Wehrmacht hole
In the Second World War, the Wehrmachtsloch was a designation used by Wehrmacht staff officers for an area on their maps of the occupied Soviet Union that covered around 100,000 square kilometers in the area of the Prypiat marshes . The name indicated that there were no major German associations in this region. The Soviet Union developed the large forest and swamp area into a main base and operational area for its partisan war .
The Wehrmacht leadership considered large parts of this swamp area to be impassable, but this turned out to be wrong. The local partisans led Soviet troops through these swamp areas in the course of " Operation Bagration ", in which they also built stick dams that tanks and trucks could pass.
Geographical background
Between the 1941 Soviet border and the three cities of Leningrad , Moscow and Kiev , which are each about 1000 kilometers apart, there is no elevation higher than 150 meters. Since the rivers that flow through this plain run parallel to the direction taken by the German advance, the motorized German units initially had no significant natural obstacles in the way.
This area is so unsuitable for regular military operations that it has had to remain largely unoccupied.
Individual evidence
- ↑ John Keegan : The Culture of War . Rowohlt, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-87134-226-2 , excursus I: The Limitations of War, p. 116 f .