Dr Paul Rohwedder recalled occasions when his field dressing station was overwhelmed by a sudden influx of casualties. ‘It was a tough mission,’ he said, describing the aftermath of one action, ‘a big burden on us, we buried 63 men. Most of them were dying as they came in.’ During such surges of activity, ‘we operated day and night’.
‘The contacts were short, you’d get masses of wounded then it was all over. We had 1,200 [casualties] inside 48 hours. That’s the sort of number you would get over six months in a big [peacetime] clinic. There were seven doctors and one pharmacist, the others were novices who had no idea and had to be trained. One had to improvise in order to do all that, and we did.’(6)
This pressure of work was not untypical. During a 12-day period in August 1941, the Ist Medical Company of the 98th Infantry Division dealt with 1,253 wounded near Korosten in Army Group Centre’s sector.(7)
The next stage of the medical evacuation process was transfer to a field hospital, either in the occupied areas or the Reich, where the wounded could recover and convalesce. ‘As the soldiers were as a rule tightly disciplined,’ explained Dr Rohwedder, ‘the hospital [with its comparative freedoms] was a big break for them.’ Morale would rise: ‘They were happy, feeling “now I’m in hospital someone will care for me”.’ Men still succumbed to their injuries, even this far along the chain. ‘There were certain nice phrases you’d use to notify the relatives,’ said Rohwedder, like ‘died peacefully, etc’. A patriotic sense of duty kept the doctor motivated. ‘In any war there will be associated losses,’ he mused long after the event. ‘That can be very painful, but as a doctor and a soldier – a patriot – you’ve got to stand that.’(8)
Medical Officer Peter Bamm described the medical evacuation chain as:
‘A grim conveyor belt which brought the debris of battle to a human repair shop. We could show no sympathy; we couldn’t afford to. We should soon have been exhausted and totally unfit for work.’
It was difficult to be completely divorced emotionally from what was going on. Caring for the wounded exacted an intangible and remorseless mental toll.
Leutnant Bamm treated a young soldier seriously wounded during a heroic action against a Soviet pillbox complex which captured the admiration of the whole regiment. ‘This story of unparalleled bravery by a handful of infantry,’ he said, ‘had become a legend in less than a day.’ One of the patients was a former student from a technical college in southern Germany, with hideous mutilations to both hands. He bore his detailed and painful examination ‘with stoic indifference’. Bamm found it difficult to suppress sympathy for such a poignant case.
‘To lose both hands! A student! And 22 years old. The thought flashed suddenly through my mind that he would never again be able to caress a girl’s body.’
Three days after the amputations the student’s clumsy inability to detonate a hand-grenade with his bandaged stumps resulted in a failed suicide attempt. Gangrene set in which meant the uninfected parts of the remaining arm had to be removed ‘in order to save the life that had become worthless to its owner’. Bamm handed over his patient when the unit moved on. He never saw him again. ‘The members of our operating group learned from this case,’ reflected the disheartened doctor, ‘that a hundred successful operations are valueless in the face of one such failure.’(9) Casualty statistics posed an emotional strain beyond measured shortfalls of battle strengths. They badly affected morale.
German officer casualties in the first five weeks of the campaign were extremely high and represented 5.9% of the total.(10) They could not be easily replaced. Officer training lasted 14–18 months. At platoon level, they were often replaced by veteran senior NCOs. An indication of the scale of losses can be gauged from the fact that a typical infantry division had 518 officers on its unit establishment. By the end of July, 2,433 had been killed and 5,464 wounded, an equivalent casualty rate of more than 15 divisions’ worth of officers. Nearly 15 more division equivalents were lost in August, but the figure fell to half of this – seven division equivalents – in September. On the eve of the Moscow offensive the Ostheer had lost one-third of its officer strength (a total of 37 division equivalents from 117 divisions) which had started the campaign.
These men represented the tip of the spear, the experienced elite of the combat arms: mainly infantry, artillery and Panzer. Many were at the height of their professional prowess, —commanders who had led in Poland, France, the Low Countries and the Balkans. It was these men who were required to think and act in the ‘operational’ dimension – leaders who took crucial decisions in terms of time and space, following Auftragstaktik (a mission-orientated command philosophy). German officers were schooled to achieve objectives while affording subordinates a high degree of freedom of action in their execution. A commander was given the requisite resources – Panzers, artillery or air support – to achieve a mission. How he did it was up to him. This style of command conferred an intrinsic advantage over Soviet commanders accustomed to receiving Befehlstaktik (detailed orders). Initiative in their case was circumscribed by painstaking control by senior commanders over its execution. Not only were resources granted, the commander was told in detail how to fulfil his mission. Auftragstaktik requires a commander to take independent action and apply creative judgement. Imaginative steps involving risk if necessary can be taken to achieve the desired goal. Time and again German junior officers applied tactical excellence in achieving encirclements or complicated tactical manoeuvres through joint co-ordination with other ground arms and the air force. Remarkable and surprising results were achieved against a more numerous foe. But there was a price to pay, and it was exacted by a fanatical enemy.
Officer deaths, particularly of those sharing the risks and stresses of their subordinates, magnified the sense of dismay felt by the troops when they fell. Experienced officers were important to fighting men who measured survival prospects against the life-span of proven commanders leading from the front. Veteran commander casualties influence tactical and operational flexibility, the very quality that confers battle-winning effectiveness. Officers were planners. They handled communications, the effective two-way passage of orders from above and below which produces success. Responsibility for synergising the effect of combined arms between tanks and aircraft, or infantry and artillery, or together, lay with them. Officers embodied leadership and direction through their very presence – important to men confused at the pace and direction of battle. A strong personality in control of events at the local level conferred the bedrock of stability and motivation needed to keep soldiers moving. Consequently it came as a shock, with repercussions at several levels, if they fell in battle. They were responsible for so much. Coping with the abrupt loss of a leader could cost momentum in the attack or reduce sustainability in defence. General Halder commented on ‘remarkably high officer casualties’ only three days into the campaign, compared to the ‘moderate’ losses of wounded and killed. In early July he remarked again on the higher proportion of officer casualties, which by then were 6.6% of total deaths compared to the previous experience of 4.85% in France and 4.6% in Poland.(11)