Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (68 page)

Unable
to match the Red Army in firepower, the strength of Bock's army group was dealt a further blow when orders arrived from Hitler's headquarters on 29 July removing Richthofen's
VIII Air Corps from Kesselring's
Air Fleet 2.
⁵⁹
This was done to provide urgently needed support for Colonel-General Alfred Keller's
Air Fleet 1 which was proving woefully incapable of supporting Leeb's drive towards
Leningrad.
⁶⁰
Hitler's decision may also have been an unspoken compromise, exchanging Hoth's panzers for Richthofen's planes. In any case, in spite of resistance from Bock and Kesselring, the transfer took immediate effect and left Army Group Centre supported only by Air General Bruno
Loerzer's weaker
II Air Corps. This afforded Bock little help in the face of fresh Soviet offensives striking his front. On 31 July he noted in his diary:

The pocket at Smolensk is still not done…very regrettable, for the enemy's attacks on the army group's eastern front are growing ever stronger…The Chief of Staff of the 9th Army, Weckmann, is very downcast. He is also pessimistic about the situation on the northern wing…Kesselring is helping me as best he can, nevertheless his remaining forces are very weak after giving up VIII Air Corps.
⁶¹

During
this period of renewed Soviet attacks, few positions were as heavily assaulted as the Yel'nya bulge (see
Map 13
). On 30 July no fewer than thirteen attacks were made on the salient
⁶²
and the following day at 9.00 p.m.
Vietinghoff's XXXXVI Panzer Corps reported: ‘Since 3.00 a.m. uninterrupted enemy attacks which are still continuing in the south, southeast, northeast, north’. The report went on to describe a now familiar pattern of events – heavy Soviet artillery fire, attacks by enemy fighters and bombers, and at times with tanks. This resulted in heavy German material and personnel losses, with an extremely limited ability to hit back owing to munition shortages.
⁶³

The
supply situation at Army Group Centre remained steadfastly dire. As
Guderian wrote in his memoir: ‘It is true that the railway track had already been relaid as far as
Orsha to conform to the German gauge, but it was still only capable of carrying very limited traffic. The stretches of track which had not been relaid were useless since there were but few Russian locomotives available.’
⁶⁴
With the railways only capable of bringing up a fraction of the supplies needed, excessive demands were being placed on the truck-based
Grosstransportraum
to meet the urgent requirements of the front. In practice, this meant the trucks driving the whole length of the German penetration into the Soviet Union, which Guderian estimated at 725 kilometres, to fetch supplies.
⁶⁵
Not surprisingly, the trucks were hopelessly incapable of adequately bridging such an enormous gap between the border railheads and the front-line supply depots. Moreover, as the distance from the railheads grew, more supplies had to be consumed by the transport network itself and less net tonnage reached the front lines. Accordingly, critical shortages, like the one at Yel'nya, were set to continue until the new railroads could be extended and upgraded. In line with the German army's propensity for widely optimistic assessments of its capabilities, Lieutenant-General
Gercke, the Chief of Wehrmacht Transport and responsible for the railroads, was soon noted for promising impracticable numbers of trains which in reality could never be achieved.
⁶⁶
Not surprisingly, by 31 July the pressures before and behind Guderian's front caused him to write home to his wife: ‘The battle is harder than anything before.’
⁶⁷
Bock too was becoming increasingly melancholic at the unremitting demands from his subordinate field commanders for more troops, supplies and increased firepower – demands which he knew far exceeded the resources of his army group. On 31 July an uncharacteristically downcast Bock wrote in his diary:

I have almost no reserves left to meet the enemy massing of forces and the constant counterattacks. They took away my offensive air power and heavy artillery and diverted some of the reserves originally destined for my front, the painful consequences of which are beginning to show. With the present state of the railroads I can't receive any help from home or through the shifting of forces…
Greiffenberg briefed the Army High Command and asked that any units from home – replacement formations or whatever – be moved up into the rear area, because I urgently need those of my divisions still there at the front.
⁶⁸

Bock's troubled observations provide a striking example of the German command's looming crisis of confidence. Unlike most of his subordinates, Bock was privy to a sufficiently large view of the big picture to judge accurately the insatiable demands of the eastern front. At the same time, he was not so far removed from the battlefield that he could bask in the luxury of Halder's brazen confidence. In short, Bock's concern for the difficulties swelling in his ranks were well founded, but scantly
appreciated.
⁶⁹

Map 13 
Dispositions of Army Group Centre 30 July 1941: David M. Glantz,
Atlas of the Battle of Smolensk 7 July–10 September 1941

Although
a clear and pragmatic understanding of the war in the east was still lacking at the OKH and OKW, the manifest resilience of the Red Army was swiftly deflating the bold confidence of the German command, and exposing the many myths upon which they had conceived their war against the Soviet Union. The army's difficulties also raised the stakes in the strategic dilemma of where to strike next to administer the desperately needed final blow.
The evidence suggests that both Halder and Hitler were showing signs of nervous anxiety consistent with the weight of a decision on which the outcome of the campaign depended. The implications of fighting on into the winter were simply unthinkable, and therefore the war had to be largely won in the weeks remaining before the autumn rains. Halder had previously made reference to Brauchitsch's dejected and nervous state, but according to
Heusinger, Halder was the more troubling of the two. Assessing the army's Chief of Staff in a letter, Heusinger concluded: ‘he is near his end, on the one hand he allocates everything to me and on the other hand he constantly comes to interfere with his own ideas’.
⁷⁰
Heusinger also asserted that Halder was only sleeping four hours a night and was, as a result, exhausted.
⁷¹
While Hitler was beset with doubt and indecision over what to do next,
⁷²
Halder remained resolute in his conviction that Moscow held the key to victory, but feared
all his cherished plans would be doomed by Hitler's nonsensical understanding of how the war should be continued. Hence, Halder was far more afraid of the internal threat from Hitler's ruinous interference, than the external difficulties caused by the Red Army, which had become so worrisome to Bock.

Halder's perceived salvation came at midnight on 30–31 July, when Heusinger reported that a new war directive had been signed by Hitler adopting the OKH proposals.
⁷³
It was an enormous relief for Halder, whose mood was suddenly jubilant, as if a great weight had been lifted. Writing of the new directive in his diary, Halder's frustrations with Hitler were interwoven with his unrestrained delight: ‘This solution frees every thinking soldier from the horrendous nightmare of the last few days, in which the Führer's obstinacy made the complete stalling of the eastern campaign appear imminent. Finally a ray of light!’
⁷⁴

In fact, the new war directive was not the divine deliverance
Heusinger had led Halder to believe. The text of the directive gives no indication that major operations were to resume towards Moscow but, importantly for Halder, the distressing implications of
Directive 33 and
33a had, for the time being, been put on hold. It was also becoming clear that Hitler was no longer so certain about where the main attack was to proceed next. The official language was that all operations were simply ‘postponed’ until the projected ten-day rehabilitation of the panzer groups could be completed. Yet
Army Group Centre appeared to retain control over both panzer groups, and Leeb was expected to invest Leningrad with his own forces (plus the addition of Richthofen's recently transferred
VIII Air Corps). In addition, Bock was permitted to undertake ‘limited’ offensives to clear his flanks, especially in the direction of
Gomel.
⁷⁵
Above all, the directive bought Halder precious time, and with Hitler already hesitant and Halder's preference enjoying strong backing from the military commanders, hope was renewed within the OKH that a turning point in favour of Moscow could finally be
reached.

Sealing the Smolensk pocket and Army Group Centre's fate

By
1 August the pocket at
Smolensk, although compressed, was still proving a major thorn in the side of Army Group Centre (see
Map 14
). Strauss's
9th Army didn't have enough forces to reduce the pocket as well as undertake the relief of all Hoth's motorised divisions to the east. As
such Hoth's already battered front was deemed by Halder to be ‘uncomfortably thin’ with ‘nothing behind it’.
⁷⁶
The Chief of Staff of the
9th Army, Colonel
Kurt Weckmann, telephoned Army Group Centre concerned that the situation was not being taken seriously enough and judged Hoth's position to be ‘severely threatened’.
⁷⁷
In fact,
Timoshenko's residual forces did not possess adequate strength or concentration for a major breach of Hoth's front. The opposing armies had effectively battered each other to a standstill, and the enduring engagements were only further eroding their respective strengths. The battle had become attritional in nature rather than one guided by strategic manoeuvre, which only added to the urgency of removing Hoth's crucial motorised formations from the front.
Hoth complained to Army Group Centre that his forces were becoming ‘weaker from day to day’ and pleaded for the ‘urgent’ replacement of his divisions by the infantry.
⁷⁸
The
20th Panzer Division reported that its infantry brigades were ‘severely exhausted’ by the ‘unceasing battles’ and that officer casualties had now reached 50 per cent.
⁷⁹
The
19th Panzer Division held its panzer regiment well back from the front to avoid losses, and to act as a reserve in case of an enemy breakthrough, but without relief from the infantry the war diary noted that none of the mechanical work on the tanks could begin.
⁸⁰
The elimination of the Smolensk pocket was simply taking too long with Bock and Hoth becoming increasingly critical of the lack of vigour from the infantry in this sector.
⁸¹
Halder too was losing patience, but his concern was with the infantry's method of attack, which he stated was ‘once again being approached the wrong way’.
⁸²
The infantry divisions were driving the remaining Soviet forces directly into the rear of four battalions from
7th Panzer Division, who were busy defending themselves against attacks from the east. Under such circumstances, Halder expressed no surprise if the 7th Panzer Division ‘eventually gets burned’.
⁸³

Map 14 
Dispositions of Army Group Centre 1 August 1941: David M. Glantz,
Atlas of the Battle of Smolensk 7 July–10 September 1941