Ostkrieg (25 page)

The Germans netted well over 300,000 prisoners and destroyed over 3,000 tanks at the Battle of Smolensk and had by early August in Army Group Center's sector alone taken over 600,000 prisoners and destroyed or captured over 6,000 tanks. Still, despite losses of over 2 million men, the Red Army showed no sign of slackening their stubborn resistance or that their vital strength had been broken. The way to Moscow was still not open, while the deterioration of the Germans' combat power, especially among the armored units, was causing mounting anxieties and gradually curtailing their available options. By late July, the OKH estimated the combat power of the panzer and motorized infantry divisions to be only about half of what it had been at the start of the campaign. The deficiencies were so serious, in fact, that, even after a ten-day pause to resupply and reequip, the goal was merely to bring the armored divisions up to 60–70 percent of their former strength. Both Hoth's and Guderian's Panzergruppen were badly overextended, with their thinly stretched front lines covered by few strategic reserves. Halder himself on 26 July noted the danger that German forces were being drawn into a series of minor successes that would lead only to positional warfare, while on 5 August he fretted that present developments were leading to a solidification of the fronts like World War I. Bock, too, lamented the Führer's suggestion, as a result of Smolensk, that “for the moment we should encircle the Russians tactically wherever we meet them . . . and then destroy them in small pockets,” an idea Bock thought would reduce grand blitzkrieg sweeps to mere tactical actions.
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Although the Soviets had not reclaimed the strategic initiative, they had broken the momentum of the German offensive. Once again, as in the border battles, the Germans failed to concentrate their forces and gain a swift, crushing victory, a pattern that would continue with regularity through 1942. Major disputes about the Schwerpunkt of the attack, which had receded in the earlier glow of success, now erupted with a fury in late July and August as the Germans struggled to prevent their Blitzfeldzug from deteriorating into a war of attrition.

On 19 July, at the height of the fighting at Smolensk, the OKW issued Führer Directive No. 33, which reflected Hitler's recognition that the large-scale encirclement operations had not achieved decisive success and that such success was not likely to be expected soon. Both Army Group Center and Army Group South had been slowed by the creation of pockets and by the continuing presence in the rear areas (the Pripet Marshes) of substantial Soviet forces. The aim over the next few weeks would be simply to prevent enemy units still within reach from withdrawing further into the vast spaces of this enormous land and to destroy them. As
many German commanders realized, this policy would slow their exploitation of any offensive successes and allow the enemy time to construct new defenses. Since the Germans had largely outrun their fragile supply system, the poor roads made it difficult for infantry to keep pace with the tanks (whose number was dwindling rapidly), and the frontline units had received only scanty replacements, there seemed little alternative to such a decision. The order thus took account of the fact that significant time would still be required to eliminate the remnants of Soviet forces in the Smolensk area, a task that was to be left to the infantry. The bulk of the two Panzergruppen would then be shifted to the north and south, to support the drive on Leningrad and to clear the Soviet Fifth Army from the Pripet Marshes. As was becoming uncomfortably apparent, the Wehrmacht bested the Red Army in individual battles time and again but found itself lacking the strength to accomplish all that it needed to do to secure victory.
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Given the dogged resistance on the central axis, the continuing attacks from the Pripet area that delayed the advance of the Sixth Army to the south and threatened to sever its supply lines, rainy weather that further hobbled the Germans, and the possibilities raised by the situation at Kiev noted by Halder on 9 July, Hitler's order appeared neither unrealistic nor unreasonable. In fact, however, Halder protested immediately and sought to have it canceled, worrying that it presaged a disastrous abandonment of a concentrated attack on Moscow. In response, on 23 July Hitler issued the Supplement to Directive No. 33, which could hardly have calmed Halder's anxieties. Although the transfer of armored units was made dependent on the operational and supply situation, this addendum nonetheless clearly intended that significant units from Guderian's Second Panzergruppe would be turned south to clear enemy forces west of the Dnieper, then strike to the east, capture the key industrial areas of Kharkov and the Donets Basin, and proceed on toward the Caucasus oil region. At the same time, Hoth's Third Panzergruppe would temporarily be assigned to Army Group North to aid in its attack on Leningrad. Army Group Center would be left with only “sufficiently powerful infantry formations” to advance “as far as possible to the east.” Only at the beginning of September, and then only if the armored units temporarily stripped from it were returned, could Army Group Center expect to resume its offensive toward Moscow. As the OKW conceded, the Soviets had forced this delay and deflected the immediate threat to Moscow, which represented a significant political victory. In addition, the pause would give the enemy a month to strengthen its defenses west of the capital as well as have use of the considerable armaments industries of
the Moscow region. Although the directive noted that Moscow should be brought under attack by the Luftwaffe and that rapid progress could be expected once the offensive resumed, its sober tone left little doubt that the German High Command recognized that it faced serious difficulties.
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Halder understood immediately the implications of this directive, which meant a fundamental shift in the operational-strategic objective from the destruction of enemy combat power in front of Moscow to the occupation of vital economic regions. That evening, he and Brauchitsch met with Hitler to express their deep concern and persuade the Führer to concentrate available German forces against Moscow. In part, their arguments followed familiar lines: since most of the remaining enemy forces would be concentrated in front of Moscow, that offered the best chance of decisive victory. The capture of the city and its communications and “leadership apparatus” as well as its significant armaments industry, the two argued, would split Russia in half and make further organized resistance “extraordinarily difficult.” As with France a year earlier, Halder (and Bock) expected the capture of the Soviet capital to induce such political shockwaves that the entire system would collapse. Halder also raised a new and disquieting concern: the Germans lacked sufficient time and strength to complete the Barbarossa plan before winter. The Russians, he noted, were desperately trying to delay the German advance until the onset of winter. If reduced to “positional warfare,” Halder warned, the enemy would be able to organize its defenses and mobilize its industries so that next spring the Wehrmacht would face newly raised and equipped Soviet formations. As a result, “the military goal of the war against Russia, the rapid elimination of one opponent in a two-front war in order to turn full strength against the other [England], could not be achieved.” Halder concluded that the enemy had been “decisively weakened” but not yet “completely defeated” and, thus, that the aim of future operations had to be the destruction of the enemy ability to resist.
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Hitler, however, was not impressed by Halder's arguments, not least because he considered the capture of Soviet economic and oil resources of far greater importance in undermining the enemy ability to resist. Moreover, in the absence of an inescapable position into which to push Russian forces, such as the English Channel, he believed that a frontal assault on Moscow would simply allow Soviet troops once again to withdraw, an argument seemingly confirmed by the operations at Minsk and Smolensk. His advice—that the army should concentrate on “tactical battles of destruction over smaller areas in which the enemy could
be pinned down and completely destroyed”—must have come as a stinging rebuke to Halder and his conduct of operations. Over the next few days, indeed, the chief of the OKH fumed that the campaign was becoming little more than static warfare while sarcastically noting the impossibility of avoiding all risks. On 26 July, he bluntly told Hitler that he was playing into Russian hands by resorting to “tactical envelopments” while trying to rally the top army leaders, including Jodl, his rival in the OKW, to his position. Both corps commanders of panzer forces in the north, Manstein and Hoepner, reported that the area facing them between Lakes Peipus and Ilmen was unsuitable for mobile warfare, as did Paulus, who was dispatched to the region on a fact-finding mission.
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In the event, it was less Halder's arguments and more the reality of growing Soviet strength and increasing German supply difficulties that caused Hitler first to suspend and then to cancel the Supplement to Directive No. 33. Although on hearing the news Halder exclaimed, “This decision frees every thinking soldier of the horrible vision obsessing us these last few days, since the Führer's obstinacy made the final bogging down of the campaign appear imminent,” the reality of Directive No. 34 was a bit less cheering. In it, Hitler still called for operations to envelop Leningrad and destroy Soviet forces at Kiev and in Ukraine west of the Dnieper while ordering Army Group Center to go on the defensive while it was refitted and reequipped. Halder clearly expected that the developments on the front would strengthen his position and that, after the enforced supply halt, the central front would again become the main axis of advance.
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Amid much vacillation, the “July Crisis” of the German military leadership had thus ended, at least temporarily, although it was clear that, after the replenishment period, a decision would still have to be taken. The crucial decision—for or against Moscow—had merely been postponed. Nor, in retrospect, is it clear that Halder's arguments were markedly better than Hitler's. In view of the logistic situation, any further advance on the central axis was for the time being out of the question. The quartermaster-general's staff had already concluded that a major attack on the central front was unfeasible since an adequate rate of supply to sustain an offensive could not be provided. At the same time, Hitler's decision corresponded with continued fighting still raging in the Smolensk pocket, so the stable situation necessary for replenishment of the front units did not exist. Because of the early capture of the Baltic ports, an action Hitler had urged from the outset, Army Group North had accumulated sufficient supplies to sustain its operations, although terrain difficulties would hamper its movement. Moreover, the strong
Soviet forces in the Pripet Marshes did represent a significant threat to the flanks of both Army Group Center and Army Group South as well as a menace to the already strained supply lines to the Sixth Army. In addition, large numbers of German troops, some six divisions, were tied down in combating enemy forays from the swamps. Even Bock admitted that “a precondition for any further operation is the defeat of the enemy on the army group's flanks, both of which are lagging far behind.” As a result, by the late summer of 1941, the envelopment of Kiev was probably the only major operation feasible. Although supply difficulties still dogged a move to the south, the supply organizations of Army Groups Center and South could at least share the burden, while the terrain was largely favorable to mobile operations.
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Strong Soviet resistance, a failure to resolve supply problems, and rainy weather that hampered the German advance all ensured that the mood of crisis would continue into August. The bitter fighting at Smolensk had sobered the German commanders and impelled them to alter their original strategy. The fear that the blitzkrieg momentum had slipped away was palpable, with little agreement on a course of action to regain the strategic initiative. By early August, the Barbarossa campaign had already exceeded in length that in the west the previous summer, with no clear way to end it in evidence. Victories had been won, yet a terrible price had been paid. “We are at the end of our tether,” Bock admitted on 2 August. “The nerves of those burdened with great responsibility are starting to waver.” Landsers, too, sensed that the fighting might be as endless as Russia itself. “We shouldn't be allowed to continue much longer, otherwise the burden will be really heavy,” complained one on 10 August, while another noted on the same day, “Our losses are immense, more than in France.” A third wrote simply, “I have never seen such vicious dogs as these Russians. . . . They have an inexhaustible supply of tanks and material.”
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Underpinning the gloom was the gnawing anxiety that the war could not be won in 1941. In early August, the Führer remained wedded to the position that a decisive weakening of the Soviet ability to wage war meant the seizure of Leningrad in the north and the key economic, oil, and industrial regions of Ukraine and the Caucasus in the south, an implicit recognition that Moscow could probably not be taken by the onset of winter.

The ruthless Soviet mobilization of resources and unrelenting counterattacks had both surprised and unnerved German generals. “The situation is extremely tense,” Bock worried on 7 August. “I don't exactly know how a new operation is to take place . . . with the slowly sinking fighting strength of our . . . forces.” Still, he consoled himself with the
thought that “things are undoubtedly even worse for the Russians!” A few days later, however, he confessed: “In spite of his terrific losses in men and materiel the enemy attacks at several places daily, so that any regrouping, any withdrawal of reserves . . . has so far been impossible.” He then added, in a revealing concession, “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.”
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