Deconstructing Barbarossa
If it is true that Hitler's strategic fumbling, not German operational and tactical failures, saved Russia in 1941, then much of the history of the Second World War must be viewed in a new light. Had Germany succeeded in knocking Russia out of the war in a lightning two-month campaign, after overrunning the rest of the continent from the Arctic circle to the tip of Greece, the virtues of the German operational method could not have been denied. How strong is the case that only Hitler could stop the panzers?
The principal criticisms of Operation Barbarossa center on the timeless military variables of time, space, force, and logistics. Thus the argument runs that Germany could never have defeated the Soviet Union because of its vast size, because Soviet forces were too strong, because the German foray into the Balkans left too little campaigning time before the onset of winter, or because the German advance could not be sustained logistically over the primitive Russian road and rail nets. Given the sheer weight of criticism, the stature of many of the critics, and the ultimate outcome of the war, the argument is a powerful one; even leading German commanders were astounded at Hitler's decision to invade Russia. Yet if we examine each charge, not from the perspective of May 1945, but from that of August 1941, an altogether different picture emerges.
Perhaps the most common critique of the German failure is that European Russia was simply too vast to be conquered in a single campaign. There can be no question that campaigning in Russia meant campaigning on a grand scale. It is some 600 miles from the Polish border to Moscow, another 900 from Leningrad in the north to Rostov-on-Don in the south. Most of the divisions in the German army were foot-mobile and horse-drawn, and though the panzer and motorized infantry formations could achieve much operating well in advance of the main body, Moscow could not be taken without the stolid infantry and horse-drawn field artillery.
Could it be done? Napoleon's Grand Army, which crossed the Russian frontier at Kovno on 23 June 1812, arrived at Moscow in early September after halting at Vitebsk for 15 days.[23] In 1941, the German troops were marching and fighting at a rate of 15 miles a day, with every seventh day set aside for rest; at that rate the mass of Army Group Center would have arrived before Moscow in mid-August, six to eight six weeks before the autumn rains. (These rates of advance were routinely achieved by German foot and horse-drawn units in the race to the Marne in 1914, and in Russia in 1941 up to the point that Hitler stopped the forward movement of the armies.) The mobile formations could and did achieve prodigious rates of advance which easily supported the generalstab's timetable. Even with a start in late June, the arithmetic easily supports a decisive campaign against European Russia in summer 1941.
Nor was it necessary to physically occupy the whole country. German possession of road and rail nets, river crossings, and main population and industrial centers could and did paralyze Russian resistance throughout western Russia and the Ukraine. While an advance beyond the Volga to the Urals was never contemplated, the complete occupation of all Soviet territory was not required to realize German war aims, centered chiefly on removing the USSR as a threat to German hegemony in Europe and control of Soviet agricultural and industrial resources west of the Urals. If the Soviet Union were pushed beyond the Volga, its armies shattered and most of its heavy industry destroyed or captured, and facing a large and aggressive Japanese army in the east, it is hard to see how the Red Army could have mounted any challenge to German military superiority in the west.
Another common assertion is that the Wehrmacht could not contend with the overpowering Soviet advantage in numbers. Though the USSR boasted a population perhaps double that of Germany, the Red Army in the west did not grossly outnumber the Wehrmacht in the summer of 1941. The Germans attacked in June with 145 divisions, approximately three million men, against a total of 191 Soviet divisions, supported by 37 mechanized brigades.[24] (These figures do not include substantial support from the Reich's Romanian, Hungarian, and Finnish allies.) However, because of differences in organization, the Red Army fighting in western Russia totaled only about 2.5 million troops in June 1941
The number of Russian divisions west of the Urals would grow steadily to exceed 300 by summer's end, but though Stalin would put a million more men into uniform by the end of July, even these staggering numbers of untrained troops could not replace the Soviet casualties lost in the opening battles on the frontiers and in the subsequent "cauldron" battles at Minsk, Smolensk, Uman, and elsewhere. Throughout the summer campaign, the Germans fought at rough numerical parity with the Soviets, with a qualitative edge that gave them a decisive advantage.
In tank strength as well, the numbers are misleading. Though the Soviets possessed many more tanks than the Germans, most were obsolete and poorly maintained (only 27 percent of the Red Army's 24,000 tanks were running when the war began, and only 1500 could be considered superior to German models). But the critical difference was the method of organization and employment. German panzer forces were self-contained, all-arms formations intended for decisive operations, while Soviet tank units were essentially pure armor employed in support of the infantry. These differences in doctrine and structure, and above all the strong German advantage in combat leadership at every level of command, ensured a striking German superiority in tank warfare that revealed itself in every major engagement.
Aside from the vastness of Russian space and numbers, the German foray into the Balkans in the spring of 1941 is often advanced as a primary cause for the failure of Barbarossa because it delayed the invasion into the early summer. Yet the rates of advance shown throughout the campaign refute this charge handily. As shown above, the invasion timetable easily supported the fall of Moscow had Von Bock's main effort--the armored spearheads of Panzer Groups 2 and 3--been allowed to continue the advance. Indeed, it is arguable whether or not the Wehrmacht could have mounted Barbarossa at all, on the huge scale envisioned, earlier in the campaigning season--whether or not the Balkan venture was carried out. The severe winter of 1940-41 and an unusually rainy spring, which carried the Bug and other Polish and Russian steams out of their banks, would have made an earlier jump-off into Russia problematic at best.
The presence of powerful Greek and British forces on the German southern flank was no trivial threat. The Greek army had beaten the Italians handily, and British interest in building an Allied stronghold on the Greek peninsula is shown by Churchill's decision to divert strong forces from Wavell's army in North Africa. Left in Allied hands, Greece represented a potential springboard for future air and ground operations aimed at the heart of the Reich. As an added bonus, the quick, successful Balkan campaign gave German forces valuable experience against quality opponents, boosting their morale at low cost in casualties and materiel.
Many critics argue that a German victory against Russia was simply not possible because of logistical considerations. Martin van Creveld, for instance, is unequivocal: "There is no doubt that the logistic situation would not have allowed an advance by Army Group Center on Moscow by the end of August." Citing the lack of road and rail nets, the poor quality of those that did exist, the distances involved, and the high consumption of fuel and ammunition by the advancing armies, Van Creveld concludes that Barbarossa could not have achieved its objectives for supply reasons alone.
There can be no doubt that the capture of Moscow would have involved great demands on the German supply system, or that German units suffered severely in the breakneck advance. But in the final analysis the charge that victory was beyond German means is not supportable. German commanders themselves, while conscious of supply difficulties and insistent in their demands for greater efforts from their quartermaster brethren, rarely reported themselves unable to achieve their objectives for logistical reasons. It is quite true that German supply services could not support the fighting divisions on the scale called for in pre-war manuals. Individual units sometimes found themselves in dire straits because of shortages. It is curious that most critiques ignore the Soviet situation altogether, yet calculating the logistical support required to sustain an operational advance must take into account the condition of the enemy.
Though critics make much of the primitive road and rail nets in western Russia, German logisticians worked tirelessly through the summer to convert the rail system to German gauge and push the railheads forward. By the middle of August, double-tracked, German-gauged railroads had been advanced as far forward as Orsha and Smolensk, greatly easing the strain on Von Bock's wheeled transportation assets. Army Group Center was now receiving twice as many supply trains per day as it had in July, giving it the logistical capacity to press on to Moscow "with all its strength." Having come 500 miles against strong opposition in seven weeks, the panzers now had six weeks of good fighting weather to cover the final 125 miles.
Denouement
By mid-month in August 1941, Russian forces defending along the Smolensk-Moscow highway stood swaying, like a punch-drunk fighter waiting for the knockout blow. With no coherent front and their own rear services in shambles from incessant air attacks and panzer raids, the Soviet units facing Von Bock represented but broken fragments of the proud formations that had stood on the Bug only weeks before. Though German strength declined with every step forward, relative to their opponents the German troops retained an absolute superiority in striking power throughout the summer and early fall. Supreme in the air, dominant on the ground, with all the advantages of the initiative and unchecked success, the final operational bound from Smolensk to Moscow against a shaken and demoralized Red Army was surely within their grasp, as the German generals themselves argued so vehemently.
The men, tanks, and supplies diverted to the Ukraine in late August helped win one of history's greatest land battles, taking 665,000 prisoners and destroying 884 tanks and 3178 guns. The state of supply could apparently support the movement and operations of an entire panzer army away from the Moscow axis in August (a distance of several hundred miles), then back toward Moscow a month later to resume the attack. That it could support the original plan of campaign thus appears highly likely.
The decisive argument is this: If logistics made an August advance to Moscow impossible, in dry weather, how could Von Bock do so in autumn and early winter, in appalling weather, with six fewer hours of daylight each day, against ever-increasing numbers? For advance he did, driving steadily if slowly forward after the great victories in the Ukraine, through mud and rain and snow, through mounting resistance from fresh Soviet divisions sprouting almost overnight, over broken-down roads and rails that grew worse with each day. Operation Typhoon, the resumption of the drive to Moscow in October, exceeded even the astounding success of the Kiev encirclement. Army Group Center succeeded in crushing eight of the nine field armies then massed before the capital; 673,000 troops, 1242 tanks, and 5412 artillery pieces were written off the Soviet order of battle.
Throughout the campaign, the achievements of the Luftwaffe were similarly impressive. Primarily a tactical force designed to operate in support of the army, with one tactical air force supporting each army group, the Luftwaffe outmatched the Soviet air force at every turn, whether in air-to-air combat, close support of ground formations, battlefield interdiction, or aerial reconnaissance. Of particular note was the great responsiveness of German air units, which proved their worth time and again by quickly massing against Soviet tank formations and blunting their attacks at the last moment. In modern warfare the notion of an air force trained and organized to fly close support for major ground formations is an antique one. In 1941 it came close to winning a world war.
By mid-December the tattered feldgrau battalions could advance no more, having reached the end of their strength even as 40 fresh Siberian divisions arrived to bolster the defense. Though Moscow never fell, German tactical and operational achievements in Barbarossa remain unequaled. In 20 encirclement battles, the German army advanced 600 miles and overran almost 400,000 square miles of Soviet territory, killing an estimated four million Soviet soldiers and capturing another 3.5 million. More than 14,000 tanks and 25,000 guns were taken or destroyed. It was, and remains in many ways, the most terrible and destructive land campaign ever. The Red Army would take years, burying its dead in their millions, to move the same distance west.
The Lessons of History
It thus seems clear that given its operational freedom, the Wehrmacht would have taken Moscow in September of 1941 and knocked Russia out of the war for good. Though largely ignored in the United States, Operation Barbarossa holds powerful lessons for all who aspire to higher command--and more important, for those who will command the commanders. In Barbarossa we see not only the potential for decisive victory, but also the terrible consequences of failure when soldiers and their political masters diverge. Whether in the maelstrom of total war, in lesser contingencies, or in the intricacies of "peace" operations, such divergence can have tragic consequences.
The first and most striking lesson of Barbarossa is that operational and tactical excellence, while necessary to achieve victory, is not enough to win. The essence of strategy is making the right choices--about strategic objectives, about the means employed to achieve them, and about how those means are used. Germany in 1941 made many right choices. By and large the commanders named to lead major formations were masters of their trade. The grouping of forces and operational planning were clearly good enough to win. The operational objectives assigned to the army groups lent themselves to battlefield success. But the most important choice of all--the primary strategic objective whose capture or destruction would lead to decisive victory--became a political football to be kicked from one end of the theater to the other. At various times Hitler favored Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, or the Caucasus, or even all four simultaneously. In the end, this inability to focus on one decisive strategic objective doomed Germany to failure and destruction.
Here, too, are sobering lessons for statesmen. Not for the first time in history, the civilian leader of the state viewed the counsel of his military chiefs with ill-concealed contempt. By any standard, the quality of the military advice offered to Hitler was uniformly high. In correctly assessing the true Soviet center of gravity and how to destroy it, the German military and its leaders gave Hitler the key to victory.
Nor can they be charged with timidity. Senior field commanders, General Staff officers, and the Army leadership gave their views frankly and forcefully, often in a manner unlikely to be tolerated in the American military today.The German experience teaches us that at bottom, military professional advice is extremely important. Hitler rejected it, believing himself more capable than his experts. His fate and that of the German nation should remind us that when political leaders disregard military advice and professionalism to intervene in military operations, they do so at great risk. Theirs is the unquestioned right to set the aims and the conditions of the war, but the art of war has moved far beyond the day when the politician and the general were interchangeable. The German nation paid a fearful price to learn that lesson.
Another significant lesson of Barbarossa is that strategy must always be designed to strive for rapid and decisive results. German commanders were steeped in the tradition of Rossbach and Sadowa, of Sedan and Tannenberg--lightning battles that delivered shattering blows. They viewed the static trench warfare of World War I, so foreign to their strategic tradition, as anathema; it was expunged ruthlessly in the interwar period by building a revolutionary army capable of waging mobile, fast-paced operations.
Given a choice, German commanders invariably sought to encircle and annihilate their opponents, rather than wear them down in set-piece battles. This idea was commonly expressed in the term kesselschlacht or "cauldron battle," a decisive maneuver to envelop the enemy on all sides and wipe him out. Strong, armor-heavy wings supported by dive bombers punched through defenses to move deep into the enemy rear, seeking to disrupt and dislocate enemy logistics and command and control, and to break up concentrations of reserves as they attempted to form. Foot-mobile infantry divisions and horse-drawn artillery then followed to complete the encirclement and reduce the pockets.
This form of warfare demanded strong nerves and led to severe philosophical differences between the rising generation of panzer generals and their more conservative seniors. At issue was how the panzers should be handled: Should they be allowed to forge ahead into the operational depth of the defense, or halted to allow the infantry divisions to come up? Guderian, the founder of the panzer arm, argued that once a deep penetration had been achieved the panzers must be kept on the move--the enemy must never be allowed to rally. His more doctrinaire superiors, virtually all gunners or infantrymen, strove to rein in the panzers, fearful they would be cut off, surrounded, and destroyed.
This question remains relevant today; its echoes can be found in the decision by the VII Corps commander in the Gulf War to halt his tanks at nightfall on the first day after successfully penetrating Iraqi front-line defenses. In doing so he remained faithful to the traditions of the US Army, which has always stressed tight control of large formations and adherence to carefully orchestrated, detailed plans. In the Gulf War, the Iraqis' poor standard of training and unwillingness to fight contributed to a short war, but in Operation Barbarossa delay promised disaster.
As he had proved in France, Guderian was probably right. Each time the panzers were held up to reduce a pocket or diverted to subsidiary objectives, the drive lost momentum, allowing the Soviets time to patch together another defensive line. Taking counsel of their fears, conservative staff officers saw scores of fresh Soviet divisions reaching all the way back to Moscow. Guderian and Hoth, moving well forward with their leading tanks and closely watching each day's aerial reconnaissance reports, knew better.
Despite these divergent views, the doctrine of operational encirclement and annihilation served the Wehrmacht well in Russia. The Russian campaign proved that swift, crushing victory was possible even when fought over great distances against numerically strong opponents. The combination of tactical aviation and armor, supported by combined arms and moving at speed into the depth of the enemy's defense, was a deadly combination as long as the spearheads kept moving.
In future conflicts, commanders and their civilian masters will again face these difficult choices. Is a slashing campaign of annihilation too risky? Should the field commanders be given their operational freedom or closely restrained by political control? Should the tanks be loosed or kept tied to the main body? For students and practitioners of the military art, the invasion of Russia is a rich trove, veined with the hard practical lessons of an implacable war fought on the largest scale. Though each war has its own context, its own logic, and its own purpose, there is much to ponder in the history of Barbarossa.
Hannibal
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