A World at Arms (56 page)

Although overshadowed by developments further south still to be reviewed, there was one last German offensive on the northern segment of the front. In October and November, the German Army Group North which had cut off Leningrad (and also a smaller Red Army-held enclave to the West) made one last effort to strike eastward to Tikhvin and beyond in the hope of joining up with Finnish forces east of Lake
Ladoga. This final gasp of German offensive strength sputtered out in the December snows as the Russians held fast after initial retreats. The Germans were incapable of pushing beyond Tikhvin, and the resulting salient almost invited attack.

The major German operation on the southern part of the main front in the East involved the use of armored formations of which one, previously with Army Group Center, drove southward to meet another armored assault northward across the Dnepr river at Kremenchug. Meeting about 150 miles east of Kiev, these operations in September 1941 led to the destruction of huge Soviet forces; the Germans took over 600,000 prisoners and captured thousands of guns; but once again the Soviet leadership was able to build up a new front.
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Like the German Army Group North, that in the south could and did win more local victories, taking most of the Crimea and occupying much of the central and eastern Ukraine, including the great city of Kharkov, and also advancing along the north shore of the Sea of Azov. This advance culminated in the seizure of Rostov at the mouth of the Don river on November 21, but here, as in the north, German offensive strength was at an end. In the following days, the Red Army’s counter-attacks not only stopped the invaders but drove them out of Rostov, and thus doomed all German hopes of cutting off the Soviet Union’s ability to transport oil from the Caucasus oil fields to her armies and factories–to say nothing of seizing these oil fields for the Third Reich. Even before the German attack toward Moscow had been halted and crushed, their formations at the southern as well as the northern ends of the front were blocked and in the south already in retreat.

The units sent to assist the German Army Groups in their September offensives in the north and south returned to the Central front for a renewed attack in October. The supplies needed for a renewal of the attack in the center had now been brought forward. In two great armored breakthrough and envelopment operations, the Germans tore up the major Soviet forces on that front, capturing another 600,000 prisoners and moving within 50 miles of Moscow. As German announcers proclaimed final victory,
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and the Soviet government evacuated most agencies from the capital to Kuibyshev, there was a temporary panic in M
OSCOW
.
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But once again Red Army reserves, reformed units, and scratch formations held a new front with grim determination, even as German offensive strength waned because of lost or worn out equipment, heavy casualties, and a degree of exhaustion among the soldiers still fighting–which many at the highest levels of the German command
structure did not comprehend. They had now to decide whether to make one more bid for Moscow or to halt and try again the following year.

Once again the very fact that the Germans faced this choice reflects the extent to which their effort to crush the Soviet Union in one great campaign had failed. All the fighting in the last months of the year was predicated on the assumption that there would be another year of war in the East and that the question now was what was the best position for the German forces to be in as they anticipated the 1942 campaign, with the expectation of shifting resources to the air force and the navy
thereafter
so that England could be defeated.
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There was some sentiment among the German military leadership that it would be best to hold the positions attained in late October and early November, straighten out the lines some, and try to use a defensive posture to remedy the very strained supply situation and provide some rest to the exhausted troops. Others, including Hitler himself as well as the Commander-in-Chief of the army, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch and Chief of Staff General Halder, thought that one last push might win them Moscow, and with it better winter quarters for the German forces. Such a local victory would also disrupt the Soviet railway and command system, would mean that the Russians would lose Moscow’s industrial facilities, and strike a major psychological blow. The now available evidence makes it clear that General Halder was the most influential and extreme advocate of a renewed offensive .
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A number of additional factors contributed to the decision. The existing front line was not advantageous for the defense and, as already mentioned, the real state of the German combat units was simply not understood by many at the top of the command structure. Perhaps most importantly, not only were the continued fighting capacity of the Red Army and the slowly reviving Red Air Force grossly underestimated, but German intelligence was, as before and for the rest of the war, very much in error in its broader assessment of Soviet strength.
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The Germans had no real concept of the rate at which the Soviet Union had been mobilizing new forces to introduce into the battle, and they were so far off in their view of Soviet power as to assert early in December that the Red Army had neither the ability nor the intention of launching any significant counter-offensive of its own.
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The Soviet Western Front (the Soviet term for an Army Group) held the Germans in bitter fighting north, west, and south of Moscow. During subsequent months Hitler himself in conversations with the representatives of other countries, and after the war German generals in their apologias, attributed their defeat in 1941 in large part to the weather. Already in the preceding year, they had often attributed their defeat in
the Battle of Britain to the bad weather over England; now they explained defeat in the East as due first to mud and then to snow and cold temperatures. A moment’s more careful reflection shows how ridiculous this line of argument generally is. Just as the occurrence of rain over England is hardly a great secret–and curiously enough affects British fliers very much the way it affects others–so there is a winter in the Soviet Union every year. Not only is winter not some extraordinary occasion which the Russians arrange to have in years when they are invaded, but it is as cold–just as the mud and later the snow are as deep–for Russian forces as they are for invaders. In certain limited situations, the weather may indeed favor one side or the other. Bad weather, for example, usually assists the defenders; but if the Red Army was on the defensive in November, it was the Germans who were on the defensive after the first week of December. What needs to be understood is that the Germans were at the end of their offensive strength, that they had not mobilized their society as thoroughly for war as the Soviet Union, and that the Soviet leadership not only remained in effective control of the unoccupied portions of the country but mustered its human and materiel resources for a devastating blow at the invaders. Before the background of that blow can be recounted, a word has to be said about the allies of Germany other than Finland in the early fighting on the Eastern Front.

The first plans of German officers for the attack on Russia made no provision for troops of other countries to participate–they assumed that the Germans who had just won in the West could finish off the Soviet Union in short order and by themselves. Hitler, while just as sure that this could be done quickly, had from the beginning counted on the participation of Finnish and Romanian troops at the northern and southern ends of the front.
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He had assumed that the Finns and Romanians would wish to reconquer the territories which they had lost to the Soviet Union-with German approval at the time–and he was prepared to reward them with additional lands beyond the old borders if their military contribution were sufficiently enthusiastic and substantial. The coordination with Finland has already been discussed while that with Romania has been mentioned in connection with the operations at the southern end of the front. Joint planning for these operations had proceeded in the winter of 1940-41, and the Romanian leader, Marshal Ion Antonescu, showed himself more than willing to participate.
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Two Romanian armies took part in the initial assault. With the help of the Germans, they quickly pushed the Russians out of the areas ceded to the Soviet Union the year before, but as they attempted to seize the great port city of Odessa discovered that they had not joined a simple victory march. The Russians halted the Romanians, drove them back in
counter-attacks, and, in accordance with a decision reached on October 1, evacuated the by now isolated city on October 16 without the Romanians realizing it until it had been completed.
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As a reward for their contribution, the Romanians received from the Germans not only the territory lost in 1940 but a substantial additional area between the Dnestr and Bug rivers, officially called “Transnistria,” to administer and perhaps eventually incorporate into the country.
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The cost of the fighting, however, had been far higher than anyone in Bukarest had originally thought likely;
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and as the war on the southern part of the front continued after the German defeat at Rostov in November, the Romanians would see the price rise steadily.

One special problem for the Romanians was their hatred for the Hungarians, who had received a portion of Transylvania the preceding year, a portion the Romanians hoped to get back, while Hungary looked forward to someday seizing the rest. It was this friction which threatened to explode into open hostilities at any moment that led Antonescu to ask that Romanian and Hungarian troops always be kept separated on the front.
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How had the bitter enemies suddenly become extremely unlikely and reluctant allies?

The Germans were always glad to use Hungarian territory to transfer their troops to Romania, both for the attack on Greece and for the invasion of the Soviet Union, but Hungarian hesitation about joining Berlin in hostilities during the international crises of 1938 and 1939 had left Hitler doubtful about active Hungarian participation in the Eastern campaign. Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy was, however, prepared to consider going to war with the Soviet Union, and his Chief of Staff, Henryk Werth, was an enthusiastic advocate of war on the side of Germany.
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It was in the latter that the Germans confided on June 19,
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but the actual entrance of Hungary into the campaign was to be attended by circumstances as spectacular in their own way as the suicide of Prime Minister Teleki when the Hungarians had attacked Yugoslavia less than three months earlier. While the Soviet government attempted to maintain peaceful relations with Hungary, a number of that country’s leaders pushed for war, partly because they believed an action on Germany’s side was wise in any case, and partly because they feared that the participation of their Romanian and Slovak rivals in the campaign could leave a neutral Hungary in an impossible position after the anticipated German victory. Opponents of war were worried about a break with the Western Powers, feared the Germans, and could see no advantage to Hungary in war against a country with which she had no quarrel. The issue was resolved on June 27 when the advocates of war utilized a still not clarified bombing incident on June 26 to take the nation into war. Two or three
airplanes, which may have been Russian planes with navigation errors, German ones sent as a provocation, or German ones with Slovak pilots scoring off their Hungarian “friends” while on a mission to or from the front, dropped bombs on Kassa (Kosice), causing damage and casualties. Without waiting for a clarification of what had really happened–a clarification that might have been possible at the time–the government rushed into the conflict.
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A Hungarian battle group and a so-called “Rapid Corps” participated in the campaign until mid-November when the heavy casualties incurred in the fighting, the hopelessly obsolete character of its equipment, and the general lack of enthusiasm for war against the Soviet Union inside Hungary made the withdrawal of almost all Hungarian forces from the front necessary in both Hungarian and German eyes.
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Realizing that the war was far more serious than anticipated, some Hungarian military leaders by August were urging a comprehensive mobilization and the dispatch of vastly greater forces.
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Over this issue Werth was dismissed in September,
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but the problem would come back to haunt the government in Budapest. In the meantime Hitler, in line with his generosity in handing out pieces of another country’s territory which he did not immediately want for Germany, promised Horthy some snippets of Poland, a prospect never realized even temporarily, like Romania’s “Transnistria” experiment.
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It has already been mentioned that Slovakia’s joining in the war had contributed to the eagerness of some Hungarian officials not to be left out of the anticipated victory. Having shown their attitude by joining Germany in the war on Poland in 1939, the puppet state of Slovakia was now given the opportunity to repeat this performance by going to war with the one country outside the Axis which had legally recognized its so-called independence. Slovakia joined the attack on Russia and sent a small expeditionary force to the southern section of the front in the hope of eventually securing German support for recovering bits of Hungary ceded to that country in 1938 to add to the pieces of Poland obtained in reward for their 1939 action.
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Considerably more significant than the participation of Slovakia would be that of Italy. The Germans had kept their intentions secret longer from the Italians than any of their other allies for fear of an immediate leak from Rome. As soon as he heard of the German attack, Mussolini was determined to join in. Having been thrashed by the Greeks and the British, he was evidently eager for more.
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An army corps was ordered to the Russian front on Mussolini’s initiative and without any German request; the Duce’s only worry as he explained to the Council of Ministers on July 5 was that they might not arrive in time to share in the
fighting!
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Three divisions, some 60,000 men, were sent as an Italian Expeditionary Corps (CSIR) to the southern section of the Eastern Front where they had plenty of opportunity to fight.
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