The Russians were extremely clever at forming army corps without us noticing it. I was told an example of that – it must have been in 1944 – when we realised, and it was also mentioned in the press, that a large strategic concentration was moving down near ODESSA, so an attack there was expected. Then, much to our surprise, it was made in the centre. What had the Russians done? They had originally assembled in concentration areas. They had set up the whole WT network in the normal way, then left this WT network standing and sent the troops northwards on short night marches. That took a fortnight. They made short marches by night, so that in the morning when it was light and the reconnaissance aircraft made their early morning patrol, everything was hidden away and not a soul was to be seen on the roads.[182] Then there was this point: sometimes it was noticed, but our forces were already so weak, that even when we did notice it, we could take no decisive action against it. The Russians have such a huge population, they can keep on forming new divisions. Just imagine that huge country! The latest figures for the population are probably 200 million. Then millions of Chinese coolies were fetched as well[183] and are doing armament work at the front. Also in that respect HITLER kept on deceiving himself – nobody knows where he actually got hold of the idea – into thinking that this Russian industry was nearly at an end and that their transport system was breaking down. Certainly I believe that the Russian High Command was for a time anxious about their transport system, but there couldn’t have been any question at all of a complete collapse.
Russian low-level command wasn’t as efficient as ours – in my opinion this is also due to their being Slavs; they are somewhat lacking in middle classes such as the Western Europeans have:[184] consequently their successes were only achieved with far greater sacrifices. Once I saw some very unbiased statistics compiled from a great mass of troops experiences; in general you can reckon on three Russians killed to one German.[185] However, they can afford it whereas one is already too much for us. That’s the difference. A Russian division consists of from 10 to 14 thousand men.[186]
I was only in the UKRAINE, in the southern territory. There were no partisans there at all. That is because there are no woods there. There were no partisans where there were no woods. They couldn’t live in the villages as the population would have objected. They reasoned: ‘If we allowed partisans to live here we’ll be the ones to suffer. Take them away!’ As a result there were no partisans there at all. You found them wherever there were woods.[187] They did it along completely revolutionary lines. In time they dropped entire armies etc. by parachute.[188] Of course we had to pay dearly as our forces were already fairly thin and we had to think a long time whether to throw a man in to the North, Centre or South. Immense forces were swallowed up merely in protecting ourselves against the partisans, without our even contemplating fighting them.[189] The partisans got their supplies by air or by organising looting raids in the neighbourhood – they plundered all the villages and took along everything they found, cows etc.[190] They hadn’t many tanks but if they were in a forest through which lead important communication roads which constitute the life lines of armies, and stay there for a few days they caused untold damage.[191] It tied down an immense number of our forces and it was a very nerve-racking and exhausting kind of war for the troops in those parts, as a partisan in the forest is like a wild animal. A peasant nation like the Russians which is far nearer to the soil than we are has a natural sense of direction. Only when fighting a people of that sort do you realise to what extent you’ve become townsmen.
The partisans didn’t make propaganda among our troops. Not whilst I was there, which was until 1942. Later on when we suffered those heavy collapses, they made more use of it. They didn’t do so until then. I met a very interesting man, General POPATOFF(?). He was commander of the 5th Russian Army[192] which was facing us in the KIEV region. He was one of the former – he called himself a MOSCOW labourer and probably came from the working classes but changed over to a military career at the age of 17. He will have been between 35 and 40 years of age. His answers to interrogation were very clever; we asked his opinion of the Russian and German artillery. Finally he was asked: ‘What do you think is the reason we have managed to reach KIEV?’ He thought for a moment and said: ‘It’s not surprising as a matter of fact. You had the initiative – we hadn’t.’ A very clever and accurate answer. Not because of the difference in arms or because one or the other had rather more but it depended on the initiative. That became apparent the moment the initiative went over to the Russians.
Two of HITLER’s sayings were circulated with a purpose at the time. First: ‘The bubble which I shall prick’, and secondly: ‘the colossus with feet of clay’. Both sayings proved to be quite wrong. Now one can ask: could that mistake have been avoided? If you wage war you must try and put everything you can into it; I have no doubt about that. I know General KÖSTERING who was military attaché. He was a German, born at LENINGRAD and practically at home in RUSSIA; Russian was his mother tongue, and he was highly esteemed there and in our innermost hearts we said: ‘No!’[193] even if we didn’t realise the extent of it; but we all knew that things were different from what HITLER imagined them to be. HITLER didn’t sense it as he has the remarkable peculiarity of always having preconceived ideas about everything. Once he said: ‘I don’t give a damn for intellect, intuition, instinct is the thing.’[194] He had a certain instinct – Heaven only knows where he got it – and he put greater faith in that instinct than in any intellect. It is psychologically quite comprehensible that as he believed his intuition was right, he distrusted all figures which seemed to contradict his intuition and rejected them. A twirp like RIBBENTROP, who was only a jobbing assistant of course knew it would all miscarry. I’m also convinced that KÖSTERING and that lot were entirely in the picture as to what was happening in the background. However, one might have known it wasn’t a mere soap bubble. The man responsible for making decisions either didn’t know or didn’t want to know. And that, as CHURCHILL recently said quite rightly, was ‘the great act of folly of a tyrant’.[195] From then on all sensible people realised the war was lost.
182
Heim is probably referring here to the skilfully disguised push by the Red Army against Army Group Centre under the codename ‘Operation Bagration’, commencing 22.6.1944. The German assessment of the enemy situation before the assault was contradictory. Although the Department of Foreign Armies East had identified the focal point of the Soviet attack, they were surprised by its strength. Hitler and the Army Group Centre commanders were both deceived by the Soviet intention. Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Der Zweite Weltkrieg’, pp. 322–4.
183
The population of the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1940 was 194 million. Zverev, ‘Ekonomika’, p. 314. The mention of millions of Chinese coolies reflects the growing fears in the United States and Europe at the end of the nineteenth century that Russia could make use of this reservoir of Chinese people. Neitzel, ‘Weltmacht oder Untergang’, pp. 113–17, 240–5, 278f.
184
During the October Revolution and civil war the social layer of intelligentsia diminished from an estimated 2 million (1917) to barely 1 million (1923), but then rose again to 5.9 millions by 1939. Melville/Steffens, ‘Bevölkerung’, p. 1188f. Against that the Russian upper classes had been destroyed at the latest by the Stalinist industrialisation. Ibid., p. 1174.
185
This quote relates to losses amongst front-line troops. By the end of 1944, the Red Army had lost 26,579,242 officers and men of which 10,472,209 were classified as total losses (killed, died of natural causes, dead by accident, missing and PoW). Of the latter, 5.7 million were PoWs according to German statistics. Krivoseev, ‘Grif sekretnosti snjat’, p. 143f. By the end of 1944 the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS had 2,743,000 dead on the Eastern Front (Overmans, ‘Verluste’, p. 279) and 955,000 had been taken prisoner (Böhme, ‘Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in sowjetischer Hand’, p. 49), therefore 3,698,000 men. The ratio of total losses including PoWs is therefore 1:2.83, losses alone 1:1.74.
188
Only twice did the Red Army deploy large military formations behind the German lines. After the Moscow counter-offensive in the winter of 1941, 250th Airborne Reg. and two battalions, 201st Airborne Brigade, in all around 1,640 men, were landed 40 kilometres south of Viasma near Znamenka and Zhelanye. H. Reinhardt, ‘Luftlandungen’. On 24.9.1943, 4th and 5th Airborne Brigades were set down about 40 kilometres behind the German front at Krementshug south-east of Kiev for the purpose of setting up bridgeheads over the Dnieper. The operation was poorly coordinated and the troops were soon overwhelmed by German forces. Glanz, ‘The Soviet Airborne Experience’, pp. 91–112, Zaloga, ‘Inside the Blue Berets’, pp. 95–116. See also Karl-Heinz Frieser in ‘Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg’, Vol. 8. The Soviets also dropped a large number of well-trained agents in small platoons to collaborate with partisans. The total number is disputed. According to Thomas, ‘Foreign Armies East’, p. 274, there were more than 130,000 agents. This seems doubtful, for the number of active partisans in the summer of 1944, the height of their activity, did not exceed 280,000. Bonwetsch, ‘Der Grosse Vaterländische Krieg’, p. 944, note 2.
189
No detailed work exists on the deployment of Wehrmacht and SS forces against partisans on the Eastern Front.
190
For convoys of partisan plunder see Edition Musial, ‘Sowjetische Partisanen’ which though rich in material is neither comprehensive nor impartial. Also see dissertation by Alexander Brakel, ‘Baronowicze 1939–1944’.
191
No adequate academic study on partisan anti-railway warfare using both German and Russian original sources has been made. It would seem that its influence on military developments at the front were slight because partisans failed to interrupt the German supply lines for any considerable period of time. Berkhoff, ‘Harvest of Despair’, p. 278f.
192
Meant here is Lt-Gen. Mikhail Popatov (1902–65), C-in-C, Soviet 5th Army. He entered the Red Army in 1920 and took part in the closing stages of the civil war. A Party member from 1926, he fought with success against the Japanese in 1939 and in 1941 took command of 5th Army at Kiev. On 21.9.1941 he was captured by the Germans; 1958–65 Chief of Military District, Odessa. His last rank was Col-General. Maslov, ‘Captured Soviet Generals’, p. 54ff.
193
General der Kavallerie Ernst Köstring (20.6.1876–20.11.1953) was born of German parents in Moscow and served as military attaché there from 1935 to 1941. In May 1941 German ambassador Werner Graf von Schulenburg authored a memorandum signed by Köstring and embassy advisers Gustav Hilger and Kurt von Tippelskirch in which they declared themselves opposed to the war. Gorodetsky, ‘Täuschung’, p. 262.
194
Thoma informed Crüwell of a conversation with Hitler after his return from the Spanish Civil War in which Hitler had said, ‘Look, I never go for intellect, I go only for intuition’. SRM 114, 24.11.1942, TNA WO 208/4136.
195
Heim is probably speaking of Churchill’s radio broadcast on 13.5.1945 in which he said, ‘And if you hold out alone long enough, there always comes a time when the tyrant makes some ghastly mistake. On June 22nd 1941 Hitler… hurled himself on Russia and came face to face with Marshal Stalin and the numberless millions of the Russian people.’ Churchill, ‘Speeches’, Vol. VII, p. 7160.