Barbarossa: Invasion of Russia 1941

Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II / the Violent Century: Campaign #11

by John Keegan

Campaign Book 11

Genres: History, World War II, War, Military History

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan, OBE, FRSL was a British military historian, lecturer and journalist. He published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime and intelligence warfare as well as the psychology of battle.

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was a boy, I used to play a tabletop war game that recreated Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia from June 1941 to the battle for Moscow in December. The curious thing was that no matter how the German player aligns his superior forces or where he chooses to fight, it's almost impossible for him to win. The late, great John Keegan, author of THE FACE OF BATTLE, wrote BARBAROSSA to explain this conundrum. The Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) presented Hitler with two scenarios for a successful invasion. The first focused entirely on Army Group Center taking Moscow, with Army Groups North and South starved. Hitler rejected this plan because, quoting Clausewitz, "wars are fought to eliminate enemy armies, not capture territory or cities". The second plan took Hitler's objection into account and gave equal weight to Group Center to take Moscow and Group South to seize the Ukraine, while North became a flanking movement. Hitler raised a new dissent. Such a plan made it nearly impossible to capture Leningrad, the largest city in the Soviet Union and the cradle of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Führer devised his own third plan, calling for an equal distribution of men and material among the three armies. This scenario, according to Keegan, was flawed too. The invasion had no center of gravity, what German military doctrine calls scherpunkt, and resembled a map Napoleon once looked at featuring equal strength armies. "Are you trying to prevent contraband?" he sarcastically asked of the officer who drew it up. Hitler was sure the thrust into Russia on June 22, 1941, catching Stalin completely by surprise, would deal a death blow to the Soviet Union in a matter of weeks: "We have only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten edifice will come crashing down," he told his generals. At first, events seemed to verify his optimism. The Lufwaffe destroyed ninety percent of the Soviet air force on the ground in the first twenty-four hours. German armies raced through the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Army Group Center, took Minsk and then Smolensk, on the road to Moscow. Yet, this was not blitzkrieg, and the swift German advance masked serious problems in continuing with Barbarossa.

Although the Luftwaffe had caught the Soviet air force napping, it was the largest air arm in the world, giving the Soviets plenty of planes to spare. A greater problem for the Germans was that in the vast spaces of Russia, steppes, marshes, mountains, and valleys, controlling the air did not grant much advantage in battle. There were too many places for Soviet troops and armor to hide. Air power did not prove decisive on the Eastern Front as it had in France and the desert of North Africa. Space worked against the Germans in Russia. The more they conquered, the more there was to conquer. German columns found themselves disoriented, and Hitler himself kept switching the center of gravity of Barbarossa from Moscow to Leningrad to the Ukraine, stripping each Army Group in turn to fit his instructions. His gamble that destroying armies was priority number one, while the cities could wait their turn, was completely wrong. The Wermacht grabbed over two million Soviet POWs in the first two months, and at least a million more in the pincer movement that destroyed the Red Army in the Ukraine, but this allowed the Soviets to retreat into Moscow and Leningrad in time to put up a stiff defense. The German army, in the course of this war, never had to storm a major city, nor even many minor ones. Warsaw, Amsterdam, Paris, and Athens fell with few German losses. This is one reason why Hitler ordered Leningrad and Moscow bombed and besieged but not assaulted---at first. By the time he instructed Army Group North to move into Leningrad, the Communist Party apparatus had drafted all the young men it could find into the army, women into the factories, and made plans to ration food for children and the elderly. The cost was horrible; over a million Leningraders died until victory came in 1945, but the Germans and their Finnish allies, who refused to encircle the city, much to Hitler's chagrin, were denied a triumph. Von Leeb, commander of Army Group North, proved unreliable in siege warfare, and Hitler dismissed him at the end of the year. Hitler halted his best Panzer commander, Heinz Guderian, after his rapid march into Smolensk with orders not to proceed to Moscow until the Red Army in the Ukraine was crushed. Then, Hitler changed his mind again. He decreed Operation Typhoon, the advance to Moscow, in November of 1941, just in time for the first heavy rains, mud, and snowflakes on the Eastern Front. The Panzers lacked fuel, the road to Moscow had no usable roads or train tracks to transport German armies, and German intelligence failed to notice the transfer of fresh Russian divisions from the Far East to the gates of Moscow. The Soviet counteroffensive under Zhukov in December made few spectacular gains, but it didn't have to. The Germans were thrown on the defensive for the first time since the outbreak of the war, and had to dig in for a winter war for which they had come unprepared.

None of this means a German defeat was nearly inevitable, as suggested by my tabletop game. Keegan points out numerous mistakes the Germans could have corrected in time, from thinking through their plans to take Leningrad to issuing winter clothing to the soldiers. The Germans could crush the Soviet Army in the Ukraine or march on Moscow, but not both in so short a time. Above all, getting back to Clausewitz, Hitler had little sense of the politics of war in the East. He seized Ukraine but refused to make an ally of the Ukrainians, who hated Stalin. The Baltic nations welcomed the Germans as liberators from Communism but could offer them little material help. The Finns proved to be literally fair-weather allies. Once Mannerheim had captured the territory to the north of Leningrad, lost in the war with the Soviets of 1939-41, the Finns fought no further except in defense. Barbarossa was largely lost in Hitler's head. He got dizzy with success in the West, and assumed the Red Army was fatally weak after Stalin's purges of 1937-38. This was a new kind of enemy the Germans had never faced before, save in the air over Britain; the kind that refused surrender and could absorb horrendous losses. At the end of December, Stalin had Britain and the U.S. as allies and his Far Eastern flank was secured by a non-aggression pact with Japan. Chastened but without apology, Hitler turned South in 1942, hoping for a win in the Caucasus; another gamble with unintended harmful consequences for the would-be conqueror.

[Alyssa Allen · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of my least favorite WWII books. It was difficult to read and I had a hard time picturing everything going on. The author bounced around several times to various battles and sieges, without reminding us who/what/where he is talking about. Once someone's name was mentioned, he assumed you would remember who it was.

It seemed like he listed city after city, army name after army name, general after general, and it didn't really have a point. They were able to get across some reasoning behind certain attacks/defensive strategies, etc, which was great, but the language was very difficult to understand. I had a hard time taking everything in.

If you're interested in Operation: Barbarossa, I would recommend a different book to help with your understanding. This book will only confuse you further!

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, dense, and to the point. A Cliff Notes version of the campaign, perfectly suitable as an introduction to larger study.

[James Varney · Rating 5 out of 5]

These Ballantine books offer excellent military history of WWII. Compact and very readable, they are not all 5-star like Keegan's "Barbarossa," but none of them are bad.

[Russell R · Rating 5 out of 5]

another good ballantine book

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Hitler had signed a non-aggression treaty with Russia before his invasion of Poland, his ultimate goal was world domination. Keegan has put together a historical account of Hitler's invasion of Russia which led to war on both the Eastern and Western fronts.

[Jeff Dawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent introductory story from Ballatine Books. The reader is given just enough information to want to explore other works in an attempt to understand the magnitude of this campaign.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

🖊 My review: An excellent history book.
🤔 My rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
📕 Media form: Read from my private library.
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