After winning the war situation from 1939 to 1941, the German high command basically drifted, and fighting the Soviet Union was a kind of drift. And their various mistakes are paid by millions of officers and men on the front line.
In the spring of 1941, the preparations carried out by the Germans for all areas involved a large number of concrete initiatives, and they tried to improve the qualitative superiority of the troops assembled in the east. This includes:
1. Set up an armored group command to command rapid forces in battle;
2. Reorganization and expansion of the Armored Division;
3. Introduce new (or upgrade existing) weapon systems to enhance the firepower of infantry and rapid troops;
4. Enhance the combat effectiveness of combat engineers, communications and railway units;
5. Form more anti-aircraft artillery units to provide cover for the troops and reduce or avoid losses caused by enemy air raids;
6. Optimize the logistics support system (including a substantial increase in the volume of trucking related to food, fuel, ammunition and other supplies);
7. Based on the experience gained by the Finns from the Winter War with the Russians from 1939-1940, a new winter coat was developed.
But these measures do not mean that the German political and military leadership was "dutifully" preparing for the Eastern War, and the fact that although the Battle of Barbarossa presented unprecedented challenges, they clearly failed to face this. Surprisingly, Germany's overall arms production (both weapons and ammunition) barely increased in the second year of the war, while the Soviet Union and Britain nearly doubled and the United States tripled.
In addition, the Germans were able to achieve production in large part because of the severe reduction in ammunition production, which in August 1941 had an impact on German combat operations on the Eastern Front, and even more so in the autumn of that year and the winter of 1941-1942. Even in areas where the Germans were actively seeking to increase production, such as tanks, their results were less significant. As mentioned in the first chapter of the previous article, the average monthly production of tanks in Germany was not 100 (including various models and products In the first quarter of 1941, the factories only produced more than 700 vehicles).
Although it is difficult to summarize the combat sequence of the German 1941 panzer divisions (for many reasons, such as the number of tanks is not uniform), the general situation is as follows: each division has 13,000 to 16,000 officers, soldiers, and soldiers, and the members of the unit wear pink trim collar badges first worn by the predecessors of the former Imperial Army Motor Transport Battalion.
A typical panzer division has about 300 tracked vehicles (of which less than 200 tanks) and 3,000 wheeled vehicles. If lined up in a single column on the road, this huge team will extend 130 kilometers back and forth! In total, the firepower possessed by one armored division consisted of about 620 automatic weapons and 260 guns of various calibers (excluding 50 mm or 81 mm mortars).
The combat core of the tank forces of the 1941 Panzer Division was the Pz 38(t) and the Home III, which totaled 1,630 of the 3,250 tanks used for Operation Barbarossa. Although there were 600 more No. III tanks in the battle sequence than in 1940, the Iv medium tanks (444) used in the invasion of the Soviet Union were only 150 more than during the Western war.
In addition, more than 50% of the German armored fighting vehicles: I, II, Pz35 (t), Pz38 (t) are now obsolete and do not apply to the brutal fighting in the east. For the most part, even their medium tanks could not match the Soviet T-34 and KV-1, which had obvious quality advantages. It is easy to conclude that, despite the many achievements made by the Germans in strengthening the firepower of their armored forces, they were far from sufficient in terms of quantity and quality to meet the needs of a successful opponent such as the Soviets.
By the spring of 1941, 2 motorized divisions (2.13th Motorized Infantry Division) had been reorganized into panzer divisions, while 8 infantry divisions on foot (3rd, 10th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 25th, 36th, 60th) had been converted into fully motorized infantry regiments, giving the German Army a total of 10 motorized infantry divisions. The remaining motorized units included the 900th Instructional Brigade, the "Großdeutsches" Infantry Regiment and several Waffen-SS divisions, "Adolf Hitler" (D'Adolf Hitler). Hitler's "Flag Guard" division was also among them.
The Motorized Division had only 2 regiments in trucks, so there were only 6 infantry battalions (a typical three-regiment infantry division had 9 battalions). Artillery was towed by trucks or half-track trailers, while reconnaissance units maneuvered in motorcycles and armored vehicles. In 1942, an assault artillery battalion or tank battalion would join the Motorized Division's combat sequence, and armored personnel carriers began to appear in large numbers. But in 1941, these motorized divisions were nothing more than more mobile infantry regiments.
Immediately after the beginning of the invasion of the Soviet Union, the great value of motorized infantry divisions (despite the small number of such units) and the vehicle-mounted infantry forces equipped with each armored division was immediately recognized, and they participated in continuous combat. In fact, the Physical and Psychological Requirements of the Germans on them were "enormous".
As a result of this short-sightedness (and arrogance), when the Germans on the Eastern Front crossed the Soviet-German border on June 22, 1941, their anti-tank weapons, field artillery, and infantry guns were "surprisingly scarce," severely affecting the fire support available to infantry. Approximately 84 infantry divisions and several motorized infantry divisions were equipped with various types of foreign vehicles (mainly French-made vehicles) and partially equipped the anti-tank forces with captured weapons.
The armored forces were put into battle using hundreds of obsolete tanks, as well as a large number of armored fighting vehicles made in the Czech Republic. While the performance level of these and other types of foreign equipment is not all lower than that of German-made weapons, they at least add a dizzying diversity to the German Army's equipment system, which makes the existing challenges in ammunition, spare parts, and maintenance more complex. But without the use of captured weapons, the Germans could hardly equip the expanded Army of 1941 for Hitler's Wars in the East.
In fact, as early as the summer of 1940, the Army General Command recognized that the captured stockpile of weapons, vehicles, and other equipment was a "vital prerequisite" for the deployment of the Eastern Army.
Thank you for your interest [Prayer]