This is how William Shirer described blitzkrieg as the German forces overwhelmed the Poles:
‘the sudden surprise attack; the fighter planes and bombers roaring overhead, reconnoitering, attacking, spreading flames and terror; the Stukas screaming as they dove; the tanks, whole divisions of them, breaking through and thrusting forward thirty or forty miles in a day; self-propelled, rapid-firing heavy guns rolling forty miles an hour down even the rutty Polish roads; the incredible speed of even the infantry, of the whole vast army of a million and a half men on motorised wheels, directed and co-ordinated through a maze of electronic communications consisting of intricate radio, telephone and telegraphic networks. This was a monstrous mechanised juggernaut such as the earth had never seen.’[1]
It was not something you would want to be on the receiving end of, but more of that later.
Blitzkrieg was born, bit by bit, in WW1, from 1917 onwards. The technology was there, if only just – tanks and planes – but the means of getting the best out of it wasn’t.
A break-through in tactics (away from bombardments and the mass frontal attack) came at Cambrai in the Battle of Passchendaele when, on the first day of the attack in November, 1917 more than 400 tanks were deployed. They pushed through all three German lines and punched a hole in the German front some six or seven kilometres wide and some eight kilometres deep. All at little initial cost, though the cavalry were torn to pieces by German machine guns and the infantry couldn’t keep pace. And without support they couldn’t seize the advantage they had gained. Many of the tanks also broke down whilst others were “ditched” (stuck in ditches, shell holes or trenches). But the tank had still shown what it could do.
We then move to the Ludendorff Offensive in 1918. Ludendorff had carefully planned the attack and had prepared thoroughly. He had turned a third of his cavalry into foot soldiers and had created and trained special “Storm Battalions” to advance quickly and find the weakest points in the enemy’s line before sending in the mass of his troops. There would be no preliminary bombardment and the troops were brought up to the line secretly at night. No tank, but no bombardment either. Surprise and speed would be the key with the “Storm Battalions” attacking were the enemy was weakest, not where they were strongest which had been the strategy since the war began in 1914.
And then, when the Entente forces with the Americans counter-attacked along a twenty-seven mile front, though the offensive began with a 2,000 gun artillery bombardment (the norm in WW1), it then used both tanks and planes in a co-ordinated manner to support the infantry.
Blitzkrieg got its name from the German word for ‘lightening war’ because it was the Germans, being the aggressive power, who used it first. But the lessons from WW1 had been taken on board by the British and French as well as the Germans. Of course, the technology had improved: planes and tanks were faster yet with a greater range and more punch, greater reliability too. But the right tactics would also be necessary if the technology was to be used to full effect.
Neil Stewart describes blitzkrieg as the co-ordinated use of ‘surprise, speed and movement’[2], striking where the enemy was weakest, and his description can’t be bettered. There you have blitzkrieg!
It was designed to cause confusion and panic more than death. Smashing enemy defences, forcing them back whilst destroying their command centres and lines of communication. Massed tanks supported by armoured cars and lorries to deliver the infantry, fighter planes to wreak havoc and bomber planes to attack the enemy’s defence positions and the command centres and lines of communication. The Stuka dive bomber came to symbolize blitzkrieg. They attacked almost vertically, machine guns blazing, their sirens screaming (the ‘Jericho trumpets) in order to maximize panic, before dropping their bombs on tanks and artillery. Though the sirens were effective, inflicting panic which left the enemy almost frozen in fear, the bombs dropped at low heights for increased accuracy (the Germans referred to them as ‘flying artillery’) and the raking machine gun fire is what did the damage.
Of course blitzkrieg required the support of a more conventional army, delivered as close as it could get by rail and then relying on good old fashioned marching (and horses). Their role was to consolidate and hold.
That Blitzkrieg proved a major success is something of an understatement: Poland crushed in four weeks, Norway and Denmark defeated in eight weeks, Holland and Belgium overrun in five days, France defeated (and British forces evacuated) in six weeks, Yugoslavia crushed in eleven days and Greece defeated (and British forces again evacuated) in three weeks.
It wasn’t all down to blitzkrieg. The Germans were well trained and morale was high. They were often up against weaker forces, Poland for example, and in France against an army with a defensive mentality and with its over-reliance on the Maginot Line.
If we take a brief look at the Polish campaign (which is where we began), Hitler hit Poland without a declaration of war but with just about everything he had. He had left Germany’s Western Front without planes or tanks and with only three days’ ammunition. German planes took out Polish airfields and other strategic targets (though most of its air force escaped to Rumania) before supporting the advancing German Army. Such was the force of the German blitzkrieg (which began on September 1st, 1939) that the Poles were quickly pushed back and the campaign was over in less than three weeks, and had really been decided by the end of the first week. The Germans suffered just 8,000-11,000 dead and another 27,000-30,000 wounded. In total, the Poles lost 70,000 men killed, 133,000 wounded and 700,000 taken prisoner.
If we then look at the attack on France, the main thrust, using the bulk of their armoured divisions, was undertaken by Army Group A in the Ardennes, where France simply did not think such an attack could be made. Indeed it was the German command of the logistics that was so impressive as lengthy columns of vehicles, tanks and marching (and cycling) troops poured through, all under air cover. Any vehicle, tanks included, that broke down and threatened the flow of this army through the Ardennes, was quickly shunted off the road to be repaired without interrupting the relentless onward march into France.
German High Command had thought it would take ten days to reach the Meuse, General Guderian (the army’s chief tank expert and the mastermind behind the attack) had thought four days. It took just two and the river was crossed using rubber dinghies on May 15th, their tanks got across the next day. The French had been taken totally by surprise and within a week the Germans had advanced more than three hundred kilometres. A major factor was the air superiority the Germans quickly established. By May 20th, the Germans had reached the Channel coast and the British and French forces were cut off from their supply lines.
So, two gold stars for blitzkrieg! And we could complement Neil Stewart’s definition by adding that courage (even if it was the courage of a gambler) was evident in both the assault on Poland which left the German’s almost defenceless in the west, and in the assault on France as they pushed through the Ardennes which most military strategists (Germans included) thought impossible. But then Hitler made his great mistake: he attacked the Soviet Union using the same tactic.
The logistics for the assault on the Soviet Union were considerable: it was a thousand kilometres from the German frontier to Moscow and two thousand kilometres to the oil of the Caucasus, and over poor roads. But this was to be conquered by blitzkrieg in a single campaign. General Thomas, in charge of the army’s High Command’s War Economy and Armaments Office, estimated that there were only two months’ supply of fuel hence the urgency to reach the oilfields. That the Soviet Union didn’t fall in a single campaign meant that the German communication lines were so over-stretched as to make supplying its army extremely difficult. And no matter how well dug-in the Germans might have been, with the Russian winter (a winter in which temperatures regularly fall below -20C), and with no winter clothing provided for its troops, and no anti-freeze for their armoured forces, their army was soon in deep trouble. And even though it survived the winter, holding their positions deep into Soviet territory, the German economy was not geared for a prolonged war. And don’t forget that, to the West, Britain had not been defeated.
What is more, the Russians then showed that they had learnt from the Germans, learnt so well that they could beat them at their own game: blitzkrieg. At Stalingrad they had shown that they could plan a major offensive and hide it from the enemy. They could co-ordinate ground and air forces and maximize the effect of armoured units: heavily armed, hard hitting, motorised tank armies. This was supported by artillery and infantry to mop up what enemy was left and to hold what was gained. The air force command was centralised too and its forces concentrated wherever it was needed with control centres set up to ensure it was being used to maximum effect. They out-blitzkrieged the Germans!
So the war was won and lost by Germany, by blitzkrieg. Not entirely, that would be a gross simplification of a war fought on many fronts, including at home in the factories, but blitzkrieg was a significant factor at both ends of the war.
[1] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 625
[2] Neil Stewart, The Changing Nature of Warfare, p. 105
1941 was the crucial year of the war and it was a year littered with mistakes that would have the most profound consequences: in lives and with regard to the eventual outcome of the war. It was the year in which Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. They were both huge mistakes. And the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour would result in Hitler making another crucially significant mistake: declaring war on America. But 1941 saw another bad mistake made. For the initial success of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was the result of a third mistake, this time made by his great adversary, Stalin. For Stalin refused to accept all the evidence that Hitler was about to invade. Both men had encouraged a cult of infallibility, but in 1941 both men blundered badly and their countries paid a tremendously high price. As too, of course, did Japan. So, four huge mistakes, and in four short pieces, I intend to examine all of them, beginning with Hitler’s initial mistake.
Hitler had ideological reasons a plenty for invading the Soviet Union: lebensraum, crushing Bolshevism, smashing the world Jewish conspiracy. However, with the Battle of Britain barely underway, Hitler was already thinking that Britain would best be defeated by first defeating the Soviet Union (a total reversal of his original strategy). At a meeting with the chiefs of his armed forces on July 31st, which General Halder recorded in his diary, Hitler told them:
‘Britain’s hope lies in Russia and the United States. If the hopes pinned on Russia are disappointed, then America too will fall by the wayside, because elimination of Russia would tremendously increase Japan’s power in the Far East….
Russia is the factor on which Britain is relying the most…. With Russia smashed, Britain’s last hope would be shattered. Germany will then be master of Europe and the Balkans.
Decision: Russia’s destruction must therefore be made a part of this struggle. Spring ’41. The sooner Russia is crushed the better. Attack achieves its purpose only if Russian state can be shattered to its roots with one blow. Holding any part of the country will not do…. If we start in May ’41, we would have five months to finish the job in. Tackling it this year would still have been the best, but unified action would be impossible at this time.[1]
This was Hitler’s strategic reasoning. But Halder’s notes also show how Hitler’s planning, such as it was, had gone awry. A major war had come before Germany was ready, Britain was not fully defeated before he turned his attention to the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union had to be defeated (as France had been) in a single campaign. The German economy, and so German rearmament, was not geared for anything more. Nor was the German army, for example no provision had been made for winter clothing or for antifreeze for its tanks.
Hitler, however, was totally confident. He told General Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff for the Armed Forces High Command, ‘We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.’[2] And unlike before, he didn’t hear loud noises contradicting his judgment from his army chiefs. Stalin’s purges, the Soviet army’s poor performance against the Finns in the Winter War of 1939-40, and their own surging confidence in themselves, had its own effect.
Even so, moves made by others showed that Hitler was not, indeed could not be, in total control of events. First, the Soviet Union forced Rumania to cede Bessarabia (something agreed in the secret protocol of the Nazi-Soviet Pact) and northern Bukovina too. And in response Hitler felt he needed to send military missions to Rumania in September lest the state crumble (Germany needed its oil). These were quickly followed by German troops being stationed in the country. This upset the Soviet Union which Hitler was not so worried about, but it also upset Mussolini who regarded the Balkans as Italy’s sphere of influence. So, to show he could not simply be ignored by Hitler, Mussolini invaded Greece, only informing Hitler (as had been Hitler’s way with Mussolini) when it was too late to do anything about it. And as it did prior to WW1, such open aggression in the Balkans was likely to suck in other Balkan states (both Bulgaria and Yugoslavia had claims on Greek territory) whilst the Soviet Union and Britain would now have an excuse to intervene.
Still, Hitler was determined to take on the Soviet Union. At a meeting with top military leaders and Ribbentrop in January, 1941 Hitler, with repeated reference to Stalin’s purges, told them, ‘Since Russia has to be beaten in any case, it is better to do it now, when the Russian armed forces have no leaders and are poorly equipped, and the Russians have to overcome great difficulties in their armaments industry.’[3] He went on to tell them what he had said to the chiefs of the armed forces in July, 1940 that with the Soviet Union crushed, Britain would either seek terms or else Germany, with vastly increased resources at its disposal, would crush them next. Also with the Soviet Union crushed, Japan would make its move and tie America down so that it would not be able to come to Britain’s aid in Europe.
But the Italians were on the retreat in both Greece, where they had been pushed back into Albania, and in North Africa. Consequently, Hitler ordered Luftwaffe squadrons to move to southern Italy in order to strike at Egypt and the straits between Sicily and North Africa, for an armoured division to be sent to Libya, and for troops to move through Hungary and Rumania, across Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and into Greece. Hungary and Rumania were already German satellites and members of the Tripartite Pact and a task force of 680,000 was soon assembled in Rumania. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were persuaded to also join the pact but Hitler’s plans were upset by a coup in Yugoslavia led by army officers opposed to the government because it had allied itself with the Germans. Hitler didn’t hesitate and attacked Yugoslavia as well as Greece in the first week of April and both countries were overrun, Yugoslavia in just eleven days, Greece in just three weeks. Whilst in North Africa, General Rommel took less than two weeks to recapture all the territory lost by the Italians and had pushed the British back to the Egyptian frontier. The point is though that German troops, almost a million men, and all the necessary resources, had been committed to the Greek and North African campaigns that could otherwise have been deployed in the Russian campaign.
Still, Hitler issued orders for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, to be completed by May 15th, and throughout the first six months of 1941, German forces were assembled on the Soviet frontier until their numbers stood at three million men. Did Hitler’s campaigns in Greece and North Africa cost him the chance to defeat the Soviet Union in a single campaign? The start of Operation Barbarossa was pushed back, from May 15th to June 22nd, but this was the result of bad weather, a late thaw which left the ground too boggy. It was still a huge force, nevertheless when Army Group South launched its attack into the Ukraine, it was without a third of its tank strength. German forces were already overstretched. Also, such were the German losses in the attack on Crete, that Hitler was discouraged from using airborne troops on any large-scale operations against the Soviet Union. But not discouraged enough to halt the attack.
Was Hitler blinded by his ideological hatred of communism? Was he himself taken-in by the myth of his infallibility? In 1945, with defeat imminent, Hitler was unrepentant. He still felt he had had no choice. He remained convinced that it was his only hope of forcing Britain to negotiate a peace. ‘For us it was an inescapable compulsion to remove the Russian piece from the European chess-board.’ Besides, just as Germany feared Russian rearmament in 1914, so Hitler claimed that he had to make his move in 1941: ‘Our only chance of defeating Russia lay in anticipating her … Time was working against us.’[4] That may be, but Germany was capable of holding what it had in Western Europe, particularly if America didn’t enter the war in Europe (more of which when we look at his second mistake). And that he took on more than he could cope with in invading the Soviet Union is not in doubt.
[1] Quoted in Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, p. 744 + Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, p. 382 (underlining in General Halder’s original diary entry)
[2] Quoted in Alan Bullock, p. 759
[3] Quoted in Alan Bullock, p. 774
[4] Quotes from Alan Bullock, p.758
If Hitler was blind to the huge risk he was taking by invading the Soviet Union in 1941, given that German forces were already stretched on a number of fronts and Britain still hadn’t been defeated, what was Stalin’s thinking?
With France defeated, Stalin embarked on something akin to his own appeasement of Hitler. Claims by Hitler that the Soviet Union was reneging on her promises to supply raw materials (a result of the German-Soviet Trade and Credit Agreement that preceded the Nazi-Soviet Pact) were simply not true, the German Foreign Office itself reported that the Soviet Union was in fact delivering more than had been agreed. And Stalin would not allow the army to do anything that might provoke Hitler.
Dmitri Volkogonov, the Russian historian, was of the opinion that it was the poor performance of Soviet troops in the Winter War that left Stalin so concerned not to provoke Hitler. Molotov would later return to the need to properly prepare themselves when he said, ‘In order to delay the war everything was done to avoid giving the Germans a pretext to start it.’[1] The evidence shows, and what unfolded confirms, that the Soviet Union was indeed ill-prepared to defend itself, let alone attack Germany. Whatever, Stalin had also noted (how could he not?) how easily the Germans had swept the French and British aside in 1940.
It wasn’t that the Soviet Union had just been sitting idly by, waiting on events. The whole notion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact from the Soviet side of things was to give it time to prepare for war. But the sweeping purges Stalin had imposed on the armed forces had left the Soviet military without the experienced leadership it now desperately needed. While rearmament was also affected by the purges that had swept away experienced managers in industry and technological experts too. So Hitler was right in that respect at least. But Stalin, though aware that Hitler hadn’t changed his views when it came to communism, and hadn’t given up on lebensraum, believed that he had at least until 1942 or 1943 before Germany would be ready.
What is more, though serious problems remained, the Red Army out-numbered the Germans and the Soviet Union had the largest air force in the world. Stalin had also reached a settlement with the Japanese which would last until 1945 and which allowed him to transfer more as well as supplies to the West. Though still, Stalin was desperate to avoid war.
With German forces clearly gathering in numbers on the frontier, Stalin ignored a proposal from his Chief of Staff to seize the initiative and launch a surprise attack on them. What was worse, no operational plans were issued for the Soviet Union’s defence. So that when the Germans did attack, the Soviet response followed no pre-determined plan, because one didn’t exist.
But the gravest error of judgment on Stalin’s part was to ignore the intelligence he was receiving – from America and Britain as well as the Soviet Union’s own sources – all telling him that an attack was imminent. Not only was the anticipated date of the attack always within the period planned by the Germans but a report presented to Stalin in March, 1941, correctly identified the objectives of the three German Army Groups. And when German reconnaissance planes started photographing Soviet air bases (there were 200 such flights), Stalin refused to allow any action to be taken against them.
Stalin was convinced that Hitler would not attempt to defeat the Soviet Union with its vast expanse of territory through blitzkrieg. Consequently Hitler would need more time to build his stock of war materials. As for British reports that an attack was imminent, he saw this as nothing more than an attempt to provoke the Soviet Union and Germany into war. And as for the German troops massing on the border, these he thought were part of Hitler’s way of pressurising the Soviet Union to provide Germany with more raw materials. Even when reports came in that the Germans were building rafts and pontoon bridges on the river frontier with Poland, Stalin wasn’t convinced. As for the Russian people, they were oblivious to what was going on. Soviet newspapers made no reference to the fact that everywhere else in the world was reporting that war between themselves and Germany was imminent.
Then, on the evening of June 21st, with reports from German deserters informing them that the attack would begin early the following morning, Generals Timoshenko (Commissar for Defence) and Zhukov (the Red Army’s chief of the general staff) went to see Stalin in a desperate attempt to get him to put the Soviet troops in a state of combat readiness, moving troops into forward defensive positions, camouflaging aircraft and preparing blackouts. Zhukov had a draft order already prepared. It so happened that the Politburo were gathering for a meeting but even with all evidence pointing toward a full-scale attack, neither they, nor Stalin were willing to provoke the Germans. By the time an order was sent, which was only to assume a state of alert and to man the frontier posts, the Germans had cut communication cables and few Red Army units received it.
At 3.30 in the morning of June 22nd Timoshenko and Zhukov received news of attacks from across the fronts. Stalin had to be woken up, the Politburo was summoned and Timoshenko and Zhukov met with the political leadership for the second time that night. The German embassy was contacted and the ambassador read out Hitler’s prepared statement. Molotov was furious at the depth of the deception, a breach of faith he shouted down the phone that was unprecedented in history (Czechs and Poles might disagree). Stalin, who had been expecting a list of demands from Hitler, was still struggling to take in what was happening.
Stalin was shocked by what had unfolded. Despite the warnings he had not expected the Germans to attack, and he must have felt a personal responsibility. It is thought that he suffered some kind of break down and for more than a week the Soviet Union was virtually leaderless when previously every decision had been channelled through Stalin. Though it is only right to note that Richard Overy suggests this was very much not the case, Alan Bullock refers to the meeting Molotov and other members of the Politburo had with Stalin at his dacha on June 30th. Anastas Mikoyan, who had been close to Stalin from the beginning and who was present, later wrote, ‘We found him in an armchair in the small dining room. He looked up and said “What have you come for?” He had the strangest look on his face and the question itself was pretty strange too. After all, he should have called us in.’[2]
The inference was that Stalin seemed as if he expected to be arrested. Instead they had come to propose setting up a State Defence Committee with Stalin as chairman. Nikita Khrushchev also later commented how, in late July he visited Stalin in his underground headquarters in Moscow’s Kirov metro station: ‘The man sat there devastated and couldn’t say anything, not even any words of encouragement which I needed…. What I saw before me was a leader who was morally crushed. He was sitting on a couch. His face was empty … he was at a complete loss and didn’t know what to do.’[3]
He would recover though, and had before that meeting with Khrushchev. His rallying radio broadcast on July 3rd suggests he was up for the fight: ‘all citizens of the Soviet Union must defend every inch of Soviet soil, must fight to the last drop of their blood for our towns and villages.’[4] But he will have had dark moments nevertheless. But to again quote Khrushchev, it was only in 1943 after the Soviet Union’s first big victories that he began to strut about, ‘like a rooster, his chest puffed out and his nose sticking up to the sky.’ Before then he ‘walked around like a wet hen.’ Of course, we know that Khrushchev did all he could to point the finger of blame for the Soviet Union’s problems at Stalin (you may recall Krushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ so perhaps we should take his recollections with a pinch of salt, nevertheless he was close to Stalin and we shouldn’t be surprised if at times, particularly in 1941, the ‘man of steel’ had “dark moments”. Wherever the truth lies, he does seem to have been more aware of his mistakes than Hitler ever was.
[1] Quoted in Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, p. 409
[2] Quoted in Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, p. 794
[3] Quoted in Robert Gellately, p. 483
[4] Quoted in Richard Overy, The Dictators, p. 515