Commander of the 3rd Panzer Division and General Heinz Guderian, commander of the 2nd Panzer Corps, wanted to bring together the armored spearheads in the Smolensk region at a distance of 600 kilometers from the starting line. In the north, the 4th Panzer Group advanced from East Prussia. The advance of the Armies Group Center with the panzer groups in its wings was rapid. On June 22, the Armies Group Center penetrated into White Russia, an area covered with dense forests and a sparse population with few roads. This concentration of power was meant to enable tempo and continuity of the ground offensive to Moscow (via Minsk, Smolensk and Vyazma). Translating it into orders that concentrated most of the German armored and mechanized forces in the 2 nd and 3 rd Panzer Groups Which later became Panzer Armies within the framework of Armies Group Center of Fieldmarshal Fodor von Bock. 21(of the High Command) of Operation Barbarossa of 18th December 1940. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, they operated according to the tactics dictated by Order No. The course of the summer battles, June-August 1941 Thus, the main part of the Red Army would cease to exist almost from the beginning. Operationally - the Germans expected to break through the defense line on the western border with three parallel massive lightning attacks, two north of the Pripet marshes and one south of them, which would encircle and liquidate the broken Russian forces within a few weeks. After the Russo-Finnish war, this seemed a reasonable risk. The Germans put their trust in this program on the advantage of training, readiness, on military prowess, staff work, better soldiers, and decisive and quick exploitation of the element of surprise. The German plan was based on the information that they had at that time, according to which the general balance of power indicated that the Germans would attack with 150 divisions about 200 Russians about 3,200 tanks compared to about 10,000 and there would be an unknown advantage (to the Germans) in aircraft. The Russians were superior both in quantities and in the quality of weapons. This deployment of the Russians, who had concentrated the Red Army within reach of one swift destructive strike, apparently abandoned the great Russian advantage of maneuverability in the field. In the spring of 1941, German intelligence reported that the Red Army was concentrated in the west, in Poland, where the armies had met after its conquest. It is clear, therefore, that the Germans had been stopped by the Russians about halfway, but in fact it was not so, and they were stopped at the last moment - in the last dugout. Its length almost 2,000 kilometers and about nine hundred kilometers from the starting line. The line reached by the Germans in December 1941 stretched from Leningrad in the Finnish Gulf, via Moscow to the Crimea and the Black Sea, only a short distance from Rostov on the Don River. The target line ran approximately 3,200 km from Archangel on the White Sea coast south of Kazan and along the Volga to the Caspian Sea, the farthest objective point being about 2,000 km from the jumping –off point. The jumping-off point was in Poland and the line ran was approximately 800 kilometers from north to south, from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian mountains (in addition there was also an offensive operation from Romania aimed at protecting the oil fields of Ploiesti). From those remote areas no Russian bomber could threaten) Germany, a vital factor in considerations. It would then be possible to cut-off or capture, according to needs, the "primitive" territories east of the Volga, the frozen Siberian steppes and the empty forests beyond the Ural Mountains. It was well suited to the geographical, economic and military situation, and underwent a process of systematic staff work and battle procedure including war games.īarbarossa's strategic concept was to destroy the Soviet state from the Polish border to the Volga in a massive summer strike and to reduce its regions to the status of unarmed colonies where German garrisons would be stationed and managed by Germany. The program, despite its complexity, was basically simple, and therein was its strength and its advantage. In the background of the plan was a daring concept regarding everything connected with time and space, the quantity and quality of soldiers and equipment, and the dimensions of the political dangers. The German planning of Operation Barbarossa was carried out primarily by a team of officers in the General Staff under the command of General Erich Marcks (head of the Planning Division) in the autumn and winter of 1940. Operation Barbarossa - the German Invasion of the Soviet Union
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