Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the New Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 From one War to Another
- 2 From the German and Soviet Invasions of Poland to the German Attack in the West, September I, 1939 to May 10, 1940
- 3 The world Turned Upside Down
- 4 The Expanding Conflict, 1940-1941
- 5 The Eastern Front and a Changing War, June to December, 1941
- 6 Halting the Japanese Advance, Halting the German Advance; Keeping Them Apart and Shifting the Balance: December 1941 to November 1942
- 7 The War At Sea, 1942-1944, and the Blockade
- 8 The War in Europe and North Africa 1942-1943: to and from Stalingrad; to and from Tunis
- 9 The Home Front
- 10 Means of Warfare: Old and New
- 11 From the Spring of 1943 to Summer 1944
- 12 The Assault on Germany from All Sides
- 13 Tensions in Both Alliances
- 14 The Halt on the European Fronts
- 15 The Final Assault on Germany
- 16 The War in the Pacific: From Leyte to the Missouri
- Conclusions: the Cost and Impact of War
- Bibliographic Essay
- Notes
- Maps
- Index
5 - The Eastern Front and a Changing War, June to December, 1941
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the New Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 From one War to Another
- 2 From the German and Soviet Invasions of Poland to the German Attack in the West, September I, 1939 to May 10, 1940
- 3 The world Turned Upside Down
- 4 The Expanding Conflict, 1940-1941
- 5 The Eastern Front and a Changing War, June to December, 1941
- 6 Halting the Japanese Advance, Halting the German Advance; Keeping Them Apart and Shifting the Balance: December 1941 to November 1942
- 7 The War At Sea, 1942-1944, and the Blockade
- 8 The War in Europe and North Africa 1942-1943: to and from Stalingrad; to and from Tunis
- 9 The Home Front
- 10 Means of Warfare: Old and New
- 11 From the Spring of 1943 to Summer 1944
- 12 The Assault on Germany from All Sides
- 13 Tensions in Both Alliances
- 14 The Halt on the European Fronts
- 15 The Final Assault on Germany
- 16 The War in the Pacific: From Leyte to the Missouri
- Conclusions: the Cost and Impact of War
- Bibliographic Essay
- Notes
- Maps
- Index
Summary
INVASION
When Germany and her allies invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the war changed in several ways. One change that not everybody recognized right away but that is certainly clear in retrospect is that from that date until the end of the war in Europe in May, 1945, the majority of the fighting of the whole war took place on the Eastern Front: more people fought and died there than on all the other fronts of the war around the globe put together. This was due to three factors which will be the theme of much of the rest of this account of the conflict: the massive size of the forces engaged, the nature of the fighting which made it unlikely that the two sides would return to peaceful relations, and the ability of Germany's enemies to stick together and thereby insure Germany's eventual defeat.
The attack on the Soviet Union was launched in the early hours of June 22 and was a total surprise. There had been a last-minute alert to Soviet units on some sectors of the front, but orders generally were to hold fire in case this was all a German provocation. The German air force, using about 60 percent of its total strength, employed over 2700 war planes; in carefully planned strikes that morning it destroyed a large portion of the Soviet air force on the ground, damaged its forward fields, and shot down most of the Red Air Force planes that got into the air. The combination of surprise with experience in prior campaigns enabled the German air force to destroy over 4000 Soviet planes in the first week of the campaign. The resulting near total German control of the air did not last long, but it was in effect in the early months of fighting and greatly facilitated the advance of Germany's ground forces.
The German army with over three million men together with more than half a million soldiers of countries allied with Germany (and over 600,000 horses) attacked according to plans that had been carefully worked out in the preceding months.“
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- A World at ArmsA Global History of World War II, pp. 264 - 309Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005