‘Commanding Generals, commanders and officers are to personally intervene to compel troops to fanatical resistance without regard to enemy that may break through on their flanks or in the rear.’
The instruction was an uncompromising stand and die’ order. This is the only way,’ the Führer added, ‘to gain the time necessary to bring up the reinforcements from Germany and the West that I have ordered.’ Two days before, Hitler had telephoned von Bock to order Army Group Centre to cease all withdrawals and defend in its present position. German soldiers would take ‘not one single step back’.(28)
General Günther Blumentritt, the Chief of Staff to Fourth Army, was in conference with his Commander-in-Chief and other corps commanders in mid-December. They were totally engrossed in co-ordinating the move westward of their increasingly vulnerable army. A steadily widening gap had opened between von Kluge’s Fourth and Guderian’s Second Panzer Army. There were no reserves to restore the increasingly dangerous situation on the southern flank, which threatened to cut Fourth Army’s single supply line to the rear. One motorised division was already marching westwards to Yukhnov. The withdrawal of Fourth Army units south of the Moscow-Smolensk highway was being discussed when Blumentritt was summoned to the telephone to speak to his personal friend and counterpart at Army Group Centre, Chief of Staff General von Greiffenberg. ‘You’d better make yourself comfortable where you are,’ he said. A new order has just arrived from Hitler. Fourth Army is not to retreat a single yard.’ Blumentritt was aghast:
‘According to every calculation, it could only mean the destruction of the Fourth Army. Yet this order was obeyed. Units already moving westwards were turned about and brought back to the front. Fourth Army prepared to fight its final battles, only a miracle could save it now.’(29)
Adolf Hitler had personally assumed the mantle of Commander-in-Chief of the Army. The Ostheer would fight where it was and, if necessary, perish.
Chapter 17
The order of the frozen flesh
‘Vorwärts Kameraden, wir müssen züruck!’ (Advance men – we’ve got to get back!)
‘Not one single step back’… the hold order
‘This retreat order has reduced me to dumb resignation,’ admitted an officer in the 198th Infantry Division. ‘I don’t want to think about it any more,’ but he appreciated that, in order to survive, ‘thinking and forethought is more necessary than before’. Obergefreiter Huber from Infantry Regiment 282 recalled unforgettable days battling on the Nara, with long nights, the cold, snowstorms – grey sinister days with artillery impacts and a constant racket among the smoke and crackling explosions of the fearsome “Stalin organs”’. The interminable retreat depressed the infantry officer. He was uneasy.
‘Awful weeks of withdrawing through the thick snow-covered countryside and impenetrable woods stood before us. Short insecure pauses in empty half-destroyed villages, a harassed existence in icy cold with driving snow and long hours of darkness. Will it be possible to rebuild a front? Will substantial combat-ready units ever turn up? Will we be able to hang on?’(1)
When the ‘hold’ order was received at battalion level in the Fourth Army sector, it was met with incredulity. Infantry Regiment 9, part of 23rd Infantry Division, heard:
‘The High Command has ordered that the present withdrawal movements around the Lama [river] are to be halted, and the division is to concentrate on both sides and now go firm. The Lama position must be defended to the last man!’
Commanders were to be held personally responsible for the order’s execution. Feldwebel Gottfried Becker’s initial reaction when told to dig was, ‘OK, OK we hold the position, but could someone please tell me which one?’ His commander, Leutnant Bremse, pointed to a hole in the ground partially filled with snow. ‘It was not completely prepared,’ he agreed, ‘but they could do it now.’ Each man in Becker’s platoon had the same unsettling thought: ‘He has got to be kidding!’ They had completed a seemingly endless march through snow and ice with no sleep, and fought countless rearguard actions. Now they were instructed to dig a position virtually from new, in rock-hard frozen ground. Mindful of the Soviet approach, they commenced digging. Becker shovelled snow out of the half-constructed trench, complaining that ‘those at the “top” had to be nuts’. Bremse was not sympathetic. ‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘shut your mouths and get on with it – now! Dig!’(2)
Obergefreiter Huber from the 98th Division reached his objective at 02.00 hours on Christmas Eve.
‘Christmas morning dawned and now we had to occupy the edge of a wood. Thirty hungry spectres groped their way back to the position with shrunken cheeks, wearing summer uniforms with threadbare coats in temperatures of below −30°C. They had torn gloves, boots with holes and many wore laced-up shoes. Balaclava head-overs were soaked in sweat beneath chalk-smeared helmets. Stomachs were empty. They had two machine guns still in working order and some rifles. The route took them across fields, meadows, ditches and holes, into which the unsteady stumbled. Finally they arrived at the “position” at the end of the wood – a pair of holes half full of drifted snow. An icy wind cut through the position, quickly coating helmets and balaclavas from top to bottom with a thin coating of ice.’(3)
Adolf Hitler had confounded the plans of his military advisors. Viewing an impending collapse of the front with dismay, he resolved to relieve his generals of command initiative. He took pride in his proven ability to master and profit from a crisis. The ailing Generalfeldmarschall von Brauchitsch, the German Army Commander-in-Chief, followed the hapless von Rundstedt from Army Group South into retirement. Von Brauchitsch became the scapegoat both for the failure of‘Barbarossa’ and the present winter crisis. Next came Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, who, in predicting disaster unless his Army Group was allowed to retreat, received a much earned ‘rest’ on 20 December. Generaloberst Guderian, evading orders to ‘stand fast’, was relieved from active duty on 26 December. General Erich Hoepner, the aggressive commander of Panzergruppe 4, enraged Hitler in early January as he retreated westward to avoid encirclement. Stripped of command, rank and privileges, he was forbidden to wear uniform in retirement. Strauss, the commander of Ninth Army, was cashiered one week later, and von Leeb, the Commander of Army Group North, was relieved on 17 January. During the subsequent winter, over 30 generals, corps and division commanders and senior officers were removed from command. They were the leaders that had brought the Ostheer with dramatic success to the very gates of Moscow. Now they were gone. Hitler, in removing them, completed the physical and moral transformation the Ostheer had been undergoing since June 1941. The last vestiges of Weimar and General Staff influence were gone. The Ostheer and Wehrmacht became the military arm of a National Socialist Reich.
Cashiering so many senior commanders in the midst of the winter crisis had an inevitable impact upon the flow of operations. Hitler’s aim was indeed to minimise fluidity. His instinctive reaction, grounded on his veteran World War 1 experience, was that soldiers in a fast-moving crisis or retreat are more easily controlled when instructed to stand fast. An unequivocal ‘stand and fight’ order, whatever the seriousness of the situation, removed immediate uncertainties. Soldiers crave decision and clarity of intent at times of crisis. The German soldier sought clear direction and order.’ Panzer Leutnant F. Wilhelm Christians later explained: