Operation Barbarossa: Difference between revisions
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===Ground=== | ===Ground=== | ||
Land forces, by nightfall, had taken the fortress towns of [[Kobryn]] and [[Pruzahany]]. <ref name=Gilbert/> | Land forces, by nightfall, had taken the fortress towns of [[Kobryn]] and [[Pruzahany]]. <ref name=Gilbert/> | ||
==Issues in July== | |||
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. <ref>Gilbert, p. 199</ref> | |||
==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.<ref name=S>{{citation | |||
| author = William Shirer | |||
| title = The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich | |||
| publisher = Simon & Schuster | |||
| year = 1960}}, pp. 456-457</ref> | |||
===Psychological=== | ===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. <ref>Gilbert, p. 207</ref> | 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. <ref>Gilbert, p. 207</ref> | ||
Revision as of 02:07, 9 January 2011
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
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