Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (52 page)

Figure 6.2 
As the Soviet armies near the border dissolved, countless armed groups hid in the extensive forests of Belorussia ambushing German supply columns.

By the middle of July 1941 Hitler's desire to rule the great expanses of the east finally seemed within his grasp. Certainly
Halder's military briefings had done nothing to dissuade Hitler from this viewpoint – quite the contrary in fact. Halder's buoyant reporting on the military situation, with its brazen tone of optimism, upheld the most fanciful pillars of Hitler's
Weltanschauung
. At every stage the triumph of German arms was lauded over that of the inferior Soviet armies, providing a strident confirmation of Hitler's perverted racial conceptions and fuelling his unbridled thirst for conquest in an ever widening departure from reality. At the same time veiled qualms, voiced from various quarters, were either left unattended or dismissively rejected. It was in this atmosphere of unmitigated delusion that Hitler's revised
War Directive 32a was issued on 14 July 1941, calling for a future reduction in the size of the army with resources being redirected towards the air force. Although retaining the ambitious tank building programme, the directive nevertheless stated: ‘The extension of arms and equipment and the production of new weapons, munitions, and equipment will be related, with immediate effect, to the smaller forces which are contemplated for the future.’
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As an instructive indication of the recurring importance of economic factors
in Hitler's strategic deliberations, the directive specifically pointed out: ‘It is particularly important to ensure supplies of
raw materials and mineral oil
.’
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Conspicuously for the intensifying strategic debate, it was only in the south of the Soviet Union, namely the mineral-rich Donets Basin in the eastern Ukraine and the oil-producing Caucasus, that Hitler could secure such
commodities.

Caught in the hinterlands

As the swift advance east began to falter, observations made by
Hoth on 13 July in his panzer group's war diary make clear the intractable predicament undercutting the German army's apparent success. Assessing the advance to distant objectives, Hoth bluntly observed: ‘The expenditure of strength is greater than the success.’ Yet with Soviet armies reeling in barely restrained chaos, there could be no question of a respite and so the motorised forces pressed on, mindful of their own dwindling strength, but unable to do anything about it. In substance, the Germans were damned if they stopped and damned if they did not, although Hoth was not yet drawing such an arrantly bleak conclusion. Instead the panzer
general acknowledged the ‘heavy losses’ of the campaign, but added that these were not in excess of those experienced in the previous western campaign. On the other hand, the physical strains, he stated, ‘are very much greater’, and he highlighted the oppressive conditions created by the heat and dust. For the first time, Hoth also called into question the morale of his men, citing a multitude of factors beginning with the ‘barren expanses of the land and the doggedness of the enemy’. Furthermore, Hoth remarked on the state of the roads and bridges, as well as the fact that throughout the enormous operational area: ‘Everywhere the enemy is taking up arms.’ In conclusion the panzer general summed up the emerging frustration of his men, among whom there was ‘constantly the feeling, should the motorised troops have to do everything alone?’
¹⁵²

Certainly Hoth illustrated a perceptive understanding of the burdens of his men, for which he was commonly known among them by the affectionate nickname ‘Daddy Hoth’ (
Papa Hoth
). Yet Hoth's commentary on the motivation of enemy soldiers was equally enlightening and, if accurate, constituted a decidedly adverse development for the Germans. ‘The Russian soldier’, Hoth judged, ‘fights not out of fear, rather idea. He does not want to return to the tsarist
time.’
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Given the ruthlessly despotic rule the Germans were bringing to the east, and their genocidal practices, the worst fears of the Soviet people were soon confirmed, which greatly helped solidify their support for Stalin's cause.
¹⁵⁴
In the occupied territories, suddenly freed from Stalin's own brand of repressive rule, active opposition to the Germans was not always an immediate instinct. The extraordinarily brutal German occupation, however, which included the pitiless exploitation of the population (often begun by the first waves of German troops), the murderous practices of the SS
Einsatzgruppen
(action groups), the army's own criminal orders and the harsh rule of the rear-area security divisions, soon banished any hopes of a better life under German rule. As a result, the great majority of the occupied Soviet Union (outside of the Baltic states and parts of the Ukraine) were either ambivalent to the German cause or actively hostile to it. There was no attempt by the Germans to win over the people because in a short, decisive war their participation would not be necessary; what was needed could simply be taken and thereafter the population would be reduced to servitude.

On 14 July Halder took heart from Guderian's ‘surprising progress’ and Hoth's ‘very good forward movement’,
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yet, as in the initial operations, the advance continued at the expense of bypassing formidable Soviet formations, which were again to plague the rear area of the panzer groups. While this had caused its share of problems during the formation of the Belostok–Minsk pocket, the much greater distances and increased vehicle losses made the newly developing encirclement centred on Smolensk an immensely more difficult undertaking.
Operating in the vast depths of the Soviet Union, the neglect of logistical considerations was rapidly presenting the army with a new set of serious complications. As
Clausewitz warned, from his intimate knowledge of Napoleon's disastrous campaign in 1812, the importance of maintaining supply lines was fundamental to an attacking army. ‘These arteries’, as Clausewitz termed supply lines, ‘then, must not be permanently cut, nor must they be too long or difficult to use. A long road always means a certain waste of strength, which tends to cripple the condition of the army.’
¹⁵⁶

In the initial stage of the advance the panzer groups were principally dependent on the truck-based
Grosstransportraum
bringing supplies to the front from border depots. As the front advanced and the distances grew, only a corresponding advancement of the railways could maintain an adequate forward flow of provisions capable of meeting the needs of the army. Yet this depended on a number of factors not least of which was security in the rear areas. Expecting a short and conclusive end to the border battles, General
Wagner, the army Quartermaster-General, told Halder on 1 July of his ‘serious worry’ for the pacification of the rear areas. ‘The particularities of our military approach’, Wagner told Halder, ‘have resulted in an extensive insecurity in the rear area by insurgent enemy elements. The security divisions alone are not enough for the great spaces. We must also employ several divisions from the front line
troops.’
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By 7 July,
9th Army was complaining it was receiving only one-third of its allotted daily entitlement in rail supply and the following day even this meagre allocation was cut off in favour of giving maximum support to Panzer Group 3. This now meant that 9th Army had to supply itself using its largely horse-drawn
Grosstransportraum
over terrible roads to a distance of 400 kilometres.
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Not surprisingly, Bock remarked to Halder a few days later about the ‘overexerted’ state of the army group's horses.
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Even with the concentrated effort of directing the railroads to supply the motorised divisions, the fact remained that demand still greatly outstripped what the feeble rail network could supply. The assumption had been made during Barbarossa's planning stage that large quantities of Soviet rolling stock and locomotives would be captured in the initial phase of the campaign, providing support for the drive into the Soviet Union, while the railroad troops (
Eisenbahntruppe
) extended the German gauge. Yet, once the initial shock and confusion of the invasion had passed, the Soviets were quick to institute an extensive evacuation of their trains with the subsequent demolition of those remaining behind. This was so effective that, by the end of August 1941, the Germans had captured only around 1,000 Soviet locomotives of which just half were still operational.
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This critical setback had two major repercussions for the German campaign. First, the army became almost immediately reliant on extending the narrow-gauge lines as quickly as possible in order to assume the enormous burden of sustaining operations to the east. Planning for this conversion did not anticipate the effects the Soviet ‘scorched earth’ policy
¹⁶¹
would have on the railroads and installations, nor the extent of destruction caused by the Luftwaffe and front-line units in earlier combat operations. The conversion was therefore slower than expected and achieved only by the most rudimentary standards of quality control.
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The second complication of the German failure to capture large numbers of Soviet trains was that the deficit had to be made up by the already over-extended
Reichsbahn
(German railways). By the autumn of 1941 some 2,500 German locomotives and 200,000 railcars had to be employed in the east, creating additional stresses for the German economy.
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Given the inadequate quantity of captured Soviet equipment and the difficulties of conversion, it was hardly surprising that by 10 July Wagner
was expressing his concern at the limited railroad capacity towards Minsk, to which Halder added the note, ‘in the last few days very poor capacity’. Wagner added that the average losses in the
Grosstransportraum
, which were running at 25 per cent, were compounding the problem.
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With the depth of operations from the supply depots constantly increasing and the overstretched
Grosstransportraum
simultaneously contracting, it was no surprise that units throughout Army Group Centre were rapidly outrunning their supply apparatus. It was therefore something of an understatement when
Halder described the logistics of the army group on 11 July as merely ‘strained’, especially since he expressed his belief that the strain would be overcome in two days.
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Characteristically, the Chief of the General Staff gave no impression that he grasped the true gravity of the crisis, or the dire implications this held for his incessantly optimistic conception of the campaign. Halder, it seems, was largely basing his opinion on the highly subjective information provided to him by Wagner, but the scale of disparity between reality and delusion was far too great to exonerate Halder – and indeed a large part of the General Staff – of a significant degree of blame.

Among the litany of oversights and falsehoods that underscored the German conception of Operation Barbarossa, the OKH's fixation with Moscow is perhaps most conspicuous for the fact that it was simply an unattainable goal within the prevailing time frame. The paramount importance of logistics rendered the various strategic arguments advanced by the generals, however favourable they might have been, entirely superfluous. Equally so, the questionable preoccupation of some historians with hypothetical ‘what if’ scenarios
¹⁶⁶
likewise tends to ignore or understate logistical considerations, which alone made the seizure of Moscow, within the confines of the operational timetable, a preordained impossibility.
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Like so much of the stubborn confidence pervading the German high command, however, negative conclusions were rapidly supplanted by adherence to Hitler's maxim: ‘To the German soldier nothing is impossible!’
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Thus, in spite of all the encroaching difficulties Wagner nevertheless assured Halder on 12 July that the panzer groups could reach Moscow, although he left open the question
of whether the infantry armies could reach even as far as Smolensk.
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Two days later on 14 July, as the motorised forces were again striking out to the east, Wagner's assessment underwent a abrupt change, which reflected for the first time the cold reality of the German predicament. The Quartermaster-General conceded to Halder: ‘The situation is still difficult. The railway capacity is not yet sufficient. Pz. Gr. [2 and 3 of Kluge's]
4th Army will reach to the east of Smolensk. The
2nd Army, given its provisioning, will not get far beyond the Dnepr with the mass of its troops. The
9th Army not far beyond the area of Vitebsk [on the Dvina].’
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As the newly appointed commander of the 17th Panzer Division, General of Panzer Troops
Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma,
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stated after the war: ‘In modern warfare the tactics are not the main thing. The decisive factor is the organisation of one's resources – to maintain the momentum.’
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