The Eastern Front, Part One: The Battle Joined

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Winter was now setting in with a vengeance, and the fighting in the south was about to come to a near halt for the time being.  Looking back years later, many Russians would call it the coldest and most fierce winter in memory.  It was as if Russia herself had gone on the attack to drive out yet another invader on her soil.

The Italians, like the rest of the world, were now watching to see the outcome of the great battle to the north.  The German army’s rapid advance through the USSR had now slowed to crawl.  The original plan in Barbarossa, as devised by Hitler, did not put the focus of the operation squarely on the drive and capture of the Soviet capital of Moscow.  Many leaders in the German army felt that Moscow, and the large industrial basin that surrounds it, should of been the main goal in the operation.  It’s fall they reasoned, would be the quickest way to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

During September however, to the frustration and disappointment to many leaders in the Wehrmacht, Hitler became focused instead on the capture of the Ukrainian capitol of Kiev.  Hitler swung Army Group Center, who was advancing on Moscow, to the south to help in the final siege and attack of Kiev.  Though the Germans would capture nearly 500,000 soldiers during their victory in the Battle of Kiev, precious time and momentum was lost on the advance to Moscow.

The drive on the capital restarted in October, but torrential rains swept through northern Russia just as the Italian and Germans in the south had faced. There were very few paved roads for the Germans to use on their advance, and the dirt ones they had been traversing now turned into muddy quagmires.  Progress slowed to about 2 to 3 miles a day as the troops moved through the muck, and the Germans now were dealing with even greater problems of supply as their lines had grown longer and longer during these opening months of the operation.  For the first time during Barbarossa, the immense size of the Soviet Union was playing a factor in slowing down the axis advance.

During the Blitzkriegs of Poland and France, the Wehrmacht was able to augment any supply needs by simply obtaining fuel or food from the land as they moved through the populated areas of those countries.  In Russia however, they found themselves surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of fields or forest with very little to scavenge or take.

The winter snows then came; light at first, but eventually becoming raging blizzards of which the Germans had great difficulty dealing with .  The German troops were literally freezing to death; very few possessed proper clothing as German war planners had been confident the war would be over long before the onset of winter.  Frostbite and the frigid cold took a huge toll on the army mentally and physically, all the while having to continue to fight an opponent who was now growing more desperate and stout as the advance moved on.    

The Russians were also able to build up their forces and greatly improve the defenses around Moscow during this time.   Hundreds of thousands of men and weapons were brought up from all over the USSR to add to the resistance, including many that had been guarding the Manchurian border against the possibility of a Japanese attack.  Russian sources now felt confident that the Japanese would not attack from the south, thus many of the Soviet troops in that area could now be diverted to Moscow for its pivotal defense.

This was yet another example of poor coordination of objectives and military strategies by the major Axis partners, which would eventually help lead to their ultimate demise.  If  Hitler would have made the Italians privy to the invasion before it had started, there is a good chance that Mussolini would have prepared and sent a much larger force to assist the Germans in southern Russia.  This would of led to the freeing up or repositioning of German troops in the south,  which would of made additional German soldiers available to participate in the advance on Moscow.  Of even greater advantage for the Axis, if the Japanese would have focused on first helping in eliminating the Soviets as a military threat by thrusting out of Manchuria, the Russians might not have been able to withstand the combined effort of the Axis forces and have been swiftly defeated. Instead Japan looked first to obtain the oil and raw materials in the Dutch East Indies and beyond to fuel its Imperial dream of conquest, and would need control and dominance of the Pacific to do this.  Just as the German drive on Moscow was faltering in the snow, the Japaneses were launching their own secret attack on a far away tropical American naval base.  Their war in the Pacific against the Americans would begin two days after the battle for Moscow officially ended, heralded in by the sound of bombs crashing down on the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.

By December elements of the German army arrived within 25 miles of Moscow.  They would go no farther.  The Russians launched a counter-attacked, and the exhausted Germans were pushed back.   The critical communications hub and capitol of the USSR was safe, but the German army was not completely destroyed or expelled out of mother Russia as other invading armies had been in the past.  The Germans were able to stop the counter-attack, and the lines stabilized for the winter.  The Wehrmacht would live to fight another day in Russia, and had not yet suffered Napoleon’s exact fate.

The Italian forces would also hold their current positions into the new year.  But 1942 would bring a new direction and path for the Axis to follow in their quest for victory on the Eastern Front.  The main thrust of attack would no longer be directed from the north, but would originate instead from the south.  The Germans would secretly move tens of thousands of men away from the Moscow front, and reposition them for a drive to seize the oil rich Caucasus in the south. The German siege of Leningrad would continue in the extreme north, and troops would continue to battle near Moscow in the new year, but Hitler believed his drive to and capture of the precious oil fields in the Caucasus Region would finally win the war in the east for him.

The Italian army would play a role in this fight during that pivotal year of 1942.  The new plan was solid and well devised, and had a good chance of achieving the desired goal based on the information the Axis had on the Russians current situation.  But something would happen on the way to victory for the Axis; Hitler would become preoccupied with an industrial city that straddled the Volga River.  He felt its seizure would cut off the supply route to the majority of Joseph Stalin’s forces fighting throughout the USSR. Hitler had split his forces in the south, with part continuing to attack the Caucasus Region and the other contingent moved from their flank postion further north to now achieve his new goal of strangling the flow of Soviet supplies up the Volga .   The Italians would move with the German 6th Army to the flanks of that critical city, making the Italian army’s fate that of the Germans in the forthcoming struggle.   The destiny of the Axis forces in Russia, and perhaps of the entire war, was to be decided that upcoming winter of 1942 in the battle for the frozen city of Stalingrad.

End Part 1 of 3
References.
Few Returned:  28 days on the Russian front:   Eugenio Corti, Peter Edward Levy
Italian Army, 1940-1945:   Philip Jowett
War without Garlands: Barbarossa 1941/42:  Robert Kershaw
Stalingrad:  Anthony Beevor
World War II Magazine article with Albano Castelletto
Wikipedia Articles

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Strong interest in WW2. My Father served in the Pacific with 710 Tank BTL at Anguar, Peleliu, and Philippines. Grandfather was in Italian Army shortly after WW1.

Peleliu81

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