Between Giants (10 page)

The numbers of people intended for removal from Eastern Europe were staggering. Only 15 per cent of Poles would be allowed to remain in Poland, while the figures for Belarus, the Ukraine, and Russia were 25 per cent, 35 per cent and 50 per cent respectively. Those who were allowed to stay would include a small number deemed worthy of Germanisation; the rest would be treated as slave labour. It was anticipated that over 45 million persons would be deported into Siberia. For the Baltic States, the deportations were intended to reduce the ‘native’ population of Estonia and Latvia by about 50 per cent, and that of Lithuania – which was ‘contaminated’ by its historical links with Poland – by 85 per cent. The suggestion that Stalin’s purges would eventually have removed perhaps a quarter of the population of the Baltic States should be measured against these planned German deportations.
Generalplan Ost
originally intended for the Baltic States to become Germanised in about 25 years; Himmler altered this target to 20 years.
¹³

Generalplan Ost
would be implemented in two distinct phases. The first phase, known as the
Kleine Planung
(‘small plan’) would take place as soon as the relevant territory was overrun. The second phase, or
Grosse Planung
(‘large plan’) would then be put into effect over about 20 to 30 years. It was anticipated that the major expulsions would come during this phase. However, the diversion of food from ‘undesirable’ populations would occur as part of the
Kleine Planung
, and if this resulted in mass deaths through starvation, as was intended for the first winter following the expected German victory, it would reduce the amount of work required in the
Grosse Planung
.

The hostility of Germany towards the citizens of the Baltic States is worth closer examination. Attitudes towards Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in Germany between the wars were influenced by two main factors. Firstly, there were significant numbers of former Baltic Germans, such as Rosenberg himself, who had left their homelands in difficult circumstances. The relationship between the Baltic Germans and the Baltic nationals had frequently been a prickly one; most of the aristocracy and landowners of Latvia and Estonia had been German, and, as has been discussed, these communities had been extensively involved in the wars of independence in attempts to prevent the nationalists from coming to power, particularly in Latvia. At the very least, the Baltic Germans were determined that any government of an independent Latvia would be a close ally of Germany, and their own interests as the major landowners would be protected. Secondly, those wars of independence had involved large numbers of German soldiers serving in the
Freikorps
. These volunteers had been made promises of large rewards for their service, including grants of land in the Baltic States, but by the end of the liberation wars, the
Freikorps
were fighting against the nationalist governments in a final attempt to establish pro-German puppet states, and few men received what they regarded as their fair rewards. Both these factors, against a historic background of long-term attempts by Germans to establish control over the area, led to a sense of entitlement to the Baltic coast as a German area. In the league tables of races in terms of which the National Socialists viewed the world, the Baltic peoples fell somewhere between the German
Herrenvolk
and the Slav
Untermensch
. There were even distinctions between the different nationalities. Estonians were perceived as being above the others, as they had strong historic (and therefore ethnic) links with the Finns and Swedes, who were seen as Aryans. The Lithuanians were regarded as the lowest, due to their historic association with the hated Poles.

The experiences of the Baltic people during the Soviet occupation shifted public opinion in the three states, at least amongst the non-Jewish and non-Russian sections, in favour of Germany. There was widespread hope and expectation that a war between the Soviet Union and Germany was coming, and as part of this war the Germans would restore Baltic independence. There would be a price to pay, but most Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were so traumatised by the experience of Soviet rule, particularly the deportations and mass arrests, that they were quite prepared to become allies of Germany. But in May 1941, Rosenberg issued a document to his staff entitled ‘Instructions for a
Reichskommissar
in Ostland’. It made clear that whatever the future held for the Baltic States, there was no prospect of Germany restoring independence to the region:

The objective of a
Reichskommissariat
for Estonia, Latvia and
Weissruthenien
[the western and northern parts of Belarus] must be to strive for a form of German protectorate, and then through Germanisation of racially acceptable elements, colonisation by German people, and deportation of unwanted elements, to turn this region into a part of the Greater German Reich.
¹⁴

In addition to those elements deemed ‘unwanted’ due to ethnicity, the Germans drew on their experiences in Poland. The intellectual elite of the three countries was to be deported, in an attempt to eliminate any residual spark of nationalism. Rosenberg anticipated that in Latvia alone this would add up to 40,000 to the number to be deported. But whilst there was general agreement within the German hierarchy about these policies, their implementation looked problematic. Himmler published detailed criteria that people in the occupied lands would have to satisfy to be deemed worthy of Germanisation, but some of his subordinates protested, pointing out that large portions of the population of Germany itself would not be able to satisfy these criteria. In view of this, many within the SS and the various bodies competing for the right to control the occupied territories favoured a model based on ancient Sparta: the Germans would be in the position of the Spartans, the Slavs would be reduced to slave Helots, and there would be room for a third category, the
Perioikoi
, free people without full citizen status, who would serve the Reich as loyal allies – in other words, much in line with Rosenberg’s original proposals. The people of the Baltic States in particular were seen to be fit to play the role of
Perioikoi
. Rosenberg himself also saw such a role for the people of the Ukraine, whom he had rightly identified as being largely hostile to the Soviets. Hitler, though, rejected this out of hand. The Ukrainians were Slavs, and would be treated appropriately.

One of the problems that Germany would have faced was that of providing sufficient settlers to realise these grandiose dreams. The
Heim ins Reich
policy resulted in over 120,000 Baltic Germans moving to Germany, and after including ethnic Germans from other parts of Europe the total came to over 850,000. Most were settled in the western parts of Poland; for example, the German population of Poznań increased from 6,000 in 1939 to over 93,000.
¹⁵
But despite these measures, there were not enough settlers to Germanise Poland, let alone the vast territories further north and east. It was expected that the German population would grow steadily, not least due to the ban on abortions and lack of provision of birth control. These future generations, it was hoped, would provide the bulk of the settlers. Other, more extreme views were also considered. Goering and the head of the RHSA, Reinhard Heydrich, advocated extermination of the entire male population of the Ukraine, after which the SS would be given free rein to impregnate as many racially acceptable women as possible.

The overall military plans for
Barbarossa
, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, are beyond the scope of this book. The main military command in the Baltic area was Army Group North, commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb. Born in Bavaria in 1876, he saw service in China during the Boxer Rebellion, and served on both the Western and Eastern Fronts in the First World War. He remained in the Reichswehr in the inter-war years, playing a major part in suppressing Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Hitler was suspicious of him due to his well-known anti-Nazi opinions, and matters were not helped when Leeb was the only senior German officer to object to the plans to defeat Britain and France by attacking through Belgium. For the second time in the century, he maintained, the world would condemn Germany for attacking Belgium while it was a neutral country.
¹⁶
He was promoted to
Generalfeldmarschall
after his troops broke through the Maginot Line during the Battle of France, and now found himself commanding a powerful force on the northern flank of the German deployment. Despite his experiences in the west, he remained a cautious man, and in some respects failed to grasp the huge significance of the combination of armoured warfare and German tactical and operational doctrine, and how well suited one was to the other.

Leeb commanded two infantry armies and a panzer group – the appellation ‘panzer army’ was created after the onset of
Barbarossa
. 18th Army, under the Prussian Generaloberst Georg von Küchler, was on the left flank. Like all his generation, Küchler had seen service in the First World War, and had also fought in Latvia in the
Freikorps
, serving for a time as a staff officer to the German commander in the Baltic, Rüdiger von der Goltz. He had led his 18th Army across the Netherlands in 1940 and on to Paris, and now he and his men prepared to invade Lithuania. He had at his disposal I Corps, with five infantry divisions, and XXVI Corps, with four divisions. On his right flank was 16th Army, commanded by General Ernst Busch, a veteran of the Western Front in the First World War, who had commanded the army during the fighting in Belgium and France in 1940. His force consisted of II Corps with two divisions, and X Corps with five divisions.

The strike power of Leeb’s army group was in Generaloberst Erich Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Group. Widely known in the army as
Der alte Reiter
(‘the old cavalryman’), Hoepner had been an early enthusiast for panzer warfare, and was assigned to the command of XVI Panzer Corps in 1938. After successful campaigns in Poland and France, he now found himself promoted to
Generaloberst
. His panzer group consisted of two motorised corps, with SS Division
Totenkopf
in reserve. XLI Panzer Corps, with two panzer divisions, a motorised infantry division, and a regular infantry division, was commanded by General Georg-Hans Reinhardt, who had led 4th Panzer Division to Warsaw in 1939. Alongside him was LVI Panzer Corps, with one panzer division, one motorised infantry division, and a regular infantry division. Its commander was Erich von Manstein, who during the inter-war years had been the first to propose the creation of the
Sturmgeschütz
assault gun for close infantry support, as well as being one of the main architects of the successful German campaign through the Ardennes in 1940. He had commanded XXXVIII Corps during the Battle of France, and his men were the first to reach and cross the Seine. Now, he would have a chance to show what he could achieve with a panzer corps.

The panzer divisions had captured the imagination of the world in the opening campaigns of the war, but the bulk of the German army was composed of infantry divisions, which still marched and fought on foot. Their relative immobility compared to the motorised panzer divisions was a source of some concern, and even in the comparatively short Polish and western campaigns, the panzer divisions had often been left isolated while the infantry struggled to keep up. To an extent, panzer divisions had been organised with an awareness of this possibility, and contained sufficient engineering, maintenance and supply formations to allow them to function for extended periods without full contact with the rest of the Wehrmacht. The rapid advance of the panzer divisions and their resultant isolation in the west had not resulted in any significant setbacks, though the British counter-attack against the German armoured spearheads near the English Channel resulted in some anxious moments. In the vast spaces of the Soviet Union, the inability of the infantry to keep up with the panzer divisions would be ruthlessly exposed. The infantry divisions consisted of three infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, and one battalion each of reconnaissance, engineer, and anti-tank troops. The bulk of the artillery was horse-drawn, further limiting their mobility. The panzer divisions at this stage of the war had an infantry brigade, consisting of one or two infantry regiments, and in many cases a battalion of motorcycle-mounted infantry. The armoured element consisted of a panzer brigade, usually of two panzer regiments, with a total of up to four battalions of tanks between them. In addition, the division had reconnaissance, engineer and anti-tank battalions, as well as a regiment of artillery – in contrast to the infantry divisions, most of this artillery was either motorised or towed by half-tracks and trucks. The motorised infantry divisions had two motorised infantry regiments and a motorcycle battalion, an artillery regiment, and engineer and anti-tank battalions.

The tanks of the panzer divisions had led the way across Poland, Belgium and France, but were in many respects inferior to those of Germany’s enemies. Most divisions still had large numbers of Pz.II tanks, which had first entered service in 1936. The 9-ton vehicles were armed with a 20mm gun, and their armour was originally intended to protect the crew only from light infantry weapons. Later versions had armoured enhancements up to 30mm, but this provided minimal protection against anti-tank guns. The Pz.III was numerically the main tank at the outset of
Barbarossa.
It was the first German tank specifically designed to engage other tanks, and was a substantially larger vehicle than the Pz.II, weighing 23 tons. Its armour was increased from an original specification of 15mm to 30mm, but this was still inadequate for engagement with other tanks. From the outset, the tank had been designed to carry a 50mm gun, but at the time it entered service, the Wehrmacht’s anti-tank battalions were equipped with 37mm guns, and these were fitted to the Pz.III in the interests of standardisation. By the eve of
Barbarossa
, most Pz.III had been upgraded to 50mm guns, though most had shorter barrels than Hitler had decreed, resulting in lower muzzle velocity and less penetrative power. There were also large numbers of Pz.III chassis in use as assault guns. The
Sturmgeschütz
III was produced in response to a proposal from Manstein in 1935 for such a vehicle, in order to provide advancing infantry with heavy weapon support that could deal with bunkers and other fortifications. The vehicle could be fitted with a more powerful gun than the Pz.III, as it lacked a turret, and battalions of these vehicles were assigned as armour support for infantry divisions. In 1941, they were armed with a short-barrelled, low-velocity 75mm gun, reflecting their original role as infantry support. Later, they would be rearmed with high-velocity 75mm guns so that they could play an increasing role in anti-tank warfare.