A New Evaluation Of The Kiev Battle

On June 22,1941,when Germany and the United Kingdom fought fiercely,Hitler launched a sudden attack on Soviet Union.As Hitler claimed,the world had held its breath after the beginning of the invasion of Soviet Union codenamed "Barbarossa".The four-year Soviet-German war was the most crucial chapter in the Second World War and the largest conflict in the history of human war.The Kiev battle was an important battle in the early stage of the Soviet-German war.It was also the largest-scale encirclement war in the history of world wars.It had an important impact on the direction of the war.At the beginning of the Soviet-German war,the German offense was rapid and progressed smoothly.The German army penetrated into the hinterland of the Soviet Union in more than a month,and caused great damage to Soviet army's main forces.At this time,Germans had an optimistic view of "Barbarossa" plan,and the Soviet resistance seemed to be on the edge of collapse.Especially in the direction of Moscow,the Germans have advanced two-thirds of the way.However,at this time,High Command of the Armed Forces(OKW)had a huge disagreement about the next stage of the war.The Army High Command(OKH)headed by Harder hopes to conquer Moscow first,but Hitler wanted to shift the strategic focus to the two wings,especially the southern Kiev region.After a long period of debate,Hitler took the upper hand,the Germans stopped marching toward the direction of Moscow,and dedicated most resources to the Ukrainian territory,and then won the Kiev battle.In terms of the result of the war,the Kiev battle was an epic victory for the Germans.The German army eliminated the main force of the Soviet the Southwest Front and captured 665,000 Soviet soldiers.After the Kiev battle,when the Germans concentrated their main force on Moscow and attempted to capture Moscow before the winter,the situation changed and Germans lost their advantage.Although German army won the the double battle of Bryansk and Vyazma in the early stage of the "Typhoon" operation,the heavy rain and muddy roads slowed down the Germans' march to Moscow.The early arrival of winter also destroyed the Germans and Germans lost all their hopes of conquering Moscow.For a long time,scholars believed that the Kiev battle was the main reason why Germans wasted their time in 1941 and missed the chance to win the war.Based on th is view,fighting the Kiev battle was considered a total misjudgement.From a more m acroscopic perspective,this paper cooperates the analysis of strategic theory to demon strate that the significance of the Kiev war was ignored for a long time,and the fightin g the Kiev war was indeed strategically correct.This article is divided into six parts,five chapters,and it is designed to conduct a more comprehensive evaluation of the Kiev battle.The first part is the introduction,which mainly explains the basis and significance of the topic selection,and summarizes the evaluation of the Kiev battle in the academic fields at home and abroad.The next five parts are the positive essay section of the thesis.The main structure is: The first three chapters discuss the rationality of the Kiev battle from the perspectives of strategic thinking and war situation.The following two chapters are based on the evaluation basis of the Kiev battle in academic community.Then the author discusses a series of strategic actions of Germans before and after the Kiev war,which proves that the current mainstream views are biased and stresses the strategic significance of the Kiev battle.The first chapter mainly discusses the strategic rationality of the Kiev battle.This chapter first discusses the principle of strategic goal selection and the rationality of Kiev as the main target of the German army from the perspectives of the strategic theory,the intention of the "Barbarossa" action,and the military value of the Kiev region.Secondly,this chapter explains the strategic rationality that chose Kiev as the main target over Moscow through the analysis of the Kaluga imagination proposed by Clausewitz in the Napoleonic war and the reason why Army High Command was obsessed with Moscow.Strategic rationality.The second chapter mainly discusses the inevitability of the Kiev battle in the str ategic situation.This chapter is based on the overall situation of the Soviet-German battlefield in mid-July 1941.By analyzing the pros and cons of attacking Moscow and at tacking Kiev in the situation of that time,this chapter shows the necessity of choosing Kiev as the main target in the strategic situation.Through careful analysis of the over all situation of the battlefield after the Battle of Smolensk,the author believes that the false optimistic view of the German army blinded them from the huge power crisis of the Supreme Command.The Germans not only lacked the necessary conditions for fu rther advancement to Moscow,but the huge threat in the Kiev region also forced the Germans to clear the Soviet heavy forces in Kiev first.The situation in the Kiev regio n also benefited the German army that they could carry out the siege war.Many evide nces suggest that the Germans chose Kiev as the main target because they had no othe r options according to the battlefield situation.The main content of the third chapter is the comparison between the prospects of the Germans in the direction of Moscow before and after the Kiev battle.This chapter shows that the implementation of the Kiev battle stabilized reinforced the fragile adva ntages of the Germans and created favorable conditions for the subsequent capture of Moscow.Based on the aspect of unquestioned time delay,this chapter compares the st rength of the Soviet Union and Germany in the direction of Moscow,and the strategic situation of the German attack on Moscow.It seems like that in addition to the time f actor,the Germans also were in a favored position in Strength advantage,logistics sup ply and combat situation after the Kiev battle.However,The loss of time advantage of the German army is not caused by the Kiev war.This article will be discussed that in detail in Chapter 5.The fourth chapter discusses that Moscow in 1941 was not the end of the SovietGerman war according to the opinion that attacking Moscow first would be decisive f or the war gave by the generals and scholars.This chapter discusses three aspects of t he situtation.The German Army High Command overestimated the strategic value o f Moscow;The Soviets would continue to fight after losing Moscow and the combat p ower in Moscow or even the entire western region.We believe that even if the Germa ns attacked Moscow and succeeded after August 1941,there would not be such decisi ve results that were expected by the Army General Command.The Soviet Union would continue to fight,High Command of the Armed Forces would face a more fragi le front line and a more difficult battlefield situation.The fifth chapter discusses the failure of the German army at the end of 1941 by focusing on the argument that the Kiev battle led to the delay of the Moscow battle,a nd then led to the failure of the German army at the end of 1941.Without any doubt,t he reasons of the failure of the German army at the end of 1941 that discussed by this chapter are closely related to the Kiev battle.Firstly,This chapter analyzes Germany's own flaws.It turned out that the strategic effect of Kiev's battle could not offset the w eakness of Germany's strength and the friction caused by a series of mistakes.The con troversy before Kiev battle and the conduct of the Kiev battle became the best excuse for the Army High Command to avoid its responsibility.Secondly,this chapter explai ns the delay caused by the Battle of the Balkans and the reason why Germans lost the time advantage in 1941.These two things show that the progress of the Kiev battle is not the main reason of the loss of time advantage of the Germans.In the end,the Ger man could not fully utilize the strategic effect of Kiev battle because of the wrong str ategic actions after the war in Kiev,which also caused Germany to finally lose the op portunity to obtain a decisive advantage in 1941.