Following three weeks of inertia the Ostheer (army of the east) was to resume the attack with a full-blooded offensive to the south. Urgency was provided by the need to conclude the Kiev operation in sufficient time to redirect an assault on Moscow before winter. The Russians, who anticipated an assault on Moscow, were astonished to see instead an attack suddenly directed to the south.
The controversy over the importance of Moscow was bound up in the army staff debate of what to do, now that the Soviet regime was prepared to fight on despite catastrophic reverses. What were the preconditions for victory in this new and not previously considered scenario? Options to circumvent the impasse might be to capture cities to create a political impact or capture ground for economic acquisition. The economic option was not seen as a rapid war-winning strategy. Gaining popular support, a measure that proved particularly effective in 1917–18, was not seriously considered due to its ideological unacceptability to the Führer. In any case it would take too long. Annihilating the Red Army remained an unfulfilled aspiration. None of the proposed strategies appeared to be working. Leningrad, ‘the cradle of Bolshevism’, was an attractive objective to Hitler, a ‘party’ man, who appreciated the ideological fibre the Communist Party conferred on the regime. Communism resided in the cities and built-up areas, not necessarily in the countryside. Panzer Leutnant F. W. Christians remembered, as his unit crossed the Ukrainian border in the middle of summer, ‘we were greeted with real enthusiasm’. It was an emotive appeal never exploited. ‘They did not just bring salt and bread,’ the traditionally hospitable Ukrainian form of greeting, ‘but also fruit and eggs,’ he declared. ‘We were warmly greeted as liberators.’(3) Such a psychological undercurrent was irrelevant in the Blitzkrieg context, because it had no immediate significance for military operations. The ideological end-state was, in any case, to enslave these people for the economic benefit of the Reich. A more positive outcome from a change in the direction of attack would be to strike an unexpected blow with potentially damaging consequences for the Soviet southern salient bulging westwards. A Cannae was envisaged.
Hitler’s decision caused real anguish to the High Command at OKH. Halder complained:
‘I regard the situation created by the Führer’s interference unendurable for OKH. No other but the Führer himself is to blame for the zig-zag course caused by his successive orders, nor can the present OKH, which now is in its fourth victorious campaign, tarnish its good name with these latest orders.’(4)
But in a number of respects the Army High Command was the victim of its own confidence. There was a gulf opening up between aspiration and reality commensurate with the physical gap developing between the headquarters at the front and rear. Senior staff officers had only a limited perception of the rigours and deprivations endured by officers and men on the new Russian front. Bickering over dwindling reserves of reinforcements and logistic assets to replenish faltering Panzer advances continued; OKW and OKH were becoming complacently spoiled by a seemingly automatic flow of victories. Complaints from spearhead commanders, who repeatedly produced triumphs despite dwindling resources, not surprisingly tended to be shrugged off. Somehow, whatever the declared limitations, the German soldier managed.
Junior officers and soldiers at the front commented on the change in the direction of advance, but theirs was an uncomplicated view. They were concerned less with strategy, rather the imperative to survive or live more comfortably in a harsh environment. German soldiers were used to sudden and unexpected changes in direction. These were generally accepted without much comment because the Führer and ‘higher-ups’ invariably ‘had it in hand’. Rapid changes in the direction of the Schwer-punkt (main point of effort) or in risk-taking had saved the day on many an occasion in France and Crete, for example. The German soldier was conditioned to instant and absolute obedience.
Major Bernd Freytag von Lorringhoven recalled Guderian’s return from the fateful conference at Rastenburg on 23 August, after the General had failed to secure the Führer’s compliance for a continuation of the drive on Moscow. ‘We were all very astonished,’ he said, ‘…when Hitler had convinced him it was more important to push southwards into the Ukraine.’(5) Hauptmann Alexander Stahlberg was similarly perplexed to learn the 12th Panzer Division was to be redirected against Leningrad.
‘The order to discontinue our advance towards Moscow and go over to a defensive position had been a shock. What strategy was intended? The word had gone round at once that it had come from the highest level, that is from Hitler himself.’
Within a few days, he explained, ‘the riddle was solved’, so far as the 12th Panzer Division was concerned. ‘Moscow was no longer the priority, Leningrad was to be taken first.’(6) Major von Lorringhoven remarked after the war that the decision ‘is difficult to comprehend under conditions that would be prevalent today’. One simply did not question orders. He added thoughtfully:
‘One must try to imagine the fixed hierarchy that existed, a strong conception of the importance of the chain of command. It was very difficult to pose alternatives outside this convention.’
To question the change of direction was incomprehensible;‘for practical purposes that was simply not possible,’(7) said von Lorring-hoven.
Some soldiers have since remarked on the change, in postwar publications. Artilleryman Werner Adamczyk was informed his unit was to be diverted towards Leningrad.
‘I had a chance to look at a map of Russia. It showed the distance between Smolensk and Leningrad to be about 600km. On the other hand, the distance from where we were to Moscow was less than 400km. And we were really making progress – prisoners from the Smolensk encirclement were still passing by every day. Definitely the Russians confronting us on our way to Moscow had been beaten. And now, it seemed we were to turn away from our greatest chance to get to Moscow and bring the war to an end. My instinct told me that something was very wrong. I never understood this change in plans.’(8)
Leutnant Heinrich Haape, with Infantry Regiment 18 on the Central Front, made similar calculations.