Operation Barbarossa: Winning To Death (Part 8)

What was so important about The Smolensk Pocket? Why did Guderian try overambitious battle plans despite a lack of adequate resources? How did Hitler and Halder disagree on the plans around capturing Moscow? Join Al Murray and James Holland for part 8 of this titanic new series on the brutal Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and how mistakes by warmongers on both sides led to untold tragedies on the Eastern Front during WW2. To watch the ad-free, video-supported, version of this episode, please head to our Patreon page directly. Start your free trial at ⁠patreon.com/wehaveways⁠ and unlock exclusive content and more. Enjoy livestreams, early access, ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and a weekly newsletter packed with book deals and behind-the-scenes insights. Get your ticket for We Have Ways Fest 6 here! Get your WHW Merch here! Visit refundclub.co.uk/whw. Refund Club is a trading style of Sandsford Law Limited, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA no. 8008114). Checking is free. A fee is payable only if your claim is successful. Eligibility: car finance taken out in the UK between 2007 and 2021. The average claim is around £829 per agreement; this is an average and not a guarantee of the amount you will receive. You can also claim yourself for free by contacting your lender or the Financial Ombudsman Service. Download World of Warships here: https://wo.ws/wehaveways A Goalhanger Production Produced by James Regan Editor: Charlie Rodwell Assistant Producer: Alfie Norris Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Social: @WeHaveWaysPod Social Producer: Harry Balden Email: [email protected] Membership Club: patreon.com/wehaveways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:46Speaker 00

  That's refundclub.co.uk/whw for your free cheque. Hitler went to war, believing that the struggle against Bolshevism might lead the Anglo-Saxon countries to end the conflict. Von Ribbentrop did not agree. In fact, he was convinced that Churchill is ready to make an alliance, even with the devil himself, if he can only destroy Nazism. This time, he was right. Now the struggle is hard and bloody, and the German people who are tired wonder why. Frau Moliere used harsh terms. She said Hitler is a blockhead. In fact, the war is harder than the Germans had foreseen. The advance continues, but it is slow and harassed by the very vigorous Soviet counterattacks. Colonel Amey and General

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Squero, who made a report on the military situation today, believe that the Russians will succeed in maintaining a front even during the winter. If this is true, Germany has started a hemorrhage that will have incalculable consequences. And that, Jim, of course...

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Count Galeazzo Ciano. It's an incredibly prescient entry in Ciano's diary, which I don't know if anyone's ever read it, but they're just brilliant. Because, you know, he's a reluctant warmonger. And he was against Italy going to war in the first place. And he is also, of course, Mussolini's son-in-law. And he is also, of course, executed by the Italians at German insistence.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  That quote is from the 18th of July, 1941, not even a month into this, into the Barbarossa adventure. So, welcome to episode eight of our Barbarossa series. Winning oneself to death is the title of this. Set the scene, James, with the Smolensk Pocket.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Well, yes. So, Smolensk, the city in Belarus, or Belarus as it then was, has fallen on the 15th of July, which is a great victory. And it's fallen to Guderian's Panzer Group Guderian, Panzer Group II, or more informally Panzer Group Guderian, remember, in Army Group Centre. And we're going to be focusing largely on Army Group Centre, because it is the progress of Army Group Centre, which is the largest of the German Army Groups by far. It has two of the Panzer Groups, which are the spearheads of these three groups. You've got Army Group South, Army Group North, Army Group Centre. It's got two of the four that are available, leading the charge. And, you know, in the original plan, this was the Army Group that

• 4:10Speaker 02

  was going to basically see the destruction of the absolute hardcore of the Red Army. What they've been doing, as we were discussing in the episode before last, before we did the Wilhelm Pula, is that it's all well and good, that they're making this huge progress, and they are capturing cities, and they're going down these roads. But these are little kind of fingers of bites. So there's lots of little sort of prongs going into Soviet Union, but it's not joined up. Guderian's forces have taken Smolensk, and then they've just charged onwards. And what you get is a massive pocket north of, sort of north-east,

• 4:48Speaker 02

  north-west of the, and to the east of Smolensk. The front is by no means cohesive. Still in the Smolensk Pocket, get this, are the Soviet 20th, 16th, and 19th Armies. So that's three armies. It's a huge force. And they're now fighting absolutely furiously and tying down plenty of Hoht and Guderian troops. So Hoht is Panzer Group III, or Panzer Group Hoht, more informally, and Guderian troops. And it just can't be ignored. You can't bypass that. You've got to turn and face it. And obviously, the Red Army is better placed to rapidly reinforce this front than the Germans are, because they've got shorter

• 5:31Speaker 02

  lines of supply. You know, all their territory is Soviet. Whereas the Germans have now got these fingers, these prongs going into the Soviet Union, which are not, sort of, you know, not conjoined. And German planning had also assumed that they'd captured plenty of Soviet locomotives and rolling stock. But this isn't really the case, because most have either been moved east by the Soviets, or they've been destroyed. And what's more, Soviet locomotives are much larger. So, for a larger loading gauge, of course, because we've talked already about the fact that the Soviet loading gauge, the width of the railway is wider than that of the European one. So they can take more coal, and they have greater water capacity than the standard Reichsbahn, the German railway train, which

• 6:14Speaker 02

  is known as the Kriegslock, which can do 50 miles an hour forward, 50 miles back. It's the Kriegslock, the standard German workhorse. And this means that not only do the Germans have to narrow the railway lines, they also have to establish more water stops and coal dumps, all of which, of course, then uses up precious resources of oil, of the gross transport out, which is, you know, the army of the Wehrmacht transport system, and takes more time, and adds to the rapidly increasing stretch lines of communication. I mean, I don't know about you, Al, but just thinking about this is making my head hurt. And you can see, can't you, how this hubristic assumption before Barbarossa, that we're

• 6:57Speaker 02

  just going to wipe them out because we're better than them, and we're going to smash them completely within 500 kilometres, and it's going to be a cakewalk, is now coming home to roost in a very, very dramatic way. Because the lines of supply are stretched, motorised provisions are rapidly in decline, both from battle and wear and tear. And discordant deployment of each of these Panzer spearheads is problematic, because it means they're fanning over a wide area in which they're no longer mutually supporting. And that is denuding them of the all-important concentration of force, the Schwerpunkt, as the Germans call it.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  And these tentacles are not uncontested either, are they? They've expanded massively into the Soviet Union. But you've still got, you know, loads of Russian stragglers, Soviet stragglers, all sorts of people. So the rear that the Germans are trying to create isn't necessarily safe, is it, is the other thing. As well as being overstretched, it's not safe either. So they've, they're basically, the problem is, is they've advanced too brilliant, they've been too brilliant, they've been too dazzling, Jim. They're smash-and-grab, Bevagans Krieg style, which has worked well in France. In the Soviet Union, under the

• 8:16Speaker 00

  different, completely different conditions, has had this weird effect of creating what looks on the map, if you're looking at this on a map and you're a Panzer commander, you're thinking, well, look at this. We've beaten everything we did in France. Within a month, we've excelled ourselves here. And that's how they see it. Rather than thinking, oh my God, we're completely overstretched here, we're surely going to culminate any second, the losses are colossal, how can we keep this together? They're Guderian, basically, and Hurt, although some people might call him Hoff, he's the one, you know, the ice planet German general. But basically, Guderian and Hurt, they believe their own success, don't they? That rather than, rather than going, hang on a minute, what's our actual

• 9:00Speaker 00

  situation here? They're looking at the great big arrows on the maps and thinking they're making military history, essentially. They're high on their own supply, aren't they?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Well, they're trying to relive France, aren't they? They're trying to relive France. But what they're failing to understand is that France is much smaller, and the more sophisticated infrastructure of France is what enables them to achieve what they do achieve. And the barriers to this are just too huge. We can post this up, but you and I have got the benefit right now of looking at a situation map at 2,300 hours, so 11pm on the 22nd of July, 1941. It's quite hard to make sense of it, isn't it? So there's an almost sort of continuous, sort of continuous line to the north-east of Smolensk.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  They look like free-roaming amoebas, the formations on this. It looks like...

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Such a good description. There's another sort of reasonable bit of line, front line, immediately south of Smolensk, by about sort of 75 miles, something like that, 100 miles south of Smolensk. Then at Yelnyar, you can see, this is Guderian's lead formations, and that is the 46 Panzer Corps, which we'll return to later on in the episode. And it's completely isolated, isn't it?

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  There's troops, there's Russian troops to their, you know, Red Army troops to their rear, there's little pockets all over the place. I mean, it is an absolute mess. And what you're not getting is any sense of clear cohesion whatsoever. There's no kind of, you know, clear line where the ground and territory behind it is completely secure in the hands. And I think it's worth just talking through the two Panzer Corps of Army Group Centre and talking about what they're doing. So Panzer Group Hoht, Panzer Group III, one of its Panzer Corps, so you have the group, which is effectively a large Panzer army, is divided into corps. It's got three corps within it, Panzer Corps within it, and 57 Panzer Corps.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Is heading off far to the north east to a place called Veliki Luki. Von Bock, who is the commander in chief of Army Group Centre, is getting increasingly concerned that these individual Panzer corps, which are not divisions, are becoming too weak to operate alone. But but these anxieties are not being met with any kind of coherent action. So instead, 57 Panzer corps under General Adolf Friedrich Kunzen is getting into massive trouble at Veliki Luki, which is 235 kilometres north of Smolensk. So that's about 150 miles, right?

• 11:40Speaker 02

  I mean, that's a that's a long way and is veering into Army Group North's patch. So striking at Veliki Luki is not entirely insane because it's a key nodal point. What we mean by that is it's a crossroads, it's a rail hub, you know, it's a significant urban centre, so it's a it's a it's a sort of transport hub. And that would give Army Group Centre a whopping 300 kilometre frontage in addition to the 500 kilometres from the border. And the town is strategically important, but it's not worth the potential loss of two divisions, 19 Panzer and 14 motorised division four.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  I mean, it's just not, and not at this critical stage where you've still got the Smolensk pocket. It's like, deal with one thing first, get your front sorted out, then move forward. And it's at this moment that the second wave of Soviet forces, all of which have been discounted before the invasion by the Germans, start to kick in because the new 29th Army is forming up just to the east of Veliki Luki. What had at first seemed to hope like a bold forward operation now seems insane folly.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  So just to get to Veliki Luki, because it's 235 kilometres from Smolensk, requires all resources of the 57th Panzer Corps with absolutely no wriggle room at all. And what this basically means is truckage, you know, this is transport and the ability to maintain the effort with the forward supply of fuel, the forward supply of ammunition. And just to remind everyone, okay, so at this stage, you're not talking Tiger tanks and Panthers, you're talking Panzer threes and Stugs and Panzer twos and a handful of Panzer fours. But these tanks use a heck of a lot of fuel.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Particularly when they're in combat. So 19th Panzer Division is going all out for the town. It's just spurning off down the road, kind of taking a very sort of narrow finger either side of this road. I mean, it is absolutely, you know, 30 corps in 1944 on way to Arnhem.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  While the 14th Motorised Division is stretched out protecting the corridor, but it's just too thin, you know, and it's just, it's just, it can't do it. And by the 19th of July, the 14th Motorised Division is being attacked all along the way, while its own material is completely worn out. And that's the words of 14th Motor Division War Diary.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  Well, but what's interesting about this, Jim, because the Red Army then attack and they break through the German line in multiple places, forcing 19th Panzer Division to fall back to help out. And you have here in the notes a Klaus Fitz quote, right? The diminishing force of the attack is one of the strategist's main concerns. His awareness of it will determine the accuracy of his estimate. In each case, the option's open to him. Now, if Klaus Fitz has said that, they all know this. The Prussian military school that's supposedly the envy of the world, right? That everyone's copied and that everyone attributes, you know, Prussian militarism to and so on. They all know this. They all know about his principle of, you know, strategic elastic, where the closer

• 14:51Speaker 00

  you are to your home base, the easier it is to fight, the further away you're at greater stretch and it's more difficult, right? They all know this. So what the bloody hell's going on for them to ignore?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Well.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? There is a kind of mystery in all this, I think.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  It's kind of threefold. So the first thing is that right at the top of the kind of old school Prussian elites, the Von Rundstedts, the Box, you know, the Von Leibs, all these types, who played such a critical role in the blitzkrieg era, you know, fall of France, Poland, Balkans, all the rest of it. They were very sceptical about this sort of rapid Panzer deployment, you know, Panzer divisions, which, as we've said many, many times over, are not just Panzers, they're an all arms, motorised outfit in an army that is predominantly not motorised. So that's the USP. They were very sceptical about it and their scepticism was confounded because they've had this great victory.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Whereas people like Hote and Gudarian, who were the advocates of this Panzer warfare, Gudarian especially, but Hote also, you know, he was, Hote had one of the Panzer corps that was driving Army Group A, the main bulk of the Panzers in the blitzkrieg in France. They've now doubled down on it because it was successful. They're like, yeah, we can freaking do this. So you've got these two strands, you've got the old school sceptics who are now kind of completely won over. And then you've got the people who were already, who were the pioneers, taking it on to another level. And they've just started to completely believe their hype.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Then you add into it, and this is the third element of this problem, their racial superiority and their military superiority in their own minds and the woeful lack of planning and the planning to fit your own intentions rather than the reality that we saw with Paulus and Gail Thomas and all the rest of it. What you've got is a perfect storm. And they've also, their heads have been turned by those early days of the campaign where they're absolutely running rampant. And we've explained in the previous episodes why that was so. So they've just got ahead of themselves. And the problem is, Al, is that now they're there, they're so deep in, they can't go back because this is all about driving forward.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  And you can't retreat, you can't consolidate because the whole USP is about constantly driving, pushing forward. But what works in France, what works in the Balkans, isn't going to work here because your enemy, in this case, the Red Army.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Has infinitesimal numbers of manpower compared to them and the distances are just too huge and the infrastructure is so backward. And they are not realising that yet, although the penny is starting to drop and they're stuck. They can't, they can't.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  You can't wheel back, you can't go forward. What do you do? It's just, it's a nightmare of their own making.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  There's also the political dimension as well, which is this kind of victory, they imagine, would deliver a political outcome, that the Soviet government will go, you know what, ain't worth it and fold. But the problem is they're not dealing with a government like the French government, which thinks, oh, it's not worth it, or the British government, which thinks, let's get the hell out of here. They're dealing with the Soviet government that's because of the revolution and that probably, you know, a big factor of this is because of their own cruelty and appalling treatment of their own population. There's no way that the Soviet government is going to go, you know what, let's do a deal. Because they have such resources at their disposal and also they are so hard, they're as hard baked in as the Nazi government in their position. They're never going to get a political decision out of this, are they?

• 18:38Speaker 00

  And no one is operating, thinking about the political element here at all, are they? And, you know, if war is politics, you know, diplomacy by other means, right? Again, back to Klaus Fitz, they've all forgotten that as well. There's no political outcome on offer here like there might be in France. You know, if you'd got 500 kilometres into France, the French government's going to, yeah, fine, okay, we give up, right? Because it's a democracy that's answerable to its population. There's something else at work in the Soviet Union that's never going, never ever going to happen. And none of them are thinking about that. None of them seem to have that.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  In mind, unlike Charno, as we started, where he gets it.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  The only way they could do this differently is to do chunks. So you have this huge effort, you get to the Dnepa and the Davina and you stop and you then harness the local population. And yes, you can want to annihilate communism. So you do that, so you politicise them and you do political training, but you also show generosity to the places you've done. You start bringing infrastructure, you improve the roads, you improve their lives, you harness the locals that you've taken over onto your side, then you're increasing your own population, your own workforce and your own, I mean, and then you do that for a bit and then. You know, you hope that you've got enough to be able to hold that line on a river.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Should be pretty defensible and then you do another chunk, you know, some months or even, dare I say, the following summer.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  You can't win completely against Stalin. You're gonna have to kill him, aren't you? Not the Red Army.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  But at this stage, in the third week of July 1941, they're not accepting this, although they're starting to think, you can see it, they're starting to think, yikes. This isn't quite working. Anyway, let's have a look, because we've only just done one Panzer Corps, and that's

• 20:31Speaker 00

  I know.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  On the way up to Veliky Luky, and we need to look at what 7 Panzer's doing, you know, which of course is Rommel's old Panzer. And in Panzer Group, Panzer Group Hote, it was also Panzer Korps Hote back in 1940. And on the same day that Smolensk falls, on the 15th of July, 7 Panzer is surging ahead and taking the main Moscow-Smolensk railroad and highway at Yatsevo. This is potentially a decisive game, but the area to the south of this is not secure because Yatsevo is 40 miles beyond Smolensk. Yet again, the leading Panzer troops are out on a limb. And Karl Fuchs is a tank gunner in 7 Panzer.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And he noted, "We are now positioned outside the city of Smolensk and have penetrated the highly acclaimed Stalin lines. I would imagine that within eight to 10 days, this campaign will be over." Giddiness at success is still kind of ruling the route, but don't forget, you know, he's writing that on the 15th of July.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  7th Panzer then ordered to thrust south to try and close the pocket from the north. Within 7th Panzer's, Hans von Look.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Great friend of the show, I think we can say that. Sort of the good German.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  He spun a good line after the war, anyway. And he's the adjutant at divisional headquarters. And von Look had been apprehensive before the invasion began. And he says, "The Ural Mountains, which are nearly 2,000 miles away, were merely the end of the European part. We were not actually afraid, but neither were we sure of our attitude should be towards an opponent whose strength and potential were unknown to us and whose mentality was completely alien." He starts Barbarossa, von Look starts Barbarossa, is the adjutant with 7th Panzer Division Headquarters. And it's his birthday on the 15th of July, the day they capture Yatsevo. So happy birthday, Hans, with that. And that evening, him and some of his officers, they climb a hill, only 1,000 yards from the Soviet lines, and they set up a table and have a great big dinner and a meal that

• 22:31Speaker 00

  that basically underlines how cocky and confident they are, really. They think, they think this is all going very well.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yes, and also it's ostentatious, and it's saying, "We have fine dining because we're sophisticated and slick. You Russians are scum in a kind of hole in the ground." You know, that's basically what it's saying, isn't it?

• 22:50Speaker 00

  Yes, well, that's what he means when he says their mentality is completely alien. What he means is they're not as good as us. But over the days that follow, the battle continues without very much progress. So, yeah, they capture Yatsevo, but the Soviets aren't throwing in the towel, which is to the point we were making earlier. The battles at Yatsevo lasted longer than we would have liked. The Blitzkrieg seemed to be over. They don't really succeed with their southern thrust to try and close the pocket, mainly because the Soviets are putting them under pressure from the east. 7th Panzer offer a good, you know, microcosm of the problems, the problems that army groups are experiencing. Because they're so spread, they're so dispersed, they can, you know, whatever they do, they're creating a hole in their own line and exposing, or a flank, offering a flank to the Soviets.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  And it shows that, you know, when you've got limited resources, both Hote and Guderian, you know, are too exposed. And the marching infantry, of course, are still footslogging their way from the border and can't catch them up and help.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  So let's talk of von Schreppenberg's 24th Panzer Corps. Yeah, remember him from Normandy. Things are not going particularly well for Panzer Group Guderian either, is the truth of it, following the fall of Smolensk. You know, numerous places where leading Panzers are dangerously overreaching. So now far to the south of Smolensk is Schreppenberg's Panzer Corps. And this obviously includes the 4th Panzer Division of Rickard von Rosen, who we've been sort of following right from the very start of our first episode, weren't we? Von Rosen was noticing, as they all are, that resistance is stiffening. So not only are they now trying to hold off the relentless Red Army attacks, they're also trying to keep their Rolbon, their line of supply, open. You know, this is a problem. They've got these roads coming down, which they're using, and then the Russians are

• 24:32Speaker 02

  coming around the back and just sort of pecking at them. And it makes it very difficult because, of course, supply troops are famously underarmed. So they're going around in trucks, it makes them very, very easy meat, of course. You know, typically the troops and, you know, maybe a few cannons and machine guns and stuff, but basically it's small arm stuff, so that's not enough. And von Rosen and his comrades have been told they were going to pause for a refit, but despite having only five functioning Panzers left, were told on the evening of 17th of July that they had to make ready for battle again. "No information was forthcoming as to why. We had been promised several days' rest here. Later, we discovered that the Russians had recaptured the Rolbon in Arhia and surrounded the Panzer pioneers who had camped on it."

• 25:16Speaker 02

  And there you have, in a nutshell, the entire problem with this kind of charging finger prongs.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  You know what this is reminding me of, Jim? And I'm sure anyone who listened to our series about the Ardennes, about the Ardennes Offensive, it's like that. It's just reminding me of that. This thing of, well, we'll speed forward, then what?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Well, that was when you get to Moscow with your one, you know, with your one Opel Blitz and a Kubelwagen.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. It's exactly like that. So they move, they move off at seven in the evening with three company in the lead. All route, they have to cross back over a bridge that's since first crossed, and it's been zeroed by Red Army artillery every time a Panzer approaches it.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Of course it has.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Of course it has, because they're not, it's the idea that they're not, they're not fighting the French. Let's just put it that way. They're not fighting the French here. That's the important thing to remember. "As we came to realise, into fighting around the Popovsk bridges, the struggle was now becoming fiercer." Part of this impression is obviously because when they first, when they first entered the Soviet Union, they zoom off because there's no one in front of them.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  But now the Red Army knows exactly what's going on and they can, you know, and you know, the bottom line is that the forward units of Panzer Group Guderian are now facing a further three Red Armies, so, you know, under Timoshenko, in addition to the three armies in the Smolensk Pocket. So they're now up against the 21st, 13th and 4th, as well as the 16th, 19th and 20th.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  So six armies they're facing here, just, and this is just the lead elements of these Panzer Groups at this stage. So, you know, as we were saying, you know, there's no clear front at all. And another argument of deployment is now developing because two army was now following, and von Schreppenberg asked for two armies 12 Corps to be hurriedly sent to his aid. And General Maximilian von Weichs, the two army commander, wanted to send most of his forces south and strike with Schreppenberg at a town to the south called Gommel. But Bock ordered Weichs to keep heading north-east towards the Smolensk Pocket, because he knows, Bock knows that rather than swanning off far to the south, what you really need

• 27:26Speaker 02

  to do is get rid of this pocket as quickly as possible. But instead, Weichs orders two corps south and to just so completely ignore Bock's orders, who after all is the field marshal in charge of the army group. And Bock, understandably, is incensed when he finds out and then countermands the orders. So it's a complete mess. And Bock believes that the Red Army's strength is exaggerated, but he's backed several hundred miles and disregarding the intelligence. And only on the 21st of July, the day after von Rosen and 4th Panzer Division had hurried back to try and rescue the situation at the bridges, at the Popovsk bridges, that Bock changes his orders again, noting in his diary, "The situation facing 24 Panzer Corps on the southern wing was so threatening that I had to order two army to restore it."

• 28:11Speaker 02

  But you could say, why is 24 Panzer Corps 100 miles south of Smolensk? What's wrong with being 30 miles south of Smolensk?

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  But then there is the main drive of Guderian's Panzer Group, which is the drive on Yelnyar. And Yelnyar is a high, is a town on a sort of high ground, about 75 miles further east from Smolensk. And Yelnyar is going to become...

• 28:42Speaker 02

  A place of total carnage. Th- th- th- this is a name which is going to go down in the annals. And it is going to see Panzergruppe Guderian almost, but not quite, broken.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely crazy, this, isn't it? Um, so he sends off von fighting off 46 Panzer corps, even though there are three Red armies, Soviet armies, in the Smolensk pocket still.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Which basically means behind them.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Behind them, in their, in their rear.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  It is insane, because, because under no circumstances are, are your rear areas remotely secure.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  But Guderian thinks, no, fortune favours the brave, you know, it's time to be bold. Klotz, and all that, right? And interestingly, Bock sort of is pushing back on this. He says, we, we should only secure one the front first, you know, on the 18th of July. He tells Kluger, 4th Army, who's coming up behind, that, you know, we've got to close his pocket as soon as possible. And on the 19th, the following day, Bock asks Guderian to act on the orders of three days earlier to close the ring around Smolensk, you know, could you please, we need to tidy all this up? And then Kluger gets in a strop with Bock for meddling. I mean, I, you know, I find all this very interesting that, as well, one of the aspects of the interesting is, you know, we talked about the German approach towards us for a tactic, you just do what you need to do, crack on. At the top, no one thinks that.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  They're all going, I want to do what I want to do and shut up.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Do you know what all this is reminding me of? It's reminding me of the, of the, of the desert generals at war in the summer of 1942. You know, this, this, this is Tobruk and, and, and, um, the Gazala line, and everyone bitching behind each other's back and complaining and, and, you know, and getting stroppy about one corps commander to another corps commander and all this.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  And that's, and why are they all getting in a cross of each other? Because it's all starting to go pear shaped.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Guderian had been trying to close the gap, but it wasn't going very well for him.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Well, because he hasn't got enough, has he? Because he's sent most of his forces off to, off to Yelnyar.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  And he's been doing this with the depleted 18th Panzer Division, which is driving north of, of Yelnyar to Dorogobush. But 18th Panzer is down to 25% of his Panzer strength and 60% manpower. He's also lost 1,300 trucks since the start of the campaign. And these are all absolutely wildly precious resources. And he's ordered them to close the pocket without offering any reinforcements and with their tail vulnerable, because their tail is, because there's no safe rear. And in effect, by sending 18th Panzer northeast to Dorogobush, he's trying to close one pocket, but opens another one. Because there's not, they're spreading the butter too thin on the toast.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  And Guderian won't, he's not willing to use his Panzer divisions in strategic defensive roles. Kluger is furious at this decision, um, but, um, and immediately countermands Guderian by ordering 18th Panzer back to hold the line east of the city.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  So they then can't go to Dorogobush. So poor old 18th Panzer, which has got almost no Panzers left, is just going, you know, what, what do you want me to do? But, but, but either option is bad and either option is, is, is stretching them too far. So, so, so Guderian now sends part of the 10th Panzer, which is currently on a drive to Yelnyar, to Dorogobush instead. But all you're doing is you're splitting up your forces, you're, you're, you're, you're denuding that concentrated of force. You know, if you're splitting up 10 Panzer, that means that 10 Panzer is not operating at max strength. And it's already not at max strength, because it's been attrited on this way, this way, this vast distance. So, so these are really, really bad decisions by people that absolutely should know better

• 32:19Speaker 02

  and who have, have, you know, their arrogance, hubris, um, and, and believing their hype is sort of getting the better of them. So, so 10 Panzer is struggling really badly at Yelnyar. So the commander says to, to von, um, Wittinghoff, that his division could do one or other of the missions, but not both. And, and Wittinghoff just goes, goes, forget that, just get on with it. Guderian then changes his mind and orders Yelnyar to be the main objective, not Dorogobush. And by this time, it's five whole days since 7th Panzer had reached Yatsevo. But since then, the Smolensk pocket is still not closed and vast numbers of Red Army troops are escaping eastwards. So Bock notes in his diary,

• 33:01Speaker 02

  "At the moment, there is only one pocket on the army group's front, and it has a hole." Oh, oh, oh, but I mean, you know, it's sort of black humour. Uh, um, you, you know, Bock is not amused at all.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Despite this, Guderian carries on pressing at Yelnyar, does capture the town, um, and then starts talking about going further east. Like, um, you know, roll on, it's go, it's, it's going well. Right from the beginning of Barbarossa, there has been a muddle and, and a lot of indecision about which way to go. And that has filtered its way all the way down across the board, isn't it? That, that the indecision that Barbarossa was characterised in terms of what's its objective? Leningrad, Moscow, Ukraine, we don't know, right? So they're, no wonder the generals feel they can change their minds and do what they like, because the whole thing hasn't been gripped from the beginning. This is why they're able to get away with it. It's that the entire command structure is corrupted from, from the top down.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Bock sends a staff officer to tell Guderian that, you know, pushing east further is a, is a, is not important. What we need to do is close the pocket, actually. They haven't foreseen any of this, because the big idea is that they will have shattered all remaining Soviet resistance in the second phase of the operations east of the Great Rivers. Yet, but, but they haven't done that, it's just not happened.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  Um, and not only are Red Army forces in the pocket still fighting, but more are appearing. Um, it's not the French army, they're not throwing in the towel. And Bock on the 20th of July says, "Repeated attacks on the elements of Panzergruppe 2 from the east, southeast and south. Panzergruppe 3, 2 has not only been attacked from inside the pocket, or from Smolensk and west, but from the east and northeast as well."

• 34:38Speaker 02

  I don't know about you, but that sounds to me like they're surrounded.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean? I mean.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  I mean, Bock's diary is absolutely fascinating. It's published and you, you can get a, an English translation as, as I've got, which is a nice big fat, fat book. And, and it is amazing, you know, he, he, he puts in these incredibly dry, kind of wry comments in his, in, in his diary. And it's clear, he's absolutely tearing his hair out, trying to manage a situation. He's got Hitler on one side in the army and he's got Halder and Brauchitsch on another. Um, he's got Keitel breathing down his neck and he's got all these, you know, he's got Kluger and Guderian at loggerheads. You know, Hope running off to Veliki Luki, you know, it's just, they're just completely uncontrollable. But, but, but suddenly there are setbacks all along this totally disconnected front from, you know, from, from,

• 35:30Speaker 02

  you know, if you look at it all, I mean, we've, we've just been through them. But you think about, you know, von Streppenberg is struggling to the south as he's fighting towards Rasavol and, and Gommel. Uh, um, and then, um, Wittinghoff's Panzers at Yelnyar, 7 Panzer to 57 Panzer corps at Veliki Luki. The, the stiffening of resistance, the counter punches, the assaults on rear and the roll barns and the rapidly diminishing numbers of Panzers. All are a taste of what is to come. But this stubborn tendency to underestimate the enemy continues. It's kind of hard baked into German minds from the very top to the bottom. And now a worrying concern is that they're being too slow to learn the lessons.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  And all that blitzkrieg success, plus the relentless brainwashing is badly undermining the efforts. You know, they're, they're deep, deep into the Soviet Union on a mission that has to succeed, but which is clearly by the 20th of July, July, 1941 unraveling. And there's a Waffen SS general, Max Simon, who ends up commanding 16th Panzer in Italy. He says, "Very soon, we had to admit that we were up against a very different adversary from the one we had expected. And I believe that this underestimation was one of the reasons for the unfortunate course which the campaign in Russia took, and it's about to get a whole load worse."

• 36:57Speaker 00

  So we're going to take a break now. I love the way that we're talking about Barbarossa falling apart and getting a whole lot worse. And we're only really a month into it, you know, that.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  A month into it, a month into it.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  For the, for the connoisseur of the historiography, this is not the, not the way this is normally told. We will see you after the break.

• 37:18Speaker 02

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• 38:27Speaker 03

  Here we are getting a statement from Melba 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  The Great Game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

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  We assess, uh, Prime Minister, with high confidence, it was Russian.

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  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

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  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

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  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order or frago.

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  A frago that says to kill the President of Russia.

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• 40:10Speaker 00

  Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. And Jim promised us before the break that things are about to get worse. So let's go, Jim. Let's make it worse. And we need to go to the other side of the hill, really, don't we? Just to find out why.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Far from facing the final throes of the Red Army, Stavka, which you may remember from one of the early episodes, is the sort of combined general staff, really, in Moscow, is about to throw in a load more new armies. It's a high command, basically. So, yes, that means they're poorly trained, but mass is massively starting to count against a Wehrmacht that is rapidly getting short of mass. That's the truth. And under Stalin's direction, Stavka has decided to mount a major counter-offensive by sending in four new armies: the 29th, the 30th, the 24th and the 28th.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  Not one army, not two armies, not three armies, James, four, four bloody armies. It's amazing.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  How many armies does Britain have in North Africa at this point?

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Well, kind of one, kind of, not a great big fat one like a Soviet one, anyway.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  You've got the three armies facing von Schreppenberg, you've got three armies in the pocket, and you've got another four. My reckoning adds up to 10. Anyway, Stalin places them under Timoshenko. So, Timoshenko had been at central command in Moscow, but is now commanding the Western Front. And Stalin says, "Until now, you have counted on help in the form of two or three divisions at a time, but nothing really has come of this. Therefore, it is time to give up this practice and to begin to create a fist of seven to eight divisions with cavalry on the flanks." In other words, punch back with as many men as you can. Zhukov, who is the chief of the general staff, now plans a series of simultaneous concentric

• 42:00Speaker 02

  blows against Army Group Centre from each of the four new armies. So the Germans don't know it, but they've already reached a high point of the Barbarossa offensive. And that's, you know, I'm just saying it right there, and then they've got victories to come, sure.

• 42:13Speaker 00

  What's the point?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  What's the point? What's the point? Well, because they haven't got any choice, because if they just stand idle, Stalin is going to get, you know, the Red Army is going to get bigger and bigger, and they're going to counterpunch, and the Germans are going to lose. So they've got to keep going, is the truth of it. But at this point, great enemy of the show, Adolf Hitler, starts to wade in and starts to meddle.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  What you need now, Jim, is an intervention from a self-styled military genius. That's what we need at this stage.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  That's exactly what you want. Into this confusing situation, what you need is some clarity of thought. So, anyway, so he delivers not one, but two directives. Yeah, I mean, you know, so he's now at his East Prussia headquarters at Rastenburg, the Wolschance or the Wolf's Lair, and he is about to wade in with, from what this moment onwards is going to be increasing interference.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  His sort of push and pull that he's already had on Halder has had enough of an effect in the conception of Barbarossa. But he basically just doesn't, he doesn't trust the army's senior commanders, and there's been this unresolved difference in strategic outlook between him and Halder.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  He's an autocrat, he's a dictator, he doesn't trust anyone. Of course he doesn't.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  You know, that's how dictators behave, they're the genius, they're the only right ones. You know, my way is the best way, it's the only way, I'm the master of everything, I'm the cleverest person on the planet.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  And he'd been consistent about prioritising Ukraine and Leningrad, but Halder wanted, you know, thought that Army Group Centre would make the drive on Moscow and so on. And the thing is, is Halder's done that anyway. It's quite clear that Hitler wasn't aware of OKH's scheming, of Halder's scheming. So now he's thinking about diversion, diverting Panzer groups the way that he'd always wanted. Hitler's now trying to get what he wants out of the campaign, now that they're a month in, and really now is not the time for someone to, I mean, it's all going badly anyway, but now's not the time for meddling, as you said. And on the 19th of July, and I love the way he issues two directives here, the 19th of

• 44:18Speaker 00

  July, he issues War Directive Number 33, Dran Dritzig, which orders Panzer Group Hoth north to help Army Group North on the drive to Leningrad, and then he's orders Guderian south to help crush the fortress city of Kiev. And there are only two infantry divisions to continue the march on Moscow, two divisions. And four days later, after Brorkic has gone to see him to try and talk him out of this, you know, siphoning off these Panzer groups from Army Group C, Hitler then issues Directive Number 33A. My final verdict is it being amended.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, I should say that Number 33A is signed by Keitel, but obviously Keitel is Hitler's mouthpiece, and it is Hitler.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  It's the same, but it's got more specific instructions for Panzer Group Three for Hoth, to come under the command of Army Group North, and for Panzer Group Two to go to Army Group South. And it says, "After mopping up operations around Smolensk and on the southern flank, Army Group Centre, whose infantry formations drawn from both its armies are strong enough for the purpose, will defeat such enemy forces as remain between Smolensk and Moscow by advancing on the left flank if possible. It will then capture Moscow."

• 45:26Speaker 02

  That first line, "After mopping up operations around Smolensk," okay, these are not mopping up operations, these are against 10 Red Armies, Red Army armies. I mean, you know, there's nothing mopping up about it at all. And, you know, at the same time, your spearheads, which are supposed to do, you know, 90% of the fighting, are absolutely screwed. So, you know, what is so interesting about Directive Number 33 and 33A is their total disconnect from reality. I mean, the delusional appreciation of the situation is quite remarkable.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  But, of course, 33A, having very specific, you know, in 33, it doesn't, it says, you know, send some, you know, we can divert some Panzer groups north and south. Now it's saying, "I want them to go and come under the command of Army Group North and Army Group South," you know, it's much more specific. So this means an end to Brorkic and Halder's plan for Moscow. So Halder visits Hitler on the 23rd of July and tries one more time to persuade him to focus on Moscow, but Hitler's not for budget. And the problem was, the infantry divisions alone are not enough to take Moscow, they're not enough to do anything, to be honest, because they're largely on foot, and there's these huge armies, you know, because it's so much, the task is so much more than mopping up.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  So suddenly, having had this great kind of confidence, they've gone from the highs to the lows, and Halder and Brorkic are in total despair, as they really did believe that striking at Moscow was the best means to destroy the Soviet Union. So they're not going to, they feel that, "Let's all go all out for Moscow, topple Moscow, and then we can deal with the rest of Ukraine, then we can deal with oil fields, then we can deal with Leningrad, etc." But diverting, you know, the main thrust of the effort should all go in one giant thrust towards Moscow. And I've got to say, I'm kind of in their camp on this. I mean, I think the whole thing is batshit crazy, obviously, and was never going to work, but, I mean, you know, this would have given them the best chance, I suspect. And also, because once you get past the Privet Marshes, the kind of road is sort of,

• 47:35Speaker 02

  it's not clear exactly, but it gets a lot easier. You know, going up into Leningrad, the terrain is problematic. You know, going down into Ukraine, you've got the Danipha, which is enormous. But Hitler's decision now prompts huge disputes as the news of these directives starts to filter through. And of course, Panzer Group Guderian is now in real, real trouble, with the help of difficulties of then having to pivot south and the logistical complications of doing that. You know, you're all in on Yelnyar and suddenly, and on the southern flank where you're battling just to survive, and suddenly you've got to kind of organise yourself, pull back, get yourself into gear, and move for a drive south. It's just, it's not easy.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  And, you know, his men are absolutely exhausted, because they've been at this since the 22nd of June, 21st, 22nd of June. And the casualties are absolutely horrendous, aren't they? I mean, it's incredible.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, 830 officers in Panzer Group Two alone, 562 in Hoth's group, and Panzer Group Guderian, the total casualties of 15,228. Hoth's lost 10,509 men. I mean, these are, these are, these are big numbers, aren't they?

• 48:43Speaker 02

  Well, they are in precious spearheads.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Exactly. And we've been saying, over and over again, the supply situation has been difficult, but it's completely critical now. They're running out of ammo, because it's got to come up from supply depots, 440k to the rear, and on supply lines that are not safe. So the 10th Panzer War Diary notes on the 21st of July, "In spite of all efforts by the coins, the coming days there will be no oil for the Panzers. The munitions situation is also strained, in particular artillery shells must be used sparingly." So all the, all the problems that are coming home to roost, aren't they? And laying great big fat difficult eggs.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  And do you remember that 10 Panzer is the one that's been split into two and is trying to go to the Gero Gavuch and also go to Yelnyar? And it's also, at the same time as they're trying to do that, it's already been denuded quite a long way, and now it's been told that artillery shells have to be used sparingly. I mean, what the heck? So Barbarossa is only a month old, and already the leading Panzer divisions are struggling to function. Okay, not win, function. So on the 22nd of July, 18 Panzer Division is given 30 new Panzer 3s and 4s, which brings it back up to 20% strength. So before that, it was below 20%. On the same day, 17th Panzer and 4th Panzer Divisions are operating at 40 and 35% strength.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Panzer Group Hoth's total Panzers are as follows on the 21st of July: under repair, 31%. Combat ready, 42%. Total losses, 27%. And can I just point out that, you know, we mentioned this when we were doing all our Casino series.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  But but thirty to thirty-five percent of any unit in any western army would basically be considered that you can no longer function at all.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  And the thing is, is the Red Army in the meantime is getting stronger and beginning to dominate. And as we said, there's four armies on their way. And I think it's really interesting, isn't it? Because the culture at the very top is to point finger, blame, bully, dominate, argue, rather than work in sort of, you know, consensus, or in a collegiate style. Well, that's how it is at the top. That's going to seep down, isn't it? It's going to be how people are operating lower. So the lead, all the commanders in Army Group Centre now start blaming one another. Hote blames Guderian for not closing the Spelens pocket. Guderian blames Kluger for interfering and overriding his orders. Kluger blames everything on Bock. Bock loathes Kluger. It's it's a perfect circle.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Big time. It's just an absolute mess. And in the meantime, despite all their deficiencies, the Panzer and motorized divisions are remain bound to the front, enduring the daily grind of relentless battle and hardening of the strategic stalemate that's gripping the whole army group. So it's not surprising at all that without the ability to concentrate and deal decisively with the enemy, the mo- these motorized and Panzer units of Army Group Centre finding themselves embroiled in ever more costly struggles, which are just constantly eroding their strength in an inescapable war of attrition. I mean, I mean, this is about as bad as it gets. And just to just to really stress the point, these units are

• 51:58Speaker 02

  the creme de la creme. This is the elite. This is the spearhead. This is the the main fighting effort of the Wehrmacht. So you denied them, what are you left with? And that's the problem. Meanwhile, you've got the Soviet counter-strike, because the enemy has a vote and there's now lots of armies and they're they're they're beginning. And and this begins on the twenty-third of July. It's badly coordinated because they're they're rushed to the front and they're not coordinated. And a lot of these troops are new and they're not properly trained and all the rest of it. But they've got immense firepower. And it it it begins as a sort of blunt hammering of the front, rather than a massive coordinated blow. But but it's still grinding down those Panzer divisions and motorized divisions yet further.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  In the narrative of Barbarossa, Timoshenko's counterattack has been seen as a failure. But but you you can't really say that, because it is stopping Army Group Centre dead in its tracks. And in a war where speed of movement is everything, and where those leading Panzer units are absolutely the creme de la creme, anything you can do to blunt that and to destroy even a portion of it is going to pay dividends later on down the line. Instead of pausing and gathering for the next stage and moving south and north, the Panzer groups are forced frantically to to firefight. They they can't move south, because they can't organise themselves, because they're engaged. You can't disengage very easily.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  And in Jelniar, which which is, you know, where where Guderian has bitten off his chunk to the east of Stolensk, it's really, really, really, really brutal fighting. Heid Ruel, who's a soldier in Second SS Das Reich, notes, "The gunners, working like fury, finally beat off the Russian tank attacks. But then these then were renewed in greater strength. And then our motorcycle battalion came under heavy pressure. We were smothered in a drum gunfire such as we had never experienced before. Because of the severe losses which it sustained, the motorcycle battalion had to be taken out of the line and was replaced by an east Russian engineer battalion. With the help of that formation, we stemmed the Russian advance, albeit only temporarily, for soon ammunition for the guns began to

• 54:04Speaker 00

  run out, and we were only allowed to fire at certain specified targets."

• 54:09Speaker 02

  I mean, that's not great, is it? I mean, it sounds like an absolute mess, doesn't it? I mean, I mean, this is this is this is reminiscent of, you know, beleaguered Hitler Yougan, you know, SS Hitler Yougan Division, you know, an Epsom, isn't it? Or

• 54:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Or something. I mean, I mean, it's this kind of language. Helmut Gunter, who is also in the Das Reich, SS Das Reich, notes, "Now it was clear to every one of us that this Russia would be a very hard nut to crack. If some of us had not already lost it, then here in the Jelniar bend, we lost the fragile innocence of youth." You know, there is this sense of breaking this this this elite force that had caused so much damage in the Blitzkrieg years. This is it, isn't it? So the Das Reich is actually hammered at Jelniar, and so too the Gross Deutschland division. Eighteenth Panzer is trying to be in two different places at once. Panzer Group Guderian is is buckling badly under the strain of relentless Red Army

• 55:09Speaker 02

  attacks. And also, you know, the Russians aren't only introducing KV1s and KV2s, these huge tanks, and the and the and the forward sloping armour of the T-34 tanks, you know, all of which are are bigger and more effective than than most of the German tanks. But they're now introducing the the famous, infamous Katsusha rockets, which are now entering the battlefield. And each one of these Katsusha rocket systems is capable of delivering three hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty-two millimetre rockets in a ten-second barrage. And when it first enters onto the onto the battlefield, it is a massive shock to the Germans. And one one German soldier noted that it was "the most terrible and shocking

• 55:54Speaker 02

  thing I have ever encountered." I mean, can you imagine coming up against that for the first time? You're not going to know it was here, are you?

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, particularly as you've been told the enemy's crap endlessly. I mean, this is the thing.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  You know, that they're not really going to put up a fight. And Hitler's also, while this is all going on, he's instructing his generals to give up on large encirclements and carry out smaller ones instead. Thanks, boss!

• 56:18Speaker 02

  Cheers now. That's really helpful.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, and Halders getting depressed. And by the twenty-sixth of July, it's clear that things aren't working out, are they?

• 56:32Speaker 02

  No. And he says, "If striking at small local enemy concentrations becomes our sole objective, the campaign will resolve itself into a series of minor successes, which will advance our front only slowly by steps. Pursuing such a policy would eliminate tactical risks and enable us to close the gaps between the army groups. The result would be that we use up our strength, expanding the front in fifth at the expense of depth, and end up in position of warfare." Yep, that's exactly what's going to happen. But you have made your rod. And, you know, yes.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  If only you'd paid a bit more attention during the planning stage.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  All all three groups, Army Group Centre, Army Group North and Army Group South, are all basically paralysed by this by this Soviet intervention. And Rundstedt is making really slow progress to Kiev and the Dnipro. And Lieb is worrying about how he can get to Leningrad, because the the ground is totally unsuitable for Manstein's fifty-six Panzer corps. So Manstein even suggests, "Let's just give up on Leningrad, and let's go for Moscow." Which strikes me as probably the right thing to do. If you need a political decision, which you do, right? Because after all, that's why you're doing it. Anyway, so on the twenty-seventh of July, Yodel then speaks to Hitler in favour of going to Moscow too, but he's tired. Don't be ridiculous. "No, that is not happening." By this time,

• 57:57Speaker 00

  Hitler's not sleeping well. Oh, dear. He's not sleeping well. And he's feeling torn between political and economic objectives. And he's, he thinks that by now, they'll be, they should be in Moscow. They should have taken Ukraine, Crimea and Leningrad. And that, you know, by the fifteenth of August, the whole thing, you know, they will have taken those by the fifteenth of August. By the end, by the beginning of October, it all ought to be over. But this is obvious even to Hitler, that this isn't going to happen. Blitzkrieg has had the, you know, the air's come out of the balloon. I think it's very interesting, this, because Hitler's career has always been about momentum. His political career was always about pushing forward, probing, pushing forward, momentum,

• 58:37Speaker 00

  relying on the tumble of events to get him to the next place, and gambling. And you can't do this in warfare. Things don't operate like that. They had, they appeared to in France, but they don't really know why they won in France. And so by the end of July, he's dithering, and he's aware that this victory, this victory is slipping from his grasp, but he doesn't know what to do. So there's another big conference on the twenty-eighth of July, after which Haldes, as played by James Holland, currently appearing in the Chichester Theatre as Franz Haldes, he wrote to his, he wrote to his wife, and really sums it up.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  He is playing Volod again and proposing such absurd ideas, that he is putting in question everything our splendid operations have won so far. The Russians won't simply go away like the French. Then he has been operationally beaten. He has to be killed, one at a time, in a country that is half forest and marsh. This takes time, and Hitler's nerves won't stand it. Every few days, I have to go there. Hours of empty talk with the result that there is only one man who knows how to wage wars. I am on the brink of despair, because I can predict exactly where this nonsense will end. If I didn't have my faith in God and my self-assurance, I'd be like Bruchich, who is at the end of

• 59:58Speaker 02

  his tether and hides behind his rank so as not to betray his inner helplessness. Well, I would, I would venture that the tone has changed somewhat, wouldn't you?

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. He must be regretting not having got his pistol out when when he had the opportunity.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Could he could have done it in November nineteen forty nine?

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  So it's all very well, the the day before this conference, the Smolensk pocket is finally closed. But it means, but at the same time, Guderian forces are having this life and death struggle in the Yelnyat salient. Bock holds a conference with his senior commanders to discuss what they're going to do next and the divergence, as a result, the divergence of his panzer groups. Guderian, you know, throws a gasket, throws a shoe, can't believe what he's hearing. His men are barely containing the relentless onslaughts where they are, so moving on. And let's not forget, they're there, they're where they are because of him, because of his decisions.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  Well, yes, but this is the first time he hears about this split from Directive thirty three and thirty three A, you see, so this is all news to him. So suddenly you've got this situation where five weeks into a war that's supposed to be the decisive blitzkrieg campaign to secure control of all Europe and crush the communist hordes, the immense gargantuan demands and the scale of the conflict, all of which I think we've laid out were entirely predictable, are coming home to roost. And the point of the sphere has been severely blunted and the senior commanders are all fighting one another rather than the Red Army. And the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front has become a busted flush, let's just say it. That is what it's become.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  His best men and officers are dead or maimed, his tanks battered, blackened and broken. But we are going to leave this series here at the very end of July nineteen forty one. But needless to say, there's plenty to come on the Eastern Front and we will be, we will be returning with this, won't we?

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  We're returning because after all, we're only really a month into it.

• 1:01:56Speaker 00

  Fantastic, isn't it? But when you start looking like this, in this sort of putting aside the sort of standard narrative and then, and not, not, not because we're trying to be cussed, but because why did the Germans fail in fighting the Soviet Union? Well, here, here's why, that this initial, the entire project and the, and the fact that the way it was schemed, the way it was laid out, the way there was no actual decided central objective, there's nothing like embarking on a thing like this without actually knowing what your central objective is, to cause you loads of problems. You know, look at the other side, the Allies chop and change and do, you know, do compromise and think, actually, no, we can't go to France this year, we're going to, you know, for instance, we'll go to North Africa instead.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  And then they, and then, and then they chop and change and they decide where they're, you know, but they follow their strategic momentum, but they know what they are planning to do next. They have clear objectives that are clearly laid out, that they observe and pursue in a way, none of it's clear, so no wonder that this thing's a disaster. And I think that's the thing that's really leaping out. And also their opponent. When we talked about unconditional surrender, you know, when we were looking at the end of the war, Jim, we said that, you know, unconditional surrender fits the Nazis as an opponent for the, for the Allies, because they're, you can't negotiate with them, they're going to go down swinging, whatever.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  So the Allies have cut their, they cut their political understanding to the cloth that's offered them. Hitler simply doesn't understand, and the Germans don't understand, that they've left their political component out of this completely. They're not fighting a democracy who's not got the stomach for it, they're fighting the most ruthless dictatorship on the planet that leaves them for dust, right? In terms of ruthlessness.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  That's a brilliant summary and exactly where we are. But, but as we know with the Eastern Front war, there's plenty to come. And so we're going to be returning with this, with, with, as Barbarossa merges into Operation Typhoon and the midnight snow in Moscow.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  Well, thanks for listening, everyone. And in fact, thanks to everyone who's signed up as a result of this series. We know that many people have joined as members in order to gobble this up as quickly as they possibly can. And that's what you get from membership. You get to listen to this ad free. If you become a patron on our We Have Ways to Make You Talk Patreon, you get this ad free, you get audiobooks, you get other tidbits, you get live casts and ticket and merch offers. It's been, this has been fantastic to do, Jim. We're one month into Barbarossa. If we carry on with the Eastern Front campaign, doing eight episodes a month.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  We might get there by twenty thirty one.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  Exactly. This podcast will never end. It's as simple as that. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you soon. Cheerio.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Cheerio.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Hello, Goalhanger History listeners. This is Marina Hyde and Richard Osman from The Rest is Entertainment. Hello, everybody. Every Thursday and Friday, we are reacting to the pop culture phenomenon that is The Celebrity Traitors. We'll be on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. And Marina and I are digging into all the castle's twists and turns, giving our expert opinion on what should happen next. Now, which historical figure do we think would be the greatest traitor? It's tempting to think of an actual traitor. Yeah. A Guy Fawkes or a Kim Philby, but then all of those are traitors who got caught. Philby had a great run, though. He did have a great run. I think he could probably see off, you know, Joanne. Yes, maybe. And probably sort of where he ended up in Moscow is probably roughly like where the contestants have to spend every night as well. So maybe there's, there's some sort of equivalence.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  So if you're watching Celebrity Traitors, don't forget to tune into our reaction episodes every Thursday and Friday night at ten PM. Find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.