Ostkrieg (26 page)

At the same time, Halder, too, succumbed to gloom, noting on 4 August, “We could not expect to reach the Caucasus before onset of this winter,” a virtual admission that Barbarossa had failed. Nor did his mood improve substantially in the next week. “On the fronts . . . reigns the quiet of exhaustion,” he admitted pessimistically in his diary on 11 August:

What we are now doing is the last desperate attempt to prevent our front line from becoming frozen in position warfare. . . . Our last reserves have been committed. . . . The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus, who consistently prepared for war with that utterly ruthless determination so characteristic of totalitarian states. . . . At the outset of the war we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360. These divisions indeed are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen. The time factor favors them, as they are near their own resources, while we are moving farther and farther away from ours. And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front line, without any depth, are subjected to the incessant attacks of the enemy.
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As the invading armies were swallowed in the immensity of the Soviet Union, as every triumph brought German forces deeper into the quagmire, a bitter irony became clear: the Wehrmacht was winning itself to death in the vast expanses of Russia. Despite the failures of the encirclement battles at Minsk and Smolensk to destroy the Soviet will and ability to resist, however, Halder could think of nothing else but to try again. If the remnant of the Red Army was to be destroyed, it would have to be done in front of Moscow.

Hitler, on the other hand, drew an entirely opposite conclusion. If the Soviets were, indeed, massing their last forces in front of the capital, that surely meant easier pickings in the north and south, precisely
where his primary objectives lay. During the first two weeks of August, then, Hitler and his army chief of staff wrestled with the key issue of the main axis of German operations. Halder achieved a certain success on 12 August when the Führer conceded, in the Supplement to Directive No. 34, that the aim was “the removal from the enemy before the winter of the entire state, armaments, and communications center around Moscow.” The army chief's triumph, however, was limited by the further stipulation that the attack on Moscow would go ahead only once the threat to the flanks of Army Group Center had been eliminated. Three days later, in fact, strong Soviet counterattacks again disrupted Halder's intentions as Hitler ordered panzer units away from Army Group Center to the north to counter the danger and directed that Bock's forces should refrain from any further attacks toward Moscow.
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Faced once more with a dissipation of forces, Halder believed that the decisive moment had arrived to settle the matter conclusively. Enlisting the support of Brauchitsch, Halder on 18 August sent Hitler a proposal justifying a concentration of strength against Moscow. In addition to the familiar argument of destroying the last enemy forces, Halder asserted that, though important, successes on the flanks in winning resources could never be decisive in themselves. Halder, however, had picked the wrong time for a showdown. Hitler almost certainly believed that in the Supplement to Directive No. 34 he had already made a major compromise. In addition, the strain of the past month had clearly taken a toll on the Führer both physically and psychologically. Although a chronic hypochondriac, in mid-August he suffered an attack of dysentery, accompanied by evidence of rapidly progressing coronary sclerosis. When Goebbels visited the Führer's headquarters on 18 August, he was taken aback by Hitler's physical and mental exhaustion. Signs of extreme nervous strain abounded: he was obsessed with the gross underestimation of Soviet strength given him before the war by German intelligence, so much so that he implied that he might have hesitated to launch the attack had he known the truth. He also shocked Goebbels with the suggestion that he might accept a negotiated peace with Stalin. Churchill, the Führer rambled on, was grasping at straws, such as the recently announced Atlantic Charter; indeed, his government might well collapse and the war end suddenly, just as the Nazis had been unexpectedly swept into power in 1933. The Führer's nerves were clearly frayed, while Goebbels was sobered by the realization that the eastern campaign would not be over in 1941 and that the best that could be hoped for were good winter positions.
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Hitler's moment of strategic realism had immediate operational
implications. If Germany could not destroy enemy forces, economic considerations became paramount. His detailed reply to Halder came quickly and was a terse rejection of the army chief's proposals. On 21 August, Hitler issued an order through the OKW reaffirming that the principal objectives to be attained before the onset of winter continued to be the capture of the economic and industrial areas of Ukraine as well as the oil region of the Caucasus. Conquest of the Crimea was also a priority in order to secure the Rumanian oil supply, while the encirclement of Leningrad still took precedence over the capture of Moscow. The next day, in a detailed study, Hitler justified his operational priorities not only with the usual political and economic arguments but with military considerations as well. It was, he stressed, as Bock had already conceded, necessary to eliminate the enemy threat on the flanks before launching any attack on Moscow, so the operation into Ukraine to secure economic resources would at the same time serve the aim of securing the southern flank of Army Group Center. In any case, Hitler noted caustically, the original operational plan anticipated movements to the north and south, so, not he, but the Army High Command, had altered the script. Moreover, in a stinging rebuke to the army leadership, he noted that not only had they deviated from the plan, but they had also then failed to achieve a decisive victory. In the ultimate insult, the Führer then contrasted their shaky performance with Goering's firm leadership of the Luftwaffe. Although Hitler ended with some conciliatory words affirming his acceptance of the thrust on Moscow, he nonetheless emphasized that this would be undertaken only after the other operations had concluded.
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Beside himself with anger, and perhaps also a bit embarrassed that Hitler had seen through his obstructionism, Halder raged in his diary against the Führer, blaming him for the vacillation and indecision of the past weeks, and furious at the humiliating treatment of Brauchitsch. Halder even urged that he and Brauchitsch tender their resignations together, but the latter rejected the proposal. Deeply upset, Halder flew to Army Group Center headquarters the next day to rally support for his preference for resuming the offensive on Moscow. He arranged for Guderian, one of Hitler's favorite generals and particularly vocal in his opposition to a move south, to accompany him to Führer Headquarters in an attempt to dissuade the dictator from his course of action. Rather amazingly to those present, on the evening of 24 August, Hitler allowed Guderian, in the absence of Halder, to make the case for an attack on Moscow. The Soviet capital, Guderian asserted, was not just the political, transportation, and communications center of Russia but, in a
telling analogy that illuminated the military mind-set, “the nerve center of Russia . . . like Paris is to France.” Hitler then argued the alternative. The raw materials and agricultural resources of Ukraine, he noted, were absolutely vital to a continuation of the war, as was securing the German oil supply. “My generals,” he remarked in a biting comment, “know nothing of the economic aspects of war.” Although the day before he had asserted that an attack to the south by his armored group was impossible, Guderian now reversed himself and affirmed his ability to launch just such a drive. When they heard the news of Guderian's volte-face, both Halder and Bock were furious, but, in truth, there had been little the panzer commander could do to alter the situation. Hitler's mind was made up: the battle for Ukraine would go ahead.
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Nor, despite the later self-serving contentions of the generals, were Hitler's criticisms without merit. The bulk of the Red Army had not been destroyed, Soviet leaders had managed to organize an effective defense in spite of catastrophic losses, and the steadily declining German strength and the vastness of the area to be conquered posed almost insuperable difficulties. In addition, the German logistic system had neared the point of collapse: railroads had not been repaired quickly enough, and the dire state of Soviet roads overwhelmed German motorized transport. The number of trains arriving at Army Group Center could barely sustain daily operations, let alone allow a buildup sufficient to support an advance on Moscow. Although it needed at least twenty-four trains a day to supply its needs, at times in August it received only half that number. Clearly, the basic prerequisite for an attack on Moscow was lacking. Moreover, even holding the ground already taken proved difficult since the Soviets launched unrelenting attacks around Smolensk. By early September, in fact, the Red Army had forced the Germans to withdraw from Yelnya, important both as a psychological victory for the Soviets and as the loss by the Germans of a springboard for later operations. The continuing attacks at Smolensk further convinced Hitler of the need to eliminate the southern threat to any advance on Moscow.
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With the failure to win a quick victory on the frontier, the stark reality facing the Wehrmacht High Command was that, in late August, no one seemed able to produce a war-winning strategy that would finish off a reeling foe. Halder and Jodl both expected operations to continue into the following year, a conclusion arrived at independently in an OKW study and a point also made by Hitler in his study. Given the facts of the situation, Hitler likely had a more realistic view than did Halder. Despite the failure of his key assumption, the latter produced no new plan for victory. Where Halder, despite the evidence of increasing
enemy resistance and eroding German strength, clung to the hope that one last blow would lead to the collapse of Soviet defenses, Hitler drew the conclusion dictated by his recognition that the war would not end in 1941: securing economic resources had a higher priority than achieving another operational triumph. At the same time, the advance to the south, and the promise of another vast encirclement operation, might at last break the Red Army. The deeper problem, of course, was the one that had festered since the beginning. Hitler and Halder had never agreed on the fundamental aims of Barbarossa; with no clarity on the overall goals of the campaign, it had from the start been a muddled gamble on luck and good fortune. With his late August decision to strike south, Hitler implicitly acknowledged that the luck had run out and the gamble had failed.
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As the turbulent events on the eastern front and at Führer Headquarters unfolded, domestically the summer of 1941 proved difficult as well. Always sensitive to the popular mood, and with memories of 1918 constantly at the forefront, Nazi officials anxiously studied the weekly SD reports on the state of public opinion. Although the outbreak of war in September 1939 had been accepted unenthusiastically, the brilliant military triumphs in Poland and France had led to unprecedented popularity for Hitler. These victories, however, had not resulted in an end to the war. Instead, the German people faced first the uncertainty of a long war and then the shock of the attack on the Soviet Union. Although the assault on Jewish-Bolshevism was popular with party loyalists, news of Barbarossa had been received by the populace with muted skepticism. As in France a year earlier, initial successes had led Germans to expect another quick and relatively painless victory, but, as the campaign dragged on into the summer with no end in sight, the mood grew resigned and weary.

Initial announcements of spectacular triumphs that had done so much to raise hopes, in fact, now backfired, as Goebbels recognized. As the summer wore on and it became obvious that the Soviets continued to resist ferociously with seemingly endless manpower reserves, hopes of an early peace gave way to rising concerns. Whatever the scale of victories, propaganda announcements of “Bolshevik atrocities,” bestialities committed by “Jewish criminals,” and the “inhumane way of fighting” of the Bolsheviks did little to reassure the friends and relatives of those at the front. Moreover, the Soviet success in destroying significant grain stocks before they could be seized by the onrushing Wehrmacht forced German authorities to reduce the food ration in late July. Since the weekly meat ration for normal consumers had already been cut in early June,
this second reduction was a disturbing blow for a population with long memories of the lean times of 1914–1918 and a leadership sensitive to the link between hunger and revolution.
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For most Germans, the summer of 1941 meant the end of the good times of the 1930s, when the Nazis had provided jobs and economic security, promoted social programs, and restored a sense of national pride. Daily concerns over food shortages, rising prices, and the fate of loved ones now dominated the popular mood. Already in late June Goebbels worried, “Food situation in Berlin is very bad. No potatoes, few vegetables.” Although the situation improved temporarily, by mid-July he noted that the “extraordinarily precarious” food situation was producing “worries and also some nervousness,” while at the end of the month he fretted that of “a whole series of explosive items in popular opinion” the most troubling was “now the question of food.” By mid-August, fears of a repetition of the “Jewish subversion” of the Great War crept in, SD reports noting that, with an increase in black market activity, “once again an old problem” had become acute. “Unstable prices,” Goebbels noted with concern, “had made people surly and nervous.” In southwest Germany, the SD reported people grumbling that “in this war the little people are the losers once more. . . . Can one still speak of a Volksgemeinschaft?” For a movement intent on creating a society strong enough to withstand the rigors of war, such statements raised alarms. When anxiety over food persisted, the popular mood having grown “somewhat critical in August,” Goering ordered that food rations be maintained at all costs since the enemy's “only hope is to wear down the morale of the home front.”
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