Barbarossa, Soviet Covering Forces and the Initial Period of War; Military History and Airland Battle

摘要

The issues surrounding the German attack upon the Soviet Union in June 1941 continue to attract the attention of historians and military analysts. The nature of the Soviet response to that attack has, as recent articles in Air University Review suggest, set off heated polemics. The appearance of Bryan Fugates Operation Barbarossa with its assertion that the Soviet High Command did, indeed, have a 'realistic plan or operative concept for coping with the situation' marked a major departure from conventional Western scholarly interpretation of the events leading up to the invasion. The response by Williamson Murray and Barry G. Watts that Fugate was 'inventing history' to find an unsuspected Soviet military genius where there was none confirms the controversial nature of the issue. These authors underscore the impact of surprise and tend to treat it as systemic and general. The Soviet Union, they argue, did not expect the blow and was unprepared for it. Soviet military doctrine an field regulations spoke of the offensive, while neglecting the defense. In assessing Soviet perception of the German threat, the authors are at odds not only with Fugate. EarlyZiemke has recently pointed to the December Conference sponsored by the Main Military Council and the January 1941 war games, which led to Zhukov's appointment as Chief of the General Staff, as explicitly directed to the problem of assessing the German threat in light of the lightning victories in Poland and the West.