Operation Barbarossa

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A strategic surprise to Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa was the German code name for its invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941, at 04:15 local time. Stalin had believed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact promising nonaggression from the Germans.

German intentions

Failure to prepare

Both Stalin and Adolf Hitler, in various ways, were unprepared for the reality of the conflict. Stalin was surprised, tactically and strategically, by the invasion. Hitler was overconfident in a quick victory.

Stalin

Strategic warning

Stalin received a warning document, in May 1939, about The Future Plans of Aggression by Fascist Germany, based on a German briefing obtained by Soviet spies in Warsaw. A Soviet agent first reported that Hitler planned to declare war on the Soviet Union in March 1941, and refined the estimate, by February 28, to May 20.

This intelligence was corroborated by sources in Bucharest, Budapest, Sofia and Rome, to say nothing of the information provided by the spy Richard Sorge (code-named Ramsay) in Tokyo [1] in which the authors detail the undercover operations of the spy ring headed by Richard Sorge and Hotsumi Ozaki which transmitted highly secret information from Tokyo to the Soviet Union between 1933 and 1941. On April 17 a Prague informant predicted a German invasion in the second half of June. The precise date and time of the invasion were revealed by a reliable source in Berlin fully three days before the Germans attacked.

All of this Stalin ignored. Typically, he scrawled on the bottom of the Prague report: English provocation! Investigate! On May 19, Sorge predicted that 150 divisions were being readied by the Germans for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin retorted with an expletive.

Readiness

The result was that literally nothing was done to prepare for the German assault. Soviet planes were not camouflaged. Troops were not in defensive positions; indeed they were ordered not to occupy such positions, for fear of provoking the Germans.

Worse, Stalin had to the gathering storm with yet another purge of suspected threats to his own authority, having had shot Mikhail Tukhachevsky and:

  • 2 of the oher 5 Marshals
  • 13 of the 15 army commanders (full generals) and 8 of the 9 equivalent admirals
  • 50 of the 57 corps commanders
  • 154 of the 186 division commanders

Soviet public position

On 13 June 1941, Moscow Radio broadcast a TASS report that appeared to be in Stalin's personal style. "to tear up the Pact and to undertake an attack on the USSR are without any foundation," and that such rumours were "clumsy propaganda by forces hostile to the USSR and Germany and interested in an extension of the war." [2]

Was Stalin planning an attack?

Hitler

Initial order of battle

Germany

Soviet Union
  • Kiev Special Military District (Kirponos faced Army Group South 56 divisions
    • 5th Army (Potapov)
    • 6th Army (Muzychenko)
    • 26th Army (Kostenko)
    • 12th Army (Ponedelin)
  • Odessa Special Military District (Tyulenev) which faced Army Group South 14 divisions
    • 9th Army (Cherevichenko)

Initial actions

German air strikes hit 66 air bases, the naval facilities at Libava in the Baltic, and five cities: Kovno, Minsk, Odessa, Rovno and Sebastopol. By noon, 25% of Soviet aircraft had been destroyed. Land forces, by nightfall, had taken the fortress towns of Kobryn and Pruzahany. Italy and Rumania declared war on the Soviet Union.[3] Tactical surprise was almost complete; while General Headquarters sent some warnings just after the Germans started moving, very few were received through a primitive communications system. [4]

German intelligence, however, was also quite lacking. By 4 July, he told his entourage, "...to all intents and purposes the Russians have lost the war." Further, he said that Germany had smashed Soviet armor and aviation, and they could never replace them. [5]

References

  1. ↑ Gordon Prange (1984). Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring. McGraw-Hill. 
  2. ↑ "Viktor Suvorov" (pseud.) (June 1985), "Who was Planning to Attack Whom in June 1941, Hitler or Stalin?", The Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies
  3. ↑ Martin Gilbert (1989), The Second World War, Stoddart, p. 199
  4. ↑ Kenneth Macksey (1987), Military Errors of World War Two, Arms and Armour Press, p. 47
  5. ↑ Walter Warlimont (1992), Inside Hitler's Headquarters 1933-45, Presidio Press, p. 180
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