Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (80 page)

Halder was perplexed by Hitler's ardent determination to seize the Ukraine over Moscow and he felt that securing economic gains was a deflection from the immediate goal of crushing the Soviet Union in the time remaining. Halder was also coming to the realisation that an indirect approach was needed to gain Hitler's approval and therefore pitched a new position to
Jodl with the hope that it would finally move Hitler to accept OKH strategy. On 7 August Halder met with Jodl and posed the question: ‘Do we want to defeat the enemy or pursue economic objectives (Ukraine, Caucasus)?’ Jodl replied that Hitler probably considered both goals to be simultaneously attainable. The answer confirmed to Halder the wisdom of his new scheme, which sought to offer Hitler everything he wanted by presenting him with subtly controlled information that supported his desires, and allowed the OKH and OKW to pursue theirs. In short, Hitler would be persuaded that Leeb and Rundstedt were capable of reaching their objectives on their own, leaving Bock free to march on Moscow with his armoured groups intact. The plan was not pure deception on Halder's part as he naively believed that a continued general offensive would work, but he wanted to assuage Hitler's doubts, practically in the south, by minimising the importance of enemy strengths. In the north Leningrad could be reached, Halder assured Jodl, with
Leeb's available forces. ‘We need not, nor may we, expend any forces for this objective that we need for Moscow.’ Shifting his attention to the main operation Halder declared: ‘The question Moscow
or
Ukraine or Ukraine
and
Moscow must be answered with emphasis on the
and
.’
⁶⁸
Thus, Halder's grand solution to the strategic impasse was to advocate everything, a stance which took astonishingly little account of the dreadful state of his eastern armies. Nevertheless, Halder convinced Jodl
who agreed to ‘pull together with us in this direction’. Halder concluded: ‘For us agreement on two ideas is necessary: All of Bock's strength for Moscow…and minimise the importance of the Korosten
group.’
⁶⁹

While
Halder was alarmingly ignorant of the strength of his own forces, his intelligence concerning Soviet strengths was even more misleading. On 8 August Halder asserted with assurance that, applying the empirical yardstick that two divisions could be raised from every million people within a population, the Soviet Union had reached the end of its mobilisation and could raise no further major formations. According to his calculations, this left
Army Group North's 26 divisions (including 6 motorised) facing 23 Soviets divisions (including 2 motorised), Army Group
Centre's 60 divisions (including 17 motorised) against 70 Soviet divisions (including 8½ motorised), and
Army Group South's 50½ divisions (including 9½ motorised) confronting an equal number of Soviet divisions (including 6½ motorised divisions). To this Halder confidently asserted:

This confirms my old judgement that [Army Group] North is strong enough to carry out its own task. [Army Group] Centre must concentrate all its strength to destroy the mass of the enemy. [Army Group] South is sufficiently strong to complete its task and maybe even help [Army Group] Centre.
⁷⁰

The much lauded victories of Bock's battle at Smolensk and Rundstedt's at Uman fortified Halder's sanguine faith in the success of his new plan to both turn Hitler's will to his own and finally break the Soviet Union. Halder hoped to emulate the success of the French campaign and achieve a final breakthrough to destroy the remaining Soviet armies. His plans reveal that he was as much deluded by his successes, as he was emboldened to surpass them. The fallacy of such assumptions, reminiscent of the deplorable pre-war planning for Barbarossa, proved that the harsh realities of the eastern campaign were still grossly unappreciated by the Chief of the German General Staff.

If Halder was captivated by the allure of impending success,
Hitler was less certain. The dictator felt the weight of strategic decision being forced upon him and vacillated as he tried to identify the shortest possible road to victory. From intelligence and past Soviet deployments it seemed clear that the greatest enemy strength was to be found on the road to Moscow, but Hitler was sceptical of treading this path, and not just for the historical parallels with Napoleon's ill-fated campaign. Bock's powerful forces had twice lunged in this direction, destroying large Soviet armies, but bringing no result and entangling themselves in long, fierce battles. Hitler had already identified the problem of such large strategic manoeuvres and had proposed smaller encirclements, but he was soon forced to accept that, while these held better prospects for operational success, because of their size they had far less strategic importance. The fact remained that the Red Army had not, as intended, been destroyed in the initial battles and a renewed thrust on Moscow, as the OKH advocated, seemed too much like reinforcing failure having already failed twice to acieve the desired result. Hitler also saw no war-winning potential in seizing Moscow. To the south, however, he saw the prospect of an immediate success over the Soviet
South-Western Front and the opening of the resource-rich eastern Ukraine to his forces. Yet this was hardly an annihilation strategy and would mean the bulk of the Red Army remained active in the field with even less time to deal with it before the onset of winter. As a result, there was hardly a general to be found who supported such a move. For the first time, Hitler may have begun to feel that control of events was slipping from his grasp, as there was no obvious solution to his dilemma without risking major drawbacks. Gripped with indecision, he reacted by steadfastly refusing to make any decision at all. Hitler's army adjutant, Major Gerhard
Engel, noted after the OKW military conference on 8 August: ‘One notices immediately how irresolute the Führer is concerning the further direction of the operation. Constantly vacillating between the ideas and objectives. From the situation conferences one comes out knowing nothing more than when one went in.’
⁷¹

Despite the weight of indecision, or perhaps even because of it, once away from the situation room Hitler's mind warmly indulged delusional fantasies of his future empire and conjured visions of his wars as historical comparatives to
Cannae,
Sedan and
Tannenberg.
⁷²
These wild protestations are unhelpful in determining Hitler's true perception of
events, since his illusions, particularly of the ‘
Endsieg
’ (ultimate victory), persisted until the final days of April 1945. In the situation room Hitler's conceited bravado had to confront another reality, frightening in its implications for the Nazi state. If Hitler had any sense of that danger it might have added to, or even precipitated, the dictator's sudden paralysis. In May 1940 Hitler had nervously halted the crucial drive to the English Channel because of an unwarranted fear of a military disaster. If his fears were again aroused in early August 1941, he showed better strategic judgement. There was no immediate danger to German forces, but there was a very real question about how Germany could end the war, and Hitler knew better than many of his generals that Germany was unfit to bear the economic burden of a long war. Thus, it remains open to speculation whether Hitler's desire to secure economic objectives in the south, which were made abundantly clear during the planning stages of Operation Barbarossa, now assumed a heightened sense of urgency, betraying perhaps a lack of faith in an outright German victory and revealing Hitler's growing concern over control of the Soviet Union's economic
heartland.

As the days passed without clear direction,
Brauchitsch's impatience spilled over into anger and disgust. According to
Engel, Brauchitsch bemoaned the constant agitation from the OKW in insignificant matters and the ‘ridiculous nervous reaction’ to every movement of the enemy. Moreover, by 9 August Brauchitsch shared none of Halder's optimism in swaying Hitler to the OKH's wishes and in fact despaired that ‘Moscow will obviously be abandoned’.
⁷³

On the following day (10 August)
Jodl followed through on his commitment to Halder and delivered a new proposal to Hitler, prepared by the OKW's Section L in accordance with the Operations Section of OKH.
⁷⁴
The plan argued for an attack on Moscow at the end of August, with Hoth and Guderian's panzer groups operating on the wings and the infantry in the centre. Jodl ended his presentation with a proposal that was clearly calculated to impress Hitler. He suggested that a later operation by Guderian's panzer group could be launched towards the south-east to seize control of the
Don River, effectively giving Germany the Ukraine.
⁷⁵
Hitler's immediate response is not recorded but, from the emphatic support it offered to Hitler's least favoured alternative, one can surmise that it only added to his uncertainty.

‘Today is the beginning of positional warfare!’ (Fedor von Bock)

Although
a number of valuable studies have recently taken issue with the long-standing Soviet assessment of early partisan warfare, the debate is focused on how widespread the movement was, and its actual effect on military operations. Justifiable doubt has been cast on the spontaneous national uprising mythologised in Soviet-era publications, but none disputes that a form of clandestine warfare was being conducted parallel to the main fighting at the front. Evidence from the army's files in August 1941 indicates that the partisan war was not simply a problem for the rear echelon units; it was affecting the main formations at the front. Indeed there was genuine concern at the impact of these camouflaged forces. On 10 August the Chief of Staff of the
9th Army, Colonel
Weckmann, complained to Army Group Centre about the treacherous conditions in the rear area which he stated ‘constantly increased’. Elaborating further, Weckmann added: ‘Confrontations with partisans increase daily…Army has the impression that the Russian rebels come together in bands and use every opportunity to attack.’
⁷⁶
A week later on 17 August Weckmann complained to
Greiffenburg about the drain on motorised forces which were being drawn away to ‘fight the still very disruptive and damaging partisan activities’.
⁷⁷

A similar problem was being experienced in the rear area of
2nd Army. In early August
Weichs asked that additional forces of the SD be committed in order to allow the smooth flow of supplies. He was informed, however, that these forces were fully occupied and could spare no resources, resulting in the
252nd Infantry Division being detained for this purpose throughout August and September.
⁷⁸
The army's own security divisions (of which just three were available to Army Group Centre
⁷⁹
) were utterly overwhelmed by the sheer size of the rear area they were charged to control. Already by the end of July, the
221st Security Division, with at most 9,000 men, was charged with securing an area 35,000 square kilometres in size. It is estimated that, of the three million German soldiers involved in Operation Barbarossa, only about 100,000 were allocated to rear-area security. By the autumn of 1941 Bock's rear area extended to
some 145,000 square kilometres, an area roughly equal to the size of England and Wales.
⁸⁰

Frequently the partisan attacks targeted the vital supply trucks operating in the vast spaces of the rear area, which helps to explain why the relatively weak early partisan movement had such a disproportionately worrying effect on the German armies. Organised civilian groups were still few in number and at an embryonic stage of development, meaning that the real backbone of the partisan movement came from the many cut-off and isolated Soviet soldiers still operating behind German lines. Their motives were not always governed by a devotion to the Soviet cause and were often dominated by a simple desire to find food and other imperatives. Nevertheless, with or without intention, their actions were striking at the weakest link in the German army, placing further demands on the stretched and exhausted German forces. Motorised units were especially important for responding quickly to partisan assaults and hunting down the attackers; it was yet another diversion the panzer groups could scarcely afford. On 16 August the
14th Motorised Infantry Division was asked to provide a battalion for operations in the Tury area against an estimated 500 enemy partisans.
⁸¹
The
29th Motorised Infantry Division was soon heavily engaged in similar work.
⁸²
Lemelsen's XXXXVII Panzer Corps noted on 19 August that in the large forested areas different partisan groups were operating in groups of 30–40 men. Equipped with good weapons, these groups were said to be striking at any trucks driving alone through the region.
⁸³
Three days later on 22 August the same war diary stated: ‘New is the increased partisan activity.’
⁸⁴
The
4th Panzer Division received orders to conduct ‘security actions’ against partisans on 24 August, but its operation failed to find the enemy.
⁸⁵
The
same problem was noted by Hoth's panzer group which reported on 23 August: ‘The partisans are obviously always informed as soon as German soldiers arrive in a village. The large forests and swamp areas
always offer enough cover, so that finding them is extremely
difficult.’
⁸⁶
The
10th Panzer Division took stringent pre-emptive measures and on 10 August the division started sending all men of military age to POW camps and seizing hostages from villages to be shot if hostile action was taken against its forces.
⁸⁷