Leutnant Peter Bamm, another medical officer, with Army Group South, observed that the Jewish massacres after the fall of Nikolaev were not approved by front-line soldiers, who felt that their victories ‘gained in grim and protracted battle’ were being used by the ‘others’ – the SS and SD. ‘But it was not an indignation that sprang from the heart.’ After seven years’ domination by the SS and SD, moral corruption ‘had already made too much progress even among those who would have denied it vigorously’. Protest was nullified by actions directed against families back home, as in the case of the wife of an Oberst in his division. Russian atrocities also had an impact upon the maintenance of emotional integrity. Soldiers would do whatever was required to survive. ‘There was no blazing indignation,’ Leutnant Bamm admitted. ‘The worm was too deep in the wood.’(44) There could be no turning back now. Should the enemy ever reach the Reich, there would be the devil to pay.
A degree of ethical disintegration resulted from atrocities which had a negative impact upon the moral component of fighting power within the Ostheer. Ideals, even those directed toward the ideological ends of National Socialism, were compromised. The Christian army that invaded Russia was behaving in the manner of the Teutonic Knights of the 13th century, portrayed in Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevesky. This had an immediate appeal to cinema audiences in an oppressed and threatened Soviet nation. Paradoxically, it diluted fighting power because officially sponsored brutality raised questions of a fundamental and compassionate nature, which led to a questioning of motive. This in turn affected willpower. At the same time the enemy’s moral component was strengthened. These indignities massively increased the resolve to resist. The German soldier began to realise in the absence of guaranteed success, for the first time in this war, that his very survival may be at stake. Conversely the Russian soldier knew he had no recourse but to fight to the bitter end. It was a pitiless prospect.
Unteroffizier Harald Dommerotsky, serving in a Luftwaffe unit near Toropez, was a witness of ‘almost daily executions of partisans, by hanging, by the security service of the SS’. Enormous crowds – predominantly Russians – gathered. ‘It may well be a human characteristic,’ he remarked, ‘this apparent predilection to always be present when one of your own kind is rubbed out.’ It made no difference, he continued, ‘whether it was the enemy or their own people’. Public hangings in Zhitomir often resulted in cheers as lorries drove off leaving victims pathetically hanging in the market place. One witness described how gaily-dressed Ukrainian women would hold up their children to see, while Wehrmacht spectators would bawl ‘slowly, slowly!’ so as to be able to take better photographs.(45)
In Toropez a huge gallows had been erected. Lorries would drive forward, each with four partisans standing in the back. Nooses would be placed around their necks and the lorries driven off. Dommerotsky remembered the occasion when only three instead of four bodies were left dangling at the end of the ropes. The victim was sprawled on the ground, his rope broken. ‘It made no difference,’ the Luftwaffe NCO remarked, he was hauled up onto the lorry and pushed out again. The same happened again. Undeterred, his executioners repeated the ghastly process and yet again the victim fell onto the ground, still very much alive.
‘My friend standing beside me said: “It’s God’s judgement.” I could not work it out either and only responded: “Now they will probably let him go.”’
They did not. As the lorry drove away for the fourth time the rope snapped taut around the victim’s neck, and he kicked his life away as the exhaust smoke dispersed. ‘There was no wailing,’ Dommerotsky remembered, ‘it was sinisterly quiet.’(46)
This was Kein Blumenkrieg – a war without garlands.[1]
Chapter 11
‘Kesselschlacht’ – victory without results
‘We will have to annihilate everything before this war is going to end.’
Cannae at Kiev
On 20 August the Eastern Front presented a fascinating picture. Lead elements of Army Group Centre had occupied Yelnya, southeast of the Minsk–Smolensk–Moscow highway, holding a salient that appeared to point at the Russian capital. Some 600km due south on roughly a straight line, Army Group South had reached the River Dnieper at Kremenchug. This represented the forward wedge of a German front shaped like an isosceles triangle. Its western apex lagged 550km behind the leading eastern elements. Concentrated within the triangle was the entire South-west Soviet Army Group situated south of the Pripet Swamps. Few commanders since Hannibal had ever enjoyed the prospect of achieving an operational double envelopment. Concept here verged on actuality.
On a hot August day in 216BC, an outnumbered Carthaginian force of 40,000 men commanded by Hannibal Barca surrounded eight Roman legions during the battle of Cannae. A feint toward the centre resulted in the double envelopment of the Roman Army of 86,000, twice the size of the Carthaginian force. Seventy thousand Roman legionaries perished, unable to escape. History appeared to be repeating itself more than 2,000 years later. Soviet Marshal Budenny’s South-west Army Group was inside an enormous salient 240km wide that extended from Trubchevsk in the north to Kremenchug on the River Dnieper to the south. Kiev lay at the western extremity of the bulge. The conditions for a Cannae-like battle of encirclement were recognisable at this point, but only to those with a visionary operational view. Marshal Budenny had about a million and a half soldiers in this area, elements of eight armies, located mainly at Uman and Kiev itself.
Hitler’s controversial strategic directive to change the main axis of advance southwards was planned as a double encirclement. A preliminary inner ring was to be created by three manoeuvring German infantry armies. Second Army was to advance south-east from Gomel, Seventeenth would strike north from Kremenchug, while the Sixth Army fixed Russian attention on the centre at Kiev. The outer ring was to be formed by Generaloberst Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 driving south from Trubchevsk with 500 Panzers to make contact with von Kleist’s 600 tanks of Panzergruppe 1 attacking north from Kremenchug, 200km east of Kiev. It was a carbon copy of Cannae. Carthaginian infantry lured the Roman legions into the heart of their concave formation in the centre, while cavalry, the precursor of the Panzers, smashed the wings and then enveloped the committed Roman infantry from the rear. The aim was not to defeat but annihilate the enemy.