Why the operation Barbarossa?

James Stuart said:

I specifically didn't mention tanks for a reason . The T-34 was probably the best tank of the war. The Panzers tended to be too heavy. The French tanks were very good as well, but get no credit; it was the tactics used by the French that doomed them in 1940, not any technological infreriority.

I'm pretty sure Italian tanks really could be defeated by spearmen. They were that bad.

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French tanks were indeed in many ways very good, but at the same time they had some serious issues (which, interestingly enough, were shared with the T-34 prior to the /85 upgrade), and basically boil down to the actual useablity of the vehicle. They (and the T-34) had all the features that looked good on paper - well armed, well armoured etc. - but they were not easy for the crews to use effectively under operational conditions. The biggest flaw was the turrets, which in many of the French tanks were crewed by a single person, who thus had to single handedly manage loading, aiming and acting as tank commander, something that is nigh-impossible under the strain of battlefield conditions. Really, these three jobs should all be done by a seperate crewman. (the T-34 had two men in the turret, reducing the load but still causing significant issues in battle). Things like the lack of individual radios added to these flaws. German vehicles, while maybe less effective on paper, tended to be much more well designed from the crew's point of view, thus allowing them to be used to their full potential and making them very good machines in actual combat (at least up to the PzIV, everything after that was a waste of time, money and metal), which was probably just as significant as the training and doctrines that are oft quoted as the sources of the sucess of their armoured divisions early in the war.

I completely agree on the Italians though

PhroX said:

French tanks were indeed in many ways very good, but at the same time they had some serious issues (which, interestingly enough, were shared with the T-34 prior to the /85 upgrade), and basically boil down to the actual useablity of the vehicle. They (and the T-34) had all the features that looked good on paper - well armed, well armoured etc. - but they were not easy for the crews to use effectively under operational conditions. The biggest flaw was the turrets, which in many of the French tanks were crewed by a single person, who thus had to single handedly manage loading, aiming and acting as tank commander, something that is nigh-impossible under the strain of battlefield conditions. Really, these three jobs should all be done by a seperate crewman. (the T-34 had two men in the turret, reducing the load but still causing significant issues in battle). Things like the lack of individual radios added to these flaws.

I completely agree on the Italians though

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Tanks aren't really my specialty, so I'll have to look into that more. You're right, on paper the French look way superior to the Germans, but I wouldn't personally understand a thing about how to actually crew a tank. I assume you have three guys, one to drive, one to shoot, and one to tell the other two where to drive and shoot. Also, Indiana Jones hanging off the side.

I was under the impression that France and Britain had roughly the same ideas about how tanks should be used (in military theory) as the Germans, but elected to wait on implementing those theories until sufficiently good tanks were available.
Meanwhile, Germany pushed ahead with implementing those theories with generally mediocre tanks. And, well, we all know what happened to France.

(Oh, and basically my entire knowledge of WWII tactics come from Jonathan House's Combined Arms Warfare in the 20th Century, for what it is worth.)

James Stuart said:

Tanks aren't really my specialty, so I'll have to look into that more. You're right, on paper the French look way superior to the Germans, but I wouldn't personally understand a thing about how to actually crew a tank. I assume you have three guys, one to drive, one to shoot, and one to tell the other two where to drive and shoot. Also, Indiana Jones hanging off the side.

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Generally (at least for WW2 era vehicles), you want at least 4 in a tank: 1 to drive, 1 to aim and fire the main gun, 1 to load the main gun (so the gunner can focus on where the next shot is going) and 1 (the commander) to tell them what to do, observe the surrounding area and call targets. As well as the gunner and loader, the commander also needs to be in the turret so he can properly maintain battlefield awareness.

If there's the room, having someone to operate the radio is a good thing to have too, but that can be done by one of the others if neccesary.

Some tanks (such as the T-34/76) had 4 people, but traded either the loader or gunner (I always forget which on the T-34, much to my shame, as I've been reminded many times) for a radioman (who was in the hull of the tank, not the turret), with the result that the tank commander had to double up on his roles, and that was a real issue for things like the aforementionned battlefield awareness. It's the kind of issue which wouldn't seem major under testing and training, but in the heat of battle, losing out on having that extra man dedicated to keeping track of what's going on and priorotising the crew's actions was a pretty serious problem (which, to their credit, the Soviets did recognise and solved with the larger 3-man turret on the T-34/85).

Louis XXIV said:

Marla_Singer, that population density map helps disprove your own point. Germany almost conquered the area with all the people in it. More importantly, it had all the industry.

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Actually no... considering that despite conqueering all these lands, the Soviet could still feed their war machine and supercede the Nazis in strength. Considering these lands failed to make the USSR collapse. And no that was not "nearly all the population", don't get impressed by the pop density in Ukraine, Russia was 3 times more populated than Ukraine at the time. The whole region between Moscow, the Urals and the Caspian Sea hosted already 50 million people at the time... so it was not "nothing". Just to make it really clear for everyone... the empty Siberia simply doesn't start in the Eastern suburbs of Moscow.

The thing is, Barbarossa, nearly succeeded to reach their primary targets... but it didn't have the expected result which was to destroy all Russian capacities.

Louis XXIV said:

Now I think it underestimated Soviet resiliency. The war did a lot to energize Soviet industry east of the Urals, which, once that was established, there wasn't a whole lot Germany could do. But the plan was sound as the only viable way to defeat the Soviet Union. It was possible to cut off the head and destroy Soviet industry. Unfortunately, the Nazi plan stalled and, once it stalled, it was doomed. Now the odds may have been against it from the start, but others have pointed out that it didn't have many viable options at that point anyway. Going to war with all of Europe and the United States with only Italy as an ally (the only country to probably make you weaker once you've allied) stacks the odds against you no matter what.

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I see your point. And everyone answered quite well "why Barbarossa". All the arguments in Germany's hands have been given in the thread, but considering whether their analysis was correct or not is another thing. As they failed, we can only assume it turned out it was not. But I agree it wasn't the first question asked.

red_elk said:

From what I read, French army 1939-1940 was actually very competent, at least from the technological point of view. Though at that time, major world powers didn't yet learn to deal with new German tactics and were rather prepared to fight WW1-style battles (of course I'm oversimplifying here, but this is a general idea). But in 1939 Western allies had an opportunity to defeat Germany when Hitler launched invasion of Poland and left pretty much token forces to defend Western border of Germany.

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Yes, the problem wasn't the quality of the tanks but the fact they weren't deployed full scale. Only as support units.

But overall, after having deeply thought about it, I believe the major issue was that neither France nor Britain had the will to fight an offensive war. They wanted to defend themselves from a German invasion, but they didn't want to invade Germany. And at the time, there was no efficient defensive strategy known against Blitzkrieg.

Marla_Singer said:

The thing is, Barbarossa, nearly succeeded to reach their primary targets...

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Which would be
- cutting off Murmansk port, disabling aid from Western allies through North route.
- cutting off Baku oil, disabling supplies through Iran.
- capturing Moscow with all aforementioned consequences
- capturing Leningrad
No, it's not "nearly succeeded" in my book.
On the other hand I would agree that achieving these targets would not make USSR surrender. The remaining abilities to resist would be questionable though. And I am probably the last person on this forum who would downplay Soviet capabilities and determination to withstand in that war.

Marla_Singer said:

Yes, the problem wasn't the quality of the tanks but the fact they weren't deployed full scale. Only as support units.

But overall, after having deeply thought about it, I believe the major issue was that neither France nor Britain had the will to fight an offensive war. They wanted to defend themselves from a German invasion, but they didn't want to invade Germany. And at the time, there was no efficient defensive strategy known against Blitzkrieg.

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Actually, Charles De Gaulle and JFC Fuller independently arrived at solutions to blitzkrieg during the interwar period. It was just that their respective countries didn't adopt those strategies.

And red_elk is correct. Germany failed to achieve any of their objectives upon invading the USSR. They did a lot of damage, admittedly, but didn't achieve any major strategic victories, only localised tactical triumphs such as the capture of 600,000 Red Army soldiers at Kiev. Achieving even one of the four objectives red_elk listed would have been a major, possibly war-winning breakthrough for the Nazis. But they decided to try four all four at once, with the result of achieving none of them. As I've stated from my first post, Barbarossa was an incredibly poor strategy.

On the subject of British armor, I think their tanks weren't terrible, but for one reason or another they weren't quite up to snuff. The infantry tanks were behind the times, and while the Cromwell was similar to the Sherman, they couldn't manufacture them in anything near the same quantities. The British & Canadian armies used a lot of Shermans to supplement their low numbers of Cromwells and Centaurs. The Sherman "Firefly" was a UK variant that used a longer hull and a 3" (76mm), 17-lb AT gun that could take out Panthers and Tigers. The Comet was the pinnacle of the WWII British Cruiser Tank, but it made the field only in December of '44, so it missed the party.

In terms of design, the British Cruiser Tanks were pretty decent. They used the Christie suspension, which was rejected by the US Army, then made famous by the Soviet T-34 series. British cruisers like the Cromwell and Comet also used the Rolls-Royce Meteor engine, which was a land version of the Merlin (which powered a couple of sexy girls you might have heard of before, the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire). The engine in the Cromwell was so powerful the suspension couldn't handle it, and they had to install a limiter. Finally, the Comet mounted a 77mm high-velocity gun that used a charge modified from an anti-aircraft shell. If the war had gone on longer and the Comet had been able to see some action, it would likely have been more than equal to the Panther.

The British infantry tanks (especially the Valentine and Matilda in the earlier parts of the war) were in the odd position of being doctrinally obselete, but still actually pretty capable vehicles when they got in a fight, being very well armoured for the day, and reasonable well armed. The Churchill was even more odd, as it would seem to be obselete design wise as well, yet it had a habit of performing very well, being tough, reliable and able to go over all sorts of terrain that other tanks couldn't.

The cruisers prior to the Cromwell, though quite interestingly designed, weren't really up to the rigours of combat, being under-armoured and unreliable (though, as with much of the allied armour in the early years of the war, being used badly didn't help - in the earlier stages of the desert war, British tank tactics were basically mechanised cavalry charges...). As you rightly pointed out though, the Cromwell was indeed a good vehicle, on much the same level as the Sherman, and the Comet continued this.

And then of course, just after WW2, the Brits came up with the Centurion, which was the finest tank in the world at the time.

iirc, the Churchills were adapted for some engineering duties, as bridge-layers, mine-flayers, recovery vehicles, and obstacle- and fortification-clearers (e.g. flamethrowers and spigot mortars). Any job that called for staying put under fire, in other words. Strangely, I don't think the Brits used many Churchills in Caen. I'd think they'd shine in street-to-street battles like that.

The infantry tanks had telephones mounted on the back of the hull, so that infantry taking cover behind the tank could speak directly to the tank commander without anyone having to stick his head up where it could get blown off. I dunno why, but that detail has always tickled me. I've seen the same feature on recent M1 Abrams tanks operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And yeah, the Churchill's armor and terrain climbing were legendary. In North Africa, some Churchills flanked a German position by climbing an incline that the Germans had thought was too steep. Another Churchill was supposedly shot several dozen times by German AT weapons without a scratch, and another Churchill captured a Tiger intact. It shot off the tread or something, and the crew abandoned it. That very same Tiger recently co-starred in the movie Fury.

James Stuart said:

Actually, Charles De Gaulle and JFC Fuller independently arrived at solutions to blitzkrieg during the interwar period. It was just that their respective countries didn't adopt those strategies.

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Yes, I know very well the story. Generals wanted to stick with good old days strategy and weren't able to figure out the game changer that mechanical warfare represented.

From that point, we can still wonder "why" the Generals ignored what Colonel De Gaulle was telling them.
De Gaulle actually talks about it deeply in his memories, and from what I read, there was even within the French and British army a strong reluctance to start a new war all over again. That doesn't mean both countries ignored neither the risk to get attacked nor the danger of new warfare, simply that they were thinking defensively, not offensively.

The whole Maginot line wasn't a silly plan in itself. Contrary to popular belief, it was actually planned to protect from modern warfare, and it did work as Hitler avoided it. The British and French troops were also well deployed in Belgium waiting for the German offensive from there, and they did hold. The major mistake was not there. It was in the fact they neglected one single point between Belgium and the Maginot line, which was the Forest of Sedan. They believed it was impassable for tanks, and they were wrong. It was piss easy for German tanks to come through.

Once tanks sneaked in, they could easily attack the French and English lines from behind, cutting them from logistics and crushing them like in a vise. The lesson from that, as I understood it, was that mechanical warfare was too mobile to be held on a front line, only a single weak point was enough to destroy everything in a matter of days. So the real error was to try fighting the war defensively at the first point. The only good way was offensively... and that's what the Soviets have done, and later the Americans when they opened the Western Front.

I like this thread.
The thing is, it took the Soviets a couple of very horrible years to even begin to approach the level of effectivness the Wehrmacht had in what you call 'mechanical warfare'. Motorized - yes, but not really all that much, especially not on the Reich's side. Mechanical, hardly. And when the Soviets began counterattacking more effectively en masse, the Germans were quite happy to revert back to the digging of trenches and setting up WWI style defensive lines as they retreated.

All of the reasons why the German operations in Poland and France and the initial stages of Barbarossa were so decisively successful on a tactical level have been pointed out here. To fight the Blitzkrieg you have to cede land, minimize damage, blunt the force of the blow and/or wait for it to run out of steam, and then cut off the enemy supply line. You cut it off the same way they want to cut yours off, so you want your own tanks and shocktroops concentrated and ready to go, but you want them behind the frontline and not on it, waiting to find that weak spot in the enemy communications to force through and cut them off. You want them at least out of range of enemy artillery, but preferably also out of range of bombing, or properly covered. What Hitler got encircled that very morning Barbarossa started was the cream of the Red Army, vehicles, cannon, munitions, men in the millions. And that was also a major mistake on the part of the Red Army, because they had deployed their main capabilities (at least for the European theatre) within easy reach of the Wehrmacht. Unlike France or Poland though, the USSR had both the land and men to spare. As abhorrent as the Soviet 'strategy' of fighting the war was, it did accomplish military objectives, albeit with disproportionately expensive logistics.

Very interesting post Mize. Thanks for it.

I agree with many here who told Stalin didn't help the Soviet Union on the military front with his purge, bad tactics and so on. However I actually wonder if ruling with such an iron fist, scaring everyone in his own side, isn't also the reason why Soviet Union hasn't collapsed from the inside in the way many of you demonstrated it was anticipated by the Nazis.

What do you guys think?

Marla_Singer said:

Very interesting post Mize. Thanks for it.

I agree with many here who told Stalin didn't help the Soviet Union on the military front with his purge, bad tactics and so on. However I actually wonder if ruling with such an iron fist, scaring everyone in his own side, isn't also the reason why Soviet Union hasn't collapsed from the inside in the way many of you demonstrated it was anticipated by the Nazis.

What do you guys think?

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If Stalin hadn't murdered every possible competitor for the top job during the 1930s he would have been arrested and shot in the month or so following Barbarossa. It's that simple. There's a story I first heard here on CFC, actually, back when I was just lurking last year. I think the thread itself was older than that, and had been bumped. After the Soviets lost 600,000 soldiers at Kiev, Molotov, Beria, and a group of high-ranking military officers went to Stalin's office to consult with him on their options. The room was dark, so Molotov, Stalin's second at that time, went in alone to see if he was there. Stalin was sitting in the dark drinking, and when Molotov turned on the lights and brought in everyone else Stalin asked; "So what is to be done with me?"

In case that goes over anyone's head; Stalin thought Molotov was launching a coup, and was wondering if he was to be arrested, or simply shot. If anyone besides Molotov, who was a die-hard Stalin loyalist, had been allowed an ounce of power under the Soviet system, Stalin would have been overthrown. If that had happened, there was a distinct likelihood of a civil war between rival factions, on top of the German invasion.

So, yeah, Stalin's cruelty and iron fist did help the USSR survive the Nazi invasion. Of course, if he'd tempered that cruelty with a little military competence, the USSR also may not have lost so much territory, lives, and treasure before the tide turned.

James Stuart said:

After the Soviets lost 600,000 soldiers at Kiev, Molotov, Beria, and a group of high-ranking military officers went to Stalin's office to consult with him on their options. The room was dark, so Molotov, Stalin's second at that time, went in alone to see if he was there. Stalin was sitting in the dark drinking, and when Molotov turned on the lights and brought in everyone else Stalin asked; "So what is to be done with me?"

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You are probably referring to the events which lead to formation of State Defense Committee. This happened about a week after June 22-nd, when disaster on a frontline became obvious, but before Kiev battle. All participants describe this event in their memoirs a bit differently, but IIRC the common part is that Zhukov was unable to give detailed report from Soviet forces near Minsk. Stalin yelled at him, then left his cabinet and in the corridor said a famous phrase "Lenin left for us a great country and we f*cked it up". And then, retreated to his dacha in Kuntsevo for one or two days. Following events are described in wiki page:

"Vyacheslav Molotov (Narkom of Foreign Affairs) called for a meeting in his cabinet Lavrenty Beria (Narkom of Internal Affairs), Klim Voroshilov (Deputy-Chairman of Sovnarkom), Georgy Malenkov (member of Sovnarkom bureau), all of whom later also were joined by Anastas Mikoyan (Narkom of Foreign Trade) and Nikolai Voznesensky (First Deputy-Chairman of Sovnarkom). It was decided to place Stalin as the head of the committee, due to his authority in the country. In the afternoon all six of them drove to Stalin's cottage-estate for Stalin to accept his functions as the head of state and divide duties in the newly created committee."

The reports in literature about Stalin being in depressed state after invasion, usually not fully correct - he probably had some sort of emotional breakdown in these two days, June 29-30, but he definitely wasn't depressed for weeks and not at the moment when invasion started.

well , once again the German "Omnipotence" shows its head in the execution of the Sicklecut that so devastated France and stuff . Once again , it's an accident . And if it had not been , we would have heard so much less on the silliness of the Maginot Line and the unexpected thrust from Ardennes - which was kinda identified as the weak spot back in 1934 or 36 by those dumb French Generals , Gamelin ı believe .

red_elk said:

You are probably referring to the events which lead to formation of State Defense Committee. This happened about a week after June 22-nd, when disaster on a frontline became obvious, but before Kiev battle. All participants describe this event in their memoirs a bit differently, but IIRC the common part is that Zhukov was unable to give detailed report from Soviet forces near Minsk. Stalin yelled at him, then left his cabinet and in the corridor said a famous phrase "Lenin left for us a great country and we f*cked it up". And then, retreated to his dacha in Kuntsevo for one or two days. Following events are described in wiki page:

"Vyacheslav Molotov (Narkom of Foreign Affairs) called for a meeting in his cabinet Lavrenty Beria (Narkom of Internal Affairs), Klim Voroshilov (Deputy-Chairman of Sovnarkom), Georgy Malenkov (member of Sovnarkom bureau), all of whom later also were joined by Anastas Mikoyan (Narkom of Foreign Trade) and Nikolai Voznesensky (First Deputy-Chairman of Sovnarkom). It was decided to place Stalin as the head of the committee, due to his authority in the country. In the afternoon all six of them drove to Stalin's cottage-estate for Stalin to accept his functions as the head of state and divide duties in the newly created committee."

The reports in literature about Stalin being in depressed state after invasion, usually not fully correct - he probably had some sort of emotional breakdown in these two days, June 29-30, but he definitely wasn't depressed for weeks and not at the moment when invasion started.

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Thanks for that. That's likely what the story I quoted was referring to. I couldn't find any corroboration for it, but that's not surprising, given Google's love of irrelevant top hits on any topic related to WWII.

r16 said:

well , once again the German "Omnipotence" shows its head in the execution of the Sicklecut that so devastated France and stuff . Once again , it's an accident . And if it had not been , we would have heard so much less on the silliness of the Maginot Line and the unexpected thrust from Ardennes - which was kinda identified as the weak spot back in 1934 or 36 by those dumb French Generals , Gamelin ı believe .

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Please don't feel my post as chauvinistic as that debacle from 1940 and its consequences with Petain is probably the most shameful episode in French History, but I just remember everyone that France wasn't alone in that debacle, the Brits lost as much then as they won during world war 1. It's only thanks to the channel that they survived.

Now of course this being said, even during the debacle, De Gaulle was already pressuring the government to continue the fight from Algiers, a decision which was refused because it was considered as abandoning the people from Metropolitan France (but which would have been the right choice). Churchill did continue the struggle. The French did not... they were invaded that's right, but still. They could have and that's not what they decided.

Marla_Singer said:

Please don't feel my post as chauvinistic as that debacle from 1940 and its consequences with Petain is probably the most shameful episode in French History, but I just remember everyone that France wasn't alone in that debacle, the Brits lost as much then as they won during world war 1. It's only thanks of the channel that they survived.

Now of course this being said, even during the debacle, De Gaulle already was already pressuring the government to continue the fight from Algiers, a decision which was refused because it was considered as abandoning the people from Metropolitan France (but that History has proven it would have been the right choice). Churchill did continue the struggle. The French did not... they were invaded that's right, but still. They could have and that's not what they decided.

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To be fair, it was a bunch of collaborators who launched a coup that decided. They were also full of French Nazis, like Laval, who were never interested in putting up a fight in the first place.