‘At 22.00 I lie down, dog tired on some straw. It was a terrible day. But again luck was with me. How long will it last?’(10)
Von Bock’s fear of being ‘scattered to the four winds’ reflected the unparalleled scale as well as unprecedented length of the new campaign. In Poland in 1939 the front expanded from a 320km-wide start line to an area of operations 550km broad at its widest point. Depth did not become a problem to the 41 infantry and 14 Panzer and motorised divisions that were committed because the campaign was over within 28 days. The spring 1941 Yugoslav and Greek campaign involved 33 divisions, of which 15 were Panzer or motorised, advancing over narrow geographically constricted frontages, but to a depth of 1,200km. It was finished in 24 days. The western Blitzkrieg beginning in May 1940 was the Wehrmacht’s supreme test. Three army groups, totalling 94 divisions including 10 Panzer divisions and 46 in reserve, advanced on a broad 700km front across Belgium, Holland and France. A decisive victory resulted in six weeks (see map on page 119). These examples paled into relative insignificance compared to the scale and ferocity of the Russian campaign. The operation dwarfed its predecessors in terms of time and scale.
The ‘Barbarossa’ invasion front was double that of the Western campaign and expanded a further one third in six weeks from over 1,200km at the start to a breadth of 1,600km. This time 139 divisions were committed. More Panzer and motorised formations were employed than in France, but the 19 Panzer divisions were smaller in size. By late autumn 1941 the front had broadened almost three-fold incorporating the Karelian Peninsula and Baltic states, stretching 2,800km from Murmansk to the Black Sea. Navigation problems dogged the advance from the beginning. Max Kuhnert, a cavalry NCO, said on crossing the border with Army Group South in June:
‘I had to be careful not to take the wrong route, for many units had branched off in different directions. There were no roads as such in the west, only field tracks established by tanks and all the other traffic.’
It seemed as though the invading armies were immediately swallowed up by the vastness of the terrain. ‘I went strictly by compass,’ commented Kuhnert, ‘occasionally checking the divisional insignia on the vehicles going east.’(11) To place the scale of the expanding front in relative context, it could be assumed that a widely stretched division might defend a 10km frontage. The new front would therefore require 280 divisions; but only 139 were theoretically available. Geographical hindrances such as the Pripet Marshes and Carpathian Mountains would restrict manoeuvre space. In reality, combat probably only occurred physically over a 1,000km frontage, and then only haphazardly. German divisions moving forward over the difficult roads that formed a primitive network probably advanced sweeping an area about 3km wide. Most combat formations would elect to concentrate in depth, forcing routes on narrow fronts. German progress, in a sense, could be pictured as three arrow shots – the army groups – fired into an empty but expanding funnel. An advance into the depth of the Soviet Union meant also that divisions had to remain behind to guard vital communication and supply routes, and reduce isolated Russian pockets. As a consequence, forces in the advance were constantly diminishing while the land area to be conquered doubled in depth and tripled in width. At the 2,800km-wide point the front was 1,000km deep.
The sheer scale of the objective was becoming part of the problem. If the Russian colossus could not be overwhelmed by the body blows being administered, a rapier coup degrâce might be the solution. In short, the conditions required to achieve victory needed to be reconsidered.
Conditions for victory
As a rapid Russian collapse did not materialise, Adolf Hitler and his army planners were obliged to reconsider uneasily the future focus as the width and depth of the Russian land mass unfolded before them. One German Army photographer wrote in the Ukraine, ‘we have no more maps and can only follow the compass needle to the east’.(1) There were no road signs and few landmarks enabling Germans to calculate their bearings across the limitless steppes of the eastern Ukraine. Patrols and despatch riders simply asked the women and old men in the fields for directions. Poor planning and a degree of unit directional floundering resulted in these vast uncharted territories.
General Halder admitted on 11 August that ‘the whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus’. The enemy’s military and material potential had been grossly miscalculated. ‘At the outset of the war, we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360’. These divisions may be qualitatively inferior to the German and poorly led, ‘but there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen’.(2) As a consequence, German staffs had enormous difficulty reconciling their victories against tangible achievements. The Russians were obstinate. They would paradoxically fight bitterly to the death in one instance and surrender en masse at the next. The cumulative impact of such victories thus far, at considerable cost, seemed merely to be the attainment of ‘false crests’. Although the summit might be tantal-isingly ahead, planning fatigue tended to obscure the best means of achieving the most direct route to the objective: that of total victory.
A diagrammatic representation of the vast area covered by the eastern campaign compared to previous shorter operations in the West and Balkans. Poland was conquered in 28 days, the Balkans in 24. The campaign in the West ended at the six-week point. Army Group Centre was lamenting its losses and commenting upon the difficulty of holding Russian forces inside the Smolensk pocket six weeks into the Russian campaign. Resistance at the very first pocket six weeks into the Russian campaign. Resistance at the very first pocket to be established, at Brest-Litovsk, ended only one week before.
Hitler’s controversial change of direction introduced at this stage of the campaign is often discussed with the benefit of a strategic hindsight not available to those executing decisions. It is these contemporary perceptions influencing such deliberations that ought to be considered. One school of thought opined that the Wehrmacht, stretched to its physical limit advancing into an ever-widening land mass, should concentrate its resources against one objective at a time. Generalfeldmarschall von Bock and his Panzer-gruppen and army commanders Kluge, Guderian and Hoth gave united support, to von Brauchitsch, the Wehrmacht and his Chief of Staff Halder in making Moscow the primary target. Hitler, almost perversely it seemed, elected to concentrate operations against Leningrad to the north and the Ukraine in the south. Moscow would fall as a consequence of this pressure directed against the flanks. Political and economic reasons were cited for this diversification of effort. Führer Directive Number 33, issued initially on 19 July, outlined the concept of future operations. Army Group Centre was to be divested of its two Panzergruppen – 3 (Hoth) and 2 (Guderian) – which were to be diverted from Moscow to co-operate with von Leeb and von Rundstedt in advances north to Leningrad and south to Kiev. Vacillation and confusion followed during a subsequent ‘Nineteen-day Interregnum’ (4–24 August) as commanders debated or fought their preferred operational concept at conferences. Führer Directive 34A followed on 7 August when OKW and OKH, after conferring with Jodl and Halder, persuaded Hitler of the need to resume the advance on Moscow. This was, however, rescinded three days later when renewed resistance at Leningrad frightened Hitler into insisting Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3 move north to assist von Leeb. Hitler resolved to strike southward toward Kiev. He was not deflected by a spirited presentation from Guderian, recalled from the front to brief at Rastenburg on 23 August, arguing the Moscow option for von Brauchitsch and Halder. Recriminations among the top commanders exacerbated the already vitriolic debate. Hitler, backed by Feldmarschall Keitel, Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff, and Schmundt, his chief Adjutant, patronisingly stated, ‘my generals know nothing about the economic aspects of war.’ Political, military and economic reasons were given for deflecting the advance southward into the Ukraine. Soviet air force bases in the Crimea could menace the Romanian Ploesti oilfields, economically vital to the German war effort. They had therefore to be neutralised.