Barbarossa Planning

[jesk]

Not theory,actual German planning based on actual German tactical manuals and actual pre conflict combat simulation.

None of which considered it normal for trained soldier to manouver at 70klm a day. Your description of what happened bears no relations to what happened, as it stems from false premise.

70 km is the maximum. 5-6 km per hour. They could walk!

[jesk]

A lot of empty theory without taking into account the actual fighting. Read Manstein, what he thought about the capabilities of the Wehrmacht that were not fully utilized in June 1941 ...

Why look at what Manstein wrote, when we can look at what he DID around Soltsy, 3 weeks into the campaign; it cost Axis 4% of the Barbarossa panzer force. in one fell swoop.

There anything serious. After the ban by Hitler to come, Leeb used the 8th panzer division for fight in the rear against the soldiers leaving an environment.

[Paul Lakowski]

Not theory,actual German planning based on actual German tactical manuals and actual pre conflict combat simulation.

None of which considered it normal for trained soldier to manouver at 70klm a day. Your description of what happened bears no relations to what happened, as it stems from false premise.

70 km is the maximum. 5-6 km per hour. They could walk!

20km per hour was the best wagon/infantry could manage in sustained march. You seem to be confusing operational and tactical march speeds.

This article reinforces the sustained 20km per day , march limitation

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a491685.pdf

[jesk]

20km per hour was the best wagon/infantry could manage in sustained march. You seem to be confusing operational and tactical march speeds.

This article reinforces the sustained 20km per day , march limitation

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a491685.pdf

but there is the first world!?

[Robert Rojas]

Greetings to both citizen Jesk and the community as a whole. Howdy Jesk! Well sir, in respect to your posting of Saturday - December 15, 2018 - 10:05am, old yours truly would appreciate EITHER a clarification OR a tad more elaboration about your open ended quip of "BUT THERE IS THE FIRST WORLD?". Now, I do have a sneaking suspicion about what you might be possibly alluding to, but I would much rather hear your official explanation rather than wallow in pointless speculation. Thank you in advance for entertaining my pointed inquiry. Well, that's my latest two cents, pfennigs or kopecks worth on this exercise into Monday morning quarterbacking - for now anyway. As always, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day over in your corner of White Russia.


Best Regards,
Uncle Bob

[jesk]

if it's funny for you ho ho ha

https://www.firstworldwar.com

[Paul Lakowski]

There was precious little difference in leg/horse/wagon march speeds of WW-I and WW-II. They were both about 20km per day.

[Robert Rojas]

Greetings to both citizen Jesk and the community as a whole. Howdy Jesk! Well sir, in respect to your posting of Saturday - December 15, 2018 - 11:23am, old yours truly would like to convey my appreciation for your nominal clarification for your open ended quip of "BUT THERE IS THE FIRST WORLD?". For the multitude of us who are challenged with matters of clairvoyance, adding the common noun of "WAR" would have been helpful. On the other hand, I was really beginning to wonder if you were attempting to draw some sort of comparison with the marching rates of the Wehrmacht's infantry formations during the campaign in France in the late Spring and early Summer of year 1940 versus their marching rates during Operation Barbarossa in the Summer and early Autumn of year 1941. After all, one might make the case that the Wehrmacht marching across France were doing so on a paved FIRST WORLD road system with readily accessible potable drinking water, while the Wehrmacht marching across the territory of the Western Soviet Union were doing so on often unpaved OR a non-existent THIRD WORLD road system with quite spotty accessibility to potable drinking water. On an incidental note, old Uncle Bob is more than a bit surprised that PODIATRIC issues have not been broached into the subject of the hard marching straight leg infantry troops of the Fatherland. Hobnailed jackboots are just fine and dandy for a parade down the Champs Elysees on a fine Summer day in metropolitan Paris, but such foot apparel is dubious, at best, in the primordial terrain conditions of the Rodina. Without going into a droning treatise on the subject, I believe it would safe to say that the whole of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is rugged industrial BOOT COUNTRY. I will defer to others regarding which industrial boot style is "BEST" for the Spring, Summer and Autumn campaigning season in the Motherland. From real life ground pounding experience, I do have MY personal boot preferences, but I'll keep MY mouth dutifully shut on the subject. In short, your rate of march will clearly be impacted if your hobnailed jackboots are falling apart from "regular" field use, not to mention the accelerated wear and tear absorbed through the shock of actual combat conditions. Napoleon Bonaparte once mused that an army marches on its stomach. I would also add that an army usually marches on its feet. If you ignore podiatric issues, morale WILL suffer. If morale suffers, so will your ongoing military enterprise OR enterprises. It's just sobering food for thought. C-RATIONS anyone? Well, that's my latest two cents, pfennigs or kopecks worth on this ongoing exercise in Monday morning quarterbacking - for now anyway. As always, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day over in your corner of White Russia.

Best Regards,
Uncle Bob

Oh, and by the way, depending upon your preferences of course, I would like to wish you a very merry Eastern Orthodox Christmas, a Happy Chanukah OR in "fond" memory of that secular humanist Karl Marx: "religion is the opiate of the masses". IF IT'S FUNNY FOR YOU HO HO HA.

[Stugbit]

Jesk Citizen, the Pripet Marshes still exist today over there or you guys in Ukraine and Belarus made it solid ground nowadays?

[jesk]

I want to say to the respondents that norms of the march are correct. There are situations when need to act above human capabilities. Then amphetamine comes to the rescue.

https://www.alternet.org/drugs/narco-na ... ne-blitzes

The meth Hitler was doing was Pervitin, created by Dr. Fritz Hauschild, and he was far from the only one in Nazi Germany using the stuff.It was also a hit with housewives, especially Pervitin-laced chocolates produced by Hauschild's company.

Germans were far from the only ones obsessed with amphetamines in the 1930s. Benzedrine had recently come on the scene in the US, and the amphetamine stimulants were popular among students, artists, and bohemian types in various European and American cities.

Pervitin also proved popular with the Nazi military high command, with the Third Reich's chief doctor, Otto Ranke, calling it a "militarily valuable drug." Ranke strongly urged Nazi generals to use Pervitin.Many followed his advice, including the "Desert Fox," General Erwin Rommel.

Rommel and his tweaked out soldiers undertook an "amphetamine blitzkrieg" during the 1940 Ardennes offensive, with tanks and men advancing for four days without sleeping, leaving French troops in disarray.Similar Drang Nach Osten (Push Eastward) offensives against the Soviet Union followed in the east.

It was an army that marched on Pervitin pills.Between April and July 1940 alone, the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe went through 35 million 3 miligram doses of the drug.

But Germans were by no means the only military to use amphetamines in World War II--or beyond.The stimulants were also gobbled down by the millions by Allied soldiers and pilots in World War II, and were used by Green Berets in Vietnam and American pilots in Afghanistan.Amphetamine is a drug for productivity, in war-making as much as anything else. But if you take it for too long, it can get on top of you. Ask Hitler.

[Hanny]

Read Manstein, what he thought about the capabilities of the Wehrmacht that were not fully utilized in June 1941 ...

Russians are not capable of any counterattacks. No need to try to argue with Manstein, on the place it was more visible to him.

manstein of his Corps movements:
Already 105 miles deep into enemy territory, it had not only outdistanced the
German formations on either flank, but had also left the Soviet forces in the frontier zone far
behind it. Now there were a bare 80 miles to go to reach the coveted bridges at Dvinsk. But
could we maintain the pace? The enemy was certain to throw in fresh reserves against us. At
any moment, moreover, he was liable - at any rate temporarily - to patch up the breach behind
us and cut off our supplies.Though 290 Infantry Division had naturally been unable to keep up with the rest of the corps, the fact that it was following in our train gave us a certain safeguard - particularly as it had already drawn the attention of strong enemy forces that would otherwise have attacked us in the rear.


Manstein:
Before the offensive started I had been asked how long we thought we should take to reach
Dvinsk, assuming that it was possible to do so. My answer had been that if it could not be
done inside four days, we could hardly count on capturing the crossings intact. And now,
exactly four days and five hours after zero hour, we had actually completed, as the crow flies,
a non-stop dash through 200 miles of enemy territory.The precariousness of our position became further
apparent when the Corps Q Branch was attacked from the rear in a wood not far from my own tactical headquarters.

As for the beaten enemy forces south of the Dvina, these could be left to
the infantry armies coming up behind.
It goes without saying that the further a single panzer corps - or indeed the entire panzer group
— ventured into the depths of the Russian hinterland, the greater the hazards became. Against
this it may be said that the safety of a tank formation operating in the enemy's rear largely
depends on its ability to keep moving. Once it comes to a halt it will immediately be assailed
from all sides by the enemy's reserves.
Finally, on 2nd July, we were able to move off again,


Comment
A Pzr Div had made 200 miles in 100 hours, thats 50 mpd. Where was the 290 ID?, 100 miles behind it.Thats 25 mpd. Div QM killed,and most of the Div supply train lost when attacked in the read. 8th imobolised due to lack of supplies. Infantry following behind, arrived on 2 july, it took 10 days to reach the 8th Pzr, makes there Tacticle approach to Battle (TAB) 20 mpd.

So your own appeal to authority show you to be wrong. As does all of human military history, if human foot armies can manouver at between 25-45 mpd as you claim.
20 mpd is the normal rate every army in history has achieved with trained troops, from Roman legions to Greeks, 20mpd, to USA civil war, 20 mpd, UK in napoleonic 20 mpd, UK in Falklands 20mpd, why?, because every army is trained to march and fight after marching at any given point ina campaign, the human stride has not changed in 100,000s of years from 30 inches, so with proper training an organised body of troops can TAB at 20 mpd in any campaign and bring itself there in capable to conduct combat. IF it force marches, it risks a reduction in combat effectives, recent studies show load bearing training of new recruits on a 8 mile load bearing run in 3 hours have 75% injury rates.

German manual, thats how the Army was trained to march and what it was expected to achieve.

MARCH SPEEDS. (1) The average speeds of division marches in miles per hour are as follows:

By day By Night

Infantry division . . . . . 3 3

Motorized division . . . . . 16 10

Armored division . . . . . 12 7

(2) The average speeds of march columns in miles per hour are as follows:

Infantry (long marches) . . . . . 3

Infantry (short marches) . . . . . 4

Mounted troops . . . . . 6

Cyclists . . . . . 8

Motorcycles and cars . . . . . 22

Trucks . . . . . 22

Trucks with trailers . . . . . 16

Half-track vehicles . . . . . 16

Tanks . . . . . 12

c. MARCH DISTANCES. The infantry division normally can march about 20 miles in a day; under adverse weather or road conditions the rate of march may fall to 10 miles a day. The motorized division can maintain an average daily march of between 90 and 150 miles; the armored division from 60 to 90 miles a day. In the near vicinity of the combat zone, road movements without motor transport average 10 to 15 miles a day, while movements by motor transport approximate 30 miles a day.

Lets not forget the horse drawn wagons being the slowest manouver element, but i guess they were on German steriods.

[Hanny]

I want to say to the respondents that norms of the march are correct.

No they are unifiomed and incorrect. Armies manouver how they are trained to do so.
In the 14th century mounted chevauchée raids were practised, entire horse mounted commands conducting rapid operations, but did not average your numbers, while having the benefit of ridding a horse at the time. This was a new improved pace of operations over slow maving foot troops.

Where the horses in the German army on steroids? or where the Geramans marching 15 hours a day to achive their 44 mpd average? for day after day on dope. No, becuse the entire year of 1941 had 10,000,000 for whole of Armed forces to use as Minister for health made it a highly restricted medicine.

[doogal]

Its sometimes amusing being the original poster as you watch your subject expand like a balloon, taking it far beyond its original horizons.

Interestingly we have moved onto the marching speed of the infantry, which I would have thought caused much concern for the planners of Barbarossa, some simple arithmetic shows us that you must be prepared to halt the mobile forces push to the east continuously so that the gap between the two elements does not grow to an unmanageable level.

T.B.H. I am still trying to wrap my head around the original intention and assumption that the Soviet Army could be destroyed west of the Dnepr and Dvina and that the German high command did not envisage a second echelon of armies deeper in the Soviet Hinterland.
It is at times quite unbelievable that Germany was unaware of the scale of Soviet industrialisation and production capability, and they did not consider that Soviet forces would be arrayed in far greater depth than they assumed. And compounding this mistake by trying to tailor an operational plan to fit unjustified and unproven assumptions.

I also would ask if anyone has an opinion of the effect of doubling the mobile divisions while halving there striking power in light of the poor assumptions which were made throughout the planning process.

Merry Christmas fellow citizens.......

[Hanny]

Hi Dougal

Yes AH was told and chose to ignore it, one thing he did was compartmentalise information, ( so no one could agrue with him from equal base of knowledge) so if countered by someone with logistics, being head of logistics and having his staff give him the data, concerns that the Heer can only be supplied for x weeks in the comming campaign, he counters with ah but we dont need x weeks logistical support because politically they will collapse before that critical element becomes an issue, so logistics is not a real problem. In this way German planning became shapped by AH sense of reality. When given by Gehlen the stimates of soviet strength he threatened to have him committed as insane.https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xeu ... er&f=false

Merry xmas to you and yours btw!, your getting the snow well before it comes to the isle of wight...

[MarkN]

I am mostly trying to ascertain whether the planning process had been compromised, and as to what exactly this was: i.e. euphoria over the success in the west, institutional over confidence, willfull delusion, conceit, idiotic belief in superiority in terms other than militarily.

Factually, you will never get an answer to the above. I mean, do you think that General von Klinkerhoff wrote a document that said I'm in favour of this because I'm as potty and deluded as a box of frogs?

In otherwords, all you will ever find is other peoples' (post-war) guesses and opinions - normally based upon a preset agenda: rehabiliate the Wehrmacht, rehabiliate Hitler, rehabilitate General von Klinkerhoff etc etc.

My opinion, without wanting to rehabilitate anyone, rather to demonstrate the collective responsibility for the gross misjudgement and failure, is that it was all of the points you mention above and several others along the same lines. Remeber, they had the information they needed, they had the warnings - even ones derived internally - about whether it was feasible, yet they still went ahead willingly. In otherwords, it was not a lack of information, nor based upon Soviet ruses, but down to their own inherent structural, societal and individual failings.