Like many students of military
history, I have long believed that the two most disastrous decisions made by Adolph Hitler and his Nazi
regime were the initiation of “Operation Barbarossa” – the invasion of the
Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 -- and the declaration of war against the United
States on December 8, 1941. Both actions
were politically unnecessary or at least poorly timed; but that is another
story. At first the Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics and the
absence of any real resistance on the part of the surprised and poorly-prepared
Soviets, still reeling from Stalin’s destructive “officer purges” of the 1930s,
seemed to pave the way for the same kind of Nazi victories which saw the
conquest of France, Belgium Poland and much of western Europe already.
To begin with the jump off was too
late in the year to beat the advent of a Siberian winter, and it was an
ill-advised plan that divided efforts and resources between two objectives – Moscow and Stalingrad. But the biggest error
of all was the lack of appreciation for the “tyranny of distance” and what
history should have taught the invaders about “imperial over-reach” and the
difficulty of occupying huge amounts of space. As if that wasn’t already a
“bridge too far”, but obsessed with the vitriol of race hatred, the invading
forces needlessly slaughtered and wreaked havoc upon the peasant populations as
they went, assuring enmity on the part of an already-oppressed people who might
otherwise even have welcomed the Germans as “liberators”.
Meanwhile, the Western Allies had
won the battle of the Atlantic freeing up the shipment of American goods,
whittled down the strength of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain and the
skies over Europe, dispatched thousand-plane raids with tens of thousands of
tons of bombs over the Reich at home, invaded Africa and Italy, reclaimed
control of the Mediterranean world, and driven the enemy from Egypt. (Not to
mention the fact that the U.S. had simultaneously brought the war in the
Pacific to Japan’s very doorstep!)
With the war turning against Germany
elsewhere, Stalin had found two Generals he trusted in Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky
and was ready to launch Operation
Bagration. Always conscious of patriotic history Stalin chose a hero of the
Napoleonic war – Piotor Bagration – a fellow Georgian as inspiration for what
was to become the greatest battle of World War II; probably the most
titanic
battle in world history.
Significantly
on June 22, 1944, the third anniversary of the German invasion, five Soviet
Armies, totaling 1.7 million
well-trained and disciplined troops (with millions more waiting) supported by
24,000 artillery pieces, 4,000 tanks (mostly redesigned and much-improved
T-34/85s) and more than 6,300 military aircraft, (including the powerful Stormavik tank-killers) exploded through
the battle line and into Hitler’s Army Group Center at a time when the
Wehrmacht defended a battle line an astounding 1800 miles long!
This was not the same ill-equipped,
poorly-led army of plodding field workers the front line Wehrmacht soldiers
remembered from past encounters, but a sophisticated organization with railway
and bridging teams, river-crossing specialists, minefield battalions and Pak
(bazooka) units full of a new-found patriotic ardor. What’s more those
“slow-witted ignorant sub-human” peasants who survived that earlier abuse were
now waiting in their well-armed and highly-motivated partisan cells across
those vast distances to the German border and beyond. To make matters much
worse the three German Army Groups and their commanders were under Hitler’s
“obey or die” personal orders to stand fast and give up no ground. Unable
therefore to maneuver, they were sitting ducks for the Soviet encircling
tactics which killed or captured entire Divisions in pincer actions. The much
faster T-34s were able to encircle the legendary Tigers and Panthers in
the same manner. In some local actions the Wehrmacht were outnumbered ten to
one as a result of those hamstringing orders. One German commander suffered a
nervous breakdown in the field, while another committed suicide.
The
sloping sides of the Russian T-34-85 WWII tank helped deflect incoming
anti-tank rounds.
With 800,000 German troops in the
field and reinforcements committed during the sixty-day battle it can be seen
that at least three million participants may have been involved in this
monumental struggle at the same time the Western Allies were watching a far
smaller number of Americans, fighting their way off of Normandy’s beaches and
across the sands of Saipan. Operation
Bagration cost Germany 670,000 in total casualties while the Soviets
counted 765,000 of their own killed wounded and captured.
Interestingly a parochial America then and now has paid little historical
attention to WWII’s eastern front where 85% of Germany’s total war losses
occurred and where more than any other place Hitler’s dreams of a thousand-year
Reich died along with so many of his country’s youth.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment