The Second World War on the Eastern Front

Lee Baker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138836792
• eBook ISBN: 9781317865032
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Europa del Este

Russia's engagement with Germany on the Eastern Front during World War II was ferocious, unprecedented and bloody, costing millions of civilian and military lives. In this challenging new book, Lee Baker distinguishes myth from reality and deflates the idea that this war, while gargantuan in scale, was in essence a war like any other.

Part 1

Analysis

Introduction

On 22 June, 1941, barely a year after defeating the French army in a spectacular and astonishing demonstration of martial skills, the armed forces of Germany launched another massive invasion, this time against the Soviet Union. Code-named ‘Operation Barbarossa’, for many weeks it looked as if the easy victory over France would be repeated as millions of hapless Red Army soldiers were either taken prisoner or killed in one of the largest encirclement battles in history. German armored pincers rapidly encircled several of the Soviet Union’s major western cities, including Brest-Litovsk, Minsk, and Smolensk, and within a month threatened Leningrad, Kiev, and even Moscow itself. Total Soviet collapse and German victory seemed certain within just a few weeks of the invasion. And yet the seemingly inevitable did not happen, and the front lines not only stabilized during the early fall but became relatively quiet, much to the relief of the Soviet leadership and its badly bludgeoned army. The short break proved, however, to be merely a brief pause so that the Germans could prepare fresh disasters for the Red Army. Early that fall the Germans launched a major offensive which swept virtually unopposed into the Ukraine, encircling Kiev and capturing over 600 000 prisoners. The carefully laid and massive trap consisted of an enormous pincer movement – the significance of which the Soviets completely failed to grasp. By the time autumn arrived the war was proving to be far more disastrous and dangerous for the Soviet state than even the most pessimistic assessments had predicted.

Before the invasion Germany was at war only with England, which had (along with France) declared war after the German invasion of Poland in September, 1939. With ‘Operation Barbarossa’ Germany faced, for the second time in a generation, a major war on two fronts, a prospect which had proven beyond German capabilities during the First World War when, despite defeating Tsarist Russia in the field, Germany’s economic exhaustion prevented it from achieving victory on the Western Front. No one, least of all the Germans, believed the country could emerge victorious from another two-front war, and the German decision to attack the USSR in 1941 thus came as a surprise to most of the world, especially the Soviet leadership. Despite the serious risks associated with a two-front war, few international observers doubted a rather rapid collapse of the Red Army (American intelligence services foresaw a Soviet collapse within two months), while German operational planning anticipated it within a matter of weeks.

That total Soviet collapse did not occur, and that the Germans ultimately suffered catastrophic defeat has been the pivot around which studies of the war have revolved ever since the fighting began. Over the years scholars have put forward, with various degrees of success, just about every imaginable thesis for the war’s genesis and course. There has never been a central or dominant viewpoint, and the foci of research have thus varied from the personalities involved – especially Adolf Hitler’s reckless megalomania and Stalin’s equally ruthless paranoia – to German and Soviet preparations for war, including flawed strategic and economic planning on both sides, and an insufficient German material buildup for the invasion. Even such seemingly mundane factors as the weather have been enrolled as explanatory causes for German defeat, especially at certain ‘key’ battles.

But an interpretation of the war which adequately includes the incredible variety of factors at play in the east has proven to be elusive. Attempts to make sense of the war have emphasized the systemic flaws within the German strategic command structures, especially the ways in which the German command appears to have ossified and hindered rather than encouraged a successful approach to the war. Other scholars have focused on the philosophical and political issues associated with conquering the vast lands of the Soviet Union and integrating them into the resources of the Reich. Thus the natural friction which accompanies military conquest was made worse by the divergent economic, political, and racial goals of competing German agencies such as the SS, the army, and the various economic ministries charged with exploiting the conquered resources and peoples in the east. There was never, for example, a single German ministry with the overall authority to extract the precious resources, but rather a multiplicity of competing agencies interested primarily in acquiring materials for themselves.

Previous approaches to the war thus looked at particular pieces of the puzzle rather than taking a holistic approach, which meant that individual features came into focus but that an overall perspective which addressed the salient issues was difficult to assemble. For example, none of the early analyses provided answers to important questions about the role of Hitler’s peculiar social-Darwinist racist ideology in the formulation of German operational plans. There has not even been, until recently, a remotely adequate explanation as to why Stalin and Hitler agreed upon a mutual non-aggression treaty just days prior to the German invasion of Poland and its relationship to Hitler’s decision to attack his putative ally. Previous explanations which viewed it as simple opportunism on the part of both men now seem too simplistic and leave too many questions unanswered.

Recent scholarship tries to address the various problems and omissions associated with earlier views by broadening the scope of the analysis of the war to include not just military history, which naturally has its limitations, but also the social, political, and economic factors which played important roles for both the German invaders and Soviet defenders. These works have examined so many disparate aspects of the war which had hitherto been ignored that our understanding has broadened to the point where a comprehensive perspective which takes into account the intentions and actions of both the German and Soviet participants, including civilians and the home front is becoming feasible. It is no longer sufficient to see the war as simply an attempt by the Germans to dominate Europe; German intentions actually went much further than traditional great power politics. It is now becoming clear that German goals in the east included not merely conquest of the vast and fertile lands of the western Soviet Union, but the erection of an eastern European racial empire based upon Hitler’s ideas about racial struggle as the keystone of human development. The core of his conception was the conquest of living space in the east for resettlement by German colonists. Hitler was not simply trying to reestablish Germany’s position in Europe as one of its great powers, but instead attempting to forge something which had never existed before: a racial state intent upon acquiring for itself the living space which it felt it required for its continued existence. These goals were to be accomplished at the expense, labor, and lives of the various ethnic peoples of the USSR, especially its Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians. This focus on the racial aspect of the war has now assumed center stage and is a crucial key in understanding both the genesis and the incredible violence of the war.

The eventual catastrophic German defeat after so many early and relatively easy victories has also caused its share of controversy: how and why did the Germans lose the war? Did the vaunted German army take the task seriously? Did racial bias and prejudice against Slavs prevent an honest assessment of Soviet capabilities and blind German planners to the very real dangers of an invasion? Were the seeds of defeat therefore planted long before the first shots had even been fired? Or was planning sufficient but, after losing several ‘turning point’ battles, such as those at Stalingrad or Kursk, was the German war machine so physically battered that it could neither replenish itself materially nor re-conceptualize a new approach to the war? How early in the war can signs of German collapse be seen and, conversely, how late in the war could the Germans have snatched victory from defeat? At what point can we see that the Soviets would most likely win the war? These questions go to the crux of the significance of the Eastern Front: at what point did the USSR become a world super-power? What role did the war play in the rise of the USSR to the status of major world power and the dominant power in eastern Europe for decades after 1945? When, in other words, did the Red Army cease being a ‘stumbling colossus’ and become a force to be reckoned with?

Compounding these questions is the degree to which the Red Army was ready for war in 1941 or whether its performance had been compromised due to the purges of the 1930s. There can be little doubt that the Red Army performed very poorly during the opening phases of the invasion as many of its disastrous early defeats were more often the result of its own incompetence rather than German superiority. The inability to fight effectively permeated the command structures and there was an apparent inability to coordinate, at all levels, even the simplest unit movements and the most elementary offensive and defensive maneuvers. Many units could not even construct adequate trench systems, erect effective fire zones, or lay minefields. This failure to create an effective defensive posture at even the most elementary level looms large in the histories of the early phases of the war and must be explained if we are to understand the evolution of the Red Army from master bungler to master of much of Europe within just a few years.

Some of the early Soviet failures have been blamed upon Stalin’s attitude concerning a possible German attack. Before the war began various foreign leaders, including Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, forwarded intelligence which revealed German troop movements to the east and a massive buildup of war materiel close to Soviet borders. Stalin and the Soviet military leadership chose to ignore these legitimate and accurate warnings about the impending invasion primarily, it now seems, because Stalin simply refused to accept that Hitler would open a second front while still engaged in a war with England. He therefore regarded all reports about a possible invasion, regardless of the source, as provocations designed to lead the Soviet Union into joining the war on England’s side and thus, as he put it, to pull England’s chestnuts from the fire. He was convinced, even during the hours after the invasion began, that it was irrational for Hitler to attack in the east until the war with England was settled, and his policies from 1939–41 flowed from this deeply held belief. His convictions had the fateful consequence that, since Soviet military doctrine emphasized offensive rather than defensive operations, the Red Army was deployed in offensive echelons rather than defensive positions when the invasion began. Some have argued that this aggressive posture meant that Stalin intended, at some future date of his choosing (1942 or 1943), to launch an invasion of western Europe, but that the German onslaught preempted his plan for the conquest of western Europe. This theory, that Hitler launched a ‘preventive war’ designed to prevent an eventual Soviet attack on European civilization dovetails with German propaganda after 1943, but seems most unlikely given recent research. The most likely explanation for the poor performance of the Red Army in 1941, as shocking as it may seem for a nation’s defense forces, was that it was caught unprepared to fight defensive warfare; to put it simply, the Red Army was not prepared for an invasion.

As the German armed forces swept into the Soviet Union they were engaged not only in the traditional tasks associated with all invasion forces, such as seizing bridges, strong points, and destroying the enemy’s ability to resist, but also with political goals which originated within the racist ideology of both Hitler and the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. In particular, the army was to assist special units under Himmler’s control. These special forces, or Einsatzgruppen, were tasked by Himmler with locating and eliminating potential sources of trouble behind the front lines through mass shootings, especially of captured Communist party officials, but also male civilian Jews who had committed no offense, wore no uniform, and were not Communist party members. The army was responsible for ensuring that these units, which numbered a few thousand men in total, not only had access to the facilities and equipment necessary to carry out their assignments but ensuring that regular army units in no way interfered with the completion of their tasks. As the armored spearheads sliced through the Soviet countryside they were closely followed by these murder squads everywhere along the front (each army group had been assigned its own task force). Earlier in the year Hitler had explained to his top generals that this was to be a war of ‘annihilation’ and that the army was expected to carry out its part in the ‘great tasks’ which lay ahead. Thus the mass murders which took place during the summer and fall of 1941 did so in the presence and with the complicity of the German armed forces; the brutal massacre of over 30 000 Jews at Kiev in September, 1941, must therefore be seen within the context of the rapid and broad advance of the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union; German military victories made such brutality possible. Until recently the link between military operations and the activities of the murder squads has been de-emphasized, but the two must be seen as two sides of the same coin: total racial and political war against the peoples of the USSR.

The battles fought to achieve this racial victory have given rise to controversies of their own. The idea that at certain stages of the war German victory was still possible has led to the conception of ‘turning points’ moments when German victory was snatched away by defeat, often through massive Soviet offensives. The battle for Stalingrad has played a central role in this concept largely because up to that point the Germans appeared to be winning the war. But therein lies the trouble with the idea of turning points: if Stalingrad really was the turning point of the war, then what is the significance of the grievous defeat before Moscow during 1941–42? Was that battle a turning point? What criteria should be used in determining whether a battle was a turning point, and could there have been multiple turning points? If so, does this not devalue the concept to the point of meaninglessness? The question over which battle was the precise moment when the war was lost for the Germans is unanswerable and can lead only to sterile debate about inconsequential issues. Recently a more balanced view has been adopted wherein there is the explicit recognition that a myriad of contingent historical forces were at play which no contemporary could sort through (and, indeed, which is proving difficult to analyze more than 60 years later). Perhaps there were no turning points because the Germans never really had a chance for a clear-cut victory. It could be that the best outcome for the Germans all along would have been some kind of partial strategic victory which might have given Hitler the political space he needed to negotiate a peace settlement (an extremely unlikely scenario given his opinions). The nature of a possible German victory, whether partial or total, has long dominated studies of the war. By 1944, however, most observers recognize that there was no longer any hope of German victory, even a negotiated one, as German forces simply began to disintegrate in the face of several major and concerted Soviet offensives all along the front.

One of the more active research topics has been the history of resistance movements in eastern Europe, in particular the role played by partisans in the final Soviet victory. The debate over whether or not they made significant contributions to the war effort, or in fact became merely an exercise in Soviet propaganda, is a debate which will never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. Did the partisans contribute to final victory or cause additional casualties which might have been avoided had the Germans not feared for their lives and supply lines behind the front? The partisan war, which looms large in recent historiography, is an important element in explaining both the level of violence and the German failure to erect adequate security measures behind the front lines. This omission is thus indicative of larger German failures in the east, as it is a reflection of the overall German failure to prepare adequately for the type of total war they had both envisioned and planned from the very beginning.

In glaring contrast to the humiliating defeats inflicted upon the Red Army during the first two years of the war, the last two witnessed outstanding feats of Soviet arms. The contrast between the hapless Soviet armies crushed at Kiev in 1941 and the hapless German armies crushed in Minsk in June, 1944 can hardly be more dramatic; by the summer of 1944 the Soviets practiced an outstanding version of an operational art of warfare far beyond German capabilities to either emulate or counter. The development of this Soviet juggernaut, aimed right at the heart of Germany and determined to destroy the ‘fascist beast,’ had a profound impact upon the political development of post-war Europe and the world. No longer could the power of the Soviet Union be dismissed as of little value; one of the ironies of the war of the Eastern Front is that it made the Soviet Union one of the post-war arbiters of world affairs. The war, in other words, brought the USSR into play as an international actor for the first time in its history, and its results continue to reverberate throughout the world today.

The war on the Eastern Front was, and remains, without parallel in world history. It claimed the lives of tens of millions and left major Soviet cities in ruins. At once a racial war, a political war, and a war for European empire, it consumed more material resources than any before and left both physical and political scars which have still not fully healed. To the loss of lives must be added the destruction of property, economies, and political systems across eastern Europe. That such a world-shattering event occurred boggles the imagination, and the purpose of this volume is not only to explain how and why it happened, but to examine the historical circumstances surrounding it to determine its historical significance.

Plate 10 The victorious Soviet generals

1

The Background

The Origins of the War on the Eastern Front

At 03:00 on the morning of 22 June 1941, German aircraft began bombing Soviet airfields and communications sites all along their common border from the Baltic to the Black seas. The bombing, which was ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Maps
• List of Plates
• Chronology
• Who’s Who
• Glossary
• Maps
• Part One: Analysis
• Part Two: Documents
• Further Reading
• References
• Index