History of the Second World War (83 page)

While this alternating rhythm of the Russian offensive was similar to that carried out by Marshal Foch in 1918, it was a more subtle as well as a more speedy application of that strategic method. The striking-point was more deceptive each time, and the process was punctuated by shorter pauses. While the preparatory moves were never directly aimed at the place which they were intended to threaten, the completing moves were often direct in the geographical sense — and thus had a psychological indirectness, because they came from the least expected direction.

But a dramatic change came over the scene in the last fortnight of February. The Russians’ advantage began to pass when they wheeled down over the Donetz towards the Sea of Azov and the Dnieper bend, to cut off the southern German armies. The Russians’ aim here was now obvious, while it carried them into the same area for which the Germans were making. The next stage thus became a race, the issue of which turned on the question whether the Russians could establish themselves across the Germans’ escape-corridor before the latter could arrive and concentrate to check the down stroke.

Unfortunately for the Russians, an early thaw hampered them at this moment, and added to the handicap which ensued from their prolonged advance. When they had planned their winter offensive they had found that the administrative side of the plan did not fit the strategic side, since there was not sufficient transport to carry even half the minimum supplies of petrol, ammunition, and food required for such an extensive range of thrusts. With characteristic boldness they decided that, instead of modifying the plan, they would bank on obtaining the larger part of their necessities from the enemy! That policy succeeded, as a large number of supply depots and dumps were overrun in each breakthrough. But when the enemy’s resistance stiffened, and such captures became fewer, the Russians became more subject to the transport handicap the farther they advanced beyond their railheads. Thus the law of overstretch came into operation again; this time to the Russians’ disadvantage. There were few railways in the Don-Donetz corridor, and these ran at right angles to their line of advance south-west-ward. By contrast, the east-to-west run of the relatively numerous rail routes south of the Donetz helped the Germans to hasten their assembly at the danger-point. The latter also began to profit by the contraction of their front — now 600 miles shorter than it had been in the autumn.

Brought to a halt by this combination of causes, the Russians were left in a very awkward position. They had driven a large wedge eighty miles beyond the Donetz towards the Dnieper, but stopping thirty miles short of it, at Pavlograd. They had driven a narrow wedge seventy miles beyond the Donetz southwards, to Krasnoarmeisk, across the corridor between that river and the Sea of Azov. The Germans, gathering all their available forces, quickly mounted a three-pointed counterstroke under Manstein’s direction. It was designed to take advantage of the irregularity of the Russians’ salient position, and particularly of its two projections. A left-hand thrust was delivered from the Dnieper against the south-western tip; a right-hand thrust was made against the south-eastern tip; a central thrust was made into the sagging front between them, towards Lozovaya. Both tips were broken off and German armoured wedges were driven deep into the body of the salient. These counterstrokes in the last week of February developed into a general counteroffensive as the Germans’ westward withdrawal from Rostov provided more reinforcements. By the first week of March the German drive had reached the Donetz again on a wide frontage around Izyum, the Russian salient had been almost wiped out, and a large portion of the Russian forces had been cornered south of Kharkov.

If the Germans could have crossed the Donetz quickly, and cut astride the rear of the Russian armies that were advancing west, they might have produced a Russian disaster comparable to their own at Stalingrad. But they were baulked in the attempt, lacking sufficient weight to carry by assault any strongly held obstacle. After this check, the centre of gravity was shifted north-west, where the Germans’ enveloping pressure squeezed the Russians out of Kharkov, once again, on March 15. Four days later a rapid German drive north of Kharkov regained Belgorod. But that was the limit of the Germans’ success. Their counteroffensive petered out the following week in the slush of the spring thaw.

While the Germans had been delivering their counteroffensive in the south, they had been falling back in the north. It was the first significant retreat there for more than a year. After the whiter campaign of 1941-2, the German front facing Moscow had the shape of a clenched fist, with the Russians lapping round the wrist — where Smolensk lay. In August the Russians had struck hard at the left knuckle, the fortified centre of Rzhev, in an effort to create a diversion in aid of Stalingrad by cracking the enemy’s central front. Their offensive had been baffled by the stubborn resistance of Rzhev, though they had cut into its flanks and left the knuckle exposed. A fresh effort in November had increased its exposure, so that it came to look like a peninsula with a narrow isthmus. At the end of the year the Russians attacked from the tip of their own great salient north of the German salient, and captured the junction of Velikye Luki, 150 miles due west of Rzhev, on the line from Moscow to Riga. As a result the danger, not only to Rzhev, but to the whole fist, became more manifest.

A month later the danger was indirectly emphasised by the surrender of the forces at Stalingrad, while the subsequent spreading collapse in the south showed the price of trying to hold overextended fronts. Zeitzler now achieved his only significant piece of persuasion in dealing with Hitler. Much as the Leader hated any withdrawal, and particularly one that would be a step back from Moscow, he was induced to agree that the front must be straightened in that sector, to avoid a collapse and to free reserves. Rzhev was evacuated at the beginning of March, just as a fresh Russian attack was opening, and by the 12th the whole fist was abandoned, including the important communications centre of Vyasma. The Germans withdrew to a straighter line covering Smolensk. The smaller fortified salient of Demyansk, between Velikye Luki and Lake Ilmen, was also abandoned at the beginning of March. (The significance of this step-back was obscured in the West by the way that British and American newspaper maps had for over a year shown a straight line here, with Demyansk well inside the Russian front.)

What the German armies gained by this shortening of the front in the north was, however, more than offset by the fresh extension, and temptation, created by the success of their counteroffensive in the south. It nullified the generals’ hope that Hitler might be led to sanction a long step-back to a line where they could consolidate and reorganise well out of reach of the Russians. It provided a new-old set of offensive springboards that looked all too promising to a man whose instincts were predominantly offensive, and whose mind was intensely reluctant to give up the idea that an offensive gamble might still turn the whole situation in his favour.

The success of the counteroffensive had removed any urgent necessity for leaving the Donetz Basin. By standing on his last year’s line south of the Donetz, near Taganrog, Hitler could preserve that industrial asset while also preserving the hope of a fresh bid for the Caucasus. By the recent return to the banks of the Donetz farther west, between Kharkov and Izyum, Hitler could picture the development of a fresh flanking leverage there. By recapturing Belgorod and maintaining Orel he had excellent flank positions for a pincer-stroke against the Russians’ nearby captured position at and around Kursk. By pinching off that great salient, he would produce a yawning hole in the Russian front, and once his panzer divisions poured through it anything might develop. The Russians’ strength was greater than he had reckoned earlier, but their losses had been very heavy. It was only the ‘old generals’ who deemed their resources inexhaustible. Pursuing this line of thought, biased by his natural inclination, it increasingly appeared to Hitler that a break-through at Kursk might again turn the balance in his favour, and provide a solution for all his problems. He found it easy to convince himself that his troubles were due to the Russian winter, and that he could always count on having the advantage in summer. The prospect became his midsummer night’s dream.

While the main offensive was to be on the Kursk sector, his summer programme also included the attack on Leningrad that had been twice postponed — it is curious how closely his plan repeated the lines, and points, of the 1942 pattern. A parachute corps of two divisions had now been formed, and this was to be used for a swoop on Leningrad to open the way for the land attack. Hitler was growing more venturesome as his chances faded, for a year before he had hesitated to accept General Student’s proposal for an airborne stroke at Stalingrad. But after the Tunisian collapse this corps was despatched to the south of France, ready to deliver an airborne riposte against the anticipated Allied landing in Sardinia. And then the defeat of the Kursk offensive led to the complete, and final, abandonment of the Leningrad attack.

Opinion among the generals was divided over the Kursk plan. An increasing number of them had come to doubt whether victory in the East was possible, and the doubters this year included such a thruster as Kleist. But he was not directly concerned with the offensive on this occasion. In regrouping during the winter campaign Manstein was placed in charge of the main part of the southern front. The 1st Panzer Army had been transferred to his army group at the beginning of the year, while Kleist was merely left in charge of the Crimea and the Kuban bridgehead. The offensive against the Kursk salient was to be carried out by Manstein’s left wing against its southern flank, and by the right wing of Kluge’s Army Group Centre against its northern flank. Both these commanders talked beforehand as if they were hopeful of the chances of success. But hope is commonly fostered by professional opportunity. Keen soldiers have a natural inclination to develop faith in a venture of which they are placed in charge, and a natural reluctance to express doubts that would weaken a superior’s faith in their powers.

The whole trend of military education also contributed to stifle doubts. While many of the generals would now have favoured a long withdrawal to shake off the Russians, as Rundstedt had advocated more than a year before, the Leader forbade any such step. As the line on which the German armies were standing, at the end of the winter, was not well chosen for defence, the generals were the more inclined to rely on the principle which they had been taught — that ‘attack is the best defence’. By attacking they might iron out the defects of the position, and upset the enemy’s dispositions for resuming his offensive. So all efforts were concentrated on making a success of the attack without regard to the consequences of failure, and to the way that the expenditure of Germany’s newly accumulated reserves would bankrupt any subsequent defence.

The shrinkage of Germany’s assets was veiled by a policy of extreme internal secrecy combined with an increased dilution of units and formations. The number of divisions was so nearly maintained at the old level that the falsity of the figure, as an index of strength, was not apparent. By the spring of 1943 they averaged little more than half their establishment in men and weapons, but many divisions were left much below that level while others were brought almost up to establishment. Commanders were kept in such watertight compartments under the security policy that few of them had any clear idea of the general situation, and they were taught that it was healthier not to enquire. But the dilution policy was dictated by other factors besides the camouflage motive.

Hitler was fascinated, and intoxicated, by figures. To his demagogic mind, numbers spelt power. As the division was the standard unit of military measure, he was obsessed with the importance of having the largest possible number of divisions — although his victories in 1940 had essentially been gained by the qualitative superiority of the mechanised fraction of his forces. Before he invaded Russia, he had insisted on the dilution policy in order to produce the maximum number of divisions, and he had subsequently increased the dilution in order to avoid a decrease in that misleading total. The consequence of such dilution was a perilous degree of inflation in the sphere of military economics.

In 1943 the extent of this inflation went far to nullify the advantage furnished by qualitative improvements in the German equipment, notably the production of the new Tiger and Panther tanks. Whenever divisions suffer heavy losses, the spearheads tend to shrink out of proportion to the overheads — since the loss is incurred mainly by the fighting troops. In an armoured division, the highest ratio is normally borne by the tanks and tank-crews, a lower ratio by the infantry component, and the lowest by the administrative troops. It is thus uneconomic in fighting power to maintain divisions, particularly armoured divisions, at a level below their establishment. Unless the wastage is promptly made up, the body remains unprofitably large by comparison with the punch it can produce.

These handicaps of the German Army were accentuated because the Russian Army was now much better qualitatively than in 1942, as well as numerically stronger. Its performance profited from the increasing flow of equipment from the new and expanded factories in the Urals, and from its Western allies. Its tanks were at least as good as those of any other army — most German officers considered them better. While they suffered from a lack of supplementary fittings, such as wireless equipment, they reached a high level of efficiency in performance, endurance, and armament. The Russian artillery was excellent in quality, and there had been a large-scale development of rocket-artillery that was remarkably effective. The Russian rifle was more modern than the German, and capable of a higher rate of fire, while most of the heavier infantry weapons were equally good.

The main deficiency was the motor transport, and that vital need was now being met by an increasing stream of American trucks. Hardly less important for mobility was the quantity of American canned food that was poured in, for it also helped to solve the supply problem that, because of the huge size of Russia’s forces and the scarcity of communications, formed the biggest check on her capacity to exert her strength. It would have been a much worse problem if the Russian troops had not been accustomed to live and fight on a lower standard of provisioning than any of the Western armies. While the Red Army never reached an equal level of mobility, it was more mobile than they were relatively to its technical means, because it could operate on a much lower scale of requirements. Its primitiveness was an asset as well as a deficit. Russian soldiers could subsist where others would have starved. Thus the Red Army’s spearheads could now attain a deeper penetrative power, through being endowed with more ample resources, while its masses could follow them up, through needing so little in the way of transport and food.