Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East

by David Stahel

• ISBN13: 9780521170154
• ISBN10: 052117015X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-05-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began the largest and most costly campaign in military history. Its failure was a key turning point of the Second World War. The operation was planned as a Blitzkrieg to win Germany its Lebensraum in the east, and the summer of 1941 is well-known for the German army's unprecedented victories and advances. Yet the German Blitzkrieg depended almost entirely upon the motorised Panzer Groups, particularly those of Army Group Centre. Using previously unpublished archival records, David Stahel presents a new history of Germany's summer campaign from the perspective of the two largest and most powerful Panzer Groups on the eastern front. Stahel's research provides a fundamental reassessment of Germany's war against the Soviet Union, highlighting the prodigious internal problems of the vital panzer forces and revealing that their demise in the earliest phase of the war undermined the whole German invasion.

Author Biography

David Stahel is an independent researcher based in Berlin.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vii
List of maps	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Glossary of terms	p. xiii
Tables of military ranks and army structures	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Strategic plans and theoretical conceptions for war against the Soviet Union
Fighting the bear	p. 33
The evolution of early strategic planning	p. 33
Two ways to skin a bear - the Marcks and Lossberg plans	p. 39
Crisis postponed - from war games to Directive No. 21	p. 54
The gathering storm	p. 70
The army deployment directive	p. 70
The dysfunctional order - delusion as operative discourse	p. 84
Barbarossa - the zenith of war	p. 95
Barbarossa's sword - Hitler's armed forces in 1941	p. 105
Carrying fear before them and expectation behind - Hitler's panzer arm	p. 105
Standing before the precipice - the infantry and Luftwaffe on the eve of Barbarossa	p. 117
The impossible equation - the logistics and supply of Barbarossa	p. 127
The advent of war	p. 139
'Welcome to hell on earth'	p. 139
The military campaign and the July/August crisis of 1941
Awakening the bear	p. 153
Indecisive border battles and the surfacing of strategic dissent	p. 153
The Belostok-Minsk pocket - anatomy of a hollow victory	p. 170
Straining the limits - Bock's race to the rivers	p. 186
The perilous advance to the east	p. 209
Forging across the Dvina and Dnepr - the threshold to demise	p. 209
'The Russian is a colossus and strong' (Adolf Hitler)	p. 228
Caught in the hinterlands	p. 245
The battle of Smolensk	p. 260
The end of blitzkrieg	p. 260
Crisis rising - the German command at war	p. 273
'I am on the brink of despair' (Franz Halder)	p. 290
The attrition of Army Group Centre	p. 306
The killing fields at Yel'nya	p. 306
Sealing the Smolensk pocket and Army Group Centre's fate	p. 324
Victory at Smolensk? The paradox of a battle	p. 344
In search of resurgence	p. 361
The arduous road to renewal	p. 361
Today is the beginning of positional warfare!'(Fedor von Bock)	p. 380
Embracing world war and apocalypse - Hitler reaches resolution	p. 400
Showdown	p. 423
Hitler's triumph in defeat	p. 423
Conclusion	p. 439
Bibliography	p. 452
Index	p. 474
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