The
initial phase of the Russian campaign, following Germany’s massive
surprise attack on 22 June 1941, was extremely successful for the
aggressor and catastrophic for the Soviets. The size of the invading
army had no precedent in history: over 5.3 million men, over 4,000
tanks, 4,500 aircraft, and over 47,000 pieces of ordnance, attacking
along an 1,800-mile-long front. |
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In
the first five months of the invasion German armored units drove
deep into Soviet territory, advancing to some 750 miles at some
points past the Russian front. They reached the outskirts of Moscow,
captured most of the Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula in the south,
and encircled Leningrad in the north, imposing a blockade on
Russia’s second largest city.
The
Red Army suffered losses unparalleled in military history: by 1
December 1941 it had lost 7 million (dead, missing, or taken
prisoner), about 22,000 tanks, and nearly 25,000 military aircraft.
In practice, nothing remained of the Red Army units formed prior to
the German invasion.
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The
catastrophic defeats and losses of the initial stage of the war were
clearly the result of the fundamental miscalculation of the
Stalinist leadership that had chosen to ally the Soviet Union with
the Nazi regime. The collusion with Hitler had deprived Russia of
the critical buffer of Poland, allowing Germany to amass troops
along the Soviet border and launch the surprise attack. In addition,
the Soviet troops, deployed in the recently annexed eastern
provinces of Poland, did not have enough time to set up powerful
defensive positions.
Stalin had received numerous warnings from his intelligence agents
and Western governments about the imminent surprise attack, but he
chose to discount them. He may have believed that countermeasures by
the Soviet Union could only provoke the Germans. He also may have
dismissed the warnings as attempts to poison his relations with
Germany. Had he heeded those signals, he could have saved much of
his troops by ordering them to prepare for action. In any event, the
Germans achieved a complete tactical surprise, while the Soviets’
forward deployments exposed them to the full force of the
Blitzkrieg.
The
humiliating defeats were a tragic consequence of the political
system, in which the supreme leader with absolute authority
completely dominated strategic decision making. Stalin’s own
dictatorial disposition and the inclination to use terror to
suppress dissenting opinions discouraged his administration from
contradicting his own analysis of the situation. Moreover, the years
of Stalin’s overinflated cult had created a psychological
environment, when even top political and military figures were too
awed to contradict him or believed unquestioningly in his
infallibility.
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