Page 26 - History of War - Issue 29-16

Frontline
WHY DID THE INVASION FAIL?

Historian and author, Roger Moorhouse, discusses how a frozen
apocalypse helped to destroy the Third Reich

peration or the loss of his army. In the case of the Kremlin in November 1941, they were ghting
Barbarossa was Soviet Union, it worked militarily as it should: at the end of a logistical chain of supply that
O arguably the decimating the Red Army in the eld, causing could stretch a thousand miles, much of which
greatest turning point in enormous casualties and capturing vast ran along unmade roads. That would challenge
World War II and changed swathes of territory – yet it was unable to force their ghting capacity even in the best of
global history but at a a political defeat. circumstances, but in the teeth of a Russian
dreadful cost. Here, This was due to the vast distances involved – winter – or even in the muddy quagmire of the
Roger Moorhouse, author Moscow was over 500 miles from the German- autumn rains – it was crippling.
of The Devils’ Alliance: Soviet frontier – and the huge resources of men
Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941, explains and materiel that the Soviet Union, despite its WAS THERE A SOVIET CONTINGENCY
what contributed to the Nazi defeat and how predicament, could still muster. To defeat his PLAN TO CARRY ON FIGHTING IF
the war with the Soviet Union led to a decisive enemy, Hitler needed to force both a military LENINGRAD AND STALINGRAD FELL?
Allied victory. and political collapse of the USSR, and this he The campaign on the Eastern Front was no
was simply unable to do. conventional con ict – no quarter was given
DESPITE INFLICTING HUGE and none expected; it was very much a ght to
CASUALTIES, WHY WAS THERE NO HOW KEY WAS THE RUSSIAN WINTER the death – either Nazism or Communism would
DECISIVE GERMAN VICTORY BEFORE CONDITIONS TO CONTRIBUTING TO THE prevail, the other would be destroyed. So, it
THE RUSSIAN WINTER SET IN? GERMAN DEFEAT? would have made little difference to the Soviets
As the Poles, Swedes and Napoleon all learned The winter was a challenge even for the if Leningrad, Stalingrad, or even Moscow had
to their cost, invading Russia is a tricky hardiest Soviet natives, but for German fallen. The ght would have carried on.
business. Germany, in 1941, had some distinct soldiers ghting in summer uniforms it could Stalin had made the regime’s intentions
advantages. Not least a marked superiority in be deadly. Men froze at their posts, guns clear early in the German invasion, when he
technology and in trained manpower, it also jammed and engines seized in their vehicles. began the wholesale shift of Soviet heavy
bene ted from the new military doctrine of Fighting became impossible, and the logistical machinery, as well as the state apparatus and
Blitzkrieg [Lightning War], which had proved dif culties of supplying troops with spare administration eastwards, out of the range of
highly effective and was now fully developed parts, food and ammunition, were exacerbated. the German invaders. The entire government,
and understood by its practitioners. The German Eastern Front medal was known for instance, was moved to Kuybyshev (now
But, though militarily revolutionary, Blitzkrieg colloquially as the ‘Order of the Frozen Flesh’. Samara), 500 miles east of Moscow.
was politically rather conventional – it worked However, it is not fair to say that the winter Stalin also ordered the start of partisan
by disrupting and swiftly defeating the enemy in alone defeated the Germans; it merely operations behind German lines, decreeing
the eld, thereby forcing a political surrender, compounded their existing dif culties. When it to be a duty of every Red Army soldier to
either due to the loss of the defender’s capital, the Wehrmacht advanced to within sight of the continue resisting to his last breath. In such

Like previous invasions across the
centuries, the German offensive was
hugely hindered by the Russian winter

“HITLER NEEDED TO FORCE BOTH A MILITARY AND POLITICAL COLLAPSE

OF THE USSR, AND THIS HE WAS SIMPLY UNABLE TO DO”

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