Barbarossa In Ukraine: Capitalism To The Rescue (Part 2)

Al Murray (0:02)

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Welcome, welcome everyone to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. We have Al Murray and James Holland. This is our next Barbarossa series, isn't it? The Road To Kiev. Here we are. The Soviet Union is punch drunk and unable to make rational decisions. The German setup is punch drunk and unable to make rational decisions. They're slugging it out in August of 1941, trying to get one over the other.

Complete strategic muddle at the top of both belligerents, isn't it? That's the really interesting thing. Stalin's strategic muddle encouraging Hitler to believe that he is a genius, because basically Stalin's gone and done what Hitler needs him to do in order for Hitler's brilliant plan to succeed. So you have this weird confluence, serendipity of decision-making on the Soviet side that helps. The completely sclerotic, stupid, deluded decision-making on the German side is making it work or making it look like they're getting it right, isn't it? Which is very, very, very peculiar.

James Holland (1:31)

Yes. Although at this time in the third week of August 1941, it's absolutely clear that Barbarossa is stalling because the main thrust towards Moscow, which Pitner professes that he never really wanted to do in the first place, has now been split and it's gone north, while the main, you know, the center bit of it is still trying to hold out against repeated counterattacks, which is where Stalin thinks the main attack is. Zhukov has warned him that that's not the case and that they've got a very vulnerable flank to the south, which Stalin is kind of to a large extent ignoring. That is exactly what Hitler is now trying to do. But as you point out, you know, both his senior command wanted to go to Moscow. He never wanted to go to Moscow. He wanted to go to Leningrad and go into the breadbasket of Europe, into the Ukraine and hence onto the oil fields of the Caucasus. But there is also this, compounding this is a sense of time running out. This is always supposed to be a three month campaign, that they haven't really moved very far at all. And certainly the front has not gone eastwards at all in the last three and a half weeks at all, really. In fact, in parts it's gone back because they've abandoned the Yelnya salient and gone on to the defensive, as we discovered in the last episode. And the Red Army is not annihilated and completely destroyed. The flip side of that is, yes, the Russians seem to have, or the Soviets seem to have inexhaustible amounts of manpower, and they have the potential to churn out vast numbers of T-34s and KV-1s tanks, and Il-2 Shturmovik ground attack fighters, and all the rest of it, and Kadyusha rockets. But is there a case that the whole Soviet Union might collapse? That's the concern for Stalin.

It's a bit like Britain in the last week of May, 1940 On paper, there's no reason to throw in the towel because you've got a Navy or an island, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But is the will sapping, you know, is there a collective panic where you just can't keep the whole show on the road? And that is the fear for the Soviets. And there is a sense in this third week of August that time is running out. Time is running out for the Germans to complete this annihilation of the Soviet Union and complete this conquest. And time is potentially running out for the Soviet Union because they've lost so much in that first 500 kilometres of German victories.

You know, they've lost so many resources and stuff. And when we get on to the next series, which we're going to do in the new year on Operation Typhoon, which is the next phase of the Eastern Front campaign, we'll look a bit more in detail in what is going in the transfer of factories to the year rules and all the rest of it, and how much actually they leave behind, which is quite a lot.

And a huge amount of coal mines and steel reserves and bauxite and all the rest of it. So that is the question. And the attrition is absolutely terrible. You know, too much is being expected of too few in the spearheads of the Germans. Guderian is blowing a gasket, and this is entirely understandable.

But he's also at the same time guilty of assuming that his drive southwards is the only show in town, which it isn't. Bok, who is the commander of Army Group Centre, is having a nightmare just trying to keep the Central Eastern Front in order. And the whole thing is about a kickoff again. But the chances of the Soviet Union of holding on, keeping the show on the road, keeping the Germans at bay, and turning defeat into victory, rather rests on surprising allies to the west. So I think it's important in this telling of the Barbarossa tale to just pause a second or an hour and find out what the response to Barbarossa is in Britain and in the USA.