Page 268 - The Chief Culprit

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remain in the trap and wait for the 1st Tank Group to completely lock the encirclement, or
run to the east, abandoning everything that cannot be carried. ey ran. Soon, they were
left without fuel and ammunition. e entire Soviet Southwestern Front crumbled from one
rather weak blow. But that was not all: this same blow threatened the entire Southern Front.
Having broken through to open space, the 1st German Tank Group could have freely
chosen any direction: all roads were open. It could have struck the rear of the Southern Front.
It could have headed to Kiev. If Kiev was being defended it could, instead of engaging in bat-
tle, have hit the metal-producing sites of the Ukraine: Dnepropetrovsk, Dneprodzerzhinsk,
Zaporozhye. Once there, it could have reached the Crimea. It could have gone to the bases
of the Black Sea fleet and taken them. Or it could have taken the largest hydroelectric plant
in Europe, DneproGES. It could have crossed the Dnepr and taken Donbass—the largest
coal region of the Soviet Union. It was also possible to continue to the North Caucasus to-
ward the main petroleum sources of the Soviet Union. But Hitler was preparing for war in
a very strange manner: so many open directions, and he only had one tank group against all
of Ukraine, Moldavia, Crimea, Donbass, Don, North Caucasus, and Trans-Caucasus—with
only 799 obsolete and worn-out tanks. e First Tank Group fought fierce battles on the
western bank of the Dniepr River, then crossed the Dniepr and joined the Second Tank
Group. is was how four armies of the Soviets were encircled; 664,000 prisoners were taken,
and with them huge quantities of arms and supplies. But the Germans paid for this grandiose
bounty by losing the tempo of their attack: it happened in September, so they could not start
moving toward Moscow before October, which meant rain, dirt, and mud. No blitzkrieg was
possible in the remaining months of 1941.
In Byelorussia, the Red Army had an even worse time. e Western Front had four
armies. e main forces of the front were concentrated in the Byelostok bulge. Two German
tank groups struck the undefended flanks and linked east of Minsk. e 3rd, 10th, and parts
of the 4th and 13th armies, all together almost thirty divisions, found themselves in a pocket.
e Western Front collapsed even quicker than the Southwestern and the Southern Fronts.
Could it be that before the war General Zhukov did not understand that one cannot herd
huge numbers of troops into bulges that become traps?
e answer to this question was given by one of the most brilliant Soviet troop com-
manders, the deputy commander of the Volkhov front Lieutenant General Andrey Vlassov.
On June 22, 1941, he was a major general in command of the 4th Mechanized Corps in the
Lvov bulge. In 1942 he was ordered to command the 2nd Shock Army, which found itself in
a hopeless position. Vlassov was ordered to complete an operation that he had not prepared,
had not started, and that had already failed. e 2nd Shock Army could not be saved. It per-
ished, and Vlassov was taken prisoner. In a protocol from questioning on August 8, 1942, it
was recorded: “Regarding the question of whether Stalin had intentions to attack Germany,
Vlassov declared that such intentions, undoubtedly, existed. e concentration of troops in
the Lvov region points to the fact that a strike against Romania was being planned in the
direction of the petroleum sources. . . . e Red Army was not prepared for the German
invasion. Despite all the rumors about the operations conducted by Germany, in the Soviet
Union nobody believed in such a possibility. During preparations, the Russians meant only
1
their own offensive.” ere is no other explanation for the concentration of Soviet troops in
the Lvov and Byelostok bulges.