Ostkrieg (48 page)

The last defense, Frankfurt (Oder): A Volkssturm unit occupies a defensive position on the Oder River, February 1945. BA Bild 183-J28787.

The last gasp, Berlin: A woman being instructed in the use of a Panzerfaust antitank weapon, March 1945. BA Bild 146-1973-001-30.

Nordhausen concentration camp (Mittelbau-Dora): Some of the hundreds of slave laborers who died building the V-2 rockets, 12 April 1945. NARA 111-SC-203456.

The wages of total war, Berlin: Destruction at the Brandenburg Gate, early June 1945. BA Bild B145-P054320.

Hitler's urgency was also fueled by the realization that the only chance of successfully opposing the establishment of a second front in Western Europe, given the growing threat from the United States, lay in German control of the economic resources of the southern Soviet Union. Although aware of the enormous potential of American industry, the Führer nonetheless believed that the Japanese entry into the war and its string of victories in early 1942 would sufficiently preoccupy the Americans, allowing him the precious time to secure the oil needed for the consolidation of Europe. If, for him, the original impetus for the eastern war had been the destruction of Bolshevism and the conquest of Lebensraum, in the spring of 1942 the goal had become even more far-reaching: the acquisition of resources that would allow the Reich to wage global war. Once that was accomplished, Hitler asserted, “then the war is practically won for us” since the Anglo-Saxon powers could not seriously challenge a German-dominated Europe. It was, however, a situation of “triumph or destruction.”
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If, in retrospect, the Third Reich in 1942 had little chance of triumphing over the coalition of its enemies, at the time a narrow window of opportunity seemed open. America's entry into the war might not prove fatal if Germany could strike a shattering blow against the Soviet Union in the coming year, the last time the bulk of the Wehrmacht could be employed largely undisturbed on a single front. The America factor had significantly altered the strategic equation and had drastically reduced Germany's freedom of action, but, if the Ostheer could secure the resources vital to its survival, the Third Reich might yet successfully traverse this danger zone. All possibilities remained open, at least
in the minds of Nazi leaders: 1942 was to be the watershed year. Thus, even as Nazi planners worked furiously to realize the original economic and racial goals associated with Lebensraum—1942 was, after all, the year of the Wannsee Conference and the attempt to realize Generalplan Ost—the operational war plans for 1942 revolved around the necessity of securing oil resources, without which the grand Nazi schemes would be mere chimeras. Expectations that the new campaign would finally secure German conquests in the east fueled a surge in planning for various colonial schemes, while the mass murder of the Jews accelerated with breathtaking speed. Still, without the resources of southern Russia with which to continue the war, all these assorted racial and imperial schemes would come to naught.
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Operation Barbarossa had been launched on the gamble of a quick knockout and had failed because of unrelenting Soviet resistance; in 1942, Hitler now placed his hopes on a similar throw of the dice, but with even less chance of success. From the start of the invasion to March 1942, the Ostheer had suffered losses in excess of 1.1 million men, or 35 percent of its average strength. An influx of 450,000 men, virtually the entire 1922 cohort, still left the army so short of troops that the infantry divisions of Army Groups North and Center experienced a shortfall of no fewer than 4,800 and 6,900 men, respectively, per division. In late April, Halder estimated that infantry units in Army Group South were 50 percent of their original strength, with those of the other two army groups at only 35 percent. Nor could any more trained reservists be pulled out of the armaments factories, which left only those recovering from wounds as a ready pool of trained personnel. By 1942, the Germans had run out of manpower. The general fatigue of the men, the great losses of experienced officers and NCOs, the shortage of specialists, and the limited combat experience of the newly raised formations all seriously impaired the fighting efficiency of the Eastern Army. Nothing reflected the stark reality of the woeful scarcity of German manpower more than the decision in the spring to increase the size of the Italian, Rumanian, and Hungarian contingents fighting in the east, under the slogan of a “European defensive war against Bolshevism.” Of the forty-one new divisions arriving in the south for Fall Blau, fully twenty-one were non-German, certainly not an auspicious indicator of success. Although poorly motivated, deficient in training, and lacking experience, they were necessary to plug gaps in the overstretched front.
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In addition, the massive losses of tanks, vehicles, and artillery could not be made good by current production, nor could German factories supply enough ammunition to compensate for the unexpectedly high
rate of consumption, thus sharply reducing the firepower of German units. Fuel, too, was in such short supply that the Wehrmacht High Command cut the fuel ration to the Ostheer considerably, a blow to its mobility accentuated by the serious loss of horses. The extension of the operations that had made the railroads the principal means of supply, as well as the poor state of the roads that undermined truck transportation, also hampered German operational mobility. Since the key to the entire operation lay in the swift encirclement and destruction of remaining Soviet forces in the south, thus allowing the timely occupation of the vital economic resources, the impediments to German mobility at the outset of the campaign were nearly catastrophic. An OKW report in June warned prophetically that, given the army's deficiencies, “a measure of de-motorization” that would seriously affect the army's mobility was inevitable. Tellingly, at a time when the Soviets were rapidly rebuilding and mechanizing their forces, the Wehrmacht was in the process of reequipping its reconnaissance units with bicycles. This demodernization of the Ostheer did not bode well given that the success of the campaign depended on seizing objectives more than eight hundred miles from the German start line, an operational and logistic challenge greater even than that of the previous summer.
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Although the rail system had recovered somewhat from its near-catastrophic collapse in January 1942, the lack of locomotives and rolling stock, the demands of providing supplies for the new offensive, and the increasing frequency of transports of Jews to the newly opening extermination camps in Poland all contributed to a continuing gulf between the demands of the military and the ability of the Reich railways to deliver. Even the funnel-shaped widening of the area of operations raised the danger of a serious overextension of the already greatly overstretched supply lines. The conclusion of all who looked objectively at the figures was inescapable: the Ostheer in the spring of 1942 was a pale shadow of the imposing force that had launched Operation Barbarossa just a year earlier. In June 1941, 134 of 209 divisions, 64 percent, had been classified as “capable of any offensive action.” Just nine months later, at the end of March 1942, the number of formations “suitable for any task” had shrunk to 8 of 162 divisions, a mere 5 percent. As one report noted sarcastically, “Armored divisions with their 9–15 battle-worthy tanks do not at present deserve that name.”
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Ironically, Hitler's optimism regarding the impending summer offensive stemmed not so much from his belief in German strength as from his assessment of Soviet weakness. His operational thinking in 1942 was based on the assumption that the Red Army was at the end of
its strength and had only limited powers of regeneration. This assessment, in turn, resulted not only from the compulsory optimism afflicting those at Führer Headquarters but also from incorrect information. That spring, Hitler had received reports detailing a severe lack of food and widespread cannibalism among both Soviet civilians and Soviet soldiers, while the state of equipment in the Red Army was said to be abysmal. In a reprise of its costly tendency to miscalculate the strength of the Russian enemy, Foreign Armies East also reckoned in April that Soviet manpower reserves were “by no means inexhaustible” and, if subjected to losses such as those suffered in 1941, would run out by the onset of the muddy season. In the event, this assessment suffered from two key flaws: Soviet manpower reserves were larger than assumed, and German forces would be unable to inflict devastating losses on the Red Army. In 1942, the Soviets would not cooperate in their own destruction, largely evading encirclement.
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Economically, as well, the plan was flawed. German analysts had misjudged the extent of Soviet industrial production in the eastern part of European Russia, the magnitude of the factory evacuation program, and the speed with which production could be resumed in the Urals area. Even during the second half of 1941, despite the enormous losses inflicted on its key economic areas and the strain of industrial evacuation, the Soviet Union had nearly equaled the entire German yearly production of tanks, aircraft, artillery, mortars, machine and submachine guns, and rifles. Moreover, since the Soviets could count on Lend-Lease aid from the United States, a fact the Germans realized would result in a “substantial strengthening of the Soviet Union's power of resistance,” a key goal of the summer offensive was to cut the Allied supply line via Persia and the Volga River. By the spring of 1942, however, the bulk of shipments were already reaching the Soviet Union through Murmansk and Archangel. Even if the Ostheer had succeeded in reaching the Volga and seizing the oil fields of the Caucasus, then, a fatal weakening of the Soviet ability to continue fighting would not likely have resulted. Even the Führer seemed dimly to recognize this dilemma, remarking to Goebbels, despite his assertion that the Soviet Union was on its last legs, that it would be necessary to build a stronger defensive line this coming winter. Seared by the savage winter fighting, Hitler also revealed to Goebbels that he no longer wished to see snow; it had become physically repulsive to him.
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Germany thus faced the same ticking time bomb as in World War I: inferiority in resources and economic production would eventually prove decisive on the battlefield. German economic and manpower resources
were overburdened, while the production, transportation, and supply problems that shackled German efforts in the last months of 1941 could not possibly be resolved in time to bring German units anywhere near the combat strength of the previous year. Speer's efforts would, ultimately, pull German production back to Soviet levels by 1944, but, by then, it was too late: 1942 was the pivotal year. Hitler clearly understood the risks involved in the new operation but believed that he had no choice. His window of opportunity had been reduced to a few months; if he had any hope of a successful outcome of the war, he had to cripple the Soviet Union by the end of autumn. “If it proved impossible in 1942 to defeat Russia definitively, or at least get as far as the Caucasus and the Urals,” General Thomas noted anxiously in May, “Germany's war situation must be judged as extremely unfavorable, if not hopeless.”
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The Red Army had suffered staggering casualties in 1941; perhaps, the Führer thought, it could not now resist another German onslaught. Having concentrated his forces in the south and phased even that operation into staggered assaults, he had made, he believed, sufficient allowance for the Ostheer's loss of strength. His grand strategic vision reduced to little more than an operational advance on a distant target that might, in any case, not provide the necessary oil to continue fighting, Hitler risked everything on yet another calamitous miscalculation.