Barbarossa (22 page)

The counterattack of the Russian 48th Army had saved the Luga
front from annihilation. But reality was bad enough as the whole
Russian line gradually crumbled away. In the second week of August,
Narva, Kingisepp, and Novgorod all fell and SS
Totenkopf
broke
through on the southern flank and captured Chudovo, on the main
Leningrad-to-Moscow railway.

In Leningrad itself a million civilians worked twenty-four hours
in a day on a wide defence perimeter which was being thrown up around
the city. The Party mobilised every one of its enormous human pool
into labour or paramilitary organisations.

[There are three generic types. The largest—the
Opolchenye
,
or "People's Army"—a more or less enthusiastic
rabble, indifferently armed, with only a memory of week-end training
in the
Osoaviakhim
and virtually without signals or
communication equipment. (Sirota says that in addition to "some"
rifles and machine guns ". . .the workers were armed mainly with
Molotov cocktails and some hand grenades; they also had some 10,000
shotguns, and about 12,000 small-calibre and training rifles donated
by the City's population.")

The cream of the
Opolchenye
were organised on a divisional
basis, with improved equipment and some cadre officers and N.C.O.'s.
These formations were termed "Guards" divisions by
Voroshilov.

(At almost the same time a general reorganisation of the Red Army
was selecting those units which had particularly distinguished
themselves in battle and using them as cores around which to build up
elite formations to which it was applying the same
designation—"Guards." There is thus some confusion
over the origin of the term, although in the later part of the war it
came to refer only to regular units.)

The third group comprised the so-called "destruction
battalions" of Party, Komsomol, and NKVD personnel. These units
had been formed to fight German parachutists, and were well equipped.
From the political element in their constitution it seems that they
were conceived for general "internal security" duties, as
well as for combat with the enemy.]

Exhortatory proclamations filled the air and plastered the walls:

A threat hangs over Leningrad. The insolent Fascist Army pushes
towards our glorious city—the cradle of the proletarian
revolution—our holy duty is to bar the road to the enemy at the
gates of Leningrad with our breasts. [20th August]

Comrade Leningraders! Dear friends! Our dearly beloved city is
in imminent danger of attack by German Fascist troops. The enemy is
striving to penetrate into Leningrad . . . The Red Army is valiantly
defending the approaches to the city . . . and repelling his attacks.
But the enemy has not yet been crushed, his resources are not yet
exhausted . . . and he has not yet abandoned his despicable [sic],
predatory plan to capture Leningrad. [21st August]

The enemy is at the gates of Leningrad! Grave danger hangs over
the city. The success of the Red Army depends on the heroic, valiant,
and firm stand of each soldier, commander, and political worker, and
also on how active and energetic the assistance given to the Red Army
by us Leningraders is. [2nd September]

To anyone experienced in the duality of meaning in all Communist
texts, the message was clear and urgent. The threat of total defeat
hung over Leningrad.

There now occurs an episode of the greatest interest, whose
background remains to this day shrouded in obscurity.

We know, and these pages will attempt to show, how the decline in
their military fortune fostered plotting and treachery within the
ranks of the Nazis. The totalitarian constitution is no less
vulnerable to personal intrigue for succession to power than the
looser fabric of a democracy, and it is tempting for the historian to
discern evidence of such discord in the Kremlin. But in spite of the
wave of "de-Stalinisation" and the denunciations of the
20th Party Congress, very little has come to light of the personal
conduct of the Soviet leaders when
in extremis
—with the
exception of this one episode during the battle for Leningrad.

On 20th August, Voroshilov and Zhdanov set up a "Military
Soviet for the Defence of Leningrad." Within twenty-four hours
Stalin was on the telephone, "expressing dissatisfaction"
that the Soviet had been set up without his having been consulted.
Voroshilov protested that it "corresponded to the actual
requirements of the situation," but Stalin was in no mood for
listening to Party jargon of this kind and suggested "an
immediate review of the personnel"—i.e., the resignation
of Voroshilov and Zhdanov. This was effected immediately, but the
incident was not yet over. At the end of August two members of GOKO,
Molotov and Malenkov, arrived, charged with "organising the
defence."

Some days passed, during which the military situation worsened
rapidly, and then Voroshilov was relieved of his "responsibility"
for military operations and kicked upstairs to GOKO in Moscow. The
General who succeeded him in command was the Chief of Staff of the
Red Army, the "fireman" who in his day was to visit and
stabilise practically every dangerous sector of the Eastern front,
Georgi Zhukov.

Some authorities attribute this shuffling around to a dispute
between Voroshilov and Zhdanov, and even go so far as to mention a
rumour that Voroshilov favoured the surrender of the town after the
Germans had captured Schlüsselburg and completed its
encirclement. It is said that Zhdanov then appealed over Voroshilov's
head to Stalin. But from what we know of the character of those
concerned, and in the light of the telephone conversation of 21st
August, it seems more probable that Stalin had suspected that the
Leningrad Military Soviet—whatever its advantages from the
aspect of military administration—might then or at some later
date form the nucleus of a breakaway administration which could
menace his own internal authority or attempt negotiation with the
enemy. There is a tradition of non-conformity at Leningrad—and
the Communist doctrine teaches that the internal enemy is always the
most important.

In fact, it is impossible to find evidence of anything more than
local grumbling and discontent at any time during the siege of the
town. And during the autumn of 1941, as the Germans daily moved
closer, the entire population seems to have been united at every
level. They were told:

The Germans are out to wreck our homes, seize our factories and
mills, plunder our public property, drench the streets and public
squares with the blood of innocent victims, torment the civilian
population, and enslave the free sons of our country ...

They believed it, and they were right.

The city, now on the point, it seemed, of falling into their hands
like an overripe melon, posed a delicious problem for the Germans—one
which promised the opportunity of slaking even their insatiable
thirst for blood.

The "problem," of course, was that of the civilian
population. Hitler's first "firm decision" was to "level
the town, make it uninhabitable and relieve us of the necessity of
having to feed the population through the winter." Once the town
had been razed, the site could be turned over to the Finns.
Unfortunately, though, the Finns were very reluctant to have anything
to do with the scheme, or even to annex any Russian territory,
whether "razed" or otherwise. Then, also, there was the
question of world opinion. A massacre on this scale would need a
little explaining—even to those who looked on Hitler as the
hammer of Bolshevism. Accordingly, Goebbels was instructed to
manufacture a Russian plan—which was, as soon "discovered"—for
the Soviets to destroy the city themselves.

The German military were against getting "involved" with
the civilian population at all. Warlimont went into the question at
length, and prepared a memorandum. "Normal" occupation was
rejected. But it might be acceptable to evacuate the children and the
old people (presumably to "shower baths") "and let the
remainder starve." This, though, could lead to "new
problems." Perhaps the best solution would be to seal off the
whole town, surrounding it with an electrically charged wire fence,
guarded by machine guns. But there remained the "danger of
epidemics" (curious how often the German plans for mass
extermination dwell on the "danger" of epidemics)
"spreading to our front." In case this solution should be
adopted, corps commanders were alerted to the need for using
artillery against civilians trying to break out of the city, as
Warlimont thought it "doubtful whether the infantry will shoot
at women and children trying to break out." In any case,
"disposal of the population cannot be left to the Finns."

There was also the possibility of making propaganda capital out of
the affair—an offer to

the philanthropist Roosevelt to send either food supplies to
the inhabitants not going into captivity, or to send neutral ships
under the supervision of the Red Cross, or to ship them off to his
continent.. .

Naturally, though, any response to this which threatened to assume
real shape could not be accepted. The proper solution was to

Seal off Leningrad hermetically, then weaken it by terror
[i.e., air raids and artillery bombardment] and growing starvation.
In the spring we shall occupy the town . . . remove the survivors
into captivity in the interior of Russia, and level Leningrad to the
ground with high explosives.

Jodl, Warlimont's immediate superior, gave his approval to the
memorandum, commenting that it was "morally justified," as
the enemy would mine the town on leaving (an interesting example of
the German mind at work; Jodl seems to have dug up this justification
quite independently of the Propaganda Ministry scheme described on
the previous page) and also because of—again—the "serious
danger of epidemics." Jodl did, however, dwell briefly on a
somewhat quaint alternative—that the population should somehow
be allowed to flee in mass panic into the interior of Russia, arguing
(with no great lucidity) that this would "increase chaos, and to
that extent facilitate our administration and exploitation of the
occupied areas."

As was not uncommon throughout the course of, the Russian
campaign, the German direction of military operations suffered from
overlap and contradiction with personal and political factors.

The first stumbling block was the attitude of Mannerheim and the
Finns. After the Luga front had disintegrated, Keitel wrote to
Mannerheim, asking that the Finnish Army begin to exert "real
pressure" along the Karelian Isthmus, and also that it cross the
Svir River to the northeast of Lake Ladoga.

On 28th August, Mannerheim had rejected the plan, only to have it
pressed on him immediately. He again rejected it (on 31st August),
and remained adamant even when subjected to a personal visit by
Keitel, who came over to plead with him on 4th September.

From a military aspect this obstinacy on the part of their allies
was exceedingly troublesome to the Germans. The Wehrmacht was fully
deployed, and had no strategic reserve at all. Only a form of grand
tactical reserve was available by a process (of which there had
already been examples) of stripping armour and mobility from one army
group to reinforce another. Consequently OKW had literally no means
of exerting pressure on the Russians' northern flank except by
persuading the Finns to do it for them. They had no forces to put
into Finland and no sanctions with which to enforce their request.
Thus by the beginning of September there was already some hard
factual backing for the decision to "hermetically seal,"
rather than to assault, the town.

Hitler, who had been watching with impatience the flank battles
develop, was already beginning to look forward to the capture of
Moscow. His mind, running several weeks ahead of the actual
development of operations, nevertheless forecast their course with
remarkable accuracy. On 6th September he issued Directive No. 35,
which provided for the return of the
Panzergruppen
to Army
Group Centre and the preparation for a final attack on the Russian
capital.

Owing to the depleted condition of many of the Panzer divisions,
it was possible to deploy only a weight equivalent to that of the
first attack by attaching the whole of Hoepner's
Gruppe
to
Army Group Centre, in addition to those of Hoth and Guderian. The
directive also ordered the 8th Air Corps to vacate its bases in
Estonia and fly south to strengthen Bock—a move which would
reduce the air strength at Leeb's disposal to less than three hundred
machines, of which the majority would be short-range fighters or
noncombatant transport and liaison aircraft.

Hitler's intention was that Leningrad be reduced in status to "a
subsidiary theatre of operations," and that the siege perimeter
be entrusted to six or seven infantry divisions.

A force of this size, while strong enough to keep three million
starving civilians behind an electric wire fence, was far from
adequate to cope with Voroshilov's army—ill equipped and
exhausted though it was by that time. And even after the fall of
Schlüsselburg (which did not in fact occur until three days
after the issue of Directive No. 35) the siege perimeter—largely
due to the intransigence of the Finns—remained loose enough to
allow the garrison a dangerous amount of movement.

Anticipating this, and forewarned by rumours from OKH of the
impending directive, Ritter von Leeb had been preparing a plan for a
direct assault on the town. He had hoped to launch his attack on 5th
September, the day before the issue of the directive, but the 41st
Panzer Corps was so worn out by its exertions that it required a
three-day period for refit while infantry cleared the east bank of
the Neva and fought to hold the desperate counterattacks Voroshilov
was ordering from the 54th Army—now in position to the south of
Lake Ladoga.