Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  The stabilization of the front not only demonstrated that the Wehrmacht remained a formidable fighting force but also illustrated misjudgments by Stalin and the Stavka, who had pushed ahead on a broad front without a point of main effort. Although impressive as an operational achievement, Manstein’s remarkable success could neither disguise nor alter the true state of affairs: although the Ostheer was able to inflict serious losses in a fighting retreat, it was no longer a force capable of winning the war. The significance of Manstein’s achievement, in fact, lay less in what he had won and more in what he prevented: an early spring attack by the Red Army that might well have shattered the eastern front. Having lost the Caucasus and a good bit of the Donets industrial area, and now faced with a multifront war, Hitler saw any lingering hopes he might have had of bringing the Ostkrieg to a satisfactory conclusion largely evaporate. Stalin, too, had been sobered, now finally realizing that his dream of a single decisive offensive that would reverse the strategic situation was illusory. The war in the east would have to be won gradually and incrementally rather than by a Soviet blitzkrieg, despite the judgments of a mid-February 1943 American intelligence report that termed Germany’s defeat in the east irreversible, suggesting even that “organized German resistance in Russia might collapse.”36

  Certainly, the Germans had suffered casualties and equipment losses that they could not easily make good, while the Soviets could count not only on their own resources but on a significantly increased delivery of Lend-Lease goods as well. Still, not losing the war was a far cry from winning it, and, as Manstein’s successful defensive battles had shown, the way west was likely to be long and bloody. The reality facing Stalin of a protracted, costly struggle, as well as his habitual morbid suspicion of his Western allies, led to a renewed Soviet attempt to explore new ways out of the war through a separate peace. Perhaps it was merely to apply pressure to the Anglo-Americans to spur them to greater activity in building a second front that Stalin explored contacts with the Germans that were hardly secretive. In any case, in the months after Stalingrad the Soviet leader did not act like a man certain of triumph. Significantly, it was Hitler who continually rejected Soviet offers. The enforced inactivity of the rasputitsa, then, found both sides pondering their next move.37

  Was Stalingrad the turning point of the war? Certainly, many contemporary observers, both inside and outside Germany, perceived it as such. Already in late August, SD reports noted that Germans displayed “overwhelming” interest in the fighting around Stalingrad, assuming that the “capture of this important cornerstone would bring a militarily decisive turning-point” and an end to the war in the east. By early November, the “blood sacrifice” at Stalingrad had become a “nightmare” that even Hitler’s effort to downplay the comparison with Verdun could not dispel. In late January 1943, the SD reported that the imminent destruction of the Sixth Army occasioned “deep worries about the further development of the war,” adding that the “entire population was shaken to its depths.” “Universally,” another report stressed in early February, “there is a conviction that Stalingrad represents a turning-point in the war.” Not only had the popular mood reached a low point, but anxious questions were raised: “How will it all end?” “How long can we hang on?” Significantly, in their desire to get an accurate picture of the situation, Germans increasingly began to listen to foreign radio. Even the person of the Führer was no longer spared criticism. By March, images of Hitler were often found defaced with the slogan “The Stalingrad Murderer.” Events in North Africa—termed a second Stalingrad or Tunisgrad—also contributed to a “growing war weariness.” In Vienna, the numbers 1918 were scrawled on walls, while, in Berlin, people were reminded of that fateful year in leaflets. As in 1918, people whispered, “The United States had not yet really begun to fight, even as Germany was already drained.” Not only had it become an idée fixe among many Germans that “a third winter of fighting in the east meant a loss of the war,” but Germany’s fate had also become an object of speculation: some argued that, following a defeat, southern Germany would be “given over to the Anglo-American sphere of interest,” while others asserted that eastern Germany would be “delivered to the Soviets.”38

  Rather than thinking in terms of the turning point in the war, especially since modern wars were no longer winnable in a single, decisive battle, it might instead be worth recasting the issue. In order to win, or at least stalemate, the global war in which they were now engaged, the Germans would have had both to cripple their Soviet enemy and to capture the oil and other resources of the Caucasus necessary for a prolonged struggle with the Anglo-American powers. Seen in this light, the Battle of Stalingrad was, perhaps, not the turning point, but rather the breaking point for the German effort, “the final conclusion,” as Bernd Wegner has put it, “of a process of diminishing options of victory in the east.” In this view, Stalingrad was not the turning point in the larger conflict, in the sense that a still-winnable war had suddenly turned into a losing one, for the Battle of Smolensk, the failure in front of Moscow, American entry into the war, and the lopsided distribution of human and economic resources all meant that, from December 1941, Germany had little chance of victory in the global struggle. Some sort of victory in the east, however, had been possible, where German triumphs had brought the Soviet Union to the point of collapse. The battle at Stalingrad would tip the balance one way or another, but Hitler’s mid-July decision to split the German forces ensured that the balance tipped against Germany. At Stalingrad, the failure of all Hitler’s assumptions over the previous year had become clear: the Soviets had not been smashed in a single blow; the British had not sued for peace; the United States had not been deterred from entering the war; the resources necessary to prevail in a global conflict had not been secured; the Wehrmacht would no longer be able to concentrate its resources on a single front. Rather than a turning point, then, Stalingrad marked a “point of no return,” as the Germans plunged over the abyss. Still, even as, by his own admission, Hitler now “muddled through from one month to the next,” the realization that any hope of victory was gone served to occasion not a softening in German war policy but its radicalization.39

  It was a dramatic moment, as all in attendance and those listening on the radio were well aware. After two weeks of mourning the catastrophe at Stalingrad, Joseph Goebbels on the evening of 18 February 1943 addressed a handpicked audience of the party faithful in Berlin’s Sportpalast, itself emblazoned with rousing slogans (“Hail, Victory!” “Führer command, we’ll follow!” “Total War, Shortest War!”). After praising the spirit of the defenders of Stalingrad, Goebbels promised “an unvarnished picture of the situation.” The events in the east, he admitted, had been a serious blow, and Germans had to be made aware of the possibility of defeat, of the threat from the “Bolshevist-capitalist tyranny” of the Jews. Describing precisely what the Germans had already done to the Poles, Jews, and Russians, Goebbels raised the specter of “the liquidation of our educated and political elite,” “forced labor battalions in the Siberian tundra,” and “Jewish liquidation commandos.” “We must act quickly and radically,” he stressed, then, adroitly exploiting class antagonisms with effective populist rhetoric, outlined a series of measures designed to root out luxury and complacency among the German population. Making it clear that worker outrage was the driving force behind these actions, he blasted privileged elites, those who persisted in a frivolous lifestyle, and those who indulged in comfortable entertainments. Invoking a “community of fate,” Goebbels demanded that radical methods be employed to achieve results. Having stoked the populist resentments of his listeners, the propaganda minister then posed a series of ten provocative questions, at the end of each of which he asked, “Do you want total war?” At each question, fourteen thousand frenzied voices rang out in unison to affirm loyalty to Hitler and the war effort. As his speech, which had been interrupted more than two hundred times with shouts of approval and thunderous applause, moved to its climax, Goeb
bels screamed, amid a wild tumult and choruses of approval, “Do you want total war? Do you want it . . . more total and more radical than we can even imagine it today?” As the crowd erupted once more in hysteria, Goebbels closed by invoking the words used by the nationalist poet Theodor Körner in the struggle against Napoléon, “Now people, arise—and let the storm burst forth!”40

  Although generally well received at the time, especially by the working class, which understood and approved the element of egalitarian social revolution implicit in it, the speech marked the culmination, not the beginning, of a process to reorient the German war economy and society—a process itself that was only indifferently successful. Long convinced that only “the total commitment of all of our resources and reserves” could produce victory, Goebbels had argued at least since the first winter crisis in December 1941 for radical measures to mobilize the German population. Although some steps had been taken in early 1942 to reorganize the war economy, the stabilization of the front, the success of Sauckel’s labor roundups, the opposition of the Gauleiter, and the military triumphs of the summer all undermined the effort at a comprehensive mobilization of the Reich’s resources. Even as Goebbels attempted to dampen the “illusionary mood” at home and Hitler, chastened by the September crisis, issued orders for a fundamental reorganization of the war effort, resistance persisted. Goebbels’s proposals in December 1942 to use sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys and girls as flak helpers and to require labor service for all men and women aroused howls of opposition. Ever conscious of the collapse of morale on the home front during World War I that had allegedly undermined the war effort and led to revolution, and convinced of the reality of a Jewish conspiracy, top Nazis, including Hitler and Goering, instinctively recoiled from imposing any increased hardships and material sacrifices on the home front. Others such as Sauckel, who claimed that labor deployment was his responsibility alone, sought to guard their own jurisdictions.41

  Goebbels persisted nonetheless, arguing forcefully that “too much has been expected of the front, too little of the homeland.” The massive losses suffered by the Ostheer, combined with the need drastically to increase arms production, meant that superfluous personnel had to be redirected from the bureaucracy and civilian economy to the war effort. His own nervous exhaustion—on Christmas Day he admitted that the dire situation demanded “the complete mobilization of the entire German people in this decisive struggle for existence”—and a palpable mood of panic among the top leadership persuaded the Führer that the regime could gain a breathing space only through a total effort in both the Reich and the occupied territories. The result was a competition among leading government figures to translate the Führer’s will into reality. While Bormann demanded that the party return to “the spirit and methods of the period of struggle for power [the Kampfzeit],” army officials quickly prepared a new personnel plan for raising troops for the Wehrmacht. Armed with a special authorization from Hitler—“Tanks must be produced, no matter the cost”—Speer rushed to put into place a new program that would drastically escalate tank production but that would also require millions of additional workers. As a first step to secure that labor, by the end of January measures had been put in place that required all women between the ages of seventeen and fifty (with the upper limit quickly reduced to forty-five) to register for work and young men and women to be used as Luftwaffe spotters and flak helpers.42

  Goebbels, however, had hoped not only to speed this process of total mobilization but also to gain decisive control over it. In addition, troubled by what he saw as a fracturing of the Volksgemeinschaft, he intended to use patriotic themes and a radicalization of the war itself to promote a revolutionary restructuring of German society. In this scenario, Hitler would use Stalingrad in much the same way that Churchill had used Dunkirk, as a means by which to rally the nation to unity and sacrifice. For all his efforts, however, and despite the Führer’s accord with the spirit he was trying to invoke, Goebbels largely failed in his personal efforts. His control over the total war effort remained confined to psychological mobilization, although the resolve and defiance he provoked, along with ever-intensifying measures of oppression, assured that there would be no collapse of the German home front.43

  The move to total war also unleashed a contest for dominance in the new power spheres that were opening up, a burst of feverish activity that, in the absence of any consistent leadership from Hitler, lacked the coherent, coordinated planning that might have made a difference in the German war effort. Amid the jumbled jurisdictions and institutional Darwinism characteristic of Hitler’s preferred style of rule, a halfhearted effort was initially made to achieve some overall coordination of policy. In mid-January 1943, Hitler authorized Keitel, Bormann, and Lammers, the heads of the three main branches of the Führer’s authority (the Wehrmacht, the party, and the Reich Chancellery)—and men not likely to challenge him—to oversee the total mobilization of the German population for the war effort. Predictably, however, from the outset this triumvirate found its efforts undermined by opposition from men such as Speer, Goebbels, and Goering as well as by the fact that Hitler reserved for himself the right to make the final decision on anything of importance. Within a week of his total war speech, in fact, Goebbels had defined the problem precisely. “We have not only a ‘leadership crisis,’ ” he mentioned privately to Speer, among others, “but strictly speaking a ‘leader crisis.’ ”44

  Still, despite the inevitable chaos and inefficiencies that resulted from this shapeless system of rule, it often resulted in impressive short-term successes. Such seemed to be the case in the first part of 1943. By the end of May, the output of aircraft, artillery, ammunition, and infantry weapons was nearly 120 percent higher than the year before, while the total production of armaments more than doubled from the beginning of 1942 to the end of 1943. For Hitler and Speer, however, the key to victory was not so much a general increase in output as a decisive rise in the production of tanks, the weapon deemed critical for success in the east. Announced to much propaganda fanfare at the end of January 1943, the Adolf Hitler Panzer Program, with its promise to double and triple the production of tanks, including the much heralded Panther and Tiger models, was as important symbolically as it was materially. If total war demanded total exertion, there had to be the prospect of some payoff for such efforts: the tank program was that reward. Certainly, the Ostheer badly needed tanks since it had fewer than five hundred at the end of January 1943. Nor can the success of the Adolf Hitler Panzer Program be denied: tank production in May was more than double that of the autumn, while, in all of 1943, 41 percent more tanks were built than the year before, with fully 40 percent of them the Panther and Tiger models.45

  The ultimate problem, however, was twofold: for all its success, German armaments output in 1943, including tank production, was being swamped by that of its enemies. In that year alone, the Allies produced just about six times more aircraft, nearly five times the number of artillery pieces, and almost four times more tanks. In each of these categories, the United States alone doubled and tripled German output. More vitally, in the spring of 1943, the German war economy itself was drawn directly into the fighting as the Anglo-American bomber offensive began to achieve significant results. Tank production required massive amounts of steel, which Hitler had now reallocated to the army rather than the navy or Luftwaffe. Pursing ruthless efficiency, German steel mills had in March 1943 managed an impressive jump in output, a feat that, combined with the stabilization of the front in April, left Speer and Hitler optimistic that further large gains in steel production would follow. Instead, beginning hesitantly in March, then increasing in frequency and intensity from April through July, British Bomber Command began the Battle of the Ruhr. Intended both to cripple output in this vital industrial area and to destroy the fabric of urban life, the bombers not only killed thousands of people but also disrupted steel production just as the Nazis anticipated an armaments surge. Where a significant increase had be
en expected, steel output now fell. Not only did that lead to an immediate cutback in tank and ammunition production, but the disruption in the Ruhr also resulted in a supplier crisis as all manner of parts, castings, forgings, and components vital for continued production in plants outside the Ruhr were now in short supply. The result was sobering: in the second half of 1943, armaments output stagnated. As Speer acknowledged, Allied bombing negated the plans for a substantial increase in production. Not until spring 1944 would the armaments index again show a significant increase, one that would last through September, but by then it was too late.46

  The Allied bomber offensive also provoked a crisis of morale among the German civilian population best illustrated by the three-day assault on Hamburg in late July. It created a firestorm so intense that bodies mummified, glass melted, and asphalt ran in the streets; 40,000 people suffocated or were burned alive, and another 500,000 were left homeless. Large parts of the great port city had been reduced to mountains of rubble, while thousands fled in sheer terror, spreading panic and disorder throughout the surrounding area. As the news from Hamburg leaked out, the Gestapo reported shock and dismay across the country, while the SD noted that hardly any senior industrial leaders believed any longer that victory was possible. In mid-August, in despair at the destruction of German cities, Hans Jeschonnek, the chief of staff of the Luftwaffe, shot himself. Among average Germans, anger at the failure of the regime to protect them from enemy air raids was widespread. Speer feared that a few more such raids might lead to a total collapse of German morale and a complete halt to arms production. The disaster was put off for another year, however, as the Allies mistakenly chose not to keep hammering at the Ruhr choke point, while the Germans initiated effective new defensive measures. At the same time, the regime responded to the crisis, in typical fashion, by imposing greater discipline on the home front. At the end of July, Speer had agreed to allow the SS to oversee security operations in the armaments industry, while, in early October, he authorized the SD to check on civilian production in industry. Moreover, any hint of defeatism was met with harsh punishment, including the death penalty. As Hitler repeatedly emphasized, there would not be another November 1918.47