War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (64 page)

General Zhukov was summoned to Stalin’s Supreme Headquarters on 1 November and questioned whether the traditional October Revolution Anniversary parade could be held on 7 November. Holding it would send a strong and politically tangible message to the international community and Russian population, demonstrating the ability of the regime to survive despite recent setbacks. Stalin had consulted General Artemev, the Moscow District Commander, the day before to assess its practicality. Alexei Rybin, a member of Artemev’s security team, recalled the general’s fear of a Luftwaffe bombing raid. ‘In the first place,’ Stalin admonished, ‘you will not let a single plane through to Moscow.’ Reality suggested, however, it could still conceivably happen. If that was the case, Stalin instructed he should ‘clear away the dead and wounded and continue with the parade’.
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Zhukov, appreciating this resolve, advised that although there was unlikely to be a major German ground offensive, the Luftwaffe could interfere. Additional fighter squadrons were transferred from nearby fronts to minimise the chances of this happening.

In wartime Russia every official utterance, particularly a speech from Stalin, was awaited with enormous expectation. The speeches and the October Revolution Parade delivered in the dramatic setting of Red Square, with the Germans virtually at the gates of Moscow, were to make a lasting impression on the population and world community alike. Artillery Cadet Mark Ivanikhin marched across a desolate Red Square on 7 November, the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution.

‘It was winter or rather it was November, but the snow was bitterly cold and it was dark. As we paraded across Red Square I was somewhere on the fifth line on the right flank, with my eyes facing right. I was surprised to see Stalin looked so short in his hat and ear flaps, not at all like the man we had seen in the portraits everywhere.’

Stalin adapted himself to the nationalist mood, making a considerable impression on both the army and workers. He reminded those present of previous invasions: the Tartars, French and Poles, and played upon the population’s deep feeling of insult aroused by this latest incursion. The Germans had lost four and a half million men in the last four months, he claimed.

‘There is no doubt that Germany cannot stand this strain much longer. In a few months, perhaps in half a year, maybe a year, Hitlerite Germany must burst under the weight of her own crimes.’

Ivanikhin, crunching through the snow as he was marched off the square, was as unimpressed by Stalin’s speech as he was by his size. ‘At the bottom of my heart I felt a little dubious when he said that the war would be over in six months to a year.’ It was likely to last a lot longer than that. Actress Maria Mironowa, living in Moscow, said, ‘everybody paid attention when Stalin spoke on the radio, because he rarely spoke and when he did it was not for long’. Everybody sat still and listened because ‘despite this, his remarks were treated as gold dust’. Stalin’s nationalist propaganda was appealing but the population saw through it. Like many soldiers and Cadet Ivanikhin, Maria Mironowa had her doubts.

‘We knew our land was becoming smaller. It didn’t matter what Stalin said, because the Germans were forever advancing.’

The thoughts emanating from the serried columns marching across Red Square were also of little consequence because after the parade they continued directly on to the front.
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On the same day, the snow turned to rain across the main part of the Central Front. All roads, except in the German Ninth Army area further north, remained impassable. During the evening of 10 November, there was snow and a light frost, but it was not accompanied by any appreciable improvement in the state of the roads. Conditions marginally improved the following day but 12 November produced clear blue skies and freezing weather. The OKW War Diary reported ‘clear, frost, roads negotiable with deep ruts in places’. Temperatures fell to −15°C and dropped to −22° the following day. ‘There was frost across the entire Army Group Front,’ the War Diary recorded. ‘All routes are frozen hard and drivable.’
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Winter had arrived and was to last for four months. The German offensive could resume.

General Halder, the Chief of the German General Staff, arrived at Army Group Centre’s headquarters in Orscha, near Smolensk, on 13 November. There was a conflict of opinion between OKW in Berlin and staffs at the front over the future conduct of the campaign. All three Panzergruppen commanders – Guderian, Hoth and Hoepner – were concerned at their ability to push their spearheads to the final objective. The perception gap between front and rear was increasing.

Generalfeldmarschall von Bock was concerned about his Army Status reports. Although the 95th Infantry Division belonging to Second Army had reached Kursk at the end of October, part of it still remained at Kiev, dispersed over 500km. The Führer was questioning Fourth Army’s progress, slowed down by appalling weather and road conditions. ‘He probably refused to believe the written reports,’ commented von Bock, ‘which is not surprising, for anyone who hasn’t seen this muck doesn’t think it’s possible.’
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At Orscha the army group chiefs of staff – Generalmajor Sodenstern from South, Brennecke from North and von Greiffenburg from Army Group Centre – were summoned to discuss the feasibility of continuing the proposed advance. Should the
Ostheer
commit itself to a final dash, or dig in for the winter months before resuming the offensive in the spring? Army Groups North and South were blocked and overstretched and wished to halt. Army Group Centre’s Generalmajor von Greifenberg accepted ‘the danger that we might not succeed must be taken into account’. But, he said, ‘it would be even worse to be left lying in the snow and the cold on open ground only 50km from the tempting objective.’
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This was precisely the conclusion the Führer and Halder sought. The offensive was to be resumed.

Behind von Bock’s decision to continue was his belief that ‘the enemy was at the end of his combat resources’, even though he ‘still retained his determination’. Von Bockwas buoyed by the conviction that ‘the enemy has no more depth and is certainly in a worse position than ourselves’. Soviet reinforcements had appeared at the front but this was interpreted as ‘a last-ditch effort’, and, being volunteer worker battalions, were likely to be of dubious quality.
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The decision to attack was taken following painstaking appreciations in early November of relative opposing strength ratios across all three fronts. German infantry divisions were assessed at two-thirds their normal strength and artillery not quite so bad. If sickness, casualties and vehicle losses were brought into the equation, infantry divisions were considered to be at 65% of their combat potential. Panzer divisions had lost 40% to 50% of their effectiveness and were down to about 35% their normal strengths. The 101 infantry divisions, 17 Panzer and 13 motorised infantry divisions of the
Ostheer,
according to these equations, represented only 65 infantry, eight Panzer, eight motorised infantry divisions and two other regiments in real terms. In summary, a ‘paper’ battle strength of 136 divisions had been reduced to a much fewer 83 in reality. Despite shortcomings, the risk was considered acceptable because it was felt the Russians were worse off.

Soviet forces in December were calculated to total 200 rifle and 35 cavalry divisions, with 40 tank brigades. They could be reinforced with a potential 63 rifle and 6.5 cavalry divisions and possibly 11 tank brigades from the Russian interior. German planners were not intimidated by this data. ‘The combat strength of the majority of the Russian units is small at the moment,’ OKW rationalised, and ‘they are insufficiently equipped with enough heavy weapons and artillery’. Significantly, reports assessed ‘previously unidentified units now rarely emerge’, which appeared to indicate ‘that integrated reserve units are no longer available in appreciable numbers’. Although units might appear from the interior, they ‘were not expected to appear for the foreseeable future.’.
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The actual extent of the mauling the Soviet Army had received since the invasion was suspected but misappreciated. Soviet figures released after the war reveal the significance of the damage. The Russian Army, which maintained an average field strength of 3.3 million men, lost an ‘irrecoverable’ 2.1 million casualties between June and the end of September, and 676,694 sick and wounded. They were to prove the highest losses to be sustained by Russian forces throughout the rest of the war.
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The figures included 142,043 officers and 310,955 senior NCOs (or sergeants) with some 1,676,679 men, representing 18.9% of the average monthly strength of the army. This fell to 8.9% in the next quarter, a reflection, among other factors, of the diminishing impact of the surprise occasioned by the initial invasion.
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Strengths were, nevertheless, laboriously maintained.

Daily losses during the early border battles had been stupendous, confirming Wehrmacht claims. From 22 June until 9 July 23,207 soldiers were lost
each day
on the Belorussian front, which amounted to 341,000 irrecoverable losses from 625,000 soldiers committed to battle. At Smolensk 12,063 men were killed or irretrievably injured each day from 10 July until 10 September, ie 486,171 irrecoverable losses from a committed strength of 581,600. The reeling Russia colossus was dealt a further crushing blow at Kiev when 8,543 men fell on average each day, which was 616,304 from a combined defeated armies total of 627,000.
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Losses in material were equally appalling. On the Belorussian front, 4,799 tanks were destroyed at a rate of 267 per day from the start of the invasion until 9 July, alongside 9,427 artillery and mortar pieces captured or knocked out at 524 per day, and 1,779 aircraft shot down or hit on the ground at 99 per day. At Smolensk 1,348 tanks were lost in two months between July and September at 21 per day, 9,290 artillery and mortar pieces at 147 per day and 903 aircraft at a daily destruction rate of 14. Fewer tanks were operable by the time of the Kiev encirclement battle, but 411 were knocked out at five per day between 7 July and 26 September. Artillery and mortars provided the main Russian fire power in the pockets and 28,419 guns were lost, picked off at 347 per day with 343 aircraft.
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The double encirclement battles at Bryansk and Vyazma cost the Soviet field armies caught either in the pockets or on the retreat some 9,825 soldiers per day. By the end of November their losses were to total 658,279 men. Soviet tank losses from the beginning of Operation
‘Taifun
’ were running at 42 per day and were eventually to total 2,785. Artillery and mortar losses reached 3,832 pieces at 57 per day, and, despite the poor weather, four aircraft were being lost on average each day.
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Stupendous though these losses were, the Red Army was not persuaded or indeed reduced sufficiently to advise Stalin and the Communist regime to sue for peace. Officer and senior NCO losses were serious but absorbed by a centralised structure, which – unlike the
Ostheer
– was not reliant upon initiative. Contrary to the German
Auftragstaktik
style of leadership, Soviet formations were committed to battle as large closely supervised blocs. German contemporary accounts constantly dwell on the ‘unpredictability’ such methods conferred. General von Mellenthin, a panzer commander, emphasising this characteristic, remarked ‘today he is a hero attacking in great depth – tomorrow he is completely afraid and not willing to do anything’.
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Panzer General Hermann Balck was to comment after the war:

‘The Russians are astonishingly unpredictable and astonishingly hard for a Westerner to understand. They are a kind of herd animal, and if you can once create panic in some portion of the herd it spreads very rapidly and leads to a major collapse. But the things that cause the panic are unknowable.’
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It was this ‘unknowable’ element that clouded German intelligence thinking. Having survived the shock of the initial onslaught, the Soviet Army was relying upon space and its considerable manpower resources to buy the time necessary to develop the experience that would eventually reduce casualties. In short, the
Ostheer
had to deliver a knock-out blow to win. The Russian Army, by contrast, had merely to remain standing to achieve eventual victory. It was this apparently inhuman capability to endure punishment and losses that German planners were never able to quantify. They applied their own psychological and rational parameters, irrelevant to the Russian context of waging war.

General Balck, observing the steady dissipation of German strength with some concern, admitted, ‘when we advanced on Moscow, the general opinion, including my own, was that if we take Moscow the war will be ended’. This was the logic applied by the German General Staff in pursuing its final reckless push against the city. Soldiers at the front, facing the reality of continued and sustained bitter resistance, thought otherwise. ‘Looking back in the light of my subsequent experience,’ Balck concurred, ‘it now seems clear that it simply would have been the beginning of a new [phase in the] war.’
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The perception of the
Ostheer,
the field army, differed from that of planners at OKW in Berlin academically assessing relative strengths. There were disagreements over objectives as a consequence. Second Panzer Army was, for example, allocated Gorki, 500km east of Moscow, as an attack objective. Its Chief of Staff, Oberstleutnant von Liebenstein, frustratedly retorted, ‘This is not May again and we are not fighting in France.’ He changed the objective to Wenjew, 50km north-east of Tula, considered to be the maximum achievable objective for the Second Panzer Army.
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Von Bock acknowledged ‘the attack cannot become a great strategic masterpiece’; rather the aim was ‘to conduct the thrust in concentration at the tactically most favourable points’. This was a clarification of earlier statements which suggested the best that might be achieved was the creation of conditions for a future encirclement of Moscow. ‘Our planned interim objective is Moskva and the Moskva-Volga canal and the capture of its crossings,’ he said, warning ‘it is not impossible that the state of the attack forces units may force us to halt on this line.’