Leadership combined with draconian measures kept men in the line. Unteroffizier Pabst commented on near-hopeless counterattacks mounted near Rzhev on 28 January. ‘The front line dug-outs,’ which had been lost, will be reoccupied,’ he wrote; and ‘any man leaving his post will be court-martialled and shot.’ The mood in their shelter was extremely sombre’. Pabst, however, admired his company commander, Leutnant von Hindenburg – ’from an old family’ – who kept them together.
‘Strain has drawn rings under his eyes. In moments when he thinks he is not being watched, a great tiredness overtakes him and he grows quite numb. But as soon as he takes the receiver in his hand, his quiet, low voice is clear and firm. He talks to his platoon commanders with such convincing warmth and confidence that they go away reassured.’(6)
Comradeship mattered to the exclusion of all else. It sustained both sides. Leadership qualities were the cement binding it together. Discipline and mutual suffering bonded men together in an inexplicable, intangible way. Oberleutnant Beck-Broichsitter held a 4km-wide sector with 200 men from the ‘Grossdeutschland’ Regiment. (It was normally a task for two battalions numbering 1,400 men.) His men had been required to march the whole night and occupy hastily dug and inadequately prepared positions against Russian attacks. While crossing a stream, moving up, some of his men had broken through the ice and had been soaked in waist-deep water. They had then to stand around outside for ten hours in frozen trousers… Exhaustion,’ the company commander wrote, was hindering his leadership.’ When checking his perimeter a few days later Beck-Broichsitter stumbled across an amazing scene. One of his grenadiers was manning a single foxhole surrounded by 24 dead Russians sprawled all around. He had shot them all with his rifle.
‘He had remained completely alone at his post during a snowstorm. His relief had not turned up and despite dysentery and frost-bitten toes he stayed there a day and night and then another day in the same position.’
‘I promoted him to Gefreiter,’ said the impressed company commander. Another of his NCOs ‘had three children and also dysentery and frostbite.’ Exercising compassion, the officer suggested he might wish to serve a period with the logistics element to the rear. ‘No, no,’ responded the soldier. ‘Somebody else will only have to do it – I’ll stay here.’ The position was held for 20 days following a punishing routine, according to the company commander, of ‘one hour’s sentry and three hours’ rest in an overcrowded lice-ridden area, during which most had to prepare new positions’. His battalion commander consistently asked him whether he could hang on, posing the eternal leadership dilemma.
‘I wanted to help my company and should have said “no” and hope we would be relieved, but nobody wanted to admit it. So I said “yes” – and not only that – but that the soldiers’ morale and resolve were firm.’(7)
It made him feel guilty.
If leadership alone did not suffice then the ultimate price was exacted from flagging men. Oberleutnant Sonntag, a battalion commander with the 296th Infantry Division, felt duty-bound to report on Oberfeldwebel Gierz, a senior NCO, to his regimental commander. Gierz appeared incapable of keeping his men in the line. Accused of cowardice, the hapless sergeant and his men were driven back into their position. The battalion commander despaired what to do next because, as he said, he was convinced, ‘the next time the enemy came, they would run again’. He agonised over the decision. ‘It wounds my heart,’ he later wrote, when one has to consider it is German soldiers we are dealing with.’ The inevitable happened. ‘I am ashamed to report, Herr Oberst-leutnant,’ he wrote, explaining, ‘I was obliged to implement draconian measures, and ordered the company to implement the order.’ Gierz was shot.(8)
Infantry Leutnant Erich Mende appreciated the powerlessness of the individual to make an impact in such circumstances. ‘I had extraordinary casualties,’ he said, defending a railway station south of Kaluga. ‘Of my original 196 men, 160 were dead, wounded or missing by the end of January.’ Reflecting on this experience after the war, he mused, ‘the soldier is a tragic figure’.
‘During war he must shoot at other soldiers and in extremis kill them, without knowing or hating them. He follows orders from people he knows and bitterly dislikes, who do not have to fire at each other. In front of us was the Red Army, defending themselves, while we in the Wehrmacht were ordered to attack them. Deserting to the Red Army was no solution for the soldiers when faced with pressure. But when we retreated, or left our position, then along came military policemen and we were up before a Court Martial.’(9)
Meanwhile, at home in the Reich, the appeal to collect winter clothes received massive support but created uneasiness. Information was filtering back, but there was no substance to it. Wehrmacht broadcasts and announcements appeared to concentrate on apparently insignificant local actions. Many soldiers imposed a form of self-censorship in their letters, indicating they were alive but deliberately avoiding subjects that might arouse concern. Leutnant Heinrich Haape, fighting for his life, applied a certain circumspection to everything he wrote. ‘When I wrote to Martha,’ (his wife) he admitted, ‘I mentioned little of the fighting, for the people at home had not yet been conditioned to realise what a serious change had come over the situation on the Eastern Front.’(10) Sceptics were beginning to guess. SS Secret Service Home Front reports remarked on the contradiction between press and film reports, showing warmly clad troops at the front and the call for winter clothing. It concluded, ‘the appeal is clearly confirmation of the authenticity of the soldiers’ stories on front leave and Feldpost letters pointing to the shortage of equipments suited to the Russian cold.’(11) Armaments Minister Albert Speer said after the war:
‘We were all quite happy about the success of the German armies in Russia, but the first inkling that something was wrong was when Goebbels made a big “action” in the whole of Germany to collect furs and winter clothes for the German troops. We knew then something had happened which was not foreseen.’(12)
Hildegard Gratz, working as a relief school-teacher at Angerburg in east Germany, felt uneasy teaching children‘about a hero’s death’when she clearly saw‘sitting in front of me were children whose fathers would never come home’. The children were required to participate in the ‘Winter Relief programme, collecting or knitting warm clothing. These activities aroused ‘anxious, despairing and forbidden thoughts,’ she said.(13)
Then came the startling news that the Führer had assumed overall command of the army. This ‘elicited the utmost surprise’, commented SS Secret Service observers. ‘Amazement bordering on dismay prevails among much of the population that the change in the Army High Command should occur just when the fighting was at its fiercest on all fronts, and, of all times, just before Christmas.’
There was increasing unease that the war was perhaps not going too well. People said they would rather be told about a withdrawal or failure than be denied a clear picture of what was going on. A certain mistrust over official reports’ resulted, fuelled further by letters and reports from soldiers on leave. Rumours suggested German troops had been driven back 150km from the line originally reached due to the introduction of the excellently equipped Soviet Far Eastern Army. Faith in the Führer remained but ‘it was becoming ever more apparent,’ commented the SS reports, ‘that the war had become a matter of life and death for Germany, and everyone would need to be prepared to offer himself up as a victim if necessary’.(14)