The Graying of the Red Beard

On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

"Barbarossa" means red beard: the reference, to the twelfth-century German crusader, is entirely apposite. Hitler viewed his war as a crusade against Jews, Communists and Slavs, all of whom had to be annihilated in order to fulfill the legitimate aspirations of Aryan Germans.

(In a perhaps tenuous effort to connect with the non-Nazi elements of the German military, Hitler concocted a further so-called strategic rationale: namely that Britain was holding out largely because of its hope of being aided by the Soviet Union. Once the Soviets were vanquished, Britain would surrender, giving Germany complete and unassailable mastery of Europe.)

There is a central myth about Barbarossa--to wit, that it failed because the Germans, having delayed the campaign against the Soviets for at least a month in order to subdue Greece and Yugoslavia, were felled by the fierce and early Russian winter, for which they were unprepared, not having been issued proper clothing.

Like most myths, this contention contains some shards of truth.

But only some.

The Germans were not vanquished by the Russian winter.

Rather, if anything, they were vanquished by the Russian summer.

Recall that the war in the Soviet Union was predominantly a tank war.

In the initial stages of the conflict, the German armored units sliced through the Soviet formations like that proverbial knife through butter. (Please, I'm not fast enough to elude the cliche police.)

But recall also that most Russian roads of that period were not sealed. They were dirt roads for the most part. As the German tanks raced over them, they threw up huge clouds of sand and dust--clouds so thick that the tank drivers often could not see the vehicle in front of them.

The dirt got into engines. The engines stalled. This greatly reduced forward progress while at the same time increasing consumption of scarce fuel.

By August, many German panzer units, particularly those aimed at Moscow, were reporting that as many as half of their vehicles were unusable.

To be sure, the affected tanks could be furnished with new engines, but transport back to supply depots was a time-consuming trip.

It was also hazardous. The Soviet troops stranded by the pincer-like German tank movements were becoming adept at hitting soft targets like supply convoys.

By August, the Germans had achieved great military feats, defeating every army the Soviets threw at them and occupying hundreds of miles of Soviet territory, although, as noted, partisan activity meant that occupation was far from complete.

Yet, also by August, the Germans began to realize that they lacked the tank capacity to achieve the invasion's main objectives--destruction of the Red Army's continued ability to wage war, and, at least according to the German High Command (though, oddly enough, not according to Hitler), the capture of Moscow.

What's more, though his commanders importuned him, Hitler would release no more tanks.

Germany just didn't have many more to spare.

It had entered the war with an insufficient amount of armor and, rather surprisingly, without the manufacturing capability to remedy that deficiency.

Even more surprisingly, the Soviets were able to succeed where Germany failed: they could produce a far greater number of superior battle-worthy tanks than their supposedly more industrially advanced enemy.

And they were to retain this edge throughout the war.

By August 1941, Barbarossa was not yet dead, but there were unmistakable streaks of gray in that flaming beard of two months earlier.