Much has been said about the factors that contributed to the victory of the USSR over Germany, much less attention is paid to the reasons for the defeat of the Wehrmacht. Let's note the main mistakes of the Third Reich, to which German historians and generals refer.
Hitler's incompetence
Most German historians declare that Germany's defeat was not so much due to individual strategic mistakes, but because of the adventurousness of political and military plans.
Hans Adolph Jacobsen notes that "the political goal pursued by Hitler far exceeded the effectiveness of the military and economic means at his disposal."
Hitler, as the main culprit of the defeat in their memoirs, is also named by German military leaders. Thus, General Walter Chal de Beaulieu writes about the "ambiguity of the strategic goal at the beginning of the war" and about the "hesitation of the Fuhrer between Moscow and Leningrad", which did not allow to build on the success of the first months of the war.
On the one hand, the desire of the German generals to relieve themselves of all responsibility for the lost war is understandable, but on the other hand, one cannot ignore the role that Hitler played in the preparation and deployment of the war against the USSR. Note that after the failure near Moscow, the Fuhrer took over the sole command of the Wehrmacht.
Mud and frost
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Military historian and Major General Alfred Filippi noted that German generals foresaw the likelihood of military action in off-road conditions and muddy roads and prepared the division for this. For example, in the infantry division of the first wave, horses were the main traction force: according to German data, their number was close to 5 thousand.
But at the same time, the degree of motorization was also high - 394 cars and 615 trucks, 3 armored vehicles and 527 motorcycles.
The plans of the German armies were disrupted by the first thaw, which, according to Guderian's records, lasted from October 7 to November 4, 1941. German generals note that after the success near Kiev, they were ready to march on Moscow, but "many formations got stuck in a quagmire, which allowed the Russians to strengthen their defenses."
To no less extent, the advance of the Wehrmacht was slowed down by the unusually strong frosts for the Germans, which swept the European part of the USSR already at the end of November 1941. The cold affected not only soldiers, but also weapons and equipment. Guderian noted in his memoirs that grease froze in rifles, machine guns and machine guns, that hydraulic fluid thickened in the recoil devices of the guns, and that the braking system of cars did not function in the cold.
Human resources
Already in August 1941, General Franz Halder writes that Germany underestimated the strength of Russia. This is not about superiority in manpower - it was not at the beginning of the war - but about the unparalleled selflessness with which the Red Army fought and the Soviet rear worked.
The big mistake of the German command was that it could not foresee the ability of the USSR to mobilize human resources under the conditions of the most severe war press and in a matter of months restore the losses of almost half of its agricultural and two-thirds of industrial capacity.
It is important that the Soviet Union threw all its resources into the fight against the enemy, which Germany could not afford to do. True, Guderian noted that the High Command of the Third Reich made a mistake in the distribution of divisions in theaters of operations. Of the 205 German divisions, only 145 were sent to the East. According to the German general, in the West, primarily in Norway, Denmark and the Balkans, 38 divisions were superfluous.
In the course of the war, another mistake of the German command in the distribution of the armed forces became clear. The number of the contingent of the Luftwaffe was over 20% of the total number of soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht. Moreover, out of 1 million 700 thousand Luftwaffe servicemen, approximately 1 million 100 thousand people were directly related to aviation - the rest are auxiliary personnel.
The scale of the war
A distinctive feature of the military conflict between Germany and the USSR is its enormous scale. From the fall of 1941 to the fall of 1943, the length of the Soviet-German front was never less than 3,800 km, while the German armies had to cover about 2,000 km through the territory of the Soviet Union.
Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist admitted: “We were not preparing for a protracted struggle. Everything was based on achieving a decisive victory even before the onset of autumn”. The reason for the failures in the East, according to the field marshal, was the fact that the German troops "were forced to overcome vast spaces without the proper flexibility of the command."
Von Kleist is echoed by a military historian, former Major General Kurt von Tippelskirch, who sees the main reason for the defeat of the German army in the fact that its forces were "ineptly wasted by useless resistance in an unnecessary place and at an inconvenient time, as well as by fruitless attempts to seize the impossible."
Errors of the German generals
Even with great reluctance, the German military leaders admit their gross strategic miscalculations, which ultimately led to failure on the Eastern Front. Let's note four of the most significant ones.
1. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt calls the choice of the initial disposition of the German troops the first strategic mistake. We are talking about the gap between the left and right flank of the armies of Theodore von Bock, formed because of the impassable Pripyat swamps. As a participant in the First World War, Rundstedt was well aware of such a danger, but neglected it. Only the fragmentation of the Red Army units then saved Army Group Center from a flank attack.
2. The German command recognizes that the 1941 summer campaign began without a clearly defined goal and a unified view of the offensive strategy. The General Staff did not determine the direction of the main attack, as a result of which Army Group North got bogged down near Leningrad, Army Group South slowed down its advance near Rostov, and Army Group Center was completely thrown back from Moscow.
3. Catastrophic mistakes, according to German historians, were made during the attack on Moscow. Instead of moving to a temporary defense of the positions reached in November 1941, awaiting reinforcements, the Wehrmacht threw its main forces to capture the capital, as a result of which German troops lost more than 350 thousand people in three winter months. The offensive impulse of the Red Army was nevertheless stopped, but at the same time the German army significantly reduced its combat capability.
4. In the summer of 1942, the German command sent its main forces to the Caucasus, thus underestimating the possibility of Soviet resistance at Stalingrad. But the city on the Volga is the most important strategic goal, by capturing which Germany would cut off the Caucasus from the "Big Land" and block access for the USSR military industry to Baku oil.
Major General Hans Doerr noted that "Stalingrad should go down in the history of war as the greatest mistake ever committed by the military command, as the greatest disregard for the living organism of its army ever shown by the leadership of the state."
