German Tank Convoy Near the Soviet Border

Image size: 1600 x 1014 pixel. 367 KB
Date: Saturday, 21 June 1941
Place: Romania
Photographer: Kriegsberichter Horst Grund

This photo was taken by Kriegsberichter Horst Grund and shows a convoy of Panzerkampfwagen IV Ausf.F1 on their way to the Eastern Front, 21 June 1941. These panzers used Dunkelgrau Nr.46 camouflage paint all over the body. The Germans had begun gathering their troops near the border with the Soviet Union, even before the military campaign in the Balkans had ended. As of the third week of February 1941, 680,000 Wehrmacht soldiers were gathered in the Romanian-Soviet border region. In preparation for the attack, Hitler moved more than 3.2 million German soldiers and 500,000 other Axis troops into the border area; sending innumerable aerial reconnaissance missions over Soviet territory; and piling up supplies in the East. Although all these things did not escape the observations of the Soviet High Command, but their dictator, Stalin, considered that it was merely an overly excessive concern. He did not believe that the Germans would attack the Soviets only two years after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement, and this resulted in the slow preparation of the Red Army. Even so, Soviet military officials themselves never believed that the Germans would continue to be their "loyal" allies. Marshal Semyon Timoshenko once said that Germany was the "strongest and foremost enemy" of his country, and from the beginning of July 1940 the Red Army Chief of Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, wrote a paper predicting that the Wehrmacht would attack the Soviet Union from three directions - which turned out to be the exact same way the German would choose a year later! To cover up his intention, Hitler leaked to Soviet intelligence the plans for Unternehmen Haifisch and Unternehmen Harpune, to support his claim that Britain was Germany's main target. In the attack on the Soviet Union itself, the invaders deployed an independent regiment, a motorized training brigade, and 153 divisions. The latter includes 104 infantry divisions, 19 panzer divisions, and 15 motorized infantry divisions which are divided into three Army Groups. This is added to the nine security divisions that would operate in occupied territories, four divisions in Finland, and two divisions as reserves which are under the direct control of OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres). These combat units will be armed with 3,350 tanks, 7,200 artillery guns, 2,770 airplanes (which make up 65% of the Luftwaffe's strength), around 600,000 vehicles, and 625,000 to 700,000 horses! To help Germany, Finland provided 14 divisions, while Romania mobilized 13 divisions assisted by eight brigades. The Axis' total strength was 3.8 million troops, stationed along a front that stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea.

Source :
https://wehrmachtss.blogspot.com/2018/11/konvoy-panzer-iv-ke-front-timur.html