“Seven weeks of the most important and historic events are behind us. Stalin’s main armies are shattered, his powerful Panzer forces are almost completely destroyed. The door to Moscow has been forced open, the Reds will not succeed in closing it again.”
GENERALOBERST HOTHI, AUGUST 1941
A propaganda image which has become on of the most famous of World War II is this study of a Panzer III from the 18th Panzer Division crossing the River Bug in June 1941.
The launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, on 22nd June 1941, was Hitler’s most desperate gamble of the Second World War. It was a gamble Hitler felt compelled to take, if his ambition of the complete subjugation of Europe was to become a reality. Four-fifths of Germany’s total armies, three million men, were committed to the most appalling conflict in the history of warfare.
In 1941 the conquest of Russia would not only have provided Germany with the agricultural and industrial supplies to ensure Hitler’s mastery of Europe, it would have simultaneously rid him of the only military power capable of challenging his domination. The deaths of tens of millions of Russians was not simple an economic necessity, their destruction would pave the way for the ‘Grossraum’, a concept already under development by Heinrich Himmler as the culmination of Hitler’s call for ‘Lebensraum’. The Grossraum was envisaged as a gigantic Germanic state stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the mountains of the Urals, in the east.
Standing between Hitler and the realisation of this vision were the armies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a fighting force whose condition of unpreparedness was a testament to the paranoia of its political leadership and the excesses of a state which vied with Germany in the extent of its totalitarian oppression. Hitler’s first Barbarossa directive ominously stated that the USSR might be invaded even before the war with Great Britain was over.
Though Stalin accepted that war was now inevitable, he believed Russia had until the spring of 1942 to prepare herself. His fanatical rejection of counter-information was so fierce that vital intelligence concerning German preparations was kept from him by subordinates fearful of the violence of his reaction.
As the German build-up toward Operation Barbarossa continued. Stalin’s attempts to pacify Hitler grew more desperate. He had already stated in an interview with PRAVDA in November 1939 that it was not Germany who had attacked Britain and France, but Britain and France who had attacked Germany. Stalin now forbade any criticism of Germany to be printed in the newspapers. He increased Russian supplies to Germany and withdrew recognition of the Norwegian and Belgian governments in exile. When Hitler successfully invaded Greece and Yugoslavia, Stalin expelled the Yugoslavian ambassador to Moscow and refused a request to recognise the Greek government in exile.
Stalin felt he was continuing to buy time by these unrequited concessions, but the breathing space he obtained was totally devoid of any worthwhile attempt to remedy his military disadvantages. By May 1940 170 Soviet divisions were stationed in newly occupied Polish territories, with the result that over half the army were occupying positions with fortifications and rearward communications which were incomplete. Indeed, by June, with a German attack imminent, Western Special Military District was a complete shambles.
Many formations were between six and seven thousand men short of wartime establishment. Numbers of experienced personnel had been hived off to build new tank and aviation units. Only one of six mechanised Corps had received their full complement of equipment. Three of the four motorised divisions had no tanks and four out of every five vehicles in the tank fleets were obsolete. Four of the Corps had only one quarter of their designated motor vehicles, and in another
Corps one in three motor vehicles needed repairs. Therefore, although the opposing forces had amassed vast amounts of weaponry along their common borders, the Soviet Red Army and the German Wehrmacht were anything but equal adversaries.
The effects of the long campaign have begun to show on these Panzer IIIs halted in a Russian village just before the onset of winter 1941.
The awesome German armies, which the 170 under-strength divisions of the Russian troops faced, were divided into three large groups. These consisted of 148 fully manned and equipped divisions of which 19 were Panzer and 15 Panzer Grenadier divisions. The Army Group South was commanded by Field Marshall Gerd von Runstedt and was charged with seizing Kiev and taking control of the Ukraine as far as the river Dnieper. Field Marshall von Bock’s Army Group Centre was to strike towards Smolensk. Army Group North under Field Marshall von Lieb was to attack through the Baltic States and seize Leningrad.
The three German army groups were supplemented by 500,000 Finnish troops advancing from their homeland in 14 divisions 150,000 Romanians attacking along the Black Sea towards Odessa. These forces, together with the Luftwaffe, which had devoted 80 per cent of its operational strength – 2,770 aircraft - to the build up of Barbarossa, fielded over three thousand three hundred and fifty tanks, over seven thousand artillery pieces, 60,000 motor vehicles and 625,000 horses.
There was, however, one vital flaw in the German organisation, previously mentioned - the questionable decision to reduce the tank strength of each of the divisions from a two-regiment brigade to a single regiment. At a stroke the tank strength of the division was reduced from 340 to 170 tanks. The initial compensation for the dilution of strength in the Panzer Divisions came in the form of the deployment of more Divisions. The resulting Panzer Divisions within each of the separate army groups were bought together to form miniature Panzer armies. By concentrating a number of Panzer divisions together the Germans were able to achieve a massive local superiority of numbers at the point of decision. In the early part of the campaign the far-sighted use of armoured formations went a great deal towards offsetting the dilution of the tank strengths of the Divisions.
The Russian army still clung to its peacetime structure. Should war occur, each military district would be transformed into army groupings similar in structure to the German forces opposing them. The Soviet Northern front was to repel advances through the Balkans and defend Leningrad from Finnish attack. The North-West, West and South-West fronts would engage the three main German army groups, and the Southern front would deal with any advance towards Odessa.
Behind these lines, the contrast between the warring nations could not have been greater. While Germany boasted one of the finest industrial infrastructures in the world, Russia had still not completed her industrial revolution. By 1941 a generation of upheaval had left its mark economically and psychologically. Revolution and civil war had been followed by the destruction of the peasantry and their enforced collectivisation. Whole segments of the population had been uprooted and transported to work the new industries set up in the mineral rich region of Siberia, the Urals and Kazakhstan.
At 4am on the 22nd June 1941 the maelstrom that was Barbarossa finally erupted. The German armies of the Blitzkrieg sliced through the Russian forces on every front. Faced by the results of his intransigent refusal to act, Stalin became frozen with indecision. While his army headquarters desperately tried to piece together the most rudimentary picture of what was happening, he ordered an immediate counter-offensive on all fronts. As the first reports of the devastation his own command had helped to create filtered through, he was shattered.
“All that Lenin created we have lost forever,” he declared. He finally retreated to his dacha, not to emerge until 3rd July.
At the front, the concerted rapier thrusts of the German Panzer divisions were skewering through the chaotic Russian defences. The Panzer groups created deadly breaches in the Soviet line, slicing the Red Army forces into isolated segments. The supporting German divisions then moved forward in encircling advances which surrounded these pockets of defenders. The ferocity and effectiveness of the Panzer attacks were so great that some of the pockets were gigantic. Groups of up to fifteen Russian divisions were surrounded and mercilessly bludgeoned into surrender.
The encirclement of Minsk by the right flank of Army Group North and the left flank of Army Group Centre yielded 300,000 prisoners, 2,500 tanks and 1,400 artillery pieces. Thirty-two of the 43 Russian divisions were destroyed within a week and the road to Moscow penetrated to a depth of 300km.
The remainder of Army Group North led by Panzer Group IV, under Hoepner, scythed into the Baltic States, capturing Riga, the Latvian capital. Only in the south were the German forces limited to shallow advances toward Lvov and Rovno.
On the ground chaos reigned. The Luftwaffe were pulverising the road and rail links behind the Russian lines. Many Russian officers were not even using code in their desperate radio requests for instructions from their headquarters. Struggling masses of uncoordinated troops were being slaughtered by the German troops as they attempted to obey Stalin’s orders to counter-attack. Others were being machine-gunned by their own military police for fleeing from positions which were worse than hopeless.
The men of the Panzertruppen were as ill-prepared as the rest of the German army for the onset of the Russian winter. These men are wearing 1941 pattern greatcoats which proved to be hopelessly inadequate for the conditions. In the case of the vehicles the situation was even worse; neither lubricants nor machinery had been designed to withstand the conditions they were about to face.
By 3rd July the battle for the frontier was over. The German armies had advanced along a line from the river Dvina in the north to the Dnieper in the south. General Halder, Chief of German General Staff, declared that the war against the Soviet Union had taken only 14 days to win. But German intelligence had totally underestimated the reserves which Russia could command. By 1st July 5,300,000 men had been mobilised and Stalin had emerged from his isolation to broadcast a message of patriotism and resistance to the nation. For once, the Russian people were told the truth. The pre-war complacency which Stalin had done so much to foster had rapidly to be undone. Stalin now took direct control of the Red Army. But the general mobilisation of Russian troops failed to curtail the German advance.
Four reserve armies of 37 divisions were despatched to holster West Front in the general area of Smolensk. The Germans countered with yet another encirclement and the Panzer groups of Generals Hoth and Guderian smashed through the Soviet line and manoeuvred 300,000 Russian troops into an indefensible pocket. Another 150,000 prisoners, 2,000 tanks and 2,000 artillery pieces fell into German hands.
Goebbels announced that: “The eastern continent lies like a limp virgin in the mighty arms of the German Mars”.
Army Group South finally broke through the Russian South-West Front and another pocket yielded a further toll of 100,000 prisoners.