Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (28 page)

Difficulties
in gathering intelligence about the Soviet air force allowed many gaps in German assessments to be filled by the rampant Nationalist Socialist thinking that pervaded the Luftwaffe.
⁸⁷
At the onset of the campaign the Luftwaffe estimates of the Soviet Air Force in the European theatre were set at 5,800 aircraft with only 1,300 bombers and 1,500 fighters classed as fully operable.
⁸⁸
Even these conservative expectations figures still left the Soviet Air Force at a significant numerical superiority, but the reality was that more than 7,000 Soviet aircraft (all types) were stationed in its western military districts
⁸⁹
with thousands more in the interior.
⁹⁰
Assessments of the poor Soviet command and control structures, training, experience and tactics proved largely accurate, helping to offset the Soviet numerical advantage. As with the Red Army, the Soviet Air Force was undergoing a major reorganisation at the time of the German attack which, together with the achievement of tactical surprise and the marked German superiority in aircraft quality and crew training, allowed such devastating losses in the earliest period of the war.
⁹¹
The
most striking German under-estimation centred on their assessment of the Soviet aircraft industry,
⁹²
which even before the war was far larger than the Luftwaffe's industrial base
⁹³
and would continue to outperform the Germans even through the great disruption of 1941.
⁹⁴
Conversely, the Luftwaffe's commanders tended to over-estimate their own effectiveness. The adverse ratio of aircraft to space prevented the Luftwaffe from making their advantages felt over the vastness of the operational area,
meaning that aerial support could only be offered selectively and Soviet aircraft could operate on parts of the front with a degree of
impunity.

In sustaining its operations against the Soviet Union, the Luftwaffe was forced to confront many practical problems also shared by the army. Material problems were recognised in the area of supply with a shortfall of some 15,000–20,000 tons in transport capacity.
⁹⁵
Furthermore, it became apparent prior to the campaign that many vehicles were in such poor mechanical condition that a great effort had to be made to recondition as many as possible before the beginning of operations. Even so, the Luftwaffe suffered the widespread problem that its motor vehicles were simply unsuited to the rigours of the eastern theatre. Personnel was another hindrance to the Luftwaffe's performance with previous losses of air crews being easy to replace numerically, but lacking the vital experience of combat and formation flying.
⁹⁶

Aerial support for the eastern front was organised into four so-called ‘Air Fleets’ (
Luftflotte
), one for each of the three army groups plus a much smaller force to operate from northern
Norway and
Finland. Army Group Centre was supported by
Air Fleet 2, under the able command of Field Marshal
Albrecht Kesselring. This was the largest German air fleet and by far the best outfitted for close support operations with the army, underlining the overall importance of Army Group Centre's progress. Air Fleet 2 commanded all 425 dive-bombers and 98 ‘destroyers’ deployed in the east, with
Fourth and
First Air Fleets, supporting Army Groups South and North respectively, receiving none.
⁹⁷
The previous success of the Wehrmacht's land campaigns had highlighted the great advantage Germany possessed in combined-arms operations and Kesselring underlined the importance of this co-operation by instructing his generals that the wishes of the army were to be considered as his own orders.
⁹⁸

Air Fleet 2 was made up of two
Air Corps: VIII and
II; the first was assigned to support
9th Army and more particularly
Armoured Group 3. Air Corps II was to co-operate with
4th Army, yet concentrate especially on supporting
Armoured Group 2.
⁹⁹
Air Corps VIII was the larger of the two corps and was heavily engaged in the capture of
Crete which, due to the battle concluding in early June, meant that there was little time to accomplish its transfer and make adequate preparations for Barbarossa.
Accordingly, on 21 June Air Corps VIII was still short of some 600 motor-vehicles, 40 per cent of its aircraft and vital communications equipment – a crucial deficiency on the eve of war.
¹⁰⁰
The commander of Air Corps VIII, Colonel-General
Wolfram von Richthofen, noted on 21 June: ‘[w]e are greatly concerned that our units are as yet
unready’.
¹⁰¹

Keeping hundreds of aircraft at peak operational efficiency presented an ongoing technical challenge which disguised the critical difference between aircraft numbers and those actually combat ready. For example, of the 425 dive-bombers cited above, only 323 were in fact combat ready and of the 98 ‘destroyers’ only 60 were fit for service. Air Fleet 2 also numbered some 384 fighters with just 284 listed as combat ready, while the bomber force totalled 299 aircraft, but only 222 were
serviceable. Overall, the Air Fleet numbered some 1,367 aircraft (all types), yet of this figure just 994 were able to conduct combat operations. The same was true for the Luftwaffe along the whole of the eastern front with an average 25 per cent fallout rate among aircraft totals – thus the 2,995 combined aircraft strength meant in real terms 2,255 combat ready.
¹⁰²

By the summer of 1941 it was clear that the Luftwaffe was only going to be able to meet all its obligations if the war in the east could be won quickly and without substantial losses. Either for practical reasons, such as the availability of oil, or for strategic considerations concerning Britain, a long campaign was simply untenable. The Luftwaffe was already engaged in a multi-front war which was tying down some 1,566 aircraft in western Europe, the Mediterranean, North
Africa and Germany.
¹⁰³
This major dispersion of strength to theatres of secondary importance prevented concentration on the most important front and the one with the smallest window for
success.

The impossible equation – the logistics and supply of Barbarossa

Although
my discussion of the major armed components making up Germany's invasion force reveals many of the institutional flaws within each service, the Achilles heel upon which all rested was logistics.

The extent to which many Germans saw Hitler as a revolutionary leader was not only reflected by the disdainful vigour with which he denounced the Weimar Republic and international conventions.
The Third Reich was to be an archetypal expression of modernisation, encompassing both a nationalist, spiritual renewal and technical progression. An essential element of this was the embracing of the motor vehicle and its promotion under the Nazis to supersede the railways. Accordingly, by the autumn of 1939 neglect had led to a critical deterioration of the railways with fewer locomotives and rolling stock than had existed in 1914.
¹⁰⁴
Yet motorisation had by no means filled the void in Germany's transportation sector, which hindered economic progression and impeded the rate of conversion from rail to road based infrastructure. At its root were unalterable economic considerations that persistently failed to impress upon the Nazi leadership the futility of their goal. As many as 1,600 trucks were required to equal the capacity of a double-tracked railway line, while the consumption rates of fuel, personnel, spare parts and maintenance decisively favoured the railways for distances over 200 miles. Furthermore, Germany could not domestically produce the rubber and oil needed for motorisation, whereas coal and steel for the railways were readily available.
¹⁰⁵

For the Wehrmacht, motorisation offered the promise of a return to movement on the battlefield and a solution to the impasse of World War I. Many officers, however, held to their traditional reliance on the railways and warned against a one-sided approach. In spite of these concerns, Klaus Schüler makes clear that such reservations, particularly within
Halder's General Staff, were regarded as matters of secondary importance and were not allowed to impinge on the primacy of operational command.
¹⁰⁶
It is evident that, by pursuing motorisation and neglecting the railways, Germany created a situation where neither infrastructure was able to meet the demands of war.

By the advent of the war in 1939 the results of a partial motorisation of the armed forces produced, as we have seen, two separate armed forces each governed by an operational doctrine that proved mutually exclusive. In the invasion of Poland Germany fielded only 16 armoured,
motorised and ‘light’ formations which were fully motorised and, therefore, to a certain degree independent of the railways. For the rest of the army, movement and supply were divided between the ‘small column area’ (
Kleinkolonnenraum
), in which the division operated, and the ‘large transport area’ (
Grosstransportraum
), responsible for bridging the gap between the divisions and railheads. In the case of the
Kleinkolonnenraum
, the authorised establishment for each infantry division was 942 vehicles (excluding motorcycles) and 1,200 horse-drawn wagons. In the case of the
Grosstransportraum
, only three transport regiments existed for the whole army and these together numbered a pitiful 9,000 men and operated 6,600 vehicles, of which 20 per cent were routinely undergoing maintenance at any given time. In total, a maximum capacity of 19,500 tons could be delivered to the front, offering only the most limited re-supply and dependent for this on relatively short distances.
¹⁰⁷
To meet even these most modest demands, the army's logistical apparatus had been anxiously absorbing civilian trucks and vehicles into its ranks. While this had the short-term effect of increasing capacity, it also exacerbated the standardisation problem already prevalent within the army.

In 1938 there were 100 different types of trucks, 53 types of cars and 150 varying motorcycle designs in service. The resulting chaos led to the ‘Schell Programme’ which sought uniform standardisation but, given Germany's limited resources, could not hope to make any real headway before the Polish campaign was underway. The jumble of vehicles in service was complicated further by the addition of those commandeered from the civilian sector. These were not the robust six-wheeled, four-wheel-drive, Krupp models, but instead the ordinary two-wheel-drive variants, unsuited to the rigours of war on dust-choked, unsealed Polish roads. As a result some units suffered vehicle losses of up to 50 per cent, which factory replacements, consisting largely of two-wheel-drive models, simply could not make good.
¹⁰⁸

Confronting this problem in February 1940
Halder noted that the army possessed 120,000 trucks, which did not allow any to be held in reserve. There was already a shortfall of 2,668 trucks (more than 2 per cent
¹⁰⁹
of the overall total) which, added together with those trucks out of service due to maintenance or repair, created a deficit of more than 4 per cent of the total.
¹¹⁰
Thus, the army was already some 5,000 trucks under strength. Even more worrying was the monthly loss of roughly 2,400
trucks (2 per cent) from accidents or simple mechanical wear, with a replacement figure per month of just 1,000 vehicles. The end result, as Halder recorded, was ‘a deterioration in the operational ability’.
¹¹¹

What is most striking about the dire shortage being experienced by the army was that it was worsening at a rate of 1 per cent of the total every month, even without the mechanical fallout rates of a sustained campaign or the battlefield losses this would entail. When one takes into account the great distances and poor infrastructure of the Soviet Union, the issue of logistics, with all its foreboding implications, stands at the forefront of problems to be encountered.

Obvious possible remedies included increasing production, but owing to the limited availability of rubber a projected maximum of only 4,000 vehicles a month (for the whole armed forces, allowing 2,500–2,600 for the army) could be produced. Requisitioning 16,000 trucks from the civilian economy was considered, although this would prove only a short-term solution and leave the army facing the same dilemma in seven months. Thus, as extraordinary as it may seem, Halder therefore undertook an ‘extensive de-motorisation’ (
großzügige Entmotorisierung
) programme in which the seven-month respite granted by the civilian truck allocation could be used to achieve a balance in the loss/replacement ratio. Halder reasoned that with a reduction in the total number of vehicles, one could expect a decrease in the fallout rate, allowing production to close the gap on the shortfall. Consequently, orders were to be issued immediately to implement the necessary preparations for the procurement of more horses, harnesses and carriages.
¹¹²