But there was good news for the Germans about the terrain that led, at least in theory, straight to Moscow. While his Soviet counterparts were scrambling to throw more troops against him, Fedor von Bock, the commander of Army Group Center, was delighted to have made it all the way to Smolensk, and he had no doubt what he wanted to do next. “The enemy is only really beaten at one place on the Eastern Front—opposite Army Group Center,” he wrote in his diary on July 13. “If the armored groups now fly apart to the south, east and north, it means forgoing the exploitation of our success…. What matters now is to completely smash this foe and make it impossible for him to establish another new front before Moscow. To do so it is necessary to tightly concentrate all armored forces and with them drive quickly to the east until I can report that the enemy is offering no more resistance in front of Moscow!”
But Hitler wasn’t ready to make that decision. The German leader, who had accomplished so many of his earlier goals by taking dramatic actions that required supreme self-confidence, wavered for about three weeks before responding to such appeals from his generals. And when he responded, it was to issue orders that directly contradicted the recommendations not only of Bock but also of Halder, Brauchitsch and other top officers. In essence, Hitler suddenly decided that his forces should now concentrate on the drive to Leningrad in the north and the offensive in the south, pushing through the Ukraine all the way to the Caucasus. Directive 34 on July 30 stated specifically, “Army Group Center will go over to the defensive, taking advantage of suitable terrain.”
Bock had received the news a couple of days earlier, when Hitler’s adjutant Rudolf Schmundt arrived to brief him on his boss’s plans. As a clearly angry Bock summarized it in his diary, the gist of the message was: “The main thing is to eliminate the area of Leningrad, then the raw materials region of the Donets Basin [in the Ukraine]. The Führer cares nothing about Moscow itself.” A couple of weeks later, Bock vented his frustration again in his diary. “All the directives say that taking Moscow isn’t important! I want to smash the enemy army and the bulk of this army is opposite my front!” he wrote. “Turning south is a secondary operation—even if just as big—which will jeopardize the execution of the main operation, namely the destruction of the Russian armed forces before the winter.”
The directive from Hitler’s headquarters on August 12 at least formally contradicted Bock’s assertion. It stated that the objective of German operations was still “to deprive the enemy, before the coming winter, of his government, armament, and traffic around Moscow, and thus prevent the rebuilding of his defeated forces and the orderly working of government control.” But if this effectively summarized the thinking of the generals who were convinced that the only way to ensure the success of Operation Barbarossa was to seize Moscow, the directive’s most important provision was to mandate a delay in pushing for that objective. “Before the beginning of this attack on Moscow, operations against Leningrad must be concluded,” it declared.
As commander of the army, Brauchitsch spelled out his opposing views on August 18, urging the resumption of the drive east toward the Soviet capital. Hitler responded that the army’s plan “is not in accordance with my intentions.” He then itemized his new priorities. “The most important aim to be achieved before the onset of winter is not to capture Moscow, but to seize the Crimea and the industrial and coal region on the Donets, and to cut off the Russian oil supply from the Caucasus area. In the north, the aim is to cut off Leningrad and to join with the Finns.”
In a clash of that kind with his generals, Hitler wasn’t going to give any ground once his mind was made up. At about the same time, General von Manstein witnessed a confrontation between Hitler and Halder, the army chief of staff. According to Manstein, Hitler questioned “in the most tactless terms Halder’s right to differ with him, declaring that as a front-line infantryman of World War I he was an infinitely better judge of the matter than Halder, who had never been in this position.” Manstein was so upset by this “undignified” scene that he left the room, returning only after a calmer Hitler asked him to do so.
Despite his admiration of Hitler’s grasp of a broad range of subjects, including military technology, Manstein concluded that the German leader was sorely deficient in precisely the area in which he compared himself favorably to Halder. “What he lacked, broadly speaking, was simply military ability based on experience—something for which his ‘intuition’ was no substitute,” Manstein wrote.
But it wasn’t just that Hitler lacked the broader military experience of his generals. In those early weeks and months of Operation Barbarossa, he kept changing his mind about the major strategic goals and particularly about the timing for the big German push for Moscow. On September 6, he ordered Army Group Center to focus on “destroying the enemy forces located in the area east of Smolensk by a pincer movement in the general direction of Vyazma”—the next key town and railroad junction on the road to Moscow. And on September 16, Hitler issued the directive that would be the basis for launching Operation Typhoon, which was supposed to be the climactic drive against Moscow, on September 30.
It was the decision the generals had been hoping for, but it came much later than they wanted it, several critical weeks having slipped away in the process. That left them confronting a far more difficult task than they would have faced if Hitler hadn’t rejected their pleas to move earlier. It left the field commanders with a growing sense of frustration about their seemingly contradictory orders and, in some cases, growing doubts about the man who was issuing those orders.
During the 1920s, when Germany’s army was severely restricted by the Treaty of Versailles, a young Prussian officer by the name of Heinz Guderian single-mindedly dedicated himself to the proposition that the country needed to develop an armored component for its armed forces—panzer brigades or divisions equipped with tanks and other armored vehicles. By the time Hitler took power in 1933, he was able to put on a demonstration for the new leader that included motorcycles, experimental tanks and armored reconnaissance vehicles, all operating together. Hitler was visibly impressed. “That’s what I need!” he exclaimed. “That’s what I want to have.”
Guderian was delighted by the Führer’s enthusiasm. Many of his superior officers, who had been brought up in the infantry or cavalry, had been skeptical about the notion that motorized vehicles would play a crucial role in future conflicts. Besides, the Versailles Treaty explicitly forbade Germany to acquire or build armored vehicles or tanks. As Guderian saw it, though, this only proved that “our enemies regarded the tank as a decisive weapon” and Germany had to equip itself with those weapons as soon as possible. To make his case, he had even brought sheet-metal dummies of tanks to take part in army maneuvers, since he couldn’t get hold of the real thing yet. “These wretched mock-ups struck the old soldiers from the First World War as so utterly ridiculous that they tended to feel sorry for us and were certainly not inclined to take us seriously,” he noted.
With Hitler in charge, all that quickly changed. Germany began rapidly rearming, and new armored units became an essential part of the new armed forces. In the fall of 1935, Guderian was put in charge of the Second Panzer Division, one of three new divisions of the kind. He was no longer a planner but an operational commander of a unit he had done so much to create.
When Germany attacked Poland in September 1939, Guderian’s tanks played a crucial role in that first victory. They quickly pushed all the way to Brest, the city with a citadel right on the Soviet border, east of the Bug River. After Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east, Guderian’s troops were required to hand over the city to the Russians, since the Bug became the demarcation line of the German-Soviet division of a defeated Poland. Guderian was hardly pleased to give up territory that he had won in a costly battle with the outgunned but defiant Poles. “It seems unlikely that any soldier was present when the agreement about the demarcation line and the cease fire was drawn up,” he tersely noted in his memoirs.
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bsp; While Guderian kept those thoughts largely to himself, he would soon find himself openly at odds with his superiors—all the way up to Hitler—at the very moment of his greatest triumph. During the invasion of France, Guderian’s panzers practically raced across the country all the way to the coast, stunning the crumbling French forces. French General Maurice Gamelin issued an order, which was intercepted by the Germans: “The torrent of German tanks must finally be stopped!” But it wasn’t the French who finally stopped the onslaught of Guderian and the other tank commanders; it was Hitler. They were suddenly ordered to stop short of Dunkirk, the port to which British and French forces were fleeing to await evacuation. The Luftwaffe was assigned the task of bombing the port, while the tank troops were held back. “We were utterly speechless,” Guderian recalled. “We were stopped within sight of Dunkirk!”
A few days earlier, Guderian had threatened to resign when he was told to slow his advance. It had then begun to dawn on him that just when Hitler’s support for an aggressive panzer strategy was paying off, the German leader “would now be the one to be frightened by his own temerity,” fearing that the German drive was becoming overextended because of the speed of the panzer units. But if that dispute was quickly resolved, allowing Guderian to continue his drive, Dunkirk proved a different matter. Guderian’s and the other tank units weren’t allowed to attack the port, so the British had enough time to orchestrate the spectacular evacuation of 330,000 British and French forces that could then fight another day. As Guderian saw it, this had been a chance to strike a blow that might have altered the course of the war. “Unfortunately the opportunity was wasted owing to Hitler’s nervousness,” he complained.
If Guderian was convinced Hitler hadn’t been bold enough in the final days of the French campaign, he would soon come to fear the opposite as word spread of an impending invasion of the Soviet Union. He believed that this would be a far more difficult task than defeating Poland or France. But the speed of those earlier successes, he noted, “had so befuddled the minds of our supreme commanders that they had eliminated the word ‘impossible’ from their vocabulary.”
Like some of the other generals, Guderian may have played up his doubts about the Soviet invasion after the war. But he certainly had legitimate grounds for them at the time. With his intimate knowledge of German tank production, he knew that the supply of new vehicles was still far short of what he felt was needed, especially in the case of a lengthy war with the Soviet Union.
An encounter with his Russian counterparts on the eve of that conflict had given Guderian pause. In the spring of 1941, a Soviet military delegation arrived to look at German tank schools and factories. Since Hitler was still pretending to be observing the Nazi-Soviet pact and wanted to keep his invasion plans secret, he had specifically authorized the visit and ordered that the visitors be shown everything so as not to arouse suspicion. When the Germans showed the Russians the Panzer IV, the Russians protested that this couldn’t be their newest and heaviest tank as their hosts claimed. In fact, it was the best tank the Germans had at the time, and Guderian and other German experts reluctantly concluded that the Russians must have something better in their own production line. Soon enough, Guderian would be able to confirm that for himself.
As part of Field Marshal von Bock’s Army Group Center, Guderian’s panzer division was in action from the first day of the invasion, crossing the Bug River and taking most of the Soviet troops by surprise. But two days later, the famed general experienced a close call that almost cost him his life. As he was consulting with several top officers about their next moves, two Soviet tanks suddenly appeared from behind a burning truck that had obscured the Germans’ view. Spotting the enemy officers, the Russian tanks opened fire at close range, blinding and deafening them for a moment. Guderian and two other generals immediately hit the ground and survived. A less experienced colonel hesitated and was killed. At a time when the Germans appeared to be heading for a swift victory, this provided a stark reminder that their opponents could still prove to be highly dangerous.
Guderian and his tanks kept pushing due east, taking part in the early victories that culminated in the battles around Smolensk in mid-July. When he flew to his army group’s headquarters on July 27, he was expecting instructions to keep going east to prepare for the strike against Moscow. Instead, he was stunned to learn that Hitler had ordered his unit to redeploy to join in the fighting around Gomel, a city located southwest of Smolensk—“that is to say towards Germany,” as Guderian angrily noted. In other words, he was being ordered to move away from Moscow.
In many ways, this felt like an even more grievous error than the decision to stop his forces in France before they could hit Dunkirk. Like many of his superiors, he was convinced “that these maneuvers on our part simply gave the Russians time to set up new formations and to use their inexhaustible manpower for the creation of fresh defensive lines in the rear area,” thus undermining German ability to achieve a rapid victory. And like Bock, Guderian had the chance to meet Hitler’s aide Rudolf Schmundt. He urged Schmundt to convey the message to the Führer that he should reconsider his decision in favor of “a direct push to capture Moscow, the heart of Russia.”
In early August, Guderian’s forces were involved in fighting to the south of Smolensk, scoring another victory, this time in Roslavl. But their commander was still determined to argue against continuing further south and west to Gomel. His troops were convinced they’d soon be on the move to the Soviet capital, and he watched “with a heavy heart” as they put up signs reading “To Moscow.” As Bock wrote in his diary, “Guderian is champing at the bit!”
Toward the end of August, the field marshal agreed to send Guderian along with General Halder to Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s military headquarters in East Prussia, for a final attempt to persuade the German leader to change his mind about making the Ukrainian capital of Kiev the next key military target instead of Moscow. But when Guderian arrived, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, the commander-in-chief of the army, gave him a brusque warning. “I forbid you to mention the question of Moscow to the Führer,” he declared. “The operation to the south has been ordered. The problem now is simply how it is to be carried out. Discussion is pointless.”
Guderian wasn’t one to obey meekly. Finding himself in a room with Hitler that was already crowded with top brass, he waited for an opening to make his case, and he quickly got it. When Hitler inquired whether his troops were ready to make “another great effort,” he replied, “If the troops are given a major objective, the importance of which is apparent to every soldier, yes.”
“You mean, of course, Moscow?” Hitler said.
Guderian replied “Yes” and asked to be given the opportunity to spell out his reasons. When Hitler agreed, he put forth all the arguments why Moscow should be the target: its role as the country’s major communication and transportation hub, which, once captured, would make it difficult for the Soviets to move men and supplies around the country; its role as a major industrial center; and its indisputable role as “the political solar plexus” of the country. A victory in Moscow would lift the spirits of German troops and devastate the Russians psychologically, he added, and would make it considerably easier to achieve victories elsewhere, including in the Ukraine. It would also have a huge psychological impact on the rest of the world. But if that victory wasn’t achieved soon and German troops were diverted somewhere else, “it would then be too late to strike the final blow for Moscow this year,” since the onset of fall and winter weather would make the task increasingly difficult.
Hitler heard Guderian out without interrupting him. But then he launched into his theory of why the agricultural riches and raw materials of the Ukraine had to be seized first, providing Germany with vital supplies. “My generals know nothing about the economic aspects of war,” he complained. As he made clear that the next target would be Kiev and not Moscow, Guderian was stunned to see all the others in the room nodding in agreement. By the end of th
e session, he felt completely alone, with no support even from those he knew had agreed with his arguments earlier.
So Guderian found himself fighting in the battle for Kiev during the first half of September instead of approaching Moscow. Relying on the kind of pincer movements that they had used at Minsk and Bialystok, the German forces encircled the Soviet forces and then inflicted massive casualties and rounded up hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Aside from the fierce combat, the troops had to deal with the effects of pouring rain. “Only a man who has personally experienced what life on those canals of mud we called roads was like can form any picture of what the troops and their equipment had to put up with and can truly judge the situation at the front and the consequent effect on our operations,” Guderian wrote.
The panzer commander admitted that the costly battle for Kiev amounted to a great tactical victory for his side. “But whether great strategic advantages were to be garnered from this tactical success remained questionable,” he added. “It all depended on this: would the German Army, before the onset of winter and, indeed, before the autumnal mud set in, still be capable of achieving decisive results?” In other words, would his warning to Hitler prove to be accurate and the remaining window of opportunity too small?
In the wake of the victory in Kiev, Hitler finally issued the orders for Operation Typhoon. As a first step, Guderian’s tanks were assigned to advance north toward Moscow by taking Orel and Bryansk. As usual, the panzer leader more than rose to the occasion. When his tanks rolled into Orel on October 3, the local authorities were caught totally by surprise—so much so that the trams were running as if this were any normal day.
Vasily Grossman, the famous war correspondent for the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, recalled the pointed exchange he had with his editor after he returned to Moscow from covering the German push from the south. “Why didn’t you write anything about the heroic defense of Orel?” the editor demanded. Grossman’s reply: “Because there was no defense.”
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