On the Initial German Success and the Motives Behind

The initial successes of the German army in operation Barbarossa can be attributed to the strategic and military advantage of a surprise attack and the total lack of any effective defense preparations by the Red Army. Since Red Army units were distributed in expectation of an offensive war “with less blood, on enemy territory”, the construction of all defense lines and projects was cancelled, and the defense structures build earlier (like the Stalin defense line for example) were dismantled, all bridges, roads, and passages were cleared of mines, bunkers and defense positions were destroyed or left in ruins. This was all done after the beginning of WWII, under the orders of Stalin himself, and despite this fact, we still have historians claiming that Stalin was afraid from a German aggression! If he was, why did he order his defenses to be destroyed?

None of the Red Army forces, that were deployed on the western border were dug into the ground in a defensive manner, nor was their military equipment set-up for a defensive battle. It could not have been, since they were preparing for an offensive operation. Furthermore, since the preparation for the attack (again, regardless of its originally planned goals) was still continuing, the tactical surprise of the German army attack, rendered many of the Soviet forces incapable of effectively using their immense military superiority. These factors, combined with the late and completely false (strategically wise) orders not to fight back (which came hours before the German invasion had began), clearly explains the initial success of the German Army during Operation Barbarossa.

Instead of further studying the first hours and days of the invasion, professional historians tell us stories about the Red Army being decapitated during the Great Purge of 1937-1938, and that if military experts such as M.N. Tukhachevsky was (according to them), and was still alive, the battle was going to take a different turn. They write such non-sense, probably because they failed to read Tukhachevsky’s works as well just like many others, which by the way, explicitly talk about an offensive deep penetration operations, or exactly the same strategy which the Red army was about to use towards Germany, had German forces not prevented it from doing so by invading earlier.

The same goes for the motives behind the German invasion. Completely overlooking the major strategic treat which the Red army posed to Germany’s main oil source in Romania, by invading Bessarabia in 1940, professional historians point to us Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, where according to them was the real motive for the invasion. The only problem with such explanation is that it completely ignores Stalin’s consistent strategy since 1927, which basically includes all the developments within the Soviet Union, it also fails to explain Hitler’s sudden change of policy in 1940, when after the Soviet invasion of Bessarabia, he began to think of possible invasion of Russia, despite the fact that this would mean a war on two fronts for Germany, which Hitler himself wrote against in this same book called Mein Kampf.

I think that instead of digging for more “new material” in the archives, it is time to re-evaluate and put into a logic order the massive information which we already have.