two million tons of petroleum products, 140,000 tons of manganese, 26,000 tons of chromium and a host of other supplies to Germany. The last freight trains rumbled across the border only hours before the German attack.27

In addition to this belief in a rational Hitler, there were institutional reasons for the Soviet intelligence failure of 1941. The purges had decimated Soviet intelligence operations as well as the military command structure. Only the military intelligence service, the Main Intelligence Directorate [Glavnoe razvedyvatel’noe upravlenie – GRU], remained essentially intact, and the GRU chief, Lieutenant General F.I. Golikov, had apparently succumbed to German deception efforts. Golikov duly reported indications of German preparations, but he labeled all such reports as doubtful, while emphasizing indications of continued German restraint. Other intelligence officials were so afraid of provoking Stalin or Hitler that their reports were slanted against war.

German deception operations also contributed to Soviet hesitation. First, the planned invasion of Britain, Operation Sea Lion, was continued as a cover story for Barbarossa. The German High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – OKW) confidentially informed their Soviet counterparts that the troop build-up in the east was actually a deception aimed at British intelligence, and that Germany needed to practice for Sea Lion in a region beyond the range of British bombers and reconnaissance aircraft.28 Meanwhile, Hitler directed that the German troop concentration be portrayed as defensive precautions against a possible Soviet attack, again encouraging the Soviets to avoid any threatening troop movements. A host of other German deceptions suggested impending operations from Sweden to Gibraltar. Then, in May 1941, the German Foreign Ministry and OKW encouraged rumors that Berlin might demand changes in Soviet policy or economic aid. This led many Soviet commanders to believe that a German ultimatum or some other diplomatic warning would precede any attack.

The German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece during April-May 1941 also helped conceal Barbarossa. This invasion not only provided a plausible explanation for much of the German build-up in the East but also caused a series of delays in the attack on Russia itself. Thus, intelligence agents who correctly reported the original target date of 15 May 1941 were discredited when that day passed without incident. By late June, so many warnings had proved false that they no longer had a strong impact on Stalin and his advisors.

Viewed in this context, the Soviet strategic surprise is much more comprehensible. Among a myriad of conflicting signals, identifying an imminent threat was difficult at best. Late on the evening of 21 June, Stalin did approve a confused warning message to his commanders (see Appendix I). Unfortunately, the archaic communications system failed to notify many headquarters prior to the first German attacks. Only the naval bases and the Odessa Military District were sufficiently remote to react in time. Some commanders risked Stalin’s displeasure by taking their own precautions, although such initiative was the exception rather than the rule.29

In retrospect, the most serious Soviet failure was neither strategic surprise nor tactical surprise, but institutional surprise. In June 1941 the Red Army and Air Force were in transition, changing their organization, leadership, equipment, training, troop dispositions, and defensive plans. Had Hitler attacked four years earlier or even one year later, the Soviet Armed Forces would have been more than a match for the Wehrmacht. Whether by coincidence or instinct, however, the German dictator invaded at a time when his own armed forces were still close to their peak while his arch-enemy was most vulnerable. It was this institutional surprise that was most responsible for the catastrophic Soviet defeats of 1941.

Reflections

For the Soviets, the 1930s was a decade of alternating hope and frustration. Faced with growing political and military threats from Germany in the west and Japan in the east and with equally disturbing western apathy in the face of these threats, the Soviet Union felt increasingly isolated on the international stage. Diplomatically, Moscow promoted global disarmament, while internally it reformed, modernized and expanded its military establishment. Soviet formulation of advanced strategic, operational and tactical war-fighting concepts in the early 1930s was accompanied, after 1935, by a steady expansion of its armed forces, an expansion that continued unabated until June 1941. This peacetime ‘mobilization’ made the Soviet armed forces the largest in the world.

Size, however, did not equate to capability. What the Soviets would call ‘internal contradictions’ negated the progress of Soviet arms and undermined the Soviet state’s ability to counter external threats. Foremost among these contradictions was Stalin’s paranoia, which impelled him to stifle original thought within the military institutions and inexorably bend the armed forces to his will. The bloodletting that ensued tore the brain from the Red Army, smashed its morale, stifled any spark of original thought and left a magnificent hollow military establishment, ripe for catastrophic defeat.

Less apparent was the political contradiction inherent in the nature of the Soviet state. Communist absolutism placed a premium on the role of force in international politics, and encouraged its military leaders to study war in scientific fashion to formulate advanced military concepts in service of the all-powerful state. Yet the abject obedience required of the officer corps to the Party, and hence to the state, conditioned passive acceptance by them of the bloodletting that ensued. Just as political leaders like Bukharin admitted to false crimes against the state for the ‘greater good’, so military leaders also served or perished at the whim of Stalin.

These contradictions undermined the Red Army’s ability to serve the state effectively and condemned to failure any attempts to reform. In the end only unprecedented crisis and abject defeat in war would impel successful reform. It is to the credit of the emasculated officer corps that, when this defeat came, the surviving officers had a sufficient legacy from the enlightened days of the early 1930s to allow them to overcome institutional constraints and lead the Red Army to victory.

2

THE BORDER BATTLES

22 JUNE–9 JULY

The Initial Strikes

At precisely 0315 hours on the morning of 22 June 1941, as the last minutes of the shortest night of the year ticked away, a storm of shellfire from thousands of German artillery pieces shattered the calm along a 1,800-kilometre (1,080-mile) front. As the red blaze of explosives reinforced the feeble light of a new dawn, thirty Luftwaffe bombers manned by handpicked crews and flying in groups of threes delivered terror and destruction to Soviet airfields and cities. Minutes later, from Memel’ on the Baltic Sea southward to the Prut River, the first wave of 3½ million German soldiers deployed along the border lunged forward, beginning the greatest military offensive the German Army had ever undertaken. Barbarossa had begun. Achieving total tactical surprise, the invaders utterly shattered Soviet border defenses within hours. Amid the chaos, thousands of stunned Red Army officers and soldiers muttered grimly, ‘Eto nachalo’ (It has begun).1

As soon as the sun rose, the Luftwaffe followed up its initial attack with a force of 500 bombers, 270 dive-bombers and 480 fighters that struck sixty-six Soviet airfields in the forward areas. These strikes succeeded in destroying over 1,200 Red Army Air Force aircraft on the first day of the war, most of them before they could take off. Within only days, the Luftwaffe secured undisputed air supremacy over the battlefield and paralysed all Soviet troop and rail movements.2

In most regions the initial Wehrmacht ground advance encountered weak and patchy resistance. German assault troops overran many border posts before the NKVD border guards could assemble, although in some regions troops assigned to local fortified regions fought to the last man, delaying the Germans for a few hours while Red Army divisions struggled frantically to man their assigned forward defensive positions. Like a defiant shoal in a hostile sea, the citadel at Brest defiantly held out against the invading forces until 12 July.3

Understanding that effective organization and crisp command and control differentiate armies from mobs, the Germans did all in their power to disrupt both in the Red Army. Even before the initial air strikes, Brandenburger special operations troops in Red Army uniforms parachuted or infiltrated into the Soviet rear areas, cutting telephone lines, seizing key bridges and spreading alarm and confusion. Within only hours, these measures and the paralyzing effect of the German air and ground onslaught utterly destroyed the Red Army’s organizational cohesion and command and control. Worse still, it was soon apparent that this destruction extended throug every level of Red Army command from infantry platoon to the High Command in Moscow.

Operations in Belorussia

Nowhere was this destruction more apparent and total than in the sector north of the Pripiat’ Marshes, where the Wehrmacht was making its main attack with Field-Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Centre.4 The army group’s initial mission was to penetrate Soviet defenses on both flanks of the Belostok salient, advance along the Minsk-Smolensk axis, and envelop, encircle and destroy Red Army forces west of the Dnepr river. Subsequently, it was to ‘achieve the prerequisites for cooperating with Army Group North… with the objective of destroying enemy forces in the Baltic region and proceeding to Moscow.’5 Bock’s army group consisted of Colonel-General Adolf Strauss’s Ninth and Field-Marshal Gunther von Kluge’s Fourth Armies, and Colonel-General Herman Hoth’s Third and Colonel-General Heinz Guderian’s Second Panzer Groups.6 The Third Panzer Group, consisting of General-of-Panzer-Troops Rudolf Schmidt’s XXXIX and General-of-Panzer-Troops Adolf Kuntzen’s LVII Motorized Corps, was to advance north of the Belostok salient through Vilnius to Minsk. The Second Panzer Group, with General-of-Panzer-Troops Heinrich-Gottfried von Vietinghoff’s XXXXVI, General-of-Panzer-Troops Joachim Lemelsen’s XXXXVII, and General Freiherr von Geyr’s XXIV Motorized Corps, was to attack eastward across the Bug river from south of Brest to link up with Hoth’s panzer group at Minsk. Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring’s Second Air Fleet, with 1,500 aircraft (more than half of the total 2,770 planes committed to Barbarossa), provided Bock with air support.

Opposing Army Group Centre, Army-General D.G. Pavlov’s Western Special Military District, which became the Western Front the moment war began, was deployed in single echelon with three armies forward and the field headquarters of Lieutenant-General P.M. Filatov’s 13th Army far to the rear.7 Lieutenant-General K.D. Golubev’s 10th Army, supported by Major-Generals M.G. Khatskilevich’s and P.N. Akhliustin’s powerful 6th and the virtually tank-less 13th Mechanized Corps defended the apex of the Belostok salient. Lieutenant-General A.A. Korobkov’s 4th Army with Major-General S.I. Oborin’s 14th Mechanized Corps deployed on Golubev’s left flank, and Lieutenant-General V.I. Kuznetsov’s 3rd Army supported by Major-General D.K. Mostovenko’s 11th Mechanized Corps was on Golubev’s right. Pavlov’s reserve consisted of Major-General M.P. Petrov’s 17th Mechanized Corps located near Slonim and Major-General A.G. Nikitin’s 20th Mechanized and Major-General A.S. Zhadov’s 4th Airborne Corps stationed near Minsk.

Faced with Bock’s onslaught, Pavlov’s front suffered immediate paralysis of its command and control. The headquarters of Korobkov’s 4th Army was never able to establish reliable communications with headquarters above and below it. Even though Kuznetsov’s 3rd and Golubev’s 10th Army were in tenuous radio communications with Pavlov’s headquarters, they were hardly more functional as command elements. On the first day of the war, on Pavlov’s order, his deputy Lieutenant-General I.V. Boldin flew through a swarm of hostile German aircraft to the 10th Army’s headquarters outside Belostok to organize a counter-attack. Golubev’s headquarters consisted of two tents in a small wood alongside an airstrip, where the Army commander attempted to counter the Germans despite shattered telephones, constant radio jamming, and total confusion. Golubev tried in vain to launch a counterstroke on 23 June with his few available forces in accordance with prewar plans, but within days the 10th Army ceased to exist except as fugitives seeking to break out of the German encirclements.8

Besides the sheer force and speed of the vastly superior German forces’ advance, the greatest difficulty the Soviet defenders experienced was lack of virtually any information about the current situation at the front. The reality was far worse than anyone in Moscow believed, resulting in a series of impossible orders to counterattack with units that had ceased to exist. At 2115 hours on the evening of 22 June, Stalin and Timoshenko issued NKO Directive No. 3, which ordered a general counteroffensive against the Germans, and, during the next several days, they stubbornly insisted the forward fronts implement this directive (see Appendix I).9 In many cases subordinate commanders passed on these orders even though they knew the real situation, simply because they feared retribution for refusing to obey. After several days the enormity of the initial defeat became obvious to all. Even then, however, the General Staff in Moscow was hard pressed to get accurate, timely reports from the front. Staff officers were sent out to patrol the forward area and report back each evening. On numerous occasions the staff called Communist Party chiefs in various villages and collectives to determine the extent of the German advance.

On Army Group Centre’s left flank, Hoth’s Third Panzer Group struck eastward along the vulnerable boundary line between the Northwestern and Western Fronts, easily outflanking the latter’s 3rd Army, and reached Vilnius by the evening of 23 June.10 Although badly rattled, on 24 June Pavlov once again attempted to organize a counteroffensive under his deputy, Boldin. Assigning Boldin nominal control of the 6th and 11th Mechanized and 6th Cavalry Corps, he ordered the force to attack northward towards Grodno to prevent the exposed Soviet units around and north of Belostok from being encircled. Lacking effective communications, air cover, logistical support and sufficient modern tanks, Boldin’s effort was doomed from the start.11 The few tanks, cavalry and infantry that survived the gauntlet of intimidating air strikes arrived in the Grodno region long after Hoth’s panzers had raced eastward toward Vilnius and fell victim to devastating infantry ambush and antitank fire. By the end of 25 June, the 6th Cavalry Corps had suffered over 50% casualties (mostly from air attack) and one tank division was out of ammunition. Another division could muster only three tanks, twelve armoured carriers and forty trucks.

Although Boldin’s futile effort did permit many Red Army units to escape from the Belostok area eastward toward Minsk, the relief was only temporary. Hoth’s panzer group raced past Vilnius toward Minsk on the Western Front’s northern flank and, at the same time, Guderian’s Second Panzer Group penetrated Soviet defenses south of Brest and advanced precipitously toward Minsk on Pavlov’s southern flank.12 Pavlov had no choice but to pull back, but was in no position to do so in orderly fashion. He attempted a general disengagement to new defenses behind the Shchara River at Slonim on the night of 25–26 June. However, the few units that actually received the orders to withdraw were not able to break contact. Having already lost much of their fuel, motor transport and air support, Pavlov’s distraught forces withdrew eastward in disarray, on foot and under constant German air attack.13 To the east, advancing German armoured spearheads ambushed the headquarters of Filatov’s 13th Army, Pavlov’s second-echelon force, which was in the process of deploying its scattered divisions forward, and captured classified reports describing Soviet defense plans.14

Since German aircraft had destroyed most of the bridges across the Shchara River, most of Golubev’s 10th Army was not able to cross the river. In a virtual state of panic, on 26 June Pavlov reported to Moscow that ‘up to 1,000 tanks [of the Third Panzer Group] are enveloping Minsk from the northwest; …there is no way to oppose them.’15 In desperation, he then ordered his reserve 20th Mechanized and 4th Airborne Corps to conduct a joint air-assault and ground operation to halt advancing German forces at Slutsk, but this effort too failed.16 By 30 June, despite Pavlov’s frenetic measures, Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzer groups had closed their pincers around a huge pocket west of Minsk containing much of Pavlov’s totally disorganized 10th, 3rd, 4th, and 13th Armies. The Western Front virtually ceased to exist as an organized force. Within a month, Stalin tried and executed Pavlov, his chief of staff, Lieutenant-General V.E. Klimovskikh, and several others on charges of ‘criminal behavior in the face of the enemy.’17 Pavlov’s immediate successor, Marshal-of-the-Soviet-Union S.K. Timoshenko, had no time to organize defenses along the Berezina River east of Minsk, and the German armoured juggernaut pushed rapidly forward across the Berezina River toward the Dnepr in early July.

In 18 days of combat, German Army Group Centre advanced 600km (360 miles), occupied all of Belorussia and inflicted 417,790 casualties on the Western Front, including 341,073 soldiers killed, captured or missing. In addition, the Western Front lost 4,799 tanks, 9,427 guns and mortars and 1,777 combat aircraft.18 However, despite the dramatic German success in this first fantastic encirclement, there were flaws in the German victory. Because the advancing Germans were not able to assemble the forces necessary to seal off the encircled Red Army forces hermetically, large numbers of Red Army soldiers escaped, leaving their heavy equipment behind. Afraid that his panzer groups would advance too far too fast, Hitler ordered them to pause while his infantry eliminated the encircled enemy. This hesitation, in turn, prompted the first of many debates that would ensue in German command channels regarding how the campaign should be conducted. Fearing that conservative hesitation would permit Red Army to regroup, Colonel-General Franz Halder, the OKH chief, hoped that Guderian would continue the advance with his Second Panzer Group on his own initiative! The prescient Halder also noted that many Red Army troops were fighting to the death, and that German intelligence was incorrectly identifying many large Red Army formations.19 All of this boded ill for the future.

Operations in the Baltic Region

While Bock’s army group was savaging Pavlov’s Western Front, Field-Marshal Ritter von Leeb’s Army Group North replicated Bock’s feats on the approaches through the Soviet Union’s Baltic republics. Leeb’s mission was to advance along the Leningrad axis, destroy Soviet forces in the Baltic region, capture Lenin’s namesake city and link up with Finnish forces near Lake Ladoga. His army group consisted of the Eighteenth and Sixteenth Armies and the Fourth Panzer Group with a total of six army and two motorized corps, backed up by three security divisions and an army corps in reserve.20 Colonel-General Erich Hoepner’s Fourth Panzer Group, consisting of Colonel-Generals Hans Reinhardt’s and Erich von Manstein’s XXXXI and LVI Motorized Corps, was to spearhead the army group’s advance.21 Colonel-Generals Georg von Kuechler’s and Ernst Busch’s Eighteenth and Sixteenth Armies, each with three army corps, were to advance on the flanks and in the wake of the advancing panzers.22 Leeb retained the XXIII Army Corps in army group reserve and could, if need be, call on the L Army Corps, deployed in his sector as Army High Command (OKH) reserve. This cast of players would initiate the Battle for Leningrad.

Leeb’s strong and experienced force faced Colonel-General F.I. Kuznetsov’s Baltic Special Military District, which became the Northwestern Front at the outbreak of war, with responsibility for defending the northwestern strategic axis and the approaches to Leningrad. Kuznetsov’s front, the weakest of the three deployed along the western border, consisted of three armies and two mechanized corps. Lieutenant-Generals P.P. Sobennikov’s 8th Army and V.I. Morozov’s 11th Army, supported by Major-Generals A.V. Kurkin’s and N.M. Shestopalov’s 3rd and 12th Mechanized Corps, formed Kuznetsov’s first echelon, and Major-General M.E. Berzarin’s 27th Army was in the front’s second echelon.23 Powerful on paper, Kuznetsov’s forces suffered from the same debilitating deficiencies that plagued the entire Red Army on the eve of war and were only partially reorganized, trained and re-equipped. Since Stalin’s orders prevented him from mobilizing and defending properly, within weeks Army Group North crushed his defenses and quickly turned the approaches to Leningrad into a war zone.

Leeb’s forces advanced on 22 June, ripped apart partially-manned Soviet defenses and plunged deep into Soviet territory, pre-empting Soviet defense plans and generating chaos in the Red Army’s ranks. Kuznetsov tried to implement his defense plan but, given the precipitous and violent German attack, did so in wooden and haphazard fashion. After counterattacking in vain with his 3rd and 12th Mechanized Corps, on 25 June his two shattered armies withdrew in disorder northward toward the Western Dvina river.24 The newly formed Soviet Stavka [High Command] hastily tried to establish new defenses, ordering Kuznetsov to defend along the Western Dvina with his shattered 8th and 11th Armies and the fresh 27th and 22nd Armies and 21st Mechanized Corps.25 However, when the 27th Army failed to occupy its defense in time, on 26 June Manstein’s LVI Panzer Corps captured a bridgehead over the river. Deprived of his last defensive barrier along the northwestern axis, Kuznetsov withdrew his 8th Army northward toward Estonia and the 11th and 27th Armies eastward, leaving the approaches from Pskov and Ostrov to Leningrad unprotected.26 Faced with the imminent loss of the Western Dvina river line, on 29 June the Stavka ordered Kuznetsov to defend along the former Stalin Line (from Pskov to Ostrov), but Kuznetsov failed to do so in time.27 Reinhardt’s XXXXI Panzer Corps seized crossings over the western Dvina from the 8th Army on 30 June, while von Manstein’s LVI Panzer Corps expanded its bridgehead at Daugavpils.

Faced with looming disaster, on 30 June the Stavka shuffled the front’s senior command cadre, replacing Kuznetsov with Lieutenant-General P.P. Sobennikov, the former 8th Army commander, and appointing Lieutenant-General F.S. Ivanov in Sobennikov’s stead. At the same time, it sent Lieutenant-General N.F. Vatutin, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, who had played a vital role in preparing pre-war Soviet defense plans, to serve as Sobennikov’s chief of staff, effective 4 July. Vatutin’s instructions were to restore order to the front