And so another five days passed while SS
Totenkopf
moved up
and the 41st Panzer Corps forced a crossing at Jacobstadt. The
Russians meanwhile were frenziedly redeploying their forces, taking
men, tanks, and airplanes from the Finnish front to bolster the
crumbling armies of Popov and Kuznetsov. Instead of being husbanded
for the next stage, these regular troops were used to stiffen the
masses of conscripts, workers, and militia units that were beginning
to take shape, and thrown into a succession of savage counterattacks,
so that ". . . at a number of points the German situation became
quite critical." As for the Red Air Force, ". . with an
almost mulish obstinacy one squadron after another flew in at treetop
level, only to be shot down . . . one day alone they lost sixty-four
aircraft."
As on so many occasions, this reckless profligacy in lives and
equipment had an unnerving effect on the Germans, and Leeb,
overestimating his enemies' strength and the cohesion of the Russian
Command, made his first tactical mistake. When the Panzer army
resumed its march on 2nd July, the axis of the two corps was
separated, Reinhardt being directed on Ostrov and Manstein into the
yawning void on the right flank—toward Opochka and the Lovat.
Within a few days both the 8th Panzer and the motorised division
were stuck fast in swampy ground. SS
Totenkopf
made better
progress, but then ran into the concrete fortifications of the
"Stalin Line," where "their losses and lack of
experience led them ... to miss favourable opportunities, and this .
. . caused unnecessary actions to be fought." None of the three
divisions of the 56th Panzer Corps were able to give the others
support, and after a week of inconclusive fighting the 8th Panzer and
the motorised division were pulled back and sent in behind Reinhardt.
Totenkopf
, after this brief and violent experience of real
combat, was returned to "Reserve," where it could vent its
spite on the civilian population.
Reinhardt, in the meantime, had captured Ostrov, but had not the
strength to press on past Pskov and along the eastern shore of Lake
Peipus. And once again Manstein was prevented from lending the weight
of his own corps to the main thrust; he was directed due east—now
with only two divisions—with the grotesquely vague and
ambitious objective of "breaking communications between
Leningrad and Moscow at the earliest possible date." This
bifurcation of the two weak Panzer corps was soon to have serious
results.
These cumulative errors of decision on the northern and central
fronts can be (and have been) attributed to many things: timidity at
OKW, the conflict of personalities, the absence of a long-term
strategic plan, and so on. But the hard fact remains that the
Germans, even at this early stage, were attempting too much. Their
mobile forces were not strong enough or numerous enough, to support
three simultaneous thrusts.
[Strength, that is to say, in a qualitative sense. The Panzers had
only a limited cross-country ability as nearly all their supply
vehicles were not tracked, but wheeled, and had difficulty over bad
going. The reduction in the tank quota had reduced not only the
number of tracked vehicles but the overall firepower of the
division.]
Few of the German commanders realised this at the time. Each
attributed other, local causes to his own (qualified) failures. On
the wall maps at Hitler's headquarters the territorial gains looked
enormous—and the more impressive in relation to the few weeks
they had taken to acquire.
"No
Schweinhund
will ever eject me from here,"
said Hitler to General Köstring when the latter visited him at
Rastenburg.
What Köstring, the last military attaché at Moscow,
and one who knew more about the Red Army than anyone else in the
room, thought may perhaps be gauged from his laconic reply.
All he could manage was, "I hope not."
four
| THE FIRST CRISIS
At this point in the campaign there occurs a major break in the
continuity of its direction. The latent conflict of attitude between
Hitler and his generals, rooted in their training, instinct, and
technique, assumes hereafter a gradually increasing importance. It
gathers momentum until by 1944 the changed balance in the field
between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army coincides with a final
subordination of the professional to the amateur on the German side.
This conflict had been a factor of primary importance during the
political evolution of the Third Reich, and its residue was to foment
bitterly as the prospect of victory faded. Now for the first time it
began to assume positive military significance.
To say that Hitler was an amateur is not intended as an
unqualified derogation. He was a brave man who had won the Iron Cross
in the field. Throughout his life he had studied military affairs.
His ability to gauge the feeling of the common soldier and to inspire
him is unquestioned. All these are vital ingredients in the essence
of successful command. And in the early months of the war his élan,
his propensity to take risks, his "intuition," had reaped a
tremendous harvest.
But eight weeks after the start of the campaign in the East, these
roles were reversed. The General Staff was to become virtually
unanimous in its desire to reinforce Bock and strike directly on a
narrow front toward Moscow. Hitler insisted on the orthodox solution
after Clausewitz—the methodical destruction of the enemy's
forces in the field, regardless of geographical or political
objectives. As early as 13th July he had told Brauchitsch, "It
is of less importance to advance rapidly to the eastward than to
destroy the living forces of the enemy," and this attitude, to
which he clung for the ensuing two months, was no more than
consistent with the original terms of the
Barbarossa
directive, which laid down that the purpose of the operations was "to
destroy the Russian forces deployed in the West and to prevent their
escape into the wide-open spaces of Russia."
The problem was simple in outline, vastly complex and elusive in
substance. After the first flush of success the Wehrmacht was losing
momentum. Partly this was a question of supply. Food and ammunition,
auxiliary services, the maintenance of machinery, all these became
progressively more difficult as the front broadened and the divisions
fanned out. But there was also a tactical aspect. The detailed plans
worked out under Halder and Warlimont were already surpassed, and the
dispersal of the armies widened daily as each fought deeper along its
own prescribed axis, bypassing resistance and exploiting weakness. At
this distance from headquarters army and even divisional commanders
were acting more and more on their own initiative, the more
adventurous fighting a series of interlocking (but not necessarily
coordinated) local actions deep in the Russian rear, while their
more placid—or less mobile—colleagues sat patiently in
rings around those portions of the Soviet Army that had been cut off.
In the middle of July the German front ran true along a
north-south line from the mouth of the Dniester, on the Black Sea, to
Narva, on the Estonian frontier. But in the centre the reversed
S
of two gigantic salients bulged ominously. The Panzer groups of Army
Group Centre, advancing on Moscow to the north and south of the Minsk
highway, had already passed the longitude of Smolensk. But to their
right the Russian 5th Army still held its forward positions in the
Pripet Marshes. In this way there was an extra "front" of
over 150 miles which lay against the exposed flanks of Army Group
Centre, and of Rundstedt's left wing as it approached Kiev. The
Russian salient, although giving the appearance of mass, was in
reality a fragmented hodgepodge of defeated units, stragglers, men
without equipment, tanks without fuel, guns without ammunition. But
this was not apparent from the large-scale war map at Rastenburg, and
the Germans simply did not dispose of the men to probe the area in
sufficient strength to find out. And so the Russian presence, poised
(as it seemed) over its supply routes, acted as a brake on the
freedom of the army groups to either side. Meanwhile, as the days
passed with them undisturbed, the Russians were exploiting to the
full that extraordinary gift of improvisation which was to succour
them on so many occasions during the campaign.
Under Potapov they were busy restoring cohesion to their shattered
brigades, laying the foundations of the Partisan movement, and
operating vigorously with their cavalry—the only mobile arm
left to them in any strength.
[Major General of Tank Troops Potapov, commander of the 5th Army.]
The 5th Army and the units gathered around it were the largest
concentration operating in the German rear, but there were many
others still in vigorous action, even though (unlike the 5th Army)
they were completely cut off from the main front. The garrisons at
Orsha and Moailev, great numbers of wandering infantry—some as
far west as Minsk and Vilna—the whole stretch of the Baltic
coastline up to the west of Tallinn, the continued resistance of all
these "pockets," lent force to the arguments of those who
believed that the Wehrmacht was being dangerously overextended.
With the intention of restoring concentration and asserting at the
same time a strict priority of objectives, OKW had issued, on 19th
July, Directive No. 33. This opened with a reminder that although the
Stalin Line had been pierced along its whole front, ". . . the
liquidation of important enemy contingents caught between the mobile
elements of the Centre will take a certain amount of time." The
directive went on to complain that Army Group South had its northern
wing immobilised by the continued resistance of the Soviet 5th Army
and by the defence of Kiev. Therefore ". . . the object of the
immediate operation is to prevent the enemy from withdrawing
important forces beyond the Dnieper and to destroy them."
To this end:
(a) The Soviet 12th and 6th armies are to be crushed by a
concentric attack of Army Group South;
(b) The inner wings of an Army Groups South and Centre are to
inflict the same treatment on the Soviet 5th Army;
(c) Army Group Centre is to push only its infantry toward
Moscow. Its mobile elements which are not engaged to the east of the
Dnieper [i.e., against the Soviet 5th Army] are to assist the advance
of Army Group North against Leningrad by covering the right flank and
destroying communications with Moscow;
(d) Army Group North is to continue its advance on Leningrad
when the 18th Army has established contact with the 4th Panzer Army,
and when the right flank of the latter has been made completely
secure by the 16th Army. The Estonian naval bases are to be seized,
and the enemy is to be prevented from withdrawing his forces from
there into Leningrad.
This was clear enough. What the directive amounted to was a halt
order to Army Group Centre (to "push on" with infantry
meant nothing over these distances) while the flanks were secured.
The fact was that OKH and OKW alike were taken aback by the
continued strength of the Russian armies. From the distance of their
headquarters the weird convolutions of the front line, the reports of
resistance so far behind their own deep salients, the mounting
activity of the Partisans, all this had an air not simply of
unorthodoxy but of menace. Army Group Centre was by far the strongest
of the four, and with it the Russian front was to have been rent in
twain. Yet in spite of its headlong advance and the brilliant
victories of encirclement it had achieved, the enemy had maintained
coordination, and his resistance seemed as tough as it had been at
the start of the campaign. There is a uniformity about their accounts
of the fighting at this time which illustrates the Germans' surprise
at finding an enemy who continued to resist long after he had been
surrounded.
The Russians did not confine themselves to opposing the frontal
advance of our Panzer divisions. They further attempted to find every
suitable occasion to operate against the flanks of the wedges driven
in by our motorised elements, which, of necessity, had become
extended and relatively weak. For this purpose they used their tanks,
which were as numerous as our own. They tried especially to separate
the armoured elements from the infantry which was following them.
Often they found that they in their turn were caught in a trap and
encircled. Situations were sometimes so confused that we, on our
side, wondered if we were outflanking the enemy or whether he had
outflanked us.
The extent to which the Panzer armies of Hoth and Guderian were
outrunning their supporting infantry was a constant source of worry
to OKH. The Germans were very short of motorised infantry units, and
those that they had operated close up with the tanks as part of the
armoured spearhead. The mass of the army marched on foot, with its
supplies drawn by horses and mules, and its pace was limited. On 17th
July the leading elements of the 4th Army were still at Vitebsk and
the 9th Army had not even crossed the Duna. But Hoth's tanks were
already northeast of Smolensk, and this situation was duplicated by
Guderian, who had crossed the Desna with the spearpoint of the 10th
Panzer and SS
Das Reich
divisions, but whose situation map for
that day shows no infantry east of the Dnieper—a distance of
over a hundred miles.
The staffs had learned much about the handling of armoured forces
since May 1940, when the British counterattack at Arras had caused
them to halt Bock before Gravelines for two critical days.
[Field Marshal Fedor von Bock.]
But this was not northern France, with the depots of the Siegfried
Line eight hours away through an intact railway system. Between the
Panzers and their depots lay two hundred miles of White Russia and
the whole of eastern Poland. A territory ravaged and demolished,
"served" by dirt roads and single-track, broad-gauge
railways, sprinkled with Partisans, and with whole areas controlled
by groups of bypassed enemy.