Asia - March 1941

Europe - March 1941

The New Republic of Xinjiang Proclaimed

November 27, 1940 - Sheng Shicai declared Xinjiang an independent nation today officially breaking away from Chiang Kai-Shek's government.

Xinjiang, though nominally a province of China, had been a de facto protectorate of the Soviet Union's up until September. Following the Second Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Sheng purged Xinjiang of all communist elements in order to curry favor with Chiang and the Kuomintang. His need for allies had grown with Mengjiang nipping at his eastern borders and no Soviet troops to help hold them back. To Sheng's regret, Chiang greatly distrusted him refusing to grant him aid and even calling for his ousting as governor of Xinjiang.

Many believe Sheng's declaration of independence is nothing more than show. Without Stalin or Chiang to protect him, he has seemingly chosen the Japanese as his new patrons. Treaties have already been signed between Sheng's new government and Japan allowing for a contingent of the Kwantung Army to be based there as well as various trade and economic treaties. There is already talk of Japanese investment in the new country.

SOURCE: The Philadelphia Bulletin

Einstein's Letter to President-elect Dewey

10 Novemeber 1940

Sir:

Recent progress in the field of physics leads me to believe that the element of uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seems to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick motion on the part of your future administration. My repeated pleas to your predecessor, I fear, have fallen on deaf ears. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations.

In the course of the last year it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in the America - that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenom would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.

The United States has very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.

In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between your future administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust with this task a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an official capacity. His task might comprise the following:

a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium ore for the United States.

b) to speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with private persons who are willing to make contributions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining the co-operation of industrial laboratories which have the necessary equipment.

I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over and is soon to seize control of mines in the Belgian Congo creating a near monopoly of all known uranium deposits. That she should have taken such actions might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsacker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.

Yours very truly,

Albert Einstein

Dewey Wins!

6 November 1940 - Republican candidate Thomas Dewey defeated Democrat James Farley to become the 33rd President of the United States, leading a conservative wave that saw Republicans make major gains in both the House and Senate. Analysts point to President Garner's inability to cure the economic downturn that has gripped the economy since 1937 as the source of voter dissatisfaction with the Democrats coupled with his administration's strong isolationist stance.

Thomas Dewey made his acceptance speech this morning stating that he would "prepare for tomorrow today". He has already begun contacting the leading minds of the country to serve in his administration fulfilling his campaign vow to put the best heads in the country together to turn things around.

The president-elect will be taking office at an unsure time. With the German and Japanese threat abroad, the poor economy at home, and a divided Congress, Dewey will have his work cut out for him.

SOURCE: Washington Post

Invasion of Mongolia

September 1940 - With the Soviet Union reeling from Operation Babarossa, the Kwangtung Army began to plan for a rematch with the Red Army as early as June 1940. Their eyes fell on Mongolia.

What began in conception as a limited engagement to probe Russian strength in the region rapidly escalated into a minor offensive as the Germans neared Moscow and the Japanese believed the USSR approached collapse.

The Kwangtung Army built up their forces in the region from early August to mid-September, preparing to pounce when the Soviet's grip on Mongolia seemed weakest.

In early September, the Japanese began vocally protesting against local Mongolian forces committing hit and run incursions into Mengjiang. Citing the dissolving control the Mongolian central government had over its southern border, the Japanese demanded the right to occupy key points throughout the Sumbataar, Umnogovi, Dornogovi, Hovd, Govi-Altay, Bayanhongor, and Dornod provinces in order to prevent future assaults on Mengjiang. Khorloogiin Choibalsan, Mongolia's leader, stalled for time. He contacted General Vlassov, the junta leader of the rump Russian state, asking for military aid pointing to the former alliance between the Soviet Union and Mongolia and pleading for Vlassov to uphold that alliance.

General Vlassov had a tough decision to make. If he were to come to Choibalsan's aid, it may lead to war with Japan. That was something Vlassov was not sure Russia was ready for. With control of all European lands ceded to Germany, Vlassov had lost the majority of his heavy industry, military equipment, and manpower. To make matters worse was the composition of his forces in the Far East. Russian strength in the area had improved little since Nomonhan in 1939 which saw Russian armor drop to a mere 250 tanks and the utter anihilation of the Far East Air Force. Stalin had placed a priority for military equipment on his western border
believing the Japanese were too weak, and too smart, to try and assault Soviet territory again. Because of this, Soviet armor and aircraft were in short supply. Estimates range from 25-50% operational strength for Soviet armor and lower for Soviet aircraft, much of which was outdated to begin with. Fuel and ammo stocks were also limited. The ability to stop the initial Japanese drive seemed slim. Sure, Vlassov could use the forces at his disposal, a still commanding army of roughly 1.5 million, and counterattack the Japanese drive using the bones of his soldiers to stall the Japanese drive. But what then? He would exhaust his armor, lose precious aircraft, and be hard pressed to replace his losses. Even worse, what if the Japanese managed to break through? And even if they didn't, would the blood of so many dead draw the attention of the Nazis back to what was left of Russia? Was all this worth it for Mongolia, an arid, worthless piece of desert? Russia had enough problems with the central Asian republics already revolting, a faltering economy, and the nagging threat of Hitler just beyond the Urals.

Vlassov would turn his back on Choibalsan to buy time should the Japanese decide to continue north. The Kwangtung Army would march into Mongolia, officially annexing the nation to Mengjiang.

The long term effects of Vlassov's decision were enormous. Such wanton cowardice further demoralized Russian forces who had already seen too many defeats. Vlassov's refusal to aid Mongolia also emboldened the Japanese who saw Russia increasingly as a dying state ripe for dismemberment. A nation that had held them at Nomonhan now ran from battle. The Japanese continued to supply the central Asian republics with arms in exchange for influence in the region and to tie up Russian troops. Dreams of conquering Siberia began to reemerge among the inner circle of the Japanese High Command.

SOURCE: OnWar.com

The Tiger Tank

Design

The Tiger differed from earlier German tanks principally in its design philosophy. Its predecessors balanced mobility, protection, and firepower. They were sometimes outgunned by their opponents.

The Tiger I represented a new approach that emphasised firepower and armour at the expense of mobility. Design studies for a new heavy tank had been started in the late 1930s, without any production planning. The real impetus for the Tiger was inspired by the quality of the Soviet T-34, which German forces briefly encountered during Operation Wotan and whose plans fell into German hands following the Soviet collapse. Although the general design and layout were broadly similar to the previous medium tank the Panzer IV, the Tiger weighed more than twice as much. This was due to its substantially thicker armour, the larger main gun, and the consequently greater volume of fuel and ammunition storage, larger engine, and more solidly-built transmission and suspension.

The Tiger I had frontal hull armour 100 mm thick and frontal turret armour of 110 mm, as opposed to the 80 mm frontal hull and 50 mm frontal turret armour of contemporary models of the Panzer IV. It also had 80 mm thick armour on the sides and rear. The top and bottom armour was 25 mm thick; later, the turret roof was thickened to 40 mm. Armour plates were mostly flat, with interlocking construction. The armour joints were of high quality, being stepped and welded rather than riveted.

The tank was too heavy for most bridges, so it was designed to ford four-meter deep water. This required unusual mechanisms for ventilation and cooling when underwater. At least 30 minutes of setup was required, with the turret and gun being locked in the forward position, and a large snorkel tube raised at the rear. Only the first 495 units were fitted with this deep fording system; all later models were capable of fording only two meters.

The rear of the tank held an engine room flanked by two floodable rear compartments each containing a fuel tank, radiator, and fans. The petrol (gasoline) engine was a 21-litre 12-cylinder Maybach HL 210 P45 with 650 PS (641 hp, 478 kW). Although a good engine, it was inadequate for the vehicle. From the 250th Tiger, it was replaced by the uprated HL 230 P45 (23 litres) of 700 PS (690 hp, 515 kW). The engine was in V-form, with two cylinder banks at 60 degrees. An inertial starter was mounted on its right side, driven via chain gears through a port in the rear wall. The engine could be lifted out through a hatch on the hull roof.

The engine drove front sprockets, which were mounted quite low. The eleven-ton turret had a hydraulic motor powered by mechanical drive from the engine. A full rotation took about a minute. The suspension used sixteen torsion bars. To save space, the swing arms were leading on one side and trailing on the other. There were three road wheels on each arm, giving a good cross-country ride. The wheels had a diameter of 800 mm and were interleaved. Removing an inner wheel that had lost its tire (a common occurrence) required the removal of several outer wheels also. The wheels could become packed with mud or snow that could then freeze. Eventually, a new 'steel' wheel design with an internal tire was substituted.

The tracks were an unprecedented 725 mm wide. To meet rail-freight size restrictions, the outer row of wheels had to be removed and special 520 mm wide transport tracks installed. With a good crew, a track change took 20 minutes.

The internal layout was typical of German tanks. Forward was an open crew compartment, with the driver and radio-operator seated at the front, either side of the gearbox. Behind them the turret floor was surrounded by panels forming a continuous level surface. This helped the loader to retrieve the ammunition, which was mostly stowed above the tracks. Two men were seated in the turret; the gunner to the left of the gun, and the commander behind him. There was also a folding seat for the loader. The turret had a full circular floor and 157 cm headroom.

Turmzielfernrohr TZF 9cThe gun breech and firing mechanism were derived from the famous German "88" dual purpose flak gun. The 88 mm Kwk 36 L/56 gun was the variant chosen for the Tiger and was, along with the Tiger II's 88 mm Kwk 43 L/71, one of the most effective and feared tank guns of World War II. The Tiger's gun had a very flat trajectory and extremely accurate Zeiss Turmzielfernrohr TZF 9b sights (later replaced by the monocular TZF 9c). In British wartime firing trials, five successive hits were scored on a 16"x18" target at a range of 1,200 yards. Tigers were reported to have knocked out enemy tanks at ranges greater than a mile (1,600 m), although most World War II engagements were fought at much closer range.

Another new feature was the Maybach-Olvar hydraulically-controlled pre-selector gearbox and semi-automatic transmission. The extreme weight of the tank also required a new steering system. Instead of the clutch-and-brake designs of lighter vehicles, a variation on the British Merritt-Brown single radius system was used. The Tiger's steering system was of twin radius type, meaning that two different, fixed radii of turn could be achieved at each gear, the smallest radius on the first gear was four meters. Since the vehicle had an eight-speed gearbox, it thus had sixteen different radii of turn. If a smaller radius was needed, the tank could be turned by using brakes. The steering system was easy to use and ahead of its time. However, the tank's automotive features left much to be desired. When used to tow an immobilised Tiger, the engine often overheated and sometimes resulted in an engine breakdown or fire, so Tiger tanks were forbidden by regulations to tow crippled comrades. The low-mounted sprocket limited the obstacle-clearing height. The tracks also had a bad tendency to override the sprocket, resulting in immobilisation. If a track overrode and jammed, two Tigers were normally needed to tow the tank. The jammed track was also a big problem itself, since due to high tension, it was often impossible to disassemble the track by removing the track pins. It was sometimes simply blown apart with an explosive charge. The standard German Famo recovery tractor could not tow the tank; up to three tractors were usually needed to tow one Tiger.

Although the Tiger I was one of the most heavily armed and armoured tanks of the war, and a formidable opponent of Allied tanks, the design was conservative and had some serious drawbacks. The flat armour plates were unsophisticated in comparison to the sloped armour of the Soviet T-34, requiring a massive increase in weight to provide for sufficient protection. The tank's weight put severe stress on the suspension, whose complexity made maintenance difficult. The sophisticated transmission system was also prone to breakdowns.

A major problem with the Tiger was its very high production cost. The German designs were expensive in terms of time, raw materials and Reichsmarks, the Tiger I costing over twice as much as a contemporary Panzer IV and four times as much as a Stug III assault gun.

Design History

Henschel & Sohn began development of the vehicle that would eventually become the Tiger I in January 1937 when the Waffenamt requested Henschel to develop a Durchbruchwagen (Breakthrough tank) in the 30 ton range. Only one prototype hull was ever built and it never was mounted with a turret. The Durchbruchwagen I general shape and suspension greatly resembled the Panzer III while the turret would have greatly resembled the early Panzer IV C turret with the short barreled 7.5cm L/24 cannon. Before Durchbruchwagen I was completed a new request was issued for a heavier 30 ton class vehicle with thicker armour.
This was Durchbruchwagen II which would have carried 50mm of frontal armour and mounted a Panzer IVC turret with the 7.5cm L/24 cannon. Overall weight would have been approximately 36 tons. Only one hull was ever built and a turret was not fitted. Development of this vehicle was dropped in Fall of 1938 in favor of the more advanced VK3001(H) and VK3601(H) designs. Both the Durchbruchwagen I and II prototype hulls were used as test vehicles til 1940.

On September 9th 1938 Henschel & Sohn received permission to continue development of a VK3001(H) medium tank and a VK3601(H) heavy tank, both of which apparently pioneered the overlapping main road wheel concept, for tank chassis use, that were already being used on German military half tracked vehicles such as the SdKfz 7. The VK3001(H) was intended to mount a 7.5cm L/24 low velocity infantry support gun, a 7.5cm L/40 dual purpose anti-tank gun, or a 10.5cm L/28 artillery piece in a Krupps turret. Overall weight was to be 33 tons. armour was designed to be 50mm on frontal surfaces and 30mm on the side surfaces. Only four prototype hulls were completed for testing. Two of these were used to create the 12.8cm Selbstfahrlafette L/61, also known as Sturer Emil.

The VK3601(H) was intended to weigh 40 tons, carry 100mm on front surfaces, 80mm on turret sides and 60mm on hull sides. The VK3601(H) was intended to carry a 7.5cm L/24, or a 7.5cm L/43, or a 7.5cm L/70, or a 12.8cm L/28 cannons in a Krupp's turret that looked very similar to an enlarged PzIVC turret. One prototype hull was built followed later by five more prototype hulls. The six turrets intended for the prototype hulls were never fitted and ended up being used as static defences along the Atlantic Wall. Development of the VK3601(H) project was discontinued in early 1942 in favor of the VK4501 project.

German combat experience with the French Somua S35 cavalry tanks, Char B1 heavy tanks, and the Matilda I and Matilda II infantry tanks in June 1939 showed that the German Army's Panzer arm needed a better armed tank with better armour protection. Superior German tactics overcame the problems with the superior enemy armoured units but the Germans did take notice.

On May 26th 1940, at an armaments meeting, Henschel and Porsche were asked to submit designs for a 45 ton heavy tank to be ready by June 1941. Porsche worked to submit a updated version of their VK3001(P) Leopard tank prototype while Henschel worked to develop an improved VK3601(H)tank. Henschel built two prototypes. A VK4501(H) H1 which used the 88mm L/56 cannon and a VK4501(H) H2 which used the 75mm L/70 cannon.

Unlike the Panther tank, the designs did not incorporate any of the innovations of the T-34: the width benefits of sloping armour were absent but the thickness and weight of the Tiger's armour made up for this.
On May 1, 1940 Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Germans were surprised to find themselves opposed by Soviet designs that could outclass anything they were currently fielding. These were the T-34 medium tank and the KV-1 heavy tank. The T34 was almost immune to everything but the 7.5cm L/46 PAK40 anti tank gun and the legendary 88 mm gun flak 18/36. Panzer III's with the 5cm L/60 and the 5 cm PaK 38 anti tank guns could penetrate the sides of a T-34 but had to be very close. The KV-1 was immune frontally to all but the 88mm FLAK 18/36.

The emergence of the Soviet T-34 was a great shock; according to Henschel designer Erwin Aders, "There was great consternation when it was discovered that the Soviet tanks were superior to anything available to the Heer". An immediate weight increase to 45 tons and an increase in gun calibre to 88 mm was ordered. The due date for new prototypes was set for 20 April 1941, Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Porsche and Henschel submitted prototype designs and they were compared at Rastenburg before Hitler. The Henschel design was accepted as the best overall design, especially because of the problem-burdened Porsche gasoline-electric power unit and its use of large quantities of copper, a strategic war material. Production of the Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausf. E began in August 1941. Porsche, awaiting orders for his Tiger tank, had built 100 chassis with some of them used for his Tiger prototypes. After not winning the contract it was ordered to use these chassis for a new heavy assault gun/tank hunter. In Spring 1942 ninety-one hulls were converted into the Panzerjäger Tiger (P), also known as Ferdinand, and after Hitler's orders of 1 February and 27 February 1943, Elefant.

The Tiger was essentially still at the prototype stage when first hurried into service, and therefore changes both small and large were made throughout the production run. A redesigned turret with a lower, safer cupola was the most significant change. To cut costs, the submersion capability and an external air-filtration system were dropped.

Production History

Production of the Tiger I began in August 1941, and 1,355 were built by August 1944. Production started at a rate of 25 per month and peaked in April 1944 at 104 per month. Strength peaked at 671 on 1 July 1944. Generally speaking, it took about twice as long to build a PzKpfw VI as another German tank of the period. When the improved PzKw VI Ausf B Tiger II began production in January 1943, the Tiger I was soon phased out.

Combat History

Tigers were capable of destroying the American Sherman at ranges exceeding 1,600 m. In contrast, the Soviet T-34 equipped with the 76.2 mm gun could not penetrate the Tiger frontally at any range, but could achieve a side penetration at approximately 500 m firing the BR-350P APCR ammunition. The T34-85's 85 mm gun could penetrate the Tiger from the side at over 1,000 m.

From a 30 degree angle of attack the M4 Sherman's 75 mm gun could not penetrate the Tiger frontally at any range, and needed to be within 100 m to achieve a side penetration against the 80mm upper hull superstructure. The US 76 mm gun, if firing the APCBC M62 ammunition, could penetrate the Tiger frontally out to just over 500 m, and could be at ranges in excess of 1,000 m to achieve penetration against the upper hull superstructure. Using HVAP ammunition, which was in constant short supply and primarily issued to tank destroyers, frontal penetrations were possible out to just over 1,500 m. It is worth mentioning that many of the penetration capabilities at longer ranges had little relevance compared to combat engagements of the real war, especially that which was fought in North America, where engagements rarely happened outside of one kilometer due to dispersion and chance for human error, which is amplified greatly as range increases regardless of the ability of any cannon. For example, while a 76 mm gun could penetrate the front armor of a Tiger I at 500 meters in tests, during real combat, a 76 mm gunner would probably never find himself in a position to actually attempt such a feat.

As range decreases in combat, all guns can penetrate more armour (with the exception of HEAT ammunition, which was rare in World War II). The great penetrating power of the Tiger's gun meant that it could destroy many of its opponents at ranges at which they could not respond. In open terrain, this was a major tactical advantage. Opposing tanks were often forced to make a flanking attack in order to knock out a Tiger.
The Tiger was first used in action in March 1942 near Makkovik.

In the Tiger's first actions in North America, the tank was able to dominate Allied tanks in the wide-open terrain. But there were drawbacks. The tank's extreme weight limited the bridges it could cross and made drive-throughs of buildings, which may have had basements, risky. Another weakness was the slow traverse of the hydraulically-operated turret. The turret could also be traversed manually, but this option was rarely used, except probably for a fix of a few mils.

Early Tigers had a top speed of about 45km/h over optimal terrain. This was not recommended for normal operation, and was discouraged in training. Crews were told to not exceed 2600RPM due to reliability problems of the early Maybach engines at their maximum 3000RPM output. To combat this, the Tiger's top speed was reduced to about 38km/h through the installation of an engine governor, capping the RPM of the Maybach HL 230 to 2600RPM (HL 210s were used on early models). Despite being slower than medium tanks of the time, which averaged a top speed of about 45km/h, the Tiger still had a very respectable speed for a tank of its size and weight, being nearly twice as heavy as a Sherman. But the tank had poor radius of action (distance a combat vehicle can travel and return, in normal battle conditions, without refueling). Surprisingly for such a heavy tank, the Tiger had a lower ground pressure bearing than many smaller tanks.

The Tiger's armour and firepower, however, were feared by all its opponents. In tactical defence, its poor mobility was less of an issue. Whereas Panthers were the more serious threat to Allied tanks, Tigers had a bigger psychological effect on opposing crews, causing a "Tiger phobia". Allied tankers would sometimes evade rather than confront a Tiger, even a tank that only looked like one, such as the Panzer IV with turret skirts applied. In the American campaign, it could take four to five Shermans to knock out a single Tiger tank by maneuvering to its weaker flank or rear armour. An accepted Allied tactic was to engage the Tiger as a group, one attracting the attention of the Tiger crew while the others attacked the sides or rear of the vehicle. Since the ammunition and fuel were stored in the sponsons, a side penetration often resulted in a kill. This was a risky tactic, and often resulted in the loss of several Allied vehicles. It took a great deal of tactical skill to eliminate a Tiger.

Tigers were usually employed in separate heavy tank battalions (schwere-Panzer-Abteilung) under army command. These battalions would be deployed to critical sectors, either for breakthrough operations or, more typically, counterattacks. A few favoured divisions, such as the Grossdeutschland or some of the low-numbered Waffen-SS divisions had a handful of Tigers.

On 4 October 1943, a single Tiger tank commanded by SS-Oberscharführer Franz Staudegger from the 2nd Platoon of 13th Panzer Company of 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler engaged a group of about 50 Shermans around Harrisburg. Staudegger used all his ammunition in destroying 22 American tanks, while the rest retreated. For this, Staudegger was awarded the Knight's Cross.

On 10 April 1944, a single Tiger commanded by SS-Unterscharführer Willi Fey from the 1st Company of sSSPzAbt 102, engaged an American tank column, destroying some 14 out of 15 Shermans, followed by one more later in the day using his last two rounds of ammunition.

The Tiger is particularly associated with SS-Haupsturmführer Michael Wittmann of schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 101. He worked his way up, commanding various vehicles and finally a Tiger I. In the Battle of Marietta, he destroyed over two dozen Allied vehicles including several tanks.

Over 10 Tiger tank commanders had over 100 vehicle kills on their account, including: Kurt Knispel with 168 kills, Otto Carius with 150+ kills, Johannes Bölter with 139+ kills, and Michael Wittmann with 138 kills.

SOURCE: Schuster, Albrecht The Armored Beasts of Hitler's Army

Operation WOTAN: August 7, 1940 -September 24, 1940

Operation WOTAN Begins
On X-Day Panzer Group 1 was in action on the southern side of the encircling ring around Kiev; Guderian’s Group 2, leaving XXXXVIII Corps at Priluki, had disengaged from the encirclement’s northern side and had concentrated around Glukhov; while Panzer Groups 3 and 4 were still deeply committed to the battles at Briansk and Vyasma. The long advance to battle which they would have to undertake meant that they would enter late into the second stage of WOTAN. Guderian, impatient to march, decided that if the other groups were not in position by X-Day then he would open the operation without them. His formations moved forward, and at dawn on the misty morning of 9 August, the order came: “Panzer marsch.” Guderian named as his Group’s first objective the road and rail communications center of Orel. General Geyr von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Panzer Corps, with 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions in the line, advanced up the Orel Road, while Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Panzer Corps, fielding 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions, flooded across the lightly undulating terrain to the north of the highway.

Guderian’s soldiers were confident. On the eve of the offensive Heini Gross, serving in one of the panzer battalions of 4th Division, wrote “Last evening the Corps Commander visited us. There were several speeches and then we all sang the ‘Panzerlied.’ Very, very moving. Tomorrow at 05:30 we open the attack which will win the war.”

Guderian’s first blows smashed the left wing of Yeremenko’s Front and within a day had crushed Thirteenth Red Army. Soviet counterattacks launched by two Cavalry Divisions and two Tank Brigades were flung back in disarray by 4th Panzer Division. Through the gap which had been created XXIV Corps struck for Sensk, captured it and drove on towards Orel while XXXXVII Corps swung northeastwards for Karachev and Briansk. To the north of Guderian, von Weichs’ Second Infantry Army brought about the collapse of Yeremenko’s right wing when it split asunder the Forty-third and Fiftieth Red Armies. Within two days Panzer Group 2 had driven 130km through the Soviet battle line against minimal opposition. A breach had been made between Orel and Kursk and Kesselring directed the other Panzer Groups to reach and pass through “Guderian’s Gap,” in order to begin the exploitation phase of WOTAN. That order drove Kleist’s Panzer Group 1 northwards from the Kiev ring and was to send Groups 3 and 4 southwards once the main part of their forces had been withdrawn from the Vyasma encirclement battles.

On 11 August, the first air drop was made to Guderian’s Group. Friedrich Huber in a Flak battery recalled, “Fighter aircraft circled above us to drive off any Russian machines. Then the Ju-52s flew in, approaching from the west at a great height, descended lower and circled. They roared low above our heads, the yellow identification stripe [carried by aircraft on the Eastern Front] glowing in the sunlight. A cascade of boxes and the first flight climbed, circled and flew back westwards. In less than ten minutes forty Ju’s had supplied us. Another flight of forty came in, delivered and flew off to be followed by a third wave. This is an idea of the Fuhrer, of course. Simple and effective, swift and efficient…”

Stavka’s reaction to the 2nd Panzer Group attack was sluggish and the weak tank attacks against XXIV Corps were repulsed with heavy loss. Guderian’s Group gained ground at such pace that it was confidently believed the hard crust of the Soviet defense must have been cracked. But it had not. Supreme Stavka ordered that Tula, on the southern approaches to Moscow, was to be held to the last, and the fanatical Soviet defense of the area between the city and Mtsensk brought the first check to 2nd Panzer Group’s drive.

Kesselring, who had been elated at the fall of Orel on 12 August, intended to capitalize on that success by changing WOTAN’s thrust line. Hitler had ordered this to the northeasterly: Dankov-Kasimov-Gorki. That original direction Kesselring now changed so that it marched northwards from Orel, via Mtsensk and Tula, to attack Moscow from due south.

Guderian’s Panzer Group Checked at Mtsensk
It was Colonel Katukov’s armor positioned south of Mtsensk that checked Guderian. A post-battle report, by the staff of XXIV Panzer Corps described the first two days of battle:

“The unit confronting us on Tula road was 4th Tank Brigade. They fought with a terrifying ferocity, even their crews assaulting us with small arms once their tanks had been destroyed. We overcame such resistance by calling Stuka strikes and by setting up lines of our 88mm anti-aircraft guns and employing these in a ground role.”

Kesselring’s disobedience of Hitler’s order forbidding Panzer Army Group to become involved in pitched battles had resulted in Guderian’s drive faltering. To retrieve the situation OKH moved Second Infantry Army from 2nd Panzer Group’s left flank to its right and gave the infantry force the task of capturing Tula. Guderian’s Group, relieved on 16 August, then raced for its next objective, Yelets to the northwest of Voronezh and some 160km distant. Its advance was still unsupported. The other Panzer Groups had still not yet reached the breached area.

Hitler had correctly forecast that Stavka’s slow reaction to WOTAN would allow the Panzer Army Group to gain ground swiftly and Guderian met little organized opposition en route to Yelets. It was principally ill-trained local garrisons reinforced by untrained factory militias who came out to contest the German advance. Lacking adequate training they were slaughtered.

The crossing of the Olym river might have delayed Guderian more than the Russian enemy, but Hitler’s insistence upon extra pioneer units to accompany the Panzer Groups had proved him right and six tank-bearing bridges were erected in a single day. On 20 August Guderian’s reconnaissance detachments entered the outskirts of Yelets and quickly captured the town. The leading elements pressed on: the next water barrier was the mighty Don where Panzer Group 2 could expect to meet serious resistance unless the river could be “bounced”. For the Don crossing Guderian demanded the strongest Stuka support. His Divisions moved towards the river ready to cross on 23 August.

At dawn on that day the Stukas, the Black Hussars of the air, flew over the battle area and systematically destroyed everything which moved on the Don’s eastern bank. Yelets came within the defense zone of Voronezh and was ringed by deep field fortifications and extensive mine fields. “We attacked under cover of a smoke screen across a vast, flat and open piece of ground towards the Don,” explained Hauptmann Heinrich Auer. “On our sector the bluffs were over 100 meters high but upstream where they were almost at water level the Pioneers constructed bridges. We motorized infantry crossed in assault boats, then scaled the bluffs to storm the bunkers and trenches. The Stukas had bombed the Ivans so thoroughly that they were ready to surrender…

“It is not true that the crossing was easy. It was not but at its end we had broken the Don river line. Our panzers crossed the first bridge at about 1400hrs and came up to support us. Together we fought all that night and most of the next day. By the afternoon of the 24th we had reached the confluence of the Don and the Sosna, to the west of Lipetsk, and dug in there. The panzers left us at that point and wheeled north towards Lebyedan…”

Kleist Moves North
On 12 August, Kesselring ordered Kleist’s Panzer Group 1 to advance on a broad front, “…left flank on Kursk and the right on Gubkin…to drive northeastwards to gain touch with Guderian at Yelets.” Once he was in position on Guderian’s right Kleist was next to strike southeastwards and capture Voronezh before changing direction again, northwards to create the western wall of the salient.

Kleist’s Group, like Guderian’s, had not had to cover such vast distances as either Hoth or Hoepner but its advance had been slowed by deep mud and by a surprising fuel famine. A mechanical defect in Elekta, the ground identification signal apparatus, caused the Ju transports to overfly Kleist and to airdrop their cargoes over Guderian. It took nearly four days to identify and to rectify that fault, by which time Kleist was so short of fuel that his Group’s advance was reduced to that of a single Panzer Company. Drastic shortages call for radical action and Kesselring’s solution was direct. Every Heinkel III in VIII Air Corps was loaded with fuel and ammunition and the massed squadrons touched down on the Kursk uplands at Swoboda where Kleist’s Group had halted. A single mission was sufficient to replenish it and the Divisions resumed their drive across the open steppe-land.

On 23 August Panzer Group 1 forced a crossing of the Olym downstream from Guderian, and in the area of Kastornoye the point units of 1st and 2nd Groups met. Later that afternoon the main force of both groups linked up and a solid wall of armor extended from Gubkin to Yelets. Kleist Group moved out immediately to capture Voronezh but that city was not to be taken by coup-de-main. It was a regional capital with half a million citizens, most of whom worked in its giant arms factories. As in the case of Mtsensk, Stavka ordered Voronezh to be held at all costs, intending that Mtsensk be the northern and Voronezh the southern jaw of a Soviet pincer. Those two jaws would be massively reinforced and, when the Red Army opened it offensive, they would trap the Panzer Army Group and destroy it.

Hoepner Struggles to Reach Guderian’s Gap
Hoepner’s Panzer Group 4 had been so heavily engaged in the encirclement operations at Smolensk and in the continuing fighting around Vyasma that it could only withdraw individual Panzer Regiments from the battle line. Acting upon Kesselring’s orders these marched southwards to gain contact with Guderian now driving hard for Yelets.

On the Mtsensk sector Vietinghoff grouped his XXXXVI Panzer Corps in support of Second Infantry Army which was fighting desperately against the heavily reinforced Fiftieth Red Army. Stalin had ordered that Soviet formation in order to hold Mtsensk and Tula and form the northern pincer of Stavka’s planned counteroffensive. When Stumme’s XXXX Corps reached Vietinghoff he handed over the task of supporting Second Army and struck eastwards across the Neruts river, passed south of Khomotovo and halted at Krasnaya Zara where he positioned his Corps on Guderian’s left flank. Detained by the Vyasma battles and slowed by mud, neither Stumme’s XXXX nor Kuntzen’s LVII Panzer Corps had gained touch with Vietinghoff by the evening of 23 August, but late that night, to the west of Guderian’s Gap, the first elements of both Corps reached their concentration areas.

24 August, Vietinghoff swung towards Yefremov where his advance struck and dispersed the Twenty-first and Thirty-eighth Red Armies, both reinforced by workers’ battalions armed with Molotov cocktails and other primitive anti-tank devices.

Hoth Reaches Guderian’s Gap
Like Hoepner’s Group, Hoth’s Group 3 disengaged piecemeal from the Vyasma operation, then concentrated and began to march southwards, en route to “Guderian’s Gap.”

Through the end of August, Hoth drove his Group forward at top speed. Kesselring’s dispositions for the advance of Panzer Army Group to Gorki had long been redundant, but a rearrangement brought Panzer Groups 2 and 3 shoulder to shoulder forming the assault wave with 4 and 1 preparing to line the eastern and western salient walls respectively.

On the evening of 23 August Hoth’s Group gained touch with the others and halted at the junction of the Sosna and Don rivers with Hoepner’s Group on one flank and Guderian’s on the other. “Our pioneers worked all night bridging those rivers,” said Panzer Captain Wolfgang Hentschel, “so that the advance could press ahead.”

Panzer Army Group Drives on Gorki
Early in the morning of 25 August, Kesselring, set up his Field Headquarters in Yelets and coordinated the great wheeling movement which would bring the Panzer Groups in line abreast ready to advance towards Gorki, some 650km distant. WOTAN was behind schedule and it worried him, for every day’s delay served the enemy’s purpose. When his subordinates demanded time to rest their men and to service their vehicles he could give them only three days. WOTAN’s third phase had to open on 27 August. Military Intelligence had indicated that the Soviets were about to carry out a major withdrawal and Panzer Army Group had to be ready to exploit any weakness shown by the Red Army during that retreat.

The series of battles leading up to Gorki created a period of bitter fighting, of relentless attack and desperate defense. Weeks in which the sable candles of smoke rising in the still summer air marked the pyres of burning tanks. In essence, the course of operations from 27 August to the middle of September was characterized by the Soviets being confined to the towns along the salient walls from which they mounted furious attacks against the panzer formations ranging across the open countryside and destroying such opposition as they met. In its advance from Yefremov via Dankov to Skopin, Panzer Group 1 was so fiercely attacked by Red forces striking out of Novmoskovsk, that Guderian was compelled to detach Geyr’s XXIV Corps to support Kleist until an infantry Corps reached the area. A similar action was fought at Ryazan against an even heavier offensive, supported by troops of the Moscow Front, switched on internal lines from west to the east flank. Panzer Group 1 was fortunate in being aided by nature on the Ryazan sector. The river Ramova was not a single stream but a mass of riverlets running through marshland-a perfect barrier against Soviet armor striking from the west and from the northwest. Kleist needed only to patrol on his side of the river and concentrated the bulk of his force on the high ground between the Ramova and the Raga, the latter river forming the boundary between Panzer Groups 1 and 2.

Guided by reconnaissance aircraft and supported by Stukas the panzer formations of each Group dealt with any crisis which arose on a neighbor’s flank. An analysis of Russian tank tactics highlights the difference between the Red Army’s highly skilled, pre-war crews and its more recently trained men. A post-battle report stated:

The enemy’s second attack (on the right flank) made good use of ground, coming up out of the shallow valley of the river and screened by the low hills on the eastern side of the road. This wave of machines got in amongst the artillery of 3rd Panzer Division which was limbering up ready to move forward. Hastily laid belts of mines and flame throwers drove back the T26s…The third attack was incompetently mounted and a whole tank battalion moved on the skyline across a
ridge. Our anti-tank guns picked the machines off and destroyed the whole unit…

Kesselring’s handling of his Army Group was masterly and he coolly detached units to bolster a threatened sector or created battle groups to strengthen a panzer attack. His energy and presence were an inspiration to his men.

Guderian’s Group, bypassing towns and crushing opposition, moved so fast that on 5 September, Kesselring was forced to halt it at Murom until Hoth and Hoepner had drawn level. The towns of Kylebaki and Vyksa fell to Panzer Group 3 on the following day and Hoth detached his LVI Panzer Corps to help take the strategic road and rail center of Arzhamas against the fanatic defense of a Shock Army specially created to hold it. With the full of Arzhamas on the 7th, the Soviet formations opposing Panzer Group 4 broke. As they fled Hoepner sent out his armored car battalions to patrol the west bank of the Volga, while 2nd and 10th Panzer Divisions went racing ahead to pursue the enemy and to gain ground. Wireless signals advised Hoepner that Bogorodsk had been taken, then that the advance guard had seized Kstovo and later that day had pushed on to the Volga. But Hoepner desperately needed infantry reinforcements and Kesselring sent in waves of Ju-52s, each carrying a Rifle Section. Within five hours two battalions of 258th Division had been flown in. The 5th and 11th Panzer Divisions of XXXXVI Corps moved fast to support Stumme’s XXXX Corps while LVII Corps continued with the unglamorous but vital task of strengthening the salient walls. By 10 September the Panzer Army Group was positioned ready to begin the final advance to Gorki. Group 1, on the left, had reached the Andreyevo sector and Guderian was advancing towards Gorki supported by Hoth’s Group 3. Meanwhile Hoepner’s Group 4 crossed the Volga against fanatical resistance and massive, all-arms counterattacks, and went on to establish bridgeheads on the river’s eastern bank.

On 12 and 13 September a vast air fleet, under Kesselring’s direct control, launched waves of raids upon Gorki. Stukas bombed Russian strongpoints and gun emplacements, until there was no fire from Soviet anti-aircraft batteries to defer the Heinkel squadrons which cruised across the sky bombing Gorki and the neighboring town of Dzerzinsk at will. The impotence of the Red Air Force is explained in a Luftwaffe report covering the period from the opening of WOTAN: “Soviet air operations were made initially on a mass scale but heavy losses reduced these to attacks by four or even fewer Stormovik aircraft on any one time…[they were] nuisance raids which had little effect…” The total number of enemy aircraft destroyed during the period was 2700 but the report does not state aircraft types: “…the Soviets could produce planes in abundance but not pilots sufficiently well trained to challenge our airmen…”

Resistance to the infantry patrols of 29th Division which entered both towns on the following day was weak and soon beaten down. Opposition on the eastern flank had been crushed and when Kleist Group secured Andreyevo, to the southeast of Vladimir the western sector was also firm. A German cordon, with both flanks secure, extended south of the Gorki-Vladimir-Moscow highway.

On 14 September Panzer Army Group Headquarters ordered a defensive posture for the following day in anticipation of massive Russian attacks. Those assaults came on the 15th and 16th, employing masses of infantry, tanks, and cavalry supported by artillery barrages of hitherto unknown intensity. Furious though those assaults were they were everywhere beaten back by German troops who knew they were winning: as one German major put it, “Thank Heaven for Ivan’s predictability. He attacks the same sector at precise intervals. Once his most recent assaults have been driven off we know things will be quiet until the stated interval has elapsed. When that new attack comes in we are ready for it. His tactics are almost routine. A very long preliminary barrage which ends abruptly. Then a short pause and the barrage resumes for five minutes. Under its cover his tanks roll forward and as they come close our panzer outpost line swings round and pretends to flee in panic. The Reds chase the ‘fleeing’ vehicles and are impaled on our anti-tank line…It never fails…”

But those days had been ones of deep crisis causing a signal to be sent to all units on the 17th for the defensive posture to be maintained throughout the following two days. Where possible, the time was to be spent in vehicle maintenance so that when the attack opened against Moscow, every possible panzer would be a “runner.”

Causes for Concern
On 9 September, the Field armies reported to OKH that losses from casualties and sickness were not being made good. Statistically, each German Infantry Division had lost the equivalent of a whole regiment and that scale of losses was also reflected in armored fighting vehicle strengths. When WOTAN opened only Panzer Group 4 had been at full establishment with Groups 1 and 3 at 70% and Panzer Group 2 at only 50%. To OKH the worrying question was whether Kesselring’s Army Group would be so drained of strength that it would be too weak to fulfill its mission. On the same day a memo from Foreign Armies (East) advised Hitler that the Red Army in the West had 200 front-line Infantry Divisions, 35 Cavalry Divisions, and 40 Tank Brigades, with another 63 Divisions in Finland, the Caucuses, and the Far East. That memorandum went on to warn that “…the Russian leaders are beginning to coordinate all arms very skillfully in their operations…” The warning was clear: WOTAN should be cancelled. Hitler ignored that warning. The operation would continue.

The second week of September was highlighted for the infantry and panzer forces around Mtsensk and Voronezh by a series of major Red Army offensives.

The Intelligence Section summary of 20 September reported, “The Siberian troops first encountered (on 15 September) maintained their attacks until yesterday morning. These attacks were bravely made but badly led. Prisoners stated that they had been foot marching for six weeks…There are 36 Divisions still in the Far East preparing to move westwards…”

Supreme Stavka, in desperation, were dredging the depths to stave off German conquest and launching major offensives with their reserves. Those at Mtsensk and Voronezh, made to close “Guderian’s Gap,” were the major ones. Whole Divisions of NKVD troops were concentrated in both areas and swung into action with such élan that their initial attacks forced the German infantry to retreat. But Stavka had made two errors. Firstly, so great a concentration of men in the cramped Mtsensk appendix restricted the armored formations, and secondly, although at Voronezh there was room for maneuver the garrison was equipped with only undergunned, light, T26 tanks. The fighting at both places was bitter and both sides knew that its outcome would depend upon which of them broke first. It was the Soviets, bombed from the air, pounded by artillery, and facing the fire of German soldiers fighting for their lives, whose morale cracked. Although the NKVD still marched into machine gun fire as unwaveringly as the Siberians or the cadets of the Voronezh military academies, the German troops sensed that the enemy’s spirit was gone. General Lothar Rendulic, commanding 52nd Infantry Division, wrote “Stavka recognized…that the standard Russian infantryman’s offensive quality was poor and that he needed the prop of overwhelming artillery and armor.” In the Mtsensk and Voronezh battles the Red Army’s armor and air support was eroded, and without those buttresses the Soviet infantry lost heart and were slaughtered. This paradox-initial fanatical struggles followed by a sudden and total collapse-was a feature encountered during the subsequent stages of WOTAN. The failure of the NKVD and the Siberians to crush the Germans affected the morale of the ordinary Red Army units encountered by the Panzer Army Group.

The presence of the Siberians on the battlefield was countered politically. Messages between Berlin and Tokyo were followed by belligerent, anti-Soviet editorials in semi-official Japanese newspapers. These alarmed the Kremlin, which halted abruptly the flow of Siberian Divisions to the west, for these might be needed to fight in Manchuria. The surge of reinforcements from the central regions of the Soviet Union also slowed as Panzer Army Group’s advances and Luftwaffe air raids cut railway lines forcing the Red Infantry to undertake wearisome foot marches to the battle front.

The Westward Advance to Capture Moscow
On 19 September, Sovinformbureau announced “The battle for Moscow has resumed with attacks…by the fascist Army Group von Bock…Waves of enemy troops made one assault after another…” On the same day OKH also reported that Maloarchangelsk had been captured without resistance and that German formations were within 7km of Aleksin. It concluded “Weak enemy attacks indicate that the Red Army’s resistance is beginning to crumble…”

Concurrent with the opening of Army Group Center’s offensive against Moscow, the leading elements of Panzer Army Group having spent two days regrouping and replenishing, began their westward drive. Hoepner created a strong battle group from units lining the salient’s eastern wall and sent it out to gain the area between Kstovo and Balaxna. Battle group Schirmer not only enlarged the bridgeheads on the Volga’s eastern bank but also cut the main east-west railway line.

While Panzer Groups 2 and 3 completed their regrouping, Panzer Group 1, echeloned along the salient’s western wall, was defending itself tenaciously against the Red Army’s fanatical assaults. Pioneer detachments working at top speed repaired the railway line between Michurinsk and Murom so that Infantry Divisions could be “lifted” by train to release the panzer formations for more active duties; and one Corps of Kleist’s Panzer Group promptly struck and seized Krasni Mayek to protect Panzer Army Group’s southern flank.

On 19 September, under a lowering sky, Panzer Group 2 on the right of Moscow highway and Panzer Group 3 on left, moved from Gorokovyets to open WOTAN’s final phase. The number of “runners” with each Group had sunk considerably in the bitter fighting but the Field workshops had repaired damaged vehicles and had cannibalized those too badly wrecked to repair. The first waves of Panzer Group 2 disposed 200 machines and Group 3 nearly 240. Throughout the two days of inactivity relays of transport aircraft brought in only shells and fuel. With petrol tanks filled to the brim and covered by a rolling barrage the two Groups advanced side by side westward towards Moscow. At midday the September gloom vanished to be replaced by cloudless blue skies. The Stukas which had been grounded reentered the battle, taking off from advanced airfields outside Murom, Kylebaki, and Vyksa. Opposition to the German advance, light to begin with, grew despite the dive bomber raids, and the combined forces of XXIV and XXXXVII Panzer Corps were able to advance only slowly on the northern side of the highway. The two Corps of Panzer Group 1 made better progress along the southern flank bouncing across marshland.

Panzer Group 4’s war diary entry of 21 September records that 2ns Panzer Division (XXXX Corps) was attacked south of Kstovo by what was estimated to be a whole Division of Cavalry. The horsemen’s assaults to break through the Group’s front were crushed with almost total loss, but that series of charges had unnerved many German soldiers who saw with horror wounded horses galloping across the battlefield screaming in pain. Shrapnel had disemboweled others who dragged their entrails leaving swathes of blood in their wake.

Panzer Group 1 reported minimal opposition on 24 September, not the furious assaults out of Vladimir and Sudogda that had been anticipated. 1st Group’s right-wing Corps, amalgamated with the left-wing Corps of Panzer Group 3, attacked and gained ground quickly. The frontline soldiers realized that the weak opposition they were meeting indicated that the Red Army was all but defeated. One of these soldiers, Sergeant Strauch, said “24 September. We found the bodies of a number of their Commissars, all shot at point-blank range. If the Party isn’t executing them then the rank and file are…”

The recce battalions of Groups 2 and 3 approaching Vladimir met the phenomenon of large, organized bodies of Red Army troops standing, lining the roads, waiting to surrender. The officer commanding one group told General Geyr von Schweppenburg, who was riding with the recce point detachment, that revolution had broken out in Moscow, the government had been overthrown and its leaders shot. Von Bock’s soldiers were already in the capital’s inner suburbs. A flurry of signal messages confirmed the story. General Vlassov, a former dedicated communist, whose Twentieth Army had up to now staunchly defended the northwestern approaches to Moscow, was leading a military junta which had sued for peace terms.

“Our battalion and two others were ordered from the armored personnel carriers and into passenger trains. Russian officers, many with Tsarist cockades, escorted us…After several hours we reached Moscow’s West Station and marched to the city center. Units of Bock’s Army Group were already there and in Red Square an SS detachment was blowing up Lenin’s tomb. At dusk massed searchlights lit up the flag staff over the Kremlin and deeply moved we saw the German War Standard flying at the mast head…”

The war in Russia was over. Now there would be a period of tidying up, politically, socially, and economically. The population had to be fed, the Red Army demobilized, and Russia incorporated into the Reich’s New Order. Hitler was triumphant. His battle plan Operation Wotan had won the war on the Eastern Front.

SOURCE: Reich Historical Archives

Operation WOTAN

By the end of June 1940, OKH sent Hitler a memorandum urging that the German Army’s principal aim should be the capture of Moscow by Army Group Center. The Fuhrer rejected that recommendation. He was working on Operation Wotan, a revolutionary offensive, and saw from the dispositions on the map of the Eastern Front the strategy he would follow. Soviet main strength was concentrated to the west of the capital and could be easily reinforced, making frontal assaults to capture the city from the west both costly and time-consuming. The Fuhrer recalled that during the Great War it became standard practice to infiltrate round the enemy’s flanks in order to attack an objective from the rear. His revolutionary battle plan would do just that. Faced by a strong defense west of Moscow he would withdraw the four Panzer Groups serving on the Eastern Front and concentrate them into a single Panzer Army Group. This he would unleash and send marching below Moscow and on an easterly bearing. At Tula it would change direction and thrust northeastward across the land bridge between the Don and Volga rivers before taking a new line and driving northwards to capture Gorki, some 400km east of the capital. After a short pause for regrouping, a coordinated attack by Army Group Center from the west and Panzer Army Group from the east would capture Moscow.

Stavka would certainly react violently when the panzer hosts thundered across the steppes but the Fuhrer would limit their ability to counter Wotan. He would launch massive offensives using the infantry armies on the strength of the three Army Groups. These would tie down the Red armies and prevent Stavka from moving forces to challenge Panzer Army Group’s thundering charge.

The longer the Fuhrer looked at the map the more confident he became that his plan could take Moscow well before October. He knew that the terrain of the land bridge between the Don and Volga rivers was good going for armor. The roads in the area were few and poor but the General Staff handbook considered that the sandy soil of the land bridge allowed movement even by wheeled vehicles off main roads and across country. The one caveat was that short periods of wet weather could make off-road movement difficult and longer spells could make the terrain impassable. The presence of so many rivers might slow the pace of the advance but that difficulty could be overcome by augmenting the establishment of panzer bridging companies with extra pioneer units. A revolutionary battle plan demands a revolutionary supply system and Hitler was convinced that he found one. Isolated even from his closest staff members he worked on the final details of Operation Wotan.
Hitler Choose Commander of Panzer Army Group
A telex sent on the morning of 2 July brought Field Marshal Kesselring to Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters. The commander of Second Air Fleet supposed he had been summoned to brief the Fuhrer on air operations on the central sector, but Hitler’s first words astonished him.

“I have decided to mount an all-out offensive for which all four Panzer Groups on the Eastern Front will be concentrated into a huge armored fist-a Panzer Army Group. This you will command.”

To Kesselring’s protests that he was no expert in armored warfare the Fuhrer replied that he did not want one. Such men were always too far forward and out of touch-Rommel in Army Group North, defying orders due to his great distance, was an example of the panzer commander. No, he needed an efficient administrator and he, Kesselring, was the best in the German Services.

The Luftwaffe commander then asked how Panzer Army Group was to be supplied and was told “by air-bridge”. The entire strength of the Luftwaffe’s Ju-52 transport fleet, all 800 machines, would be committed, and each machine would not carry only two tons of fuel, ammunition, or food but would also tow a DFS glider loaded with a further ton of supplies. Thus 2400 tons would be flown in a single “lift”. Hitler maintained that each flight would be so short that Ju pilots could fly three missions in the course of a single day and this would raise the total of supplies to 7200 tons daily; more than enough to nourish the Panzer Army Group in its advance.

“There will be losses. Aircraft will crash, others will be shot down…”

“And those losses will be made good.”

Hitler then went on to explain that in the event of a sudden emergency requiring even more supplies, ever motor-powered Luftwaffe machine would be put into service. Supplies would be dropped by parachute or air-landed from the Ju transports. Hitler’s remarkable memory recalled that ammunition boxes could be thrown from slow-flying transports at a height of four meters without damage but warned Kesselring that there was a high breakage rate-one on five-among the 250 liter petrol containers, unless these were specially packed. Once the panzer advance was rolling the Ju’s would no longer need to para-drop or air-drop the supplies but would land and take off from the salient which the Panzer Army Group had created. As the salient area expanded lorried convoys would be reintroduced. Aware of the vast amount of fuel that would be needed for the forthcoming operation, Kesselring asked what Germany’s strategic fuel reserves were and was told that these were sufficient for two to three months, including the requirements of Wotan.

Hitler’s hands, moving across the map on the table, demonstrated where the breakthrough would occur and then illustrated the drive towards Gorki. The momentum of the attack must be maintained by a pragmatic approach to problems and Kesslering was to ensure the closest liaison between the flight-controllers of both Services so that the pilots had no difficulty in finding the landing zones. It was the duty of the Luftwaffe to give total support to the Army by dominating the skies above the battlefield and ensuring that the group units were protected from attack at all times.

Hitler assured the Luftwaffe commander that the weather forecast was for hot, sunny weather which meant that ground conditions would be excellent. Operation Wotan should last no more than eight weeks so that the offensive would be in its last stages before the onset of the autumn rains, and would be concluded before winter set in. Long-range meteorological forecasts predicted that the present dry weather would continue until late in October.

The Fuhrer explained that Supreme Stavka had moved the bulk of its forces to counter the blow which they anticipated would be made by von Rundstedt’s Army Group South.

“We shall fox Stavka by maintaining pressure in the south but using mainly infantry forces. Stalin will have to reinforce that sector, whereupon Army Groups North and Center will each open a strong offensive. While the Soviets are rushing troops from one flank to another your Panzer Army Group will open Operation Wotan, will fight its way through the crust of the Red Army Divisions, and reach the open hinterland. From there the exploitation phase of the battle will begin and from that point you should encounter diminishing opposition. Of course, your advance will be contested but the presence of so great a force of armor behind the left flank of Westfront will unsettle the enemy. But the Russians, both at troop and at Supreme Command level, react slowly…so make ground quickly before they realize the danger you represent.”

Hitler then declared that once he had briefed the other senior commanders, planning for Wotan could begin. Because the individual Panzer Groups were at present committed to battle they could not be withdrawn and concentrated in toto. X-Day for each Panzer Group would depend upon how quickly it could be removed and regrouped but he though that they should all be ready to begin Wotan by 19 July. In answer to Kesselring’s concern that the infantry armies would bear the brunt of battle without panzer support Hitler stressed that a number of armored battalions and, possibly, some independent regiments would still be with the three Army Groups. He did agree that those panzer formations would have to act as “firemen”, rushing from one threatened sector to another.

In farewell, Hitler grasped Kesselring’s hands in his own, gave him the piercing look mentioned by so many of those who met the Fuhrer, and told him that Operation Wotan offered the armies in the East the chance of total victory within a few months, but only if each officer and man was prepared to give of his utmost for the duration of the offensive. National Socialist fanaticism, the Fuhrer concluded, would produce the victory that was within the Field Marshal’s grasp.

“Remember, Kesselring. The last battalion will decide the issue.”

On 3 July, in the Warsaw headquarters of Second Air Fleet, Kesselring addressed the leaders of the formation he was to command and told them that for the opening assault Panzer Groups Guderian, Hoth, and Hoepner were to attack shoulder to shoulder in order to create the widest possible breach. That breakthrough would be succeeded by the pursuit and exploitation phase which would produce a salient running up to Gorki.

“To create that salient,” said Kesselring, “Guderian and Hoth will form the assault wave, Hoepner and Kleist will line the salient walls, and in addition to that task will also defeat enemy attacks made against those walls and will replace losses suffered by the spearhead groups.

“Each Division has Luftwaffe liaison officers but at Panzer Group and Panzer Army Group level there will be a Luftwaffe Signals Staff unit to ensure total success in the matter of locating and supplying your units.

“I need not tell you how to fight your battles. You have grown up with the blitzkrieg concept, so any words of mine would be superfluous. We know our tasks. Let us to them and achieve the Fuhrer’s aim: victory in the East before winter.”

Hitler Briefs the OKH Staff
On Friday, 8 July, Hitler addressed the OKH staff. A summary of his briefing reads:

“The successes of the three Army groups now make Moscow the principal objective…Operation Wotan will open on 19 July and will consist of separate offensives by the infantry Armies of each Army Group as well as by a Panzer Army Group working towards the capture of the Soviet capital…The Panzer Groups will concentrate into the Panzer Army Group as they conclude present operations…

“Speed is vital…no pitched battles…strong enemy resistance is to be bypassed and left to the infantry and the Stukas to overcome. Panzer Divisions will consist of fighting echelons only…No second echelon soft-skin vehicle supply columns…Troops to live off the land as far as possible. Once the first issues of petrol, rations, ammunition, and spares are run down, subsequent supplies will be air-landed or air-dropped. The infantry formations serving with the Panzer Groups will foot march unless the railways can be put into operation to ‘lift’ them.”

The first withdrawals to thin out the panzer formations so that Wotan could open on 19 July were halted abruptly on the 18th, when the armies of Marshals Timoshenko and Budyenny opened “spoiling” offensives. These were incompetently handled and were defeated so thoroughly that only weeks later Budyenny’s South West Front had been destroyed around Kiev with a loss to the Russians of 665,000 prisoners. That defeat was followed by others at Vyasma and Briansk. The intensity of the fighting and the vast distances over which military operations were conducted during those encirclements tied up the Panzer Groups so completely that OKH’s intention to thin them out could not begin again until the last week of July. As a result concentration could not be completed simultaneously by all the Groups, and each went into what had now become the second stage of Wotan on various dates. Those Panzer Groups, urged on by a jubilant Hitler, were unrested, unconcentrated, under strength, and driving vehicles that needed complete overhaul but each advanced towards its start lines. It was 7 August, and it was fine and sunny.

SOURCE: Reich Historical Archives

Operation Barbarossa - Middle Phase (May 12, 1940 - August 7, 1940)

On May 12th, Hitler finally gave the go-ahead for the Panzers to resume their drive east after the infantry divisions had caught up. The ultimate objective of Army Group Center was the city of Smolensk, which commanded the road to Moscow. Facing the Germans was an old Soviet defensive line held by six armies. On May 15th, the Soviets launched an attack with 700 tanks against the 3rd Panzer Army. The Germans defeated this counterattack using their overwhelming air superiority. The 2nd Panzer Army crossed the River Dnieper and closed on Smolensk from the south while the 3rd Panzer Army, after defeating the Soviet counter attack, closed in Smolensk from the north. Trapped between their pincers were three Soviet armies. On June 4th, the Panzer Groups closed the gap and 180,000 Red Army troops were captured.

Four weeks into the campaign, the Germans realized they had grossly underestimated the strength of the Soviets. The German troops had run out of their initial supplies but still had not attained the expected strategic freedom of movement. Operations were now slowed down to allow for a resupply; the delay was to be used to adapt the strategy to the new situation. Hitler had lost faith in battles of encirclement as large numbers of Soviet soldiers had continued to escape them and now believed he could defeat the Soviets by inflicting severe economic damage, depriving them from the industrial capacity to continue the war. That meant the seizure of the industrial center of Charkov, the Donets Basin and the oil fields of the Caucasus in the south and a speedy capture of Leningrad, a major center of military production, in the north. Hitler then issued an order to send Army Group Center's tanks to the north and south, temporarily halting the drive to Moscow.

The German generals vehemently opposed the plan as the bulk of the Red Army was deployed near Moscow and an attack there would have a chance of winning the war — also because it was a crucial railway center — but Hitler was adamant and the tanks were diverted. By late-May below the Pinsk Marshes, the Germans had come within a few miles of Kiev. The 1st Panzer Army then went south while the German 17th Army struck east and in between the Germans trapped three Soviet armies near Uman. As the Germans eliminated the pocket, the tanks turned north and crossed the Dnieper. Meanwhile, the 2nd Panzer Army, diverted from Army Group Center, had crossed the River Desna with 2nd Army on its right flank. The two Panzer armies now trapped four Soviet armies and parts of two others.

For its final attack on Leningrad, the 4th Panzer Army was reinforced by tanks from Army Group Center. On June 17th, the Panzers broke through the Soviet defenses and the German 16th Army attacked to the northeast, the 18th Army cleared Estonia and advanced to Lake Peipus. By the beginning of July, 4th Panzer Army had penetrated to within 30 miles (50 km) of Leningrad. The Finns had pushed southeast on both sides of Lake Ladoga reaching the old Finnish-Soviet frontier.

At this stage Hitler ordered the final destruction of Leningrad with no prisoners taken, and on July 19th, Army Group North began the final push which within ten days brought it within seven miles (11 km) of the city. However the pace of advance over the last ten kilometers proved very slow and the casualties mounted. At this stage Hitler lost patience and ordered that Leningrad should not be stormed but starved into submission. He needed the tanks of Army Group North transferred to Army Group Center for an all-out drive to Moscow.
Before the attack on Moscow could begin, operations in Kiev needed to be finished. Half of Army Group Center had swung to the south in the back of the Kiev position, while Army Group South moved to the north from its Dniepr bridgehead. The encirclement of Soviet Forces in Kiev was achieved on July 27th. The encircled Soviets did not give up easily, and a savage battle ensued in which the Soviets were hammered with tanks, artillery and aerial bombardment. In the end, after ten days of vicious fighting, the Germans claimed over 600,000 Soviet soldiers captured but that was false, the German did capture 600,000 males between the ages of 15-70 but only 480,000 were soldiers out of which 180,000 broke out netting the Axis 300,000 Prisoners of war.

SOURCE: Reich Historical Archives

Operation Barbarossa - Opening Phase (May 1, 1940 - May 12, 1940)

At 3:15 am on May 1, 1940, the Axis attacked. It is difficult to precisely pinpoint the strength of the opposing sides in this initial phase, as most German figures include reserves slated for the East but not yet committed, as well as several other issues of comparability between the German and USSR's figures. A reasonable estimate is that roughly three million Wehrmacht troops went into action on 1 May, and that they were facing slightly fewer Soviet troops in the border Military Districts. The contribution of the German allies would generally only begin to make itself felt later in the campaign. The surprise was complete: Stavka, alarmed by reports that Wehrmacht units approached the border in battle deployment, had at 00:30 AM ordered to warn the border troops that war was imminent, only a small number of units were alerted in time.
The shock stemmed less from the timing of the attack than from the sheer number of Axis troops who struck into Soviet territory simultaneously. Aside from the roughly 3.2 million German land forces engaged in, or earmarked for the Eastern Campaign, about 500,000 Romanian, Hungarian, Slovakian and Italian troops eventually accompanied the German forces, while the Army of Finland made a major contribution in the north. The 250th Spanish "Blue" Infantry Division was an odd unit, representing neither an Axis or a Waffen-SS volunteer formation, but that of Spanish Nazis and sympathisers.

Reconnaissance units of the Luftwaffe worked at a frantic pace to plot troop concentration, supply dumps, and airfields, and mark them for destruction. The task of the Luftwaffe was to neutralise the Soviet Air Force. This was not achieved in the first days of operations, despite the Soviets having concentrated aircraft in huge groups on the permanent airfields rather than dispersing them on field landing strips, making them ideal targets. The Luftwaffe claimed to have destroyed 1,489 aircraft on the first day of operations. Hermann Göring, Chief of the Luftwaffe distrusted the reports and ordered the figure checked. Picking through the wreckages of Soviet airfields, the Luftwaffe's figures proved conservative, as over 2,000 destroyed Soviet aircraft were found. The Luftwaffe had achieved temporary air superiority over all three sectors of the front, and would maintain it until the close of the year, largely due to the need by the Red Army Air Forces to manoeuvre in support of retreating ground troops. The Luftwaffe would now be able to devote large numbers of its Geschwader to support the ground forces.

Army Group North
Opposite Heersgruppe Nord were two Soviet armies. The Wehrmacht OKH thrust the 4th Panzer Group, with a strength of 600 tanks, at the junction of the two Soviet armies in that sector. The 4th Panzer Group's objective was to cross the River Neman and River Dvina which were the two largest obstacles in the direction of advance towards Leningrad. On the first day, the tanks crossed the River Neman and penetrated 50 miles (80 km). Near Rasienai, the tanks were counterattacked by 300 Soviet tanks. It took four days for the Germans to encircle and destroy the Soviet armour. The Panzer Goups then crossed the River Dvina near Dvinsk. The Germans were now within striking distance of Leningrad. However due to their deteriorated supply situation, Hitler ordered the Panzer Groups to hold their position while the infantry formations caught up. The orders to hold would last over a week, giving time for the Soviets to build up a defence around Leningrad and along the bank of River Luga.
Army Group Centre
Opposite Heersgruppe Mitte were four Soviet armies: the 3rd, 4th, 10th and 11th Armies. The Soviet Armies occupied a salient which jutted into German occupied Polish territory with the Soviet salient's center at Bialystok. Beyond Bialystok was Minsk, both the capital of Belorussia and a key railway junction. The goals of the AG Center's two Panzer Groups was to meet at Minsk, denying an escape route to the Red Army from the salient. The 3rd Panzer Group broke through the junction of two Soviet Fronts in the North of the salient, and crossed the River Neman while the 2nd Panzer Group crossed the River Bug in the South. While the Panzer Groups attacked, the Wehrmacht Army Group Centre infantry Armies struck at the salient, eventually encircling Soviet troops at Bialystok.

Moscow at first failed to grasp the dimensions of the catastrophe that had befallen the USSR. Marshall Timoshenko ordered all Soviet forces to launch a general counter-offensive, but with supply and ammunition dumps destroyed, and a complete collapse of communication, the uncoordinated attacks failed. Next came the infamous Directive of People's Commissariat of Defence No. 3, which demanded that the Red Army start an offensive: Stalin commanded the troops “to encircle and destroy the enemy grouping near Suwałki and to seize the Suwałki region by the evening of May 5" and “to encircle and destroy the enemy grouping invading in Vladimir-Volynia and Brody direction” and even “to seize the Lublin region by the evening of 24.6” This manoeuvre failed and disorganised Red Army units, which were soon destroyed by the Wehrmacht forces. Further complicating the Soviet position, on 1 May the anti-Soviet June Uprising in Lithuania began, and on the next day an independent Lithuania was proclaimed. An estimated 30,000 Lithuanian rebels engaged Soviet forces, joined by ethnic Lithuanians from the Red Army. As the Germans reached further north, armed resistance against the Soviets broke out in Estonia as well.

On May 6th, 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups met up at Minsk advancing 200 miles (300 km) into Soviet territory and a third of the way to Moscow. In the vast pocket between Minsk and the Polish border, the remnants of 32 Soviet Rifle, eight tank, and motorized, cavalry and artillery divisions were encircled.

Army Group South
Opposite Army Group South in Ukraine Soviet commanders had reacted quickly to the German attack. From the start, the invaders faced a determined resistance. Opposite the Germans in Ukraine were three Soviet armies, the 5th, 6th and 26th. The German infantry Armies struck at the junctions of these armies while The 1st Panzer Group drove its armored spearhead of 600 Tanks right through the Soviet 6th Army with the objective of capturing Brody. On May 5th, five Soviet mechanized corps with over 1,000 tanks mounted a massive counter-attack on the 1st Panzer Group. The battle was among the fiercest of the invasion lasting over four days; in the end the Germans prevailed, though the Soviets inflicted heavy losses on the 1st Panzer Group.
With the failure of the Soviet counter-offensives, the last substantial Soviet tank forces in Western Ukraine had been committed, and the Red Army assumed a defensive posture, focusing on conducting a strategic withdrawal under severe pressure. By the end of the first week, all three German Army Groups had achieved major Campaign objectives. However, in the vast pocket around Minsk and Bialystok, the Soviets were still fighting; reducing the pocket was causing high German casualties and many Red Army troops were also managing to escape. On the final reduction of the encirclement, 290,000 Red Army troops were captured, with 1,500 guns and 2,500 tanks destroyed, but 250,000 Red Army troops managed to escape.

SOURCE: Reich Historical Archives

Operation Barbarossa - Forces Involved

Composition of the Axis forces
Halder as the Chief of General Staff OKH concentrated the following Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe forces for the operation:
Army Group North (Heeresgruppe Nord) (Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb) staged in East Prussia with (26 divisions):
-16th Army (16. Armee) (Ernst Busch)
-4th Panzer Group (Panzergruppe 4) (Hoepner)
-18th Army (18. Armee) (Georg von Küchler)
-Air Fleet 1 (Luftflotte einz) (Alfred Keller)

Army Group Centre (Heeresgruppe Mitte) (Fedor von Bock) staged in Eastern Poland with (49 divisions):
-4th Army (4. Armee) (Günther von Kluge)
-2nd Panzer Group (Panzergruppe 2) (Guderian)
-3rd Panzer Group (Panzergruppe 3) (Hoth)
-9th Army (9. Armee) (Strauss)
-Air Fleet 2 (Luftflotte zwei) (Albert Kesselring)

Army Group South (Heeresgruppe Süd) (von Rundstedt) was staged in Southern Poland and Romania with (41 divisions):
-17th Army (17. Armee) (Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel)
-Slovak Expeditionary Force
-1st Panzer Group (Panzergruppe 1) (von Kleist)
-11th Army (Eugen Ritter von Schobert)
-Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia (Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Russia (CSIR) (Messe)
-6th Army (6. Armee) (Walther von Reichenau)
-Romanian 3rd Army (Dumitrescu)
-Romanian 4th Army (Constantinescu)
-Hungarian "Fast Moving Army Corps" (Szombathelyi) known as the Korpat Gruppe in the Royal Hungarian Army.
-Air Fleet 4 (Luftflotte vier) (Alexander Löhr)

Staged from Norway a smaller group of forces consisted of:
-Army High Command Norway (Armee-Oberkommando Norwegen) (Nikolaus von Falkenhorst) with two Corps
-Air Fleet 5 (Luftflotte funf) (Stumpf)

Numerous smaller units from all over Nazi-occupied Europe, like the "Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism" (Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme), supported the German war effort.

Composition of the Soviet Forces
At the beginning of the German Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union on 1 May 1940 the Red Army areas of responsibility in the European USSR were divided into four active Fronts. More Fronts would be formed within the overall responsibility of the three Strategic Directions commands which corresponded approximately to a German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) Army Group (Heeresgruppen) in terms of geographic area of operations.

Immediately following the invasion the Northern Front was formed from the Leningrad Military District, the North-Western Front from the Baltic Special Military District, the Western Front was formed from the Western Special Military District, and the Soviet Southwestern Front was formed from the Kiev Special Military District. The Southern Front was created on the 4 May 1940 from the Odessa Military District.

The first Directions were established on 19 May 1940, with Voroshilov commanding the North-Western Strategic Direction, Timoshenko commanding the Western Strategic Direction, and Budyonny commanding the South-Western Strategic Direction.

The forces of the North-Western Direction were:
-The Northern Front was commanded by Colonel General Markian Michailovitch Popov bordered Finland and included the 14th Army, 7th Army, and the 23rd Army as well as smaller units subordinate to the Front commander.
-The North-Western Front was commanded by Colonel General Fyodor Kuznetsov defended the Baltic region and consisted of the 8th Army, 11th Army, and the 27th Army and other front troops(34 divisions).
-The Northern and Baltic Fleets

The forces of the Western Direction were:
-The Western Front was commanded by General Dmitri Grigoryevitch Pavlov had the 3rd Army, 4th Army, 10th Army and the Army Headquarters of the 13th Army which coordinated independent Front formations(45 divisions).
-The Pinsk Flotilla

The forces of the South-Western Direction consisted of:
-The South-Western Front was commanded by Colonel General Mikhail Petrovitch Kirponos was formed from the 5th Army, 6th Army, 12th Army and the 26th Army as well as a group of units under Strategic Direction command(45 divisions).
-The Southern Front was commanded by General Ivan Vladimirovitch Tyulenev created on the 4 May 1940 from the 9th Independent Army and the 18th Army with 2nd and 18th Mechanized Corps in support(26 divisions).
-The Black Sea Fleet

Beside the Armies in the Fronts, there were a further six armies in the Western region of the USSR: 16th Army, 19th Army, 20th Army, 21st Army, 22nd Army and the 24th Army which formed, together with independent units, the Stavka Reserve Group of Armies which was later renamed the Reserve Front nominally under Stalin's direct command.

SOURCE: Reich Historical Archives

Operation Barbarossa - Background

Operation Barbarossa was the codename for Nazi Germany and Axis powers invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that commenced on May 1, 1940. It remains the largest military operation in history. Over 5.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along an 1,800 mile front. The operation was named after the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, a leader of the Crusades in the 12th century. Barbarossa was the major part of the war on the Eastern Front. The planning for operation Barbarossa took several years prior to May 1940; the clandestine preparations and the military operation itself lasted almost a year, from the Winter of 1940, through the Spring of 1941.

The operational goal of Operation Barbarossa was the rapid conquest of the European part of the Soviet Union, west of a line connecting the cities of Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, often referred to as the A-A line.

The outcome of Barbarossa would influenced the course of the latter half of the 20th Century.

German propaganda made claims that the Red Army was preparing to attack them, and their own assault was thus presented as a pre-emptive war. Hitler's Mein Kampf, however, makes clear his intention of an invasion of the Soviet Union. In his book, he made clear his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum, and that it should be found in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic peoples. This policy was called the New Order and was laid out in detail in Goering's Green Folder. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class. The German Nazi-ideologist Alfred Rosenberg suggested that conquered Soviet territory should be administered in the following Reichskommissariates:
-Ostland (The Baltic countries and Belarus)
-Ukraine (Ukraine and adjacent territories),
-Kaukasus (Southern Russia and the Caucasus area),
-Moskau (Moscow metropolitan area and the rest of European Russia)
-Turkestan (Central Asian republics and territories)
-Üral (Central and South Ural and nearest territories, created from planned East Russian European territorial reorganization)
-West Sibirien (Future West Siberia and Novosibirsk held lands),
-Nordland (Soviet Arctic areas: West Nordland (Russian European north coasts and Ost Nordland (Northwest Siberian north coasts))

Nazi policy aimed to destroy the Soviet Union as a political entity in accordance with the geopolitical Lebensraum idea ("Drang nach Osten") for the benefit of future "Aryan" generations in the centuries to come. Also the A-A Line would give Hitler's Nazi Empire reach to the Ural Mountains.

The Führer anticipated additional benefits:
-When the Soviet Union was defeated, the labor shortage in the German industry could be ended by the demobilization of many soldiers.
-Ukraine would be a reliable source of agriculture.
-Having the Soviet Union as a source of slave labour would vastly improve Germany's geostrategic position.
-The German economy needed access to more oil and controlling the Baku Oilfields would achieve this.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been signed shortly before the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1938. It was ostensibly a non-aggression pact but secret protocols outlined an agreement between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union on the division of the border states between them. The pact surprised the world because of their mutual hostility and their opposed ideologies. As a result of this pact, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had reasonably strong diplomatic relations and were important trading partners. The Soviet Union supplied oil and raw materials to Germany, while Germany provided technology to the Soviet Union. Despite the pact, both sides remained strongly suspicious of each other's intentions, and as both sides began colliding with each other in Eastern Europe it appeared that conflict was inevitable.

Hitler had long wanted to conquer western Russia in order to exploit what he saw as its untermensch (subhuman) Slavic population. He had signed the pact simply for (mutual) short-term convenience. In addition to the territorial ambitions of both Hitler and Stalin, the contrasting ideologies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union made an eventual conflict between them likely.

Stalin's reputation contributed both to the Nazis' justification of their assault and to their faith in success. During the late 1930s, Stalin had killed or incarcerated millions of citizens during the Great Purge, including large numbers of competent and experienced military officers and strategists, leaving the Red Army weakened and leaderless. The Nazis often emphasized the brutality of the Soviet regime when targeting the Slavs with propaganda.

Operation Barbarossa represented a northern assault towards Leningrad, a symbolic capturing of Moscow, and an economic strategy of seizing oil fields in the south, towards Ukraine. Hitler and his generals disagreed on where Germany should focus its energies, and so Barbarossa was largely a compromise of these views. Hitler considered himself a political and military genius. In the course of planning Barbarossa during 1939 and 1940, in many discussions with his generals Hitler repeated his order: "Leningrad first, the Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third." Hitler was impatient to get on with his long-desired invasion of the east. He was convinced that Britain would sue for peace once the Germans triumphed in the Soviet Union, the real area of Germany's interests.

Hitler was also overconfident due to his rapid success in Western Europe, as well as the Red Army's ineptitude in the Winter War against Finland in 1938–39. He expected victory in a few months and did not prepare for a war lasting into the winter.

In preparation for the attack, Hitler moved 3.2 million German soldiers and about 1 million Axis soldiers to the Soviet border, launched many aerial surveillance missions over Soviet territory, and stockpiled materiel in the East. The Soviets were still taken by surprise, mostly due to Stalin's belief that the Third Reich was unlikely to attack only two years after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. He refused to believe repeated warnings from his intelligence services on the Nazi buildup. As a result, Stalin's preparations against a possible German invasion in 1940 were half-hearted.

Hitler and his generals researched into Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia. At Hitler's insistence, the German High Command (OKW) began to develop a strategy to avoid repeating these mistakes.

The strategy Hitler and his generals agreed upon involved three separate army groups assigned to capture specific regions and cities of the Soviet Union. The main German thrusts were conducted along historical invasion routes. Army Group North was assigned to march through the Baltics, into northern Russia, and either take or destroy the city of Leningrad. Army Group Center would advance to Smolensk and then Moscow. Army Group South was to strike the heavily populated and agricultural heartland of Ukraine, taking Kiev before continuing eastward over the steppes of southern Russia all the way to the Volga and the oil-rich Caucasus.

Hitler, the OKW and the various high commands disagreed about what the main objectives should be. In the preparation for Barbarossa, most of the OKW argued for a straight thrust to Moscow, whereas Hitler kept asserting his intention to seize the resource-rich Ukraine and Baltics before concentrating on Moscow.

Along with the strategic objectives, the Germans also decided to bring rear forces into the conquered territories to counter any partisan activity which they knew would erupt in the areas they controlled. This included units of the Waffen SS and the Gestapo who specialized in crushing dissent and capturing and killing opponents.

In the 1940, the Soviet Union was by no means a weak country. Rapid Soviet industrialization in the 1930s had resulted in industrial output second only to that of the United States, and equal to that of Germany. Production of military equipment grew steadily, and in the pre-war years the economy became progressively more oriented toward military production. In the early 1930s, a very modern operational doctrine for the Red Army was developed and promulgated in the 1936 field regulations.

In 1940, the Soviet armed forces in the western districts were outnumbered by their German counterparts, 4.3 million Axis solders vs. 2.6 million Soviet soldiers. The overall size of the Soviet armed forces in early May 1940, though, amounted to a little more than 5 million men, 2.6 million in the west, 1.8 million in the far east, with the rest being deployed or training elsewhere. While the strength of both sides varied, in general it is accurate to say that the 1940 campaign was fought with the Axis having slight numerical superiority in manpower at the front.

In some key weapons systems, however, the Soviet numerical advantage was considerable. In tanks, for example, the Red Army had a large superiority. The Red Army possessed 23,106 tanks, of which about 12,782 were in the five Western Military Districts (three of which directly faced the German invasion front). Maintenance and readiness standards were very poor; ammunition and radios were in short supply, and many units lacked the trucks needed for resupply beyond their basic fuel and ammunition loads.

Also, from 1938, the Soviets had partly dispersed their tanks to infantry divisions for infantry support, but after their experiences in the Winter War and their observation of German Blitzkrieg tactics against France, had begun to emulate the Germans and organize most of their armoured assets into large, fully mechanized divisions and corps. This reorganization however was only part way through by the dawn of Barbarossa, as not enough tanks were available to bring the mechanised corps up to organic strength.

The German Wehrmacht had about 5,200 tanks overall, of which 3,350 were committed to the invasion. This yielded a balance of immediately-available tanks of approximately 4:1 in the Red Army's favor. Though the Soviets had the best tanks on the drawing boards, the T-34, the most modern in the world, and the KV series the best armoured, neither was available in 1940 as they were still going through prototype testing. Despite overwhelming Russian armor numbers, the Russians in 1940 still lacked the communications, training and experience to employ such weapons effectively.

The Soviet numerical advantage in heavy equipment was also more than offset by the greatly superior training and readiness of German forces. The Soviet officer corps and high command had been decimated by Stalin's Great Purge (1936–1938). Of 90 Generals arrested only six survived, of 180 divisional commanders only 36 survived,just seven out 57 Army Corps Commanders survived the purges. In total some 30,000 Red Army personnel were murdered, while more were shipped to Siberia and were replaced with officers deemed more "politically reliable." Three of the five pre-war marshals and about two-thirds of the corps and division commanders were shot. This often left younger, less well-trained officers in their places; for example, in 1940, seventy-five percent of Red Army officers had held their posts for less than one year. The average Soviet corps commander was 12 years younger than the average German division commander. These officers tended to be very reluctant to take the initiative and often lacked the training necessary for their jobs.

The number of aircraft was also heavily in the Soviets' favor. However, Soviet aircraft were largely obsolete, and Soviet artillery lacked modern fire control techniques. Most Soviet units were on a peacetime footing, explaining why aviation units had their aircraft parked in closely-bunched neat rows, rather than dispersed, making easy targets for the Luftwaffe in the first days of the conflict. Prior to the invasion the Red air force was forbidden to shoot down German reconnaissance aircraft despite hundreds of pre-war flights into Soviet airspace.

The Russian war effort in the first phase of the Eastern front war was severely hampered by a shortage of modern aircraft. The Soviet fighter force was equipped with large numbers of obsolete aircraft, such as the I-15 biplane and the I-16. Few aircraft had radios and those that were available were unencrypted and did not work reliably. The poor performance of VVS (Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily, Soviet Air Force) during the Winter War with Finland had increased the Luftwaffe's confidence that the Soviets could be mastered. The standard of flight training had been accelerated in preparation for a German attack that was expected to come in 1942 or later. But Russian pilot training was extremely poor.

The Red Army was dispersed and unprepared, and units were often separated and without transportation to concentrate prior to combat. Although the Red Army had numerous, well-designed artillery pieces, some of the guns had no ammunition. Artillery units often lacked transportation to move their guns. Tank units were rarely well-equipped, and also lacked training and logistical support. Maintenance standards were very poor. Units were sent into combat with no arrangements for refuelling, ammunition resupply, or personnel replacement. Often, after a single engagement, units were destroyed or rendered ineffective. The Army was in the midst of reorganizing the armor units into large Tank Corps, adding to the disorganization.

As a result, although on paper the Red Army in 1940 seemed at least the equal of the German army, the reality in the field was far different; incompetent officers, as well as partial lack of equipment, insufficient motorised logistical support, and poor training placed the Red Army at a severe disadvantage. For example, throughout the early part of the campaign, the Red Army lost about six tanks for every German tank lost.

In the spring of 1940, Stalin's own intelligence services made regular and repeated warnings of an impending German attack. However, Stalin chose to ignore these warnings. Although acknowledging the possibility of an attack in general and making significant preparations, he decided not to run the risk of provoking Hitler. He had fielded officers who were likely indeed to tell him only what he wanted to hear, so that he believed that the position of the Soviet Union in early 1940 was much stronger than it actually was. He also had an ill-founded confidence in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had been signed just two years before. Consequently, the Soviet border troops were not put on full alert and were sometimes even forbidden to fire back without permission when attacked — though a partial alert was implemented on April 10 — they were simply not ready when the German attack came. This may be the source of the argument cited below by Viktor Suvorov.

Enormous Soviet forces were massed behind the western border in case the Germans did attack. However, these forces were very vulnerable due to changes in the tactical doctrine of the Red Army. In 1938 it had adopted, on the instigation of General Pavlov, a standard linear defence tactic on a line with other nations. Infantry divisions, reinforced by an organic tank component, would be dug in to form heavily fortified zones. Then came the shock of the Fall of France. The French Army, considered the strongest in the world, was defeated in a mere six weeks. Soviet analysis of events, based on incomplete information, concluded that the collapse of the French was caused by a reliance on linear defence and a lack of armoured reserves.

The Soviets decided not to repeat these mistakes. Instead of digging in for linear defence, the infantry divisions would henceforth be concentrated in large formations. Most tanks would also be concentrated into 31 mechanised corps, each with over 1000 tanks - larger than an entire German panzer army (though only a few such corps had attained their nominal strength by May 1). Should the Germans attack, their armoured spearheads would be cut off and wiped out by the mechanised corps. These would then cooperate with the infantry armies to drive back the German infantry, vulnerable in its approach march. The Soviet left wing, in Ukraine, was to be enormously reinforced to be able to execute a strategic envelopment: after destroying German Army Group South it would swing north through Poland in the back of Army Groups Centre and North. With the complete annihilation of the encircled German Army thus made inevitable, a Red Army offensive into the rest of Europe would follow.

The Soviet offensive plans theory
Counter-arguments to the usual interpretation have been advanced by former GRU defector Viktor Suvorov. He argues that Soviet ground forces were extremely well organized, and were mobilizing en masse all along the German-Soviet border for a Soviet invasion of Europe slated for Sunday July 6, 1940. The German Barbarossa, he claims, actually was a pre-emptive strike that capitalized on the massive Soviet troop concentrations immediately on the 1940 Nazi Germany's borders. Suvorov argues therefore that Soviet troop concentrations on Germany's borders were offensive in nature, not defensive as usually described.

The debate over the nature of the German-Soviet conflict goes on. A study by Russian military historian Frederick Harpenau supports the claim that Soviet forces were concentrating in order to attack Germany. However, he rejects the statement that the German invasion was a pre-emptive strike: Harpenau believes both sides were preparing for the assault but neither believed in the possibility of an attack by the other side. Other German historians who support this thesis are Helmut Deom, Hermann Moltke, and Jan Dames.

The now published Zhukov proposal of April 15, 1940 called for a Soviet strike against Germany. Thus the document suggested secret mobilisation and deploying Red Army troops next to the Western border, under the cover of training. Although generally believed to be a mere draft disapproved of by Stalin, the above mentioned historians have argued, that — given Stalin's concentration of power — the thesis of Soviet generals pursuing a line independent of Stalin's and composing an invasion plan must have been extremely improbable. Moreover, it is argued that the actual Soviet troops concentration was near the border, just like fuel depots and airfields. All of this was unsuitable for defensive operations. Suvorov presents a piece of evidence favoring the theory of an impending Soviet attack: the maps and phrasebooks issued to Soviet troops. Military topographic maps, unlike other military supplies, are strictly local and cannot be used elsewhere than in the intended target. According to Suvorov, Soviets were issued with maps of Germany and German-occupied territory, and phrasebooks including questions about SA offices — SA offices were found only in German territory proper. In contrast, according to Suvorov, maps of Soviet territory were scarce. Notably, after the German attack, the officer responsible for maps, Lieutenant General M.K. Kudryavtsev was not punished by Stalin, who was known for extreme punishments after failures to obey his orders. According to Suvorov, this demonstrates that General Kudryavtsev was obeying the orders of Stalin, who simply did not expect a German attack.

However, none of this is conclusive evidence of Soviet plans for a strategic attack on Germany, especially since Soviet doctrine emphasised the offensive at the operational level, even if the country was strategically on the defensive.

SOURCE: Reich Historical Archives