Leutnant Adolf Stamm, serving with Flak artillery, recalled, ‘the cry from heavily pressured infantrymen, “Bring up the Flak!” happened ever more frequently these days, because we, with our 88mm guns, were practically the only weapon which could still halt the Russians.’ But the 88mm was cumbersome to bring into action. Despite excellent penetration, it was, in the opinion of another Panzer veteran, ‘really large, quite immobile and hard to handle’. It was designed to be set up in the anti-aircraft role from a fixed static position, not engage in the mêlée of mobile meeting engagements. Getting the gun into action at vulnerable points with flexibility restricted by ice and snow, or dragging it into hasty positions among the wooded areas pronounced at this stage in the advance on Moscow, was labour-intensive and cost time. It was not a tank. Yet there were few alternatives. Adolf Stamm pointed out, ‘the other weapons and even the hard-pressed infantry had scant capability to halt the attacks’. As a result, ‘from morning until evening the infantry would repeatedly call “Flak Vorn! Flak Forward! Bring up the Flak!”’(22)
Luftwaffe support began to fall away with the onset of bad weather and the effects of the resupply crisis. Generalleutnant Baron von Richthofen assumed command of Army Group Centre’s air support with Luftflotte 7 when Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring was withdrawn, along with all his Luftflotte 2 units, to Italy, to shore up the Axis effort in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Von Richthofen’s command post moved from Smolensk and was eventually established at Jemelyanovo, 125km west of Moscow. Resupply became so critical that long-distance communications cable was flown forward by air transport. Aircraft fuel, bombs and ammunition requirements were not being met. Roads were constantly churned up by trucks, and delays ensued. ‘The entire stretch between Rzhev and Kalinin was precarious,’ von Richthofen explained, ‘because Soviet infantry and even tanks and artillery were always crossing the roads.’ Additional Junkers Ju52 air transports were brought in from Norway to fly air supply sorties in support of the army group.
Winter weather applied its own peculiar attrition rate through adverse conditions and accidents, which resulted in a decline of the sortie rate. The 2nd Stuka Geschwader reported in November: ‘winter weather; sleet; only dive-bombers fly at 100m altitudes against a Soviet tank counter-attack into the flank of the 110th Infantry Division’. On 7 November the temperature fell below −20° and the Ju87 Stuka engines failed to start. Major Hozzel, the Geschwader commander, wrote in his diary that ‘in spite of the efforts of all personnel, we can only sortie on a few days’. As a result, only one dive-bombing attack was mounted on 13 November, another on 18 November and some others on the 26th and 28th, when four sorties were flown. At the end of the month another sortie was mounted in support of Panzergruppe 4 about 20km north-west of the outskirts of Moscow.(23) Support deteriorated almost completely at the beginning of December when temperatures plummeted to −30°. Oberleutnant Hans Ulrich Rudel, a Stuka pilot, declared ‘a sudden cold snap of below −40° freezes the normal lubricating oil. Every machine gun jams’. He ruefully commented, ‘the battle with the cold is tougher than the battle with the enemy’.(24) German airstrips were hardly usable, whereas the Russians used permanent Moscow bases. Russian sources claim a five-fold sortie superiority rate of 15,840 against 3,500 German during the three-week period 15 November–5 December.(25)
Artillery Leutnant Georg Richter with the 2nd Panzer Division repeatedly referred to Russian air attacks in his diary. They appeared to climax at the end of November, coinciding with the reduction of Luftwaffe support. Richter, routinely commenting on a wide range of issues, pointedly emphasised the significance of the development. On 26 November he observed, ‘there are heaps of Russian aircraft around – our own very seldom!’ The following day, ‘Russian aircraft totally dominate air space’ over Panzergruppe 4, and as the advance got under way he declared, ‘Russian flyers dominate the air and the ground’. Repeated references to Russian air superiority and strafing attacks are made on 29 November and 2 and 3 December. Every attack killed or wounded small numbers of artillerymen and began significantly to disable increasing numbers of artillery-towing vehicles.(26) Russian air dominance had a cumulative and negative impact on morale. Attacks were more effective in winter than summer because men and vehicles were unable to get quickly off roads, hemmed in by piled snow from clearance, and funnelled by the wooded terrain through which they advanced.
The advent of winter caused soldiers to take the ‘Mot’ abbreviation used to describe motorised units and substitute it with a sardonic ‘Hot’ label. The Ostheer was becoming increasingly reliant on horse power for transport and infantry manpower to maintain progress. Infantry were shouldering an increased burden of the ‘Flucht nach Vorn’. They were completely unprepared for the conditions they encountered. Temperatures of −10° to −15°C deteriorated even further. Winter on the Western Front in 1940 had also been severe, but then it had been Sitzkrieg (Phoney War). There was no possibility of sitting out the present winter in bunkers, and the weather was becoming progressively worse.
Gefreiter Joachim Kredel with the 9th (Potsdam) Infantry Regiment naïvely felt with the onset of the first snowstorms that ‘now the war will stop, you can’t fight in the snow’.(27) He was wrong, but it was a justifiable error of judgement, shared by many others. Winter conditions up to this point were the worst they might have experienced in Germany, in which case they would have ceased training and returned to barracks. Training had not prepared them for such conditions. On 21 October a Flak regiment Unteroffizier wrote home:
‘How long we remain here is dependent upon the course of this operation. Of course the greatest pleasure for us would be to load up and be off to Germany. We may perhaps need to stay, even over the winter. We don’t know.’
Another Unteroffizier in 167th Infantry Division spoke of ‘diverse rumours with varying content’. He explained, ‘one says we will be out of here before Christmas, the other that we are to occupy winter quarters at Riesana, 150km from Tula’. In any event, ‘by Easter we ought to get some home leave’. All this ominously suggested the campaign would last longer than anticipated. A transport battalion NCO wrote with some exasperation in early November:
‘One cannot fundamentally grasp why we have not received any winter things… I believe that [the French] in 1812 were better equipped against the winter than we are… Surely… the “men at the top” can’t be aware of this, otherwise they would certainly have helped us.’(28)
Logistic decisions taken in good faith by the staff were being unravelled by events and bad weather. Throughout the summer, campaign diaries and official records indicate staffing activity was ongoing to prepare for the approaching winter. Assumptions concerning the predicted outcome of the campaign were to prove massively wrong. It was anticipated that, following a rapid conclusion of the ‘Barbarossa’ invasion phase, an occupation army of 56 divisions would remain in Russia. Two-thirds of the Ostheer would be likely to return to the Reich, leaving the bulk of their matériel for an occupation force, which would almost certainly occupy winter quarters. At the beginning of September it dawned on planners that the number of trains would have to be increased by 50% to clothe 750,000 men and care for 150,000 horses. Not until mid-December did it become ominously apparent that the mass of units would not only stay in Russia but would be engaged on active operations in winter field conditions.