Page 296 - The Chief Culprit

A Blitzkrieg against Russia? y 241

of plain infantry divisions, which moved on foot, and used animal transport,” said German
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General Guenther Blumentritt. On June 22, Hitler had on the eastern front 750,000 hors-
es. A convoy of 220 horses with carts followed each German tank. Was it on carts that they
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planned to carry out the blitzkrieg? Out of 153 divisions launched by Hitler against the
Soviet Union, only seventeen were tank divisions. ere was not a single tank in the thirteen
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German motorized divisions at the beginning of World War II, while each Soviet rifle divi-
sion had its own tank battalion of T-26 tanks. We have been taught to laugh at this tank. But
the German infantry did not have tanks at all!
e entire German tank force was divided between the four tank groups. e rest of
the German army fighting against the Soviet Union didn’t have a single tank. It consisted
entirely of infantry and 750,000 horses with carts. Colonel General Lotar Rendulic described
his 20th Mountain Army: “With the exception of rear transport units, the army consisted
entirely of infantry troops—200,000 soldiers and 70,000 horses.” e German magazine
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Der Spiegel once published a giant photograph of laughing German soldiers. at one pho-
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tograph told more truth about the war than the whole article, and many articles like it, and
even libraries of books. e photograph showed German soldiers walking on Soviet land in
1941 during the blitzkrieg. All are on foot. ey do not have a single submachine gun. eir
weapons consist of rifles with bayonets, the 1898 model, and two machine guns. In the back-
ground, there are hundreds of carts.
e German army relied heavily on cars and motorized transportation. e plethora of
such machinery—more than 500,000 cars in the invading army—played a cruel trick on the
Germans. While on the European front, which was heavily road-linked, such an abundance of
motorized transportation was more than sufficient, but the German cars on the Russian front
(along its so-called roads) often turned into a setback. First, the Germans needed specialized,
road-tolerant cars, wheel-track and track-based transport vehicles and tractors. Second, the
chronic lack of fuel led to frequent halts in the general mass of automobiles.
Field artillery was the main tool of the Red Army for breaking through enemy defense
lines. First were the howitzers. A howitzer, compared to cannon of the same weight, had a
slower initial shell speed and a smaller range. But its shells were more powerful and its fire
trajectory was curved, which was useful for firing upon an enemy dug into the ground.
Marshal Kulik commanded the Red Army artillery for many years. During his leadership, the
best artillery systems in the world were created, primarily the howitzers. By June 22, 1941,
the Red Army had 15,464 howitzers of all types. e most powerful ammunition factories
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were created for supplying them. e German army had 10,810 howitzers by June 1, 1941.
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However, those howitzers had to be divided among several fronts, including the African one.
Furthermore, Germany had too few non-ferrous metals to manufacture artillery shells in such
quantities as were being produced in the Soviet Union. Finally, the German howitzers were
obsolete, developed during World War I or even before it.
Stalin had long-range bombing aviation, which Hitler did not have. In 1940 and 1941,
Germany was already being bombed by British strategic aviation. Stalin was ready to add his
forces to this effort. Hitler, meanwhile, planned to “bomb Britain out of the war,” but that
plan failed, because he had no strategic aviation at his disposal. Later on, Hitler decided to
take over the European part of the USSR up to the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, and every-
thing east of that line he was going to leave to the bombers. e problem with this plan was
that Hitler had almost no long-range bombers.