A World at Arms (91 page)

The inability of Army Group North to maintain the siege of Leningrad after its earlier warding off of the relief attempts of 1941–42 surely contributed to Hitler’s willingness finally to give up the Demyansk salient and to pull out the German divisions stationed there. Here, too, there was symbolic significance. A pincer operation from Army Group North to meet Army Group Center had been assumed to be a necessary preliminary for any renewed offensive toward Moscow. Giving up the northern base for such a pincer movement–and thus in effect writing off that possibility–made it easier for Zeitzler and the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Center to persuade Hitler to approve operation “Buffalo” (Büffel), the abandonment of the Rzhev salient, the southern base of any such pincer, which had been the scene of such bitter fighting over
the preceding year. Carried out during March, 1943, even as the last German units were withdrawing from the Demyansk area, this operation could be seen as strengthening the now shorter German line. In the broader canvas of the war, however, the two withdrawals, however trumpeted as defensive successes and as triumphs of military reason over megalomania, constituted a clear sign that the German tide was ebbing and that all hopes of a renewed offensive toward the Soviet capital had been given up in German headquarters.
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In a way, the relief of Leningrad brought with it the relief of Moscow.

The more ambitious aims of Soviet winter offensives had been thwarted in early 1943 as in 1942, but there was a major difference. The great victory at Stalingrad had repercussions on the German home front and on her allies in a way that went far beyond those of the preceding winter. Inside Germany, the loss of the 6th Army introduced a somber mood into a country beginning to show signs of weariness at a war that had now lasted three and a half years and whose casualties were steadily rising. The obvious signs that things were not going well in the Mediterranean combined with the impact of bombing to make the war as a whole look far grimmer than ever before.
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The broader picture of Germany’s home front development will be sketched in the next chapter, but it belongs in this context that the major new effort at mobilization of the home front came as a direct result of the defeat at Stalingrad.

The exclusion of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels from immediate responsibility in the new mobilization measures adopted at Hitler’s insistence led the ambitious and anxious minister to seize the initiative by staging the spectacle which came to symbolize the whole process: his total war speech of February 18, 1943. Carefully rehearsed, staged before a hand–picked audience, and broadcast and filmed in a closely coordinated propaganda campaign, this action was designed simultaneously to re–elevate Goebbels to a major role in domestic affairs and to reinvigorate flagging morale.
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Within limits it did both. But while it could harness greater energies to the ongoing conflict, it could not reverse the disastrous defeat suffered at the front or reassure Germany’s allies who drew very different lessons from the events on the Eastern Front.

The most immediately hard hit of Germany’s allies were those whose armies had been crushed by the Soviet offensives: Romania had lost two whole armies, Hungary and Italy each one. The government of Marshal Antonescu, based as it was on the Romanian army as its main pillar of support at home, was especially hard hit. The string of broken German promises of equipment and support, the disregard of warnings about
Soviet offensive preparations, the unfriendly treatment of retreating Romanian units by German officers and soldiers, and the general German tendency to blame their own military miscalculations and disasters on their allies all combined to produce a real crisis in German-Romanian relations.
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The Germans made some minimal efforts to improve the situation, while elements inside Romania, including Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu and the opposition leader Juliu Maniu, began to sound the Western Powers about peace and urged the Italian government to do likewise. The refusal of the Western Powers to do more than listen and call upon Romania to stop fighting against their Soviet ally–where eight Romanian divisions were still at the front–ended the soundings (about which the Germans came to be quite well informed). The stabilization of the southern section of the Eastern Front in March gave the Germans the opportunity to insist on Romania’s falling back in line, but the fundamental basis of mutual confidence had disappeared.
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The situation with Hungary was essentially similar, although her forces in the East-and hence casualties–were fewer than Romania’s. Here too alarm over the great defeat at the front shook the regime and its relations with Germany, which in Budapest as in Bukarest rested heavily precisely on the military officers who saw themselves disappointed and disgraced by what had happened. Here, too, there were recriminations and complaints; here, too, there would be first soundings with the Western Powers about a possible exit from the war.
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In this case also, the insistence of the Hungarians on
not
making peace with the Soviet Union blocked an exit from the war while the March German counter-offensive provided a basis for a firmer German line toward the reluctant satellite.

If an underlying fear of German actions against themselves came to play an increasing role in Romanian and Hungarian policy, the same element was also coming to be present, if in a somewhat different form, in the Italian reaction to the destruction of the Italian 8th Army. The impact of disaster in the East on the Italian government was to some extent absorbed by the concentration of the authorities in Rome on the turning tide of battle in the Mediterranean which affected Italy even more directly. The British breakthrough at El Alamein followed soon after by the landing of American and British forces in French Northwest Africa pointed to the possible imminent loss of the remainder of Italy’s colonial empire and a subsequent direct Allied assault on Italy itself. From the perspective of Rome, the obviously most effective way for the Axis to deal with the growing threat was to make peace with one of their enemies and concentrate all energies on the immediately most dangerous. Mussolini, therefore, began to urge his German ally to do
what the Japanese had long been advocating, namely a separate peace with the Soviet Union and the utilization of the released forces for an effective defense against Britain and the United States.

In a lengthy series of soundings, pleadings, and remonstrances, Musso Hni, Ciano, and other Italian political, diplomatic and military leaders urged the Germans to work out a compromise peace with Stalin (although simultaneously some of them were also thinking of sounding out Britain and the United States). The conferences between German and Italian leaders at Hitler’s headquarters on December 18–20, 1942, and a number of other occasions were used by the Italians to try to broach this subject, but Hitler always rejected the possibility. He made it clear to his Italian ally that he intended first to halt the Soviet offensive and then to go on the offensive himself again in the summer, and that he had no interest in a compromise with the Soviet Union. On the one hand, the enormous Soviet territory he expected to keep under any circumstances–especially the whole Ukraine–were areas the Soviet government would not be willing to give up, and on the other hand, there was no point in his eyes in leaving on Germany’s eastern border a strong and undefeated Red Army with the opportunity to recover its strength and build up its armament. Germany did send what forces it could to assist in the defense of Italy-and, as already mentioned, massive reinforcements were sent to build up the new front in Tunisiabut the war in the East would go on, with or without the Italians.
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The other important German ally on the Eastern Front was Finland. The impact on the Finnish government and public of the disastrous course of events of the winter of 1942–43 for the Axis can readily be imagined. First there had been the failure of the Germans to launch the planned assault on Leningrad; there had followed the series of defeats at the southern end of the front symbolized by Stalingrad; finally, to cap the avalanche of bad news, came the successful Soviet offensive south of Lake Ladoga in breaking the siege of Leningrad. Not as obvious to the public, but certainly evident to Finland’s military leadership, was the transfer of most of the German planes hitherto engaged in the Axis battle against the Arctic convoys from Norwegian bases to the Mediterranean to cope with the Allied landing in Northwest Africa, with the obvious result that the convoys from the West could now be expected to deliver a substantially higher proportion of their cargoes to Murmansk and Archangel. All of these factors produced a renewed interest in a possible accommodation with the Soviet Union by the Finnish government. There were some soundings in the winter of 1942–43 in which the Soviet government, somewhat to the surprise of its British ally, expressed itself as willing to return to the 1941 border. In the face of
German pressure, however, the Finnish government could not or would not muster up the courage to break with Berlin, and thus forfeited its last opportunity to exit from the war without the loss of territory even beyond that ceded to the Soviet Union by the treaty of March 1940.
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The most important of Germany’s allies, Japan, had been urging Berlin to reach a new agreement with the Soviet Union and concentrate on fighting Britain and the United States for some time.
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The Axis defeats of the winter of 1942–43 only led Tokyo to conclude that this advice had been correct all along and to redouble its efforts to urge what the Japanese considered reason on their German ally.
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The latter responded by calling for greater Japanese efforts against the Western Allies in the Pacific; from the perspective of Berlin, it looked as if Germany was bearing the major burden of the war against all of the Allies, and it seemed to its leaders that Japan was surely capable either of attacking the Soviet Union or of greater offensive actions against the British and the Americans. They did not fully understand the extent to which the Japanese war effort was both strained by the fighting in the Southwest Pacific and partially immobilized by the inability of the army and navy to work out a coordinated strategy.
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The constant urgings from Tokyo that a German-Soviet peace could and should be made reflected both enormous worry about the future in Tokyo and the total lack of comprehension of German war aims among Japanese leaders. Like the Italians, the Japanese were assured that there was no prospect of peace, that the Germans would halt the Soviet winter offensive, and that a renewed offensive in the summer would inflict even greater blows on a Soviet Union already weakened by great casualties in the 1941 and 1942 fighting. Germany’s demands–the Ukraine, the Caucasus, severance from the outside world and demilitarization–were not likely to appeal to Moscow; and Germany, von Ribbentrop assured Ambassador Oshima on December 11, had no interest in saving a tottering Soviet regime.
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All the predictions from Berlin were met with skeptical comments from Japanese diplomats. As Ambassador Suma Yokichiro in Madrid explained, it “will be the same old story–the beginning of hostilities in the spring, a big push in the summer and a nightmare in the winter; and this time I do not see how she [Germany] could come back again.”
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He only failed to predict that the nightmare would come for the Germans even sooner.

The consolidation of Germany’s southern front in the East as a result of the successful Kharkov counter-offensive in March provided Hitler with the opportunity to shake off the doubts created by the Stalingrad disaster. He and a large number of his military advisors simply blamed the great defeat on the failings of their allies–ignoring
the central German role in the catastrophic 1942 campaign. Now that things appeared to be going well again the satellite leaders were summoned one by one to appear in headquarters, or at other places Hitler had selected, in order to be lectured on the failings of their soldiers, the great prospects of Germany, and the need to hold together for final victory. In turn King Boris of Bulgaria, Mussolini, and the leaders of Romania and Hungary, Marshal Ion Antonescu and Admiral Horthy, were called on the carpet, with the latter two being instructed to drop their Foreign Ministers, Mihai Antonescu and Miklós Kallay, as appropriate penance for their having authorized contacts with the Allies.

Neither Marshal Antonescu nor Admiral Horthy followed Hitler’s bidding in regard to their Foreign Ministers, and all four were reluctant to yield to the insistent and constant pressure of the Germans to turn over the Jewish inhabitants of their respective countries to be slaughtered by the Germans, who were getting impatient about the recalcitrance of their satellites in this regard. It was, however, made clear to all of them that the war against all the Allies would continue in full force and that Germany would tolerate no deviation from the path that led to total victory or total defeat for every member of the Axis.
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GERMAN AND ALLIED PLANS FOR 1943–1944

How did the Germans see themselves, and their ever more reluctant allies, continuing the war? Germany placed increasing emphasis on the U-Boat war which, in the spring of 1943, was approaching its climax. In addition, other new weapons were at first thought likely to play a role in the defeat of the British and Americans. At a conference with Speer on June 30, 1942, Hitler had stressed the need to push for German superiority in the field of gas warfare, especially because he believed that the participation of the United States in the war meant that Germany must win by the employment of the new nerve gas, Tabun, since she could not match United States industrial capacity.
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As stocks of the new gas were beginning to accumulate, however, Hitler was told on May 15, 1943, erroneously as we now know, that Germany did not have a monopoly of the nerve gas which he very much wanted to use against London (no doubt as an additional sign of the love for the British attributed to him by some historians). Before employing the dread weapon, therefore, Germany would have to develop the capacity to defend her own population against such gases–and this she was never able to do.
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If this was one new weapon the Germans refrained from using for fear of retaliation, others looked more promising.