Editing Blitzkrieg (section)

===Eastern Front, 1941–1944===
[[File:Defensive pincers in battle of Volkhov.png|thumb|alt= Map depicting Allied breakthroughs of the German line. The German armour is held back and committed to seal the breakthrough. |After 1941–1942, the Wehrmacht increasingly used armoured formations as a mobile reserve against Allied breakthroughs. The blue arrows depict armoured counter-attacks.]]
Use of armored forces was crucial for both sides on the Eastern Front. [[Operation Barbarossa]], the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, involved a number of breakthroughs and encirclements by motorized forces. Its goal, according to [[List of Adolf Hitler's directives|Führer Directive 21]] (18 December 1940), was "to destroy the Russian forces deployed in the West and to prevent their escape into the wide-open spaces of Russia".{{sfn|Clark|1965|p=78}} The Red Army was to be destroyed west of the [[Daugava (river)|Dvina]] and [[Dnieper]] rivers, which were about {{convert|500|km|mi}} east of the Soviet border, to be followed by a mopping-up operation. The surprise attack resulted in the near annihilation of the [[Soviet Air Forces|Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily]] (VVS, Soviet Air Force) by simultaneous attacks on airfields,{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p= 487}} allowing the Luftwaffe to achieve total air supremacy over all the battlefields within the first week.{{sfn|Glantz|2012|p=30–31}}{{sfn|Hardesty|2012|p=9}} On the ground, four German panzer groups outflanked and encircled disorganized Red Army units, and the marching infantry completed the encirclements and defeated the trapped forces.{{sfn|Glantz|2012|p=7}} In late July, after [[2nd Panzer Group]] (commanded by Guderian) captured the watersheds of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers near Smolensk, the panzers had to defend the encirclement, because the marching infantry divisions remained hundreds of kilometers to the west.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|p=487}}

The Germans conquered large areas of the Soviet Union, but their failure to destroy the Red Army before the winter of 1941-1942 was a strategic failure and made German tactical superiority and territorial gains irrelevant.{{sfn|Frieser|2005|p=351}} The Red Army had survived enormous losses and regrouped with new formations far to the rear of the front line. During the [[Battle of Moscow]] (October 1941 to January 1942), the Red Army defeated the German [[Army Group Centre|Army Group Center]] and for the first time in the war seized the strategic initiative.{{sfn|Frieser|2005|p= 351}}{{sfn|Glantz|2012|pp=192, 197}}

In the summer of 1942, Germany launched another offensive and this time focusing on [[Stalingrad]] and the [[Caucasus]] in the southern [[Soviet Union]]. The Soviets again lost tremendous amounts of territory, only to counter-attack once more during winter. The German gains were ultimately limited because Hitler diverted forces from the attack on Stalingrad and drove towards the Caucasus oilfields simultaneously. The ''Wehrmacht'' became overstretched. Although it won operationally, it could not inflict a decisive defeat as the durability of the Soviet Union's manpower, resources, industrial base and aid from the Western Allies began to take effect.{{sfn|Frieser|2005|p=351}}

In July 1943, the ''Wehrmacht'' conducted Operation Zitadelle (Citadel) against a salient at [[Kursk]], which Soviet troop heavily defended.{{sfn|Clark|2012|pp=233}}{{sfn|Glantz|House|1995|p=167}} Soviet defensive tactics had by now hugely improved, particularly in the use of artillery and air support.{{sfn|Glantz|House|1995|p=167}}{{sfn|Glantz|House|2004|p=63–64}} By April 1943, the [[Stavka]] had learned of German intentions through intelligence supplied by front-line reconnaissance and [[Ultra (cryptography)|Ultra]] intercepts.{{sfn|Clark|2012|pp=188, 190}} In the following months, the Red Army constructed deep defensive belts along the paths of the planned German attack.{{sfn|Glantz|House|2004|p=63–65}} The Soviets made a concerted effort to disguise their knowledge of German plans and the extent of their own defensive preparations, and the German commanders still hoped to achieve operational surprise when the attack commenced.{{sfn|Clark|2012|pp=207}}

The Germans did not achieve surprise and could not outflank or break through into enemy rear areas during the operation.{{sfn|Glantz|House|2004|p=63}} Several historians assert that Operation Citadel was planned and intended to be a blitzkrieg operation.{{efn|name=Citadel as blitzkrieg}} Many of the German participants who wrote about the operation after the war, including [[Erich von Manstein]], make no mention of blitzkrieg in their accounts.{{efn|name=German participants on Citadel}} In 2000, Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson characterised only the southern pincer of the German offensive as a "classical blitzkrieg attack".{{sfn|Zetterling|Frankson|2000|p=137}} Pier Battistelli wrote that the operational planning marked a change in German offensive thinking away from blitzkrieg and that more priority was given to brute force and fire power than to speed and maneuver.{{sfn|Battistelli|2013|pp=4, 6}}

In 1995, [[David Glantz]] stated that blitzkrieg was at Kursk for the first time defeated in summer, and the opposing Soviet forces mounted a successful counter-offensive.{{sfn|Glantz|House|1995|p=167}} The Battle of Kursk ended with two Soviet counter-offensives and the revival of [[Soviet deep battle|deep operations]].{{sfn|Glantz|House|1995|p=167}} In the summer of 1944, the Red Army destroyed Army Group Centre in [[Operation Bagration]] by using combined-arms tactics for armor, infantry and air power in a coordinated strategic assault, known as [[deep operations]], which led to an advance of {{convert|600|km|mi}} in six weeks.{{sfn|Tooze|2006|pp=599–600, 636–637}}