All Hell Let Loose (29 page)

Suddenly, however, on the evening of 18 October Stalin changed his mind. He stayed, temporarily moved his office to Air Defence headquarters in Kirov Street, and declared Moscow a fortress. Order on the streets was restored by a curfew and imposition of the usual brutal sanctions. On 7 November, by a brilliant propaganda stroke, units en route to the front were diverted to stage the traditional parade through the capital celebrating the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. That night came the first heavy snowfall of the year. The Germans, their operations crippled by the weather, lacked sufficient mass to make the final breakthrough; they languished outside the city, suffering rapidly increasing privations. Halder and Bock insisted that a further thrust should be made. More ground was gained: the advancing spearheads occupied some of Moscow’s outlying tram stations while aircraft and artillery bombarded the city.

Some Russians were sincerely moved by Stalin’s appeals for desperate measures in desperate circumstances. A Moscow plastics worker said: ‘The leader did not remain silent about the fact that our troops have had to retreat. He does not hide the difficulties that lie ahead for his people. After this speech I want to work even harder. It has mobilised me for great deeds.’ But sceptics were not lacking – it would be mistaken to exaggerate Russian unity and confidence in the winter of 1941. A Moscow engineer said: ‘All this talk about mobilising the people and organising civil defence just goes to show that the situation at the front is absolutely hopeless. It’s clear that the Germans will take Moscow soon and Soviet power will not hold out.’ Here was an echo of the despair that overtook some informed British people in 1940. Further south in Kursk province a woman said: ‘Shoot me if you like, but I’m not digging any trenches. The only people who need trenches are the communists and Jews. Let them dig for themselves. Your power is coming to an end and we’re not going to work for you.’

But amid such reluctant comrades, a bare sufficiency of patriots and fighters held the line and repulsed the invaders. By the end of November, the German advance had exhausted itself. ‘The Führer himself has taken charge,’ wrote Kurt Grumann, ‘but our troops walk around as if they were doomed. Our soldiers hack at the frozen ground, but the heaviest blows yield only enough earth to fill one’s fingernails. Our strength is decreasing every day.’ Quartermaster-General Eduard Wagner said: ‘We are at the end of our personnel and materiel strength.’ Germany’s fuel situation was so critical that its navy was virtually immobilised. The army’s supply system struggled to support spearheads three hundred miles beyond the forward dumps at Smolensk. A gallows joke circulated in German official circles: ‘Eastern campaign extended by a month owing to great success.’

In Berlin on 28 November, a conference of industrialists chaired by armaments supremo Fritz Todt reached a devastating conclusion: the war against Russia was no longer winnable. Having failed to achieve a quick victory, Germany lacked resources to prevail in a sustained struggle. Next day, Todt and tank-production chief Walter Rohland met Hitler. Rohland argued that, once the United States became a belligerent, it would be impossible to match Allied industrial strength. Todt, though an ardent Nazi, said, ‘This war can no longer be won by military means.’ Hitler demanded, ‘How then shall I end this war?’ Todt replied that only a political outcome was feasible. Hitler dismissed such logic. He chose to convince himself that the imminent accession of Japan to the Axis would transform the balance of strength in Germany’s favour. But the November diary of army chief of staff Franz Halder records other remarks by Hitler that acknowledged the implausibility of absolute triumph. For the rest of the war, those responsible for Germany’s economic and industrial planning fulfilled their roles in the knowledge that strategic success was unattainable. They drafted a planning paper in December 1941 entitled ‘The Requirements for Victory’. This concluded that the Reich needed to commit the equivalent of $150 billion to arms manufacture in the succeeding two years; yet such a sum exceeded German weapons expenditure for the entire conflict. Whatever the prowess of the Wehrmacht, the nation lacked means to win; it could aspire only to force its enemies to parley, together or severally.

Many more months elapsed before the Allies saw that the tide of war had turned. In 1942, the Axis would enjoy spectacular successes. But it is a critical historical reality that senior functionaries of the Third Reich realised as early as December 1941 that military victory had become impossible, because Russia remained undefeated. Some thereafter nurtured hopes that Germany might negotiate an acceptable peace. But they, and perhaps Hitler also in the innermost recesses of his brain, knew the decisive strategic moment had passed. Gen. Alfred Jodl, the Führer’s closest and most loyal military adviser, asserted in 1945 that his master understood in December 1941 that ‘victory could no longer be achieved’. This did not mean, of course, that Hitler reconciled himself to Germany’s defeat: instead, he now anticipated a long war, which would expose the fundamental divisions between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies. He aspired to achieve sufficient battlefield success to force his enemies to make terms, and he clung to this hope until April 1945. Since the Western Powers and the Russians shared morbid and persistent fears of each other seeking a separate peace, Hitler’s speculation was at least a little less fanciful than it might now appear. Only time would show that the struggle was destined to be fought out to the end; that the rupture he anticipated between the West and the Soviet Union would indeed take place, but too late to save the Third Reich.

Those who fought the war saw its turning point in late 1942, when Japanese advances in the Pacific were checked, and the Germans eclipsed at Stalingrad and in North Africa. For months before those events, the Allied nations endured a diet of almost unbroken ill tidings, which the United States’ entry into the conflict could not deflect. Konstantin Rokossovsky, the most glamorous as well as one of the most formidable of Stalin’s generals, was commanding Sixteenth Army north of Moscow. In mid-November he told a reporter, ‘Soon the Germans will start to get washed out and the time will come – we’ll be in Berlin.’ His words later seemed prescient, but at the time few people around the world grasped the gravity of the Wehrmacht’s predicament in Russia, the fact that some of Hitler’s closest advisers already believed his bid for global domination doomed.

German forces were still thrusting forward north and south of Moscow, but losing momentum. On 17 November, a Wehrmacht division broke and fled in the face of an attack by new Soviet T-34 tanks. Fresh Russian armies were taking the field; the invaders were running out of armour, fuel, men and faith. A young SS officer wrote: ‘Thus we are approaching our final goal, Moscow, step by step. It is icy cold … To start the [vehicle] engines, they must be warmed by lighting fires under the oil pan. The fuel is partially frozen, the motor oil is thick and we lack anti-freeze … The remaining limited combat strength of the troops diminishes further due to the continuous exposure to the cold … The automatic weapons … often fail to operate because the breechblocks can no longer move.’ If a man spat, the moisture froze before reaching the ground. A single regiment reported 315 frostbite cases. On 3 December Hoepner, commanding Fourth Panzer Group, reported: ‘The offensive combat power of the Corps
has run out
. Reasons: physical and moral over-exertion, loss of a large number of commanders, inadequate winter equipment … The High Command should decide whether a withdrawal should be undertaken.’

Again and again the Germans threw themselves at the Russian positions – and again and again they were repulsed. Georgy Osadchinsky saw a group of German tanks and supporting infantry mill in confusion before a railway embankment they could not pass, as Soviet guns wreaked havoc. Tank after tank caught fire, and the survivors began to retreat. He watched a German soldier flounder helpless in the snow on all fours, while others scrambled clumsily back towards their own line. ‘Relief and happiness swept through our ranks,’ wrote Osadchinsky. ‘The Germans did not seem so terrible now – they could be beaten.’ Russian tactics were still murderously clumsy, based upon frontal assaults launched at Stalin’s personal behest: one such, against the flank of the German Ninth Army, caused the slaughter of 2,000 men and horses of a cavalry division. Tactical leadership was poor, troops ill-trained; Rokossovsky railed against Zhukov’s insistence on the doctrine of ‘no retreat’, imposed by the Kremlin. Russian blood leached into the snow in unimaginable volume.

But German commanders still underrated their foes. An army intelligence report on 4 December concluded that ‘At present the enemy in front of Army Group Centre are not capable of conducting a counter-offensive without significant reserves.’ They had no notion that Zhukov had been reinforced by nine new armies, twenty-seven divisions; more horsed cavalry units had been raised, which could move through snow where vehicles could not go. The invaders stood just twenty-five miles from the Kremlin, with spearheads nine miles from the capital’s outskirts. But, after suffering 200,000 dead since the start of
Typhoon
, they had shot their bolt.

On 5 December, the Russians launched a massive assault which caught the Germans almost literally frozen in their positions. The Stavka had awaited the assistance of General Winter. The thermometer fell to 30 degrees below zero Celsius, so that German lubricants hardened while Russian weapons and tanks still worked – the T-34 had a compressed-air starter, immune to frost. A stunned infantryman named Albrecht Linsen described the response of his unit to the Soviet assault: ‘Out of the snowstorm soldiers were running back, scattering in all directions like a panic-stricken herd of animals. A lone officer stood against this desperate mass; he gesticulated, tried to pull out his pistol and then simply let it pass. Our platoon commander made no attempt at all to stop people. I paused, wondering what to do, and there was an explosion right next to me and I felt a searing pain in my right thigh … I thought: “I am going to die here, 21 years old, in the snow before Moscow.”’

The Russians smashed into the exposed German salients north and south of Moscow, then exploited westward. The unthinkable became reality: the invincible Wehrmacht began to retreat. ‘Each time we leave a village, we set it alight,’ wrote Lt. Gustav Schrodek. ‘It is a primitive form of self-defence, and the Russians hate us for it. Yet its grim military logic is clear – to deny our pursuing opponents shelter in the terrible cold.’ Lt. Kurt Grumann wrote from a field dressing-station: ‘Eighty men were brought in here today, half of whom have second-or third-degree frostbite. Their swollen legs are covered in blisters, and they no longer resemble limbs but rather some formless mass. In some cases gangrene has already set in. What is it all for?’ Many tanks and vehicles were abandoned, immured in snow and ice. ‘The ghost of the Napoleonic
Grande Armée
hovers ever more strongly above us like a malignant spirit,’ wrote gunner Josef Deck.

For ten days the Wehrmacht staggered back through a white wilderness landmarked with huddled corpses, the blackened carcasses of abandoned vehicles. Most German commanders favoured a major withdrawal. Hitler, displaying an obstinacy which mirrored that of Stalin, called instead for ‘fanatical resistance’. The ardent Nazi General Walther Model played a hero’s part in stabilising the line. Stalin, against Zhukov’s strong advice, insisted upon extending operations. On 5 January he ordered a counter-offensive the length of the front. Once more following Hitler’s example, by spurning an opportunity to concentrate forces against the weak point in the German line Stalin threw away the possibility of a great victory; Rokossovsky later offered a scornful catalogue of the blunders made, chances missed. The Germans still resisted fiercely, mowing down attackers in tens of thousands. Soviet reserves were soon exhausted, and their advance ran out of steam. Model recovered some lost ground, and Zhukov’s hopes of encircling Army Group Centre were frustrated. But a decisive reality persisted: the invaders had been pushed back between sixty and 150 miles. The Russians held Moscow.

Even as the fate of Russia’s capital was decided, further west a parallel drama unfolded, of almost equal magnitude and embracing even greater human suffering. From north-west and south, in the autumn of 1941 Axis forces closed upon Russia’s old capital Leningrad.
Barbarossa
persuaded the Finns to avenge their 1940 defeat: in June 1941 Finland’s army, re-equipped by Hitler, joined the assault on the Soviet Union. German troops thrust from north Norway to reach positions within thirty miles of Murmansk. The Finns showed no enthusiasm for advancing much beyond their 1939 frontier, but on 15 September, with their aid the Germans completed the encirclement of Leningrad. The ensuing siege of the city – the tsars’ St Petersburg, with its elegant avenues, baroque palaces and seaside quays – became an epic that continued for more than two years. It assumed a character unique in its horror, and cost its defenders and citizens more lives than Britain and America together lost in the entire war.

Before the battle began, Soviet commanders had anticipated a direct assault. Tens of thousands of civilians dug defensive works under incoming artillery fire; shells fell on them ‘methodically, precisely’, in the words of a veteran. ‘Our soldiers dashed from their dugouts, grabbing youngsters and women, pulling them off the road and out of the line of fire … An incendiary shell landed. A herd of cattle, frightened by the flaming asphalt, began a stampede, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. Then the terrified animals charged straight into a minefield.’ Some children were belatedly evacuated from the city – into the path of the advancing Germans: more than 2,000 perished in a Luftwaffe attack on a trainload of fugitives at Lychkovo.

The credentials of the hoary old Bolshevik general Kliment Voroshilov, charged with the defence of Leningrad, rested solely upon his loyalty to Stalin; he despised professional soldiers and understood nothing of military science. Moscow dispatched a large food convoy to the city, but Voroshilov decided that to acknowledge a need for it would represent defeatism. He diverted the supplies elsewhere, and launched impromptu assaults on the Germans which yielded only slaughter. A despairing Lieutenant Yushkevich wrote in his last diary entry before being killed: ‘Our soldiers are only issued with old rifles and we have pathetically few machine-guns. We haven’t any grenades either. There are no medics! This is not a military unit – we are simply cannon fodder.’ He described his men ‘being hunted through the woods like animals … Constant shooting – panzers everywhere.’

On 8 September the encirclement of Leningrad became complete, its siege formally commenced. Next day, Stalin dispatched Zhukov to relieve Voroshilov. His unexpected arrival by light aircraft prompted a petty farce: for fifteen minutes guards at the city’s
front
^*
headquarters beside the Smolny Institute declined to admit him, for lack of a pass. ‘Well, that’s the army for you,’ shrugged Zhukov later, but at the time he was probably less philosophical. Voroshilov, flown back to Moscow, dared to denounce Stalin to his face, shouting: ‘You have yourself to blame for all this! You’re the one who annihilated the Old Guard of the army; you had our best generals killed!’ When Stalin demurred, the old revolutionary seized a salver bearing a roast suckling pig and smashed it down on the table. Voroshilov was fortunate to escape a firing squad.

Zhukov reorganised Leningrad’s defence, countermanding Voroshilov’s order to scuttle what was left of the Baltic Fleet in the harbour; through the years ahead, the warships’ guns provided critical support for the land forces. The general launched a series of thrusts against the Germans which climaxed on 17 September, cost thousands of lives, and foundered amid devastating artillery fire. A marine officer, Nikolai Vavin, described an attempt to reinforce the island fortress of Oreshek on Lake Ladoga: ‘Our guys just didn’t have a chance. The Germans quickly spotted us from the air – and it became a mass execution. The enemy’s planes first bombed and then machine-gunned us. Out of my own landing group of two hundred men, only fourteen reached the shoreline.’ Faced with protests from his officers about the futility of such attempts, especially from the Nevsky bridgehead on the east bank of the Neva, Zhukov remained implacable: ‘I said attack!’ Casualties soared, while medical facilities for the wounded were almost non-existent. Zhukov placed blocking units –
zagradotryady
– behind the front, to shoot down his own men who attempted to flee, a practice that became institutionalised in the Red Army. German propaganda loudspeakers taunted the doomed assailants on the battlefield: ‘It’s time to assemble at your extermination points again – we shall bury you on the banks of the Neva.’ Then the next barrage fell upon Soviet troops milling helplessly in their positions.

For weeks, the Russians remained oblivious of the fact that the Germans had no intention of launching a ground attack on Leningrad, nor even of accepting its surrender. Zhukov acquired a prestige in Stalin’s eyes as saviour of the city, rooted in failure to understand that it had not been seriously assaulted. In a moment of fantasy, German staff officers in Berlin discussed the possibility of making a propaganda gesture by inviting the United States to accept the 2.5 million inhabitants of Peter the Great’s capital as refugees. Hitler, instead, set out to starve them to death. Professor Ernst Ziegelemeyer of Munich’s Institute of Nutrition – one of many scientists who provided satanic counsel to the Nazis – was consulted about practicalities. He agreed that no battle was necessary; it would be impossible for the Russians to provide their beleaguered citizens with more than 250 grams of bread a day, which could not sustain human life on a protracted basis: ‘It is not worth risking the lives of our troops. The Leningraders will die anyway. It is essential not to let a single person through our front line. The more of them that stay there, the sooner they will die, and then we will enter the city without trouble, without losing a single German soldier.’

Hitler declared: ‘Petersburg – the poisonous nest from which, for so long, Asiatic venom has spewed forth into the Baltic – must vanish from the earth’s surface. The city is already cut off. It only remains for us to bomb and bombard it, destroy its sources of water and power and then deny the population everything it needs to survive.’ The first major Luftwaffe attack on Leningrad destroyed the waterside Badaev warehouses, holding most of the city’s food stocks; melted sugar ran along a neighbouring road, and fires burned for days. The citizens quickly understood their plight. A woman named Elena Skryabina wrote in her diary: ‘We are approaching the greatest horror … Everyone is preoccupied with only one thought: where to get something edible so as not to starve to death. We have returned to prehistoric times. Life has been reduced to one thing – the hunt for food.’

Pravda
correspondent Lazar Brontman described in his diary how citizens made soup and bread with grass. Once such fare was accepted as a norm, he said, ‘grass cakes found their own price in the market’. A single match cost a rouble, which caused many people to ignite their kindling with magnifying glasses under the sun. One of Brontman’s writer friends was eccentric enough to cling to his household pet, ‘probably the only surviving dog in Leningrad’. Bicycles provided the sole means of civilian transport. Since water supplies now depended on hydrants, women washed clothes in the street while passing military vehicles weaved between them. Every vestige of vacant soil was tilled for vegetables, each plot marked with its owner’s name. Fuel was desperately short, because the city was invested before the inhabitants could make their annual pilgrimages to collect firewood from outlying forests.