Third Reich Victorious (26 page)

The Wehrmacht’s manpower shortages were even more acute. In terms of numbers of divisions, the army hoped that its order of battle for June 1942 would exceed that of June 1941 by a count of eleven more infantry and three more Panzer divisions. But this represented only an illusion of improvement. Despite the provision of 1.1 million replacements to the Eastern Front since June 1941, the three army groups facing the Russians would still be short 625,000 men when May 1942 arrived. There would not be enough men to create reserves for the front, and many of the new soldiers would be young recruits with less training than had previously been considered mandatory. Naturally, the losses during the winter also meant that experienced leadership in the commissioned and noncommissioned officer ranks would be far below the army’s needs. Confronted with these daunting statistics, it is little wonder that many of Hitler’s advisers regarded the coming summer with more foreboding than optimism.
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If some looked fearfully at the future, the Führer remained confident. Though aware of the Wehrmacht’s deficiencies and the limitations of German resources, Hitler was convinced that his foe was in even worse condition. Haranguing the German people on March 15, 1942, he told his listeners that “the Bolshevik hordes, which were unable to defeat the German soldiers and their allies this winter, will be beaten by us into annihilation this coming summer!” These sentiments were not simply for public consumption. He related tales of starvation, even cannibalism, in the Soviet Union to Josef Goebbels on April 26 in private conversation and spoke of the miserable equipment found on captured Red Army troops as evidence of Russia’s desperate condition.
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He told his military advisers simply that “the Russian is dead,” and Germany’s generals began to assume with Col. General Franz Halder, the Chief of Staff at OKH, that “although we are weak, the enemy is presently far worse off than we are.”
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Hitler fully intended to exploit this presumed Soviet weakness in the coming summer, but the Wehrmacht’s condition, and to a lesser extent the Luftwaffe’s, meant that German forces would only be able to strike in a few select sectors of the Eastern Front. There was never any serious consideration given to shifting the Reich’s emphasis to another part of Europe. Psychological considerations alone demanded that Germany retain the initiative in the war and no one wanted to allow Russia a respite to recover its strength. Moreover, it was recognized that the entry of the United States into the war, though welcomed with cheers in the Wolfsschanze, would mean a second front somewhere on the continent no later than mid-1943. From a grand strategic perspective, therefore, the naval war against the “Anglo-Saxon powers” would continue to receive high priority, and defenses on the European mainland would be built up to resist the eventual invasion. But the assault on Malta was deferred, and Rommel would have to make do with little more than what he had on hand. The East would remain the principal focus of German attention and resources.

If the overwhelming importance of the war with Russia was blindingly obvious in Hitler’s view, the strategic imperatives across that enormous front were no less clear. On the northern flank, a secondary offensive would capture Leningrad, establish a land route to Finland and threaten the Soviet link to the West through Murmansk. In the south, the
schwerpunkt
of the 1942 summer offensive would be a drive across the Don to deny Russia the use of the Volga as a supply route and to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus. With these facilities in hand by the autumn of 1942, Germany would secure its own access to vital oil supplies while simultaneously depriving the USSR of this key resource. In conjunction with the effort toward Murmansk, the thrust toward the Caucasus would also impede the flow of U.S. and British supplies to the Soviets. German planners further hoped to cripple the Red Army during the course of the offensive by scooping up hundreds of thousands of prisoners as they swept toward the distant mountains. With Caucasus oil in hand, a secure connection to the Finns, and the Russian Army in collapse, Germany could await the winter and Anglo-American attacks with confidence even if the USSR remained temporarily in the war. The great contest would thus be decided in the East, because, as Hitler himself admitted, “If I don’t get the oil of Maykop and Groznyy, then I must finish this war.” But he was confident as the summer approached, telling the Italian ambassador, “It can therefore in no way become worse for us, but only better.”
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Hitler’s vision, however, was not confined by the borders of the Soviet Union. Having conquered the Caucasus, German forces from Russia would be poised to deal a mortal blow to British and American hopes by combining with Rommel in a gigantic pincer movement designed to seize the Suez Canal as well as the oil fields of Iran and Iraq. This enticing prospect, already shimmering before Hitler’s eyes in the heady days of 1941, became all the more alluring with Japan’s entry into the war and its stunning victories in Malaya and Singapore. Underestimating Britain’s resolve and overestimating Japan’s capabilities, the Führer began to imagine a German triumph in the Middle East that would unhinge Allied strategy, pose a direct threat to India, and, combined with the unrelenting pressure of the U-boat campaign, bring Britain to negotiate on his terms. “At all costs we must descend into the Mesopotamian plains and take the oil of Mosul away from the English,” Hitler told his staff, “then the entire war will end.”
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The paucity of German resources, however, clearly meant that these ambitious goals could only be accomplished with the more or less willing cooperation of Berlin’s allies. As German power secretly began to assemble in southern Russia for Operation Blue, the code name of the summer offensive, Hitler launched a diplomatic offensive to coerce his Axis partners into greater exertions on behalf of the supposedly common cause. He was surprisingly successful with Romania, Hungary, and Italy, each of which committed thousands of its soldiers to the great endeavor. Bulgaria, a Russophile state in German eyes, was able to evade any involvement at the front, but its army was usefully employed in guarding against Russian landings on the Black Sea coast and in a sizable proportion of the onerous occupation duties in Yugoslavia.

Though generally successful in his negotiations with his treaty allies, Hitler faced a much greater challenge in convincing the other key “flanking power,” Turkey, to join the Axis. For the military planners in the Wolfsschanze and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop’s diplomats, Turkey represented a potentially invaluable asset in the struggle for the Middle East. During the 1941 Balkans campaign, the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) had considered attacking Turkey as a launching pad for further operations against the British position in Palestine and Iraq. However, the prospect of assaulting a natural fortress defended by an army of renowned fighting qualities in what Gen. Alfred Jodl was certain would be a “protracted campaign” was decidedly unappealing. Instead, the Germans chose to respect Turkish neutrality while keeping a contingency occupation plan on the shelf and holding the Bulgarian Army in defensive readiness should Turkey join the Allies.
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The approach to Ankara was not new. While overrunning the Balkans and preparing for Operation Barbarossa in 1941, Berlin began what proved to be an extended diplomatic effort to persuade Turkey to side with the Axis as an active belligerent. In the chaotic Nazi state, however, the actions of the various government organs were not always well-coordinated. Ribbentrop’s arrogance and crude threats, for instance, were seldom orchestrated with Ambassador Franz von Papen’s smooth diplomacy or Goebbels’s widespread pro-German, anti-Soviet propaganda. A member of Papen’s staff, for example, defused a potential crisis by buying up Turkish phrase books for German soldiers (
Türkisches Soldaten-Wörterbuch für den Feldgebrauch
) which the propaganda minister distributed to Istanbul book stalls as an unsubtle reminder of German power.
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Nonetheless, the combined effect favored Berlin. In an especially well-received measure, the Führer wrote a personal letter to Turkish president Ismet Inönü recalling the comradeship of the First World War, the common interest in reducing British influence in the Mediterranean, and the shared concerns about the USSR. These efforts culminated in a treaty of friendship signed by the unsuspecting Turks on June 18, 1941, only four days before the invasion of Russia.

Perhaps most important, however, was an autumn 1941 visit to the Russian front arranged for Col. Gen. Ali Fuat Erden and a group of senior officers when the Wehrmacht was at the height of its apparently victorious progress. Returning with vivid impressions of Germany’s military might and the swift violence of modern war, Erden met with Inönü and other national leaders for six hours to discuss his tour and Turkey’s future.
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Ankara, however, remained noncommittal. Although the brightest mind in the Foreign Ministry, Numan Menemencioglu, was inclined toward Germany, the Foreign Minister, Sükrü Saracoglu, favored the West, and Marshal Fevzi Cakmak, the chief of the Army Staff, feared that after the Soviet Union, Turkey would be the Nazi regime’s next victim. With Inönü undecided, Hitler ordered preparation of a plan to rearrange the constellation of political power in Ankara to suit Berlin’s purposes better.

In the spring of 1942, as thousands of Axis troops were assembling in southern Russia for Operation Blue, German pressure on the Turks increased. In addition to a “leading place in the Axis new order,” Papen broadly hinted at important “territorial rectifications” in favor of Turkey in the event of actual alliance. He specifically mentioned parts of northern Syria, Mosul in Iraq, and “adjustments” in the Dodecanese Islands and Thrace.
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The German proposals excluded the key oil centers in the Caucasus, but left open the possibility of some Turkish acquisitions in this direction and in the Crimea as well. Even Cakmak, his aversion to the Germans notwithstanding, found the expansion into the Caucasus attractive. Such a move appealed to the pan-Turkic sentiments he shared with many of his fellow officers and represented a first step toward uniting all Turkic peoples of Central Asia under Ankara’s guidance. Germany also undertook to provide modern weapons and training for the antiquated if courageous Turkish military, and offered a Wehrmacht expeditionary corps to fight alongside their prospective allies. In return, Berlin expected a Turkish advance into the Caucasus from the south; pressure toward Syria, Iraq and Iran to tie down British forces; U-boat access to the Black Sea; and sole rights to Turkey’s chromite ore, key to the German armaments industry.

The Turkish president balked at these proposals. Despite Papen’s diplomatic skill and the stunning German victory against the Soviet Kharkov offensive in May, Inönü remained adamant as the late June deadline for the start of Operation Blue approached. Hitler, furious, decided to have him removed. Code-named “Case Gertrud,” the German plan sought to oust Inönü by exploiting his negative image inside the army and by building on the pro-German and anti-Soviet propaganda of the preceding year.
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As Gen. Emir Erkilet, one of Erden’s companions during the 1941 tour, told von Papen, “participation in the war against Russia would be very popular in the army and in many sectors of the population.
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Those involved in the coming coup were still plotting, however, when Operation Blue opened with a tremendous crash of artillery at 0215 on June 28. As the Wehrmacht armored columns raced across the steppes, fruitlessly endeavoring to repeat their dramatic
kesselschlacht
(“encirclement”) triumphs of the previous year, the Germans and their Turkish coconspirators in Ankara were favored with an enormous piece of luck when Prime Minister Refik Saydam died on July 9. Although Saydam had been a figurehead in the government, the pro-German faction cleverly used the temporary disruption to put Erkilet, an ardent pan-Turkist, in his place. Saracoglu was forced into retirement ten days later under the pretext that his hesitant stance would invite German wrath and deny Turkey its share in the spoils of war. The lure of Berlin’s blandishments, the evident success of Operation Blue, Rommel’s capture of Tobruk, and Hitler’s dark threat that “Constantinople could share the fate of Birmingham and Coventry,” pushed Inönü toward allegiance with Germany, but Allied appeals and his recognition that his country was not ready for war held him back.
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Although von Papen assured Hitler that “we can definitely and also very quickly find a treaty instrument preparing the transition of Turkey into our camp,” tension dominated Ankara through that hot, dusty July as Inönü’s decision hung in the balance.
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In the end, the decision was taken out of the president’s hands. On July 23, Rostov fell to the advancing Germans. Over the next several days, the Wehrmacht’s Army Group A poured south in a seemingly unstoppable drive toward the Caucasus. Erden, Erkilet, Menemencioglu—now Foreign Minister in Saracoglu’s stead—and even Cakmak, attempted to sway the president, but “Inönü did not appear at all convinced.”
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In a desperate atmosphere of mingled hope and fear, the generals and the foreign minister eased Inönü from power on July 30 and had him respectfully escorted to a coastal villa to “recover his health.” The following day they signed a secret treaty with Germany and prepared to take their country into the war.