Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  Hitler, however, was not impressed by Halder’s arguments, not least because he considered the capture of Soviet economic and oil resources of far greater importance in undermining the enemy ability to resist. Moreover, in the absence of an inescapable position into which to push Russian forces, such as the English Channel, he believed that a frontal assault on Moscow would simply allow Soviet troops once again to withdraw, an argument seemingly confirmed by the operations at Minsk and Smolensk. His advice—that the army should concentrate on “tactical battles of destruction over smaller areas in which the enemy could be pinned down and completely destroyed”—must have come as a stinging rebuke to Halder and his conduct of operations. Over the next few days, indeed, the chief of the OKH fumed that the campaign was becoming little more than static warfare while sarcastically noting the impossibility of avoiding all risks. On 26 July, he bluntly told Hitler that he was playing into Russian hands by resorting to “tactical envelopments” while trying to rally the top army leaders, including Jodl, his rival in the OKW, to his position. Both corps commanders of panzer forces in the north, Manstein and Hoepner, reported that the area facing them between Lakes Peipus and Ilmen was unsuitable for mobile warfare, as did Paulus, who was dispatched to the region on a fact-finding mission.89

  In the event, it was less Halder’s arguments and more the reality of growing Soviet strength and increasing German supply difficulties that caused Hitler first to suspend and then to cancel the Supplement to Directive No. 33. Although on hearing the news Halder exclaimed, “This decision frees every thinking soldier of the horrible vision obsessing us these last few days, since the Führer’s obstinacy made the final bogging down of the campaign appear imminent,” the reality of Directive No. 34 was a bit less cheering. In it, Hitler still called for operations to envelop Leningrad and destroy Soviet forces at Kiev and in Ukraine west of the Dnieper while ordering Army Group Center to go on the defensive while it was refitted and reequipped. Halder clearly expected that the developments on the front would strengthen his position and that, after the enforced supply halt, the central front would again become the main axis of advance.90

  Amid much vacillation, the “July Crisis” of the German military leadership had thus ended, at least temporarily, although it was clear that, after the replenishment period, a decision would still have to be taken. The crucial decision—for or against Moscow—had merely been postponed. Nor, in retrospect, is it clear that Halder’s arguments were markedly better than Hitler’s. In view of the logistic situation, any further advance on the central axis was for the time being out of the question. The quartermaster-general’s staff had already concluded that a major attack on the central front was unfeasible since an adequate rate of supply to sustain an offensive could not be provided. At the same time, Hitler’s decision corresponded with continued fighting still raging in the Smolensk pocket, so the stable situation necessary for replenishment of the front units did not exist. Because of the early capture of the Baltic ports, an action Hitler had urged from the outset, Army Group North had accumulated sufficient supplies to sustain its operations, although terrain difficulties would hamper its movement. Moreover, the strong Soviet forces in the Pripet Marshes did represent a significant threat to the flanks of both Army Group Center and Army Group South as well as a menace to the already strained supply lines to the Sixth Army. In addition, large numbers of German troops, some six divisions, were tied down in combating enemy forays from the swamps. Even Bock admitted that “a precondition for any further operation is the defeat of the enemy on the army group’s flanks, both of which are lagging far behind.” As a result, by the late summer of 1941, the envelopment of Kiev was probably the only major operation feasible. Although supply difficulties still dogged a move to the south, the supply organizations of Army Groups Center and South could at least share the burden, while the terrain was largely favorable to mobile operations.91

  Strong Soviet resistance, a failure to resolve supply problems, and rainy weather that hampered the German advance all ensured that the mood of crisis would continue into August. The bitter fighting at Smolensk had sobered the German commanders and impelled them to alter their original strategy. The fear that the blitzkrieg momentum had slipped away was palpable, with little agreement on a course of action to regain the strategic initiative. By early August, the Barbarossa campaign had already exceeded in length that in the west the previous summer, with no clear way to end it in evidence. Victories had been won, yet a terrible price had been paid. “We are at the end of our tether,” Bock admitted on 2 August. “The nerves of those burdened with great responsibility are starting to waver.” Landsers, too, sensed that the fighting might be as endless as Russia itself. “We shouldn’t be allowed to continue much longer, otherwise the burden will be really heavy,” complained one on 10 August, while another noted on the same day, “Our losses are immense, more than in France.” A third wrote simply, “I have never seen such vicious dogs as these Russians. . . . They have an inexhaustible supply of tanks and material.”92 Underpinning the gloom was the gnawing anxiety that the war could not be won in 1941. In early August, the Führer remained wedded to the position that a decisive weakening of the Soviet ability to wage war meant the seizure of Leningrad in the north and the key economic, oil, and industrial regions of Ukraine and the Caucasus in the south, an implicit recognition that Moscow could probably not be taken by the onset of winter.

  The ruthless Soviet mobilization of resources and unrelenting counterattacks had both surprised and unnerved German generals. “The situation is extremely tense,” Bock worried on 7 August. “I don’t exactly know how a new operation is to take place . . . with the slowly sinking fighting strength of our . . . forces.” Still, he consoled himself with the thought that “things are undoubtedly even worse for the Russians!” A few days later, however, he confessed: “In spite of his terrific losses in men and materiel the enemy attacks at several places daily, so that any regrouping, any withdrawal of reserves . . . has so far been impossible.” He then added, in a revealing concession, “If the Russians don’t soon collapse somewhere, the objective of defeating them so badly that they are eliminated will be difficult to achieve before the winter.”93

  At the same time, Halder, too, succumbed to gloom, noting on 4 August, “We could not expect to reach the Caucasus before onset of this winter,” a virtual admission that Barbarossa had failed. Nor did his mood improve substantially in the next week. “On the fronts . . . reigns the quiet of exhaustion,” he admitted pessimistically in his diary on 11 August:

  What we are now doing is the last desperate attempt to prevent our front line from becoming frozen in position warfare. . . . Our last reserves have been committed. . . . The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus, who consistently prepared for war with that utterly ruthless determination so characteristic of totalitarian states. . . . At the outset of the war we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360. These divisions indeed are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen. The time factor favors them, as they are near their own resources, while we are moving farther and farther away from ours. And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front line, without any depth, are subjected to the incessant attacks of the enemy.94

  As the invading armies were swallowed in the immensity of the Soviet Union, as every triumph brought German forces deeper into the quagmire, a bitter irony became clear: the Wehrmacht was winning itself to death in the vast expanses of Russia. Despite the failures of the encirclement battles at Minsk and Smolensk to destroy the Soviet will and ability to resist, however, Halder could think of nothing else but to try again. If the remnant of the Red Army was to be destroyed, it would have to be done in front of Moscow.

  Hitler, on the other hand, drew an entirely opposite conclusion. If the Sov
iets were, indeed, massing their last forces in front of the capital, that surely meant easier pickings in the north and south, precisely where his primary objectives lay. During the first two weeks of August, then, Hitler and his army chief of staff wrestled with the key issue of the main axis of German operations. Halder achieved a certain success on 12 August when the Führer conceded, in the Supplement to Directive No. 34, that the aim was “the removal from the enemy before the winter of the entire state, armaments, and communications center around Moscow.” The army chief’s triumph, however, was limited by the further stipulation that the attack on Moscow would go ahead only once the threat to the flanks of Army Group Center had been eliminated. Three days later, in fact, strong Soviet counterattacks again disrupted Halder’s intentions as Hitler ordered panzer units away from Army Group Center to the north to counter the danger and directed that Bock’s forces should refrain from any further attacks toward Moscow.95

  Faced once more with a dissipation of forces, Halder believed that the decisive moment had arrived to settle the matter conclusively. Enlisting the support of Brauchitsch, Halder on 18 August sent Hitler a proposal justifying a concentration of strength against Moscow. In addition to the familiar argument of destroying the last enemy forces, Halder asserted that, though important, successes on the flanks in winning resources could never be decisive in themselves. Halder, however, had picked the wrong time for a showdown. Hitler almost certainly believed that in the Supplement to Directive No. 34 he had already made a major compromise. In addition, the strain of the past month had clearly taken a toll on the Führer both physically and psychologically. Although a chronic hypochondriac, in mid-August he suffered an attack of dysentery, accompanied by evidence of rapidly progressing coronary sclerosis. When Goebbels visited the Führer’s headquarters on 18 August, he was taken aback by Hitler’s physical and mental exhaustion. Signs of extreme nervous strain abounded: he was obsessed with the gross underestimation of Soviet strength given him before the war by German intelligence, so much so that he implied that he might have hesitated to launch the attack had he known the truth. He also shocked Goebbels with the suggestion that he might accept a negotiated peace with Stalin. Churchill, the Führer rambled on, was grasping at straws, such as the recently announced Atlantic Charter; indeed, his government might well collapse and the war end suddenly, just as the Nazis had been unexpectedly swept into power in 1933. The Führer’s nerves were clearly frayed, while Goebbels was sobered by the realization that the eastern campaign would not be over in 1941 and that the best that could be hoped for were good winter positions.96

  Hitler’s moment of strategic realism had immediate operational implications. If Germany could not destroy enemy forces, economic considerations became paramount. His detailed reply to Halder came quickly and was a terse rejection of the army chief’s proposals. On 21 August, Hitler issued an order through the OKW reaffirming that the principal objectives to be attained before the onset of winter continued to be the capture of the economic and industrial areas of Ukraine as well as the oil region of the Caucasus. Conquest of the Crimea was also a priority in order to secure the Rumanian oil supply, while the encirclement of Leningrad still took precedence over the capture of Moscow. The next day, in a detailed study, Hitler justified his operational priorities not only with the usual political and economic arguments but with military considerations as well. It was, he stressed, as Bock had already conceded, necessary to eliminate the enemy threat on the flanks before launching any attack on Moscow, so the operation into Ukraine to secure economic resources would at the same time serve the aim of securing the southern flank of Army Group Center. In any case, Hitler noted caustically, the original operational plan anticipated movements to the north and south, so, not he, but the Army High Command, had altered the script. Moreover, in a stinging rebuke to the army leadership, he noted that not only had they deviated from the plan, but they had also then failed to achieve a decisive victory. In the ultimate insult, the Führer then contrasted their shaky performance with Goering’s firm leadership of the Luftwaffe. Although Hitler ended with some conciliatory words affirming his acceptance of the thrust on Moscow, he nonetheless emphasized that this would be undertaken only after the other operations had concluded.97

  Beside himself with anger, and perhaps also a bit embarrassed that Hitler had seen through his obstructionism, Halder raged in his diary against the Führer, blaming him for the vacillation and indecision of the past weeks, and furious at the humiliating treatment of Brauchitsch. Halder even urged that he and Brauchitsch tender their resignations together, but the latter rejected the proposal. Deeply upset, Halder flew to Army Group Center headquarters the next day to rally support for his preference for resuming the offensive on Moscow. He arranged for Guderian, one of Hitler’s favorite generals and particularly vocal in his opposition to a move south, to accompany him to Führer Headquarters in an attempt to dissuade the dictator from his course of action. Rather amazingly to those present, on the evening of 24 August, Hitler allowed Guderian, in the absence of Halder, to make the case for an attack on Moscow. The Soviet capital, Guderian asserted, was not just the political, transportation, and communications center of Russia but, in a telling analogy that illuminated the military mind-set, “the nerve center of Russia . . . like Paris is to France.” Hitler then argued the alternative. The raw materials and agricultural resources of Ukraine, he noted, were absolutely vital to a continuation of the war, as was securing the German oil supply. “My generals,” he remarked in a biting comment, “know nothing of the economic aspects of war.” Although the day before he had asserted that an attack to the south by his armored group was impossible, Guderian now reversed himself and affirmed his ability to launch just such a drive. When they heard the news of Guderian’s volte-face, both Halder and Bock were furious, but, in truth, there had been little the panzer commander could do to alter the situation. Hitler’s mind was made up: the battle for Ukraine would go ahead.98

  Nor, despite the later self-serving contentions of the generals, were Hitler’s criticisms without merit. The bulk of the Red Army had not been destroyed, Soviet leaders had managed to organize an effective defense in spite of catastrophic losses, and the steadily declining German strength and the vastness of the area to be conquered posed almost insuperable difficulties. In addition, the German logistic system had neared the point of collapse: railroads had not been repaired quickly enough, and the dire state of Soviet roads overwhelmed German motorized transport. The number of trains arriving at Army Group Center could barely sustain daily operations, let alone allow a buildup sufficient to support an advance on Moscow. Although it needed at least twenty-four trains a day to supply its needs, at times in August it received only half that number. Clearly, the basic prerequisite for an attack on Moscow was lacking. Moreover, even holding the ground already taken proved difficult since the Soviets launched unrelenting attacks around Smolensk. By early September, in fact, the Red Army had forced the Germans to withdraw from Yelnya, important both as a psychological victory for the Soviets and as the loss by the Germans of a springboard for later operations. The continuing attacks at Smolensk further convinced Hitler of the need to eliminate the southern threat to any advance on Moscow.99

  With the failure to win a quick victory on the frontier, the stark reality facing the Wehrmacht High Command was that, in late August, no one seemed able to produce a war-winning strategy that would finish off a reeling foe. Halder and Jodl both expected operations to continue into the following year, a conclusion arrived at independently in an OKW study and a point also made by Hitler in his study. Given the facts of the situation, Hitler likely had a more realistic view than did Halder. Despite the failure of his key assumption, the latter produced no new plan for victory. Where Halder, despite the evidence of increasing enemy resistance and eroding German strength, clung to the hope that one last blow would lead to the collapse of Soviet defenses, Hitler drew the conclusion dictated by his recognition that the war would
not end in 1941: securing economic resources had a higher priority than achieving another operational triumph. At the same time, the advance to the south, and the promise of another vast encirclement operation, might at last break the Red Army. The deeper problem, of course, was the one that had festered since the beginning. Hitler and Halder had never agreed on the fundamental aims of Barbarossa; with no clarity on the overall goals of the campaign, it had from the start been a muddled gamble on luck and good fortune. With his late August decision to strike south, Hitler implicitly acknowledged that the luck had run out and the gamble had failed.100

  4

  Whirlwind

  As the turbulent events on the eastern front and at Führer Headquarters unfolded, domestically the summer of 1941 proved difficult as well. Always sensitive to the popular mood, and with memories of 1918 constantly at the forefront, Nazi officials anxiously studied the weekly SD reports on the state of public opinion. Although the outbreak of war in September 1939 had been accepted unenthusiastically, the brilliant military triumphs in Poland and France had led to unprecedented popularity for Hitler. These victories, however, had not resulted in an end to the war. Instead, the German people faced first the uncertainty of a long war and then the shock of the attack on the Soviet Union. Although the assault on Jewish-Bolshevism was popular with party loyalists, news of Barbarossa had been received by the populace with muted skepticism. As in France a year earlier, initial successes had led Germans to expect another quick and relatively painless victory, but, as the campaign dragged on into the summer with no end in sight, the mood grew resigned and weary.