Is Barbarossa one of most spectacular military successes ever?

Great Debates
1

If so, it doesn’t seem to get it’s due. I feel like a sports fan saying “X team doesn’t get enough respect”.

Germany took on a larger USSR and totally overwhelmed them using blitzkrieg tactics. They mobilized and supplied a gigantic force (with allies) across another country. They achieved nearly complete surprise.

They were successful in just about every battle of the campaign, netting nearly 5-1 in killed and wounded, and nearly 10-1 in tank and plane losses. And to top it off with a staggering 3,000,000 POWs. Despite the well-known deficiencies in the Soviet military, the numbers are still overwhelming.

Some mitigating factors often heard (no cite, perhaps being a strawman):
[ul]
[li]It was done by Nazis, who are bad guys. Yet, Rommel was considered a great general leading his Afrika Corps. [/li][li]The Germans lost in the end. So did Carthage after Cannae, the Confederacy after Jackson’s Valley, and Napoleon after Austerlitz.[/li][li]The USSR, under Stalin, made a lot of mistakes that contributed to Germany’s success. So did Hooker at Chancellorsville, which is called Lee’s best battle.[/li][li]It was incomplete: they never captured Moscow or Leningrad. But in a few months, they did get the Baltics, Belorussia, and Ukraine while inflicting massive casualties. That’s got to count for something, right?[/li][li]The Soviets had more to lose. Perhaps, but according to wiki, they lost nearly 7 million K-W-M. That’s hard to dismiss as a cushion to buy time for Stalin to get his act together. [/li][/ul]

So, despite Blitzkreig being no secret (the Soviets had to take some lessons from Poland and France), they simply overwhelmed the productive regions of their enemy, took out most of their military, laid siege to their largest city, and got within sight of their capital. All in a few short months.

Shouldn’t this be counted as one of the most brilliant military campaigns?

2

Win the battle, lose the war because of it.

Hard to call it a success. Yes, the initial successes were impressive but they are meaningless if you fail in your overall objective and ultimately lose the war because of it.

Pyrrhic Victory comes to mind although that is not quite right for this.

3

Didn’t Hitler learn anything from Napoleon? At least Napoleon made it all the way to Moscow.

4

On the other hand it took some three years for the Wehrmacht to be dislodged from Soviet territory while Napoleon retreated in a matter of months.

The main problem with Barbarossa was that its goal of conquering all of the USSR was impossible without supporting a general rising of the populace against Stalinist terror. However the Nazis managed to establish a regime even more brutal than that of Stalin in the occupied territories turning most of the populace against the Reich. If Hitler had aimed for a negotiated peace, he would have gotten it (Stalin offered it as late as 1943) much as the Rebels’ advance in the North was to make the Union sue for peace, not conquer all of the North during the Southern Rebellion. However he did not.

5

I’d take exception to something you wrote - “Germany took on a larger USSR and totally overwhelmed them using blitzkrieg tactics.” It’s clear that Germany did not totally overwhelm the Soviet Union. In fact, that was Germany’s biggest mistake - thinking they could win the war by achieving a decisive victory in the first battle. Japan made the same mistake against the United States. An intelligent war plan addresses the possibility that the enemy doesn’t surrender when you think he should.

6

I’d say that Operation Desert Storm was arguably the most successful military venture in history, but that’s just me. Barbarossa ultimately failed in it’s primary objective, so I don’t really think it’s in the running.

-XT

7

This isn’t true. That the German attack was a surprise was the result not of an achievement by Germany, but willful blindness by Stalin. British intelligence repeatedly warned the USSR about Barbarossa, but the warnings were ignored.

8

Probably apocryphal, but didn’t Stalin have several (or one at least) messenger whacked who was trying to bring him intelligence about a build up and possible German attack? Even after the Germans were attacking he seemed to be trying to convince himself that it wasn’t really happening until the evidence was overwhelming.

-XT

9

I think one could pick numerous campaigns headed by Genghis Khan as among the most successful military operations.

10

I’d been tempted to remark on Barbarossa being enormously successful, the largest victory in history in pure numbers in some of the recent what-if threads. If divorced from subsequent events and the rest of the war it was a brilliant feat of arms. It was ultimately a failure though in the larger context of the war, the knockout blow was not achieved, the cost to the Germans of Barbarossa itself wasn’t cheap, the Germans suffered horribly in the winter counteroffensive of 41/42 and was itself severely depleted in manpower by the summer of 42, when they were only able to take the offensive on the southern part of the front, they no longer had the strength for an offensive along the entire length of the front.

Two of these aren’t true. The Soviets successfully evacuated huge amounts of their heavy industry east of the Urals, and the Germans never took out anything close to most of the Soviet military. One of the great failings of the Germans was grossly underestimating the military potential of the Soviet Union. The Soviets were able to make good even the enormous casualties they sustained and increase the size of their army as well. As Halder ominously noted in his diary as early as August 15,

The number of divisions would continue to increase past the 360 the Germans had identified by that point.

True, but the Germans were still able to achieve total strategic surprise on the vastest of scales. Thankfully this hasn’t resulted in as much conspiracy theorizing as the surprise at Pearl Harbor has generated. I read Codeword-Barbarossa a good while ago, in it the author examined over 100 warnings that the USSR received from a great number of sources pointing to Germany planning to attack, but Stalin had already become convinced that Hitler was saber-rattling and would deliver a demand for concessions from the USSR, and as a result viewed all of these warnings through that prism, or as attempts by the British to cause friction in German-Soviet relations.

11

Do you have a cite for Stalin offering a negotiated peace in 1943 that isn’t based on speculation or rumor? Or that said peace offer didn’t include a return to pre-war borders? The USSR was winning in 1943, it had no reason to accept a cease-fire in place surrendering an inch of Soviet soil to the Germans.

12

I meant it supported some sort of cease-fire, by 1943 it was basically pre-war borders.

13

I may be miss-remembering, but I thought there were several Axis/Soviet meetings in Stockholm over the winter of '42-'43. These feeler meetings never went anywhere. The Axis was probing for a second treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Soviets were looking for a return to a return to the '41 borders. But even if either side had been willing to meet the stated peace plans of the other, it is uncertain that Hitler or Stalin would ever accept any peace aside from unconditional and total surrender of the other.

14

Very unlikely considering that Hitler had broken the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and that winter, on January 1943, the Allies (that already included the USSR) had called for the unconditional surrender of the axis powers in Casablanca.

15

Yes, Barbarossa up to Moscow was unquestionably one of the most stunning military successes ever, in terms of loss ratios and ground taken. But it had to be even more successful than it was in order to achieve its objective, to destroy the USSR. IMO they would have had to have taken at least Moscow and probably Leningrad, and I just don’t see any possible way they could have.

A similarly short-lived triumph was the first British offensive against the Italians in Egypt/Libya, which destroy IIRC 10-12 divisions for the loss of ~500 men.

My actual nomination would be the 7 day war in 1967.

In both cases I wouldn’t term it a mistake per se. It was more like “the only way we can win this war is if we destroy the enemy utterly in the first six months and they lose the will to fight on; given that due to domestic factors we’re going to attack no matter what, we are forced to believe that the enemy will cave in as we need him to”. That is, it was more a wilful and convenient blindness to the enemy’s capabilities than what I would call a mistake of strategy, intelligence, or whatever factor(s).

16

“Potential” is not the same as ability. If you do not realize your potential who cares if you have it?

As noted, at the outset, the Germans were manhandling the Soviets at every turn. Stalin’s purges had gutted his military of any ability to be effective.

Two things saved the Soviets.

Huge amounts of American aid (and before anyone belittles trucks some American general when asked what vehicle helped most in winning the war answered, “The Jeep”). American aid was hugely vital to the Soviets staying in it long enough. Without it they probably would have folded.

Second goes to Stalin’s famous quip, “Quantity has a quality all its own.” The Germans fucked up royally in treating the Soviets badly (citizens). The citizens quickly learned capture by the Germans was death and running away was death (their own military would execute them). When surrender and run away = dead you may as well fight. The Soviets sustained colossal casualties. Far more than any Western country would without surrendering.

When you have a government that views its populace as meat for the grinder and are willing to sacrifice them wholesale you can get pretty far. The Chinese had this mentality too in the Korean war (when the Chinese came across the border American artillery was chewing them up mercilessly…they kept coming and nearly pushed the Americans off the peninsula).

17

Bah. Barbarossa? Amateurs. Operation Desert Storm? Rank beginners.

Try this: Battle of Cajamarca - Wikipedia. Francisco Pizarro vs. the Incan leader Atahualpa: 160 Spaniards vs. 80,000 Incan warriors. End result? Incans defeated, 6000+ dead in a single night. One of the Spaniards had a minor injury.

18

I do.

From the outset bomb them with leaflets telling them they’d get a bed, beer and three square meals and would be allowed to ride out the war then sent home to get on with life. Then actually follow-up on that (word of actual treatment has a way of getting out).

The Russians probably would have surrendered en mass. They had no love for Stalin.

Whatever army was left would have been mopped up with ease.

Hitler’s decision to treat them like shit merely guaranteed they’d fight him.

Stupid. If he really hated them he could have gotten on with the pogroms later when there was no Soviet army left.

19

A fine example of what I was talking about.

Didn’t he burn his ships to keep his men motivated (i.e. there was no retreat)?

Most people faced with 6,000 (or 80,000) to their 160 would bug out. But when you realize there is nowhere to bug out to and surrender means having your heart carved out with a spoon (almost literally as they sacrifice you) you have no choice but to fight. Such motivation does wonders.

Better weapons and tactics did the rest.

20

Alas, no, the one who burned his ships was Cortez just before conquering Mexico.