Re: Operation Barbarossa - 68th Anniversary

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They couldn't compete with that in the Battle of Britain, when Britain, by
itself, was building aircraft faster than the Luftwaffe was shooting them
down. What we lacked at the time was enough pilots to fly them all.

Colin Bignell

That was clear.."There was no reserves".

Roosevelt promised in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in
the RAF.  Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs
disposal.  And the only way they could really get at each other was by air.
Germany feared mass bombing, which came.  The lead time for aircraft was 18
months from order to delivery.  That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these
planes would be starting to come in numbers.

Again..
"In June 1941, German industry was geared to producing more planes not land
army equipment in preparation for the coming air war with the UK. They wound
down army production."  and.....
Tooze - Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941
were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain
out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."

Well spotted.

The Soviet response was not the point.  It is Barbarossa, the German attack,
and how ill-conceived and ill-prepared it was.

Tooze: Page 373, "In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the
Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht
had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the
Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation
other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat.  But whereas it
suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment,
Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms."

The Germans thought they were invincible warriors and superior generals, so
attacked the USSR with a half-baked plan, short of everything.  Their egos
were deflated after a few months, when it was a clear they could not do what
they thought they could - destroy the USSR in a matter on months.  One
victory clouded their view of themselves, not really assessing that the UK &
French opposition was so inept rather than themselves being so wonderful.
Tooze stresses that Blitzkrieg was bound to fail in Russia as there was no
wall (the Channel) which to pin the enemy up against and destroy. Once the
blitzkrieg chains were overstretched it peters out, as it need a constant
supply chain to be effective, and the enemy falls back and re-groups, and
you face them again as they are not pinned up against a body of water.

They never and never could.  Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known
they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"

Read Tooze then, instead of babbling.  Again.."Halder noted in his diary".

Stopped them at Moscow, pushing them back, and pushed them back few times
here and there.

No, it was an ill-conceived plan, that no General thought would succeed.
That was short of every type of equipment, raw materials, fuel, rubber,
vehicles and men.

That is clear.

So there were no German forces in the Balkans, Africa, Norway and
Greece. None training either. Tooze wrote an economic history he was not
it seems a military historian.

Not in June 1941 that was before Lend Lease and wishful thinking
anyway. US production was still ramping up in 1941 and Germany was aware
that they were not a current threat.

The air war with Britain was fought with existing equipment and was
over by 1941. At least from the German perception, UK bombing did little
or no damage throughout 1941.

Well considering the fact that the Soviets used a different rail gauge
the Germans would have had problems if everything had been taken intact.

And the vast majority of Soviet soldiers responded to the attack on foot.

And they came quite close to succeeding.

Those were probably the misgivings of the surviving generals post war.
Or of course your misunderstanding what he wrote.

Well if you consider combat reports instead of economics it was not
until Kursk and Stalingrad that the Soviets managed to start driving the
German forces back. It was mainly the weather that stopped the Germans
in 1941. The Siberian forces were saved for a counter attack the Germans
stopped. While I have not read Tooze if he says what you claim he knows
nothing about military history. The Soviets were on the defensive until
1943 and did not succeed in recapturing much until 1944.  

Ken Young

I would largely agree with that, with reservations. The T-34 started the
reverse of the German Army, the German Army would have petered out anyway. I
have been Googling this group, a book by Tooze causes great reactions.  I
read it and found it revealing indeed, especially on the German invasion of
the USSR.

It commited 100%. There was no reserves.
Tooze, Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By
contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."

It was not.
Tooze - Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941
were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain
out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."

"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to
gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."

The US was to make 50,000 planes a year with UK production on top and much
of these planes in the hands of the UK.  Germany did not have a cat in hells
chance of matching this level of production, with UK & US being new modern
designs as well, against a now increasingly outdated Luftwaffe.  They
thought they could crush the USSR in months and turn to the UK before the
planes came on line in mid 1942.

In June 1941, German industry was geared to producing more planes not land
army equipment in preparation for the coming air war with the UK. They wound
down army production.

Page 454:
"The existing Russian rail infrastructure, even if it had been captured
intact, was insufficient to support the German army.  As a rule of thumb,
the German logistical experts liked to assign at least one high capacity
railway line to each army sized unit.  But for the 10 armies that invaded
the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht was able to assign only three main railway
lines, one for each army group."

Further up the page he writes:
"the retreating Red Army became extremely proficient at evacuating rolling
stock and sabotaging bridges, tracks and other railway installations."

This means the German Army was not going to be supplied properly even if the
rail system was taken intact, and very poorly in real shooting war, to
compound matters

On the same page:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33
tank and motorised infantry divisions.  If the battle extended much beyond
the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German
army would dwindle rapidly."

"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army".  The fast striking motorised
element of the Germans army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130.
Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional
means of traction: foot and horse.  The German army in 1941 invaded the
Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses.  The horses
were not for riding.  They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."

"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in
France, on foot."

"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the
Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the
possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The
Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to
fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."

Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"

"the fuel shortage of 1941 was so expected to be so severe that the
Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its
dependency on scarce oil."

"Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would
crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."

Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the
capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people."

"Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."

"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock
of tanks and aircraft."

Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the
invasion. All were negative.

Page 457:
"Halder noted in his diary: Barbarossa: purpose not clear, We do not hurt
the English. Our economic base is not significantly improved."

At the top of page 459 Tooze emphasises that Hitler misinterpreted Backe's
comments about the Ukraine grain. A region that had little surplus and had a
substantial population increase from WW1.

Page 459:
"On 22 January 1941 Thomas had informed his boss, Keitel, that he was
planning to submit a report urging caution with regard to the
military-economic benefits of the invasion. Now he reversed directions. As
it became clear that Hitler was justifying Barbarossa first and foremost as
a campaign of economic conquest, Thomas began systematically working towards
the Fuehrer."

Thomas was head of the OKW economic planning staff. He modified his reports
from negative to positive, presenting the Ukraine as an economic
breadbasket. Thomas was an insider and it is assumed he had heard of the
misinterpreted Backe's comments to Hitler.

Page 459:
"The OKW now claimed that in the first thrust the Wehrmacht would be able to
seize control of at least 70% of the Soviet Union's industrial potential."

Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the
coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union
against the British Empire."

"If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it
was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a
strategic disaster."

Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By
contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."

Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?  Madmen!

Since today marked the 68th Anniversary of Nazi Germany's attack on
the then Soviet Union (SU) it might be interesting to review info re.
this huge surprise attack especially since it changed the nature of
WW2 and started the Eastern war where Germany committed 65% - 75% of
its armed forces. The attack was launched for ideological reasons -
crush a Socialist ideology state and gain lebensraum where the Slavic
people became virtual serfs under Nazi occupation.

The major significance of Operation Barbarossa was:

1  This was the largest Theater operation in WW2 & history - almost 3
million men (some historians claim 4.5 million)  in the German & its
allied armies were in the invasion along a 1800 mile front reaching
from the Baltic Sea almost to the black Sea.

2 Largest till then armored forces involved (mobile on German side)
mostly static on SU

3  Largest Luftwaffe operation and huge Soviet Air force airples
destroyed but mostly on the ground

4 First major defeat for the Wehrmacht in WW2 -  its attack being
checked on the approaches to Moscow, then pushed back by a SU counter-
offensive

5 After Barbarossa Wehrmacht forced to transition from Blitzkreig to a
war of attrition loosing its edge.