Ostkrieg (29 page)

By the end of the month, stalemate had settled on the northern front. Leningrad was besieged, but the Germans had not closed the ring tight enough to allow effective artillery bombardment of the city or to cut it off completely from its hinterland. As a result, even the possibility of starving the city into submission—which at least had the advantage, Leeb noted coldly, that large numbers of people would die, “but at least not before our eyes”—seemed remote.
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Even though the city remained in mortal danger, the Germans had not been able to end the fighting in the north, which meant that large numbers of troops would not be available for operations elsewhere. September thus proved a frustrating month for the Germans. As at Kiev, an apparently great triumph had resulted in actual gains much less than those anticipated. Worse, the struggle would
continue as the Wehrmacht sought the elusive decisive battle that would finally end Soviet resistance.

Hitler intended that “final battle” to be the much-delayed assault on Moscow that Bock and Halder had advocated in August. Even as German forces completed the encirclement of Leningrad and pulled off the spectacular envelopment operation east of Kiev, the two fretted that time to force the decisive showdown was slipping away. The bitter arguments of July and August between Hitler and the OKH, the persistence with which Hitler promoted his ideas against the advice of the army leadership, and the flurry of often contradictory directives led to charges at the time, and ever since, that Hitler's dilettantism and diversion of forces from the center caused the German defeat. Hitler's views, however, were not as odd as they have been made to seem, nor were those of his advisers necessarily more incisive. Not only did Hitler's ideas correspond more closely to the original Barbarossa plan, but the growing realization that Halder had subverted his wishes from the beginning, combined with the indecision of the hopelessly ineffective Brauchitsch, undermined his trust in both. Nor, given the economic and supply problems facing Germany, was his strategy of seizing the Baltic and the vital resources of Ukraine before launching an attack on Moscow without merit. Moreover, far from pursuing a defeated foe, as advocates of the thrust to Moscow imply, German commanders readily acknowledged that Soviet resistance was stiffening rather than slackening.

Therein lay the cause of the mounting problems facing the Germans. The assumption that the Red Army could be defeated quickly and that the Soviet system would collapse like a house of cards had proved horribly wrong. The Germans had signally failed to destroy Soviet forces in the first weeks of the war, an omission Halder now sought to remedy by the capture of Moscow. Stalin, however, fully expected such a move and, thus, had prepared strong defenses to meet it. At the same time, Soviet forces in Ukraine posed an intolerable danger for the long, exposed southern flank of a thrust on Moscow and had to be eliminated before any attack on the capital. Nor did most in the German leadership really expect the capture of Moscow to trigger a collapse of the enemy's will to resist, as had happened in France, hoping instead merely to gain favorable starting positions for the next year's campaign. Stalin had long since mastered the crisis of the early weeks of the war and regained control of his system. Given the Soviets' furious mobilization of their enormous resources as well as the promise of massive Western aid, the war would have continued even with the loss of Moscow. In any case, regardless of these other
factors, a rapid drive toward the Soviet capital could not have taken place since German resources were already stretched to the breaking point. Without substantial reinforcements and resupply, Army Group Center was in September incapable of launching an offensive.
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The continuous fighting since late June had taken an enormous toll on the Eastern Army. Since the Germans had assumed that the destruction of Soviet forces on the border would allow them to leap the three hundred miles to the Dnieper, then pause for a rest, they had gambled that a logistic system dependent on truck columns would suffice to provide the necessary supplies. In the event, however, Russian resistance, the absence of paved roads, persistent rains that turned even good roads into muddy tracks, the wear and tear on machinery, constant congestion and traffic jams, and the higher-than-expected fuel expenditure produced a logistic nightmare. In the best of times, driving conditions were harsh, but the long distances to be covered meant that German truck columns had to snake slowly across decrepit roads day and night, their long lines vulnerable to attack by partisans. By the time the fighting at Smolensk had ended, Guderian's Second Panzergruppe was 450 miles from its original base, barely within reach of motorized supply. The relentless Soviet counterattacks throughout July and August, moreover, not only denied Landsers the opportunity to rest but also resulted in a serious ammunition crisis. German transport capacity was so limited that a switch in priorities to munitions, however, necessitated a drastic cut in the supply of fuel and food rations. Expedients such as giving precedence in supply to the motorized units also backfired since this served only to increase the gap between them and the marching infantry. The supply situation with regard to tanks, motor vehicles, and fuel was so precarious, in fact, that on 11 September the quartermaster-general's office warned that the strength of the Ostheer might be “insufficient to bring the eastern campaign to a conclusion in the autumn.” “A great reduction in the fighting power and mobility of the army, perhaps at the crucial moment,” might result unless drastic measures were adopted.
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Although the supply and transportation services worked round the clock to remedy the situation, the inadequacies of motorized transport could not be easily overcome. By the end of September, the shortfall in motor vehicles was estimated at 22 percent, a situation that would only worsen given the deteriorating weather, the lack of spare parts, and the rugged road conditions. The result was a shortage of supplies in nearly every category, a fact that significantly reduced the army's mobility and fighting power. Nor could increased use of the railroads plug the gap.
In preparation for Barbarossa, the railroad net in Poland had been expanded, which in a terrible irony would serve to assist in the Final Solution, but Russian railroads did not conform to the German gauge. Relatively few railway troops had been assigned the task of converting the Russian tracks, however, so their progress lagged behind demands. As a result, bottlenecks occurred at the exchange points between German and Russian rail lines, with waits of up to three days to unload some trains, while others were simply lost. Even converted track proved problematic as Russian rail beds were lighter, which prevented the use of heavy locomotives. In addition, German engines needed additives in order to burn Russian coal efficiently. Finally, deportations of German Jews began on 15 October, which meant that the Reichsbahn was able to furnish only half the required boxcars for supplying the Ostheer, while much of the remaining rolling stock was engaged in transporting food, cereals, and meat back to the Reich.
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To stockpile sufficient supplies of fuel for Operation Typhoon, the Eastern Army needed twenty-seven fuel trains daily throughout the month of September and twenty-nine in October, but the OKW promised delivery of twenty-seven trains only for the first half of September. It agreed to twenty-two daily through October, while in November the number fell to three. In practice, however, even these figures could not be achieved, with the result that, at the beginning of the offensive, Army Group Center had barely enough fuel to reach Moscow and stocks of ammunition sufficient for only two weeks. Nor were other supplies getting through. Army Group Center in August needed at least twenty-four supply trains daily to meet its requirements and twenty-six in September, but at times only half this number arrived and seldom more than eighteen trains a day. Supplying winter equipment to the troops, which had not yet begun, would put further demands on the system. The offensive, as a result, would have to be decided quickly. A report from Forty-first Panzer Corps admitted that “the supply stations cannot cope with even modest demands on account of their lack of supplies from the outset.” Once available stocks were consumed, the sclerotic German supply system could not cope.
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The initial German assumption that the army could be adequately supplied to the Dnieper had been correct; beyond that line, serious logistic difficulties now put sharp limits on the further conduct of operations.

Just as worrisome, the combat power of the armored divisions that were to spearhead the attack on Moscow had declined precipitously as a result of the continuous fighting and lack of rehabilitation. By the end of August, the Ostheer had lost 1,488 armored vehicles and, since Hitler
was hoarding tanks for “the time after Barbarossa,” had received only 96 replacements. Even though 125 tanks were in the supply pipeline and Halder had requested the release of a further 181, these numbers were still astonishingly low when the decisive battle of the campaign was being planned. In early September, Halder noted that 30 percent of the Eastern Army's tanks were completely out of action and that another 23 percent were back in Germany being overhauled. In Army Group Center, the situation was worse, with only a third of tanks ready for action, while in some individual units the figure hovered around 20 percent. Moreover, because of bad weather, muddy roads, and the inadequacy of the railways, the redeployment of forces back to Bock was taking longer than expected. In a dreary reprise, the Germans again faced the reality that they could not concentrate sufficient strength for a knockout blow. The Second Panzergruppe in late September had only 33 percent of its armored vehicles in operation and faced a parlous fuel situation yet was expected to play a major role in the attack on Moscow. Similarly, to the north, Panzergruppe 3 had been forced to leave three motorized divisions in the Leningrad area, while combat and the strain of moving some four hundred miles exacted a considerable toll on the men and equipment of those units returned to Army Group Center.
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In another key measure, as well, it proved impossible to bring Army Group Center back up to strength. While the “beaten” Red Army continued to form reserves, the operational strength of the OKH had been exhausted, as Halder was well aware. At five weeks, roughly the same amount of time as it had taken to defeat the French, total German casualties were almost 17 percent higher, while, by the end of September, the Germans had three times the casualties as in the previous year. Even before the start of Operation Typhoon, the Wehrmacht had lost 185,000 men killed, a figure larger than the total casualties of the entire French campaign. By the end of August, virtually all available forces in the Replacement Army had been brought to the front, with the result that casualties sustained after mid-September could not be replaced. Bock's forces, which through September had suffered almost 220,000 casualties, had received only 151,000 replacements. Moreover, officer and NCO casualties had been extremely high. These were men, normally the experienced elite of the combat spear, who could not easily be replaced. They were the ones who were schooled in initiative and independent action that gave the Wehrmacht its qualitative edge, whose skills allowed tactical and operational flexibility, who maintained the steadiness, motivation, and morale of their troops in spite of the fanatic
enemy resistance. By the end of August, nearly thirty division equivalents of officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) had been killed or wounded, a staggering figure that had a profound impact on the effectiveness of the Eastern Army. Combined with the constant hardships of daily existence—the filth, mud, lice, fatigue, hunger, and diseases—the sight of trusted officers and NCOs, on whose ability one's own survival often depended, being struck down in droves was profoundly discouraging. Inevitably, men began to question the extent and duration of their sacrifices or whether the objective could ever be attained, especially since the Russians did not seem beaten. Thus, although Army Group Center had roughly 1.9 million men, it did not possess the fighting power these figures would suggest since veteran soldiers were exhausted and the replacements were not comparable in training or experience to those whose places they were taking. Such losses could not continue, one divisional commander warned, “if we do not want to win ourselves to death.”
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By the end of September, just such a prospect seemed at hand as German leaders could look back at a series of spectacular triumphs—grabbing an enormous swath of territory; taking some 2 million prisoners; destroying entire Soviet army groups in impressive encirclement operations; seizing Kiev and isolating Leningrad—yet enemy resistance had still not been broken. German operations, bedeviled all summer by frequent changes of emphasis, a dispersal of effort, and the resultant failure to concentrate sufficient forces for a final knockout blow, continued in typical fashion as the decisive battle of the campaign loomed, struggling to assemble the strength necessary for Army Group Center to accomplish its task.

Nonetheless, by the end of September, the Germans had assembled a force of 1.9 million men and over one thousand tanks for Operation Typhoon, which the Führer assumed would be the last great battle of the eastern war. Mindful of the experiences of large numbers of the enemy escaping loose pockets, he stipulated in his directive a close-knit, tight encirclement east of Smolensk in the area of Vyazma before the attack on Moscow itself would proceed. Since both Halder and Bock considered such a move too limited to accomplish the destruction of remaining Soviet forces, the former, as he had done consistently, did his best to undermine Hitler's intentions by indicating to the latter that he need not take his orders too seriously. Although Bock initially planned to use the Third and Fourth Panzergruppen to encircle Soviet forces in the Vyazma region, thus seizing a vital railway junction and tearing a gap in the enemy's defenses
that could be exploited quickly, discussions during September, influenced by the magnitude of the triumph at Kiev, led to a broadening of the offensive. Guderian's Second Panzergruppe, to be hastily reassembled after its action in Ukraine, would form a third concentration in the south, with the objective of crushing Soviet forces near the equally vital rail center of Bryansk. If successful, the three armored groups would collapse the Soviet front and leave Moscow utterly defenseless.
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