The Year of Ruin
Part 7: Withdrawal I, March 14 – March 25, 1945
If you listen to many historians, war is a neat activity and everything is laid out for the commanders to see. There is no fog of war, there is no uncertainty, and there is sometimes even no friction. Campaigns are waged, battles are fought and withdrawals undertaken much like clockwork. Real war is about as far from this sort of omniscient historical retrospective as can it can possibly be. The true import of events can only be understood in hindsight; commanders on the ground and politicians at the time can never grasp current events in all their complexity. This is doubly true when events are abstract entities. Mussolini could not imagine at the beginning of hostilities with the Soviet Union that this event would precede three years of incredibly costly fighting with a lame-duck German ally, yet perceiving this would have been far easier for him than a theoretical threshold such as the Clausewitzian culminating point of victory. The previous two weeks had been judged through the lens of history and hindsight. The eleven days between March 14 and March 25 indicate exactly the sort of advantage historians have over actual strategic actors.
This is to say that the Italians did not perceive that they had already passed their culminating point of victory until much later. The drive on Moscow had been blunted, yes, but six other Italian armies were capable of strong offensive action. Perhaps most tellingly, in the Kazan, Baistrocchi’s army was still completely geared for an offensive. The only Soviet presence on his front was a lonely Soviet headquarters and he was driving his formations toward Stalingrad. He was also moving to erase even the weak Soviet presence that there was in front of him. Other divisions were marching toward the Caspian Sea and, ultimately, Astrakhan. The Caucasus had been effectively wiped clean by Amadeo Duca degli Abruzzi. These generals knew the bad news from Bastico’s front but it did not concern them, not yet. The Soviets might be tumbling southward, but they were still weeks away and these two armies together were strong enough to put up a stiff fight. The delivery of supplies was becoming slightly erratic and occasionally formations would be held up by logistical failure, but such inconveniences did not of themselves spell out defeat or culminating point.
Baistrocchi’s advance on Stalingrad.
The strategic situation still seemed hopeful to commanders on the ground even closer to the Moscow thrust. Bastico had been blunted, his vanguard corps was in headlong withdrawal from the salient and one division even seemed to be in danger of destruction, but the Soviet presence in western Ukraine was in grave danger of encirclement should Pintor push forward and link up with the Germans. With Graziani on his medium right and Guzzoni on his far left, this seemed a plausible plan of action to stabilize the front even should Bastico and perhaps Vercellino be pushed up to several hundred kilometers back. Graziani and Vercellino, for their parts, were still fighting offensive battles, and on favorable conditions as well. Herein lay the seeds of another potential thrust on Moscow, from the west rather than the south and east. If the Soviets could be trapped in western Ukraine and then their eastern fronts rolled up from the west, then the Soviet army would be fractured into three major pieces and a number of more minor ones.
The dangerous Moscow situation.
The Italians were still achieving encirclements, still destroying entire Soviet formations. Plavsk was the site at which a Soviet armored division and an infantry formation met their end, and this was not the only such victory. The Italians were still winning battles. What sort of withdrawal can be occurring if those withdrawing were not just winning battles, but actually winning offensive battles? Guzzoni was still making inroads into western Ukraine; the Soviet positions there were becoming increasingly bent out of shape. The Germans were also doing their, however small, part, at least in pushing forward the front in places where there were neither Italian nor any Soviet formations. Encirclements, victories and advancing save in a few isolated sectors. This is not the stuff a withdrawal is made of.
The overall situation on the 23rd of March.
As is its wont, the change, when it came, burst upon the Italians with breathtaking rapidity. It was literally in the space of two days that the entire situation changed. The blame lay, unsurprisingly, with the Germans. On the 23rd they were forging ahead or, at the very least, holding the line so that the Italians could maneuver and advance. By the evening of the 25th, all German units in the Ukraine were in full withdrawal. The Germans were pulling out of this joint offensive venture with the Italians. The Italians still fielded seven armies, but these armies on their own could not cover the entire front. Even with German assistance, this was impossible. Without German assistance, it became even more so. The causes of the German withdrawal are not clear to this day. Undoubtedly it sprung from the unbalanced mind of their Fuhrer and the German generals themselves lacked the wit and will to defy his twisted purposes.
The Germans, withdrawing!
The result was, of course, immediate and obvious. The Italians were to be left unsupported, deep in enemy territory along a front they could not possibly man. Mussolini bubbled with rage, but had no choice. The successes of the previous eleven days, with a casualty rate better than in a long time at just over eight thousand one hundred Italians and over twenty-two thousand four hundred Soviets—and not to mention formations destroyed—these successes were thrown away into the wind, to be lost. There was naught that could be done. The Italians would have to withdraw as well.