Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941: Volume 2 - The German Offensives On The Flanks And The Third Soviet Counteroffensive, 25 August-10 September 1941

by David M. Glantz

Overview

At dawn on 10 July 1941, massed tanks and motorized infantry of German Army Group Center's Second and Third Panzer Groups crossed the Dnepr and Western Dvina Rivers, beginning what Adolf Hitler, the Führer of Germany's Third Reich, and most German officers and soldiers believed would be a triumphal march on Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union. Less than three weeks before, on 22 June Hitler had unleashed his Wehrmacht's [Armed Forces] massive invasion of the Soviet Union code-named Operation Barbarossa, which sought to defeat the Soviet Union's Red Army, conquer the country, and unseat its Communist ruler, Josef Stalin. Between 22 June and 10 July, the Wehrmacht advanced up to 500 kilometers into Soviet territory, killed or captured up to one million Red Army soldiers, and reached the western banks of the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, by doing so satisfying the premier assumption of Plan Barbarossa that the Third Reich would emerge victorious if it could defeat and destroy the bulk of the Red Army before it withdrew to safely behind those two rivers. With the Red Army now shattered, Hitler and most Germans expected total victory in a matter of weeks.

The ensuing battles in the Smolensk region frustrated German hopes for quick victory. Once across the Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, a surprised Wehrmacht encountered five fresh Soviet armies. Despite destroying two of these armies outright, severely damaging two others, and encircling the remnants of three of these armies in the Smolensk region, quick victory eluded the Germans. Instead, Soviet forces encircled in Mogilev and Smolensk stubbornly refused to surrender, and while they fought on, during July, August, and into early September, first five and then a total of seven newly-mobilized Soviet armies struck back viciously at the advancing Germans, conducting multiple counterattacks and counterstrokes, capped by two major counteroffensives that sapped German strength and will. Despite immense losses in men and materiel, these desperate Soviet actions derailed Operation Barbarossa. Smarting from countless wounds inflicted on his vaunted Wehrmacht, even before the fighting ended in the Smolensk region, Hitler postponed his march on Moscow and instead turned his forces southward to engage "softer targets" in the Kiev region. The 'derailment" of the Wehrmacht at Smolensk ultimately became the crucial turning point in Operation Barbarossa.

This groundbreaking new study, now significantly expanded, exploits a wealth of Soviet and German archival materials, including the combat orders and operational of the German OKW, OKH, army groups, and armies and of the Soviet Stavka, the Red Army General Staff, the Western Main Direction Command, the Western, Central, Reserve, and Briansk Fronts, and their subordinate armies to present a detailed mosaic and definitive account of what took place, why, and how during the prolonged and complex battles in the Smolensk region from 10 July through 10 September 1941. The structure of the study is designed specifically to appeal to both general readers and specialists by a detailed two-volume chronological narrative of the course of operations, accompanied by a third volume, and perhaps a fourth, containing archival maps and an extensive collection of specific orders and reports translated verbatim from Russian. The maps, archival and archival-based, detail every stage of the battle.

Within the context of Guderian's southward march toward the Kiev region, volume 2 in this series describes in unprecedented detail the Red Army's attempts to thwart German offensive plans by defeating Army Group Center in the Smolensk region with a general counteroffensive by three Red Army fronts. This volume restores to the pages of history two major military operations which, for political and military reasons, Soviet historians concealed from view, largely because both offensives failed. This volume includes: The Northern Flank: Group Stumme's (Third Panzer Group) Advance to Velikie Luki, Toropets, and Zapadnaia Dvina, 22 August-9 September 1941; German Strategic Planning, the Tilt toward Kiev, and Second Panzer Group's Advance Across the Desna River, 22-28 August 1941; The Third Soviet Counteroffensive, including the Western Front's Dukhovshchina Offensive, 26 August-6 September1941, the Reserve Front's El'nia Offensive, 30 August-10 September 1941, and the Briansk Front's Roslavl'-Novozybkov Offensive, 29 August-14 September 1941.

Based on the analysis of the vast mass of documentary materials exploited by this study, David Glantz presents a number of important new findings, notably: Soviet resistance to Army Group Center's advance into the Smolensk region was far stronger and more active than the Germans anticipated and historians have previously described; The military strategy Stalin, the Stavka, and Western Main Direction Command pursued was far more sophisticated than previously believed; Stalin, the Stavka, and Timoshenko's Western Main Direction Command employed a strategy of attrition designed to weaken advancing German forces; This attrition strategy inflicted far greater damage on Army Group Center than previously thought and, ultimately, contributed significantly to the Western and Kalinin Fronts' victories over Army Group Center in December 1941.

Quite simply, this series breaks new ground in World War II Eastern Front and Soviet military studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781906033903
Publisher:	Helion and Company
Publication date:	04/10/2012
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.30(d)

About the Author

David M. Glantz is an American military historian and the editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Glantz holds degrees in history from the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Defense Language Institute, Institute for Russian and Eastern European Studies, and U.S. Army War College.

He began his military career in 1963 as a field artillery officer from 1965 to 1969 and served in various assignments in the United States and Vietnam during the Vietnam War with the II Field Force Fire Support Coordination Element (FSCE) at the Plantation in Long Binh.

After teaching history at the United States Military Academy from 1969 through 1973, he completed the army’s Soviet foreign area specialist program and became chief of Estimates in US Army Europe’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. Upon his return to the United States in 1979, he became chief of research at the Army’s newly formed Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and then Director of Soviet Army Operations at the Center for Land Warfare, U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

While at the College, Col. Glantz was instrumental in conducting the annual "Art of War" symposia which produced the best analysis of the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War in English to date. The symposia included attendance of several former German participants in the operations and resulted in publication of the seminal transcripts of proceedings.

Returning to Fort Leavenworth in 1986, he helped found and later directed the U.S. Army’s Soviet (later Foreign) Military Studies Office (FMSO), where he remained until his retirement in 1993 with the rank of Colonel. In 1993 he established The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, a scholarly journal for which he still serves as chief editor, that covers military affairs in the states of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the former Soviet Union.

In recognition of his work, he has received several awards, including the Society of Military History’s prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Prize for his contributions to the study of military history. Glantz is regarded by many as one of the best western military historians of the Soviet role in World War II. He lives with his wife Mary Ann Glantz in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vi

List of Maps vii

List of Tables x

Abbreviations xii

Preface 14

1 Introduction 17

Context 17

Army Group Center's Achievements, 22 June-6 August 1941 19

Army Group Center's Problems by 6 August 1941 21

Soviet Problems, 22 June-6, August 1941 24

Army Group Center's Achievements, 6-24 August 1941 25

German Problems, 6-24 August 1941 27

Competing Strategies in Late August 1941 29

2 The Northern Flank: Group Stumme's Advance to Toropets, 22-28 August 1941 31

Context 31

22nd Army's Encirclement and Soviet Command Confusion, 22-24 August 35

The German Pursuit To Toropets, 26-28 August 42

3 German Strategic Planning and Jockeying for Position along the Desna River, 22-24 August 1941 54

German Strategic Planning: The Tilt Toward Kiev, 22-25 August 55

The Operational Lull: Jockeying for Position along the Desna River, 22-24 August 68

German Preparations for the Kiev Offensive, 22-24 August 94

4 Second Panzer Group's Advance across the Desna River, The Stavka's Offensive Plan, and Group Stumme's Advance to Andreapol' and Zapadnaia Dvina, 25 August-9 September 1941 103

Guderian's Advance Across The Desna River, 25-28 August 103

The Stavka's Offensive Plan 129

The Northern Flank: Group Stumme's Advance to Andreapol' and Zapadnaia Dvina, 29 August-9 September 139

5 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Western Front's Dukhovshchina Offensive, Preliminaries and the First Stage, 25-31 August 1941 162

Preliminaries, 25-27 August 162

The First Stage, 28-31 August 187

6 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The "western Front's Dukhovshchina Offensive, The Second Stage, 1-10 September 1941 230

The Western Front's General Assault, 1-3 September 230

1 September 234

The Western Front's General Assault, 4-5 September 278

Dénouement, 6-9 September 295

The Western Front on the Defense, 10 September 300

Problems and Critiques 310

7 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Reserve Front's El'nia Offensive, 30 August-10 September 1941 322

Planning and Preliminaries, 24-29 August 322

24th Army's Assault, 30 August-3 September 332

The German Withdrawal, 4-5 September 347

Postscript 354

Conclusions: Dukhovshchina and El'nia Compared 358

8 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Briansk Front's Roslavl'-Novozybkov Offensive, the First Stage, 29 August-I September 1941 364

The Situation On 29 August 364

Planning and Operations, 29-31 August 371

The Briansk Front's Forces and Problems 375

The Briansk Front's Offensive Planning and Operations, 31 August-1 September 400

9 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Briansk Front's Roslavl'-Novozybkov Offensive, the Second Stage, 2-14 September 1941 425

The General Counteroffensive, 2-6 September 425

Postscript: The Road to Kiev, 7-14 September 488

Conclusions 497

10 Conclusions 504

The Missions of Operation Barbarossa 504

German Strategy and Operations 506

Postwar Critiques 512

Soviet Strategy and Operations 515

The Red Army's Problems 525

Comparative Losses 527

The Soldiers and their Commanders 542

Summary Judgments 545

What's New about the Battle for Smolensk 546

11 Photographs of Commanders 550

German 550

Soviet 552

Appendices

A Comparative Orders of Battle, I August-I September 1941 554

B The Numerical Composition of Soviet Forces in the Battle of Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 567

C The Numerical Composition of Enemy Groupings Operating in the Sector of the Groupings of Soviet Forces at the Beginning of the Battle for Smolensk 568

D The Red Army's Personnel Losses during, the Battle for Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 569

E Army Group Center's Personnel Losses during the Battle for Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 (A Soviet Perspective) 570

F Army Group Center's Losses in Weapons and Equipment during the Battle for Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 (A Soviet Perspective) 571

G The Composition of the Pinsk Military Flotilla in the Battle for Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 572

H The Red Army's Strength on 30 September 1941 573

Selective Annotated Bibliography 574

Index 582

Editorial Reviews

… A necessary and valuable addition to the English-language literature on the Great Patriotic War. It includes a wealth of documents never before available in English, and it substantially revises earlier accounts of the Battle of Smolensk.

Journal of Military History

"...such a thorough and scrupulous account of these battles is long overdue. By closely examining these early battles, the author shows how the weakened Soviet military leadership studied their early mistakes, regained their balance, and struck back with deadly fury. Though the Soviet nightmare was to last for another four long years, the painful lessons learned on the battlefields in and around Smolensk during the summer of 1941 were the key to the ultimate Soviet victory."

The Russian Review

"...its conclusion will have a profound impact on future books written about the Eastern Front in World War II."

J.W. Thacker

"This is operational history at its best, meticulously researched and presented for the reader to analyze."

Warfare Magazine