The greatest weapon in this war, as it had been when Napoleon attacked, also on a June day, in 1812, was the combination of the resilient people, vast distances, and cruel weather.
The battlefront from north to south covered an expanse of 1,250 miles.5 Given the state of technology and the resources at the Wehrmacht’s disposal, that was far too much territory. German supply lines were under constant attack, and the armies were unprepared for winter war.
Yet Germany’s leaders, blinded by their prejudices about the inferiority of “the Russian” and underestimating the Red Army, did not even mobilize many more resources than they had against Western Europe. The Germans had 7,184 artillery pieces for the French campaign, and 7,146 to use against the USSR; in the battle for France the Luftwaffe had 3,530 fighter aircraft, but only 2,510 to employ against the Soviets, and one-fifth of them were not ready for action; in the western offensive they mobilized 142 divisions, but against the Red Army there were still only 150.6 This does not show the level of readiness needed to fight far greater forces over vast distances under what became in the autumn and winter impossibly adverse conditions.
Initially the blitzkrieg worked even better in the east than it had in Western Europe. Army Group North advanced rapidly through the Baltic States; Army Group Center took the parts of Poland conquered by the Soviets in 1939 and drove straight ahead toward Moscow; and Army Group South swept into Ukraine. Everything went according to plan.
On July 3, in a summary of what had happened to that point, Halder painted a positive picture:
On the whole, then, it may be said even now that the objective to smash the bulk of the Russian army this side of the Dvina and Dnieper has been achieved. I do not doubt the statement of the captured Russian corps Commanding General, that east of the Dvina and Dnieper we would find nothing more than partial forces, not strong enough to hinder German operational plans. It is probably no overstatement to say that the Russian campaign has been won in just two weeks.7
What remained to be done, he thought, in the face of the great distances and the nagging resistance would “claim our efforts for many weeks to come.” What was needed was to prepare a new jump-off line between Smolensk and Moscow, do the same around Leningrad, and thereafter proceed to conquer northern Russia and Moscow. The attack would then aim at the south and the oil in the Caucasus. Halder, believing the Soviets were as good as beaten, thought the goal now was to prevent Stalin from raising a new army “from his gigantic industrial potential and his inexhaustible manpower resources.” He fully expected that once the objective switched from annihilating the Soviet enemy to destroying the economy, the “next task” was to focus again on Britain.
Hitler was equally optimistic and thinking along similar lines. He told Goebbels on July 9 of the “surprisingly positive” situation in which “two-thirds of the Bolshevik army was already destroyed or at least under heavy pressure; five-sixths of the Bolshevik air and tank weapons were as good as destroyed.” He was even considering withdrawing the bulk of his forces and leaving a mere fifty divisions to pacify the country. He talked about how “the Bolshevik leadership clique had intended to invade Germany and therefore Europe, and at the last moment, with a weakening of the Reich, to carry out the Bolshevization of the continent that it had planned already since 1917.” Hitler was convinced that Stalin had intended some such invasion and suggested that the Soviets might have been preparing to take Romania in the autumn, in order to cut off Germany from its petroleum supplies. He was ecstatic that he was able to thwart all such moves and said that the attack parried a threatening Soviet invasion. He believed the German people were “again thoroughly in an anti-Bolshevik frame of mind,” and had never really accepted the rapprochement with the USSR following the nonaggression treaty of August 1939.8
What Hitler wanted for the east was reflected in a meeting he called at the Wolf’s Lair on July 16, 1941. Present were Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Lammers, and Hermann Göring.
Hitler was quoted as saying: “In principle we now have to face the task of cutting up the giant cake according to our needs, in order to be able: first, to dominate it; second, to administer it; and third, to exploit it.” West of the Ural Mountains no military power would be allowed to exist, in effect what used to be European Russia would come to an end. He made reference to Stalin’s speech of July 3, which called for partisan warfare against the invaders. Hitler said such a rally to the Soviets had the advantage of “enabling us to exterminate everyone who opposes us.” Germany would keep its true aims to itself for political reasons, but there would be no “wavering policy.”
The conquerors would present themselves as liberators, but they dare not lose sight of their goal: “We have to create a Garden of Eden in the newly won eastern territories; they are vitally important to us. Colonies by comparison were of completely secondary interest.” Hitler favored heavy-handed methods, shooting, deportation, or extermination, while others (like Rosenberg) warned about raising the historical consciousness of some people (like Ukrainians) by treating them badly. Germany was never going to leave the region it would conquer. Hitler’s view was that “this giant area would have to be pacified as quickly as possible; this would best happen if we shoot anyone who only looks sideways at us.” However, the false assumption among all those present, as well as many in the Wehrmacht, was that the Soviets were as good as beaten.9
Although Soviet collapse was thought to be imminent, by August Halder had come to doubt the Communists would give up that easily. At the beginning of the war German military leaders had reckoned on 200 Soviet divisions, but by early August they had already counted 360. If the latter were not fully equipped, they were still there, and no sooner did the Germans destroy a dozen of them, he said, than another dozen appeared. Even though Germany had captured over three million in early 1942, many Red Army units fought to the death and inflicted heavier casualties on the Wehrmacht than expected. The prisoners were being allowed to starve in the hundreds of thousands, a war crime of unprecedented proportions. Rosenberg, minister for the occupied eastern territories, complained that he could find only a few hundred thousand fit to work.10
The blitzkrieg effect began to falter in the depths of the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht was prepared not so much for a full-scale campaign as for “expeditions” by motorized corps, after which there would be follow-up “sorties” into the Ural Mountains, just as the British Indian Army had supposedly done in the nineteenth century in the Afghan mountains.11
The Nazi strategy was to use deliberate brutality to shatter resistance and break the enemy’s will. However, the tactic of killing off or starving hundreds of thousands of prisoners had the unanticipated effect of stiffening the resolve of the Red Army, because word of the atrocities soon spread. The invaders also disregarded the popular response. If their arrival was often welcomed, at least by some, as liberation from Stalinist oppression, killing all commissars and practically any Jews alienated more than expected. It was soon evident that the Nazis were coming not as liberators but as even more ruthless oppressors than the Soviets.
Civilians in occupied territories were pressed into labor service and sent to Germany, most against their will, to make up for growing shortfalls. Poles were the first to be forced to work as slaves—complete with a P marking on their clothing. They were now followed by Ost, or “eastern,” workers. Inside Germany both were judged racially inferior and legally prohibited from having sexual relations with a “German-blooded” person. Any such “crime” was subject to the death penalty. Poles and eastern workers found guilty were in fact executed in public inside Germany, while German women involved in these forbidden relations had their heads shaved and were paraded through the streets.12
Nazi terror was used with far greater abandon outside Germany, where it became the order of the day in Poland in 1939. It was practiced further in Yugoslavia and Greece and applied with more ferocity still in Barbarossa.
Hitler was remarkably cold when he got news o
f setbacks or the loss of troops. In this he was not unlike Lenin and Stalin. The lives of their own people, whether civilian or military, were there to be sacrificed for the cause.
Anyone reading his memorandum issued on August 27, 1941, has to be struck by how far Germany was overextended. The memo dealt with fighting in North Africa, the air war over Britain, and the struggle in the Mediterranean, as well as the invasion of the Soviet Union. It conceded that only after the defeat of the Soviets would it be possible to take on Britain. There was a candid admission that beating the Soviets was now the top priority and that it “will not be fully achieved in 1941.”13
REVISIONS OF THE INVASION PLAN
Hitler and his generals recognized in August that they did not have the reserves to continue to attack the Soviet Union in strength in three directions at the same time. There was disagreement about what the priority should be. The military men Halder, Bock, and Guderian all wanted to aim for Moscow. On August 21–22, Hitler repeated that he cared less about taking that city but wanted to focus on the north, where he would surround and destroy Leningrad, and on the south, by taking Kiev and Ukraine.14
Kiev fell on September 25 and at enormous costs to the Red Army. The Germans took hundreds of thousands of prisoners and were generally welcomed by the local population. But the great victory was more apparent than real, because the Germans suffered heavy casualties as well and still had to fight on across long stretches of inhospitable terrain.
Leningrad, the home of Bolshevism, had been partly cut off from the rest of the USSR since July 1941, but the effort to encircle the city stalled. Hitler’s orders on August 21 took troops from Army Group Center and sent them north. On September 6 the question arose whether he should accept the surrender of the city.
The option, which was also eventually adopted for Moscow, was to wear the cities down from the outside and use artillery and bombing to level them. Hitler wanted to turn them into living hell to induce the population to leave. Gaps would be left open in the lines so people could escape and sow chaos inside Russia.15
Stalin sent Zhukov, who arrived in Leningrad on September 9. As the situation continued to deteriorate, he issued an order typical of his command style and the Soviet approach to the war. As the Germans were tightening their vise around Leningrad, his combat order No. 0064, published on September 18, read in part as follows: “The Leningrad Front’s Military Council announces to all commanders and political and line cadres defending the designated line that all commanders, political workers, and soldiers who abandon the indicated line without a written order from the front or army military council will be shot immediately.”16
The Germans closed the circle around Leningrad anyway. On September 16, Hitler spoke with his ambassador to France, Otto Abetz, about what demands should be made of that country. He worried about using French troops because at some point in the future, if a “genius” should emerge, he might lead them in a resistance movement. Hitler also spoke about the east. “The Petersburg [that is, Leningrad] poison well” that had been overflowing into the Baltic for years, as he put it, “had to be obliterated from the face of the earth.” In Hitler’s terms, it was all or nothing: “The Asiatics and Bolsheviks had to be driven out of Europe.” The new border in the east would be the Ural Mountains.17 On September 22 he ordered the city put under siege, after which his commander was “to erase” it “by means of artillery fire of all caliber and continuous bombardment from the air.”18 Some German officers worried about having to feed the “millions” in Leningrad. Officers and men recognized that would be impossible without taking away food needed for the fatherland. There was also concern about ordering troops to shoot what might be many thousands trying to cross over into their lines; officers searched for an alternative approach, because they thought it would render their men mentally and (morally) unstable.19
Momentarily all went quiet on the Leningrad front, and the Germans mistakenly assumed that the Soviets had “accepted their fate” and were withdrawing. Hitler and his generals began to count the city as a victory and, especially given the massive losses sustained by the Red Army, concluded the Communists were finished. Based on these mistaken assumptions, they decided it was feasible to attack Moscow in Operation Typhoon.
MESSAGES TO THE GERMAN TROOPS
Hitler sent words of encouragement to the troops on October 2. He told them to keep the ideological mission in mind and claimed that the invasion was a preventive measure, as Stalin had been about to unleash an assault against Europe. By now, he said sarcastically, German soldiers had themselves become acquainted with “the paradise of the workers and peasants.” They were able to see the “unimaginable poverty” in what should have been a land of prosperity, the result, according to Hitler, “of almost twenty-five years of Jewish domination.” He denounced Bolshevism as worse than the most exploitative form of capitalism and claimed that in both cases the “carriers” of the systems were the same: “Jews and only Jews.” He looked forward to Moscow as “the last great decisive battle of the year.”20
This anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik message was published all over Europe, so few people indeed would have been unaware of what the crusade was all about.21
Hitler issued a directive on October 7, repeating that the surrender of Moscow and Leningrad was not to be accepted. German troops should stay outside both. Taking Kiev, which had to be fought for street by street and was full of booby traps, showed how costly urban warfare could be. He wanted to incite chaos, forcing people to flee and bringing general social breakdown. That would make it easier to administer the areas.22
He called forth a historical dimension by saying that in defeating the Soviet Union at Moscow, Germany would end the Slavic danger that had threatened Europe for centuries. This was not a war for mere booty, or to make life easier for the German taxpayer, but war against the Jews and Communism and for lebensraum.
Germany’s top military figures identified “from the start with the ideological aim of combating ‘Jewish Bolshevism,’”and many of them issued statements or orders to their troops to underline the point.23Quartermaster General Wagner was aware of growing casualties but on October 5 still expressed complete faith in Hitler’s military abilities. “Operational goals are being set,” he said breathlessly, “that earlier would have made our hair stand on end. Eastward of Moscow! Then I estimate the war will be mostly over, and perhaps there really will be a collapse of the [Soviet] system…. I am constantly astounded at the führer’s military judgment.”24
The Wehrmacht kept encircling vast numbers of Red Army troops and taking prisoners. According to Bock, in charge of Army Group Center, his forces (so he claimed) had taken no fewer than 673, 098 prisoners by October 19. They had captured “huge amounts of war material.” Even so, the way ahead was long and the going tough as the weather worsened. Rain and sleet turned the land into mud. Soon Bock was complaining about “bottomless roads,” and his commanders were saying it was impossible to move forward. Ordinary soldiers wrote home to tell of the horrid conditions.25
Hitler was adamant that troops not enter Moscow and, by order of October 13, told his generals again not to accept the surrender of that city, should it be offered. Bock’s diary shows that although he kept winning battles, the Red Army would not go away. He drove ahead to see the causes of delays and recognized that mud made the roads all but impassable.
The Wehrmacht had made no provisions for the hundreds of thousands, and ultimately millions, of Red Army prisoners they were taking in the advance on Moscow. The wounded were either finished off or left to die. Bock saw the captured Soviets struggle past his vehicle in silence and noted: “The impression of the tens of thousands of Russian prisoners of war who, scarcely guarded, are marching toward Smolensk is dreadful. Dead-tired and half-starved, these unfortunate people stagger along. Many have fallen dead or collapsed from exhaustion on the road.”26
Although by the end of October orders kept coming in from headquarters to drive on, Army Group
Center was becoming exhausted. Everything seemed to be backfiring. Much German equipment was in disrepair; conditions on the ground were so poor that Bock considered ordering his divisions to leave their motorized equipment behind and go forward on foot. German troops were supposed to form a ring around Moscow forty-five kilometers from the center of the city. Bock realized that such a mission required far more troops than he had.27 On October 25 he noted that the Red Army was rushing reinforcements from Siberia and the Caucasus, while he was forced onto the defensive.
Hitler and Halder could plainly see the blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union was faltering if not failing. However, they agreed that the attack had to continue, even if by early November the main objective was to establish a basis for operations the next year.28
On November 13, Halder held a conference near Smolensk with the chiefs of staffs of the armies and army groups. Bock recorded in his diary that it was fifteen to twenty degrees below freezing. There was concern about how troops would survive the winter, never mind prepare for fresh offensives the following year. Halder said he thought it was still possible to take Moscow in 1941, but was given plenty of reasons to conclude otherwise.29
He called the operation Hitler wanted “high-risk.” In reality, it was bound to fail because German forces were already at the end of their endurance, supplies, and reserves. On November 21, Bock noted that the ranks of his officers had been so decimated that young lieutenants were leading major units without the necessary training and experience. Nevertheless, he still decided to call on his last reserve division. He confided to his diary: “But it is doubtful if we can go any farther. The enemy can move everything he has to Moscow. But my forces are not up to a concentrated, powerful counterattack.”30 Army Group Center fought doggedly onward even at the risk, as Bock put it to Halder on November 29, “of some units burning themselves out.”31
Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler Page 49