Last time we spoke about the Drive to Kyiv and Leningrad continues. In late August 1941, the German siege of Kyiv intensified, led by General Guderian amidst a fierce defense from the Soviet Red Army under Marshal Timoshenko. As the Nazis pushed forward, their initial confidence waned under severe logistical strain and significant casualties, while the Soviets showcased resilience and tactical evolution. The month ended in bloodshed, with both sides suffering staggering losses. As September arrived, rain soaked the battlefields, further complicating efforts toward Leningrad, where Finnish troops advanced, threatening Soviet hold on the city. The Germans faced a critical moment as they lost vital supply routes. Fierce combat ensued, with the Soviets and Finnish forces engaged in relentless skirmishes that emphasized the human cost of war. Then in a enormous reversal, Hitler issued directive no. 35 altering the course for Moscow. After fighting tooth and nail against it, Hitler ultimately succumbed to the alure of taking the capital of the USSR.

This episode is the Panzer’s Greatest Victory

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Leningrad is now encircled. Guderian and Kleist, are on the brink of merging their forces just outside the ancient city of Kyiv. As the war rages on, the Red Army unleashes a relentless assault on German positions in the center. We find ourselves in the 11th week of Operation Barbarossa. The weary German Army is eyeing what could be their greatest achievement yet, but meanwhile, the Red Army plunges to new depths. Supply trucks are mired in mud as the Panzers struggle to complete the encirclement against the Southwestern Front. Last week, we witnessed the Southwestern Front and the Bryansk Front fiercely fighting to retain control over Ukraine and its capital, Kyiv. We also observed the renewed momentum of the advance on Leningrad as the Stavka reorganized the city's defenses. In a challenging turn, Army Group Center had to retreat from the Yelna salient, suffering significant casualties in the process. 

The Wehrmacht now faced two daunting logistical issues involving men and machines. Neither was in massive supply by the end of the summer of 1941. By late September, an official report would put German casualties above 500,000. 14 divisions were more than 4,000 men short, 40 divisions were over 3,000 men short, and 30 divisions were more than 2,000 men short. Meanwhile, the Heer had lost nearly 1,500 tanks and artillery pieces. This accounted for about one-third of the starting force. Only 47% of the tanks across all four Panzer Groups were operational, according to a report from September 4, with many tanks requiring spare parts for repairs. Hitler had ordered that all new tank production be held in a strategic reserve in Germany, aiming to form new Panzer divisions. It would take until mid-September for Halder to convince Hitler that the plans for capturing Moscow, Operation Typhoon, required some replacements to be released. Only 96 tanks had been sent forward, just over 10% of the new production from June to the end of August. When Hitler finally allowed the strategic reserve of vehicles to be allocated for replacements, the Panzer arm was in desperate straits. On September 15, he authorized the release of 60 Czech 38(t)s, 150 Panzer IIIs, and 96 Panzer IVs along with an additional 310 replacement engines for the Panzer III. These numbers were completely inadequate. His only other concession was the transfer of two more complete Panzer divisions to the 4th Panzer Group under Hoepner. The 2nd and 5th Panzer Divisions had been unable to participate in the initial invasion due to their poor state of readiness following the Yugoslavia campaign in April. They had since been rebuilt and brought along about 450 new tanks.

However, even the entire stock of production could not have rebuilt the Panzer arm to its original numbers. Most of the new production was of modern designs, which would replace some of the obsolete models they began the invasion with. Yet, that statement doesn't capture the whole truth. Seventy-one of the approximately 800 tanks produced by German factories from June to the end of August were Panzer IIs. These vehicles had proven inadequate in France in 1940 and were certifiably obsolete by the end of the summer of 1941. Nevertheless, production did not cease that year. Remarkably, production of the Panzer II as a mainline tank continued until 1942 with production of derivatives and specialised variants continuing until 1944. As it stood, the Panzer arm was significantly reduced from its June starting point. A complete rebuilding of the force was out of the question, as there simply weren't enough available tanks. Additionally, Hitler forbade any attempts to fully restore the Panzer divisions. Instead, they were forced to amalgamate and make do with what they had. The Heer would have to undertake Operation Typhoon with their diminished resources. There was no other option.

Highlighting the logistical issues facing the Germans, might lead you to believe that the situation was much worse on the Soviets. The summer of 1941 indeed represented a Soviet debacle of grand proportions, marked by mass confusion and enormous waste of men and material. However, it remains a fact that these losses, while dreadfully costly to the Soviet war effort, were bearable. In fact, far from crumbling, the Red Army was growing in size, fueled by a vast pool of non-active reserves. Moreover, unlike the German Army, the Red Army didn't have to win the war in 1941; it only needed to survive long enough for Germany’s offensive strength to exhaust itself. The winter granted the Soviet Union a reprieve, further sweetened by the entry of the United States into the war. Thus, despite the Red Army's weaknesses in the summer of 1941, it succeeded fundamentally in one key respect,it confounded the German leadership’s plan to conquer the Soviet Union in a Blitzkrieg-style campaign during the early weeks of the war. As Historian Jacob Kipp concluded in his study on the Battle of Smolensk “At a horrible cost in losses, Russia gave up her sons and her land to bleed the Wehrmacht white, even if the losses were 10 to 1 in favour of the German invader. Nazi ideology and occupation policies in the end made such sacrifices seem justified and legitimized Soviet totalitarianism . . . After Smolensk it was clear that this would be a long war, not a Blitzkrieg. The Soviet state and society, which Lenin and Stalin had cast as a vast mechanism for mobilization and militarization, had begun that process in earnest”. 

By the time German armies were able to reassemble for their renewed drive on Moscow designated Operation Typhoon, it would already be September 30. The available combat strength and logistical support had fallen far below what would be required to seize the Soviet capital. Following the pattern of earlier offensives, the attack began well and again took advantage of the dreadful Soviet strategic direction to capture another huge haul of Soviet prisoners in two enormous pockets. As Halder recorded on October 4: ‘Operation Typhoon is following an altogether classic course... The enemy is standing fast on all parts of the front not under attack, which gives hope for the creation of pockets.’

However, as in past German offensives, the pace could not be sustained. Over vast distances, the spearheads weakened as their flanks grew, and their supply lines became impossibly long. Soviet counterattacks became relentless. Road conditions worsened along with the weather, and soon German troops everywhere found themselves in freezing temperatures with little more than their worn-out summer uniforms. Deprived of the chance to win the war, or even to escape the slogging battles of attrition, Germany's stalled eastern front underwent rapid de-modernization. This intensified the bitter deprivations of life at the front, especially as winter took hold. As one German soldier wrote in December 1941: ‘Technology no longer plays a role... The elemental power of nature broke the operations of our engines. What do we do?’

Summarizing the first two years of the war, Michael Geyer observed: ‘However successful the first two years of the war, the Third Reich never came close to escaping the dilemma posed by the fact that the political and military-strategic costs of expansion continuously outran the benefits of a newly gained hegemonic position.’ When the hoped-for lightning victory against the Soviet Union proved beyond the Wehrmacht’s capacity, a longer-term, war-winning solution was all that remained open to Germany. However, the prospects of success for this option can be immediately dismissed. As Historian Omer Bartov has written “Once blitzkrieg failed, production, industrial capacity, material and manpower resources, organisation and technical skill, all became more important than tactics, training, and courage. Of course blitzkrieg itself depended on technology, indeed, it made a fetish of modern fighting machines. But now technological innovation had to be paralleled by quantities produced, while the initial psychol