Snake Featherston[/URL] &
ObssesedNuker”]
...that happened in the first two weeks of the war. During that time the Wehrmacht met their concept of what victory was, for reasons that would have happened regardless of Moscow directing or not directing.
'When Titans Clashed', page 37-38:
Behind the five forward fronts, a completely separate group of five field armies was in the process of forming a second strategic echelon behind the original three belts. This Reserve Front was assembling along the line of the Dnepr and Dvina Rivers. Their force concentration was typical of the Soviet principle of echeloning forces in great depths; it was virtually invisible to German intelligence prior to hostilities. Both the Reserve Front and significant elements of the Forward units had only begun to deploy in late-April 1941 As in so many other respects,
the German attack on 22 June caught the Soviets in transition.
page 44, same book.
In retrospect,
the most serious Soviet failure was neither strategic surprise nor tactical surprise, but
institutional surprise. In June 1941 the Red Army and Air Force were in transition, changing their organization, leadership, equipment, training, troop dispositions, and defensive plans. Had Hitler attacked four years earlier or even one year later, the Soviet Armed Forces would have been more than a match for the Wehrmacht. Whether by coincidence or instinct, however, the German dictator invaded at a time when his own Armed Forces were still close to their peak while his arch enemy 3was most vulnerable.
It was this institutional surprise that was most responsible for the catastrophic Soviet defeats of 1941.