In one sense, Hitler’s strategic conclusions were correct. Germany had the vast majority of her armed might in the army, not in the Kriegsmarine or the Luftwaffe. Britain could not be invaded or defeated by the army, so it would be best to use this superb fighting machine elsewhere. The defeat of Russia would, as Hitler argued, totally change the world situation and might very well have brought peace with Britain. But Hitler had not, at this point, undertaken a practical review of what was involved in defeating Russia. The question was, could Russia be beaten?
On 3 February 1941 OKW staff put before Hitler the first draft of the plans for the invasion of Russia devised by the staff officers of the army at Army High Command, OKH, and the staffs of the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe. The generals and their staffs who drew up these plans were fully aware that Russia’s greatest asset was almost limitless space. The Soviet armies could retreat for hundreds of miles, putting enormous strains on the supply system of an advancing enemy, before turning to counterattack the weakened and over-stretched invader. Napoleon had been defeated in this way in 1812 and the German invasion of Russia in the First World War would have ended in similar fashion if the Russian Revolution had not broken out.
The plans from OKW, therefore, concentrated on the problem of how to defeat the Russian armies without giving them a chance to retreat into the vast Russian interior. It was known that the mass of the Russian army was located within a hundred miles of the Soviet western border. OKW proposed three massive blitzkrieg attacks of combined panzer and stuka forces to punch through the Russian forces and to encircle them some 150 miles or so to the east. The conventional infantry and artillery would then march forwards to crush the Soviets against the panzers to their rear, creating what came to be known as the Kesselschlacht, or ‘cauldron battle’. It was envisaged this phase of the operation would take about a month.
Then the Germans would turn east to capture the cities of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad and the vast open spaces between them. This would, OKW reasoned, paralyse the Soviet government and halt the calling up of the Russian reserves. Four months after the start of the campaign, the Germans would be establishing a firm line from the Caspian Sea to the White Sea. Russia would be defeated.
The war would begin, the plan said, on 25 May 1941 and end in October.
The plans were codenamed Barbarossa, yet another example of a German codename giving away the purpose of the plans: Friedrich Barbarossa was a powerful 12th century German monarch who had conquered vast swathes of territory beyond Germany’s eastern borders. Nazi propaganda had often portrayed Hitler as a successor to the emperor, and this comparison would hardly have been lost on Soviet Intelligence.
Hitler read the plans with care, then made three decisions which would have a radical effect. The first was to emphasise that the purpose of the first month’s fighting was ‘to wipe out the enemy, not put them to flight’. The second was to give the northern attack column the task of capturing Leningrad in the first phase of the campaign, not the second. This division of purpose for the northern attack was, in itself, an unwise dissipation of forces. For Hitler it was a strange decision. In all previous campaigns he had insisted on a ruthless concentration of forces to achieve a key strategic objective. Now he was asking for forces to be divided to tackle different objectives.
The third decision was the most important. There had been a dispute in the OKH about exactly how to handle the main panzer thrusts. Heinz Guderian, the general who had done most to develop the idea of blitzkrieg, and Erich von Manstein, who had developed the plan to invade France, wanted a daring and fast moving attack. They saw the panzers racing as far east as the river Dnieper, taking with them their own motorised supplies, supplemented by air drops, so that they would be self-sufficient. The panzers would then fan out and turn back to attack all the Russian armies from the rear and ensure their annihilation.
The more conservative Keitel and Brauchitsch, however, feared the supposedly self-sufficient panzer units would get cut off and crushed by sheer weight of Russian numbers. They wanted the panzers to turn inwards much sooner, encircling the forward Russian units before moving on to those in the rear. Hitler decided in favour of his more conservative generals. Again, this was not like Hitler. He had previously favoured the bold and daring solution to a problem.
Hitler’s growing tendency to set divided objectives, and then favour a cautious method of achieving them, was to become more pronounced as time passed. And it was to prove a weakness.
This was not, however, clear in the early months of 1941. The Germans knew they could muster 120 divisions for Barbarossa, of which 17 were panzer divisions and another 12 were fully motorised. The Finns had promised to attack Russia north of Leningrad, and Rumania was to add forces to the German southern attack. Over 3.5 million men were to be involved in the strike on Russia, backed by 3,550 panzers, innumerable bombers and all the latest war equipment made to excellent German standards.
The only problems the OKW foresaw were those affecting supply. Russian roads and railways were notoriously bad and the rapid advances and heavy fighting would demand thousands of tonnes of food and ammunition being moved hundreds of miles. In late February Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, the head of OKH, tried to convince Hitler that shifting supplies would present serious problems, but Hitler brushed him aside. The OKH planners decided to reduce the need for trucks and wagons by cutting the estimates of supplies and equipment they would need to transport. One crucial compromise was to reduce the quantities of winter clothing to be sent to the army of occupation. Both Hitler and OKW were adamant the main fighting would be over by autumn and that only a few troops would be needed in the field to mop up isolated Soviet units or put down rebellions. The rest of the German army would be back in Germany or snug in winter quarters. OKH therefore allowed for only 20% of the German army to have winter outdoor clothing.
On 17 March, Hitler held a meeting with his most senior commanders, including Brauchitsch and Halder from OKH, Keitel from OKW and senior figures from the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Hitler had more changes to make to the plans. He had been inspecting the maps of western Russia and talking to German officers who had fought in the area in the First World War. These had convinced him that the plans contained a fatal flaw.
In the centre of the proposed German line of advance, between Kiev and Minsk, was a vast wilderness area of swamp, lakes and bogs known as the Pripet Marshes. Covering over 14,000 square miles, this area had been written off in the OKW plans as impassable for an army and simply bypassed. Hitler, however, had learned that during the dry summer weather the marshes were passable to infantry and cavalry, though not to heavy artillery or tanks. Hitler insisted that German cavalry be sent into the marshes to root out any Soviet fugitives and that a strong flank guard be posted around the area to stop Russian attacks on German supply lines. In the event, Hitler was proved right and his precautions saved the Germans from an embarrassing defeat.
Hitler also demanded that the southern front should be extended to capture for Germany the rich agricultural and industrial resources of the Ukraine and, beyond them, the oil fields of the Caucasus. This was yet another strategic objective, further diluting the concentration of force needed to achieve the objectives already set.
Having persuaded his senior commanders to adopt these changes, Hitler called a conference on 30 March for the 200 senior commanders who would lead the invasion. Most of them did not even suspect that Russia was the next target and none knew the war would start so early. Hitler spoke from a podium with a large map of Russia on the wall to explain the plan. He began by explaining his reasons for the war, then ran through the outline of the revised OKW proposals. He ended by acknowledging that there would be supply problems then added that many of these were ‘caused by the problem of what to do with the Russian prisoners.’ Then he went on ‘The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be fought in a chivalrous fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will ha
ve to be conducted with unprecedented, merciless and unrelenting harshness.’
The generals present knew what Hitler meant, though he had not actually spelt it out. Most were aware that the SS had followed the German army into Poland and carried out mass executions. Some knew that the extermination of the Jews, clergy and upper classes in Poland was proceeding by means of mass murder. The army had refused to have anything to do with such crimes in the Polish campaign and many lower ranking officers and men had known nothing about them. Now, the commanders feared, Hitler was asking the army to commit mass murder of prisoners. None of them spoke up openly at the conference on 30 March, but they soon began voicing their opposition to each other and to their superiors.
On 15 May, Hitler was holding a meeting with his senior staff to discuss final arrangements for Barbarossa. He suddenly broke off from talk of logistics and manoeuvre to rage at the assembled military men. ‘You will have to rid yourselves of your outmoded ideas of warfare. This is to be a war of unprecedented harshness. I know my way of thinking is beyond the comprehension of my generals – and that makes me so angry – but my orders must be carried out.’ He threw down his pen and stormed out.
Brauchitsch assured the generals that Hitler was merely upset and did not mean what he had said. Even if he did, Brauchitsch explained, the army would not have to get involved. The SS could handle Hitler’s plans. In the event Brauchitsch was proved wrong. The army was ordered to carry out executions without trial, mass killings and the most brutal of reprisals for guerrilla activity. Some units obeyed the orders enthusiastically, some reluctantly and some found excuses not to do so.
To face this vast and unrelenting tide of invasion, the Soviets had their own enormous armed forces. The Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, had 170 divisions and 12,000 tanks in the field and about another 200 divisions and 14,000 tanks as reserves. These vast forces were, however, dangerously weak. Most of them were supplied with obsolete equipment, in particular the tanks and anti-tank guns, which would have been well matched to the Panzer I, but were hopelessly outclassed by the Panzer III and Panzer IV. Moreover, Stalin had spent the later 1930s purging the army of officers he thought disloyal to his regime. Thousands of experienced commanders had been shot, sent to the slave camps or given jobs on farms and in factories. Huge though they were, the Russian forces were in no fit state to stand up to blitzkrieg.
But before Hitler could attack Russia he had to solve other problems.
In October 1940 the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had taken advantage of the victorious war Hitler waged in the west to mount his own war of conquest by invading Greece. The Italian attack had become bogged down, however, and by Christmas 1940 was locked in stalemate in northern Greece. In January 1941 some Australian and New Zealand troops arrived to aid the Greeks. Until this event, Hitler had been content to let his Italian allies suffer for their ambitions. But the arrival of British troops and RAF squadrons made him suddenly nervous. He did not want to invade Russia if powerful British forces were going to attack from the Balkans. In January Hitler offered Mussolini help.
Hitler told his generals to divert troops from the planned Barbarossa campaign to the Balkans, but to rest assured that they would be back in time to attack Russia. On 27 March the detailed plans for an attack on Greece through the territories of Germany’s allies Rumania and Bulgaria were issued. This was after Yugoslavia had been persuaded to agree to neutrality in the coming conflict. That very day, however, a military coup in Yugoslavia took place and the new regime repudiated the agreement with Hitler. Hitler at once ordered the German plans to be changed to include the invasion of Yugoslavia.
On 6 April German troops poured into Yugoslavia and Greece. On 17 April Yugoslavia surrendered and six days later Greece followed suit. The war had been short, but for Hitler it was deeply damaging. He had lost few men, but was now forced to station more German troops in the Balkans to support the Italian occupying forces. Moreover he had been obliged to send a panzer division and an infantry division under Erwin Rommel to North Africa to help the Italians in their campaign against the British in Egypt. Both moves were a drain on his manpower. More dangerously, the attack on Russia had been delayed until 22 June.
Hitler no longer had five months before the dreadful Russian winter came, but just four months. It had been Hitler’s personal decision to allow five months of good weather to defeat Russia. Now it had been his personal decision to reduce the time to four months. Had the diversion to the Balkans been necessary, the delay might have been worth it. But the attacks were not, strictly speaking, needed. Mussolini’s troops had been holding their own and could have guarded against a flank attack on the Barbarossa campaign. Hitler may have been prompted by loyalty to his Italian ally or by caution about a vulnerable flank, and he was later to give both these excuses. But whatever his reasons, the action proved the first mistake of the Russian campaign.
The attack on Russia finally began before dawn on Sunday 22 June 1941. Unlike previous aggression by Germany, Hitler had not bothered to fabricate an excuse for his actions by allegations or demands. As a result, the Russians were totally unprepared for the attack. Stalin himself was so taken aback that he refused against all the evidence of his front line commanders to believe that the Germans were attacking, and ordered Soviet troops not to open fire. Even those who had foreseen that Germany would invade at some date, were taken by surprise. The Russian air force was destroyed on the ground within days, giving the Luftwaffe complete control of the skies and, with it, the ability to co-operate closely with the army.
To the south of the Pripet Marshes the Army Group South, under Gerd von Rundstedt, had 59 divisions including one panzer group of five panzer divisions and three motorised divisions concentrated together as the First Panzer Group commanded by Kleist. To Rundstedt’s south nine Rumanian divisions invaded along the Black Sea coast. The objective of Rundstedt’s southern attack was to destroy the Russian armies to their front, then drive on to capture Kiev and reach the River Dnieper. Rundstedt got off to a flying start and his right wing was leaping forwards towards the Crimea, but only slow advances were made on his left wing, towards Kiev.
In the north was Army Group North under von Leeb which fielded 26 divisions including the Fourth Panzer Group under Höppner. Leeb’s task was to overrun the Baltic states and capture Leningrad. Like Rundstedt in the south, Leeb made good initial progress but he was brought to a halt in front of Leningrad.
The main weight of the German attack fell in the area immediately north of the Pripet Marshes. Army Group Centre was commanded by von Bock and had 51 divisions as well as the Second and Third Panzer Groups under Guderian and Hoth respectively. This was the elite of the German army, commanded by the most able generals.
Bock made rapid progress forwards, capturing 300,000 prisoners at Minsk on 2 July and a month later nearly 400,000 were taken at Smolensk. By this time, however, both Guderian and Hoth were forced to remove their panzers from the front lines. The strains of motoring hundreds of miles and fighting dozens of battles had taken their toll and repairs were necessary.
The pause in the panzer advance gave Hitler and his generals time to assess progress thus far. The German forces had advanced hundreds of miles. Over a million Russian soldiers had been killed, captured or surrounded. And yet the war was not going well for the Germans. Although the Russians had suffered terrible losses, they still had intact armed forces. Many hundreds of thousands of Russians had retreated faster than the Germans advanced, escaping the panzer pincers. More and more reserves were being mobilised and pushed into the fighting. The Germans had not achieved their principal strategic objective of crushing the Red Army, nor had they captured Leningrad or the Ukraine.
Infantry and Panzer troops survey the terrain, Russia, probably June/July 1941
While the panzers were being repaired, Hitler and his commanders debated what to do next. The majority of the generals, including Guderian, Bock and Brauchitsch, wanted to attack Moscow. They argued th
at the capture of Moscow would destroy the industrial and communications heart of Russia. Moreover, and Brauchitsch was especially keen on this point, the Soviets would fight hard to defend Moscow allowing the Red Army to be destroyed, not merely chased further to the east.
Hitler, however, disagreed. He pointed out that Napoleon had captured Moscow in 1812 and little good it had done him. Much better, Hitler said, to concentrate on the Ukraine and Crimea with their huge coal reserves, agricultural lands and, at the same time, cut off the supplies of oil from the Caucuses to the Red Army. On 21 August the decision was made. Hitler ordered Guderian’s panzers to drive south to help Rundstedt.
Panzer IIIs in attack formation, Russia, probably June/July 1941
Guderian fought his way south with his customary skill and flair while Kleist came north with equal determination. On 14 September the two panzer forces met at Lokvitsa, far to the east of Kiev. Over 600,000 Russian prisoners were taken and the Ukraine fell to the Germans. It was a major success at the tactical and strategic levels, but it proved to be yet another illusory victory. The Red Army was still in the field and the war went on.
By 2 October Guderian was back with Bock. Hitler now agreed to a drive on Moscow and unleashed Army Group Centre. Within eight days another 600,000 Soviets had been surrounded and captured. It looked as if Brauchitsch’s plan to destroy the Red Army in front of Moscow was going to become reality. The diversion had cost valuable weeks, however, and the Russian weather, never really acknowledged as a factor in Barbarossa, took a hand. At the end of October the autumn rains came, and with them the rasputitsa, the season of mud which turned most of the country into one vast, unpassable quagmire. The supply trucks could not move and the German advance ground to a halt.
Again, Hitler used the enforced delay to rethink his strategy and, again, he changed the objectives. Instead of concentrating all his forces on the Moscow attack, as Brauchitsch again urged, Hitler divided the replacement panzers and his reserves between the three army groups. Bock was ordered to capture Moscow, though he doubted he now had the forces to do it. In the north Leeb was ordered to capture Leningrad, which he had now surrounded and cut off from supplies. In the south Rundstedt was ordered to advance beyond Rostov to take Stalingrad and the Caucasus oilfields.
Hitler: Military Commander Page 17