Barbarossa (19 page)

Bock's G.S.O. I, Major General Henning von Tresckow, and his
A.D.C., Fabian von Schlabrendorff, had conceived the idea of
literally taking Hitler for a ride. Once inside the net of Army Group
Centre's security system, the Führer's car was to be diverted
and the occupants detained. Hitler would be subjected to an extempore
trial, and an order of deposition, or even of execution (although the
concept had not yet been mentioned specifically), would be
pronounced. How matters were to develop thereafter is not clear. Nor,
indeed, is it likely that the conspirators had planned any further
than the removal of the Fuhrer's
persona
and the relief,
thereby, of the obligations inherent in the loyalty oath. Certainly
this particular attempt, and its successors which emanated from that
same headquarters, enjoyed none of the carefully planned supporting
processes which were triggered off by the
attentat
of 20th
July, 1944.

It may well be asked how the idea, much less the execution, of a
Putsch
could enjoy serious consideration at such a time, when
German arms seemed everywhere to be invincible. The answer, surely,
is that the plotters were the personification of all that was best of
their country's qualities, a rational intellectualism allied to a
selfless bravery. Their intention was for the creation of a "decent
Germany," that national entity whose elusive quality has for so
long been the despair of European politicians, and being Germans,
they naturally held military strength and constitutional order to be
corollaries of "decency." At the front, five hundred miles
inside Russia, they were in a better position to appreciate the
realities of the campaign. They could see that the irresistible force
of the Wehrmacht had at last collided with an immovable object, and
". . . when our chances of victory are obviously gone, or only
very slim, there will be nothing more to be done."

The officers privy to this conspiracy were so numerous and
occupied positions so close to the army group commander that it is
impossible to believe Bock was unaware of what was going on.

[Actively involved were Bock's two personal A.D.C.'s, Graf Hans
von Hardenberg and Graf Heinrich von Lehndorff. Others prominent in
the conspiracy were Colonel Freiherr von Gersdorff, Colonel
Schulze-Brüttger, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander von Voss, Major
Ulrich von Oertzen, Captain Eggert and Lieutenant Hans Albrecht von
Boddien.]

Yet the notion of a plot to kidnap the head of state while he was
visiting his armies on the field of battle, being if not encouraged,
then tolerated by the Commander in Chief, is so alien to the
practices of a Western democracy that we must find it hard to
believe. To comprehend how such a state of affairs could exist one
must recall the atmosphere of nightmare and fantasy that pervaded the
Third Reich. Private armies, personal hatreds, and rivalries; fresh
and vivid memories of denunciation and betrayal; of blackmail and
violence; of failure, humiliation, and imprisonment. What we
understand by a tradition of moderation was, where public affairs
impinged on individual conduct, nothing more than a
laisser-passer
to the concentration camp.

Practically every general in the Army was approached at some time
or other by the plotters. Not one of them lifted the telephone to
Himmler. Even Brauchitsch had gone no further than to tell General
Thomas, ". . . if you persist in seeing me [on this subject] I
shall have to place you under arrest."

The gulf between Army and SS made a denunciation
unthinkable—besides, there was always the consideration that
the messenger with ill tidings sometimes loses his own head.
Nonetheless, as the generals listened to their juniors and heard the
excited pleas of those civilian emissaries who journeyed to their
headquarters on passes provided by cells in the Abwehr or the Foreign
Office, other thoughts must have been passing through their minds. If
there was a plot in the wind, a possible change of regime, was it not
their duty to the Reich to remain in office? Here, after so long, was
a whiff of Seeckt's time; the possibility of a Reichswehr once again
returning to its rightful position as arbiter of the country's
political destiny.

This concept was to provide the generals with a psychological
element of excuse which they were soon to find very welcome. A hint
of uncertainty, and the mystique of duty gathered strength. The Army
was above politics, certainly, but reserved to itself the right of
intervention when events demanded it. Under these circumstances the
generals should play for time, even if this meant accepting orders
which in the normal course of events they would have countered by
resignation. This kind of muddled thinking, aggravated by a nagging
fear of being implicated too early, was to plague the peace of mind
of the "Eastern marshals" and erode their powers of command
and decision throughout the campaign.

Bock himself was one of Seeckt's protégés. He was no
innocent in the world of clandestine
raisons d'état
,
and twenty years before had been one of the original organisers of
the "Black Reichswehr." But now his ambition, compounded by
vanity and egotism, caused him to reject the notion of political
intrigue. Sheer brilliance at arms would, he believed, grant him the
powers which might or might not follow by the less certain route
which Tresckow and Schlabrendorff proposed. For he. Bock, was to be
the captor of Moscow. Then, verily, he would be pre-eminent among the
marshals; the slayer of Bolshevism; the first soldier of the Reich,
cast (as he believed himself) in the Hindenburg image.

This is not to deny that had the plotters succeeded in their
attempt to kidnap Hitler, Bock would have followed up by arresting
all the SS in his area and proclaiming a "military government."
But in fact, he rated their chances as "outside probability."

[An example of Bock's excessive "realism" in political
matters. In 1943 when formally approached by Thomas for his support,
he declared that this would be forthcoming only if Himmler were also
a party to the plot.]

Bock's paramount concern at this time was to operate within the
existing framework of command, to retain the mass of German striking
power under his own hand, and to gain permission to continue his
march directly on Moscow.

Without the help of their chief the amateur plotters at his
headquarters never got started. Three times the Führer's
impending arrival was announced from Rastenburg. Three times it was
cancelled. On 3rd August a convoy of SS arrived, bringing their own
staff cars. And when Hitler's aircraft finally landed they escorted
him over the three miles from the airstrip to headquarters. Until the
convoy actually drew up outside Bock's building, it was not known in
which car the Führer was travelling. For the duration of his
visit none of the young officers at Army Group Centre got close
enough to Hitler to be able to point their revolvers with any
accuracy—far less to set in motion the elaborate plans for
"detention" and "trial" which they had been
harbouring for so long.

Nor did events conform any more closely to Bock's own ideas.
Instead of being confronted by a resolute and unanimous body of
professional opinion, Hitler interviewed his commanders singly and
alone, so that none could be sure what the others had said, what they
had been offered, or what they had given away. The Führer
installed himself in Bock's map room with Schmundt and two SS
adjutants. He then sent for Heusinger, Bock, Guderian, and Hoth, in
that order, and asked them their "opinion."

[Colonel Heusinger, Chief of the Operations Department at OKH, who
was representing Halder.] The result of these tactics was that Hitler
at the outset established his customary moral ascendancy. The army
group commander and his two Panzer lieutenants were, indeed, united
in their recommendation to advance directly on Moscow, but under
Hitler's cross-examination certain inconsistencies cropped up. Bock
said that he was ready to advance immediately; Hoth said the earliest
date by which his Panzer group could start was 20th August; Guderian
claimed that he would be ready on the 15th. Bock, in his anxiety to
avoid any administrative excuse for a halt, said that the forces of
Army Group Centre were adequate for the task. Guderian, partly from a
genuine concern and partly no doubt in an effort to cripple the
scheme whereby the Panzers were to be diverted on a great southward
encirclement sweep, "stressed the fact that our tank engines had
become very worn as a result of the appalling dust," and asked
for replacements.

After hearing them out Hitler had his commanders called into the
map room together and delivered an address. He declared that
Leningrad was the primary objective at that time. After this had been
achieved the choice would lie between Moscow and the Ukraine, and his
inclination was to favour the latter on strategic and economic
grounds. A long and well-reasoned exposé of these followed. In
essence the Führer's attitude was founded on defensive
considerations: the capture of Leningrad would shut the Russians off
from the Baltic and secure the iron-ore route to Sweden; the capture
of the Ukraine would provide the raw materials and the agricultural
produce Germany would need for a long war; the occupation of the
Crimea would neutralise the threat from the Russian Air Force against
the Ploesti oil fields. There was also the consideration that

". . . Army Group South seems to be laying the foundation for
a victory in that area," a reason which can hardly have been
welcomed by Bock, the less so because of his own (unfulfilled)
expectations of lavish praise for the achievement of Army Group
Centre.

[This probably put Bock in a very bad temper, but there is no
evidence to corroborate Schlabrendorff (
Offiziere gegen Hitler
)
in his contention that Hitler upbraided and insulted Bock on this
occasion. There is no reason he should have done so; indeed, it Would
have been inconsistent with the whole tone of the conference (at
which Schlabrendorff was not present).]

Hitler would never admit as much to a professional soldier, and
unfortunately, we have no fragment surviving of his conversation
among his intimates at this time, but it is most likely that he was
already seriously taken aback by the strength of the Russian
resistance. The ghost of Napoleon stood at his elbow, as it did at
some moment for every German officer in the East, and he was
determined to resist the temptation of a march on Moscow until he had
laid (as he believed) a secure strategic foundation.

The only clue to this attitude—but a significant one—was
dropped at this same conference. Guderian was asking for completely
new tanks, and not simply replacement parts, to be sent up to the
front. Hitler refused on the grounds that the new tanks were being
used to equip fresh divisions in Germany, and said, "If I had
known that the figures for the Russian tank strength which you gave
in your book were the true ones, I would not—I believe—ever
have started this war."

Now followed an agonising period, two and a half weeks long, of
interregnum. Army Group Centre, its leadership hamstrung, floundered
on the brink of a tremendous opportunity, while opposite them, for
nineteen perfect campaigning days, the Russians worked unmolested to
rebuild their shattered front.

For almost seventy miles along the Desna, between the southern
corner of the Yelnya salient and the Bryansk bend, Timoshenko's
defence can hardly be said to have existed at all. A few units, none
above brigade strength, which had slipped out of the Roslavl pocket,
were drifting back across to the eastern bank of the river, and at
the bridges there were some "workers' battalions," raised
locally and without any heavy equipment. There was practically no
artillery, and not a single tank in working order-between
Spas-Demiansk and Bryansk. The whole region, nominally the
responsibility of the 43rd Army (which had lost the majority of its
headquarters staff at Roslavl), was in anarchy, with local party
officials taking the law into their own hands, attempting military as
well as civil administration, compensat-ing for their clumsiness in
this unfamiliar element with a Draconian severity toward "deserters"
and "malcontents."

Higher direction there was none, save the perennial bleat from the
Stavka
that the enemy "must be counterattacked wherever
encountered." The plight of the Russians was worsened by a total
lack of mobility. Even had men and guns been available, there
remained no means of moving them—except the forced march. Every
vehicle—civilian, agricultural, and military—had already
been spent in the death rides of July, when the Red Army had loaded
up and driven head on into the advancing enemy.

This, indeed, was the moment for Super Cannae. A wedge of Panzers,
driven hard into this gap, might yet have levered the whole creaking
gate off its hinge. But the state of the German armour, worn down in
the battles of July, made this a dangerous concept; and now Hitler's
directive made it virtually impossible from an administrative point
of view. In spite of this OKH and the staff, instead of formulating a
new policy and throwing themselves vigorously behind the plan for the
capture of Leningrad, lingered on with the cherished notion of a
direct march on Moscow. They used their waning powers to thwart the
expressed "general intention" of the Chief of OKW (Hitler)
and to divert and confuse the issue on a tactical level. Brauchitsch
managed to extract from Hitler the concession that a defensive
posture by Army Group Centre was "only temporary" and the
important (because vague) permission to "make attacks . . . with
limited objectives which
might improve its positions for
subsequent operations."

After the conference at which Hitler agreed to this, Halder wrote: