Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  Reeling from the crisis in front of Moscow, German economic leaders now scrambled to put just such a system in place. On 15 January, Goering demanded a rigorous conversion to a war economy, emphasizing that the civilian sector could no longer be maintained at existing levels and that all production capacity should be concentrated on the needs of the Wehrmacht. On the twenty-first, General Thomas echoed Goering’s opinion and took the further step of calling for the German war economy to be centrally controlled. Thomas obviously expected that he would be the person given extensive powers to manage the armaments sector, but, in a blow to the military, he was outmaneuvered by Todt, who, as minister for armaments and munitions, had already taken vital steps to rationalize arms production. An advocate of doing away with the “inertia of the old,” Todt had earlier pioneered a system of industrial autonomy that left the development and production of weapons and equipment to industry. In December 1941, he sought even greater efficiencies of production by replacing what had been a cost-plus system of letting contracts, in which firms were reimbursed the full production costs as well as a profit based on a percentage of the costs, in favor of a system of fixed prices. In the former, firms had little incentive to cut costs since, the greater the expenditure, the larger the profits. With the fixed-price system, Todt introduced greater competition, forcing firms to rationalize production, reduce costs, and work more efficiently. The firm that had the lowest production costs for the same performance was now the yardstick for all others. Those firms that chose the lowest price calculated by Todt’s ministry for a particular product did not have to pay any taxes on its manufacture, while those choosing the middle price category had to pay taxes. Those electing the highest price had to prove special difficulties. Under the new system, a manufacturer who did not cut costs quickly, which, in practice, meant increasing productivity, was soon eliminated from the supply chain.50

  Despite the improvements promised by his system, Todt understood that, for production levels to rise significantly, the entire German economy had to be mobilized fully for war. By the end of January, he presented Hitler, who greatly admired his talented minister, with plans for the centralization of the German armaments industry. Hitler, now aware of the gross inefficiencies of weapons production and eager to increase the output of weapons, backed the changes. On 6 February, Todt chaired the first joint meeting of all the committee chairmen in the Ministry for Armaments and Munitions, at which time he revealed that the focal point for the reorganization of production had been switched from the army to his ministry. His triumph, however, proved short-lived. Two days later, after a contentious private meeting with Hitler at Rastenburg, Todt’s plane burst into flames shortly after takeoff and crashed, killing all aboard. The nature of his death and the fact that Hitler rejected the findings of the crash investigation and personally dictated the official version led to speculation at the time and since that Todt had been murdered, although by whom remained unclear. Suspicion naturally fell on the Führer, but, even though Todt expressed doubts about the war to Hitler, he nonetheless remained a loyal and dedicated supporter who had just taken energetic efforts to reorganize war production. Speculation has also centered on the SS, but the most likely culprit was Goering, a man rapidly losing his influence and control over the economy to his ambitious rival. Goering, in fact, hurried to the Führer immediately on learning of Todt’s death in order to declare himself ready to take over the latter’s tasks, only to find Hitler already meeting with Todt’s successor, Albert Speer. The unaccustomed speed with which Hitler had named Speer the new minister of armaments only confirmed his intention to maintain the changes Todt had introduced and to avoid a relapse into the tired intrigues and rivalries that had plagued war production until now. In March, he made this clear when he finally approved the subordination of the entire economy to the needs of the war.51

  Whatever the reality of Todt’s death, it now launched the meteoric rise of Albert Speer, who proceeded both to expand on and to benefit from the changes already introduced by Todt. The so-called production miracle launched by Speer in 1942 was, in fact, largely the result of a continuation of the reforms already set in motion by Todt. Key to Speer’s success was both tighter administration and central control of important physical resources such as raw materials, factory equipment, and labor as well as the standardization of production practices. Speer also introduced a system of industrial committees, a fundamental change in regulatory practice that aimed at mobilizing industry through a process of self-regulation, by which industrialists would be allowed input into the allocation of raw materials and the awarding of contracts. In April, he established the Zentrale Planung, a central planning agency that permitted the coordination of all armaments plans that came under his jurisdiction. Although the Luftwaffe and the navy retained their independence, in practice Speer cooperated closely with Erhard Milch, the head of Luftwaffe armaments programs, thus extending his influence. Speer also staffed his new offices and committees with younger men from an engineering and business background, bringing needed expertise into the design, development, and organization of weapons programs as well as allowing him to circumvent army obstruction.52

  With the new administrative structure in place, which for the first time allowed for the coordination of much of the German armaments industry, Speer was able fairly quickly to raise production levels simply by utilizing industrial capacity more fully and rationally. By August 1942, production of weapons had risen 27 percent from its February low, that of tanks by 25 percent, and that of ammunition by 97 percent. Although vital to the continuance of the war, Speer’s ability to increase production was hardly miraculous. In most cases, his ministry better exploited factory space by encouraging more shift work, rationalized the supply chain, reduced the number of firms engaged in the manufacture of weapons and equipment, and concentrated output in the largest or most efficient firms. At the same time, Speer established a new set of organizations, known as rings, to manage the supply of raw materials, semifinished products, and components. Based on the principle of self-responsibility, the rings essentially amounted to an Auftragstaktik policy for industry, in which the Reich Armaments Ministry would set targets, leaving responsibility for meeting them to industry. Finally, Speer also attempted to get the army to reduce the number of modifications to weapons in the pipeline as well as to accept both a reduction in the number of weapons types and a standardization of parts and components. Through such simplification and standardization, not only would a more rational use of labor resources and higher levels of automation be possible, but the need for highly skilled labor would also be reduced. The result of this de-skilling and increased use of machine tools was a sharp rise in labor productivity in the armaments industries, while more effective allocation of raw materials and the massive labor mobilization campaign provided an additional boost to production.53

  Speer’s success thus rested on the radical mobilization of labor and raw materials as well as the beneficial effects of rationalization, although persistent problems in coal and steel production always threatened to unravel his tightly wound system. Nonetheless, his “armaments miracle,” and the underlying promise that more could be done with less, provided an important political and mythical function for Hitler’s regime. Goebbels’s propaganda manipulated the dramatic increases in production in 1942 and into the following years to dispel any lingering defeatism and to demonstrate to the German people that the winter crisis of 1941–1942 had been overcome and the war could still be won. The remarkable performance of German industry not only fortified morale on the home front; it also reassured Germans that success was still possible, that, as Goebbels’s slogan had it, “the best weapons bring victory.” The increase in arms production was certainly real enough, but its mythical dimension was just as vital to the continuing German effort as its physical manifestation: as long as Germany could continue to produce weapons at an ever-increasing rate, there would not be another November 1918.54

  Goebbels’s propa
ganda, however, was self-deceiving. Even as German armaments production increased and new investments were made that would result in a substantial jump in output by 1944, Germany, as we have seen, had already been outproduced in 1941 by the Soviet Union. Nor was this a one-year aberration. Despite resource losses and a disruption to production that resulted in a 25 percent fall in total national product, in 1942 the Soviet Union alone, even without the contributions of Great Britain and the United States, would once again outproduce the Reich in virtually every weapons category. In the key areas of small arms and artillery, the advantage was three to one, while, in tanks, it was a staggering four to one, accentuated by the higher quality of the Soviet T-34. As Adam Tooze has noted, the real productive miracle in 1942 took place in the Urals, not in the Ruhr. Buoyed by the flow of vital goods and raw materials through Lend-Lease, the Soviets could concentrate production on a limited number of weapons while at the same time employing the full range of Stalinist methods of oppression to exact enormous sacrifices from the Russian home front, where millions of civilians died for the sake of the “Great Patriotic War.” This effort was not sustainable, and by 1944 German production roughly equaled Soviet, but by then it was too late. The key year was 1942, the last time that Hitler could dictate the course of events to his enemies. If the Third Reich was going to survive, German forces would have to win some sort of decisive victory before the awesome power of the United States was fully mobilized.55

  “Will this winter never end? Is a new glacial age in the offing?” mused Joseph Goebbels in late March 1942 as he paid a visit to Führer Headquarters. There he found morale to be “extraordinarily good, although the endless winter has a somewhat depressing effect.” At first glance, the propaganda minister thought the Führer looked to be in good health, although “he has gone through exceedingly difficult days, and his whole bearing shows it. . . . He must take the entire burden of the war upon his shoulders, and nobody can relieve him of the responsibility for all the decisions that must be made.” Despite the successes in stabilizing the military situation and the promise of increased armaments production, the anxieties touched off by the winter crisis were not far from the surface. On closer look, Goebbels found Hitler to be psychologically shaken by the recent reverses. The Führer had been wracked with doubts during this “cruel winter” as to whether the Eastern Army could be saved. Goebbels referred openly to a “crisis in the regime, of dancing on a razor,” while Hitler himself railed at the incompetence and cowardice of his generals. He had wanted to seize the Caucasus and strike a mortal blow at the Soviet regime, but they knew better, had, in fact, consistently interfered with and undermined his plans. Then, confronted with military reverses and a collapsing supply system, they lost their nerve. Only his iron will and determination had surmounted the crisis and avoided a “Napoleonic disaster.” Indeed, the crisis of the past months only intensified his belief that he had to struggle not only against external enemies but also against those within his own ranks who were either inadequate or disloyal. “Stalin’s brutal hand,” he remarked with approval, “had saved the Russian front. . . . We shall have to apply similar methods.” Not surprisingly, his first target was to be the Jews, toward whom Goebbels found the Führer’s attitude “as uncompromising as ever. The Jews must be got out of Europe . . . by applying the most brutal methods.”56

  Hitler also revealed to Goebbels the outline of a plan that, if not exactly designed to end the Ostkrieg—he talked of a “hundred years’ war in the east”—would by the end of October leave Germany in a very formidable position to wage a global war over an extended period. This plan, submitted to Hitler on 28 March under the code name Fall Blau (Case Blue), sketched the goals for the German summer offensive. After reworking by the OKH and Hitler, it received concrete expression in Directive No. 41, which Hitler signed on 5 April 1942. Declaring that it was vital to seize the strategic initiative and “force our will on the enemy,” Hitler directed that all available forces would be concentrated in the southern sector, “with the aim of definitively destroying the remaining vital enemy forces and, as much as possible, depriving him of the most important military-economic sources of strength.” The ultimate goal, however, was “to secure the Caucasian oil fields and the passes through the mountains themselves.”57

  Faced with the dilemma of what to do in Russia now that blitzkrieg had failed, German planners came to the only conclusion possible given their history, training, and assumptions: launch another blitzkrieg campaign. In the operational plan for 1942, however, they departed from tradition and past practices in two key areas: first, it was to be an exceedingly complex operation based on a series of sequential actions directed from the top, and, second, little decisionmaking freedom was to be accorded field commanders. Moreover, success would be assured only if the enemy cooperated once again in his destruction. Since the distances involved were so great, the supply situation so tenuous, and the necessary manpower insufficient, in order to achieve a maximum concentration of force at crucial points the campaign was planned as a series of mutually supplementary partial attacks, staggered from north to south. The aim, in short encirclements modeled on Vyazma and Bryansk, would be to seize Voronezh, then destroy enemy forces west of the Don to prepare the way for an advance to Stalingrad. Having neutralized, although not necessarily seized, this industrial and communications center and cut the Volga supply line, only then would German forces move into the Caucasus. At the conclusion of this operation, which Hitler expected by the end of October, German troops would immediately go into winter quarters; haunted by the frightful death toll of the previous winter, the Führer was determined that strong defensive positions be prepared. All plans for after the operation in the Caucasus, he told Mussolini at the time, would have to be shelved since all would depend on the outcome of that battle. As with the blitzkrieg of the previous summer, it was an allor-nothing gamble on a short campaign, but, in the spring of 1942, the discrepancy between his aims and his military power was even greater than the year earlier.58

  With Directive No. 41, Hitler indicated both his intention to make the eastern front the decisive theater of operations—“The war will be decided in the east,” Halder noted in late March—and the fact that, even with a victory in the summer offensive, he had no clear idea how to extract Germany from the war. The first point, given the altered circumstances in the spring of 1942, was not self-evident since a German victory in the east would not necessarily be decisive. With the failure of Barbarossa and the entry of the United States into the war, Hitler’s freedom of action was seriously constrained. Still, he had several conceivable options at his disposal, although none offered much certainty. He might, theoretically, have gone over to the strategic defensive and used the time fully to mobilize the German war economy and develop new weapons. Goebbels, in fact, referred in late March to a report he received indicating that German research “in the realm of atomic destruction has now proceeded to a point where its results may possibly be made use of in the conduct of this war. . . . It is essential that we be ahead of everybody, for whoever introduces a revolutionary novelty into this war has the greater chance of winning it.” Or Hitler might have ordered an increase in weapons such as U-boats or antiaircraft guns that might have significantly affected the outcome of the war in the Atlantic or over the skies of Germany. He might also have built on Japanese successes and revived the Mediterranean strategy rejected the previous year, in hopes of striking east through Egypt to acquire the oil fields of the Middle East and link up with Japanese forces in India. The naval leadership did propose a plan, which Halder sarcastically dismissed, to redirect German efforts against the British Empire and the oil of the Middle East, but, although Hitler found it intriguing, it was ultimately rejected, not least because of force limitations and its failure to offer a quick solution to the problem of economic constraints.59

  Although senior military leaders complained privately of “utopian plans for an offensive,” the striking fact was that none could offe
r a convincing alternative strategy, especially since the Germans possessed neither the manpower, the materiel, nor the economic resources to conduct a strategic defense. Nor, given the psychological impact of the events of the recent winter, was a resumption of the assault on Moscow a viable option, especially since that operation had largely been Halder’s idea and disaster had evidently been averted only by Hitler’s resolve. Both at the OKH and among field commanders, concerns were expressed that Army Group South lacked the resources to occupy the enormous area between the Black and the Caspian Seas, while Fromm regarded the proposed operation as a “luxury” inappropriate to a “poor man.” General Thomas warned of “the disproportion between war requirements and the capacity to meet them” and demanded that German military operations in the summer of 1942 take account of the fuel situation, but he could offer nothing beyond that. Speer merely observed that, if Germany had to fight another winter in Russia, then it would have lost the war. None, however, could offer a convincing alternative, nor did any have any impact on Hitler, who observed with asperity in late May, “Again and again so-called experts . . . declared: that is not possible, that can’t be done. . . . There are problems that absolutely have to be solved. Where real leaders are present, they have always been solved and will always be solved.”60

  This operational problem, however, concealed a larger dilemma. If the goal of the war in the Soviet Union was Lebensraum, how was this to be achieved? The Germans no longer had the resources to conquer European Russia, if they ever had. If the Red Army could avoid being drawn into encirclement battles, the destruction of the enemy forces would prove to be beyond German capabilities. At best, then, Hitler might hope to destroy sufficient numbers of Soviet units to hold the remnants of Stalin’s regime at bay. At the same time, the Soviet Union’s Western allies were steadily assembling their massive economic and military resources to use against Germany. For their part, the Germans found themselves increasingly dependent on their allies, Italy, Rumania, and Hungary, nations that could marshal far fewer resources than those of the enemy coalition. Once again, the Germans confronted their basic dilemma, how to do more with less. Even as they won on the operational level, they failed to find a way to translate these triumphs into a strategic victory, a conundrum that grew the more the Germans achieved success on the battlefield as they had to disperse their scarce resources over a wider area.