Ostkrieg
Page 35
Realistically, the only two alternatives left to Germany in early 1942 were to end the war politically, an option Hitler refused to countenance, or to create as rapidly as possible the preconditions for fighting a long war. Operation Blau, which aimed to acquire the oil and raw materials necessary for German survival and deny these equally vital resources to the Soviets, was, thus, an operational attempt to pass through the danger zone before the Western allies could intervene on the Continent. As Hitler understood, perhaps the most serious consequence of the altered strategic situation was to put Germany under an extraordinary time pressure. With the American entry into the war, a concrete threat of a second front had now materialized, and, in order to avoid the strategic encirclement of Germany, as in World War I, a victory in the east was needed “to clear the tables.” Halder, despite his misgivings and fear that losses in 1942 would be greater than the entire cohort of young men to be drafted into the army, recognized the bloody logic of the Ostkrieg: the Caucasus operation, he concluded, was “an inescapable necessity.” That spring, Goebbels began alerting the German public to the meaning of the coming summer offensive. In an article in Das Reich, the propaganda minister stressed the importance of ideals but underscored that this was also “a war for raw materials.”61
One thing above all obsessed Hitler and gave credence to his strategic arguments: the absolute necessity of acquiring oil supplies, a fact that had not escaped Soviet military leaders. “The only thing that matters is oil,” Marshal Timoshenko asserted at the end of 1941. “We have to do all we can to make Germany increase her oil consumption and to keep German armies out of the Caucasus.” As if confirming this observation, Keitel admitted to General Thomas in late May that “the operations of 1942 must get us to the oil”; otherwise, the army’s operational freedom would be lost. A few days later, Hitler confessed to his assembled generals, “If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny, then I must end the war.” Oil, to Hitler, was the key. In late May, he voiced confidence that the war could still be won once this “business in the east” was finished, but, by August, the Führer again stunned an audience by remarking that, if the oil wells of the Caucasus could not be taken by the end of 1942, it would mean the end of the war. Much, in fact, supported this contention, for as late as 1938 the Soviet Union obtained some 90 percent of its oil supplies from the Caucasus. If his forces could seize these vital fields, Hitler reasoned, this, along with the other mineral, agricultural, and industrial resources gained along the way, would not only boost the German war effort but also throw the Soviet war economy into an existential crisis.62
German troops in Russia, summer 1941. NARA 242-GAP-286B-4.
German assault gun on the move over dusty roads, June–July 1941. Note the juxtaposition of mechanized and horse-drawn transport. BA Bild 101I-136-0882-13.
German infantry marching through a village in the Baltic, June 1941. BA Bild 101I-208-0027-04A.
German infantryman before a dead Red Army soldier and burning Soviet BT-7 tank, Ukraine, June 1941. BA Bild 101I-020-1268-36.
German soldiers watch a burning synagogue in a small Lithuanian village, June 1941. BA Bild 183-L19427.
The intensification of anti-Jewish policy began simultaneously with the invasion of the Soviet Union. Here, Jewish men and women are shoveling their own graves under the watchful gaze of SS men, Storov, Ukraine, 4 July 1941. BA Bild 183-A0706-0018-029.
Red Army prisoners were not spared the impact of the hunger policy. Distribution of bread to Soviet prisoners of war, Vinnitsa, Ukraine, 28 July 1941. BA Bild 146-1979-113-04.
Himmler visiting a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, Minsk, Belorussia, August 1941. At roughly the same time as this visit, Himmler, acting on an order from Hitler, vastly expanded the killing operations in the east. NARA 242-HB-47721-306.
Vitebsk: Transport of Soviet prisoners of war in an open rail car, 21 September 1941. In the winter of 1941–1942, this policy often resulted in large numbers of the prisoners freezing to death before arrival at the prison camps. BA Bild 101I-267-0124-20A.
Two German soldiers before a burning building and a billowing cloud of flames, October 1941. BA Bild 101I-268-0154-11.
The impact of weather and primitive Russian roads is clearly visible as a German vehicle attempts to negotiate a muddy road in a small village in the Moscow region, November 1941. BA Bild 183-B15500.
The fierce snowstorms of Russia burdened both humans and animals, making movement virtually impossible. A German soldier urges on a horse pulling a panje wagon through deep snow, winter 1941–1942. BA Bild 101I-215-0366-03A.
Hunger! Russian women carve a dead horse for food, February 1942. BA Bild 183-B15171.
The fierce fighting of the winter is clearly evident from this photograph of the Kholm pocket, where Germans have stacked dead Red Army soldiers to form a protective wall, early 1942. BA Bild 101I-004-3633-30A.
The spring rasputitsa turned western Russia into a sea of mud. A horse-drawn wagon struggles through deep mud near Kursk, March–April 1942. BA Bild 101I-289-1091-26.
The lack of a quick victory and the need for workers forced the Germans to resort to foreign workers. Here we see the deportation of forced laborers for the German armaments industry, Artemovsk, Ukraine, May 1942. BA Bild 183-B19867.
The decision to use Ostarbeiter in German industry doomed Jews to a different fate. Deportation of Jews to an extermination camp (probably summer 1942). BA Bild 183-68431-0005.1942.
The second attempt at a blitzkrieg triumph. A panzer commander on the Don-Stalingrad front surveys the situation as his forces seem swallowed by the vastness of the steppe, July 1942. BA Bild 101I-218-0510-22.
German infantry on the march in southern Russia, August–September 1942. BA Bild 101I-217-0465-36.
Stalingrad: A German captain takes cover in the debris of the Barrikady artillery factory, October 1942. BA Bild 116-168-618.
Stalingrad: The nerve-wracking nature of house-to-house fighting is illustrated as German soldiers with an MG 34 machine gun and rifles anxiously peer out the window of a building, autumn 1942. BA Bild 101I-617-2571-04.
Stalingrad: German soldiers patrol in a destroyed industrial area, autumn 1942. BA Bild 116-1974-107-66.
Stalingrad: The swastika flies bravely from the ruins of the department store in whose cellar Paulus had his headquarters, October 1942. BA Bild 183-B22531.
Stalingrad: The face of an exhausted Landser after storming the Barrikady artillery factory, November 1942. BA Bild 183-R1222-501.
Executed Soviet partisans, 20 January 1943. The sign at the top says, “We are bandits; we have not only murdered and plundered German soldiers but also Russian citizens.” The sign at the bottom reads, “Photography prohibited!” BA Bild 101I-031-2436-05A.
The cruelty of the partisan war: Soldiers of the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) throw grenades at a burning building in an antipartisan operation somewhere in the Soviet Union, probably spring 1943. BA Bild 146-1993-025-03.
“Victory or Bolshevism,” February 1943. A poster designed to promote Goebbels’s total war effort. BA Plak 003-029-043.
The German need for foreign workers was insatiable. Forced laborers being marched to a train station for transport to Germany, Jankovo, Soviet Union, March 1943. BA Bild 183-J22099.
Hitler visits a tank factory to urge increased production, 5 April 1943. BA Bild 146-2007-0122.
Kursk, Operation Citadel: Pz. VI Tiger tank of the Waffen-SS in action, July 1943. BA Bild 101III-Groenert-019-23A.
Scorched earth: A burning village in Russia, 10 January 1944. BA Bild 146-1971-059-20.
Grinding defensive war: Three men of a tank destruction unit anxiously await a Soviet tank near Nevel, November–December 1943. BA Bild 146-1977-041-01.
Retreat: German soldiers struggle along a muddy, snowy road in the southern Ukraine, early 1944. BA Bild 101I-711-0438-05A.
Retreat: The Leningrad front between Lake Ilmen and Lake Peipus, February 1944. BA Bild 101I-725-0190-15.
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sp; A lone German soldier with a hand grenade mans the front just before the start of Operation Bagration, 21 June 1944. BA Bild 101I-696-0442-29.
Soldiers of the Grossdeutschland Division mount a counterattack from woods and a cornfield, mid-August 1944. BA Bild 183-J27512.
Young men of the Reich Labor Service construct a protective wall in East Prussia, August 1944. BA Bild 183-J30355.
The ravages of defeat: A refugee trek in East Prussia with a dead horse in the foreground, early 1945. BA Bild 146-1990-001-30.
The last defense, Frankfurt (Oder): A Volkssturm unit occupies a defensive position on the Oder River, February 1945. BA Bild 183-J28787.
The last gasp, Berlin: A woman being instructed in the use of a Panzerfaust antitank weapon, March 1945. BA Bild 146-1973-001-30.
Nordhausen concentration camp (Mittelbau-Dora): Some of the hundreds of slave laborers who died building the V-2 rockets, 12 April 1945. NARA 111-SC-203456.
The wages of total war, Berlin: Destruction at the Brandenburg Gate, early June 1945. BA Bild B145-P054320.
Hitler’s urgency was also fueled by the realization that the only chance of successfully opposing the establishment of a second front in Western Europe, given the growing threat from the United States, lay in German control of the economic resources of the southern Soviet Union. Although aware of the enormous potential of American industry, the Führer nonetheless believed that the Japanese entry into the war and its string of victories in early 1942 would sufficiently preoccupy the Americans, allowing him the precious time to secure the oil needed for the consolidation of Europe. If, for him, the original impetus for the eastern war had been the destruction of Bolshevism and the conquest of Lebensraum, in the spring of 1942 the goal had become even more far-reaching: the acquisition of resources that would allow the Reich to wage global war. Once that was accomplished, Hitler asserted, “then the war is practically won for us” since the Anglo-Saxon powers could not seriously challenge a German-dominated Europe. It was, however, a situation of “triumph or destruction.”63
If, in retrospect, the Third Reich in 1942 had little chance of triumphing over the coalition of its enemies, at the time a narrow window of opportunity seemed open. America’s entry into the war might not prove fatal if Germany could strike a shattering blow against the Soviet Union in the coming year, the last time the bulk of the Wehrmacht could be employed largely undisturbed on a single front. The America factor had significantly altered the strategic equation and had drastically reduced Germany’s freedom of action, but, if the Ostheer could secure the resources vital to its survival, the Third Reich might yet successfully traverse this danger zone. All possibilities remained open, at least in the minds of Nazi leaders: 1942 was to be the watershed year. Thus, even as Nazi planners worked furiously to realize the original economic and racial goals associated with Lebensraum—1942 was, after all, the year of the Wannsee Conference and the attempt to realize Generalplan Ost—the operational war plans for 1942 revolved around the necessity of securing oil resources, without which the grand Nazi schemes would be mere chimeras. Expectations that the new campaign would finally secure German conquests in the east fueled a surge in planning for various colonial schemes, while the mass murder of the Jews accelerated with breathtaking speed. Still, without the resources of southern Russia with which to continue the war, all these assorted racial and imperial schemes would come to naught.64
Operation Barbarossa had been launched on the gamble of a quick knockout and had failed because of unrelenting Soviet resistance; in 1942, Hitler now placed his hopes on a similar throw of the dice, but with even less chance of success. From the start of the invasion to March 1942, the Ostheer had suffered losses in excess of 1.1 million men, or 35 percent of its average strength. An influx of 450,000 men, virtually the entire 1922 cohort, still left the army so short of troops that the infantry divisions of Army Groups North and Center experienced a shortfall of no fewer than 4,800 and 6,900 men, respectively, per division. In late April, Halder estimated that infantry units in Army Group South were 50 percent of their original strength, with those of the other two army groups at only 35 percent. Nor could any more trained reservists be pulled out of the armaments factories, which left only those recovering from wounds as a ready pool of trained personnel. By 1942, the Germans had run out of manpower. The general fatigue of the men, the great losses of experienced officers and NCOs, the shortage of specialists, and the limited combat experience of the newly raised formations all seriously impaired the fighting efficiency of the Eastern Army. Nothing reflected the stark reality of the woeful scarcity of German manpower more than the decision in the spring to increase the size of the Italian, Rumanian, and Hungarian contingents fighting in the east, under the slogan of a “European defensive war against Bolshevism.” Of the forty-one new divisions arriving in the south for Fall Blau, fully twenty-one were non-German, certainly not an auspicious indicator of success. Although poorly motivated, deficient in training, and lacking experience, they were necessary to plug gaps in the overstretched front.65
In addition, the massive losses of tanks, vehicles, and artillery could not be made good by current production, nor could German factories supply enough ammunition to compensate for the unexpectedly high rate of consumption, thus sharply reducing the firepower of German units. Fuel, too, was in such short supply that the Wehrmacht High Command cut the fuel ration to the Ostheer considerably, a blow to its mobility accentuated by the serious loss of horses. The extension of the operations that had made the railroads the principal means of supply, as well as the poor state of the roads that undermined truck transportation, also hampered German operational mobility. Since the key to the entire operation lay in the swift encirclement and destruction of remaining Soviet forces in the south, thus allowing the timely occupation of the vital economic resources, the impediments to German mobility at the outset of the campaign were nearly catastrophic. An OKW report in June warned prophetically that, given the army’s deficiencies, “a measure of de-motorization” that would seriously affect the army’s mobility was inevitable. Tellingly, at a time when the Soviets were rapidly rebuilding and mechanizing their forces, the Wehrmacht was in the process of reequipping its reconnaissance units with bicycles. This demodernization of the Ostheer did not bode well given that the success of the campaign depended on seizing objectives more than eight hundred miles from the German start line, an operational and logistic challenge greater even than that of the previous summer.66
Although the rail system had recovered somewhat from its near-catastrophic collapse in January 1942, the lack of locomotives and rolling stock, the demands of providing supplies for the new offensive, and the increasing frequency of transports of Jews to the newly opening extermination camps in Poland all contributed to a continuing gulf between the demands of the military and the ability of the Reich railways to deliver. Even the funnel-shaped widening of the area of operations raised the danger of a serious overextension of the already greatly overstretched supply lines. The conclusion of all who looked objectively at the figures was inescapable: the Ostheer in the spring of 1942 was a pale shadow of the imposing force that had launched Operation Barbarossa just a year earlier. In June 1941, 134 of 209 divisions, 64 percent, had been classified as “capable of any offensive action.” Just nine months later, at the end of March 1942, the number of formations “suitable for any task” had shrunk to 8 of 162 divisions, a mere 5 percent. As one report noted sarcastically, “Armored divisions with their 9–15 battle-worthy tanks do not at present deserve that name.”67
Ironically, Hitler’s optimism regarding the impending summer offensive stemmed not so much from his belief in German strength as from his assessment of Soviet weakness. His operational thinking in 1942 was based on the assumption that the Red Army was at the end of its strength and had only limited powers of regeneration. This assessment, in turn, resulted not only from the compulsory optimism afflicting those at Führer Headquarters but also from incorrect information
. That spring, Hitler had received reports detailing a severe lack of food and widespread cannibalism among both Soviet civilians and Soviet soldiers, while the state of equipment in the Red Army was said to be abysmal. In a reprise of its costly tendency to miscalculate the strength of the Russian enemy, Foreign Armies East also reckoned in April that Soviet manpower reserves were “by no means inexhaustible” and, if subjected to losses such as those suffered in 1941, would run out by the onset of the muddy season. In the event, this assessment suffered from two key flaws: Soviet manpower reserves were larger than assumed, and German forces would be unable to inflict devastating losses on the Red Army. In 1942, the Soviets would not cooperate in their own destruction, largely evading encirclement.68