Hitler

Group South was to destroy the enemy forces west of the Dnieper and in the vicinity of Kiev. The real decision – for or against the drive to Moscow – had effectively just been postponed for a while.
    In early August Hitler remained wedded to Leningrad as the priority. He reckoned this would be cut off by 20 August, and then troops and aircraft could be redeployed by Army Group Centre. The second priority for Hitler was, as before, ‘the south of Russia, especially the Donets region’, which formed the ‘entire basis of the Russian economy’. Moscow was a clear third on his priority-list. He recognized that in this order of priorities the capital could not be taken before winter. Halder tried unavailingly to get Brauchitsch to obtain a clear decision on whether to put everything into delivering the enemy a fatal blow at Moscow or taking the Ukraine and the Caucasus for economic reasons. He persuaded Jodl to intervene with Hitler to convince him that the objectives of Moscow
and
the Ukraine had to be met.
    By now, Halder was realizing the magnitude of the task facing the Wehrmacht. ‘The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus,’ he wrote on 11 August. ‘At the outset of the war, we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360. These divisions indeed are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen … And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front line, without any depth, are subjected to the incessant attacks of the enemy.’
    In his Supplement to Directive No. 34, issued on 12 August, Hitler for the first time stated categorically that once the threats from the flanks were eliminated and the panzer groups were refreshed the attack on the enemy forces massed for the protection of Moscow was to be prosecuted. The aim was ‘the removal from the enemy before winter of the entire state, armaments, and communications centre around Moscow’, ran the directive. Three days later, however, Hitler intervened once more in the tactical dispositions by ordering panzer forces from the northern flank of Army Group Centre to help Army Group North resist a strong Soviet counter-attack.
    His concession, if heavily qualified, on Moscow, then – in effect – rapid negation of the decision, may have been affected by the severe attack of dysentery from which he was suffering in the first half ofAugust. Despite mounting hypochondria, he had, in fact, over the past years enjoyed remarkably good health – perhaps surprisingly so, given his eating habits and lifestyle. But he had now been laid low at a vital time. Goebbels found him still unwell and ‘very irritable’, though on the mend, when he visited FHQ on 18 August. The weeks of tension and the unexpected military difficulties of the past month had taken their toll, the Propaganda Minister thought. In fact, electrocardiograms taken at the time indicated that Hitler had rapidly progressive coronary sclerosis. Morell’s discussion of the results of the tests could have done little to lift Hitler’s mood, or to lessen his hypochondria.
    Probably Hitler’s ill-health in August, at a time when he was stunned by the recognition of the gross underestimation by German intelligence of the true level of Soviet forces, temporarily weakened his resolve to continue the war in the east. Goebbels was plainly astonished, on his visit to FHQ on 18 August, to hear Hitler entertain thoughts of accepting peace-terms from Stalin and even stating that Bolshevism, without the Red Army, would be no danger to Germany. (Stalin, in fact, appears briefly to have contemplated moves to come to terms, involving large-scale surrender of Soviet territory, in July.) In a pessimistic state of mind about an early and comprehensive victory in the east, Hitler was clutching at straws: perhaps Stalin would sue for peace; maybe Churchill would be brought down; quite suddenly peace might break out. The turnabout could come as quickly as it had done in January 1933, he suggested (and would do so on other occasions down to 1945), when, without prospects at the start of the month, the National Socialists had within a matter of weeks found themselves in power.
    Halder’s own nerves were by this point also frayed. He now thought the time had come to confront Hitler once and for all