*Excerpts from Damir Maksudi,Bagration: Anatomy of a Disaster, (Moscow: M.V. Frunze Academy, 1957)**1
In 1941, the military-political situation in the Western TVO swung between the greatest extremes of euphoria and despair. On the eve of the great summer campaign, Operation Bagration, Stalin had prophesied the imminent destruction of the German invaders and the opening up of Poland and the German homeland to liberation like a ripe fruit falling right into the hands of the International.
As central Russia froze under the harshest winter in living memory, the Wehrmacht had chased the Red Army deep into central Russia. As Marshal Frunze said on the matter: “There is nowhere left to retreat to; Moscow is behind us.”
The truth of the matter is that like the excited state and the ground state of an ion, military exuberance and defeat are not their opposites, but twins of a dialectical interrelation. Operation Bagration led inexorably into Operation Valkyrie. With the enemy encamped deep within Soviet territory committing unspeakable depravities, the need to excise them was irrepressible. When combined with the Red Army’s cult of the offensive, the doctrinal desire to wage war on the initiative, in the time, place and manner of the commander’s choosing, to move the battle into the enemy’s territory, this led to a situation where the Red Army’s combat power was expended against an elastic enemy defense, well-prepared materially and prosecuted by well-discipline troops, in an offensive that continued well past its culminating point.
Correlation of forces necessary for such an operation had not been achieved. The twin operations of Bagration and its initially more successful twin Potemkin to the south diluted Soviet and American strength over far too broad of a front. This dilution of combat power contributed to a widespread failure to achieve decisive tactical concentrations of force.
[…]
The RKKA had taken between 2.6 and 3.1 million casualties in 1940, the great majority of which were irretrievable casualties. Organisationally, the army had been shattered and would have to reorganise and rebuild while continuing to fight against a determined foe. Equipment shortages, everything from mess kits to tanks, plagued the formations in the field. The savage fighting, combined with the army’s rapid expansion and the ongoing legacy of the Soviet Thermidor, had broken the back of the leadership cadre.
The corps all but disappeared from tables of organization. Brigade-sized divisions reported directly to the army headquarters. This desperate measure did conserve desperately needed officers for direct command of combat troops, but left the rear area in shambles. Worse, the massive strain placed on higher echelon commands proved too much for even objectively talented officers.
The ranks of the great heroes of 1945 are filled with many officers who lost their mettle and were dismissed in 1941 for “incompetence”. Conditions further down the chain were little better. Like in the immediate aftermath of the purges, many formations were being commanded by men two grades below the regulation. It was not unheard of for companies or even battalions to be commanded by a reserve officer whose military education was no deeper than the military faculty of the university he attended, or for captains to be put in temporary command of regiments.
The worst of these excesses had been tamed by operational d-day. But it will leave students of military history who did not live through those times puzzling over the obvious disaster waiting to happen.
[…]
The root of operational failure begins with failing to accurately assess enemy forces, dispositions and intentions. In the case of Bagration, the failure of military intelligence began with accepting a lie that was coated in the sweet honey of truth. The Wehrmacht had inflicted gaping wounds on the Soviet military and seized huge tracts of territory in a single campaign. But it had also been made to pay dearly for the privilege.
Panzer Group 1, the pride of the German Army, had been utterly destroyed as a fighting force at the Battle of Rivne. The divisions that escaped the pincer existed only on paper. 32 percent of the men had been killed or captured. Nearly 40 percent had been wounded. 85 percent of vehicles and heavy weaponry, including one hundred percent of the tanks, had been lost. A bloodied rabble of men clinging to trucks, shell-shocked and fleeing with their tail between their legs, had escaped. 21 of 36 regimental colours had been lost in the flight.
Hitler and the OKW responded by all-but declaring damnatio memoriae on Panzer Group 1. Every command from regiment on up was disbanded and their heraldry stricken. The shame was wiped so thoroughly that none of the offending unit numbers would be used again for the duration of the war. When the Panzergruppen were reorganized in January 1941, Panzer Group 2 would become the First Panzer Army, and so forth.
And even with the dizzying success of the German army elsewhere, they were made to pay in blood for the advance. After the back breaking blow delivered by Operation Little Icebreaker in November, the frontline units of Army Group Centre were worn down to the nub. Disease and frostbite had forced thousands of soldiers off the line. The motor pool had broken down, and the Luftwaffe lost aerial superiority except over German territory.
And through it all, partisan groups, numbering in the tens of thousands, continued to harass the German rear and bleed every effort to reguage and rebuild Soviet rail infrastructure. Relying on these partisan networks and their connections via the combat applications cadres for intelligence gathering had painted a somewhat optimistic view of German strength.
It is not as though every partisan was a braggart—though some were. But the partisan could only report on what his eyes and ears were telling him, and Soviet military intelligence was lacking in many other aspects. These well lauded and remembered fronts of the war were in the future. Presently, the Rote Kappelle network in Germany and its central European occupied territories was building and not yet producing useful intelligence. The primary German military cipher, the famed Enigma machine, had not yet been broken. The tenacity of the Luftwaffe made aerial reconnaissance very limited. And even the great “Ramsay” and his network were reshuffling to avoid being cornered by the Japanese Kempetei after delivering the vital intelligence that made Little Icebreaker possible.
Thorough analysis of the failures of intelligence leading to the Bagration disaster are a major chapter in development of the GRU, especially in the field of intelligence analysis, as well as the broader Soviet military doctrine of maskirovka. In this regard, it was a painful, awful failure, but one which was honed into the doctrine of future victories.
[…]
In Stalin’s last year, his direct influence in military operations was at its greatest. Having mentally recovered from the shock of 1940, Stalin applied himself to overbearing micromanagement of the war effort from his position as Chairman of the GKO. Frunze had his confidence…for now, but Stalin’s meddling continued, especially through his faithful toadie Beria. Conflict between the RKKA and the NKVD continued, even as the GKO gave official directives subordinating domestic state security services to the military district commands.
Stalin’s record as a military leader was poor, and only towards the very end was he demonstrating much capacity to learn and improve. We will never know what he could have become. His forceful presence had helped make the seemingly impossible be accomplished in the industrial reorganization, but it also pushed subordinates to attempt and fail to accomplish the actual impossible.
But Stalin may have given the command, he was far from alone in believing it to be the best course of action. The biggest proponents of Operation Bagration were the American Joint-Staff Mission, Marshal Voroshilov and the commander of the Separate Mechanised Army, General Patton. Frunze joined them but with more reservations, as did most of the Stavka.
Every measure of acknowledged deficiency in the RKKA was expected to be compensated by the American Expeditionary Force. Now three field armies strong, consisting of twenty-seven divisions and nearly half-a-million men, including air and logistics, they would provide the weight of shock and awe for the operation.
This is not meant as a sleight to our American comrades. They were brave, efficient and utterly ruthless in the application of the military directives of Operations Bagration and Potemkin. But they were not facing the Wehrmacht of 1940. Had they been, the war would have been over by Yule.
In 1940, the German Army had never been on the receiving end of concentrated mechanized offensives, and while the theory of how to deal with that had been developed, its implementation had been a lower priority in an offensively minded army that wanted to put more tanks and artillery in the field. In terms of military industry, the ascendency of the Front Ford, the Reich Ministry for Armaments and the transition to total war economy had cleared production logjams and helped solve resource bottlenecks.
The German Army traded out some of its tanks, especially obsolete chassis, with casemate style tank destroyers and assault guns. The division and army corps order of battle greatly increased in the number of anti-tank guns, and the inadequate 3.7 cm and 5 cm guns were being augmented (and eventually replaced) by the 7.5 cm PaK 40, a very effective anti-tank gun that would serve as the backbone of the anti-tank mission for most of the war.
These efforts were further augmented by increasing training of 8.8 cm FlaK 36 crews for the anti-tank role, and the provisioning of more anti-tank ammunition as standard (in the rapid advance in 1940, it was often left in supply depots to make way for more HE). The average landser would, in theory, also have access to hollow-charge rifle grenades of a design very similar to the America and Soviet examples, though no direct counter to the 14.5mm PTRS and its excellent specialized armor piercing ammunition would be fielded.
German troops were also much more familiar with the equipment and tactics of their adversaries. After the loss of the Second Army, they would no longer underestimate the tenacity of American tankists, or the morale of the average American rifleman.
The OKW had improved the supply situation greatly over the winter, and many units were able to be rotated out for fresh units, especially as additional diplomatic guarantees were secured with Britain. The GRU and their American counterpart failed to adequately acknowledge this reality, and only after the bitter reflection on the disasters of 1941 did the appropriate statistical methods be employed to more accurately estimate German production of war materiel.
[…]
Operation Bagration began on 21 May 1941 despite already having lost one of its major prerequisites. German aerial reconnaissance had detected the build up of major forces, including armor, by the first week of May. Hitler became informed of these developments on the 6th, while in conference with the OKH at the Wolfschanze command post. After a private consult with Göring, Hitler made the decision to cancel the redeployment of the First Panzer Army to the south for the Kiev operation, and to halt the planned Leningrad operation to free up available reserves and air power for the centre.
Partisan networks reported these sudden changes in movement, and passed along captured orders detailing the new troop movements, which was presented to the GKO on the 18th. Nevertheless, Stalin ordered the operation to commence as planned. The American 1st Army began its assault on German fortifications at Vitebsk, heralded by artillery fire and tactical aviation.
The assault was supported by SA-76 assault guns as well as by three breakthrough tank brigades. But in spite of the close cooperation with the infantry, progress was frustratingly slow on the first day. Breakthrough tank units suffered high attrition from anti-tank artillery, and tactical aviation failed to achieve local superiority.
Interdiction missions by medium bombers further in the rear were more successful, but this did not have the profound morale effect that the constant threat of aerial attack could impose on frontline troops. Despite tank obstacles only partially cleared and major German forces still resisting at the point of main effort, Frunze ordered the Separate Mechanised Army to proceed through the lines on schedule and add its weight of fire to the assault.
Breakthrough was achieved at considerable cost by mid afternoon on the 22nd. However, advancing units continued to be stymied by additional German strong points as well as the deployment of German tank units. The Wehrmacht would deploy the “Pakfront”2 defensive tactic to great effect here. Concentrations of anti-tank artillery under central control would be deployed in these strong points, concealed in the terrain, and covered by infantry (and tank hazards where possible).
Anti-tank artillery was not sufficient to stop the advance. American tankists were well-versed in anti-tank gun clearance operations, and the effective cooperation with mechanised infantry aided in this matter. But by littering the path of advance with determined resistance, the breakthrough suffered high attrition and advanced more slowly, buying the necessary time for First Panzer Army to begin a counterattack operation on 5 June, ending the threat of encirclement.
[…]
Considerable emphasis has been placed in scholarship on analyzing the mechanised campaigns of the World Revolutionary War. This is perhaps understandable; they are not only the most dynamic parts of military operations, the fulcrum on which the fight between fascism and communism pivoted around, and also the historic experience most directly relevant to our present military reality. But war had already irrevocably changed by the end of the Second World War, and the nature of our present campaigns will not resemble those of the past.
Amidst the focus on tanks and armored infantry vehicles, it has been forgotten that the great bulk of combat power on all sides of the Second World War was supplied by the infantry rifleman. For every tank that fought, a hundred riflemen were there to hold the ground.
The role of infantry has not changed since the Napoleonic Wars. The details of their operations constantly evolved, but the eternal constant is that the infantry is the master of the battlefield. Infantry close in and destroy the enemy through fire and maneuver, and even the grandest mechanised offensives, whether was the encirclement of Białystok–Minsk or the Mark of Brandenburg, were decided by shock power of the infantry, not the firepower of tanks.
In Bagration, the deficiencies were not merely in the tank troops, artillery or frontal aviation. The great majority of combat troops in the operation were regular line riflemen of the SSV3, and their weaknesses in tactical and operational matters were just as crucial as the failure of the reconstituted Soviet tank brigades of the 6th Army.
It is an unavoidable fact that the burden of command is to sacrifice the lives of soldiers under one’s command to achieve operational objectives in service to the strategic aims of the war effort. The commander must not be shy or squeamish about this fact. But the equally important duty to the men whose lives are entrusted to the commander is to spend their lives in an efficient manner. In a word, to not waste them.
This scholarship is not an exercise in moral judgment. The fact that the Soviet Army was not institutionally prepared for the scale of the task before them was an inexorable result of the devastation wrought by Operation Teutonic, where the already greatly overleveraged Soviet officer corps had to be once again rebuilt from scratch, with hundreds of divisions raised out of whole cloth from reservists, with far too little time to train and drill them into a cohesive fighting force. The truth is, in keeping with General Patton’s oft quoted witticism that a “a decent plan executed violently today is better than a perfect plan executed next week,” an army violently assembled in time for an operation is superior to a perfect army assembled after it is over.
But we must be cognizant of our failures so that we may not repeat them. The fault was not of the soldiers, but of the commanders who could not adjust to the realities of the forces available to them.
The deficiencies of Soviet rifle formations in 1941 were, in order of severity: command & control, proficiency in fire & maneuver, and morale.
On the first matter, the lack of a professional NCO cadre and the paucity of experienced commanders in the lower ranks meant that on the attack, junior officers relied heavily on operational plans from higher echelons. When faced with unplanned obstacles, or no detailed instruction on how to overcome enemy positions, commanders relied on direct aggression to overcome the lack of finesse, pushing frontal assaults and failing to properly coordinate specialist troops when available to serve as force multipliers.
In the second matter, troops were only drilled in the most basic of operations. Matters as simple as trench digging would be performed too slowly. Utilization of cover and concealment were haphazard. In terms of proficiency with weapons, it goes without saying that the employment of arms in battle would suffer similarly. Relying on the large reserves of older equipment such as the Mosin-Nagant M91/30, many riflemen could not achieve the aimed volume of fire that had been demanded of soldiers in the peacetime army.
With the limited training time, troops were only drilled in a small number of basic march formations and tactical operations. In the confusion of battle, coordinated application of fire or shock power rapidly diminished.
These matters fed into the serious morale problems in the military. It was not that troops were unwilling to fight. It was that their willingness to fight and endure hardship was brittle and temperamental. The weaknesses of military discipline cut both ways; it was often the job of the officers and commissars to prevent reckless actions of military bravery as it was to prevent desertion and cowardice.
[…]
There is a point in every military operation when the friction of forces opposing the movement of military arms equals the force exerted on the enemy: the culminating point. At this point, the operation becomes a truck spinning its tires in the mud, and further effort becomes pointless. The role of command is to realise when this point has been reached and to then shift towards consolidation.
In Operation Bagration and Operation Potemkin, this realization came all too late. When army and even frontal commanders sought to halt their fruitless offensive operations, the order from Moscow was to continue. In Ukraine, this was at its most dire, with General-Colonel Kirponos being ordered by Stalin to continue offensive operations even as Italian and German mechanised forces had severed this front line and the bulk of the 26th Army was pinned against the Black Sea coast and isolated from land lines of communication.
The expenditure of lives and combat power against the Wehrmacht ensured that the German counteroffensive would be disastrous. In the Ukraine, where the terrain proved most favorable on the steppes, the German Panzer armies succeeded in crossing the Dnieper and encircling most of the Southwest Front in the Kiev cauldron.
The bitter fruit of Case Apostle was perhaps, in terms of men, territory, and vital industrial capacity lost, the single largest military defeat in human history. Empires have fallen for less, and it is only thanks to the resolute determination of the great masses of the Communist International that the fall of Kiev did not bring the same fate to the Soviet Union.
Exhausted soldiers, low on crucial supplies, hungry and sick from the hard campaign, could not resist their adversaries. Almost 700,000 were herded into pocket, including almost ten thousand men of the International Volunteer Army. The German offensive in the south would not be halted until they reached Kharkov. Huge swathes of important agricultural territory and coal reserves were lost, continuing the production crisis from the previous year that had been on the cusp of being resolved. That grain and coal would now support the German war effort, at gun point it must be emphasized.
The collapse of the Central and Northwestern Fronts against Case Typhoon only avoided a similar fate by the narrowest of margins. With the frontline beginning to collapse, and the Fourth Panzer Army hellbent on driving a wedge between the two fronts, intent on a rendezvous at Rzhev, General Harry Haywood ordered the 101st Airborne Division to “hold Pskov to the last man.”
They could not stop such a tremendous concentration of force. Their sacrifice could only buy precious time to pull out the forces on the verge of rout against Army Group Centre in an orderly fashion and rebuild the shattered divisions of the Central Front onto a new line of resistance.
- At the time of publication, Maksudi was a Colonel of the Soviet Ground Forces. A Volga Tatar, Maksudi would later become the first non-Slav to hold the position of Commander-in-chief of the Soviet Ground Forces.
- “Pakfront” is a neologism derived from the German acronym Pak—Panzerabwehrkanone , used to denote anti-tank guns. In this sense it is self-explanatory, an anti-tank front.
- Sovetskiye Sukhoputnye Voyska , “Soviet Ground Forces”, the land combat arm of the RKKA.
*[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
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