The Year of Strategic Crisis
Part 8: Safeguarding Dacia, May 2 – June 16, 1941
The period of two months between the beginning of May and the advent of July saw widespread Italian operations in Dacia, in Ukraine, in Anatolia, and in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. It seems best to approach each of these operations one by one and examine them in their entirety before moving on to the next one. The first operation to be examined will be Operation Trajan II, Bastico’s urgent operation to trap and destroy the Soviet armored division running rampant across southern Dacia.
Bastico’s plan was a simple one. Simple plans are always the best, and his opponent only fielded a single division, albeit an armored one, to his seven. Thus he planned simply to rely upon his superior numbers and flexibility they provide to surround, trap and destroy the Soviet division. He would advance on a front four times broader than the Soviets could cope with, simultaneously retaking the two important strategic locations of Bucharest, the provincial capital, and Ploesti, where most of Italy’s crude oil came from. The aim of this operation was to prevent the further incapacitation of Italian logistics through Dacia. It was to prove to be more difficult than imagined, in large part because the logistics network had been compromised to such an extent that at times half of Bastico’s army was immobilized for want of supplies.
Bastico’s plan to move and trap the Soviet armored division that was running amok in Dacia.
It was fortunate that the Soviet armored division did not seem to have good intelligence capabilities on its own, and that STAVKA, the Soviet high command, had either also not detected Bastico’s deployment, or had not communicated this information to the Soviet armor in Dacia, though the reason for this is not known, though it must necessarily reduce to either a lack of intention to, or a lack of capability to. It was likely due to this fact, and despite its superior mobility, particularly given Bastico’s lack of supplies, that Bastico had been able to throw a net around the region of Dacia it was rampaging around by the 13th of May, after nearly two weeks. Despite this entrapment, the amount of space still available to the Soviets was quite large. It was, indeed, large enough that on the 13th Bastico did not actually know where the Soviets were, and considered it plausible that the division had escaped! Given that the average armored division on the march required some forty kilometers of open road, this disappearing act was a veritable display of skill in trickery by the Soviet commander.
The Soviet armored division—encircled but vanished.
Nevertheless, by the end of that day the Soviets had been found again, and three Italian divisions went onto the attack. Six Italian brigades faced four Russian brigades, a possibly worrying sign of fights to come. The Soviets, once pinned down, proved an obstinate opponent and kept the fight going for four days, in a wonderful display of the tunnel vision of military men. The Soviet commander lost all thoughts of strategy and even of operations one he became preoccupied with tactics. This allowed other Italian formations to close in behind him and remove from him the ability to retreat. By evening on the 17th, the Soviet division had finally been broken and, though mopping up continued for some days, the threat to the interior of Dacia had been defeated. Given the apparent impact of the Soviet armored division on the Italian logistics network, it seems plausible to argue that a strategy of raiding, designed to deny the enemy frontline and other armies access to supplies rather than tackling the armies themselves, may be quite effective, particularly for halting offensives and counteroffensives.
The Soviet armored division, finally attacked.
With southern Dacia back in Italian possession and the logistics network slowly being brought back into being after ruin, Bastico moved northward. While he had been securing the south, the situation to the north had become serious. Bastico’s army was needed to stabilize the situation and transform it from a potential defeat into at least a stalemate. By beginning of the second week of June, Bastico’s forces were steadily fighting their way northward, aiming to create the shortest possible line of defense against the Soviets. This line would stretch from the Hungarian border eastward to the Prut River, and then along the Prut southeastward. In attaining his portion of this line, Bastico lost some two and a half thousand men, just under a tenth of his force engaged, which was not his entire army, and in return inflicted only one and a half thousand casualties upon the Soviets, though this was slightly more than one tenth of their force. Bastico’s simple prognosis from this was that, if there was much more fighting of such intensity, his army could be bled dry, while the Soviets could still reinforce their formations in that region.
Bastico’s defensive line in the north of Dacia.
Bastico had completed his initial objective and saved southern Dacia from further disruption. However, the situation in the north during this time had deteriorated to such an extent that his second objective of defending Graziani’s northern flank had become defunct. The best he could do was save the situation, but that would have to be enough for him, for Graziani and for Mussolini.
