German Generals against Barbarossa

[Gorque]

Warlimont described "a chorus of objection" and an hour of debate when Hitler informed OKW's Operations Department on July 29, 1940 of his decision to invade the Soviet Union, based mainly on having to fight a war on two fronts.

[Gorque]

Guderian was against it. He tried to warn Hitler of Russia's tank production but Hitler didn't believe him. He later admitted to Guderian that if he'd known the figures were true he wouldn't have invaded.

Best regards,
Bill in Cleveland (OH)

In what year did Guderian expressed that concern?. Un 1940 and 1941 the tank production figures of URSS were not impressive at all. It was after they began to receive the help in steel, aluminum, engines, and other vehicles that they could concentrate in the manufacturing of tanks almost exclusively. Had the germans been able to end the war in Dec 41 no one would have ever known of the "great tanks manufacturing abilities" of Russia.

Hi antfreire:

Per Guderian, Panzer Leader, p.142, he claims his astonishment when the plans for Barbarossa were revealed to him shortly after Molotov's visit to Berlin in November 1940.

Best regards,

Gorque

[ljadw]

But,his claim was very dubious:hé knew before (but,at the moment Panzerleader was publishe,it was not PC to admit this)

[randwick]

.
There is a short movie of a discussion between Hitler and marshal Mannerheim , toward the end of 41 ,where Hitler declared that having destroyed 30.000 Russians tanks so far he would not have attacked Russia if he had been aware of those figures

there is very little evidence that the Germans had much knowledge on Russian tanks at all , never mind their production figures
some direct observation of various parade , some Spanish civil war data , a bit of technical analysis and plenty of guesswork
the T-34 was a surprise , the KV1 armor was a shock and the integrated assembly lines relocated East would be unsuspected for a long time .
There is no reasons to believe Guderian was any wiser than the OKH

[Michate]

There is a short movie of a discussion between Hitler and marshal Mannerheim , toward the end of 41

The sound document of the discussion between Hitler and Mannerheim (which actually took place in 1942, IIRC) can be found in its entirety (??) on youtube. Pretty interesting.

[randwick]

.
Thanks for the correction , my memory of the clip was rather hazy

[Graeme Sydney]

Just wondering which german high ranking officers were againts the war with the USSR. Was it a significant number, or a very small minotiry ?

Going back to the original question and having read all of the posts my conclusion is that no high ranking officers opposed Op Barbarossa.

Some had general reservations and some had specific reservation, but none opposed the operation (and therefore the War in the East).

Not that this should be too surprising, it wasn't their specific duty to oppose, it wasn't the tradition of the German Officer Corp to oppose and they were very aware that they were serving in a very efficient police state dictatorship and overt candid opposition or even questioning Hitler would result in dire consequences for self and family.

Also, polling for opinion amongst the German Officer Corp, both before and after Op Barbarossa, is hardly valid or informative. The vast majority of them didn't have the specific information before them to make a valid decision. Again this is not too surprising. Firstly they would have been fully involved in their duties with little spare time. Secondly most would not have known or had the need to fully know the grand strategy factors. And thirdly Hitler was a dictator and had very purposely and effectively centralized information and decision making and the detail and depth of information wasn't generally available to the Officer Corp.

Talking of Victory Disease or over-enthusiasm is just a compounding factor.

However, it also seems true that the critical officers, Paulus, Köstring, Fromm and a number of others (and a good number of their staffs) did fully understand the dangers. The question now becomes did these officers do enough to voice their opposition.

For my money I don't think their did. Their neglect of duty and lack of moral courage lead to a predictable German National tragedy of the highest order.

But what really condemns them is what they didn't know but knew that they needed to know.

[Qvist]

Well, I think it is a much too simple assumption that they ought to have known better. Looked at from the vantage point of 1940/41, the arguments in favor of Barbarossa are fairly strong. It is one thing to be aware of risks, another to draw specific conclusions from that. And ultimately, knowing that there's a lot of things you don't know about the Soviet Union isn't a better argument for inaction than for any other course of action.

Also, it seems to me pretty clear that it wasn't really a question of failing to oppose the operation. They simply weren't against it.

[Graeme Sydney]

Well, I think it is a much too simple assumption that they ought to have known better.

I disagree strongly. The study of Military Science was well established with well versed and well studied professionals in the military and the diplomatic corps of all the belligerents. It may not be what we have today but there was plenty of knowledge and case history.

Looked at from the vantage point of 1940/41, the arguments in favor of Barbarossa are fairly strong.

I disagree strongly. To think that Germany could attack and occupy the land mass they sought to enslave is mind boggling. And at the same time they were also engaged in a hostile occupation of Western Europe and Scandinavia, and still pursuing a war with a World Power, Great Britain.

I don't think it is 20/20 hindsight to say that it is mind blowing arrogance.

And ultimately, knowing that there's a lot of things you don't know about the Soviet Union isn't a better argument for inaction than for any other course of action.

I disagree strongly. It wasn't an agrument for inaction. The equation wasn't 'attack or be attacked', there were other options including strategic defense, diplomacy and politics.

[Qvist]

I disagree strongly. The study of Military Science was well established with well versed and well studied professionals in the military and the diplomatic corps of all the belligerents. It may not be what we have today but there was plenty of knowledge and case history.

So, what do you think that is most likely to show? That all this expertise mysteriously capitulated in the face of a nonsensical scheme, or that there were in fact arguments for Barbarossa that has not so far occurred to you?

I disagree strongly. To think that Germany could attack and occupy the land mass they sought to enslave is mind boggling. And at the same time they were also engaged in a hostile occupation of Western Europe and Scandinavia, and still pursuing a war with a World Power, Great Britain. I don't think it is 20/20 hindsight to say that it is mind blowing arrogance.

I think that's an extremely superficial analysis, which I frankly doubt has been arrived at as a result of a careful and in-depth consideration of all pertinent factors. If anything is "mindblowing arrogance", it's your assumption that only foolishness can explain a course of action that does not immediately commend itself to you.

I disagree strongly. It wasn't an agrument for inaction. The equation wasn't 'attack or be attacked', there were other options including strategic defense, diplomacy and politics.

The point is that it is not the case that the absence of adequate knowledge is automatically and unequivocally a prohibitive argument against embarking on a campaign in the East. It represents an element of risk, but there are always risks. Secondly, you overlook that alternative courses of action were arguably equally plagued by similar insecurities. The same lack of knowledge, for instance, made it equally hazardous to assess what level of threat the USSR might come to represent if it was not attacked. Also, it wasn't as if it was predictable and transparent how a multi-year effort to develop aerial and naval capacities to counter Britain would turn out either.

The chief argument for Barbarossa was that it was the only course of action open to the Germans that had the potential to fundamentally improve their position in the foreseeable term. They did not in fact find themselves in a very easy situation in the summer and fall of 1940. Once Sealion was off the table, they were looking at an escalating aerial war against an enemy they knew ere being supported by American industrial might, including an officially announced aircraft production drive that would utterly dwarf the German. German naval power was negligible. Nothing they could do against Britain in the foreseeable future had any prospect of being decisive, and any effort to build the necessary capacities would a) take years and b) be severely limited by their shortage of manpower and raw materials, all of which would be c) further limited by the existing threat from an untouched USSR which even in the best case would require the maintenance of a very large army in the East. Barbarossa offered several advantages in this picture: It would remove the last remaining ground threat in Europe, enable the freeing-up of scarce resources for the drive to meet the Western challenge and give access to vast new reservoirs of material and human resources in the East.

Provided the operation could be decisively won in a single season, it would not in fact be much of a diversion from the war in the West, but would on the contrary make a great contribution to it. From this perspective, it represented not so much the embarkation on a two-front war, but rather an attempt to avoid one and simultaneously greatly enhance prospects on the already active front.

But everything - everything - depended on the ability to reach a quick and decisive victory. If that fell apart, the effects would be disastrous, and were recognised as such. This was the strategic calculation - certainly a calculated risk, but nevertheless one for which quite a case can be made (without hindsight, of course).

It hinges fundamentally on the viability of that basic premise. You seem to imagine that it's enough to look at the map in order to conclude that this was a self-evidently unrealistic aim. This is of course not the case. Geographical depth in itself is not the key issue, nor logistics - the USSR's military capabilities are.

Briefly put, the Germans assumed that they would be able to annihilate the main mass of the Red Army during the first weeks of the invasion, by catching it West of the great river barriers. Which indeed they largely did.

They further assumed that the Soviets would not be able to raise and effectively deploy sufficiently large additional forces to recover from this quickly enough, so that after a logistical pause they would be able to advance to the main centers of population and production without too much hard fighting - and that would be the end of any further serious capacity for resistance. This was the main point of insecurity, and where the calculation in the event broke down. (They of course also overestimated how dependent the soviets were on Leningrad, Moscow and the Donbass, but they never got far enough for that to come into play).

I don't think one can argue that this represented some sort of incomprehensible wishful thinking. Given the state of Soviet infrastructure, the general impression of how efficiently the Soviet state worked and not least the powerful paradigmatic notion of "the slow Russian mobilisation" that played such a big role in 1914, it does not seem all that unreasonable. A big risk given the state of actual knowledge yes, but risk is a normal part of strategy and so is an imperfect knowledge about the enemy's situation. Also, it should not be forgotten that the Soviet mobilisation in 1941, not to mention the evacuation of industry, was of a truly mind-boggling extent that I would be fairly confident very greatly exceeded the expectations of any observer. Even then, they didn't survive by a large margin.

After all, it's not exactly difficult to find other examples of major decisions being made on the basis of incomplete knowledge or erroneous assumptions. The whole strategic bombing campaign was waged on largely speculative premises, with the extent of the effects only unveiled by the postwar strategic bombing survey. They had no idea, for example, how small German fuel reserves where, which was a fairly crucial piece of information for the air camapign. In September 1944, allied operations were planned on the assumption that the Germans were essentially if not finished, then certainly without the ability to offer hard resistance in the next few months. Nobody foresaw that the Germans were capable of launchin an operation like Weserübung in 1940. In 1940, the Germans expected to fight a prolonged attritional campaign in the West, on the assumption that Western powers of resistance were greater than they were. One could go on.

[randwick]

.
I think the comments above are fine but miss the point
the generals were from a gentry class and ferocious opponents of anything Bolshevik
they enthusiastically crushed the Spartakist , fleet mutineers and cheered at the destruction of other risings
from Bavaria ,the Baltic and Hungary .
Going to war against Russia is one side of the story , destroying Judeo-Bolchevism was a crusade
approval was widespread amongst the ruling classes of England Spain and quite a few "neutrals"

The German generals were told to do something they were enthusiastic to do
there was some quibbles about how to do it but none whatsoever about the rightness of doing it

[Graeme Sydney]

I disagree strongly. The study of Military Science was well established with well versed and well studied professionals in the military and the diplomatic corps of all the belligerents. It may not be what we have today but there was plenty of knowledge and case history.

So, what do you think that is most likely to show? That all this expertise mysteriously capitulated in the face of a nonsensical scheme, or that there were in fact arguments for Barbarossa that has not so far occurred to you?

"nonsensical" are your words not mine. I would describe it as a deeply flawed and not based on standard military staff work, planning or appreciation.

I disagree strongly. To think that Germany could attack and occupy the land mass they sought to enslave is mind boggling. And at the same time they were also engaged in a hostile occupation of Western Europe and Scandinavia, and still pursuing a war with a World Power, Great Britain. I don't think it is 20/20 hindsight to say that it is mind blowing arrogance.

I think that's an extremely superficial analysis, which I frankly doubt has been arrived at as a result of a careful and in-depth consideration of all pertinent factors. If anything is "mindblowing arrogance", it's your assumption that only foolishness can explain a course of action that does not immediately commend itself to you.

It was meant to be a concise precis in the context of a thread. I didn't portray that the comments were a consideration of all factors but of the critical factors - to list the mains ones, defined aim, logictics, transport, secure LOC, intelligence and resources to task/aim.

I disagree strongly. It wasn't an agrument for inaction. The equation wasn't 'attack or be attacked', there were other options including strategic defense, diplomacy and politics.

The point is that it is not the case that the absence of adequate knowledge is automatically and unequivocally a prohibitive argument against embarking on a campaign in the East.

I never said nor implied "the case that the absence of adequate knowledge is automatically and unequivocally a prohibitive argument against" but I say the ignoring of major factors to conform to a preconceived notion is the antithesis of Military Science. In layman's terms 'alarms bell should have been ringing' - loud and clear.

It represents an element of risk, but there are always risks.

Argumentative Motherhood statement which wasn't broached by me.

My broad argument was that it was ignoring risk rather than risk taking or risk management.

Secondly, you overlook that alternative courses of action were arguably equally plagued by similar insecurities. The same lack of knowledge, for instance, made it equally hazardous to assess what level of threat the USSR might come to represent if it was not attacked.

I did? I suggested strategic defense, diplomatic and politic as alternatives. Trying to be concise I didn't fully develop the ideas. But the threat of Russia to Germany or to Europe overall was obvious in 1933 and even earlier.

(more to follow, over ).

[Zebedee]

My broad argument was that it was ignoring risk rather than risk taking or risk management.

edited to remove nested quotes.

Hi Graeme,

could you expand on this a little from your perspective? I think Qvist is making some good points about not attaching our current knowledge to the knowledge available.

The risks to Germany of not pursuing Barbarossa are quite compelling. Diplomacy is one way out - but the British were not in the mood for it. The diplomatic neutralisation of the Soviets was recognised to be undercutting Germany's position and providing the Soviets with a huge economic lever to wiggle. In the background one has the USA beginning to ramp up production to subsidise Britain, and a lingering fear that at some point the USA would find cause to enter the war. There is concern over the economic capability to remain at war and a constant awareness that the longer the war continues as a stalemate, the more time Britain and the USA have to mobilise overwhelming resources.

To my mind, that''s a catch-22 situation where staying with the status quo may lead to a slow defeat whereas the risks of Barbarossa may provide a 'hail mary' type of solution. It's interesting that the Soviet Union is something of an outlier in modern warfare in terms of its ability to have survived without a total breakdown in governance (Mark Harrison has a little fun with explaining why it didn't here).

[randwick]

.
In assessing the outcome of Barbarossa two factors were of preeminent importance

first the pathetic display of military incompetence of the RKKA during the Finnish war
the Germans naturally concluded that the severe purges had destroyed the officer corps
as it pretty much did
the second , was that the Bolsheviks had a tenuous grip on the country ,only sheer terror kept the system hobbling along
the destruction of the national spirit and the national elite was bound to make Russia little more
than a great Gulag whose inmates wouldn't fight for their hated masters .
this was feared with good reasons by the Bolshevik leadership itself

the first week of the war saw mass surrenders often with little military pressure as soon as the power of the commissars was neutralized ,
this explain Hitler desire to eliminate them from the prisoners population
the obsessive view by the NKVD that anyone who had surrendered was a traitor
and the switching of the propaganda from fight for Socialism to fight for Russia

The logical conclusion was that the USSR was a giant with feet of clay ,
a military defeat would see the collapse of this supremely political factor , the will to fight
millions of soldiers who would scatter as soon as they safely can are not a threat

the first weeks of the war totally confirmed both assumptions

[ljadw]

The theory of the mass-surrenderings (without a lot of military pressure) is very questionable :there were some small mass-surrenderings by Baltic units,but,for the remainder....there is a quote in the diary of Halder :the enemy is fighting fanatically .