The errors of the Barbarossa operation

[Aurelian]

The most recent gauge was the Winter War with Finland. A more accurate gauge might of been Khalhkin Gol, but the invasion of Poland pushed it off the radar.

[warspite1]

I would say it was the blockade that killed them. And without the unrestricted u-boat warfare, does the US even enter? They still had the spring offensives in 1918. Those turned out to be pretty good chances. Had they taken them earlier, it would have been without the benefit of Stosstruppen.

warspite1

Good point. And......why did the blockade kill them? Yep, because the blockade took effect over the many years that Germany was fighting, and had Germany not been fighting on two fronts, there is a good chance she would have defeated the Western Allies. So yes, the two front war killed Germany. It’s why Hitler needed the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939 - and then promptly forgot about why he needed it when he got over excited and started to believe his own press.....

[warspite1]

Again, what planner would go that far back?

warspite1

As I said, I’ve not at ANY point suggested the Germans go back to 1812 to plan for Barbarossa. Planning for Barbarossa started in 1940 and continued into 1941. The planning for it should have involved all the usual elements needed for a successful operation. Any plan should have contingencies for what happens if......

Germany staked all on a swift crushing of the USSR before the end of 1941. Where was the Plan B if that didn’t happen? And Plan B needed to account for the fact that the Comonwealth was still in the game and was being increasingly aided by “neutral” USA.

History would have shown Hitler what fighting on two fronts does - he had plenty of worrying examples to refer to. As said, this is not hindsight, many of his top generals and Nazi cronies knew this and wanted the focus to remain on defeating the UK..... but Hitler was a military genius right?

[Aurelian]

Or to put it more bluntly. Similarities exist, but ... we have to be careful which ones to trust.

The mongols did a fine job of taking it.

Not really. It was Kievan Rus' they conquered. Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia all claim it as their cultural ancestor.

The end of that saw the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which eventually overthrew the Golden Horde.

[warspite1]

The most recent gauge was the Winter War with Finland. A more accurate gauge might of been Khalhkin Gol, but the invasion of Poland pushed it off the radar.

warspite1

Indeed. The Winter War told Hitler what he wanted to hear, while Khalkhin Gol didn’t. That was a feature of German* planning. By coincidence the Japanese, like Hitler, thought fighting was all about ‘will’ - well the disaster at Khalkin Gol showed how limited this notion was......

Edit: that is Hitler’s “planning”.

[TulliusDetritus]

One of the books I read recently is Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941. I inmediately thought about you, Warspite. Strange because historians tend to stay away from speculations, but the book is full of what-ifs, and it's clear you *love* them. You will be in paradise I think. Or maybe you already read it.

[ernieschwitz]

Ah, but are we talking the landmass that is what Russia/USSR was in general at the time, or are we talking the specific country? In which case the USSR and Russia technically are different countries, and thus you cannot compare Napoleon to Hitler.

Or to put it more bluntly. Similarities exist, but ... we have to be careful which ones to trust.

The mongols did a fine job of taking it.

Not really. It was Kievan Rus' they conquered. Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia all claim it as their cultural ancestor.

The end of that saw the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which eventually overthrew the Golden Horde.

[warspite1]

One of the books I read recently is Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941. I inmediately thought about you, Warspite. Strange because historians tend to stay away from speculations, but the book is full of what-ifs, and it's clear you *love* them. You will be in paradise I think. Or maybe you already read it.

warspite1

Thank-you. I’ve not read anything by Kershaw but I understand he wrote a well received work about Hitler. This looks very interesting and the recommendations for this book come from some serious historians - needless to say I’ve ordered this straight away

[warspite1]

One thing I have seen/heard mentioned about Germany's invasion of Soviet Union is securing the oil in Caucasus (allegedly Hitler had deemed Moscow unimportant in comparison). Not only for continuation of the war, but also for the industry in general. Something about trade restrictions, so Germany had to become self-sufficient. Therefore much of the invasions were motivated by need/desire to secure natural resources. Had Germany committed enough (or even overkill) efforts to secure the oil in Caucasus and nickel mines in Petsamo in order to more heavily mechanize the forces while also successfully suing peace with Britain would make one heck of a what-if scenario.

warspite1

I think the fundamental problem was the Germans didn’t have enough troops, tanks, artillery pieces, trucks and planes. In order to beef up Army Group South for an all out drive on the Caucasus, they would have had to seriously weaken the other Army Groups to the point that they would be little more than defensive - or certainly AGN would be, and AGC weakened but perhaps with one Panzergruppe. I say this because if you look at a map of the Southern theatre, can you imagine how many troops would be needed not just for the spearhead, but also guarding the flanks along an ever increasing front. Think Operation Uranus. Logistically I suspect it was all too much anyway as the need to beat the Soviets in one campaign would probably not go away.

[gamer78]

Baku to be more precise. Not whole region. History repeat itself but oil is a turning point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baku

Although I'm not sure in this wiki info about White Guard Cossacks and British working together.

[DeepBlack]

The author David Stahel has written several books
that cover the start of Barbarossa up to the
winter retreat from the outskirts of Moscow.

He is a talented writer and his analysis is
backed up by his own research from original
source material. If you have an interest in
the East Front and have not read his work, I
urge everyone to take him into consideration.

Because, his work is basically a multi-volume
look at answering "what went wrong".

[Aurelian]

The author David Stahel has written several books
that cover the start of Barbarossa up to the
winter retreat from the outskirts of Moscow.

He is a talented writer and his analysis is
backed up by his own research from original
source material. If you have an interest in
the East Front and have not read his work, I
urge everyone to take him into consideration.

Because, his work is basically a multi-volume
look at answering "what went wrong".

I second that.

[Dabo]

The author David Stahel has written several books
that cover the start of Barbarossa up to the
winter retreat from the outskirts of Moscow.

He is a talented writer and his analysis is
backed up by his own research from original
source material. If you have an interest in
the East Front and have not read his work, I
urge everyone to take him into consideration.

Because, his work is basically a multi-volume
look at answering "what went wrong".

Absolutely, His thesis is that Barbarossa had been already doomed by the end of July having failed to achieve its objective which was the destruction of the Soviet army in 6 weeks, Germany simply didn’t have the logistical capacity to support such a task.
His work is based almost entirely on German primary sources, especially on the two army group center panzer groups. It can be considered complementary to Glantz’s works on Barbarossa (if I'm not mistaken most of his maps in the first book come directly from Glantz), and they pretty much reach the same conclusions.
I must say his prose is much better than Glantz who is often a bit too dry, moreover his works has a larger width, not being exclusively top down and it’s not only focused on the sheer operational and tactical aspects of the war in the east. It's frankly an impressive work, considering that his first book is pretty much his PhD dissertation.

[Kriegsspieler]

This has been an interesting discussion. When I read the first post, I immediately thought of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, so it's not surprising to read that it was indeed based on this most recent example.

To those who wonder if history is of any use at all, I would offer as a counter that a great deal of effort is devoted by the US military services to studying and analyzing prior operations in the hope of improving future operations. The same is true of all major military organizations.So someone somewhere thinks history has some value!

More seriously, I spent more than 30 years teaching history at a major research university in the US. I say this not to suggest that my judgment trumps everyone else's but merely to say that I spent most of my working life thinking about what history is for, why we teach it and so on.

From Antiquity forward, the reasons that people have offered for studying history have remained basically the same -- it deepens knowledge and cultivates wisdom. The "lessons" of the past are basically a guide for making judgments in complex situations. They're not a recipe for success, because such recipes don't exist.

So in the case of Barbarossa, ALL of the factors cited by people here potentially are relevant -- the disaster of Napoleon's campaign, the problems of a two-front war in World War I, and so on. The point, however, is what kind of narrative is one attempting to construct out of those factors? History doesn't ever write itself -- it consists of stories we fabricate in order to interpret our experience various ways and justify our choices.

For my money, Barbarossa was born out of the confluence of two major factors. One was the German obsession with the Slavic (or Judeo/Slavic/Bolshevik) menace, coupled with a perceived need for resources -- Ukranian wheat, Caucasus oil, etc. Kershaw's biography of Hitler, which is still the most authoritative scholarly treatment of him, makes clear how successfully Hitler communicated his anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic paranoia to a willing public. Perceived urgency is what overrode the lessons of prior wars that might have argued for more caution.

[ernieschwitz]

You raise some interesting points. I agree with most of them, on some level, however I know history, despite by some viewed as a subject that scholars agree somewhat on, is not taught the same. I can give an example, from my own life. In the USA where I lived for a while, and was in school, Vikings are thought of as barbaric raiders, who lived by pillaging and waging war, little else is told about them. In Denmark, they are thought of as sometimes warring, sometimes raiding, but for the most part as traders. Quite a difference.

I am sure some of the same is true for the reasons for Barbarossa too. In my view, which has been formed by multiple sources, and a bit of reflection, what you say is true, but it basically, in my mind, boils down to a sort of colonialism, just with Europeans being the target too. I am not discounting that Hitler thought of those Europeans as "untermenschen" and that is deeply troubling. This says something very troubling about colonialism too. Germany was not able to get any colonies at this time (Abyssinia being the last free country in Africa already taken by the Italy), so they had to think of some other way to do this, it seems logical to expand, somewhere.

Anyway the topic at hand was/is why Barbarossa failed, the top reasons.

[TulliusDetritus]

Ernie, a theory says commerce and trade were in fact started (sort of nasty pioneers eh) by pirates and other assorted bandits. On the first millenium B.C in the eastern Mediterranean world or on the XVI century (IIRC): the Japanese pirates.

So yes, those Vikings were no doubt such nasty "pioneers" too (in that economically backward part of the world).

The point is the line between trade, commerce and banditry was were thin

[timmyab]

With regards to the forth mistake I think that OKH were aware that German logistics were insufficient for the task. Off the top of my head I seem to remember that Paulus did a study before the invasion and discovered that they were only good for about 500 miles.

[warspite1]

Going back to Napoleon, the Russians traded space for time. The German generals knew that if the Soviets did the same the Wehrmacht would be in trouble - essentialy the Germans had to destroy the Soviets within (forgive me I don’t have the number to hand) miles of the start point or it would be game up - unless the Soviets gave in, and that is where Britain staying in the game was important.

warspite1

Ah yes - thank-you, it was 500 miles.