War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (54 page)

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

‘Many of the others seem particularly cheerless. I considered whether I ought to write a letter to Maria [
his wife],
so that it would be in my pocket should I never get to go home.’

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.’
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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 contrast between what you are saying and what I could tell you is so crass I feel unable to write without being under considerable moral pressure.’
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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.

‘Mother writes how much knowledge of our suffering torments her. Should I not write at all, simply offering greetings each time and that I am still in one piece? If so, who knows where I have already been!’
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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: