Barbarossa (14 page)

So long as a people is peaceful, one should treat it decently.
To make political mistakes and to hit people over the head—anyone
can do that.

Moreover, Lohse cherished the hereditary principle:

I am not working for myself. I work so that my son, who has
just been born, can some day put the hereditary ducal crown on his
head.

The result of this policy was twofold. First, the industrial
capacity of Ostland contributed far more to the war effort of the
Reich than that of other, potentially richer areas where the
administration was needlessly harsh and oppressive. Although even
here the effect was diminished by a ludicrous corruption and
inefficiency—it was open season for German businessmen, large
and small, who built up private industrial empires by confiscation
and "licensing" and then used them to manufacture and
market luxuries (such as perambulators) which were banned in the more
tightly organised economy of the Reich.

The second result was that the Partisan movement never became a
major adjunct of the Red Army, as it was to become in the other parts
of Russia, and indeed, as it became in Ostland itself once the
frontiers of the Baltic states had been passed and the dark forests
of the Narva gave cover. In Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania the
population lived through the war in a state of dumb resignation,
tempered, during its later years, by a fearful apprehension of the
revenge the Red Army would exact on its return.

While the rear areas succumbed to a hodgepodge regime of terror,
bungling, and exploitation, the German Army continued with its gallop
across the steppe.

On 1st July, Guderian had crossed the Berezina at Svisloch with
the 4th Panzer, and the following day the 18th Panzer won a
bridgehead higher up the river, at Novy Borisov, entering the town
simultaneously with tanks from the 14th Panzer on Hoth's right wing.
But the clash of personalities, which compounded the incompetence of
the civilian administration, was by no means absent from the conduct
of military operations, even at this early stage. In particular, the
activities of Army Group Centre suffered from this affliction.

The primary source of this trouble was friction between Guderian
and Kluge. Kluge had commanded the 4th Army in Poland (when Guderian
had a corps), and in France (and again Guderian was only a corps
commander). Now Kluge was still commanding the 4th Army and his
erstwhile subordinate had a whole
Panzergruppe
—the very
tip of the spear which, wielded not by Kluge but by the army group
commander, Bock, was to lance the centre of European Russia. Kluge,
it was true, had been promoted to Field Marshal for his achievements
in France, and the 4th Army was the most powerful of the eleven which
the Germans deployed at the start of
Barbarossa
; but though
these things may have diminished, they could not eradicate Kluge's
chagrin at being denied a
Gruppe
.

Partly out of deference to the Field Marshal's feelings, partly
from a supposed administrative convenience, the chain of command at
Army Group Centre had been altered so as to make Guderian subordinate
to Kluge and not (as would have been the normal arrangement) directly
to Bock. The circumstances under which this had arisen were as
follows. The fortress of Brest-Litovsk had stood directly in the path
allotted to the 2nd Panzer Army. To subdue it Guderian had asked for
an infantry corps from the 4th Army and had divided his tanks,
sending a column to the north and one to the south. Guderian's
version of the arrangement is that

In order to ensure unity of command, I asked that these troops
be temporarily subordinated to me, and expressed my willingness to
place myself under the command of F-M von Kluge during this time.
[These arrangements]
. . . involved a sacrifice on my part;
Field-Marshal von Kluge was a hard man to work under
.

Whether it is true that the subordination was done at Guderian's
request or (as seems more likely) was decided at OKH, the operational
phrase was "during this time," i.e., during the siege of
Brest-Litovsk. But in fact, Kluge continued to interpose himself
between Guderian and Bock long after the river Bug had been crossed
and the Panzers were in open country. And at this point personal
animosity began to aggravate the very real differences in tactical
approach which characterised the two men.

Guderian was the tank general par excellence; more than Manstein,
O'Connor, Model, with a cooler nerve than Rommel or Patton, he knew
how to handle an armoured division. He was one of the very few men
who had really absorbed the teaching of Liddell Hart on the
importance of speed, mobility, and firepower; who understood the tank
as an independent arm, not simply as an adjunct to orthodox
deployment. Kluge, on the other hand, disliked seeing the panzers
rushing too far ahead, and claimed that their extra weight was
required to keep the Russian pockets "contained." Guderian
believed that this was a task for infantry, that the tanks should
keep moving, and were vulnerable only when they stopped. Bock,
commander of the entire army group, privately backed Guderian. But he
could see the risks, risks which in those first hectic weeks were
more apparent at headquarters than through the observation slit of an
armoured command car. Kluge's policy was the safe one, and the prime
concern of Bock was that nothing should prejudice his own prospects
of acclaim as the captor of Moscow and the hammer of the Soviets. He
tried to compromise between Kluge's restraint and Guderian's
audacity—and always to keep himself covered in case anything
should go wrong.

It is characteristic of this officer [wrote Halder testily]
that he should demand a written confirmation of an order from my
headquarters simply because he does not agree with it.

Halder himself, who could have given a lead, shirked the
responsibility. From his desk at OKH he could see the opportunities,
but his strict professional training urged caution. It is also the
case that he was subject to a steady stream of telephone calls from
the nervous ObdH, who himself was under more or less constant
cross-examination by Hitler. Was the pocket at Slonim holding fast?
Was the 292nd Division across the Desna yet? Was it true that two
Russian corps had been identified in the Naliboki forest? How many
serviceable PzKw III's were left in the 29th Motorised? "There
they go, fussing again." One can imagine Halder's irritation as
he scribbled down this phrase before leaving his evening journal to
answer, once again, a telephone call from Rastenburg.

Drawn in two directions at once, Halder committed himself on 29th
June to one of the most craven admissions of executive impotence that
can ever have been uttered by a member of the General Staff:

Let us hope that the Commanding Generals of Corps and Armies
will do the right thing without express orders
, which we are
not allowed to issue because of the Führer's instructions to
ObdH.

Yet at this point Halder himself does not seem to have been clear
as to what "the right thing" was. For the very next day he
was echoing Kluge's complaints about Guderian's headstrong advance:

... in disregard of its orders [the Panzer group] has neglected
to attend to the mopping up of the territory traversed by it, and now
has its hands full with local enemy breakthroughs.

Among these five generals a multilateral dispute (which, with
Hitler's intervention, was to blow up into a major crisis by the end
of July) was already in the making.

On 1st July a sharp Russian attack against the east side of the
Slonim pocket had penetrated the German screen and allowed the
remnants of two tank brigades to escape into the marsh and forest
area between the 47th and 24th Panzer corps. This setback had
occurred almost simultaneously with the forcing of the Berezina by
the 18th Panzer, over sixty miles to the northeast. The 18th Panzer
was stretched to the limit, and with a hostile (if somewhat ragged)
Russian brigade group straggling its lines of communication, the
question of its reinforcement was urgent. Guderian had ordered the
17th Panzer, on that day in leaguer to the south of Minsk, to drive
at once to Borisov. But Kluge countermanded this, personally
communicating directly with Weber, the divisional commander, instead
of through Guderian.

Thus far, although Kluge had not been tactful in his approach, the
incident was unremarkable. But now an element of mystery intrudes.
Guderian had been touring the forward units throughout the day, and
learned of the 4th Army order only when he arrived at Weber's
headquarters in the afternoon. He does not mention any conversation
between the two, and no other source is available concerning their
exchanges as Weber was mortally wounded a week later.

However, when Guderian finally arrived at his own command post
that night he "immediately despatched a signal to Fourth Army,
informing them that
a mishap had occurred in the transmission of
orders to 17th Panzer
; part of the division had not received the
order to remain on the encirclement front and had, therefore, set off
for Borisov. ... It was too late to do anything about it."

The reply from Kluge's headquarters was instantaneous—a
summons to report there in person at eight o'clock the following
morning. Guderian says that he was "strongly taken to task,"
and in view of the fact that Kluge raged about a "generals'
conspiracy" (the same sort of "muddle" had occurred
earlier in Hoth's
Gruppe
) and threatened him with
court-martial, this can hardly be called overstatement.

In the result the forward dispositions were not affected, and
neither the strength around the Slonim pocket nor the striking power
of Guderian's left wing was adequate. On 3rd July it rained all day,
and forward movement stopped. Evidence that the Russians were going
to make a fight for the Dnieper soon began to accumulate. On 6th July
a strong Russian force drove back the 10th Motorised and the cavalry
division from Shlobin, and an attempt to storm Rogachev by the 3rd
Panzer was repulsed. Then the following day came violent pressure
against the left wing; the 17th Panzer was ejected from Senna.

Guderian, however, was undeterred. The revival of Russian strength
made it all the more urgent, he believed, to force the crossing of
the Dnieper at the earliest possible moment. Instead of clearing his
flanks he contracted them. The 17th Panzer and 10th Motorised were
ordered to "break off the engagement," and to content
themselves with keeping the enemy "under observation."
Guderian's plans suffered another setback when SS
Das Reich
was bloodily defeated in an attempt to capture the bridges at
Mogilev—right in the centre of the Panzer group's front, but
even this failed to deter Guderian, and finding weak spots at Kopys
and Shklov, he prepared to force both the 47th and 46th Panzer corps
across the river.

By this time Kluge was not the only one to be alarmed. Halder
recorded that "Everyone [at OKH] is vying for the honour of
telling the most hair-raising tales about the strength of the Russian
forces [behind the Panzer group in the Pripet Marshes]. Foremost are
the radio intelligence people who claim three Armoured Corps, and two
Infantry Corps." Another disturbing feature was the evidence of
mounting concentration at Bryansk and Orel, and the fact that the
remaining Soviet fighter aircraft seemed to be devoted to protecting
the railway stations there.

July 9th was marked by "exceptionally heated conversations."
Kluge flew to Guderian's headquarters at first light and "ordered
that the operation [i.e., crossing the Dnieper] be broken off and the
troops halted to await the arrival of the infantry." Guderian
claimed that his preparations had "already gone too far to be
cancelled." Guderian continued by asserting, ". . . this
operation would decide the Russian campaign in this very year if such
a decision were at all possible."

After a good deal of argument Kluge was convinced, and gave his
approval. But there is no doubt that he impressed his subordinate
with the verdict that it was "now or never"; the headstrong
General could not be allowed another such chance. At the close of
their meeting he passed his celebrated judgment on Guderian's
tactics:

"Your operations always hang by a thread!"

On the northern front, too, great prizes beckoned, but the
generalship faltered before the diffusion and tenacity of Russian
resistance. Hoepner, the commander of the 4th Panzer Army, has been
widely criticised by his colleagues since the war.

[Treatment which cannot be divorced from his own career following
his dismissal in 1941, and his execution in 1944.]

But the fact remains that of all the Panzer armies his was the
weakest, and had been given the most ambitious objectives. Hoepner
was expected to strike directly for Leningrad, yet at the same time
he had to protect his right wing and that of the whole of Leeb's army
group from the Russian armies along the Lovat—an open flank of
over two hundred miles. Hoepner's task was further complicated by the
fact that his neighbour, Hoth, had an axis of advance due east, and
was in fact repeatedly turning his forces
inward
to meet
Guderian in their succession of encirclement battles.

Manstein has described how, after his corps had been waiting for
two days at Dvinsk, Hoepner arrived in a Fieseler Storch but "could
tell us nothing" except "to widen the bridgehead, and keep
the crossings open." The 56th Corps commander goes on to
complain, ". . . one might reasonably have expected the
commander of a whole Panzer Group to be in the picture about future
objectives, but this was obviously not the case." But how could
Hoepner possibly have allowed Manstein to press on with only two
divisions (the 8th Panzer and 3rd Motorised)—which was what
Manstein was wanting—while his sister corps was not yet abreast
of the Dvina, much less across it?