Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  Twenty miles to the south, at Krassnaya Polyana, the Second Panzer Division also came to a standstill on the twenty-eighth, as did units from the Fourth Panzergruppe—the Fifth, Tenth, and Eleventh Panzer Divisions and the Second SS Division Das Reich—as they battered futilely against the minefields and fiercely defended earthworks of the Soviet defense line, with the spires of the Kremlin visible some twelve miles in the distance. Two incidents were telling. On the twenty-eighth, German troops knocked out both British- and American-made tanks, a clear indication of the material aid arriving from the West, while, on 1 December, a detachment of motorcyclists from the Second Panzer Division conducting a reconnaissance got within five miles of Moscow. Having no way to exploit this gap in Soviet defenses, however, all the frustrated motorcyclists could do was turn and drive back to German lines. By now, Bock doubted that his forces could go any further, especially in view of the enemy’s ability to draw on seemingly inexhaustible reserves of men. “If we do not succeed in bringing about a collapse of Moscow’s northwestern front in a few days,” he noted on 29 November, “the attack will have to be called off; it would only lead to a soulless head-on clash with an opponent who apparently commands very large reserves of men and material; but I don’t want to provoke a second Verdun.” Significantly, in a matter of weeks, the Great War analogy invoked had changed from the Marne, where the Germans threw away a chance at victory through a failure of will, to Verdun, where the spectacle of relentless material attrition highlighted fatal German weakness.95

  Although Kluge now belatedly launched an attack with his depleted forces, an action urged by the OKH despite Bock’s reservations, the state of his troops ensured that it would sputter to a halt almost immediately. The lack of realism at the OKH once again convinced Bock that no one at headquarters had actually read his reports on the true condition of the troops, prompting him on 1 December to issue another stark warning. “I lack the strength for large-scale encirclement movements,” he stressed, then outlined with precision the dire consequences:

  The attack will, after further bloody combat, result in modest gains . . . but it will scarcely have a strategic effect. The fighting of the past fourteen days has shown that the notion that the enemy in front of the army group had “collapsed” was a fantasy. . . . The attack thus appears to be without sense or purpose, especially since the time is approaching when the strength of the units will be exhausted. . . . In this state, with the heavy losses in officers and the reduced combat strengths, it could not withstand even a relatively well-organized attack. In view of the failure of the railroads there is also no possibility of preparing this extended front for a defensive battle or supplying it during such a battle.

  The Ostheer had now clearly passed the culmination point. On 3 December, both the Fourth Army and the Fourth Panzergruppe reached the end of their strength and broke off the attack. Physically and psychologically, the troops had reached the limit of their endurance, with half the units unable to resist an assault. Most of the divisions of Army Group Center had fallen below 50 percent of their strength, while the army group itself had now suffered a total of 350,000 casualties.96

  Signs of apathy abounded: on two days in early December, the Sixth Panzer Division reported a total of “eighty cases of fainting owing to exhaustion.” Just as worrisome, the steady erosion of German strength had serious psychological repercussions and effects on morale. One report noted signs of panic among the troops, who could no longer be completely relied on. Another stressed the demoralizing effect of facing day after day new enemy forces that not only were superior in number and equipment but had also learned German tactics. As his qualitative superiority slipped away, “the German frontline soldier also realizes . . . that he is alone in the Far East with thinned ranks; he is suffering in the cold Russian winter . . . constantly aware of the heavy casualties . . . [and] that no replacements arrive. . . . The frontline soldier today quite openly states that this campaign still has a long way to go.” Noted another, in stark terms, “The troops are exhausted and kaputt; they are completely indifferent.” Letters home complained of the dismal situation at the front and the lack of winter clothing and equipment, with unflattering comparisons with the enemy, who was “much better . . . equipped for the winter.” With three-quarters of German supply trains put out of action by the cold and partisan raids, any regular provision of supplies was impossible. The extreme cold, now dropping to as low as –30°F, inadequate clothing and shelter, lack of food, losses of weapons and equipment—in addition to the impact of combat—all sapped German morale.97 Even before the Soviet counterattack, then, the German offensive had ground to a halt. In the absence of an enemy attack, the Germans would have been hard-pressed to maintain their positions since the lines reached by 5 December had long, unprotected flanks. Now, they would face an even bigger challenge: preventing the disintegration of the Ostheer itself.

  “We must solve all continental European problems in 1941,” Hitler had told Jodl on 17 December 1940, “since from 1942 on the United States would be in the position to intervene.” Now, as the turn of events in front of Moscow cast a gloomy mood over the Führer Headquarters, came the news on 7 December of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which might have been expected to deepen the sense of apprehension even more. After all, as a German officer in Warsaw noted in his diary, “What probably every German has feared has come true.” Even Goebbels worried that Germany could “probably not avoid a declaration of war on the United States.” For Hitler, however, the news produced a “euphoric mood,” as if he “had been freed from a nightmare.” To him, in fact, it was nothing less than “a deliverance”: “We now have an ally that has never been conquered in 3,000 years.”98 With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war on the United States on 11 December, a European war, Hitler’s war, had become a global war, one, moreover, that Hitler knew had come too soon and for which Germany was unprepared. Why, then, did he see this turn of events as hopeful for Germany?

  Hitler had been aware of the potential power of the United States ever since his Second Book, written in 1928 but never published, and increasingly from the late 1930s America entered into his strategic calculations. In common with many German nationalists, his extremely negative view of the United States had been shaped by two events: American entry into World War I, which was, he thought, the result of the manipulation of Jewish finance capital, and President Wilson’s “betrayal” of Germany in both the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. This had resulted in revolution, chaos, and national humiliation, which could never be forgiven. By the late 1930s, as Roosevelt moved in a more outspoken anti-German direction, Hitler once again detected the hand of Jewish finance directing American actions in a warlike manner, the consequences of which he had laid out in his infamous 30 January 1939 speech. Despite his realization that the United States could do little in the short term to disturb his plans, he was aware of the rapid American rearmament and the likelihood of its support for Britain and France in the event of war. At the beginning of hostilities, he expressed confidence that Germany would solve all its problems in Europe before the Americans could intervene, but he also registered deep concern “if we’re not finished by then,” for all assessments indicated that the United States would be ready for war by 1942. The western war, Hitler clearly understood, had to be won quickly and decisively. The failure to do so, as we have seen, put him under a considerable time pressure and greatly influenced the timing of his move against the Soviet Union. The war he had always planned to fight on ideological grounds now had an urgent strategic goal: establish German continental dominance by the end of 1941 and remove any British hope of holding on before American intervention became a reality.99

  To Hitler, doing nothing in the spring of 1941 raised the specter of a possible two-front war against Germany engineered by the Jews acting from both Russia and the United States. If he needed any confirmation of America’s hostile intentions, the Lend-Lease Act, ena
cted in March 1941, and Roosevelt’s actions in deliberately escalating the naval conflict in the Atlantic were regarded in Berlin as a virtual declaration of war on Germany. Hitler, however, did not want to give the American president an incident he could use to justify intervention, as had happened in World War I, so he ordered his naval leaders, chomping at the bit for a confrontation with the United States, to avoid any provocations. At the same time, the Führer began to see his erstwhile ally, Japan, in a new light. If Japanese expansion could be encouraged in the Pacific, he believed, that would not only strike a blow against British power but also distract U.S. attention from Europe. The key to enticing a more aggressive Japanese posture, in turn, would be the rapid defeat of the Soviet Union. That would eliminate the threat to both Germany and Japan and allow each to proceed unhindered against their remaining adversary. The Germans thus set about trying to encourage a more belligerent attitude in Tokyo.100

  By the autumn, with the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1941 increasingly unlikely, and with concern growing in Berlin over a possible Japanese-American rapprochement, Japan now assumed a key role in Hitler’s thinking. In order to buy time for a 1942 campaign that would secure its material base in Europe, if not destroy the Soviet Union outright, it was urgently necessary that Berlin coax Tokyo into taking action in the Pacific. Much to German relief, a mid-October change of government had set Tokyo on a more confrontational path with the United States. By early November, in fact, it was the Japanese who were seeking assurances of support from Germany in the event of a Japanese-American conflict, guarantees that Berlin was happy to provide. Ribbentrop not only assured the Japanese ambassador on 28 November that Germany would aid Japan in the event of war but also reaffirmed its commitment not to make a separate peace with the United States.101

  By now, German leaders sensed that Japanese action was imminent, but they were taken completely by surprise—“a bolt from the blue,” Goebbels admitted—by the bold attack on the key American naval base in the Pacific. Hitler now took a step that some historians have seen as “the most puzzling” of his decisions, indeed, as a “suicidal” impulse without any strategic purpose: declaring war on the United States. After all, Germany was under no treaty obligation to enter the conflict against the United States since Japan had not been attacked, and he had what he wanted at no apparent cost, a war in the Pacific that would preoccupy the Americans. The Führer’s action, however, was not as irrational as it seemed. At the beginning of December, he certainly understood that his original concept of the war had failed, that the Soviet Union would not be defeated in 1941, that Germany did not yet possess the economic or armaments ability to fight a sustained war, that the intervention of the United States was only a matter of time, and that Germany could not win a two-front war against the United States and the Soviet Union. The Japanese action, however, gave Germany a last opportunity to defeat the unexpectedly resilient Soviets or at least produce some sort of satisfactory result, such as a deal with Stalin. For this to succeed, for Germany to have the time to accomplish its aims, Japan would have to tie down the Americans as long and as completely as possible in the Pacific.102

  Germany’s role, in turn, would be to prevent the Americans from concentrating all their considerable resources on the Japanese and, thus, win a quick victory before turning on Germany. The United States, through German action, would be compelled to divert resources to the Atlantic, thus forcing it into a war across two broad oceans. The tables, neatly enough, would be turned: this time, the Americans, not the Germans, would have to disperse their strength. Not surprisingly, then, on the eighth, even before the declaration of war three days later, Hitler removed the shackles from his U-boats and now ordered them to attack American shipping, a move that certainly would have resulted in an American declaration of war. He not only hoped thereby to disrupt American supplies to the British, and, thus, weaken their position, but also aimed to send a signal to the Japanese that Germany would support them fully. In retrospect, he grossly overestimated Japanese military abilities and underestimated those of the United States, but his decision, given his assessment of the situation, was certainly not irrational. Faced with a two-front war, he believed that the only way out of his dilemma was to help the Japanese preoccupy American power long enough to allow him to win the resources necessary to continue what was now a war of attrition from a solid material base. Nor, given Roosevelt’s actions in the past year, did he assume that he was taking some sort of fateful step; after all, given its undeclared war in the Atlantic, the United States could be expected to declare war on Germany.103

  Prestige and propaganda, as always, were also important for Hitler, who sought to use the declaration of war as a means by which to regain the initiative. In his speech to the Reichstag on 11 December, he stressed the endless series of provocations by the United States, until now unanswered, behind which he saw the “Satanic insidiousness” of the Jews, set on the destruction of Germany. He had at last, his patience exhausted, been forced to act. Now, however, with the support of the Japanese, he could take the gloves off and boost Germany’s prospects in the Atlantic. The next day, in a speech to his Gauleiter, he stressed the inevitability of the confrontation with the United States but also revealed something of his strategic thinking. He indicated his firm intention of finishing off Russia in the coming year or at least its European portion. “Then it would perhaps be possible to reach a point of stabilization in Europe through a sort of half-peace” by which this German-dominated continent could exist as a self-sufficient fortress. Problems had arisen that had delayed the German timetable, he acknowledged, but once again he emphasized his vision of the east as Germany’s India. He also stressed, as we have seen, his determination to solve the Jewish problem. “If the German people has again sacrificed 160,000 dead in the eastern campaign,” he vowed, “the originators of this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their own lives.” To Hitler, the Jews had begun the war in Europe and had succeeded, despite his warnings, in making it a world war. They would now pay the price; indeed, from Hitler’s point of view, they had to be eliminated to ensure that Germany was not again “stabbed in the back.” On several occasions in 1943 and 1944, both Hitler and Himmler voiced their belief that only the timely “removal” of the Jews had enabled the Nazi regime to survive military reverses and the aerial bombardment of German cities. This time, unlike 1918, there would be no revolutionary unrest. The matter, Hitler said, could not “have been handled more humanely” since Germany was “in a fight to the death.”104

  Given his assumptions, then, Hitler’s decision to declare war on the United States was not all that baffling, nor was it fraught with the deep significance claimed by many historians. It was not the decisive moment in taking Germany down the path of catastrophe: that had already happened. Hitler himself had acknowledged, if only fleetingly, German failure in grasping at world power status in his late November remark to the Danish foreign minister quoted above. Certainly, American entry into the war sealed Germany’s fate, but not before it was able to recover, remarkably well, from the winter crisis that threatened to destroy the Ostheer and achieve amazing victories in 1942. Nor was Hitler’s analysis fundamentally incorrect, for the United States was forced to commit significant resources in the Pacific in 1942, despite Roosevelt’s “Europe first” approach, and not until 1944 was it able to bring to bear substantial ground forces in Europe. Germany had gained a year to win the Lebensraum necessary to compete with the United States and came amazingly close to achieving some sort of triumph over the Soviet Union. Not until the end of 1942, with the Battle of Stalingrad and the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, did Hitler’s gamble finally, definitively, fail. Even then, as Churchill remarked, it was not the beginning of the end, but only the end of the beginning. The war had a long way to go, and, despite his admission that he had no idea how to defeat the United States, Hitler hoped that some sort of victory over the Soviet Union in 1942, combined with a Japanese stalemating of the
Americans in the Pacific, might yet retrieve the situation. Unlike the year before, however, Germany had clearly lost its freedom of action and could no longer depend on its own resources for victory. Hitler’s worst fear had proved correct: time was against him.105

  The six months between June and December 1941 had proved crucial in determining the fate of the Third Reich. In attacking the Soviet Union, in seeking to realize his ideological vision, Hitler gambled that Germany could remedy its strategic dilemma in a quick campaign that would elevate it to world power status and leave it in control of a continental imperium. In so doing, he also set in motion all the aspects of his war of annihilation: the extermination of the Jews, the starvation and murder of the Soviet civilian population, the homicidal treatment of prisoners of war and partisans, and the colonial exploitation of the conquered territories. Military reverses at the end of the year meant that it was likely that he could not now win the war in the way he originally envisioned, but the change of fortune was not so great that he had to abandon the murderous projects already begun. Although his gamble would ultimately fail, the number of his victims would also soar over the next few years.

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