The Great Battle for Kiev, September 1941
Rachel Moltz
Thu, 06/29/2023 – 12:17
On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched his massive Wehrmacht in an effort to destroy the Red Army and the Soviet Union. That was certainly at the heart of the German belief that they would succeed in a matter of weeks. As Hitler suggested, it would prove a matter of punching a few holes in the Soviet front lines, and the whole Bolshevik-Jewish regime and its military forces “would collapse like a house of cards.”
However, things turned out to be much more difficult than the German leaders expected. Despite being aided and abetted by the extraordinarily bad guidance the Red Army received from Stalin, almost immediately the Wehrmacht ran into significant difficulties. Soviet resistance proved especially tenacious at the sharp end, while the Germans began to recognize that their estimates of the logistics and intelligence requirements for the upcoming campaign had been disastrously off the mark.
The Army’s chief of staff, Franz Halder, who had been exceedingly optimistic during the campaign’s opening weeks, by the end of July had fundamentally altered his estimation: “the whole situation makes it entirely plain that we have underestimated the Russian Colossus. … …read more
Source:: Hoover Institution
