WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk
Operation Barbarossa: Planning The Impossible (Part 2)
24 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The general staff demonstrated a wanton lack of professionalism, ignoring unfavourable intelligence and failing to consider in-depth such critical questions as logistics, climate and the imposing spaces which extended not only the depth of operations but, owing to the expanding funnel of the Soviet landmass, the breadth of the front line.
And that, of course, was Professor David Stahl, who has done some absolutely extraordinary work on Barbarossa. And I think he's one of the people who's moved the needle quite considerably, hasn't he, Jim, in recent years?
Yeah, he has. And what he's done is he's gone into all the German archives and he's looked at all the original sources. So he's looked at what they're all saying at the time. He's looked at all the minutes of all the various conferences, the planning notes, the operational notes. He's looked at statistics. And the Germans are very good at keeping all that stuff.
And I know this from personal experience, having been to those same archives. You know, it's all there. And we left, didn't we, with the last episode, Stalin's response to the plan, a proposal of a four-power pact between Japan, Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. And he gave five conditions, all of which were impossible for the others to accept, and least of all, Germany.
I think it's fair to say that plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union, from a German point of view, accelerate after Stalin's response. I mean... Hitler is not just vexed. He's incensed. He's furious.
He's livid. Welcome to episode two of our Barbarossa series here on World War Two Pod. We have ways of making you talk of the run up to Barbarossa. This episode is called Planning the Impossible because let's be let's be frank now. We all know how it turns out. So it doesn't look like it was that possible. But at the time,
When we look at the German preparations and the German mindset, they are not really sweating the fact that this might be impossible, are they?
They're just going into a self-delusion mode. They know it in their heart of hearts, but they're convincing themselves that it's all going to be fine.
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Chapter 2: How did the interwar years shape Germany's invasion strategy of the Soviet Union?
crazy he's very very unhappy about this after all it's a long time in his life since he experienced pushback of any kind and Molotov has outraged him with his attitude in Berlin and Stalin's formal response is absolutely outrageous as far as Hitler's concerned and this is doubly painful because actually Germany is reliant on the Soviet Union really not just a little bit either Yeah. Yeah.
For petrol, for grain, for cotton, for manganese, which they need for making steel and other raw materials. And Stalin now wants the Germans to step out of Finland where there's nickel and timber, too. And of course, if the Soviets are dominant in Bulgaria, this means that German interest in the oil, it can get its hands on that doesn't come from the Soviet Union in Plessy.
That's effectively going to be surrounded, which means they're completely dependent, pretty much. 83% of German fuel consumption is dependent on the Soviet Union. I mean, what a situation to have got yourself into.
What a situation to have got yourself in. And to make matters worse, Italy has then invaded Greece at the very end of October and is making a complete hash of it. And because of all this, Hitler can't just sit back and ignore what is going on on his southern front. He cannot afford for this to be a disaster, where because of Italian ineptitude, the Greeks fight back.
The British then have a stranglehold as well in the Aegean, which then threatens Plessy in a different way. So he's got another threat to Plessy. So he's got to do something, which basically means he's then got to divert resources to help sort that out. So it's a total nightmare.
And on top of that, the Italians are also making a hash of things in North Africa, where the British are now completely overrunning them from the middle of December onward. He's now getting himself into a position where I would argue he can't avoid invading the Soviet Union. Really? What else do you do? Because the Soviet Union is going to come after him. He's now got a choice.
He's got Britain on one hand with America rearming and Britain rearming as well at increasing armaments production at a great rate. You've got the Soviet Union having an armaments race. What do you do?
Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because some of the drivers for the war, which is the idea that Germany needs to sort of... The German economy can't run the way it does forever.
It can't run now.
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Chapter 3: What was Hitler's reaction to Stalin's Four Power Pact proposal?
They haven't got enough food. Rationing is unbelievably stringent in Germany and throughout the Reich. They haven't got enough of anything. They haven't got enough fuel. They haven't got enough resources. They're blockaded in by the Royal Navy. They've got the Soviet Union breathing down their necks and trying to ever kind of needle away and expand more.
His one source of oil is almost completely surrounded. What does he do? You know, you've got the situation where, on the one hand, he's all-conquering. On the other hand, he's absolutely pegged in. And he's as pegged in as Germany ever was, but with bigger borders than he had, which actually cost you more to maintain than they did when you had smaller borders.
And he can't just shore up his defences and go, OK, well, we'll go on to the defensive, because he hasn't got enough resources. Yeah. You know, so...
his his choice is to make peace with britain which isn't going to happen or try and do a deal with the soviet union which has been rejected or invade the soviet union all of which i would argue are impossible or really bad so at this moment of victory he's actually in a really really weak situation and yet the irony is is what's going to happen is is you know they are going to go to italy's rescue in north africa they are going to go to um
Italy's rescue in Greece and Yugoslavia in the Balkans. And they're going to steamroller again and it's going to look like they're as all-conquering as they ever were. But their situation is just getting worse and worse and worse, even though they're still having these victories. It's just extraordinary.
One of the reasons he thinks he can do this, doesn't he, Hitler, is because he believes that Germany's perfected this modern motorised form of warfare. The Blitzkrieg, and of course, we're not going to spend half an hour arguing about whether Blitzkrieg exists or not or what it was or whether it's the product of press hype that the Germans then adopt and all that. Motorization.
Let's look at this as the characterized method of German warfare that is supposedly the hallmark of the way they're going to do things.
Wherein lies yet another irony?
Well, here we go, right? Yeah. Well, and actually, I mean, if you, you know, if you like, if this is a me-fee of ironies, this entire thing, a dense thicket of ironies now presents itself. So...
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Chapter 4: How did Hitler's mindset affect the planning for Operation Barbarossa?
within the Reich and within particularly Germany. So motorization unquestionably has been vital for the success in France. Those leading Panzer divisions are really an all-arms mechanized formation equipped with fantastic comms. This is a mass use of radios. But the actual lack of mechanisation in Germany is a massive, massive problem.
And I think it's worth us just honing in on one of the individuals within the Wehrmacht trying to sort all this out. This is a largely forgotten character today, Major General Adolf von Schell.
who has the grand title of General Plenipotentiary of Motor Vehicles within the War Economics and Armaments Office of the OKW, the Oval Commando de Wehrmacht, the Combined General Staff of the German Armed Forces. And it's his job to try and sort it out. But
Of course, Germany is experiencing vehicle shortages now at the end of 1940, beginning of 1941, because of the problems of the 1920s and 1930s and because of the economic decline and for very obvious reasons. You know, motor vehicles are still quite new post-First World War. And the great period of expansion is the 1920s, first and foremost.
And then the 1930s, when they're all quite, you know, Germany's strapped, of course, for cash in the first part of the 1920s and then playing catch up. And it's the catch up that's the problem. So also the tariff war that followed from 1930 onwards with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.
has ensured that very, very few US cars, which are being mass produced in great numbers, are actually coming into Europe. So they have to build their own cars because there aren't any Model T Fords and Buicks and Chevrolets and all the rest of it. So they have to develop their own motor vehicle industry.
And again, for the same reason, that's quite difficult to just get up and running from a standing start, particularly when you're late for the party. So although Germany has Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Hawk, all the rest of it, they're very much elites only. So there is no mass-produced car for the proletariat like there is for the American worker with a Model T.
Yeah, you have to forget what you think about the German car industry now or in its heyday.
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Chapter 5: Why was Nazi Germany dependent on trade with the Soviet Union?
Correct. Just drop it. Completely drop it. Just forget about it. Yeah, and also people in Germany are broke so there isn't the money to buy the cars either. The thing is because Germans are broke. That's the point.
That's the point. And so there isn't even kind of mass production like there is in Britain with Morris's and so on, or in France with Citroën and Renault and Peugeot, which are manufacturers coming in. Citroën is the largest automobile producer in Europe into the 1930s. So in 1935, there is one motorized vehicle for every 65 people in Germany.
But in 1939, four years later, that figure is one vehicle per 47 people. So it's increased, but not much. So don't be hoodwinked into thinking because you've got autobahns, you've got lots of cars. And one of the things that really annoys me about period films of Germany is they always have far too many vehicles in the scenes. They weren't there.
And comparatively with Britain, there is one vehicle for 23 people in 1935 and one vehicle for 14 people by 1939. And that figure by 1939 is eight people for every motorised vehicle in France and three in the USA, which basically means in the USA, literally every adult has got a car that they can drive. Access to a vehicle, yeah.
In Italy, which has Alfa Romeo and Fiat and all the rest of it, it's 106 people for every motorised vehicle. The lack of German vehicles in 1939 has massive, massive knock-on effects, which goes beyond just a vehicle shortage on the front lines. Because, of course, if you've got fewer vehicles, you've got fewer vehicle factories.
If you've got fewer factories, you've got less mechanics with the necessary vehicle knowledge. You've got fewer repair shops and garages. And you've got fewer filling stations. And you've also, crucially, got fewer people who know how to drive. And you've got fewer petrol pumps. So it's just, there's a general shortfall in mechanised, motorised vehicle.
If you're going to catch up, It's going to be very difficult. I mean, just training people and getting them up to speed. Well, you need 10 years, don't you? Five, 10 years. Yeah, exactly. And an army is thinking either I can train someone to drive or I could stick a rifle in their hand and tell them to get on with it.
That's the other thing, which is cheaper, which is cheaper from the Wehrmacht's point of view, which is easier.
um and which is more possible that's the other that's the other thing is which is which is more possible so so this is this is the gap between the the the the glamorous image of the wehrmacht modernity mechanization that nazi propaganda is projecting um is is that the vermont is not like that um and in the polish campaign only 15 of the 53 divisions that took part were mechanized in any way the others are dependent on the horses and infantry
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Chapter 6: What logistical challenges did Germany face during the invasion of the Soviet Union?
So they think we've done it before. We can do it again.
But also there's also this this this this thing, isn't there, with the Germans that, you know, we're Prussians. And what we do is we do we do. Brilliant. We do brilliant military stuff. That's our DNA. We call it military. Which is why there's such an issue with defeat in 1918. How can this be possible? We're supposed to be the top dogs. And they've never got rid of that thing. That point.
And part of the Nazis' self-building of German confidence is to go, we were stabbed in the back. We were betrayed. We are really good at military. That is what we do. And as if to prove it, we've just won in Poland and Scandinavia and in the West. We've overrun everyone. So we can do it again. So there is this, by this stage, there is this hardwired
military superiority kind of thrown into it, which is also mingled with really, really strong racism against these inferior, backward, primitive Slavs who have low toilet facilities. Yeah, exactly.
And General Hermann Hoth, he says that Russia is a place of bestial cruelty when he encounters the Russians in 1914. Guderian also calls the Bolsheviks, he says they're cavort-like beasts. You know, Halder, he's been on the Eastern Front in 1917 when the Russians collapse.
So they all, you know, and shake that in a cocktail with hardwired Nazi stuff about Bolshevism and about Judeo-Bolshevism, about Jews and about Slavs. Give that all a shake. You know, and this is the cocktail they're all taking refreshing drafts from at this point, isn't it? So this is the...
at the core of it that they will not take the red army seriously and and the red army the red army has has helped with that by by making it by fumbling it's offensive in finland so they can look at the the experience of the fins ago you see they are they are terrible they're plodding they're they're they've been purged the officer class has been purged and all this sort of stuff so they
You know, there's a very much a sort of impenetrable group think on this, isn't there?
But there are some discerning voices and not least General Lieutenant Ernst Kerstring, who is the foremost German military expert on the Soviet Union. fluent in Russian and been the military attache in Moscow since 1935. And he strongly believes that there's nothing to be gained from war that couldn't be better served by a political solution. And on this, he is absolutely on the money.
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Chapter 7: How did the German military's perception of the Soviet Union influence their strategy?
The lessons from these exercises and study is absolutely crystal clear. The Wehrmacht doesn't have a significant enough quantitative superiority and can't raise reinforcements on the scale of the USSR. You know, clearly the size of the Soviet Union and critical time factor are major challenges. And the general conclusion, the German forces were barely sufficient for the purpose.
And the planned final line of the Volga, River Volga, all the way up to Archangel in the Arctic, was dismissed by Paulus as far beyond anything that the German forces available could hope to achieve.
Well, in which case it's off, right? They've looked at that. They've run it. They've got the right people running this thing. It's off. I'd cancel that, wouldn't you? Nah, suck it off, lads.
Well, at the very least, you'd think of a major rethink, wouldn't you?
They might need to go back to the drawing board. They don't, do they? This is what's absolutely amazing.
No, of course they don't.
Of course they don't. 5th of December, 1940, Hitler meets with von Prauchitsch, but also the chiefs of the OKW. to hear the army's plans. And, you know, I imagine that you're quite nervous to present that, do that presentation to Hitler at this point. And they're right to be nervous, because instead of listening, he goes off on one.
He tells them the upcoming battle is the definitive decision concerning German hegemony in Europe. He tells everyone that the Red Army is in fear in arms, personnel, especially leadership. And he predicts the swift collapse of the Soviet state. And the thing is, they're all kind of thinking this anyway, aren't they? That's the truth.
He's saying out loud the thing that's colouring their thinking anyway. And he then says, but the campaign needs to end on a Volga.
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