Who is to blame for the failure of Barbarossa?

Currently I am reading John Erickson's 'Road to Stalingrad'. One thign that really puzzles me is how in the world the Germans lost the war against the Russians in 1941. I am curious who on the German side was responsible for the failure of the invasion in 1941. Besdides of course Hitler. Reading this book I feel that it must be through some great fault that the Germans were not able to utterly crush and conquer the Russians. They were so poorly equipped and badly led that it would seem impossible for the German forces to lose. Besides having these factors working against them the Russian commanders made(Primarily Stalin and his cronies) so many bad decisions that invited disaster. The way that Erickson describes the Soviet situation in 1940-41 it would appear that Barbarossa should have been the easiest campaign in world history, yet the Germans failed to decisivly eliminate the Russians. Who is to blame?

Daniel

 

In addition to Hitler, I would blame the General staff for not pushing back and insisting they run the show. It was never feasible for Germany to overun all of the Soviet Union but could have reached the Urals and stopped there but I still think they were biting off more than they could chew.

 

Opps, for a moment there I thought you were discussing the Germans...."poorly equipped and badly led"....

 

The Soviet resistance.

If you look on the German side: It's always hard to single out names, just as în success, failure is a team effort, too. So the names are more for the responsible Departments they led.

Hitler - Chief of the State
Brauchitsch - Chief of the Wehrmacht
Halder - Chief of Staff / Operational planning
Wagner/Gercke - Quartermaster / Transportation
Tippelskirch / Matzky - Ouartermaster IV (German intelligence evaluation service - eastern section)

I wonder who the blundering and overly optimistic Germans managed to get so far, guess the blundering Soviets helped 'em much. Otherwise the Nazi Army wouldn't even have Smolensk.

Cheers,

 

There are a large combination of failures associated with the disaster.

I am in no position to speak with authority, but Hitler's chain of command was unable to fully research all the issues related to the invasion.

I attribute it to poor planning, plain and simple.

For a similiar instance, I equate it to the Japanese at Midway, both were goal able to be acheived, and both failed do to lack of front end planning.

 

Besides Hitler, I think that Paulus have a big part of the guilt. Even though he wasn't allowed, he should have ordered an outbreak. He would maybe be accused of treason if it failed or succeeded, but if it succeeded, I think Hitler would take the honor in propaganda "Der Führer has saved our soldiers!". Or as when he took the honor from Manstein when he had conquered Charkow and Hitler said to his announcement(?)boss Otto Dietrich: "I have re-conquered Charkow, not herr von Manstein!".

 

TEST-THE WEATHER

 

If it wasn´t the King Winter then was it the King Mud that stopped the Germans for several weeks?

 

There were actually many reasons the Germans couldn't pull off the overtaking of Russia as a whole:

Zhukov was put in command when Russia was on the brink of failure and he was a genuis with military tactics and warfare with the experience of the First World War under his belt.

The deployment of Soviet-Mongolian troops who were preparing for an attack from Japan into south-eastern Russia. They were trained to fight in cold terrain and were battle ready.

The Germans weren't ready for the sub-zero Russian winter because the German military high command thought the campaign wouldn't last that long and didn't supply the troops with the proper clothing or materials to last; thus causing hundreds of Germans casualties and a severe drop in morale.

 

Lack of a political plan for conquered lands. Of course no reasonable person might have called 'the plan' - an attempt to create the 'Lebensraum'.

Let's take for instance Ukrainians - at first they perceived Wermacht and Germans as liberators. In short time the Sondercommandos got any dreams about at least limited independence out of their minds. Remember after horrible crimes pepetrated by commies in Ukraina anybody who had offered any chance for an independence (say something like Hungarian or Romanians - closely tied with the III Reich)would have received strong support. Unlike Romanians and Hungarians Ukrainians would have fought on their own land and for their own sake. So they would have perform much better. It pretty safe to say Hitler would have been able to call up 2 maybe 3 milions Ukrainians soldiers.

Excellent book "Hitler table talk 1941 - 1945" reflects how short-sighted he was.

Another problem was too easyly achieved victories - so Hitler and OKW, OKH was convinced German tactics was superb. While (especially their defensive tactics) in the early stages of Barbarossa was OBSOLETE. Or maybe I should say INADEQUATE to the situation.

Here
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Wray/wray.asp

you may read about the German Defensive Doctrine - outstanding analysis by Major Timothy A. Wray

Regards!

 

A more reasoned analysis of Germany's failure is that it had alot to do with the inept failure of their military and civil leadership to appreciate the importance of logistics and engineering in modern warfare. Germany squandered huge amounts of military equipment, and material in general, due to nothing more than poor management of resources and lack of engineering assets to improve infrastructure.
Some direct examples:
Orgainzation Todt, responsible for most major construction throughout the Third Reich had something between 600,000 to 1.5 million men (depending on what point in the war you are discussing)but relied almost totally on manual labor to accomplish construction tasks. Powered machinery was rarely available. Outside of cement mixers and cranes it was virtually non-existant.
As a comparison, somewhere on this board I listed the equipment of a single 800 man US Naval Construction Battalion (SeaBee battalion). One of these units was capable of doing the work of more than 8000 OT workers in the same time due to the massive amount of machinery they possessed. On top of that, they could accomplish work most OT units could not even do (water purification, electrical generation as two examples).
German mistakes in Russia:
No appreciation for improving the road net or rail net beyond basic repairs and regaging. How much difference would it have made if the Germans had improved the road net substancially?
Use of pipelines. The Germans made no use of pipelines to move water or POL any great distance. What if they had? How much more secure and efficent would a buried pipeline be than moving these resources by rail.
Use of naval equipment in a riverine setting. Germany did not move Siebel ferries or MFP's or other similar craft into Russia for use on the major rivers. How much difference would the presence of such vessels make? The US and British took LCVP and LCM's to the Rhine for use as ferries in advance of crossings. This made sense especially if one expects not to find bridges intact.
The list is endless. The Germans squandered as much as 20% or more of their equipment, manpower and supplies in simple wastage due to inept managment of logistics and engineering.

 

Good points about misuse of Ukranian, & also Russian manpower, improvements of roads & nonuse of rivercraft. only thing I might add is lack of longrange bombers to attack behind Ural factories. Wonder if commando raids on these facilities could've been pulled off.

 

A commando raid would be more or less a suicide mission,heh? How would they get back out? And given how much punishment the Tractor factory took in Stalingrad[artillery,planes],how much damage could a commando team do?

 

All this was discussed in another thread when this was not working, but I think that most of what has been said here is true.

First of all, 'Barbarossa' failed because of the German High Command's incompetence, because of terrible logistics —more incompetence on the High Command and the Quartermasters—, because of Soviet resistance and finally, because of the weather, i. e. autumn rains.

And Hitler is only on top of all this because he created an environment of hesitation and inner-struggle in the High Command, between the OKH and OKW. All the planning options in both organisations were never entirely accepted or rejected. This caused that the Germans went into Russia without concrete strategical objectives and they lost a tremendous amount of time deciding, which along Soviet resistance, delayed the advance to the autumn, and the rains halted the attack until the winter.

 

Well yah Framert, it would be a trick to get home. Land on an ice lake perhaps. As to how much damage could be done, a few bridges knocked out would be one thought,( especially rail bridges), & oil refineries another. Most oil was produced in south , but not all. Factories harder to damage. It would have to be well thought out, but Damage could be significant.A difficult proposition I agree.

 

A few late thoughts.

Speaking as an engineer, this lack of resources is annoying, but you have to bear in mind tha simply the USA was a special case of mechanization, other nations were not geared for this. Also remember the Todt organization was a large make-work organization, it was not meant to reduce manpower by increasing use of machinery, quite the opposite. It was meant to generate a large number of jobs in large public works. In the short term you won’t generate much employment by using machinery, therefore no diggers.

A lot, but for this you need time. Germany was in an intensive war, had no manpower available for this (well, they had manpower for the Atlantic Wall…), short on material resources, and mostly short on strategic vision! Too many ideologues and techicians were mute! Their chief engineer in the end was an Architect

Yes, but the Rhine ran from North from the Atlantic harbours in a generally SE direction. The East Front rivers ran N-S, paralell to the front (except for the Danube, the only useful river) and they ran from nowhere useful (no harbour) to nowhere at all! River transport would be useful as large volume transport from a harbour or railhead to distribution centres, Having rivers running N-S was useless.

All the large volume transport possible would be by rail. The best investment IMHO (I never used this!) would be an adequate rail line revamp, and a decent and high numbers line of technically good all-terrain logistical transport. Woul Uncle Sam sell production licenses for their magnificent 2 ½ ton trucks?

Also, pipelines would be extremely useful, but the Western Allies did not have a guerilla infested rear, did they? And as a matter of fact I can't recall the Germans building a pipeline even from Spandau to Cottbus, so no engineering tradition here

 

That's what I love about nazis: in their own stupid ideology was their own doom. Isn't it funny to watch how a country castrates and beheads itself?

Besides, you're also forgetting that even if Germany had the technology to build bulldozers, cranes and lorries for its engineers, she was using this technology and most important, the infraestructure to build tanks. Due to Germany's limited industrial capabilities, she had to choose: whether to build bulldozers for their engineers and eliminate jobs for their young and strong nazi youth or build tanks for its wonderful Panzer divisions…

Now that I've just had a look on a map, you're right, Miguel. There are no rivers in the immensity of Russia that run perpendicular to the frontlines and parallel to the advancing troops, the most important ones which are in the course of big railroad junctions —Dniéper and Volga— run paralell to the front and could have only worked as liaison between armies. The ideal thing would have been that the Dniéper started in the Baltic near Leningrad and ran east all the way to Moscow… but Nature didn't want it that way.

As for the pipes, the first thing that went into my mind when I read it, besides that it is a very good and practical idea, was "what about partisans?" The Germans would have given them another thing to sabotage, not only railroads. And therefore, they would have had to guard this pipelines to and waste even more manpower.

 

Indeed. Losing/killing the professionals in all matters; the jews.How many Nobel winners did they lose, and to think how many people they killed who fought for Germany in WW1...It sounds like shooting yourself in the leg after all...If you look at it objectively!

 

From 1905 to 1933 there were ten Judeo-German men awarded with Science Nobel Prizes…

But it's not only that. By 1939 there were 60% less science students in German universities and 50% less students in every other branch of German superior educations. Industries frequently complained that there was a lack of young engineers and the very few there were, were poorly brought.

What about lawyers in Germany? Law in Germany was destroyed by nazi police state. There were almost no justice courts and no judges and lawyers, the law was in hands of the Gestapo. In a period of 30+ jurisprudence and law as a science would have ceased to exist in Germany.

And if you annalyse things, the Gestapo and RSHA were efficient because their base was on Imperial and Weimar Germany's police organisations and its personnal and archives had been made in pre-nazi times.

Also, the engineers who designed the Me-262, the V-2 and electric submarines were all made outside Nazi Germany.

And artistically and itellectualy, it's a pity, since Germany has not yet overcome nazism. In the early XX Century Germany took the vanguard away from France for the first time in History. But 12 years of nazism destroyed all that.

 

Certainly was but the persecution of the jews goes hand in hand with the rise of the Nazi's. A Germany that had Einstien workin for it would have been scary...

As for failure in Russia, the place is too damn big! No-one has the troops to secure vast swathes of territory like the Soviet Union. The only logical course would have been a limited invasion to gain territory, say grab the Ukraine and bits, then force peace. AT least the smaller territory would have been easier to control. Also the treatment of the people in the conquered territory was pretty awful and a missed opportunity for Germany, but again this is due to ideology.

IMHO success in Russia was never gonna happen...

Remember the old adage...

"Never start a land war in Asia."

If NApoleon couldn't do it, no way a madman like Hitler could!

Not that I think Boney was sane, he was French! Well Corsican...