I’ve been freebasing history podcasts lately, and two of the best - We Have Ways of Making You Talk and The Rest is History - recently featured very interesting episodes about the planning and logistics for Operation Barbarossa. One of them actually starts with a tongue-in-cheek introduction, superficially comparing it to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as you might expect from a hack headline writer or Substacker. (Cough)
And then comes this piece in the Daily Mail which does just that:
That said, the similarities are quite striking:
The Russian president has always been security conscious, but today, on the losing side of his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine for which he has only himself to blame, Putin is more paranoid than ever.
He rarely ventures even into his office at the Kremlin now, preferring to do business from his grand, yellow-painted, pillared mansion on his summer estate, Novo-Ogaryovo, in an exclusive suburb popular with rock stars and oligarchs just west of Moscow.
People come to him if and when he wants to see them. And increasingly, he doesn’t.
He has his staff, his bodyguards, his team of food tasters and so on, but for months senior ministers, advisers and aides with whom he would once frequently consult, have been kept at a distance. The pandemic facilitated this — but he shows no sign of wanting to change the status quo.
It is impossible not to be reminded of Adolf Hitler’s last days, when a war he started was also going against him. Of course, Putin’s enemies are not at the gates of Moscow as Hitler’s were in Berlin, yet there are parallels in both leaders’ refusal to listen to counsel, and their insistence on micro-managing military manoeuvres despite not having the experience to do so.
[…]
Indeed, there is an old military adage: amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics. Amateurs think wars are won by ingenious weapons or cunning strategic ploys. For the professionals, it’s getting the boring stuff right that makes the difference — ensuring there is enough fuel and ammunition and that troops get good equipment and hot meals. In this, Russia has singularly failed.
Hitler did serve in the First World War, but he was no military genius. Nor was Joseph Stalin. Both began their part in the Second World War by interfering in the deployment of their forces — in Stalin’s case with disastrous consequences.
He was sure Hitler would not attempt an invasion of the Soviet Union following the non-aggression pact between the two countries. Then when the tide of war turned in 1941, he refused to believe his generals who were telling him that an attack was imminent. He thought it was a British plot to foment trouble and as a result the Soviet forces were pretty much destroyed on the ground.
Stalin realised his mistake and from that point let his generals get on with it. Hitler never learned that lesson. Right up to the end, in his bunker below the streets of Berlin, he was micro-managing his troops.
In intelligence studies there is a long-standing debate over whether the British should have assassinated Hitler, given the chance. The answer is, before the war, yes. But after the war started, no — because someone competent might have replaced him. In that respect, at the moment, Putin is Ukraine’s best friend.
The reason Russia’s military offensive has gone so wrong is not that its forces are useless, but that they have been used so badly. They haven’t been able to fight the way they are meant to.
This is Putin’s fault. He was adamant the Ukrainians weren’t going to resist, that his ‘special operations’ would be over in a couple of days. He told his generals that they didn’t need great supplies of ammunition, to prepare their ground or establish supply lines. As a result, the planned siege of the capital Kyiv was abandoned and the Russians have been driven out of areas they took early on.
I don’t agree with people who say Barbarossa was absolutely unwinnable by design. Many seemingly impossible wars have been won. But the planning and execution would have to be perfect and absolutely everything would have had to go the Germans’ way.
So, it was a longshot under any circumstances. But aside from Hitler’s meddling (and Stalin dialing back his own meddling, which is kind of rare for a totalitarian dictator) it turns out that the Germans were stuck with many logistical problems, including an interminably long list of different vehicles from different manufacturers which needed their own parts.
And that was just from all the German manufacturers. The Nazis also relied heavily on vehicles they’d captured (or had built under occupation) from the French and other conquered Western European armies, making things even more unwieldy.
[Insert your own joke about French car reliability here.]
Just as budget airlines like Ryanair pick one kind of plane (usually the Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 series, the Corolla and Civic of the skies) because they only have to source parts and train pilots for one model, it’s much easier for an army to advance if it uses a limited number of vehicles. If one breaks down or gets blowed up, you can still salvage whatever parts are left and re-use them as needed. But if your Mercedes-Benz truck dies and everyone else nearby is using three or four different models, it either goes to waste or you’re forced to transport the parts back to the depot, when your supply lines are already stretched thin.
Every middle-aged man thinks he’s an expert on WW2, but darned if you don’t learn something new about it almost every day.
As for the Ukraine war in 2022, I’ve seen some commentators suggest that the tide might finally though slowly be turning in Russia’s favor as the West moves on to other controversies (and in some cases never delivered the promised weapons to begin with) and the Russians learn from some of their mistakes.
Absorbing the whole country (or even everything East of the Donbass River) likely won’t happen, but we can’t assume the Russians won’t walk away with something Putin can call a victory. The Ukrainians have humiliated the Russians in 2022 the way the Finns embarrassed the Soviets in 1939, but the USSR ultimately won that war and seized 11% of Finland.
That said, the Russians have lost so much equipment in Ukraine that they’ve taken their decades-old T-62 tanks out of mothballs and sent them into battle. Hey, at least they’ll have fleet commonality on their side. Also, the way Russia’s new equipment has performed, the old Soviet stuff might be better.