Eastern Front, Thanks for the help!

[Curlew]

So I would like to thank all of you for your help and perspective in helping me with my paper, and I know many of you would enjoy reading this so I have decided to post the final paper and outline.

Andrew Hart
April 2, 2009
Professor Raffialli
English 1B
The Eastern Front

   Its mid November, 1942, the weather in Stalingrad really starting to get cold, just like your heart from all the killing you have done. You are a Russian private in the Red Army and you have been defending an apartment that will later become known as Pavlov’s House for the lengthy stay and vicious attacks your unit survived. You have been there 2 months manning a machine gun nest in the upper corner of the building, suddenly you see a movement in the distance across the square you over look. “Здесь они приходят!!!!” (Here they come!!!), you unleash the fury of your Degtyarev light machine gun and mow down several German attackers. As the attack subsides a call comes up through the holes in the floor that it is your turn to run the square. You grudgingly get up and prepare yourself, you don’t want to do it but someone has to, and it is your turn. You and several other privates run out into the square, knocking over the several heaped piled of German and Russian bodies so that the Germans cannot use them for cover with the next attack. You run back inside the building, look up at Sergeant Yaakov Pavlov who smiles and nods, heaving for air you trek your way back up to your machine gun and prepare for the next attack.

   This is what it would be like to live a day in the life of a solider of the red army on the front line of the eastern front. That specific description details the attacks on Pavlov’s House, an apartment building in Stalingrad that was under siege for over 2 months. It is a great example of the vast loss of life in the bloodiest battle in modern history that took place during the bloodiest conflict in modern history that cost over 33 million lives. Over 4 years of fighting from Berlin to Stalingrad and back to Berlin made up the Eastern front fighting from 1941 to 1945. There are several reasons that made up the defeat of Germany on the eastern front. German soldiers were not properly equipped for winter fighting and under supplied throughout the war where as the Russians were properly prepared and equipped for winter. Also, the Russians had fewer resources than the Germans they were able to produce vehicles more efficiently and vehicles that were lower maintenance which helped to outnumber and overwhelm the better, heavier German tanks. The Russians also had a larger fighting force for two reasons, the Russians have a large population that they conscripted and they were able to transfer forces from the pacific coast because the Japanese had no intention of attacking Siberia. These reasons as well as poor tactics on the part of the Germans and good tactics on the part of the Russians lead to a Soviet victory on the eastern front.

   When the Germans initially attacked in June of 1941 they thought that they could successfully fight all the way to Moscow and Stalingrad before the deadly Russian winter. This was the plan for the German attack named Operation Barbarossa and falling back on the successful Blitzkrieg, or lighting war, tactic of fast aggressive forward movement they were able to push very far into Russia. One of the reasons for the vast amount of territory gained was fact that Stalin had refused to believe intelligence that there was an eminent German attack and had therefore refused to build up his defenses and only offered light resistance. During the Fall of 1941 Russians were able to transfer troops from the Siberian coast and defend better. These troops from that had been posted on the east coast of Russia had been stationed there in preparation for a Japanese attack which intelligence correctly stated was not coming. When they reached the Eastern front they were fresh and rested which was a major advantage over the fatigued Germans soldiers. Because of this the Germans were stopped short of Moscow and didn’t come close to Stalingrad.
In the late Fall Hitler ordered the German army to stop outside Moscow and wait out the winter in hopes that by then his southern army would have captured Stalingrad and would be able to transfer troops for the eventual attack. Many historians state that the order to halt the attack outside of Moscow and not attacking it was the main reason the Germans lost the war. The theory is that taking the capitol and possibly capturing or killing Stalin would have caused the Russians to surrender though I disagree. I do not believe that taking Moscow would have caused the Russians to surrender nor do I think they would have killed or captured Stalin, but stopping outside and planning to wait out the winter was a large mistake on the Germans part. The German army was unprepared for the fierce Russian winter in several ways; they were undersupplied as well as improperly equipped and dressed. The German attack had pushed so far forward so fast they had not had time to develop adequate supply lines and were undersupplied at the front lines. The Germans also did not have adequate winter clothing for the harsh Russian winter and had soldiers that were freezing because of it. There were also many reports of German weapons malfunctioning because the gun oil they used was freezing inside of the weapon which caused them to jam. The harsh Russian winter became a recurrent problem over the years as the Germans were never prepared for it. The Russians on the other hand were properly prepared and equipped for winter fighting. This included proper clothing, working weapons, and even several ski mounted battalions which gave the Russians a great advantage and helped them to push back the Germans in the winter of 1941.

The following summer of 1942 the Germans launched another major attack to the south pushing through the Russian defenses headed towards the oilfields to the south and Stalingrad to the east. This split to the south is viewed as a major mistake by historians because the Germans split their army in two (Beever). I however disagree because the Russians never really capitalized on this action. The Russians transferred many of their troops to the south to defend the oilfields and Stalingrad. The battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle in modern combat, shows two key factors in tipping the scale of war, the fact that the Russians had a vast number of troops they were willing to take ground at any cost and that the Germans were once again not prepared for the winter.
This strategy of attrition by throwing waves upon waves of men at the Germans did well. The Germans were mostly trained for fast forward movement through open land not street by street, building by building attack and defense had trouble coping with these endless attacks. Over the entire war this strategy of attrition on the part of the Russians help lead them to victory, though at a high cost (Anderson).

 When the Germans attacked Stalingrad in the summer of 1941 they attacked with a under strength forced and were unable to take the city which forced the battle into another winter that the Germans were once again unprepared for. Hitler’s arrogance that his army could complete its territorial objectives before the winter was once again his downfall. Many German soldiers were malnourished and freezing due to the lack of winter clothing. The German supply lines were once again stressed leaving the front line soldiers undersupplied (Beever). For the second winter in a row the Germans had not been able to secure their terrain objectives or plan for the harsh Russian winter. This compiled with the Russians comfortableness in the winter atmosphere was like fighting a team who actually practiced and has home field advantage. In the end the Germans paid the price for their under preparedness and were quickly pushed out of Stalingrad when the Russian army attacked.

The Russians were able to take back Stalingrad through a maneuver called a double pincer attack which left the Germans in the city stranded. As the Russian army pushed west the Germans trapped in Stalingrad began to starve. The German Luftwaffe began to fly in supply drops in order to sustain the soldiers while a counter attack was amassed in hoped that they could get close enough that the trapped soldiers could break out the German front lines. During this push towards Stalingrad the Russians made a key move by taking their northern forces and sweeping down on top of and behind the German attack (Beever). Though it didn’t kill many Germans or was not a great terrain gain what it did do is prevent the Germans from breaking out of Stalingrad. The Russians were also able to destroy allot of the Luftwaffe’s transport aircraft that were used for running supplies (Anderson). Because the supply drops on Stalingrad had been such an important and large operation the Germans had invested a majority of its supply aircraft. Like putting all of your eggs in one basket this was a bad move and in the end resulted in worse supply lines for the Germans who already could not afford this (Anderson). This compiled with the Germans losing all the territory it had gained in the summer of 1942 and then some made for another bad winter.
   
 

[Curlew]

Once again Hitler thought all that was needed was one last blitzkrieg to break the Russians, but this time deferred the planning to his generals. In the summer of 1943 the Germans launched an attack on the Kursk salient, a large bulge into the German lines in the middle of Russia. Kursk was a very heavily fortified position with lots of anti-tank measures. The Germans had been fooled into thinking otherwise by the Lucy Spy Ring supplying the Germans with misinformation (Anderson). On the 19th of February the Russians launch their offensive in a double pincer format to pinch off and encircle the Russian troops in the Kursk salient. Unfortainitly for the Germans they had marched straight into the Russian defenses. The northern offensive launched from Rzhev was to sweep down to Kursk but attacked straight into a Russian minefield and couldn’t even reach their first objective 5 miles away from the start (Anderson). The army in the Rzhev sector was soon put on the defensive and couldn’t make any more ground for the remainder of the offensive. The southern attack that was coming up also encountered heavy resistance, in an attempt to out flank the Russians the Germans made a drastic 90 degree turn and moved 60 miles west. It wasn’t long before they ran into the reserves of the Russian 5th Guards Tank Army outside of Prochorovka. The Germans sustained heavy losses at Prochorovka and made little ground after, by august the German attack had been exhausted and very little ground had been taken. The Attack on Kursk was an utter failure and would be the last major German offensive of the war.

   The battle outside of Prochorovka is a key battle for two reasons, the Germans heavy tank losses and the proof that the Russian light and medium tanks could defeat the heavy German tanks. Prochorovka has been cited by many historians as the largest tank engagement in history with over 1000 tanks. There is some disagreement in the numbers of tanks at the beginning and end of the battle but my research shows that around 800 light and medium tanks going up against around 300 heavy German tanks. The German philosophy on tank building was to build large, complicated, heavy tanks such as the Tiger, Panther, and Hetzer, because of this they produced allot less and used allot more resources. This philosophy not only applied to tanks but to self propelled guns, aircraft, and other forms of military equipment. The Russians before the war had idolized Ford for his ability to mass produce cars and had adopted mass production with his help. This ‘Fordization’ combined with the communist philosophy lead the Russians to produce smaller, lighter tanks such as the T-34 and T-75 at a quicker rate with less resources. Like the Germans this philosophy governed all other areas of military production. The Russians were in fact producing around 3 times the tanks and 10,000 more aircraft a year than the Germans after 1941 (Wikipedia.org). The reason that the battle outside of Prochorovka is so important is that not only was it a major tank battle but it was a clash of the two industrial philosophies. On one side you had about 300 heavy, complicated, hard to produce tanks and on the other side you had 3 times the German tanks in the form of 1000 light, mass produced Russian tanks ready to go on the attack. The Russians fell upon its strategy of attrition and began to throw waves upon waves of attacking T-34’s and T-75’s upon the Germans heavy tanks. Though the Russians sustained heavy casualties but eventually forced enough losses on the Germans that they retreated. The battle outside of Prochorovka though a little territorial gain was a major defeat for the Germans, both in the material losses and the proof that the Russian industrial philosophy would defeat them.

[Curlew]

The reason the loss of several hundred German tanks was so important is because in August the Russians launched a major attack. This attack forced the under strength German army to retreat giving up valuable industrial areas in Orel making it harder to replenish their supply of hard to build complicated tanks that they had lost at Prochorovka.  Defensive position and retreating were not a specialty of the German army which had trained to make fast forward movement. This compiled with having to move some troops to France to fight the newly formed western front and fighting against Russians who were very comfortable fighting in winter put the Germans at a severe disadvantage. Continuing the attack into April the Russians continued to push through the Ukraine as well as launching a new offensive in the north from Leningrad. By August the Russians had pushed west though Belorussia and into Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. With winter setting in the Russians had even pushed to the south and taken Romania, Bulgaria, and parts of Yugoslavia, and Hungary. This year long attack took back most of what the Germans had taken in the summer of 1941. The land lost contained important industrial areas and valuable farming areas which severely cut the supplies for the German army. In the end the Russian offensive of 1942 was a precursor to the end of the war.

   The areas liberated were grateful to be out from under German oppression and had lost allot under the German military occupation. When the Germans first occupied the land they had set up a military government in charge of controlling the population. Racist Nazi ideology viewed the civilians of the eastern countries as inferior and viewed the future of the area as being settled by Germans. Though at first they were greeted as liberators they were quickly despised. The Germans were notorious for going from village to village and taking all able men with them to fight or work and those who refused were shot. The women in the towns were very often raped and then killed by German soldiers. The Germans also would requisition all of the food coming off the farms to help supply their war efforts, this lead to massive famine and extreme unrest in the local populations. The result was a strong and widespread resistance that would interfere and attack German supply lines and communication. This had two effects on the German war effort, first and most obviously if weakened the supply lines and communication efforts. Second is that it forced the Germans to take more soldiers off the front lines to control the population, using important resources and men on this job. In the end it helped the Russian efforts greatly because the German supply lines were something that troubled them throughout the war as well as removing front line soldiers giving the Russians better odds. In the end their ordeal was over when the Russian army came in and liberated them in 1943. By the end of it all over 16 million eastern country civilians died because of the German occupation, a number greater than the military loses of both sides combined during the conflict.

   In the summer of 1943 the German leaders believed that the major attack on Germany and Berlin would come from the south where it would be shortest, they were terribly wrong. The Russian attack was a sweeping attack from the north that pushed deep into Germany and then down onto Berlin while the southern flank slowly followed (Wikipedia.org). This mistake was the last nail in the coffin as the red army pushed into Berlin in April and May of 1945. With the end of the eastern front coming to a close the 4 year ordeal came to a close.

   All in all the Germans made several mistakes that cost them the war. Countless tactically mistakes and Hitler’s arrogance lead them to make bad advances and have a terrible defense. This compiled with terrible supply lines constantly under attack from civilian resistance in occupied territory lead to a army with low food and ammunition. Poor equipment left German soldiers freezing during winter with guns that had frozen shut fighting against an army that was comfortable in harsh Russian winter. Misinformation lead the Germans to make an attack on a strongly fortified Kursk costing the Germans heavy casualties. During the battle near Prochorovka not only cost the Germans heavy tank losses but also showed that their philosophy of building heavy complicated tanks could be beaten by the Russian philosophy of building simple light tanks. These losses compile with the loss of valuable industrial and farming areas put the German army at an even larger disadvantage. The final mistake was reinforcing the southern flank in defense of Berlin when the Russians ended up sweeping in from the northern flank. All in all the Germans made many key mistakes in areas that vital to winning a war and in the end it cost them the war.

[StokesAk]

Thats very interesting. It looks like my report on Civil War Railroads.

[Scherf]

The man's name is Beevor, not Beever.

[Kermit de frog]

Did you say...did you say....did you say BEAVER!?!

Quote is from "The Elm Chanted Forest"...

[Nefarious]

When the Germans attacked Stalingrad in the summer of 1941 they attacked with a under strength forced and were unable to take the city which forced the battle into another winter that the Germans were once again unprepared for.

I noticed this was wrong, it should be 1942. Good read though, hope you get a good grade.

[LLv34_Camouflage]

Good read, here's some constructive criticism / comments. If this is an essay for a university class, make sure to reference everything. And I mean everything. And wiki isn't a proper source. 

Also, the Russians had fewer resources than the Germans they were able to produce vehicles more efficiently and vehicles that were lower maintenance

The soviet logistics relied heavily on the lend-lease trucks. Their own trucks were generally good for as long until the first tank of gas ran out.

Towards the end of the war, the germans were critically low on strategic materials (metal alloys etc), whereas the soviets had just had their industry kick started and up to increasing speed.

These reasons as well as poor tactics on the part of the Germans and good tactics on the part of the Russians lead to a Soviet victory on the eastern front.

Generally, I'd consider the germans to have had superior tactics, but they were just simply overrun by the superior numbers as the war progressed. It was the germans' strategy that was pretty much doomed from the start. They woke up a sleeping giant.

push back the Germans in the winter of 1941

IIRC, the germans advanced at all fronts up until the end of 1942.  In the beginning of 1942, the soviet troops were pretty much clobbered up from the arctic ocean all the way down to the black sea. They didnt have a chance to push the germans back.  However, the winter stopped the germans as they were ill prepared for the harsh conditions, as you point out.

smaller, lighter tanks such as the T-34 and T-75

T-34 is a medium tank. Whats a T-75?

The Russians were in fact producing around 3 times the tanks and 10,000 more aircraft a year than the Germans after 1941

Put the number into perspective, 10.000 compared to what?

This year long attack took back most of what the Germans had taken in the summer of 1941.

Lots of text with just days of the month mentioned....  What year? 

In the end their ordeal was over when the Russian army came in and liberated them in 1943.

I would be VERY careful with the term "liberation".  In many cases the soviets were worse than the germans.  I'm sure you're familiar with the state of things in eastern europe after WW2...

And check the grammar please.

Please note that I havent referenced any of these comments, so take them with a grain of salt.

Camo

<edit>Just noticed that the text is already submitted. So please ignore my comments.   Like Nef said, good read, I hope you get a good grade!   </edit>

[iTunes]

Hey Curlew
Not here to comment on the content, I'll leave that to more historical minds
Structure is good, You had a thesis at the begining, with supporting paragraphs under it, You had subject matter in the sentences that matter with the correct amount of verbs (In some of them) You made good use of some linking verbs without preposition.
At the end, I would have clairified your thesis one more time with a short quality summary in there with some points to recap it all.
some of your topic sentences werre indeed  lacking in some supporting material, in other words "Xyz did tid not like abc" but not much after that- stay on course and keep the sturcture there.
There was some good use of logic and one part of your argument (attempt to convince) was short of a declarative sentence or two, more of a statement than a premise so it was difficult to form a conclusion.
good work though and a big <S> !

[Curlew]

Thanks guys, i did get a good grade on this, and thanks for the pointers camo, allot of that stuff is in there because i had to make an arguement in the paper instead of just writing and awesomefun paper.

Thanks for the analysis tunes