History of the Second World War (29 page)

That incomplete victory left the Germans with an unsolved problem. It meant that their path to Moscow, a further 200 miles ahead, was still blocked by considerable forces — which were being continuously increased by newly mobilised reinforcements. At the same time the Germans’ capacity to mount a fresh effort was cramped by the difficulty of bringing up reinforcements on their side over the bad roads.

That spelt an inevitable delay, but nothing like the length of the delay that now occurred. For October came before the advance on Moscow was resumed. The best two months of the summer were allowed to pass while Bock’s armies were halted on the Desna. The causes are to be found in Hitler’s uncertainty of mind, coupled with the progress of Rundstedt’s armies south of the Pripet marshes.

On that southern front the Germans had enjoyed no initial superiority of force. Indeed, they had started with odds against them that on paper looked formidable. The Russians’ South-western Army Group under Marshal Budenny comprised thirty tank and motorised divisions, five cavalry divisions, and forty-five infantry divisions in southern Poland and the Ukraine; of these, six tank and motorised divisions, three cavalry divisions, and thirteen infantry divisions were in Bessarabia, facing the Rumanians. In armour it had nearly twice the strength of Marshal Timoshenko’s Western Army Group which had faced the main German drive. Altogether, Budenny had about 5,000 tanks, of various types, whereas Kleist’s panzer group — which formed Rundstedt’s armoured punch — consisted of only 600 tanks. Moreover, a large proportion of the latter had been engaged in the Greek campaign, and been allowed little time for overhaul before they were launched into this greater venture.

Rundstedt had to depend for an advantage on surprise, speed, space — and the opposing commanders. Budenny, the famous old cavalry hero of the Civil War, was most aptly described by one of his own officers as ‘a man with an immense moustache, but a very small brain’. Some of the best Russian commanders had been eliminated in the pre-war purges, and those who had survived as politically safe were often militarily unsafe. It was only after these too solid seniors had been weeded out under the test of war that the pick of a younger generation came to the top.

Rundstedt’s main effort was concentrated on his left wing, along the Bug. That plan made the most of his limited strength, while profiting by the fact that his starting line lay well behind the flank of the Lwow salient formed by the Russian zone in Galicia. The attack was thus delivered from a natural wedge, which had only to be driven in a little further before it began to threaten the communications of all the Russian forces near the Carpathians. After Reichenau’s 6th Army had forced the crossings of the Bug, Kleist’s armoured forces were launched in a drive through the breach towards Luck and Brody.

Surprise helped not only to facilitate his initial breakthrough, but to nullify the potentially dangerous countermove which the Russians might otherwise have made. Knowing that they had twenty-five divisions facing Hungary’s Carpathian frontier, Rundstedt had anticipated that these might swing round and strike at his right flank as he advanced towards Luck. Instead, they retreated. (That reaction, coupled with the lack of preparedness found in the Russians’ forward zone, led Rundstedt and other German commanders to doubt whether there had been any justification for Hitler’s argument that the Russians were about to take the offensive.)

Even with this flying start, Rundstedt’s forces were not able to make such rapid progress as Bock’s in the left centre. Guderian urged the importance of keeping the Russians on the run, and allowing them no time to rally. He was convinced that he could reach Moscow If no time was wasted, and that such a thrust at the nerve-centre of Stalin’s power might paralyse Russia’s resistance. Hoth shared his views and Bock endorsed them. But Hitler reverted to his own original idea in a directive of July 19 for the next stage of operations. The panzer forces were to be taken away from Bock, in the centre, and sent to the wings — Guderian’s panzer group was to wheel southward to help in overcoming the Russian armies facing Rundstedt in the Ukraine, while Hoth’s panzer group was to turn northward to aid Leeb’s attack on Leningrad.

Once again Brauchitsch temporised, instead of at once pressing for a different plan. He argued that before any further operations were started, the panzer forces must have a rest to overhaul their machines and get up replacements. Hitler agreed the necessity for such a pause. Meanwhile the high-level discussion about the course to be followed went on, and it continued even after the panzer forces could have resumed their drive.

After several weeks had slipped away in such discussions, the Chief of the General Staff, Halder, spurred Brauchitsch to put forward proposals for a speedy advance on Moscow. Hitler retorted with a new and more definite directive on August 21, which began:

I am not in agreement with the proposals submitted by the Army, on August 18, for the prosecution of the war in the East. Of primary importance before the outbreak of winter is not the capture of Moscow, but rather the occupation of the Crimea, of the industrial and coal-mining area of the Donetz basin, the cutting of the Russian supply routes from the Caucasian oilfields. . . .

Accordingly, he gave orders that to clear the way to these southern objectives, part of Bock’s army group (including Guderian’s panzer forces) was to turn south and help to overcome the Russian armies around Kiev that were opposing Rundstedt.

When these orders were received, Halder tried to get Brauchitsch to tender their joint resignation. But Brauchitsch said it would be a useless gesture, as Hitler would simply reject their resignation. As for arguments, Hitler brushed these aside with the remark, which he often repeated: ‘My generals know nothing about the economic aspects of war.’ All that he would concede was that after the Russian armies in the Kiev area had been wiped out, Bock should be allowed to resume his advance on Moscow, and Guderian’s panzer forces be returned to him for the purpose.

The Kiev encirclement was in itself a great success, and raised rosy expectations. Guderian thrust downward across the Russians’ rear while Kleist’s panzer group thrust upward. The two pincers met 150 miles east of Kiev, closing a trap in which over 600,000 Russians were caught, according to the German claim. But it was late in September before the battle ended as poor roads and rainy weather had slowed down the pace of the encircling manoeuvre. The brightness of victory was darkened by the shadow of winter, carrying its historic menace to an invader of Russia. The two wasted months of the summer proved fatal to the prospects of reaching Moscow.

The renewed advance began on September 30. Its prospects looked bright when Bock’s armies brought off a great encirclement round Vyasma, where a further 600,000 Russians were captured. That left the Germans momentarily with an almost clear path to Moscow. But the Vyasma battle had not been completed until the end of October, the German troops were tired, the country became a morass as the weather got worse, and fresh Russian forces appeared in front of Moscow.

Most of the German generals wanted to break off the offensive and take up a suitable winter-line. They remembered what had happened to Napoleon’s army. Many of them began to re-read Caulaincourt’s grim account of 1812. But on the higher levels a different view prevailed. This time it was not entirely due to Hitler, who was becoming impressed, and depressed, both by the increasing difficulties and by the wintry conditions. On November 9 he sombrely remarked: ‘The recognition that neither force is capable of annihilating the other will lead to a compromise peace.’ But Bock urged that the German offensive must be continued. Brauchitsch and Halder agreed with him — Halder telling a conference of the higher staff on November 12 that there was good reason to believe that Russian resistance was on the verge of collapse.

Brauchitsch and Halder, as well as Bock, were naturally the more reluctant to call a halt because of their earlier struggle in getting Hitler to accept their arguments for capturing Moscow rather than pursuing objectives in the south. So the push for Moscow was resumed on November 15, when there was a momentary improvement in the weather. But after two weeks’ struggle in mud and snow, it was brought to a halt twenty miles short of Moscow.

Even Bock came to doubt the value of trying to push on, although he had just previously been declaring: ‘The last battalion will decide the issue.’ But Brauchitsch, from far in the rear, continued to insist that the offensive must be continued at all costs. He was a sick man, and desperately worried by Hitler’s anger about the poor results achieved.

On December 2 a further effort was launched, and some detachments penetrated into the suburbs of Moscow, but the advance as a whole was held up in the forests covering the capital.

This was the signal for a Russian counteroffensive of large scale, prepared and directed by Zhukov. It tumbled back the exhausted Germans, lapped round their flanks, and produced a critical situation. From generals downwards, the invaders were filled with ghastly thoughts of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. In that emergency Hitler forbade any retreat beyond the shortest possible local withdrawals, and in this situation he was right. His decision exposed his troops to awful sufferings in their advanced positions facing Moscow — for they had neither the clothing nor equipment for a Russian winter campaign — but if they had once started a general retreat it might easily have degenerated into a panic-stricken rout.

Hitler had lost his chance of capturing Moscow by his August decision to halt the advance in that direction, and turn aside to clear a path into southern Russia. The forfeit of Moscow was not compensated by what his armies attained in the south. After the great round-up at Kiev, Rundstedt overran the Crimea and the Donetz basin, but without Guderian’s tanks was frustrated in his drive for the Caucasian oilfields. His troops succeeded in reaching Rostov on the Don, but in an exhausted state, and were soon pushed out by the Russians. He then wanted to fall back to a good defensive line on the Mius River, but Hitler forbade such a withdrawal. Rundstedt replied that he could not comply with such an order, and asked to be relieved of his command. Hitler promptly replaced him, but immediately after this the front was broken and Hitler was forced to accept the necessity of a retreat. That was in the first week of December — simultaneously with the repulse at Moscow.

That same week Brauchitsch asked to be relieved on grounds of sickness, the next week Bock did likewise, and a little later Leeb resigned when Hitler rejected his proposal for a withdrawal on the northern front near Leningrad. So all the four top commanders departed.

Hitler appointed no successor to Brauchitsch, but took the opportunity to make himself the direct Commander-in-Chief of the Army. By Christmas he had got rid of Guderian, the principal agent of his earlier victories, who had withdrawn his exhausted troops without Hitler’s permission.

A fundamental factor in the failure of the invasion was the invaders’ miscalculation of the reserves that Stalin could bring up from the depths of Russia. In that respect the General Staff and its Intelligence Service were as much deceived as Hitler. The fatal error is epitomized in one pregnant sentence of Halder’s diary in mid-August: ‘We underestimated Russia: we reckoned with 200 divisions, but now we have already identified 360.’

That largely cancelled out the wonderful success of the start. Instead of having a path swept clean of defenders, the Germans had now to deal with fresh armies that had arrived on the scene. The massive Soviet mobilization system succeeded in getting under way well out of the reach of the German armies, and from the winter of 1941 onwards the Germans were always to be outnumbered on the Russian front. Thanks to their own superior technique and training, they eventually succeeded in destroying these armies in successive great battles of encirclement — but then became bogged in the autumn mud. By the time that the winter frost had hardened the ground, they again found fresh armies blocking the route, and they themselves were too exhausted to struggle on to their goal.

Next to their miscalculation of Russia’s resources, the most fatal factor had been the way that Hitler and his top generals had wasted the month of August in arguing as to what should be their next move — there was an amazing state of mental haziness on the topmost level of the German Command.

Lower down, Guderian in particular had a clear idea of what he wanted to do — to drive for Moscow as fast as he could, leaving the infantry armies to mop up the disorganised bodies that he had cut through. In 1940 he had won the Battle of France in that way. It would have meant running big risks, but might have captured Moscow before the Russian second-line armies were ready to cover it. Far greater risks developed, and fatally, from the course that was followed.

As it was, Russia owed her survival more to her continued primitiveness than to all the technical development achieved since the Soviet revolution. That reflection applies not only to the toughness of her people and soldiers — their capacity to endure hardships and carry on under shortages that would have been paralysing to Western peoples and Western armies. A greater asset still was the primitiveness of the Russian roads. Most of them were no better than sandy tracks. The way that they dissolved into bottomless mud, when it rained, did more to check the German invasion than all the Red Army’s heroic sacrifices. If the Soviet regime had given Russia a road system comparable to that of Western countries, she would have been overrun almost as quickly as France.

But this conclusion has a converse. Hitler lost his chance of victory because the mobility of his army was based on wheels instead of on tracks. On Russia’s mud-roads its wheeled transport was bogged when the tanks could move on. If the panzer forces had been provided with
tracked
transport they could have reached Russia’s vital centres by the autumn in spite of the mud.

CHAPTER 14 - ROMMEL’S ENTRY INTO AFRICA