Barbarossa: Army Group South, 1941 2nd. Edition

As the tally of encirclements and surrenders mounts, the German advance appears unstoppable to Hitler and many others.

However, the officers and men at the front are beginning to have serious misgivings -- not in themselves, but in the pre-war intelligence estimates that they had received.

They had not been prepared to encounter hundreds of KV-1's and T-34's, tanks far superior to anything they possessed.

For the moment, German tactics provided the margin of victory over better material, but the Russians were proving to be quick learners.

Worse yet, by western European standards, Russian losses had been so staggering that there should have been no army left to fight.

Not so.

There seemed to be no end to these tenacious Russian defenders.

As the German forces continued their eastward advance, more and more soldiers began asking, "what have we gotten ourselves into?”

Scenarios

Kirponos Attacks!

This is the Learning scenario.

With the Stalin Line breached, Soviet Southwest Front commander, Col.Gen. M.I. Kirponos, found it increasingly difficult to plug the ever-widening gap between his 5th and 6th Armies.

If it were not plugged, 6th Army, and others, would find themselves surrounded.

Assault on Kiev

The first Germans appeared outside of Kiev on 11 July, but the newly arriving panzers were under orders to keep moving south and east to complete the Uman pocket encirclement.

Taking Kiev was left to the follow-on infantry formations, and it would take another two weeks before they were able to deploy in force.

Odessa:

Hero City Capturing Odessa became the responsibility of the Fourth Romanian Army, commanded by Gen. Nicolae Ciuperca.

This represented an expansion of the Romanian war effort, engineered by Marshal Ion Antonescu.

Romania's initial reason for entering the war was the recapture of Bessarabia which had been annexed in 1940 by the Soviet Union.

The Soviet defenders lacked equipment and organization at first, but they resisted fiercely.

They were greatly aided by three concentric rings of fortifications (again built largely by civilian labor), and the presence of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet which contributed infantry, coast artillery and naval gunfire support.

Rundstedt Attacks!

The primary Axis thrust into the Ukraine would be made through the Lvov Gap against the greatest and best prepared concentration of Soviet armor found anywhere from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's 730,000 Germans and 800 tanks were poised to take on Col. Gen. M.P. Kirponos' Southwestern Front containing 864,600 men and 5,465 Soviet tanks.

Operation Munich

Early plans for the Bessarabia offensive included an armored attack from Romania, but fearing for the safety of the Romanian oil resources, Hitler ordered the German 11th Army to stand on the defensive until 2 July.

Then the 11th Army, plus 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies, initiated Operation "Munich." The objective for all armies was to clear the Soviets from Bessarabia.

Uman Pocket

With the conclusion of the border battles, the Soviet 5th Army, pursued closely by the German spearheads, retreated into the Stalin Line and the Pripyat Marshes.

On 30 June Moscow also authorized a full withdrawal by 6th, 12th, and 26th Armies into the Stalin Line, hoping to stop the Panzers while strategic reserves dealt with the more threatening German Army Group Center, well to the north.

With German Panzers once again driving out ahead of their infantry, Kirponos saw another opportunity for counter-attack.

Campaign Game Code-named "Operation Barbarossa,"

The German plan for defeating the Soviet Union called first for the defeat of the Red Army.

Planners generally expected it to be deployed west of the Dvina-Dnepr river line.

In a manner similar to that practiced in Poland and France, Barbarossa called for a Blitzkrieg campaign spearheaded in the central sector by two Panzer groups in parallel drives.

Of the three opening drives in Barbarossa, the Army Group South attack was tasked with the most ambitious objectives while facing the heaviest Soviet opposition.

Stalin judged that the Ukraine would be the primary Axis objective.

RULES 

Distributor:

GMT Games LLC

PO Box 1308

Hanford, CA 93230

gmtoffice@gmtgames.com