The Moscow Option (22 page)

At Lotzen, through the last fortnight of April, Halder’s staff struggled to produce a
Siegfried
to the Führer’s taste. In the end a three-stage plan was agreed. In the first stage Army Group Centre, augmented by Sixteenth Army and Fourth Panzer Army (all the panzer groups had been upgraded to army status), would attack along the front between the Oka river and Bologoye to attain a line Chudovo-Rybinsk reservoir-Volga-Gorkiy-Ryazan. Having thus secured a salient bound by the Volga and Oka rivers, Second and Fourth Panzer Armies would strike southwards with Fourth Army while Second, Sixth and First Panzer Armies struck east to meet them. Eventually a quadrilateral bounded by Ryazan, Gorkiy, Stalingrad and Rostov would be occupied, the line Hitler demanded manned by the infantry, and the armour released for Stage 3, the conquest of the Caucasus. In the far north Third Panzer Army and Army Group North would be advancing to the ordained Vologda-Onega line.

It was an audacious plan, and made more so by the same lack of reserves with which OKH had launched
Barbarossa
. But that, the dubious Halder reassured himself, had succeeded. The testing of the plan by war game, at Lotzen on 2 May, emphasised the narrowness of the margins but still prophesied success. Hitler proved happy with the new drafting, but could not resist making a few minor alterations. The operation orders were sent out.

On 17 May, the day 20th Panzer reached the coast at Buq-Buq in North Africa, Hitler addressed his Eastern Front commanders at the Wolfsschanze. It was his usual practice to meet them half-way, but Russian distances were great and he had no intention of climbing aboard another plane. He treated the assembled company to a verbose summary of the war situation. Rommel would be in Cairo ‘in a few days’, the U-Boats were sinking more Allied merchant ships each month than they could build in six, the Japanese were proving too strong for the effete Americans. All that he asked of those present was that they deliver the final crushing blow to the disintegrating colossus in the East. That achieved, the bulk of the Wehrmacht could return to the West, there to offer a decisive deterrent to Anglo- Saxon intervention in the affairs of Europe. The war would be effectively won.

The generals listened to this glowing picture, were given no chance to ask questions, and dispersed. It was the first time most of them had seen Hitler since the accident. ‘He looks older,’ Guderian wrote to his wife, ‘and his left hand shakes terribly.’

II

In Kuybyshev Stalin did not need meteorological reports to know that the period of the spring thaw was drawing to a close: he had only to look out of the window. Soon the Germans would renew their advance, and there seemed precious little chance of stopping the initial onslaught.

But there were few signs of despair, either among the leaders gathered around the table in Kuybyshev’s Governor’s Palace or among the population at large. The devastating blows dealt by the invader had not split the Soviet Union asunder. Rather, the empty barbarism of Nazi occupation policies had served to emphasise the positive side of Stalin’s totalitarianism. Life in Soviet Russia was certainly harsh, but at least the harshness seemed to serve a purpose. The dream born in 1917, that had soured in the succeeding years, seemed more relevant in 1942 than it had since the days of Lenin.

In the vast tracts of occupied Russia, that area of forests and marshland which stretched northwards from the borders of the Ukrainian steppe, the partisans were emerging from their winter retreats. Though still under-organised their presence would be increasingly felt in the months ahead, particularly by those unfortunates detailed to guard the long German supply-lines. In the Ukraine, where the Germans had been initially welcomed as liberators by a significant section of the population, such activity was rendered difficult by the openness of the terrain. But already the cruelties of the occupation had made active collaboration the exception rather than the rule. The loyalty of the non-Russian citizens of the Caucasus, who were yet to learn the realities of German rule, was still to be tested.

On the thousand mile frontier of unoccupied Russia the Red Army awaited the coming offensive. Despite losses exceeding eight million it was still the largest army in the world. It was also one of the worst-equipped and definitely the least-trained. Those few experienced troops who had survived the fires of 1941 were spread too thinly among the copious ranks of raw recruits; only the Siberian divisions of the Far Eastern Army were coherent, well-organised military units. And they had suffered most heavily in the bitter struggles of early winter.

The new Red Army leadership offered some consolation for the poor state of those it had to lead. Most of those who had lost the battles of 1941, whether through incompetence or misfortune, had been replaced. Those in command in the spring of 1942 had either proved themselves extremely adept or extremely fortunate. Much had been learned, many obsolete theories cast aside. Most important of all, given the political realities of the Soviet system, Stalin himself had learnt from his mistakes. No more Soviet armies would be ordered to stand their ground while the panzers cut it from under their feet.

Still, strategic savoir faire was of limited use to an army that had a severely limited supply of tanks and aircraft. The evacuation of the Gorkiy and Kharkov tank production plants had effectively halved Soviet tank production in the first five months of 1942. The removal of the Voronezh aircraft industry had a serious effect on plane production. Though both tanks and planes were being produced in the Ural region in quantities which would have shocked the Germans, for the coming campaign they were still in pitifully short supply.

So this was the material at Stavka’s disposal for averting Hitler’s next ‘crushing blow’. A large, inexperienced Army, sound leadership, insufficient armour, and an Air Force which could hardly hope to challenge the Luftwaffe for control of the Russian skies. How should it be used?

Just as Hitler and Halder had their list of objectives to gain, so Stalin and Stavka had a list of objectives to hold. Not surprisingly the lists were similar. But fortunately for the Soviet Union, and ultimately for the world, they were not the same. The priorities were different.

The Soviet decisions were taken at a routine Stavka meeting late in the evening of 4 April 1942. Those present included Stalin, Molotov, Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko, Budenny and Zhukov. The last-named argued that the greatest threat to the continued existence of the Soviet Union lay in a German advance beyond the line of the Volga. Behind that river, Zhukov continued, Soviet war industry was being rebuilt. In the cities of the great Volga bend - Kazan, Ulyanovsk, Syrzan, Kuybyshev itself - and in those to the east and south, in the Urals, Siberia and Soviet Central Asia, the foundations were being laid for eventual victory. Nothing must be allowed to disturb this construction. Though there was now little hope that the Germans could be pushed back by Soviet arms alone, the growing power of the United States and the continued defiance of Britain would eventually diminish the German presence on Soviet soil. Then these new foundations would prove their worth. As the German power decreased the Soviet power would rise. Then would be the time to march west.

As Zhukov outlined his case Stalin, as was his habit, walked up and down behind the lines of seated generals and marshals, puffing pipe smoke out into the room and occasionally stopping to gaze out of the window at the moonlit Volga. Every now and then a sharp report was audible inside the room, as another stretch of ice cracked in the thawing river.

Shaposhnikov raised the question of the Caucasus. ‘Can these industries east of the Volga maintain their production without the Caucasian oil?’

‘Of course the retention of the Caucasus is vital,’ Zhukov replied. ‘But we do not have the forces to defend all those areas that are vital.’ He took a memorandum from his attaché case. ‘And it seems that the Caucasus is not so vital as the Germans believe, or as we ourselves believed. The oilfields in the Volga-Kama, Ukhta, Guryev and Ural regions are now being developed at the fastest possible speed. According to this report we can survive, at a pinch, without the Caucasian oil. And this is a pinch. The defence of the Caucasus must come second to the defence of the Volga line.’

Stalin, the Georgian, said nothing. Which usually implied agreement. Shaposhnikov was not satisfied. What about the aid from the West? Was it not vital to keep open the southern ingress route, which passed through the Caucasus?

Zhukov reached for another memorandum. ‘Work on the new road between Ashkabad and Meshed in northern Persia is well advanced. Of course this road will not have the capacity of the trans-Caucasus route, but it will be better than nothing. The southern ingress route is not the only one. The Archangel railway is carrying a substantially greater volume of goods. And even if Vologda falls - which is likely - the terrain between there and Konosha is most unsuitable for the enemy’s armoured formations. We have a much better chance of holding this route open. And even if it were closed, there is still Vladivostok. Unless the Japanese win a great victory over the Americans they will not add to their list of enemies by attacking us in the Far East. If they do, if the worst comes to the worst, we shall have to carry on without outside aid. We will have no choice. But we must hold the Volga line, or there will be nothing left to carry on for!’

The meeting went on into the early hours, but Zhukov’s list of priorities was not questioned in principle. The Red Army’s dispositions in the following weeks reflected these priorities. The front was now divided into nine Fronts - North, Volkhov, North-west, West, Voronezh, South-west, South, North Caucasus and Caucasus - comprising twenty-six armies or roughly three and a half million men. Half of these armies were attached to only two Fronts, West and Voronezh, holding the centre of the line between the Volga below Kalyazin and Liski on the Don. Of the six armies held in reserve, four were deployed behind these two Fronts. If the Germans intended a straight march east towards the Urals they would have to go straight through the bulk of the Red Army.

III

An hour before dawn on 24 May the German artillery began its preliminary bombardment, and as the sun edged above the rim of the eastern horizon the panzer commanders leaned out of their turrets and waved the lines of tanks and armoured infantry carriers forward.

In the German ranks morale was high. The soldiers had survived the rigours of a winter that would once have been beyond their darkest imaginings, and now it was spring. The leaves were on the trees, the pale sun warmed their feet, their hands and their hearts. The next few months would see this business in the East finished. And then at best there would be peace and home, at worst a more amenable theatre of operations.

The commanders were equally optimistic. Guderian, up with the leading tanks of 2nd Panzer, was later to write:

“Although there was some concern that the final objectives of the summer campaign were not clearly defined, and that this lack of clarity might encourage interference from the Supreme Command (i.e. Hitler), there was little doubt in any of our minds that the war in the East would be concluded before the autumn.”

Guderian of course was always at his most optimistic when moving forward, and Second Panzer Army was certainly doing that. On the opening day of the campaign the two strong panzer corps, 24th and 47th, burst through the weak link between the Soviet Twenty-fourth and Fiftieth Armies, throwing the former south towards the Oka and the latter north into the path of von Kluge’s advancing infantry. By evening on that day the leading elements of 2nd Panzer had broken through to a depth of thirty miles and were approaching Lashma on the Oka. Fifteen miles to the north 3rd Panzer was nearing Tuma. The Soviet forces facing Second Panzer Army had been comprehensively defeated.

One-hundred-and-twenty miles to the north, on the other wing of Army Group Centre’s attack, Fourth Panzer Army was having greater difficulty breaking through the Soviet Fifth Army’s positions on the River Nerl. This unexpectedly stubborn resistance forced Manstein, who had relieved the sick Hoppner as Panzer Army commander, to shift the
schwerpunkt
of his attack southwards in the early afternoon, and it was not until dusk that 8th Panzer was free of the defensive lines and striking out across country towards the Moscow-Yaroslavl road.

On the following day both panzer armies were in full cry towards the Volga and their intended rendezvous in the neighbourhood of Gorkiy. But that evening the Führer decided to interfere with the smooth unfolding of Halder’s plan. To Hitler July 1941 was only three months and a long coma away. He remembered only too clearly how many Russians had escaped from the over-large German pockets around Minsk and Smolensk. Then he had insisted on smaller, tighter encirclements against the opposition of his panzer generals. He did so again now. Watching Guderian and Manstein motoring blithely on across the Wolfsschanze wall-map towards the distant Volga the Führer again feared that the Russians would escape the net. He ordered both panzer armies to turn inwards behind the retreating enemy.

Guderian and Manstein both protested loudly to von Bock. Bock protested diplomatically to Brauchitsch. Brauchitsch protested very diplomatically to Hitler. A day was wasted. The Führer remained unmoved. Brauchitsch said as much to Bock, who passed on the message to Guderian and Manstein. Both duly turned a panzer corps rather than their whole armies, inward behind the Russians.

Or so they thought. In fact the Red Army formations, granted an extra day’s grace by the arguing Germans, had pulled back beyond the range of the gaping jaws. When Guderian and Manstein’s units met east of Kovrov on the evening of 27 May they closed a largely empty bag. The eventual tally of prisoners was a mere 12,000.

Hitler was not disappointed. The low figure, he told Halder, was an indication of the enemy’s weakness. Halder was inclined to agree, but the commanders on the spot were not so sure. But in any case only a few days had been wasted, and what were a few days?