Barbarossa (60 page)

Hewel:
May I interrupt? It's about the Prince of Hesse. He
stands around all the time. Shall I say that we don't need him?

Hitler:
All right. I'll send for him and say a few words to
him.

Hewel:
He bothers everybody, and wants to know everything.

Hitler:
I would start by giving him all the proclamations
we have collected here. They have been made public anyway. Philip can
read these, all right, they aren't dangerous. But be sure to give the
order not to let him have the wrong thing.

So much for the scene at Hitler's headquarters. The total time
devoted to the campaign in the East was about forty seconds (the
exchange with Keitel and Jodl quoted above), But there, on the
southern front, a situation was building up every bit as menacing as
that which prevailed in Italy.

This situation arose out of a persistent faulty appreciation by
the German commanders on the spot, and in particular, by Manstein.
Although they recognised that the attempt to squeeze out the Kursk
salient had been a failure, they still clung to the view that the
fighting there had sucked in most of the Russian armour and that the
rest of the summer could be devoted to a series of minor tactical
"solutions" which would straighten out and consolidate the
front before the onset of winter. The Germans would not accept the
fact that, as the weaker army, they would have to confront a Russian
initiative in both summer and winter instead, as had been the rule
until then, of alternating their offensive and defensive with the
seasons.

Manstein is perfectly frank about this. "We hoped to have
given the enemy so much punishment in the course of
Zitadelle
that we could now count on a breathing space in this part of the
front," he wrote, and that "Southern Army Group [i.e.,
himself] decided to withdraw a substantial weight of armour from that
wing for the time being, in order to iron things out in the Donetz
area."

The result was that practically all the Panzers were withdrawn
from the old front around the Kursk salient. The majority of units
were seriously understreneth, and still further depleted by a
rigorous inspection program which took out all vehicles in need of
repair and sent them back to the maintenance depots at Kharkov and
Bogodukhov. These establishments became so choked with work that
after 1st August tanks and assault guns had to be sent as far back as
Kiev, even for minor repairs, to the running-gear and gunnery-control
equipment. By the time the different Panzer divisions engaged in
Zitadelle
had sorted themselves out, it was painfully clear
that "a substantial weight of armour" was going to be very
hard to find. Manstein managed to scrape up a few oddments to stiffen
the headquarters of the 3rd Panzer Corps and sent these south,
together with the whole of the 3rd Panzer Division, one of the units
which had suffered least in the previous battle. However, as it was
intended that this force, the rump of the German armoured strategic
reserve, into whose creation Guderian had put so much energy less
than six months earlier, was now to strike two blows in succession,
on the Donetz and on the Mius, still further reinforcement was
needed.

The only force available consisted of the SS Panzer corps which
had been withdrawn from the Kursk battle at an early stage, and was
thus in better shape than the regular Panzer divisions. In addition
the usual priority which the SS enjoyed in the allocation of
equipment had allowed it to replace its losses more rapidly. From
Manstein's point of view the drawback to using the SS lay in the fact
that he had to get permission from OKW, and thus from Hitler in
person. This would have been a delicate enough affair at the best of
times, but during the last week of July, Hitler (as has been seen)
was preoccupied with the Italian revolution and had himself decided
to transfer the SS Panzer corps to Italy. A hectic exchange of
messages took place between Army Group South and OKW, with
intermittent direct intervention by the Führer. First, all of
the SS was ordered to Italy; then only
Leibstandarte
; then it
was ordered to Kharkov, except
Leibstandarte
, which was first
to open the 3rd Panzer Corps attack, and then entrain for Italy;
then, and finally, the whole corps was ordered south for the
counterattack, subject to the withdrawal and entrainment of
Leibstandarte
when rolling stock became available—
vide
the conversation between Hitler and Jodl recorded above.

But now Hitler imposed a new condition. Presumably from pure
intuition—-it certainly cannot have been from intelligence
reports, as none of the army commanders shared this opinion—the
Führer thought that a fresh Russian offensive between Rylsk and
Belgorod was more than likely, and he forbade Manstein to use the SS
in the Donetz operation, but ordered him to proceed immediately
against the Russian bridgeheads across the Mius.

In the meantime Russian tank strength in the Kursk salient was
gradually returning to pre-
Zitadelle
figures. The figure of
thirty-five armoured divisions, with which Rokossovski and Vatutin
had started the battle, hardly shrank at all, although naturally the
effective strength of many were diminished.

Having been left masters of the field, the Russians were able to
pull in and repair the majority of lightly damaged tanks by the end
of July. Moreover, their spares problem was greatly simplified by the
fact that they had fought the battle with only one type of tank—the
T 34—while the Germans had engaged five separate types of tanks
and two assault guns.

[This refers to basic, or chassis, variants;
viz.
PzKw III and IV,
Panther, Porsche, and Henschel Tiger. Differences in armament
compounded the varieties. Assault guns were mounted on both PzKw IV
and Skoda chassis.]

The number of Russian tanks operational on 5th July in the salient
was about 3,800; by 13th July this had fallen to under 1,500; yet by
3rd August it had risen again to 2,750. It seems unlikely that any
new equipment was sent to Rokossovski (although three fresh regiments
of self-propelled artillery went to Vatutin at the end of July), for
both Sokolovski, to the north, and Koniev and Malinovsky, below the
Donetz, were charged with the undertaking of supporting offensives at
this time. Consequently this recovery must be attributed to skill and
energy in the field workshops—and would probably have been even
more spectacular if it had not been for the number of crews who had
been made casualties in the early stages of the battle and for whom
there were no trained replacements.

In this brief lull both sides proceeded with the urgent groundwork
to their own plans. The Germans, if anything, were the more
leisurely. Their notion was for "a short sharp punch to
straighten out First Panzer Army's position south of the Donetz,"
(opposite Koniev) then "to use the whole of our armour to wipe
out the big enemy bridgehead in Sixth Army's sector and to restore
the Mius front." The
Stavka
, on the other hand, was
pressing on with its own plans for breaking up the entire German
front in South Russia. This plan was typical of all of the Russians'
major operations in the East (with the one brilliant exception of
Stalingrad), being unimaginative, lacking in finesse, and dictated
by the size of their forces and the limitations of the subordinate
commanders.

After worsting the Germans in the head-on
Materialschlacht
at Kursk, the Russians planned three separate secondary offensives
which had the purpose of keeping the German reserves dispersed,
together with the usual opportunistic and ill-defined aim of picking
up any ground that was going if a weak spot should be discovered. Of
these Sokolovski's, at Orel, was purely diversionary. But that
launched under Koniev on the upper Donetz was intended as the
northern arm of a gigantic pincer aimed at Kharkov, against which the
supporting thrust was to come from Malinovsky in the southern sector.

Thus it can be seen that the despatch of all the battleworthy
armour to the extreme south of the front, to settle the score with
Malinovsky, was the most dangerous course the Germans could follow.
Paradoxically, Hitler, who sensed an impending attack on Kharkov and
was trying to hold the SS back to deal with it, aggravated the
danger. For had Manstein been allowed to attack first on the Donetz,
against Koniev, the strength of Russian resistance would have warned
Army Group South that something was afoot. As it was, the 3rd Panzer
Corps and two of the SS Panzer divisions started their attack against
Malinovsky on 30th July. The Russians were very short of armour
(German intelligence identified only one tank brigade in the entire
Mius bridgehead), and within a few days their infantry was being
forced back over the river, having suffered over seventeen hundred
casualties in prisoners alone. The 3rd Panzer Corps also claimed the
capture of four hundred antitank guns and two hundred field guns.

This was one of the last German tactical successes on the Eastern
front, and it was to have immediate, and serious, strategic
consequences. For even as the 3rd Panzer Corps was counting its
spoils, Rokossovski's twenty-four armoured divisions were moving into
position, 350 miles to the northwest.

While the military situation deteriorated, both in Russia and
Italy, the days moved inexorably forward to that appointed for the
meeting between Himmler and Popitz. Nothing had occurred, since the
subject had first been broached by Langbehn, to moderate the
Reichsführer's conviction that world events would soon make some
form of personal "reinsurance" desirable. Yet he cannot
have contemplated this direct confrontation with one of the leading
conspirators against the National Socialist regime and the Führer's
life with a completely easy mind.

The final details of the meeting were arranged by Himmler's
personal Chief of Staff, SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolf, for
26th August. The four men—Himmler, Wolf, Popitz, and
Langbehn—met in a room at the Reich Ministry of the Interior.
After some opening pleasantries (and there can have been few
occasions in history when "pleasantries" sounded so
brittle) Popitz got the ball rolling. He was very discreet.

"He approached the subject from the angle of the critical
military and political situation which had arisen for Germany, Was it
not possible that things had perhaps got a little beyond the
Führer
's
control? Should he not be relieved of some of the many burdens which
he bore? Should he not be, perhaps, reduced somewhat in cares and in
power, with, of course, a resulting devolution of authority upon some
strong personality—Himmler himself, perhaps; who better?—who
should take action to save the Reich?"

Not surprisingly, there is no record of what Himmler said. All the
participants are now dead, and we shall never know, but the
likelihood is that he did little more than mumble noncommittally and
leave the questioning to Wolf. At all events, what he did
not
do was to clap both Popitz and Langbehn into prison for their gross
sedition, and Popitz later told Goerdeler that Himmler was "not
averse in principle" to the suggestions. Within forty-eight
hours Langbehn received a travel permit for Switzerland, where he was
to "feel out . . . the reactions of the Allies to a change of
régime."

So far, so good. But the catch in the situation, from the
conspirators' viewpoint, remained. They had chosen to confide in one
of the most astute and ruthless operators in a jungle world where
they themselves were mere novices, dilettante amateurs, gentlemen of
principle. Himmler's vanity may have been touched by Popitz's
suggestions. But he was far too astute not to recognise the essential
enmity between himself, and everything he represented, and the
conspirators. The naïveté of Popitz's suggestions
emphasised rather than concealed the fact that the elimination of the
Führer was but a preliminary stage, to be followed by a purge of
the whole Nazi apparatus. And he who thought that he could beat
Himmler to the draw, particularly after the events of June 1934, was
a bold man indeed.

Whereas, though Himmler may have been fairly confident of his
ability to deal with the conspirators at a moment of his own
choosing, he was also uncomfortably aware of other, personal, enemies
in less vulnerable positions. The constant power struggle in the
higher echelons of the Nazi Party has already been the subject of
discussion, and it was sharpening and becoming more obsessive as the
decline in Germany's fortunes steepened and the possibility of a
successor to the Führer came to be openly discussed. It was
sudden intervention from this quarter which put paid to the "Langbehn
mission," and which ensured for the unfortunate doctor a more
gruesome demise than he might otherwise have suffered.

Langbehn left Berlin with his wife at the end of August and
travelled to Berne. Here he sought out British and American
intelligence officers. Whether out of impatience or disappointment,
he soon extended the scope of his contact to include "Allied"
and even neutral missions, and to them he spoke less guardedly. It
may be that he feared for his own skin if he did not return to
Himmler with at least some form of positive encouragement. At all
events, one of these lesser agencies (probably the Free French) sent
a telegram to London asserting, . . . HIMMLER'S LAWYER CONFIRMS THE
HOPELESSNESS OF GERMANY'S MILITARY AND POLITICAL SITUATION AND HAS
ARRIVED TO PUT OUT PEACE-FEELERS.

The telegram was sent in a cipher which the Germans had already
broken, and it was decoded (independently of each other) by the
Abwehr and the SD. Canaris at once warned Popitz that there was
trouble ahead, but both imagined that it would be moderated by
Himmler's protection. They had reckoned without the forces of
personal rivalry which seethed around that focus of power.
Schellenberg, the head of the SD, and himself no stranger to the
world of cloak and dagger, acted fast.