Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (3 page)

The blitzkrieg was a good choice for a mid-sized country of limited means such as Nazi Germany. Since the days of Frederick the Great, Prussia/Germany sought to fight outnumbered and win, while avoiding wars of attrition against larger enemies such as France, Austria or Russia. Accordingly, Führer Adolf Hitler aimed to isolate strategically his enemies and defeat them episodically by concentrating his entire military potential at a single point for a brief time. Surprise and violent action played critical roles.
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So long as Germany fought relatively smaller or weaker states such as Poland, France or Yugoslavia this method worked; against the USSR, which was neither small nor weak, it would fail. The Soviet Union’s almost limitless space dissipated the blitzkrieg’s shock value, while the ruthless Stalinist state survived the most massive defeats suffered by any nation in history.

The blitzkrieg’s decentralized command model is perhaps best exemplified by the Auftragstaktik and the flexible Schwerpunkt (main effort), which could constantly shift in order to adapt to changing situations. The elder von Moltke’s admonition that ‘omission and inactivity are worse than resorting to the wrong expedient’ suited the German psyche and stimulated blitzkrieg leaders. They idolized past iconic leaders like Frederick, von Blucher, von Moltke, von Hindenburg/Ludendorff, von Seeckt and memorialized ‘mythical’ or legendary exploits of yore – the more hopeless the situation the better. But fatally, this kind of thinking eventually led to accepting excessive risk and substituted ‘taking action’ for solid staff work and preparation. Thinking and acting faster than one’s enemy was also critical; the terms ‘decision loop’, ‘OODA Loop’ or ‘Boyd Loop’ will be used here. The ground-breaking work of US Air Force Colonel John Boyd in explaining the success of fighter aces applies equally to most military situations. Its four components are: Orientation – for example, does the subject come from a culture of free–thinking initiative or top–down conformity; Observation – speed and accuracy of his situational awareness; Decision – speed and correctness of his choices; Action – once decision is made, how well do subordinates carry them out.
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Likewise, the Bewegungskrieg had long been Prussia/Germany’s preferred substitute for attritional warfare. For example, in the von Schlieffen plan of the First World War, German soldiers had been called upon to perform unparalleled feats of marching in order to put the French in a position of fatal disadvantage – something they did not accomplish.
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Military motorization, which came of age late in the war, promised to breathe new life into future wars of maneuver. However, Germany’s modest size and lack of resources betrayed
this hope as well. The Wehrmacht never reached the level of modernization necessary to make the blitzkrieg truly work on a global scale, and in particular, its lack of sufficient oil was a constant limitation. Throughout the Second World War, and even at the height of Hitler’s successes, the great mass of the German Army marched on foot at the pace of a Roman legion. Its leg infantry plus horse–drawn artillery and logistics did most of the fighting and dying, despite pride of place being given to panzers, Stukas and other ‘elites’. In fact, the infantry branch was further hamstrung because it lost many of its best divisions when the Army needed foundations for new mechanized units.

The concept of the Vernichtungskrieg rounds out the blitzkrieg’s historical legacies.
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Prussia/Germany long operated under an enemy oriented, instead of a terrain–oriented, system. Destruction of enemy forces in the field became the main objective, with Hannibal’s victory at Cannae serving as the classic example. The Germans considered huge encirclement battles such as Sedan in 1870 and Dunkirk in 1940 models of the penultimate victory. Blitzkrieg forces were the perfect weapon to achieve the prerequisite breakthroughs and envelopments, plus the concluding exploitation necessary to create the desired Kessels (cauldrons). However, there was a steep price to pay: the Germans accepted risk taking and high casualties as an unfortunate part of the bargain.

Current United States Army doctrine acknowledges three levels of warfare: strategic, operational and tactical. Unfortunately, all three words are used inaccurately and interchangeably in both popular literature and military history, so clarifying their use in the present work is appropriate. At the top of the spectrum is strategy, where nations establish policies and goals and in extreme cases, fight wars. At the low end of the spectrum is tactics; here units approximately up to the size of divisions fight engagements and battles. In between, and often most difficult to understand, is the operational level, called grand tactics during the Napoleonic period. Here corps, armies or army groups fight campaigns. Good operational-level commanders put battles together to win campaigns. Successful national–level leaders string together campaigns to win wars.

During the wars of German unification in the largely dynastic nineteenth century, strategy lay in the hands of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, which allowed the Army to concentrate on the operational and tactical levels. In the twentieth century, this method fell apart under the less-capable and more-erratic dilettantes Wilhelm II and Hitler. With them, strategy was integrated, ‘if at all’,
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mainly in the minds of the supreme leaders. As is so often the case in military history, success, such as Bismarck’s nation building from 1864-71, did not engender much serious analysis. Therefore, the German military never
really questioned the prominence of operations and tactics over strategy. As a result of this lopsided emphasis, in 1914–18 and 1939–45, Germany demonstrated an amazing ability to win battles and campaigns, but thankfully, not the capacity to win the wars themselves.

The history of the genesis of the Panzerwaffe should be well known to the reader and need not be repeated here. The Germans conceived of panzer divisions as early as 1931–32, as the tool to execute the blitzkrieg. Initially there were two types of mechanized formations: heavy panzer divisions to attack and create breakthroughs, and light divisions for deep maneuver, encirclements and exploitation. In Poland, however, the light units proved inadequate so were transformed into regular panzer divisions.
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With the creation of the first panzer corps in 1935, the Panzerwaffe ceased to be merely a tactical or infantry support weapon. It had finally become an independent combat arm. The Germans turned to concentrating panzers into increasingly larger formations. The panzers’ ability to function independently on the operational level continued with the establishment of four panzer groups in early 1941 and again with the short-lived Fourth Panzer Army (combining two panzer groups) later that summer.

Panzer armies were where the blitzkrieg and operational–level warfare came together. During the Polish campaign, panzers represented simply another tactical weapon, although a unique one. In the West, the Wehrmacht first experimented with the Panzerwaffe at the operational level; Group von Kleist broke through the Ardennes Forest and trapped the Anglo–French armies against the Channel coast. This was the decisive maneuver of the 1940 campaign
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. Early in 1941, Group von Kleist deployed to Bulgaria in anticipation of action against Greece, was ultimately reoriented against Yugoslavia, but did not play such a critical role in the Balkans as it had in France.

German planners sought to capitalize on their 1940 success by pinning their hopes for Operation Barbarossa on four massive panzer groups. Further, between 26 June and 28 July 1941, Panzer Groups Two and Three were consolidated into an even larger formation, Fourth Panzer Army, along the Minsk–Smolensk axis. The reasoning behind this restructuring was sound, but the wrong selection for commander condemned the concept.
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However, the seeds had been sown and in the autumn and winter of 1941 the panzer groups were renamed panzer armies and reorganized to include artillery, engineer, signal, logistical and other support common to numbered armies.

For several reasons, Barbarossa failed to destroy the USSR and a war of attrition developed in the east. The transition to war of attrition meant both disaster for Nazi Germany and, according to many histories, the end of the blitzkrieg era. (However, I will continue to use the ‘shorthand’ term blitzkrieg
as described earlier.) Only two panzer armies played critical roles in Operation Blau, the assault on Stalingrad and the Caucasus Mountains in 1942, and only one participated in Operation Citadel against the Kursk bulge in 1943. In a dangerous trend, the Second and Third Panzer Armies remained holding defensive positions on the Moscow sector. By 1944 the structure of the German Army was breaking down.
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The Red Army had always outnumbered the Germans, but now in terms of skill it had caught up to, and arguably surpassed, the invaders. Initiative passed to the Soviets and, despite retaining their fearsome-sounding names, panzer armies often ceased to be operational maneuver weapons and instead merely occupied ground. They lost most unique qualities and, in numerous cases, did not even have any panzer or mechanized formations under their command.

Three months prior to launching Operation Barbarossa, German Army Commander Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch told a group of officers to rely on the ‘ruthless spirit of attack, boldness and resolute action inspired by confidence in the superiority of the German soldier over any opponent and by unshakable faith in final victory’.
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This one comment proved to be a harbinger of both the panzer army’s success and decline.

Chapter 1

Group von Kleist as Precursor

The Panzerwaffe’s baptism of fire came in Poland. With a greater than four–to–one superiority in tanks and numerous other German advantages, it is no wonder that the blitzkrieg through Poland was successful. However, the Wehrmacht did not employ its panzer divisions in an operational mass there. Rather, these formations were divided, as were the light and motorized infantry divisions, among numerous armies. Clearly, the Germans would need to make many adjustments in order to be successful when they faced more evenly matched enemies in the future.

Events leading up the Nazi’s western campaign in 1940 are among the best known in military history. When Hitler first ordered the attack for the late autumn of 1939, the Wehrmacht could do no better than plan an unimaginative repetition of the 1914 von Schlieffen Plan. At that time, the Fuhrer had suggested a plan somewhat close to what the Germans would actually employ, but his generals resisted.
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For a number of reasons, including opposition by Army Commander Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch, weather and the compromise of German plans as the result of the crash of a liaison airplane in Belgium, Hitler pushed back the invasion date.

In the meantime, Colonel General Gerd von Rundstedt’s chief of staff at Army Group A Headquarters, Lieutenant General Erich von Manstein, developed and submitted alternative plans up the chain of command. His novel plan called for a true Vernichtungsschlacht (battle of annihilation) not just an ‘ordinary victory’ called for by existing plans. Army Chief of Staff, General of Artillery Franz Halder, however, repeatedly squashed the plan. Thanks only to a chance luncheon between Hitler and von Manstein just months before the invasion, did the general’s unconventional option come to the Fuhrer’s attention. Hitler ordered adaption of the ‘sickle cut’ operation the next day. Furious, Halder banished von Manstein to the relative obscurity of corps command shortly thereafter.

As conceived by von Manstein, the Wehrmacht first moved against the Netherlands and Belgium, replicating their opening gambit of the First World War. This maneuver, designed to divert the Allies, produced the desired effect and drew them northeast. Airborne landings in this area, coupled with apparent passivity opposite Luxemburg and the Maginot Line, confirmed Wehrmacht
intentions to Allied intelligence. After a brief delay, the Germans revealed their Schwerpunkt through the Ardennes Forest. Only when the Allies were fully committed and it was too late, did they notice the danger. Slashing across the French and British rear, the largest armored grouping the world had seen trapped the enemy against the Channel coast. Figuratively, Napoleon must have been spinning in his grave.

Another familiar feature of the western campaign is that the Allies outnumbered the Germans both in divisions and in tanks deployed on the battlefield. Many marks of Allied tanks had thicker armor and bigger guns, but they suffered in the areas of communications and the arrangement of their fighting compartments. The French in particular misused their armor; according to General of Panzer Troops Walther Nehring, thirty–three of sixty–one French tank battalions served in the infantry support role.
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During the 1940 campaign, they never mounted an operation involving more that two armored divisions. Not that it mattered; essentially their morale was broken before the first shot was fired. Strategically the French were hiding behind the Maginot Line. Meanwhile, the British Army, basically a glorified constabulatory designed to guard the empire, fielded a force also unequal to the upcoming ordeal.

As early as 1938, French peacetime maneuvers betrayed their weaknesses in the Ardennes region. Nevertheless, they defended the area with weak ‘B’–quality divisions. German intelligence also noted the vulnerable boundary between the French 2nd and 9th Armies near Dinant and Sedan. Accordingly, German planners knew they would surprise the French at precisely this point with the unexpected arrival of massed panzers along the Meuse River.
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