Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part VI
Posted by Mitch Williamson in Air Warfare on Friday, January 27, 2012
Seen in retrospect, the German campaign in Russia in 1941
was the greatest display of maneuver warfare in history, and it will likely
remain so in the future. In point of preparedness, doctrine, numbers available
for the offensive, and leadership, the German armed forces had peaked during
the summer. These qualities enabled them to storm forward, advancing over 600
miles in less than six months while fighting against an opponent who was
numerically at least equal, and to conquer territory about twice as large as
Germany itself. The key to this unparalleled achievement was operativ warfare,
now waged with the aid of armored and mechanized units and honed into the
blitzkrieg. Its essence consisted of never taking on the enemy in a frontal
attack if it could be helped; instead, massive forces were concentrated on very
narrow fronts in order to achieve a breakthrough, after which they would move
forward to drive deep wedges into the enemy, pulverize (zerstuekeln), outflank,
encircle, and annihilate him in a Kesselschlacht with inverted fronts whenever
possible. Coordinated mobility, even more than firepower, formed the key to
this method of warfare, and indeed the entire German system of organization and
C3 were specifically designed to assist large separated forces in coordinating
their movements against a single enemy. As a glance at the map shows, the
campaign consisted of first breaking up the enemy front into separate sectors
and then building a series of huge cauldrons, each of which contained several
hundred thousand Red Army troops. In point of sheer operational brilliance, it
has no parallel.
This above does not mean that the German conduct of the war,
even if narrowed down to the 1941 campaign alone and even if regarded from a
purely operativ standpoint, was perfect. Having underestimated both the power
of their opponents and the difficulties posed by distance, terrain, and
climate, the Germans did not have sufficient troops for the campaign and
logistically their preparations for it were rather sketchy. Once the invasion got under way, the funnel
shape of the theater of war meant that the number of objectives was forever
increasing. This should have acted as a spur to the German High Command (Hitler
in particular) to decide priorities and to create Schwerpunkte. Instead, they
often chose to scatter their forces and "send them off along a growing
number of diverging axes in order to, from left to right (or north to south),
link up with the Finns, capture Leningrad," keep in touch with Army Group
Center, capture Moscow, keep in touch with Army Group South, overrun the
Ukraine, and invade the Crimea . Whether the Germans could have won the war by
imitating Napoleon and marching straight for Moscow is doubtful, given that the
fall of the city would not necessarily have caused the Soviet Union to break
up. Also, it is not clear whether such a thrust could have been logistically
supported using the road system in Belorussia. As it was, this strategy was
never put to the test.
The contribution that the Luftwaffe made to the campaign was
enormous. It was able to secure air superiority and protect friendly forces
against attack, although its ability to carry out the latter mission diminished
as time passed. Next, its forces used every means at its disposal to help the
army move forward. Luftwaffe units reconnoitered the enemy ahead of the army
and often helped the latter's commanders decide on the best direction in which
to mount their operativ thrusts. They flew supplies to army units that could
not be reached in any other way. They protected the long, exposed flanks that
naturally resulted from the blitzkrieg style of war, forming Schwerpunkte
wherever and whenever the enemy showed signs of preparing a counterattack. They
helped prevent the withdrawal of trapped Soviet forces and launched punishing
attacks on those that had been cut off inside the pockets created by the army's
operativ thrusts. Whenever a river was to be crossed or an important city to be
captured, the Luftwaffe was certain to be found flying close-support missions
even to the point where it literally dropped its bombs at the German infantryman's
feet.
Though the achievements of the Luftwaffe were thus
considerable, it became increasingly clear that the available forces were not
really sufficient to master the enormous spaces involved. This was particularly
true in view of the equally enormous difficulties involved in having to operate
from bases that were primitive, far from home, and often connected to each
other, the rear, and the ground forces only by the most tenuous of
communications. The farther east the Germans went, the more difficult it became
to keep the Luftwaffe units supplied and their aircraft operational. The more
intensive the fighting, the greater the army's tendency to call in the air
force wherever an advance was to be made or whenever a local crisis took place.
This combination of circumstances had the effect of gradually bringing operativ
warfare to an end. The Luftwaffe was forced more and more to act as flying
artillery, a role for which the majority of its aircraft were not well suited
and in which they took correspondingly heavy losses.
In Russia, as in Poland and France, the Luftwaffe was
originally forbidden from attacking strategic targets, it being assumed that
such attacks would be a waste of effort and that the campaign hopefully would
be over before the effects of such attacks could be felt. However, just as the
army tended to divide its efforts between many objectives, so the Luftwaffe had
to go beyond this strict line of reasoning. Beginning in the second half of
July, some of its forces were diverted from interdiction in order to attack
industrial targets in Moscow, Rharkov, Rostov, Orel, Tula, Voronezh, Bryansk,
and a number of other places. In the absence of a heavy four-engined bomber
fleet (which, given their overall economic situation, the Germans probably
could not have created even if the necessary prototypes had been available),
strategic warfare had to be carried out by two-engined medium and light
bombers. However, even these were only capable of hitting individual targets
more or less by accident.
It is therefore not surprising that such warfare remained
without any noticeable effect, of nuisance value at best and a waste of
resources at worst. The only thing that can be said in its favor is that it
probably did not seriously impact on whatever chances the Germans stood to gain
a victory, given that during the would-be decisive advance on Moscow the effort
that went to operations other than mittelbare (indirect) and unmittelbare
Unterstuetzung (direct support) was not very great.
All in all, the strengths and weaknesses of the Luftwaffe in
this period reflected those of the German armed forces as a whole. Unequalled
determination and sheer Schwung (elan) was based on the unlimited
Einsatzbereitschaft (initiative) of air crews and ground personnel. The Germans
were unmatched in their grasp of operativ warfare, but only at the expense of
weaknesses in logistics (sustainability in particular) and a somewhat uncertain
overall strategy that caused them to go after too many different objectives at
once. There is still much to learn from the Luftwaffe's methods of waging war.
There is also much to avoid.
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