Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  The further the German forces advanced, the more urgent became the question of the future deployment of the panzer units. This inevitably sharpened the disagreement between Hitler and the army leadership over the main focus of the operations.25 Halder’s diary entries for 14 July show that, at this point, the growing discontent with Hitler’s interventions in matters of detail in the military operations was reaching a critical stage: ‘Hitler’s endless interventions in matters he does not properly understand are turning into a real menace, which is becoming intolerable.’26

  In his Directive No. 33 of 19 July Hitler left no doubt about his determination to get his way on the conduct of the war. It emphasized the need to ‘continue to prevent substantial enemy forces from escaping into the depths of Russia and to destroy them’.27 His message was that in cases of doubt he was not interested in engaging in operations deep into enemy territory, but rather in eliminating Soviet units that were contained in small pockets in front of the German lines. After Brauchitsch had spoken to Hitler on 22 July, he supplemented Directive No. 33. After the situation in the south had been sorted out, Army Group Centre was now ordered to ‘capture Moscow’ and no longer simply to continue its march on Moscow, as had been stated in Directive No. 19 of 19 July. However, this was merely an apparent concession to the army leadership, as at the same time he removed the panzer units from Army Group Centre for this operation.28

  After a further vain approach to Hitler, undertaken together with Brauchitsch,29 Halder now tried to get the general staffs of the army groups to modify Hitler’s directive so that its application was more in tune with his own approach.30 When, on 26 July, Hitler had the idea of deploying the tanks of Army Group Centre against an enemy concentration near Gomel, Halder rejected it on the grounds that it represented a ‘move from strategic to tactical operations’. If they were going systematically to eliminate all the pockets lying between the various thrusts, this would restrict movement and they would end up engaging in static warfare.31 However, Hitler insisted on the destruction of this enemy group, telling Halder during a meeting on 26 July that ‘Russians couldn’t be defeated by operational successes, because they simply didn’t recognize them. So they had to be smashed piecemeal in what might be considered small tactical envelopments.’ Halder was prepared to admit that this point had ‘some merit’, but with this kind of thinking they were ‘leaving the initiative to the enemy’; ‘what had hitherto been a dynamic operation would start becoming bogged down’.32 Although Brauchitsch succeeded in mobilizing Bock and Jodl in his support,33 on 28 July, Hitler once again insisted ‘that the industrial area round Kharkov is more important to him than Moscow’. Expansive operations had to be subordinated to ‘the elimination of enemy forces ahead of the front line’.34 Thus, in his Directive No. 34 of 30 July he ordered that Army Group Centre should temporarily go on the defensive, thereby postponing for the time being the decision on the main focus of future German operations.35 In short, the German armies had within a few weeks penetrated deep into Soviet territory without the political–military leadership being able to agree on what their further military goals should be.

  At the beginning of August, Halder’s method of working on the generals in the field behind Hitler’s back and getting them to follow his line began to pay off. Hitler was increasingly confronted with requests from his generals to begin an offensive on Moscow, in some cases cleverly using his own arguments to persuade him to adopt the army leadership’s approach.36 On 12 August, Hitler finally issued his supplement to Directive No. 34: Army Group Centre’s ‘aim must be to deprive the enemy of the whole of the political, armaments, and transport hub around Moscow before the onset of winter’. However, he made this objective dependent on a set of preconditions that could hardly be met. In the first place, Army Group Centre had to remove the threat that Hitler believed existed on its two flanks, and re-equip its panzer units. In addition, he insisted that, before the offensive against Moscow could begin, ‘the operations against Leningrad must be concluded’.37 On 14 August, he appeared to be ‘seriously disturbed’ about an enemy breakthrough near Staraja Russa in the area of Army Group North, demanding that Halder deploy a panzer corps made up of elements from Army Group Centre. This prompted the latter to note that ‘responding in this way to pinpricks undermines any attempt at producing an operational plan and focusing on strategic targets’.38

  The conflict was now coming to a head, although, during this period, Hitler was partly out of action as a result of contracting dysentery.39 After a presentation by Brauchitsch, on 15 August he ordered that Army Group Centre should, for the time being, cease any further offensives in the direction of Moscow. First of all, the offensive by Army Group North had to be brought to a rapid and successful conclusion and, for this purpose, powerful elements of Panzer Group 3 were to be transferred to it. The advance on Moscow could be continued only after the successful conclusion of the northern operations.40 Halder responded by preparing a proposal for the advance by Army Group Centre to continue alongside those of Army Groups North and South,41 which Brauchitsch adopted, and which was further supported by an assessment from the OKW.42 According to Halder, Army Group Centre had to secure the ‘destruction of the strong enemy forces in front of it’ and ‘capture the industrial area round Moscow’. This would ‘prevent the enemy from re-equipping its armed forces and from building up military units capable of mounting serious offensives against us’. Hitler, now recovered, responded on 21 August with a new Führer Directive in which he definitively stated that the ‘Army leadership’s proposal is not in accord with my views’. The most important goal to be achieved before the onset of winter was ‘not the capture of Moscow’, but the conquest of the Crimea and the Donets basin, the cutting off of the Soviet oil supplies from the Caucasus, as well as the isolation of Leningrad. The next task for Army Group Centre was, together with Army Group South, to surround and destroy the 5th Soviet Army.43 Hitler justified his rejection of Halder’s proposal in more detail the following day by arguing that more important than the conquest of industrial sites was the ‘destruction or rather removal of essential sources of raw materials’ and ‘to deal the enemy a knock-out blow’. He made a detailed critique of the army leadership’s conduct of operations hitherto, telling them in no uncertain terms that the motorized units could ‘under no circumstances be considered integral parts of a particular army group or army’; they were at the exclusive disposal of the Supreme Command.44

  Halder considered the situation resulting from Hitler’s intervention as ‘intolerable’ and his treatment of Brauchitsch as ‘unheard of’. He suggested to the commander-in-chief that they should both resign, which Brauchitsch, however, declined to do.45 At the end of the month, a conversation took place between Hitler and Brauchitsch, in which the ‘Führer’ told his army commander-in-chief that ‘he hadn’t meant it like that’, thereby apparently putting an end to the dispute for the time being.46 During a visit to Fedor von Bock, the commander of Army Group Centre, on 23 August, he and Halder agreed that the offensive should be continued towards the east, in the direction of Moscow, and not to the south. Heinz Guderian, the commander of Panzer Group 2, who was brought into the discussion, stated that his troops were simply not in a position to carry out the offensive ordered by Hitler.47 On the same day, at Halder’s and Bock’s suggestion, Guderian went to see Hitler in order to press the arguments for an advance on Moscow. However, Hitler was not prepared to change his priorities and, in the end, Guderian suppressed his concerns and acquiesced – much to Halder’s and Bock’s disappointment.48

  In the end, however hard the army leadership had tried to bypass Hitler’s directives by issuing flexible orders or by dressing up their aims as, in reality, identical to his own goals, by continually intervening, the ‘Führer’ had managed to get his way in this major dispute over strategic objectives. It was inevitable that these disagreements had damaged the basis of trust between the political and military leadership. The army believed that Hitler’s
constant interventions were hampering a bold military operation, while from Hitler’s perspective the army was showing no awareness of the requirements of the war economy. What lay behind this dispute was the basic problem posed by Germany’s ‘Eastern Campaign’, for, despite its remarkable success, during the first weeks it was already becoming apparent that Germany had underestimated both the quality and quantity of the Soviet armed forces. In the middle of August, Hitler told Goebbels that he had ‘estimated the number of Soviet tanks as 5,000, whereas in reality they had around 20,000. We thought they had about 10,000 aircraft, in fact they had over 20,000 . . .’49 In the meantime, his opponent, Halder, had reached the same conclusion: they had ‘underestimated . . . the Russian colossus. At the start of the war we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Up to now we have already counted 360.’50 Despite its heavy losses in the pockets produced by encirclements, the Red Army had nonetheless succeeded in withdrawing a large part of its forces, and in managing to mobilize and re-equip new units. Behind the dispute about strategic objectives lay the unspoken realization that the Soviet Union could not be defeated before the onset of winter. Neither offensives by the flanks towards Leningrad and Kiev, nor an advance on Moscow in the centre could achieve this goal.51

  Hitler’s further war plans

  During the first phase of this war, Hitler was already energetically pursuing his goals, as summed up on 11 June, for the period after Barbarossa.52 To facilitate further conquests he was even prepared to withdraw troops, which in reality were urgently needed in the eastern theatre. On 8 July, he ordered brand new tanks to be kept in reserve in Germany, in order to have new units ready for action outside Russia.53 Six days later, he issued guidelines in the form of a Führer Directive for a reduction in the size of the army. It began with the statement: ‘After the defeat of Russia our military control of the European area will shortly enable us significantly to reduce the size of the army.’ The panzer arm was, however, to be expanded (among other things by ‘4 more tropical panzer divisions’), while the main focus of rearmament was to be shifted from the army to the Luftwaffe. Naval rearmament was to be limited to those measures that ‘directly apply to the war against England and the United States, assuming it enters the war’.54 With this restriction of naval rearmament largely to U-boat construction – in June he had been treating the navy on a par with the Luftwaffe – he was taking account of the setbacks that the German navy had been increasingly suffering in the Atlantic since the sinking of the ‘Bismarck’ in May.55 Big capital ships were no longer an option for ‘besieging’ Great Britain. On 4 August, during a visit to Army Group Centre, Hitler announced that, in order to deal with a possible British invasion of the Iberian peninsula, or landing in West Africa, but also to meet ‘other eventualities’, a ‘mobile reserve’ must be created in the Reich. This required retaining two panzer divisions and the creation of new panzer units in Germany.56

  At the end of August, Hitler approved the OKW memorandum ‘Concerning the Strategic Situation in the Late Summer of 1941 as the Basis for Further Political and Military Goals’ and had it sent to the chiefs of the Wehrmacht branches and the Foreign Minister. This was an indirect admission that his original plan of bringing the whole of the Mediterranean under his control and establishing bases on the Atlantic coast, following a rapid victory over the Soviet Union, was no longer feasible, at least during 1941. For in the memorandum, albeit discreetly expressed, the OKW was no longer assuming that the war in the East could be won during that year.57 The detailed memorandum made it clear that, without this victory, almost all further German war plans, such as had been developed during the first half of 1941 – the cutting off of the Mediterranean with Spanish and French assistance, the ‘besieging’ of Britain through an intensification of the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’, the offensive through Turkey, and the advance through North Africa towards the Suez Canal – could not be carried out. These options were still kept in view, but they could not now be realized before spring 1942 at the earliest. The only way of threatening Britain’s position in the Near East before complete victory over the Soviet Union would be to mount a successful offensive via the Caucasus.58 The earliest this could start would be May 1942, as a continuation of a successful offensive in the south of the eastern front. An invasion of Britain would not be possible before autumn 1942, as a final option in case the ‘siege’ of the island did not prove decisive.

  Thus, by the end of August, Hitler was having to face the fact that not only his idea of a ‘lightning war’ against the Soviet Union, but also the rapid realization of his other war plans – to undermine Britain’s position in the Mediterranean during 1941, to bring Britain to its knees through an increase in naval warfare, and to establish a position from North Africa through the Near East to the Urals, from which he could calmly face the prospect of a war with the United States – were all doomed to failure. Now that he had been unable to consolidate his future empire he had to fear that the United States, whose entry into the war appeared from month to month more likely, would be able to build a base in the Mediterranean, from which, together with Britain, it could mount an attack on the weak southern flank of the Axis. During the first months of the war in the East, as relations with the United States rapidly deteriorated, Hitler had placed great emphasis on trying to delay its entry into the war for at least some months. When, on 9 July, during one of his presentations, Raeder had asked him whether the recent occupation of Iceland by the United States meant its ‘entry into the war’, Hitler replied that ‘he was extremely anxious to postpone the entry of the United States for one or two more months’. For one thing, he needed the whole of the Luftwaffe for the war in the East, while ‘the success of the eastern campaign would have an enormous effect on the whole situation, including on the attitude of the United States’.59

  Whereas during the visit of the Japanese foreign minister to Berlin at the end of March/beginning of April 1941, Hitler and Ribbentrop had been putting huge pressure on Japan to attack Singapore,60 now their concern was to prevent the Japanese from precipitately going to war with the United States. In the medium term, after the victory over the Soviet Union, such a war would of course be very welcome. Thus Berlin was wary of a potential American–Japanese rapprochement.61 This set of aims formed the background to Hitler’s meeting with Oshima on 15 July. ‘We shall not’, he told Oshima, ‘be able to avoid a conflict with America’. And then he came to the point: ‘The only way of keeping the United States out of the war would be by defeating Russia, and only then if Japan and Germany act with clear and ice-cold determination.’62 He added: ‘And if there was going to be war with the United States then he would be leading it’. By this he did not mean the global war deploying the ‘Z fleet’ and long-range bombers, which he considered the task of his successors.63 Instead, he was thinking of a European continent under German rule being able successfully to defend itself against an American invasion. However, this must not occur during the next few months; first of all, the Soviet Union had to be defeated. The United States was not ready for war, Hitler opined in August.64 In the middle of September, he instructed Raeder that, ‘incidents must not be allowed to occur in the trade war’ before the middle of October, since, at the end of September, ‘the Russian campaign would reach a major turning point’.65 At that stage he was already aware that his post-Barbarossa plans could no longer be realized before the middle of 1942. He nevertheless gave the appearance of being confident of victory and, on several occasions when speaking to Goebbels, played down the threat of the United States entering the war.66 He must, however, have been fully aware that he was running out of time.

  While the entry of Japan into a war with the United States was now to be postponed in order to prevent the latter from becoming engaged in Europe, Hitler became all the more desperate for a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union. This would have immediately eased the situation on the eastern front, opened a realistic prospect of victory over the Soviet Union and, in the proce
ss, increased the likelihood of preventing American intervention. Immediately after the start of the war with the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop had put the Japanese under huge pressure to take this step.67 But month after month went by and the Japanese government failed to act; on the contrary, it had decided in August to stay out of the war with the Soviet Union.68 At this time, Hitler still behaved as though he was convinced that Japan would enter the war with the Soviet Union.69 In contrast to the Foreign Ministry, he did not want to put any pressure on Japan because that could appear a sign of weakness.70 By September, he was only hoping for such an intervention; in November he believed it might come about ‘in certain circumstances’.71

  Occupation fantasies

  In a series of endless monologues while at his headquarters in East Prussia during the summer and autumn of 1941, Hitler developed his vision of a German-dominated ‘eastern area’. His audiences were members of his intimate entourage or visitors who were present at lunch or dinner; often these monologues lasted late into the evening. He invariably began by emphasizing the ‘racial inferiority’ of the indigenous population. He was convinced that ‘the Russian does not naturally seek to create a higher form of society’. Russia only managed to establish a ‘state form’ by using compulsion. It was only possible to get Russians, who were by nature work-shy, to work ‘by creating a really tough organization’. The Russian was ‘incapable of organizing himself; he can only be organized’.72 The Ukrainians were ‘just as lazy, disorganized and, nihilistic–anarchistic’.73 In short, ‘the Slavs are a mass of born slaves crying out for a master’.74 The fact that Stalin had managed ‘to forge a state out of this Slav rabble’ [lit. ‘rabbit family’], albeit ‘only by using the toughest form of compulsion and with the aid of the Jews’, made him in Hitler’s eyes ‘one of the greatest men alive’.75