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Home , Blitzkrieg, June 1941, Operation Barbarossa, Western Front (RSFSR)

By John T. Correll

n the spring of 1941, the nonag- gression pact between and the was 18 months old and wearing thin. The warning signs were abundant. The made little effort to conceal their massive buildupI of forces or their daily reconnais- sance flights across the border. At least two intelligence reports, one from a German army deserter and the other from a secret agent, accurately forecast the exact day and hour for the coming German of . The Soviet Embassy in obtained a copy of a German-Russian phrase book for soldiers with such useful lines as, “Hands up or I shoot!” Soviet dictator dismissed the warnings. He did not believe his nomi- nal ally, , would risk opening a second front in the east while Germany photo was still engaged against Britain in the

62 Magazine / June 2016 German soldiers unload a Junker Ju 52 transport, lugging the supplies on sleds through the . Anticipating a quick victory, the Germans were not prepared for the brutality of a .

west. To avoid provoking Hitler, Stalin HITLER LOOKS EAST Foiled by German failure in the gave orders not to fire on the reconnais- Hitler’s plans to conquer Russia were of Britain in 1940, Hitler resumed his sance overflights. The border guards were of long standing and well known. In Mein determination to invade and exploit eastern not reinforced, nor were they put on alert. Kampf in 1925, he laid claim to “the “soil and Russia. The plan was called Thus the Russians were taken by and territory” of “Russia and her border —“Red Beard”—the surprise when the Germans launched states” as “living space” for Germans nickname of Germanic Emperor Frederick their invasion before dawn on June after the regular occupants were evicted. I who hammered the in the 12th 22, 1941. Three German army groups, He repeated his intentions periodically. century. preceded by bombers and The nonaggression pact of August Hitler disagreed with his generals, fighters, surged with ease through 1939 was a temporary arrangement of who proposed to take as soon the sluggish Soviet defenses. Within expediency for both sides. It let Hitler as possible. In addition to its political a month, they had pushed 450 miles concentrate on subjugating western Eu- value, Moscow was the hub of Russian into Russian territory. rope without worrying about the eastern transportation and communications lines. Hitler believed the , which front. Stalin gained time to rebuild the Hitler thought it more important to secure he named Operation Barbarossa, would , badly depleted by the agricultural and industrial areas of the lead to victory over the Soviet Union his own political purges of the and the Baltic. Hitler’s opinion within a few months. observ- in 1937. prevailed, of course. ers in the and Britain A secret protocol to the pact divided up Fuhrer Directive 21 on Dec. 18, 1940, likewise predicted a Russian defeat. into German and Russian called for three army groups to push to- In actuality, Hitler had just made spheres of influence. Hitler and Stalin ward Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev—but the biggest of his numerous military each took a share of . The Soviet Moscow was a secondary objective. When mistakes. Union annexed the Baltic states. the army group in the center reached

AIR FORCE Magazine / June 2016 63 German Federal Archives photo by Arthur Grimm German Federal Archives photo by Johnnes Hahle

Clockwise from left: A single-seat Il-2 Stur- movik assault aircraft at an airfield in Russia in 1941-42; German soldiers on Panzer at the beginning of the Eastern campaign in ; a German soldier examines a dead Russian soldier in front of a burn- ing Russian BT-7 light tank during the early days of Operation Barbarossa.

Once the invasion force entered the Soviet Union, the front would spread out rapidly like an expanding fan. However, the Germans did not want all of Russia. They intended to stop well before reach- ing the Urals, along a new line that would extend some 2,000 miles from Archangel to . They regarded the expanse of Asia beyond there as a wasteland. Neither side was yet settled into fortifi- cations on the new border, but throughout the first half of 1941, the Germans steadily moved troops, tanks, and forward , its panzers would split off north Russian air force and support the German into Poland and East . and south to join the assault on ground forces. The directive specified In a single month between April and and Leningrad. that the Soviet would not June, the Luftwaffe violated Soviet air- There would be plenty of time to be attacked until the main operation was space 180 times to fly reconnaissance worry about Moscow after victory on completed. missions over the Russian defenses. Stalin the northern and southern flanks. The raised no objection. planners assumed a campaign of six to LINES ON THE MAP Stalin wanted to delay an armed con- eight weeks, four months at most. Winter The division of spoils in 1939 had a frontation with Hitler as long as he could, clothing was ordered for less than a third significant side effect: The buffer zone but eternally suspicious, he also imagined of the invasion force. that had previously separated Russia the British were feeding him misleading Barbarossa was timed to begin on and Germany was eliminated. Now information in order to draw Russia into the shortest night of the year, to allow they faced each other directly over a the . the invasion force as much daylight as new border that ran for more than 1,000 By late June, the Germans had as- possible. In the early phase of the opera- miles from the Baltic to the sembled about three million troops, ac- tion, the Luftwaffe was to neutralize the and that bisected Poland. counting for about 80 percent of their

64 AIR FORCE Magazine / June 2016 The Red Army had 23,000 tanks. The Soviet Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily, or VVS, was the world’s largest air force. It had about 20,000 , but the vast major- ity of them were obsolete, many of them old biplanes. The Soviet forces were raw and disorga- nized. In 1939-40, they had been severely battered in an unsuccessful attempt to overwhelm little , even though the Russians committed three times as many soldiers and 30 times as many airplanes as the Finns did. When Operation Barbarossa began, the Russians had about half of their active ground forces stationed in the west, facing the Germans. The rest were in and the Far East. Of the 70 VVS air divisions, 48 were on the Western Front, many of them based near the border, within easy reach for a strike by the Luftwaffe. The Germans had the sturdy Panzer III tank, the superb Bf 109 fighter, the Ju 87 Stuka, the Bf 110, Ju 88, and He 111 German Federal Archives photo by Albert Cusian army, in position to strike. The Russians medium bombers, and excellent leaders at German soldiers push a car stuck in the had about the same number of forces in the all levels. They had no long-range bomb- mud in October 1941. Snowfall followed by four military districts facing the German ers, but the main deficiency was that their rain made progress on the dirt roads slow front, but this rough numerical parity was logistics infrastructure could not cope with for the Germans. In November, heavy began, and temperatures plummeted to 52 offset by the German advantage in quality. the distances and conditions the Germans degrees below zero. Most German troops The German Schwerpunkt, or strategic would encounter in Russia. did not have winter gear. “heavy point,” was in the center, where Col. Gen. and his Panzer INVASION detonate the demolition charges on the Group 2 stood on the banks of the Barbarossa opened at precisely 3:15 bridges. The Germans broke through ev- River east of , waiting to lead the a.m. on with an artillery bombard- erywhere, pushing the Russian divisions attack. They were only 700 miles from ment by 6,000 guns. Concurrently, the first aside, capturing thousands of soldiers, and Moscow. wave of German troops surged across the disrupting telephone and telegraph lines. border. Thirty Luftwaffe bombers with Stalin did not clear the Soviet fighters THE LAST crews specially trained for night opera- to take off until the was Operation Barbarossa was based on tions struck at 10 selected Soviet airfields. four hours old. The VVS fought fiercely faith in blitzkrieg and contempt for the At sunrise, at 4:10 a.m., the Luftwaffe in scattered instances. Nineteen times that Russians. The Germans had introduced launched in strength. Five hundred high- day, Russian pilots rammed their aging blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” in their vic- level bombers, 270 dive bombers, and aircraft into German bombers. Neverthe- tories in western Europe, using the shock 480 fighters, swept in ahead of the ground less, by nightfall 1,800 Soviet aircraft had effect of coordinated panzers, motorized forces. Among their targets were 66 been destroyed, more than half of them , and aircraft—especially Ju 87 Russian airfields, where they found the on the ground. Stuka dive bombers—to blow away the airplanes parked out in the open, close Within a few days, the Luftwaffe had opposing forces in their path. together in neat rows. established undisputed and In the Barbarossa invasion, the Germans The attack took the Soviets by surprise before the end of the month, had destroyed would employ blitzkrieg for one last time and there was no coordinated resistance. 4,614 Russian aircraft. What had been the in II, counting on their combat Stalin did not believe reports of the attack world’s largest air force was no longer a experience and superior technology to and was slow to react. It was 7:15 a.m. factor in the ongoing battle. prevail over the sheer Russian numbers. before he gave the first order to resist, On , Hitler arrived at his forward The greatest military resource of the stipulating even then that Soviet ground command post near Rastenburg in East Soviet Union was its huge population, troops were not to cross the border without Prussia to direct the invasion. which provided almost limitless manpower specific authorization. He did not declare All four of the Soviet armies facing for the Red Army. In 1941, the Soviet a general counteroffensive until 9:15 p.m., the German center were encircled and forces had 5.5 million men under arms fully 18 hours after the invasion began. defeated. In two months, the Red Army with a reserve of 14 million available for On the central front, the panzers crossed lost 700,000 soldiers killed or wounded mobilization. the Bug River before the Russians could and almost a million taken prisoner. The

AIR FORCE Magazine / June 2016 65 Photo via Ria Novosti

Germans had advanced 500 miles and Clockwise from above: A German sol- dier surrenders to a Russian soldier in controlled the western part of the Soviet November 1941; German soldiers dig out Union. a Panzer tank stuck deep in the snow in ;Yak-1 aircraft, such as this one, were stripped of their wheels and DIVERSION outfitted with skis to better take off and By the middle of July, the Germans land in the harsh Russian winter. were 200 miles from Moscow with only a weak blocking force in front of 1941 than they did in 1940, and they them. Hitler’s generals beseeched him had not replaced all of their losses from to press on, but he would not hear of it. the . Instead, he reinforced the earlier The Russian policy plan, requiring the panzer groups to left nothing behind for the Germans break off the advance toward Moscow to use. The supply lines were longer and join the assault on Leningrad in the now, and more dependent on primitive north and the of the Ukraine roads. The Luftwaffe often flew from surprise of the Germans and the rest of and to the south. “My gener- dirt airstrips while the VVS had the use the world, they managed an astounding als know nothing about the economic of better fields around Moscow. recovery in a very short time. aspects of war,” Hitler said. On Oct. 2, Hitler ordered resumption By some estimates, the Red Army Hitler did permit the bombing of of the offensive on Moscow in Opera- lost almost five million men during Moscow, but the Luftwaffe did not fly tion Typhoon, a separately designated Operation Barbarossa. By any count, many missions and most of them con- operation within Barbarossa. The ad- the peacetime force was virtually eradi- sisted of fewer than 10 aircraft each. vancing Germans inflicted punishing cated in the first three months, but The effect was negligible. defeats on the Soviet forces between Stalin rebuilt it in record time through The diversion to the flanks was enor- them and Moscow but the diversion to redeployments and mobilization. mously successful in the short term. In the flanks had consumed two months. The most immediate source of fresh September, the Germans laid to The Germans had allotted four troops was the Russian army in the Far Leningrad and captured Kiev, where the months for Operation Barbarossa. The East, on guard against the Japanese. For- Russians sustained losses of 616,000 timeline was running behind and winter tunately for Stalin, a Soviet-Japanese killed or captured. Entire Soviet field was coming on. Through October, the neutrality pact signed in 1941 still held. armies ceased to exist. had suffered 686,000 casu- The Japanese, focused on their expan- However, Operation Barbarossa had alties, the Luftwaffe readiness rate had sion in the Pacific, were not ready to begun to take its toll on the Germans. plummeted, and the panzer divisions come to the aid of their German allies. Their since 1939 had focused were at 35 percent of required strength. Stalin brought half of the Soviet Far on short, intensive campaigns. Logistics East forces to augment the defense of was a blind spot. The Germans were RUSSIA REBOUNDS Moscow and formed new reserve armies poorly prepared to sustain or replenish Stalin and the Russians were not by mobilization. In December, the Red their forces in extended engagements. as clumsy or as dull-witted as they Army was back to full strength. Russian They manufactured fewer airplanes in may have seemed earlier. To the utter soldiers, motivated by the attack on

66 AIR FORCE Magazine / June 2016 and most were lost in the first days of fight- official refusals and insisted on warm ing. New production enabled the effective clothing for his airmen. Belatedly, over- use of the Yak-1 in the battle for Moscow. coats were ordered for the ground forces The Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack air- and shipped to rear echelon railheads in craft made its combat debut at the battle Russia. Few of them reached the fighting for in June 1941. The single-engine front before winter took hold. Il-2 was often called “the flying tank” be- The staggering German army got within cause it was so heavily armored that it was 10 miles of Moscow, close enough to see almost impervious to light the Kremlin with field glasses, but on the fire. It was adept at bombing the Germans morning of Dec. 5, the Russians launched from altitudes as low as 300 feet. their . The Panzer III was outclassed by the Additional Red Army troops arrived Russian T-34 tank, introduced in October. from Siberia in trains pulled by insulated It had sloping armor plates that deflected locomotives that held their steam in the German shells and a 76 mm gun that blew cold. Air superiority now belonged to big holes in the panzers. It also had wide the VVS, which had more than twice as tracks that rolled on top of the mud in many airplanes on the Moscow front as which the panzers bogged down. the Luftwaffe did. Recognizing the possibility that his WINTER entire force could be lost, Hitler on Dec. As Napoleon learned in 1812, Russian 8 issued Fuhrer Directive 39, declaring winters are severe. It was to the sheer bad that German forces around Moscow were luck of the Germans that the winter of to “halt immediately all large-scale offen- 1941-42 was the coldest of the century, sive operations and go on the defensive.” and it came early. Operation Barbarossa was over, five The first snow fell on Oct. 6. It melted months, two weeks, and two days after quickly but was followed by a stretch of it began. In that time, the Russians had heavy rainfall. The dirt roads turned to sustained four million casualties, the mud, slowing the advancement toward Germans one million. Tanks and aircraft Moscow to a crawl. November brought were lost by the tens of thousands, and colder weather, freezing the mud and the devastation was enormous to 400,000 allowing the German tanks and trucks to square miles of Soviet territory. move again. Hitler was not willing to give it up. Later that month, the temperature fell The army was permitted to withdraw to to 52 degrees below zero. “Water froze in fortified positions as rallying points, but their homeland, fought harder and the the boilers of railroad engines, oil froze the fight to dominate the Soviet Union increasingly went in their favor. in trucks, grease froze in guns, and the would continue. Industrial recovery was even more mechanized German army had to seek There were more battles to come in amazing. Prior to the invasion, most of the horses to hitch to its tanks,” said historian the Soviet Union, notably at Stalin- Soviet arms plants were in eastern Russia Nicholas Bethell. “Wounded foot soldiers grad, where Field Marshal Friedrich and the Ukraine. Between July and Novem- often died where they fell, not from their Paulus defied orders from Hitler and ber, 1,523 entire factories were stripped injuries but from shock and frostbite.” surrendered the German Sixth Army in down, transported, and reassembled in the Then came the snow, obliterating after it was cut off and safety of the Urals, Siberia, and Central landmarks, closing resupply routes, and surrounded. Asia. This incredible transfer required hampering aircraft takeoffs and landings. The Germans never regained the about 1.5 million rail cars. Rubber aircraft tires turned brittle in the hopes and expectations with which Aircraft production dropped during the cold. The Russian airfields, built for winter they had begun Operation Barbarossa. move, but within 90 days output had risen conditions, remained open. The Yak fight- They fell back, steadily and grudgingly, above the previous level. In the last half ers were painted white for camouflage pushed by the resurgent Red Army. of 1941, the Russians produced vastly and their wheels were replaced with skis. The remnants of the German armies more than the Germans Some of the Russian rifle battalions were on the Russian front made their last did—5,173 to 1,619. on skis as well. Wide-tread T-34 tanks rode stand in April 1945 on the Oder River, Development of new Russian on the crest of the snow. a few miles east of Berlin. That battle, systems started well before the invasion. The Luftwaffe gave thanks to Field which they lost, was the prelude to the Notable among these was the Yak-1 fighter, Marshal Erhard Milch, who had overcome German on May 7. J introduced in . It was nearly equal in speed, maneuverability, and fire- John T. Correll was editor in chief of Air Force Magazine for 18 years and is now a power to the Bf 109, but the VVS did not contributor. His most recent articles, “ Shoot” and “1946: The Year After the have many of them when the war started War,” appeared in the April issue.

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