Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (19 page)

Halder's handling of the operations for
Army Group South help to illustrate further the degree of divergence in operational conception and the extent of departure he was prepared to risk from Hitler's strategy as set out in
Directive 21. During the February 3 conference with Hitler, Halder made only passing reference to the task of Army Group South, deflecting attention from the subject on account of the fundamental alterations he had instigated in the issuing of the Army Deployment Directive. These included expanding the mandate of the 12th Army to include the taking of
Odessa, if an opportunity arose for its surprise capture.
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Moreover, flagrant liberties were taken concerning the staging of troops in
Hungary to support an advance out of the Carpathian mountains for which Halder
had been engaged in unauthorised negotiations.
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This went expressly against Hitler's instructions of early December 1940 that excluded any participation by Hungary, which is why no mention of Hungary was included in
Directive 21. Indifferent to such official obstructions, Halder proceeded with
his
planning. This went beyond commanding German troops into a theoretically neutral country to also include a provision for Hungarian formations to support the attack in the role of rear-area security forces.
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In what must count as an outstanding example of insubordination well in excess of his position and authority, Halder undertook all this without the consent of his head of state. In an attempt to legitimise his actions Halder included a request to Hitler on 3 February for the active inclusion of Hungary in the planning for Operation Barbarossa. This request was flatly rejected and Halder was left to accept his first defeat in the battle with Hitler over the direction of the eastern
campaign.
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Significantly, Halder's rebuff over Hungary
was a warning sign for his main gamble requiring Hitler's ultimate consent, namely Moscow.

Such underhand dealings speak strongly of the double standards upheld during Halder's tenure as Chief of the General Staff. While he was infuriated at Hitler's interference in the military sphere, he saw no contradiction in his own attempt to circumvent Hitler's authority. Moreover, Halder's subordinates were not permitted the independence of action that was encouraged within certain quarters of the army. Instead, strict obedience and a dedicated loyalty were valued above all else, a point which Lieutenant-Colonel
Henning von Tresckow emphasised to Halder's secretary: ‘We are trained to be machines and must adapt our opinions. Little value is placed on our development as individuals.’
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Thus, it seems hypocrisy was also one of Halder's failings.

The issue of the army's supply was also a feature of Halder's presentation to Hitler during the 3 February conference, but again it remained unreflective of the grave reports Halder himself had received. None of the worrying economic details reported to him on 28 January were brought to Hitler's attention. The objective it seemed was to address how problems
could be overcome, with contradictory evidence simply omitted. Halder emphasised to Hitler the great reliance on trucks owing to the fact that the Soviet railroads would first have to be reset to the German gauge.
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Yet changing the gauge would not alter the fact, as Halder had noted in his diary, that the Soviet railway system was ‘very dispersed, mostly single tracked and not maintained’.
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Hitler was also informed of the need to open the Baltic ports as quickly as possible for re-supply and Halder recommended increased co-operation between the army and the Luftwaffe to avoid wastage of space in the transports heading east.
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From such uncritical and clearly limited assessments of the supply situation, one can see the ease with which Hitler's obsessive ambitions would push the Wehrmacht far beyond the limits of its already fragile support system. Halder's unbounded confidence only fuelled Hitler's yearnings when he should have been restraining him with all the means at his disposal. The conference of 3 February ended its discussion of Barbarossa with Hitler's disquieting prediction: ‘When Barbarossa begins the world will hold its breath.’ (
Die Welt werde den Atem anhalten, wenn die Operation ‘Barbarossa’ durchgeführt werde
.)
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Perilous warning signs were already clearly visible to the army commanders and not just in the realm of motorised transportation but the whole war economy. Field Marshal von Bock was assured by
Hitler on 1 February 1941, ‘we are ready for anything. Materially we are well off and already have to think about the conversion of some factories…economically we are absolutely solid.’
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Hitler's show of absolute confidence is in part due to his self-delusional character, but also sustained by his belief in the power of individual ‘will’; he sought to convince those around him of his own infallibility as if this belief alone could alter fact. As eccentric as it was, it found no shortage of disciples in the Third Reich, including those within the armed forces.
Brauchitsch's and
Halder's unquestioning participation in Hitler's eastern schemes
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not only condoned the flimsy basis upon which the schemes rested, but fired Hitler with their own conviction of superiority and faith in the operational plans. Halder in particular, who had been shown the critical weakness of his army and heard at first hand the excessive aspirations of Hitler, still managed an otherwise inexplicable reconciliation between the two.

Halder's slide into the devout service of Hitler, like that of many of his fellow generals, was a subtle, but steady process. As recently as 1938 Halder had been a central figure in the anti-Hitler resistance, but abandoned such ideas in spite of Hitler's aggressive war-waging and the terrors he unleashed, with widespread assistance from the army, in
Poland. Halder's desire for acceptance clouded his professional judgement and reduced the eminent position of Chief of the General Staff to outward obedience and inner deceit, aimed at achieving Hitler's growing ambitions without risking a confrontation over divergent strategies or the difficulties involved. Halder's own blindness to the corruption of his post and its forsaken ideals sees no greater reflection than his insistence in December 1940 that: ‘So long as I am the keeper of the grail, I shall not retreat one hair's width from the spirit of the German General Staff.’
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Yet for the army it was already much too late. Halder's betrayal of the time-honoured principles enshrined in the traditions of the German General Staff had allowed the foreboding problems and unanswered questions to remain unseen and
unaddressed.

The dysfunctional order – delusion as operative discourse

Despite the bravado of Hitler's public ranting about German strengths and future conquests, this outward facade occasionally failed him, betraying misgivings and revealing indecision. Even upon the issuing of
Directive 21 Hitler's army adjutant Major
Engel observed: ‘In my opinion the Führer himself does not yet know how things should be continued. Mistrust of his own military leadership, uncertainty over Russian strengths, disappointment at England's hard line all continue to occupy the Führer.’
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Not surprisingly therefore,
Hitler viewed with a degree of scepticism Halder's confident assessment of 3 February and, in an act which suggests Hitler to be more of a pragmatist than Halder, he ordered two further studies on 5 February in areas he saw to be potential threats.

The first concerned the imposing obstacle of the
Pripet marshes and its defensive capabilities as well as the possibility of the Soviets establishing a centre of resistance there. Furthermore, Hitler instructed attention to be directed towards the possible use of Soviet forces, especially cavalry, against the flanks of the two bordering army groups. The second study was to be concerned with the different Soviet industrial areas, ascertaining how interdependent they were and assessing the possible
implications of the Soviets building a defensive zone at any point up to the Urals.
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Obviously Hitler's thoughts were concerned with Soviet defensive counter-measures, something which hardly featured in the OKH plans and were certainly not a topic of great concern to the Army General Staff.

The army report into the Pripet marshes was compiled by Foreign Armies East and issued in its first draft on 12 February. While the study made reference to the difficulty of the terrain, it nevertheless arrived at the unsettling conclusion that, using the railways, Soviet armies could be transported in any direction. Furthermore the report judged: ‘It seems therefore that a threat from the Pripet [marshes] to the flank and the rear of the armies advancing towards
Moscow or
Kiev is very much within the realm of possibilities.’ When Hitler requested a copy of the study, however, this sentence was inexplicably deleted from the final version, in what was to be the latest example of an army censoring its own information to guard against a negative impression. Instead, the document suggested guerrilla actions and minor engagements (up to regimental strength) were the most likely form of combat to be expected, a far cry from a threat to the flanks of the two biggest army groups.
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Hitler's mistrust of his military commanders was therefore not wholly without basis. Indeed, as if aware of the army's deceit, he ordered the mining of passages throughout the marshes and made an insightful observation to Halder that, ‘supposedly armies could be moved in
there’.
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The second study called for by Hitler proposed answers of an economic kind which General
Thomas as head of the War Economy and Armaments Department was charged to answer. His study in fact pre-dated Hitler's request, resulting instead from a meeting with OKW chief Field Marshal
Keitel on 22 January 1941. Thomas on this occasion expressed some misgivings about the war-economic implications of the planned operation in the east and on this basis resolved to prepare a memorandum.
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On 8 February, three days after Hitler's instruction that further studies be conducted, Thomas informed Keitel and
Jodl of the fact that aircraft fuel would only last until the autumn, vehicle fuel for the first two months of operations and rubber supplies until the end of March. To this damning assessment Keitel flatly responded that ‘the Führer would not allow himself to be influenced in his planning
by such economic difficulties’.
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Thus it is considered doubtful Hitler was ever briefed on such details, providing yet another success for the internal army control over information and preservation of their confidently assured outcome.
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Keitel's blunt dismissal, however, had an even more drastic ramification in that it sent a clear signal to Thomas of what was expected in the still pending memorandum for Hitler's examination. Accordingly the memorandum entitled ‘The War-Economy Consequences of an Operation in the East’ dated 13 February 1941 was not submitted to Hitler until 20 February. In this time Thomas was able to amend and re-draft his study, presenting a final version favourable to Hitler's wishes and in line with the established views of his commanding officers.
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Thomas thus delivered a report lavish in discussion of the long-term economic benefits to be derived from occupying the Soviet Union and entirely dismissive of contradictory evidence previously produced
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as well as the dubious nature of his source material.
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Furthermore, his study ignored questions relating to the military feasibility of achieving the distant economic goals even though they required the conquest of an enormous land mass. Specifically, Thomas emphasised the need for the rapid conquest of the Caucasus for oil and a connection to the Far East to ensure future rubber supplies. Grain was expected to flow from the Ukraine solving Germany's food shortage and 75 per cent of the Soviet armaments industry was to fall, it was hoped intact, under direct German control with the remainder posing little threat so long as the factories in the Urals were destroyed.
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The folly of such optimistic predictions was apparent even to former diplomat and anti-Hitler conspirator
Ulrich von Hassell, whose diary of 2 March 1941 observed with remarkable accuracy that the ‘real results’ of an invasion of the Soviet Union would be: ‘(1) the cutting off of imports from Russia, since the Ukraine will be useful only
after a long time; (2) a new and unprecedented strain on war material and energies; (3) complete encirclement, deliberately arranged.’
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Thomas's study is a characteristic example of what Ian Kershaw has referred to as ‘working towards the Führer’ in which service to the dictator and his ideals was pursued above and sometimes at the expense of other more practical or moral considerations.
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In this case General Thomas provided more dangerous encouragement to Hitler's already overwrought ambition. More importantly still, his study solidified Hitler's conception of the campaign, substantiating as it did his preference towards economic objectives as a dual method of crippling the Soviet state and providing the resources he required to sustain his war. Indeed Hitler had ordered that a clear map accompany General
Thomas's study and this became a constant source of reference for his operational decisions over the early months of the campaign.
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