Christopher Frueh

History 363
12.16.2008
Research Paper
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“When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature
say, "Come!" I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death,
and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the
earth to kill by sword, famine and plague…” – Revelations 6:7-8

On June 22, 1941, the greatest campaign in the history of human conflict began as

the vanguard of the German Army crashed across the Soviet border, crushed the border

guard, and drove deeply into the open plains of Belarus and the Ukraine. The titanic

struggle that began there drew the attention of the world for four years and cost millions

of lives. In this paper, I will outline the various historians’ conclusions from their

research, expose the inevitable contradictions, and present a conclusion well supported by

their evidence.

The historians I will reference are Alan Clark in his book Barbarossa,

Magenheimer in Hitler’s War: Germany’s Key Strategic Decisions, and Stolfi’s Hitler’s

Panzers East. In particular, Clark argues the point that the Wehrmacht had the capability

to conquer the Soviets but, due to unforeseen difficulties and the underestimation of the

Soviet reserve system, were unable to capitalize on their ability. Magenheimer, echoed by

a few others, claims that the Germans severely overestimated their own capabilities and

marched headlong into inevitable defeat. As a counterpoint, Stolfi presents a revisionist

view of the conflict, attempting to avoid conclusions based on Soviet propaganda and

American denial. He claims that the OKW realistically estimated the Soviet strengths and

objectives, plotted achievable goals to quickly end the conflict and executed the plan to

near perfection in the first month of combat, the results of which were the absolute

collapse of any significant, coordinated Soviet counteroffensive.

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The first point of contention is the reason or rationality of the invasion. The

universally accepted view, one espoused by most amateur historians, is that the delusional

mind of Hitler decided to turn on the peace-loving Soviets after he was denied the

opportunity to invade Britain. Fortunately, the authors examined do not hold to that view

as it ignores the professionalism of the entire German general staff. The complete

ignorance that would be required from dozens of senior officers would have made the

Polish, Scandinavian and French campaigns impossible.

How could the Germans win anything from September 1939 to October 1941 with

Hitler’s nervous instability, British possession of Ultra, and the incapability of the

Italians to conduct their part of the war? The answer lies partly in the need to

reevaluate upward the quality of Germany’s trumps… The battle-winning

capabilities of the German army… must be seen as extraordinary because the

army had to overcome first-class opposing armies and the unique combination of

factors noted above. (Stolfi 28)

Clark, however, brings up a perfectly reasonable explanation for such an assault.

The British were strongly pressing both the Americans and the Russians for assistance

similar to the American intervention that saved the Triple Entente in the First World War.

OKW was almost certainly aware of the diplomatic entreaties and, according to Clark,

decided to strike at the Russians before any diplomatic destabilization occurred.

Stolfi adds an additional reason as he points to the Russian deployment patterns as

being completely lopsided for anything but an offensive. In particular, the lack of

established defensive strongpoints along the border and the lack of a mobile reserve lend
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strong credence to the idea that the Russians were planning an offensive of their own in

the near future.

All agree that the Soviet government deployed an immense army in the path of

the Germans in June 1941 and entrenched it in so peculiar a way that it could be

interpreted as being ready for defense or offense… Any interpretation in which

the Soviets were committed in advance exclusively or even just largely to defend

against a feared German attack is difficult to maintain. (Stolfi 69)

I disagree somewhat with Stolfi’s assessment of the multipurpose nature of the

deployment on the basis that the Red Army had no mobile or armored reserve and the

strong armor they did have was deployed in salients that rendered them extremely

vulnerable to deep offensive armored counter-thrusts. This deployment, compounded by

the occupations made during 1939-40 demonstrate a clear move by the Red Army

westward while the lack of defensive measures characterize the move as aggressive

towards their Teutonic neighbors.

Clark, after ceding this point, states that, although the Germans had made a

reasonable decision to invade, the limitations of time and manpower with which they had

to work rendered victory impossible. This is an extremely important point that will color

his interpretation of events to be expounded upon later. The main point of contention

between Stolfi and Clark is the inevitability of events and the individual actions to be

examined are merely the examples or counterexamples.

A few quick points need making before anything else. Primarily, Stolfi does not

address the popular contention that the British intervention in Greece and Yugoslavia
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distracted the Germans for several critical weeks and siphoned off up to 14 divisions

from what would become the Eastern Front. This point is rebutted by M. Stanton’s book

Blacklisted by History in which he shows the influence various Soviet espionage rings

had on the course of World War II. Of particular influence here is his passage about the

Soviet agents in Cairo. These men, secreted high in the levels of the British diplomatic

and military services, were attempting to sway the British government’s opinion on the

best resistance group in Yugoslavia to support. To accomplish this, they fabricated the

number of German troops that Marshal Tito, the communist leader, had pinned down.

Secondly, Stanton points out the specific reasons the Soviets had to believe that

the Japanese would not militarily support a German invasion. Two Soviet agents in the

upper echelons of the Japanese dictatorship directed the Japanese military seeking relief

from the American embargo to look towards the south. This allowed the movement of Far

East divisions from the Siberian front to the Moscow front, a movement that Clark claims

is the pivotal point and blunted the steel of the German panzers. Stolfi tended to ignore

this as his entire point is that the Germans would have been in Moscow by September,

two months before the Far East troops would even have arrived.

Lastly, in regards to the objectives of Barbarossa, Lt. Colonel Hooker, in his paper

“The World Will Hold Its Breath”, spotlights two weaknesses in the Soviet ‘defensive’

deployment if it were indeed defensive. The most obvious are rail systems and

communication lines that both had their nexus in and around Moscow.

In 1941 Moscow served as the communications hub of European Russia, with rail

lines and highways radiating outward in all directions to connect the capital with
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principal population centers. The only significant lateral communications were

those which ran through Moscow; without them, Stalin would lose the ability to

shift strategic reserves to meet the gravest threats. With Moscow lost, a defensive

campaign west of the Volga would be impossible at the strategic level. (Hooker 4)

Moreover, Moscow’s weakness was not merely strategic. Hooker notes that the

political system of the time was an authoritarian pseudo-cult in which independent

thought and action was strictly forbidden. This would make a strike towards Moscow

particularly dangerous as any sign of weakness could waken the millions of repressed

minorities from their stupor and highlight to them the fallibility of the dictator.

In his many years in power Stalin had created a cult of personality which stressed

his personal leadership as the source of Soviet progress. But his savage treatment

of the kulaks, land-holding Soviet peasants starved by the millions in the early

1930s, and his paranoid purge of the military a few years later, created legions of

enemies smarting for revenge. (Hooker 4)

As to the invasion itself, we have already established the various opinions as to

the feasibility of the act but, in stark contrast to the previous and future disagreement, all

of these scholars are united in the belief that in a quick, destabilizing drive towards

Moscow stood the best chance of ending the conflict quickly. Stolfi and Hooker mention

that the insecurity and fragility of the rail and communication system alluded to earlier,

recommended Moscow as a prime target. In addition, approximately 35% of the Russian

manufacturing capacity was located in the area west of the Leningrad-Moscow-Rostov

line.
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Soon after the invasion, the Russian weakness was exposed for the world to see.

The poor dispositions, inadequate support and inefficient chain of command turned a

retreat into a rout. The mindless “never surrender, always attack” orders that flowed

unceasingly from Moscow turned the rout into a debacle. After two weeks of absolute

chaos, Stalin reinstituted and strengthened the office of the commissars that, in

combination with the officer purges, served to lobotomize the front line commanders and

rendered them hesitant lest they be accused of treason. Stolfi implicitly equates this

politicalization of the battlefront with Hitler’s later Nazification of the frontline

commanders and his own “no retreat” policy. “Unlike political questions of why, where,

and when to fight wars, winning wars revolves almost entirely around military means and

military strategy.” (Stolfi 81) This single sentence condemns both sides for their mantric

elanism that condemned hundreds of thousands needlessly.

Where Stolfi and Clark run starkly divergent is in the aftermath of the first two

weeks. The numbers cited by each demonstrate titanic battles with tremendous losses for

the Soviets and the complete disintegration of their front. After a number of extremely

successful Kesselschlacht battles, the Red Army was in complete disarray and the

Wehrmacht tore into the rear areas wreaking havoc. Clark, however, says that at this

point, the Panzer armies needed a rest and refit from the casualties sustained. Stolfi

disagrees adamantly and refers to the effective strengths of the Panzer corps after these

intensive combats. He says that of the 1700+ battle tanks that were available on the 22nd

of June, 80 percent were still active or were only in the repair shop. When one compares

this to the absolute carnage inflicted upon the Soviet tank corps and their relative
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strengths at the time, the Germans could still command an effective local superiority

through more skillful use of lighter tanks and the mass employment of antitank weaponry.

I tend to believe that Stolfi has the more convincing arguments based upon the

performance of the German tactical battle plan in France and North Africa where Panzers

outnumbered by as many as 3:1 maintained momentum to disrupt the inflexible plans of

their opponents. In Russia, in particular, the indecisive nature of the Red Army General

Staff played right into the hands of the German ‘panzer leaders’ and their hyper-

aggressive style of combat. It may well have been the correct decision to keep them

entirely off balance and constantly unprepared for any move. This would presuppose the

strength of the Panzers was up to the task and the generals in command capable of this

sort of combat. I strongly believe that both of these conditions were fulfilled. However,

overly cautious generals in the upper echelons ordered the panzers to make unnecessary

halts or to support the taking of irrelevant objectives, a process that allowed respite to an

enemy who used it well enough.

In the drive towards Leningrad, Hoepner and Manstein opened a fracture in the

enemy lines that, were it exploited, would very probably have led to the complete

enclosure of Leningrad in July of 1941. As it happened, the forces in question were

squandered at Jakobstadt forcing a bridgehead across a river towards less important

objectives.

Manstein sat tamely in his bridgehead, losing seven irretrievable days that should

have been used to deepen the shock in the opposing field armies and tear up the

command and control capabilities of the Soviet Baltic military district. (Stolfi 52)
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It was in the forked advance of Guderian’s forces that “lay the seeds of trouble

that might grow with alarming suddenness if the Russian Army were to recover its

balance…” (Clark 82)

It was this very halt that returned some semblance of order to the Russian lines, allowing

them to bring up forces to defend the Leningrad metro area. Manstein’s failure to support

the key direction of advance delayed the enclosure of the Leningrad for two months while

accomplishing nothing in his sector.

Immediately after this halt, Hitler sent the entirety of the Army Group Center’s

panzer detachment to close of the Kiev pocket. While this led to over half a million

prisoners taken, the rest afforded the Moscow armies was enough to allow them to

stabilize their lines and bring up reinforcements. The necessity of keeping a running

enemy running cannot be stressed enough. The very core of the blitzkrieg strategy

demands destabilization of the command structure. This was the true failure of the Kiev

onslaught. Even with six hundred thousand prisoners and rapid advances on the southern

front, Hitler jeopardized and perhaps even compromised the entire campaign.

…it is believed with certainty that the line Leningrad-Moscow and to the south

can be reached [by October 1]… [However] the conduct of all operations is being

controlled from the very highest level. Final decisions have not yet been taken

concerning the future course of events. (Clark 94) –von Bredow, on 30th July

This shows the constraints that OKW and Hitler in particular had placed on the

operational mobility of the army unit commanders.

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Clark points at what all agree is a gross misstep and says this was the point of no

return. The Far East troops mentioned earlier had been on the move since June and would

arrive in the Moscow area in December. Clark implies that the Wehrmacht could no

longer beat these troops to the Moscow-Gorki space even as he says that there was no

significant threat from any of the Soviet units in front of Moscow.

From the point of view of equipment and training, the armies with which the

Stavka found itself fighting were the weakest the Soviets had ever put into the

field. (Clark 149)

Directly in Hoepner’s path there were three skeletal Russian infantry divisions.

They had left their artillery on the west back of the river, had no tank strength

whatsoever… for the most part exhausted and demoralized from units that had

been smashed in the previous weeks’ fighting… it is plain that the Germans

enjoyed a crushing superiority of numbers to leaven their material ascendancy

(emphasis added). (Clark 158)

Note that as Stanton mentioned, the troops that came to reinforce these weak reservists

were only mobile because of the actions of Soviet agents in Japan. These agents were

acting under the previously stated intention of the Soviets to invade Germany at some

indeterminate time in the future and the side effects of which, the mobility of the eastern

troops, were not relayed to the German allies.

From the authors’ evidence and narratives presented, it is possible to recreate in

one’s mind the chaos of those few months in an effort to understand the decisions made.

Fortunately for their readers, the authors so far presented do not commit the common
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mistake of believing Hitler to be entirely delusional. Clark presents a clear and cogent

explanation for the fluctuating of the Fuhrer’s decisions. As a preface to his point, there

are three possible targets for a military attempting to eliminate another country’s war-

making capacity: the political center, the economic or resource centers, and the army

itself. As was presented earlier, the original battle plan targeted the political nerve center

of the country and weighted the schwerpunkt towards Army Group Center. However, the

target of the plan for the French invasion in 1940 was focused more on the destruction of

the field armies, the mobile divisions moved into Belgium. As such, as the panzers in the

center encountered some resistance brought on in no small part by the field commanders’

own timidity, Hitler perhaps reverted to what had worked previously. Clark refers to this

new battle plan as a “super Cannae” because the wide sweeping drives on the northern

and southern wings would enclose the entirety of the Russian army in the greatest

kesselschlact in history. However, Clark skirts the issue of the plan in execution.

Obviously, none of this was conveyed to the men on the ground for use in making

strategic decisions but why did Hitler become so preoccupied with Leningrad and

Stalingrad? There appears to be some vast inconsistency if one presumes Hitler is not

operationally senseless: a shift from the political target is irrational unless one were

engaged in the complete destruction of the Red Army, ill advised though this switch of

objectives was. However, if the destruction of the Red Army was the aim, the investment

and entanglement at Stalingrad and Leningrad become equally irrational. The only two

conclusions disagree with Clark: either Hitler was operationally incompetent, a difficult

conclusion to make entirely on circumstantial evidence, or he was insecure in any of his

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decisions. I believe the latter conclusion fits the admittedly circumstantial pattern of

Hitler’s actions more closely. This, however, changes none of the capabilities of the Army

or the General Staff in its war-fighting although it does require additional examination.

To briefly summarize, Magenheimer presents the ‘common sense’ understanding,

namely that regardless of variables of leadership or execution, the Wehrmacht was

completely incapable of assaulting the Soviet Union in 1941 with any hope of success

handicapped as they were by engagements elsewhere and operational mishaps. Clark says

that while the German Army had no chance of victory in a quick campaign, it was

because the strain of combat would wear down the strength of the army leaving them

short of victory as the Far East reinforcements would shore up Moscow’s defenses

against the exhausted Panzer corps. Stolfi and Hooker counter by pointing to specific

instances in which the army’s strength was diverted from the war-winning objective.

They try to prove that Moscow is indeed the jugular of the Soviet state and, given this,

that the Wehrmacht was capable of cutting it quickly.

It is an unattractive possibility to imagine, that the most organized force of

ruthless evil the world has ever known came within a hair’s breadth of cementing

operational security in the battle for the fate of the world. However, hard as it is, I believe

that possibility is just what was faced in 1941. The arguments that Clark makes, though

supported, do not fit with other engagements. The point about the ‘exhausted panzer

corps’ in particular holds no sway considering the rapid and decisive gains that General

Rommel was to attain in Africa with a pair of under-equipped panzer divisions. The

momentum of the drive would have guaranteed more than Clark cares to admit.
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These two obviously conflict with the position advanced by Stolfi and Hooker and

require an in-depth look at the circumstances surrounding the invasion. To refute or

affirm Clark’s main position, it would be necessary to examine the records of the panzer

units and the rear echelon detachments that supported them. Primarily, one would look

for the records of the active and battle-ready tanks at the points of contention to which

Clark points. The rear echelon reports would give the researcher a picture of the turnover

of the panzers: the sooner the tanks return to battle, the more a leader can gamble with his

current forces. Clark, however, would also need to address the possibility that the panzers

could achieve significant gains with very little if they maintained momentum. To explore

this concept further, I would direct the reader to the records and historical expositions of

the campaigns in Africa and France. To further investigate a possibly significant point,

the structure of the Soviet tank forces needs to be examined. If the tank detachments were

as diffuse as the French tank units were, Stolfi’s argument about the capabilities of the

German panzers would be strengthened due to the concentration of the panzer units and

the subsequent ability to gain local superiority regardless of overall strength.

In contrast, Magenheimer completely ignores the French invasion of Russia. The

French troops were able to march several hundred miles to the doorstep of Moscow, a

feat the magnitude of which Germans need not have equaled. The Wehrmacht was

fighting an enemy that did not understand the concept of strategic withdrawal and,

subsequently, destroyed the vast majority of their experienced units. Secondly, the

Germans did not need to capture Moscow to end serious chances of resistance. If

Hooker’s claims about the Soviet rail and communication lines were correct, a point
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easily corroborated, the Germans need only break into the Moscow-Gorki space to render

resistance at Leningrad futile. Lastly, the Soviets did not dare employ a scorched-earth

policy in 1941 for fear of destabilizing the government beyond what the June and July

territorial losses and military defeats had already done. Inclusion of these points in

Magenheimer’s equation would lead to a radically different picture, one closer to Clark.

To flesh out a better argument, I would also examine the previous and concurrent blitz

campaigns noting in particular the extreme ‘disruptability’ of the panzers’ breakthrough.

If Magenheimer were correct, why are all subsequent battles of maneuver based upon the

blitz model?

As for Stolfi, his main points of contention deal with the diversion of the panzers

first towards the east when support towards the north might have accomplished similar

goals in a more advantageous mode and, secondly, the amputation of the Kiev salient.

Were I to attempt to cement his position, I would examine the make-up of the units facing

these panzers. While he quite rightly shows the possibility of the German advance into

Leningrad in July and Moscow in August, he ignores the units that would not have been

eliminated in the Kiev pocket. Stolfi cannot claim to know their effect on the stability of

that final drive. In addition, I would investigate the Soviet battle plans for the invasion of

Germany. It appears very well supportable that the Red Army was deployed in

preparation for such a strike but had not finished the build-up of the units necessary for it.

Thus, Stolfi might better be able to plot the recoil of these combat troops from the border

and determine which might have remained intact had the encirclements he notes been

avoided. In this way, he would get a picture of events that would presume the Soviets,
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while caught unawares in the aforementioned preparations, would not foolhardily throw

rested and capable units piecemeal into the German meat grinder. This would remove the

fundamental logical flaw from his argument: he investigates his counterfactual on the

premise that only the Germans would act intelligently. While he has some basis for this,

most notably the authoritarianism in the joint military-political structure and the purges in

the ‘30s, he would do best to provide equal footing for his assumptions.

To close this reflection, it could do little harm to read the memoirs of the soldiers

and politicians involved. While some may be somewhat self-exonerating, the greater

understanding that these personal insights could bring would, in my opinion, far outweigh

the errors that the books would inevitably have.

In conclusion, each of the authors brings up well-supported points that, even in

the inconsistencies, provide direction for one’s future research. The sum of their research

lends me to believe that the Wehrmacht could have driven into Moscow long before

either the Russian winter or the Far East reinforcements would have made any difference.

However, the altering of this battle plan raises some very pointed questions that would be

very difficult to answer so, though Stolfi and Hooker present the strongest case, much

research remains to be done in understanding the chaotic conflict that took place in 1941

as the world held its breath.