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    World War 2 In Review No. 63
    World War 2 In Review No. 63
    World War 2 In Review No. 63
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    World War 2 In Review No. 63

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    Merriam Press World War 2 In Review Series. The following articles on World War II are in this issue: (1) The German Attack on the USSR: The Destruction of a Legend (2) Who Was Planning to Attack Whom in June 1941… Hitler or Stalin? (3) Prelude to Disaster: The Soviet Army, June 1941 (4) Slovakia: An Eastern Front Axis Ally (5) The Soviet Union and Britain: The Alliance Negotiations of March-August 1939 (6) He Built a Better Mousetrap: Gerd Von Rundstedt and the Ardennes Offensive (7) 1st SS Panzer Regiment (11-24 December 1944): Interview with Joachim Peiper (8) Follow-up Interview with Joachim Peiper (9) The Trap that Doomed Kampfgruppe Peiper (10) U.S. Army Uniforms, Battle of the Bulge (11) Battle of the Bulge Photo Gallery. 228 B&W/color photographs/illustrations.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateOct 5, 2019
    ISBN9780359819935
    World War 2 In Review No. 63

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      World War 2 In Review No. 63 - Merriam Press

      World War 2 In Review No. 63

      World War 2 In Review No. 63

      F:\Working Data\Merriam Press Logo CS.jpg

      Hoosick Falls, New York

      2019

      First eBook Edition

      Copyright © 2019 by Merriam Press

      Additional material copyright of named contributors.

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

      The views expressed are solely those of the authors.

      ISBN 978-0-359-81993-5

      This work was designed, produced, and published in the United States of America by the Merriam Press, 489 South Street, Hoosick Falls NY 12090.

      Notice

      The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

      Mission Statement

      World War 2 In Review presents articles and pictorials on topics covering many aspects of World War II, with coverage from the 1930s through the end of the war. In addition to new articles and pictorials on topics not previously covered, future volumes may include additional material on the subjects covered in this volume. The volumes in this series will comprise a single source for innumerable articles and tens of thousands of images of interest to anyone interested in the history and study of World War 2.

      The Images

      These photos are seventy-plus years old, were taken under less than ideal conditions, and some were taken by individuals who were neither professional photographers nor using professional equipment. Thus, the quality of the original image may be less than perfect. While Merriam Press tries to obtain the best quality images possible, the quality of the images in this publication will no doubt vary greatly.

      World War 2 In Review utilizes the editor’s collection of tens of thousands of photographs and other illustrative material acquired since 1968. Hundreds of sources over the years have been searched for material on every subject.

      Photographs Needed

      Merriam Press welcomes any contributions of photographs from the 1930s through the end of World War II for future volumes in this series. Because of the low price of this publication, no payment can be made for their use, but whenever possible, credit will be given.

      How to Use This Publication

      To get the best viewing experience on a computer, the use of the Adobe Digital program is highly recommended. This free program is available from Adobe.

      To view the images properly, adjust the program’s viewing window’s right side edge accordingly. If the viewing window is too wide, images may overlap, and moving the right side edge will fix this.

      •

      Welcome to No. 63 of the World War 2 In Review Series

      The following articles are in this issue of World War 2 In Review:

      (1) The German Attack on the USSR: The Destruction of a Legend

      (2) Who Was Planning to Attack Whom in June 1941… Hitler or Stalin?

      (3) Prelude to Disaster: The Soviet Army, June 1941

      (4) Slovakia: An Eastern Front Axis Ally

      (5) The Soviet Union and Britain: The Alliance Negotiations of March-August 1939

      (6) He Built a Better Mousetrap: Gerd Von Rundstedt and the Ardennes Offensive

      (7) 1st SS Panzer Regiment (11-24 December 1944): Interview with Joachim Peiper

      (8) Follow-up Interview with Joachim Peiper

      (9) The Trap that Doomed Kampfgruppe Peiper

      (10) U.S. Army Uniforms, Battle of the Bulge

      (11) Battle of the Bulge Photo Gallery

      with 276 B&W and color photographs, maps and illustrations.

      The German Attack on the USSR: The Destruction of a Legend

      by M. van Creveld

      F:\Working Data\WW2 In Review\WR Published\WR - 063 - Mixed - Photos\WR063-LE1_files\image002.jpg

      Ukraine, early days of Barbarossa.

      The decision over the hegemony of Europe, Hit­ler told a select group of officers during a military conference on 5 December 1940, will be taken in Russia."[1]

      The Führer, most historians will agree, was right; but not in the sense he expected. World War II was decided in Russia, and in that country’s favor. The result was Germany’s destruction and Hitler’s downfall.

      When did Hitler lose the Second World War? From the purely military point of view, the time was probably December 1941, when Hitler’s hither­to invincible armored divisions finally ground to a halt at the very gates of Moscow. The story of why and how they got there has been told too often to be repeated here.[2] Planned as a Blitz­feldzug and expected to be over in three months, the German offensive against the Soviet Union got bogged down in the mud of the Russian autumn and then froze in the snow of the Russian winter. Consequently Hitler’s great gamble to knock out the Soviet Union before the United States could mobilize its full power against him had failed, and his thousand-year Reich was doomed.

      Why did Hitler fail in his attempt to smash the Soviets before the advent of winter? Perhaps the most common answer is that he started too late. Ori­ginally, so runs the legend, Hitler had planned his Russian offensive to start on 15 May 1941. Cir­cumstances, however, forced him to postpone his invasion by five weeks to 22 June, with the result that the remaining season no longer sufficed to achieve a decisive victory in Russia. Historical opinion differs wildly as to the nature of the cir­cumstances that caused the delay, and the debate is not without certain political undertones. The Bri­tish prime minister in particular, with an eye to jus­tifying his otherwise disastrous decision of Febru­ary 1941 to transfer forces from Libya to Greece,[3] has claimed that, although ending in evacuation, the British adventure in the Balkans contributed suf­fi­ciently to the prolongation of Greek resistance in face of the German Wehrmacht to spoil the deli­cate timetable governing the coordination between Hitler’s invasion of Greece and his planned Rus­sian campaign. As we shall see, this view has some­thing to be said for it, although not quite in the way Churchill intended.

      Conversely, Churchill’s opponents have denied that Hitler’s war against Greece had anything at all to do with the postponement of the Russian cam­paign. According to them, it was the sudden coup d’‚tat which overturned the government of Bel­grade on 27 March 1941 that, by causing Hitler to decide on the military liquidation of Yugoslavia and forcing him to bring up troops for the purpose, occasioned the delay. This view has been seized upon by the proponents of the coup in order to de­fend the act which led directly to a national dis­aster in the form of war against Germany and the subsequent occupation of Yugoslavia. By and large scholarship has tended to confirm this theory, claiming that Hitler’s decision to smash Yugoslavia forced the postponement of the Russian campaign by disrupting the build-up for the latter, making neces­sary the commitment of much stronger forces in the Balkans than originally envisaged, and de­lay­ing the start of the invasion of Greece.[4]

      Vague attempts have also been made to blame the delay on the weather. According to the plans pre­pared by the German Army High Command (OKH), the starting date of the campaign against Rus­sia was to some extent dependent on the wea­ther, since it was impossible to start operations be­fore the morasses created in eastern Europe by melt­ing snow had dried up. The winter of 1940-41, it is sometimes claimed, was longer than usual, a fact which made it impracticable to start the cam­paign on 15 May as planned. Not surprisingly, this view is held especially by the commanders at the front.[5] The senior officers at OKH, on the other hand, do not mention it in their writings, a fact which may be accounted for by their determination to put the blame for every blunder committed by the German Army during the war on Hitler per­sonally.

      The sum total of all these views is utter con­fusion. All these years after, there is probably no­body who can say with certainty whether it was Greece or Yugoslavia that was mainly responsible for the starting date, and therefore outcome, of the Russian campaign; what role was played by the wea­ther; and whether the delay was absolutely necessary. The only thing that everybody seems to be agreed on is that there was a delay. For the rest, it is generally assumed, rather than known, that he cause of this delay was Yugoslavia, not Greece. It is the purpose of this article to examine the es­sen­tial points of this ‘accepted’ view, and to offer an alternative explanation.

      Is it true that Hitler had originally intended his Russian campaign to start on 15 May? His ‘Direc­tive No. 21’ for the preparation of the Russian cam­paign, on which this assumption is generally based, does not mention a starting date; it only says that those preparations requiring more than eight weeks should be completed by 15 May.[6] At the important military conference of 5 December, during which Hit­ler saw and approved the plans submitted to him by OKH, ‘end May’ was mentioned as the start­ing date.[7] On 24 January a memorandum on the oil situation assumed 1 June as the starting date,[8] while a Navy timetable issued on 12 March men­tions 22 May.[9] Furthermore, there is an entry in Halder’s diary, dated 24 February, in which the Army chief-of-staff raised the idea of securing the equip­ment of the reserves before that of the di­vi­sions to be supplied with French material which, ac­cording to this suggestion, was to be ready by 1 June.[10] Since five crucially important divisions are in­volved, the very fact that such a proposal could be raised shows that no date earlier than June was being considered for the beginning of the attack. May 15th, therefore, was nothing but a provisional terminus post quem, and explicitly defined as such.[11]

      Next, what was the relationship between the Ger­man invasion of Greece (Operation

      Marita

      ) and the offensive against Russia? According to the ‘traditional’ view the two operations, having been conceived more or less simultaneously towards the end of 1940, were coordinated with each other; and so they were, at least in principle. The aim of

      Marita

      , as conceived in December 1940, was to protect the southern flank of the Russian campaign against the possible establishment of a World War I style British front at Salonika.[12] For this reason, the latter could not be started before the aims of the former had been achieved. This fact was recog­nized by Hitler, who accordingly ordered the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) to prepare a timetable for 1941 in which the two operations would be incorporated.[13]

      However, it soon turned out that this was easier said than done. Originally supposed to start on 11 February,[14] Operation

      Marita

      suffered almost two months’ delay because of bad weather in the de­ployment area in Rumania[15] and because the Bul­garians, whose territory had to be crossed in order to reach Greece, did their best to draw out the talks for the purpose for as long as possible.[16] Fur­thermore, political considerations—in the first place, Hitler’s fear of Soviet, Turkish and even Yugo­slav intervention—made it necessary to in­crease the number of divisions earmarked for Mari­ta

      from four to seven, twelve and finally eighteen,[17] causing grave concern to OKH, which reckoned that the forces committed in this operation could not be dis­pensed with for the Russian campaign.[18] Hitler ac­cordingly made several attempts to speed up the starting date, and therefore the termination of

      Marita

      ; he tried to send his forces into Italian-occupied Albania,[19] to accelerate the build-up in Rumania by stopping all civilian traffic on the Rumanian railways,[20] and to open up the roads and railways of Yugoslavia.[21] All these attempts met with stiff resistance on the part of the states in­volved and had to be abandoned.

      Thus, even before 7 March 1941, when the British started landing forces in the Piraeus in order to help the Greeks, the question of the re­la­tion­ship between

      Marita

      and the Russian cam­paign was a complicated and difficult one. Al­though the British intervention had precious little effect on the course and duration of German opera­tions in the Balkans, as we shall see it did have an­other important result. While ordering the Greek operation in Directives Nos. 18 and 20, Hitler had mentioned the possibility that

      Marita

      , originally supposed to be limited to the occupation of the Aegean coast, would be extended to include the whole of Greece. However, OKH had not really taken this possibility into account when preparing the operation, and little was heard of it during the win­ter of 1940-41. With its objective limited to the Aegean coast,

      Marita

      was to last only one week.[22] Hitler’s decision to enlarge the operation meant that it would last considerably longer; also, that the distance which the troops would have to tra­verse on their way back from Greece to their re­freshment areas would be much larger. Finally, OKH insisted that in order to carry out Hitler’s order it needed more forces than had hitherto been al­located for active participation in

      Marita

      .[23] As a result, it became clear that not all the divisions of

      Marita

      would be back in time for the east.[24] It would therefore seem that, contrary to what is generally assumed, Churchill was right to a degree in asserting that his sending of British troops to Greece obstructed the start of the German cam­paign in Russia. It was not what the British did in Greece, but the very fact that they went there which did the trick.

      We may next ask what was the relationship be­tween the German campaign in Yugoslavia (Op­era­tion ‘25’) and the attack on Russia. To answer this question in a satisfactory manner, it must be divided into two parts: the relationship between Operation ‘25’ and the German build-up for Russia, and the effect of Operation ‘25’ on

      Marita

      .

      What then was the effect on the Wehrmacht’s build-up for Russia of Hitler’s decision of 27 March 1941, to smash Yugoslavia? It has generally been assumed that the latter was so sudden and un­expected that, to carry it out, large-scale disruption in the former could not be avoided. However, the evidence does not support this view. The Yugoslav campaign was not really as unexpected as the Ger­man generals, speaking after the war, have tried to make it look; all theoretical and some practical pre­parations for it had been made many months previously, a fact which greatly facilitated the opera­tion.[25]

      Much ink has been split over the ‘disruption’ allegedly caused to the Russian build-up by Hit­ler’s decision to smash Yugoslavia and bring up troops in addition to those earmarked for

      Marita

      for the purpose. Such evidence as we possess, how­ever, does not indicate any such large-scale dis­ruption. At the time of the Belgrade coup, the build-up for Russia was proceeding slowly and with large intervals.[26] Out of the total of 17,000 trains comprising the build-up, only some 2,500 had already rolled to the east,[27] carrying mainly in­fantry divisions. The transportation of the Army troops (including artillery) to the east had only just begun,[28] while that of the bulk of the ‘fast’ (i.e., armored and motorized) divisions was still one month away. Indeed, it was only a few days since the OKW timetable for the transports had been made ready.[29] A look at the timetable reveals that, out of the twelve divisions whose diversion to the Bal­kans was brought about by the Belgrade coup, only four were on the point of being transferred to the east.[30] These forces could be, and were, replaced by others from the OKH reserves,[31] so that there was no need to suspend the build-up at all. As to the other eight divisions, mostly armored and motori­zed ones, they were not supposed to travel to the Russian frontier for another month, a fact which allowed OKH plenty of time to find alternative ar­rangements. Out of the total of twelve divisions which were brought up for Operation ‘25’ only one—the 14th Armored—came from the east.[32] From these facts, it is clear that any immediate delay caused to the Russian build-up by Hitler’s decision to smash Yugoslavia was limited to the time needed to pre­pare the OKH reserves for transportation in the place of those forces that had been sent to Yugo­slavia. Even this delay, however, could easily be made up for later on because of the extremely lei­surely pace at which the transports were rolling at this time.[33]

      What was the effect of Operation ‘25’ on

      Ma­rita

      ? According to a timetable issued on 19 February, the latter was to start on 6 April.[34] Fol­lowing Hitler’s decision to extend its objectives, however, OKH felt the need to advance this date and requested the commander in question, Field Mar­shal List of the 12th Army, to start his attack—subject to the weather—on or about 1 April.[35] Even after the Yugoslav coup, OKH still considered it pos­sible to start

      Marita

      on 2 or 3 April, that is with­out any delay as compared to the original time­table.[36] However, Operation ‘25’ also presented List with opportunities which OKH did not want him to miss. On 29 March, therefore, a conference was held in which List, the deputy chief of OKH, General Paulus, and the commander of the 2nd Army designed to carry out Operation ‘25,’ General Weichs, took part. I was decided to defer the attack on Greece until Weichs’s forces would be ready to open their own attack in order to achieve a better coordination between the two operations.[37] Con­se­quently OKH issued a new timetable, according to which the opening of both ‘25’ and

      Marita

      was postponed to 5 April, to make it possible for List to re-deploy his forces in such a way as to take ad­vantage of the opportunities of attacking Greece from Yugoslav territory which had been opened up by the Belgrade coup.[38] On 3 April Hitler overrode OKH and ordered a postponement of another 24 hours. Thus, it is clear that such delay as Operation ‘25’ caused to

      Marita

      was due not to any difficulty in bringing up additional forces, but to the desire to exploit the opportunity presented by the Belgrade coup in order to

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