Episode 2 - The Red Army staggers under the Wehrmacht’s storm

This week I’ll cover the initial phase of Operation Barbarossa. Remember last week we heard how the tension between Russia and Germany had been growing despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which was a rather flimsy agreement based on mutual dislike rather than a proper peace document.

And on June 22nd 1941 it became redundant because Germany invaded Russia as part of the massive Operation Barbarossa which Hitler had been planning since December.

There is a great truth in Carl von Clausewitz’s observation that the greater part of information obtained in war is contradictory, a still greater part is false, and by far the greatest part is of a doubtful character. InBetween the Wars German intelligence had been directed Westwards as Hitler built up his plans to attack Poland, then western Europe. He regarded the USSR as so backward that his intelligence gathering was erratic and largely incompetent.

In consequence by 1941, German military intelligence on the Soviet Union compared rather unfavourably with the intelligence the Russians had on Germany.

The arrogance is breathtaking. For example, the head of German Foreign Armies East Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel Liss could not speak Russian and appeared to have no real interest in the territory.

Worse, Liss had no particular knowledge of the Soviet Union nor the Red Army and he was not even trained as an intelligence officer. This was worsened by the fact that intelligence gathering in the USSR was difficult.

The Soviet system of the registration of the civilians who were forced to carry documents and labour books made it difficult to introduce agents into the country. Foreigners were frowned upon in the Soviet Union and all travel was tracked closely when permission was eventually granted.

The Germans relied for their order of battle intelligence on information obtained from Finland, Hungary, Rumania and Japan.

Inside Russia, the German Military attache was General Kostring who was a Russophile and unlike Liss, he was fluent in Russian. He correctly warned Berlin that the Red Army’s best allies were time and space, a lack of roads, and bad weather. Hitler ignored his warnings to some extent.

Kostring also stipulated in a report to Hitler that Moscow was not an important target because the most strategic heavy industry lay eastwards. To win – they had to destroy Russia’s production capability which was mostly out of reach of both German planes, and saboteurs.

German intelligence made a number of fatal guesses when it came to the Red Army. The first was that it was not fit for modern war and could not match a boldly led Wehrmacht.

Kostring completely miscalculated the Soviet industry’s capacity to provide weapons, clothing and vehicles for a long war. He also completely miscalculated the Russian fighting spirit.

To give you an idea just how poor German intelligence was, when Operation Barbarossa began that Sunday in June 1941 Hitler and his Generals had no idea that both the Russian 9th Army and 26th Army were based in the Ukraine. They only discovered this almost a month later in July 17th yet both armies had been fighting the Germans since almost day one of the campaign