The Smolensk encirclement was completed by 17 July and contained 25 Soviet divisions. Resistance lasted until 5 August. Some 310,000 Soviet prisoners were taken.

Operation BARBAROSSA envisaged Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center capturing Moscow and eliminating Soviet army groups en route within four months. Smolensk, a crucial communications center 200 miles west of Moscow, was a major German objective.

The Bialystok-Minsk encirclement (9 July), netting 300,000 Russian prisoners, exposed Smolensk. With Adolf Hitler’s support, Hans Gunther von Kluge ordered Heinz Guderian’s 2d and Hermann Hoth’s 3d Panzer Groups, the enveloping arms of Army Group Center’s pincer, halted for mopping up operations. This action would have allowed his Fourth Infantry Army to catch up, but the Panzers nonetheless advanced. Crossing the Dnieper River (10 July), they entered Smolensk from south and north (16 July), with the Fourth Army lagging.

Stavka, the Soviet High Command, reeling from 2,000,000 manpower losses since BARBAROSSA began, deployed the new Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-first, and Twenty-second Armies along the Dnieper River and the Sixteenth Army around Smolensk, thus halting the German blitzkrieg. Western front commander in chief Semen Timoshenko coordinated capable commanders such as Ivan Konev, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Pavel Kurokhin, and Mikhail Lukin.

The Panzer breakthrough on 16 July threatened encirclement of the Soviets. Timoshenko gave the only orders that could deal with the situation at the front: his commanders were to cut their way out with systematic fighting withdrawals, regroup into mobile detachments, and counterattack, accompanied by tank trap defenses and aerial support. Amid fierce fighting, the Soviets escaped the German trap before Smolensk fell on 8 August. Despite 100,000 Soviet casualties and 300,000 Soviets taken prisoner, along with 2,030 tanks and 1,900 guns lost, a stable line held 25 miles east of Smolensk. The Red Army had proved the German blitzkrieg could be halted, even when facing odds of 2:1 in personnel, artillery, and aviation and 4:1 in tanks, thus crucially regenerating its morale.

The Soviets at Smolensk tied down Wehrmacht tank forces designated for Leningrad. Hitler, targeting Leningrad and Ukraine before Moscow but perhaps deterred by Smolensk, reversed himself and stripped Group Center of Panzers, delaying Operation TYPHOON, the seizure of Moscow, until 2 October and leaving Army Group Center’s infantry open to further counterattacks. The two-month delay was vital. Georgy Zhukov formed the Army Group before Moscow and mobilized the population to construct defenses. The Germans reached Moscow in deep winter, ill-equipped, exhausted, and off-balance for the 6 December Soviet counteroffensive.

References and further reading:

Erickson, J. The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.

Glantz, D. M., and J. M.House. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Overy, Richard. Russia’s War. London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 1998.

Strategicus. From Tobruk to Smolensk. London: Faber and Faber, 1941.

With the opening of Operation Barbarossa nearly 75% of the German army moved either by foot or horse drawn vehicles. This is why on numerous occasions the unstoppable panzers were forced to a halt deep behind enemy lines, waiting for the infantry support to catch up. The German failure to capture Moscow was caused as much by German industries inability to mechanize the army as any decision made by Hitler or his generals on the battlefield.

When the Soviet counteroffensive struck in early December, the German forces were already weakened by lack of supplies and many German soldiers lost their lives in the retreat because there was not enough transport available. The German losses of motor vehicles and horses were horrendous and would affect the ability of the German forces to conduct offensive operations in 1942.

The answers for the Germans was not as simple as building more trucks. As most of the German war effort was concentrated on the Eastern Front, they were faced with circumstances they had not encountered in the west. The first dilemma was in the original planning for Barbarossa where Hitler and his generals had grossly underestimated the size of the Soviet Union. Additionally many generals were still rooted in WWI concepts of conducting war and when confronted with the vastness of the steppe were incapable of adapting to the situation. In the west the major bottlenecks encountered by German forces were road/rail junctions and major towns. In the Soviet Union the bottlenecks were the river crossings and most importantly the Soviet road system was virtually nonexistent.

So if German industry had been capable of providing the number of vehicles necessary to supply German forces, the basic problems created by the appalling roads especially in the wet weather of late summer and the spring thaw would negate any benefits.

Similarly if the necessary vehicles had been built, then the strain on German fuel oil reserves would have been catastrophic. As it was by 1941 operations were being curtailed by the lack of oil and of course many campaigns Hitler had planned had never come to fruition because of the fuel situation.

While the Soviets were faced with a similar transport crisis, their situation eased as their own production of domestic trucks (which were simpler and more rugged than most German or European vehicles) swung into gear in late 1942, along with the steadily increasing supplies of trucks under the Lend Lease agreement.

Germany's transport problems escalated throughout 1942, culminating at the Battle of Stalingrad. Even before the Soviet counter offensive encircled the 6th Army, von Paulus' troops were inadequately supplied as the transport arm struggled over the few appalling roads leading to the railheads deep in the German rear.

For days Field-Marshal Kesselring and his Air Corps commanders sat evaluating the aerial photographs and discussing operations. There was just one problem that troubled them-the timing of their attack. Zero hour on 22nd June had been chosen to give the infantry enough light to make out their targets. That was why the artillery bombardment was scheduled to start at 0315 hours. On the Central Front, however, it was still dark at 0315, and air-force operations were therefore not yet possible. The Russian fighter and bomber formations, which would naturally be alerted by the artillery bombardment, would thus have thirty or forty minutes before the first German aircraft appeared over their fields. Needless to say, experienced pilots could have found their targets in the dark even twenty years ago, but the point was that no air forces should be spotted crossing the frontier too soon. For that would have warned the Russians and deprived the ground forces of their element of surprise. At last somebody thought of the solution-General Loerzer, General von Richthofen, or Colonel Mรถlders, nobody remembers for certain who it was. The idea was that the aircraft would approach the enemy airfields at great height in the dark, in the manner of long-range reconnaissance planes.

The plan was adopted. For each airfield from which Soviet fighters were operating three German bomber crews with experience of night flying set out. Flying at great height and taking advantage of uninhabited areas of marsh or forest, they crossed the frontier and sneaked up on their targets, so that they were over the fields exactly at first light, at 0315 hours on 22nd June.

At the same time as the bombers, but very much higher, flew Rowehl's long-range reconnaissance machines, carrying men of the "Brandenburg" Intelligence Regiment. They were to be dropped by parachute near railway junctions and road intersections, for sabotage actions or for work as undercover agents.

The plan went according to schedule. On the Russian fields the fighters were lined up in formation. Row by row they were bombed and shot up. Only from a single airfield did a fighter formation attempt to take off, just as the German bombers arrived. But the Russians were a few minutes too late. The bombs and shells burst right among the formation about to take off. Thus the pilots were written off as well as the machines. Right at the beginning of the war the Soviet fighter strength had been wiped out by a terrible "Pearl Harbor of the air." As a result, the German Stuka and bomber formations were able, on that first day of the offensive, to clear the way for the ground forces untroubled by enemy fighters. They penetrated some two hundred miles into Russian territory and destroyed Soviet bomber bases. Without this blow the Red Air Force would have been a dangerous enemy during the first crucial operations. Anyone questioning this assertion need only look at the losses suffered by the German Luftwaffe in the first four weeks of the war. Between 22nd June and 19th July the Luftwaffe lost, in spite of its shattering opening strikes, a total of 1284 aircraft shot down or damaged. The war in the air on the Eastern Front was therefore no walkover. On 22nd June the three air fleets on the Eastern Front flew 2272 missions, with 1766 bombers and 506 fighters. Seven days later their operational strength had dropped to 960 aircraft. Not till 3rd July did it rise again above the thousand mark.

It is clear that the surprise blow at the Soviet Air Force was of decisive importance for the ground troops.