Germany launched large-scale air attacks on Britain to defeat the Royal Air Force (RAF) beginning in August, before a seaborne invasion could be attempted, first against military targets, including air fields and radar station installations, and then against British cities to first secure air superiority, and also to weaken the British resolve to stay in the war through launching aerial bombing, along with bombing the cities in response to the British bombing of German cities. Using radar technology, while the Luftwaffe did not attack the key radar stations that were indispensable for British air defence sufficiently often enough to render them permanently unusable. Bombing raids became increasingly inefficient as the British air force inflicted heavy losses, and difficulties became apparent as accurate bombing in daylight was difficult. The complete defeat of the RAF therefore became unrealistic. The strategic shift toward bombing of cities provided respite for the British defensive efforts. Besides, the Germans were ill-prepared for a massive bombing campaign, since their bombers were small and slow since they were designed for short Blitzkrieg on land, and therefore the Germans did not develop heavy four engine long-range bombers with sufficiently heavy payloads to impose a knockout victory blow.
The German High Command began contemplating plans for the invasion of Britain in November 1939. While the German High Command did not possess the logistical knowledge of how to execute this type of an amphibious landing for a powerful invasion force, Hitler met with Admiral Raeder to discuss naval planning on 20 June, in which he elucidated the preliminary requirements, prior to conferring with the army authorities for a complex operation with effective coordination between the different military forces with various requirements. Plans remained incoherent while army planners demanded landings over wide separate areas, while naval planners argued for concentrating on a narrower landing zone, as the navy could not defend landings over a broad front from the Royal Navy even if air supremacy was achieved, which was yet to be achieved in the face of British radar installations reporting of Luftwaffe formation movements that allowed for directing RAF fighter resistance to confront those threats.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding’s key to success lay in the modernised communications system he had constructed for national defence, which was based on the swift analysis of information regarding incoming enemy aircrafts’ positions, directions and speeds from the radar stations around England’s south and east coasts, which provided advance warning about Luftwaffe flights taking off from Calais. Dowding knew that timing was essential if the German bombers were to be stopped. Fighters only had enough fuel to remain in the air for about an hour, and their ammunition was used up in a matter of seconds. Hence, Dowding formulated the innovative concept of providing adequate warning to allow the fighters to gain sufficient height for a successful attack with the advantage of foresight. Fifty-two radar stations from Pembrokeshire to the Shetlands could pick up incoming planes from a distance of about seventy-five miles, and could make reasonably accurate estimates of their numbers and altitude. As soon as the enemy aircraft reached the coast, their heights, numbers and directions were tracked by Royal Observer Corps personnel. This information was relayed to the four Fighter Command Groups and to the Fighter Command Headquarters that was filtered to identify relevant and essential information, with updated information that was then relayed to RAF fighter squadrons. Additional information from monitored radio traffic between German aircraft was analysed by “Station X” at Bletchley Park, which was also responsible for cracking the German “Enigma” codes in February 1940.
It was necessary to assembly sufficient numbers of barges to be assembled and powered vessels to tow personnel and equipment, which would be difficult of view of the difficulties of managing transporting them across the notoriously difficult to navigate English Channel currents, and therefore planning for this type of crossing was to be undertaken during summer weather conditions, which nevertheless would entail facing risks of damage or sinkings prior to a landing, in addition to overcoming British air defences. It would otherwise be necessary to use air power and submarine warfare to blockade Britain to preclude the delivery of vital resources until an invasion force could be readied for launch during the following year.
Hitler ordered invasion plans to be formulated on 16 July, while being careful to indicate to his military planners that an invasion was possible only if the Germans achieved air supremacy over England to preclude British aircraft attacking German landing crafts. This precondition had to be achieved before the autumn when inopportune weather would make a cross-Channel landing impossible, in addition to facing the logistical problems involved in staging a seaborne landing, and challenging the British Royal Navy while German surface fleet sea power that had constituted vessels that would be the most suitable for a cross-Channel invasion was severely undermined as a result of the losses incurred during the earlier invasion of Norway, as well as the Royal Navy’s destruction of Vichy French ships at Mers el Kébir on 3 July 1940. German troops and equipment were being assembled in France and Belgium in July 1940 for Operation Sea Lion for the invasion of Britain to prevent the possibility of British air attacks and an amphibious invasion of occupied France, prior to waging war on the Soviet Union, while the most important immediate task was the destruction of the RAF. This would secure Germany against bombing raids and enable the Luftwaffe to destroy the industrial centres of southern England and British shipping and ports. If this was combined with “terror raids,” civilian morale would break and the British government would be forced to sue for peace. An invasion was considered to be possible only as a last resort to deal a final “death blow” to a country tottering on the brink of collapse after a successful air offensive.
Air attacks began in early July with targeting shipping and the Channel ports. The objectives of Göring’s plan for the air offensive to establish air superiority over Britain, codenamed “Eagle” took place on 13 August, concentrating 1270 fighters and 520 bombers on the destruction of RAF bases, factories that produced aircraft parts, and also placing particular emphasis on the need to put the radar stations out of action. The Luftwaffe seriously underestimated the productivity of the British aircraft industry. It was assumed that the British could produce only 180 to 200 fighters per month, when in fact they were producing an average of 470, in addition to enlisting experienced pilots from different countries, including from France, Czechoslovakia and Poland, along with British pilots who could be recovered in the event of being downed over Britain, in contrast to German air personnel who were lost over enemy territory. The strength of Britain’s ground defences was also seriously misjudged. Believing that the task which faced them was so easy, the Luftwaffe made insufficient preparations for their offensive, and therefore had vague and incomplete planning.
The Germans also had to face practical difficulties. Their bombers, the Dornier 17 and the more heavily armoured Heinkel 111, were very vulnerable to fighter attack and therefore needed close escorts of Messerschmitt 109s. Since the Me 109s had only thirty minutes’ flying time over Britain, the range of the bombers was severely restricted. The Junkers 87B (Stuka), which had proved so terrifying in Poland and the western campaign was painfully slow and was thus an easy target for modern fighters and extremely vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. The Spitfire proved to be the match of the Me 109 in everything but high-altitude flying. Although Fighter Command suffered heavy losses in the air war over the Channel (Kanalkampf), and by 19 July, statisticians warned Dowding that his fighters would all be destroyed within six weeks if losses continued to climb at the same rate, and German pilots showing they were better trained and their tactics were superior, The RAF, however, was quick to learn from the Luftwaffe that began massive attacks from 5 August, and used their methods against them to devastating effect.
Although “Ultra” decrypts gave the British ample warning of the German attack, their radar stations along the south coast suffered severe damage on 12 August. On the following day Fighter Command’s ground installations were badly hit and a number of aircraft still on the ground were destroyed. “Ultra” provided precise information of the Luftwaffe’s intentions on 15 August and the Germans were to suffer severe losses in this first phase of the Battle of Britain. In the following days the Luftwaffe kept up the attack, concentrating on Fighter Command’s airfields in Kent and causing serious damage, but they were still being outshot by the RAF during this second phase of the battle. By the end of August, Fighter Command had suffered crippling losses of aircraft and severe damage to ground installations. However, the Luftwaffe was also frustrated by its failure to draw British fighters into a fight of attrition while they were instructed to concentrate on shooting down bombers before they released their payloads, rather than concentrating on their fighter escorts, in order to protect airfields and the communications network.
A German aircraft dropped bombs on London on the night of 24 August by mistake due to a navigation error. The British Bomber Command retaliated with a raid of eighty-one bombers to Berlin on the following night. This ineffective British air raid on Berlin prompted Hitler to order the bombing of major British cities, shifting toward strategic bombing to hit industrial targets and undermine civilian morale to sustain the war effort. Luftwaffe attacks hereafter shifted from attacking air bases and radar installations to civilian targets, beginning with n a deliberate attempt to bomb London on 7 September, which was then followed by fifty-seven consecutive days of bombing major British cities in a third phase of attacks on Britain. This diversion of the attacks away from Fighter Command’s bases gave the RAF a welcome respite. London was a more distant target than the air bases in southern England and therefore gave Fighter Command more time to prepare to meet the attackers. It also further reduced the limited flying time of the Me 109s to ten minutes, which left many raids undefended by fighter escorts. This also afforded the British to rebuild their air force. The fighting in the air continued until the largest daylight attack 15 September, when two massive waves of German attacks were decisively repulsed by the RAF, and therefore prevented the Luftwaffe from establishing air superiority. Moreover, the German surface fleet lacked heavy naval forces and light vessels that could adequately protect amphibious forces crossing the English Channel, where the Royal Navy could muster four destroyer flotillas, consisting of approximately thirty-six such vessels, along with additional destroyers, cruisers and battleships in the Home Fleet. Launching Operation Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely on 17 September, and then cancelled on 15 October. This was thus Nazi Germany’s first major defeat, which allowed for British to rebuild its military, while Hitler’s next offensive was launched against the USSSR.
Mounting losses in air crews, aircraft and the lack of adequate replacements led to the Luftwaffe shifting from daylight to nighttime bombing of British cities in further attempts from October 1940 to demoralize the population and cripple British industry. The Battle of Britain, which averted the invasion of Britain, marked the first defeat of Hitler’s military forces. Having failed to create the necessary preconditions for an invasion of England, the German military proposed an indirect strategy by cooperating with the Italians in the Mediterranean, while the Germans were now driven to fight a protracted war after their efforts to knock Britain out of the war through waging aerial warfare were unsuccessful.
In a bizarre incident during this early stage of the war, Deputy-Führer Rudolf Hess, who had remained not fulfilling any specific function in the Nazi regime, desperately sought to re-establish his status in the NSDAP while only theoretically occupying the third most powerful position in the state by single-handedly attempting to stage a diplomatic coup. Hitler had issued a “Decree Concerning the Deputy of the Führer,” which designated Göring as his successor in the event of his death, which reaffirmed Göring’s already prominent position, and appointed him legally first in the line of succession within the state leadership. During this time, Martin Bormann who served as the chief of staff of the Staff of the Deputy Führer, working directly under Rudolf Hess, and was Hitler’s official deputy in the Nazi Party placed him in charge of the Party Chancellery’s administrative machinery for Hess, and was already becoming acquiring considerable influence behind the scenes, largely because of his administrative control and his access to Hess, which likewise appeared threatening to Hess, who believed he could restore his status with Hitler by negotiating a peace settlement with Britain. Hess therefore made a solo flight from Augsburg in a ME-110 to Scotland on 10 May 1941, seeking to arrange peace talks with the Duke of Hamilton, with whom he was acquainted, and believed was a prominent opponent of the British government’s war policy while having personal connections to the national government and the British monarchy, in the interest of establishing an alliance with Britain against the Soviet Union. Hess claimed that Nazi Germany only required a free hand in Europe in exchange for expressing complete disinterest in the British spheres of influence, such as maintaining the status quo of the British empire. This attempt at making a peace offer was dismissed and only resulted in his prolonged imprisonment. This incident only managed to expose dissent with the National Socialist leadership, while Prime Minister Churchill expected to defeat Germany by receiving worldwide material support. In contrast, Hitler expected for Britain to remain forcibly pacified through aerial bombardment and waging submarine warfare, while planning to invade the Soviet Union. This delusional attempt to restore his prestige in the regime only resulted in his expulsion from the NSDAP and incarceration for the remainder of his life, and his former chief of staff, Martin Bormann, becoming chief of the NSDAP chancellery who positioned him to control all access to Hitler. The air war continued for years with indecisive results for both Germany and Britain, while the German navy depended on using submarine warfare to prevent the flow of supplies by sea.
Hitler turned to plans to attack the Soviet Union that was extending its influence in eastern Europe following the failed attempt to induce Britain to end war in the west through the air offensive that ended in a losing battle of attrition, which then led to formulating an indirect strategy to defeat Britain by attacking their interests in the Mediterranean. Discussions with Vichy France and Spain following the end of the Battle of Britain regarding the peripheral strategy of attacking British interests, northern Africa and the Middle East were inconclusive, as Spain made impossibly high demands for concessions, whereas Vichy France maintained a cautious neutral stance. Nazi Germany’s resources were thus to be concentrated on attacking Russia to isolate Britain. It also became necessary to counter any potential expansionist Soviet foreign policy objectives, upon the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s visit to Berlin in November 1940 that revealed intentions to place Finland, the Balkans and the Dardanelles within the sphere of the Soviet Union’s interests, and proposing a two nation commission between Denmark and the Soviet Union to impose control over the Skagerrak as entrance to and exit from the Baltic Sea. The most important underlying consideration was attacking the Soviet Union inevitably composed the basis of executing Hitler’s long term ideological goals, in addition to preserving Nazi Germany’s interests in the Balkan Peninsula.
The Baltic States were compelled to provide military bases in the autumn of 1939, and then acquired key strategic areas from Finland by March 1940, following its attack in November 1939. Rumania was then compelled to surrender Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in June 1940, and the Baltic states were annexed into the Soviet Union in August. Hitler would thus shift Nazi Germany’s foreign policy from fulfilling national interests to waging war on the basis of ideology. Measures were already taken that began to alienate the Soviet Union that continued delivering oil, food and huge quantities of raw materials to Germany while behaving as a benevolent neutral that alleviated the effects of the British naval blockade. A German-Italian-Japanese Tripartite Pact, or Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, was signed in September 1940, which weakened the amity between Germany and the Soviet Union, which had already been weakened by the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in late June, following an ultimatum to Rumania that Germany counted on for fulfilling its needs for oil and wheat. The annexation of Bukovina lay beyond the line of the secret protocol of the pact with Hitler. Hitler then extended his influence in the Balkans in August by adding Hungary, Rumania and Slovakia to the Tripartite Pact in November, followed by Bulgaria.
Further actions were taken to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet Union through diplomatic manouevres without prior consultation with Soviet authorities. Nazi Germany resolved tensions between Hungary and Rumania over the disputed region of Transylvania in the Vienna Accords by shifting territory to Hungary,and oversaw bolstering a Rumanian regime under General Ion Antonescu. A German motorised infantry division supported by flak and air units were then dispatched to Rumania in October 1940 to demonstrate support for this regime, and maintain German control over the Ploesti oil fields, and thus blocking Russia from access to the Balkans. A German intelligence report noted that the war effort could not be sustainable if Rumania came under the Soviet or British influence. Oil would remain essential resource for waging mechanised warfare, which would lead to Rumania becoming Nazi Germany’s second most important military supplier by providing fuel and troops. Another agreement allowed for maintaining troops in Finland. With victory assured in the west apart from Britain who remained standing alone, Hitler remained determined to attack the Soviet Union, and later issued the Directive No. 21 for operation Barbarossa on 18 December 1940, to be launched in mid-May 1941. (See World War II Archives. The Yale University Avalon Project.)
Nazi Germany’s military had hitherto built up its potential through planning and rearmament that had begun during the 1920s, and ultimately resulted in successful implementation of its capacity in practice. Rapid rearmament during the 1930s at the cost of incurring massive national debts along with acquiring new territories and exploiting their resources contributed to this effort. Successful military training at the outbreak of open hostilities led to launching successful offensives by the OKW deploying well trained, armed and equipped forces, which included mechanised and armoured units that enabled a rapid war of movement in the face of defence oriented doctrines on a single front against weaker and less prepared adversaries, which did not impose strains on Germany’s logistical and industrial complexes, and also provided resources to the German economy in the form of material goods and forced labour. However, Germany would not able to sustain a prolonged war of attrition on separate fronts.
The fall of France and the Battle of Britain that was superseded by aerial bombing and the war at sea was followed by Hitler’s struggle against Britain concentrated on the Mediterranean. He hoped to drive Britain out of the area and at the same time protect his southern flank in anticipation of an attack on the Soviet Union, in cooperation with Italy, which had joined the war against Britain and France on 10 June 1940. Hitler hoped that the Tripartite Axis Pact of 27 September 1940 between Germany, Italy and Japan, which recognised each other’s spheres of interest and undertook “to assist one another with all political, economic and military means when one of the three contracting powers is attacked” by a country not already involved in the war, excluding the Soviet Union, clearly directed against the United States, would help to overcome some of his immediate strategic concerns. This included putting continued pressure on Britain to negotiate by eliminating the Soviet Union as its final hope for maintaining resistance, and driving it out of the Mediterranean, and at the same time, protect the southern flank that entailed fighting in the Balkans in anticipation of an attack on the Soviet Union, which was the remaining power that could challenge Nazi Germany’s bid at seizing control over the entire European continent, while also continuing fighting against the British in northern Africa.
Germany’s Mediterranean strategy proved to be impractical for different reasons. The dictator of Spain, Francisco Franco, made it abundantly clear that he intended to keep out of the war if Spain could not receive considerable territorial concessions in northern Africa at the Vichy regime’s expense, including taking possession of Gibraltar, all of French Morocco, and a part of Algeria, along with receiving far-reaching military and economic assistance. The Vichy regime was prepared to offer only limited collaboration, including following the destruction of its naval squadron by British naval forces at Mers-el-Kébir in Algeria on 3 July 1940, and whose own territorial interests in northern Africa were in conflict with Spanish and Italian interests, while also, like Spain, seeking to maintain its independence to the widest possible degree until the potential event of an Axis victory in Europe. While Franco’s regime was one of benevolent neutrality supporting the Axis powers, Hitler’s Mediterranean strategy was therefore dictated by the Italians who took precedence for the southern flank of the European war, while the British maintained control of the Mediterranean Sea with its strongholds at Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, and therefore maintaining the waterways from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The British colony of Egypt was a pivotal connection through between the Mediterranean and the Red Seas that was vital for maintaining the flow of oil from Iraq, Iran and Syria, as well as food supplies from India and the southern Pacific. Losing control over the Suez Canal would add several weeks to sea transportation around Africa, which would expose redirected merchant shipping to German U-boat attacks in the Atlantic. However, Mussolini’s threat to attack Egypt were delayed due to the major setbacks on Albania and then Greece, and the Italian fleet was crippled by a British surprise attack on the Italian warships at the port of Taranto on 11 November 1940 by dispatching torpedo bomber aircraft launched from the aircraft carrier Illustrious stationed in Malta, which sunk two new and two older Italian battleships, and consequently permanently altered the Mediterranean naval balance in favour of the Royal Navy. These weaknesses thus led to Germany requiring providing military support on a new southern front that would remain posing a threat to the British war effort receiving vital imports.
There was not any uncertainty about the long-term aim: attack the Soviet Union to acquire Lebensraum in the east, as well as eliminate it as a source of support for Great Britain after the fall of France. Russian advances in eastern Europe by the middle of 1940 had established their control over Germany’s main supply routes. Their advances into Finland threatened the vital nickel ore at Petsamo, as well as iron ore from Sweden. The occupation of the Baltic states in June 1940 also deprived Germany of large supplies of foodstuffs and oil shale, whereas their occupation of Bessarabia and Bukovina during the same time brought the Ploesti oil fields, from which Germany drew fifty percent of its oil supplies, were within range of Russian bombers. Germany also depended on Russia for an additional twenty-five percent of its oil, sixty percent of its grain, as well as phosphates, iron, chrome, manganese, timber and cotton, in addition to supplies of tin and rubber from Asia transported through Russia. Hitler informed the German general staff of his intention to invade the Soviet Union to acquire its resources, as well as fulfill the Nazi ideology of acquiring “living space” for future German settler populations, on 31 July 1940.
Stalin was meanwhile facing the possibility of a German invasion of the Soviet Union, and expected its defences to be prepared for this contingency by the spring of 1942, and ignored warnings from the British and American government and Soviet intelligence reports about the German preparations for this forthcoming invasion. The Soviet government avoided provoking Nazi Germany through giving loyal diplomatic support to Germany by expelling the envoys of countries that Germany had overrun, and recognised the puppet governments that Germany had set up. Stalin also did not have any defensive plans, rather than merely plans for an offensive against resentful national minorities in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states that were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, while the Soviets were still considering establishing improved relations with Germany, and were still making deliveries of wheat, oil and minerals in accordance with their trade agreement of 19 August 1939, as well as with Japan, with which a Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact was signed in April 1941.
Preparing for the invasion of the Soviet Union entailed German military planners focusing particular attention on the Balkans, which was important for several reasons. Germany was more dependent than ever on supplies from the Balkans since the Royal Navy had cut off vital provisions from overseas. Particularly important were petroleum and wheat from Romania. Politically, it was essential to stop the British from establishing better relations with the Balkan states and to reduce Soviet influence in the area so as to secure a launching-pad for the attack on the Soviet Union. The Rumanians had valid reasons to be concerned by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, although they were unaware of the secret protocol which gave Bessarabia to the Soviet Union. With Poland in German hands, the Rumanians did everything possible to appease the Germans, including guaranteeing oil supplies to Germany and allying themselves militarily by joining the Tripartite Pact on 23 September 1940, leading to German armoured troops deployed to protect the Ploesti oil fields on 7 October. Similar economic and military ties were formed between Germany and Hungary after it joined the Tripartite Pact on 20 November 1940, largely because of the shared interest in revising the territorial settlements that were concluded after the First World War.
Germany’s policy in the Balkans was then placed in serious jeopardy when Italy attacked Greece on 28 October 1940, leading to its decisive defeat following its occupation of Albania, which prompted the British to send military support after having had given Greece a guarantee of support in April 1940. News that the RAF was steadily building up reserves in Greece convinced Hitler that the British intended to bomb the Romanian oilfields. This in turn prompted plans for Germany to invade Greece, as well maintaining the interest of protecting the southern flank during the forthcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. The German garrison in Rumania was strengthened in preparation for the invasion, Troops were also sent to Bulgaria, which had also allied itself with Germany by joining the Tripartite Pact on 1 March 1941, and allowed German units to be stationed in Sofia and Varna, while also seeking a return of lost territory. Hitler also demanded that Yugoslavia join the Axis in order to secure the southern flank of German forces invading the Soviet Union, in addition to reinforcing support for the Italian invasion of Greece that was marked by ineptitude.
Germany had thus greatly strengthened its position in the Balkans by this time, Greece was effectively isolated and, with the exception of Turkey which jealously guarded its neutrality, all the other countries in the region had joined the Tripartite Pact and had signed trade agreements which enabled Germany to secure adequate supplies of vital raw materials. Greece could be easily overrun and the British driven from continental Europe. The exposed southern flank of the attack on the Soviet Union would be secure from attack. However, there was internal opposition in Yugoslavia to the signing of the Three-Power Pact on 22 March. A group of pro-British Serbian officers pressed king Peter II to dismiss the pro-German Yugoslav government on the following day.
Hitler responded by ordering attacks on Yugoslavia and Greece on 27 March to secure the Balkan flank during the invasion of the Soviet Union, including protecting the Rumanian oil fields from RAF attacks, as well as building staging areas in Bulgaria. German bombers attacked Belgrade and the operational centres of the government on 6 April, and the military were destroyed. With their overwhelming air power, the Germans had little difficulty in overrunning the courageous but ill-equipped Yugoslav army, and Yugoslavia capitulated unconditionally on 18 April. The German army then continued its next Blitzkrieg into Greece, which capitulated on 21 April in the face of overwhelming German troop numbers, equipment resources and air power, and entered Athens on 27 April. Despite the success of these campaigns, large numbers of German troops were hereafter engaged in fighting against highly motivated and skillful partisans waging guerilla warfare, primarily under the communist resistance leadership of Joseph Broz Tito. Although securing this southern flank did not necessarily postpone launching Operation Barbarossa, which was delayed by supply and organisational difficulties along with poor ground and weather conditions, rapid redeployment of German units to this next operation allowed for Greek and Yugoslav soldiers in isolated areas to form the basis for considerable guerilla movements throughout these regions that continually harassed large numbers of German forces by 1942, and therefore prevented fully exploiting resources in the southern Balkans.
The British evacuated approximately 43,000 of their 55,000 troops in Greece to Crete, but they had only six Hurricanes, seventeen obsolete aircraft and painfully few anti-aircraft guns. Crete had long been a strategic goal of the Germans, for Hitler feared that it could be used by the British as a base for air strikes against the Romanian oilfields. “Enigma” decrypts had revealed the full details of the German plan of attack, but the British forces in Crete were caught inadequately prepared by a brilliantly planned and executed airborne attack on 20 May, although at a loss of 6,000 elite troops and more than 300 aircraft. German armaments were flown over Vichy controlled Syria to support an indigenous revolt in Iraq on the same day, which further threatened British positions in the Middle East.
The British were no longer able to launch air raids against the Romanian oil fields, and they could inflict only indirect damage on the Germans in the desert. It could never be a decisive theatre, because even if they were able to draw a substantial number of German troops from Europe there would be no allied force large enough to mount an invasion of north-western France. On the other hand, an Axis victory in which Britain lost control of the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf could well make it impossible for the Allies to continue the war. The British commander-in-chief in the Middle East, Archibald Wavell, thus recognised the importance of protecting the Suez Canal was vital for protecting Britain from being cut off from much of its empire and access to Middle Eastern oil fields, and therefore protecting Egypt was of the utmost necessity for strategic and economic reasons. It was fortunate that Hitler was obsessed with attacking the Soviet Union and therefore did not bother unduly about the Middle East where the Italians were fighting the British.
When Mussolini declared war on Britain and France on 10 June, there appeared to be a high probability of positive prospects for a victory in northern Africa following the fall of France and taking advantage of what he believed to be the imminent collapse o of the British empire by taking over its possessions in Africa and the Middle East. The French forces in North Africa, Syria and French Somaliland were loyal to Vichy. The British forces were overwhelmingly outnumbered both on land and in the air when Mussolini ordered an invasion of British-controlled Egypt in August 1940. The Italian commander Marshal Graziani was slow and hesitant to stage offensives, whereas the Italian army was constantly harassed by a series of hit-and-run raids by General Creagh’s Seventh Armoured Division. Graziani waited for three months before beginning his offensive against Egypt on 13 September 1940, which failed against inferior British forces that staged a very successful counterattack led by General Wavell in Operation Compass, in which the Italian Tenth army was decisively defeated and pursued back into Libya in January 1941. The British also had further successes against the Italians in East Africa, where they took Ethiopia, Somaliland and Eritrea by May 1941, and thus ending Mussolini’s dream of creating an African empire.
Hitler ordered Luftwaffe units to Sicily, and armoured troops to northern Africa in December 1940 to defend Tripoli because he feared that further Italian defeats could well lead to the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Axis. Lieutenant-General Erwin Rommel later arrived in Tripoli, Libya on 12 February 1941 to take command of the newly formed German Afrika Korps as a mechanized military contingent under Italian command in northern Africa to reinforce Italian forces to check the British drive toward Tunis, after British forces under General Sir Arthur Wavell had already wrested control of Somaliland, Eritrea and most Libya from the Italians. Rommel independently decided to go on the offensive against the British Eighth Army to stabilise the Libyan front, soon after Australian troops were withdrawn from Libya on 6 February to be deployed to Greece to counter the Axis invasion there. British troops in static defensive positions were thus caught off guard while their supply lines were overextended, beginning a retreat from Cyreneica, leaving only Tobruk as a defensive stronghold on the Mediterranean coastline that was besieged by the Afrika Korps.
Benghazi was taken by mid-April, and British forces were forced to retreat back into Egypt, apart from the besieged garrison at Tobruk that Rommel required to take as a resupply port for desert warfare that required continual deliveries of all forms of resources that were unavailable in the immediate vicinity, which was relieved on 10 December following British led advances from Egypt during Operation Crusader, while Rommel’s supply deliveries from Tripoli remained precarious due to British interventions at sea and in the air from Malta, whereas Axis personnel were precluded from reinforcing Rommel’s Afrika Korps while engaged in the campaigns in the Balkans and Russia. Britain was also soon to be placed in a far more precarious position in the Battle of the Atlantic, beginning in 1941.
Meanwhile, Hitler’s racial and political obsession with the Soviet Union gave Britain time to recover, but critical to its survival and eventual victory was the support of the United States. President Roosevelt was determined to do everything possible to help, but he was constrained by domestic political concerns about the public demand for an in, by legal restrictions and by considerations of national security, by which there were arguments that America could not risk sending armaments to Britain that would be wasted in the event of a German victory. Roosevelt came up with the idea of “Lend-Lease” in December 1940, the object of which was to lend equipment for the duration of the war, which began to be supplied in US ships from early 1941.
Rommel reported to the Oberkommando der Heeresleitung at the beginning of March 1941 that he intended to go on the offensive as soon as possible. His immediate aim was to recapture Cyrenaica, and if all went as had been planned, he intended to push on into Egypt and seize the Suez Canal, and would then anticipate seizing the Middle Eastern oil fields as far as Iraq and Iran, prior to linking with German forces in the Caucasus. Rommel initially advanced to Cyrenaica against ill-prepared British forces that were depleted due to redeployment in Greece, and were further weakened by having inferior weapons, such as obsolete and lightly armoured tanks and inadequate anti-tank guns, an inadequate communications network and poor aerial reconnaissance, until a defensive position was held at Tobruk when it was attacked in April 1941. Although Rommel had reached the Egyptian border, he was denied the extra troops he needed to advance eastward toward Egypt, while Hitler was going to launch his attack on the Soviet Union.
When it became evident that an invasion of England was not plausible in 1940, the army leaders became concerned about the dangers of fighting a two-front war. They therefore suggested that the alliance with the Soviet Union should be maintained, that the British should be driven out of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and that Germany’s position in Europe should be strengthened. Once this was achieved Germany could face the prospect of a protracted war with Britain with every confidence. Hitler came to a totally different conclusion. He argued that once Russia collapsed the British would lose their last and only hope, since the Americans would be solely concerned with Japan, whose strength would be immeasurably enhanced by the defeat of the Soviet Union.
Admiral Dönitz estimated that for an effective offensive against British shipping in the Atlantic, at least three hundred U-boats were needed. At the outset of the war, the German navy only had 57 U-boats fit for service, of which only 23 were suitable for operations in the Atlantic. While the British Royal Navy could not be challenged by the German navy, a crash programme of U-boat construction offered a viable alternative. Nevertheless, the Germans were to have some impressive successes in the early stages of the war. The Germans sank 148 ships in the Atlantic totaling 678,130 tonnes between September 1939 and March 1940, and a further 267,443 tonnes were sunk by mines off the British coast. The aircraft carrier Courageous was sunk on 17 September and the battleship Royal Oak a few weeks later. The Deutschland raided merchant shipping in the north Atlantic and another battleship, the Graf Spee, chased shipping in the south Atlantic and the Indian Ocean until it was scuttled in Montevideo on 17 December 1939.The war effort against the U.K. would remain being fought in the form of bombing attacks from the west, and the war at sea that Germany largely waged through employing submarines, following the sinking of the battleship Bismarck on 27 May 1941, which led to weakening the influence of deploying major surface warships, particularly shifting the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, as well as the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, which were docked at Brest where they were subjected to British air raids, while they were intended to engage in the war against allied shipping in the Atlantic. Hitler ordered their transfer to Norway, which he believed was of great importance to Germany, and the British would likely attempt an invasion there, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau remained docked in French ports where they were subjected to British bomber attack, until Hitler expressed concerns about their necessity to defend against a potential invasion of Scandinavia, and therefore ordered these vessels to break through the English Channel to Germany, prior to their next deployment in the north. Two German fighter wings in France and one in Germany provided cover for this purpose, which kept the RAF from a decisive intervention, which demonstrated how the Luftwaffe could still challenge British air power on equal terms in a defensive capacity.
The Soviet Union was the only great power which he could attack before Britain and the United States had time to adjust to the demands of global war. Behind all this were Hitler’s ideological obsessions: the destruction of “Jewish bolshevism,” the conquest of “living space,” or Lebensraum, in the east by which Germany’s survival could be ensured through obtain means for sustaining itself through sufficient resources while surrounded by hostile powers, and the lasting triumph of a purified Germanic race by waging war against the “Jewish-Bolshevik race.” This separate war of intentional annihilation was thus dictated both by Hitler’s calculated strategic assessment of Germany’s global situation and by his passionate commitment to his fantasies of race and space while expecting that the German armed forces would crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign before the conclusion of the war against the U.K., which continued through the aerial bombardment of Britain while expecting that the British would come to terms following the expected subjugation of the Soviet Union. Hitler expressed to German generals on 30 March 1941 that the forthcoming war against the Soviet Union was to be waged with unprecedented and unrelenting harshness to displace and ultimately annihilate local populations, who would also be compelled to perform forced labour for Nazi Germany, and seize its resources. General Franz Halder, the chief of the general staff, prepared two directives to execute war aims in the form of the martial jurisdiction decree and the commissar order. The former stipulated that German soldier could not be prosecuted for war crimes, and the latter stipulated that Soviet commissars were to be executed, which aggravated the brutality of the war in the east for both military personnel and civilians that became characteristically common.
Operation Barbarossa was launched as a complete surprise on 22 June 1941, in spite of a final warning made by a German army sergeant who informed Russian border guards about the impending invasion, which Stalin contemptuously dismissed as disinformation. One hundred and forty-eight fully prepared German divisions, totalling about three and a half million German and Axis allies’ troops, composing eighty percent of the German army and sixty percent of the air force invaded the Soviet Union in a three pronged advance by Army Group North advancing toward Leningrad supported by Air Fleet One, Army Group Centre advancing toward Moscow supported by Air Fleet Two, and Army Group South advancing toward Kiev supported by Air Fleet Four. They were joined contingents from Axis allies, including a 2,500 troop French infantry regiment formed in October 1941, 500,000 Finnish troops joining in the assault from the north toward Leningrad, and 150,000 Rumanians crossing the Prut River into Bessarabia, and then advancing toward attacking toward Odessa, confronting 170 understrength Soviet divisions that were stationed in newly acquired territories by May 1941, composing over half of Soviet military strength with incomplete defensive fortifications and communications lines, greatly lacking updated equipment, as well as being without plans to take future action.
The German plan was to annihilate the Soviet army and air force in a few swift blows, and then expected the Soviet government to surrender and disintegrate within three months, and therefore preparations were not made for a winter warfare. At first, the campaign went according to plan, as German armoured divisions plunged deep into Russia in great pincer movements, and millions of Soviet soldiers, most of the air force lacking radar and ground control, as well as often lacking fuel, with a loss of 1,500 Soviet aircraft on the first day of the invasion, and vast quantities of war supplies were lost. Within a few months, Army Group North was approaching Leningrad, reaching as far as ninety-six kilometres from the city, Army Group Centre was thirty kilometres away from Moscow by mid-November, and Army Group South had reached Kharkov in October. However, the Soviet army, which retreated in good order and had to be destroyed before it retreated behind the Dnieper-Dvina Line, which was the absolute limit for the German army’s logistical supply lines that was not possible due to a shortage of mechanized vehicles, while the Russians adopted scorched earth policies as they retreated. Moreover, huge efforts were made to move whole plants behind the Urals and concentrating resources on war production facilities that were out of Luftwaffe bombardment range, since it was devoid of strategic four-engine bombers, while Germany was deprived of necessary deliveries of food and raw materials.
The main weight of the offensive was to be directed north of the Pripet marshes toward Leningrad. The attack was then to continue towards Moscow. The army group operating south of the Pripet marshes posing an impenetrable obstacle was to seize Kiev and capture the Donets basin in the hope of seizing the important agricultural and industrial areas of Ukraine before winter. Hitler’s planning concentrated on capturing the economic centres of Moscow, Leningrad and Ukraine as a whole in order to seize the Soviet Union’s economic resources as rapidly as possible, rather than the officer corps arguing for focusing advancing toward Moscow as a primary military factor. In contrast, the Soviets could have to defend the industrial and agricultural districts in the west, without which they would be unable to supply their armies and continue the war. This offered the opportunity to destroy the enemy in a rapid series of encirclements close to the frontier, and warnings that space and climate were powerful factors which could well prove difficult to overcome were thus discounted.
However, Germany military planners overlooked several elements that constituted strengths possessed by the Soviet Union, They substantially underestimated the Red Army’s numerical strength, industrial resources, and the inherent logistical difficulties involved in waging a campaign on a continental scale They remained unaware of the resources available in Siberia, overlooking the fact that the Soviets had already built a considerable war industry east of the Urals, and did not consider the possibility that they might be able to hold up the German advance long enough to move industrial plants to safety behind the Urals, which were beyond the range of German reconnaissance aircraft, and reports from German engineers regarding extensive production that was underway there remained unheeded. Intelligence resulting from agents being unable to operate effectively in totalitarian state conditions woefully inadequate, and there was a refusal to believe that official Soviet statistics were anything but propaganda, but also to the belief that the entire Soviet system was hopelessly incompetent and fundamentally unstable. Warnings from the German embassy in Moscow that the economic advantages of an invasion would be minimal because the Soviets would destroy industrial plant and the Ukraine was unlikely to yield any more than during the First World War, when it had scarcely enough to supply the occupying troops, were thus dismissed, as were reports that the Soviet system was far more stable than was believed in Berlin. Planning also went on with the conviction that the campaign would be brief and decisive. That this was held to be an axiomatic truth was based on a serious underestimation of the Red Army. Military observers noticed the pernicious results of the military purges of 1937 and 1938 that led to glaring faults that the Soviet military displayed in the Winter War against Finland in 1939-40 and the invasion of Poland in 1939. Stalin’s decimation of the Soviet officer corps resulted in remaining military leadership that was deemed to be seriously deficient and lacking in initiative, imagination and basic operational skills.
Hitler estimated that his armies could force a collapse in six weeks, arguing: “We only have to kick in the door and whole rotten structure will come crashing down.” Apart from misinterpreting the amounts of Soviet resources, Soviet capabilities were greatly underestimated as a result of the nature of the ideological war that Hitler believed he was launching, which superseded military and political considerations. The purpose of this war was to subjugate an entire nation to acquire “living space” for the German population while destroying the “Jewish Bolshevist regime,” uproot and eradicate the Jewish population along with other nationalities, reduce the remaining Slavic populations to a servile mass, and then acquire resources to continue waging war against the “Anglo-Saxon powers.”
Stalin remained unprepared for war with Germany while fearing taking any action that would provoke Germany into launching an attack, regardless of several reports that an invasion was forthcoming, and indications on German troop movements on the borders, and the expansion of the Tripartite Pact, the Russian forces initially collapsed at the outset of the invasion. Communications networks were disrupted, artillery units remained in place due to lack of transport, and tanks were without fuel or ammunition. Orders to regroup for a counterattack led to further confusion and a weakening of defensive positions. Only in the southwestern sector, where Marshal Zhukov, the chief of the general staff, was examining the situation and offering his advice, the counterattacks had limited success. They were a disastrous waste of effort elsewhere, as the Soviets failed to implement a war of mobility deploying armoured units in a successful combined arms doctrine, and lacked the experience in its application due to the effects of the purge of the military, in contrast to the German forces executing war of movement tactics, in addition to being left with poor leadership. Furthermore, eighty percent of the Soviet air force was composed of nearly obsolete aircraft, with undertrained and inexperienced pilots. Many Soviet airfields had been built far too near the border. By noon on 22 June, the Soviets had lost 1,200 aircraft, most of which were destroyed on the ground, and left the Luftwaffe free to attack Soviet armour almost unopposed in the early phases of the operation, while a lack of communication between Soviet air and ground forces further contributed to the Germans achieving air superiority.
Operation Barbarossa was initially highly successful in terms of advancing over vast swathes of territory and destroying Soviet military power. The Germans had advanced approximately over seven hundred and twenty-four kilometres from their starting points within three weeks. Although the Red Army was far larger than the Wehrmacht, it was extended along a lengthy frontier and was ineptly deployed to meet a concentrated mechanised attack. The railway system, which was not extensive enough to meet the needs of a modern army, was completely disrupted by bombing raids. The Germans also had the advantage of a better trained and more experienced officer corps and the ordinary soldier was more highly skilled and better equipped than in the Red Army. In spite of the early successes, the invasion failed to defeat the Soviet Union before the onset of the winter, and the north, centre and south German army groups were henceforth directed to take Leningrad, Moscow, and drive on into the Caucasus that supplied half of the Soviet Union’s oil reserves, eighty to ninety percent of its crude oil production, refinery output and pipeline capacity. Finland sought to recover its lost territories by declaring war on the Soviet Union on 26 June 1941, and coordinated their military movements with German material and troop support throughout what became known as the Winter War for the next three years that led to limited results, including not succeeding in permanently knocking out Soviet naval bases at Kronstadt and Leningrad, which kept the Soviet Baltic fleet in operation that continually posed threats to German sea transports. Hitler ordered General Hoth’s Third Panzer Army in Directive No. 31 on 16 July to be deployed to reinforce the advance toward Leningrad, and General Guderian’s Second Panzer Army was to be deployed to the south to occupy Ukraine, which temporarily halted the advance toward Moscow in favour of destroying Red Army units. This diversion of these units to reinforce separate fronts caused a delay in the advance toward Moscow, while German forces were also stalled at Smolensk, where supply lines were stretched to the widest limit.
The German forces drove through Minsk and then besieged the key city of Smolensk as a central communications axis on 27 July and entered the city on 5 August, when it proved to be nearly impossible to accumulate supplies for further advances on this front. Logistics could not be managed as a result of the distance to the railheads, the movement of infantry to support the mechanised units, and the exhaustion of the motorised supply system. Soviet attacks from within and outside the Smolensk cauldron to break through the German encirclement further complicated the serious supply problems. Intensive fighting in this region also imposed heavy demands on ammunition supplies for the forward lines, which placed heavier requirements for transporting ammunition, and there was not any opportunity to stockpile fuel for the next advance.
The final objective of the German Army Group Centre was continued 350 kilometre drive toward Moscow. This delay also opened the way for Marshal Zhukov to stage a successful temporary counterattack at Smolensk on 22 July, continuing until 30 July. This key battle provided an insight into how the Russians were yet able to muster reinforcements to stage counterattacks, in spite of their previous losses, and also temporarily blunted the German momentum of the advance toward Moscow that reduced the probability of a swift breakthrough victory over the Soviet Union, as territorial advances over wide distances were rendered meaningless when they would not contribute to an ultimate Soviet capitulation, prior to Soviet counterattacks with immense personnel and material resources becoming available at Stalin’s disposal, in addition to the climate and the Soviet Union becoming reinforced with aid from abroad proving to be considerable advantages to the detriment of the German war effort.
The German forces on the northern front reached the shores of Lake Ladoga and besieged Leningrad by 8 September, with the advancing Finnish army cutting off relief from Russia to the north by occupying the northeastern and northwestern shores of Lake Ladoga, while German and Finnish warships blockaded the city from the Baltic Sea. German troops then pressed toward the city from the south and east, and subjected the city to air and artillery attacks, but were running low on sufficient amounts of resources while facing resilient entrenched Russian defences. Moreover, Finnish military efforts would not extend toward staging direct assaults on the city, which lay outside of the scope of Finland’s war aims to maintain its earlier territorial integrity, rather than contributing to the destruction of the Soviet Union. Hopes for a rapid victory were dashed as a consequence of facing logistical problems over long distances following a successful advance, continued Soviet resistance, regardless of inflicting major losses, and unexpected weather conditions due to the onset of an early winter, which resulted in melting snow on 6 October turning dirt roads into muddy morasses, or the rasputitsa natural phenomenon, or a time without roads, which bogged down mechanised and infantry movements.
Kiev fell on 18 October. German forces in Army Group Centre launched what they had anticipated to be the final offensive toward Moscow, Operation Typhoon, on 30 September. They faced a series of elaborate defensive lines while facing problems when the seasonal rains started in October, which limited the mobility of German forces when roads turned into mud, making the terrain difficult to cross, especially over the enormous distances and the tenacious Russian defensive efforts, which General Georgi Zhukov prepared along a line of fortifications before Moscow from 10 October, stretching from Kalinin in the north to Kaluga in the south, centered at Mozhaisk, which was reinforced by reserve armies from Siberia. German forces breached this defensive line on 27 October, albeit remained weakened by logistical problems, low fuel reserves, and overcoming the difficult terrain that slowed the delivery of supplies of necessary winter gear, with the advance halting on 31 October until the supply lines could be stabilised and the ground could freeze, with the advance resuming upon the frozen ground a week later, reaching forty kilometres from Moscow, although also being subjected to cold related illnesses and mechanical failures while logistical supply lines remained tenuous.
Guderian launched an offensive toward Moscow from the south on 18 November, and eventually stalled in the face of Soviet counterattacks by 27 November, leading him to decide to withdraw to a more defensible position on 5 December with his remaining available forces The Fourth Field Army launched a separate offensive on 1 December, which was also stalled due to resolute Soviet resistance, and facing a counteroffensive on the following day. The Seventh Panzer Division advanced as far as twenty-two miles from the Kremlin reaching the outskirts of Moscow by 28 November, prior to being pushed back by a powerful counteroffensive, while only infantry reconnaissance units reached as far as eighteen miles away on 2 December. The Soviets launched a massive concerted counterattack on 5 December when the German forces were 170 kilometres southeast of Moscow, which pushed the German lines back by 7 December, culminating in Hitler issuing Directive No. 39 allowing the German forces to entrench themselves in defensive positions along the entire front, and would later retreat approximately hundred kilometres by early January 1942 while the Soviet forces permanently eliminated the threat to Moscow from Army Group Centre, with which they would continue engaging in a war of attrition. It became clear that campaign would continue throughout the winter, which caught the Germans unprepared for a winter campaign, such as by providing supplies of winter clothing, having had expected the Blitzkrieg to destroy the Soviet Union within a few months, whereas the Soviets had the advantages of shorter supply lines, plentiful amounts of personnel reserves who were motivated by the decisive factor of fighting to defend their homeland against the German war of unrestrained annihilation.
The three-pronged attack on the Soviet Union later proved to be a tactical error, in terms of dispersing simultaneous and overambitious offensives that could not be sustained. It was also essential to be in an optimal strategic position to continue the campaign in the following year, after the German offensive stalled by late November, when army group centre had reached the outskirts of Moscow and remained outside Leningrad. They lacked reserves and matériel and their lines of communication were overextended, their flanks dangerously exposed. Even without the freezing weather, the German advance would have been halted. In fact, the Germans had run out of troops by the end of October, when Hitler ordered recommencing the attack on Moscow. German military authorities had also grossly underestimated Russian reserves strength that would compensate for the earlier reverses, and had wrongly assumed that this Blitzkrieg campaign in the east would last three months. Besides, the supply situation, especially with regard to fuel, the sheer exhaustion of the troops, and the miserable weather, including autumn rain turning dirt roads into quagmire that stalled motorised advances, all made it impossible to continue the advance toward Moscow, prior to the early onset of one of the worse winters on record that left ground troops unprepared for weather conditions, which also caused problems for vehicle operations. The range of German air power likewise reached its limit in terms of acquiring resupplies, and could not attack Russian war production centres in the east. Although the Soviet military capacity was temporarily weakened by the German onslaught, the Soviet Union remained benefiting from receiving war materials from the western allies.
Further advances were temporarily suspended after 1 November due to the local climate conditions, which allowed Russians time to reinforce their defences and mobilising additional troop reserves, including from Siberia. The attack was resumed on 15 November, but it was soon hampered by fuel shortages and began sputtering, and was further undermined by heavy casualties and sheer exhaustion as the effort became overextended while the troops were fighting without significant resupply and meaningful reinforcements as three-quarters of German supply trains were put out of action by the cold and partisan raids, making any regular provision of supplies impossible. The freezing temperatures likewise undermined troops lacking protective clothing, and their weapons and vehicles failed to function. Moreover, the Soviet military had a technical advantage in their armoured units. The heavily armoured and mass produced Soviet T-34 tanks that were largely impervious to German tank and anti-tank guns, and could operate normally during freezing temperatures. Fritz Todt, the Minister for Armament and Munitions, expressed a pessimistic assessment to Hitler at a military conference on 29 November about the prospects of a military victory on the eastern front without improved weapons and equipment. Nevertheless, Hitler would not harbour any thoughts of ending this conflict as a core value of Nazi ideology, regardless of the limits of German industrial capacity.
The German offensive was broken off by 3 December, while most of the divisions of Army Group Center had fallen below fifty percent of their strength, while the army group itself had suffered a total of 350,000 casualties and had long unprotected flanks. General George Zhukov, who took over the defence of Moscow on the night of 5-6 December, launched a major counterattack, striking north and south of Moscow, with reserves from Siberia. The Germans were unprepared due to there being a lack of manpower and construction materials for defence preparations while they were overextended, mentally and physically exhausted, without supplies or winter equipment, and had dangerously vulnerable supply lines. The German advance was thus unquestionably halted, and was prevented from retreating by Hitler himself who assumed operational command. They were then forced to into a stalemate after having expected to defeat the Russians before winter, and were also unprepared for a winter campaign after also having lost more than twenty-five percent of its total fighting strength in terms of men and material until the beginning of December. The Soviets launched their counteroffensive that struck north and south of Moscow, and although the attack did not attain Stalin’s totally unrealistic objective of a triumphant general offensive on all fronts, it was a major victory for the Red Army. The Germans were forced back roughly between a hundred and two hundred and fifty kilometres, Hitler was obliged to place the entire front on the defensive while the Soviets had wrested the initiative from the Germans, facing six German armies composing Army Group Centre holding a largely static eight hundred kilometre front at the beginning of 1942 in a costly war of attrition, which compromised the German ability to make further advances in the form of pragmatic minor offensives with limited objectives, rather than staging further large scale manouevres, while the Russians maintained control over sustainable personnel and material resources, in addition to partisans harassing German forces in the occupied territories to indecisive degrees.
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