Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (95 page)

To explain this extraordinary weakness one must take a step back and see the German generals in a wider context than the immediate events of Operation Barbarossa. All of the generals had served in World War I and some had direct experiences fighting on the eastern front (Halder, Rundstedt, Manstein, Kesselring, Kleist). Memories of Russia's poor performance in that war, exemplified most dramatically by the battle of
Tannenberg in 1914, undoubtedly coloured the perceptions of junior officers of the period. The ultimate defeat of Russia in 1917, despite the division of German forces between multiple fronts, gave weight to the view of Russia as a backward land, fielding a peasant army that was technically ill-equipped and badly led. By contrast events in the same war on Germany's western front had encouraged the misleading conclusion that this was where the one real threat to German military ambitions stood. By 1941 with France defeated, England isolated and the Soviet Union facing Germany essentially alone, the temptation to under-estimate the Red Army, especially in the absence of an objective appraisal of Soviet power, was always going to be great. Once Barbarossa was underway and the mounting difficulties of the campaign began to surface, memories of World War I again played a defining role. In September 1914, as the attacking German armies were compelled to assume defensive positions on the western front, which quickly transformed into the stalemate of trench warfare, the so-called ‘Miracle of the Marne’ was proclaimed by the Allies and German victory plans for 1914 were doomed. In the eyes of many later German commanders (including Guderian who fought in the battle of the Marne), the German failure was not a reflection of an overly ambitious campaign objective or the prevailing battlefield conditions; it was the result of excessive caution and a failure to press the attack on Paris with every possible means in the hope of clinching the decisive
success. The lesson seemed justified by the first campaigns of World War II and formed a new cult of the offensive which subsequently pushed the German armies well beyond their limits in Operation Barbarossa. While historical context may help explain why Halder and his generals acted as they did, it does not excuse the oversights these included.

If the German generals are to be seen as efficient operators of the blitzkrieg war method,
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one can say that even at the height of their wartime experience in offensive operations, they still failed to grasp the fundamental underpinnings of blitzkrieg in strategic matters. This is no small oversight and it raises the question of how well they really understood the formula of their success and its related limitations.
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Certainly there was a great over-confidence going into Barbarossa, supported by an overarching ideological and racial bias, but these factors alone don't fully explain the phenomenon. At its root the generals demonstrated a clear professional failing. They could lead their men well towards a limited operational objective so long as they could maintain their dynamic movement, which in Poland, France and the Balkans also sufficed to achieve the strategic objective. In the Soviet Union, however, this same concept produced an initial success, but not anywhere near enough to achieve the overall strategic objective. Even after the battle of Smolensk and the changing relationship between German offensive and Soviet defensive strength, the generals could do no more than propose yet another grand offensive towards Moscow, entirely oblivious to the essential underpinning of such an operation. Operational thinking predominated within the Wehrmacht at the expense of a vigilant strategic overview.
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This
forestalled an informed understanding of what was possible and not possible, and allowed the war to degenerate into strategically senseless battles without any clear appreciation of how it could eventually be won. The generals merely concentrated on the tasks at hand; the next city to conquer, the next Soviet army to defeat. This blinkered view endured not only throughout 1941, but into the summer of 1943. It was only after the disaster at Stalingrad, when the war was increasingly recognised as being lost, that the plots to kill Hitler, emanating from within the army, gathered pace. Even then the decision to join the conspiracy was largely based on the deteriorating military situation, and not the well-known criminal activity of the regime. In the summer of 1941 there was hardly a murmur of recognition that the strategic outlook was dooming Germany's war effort. For this the generals were far too short-sighted; indeed, most believed in some form of victory until the Soviet winter offensive finally dispelled all remaining illusions. Professionally, therefore, it may be said that the men who led the German armies in Operation Barbarossa were functionally competent, but strategically inept. Accordingly, Hitler's generals, with very few exceptions, were both morally compromised in the war of annihilation behind the front and professionally incapable in the war against the Red Army.

For Anglo-American readers there should be no military idols in the German High Command. In 1941 the top echelon of command were at one with their Führer over his erroneous military and ideological objectives. Not even when these reached their frightening conclusion in a strategic quagmire and mass murder did even a single general resign in disgust. From Brauchitsch down this was indeed Hitler's army.

A central problem for military historians in assessing Germany's ‘victories’ on the eastern front in 1941 has been the occupational hazard of evaluating these battles in context of countless other historical conflicts. In almost any other war, a battle on the scale of Belystok–Minsk, Smolensk or even Uman would constitute a crushing blow and, most likely, prove decisive. Barbarossa produced multiple battles of this magnitude, and in quick succession, which, together with the deep advance of the German armies, seem to provide sufficient evidence that the Soviet Union must have been on the brink of defeat. Yet, the extraordinary robustness of the Soviet state is rarely taken into account; likewise the difficulties of completely eliminating such an enormous power in a short campaign, especially given the structural weaknesses of the German invasion force, are often overlooked. The resilience of the Soviet state, therefore, defies straightforward comparisons with previous empires and past wars. As
Stalin himself remarked in November 1941, ‘any other government which had suffered such losses of territory as we did would not
have stood the test and would have collapsed’.
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With this in mind, the benchmark for what constitutes a decisive battle is accordingly a good deal higher. The Soviet Union was nothing less than a militarised juggernaut and, while deeply wounded in Germany's 1941 campaign, there is no evidence to suggest it was about to collapse either politically or militarily. This is not to say that historical comparisons are inappropriate in evaluating the German–Soviet war, rather that a suitable appreciation of scale needs to be borne in mind. Reconciling the early German ‘victories’ with the ultimate task at hand – the defeat of the Soviet Union – should in future forestall the ingratiating descriptions which have previously defined German operations in the summer of 1941.

Historical comparisons reveal that many fundamental points that denote Hitler's failure in 1941 were actually foreshadowed in past campaigns. The most obvious example is
Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812. The German High Command's inability to grasp some of the essential hallmarks of this military calamity highlights another angle of their flawed conceptualisation and planning in anticipation of Operation Barbarossa. Like Hitler, Napoleon was the conqueror of Europe and foresaw his war on Russia as the key to forcing England to make terms. Napoleon invaded with the intention of ending the war in a short campaign centred on a decisive battle in western Russia. As the Russians withdrew, Napoleon's supply lines grew and his strength was in decline from week to week. The poor roads and harsh environment took a deadly toll on both horses and men, while politically Russia's oppressed serfs remained, for the most part, loyal to the aristocracy. Worse still, while Napoleon defeated the Russian army at
Smolensk and
Borodino, it did not produce a decisive result for the French and each time left Napoleon with the dilemma of either retreating or pushing deeper into Russia. Neither was really an acceptable option, the retreat politically and the advance militarily, but in each instance Napoleon opted for the latter. In doing so the French emperor outdid even Hitler and successfully took the Russian capital in September 1812, but it counted for little when the Russians simply refused to acknowledge defeat and prepared to fight on through the winter. By the time Napoleon left Moscow to begin his infamous retreat, the Russian campaign was doomed.
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As
Clausewitz observed:

The Russia campaign of 1812 demonstrated in the first place that a country of such size could not be conquered (which might well have been foreseen), and in the second that the prospect of eventual success does not always decrease in proportion to lost battles, captured capitals, and occupied provinces, which is something that diplomats used to regard as dogma, and made them always ready to conclude a peace however bad. On the contrary, the Russians showed us that one often attains one's greatest strength in the heart of one's own country, when the enemy's offensive power is exhausted, and the defensive can then switch with enormous energy to the
offensive.
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Despite the intervening 129 years, the parallels with Hitler's advance into the Soviet Union are unmistakable. A point almost entirely lost on the German generals, who, in spite of reading accounts of the 1812 campaign and other Russian wars,
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preferred to trust in their technological advancement and ‘natural’ German superiority.

The war of 1812 was certainly not the only invasion from which German generals could have learned instructive lessons. The German army's own failure to successfully implement the famous Schlieffen plan in 1914 also merits strong comparisons with Barbarossa. Just as the defeat of France in 1940 had swelled the superiority myth to dangerous proportions within the German army, so too had the memory of 1870
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seriously influenced planning and expectations on the eve of World War I. As the powerful right wing of the German western front wheeled through Belgium in the opening act of World War I, serious problems soon undermined the success of Schlieffen's planned strategic envelopment. The German railways proved magnificent at mobilising and concentrating the great mass of the German army, but from here the German field armies had to march to war, leaving supply railheads further behind with every day.
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Efforts to extend the railways suffered from poor planning and inadequate resources.
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Trucks were too few in number and too slow over the congested roads to bridge the gap. The constant demands also
led to a high vehicle fallout rate, which by early September 1914, at the critical battle of the
Marne, left only 40 per cent of the fleet serviceable. Horses were of course the main motor of the army's transportation system, but they were inadequately cared for and almost no provision had been made to provide fodder for the horses on the march.
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The result was masses of sick and weakened horses, which soon succumbed in high numbers. Allied resistance also took its toll on German offensive strength, with casualties throughout the German field armies reaching some 265,000 men by 6 September 1914. The expansion of the front further exacerbated this weakness, while French losses were being made good by not having committed so many of their reserves from the outset and falling back on the country's interior.
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These were not the only factors that contributed to the German failure in 1914, but they all reflect essential problems later encountered, to a lesser or greater extent, in Operation Barbarossa. Summing up the failure of the Schlieffen plan, historian Hew Strachan's judgement could apply as much to 1941 as it did to 1914. Strachan wrote:

Moltke's
[the Chief of the German General Staff] lines of communication were lengthening by the day; his front broadened as the movement through France developed…The combination of the detached corps, the heavy losses…and exhaustion through the march and its attendant supply problems meant that a stage would be reached when the Germans had too few men. Thus, in almost every key index of military strength – in command, in communications, in manpower…– the balance was swinging from Germany to France. Much of the swing was inherent in the advance itself and the plan which had given rise to it.
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Later in his summary of the battle of the Marne, which may be contrasted with the battle of Smolensk, Strachan concluded: ‘Germany had failed to secure the quick victory on which its war plan rested. From now on it was committed to a war on two fronts. With hindsight, some would say that Germany had already lost the war.’
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Operation Barbarossa's much lauded success began as just another episode of Nazi propaganda, yet this has been given amazing longevity, and even a guise of historical truth, by continual acceptance in stoutly uncritical military histories. In spite of some severe early blows to the Red Army, the German army never really came close to their definitive goal
of conquering the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was these early ‘successes’ which led to the Wehrmacht's own rapid exhaustion and insurmountable difficulties. By mid-August 1941, it was already abundantly clear that Barbarossa would fall well short of achieving its operational objectives, while the ongoing scale of attrition would paradoxically transform its legacy from the annihilation of the Red Army to the ceaseless destruction of the German Wehrmacht. While the precise path to an Allied victory was by no means clear in late August 1941, Germany's inability to win the war was at least assured. Accordingly, if on 22 June 1941 Hitler was right and the world did indeed collectively hold its breath – the course of operations ensured that, by the middle of August, the world could breathe again.