How Germany and Japan Could've Won (Part II)

Continued From Part I

Operation Barbarossa — A Re-Enactment 70 Years Later

SPECIAL BULLETIN  — from Radio Berlin a Special Report!

June 22, 2011   7:00 AM

We are sorry to interrupt your programming. It is the German Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, speaking:

"... At this moment a march is taking place that for its extent, compares with the greatest the world has ever seen. I have decided again to place the fate and future of the Reich and our people in the hands of the soldiers ..."

Just before dawn today the mightiest battle in the annals of war has began. Hitler's Wehrmacht has launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. The Russian expanse has been traversed, over a nearly 1,000-mile front, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, with a blitzkrieg invasion force consisting of 3.3 million German soldiers, 3,300 tanks, including several Panzer divisions, and 600,000 other motorized and armored vehicles.

Army Group North is headed toward the Baltic to protect the iron ore shipments from Sweden and capture Leningrad; Army Group Center, led by German Panzer General Heinz Guderian is aimed like a dagger toward Moscow; Army Group South points to the Ukraine and the Caucasus to capture the Soviet oil fields...

The Soviet army is suffering heavily, several divisions of the Red Army have been completely annihilated, over 2,000 Soviet planes destroyed on the ground, hundreds of tanks wiped out ... Byelorussia overrun ... within four days nearly 200 miles of Soviet territory will be overrun by the Wehrmacht!

This is what actually occurred exactly 70 years ago on June 22, 1941, and I wrote the brief and unequal imitation above in the style of Orson Wells' radio broadcast of War of the Worlds that also took place many years ago. It is intended only as a "Today in History," news capsule! Hitler's quote is accurate, as are the figures (although rounded up) and the brief description as to what happened on that day.

The invasion of the USSR, Operation Barbarossa, was one of history's turning points, and it affects us to this day.

The Wehrmacht Order of Battle was as follows:

Army Group North was commanded by Field Marshall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and its objective was to capture the Baltic seaports and converge in Leningrad.

Army Group Center was led by Field Marshall Fedor von Bock and it aimed to destroy the Soviet nerve center itself, Moscow.

Army Group South headed by Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt was to overrun the Ukraine, capture Kiev, and conquer the Caucasus region.

For Hitler there were several main objectives. The two most immediate goals for him were in the southern and northern flanks. He wanted his Panzers in the South to capture the Ukraine, the breadbasket of the USSR and the protection of the Rumanian Oil fields. Victory in the Ukraine and Kiev would also open the way to the Soviet oil fields of Baku in the Caucasus, Grozny in Chechnya, and the Caspian sea.

In the North, Hitler wanted his army to protect the Baltic Sea route through which Swedish iron ore, vital for Germany's armament industry, was transported. Leningrad had to be captured to protect this northern sea route and Scandinavia.

But Hitler's generals were adamant that Moscow had to be captured both for strategic and psychological reasons. Hitler wanted the Center campaign to yield as to accomplish his immediate objectives in the north and south. By July 30, since victory on all fronts was not achievable, Hitler wanted Army Group Center to slow down and become a tactical reserve for either Army Group North or South. And on August 18, Hitler issued Directive 34, which ordered the Wehrmacht's main objective to be the southern mission. Despite the objections of Field Marshall Walter von Brauchitsh, the Army Chief of Staff, the Southern army, reinforced by General Heinz Guderian's Panzers, rolled south. The thrust was succesful and Kiev, capital of the Ukraine, capitulated to Generals Guderian and Rundstedt. Hitler turned down Stalin's peace fellers.

But Hitler now was more confident and he went along with his generals' wishes in the Center theater of war. On September 6, Hitler changed course and ordered his army to capture Moscow. By October 6, 1941, barely four months after the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union had lost 3 million men, more than the entire Red Army possessed at the beginning of the war, but the Russians kept coming. The German High Command mistakenly believed that the USSR had no further reserves and that Moscow could be conquered before the winter set in. They were wrong on both accounts. Fresh Siberian troops were moving west.

These Siberian reinforcements were the seasoned troops who had defeated the Japanese in Mongolia at Khalkin Gol and Lake Khasan at the prelude of World War II, and this army was led by the best Russian general, Field Marshall Georgi Zhukov. The Battle for Moscow was stalled, and by December 5, 1941, Stalin had given permission for the reinforced Red Army under Zhukov to begin the offensive. The Wehrmacht soldiers and war machine were shocked by this offensive, not used to the Soviet winter and -40 degree Fahrenheit temperatures!

Because Hitler sent his Panzers east (photo, right), he ceased his operations in the west, and did not invade and conquer England with whom he was already at war. Had he not launched Operation Barbarossa, he could have turned the German Army west, ordered Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of the British Isles — and the United Kingdom could have been history!

The United States, eventually, would have been attacked from the east by the Germans, now possessing not just U-Boats but the captured mighty Royal Navy, and from the west by the Japanese (as in fact happened in the Pacific at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941).

Stalin, the red communist Czar, who hated the capitalist West, was ready for this. He was waiting in the wings for Great Britain and the West to be exhausted by the German onslaught. He was preparing for war by the spring of 1942 or autumn at the latest, but he was not ready in June of 1941. He was hoping that by the autumn of 1942, the U.S. would be fighting alone against the Germans and the Japanese and would have been drained of resources. Of course, Stalin expected the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy to be exhausted as well from the loss of men, equipment, and resources before he turned on them!

So the USSR would have been ready for the kill — i.e., the communist conquest of the globe — after the rest of the combatants had annihilated each other. After all, this had been the dream of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin — world communist revolution!

Ponder history. The history of the entire world might have turned out very differently had Hitler marched east, rather than west, because of his mad fixation with the need for lebensraum (living space) for the German people, the Thousand Year Third Reich — and Operation Barbarossa!