Operation Barbarossa: The Surge (Part 6)

What happened to Russian resistance once German units reached the Dneiper river? Why were units like Panzer Group Guderian suffering from success? How did Nazi Germany deal with Soviet partisans and PoWs? Join Al Murray and James Holland for part 6 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: James Clayden 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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  That's refundclub.co.uk/whw for your free cheque. 15th of July. A few men stretched out on the way of the Panzer, slept for 15 minutes. We could hear firing ahead. Second up, Tylo was on the move again. We set off at 01:30 hours. Scarcely had we exited the wood, then we saw on our right a burning German armoured scout car. The Russians had brought up a 105mm gun somewhere nearby and were shooting directly at us. The house in the vicinity was burning, illuminating everything with a ghostly light. All around was deepest night. We increased the distance between the Panzers and drove flat out across the danger area. All hatches were tight shut. The driver floored

• 2:59Speaker 00

  the gas pedal. The explosions sounded strange so close to the Panzer. To the side, I saw a brief flash at each impact, and shell splinters would fly against the Panzer armour. We were happy to get through it. It was simply impossible to make out where the gun was. Soon after, we came to a village still occupied by the enemy, where you see fire from every house, but nothing to worry us. Rife bullets whizzled around our turret. And that was Unteroffizier Ricard von Rosen, who we'd been following in his progress into Barbarossa, with the 35th Panzer Regiment.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, 35th Panzer Regiment is part of the 4th Panzer Division, which is part of Panzer Group Guderian, part of that southern thrust. You remember the words, it's like the oval shaped encirclement that is going on with Panzer Group Hope to the north in the centre and Panzer Group Guderian to the south, charging through the Soviet Western Front. And what is amazing from von Rosen's account is he does an awful lot of tank maintenance. They're forever tweaking and tinkering and all the rest of it. But he doesn't see any action at all before the 4th of July.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Incredible.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  So that's what, 12 days in? And this, of course, is because Guderian's Panzer Group is charging so fast that there simply aren't any Red Army troops, because Red Army troops have been at the crust. And the replacement ones and the reinforcement ones and the ones that haven't been encircled are trying to respond and being sent northwards and southwards and all the rest of it into an area where Panzer Group Guderian has already been and gone.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. We need to say hello, don't we? Welcome, everyone, to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray, James Holland. As you can see, we're chomping at the bit to get on with this episode about Barbarossa.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  I am.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  And this episode's called The Surge, Jim, and you are surging right there. That was you surging hard into the

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Into the vast, empty spaces.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  I thought I'm to go in my Panzer III.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  It is quite extraordinary that because the Red Army's basically been in the completely the wrong posture, a big part of these German advances are not fighting advances, are they? They're just like trundling forward and there's nobody there. Easy to make rapid progress when there's no one there to stop you. And on paper, none of this should work. So by the 4th of July, 4th Panzer Division, they're back in the lead and they're out on a massive, massive limb, and they're approaching the Dnieper, which runs sort of north-south.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Just to get your head around this, they are southeast of Minsk, which hasn't even fallen at this point. You know, Minsk is encircled, and that means you've got to complete the encirclement, you've got to go beyond

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  Beyond the objective. But they're now facing the Dnieper, which is, you know, runs almost vertically north-south at this point. And so it's a very obvious obstacle for the Red Army to defend. But the orders of the 4th Panzer Division to try and take a major bridge at the town of Stary Bichow, intact, and Bichow is now called just Bichow. Stary Bichow is 241 kilometres from Minsk and 575 kilometres from Brest-Litovsk. So, you know, just to remind everyone, the whole point was that the Red Army was supposed to be annihilated within 500. So they've already gone beyond that.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  And so Rosen says

• 6:16Speaker 00

  For us, the race to the Dnieper Bridge was the important thing. We had to reach it with all speed and surprise before the Russians could demolish the bridges vital for our advance. They've got to crack on, but what they're also not doing here is destroying the Red Army, are they?

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Not destroying very much.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  No.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  They're just on a surge. So they reached Stary Bichow and found the inhabitants in panic, because obviously the dust clouds of this advancing column have been seen across the flat plains of Belarusia. And they've seen them coming. And the one company commander in the 35th Panzer Regiment is Oberst Leutnant von Kossel, and he orders the lead five Panzer IIs to push straight on through the town and make for the bridge. You know, this is a kind of, you know, we've got to get it quick. Come on, boys.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  But five Panzer IIs is obviously a laughably small advance guard, but they do surprise the bridge and they do get across it. And then they pause. There's these huge embankments on the far side, and they pause and try and establish a bridgehead. But unbeknown to them, they'd crossed directly into the Stalin Line, you know, the original border crossing, where there were no less than 65 anti-tank guns dug in along this stretch of the river. And a number of them suddenly began firing at these isolated five Panzer Mark IIIs. And as a gunner, Rosen is firing round after round, but they're taking hits, as were their other tanks. And it's also an incredibly hot day.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he says, "The air shimmered with heat, making everything in the optic hazy. We received two more hits on the front, but they bounced off. The armour held." Intense stuff, this.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  And Leutnant Koenig's tank, he sees it turning back to the bridge, as does Feld Väbel Schriders. But Rosen's tank stays where it was. And it's just this, you know, they're absolutely in the moment. Shells are coming in, the din is absolutely immense, the smoke in the tank and all the rest of it. And, you know, whether they're there for five minutes or 10 minutes, you know, Rosen can't quite sort of, can't quite tell. But suddenly, the Panzers on fire at the rear, and, you know, their commander says, "Get out." So bullets are whistling around. He can hear them as he's jumping out of the tank. And he falls through the flames and rolls down the embankment on the riverside of the road they're on. So they're on a kind of elevated bit, and they kind of have to roll down to the, down to the water's edge. And the commander, Feld Väbel Gerler, is wounded, and you can see

• 8:42Speaker 03

  him crawling towards him, kind of, you know, his wound. And Gerler and Rosen and a number of others, including the commander, Oberst Leutnant von Kossel, found themselves crouching together at the foot of the embankment. And then Unteroffizier Plurcher finds a small man-sized tunnel at the foot of an embankment and crawls in. And all the others follow, except Gerler, who decides to make a dash for the bridge, although on all fours.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  God.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  And in the tunnel, it's completely pitch black, but it leads to a bunker on the old Stalin Line, which the Russians had seemingly forgotten about or just didn't know about, because of course this was built prior to 1939. They've only just got here. And, you know, they obviously haven't got maps of the old bunker system or, or anyway, whatever, there's this tunnel which leads into a bunker and they're all in it and for the time being safe, but you know, they're expecting to be discovered at any moment. And they're also kind of hoping and praying that the comrades on the other side of the river are going to counter attack and, you know, are going to attack and overrun the situation and come to their rescue. Cause after all, they're the advance guard.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  But it doesn't happen.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  No. And they're stuck there for two days and nights, aren't they? Eight of these German guys. And they can hear the Russians on the embankment above them. They can hear the guns firing, the machine guns, but they never rumbled. They aren't discovered. And they use a jackboot to urinate in and they defecate where they are, but there's no food, there's no water and there's no German advance and no rescue.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  No. So they're all thinking,

• 10:15Speaker 00

  We've had it.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Lorks, what are we going to do?

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it starts raining on the night of the 5th of July. So they decide to use that as cover and try and swim the river. And of the eight of them, incredibly five of them make it, including Rickard von Hosen. And they get most of the way in a wooden rowing boat. They stick close to the bridge in its shadows.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Yes. It's sort of down in the, in the reeds and they see it and it's looking a bit forlorn, but, but they kind of, you know, there's, there's these great sort of columns going into the river from the, from the bridge. And, and so they, they kind of sort of just very coasty kind of row across and they managed to get to the other side. And of course, on the other side, they get back through the kind of, they were able to use the right passwords and all the rest of it. Now treated like heroes. And one of the person who's most thrilled to see them all is Oberst Eberbach.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Remember him?

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Doesn't he take over Panzer Group, Group West from, from Von Schreppenberg in Normandy?

• 11:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Anyway, he's thrilled to see them. Rosen, however, is absolutely shaken to the court who've lost his entire crew. Um, and he's immediately said, oh, don't worry about it. And, you know, sent off to be a gunner to another. Um, but he's also promoted to Unter Offiziere and given the Iron Cross Second Class, which he's absolutely bunked about. And he also gets some mail from home, including a birthday card from his parents and a present of a wristwatch, which is his first. So it's reached him all that way.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Blimey.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Isn't that amazing?

• 11:28Speaker 00

  That is amazing.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  They're on the banks of the Dnieper, for goodness sake, nearly 600 kilometres from the border.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. But then he's straight back into it, isn't he?

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Well, no. Okay. So he's, he's not, this is the point. He's not straight back into it.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  This is a five day delay and this is because resistance is stiffening. And so you can't just bounce this. You've got to wait for the artillery to come up and more Panzers to come up and infantry to come up and pioneers to come up. So it's five days and the Luftwaffe and, you know, organise it. So this is, this is the more methodical attack, which takes five days to organise.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  You know, so, so they do overwhelm the, the, the Red Army troops on the other side and, and, you know, Rosen sees the Luftwaffe helping and watches particularly, watches an ME 110 as a Sturma, hammered positions on the far side. And once they get across, they find the wrecks of the tanks, plus the bodies of all their fallen comrades from six days earlier. So Lieutenant Koenig is recognisable only from his uniform and his body is already rotting. And Hofweber, who's one of Rosen's crew, you know, you can see that he's had terrible injuries, but has also received an obvious coup de grace shot by a Russian. And in another Panzer, they find the headless body of Lindenberg. You know, it's pretty devastating stuff.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. He describes, this was the worst thing of all in the whole campaign, to see comrades with whom one had sat in the Panzer or to whom one was a friend in such cruel circumstances, mutilated and decomposing, almost beyond recognition. So it's coming home to him, kind of in the way it's beginning to creep up on the, uh, the Wehrmacht in general, isn't it? What, what's, what they've actually taken on.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Well, I would argue that he's very much the leitmotif for the entire experience.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And from then on, the Russians are more organised. There's proper artillery in response. There's mines, there's lots and lots of troops. Because if there's, if Stalin's got one thing, and the Red Army's got one thing at their disposal, it's tonnes of people. And that's when you get the, the battle described in our, in the opening quote at the start of this episode. And this is the battle for Propisk, which is a further 75K, so kind of 45 miles from Bitchov. And vehicles get hit. One Panzer's fresh out of the workshop, it's hit by a mine. They reach a fuel dump on the edge of town, but it's actually quite difficult to refuel. And another Panzer's destroyed with a shell bursts in its barrel and there's anti-tank ditches and mines. There's much, much more

• 13:54Speaker 00

  friction and wear and tear. And it's really beginning to bite because this is what happens if you're hundreds of kilometres from, from, uh, home. And in, he says, in the previous weeks of fighting, the company had had several breakdowns due to engine failure and was down to its last five Panzer Frees. Russian oil and petrol in the long distance runs had taken their toll.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  I mean, that's amazing, isn't it?

• 14:18Speaker 00

  They've been using stolen fuel. And of course, it doesn't agree, the Soviet fuel doesn't agree with the German vehicles, does it? And lubricants that,

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Well, it's much lower octane. That's the thing.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  Rough stuff.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. And,

• 14:30Speaker 03

  You know, and so, so to put this into some context, you know, a Panzer company typically has three platoons of five and then two command tanks and usually a functioning tally of up to 22 tanks. You know, so you've got some spares and a bit of leeway. So to have five left.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  In the entire company, that's it.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  And then on the 13th of July, they get through Propisk and by the 14th of July, they pass through Chernikov. And then they're told they're getting several days rest. But then they hear that the Red Army have captured the roll barn to their rear.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  And surrounded the pioneers there. So they have to get going and head backwards to rec- rescue the situation. So they travel through the night, picking, picking up newly laid mines as they do so.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Hmm. As we came to realise in the fighting around the Propisk bridges, the struggle was now becoming fiercer. So it's getting much stickier.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Yes, it is.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  I mean, we've got lots of German perspective here, Jim. What's the Soviet perspective?

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Well, the Soviet perspective is, is that, that it absolutely feels like it's totally one-way traffic in the opening weeks of the campaign. And, and the Germans are, you know, doing exactly what they'd done so far. The war, perhaps less so in Poland when there's, you know, quite finished article, but certainly what they've done in Scandinavia, in the Low Countries, in France and Balkans, you know, which is this notion of the rapid Keschelschlag on a grand scale. It's known as Bevegan's Creek, which is, you know, this idea of overwhelming the enemy with far superior operational and tactical skill, harnessing combined arms mobile forces and supported by highly focused and equally overwhelming air support. That's the plan. And, and the Russians, the Red Army is absolutely, it's, it's not regaining

• 16:14Speaker 03

  its balance, but it, but it's showing some kind of metal because what the Germans hadn't factored in was the vast amount of reserve forces that they've got. And in some places, they have fallen back. So, so, you know, in, in, in the southwestern front, in, in army groups, south in Ukraine, for example, Kripenos and Zhukov have quite successfully managed to pull back 125 miles. And so then they're going back to the old Stalin line, you know, the old pre 1939 border defensive system. So suddenly you've got bunkers and you've got anti-tank ditches and you've got charges ready on the bridges and they're waiting there and they now know what is happening. You know, there's no more surprises. They

• 16:58Speaker 03

  know that the, you know, the Germans are invading the Soviet Union and they're trying to do it. So, so it's, it's, it's sort of, it's cleaner. Now, that doesn't mitigate against the fact that they've lost most of their air forces. It doesn't get away from the fact that the command is not terribly good. And it doesn't get away from the fact that vast armies are being encircled. But there is a case that, that the Germans are not, they're advancing through territory, but they're not really taking ground. And I would argue that there is a, there is a difference. Now, where you have these nodal points, you know, these are crossroads of, of railway marshalling yards and, and limited roads and all the rest of it and, and river crossings. There tends to be cities such as

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Minsk or Brest-Litovsk or Smolensk or whatever it might be, or, or, or Bitchov. Um, so, so there is more ferocious fighting there, but it doesn't get away from the fact that the Soviet Union is absolutely vast and the Germans can't be absolutely everywhere. So, so Minsk falls on the 9th of July, which is the capital and largest city of Belarusia. And the following day, the 10th of July, Army Group North captures Peskov, which is just 180 miles from Leningrad. And mopping up the Minsk pocket is also completed that day too, with

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Von Bock's Army Group knitting a cool 287,704 prisoners of war and 2,585 tanks. And incredibly, by this time, German pioneers and tod workers have regaged the entire stretch of the railway line from Brest-Litovsk and Minsk at a rate of almost 20 kilometres a day, which extends the lines of supply by 347 kilometres, you know, which is just under 216 miles. You know, which I would say is going some, wouldn't you?

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've got their finger out there.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  But, but it's easier to do that the closer you are to your own railhead.

• 18:50Speaker 00

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

• 18:51Speaker 03

  In the, every, every further 20 miles or 20 kilometres is going to get harder and harder and harder. That's the, that's the problem.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  And they're having to do it is the other thing. That's pioneering in work you can't do on something else. That's the cost of it. And mate, these numbers are staggering. By the, by the 9th of July, the, the Red Army has already lost 11,700 tanks. They're mainly the light, the BTs and the T26s, as well as 19,000 guns, artillery pieces and mortars. And by the end of the month, the total loss of aircraft, um, would be 10,000 airframes, which means the Luftwaffe have complete control of the airspace. And some journalists do a tour of ex-Soviet Galicia in western Ukraine in the middle of July, and they don't see a single Red Army aircraft during that time.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Not one?

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  I mean, isn't that amazing?

• 19:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  And, and in fact, actually, although all the airfield construction have been sent west in the first six months of, of the war, on the 28th of June, a reverse order is put in place. So all NKVD construction battalions are ordered to evacuate 57 airfields in Belarusia, 11 in Latvia, 18 in Estonia, and five on the Romanian border and get the hell out of there. And they do. So you, you've now got lots and lots of troops falling back. And that means they're not in captivity. It means they're not prisoners of the Germans.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  That they can kind of, you know, live to fight another day effectively. Yeah. And then on the 15th of July, of course, comes the fall of Smolensk, which is Belarus's second city and only 200 miles from Moscow. It seems that the Germans are going to win after all, you know, from the middle of July. And of course, you know, the, the, the news of this is spreading all around the world. I mean, you know, everyone's, everyone's following this. Soviet organisations such that they have complete control of the media. But outside of that, in the Western world, they're following these events because the Germans are crowing about it and making Bockenschau films and, and all the rest of it. And, you know, Britain and America and, and the Western allies are all kind of sort of looking aghast at what is going on.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  And what you're looking at, of course, is the map and you're just seeing these huge arrows thrusting into, into the Soviet Union and you're thinking they're absolutely stuffed. Yeah. You know, and everyone had known that the Soviet Union had front loaded the crust of the border. So surely that's it. But is it? The Soviet response after the break, we'll see in a tick.

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• 23:23Speaker 00

  Welcome back to Where are Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, of course. And here we are, Jim, the enormous arrows zooming across the interior of the Soviet Union through its buffer states within 200 miles of Moscow itself. But what are the problems that come with these enormous advances? I mean, I think, I think they, it's interesting, I think they're actually kind of obvious, aren't they? It's that the further you get from home, it's the old Clausewitzian elastic, isn't it? That the further you are from your base of operations, the harder it is to conduct operations. And if you push the enemy back onto his base, it's easier for him.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  All of that.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  But these blokes would have all studied Clausewitz, wouldn't they?

• 24:02Speaker 03

  They absolutely would. But, but, but I think it's also the arrow thrusts show on the map where they have reached. But it doesn't really mean that they've conquered it.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  No.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  What's behind? You know, think of it like 30 Corps going through, through Holland. It's like a little finger.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  And the finger is sort of extends either side of the immediate road. But in the hinterland, they haven't got control because it's a prippet marsh and it had to be boggy or whatever. Cause it's just so huge. And because there is a fact that to take territory, you have to hold territory and to hold territory, you need manpower. And this is all about the drivers, this is all about the surge. So you can't afford to leave the manpower there because otherwise you're taking away from the surge and.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, you need it to go forward. Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  You need to go forward. So, you know, that's what you're waiting for the, for the infantry to catch up. But, but the logistical effort has all been with the, with the surge. So, you know, the, the infantry that are following up behind are not quite equipped to do what they need to do. So suddenly you, you haven't quite conquered the territory in the way that it looks like you have. And the operational skill, high confidence, tactical flair and, and a lan that seen them sigh through these Western regions and through the crust of the Soviet Union is now starting to cause really major problems, problems which were starting to reveal themselves in Rickard von Rosen's account.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  And just to be absolutely clear here, I mean, you know, no one would deny the Army Group Centre's encirclement of Pavlov's, General Pavlov's Western Front was a catastrophe for, for the Soviet Union. But it isn't exactly one sided.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  And most of this victory that has been achieved has been won on the ground by two Panzer groups, which after all is only 17 Panzer divisions in total for Barbarossa. You know, that's just not enough because they are taking the absolute lion's share of the lift of this, of this offensive thrust.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  And by the 15th of July, they've been in constant action for 23 days. They've travelled more than 450 miles. So obviously everyone's, everyone's exhausted, their kit's exhausted. And to fight like this, you have to take losses. And we've seen with Rickard von Rosen, you know, they're down to five, five Panzers in their company. So it's costly doing this as well. As, as dramatic as it appears, it's incredibly costly. And the, the tip of the spear, as sharp as it might have been, is getting blunter. You know, Panzer Guderian is 500 miles from where it set off.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  I know, can you imagine? I mean, that's, that's huge distance in such a short period of time.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  It is extraordinary, the distances. I mean, that's, you know, that's, I mean, London to Edinburgh is 400 miles, isn't it?

• 26:47Speaker 03

  A modern army wouldn't be able to move that quickly.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  And of course, the problem is they've reached the distance by which the Red Army is due to have been annihilated and destroyed and all that, all that chat when they were talking about, well, once we've done that, then we can decide what to do next. But there's still plenty more Russian troops coming. They have reached basically what is known as the culmination point, which we touched on in a, in an earlier episode. Basically it's, it's the point at which you stop because you gotta, because you can't do anything else.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  You can no longer operate in the way that you want to operate because your supplies are so stretched.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  And you've taken too many knocks. Everyone's exhausted. You've got as far as you can go on, on what you set off with. And Guderian is particularly guilty of this, isn't it? And I think this is really interesting because.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, he's, he's dreadful.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  Well, because he's the poster boy for armored warfare, isn't he? He's the, you know, he's, he's supposedly the genius that figured it all out.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Well, well, he was a genius then, but, but he's got too big for his boots.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  He now thinks that, you know, shouldn't listen to all these sort of boring farts he does, understand stuff in the, in the. You know, even, even before the end of June, you know, Phil Marshall von Bock, who was the commander in chief of, of Army Group Centre, has had to put on the brakes to allow the masses to catch up. But Guderian just ignores this. And at one point he even flies over to see Hope to discuss the matter and plot to disregard such orders. Cause, because he knows that for success, they need an encirclement, but this could only happen if Hope's Panzer group keeps pace in the north. So Hope agrees with this. And then there's a point later where they said, we need to come back because there's this danger that, that troops in the rear, you know, left behind Red Army soldiers are going to cause problems in, in, behind you.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  So, so Guderian takes off in a plane and does reconnaissance route himself. And he goes around, he goes, well, I couldn't see anyone. We, we, stop worrying about it, just keep going. There is a sense that Guderian is kind of sort of rolling his eyes and, you know, as I said earlier, you know, sort of cursing the kind of stuck in the mud military elites who don't understand modern mobile warfare. But, but, but, you know, and he views this as, as 1940 and Hitler's halt order before Dunkirk all over again, you know, which is where they have this huge opportunity to completely encircle the British and the French and, and, and don't. Because Hitler insists on, on halting them to, to allow the infantry to catch up. And, you know, Guderian has cursed this ever since, felt that this is a sort of, you know, the terrible error of judgment and a massive mistake. And he's determined not to do it again.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  On one level, he's right, they do need to keep the momentum. The problem is, and this is, it's just the problem that comes to time and time again. They don't have enough to do what they need to do. But they're in it now, so what do you, so what do you do? You know, do you just keep going, keep ploughing on and insisting that you can cut yet more sways? Well, you can, but, but, but eventually it's going to run out. I mean, it's, it's, it's basically a sort of minor version of the sort of bonkers plan to send the Panzers to Antwerp in the Battle of the Bulge. You know, okay, you get to Antwerp, but you've only got one half track left by that point. And it's the kind of, you know, this is what would happen if you go to Moscow at this point. It's, there's not going to be anything left, so there's no point.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  You know, because, because you just can't sustain it. And this is what Guderian is not accepting.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  And. You know, he's also wrong in his assessment of his superiors. You know, Von Bock has been the officer commanding of Army Group B in France. Army Group B is the one that's coming through the Laube countries and Von Bock had absolutely railed against, against the halt order and said, this is insane. We need to kind of keep going. But Von Bock totally gets mobile warfare and the need for speed, but he also understands that frontline troops win battles, but logistics win wars. Do you remember General Ritter von Tomma?

• 30:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  He captured an army.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  You know, July 1941, he's the officer commanding 17 Panzer Division and he knows in modern warfare, the tactics are not the main thing. The decisive factor is the organisation of one's resources to maintain the momentum.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Well, yes, it's the more long-winded way of saying amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, which is the thing they say nowadays, right?

• 30:52Speaker 03

  Right. But, but, but, but Guderian is, is forgetting this in, in his, in his kind of, we've got to keep going, we've got to keep going. It's all about the frust, it's all about the surge. At some point, the wheels are going to come off. At some point, you're going to need that replacement gas gear. At some point, you, you, you know, your, your Panzers are going to grind down, even if they're not hit by the Russians. And then, then you're not going to have enough of a force to be able to do what you need to do.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  It's interesting though, because they are sensitive to this, aren't they?

• 31:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  But because German officers are also headstrong, there's this culture that you take matters into your own hands, you know, initiative is, has been encouraged. So von Kluge, who's the fourth army commander in Army Group Centre, he's getting worried about the Panzer spearhead stretching head as well, isn't he?

• 31:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  He sees it in clear terms. It's all very well getting right into the Soviet Union, but what if these are separated and the spearheads are isolated? These things all seem pretty obvious, don't they? Really? On reflection. And Guderian's not prepared to compromise. He's not a team player. It's all shit or bust, isn't it? And supply lines are just getting longer and longer and longer, which means it's hard to maintain this endless rolling momentum because getting the stuff forwards is more difficult.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  Well, because it takes longer to get it there.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everything's slowing down.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  And then there's a greater territory that you've then got to defend to maintain that effort.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  You know, and, and this is the point, these encirclements don't mean that every yard that they've passed through is now secure. And it just isn't. It is, you know, it's not by a long shot.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  And there's this incredible Army Group Centre memo, which is issued on the 3rd of July. Minsk was on the, on the 9th, you know, Semenlensk was on the 15th of July. This is on the 3rd of July. So this is just 11 days after the launch of Barbarossa.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  The problem appearing from now on in its full magnitude, which must be the constant variable of all responsible departments of the Army Group Commands, is the daily widening of the distance between the Panzer Groups and the armies. While until now, this instance had relatively little effect, the early renewal of the advance by the Panzer Groups, with an objective over 500 kilometres away, will house the results that 100 to 200 kilometres long stretches behind the Panzer Groups are more or less empty of German troops, almost entirely on the road. Means that everywhere, there are still strong elements roaming and a constant danger exists to the supply and communications of the Panzer Groups.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  So there you have it.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the, the front's too far away and the rear's not secure.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  And so the front isn't a front if it's not secure. That's the point. It's false. It's phony. It's, it's a charade.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  And nor is your rear if it's not secure. So the front's not secure, their rear's not secure.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  So your rear's not a rear and your front's not your front.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  And. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. They've made a real problem for themselves, but people aren't willing to hear this. So Guderian is ordered to meet General Jochen Lemelson, is another name, another one of his names. He's ordered to hold the, the gap, isn't he? And.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  So Lemelson, Lemelson, who later commands temporarily 10th Army in Italy and then later 14th Army. He is the commander of the 47th Motorized Corps, which is a part of Panzer, of Panzer Group Guderian.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  And he's told to kind of hold the gap.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  But despite this, Guderian still surreptitiously brings most of Lemelson's 17th Panzer Division to his spearhead forces. Just, ah, don't worry about that.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Just ignore it.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and then you have General Heinrichi, who commands the 43rd Corps of Infantry. And the infantry are really having trouble keeping up with the pace because, because basically they're tabbing, aren't they? They're, they're pretty much on foot or in trucks and it's much harder. And on the 11th of July, 19 days into the campaign, he writes to his wife, yesterday, yesterday, one regiment marched 54, another 47 kilometres. To do that once is possible. To do that, having already had numerous marches of 30 to 40 kilometres with more to come, that is something else. It makes it tremendous. To do it, no one gets to sleep at night. Rather, it starts at 2 or 3am and lasts until

• 34:55Speaker 00

  evening, sometimes 10pm. So they're really, some PBI here, really foot slogging. It's high summer, so it's either blazing hot or it's raining. They're either caked in dust or they're caked in mud.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's horrendous. And, and just, just to really stretch here, the infantry that he's talking about, they're on foot.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Bloody hard work, carrying, yeah, carrying as much of their kit as they have to. And Soviet roads are terrible. Rickard von Rosen noticed that the Rolbahn was basically a mud road when he first entered the Soviet Union. It's throughout, this is the case throughout. And the roads can't cope with the wooden wagons that the infantry are bringing with them. They're too heavy. The horses, interestingly, are too used to better food in Germany.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Too well looked after.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  Too well looked after.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  They've grown soft.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  Exactly. And there's an officer in the 6th Infantry Division who says, our German horses needed longer rest period, heavy meals and food for them was very obtainable in quantity. They had been ideal for France, but for a hindrance for this campaign.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  I mean, that's pretty damning when you've got 625,000 horses, isn't it?

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Well, suppose the great advantage of your horses, you don't need petrol. You don't need petrol, you don't need lubricants. It, it cuts a corner, doesn't it? They'll just eat what's on the roadside, but it's not doing the trick.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  So the 9th Army of Army Group Centre, which is supporting Panzer Group Hope, was discovering the supply line priorities are going to the Panzer Groups. And even on the 7th of July, so at this point, you know, that's 15 days in, is complaining that it was receiving only one third of its allotted daily supplies. Instead, they had to rely almost entirely on the largely horse-drawn Gross Transportraum, you know, which is the supply organisation, basically. And, you know, this is, this is like the Royal Army Service Corps.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  But in the, in the vermat.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  You know, with his, with his oversensitive and needy horses. And just, I love that all these horses are kind of, you know, too refined. And it's a bit like the sort of, you know, their machinery is too refined for the job and, and over-engineered. But obviously, you know, it's, it's entirely insufficient for substandard roads on a, on a supply line, which is now in excess of 400 kilometres. Because every time you advance 10 kilometres, that's 20 kilometres, because you've got to get 20 kilometres, then you've got to go back again. So 40 kilometres is 80 kilometres, 100 kilometres is 200 kilometres and so on. Because you've got to go back and forth. And, you know, by the second week

• 37:24Speaker 03

  of July, the demand across the attacking forces is massively outstripping the supply, which means that people are having to make do and mend and they're having to do with less, just at the point where the opposition is starting to get heavier.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  And it is true that amazing things have been done to widen the railway gauge and the railway track to Minsk, but they're now beyond Minsk and that already great distance. And, and one single track railway isn't enough anyway. So great that you've got your one single track, but even once you get to the railhead of Minsk, you've then got to distribute it. And Panzer Group Guderian is 275 kilometres beyond Minsk to the southeast. So how do you go from Minsk to Panzer Group Guderian? Well, you have to go cross-country, but there are only roads. Well, the roads there are dirt tracks and the territory hasn't been secured.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  So proportion of that supply lines is going to be ambushed by Red Army troops, you don't know where they are, or Belarusian nationals, or NKVD working construction battalions with guns, or whatever. So, you know, as you say, the, the, the problems just escalate and escalate and escalate. And, and of course, part of the plan that we were looking at, that where General Paulus had been saying, no, no, no, no, do it again. And, and General Georg Thomas, from the economic point of view, had been going, no, no, no, no, no, that's far too negative. Look at it again. So they had assumed that they were going to capture large amounts of Soviet stock. But not only have the Soviets been more efficient

• 39:05Speaker 03

  than expected in sending rolling stock east, there was also now the Stavka's scorched earth policy to contend with.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  Which includes smashing railway lines and railway installations.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  The only option to deal with that is to rebuild them. And that means sending stuff from Germany, where the Reichsbahn is under maximum stretch anyway. And the Gross Transportraum, their, their losses are mounting. They're down by 25% by the second week of July. And that, you know, just as we talked, that the Soviets were caught in their cock-up loop in the last episode, the Germans are caught in their failed logistics loop. They never took it seriously. And now their previous daft decisions are compacting and impacting further and compounding their, their difficulties. And the Quartermaster General is another old friend of the show, General Edvard Wagner,

• 39:57Speaker 00

  who told Halder as early as the 1st of July, that there was a big problem with pacification of the rear areas, that this rear isn't a rear, it isn't a safe base at all. He says,

• 40:08Speaker 03

  The particularities of our military approach have resulted in an extensive insecurity in the rear area by insurgent enemy elements. The security divisions alone are not enough for the great spaces. We must employ several divisions from the frontline troops. So at this point, the campaign is only eight days old, you know, a week.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  So this is a trouble. Okay. If you, if you want to bring it down to kind of, you know, one line, you know, what, what is the problem? Ain't got enough.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  I haven't got enough.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Not enough of anything.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Just think about this. Okay. So, so, so the whole German USP is the Wagenkrieg and the Kessel Schlacht.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  This idea of, of, of you hit them hard at the schwerpunkte, the point of impact, you do this encirclement, you annihilate your enemy and you do it really, really quickly. And the whole pre Barbarossa assumption is that they're going to smash them at the crust.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  They're going to annihilate the Red Army within 500 kilometres. So off they go.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  But they've got 500 kilometres and they haven't destroyed the Red Army. They've captured armies. They've done encirclements, but they haven't secured the territory behind them. They haven't secured the territory in the rear areas and they haven't destroyed the Red Army. And now they're 500 kilometres in with their extended lines of supply.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  If 500 kilometres was enough to destroy the Red Army, then this policy would have been fine. But the moment that they don't, and they don't achieve that objective, this is a disaster in the making.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  Because all those problems you're talking about are going to compound themselves.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  They're only, only going to get worse.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  And to illustrate the point, you've got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of POWs to deal with and what they're calling partisans.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Yes, which, which can basically mean anybody because there are just so many people adrift. Red Army troops who've been isolated or overrun and they've been sending POWs back pretty loosely because the spearhead hasn't, has to keep going, can't, can't afford to carry Russians around with it and feed and water Soviet soldiers. So a lot of them, obviously they take the opportunity to escape these loosely guarded POWs. And there are in the mix, there are nationalist freedom fighters and rebels against the Soviet Union, but it's in the mix, but mainly actually it's soldiers, Red Army soldiers who are a cut adrift and the supply lines are insufficiently

• 42:45Speaker 00

  protected, which is why there's the talk of robbing the frontline to cover the rear. You know, you've got to rob Peter to pay Paul. And von Bock notes on the 28th of June. So again, six days into it, thousands of Russian soldiers are sitting in the forests far behind the front, some in civilian clothes. Catching them is impossible, given the tremendous size of the area and the, and the scale of the task, I'd argue as well, you know, how many there are.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  And that word catching them is impossible.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  It's impossible.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  It is not remotely possible to do what they need to do. So they can't do it.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  It is, it is, you know, when, when he says it's impossible, that means it simply isn't possible at all. And it really, really isn't. So they've got a massive problem on their hand. I mean, and then look at this report from the third Panzer Division. The third Panzer Division is the one that was rivaling fourth Panzer Division with Rickard von Rosen for the vanguard of Panzer Group Guderian. And it said, unarmoured troops and rear echelons suffered considerable losses inflicted by hostile enemy troops cut off from their main bodies. They hid behind the march routes, opened fire by surprise and could only be defeated in intense hand-to-hand combat. German troops had not previously experienced this type of war. And this is written at the end of June. You know, it's not July yet.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Well, this means that there's, there's blokes in trees with rifles and, you know, this nowhere is safe. And you have a German soldier who writes home at the beginning of July, he says, any snipers who fall into our hands are of course shot. Their bodies lie everywhere. Sadly though, many of our own comrades have been lost to their dirty methods. We're losing more men to the bandits than in the fighting itself. Hardly any sleep to be had. We're all awake and alert almost every night. You have to be, you have to be in case they attack suddenly. If a sentry drops his guard just once, then it could be over for us all. Travelling alone is out of the question.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Imagine that spreading osmosis like through everyone but, but, but the Panzer spearheads.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  And imagine how this wears on the nerves and how you're not getting enough sleep, you know, you're not getting enough surprise anyway. How isolated you'd feel in this vast forests of Belarus or Ukraine, open plains of Ukraine or, or, or whatever. You know, it's just, it's, it's, they ploughed great distances, but they haven't really conquered.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  And, and that's the truth of it. And, and for those back in London, in Washington, in Berlin, at the Wolf's Lair in Rastenburg, HQ area number two, where Hitler is and everything, they're looking at the maps, they're seeing the arrows and they're thinking, great, we've got this. We've nailed this. Look at our advance. But, but, but it's a trick. It's, it's an illusion because they haven't really got all this territory.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  No.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  They will do in the fullness of time.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  But they haven't yet. And it's all about speed because if you don't do this quickly, you've got the Russian winter coming, you've got the rebalancing, you've got Lendies coming from Americans and from Britain, and you've got an enemy which is going to be revitalised and reinvigorated and, and stronger. So this was always a single roll of the dice. This has to win within 500 kilometres or else you're in really, really sticky problem.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  And, and as we mentioned, Smolensk, this major city in Belarus gets captured on the 15th of July and there's shock in Moscow, the shock around the allied world, you know, and at this point, very few people looking at this from the outside are prepared to bet against a German victory. But, you know, because they seem unstoppable. It's another victory for the two Panzer Groups of Army Group Centre. But these armoured forces are grossly abused and really struggling. They're winning, but a terrible cost. And, and, and the, and the figures that are emerging by, by the fall of Smolensk on the 15th of July is just staggering.

• 46:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, yes. So, um, on the 16th of July, General Emelson, he says that his 18th Panzer Division is no longer combat ready. They're spent. He says in his report, 25 days of battle, division has suffered catastrophic losses of officers, men and material. So it's done. It's, it, it, there's, there's nothing left. And they're not alone. So from starting the campaign with 169 Panzers, which isn't very many, um, fourth Panzer Division, von Rosen, who have been following Rickard von Rosen, Untoffertze, uh, von Rosen, they can only field 40 by the 17th of July. 10th Panzer Division reports on the 16th of July, they have only 30% of their original strength. 7th Panzer Division, which is Rommel's old crew, they

• 47:29Speaker 00

  start off with three, because these are the, the, all these divisions are differently equipped, aren't they? There's no uniformity. They begin with 300, but by the 21st of July, they've got 121 in repair and 77 have been destroyed. And in first Cavalry Division alone, 2,292 horses have been lost between the 22nd of June and the 12th of July. So if you're looking at the arrows on the maps, everything's fantastic. But if you're looking at the spreadsheets and looking at the numbers, it isn't. And given, as we've said in previous episodes, the size of the opponent, the sheer size of the Red Army, this is not a good state to be in, no matter how well you appear to be doing on the map.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  And they've lost, I mean, absolutely amazing. In the first three weeks, personnel losses amount to 102,588 men. And these are from, from the spearhead as well, from the bit doing the work.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  Well, there's 17 Panzer Divisions. I mean, they're not all by any stretch of the imagination, but let's say, you know, 60% are from the Panzer Divisions. I mean, that's a, that's a huge bite.

• 48:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, it certainly is.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  You know, 100, 102, that's, that's, you know, what's that? That's like seven divisions.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Gone.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  And these are the, these are the people who you've invested your effort in and expertise and training and they're gone. They're out of the picture.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  They're the elites. Yeah. Yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  I think probably if you're listening, the penny's dropping here. By the 15th of July and the fall of Smolensk, 20, so 23 days into the campaign, three weeks roughly, German forces, they are in real trouble. They're really up a gum tree despite the appearance of these extraordinary victories. And what they need to do, obviously, is confront the fact they've got a strategic situation that's beginning to unravel and that sorting that out is starting to come to a head. And that basically the divergent strategic view between Hitler, who wanted the Baltic and St Petersburg and Leningrad or whatever, and the OKH, who wanted Moscow, principally, these differences that were there before Barbarossa are about to come

• 49:35Speaker 00

  to a head because they haven't got what they need to do any of those things, either of those tasks.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  This is the truth.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  This is the truth. This is the simple truth that in 1941, the Wehrmacht simply doesn't have enough of anything for the tasks they've set themselves.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Not of anything for a country quite so vast, quite so challenging and quite so inhospitable. But in the next episode, we're going to leave these strategic dilemmas to one side for a little bit.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  And we're going to follow in the footsteps of just one German soldier, an NCO, um, in Army Group South.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Great.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Uh, who's going into Ukraine and we're going to follow his fortunes through this period. And then in the final episode, in this part of four-part series, we will be turning back to the strategic dilemmas facing Hitler and, and the army command and what they decide to do about it and how they, uh, how they try to resolve it. Amazing stuff, isn't it?

• 50:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's incredible. If you want to hear those right away, go to our Patreon and become a Patreon member. We have ways of making you talk Patreon, become a member for a price of less than a pint of London Guinness. There's ticket offers, there's live casts, there's a buoyant membership of fellow afflicted Second World War enthusiasts waiting for you. Audio books too. Um, we will see you very soon. Thanks for listening. Cheerio.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  Cheerio.

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• 51:35Speaker 02

  The wheel had roads. Electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Honey, that flu keeping you up?

• 51:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't got this. You need Nyquil Intense Flu. Undo your flu symptoms with Nyquil Intense Flu. The nighttime sniffling, aching, aching fever, best sleep with a flu medicine. You do got this. Uses directed, keep out of reach of children.