Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (61 page)

While the battles raged around the Yel'nya salient, it was not the only place in Guderian's panzer group where the situation was being described as ‘critical’. The infantry regiment
Grossdeutschland
, which Guderian intended to use for offensive operations in the Yel'nya salient, was desperately engaged attempting to hold its front against powerful Soviet attacks. The supporting
18th Panzer Division noted that the regiment had ‘not the slightest reserve available’ and that ‘[t]he situation is repeatedly extremely critical’ with the enemy having already broken through the
lines twice in regimental strength.
¹⁰³
The
18th Panzer Division therefore strenuously opposed the orders for the removal of part of
Grossdeutschland
for the offensive towards
Dorogobuzh. Yet this went ahead in spite of intelligence indicating additional enemy strength, including 40–50 tanks, were moving up behind the Soviet front and it was anticipated that ‘it is not possible to prevent the enemy breakthrough under the current conditions’.
¹⁰⁴

While the centre of Bock's front strained under the immense pressure, the first major elements of Strauss's
9th Army and Weichs's
2nd Army were at last arriving on the western segments of the Smolensk pocket, but the desperate call to bring up more infantry was again endangering the hard-pressed southern flank. On 20 July
Heinrici, commanding the XXXXIII Army Corps, wrote home of the many problems his infantry divisions faced.

The Russian is very strong and fights desperately, driven by his commissars. Worst of all are the forest battles. Everywhere the Russian suddenly appears and shoots, attacking columns, single transports, dispatches, and so on. The war here is without doubt very bad and to this must be added the tremendous road difficulties, the enormous spaces, the unending forests, the difficulties with the language and so on. All past campaigns seem like child's play in comparison with the present war. Our losses are heavy …
¹⁰⁵

Describing the heavy fighting on the army group's southern flank one junior doctor,
Gerhard Meyer, wrote home in a letter on 23 July:

After weeks of very tiring marching my division reached the Dnepr, at that place the Russians in a great counterattack crossed the river to the west. This first encounter against the superior enemy, unable to be softened up with artillery, cost us much blood. In four places there was an enduring and very costly back and forth, whereby the two or threefold Russian superiority, above all in artillery, was very noticeable. The active strength of the division has sunken to less than half, with 80 per cent of the officers lost.
¹⁰⁶

On 24 July
Weichs gave Bock ‘a very pessimistic description of the situation’ in which the loss of
Bobruisk was suggested as the possible outcome of moving more infantry east.
Bock, however, was adamant and accepted full responsibility.
¹⁰⁷
By 26 July the
LIII Army Corps defending Bobruisk
reported that the individual companies of the
255th Infantry Division had to defend an average front of 1,200 metres.
¹⁰⁸

In addition to the delays caused to Weichs's infantry on the southern flank, the continuing Soviet resistance at
Mogilev, in spite of the gravest deprivations, was holding up a further three infantry divisions, plus the artillery of a fourth, on the Dnepr. As Bock observed with a degree of irritation: ‘The Russians are unbelievably
stubborn!’
¹⁰⁹
The siege continued until 27 July when supplies of food and ammunition were finally exhausted and the weary defenders, numbering 35,000 men,
¹¹⁰
passed into captivity. Yet they had fought valiantly, making the Germans pay dearly for the capture of the city in both expenditure of strength and loss of time. Such fanaticism on the part of the Soviet soldiers prompted the first private doubts about the course the war might take. Writing to his wife, Heinrici despaired that the Soviet will to resist was unbroken, and then added; ‘Presently, one has the impression that even if Moscow was taken, the war would go on from the depths of this unending
country.’
¹¹¹

‘I am on the brink of despair’ (Franz Halder)

The issuing of
Directive 33a on 23 July had already sent a shock wave through the OKH command and as the orders were passed down to the field commands the effect was no less dramatic.
Bock, whose army group was most directly affected, was incensed and even suggested the abolition of his command, presumably a veiled threat of resignation. In his diary for 24 July Bock gave voice to the ire of his discontent:

I sent a report to
Brauchitsch opposing the new operation and suggested that they remove the army group headquarters if they stick to the announced plan of action. Perhaps they will correctly construe from this suggestion that I am ‘piqued.’ That is rubbish! But if the army group is carved up into three parts there will be no need for the headquarters.
¹¹²

Bock's profound resentment of the new operational orders stemmed from two sources. On the one hand, he fundamentally disagreed with shifting the point of main concentration away from Moscow. In December 1940 during his convalescence from a serious stomach ailment, Bock read a series of articles in the
Neue Züricher Zeitung
entitled ‘How France Lost
the War’; here he noted: ‘I found Maurois’ [the journalist] view of the fall of Paris especially interesting.’ Bock then copied into his diary the following passage from the article: ‘After the loss of Paris
France became a body without a head. The war was lost!’
¹¹³
Conceivably, Bock attached a similar importance to the capture of Moscow and now saw that hope squandered. A second motivating factor for Bock was the prestige blow; he had already suffered the frustration of being switched to the secondary role in the French campaign and now with all his panzer forces going to Leeb and Rundstedt, he was facing an even greater
relegation.
¹¹⁴

On 25 July
Keitel arrived at
Bock's headquarters ostensibly to discuss the hole in the Smolensk pocket, but in substance Keitel's presentation was entirely concerned with
Hitler's most recent obsession – smaller tactical encirclements. Reports that sizeable Soviet forces had escaped the German pocket, with the panzer groups incapable of closing the pincers, had no doubt convinced Hitler that large-scale encirclements were invariably flawed and should be replaced by smaller movements where the enemy could be completely eliminated.
¹¹⁵
Given the increasingly limited offensive capacity of the panzer groups, such a theory had merit but, as Bock immediately observed, it appeared inconsistent with the wider objectives of the campaign. There were still numerous Soviet armies to be destroyed and many distant objectives to be reached, requiring in Bock's view broad strategic movements, which were impossible to reconcile with smaller tactical operations.
¹¹⁶
Thus in addition to Hitler altering the strategic direction of Bock's armies, the Field Marshal was now being instructed on the operational parameters for conducting new offensives.

Keitel then related Hitler's concern for the southern flank of Army Group Centre and proposed that Guderian turn south to encircle enemy forces ‘in individual small packages’
¹¹⁷
around
Gomel and
Mosyr. Such a suggestion was met with bewilderment on Bock's part.

I told him that this conflicted with the directive given to me yesterday by the Army High Command. According to it, the forces of my right wing, together with Panzer Group Guderian, are supposed to be sent against objectives far to the southeast, while Keitel's proposal calls for these elements to be turned southwest.
¹¹⁸

When
news of the operation reached Guderian he too was confounded by the apparent contradiction between his new orders and the goals of the campaign.

I expected to be told to push on towards Moscow or at least
Briansk; to my surprise I learned that Hitler had ordered that my 2nd Panzer Group was to go for Gomel in collaboration with Second Army. This meant that my Panzer Group would be swung round and would be advancing in a south-westerly direction, that is to say towards Germany; but Hitler was anxious to encircle the eight to ten Russian divisions in the Gomel area. We were informed that Hitler was convinced that large-scale envelopments were not justified: the theory on which they were based was a false one put out by the General Staff Corps…All officers who took part in this conference were of the opinion that this was incorrect: that these manoeuvres on our part simply gave the Russians time to set up new formations and to use their inexhaustible man-power for the creation of fresh defensive lines in the rear area: even more important, we were sure that this strategy would not result in the urgently necessary, rapid conclusion of the campaign.
¹¹⁹

Understandably, Hitler's latest ideas produced much antipathy and confusion within the army command, not least because they seemed to contradict his own broad strategic movements outlined in
Directives 33 and
33a. Emerging even at this early period of the war was Hitler's alarming propensity for a schizophrenic military policy, which could change according to his mood or the latest military reports to reach his headquarters. Ever more divorced from reality, Hitler sought to counter the escalating dimensions of the war through his increased personal involvement, convinced that victory should not be trusted to the imperfect judgement of his generals. Insisting upon tactical encounters, but proposing the war be won with grand strategic goals divided between
Leningrad,
Moscow and the
Volga, was only the beginning of Hitler's chaotic foray into military affairs, further widening the gulf with the
OKH. As
Heusinger privately wrote on 25 July: ‘Ceaseless disquiet and perpetual interference from the highest position, that is totally unnecessary. Aggravation is the result.’
¹²⁰

In further reaction to Hitler's interference, an OKH meeting on 25 July that brought together the chiefs of staff of the three army groups operating in the east was warned by
Brauchitsch that it was ‘not possible’ for the OKH to ‘protect against intervention from above’.
¹²¹
Yet, in his private notes before the meeting
Halder determined that the ‘[s]tray shots from the stratosphere’ had to be met with ‘patience, but also timely refutation’.
¹²²
In essence, the meeting was an attempt by Halder to achieve a consensus on basic principles of strategy and thus remove
the danger that the army groups would make contrary or competing demands to Hitler.
¹²³
This was particularly important as Halder correctly recognised that ‘[t]he front is more trusted than us!’ By this he meant the generals at the front, as opposed to himself and the other the ‘desk generals’ at OKH. This realisation instilled in Halder the idea that some reports to Hitler should be made through courier generals from the front
¹²⁴
– a prospect which emphasised the importance of a unified pro-Moscow
position.

In a discussion with
Brauchitsch on 26 July, it seems
Halder heard for the first time of Hitler's recent scheme for smaller tactical encirclements like the one being planned around Gomel and
Mosyr. Like Bock, Halder not only now feared for the strategic direction of the campaign, but also the operational method for engaging the Red Army. The inherent contradictions of Hitler's strategy were also plainly evident to him and he complained in his diary that:

If striking at small local enemy concentrations becomes our sole objective, the campaign will resolve itself into a series of minor successes which will advance our front only slowly by steps. Pursuing such a policy would eliminate tactical risks and enable us to close the gaps between the army groups, the result would be that we use up our strength expanding the front in width at the expense of depth – and end up in positional warfare!
¹²⁵

Halder then discussed the matter with
Bock who was vehemently opposed to sending panzers back towards
Gomel from the east, and spoke of Hitler's plan sabotaging the operational conceptions of the campaign.
¹²⁶
Bock still clung to the fading hope that his entire army group would be employed for a concentrated drive east to destroy Timoshenko's remaining armies. Bock believed that: ‘Securing the attack's southern flank would, for the most part, be a matter for Army Group South. From all that I heard, however, I doubt that the Supreme Command will be talked into it.’
¹²⁷
Halder, on the other hand, remained defiant and went to see
Hitler that evening in a meeting that he later described as ‘long-winded’, but at times erupting into ‘heated argument’. ‘The Führer's analysis’, Halder recorded, ‘indicates a complete break with the strategy of large operational conceptions.’
¹²⁸
According to Hitler, the Red Army could not be beaten with such operational manoeuvres because they simply did not know when they were defeated. Soviet armies needed to be destroyed
piecemeal in actions of a more tactical character. To a point Halder was prepared to acknowledge that the large operational encirclements were less than perfect, but he could not reconcile Hitler's preference for smaller encirclements with the attainment of Barbarossa's goal to reach the Volga.