All in all, it’s a picture that cannot be thought of more unpleasantly and one expects of all the men considerably more than each man can normally physically and mentally fulfil.
The limit of effectiveness is far exceeded here. It is completely unclear to me how we should hold our present or other defensive positions under the expected further attacks. One must hope that the situation can once again be repaired through the use of tanks, assault guns and the artillery. I believe, however, that this game cannot be continued for much longer. It is now so that everything is now brought down to a common denominator: the battle can only be led through the artillery, tanks, and assault guns and these are there to prevent all deployed infantry from running away at the same time. When one succeeds in keeping a part of the men stay in the line through the action of these heavy weapons, then one can hope that the situation can once again be rectified at the difficult spot.
4) Measures against this complete physical and moral deterioration are difficult to find. Any and all spiritual vitamin shots are useless; but other measures, such as a summary court martial, death sentence, immediate weapon use by officers, etc., no longer is of any use. It means nothing to a man from a group when it is shared with him that Gefreite X has been shot because of cowardice when he doesn’t know this Gefreite X at all because everything is completely mixed up. Moreover, Gefreite X is missing the next day in the fox hole in which he might have been taken back to.
5) The real Grabenstärke [trench strength – a special form of combat strength] and therefore the men who are really deployed in the trenches, is so low that a man deployed [in the line] frequently cannot see his neighbour from his fox-hole. Through the constant casualties, this situation worsens hourly and daily. The battalions assembled out of many units are hardly manageable. The following were deployed from one of our strongest battalions, the I./Grenadier-Regiment, in the frontline this morning: 4 NCOs and 17 men from different branches of the service (from the supply leader’s alarm units, the artillery and so on).[50] 2 NCOs and 18 men from the reconnaissance battalion, the engineer battalion of the division with a strength of 2 NCOs and 22 men. Altogether, it’s called the I./ Grenadier-Regiment G.D. [Grossdeutschland] and it has to hold a frontline of 2.3km with its 8 NCOs and 57 men. Any comment is superfluous.
I write this to you to illustrate to you once again from a fresh experience the tremendous difficulties which we fight under and know at the same time that these difficulties are known by you as well as all other staff officers [of LVIIth Panzer Corps]. You can rest assured that we also will still do everything to hold the present positions. And what is in some way humanly possible will be done. As it has worked so far, it will again barely work. And when you help us with a delivery of a few NCOs and men, we will somehow hold out as long as necessary until another greater solution is once more due.
By the end of 1943, even elite units (or perhaps especially elite formations due to their frequent use in countering Soviet attacks across the front) were clearly suffering from the infantry crisis that permeated the German army. The heavy and near continuous fighting in the Soviet Union had, to all intents and purposes, decimated and degraded the German army to such an extent that it no longer resembled the institution that had initiated Operation Barbarossa three years previously.
Chapter 2
Command and Leadership in the Ostheer
Significant increase of the supply of trained officers and NCOs. Those officers drawn from all branches and retrained in short courses and those NCOs that are freed in comb-out actions in the homeland do not even meet the lowest demands of a calm positional front. The fighting has shown again that the attack and defence power of the infantry is decisively dependent on the availability of experienced, well trained leaders and NCOs.[1]
German military leadership was one of the key factors, if not the primary one, in the tactical and operational successes of the German Ostheer, even if the latter levels of command increasingly suffered from the interventions of Hitler and the General Staff. German leadership on the ground played an important role in the tremendous gains during the first long year of the war in the east (22 June 1941– end of September 1942), but also in stemming the marked Soviet superiority in men and material for two and a half bloody years. Vital in enduring the already discussed hardships in the east, leadership was important in creating a deep cohesion within units and giving the ordinary soldier an example of officers who endured the same hardships side by side with their men and who generated combat motivation among the ranks. But losses in command personnel were extremely high and the demands of the front could never be satisfied, not even with the infusion of officers from rear units. When the German army suffered its worst defeats in summer 1944, marking the start of the final phase of the war in Europe, the key factor for German success had been severely weakened by three years of attrition.
Military command is too often, even in military history studies, reduced to a few famous generals and their decisions. Of course, men like Fedor von Bock and Erich von Manstein, or Heinz Guderian and Walter Model, are essential to understanding the war in the east. But they were in need of a command staff to implement their decisions, they required lieutenants to fulfil their plans skilfully, sub-leaders on the spot to react adequately to surprising developments and finally communication equipment for transmitting orders and, in turn, to obtain an image of the situation at the front. This chapter will discuss the German ideas about command, such as the famous Auftragstaktik (generally translated as mission command) and see how these were practiced in the campaign against the Soviet Union. Furthermore, it will be discussed how losses in troop leaders were replaced. Finally, three mid-level commanders will be presented to give a face to that command level.
50
Alarm units (
1
Auszüge aus den vom Oberkommando der Heeresgruppe Süd an O.K.H. eingereichten Berichten über die Hebung der Kampfkraft der Infanterie, 1943, BA-MA RH 11-I/44.