The German Army officer corps meanwhile had retained a healthy respect for the Red Army. If the experience of World War 1 was any indication, a fight with the Russian Army would be a serious affair. Its soldiers had always demonstrated innate combat toughness with the ability to endure great hardship. Their tactical doctrine, not dissimilar from the German, was aggressive. Von Kluge’s assessment was that, although his Fourth Army motorised forces had performed well in France, they were not tough enough for Russia. They needed to be more aggressive in the attack.(4)
On 20 March 1941, he directed that training should concentrate on hardening the soldiers, since in Russia they would be without even the simplest comforts. Men and horses had to practise longdistance marches, be prepared to cope with chemical and biological weapons, and anticipate assaults, when they came, to consist of several and deep waves of infantry supported by tanks and artillery. German infantry weapon co-ordination would have to improve if ever they were to defeat such attacks. Soldiers needed to be tougher to cope with the inevitability of close combat and overcome their present aversion to fighting at night. The Russians, described as ‘children of nature’, revelled in night combat. Despite shortcomings, the Red Army was better equipped than the Wehrmacht’s previous victims. German soldiers would have to copy the Spanish and Finnish infantry precedents of attacking tanks with explosive charges. The coming war would not be conducted on roads as in the West; limitless space and massive forest areas would need to be reconnoitered and cleared. German headquarters staffs would now be vulnerable. Normal security precautions would not suffice. Headquarters personnel should become familiar with their side-arms and expect to use them.(5) For some, it was a daunting prospect.
As successful as the German Army had been, its hasty expansion had resulted in organisational problems and insufficient training. Overall fighting ability appeared to have even declined. This was reflected in low marksmanship standards, a disinclination for close combat, night and forest fighting, and reluctance to exercise and bivouac in the field and dig entrenchments.(6) Hitler’s policy of spending lavish sums of money on military barracks had softened his soldiers. Accommodation demonstrated just how much the German soldier of 1939 was spoiled and pampered compared to his 1914 counterpart. Modernised versions of these barracks are still in use today.
The infantry, although unable to set the pace of the coming campaign – which would be the task of the motorised formations – still constituted the bulk of the fighting power of the German Army. Only it could fix and destroy the pockets of resistance planned to be surrounded and held by the motorised formations until they caught up. Yet the German infantry was badly in need of a period of reform and consolidation following a series of conflicting demobilisations and reconstitutions. Lessons from the French campaign had been clear. More motorisation and effective reconnaissance units were urgently required. The pace of the campaign had been much influenced by the speed of infantry marching on foot. Infantry divisions spearheading advances in France created ad hoc motorised advanced battalions by pressing captured vehicles, including civilian, into service.
A more effective anti-tank gun was required to replace the 37mm ‘door-knocker’, so called because of its inability to penetrate allied tanks, as well as better use of artillery and artillery observation units. The reorganisation of the German infantry arm was now a conceivable option if captured French equipment was used. In the midst of the French campaign, Hitler officially directed the army to reduce in strength to 120 divisions, while concurrently expanding its mobile element to 20 Panzer and 10 motorised divisions.(7)
The resulting demobilisation provided the army with a reserve supply of weapons and equipment. Ten weeks later Hitler reversed the decision, calling for an expansion up to 180 divisions, to pursue the Russian campaign. With only 11 months remaining to the invasion, time and energy were devoted to creating new units and operational planning. Any hopes of modernisation – motorising infantry and artillery, introducing new weapons and standardising tables of organisation and equipment – were gone.
Occupying Europe and garrisoning the flanks and rear of the proposed invasion led to the identification of commitments which the German General Staff assessed would require the army to field 208 divisions by June 1941. There were other agencies also competing for the army’s increasingly scant resources of manpower and equipment. Goering’s Luftwaffe expanded its ground combat capabilities after the fall of France. On 3 December 1940 Hitler directed the creation of a parachute corps using the army’s 22nd Infantry Division as an air-land nucleus. Two months before, 4,500 army paratroopers and 20,000 rifles and pistols were absorbed. British bombing raids over the Reich required the army – on Hitler’s insistence – to turn over 15,000 Flak guns and 1,225 officers in the summer of 1940 to Luftwaffe air defence. On 8 November 1940 Hitler further ordered the expansion of the Waffen SS from two and a half to four divisions, and the SS Regiment ‘Leibstandarte’ to a full brigade. This prompted army officers to complain the SS were a ‘wandering arsenal’ led by men who had never seen combat, and that these weapons would be better served by ‘Third Wave’ conscripted divisions of World War 1 veterans. At the end of August 1940, Hitler ordered the army to release 300,000 metal workers back into the armaments industry. To expand to 180 divisions, the army drafted the age groups of 1919, 1920 and 1921. They began basic training in August 1940. They would finish one month prior to the Russian campaign.(8)
Hitler’s instructions to double the number of motorised divisions was virtually unachievable. In May 1940 there were 10 Panzer divisions; this was expanded to 19 by June 1941. Tank numbers in individual divisions were halved to achieve the reorganisation. Obsolete PzKpfwIs and PzKpfwIIs were recalled because German tank production was still very low, at under 200 per month. Instead of fielding a Panzer division with 324 tanks as in 1939, the 1941 divisions invading Russia were to number about 196 tanks (in reality, due to serviceability, between 150 and 200). Creating 10 new tank divisions required the army to remove more lorries from the infantry; even so, one Panzer division was solely equipped with captured French vehicles. The German infantry would therefore march even more short-handed than before. Some divisions were totally reliant upon captured Czech and French artillery and anti-tank guns. There was no standard organisation for the swiftly raised infantry motorised divisions. These were basically rifle regiments (equivalent to modern weak brigades) with two battalions of lorried infantry and one of motorcycles; sometimes there was a mechanised battalion riding in armoured half-tracks.
Rapid expansion diluted quality. The German infantry of 1941 differed little from that of 1939. Practically none of the reforms suggested at the end of the French campaign were carried out. The Panzer divisions were more numerous, had more medium tanks – PzKpfwIIIs and IVs – but were weaker than their 1939 counterparts. Delivery of new vehicles within the reorganisation phase continued right up to the very last moment, some even to the assembly areas preceding ‘Barbarossa’. Leutnant Koch-Erbach, a company commander in the 4th Panzer Division, took delivery of his 37mm anti-tank guns mounted in half-tracks ‘shortly before 22 June 1941’.(9)The SS Panzergrenadier Brigade ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ started the campaign with 2,325 vehicles of which 240 were captured. Over 1,200 vehicles were to break down quickly due to lack of replacement parts.(10) The 20th Panzer Division had been obliged to occupy its assembly area in East Prussia in May 1941 short of many vehicles. Replacements arrived, according to the official unit history, ‘in parts, and initially only a few days before the start of the attack’.(11) The logistic system was straining to cope, and the campaign had yet to start.