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Why did Hitler lose the war? german look
(Second World War. Life and Death on the Eastern Front).Foreword by Alexei Isaev"Twilight state of mind", temporary or permanent clouding of the mind is one of the convenient and common explanations for the adoption of military and political decisions of non-obvious expediency. Often, journalists and historians, like the screenwriters of mediocre Hollywood films, offer their readers mental disorders as an explanation for certain moves with disastrous consequences. Memoirists even more often pat on the back, or even after the fact generously hand out cuffs to the leaders, before whom they trembled in their time at the helm of power. However, most often this is nothing more than an attempt to find a simple answer to a complex question and the desire to avoid a deep analysis of the situation. To the greatest extent, the passion for the personal decision-making factor affected the history of the Third Reich. In places, the really eccentric behavior of Adolf Hitler, repeatedly reinforced by third-hand retellings, provided enormous opportunities for shifting the burden of responsibility from objective factors to subjective factors. At the same time, critics of the decisions of the “possessed Fuhrer” did not always take a critical enough approach to the issue of the feasibility of theoretically correct versions of orders and orders. All the more difficult is the understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships of events for foreigners, including the domestic reader.
The presented collection of articles fills this gap to some extent, covering the military and political aspects of the rise and fall of the Third Reich through the eyes of German specialists. It collects research on a wide range of topics, from weapons production to the strategic and political aspects of World War II.
The collection opens with an article by X. Hemberger on the German economy and industry on the eve and during the Second World War. The article describes the titanic work that was done in the 30s with the aim of turning the Third Reich into an autarchy capable of doing without the import of certain types of raw materials and food. Shortly after Hitler came to power, a plan was proposed and put into practice to replace several strategically important raw materials with synthetic counterparts. This primarily concerned rubber and hydrocarbon fuels. In the Third Reich, due to large-scale state investments in the chemical industry, the production of synthetic rubber and synthetic gasoline was launched. Hemberger traces the system of economic and political decisions of the German leadership, which made it possible to take a big step towards creating an autarchy capable of existing under blockade conditions.
At the same time, the image of Germany as a country experiencing a total shortage of all types of natural resources is being destroyed. Full provision of domestic needs with coal made it possible to spend large volumes of this fuel on the production of synthetic fuel. In addition, the situation has changed significantly since the First World War, not least due to the progress of the technical means of warfare. Unlike the USSR, Germany not only covered its needs for aluminum and magnesium, but even had the opportunity to export these materials, which were essential for the aviation industry. In contrast, in the Soviet Union, the scarcity of bauxite deposits led to the widespread use of wood as a material for the production of aircraft. In the 1930s and 1940s, aviation became one of the most important instruments of warfare. The natural resources of Germany created all the possibilities for the production of high-quality combat aircraft. Both the Heinkels that terrorized European cities, and the Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers that became the symbol of the blitzkrieg, and the Messerschmitts were built from “winged metal”.
All-metal aircraft had undoubted advantages over Soviet aircraft, in the design of which the base material was wood. For example, hitting a 20-mm airgun projectile into a metal wing did not lead to damage that threatened to destroy the entire structure. On the contrary, for the wooden wing of a domestic aircraft during the war, the same hit threatened much more serious consequences. The wooden wing turned out to be heavier than a metal wing comparable in strength, in wartime conditions it was difficult to withstand its geometry and quality of finish. All these factors played a role in the air war on the Eastern Front.
Moreover, German designers could afford the luxury of using aluminum alloys not only in aircraft construction, but even replacing steel with them in gun carriages (in particular, on the 150-mm heavy infantry gun "sIG-33") and producing from "winged metal » massive pontoons for the construction of floating bridges. All these facts have not been given due attention in Russian historiography. The USSR was declared an inexhaustible pantry of natural resources, although this was generally not true. There were very few deposits of the main source of aluminum - bauxite - in the USSR, and the country experienced a severe shortage of aluminum, which was even supplied under lend-lease from the United States.
The view of German historians is also useful in terms of understanding the role of the Soviet Union as a subject of big European politics. A characteristic feature of the Soviet historical school was the exaggeration of the significance of the USSR for Germany as an object for a military operation. The “young Soviet state”, around which, like planets around the Sun since 1917, the world superpowers have been revolving, seeking to deal with it at all costs, is a highly distorted picture of world politics.
Another German historian, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, whose work is included in this collection, writes: “However, it was by no means the “living space in the East”, the forcible conquest of which already from the 1920s permeated Hitler’s political calculations, served as the main activating moment; no, the main impetus was the Napoleonic idea of defeating England by defeating Russia.”
Such an approach to the problem of the emergence of the Barbarossa plan was not typical for Russian historians, who focused more on long-term plans for the conquest of "living space" and the seizure of natural resources. However, Adolf Hitler himself formulated the reasons for the attack on the USSR in a speech at a secret meeting at the headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht on January 9, 1941 as follows: “The British are supported by the hope that the Russians can intervene. They will only give up resistance when this last continental hope of theirs is crushed. He, the Fuhrer, does not believe that the British are "hopelessly stupid"; if they do not see any prospect, they will stop fighting. If they lose, they will never find the moral strength to save the empire. If they can hold out, form 30-40 divisions, and if the United States and Russia provide them with assistance, then a very difficult situation will be created for Germany. This cannot be allowed.
Until now, he [Hitler] has acted on the principle of striking at the most important positions of the enemy in order to advance one step further. Therefore, now it is necessary to defeat Russia. Then either England will surrender, or Germany will continue to fight against England under the most favorable conditions. The defeat of Russia will also allow Japan to turn all its forces against the United States. And this would keep the latter from entering the war.
The question of time is especially important for the defeat of Russia. Although the Russian armed forces are a clay colossus without a head, it is impossible to accurately predict their further development. Since Russia must be defeated anyway, it is better to do so now, when the Russian army is leaderless and ill-prepared, and when the Russians have to overcome great difficulties in the military industry created with outside help.
Nevertheless, even now the Russians cannot be underestimated. Therefore, the German offensive must be carried out with maximum forces. Under no circumstances should the frontal pushing back of the Russians be allowed. Therefore, the most decisive breakthroughs are needed. The most important task is to quickly cut off the Baltic Sea area; for this it is necessary to create a particularly strong grouping on the right wing of the German troops, which will advance north of the Pripyat marshes. Although the distances in Russia are large, they are no more than the distances that the German armed forces have already coped with. The purpose of the operation should be to destroy the Russian armed forces, to seize the most important economic centers and to destroy other industrial regions, primarily in the Yekaterinburg region, in addition, it is necessary to capture the Baku region.
The defeat of Russia will be a great relief for Germany. Then only 40-50 divisions would have to be left in the East, the strength of the land army could be reduced, and the entire military industry could be used to arm the air and naval forces. Then it will be necessary to create a reliable anti-aircraft cover and move the most important industrial enterprises to safe areas. Then Germany will be invulnerable.
The gigantic expanses of Russia are fraught with incalculable riches. Germany must take possession of these areas economically and politically, but not annex them. Thus, she will have all the possibilities for waging a future struggle against the continents, then no one else will be able to defeat her. 1
Dashichev V.I. Bankruptcy strategy of German fascism. M.: Nauka, 1973. S. 93–94 with reference to KTV OKW, Bd.I. S. 253–258.
A balanced look at the roots of the Barbarossa plan gives dynamics to the attitude of the leadership of the Third Reich towards the USSR. Initially, the campaign against the Soviet Union was auxiliary to the main (as it seemed to Hitler) events of the war in Europe, which were to unfold at sea and in the air. The collapse of the Barbarossa made the ancillary campaign the main content of the Second World War for Germany, relegating the air and sea war with England to the background.
In addition to the issues of relations between the USSR and Germany that are most significant for the domestic reader, German historians pay much attention to the consequences of the air battle over the Reich. Before us is a picture of the destruction of large cities, generated by the imperfection of weapons of air warfare. Bombers of the Second World War, armed with free-fall bombs dropped from a height of several kilometers, could only effectively hit a target of the “large city” type. Contrary to Douai's theory, the impact on the major cities did not lead to the surrender of Germany. Air terror only embittered people in the rear and at the front. However, the German people had to pay dearly for testing the theory of the Italian military theorist in practice. Gerhard Schreiber writes: "As a result of the bombing, almost five million apartments were destroyed - a quarter of the total housing stock in 1939." At the same time, monuments of history and culture, created long before Hitler came to power, were destroyed.
On the contrary, industrial enterprises defended by strong air defense systems and represented relatively compact targets suffered much less. Schreiber gives the following estimates of the impact of Anglo-American aviation on German industry: “In general, the damage to the buildings and technical equipment of industrial enterprises caused by enemy air raids, ground battles and destruction by one’s own hands amounted to 10 to 15 percent of structures, if we take for the starting point of 1936 with its full workload.
Of course, the futility of air terror was realized by the Anglo-American command, and in search of targets for a direct impact on the functioning of the German military machine, they turned their attention to communications. Schreiber writes: "After all, the Allies dropped seven times more bombs on Germany's transport system - and on its civilian population - than on its military-industrial enterprises." It was the destruction of the transport network that prevented the rapid restoration of pre-war production volumes by German industry. At the same time, it should be noted (this moment was missed by Schreiber) that a massive impact on the transport network of the Third Reich began only in the autumn of 1944. Until September 1944, sporadic Allied bomber strikes were carried out on German railway and river communications, but they did not have any noticeable effect on transportation. Accordingly, the military industry of the Third Reich was able to reach peak performance. Bridges, railway junctions, and the infrastructure of the German river fleet were really hit hard only in September and October 1944. These strikes achieved their goals. On March 16, 1945, Speer reported to Hitler: "The German economy is in for an inevitable collapse within 4-8 weeks."
In addition to strategic economic issues, much attention is paid to big politics in the collection. Here, German historians also depart from the classic version of setting Germany against the USSR, on the one hand, and avoid sweeping accusations of big politicians of suggestibility and weakness. In particular, it is subjected to a thoughtful analysis of the politician Neville Chamberlain, the "father" of the Munich Agreement. Sebastian Haffner: “The basis of the “pacifying” calculations was Hitler's anti-Bolshevism and his openly proclaimed plans for conquest in the East. They, as Chamberlain expected, made it impossible for Germany and Russia to act together. And while both continental giants kept each other at bay, England, together with France, dragging along in the wake of her policy, could, as has long been customary, play a decisive role. In addition, the old cordon sanitaire still existed between Germany and Russia - the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, etc. This cordon could prevent or at least complicate a direct military clash between Germany and the Soviet Union. Thus, as we see, there was a desire of the British Prime Minister to create a system of "checks and balances" in Europe and avoid military action.
Explanations other than doubts about Hitler's mental capacity, Haffner also gives German policy towards the United States during 1940-1941: "The thirteen-month duel (from November 1940 to December 1941) between Roosevelt and Hitler looks funny, because Hitler acted in it in a completely unusual role: Roosevelt, full of rage, was opposed by the meek, almost like a lamb, Hitler. The German historian invites readers to look at the relationship between Roosevelt and Hitler from a different angle, and such a theory is quite worthy of the right to exist.
There is also a bridge in Haffner's work from politics to military operations. He explained the offensive of the German troops in the Ardennes from a political point of view: "Hitler wanted to put the Western powers before a choice: either at the last minute to come out with him against the Soviet Union, or to remain with nothing." So big politics influenced strategy, proposing to attack in the West in the face of the threat of a strike in the East, which was to follow any day and really took place at the beginning of January 1945.
One can argue with the points of view expressed in the German View, but one thing is certain: they were expressed by people who well understood the realities of the country that was the opponent of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War.
Hans Adolf Jacobsen
HOW THE SECOND WORLD WAR WAS LOSTAt dawn on August 26, 1939, six days before the start of the war, the German Wehrmacht Special Forces suddenly captured the Yablunkovsky Pass in Poland. She had the task of keeping it open until the advance units of the ground forces approached; more than 2,000 Polish soldiers were captured at the same time. Hitler's order to postpone the offensive envisaged for August 26 could no longer reach this "detachment for operations in the dark" in time. He had to withdraw in small groups to the German border.
Only on August 31, 1939, Hitler gave the final order for the offensive: on September 1, at 4:45 am, the German divisions entered Poland. The Second World War broke out when England and France (including the dominions), fulfilling their allied obligations to Poland, declared war on Germany on September 3 after the expiration of their ultimatums. They did not stop even before the serious consequences of their step, as Hitler hoped until the very end, being in a state between illusion and self-deception. When the chief translator of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs translated the fatal words of the note from the Western powers to him, he "as if frozen ... and sat in his chair completely silent and motionless." Hitler's idea of the cowardly and accommodating position of England and France was not confirmed; his big trump card, the August 23 non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, did not play either: the allies were determined to put a limit to the expansionist policy of Hitler, which they had realized in the spring. The time when they put up with the fait accompli is over. From the moment of the German occupation of the Czech Republic and Moravia, they, supported in that by the President of the United States, turned the steering wheel of their policy by 180 degrees: by entering Prague, Hitler "crossed the Rubicon."
In contrast to 1914, in relation to 1939, the problem of guilt for the war as such is not, in fact, worth it, although its historical assessments could be more differentiated than is formulated in numerous post-war studies.
With regard to the outbreak of the First World War, West German and foreign researchers agree that we should talk about shared responsibility. All participants in this war, as Lloyd George once put it, were more or less "drawn" into the conflict, and each of them, entering into it, sincerely believed that he had to defend himself, arms in hand, against attack from outside. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which placed the blame for the war solely on Germany and its allies, placed a fatal burden on the shoulders of the young Weimar Republic. After the collapse of the European state system as a result of the First World War, the failed attempt of a new organization of Europe made in 1919 provided a fertile ground for further, fraught with serious consequences, the course of development. The Treaty of Versailles, neither territorially nor politically, much less morally, could satisfy the European nations, especially the defeated ones; Nor was he capable of promoting the desired comprehensive understanding. The then-created League of Nations, despite some of its achievements, was unable to resolve disputes at the international level, since it had to make decisions only unanimously and, moreover, did not have sufficient executive power. But the United States of America, which emerged from the First World War as a power-political and especially ideological leading force, stood especially far away from the League of Nations, and then again fell into isolationism.
In this era, which, moreover, was characterized by economic depression and spiritual crises, the demagogues found obedient masses who enabled them to carry out their own political ideas with promises and promises. One thing is certain: in 1933, Hitler began his foreign policy with the struggle against the Versailles "dictatorship". Under the slogan of “peace”, he freed Germany step by step from the restrictions imposed on her and, in his own way, helped to restore the full effectiveness of the unilaterally formulated right of peoples to self-determination in 1919. But behind this nationalistically framed policy of revision of the Treaty of Versailles, which its propagandists portrayed in the most favorable light, something much more was hidden from the very beginning. Along with internal consolidation and the creation of a totalitarian Fuhrer state, the formation of which Hitler accelerated by brutal means and methods, he purposefully pursued (at first only poorly realized as the realization of the ideas of his book Mein Kampf) two major goals: the conquest of the "corresponding the population of the living space" in the East (while settling accounts with Bolshevism) and the establishment of his dominance in Europe, with which he intended to link its nationalist transformation in the spirit of his racial theory. However, he always left the decision on the time and direction of this or that action (acting “this way or that way”) to himself, not making it until the very last moment.
Driven by his inherent impatience and fear of not having time to carry out his historically unique “cause” before the end of his own life, Hitler in his policy did not take into account any rules of human and national coexistence. Since his actions, starting from 1935, did not encounter any significant resistance from the European powers, he acted more and more boldly: the restoration of universal conscription and the entry of troops into the remilitarized Rhineland, combined with forced armament - these were the first stages of his beginning prestigious success. Instead of putting it in its place from the outset, which was still possible with the military superiority of the Western powers in the early years of National Socialist domination, England and France (underestimating the methods and dynamics of the totalitarian National Socialist system) believed that they could more quickly contribute to the solution all contentious issues with a policy of appeasement. In 1936, Hitler brought about the rapprochement with Italy that he sought (the Berlin-Rome axis), and also strengthened Germany's position as a bulwark against Bolshevism by concluding the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. A year later, at a secret meeting on November 5, 1937, in the narrowest circle, he declared that for him in resolving the issue of German living space there is only one path of force, and without risk this path is unthinkable.
When, on February 4, 1938, Hitler removed from their posts the Imperial Minister of War, Field Marshal von Blomberg and the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Baron von Fritsch, and took command of the Wehrmacht directly, another important step was taken: the strongest tool of the state, hitherto unified only politically, has now lost its professional-military independence. Thus, in a future war, the role of commander was to fall to Hitler's lot! At the same time, diplomacy also came under his influence when he appointed Ribbentrop as Reich Foreign Minister instead of Baron von Neurath. After the Anschluss of Austria, when Hitler's authority among the people was further strengthened, he began to strive for the liquidation of Czechoslovakia. But first he had to content himself in Munich in September 1938 with a partial solution: Germany received the Sudetenland, which was occupied on October 1, 1938. Although Hitler on September 26 declared publicly in the Reichstag: "We do not need the Czechs", already in mid-December he gave the headquarters
The Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), albeit with some reservations, an order to take all preparatory measures to defeat the rest of the Czech Republic.
* * *The entry into Prague marked the beginning of a decisive turn towards war: far from being satisfied with this booty, Hitler turned his gaze to Poland. Since 1935, he tried to win her over to his side for a joint struggle against the Soviet Union. But at the end of 1938 he had to abandon this plan, since the leading figures of Poland did not even think of allowing themselves to be made an instrument of the National Socialist aggressive policy, hoping to pursue an independent policy as a "third force" in Europe. They also rejected Hitler's proposals for resolving the question of Danzig and the corridor of March 21, 1939, while the Western powers on March 31 gave their guarantees to Poland. Hitler denounced the German-English naval agreement and the German-Polish non-aggression pact (April 28) and at the same time entered into a military alliance with Italy (the "Steel Pact"), and also, competing with the Western powers, stepped up diplomatic efforts against Moscow to get a free hand against Poland. This led on August 23, 1939 to the conclusion of a non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. After Hitler made the final decision to attack Poland in early August, German-Polish relations became more and more aggravated. The excesses of many Poles against the Volksdeutsche, deliberately exaggerated by the National Socialist press, gave Hitler a welcome pretext for a violent invasion. True, the conclusion of the Polish-British Mutual Assistance Pact of August 25 and Italy's declaration that it was not ready for war led once again to the postponement of the attack. But on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered the entry of the Wehrmacht, after direct Polish-German negotiations did not take place and Poland, completely unaware of its actual military capabilities, announced mobilization on the afternoon of August 30.
The critically thinking politician of those dramatic August days of 1939 [the German ambassador in Rome] W. von Hassel described his impressions as follows: “... Hitler and Ribbentrop wanted war against Poland and deliberately risked war with the Western powers, until the last days temperature the illusion that they will remain neutral. The Poles, with their Polish arrogance and Slavic pliability to the course of events, imbued with confidence in England and France, missed any remaining chance to avoid war. The London government, whose ambassador did everything to keep the peace, in recent days stopped this race and made a kind of "Vogue la galiere" 2
Ibgue la galiere - the curve will take you out (fr.). France followed this path with much greater hesitation. Mussolini spared no effort in order to avoid war ... ”It is characteristic that already in this first campaign, Hitler’s military goal went far beyond the defeat of the enemy armed forces: he wanted to fight until the complete annihilation of Poland!
Of course, the Second World War did not arise only as a result of the ambition and lust for power of an individual. But hardly any power was free from the blame for this second European catastrophe, for all the states that later participated in the war had previously rendered more or less strong assistance to the National Socialist policy. However, the fact remains that Hitler deliberately unleashed a war against Poland and thereby caused the Second World War. Therefore, he bears such responsibility for it, which is generally “conceivable within the framework of major global political processes” (Herzfeld).
The outbreak of World War II, which caused the German people not to delight, but to skepticism and gloomy forebodings, found the Wehrmacht in the midst of its construction. It was carried out at a very fast pace, almost in a hurry, and, moreover, in breadth, and therefore it lacked depth in the field of weapons and personnel. Thus, Germany possessed an instrument of war that was still far from being ready for action, even though she was ahead of the Western powers in the production of modern types of weapons. Of the required four-month supply of weapons of any kind, an average of 25% was available; ammunition for anti-aircraft artillery and aerial bombs was enough for only three months, while fuel supplies from reserves and current production, at best, covered the needs of only four war months. The General Staff of the Ground Forces did not undertake any operational preparations for the offensive, with the exception of those related to Poland, because it considered the ground forces exclusively as a combat-ready means of defense. Contrary to the claims at the Nuremberg trials of the main German war criminals (1945-1946), that the German General Staff had already developed plans for an offensive against the Western powers before 1939, today it is firmly established: the first directive of the High Command of the Ground Forces (OKH) on the strategic concentration and deployment of troops dated October 19, 1939.
Moreover, Hitler imposed this directive on the leading officials of the OKH. Indeed, back in September, he faced a choice: either to neglect his latest political and just completed military seizures, or to “finally” settle accounts with the Western democracies, which, as he later told the generals, had been opposing the consolidation of the Reich for several decades. Considering the speed with which the German troops, brilliantly led by the OKH and the army group command, marched from success to success in Poland (while France, almost inactive, sat behind their Maginot Line!), and the growing awareness of the fact that Great Britain, entering the war, will fight to the last, Hitler wanted to use the imaginary favorable moment and force the enemy to a decisive battle. At the same time, the problem of neutrality did not play any role for him; if Germany won, no one would ask about it - that was his argument.
An impulsive and shameless course of action, in which he did not consider the views of others and the assessments of the situation by his closest military advisers, led Hitler in October to a hasty decision: while he seemed to have military superiority, it was necessary to attack the Western powers as soon as possible and destroy them. When Hitler, after the so-called peace proposal of October 6, 1939, ordered to speed up operational preparations for the offensive and, without waiting for the Western powers to respond to his proposal, set the first date on November 25, 1939, this caused indignation among the commander of Army Group C, Colonel General von Leeb. He wrote in his diary: “[…] all the orders […] indicate that this crazy offensive against the neutrality of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg is really going to be launched. So, Hitler's speech in the Reichstag was just a deception of the German people. Not only he and the General Staff of the Ground Forces, but also a number of other commanders of the armies involved in the west rightly doubted that a decisive victory would be achieved that same autumn; in addition, the Polish campaign revealed the obvious shortcomings of the ground forces. At various meetings to discuss the situation, they repeatedly drew Hitler's attention to how little the German army at the moment, in terms of personnel training and armament, meets the high requirements of the march to the west. Of course, based on the experience of the First World War, they assessed the combat capability of the enemy, including the French, very highly. Colonel-General von Brauchitsch [Commander-in-Chief of the Army] tried to do this for the last time in a dramatic conversation with Hitler on November 5, and together with the Chief of his General Staff, General Halder, again and again made attempts to soberly state all military points of view and convince Hitler to use any the possibility of peace. This tragic contradiction (on the one hand, the desire to prevent the expansion of the conflict and turning it into a new world fire, and on the other hand, the need to move forward with all professionalism the preparations for a military campaign) made the highest demands on their moral sense of responsibility and on their soldier's sense of duty. . The full depth of this conflict with one's own conscience can be appreciated, however, only by one who was forced to act in the same position and received the same upbringing. Today we can only guess what state of internal struggle the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces was in if he wondered if the elimination of Hitler was not the only way out of this tangled situation. But he and his like-minded people did not dare to take this last step, for they believed that such an act would be a violation of tradition, and besides, there is no suitable successor; in addition, the young officer corps, who believed in the Fuhrer, is unreliable, but above all, the mood within the country has not yet matured for this.
A lot has been said about the factors that contributed to the victory of the USSR over Germany, much less attention is paid to the reasons for the defeat of the Wehrmacht. We note the main mistakes of the Third Reich, which are referred to by German historians and generals.
Hitler's incompetenceMost German historians claim that the defeat of Germany was not so much due to individual strategic mistakes, but because of the adventurism of political and military plans. Hans Adolf Jacobsen notes that "the political goal pursued by Hitler far exceeded the effectiveness of the military and economic means at his disposal." Hitler, as the main culprit of the defeat in his memoirs, is also called by German military leaders. So, General Walter Challe de Beaulieu writes about the “uncertainty of the strategic goal at the beginning of the war” and about the “flurence of the Fuhrer between Moscow and Leningrad”, which did not allow building on the success of the first months of the war. On the one hand, the desire of the German generals to absolve themselves of all responsibility for the lost war is understandable, but on the other hand, one cannot ignore the role that Hitler played in the preparation and deployment of the war against the USSR. Note that after the failure near Moscow, the Fuhrer assumed sole command of the Wehrmacht. Muds and frostsMilitary historian and Major General Alfred Filippi noted that the German generals foresaw the likelihood of hostilities in off-road conditions and mudslides and prepared divisions for this. For example, in the infantry division of the first wave, horses were the main traction force: according to German data, their number was approaching 5 thousand. But at the same time, the degree of motorization was high - 394 cars and 615 trucks, 3 armored personnel carriers and 527 motorcycles.
The plans of the German armies were already violated by the first thaw, which, based on Guderian's notes, lasted from October 7 to November 4, 1941. The German generals note that after the success at Kiev they were ready to march on Moscow, but "many formations got stuck in a quagmire, which allowed the Russians to strengthen the defense."
To no lesser extent, the advance of the Wehrmacht was slowed down by unusually severe frosts for the Germans, which engulfed the European part of the USSR already at the end of November 1941. The cold affected not only the soldiers, but also weapons and equipment. Guderian noted in his memoirs that grease froze in rifles, machine guns and machine guns, hydraulic fluid thickened in the recoil devices of guns, and the brake system of cars did not function in the cold. Human resourcesAlready in August 1941, General Franz Halder wrote that Germany had underestimated the strength of Russia. This is not about superiority in manpower - it did not exist at the beginning of the war - but about the unparalleled dedication with which the Red Army fought and the Soviet rear worked. The great miscalculation of the German command was that it could not foresee the ability of the USSR, under the conditions of the most severe pressure of the war, to mobilize human resources and in a matter of months restore the losses of almost half of the agricultural and two-thirds of the industrial capacities. It is important that the Soviet Union devoted all its resources to the fight against the enemy, which Germany could not afford to do. True, Guderian noted that the High Command of the Third Reich made a miscalculation in the distribution of divisions in theaters of war. Of the 205 German divisions, only 145 were sent to the East. According to the German general, in the West, primarily in Norway, Denmark and the Balkans, 38 divisions turned out to be superfluous. During the war, another mistake of the German command came to light in the distribution of armed forces. The number of the Luftwaffe contingent was over 20% of the total number of soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht. Moreover, out of 1 million 700 thousand Luftwaffe military personnel, approximately 1 million 100 thousand people were directly related to aviation - the rest are auxiliary personnel. Scale of the warA distinctive feature of the military conflict between Germany and the USSR is its huge scale. From the autumn of 1941 to the autumn of 1943, the length of the Soviet-German front was never less than 3800 km, while the German armies had to go through the territory of the Soviet Union about 2 thousand km. Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist admitted: “We did not prepare for a protracted struggle. Everything was built on achieving a decisive victory before the onset of autumn. The reason for the failures in the East, according to the field marshal, was that the German troops "were forced to overcome vast spaces, not having the proper flexibility of command." Von Kleist is echoed by a military historian, former Major General Kurt von Tippelskirch, who sees the main reason for the defeat of the German army in the fact that its forces were "meanly wasted by useless resistance in an unnecessary place and at an inconvenient time, as well as fruitless attempts to capture the impossible." Mistakes of the German generalsAlbeit with great reluctance, but still the German military leaders admit their grossest strategic miscalculations, which ultimately led to a failure on the Eastern Front. Let's take a look at four of the most important. 1.
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt calls the choice of the initial disposition of the German troops the first strategic mistake. We are talking about the gap between the left and right flanks of Theodor von Bock's armies, formed due to the impenetrable Pripyat swamps. As a participant in the First World War, Rundstedt was well aware of such a danger, but neglected it. Only the fragmentation of the Red Army units then saved Army Group Center from a flank attack. 2.
The German command admits that the 1941 summer campaign of the year began without a clearly defined goal and a unified view of the offensive strategy. The General Staff did not determine the direction of the main attack, as a result of which Army Group North got bogged down near Leningrad, Army Group South slowed down its advance near Rostov, and Army Group Center was completely thrown back from Moscow. 3.
Catastrophic mistakes, according to German historians, were made during the attack on Moscow. Instead of switching to temporary defense of the positions reached in November 1941 in anticipation of reinforcements, the Wehrmacht sent the main forces to capture the capital, as a result of which German troops lost more than 350 thousand people in three winter months. The offensive impulse of the Red Army was nevertheless stopped, but at the same time the German army significantly reduced its combat capability. 4.
In the summer of 1942, the German command sent its main forces to the Caucasus, thus underestimating the possibility of resistance by the Soviet troops near Stalingrad. But the city on the Volga is the most important strategic goal, capturing which Germany would cut off the Caucasus from the "Great Land" and block access for the USSR military industry to Baku oil. Major General Hans Doerr noted that "Stalingrad should go down in the history of wars as the greatest mistake ever made by the military command, as the greatest disregard for the living organism of its army, ever shown by the leadership of the state."
Tags: Albeit with great reluctance, but still the German military leaders admit their grossest strategic miscalculations, which ultimately led to a failure on the Eastern Front. Let's take a look at four of the most important.
1. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt calls the choice of the initial disposition of the German troops the first strategic mistake. We are talking about the gap between the left and right flanks of Theodor von Bock's armies, formed due to the impenetrable Pripyat swamps. As a participant in the First World War, Rundstedt was well aware of such a danger, but neglected it. Only the fragmentation of the Red Army units then saved Army Group Center from a flank attack.
2. The German command admits that the summer campaign of 1941 began without a clearly defined goal and a unified view of the offensive strategy. The General Staff did not determine the direction of the main attack, as a result of which Army Group North got bogged down near Leningrad, Army Group South slowed down its advance near Rostov, and Army Group Center was completely thrown back from Moscow.
3. Catastrophic mistakes, according to German historians, were made during the attack on Moscow. Instead of switching to temporary defense of the positions reached in November 1941 in anticipation of reinforcements, the Wehrmacht sent the main forces to capture the capital, as a result of which German troops lost more than 350 thousand people in three winter months. The offensive impulse of the Red Army was nevertheless stopped, but at the same time the German army significantly reduced its combat capability.
4. In the summer of 1942, the German command sent its main forces to the Caucasus, thus underestimating the possibility of resistance by the Soviet troops near Stalingrad. But the city on the Volga is the most important strategic goal, capturing which Germany would cut off the Caucasus from the "Great Land" and block access for the USSR military industry to Baku oil.
Major General Hans Doerr noted that "Stalingrad should go down in the history of wars as the greatest mistake ever made by the military command, as the greatest disregard for the living organism of its army, ever shown by the leadership of the state."
The Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defense in Podolsk is a real Klondike for historians. Its main wealth is 9 million cases of the period of the Great Patriotic War. Almost everything is available! They began to be posted on the Internet resources of the Ministry of Defense 4 years ago and have already published more than 100 million pages relating to the Red Army. But it turned out that there is also a trophy archive taken out of Germany. It contained unique documents, several of which KP is publishing today for the first time.
You can stumble upon a sensation in any folder
Behind the old Soviet buildings of the post-war model, modern ones sparkle. The entrance to them is closed for now - construction is underway. Between them, a track filled with water leads me to the secrets of the Third Reich.
Come in here, - apologizing for the inconvenience, my guide points out - an employee of the archive Victoria Kayaeva. - The USSR got only a part of the German archives. Mostly documents of the Army Group Center and North, reports and telegrams from naval units, a lot of maps of the Eastern Front. 24 thousand storage units!
Well, not everything is so simple. The German documents ended up in the archive in a fragmented form, as if a deck of cards had fallen. In Soviet times, they managed to translate something. But there is still a lot of work. And in 2011, the Germans proposed to the Russian Historical Society, the government and the Russian Ministry of Defense to jointly digitize the trophy archive. The work is calculated until 2018 and will cost German taxpayers 2.5 million euros. Some of the documents are quite dilapidated, burned, in need of restoration.
- And what are the Germans looking for in the archive?
They are mainly looking for the names of their military in order to establish their fate. But the sensation here can wait in any folder.
"The commissars are insidious, secretive..."
Victoria opens a thick folder. Dust dries the eyes. Gothic letters on the sheets. The war with the USSR had not yet begun, and ciphers were already coming from all over the world to Berlin.
Here it is curious, - Kayaeva draws my attention.
On the opened page is a real “black hole” into the past: a secret report from the head of the 1st department of German counterintelligence to Berlin on September 21, 1939. "According to the agent in the city of Polangen (Lithuania), 3,000 Poles are due to arrive ... This disturbs the German population of the border regions, especially the peasants, so much that some of them want to leave their farm."
Now the Germans tolerate refugees from Africa, but before they were ready to leave their homes and leave because of the influx of Poles?
It turns out that this is so ... And here is the report of German intelligence officers about negotiations with Russian officers on the division of Poland: “The commissar shows impudence: the city of Siedlce was destroyed without military necessity, this contradicts Hitler’s promise to Roosevelt to destroy only military facilities.”
From the same message: “The commissars are insidious, secretive. The political line is clearly traced: the Red Army marches as a "liberator" from the German troops, who recklessly destroyed everything "...
But we know that the local population accepted the Red Army precisely as liberators, in contrast to the German Wehrmacht.
Report of the Major of the SS on the operation "Pripyat"
Surprise: most SS reports begin with a description of the area, nature. We read the report to the headquarters on Operation Pripyat by SS Major Magill dated August 12, 1941.
 Continuation of the report of the SS major on the operation "Pripyat"
Here is a little about nature: "The terrain is swampy, but, on the other hand, the soil is sandy, only small areas have fertile soil."
The next paragraph is called "Successes of the operation": "6526 people were shot. Of these, 6,450 were robbers (as Jews were called in SS documents), the remaining 76 were Red Army soldiers or persons engaged in communist activities.
"Fighting": "was not."
"Trophies": "only the valuables of the robbers. Partially they were handed over to the security police department in Pinsk. There are no losses."
Where the Germans have a craving for describing nature becomes clear when you read the full report on the same operation: “The attempt to drive women and children into the swamps did not have the due success, since the swamps were not deep enough to drown there.”
Somewhere I came across an interrogation of a woman who was captured when she was looking for her child in a concentration camp, - Victoria Kayaeva sighs. - She looked into the crack in the barracks where the children were kept, and saw how they walk, putting their hands forward. They were blinded during the experiments.
Photo album with Hitler's first trip to the USSR
The next case is more like a photo album. It contains hundreds of small black-and-white photographs, each no larger than a negative. They were printed from German AGFA film after the war, in the USSR. And they sealed it right away.
 This case has already been handed over to the representative of Germany, the description says that Hitler must be somewhere in the footage. Something I couldn't see here. It would be necessary with a magnifying glass ...
- Isn't that him?- I point to a man surrounded by retinue.
Looks like he is! The description says that the pictures show Hitler in the city of Borisov on August 4, 1941.
- Did you go to Moscow in the footsteps of Napoleon?(The French also advanced through this town in 1812.)
Wow, look, the Japanese military attaché is with him! That is, in Borisov, Hitler persuaded the Japanese to enter the war?
The uniqueness of these images was confirmed by "KP" and the head of the project for the digitization of trophy archives - a representative of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, Matthias Uhl:
Yes, in these rare pictures, Hitler first appeared on the territory of the USSR. In Borisov (a city on the left bank of the Berezina River, now - Belarus. - Ed.), He flew to a meeting of the headquarters of Army Group Center.
 When the pictures were enlarged, historians easily identified all the knights of the Knight's Cross of the First World War: the commanders of the Army Group Center in 1941, Field Marshals Fedor von Bock and Adolf Ferdinand von Kluge, the commander of the 2nd Panzer Group, Colonel General Wilhelm Guderian and 3 th Panzer Group - Colonel General Hermann Goth ... Almost all of this old guard was dismissed by Hitler after the defeat near Moscow.
- What happened at the meeting?
It is known that the generals disagreed with Hitler in opinion. The Fuhrer convinced them that there was no need to waste time on Moscow: it could be surrounded and flooded, and all forces should be thrown at Leningrad and the Caucasus in order to level the front line. And the generals assured him that they would easily capture Moscow.
 And how many legends there are about how Hitler walked around Smolensk and even hid there in a concrete bunker - "Berenhalle" (German - "Bear's lair").
He really was in Smolensk on March 13, 1943. I did not hear that he lingered there in the “lair”. It was there that Major General of the General Staff of the Center Group Henning von Tresckow made his second attempt on the Fuhrer. He, under the guise of sending home, planted a bomb on Hitler's plane. But she didn't explode.
- And when was the first attempt?
in Borisov. Then von Tresckow wanted to arrest Hitler together with the staff officers. But the guards did not allow his car to approach the Fuhrer's column.
How Himmler dined with Vlasov
Perhaps soon Matthias Uhl will put all these historical puzzles into the big picture. After all, he is not just a historian, but also a writer. According to archival documents, in 2007 he released the collection "Unknown Hitler".
 - Matthias, what other surprises await your readers?
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Sergei Shoigu, who helped make these archives available. Now everyone can get acquainted with the documents in Russian and German on the Internet. We managed to find among these papers the diary of Hitler's right hand, head of the SS Heinrich Himmler (see photo above).
- What's in it?
This is a business calendar. Let's open it at random, here I read: “September 18, 1944. At 14.00 lunch with General Vlasov. At 16.00 a meeting with SS officers in the presence of General Vlasov.
This, as you understand, is about General Andrei Vlasov, captured by the Germans, who became a traitor (he was hanged in the USSR in 1946). But this is what they talked about with Himmler, the diary does not say, you will have to look for the memoirs of those who were present at this meeting.
 - And what might be of interest to Russians in the German archives?
For example, the conversation between Hitler and the chief of staff of the Wehrmacht high command, Wilhelm Keitel, is curious. On September 16, 1942, Hitler smashes his generals for about two hours, saying that his generals failed the offensive near Moscow and in the Caucasus. He actually explains to the generals that the war with the USSR has already been lost and that we must at least hold on to positions near Stalingrad at any cost!
- Did he tell his generals in 1942?!
Yes, and it seems that Hitler foresaw the outcome of the war even before the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. The generals, after his reprimands, were already afraid to take responsibility for making decisions. And the Fuhrer actually controlled the troops personally, but at the same time he did not own the real situation on the fronts.
 - It turns out that Hitler had already lost the war then?
I think this happened when he decided to attack the Soviet Union.
DEJAVU
Among archival photographs of 1941, I came across pictures (on the left) that seemed very familiar to me. Here on the square of the settlement in the Smolensk region there is a monument to Lenin. The crowd throws ropes over the head of the monument, throws Lenin to the ground. Breaks into pieces with sledgehammers. And here is a collective photo for memory against the background of the defeated leader. When looking at these happy faces, I recalled the grimaces of Ukrainian nationalists on the Maidan 70 years later...
1941 - the most powerful military machine of that time, spurred on by its leader Hitler, already completely dominating Europe, was moving towards Moscow.
The Germans are implementing the Barbarossa plan. He assumed complete occupation of strategically significant areas of the territory of the Soviet Union just six months after the start of the invasion. The German military command set itself the task of capturing Moscow by the end of August 41st. Georgia and Azerbaijan, as the last industrial segments of the USSR, were to be conquered already in the first days of November.
On secret papers at the headquarters of the operational leadership of the Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht Armed Forces, the Soviet Union ceased to exist five months after the June attack by Germany.
The optimism of the fascist headquarters was understandable - the army groups "North" and "Center" were indeed quite successfully fulfilling the deadly schedule. But the “South” began to seriously tie up in Ukraine. Hitler began to get nervous, demanding the speedy capture of the Donbass region - the supply of coal, weapons and oil from the Caucasian basins gave the USSR a chance to transfer the war from lightning to protracted ..
With all its superiority in armored vehicles and the best training of the army, Germany was not ready to wage a long war with the USSR - an awakened bear could stand on all fours very soon. The rapid industrialization and the transfer of Soviet industry to a military footing began to bear fruit, and Hitler saw this as a threat to the entire campaign.
The Barbarossa plan envisaged the division and transfer of the former territories of the Union under the control of coalition governments in order to facilitate control over such vast spaces. No Germany could have swallowed such a large bitten piece on its own. Therefore, in the minds of the fascist strategists, the captured Russia should have been divided in this way - the north (Stalingrad) controls the Finnish corps of the Axis, the Baltic states, Ukraine and Belarus are transferred under the protectorates of Italy and Greece.
Something went wrong?
However, an extremely important condition for the implementation of this program was the cutting off from the industrial organism of the country of Kharkov with its strong industrial component and the resource-rich South-East of Ukraine. Hitler, prioritizing according to the current state of affairs on the fronts by the end of the summer of 1941, was ready to sacrifice the initial capture schedule and even abandon the planned assault on Moscow, postponing it until the beginning of winter. And the situation at that time was such that neither the "North" nor the "South" could boast of full-fledged success in the Baltic states or in Central Ukraine.
There were serious fears that without supporting their “wings” and attempting to storm the capital of the USSR, the Army Group “Center” could be subjected to counterattacks from the flanks at the most inopportune moment for this. The battles for Kyiv brought tactical success to the Wehrmacht army, but in a strategic sense, the delay in the development of the offensive on the southern sector of the front led to a loss of time and initiative - the planned advance to Moscow began only by mid-autumn, when weather conditions were already playing against the attacking side. The plan of "Barbarossa" was already broken - its main creed about defeating the enemy before the start of the autumn-winter period failed.
Beginning of the End
The main reasons why the Barbarossa plan was not destined to be realized are considered to be an erroneous assessment of the mobilization potential of the Union and an underestimation of the defensive capacity of the Red Army. Based on intelligence, the strategic geniuses of the Wehrmacht assumed that with the rapid development of the offensive, the Red Army would not have time to transfer its forces located in Siberia and the Far East to the western borders of the country. And the local mobilization capabilities of the Soviet command will be able to oppose the invaders by the end of the year with no more than 40 hastily formed divisions. From this calculation, a combat reserve was formed, which allocated a limited contingent of up to half a million people from occupied Europe. Even with the predicted expected losses in manpower from the German troops, this reserve could feed the front for no longer than a few months.
The bogged down offensive threatened not only to disrupt plans to seize the territory of the Soviet Union, but also put at stake the combat capability of the Fuhrer's armies in Europe itself. To the unpleasant surprise of the German generals, the leadership of the Red Army ensured in the first couple of months of the war the mobilization of as many as three hundred and twenty divisions instead of the fifty expected by the enemy. Also striking was the defense capability of the Soviet troops, who managed to deploy at the very initial stage of the war from some two hundred and twenty active divisions a quite tangible obstacle course for the German armies. The stubborn resistance of the Soviet Union during the Typhoon operation by the Nazis demonstrated the final failure of the Barbarossa plan - the battle for Moscow turned out to be the beginning of the end of the entire Third Reich. At that moment, when in December the 41st part of the Red Army, defending Moscow, launched a counterattack, giving rise to the subsequent January offensive operation, Hitler realized that all hopes for a quick and easy victory over the USSR were now buried forever!
Back to the lair
Even for Hitler, who believed in the special exclusivity of the Nordic Aryan race, it was clear that a country like Germany, with a size comparable to Belarus, simply could not control the whole of Europe, being in a state of protracted war with the giant Soviet Union. Germany simply would not have had enough diplomatic or military resources. Hitler cannot be called a failed strategist, but he made a serious mistake by attacking the USSR in 1941. Even being ahead of all European countries and the Union in the development of the military-industrial complex by a whole five-year plan, Germany did not have sufficient potency to control all the occupied lands. After the capture of Europe, it would take Hitler another seven years to fully assimilate the resource potential from the acquired territories.
And only after that it would be possible to talk about the full expansion of Nazism to the East. But, obviously, Hitler did not trust Stalin so much, was so afraid of the effectiveness of the totalitarian-communist approach in industry and the economy, that he made a risky bet on the Barbarossa plan. However, the fascist reptile choked on a too large piece that she managed to bite off. And although Hitler, thanks to his stubbornness and sick ego, will desperately send the faithful sons of Germany to death for another three years, it becomes clear to him and to most of his entourage that the stop in December 1941 near Moscow of the German military ice rink, which managed to crush the entire Europe is a verdict on the dream of the dominance and supremacy of the Nazi ideology over the entire civilized world.
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