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Ostkrieg

Page 13

by Stephen G. Fritz


  The initial assault, however, matched German expectations of a rapid campaign. “Tactical surprise of the enemy has apparently been achieved along the entire line,” Halder noted drily in his diary. “As a result of this tactical surprise, enemy resistance directly on the border was weak and disorganized, and we succeeded everywhere.” That the Soviets had been caught unawares despite numerous warnings to Stalin throughout 1941 has long been recognized by historians, who have struggled to shed light on his seemingly erratic and illogical behavior. Most have dismissed the Soviet dictator’s actions as a futile attempt at appeasement of Hitler, while a few have argued that he actually intended a preventive strike against Germany but that the Führer simply beat him to the punch. In reality, a complex mix of factors influenced Stalin’s assessment of the situation, with the relative significance assigned to them largely depending on the perspective of the observer. The most common interpretation, that Stalin simply could not bring himself to believe the warnings or believed them to be an attempt by the British to draw the Soviet Union into the war, have focused on Russian weaknesses. The purge of the Red Army in the late 1930s that resulted in a decimation of the officer corps, the poor performance against Finland that seemed to confirm Soviet military haplessness, the seeming constant reorganization that left the Red Army in a state of disarray, the prompt delivery of food and raw materials to Germany: all these indicated to many observers a policy of abject appeasement.3

  Stalin’s actions and decisions can be considered from another perspective, however, one that, if not absolving the Soviet dictator, both better illuminates his view of the situation and sheds significant light on the scale of the task facing the Germans. Although still guilty of miscalculations, Stalin, in this view, acted largely from a sense of strength rather than weakness. Thus, he almost certainly understood that Germany would attack; the key questions in his mind were when and where. On numerous occasions, he had dismissed notions that Hitler would launch an attack on the Soviet Union with the (not incorrect) observation that Germany did not have the resources to win a two-front war and, thus, would not risk starting one. He expected that Germany would end the war in the west before entering any conflict with Russia. In the spring of 1941, he most feared being drawn into the war through British duplicity or being the victim of a sudden peace between Germany and England. The flight of Rudolf Hess to England, which most historians dismiss as merely a bizarre episode, appeared to him to raise the prospect of just such a peace. As late as 1944, Stalin still maintained to Churchill that Hess had been involved in a plot to organize a joint Anglo-German crusade against Russia. “All believed,” recalled Maxim Litvinov, “that the British fleet was steaming up the North Sea for a joint attack, with Hitler, on Leningrad and Kronstadt.”4

  Given previous German behavior toward its intended victims, Stalin also thought that any military action would be preceded by an ultimatum, which would provide time for a Soviet military response. This assumption was important since from the mid-1930s Soviet military doctrine had stressed the notion of quickly transferring a war to the enemy’s territory. The task of defense, then, involved absorbing the attacker’s initial blow on the frontier while establishing the preconditions necessary to wrest the initiative away through a counteroffensive. Unknown to Stalin, however, Hitler intended to act differently this time, as Goebbels noted in his diary on 16 June: “We will take a completely different approach than usual . . . : we will not polemicize in the press, we will wrap everything in deepest silence and simply attack on X-day.” Still, in anticipation of a possible German attack at some point, and in accordance with Red Army doctrine, Stalin had ordered large numbers of Soviet troops to the border areas.5

  This concentration of force was also intended as a deterrent to any German attack. In early April, when Soviet intelligence had identified only seventy-two German divisions on the border facing over three hundred Red Army divisions, Stalin’s brash reply to rumors of a German attack, “Let them try it,” seemed appropriate. Similarly, Stalin rejected a mid-May proposal by Timoshenko and Zhukov to launch a preemptive strike against Germany, arguing that mobilization for such an action might provoke the very attack he thought he could avoid. Since the Wehrmacht deliberately brought units in at the last moment so as to avoid detection, Stalin’s exchange with Timoshenko and Zhukov on the night of 13–14 June also revealed confidence rather than weakness. When Timoshenko requested that more units be moved into the border areas, Stalin refused, then asked how many divisions were in place already. When told 149, he replied, “Well, isn’t that enough? . . . According to our information the Germans do not have so many troops.” At roughly the same time, Molotov expressed similar confidence in Russian strength, telling an associate, “Only a fool would attack us.”6

  From these and other such statements, the conclusion can be only that, although Stalin and the Soviet High Command were aware of the German military buildup, they thought that they had more than matched it and were, thus, acting from a position of strength, not weakness. Stalin’s miscalculation, then, was believing that the Germans would be deterred by these massive Russian forces. His angry remark to Churchill in late 1943—“I did not need any warnings. I knew war would come, but I thought I might gain another six months or so”—was in line with his expectations that Hitler could not wrap up the war with England before 1942 and would not dare launch an assault on Russia in late June. Undone by an odd combination of intense suspicion and rational calculation, Stalin feared stumbling into war through outside provocations but at the same time could not bring himself to believe that Hitler would disregard the evidence of Soviet strength and risk a two-front war. The mood of confusion and anxiety noted by Zhukov on 21 June reflected a man struggling to make sense of the inexplicable.7

  As the Germans were soon to discover, Stalin’s assumption of Soviet power had a great deal to recommend it. From the outset, the Wehrmacht confronted an adversary with a remarkably high level of equipment that could draw on eight times the number of tanks, with the newest models superior in armament, speed, and fighting power. Most Soviet tanks were obsolete, to be sure, but they had to be destroyed nonetheless, a process that cost the Germans time, effort, and staggering quantities of munitions. Moreover, in the second Five-Year Plan (1933–1938), the Soviets had significantly increased the size of their armaments industry, with the result that by 1941 the Soviet Union had come to resemble an armed camp. This militarization had produced a “warfare state” whose goal was to be in a position “to wage war from a running start.” The Soviet Union possessed not only the largest military-industrial complex in the world but also one with a trained cadre of administrators already experienced in managing a war economy. As a result, despite its serious flaws, the Soviet system and the Stalinist apparatus of control proved far more resilient than the Germans anticipated. This enormous expansion of the industrial potential of the Soviet Union, both in size and in geographic distribution, was decisive in 1941, as the Soviets absorbed extraordinary losses but kept fighting. The Germans did, indeed, kick in the front door, but, contrary to Hitler’s expectations, the structure wobbled but did not collapse. The Wehrmacht’s qualitative edge in terms of training, leadership, and equipment provided it an advantage in a short struggle, but, if the initial onslaught failed, the Soviets had the capability of overwhelming Germany in the long term.8

  In addition, German political and military leaders had fallen prey to the illusion of a quick victory, which clouded all their assessments of Russia. After all, they reasoned, they had finished off the apparently much stronger czarist empire in World War I and, thus, made sweeping generalizations based on previous experience. Since their entire plan rested on the assumption that the Red Army would disintegrate immediately under a series of sharp blows, as the French had a year earlier, they ignored unpleasant realities. That it was three hundred miles to the Dvina-Dnieper River line and another seven hundred miles to the Volga in a country with roads that were muddy and nearly impassable for much
of the year did not seem to matter. That even the European part of Russia was vastly larger than British India, with which Hitler liked to make comparisons; that it dwarfed the German conquests in Western Europe; that it was a region of rough terrain, harsh climate, and poor infrastructure; that large areas of dense woods and swampy marshlands were perfect for partisan warfare; that the Russian railway system would have to be rebuilt to the narrow-gauge European standard, which required manpower the Germans lacked: all of this seemed not to register. That the Soviet Union possessed enormous resources and a growing industrial base while Germany suffered a serious lack of key materials, especially oil, was put aside. The French campaign remained the prototype, and the myth of blitzkrieg convinced the skeptics: the campaign would be decided in a few weeks by quick operational victories on the frontier.9

  Skepticism, however, did occasionally seep through. In the seven-week campaign against France, the depth of the longest drive was 250 miles, while the active operational area extended only about 150 miles across. In the Soviet Union, by contrast, the “frontier” area in which the battle of annihilation was to take place extended anywhere from 200 to 350 miles to the rear and covered some 750 miles in breadth, with the attacking armies diverging rather than converging. Even if the attack was successful, a diminishing number of German divisions would face the prospect of conquering an area that was doubling in width. Moreover, a Soviet defeat in the western borderlands would not put Moscow in the immediate danger that the German drive to the Channel had with Paris as the Soviet capital was another 350 miles to the east of the Dvina-Dnieper line. As a result, there would be less likelihood of the same panic affecting Soviet leaders as that which overwhelmed their French counterparts in May 1940. At the end of January 1941, Bock and Halder had already expressed doubts concerning the vast distances and German ability to destroy the Red Army, an unease that was not lessened when initial German operational plans had to be modified on a number of occasions as it became clear that the Wehrmacht did not possess sufficient strength to accomplish its task.10

  In this creeping recognition of inherent German weakness lay the larger problem facing Hitler. War always involves a complex mixture of political, economic, and military factors. Although the first two might have priority in timing or goals, success in war ultimately depends on the proper application of military force. Thus, the planners of Barbarossa proceeded in accordance with Clausewitz’s fundamental rule that the aim of any campaign is to defeat the enemy’s military forces in the field, from which the seizure of economic and political objectives would follow. To be sure, Clausewitz had also noted the need to destroy the enemy’s will to fight, for, if the popular will remained intact, a new military force could be formed, but the assumption remained that destroying the ability would also eliminate the will to resist.11

  At the heart of Barbarossa, however, was a dilemma, which Hitler well expressed in his insistence on securing as quickly as possible the economic and industrial resources of the Soviet Union. Lebensraum, of course, whether referring to economic resources or a utopian idea of racial resettlement, had always been the ultimate goal, but in this instance it meant something very specific to Hitler. The outbreak of war in 1939 had left Germany in a precarious position with regard to many key raw materials—none more critically than oil as overseas imports were cut off by the British blockade. By 1940, an astonishing 94 percent of German oil imports came from Rumania. This dependence proved a source of constant worry for Hitler, especially that the Rumanian oil fields might be crippled by Soviet or British bombers. Although the rapid conquests of 1940 had temporarily augmented the stocks of oil available, these increases had been outweighed by a greater liability as the Third Reich was now responsible for supplying the oil needs of both the occupied countries and its oil-poor allies. The stark reality facing the German war machine was inescapable, and, as early as March 1941, General Georg Thomas of the War Economy and Armaments Office had warned that existing stocks of oil would be exhausted by October. The only possibility of alleviating this desperate shortage would be “to seize quickly and exploit the Caucasus oilfields, at least the areas around Maikop and Grozny. . . . If this is not successful, we must expect the most serious repercussions, with unpredictable consequences for military operations after [September 1941] and for the survival of the economy.”12

  Barbarossa, however, promised the consumption of an enormous amount of oil, which Germany might be able to sustain in the short term, but with which it would be hard-pressed to cope if the campaign lasted longer than a few months. In addition, the Third Reich needed large quantities of oil and other raw materials in order to conduct the anticipated war of attrition against Great Britain and the United States. Winning quickly in the Soviet Union, and securing these vital resources, was, thus, an absolute necessity. In order to achieve this, Hitler ordered the creation of more mechanized units, but the problem of insufficient supplies of oil and gasoline with which to run and maintain these vehicles remained. As a result, the Wehrmacht was forced to rely extensively on horse-drawn transport, which led to further problems: the tremendous differences in the pace of march between the motorized and other units raised the issue of when and how to close pockets; horse-drawn columns were vulnerable to attacks that aggravated logistic problems; and the lack of fodder and replacement animals put a strain on civilian supplies.13

  All the while, the larger questions of the main focus of the attack and how to win a quick victory remained unresolved. Hitler’s ideas certainly violated Clausewitz’s principles, but they were based not merely on an ideological agenda but on a clear understanding of German economic needs. In view of the later criticism of his meddling, it is worth mentioning that, in this instance, he had a far keener appreciation of the economic weaknesses faced by Germany than did his military advisers. Ironically, he had not initially insisted on his ideas but left planning for Barbarossa to the OKH, which stressed the classic military dictum of destroying the enemy army. His suggestions had eventually been incorporated in the overall plan, but not in such a way as to settle the question of the Schwerpunkt of the attack. Typically, Hitler and Halder did not discuss this obvious dichotomy in their views: Hitler simply assumed that the General Staff would accept his ideas, while Halder believed that operational developments would prove his emphasis on the capture of Moscow correct. As a result, no single objective dominated planning; three primary goals were identified, with an army group detailed to each, but with little regard for an eventual concentration of force. Subsequent attempts by army leaders to shape the operations in accordance with their plan led to a dispersal of effort and crippling delays while the key issues that should have been resolved in the beginning were now debated. Would it have been better to have focused the attack in the south? Stalin and Soviet military leaders certainly thought so and had placed the larger part of the Red Army in that area. They believed, given Hitler’s obsession with the Balkans and especially Rumanian oil, that any German attack would target Ukraine and the Caucasus, with the aim of quickly acquiring the industrial, economic, and oil resources of southern Russia.14

  The German operational plan thus failed to achieve clarity in how to destroy the Soviet will and ability to fight on: by crushing the main Soviet forces and seizing the capital or by conquering the key military-industrial areas of the country. In order to win, Germany had to capture the oil fields of the Caucasus as quickly as possible but launched its main effort against Moscow, far to the north. Even here, however, compromise and vacillation ruled as, in the final plan, significant forces had been peeled away from the central front and dispersed both to the north and to the south. In trying to do everything at once, German planners had largely assured that none of the three army groups had the means by which to achieve success. Nonetheless, even though it had military forces and economic resources clearly inadequate to accomplish its goals, Hitler once again hurled the Wehrmacht against a powerful opponent in an all-or-nothing gamble on short-term victory. Given the Wehrmacht’
s limited quantities of oil and gasoline, along with serious deficiencies in logistic preparation and supply capabilities, Barbarossa was from the outset a dangerous undertaking. Success meant that Germany would have the resources to fight a war of attrition against the Anglo-Saxon powers; failure would convert the temporary risk of a two-front war into strategic disaster. Although Goebbels recorded gleefully the initial frightful Russian losses and predicted, “We will soon have pulled it off,” he also noted, with surprising candor: “We have to pull it off. There’s a somewhat depressed mood among the people. . . . Each newly opened theater of war causes concern and worry.”15

  Despite the enormous quantitative strength of the Soviet defenders, the opening phase of Barbarossa seemed to vindicate German assumptions of a quick destruction of the Red Army. Along the entire front, German infantry and armored forces caught the startled Soviet defenders by surprise and advanced quickly against initially weak and patchy resistance. Intercepts of Soviet radio traffic confirmed the impression of surprise as up and down the line the common question was posed, “What should we do?” In some local areas, Russian troops fought stubbornly to the last man and delayed the German advance for a few hours, but this failed to alter the larger picture: the invaders had completely shattered Soviet border defenses. In the skies above the onrushing German forces, the Luftwaffe launched more than twelve hundred aircraft in an assault on Soviet airfields that destroyed over a thousand enemy planes, most on the ground, on the first day alone. In addition, the Luftwaffe sought to destroy Soviet command and control centers in an effort to turn the Red Army into a disorganized and chaotic mob. The Germans had seized the tactical initiative and now aimed to develop such momentum that the Soviets would be unable to organize an effective resistance, an urgency based on the realization that the campaign would have to be won in the first two weeks.16

 

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