The key events that thwarted Operation Barbarossa. At dawn on 10th
July 1941, massed tanks and motorised infantry of German Army Group Centre'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. 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 and
severely damaging two others a quick victory eluded the Germans. Instead, Soviet
forces encircled in Mogilev and Smolensk stubbornly
refused to surrender, and while they fought on a total of seven newly mobilised
Soviet armies struck back viciously at the advancing Germans, conducting
multiple counter-attacks and counterstrokes, capped by two major
counter-offensives 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
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 study exploits a wealth of Soviet and German
archival materials 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.
At dawn on 10 July 1941, massed tanks and motorised infantry of German Army
Group Centre's Second and Third Panzer Groups crossed the Dnepr and Western
Dvina Rivers, beginning what Adolf Hitler and most German officers and soldiers
believed would be a triumphal march on Moscow. Between 22 June and 10 July, the
Wehrmacht advanced up to 500km 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. In doing so, they
satisfied 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 safety behind those two rivers. With the Red Army now believed
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.
This groundbreaking new study exploits a wealth of Soviet and German
archival materials, including the combat orders and operational practises of the
German OKW, OKH, army groups, and armies of the Soviet Stavka, the Red Army
General Staff, the Western Main Direction Command, the Western, Central,
Reserve, and Bryansk 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 10th July-10th
September 1941.
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 Centre 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.
Based on the analysis of the vast mass of documentary materials exploited by
this study, David Glantz presents a number of important new findings. Quite
simply, this series breaks new ground in World War II Eastern Front and Soviet
military studies.
