After The Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition To Defeat In The East
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Major Bob E. Willis Jr.
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After The Blitzkrieg - Major Bob E. Willis Jr.
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AFTER THE BLITZKRIEG: THE GERMAN ARMY’S TRANSITION TO DEFEAT IN THE EAST
By
Major Bob E. Willis Jr., United States Army.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
ABSTRACT 5
INTRODUCTION 6
Background 8
Thesis 9
OPERATION BARBAROSSA: A LINEAR, KINETIC APPROACH 11
Strategic and Operational Objectives 11
The Military Zone of Operation 13
The Civil Zone of Operations 14
Summary 15
DECISIVE BATTLE FOUNDERS: THE RISE OF THE PARTISAN WAR 17
The Genesis of the Early Partisan Movement 17
From Scattered Resistance to All-peoples War
21
One Last Opportunity: The German Experience with Indigenous Security Forces 22
BARBAROSSA IN RETROSPECT: PLANNING TO FAIL 27
Doctrine and Experience 27
Information Bias: The German Army’s Appreciation of Soviet Politics, Society and Culture 31
Interagency
Unit of Purpose: Relations Between Civil and Military Administration 38
CONCLUSION 43
The Chimera of Decisive Battle 44
Complex Adaptive Systems 45
The Role of Indigenous Security Forces 47
Doctrine, Culture and Interagency Coordination 48
APPENDIX A: NOTES ON SOURCES 50
APPENDIX B: KEY PERSONS OF INTEREST IN THE STUDY 53
APPENDIX C: KEY TERMS AND ORGANIZATIONS 54
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 56
BIBLIOGRAPHY 57
Memoir 57
Reports 57
Books 57
U.S. Doctrinal and Concept Publications 60
Theses and Research Papers 61
Articles 61
ABSTRACT
AFTER THE BLITZKRIEG: THE GERMAN ARMY’S TRANSITION TO DEFEAT IN THE EAST by Major Bob E. Willis Jr., United States Army.
One of the most complex challenges facing the U.S. military today is the problem of imposing stability over the chaos that follows major combat operations. Despite the U.S. military’s predilection to distill warfare into the linear, Newtonian paradigm, recent experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) suggests that the cause and effect correlation between high-velocity major combat operations and achieving a complex political end state such as regime change is becoming less certain in the contemporary strategic environment. The transition to stability operations in a non-linear, dynamic environment is proving more difficult, and perhaps more decisive, than the major combat phase of a campaign. At some point in every war, the focus must shift from rupturing the existing system to stabilizing and legitimizing a new one; the center of gravity from the enemy’s military forces to ending the chaos and violence that follow major combat operations. The aim of this study is to examine the difficulty in planning and executing these transitions from a historical perspective.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 sparked a guerilla resistance unparalleled in modern history in scale and ferocity. In the wake of the initial invasion, the German Army began its struggle to secure a territory encompassing one million square miles and sixty-five million people and to pacify a growing partisan resistance. The German endeavor to secure the occupied areas and suppress the partisan movement in the wake of Operation Barbarossa illustrates the nature of the problem of bridging the gap between rapid, decisive combat operations and shaping
the post-major conflict environment—securing populations and infrastructure and persuading people to accept the transition from a defeated government to a new one. In this regard, the German experience on the Eastern Front following Operation Barbarossa seems to offer a number of similarities to the U.S. experience in Iraq in the aftermath of OIF. This study highlights what may be some of the enduring qualities about the nature of the transition between decisive battle and political end state—particularly when that end state is regime change. It elaborates on the notion of decisive battle, how the formulation of resistance movements can be explained as complex adaptive systems, the potential of indigenous security forces and the influence of doctrine, cultural appreciation and interagency cooperation on operational-level transition planning.
INTRODUCTION
Transitions are incredibly hard. Everyone understands that— all the way back to all the dead Germans.—A Senior U.S. General Officer speaking on the lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
One of the most complex challenges facing the U.S. military today is the problem of imposing stability over the chaos that follows major combat operations. In the coming decades, the nature of the strategic environment will likely place an even greater demand on the U.S. military’s ability to plan and execute these transitions between major combat and stability operations.{1} The situation facing U.S. and Coalition military forces in Iraq at the time of this writing is one example that demonstrates the nature of this problem. Despite defeating the Iraqi Army and removing Saddam Hussein’s regime in the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), a fierce insurgency emerged in the ensuing chaos which now poses a serious threat to the U.S. strategic objectives in Iraq.{2} According to one U.S. national intelligence estimate, a stable, independent government in Iraq is unlikely for the foreseeable future. A state of persistent chaos or even outright civil war is far more likely.{3} By any measure, the U.S. has yet to impose the security required to facilitate the transition to, and reconstruction of a new normal
-the first step towards winning the peace.{4}
Related to this problem in the changing nature of warfare, the U.S. experience in OIF suggests that the cause and effect correlation between high-velocity major combat operations and the political end state is becoming less certain in the contemporary strategic environment.
Contrary to the U.S. military’s predilection to distill warfare into the linear, Newtonian paradigm as postulated by Jominian theory, the transition to stability operations in a non-linear, dynamic environment is more difficult, and often more vital to the overall aim, than conventional combat operations.{5} It is difficult at the present juncture to evaluate the merits of this assertion vis-a-vis Iraq as OIF is still a work in progress. However, the problem of bridging the void between major combat operations and a campaign’s ultimate political aims is not idiosyncratic to U.S. forces in Iraq. It is therefore useful to gain an understanding of the difficulty in planning and executing these transitions from other historical cases.
There exists a great body of study on the operational planning for the German invasion of the Soviet Union.{6} The majority of historical and professional military interest in Operation Barbarossa is focused on the customary elements of operational design: the dubious end state, the failure to commit to a center of gravity, culmination and the selection of lines of operations. By comparison, there is a dearth of analysis on the German Army’s plan to transition from major combat operations to securing the occupied areas. This aspect of the German invasion was an unequivocal, yet highly instructive failure. The planning and execution of this transition in the early months of the war gave rise to "one of the greatest guerilla organizations