Why did the German railways fail during Barbarossa?
A joint German-Russian effort to digitize WW2 records contains a document analyzing the failure of German railways during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The author page of the document is not included online but from context it is clearly drafted by an official of — probably the leader of — the military railway district for the central sector of the German invasion (i.e. that of Army Group Center). This is the main rail directorate #3 (Hauptbahndirektion 3 or “HBD 3”), whose prewar and campaign woes the document narrates.
The document contains a litany of particular shortcomings to prepare for adequate rail support of the German invasion. The document discusses that its author and his colleagues were aware, pre-invasion, that these failures presaged a rail disaster during the campaign, and that they raised these points to the relevant authorities (e.g. Wehrmacht Chief of Transportation Rudolf Gercke, Army Commander in Chief Walter von Brauchitsch).
Most strikingly for me, the author connects all these failings to a fundamental point made in this blog: German authorities refused to address the concerns of their railway professionals because they assumed that Barbarossa would be easy. From the document:
Translation: If the preparations considered necessary by the railroad experts were not made, the reason could be that the war would not come at all or would be very short.
Original: Wenn die von den Eisenbahnfachleuten fur notwendig gehaltenen Vorbereitungen nicht getroffen wurden, so konne das ja darin seinen Grund haben, dass der Krieg uberhaupt nicht komme oder nur ganz kurz sein wurde.
The conditional phrasing of the assessment (“the reason could be”) should be read as a military subordinate’s transparent attempt to be polite in rendering a devastating criticism of his superiors.
This point has escaped remark from the few good scholars of the WW2 German railways. In his excellent article on Eastern Front railways, for example, H.G.W. Davie only discusses this document’s content insofar as it shows that the German national railway authority (DRB) lacked information in 1940 about how the Soviet rail system operated. The document makes clear that the author and his colleagues were able to ameliorate this problem by reading Soviet trade publications over the next year. Much more concerning to the document’s author was the lack of resources for the railroaders.
