the soviet partisan movement 1941-1944 by edgar m. howell

24 THE SOVIET PARTISAN MOVEMENT
The German Lineup
Invasion Planning
Under the German plan of operations, the immediate task of the Army
was the destruction of the Red Army in the western border zones of the
USSR by means of deep penetrations and encirclements by armored
spearheads. Special emphasis was to be placed on the prevention of
a strategic retreat into the void of the Russian land mass where space
might be traded for time and German communications stretched to the
breaking point. The final aim of the entire operation was the erection
of a barrier against the infinity of Asiatic Russia along the Archangel-
Astrakhan line.
The attack was to be launched by three army groups simultaneously,
two to the north and one to the south of the Pripyat Marshes, with the
main effort in the north. Army Group Center, under the command of
Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock was to move directly eastward
and encircle and destroy the enemy forces in White Russia. This would
cover the right flank of Army Group North and enable it to advance
swiftly to the north to capture Leningrad and free the Baltic States coast
to the German navy. Once the Baltics were secure, and his left flank
thus anchored, he was to throw the entire weight of his armies at Moscow.
His force for this task consisted of the Second Panzer Group (Generaloberist
Heinz Guderian),the Third Panzer Group (Generaloberst Hans
Hoth), the Fourth Army (Generaloberst Guenther von Kluge), and the
Ninth Army (Generaloberst Adolf Strauss), the whole totaling 48 divisions
of which 9 were armored and 7 motorized. 68
The assault was to be spearheaded by the two panzer groups attacking
from points some 120 miles apart in a series of gigantic double envelopments,
the Third Panzer Group on the extreme left and the Second
Panzer Group to the south in the vicinity of Brest-Litovsk. The infantry
was to push forward all along the line and reduce the tankencircled
pockets.
Opposing ArmyGroup Center was Timoshenko's West Front, 69 comprised
of the Second, Third, Tenth, and Twelfth Armies, made up of
some 45 rifle and 2 armored divisions.
Poised in East Prussia for the thrust through the Baltics to Leningrad
was Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb's Army Group
North, made up of the Fourth Panzer Group (Generaloberst Erich
Hoeppner), the Sixteenth Army (Generaloberst Ernst Busch), and the
Eighteenth Army (Generaloberst Georg von Kuechler),totaling 27 divi-
68 All figures for the German order of battle at the beginning of the campaign are
taken from DA Pam 20-261a, The German Campaign in Russia, Planning and
Operations (1940-1942).
69
In the Red Army a "front" corresponded roughly to a German army group.