Unternehmen Barbarossa
("Operation Barbarossa" or "the invasion of the Soviet Union")
1941-06-19
I'm unable to sleep this evening. Tomorrow at precisely 4:00 German local time our troops will start the biggest land offensive ever undertaken in the history of warfare. A total of 1.7 million German soldiers will attack the combined forces of the Soviet Union and their allies. In my head I'm thinking about the battle plan over and over again:
We will attack on three different fronts with four army groups. Army Group Iberia on the Spanish front, Army Group North in Finland, Army Group South in the Balkans and Army Group Center on the Soviet front. The Kriegsmarine will be split into two forces: A small task force, lead by Admiral Böhm from the bridge of our fierce battleship Tirpitz, is stationed in the Arctic Sea north of Murmansk. The rest of the navy, under the command of Grand Admiral Raeder, will dominate the Baltic Sea and protect our transports during amphibious operations there.
The objectives of our armies are as follows:
Heeresgruppe Iberia (Field Marshal Ringel)
Weakened by a long civil war and without support from the Soviet Union, Spain will be the easiest target of this campaign. This front will be covered by the 4th army under General Heinrici, which is the only army of Army Group Iberia, with its headquarters in Toulouse. Heinrici is commanding 15 infantry divisions (half mountain infantry and half regular) and two light tank divisions. Their objective is to engage and destroy the Spanish forces in the Pyrenees. After that they will simply advance until the entire peninsula is occupied. We expect that the occupation is complete by the end of this year. Air support is provided by two fighter and two Stuka wings.
Heeresgruppe Nord (Field Marshal Busch)
Stationed alongside the former Finnish border are the troops of General Schöner's 7th army, commanded by the Army Group North from Oslo. Difficult terrain and bad infrastructure are the reasons why we are facing the Soviets only with 25 infantry divisions here. The Soviets are opposing us with more that twice that number of troops: For some reason they have stationed 49 infantry and 9 tank divisions in the arctic cold of northern Finland. We are hoping that the Soviets are running out of supplies as soon as the fighting starts, which would negate their numerical superiority.
The objectives of Army Group North are to capture the important port at Murmansk and the aluminum mines at Kemi. Next they will advance south to shorten the front line. We hope to achieve these goals by the end of August to secure our supply of rare ores and to deny the Soviets their only access to the Atlantic that is available during winter months.
Like in Spain, air support is provided by two fighter and two Stuka wings.
Heeresgruppe Mitte / Süd (Field Marshals Ramcke and von Saucken)
The two Army Groups Center (stationed in Warsaw) and South (stationed in Prague) are covering the main front against the Soviet Union and their allies on the Balkans. They have a combined strength of 90 infantry and 21 tank divisions and air support is provided by 18 fighter and 16 bomber wings. Opposing them is an enemy force with a total of 133 Soviet, Hungarian and Yugoslavian infantry divisions and 10 tank divisions. The chaotic organization of the enemy and lacking intelligence reports makes it difficult to determine which general is in command at which part of the front but what we know for sure is that they are all directed from the Stavka in Moscow by Field Marshal Garnov.
By the End of July the forces of Army Group South are expected to capture Budapest and a large part of Hungary. Army Group Center is facing a force almost twice the size of their own and they are only expected to advance a few dozen kilometers into the enemies territory in the first month. During the opening stages of this operation five marine infantry divisions will attack the former Latvian capital of Riga to cement our dominance in the Baltic Sea and to disrupt the enemies supply lines in the rear.
The main blow however will com from the center of the front where we have concentrated all 15 tank divisions of Army Group South which are supported by 10 of our elite Waffen-SS infantry divisions. They are supposed to break through the enemy lines just north of Lemberg and will advance at high speed over the plains of the Ukraine towards the Black Sea at Odessa, effectively cutting their allies off from supplies and reinforcements. Left on their own the armies of Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria will be no match for the Wehrmacht and we expect to advance to the Bulgarian border by the end of August. After the initial blow the Soviet forces will probably be in disarray and our goal will be to advance to a line spanning from Riga in the north over Minsk and Kiev to Sevastopol in the south by the end of August.
Army Group South is assisted by the Italian Army, whose objective will be to conquer the entire Adriatic Coast from Yugoslavia and to advance towards Albania and the Greek border by the end of August.
Any further operations will depend on which goals we have achieved and the situation as it presents itself at the end of August.
1941-06-20
Today was the day we've been waiting for, for so long. The first shot was fired by the massive railway gun "Schwerer Gustav" on the fortifications of the Soviet city of Brest. By noon we had broken through the lines of Spanish, Yugoslavian and Hungarian forces, but the resistance from the Soviet units was harder than expected and we were only able to break through the lines where we had concentrated our tanks for the push towards the Black Sea.
The "Schwerer Gustav" is brought into position to fire at Brest's fortifications.
1941-06-21
The heavy fighting on the Soviet border continued today. The seas were quiet yesterday but today we encountered a small Soviet transport convoy heading towards Murmansk that was escorted by a few destroyers, no match for the main guns of our battleships. We also encountered the first real resistance from the soviet air force today. Superior to ours in numbers, but inferior in every other way. We had some losses but with our modern planes, well trained pilots and better equipped air fields we should be able to win the upper hand soon.
In the afternoon our five divisions of the 1st Marine-Sturm-Korps captured Riga and much of the Latvian coastline completely unopposed. They were greeted by the very friendly Latvian population who had been invaded by the Soviets last year. I think if we play our cards right, partisans will be no problem in these parts of the world. I've given the order to implement the same lenient occupation policies in Russia and the other eastern countries, that we have implemented recently in the other occupied territories.
Riga falls to us after a amphibious surprise attack.