Kluge:
My Führer, I want to call attention to the fact
that nothing can be pulled out of the line now.
[The following discussion refers to the tempo of the German
retreat from Orel to winter positions along the Dnieper, the
so-called "Hagen Line." Originally this was supposed to be
a step-by-step retreat, from Orel to Karachev, from Karachev to the
Desna, and from the Desna to the Dnieper, extending from the end of
August well into the fall of 1943. In order to free troops for action
in Italy, Hitler wanted to force Kluge to start this retreat much
earlier and to withdraw at greater speed than had been originally
planned. The German line was back on the Dnieper at the end of
September. The German retreat has been characterised as methodical,
the daily withdrawals from 5th August to 22nd September averaging
from one and a half to three and a half miles.]
That is completely out of the question at the present moment.
Hitler:
Just the same, it must be possible—
Kluge:
We can only withdraw troops when we reach the Hagen
Line.
Zeitzler:
Let the
Gross Deutschland
get to this
point, then draw them out, keep them here for a while, and the 7th
Panzer must leave soon—
Kluge:
We could not anticipate these overall political
developments. We couldn't guess that this would happen. Now a new
decision must be made, first of all that Orel must be evacuated after
we have moved out our own vital material.
Hitler:
Absolutely.
Kluge:
Then there is another question: This rear line, the
so-called "Hagen Line," is still under construction?
Hitler:
Yes, unfortunately.
Kluge:
There is nothing that can be done about it. We have
a huge number of construction battalions and God knows what all else.
We have been having cloudbursts every day, of a style you couldn't
even visualise here. All of the construction battalions had to keep
the roads in shape; they are supposed to have been back in the Hagen
Line long ago in order to finish it, but I needed them up front to
straighten things out.
Hitler:
Perhaps the rain will stop soon.
Kluge:
I certainly hope so. It was a little better today.
Hitler:
But you have to admit, Marshal, that the moment
your troops reach approximately that line, quite a number of your
divisions can be moved out.
Kluge:
My Führer, I want to call your attention to the
fact that four divisions—
Hitler:
—are very weak.
Kluge:
I have four divisions which are completely
exhausted.
Hitler:
I'll grant you that. But how many of the enemy's
divisions are smashed?
Kluge:
Well, in spite of that. Now we come to the question
of the so-called Karachev position, my Führer. If I move into
that position, which isn't ready, and if I am attacked again with
tanks and everything else, they will break through with the tanks,
and then when they have broken through with their tanks, the moment
has come. I am just mentioning that again because this is a good
opportunity, because we might get into a very difficult situation. I
would like to suggest again that it might be more practical to move
all the way back behind the Desna River while we are at it. We must
have the Karachev position anyway as a skeleton, as it is now and as
it will be after two more weeks of work, in order to give the troops
support on the retreat. Therefore my suggestion is that it would be
more practical to move right behind the Desna now.
Hitler:
Here you are safe and
here
you are not.
Kluge:
Bryansk—this part of the line is good, but
this other piece is not fully constructed yet.
Hitler:
That part is not better than this one. If you put
these two pieces at Bryansk together, then they make up as much as—
Kluge:
But then I have to have time to construct them. I
can't do that—
Hitler:
You would have to construct the other one anyway.
Kluge:
Yes, I would here. But not over here at the Desna.
Hitler:
Not here.
Kluge:
I have to build from here to here, and over there I
wouldn't have to build anything.
Hitler:
But that is practically the same length—
Kluge:
But this one is better because nothing can happen to
me on this whole line.
Hitler:
They won't attack here. They'll come down this way.
Kluge:
That's the decisive point. But then, my Führer,
I won't be able to draw back as early. First I have to construct the
Hagen Line; I must have that in order, I can't just go back in a mad
rush.
Hitler:
Nobody said anything about a mad rush.
Kluge:
But at any rate, not much faster than was planned.
Hitler:
What was your timetable?
Kluge:
Timetable as follows: In about five days—
Hitler:
Altogether, when will you be back on that line?
Kluge:
We had not intended to be back in there before the
beginning of September.
Hitler:
That's impossible, Marshal, completely impossible.
Kluge:
Naturally, under these circumstances everything has
changed a little. But it will take at least four weeks before the
position is even usable.
Zeitzler:
Do it in two moves. Perhaps you can stay here
until the line is ready.
Kluge:
That won't work for the following reasons: maybe for
a short time, but not in the long run; the rail capacity to Orel is
fifty trains, but the moment we lose Orel it decreases to eighteen
trains per day, which would be a very unpleasant situation.
Zeitzler:
You won't need very many trains if you are in
this position.
[It is noticeable that, although paying lip service to Kluge's
seniority with an occasional "sir," Zeitzler takes Hitler's
part throughout the discussion, to the extent almost of being
insubordinate.]
Kluge:
No, that won't work. I don't even have facilities to
unload them.
Zeitzler:
If your troops are here, this strip of rail line
is of no value.
Kluge:
No, not any more. I just wanted to emphasise that if
I give up Orel, I have to retreat in one move; but the important
thing is that I have my positions prepared behind me.
Zeitzler:
If you can hold here for six or seven days, then
you gain that much time and a few units here will be freed.
Kluge:
But the calculations must always be based on the
situation in the rear. I must have at least a moderately strong
position, or else they'll overrun me, and then I'll be in the hole
again and won't be able to spare any troops.
Zeitzler:
Sir, on this line you will gain six or seven
days.
Kluge:
You mean here? Oh no, the enemy will reach that in
two or three days.
Zeitzler:
If you could hold this for six or seven days,
then you could move the line down from here to here, so that in ten
days you would be here.
Kluge:
You mean now?
Zeitzler:
Yes.
Kluge:
That would mean a headlong retreat in this whole
area, which, in my opinion—
Zeitzler:
Perhaps the army group can make new calculations.
Hitler:
Just the same, Marshal, we are not masters of our
own decisions here; in war, decisions are frequently necessary—
Kluge:
My Führer, if you order me to do it quickly—but
then I would like to direct your attention to the fact that this plan
is contradictory to that of the Hagen Line, which isn't finished.
Hitler:
The other one isn't finished either, at least not
at that point, and anyway, the Russians won't attack where the
position is finished.
Kluge:
For instance, I could do the following, my Führer:
I could move back into this position, the construction of which is
more advanced up here and also here, although over here practically
nothing has been done. In that case I would have to allow for giving
way a bit here, but then this has to be built.
Hitler:
Certainly, that is supposed to be built, as a
precaution; but I don't want a withdrawal at this point now, because
that will have to be done anyway in the winter, when the Russians
attack. Model has built that up very solidly. It ought to be possible
to build some sort of a position in that time. At the time of the
advance we managed to build a position anywhere we had to stop, and
to hold it. Those bastards over there can dig a position in two days,
and we can't push them out of it.
Kluge:
My Führer, actually the question is that of
tanks. That is the main point. He batters so hard with his artillery
and tanks that he gets through after all.
Zeitzler:
Sir, in my opinion, moving back into
this
line would free half of the divisions, which could then be pulled
back here, and you could have them dig for six days. Then that
position would be ready.
Kluge:
No, that doesn't solve the problem. In my opinion,
the earliest time for occupying the Hagen Line would be in—let's
see, today is the 26th—in about four weeks, if we cut it fine
maybe three or four weeks, but that's absolutely the earliest.
Hitler:
Well, we just can't wait that long. We must free
some troops before that. It's no use.
Kluge:
Sauckel won't be able to get his workers out before
that.
Hitler:
He has to. Look how fast the Russians can evacuate.
Kluge:
But, my Führer, that is an enormous crowd.
He'll jam up all my bridges over the Desna.
Hitler:
How many people are in here, anyway?
Kluge:
Several hundred thousand.
Zeitzler:
Two hundred and fifty thousand men, I was told—
Hitler:
What are 250,000 men? That's nothing at all.
Kluge:
My Führer, I need my forces for fighting now. I
can't use them for all kinds of other things.
Hitler:
On the contrary, I would herd these people out of
there immediately and put them to work on the position here.
Kluge:
We've already tried that. At the moment they are all
harvesting. The rye has just been mowed. They have no idea of what is
coming. If we move them back for construction work they'll run away
in the night. They'll run to the front just to mow their rye. All
these are difficulties. Nothing has been organised.
Hitler:
What is going to be done with the harvested rye? Is
it going to be burned?
Kluge:
Certainly, we'll have to. Probably we will burn it,
but I don't know whether we'll have time. We'll have to destroy it
somehow. Especially the valuable cattle we have here, and back here I
have lots of guerillas who are not finished off. On the contrary,
they are making themselves felt again. They were suddenly reinforced
by a huge parachute operation, here. And then there was this famous
cutting of the rail line at four hundred points.
Hitler:
All that may be perfectly true, but it doesn't
alter the fact that this has to be done. I think that the Army Group
South is in a much worse position. Look at the kind of sectors it
has. One of its divisions, the 335th, has a front of forty-five
kilometres.
Kluge:
But, my Führer, I don't know how the impression
originated that we didn't have long sectors too. That's where the
56th Division was, they had more than fifty kilometres; and the 34th
had forty-eight kilometres. That calculation is not correct.
Hitler:
That's true, you did have such sectors when we
started out.
Kluge:
At the time we started out—
Hitler:
On the whole, the Army Group Centre had an entirely
different type of division sector.
Kluge:
Our sectors became narrower through the mass attack,
but we still have thirty kilometres and more apiece. Our front is
already thinned out to that extent.
Hitler:
That's no comparison.
Kluge:
Up there in the sector of the 3rd Panzer it is very
thin too.
Hitler:
How is the situation here?
Zeitzler:
They haven't attacked here. The latest seems to
be that they have pulled out their motorised corps here, and have
replaced them with rifle corps of the Guard. They may be resting
these corps in order to use them over here. I'm a little worried
about that place, because they moved that parachute army up there
too. I'm not sure what he plans to do with that. Their railroad
traffic is a little heavier, so that I am of the opinion that they
are pulling troops out by rail. Or else they are bringing them up
there. So we have to watch that. They evidently had too heavy
casualties, so they've stopped trying to do that with motorised
units. They are pulling out here. I have spoken to Manstein about
this business, this as well as that. He called up again today. Now
that the
Leibstandarte
has left, he wants to reconsider
whether to attack at all.
[This attack was the second of the two operations planned by
Manstein for the end of July, against Koniev's bridgehead across the
Donetz at Izyum. As has been seen, it never materialised.]
I think it would be sensible to wait. This small matter doesn't
need to be cleaned up, since the pressure is not too great.
Hitler:
How soon can the
Leibstandarte
leave?
Zeitzler:
The first train leaves tomorrow night. We are
counting on 12 trains per day. After four or five days, 20 trains.
The whole movement, consisting of 120 trains, will take from six to
eight days.