War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942

Objective Moscow

Führer Directive Number 35 was issued on 6 September as Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 battled southward to begin the closure of the Kiev pocket. Code-named ‘Taifun’ (Typhoon), the operation aimed at the defeat and annihilation of the Russian forces blocking the road to Moscow ‘in the limited time which remains available before the onset of the winter weather’. Following the encirclement and destruction of the Red Army facing Army Group Centre, Generalfeldmarschall von Bock would ‘begin the advance on Moscow with [his] right flank on the Oka [river] and [his] left on the upper Volga’.

Army Group Centre was to become the Schwerpunkt (main point of effort) in this last push before the end of the year. Von Bock issued his attack order on 26 September,⁽¹⁾ even as the final blows were being administered to the disintegrating Kiev pocket. In order to provide Army Group Centre with the appropriate force and penetrative power commensurate with its Schwerpunkt role to achieve the objective, Army Groups North and South were directed to transfer important forces to von Bock’s control. Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4 was to be detached from Army Group North and Panzergruppe 2, fighting around Kiev, from Army Group South. Von Bock would have three Panzergruppen under command: these two and Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3, at that moment supporting von Leeb’s assault on Leningrad. Three marching infantry armies – the Ninth, Fourth and Second – would follow behind the Panzer forces.

The attack plan aimed at a double armoured encirclement which would close their pincers east of Vyazma, bringing the Panzer spearheads to within 160km of Moscow astride the main road leading from the west. Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 (now renamed Second Panzer Army) was tasked to attempt an envelopment southeast of Bryansk, by advancing north-east from its present position at Kiev to effect a junction with the Second Infantry Army moving due east. Staff preparation now focused on the requirement to amass the necessary force and matériel.

The war in the east was approaching a climax. On the German side Army Group Centre had nearly two million (1,929,000) soldiers at its disposal, facing one and a quarter million Russian defenders. Over one-third of the forces on both sides formed the logistic and rear area security ‘tail’ supporting the operational ‘teeth’ forward. In reality some 1,200,000 German ‘fighters’ were to engage 800,000 Russian, a ratio of broadly eight German to every five Russian soldiers.⁽²⁾ This was not sufficient for the conventional military wisdom of a ratio of three to one, to ensure a realistic chance of success for attack against defence. Overall figures are less important, however, than tactical and operational excellence, which is required to create the necessary force ratios that ensure success at a given time and place at the front. Surprise is one factor ensuring this, but it becomes subject to an effectiveness ‘fade’ once the operation is underway.

Such a point had arguably been reached in the eastern campaign. The Red Army was configured in a quasi-offensive stance at the outset of ‘Barbarossa’ and was ‘checkmated’ in the wrong place when the German attack began. Massive defeats and encirclements at Minsk and Smolensk bore testimony to the benefits of the surprise achieved. With Leningrad besieged and the armies at Kiev annihilated by a further unexpected move, only one clear German objective remained. This was Moscow. The only remaining conundrum was ‘when?’

Surprise is a two-edged weapon and applies to both sides. Captured Soviet West Front documents give an insight into the tactical and technical surprises inflicted by the German onslaught during the initial invasion phase. ‘Use of infantry forces strongly supported by heavy-calibre infantry guns and anti-tank weapons, with motorcycle troops and the application of deeply echeloned Panzer attacks, in close co-operation with the Luftwaffe’, according to the documents, had considerable impact, ‘thereby deceiving the intent of eventual encirclement, and with good fire control on the move.’ A lesson of the previous short campaigns, which was missed due to the rapidity of the Polish and Balkan operations, but partly reflected in the greater German casualties suffered during the latter part of the French campaign, was that, with experience, Blitzkrieg could be blunted. Shortfalls discerned and commented upon by the German General Staff,⁽³⁾ following the six-week French campaign, were not identified by the enemy until it was too late.

The Russians, with space to react, were given time to learn. They had already noted the difficulty of matching the infantry pace to Panzers. Night defence was invariably poor, as also the reaction of motorised and Panzer elements to unexpected attacks, especially when they were resting on roads or in villages. These had ‘weakly defended outposts that can be easily overwhelmed during the attack’, the report read. It was deduced that wide-ranging night attacks to harass the Germans, by destroying material and inflicting casualties, was likely to have considerable impact. But German officers arrogantly surmised they held the tactical edge. Generalmajor Nehring, commanding the 18th Panzer Division, calculated from an examination of captured staff maps that he would require a 15-day logistic capability to sustain the forthcoming attack.⁽⁴⁾ This would suffice to reach Moscow, or just short of it, when a further decision dependent on the situation would be necessary. Estimates of Russian strength had been 171 divisions prior to the campaign, which was revised to 200 shortly after and then to 360 divisions within six weeks.⁽⁵⁾ Surprise had been mutual.

The effectiveness of surprise was diluted over time. New factors started to emerge. Halder foresaw the approaching dilemma as early as 11 August:

In mid-September he wrote to his wife that ‘the shame of it is that time is frittering away, and time is the stuff of victory.’⁽⁷⁾ Time, distance and the unexpected ferocity of resistance had a cumulative impact upon the Ostheer. Commanders retained confidence because the Wehrmacht had yet to lose a battle during this war. Two factors, however, interacted in reducing the qualitative impact of a barely sufficient attack-to-defence ratio. They were faltering logistics and an army that was, in its own words, ‘victoring itself to death’ (Totsiegen).⁽⁸⁾

A logistic ‘trip-wire’

The original ‘Barbarossa’ concept surmised that the Russian field armies would have to be defeated in western Russia, within 500km of the border, to realise the plan. OKH calculated that the distance from the frontier to Smolensk should be covered in one mighty leap, followed by a pause, during which time the rail network would be extended to catch up. Covering the resupply gap, meanwhile, would necessitate a balance of tracks, wheels and rail transport. The reality was that tracks – the Panzers – rapidly outstripped the marching armies which were reliant upon horse-drawn transport.

Logistics was based upon the army’s Grosstransportraum (lorry carrying capacity), which was truck columns supplying the 33 ‘fast’ divisions and their supporting troops and headquarters. There were 144 divisions to be supplied in total. The sanguine expectation was that the 300km drive to Smolensk could be covered by a six-day 600km round-trip by lorries, including loading and unloading. Each division would receive only 70 tons per day through this method, of which well over one-third would consist of rations. Concentrating only on the ‘fast’ divisions would denude the remaining 111 divisions. ‘Fast’ divisions encircled the pockets, but the slower divisions still required substantial logistic support to reduce them. Potential for problems existed even before the 300km intermediate Smolensk objective was reached. The 500km line (from the frontier) beyond it represented a form of intangible ‘tripwire’ that would snag any offensive and cause it to falter. At worst case it might collapse. German field-post letters home had already frequently alluded to shortages of equipment, food and manpower replacements at the front.

A fundamental tenet creating a 500km logistic check was the technological inferiority of lorried transport compared to rail in 1941. The French Blitzkrieg, despite the convincing perception given by newsreels of powerful motorised German columns portrayed in the propaganda film Sieg im Westen (Victory in the West), was not reality. Indeed, the earlier campaigns had irretrievably damaged the motorised lorry fleet, now reliant upon captured stocks. Even if these fleets had existed, they would have been inferior to rail. No fewer than 1,600 lorries were needed to equal the capacity of one double-track railway line over the 500km distance. Motorised transport further devoured material in its own right, requiring fuel, drivers and personnel, spare parts and maintenance. Consumption relative to the payload carried placed railways in the ascendancy as the most efficient primary carrier at distances in excess of 320km. Lorry columns were a tactical rather than strategic asset.

Some 40% of Wehrmacht divisions were equipped with captured French motorised vehicles at the outset of ‘Barbarossa’.⁽¹⁾

^{The Logistic ‘trip-wire’ was the limit of the Ostheer’s strategic logistic sustainability, beyond which an offensive aimed at Moscow could not be achieved unless supported with a rail-based transport network. The lorried tactical carrying capacity, Grosstransportraum, was the only element able to keep up with the fighting spearheads. The lorry fleet, as also combat vehicles within the fighting formations, had been decimated by the eve of Operation ‘Taifun’ at the beginning of October 1941.}

Panzer division reorganisations prior to the campaign created more units from virtually the same number of tanks, forming 19 Panzer divisions from nine. The creation of the additional ‘fast’ divisions resulted in a corresponding demotorisation of units and services in infantry divisions, which had meanwhile expanded from 120 to 180. The newly created motorised units were experiencing enormous difficulties by late summer, due to wear and tear.

Technical transport reports from the SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ (LSSAH) offer an instructive snap-shot of the problems experienced by a relatively well equipped motorised unit. The LSSAH started the eastern campaign with an inventory of 3,403 vehicles, 240 of which were captured. Many of the same vehicles had already been used for campaigns in Austria, the Sudetenland and Bohemia-Moravia, and most of them had been employed in Poland, France, Greece and the Balkans, and now Russia. No regular or complete refurbishment of vehicles occurred between the French and Balkan campaigns before ‘Barbarossa’. OKH simply ruled that fairly worn parts – those with an assessed 5,000km of life – were to be reinstalled. By the autumn most vehicles had averaged 8,000km and supply and special-duty variants had surpassed 12,000km. Fine dust on all roads caused numerous break-downs. There were no new filters to remedy the situation, so cylinders and pistons wore out early. Reliance on low-grade oils caused piston-rod failures requiring a complete overhaul to repair damage. Shortage of spare parts resulted in ‘junking’ otherwise repairable vehicles, which were cannibalised to keep the remainder of the fleet moving. By 10 October the Motor Transport Officer was predicting catastrophic fall-out rates: 493 vehicles had broken down, 160 were immobilised awaiting spare parts and, he assessed, 250 more vehicles would likely break down within the next 500km.⁽²⁾ This was the situation on the eve of the final German offensive at the end of the year.

The IIIrd Panzer Corps, part of Generaloberst von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1, reported only 142 of 338 Panzers available for action on 17 October, and 3,100 of a total of 4,300 vehicles in running order. The report complained, ‘the vast majority of vehicles are worn out’. By the time the corps reached Dnepropetrovsk:

German advance routes and Russian avenues of retreat were carefully combed for usable parts from wrecked trucks. The LSSAH Division Engineer claimed only 50% of his motor transport fleet was fully serviceable at the end of August. Search groups seeking vehicle parts actually fought engagements with their Soviet counterparts for possession of burned-out vehicles.⁽⁴⁾

The Ostheer’s motor-vehicle fleet was experiencing serious difficulties. Only 1,000 trucks were allocated to Wehrmacht land forces each quarter to make up losses. This was insufficient to replace those lost through normal wear and tear, never mind enemy action. Fuel was in short supply, and could not be procured as in France by filling up at civilian petrol stations. Russian petrol had a high octane content and could only be used in German vehicles after the addition of benzol, mixed at specially constructed installations. Provision of spare parts was critical. German units in Russia used no fewer than 2,000 different vehicle types. Army Group Centre, the Schwerpunkt for the coming offensive, needed over one million spare parts to support it.⁽⁵⁾

The Eastern Army lacked homogeneity because its motor vehicles were concentrated within a small number of units. Priority was given to these ‘fast’ Panzer and motorised divisions for breakthrough and exploitation. Infantry forces normally opened the attack paving the way for Panzer break-ins following along afterwards to subjugate enemy units encircled by the fast forces. Ironically this required 75 infantry divisions to be issued 200 Panje horse-drawn carts to supplement their Grosstransportraum. Fast units were checked at about 500km from their start point due to the requirement for lorries to return empty to reload. They had also to carry their own fuel. On average they were driving 2km (because of the need to manoeuvre tactically) for every kilometre of enemy territory conquered.

Technical problems were exacerbated by the absence of metalled roads. Few were anticipated, and these were expected to be low-grade. The reality was even worse, as the small number of metalled roads became degraded within three days of the campaign start, through the volume and pressure of traffic. Heavy rain transformed them into quagmires, and deep sand and dust pushed fuel expenditure up by 30% in dry weather. Raids by groups of cut-off Russians also exacted a considerable toll. Losses were approaching 25% within 19 days of the invasion, rising to one-third within Army Group Centre alone a week later.⁽⁶⁾ Columns of marching infantry moving up to relieve the Panzers complicated the problem by bringing resupply convoys to a complete standstill. Junkers Ju52 transport airlifts of petrol had to be substituted within 48 hours of the beginning of the campaign to keep Panzer spearheads moving.

Some of the reality of these statistics is revealed through the diary of a German driver with a transport unit at the end of September. He was often away from his company for three to four days at a time. His 6-ton (French) Renault ‘was very good up to a point,’ he wrote, ‘but not for these roads’. Accidents were common. He carried rations, petrol or ammunition as cargo. On one occasion:

Mud and the danger were all pervasive. ‘It is forbidden to drive at night,’ he explained, ‘because there are too many ambushes.’⁽⁷⁾ Driving conditions were harsh. Kanonier Mutterlose, serving with the SS ‘Leibstandarte’s 2nd Artillery Regiment, complained:

Driving by night, in columns, was even worse. Mutterlose noticed the driver:

Mutterlose clambered onto the running board and attempted to remedy the problem by steering the driver through signals and shouts. The inevitable happened. ‘Suddenly, I noticed the vehicle ahead of us had stopped.’ He screamed ‘Halt!’ but it was too late. As the lorry skidded into the one in front, Mutterlose was catapulted into the road. ‘In the silence that followed I could only hear the trickle of radiator water running out into the dirt.’ This ominous sound was the precursor of the driver’s nightmare: to be left behind alone by the road. The SS column drove by, guided around the crippled truck by flashing torch-light. A long lonely vulnerable night followed until they received a tow into a nearby village for repair. They were promptly ambushed by a group of cutoff Russian soldiers. The truck was blazing furiously by the time they were rescued by another German unit, which had also detoured to resolve its repair problems.⁽⁸⁾

Incidents such as these, combined with other frictions, could make life unbearable and fray nerves. Haphazard resupply had a negative impact on morale. Feldwebel Max Kuhnert vividly recalled a dark march by night, chilly and pelting with rain. The soldier’s tent-sheets had not kept them dry. An offer of hot tea, brought up by resupply with a rum included, ‘was music to our ears’.

Even before the Grosstransportraum reached its 500km practical limit of operations, it was clearly labouring under cumulative pressures made worse by time and distance. Under the prevailing technical conditions of 1941 even the Wehrmacht, a moderately modern and certainly innovative force, remained dependent upon rail transport for strategic reach – just as their predecessors had in 1917.

‘Barbarossa’ planning was not decisively influenced by the existing road and rail network, but the need to keep operations supplied did influence route consideration. The initial concentration of divisions for the invasion could be achieved only by intensive use of the rail network in German-occupied Poland. Surprise was achieved by transporting the Panzer and motorised divisions last, a tangible indicator of the coming invasion if they had been moved prematurely. Once the offensive began, the fundamental problem was that Russian railways did not conform to the German gauge. Only the railways had the strategic logistic carrying capacity to reach beyond the 500km ‘trip-wire’ point.

Ideological arrogance leading to an illogical deduction of Russian weakness encouraged German planners to assume the Führer’s ‘kick in the door’ would suffice to bring down the Soviet Union like a stack of cards. A decisive victory was anticipated within the 500km belt immediately to the east of the border. Eisenbahntruppen (railway troops) therefore neglected to spend the winter of 1940 exercising the conversion of Russian railways to standard European gauge and were not adequately prepared. Priority was given to the more pressing task of extending the Polish network in anticipation of the German concentration. This resulted in an over-capacity, which was ironically applied to assist in the ‘Final Solution’ extermination of European Jewry. Even when the invasion began, railway troops had low transport priorities. Equipped with inferior and captured French and English vehicles, they were not able to keep up with the advance. Only one-sixth was motorised and two-thirds had no vehicles at all. They were poorly supplied with fuel by the army groups, and their signals and communications assets could only stretch to 100km.⁽¹⁰⁾ Their numbers were not appropriate to the immense demands they faced. In recognition of this they were supplemented in early July with men from the German Reichsbahn (national railways).

As the army groups penetrated the Russian hinterland, the railway troops worked feverishly to restore damage and convert lines to the German gauge. By 10 July 480km had been completed but only about one-tenth of the load capacity required was reaching the army groups.⁽¹¹⁾ Russian rail-track was lighter than German variants and supported by one-third fewer sleepers, which prevented running heavy locomotives over converted track. Soviet locomotives were larger, their water stations further apart, and many had been destroyed. Russian coal, it was discovered, could not be burned efficiently in German engines without German coal or petrol additives. Damage to signal equipment and rolling stock, bridges and engine sheds, and the elementary point that one double track can carry more capacity than two single ones, reduced German logistic planning figures to theoretical aspirations.

Resupply bottlenecks occurred at the exchange-transfer points between German and Russian railway gauges. A ‘catastrophic’ situation developed at Schaulen in Army Group North‘s area on 11 July, when instead of an anticipated three-hour turn-round, some trains took 12, 24 or even 80 hours to unload. Hopeless congestion resulted. Some trains were actually ‘lost’ in the confusion. Army Group North calculated it needed 34 trains per day (carrying 450 tons each) to meet operational requirements. The maximum achieved on only exceptional occasions was 18. Ninth Army, serving with Army Group Centre, complained it was receiving only one-third of its daily entitlement of trains in early July.⁽¹²⁾

The majority of Soviet division deployments on the eve of war had, by necessity, been by train. Gabriel Temkin, serving in a Russian labour battalion shortly after the outbreak of war, had experienced the German Blitzkrieg through Poland at first hand. He noticed the difference in effect of Luftwaffe attacks on the Russian rail network:

After air attacks, railway soldiers immediately cleared the debris and completed rudimentary repairs so that ‘trains were moving again, slowly, stopping quite often, but moving’. German logistic pressures were insignificant compared to those experienced by Russian armies enduring bottlenecks under relentless air attack the whole time. In addition, the Soviet rail network was engaged in the migration of whole factory complexes complete with workers. These were transported eastward as countless troop trains moved west. Temkin remarked that his mail continued to arrive from his fiancée even ‘during this chaotic time’. Despite being slow and sporadic the military postal service continued to deliver to the front. ‘The trains were moving,’ Temkin emphasised, ‘the freight cars often damaged and half-burned but moving.’ In the face of seemingly endless military reverses Temkin pointed to the value of small achievements: ‘to me it was an encouraging sign,’ he said.⁽¹³⁾

The jump-off point for the projected final German assault on Moscow was over 600km from Brest-Litovsk, and little over halfway to Moscow. The German railway network was labouring even at this distance. Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, commander of Army Group Centre, estimated he needed 30 trains per day during August to replenish current consumption and build up stocks for the forthcoming Moscow attack. On average only 18 arrived, although he was promised 24. Even after the conversion of the railway gauge to Orscha and Smolensk by 16 August and other improvements, the objective of 30 trains per day was never achieved. Von Kluge, the commander of Fourth Army, declared on 13 September that ‘with growing distances, the army is almost completely dependent on the railways’. Although current consumption was met, the build-up of offensive stocks was less certain. ‘The army lives from hand to mouth,’ he admitted, ‘especially as regards the fuel situation.’ The Ninth Army commander was less compromising, commenting the following day that its transport ‘was insufficient to support the coming operations’.⁽¹⁴⁾

Some progress was achieved in September but only limited stocks of Verbrauchssatzen (logistic ‘units’) could be amassed to support the pending offensive. It was not possible to amass the ‘buffer’ stocks desired: 27 trains were needed daily in September to shunt units into place and locate material forward. Only 16 could be mustered before 22 September, although 27 delivered up to 30 September, producing a limited build-up of stocks. OKW estimated 29 trains would be needed daily during October but could only confirm 20. It was anticipated that November and a cessation of activity due to winter conditions would lessen the requirement to a much reduced three trains daily in order to move winter clothing and equipment.⁽¹⁵⁾

In any event it was not enough. Material shortages constantly featured in letters sent home from the front. Secret SS Home Front situation reports, monitoring the impact of these letters, referred to the concerns mothers and wives were expressing about the harsh conditions endured by their menfolk at the front. Supply shortages were a feature of correspondence during August and September, together with apprehension at the approach of winter. Observers reported Feldpost letters revealed ‘soldiers had to endure enormous difficulties because resupply, and with it the supply of combat troops, appeared very difficult’. Within weeks of the final offensive it stated, ‘relatives of soldiers serving in the east are much preoccupied today with the accommodation and supply difficulties of German soldiers for the coming winter’. This, in contrast to the very optimistic views expressed at the beginning of the campaign, was now having a cumulative impact. ‘Growing difficulties with resupply’ was a recurring theme, along with the ‘unimaginable huge reserves the Soviet Army possessed in men and material’. There was pessimism over ‘the almost certain likelihood of not achieving a decisive outcome in the foreseeable future’.⁽¹⁶⁾

Army Group Centre was teetering on an intangible logistic tripwire extending some 500–600km east of the German border from north to south. Motorised transport was designed to keep the ‘fast’ Panzer and motorised divisions replenished, filling the supply vacuum created as railway construction units sought to close the gap and catch up. Generalmajor Gereke, the Chief of Army Transportation, estimated one railway battalion could change Russian to German track gauges at a rate of 20km per day. Smolensk had been reached, but not the capacities required to stockpile for the coming offensive. Army Group North, able to capitalise on the more sophisticated Baltic rail network, had already reported 84 combat incidents between its railway construction troops and stay-behind Russian troops, suffering 162 casualties in the process.⁽¹⁷⁾

Overland vehicles, tracked or wheeled, did not offer a solution. The new offensive would start in the autumn with the prospect of worse weather than that already experienced during the closing stages of the battle of Kiev. OKH announced a deficit of 38,000 vehicles on 16 August. Panzer units were on average 50% short, with corps troops and headquarters already 25% down. Infantry divisions with comparably fewer vehicles, and mainly horse-drawn at that, had lost one-quarter of their motorised fleets. The mobile columns required to spearhead the final Blitzkrieg were between one-quarter and one-third below their previous capacity. This time there would be no surprise; the remaining vehicles were worn out and weather prospects were bleak.

The Panzer situation was serious by late summer. At the beginning of September 30% had been destroyed and 23% were under repair. About half of the Panzer divisions foreseen for Operation ‘Taifun’ had only 34% of their tanks in service. Panzergruppe 1, reduced to 50%, was to continue the advance in the south. Von Bock retained the three remaining Panzergruppen. Generaloberst Guderian’s renamed Second Panzer Army had been reduced to a 45% average even before the Kiev encirclement battles. Its 10th Division was at 83% but its 18th was down to 57%. After the battle Guderian’s force was reduced to 25% in addition to being badly located some 200km south of the Smolensk-Moscow axis. Its 9th Division – having begun the campaign with 157 Panzers – had only 62 tanks with 67 under repair. Overall the three Panzer corps forming Second Panzer Army (with five Panzer divisions) mustered 252 tanks. General Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3 was down to an average of 45% of its strength at the beginning of September and Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4 to between 50% and 75%.⁽¹⁸⁾

A feverish period of repair and transfer of reserve Panzers forward to the front was undertaken (125 of the 181 tanks available were already positioned at Orscha and Daugavpils). Repair was slow because major overhauls were still being conducted in the Reich. This necessitated a two-way additional journey to and from the front. Logistic difficulties further stymied the transfer process, so that the readiness states of the severely pressed Panzer force could only be raised a further 10%. Guderian’s Second Panzer Army, for example, had been promised 100 new Panzers: it received only 50 in time; the remainder were despatched to Orscha, 200km away, by mistake.⁽¹⁹⁾ By 15 September, Army Group Centre had 1,346 serviceable tanks for the forthcoming operation; this was from the 2,609 the divisions theoretically had at their disposal at the outset of the campaign.⁽²⁰⁾

Mal-location did not just affect Second Panzer Army, obliged now to advance north-east, an additional 100–200km, instead of due east along the Smolensk–Moscow road. Panzergruppe 3 had to relocate 600km from Leningrad via Luga, Pskov and Nevel to join Army Group Centre south-east of Velizh. Large numbers of Panzers and self-propelled guns broke down during the rapid three to four-day administrative march. Service support vehicles were obliged to move northward from the Panzergruppe assembly area to recover many of these vehicles, denying vital last-minute support to the remainder prior to the offensive. Artillery gun numbers were reduced as a result of half-track prime movers breaking down and a shortage of spare parts.

The logistic brake was applying remorseless attrition. ‘Panzergruppe 3’s main supply point in the Ribshevo area in no respect carried sufficient supplies to feed a far-reaching attack later on,’ admitted Oberst Hans Röttiger, the Chief of Staff of XXXXIst Panzer Corps. Fuel and ammunition were particularly short, as also spare parts for Panzers and artillery towing vehicles. On the eve of battle the corps possessed between 50% and 75% of its strength, about one to one and a half divisions. Its 1st Panzer Division was down to 90 Panzers, having begun the campaign with 154 tanks.⁽²¹⁾ Army Group Centre was about to embark on the last thrust on Moscow, although it was over half way with 340km to go, with under half (48%) of its serviceable Panzer strength and without the benefit of surprise.

Luftwaffe Luftflotte 2 HQ, located in woods near Smolensk, was considerably reinforced in anticipation of the coming offensive. The VIIIth Fliegerkorps was moved from the Leningrad front at the end of September and attached to the left wing of the gathering Panzer spearheads to support Panzergruppen 3 and 4. The latter was also reinforced by the IInd Flak Corps configured in the ground role. Only Flak artillery calibres were capable of dealing with Soviet heavy tanks with some certainty. The Ist Flak Corps was placed on the right wing to support Fourth Army and Second Panzer Army. In addition to the relocation of the VIIIth Fliegerkorps, 1StG, 77StG and 26JG, formerly committed in the Kiev area, arrived at airfields in Army Group Centre’s area of operations. Once again Luftflotte 2 was positioned to support the army group with massive sortie rates. Meanwhile the ‘Legion Condor’, KG53, began to attack installations in the greater Moscow area from the night of 1 October. Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, commanding Luftflotte 2, described the envisaged concept of operations:

As with the Panzers, the Luftwaffe air situation had changed. There would be no unexpected pre-emptive attack. The front now stretched from Leningrad to the Black Sea, having expanded from 1,200km at the beginning of the campaign to a width exceeding 2,000km. Prior to the Kiev encirclement, OKW had calculated respective air strengths (from fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft) to be 1,916 German aircraft against 1,175 Russian. Soviet factories had been steadily making good the damage meted out by the Luftwaffe’s surprise June air-strikes. A comparison of relative operational strengths on 6 September reveals a German 7% shortfall of bomber and dive-bomber strengths, and an almost 2:1 inferiority of medium- and long-range fighters. The figure was based on an assessment of 1,710 Soviet combat and 1,230 training aircraft, with a further 350 ready in factories. Creative accounting was applied by German planners, who assumed a best case figure of 40% for operational Russian aircraft availability.⁽²³⁾

German letters from the front, supported by diary and eyewitness accounts, testify to the frequency if not lethal impact of constant Soviet air raids up to and including successive Russian defeats at Minsk, Smolensk and Kiev. These were not confidence-building features during the run-up to the final autumn offensive. Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring confided:

Kesselring observed that the successful Kiev encirclement battles and optimistic expectations of Operation ‘Taifun’ encouraged OKW to anticipate success. Commanders’ doubts, he commented, were to some extent allayed ‘by the spirit of the front-line troops’. OKW was pinning its last offensive hopes on the almost mythical ability of the German soldier to snatch victory from apparently impossible conditions. They had yet to lose a campaign. There was total faith in their capability to master this last test. The Ostheer, however, had changed its intrinsic character since the heady opening days of ‘Barbarossa’.

‘Totsiegen’… ‘victored’ to death

By the third week of the Russian campaign total casualties had exceeded those of the entire French Blitzkrieg in 1940. Officers were perishing during the initial period at the rate of 500 per week (524 died between 22 June and the beginning of July), with 1,540 officer casualties occurring in the first seven days of the offensive. This figure represented the combined officer establishments of three German infantry divisions.⁽¹⁾ At the end of July, even before the end of the battle of Minsk, almost 17% more German soldiers had died in Russia than in France. Total losses were 181,000 killed, wounded and missing, compared to 154,754 for the entire French operation. By the end of September the Germans had lost 518,807 casualties, or over three times the losses suffered during the six-week French campaign.⁽²⁾

Despite having inflicted three to four million casualties on the Russian army, the cost – at over half a million men – was sufficient to have a fundamental impact on the structure of the original Ostheer. The Wehrmacht was achieving a Pyrrhic victory. As early as 11 July, the 18th Panzer Division had been reduced to 83 operational tanks representing 39% of its initial start state. It lost 2,279 men, 13.3% of its strength, in almost 20 days. By the end of the month this figure was approaching 20% and required two Panzer regiments to combine to form one with only 600 men in its two battalions. The division commander ominously warned such losses should not be allowed to continue, ‘Wenn wir uns nicht totsiegen wollen’ (‘if we do not intend to victor ourselves to death’).⁽³⁾ A succession of such victories between June and the beginning of October was affecting the very fabric of the Ostheer. Already seriously injured, the losses of officers, NCOs and men were burning out the seed corn of Blitzkrieg.

The horror of becoming a casualty was all-pervasive. All-encompassing shock is the premier emotion engendered as a projectile tears through vulnerable human tissue. German medical doctor Peter Bamm, serving in an infantry division with Army Group South, described the impact:

Following shock there is pain and fear. The wounded were often condemned to lie unattended for hours during intensive fighting before they could be recovered.

If fortunate, the casualty will be dragged or carried back to a shell crater or primitive dug-out where the company aid post offers the first possibility of medical assistance. The regimental medical officer might apply a bandage, a splint or a tourniquet, or give an injection to ease pain. Afterwards the soldier would be laid down somewhere to await the arrival of an ambulance, which would take him to a field dressing station, the next stage in the evacuation chain.

Soldier Erhard Schaumann described the process for those who had not survived this far. ‘You’d take half the [metal ID] tag [snapped in two halves, part for the unit and the other left on the man], and that meant the Feldwebel could notify the relatives.’ Corpses were buried ‘wherever you had a chance, beside a railway or in the woods, and quickly, to prevent epidemics breaking out’. Every soldier was equipped to do this. ‘We all had a little spade,’ he said, ‘on the back of the belt-order.’⁽⁵⁾ Those surviving treatment were carried further back to ambulances. A long crowded journey would follow, squashed together with other wounded in semi-darkness, punctuated by the sound of groans. The next time the stretcher was lifted would be into the glare of a hospital theatre lamp prior to surgery.

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’.

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:

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.

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⁾

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’.

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:

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:

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.

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⁾

Unteroffizier Robert Rupp, equally despondent, wrote in his diary on 12 July:

Two days later the company dead were piled on a lorry, which had to be towed into their position because it had been disabled by a strike in the radiator. ‘H. was there,’ he noticed, ‘with his wedding ring on the finger.’ One of the Unteroffizier section commanders told him, ‘it looks like the whole of his squad had been taken out’. He had ‘three dead, four seriously wounded and the others were at least badly injured’. Morale was low; ‘everyone is very gloomy, very quiet,’ said Rupp. The dismal task of sorting through the possessions of the dead and wounded followed. Private things were separated from military. Shaving utensils and writing materials were shared out among the other soldiers because they were short. ‘It is sad work,’ he confessed. Pocket fighting had exacted a serious toll. The company was being led by a Leutnant one month later (normally a Major’s appointment). Another Leutnant was wounded within 24 hours of his arrival at the front. He had confided to one of Rupp’s friends that ‘the company commander insisted on senseless sacrifices, but I am not going to be considered a coward’. It was a particularly dismal incident. The company commander had been wounded in the leg and his company pinned down. ‘Wait here you cowards,’ he had called out. ‘If I could still run I would soon show you how to attack.’ Thirteen more men were wounded to prove him wrong. Even the company commander’s batman was shot in the stomach and another soldier through the nose. ‘One hundred and sixty-two men have been taken-out so far,’ said Rupp, ‘not including the sick.’⁽¹⁶⁾ This meant that, taken from a company fighting establishment of 176, often in reality much lower, very few veterans survived from those who had crossed the border on 22 June. These were depressing survival statistics.

There were approximately 16,860 soldiers in a German infantry division. By the end of July casualty figures reveal that the equivalent of 10 full divisions had been lost. August was even worse, with 11.6 divisions, and a further 8.3 divisions were removed from the order of battle before the end of September. The Ostheer was indeed ‘victoring itself to death’. Before the onset of Operation ‘Taifun’ at the beginning of October, nearly 30 divisions’ worth of casualties had been lost. This figure exceeded the entire strength of Army Group North’s 26 divisions, which had been sufficient to fight to the gates of Leningrad. These losses represented three-quarters of the size of Army Group South, now in the Ukraine, and three-fifths that of Army Group Centre in June.

Dry statistics do not encapsulate the full significance of the negative impact upon those remaining. Pressure was moral, psychological and physical, all cumulative in their effect. The moral and psychological character of the Ostheer was intangibly but perceptibly changing. Faith remained in the Führer’s ability to see the campaign through to a successful conclusion, but Feldpost letters written by educated and articulate soldiers were beginning to question the extent of the sacrifice relative to the value of the objective. One soldier, writing to his former schoolmaster, apologised for not answering his letters for two months. His ‘bad conscience’ was quoted as part reason.

The gulf between front and home was virtually insurmountable. It applied pressure in two directions. Front soldiers were reluctant to reveal the reality of their experiences for fear of worrying their loved ones. Conversely, those at home had no idea what they endured. Infantryman Harald Henry, although prepared to reveal his innermost thoughts to his diary, struggled with any imperative to inform those at home.

A number of factors enabled the Ostheer to endure privation and enormous casualties. The realities of war produced increasing cynicism alongside growing experience. Dr A. Stöhr, for example, recalls ‘actually witnessing a case during the Polish campaign when a German infantry company stormed the citadel at Brest-Litovsk singing the German National Anthem’. His veteran judgement was that patriotism combined with tactical training, repeated so often it became automatic, kept the German soldier going:

Patriotism continued and was rationalised as ‘duty’. It did, however, became tempered with a more realistic appraisal of what should constitute ‘sacrifice’.

Another motivation was so called Halsschmerzen. This so-called ‘sore-throat’ affliction was suffered by heroes who aspired to the Knight’s Cross, Germany’s highest order for bravery, worn at the throat. Its holder, whether officer or soldier, was entitled to a salute by all ranks. The medal was implicit recognition: ‘I have proved myself.’ Knight’s Cross holders were less inclined to avoid tight situations because collective peer pressure anticipated results. Nazi propaganda extolled the concept of a ‘nation of heroes’. The resulting by-product was a crop of veterans who mastered their lethal craft. One former soldier described them as:

Killing was their expertise, and as such they were bizarrely appreciated in the same vein that football or racing-car heroes are feted in peacetime. Veteran A. Stöhr remarked, ‘they were not particularly unique because every other man also risked being killed himself all the time’. War also changed men. Veterans remarked that the scale alternated between sensible types, who overcame their fear, to insensitive psychopaths, who, because they lacked imagination, knew no fear. Alongside doubters fought fanatic ‘Hitlerites’, to whom everything was the same. Stöhr recalled a Feldwebel whose bride was killed before his eyes during an allied bombing raid. From that moment on he became a ‘hero’, whose reckless courage won him the right to wear a string of tank victory badges on his sleeve, proof he had destroyed seven tanks single-handed in combat. At his throat hung the Knight’s Cross, ‘a hero,’ Stöhr remarked, ‘because his own life had become unimportant’.⁽²⁰⁾

Hardship at the front was a physically cumulative and psychologically wearing process. Fewer surviving soldiers meant more to do – notably sentry and other security duties – for those remaining. There is also universal comment in Feldpost letters and diaries from soldiers about the filth, dust, mud and lice and other discomforts on the Russian front. Obergefreiter Erich Kuby wrote typically in his diary on 19 August, ‘I slept miserably in a soaking bed and developed a headache. Since 22 June I have spent every single night in the open.’⁽²¹⁾

Fresh food, which had been reasonably plentiful in the summer, became increasingly difficult to commandeer in the autumn. Haphazard marching routines punctuated by unexpected periods of sustained or intense fighting meant soldiers ate poorly, and when they could. Incessant hard marches with poor food produced intestinal complaints and diarrhoea, which by the fourth consecutive month of the campaign was draining physical reserves. Natural body resistance was on the decline, colds and fever commonplace, further raising the susceptibility to disease. The prospect of enduring a Russian winter in the open became both depressing and alarming to soldiers at the front and their concerned relatives at home.

A ‘Leibstandarte-SS’ medical report surveying supplies reaching combat troops revealed their nutritional value was on average ‘more than a quarter below what they should have received’. In particular, ‘the supply of fat is always remarkably low’, as also the intake of vitamin C. Summer foraging had compensated for the shortfall but, by late autumn and winter, opportunities to supplement this meagre diet fell away. This eventually ‘led to considerable numbers of men being taken out of service due to illness’. Harsh conditions and insufficient resupply reduced core body resistance to face the approaching winter. The ‘Leibstandarte’ doctor wrote:

Casualties and harsh physical demands were starting to erode the moral component of the Ostheer’s fighting power. A sociological transformation was to occur during the coming winter. The supremely committed idealistic army that had crossed the demarcation line in eastern Poland on 22 June was undergoing change. Many of its commanders, including junior officers and NCOs, had been veterans of World War 1. The youngest were in their early 40s, serving both with the Kampftruppen (combat arms) and staffs. They were less able to endure the drawn-out hardships of a campaign which was totally unlike France, where they had been able to purloin comfortable billets at will. Cumulative physical and psychological pressure alongside the attrition of incessant combat, with still no prospect of victory four months into the offensive, exacted a toll. Atrocities were removing much of the idealistic gloss from soldiers who originally considered they were participating in a ‘crusade against Bolshevism’. Leutnant Peter Bamm referred to the original volunteers of 1914 as ‘a fellowship apart’, adding, ‘they greeted each other with an old-fashioned and traditional courtesy.’

Hauptmann Klaus von Bismarck described his own Infantry Regiment 4 as ‘conservative’, claiming ‘there were no Nazis with us in Kolberg’ (their original garrison town). But later, ‘I noticed from about 1941 onwards, how far the leadership at the top had already been successful in infecting the army [with Nazism] – ever more’. Leutnant Bamm described the development as a ‘rot that during the course of the years had slowly infected the army like a creeping thrombosis’. As the 1914–18 generation of soldiers were killed or succumbed to nervous and physical exhaustion, they were replaced by less competently trained but less compromising and younger men. These men had either been educated under National Socialism, or owed their recent advancement to it. Von Bismarck pointed out:

Traditional reservist commanders, such as Leutnant Haape’s battalion commander in Infantry Regiment 18, a World War 1 veteran, were beginning to feel the strain of incessant combat. Haape noticed how easily he fell asleep on occupying quarters as the weather grew colder. ‘It had become noticeable,’ he observed, ‘that the strains and stresses of these days were beginning to affect him more than the rest of us, and his responsibilities seemed to weigh more heavily on him by the day.’⁽²⁴⁾ An important strata of collective experience in the Ostheer was becoming worn out.

Heavy casualties produced a spiral of mutual concerns that applied both to soldiers at the front and to their relatives and loved ones at home. Rumours of heavy casualties prompted the despatch of emotional letters to the front which could be equally devastating to the soldiers receiving them. ‘My dearest and good Helmut,’ wrote one wife on 21 September:

Black barrack-room humour was often the only antidote to emotional pressures such as these. Soldier Hanns-Karl Kubiak described the plight of his friend, Obergefreiter Gerhard Scholz, when he discovered during an unexpected home leave that his wife ‘had not precisely followed the marriage vows’ as anticipated. The sardonic response of his comrades to the divorce that followed was to poke fun at the propaganda theme requiring men to defend their homes and families. Scholz obviously ‘no longer needed to fight for his wife at home’.⁽²⁶⁾

Concerns for families left at home, beginning to endure the threat of Allied night-time bombing, created further nervous tension at the front. Berlin housewife Ingeborg Tafel wrote to her husband on 15 September:

Three weeks later she told her husband about the emotional effect of her young brother’s death.

Todesanzeigen (death notices) produced rashes of black crosses across newspaper pages announcing the Heldentod (heroes’ death) of those ‘fallen for the Führer and Fatherland’. There was depression in the Reich. Secret SS home front reports recalled Hitler’s Sportpalast speech of the previous year which hinted the war should be over in 1940–41. ‘Now one is faced with a further year of war with new fronts and a further expansion of the conflict,’ the report read. The general tenor was: ‘who would have thought the war would have lasted so long?’ and, ‘it has already lasted two years’. Yet another anniversary of the beginning of the war (1 September) had passed, ‘and still no end in sight’.⁽²⁸⁾ Actress Heidi Kabel recalled the impact of the casualty notices published in the press:

Observations of home front morale assessed ‘the population is beginning to take the view that the war in the east will not end as quickly as was anticipated following early successes’. Rumours fuelled by numerous Feldpost letters quoted high casualties among certain identified units. ‘Death notices in the newspapers,’ read one report, ‘in particular a number of publicly known personalities who have died, exacerbate the extensive public concern over German losses in the east.’ The 1st SS Division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ had reportedly ‘lost 60% of its strength’; another rumour claimed ‘officer casualties in all units were way beyond all expectations’. In one town it was alleged 23 men had perished from a community of only 3,000. SS Home Front reports observed, ‘the population is becoming increasingly convinced from front reports that Soviet resistance appears not to be decreasing and that clearly the enemy has further huge reserves of matériel available.’⁽³⁰⁾

The handling of death notices attracted intense criticism, as revealed by one lengthy SS Home Front survey. It criticised an insensitive and inefficient bureaucratic system responsible for gross errors. Probate wills were being returned stamped ‘Fallen for Greater Germany’, before families had even been officially informed by the Wehrmacht Army Office. Suffering was, in any case, unavoidable. Hildegard Gratz in Angerburg recalled ‘the first “black letter” for our family’ came with the advent of the Russian war. Her brother-in-law had perished on the very first day of the campaign.

Such inconsistencies were not lost on the population. Rumours intensified as black stories abounded. A wake organised at St Ingbert on the basis of a witness report sent by letter from a comrade who had witnessed the ‘death’ was cancelled after a hospital notification that the ‘deceased’ had survived. Some ‘killed in action’ letters of condolence were thoughtlessly composed, graphically describing the wounds that led to death and sometimes even the duration and extent of suffering. ‘Two particularly crass cases were reported from Düsseldorf,’ noted the SS Home Front survey. A death notice inserted through a letter box with normal mail when there was no answer resulted in a housewife discovering her husband had died as she sorted through routine correspondence while her children were present. Another unfortunate mother was handed her tragic news at the tram stop, with her children, while the unsuspecting postman continued on his round. She screamed and fainted in the street. The SS report recommended numerous humane changes to procedure.⁽³²⁾

‘Being a postman suddenly became an unpleasant occupation,’ commented Hildegard Gratz. ‘He became the bringer of bad news.’

The war was sucking the very vitality from normal life. ‘Three young women went around our village in black that autumn of 1941,’ said Frau Gratz. ‘I had danced at their weddings, and they at mine.’⁽³³⁾

On 18 September the press announced the death of Generaloberst Ritter von Schobert, the commander of the Eleventh Army, killed six days before when his Fieseler Fi156 Storch light aircraft force-landed in a minefield. ‘Just imagine how high casualties among officers and men must be,’ was the public perception, ‘if even an army commander is killed’.⁽³⁴⁾ Casualties produced a nagging unease throughout the Reich during August and September. Rumours were temporarily allayed on 22 September when the ‘Announcement of Eastern Campaign Losses’ was revealed: about 86,000 had died and almost 22,000 were missing. The figures were reasonably accurate (87,489 and 19,588 respectively). Conjecture had varied from 200,000 at the low end of the scale to one million as the worst case. The figures ‘have in one blow,’ according to the official assessment, ‘settled the uncertainty’. Although viewed as costly at first, they were eventually accepted as an inevitable expense for ‘the harshness of the battle against Bolshevism’. People temporised, claiming they were lower than World War 1 losses with far greater success to show for it. Interestingly, the ‘wounded’ totals were not given: they numbered 302,821. Soviet casualty figures were, in any case, calculated as far higher, with 1.8 million prisoners taken and reportedly 3–4 million dead.⁽³⁵⁾

The impact of German losses was tearing away at the very fabric of the Ostheer. The cream had likely already perished. Even the SS, who had begun this battle supremely confident and motivated, were expressing doubts. The commander of the 4th SS Infantry Regiment ‘Der Führer’ wrote:

Army Group South, which would support the right flank, had similar misgivings. The commander of its IIIrd Panzer Corps reminded the commander of Panzergruppe 1, Generaloberst von Kleist, that ‘it is psychologically wrong to drive a unit that has proven its fitness’. More than half of his combat leaders had fallen in some units and his Panzers were reduced from 338 to 142. ‘The vast majority of all vehicles are worn out,’ he lamented. His comments concerning the fighting power he was able to muster were more significant. ‘Morale,’ he explained, ‘is weighed down’ by the increasing frequency of Russian air raids and the apparently inexhaustible reserves of Russian ammunition. Both factors ‘will only increase as the Russians move back to their unattacked positions and reach their stocks of ammunition and matériel’. His men were depressed ‘by the fact that the final goal seems out of sight’. Moreover ‘the number of men out of commission proves that the Russians are by no means “beaten” as it might appear in the big picture’ – a statement all the more significant coming, as it did, three weeks after the annihilation of several Russian armies in the Kiev pocket. The men were worn down. ‘Readiness for action for the personnel can only be achieved with a few days of rest outside the area of Russian fire.’ So far as ‘material’ was concerned, ‘no full readiness can be expected anymore’.⁽³⁷⁾

One artillery NCO serving with Army Group Centre expressed his foreboding more succinctly. ‘God save us from a winter campaign in the east,’ he wrote. ‘It is very cold here already and it rains practically every day.’⁽³⁸⁾ Infantryman Harald Henry noted in his diary on the eve of Operation ‘Taifun’ that even ‘at the beginning of this new offensive we had no rest for 44 hours having been incessantly on the march’. Pressure was beginning to tell:

The German infantryman was at the end of his tether, as was also the fighting power of the Ostheer.

A dying army

The fighting power of an army can be broken down into three components: the conceptual, physical and moral.⁽¹⁾The conceptual is ‘how’ the campaign is to be fought and includes the strategy and operational and tactical plans to support it. Successful Blitzkrieg was dependent upon the flexibility conferred by the Auftragstaktik concept of mission command tactics. Up to one-third of the veteran leadership of the Ostheer, its officers and senior NCOs, had perished by the eve of Operation ‘Taifun’. These were veteran combat leaders, men who had been killed leading from the front. Although they represented one-third of the whole, in logistic ‘tail’ compared to forward ‘teeth’ terms they represented a greater loss, more like 50%, because only a small proportion of a typical division actually closes with the enemy. (See Appendix 3.) Such men were irreplaceable. Eighteen months was required to train individual replacements, but the seed-corn of experience had been irretrievably lost. Therefore the conceptual component, the command and leadership of the fighting element of the Ostheer, had been grievously injured.

The physical component represents the sum of resources: manpower, logistics, equipment and the training and readiness that makes up the whole. In manpower terms the Ostheer had suffered over half a million casualties, more than three times what it had lost in France. Thirty division equivalents were for practical purposes removed from the order of battle, a loss greater than the size of Army Group North, which had fought itself to Leningrad. A logistic ‘trip-wire’ had been crossed past which little could effectively be squeezed beyond physical choke-points. War-winning priority equipment – Panzers, artillery prime movers and motorised vehicles – were worn out. There was barely 500km of effective life in them before major overhauls and replacements would be needed to avoid breakdowns. This was hardly sufficient to reach Moscow.

The third and decisive component was the moral, the ‘hearts’ that sustain the conceptual ‘mind’. Losing the cream of its combat leadership affected not only the flexibility, experience and professionalism of the remainder, it also impacted on the will to fight. Most Landser were committed and motivated by duty to fight. There was, however, some questioning of the practical ability to reach Moscow, even if it was the last major objective. The debilitating and cumulative impact of stress and physical deprivation was wearing men down. Doubts and scepticism are evident in Feldpost letters and diaries that survive from this period at the front. ‘Duty’ was being eroded to some extent by a moral questioning in some instance of the ‘justness’ of a cause that was inflicting state-sponsored terror upon the local populace. Interestingly, the official history of the Potsdam-Berlin Infantry Regiment 9 fighting on the Central Front is entitled ‘Between Duty and Conscience’.⁽²⁾ Preaching ideological conflict was not the same as physically inflicting its implications upon a helpless civilian populace. Soldiers feel more at ease with the certainty of a just and clearly identified cause to rationalise the violence they are called upon to execute in battle. A degree of moral degradation was also afflicting the Ostheer. Thinking men had to come to terms with the immense cost and ghastly implications of prosecuting an ideological ‘Total War’.

The Ostheer was bleeding profusely. All three of the primary components constituting its fighting strength were seriously damaged. The assumption that kept the force going was that the Russians were even more grievously hurt. Victory was achievable, it was felt, if the final Soviet field army standing before Moscow could be decisively defeated. Such a catastrophic reversal might indeed provide the catalyst required to convince the Soviet regime to conclude an armistice and allow the occupation of Moscow. Failure was never seriously countenanced, despite the parlous state of the Eastern Army itself. The Wehrmacht had never been defeated in this war, but neither had it sustained such punishment in any previous campaign. It was practically ‘victoring itself to death’.