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US ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE US Army Command and General Staff School Command and General Staff Officer Course (CGSOC) Common Core H100: History, Theory, Doctrine, Practice H112: Barbarossa to Kursk: The Limits of Blitzkrieg Reading H112RB The German Invasion, 1941 by Jonathan M. House Adolf Hitler had always intended to attack the Soviet Union, both to eliminate any threat to Germany and to fulfill his political goals of defeating “Jewish Bolshevism” while expanding Germany’s population and economy eastward. By 1940, Germany was increasingly dependent on raw materials provided by the Soviets, and in fact Germany was running a serious trade deficit with its eastern neighbor. At the time, Stalin was more than willing to trade raw materials and food for German technology, but the Germans could not expect this relationship to continue indefinitely. Having become accustomed to controlling the economy of both their own nation and their satellites, various German leaders were irritated by their inability to dictate the terms of their trade with the Soviets. They believed they could extract more resources by occupying European Russia, although these plans implied starvation for the local population. 1 Thus for political, economic, and ideological reasons, a German attack on the Soviet Union was almost inevitable. This did not mean, however, that the German dictator had a rigid timetable or master plan for such an attack; throughout his career Hitler followed his instinct to exploit perceived opportunities as those opportunities arose. After the fall of France in June 1940, Hitler and many of his subordinates expected Great Britain to make peace. When London failed to fulfill this expectation, Hitler rapidly concluded that the only thing motivating the British to continue fighting was the prospect, however remote, of the Soviet Union and/or the United States entering the war against Germany. In Hitler’s mind, this was one more reason to strike quickly and eliminate any threat of Soviet intervention. Thus on 31 July 1940, even before the Luftwaffe’s failure in the Battle of Britain, Hitler directed the start of planning for an attack eastward. 2 Based on the Red Army’s dismal performance against Poland and Finland, Hitler and his generals anticipated little trouble in defeating the Soviet foe. Although the Germans may not have been aware of the full extent of the Red Army’s woes, that force was obviously suffering from the effects of a massive purge of its officer corps, compounded in 1939–1941 by frequent changes in organization, doctrine, and equipment. The bulk of its tanks and combat aircraft were poorly maintained, obsolescent vehicles produced in the mid-1930s; few crews were qualified to operate the trickle of more modern equipment produced in the months before the German attack. The Red Army of 1941 was a force caught in the midst of multiple transitions, a force whose very survival in the face of the German onslaught would be a miracle. In contemplating their future opponent, however, the German leaders made two basic errors. First, because they loathed Bolshevism, they assumed that the Soviet regime enjoyed very little support and would crumble at the first setback. Indeed, it was on this basis that most German generals wanted to focus on Moscow, believing that Stalin’s government would not survive the loss of the traditional capital of House, Jonathan M. “The German Invasion, 1941.” Unpublished, 2012, Fort Leavenworth, KS: Department of Military History, US Army Command and General Staff College. Author's permission affirmed. CGSC Copyright Registration #22-189 E H112RB-577

Russia. In making these assumptions, the Germans failed to anticipate both Stalin’s skill in using nationalism to unite his people against the invader and their own failure in alienating Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and other ethnic groups who were initially disposed to reject the Soviet government and aid the attackers. In fact, the German plan to extract large supplies of raw materials and food from the former Soviet territories would obviously discourage the local population from cooperating with the occupiers. The second German intelligence error was to underestimate the mobilization capacity of the Soviet state. The German plan, as will be seen below, assumed that the attackers would destroy the bulk of the Red Army in a short series of encirclement battles near the western borders of the USSR. Although the Wehrmacht achieved victories that exceeded even its own expectations, the Soviets had such vast pools of trained manpower that, by 1 December 1941, Moscow had created 194 new divisions and 84 separate brigades to replace the 100-plus divisions lost in battle. 3 Many of these units were short of equipment and training, but they systematically attrited the invader. Similar prodigies of effort enabled Stalin to relocate more than 1,500 factories beyond the reach of the invaders. German Planning Hitler approved Führer Directive No. 21, Operation B ARBAROSSA , on 18 December 1940. 4 Although German mountain troops (based in Norway) and the Finnish army would attack the Soviet far north, the principal battles would be fought by three army groups, of which two (Army Groups North and Center) would operate north of the vast Pripiat’ Marshes that divided the theater horizontally into two parts. In total, at least 152 German divisions, including 19 panzer and 15 motorized infantry divisions, were massed in the east. The cutting edge of this army was composed of the four panzer groups (later re- designated panzer armies), of which the Fourth was allocated to Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb’s Army Group North, the Third and Second to Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center, and the First to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group South. Rundstedt also controlled a Hungarian corps and 14 brigade-size Romanian divisions. Overall, the Germans had 3,350 tanks, 7,200 artillery pieces, and 2,770 aircraft. The initial invasion force included just over 3,000,000 Germans, plus about 600,000 allied troops. 5 The intent of the B ARBAROSSA plan was to capture or destroy the mass of the Red Army by encirclements within a few hundred kilometers of the border, after which a smaller force would advance to eliminate remaining resistance and occupy most of European Russia. The ultimate objective was stated to be “to screen European against Asiatic Russia along the course of the Volga [River],” pushing any residual Soviet air elements beyond the range where they might bomb German territory. 6 In a 1 December briefing, the OKH (Army General Staff) presented its operations concept to implement this loosely worded strategy. Based on detailed army war games, the army chief of staff, Franz Halder, attempted to convince Hitler that the operational objective of the campaign should be Moscow, the political hub of the Soviet Union; the ultimate goal would be to control the area west of a line running roughly from Archangel to the Volga River. Confident that the Germans could conquer anything they wished, Hitler neither accepted nor rejected these goals. Instead, he placed great emphasis on destroying the Red Army before it could retreat, and then seizing economic targets on the northern and southern flanks such as the agricultural center of the Ukraine and the relatively industrialized areas along the Baltic Sea coast. In addition, both Hitler and the army planners assumed that the German army was so strong that Army Group Center, making the main effort, could be diverted periodically to assist in encirclements on the flanks. 7 Unfortunately, the same supply shortages that helped motivate the German invasion would also hobble the execution of B ARBAROSSA . The vast distances involved in European Russia far exceeded H112RB-578

anything which the German supply and maintenance system had faced in previous campaigns, and posed a huge drain on the limited German petroleum supply. In November 1940, the army quartermaster general, Major General Edouard Wagner, presented his logistical calculations to General Halder. Wagner estimated that the army had sufficient fuel to advance to a maximum depth of only 500–800 kilometers, with enough food and ammunition for a twenty-day operation. After that, Wagner concluded, the army would have to pause for several weeks for resupply, and would be dependent on the captured Soviet rail network to support a deeper penetration. Yet the entire Soviet Union had only about 82,000 kilometers of railroad, all of it on a wider gauge than that in Germany and Eastern Europe. Thus, Wagner noted, Germany would have to use prisoner and local labor to rebuild the track bed before European-gauge trains could resupply the German Army. 8 In this regard, it is worth noting that the territory west of Moscow, where Halder wished to make the main effort, offered much less opportunity for “living off the land” than Hitler’s preferred objectives in the south. In short, Germany began B ARBAROSSA with a set of strategic goals that were poorly articulated into operational objectives, that were the subject of debate within the high command, and that were in any event beyond the logistical capability of the Wehrmacht . Instead of adjusting their objectives to their capabilities, the Germans pursued a set of divergent goals that might well have been beyond their reach even if they had succeeded in eliminating the Red Army. German Forces Still, the German armed forces seemed ready for this operation. Although the Luftwaffe had suffered a severe check in the Battle of Britain, it remained a formidable tactical air force. The German army appeared to be at the peak of its form, filled with combat veterans who had largely perfected mass maneuver warfare at high tempo. In fact, however, that army had a number of weaknesses. In preparation for B ARBAROSSA , the number of panzer divisions had almost doubled, while simultaneously the oldest, least capable tanks, including all Panzer Is and most Panzer IIs, were withdrawn from first-line units. In addition, the Germans had to take cadres and entire tank battalions from the existing divisions in order to create these new units. Instead of three to four tank battalions per division as in previous campaigns, eleven of the nineteen panzer divisions that attacked in 1941 had only two battalions each. 9 The resulting units probably had a better balance between the combat arms, including a higher proportion of motorized infantry and artillery than the original panzer divisions, but this process disrupted the unit cohesion of those older, more experienced divisions. Moreover, German industrial production was not equal to the new requirements, both because of raw materials shortages and because Hitler the politician was reluctant to impose full economic mobilization on Germany. As a result, German force developers resorted to various expedients to equip new organizations. Entire divisions, such as the 11th Panzer, consisted of captured French trucks and tanks, even though these vehicles were not designed to support the German concept of operations. Shortages of trucks and other vehicles hampered the training of the newer units. The German maintenance system, already challenged by the vast distances of the Soviet Union, found itself further hampered by the variety of foreign-made equipment, much of which came without repair parts or appropriate tools. The Wehrmacht entered the Soviet Union with more than 2,000 different types of vehicles, and began losing those vehicles to mechanical breakdown within the first few days. Despite all these stopgap measures, the Germans were short some 2,700 trucks even before the invasion began. 10 It is also worth remembering that the panzer and motorized units made up less than 20 percent of the German army. The remaining divisions differed little in their equipment from their counterparts of 1918, being essentially foot-mobile with horse-drawn artillery and supply columns. In theory, each division had a limited number of motor vehicles for command, signal, and mobile antitank defense, but given the shortages of such vehicles throughout the army, horses often had to make up the difference. As in the H112RB-580

mechanized units, captured French weapons such as antitank guns often substituted for German equipment. Although sources differ widely in their estimates of the number of animals involved, the “mechanized” invasion of 1941 probably included well over 600,000 horses. And these animals suffered heavily from disease, harsh climate, and shortages of suitable fodder. 11 The Invasion At 0300 on 22 June 1941, the invaders struck into the Soviet Union, rapidly shattering the tenuous organization of forward Soviet units. Josef Stalin, determined to avoid giving Hitler an excuse to attack that year, had forbidden most defensive preparations and thereby increased the effects of the German surprise. Given its political and doctrinal orientation towards the offensive, the Red Army was ill- prepared to conduct an effective defense. Moreover, in the absence of accurate information from the front, Stalin and Defense Commissar S. K. Timoshenko repeatedly ordered their bewildered forces to launch a counteroffensive, thereby compounding the problem. Only in the Ukraine did the newly formed Soviet mechanized corps offer organized and effective resistance to Army Group South, and First Panzer Group succeeded in breaking this resistance only after four days of heavy fighting. North of the Pripiat’ Marshes, Second and Third Panzer Groups achieved their first encirclement west of Minsk, capturing or destroying the bulk of three Soviet field armies with a total of 417,000 soldiers. By 20 July the same two panzer groups had created an even larger pocket near Smolensk. 12 It was one thing for the Germans to form an encirclement with mechanized forces; it was another task entirely to seal off the resulting pocket and take the enemy prisoner. At the end of each lunge eastward, the panzer units had to pause both for resupply and to allow the infantry units to catch up and take over control of the encirclement. Until the hard-marching infantry arrived, the mechanized troops were too few to effectively seal off the pocket, and thus large portions of the encircled units, especially staff officers and other highly trained specialists, escaped the trap to rejoin the Red Army or form the nucleus of local guerrilla efforts. Each advance placed further strains on German logistics. Most roads were unpaved, and became swamps when it rained. As a result, the Germans consumed petroleum products and spare parts at triple the ordinary rates. This was particularly hard for First Panzer Group and other elements of Army Group South which had participated in the spring invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece—their vehicles had already traveled hundreds of kilometers before 22 June. By 18 July, four weeks into the campaign, General Halder estimated the panzer divisions to be at 60 percent strength. Two days later, he described the French-equipped 11th Panzer Division as being split into three groups: tracked vehicles with some infantry on top, peasant carts with the remaining infantry, and wheeled vehicles left behind because of the poor roads. 13 Meanwhile, the German leadership was so confident that Hitler was looking beyond the current campaign to plan for future conflicts. On 14 July 1941, the dictator changed industrial priorities to increase submarines to blockade Britain and form another 16 panzer divisions with additional Luftwaffe squadrons for future operations. 14 In early August, however, the maintenance situation in the east forced him to release 350 replacement engines for Panzer III tanks, engines that he had intended to use in construction of additional panzer units. Nor were the defenders completely passive and ineffective. Soviet units persistently counterattacked, including a coordinated effort by the 19th, 20th, and 21st Armies at Smolensk on 13–16 July and a similar attack on the 21st. Because these attacks failed to achieve their objectives, Hitler and the OKH were largely unaware of them, but at the tactical level units often had their hands full containing the Soviets. Thus, while capturing huge numbers of enemy soldiers, the Germans themselves absorbed significant casualties. By 2 August, the three German Army groups had suffered a total of 179,500 casualties, but had H112RB-581

troops. 22 Such shortfalls, in conjunction with the loss of Soviet sales to Germany, meant that the German war effort was weakened rather than strengthened by the invasion. The Soviet Union had obviously confounded the German expectation of rapid defeat and collapse. Far from giving up, their opponents constantly, if often ineffectually, counterattacked the invaders. General Halder, for one, had revised his earlier optimistic assessment, and concluded by 11 August that the Red Army was much stronger than he had expected: The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus. At the outset of the war, we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360. These divisions indeed are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen . . . And so our troops, sprawled over an immense frontline, without any depth, are subjected to the incessant attacks of the enemy. 23 A few days later, Halder noted in his diary that, as of 13 August 1941, after 53 days of combat, German casualties amounted to 389,924, or 11.4 percent of the original invasion force. 24 On 6 September, Führer Directive No. 35 finally ordered an advance on Moscow, but even now the primary objective was to encircle and destroy Soviet forces west of the capital before actually marching to the city. To this end, the panzer forces diverted to Army Groups South and North were finally ordered to return to Army Group Center. Thirteen panzer divisions and seven motorized divisions, with at most 1,000 functional tanks between them, were finally concentrated on a 400-kilometer front for the main effort. 25 Launched on 2 October, by the 8th Operation T YPHOON had encircled major portions of four Soviet field armies. Although two rifle divisions broke out of the poorly sealed envelopment on the night of 12–13 October, the invaders had once again torn a huge hole in the Soviet defenses, capturing a reported 663,000 men in the so-called Vyazma pocket. On the 13th, Stalin ordered the evacuation of the bulk of government and Communist Party offices from Moscow, although he personally stayed in the city to discourage panic. However, before the Germans could exploit this success toward Moscow, the fall season of rain and mud brought all battlefield movements to a halt for several weeks. In fact, the rainfall in October–November 1941 was actually below average, but the additional mud combined with fuel shortages to slow the advance to a crawl. 26 Yet, despite their continued successes, the Germans found the Soviets increasingly difficult to defeat. On 6 October, for example, Major General D.D. Leliushenko led a patchwork collection of T-34 tanks and airborne infantry in an ambush on the 4th Panzer Division on the southwest approaches to Moscow. German Panzer IVs attempted to outflank the ambush, but were stopped short with severe losses. Heinz Guderian noted that his opponents were learning. 27 To Moscow? As major operations resumed, Halder and his staff chiefs traveled to Orsha, in the Army Group Center area, for a marathon meeting with the army group chiefs of staff on 13 November. At this meeting, Halder conceded that the war could not be brought to a conclusion in 1941, but contended that the German army must inflict maximum damage to simplify matters for a 1942 campaign. In response, the staff officers of the army groups reviewed a set of grim statistics: By 1 November, the Germans had suffered 686,000 casualties, representing 20 percent of the 3.4 million soldiers, including replacements, committed to the campaign since June. Only one-third of all motor vehicles were fully serviceable, and tank attrition rates were as high as 75 percent. Worse still, although about two-thirds of captured railroad tracks had been converted to European gauge, the field armies were still dependent on inadequate motorized and horse- H112RB-583

drawn vehicles to get supplies forward to the troops. Thus, although Germany had assembled winter clothing for most of the troops, the army group logisticians had left that clothing in the warehouses because they had only enough transportation to provide ammunition and fuel for the depleted spearheads. Clearly, further offensive efforts would be weak, and could only be accomplished by further damaging the emaciated German divisions. 28 The problem was underlined on 17 November when a local Soviet counterattack hit the flank of Guderian’s panzer group, which was struggling toward Moscow from the southwest. The 112th German Infantry Division, which was largely equipped with captured French weapons and had no antitank guns capable of penetrating a T-34 tank, retreated in panic, an event with few precedents in the German army. 29 This setback occurred during Army Group Center’s renewed offensive, which began on 15 November. This attack, like every German advance after about mid-July, was essentially improvised. By this stage, Wehrmacht forces were able to sustain operations to depths of only about 100 kilometers for approximately 10 days, after which they had to pause for at least a week to repair and resupply. Still, the Germans struggled forward in two pincers stretching toward the Soviet capital. In early December, however, the relatively mild weather of the preceding month gave way to a typical Russian winter. German troops were dependent upon the few available roads, while the Luftwaffe was operating from improvised forward bases. Aircraft and vehicles had to be heated by fires for hours before attempting to start them. The Wehrmacht finally ground to a halt, overextended and vulnerable to the coming counteroffensive. One reason the Germans advanced as far as they did was that Josef Stalin had insisted, despite the pleadings of his subordinates, on holding out large formations for a future counterattack. Although some of these divisions were fresh, well-equipped units imported from Siberia, others were as threadbare as their German opponents after months of fighting. While overall numbers of men and equipment were probably equal, the Soviet forces were initially more concentrated than their opponents, with the best units of necessity defending the approaches to Moscow. Moreover, because German intelligence estimated that Stalin had finally reached the bottom of his reinforcement pool, the Germans were shocked by the appearance of new formations. The Soviet counteroffensive began on 5 December 1941 and achieved considerable victories against the depleted, dispersed, and nearly frozen Germans. Hitler initially forbad any withdrawals, both because of his pride and because retreat meant abandoning whatever warm shelter the troops had been able to find. In short order, the commanders of two army groups and the overall head of the German army, Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch, resigned, and even the darling of panzer operations, Guderian, was relieved of command for asking permission to withdraw to more defensible lines. Hitler assumed command of the army in Brauchitsch’s place. Yet, although some units held fast, others were forced to retreat despite Hitler’s orders to the contrary. One emaciated battalion of the famous Grossdeutschland Regiment had to retreat south of Moscow, while the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler withdrew under pressure from its position on the extreme southern flank of the German line. 30 Fortunately for the German soldiers, Hitler’s intransigence succeeded. Elated by their initial victories, the Soviet leaders attempted to broaden their local attacks into a general counteroffensive along the entire front with the goal of encircling the entire Army Group Center. Although they had a significant local superiority at the gates of Moscow, overall the Soviets lacked the numbers and weapons to destroy the weakened Wehrmacht. In many places, the German defenders held onto towns and villages while their opponents controlled the surrounding countryside, with neither side able to dislodge the other. Eventually, Hitler did permit some withdrawals to straighten out the front, and the Soviet offensive gradually came to a halt. H112RB-584

1 Notes . Rolf-Dieter Müller in Horst Boog, Jurgen Forster, Joachim Hoffmann, et al, Germany and the Second World War: Volume IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union . Trans. Dean S. McMurry, Ewald Osers, and Louise Willmot. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, c. 2001), 118–31; 174–77. 2. See, for example, the essay by Jurgen Forster in ibid., Vol. IV, 13–30. 3. David M. Glantz, “Soviet Mobilization in Peace and War, 1924–42: A Survey,” Journal of Soviet Military Studies 5:3 (September 1992), 345–52. For a general discussion of Soviet force generation, see Glantz’s Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 205-32. 4. For the evolution and text of this plan, see George E. Blau, The German Campaign in Russia, Planning and Operations (1940–1942) CMH Publication 104–21. (Washington, D.C.: US Army Center of Military History, 1988; original dated 1955), 6–25. 5. David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitle r (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 30–33. 6. Quoted in Blau, The German Campaign in Russia , 22. 7. See Gerd Niepold in David M. Glantz (ed.), The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front, 22 June–August 1941 . (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1993), 66–70. See also Germany and the Second World War , 274–78. 8. On Wagner’s estimates, see German and the Second World War , Vol. IV, 140, 294–97; on the railroad and road network, see Earl F. Ziemke and Magna E. Bauer, Moscow to Stalingrad: Decision in the East . (Washington: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1985), 14. 9. Kenneth Macksey in Glantz, The Initial Period of War , 63. 10. Richard L. DiNardo, Germany’s Panzer Arm . (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 16–17, 99–100. 11. Richard L. DiNardo, Mechanized Juggernaut or Military Anachronism: Horses and the German Army of World War II . (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 40–43. 12. Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed , 51–55. 13. Franz Halder, The Halder War Diaries, 1939–1942 . Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (eds.) (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1988), 478, 480. 14. Klaus Reinhardt, Moscow–The Turning Point . The Failure of Hitler’s Strategy in the Winter of 1941–42 . Trans. Karl Keenan. (Oxford and Providence, RI: Berg Publishers, 1992), 26–27. 15. Ibid ., 493. 16. Quoted in Omar Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare . (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 20. 17. Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed , 75–77; Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader . (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1952), 189–214. 18. Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies II, The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture . (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. 66-119. 19. Felix Römer, “The Wehrmacht in the War of Ideologies: The Army and Hitler’s Criminal Orders on the Eastern Front,” in Alex J. Kay, Jeff Rutherford, and David Stahel (eds.), Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization . (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012), 85-88. 20. Blau, The German Campaign in Russia , 65–70. 21. Reinhardt, Moscow—The Turning Point , 146–47. 22. Germany and the Second World War , Vol. IV, p. 1151–53. 23. Halder, The Halder War Diaries , 506. 24. Ibid., 521. 25. Blau, The German Campaign in Russia , 75; Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed , 78. 26. Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed , 79–81; Ziemke and Bauer, Moscow to Stalingrad , 36–37. 27. D. Leliushenko, “Boi pod Mtsenskom” [The Battle at Mtsensk], Voenno-istoricheskii Zhurnal [Military Historical Journal, hereafter abbreviated ViZH] 12 (December 1960), 34–44 [Russian-language sources courtesy of David Glantz]; Guderian, Panzer Leader , 232–35. 28. Ziemke and Bauer, Moscow to Stalingrad , 44–46; Blau, The German Campaign in Russia , 83–84; On rainfall and fuel, see Reinhardt, Moscow—The Turning Point , 92, 152. 29. A. Getman, “112-ia tankovaia diviziia v bitve pod Moskvoi” [The 112th Tank Division in the Battle of Moscow], ViZH 11 (November 1981), 49. The equipment of the 112th German Infantry Division is listed in the table on p. 222 of Germany and the Second World War , Vol. IV, as consisting of French vehicles with reduced establishments of antitank guns and motor vehicles. 30. Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed , 87–91; Ziemke and Bauer, Moscow to Stalingrad , 82–87. 31. G. F. Krivosheev (ed.), Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century . (London: Greenhill Books, 1997), 96-97.