Because generally after being surrounded in actual combat, the army will face a series of problems such as serious lack of material supply, low morale, and lack of support from the periphery. Of course, in the history of human warfare, there are indeed examples of successful breakthroughs after being surrounded, but the probability of such a situation is really not high. Let's give a few simple examples to understand why being surrounded is equivalent to losing the battle.
The Siege of Kiev was one of the largest wars of annihilation in the history of human warfare, and on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched the Barbarossa Plan to begin a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union.
Germany mobilized 3.2 million troops and 600,000 servants, an army of nearly 4 million people, with 3,600 tanks, 50,000 artillery pieces and 6,000 aircraft of various types, and they waged the largest war in the history of mankind against the Soviet Union.
Moreover, in the early days of the war, the German ** team quickly annihilated dozens or millions of Soviet troops by virtue of its tactical superiority. Within a week of the outbreak of the war, Germany had advanced its front near the borders of the old Soviet Union. This forced Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to demand that the defenses near Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, be strengthened, hoping to hold the line in the border area of the old Soviet Union.
However, due to the command errors of the Soviet side, their army was defeated again and again in the early stage of the Soviet-German battlefield, and the so-called strategic idea of holding Ukraine and keeping Kyiv became empty talk.
On September 16, 1941, the Panzer Group led by Guderian and Kleist of Germany completed the rendezvous at Lokhvica, which represented the Soviet Union's Southwestern Front near Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, surrounded by German forces.
The four armies of the Southwestern Front, namely the 21st, 5th, 37th and 26th armies, were all in this huge encirclement, in which there were more than 700,000 Soviet troops, which was equivalent to 1 5 of the Soviet ** force before the outbreak of the Soviet-German war.
If the Southwestern Front is annihilated, there will not be a single formed Soviet army from Ukraine to the vicinity of Moscow capable of resisting the attack of the German army, so these 700,000 people are very important to the Soviet Union.
Although there were rumors in later generations that Stalin did not allow the Southwestern Front to retreat, in fact this was just a rumor, and the Soviet High Command led by Stalin allowed the Southwestern Front to retreat, but an orderly plan was needed.
And Stalin demanded that the Southwestern Front must build defensive positions along the Niper River, but in fact, this order was already impossible to fulfill. Not to mention holding the defensive line, it can be said that the Southwestern Front can not be completely annihilated in the process of breaking through and retreating, which can be said to be very good.
The Southwestern Front, which was caught in the encirclement, broke through under the leadership of Commander Kirburnos, and the Soviet Red Army did put up resistance to the death in the encirclement, but their resistance was meaningless, because the initial combat mission of the Southwestern Front was not only to hold Ukraine, but also to find opportunities to counterattack Germany.
Many units of the entire Southwestern Front were temporarily requisitioned in the first month of the war, and they lacked the best equipment, and even many troops could only use bayonets to fight against the tanks of the German ** team without fuel and ammunition, which can give us an intuitive sense of the situation of the encircled army.
They are very desperate, because generally speaking, the logistics supply lines of the encircled army have been completely interrupted, and the resources consumed by the modern army every day are an astronomical amount, and it is absolutely impossible to meet the material consumption needs if they want to rely on local conscription, and the average modern army will only carry about 7 to 10 days of combat materials.
Coupled with a series of defeats of the Soviet Red Army at the beginning of the war, commanders and fighters at all levels actually did not have much confidence in fighting the German ** team. Defeat and frustration permeated the entire army, which once again directly affected the combat effectiveness of the entire Southwestern Front. Although there were still many Soviet Red Army soldiers who fearlessly attacked the German ** team on the battlefield, it was useless.
In addition, at this time, the German ** army could be said to be blooming everywhere on the territory of the Soviet Union, and Army Group North and Army Group South were advancing towards Leningrad and Stalingrad, so the encircled Southwestern Front basically had no external support, and it was a matter of time before it was annihilated.
On September 20, 1941, four days after the siege began, the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, was captured by the German Sixth Army, and then Germany mobilized the 46th Panzer Army to launch an all-out attack on the Soviet forces in the encirclement. As a last resort, Commander Kirponos demanded that the encircled Red Army soldiers break out of the siege separately.
Most of the Soviet Red Army in the encirclement resisted until September 26, and with the death of the commander of the Front, Kirbernos, the military councillor Burmystenko, and the chief of staff Tupikov, the entire Southwestern Front was basically surrounded and annihilated, and only less than 20,000 Soviet Red Army soldiers broke through the German encirclement.
Of the more than 700,000 Soviet Red Army soldiers who were surrounded, 60,000 were killed and 650,000 were taken prisoner. The 5th, 21st, 26th, and 37th armies, which were the elite combat forces of the Soviet army at the beginning of the war, were completely annihilated, and part of the 40th and 38th armies, which were originally used to defend Ukraine and even near Moscow, were also annihilated by the German ** team. And the German team only has 1320,000 people.
At the same time, dozens of senior commanders of the Soviet Red Army were captured or killed, leaving a huge and almost irreparable hole in the Soviet defense line in the front-line area. From this example, we can intuitively feel that it is basically impossible for an army to maintain effective combat effectiveness after being surrounded.
After all, they have all been surrounded, and the morale of the army will inevitably fall to the bottom, coupled with a series of reasons such as insufficient material supplies, insufficient communications, and chaotic command, it is really only a matter of time before they are annihilated without external support. In fact, in the War of Liberation, the People's Liberation Army also surrounded the Kuomintang army many times and fought a series of dazzling battles of annihilation.
For example, in the Huaihai Campaign, the Central Plains Field Army and the East China Field Army took Xuzhou as the center, starting from October 6, 1948 and ending on January 10, 1949, through a series of encirclement and annihilation battles, annihilating five corps of the Kuomintang Army, with a total of 55 corps in 22 armies50,000 people, basically annihilating the living forces of the Kuomintang army north of the Yangtze River, these all prove one point: the army trapped in the encirclement, defeat is basically the only way.