Jim Lacey has a great column today on the anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s ill-advised assault on Russia. I happen to be reading about the campaign in Andrew Roberts’ so-far great history of World War II, The Storm of War.
The sheer scale of the horror. As Stalin’s forces retreated east in the face of the Germans’ three-pronged, 1,500 mile line of advance they made sure to execute prisoners, mental patients, and anyone though to be politically unreliable on the way out — often taking the time to torture and mutilate them first. When arriving Wehrmacht divisions were welcomed as liberators by some ethnic minorities in Stalin’s vassal provinces, some of Hitler’s advisers gave voice to the thought of stoking their nationalist sentiment and conscripting them in the fight against the Red Army. But the Führer and his racialist ideologues quickly dismissed the idea of co-opting the Slavic untermenschen and instead enslaved and exterminated them. After all, everything west of the Urals was slated for German lebensraum — room to live — and set to be recolonized by Aryan soldier-farmers.
But perhaps the thing that strikes me most about the whole affair was the mutual stupidity of the men. Never mind the wisdom of invading Russia in the first place. Hitler’s ideology required it, logic and logistics be damned — Germany was receiving half of its raw materials from the Soviets under the non-aggression pact! But against the advice of virtually every one of his generals, Hitler decided to neuter the powerful mechanized army group pushing toward (indeed, within a dozen miles of) Moscow, and send it south to bail out the stalled offensive there. Even for the man who had let the British slip away at Dunkirk and blundered his way to a defeat in the Battle of Britain, this would prove to be his worst decision.
Stalin was no better. Despite the fact that Barbarossa was in Roberts’ words the “worst kept secret of the war” (the anti-Nazi German ambassador in Moscow had warned Stalin of the plan himself, and even given a date!), Stalin was dumbstruck when he heard of the attack and spent, as Lacey notes, a week puttering around his dacha like an idiot before coming up with anything like a coordinated response, while more than half of his air and armor forces were destroyed on the ground without firing a shot. The very reason Hitler suspected Russia was weak in the first place was her Pyrrhic victory in Finland a year earlier, where a vastly outnumbered Finnish force managed to inflict a 20-1 casualty ratio on a Red Army, much of whose leadership had recently been “purged” by Uncle Joe. But Stalin’s advantage in Finland was his advantage in Barbarossa: no matter how many of his soldiers you killed, he had more to throw at you. Some of the Soviet divisions had as few as a hundred rifles and revolvers to be distributed among 10,000 men. But their courage and (tolerance for pain) was often remarkable, and ultimately decisive. That, and Hitler had finally encountered a sociopath who valued life more cheaply than even he.
Now THAT is a great blog post. Foster is easily the best poster on the corner.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePerhaps then, Mr. Foster, you ought to think twice before whipping out your "liberal fascism" card (as you often do) when the stakes are entirely different (lemonade stands vs. mass murder.) It's legitimate to criticize, of course, but perhaps something more civilized would be appropriate.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, Mr. Dude, if you had taken the time to read any portion of Mr. Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism", you would see that he certainly didn't try to find an equivalance between the horros that the fascists (Nazis) actually did and the kinds of things the Left pushes here in America.
The point was more to show that American Progressivism of the early 20th Century (and even current Progressivism) and Fascism have similar underpinnings. In fact American Progressives were fans of Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin until Hitler went after Stalin and everyone found out about the Holocaust. Then suddenly the National Socialist was a "right-winger".
History is history and facts are facts.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm sorry, but what are you talking about?
I said nothing at all about Goldberg's book.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLast I checked, the name of Jonah's book was not Liberal "National Socialism"...
So, ditto the other commenter's reply. Yes, today's progressives share intellectual roots with some very bad people who had some pretty evil ideas euthanasia, eugenics, racial purity, etc. which survive today with clever names like "pro-choice" and "population management". All of these tuned to affect less-favored socio-economic groups.
The names change...Socialist, Liberal, Progressive...but their assault on humanity continues unabaited. It's a shame so many people get duped by the "good intentions" crowd whose intentions are not good at all.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAgree with Another Brad. He's consistent too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's an excellent podcast called Hardcore History that last year did a harrowing four-part series on Barbarossa and the entire war in the east. My teenage daughter and I were both blown away by it, and even though I'd known much of the general information contained therein, podcaster Dan Carlin fleshes it out--almost literally--with details of the murderous horror. It's about the most riveting podcast I've ever heard. Check it out at External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHitler was concerned that the Soviet Union would enter the War on the side of the Allies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOnly one quibble - Dan notes that the Soviets ability to take pain, and their lesser value on life, were the reasons for victory. Yes, the Soviets were willing to throw men willy-nilly into the meatgrinder - but that is not what won the war. They won the war due to their ability to produce war material in vast quantities (Germany didn't run out of men so much as it ran out of planes, tanks, artillery and fuel) and, more importantly, because the Red Army was molded into a modern fighting force capable of sophisticated mechanized operations (see the encirclement around Stalingrad, Operation Bagration and the Ukrainian campaign after Kursk). The contributions of Soviet generals such as Zhukov, Konev and Rokossovsky should not be dismissed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think that anyone who studied how to fight the Soviets during the Cold War had to respect their military prowess. Their courage and skill at Stalingrad is undeniable.
During the Cold War, the Red Army had splendid NCO's. Their SOP did not allow these NCO's to take any initiative, and this was well known to be a key weakness.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Red Army also had the best tank in the war, one which revolutionized armor design in a number of respects - the low profile, angled surfaces, powerful gun and simplicity of the T-34 made it extremely formidable, it was very good and produced in huge numbers. Superior German tactics and fighting skills allowed the Nazis to slow the Russians for quite a while but the ample supply of Russian tanks and fighting men eventually crushed the German armored spearhead, and as the war dragged on Russian mastery of the envelopment and double envelopment tactic closed the deal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAgreed. While the old saw about sending the human wave out with only every other man having a rifle is true, it stops being true in late 1942. I think they built the most powerful land army in history.
And Zhukov was a genius, best commander of the war IMHO. It's really too bad he was a commie.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOld Soviet-era joke: Two aged Red Army veterans, both subsisting on meager state pensions, begin reminiscing about their war experiences. After a long conversation, one vet pauses, looks both ways, and then blurts out, "You know it's a shame we beat the fascists." The other vet sighs and says, "Yeah, if we'd lost we could be living like the Germans now."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseQuick question/quibble for Mr. Foster....
You discuss the stupidity of Hitler moving the offensive from Moscow to the south.... but then again how would you defeat the Soviets? What is their point of leverage? Their schwerpunkt?
You imply it was Moscow, but Napoleon took it and look where it got him. Perhaps Mr. Roberts addresses it in some detail but the fact was most of the Soviet industrial and resource production lay elsewhere outside of Moscow... I doubt taking it would have ended the war. Perhaps taking the south and the Caucauses might not have either but then at least the Germans would have had the resources they needed to continue the war.
How to beat the Soviets is a good question that far too few historians deal with any accuracy - perhaps the only real point of leverage to beat the Soviets was drive all the way to Gorky or kill Stalin
Btw... "Why the Allies Won" is a good book that deals with some of the reasons why the Soviets won.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHard to drive tanks without oil. South was the Caucusus...and the oil.
Hitler was a lot of things, but he was not stupid. He knew his history, especially of defeated German and French armies in western Russia. But he would ultimately fall into the same trap of depleting resources fighting an unwinnable, and strategically questionable, battle (Stalingrad). The Russians were able to hit back hard with all the tanks, guns and planes they had built while Hitler was concentrated on Stalingrad. Hitler's generals tried to convince him otherwise, but quickly learned, "Never contradict the Fuhrer"...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNapoleon in 1812 was facing a different Russia than Hitler did in 1941. Moscow was more than the center of the Soviet state (which in 1812 was in St. Petersburg), it was the core of their rail network (virtually all rail lines ran THROUGH Moscow, hence its capture was significantly disrupt transport), their communications net, and it was the core of several of their critical industries. Contrary to popular belief, by mid-summer of 1941 (when the decision to divert Army Group Center took place), over 90% of Soviet optics production, 60% of their electrical component production, and about 80% of their specialty metals production all took place in the Moscow district, meaning that its capture would eviscerate Soviet tank and aircraft production. From the point of view of logistics, Moscow was a target whose capture would produce an immediate and overwhelming impact upon the Soviet war effort even ignoring the political consequences of destroying the heart of the Soviet governing apparatus.
Also, the choice to strike south (Guderian's forces were diverted south to help take Kiev) had nothing to do with the oil fields in Maikop and Baku (that was 1942, a very different war, almost 800 miles further east), but rather to mop up a Red Army group under the command of a Field Marshal notorious for incompetence even by the rather low standards of Soviet generals in 1941. Had Moscow fallen, Kiev would have been strategically isolated, and could have been dealt with pretty much at Hitler's leisure. The resources of the Donbas, and the rest of the Ukraine and the Soviet south would have been easy pickings once the heart of Red Army's ability to replenish itself was shattered.
In 1812, an army with food, manpower, and extremely limited industrial resources could survive, and counterattack, especially when their enemy was overextend, ravaged by disease, and 1000 miles from home. Rail lines were not even a dream of the future, and nothing a soldier carried required much more than home workshops to build and maintain, so industrial centers (the few that existed, and Moscow was clearly NOT one of those) were largely irrelevant. Moscow in 1812 was a name on a map, but little more than that, wereas in 1941 it was THE prize to be taken.
A long war of attrition in the USSR was a guaranteed slow death for the Wehrmacht, which was designed from its inception to win wars quickly so as not to expose Germany's fatal lack of resources. Destroying yet another army at Kiev was a waste not so much of troops or weapons, but of TIME, and time was something that the Germans did not have. The only hope of winning quickly was to destroy the ability of the Red Army and the Soviet state to sustain and rebuild itself, and that meant Moscow.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank to both and Mr. Foster for your comments...
While I find both of you quite plausible I will need to do some more research in order to be convinced but for now I will yield the field
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRoberts' argument amounts to siding with Hitler's generals -- basically everybody in the OKW except Keitel and Jodl, who were lickspittles and not strategists. Hitler's commanders wanted to attack the center of Red Army mass, which was around Moscow and in Army Group Center's theater of operations. They also thought that capturing the capital would in the very least push the Stalin government west of the Urals, where he could be kept by the Luftwaffe and a minimal ground force.
Hitler was obsessed with "economic warfare", as you say, and if he had invaded in April, maybe the strategy would have worked out. But it was the second time he halted a blitzkreig (Dunkirk) within miles of cutting off the main body of his enemy. And he paid both times.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJohn Keegan's book, "The Second World War" is a superb read as well. There's a great line about midway through his history of the battle...something like "never contradict the Fuhrer."
Much of the move south was about the oil in the Caucusus...something Keegan spends considerable time discussing. Operations after Barbarossa pressed this strategy further.
About that "tolerance for pain" quote. According to Keegan's history, of the 5.7 million Russian POWs captured by the Germans, 3.3 million died in captivity. He quotes a Grossdeutschland Division communique reporting "a siffening of the enemy's resistance because every Red Army solder fears German captivity." Paraphrasing Keegan, "Fear of capture is an excellent motivator."
And Hitler "excused" (his words) any violations of International Law claiming that the Russians had opted-out of the Hague Convention. Keegan quotes Hitler, "The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion;[...]The commissars are the bearers of ideologies directly opposed to National Socialism. Therefore the commissars will be liquidated."
I've never really understood, however, why Hitler is remembered as a monster, but Stalin and the Commies somehow retain some sort of post-modern cachet. Hang the flag of the Nazi Party in your dorm room, and you are an imbecile who is rightly shunned. Hang a Soviet flag, and you are cool. Two deeply evil regimes, two totally different treatments in the history books.
Liberal Fascism...
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse>>I've never really understood, however, why Hitler is remembered as a monster, but Stalin and the Commies somehow retain some sort of post-modern cachet.
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With all due respect, I think the explanation is that these matters pivot on the Jewish experience. It may be a cliché, but it is a true one that Jews have been extraordinarily powerful in shaping our narratives in the last seventy-five years or so. And, quite naturally, the experience of the Holocaust resonates in Jewish thought with enormous power. It is their central modern tale and they tell it with passion and superb skill. And the Nazis made it very easy for them by carrying out their murderous regime in such a mechanized and bureaucratic and "cinematic" fashion. One of my earliest memories of anything on TV that really affected me was a scene of a train, with its shrill whistle, moving across a barren Polish landscape toward the death camps. Death by Stalinism tended to be more out of sight and often completely lacking the obvious hand of the Stalin terror that was causing the starvation or directing military policies that did not value human life even when those policies were not deliberately punitive.
And then on the other side, we have the sad reality that American Jews have traditionally tilted far to the Left and were very prominent in the American Communist Party and underground. This is not a pleasant matter to discuss in this era when so many great conservatives are Jews, but the historical truth is what it is: The majority of American Jews have always been sympathetic to the Left and remain so. And in the Stalin period, it was not mere modern "liberalism" that we are talking about but the real Red deal. So liberal Jews, with their powerful input into the narrative, not only have a passionate case against Hitler; they have an incentive to look away from the crimes against humanity which were committed by the political side for which Jews were prominent partisans rather than the victims.
I share your sense that Stalin unjustifiably gets a pass relative to Hitler.
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