Operation Barbarossa

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A strategic surprise to Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa was the German code name for its invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941, at 04:15 local time. Stalin had believed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact promising nonaggression from the Germans.

Adolf Hitler had generally described action in the "East" in Mein Kampf. It appears to always have been in his mind, but Germany was in no position to attack for many years. Indeed, there was considerable cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union, the latter providing training for the Black Reichswehr while Germany was limited in military forces.

German intentions

Detailed planning was done by the Army Staff, OKH. One of the earliest notes during the planning process is an entry in the diary of Army Chief of Staff Franz Halder, for 31 July 1940. It described a first phase of a combined thrust toward Kiev, and a thrust through the Baltic States to Moscow. This would be followed by pincers from north and south, then an operation against the Baku oil fields in the Caucasus (now Azerbaijan).

Hitler issued OKW Directive 18 on 12 November 1940, confirming the Army staff was developing the plan and OKW was minimally involved. OKH presented their plans to him on 5 December, which he approved in principle. At that point, OKW became involved, and Warlimont provided a draft directive on 16 December. [1]

The formal decision came on 18 November 1940, with OKW Directive 21. A plan previously code-named "Otto" and "Fritz" was renamed "Barbarossa", with the order beginning

The German Wehrmacht must be prepared, also before the ending of the war against England, to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign.[2]

Failure to prepare

Both Stalin and Adolf Hitler, in various ways, were unprepared for the reality of the conflict. Stalin was surprised, tactically and strategically, by the invasion. Hitler was overconfident in a quick victory.

Stalin

Strategic warning

Stalin received a warning document, in May 1939, about The Future Plans of Aggression by Fascist Germany, based on a German briefing obtained by Soviet spies in Warsaw. A Soviet agent first reported that Hitler planned to declare war on the Soviet Union in March 1941, and refined the estimate, by February 28, to May 20.

This intelligence was corroborated by sources in Bucharest, Budapest, Sofia and Rome, to say nothing of the information provided by the spy Richard Sorge (code-named Ramsay) in Tokyo [3] in which the authors detail the undercover operations of the spy ring headed by Richard Sorge and Hotsumi Ozaki which transmitted highly secret information from Tokyo to the Soviet Union between 1933 and 1941. On April 17 a Prague informant predicted a German invasion in the second half of June. The precise date and time of the invasion were revealed by a reliable source in Berlin fully three days before the Germans attacked.

All of this Stalin ignored. Typically, he scrawled on the bottom of the Prague report: English provocation! Investigate! On May 19, Sorge predicted that 150 divisions were being readied by the Germans for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin retorted with an expletive.

Readiness

The result was that literally nothing was done to prepare for the German assault. Soviet planes were not camouflaged. Troops were not in defensive positions; indeed they were ordered not to occupy such positions, for fear of provoking the Germans.

Worse, Stalin had to the gathering storm with yet another purge of suspected threats to his own authority, having had shot Mikhail Tukhachevsky and:

  • 2 of the oher 5 Marshals
  • 13 of the 15 army commanders (full generals) and 8 of the 9 equivalent admirals
  • 50 of the 57 corps commanders
  • 154 of the 186 division commanders

Soviet public position

On 13 June 1941, Moscow Radio broadcast a TASS report that appeared to be in Stalin's personal style. "to tear up the Pact and to undertake an attack on the USSR are without any foundation," and that such rumours were "clumsy propaganda by forces hostile to the USSR and Germany and interested in an extension of the war." [4]

Was Stalin planning an attack?

Hitler

Initial order of battle

Germany

Soviet Union
  • Kiev Special Military District (Kirponos faced Army Group South 56 divisions
    • 5th Army (Potapov)
    • 6th Army (Muzychenko)
    • 26th Army (Kostenko)
    • 12th Army (Ponedelin)
  • Odessa Special Military District (Tyulenev) which faced Army Group South 14 divisions
    • 9th Army (Cherevichenko)

Initial actions

C3I

Tactical surprise was almost complete; while General Headquarters sent some warnings just after the Germans started moving, very few were received through a primitive communications system. [5]

German intelligence, however, was also quite lacking. By 4 July, he told his entourage, "...to all intents and purposes the Russians have lost the war." Further, he said that Germany had smashed Soviet armor and aviation, and they could never replace them. [6] In reality, Russian was starting strategic responses in July.

Diplomatic

On the first day, Italy and Rumania declared war on the Soviet Union.[7] Hitler's letter to Benito Mussolini was given to the Italian foreign minister at 3 AM that morning; [8] Rumania had been informed earlier because it was providing troops.

Psychological

Joseph Goebbels broadcast the justification for the action at 05:30 on the first day. It justified the attack as defending not just Germany, but Europe, from the "Jewish-Bolshevik leaders". [8]

Air

German air strikes hit 66 air bases, the naval facilities at Libava in the Baltic, and five cities: Kovno, Minsk, Odessa, Rovno and Sebastopol. With 1280 combat aircraft the German Luftwaffe destroyed over than 2000 Soviet aircraft within 18 hours. The Germans lost 35 aircraft, 15 of which from premature explosions of own bombs. The Soviet air defense, therefore, was only able to inflict a a loss of one German aircraft to each 100 of theirs. [9]

The Luftwaffe changed its targeting priorities from close air support being the main air task in the 1939 and 1940 blitzkriegs. Instead, the first mission was offensive counter-air: destruction of the Red Air Force and its ground organization, after which close ar support would follow. These priorities indicate the Luftwaffe regarded aircraft engines as a center of gravity. They were:[9]

  • "Destruction of modern aircraft and the Red Air Force ground organization.
  • Destruction of production facilities for aircraft and aircraft engines.
  • Destruction of aircraft with "M" (modern) engines.
  • Destruction of other aircraft."

Ground

Land forces, by nightfall, had taken the fortress towns of Kobryn and Pruzahany. [7]

Within 3 weeks, Army Group Center had reached Smolensk, 200 miles from Moscow. In the north, Leeb's Army Group North was approaching Leningrad, and the southern group was nearing Kiev.

Industrial

On 23 June, the Soviets formed an Evacuation Council, which immediately began to prepare to move approximately 1500 industrial facilities to safety in eastern Russia, preferably beyond the Ural Mountains. [10]

Issues in fall 1941

Probaby the most important strategic argument came in mid-July, when Hitler decided not to follow the plan and take Moscow as quickly as possibly, but to shift the priority to the food, oil and industrial areas of the South. OKH argued that taking Moscow first was not merely psychological, but the heart of the Soviet centralized communications and transportation systems. Their intelligence indicated that Russian forces were concentrating for the defense of Moscow, and rapid action was needed to avoid striking into a prepared defense.

They subnitted a formal protest on 18 August, which Hitler rejected on the 21st.[11]

Psychological

Stalin, on 3 July, made his first broadcast to the Russian people, asking for total resistance, to which the populace would respond positively as Russians, not Communists. Einsatzgruppe killing had already begun behind the German lines, which would have an effect on Russians. [12]

C3I

British communications intelligence personnel discovered that the Germans hd penetrated some Russian air force and navy communications, sending a warning through the British Military Mission in Moscow on 7 July. On 9 July, they also broke the Enigma machine key used for ground-air communications. The Soviets were never informed of the details of the communications intelligence against the Germans, but the information was usually passed on, attributed to other sources.[13]

References

  1. ↑ Walter Warlimont (1992), Inside Hitler's Headquarters 1933-45, Presidio Press, pp. 135-139p
  2. ↑ Ian Kershaw (2000), Hitler 1936-45: Nemesis, W.W. Norton, ISBN 0393049949, p. 335
  3. ↑ Gordon Prange (1984). Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring. McGraw-Hill. 
  4. ↑ "Viktor Suvorov" (pseud.) (June 1985), "Who was Planning to Attack Whom in June 1941, Hitler or Stalin?", The Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies
  5. ↑ Kenneth Macksey (1987), Military Errors of World War Two, Arms and Armour Press, p. 47
  6. ↑ Warlimont, p. 180
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Martin Gilbert (1989), The Second World War, Stoddart, p. 199
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Kershaw, Nemesis, p. 387
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Lonnie O. Ratley III (March-April 1983), "A Lesson of History: The Luftwaffe and Barbarossa", Air University Review
  10. ↑ Gilbert, p. 199
  11. ↑ William Shirer (1960), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon & Schuster, pp. 456-457
  12. ↑ Gilbert, p. 207
  13. ↑ Gilbert, pp. 208-209
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