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Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941: The German Offensives on the Flanks and the Third Soviet Counteroffensive, 25 August-10 September 1941
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Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941: The German Offensives on the Flanks and the Third Soviet Counteroffensive, 25 August-10 September 1941
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Overview
At dawn on 10 July 1941, massed tanks and motorized infantry of German Army Group Center’s Second and Third Panzer Groups crossed the Dnepr and Western Dvina Rivers, beginning what Hitler and most German officers and soldiers believed would be a triumphal march on Moscow, the Soviet capital. Less than three weeks before, on 22 June Hitler had unleashed his Wehrmacht’s massive invasion of the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa, which sought to defeat the Soviet Red Army, conquer the country, and unseat its Communist ruler, Josef Stalin. Between 22 June and 10 July, the Wehrmacht advanced up to 500 kilometers into Soviet territory, killed or captured up to one million Red Army soldiers, and reached the western banks of the Western Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, by doing so satisfying the premier assumption of Plan Barbarossa that the Third Reich would emerge victorious if it could defeat and destroy the bulk of the Red Army before it withdrew to safely behind those two rivers. With the Red Army now shattered, Hitler and most Germans expected total victory in a matter of weeks.
The ensuing battles in the Smolensk region frustrated German hopes for quick victory. Once across the Dvina and Dnepr Rivers, a surprised Wehrmacht encountered five fresh Soviet armies. Quick victory eluded the Germans. Instead, Soviet forces encircled in Mogilev and Smolensk stubbornly refused to surrender, and while they fought on, during July, August, and into early September, first five and then a total of seven newly mobilized Soviet armies struck back viciously at the advancing Germans, conducting multiple counterattacks and counterstrokes, capped by two major counteroffensives that sapped German strength and will. Despite immense losses in men and materiel, these desperate Soviet actions derailed Operation Barbarossa. Smarting from countless wounds inflicted on his vaunted Wehrmacht, even before the fighting ended in the Smolensk region, Hitler postponed his march on Moscow and instead turned his forces southward to engage “softer targets” in the Kiev region. The “derailment” of the Wehrmacht at Smolensk ultimately became the crucial turning point in Operation Barbarossa.
This groundbreaking study, now significantly expanded, exploits a wealth of Soviet and German archival materials, including the combat orders and operational of the German OKW, OKH, army groups, and armies and of the Soviet Stavka, the Red Army General Staff, the Western Main Direction Command, the Western, Central, Reserve, and Briansk Fronts, and their subordinate armies to present a detailed mosaic and definitive account of what took place, why, and how during the prolonged and complex battles in the Smolensk region from 10 July through 10 September 1941. The structure of the study is designed specifically to appeal to both general readers and specialists by a detailed two-volume chronological narrative of the course of operations, accompanied by a third volume and a fourth, containing archival maps and an extensive collection of specific orders and reports translated verbatim from Russian. The maps, archival and archival-based, detail every stage of the battle.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781908916785 |
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Publisher: | Helion & Company Ltd. |
Publication date: | 05/20/2022 |
Series: | Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941 Volume 2 , #2 |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 456 |
File size: | 33 MB |
Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations vi
List of Maps vii
List of Tables x
Abbreviations xii
Preface 14
1 Introduction 17
Context 17
Army Group Center's Achievements, 22 June-6 August 1941 19
Army Group Center's Problems by 6 August 1941 21
Soviet Problems, 22 June-6, August 1941 24
Army Group Center's Achievements, 6-24 August 1941 25
German Problems, 6-24 August 1941 27
Competing Strategies in Late August 1941 29
2 The Northern Flank: Group Stumme's Advance to Toropets, 22-28 August 1941 31
Context 31
22nd Army's Encirclement and Soviet Command Confusion, 22-24 August 35
The German Pursuit To Toropets, 26-28 August 42
3 German Strategic Planning and Jockeying for Position along the Desna River, 22-24 August 1941 54
German Strategic Planning: The Tilt Toward Kiev, 22-25 August 55
The Operational Lull: Jockeying for Position along the Desna River, 22-24 August 68
German Preparations for the Kiev Offensive, 22-24 August 94
4 Second Panzer Group's Advance across the Desna River, The Stavka's Offensive Plan, and Group Stumme's Advance to Andreapol' and Zapadnaia Dvina, 25 August-9 September 1941 103
Guderian's Advance Across The Desna River, 25-28 August 103
The Stavka's Offensive Plan 129
The Northern Flank: Group Stumme's Advance to Andreapol' and Zapadnaia Dvina, 29 August-9 September 139
5 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Western Front's Dukhovshchina Offensive, Preliminaries and the First Stage, 25-31 August 1941 162
Preliminaries, 25-27 August 162
The First Stage, 28-31 August 187
6 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The "western Front's Dukhovshchina Offensive, The Second Stage, 1-10 September 1941 230
The Western Front's General Assault, 1-3 September 230
1 September 234
The Western Front's General Assault, 4-5 September 278
Dénouement, 6-9 September 295
The Western Front on the Defense, 10 September 300
Problems and Critiques 310
7 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Reserve Front's El'nia Offensive, 30 August-10 September 1941 322
Planning and Preliminaries, 24-29 August 322
24th Army's Assault, 30 August-3 September 332
The German Withdrawal, 4-5 September 347
Postscript 354
Conclusions: Dukhovshchina and El'nia Compared 358
8 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Briansk Front's Roslavl'-Novozybkov Offensive, the First Stage, 29 August-I September 1941 364
The Situation On 29 August 364
Planning and Operations, 29-31 August 371
The Briansk Front's Forces and Problems 375
The Briansk Front's Offensive Planning and Operations, 31 August-1 September 400
9 The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Briansk Front's Roslavl'-Novozybkov Offensive, the Second Stage, 2-14 September 1941 425
The General Counteroffensive, 2-6 September 425
Postscript: The Road to Kiev, 7-14 September 488
Conclusions 497
10 Conclusions 504
The Missions of Operation Barbarossa 504
German Strategy and Operations 506
Postwar Critiques 512
Soviet Strategy and Operations 515
The Red Army's Problems 525
Comparative Losses 527
The Soldiers and their Commanders 542
Summary Judgments 545
What's New about the Battle for Smolensk 546
11 Photographs of Commanders 550
German 550
Soviet 552
Appendices
A Comparative Orders of Battle, I August-I September 1941 554
B The Numerical Composition of Soviet Forces in the Battle of Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 567
C The Numerical Composition of Enemy Groupings Operating in the Sector of the Groupings of Soviet Forces at the Beginning of the Battle for Smolensk 568
D The Red Army's Personnel Losses during, the Battle for Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 569
E Army Group Center's Personnel Losses during the Battle for Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 (A Soviet Perspective) 570
F Army Group Center's Losses in Weapons and Equipment during the Battle for Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 (A Soviet Perspective) 571
G The Composition of the Pinsk Military Flotilla in the Battle for Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941 572
H The Red Army's Strength on 30 September 1941 573
Selective Annotated Bibliography 574
Index 582