Germany's "blitzkrieg" against the Soviet Union made rapid progress, but ultimately failed. Where did it go wrong?

In September 1939, German ground forces launched a massive attack on Poland. On September 17, Soviet troops also entered Poland on the grounds of protecting ethnic minorities in Belarus and Ukraine. Under attack from both sides by Germany and the Soviet Union, Poland soon fell. On September 29, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a treaty on the partition of Poland. After Hitler's victory in Poland, he immediately began to formulate the "Barbarossa" plan. According to this plan, the German army would be divided into three attack groups and use lightning tactics to quickly conquer the Soviet Union's western territories from Arkhangelsk in the north to Astrakhan in the south from west to east.

In the early morning of June 22, 1941, more than three million German troops gathered on the Polish-Soviet border were divided into three army groups: northern, central, and southern army groups: from three directions, Lenin attacked the northern road. Grad, Moscow in the middle, and Ukraine (Kiev) in the south carried out a strategic raid code-named "Barbarossa". At the beginning of the war, Operation Barbarossa achieved a phased victory: the North Army Group besieged Leningrad; the Center and South Army Groups defeated nearly thirty Soviet divisions within seventeen days of the war, and a large number of The defeated Soviet army saw a large-scale German tank assault group for the first time, so it appeared to be at a loss and confused. So much so that Guderian, who led the tank assault group, shouted to the Soviet army through the German Russian interpreter: "I don't have time to capture you, but please don't block the way and make way for my tanks quickly." A large number of Soviet troops in chaos were immediately disarmed and captured by the German mechanical and motorized infantry that followed.

On the 25th, the German First Armored Group occupied Petrovsk in the western Soviet Union; the German 13th Armored Division forcibly crossed the Dnieper River and approached Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The German Second Armored Group also moved south from Smolensk, cut through the vulnerable northern flank of the Soviet Southwest Front, and joined the German First Armored Group in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, thus successfully encircling Kiev. Budyonny, one of the former chief officers of the Southwest Front, and Zhukov, the Soviet Chief of General Staff, both urged Stalin to abandon Kiev in order to avoid the strong German army and preserve the strength of the Soviet army. However, Stalin insisted on carrying out the Battle of Kiev. As a result, in addition to Budyonny, Timoshenko, Khrushchev and other chief officers of the Southwest Front who evacuated Kiev by plane, more than 660,000 people in the Southwest Front became German prisoners.

The famous German general Manstein has a memoir "Lost Victory". There is a very insightful sentence in the article, which is called technology defeats weight. In other words, on the Soviet-German battlefield in World War II, the German army relied on technology. With the advancement of tactics and the superior quality of the grassroots officers and soldiers of the German army. Plan Barbarossa was formulated by the German General Staff based on the experience of the Yellow Plan, which attacked Poland, and the White Plan, which attacked France. Judging from the situation at the beginning of the war, the war plan was perfect. The three army groups in the south, center, and north broke through very smoothly. The Soviet Army There was a panic and many people were surrounded. However, the results of the war showed that the plan had three major mistakes:

The problem of attack time. The launch of Project Barbarossa was originally in early May, not June 22. This more than one month was fatal. It was when the German army advanced to the outskirts of Moscow that the harsh winter of the Soviet Union arrived, and the ice and snow overwhelmed the German mechanized troops. Completely lost combat effectiveness. This was purely an accident. Hitler delayed the attack on Moscow in order to provide food supplies for the troops in order to capture Ukraine. As a result, when the Battle of Kiev ended and they marched towards Moscow, it was already the cold and rainy autumn season in the Soviet Union. Zhukov took advantage of the precious opportunity when the German army attacked Kiev and seized the time to consolidate Moscow's three peripheral defense lines, thus preparing to attack the German army invading Moscow. The first part of the German Army Group Center and Army Group South gathered together and headed towards Moscow with the first and second armored groups opening the way. After the fall rainy season entered in the western part of the Soviet Union, large areas of mud appeared on the roads: German tanks and mechanical motorized units were struggling to move due to being stuck in the mud.

By the time the faltering German army arrived at the gates of Moscow, the severe cold in Moscow had quietly arrived. On October 6, 1941, the first snowfall of winter fell in Moscow. This seems to be a perfect irony of the arrogant and willful Hitler: The arrogant Hitler had previously determined that the German army would be able to occupy Moscow before the Soviet October Revolution Day, and then he would be able to review the German army in Moscow's Red Square. However, the history of Napoleon's expedition to Moscow in 1812 reappeared in the twentieth century: the Third Reich once again repeated the mistakes of Napoleon's defeat of Moscow.

Problems of estimating road conditions in the Soviet Union. A very important condition for the German three-dimensional blitzkrieg is good road conditions and accessibility in all directions. Poland and France are both capitalist countries, and France in particular is a developed country. Its good road network facilitates the rapid advancement of the German army. But the situation in the Soviet Union is different. It has a vast territory and very few asphalt roads. Most of them are inferior dirt roads. Such roads become muddy when it rains and snows, which greatly limits the marching speed of mechanized troops. The commander of Army Group Center, Bok, responded to Hitler's question Shi said, my soldiers are fighting against the mud. This shows the benefits of being poor.

Logistics issues.

The Soviet-German War was different from our Anti-Japanese War. It was a large-scale modern war. There was a huge demand for fuel, food, ammunition and other supplies. For the German army fighting in the enemy country, all of these had to be shipped from Germany. The faster the troops advanced, , the longer the logistics supply line is, the more oil is sent to the vehicle, the vehicle itself may also consume one vehicle of oil. The German General Staff Headquarters' assessment of logistics is too optimistic. Even millions of German troops did not prepare a single winter coat. The General Staff Headquarters believed that the war was over when the severe winter arrived. Coincidentally, the cold winter of 1941 not only came early, but also came fiercely. The German army's steel equipment and soldiers almost lost their combat effectiveness, and they had to switch to offense and defense near Moscow, waiting for the arrival of the following spring. And fighter planes are always fleeting.