A World at Arms (119 page)

On the Central front, the Soviet victory at Orel was followed by a major push which forced the Germans to evacuate Bryansk and Smolensk along with a large portion of the area they had held since the summer of 1941. The German Army Group Center still had more soldiers, proportionally, than those either to the north or the south, although during the fall of 1943 it was obliged to transfer some divisions to von Manstein’s Army Group South. The converse of this situation was that, having committed itself to a major series of offensives in the south, the Soviet high command did not have at its disposal the massive reserves which would have been required to drive back the Germans quickly on the Central front. During September 1943, therefore, the Red Army slowly pushed back Field Marshal Kluge’s Army Group Center to the “Panther” position, a line about thirty miles east of the upper Dnepr, which the Germans had prepared in the preceding weeks and hoped to hold.

In practice this did not work as well for the Germans as it did in theory. During October, Rokossovski’s Belorussian Front (a consolidated and renamed union of the former Bryansk and Central Fronts) drove into the southern flank of Army Group Center. While unable to score a decisive breakthrough, the Belorussian Front pushed the Germans out of Gomel and across the Dnepr. Simultaneously, at the northern flank of Army Group Center, where it joined Army Group North, a Soviet local attack at Nevel crushed one of the newly formed air force field divisions and opened a gap which the Red Army was unable to exploit fully because of commitments elsewhere but which the Germans could not close. During November and December, the Nevel gap was in fact enlarged by the Red Army so that by the end of the year the main northern anchor of Army Group Center, its defensive positions around Vitebsk, remained dangerously exposed, a situation on which the Russians were to capitalize in 1944.
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If these obvious signs of continuing military strength by the Soviet Union made it clear that the Red Army could hold and even advance in the summer as well as the winter, the continued strong resistance of the Germans, including their counter-attacks which sometimes succeeded in blunting Soviet advances, also demonstrated that a bitter fight lay ahead if the Red Army was to free all the previously occupied territory and drive on into the heart of Germany. The absence of the forces of the Western Allies from the continent of Europe until September of 1943 - however much the product of the Soviet Union’s own earlier policy of helping Germany drive them out of North, West and Southern Europe-made the burden of fighting the bulk of the German army and a large share of its air force a particularly heavy
one. This point had been driven home to Stalin most dramatically by the German counter-offensive of March 1943 culminating in the loss of Kharkov.

A SEPARATE PEACE IN THE EAST?

Until access to Soviet archives enables scholars to see more clearly into these murky episodes, this author will remain convinced that it was the shock of German military revival so soon after the great Soviet victory at Stalingrad which reinforced Stalin’s inclinations during 1943 to contemplate the possibility of a separate peace either with Hitler’s Germany or with some alternative German government. With the road to Berlin so obviously a difficult one, the temptation to sound possible alternatives was enormous. Surely by now the Germans must realize that their hopes of defeating the Soviet Union were illusory. The German government had had sense enough in 1939 to work out an accommodation with the Soviet Union on terms both sides had found advantageous; the same people were still in charge in Berlin. In the winter of 1940–41 they had refused to reply to the Soviet proposals for Russia to join the Tripartite Pact, but instead had insisted on attacking her; perhaps in the interim they had learned better in the hard school of war. As for the Soviet Union, she had demonstrated conclusively that she could defend herself, but this defense had been immensely costly. A new agreement with Germany would provide a breathing space for reconstruction and recovery, would remove German occupation without either further Red Army casualties or economic destruction, and would leave the Soviet Union dominant in all of Eastern Europe, especially in Poland where a Soviet puppet government would replace the pre-war regime. It may have been known to the Soviet government that there were elements in the German government and military apparatus who wanted an agreement with Moscow, and it was certainly known that Japan was very strongly in favor of a German-Soviet peace.

If a peace on the Eastern Front left Britain and the United States fighting Germany and Japan by themselves, that was not necessarily so sad from Moscow’s point of view. Perhaps that would prove to be a more even match than the earlier one Stalin had promoted between Germany and the British-French combination. Whatever happened in such a conflict, victory for one side or a stalemate and accommodation, the combatants were certain to be greatly weakened and the Soviet Union would be secure and in a stronger position than before 1941. And if the prospect of a separate peace on the Eastern Front made the British and American governments more willing to make political
concessions to the Soviet Union or to strike earlier against Germany in the West, that would be all to the good even if no such peace actually came about.

The tentative contacts between German and Soviet representatives in 1943, primarily in Sweden and very largely, it seems, through intermediaries, remain shrouded in a fog of controversy and confusion.
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What is clear is that these contacts were most extensive in the spring and summer of 1943 but continued into the fall, that the Soviet Union informed its Allies about them only months after they had taken place, that the Western Allies found out about them anyway, and that they did not lead to any separate peace. As for their effect on the Western Allies, there can be no doubt that during the period May to September 1943 the British and American governments were very much concerned about the possibility of a separate peace, a concern reinforced by the withdrawal of Soviet ambassadors from London and Washington at the end of June as well as the knowledge gained from the intercepted Japanese telegrams that there was great pressure from Tokyo to bring the two combatants together again.
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On the Soviet side, the position appears to have been that Germany must evacuate all the occupied territory, certainly to the 1941 border, possibly later on, after the Soviet victory in July 1943, back to the 1914 border (thus turning over central Poland to the Soviet Union). German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop appears to have been at least slightly interested in some compromise peace; he saw himself as the architect of the 1939 pact with the Soviet Union and had always given priority to the war against Great Britain. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, favored negotiations with Stalin and so advised Hitler, almost certainly much more strongly than von Ribbentrop. Hitler, however, was unwilling to have any negotiations with the Soviet Union. Some of the sources make a great deal out of his suspicions about a key intermediary in Stockholm being Jewish, but Hitler’s explanations to Goebbels and Oshima go to the core of the issue: he wanted to keep territory, especially the Ukraine, which he was certain Stalin would not give up; and on this point, if no other, his assessment of the Soviet Union was certainly correct.
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While Stalin might have been willing to negotiate about territory to the west of the 1941 border of the country, he was certainly not about to leave the Germans in occupation of portions of it, least of all the rich agricultural and industrial areas of the Ukraine. The latter would, if necessary, be retaken in battle, and in the fall of 1943 and the winter of 1943–44 that is exactly what the Red Army did.

There was, however, still a third possible path other than a new accommodation with Hitler or a fight to the finish and that was an
agreement with some alternative German government willing to abandon Germany’s aims of conquest in Eastern Europe in exchange for the Soviet Union’s exit from the war. It was obvious by 1943 that the mass working class upheaval which Marxist-Leninist theory had once predicted was clearly not about to occur in Germany. On the contrary, it was all too evident at the front that the workers were, for the most part, fighting hard in the Third Reich’s service. There was, however, always the possibility that the German military might break with the regime and return to that cooperation with the Soviet Union which had been so profitable for their rearmament projects in the 1920s. Such a new regime, possibly supported by segments of the German population, could develop good relations with Moscow and provide a junior partner to the Soviet Union in dominating Europe.

The creation in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1943 of the National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD) and soon after of the League of German Officers (BDO) point in this direction. Recruited from German Communist Party exiles and from German prisoners of war, these organizations were launched with great fanfare. Eventually, as it became obvious that the military were not about to turn on Hitler and the soldiers, with few exceptions, were not about to rise either, these organizations came to serve as propaganda vehicles during the war and as recruitment grounds for the post-war civilian regime and military forces in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany. But for a while in 1943, their creation was a sign that Stalin was prepared to consider several options in dealing with both his enemy and his allies.
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ALLIED INVASION PLANS

Stalin’s interest in exploring the possibility of a separate peace with Germany governed either by Hitler or by an alternative regime more sympathetic to and perhaps dependent upon the Soviet Union, was probably stimulated in the summer of 1943 by the information that a large-scale invasion of Western Europe by Britain and the United States would not take place until 1944. And as Soviet intelligence may well have informed him, even that date was not really certain because of continued British interest in pushing Mediterranean operations. At the Trident Conference in May 1943, the Americans, after long and heated debate, finally obtained Britain’s agreement on two critical points: a May 1944 target date for the cross-Channel invasion and a commitment that in November 1943 the Allies would begin the transfer of seven battle experienced divisions, four American and three British, from the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom to take part in the great invasion. In
the course of the summer, it became clear to the Americans that the British were not holding to this agreement; the latter now called for a halt to the troop transfers and this in turn raised fundamental questions about Britain’s willingness to go forward with the cross-Channel invasion in practice, not only in theory.

The constant British emphasis on operations in the central and eastern Mediterranean, repeatedly voiced by Churchill and Brooke, made the American military leaders, Secretary of War Stimson, and President Roosevelt increasingly doubtful about the firmness of Britain’s commitment to what was then referred to as “Roundhammer” and came to be known as “Overlord.” Stimson himself went to London and in arguments with Churchill and others advocated the United States army’s strategy of pushing from the best base with the greatest force at a place where it would have the greatest effect, as against a constantly revived British preference for a peripheral strategy. This in American eyes, would produce a stalemated war in Europe, leave the overwhelming burden of the war against Germany with the Soviet Union, and thus result either in the latter making a separate peace with Germany or, alternately, eventually winning the European war on land by itself and controlling practically all of the continent.
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Churchill constantly went back and forth between a firm endorsement in principle of the cross-Channel operation and a concern that the opportunities in the Mediterranean theater be exploited. The forboding sense that a renewed battle in Northwest Europe would involve staggering casualties if the landing failed or if the troops, once ashore, became involved in a lengthy campaign reminiscent of World War I fighting, came back to him time and again. Simultaneously, Field Marshal Brooke, who on other occasions restrained the Prime Minister’s impulsive advocacy of all sorts of expeditions and projects, was most reluctant to hold down Mediterranean operations in favor of a future project which he was himself at that time scheduled to command but for which he evidently did not see the prerequisites in place.

It is not, in my judgement, correct to assert that the British opposed a landing in Northwest Europe, but they were simply not yet willing to give it the kind of priority that would be needed if the very obstacles to which they constantly pointed were to be overcome. The fact that both Churchill and Brooke would have reservations
after
the “Quadrant” Conference at Quebec in August, when apparently all had been definitely settled, shows that they did not see the issue the same way as the Americans. The latter believed that unless the energies of the Western Powers were harnessed unreservedly to a firm date, with the operational, shipping, production, and training schedules geared to that date, the
project would recede into the indefinite future, and then the United States would either have to carry it out by itself or shift to a Pacific First strategy. It is ironic that Brooke, who so often privately castigated Marshall for being unable to see beyond the end of his nose, neither grasped the American concern with the need to set priorities nor conveyed to Montgomery, his favorite general, just what it was that made the Italian campaign such a highly significant operation. This latter point is important in the face of Montgomery’s preference for leaving the Germans in control of the exposed Italian peninsula and concentrating everything for the big blow where it really counted, in the West.
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The Americans had three advantages in getting a large part of their strategic concept agreed to in Quebec. First, the recent nasty exchanges between the Western Allies and Stalin on the conduct of the war, the rumors of a German-Soviet separate peace, and the establishment of the National Committee for a Free Germany all suggested that it was essential for Allied unity that the Soviet Union be reassured about the seriousness of purpose in Britain and the United States.
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Second, President Roosevelt’s growing confidence in the advice of General Marshall and the developing strength of the United States helped make him absolutely determined to get a firm and final commitment for a May 1, 1944, “Overlord” at this time, and now with an American rather than a British commander.
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A third factor was the product of earlier American pressure. At Marshall’s insistence, a planning staff for the invasion had been created under General Frederick Morgan and the staff had been at work, preparing an invasion plan. This plan was ready by the time of the Quadrant Conference. It provided for a smaller assault than discussed earlier and actually carried out later (three divisions and two following divisions, plus some airborne units), but it designated the beaches near Caen as the assault site, and called for major supply over the beaches. It stipulated an early effort to seize the port of Cherbourg, set forth the need to have separate sectors in the assault and thereafter for the British and the United States units with the latter on the right flank to facilitate reinforcements, and stressed that it was essential to crush the German fighter planes in the West-all major features of the eventual actual invasion.
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The submission of the plan as completed at the end of July to the conference immediately and almost automatically made the invasion project a real, practical, actually intended operation of war, not some abstract concept for interminable debate.