As a feat of sheer brilliance in organisation, command, control and improvisation, Guderian’s shift through 90 degrees in direction, from a posture of containment of the Kiev pocket on 26th September, to one of outright aggression on the 30th is almost unparallelled. The arrival of 50 new tanks was of assistance though the crews remained those same weary warriors who had fought without cessation for three long months. In fact the battle began even sooner than Bock intended, Guderian launching the newly received XLVIII Panzer Corps in an attack on the 28th to secure the flank of the main thrust that was intended to go north-eastwards from Gluchov to Orel. This preliminary operation failed. Nevertheless all three Panzer Corps began the main assault on the 30th and made useful headway despite a strong Russian counter-attack and early morning mist which prevented the dive-bombers taking off. The spearheads shot forward and the marching infantry toiled behind, but their progress had been made easy, for not only were the Russians thin to the front, but again they had been entirely taken by surprise since they too, quite logically, thought that the campaigning season was all but over.
Von Barsewisch gives a glimpse of Guderian in action, frightening ‘… some waddle papas of the Infantry who have now come to know us and think our kind of war terrible. He derives from it a quiet and warm-hearted pleasure. “You don’t think you can secure 10 kilometres with a battalion? What a shame! Just think, I have 300 kilometres of open flank in which there is nothing and that does not bother me in the least. So, therefore, please…”’ And on another occasion when their car became stuck in mud, ‘Guderian grinned and said “Well, my dear Herr von Barsewisch, we seem to be in the shit”’ – the remark of a true tank man which immensely pleased Barsewisch.
Moving at its fastest through heavily wooded territory, Panzer Group 2 advanced 130 miles in two days to capture Orel, completely outpacing the Russian counter-moves and slaughtering defenders whose principal aim was escape. In the forests around Bryansk more Russian armies lay trapped and eventually this vital communication centre would be in German hands along with the customary collection of booty. Now Hitler began intervening again with characteristic diversionary directives aimed at taking quick pickings instead of persevering with the main strategic purpose: Kursk was to be taken and the Bryansk pocket squeezed dry even though this meant that the crucial advance upon Tula, once Orel had fallen, was to be denied essential support. Once more the capture of Moscow was to be delayed in favour of a resounding local victory. It was the same story at Vyasma after Bock’s principal attack had got well under way and netted another gaggle of Russians.
First the Russians and next the weather conspired to change German fortunes. On 6th October Bryansk fell and Guderian’s leading division (4th Panzer) ran into the 1st Russian Tank Brigade with its KV 1 and T 34 tanks at Mzensk, a quarter the way to Tula. This was an awesome moment. For the first time the Germans experienced in a big way the threat that Guderian and Nehring had apprehended when they made the discovery on 3rd July. The German tanks were out-fought and the advance brought to a halt through excessive losses. That night the first snows fell. It was a hollow distinction that Panzer Group 2 was renamed Second Panzer Army that day.
All at once the situation swung hard against the Germans and for the first time Guderian lost hope. The tale of woe which fills the pages of Panzer Leader sincerely reflects his feelings at the time. The advance died in its tracks and twitched only fitfully in the moments when the state of the roads and the surrounding fields permitted. After each snowfall the thaw would bring a standstill; in the aftermath of every standstill the enemy would be that much better prepared and the process of regaining momentum had to be primed all over again. Moreover options were no longer open for changes of direction and the achievement of surprise. The Russians easily read German intentions and skilfully sited their blocking positions.
With every day that passed Guderian’s thoughts turned anxiously to his soldiers’ predicament as opposed to the need for pushing them deeper into Russia. Each visit to the front produced evidence of worsening privations caused by a shortage of boots, shirts and socks – indeed of all kinds of winter clothing. Senior officers were beginning to show signs of exhaustion, though it might have been of himself when he wrote that their problems were ‘less physical than spiritual’. For on 21st November at the beginning of a letter to Gretel, in which he wrote of the duties of a commander as ‘a misery’, he displayed that same extraordinary mixture of hope and despair which had governed him in 1919 at Bartenstein. Even in the dying spasms of the German advance on Moscow he could somehow recognise the smallest trend of a development in his favour -‘step by step’. And yet: ‘The demands on the troops are enormous and their performance is admirable. There is no support from above. I must muddle along on my own. Yesterday I was on the brink of despair and my nerves were at an end. To-day an unexpected battle success by the brave panzer divisions has given me new hope. Whether it continues remains to be seen … If the battle allows I intend to go to Army Group to explain our situation and to find out their intentions for the future … I cannot imagine how we can have things straight by next spring. Here we are, close to December, and no decision has yet been taken.’ This was not the letter of a general whose viewpoint was restricted but that of a commander who thought like a commander-in-chief.
In Panzer Leader he caustically refers to ‘the high spirits in evidence at the OKH and at Army Group Centre’, though this was a little hard. It is true that Haider’s diary reflects confidence: it is also essential that any superior command should maintain an outwardly confident mien to its subordinates. Guderian did no less himself. But Haider was aware that his belated drive on Moscow was in danger and his reputation with it. Von Barsewisch recorded how ‘Guderian is outwardly composed but inwardly worried about the bad weather’, and quotes Guderian’s persuasive encouragement of the troops when he spoke to them: ‘Comradeship depends upon mutual frankness … a big effort now, if we press on, will save far greater suffering in the year to come’.
Von Brauchitsch had recently suffered a heart attack, while at Army Group, von Bock was down with stomach cramps, though driving himself to the limit. In due course, with 30 degrees of frost reducing the combat worthiness of men and machines to a mere 20 per cent of efficiency (if that), he would come within sight of Moscow in the north. But Guderians Second Panzer Army (even though it made far more progress, at this time, than the other armies) was stuck near Tula and a count of destroyed tanks on the battlefield revealed that, for the first time, more German than Russian tanks had been destroyed. The KV Is and T 34s were deadly.
The moment for something stronger than straight talking to Hitler had long since passed and when, at last, a Generalfeldmarschall lost patience, it was too late. Rundstedt’s Army Group South had taken Rostov-on-Don on 20th November, but at once its salient came under intense Russian pressure from both sides. Without seeking permission, Rundstedt did the prudent thing and withdrew – the first retrograde strategic step in German military experience since 1919. And when OKW had instructed him to rescind the order he told them, in a moment of weary exasperation, to find somebody else to do it. Reichenau stepped into his shoes – but the withdrawal continued, and the effect of Rundstedt’s resignation only whipped up a wave of resistance to Hitler’s authority. Even the SS leader, Sepp Dietrich, told Hitler his approach was wrong. On the eve of a major Russian counter-offensive before Moscow on the 6th December Guderian, Hoepner and Reinhardt presented Bock with a fait accompli and withdrew their leading troops into shelter. Almost simultaneously they came under mounting pressure from the Russians and had to begin a withdrawal. Inevitably equipment, stores and some of the wounded and frost-bitten had to be left behind. Yet the German soldiers continued to fight back and there were no signs of disruption even in the face of defeat.
Faced with impending disaster, Guderian is on record for his efforts to gather support from those with influence to bring a halt to the offensive and a withdrawal to refuge. Always, for hi
m, there was safety in movement whether it was forwards or backwards. At the crux of the matter was the need for adequate supplies to sustain the mobility of machines and the well-being of his men. On 23rd November he had detected incomprehension at Army Group and had asked his old comrade-in-arms Balck (who was on a visit to the front from his office job in Germany) to give his pessimistic views to Brauchitsch. The telephone log of Second Panzer Army is a record of Guderian’s struggle with Bock to end the winter campaign – a poignant document. On 8th December he was lobbying visiting generals and on the 10th sending written reports to Schmundt, and to Bodewin Keitel in an effort to reach the ear of Hitler. At a meeting at Roslavl on the 14th with Brauchitsch, Bock and Kluge (whose Fourth Army had already made withdrawals) he asked for and received permission to withdraw towards the Susha/Oka river-line covering Orel. At this meeting he was entrusted with the unified command of the southern wing with Second Army as well as Second Panzer Army incorporated into the ‘Provisional Army Guderian’. Next day Brauchitsch, reiterating what Guderian had said, told Haider that he saw no way out for the Army.
On the 16th Guderian met Schmundt near the front ‘at my urgent request’, and then wrote to Gretel. ‘I am now awaiting the Führer’s call to report to him, first hand, about our state and the ‘measures I think essential. I hope it is not too late … I do not know how we can get out of it. At any rate the administration must be taken quickly and energetically in hand … I am glad that the Führer knows the situation and I hope he will intervene with his customary energy to rectify the administrative failures amid the railways and so on. I can never remember being so dominated by my task as now. I hope I can last out. My old sciatica is causing me trouble again. At night I lie sleepless and torture my brain as to what I can do to help my poor men who are unprotected in this crazy weather. It is terrible, unimaginable.’
At 0300 hours on the 17th the call from Hitler came through on a bad line. In that it set yet another pattern for the future it was historic. There were sumptuous promises of forthcoming aid by air and then an order -repeated – to stand fast. Germany’s fighting generals would get used to such words and harsh demands in the days to come, but Guderian was among the first to hear them – and in the prime knowledge that he listened to the man who was about to downgrade the Army one step further. For Schmundt had told Guderian that Brauchitsch was to be retired and his place taken, not by Guderian or even another soldier, but by Hitler himself. In this way the true spirit of National Socialism was to be injected into the Army and the Head of State and Supreme Commander empowered to give orders to himself. Just then, however, Guderian cared only for those things that were. Liebenstein wrote, apropos the telephone call, The Führer’s order to halt, forbidding all evading actions, does not correspond in any way with reality, as it does not correspond with our insufficient strength. Despite all claims and reports it has not been understood by those above that we are too weak to defend ourselves’. Guderian proceeded with the withdrawal – Hitler’s order notwithstanding. But at last he could see for himself from whence so much of the trouble originated, though he held the belief that Hitler was being misinformed by the optimists in OKH. With his Provisional Army in controlled retreat under corps’ commanders who keenly felt their peril, Guderian, on the 17th, asked Bock’s approval to fly to Rastenburg for a personal interview with Hitler. Noncommittally Bock let him go; his stomach ailments were worse and he had made up his mind to report sick the next day and take no further part in the campaign.
On 17th December Haider began to nag, knowing Guderian was restive, but on the 19th the whole atmosphere changed. Haider was called for by Hitler who informed him that Brauchitsch had been replaced and that, henceforward, operational command would be in the hands of the Führer himself. Bock was to be replaced by Kluge. From now on the Chief of Staff was to be responsible for the Eastern Front, alone, while the other theatres of war were to be controlled by Keitel and Jodl from OKW. Hitler reserved to himself the right to give orders as far down the chain of command as he chose while hiving off to others the chores of a C-in-C which did not interest him. Haider could – perhaps should – have resigned there and then. But he did not and for the reason of old – he felt his first duty was to the Army. So he soldiered on in closer proximity to Hitler, executing orders in which, frequently, he did not really believe.
Skirmishing began at once between Kluge and Guderian as soon as Kluge took over from Bock. On the 17th Kluge had told Guderian that the Führer’s standstill order must be carried out ‘… in such a way that as much as possible is preserved of the Army. No area is to be given up unnecessarily but neither is it to be held if troops are to be wiped out as a result’. There was flexibility in this, but Guderian replied, ten hours later after talking to Hitler on the telephone, ‘I know the Führer’s mind. I will do everything I can … I need freedom of action and cannot ask whenever I want to move a division’. He continued gently to withdraw before the Russian pressure, in compliance with Brauchitsch’s earlier directive but contrary to what Hitler demanded.
The five-hour meeting with Hitler, when it took place on the 20th, was totally unproductive. Each time Guderian produced evidence of appalling conditions at the front, Hitler brushed it aside with impracticable solutions. When Hitler refuted Guderian’s fears of impending doom with an historical analogy, Guderian had a prompt historical retort. A claim by Hitler that winter clothing had actually reached the troops was denied by Guderian with irrefutable proof that it had not. The slightest imputation that OKW did not understand the situation at the front stimulated the Führer’s indignation and anger. Suggestions that Hitler should bring battle-experienced officers to replace the OKW staff were anathema. Neither convinced the other of his sincerity and purpose and Guderian was compelled to return to the front to make the best of a bad job – to hold where no defensive localities were prepared, to employ equipment that was falling apart and to drive men who were jaded and depressed – though not yet broken.
The burden of Kluge’s telephone call to Haider was to complain about Guderian’s continued withdrawal, and say that Guderian had lost his nerve. Kluge was securing his own position, and so, too, was Haider against any possibility of blame by Hitler. They guarded against Guderian’s habit of circumventing authority, a habit from which Kluge had often suffered in the past. And almost at once Guderian was making local withdrawals, although, as the Second Panzer Army telephone log shows, they were within the terms permitted by Kluge on the 17th and with Kluge’s expressed authority. The log shows how Guderian meticulously asked Kluge’s permission for each redeployment, their exchanges sounding almost comic by comparison of minute detail with the expansive freedom of the past. Wielding his power Kluge became more than usually patronising:
‘You have a sack full of reserves … what do you intend to do with them?’ he asked on the 24th. ‘Haven’t you kept an eye on the roads from Bryansk?’ ‘Why move again?’ And to each provocative question Guderian answered calmly, explaining in detail but warning ‘that a 25-kilometre gap had opened which had to be filled’, to which Kluge blandly replied: ‘The sector must be held … after speaking to the Führer and Haider I will let you know.’
A few hours later the town of Chern was reported as lost and Kluge instantly took this opportunity to accuse Guderian of having ordered its evacuation twenty-four hours previously. Guderian denied it and there were hot words. But next day Kluge felt fully justified in his primary suspicions when the units, which had been holding Chern, arrived back escorting several hundred Russian prisoners. Kluge blankly accused Guderian of sending a deliberately falsified report and announced that the matter would be reported to Hitler. At that Guderian impulsively asked to be relieved of his command. But Kluge, who recorded in his diary, ‘I am basically in agreement with Guderian but he must obey orders’, beat him in the act and recommended at once that he should be removed.
There was no hesitation on Hitler’s part either. To him, at that moment, Guderian was just anothe
r rebellious senior product of the General Staff who, as Goebbels put it, ‘… are incapable of withstanding severe strain and major tests of character’. Over thirty more generals were categorised that way in December and relegated to the ranks of the disaffected. And yet, ironically, Guderian, at this moment of ugliest adversity, had performed at his best – never before or again does he appear to such advantage by force of personality in leadership or with such innate comprehension of what operationally had needed to be done. Under his hand the troops of Second Panzer Army demonstrated that a flexible withdrawal in winter conditions was within their capacity – and thus he refuted the Hitlerian contention (so willingly approved by a large body of German generals both during and after the event) that if the troops had been permitted a wholesale withdrawal, a rot that transcended French experience in 1812 would have set in. Surpassing even his ability in the techniques of command, however, was his willing cutting of losses that led to the sacrifice of his own career in the service of what he believed to be right. In this way he led his contemporaries and became set upon a course of resistance that converged ever more sharply upon collision with the Führer. Indeed, Paul Dierichs says that in his farewell address to his staff Guderian included hard criticism of Hitler’s decision. But for the time being he had no option but to retire from the fray and look on in anger.
* Suggestions to the contrary from some sources are not substantiated by Guderian’s private papers, particularly letters to his wife.
*Guderian gives no hint of this approach in Panzer Leader though in his correspondence there is ample evidence of his realisation that new horizons were appearing. Since he was repeatedly the target, after the war, of accusations of being a self-seeker, his reticence about this affair is at least understandable even if unnecessary. So far as I am aware, however, this highly significant factor has not been published before in books in English.
Guderian: Panzer General Page 24