Brokenback War: Grozny 1942-43
Armchair Command Dramatis Personae
-
Zhou: A lawyer by trade; one of the hosts and writers of Armchair Command– retired Staff Sergeant of the Workers’ and Farmers’ Revolutionary Army.
-
Bianca: The producer, co-host and co-writer of Armchair Command, approximately seven years Zhou’s junior. Often described as “a gremlin” due to her cheeky/irreverent style of humor.
Excerpts from Armchair Command Episodes 268 “The Battle of Grozny Part 1: A Legion of Liams”[1]
[Part 1, 0:04:20]
Zhou: Okay, so we’ve already covered the lead-up to this one pretty well in our series about Bagration and Teutonic, and I’m totally gonna be doing a series on Case Blue at some point.
Bianca: Yeah I’m not looking forward to that.
Zhou: Neither am I! That being said, I don’t want to retread stuff we’ve already discussed before, so I’m just gonna give a quick summary of the year-and-a-half lead up to Grozny.
[…]
Zhou: What all this means is that by the fall of 1942, you have all of five divisions worth of people spread amongst thirteen entirely theoretical divisions. And when you factor in the grab bag of guys that make up every militia in this period, that still amounts to all of nine divisions filled with varying degrees of competence.
Bianca: Shit sucks man.
Zhou: But wait: it gets worse. Across these nine divisions, you have shortages in ammo, food, weapons, mechanical parts, and basically anything else you would need to mount a defense, with only one out of every two soldiers having a gun in some cases, and many having to improvise in lieu of materiel.
Meanwhile in Naziland, things were not much better. While the Third Volksarmee was better equipped, that was only in comparison to the defenders. The soldiers and equipment were wearing down from the near-constant fighting in the leadup to Grozhny, with tanks and trucks often breaking down in the middle of skirmishes, often leading to vehicles being abandoned on the side of the road. This was only exacerbated by the German supply line being stretched as thin as possible, meaning that the Volksarmee were little more than an army of shambling corpses.
This was, of course, in the midst of the “integration” of the SS into the Wehrmacht proper. Now, that’s in enormous scare quotes, because said integration in practice was the SS subsuming the command structure of the Wehrmacht, and suborning the regular army to everything that entails.
Bianca: So could you say that the SS vored the Wehrmacht?
Zhou: [laugher] Oh, fuck you. You’re more right than wrong though; the newly christened Third Volksarmee saw quite a bit of infighting between its component Wehrmacht and SS formations. Between the seven divisions in III SS Corps and VI Armeekorps, to say that there was friction within the army would be calling the Marianas Trench deep. The reason they were here, of course, was for all that sweet, succulent oil in Baku. And Grozhny was in the way of that.
Alongside the ever-present need for oil, the advance on Baku was also done to spread the Soviet forces in the Caucuses thin, in order to aid Turanist Turkey’s push into Armenia and Azerbaijan. And if they were successful in taking Grozhny and then Baku, the Soviet forces in the Caucasus would be cut off from any potential reinforcements.
Bianca: Sounds like the perfect recipe for a Kraut Jook[2].
Zhou: Hold that thought.
Bianca: Oh fuck off.
Excerpt from “Eve of Destruction: The Caucasian Front of the Great Patriotic War” (A. F. Malinowski, Professor of Modern History, Florida State University System; 2021)
By the time the Oberkommando des Wehrmachts authorized Fall Blau , the state of the German and Soviet militaries were in flux. For Germany, the nominal independence of the Wehrmacht was rapidly disappearing. For much of the early existence of the Nazi state, the Wehrmacht had resisted attempts by the NSDAP to assert authority over its command structure by the paramilitary organisations.
From the start of the Machtergreifung , Hitler and the NSDAP leadership had insisted on the creation of the Waffen-SS, an institutional parallel command structure to the Wehrmacht, marked with divisions filled with the most fanatical and loyal Nazi militants.
From day zero of the war, Himmler intended for his command structure to usurp that of the Wehrmacht— and the Prussian generals whom Hitler and his ilk blamed in-part for Germany’s catastrophic defeat twenty years prior. The attitude of the Waffen-SS’s leadership from top to bottom was contemptuous or outright hostile towards that of the Prussian old guard, as illustrated in diaries of Standartenführer Kennedy of the 5th SS Panzer Division.
“Many of the old heads insisted that war had changed little since their day. That the strategies and tactics of yester-year, of restrained tentative advances, giving the Bolsheviks and their Jewish hangers-on time to reorganise and regroup, was the best way to win. This is why they lost the last war, and unless the Fuehrer asserts the supremacy of will, there is no doubt in my mind that this invasion will fail. The SS men will always be the backbone of victory.”
Despite the successes of the early war, the German war machine was beginning to show strain as it penetrated deeper into the hinterland of the Soviet Union. Throughout the first years of the Eastern Front, German supply lines were stretched thinner as the climate of the Soviet hinterland impaired Hitler’s dream of a quick victory. Furthermore, the production lines back in the Heimatland, despite being buoyed by Henry Ford and his cut-throat industrialisation policies and liberal use of slave labour, were also bending under the strain of the contradictory and often chaotic German command structure.
In the lead up to Fall Blau, Hitler, eager to capture the initiative and bring about a final, total end to the Soviet Union, commanded the integration of the SS and Wehrmacht command structures, asserting himself in his role as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. This, to Hitler, would solve the problem of contradiction, and ease the road to total victory in the East. Of course, the reality of the matter is that all it did was further exacerbate the inter-service rivalries between the SS and Wehrmacht, and did very little if anything to solve the question of how the German army was going to remain supplied, fed and capable of prolonged offensives deep into the heart of the Soviet Union.
On the other side of the line of contact, the Soviet Army was in a dire state. Reinforcement and resupply of the North Caucasian Front had not only been deprioritized to shore up the newly split off Transcaucasian Front, the German offensive had severed the main rail lines. While under normal conditions shipping materiel to Baku would pose minimal strain, the German advance had placed the sea under threat from the Luftwaffe. Attrition on Caspian Sea merchant shipping exceeded available production until November 1942, when the reopening of the Pacific connection allowed the delivery of Liberty Ship knockdown kits.
The calculation in the Stavka of the Supreme Command may seem ghastly, but the military logic was impeccable. In reality, Germany could never profit from the Baku oil fields. The tantalizing prize sought by Hitler was a self-laid trap. Even if the front had totally collapsed and been occupied, it would take a year’s work or more to recover from the damage wrought by scorched earth policy and establish a reliable transport of oil back to the Reich. Taking Baku thus only served to deny the product to the enemy, and by year end 1942, the light sweet crude of Texas was flowing freely across the Pacific to Vladivostok.
The Soviets thus needed only to use the minimum of resources necessary to keep the Germans mired and overstretched while both sides squared off over the real strategic prize on the Volga River.
Excerpts from Hovsep Kassabian, The Battle of Grozny as Broken-back Warfare, (Moscow: M.V Frunze Academy, 2015)
Logistics has been the key element of warfare since long before Jomini coined the term in 1838. Modern innovations in planning and infrastructure - most manifest in the modern cybernetic communications systems, the extensions of which populate our offices - makes the herculean tasks of supplying a modern military campaign seem almost trivial. One piece of modernity, however, threatens to completely overturn this and shatter this fragile web of connections: the atomic bomb.
Tactical usage of atomic weapons in a major conflict with the imperialist powers is a near-certainty, as demonstrated by our American compatriots off Jeju, and by both ally and adversary in a few places in the decades since. What the author would like to consider, however, are not the immediate, first-order battlefield consequences of tactical atomic weapons, but rather the battlefield consequences of their operational and strategic (both counterforce and countervalue) use. In particular, the battlefield after the resulting breakdowns in communication and logistics, what has become known in military circles as “broken-back warfare.”
This paper aims to examine the potential post-atomic battlefield by way of comparison with what the author considers a comparable environment; the middle stages of the North Caucasus Theater of Operations of the World Revolutionary War, particularly around Grozny.
[…]
Recent scholarship has divided the fighting in the Northern Caucasus into three phases; the German advance in summer and autumn 1942, an awkward, underlooked intermezzo , and the INTREV counteroffensive in spring and summer 1943. That awkward intermezzo will be the primary focus of this paper.
The fighting in the northern Caucasus was by far the most austere environment that INTREV and the Axis found themselves engaged in during the World Revolutionary War. Case Blue and the Turkish invasion of Armenia had effectively cut the region off from the rest of the Soviet Union, with supplies only coming into the theater via tenuous lines of communication from Iran and Central Asia. The Soviet armies in the area, organized into the North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, and Baku fronts, found themselves with a severely constrained logistical capacity, made worse by constant harrying by the Luftwaffe.
The Grozny area of operations was the responsibility of the 67th and 71st Armies, with thirteen paper divisions between them. In terms of actual strength, between materiel and personnel losses over the last six months every division was chronically understrength. Actual force estimates were something in the order of the equivalent of 8 full-strength divisions, and even that was after the aid (voluntary or impressed) of local civilians and militia. Supplies were thin, and morale was low despite the best efforts of propagandists and political officers.
[…]
Conversely, the Wehrmacht found itself stretched to the limit and at the very end of its logistical tether. The establishment of a logistics hub at Armavir shortened the supply line, but they could only do so much; The Third Volksarmee’s headquarters in Proletarskoe was almost four hundred kilometers from Armavir as the crow flies. Considering the less direct routes railroads in the region are forced to take due to the terrain, and the fact that Wehrmacht supply trains were plagued by partisan activity, the supply dump in Armavir might as well have been on the moon.
[…]
Between the end of Case Blue in the Autumn of 1942 and the beginning of the Planetary Operations the next spring, massed maneuver warfare in the north caucasus more or less broke down, Logistical hurdles, exacerbated by the old Prussian officer culture’s disdain for logistics, reduced the Wehrmacht and SS in the region into bands of scroungers, rampaging across the steppe and looting villages as they conducted “patrols” while scrupulously avoiding INTREV concentrations. Despite its ultra-modern image, the frontline Heer in the North Caucasus had been reduced into a bandit-army that would not have been unfamiliar to the wars of the 17th century (a comparison to similar behaviour exhibited by both warlord armies in China and the Integralists in Argentina in this period, while no doubt fruitful, is beyond the scope of this paper).
INTREV forces, on the other hand, retreated to strongpoints, most notably Vladikavkaz, Grozny, and Makhachkala. While patrols from these strongpoints did their best to stymy Axis forces’ freedom of movement, they could only do so much. Despite the Wehrmacht’s inability to meaningfully occupy much of the region, the behavior and tactics exhibited by the North Caucasus Front begin to more closely resemble those of the partisans in the occupied USSR and Yugoslavia..
[…]
The fighting for Grozny in particular can be in some ways understood less as a miniature Stalingrad (as some local memory casts it), but the entire North Caucasus campaign played out in miniature. German forces first made their approach to the city with the culmination of Case Blue, assaulting INTREV positions on the small city’s northwestern approaches. Despite managing to break through and organizationally shatter much of 71st Army, they failed to capture many of the actual men, most of whom continued to operate in small bands. The next six months of fighting broke down into essentially gang warfare with artillery and air support; small, company-sized patrols would loop in and out from secured areas, and engage in firefights whenever contact was made with the enemy. While the fighting between such patrols was incredibly brutal and destruction unleashed upon the city nightmarish, not much actual progress was made. The Germans found themselves without the logistical capability to do anything more than advance piecemeal, and it seemed that for every block they took, the Soviets would take one back.
So it went, grinding on and on, until the Planetary Operations cut the Northern Caucasus off from the main body of Axis troops, forcing Third Volksarmee to withdraw from the city as they joined the Axis rout.
[…]
What should have been a rapid advance to Baku turned into a six month long slog. The sieges of the North Caucasus base areas - again, exemplified by Grozny - sapped German momentum and spread them thinner than was logistically feasible. INTREV forces were less implementing a deliberate, cohesive strategy than making the best of a bad situation, but they acquitted themselves more than adequately, and there are notable lessons for a potential brokenback warfare defensive scenario.
In the authors opinion, most notable was the integration of local civilians and militia into the defense - armed militia auxiliaries buttressed the armies defending Grozny, and assistance from civilians proved vital in preventing much of the 71st Army from being captured or killed. This is not a perfect model for us - the evacuation of civilians from active combat zones is, of course, ideal, as is an offensive posture (we obviously cannot expect to be reinforced by the paramilitary organs of an adversarial state). However, it should be remembered that the ultimate goal of military operations under the Unified Military Doctrine is to instigate and ultimately assist proletarian revolution and thus civil war. Any such civil war can be expected to continue in a post-atomic environment, and therefore the presence of friendly auxiliaries can be expected.
[…]
Excerpts from Armchair Command Episode 269 “The Battle of Grozny Part 2: Chechen Squirrel Smash”[3]
[0:28:30]
Zhou: With the terrain being this nightmare combo of mountains and city, a top-of-the-line invasion force would face heavy losses in besieging the defenses. Of course, instead of a top-of-the-line invasion force, the North Caucasian Front was facing the equally-undersupplied Third Volksarmee.
Bianca: This sounds almost like the Italian front of the First World War.
Zhou: The comparison isn’t wrong, but you’d also be downplaying the true ingenuity of the Caucasian Front soldiers and commanders, given what they had.
Bianca: I’m both intrigued and terrified as to what that entails.
Zhou: The usual barbed wire, improvised barriers, and killboxes were used, alongside improvised pillboxes made from tanks, tower blocks turned into fortresses and AA emplacements, and minefields on the roads leading into the city.
Bianca: That seems almost… normal. Where’s the insane stuff?
Zhou: The real Termite Terrace-type shit started with booby traps, ranging from spike pits made with broken glass, bridges set to detonate once the Germans started crossing them, improvised rockets made from empty fuel drums[4], and my personal favorite, electrifying the Sunzha River[5], which bisected Grozhny.
Bianca: I would expect the electrified river from any one of the Indochinese wars, but holy fuck.
Zhou: Honestly, something really interesting in this bit of the war is how much it looks more like, like, the early Indochina wars or the war in Yugoslavia
Bianca: Or any other insurgent phase of a war.
Zhou: Precisely! It is a lot like the Armenian theater in that way, breaking from the mold of what folks think of when they think about the European war. In any case; It was not a pretty sight all things considered, especially with the supply troubles setting a hard limit as to how long the defense can be maintained.
Bianca: I know that the city was evacuated over time. I’m guessing that the spread-out nature of the assault played a factor in that?
Zhou: You would be correct. And with the Third Volksarmee spread thin, on top of the SS trying to subsume the command structure in the process, meant that holes could be punctured in the line to get people out of Grozhny and towards the more easily supplied city of Makhachkala.
Bianca: If Makhachkala was more easily supplied, then the whole defense of Grozhny was just a means of stalling the Nazis.
Zhou: Like we said in part one, yeah, this was a holding action first and foremost.
Bianca: In that case, how did the evacuation happen?
Zhou: Right, the evacuation of Grozhny proper began in the thirteenth of April, 1943, with almost regular counterassaults being used to distract the Germans long enough for the evacuation to commence. And by the 15th of May, all that remained were the dead and dying that couldn’t make it, select partisan forces that stayed behind, and a maze of mines, traps, and obstructions that made clearing them out a living nightmare for the occupiers, even if they were able to retain their manpower.
Bianca: [Barely suppressed laughter]May 15th, 1943… Zitadelle is just a week away…
Zhou: A little more than that, but yes indeed, leaving only a fraction of the remaining forces to bicker between the SS and Wehrmacht as the mountains and ruins whittled them down further and further..
Continued from “Eve of Destruction”
With the total reconquest of Grozny a rousing success with minimal effort on 12 July, General Friedrich-Wilhelm von Chappuis, nominally the commander of German forces in the city, opted to surrender rather than fight for every inch of the Caucasian village. This further exacerbated the inter-service disputes between the Wehrmacht and SS, as the failure of the Wehrmacht to achieve their goals, and their ‘cowardly capitulation’ to the ‘sub-human’ enemy only further served to strengthen Himmler’s position in the halls of power in Berlin that the Wehrmacht could not be permitted to operate without the oversight and control of the SS.
It would not be the last time on the Eastern Front that inter-service rivalries doomed key attempts by the Germans to recapture the initiative; as the more notable, and arguably, most pivotal battle of the war as a whole, was yet to come.
Stalingrad.
Written by @Raiho-kun. @vilani99, @Aelita, @Asami, and yours truly.
[1] the R!TL version of the “Kyle” meme in United Republics English
[2] United Republics English for what we call congee
[3] R!TL Whack-a-mole
[4] Known as a lob bomb IOTL, usually made using empty propane tanks or any other metal canister that had been filled with explosives and shrapnel.
[5] The OTL Iran-Iraq war had something similar to this, where the Iraqis put blockades in a swamp to force Iranian forces off their boats before electrifying the swamp once the Iranians got off. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
Bình luận
0