mmmmmm From the collection of the Frejinger " b t W P n San Francisco, California 2008 'WE MADE A MISTAKE"- HITLER ^^We Made A Mistake''— fliTLEi? RUSSIA'S SURPRISING DEFENSE AGAINST GERMANY By LUCIEN ZACHAROFF GROSSET & DUNLAP PtTBLISHERS NeW YoRK By arrangement with D. Appletcm-Century Co., Inc. COPYMGHT, 1941, BY D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publisher. \ LIBRARY JUN27 1967 UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC '^^^166990 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. "According to Plan'* 1 II. The Legendary Luftwaffe .... 11 III. The Red Am Force 19 IV. Here Come the Panzers 29 V. Russia's Mechanized Forces .... 38 VI. Cavalry in Modern War? .... 46 VII. Parachute Troops 53 VIII. Encirclement Was Never Like This . 59 IX. "Osoavlvkhim" ........ 73 X. The World's Most Literate Army . 83 XI. What, No Fifth Column? .... 94 XII. Poison Gas and Microbe Mobilization . 101 XIII. Industtod^l Potential 116 XIV. The Ukraine 123 XV. The Red Navy 135 XVI. If Japan Strikes 144 XVII. Stalin as a Military Leader . 152 XVIII. Three Soviet Marshals 171 XIX. Winter Warfare 191 XX. The Seeds of Hitler's Defeat . 197 "WE MADE A MISTAKE"- HITLER CHAPTER I "According to Plan" Seven years ago. Lieutenant Colonel Justrow, an out- standing brain-truster of the Nazi army, wrote: "Decisive success against a defense prepared for all eventualities is possible, if at all, only by a lightning surprise attack." The italics are mine. At 4 A.M. on June 22, 1941, the 'lightning surprise attack" was launched against Russia. German artillery opened up full blast. German mechanized units were hurled at the frontiers. LuftwaflFe bombers rained death on the Ukraine, Crimea, Lithuania. At 5.30 A.M., Count Von der Schulenberg, German Ambassador to Moscow, called on the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Molotoff, to "inform" him that Rus- sia's turn had come. It was the standardized formula of Blitzkrieg. The impact of the first attack was tremendous. It had been worked out to the most minute detail, rehearsed with loving care like the overture to a Wagner opera. The first blow was to send the Red Army staggering back, punch-drunk. The Russians were to be thrown off bal- 1 2 'We Made a Mistake^- Hitler ance at the start and remorselessly pressed from that moment on; they were never to be permitted a breath- ing spell, a chance to gather their strength. France, Poland, Jugo-Slavia, Greece, had taught them that all the Nazis needed was the systematic pressing of that initial advantage. By the time the Reds were ripe for the final blow, they would hardly know what had hit them. Commentators in London expressed the hope that the Russians would have sense enough to retreat be- hind the Urals while they still had an army with which to retreat. In Ankara, the German military attache said it would be all over within six weeks. In Germany, this opinion seemed conservative. Renter's reported Nazi opinions that "the campaign in Russia will be finished in ten to fifteen days." Soviet frontier detachments were forced to retreat. Great numbers of picked German divisions thrust a deep wedge into the U.S.S.R. German oflBcial com- muniques were lyrical. The magnitude and super- speed of this victory were going to amaze the world— a world that was already accustomed to being amazed. This was to be the bUtz of blitzes, the Wehrmacht's masterpiece. Then—something went wrong. Suddenly the word "sudden" disappeared from com- muniques emanating from the Fuehrer's headquarters. Instead, the orders of the day dealt more and more "According to Plan" 3 frequently with losses, and counseled better care of equipment and economy of fuel and ammunition. At the end of the first month of the struggle, Nazi headquarters claimed that the Soviet Army's last re- serves had been thrown into action, that their tanks and planes had been swept to the junk pile, and that the road to Moscow was open. At the end of the second month, a Berlin radio broadcast stated that 5,000,000 Russian soldiers had been put out of action, though the Russians were stubborn enough to deny this. In- teresting, if true. But not more interesting than the statement that followed. The German casualties, the speaker added, totalled less than a third of that 6,000,000 figure An interesting slip, in the light of Germany's later statements about casualties. An earlier Berlin broadcast—on July 30th—had al- ready pitched the German official statements in this strange new key. "Without smashing the enemy's strik- ing force," said the speaker, "territorial conquests mean nothing. The march on Moscow will give the German people nothing until the living military force of the enemy has been destroyed." The Finnish newspaper Uosi Suomi, taking the cue, said: "Not a single Finnish or German soldier should be sacrificed merely for achieving a speed record or to capture a few well-known places. One must make haste slowly." By the middle of August, an editorial titled "The 4 "We Made a Mistake'- Hitler Most Dangerous Enemy" in the Voelkischer Beo- bachter. Hitler's official organ, attempted to prove that he had never prophesied a hghtning war in the first place I By this time the German High Command realized how catastrophically it had underestimated the strength of the defense. Strict orders were issued to advancing contingents not to engage in serious action with strong defense centers, but to outflank them. Yet, as the Panzer formations rushed from one sector to another, immense casualties sapped their strength. Soviet bombers pounded them continuously. Gueril- las took heavy toll of them. Russian tank formations that were supposed to have been relegated to the junk-pile reappeared by magic. Nazi communiques complained of "new armies," "new equipment." Crack mechanized units under the most celebrated leadership were thrown into battle in the Smolensk and Nevel areas. There the ^lite of the Wehrmacht have been wiped out altogether, while other divisions, after losing more than half their strength, have been reorganized into regiments. Some German tank regi- ments have been transformed into ordinary infantry units that retain the "tank regiment" designation only by official grace. What of the Luftwaffe? In every previous cam- paign, it won quick mastery of the air. This time the *'According to Plan" 5 Red Air Force, after having been several times an- nihilated by commimiqu^s of the German High Com- mand, was still disputing for the skies wherever a Nazi squadron appeared, was impudently raiding German air fields and destroying their planes on the ground, was setting fire to the oil fields of Ploesti, and raining bombs on Berlin. In every previous campaign, the Nazis had clear superiority in man-power. Hitler hoped to achieve it in this campaign by crippling Russian communica- tions, striking a death blow before mobilization could be achieved. Here, too, something went wrong. Always before, parachutists had succeeded in spreading terror. To bewildered peasants they had seemed like demons dropping from Mars. In Russia, they proved about as terrifying and unfamiUar as a turnip. What of that good old reliable mainstay of Nazi- dom, the Fifth Column? Did Russia have none? No generals who would like to win that nice Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross? No guides and victualers to mechanized picnic parties? . Those uncouth Rus- sians, it seems, had shot them all. That Russia, too, has had serious set-backs, no one but a member of the Wishful Thinkers' League could deny. There would be no point in minimizing the im- portance of the Nazi penetration. If Krivoy Rog, Kiev, and the territory taken in the Leningrad area hadn't 6 "We Made a Mistake*— Hitler been considered important, they wouldn't have been defended. But, on a two-thousand-mile front, it was a fore- gone conclusion that the attacker, knowing where he was going to concentrate his greatest strength and having the advantage of surprise, would score some important gains—unless the defender had greater man- and machine-power, not merely in the aggre- gate, but at every point. Along so vast a fighting line, the technic of a feint at one point and a blow in full force at another becomes comparatively simple. In the first rounds of the fight, it isn't the potential strik- ing power of the defender that counts, but the force available at the point of attack, at the moment of attack. A strategy of retreat at the major points of pressure, with the fighting of delaying actions and localized counter-attacks such as those in the Smolensk area, was therefore indicated. In strategic retreats of pre- vious European campaigns, there was generally more retreat than strategy—necessarily so, because of the overwhelming Nazi weight of men and metal at the focal points. This was not true in Russia. The Rus- sians yielded no ground without first strewing it with the twisted wreckage of Nazi tanks and the bodies of Nazi troops, without first sending to the rear all sup- plies that could be moved and destroying what could not be moved. Full' advantage was taken of the reck- "According to Plan" 7 lessness of the German attack methods. Their dis- position to fling away hves and machines in headlong plunges into artillery fire was coolly exploited. Always before, this Nazi prodigality had meant economy for them in the long run. It had enabled them to crash through quickly to vital points, over- whelming and routing the defenders.