Eastern Front #6 Battle for Smolensk Begins

Last time we spoke about the Red Army on the Run. In the second week of Operation Barbarossa, the progress of the German forces was marked by swift victories and severe challenges. The Luftwaffe's dominance in the skies led to significant destruction of Soviet aircraft, with Germany claiming thousands downed. However, the Soviet Air Force, with hidden reserves, began to regroup under General Timoshenko, setting the stage for resilience. Amid these chaotic battlefields, disorganization plagued the Red Army, which struggled to adapt its tactics against the more cohesive German forces. Despite losing heavily, Soviet commanders sought to turn the tide, but logistical issues and fierce German assaults exacerbated their plight. As the Germans captured crucial territories like Riga, their strategic goal conflicted with rising concerns from within their command. While Hitler believed victory was within reach, generals like Halder worried about underestimating Soviet strength. The relentless advances led to fierce fighting at the edges of Smolensk, where both armies braced for an inevitable and consequential clash. 

This episode is the beginning of the Battle for Smolensk 

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

Well hello there, we are back and its week three of Operation Barbarossa. On July 8, Army Group Centre officially proclaimed that it had captured 287,704 prisoners, destroyed or seized 2,585 tanks, and taken 1,449 guns. While these numbers do reflect considerable gains, they do not necessarily indicate that the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse, in fact, the opposite was true. As the German offensive strength began to wane, the Soviet Union was implementing one of the most remarkable mobilization programs in military history. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Red Army had developed a cadre system, maintaining a small number of active-duty soldiers in peacetime that could be rapidly expanded by reservists during wartime. This system received a boost with the 1938 Universal Military Service Law, which extended the age of enlistment for army reserves to 50 and established numerous military schools to accommodate the influx of recruits. By the time of the German invasion, the Red Army boasted a mobilization base of 14 million men. By the end of June 1941, 5.3 million reservists had been called up, with subsequent mobilizations continuing to swell the ranks. This cadre system allowed for an unprecedented rate of force generation, catching German intelligence completely off guard and concealing the true strength of the Soviet military. In July 1941, an astounding 13 new field armies emerged, followed by another 14 in August. While these reserve armies were not as well-equipped or trained as their professional counterparts, as the German mobile forces weakened, many of the frontlines began to settle into positional warfare. This shift granted the new armies the time they needed to improve.

 

While it would be unreasonable to downplay the magnitude of the Western Front’s military disaster in Belorussia, it is important to recognize that the Soviet Union’s system for generating forces allowed it to quickly replace losses and expand the size of the Red Army. On June 22, 1941, the Red Army counted 5,373,000 men. By August 31, despite heavy losses, this number had surged to 6,889,000, and by December 31, 1941, it reached an estimated 8 million. After the war, German military officer Blumentritt acknowledged the fundamental issue of latent Soviet military strength. He recalled the German offensive plans aimed at encircling and destroying the Red Army before reaching the Dnieper and Dvina Rivers, ultimately asking, “But what if armies, millions strong, had not yet even been mobilized, and only parts of the Red Army were in western Russia?”

 

The loss of tanks weighed heavily on the Soviets, as these assets were much harder to replace. However, historians have often overstated the extent of German victories, particularly regarding the Soviet tank fleet. At the war's outset, the Soviets had an astonishing total of 23,767 tanks, but this figure included many that were already obsolete. Around 15,000 of those w