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Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941
The German Advance, The Encirclement Battle, and the First and Second Soviet Counteroffensives, 10 July-24 August 1941
David Glantz
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Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941
The German Advance, The Encirclement Battle, and the First and Second Soviet Counteroffensives, 10 July-24 August 1941
David Glantz
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The first half of a two-part study on Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan to invade Soviet Russia during World War II, and what went wrong. At dawn on 10 July 1941, massed tanks and motorized infantry of German Army Group Center's Second and Third Panzer Groups crossed the Dnepr and Western Dvina Rivers, beginning what Hitler and most German officers and soldiers believed would be a triumphal march on Moscow, the Soviet capital. Less than three weeks before, on 22 June Hitler had unleashed his Wehrmacht's massive invasion of the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa, which sought to defeat the Soviet Red Army, conquer the country, and unseat its Communist ruler, Josef Stalin. Between 22 June and 10 July, the Wehrmacht advanced up to 500 kilometers into Soviet territory, killed or captured up to one million Red Army soldiers, and reached the western banks of the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, by doing so satisfying the premier assumption of Plan Barbarossa that the Third Reich would emerge victorious if it could defeat and destroy the bulk of the Red Army before it withdrew to safely behind those two rivers. With the Red Army now shattered, Hitler and most Germans expected total victory in a matter of weeks. The ensuing battles in the Smolensk region frustrated German hopes for quick victory. Once across the Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, a surprised Wehrmacht encountered five fresh Soviet armies. Quick victory eluded the Germans. Instead, Soviet forces encircled in Mogilev and Smolensk stubbornly refused to surrender, and while they fought on, during July, August, and into early September, first five and then a total of seven newly mobilized Soviet armies struck back viciously at the advancing Germans, conducting multiple counterattacks and counterstrokes, capped by two major counteroffensives that sapped German strength and will. Despite immense losses in men and materiel, these desperate Soviet actions derailed Operation Barbarossa. Smarting from countless wounds inflicted on his vaunted Wehrmacht, even before the fighting ended in the Smolensk region, Hitler postponed his march on Moscow and instead turned his forces southward to engage "softer targets" in the Kiev region. The "derailment" of the Wehrmacht at Smolensk ultimately became the crucial turning point in Operation Barbarossa. This groundbreaking study, now significantly expanded, exploits a wealth of Soviet and German archival materials, including the combat orders and operational of the German OKW, OKH, army groups, and armies and of the Soviet Stavka, the Red Army General Staff, the Western Main Direction Command, the Western, Central, Reserve, and Briansk Fronts, and their subordinate armies to present a detailed mosaic and definitive account of what took place, why, and how during the prolonged and complex battles in the Smolensk region from 10 July through 10 September 1941. The structure of the study is designed specifically to appeal to both general readers and specialists by a detailed two-volume chronological narrative of the course of operations, accompanied by a third volume and a fourth, containing archival maps and an extensive collection of specific orders and reports translated verbatim from Russian. The maps, archival and archival-based, detail every stage of the battle.
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Introduction: Plan Barbarossa, Opposing Forces and the Border Battles 22 Juneâ1 July 1941
Plan Barbarossa
When Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany, began planning Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1940, Germany had been at war for almost a full year. Before the Second World War began on 3 September 1939, the German FĂźhrerâs diplomatic and military audacity had exploited his foesâ weaknesses and timidity, producing victories that belied the true strength of the German Wehrmacht [Armed Forces].1 Defying the victor countries of the First World War, in March 1936 Hitler renounced the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, which had ended the war. Then, in rapid succession, Germanyâs fledgling armies reoccupied the Rhineland in the same month, annexed Austria in March 1938, dismembered Czechoslovakia in fall 1938 and early 1939, annexed the city of Memelâ in March 1939, and invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, all but the latter bloodlessly and with tacit Western approval. By mid-1939 perceived British and French âappeasementâ of Hitler at the Munich Conference finally convinced Josef Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union, that the Western powers were simply encouraging Hitlerâs ambitions to extend German dominance toward the East. This, in turn, prompted Stalin to negotiate a cynical non-aggression treaty with Hitler in August 1939, the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact, whose provisions divided Poland and much of the remainder of Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union and granted Stalin his desired âbufferâ zone with a potentially hostile Germany.
Once the Second World War began, Hitlerâs armies quickly conquered its half of Poland in September 1939, occupied Denmark and invaded Norway in April 1940, and vanquished the Westâs most respected armies and occupied Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and France in May and June 1940, driving the British Expeditionary Army from the continent at Dunkirk in utter defeat. Protected by its formidable moat, the English Channel, and its vaunted High Seas Fleet, Britain survived Hitlerâs vicious and sustained air attacks during the ensuing Battle of Britain from September 1940 through June 1941, but only barely.
It was indeed ironic yet entirely characteristic that military failure in the Battle of Britain would inspire Hitler to embark on his Crusade against Soviet Bolshevism. Even though German defeat in the skies during the Battle of Britain frustrated his plans to invade the British Isles in Operation Sea Lion, Hitler reverted to his characteristic audacity. Inspired by his armyâs unprecedented string of military successes, he set out to achieve the ambitious goal he had articulated years before in his personal testament Mein Kampf [My Struggle], the acquisition of the âliving spaceâ [lebensraum] to which he believed the German people were historically and racially entitled. Conquest of the Soviet Union would yield that essential living space and, at the same time, would also rid the world of the scourge of Bolshevism.
Militarily, a German ground invasion and conquest of the Soviet Union was a formidable task. The Wehrmacht had achieved its previous military successes in East-Central and Western Europe, relatively small theaters of operations that were crisscrossed by a well-developed communications network. It had done so by employing so-called Blitzkrieg [lightning war] tactics, employing armies spearheaded by highly-mobile and maneuverable panzer and motorized forces, supported by dense waves of ground attack (Stuka â assault) aircraft to defeat large but essentially immobile forces of France, Great Britain, and Belgium, which were completely unsuited to counter or endure these sorts of tactics and whose parent governments lacked the will to fight and risk replicating the carnage of the First World War.
Hitlerâs conquest of the Soviet Union was an entirely different matter. Although German military planners began contingency planning for an invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940, Hitler did not issue Directive 21 for âFall [Case or Operation] Barbarossaâ until 18 December 1940. Once fully developed in separate plans and orders prepared by the Wehrmachtâs service arms in early 1941, Plan Barbarossa required the Wehrmacht to defeat the largest standing military force in the world and ultimately advance to a depth of up to 1,750 kilometers along a front stretching for over 1,800 kilometers from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea. In addition to being larger than all of Western and Central Europe, the eastern theater of military operations was also an underdeveloped theater lacking the dense and efficient road and rail network so characteristic of the West. Nonetheless, Hitler and his senior military planners assumed that Blitzkrieg tactics would produce quick resolution of the conflict and planned accordingly.
The overriding assumption of Plan Barbarossa was that Stalinâs Bolshevik Soviet Union would indeed collapse if and when the Wehrmacht destroyed the Red Armyâs forces deployed in the Soviet Unionâs border military districts, that is, when German forces reached the line of the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers. Hitler himself noted at his final planning conference on 5 December 1940 that the Red Army would likely collapse faster than the French Army had collapsed in 1940.2 During the same planning conference, Hitler also clearly stated his preference for orienting the Barbarossa campaign on the destruction of the Red Army rather than achievement of specific terrain or political objectives when he declared:
The mass of the [Red] army stationed in Western Russia is to be destroyed in bold operations involving deep penetrations by armored spearheads, and the withdrawal of elements capable of combat into the extensive Russian land spaces is to be prevented. By means of rapid pursuit a line is then to be reached from beyond which the Russian air force will no longer be capable of attacking the German home territories.
Consequently, the [central] army group aiming toward Moscow was to be made strong enough to be able to pivot northward with substantial forces⌠A decision whether or not to advance on Moscow or to an area east of Moscow could not be made until after the destruction of the Russian masses trapped in the anticipated northern and southern pockets. The cardinal point was the Russians must not be permitted to establish a rear defense position.3
The German Army High Commandâs [Oberkommando des Heeres â OKH] final amendment to Directive No. 21, which it prepared on 31 January 1941, accurately reflected Hitlerâs strategic intentions:
3. Concept. The first and foremost intention of the High Command of the Ground Forces, in accordance with the objectives articulated above, is to chop up the front of the Russian Armyâs main forces concentrated in the western parts of Russia by rapid and powerful blows by mobile groups and, by exploiting this penetration, destroy the broken up groups of enemy forces.
South of the Pripiat Marshes, Army Group South, under the command of General Field Marshal Rundstedt, by exploiting the decisive attacks of powerful panzer formations from the Lublin region, will cut off Soviet forces located in Galicia and Western Ukraine from their communications on the Dnepr, seize crossings across the Dnepr River in the vicinity of Kiev and to the south, and, in that fashion, secure free maneuver for the resolution of subsequent missions in cooperation with forces operating to the north or fulfill new missions in southern Russia.
Army Group South, under the command of General Field Marshal von Bock, will attack north of the Pripiat Marshes. By introducing powerful panzer formations into combat, it will carry out a penetration from the Warsaw and Suwalki region in the direction of Smolensk and then turn the panzer forces to the north and, in cooperation with Army Group North (General Field Marshal von Leeb), attacking from East Prussia in the general direction toward Leningrad, will destroy Soviet forces located in the Baltic region. Then the forces of Army Group North and the mobile forces of Army Group Center, together with the Finnish Army and German forces transferred from Norway for this purpose, will finally deprive the enemy of his last defensive possibilities in the northern part of Russia. As a result of these operations, freedom of maneuver will be secured for the fulfillment of subsequent missions in cooperation with German forces attacking in the southern part of Russia.
In the event of surprise and the complete destruction of Russian forces in the north of Russia, the turn to the north will fade away and the question about an immediate advance on Moscow can ariseâŚ
Only by such means will we be able to stand in the way of a timely withdrawal by enemy forces and destroy them west of the Dnepr and Western Dvina River lines.4
To achieve this victory, the German military planners sought to annihilate the bulk of the peacetime Red Army in the forward area, that is, the Soviet Unionâs western military districts, before Stalinâs state could mobilize its large pool of strategic reserves. The German OKH planned to do so by orchestrating a series of dramatic encirclement battles inside the Soviet Unionâs new western frontier.
To destroy the Red Army, Hitler massed 151 German divisions (including 19 panzer and 15 motorized infantry divisions) in the East and equipped them with an estimated 3,350 tanks, 7,200 artillery pieces, and 2,770 aircraft.5 The Finnish government promised to support Operation Barbarossa with a force totaling 14 divisions, and the Romanians offered to contribute four divisions and six brigades to the effort, backed up by another nine divisions and two brigades.6 The German OKH, which controlled all Axis forces in the Eastern Theater, organized these forces into an Army of Norway, which was to operate in far northern Scandinavia, and three German army groups (designated North, Center, and South), which included four powerful panzer groups and three supporting air fleets, deployed across a broad front extending from the Baltic Sea southward to the Black Sea.
Plan Barbarossa required Bockâs Army Group Center, which included German Fourth and Ninth Armies and Second and Third Panzer Groups, supported by Second Air Fleet, to conduct the Wehrmachtâs main offensive thrust. Spearheaded by its two panzer groups, which were to advance precipitously eastward along the flanks of the Belostok salient, Bockâs forces were to conduct the campaignâs first major envelopment operation in the Minsk region, destroy the encircled Red Army forces, and then proceed eastward through Smolensk to Moscow. Operating to the north, Leebâs Army Group North, which included German Sixteenth and Eighteenth Armies and Fourth Panzer Group, supported by First Air Fleet, was to advance from East Prussia through the Soviet Unionâs Baltic Republics to capture Leningrad. On the southern wing of the Barbarossa offensive, Rundstedtâs Army Group South was to advance eastward from southern Poland and northeastward from northern Romania to seize Kiev and the Soviet Ukraine. This army group consisted of German Sixth and Seventeenth Armies and First Panzer Group operating north of the Carpathian Mountains and a combined German-Romanian command formed from German Eleventh and parts of Romanian Third and Fourth Armies operating south of the Carpathians. The Fourth Air Fleet was to provide air support to Army Group South. Thus, the mass of German offensive power was located north of the Pripiatâ Marshes, the almost-impassible swampy region that divided the theater into distinct northern and southern halves.
The plan for Operation Barbarossa sought to exploit the Soviet Unionâs lack of adequate communications route, that is, roads and railroads extending laterally across the front as well as into the depths, by employing panzer forces, rapidly advancing cross country, to encircle and destroy Red Army forces in the forward area before they could regroup from one sector to another or withdraw eastward to escape encirclement and destruction. In this fashion, planners believed the three German army groups could destroy most of the peacetime Red Armyâs force in their forward defensive positions before mobilized reinforcements could reach the forward area. However, this belief proved to be incorrect because German intelligence overestimated the number of Red Army divisions concentrated in the forward area and was totally ignorant of Soviet mobilization capabilities, specifically, the quantity of reserve armies the Soviet Union could raise and deploy forward into new defensive positions east of the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers.
According to the Barbarossa Plan, once the Wehrmacht won the battle of the frontiers (in Soviet terms, the border battles) and destroyed the Red Armyâs forces in the forward area, the three German army groups could advance northeastward and eastward relatively unhindered, with Army Group North heading toward Leningrad, Army Group Center marching against Moscow, and Army Group South pushing on to Kiev. Thus, from its inception, Plan Barbarossa anticipated its three army groups would be able to seize all three of Hitlerâs most vital objectives virtually simultaneously and without dangerously dissipating the Wehrmachtâs military strength.
Soviet War Planning: Defense Plan-41 (DP-41) and the âAnsweringâ Strike
Ironically, the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-Aggression Pact, which Stalin negotiated with Hitler in August 1939, actually contributed to the catastrophic defeat the Red Army suffered during the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa. By signing the infamous pact, Stalin hoped to forestall possible German aggression against the Soviet Union and, while doing so, create a âbufferâ or security zone by seizing eastern Poland and the Baltic States. However, the subsequent Soviet invasion and occupation of eastern Poland in September 1939 and the Baltic States in the fall of 1940 brought the Soviet Union into direct contact with German-occupied territory. This, in turn, compelled Stalinâs government to reevaluate potential strategic military threats to the Soviet Union and adjust its war, defense, and mobilization plans accordingly. In short, by July 1940, the Soviet Union assessed Germany as its most likely future strategic opponent, and the Red Army General Staff identified Hitlerâs Wehrmacht as the most dangerous military threat to Stalinâs Communist state. Based on its analysis, when preparing its defense plan, the Red Army General Staff, then headed by its chief, Marshal of the Soviet Union Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov designated the region north of the Pripiatâ River and its adjacent marshes as the most likely axis of any future German military aggression.7 Stalin, however, disagreed with Shaposhnikovâs assumptions and, in October 1940, insisted the General Staff prepare a new plan based on his assumption that, if Hitler attacked, the Wehrmacht would likely strike south of the Pripiatâ Marshes to seize the economically vital region of the Ukraine.8 With minor modifications, the October variant of the defense plan became the basis for the Soviet Unionâs Mobilization Plan (MP) 41 and associated war plans, specifically, State Defense Plan 1941 (DP-41).
Mandated by Stalin and prepared in early 1941 by Army General Georgii Konstantinovich Zhukov, who was appointed chief of the General Staff in January 1941, the provisions of DP 41 were based on the cardinal assumption that âthe Red Army would begin military operations in response to an aggressive attack.â9 Alth...