"Up to this point we had enjoyed tank superiority. But from
now on the situation was reversed."
[Guderian records, "[I] made a report on this situation,
which for us was a new one, and sent it to Army Group. I described in
plain terms the marked superiority of the T 34 to our PzKw IV and
drew the relevant conclusions as they must affect our future tank
production. I concluded by urging that a commission be sent
immediately to my sector of the front, and that it consist of
representatives of the Army Ordnance Office, the Armaments Ministry,
the tank designers, and the firms which built the tanks. ... it could
examine the destroyed tanks on the battlefield . . . and be advised
by the men who had to use them what should be included in the designs
for our new tanks. I also requested the rapid production of a heavy
antitank gun with sufficient penetrating power to knock out the T
34."
[AUTHOR'S NOTE: This commission was in fact constituted remarkably
quickly, and visited Guderian's headquarters on the 20th November.
The part it and other influences played on German tank design is
dealt with in Ch. 15.]
One of the many paradoxes of the Eastern campaign is that this
moment, when the Russians were at their weakest, should have seen the
first real doubts rising in the German Army. While Guderian was
busying himself with practical complaints, other officers took
advantage of the enforced halt in literary reflection. Blumentritt
has described how, although there was little opposition, ". . .
the advance was slow, for the mud was awful, and the troops were
tired."
Most of the commanders were now asking: "When are we going
to stop?" They remembered what had happened to Napoleon's army.
Most of them began to re-read Caulaincourt's grim account of 1812.
That book had a weighty influence at this critical time in 1941. I
can still see Von Kluge trudging through the mud from his sleeping
quarters to his office, and standing there before the map with
Caulaincourt's book in his hand. That went on day after day.
During the last three weeks of October weather conditions—heavy
rain, snow showers, damp and penetrating mists—made movement
almost impossible on two days out of three. Conditions varied along
the arc of the German attack and added to the difficulties of
coordinating the armoured flanks with Kluge's infantry mass in the
centre. At the northern end of the front, from Kalinin to Mozhaisk,
freezing temperatures would sometimes persist all day. Then the
Germans could press hard against Zhukov's screen as it covered the
withdrawal from the Rzhev-Gzhatsk bulge. But even here the barometer
was erratic, and a twelve-hour thaw with rain would throw the
advancing columns into disorder. On such days a single battery, a
hastily laid mine field in a defile between swampy woodlands, could
hold up a whole Panzer corps.
General Bayerlein (who commanded a mixed combat group in the 39th
Panzer Corps) has given one of the best descriptions of this stage of
the advance from the German side.
[Lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein, soon to be engaged in more
agreeable climes. He went to the Afrika Korps in February 1942. He
commanded the unsuccessful attack at Alam Haifa, and later the
redoubtable
Panzerlehr
in Normandy and the Ardennes.]
His group consisted of about twenty-five PzKw III's and IV's, with
a few Czech tanks, which were used to stiffen the motorcyclists in
reconnaissance; a
Panzerjäger
company with twelve 37-mm.
antitank guns; an artillery battery with four 105-mm. guns; and two
Panzergrenadier
companies of infantry, some in half tracks and
some in trucks.
By the beginning of November [he writes] we had reached an
extensively wooded area east of Ruza and north of the main
Smolensk-Moscow highway. . . . After unceasing rainfall the ground
became soggy and afterwards intermittently, lightly frozen. According
to the map good roads should have been available. This turned out to
be an illusion. The Ruza-Voronzovo highway went over a bad forest
road and was only usable in the beeinning. . . . The tanks could only
labour forward step-by-step in the sticky morass. The movement of
wheeled vehicles was impossible. The attack, however, had to be
pressed forward under all circumstances.
After only about 10 km, near Panovo, even the tanks were stuck
. . . The Pioneers had to build a corduroy road of saplings over a 15
km stretch from Voronzovo to Panovo, but even on this, because of its
unevenness, travel was only possible for full or half track vehicles.
... it took several days to bring up the infantry and secure Modenovo
against counterattack.
The Russians were now withdrawing fast. Zhukov had fixed the
bounds which were to be defended until the last, and until these were
reached he had no intention of risking any more disastrous
encirclements. But their rear guards never left a position until they
were forced off it; and the moment the Panzers halted, whether
because of fatigue, shortages, or climate, the Russians turned and
harried them without respite. Bayerlein goes on:
The Russians would attack during the night . . . and it was
necessary that the task group be constantly on the alert defensively.
In order to do this it was necessary to maintain the tanks' engines
at the right temperature. Every four hours the motors were run for
10-15 minutes until they had reached & temperature of 140°
Fahrenheit.
These periods commenced for all tanks at exactly the same
second in order to minimise interference with the forward listening
posts, whose task was aggravated by the dense ground mist that rose
from the marsh, particularly at night-time. We discovered that the
transmissions must also be operated while the engine is idling,
otherwise by a sudden start the metal parts of the power train from
the engine to the drive sprockets would be damaged [because of the
low viscosity of the oil at those temperatures].
After a few days' halt the Russians would have full knowledge
of the positioning of our entire defences. . . .
They employed the whole civilian population; women, children
and cripples, who at first did not seem at all suspicious ...
Bayerlein also complains of the effect on morale of the
Katyusha
rocket mortars, which were now beginning to be used in numbers for
the first time; and also of a revival of activity by the Red Air
Force. "They would attack with single aircraft of any type, even
under the most unfavourable weather conditions, when we ourselves
were getting no cover from the Luftwaffe."
For the tanks' crews it was the beginning of a bad time. The
constant confinement to the inside of the tank was not possible
without a reduction of the combat efficiency of the soldiers, in as
much as it was narrow and cold. Earthen bunkers could not be
constructed in the ever-soggy and muddy ground. The wooden houses
which were made available as billets were in the course of time
systematically destroyed, one after another, by enemy fire, and
burned to the ground.
The supply difficulties took on formerly unheard-of
proportions. Through the constant warming of the engines there was a
higher rate of gasoline consumption. Constant defensive combat caused
a profuse ammunition expenditure. . . . For days on end there were no
hot meals for the combat troops—intestinal diseases and
disorders were the result.
The Germans' difficulties were multiplied by their order of
battle, which was becoming unbearably congested as the actual battle
front shrank in size. There were only three major approach routes to
the capital, and the few secondary ones were narrow, vulnerable, and
weather-bound for days at a time. The result was that Hoth, Strauss
(9th Army), and Kluge were all competing for use of two main roads,
the Smolensk-Moscow "highway" and the Moscow-Klin road.
Hoepner and Weichs (2nd Army) had to share the Moscow-Kaluga road,
and Guderian, until he had captured Tula, would have no hard-surface
communication routes whatever. After three weeks of struggling
through mud and mine fields with their supply lines entangled, their
vehicles breaking down, and casualty returns mounting, Bock saw that
they would have to regroup before the final march on Moscow. On 27th
October, Goebbels told a somewhat startled press conference (who had
heard him proclaim only a fortnight before that the war was over),
"Weather conditions have entailed a temporary halt in the
advance."
Against this background of disillusion and failing momentum a
Chief of Staff conference was called at Orsha, the headquarters of
Army Group Centre, for 12th November. This was to be one of the
decisive moments in the history of the German Army. The question
before its senior officers was a simple one: were they to follow the
prudent dictates of their military conscience, take up "winter
quarters," rest and refurbish their forces, and plan the next
stage of the campaign at their leisure? Or were they to gamble the
remains of their own strength against an imponderable—the
strength remaining to the Red Army and a certainty—the violence
of the Russian winter? Of course it is true that there are occasions
in every campaign when the state of the enemy may present a tactical
opportunity which demands vigorous, indeed reckless, exploitation.
But was this really one of them? The evidence that the Russians were
on the point of collapse was very tenuous, and based in large part on
calculations which had already been proved false. As for the
winter—here the evidence for the last 150 years was unanimous,
yet no provision at all had been made to fight a war of movement
through those months, other than the first tentative enquiries about
clothing "requirements."
The Orsha conference was an OKH affair, called by Halder and
attended by the Chiefs of Staff (not the commanders) of the
subordinate armies in Bock's army group. Although Orsha was the site
of Bock's headquarters, the conference did not take place there but
in Halder's special train, which was standing on a siding at the
railway station. And although a formal "discussion" was
invited following the address with which Halder opened proceedings,
it is clear that this was intended to be concerned with details
rather than principle; for the Chief of the General Staff had brought
the "Orders for the Autumn [sic] Offensive. 1941," with
him, and these were distributed, without amendment, when the meeting
broke up.
The decision which Halder announced—to resume the advance on
Moscow—has often been held up as one of the many instances of
Hitler's forcing the generals into actions of which they disapproved.
But like so many of the other "examples" of the Führer's
destructive interference, a moment's objective scrutiny will show
another side to the affair, that it could equally well be cited as
illustrating the characteristic inflexibility of the German General
Staff.
At the end of October there was a good deal to be said for making
one last attempt to reach the Soviet capital. Both Halder and
Brauchitsch had been trying (in their own personal and circumspect
fashion) to persuade Hitler to concentrate on Moscow since the
start of the campaign. In reports, in conversation, in memoranda,
this course had been urged to the exclusion of others. After the
battles of Vyazma-Bryansk the last obstacle (on Bock's figures, at
all events) had been removed. There was also the consideration that
if the attempt were not to be made, then consolidation of a "winter
line" would entail withdrawals; minor ones, it was true, but in
the course of straightening out the front ground bought with German
blood would have to be ceded. How could anyone at OKH explain this to
the Führer so soon after the greatest victory of the whole
campaign?
All this is understandable, and Halder and Brauchitsch must have
come to their decision to stage a new offensive at some time between
26th and 30th October, as the orders for redeployment of the army
group were sent out at that time. The two infantry armies of Strauss
and Weichs were moved to the flanks; Reinhardt (who had taken over
Hoth's
Gruppe
) and Hoepner were placed side by side on Kluge's
left, and Guderian was moved closer in, to take station, as he had on
22nd June, on Kluge's right.
But while these movements were taking place, the assumptions upon
which the OKH plan was based were daily shedding their validity. The
impact of the weather, in terms of its effect on morale and on the
efficient working of equipment, was already greater than expected;
far from waning, Russian resistance had intensified. It must have
been clear to Halder, several days before he journeyed to Orsha, that
to reach Moscow before Christmas was going to be a major operation,
and a very difficult one. If Halder had private doubts, there would
still be an opportunity to change his recommendation should the army
group Chiefs of Staff be unanimous or a majority of them reject the
plan. This likelihood was increased by certain changes Hitler had
made in the original scheme when Brauchitsch discussed it with him.
The Führer had become uneasy at the manner in which the
Panzer divisions were bogging down in the Istra forests, and favoured
a wide sweep behind Moscow rather than a direct march on the capital.
"The town will fall," he had told Mussolini, "without
the loss of a single man." This plan looked good on the wall map
at Rastenburg, but completely ignored the condition of the troops and
the state of the terrain—and thereby made it easier for the
generals to present a united opinion and throw out the idea of an
attack on Moscow, in any form.
There are only two records of what went on at the Orsha
conference. One is to be found in Halder's diary. It is cursory, and
insofar as his own attitude to the operation emerges, it is seen to
be inconsistent. The second account was given by Kluge's Chief of
Staff, Blumentritt, under interrogation in 1946. This makes it plain
that there was an ample body of professional dissent if Halder had
needed support.