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    After The Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition To Defeat In The East
    After The Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition To Defeat In The East
    After The Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition To Defeat In The East
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    After The Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition To Defeat In The East

    By Major Bob E. Willis Jr.

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    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVerdun Press
    Release dateAug 15, 2014
    ISBN9781782895763
    After The Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition To Defeat In The East

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      Book preview

      After The Blitzkrieg - Major Bob E. Willis Jr.

       This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – picklepublishing@gmail.com

      Or on Facebook

      Text originally published in 2005 under the same title.

      © Pickle Partners Publishing 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      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

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