Guderian: Panzer General

by Macksey, Kenneth

  In this short passage can be recognised the key to an appreciation of the operations which resulted on 15th July in the completion of another wholesale encirclement of Russian forces at Smolensk and the attainment of a crucial stage in the campaign. Kluge’s difficulties with the Russians and with Guderian are plain to see, but one is left in little doubt from whence the strategic motivation came and to whom Blumentritt gave most credit – and Blumentritt was usually loyal to Kluge.

  To Oberstleutnant von Barsewisch, Guderian’s Luftwaffe officer, his commander was a ‘superman, a ball of energy and brainy too …’ Barsewisch wrote in his diary of the planning which took place on the 11th/12th, as he saw it: ‘When Guderian makes decisions it is as if the War God himself rides above Walstatt. When his eyes flash Wotan seems to hurl lightning or Thor swings the hammer’. And in the evening he listened to a conversation with Oberst Rudolf Schmundt, the Führer’s military assistant, when Guderian passionately exclaimed, ‘It’s not my fame but of Germany for which I care’. This was a protestation of some significance which Barsewisch may not have appreciated at the time, affecting, as it did, Guderian’s rising sense of destiny.

  The operations by Guderian and Hoth in the approach to Smolensk are among the most remarkable of the war – supreme examples of a mobile offensive in pursuit of a strategic aim against stiff resistance by a numerically inferior foe. For a month the Russians persisted in their piecemeal counter-attacks against Army Group Centre, yet the Germans, despite logistic limitations, maintained a steady rate of advance even though its pace was reduced compared with the early days of the campaign. Between 10th and 16th July Panzer Group 2 pushed forward only 75 miles from Krasnyi to Smolensk, but it covered countless additional miles through the necessity constantly to shift its stance to deal with Russian counter moves and to occupy successive nodal points in the battle of manoeuvre. Steadily it moved eastward, implacably the Russian groups were outflanked and isolated, invariably it was the Germans who were first to seize vital points with tanks and infantry and then hold them with anti-tank and machine-guns brought up in defence, while the tanks moved on to conquer fresh ground. Only when it rained, and the tanks sank to their turrets in slime, was there a pause, for rarely even by night was a standstill permitted. Men and machines began to wear out, fuel ran short and ammunition had to be used more sparingly. But Guderian was everywhere, coated in dust and tirelessly developing his schemes.

  At the peak of his form he attained new heights in generalship and an even deeper understanding of his profession. Strategic, tactical and technical skills he supplemented with a lighter touch: he even managed to win the admiration of one of his more virulent critics, Geyr von Schweppenburg, the commander of XXIV Panzer Corps. ‘We worked in a model way together, owing to the tact and skill of his Chief of Staff and to Guderian’s own discretion and good will. During six months of daily hard fighting there was not a single row.’ The same could not be said of the relationship with superior headquarters far to the rear: with them a bickering struggle to obtain enough reinforcements and supplies to sustain the failing panzer forces went on. Yet by the very persistance of their success the Panzer Group leaders belied each angry show of anxiety since they always somehow managed to stay mobile, to mop up over 300,000 trapped Russians along with 3,200 tanks and mountains of equipment besides stopping those Russian attacks which came in from the east. Hitler, OKW and OKH were becoming, in fact, dangerously spoilt and complacently accustomed to the seemingly automatic flow of panzer victories: they failed to realise that these good things were by way of being military miracles. Divorced from the front by space, as they were, it was hardly surprising that they shrugged off complaints from spearhead commanders who repeatedly conjured up triumphs despite their cries of alarm and despondency.

  Neither OKW nor OKH could be genuinely aware of what von Barsewisch called ‘… the unbelievable deprivations and exertions imposed upon to-day’s generals’ since none of the senior officers in those remote places had experienced anything like it in their lives. Von Barsewisch gives a vivid impression of Guderian in a moment of crisis which was to occur on 5th August, a day in which his commander raced from place to place in attempts to prevent a large body of Russians from escaping encirclement. Information that a threat was developing against an important bridge at Ostrik came in. ‘He rushed immediately to the point’, relates von Barsewisch, ‘… full of rage, and closed the gap with a battery of anti-aircraft artillery which he led personally into battle. There was this fantastic man, standing by a machine-gun in action against the Russians, drinking mineral water from a cup and saying, “Anger gives you a thirst!”’ It was almost superfluous when Barsewisch wrote ‘Guderian is well known by his 300,000 men. It is amazing the respect with which he is greeted everywhere he goes’.

  Twice Guderian wrote commentaries to Gretel upon himself. On the 6th August he remarked, ‘how long heart and nerves can stand this I do not know’ and on the 12th, in a letter which wonderfully describes the stresses of command besides his own reactions:

  ‘Have I not become old? These few weeks have imprinted their marks. The physical exertions and battles of the will make themselves felt. Occasionally I have a tremendous yearning for sleep which I can seldom satisfy. Yet, by and large, I am feeling very fit when something is going on – also quick and able. But as soon as the tension is relaxed comes the relapse.’

  Notwithstanding the gallantry of the front-line troops, a dangerous crisis loomed over OKW and OKH. At the beginning of August it was apparent that the enemy, far from being broken, was strong and capable of prolonged operations. On July 31st Guderian wrote, ‘The battle is harder than anything before … it will take some time yet.’ Though vast areas had been occupied and immense armies smashed the capture of a major political or economic objective had not been achieved, nor had the Russians been annihilated. Indeed, in the Ukraine, the Russians had nimbly evaded Army Group South and still held Kiev, while Army Group North stood well short of Leningrad.

  From the outset each Army Group commander had been eager to seize the principal objective that lay within the boundaries of his command. To Bock, Moscow was a prize beyond price even though he doubted its political significance. But now the difficulties of achieving their ambitions were accentuated by a belated appreciation of the tyranny of distance and the inadequacy of their resources to overcome that tyranny. Not only were the fighting vehicles breaking under the strain but so, too, was the machinery of logistics as well as the moral fibre of the commanders whose thoughts turned pessimistic again. The Wehrmacht was stretched to the limit: only one major objective could reasonably be pursued at a time. Bock, supported by Kluge, Guderian and Hoth, gave unified support to Brauchitsch and Haider in their endeavours to make Moscow the primary target. Almost perversely, it seemed, Hitler proposed instead that Leningrad and the Ukraine should be taken; thereupon, he claimed, Moscow would fall of its own weight. As his reasons for diversifying effort, he propounded the need to attack political and economic objectives rather than concentrate upon a purely military task – but Hitler chose convenient arguments to suit short term aims which, on this occasion, were ill-defined.

  Nothing could be settled until Hitler had visited each Army Group headquarters in turn, seeking to test the opinions of von Leeb, von Bock and von Rundstedt while reimposing his personality upon them and sowing the seeds of dissention which could undermine their faith in Haider and OKH. Insidiously Hitler worked upon the susceptibilities of the generals, aiming to dominate each one through personal fascination regardless of the integrity of the strategy he was promulgating.

  Concerning Bock’s headquarters, where Hitler arrived on 4th August, there has been gossip about some sort of plot by the la, Oberst Henning von Tresckow, and his ADC, Fabian von Schlabrendorff (a barrister) along with two more ADCs, to arrest Hitler in the hope that a chain reaction would be set off against him. This ludicrously amateur scheme (if it ever existed) was mentioned in Schlabrendorff s book of 1946, Offiziere ge
gen Hitler (but omitted from his subsequent book of 1965). It appears to have been abortive because, only at the last moment, did the plotters realise that Hitler was too strongly escorted. It is also said that Tresckow had tried to involve Bock in the plot and that Bock refused to give support unless presented with a proven success, and there has been a suggestion in Wheeler-Bennett’s Nemesis of Power that Guderian was aware of the Tresckow plot and undermined it by falling in line with Hitler’s aims. Guderian, who denied the truth of anything written about him by Schlabrendorff in 1946, has history on his side, whereas Schlabrendorff’s book was riddled with inaccuracies and hearsay accounts. For example, Schlabrendorff asserted that Bock did not want to go to Moscow but asked to revert to the defensive, while Guderian was more interested in the Ukraine: both notions are substantially contradicted by contemporary diaries and personal accounts. Admittedly Hitler interviewed each senior commander alone and nobody can be sure what was said, but there is nothing to show why Schlabrendorff should be right and everybody else wrong. In fact Guderian’s only public strategic disagreement with anybody else at this moment was with Hoth over the date of the start for Moscow – the former calculating he could be ready on 15th August, the latter more cautiously preferring the 20th – the critical factor being the repair of tanks. Meanwhile, in private, Bock and Guderian disagreed mainly upon what the fundamental effect of capturing Moscow might be, Guderian arguing that occupation of the capital would be sufficient in itself to bring about the collapse of Stalin’s regime, Bock holding the much more political and sophisticated opinion that ‘Russia can only be conquered by the Russians through a civil war and a national liberation government’.

  Abstruse political theories come low in the priorities of a field commander at the height of battle. Guderian was consumed by combat and returned to the front after the conference eager to prepare his Group for the drive on Moscow which he reckoned must surely take place. A few swift orders to his staff and once more he raced to the front line to fight, an action he described to Gretel: ‘… I fought a battle at Roslavl, conquered the town, took 30,000 prisoners, 250 guns and much other material including tanks … A pretty success. But still somebody [Bock under whose direct command he then was] interferes as before and endeavours to deploy the tanks in dribs and drabs, ruining them by useless journeys. One despairs! How I can overcome this stupidity I do not know. Nobody helps me … Three days ago I was ordered to the Führer to report on the panzer situation. The opinion at OKW and Army Group does not match my ideas despite the fact that the Führer was extremely understanding. What a pity! What a pity!’

  At the higher headquarters, where the sound of gunfire was only rarely heard and time seemed to have lost some of its importance, the long debate about future strategy dragged on. As the campaigning season ebbed away the only immediate friendly beneficiaries of a pause were the German logisticians who thus found the opportunity to recuperate the formations’ strength along with stocks at the front. The main long-term beneficiary was, of course, the Russian Army which at last had time in which to consolidate its positions. When the initiative is finely balanced, inaction is often more destructive of generals’ composure than is the actual crunch of battle on soldiers. The strain upon Haider, who, best of all, knew that a moribund strategy tolled the death knell of Germany and who pondered and strove under well-nigh intolerable conditions, was appalling. He was caught in a vortex of proposals and counter-proposals but lacked the authority and ability to turn them into positive action. Frequently reviled and blatantly ignored by OKW, too often abandoned by his C-in-C whose credibility with OKW had sunk low, his consequential ineffectuality became apparent to worried colleagues at the lower levels, and they began to lose confidence. This highly strung staff officer, who would have welcomed a rigorous debate in straightforward terms, began to lose his sense of poise. An argument that shifted amid the sands of Hitler’s tortuous political manoeuvres and intuitions was destructively exasperating to Haider.

  Guderian merely wished to keep moving since this, to him, was the essence of panzer tactics, and the mainspring of victory. On 12th August he wrote: T would not wish to be in this area [Roslavl] in the autumn: it is not very pretty … waiting always brings the dangers of immobility and static warfare: that would be terrible.’ That he knew only too well the troubles of the High Command, he showed in a letter on the 18th:

  ‘This situation has a bad effect upon the troops, for everyone is aware of the absence of harmony. That is the product of unclear orders and counter-orders, absence of instructions sometimes for weeks … we are missing so many opportunities. But it is annoying when one knows the reasons. These most probably cannot be put right during this war, which we will win despite it all. That is human nature in great moments and with great men. Don’t listen to too much talk about me. It is all much exaggerated and people make a mountain out of a molehill.’

  For talk there was – about his intransigence, on the one hand, but ever more loudly about his virtue linked with a growing feeling among a small and influential caucus that he was wasted in the lower echelons of command. Or so it seemed to Oberst Gunther von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, who was a fervent admirer of Guderian. It was clear to him, as many others, that the poor relationship between von Brauchitsch and Hitler was leading to disaster and that Guderian, for whom Hitler had much more respect, would be the right replacement. At this moment, in playing a hunch, he suggested to Major Claus von Stauffenberg, a staff officer at OKH, that he should visit Panzer Group 2 to assess for himself Guderian’s fitness for the higher role. Stauffenberg, like most visitors after a stay with Guderian, returned enthused and the two conspirators sought ways of unofficially thrusting Guderian’s qualities upon the Führer’s attention. At about the same time von Below asked Guderian what his reactions would be if he were asked to be C-in-C, and Guderian, not surprisingly, had answered that he would ‘follow the call’* Von Below says that Guderian’s Chief of Staff, Liebenstein, probably knew of the scheme, though Oberst Schmundt was unaware of it. Through notes in his diary it is apparent that Barsewisch knew too** but whether or not Haider was informed is a matter for conjecture, although Oberst Heusinger, the Chief of Operations, was told and may have discussed it. I think it very likely that Haider did know. Certainly his subsequent relationships with Guderian and those who supported the panzer general assume a different character if viewed in the light of this positive assumption, for up to the middle of August Haider had little for which to thank Brauchitsch but good reason to feel gratitude towards Guderian, besides an increasing disenchantment with Hitler whose arbitrary behaviour was worsening.

  For not only the Commander-in-Chief was losing – or had totally forfeited – prestige. The Führer too had begun to suffer from failing authority and was finding it more difficult, by sweet persuasion, to sway doubters. Ever more frequently he felt compelled to resort to bullying injunctions to over-ride contrary points of view. Increasingly he came to rely upon the thoroughness of Prussian discipline to bend the generals to his will. Each set-back and every revelation of weakening in Germany’s situation was to lead to a coercive tightening of his lonely, dictatorial grip. And since he was never effectively opposed by his closest followers and sycophants, and persisted in holding dissident factions at a distance, he was permitted to formulate and actuate warped ideas upon false or ephemeral premises which all too often were turned into faulty policy. For example, the limited operations mounted by Guderian in the interim period between his arrival at Smolensk and the construction of a revised strategy, are coincidental with Hitler’s suggestion to abandon the principle of securing victory through sweeping mobile operations in favour of small local actions, analogous with static warfare, to take unimportant terrain. This concept, encouraged by Haider and adopted by Bock as a temporary expedient to maintain a limited mobility, led to an innocuous advance on Gomel by Second Army along with random requests to Panzer Group 2 for assistance – the requests which led Guderian to complain on the 18th
about the plethora of unclear orders and counter orders. Liebenstein bitterly remarked The troops must think we are crazy’ and he wrote in his diary on the 15th, that the moves ‘… cannot lead into the flank and rear of the enemy’ and, again on the 20th in complaint in connection with tanks held in the line instead of being relieved by infantry in order to prepare for the next main task: ‘After all, this Army Group appears to intend attacking on both sides of the road Roslavl to Moscow. Our further extension to the south is therefore no longer appropriate’. Guderian, though he knew that the order had come from OKW via OKH, resisted it – Liebenstein quotes Guderian as saying, on 22nd August, that to send the Panzer Group in this direction was ‘a crime’. But as Second Army, under Bock’s goading, edged southward, the seeds of decision at last germinated in Hitler’s mind: he opted firmly to strike heavily southward in the direction of Kiev. At about the same moment, on 18th August, Brauchitsch and Haider put their names to a document demanding an advance upon Moscow.

  The plan submitted by Brauchitsch and Haider nevertheless temporised in that it still allowed the flanking army groups sufficient resources to reach the main objectives within their boundaries. Hitler, in rejecting it, gave a politicians reply by accusing OKH of being too strongly influenced by the three Army Group commanders. Once more Haider asked Brauchitsch to join him in joint resignation, but again the C-in-C declined. He knew that a second-rate policy was promulgated, an offensive based upon pure opportunism in which a Panzer Group was to be peeled off Army Group Centre and made to collaborate with Army Group South in a gigantic envelopment of the Russian armies defending the Ukraine. In every sense he took the line of least resistance.

  Haider stuck to his guns and called yet another meeting at Army Group Centre at which the Army and Panzer Group commanders were in attendance. With compulsive zeal and ability, Guderian argued the case against diverting his Panzer Group to the south, pointing out the logistic difficulties that would arise and emphasising the debilitation of men and machines. Some of the men, he said, had forgotten the meaning of rest. Then he raised the spectre of a winter campaign which had never been envisaged by the planners and for which, on the face of it, no apparent preparations had been made. In essence he said that, though the Kiev operation was feasible, it precluded a subsequent offensive against Moscow and made a winter war inevitable. This precisely coincided with Haider’s and Bock’s opinions. Now it was that von Below suggested to Bock that Guderian was the man to accompany Haider in a final effort to change the Führer’s mind, a scheme to which Haider readily acceded – all the more readily, one feels, if he too was convinced, as possibly he was, that Guderian was the one man who might succeed where Brauchitsch had failed. Indeed, at this moment, it seems entirely reasonable to believe that Haider supported Guderian as the candidate for Brauchitsch’s job.