Panzer Group Rommel’s daring march through the Pripet Marshes won the war for Germany. The destruction of the ammunition and fuel depots deprived the Red Army of critical supplies in its greatest hour of need. The eradication of command posts and radio stations prevented the Soviet high command from moving reinforcements through the marshes. Panzer Group Rommel had split the Russian fronts. More important, lead elements of the four divisions dispatched to Minsk emerged from the darkness, like ghosts, on the flanks of the defending Soviet 20th Army. These thirteen Russian divisions, augmented by another five reserve divisions north of the Pripet Marshes, were all that stood between the 3rd Panzer Group and the Byelorussian capital.
An audacious early morning attack by Rommel’s troops demolished the Soviet left flank, forcing the Red Army soldiers to abandon their strongly entrenched positions. Seeing the Russians in disarray, Hoth, whose earlier assaults had stalled, attacked again behind a heavy artillery barrage. This time his Panzers broke through, annihilating the enemy formations and entering Minsk. Likewise, the 1st Cavalry Division emerged from the marshes in the early morning hours behind twelve reserve Russian divisions blocking Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group along with the Soviet 21st Army. Leading with flame tanks, the German cavalrymen boldly charged the panic-stricken Red Army reserve, shattering it and causing the fleeing Russian soldiers to retreat into the 21st Army, which also broke and ran. Guderian’s Panzers sliced through both formations and headed for a defenseless Kiev, which they entered later that day. Within another three weeks German forces were in possession of Leningrad, Smolensk, Bryansk, Kursk, and Stalingrad.
On August 6, 1941, Stalin sued for a beggar’s peace. The Second Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in the same city where Lenin and Trotsky had capitulated to the German Army in World War I. Like the first treaty, of 1918, it was a harsh, one-sided peace, dictated by Germany, and which emasculated Russia economically and militarily. Gone, at the stroke of the pen, were the Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia. All would become Reich Commissariats and be ruthlessly exploited as sources of labor, food, and raw materials. Anti-Soviet uprisings throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia indicated those republics might not remain under Stalin too much longer. Soviet borders were thus pushed back to the boundaries of Ivan the Terrible.
The treaty was also accompanied by a range of protocols that confirmed German supremacy. The Diplomatic Protocol called for the immediate resumption of the Non-Aggression Pact between the two sides, as well as the opening or reopening of all German embassies and consulates in all the major cities of the Soviet Union. The Economic Protocol dictated an immediate resumption of shipments of oil, gas, metal ores, and grain to Germany. Under the Technical Protocol, Moscow would send samples of all the Red Army’s latest tanks, armored cars, artillery, and the Red Air Force’s aircraft to the Third Reich along with blueprints and technicians for discussions. The Factories Protocol, which ensured open access to all factories for special teams of German civilian and military inspectors on demand, was intended to deny the Soviets the ability to hide any new technology. The Open Skies Protocol allowed the Luftwaffe unhindered access to Soviet airspace, while the Open Waters Protocol did the same for the Kreigsmarine.
Moscow had asked for a repatriation clause, but Hitler refused to make any concessions to Stalin. Besides, he was seriously considering making use of the millions of Soviet POWs who had surrendered to the Wehrmacht.
32
A Slavic legion to fight Bolshevism under Nazi Germany, he thought. What an irony!
It was only the battered condition of the armed forces that had caused Hitler to agree to peace. About half the Wehrmacht’s Panzers and the Luftwaffe’s aircraft had either been destroyed or damaged, and many of the rest were out of service for maintenance. Furthermore, the German armed forces were seriously short of spare parts, fuel, and ammunition. This short war had been much more intense than anyone expected. Hitler thought he would use the next year to rebuild his victorious but dilapidated army. He was intent on finishing this business with Stalin after that. For the moment, he was persuaded by Rommel, the Reich’s newest field marshal, to turn his attention to the West. “Let Stalin wait,” he had advised Hitler, “There are bigger fish to fry!” The Führer was now planning to dispatch a new Panzer group to North Africa to settle the score with Churchill once and for all. Hitler was confident that the Third Reich would once again emerge victorious.
In the spring of 1941, Zhukov tried to persuade Stalin of the need for a preemptive attack on Germany. The new chief of the General Staff wrote a “Report on the Plan of Strategic Deployment of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union to the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissar’s on May 15, 1941.” In this handwritten proposal, Zhukov argued for an immediate offensive using 152 divisions to destroy the estimated 100 German divisions assembling in Poland. Given the many problems the Red Army was experiencing at the time, Stalin ignored Zhukov’s proposal, believing such an attack would have been a desperate gamble. On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Despite devastating losses, the Red Army survived to fight another day and defeat the Wehrmacht, entering Berlin four years later.
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et al, Istoriya Velikoi Otechestvenoi Voiny Sovetskogo Soyuza 1941-1945
[
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], vol. 1 (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1961).
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(Frank Cass, London, 1992).
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[
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] (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1973).
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[
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(The Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1936).
Shukman, Harold, ed.,
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(Grove Press, New York, 1993).
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(Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1973). This is a translation of the Soviet Ministry of Defense official history of the Soviet Air Force in World War II.
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1
. Boog,
Germany and the Second World War
, Volume IV
, The Attack on the Soviet Union
, 318.
2
.
Ibid.
, 325. Estimate as of June 20, 1941.
3
.
Ibid.
, 343.
4
.
Ibid.
, 340; Haupt,
Army Group Center
, 18-19.
*
5
. Hitler, Adolf,
Germany’s Supreme Warlord
, 22 volumes (Das Reich, Berlin, 1950), vol. 2, 228. Unless otherwise cited, all references to Hitler are from this work.
6
. Glantz,
The Military Strategy of the Soviet Union
, 88-91. See also Suvorov,
Ledokol
and
Den’ “M.”
*
7
. Taken from Zhukov, General of the Army Georgi K.,
Operation Storm
, two volumes (Voenizdat, Moscow, 1954), vol I, 102-22. Unless otherwise cited all references to Zhukov are from this work. Zhukov survived twelve years in a Soviet prison camp before being released and allowed to publish this account.
8
. Viktor Anfilov, “Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov,” in Shukman,
Stalin’s Generals
, 343.
9
. Glantz & House,
When Titans Clashed
, 41.
10
. Glantz,
The Military Strategy of the Soviet Union
, 88-91.
11
. Hoffmann, Joachim, “The Soviet Union up to the Eve of the German Attack,” in Boog,
The Attack on the Soviet Union
, 78-81, and Boog, Horst, “Military Concepts of the War with Russia,” in Boog,
The Attack on the Soviet Union
, 352.
12
. Hoffman,
op. cit.
, 66.
13
. Radzievskiy,
Tankovyi Udar
, 8.
14
.
Ibid.
, 9.
15
.
Ibid.
, 22.
Sovetskie Tankovye Voika 1941-1945
, 22.
16
. Andreev,
Istoriya Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny Voiny Sovetskogo Soyuza 1941-1945
, vol. 1, 475.
17
. Spick,
Luftwaffe Fighter Aces
, 78. Schiess scored sixty-seven air victories during the war.
18
.
The Soviet Air Force in World War II
, 38; See also Horst Boog
et al.
, vol. IV, Maps.
19
.
The Soviet Air Force in World War II
, 39.
20
. “Single Engine Fighters 28.06.41,” in
German Order of Battle—Statistics as of Quarter Years 1938-1945
, HRA 137.306-14 on microfilm roll A1128, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Military Analysis Division, USAF Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.
21
. Spick,
op. cit.
, 78-79.
*
22
. Danilov, General of the Army VI.,
Official History of the Soviet Armed Forces in World War II
, twelve volumes (Voenizdat, Moscow, 2000), vol. 2, 114. Unless otherwise cited all references to Red Army operations are from this work.
23
. Boog, 93.
24
.
Ibid.
25
. For the organization and order of battle of Soviet airborne forces on the eve of the German invasion, see Glantz, David M.,
Research Survey No. 4 The Soviet Airborne Experience
(Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute, November 1984), pp. 21-22, 26.