Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  Despite the later prominence and notoriety of the Einsatzgruppen, they constituted only one part, and the smallest at that, of the forces to be deployed in this ideological war. In addition, numerous battalions of the Order Police and the Reserve Police, together numbering perhaps twenty thousand men, were made available for participation in these special tasks, as were the First SS Brigade and the SS Cavalry Brigade, with another eleven thousand men. The Order Police units, in particular, three-quarters of whose officers were party members, had been educated for toughness and inculcated with a spirit of “soldierly warriors” and, thus, could be expected to carry out their murderous duties with brutal efficiency. Throughout the Order Police units, a process of institutional socialization had instilled an ethos focused on ruthlessness, German racial superiority, the need for Lebensraum, and hatred of Communists and Jews. By the time of the invasion of Russia, then, Hitler, leading party officials, the army command, the heads of the SS, and top bureaucrats had crossed the threshold to planned, deliberate murder. For Hitler, military operations against the Soviet Union designed to gain Lebensraum and political-police measures aimed at the extermination of ideological and racial enemies were simply different facets of the same war. As Ian Kershaw aptly observed, “The genocidal whirlwind was ready to blow.”73

  Unlike the Phony War, this second interregnum, between the summer of 1940 and June 1941, did not benefit the Germans but instead illuminated the weaknesses of their position. Great Britain had used the respite to strengthen itself substantially, most vitally by gaining assurance of material aid from the United States, which itself increasingly geared up for war. Despite the logic of the Mediterranean strategy, Hitler had to concede that Germany had neither the strength to bring it off on its own nor the ability to coerce its reluctant allies into action and, thus, had no way to force England to make peace. The economic situation also remained precarious as, far from solving their food and raw material problems, the Germans’ conquests had added the burden of feeding the occupied populations of Western Europe without the benefit of imports, which were cut off by the British blockade. The twin Italian fiascos in Greece and North Africa struck at the prestige of the Axis and promised to drain limited German resources, nor could the Japanese be persuaded to strike at Singapore in order to distract and weaken the British.

  Operations in the Balkans now proved necessary in order to protect key supplies of raw materials and the southern flank of the intended invasion of Russia. German triumphs over Yugoslavia and Greece and the daring airborne conquest of Crete certainly reinforced the image of the invincible Wehrmacht but came at a considerable price. They strained the German logistic system on the eve of Barbarossa, added considerable wear and tear to vital mechanized units, and persuaded Hitler and the army command of the uselessness of airborne operations just as the Germans had the most need for mobile assault forces that could seize key river crossings or block enemy retreats. Ironically, despite later claims to the contrary, the one thing they did not do was significantly affect the timing of Barbarossa, which would have been delayed in any case by German economic and transportation difficulties as well as the flooded condition of most of western Russia in the spring of 1941.

  As the confident expectation of an imminent end to the war faded, the mood in Germany grew cloudy. During the autumn of 1940, Goebbels anxiously tracked the deterioration in popular opinion, which resulted not only from the prolongation of the war but also from the persistent British air attacks on the civilian populations of German cities, which necessitated the unpopular evacuation of children from many urban areas. Although Goebbels undertook a propaganda blitz that stabilized the situation, the popular attitude remained a concern: average Germans wanted an end to the war. Instead, rumors swirled of worsening relations with Russia, of troop concentrations in the east, of further cuts in food rations. Nor could there be much reassurance when they heard Hitler speak of “a hard year ahead of us” and of providing better weapons for German soldiers for use in the “next year.”74

  In the last weeks before Barbarossa, Hitler became characteristically jittery and irritable. Although a gambler willing to play for the highest stakes, before every major coup the Führer would lapse into a state of hesitancy, vacillation, nervousness, and anxiety. In a conference with Mussolini on 2 June, he kept his Italian ally in the dark about his plans, although rumors circulated as to the reason behind the German buildup in the east. The Japanese ambassador better understood the broad hints but remained noncommittal about possible cooperation. On 14 June, Hitler held his last military conference before the start of Barbarossa, where once again confidence was expressed that, although the Russians possessed a numerical advantage, German qualitative superiority would prove decisive. He reemphasized the reasons for attacking the Soviet Union, stressing that every soldier had to know what was at stake. The Russians would fight tenaciously, he observed, but had to be crushed in order to save Europe from Bolshevization. Was he having second thoughts? A few days before Barbarossa, Goering sought to flatter him that his greatest triumph was at hand. Hitler sternly rebuked the Reichsmarshall. “It will be our toughest struggle yet—by far the toughest. Why? Because for the first time we shall be fighting an ideological enemy, and an ideological enemy of fanatical persistence at that.”75

  On the afternoon of 16 June, Hitler summoned Goebbels to the Reich Chancellery—he entered through a back door in order to avoid detection—to discuss the situation and, perhaps, to gain a bit of reassurance. The Führer looked superb, Goebbels thought, despite “living in a state of tension that is not to be described.” Clearly in a state of nervous excitement, with words pouring out seemingly at random, Hitler laid before his propaganda minister his thoughts and justifications for the impending invasion. The Greek campaign had taken a toll on German equipment, but it should be ready for Barbarossa. The weather had delayed the wheat harvest in Ukraine, which gave hope that most of it could be seized. The attack would be the largest in history and would avoid the mistakes of Napoléon, a remark that perhaps revealed his innermost fear. The Russians had massed their troops on the border, a perfect situation to ensure their destruction. “The Führer estimates the action at around four months,” Goebbels noted. “I estimate much less. Bolshevism will collapse like a house of cards. We stand before a victory march without comparison.”76

  “We must act,” Hitler insisted, then sketched a surprisingly accurate assessment of Stalin’s intentions. “Moscow will remain out of the war until Europe is exhausted and bled white. Then Stalin would act to Bolshevize Europe.” The coming struggle would not be geographically limited, he noted, but would continue until Russian military power no longer existed. In addition to his usual strategic arguments, Hitler now added a new one: Tokyo would not move against the United States as long as Russia loomed intact in its rear. This was, he claimed in rather inverted logic, “a preventive war” designed to avoid a two-front war since “Russia would attack us when we are weak.” He also stressed the economic advantages to be gained from the invasion, from raw materials and foodstuffs to the freeing of large numbers of German soldiers to return to the factories. In any case, “The Bolshevist poison had to be driven from Europe. . . . That which we have fought against our entire lives will now be annihilated. . . . Whether right or wrong, we must triumph. . . . Once we have won, who will ask us about the methods?” Despite his nervous ramblings, virtually all the key components of his ideology were on display, from Lebensraum and anti-Bolshevism to the conspiratorial notion that Germany was surrounded by rapacious enemies. The other crucial element, anti-Semitism, emerged clearly four days later when Goebbels met again with Hitler, along with Hans Frank, the governor-general of Poland. Frank talked of the situation in the General Government and his joy that the Jews would soon be “pushed out.” Then Goebbels noted, “The Jews are bit by bit falling to ruin in Poland. A just punishment for their incitement of the peoples and instigation of the war. The Führer had also prophesied that about the Jews.”77 />
  The next day, the twenty-first, in oppressive, muggy heat, Hitler appeared completely worn out, pacing for hours in his apartment in nervous agitation, dictating his proclamation to the German people, and discussing minutiae such as the fanfare to be played on the radio when the attack was announced. Hitler clearly still wrestled with his momentous decision. Himmler conveyed to Heydrich his impression that “the Führer is not so optimistic as his military advisors.” As the time for the attack approached, Goebbels noticed that Hitler became calmer: “The Führer is freed from a nightmare, the closer the decision comes. It is always that way with him. . . . All the fatigue appears to have gone from him.” Indeed, Hitler seemed once more to have resolved in his own mind the correctness of his decision: “There is nothing else for us to do but attack. This cancerous growth has to be burned out.” As Goebbels remarked, “He has worked since last July [on preparations for the invasion], and now the time is at hand. Everything has been done that could have been done. Now the fortunes of war must decide.” At 2:30 A.M. on the twenty-second, Hitler absented himself to get a bit of sleep. Goebbels, too agitated to rest, went in pitch blackness to his office. There he received the first news of the attack at 3:30 A.M., then two hours later read Hitler’s proclamation to the German people. It was, Halder noted with scorn, a “long-winded manifesto . . . in a predominant political tenor,” a thin justification of German action based on the claim that the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy sought to destroy Germany. “The hour has now therefore arrived,” Hitler declared, “to counter this conspiracy of the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon warmongers and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik headquarters in Moscow.” To Goebbels, “The burden of the last weeks and months fell away.” Months later, however, Hitler admitted to his own doubts. “At the moment of our attack, we were entering upon a totally unknown world. . . . On June 22 a door opened before us and we did not know what was behind it. . . . The heavy uncertainty took me by the throat.”78

  In 1941, as in 1914, Germany was essentially a European continental power striving to become a world power, in both instances firm in the belief that a daring operational plan would accomplish the goal. The failure of the Schlieffen Plan in 1914 had sobered a generation of officers, until the brilliant success of May and June 1940 raised the notion of blitzkrieg from a tactical idea to a war-winning doctrine. Seduced by the myth of blitzkrieg into again believing that they could conquer the resources necessary for the breakthrough to world power, German leaders hoped to solve their conundrum through another gamble. Just one more triumph, they sensed, would provide the nation the means, still lacking despite the previous success, to conduct war at the next level. In this, they resembled a gambler hoping that one more successful throw of the dice would enable him to cover his past debts and finance future operations and harboring the false belief that he has figured out a foolproof scheme to beat the odds and break the bank.

  The war that began on 22 June 1941, however, was more than just a gamble. It was, in a very real sense, Hitler’s war, the showdown with Jewish-Bolshevism he had sought since the 1920s. His failure to subdue Great Britain meant that it had not come about under the conditions he preferred, but he decided to take advantage of the favorable circumstances of the moment both to secure living space for Germany and to free it from the strategic impasse into which his policy had plunged the nation. Hitler had long accepted the risks involved in his attempt to overturn the global balance of power and break the bonds he saw shackling Germany. Once committed to this policy, he had no choice but to strike fast and hard in an attempt to seize and retain the initiative. The risk of a new war, which he and his military advisers expected to be short, appeared more tolerable than doing nothing and allowing the Anglo-American powers to build up their resources for another contest of attrition. In any case, as Hitler well understood, the areas already conquered by Germany were unsuitable to sustain a material war, so conquest of European Russia was necessary to provide a decisive way out of the Reich’s economic dilemma. Moreover, for Hitler, military-political strategy was inseparably intertwined with racial ideology. The realization of Lebensraum in the east and the final confrontation with the ideological and racial enemies of Germany had formed the core of Hitler’s program for two decades, so the Führer was being pushed by circumstances in the direction he always intended to go. The threat posed by the emerging Anglo-American alliance only made this aim more necessary and urgent.79

  The decision for war against the Soviet Union thus came, as Jürgen Förster has emphasized, not as a result of England’s intransigence, but despite it. Even if Great Britain had made peace, Hitler would still have pursued war in Russia, for his ideology made no sense otherwise. As early as February 1939, he had stressed to his army commanders that the next war “would be a pure war of ideologies, that is, consciously a national and racial war.” Brauchitsch, conveying Hitler’s ideas to his top commanders, declared in November 1939, “Racial war has broken out [that] will decide who will rule in Europe and the world.” In Hitler’s eyes, the final goal, the racial restructuring of Europe, determined from the beginning the methods, with the result that, in the war against the Jewish-Bolshevik deadly enemy, means and ends were identical. The purpose of Operation Barbarossa was not merely the winning of territory for Germany but the final reckoning with Jewish-Bolshevism. As such, victory was more important than morality. When, after the German assault, Stalin responded in kind on 3 July 1941, declaring the struggle against Germany to be a merciless, life-and-death people’s war, Hitler now had what he had long dreamed of, “the chance to exterminate that which is opposed to us.”80

  From the beginning, the concept of annihilation constituted an integral part of Operation Barbarossa, as the planning for occupation policy and the formation of the Einsatzgruppen demonstrated. In Hitler’s view, military operations and SS actions would fuse into a unique dynamic of destruction. Despite a few rumblings, the belief in an unbridgeable racial and ideological chasm between Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia was accepted by virtually all in the army command. The lack both of opposition to the planned measures of the SS and of any outcry at the hunger policy demonstrated their integration into the National Socialist worldview. The special character of the war in the east was self-evident. Hitler had once boasted, “We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down,” a statement that expressed well his destructive vision. With the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, he now more accurately predicted, “The world will hold its breath.”81

  3

  Onslaught

  The night of 21–22 June, Goebbels noted in his diary, was oppressively hot and humid, and he worried, with no hint of irony, that “our troops will not have it easy in battle.” At the front, it was not the heat but rather the nervous anticipation that burdened many—most—of the men. Those in the first wave studied maps, surveyed the terrain in front of them, prepared their weapons, reviewed their tasks, and looked anxiously for any sign of enemy activity. Some expected quick victory; a few pondered the example of Napoléon; most were unenthusiastic but determined to do their duty. An unnatural silence hung over the front; movements had halted, vehicles were quiet, and men spoke in hushed tones. With muted voices officers read the Führer’s rather pedestrian appeal to small groups of troops, ending with the portentous words: “Soldiers of the eastern front, you are about to enter a difficult and all important struggle. The fate of Europe, the future of the German Reich, the existence of our people henceforth lie in your hands.” The troops stood silently and seriously. For some dawn would bring their baptism of fire, for others their last passage. Then, again in silence, with no talking and no clanking of equipment to betray their movement, the men entered their jumping-off positions. The silence, now an inward muteness, was stifling. Then, at 3:15 A.M. on the morning of 22 June, exactly 129 years after Napoléon had launched his invasion of Russia, the entire thousand-mile front from the Baltic to the Black Sea erupted: a thunderous cascade of artillery f
ire, tank engines roaring as they jolted into action, waves of droning aircraft filling the sky, the clatter of machine-gun fire, the sharp burst of mortars and hand grenades, and the earth rumbling and shaking amid the shrill shouts of racing men released from an almost unbearable nervous tension.1

  Deploying over 3 million men, 3,600 tanks, 600,000 motorized vehicles (as well as 625,000 horses), 7,000 artillery pieces, and 2,500 aircraft (a number that was actually smaller than that employed during the invasion of France), the Germans had launched the largest military operation in history. Just as Friedrich Barbarossa over seven hundred years earlier had taken up a crusade against the Muslim presence in the Holy Land, so Hitler now launched his own crusade against the Jewish-Bolshevik menace. Astonishingly, the Wehrmacht found itself opposed by an even larger force: the Red Army possessed well over 5 million men, 24,000 tanks (of which almost 2,000 were new type T-34 and KV models), over 91,000 artillery pieces of all types, and over 19,000 aircraft (of which over 7,000 were based in the western districts). Given the willingness of Stalin to mobilize ruthlessly all elements of his population, the Red Army could also exploit an enormous pool of manpower to make good its losses. By contrast, the Wehrmacht could draw on a population less than half the size of its adversary and one from which the prime manpower had already been conscripted.2

  As in France, the Germans again gambled on assembling all their available resources in hopes of deciding the outcome of the battle in the first few weeks. Ironically, while in 1914 the German military had overestimated the Russians and underestimated the French, in 1940–1941 it would prove to be the other way around. If France, the great foe of the First World War, had been defeated easily, the reasoning now went, the Soviet Union, weakened by communism and Stalin’s irrational purges, must surely collapse at the first blow. If, however, the Red Army did not disintegrate and survived the first weeks of combat, the Wehrmacht would not have the resources to pursue and destroy it. Barring the expected Soviet collapse, the German forces were simply too small, too poorly equipped, and too badly supplied to accomplish their task of defeating the Red Army before the onset of winter.