The German Army in the Soviet Union 1941-45 - Effective or not?

[Michael Dorosh]

The German Army of 1941-45 failed utterly in all the war goals set for it by their supreme warlord, Adolf Hitler - the Red Army was never destroyed as a fighting force, no new ground was opened to German settlers in the east, and in fact many (most? all?) of the gains made from 1936 to 1939 had been lost to Germany's enemies. (The only successfully concluded part of Hitler's foreign policy would appear to have been the attempted extermination of the Jewish race - a goal which was only partially, but disgustingly efficiently, achieved.) May 1945 saw the complete ruination of the German nation, which passed into foreign occupation and eventually partition which was to last for nearly 50 years.

Given that these failures were very much due to factors not just attributable to the performance of the Army, but to a wide array of factors beyond the control of the Army, how should we rate the Heer during the period 1941-45, with respect to its fighting ability on the Eastern Front? Does its inability to conclude Hitler's foreign policy automatically render it "ineffective"?

I would propose not, and would further propose we can analyze how the Army carried out operations in the field to discuss this on its own merits. So what does history say about the performance of the German Army as a whole, then, during the period 1941 - 1945 in the East? What did the German Army have going for it, and what qualities did it lack that might have made it a more effective instrument?

Every Army has deficincies and strengths. My questions are:

a) did the German Army recognize and accurately identify its own deficiencies and strengths?

did the German Army actively seek to rectify these deficiencies?

c) could the German Army have rectified them even if it wanted to?

d) how did the Red Army take advantage of German deficincies - or could it? Or did it have to?

I would suggest we could look at several categories and apply these questions to them.

a) manpower

weapons technology

c) leadership at the tactical level

d) leadership at the operational and strategic level

Others are open for discussion as they arise.

We all have preconveived answers to these; I have no idea if my notions would be the same as anyone elses. I am currently reading Matthew Cooper (The German Army) and finding it fascinating and well written, but have not seen any real dialogue anywhere about his book, so don't know what to make of it.

I do like his deconstruction of "Blitzkrieg", and he instead talks about two concepts - the armoured thrust of Guderian, and the Decisive Manoevre which was the classic German way of making war - harking back to 1866, 1870-71, 1914, 1939 and 1940.

Was he right that Guderian's concept of armoured operations never really happened in France? He seems to criticize the Germans for not going all out with their armour at the same time as citing reports from field commanders talking about fatigue and reasons why they couldn't do exactly that. Perhaps I haven't read it closely enough. But if so, did they get it right in 1941? Or was this even a desirable method of waging war to begin with?

He describes Blitzkrieg as being long ranging drives with armour, plowing through holes opened by tactical air power. Cooper says that this never happened in France in 1940 - airpower and air supremacy was important, he said, but airpower was not used to destroy tactical ground targets, and that the picture of Stukas blowing holes open in enemy defences for the tanks is just one more myth surrounding the term "Blitzkrieg" (a term the Germans never, ever used). Is Cooper right?

Did the German Army use tactical air power to greater advantage in Russia?

I am trying to put together some notes for a web page dealing with the "players" on the Eastern Front. Sort of a who's who of which nations contributed what types of forces. The Axis minors were easy, so were the Luftwaffe and the Waffen SS. But since it was the German Army who ultimately organized and executed the grand strategy, I am trying to get a better handle on what it did right and what it did wrong.

My problem is I don't know which sources are the best, and would prefer to discuss it interactively than try and dig stuff out of several books (a route I am in the middle of taking.)

So with your indulgence, then, meine damen und herren, anyone care to discuss this?

[killmore]

I would love to but it seems you really need a book to unswer in depth.

Not being a grog I would say that Germany was highly effective in first year. But it lacked over all plan and was not willing to stick to some of its own goals.

There was probably also some willingness to contradict hitler to show him that he is not a super-commander.

There were some gross mistakes - like no infantry support for armour drive. Sometimes armour was ordered to wait for days until infantry catches up.

Also Germany never had enough transportation/trucks. So in early war they were able to move faster than Soviets by the war end they were not. Hitler compounded that with orders to stand ground. - Soviets loved that. They could leave slow infantry divisions to slowly starve opponent into submittion.

German army was not as mobile Soviets in late war...

Their biggest mistake in my opinion was alienating local Soviet population....

[Grisha]

I will say this, Michael. A major weakness of the German Army was its lack of an operational level of combat. The excellence of the German General Staff tended to compensate for it, but without an infrastructure or doctrine that defined it and formulated a methodology, the German Army really had no means of meeting the gap between tactics and strategy. In the field of operations, this was dealt with intuitively by the General staff, though levels of skill were based on the individual. But in the areas of intelligence and logistics, there was a large gap that was never filled. Because of this lack of a defined operational level, the German campaigns lacked the ability for true depth and continuity in attaining strategic objectives.

German campaigns tended to assign strategic objectives to their initial operation, and in France, Poland, and Greece this worked because the operations were fully capable of achieving those objectives. But in Russia, it was impossible due to the sheer distances involved.

The only way German campaigns were geared to win was by the first operation, since there was no methodology for a series of operations used to achieve strategic objectives. Thus, either a)the Germans won outright in that first operation, or b)they would deal such a devastating blow on the first operation that the Germans would have enough time to build up and put another operation together in hopes of finally dealing the death blow. In Russia, they almost made (.

[Michael Dorosh]

So does that tie in with the idea of Auftragstaktik? ie - are you saying that an Army Group, say, would issue one strategic objective, but not lay out how the various armies should achieve this objective, causing confusion and poor co-ordination of effort?

[Piedtendre]

Hi

I'm (also) not a grog, but I would like to add another item to your list of subjects: logistics (latu sensu, i.e., including the production of equipment).

I have no hard facts to contribute to this discussion, just a general feeling of the matters at hand.

The Eastern/Russian Theatre of Operations was not the only one: Africa (until 42?), Italy (43?-45?), France/Netherlands/Germany (44-45), the Atlantic, all these theatres required men, equipment and suplies that were unavailable in Russia.

Also, the Allied strategic bombings had some impact on the production capacity. Add the lack of raw materials (rubber, oil, etc).

The example of logistics influencing the outcome of a theatre of operations that comes to my mind is the ultimate failure of the Afrika Korps. It had many successes, won lots of battles, but

a) the British submarines sunk too many oil tankers and too many ammo ships in the Mediterranean (sp?);

the ports where those ships were to unload were ill dimensioned for the traffic and some ships even returned to Italy having failed to unload their cargo.

In the Eastern Front, two major logistics problems were the insufficiency of the Russian railroad network and that it was incompatible with the German railroad (the Russians used a narrower track).

Rgds, Piedtendre

[Galkov]

Well... my opinion:

German great sucsess of first year in Russan campain was possible because all expirienced units was destroyed or captured in two...three months. Russian Army in september 1941... september 1942 years consists of solgers & oficers wich have no any battle expirience (there wasn't time to get it in training centres or in real war (the last because the price for mistake is death or capture) ).

In this case germans have a chance to get all advanteges from their battle tecnology: total air control wich support army supply and flank panzer ataks.

But when the time come Russians get army, wich expirience, organization, supply and other parametres was around the same as german. From that point (somth about spring 1943 year) the destiny german army was solved, because fighter's resource level wasn't the same.

Form 1943 Alies start use the same battle strategy as germans, may be moust GB and USA armor wasn't so good as german but solgers, commanders was the same and all battle order and tecnology was the same.

So the main strategy of the war was: who faster coud regenerate loses. Axis wasn't... that's all...

[Ligur]

d) leadership at the operational and strategic level

Just a morning quickie, there was at least one major ****-up at this level, dear uncle Adolf and his personal retinue, who time and time again refused to listen to the Wermacht generals and officers. He didn't trust the Wermacht and they lacked his WILL TO WIN and refused to understand that cheer willpower can overcome any normal operational problem like lack of fuel or winter gear. As we all know all of this just got worse and worse towards the end (he thought even the SS "betrayed" him in the end, lacking his will to win).

Hitler time and time again gambled like a madman and refused to accept that even with German übermensch willpower you have to accept operational military laws. By the end of Stalingrad, many already became to understand that Hitler had detached himself from reality (might have been like that all the time; then it just became quite evident, with Hitler watching little flags of nearly annihilated divisions and Romanian Armies, tuning out what was actually going on even when told face to face from officers who had been there).

Those surrounding him certainly didn't make things any better, Goering, Himmler the Great War Chief, Keitel and the rest being major asslickers and foghats to begin with, assuring Hitler things which certainly were not possible infact were (yes, Stalingrad, *ahem*, can be supplied by some fantastic airbridge we dream up. Sieg Heil!).

Also, Germany didn't gear up to Total War soon enough. They could have and should have produced more war materials when they started thinking of taking on the vast Russia.

Well, of course, without Hitler operation Barbarossa might have never been. But he certainly didn't make things easier after it became a reality. Leaving the military side to the professionals would have helped the German army 1) Do better when things started turning around 2) Avoid catastrophes like Stalingrad 3) Last longer when the Russian War Machine finally was working on full efficiency, grinding down anything on its path (which is a double edged goodie).

I'm not blaming Hitler on the German loss, by the way. I just claim he & his entourage did a lot of harm on the operational and strategic levels in the war against Mother Russia and hampered the efficiency of the the German Army.

[Grisha]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

So does that tie in with the idea of Auftragstaktik? ie - are you saying that an Army Group, say, would issue one strategic objective, but not lay out how the various armies should achieve this objective, causing confusion and poor co-ordination of effort?

Not quite. But to use your example, here's what would happen. The German General Staff would give a strategic order, say 'take Paris', then give senior officers general directions on who was to go where and how long they had to do it. Senior officers would do likewise, on down the chain of command. Blitzkrieg combined arms warfare combined with excellently trained troops would blow holes through the French line, then send Panzer divisions to exploit deeply into the French rear. Distances are such that those Panzer divisions can make it to Paris within the confines of the operation. Hence, operational goal matches strategic goal. They were able to do this in Poland, and also repeat it in Greece, thereby reinforcing the idea of a one-operation strategic victory. It allows the Germans to skimp on things like intelligence and logistics, since initial surprise and blitzkrieg (defining blitzkrieg as a combined arms concept that has tremendous tactical applications and operational implications) alleviate the need for more detailed intelligence, and the operation doesn't last long enough to consider a more long term approach to logistics.

Now, the Germans attack the Soviet Union. German General Staff says, "Take Moscow, Leningrad, and the Don basin," thinking this will force the Soviets to surrender. Maximum planning is for 3-5 months, but nobody seriously thinks it'll get past 3. It's now November, and the Germans have still to take Leningrad and Moscow. They fail. Now what?

The Germans had no methodolgy for using operations as stepping stones for achieving strategic victory. For the Germans, only one operation was needed to either defeat an enemy nation outright, or fatally wound them. When forced to conduct successive operations against the Soviet Union, they still approached each new operation as the 'one that was going to win the war,' or something similar. And because their intelligence and logistic departments were not formed to operate within an ongoing operational context, they had to improvise in these two areas as best they could, resulting in logistical inefficiency and a weakpoint that the Soviets maximized on - intelligence.

[ August 06, 2002, 03:57 AM: Message edited by: Grisha ]

[Ligur]

Originally posted by Grisha:

Interesting point.

Interesting point. Now that you said it out loud, seems like something I should have understood for a long time.

[Grisha]

Actually, Ligur, the Eastern Front at the operational-strategic level is a fascinating subject and one that has only fully come to light in the last decade, or so

[Olle Petersson]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

... many (most? all?) of the gains made from 1936 to 1939 had been lost to Germany's enemies. (The only successfully concluded part of Hitler's foreign policy would appear to have been the attempted extermination of the Jewish race - ...

... and this last part is nowadays claimed by neo-nazis to be a hoax, and thus also a total failure!

How on earth can anyone support such a loser...?

(Sorry that it's off topic, but I couldn't resist and it doesn't deserve a thread of it's own.)

Cheers

Olle

[Michael Emrys]

I think Greg has hit on a key point, one that I have been thinking about for the past few months. I would say pretty much what he has said except that I would substitute 'strategic' in most places where he uses 'operational'. To my mind, the Germans excelled in operations, but were poor strategists for pretty much the reasons he gives.

One thing that occurs to me is that Germany tried to fight a 20th. century war with what was in many ways a late-19th. century army. That the industrial economy was not mobilized until the last two years of the war meant that it was outproduced by each of its main enemies, let alone all of them together. This meant among other things that the army never became completely motorized as its enemies were (for the greatest part: I think some Soviet divisions were still unmotorized at the end of the war). Needless to say, this had a profound effect on the way that they conducted their campaigns, especially those on the Eastern Front. Not only did it mean that the infantry divisions which comprised the great bulk of the army were unable to keep up with the Panzer spearheads, it also crippled the ability of the army to supply itself once it got more than about 500km inside Soviet territory.

This was something Hitler and the Heer don't seem to have been able to truly grasp and prepare for. (Some members on the OKH staff, e.g. Halder, were conscious of the problem, but nobody went to Hitler and said "We can't do this and here's why." Probably because they wanted to keep their heads.) Given this profound limitation of the German army, it was probably only making things worse to try to defeat the USSR in a single campaign season. Attacking until they had reached the limits of their supply and then hunkering down along a defensible line until their logisitcs had caught up with them and the weather got better and then continuing their attack might have worked. That's basically the form the Soviets settled on. But I don't know if the Germans could have made that work either. It would have been more economical of their strengths. That might have made a difference. But I seriously doubt if the objectives set forth in Hitler's original directive were ever attainable, barring a huge blunder on the part of the Soviets.

Which brings me to another point. You will notice that all of Germany's victories were either achieved against opponents that were much smaller and weaker or which had committed some irretrievable blunder. (Although Poland's army was not a great deal smaller than Germany's on paper, it never achieved total mobilization and was seriously compromised by its geographical situation.)

And so forth. I fear, Michael, that I have gone the long way around to give you a not very complete answer. I hope that there is nevertheless something of interest here.

Michael

[ August 06, 2002, 04:51 AM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[Ligur]

When Barbarossa was launched, Stalin was scared out his wits and seriously considered negotiating a peace, throwing in Belorussia to the Germans, parts of Ukraine maybe (educate me if I'm wrong) and he, with Molotov, asked a foreign diplomat to act as the intermediate. I think it was the Hungarian ambassador (?) but just can't conjure up the persons name or nationality right now.

He outright refused, saying "You can retreat to the Urals, but in the end, you'll still win" and left.

Boy was he right.

[Grisha]

Michael,

Yes, the Germans were good at operations per se, but they didn't understand operational art. A good way to understand this is by looking at what were the operational objectives for Germans and Soviets. When you look at German operational objectives from 1941-42 you often see strategic objectives like Moscow, Leningrad, the Donbasin, and Baku. When you look at Soviet objectives from 1944-45 you see objectives firmly grounded within the limits of the forces involved - operational objectives. Examples to compare would be Barbarossa with Bagration. The only Soviet operation that placed Berlin as its objective was when Soviet forces were on the banks of the Oder. Furthermore, each Soviet operation set the foundations for the next one to come. The Germans never did this, because they didn't think of operations as intermediate steps towards which strategic victory was achieved.

I know I'm not explaining myself well, but I think the point has to deal with the definition of operation. For the Soviets, an operation in 1944-45 was a very distinct and defined part of their military art. For the Germans, the term 'operation' in 1941-42 had a loosely defined meaning that encompassed a military campaign of variable length and scope with immediate strategic implications.

[gatpr]

One strategy the Soviets used to great effect in 1942 and early 1943 was simply defend against the Germans. The offensive operations were launched against the Axis allies, and the general idea was to strike along boundaries betweeen units as much as possible. There were some exceptions that tend to prove the rule Operation Mars and the Kharkov attack. Maybe the prime example would be Uranus when the Soviets targeted Rumanians and Italians to surround the German 6th army. After Kursk the Soviets pretty much had the strategic iniative, so it was a very successful plan of operations.

[Andreas]

Gatpr, I don't actually think that is correct. There were a lot of major offensives by the Soviets during that time-frame, some of which you have already mentioned.

Kharkov Spring 1942

Wolchow Jan-Mar 1942

Mars November 1942

Welikije Luki November 1942

Uranus December 1942

Little Saturn January 1943

Gallop Feb/March 1943

The Red Army went about attacking very strongly during this time-frame, and caused the Wehrmacht very serious trouble. To say they just sat back on their heels and let the Germans come for them is really not quite correct.

[Olle Petersson]

I think Michael hit the nail, further driven by Grisha.

Some explanations as to why the strategy level failed:

The short-short answer is; Adolf Hitler.

He suffered from megalomania and paranoia.

The paranoia forced him to divide his subordinates to let them fight each other rather than cooperate towards the common goal. Heer vs SS vs Luftwaffe vs Kriegsmarine vs ...

It also forced him to excert control in areas where he was incompetent, like being in direct command of the Heer.

The megalomania caused some underestimate of the opposition and the intended tasks at hand.

- Why rout all production to war industry when there's no war (yet), and thus stir up the population and foreign nations?

- Why switch to war production when we allready have all weapons and ammo we need for this war, that will be over in a few weeks?

- We are the master race and those slavs are not nearly as good, therefore we can easily conduct this operation in a few months...

When things started to go wrong the constant change of Hitler's mind, and thus the armies' operational goals, caused the whole mission to fail.

Cheers

Olle

[Mammou]

The German Army was ripe for failure in '41. Although highly skilled and experienced at many levels, the General Staff was ill-prepared for a large war. Consider their experience to date; campaigns in Poland, Norway and France were all short, "come-as-you-are" actions. They had every reason to expect that a war in Russia would be the same - after all, they beat France, a much more formidable enemy, in 6 weeks. Things like a war economy and any sort of self-examination to correct failures in the system were totally irrelevant. They never really understood this "blitzkrieg" beast they had created, or how easy it would be to stop once its opponents studied it.

IMO it is much too easy to blame Hitler for these failings (there is enough other crap to blame him for, we don't need extra). While in Poland and France there were some generals who cautioned a more conservative approach to war, they were quickly silenced by the success of the campaigns. By Barbarossa, the only real disagreement among the General Staff was in the targets of the campaign, not in how it was conducted or whether more preparation should be taken. This sort failure was endemic among the General Staff.

Cheers,

Mammou

[Andreas]

Fugate and Dvorestky in 'Thunder on the Dnjepr' mention a study by the logistics department of OKH under von Paulus, conducted in early 41 or sometime 1940, stating that the Wehrmacht was incapable of winning a war against the Soviet Union. Can anyone point me to some easily accessible information on that?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Grisha:

For the Germans, the term 'operation' in 1941-42 had a loosely defined meaning that encompassed a military campaign of variable length and scope with immediate strategic implications.

As I have been given to understand it, 'operational' (a term by the way I think the Germans invented) was meant to encompass those actions that fall in scope between the tactical and the strategic. Thus, if tactics is the art of winning battles, and strategy is the art of arranging battles to win a war, operations are an intermediate step of connecting battles together into a compaign.

I think we are just arguing over semantics, because I agree totally with you that the Soviets were much better than the Germans at casting their operations to serve an overall strategy. So were the Western Allies for that matter.

So what I find is that for much of the war, the Germans were superb at winning battles, but it doesn't look to me like they ever had a winning strategy. What Hitler et al were counting on was something like an unbroken string of outrageous luck. And that's not a strategy, that's just wishful thinking.

Michael

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Mammou:

[QB]The German Army was ripe for failure in '41. Although highly skilled and experienced at many levels,

But my question is - were they? Good discussion on the grand strategy, so how about the tactical level? Was the 10 man squad (later 9) good or bad? Did it make sense to put the heavy weapons like MGs and mortars in seperate companies at the battalion level? How were German divisions at defending terrain once taken? That is really the kind of thing I was also interested in.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Fugate and Dvorestky in 'Thunder on the Dnjepr' mention a study by the logistics department of OKH under von Paulus, conducted in early 41 or sometime 1940, stating that the Wehrmacht was incapable of winning a war against the Soviet Union. Can anyone point me to some easily accessible information on that?

Wow, I've read that somewhere too in the last year. If my memory box coughs up the location, I'll pass it along. (Might have been van Creveld's Supplying War.)

Michael

[ August 06, 2002, 08:55 AM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

So what I find is that for much of the war, the Germans were superb at winning battles,

Michael

What made them superb at this?

[ August 06, 2002, 08:56 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Zitadelle]

Originally posted by Grisha:

Examples to compare would be Barbarossa with Bagration. The only Soviet operation that placed Berlin as its objective was when Soviet forces were on the banks of the Oder.

....

Gentleman-

An excellent discussion, and once I get some of my opinions, learnings, and evidence collected I hope to contribute as well. So far, you've avoided the trolls and I hope that continues.

Grisha-

I think a connection between Barbarossa and Bagration is an excellent comparison (and I will even leave out the date connection). Operation Bagration, I would agrue was as a stunning blow to the German Army as the great encirclements was to the Russians in 1941. Even the general strategy taken by each side in 1944 was a mirror of the 1941 strategy. The German army was held by Hitler's hold the ground policy- limiting their use of a mobile defense (sound familiar in 1941?). The end result was of course, massive encirclements and losses of 400,000 odd troops that the Germans could not afford.

I would have to say, however, that Berlin was an operation's objective prior to the Russians deploying on the Oder. Stalin's initial plans was to take Berlin as a part of the offensives beginning in January, 1945 when the Russian army was still in Poland. Based upon the successes of the winter operations in '44 against Army Group South and Operation Bagration, Stalin and the army commanders believed that it would be possible to take Berlin with the January, 1945 offensive (trying to remember the name of the operation...).

Events were to prove that this was not possible. While the offensive initially made good ground, the length of the logistical lines proved to be too long. Additionally, German defenses proved to be stronger than anticipated; and in fact, the Germans were able to take advantage of an extended Russian exposed flank in Northern Poland and stage an offensive. This offensive made Zukhov realise that his position was not as strong as he initially viewed and he had to consolidate his front before beginning the Spring operations on the Oder.

Fortunately, the Russians were able to establish a series of bridgeheads across the Oder including major rail junctions that proved to be advantageous to the final offensive.

(Drat, I need to keep some documentation in the office so that I can actually use individual names, operation/offensive titles, etc....)

Edit: according to Glantz, the name of the January/February operation was simply the Vistula-Oder operation. Somehow I think a definition does not make for a name.

[ August 06, 2002, 09:08 AM: Message edited by: Zitadelle ]

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Zitadelle:

(Drat, I need to keep some documentation in the office so that I can actually use individual names, operation/offensive titles, etc....)

Edit: according to Glantz, the name of the January/February operation was simply the Vistula-Oder operation. Somehow I think a definition does not make for a name.

Zitadelle, that was the name. Koniev in his memoirs refers to it as 'Vistula-Oder' operation, and then the 'Lower-Silesian', 'Upper-Silesian', 'Prague', etc. Operations. As far as I can tell, 'Bagration' was the last time the Red Army bothered with a name for an operation that was not geographically related to the area it was fought over.

[ August 06, 2002, 09:13 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]