Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (21 page)

Naturally, Hoth was striving for the most economical employment of his forces and, irrespective of whether he was viewing Moscow or
Leningrad as the secondary objective, both argued strongly for him to keep his weight on the left flank and not be drawn into the centre. Essentially he hoped for a direct thrust on the Dvina, seizing bridgeheads along the river west of
Vitebsk and creating, in tandem with
Panzer Group 2's drive to the Dnepr, a giant ring closed on the great rivers. From this position Hoth's further operations to either the north-east (Leningrad) or east (Moscow
) would be best served. Yet the OKH insisted that the great mass of Soviet strength lay between the border zone and
Minsk, allowing a decisive blow to be struck. There may also have been a latent fear on Brauchitsch and Halder's part that allowing Hoth's panzers such a favourable development for the northward swing towards Leningrad would endanger their own designs. Conceivably, they therefore sought to concentrate Hoth's armoured strength in the centre of the front before a continued advance eastward. The decision for a smaller encirclement centred on Minsk created the dilemma for Hoth, who clearly saw the incompatibitly of having to secure the Dvina rapidly, with a south-easterly diversion to Minsk. ‘But’, as
Bock noted, ‘the Army Command…in its directives is demanding that the panzer groups assist in the destruction of the enemy forces in the frontier zone [i.e. the region west of Minsk], I will have to reject Hoth's
solution, even though there is much to be said in its favour.’

Foreseeing the bitterness the dispute could engender, Bock dispatched his operations officer, Lieutenant-Colonel
Henning von Tresckow, to OKH to ensure the sincerity of their commitment to the Minsk operation, especially in the light of Hoth's justifiable concerns.
⁹⁴
Brauchitsch and Halder did not welcome a discussion in detail of such sensitive operations and they refused to be drawn on the issue, placating Tresckow with vague, non-committal answers. Irritated at such vacillation, Bock
took up the matter personally on 27 March during an OKH meeting with the army and panzer group commanders. Here Bock was under no illusions as to the fundamental issue at stake and was frustrated by the preoccupation with what he saw as ‘minor details’. Indeed he was given the same treatment as Tresckow, with Halder attempting to skip over the issue,
⁹⁵
forcing Bock to complain in his diary:

When I mentioned the matter of the linking up of both my panzer groups in the Minsk area and the difficulties of their subsequent advance from there, I received no clear statement on it, the same sort of answer Tresckow had received in Berlin recently. The question is important, for between Minsk and the ‘gateway to
Smolensk’ – the land bridge between the Dniepr and the Dvina
– lie the marshes from which the Beresina springs; massing armoured forces near Minsk would therefore be very detrimental to their further forward movement.
⁹⁶

We may safely surmise that Bock's attention was directed by Halder towards Smolensk as the next operational objective, adding to the Field Marshal's concern about the density of marshlands to be traversed. Unaware of the divergent plans of the OKH and Hitler pulling his armoured strength in different directions, Bock had cause to welcome an opportunity for discussion of the planned operations with
Hitler a few days later on 30 March. The conference was also attended by
Brauchitsch and
Halder who were evidently prepared to play along with Hitler's intentions as they had done in all previous discussions, but neither had thought to forbid Bock from raising the matter openly with Hitler. When Hitler surveyed the operations in the Baltic and around Leningrad he made reference to the likelihood of Bock's armoured groups impacting events decisively. The difficulties this would entail with a diversion of forces first to Minsk and later Smolensk, as well as the entanglement of marshes and the ever-present vast distances, forced Bock to seize his moment. ‘I once again spoke of the difficulties facing a subsequent advance by the tanks out of the area assigned to me at Minsk.’ According to Bock, as he outlined the problem, Brauchitsch, somewhat embarrassed and desperate to play it down, interjected ‘that “link-up at Minsk” was intended to mean the general area of Minsk’. This attempt to trivialise Bock's concern and
belittle the issue in front of Hitler angered Bock all the more because specific orders to the contrary had been issued by the OKH – a fact Bock pointed out to Halder at the conclusion of the meeting when he remarked: ‘You have issued written orders that the panzer groups are to advance “in close contact”.’ Like Brauchitsch, Halder sought again to make light of the fact, retorting with a laugh: ‘Spiritual contact is what was meant!’ The ambiguity of this response, coupled with the apparent failure of Halder and Brauchitsch to grasp the difficulties involved, especially with discussion of supporting operations as far north as
Leningrad, disgusted Bock, whose final comment summed up his utter failure to resolve the matter: ‘That clarified nothing!’
⁹⁷
Importantly for Brauchitsch and Halder, Hitler seems to have been adequately convinced this was a minor internal matter of the army without perceiving any threat to his intended strike northwards. This could have a number of explanations; either Bock was cut off before he was able to outline the full extent of his concerns or Hitler, in a typically boundless over-estimation of German strength, simply did not share the Field Marshal's assessment.

The vague issue of closing the first armoured ring at Minsk remained unattended until Tresckow finally extracted a firm commitment from Brauchitsch in mid-May, which confirmed that Panzer Group 3 would advance over the Molodechno land bridge to link up with Panzer Group 2 in the area around
Minsk. Further operations directed eastwards were to be preceded by an advance north around the Beresina marshes. Although
Tresckow's report represented clear instructions and a welcome resolution to what Bock called the ‘foggy order concerning the link-up of the two panzer groups’,
⁹⁸
it nevertheless did not satisfy Bock's
or Hoth's initial concerns over closing the first armoured ring so soon. No open dialogue took place because in the closed circle of discussion that was not possible. For Brauchitsch
and Halder
, it was only important that OKH's orders be followed and that Hitler
not be drawn into strategic questions concerning the direction of the campaign or, so far as possible, even be made aware of their
existence.

Barbarossa – the zenith of war

Until
spring 1941 the campaign in the east was presented and explained by Hitler largely in terms of the wider war against
Britain and the related advantages for possible future conflict with the
United States. Yet as the
campaign approached, his interest shifted more and more from strategic and geopolitical considerations to his long-held racial and ideological beliefs. As early as his 1925 publication of
Mein Kampf
these ideas had been given clear expression:

We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future
. If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.
⁹⁹

Reiterating this point, his second book, written in 1928, asserted:

The size of a people is a variable factor. It will be a rising one in the case of a healthy people. Yes, the increase alone can secure the future of a people…The growth in population could only be compensated by growth – expansion – of the Lebensraum.
¹⁰⁰
For Germany, a future alliance with Russia has no sense…On the contrary…that would have prevented us from seeking the goal of German foreign policy in the one and only place possible: space in the East.
¹⁰¹

Upon his accession to power, Hitler declared to his generals on 3 February 1933 that the purpose of the new Wehrmacht was for ‘conquering new Lebensraum in the East and ruthlessly Germanizing it’.
¹⁰²
The advent of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 was the product of political convenience and represented no more than a short-term ‘tactical maneuver’.
¹⁰³
Finally, at the end of March 1941 Hitler gathered his generals to announce the beginning of what he called ‘Colonial tasks!’, requiring a ‘
Clash of two ideologies
’ for which the Wehrmacht would have to partake in ‘a war of extermination’.
¹⁰⁴

Hitler's words signalled a fundamental change in the nature of the war and the previous approach of the German army in conceptualising and engaging its enemy. Although atrocities had been perpetrated in
Poland and in other occupied countries, the eastern front deserves careful attention in order to understand what kind of war Hitler was planning and the resulting implications for the war's turning point. For this purpose, a brief elaboration on terminology is in order.

Owing to its rapidly developing ideological nature, Operation Barbarossa represents a clear break from all previous German campaigns of World War II.
¹⁰⁵
Even apart from the obvious military and strategic implications of open conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union, the campaign in the east represents a watershed in the basic character of the war itself. This differentiation is best understood through
Erich Ludendorff's definition of ‘total war’ from his 1935 study
Der Totale Krieg
.
¹⁰⁶
Defining this difference is not helped by the common usage of the term ‘total war’ in the vast annals of Anglo-American military literature, especially in regard to categorising the First and Second World Wars. The contention by Ludendorff is unique, however, for its radical, even extremist application of war and at the same time its close approximation to the methods adopted by National Socialist Germany. For Ludendorff, war should aim for ‘the annihilation of the enemy Army and of the enemy nation’,
¹⁰⁷
the essential aspect being the lack of distinction between combatants and non-combatants, thus creating the precondition for unrestrained violence directed indiscriminately against a civilian populace. Ludendorff's definition of total war, Beatrice Heuser has concluded, encompassed two essential elements; the total application of the modern war machine combined with a genocidal policy.
¹⁰⁸

In pursuing the conquest of the Soviet Union, the German war aims began to envisage far more than a purely military victory, transforming the struggle into a war of annihilation or ‘total war’ directed against an enemy nation of perceived inferior racial stock with a competing and hostile ideology. The totality of the coming war was reflected in Hitler's instruction in early March 1941 that Barbarossa was to be ‘more than a mere clash of arms; it is also a conflict between two ideologies. In view of the extent of the space involved,
the striking down of the enemy armed forces will not suffice to bring about an end to the war
.’
¹⁰⁹
Clearly, Ludendorff's conception of war against the enemy nation was reaching its fruition.

The
fanatical ideals contained within Hitler's ‘total war’ philosophy formed a radical departure from his past campaigns and necessitated a degree of brutality and harshness hitherto unseen in Europe since the genocidal campaigns of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). The concept of ‘total war’, however, was identified at the time by the more acceptable term of a ‘New Order’, which determined the methods and policies of occupation in the newly-won territories of the east. The ruthless ideological dictates of this work and the huge area to be administered demanded the willing complicity of the armed forces which would have to operate both directly and in close contact with the murderous excesses of the genocidal policy. Indeed, the cordial relationship between the Wehrmacht and the other agencies of the regime such as the
SS and
SD
¹¹⁰
belies the myth of ignorance or formal separation from the barbarous German rule, which many generals (and lower-ranking veterans) later claimed in their
defence.

While
a detailed assessment of the Wehrmacht's participation in the ‘total war’ to be fought in the east is beyond the scope of this study, it is important to establish its impact on the will of the Soviet people to resist. The methods of ‘total war’ threatened not only the existence of the Soviet state, but the survival of the Soviet people themselves, who responded with an indignant conviction of assured righteousness, maximised by the scale of German atrocities. In the advent of an unforeseen setback or major delay in the German campaign, the consequences of an unrestrained genocidal policy are plainly apparent. This highlights the German faith in their ultimate triumph and the belief that it could be achieved before an organised Soviet response would be possible. Given the tenuous state of German preparations for war, the planned ruthless exploitation and wanton cruelty towards the Soviet population attain greatly increased significance in determining the advent of a turning point once the assumed decisive military solution had failed to materialise.