A door opened, and in the bright sunlight I could see a
tommy-gunner in a black uniform. On his left sleeve was a skull. I
had fallen into the hands of the enemy.
The German offensive, which had opened so brilliantly, had
reaffirmed in a few short weeks the Wehrmacht's power to make the
whole world tremble, had carried the boundaries of the Reich to their
farthest mark—was now, undeniably, stuck fast. For nearly two
months the maps had remained unchanged.
The Propaganda Ministry affirmed that the "greatest battle of
attrition that the world has ever seen" was taking place, and
daily published figures which showed how the Soviets were being bled
white. But whether the Germans believed them or not, the facts were
very different. It was they, not the Red Army, who were being forced
repeatedly to raise the ante. With the same coolness which stamped
his refusal to commit the Siberian reserve until the battle of Moscow
had already been decided, Zhukov was keeping the reinforcement of the
62nd Army to a bare minimum. In the two critical months from 1st
September to 1st November only five infantry divisions were sent
across the Volga—barely sufficient to cover "wastage."
Yet in that period twenty-seven fresh infantry divisions and nineteen
armoured brigades were activised from drafts, new material, and cadre
skeletons of seasoned officers and N.C.O.'s. All were concentrated in
the area between Povorino and Saratov, where their training was
completed, and whence some of them were sent in rotation to the
central sector for brief periods of combat experience. The result was
that while the Germans were slowly running all their divisions into
the ground with fatigue and casualties the Red Army was building up a
formidable reserve of men and armour.
The feeling of frustration at being halted so near (as it seemed)
to complete victory was soon compounded by a sense of foreboding
which heightened as the weeks followed one another with the army
always in the same position.
The days were shortening again, you could definitely sense it.
And in the mornings the air was quite cool. Were we really going to
have to fight through another of those dreadful winters? I think that
was behind our efforts. Many of us felt that it was worth anything,
any price, if we could get it over before the winter.
While the spirits of the men alternated between frenzy and
depression, recrimination and the clash of personalities enlivened
the affairs of the army group at a higher level.
First to go were two tank generals, Wietersheim and Schwedler. The
essence of their complaint was that the Panzer divisions were being
worn out in operations to which they were completely unsuited, and
that after a few more weeks of street fighting they would no longer
have the ability to fulfil their primary task—that of engaging
the enemy's armour in mobile battles. However, the dictates of
military protocol do not permit corps commanders, however
distinguished, to protest on broad strategic grounds, and each chose
to complain on a narrower point of tactics.
General von Wietersheim commanded the 14th Panzer Corps, which had
been the first unit of the 6th Army to break through to the Volga at
Rynok in August. He certainly cannot be accused of timidity, for he
had taken his corps across northern France in 1940 on Guderian's
heels and been one of the very few officers in the German Army who
had recommended pressing on across the Meuse. Wietersheim suggested
to Paulus that the attrition from Russian artillery fire on both
sides of the Rynok corridor was having such effect on his Panzers
that they should be withdrawn and the corridor held open by infantry.
He was dismissed and sent back to Germany, ending his military career
as a private in the
Volkssturm
in Pomerania, in 1945.
General von Schwedler was the commander of the 4th Panzer Corps,
and had led the southern arm of the counterstroke against
Timoshenko's drive on Kharkov in May. His case is an interesting one
in that he was the first general to warn against the danger of
concentrating all the armour at the tip of a "dead
Schwerpunkt
"
and the vulnerability to a Russian attack from the flanks.
[Practically every senior German commander in the southern theatre
now likes to take the credit for this prescience. In fact, it seems
to be due either to Schwedler or to Blumentritt. Blumentritt was sent
on a tour of inspection of the Don front between Voronezh and
Kletskaya and submitted a report to the effect that ". . . it
would not be safe to hold such a long defensive flank during the
winter." Goerlitz places the time of this inspection in early
August, but Blumentritt himself under interrogation put it in
September.]
But in the autumn of 1942 the concept of the Russians
attacking
was regarded as "defeatist," and Schwedler, too, was
dismissed.
The next head to fall was that of Colonel General List, Commander
in Chief of Army Group A. After the first rush across the Kuban,
which had carried the 1st Panzer Army to Mozdok by the end of August,
the front of the German advance had solidified along the contour
lines of the Caucasus range and the Terek River. Different factors
accounted for this, notably the withdrawal of Richthofen's bombers to
Stalingrad and a recovery by the defenders. Kleist has remarked:
In the early stages ... I met little organised resistance. As
soon as the Russian forces were bypassed, most of the troops seemed
more intent to find their way back to their homes than to continue
fighting. That was quite different to what had happened in 1941. But
when we advanced into the Caucasus the forces we met there were local
troops, who fought more stubbornly because they were fighting to
defend their homes. Their obstinate resistance was all the more
effective because the country was so difficult . . .
The result was that the first plan for the occupation of the oil
fields was altered, and OKW directed List to force his way across the
low Caucasus at their western end and capture Tuapse. Reinforcements,
including three mountain divisions which would have been of great
value to Kleist, were put into the 17th Army instead. Had this been
successful, the Germans would have broken across the Caucasus at
their lowest point, and by capturing Batum would have forced the
Russian Black Sea fleet into internment and ensured the security of
the Crimea and the compliant neutrality of Turkey. But in fact one
difficulty after another supervened and, notwithstanding his
reinforcement, List made little progress. In September, Jodl was sent
as the OKW representative to List's headquarters to report "the
Führer's impatience" and to try to get things moving.
But when Jodl returned he came with bad news.
List had acted exactly in conformity with the Führer's
orders, but the Russian resistance was equally strong everywhere,
supported by a most difficult terrain.
Warlimont contends that Jodl answered Hitler's reproaches (and if
he did, it was certainly for the first, and the last, time) by
pointing
to the fact that Hitler by his own orders had induced List to
advance on a widely stretched front.
The result was "an outburst," and Jodl fell into
disgrace.
Further consequences were that Hitler completely changed his daily
customs. From that time on he stayed away from the common meals which
he had taken twice a day with his entourage. Henceforth he hardly
left his hut in daytime, not even for the daily reports on the
military situation, which from now on had to be delivered to him in
his own hut in the presence of a narrowly restricted circle. He
refused ostentatiously to shake hands with any general of the OKW,
and gave orders that Jodl was to be replaced by another officer.
Jodl's replacement was never in fact appointed, and the OKW Chief
of Staff soon came back into favour, having learned his lesson,
which, as he confided to Warlimont, was that
A dictator, as a matter of psychological necessity, must never
be reminded of his own errors—in order to keep up his
self-confidence, the ultimate source of his dictatorial force.
Nonetheless, the possibility of the appointment was duly
communicated to that "other officer" concerned, with
results which will be seen.
However, before that particular trail of private ambition and
intrigue is followed up, there is one more dismissal which must be
recorded, together with its effect on the running of Führer
headquarters. Relations between Hitler and Halder had deteriorated
steadily since the removal of the pliant ObdH, who had acted as an
absorbent pad between Hitler's violence and the Chief of Staff's dry
acerbity. Manstein, who had seen them together in August while
passing through headquarters to take up his command at Leningrad, was
"quite appalled" to see how bad their relations were.
Hitler was abusive, Halder obstructive and pedantic. Hitler would
taunt Halder with his lack of combat experience, in contrast to his
own experiences in the front line in the Great War. Halder would
mumble under his breath about the differences between professional
and "untutored" opinion.
Matters came to a head over a quite minor point, relating to the
central front. Many of the German commanders, particularly Kluge
(whose responsibility it was), believed that the counteroflfensive
the Russians were expected to launch in the winter would be directed
against Army Group Centre.
Paradoxically, this was in part due to the Russians' practice of
giving their new divisions a baptism of fire in the quiet central
sector before taking them back into strategic reserve. The new
divisions would be identified, then seem to disappear. Kluge, and
Halder himself, formed the erroneous opinion that they were being
accumulated behind the front where they had been identified instead,
as was the case, of being sent south. At all events, a rather
childish quarrel blew up between Hitler and Halder concerning the
date on which one of these units was identified, and around it larger
issues were invoked, notably the need (as Halder saw it) to reinforce
Kluge and thus, indirectly, the overstretched condition of the
Wehrmacht generally.
[It is widely contended that Halder's dismissal arose out of his
refusal to sanction further offensive operations at Stalingrad until
the Don flank had been strengthened (Leyderrey, Goerlitz,
Blumentritt, Halder himself, etc.). But the chain of argument by
which this claim is rationalised seems pretty tenuous.
Vide
Warlimont's evidence to Liddell Hart:
It was on this issue [Russian activity against Army Group
Centre, at Rzhev] that the final clash between Hitler and Halder
orginated, which led to the latter's dismissal. (See Liddell Hart,
op. cit., 220, enlarged third ed.; London, 1956.)
]
On 24th September, Halder was dismissed and Colonel General Kurt
Zeitzler brought from the West to take his place.
The occasion of Halder's dismissal is of particular interest to
historians of World War II because of a change which was inaugurated
at that time in the administration of the daily Führer
conferences. These conferences had become the medium through which
the war was being run and the directives promulgated. For the old OKH
apparatus had been in decay since Brauchitsch's dismissal, and
Halder's real fault, in Hitler's eyes, was his shuffling attempts to
reserve to OKH (and thereby to himself) certain of the old
prerogatives of the
Generalstab
and his tacit reluctance to
accept Hitler's "appointment" as Commander in Chief of the
Army as anything but temporary. With the advent of Zeitzler, who had
no memories of the time when OKH ran the Eastern campaign with Hitler
no more than a petulant voice at the end of a bad telephone line, the
centralisation of tactical as of strategic administration would be
complete. The final step in the consolidation of the daily
conferences as the prime mover in the executive process was the
introduction of stenographers who faithfully recorded every word
spoken by every participant. To the extent to which these records
have survived, they are of enormous importance in showing how the war
was run by the Germans, and where they impinge on the Eastern
campaign they will be quoted at length in this work.
[The character and origins of this very important material are
discussed at greater length in the Note on Sources.]
One of those who benefited from the reshuffle at Hitler's
headquarters was that loyal, well-meaning Nazi, General Schmundt (who
will be remembered helping Guderian with his "problems" the
previous summer, and who will later be encountered in a less happy
contest). Schmundt was promoted from the rather ill-defined post of
Hitler's principal adjutant to that of head of the Army Personnel
Office, where he enjoyed very considerable power in the field of
posting and appointment. Paulus "felt that he ought to send
Schmundt his congratulations."
Not long afterward Schmundt turned up at Paulus' headquarters, and
the commander of the 6th Army launched straightaway into a long
complaint about the condition of the troops, the shortages, the
strength of the Russian resistance, the possible dangers if the 6th
Army were to become too exhausted, and so forth. Perhaps he referred
to the original text of Directive No. 41, which had limited his
objective to bringing the Volga under gunfire—for he had
certainly done
that
.
Schmundt, however, had the one answer which a reluctant commander
can never resist. After some prefatory remarks about the Führer's
desire to see the Stalingrad operations "brought to a successful
conclusion," he broke the exciting news. The "other
officer" under consideration for the post of the Chief of the
OKW staff was none other than Paulus himself! It was true that
General Jodl's actual standing-down was hanging fire at the present
time, but Paulus had been "definitely earmarked" for a more
senior post, and General von Seydlitz would take his place as head of
the 6th Army.