Barbarossa (21 page)

[It was that evening that Halder made his celebrated diary entry:

"We reckoned with 200 Russian divisions. Now we have already
counted 360. Our front on this broad expanse is too thin, it has no
depth. In consequence the enemy attacks often meet with success."]

The immediate result was that Hoth had to send another Panzer
corps north to reinforce Leeb, and this reduced the strength of Army
Group Centre by a further three divisions.

[The 39th, consisting of the 12th Panzer and 18th and 20th
Motorised Divisions.]

Hoth himself, less volatile and more obedient than Guderian, had
his Panzer army in a better state of concentration and readiness. His
presence and his tanks were absolutely essential to any large-scale
operation by Army Group Centre, yet already they had been almost
halved by OKW movement orders directing them northward. Bock's
strength was running out with the dispersal of his Panzer groups, and
although he could still talk of the "resumption" of the
advance on Moscow, the reality behind this idea was weakening daily.
(Within ten days he was to be complaining to Halder that ". . .
he could foresee the end of his Army Group's ability to hold out.")

But although the physical means with which to achieve its purpose
were slipping from its grasp, OKH continued to press its plan. On
18th August, Brauchitsch finally plucked up courage to submit his
"appreciation" to Hitler. Jodl, as usual, had ratted and
withdrawn his support, and Hitler rejected the memorandum in its
entirety. In his own hand the Führer wrote out a long reply,
which contained both tactical criticism and strategic direction. The
armoured columns of the centre, Hitler alleged, had not ever
succeeded in surrounding the enemy sufficiently. They had been
allowed to push too far ahead of the infantry, and
been permitted
to operate with too great a degree of independence.
The plans for
the future which Hitler set out and codified as Directive No. 34
showed that the preparations for an assault on Leningrad had been
allowed to pass into limbo and that the maximum effort was to be
confined to the south.

[Reproduced as Appendix.]

With the publication of this directive the centre-thrust plan was
dead, officially. But for another week the officers of Army Group
Centre, abetted by Halder, continued to nurture the scheme and to
obstruct its alternatives. On 22nd August, Guderian was once again
asked to "move armoured units capable of fighting" to the
Klintsy-Pochep area, on the left flank of the 2nd Army. And for the
first time the concept of co-operation with Army Group South was
mentioned. Once again Guderian retorted that ". . . the
employment of the Panzer Group in this direction is a basically false
idea," and that splitting it up would be "criminal folly."

The following day Halder travelled to Bock's headquarters, and he,
Bock, and Guderian discussed at length "what could be done to
alter Hitler's 'unalterable resolve.' " Halder felt that one of
them should go to Hitler and, "speaking as a general from the
front, lay the relevant facts immediately before him and thus support
a last attempt on the part of OKH to make him agree to their plan."
After "a great deal of chopping and changing," during
which, presumably, he was weighing the chance of changing Hitler's
mind against that of falling out of favour by opposing him, Bock
suggested that Guderian should go. Halder and the Panzer group
commander left at once, and took off in a Ju 52 for Lötzen that
same afternoon.

They arrived at the airfield just as it was getting dark and
reported to Brauchitsch. ObdH, as his subsequent actions show, was in
a nervous condition, and this seems to have worsened during the
absence of his punctilious
eminence grise
. Guderian has
related that Brauchitsch's first words as they entered the room were,
"I forbid you to mention the question of Moscow to the Führer.
The operation to the south has been ordered. The problem now is
simply how it is to be carried out. Discussion is pointless."
Guderian then said that in that case he would fly back to the Panzer
group immediately since any conversation that he might have with
Hitler would simply be a waste of time. No, no, Brauchitsch replied;
he must see Hitler, and he must report on the state of the Panzer
group—
"but without mentioning Moscow!"

The interview took place before a large audience. Neither
Brauchitsch nor Halder was present, although there were several
officers of OKW, including Keitel and Jodl. Hitler listened in
silence to Guderian's account of the state of the Panzer group, and
then asked him :

"In view of their past performance, do you consider that your
troops are capable of making another great effort?"

Guderian replied:

"If the troops are given a major objective, the importance of
which is apparent to every soldier, yes."

"You mean, of course, Moscow?"

"Yes. Since you have broached the subject, let me give you
the reasons for my opinions."

Guderian then delivered his argument, to which Hitler again
listened in silence—an unexpectedly meek attitude, which may
have encouraged the Colonel General to indulge in certain
exaggerations (as, for example, his assertion that "... the
troops of Army Group Centre are poised for an advance on Moscow").
When Guderian had finished, Hitler replied, and went into great
detail over the economic background to his decision. "My
generals know nothing about the economic aspects of War," he
said, and it is certainly true that they seldom gave any sign of it.

It appears that Hitler had already held forth to his audience many
times on this very subject. Guderian noted, "... I saw here for
the first time a spectacle with which I was later to become very
familiar: All those present nodded in agreement with every sentence
that Hitler uttered, while I was left alone with my point of view."

All the same, one must ask, did not Hitler finish by persuading
even Guderian? Guderian himself claims, "... I avoided all
further argument [as] I did not then think it would be right to make
an angry scene with the head of the German State when he was
surrounded by his advisers." This may well have been entirely
true, but it is followed by the admission (or excuse), "Since
the decision to attack the Ukraine had now been confirmed, I did my
best at least to ensure that it be carried out as well as possible. I
therefore begged Hitler not to split my Panzer Group, as was
intended, but to commit the whole group to the operation."

An order confirming this was immediately promulgated, and reached
Army Group Centre the next day. To what extent this decision—to
make the whole Panzer group march south instead of husbanding some of
the divisions at rest in the centre—was responsible for the
failure of the attack on Moscow when finally it was launched is hard
to determine. There is no doubt that it played its part,
supplementing the fatal delays which preceded it. Halder's view was
that it was a bribe by Hitler to induce Guderian to acquiesce in the
plan and when the Panzer group commander told him the news ". .
. he suffered a complete nervous collapse, which led him to make
accusations and imputations which were utterly unjustified." The
two officers "parted without having reached agreement," as
Guderian's understatement puts it, and their relations were never the
same for the remainder of Halder's term as Chief of the General
Staff.

After Guderian had returned to his headquarters, Halder telephoned
Bock and told him that Guderian had let them all down, then got hold
of Brauchitsch and urged that since they could not take
responsibility for the course of operations as prescribed by Hitler
they should both resign.

The unfortunate ObdH, fresh from an interview at which he had been
charged with "allowing the Army Groups too much latitude in
advancing their particular interests," was against this. He
attempted to calm his Chief of Staff, telling him, "Since a
relief of office would not in fact eventuate, the situation would
remain unchanged." For two days Halder hesitated, then Hitler
made it up with Brauchitsch, declaring, "He did not mean it that
way," and it was too late for the Chief of Staff to resign
alone.

By now, too, the whole pattern of the front was changing. The
squeal and clatter of tank tracks; the twenty-mile dust clouds; the
song of men on the march; as the new offensive gathered momentum,
these things erased the memory of the preceding weeks. OKH was busy
with tactical planning. Guderian was driving south in his armoured
radio truck, directing a whole new series of encirclement battles.
Hoth was away with Leeb. Only Bock was left, with his infantry, to
brood on what might have been. As for the personal side of the
affair, it seemed nothing more than a passing tiff, a petty squabble
between the generals, jointly and severally, and Hitler.

But in fact it had been nothing of the kind. This was a
catastrophic dispute whose consequences, both upon the course of the
war and upon Hitler's own relations with his commanders, can hardly
be measured.

six
| LENINGRAD: HYPOTHESIS AND REALITY

As the weight of the German tank forces wheeled south, drawn by
the gravitational pull of Budënny's mass, the course of events
on the northern wing ran smoothly along the lines laid down in
Hitler's directive.

Leeb's armies had succeeded in smashing the two Russian "fronts"
opposite them, and had punished the Soviet commanders so severely
that the
Stavka
had, in effect, been compelled to constitute
the Leningrad theatre as a separate command, operating in
independence, if not isolation, from the rest of the battle front.
After the 41st Panzer Corps had penetrated the extempore screen
thrown up along the course of the Stalin Line, there remained only
one position between the old Estonian frontier and the outskirts of
Leningrad itself where a stand was possible. This was the Luga River,
running southeast from Narva, toward Novgorod, at the tip of Lake
Ilmen.

The Luga position was divided into three sectors, but each was
little more than a corps in strength—in fresh troops, at least,
plus what could be made of the stragglers and beaten-up formations
that had been carried back on the tide from the frontier battles.

[Excluding irregular and militia formations, the strengths were

The Russians had practically no artillery, and no tanks.
During the first week of August the Germans had been filling up their
bridgeheads over the river while Popov, short of equipment,
ammunition, and—-still more disconcerting and, for a Russian
commander, a novel experience—men, watched in impotence and
reported daily to the
Stavka
.

The German attack opened on 8th August, and within hours the Luga
position was creaking ominously. Hoepner had again dispersed the two
Panzer corps of his
Gruppe
, putting Reinhardt on the left of
the 18th Army at Narva, and Manstein (now reinforced by one of the
most sinister formations in modern war, the SS Police Division) at
Luga. SS
Totenkopf
remained with the 16th Army at Novgorod, to
spearhead and drive on Chudovo. Within three days the Kingisepp
sector was on the point of giving way, and with his reserves expended
and nothing in Leningrad itself except a mass of popular irregulars,
Popov was faced by an agonising problem. Should he "withdraw"—if
such a term was applicable to what would be a murderous, footsore,
and embat-tled retreat under the lash of the Luftwaffe—from
the Luga position forthwith? Or by holding on risk a complete rupture
by the 41st Panzer Corps in the coastal region, which would leave the
rest of his precious cadre formations stranded in the interior? In a
report to Shaposhnikov, dated 11th August, Popov's Chief of Staff
complained:

The difficulty of restoring the situation lies in the fact that
neither divisonal Commanders, army Commanders, nor front Commanders
have any reserves at all. Every breach down to the tiniest has to be
stopped up with scratch sections or units assembled any old how.

And two days later:

To suppose that opposition to the German advance can be
maintained by militia units just forming up or badly organised, units
taken from the NorthWestern Front command after they have been
pulled out of Lithuania and Latvia ... is completely unjustified.

The whole Russian position was on the point of cracking at this
time. Two days earlier Hoepner had started to disengage the 56th
Panzer Corps and move it north to support Reinhardt, whose own tanks
had at last managed to keep the Kingisepp breach open. But on 12th
August the Russian 48th Army, in response to the urgings of the
Stavka
, had moved around the south shore of Lake Ilmen and
attacked the right flank of the 16th Army. The Russian force was
mainly cavalry, and short of heavy equipment, but it was fortunate in
its timing and direction. For the only German unit in its path was
the 10th (infantry) Corps, which was the extreme right marker of the
16th Army, itself the flank army of the Whole of Leeb's group. The
area between the 10th Corps and the northernmost units of Bock's army
group was a desolate region of swamp and forest, roadless and
practically unmapped.

The 10th Corps was soon under severe pressure, and Leeb responded,
perhaps too generously, to its calls for help. Manstein was ordered
to turn about and place himself under the 16th Army. The result of
this was that the 56th Panzer Corps passed the vital days from 14th
to 18th August, while the entire Luga front was on the point of
disintegration, in marching and countermarching, and finished up in a
position on the flank, 150 miles from the centre of gravity of the
battle.