How Hitler Could Have Won World War II (12 page)

Hitler's irresolution had consumed a month of dry summer when his panzers could have rolled to Moscow. Now he delayed even longer in order to seize Ukraine. On August 25 Guderian turned south on the new mission that would take another month to finish. By the time he could get back on the Moscow road the autumn rainy season would arrive, a period of mud called
Rasputitsa
(literally “time without roads”), which would slow or stop vehicles and the advance. After that would come the Russian winter.

The disputes in July and August demonstrated that Adolf Hitler did not possess a fundamental prerequisite of great commanders. Successful generals from Alexander the Great on have thought out their objectives in advance and adhered doggedly to them in the stress and chaos of battle, ignoring peripheral targets, however attractive, and passing up partial victories in order to achieve total success at the end.

Hitler could conceive of no great strategic plan. And once embroiled in a campaign, he was ready to toss aside even his general goal to seize an opportunity that appeared. He had shown this irresolution in a negative way in the 1940 campaign, wanting to halt the panzers out of fear just as they were about to break out into undefended space, and actually stopping the tanks before Dunkirk.

The attack on Kiev is one of the greatest examples in history of how a leader can be seduced by the vision of a short-term gain into abandoning a course of action that would have given him victory. At Kiev Germany won a great local victory, but surrendered its last chance to win the war.

Kiev did offer a tempting target. Army Group South had not taken Kiev, but had seized Dnepropetrovsk on the bend of the Dnieper River, 250 miles southeast of Kiev. Stalin had ordered the defense of the Kiev region at all costs, and Soviet supreme headquarters (Stavka) sent three additional armies to reinforce the Southwestern Front under General Mikhail Kirponos and Marshal Seymon Budenny.

The situation was now set for a giant envelopment, for Guderian's Panzer Army at Starodub was far to the east and north of Kiev. If Kleist's Panzer Group 1 at the Dnieper bend advanced north, while Guderian drove south, they could close off the region around Kiev. This was the opportunity that Hitler had seen, and this prospect is what drew him away from the attack on Moscow.

The campaign got under way on August 25. While 2nd Army pressed south from Gomel, Guderian's panzers struck from Starodub, seventy-five miles to the east, and seized a bridge over the Desna River, sixty miles south, before the Russians could destroy it. Heavy Soviet resistance required a week of bitter fighting for Guderian to break out and continue south.

Meanwhile Kleist's Panzer Group 1 moved from Dnepropetrovsk to the more westerly crossing of the Dnieper at Kremenchug, and launched his arm of the pincers on September 12.

By this time, the Soviets were beginning to realize their danger, but could do little to stop Guderian. Budenny sent a general to Moscow asking permission to retreat. But Stalin replied: “Hold at any price.” He also replaced Budenny with Semen Timoshenko as Southwestern Front commander. The Soviet army group was left in a hopeless position. On September 14–15 the points of the German armored columns met at Lokhvitsa, 125 miles east of Kiev. The caldron was closed.

When Timoshenko arrived, he recognized the incredible danger, and on September 16 ordered withdrawal on his own, despite the example of Western Front commander Dimitri G. Pavlov, whom Stalin had ordered shot on July 1 over the disaster at Minsk. Kirponos dared not carry out the order, however, and wasted two days in a futile effort to get permission from Stalin. By then it was too late. The Germans had formed an iron ring around the caldron and tore the Russian armies apart as they tried to break out. Kirponos died in the fighting. By September 19, when the Germans seized the city of Kiev itself, Russian resistance had virtually ended.

The Germans captured 665,000 men in the Kiev caldron, the largest single military success in history and the largest haul of prisoners ever attained in one battle.

10 FAILURE BEFORE MOSCOW

DURING THE FRANTIC FIRST DAYS OF THE CAMPAIGN, SOVIET OFFICIALS TRANSFERRED 1,500 factories and as much machinery as possible, along with workers, by rail to the Urals and western Siberia. This exhausting, chaotic undertaking resulted in enormous drops in production and terrible living conditions for workers, but ensured that Soviet industry would ultimately recover and produce weapons and war goods in great quantities. In the interim, much depended on the willingness of the west to support the Soviet Union.

In the United States and Britain there was doubt that Russia could last out the summer. Americans in general were gleeful that the world's two worst dictatorships were tearing at each other's vitals and hoped they would fight to mutual exhaustion. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, however, were terrified that Hitler would win and the democracies would be faced with the combined resources of Europe and the Soviet Union.

Roosevelt's first reaction to Soviet pleas for help was caution, and he dodged questions from the press about extending lend-lease to Russia. But he quickly decided that aiding the Red Army might be worth the gamble, and in mid-July sent his closest confidant, Harry Hopkins, to London to discuss the matter with Churchill.

Churchill endorsed American help to Russia, but he didn't like the idea of supplies destined for Britain being diverted to the Reds. Hopkins decided to go to Moscow himself to assess the situation. The trip was long and hard, but in Moscow Hopkins found confidence, high morale, and “unbounded determination to win.” Stalin vowed he'd fight beyond the Ural Mountains even if Moscow fell.

At the moment the United States was as preoccupied with Japan as it was with Hitler's advances into the Soviet Union. On July 2, at a secret imperial conference in Tokyo, Japanese leaders decided not to join the war against Russia, unless the Red Army collapsed. Instead they elected to continue their drive south to seize most or all of Southeast Asia, overrunning the colonies of the Netherlands, France, and Britain. Shortly after France's defeat in 1940, the Japanese demanded and got permission to occupy northern French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia).

The Kremlin knew the results of the July 2 conference from its spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge. But Stalin took no chances. Though he desperately needed the thirty divisions, many tanks, and 2,800 warplanes he had in the Far East, he kept most in place, and actually strengthened defenses around Manchuria, where the Japanese army was massed.

This sealed Japan's decision to move south, and on July 14 the government demanded of the Vichy French agreement to occupy eight air bases in southern Indochina and to use France's naval base at Camranh Bay. The French quickly capitulated.

FDR and Cordell Hull, secretary of state, didn't know of the imperial conference, but were aware of much that was going on in Tokyo. American army and navy cryptanalysts by August 1940 had discovered the secrets of the Japanese encoding machine known as “Purple,” which diplomats used in radio messages to and from Tokyo. American intercepts of these messages in the decoding program named “Magic” picked up indications of Japanese intentions in Southeast Asia.

This galvanized Roosevelt into taking a step on July 25, 1941, which he had shrunk from for over a year: he froze Japanese assets, instantly ending all trade with Japan. Britain, its dominions, and the Dutch East Indies followed quickly.

Roosevelt and Churchill hoped this action would slow the Japanese drive toward war, but it actually accelerated it. Without oil imports from the United States or the East Indies, Japan's military operations would collapse within months. The army and navy started preparing for armed confrontation.

Hopkins got back to London from Moscow just in time to climb aboard the British battleship
Prince of Wales
taking Churchill and his staff to meet Roosevelt at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland—the Atlantic Conference on August 9–12, 1941, and the first meeting of the two leaders. Hopkins told FDR that all-out aid to Russia was a good bet. At the worst it would delay Hitler long enough for the United States to prepare for war. He recommended that the Soviets be declared eligible for lend-lease.

Roosevelt sent Stalin a message promising strong aid after three months. FDR's decision was influenced by the fear that Stalin might conclude a peace with Hitler, something hardly less bad than a German victory.

As Churchill turned back toward Britain, a de facto anti-Hitler coalition had been sealed. On the last day of the conference, August 12, 1941, the House of Representatives extended the draft by a single vote, 203–202. Narrow as the vote was, it demonstrated American determination to rearm and defend itself. Freezing trade with Japan was one sign of this resolve, and Roosevelt did more: he extended U.S. Navy protection of British convoys to Iceland and prepared deliveries to the Soviet Union along this route.

On August 25, Britain and the Soviet Union occupied Iran and ensured an all-weather, unopposed supply line to Russia. Soviet forces from the north and British from the south took over the country, required Shah Reza Pahlevi to abdicate in favor of his son, and mobilized forced labor to build a highway between Shatt al Arab and the Caspian Sea to expedite American exports.

When Guderian's panzer group moved south to assist in the Kiev caldron battle, Hitler sent Hermann Hoth's panzer group to join Army Group North's efforts to seize Leningrad. But the Finns refused to press down from the north beyond their old prewar boundary. Half a million of the city's three million people helped to build fortifications around the city— 620 miles of earthworks, 400 miles of antitank ditches, thousands of concrete pillboxes.

German panzers were able to seal off the southeastern approaches to the city, the only land bridge to the rest of Russia. This put the city under siege, but left open a water route east of the city across Lake Ladoga. The situation for the people was grim, but there was no thought of surrender. In mid-September Georgy K. Zhukov, dismissed as chief of staff because he had advised Stalin to abandon Kiev, arrived with orders to hold the city.

Zhukov brought up every gun and mortar available to blast the Germans and prevent penetration of the city's defense line. Leeb informed Hitler on September 24 that his attacks had failed. The Leningrad front slowly subsided into a gruesome siege that lasted until the spring of 1944, killed or starved millions, but had no major effect on the war.

Meanwhile, far to the south, Rundstedt's army group overran the Donetz basin and, on November 21, seized Rostov on the Don, at the entrance to the Caucasus. But without Guderian's tanks, he could not drive on the oil fields. The Russians soon pushed his exhausted troops out of the city.

Rundstedt wanted to pull back to a good defensive line along the Mius River, about forty miles west of Rostov, but Hitler forbade the withdrawal. Rundstedt responded that he could not comply with such an order. Contrary to his custom, Hitler came to Rundstedt's headquarters at Poltava with Brauchitsch and Halder.

Hitler tried to blame Rundstedt for losing Rostov. Rundstedt answered that responsibility must lie with those who devised the campaign. “Hitler looked for a moment as though he were about to hurl himself against Rundstedt, and tear the Knight's Cross from his uniform,” Walter Goerlitz wrote. Brauchitsch promptly had another heart attack.

Rundstedt persisted in his demands for freedom. When Hitler refused, he asked to be relieved of command. Hitler agreed, but at a final meeting told Rundstedt that in the future he would not consider any request by generals for retirement.

Meanwhile, Erich von Manstein, who had been given command of 11th Army with orders to seize the Crimea, reached the neck of the peninsula on September 29, and by November 18 had driven most of the surviving Russians into Sevastopol. Attacks against the fortress failed, and Manstein finally called off the effort on December 30, 1941. Meanwhile, Russians landed on the Kerch peninsula in the eastern part on December 26 and tried to reconquer the Crimea. With great difficulty Manstein sealed off the peninsula, but anticipated that the Red Army would make another attempt in the spring of 1942.

With the conclusion of the Kiev encirclement, Hitler at last was ready to attack Moscow. He ordered it, code-named Operation Typhoon, to commence on September 30. The principal aim was the destruction of Soviet forces blocking the road to the Soviet capital “in the limited time which remains available before the onset of the winter weather.”

He transferred back Hoth's and Guderian's panzer groups, and sent along all but one corps (Rudolf Schmidt's 29th) of Hoepner's group from Army Group North. In theory Army Group Center's commander, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, had a formidable force in the panzer formations, plus 4th Army (Kluge), and 9th Army (Strauss), a maneuver mass of seventy divisions.

But the German army as a whole had lost half a million men since June 22. Almost no units were at full strength. Many of the 600,000 horses the Germans had brought into Russia to carry supplies were dead, and there were no replacements. Ammunition had to be left on the sides of the roads. The simplest necessities disappeared—razor blades, soap, toothpaste, shoe-repair kits, needles and thread. The sick could not be left in the rear, because the forests behind were infested with partisan guerrillas. Rain began in September with cold northeast winds. Shelter everywhere was inadequate or nonexistent. Boots were falling apart, clothing turning into rags.

The infantry divisions were 2,000 to 4,000 men below strength. The three panzer groups (thirteen panzer and seven motorized divisions) possessed only about a thousand tanks altogether. Still they were superior to the 480 tanks (only forty-five new T-34s and KV-1s, both with high-velocity 76-millimeter guns) that Ivan S. Konev's Western Front had to oppose them.

The Russians had had two months to build field fortifications across the approaches to Moscow, and about 800,000 men were facing them. But they were mostly raw replacements with little training and poor leadership.

German panzers broke the Russian front in five places. Guderian drove northeast from Sostka to Orel, eighty miles south of Moscow. His advance was so rapid that the electric streetcars were still running in the city, and evacuations of factories were under way as his tanks rolled in. Workers had to abandon machinery and tools on the streets.

Guderian then turned west on Bryansk. With the help of 2nd Army to the west and Hoepner's Panzer Group 4 to the north, he trapped thousands of Russians south and west of Bryansk. Meanwhile 4th and 9th armies and Hoth's Panzer Group 3 formed another caldron west of Vyazma (only 135 miles from Moscow).

The battles were turbulent. Frequently German troops were cut off and had to fight their way free. Russian aircraft bombed frequently, but flew so high their aim was inaccurate. Counter strokes by T-34 and KV-1 tanks led to critical battle situations.

Guderian commented on a collision of 4th Panzer Division northeast of Orel on October 11: “Numerous Russian T-34s went into action and inflicted heavy losses on the German tanks. Up to this time we had enjoyed tank superiority, but from now on the situation was reversed.”

German tankers found that the short-barreled 75-millimeter gun on the Mark IV could knock out a T-34 only if it could hit the grating above the engine in the rear, a shot rarely possible. The 480-mile-wide battlefield was covered with fallen soldiers, dead horses, shot-up tanks, and the first American jeeps.

Stalin had rushed many militiamen with virtually no training into ranks, and large numbers of them gave up without a fight. Once more, linear Russian dispositions had allowed the Germans to break through at selected points and surround great bodies of troops. On October 13, resistance in the Vyazma caldron ceased. A week later the last Russians surrendered in the Bryansk pocket. The Germans counted 650,000 prisoners altogether, almost as many as were taken in the Kiev caldron.

There were now very few Soviet soldiers between the Germans and Moscow. The entire Soviet army in European Russia was down to 800,000 men and 770 tanks. But the situation had changed radically since August. The first snow fell on October 7. It melted quickly, but was followed by heavy rains.

“The roads rapidly became nothing but canals of bottomless mud,” Guderian wrote, “along which our vehicles could only advance at a snail's pace and with great wear to the engines.”

In the crisis, Stalin brought Georgy Zhukov back from Leningrad on October 10 to direct the defense of Moscow. Panic was setting in among the people. Rumors of advancing Germans spread widely. People began to flee from the city.

Zhukov stilled the panic by mobilizing every person he could find to build antitank ditches outside the city. A quarter of a million people, three-quarters of them women, did the work by hand with shovels, spades, and buckets. Using whatever troops he could find, Zhukov manned the Mozhaisk line, the Russians' last defensive position, running from the “Sea of Moscow,” a reservoir on the Volga River seventy miles north of the city, in a semicircle around to the Oka River, fifty-five miles south of Moscow.