Hitler a life, p.119
Hitler- a Life, page 119
orders, which we are unable to give them because of the Führer’s instruc-
tion to the C-in-C Army.’17
Thus Halder was aiming to bypass the Supreme Commander’s directives
by issuing broadly framed orders and hinting at what he wanted. He relied
on the commanders at the front intuitively acting in tune with the basic
intentions of the general staff. When, a few days later, Hitler wanted to
intervene once again in the conduct of operations, Halder noted critically
that resolving matters of detail should be left to army and corps command-
ers. However, ‘people at the top don’t understand the need to place their
trust in the people on the ground, though that is one of the most valuable
features of our style of leadership. This is because they’re unaware of the
value of the education and training that our leadership corps has gone
through together.’18
In the end, during July, this conflict came out into the open, as both
continued to pursue their different approaches. Halder remained commit-
ted to capturing Moscow, whereas Hitler considered Leningrad and Kiev to
be the more important goals. Hitler was concerned, on the one hand, to
destroy the Soviet Union’s main military forces,19 and, on the other with
economic issues affecting the war. Leningrad had to be captured in order to
prevent the Soviet fleet from blocking Germany’s access to iron ore through
the Baltic, while in the Ukraine he wanted to seize the Donets basin, a centre
of Soviet heavy industry, and cut off oil supplies from the Caucasus. On 30
June, he told Halder that, to begin with, he wanted ‘to make a clean sweep’
in the north with panzer units and that he reckoned that ‘Moscow could
wait until August and then be taken with infantry units’.20 Halder responded
on the same day by getting Brauchitsch to sign off a memorandum setting
out the opposite point of view, namely that a rapid thrust towards Moscow
would prove decisive in ending the war. 21 Essentially, this dispute during the
summer of 1941 involved the deployment of the panzer groups 2 and 3,
which Halder wanted to continue to use in Army Group Centre’s advance
746
Operation Barbarossa
on Moscow, whereas Hitler intended to deploy them to support the oper-
ations of Army Groups North and South. In any case, in early July, both
Hitler and Halder believed that the war in the East had already been won.22
On 4 July, Hitler was still preoccupied with the question of the future
deployment of the panzer units, without being able to reach a decision: ‘It
will be the most difficult decision of this campaign’.23 After a presentation
by Halder and Brauchitsch, on 8 July he decided that Army Group Centre
should carry out another pincer movement in order to clear the way for the
advance on Moscow. However, the two panzer units should then remain
behind so that they could take on tasks in the north and south. Leningrad
and Moscow should be ‘razed to the ground, to prevent people from con-
tinuing to live there whom we would then have to feed during the winter’.
That would be the task of the Luftwaffe.24
The further the German forces advanced, the more urgent became the
question of the future deployment of the panzer units. This inevitably sharp-
ened 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 turn-
ing 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 ter-
ritory, 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 ‘cap-
ture 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
Operation Barbarossa 747
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 mili-
tary 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 precondi-
tions 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
748
Operation Barbarossa
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 direc-
tion 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 par-
ticular 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,
Operation Barbarossa 749
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 com-
mander 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 ‘underesti-
mated . . . 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
750
Operation Barbarossa
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 increas-
ingly 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 ‘Concer-
ning 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 admis-
sion 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
Operation Barbarossa 751
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
