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    Hitler’s Defeat In Russia
    Hitler’s Defeat In Russia
    Hitler’s Defeat In Russia
    Ebook318 pages8 hours

    Hitler’s Defeat In Russia

    By Lieutenant-General Władysław Anders

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    To both professional soldiers and historians, the causes of the German catastrophe in Eastern Europe in the years from 1941 to 1945 will ever remain an absorbing problem. Why did Hitler’s hitherto invincible Wehrmacht—which between September 1939 and June 1941 had knocked over like tenpins the far from negligible armies of Poland, France, and Yugoslavia, had driven three-hundred-odd thousand British from the continent in a campaign of a few brief weeks, and had spread the rule of Hitler’s Reich from Brest to Crete and from Arctic Narvik to the desert sands of Tripoli—why did this Wehrmacht come to a dead halt before Moscow within six months of launching its all-out assault on the Soviet Union? Why, once again in the autumn of 1942, did the Wehrmacht suffer such an overwhelming defeat at Stalingrad—after occupying nearly half of European Russia, reducing the Red armies to less than two and one half million men at the beginning of 1942, and planting the swastika on Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus, more than 1,000 miles from its advanced base in Poland?

    These are questions General Anders attempts to answer in the present analytical study of the Russo-German war—and, in my opinion, he succeeds to the full, with amazing clarity and unanswerable logic.-Foreword.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVerdun Press
    Release dateNov 6, 2015
    ISBN9781786253347
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      Book preview

      Hitler’s Defeat In Russia - Lieutenant-General Władysław Anders

      West.

      Part II — HITLER’S MILITARY BLUNDERS

      Chapter I — German Strategy

      IN PREPARING his campaign against Russia, Hitler had the choice of two basic forms of strategy, both completely different, and yet of equal importance.{11} One form is the strategy of annihilation; the other is the strategy of exhaustion, sometimes also called the strategy of attrition. The first attempts to enforce the aims of the war by military victory, in other words, by a decisive battle in which the enemy’s forces are destroyed.

      The strategy of exhaustion endeavors to achieve the aims of war by wearing the enemy out. The battle is not the focal point of this strategy—it is only one of many means, among them economic attack, political action, propaganda, etc. Today, when military power has become so dependent on the economic hinterland, the strategy of exhaustion has greatly gained in importance. Economic attack, particularly that which deprives the enemy of areas vital to the maintenance of his armed forces and so strikes at the very roots of their existence, may bring greater results than victory in the field.

      It follows that the strategy of annihilation is less complicated than the strategy of exhaustion. The former deals only with military power, while the latter requires a certain finesse in the use of elements in hand either jointly or successively.

      German military circles, brought up on the traditions and teachings of Napoleon and Moltke, believed solely in the strategy of annihilation. They either ignored completely the strategy of exhaustion or held it in contempt. So it was in the First World War, and so again in the Second.

      But the proper use of the two forms of strategy depends mainly on the character of the enemy. If, for example, the enemy’s vital areas of operations{12} lie beyond the range of the attacker so that he cannot seize them in one continuous operation, the application of the strategy of annihilation holds great risks, because if the defender makes a deep retreat the attacker is apt to lose his punch before achieving his objectives. In this case it is better for the attacker to rely on the strategy of exhaustion until he comes within striking distance of the enemy’s vital areas of operations and is capable of seizing them in one continuous attack.

      In the war between Germany and Russia, the use of the strategy of annihilation by the Germans was limited by two factors. First, the Soviet forces outnumbered the German Wehrmacht. Second, Russia’s vital areas of operations were beyond the reach of the German thrust.

      The relative strength of the two opponents is difficult to assess even today, because the data are both insufficient and biased, especially on the Russian side. It is known, however, that the bulk of the Red Army was concentrated in the western part of the USSR and in the countries occupied by Russia after 1939. Just before the outbreak of war, the German General Staff estimated that Russia would have available at the beginning of hostilities 125 to 154 infantry divisions, about 25 cavalry divisions, and 30 to 37 armored or motorized brigades.{13} To this number should be added the forces in the Far East, where 25 infantry divisions, 7 cavalry divisions, and 5 moto-mechanized brigades were said to be stationed. The Soviet Air Force numbered probably more than 8,000 aircraft, but their equipment was inferior to that of the Luftwaffe.{14} Most impressive, however, was the number of tanks which Russia had at the outbreak of war. It seems that there were about 15,000 of them, though mostly light or obsolete models.{15} Thus, to destroy even the Red Army forces concentrated in the West, or to prevent their retreat into the depth of central Russia, was a task far exceeding the strength and the mobility of the Wehrmacht.

      This becomes apparent when we consider that the Germans had mustered for the Russian campaign probably only about 178 divisions—of which about 145 were German,{16} about 33 satellite{17}—and 3 air fleets with a total of about 2,000 aircraft.{18}The German forces included 19 armored divisions with about 3,200 tanks, and 14 motorized divisions. Germany’s allies allegedly supplied the equivalent of 1 armored and 1 motorized division. In German formations, the ratio of medium to light tanks was 2:1.

      According to these figures, only one fifth of the Wehrmacht was composed of fast forces, the remainder being a foot-marching force of no greater mobility than that of the Red Army. What was worse, the German fast forces were unable to develop their full speed on the immense and almost roadless plains of Russia, since the bulk of the troops depended on road transportation. Had these fast forces and their services been fully equipped with cross-country vehicles, they would have had a far greater mobility and much greater power, for their thrust would not have been confined to the few roads where resistance was always strongest. Furthermore, the German armored divisions of 1941 no longer resembled the formidable rams of 1939 and 1940. Their tank strength had already been cut by half,{19} a fact which contributed greatly to the weakening of their drive and power, and shortened their range.

      Accordingly, the Wehrmacht had no superiority in numbers over the Red Army, and its mobility was not much greater than that of the enemy. The only field in which it had an absolute advantage was the superiority of its commanders and that of the German soldier. Perhaps this would have been enough to defeat the Russians if it had been accompanied by an equally high standard in the German High Command. This, however, not being the case, the Wehrmacht failed to make good use of its only real advantage.

      Let us now consider the question of Russia’s vital areas of operations, i.e., those which were of primary importance in maintaining her armed forces. As of 1941, the industrial areas of Moscow, the Ukraine and the Caucasus must be considered such first of all. The large industrial district of the Ural and several other districts in Asiatic Russia did not at that time play as important a part as they do now.

      The Moscow industrial district extends over an area enclosed within a line running from Kalinin (Tver), through Rybinsk-Kostroma-Gorki-Riazan-Tula to Kaluga.{20} Here live 20% of the urban population of the USSR. Although this territory equals in size only half of the Ukrainian industrial district, its total production is twice as high as that of the Ukraine, and several times higher than the production of the Ural district. The Moscow district has no natural resources. It does include, however, the following industries: machinery, machine tools and precision equipment, cars, chemicals, textiles, leather and timber. But its great importance lies in the fact that it produces a third of the output of the USSR’s heavy industry, and that most of the industries producing precision equipment and machine tools are concentrated in this area. This, at any rate, is more or less its contribution to the Soviet Union’s industrial production today. But since in 1941 the percentage of industrial production of the Asiatic centers was much lower, the Moscow district was of much greater importance then than it is today. There are two further points, almost equally important: the Moscow district forms the central and most vital part of the Russian railroad and communications network; and in it lies the capital of the Soviet state:

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