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After the validity of the argument was considered certified, an attempt was made to use the same military model in the two world wars. In the First, the Schlieffen Plan was a failed example of the approach, and the Tannenberg offensive, in the east, a success, although a minor one that, after the defeat of , would serve – along with the arrival of new means, such as the Panzer – as an excuse to return to the same approach in , this time with resounding success. That year Poland fell, the next, France in just six weeks , and then, Yugoslavia and Greece. Everything was ready for the great confrontation, the invasion of the Soviet Union . According to the historian Karl-Heinz Frieser, however, the Blitzkrieg was a mirage that had achieved its successes not because the theory was good, but thanks to the concrete initiatives of prominent commanders on the ground; and the feeling of superiority that it generated regarding its application in the Soviet Union ended in disaster. Even so, the first months were a succession of resounding successes.
The large stock exchanges of Bialistok-Minsk, Smolensko, Luga, Kiev or Viazma-Briansk, to name just a few (see Glantz, D. (): Clash of the Titans . Madrid: Desperta Ferro Ediciones ), yielded hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners, but the “annihilation” had not been enough, and the operational victories did not lead to the expected strategic victory, the Red Army was not only going to continue fighting, but also B2B Email List counterattacked Moscow. Russian prisoners captured at Vyazma-Bryansk, up to , according to German sources, waiting to be transferred to a prison camp. Russian, November , Both contenders faced the year in a new way. For Stalin's Red Army, in the shadow of the success against Moscow, it was necessary to unleash as many counterattacks as possible, which would lead, among others, to the second battle of Kharkiv ; For the Wehrmacht , the units had to be regrouped, resupplied and reinforced to return to the attack, but this time it was going to be on a narrower front, that of the southern sector, and with different premises.
The basis of German operations in the summer of was the Führer's Directive No. (April , ), from which we can extract two fundamental ideas: that the Germans considered that the Soviet Union had suffered a profound erosion : “The enemy has suffered severe casualties in men and material. In his effort to exploit what he considered to be initial successes, he has spent, during the winter, the bulk of the reserves planned for subsequent operations”; and that to defeat it definitively it was necessary to destroy its resources: "Our objective is to destroy all the defensive potential that the Soviets still have, and isolate them, as much as possible, from the most important nuclei of their war industry." As far as biological attrition is concerned, it is important to quote a statement by Reinhard Gehlen, recently arrived at the front of the Fremde Heere Ost (foreign armies east), the information organization that was in charge of evaluating the capacity of the Red Army, who stated before the Kriegsakademie (war academy), on June , , that: “The adversary can no longer allow itself, without consequences, to suffer casualties such as those in the battles of Bialistok, Vyazma and Bryansk. He will not be able, for the second time, to send reserves to the attack in the same quantity as those used in the winter of -
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發表於 2024-3-12 17:27:44