June 22, 1941 - Operation Barbarossa:
Nazi Germany’s invasion of Soviet Union
Ravi Perera
“The German nation is sick of
principles and doctrines, literary existence and theoretical greatness.
What it wants is power, power and more power. And who ever gives it
power, to him will Germany give honour and more honour than he can ever
imagine” - Julius Frobel - 1859
When Adolf Hitler founded his third Reich most Germans believed they
had found their man of destiny. Humbled, despite their mighty efforts in
the First World
![](z_p10-Nazi-Germany01.jpg)
Adolf Hitler. Pic. courtesy: google |
War, suspecting betrayal by both external as well as internal forces,
their once strong and orderly country reduced to near anarchy, to many
Germans in 1933 the National Socialist Party of Hitler seemed like the
benediction the nation had prayed for.
By 1939 under Hitler the efficiency, abilities and the discipline of
the Germans had once again created a powerful nation with an awesome
military machine. The capable, martial race was armed and ready. Led by
its extraordinarily able General Staff, which both friend and foe
considered a ‘corps d’elite’, Hitler’s wehrmacht was easily the best
fighting machine in the world at the time. It was said of the German
officer class that they were “men of outstanding intellectual ability
and physical stamina, governed by a code of ascetic self-discipline.
Their strength lay in their complete self-effacement to the point of
anonymity. They were expected in times of peace to devote themselves
wholly to knowledge and education. In war, out standing bravery and
capability were demanded of them.”
Human conflict
As the war drums rolled across Europe the aggressive German Army
triumphed with surprising ease over once vaunted armies of Poland,
France and other European nations. In the case of the French, the enemy
in fact out numbered the Germans in many strategic aspects such as in
men and tanks. But in military thinking they seemed stuck in Napoleonic
times when the cavalry charge won the day. The Germans on the other hand
were ready for mobile warfare fought with mechanized armoured forces,
closely supported by deadly accurate air and artillery power. The French
were conquered in a few short weeks.
The British were never more thankful for the English Channel. After a
halfhearted attempt to subdue the stubborn island with air power alone,
Hitler turned his eyes to the East. The stage was now set for the
greatest human conflict in history.
The Soviet Union, the largest country in the world and which perhaps
maintained the biggest army at the time, was shrouded in mystery. The
Stalinist system did not provide statistics at information bureaus. But
it was obvious that in comparison to Western Europe it was poor and
primitive.
Soviet Union
The Soviet roads were not anything like what the motorized German
Army had used in Europe. There were very few all-weather roads in the
country proving a terrible obstacle in the bad Russian weather
conditions. And unlike other countries the Germans had vanquished in the
previous summers the Soviet Union was much too large to be brought under
in one aggressive dash.
But the German Army, full of confidence after its remarkable
achievements in the previous campaigns, had come to believe that nothing
was impossible for the German soldier. Addressing the higher echelons of
the army Hitler boastfully predicted that when Operation Barbarossa, the
name given to the German plan for the impending campaign against the
Soviet Union, commenced, “The world will hold its breath.” “One good
kick on the door and the entire rotten structure will collapse”, he
further emphasized his conviction that the Soviet Union was no match for
the proven, battle hardened German war machine.
This confidence was reflected in the astonishing fact that the German
Army launched the war against the Soviet Union where it was expected to
conquer an area of about one million square miles in one summer campaign
with just a few more divisions more than it had deployed in the previous
summer against France, a country of approximately 150,000 square miles.
![](z_p10-Nazi-Germany02.jpg)
The German Army entering the USSR. Pic. courtesy:
wwiiphotos.blogspot.com |
For the ‘good kick on the door’ the Germans gathered in secret almost
four million soldiers on the Russian border. Provided air cover by the
vigorous luftwaffe, supported by nearly four thousand pieces of heavy
artillery and most importantly given the cutting impetus by the
brilliantly led panzer divisions, the German Army’s campaign in the East
was indeed going to open with a breathtaking fury.
Military planners
In view of the immense land area it had to conquer with human
resources Germany could not afford to keep in uniform for too long, the
Wehrmacht had to gain a decisive result in that summer of 1941.With this
strategic goal in mind its military planners aimed at fatally wounding
the Red Army West of the Dnieper River. The Germans committing
themselves to a huge undertaking with a numerically weaker army with
limited resources were gambling on the skills and capabilities of its
soldiers to bring them a quick victory. For operational purposes they
divided their forces in to three large army groups.
The Army Group North under the command of Field Marshal von Leeb was
to capture the Baltic area and Leningrad. The Army Group Centre under
Field Marshal von Bock was to drive to Moscow through the Russian
heartland. Field Marshal von Rundstedt leading the Army Group South was
to bring the fertile Ukraine under its heel.
After a few nervous postponements the date for the opening of the
campaign was fixed for June 22, the same day that Napoleon, in 1812,
launched his ill-fated invasion of Russia. Starting their eastward
thrust at about 3.00 a.m. on that day the Germanic war machine once
again gave an almost flawless display of its awesome prowess.
Within forty-eight hours more than two thousand Russian fighter
planes were down. The German Panzer divisions exploiting the gaps
punched in the defensive barriers of the Russians by their opening
salvos drove on eastward relentlessly with the aim of achieving
strategic dominance, leaving the task of destroying the shocked and
confused stragglers of the enemy forces to the rapidly following
infantry divisions.
By mid-July, in just three weeks of fighting, Russians had lost 3,500
tanks, 6,000 planes and more than two million men. The famous German
tank commander General Heinz Guderian leading a powerful armoured corp
attached to the Army Group Centre noted in a memorandum that the
“Russians were severely hampered by political demands of the State
leadership and suffered a basic fear of taking responsibility.
This, combined with bad coordination meant that orders to carry out
necessary measures, counter-measures in particular, are issued too late.
Soviet tank forces were insufficiently trained and lacked intelligence
and initiative during the offensive”. In these early stages of the war
to many observers it appeared that the Wehrmacht had once again
delivered a death blow to a powerful adversary well before it could even
comprehend the attackers diabolical intentions.
Young soldiers
Although German propaganda portrayed the average Russian as a
semi-Asiatic primitive with sub-human qualities and no match in the
battle field to the masterful Teutons it did not take long for the
German soldiers to realize that in the Russian vastness they were facing
a fight to the death with this Slav/Mongol race. On that bloody
battlefield German skills confronted Russian stubbornness, the
attacker’s courage was met by the defenders recklessness and the
conquerors contempt was matched by the hatred of resisters. The Eastern
campaign that began so dazzlingly for the invader on June 22, 1941 raged
on in the mind-boggling hugeness of Russia until early 1945. The young
soldiers of the two nations were locked in a war of savagery on a scale
rarely witnessed in human conflict. Russia alone suffered more than 20
million deaths in those four years of relentless conflict.
Nazism and Communism, the ideologies professed by the two armies that
clashed with such bitterness in 1941, are dead in these countries today.
Germany has rebuilt and is one of the most prosperous nations on the
planet. Russia after her failed experiment with Communism is yet
struggling to find a place in world affairs that befits its size and
potential. But they both surely remember the four years when the best of
these two brave nations fought on a terrible battlefield and often died
a soldier’s death.
War is a terrible thing. Here in our little island we too learnt in
our long and bloody war against terrorism, the tragedy and the waste of
it all. But paradoxically, war often brings out some of the best
qualities in man. The titanic clash that began in that summer of 1941
demanded of the combatants, super human effort, amazing physical
endurance, boundless courage, iron discipline, selfless comradeship and
finally the unflinching sacrificing of one self. The stage and the human
actors of that bloody drama to this day inspire awe by its sheer scale,
intensity, wickedness and heroism.
“Two things have altered not, since first the world began, the beauty
of the wild green earth, and the bravery of man.” |