Ostkrieg (17 page)

As the Germans were soon to discover, Stalin's assumption of Soviet power had a great deal to recommend it. From the outset, the Wehrmacht
confronted an adversary with a remarkably high level of equipment that could draw on eight times the number of tanks, with the newest models superior in armament, speed, and fighting power. Most Soviet tanks were obsolete, to be sure, but they had to be destroyed nonetheless, a process that cost the Germans time, effort, and staggering quantities of munitions. Moreover, in the second Five-Year Plan (1933–1938), the Soviets had significantly increased the size of their armaments industry, with the result that by 1941 the Soviet Union had come to resemble an armed camp. This militarization had produced a “warfare state” whose goal was to be in a position “to wage war from a running start.” The Soviet Union possessed not only the largest military-industrial complex in the world but also one with a trained cadre of administrators already experienced in managing a war economy. As a result, despite its serious flaws, the Soviet system and the Stalinist apparatus of control proved far more resilient than the Germans anticipated. This enormous expansion of the industrial potential of the Soviet Union, both in size and in geographic distribution, was decisive in 1941, as the Soviets absorbed extraordinary losses but kept fighting. The Germans did, indeed, kick in the front door, but, contrary to Hitler's expectations, the structure wobbled but did not collapse. The Wehrmacht's qualitative edge in terms of training, leadership, and equipment provided it an advantage in a short struggle, but, if the initial onslaught failed, the Soviets had the capability of overwhelming Germany in the long term.
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In addition, German political and military leaders had fallen prey to the illusion of a quick victory, which clouded all their assessments of Russia. After all, they reasoned, they had finished off the apparently much stronger czarist empire in World War I and, thus, made sweeping generalizations based on previous experience. Since their entire plan rested on the assumption that the Red Army would disintegrate immediately under a series of sharp blows, as the French had a year earlier, they ignored unpleasant realities. That it was three hundred miles to the Dvina-Dnieper River line and another seven hundred miles to the Volga in a country with roads that were muddy and nearly impassable for much of the year did not seem to matter. That even the European part of Russia was vastly larger than British India, with which Hitler liked to make comparisons; that it dwarfed the German conquests in Western Europe; that it was a region of rough terrain, harsh climate, and poor infrastructure; that large areas of dense woods and swampy marshlands were perfect for partisan warfare; that the Russian railway system would have to be rebuilt to the narrow-gauge European standard, which required manpower the Germans lacked: all of this seemed not to register. That the
Soviet Union possessed enormous resources and a growing industrial base while Germany suffered a serious lack of key materials, especially oil, was put aside. The French campaign remained the prototype, and the myth of blitzkrieg convinced the skeptics: the campaign would be decided in a few weeks by quick operational victories on the frontier.
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Skepticism, however, did occasionally seep through. In the seven-week campaign against France, the depth of the longest drive was 250 miles, while the active operational area extended only about 150 miles across. In the Soviet Union, by contrast, the “frontier” area in which the battle of annihilation was to take place extended anywhere from 200 to 350 miles to the rear and covered some 750 miles in breadth, with the attacking armies diverging rather than converging. Even if the attack was successful, a diminishing number of German divisions would face the prospect of conquering an area that was doubling in width. Moreover, a Soviet defeat in the western borderlands would not put Moscow in the immediate danger that the German drive to the Channel had with Paris as the Soviet capital was another 350 miles to the east of the Dvina-Dnieper line. As a result, there would be less likelihood of the same panic affecting Soviet leaders as that which overwhelmed their French counterparts in May 1940. At the end of January 1941, Bock and Halder had already expressed doubts concerning the vast distances and German ability to destroy the Red Army, an unease that was not lessened when initial German operational plans had to be modified on a number of occasions as it became clear that the Wehrmacht did not possess sufficient strength to accomplish its task.
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In this creeping recognition of inherent German weakness lay the larger problem facing Hitler. War always involves a complex mixture of political, economic, and military factors. Although the first two might have priority in timing or goals, success in war ultimately depends on the proper application of military force. Thus, the planners of Barbarossa proceeded in accordance with Clausewitz's fundamental rule that the aim of any campaign is to defeat the enemy's military forces in the field, from which the seizure of economic and political objectives would follow. To be sure, Clausewitz had also noted the need to destroy the enemy's will to fight, for, if the popular will remained intact, a new military force could be formed, but the assumption remained that destroying the ability would also eliminate the will to resist.
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At the heart of Barbarossa, however, was a dilemma, which Hitler well expressed in his insistence on securing as quickly as possible the economic and industrial resources of the Soviet Union. Lebensraum, of course, whether referring to economic resources or a utopian idea of
racial resettlement, had always been the ultimate goal, but in this instance it meant something very specific to Hitler. The outbreak of war in 1939 had left Germany in a precarious position with regard to many key raw materials—none more critically than oil as overseas imports were cut off by the British blockade. By 1940, an astonishing 94 percent of German oil imports came from Rumania. This dependence proved a source of constant worry for Hitler, especially that the Rumanian oil fields might be crippled by Soviet or British bombers. Although the rapid conquests of 1940 had temporarily augmented the stocks of oil available, these increases had been outweighed by a greater liability as the Third Reich was now responsible for supplying the oil needs of both the occupied countries and its oil-poor allies. The stark reality facing the German war machine was inescapable, and, as early as March 1941, General Georg Thomas of the War Economy and Armaments Office had warned that existing stocks of oil would be exhausted by October. The only possibility of alleviating this desperate shortage would be “to seize quickly and exploit the Caucasus oilfields, at least the areas around Maikop and Grozny. . . . If this is not successful, we must expect the most serious repercussions, with unpredictable consequences for military operations after [September 1941] and for the survival of the economy.”
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Barbarossa, however, promised the consumption of an enormous amount of oil, which Germany might be able to sustain in the short term, but with which it would be hard-pressed to cope if the campaign lasted longer than a few months. In addition, the Third Reich needed large quantities of oil and other raw materials in order to conduct the anticipated war of attrition against Great Britain and the United States. Winning quickly in the Soviet Union, and securing these vital resources, was, thus, an absolute necessity. In order to achieve this, Hitler ordered the creation of more mechanized units, but the problem of insufficient supplies of oil and gasoline with which to run and maintain these vehicles remained. As a result, the Wehrmacht was forced to rely extensively on horse-drawn transport, which led to further problems: the tremendous differences in the pace of march between the motorized and other units raised the issue of when and how to close pockets; horse-drawn columns were vulnerable to attacks that aggravated logistic problems; and the lack of fodder and replacement animals put a strain on civilian supplies.
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All the while, the larger questions of the main focus of the attack and how to win a quick victory remained unresolved. Hitler's ideas certainly violated Clausewitz's principles, but they were based not merely on an ideological agenda but on a clear understanding of German economic
needs. In view of the later criticism of his meddling, it is worth mentioning that, in this instance, he had a far keener appreciation of the economic weaknesses faced by Germany than did his military advisers. Ironically, he had not initially insisted on his ideas but left planning for Barbarossa to the OKH, which stressed the classic military dictum of destroying the enemy army. His suggestions had eventually been incorporated in the overall plan, but not in such a way as to settle the question of the Schwerpunkt of the attack. Typically, Hitler and Halder did not discuss this obvious dichotomy in their views: Hitler simply assumed that the General Staff would accept his ideas, while Halder believed that operational developments would prove his emphasis on the capture of Moscow correct. As a result, no single objective dominated planning; three primary goals were identified, with an army group detailed to each, but with little regard for an eventual concentration of force. Subsequent attempts by army leaders to shape the operations in accordance with their plan led to a dispersal of effort and crippling delays while the key issues that should have been resolved in the beginning were now debated. Would it have been better to have focused the attack in the south? Stalin and Soviet military leaders certainly thought so and had placed the larger part of the Red Army in that area. They believed, given Hitler's obsession with the Balkans and especially Rumanian oil, that any German attack would target Ukraine and the Caucasus, with the aim of quickly acquiring the industrial, economic, and oil resources of southern Russia.
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The German operational plan thus failed to achieve clarity in how to destroy the Soviet will and ability to fight on: by crushing the main Soviet forces and seizing the capital or by conquering the key military-industrial areas of the country. In order to win, Germany had to capture the oil fields of the Caucasus as quickly as possible but launched its main effort against Moscow, far to the north. Even here, however, compromise and vacillation ruled as, in the final plan, significant forces had been peeled away from the central front and dispersed both to the north and to the south. In trying to do everything at once, German planners had largely assured that none of the three army groups had the means by which to achieve success. Nonetheless, even though it had military forces and economic resources clearly inadequate to accomplish its goals, Hitler once again hurled the Wehrmacht against a powerful opponent in an all-or-nothing gamble on short-term victory. Given the Wehrmacht's limited quantities of oil and gasoline, along with serious deficiencies in logistic preparation and supply capabilities, Barbarossa was from the outset a dangerous undertaking. Success meant that Germany would have
the resources to fight a war of attrition against the Anglo-Saxon powers; failure would convert the temporary risk of a two-front war into strategic disaster. Although Goebbels recorded gleefully the initial frightful Russian losses and predicted, “We will soon have pulled it off,” he also noted, with surprising candor: “We have to pull it off. There's a somewhat depressed mood among the people. . . . Each newly opened theater of war causes concern and worry.”
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Despite the enormous quantitative strength of the Soviet defenders, the opening phase of Barbarossa seemed to vindicate German assumptions of a quick destruction of the Red Army. Along the entire front, German infantry and armored forces caught the startled Soviet defenders by surprise and advanced quickly against initially weak and patchy resistance. Intercepts of Soviet radio traffic confirmed the impression of surprise as up and down the line the common question was posed, “What should we do?” In some local areas, Russian troops fought stubbornly to the last man and delayed the German advance for a few hours, but this failed to alter the larger picture: the invaders had completely shattered Soviet border defenses. In the skies above the onrushing German forces, the Luftwaffe launched more than twelve hundred aircraft in an assault on Soviet airfields that destroyed over a thousand enemy planes, most on the ground, on the first day alone. In addition, the Luftwaffe sought to destroy Soviet command and control centers in an effort to turn the Red Army into a disorganized and chaotic mob. The Germans had seized the tactical initiative and now aimed to develop such momentum that the Soviets would be unable to organize an effective resistance, an urgency based on the realization that the campaign would have to be won in the first two weeks.
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In the first few hours, the shattering impact of the German ground and air onslaught destroyed the operational cohesion of the Red Army and paralyzed its ability to react, a calamity intensified by Stalin's initial unwillingness to order Soviet countermeasures. Fearing that the German attack was a provocation, the Soviet dictator seemed at first not to comprehend the magnitude of the disaster, thinking even that German generals had launched an attack without Hitler's knowledge. Then, when he did authorize Soviet resistance, he and the Red Army command had difficulty imposing control over the utter chaos at the front and comprehending the speed of the German advance, which confounded all their expectations of initial probing attacks on the border. With communications disrupted and little information about the situation at the front, Stalin moved in a dream world where orders such as the one issued on
the evening of 22 June to launch an immediate counteroffensive were passed on by subordinate officers, even though they knew the reality, simply because they feared retribution for refusing to obey. Not for a few days, in fact, would Stalin truly comprehend the magnitude of the looming catastrophe facing the Soviet Union, and, when he finally did, on 27 June, his subsequent actions revealed a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
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