Operation Barbarossa: The Surge (Part 6)

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1:47Al Murray: 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 the gas pedal. The explosion sounded strange so close to the Panzer. Through the sight I saw a brief flash at each impact, and shell splinters would fly against the Panzer armor. We were happy to get through it. It was simply impossible to make up where the gun was.

2:20Al Murray: Soon after, we came to a village still occupied by the enemy, where you see fire from every house, but nothing devour us. Rifle bullets whistled around our turret. And that was Unteroffizier Richard von Rosen, who we've been following in his progress into Barbarossa, with the 35th Panzer Regiment. Yeah, well, the 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 Hote to the north in the centre and Panzer Group Guderian to the south, charging through the Soviet Western Front.

2:59And 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. 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 Panzergoogadaran has already been and gone.

3:40Al Murray: We need to say hello, don't we? Welcome, everyone, to We Have Ways of Make 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. I am. And this episode's called The Surge, Jim, and you are surging right there. That was you surging hard into the vast, empty spaces. I found a go in my Panzer 3. It is quite extraordinary that because the Red Army's basically been in 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.

4:11Al Murray: 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. 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 the objective. But they're now facing the Dnieper, which runs almost vertically north-south at this point, and so is a very obvious obstacle for the Red Army to defend.

4:52But the orders of the 4th Panzer Division to try and take a major bridge at the town of Stary Bichau intact. And Bichau is now called just Bichau. Stary Bichau 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 is supposed to be annihilated within 500. So they've already gone beyond that. Yeah. And so Rosen says,

5:22Al Murray: 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? Not destroying anything much. No. They're just on a surge. So they reached Stary Bichau 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 Oberstleutnant von Kossel.

6:02And he orders the lead five Panzer 3s 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. Yeah, yeah. But five Panzer Freys 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 cross directly into the Stalin line, the original border crossing, where there were no less than 65 anti-tank guns dug in along this stretch of the river.

6:38and a number of them suddenly began firing at these isolated five Panzermarkt-3s. 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.

6:53Al Murray: 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. And Leutnant Koenig's tank, he sees it turning back to the bridge, as does Feldwebel Scheider's. 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. There's smoke in the tank and all the rest of it. And, you know, whether they're there for five minutes or ten minutes, you know, Rosen can't quite sort of, can't quite tell.

7:24But suddenly the Panzer's 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're kind of able to roll down to the water's edge. And the commander, Feldwebel Gerle, is wounded and you can see him crawling towards him, kind of, you know, his wound. And Gerle and Rosen and a number of others, including the commander, Oberst Leutnant von Kossel, found themselves crouching together at the foot of the embankment.

8:01And 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. 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. night. They've only just got here. And, you know, they obviously haven't got maps of the old bunker system or anyway, whatever. There's this tunnel which leads into a bunker and they're all in it.

8:41And 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 counterattack and, you know, are going to attack and overrun the situation and come to their rescue because after all they're the advance guard yeah but it doesn't happen no

8:59Al Murray: 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 No. So they're all thinking, we've had it. Lorcs, what are we going to do? 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 Richard von Rosen.

9:33Al Murray: And they get most of the way in a wooden rowing boat. They stick close to the bridge in its shadows. Yes, it's sort of down in the reeds and they see it and it's looking a bit forlorn. But they kind of, you know, there's these great sort of columns going into the river from the bridge. and so they kind of sort of just very closely kind of row across and they manage to get over to the other side. And of course on the other side, they get back through the kind of, they're able to use the right passwords and all the rest of it. Now treated like heroes and one of the persons who's most thrilled to see them all is Oberst Eberbach.

10:04Remember him? Yes. Doesn't he take over Panzer Group West from von Schreppenberg in Normandy? Anyway, he's thrilled to see them. Rosen, however, is absolutely shaken to the court. We've lost his entire crew and has immediately said, oh, don't worry about it. And, you know, sent off to be a gunner to another. But he's also promoted to Unter Offizie and given the Iron Cross second class, which he's absolutely bunked about. And he also gets the 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. Limey. Isn't that amazing?

10:34Yeah, that is amazing. They're on the banks of the Dnieper, for goodness sake, nearly 600 kilometres from the border. Yeah. But then he's straight back into it, isn't he? Well, no. Okay, so he's not. This is the point. He's not straight back into it. 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, you know, organized it. So this is the more methodical attack, which takes five days to organize.

11:11You know, so they do overwhelm the Red Army troops on the other side. And, you know, Rosen sees the Luftwaffe helping and watches, particularly he watches an ME110 as a stutter, a hammer, 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 Hoffeber, who's one of Rosen's crew, you know, he 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 lindenburger you know it's pretty devastating

11:50Al Murray: stuff yeah he describes it this is the first thing of all it's a whole campaign to see comrades with whom one had set 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 that what they've actually taken on well i would argue that he's very much the light motif for the entire experience yeah yeah yeah and from then on the russians are more organized 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 this post it's tons 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 bitch off and vehicles get hit one panzer's fresh out of the work 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 friction and wear and tear.

13:02Al Murray: And it's really beginning to bite because this is what happens if you're hundreds of kilometres from home. And 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 3s. Russian oil and petrol and the long distance runs had taken their toll. I mean, that's amazing, isn't it? 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 well it's much lower octane that's the thing yeah yeah rough stuff yeah and you know and just and 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 yeah in the entire company that's it yeah 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 ah and surrounded the pioneers there so they have to get going and head backwards to wreck rescue the situation so they travel through the night picking picking up newly laid mines as they do so hmm as we came to realize since the fighting around the propisk bridges the struggle was now becoming fiercer so it's getting much stickier yes it is i mean we've got lots of german perspective here jim what's the soviet perspective 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 the Germans are, you know, doing exactly what they've done so far, or perhaps less so in Poland when there's, you know, quite a finished article, but certainly what they've done in Scandinavia and the Low Countries, in France and Balkans, you know, which is this notion of the rapid Keschelschlacht on a grand scale.

15:00It's known as Bavaganskrieg, 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 the Russians, the Red Army, is absolutely, it's not regaining its balance, 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, you know, in the southwestern front, in army groups south in Ukraine, for example, Kripenos and Zhukov have quite successfully managed to pull back 125 miles.

15:44And 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 know that the Germans are invading the Soviet Union and they're trying to do it. So it's sort of 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.

16:21But there is a case 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 difference. Now, where you have these nodal points, you know, these are crossroads of railway, marshalling yards, and limited roads, and all the rest of it, and river crossings. There tends to be cities, such as Minsk or Brest-Litovsk or Smolensk or whatever it might be, or Bichov. 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.

16:57So 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 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 re-engaged 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.

17:48You know, which I would say is going some, wouldn't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've got their finger out there. But it's easier to do that the closer you are to your own railhead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Every further 20 miles or 20 kilometres, it's going to get harder and harder and harder. That's the problem.

18:04Al Murray: 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. These numbers are staggering. By the 9th of July, the Red Army has already lost 11 ,700 tanks. They're mainly the BTs and the T-26s, as well as 19 ,000 guns, artillery pieces and mortars. And by the end of the month, the total loss of aircraft will 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.

18:44Not one?

18:44Al Murray: Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. And in fact, actually, although all the airfield construction had been sent west in the first six months 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, 80 in Estonia, and five on the Romanian border, and get the hell out of there. And they do. So 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. And that they can kind of, you know, live to fight another day, effectively.

19:28Yeah, yeah. And then on the 15th of July, of course, comes the fall of Smolensk, which is belarusia's second city and only 200 miles from moscow so you know it's just 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 news of this is spreading all around the world i mean you know everyone's everyone's following this soviet organization is 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 vokenshaw films and and all the rest of it and you know britain and America and the Western Allies are all kind of sort of looking aghast at what is going on.

20:07And what you're looking at, of course, is the map, and you're just seeing these huge arrows frosting 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?

20:28Al Murray: The Soviet response after the break. We'll see you in a tick.

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23:26Al Murray: Welcome back to We Have Ways of Make You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, of course. And here we are, Jim. The enormous arrows are 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 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 Klaus Witzian 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.

24:01Al Murray: All of that. But these blokes would have all studied Klaus Witz, wouldn't they? They absolutely would. But I think it's also the arrow for us show on the map where they have reached. but it doesn't really mean that they've conquered it. No. What's behind? No. You know, think of it like 30 Corps going through Holland. It's like a little finger. Yeah. And the finger sort of extends either side of the immediate road, but in the hinterland, they haven't got control. No. Because this is Pripet Marsh and it's boggy or whatever because 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.

24:40and this is all about the drive. 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. Yeah, you need it to go forward, yeah. You need to go forward. So, you know, that's what you're waiting for the infantry to catch up, but the logistical effort has all been with the surge. So, you know, the infantry that are following up behind are not quite equipped to do what they need to do. So suddenly 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 elan that's seen them sigh through these Western regions and through the crust of the Soviet Union is now starting to cause really major problems.

25:29Problems which were starting to reveal themselves in Richard von Rosen's account. And just to be actually clear here, I mean, no one would deny the army group centre's encirclement of General Pavlov's Western Front was a catastrophe for the Soviet Union, but it isn't exactly one-sided. 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 offensive thrust.

26:13Al Murray: 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 exhausted. Their kit's exhausted. And to fight like this, you have to take losses. And we've seen with Richard von Rosen, you know, they're down to five Panzers in their company. So it's costly doing this as well. As dramatic as it appears, it's incredibly costly. And the tip of the spear, as sharp as it might have been, is getting blunter. You know, Panzergadurin is 500 miles from where it set off. I know. Can you imagine? I mean, that's huge distance in such a short period of time.

26:45Al Murray: It is extraordinary, the distances. I mean, London to Edinburgh is 400 miles, isn't it? A modern army wouldn't be able to move that quickly. 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 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 an earlier episode. Basically, it's the point at which you stop because you've got to, because you can't do anything else.

27:20You can no longer operate in the way that you want to operate because your supplies are so stretched.

27:24Al Murray: And you've taken too many knocks. Everyone's exhausted. You've got as far as you can go on what you set off with. And Guderian is particularly guilty of this, isn't it? And I think this is really interesting because... Yeah, yeah, he's dreadful. Well, because he's the poster boy for armoured warfare, isn't he? He's supposedly the genius that figured it all out. Well, he was a genius then, but he's got too big for his boots. He now thinks that, you know, shouldn't have listened to all these sort of boring farts who don't understand stuff. You know, even before the end of June, Phil Marshall von Bock, who is the commander-in-chief of Armour Group Centre, has had to put on the brakes to allow the masses to catch up.

28:00But Daring just ignores this. And at one point, he even flies over to see Hote to discuss the matter and plot to disregard such orders. Because he knows that for success, they need an encirclement. But this could only happen if Hote's Panzer Group keeps pacing the north. So Hote agrees with this. And then there's a point later where they said, we need to come back because there's this danger that troops in the rear, you know, left behind Red Army soldiers are going to cause problems behind you. So Guderian takes off in a plane and does a reconnaissance route himself. And he goes around and he goes, well, I couldn't see anyone.

28:34Stop 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, you know, and he views this 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 don't because Hitler insists on halting them 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, a terrible error of judgment and a massive mistake, and he's determined not to do it again.

29:10On one level, he's right. They do need to keep the momentum. The problem is, and this is just the problem that comes to time and time again, they don't have enough to do what they need to do. Yeah. But they're in it now, so what do you do? Do you just keep going? Do you keep ploughing on and insisting that you can cut yet more sways? Well, you can, but eventually it's going to run out. I mean, 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.

29:48Yeah, exactly. This is what would happen if you go to Moscow at this point. There's not going to be anything left. There's no point. You know, because you just can't sustain it. And this is what Guderian is not accepting. Yeah. 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 Labour countries. And von Bock had absolutely railed 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.

30:24but he also understands that frontline troops win battles, but logistics win wars. Do you remember General Ritter von Thoma? Yeah. He was captured at Alame. Yes. You know, in 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.

30:48Al Murray: Well, yes, it's the more long-winded way of saying amateurs taught tactics, professionals taught logistics, which is the thing they say nowadays. Right. But Guderian is forgetting this in his kind of, we've got to keep going, we've got to keep going. It's all about the thrust. 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 gasket. At some point, you know, your panzers are going to grind down, even if they're not hit by the Russians. And then you're not going to have enough of a force to be able to do what you need to do.

31:16Al Murray: It's interesting, though, because they are sensitive to this, aren't they? Yeah. But because German officers are also headstrong, there's this culture that you take matters into your own hands. You know, initiative 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 ahead as well, isn't he? Yeah. 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?

31:46Al Murray: 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 it's getting longer and longer and longer which means it's hard to maintain this uh endless rolling momentum because getting the stuff forward is more difficult well because it takes longer to get it there yeah yeah yeah so everything's slowing down and then there's a greater territory that you've then got to defend to maintain that effort yeah yeah you know 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.

32:17It's not by a long shot. Yeah. And there's this incredible army group sent a memo which is issued on the 3rd of July. Minsk was on the 9th. You know, Simulensk was on the 15th of July. This is on the 3rd of July. So this is just 11 days after the launch of Barbarossa.

32:38Al Murray: The problem appearing from now on in its full magnitude, which must be the constant value 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 distance had relatively little effect, the early renewal of the advance by the Panzer groups, with an objective over 500 kilometres away, will have the result that one 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 Penzer groups.

33:19Al Murray: So there you have it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The front's too far away and the rear's not secure. So the front isn't a front if it's not secure. That's the point. It's false. It's phony. It's a charade. And nor is your rear if it's not secure. So the front's not secure. Their rear's not secure. So your rear's not a rear and your front's not front.

33:41Yeah, yeah, exactly.

33:42Al Murray: Yeah, they've made a real problem for themselves, but people aren't willing to hear this. So Guderian is ordered to meet General Joachim Lemelson. There's another name, another one of his names. He's ordered to hold the gap, isn't he? So 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, Panzer Group Guderian. Yeah. And he's told to kind of hold the gap. Yeah. 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.

34:18Al Murray: Yeah. Just ignore it. Yeah. Yeah. 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 basically they're tabbing, aren't they? 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 kilometers. To do that once is possible. To do that, having already had numerous marches of 30 to 40 kilometers with more to come, that is something else. It makes it tremendous.

34:53Al Murray: To do it, no one gets to sleep at night. Rather, it starts at 2 or 3 a.m. and lasts until evening, sometimes 10 p.m. 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. Yeah, it's horrendous. And just to really stretch here, the infantry that he's talking about, they're on foot. Bloody hard work, carrying as much of their kit as they have to. And Soviet roads are terrible. Richard von Rosen noticed that the roll barn was basically a mud road when he first entered the Soviet Union.

35:29Al Murray: 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. Too well looked after. Too well looked after. They've grown soft. Exactly. And there's an officer in the 6th Infantry Division who says, our German horses needed long rest period, heavy meals, and food for them was fairly obtainable in quantity. They had been ideal for France, but for a hindrance for this campaign. I mean, that's pretty damning when you've got 625 ,000 horses, isn't it? Well, supposedly the great advantage of your horse is you don't need petrol.

36:03Al Murray: You don't need petrol. You don't need lubricants. It cuts a corner, doesn't it? They'll just eat what's on the roadside, but it's not doing the trick. So the Ninth 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 Gros Transporte, which is the supply organization, basically. And this is like the Royal Army Service Corps, but in the Wehrmacht.

36:47Yeah. You know, with its oversensitive and needy horses. and just I love that I tell these horses are kind of you know too refined and it's a bit like they're sort of you know that their machinery is too refined for the job and over-engineered but obviously you know it's entirely insufficient for substandard roads on a supply line which is now in excess of 400 kilometers because every time you advance 10 kilometers that's 20 kilometers because you've got to get 20 kilometers then you've got to go back again so 40 kilometers is 80 kilometres, 100 kilometres, 200 kilometres, and so on, because you've got to go back and forth.

37:25And, you know, by the second week 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. Yeah. And it is true that amazing things are being done to widen the railway gauge and the railway track to Minsk, but they're now beyond Minsk and that already great distance 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 Panzergroep Guderian is 275 kilometres beyond Minsk to the southeast.

38:13So how do you go from Minsk to Panzergroep Guderian? where you have to go cross-country, but there are any roads. The roads there are are dirt tracks, and the territory hasn't been secured. So a proportion of that supply lines is going to be ambushed by Red Army troops who don't know where they are or Belarusian nationals or, I don't know, NKVD working construction battalions with guns or whatever. So, as you say, the problems just escalate and escalate and escalate. And, of course, part of the plan that we were looking at, where General Paulus had been saying, no, no, no, no, do it again, and General Georg Thomas, from the economic point of view, had been going, no, no, no, no, that's far too negative, look at it again.

39:01So they had assumed that they were going to capture large amounts of Soviet stock. But not only have the Soviets been more efficient than expected in sending rolling stock east, there was also now the Stavka's scorched earth policy to contend with.

39:16Al Murray: Yes. Which includes smashing railway lines and railway installations. 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 Großtransportenraum, their losses are mounting. They're down by 25 % by the second week of July. And that, you know, just as we talked, 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 difficulties.

39:53Al Murray: And the quartermaster general is another old friend of the show, General Edvard Wagner, 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, 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 front-plane troops. So at this point, The campaign is only eight days old. That's, you know, a week.

40:32Yeah. Yeah. So this is a trouble. Okay, if you want to bring it down to kind of, you know, one line, you know, what is the problem? I haven't got enough. Yeah. I haven't got enough. Not enough of anything. Just think about this. Okay, so the whole German USP is Bavaganskrieg and the Kesselschlacht. Yeah. This idea of you hit them hard at the Shverpunk to 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. Yeah. They're going to annihilate the Red Army within 500 kilometres.

41:10So off they go. 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. 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. Because all those problems that you're talking about are going to compound themselves.

41:50They're only, only going to get worse. 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.

42:05Al Murray: Yes, 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 has to keep going. 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 cut adrift. and the supply lines are insufficiently protected, which is why there's the talk of robbing the front line to cover the rear.

42:52Al Murray: You know, you've got to rob Peter to pay Paul. And from Bok 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 scale of the task, I'd argue as well. You know, how many there are. And that word, catching them is impossible. It's impossible. It is not remotely possible to do what they need to do. They can't do it. When he says it's impossible, that means it simply isn't possible at all. It really, really isn't. So they've got a massive problem on their hand.

43:35And then look at this report from the 3rd Panzer Division. The 3rd Panzer Division is the one that was rivalling 4th Panzer Division with Richard von Rosen for the vanguard of Panzer Group Guderian. And it said, unarmored 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. This is written at the end of June.

44:07Al Murray: You know, it's not July yet. Well, this means that 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 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 imagine that spreading osmosis-like through everyone but the panzer spearheads.

44:52Yeah. 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 forest of Belarusia or Ukraine, open plains of Ukraine or whatever. You know, it's just, they've ploughed great distances, but they haven't really conquered. Yeah. And that's the truth of it. 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.

45:34But it's a trick. It's an illusion, because they haven't really got all this territory. No. They will do in the fullness of time, 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 them rebalancing, you've got Lend-East coming from the Americans and from Britain, and you've got an enemy which is going to be revitalized and reinvigorated 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. And as we mentioned, Smolensk, this major city in Belarusia, gets captured on the 15th of July.

46:15And there's shock in Moscow, there's 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 bow, 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 the figures that are emerging by the fall of Smolensk on the 15th of July is just staggering.

46:47Al Murray: Yeah. Well, yes. So on the 16th of July, General Emelsen, 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. There's nothing left. And they're not alone. So from starting the campaign with 169 panzers, which actually isn't very many, 4th Panzer Division von Rosen, who have been following, Richard von Rosen, Unteroffizier 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.

47:29Al Murray: 7th Panzer Division, which is Rommel's old crew, they start off with three, because 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 1st 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.

48:13Al Murray: And they've lost. I mean, absolutely amazing. In the first three weeks, personnel losses amount to 102 ,588 men. these are from from the spearhead as well from the bit doing the work well the 17 panzer divisions i mean they're not all by any stretch of the imagination but let's say you know 60 percent from the panzer divisions i mean that's a that's a huge bite yeah it certainly you know 100 102 that's that's you know what's that's like seven divisions yeah yeah gone and these are the these are the people who you've invested your uh effort in and expertise and uh training and they're gone They're out of the picture.

48:53They're the elites. Yeah, yeah.

48:54Al Murray: I think probably, if you're listening, the penny's dropping here. By the 15th of July and the fall of Smolensk, 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 to a head because they haven't got what they need to do any of those things.

49:43Al Murray: Either of those tasks. But this is the truth. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Not of anything for a country quite so vast, quite so challenging and quite so inhospitable. Yeah. But in the next episode, we're going to leave these strategic dilemmas to one side for a little bit. Yeah. And we're going to follow in the footsteps of just one German soldier, an NCO in Army Group South, 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 the Army Command and what they decide to do about it and how they try to resolve it.

50:38Amazing stuff, isn't it? Yeah, it's incredible.

50:40Al Murray: If you want to hear those right away, go to our Patreon and become a Patreon member. We have ways to make 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. Audiobooks too. We will see you very soon. Thanks for listening. Cheerio. Cheerio.

51:11Al Murray: Hello, Goalhanger History listeners. This is Marina Hyde and Richard Osman from The Rest is Entertainment. Hello, everybody. Every Thursday and Friday, we are reacting to the pop culture phenomenon that is the celebrity traitors. We'll be on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. And Marina and I are digging into all the castles' twists and turns, giving our expert opinion on what should happen next. Now, which historical figure do we think would be the greatest traitor? It's tempting to think of an actual traitor. Yeah. A Guy Fawkes or a Kim Philby. But then all of those are traitors who got caught.

51:42Philby had a great run, though. He did have a great run. I think he could probably see off, you know, Joanne. Yes, maybe. And probably sort of where he ended up in Moscow is probably roughly like where the contestants have to spend every night as well. So maybe there's some sort of equivalence. So if you're watching Celebrity Traitors, don't forget to tune into our reaction episodes every Thursday and Friday night at 10pm. Find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.