In china's ancient history, Cao Jie's theory of fighting a war has a drum, then declines, and three exhaustion, and its core content is to wait for the enemy to strike after striking the three-way marching drum before attacking, at this time the opposing soldiers are exhausted, and it is just the right time to counterattack. Coincidentally, in the history of the Soviet-German War in World War II, Guderian lost his troops at the Battle of Moscow and had to withdraw from the battlefield in the middle of the battle, also because of the exhaustion of combat effectiveness in the previous three major battles and the lack of conditions to continue the offensive. So, in the Battle of Moscow, the 2nd Panzer Group was also upgraded to an armored army group, why did the combat effectiveness still decline?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" >01 Blitzkrieg soviet union, Guderian was full of ambition, and the occupation of Moscow was his dream. </h1>
As the founder of the theory of blitzkrieg, Guderian can be said to have exhausted his efforts on the expansion of the German blitzkrieg, and when the German army divided Poland and occupied Western Europe and France through blitzkrieg, Guderian was even more convinced of the effect of blitzkrieg. So on December 18, 1940, after the German high command issued the Barbarossa plan to attack the Soviet Union, he was the first to spare no effort to run forward and fight for the four main armored forces of blitzkrieg.
If there were people in the German army who did not believe that the blitzkrieg of the Soviet Union would succeed, Guderian was the first to refuse, so in combat, he had to prove that the blitzkrieg theory was invincible through continuous attacks. So when the German High Command proposed to end the Soviet-German war in 3 to 5 months, Guderian was also working towards this goal. And when Barbarossa planned to choose Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev as the first offensive targets, he bore the brunt of the main force of the armored attack in the middle.
Although after the war began, Manstein on the northern front moved very quickly, and Kleist on the southern front was invincible to the 6th Army, but compared with the 2nd Panzer Group commanded by Guderian and the 3rd Panzer Group commanded by Hoth, they were much worse, because the two main armored forces on the central line were the most successful blitzkriegs, they were like two iron tongs, one south and one north, back and forth, occupy Minsk in a week, take Smolensk in January, if it were not for the German army pressing the pause button on August 13, Both of them were ready to occupy Moscow in a month.
In this sense, in the two battles of Minsk and Smolensk, Guderian always had a dream of occupying Moscow to realize his ideals in life. Unfortunately, after winning two consecutive battles, a basin of cold water fell from the sky, and the German high command changed the focus of the operation and asked him to go south to Kiev, thus completely cooling Guderian's radical heart instantly, which also led to a lot of complaints and confusion in the subsequent operations, which eventually led to early withdrawal on the Moscow battlefield.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" >02 retreated from the Moscow battlefield, and Guderian did not want to be a laughingstock. </h1>
Although he had thoughts about the German high command's suspension of the attack on Moscow, especially that he did not understand the economy of war and lost face, Guderian commanded the 2nd Panzer Group to close the encirclement with Kleist's First Panzer Group in just 20 days, and it took less than 10 days to end the Battle of Kiev.
But what Guderian did not expect was that from the beginning of the war on June 22, 1941 to the end of the Battle of Kiev, the 2nd Panzer Group basically did not rest well, the soldiers were seriously lacking, the armored tanks were lost by more than half, and what worried him even more was that the logistics of the German army became more and more unspeakable, and some units were already out of touch.
However, the German high command in Berlin sent Guderian an order to move quickly north, saying that he must return to the central front by September 30 and prepare to participate in the Battles of Bryansk and Vyazma, which began on October 2.
To tell the truth, the 2nd Panzer Group went south and north, if placed in peacetime, an armored unit mechanized march did not take much time, but the German high command at this time to Guderian in the task, but also included to ensure the central line and the southern line contact part of the passage safety, especially before he set off, but also the 2nd Panzer Group made a series of operational adjustments, which made Guderian a little uncomfortable, on the one hand to reach the offensive ground on time, on the other hand, to adjust the deployment while walking, and only 4 days.
Since after the Battle of Kiev, the 46th Panzer Army was assigned to the 1st Panzer Group, the 48th Panzer Army and the 34th 35th and 1st Cavalry Divisions were assigned to Guderian, plus the 24th 47th Panzer Army, the old unit at the time of the war, in fact, the 2nd Panzer Group was strengthened when it attacked Tula.
But Guderian was still worried that, on the one hand, the main battle tanks had suffered too much loss, and the follow-up supplements had not followed, and 50 of the 100 tanks that the north had promised to give him were sent to the wrong place. On the other hand, the rainy season in Moscow is coming again, and the muddy roads are a natural enemy of the armored forces. According to some sources, when Guderian attacked Moscow, almost 60% of the armored tanks under his command were modified using Soviet tanks captured on the battlefield, and after the end of the battles of Bryansk and Vyazma, the 2nd Panzer Group itself also suffered heavy losses, and Guderian also recorded this incident in his memoirs, although it did not say how many casualties there were, but it was enough to describe the casualties as amazing.
In this sense, when the climate in Moscow changed in November and the German supplies were not seen, Guderian returned from the inspection of the front line and fell into the mud pit at night, and the armored command vehicle he was riding could not adapt to the battlefield environment, let alone the soldiers on the front line without cotton clothes. Coupled with the fact that the high command was still unrealistically ordering an attack, Guderian had no choice but to retreat halfway, or he would become a laughingstock.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="25" >03 From the armored group to the armored army, why doesn't the combat effectiveness increase but decrease? </h1>
Some people believe that Guderian's choice to withdraw from the battlefield, although it had a major impact on the defeat of the German army, was also forced by the harsh climate at that time, and if he did not withdraw, he would either be surrounded and annihilated by the Soviet army or freeze to death and starve to death. In fact, from the perspective of the battlefield environment at that time, when the German army launched typhoon operation, it used 3 armored groups and 4 army groups at a time, and almost 1.8 million troops attacked at the same time.
Guderian withdrew halfway through for several important reasons:
One is the influence of psychological factors. It can be seen from the lines of Guderian's memoirs that he has always been grumpy about reinforcing Kiev from the south, believing that the re-attack on Moscow was a waste of time, and that letting him attack Tula from the south did not play to the strengths of his armored offensive, and most importantly, he repeatedly proposed to adjust the battle plan, which was repeatedly ignored.
Second, after several major battles, the combat effectiveness of the 2nd armored group was greatly reduced. After the Battle of Moscow, the reason why the German army made the 2nd and 3rd Panzer Corps a second-rate team and the panzer corps became a decoration was because the initial losses were too large, and there was no difficulty in equipment replenishment and supply support.
Third, Guderian did not want to be a victim. Objectively speaking, if Guderian did not withdraw from the battlefield, Zhukov had already launched a siege counterattack against him, and once he became a prisoner, the so-called blitzkrieg created was a joke, and this face would be lost.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that Guderian's re-attack on Moscow was blocked, some of which were objective reasons, and some of which were related to his judgment. However, the performance of the 2nd Panzer Army in the Battle of Moscow was not well played, and in addition to its own decline in combat effectiveness, it also had an important relationship with the platooning of the German high command. The Germans relieved Guderian of command, not without reason, at least he shook the hearts of the army, resulting in the entire southern front being completely exposed to the Soviets.
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