Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  As a result, both sides, locked in a deadly embrace, hammered away with increasingly ineffective body blows that served only to exhaust their remaining strength. The Stavka sought to mount offensives on either side of the central sector, with the hope of relieving the siege of Leningrad, further threatening German lines of communication, and disrupting any enemy buildup to the southwest of Moscow, which the Russians had incorrectly identified as the likely area for the main German advance in the summer. The Soviets achieved most success in the north, where they encircled considerable German forces around Kholm and Demyansk. Unlike the earlier pocket at Sukhinichi, the Germans refused to abandon Kholm and Demyansk; instead, the Luftwaffe mounted a major operation to supply the pockets by air. By holding on to these areas, not only did the Germans retain key strategic positions, but, if their forces at Demyansk and Rzhev could join hands, they would also trap many Soviet divisions in the Toropets salient. In the event, however, the Germans lacked sufficient force to unite the two pockets. Instead, they mounted a major effort to relieve Demyansk, driving a thin corridor to the pocket in early March. Ironically, the relief column was commanded by General Walter von Seydlitz, who would later be captured at Stalingrad and emerge as a key figure in a Soviet-sponsored anti-Nazi movement. Indeed, the relief of Demyansk and Kholm (achieved on 1 May) had a direct impact on the later disaster on the Volga since the successful resupply of the smaller pockets encouraged Hitler in the belief that the operation could be repeated on a much larger scale at Stalingrad.27

  To the northwest of Demyansk, the Russians planned an ambitious operation in conjunction with the Volkhov Front that aimed at nothing less than cutting the lines of communication of Army Group North and raising the siege of Leningrad. Despite some success in recapturing mostly swamps and forests of little military value, the Soviets never seriously threatened the position of the army group, despite their numerical superiority. As elsewhere across the front, after an initial advance, the fighting along the Volkhov degenerated into a confusing series of battles with isolated forces of exhausted men, literally bogged down in the woods and swamps, trying to encircle each other. Eventually, as noted above, the Second Shock Army under Vlasov found itself encircled following sharp German counterattacks and was forced to surrender in late June. Despite the urgency attached by Moscow to the Leningrad operation, it failed to achieve anything of significance, a failure that meant a starvation death for hundreds of thousands of Leningraders, for the worst period of the nine-hundred-day siege was the three months from January to March 1942. Subjected to constant artillery bombardment, and cut off from fuel and food supplies, with rations that guaranteed only death by famine, an estimated 1 million civilians starved to death in the city during the course of the war, the great majority in the first months of 1942. The Soviets having failed, for a variety of reasons, to evacuate enough of the civilian inhabitants of the city, the result was the worst single demographic disaster of the war. But, as we have seen from his orders, even the surrender of Leningrad would not have averted a catastrophe, for Hitler had no intention of feeding the inhabitants in any case. The logic of a racial war of annihilation precluded such action.28

  Although Hitler’s blitzkrieg failed in front of Moscow, Stalin’s effort to force a decisive result before the spring rasputitsa miscarried as well. Zhukov, in his memoirs, put it best when he observed bitterly, “If you consider our losses and what results were achieved, it will be clear that it was a Pyrrhic victory.” The most optimistic aim, the destruction of Army Group Center, had not been achieved, nor had the more pragmatic goal of Zhukov, to drive the line back to the starting point of Operation Typhoon been satisfactorily attained. Red Army losses had been staggering, the central Rzhev-Vyazma operation alone costing the Soviets some 272,000 lives. Overall, in the roughly four months of fighting between December and March, Zhukov’s West Front lost 250,000 men and Konev’s Kalinin Front some 150,000, while the battles around Demyansk cost the Soviets another 89,000 men. Red Army losses across the entire eastern front totaled 620,000 from January to March, compared with roughly 136,000 German deaths in the same period. Soviet mobility and operational effectiveness, too, were limited by the deep snow, bitter cold, and difficulties in moving supplies. Nor did the Red Army possess enough mechanized forces to block roads and railways permanently or take the villages that the Germans had fortified, Zhukov complaining that it was impossible to encircle without tanks. The Stavka had made the same mistakes as the Germans; not only had it assumed that the enemy was exhausted and shattered, but it had also attacked everywhere and, thus, dispersed its own limited forces. The Germans had mounted a remarkably successful defense, which the quality of the Landser had made possible, but the Soviets’ failure to concentrate their resources had, ultimately, allowed the Wehrmacht to escape a disaster. Stalin’s strategy of wearing down the Germans did not work; in return for huge losses, the Soviets regained little territory and now faced the task of again rebuilding their weakened forces.29

  The Germans, however, were powerless to take advantage of the Russian predicament, for, even though Hitler grasped the seed of a victory in the overextended enemy positions, he had nothing left to employ. Despite the Führer’s promises, in December and January Army Group Center received a total of only 60,000 replacements but in the same two months suffered nearly 250,000 casualties. For the December–March period, the army group received 180,000 troops but suffered almost 437,000 casualties. Thus, even though the monthly death totals that resulted from Hitler’s Haltebefehl and subsequent operations were not out of line with preceding months, relatively they were far worse since they came from ranks already depleted by the earlier bloodletting and could not be offset with replacements, there being no more reserves. By the end of January, there had been over 900,000 casualties in the Ostheer as a whole, a figure that the Germans could not remotely make good. The consequences were readily apparent to anyone in the ranks: Heinrici reported that, in the Ninth Army, each battalion was down to about seventy men, five light machine guns, and two heavy machine guns. In December 1941, an additional 282,300 conscripts entered the army, but they needed training before they could be employed, and, in any case, two-thirds had come from the armaments industry. These vital war workers proved impossible to replace in the short term with Russian prisoners of war since German policy had depleted their ranks through mass starvation and epidemic diseases. The shortage of labor was made even more acute because of the need now to step up armaments production considerably.30

  Nor, had replacements been available, could they have been equipped with weapons. German materiel losses in Operation Barbarossa had been staggering, with the bulk of armaments produced in 1941 lost on the battlefields of the east. In many areas, the Wehrmacht was reduced to the level of armaments of 1940 or even September 1939. In the first three weeks of December alone, 424 tanks had been lost, while, in the first ten days of January, another 242 were destroyed. In just two months, December and January, the Ostheer lost a total of 974 tanks and armored assault vehicles, with the result that total losses on the eastern front to the end of January rose to 4,241. During the same period, only 873 tanks had been delivered to the Ostfront; indeed, between June 1941 and January 1942, only 2,842 tanks and assault guns had been manufactured in Germany. By the end of March 1942, the sixteen panzer divisions had only 140 operational tanks. In late February, the Second Panzer Army counted only forty-five combat-ready tanks, with another forty-four undergoing repair. Enormous losses in motorcycles, trucks, and motor vehicles, some 25 percent of the original strength, as well as horses severely restricted the mobility of the Ostheer, a bloodletting from which the most mobile forces never recovered. In addition, fuel and ammunition supplies were virtually exhausted. Accentuating the problem, the units of Army Group South, which would conduct the main German attack in 1942, could be brought up to 85 percent of their authorized equipment levels only by stripping Army Groups Center and North, further reducing their limited operational abilities.31
/>   Losses in artillery and mortars were also severe, with the lost guns not replaced. In December, for example, although 452 light field howitzers and 200 heavy field howitzers were lost, only 21 and 10 new models, respectively, were produced. In January, production of light howitzers stopped altogether. In all this, of course, lay a deeper problem: German industry could not produce enough to offset the material losses, nor could much of what was produced be supplied to the troops because of transportation deficiencies. By the end of March 1942, of the 162 divisions employed on the eastern front, only eight were fully operational, three needed only minor rest and resupply, and forty-seven were limited in their ability to attack, while the bulk of the units could be used only in defense. Arguably, in the early spring of 1942, the military strength of the Wehrmacht was not only lower than a year previously but also lower than when the war had begun. Only in mid-December 1941 had Hitler ordered an increase in war production and a reorientation in favor of the army. He also directed that armaments production be rationalized on mass production principles while, in a blow to the military, putting civilian industrialists in charge of the war economy. Still, these changes would take time, so he faced the very real prospect that his objectives could no longer be attained by a Wehrmacht torn apart by the savage fighting in Russia, especially since his opponent could rely on a steady stream of Lend-Lease supplies from his allies.32

  Although Hitler could claim, and some of his generals would reluctantly concede, that his iron will and ruthless determination had prevented Germany from suffering the fate of Napoléon, his tactic had worked as much because of Soviet mistakes as because of German strengths. When attempted again the following winter, it would fail disastrously. Further, despite the gloating over his genius, Hitler had no idea how or even whether Germany could still win the war. Jodl, in fact, asserted after the war that as early as spring 1942 the Führer realized that the war was lost and there could be no victory. The crisis had taken a toll on him mentally and physically. Goebbels was shocked by his appearance in late March and especially by his admission that at times he doubted whether it was possible to win the war. Still, as relative calm returned to the front during the period of rasputitsa, Hitler’s confidence began to return. The Japanese entry into the war, he insisted, had been a key turning point, although he lamented that the Japanese advance meant a loss for the “white race.” The fall of Singapore affirmed his belief that the Japanese would play their assigned strategic role, but his pleasure was tinged with regret that the British had not thrown in their lot with a German-dominated Europe against the United States. Despite the massive losses of the Barbarossa campaign and the near disaster of the winter, he looked expectantly to the approaching summer offensive. Having survived the onslaught of the “Bolshevik hordes” as well as the worst winter in a century and a half, Hitler was speaking again of ultimate victory. After all, as Goebbels exulted, “Troops who can cope with such a winter are unbeatable.” The winter crisis overcome, Hitler spent little time reassessing his strategy, which had been flawed from the beginning, or seeking alternative ways to end the war. The Russians, too, had suffered grievously during the winter: it was imperative that this wounded but still dangerous enemy be destroyed as soon as possible. For a man obsessed with the problem of time, it was, he knew, Germany’s last chance to secure its hegemony on the Continent before America’s massive resources tipped the balance irretrievably against the Reich.33

  As a project of national and social renovation based on war, the invasion of the Soviet Union had from the beginning posed the existential question of survival or annihilation. The characteristic dynamism of Nazi policy, its sense of urgency, was based as much on a notion of must do as on one of can do. This insistent desire to prevent the destruction they imagined their enemies were about to visit on them produced in the Nazis a feeling of liberation from conventional morality and a willingness to use maximum violence. Not surprisingly, then, despite, or perhaps because of, the military crisis in the winter of 1941–1942, the process of radicalization of Nazi racial policy accelerated. With the growing recognition that Germany now faced a long war, top Nazi leaders drew certain conclusions: the labor problem had to be solved and armaments production increased; the food situation had to be stabilized; any unrest at home had to be stemmed by moving against “privilege”; and, above all, the underlying source of all such discontent, the Jews, had to be eliminated immediately. “It must be done quickly,” Hitler told Himmler in late January 1942. “The Jew must be ousted from Europe. . . . He incites everywhere. . . . I see only one thing: total extermination. . . . Why should I look at a Jew any differently from a Russian prisoner . . . ? Why did the Jews start this war?” In mid-February, Goebbels, always sensitive to the Führer’s mood, recorded Hitler’s mounting fury and decision “to do away ruthlessly with the Jews in Europe”: “The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that they are now experiencing. We must accelerate this process with cold determination.” This “clear-cut anti-Jewish position” was also conveyed, Goebbels gloated, to a number of top army officers.34

  Nor did Hitler’s apocalyptic vision wane as the situation at the front stabilized. In a late February gathering of the “Old Fighters” in Munich, Hitler promised “the elimination of these [Jewish] parasites,” a vow that was hardly meant to be kept secret since the next day many German newspapers headlined the speech, “The Jew will be exterminated.” That this threat had now materialized as a comprehensive process of destruction was evident to Goebbels in late March when he recorded with some trepidation in his diary:

  Starting with Lublin [the first ghetto to be liquidated], the Jews are now being deported from the General Government to the East. The procedure used is quite barbaric and should not be described in any further detail. Not much remains of the Jews themselves. . . . The Jews are being subjected to a sentence that is barbaric, but they have fully deserved it. The prophecy that the Führer made . . . starts to come true in the most terrible way. In these things no sentimentality should be allowed. If we didn’t defend ourselves, the Jews would exterminate us. . . . Thank God, during the war we now have a range of possibilities that we couldn’t use in peacetime.

  This thundering crescendo of anti-Jewish threats and abuse culminated in a late April speech to the Reichstag in which Hitler set out the “historical context” of Nazi policy. The Jews, he claimed, had played an evil role and done great harm to Germany in World War I. Now they were trying to complete the second act of their destructive process but would fail since Germany had declared war on “this Jewish infection.” Victor Klemperer, an acute observer of the anti-Semitic mood in Germany, noted worriedly of this speech, “The concentration of hatred has this time turned into utter madness. Not England or the USA or Russia—only, in everything, nothing but the Jew.”35

  Even at the height of the danger on the eastern front, then, when it appeared as if Army Group Center, if not the entire Ostheer, might collapse, Nazi killers on the ground kept at their murderous task while top officials continued to refine procedures for a more efficient destruction of the Jews. In the east, the men of Einsatzgruppe B spent the winter in the vicinity of Smolensk, Mogilev, and Bryansk, but, even as they recoiled from the Russian counteroffensive, their advanced commandos systematically killed the surviving Jews in the rear area of Army Group Center. To the south, during the early months of 1942, Einsatzgruppen C and D engaged in more extensive operations, murdering perhaps 75,000 people in all between the beginning of the Soviet attack and the end of March. In one particularly gruesome incident, 4,000–5,000 Jews were placed in stables that were then doused with the gasoline in such scarce supply to the army and set afire. In Transnistria, 43,000 Jews, in groups of 300–400, were shot while kneeling naked in the icy weather on the rim of a precipice; the shootings continued for days, interrupted only by the celebration of Christmas. Almost 30,000 Jews were deported to the makeshift camp of Berezovka, some sixty miles northeast of Odessa, where most perished from the abysmal conditions or being s
hot. The shootings had been conducted so haphazardly that some of the corpses had been left on the main road or thrown into a local lake, raising fears of epidemics in the spring. To the north, in the Baltic, Einsatzgruppe A also continued its operations, with the murderously reliable Karl Jäger and his Einsatzkommando 3 alone accounting for over 138,000 victims between the start of operations and early February 1942.36

  Even as the Einsatzgruppen worked nonstop during the winter months to kill as many Jews as possible, officials in Berlin discussed ways in which to extend the reach of the Final Solution. In the wake of the Wannsee Conference, a number of smaller meetings, involving lower-ranking officials, were held to work out the details of the complicated process. News about the decisions made at Wannsee spread quickly throughout the bureaucracy, where there was no lack of willingness to participate. In Heydrich’s original scheme, Europe was to be “combed from west to east,” but, in practice, because transportation problems were less acute in Poland, the systematic extermination of the Jews at death camps began in the General Government. Already on 26 January 1942, Albert Speer had informed Rosenberg that, owing to the rail crisis, any additional Jewish transports from the west would have to be postponed until April. Even the deportations of Reich Jews to concentration camps approved by Himmler on the same day had to be delayed for a time.37

  These difficulties, however, merely caused Nazi officials to shift their focus, rather than postpone their plans. In early December 1941, the Germans had begun killing Jews in gas vans at the extermination camp at Chelmno. As the killers gained experience in and skill at their deadly craft, the pace and scope of their operations expanded accordingly, and increasing numbers of Jews from the Warthegau and the Lodz ghetto, deemed unsuitable for work and, therefore, useless eaters, were sent to their fate. Beginning in early February 1942, selections also began to be made in Riga: Jews deemed incapable of work were shot or murdered in gas vans. In Minsk, too, executions became a regular feature. That same February, 150 Jews were killed in the first test of the gas chambers at the newly constructed camp of Belzec, near Lublin. Similarly, construction of a new camp to accommodate large numbers of Soviet prisoners of war had begun at Auschwitz-Birkenau in October 1941. But, by early 1942, with it increasingly evident that large numbers of Soviet prisoners would never reach the camp, the site’s mission began to change: Birkenau would now assume the same role, killing nonworking Jews, as Chelmno and Belzec. Systematic mass murder was clearly in the air as winter gave way to early spring, but the process initially used to kill euthanasia victims in Germany had to be shown to be feasible on a large scale in the east. The first transports of Jews from Galicia and Lublin arrived in mid-March at Belzec, where they were successfully gassed to death in one large operation. The technical hurdle to assembly-line murder had been overcome. In April, when the Reichsbahn again supplied special trains for Jewish deportations, so had the transportation obstacle. The will was never in doubt. Late that month, in a detailed discussion of the Jewish question, Goebbels found that Hitler’s attitude remained “unrelenting”: the Jews had to disappear from Europe.38