War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942

by Robert Kershaw

  Caring for the wounded in the confusion of the retreat was an almost unsupportable burden. ‘Dreadful scenes were played out before our eyes,’ admitted Gründer. Many wounded presented themselves for treatment with emergency bandages that had been applied more than a week before.

  ‘One soldier had an exit wound through the upper part of his arm. The whole limb had turned black and the pus was running from his back down to his boots. It had to be amputated at the joint. Three soldiers smoked cigars throughout the operation because the stench was so unbearable.’(9)

  The German retreat took many forms, varying between disciplined order and panic-driven flight. Whatever the recriminations and debates between army group and higher headquarters over its extent, it continued to run. Motorised formations, which had achieved the glory of the advance, were fortunate in being able to withdraw to a plan of sorts. They had a chance. The infantry, who through sheer brute strength and willpower had underpinned the offensive and arrived last, were the most exhausted. Being foot-borne, their survival chances were correspondingly less. Caught in the open, with no prepared bunkers to their rear, many perished anonymously in hard-fought rearguard actions.

  The Soviet counter-stroke before Moscow in December 1941 achieved complete strategic and operational surprise. By Christmas the Germans had lost all the ground they had won during the final drive following the Orscha conference. The first phase of the Soviet counter-offensive cleared the Germans before Moscow, but the second phase did not succeed in destroying the Ostheer. Soviet operational inexperience resulted in some reverses before a tortuous yet continuous German front was shored up by April 1942. Army Group Centre had lost its offensive capability.

  Leutnant Heinrich Haape’s leave train was halted, just as he was departing for Germany. ‘Every man is to return at once to his unit and report for duty,’ they were told. Muttered protests stopped when it was announced the Russians had broken through at Kalinin. ‘There was silence among the men now,’ Haape recalled, ‘nobody swore – the matter was too serious for swearing even.’

  ‘And where are the Russians?’ asked Haape, when he rejoined his division. ‘Everywhere,’ was the response, ‘nobody seems to know precisely where.’(10)

  In the north the deepest Russian advance was made by General Lelyushenko’s Thirtieth Army. It soon reached the Moscow-Leningrad highway, jeopardising the link between Panzergruppe 3 and von Kluge’s Fourth Army. On 13 December Klin was reached, threatening a partial encirclement with First Shock Army advancing due west. It took two days of fierce fighting to clear the town. Sixteenth and Twentieth Armies, meanwhile, captured Istra on the original Army Group Centre axis of advance toward Moscow. Solnechnogorsk was abandoned by the Germans on 12 December. South of Moscow, Guderian’s main supply artery, the Orel-Tula line, was menaced by advancing Soviet forces as the Fiftieth and Tenth Armies succeeded in separating Second Panzer Army from von Kluge’s Fourth Army to its north. During the first phase of the Soviet counter-offensive, which lasted until Christmas, the Russian armies took back all the ground the Germans had won during their final drive on Moscow after the Orscha conference.

  Pawel Ossipow pondered the cumulative impact of successive German setbacks:

  ‘On the second or third day of the counter-offensive, on 7 or 8 December it dawned on us that our attack was going successfully, morale amongst all the soldiers, sergeants and officers soared. From then on we pushed forwards in order to overtake the Germans before they could set villages on fire. As a rule they torched everything before a withdrawal.’(11)

  Devastating villages was universal practice across the front for both sides. It had already occurred during withdrawals around Leningrad. Gefreiter Alfred Scholz, with the 11th Infantry Division, had participated in the systematic wasting of territory whereby civilians were pitilessly set outside in cruel freezing temperatures down to −30° and −40°C.

  ‘I personally saw,’ he admitted, ‘Russian women and children lying frozen in the snow’. As the withdrawal started in the central sector, the excesses visited on the population during the advance were repeated during the retreat. Obergefreiter Wilhelm Göbel, with Infantry Regiment 215 (part of 78th Division) south-west of Moscow, recalled the pain of constant withdrawals. ‘While accommodated in these villages,’ he admitted, ‘the Germans were taken in hospitably by the civilian population. They washed our underclothes, cleaned our boots and cooked potatoes for us.’ When his IInd Battalion commander, Major Käther, received the order ‘to burn down various villages and pollute wells,’ he remonstrated, stating that he ‘disagreed with such senseless destruction.’ But duty and an in-bred sense of order and discipline overcame his doubts. ‘An order is an order,’ he resolved. ‘We had to do our duty as soldiers and had strictly to obey’(12) Each rearguard was instructed to torch villages as it withdrew. When Pawel Ossipow reached his own village near Volokolamsk he found his own house had been burned to the ground and his family had fled. There was some compensation in the fact that ‘liberated villagers always welcomed us and offered hospitality, which pleased us’.(13)

  The Russians were winning and beginning to realise it. Infantry platoon commander Anatolij Tschernjajew, contemplating the pitiful state of German prisoners, assessed ‘to a certain extent they had been unprepared for a war against Russia.’ In his view:

  ‘The popular picture of the German Army had altered starkly during the course of the war. The summer and autumn offensives had been conducted against a back-drop of an invincible, mighty and colossal strength. Now when we saw them miserable, half-naked and hungry in front of Moscow we realised that this army had been defeated.’(14)

  The moral initiative was passing to the Russians. It was coincidental with a diminution of the moral component of German fighting power. A reversal they themselves were beginning to recognise.

  The German soldier does not go ‘Kaputt!’…

  The crisis of confidence

  By 7 December von Bock had appreciated that ‘the orders for the ruthless pursuit of the enemy’ were justified only if ‘the ultimate sacrifice’ demanded by his Army Group was against the very last of his forces’. This was demonstrably not the case, and this ‘mistake’ had forced his army group to go over to the defensive ‘under the most difficult conditions’. On the telephone the normally ebullient Generaloberst Guderian had described his situation ‘in the blackest of terms’. He told von Bock that ‘a crisis of confidence was taking hold’ among the troops and NCOs. When closely questioned against whom, he declined to answer, but constantly asked his C-in-C whether OKH and OKW were being given a clear picture of what was happening at the front. Visibly affected by this exchange, von Bock passed on his concerns to General Halder a few hours later. The Chief of Staff told him ‘not to take Guderian’s comments to heart’. When von Bock admitted he could not stand off a determined attack anywhere on his front, Halder speculated it was likely that the Russians were using cadres and untrained troops which they would otherwise have held back until the spring. ‘I suspect,’ he said, ‘that it will continue until the middle or end of the month and then tail off into a quieter period.’

  ‘By then,’ remonstrated von Bock, aghast at Halder’s insensitive appreciation of what was going on, ‘the Army Group will be kaputt [finished].’ Halder coolly responded: ‘The German soldier does not go “Kaputt!”‘ Von Bock ordered his planners to begin working on the practicality of a 100–150km withdrawal along a line stretching from Rzhev through Gzhatsk to Kursk.(1)

  Guderian was merely articulating the moral transformation that had occurred from the Ostheer’s high point at the beginning of ‘Barbarossa’ to the present crisis before Moscow. He viewed it in physical terms. ‘We are faced with the sad fact,’ he wrote on 8 December, ‘that the supreme command has over-reached itself by refusing to believe our reports of the increasing weakness of the troops and by making ever new demands on them.’ A typical product of the analytical German General Staff, Guderian concentrated on the tangible manifestation
of the physical component of fighting power. They were insufficient in numbers and not equipped for the cold. Even after failure at Rostov, Guderian complained, ‘the same old business went on as before’. His criticism was directed at a failure of the General Staff to present clearly an accurate picture to the political leadership, Adolf Hitler. His men, meanwhile, carried the burden. He complained:

  ‘Then my northern neighbour broke down; my southern one was already very weak, and so I was left no alternative but to break off my attack, since I could hardly roll up the whole Eastern Front by myself, let alone at a temperature of −32°.’(2)

  The ordinary German soldier, who had awaited the order to attack on the eve of ‘Barbarossa,’ was not the same man being ordered to fall back from Moscow now. Of his nine peculiar characteristics identified at the beginning of the operation,(3) six were transformed in the crucible of the campaign. Change had accelerated between September and the end of the year. Success in previous campaigns had created an idealistic zeal that diminished with casualties. Atrocities across the front drove a wedge between those who retained decent personal standards versus a peer pressure to conform with National Socialist ideology. Resistance to the Commissar Order had come from liberal Weimar-educated older officers and NCOs who had been decimated by casualties or retired through illness brought on by physical and nervous exhaustion. Confidence following near-victories at Leningrad and Rostov ebbed with the realisation of failure. The surge in the size of the Wehrmacht following its victorious campaigns in the west had diluted previous quality, which was parcelled out among smaller but more numerous Panzer divisions. Casualties by September, followed immediately by crippling losses in the autumn and winter offensives, had removed the cream of the combat-effective and experienced leadership. The ‘teeth’ had suffered in disproportionate terms to the specialist ‘tail’, breaking up the combined operations characteristics of divisions. The ‘seed-corn’ of Blitzkrieg was dead.

  The characteristics that had not changed during this process of disintegration were those related to the continued existence of the Nazi totalitarian state. Its ‘endless pressure to participate’ and its acceptance of ‘order and duty’, regimentation and acute sense of responsibility to ‘orders’ was holding the core of the army together during this crisis. Faith in the Führer remained, but would be increasingly questioned in the future on both the home and fighting fronts as the fortunes of war deteriorated.

  The Russian war was to prove a catalyst for the German nation. There would now be a certain intangible conflict between those who clearly fought for the Führer and Nazi ideology, and those who did their duty for their country. Men who had been prepared to storm Warsaw, Rotterdam, Paris, Athens, Belgrade and now Smolensk and Kiev, questioned whether Moscow was really worth the price. The decline of the moral component of the Ostheer’s fighting power can be charted within Halder’s Diaries, adding weight to Guderian’s assertion that the signs had clearly been evident, but the Supreme Command, over-confident in its assessment of German fighting power, had ‘over-reached’ itself. As early as 3 November Halder was admitting that Army Group South was pessimistic’ and losing drive, and that ‘some energetic persuading would be in order to kick them’. On 22 November he assessed that the troops on the southern wing and centre of Fourth Army are finished’. The commander of the 13th Panzer Division and one of his ablest regimental commanders have had complete nervous breakdowns,’ he observed on 1 December. Nine days later he commented on Guderian’s ‘serious breach of confidence’ in the field commands, and that the ‘commanding General of the XXVIIth Corps is said to have failed completely.’(4)

  The crisis of confidence is also reflected within the Feldpost. Soldiers, aware of censorship in the Nazi State, were still wary of free expression when they sent letters home. Gefreiter Fritz Sigel, complaining of frostbite in the fighting around Tula in temperatures of −32°C, echoed his commanding general’s concern when he wrote on 6 December:

  ‘My God, what is this Russia going to do to us all? Our superiors must at least listen to us on one occasion, otherwise, in this state, we are going to go under.’(5)

  Gustav Schrodek, stalled with the 1st Panzer Division one hour’s Panzer drive from Moscow, had written four days previously in his diary that ‘the troops’ trust in the higher command had quickly disappeared’. In his view, ‘morale has collapsed’.(6) Failure to reach Moscow, which the troops keenly felt to be their due by virtue of casualties and pain, was deeply disappointing. One Leutnant from 258th Infantry Division claimed their lead unit had penetrated to within 30km of the city, ‘an indication of the heroism and readiness and effectiveness of our soldiers’. Casualties were not unexpected, and those that were lost were all loved’.

  ‘But when nothing of use comes from the attack then that is something to think about. I have no clue or opinion why it should be so, but, despite all this, what a real shame. A pity! The end effect was that on 3 December we went back to the start point during the night. In some places there were merely remnants from previously strong companies.’(7)

  Front letters covered a myriad concerns, primarily discomfort, survival and an emotional reaching of hands back home. Most accepted the abrupt reversal with resignation. But the fire of June 1941 had gone. The retreat has taken a lot out of us,’ wrote a Gefreiter with the 262nd Infantry Division, with constantly overstretched nerves, sometimes I do not want to go on.’ He longed for a little peace at Christmas and particularly my post!’ But he would fight on. ‘My dearest,’ he continued, some very hard days lie behind us, but now we have overcome all that.’ Realising his letter was unlikely to arrive home until the New Year, he concluded on an optimistic note. ‘The political situation nevertheless is now crystal clear,’ he wrote, ‘it can only result in victory!’ Whatever the blind faith, the Soviet offensive had come as a brutal surprise. Soldiers were irritated that the ‘higher-ups’ could have got them into such a mess. Oberleutnant Karl Moltner, a Panzer corps staff officer, stated indignantly in a postwar interview:

  ‘We were in no way equipped for such a winter with temperatures of −36°C. There was not even any winter clothing at this time. I can truly say we only had our so-called “summer” coats and, whoever might be lucky, a motorcyclist’s greatcoat.’(8)

  There was now a parting of ways. The moral component would never be restored to its original state of June 1941. One fought for survival or the Führer, occasionally together, but never with the same idealistic purpose with which the campaign had begun. As the retreat gathered momentum only one objective preoccupied the German soldier – to live.

  The German Army in retreat

  The potential for the complete destruction of German divisions was unprecedented in this war and the deep Soviet penetrations of Army Group Centre’s flanks either side of Moscow threatened to achieve just that. Leutnant Georg Richter, having departed Putschki, 30km from Moscow, on 6 December, recorded two days later, until now, the retreat is proceeding to plan.’ It was easier for vehicle-borne troops. On the road moving west with Panzergruppe 4 there was constant danger from their northern flank that Russian spearheads would break through in the direction of Klin. Temperatures varied between −6°C and −15°C, with fog and snowfalls. Petrol shortages necessitated frequent halts. Richter observed ‘a seemingly endless column of vehicles stretching before him’ on 13 December when they came across lines of blackened German vehicles, burned out during a recent Russian break-through. From the edge of the wood, Richter was suddenly aware of a sinister ‘Urra! Urra!’ sound.

  ‘Brown figures poured out of the woods and a stream of German soldiers, drivers and vehicle crews came back towards me along the road. At first I did not know what I ought to do, I couldn’t grasp it. One couldn’t hold back the fleeing men who had been gripped by panic and shock. Most of them had not even held onto their rifles. There were also probably Russian tanks. I saw one had already driven across the road and on to the other side.’

  Some of his own men were crawling
back along the roadside ditch. ‘One of them, the oldest man in our battery, was shot and killed, it was a sorry affair.’ Richter gathered about 10 men together and tried to fight back, but the German armoured cars escorting the convoy ‘did not show their brave side’. They merely ‘blazed away from where they were,’ according to Richter, ‘at the edge of the wood, where there were no more Russians’. The group fell back to a neighbouring village. Nothing could be done. After darkness fell it was suddenly illuminated by the flash of an exploding ammunition lorry, which had been smouldering for hours. ‘We could not rescue our vehicles,’ said Richter, at least 25 others were littered about, criss-cross around the road.’

  The following day the route was reported as fought clear. Passing the ambush site they noticed food and other items scattered about the road. ‘Anything usable had been taken by the Russians,’ Richter observed, or snatched up by our own Landser passing by.’ The march continued over subsequent days. Abandoned vehicles were burned where they stopped. ‘It was such a shame,’ Richter commented. ‘One often saw how the crew would gather together the essentials and then set off on foot.’ He was especially depressed, as an artillery officer, by the abandonment and destruction of guns. Superhuman effort had been expended to get them this far. ‘In front of Petrowskoje is a sea of vehicles,’ he wrote on 16 December. They had driven out of the town and parked in columns. At first there were 10 rows, then 15 and so on, with the 5th Panzer Division, the 1st Panzer Division, 2nd Panzer Division, 14th Infantry Division and everything else all in between.’