[Halder started recording his irritation with Hitler within a few
days of his own disastrously inaccurate forecast of 3rd July. He
grumbled, "The Supreme Commander places no trust in the commands
in the field, or in the education and training of the senior
officers!" His views on the centre-thrust controversy were that
Directive 33 would lead to "a bogging down of the current
stirring operations," (25th July) and that "The operations
ordered by the Führer will lead to a scattering of forces and to
stagnation in the decisive direction, Moscow. Bock will be so weak
that he will not be able to attack." (28th July) Halder seems to
have put his views with force to Brauchitsch, but both he and ObdH
showed considerable diffidence in protesting to Hitler. Standing at
the apex of the
Heeresleitung
, they seem also to have embodied
the opinion of the majority. Only Rundstedt, who favoured restricting
offensive operations to the northern front, and Kluge (who strongly
disliked Guderian) were against them, although it is probable that
the commanders in the Army Groups North and South—Leeb,
Reichenau, Kleist, and Hoepner—were not averse to the proposed
accession of personal strength which Directive 33 offered.]
Brauchitsch has since said that he "postponed clarification"
of this question—the course of operations following on the
shattering of the Russian border deployment—in the hope of
"effecting a timely agreement." But no clarification was
required. Hitler may have kept his dreams of Super Cannae to himself
and his table talk, but he never made any secret of his aversion to a
direct march on Moscow, and continued to proclaim it even after the
decision had been codified by Directive 33. "At present,"
wrote Halder on the 23rd, "the Führer is not at all
interested in Moscow, only in Leningrad." And two days later a
reference to the importance of Moscow was "summarily rejected"
by him. The most that Brauchitsch could manage was permission to
delay the execution of Directive 33 because ". . . the fast
forces of Army Group Centre to which the Führer has assigned
objectives urgently need a 10-14-day rest period to restore their
combat effectiveness."
But this course of action had two serious drawbacks. First, even
if Bock and Guderian managed to bring about a situation in which they
were given a "go-ahead," the ensuing offensive would still
have a dangerously improvised character. Second, the Panzer groups
at
some time
were going to need the "rest period" which
they had spent in furthering their own purposes, and the longer this
was put off the more serious loomed the threat of a complete
breakdown.
Since 1945 the protagonists of the single narrow thrust to Moscow
have enjoyed a free run for their views. It is always easier to extol
the virtues of a hypothetical alternative than to justify a cautious
and disappointing reality. It is also the case that those who were
against the centre thrust are all dead. Keitel, Jodl, Kluge, Hitler
himself—they had no time to publish justificatory memoirs. Only
Blumentritt, Kluge's Chief of Staff has survived, and under
interrogation he was noncommittal.
["Guderian's plan was a very bold one," he told Liddell
Hart. "There were big risks in maintaining reinforcements and
supplies. But it might have been the lesser of the two risks. By
making the armoured forces turn in each time and forge a ring around
the enemy forces they had bypassed, a lot of time was lost."]
A dispassionate survey of the facts will show how perilous the
Germans' position was. They had no more than ten divisions across the
Dnieper, and these had now penetrated a further 120 miles beyond the
river. The main crossings, at Orsha and Mogilev, were still in
Russian hands and held by garrisons themselves larger than the whole
German spearhead; while to the north and south of the salient four
Russian armies had the force, if not the ability, to converge and
crush its roots. Moreover, all the equipment was in need of repair.
Every tank had travelled on its own tracks from the Polish boundary,
and the wheeled transport, on which the divisions depended for every
gallon of fuel and every round of ammunition—besides such vital
functions as the transport of maintenance and bridge-building
engineers, and the medical services—was being knocked to pieces
on the rough going.
The German intelligence service had been fairly accurate about
conditions in Russian-occupied Poland, but badly at fault about those
beyond the original Russian frontier. Blumentritt has described how,
"We were not prepared for what we found because our maps in no
way corresponded to reality. The great motor highway leading from the
frontier to Moscow was unfinished—the one road a Westerner
would call a 'road.' On our maps all supposed main roads were marked
in red, and there seemed to be many, but they often proved to be
merely sandy tracks. Nearly all the transport consisted of wheeled
vehicles which could not move off the roads, nor move on them if the
sand turned into mud. An hour or two of rain reduced the Panzer
forces to stagnation.
It was an extraordinary sight, with groups of them strung out over
a hundred-mile stretch, all stuck—until the sun came out and
the ground dried."
Moreover, it was proving difficult enough to keep the
small-calibre field guns of the divisional artillery supplied with
ammunition—much less to bring up the heavier pieces which would
be needed for any prolonged battle of position, and for which the
Stukas were already proving themselves to be an inadequate
substitute. In truth Kluge's "silken thread" was stretched
to breaking, but a more apposite analogy would have been that of a
cyclist on a high wire. The 2nd Panzer Army had to keep up its
momentum—and its balance—or fall over. And now
Timoshenko, with his twenty-one fresh divisions, was making ready to
throw a log in its path.
That the Russians regarded their own position as extremely serious
can be gauged from their having already committed four fresh tank
brigades (all newly equipped with the T 34) into the Smolensk
Kesselschlacht
instead of husbanding them for the
counteroffensive with the Vyazma and Bryansk armies. There is some
evidence that GOKO was already looking ahead to the prospect of a
winter counteroffensive. But any further disintegration of the front
had to be prevented so that the reserve armies could be built up
undisturbed.
It seems probable that the Russians overestimated the strength of
the forces opposing them, and that the events of 18th-19th July had
disillusioned them of the prospects of an immediate counteroffensive.
But for Timoshenko it was now more important than ever that the
divisions trapped at Smolensk be relieved and the connection with
Orsha, and the front along the northern Dnieper, restored. The four
fresh tank brigades which had been sent from the Reserve Army to the
Smolensk area a week before had gone already—with the
completeness of ice cubes in a cauldron of molten lead—and
there was little more behind them. Moreover, the configuration of the
railway system made it impossible to switch the Bryansk army around
to face due west.
Accordingly, Timoshenko ordered that both relieving armies from
Spas-Demiansk and Roslavl go straight into the offensive as they
arrived at the scene of battle, and gave instructions to the forces
at Orsha and Mogilev, inside the Smolensk
Kesselschlacht
, to
attempt a breakout to the south. These attacks against the enemy
right and rear were intended to relieve the pressure in the
Kesselschlacht
, and evidence that they were doing so was not
long in coming. On 22nd July, Guderian reported that ". . . all
units of the 46th Panzer Corps were at that time engaged and, for the
time being at least, committed," and from the 47th Panzer Corps
that ". . . nothing further could be expected for the time
being." To complete the concentric pressure on the German bulge
the Russians trapped at Smolensk were counterattacking fiercely to
the south. The town was under continuous shellfire, and the road and
railway were useless to the Germans. The 17th Panzer, moved here from
Orsha, was heavily engaged, its commander, General Ritter von Weber,
being mortally wounded.
The first result of these attacks was the escape to the east of a
substantial portion of the Russian divisions in the
Kesselschlacht
.
At least five slipped out during the night of the 23rd, and the
remains of three more during the 24th. Hoth, who had detected the
first creakings there as early as the 19th, had sent two Panzer
divisions even farther east, in a long "left hook" that was
intended to trap any survivors of the original encirclement. But this
column had been delayed by the conditions. "It was appallingly
difficult country for tank movement—great virgin forests,
widespread swamps, terrible roads and bridges, not strong enough to
bear the weight of tanks. The resistance also became stiffer, and the
Russians began to cover their front with mine fields. It was easier
for them to block the way because there were so few roads."
[Blumentritt,
Interrogation
. In fact, the "stiffer
resistance" to which Blumentritt refers came from two small
striking forces, drawn from troops in rear positions and each
commanded by a general whose name was, in later years, to acquire a
particularly ominous ring for the Germans—Koniev and
Rokossovski.]
This trap, too, would fail to close unless the 2nd Panzer Army
could advance from the south to force it shut. Guderian claims that
with this in mind he gave the orders for an advance toward Dorogobuzh
as early as 21st July. He had spent that day touring the forward
positions in his wireless command truck, and while he was doing so
repeated messages came in from army group headquarters that the SS
Das Reich
Division should be directed on Dorogobuzh. However,
this unit was carrying the brunt of the counterattack at Yelnya—now
coming in at an accelerating pace as the new Vyazma army arrived on
the scene, and it would have been impossible to disengage it without
giving up possession of the town. Guderian's own preference was for
sending
Gross Deutschland
, at that time less heavily engaged,
and for taking the 18th Panzer out of the line at Kuzino and using
this as his mobile reserve. He sent orders for this move at midday
from
Gross Deutschland
headquarters at Vaskovo, where he was
taking lunch.
However, on his return to group headquarters at Choclovo, Guderian
was confronted with a fresh development. "Von Kluge, in his
anxiety for the left flank of my Panzer group along the Dnieper, saw
fit to intervene personally and ordered the 18th Panzer Division to
stay where it was. As at Bialystok he did not inform me of this
direct action on his part. As a result of this the force needed for
the attack on Dorogobuzh was unfortunately not available."
[Guderian,
Panzer Leader
, Cassell ed., 179. Guderian had to
wait a long time before he got his own back on Kluge. But on 21st
July, 1944 (the day following the
attentat
), he was personally
promoted to Chief of the General Staff by Hitler. During the
afternoon "The conversation turned on individuals. My requests .
. . [concerning certain other appointments] were approved. In this
connection I remarked that the new Commander-in-Chief West [Kluge]
did not have a lucky touch in commanding large armoured
formations
, and I therefore proposed he be given another
assignment." My italics.]
For the next two days Guderian devoted all his energies to having
his army commander overruled and regaining control of the 18th
Panzer. And during this time the Russian attacks against Yelnya and
northwest from Roslavl mounted in force. The 10th Panzer returns for
24th July show that over one third of its vehicles had been lost. The
divisions claimed fifty Russian tanks destroyed on that day, and even
after making allowance for exaggeration in the heat of combat it is
plain that the Russian effort was increasing daily. Eighteen fresh
divisions had already been identified between Cherikov and Yelnya,
and Vietinghoff reported that the Russians were "attacking from
the south, east and north with very heavy artillery support. On
account of a shortage of ammunition, which was now making itself felt
for the first time, the corps could only defend its most important
positions."
At this point, paradoxically, the extempore character of the
Russian counteroffensive began to take effect deeper than the surface
fluctuations of the fighting suggested, and deeper, too, than would
have resulted had the Russians not, with a mistaken sense of urgency,
been so precipitate in its launching. For the first of the 4th Army's
regular infantry divisions was now drawn into action across the
Dnieper. By the evening of 25th July there were three (the 263rd,
292nd, and 137th), and two days later this had become nine (joined by
the 7th, 23rd, 78th, 197th, 15th, and 268th). And these units had
come not to relieve the 2nd Panzer Army but to reinforce it.
Thus strengthened, the 2nd Panzer Army would be able to win any
action that might follow. But the battle it was going to fight was in
essence a local one. It had no place in the strategic development of
the campaign as originally envisaged by OKW. In this way the
desperate Russian attacks "off the march," costly [General
Kachalov, commander of the Vyazma group, had been killed in action on
22nd July.] and ill planned though they were, had an importance that
was, in the long run, crucial. For by contesting the initiative in
those days of late July, in that decisive central front, the Russians
had introduced an element of practical uncertainty—uncertainty
of purpose and of opportunity—which was to aggravate the
divisions between the counsels at OKH and OKW.
On 27th July a conference of army commanders was called at Bock's
headquarters at Novy Borisov. Guderian attended with his Chief of
Staff, Freiherr von Liebenstein, and was not long in discovering that
". . . the relationship between the commander of the Fourth Army
and myself had . . . become strained to an undesirable degree,"
owing to "divergences of opinion concerning the situation."
Kluge was grumbling on about his long left flank, offered along the
length of the Dnieper, and claimed to regard the "threat"
to the Smolensk area as "very serious." Guderian's own
opinion (almost as much at fault, as we now know) was that ". .
. our most dangerous enemy was now to the south of Roslavl and east
of Elnya [Yelnya]." But with greater truth he went on to contend
that ". . . as a result of units being retained on the Dnieper
west of Smolensk, crises and losses bad occurred in the Roslavl area
which could have been avoided."