Barbarossa (56 page)

Speer told me about a so-called manifesto that Sauckel
addressed to his organisation within the Reich and the occupied
areas. [This document appears to have been a more or less typical
combination of bombast and special pleading concerning the GBA's
achievements and failure to meet all demands put upon it.] . . . This
manifesto is written in a pompous, terribly overladen, baroque style.
Sauckel is suffering from paranoia. When he signs off with the words
"Written on the Führer's birthday in an aero-plane over
Russia," it smells ... It is high time that his wings were
clipped.

Superimposed on the chaotic interplay of administrative rivalries
were the crackpot (but tenaciously held) views of racial propriety.
With so large an influx of
Untermenschen
into the homeland
while the Army was abroad, the danger of "pollution" could
not be discounted. Workers were being imported in about equal
proportion of men and women. Girls between the ages of fifteen and
twenty-five were (when they survived "mishandling" on the
journey to their destination) put into sexual thrall, either in army
and SS brothels, or at "rest centres" in the Reich. Others
were sent to concentration camps, where the proclivities of the
guards determined whether they suffered normal sexual abuse or "experimentation" ending in death. Still others were sent
au
pair
(an early, and stringent, example of this arrangement) to
German homes, where their fate depended entirely on the whim of the
householder. Women over twenty-five were drafted directly into
industry, where they were expected to fulfil the dual role of workers
and doxies to the alien male population.

Nonetheless, a risk remained that there might be some
contamination of German women. The
Ostministerium
had early
directed that

Prisoners of Asiatic features should in no case be brought as
labour to the Reich.

And sexual intercourse with German women was punishable by death.
However, as the normal scale of punishment for foreign workers
acknowledged no graduation between whipping and deprivation of
rations at one end of the scale and death at the other, it is hardly
surprising that this deterrent was not always effective. From time to
time reports of "scandalous" cases are to be found in the
German newspapers.

An element of tragedy pervades the German defeat in
Zitadelle
.
Perilously close to annihilation at Moscow, dreadfully mauled at
Stalingrad, this magnificent army had twice recovered. Now, once more
invigorated, overhauled, equipped with new and formidable weapons, it
was to throw away the prospect of victory in a series of trivial
errors and miscalculations whose sum was disastrous. If "tragedy"
is too strong a word, no observer can avoid a sense of frustration at
the persistent abuse of this wonderful machine. And so it is all the
more important to remember that just as the Nazi state rested on a
basis of total brutality and corruption, so the parts of the army
machine, the actual weapons with which the soldiers fought, Tigers,
Panthers, Nebelwerfers, Solothurns, Schmeissers, came from the
darkened sheds of Krupp and Daimler-Benz; where slave labour toiled
eighteen hours a day; cowering under the lash, sleeping six to a "dog
kennel" eight feet square, starving or freezing to death at the
whim of their guards.

seventeen
| THE GREATEST TANK BATTLE IN
HISTORY

Of all the operations in World War II none is so evocative of
1914-18 as the German attack on the Kursk salient, the ill-fated
Fall
Zitadelle
in high summer of 1943. Rightly acclaimed as the
greatest of all tank battles—at its height there were close to
three thousand tanks on the move at the same time—it was from
first to last a colossal battle of attrition, a slugging match which
swayed to and fro across a narrow belt of territory, seldom more than
fifteen miles deep, in which mines, firepower, and weight of
explosives (rather than mobility and leadership) were the decisive
factors. There is another feature of the offensive, which broke the
Panzer force and irrevocably handed the strategic initiative to the
Russians, which evokes the Great War, and this is the procrastination
and argument which preceded its launching. The plan can be seen
acquiring a momentum of its own, which ends by sweeping along all its
participants, some protesting, some intoxicated, to a doom whose
inevitability they have all come to recognise.

Manstein had originally intended to strike against the Kursk
salient immediately after his victory at Kharkov in March, but with
the imminence of the thaw and the difficulty of getting Kluge to
exert corresponding pressure from the north, the project was shelved.
It came up again in April at a Chiefs of Staff conference which
Zeitzler called at OKH headquarters at Lötzen. By this time
Manstein was more inclined toward the "backhand" stroke,
which involved giving up the whole Donetz basin and staging a major
Panzer offensive southeast from Kharkov, but Zeitzler judged that an
attack at Kursk would be less risky, would entail no preliminary
sacrifice of ground, and "would not make such heavy demands on
the reserves." A memorandum suggesting a convergent attack by
Kluge (with Model's 9th Army) and by Manstein (with Hoth's 4th Panzer
Army) was submitted to Hitler on 11th April. The Führer,
however, was unable to make up his mind. Zeitzler's memorandum had
suggested that between ten and twelve Panzer divisions, with
supporting infantry, would do the trick. Hitler thought that this was
not enough, and when Zeitzler argued that only five had been needed
to recapture Kharkov the Führer replied that victory there had
been due to the employment of the Tiger, "of which one battalion
was worth a normal Panzer division." For the spring offensive
Hitler was determined to include the Panther as well.

The argument dragged on for some weeks, with the Führer, it
seems, genuinely undecided and the production of the Panther—which
was experiencing a variety of teething troubles—trickling along
at a bare twelve per week. During April the ripples of argument
spread outward and affected the whole of the Nazi high command. Jodl,
Chief of Staff at OKW, was against
Zitadelle
because he
believed that it was dangerous to empty the strategic reserve when so
many new crises threatened to develop in the Mediterranean. Zeitzler
countered with the paradoxical argument that the Wehrmacht was now
so
weak in the East that it could not stand still and "wait to be
hit" but must do something to draw Russian fire. There was also,
inevitably, the personal element. Warlimont has described how

Zeitzler was not interested in these far-off problems, and the
fact of his being excluded from them, as Chief of Staff at OKH, was a
constant source of anger to him. He urged all the more the execution
of "his" offensive, and complained to Hitler of Jodl's
intrusion into his sphere of responsibility.

And in fact the OKW staff was still further excluded from matters
relating to the Eastern front. From being an overall advisory body,
it was now little more than a second army operations branch for
theatres other than the Russian. Only one man, Hitler, possessed
complete insight into the whole strategic picture, and persons who
advised him, whether on military, economic, or political questions,
did so on the basis of their restricted and departmentalised
knowledge. One result of this was that in the case of
Zitadelle
the majority of those in favour were generals with active commands on
the Russian front, and those against it (with the exception of
Guderian) did not have access to the detailed figures which its
protagonists could juggle to support their case.

If a personal element underlay the dispute between Zeitzler and
Jodl, between Kluge and Guderian it was open and notorious. The two
men barely spoke on even the most ceremonial occasions, and in May,
Kluge wrote to Hitler, asking his permission to challenge the
Inspector General to a duel. Kluge, as C. in C. of Army Group Centre,
was passionately in favour of
Zitadelle
. His apparent triumph
over Guderian in December 1941 had turned sour, for while Kluge's
command had remained static and inglorious for over a year, Guderian
had returned from the shadows with immense power and influence. It
was not difficult for Kluge, and others who were jealous of the
Inspector General, to represent his opposition to
Zitadelle
as
originating in a fear that the operation might lead to a reduction in
his power of control over the Panzer force, and thereby to drum up
support for the operation simply because Guderian was against it.

In the meantime Hitler was continuing to sound opinion among the
field commanders, which he did through Schmundt and his adjutant's
staff. These showed one surprising exception to the unanimity which
Zeitzler alleged. For Model, who was to command the 9th Army under
Kluge, reported that he was highly dubious about its prospects.
Aerial reconnaissance and patrol activity showed that the Russians,
at any rate, had no doubt as to where and how the Germans would
strike, and were preparing energetically to meet them.

[There is some conflict of evidence as to what Model's final
recommendation actually was. Under interrogation by Liddell Hart,
Manstein asserted that Model told Hitler the offensive was feasible
if he was given adequate strength, and that this lay behind Hitler's
decision to wait for the Panthers. But when he came to write his
memoirs, Model is not mentioned at all. Guderian (admittedly not an
unprejudiced source) says that Model was against it under any
conditions.]

To this the Zeitzler school retorted with a change of rationale.
If the Russians were in fact going to give battle there, was it not
an admission that the area chosen was of vital importance, and would
result in a substantial part of the Russian armour being brought to
battle?

Meanwhile the weeks were slipping by, and with the accumulating
Russian strength the original concept of
Zitadelle
was
inexorably changing from a short, sharp blow that was to throw Soviet
offensive plans out of gear to a head-on trial of strength which
would settle the whole course of the summer campaign. At the
beginning of May, Hitler was still undecided as to whether to issue
the directive or not, and a conference of army and army group
commanders was called at Munich on the 3rd for a discussion of
prospects.

At this conference, which lasted two days, only Guderian spoke
forcibly against the offensive in any form (although he was supported
by Speer in an address on the weapons and production aspect).
Zeitzler and Kluge were very enthusiastic, and Manstein, "as
often when face-to-face with Hitler, was not at his best." The
commander of Army Group South could only say that the chances of
success "would have been excellent in April" but that now
he found it hard to form an opinion. Indeed, the best arguments
against the operation seem to have come from Hitler himself, who had
opened the discussion with a concise résumé of Model's
report and concluded by saying, "Model drew the correct
deduction . . . namely that the enemy was counting on our launching
this attack and that in order to achieve success we must adopt a
fresh tactical approach."

However, Hitler still would not make up his mind definitely, and
in a characteristic device to postpone doing so, he returned to the
question of the Panthers. Inquiry showed that only about 130 of these
tanks had actually been completed and of these less than 100 had been
delivered. The original production schedule stipulated that 250 were
to be ready by the end of May. Speer explained that the earlier
difficulties had now been overcome, that the target of 250 could now
be comfortably exceeded, and that 324 would be available by 31st May.
This meant that if the Panthers were to be employed in quantity the
offensive would have to be postponed until June. A putative date,
13th June, was fixed around which the contingency planning could be
based, pending a final decision.

These figures had been produced at a separate tank-production
conference held at the Chancellery a week after the Munich
discussion, on 10th May. And it was at the close of this conference
that Guderian had approached Hitler and their celebrated exchange, in
which Hitler admitted that the thought of the
Zitadelle
operation "made [his] stomach turn over," took place. In a
state of considerable agitation, Guderian had asked Hitler why he
wanted to attack
at all
in the East in 1943. Keitel then
interrupted and said, "We must attack for political reasons,"
to which Guderian replied, "How many people do you think even
know where Kursk is? It's a matter of profound indifference to the
world whether we hold Kursk or not . . ." Thereupon Hitler,
after confessing his own misgivings, said that he had "as yet by
no means committed [himself]."

If the generals who favoured
Zitadelle
had known the truth
about the Russian preparations, they could hardly have been so
enthusiastic. The first appreciation of the German plan had been
drawn up by Vatutin as early as April, and forecast with remarkable
prescience the final shape of the operation. For the next two months
the Russians were shoring up the flanks of the salient with guns and
armour at a considerably faster pace than the German concentration
opposite them.

To coordinate the three "fronts" involved, and to
evolve a counteroffensive plan which was to come into operation as
soon as the German impetus slackened, the
Stavka
had sent down
Zhukov and Vasilievski to Kursk at the end of April. They calculated
that the main shock of the assault would fall on Vatutin's "Voronezh
front," opposite Belgorod, and there were placed two veteran
armies of the Stalingrad fighting, the 21st and 64th (now designated
the 6th and 7th Guards armies) and a very strong tank force, the 1st
Armoured Army. The bulk of the salient, including its northern
corner, opposite Model, was under Rokossovski's "central front,"
and this was steadily reinforced with artillery until at the end of
June it contained more artillery than infantry regiments, with the
fantastic figure of over 20,000 pieces, of which 6,000 were 76.2-mm.
antitank guns and 920
Katyusha
multiple rocket throwers.
Antitank and anti-personnel mines were laid in a density of over
4,000 per mile. All the defending units were subjected to an
intensive and repetitive course of training on their reaction to the
expected German attack. A Red Army captain has described how his
brigade