As can be seen from the previous part of our review, in Viktor Suvorov's opinion, the failure of the Red Army in the first decisive ten days of the Wehrmacht's invasion of the shovel territory was the complete unpreparedness of the troops to organize the defense. It was meant that the troops not only did not prepare for defensive battles, but also did not have a defense plan as such. Subsequent commentators even used the term "time trial" referring to the situation that both sides did not have a sane plan in case the enemy begins the offensive earlier and the critical one is who will finish the deployment first and strike the first blow. According to Suvorov, it was the first blow that overturned the first echelon of troops and became fatal for the Red Army. Moreover, this explains the loss of command and control in the first phase of military operations.
Of course, this version is much more believable than the official version, according to which the saboteurs' sieves, thrown into the rear of the Soviet army, violated all wire communication and, therefore, the operational control of the troops was lost. Indeed, the official version has the right to life only if it is not possible to get a picture of events from the other side or simply from the side. Nevertheless, there is no evidence of the mass dropping to the rear of the Red Army. It follows that either everything was normal with the connection, or some cases of damage to the communication lines were the work of local residents who had such a degree of "gratitude" to the Soviet government for a year and a half of its presence, that at least this way it was possible to get out, albeit partially.
Suvorov's version that even with a completely stable connection with the troops, until their mass retreat began, the General Staff simply did not desist any instructions in terms of defense, because there was simply no clear defense plan. Despite the numerous requests of the leadership of the formations at the border, Moscow did not give instructions on the transition to defense, for which they paid.
In general, we agree with the conclusions of Suvorov, but nevertheless, the question arises as to how many people have a preponderance in the number and quality of equipment and weapons, it was possible to completely fail not just some sectors of the front where the enemy is point-blank Created a preponderance in the forces, but the whole front. After all, logic suggests that the same Guderian, with his tank groups, who had bypassed Brest from the north and south, and wedged deep into the rear of the soviet group, left from the flanks a monstrous accumulation of troops that had before them a weakened front of the enemy. For the principle of concentration of troops in the direction of the strike inevitably reveals the neighboring sectors of the front.
Moreover, Guderian himself recalled the rather risky nature of his own maneuvers, for at the time of a deep breakthrough, he had very vulnerable flanks that were plugged by forces attached to the infantry, which did not always keep up with the tanks. This situation was repeated several times, during the first ten days of hostilities.
Moreover, Guderian argues that, in contrast to the western campaign to defeat the Anglo-French troops, in the east, the tactic of using tank wedges was revised. He noted that the use of large groups of tanks, following the infantry, hampered the maneuver and reduced the overall pace of the operation, as the tanks had to move along the downtrodden roads, where the bottleneck effect arose. Here, for the first time, a different tactic was practically used, where the tanks were ahead, and the motorized infantry was behind and it was the task of covering the flanks of the entire strike group.
This was followed by new approaches in organizing the management of such groups and setting tasks for them. Organizationally, the command of the tank groups was subordinated to the infantry divisions, and therefore, it was possible to plan the actions precisely in terms of a deep breakthrough, when infantry is adjusted to the pace of movement of tank groups. Therefore, the targets for tankers were not square, but point, for example - the capture of bridges across a water barrier, which was demonstrated in this case. In all three groups of armies, the tank shock groups acted exactly in this mode and in the first days, the greatest success in the pace of advancement, showed the Goth tank group from Army Group North,.
We describe this very moment precisely this moment for one reason. The success of the Wehrmacht in the initial period of the war with the scoop was due precisely to the successful and profound breakthroughs of the tank groups. This circumstance is not disputed either by an official or an alternative version of the exposition of events. But it also raises the biggest and most difficult question. These very tanks, which ensured success, had a small ammunition and a modest run at one gas station. That is, a big gap from their communications, could be both an incredible success, and a complete catastrophe.
It was enough to cut the supply routes and the tank divisions would simply stop, becoming good targets and a heap of scrap metal. That is, it would have happened exactly what happened with the Soviet-era mechanized corps, which had several times more tanks and had tanks that surpassed German ones in all respects, including armor and firepower.
That is, we just need to imagine that after passing fifty kilometers forward, the same Guderian left to his left and right of himself tens of thousands of enemy troops and hundreds of tanks that had to crush his flanks and leave his strike group in a sack. A deep breakthrough, in fact is an almost complete tactical environment. To prevent it from happening, there must be synchronization of the actions of the neighbors to the right and to the left, which will tighten and close flanking gaps.
But we remember that literally all analysts argue that deep breakthroughs were achieved precisely by the temporary concentration of forces and assets in a narrow sector of the front. This means, at a minimum, that the neighbors had a much lower density of troops, because there was no concentration there. It follows that by definition they can not show the same pace as the shock groups of Guderian, Goth, or other leaders of tank groups.
This means that their advance will be conditioned solely by the fact that the enemy forces opposing them. In fact, it turned out that on other sectors of the front, where tank divisions were not close, the Wehrmacht successfully advanced, having in front of itself a monstrous concentration of the Red Army troops with tanks, artillery and other. As for the tanks, in the summer of 1941 the scoop had heavy tanks with characteristics that the German industry could not issue until the end of the war.
In the photo - the captured tank KV.
When the first reports of the second day of hostilities were heard about the presence of this tank, it was perceived as an unsuccessful broomstick. Only later, when it was possible to beat KV and even capture several whole copies, it became clear how much the Wehrmacht tanks fell behind the Soviet. And yet, the incredible breakthroughs in the light and medium tanks of the Wehrmacht proved to be incredibly successful. How could this happen?.
On this question, Suvorov has no answer at all. It seems that official military historians have caught this moment and tried to explain this by means that were available to them, from an ideological point of view. They proved to be a universal explanation for the collapse of the frontier first echelon of troops. The first explanation is suddenness, the second is the numerical superiority, and, of course, the backward technique.
As for the second question, Suvorov approximately showed that his Germany did not have and he did it thoroughly enough, breaking the arguments of Soviet propaganda, its statements and messages in the central press. In occasion of technical backlog, already anybody does not speak speech, for it contradicts not only the open statistics, but also common sense. As for the surprise, it was not at all and it is easy to prove.
Total, no one gave a sane answer to the question of why the superior of the Red Army in all respects could not smother the Wehrmacht's breakthrough in the first 10 days of its invasion, although it had all the possibilities for that? To answer this question, we will cite some data from a third party, namely, the opponent of the Red Army. This will help to make the most complete picture of what happened and point to the actual cause of what is now called "the catastrophe of the summer of 1941".
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