Blitzkrieg, "lightning war". It is believed that tanks played the main role in this aggressive strategy of the Wehrmacht. In fact, the blitzkrieg was based on a combination of advanced achievements in all spheres of military affairs - in the use of intelligence, aviation, radio communications …
July forty-first. The tank armadas of Kleist, Gotha, Guderian, crossing the border, are torn into the depths of Soviet territory. Motorcyclists, machine gunners on armored vehicles and tanks, tanks, tanks … Our tanks are better, but there are too few of them. Units of the Red Army, which cannot come to their senses in any way after the sudden attack of Hitler, heroically hold the defense. But what can machine guns and rifles do against armor? They use grenades and bottles with a combustible mixture … This continues right up to the approaches to Moscow, where German tanks are again stopped by a handful of infantrymen - 28 Panfilov heroes …
Perhaps this picture is somewhat exaggerated. But this is how the beginning of the Great Patriotic War was portrayed not only by Soviet propagandist historians, but also by writers and filmmakers - in general, this is the image of war that entered the mass consciousness. None of this is very consistent with the numbers.
By June 22, 1941, the grouping of Soviet troops on the western border consisted of 15,687 tanks. On the other side of the border, the invasion army was preparing for an attack, which had … 4,171 tanks, and this number also included assault guns. The USSR also had an advantage in airplanes. But here everything is clear - the Luftwaffe pilots seized air supremacy thanks to the destruction of a significant part of the Soviet Air Force by a surprise attack on airfields. And where did the Soviet tanks go?
It's not about tanks
Let's look a little deeper into history. May 1940. The Panzer Group of the same Guderian cuts the Allied troops and goes out to sea. The British are forced to hastily evacuate from Northern France, and the French are trying to establish a new line of defense. Soon, not wanting to turn Paris into ruins, they will declare their capital an open city and surrender it to the enemy … Again, the tanks decided everything.
Meanwhile, it was the French army that was considered the strongest in Europe before the Second World War! Maybe France had no tanks or were they useless? It turns out there were more French tanks than German ones, and they weren't that bad. Do not forget that in 1940 the German tank forces looked even less impressive than in 1941. A significant part of them were light Pz. II, armed with a 20mm cannon. Combat units were also machine-gun Pz. I, which were generally designed only for training use, but ended up on the battlefield (and they fought in Russia too).
In the history of the victorious breakthrough of the Panzerwaffe to the English Channel, there is an episode when a column of German tanks was suddenly attacked by the British. German tank crews were amazed to see their shells bouncing like peas off the armor of the British Mk. II Matilda. Only by calling in dive bombers did they manage to cope with the situation. A little over a year later, history repeated itself - the shells of German tank guns could not penetrate the armor of the Soviet KV and T-34 …
Therefore, they conquered almost all of Europe and reached Moscow by troops … armed with very mediocre tanks, which, moreover, were few. Yes, they had excellent tactical skill and blitzkrieg strategy. But what is a blitzkrieg? Deep penetration of tank wedges. Will tactics help to break through if the defending side has stronger tanks and more? Will help. Paradoxically, the fact is that the German tank divisions were indeed the best instrument of mobile warfare at that time, despite their nasty tanks and their small number. Because blitzkrieg was not just a strategy, but also a new technology of war - which until 1942 was not possessed by any belligerent state except Germany.
Blitzkrieg in Russian
There is a saying that the military is always preparing not for a future war, but for the past. Of course, in all countries there were those who evaluated the newly appeared armored vehicles as an independent means of achieving decisive success in the war. But most of the European staff thinkers (including in Germany) in the thirties operated with the categories of trench warfare, based on the experience of the First World War. They believed that tanks should only be used to support infantry units.
Only in the USSR did they rely on the experience of the civil war - and believed that a future war would also be maneuverable. What in Germany will be called "blitzkrieg" was developed in the USSR! Only in our country it was called the "Theory of a deep offensive operation." "Quickly and boldly penetrating into the depths of the enemy's marching formations, tanks, without getting involved in a long battle, bring disorder into the enemy's ranks, sow panic and disrupt the control of the troops deploying for battle …" This quote, which perfectly describes the essence of the blitzkrieg, is not taken from the famous book of Guderian "Attention, tanks!"
Manufactured in the USSR and equipment, ideal for blitzkrieg. These are the famous BT tanks, they could move both on tracks and on wheels. The pinnacle of the development of this type of combat vehicles was the BT-7M with a 500-horsepower V-2 diesel engine (the speed of 62 km / h on tracks and 86 km / h on wheels is no worse than that of another car of that time). Considering that the Soviet marshals were going to fight "with little blood and on a foreign land", where the roads are better than domestic ones, then one can imagine how dashingly these tanks could walk along the enemy's rear … tank breakthroughs than even the most modern German tanks Pz. III and Pz. IV (with their maximum highway speed of about 40 km / h). In the USSR, the idea of crushing the enemy with the help of powerful tank wedges has been maintained at the highest level since the 1920s.
Why are tanks good?
But in Germany, the enthusiast of the tank troops Heinz Guderian had to overcome the resistance of the staff officers for a long time. Inspector motorized units of the Reichswehr Otto von Stülpnagel told him: "Believe me, neither you nor I will live to see the time when Germany will have its own tank forces." Everything changed after the Nazis came to power. Guderian's ideas found full approval at the top of the new leadership. Breaking with the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany could produce tanks and other equipment. The advanced military thought of different countries was studied.
In 1934, Ribbentrop named Colonel de Gaulle the best French technical expert. In fact, the future head of the Resistance was not a colonel at that moment. In the General Staff building he was so tired of his articles and projects that he was marinated in the rank of captain for 12 years … But Charles de Gaulle offered about the same as Guderian! At home, they did not listen to him, which predetermined the future fall of France.
De Gaulle called for the creation of specialized tank divisions, rather than distributing tank brigades between infantry formations. It was the concentration of mobile forces in the direction of the main strike that made it possible to overcome an arbitrarily strong defense! The First World War was mainly of a "trench" nature. Although then they knew how to smoke enemy soldiers from trenches and shelters, destroy minefields and barbed wire - this required a long, sometimes lasting several days, artillery preparation. But it showed where the blow would be struck - and while the shells were plowing the front edge of the defense, the enemy's reserves were hastily drawn to the place of attack.
The emergence of mobile troops, the main force of which was tanks, made it possible to act in a completely different way: covertly transfer large forces to the right place and attack without artillery preparation at all! The defending side did not have time to understand anything, and its line of defense was already hacked. Enemy tanks rushed to the rear, hunting for headquarters and trying to surround those who still held their positions … To counter, mobile units with a large number of tanks were needed to respond to the breakthrough and organize countermeasures. The penetrated tank groupings are also extremely vulnerable - no one covers their flanks. But sedentary opponents could not use some of the adventurousness of the blitzkrieg for their own purposes. That is why Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia fell so quickly … Yes, France had tanks, it could not use them correctly.
What happened in the USSR? It seems that our military leaders thought in the same categories as the Germans. In the structure of the Red Army there were even more powerful formations than the German ones - mechanized corps. Could it be the surprise attack by Germany?
How the strategy works
“I never used the word‘blitzkrieg’because it’s totally idiotic!” - Hitler once said. But even if the Fuhrer did not like the word itself, we must not forget who exactly the strategy of "lightning war" served. The Nazi state attacked without a declaration of war, and the surprise invasion became an integral part of the blitzkrieg. However, you shouldn't boil everything down to surprise. England and France had been at war with Germany since September 1939, and until the spring of 1940 had the opportunity to prepare for German attacks. The USSR was attacked suddenly, but this alone cannot explain the fact that the Germans reached Moscow and Stalingrad.
It's all about the technical equipment and organizational structure of the German divisions, united in tank groups. How to hack enemy defenses? You can attack in the place that the superior bosses have outlined. Or you can - where the enemy has the weakest defense. Where will the attack be more effective? The trouble is that the vulnerabilities of the defense are not visible from the headquarters of the front or army. The division commander needs independence to make decisions - and information to make the right decisions. The Wehrmacht implemented the principle of "potato strategy" from the movie "Chapaev" - "the commander is ahead on a dashing horse." True, the horse was replaced by an armored personnel carrier, but in the mobile units the place of commanders was always in the attacking formations. The importance of this was not understood by everyone in Germany either. Chief of Staff Beck asked Guderian: "How are they going to lead the battle without having a table with maps or a telephone?" The famous Erwin Rommel, who fought in North Africa, got a table … right in an open Horch car! And the telephone was replaced by the radio.
The radio frequency of German tank divisions is a factor that is often underestimated. Such a division was like an octopus, feeling the position of the enemy with tentacles, in the role of which were mobile reconnaissance detachments. The commander, receiving radio messages from them, had a clear idea of the situation. And at the place of the decisive attack, the German general was present personally, observing the development of events with his own eyes. He clearly knew the location of each unit: the radio was in constant contact with them. Enigma cipher machines helped to make orders inaccessible even if the enemy intercepted them. In turn, the radio intelligence platoons listened to the negotiations on the other side of the front line.
A representative of the Luftwaffe, who was in the advance units of the attacking, maintained constant radio contact with the aviation, directing the bombers to the targets. “Our task is to attack the enemy in front of the shock wedges of our armies. Our goals are always the same: tanks, vehicles, bridges, field fortifications and anti-aircraft batteries. The resistance in front of our wedges must be broken in order to increase the speed and strength of our offensive … - this is how the as-dive bomber Hans-Ulrich Rudel describes the first days of the war with the USSR.
That is why the relative weakness of the German tanks did not interfere with the striking power of the panzer divisions! Effective air support made it possible to weaken the enemy even before a fight with him, and reconnaissance (including air) revealed the most vulnerable spots suitable for an attack.
Antidote
And what about our mechanized corps? The Germans in the tank division had all the motorized units - infantry, sappers, repair brigades, artillery, fuel and ammunition supply services. Our tanks were faster, but the rear lagged behind them all the time. It is difficult to pierce the T-34 armor, but without shells, fuel and spare parts it turns into a stationary armored box … The tank commander controlled his tanks by means of flag signaling, the headquarters sent "communications delegates" airfield (while the army commanders needed them). The lack of reliable radio communications led to the "loss" of regiments, divisions and even corps. In addition, the immediate commanders were deprived of any independence in decisions. Here's a typical case …
The axiom of tank warfare is that units must enter into battle after full concentration, attacking the enemy with all their might. This, of course, was also known to the commander of the 8th mechanized corps Dmitry Ryabyshev. In his corps there were more than 800 tanks, including the KV and T-34. A huge force that could play a decisive role on the scale of an entire front!
In the early days of the war, obeying conflicting orders from above, the corps made a series of senseless maneuvers, losing equipment, wasting fuel and exhausting people. But then, finally, the moment came for a counteroffensive, which could cut off the German tank wedge at the base …
Ryabyshev waited for all his divisions to arrive, but at that moment a member of the Front's Military Council, Vashugin (in other words, a party commissar of a front scale) arrived. Not one came - with the prosecutor and the commandant's platoon, threatening to shoot Ryabyshev on the spot if the offensive does not start right now: “The field court will listen to you, a traitor to the homeland. Here, under the pine tree, we will listen and shoot by the pine tree …”I had to send those at hand into battle. The first group (armored division with reinforcement), which started the offensive immediately, was cut off and eventually got out of the encirclement on foot. So 238 tanks were lost! Characteristically, there was only one radio station in the group. And the commander of the group, Nikolai Poppel, managed to contact only … a German radio intelligence officer, who in Russian tried to find out the location of the headquarters, posing as Ryabyshev …
This was the case everywhere - so do not be surprised at the colossal losses of Soviet tanks. And yet it was precisely these poorly organized and often suicidal counterstrikes at the start of the war that ultimately predetermined the blitzkrieg's collapse. In France, only the 4th Panzer Division, commanded by Charles de Gaulle, who had by this time still reached the rank of colonel, delivered successful counterattacks to the Germans. We were all attacked. It was impossible to cope with the blitzkrieg defense! The constant counterattacks of the Soviet troops in the summer of 1941 may have looked senseless - but they made the Germans waste their forces already at the first stage of the war. Of course, the casualties of the Red Army were even more serious, but they made it possible to drag out the war until the autumn thaw, when the "lightning speed" of German tanks instantly dimmed.
"You shouldn't fight the Russians: they will answer any of your tricks with their stupidity!" - Bismarck warned in due time. In smart Europe, no antidote was found against the cunning German blitzkrieg. And the way they tried to resist him in Russia, the Germans considered stupidity. But the war, nevertheless, ended in Berlin …
