The opportunity for turning existing gains into a reduced Lebensraum and making occupied Europe slave for the German war effort remained a viable option. At the beginning of 1943, the German position in Russia was still strong even after two seasons of strategic setbacks. Throughout 1942, cliques within the regime attempted to implement various interpretations of Lebensraum; but they all proved unworkable while the Soviet Union survived. In May 1942, Himmler received the final draft of Generalplan Ost from Professor Konrad Meyer, the blueprint for SS colonization of the east.6 Elsewhere, by the end of the year, there were grumblings within the regime of failures. In October, Otto Bräutigam of the Ostministerium wrote damning reports on the shortfalls of eastern policy. He argued that a struggle against Bolshevism or even a campaign against the moribund Russian Empire might have succeeded, but a struggle for Lebensraum had not fooled the Russian people. He condemned German policies for forcing “both Bolshevists and Russian nationals into a common front against us.” Bräutigam pointed out that the war had not brought about a collapse of the Red Army, while the armed forces were not large enough to police the occupation. This had matured into a dire situation, he explained, because the economy of the occupied territories was integral to the success of the war effort.7 Yet in October, Hitler admitted that if the war were only about colonies he would end it immediately, an indication perhaps of his waning confidence.8 In December 1942, Bräutigam’s Nazi boss, Alfred Rosenberg, hosted a conference for the Wehrmacht, including Schenckendorff, and members of the Ostministerium, to discuss serious issues of the German occupation of Russia. The army blamed the roundup of Russians for labor as encouraging the will to resist. There was growing conviction from some quarters that only Russians (anti-Bolsheviks) could defeat the Russians (Bolsheviks).9 Schenckendorff hoped to manipulate the conference proceedings to restore his standing in the realm of security. It was flawed judgment to assume that Rosenberg, already declining in the regime’s hierarchy of favoritism, could persuade Hitler to change his policy. The ploy failed spectacularly and Hitler admonished them both.10
The period from the surrender of Stalingrad (February 1943) to the defeat of Kursk (July 1943) was the watershed of Hitler’s war. In the wake of Stalingrad, eyewitnesses described the moment when time stood still, as the shock and calamity of defeat was recognized by everyone. Among Germans, there was a growing realization of the hypocrisy and absurdity of the war, but also a petulant self-denial of the destruction done in their name. The regime required someone to quickly paper over the cracks, pull back the nation from the trance-like spell cast by Stalingrad and move on with the war. Josef Goebbels stepped forward with his “total war” speech in February 1943.11 Ulrich Herbert called this the “Goebbels initiative,” one of many polycratic initiatives from within the regime.12 The Propaganda Ministry, using advanced techniques to enhance and spotlight subliminal messages, manipulated the presentation. Goebbels called on the German people to rise up and release their storm of victory, while the banners draped around his podium, intended to catch the eye of cinema audiences, declared “total war–rapid war” (Totaler Krieg–Kürzerer Krieg). A short total war was an appealing prospect for the German public. However, without a strategic commitment to sustain it, Goebbels’s initiative soon withered, as his diary testified, but his intervention had broken the pallor of defeat.
Hitler, the Wehrmacht, and the SS could stimulate strategic initiatives, but their attention lay elsewhere. The shock of the Red Army’s double envelopment at Stalingrad sobered the army to the realities of the war. Superior strategy and tactics on the part of the Soviets had defeated the German army; stealing their precious Cannae, through the exploitation of huge manpower reserves. The German generals wanted to reposition strategy by rebuilding reserves and vigorously defending their existing gains. Hitler proposed the “Fortress Europe” (Festung Europa) plan, an economic-warfare driven derivation of Frederick the Great’s grand strategy. The Prussian king had effectively held together his military gains through a system of fortresses. Hitler thought solid lines of in-depth fortifications interconnected with fortified cities could blunt Red Army envelopments and offset the Soviet advantage in manpower. Labor and raw materials became the real currency of Fortress Europe as building projects surpassed Roman construction schemes.13 Defensive walls, such as the “Atlantic Wall” or the “Panther Line” became the construction centerpieces of this strategy. Elsewhere, Albert Speer artificially stimulated the economic life cycle of Germany’s war economy through slavery and autarky. The emphasis on cheap mass production released intense competition between agencies and industries for a constant flow of slave labor and exploited materials. The deportation of labor under the Speer-Sauckel directive of March 1942 was intensified in the “Sauckel drive” of 1943. German soldiers and civilians became scavengers scouring Europe for equipment. Economic agencies and industrialists ignored the strategic realities and drove hard to meet performance targets through plunder and labor. By January 1943, Sauckel could publicly boast that 710,000 Ukrainians labored for the German war effort.14
One of Hitler’s paradigms for victory over the Soviet Union came from Professor Michael Prawdin’s study of Genghis Khan, which Hitler recommended to all the members of his inner circle to read.15 Expediency led Wehrmacht propaganda to make a call to arms for a united (occupied) Europe in the struggle against “Jewish Bolshevism.” The German army declared the reintegration of eastern and western European people. Military dogma flooded Russian communities with messages that the defeat of Bolshevism was in everyone’s interest and the means to preserving Russian culture. The army attempted to project Stalin—along with Bolshevism—as the common enemy of both Russians and Germans. In an act of “good faith,” the Germans stopped all new settlements in Russia. The real purpose behind these messages was to improve Russian willingness to work and to raise volunteers for the armed forces. The question of labor also became a problem for the army, which was forced to be self-sufficient, exploiting local resources. The army ordered insults toward “easterners” stopped and instead praised them for their contribution to the German war effort. References to colonial exploitation or slanderous remarks about Russians as Europe’s “Negro” or as “beasts” and “barbarians” were directed to stop. The troops received orders warning them against harsh or unnecessarily violent treatment of Russian civilians.16 Any positive effect this policy had was undermined by the Wehrmacht’s own counter-policy of conscripting labor to maintain its survival in the field.17
In July 1942, the German army captured Red Army general Vlasov and since then had allowed him to become the leading personality in the Russian collaboration movement.18 The growing sense of failure and isolation since 1942 led Max von Schenckendorff toward a curious fate. He was a product of the Schlieffen system and steeped in the noble family military tradition of Frederick the Great and General Blücher. Born in February 1875, by 1914 he was a battalion commander, and by 1918 he was the commander of the 29th Infantry Regiment, one of Bach-Zelewski’s former regiments. Since December 1942, he had constantly misread Hitler. When he drifted into the Russian nationalist circle, perhaps convinced that only a Russian could defeat a Russian, he placed himself outside the circle. He encouraged his Feldkommandanturen to support local initiatives that resembled micro-experimentation with Russian self-rule. Soon this turned into a strong relationship with Russian collaborators, which was remembered long after the war. He sponsored a plethora of formations, including the “Order Department” (Ordnungsdienst), Cossack detachments, and communities or settlements with a counter-partisan bias. He gave them weapons and trained their personnel. In April 1943, Schenckendorff jointly hosted a visit to his region by the former Red Army general Vlasov.
In January, Himmler had warned Bach-Zelewski against any ideas of building a new Russian nation. Bach-Zelewski gave his interpretation of Vlasov’s visit in a report to Himmler. He encapsulated the proposals of cooperation or colonization. They reflected Himmler’s January sentiments.19 He o
pened by dismissing out of hand the politically immature German commanders (presumably referring to Schenckendorff) who were embarrassing the situation. In his opinion, if Vlasov had not been captured, he would have become the Red Army commander-in-chief. In his present situation, he was a Russian nationalist pursuing a Russia-only agenda. Vlasov had not endorsed Germanization. Cooperation with the Russians, Bach-Zelewski alleged, could not be honest when German propaganda described the Slavs as a “minor race” (Minderrasse) or declared supreme German mastery. Vlasov was not the answer for many Russians who were increasingly aware of Stalin’s order that captured, unwounded soldiers were traitors. The Russian audiences sat in stony silence during Vlasov’s speeches. Stalin had already reacted to counternationalistic sentiments by freeing religion and granting other minor political concessions. Bach-Zelewski advised that Vlasov was only honest in small groups, for example when he had told Schenckendorff that Germany would lose the war. Bach-Zelewski believed that the Russians only collaborated while there was no German colonization. He also mentioned that Vlasov thought the mobilization of labor program was disgraceful and that in Russian minds German corruption was worse than Soviet corruption. He concluded that Vlasov “would not take Russian lives until he received confirmation from Hitler of a national Russian state.”
On May 14, Schenckendorff, Gehlen (Foreign Armies East), and several Army Group Centre officers held a meeting to discuss the future of eastern policy. They agreed that further discussions should take place before representations were passed to Hitler. Eight days later, a former member of Goebbels’s propaganda staff attempted to bring Vlasov into contact with the Nazi governor of Galicia, Dr. Otto Gustav Wächter. On May 25, a conference was hosted by Rosenberg, attended by Bräutigam, Gehlen, Wagner, and other officers from Army Group Centre; the military also brought a letter of endorsement from Kluge in the hope of generating a substantial change in policy. On June 8, Hitler declared he would never build a Russian army and called their ideas fantasy.20
Meanwhile, Stalin treated Hitler like King Canute, releasing a tidal wave of partisans through Fortress Europe. The partisans targeted the German communications network in what became known as the “War of the Rails.”21 The German army’s main supply collection and distribution centers were joined by an east-west double-track trunk railway line. The supply collection centers were located in Königsberg, Bialystok, Brest-Litovsk, Kovel, and Lvov.22 From March 1943, the partisans undertook 404 attacks on the railways, blowing up bridges and attempting to cut the German army off from its logistical support. The number of attacks increased monthly and peaked in July with 1,114 incidents. Following the Battle of Kursk, the Soviet plan for late summer of 1943 was to destroy key points along the German rail system. The plan came in two operational phases: Phase 1 (August 1943) caused 21,300 rail attacks, mostly in Byelorussia, carried out by 167 partisan brigades totaling 95,615 partisans.23 Phase 2 (September 1 to November 1, 1943) deployed 193 partisan brigades totaling 120,000 partisans. The target was the destruction of 272,000 miles of railway. There were mixed opinions at the time about whether the plan succeeded or failed, although the rear area of Army Group Centre recorded 20,505 rails destroyed.24
The weakest links in Fortress Europe were Germany’s allies, only tolerated by Hitler to sustain the illusion that Germany was not alone in the war. Goebbels was uneasy about the allied strategic threat of invading southeast Europe and gathering support from the Balkan.25 In 1941, the Axis alliance had divided the spoils of Albania, Yugoslavia, and Greece but security had been an afterthought. Hitler introduced Directive 31 to establish a “clear and unified system of command.” It was supposed to engineer cooperation with Italian and Bulgarian forces.26 The collapse of the Afrika-Korps in the latter half of 1942 forced Hitler to reconsider the security for the region. In December, Hitler issued Directive 47 for the “command and defense measures in the South-East.” This time he tried to bind the Axis forces operating in the Balkans (Italy, Bulgaria, and Croatia) under a unified but German command. In the summer of 1942, Himmler set Bandenbekämpfung on the Balkans. To raise the political profile of this policy, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and Keitel met Italian Marshal Cavallero in December 1942. Ribbentrop explained to Cavallero that Croatia required cleansing of a strong British presence. He admitted that “the Führer had declared that the Serbian conspirators were to be burnt out and that no gentle methods might be used in doing this.” Keitel immediately interjected that “every village in which partisans were found had to be burnt down.”27 Orders passed to the judge advocate of the German armed forces in southern Europe from OKW demanded the prosecution of aggressive Bandenbekämpfung.28 On February 21, 1943, Ribbentrop met with the Italian ambassador in Berlin, and they mutually agreed that “the [bands] had to be exterminated, and that included men, women and children, as their continued existence imperiled the lives of German and Italian men, women, and children.”29
The Nazi political relationship with Vichy France began to deteriorate following the string of defeats in the Mediterranean region. On June 18, 1942, General De Gaulle proclaimed a Free French victory at Bir Hacheim, a small but significant battle in North Africa. Six months earlier, De Gaulle had sent Jean Moulin to occupied France as his representative to stir the resistance into action against the Germans.30 With events turning against him in the Mediterranean theater, Hitler began to string together a southern theater security strategy. In November 1942, formations of the Waffen-SS led the occupation of Vichy France. The Italians joined the operation and both armies converged on the harbor of Toulon. Territorially, this theater stretched from southern France at its western flank across to Greece in the southeast; Hungary and Italy at the center formed a north and south junction, while Bulgaria and Romania faced east. The bridge to this theater was the “Alpenland,” the southern most mountainous range that linked Germany with the south. The southern Mandarins, whether from the Wehrmacht or SS, proved as adept at pulling on the purse strings of the German war effort as their comrades in the east. Two prima donnas formed a dual command in the area: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (headquartered in Munich, commanding the southern regions) and Luftwaffe Field Marshal Alfred Kesselring. German setbacks in Stalingrad and El Alamein stirred a will to resist especially in northern Italy, Greece, southern France, and Yugoslavia. The Germans thinned out their security forces in the east, to be able to send troops to bolster the Axis in the south. The invasion of Sicily and the dismissal of Mussolini led Hitler to make contingency plans. In July 1943, a British strategic assessment of Hitler’s southern flank judged,
German defense of the Balkans and Italy largely hinges on the security of the German positions in the Istria-Slovenia area which has been brought under Rommel’s command…. Further reinforcements have recently arrived in Yugoslavia from France and Greece, and there is ample evidence that the battle against the partisans has become Rommel’s most pressing commitment.31
Frederick the Great is reputed to have said, “To defend everything is to defend nothing,” an aphorism that accurately described Hitler’s Fortress Europe. In desperation to erect fortifications and feed the arms industries, the Germans mobilized labor in France, Italy, and the Balkans.32 Militarily, Fortress Europe further burdened Germany’s reserves, which were distributed across three theaters of operations, while the Alps served to divide Hitler’s empire north and south.
Der Chef der Bandenkampfverbände
The new year opened with another bleak military task for Bach-Zelewski: to hold the line following Soviet breakthroughs around Velikie Luki. He took charge of the 1st SS-Infantry Brigade within Gen. Kurt von Chevallerie’s LIX Corps. Gottberg, assisted by Bassewitz-Behr, continued to prosecute security operations in his absence. Bach-Zelewski’s first impression of Chevallerie was that he was a ruined man, depressed and suffering involuntary shaking of the head. Then he discovered that Chevallerie was the former Reichswehr colonel of the 4th Infantry Regiment in which Bach-Zelewski served as a lieutenant. His opinion mellowed when t
he general proved to be brave and so Bach-Zelewski wrote in his diary that Chevallerie played the part of the “shining god of war” (den strahlenden Kriegsgott markierte). However, this did not detract from two major problems. The first involved the condition of the SS brigade, which had little frontline experience and few heavy weapons, was staffed with ethnic Germans from Hungary, and was led by a small cadre of Germans. Attached to the brigade was the highly regarded manpower (Menschmaterial) of the SS-Freikorps Danmark. Irrespective of the redeeming features of this formation, its general command demeanor was low. Bach-Zelewski believed there were no merits to be gained with these troops: “I could lose reputation and command qualifications against tanks without antitank guns.” He was assigned no further troops and had 14th and 15th SS-Police Regiments removed from his Bandenbekämpfung command. They were sent to join another disastrous situation (Schweinerei) in Army Group South. Bach-Zelewski was informed that the commander of the 14th Regiment, Oberst der Polizei Buchmann, the man he regarded as his only capable field officer (refer to chapter 5), had been killed in action. He concluded that the front was only held because the Red Army did not press its attacks vigorously.
Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe Page 17