German Generals against Barbarossa

[ljadw]

If we are looking to a) the inflated German claims of Soviet POW
b) the German losses
we see a lot of Soviet POW's and a lot of German losses,indicating that there was a lot of pressure needed
22/30 june :112784 POW/41087 German losses
1/10 july: 253.588 POW/36226 German losses
11/20 july:234566 POW/52906 German losses
In one month:600000 POW against 130000 German losses

[randwick]

.
True , true there were many example of desperate resistance ,
but there also was millions of prisonners taken without comensurate loses
the shock of surprise and the disorganisation of command certainly was a factor
but on the face of it one can suspect a deep lack of enthusiasm to fight to the death once the chain of command
( and the disciplinary consequences ) had been obliterated
certainly the official exortation to fight would indicate a certain touchiness on the subject

I am not aware of detailed recent studies on this topic ,
it would be highly classified somewhere in the NKVD archives of the time

[Alixanther]

.
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

I'd like to say that their description was fairly accurate. I could imply THIS is also one of the factors of the German unbelievable advance (aside from Russian troops being either not deployed into a defensive manner and / or being caught while redeploying).
However, I must say that everything that made these assumptions lead to early military successes, also inebriated OKW into such a stupor as they completely discarded all previous analysis and went hellbent into "Victory or Valhalla".
Should they have simply re-read all this stuff once again AFTER they reached the gates of Moscow, maybe - MAYBE! - they could have seen that creating a REAL Polish state and a REAL Ukrainian state would have helped A LOT both politically and military. Pushing Poland and Ukraine territories into soviet ones (as USSR did but in a reverse manner) could have alleviate all the losses and grievances Poland had prior to that.

P.S. I'm very well aware that some / all of these suggestions might contradict the very essence of the nazi weltanschauung. They could have happened, nonetheless.