There is no logical reason for this beyond a spirit of sacrificial patriotism. Nazi ideology extolled group values over the individual. ‘You are nothing, Dein Volk [your people] are everything.’ Wagnerian mythology was pervasive in propaganda and documentary newsreels. Soldierly virtues were extolled through images of tight-lipped heroes against a backcloth of stirring music taken from film director Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, and the 1936 Olympia documentary. Feldzug in Polen alongside Sieg im Westen glorified modern war, chronicling the campaigns in Poland and France. Blitzkrieg was presented through realistic and gritty campaign footage juxtaposed with victory parades in Berlin where the victorious troops were bombarded with flowers and bouquets by adoring females. The colloquial Blumenkrieg expression (literally a ‘war of flowers’) originated from these mass celebrations of success. Idealistic young officers became imbued with a desire to match these epic precedents. As the new campaign was expected to be short, there would be only a fleeting opportunity to prove themselves. Many paid the ultimate price. Although the Alte Kameraden (veterans of previous campaigns) had gloried in public adulation, by the middle of August the war was assuming more a mantle of Wagnerian tragedy rather than triumph. Realisation dawned that the campaign would be no walk-over. Casualty levels assumed horrific proportions.
There was, in any case, a fine dividing line between courage and self-preservation. This is illustrated by an interview between Dr A. Stöhr, a wartime veteran and psychiatrist, and an infantry company commander, who described a typical experience in a ‘tight corner’.
‘I returned to my position having left battalion headquarters just as a Russian attack came in. My men were streaming back towards me in uncontrolled flight. I beat them back into their positions with the ornamental cane we used to carry at Wolchow [peacetime barracks]. We were able to repel the assault. Later, I and a number of soldiers were decorated for this successful defensive action.’
Subsequent remarks by the same officer reveal an insight of the imperatives that drive commanders and soldiers to acts of courage under duress. He admitted:
‘I would rather have joined my men in flight but as an officer I could not. This was due on the one hand to the likely [disciplinary] consequences, while on the other, I was frightened of being considered a coward. Later rationalising my conduct I realised I took this course of action because it was the most effective. We had far more chance of surviving in the position than in flight. It is probably likely, therefore, I hurled my soldiers back into their trenches out of fear of the consequences.’(12)
The commander of IIIrd Panzer Corps, General der Kavallerie Eberhard von Mackensen, believed the scale of officer casualties was undermining the effectiveness of his corps. Its ‘fitness for action,’ he claimed, was ‘only a fraction of what it had been before Kiev, for example’. Many of his officers, including numerous ‘combat leaders’, had perished. ‘In some cases it is more than half.’ Across the corps 25% to 35% of officers had been lost and over 10% of the soldiers. ‘Specialist’ casualties were having a significant impact upon his combat effectiveness. Von Mackensen explained, ‘that has a more profound effect on a motorised rather than infantry unit.’(13)
The ability to think on one’s feet during combat was expected, but to a lesser degree, from NCOs. These junior leaders were essentially trainers and movers of troops, commanding sections or squads of up to 10 men in the infantry, or a small element – a Panzer or artillery gun – in the other arms. Casualties often resulted in elevation to platoon command if there were no officers left. There was less of a leadership gulf between NCOs and soldiers compared to officers. NCOs provided the deputy commanders, but more often the ‘administrators’ preparing for combat. This involved making things work, feeding and caring for soldiers, with minor but cumulatively important supervisory tasks such as ammunition resupply, organising sentry rotations or controlling an important weapon or technical capability.
NCO losses were fearsome. One analysis of casualty figures in an infantry (Schützen) regiment with the 11th Panzer Division reveals 48 deaths prior to Operation ‘Taifun’, with 79 by the end of the year and 210 wounded. The effective full strength of a company would normally lie between 150 and 170 men. Intense periods of combat coinciding with peaks of fighting in July and August reveal the majority of casualties to have been NCOs and senior soldiers. Of 29 killed in July, all but one were within this category, as were 11 of 13 killed in August.(14) Numbers of wounded were on average three times that of fatalities.
A typical infantry division numbered 518 officers, 2,573 NCOs and 13,667 men. NCOs represented 18.8% of the whole. Evidence suggests – as in the case of Infantry Regiment 110 – that NCO casualties were much higher than soldiers. Even accepting a low estimate of 20% casualties of the whole, an interpretation of OKW casualty figures (see Appendix 2) suggests the manning equivalent of at least 13 divisions’ worth of NCOs had been lost in killed, wounded and missing by the end of July. In August 15 division equivalents were lost and nearly 11 in September. By the start of the Moscow offensive nearly 39 division manning strengths had become casualties or about one-third of all the NCOs (from 117 divisions) who had started the campaign. Therefore, about one-third of the veteran leaders of the Ostheer had perished even before the final offensive of the year. Such an abrupt changeover has implications for tactical flexibility and operational effectiveness. The blood-letting in the ranks was on an even grander scale.
Gerhard Meyer, serving in an artillery unit, claimed the battles around the River Dnieper crossings of 23 July ‘cost blood on blood’ in a ‘high priced to-and-fro of constant fighting around four positions’. His division was reduced to less than half its strength and 80% of the officers had perished. He wrote despairingly:
‘To believe, amidst the smell of decaying bodies, that this life has a beginning and end, and is the only purpose and reason for our existence is totally unacceptable. It seems idiotic to me that there is still no order in this world.’
Three weeks later Meyer reported ‘two-thirds of the division has now been rubbed out’, and his commander was wounded and had been captured by the Russians. The division was on the defensive.
‘As I traversed the dreadful “street of misery”, a straight track leading from the gun position to the administrative area on my way to wash, I noticed holes had already been freshly dug among the rows of graves to left and right.’
One of these holes was earmarked for his friend, a signals section commander, who had also come from Würzburg, his home town. They had been sitting together talking about old times when he got up to retrieve his coat spread out to dry 15m away. He ‘waved back to me’ Meyer said, ‘and at that moment was struck in the head by a shell splinter’. His battery commander, a father with three young sons, was also interred there. Meyer was reminded of ‘the old song about the blood-red dawn lighting the way to an early death, which became comprehensible for the first time’. He confided to his diary, ‘whoever is not a soldier would not understand’.(15)