World War II History Volume IV 2: German and Soviet Forces Deployment Before the Outbreak of the Soviet-German War

Chapter II: Deployment Before the Battle of the German Invasion of the Soviet Union

June 22, 1941, was a special day in the history of World War II, the most powerful blitzkrieg fell from the sky, quickly swept across the land of the Soviet Union, millions of tiger and wolf divisions, thousands of tanks, thousands of aircraft, overwhelmed the earth, rushed to kill, to create a greater disaster of aggression on the human world. The aggressors were unprepared, caught off guard, suffered heavy losses, were forced to retreat, their land was lost, and the people suffered.

Section 1 Fascist German Army

In the previous volume, we have already introduced the pre-war preparations of the two sides of aggression and counter-aggression, one side has already polished the blade of aggression and only waited for the order of its headquarters to slash and kill them, while the other side has the wrong guiding ideology of anti-aggression, is wrongly prepared, and is still in a state of ignorance and hesitation. Still the old rule, we will focus on the specific campaign deployment and intentions of both sides of the war. As we have already described in the previous volume, Fascist Germany equipped the most powerful blitzkrieg with 4.6 million troops, more than 4,000 tanks, about 4,000 aircraft, and a huge amount of other weapons, and if you add the minions army, the total strength reaches 5.5 million people.

Barbarossa Plan

The fascist German army and its servant armies were fully deployed on a front of thousands of kilometers from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean, of which on the two-thousand-kilometer front from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea, the fascist German army deployed its main army: "central", "north" and "south" three army groups, according to the "Barbarossa" plan, their attacks will be directed in the main direction of Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, the three main directions of the Soviet territory. Their course of action was still surprise attacks, deep breakthroughs, high-speed advances, and rapid rushes, striving to eliminate the main soviet forces in the western part of the Soviet Union, not giving them the opportunity to reorganize their defenses, and seize the above three places. The Germans eventually advanced to the so-called AA line (Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line). To the west of the line is about the rich land of the Soviet Union , the main political and economic region , and the Urals and Siberia to the east of the line are about the barren lands of the Soviet Union , and the fascist intention is to seize the rich lands of the Soviet Union, drive the remnants of the defeated Soviet Union to the barren lands, and then eliminate them by other means (air raids on the Ural industrial areas, etc.), while the main army has completed its task of invading the Soviet Union and switched to other directions. This was the whole idea of the fascist German invasion of the Soviet Union.

The western part of the Soviet Union was located in the vast Eastern European Plains, so the overall terrain was flat, and there were occasionally some highland hills, but the plains were covered by dense forests and large swamps, which adversely affected mechanized operations. There are large swamps from Leningrad to the north to the whole of Belarus in the south, and the famous Polesyye swamp (i.e., the Pripyat River, located at the junction of Belarus and Ukraine) became the natural dividing line between the two army groups of the German army "central" and "south", and everyone deliberately avoided this difficult place. Here we must also remember two rivers: the West Dvina (Daugava) and the Dnieper, both of which originate in the highlands west of Moscow, the West Dvina river passes through Vitebsk, Polotsk, Taugavpils, and finally joins the sea; the Dnieper flows through Smolensk, Mogilev, Gomel, Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, and enters the sea at Hersson, of which south of Kiev it forms a large bend. The two rivers sandwich the famous ancient battlefield of Smolensk in their upper reaches, which is the shortcut to Moscow. The fascist Germans expected to annihilate the main Soviet forces in the area west of these two rivers, prevent the Soviets from reorganizing their defenses here, and lay the foundation for the next operational objectives.

Marshal Bock's "Central" Army Group was tasked with attacking Moscow, and it was also the most powerful. It has two army groups (4th and 9th army groups) and two tank groups (2nd and 3rd tank groups), a total of 50 divisions, including 9 tank divisions and 7 motorized divisions, totaling more than 1.45 million troops, 2156 tanks and artillery. Here we talk about the formation of the tank group, in the Western Front, the fascist German army was organized into a Klest tank group, and now in the invasion of the Soviet Union, such a tank group has become four, the "central" army group has two, and the fascist assault force, the tank motorized unit, will be mostly incorporated into these four clusters to achieve a larger concentration of this assault force.

The "Central" Army Group was deployed in the five-hundred-kilometer border area from Goudap (Suwałki) to Włodawa, opposite the Soviet Special Military District to the West, which apparently guarded a particularly unfavorable defensive line, namely the Białystok Salient, and the first action of the "Central" Army Group was to break through the two wings of this salient, to attack Minsk at a rapid pace, and then to encircle and annihilate the Soviet Western Special Military District west of Minsk. Specifically, the 2nd Tank Group and the 4th Army, the 3rd Tank Group and the 9th Army that followed it broke through the defensive line from the north and south and encircled the Białystok salient, respectively. Still as the old rule, tank groups rush at high speed in front, disrupt the enemy's defense system, enter the depth of the battle, and open up forward passages, while the group army follows close behind, responsible for encircling and annihilating the enemy and reaping the results of the battle. Next, the "Central" army group will attack the area of the West Dvina and upper Dnieper rivers between Polotsk and Mogilev, capturing Smolensk without giving the enemy a chance to reorganize its defenses. As for the next step, it was supposed to take Moscow, but the Barbarossa plan had other arrangements for this.

The Barbarossa plan actually divided the invasion of the Soviet Union into two relatively independent parts, the north and the south, bounded by the Pripyat swamp, and the northern part was carried out by the "Central" Army Group and the "North" Army Group. After the "Central" army entered Smolensk, it attacked north to assist the "Northern" army in capturing Leningrad, and after completing this step it could return to Moscow, "only when the resistance of the Russian army suddenly and rapidly collapsed, could it strive to achieve both of these objectives at the same time" (i.e., the simultaneous capture of Moscow and Leningrad). In the previous volume, we pointed out that there were differences within the Nazi high command on the main direction of the German army's offensive, Hitler was more interested in the two directions of the north and the south, and the army command demanded a direct take of Moscow, which led to a blur in the direction of use of the "central" army, whether to take Moscow directly or first take Leningrad and then take Moscow, in fact, it was not determined, this depends on the degree of resistance of the aggressor, the aggressor strong resistance, Hitler's idea will dominate, on the contrary, the idea of the army command will be realized.

Marshal Loeb's "Northern" Army Group consisted of two armies (16th and 18th Armies) and one tank group (4th Tank Group), with a total of 29 divisions, including 3 tank divisions and 3 motorized divisions, totaling more than 780,000 troops, 679 tanks and artillery, which were deployed on the Baltic coast to the 230 km border area of Govodap, opposite the Soviet Baltic Special Military District. The attack of the army was divided into two wings: the right wing, consisting of the 4th Tank Group and the 16th Army, attacked in the direction of Taugevpils and Opochka, apparently to form a large encirclement and prevent the Soviet army from withdrawing east from the Baltic coast and eliminating it; the left wing, composed of the 18th Army, first attacked in the direction of Riga, and then attacked Pskov and Ostrov (south of Pskov), with the same task of preventing the Soviet army from withdrawing east and destroying it, and capturing the Baltic coastal area. In order to fight against the Soviet Baltic Fleet and ensure the combat activities of the "Northern" Army, the German army invested hundreds of combat ships in the Baltic Sea, including submarines, frigates, mine-laying ships, and torpedo boats.

Marshal Lundstedt's "Army Group South" consisted of 3 armies (6th, 11th and 17th Armies) and a tank group (1st Tank Group), with a total of 41 divisions, including 5 tank divisions and 4 motorized divisions, totaling about 972,000 German troops and 728 German tanks, from the Bolesier Swamp to the 1,300-kilometer border area of the Black Sea, opposite the Soviet Kiev Special Military District and the Odessa Military District. There were also two Romanian armies (3rd and 4th army groups) and Hungarian troops in the area, totaling 400,000 troops, which were also under the command of Army Group "South". Although the "Southern" Army had a long front, its main forces (1st Tank Group, 6th Army, 17th Army) were concentrated on the narrow left flank, preparing to break through the Soviet defenses from Polesier to Peremeshli, then attack in the direction of Kiev, and then attack the great bend of the Dnieper River, encircling and destroying the Soviet army west of the river, and then crossing the Dnieper River to continue the eastward attack. The right-wing forces (11th Army and Romanian Army) first actively pinned down the Soviets and turned to the offensive when the left flank made progress. Before the start of the war, there were no German ships in the Black Sea, and Romania deployed destroyers, auxiliary cruisers, submarines, etc. here, which could be used to support its army operations.

Having said the deployment in the main direction of aggression, let's look at the secondary direction - the deployment from the Gulf of Finland to the Soviet-Finnish border in the Arctic Ocean. It was a joint front of fascist German and Finnish armies. The German army was General Falkenhof's "Norwegian" Independent Army Group, the core of which was the man and horse that invaded Norway that year, and it had three armies under its command: two German armies (the "Norwegian" Mountain Infantry Army and the 36th Army) attacking Murmansk and Kandalaksha respectively, and a Finnish Army (3rd Army) attacking Kostenga and Ukhta (both south of Kandalaksha). The Finn Army (excluding those temporarily under German command) had two armies, the Karelian Army Group, the former attacking the area between Lake Onega and Lake Lagado and the latter attacking the Karelian Isthmus between Lake Lagardo and the Gulf of Finland, which would join forces with Army Group "North" to encircle Leningrad from north to south. On the opposite side of this front was the Leningrad Military District of the Soviet Army.

The above deployment indicates that the fascist German army will launch a comprehensive and focused offensive of aggression, which is to make a comprehensive blow on the land of the Soviet Union and inflicted on the Soviet people. In addition to the above-mentioned front-line troops, the German high command also directly controlled the reserves of 26 divisions (including 2 tank divisions and 2 motorized divisions) (in addition, the German army also had more than a dozen police divisions responsible for rear guard), and the italian fascist and other vassal armies could also be counted within the fascist German reserve. And the group army group there is basically no reserve, all the armies are all put into battle, but in the group army and the tank group common combat zone, naturally formed two echelons of the campaign layout [Note 1], that is, the tank cluster in front, the group army in the rear, in addition, on this occasion, the group army and the tank cluster will also do two or more echelons of the campaign layout, on the one hand, caused by the concentration of troops and the narrowing of the front, on the one hand, taking into account that these armies will carry out the task of encirclement and annihilation after going deep into the enemy's territory. The flanking front will inevitably be lengthened, and only a ladder deployment in advance can deal with this situation. [Note 1: Campaign layout, simply put, is the deployment of troops in the campaign, but in the past Soviet literature, it was more about what kind of depth and depth the offensive army should be allocated, whether the army was fully put into the battle at one time, that is, the offensive army to do an echelon deployment, or whether it was put into the battle in multiple batches, that is, the offensive army to do multiple echelon deployment, the first into the first echelon, the second and third echelons, etc. into the battle according to the situation. Attacking in an echelon is more suitable for blitzkrieg, and the more unprepared the invaded person is, the more the aggressor must concentrate his maximum strength and devote all of it at once, fighting quickly and quickly, without giving the enemy any respite. On the contrary, the more prepared the defenders are, the more the offensive deployment must be deepened, into multiple echelons, and gradually invested, of course, on such occasions there is no opportunity for fascism and its blitzkrieg aggression. 】

The Fascist German Army will send four air groups to support operations in all directions, the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Air Forces will support the "North", "Center", "South" Army Groups and "Norway" Army Groups respectively, the 2nd Air Force in support of the "Central" Army will be the most naturally strong, with 1600 aircraft, the remaining 1st, 4th and 5th Air Forces will have 760, about 1000 and 240 aircraft respectively, and Finland, Romania and Hungary will each send 307 aircraft. 600 and 50 aircraft (Romania and Hungary may have provided German air fleets under their command). The luftwaffe's first task was naturally to seize air supremacy by bombing airfields on a large scale as soon as the war began, without giving the invaded air force a chance to counterattack; the second task was naturally to support the army in combat, to bomb all important targets of the aggressor and his army, including, of course, the people of the invaded, to suppress the forces of the invaded from the air, and to ensure the smooth attack of his army. At the beginning of the war, the Air Force should not attack Soviet industrial targets, but should protect these industrial targets so that these industrial capabilities could be quickly exploited once the Blitzkrieg was won. In fact, fascist Germany will put forward such a demand every time before launching a new war, which is the fascist German version of "the whole country is first, the destruction of the country is secondary", yes, the purpose of the war is to plunder, all have been exhausted, how to plunder? But fascist Germany wants to completely destroy what it cannot get, and will never leave a single plant or a tree for the invaded, but then again, will its plunder leave every plant and tree for the invaded?

Section II: The Red Army of the Soviet Union

Let's take a look at the deployment of the Soviet army before the outbreak of the war, which is consistent with the anti-aggression state of the whole country, at this time the Soviet army is in a state of deployment rather than a state of deployment, and as for what kind of state this state of deployment is, we will see below. In short, this state of affairs cannot be simply understood as a state of defense against the enemy's attack, but is more the inevitable result of its neglect of strategic defense and the initial problems of war and its failure to face up to the reality that the enemy is strong and we are weak.

In the western frontier region, the Soviet Army had five military districts, from north to south: the Leningrad Military District, the Baltic Special Military District, the Western Special Military District, the Kiev Special Military District and the Odessa Military District, which, together with their air force and territorial air defense forces, totaled 2.68 million people, 171 divisions, 37,500 artillery and mortars, 1,475 T-34 tanks and KV-1 tanks and more than 10,000 old tanks[Note 1], 1,540 new aircraft and more than 8,000 old aircraft. There are also three fleets in the western seas: the Northern Fleet deployed in the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic Fleet deployed in Leningrad and the Gulf of Finland, and the Black Sea Fleet, with a total of 220,000 people and 182 major ships (3 battleships, 7 cruisers, 45 destroyers and 127 submarines). Border troops and internal guard units are also deployed in the western border area, about 100,000 people. In this way, the strength of the Soviet army in the western region is 3 million people. At that time, the total strength of the Soviet army was 5.37 million, including 4.55 million in the army (including the air defense army), 480,000 in the air force, 340,000 in the navy, 276 major ships in the navy, and 67,000 guns and mortars in the army. [Note 1: According to relevant information, more than 80% of the tanks need to be repaired. 】

The Western Special Military District opposite Army Group Center guards the 470-kilometer front from the southern border of Lithuania (near Grodno) to the Pripyat River, covering the minsk-Smolensk direction behind it, with 24 infantry divisions, 12 tank divisions, 6 motorized divisions and 2 cavalry divisions, totaling 44 divisions, 625,000 men and 2,900 tanks. The military region has three armies (3rd, 4th and 10th army groups) deployed in the border areas (this kind of army group deployed in the border area is also known as the cover army group), of which the 3rd and 10th army groups are deployed in Bia for the Stok salient, the 4th Army is deployed on the north side of the Pripyat River, and the three armies have a total of 27 divisions. The 13th Army was still being formed, in the rear areas of Minsk and Mogilev. In addition, the military district itself directly administers a large number of troops as its second echelon and reserve.

The Kiev Special Military District, on the left flank of Army Group "South" and opposite in the middle, guarded the 860-kilometer front from the Pripyat River to Lipkhane (near Chernivtsi), covering the Ukrainian industrial zone behind. It has 32 infantry divisions, 16 tank divisions, 8 motorized divisions and 2 cavalry divisions, totaling 58 divisions, 864,600 men, and 5,465 tanks. Four cover armies (5th, 6th, 26th, and 12th Armies) were deployed sequentially from north to south in the border areas, with a total of 30 divisions under their command. Similarly, the military region has a large number of directly subordinate units as the second echelon and reserve. At the same time, two armies (16th and 19th Armies) were also deployed in the rear of the military region (although after the outbreak of war they were urgently transferred to the Western Special Military District).

The Baltic Special Military District opposite the "Northern" Army Group guards the 300-kilometer front from the Baltic Sea to the southern border of Lithuania, with 25 divisions and 1 infantry brigade (including 4 tank divisions and 2 motorized divisions), 440,000 men, 1549 tanks, and two cover army groups (8th and 11th army groups) deployed in the border area, with a total of 19 divisions. The 27th Army was still being formed north of Pskov, and the military district also assisted the Baltic Fleet in guarding the coastal areas of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and the Baltic Fleet was stationed in Tallinn (the main base), Kronstadt (near Leningrad), Liepaja, and the Hanko Peninsula in Finland.

The above three special military regions are the main force of the western Soviet army, they guard the 1600-kilometer border, accounting for 47% of the total length of the western land border, they concentrate 74% of all the divisions on the western border (127 of the 171 divisions), 73% of all artillery and mortars, 89% of all tanks, 68% of all aircraft, and overall, 75% of the western Soviet forces are armed to guard this key part of the national border.

The Odessa Military District is located in the south of the Kiev Military District, guarding the area to the Black Sea coast of the Danube estuary, with a length of 480 kilometers, and it also coordinates with the Black Sea Fleet (including the Danube Region Fleet) to guard the north bank of the Black Sea from the mouth of the Danube river to the Kerch Strait. The military region has 13 infantry divisions, 4 tank divisions, 2 motorized divisions and 3 cavalry divisions, with a total of 22 divisions, 340,000 men and 1,011 tanks. After the outbreak of the war, the troops of the military region were merged into the 9th Army Group, and another unit of men and horses from the Kiev Military District was transferred to form the 18th Army Group, which was also under the command of the military region.

The Leningrad Military District has 7th, 14th and 23rd Armies, with a total of 21 divisions and 1 infantry brigade (including 4 tank divisions and 2 motorized divisions), 426,000 people, and 1,857 tanks. Together with the Northern Fleet and the Baltic Fleet, it guards the Soviet-Finnish border and the northern coastal region of Estonia, where the land border is 1300 km and the sea frontier is 380 km. Army 23 guarded the border west of the Karelian Isthmus, and together with the Baltic Fleet covered Leningrad from the north and west, opposite the Southeastern Army of Finland. The 7th Army was guarding the border west of Petrozavodsk, opposite the Karelian Army group in Finland. The 14th Army, together with the Northern Fleet, guarded the direction of Murmorsk and Kandalaksha.

The five military districts and three fleets, together with their air forces and air defenses, constituted the first strategic echelon of the Soviet armed forces against aggression, which was divided into echelons and spread deep within the western theater. First of all, the front line guard should be 100,000 border defense and internal guard troops, and then the first echelon of each military region - the nine cover group armies deployed in the front line of the three special military regions, which have a total of 76 divisions, accounting for about 60% of the 127 divisions of the three special military regions. These cover armies were divided into two echelons: their first echelon divisions (mostly infantry divisions) were stationed in training camps 8-20 kilometers from the planned area at the time of the war, with only a few troops deployed close to the national border, and its second echelon divisions (mostly composed of mechanized armies, namely tank and motorized divisions) 50-100 kilometers from the border. Behind the cover army group are the second echelons and reserves of the military districts, which are even farther 100-400 kilometers away.

The reason why the Soviet army made such a large-depth deployment has to do with the fact that its army is still in a state of deployment - many troops are ready to move further to places close to the border, but the deeper level is its guiding ideology. Since it despises the initial problems of the war, and since it does not really recognize the reality that the enemy is strong and we are weak, then the forces it deploys on the front line will naturally be weak, and it thinks that this strength is enough to block the enemy's initial assault. Relying on the "strong" resistance of the various cover armies, especially their first echelons, it can calmly draw its forces from depth into the war, and these forces will not join the defense of the first echelon of the cover group army, but will launch a counter-offensive from the very beginning, not only to fight the aggressor back, but also to quickly direct the flames of war to the aggressor's land. Therefore, the deployment of the weak depth and strength of the first line is in line with the Soviet army's idea of light strategic defense and heavy strategic offensive, the weak line is tightly used for defense, and the strong depth is used for offense.

As for the idea of acting cautiously diplomatically and avoiding premature involvement in war, as for the fact that the army is still in the process of reconstruction, expansion, and reconstruction; as for the entire army, it has only quantity and no quality, only the expansion of scale and quality; as for the need to restart the construction of the war zone in the new border in the western region, the need to build fortifications, fortifications, supply bases, airfields, road networks, communication networks, and so on, we do not want to say much, we have said a lot. Well, the past has passed, it is impossible to change, the following depends on the future efforts, the future of continued efforts can still turn the tide, turn defeat into victory, and create brilliant again.