Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (82 page)

In spite of the dark clouds swelling over the army,
Halder remained defiantly optimistic about the prospects of a decisive blow being dealt to the Soviet Union when operations resumed towards the end of August. In part this was based on a serious over-estimation of the army's offensive strength, but there was also a corresponding under-estimation of the Red Army, fed by the inept submissions of the intelligence department Foreign Armies East. Halder's dismissive estimation of the Red Army had recently prompted him to compare it with France's desperate position in early June 1940, and he continued to insist that Soviet reserves had reached their end. This delusional perception of Soviet strength was one of the central pillars sustaining Halder's faith in the coming victory, but his bubble was burst with dramatic effect when new information from Foreign Armies East finally revealed the fearsome potential of the Soviet
colossus. Halder's diary entry for 11 August conveys his shock, disbelief and sudden misgivings.

Regarding the general situation, it stands out more and more clearly that we underestimated the Russian colossus, which prepared itself consciously for war with the complete unscrupulousness that is typical of totalitarian states [
sic
]. This statement refers just as much to organizational as to economic strengths, to traffic management, above all to pure military potential. At the start of the war we reckoned with 200 enemy divisions. Now we already count 360. These divisions are not armed and equipped in our sense, and tactically they are inadequately led in many ways. But they are there and when we destroy a dozen of them, then the Russians put another dozen in their place. The time factor favours them, as they are near to their own centres of power, while we are always moving further away from ours.

And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front line, without any depth, are subject to the incessant attacks of the enemy. These are sometimes successful, because in these enormous spaces far too many gaps must be left open.
¹¹⁸

It was this dispersal of units that sapped the army's strength and revealed a critical shortage of resources, which undercut every attempt at concentration. This realisation made a sobering impression on Halder, as he bluntly outlined the difficulty of the German predicament.

[W]hat we are now doing is the last desperate attempt to avoid positional warfare. The High Command is very limited in its means. The army groups are separated by natural boundaries (marshes). Our last reserves have been committed. Any new grouping now is a movement on the baseline within the army groups. This takes time and consumes the power of men and machines.
¹¹⁹

Without question this was Halder's most accurate assessment to date on the harsh reality of war against the Soviet
Union.

Given the general severity of Germany's position in the east, it would be incorrect to highlight any individual problem and attribute to it a decisive importance. A few hundred tank engines more or less would not have radically altered the German predicament, any more than a particular command decision in one direction over another. Such hypothetical matters may have affected the war in individual areas, or at best across a broad section of the front, but the general lack of military resources, in almost every significant category, locked Germany into a long war. Although barely understood by the German command at the time, this created an alarming strategic dilemma. The dilapidated state of the motorised and panzer divisions rendered them unable to eliminate
Soviet power in 1941, yet by the same token, the longer the war dragged on, the more the Soviets would benefit from Allied economic assistance and direct military aid.

Figure 9.2 
As Hitler intended to disperse Army Group Centre's panzers to the north and south, Halder (left) and Brauchitsch desperately schemed to maintain the attack on Moscow.

Not only was the
restoration of Bock's motorised divisions proving an uphill battle against an intractable mechanical deficit, but the race to offset the widening gaps in the ranks of the panzer groups was also being lost. Personnel losses from 22 June to 10 August revealed the scale of internal erosion that the replacement system was proving too slow to counter. Guderian's panzer group had suffered the heaviest casualties
with 26,230 men lost, including 1,275 officers.
¹²⁰
For the same seven-week period, Hoth's panzer group recorded 17,201 casualties, including 763 officers.
¹²¹
Throughout the whole army the loss of officers had reached a worrying proportion, with some 10,000 having been killed or wounded in the first 50 days of the campaign, a staggering average of 200 a day. On 15 August Halder noted that some 16,000 officers would be required for the rest of the year, but that only 5,000 replacements would be
available.
¹²²

Army Group Guderian's continuing juggling act to simultaneously attack in the south, refit in the rear and defend at Yel'nya was symptomatic of Army Group Centre's excessive commitments.
All three placed inordinate demands on resources which simply could not be met, and Guderian's penchant for the offensive left the Yel'nya salient, already in crisis, under threat of total collapse. Soviet attacks were proving indefatigable and growing in strength, against which the recommitment of the weakened SS division
Das Reich
and infantry regiment
Grossdeutschland
had provided only a short-term solution. On 11 August
XXXXVI Panzer Corps reported that the latest enemy breakthrough had been achieved on a 2½-kilometre front to a depth of three kilometres.
Das Reich
was reported to be at the end of its strength and not in a position to hold its line against sustained enemy pressure.
¹²³
The desperate position of Vietinghoff's panzer corps and the
XX Army Corps now forced plans to be prepared for a major reinforcement of the salient in the event of a complete military collapse. In this instance, the entire
18th Panzer Division and parts of the
10th Panzer Division would be mobilised, as well as the
17th Panzer Division if still available.
¹²⁴
It was indeed a troubling commentary on both the offensive strength of the Red Army and the corresponding weakness of the German front, that they deemed it would now require the great majority of two panzer corps to simply hold one section of the front.

Bock
was now paying the price for the gross over-extension of his army group, and the frantic demands of the front required that he raise more
reserves. He sought to do this by stripping the rear areas. ‘I need every man up front’, he wrote in his diary on 12 August. Yet the absence of reserves was a crisis that pervaded the whole of the eastern front. Bock observed with growing concern that Army Group North's advance to Leningrad was sluggish, and Army Group South was stuck at the Dnepr River. For his own army group, Bock recognised that resuming forward operations depended on refitting the panzer groups; he foresaw, however, the motorised and panzer divisions being restored to no more than half of their initial strength. Even then, he noted, they would have to engage the main body of the Red Army on a 700-kilometre-wide front. Overall, Bock concluded: ‘If the Russians don't soon collapse somewhere, the objective of defeating them so badly that they are eliminated will be difficult to achieve before the
winter.’
¹²⁵

As Soviet pressure mounted at Yel'nya, the lack of German reserves was only part of the problem. On 13 August Vietinghoff's panzer corps complained that the ongoing shortage of ammunition supplies further contributed to its difficulties and that so long as these continued the Stuka dive-bomber constituted its artillery.
¹²⁶
Even this was thrown into doubt when Hermann
Göring, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, abruptly directed Kesselring's concentration of strength away from Yel'nya to support Guderian's drive in the south. This was done without Bock's consultation or consent, which, as the Field Marshal protested, made rational command ‘impossible’.
¹²⁷
Vietinghoff's panzer corps had no doubts about the consequences of this decision and noted in its war diary ‘it is questionable whether the front, especially the Yel'nya salient, will hold. The losses remain continually high.’
¹²⁸

With the profound threat of collapse hanging over the German position at Yel'nya,
Guderian ordered
Vietinghoff and
Materna (the respective commanders of XXXXVI
Panzer Corps and XX
Army Corps) to a meeting on 14 August. Already on 13 August the idea had been mooted to withdraw from the salient, thereby shortening the German defensive line, but Guderian was extremely reluctant. In his opinion, withdrawal was akin to permitting a significant Soviet victory, and Guderian was very sensitive about allowing the first major retreat of the entire war to take place on his front, which he felt the Soviets would use to good effect
as propaganda.
¹²⁹
The emergency meeting on 14 August was intended to decide the fate of the Yel'nya salient and sharply divergent opinions were exchanged. General Materna was adamant that the German position must be evacuated. The evening before he had complained bitterly to Vietinghoff that his
15th Infantry Division was particularly threatened, having lost 35 officers over the preceding two days alone, and insisting that holding the current position was ‘pure insanity’.
¹³⁰
On 14 August, Materna stated that a serious enemy attack could no longer be held by either of his two infantry divisions and pleaded for a withdrawal.
¹³¹
Vietinghoff took the opposing view and argued that a retreat would allow the Soviets to concentrate their forces in the same way that
Materna was proposing to benefit. Guderian was inclined to back
Vietinghoff's standpoint but, in the absence of any clear idea of future operational priorities, he found it difficult to make a decision.
¹³²
As
Bock observed, if major operations were to be continued towards the east, then it was important to hold the salient as an offensive springboard. On the other hand, if the front was to remain on the defensive against costly Soviet attacks, then withdrawal was the correct course of action.
¹³³
Clearly, the enduring strategic uncertainty was making reasoned command decisions hopelessly impracticable. Bock referred the matter to Brauchitsch, but ultimate responsibility for a decision was returned to him.
¹³⁴
At this point Guderian gave a strong hint of his lack of faith in the Moscow alternative by advocating the salient be evacuated.
¹³⁵
Halder, on the other hand, spoke with Greiffenberg, Bock's Chief of Staff, and warned him against a withdrawal, claiming that however bad the situation was, it had to be a lot worse for the enemy.
¹³⁶
Eventually Bock too decided to hold at Yel'nya and consulted Guderian to find out what was needed to make this possible. Most notably, Guderian
stipulated a sizeable increase in the flow of munitions and the recommitment of the Luftwaffe to
Yel'nya.
¹³⁷

The army's uncertainty about Yel'nya was only one symptom of Hitler's continuing indecision over the further prosecution of the war. His customary decisiveness had temporarily deserted him, and he stood
day after day at his military conferences struggling to find a way of closing the Pandora's Box he had opened in the east.
Caught between his own instinctive strategic judgement and the resounding opposition of his commanders, Hitler anxiously sought a solution that would allow him to cover all options. Jodl's submission to Hitler on 10 August had advocated much of what Halder had earlier proposed (from their meeting on 7 August) and was, therefore, endowed with a hefty dose of Halder's previously insatiable optimism. The continued drive on Moscow by Bock's armoured forces was, of course, central to what Jodl had argued, with the two flanking army groups deliberately presented as being strong enough to carry out the tasks Hitler desired of them. Not surprisingly, Hitler found in this a degree of solace, as it purported to offer a joint solution to the seemingly intractable impasse over the strategic direction of the campaign. Although not accepted in its purest form, Jodl's submission was convincing enough for Hitler to initiate it in an amendment to
Directive 34, to be known as
Directive 34a. This new dictate took a major step towards the Moscow alternative, albeit with Hitler's own stringently attached conditions. Dated 12 August, Directive 34a made clear that Rundstedt's army group was expected to achieve its objectives in the Ukraine without assistance from Bock. Leeb's army group was likewise expected to encircle
Leningrad and achieve a junction with Finnish forces. In this case, however, Bock was expected to extend his front further to the north to allow Leeb's offensive a greater concentration of forces. The directive also repeated Hitler's long-standing insistence that Bock deal decisively with the Soviet forces on his southern flank before renewing his advance eastward.
¹³⁸
Regarding
Moscow, the directive stated: