Hitler

Kiev’, casualties numbered almost 400,000, or over 11 per cent of the eastern army. Replacements were becoming more difficult to find. By the end of September, half of the tanks were out of action or in different stages ofrepair. And by now the autumn rains were already beginning to turn the roads into impassable quagmires. Whatever the successes of the summer, objective grounds for continued optimism had to be strongly qualified. The drive to Moscow that began on 2 October, seeking the decisive victory before the onset of winter, rested on hope more than expectation. It was a desperate last attempt to force the conclusive defeat of the Soviet Union before winter. It amounted to an improvisation marking the failure of the original ‘Barbarossa’ plan rather than its crowning glory.
    Hitler’s own responsibility for the difficulties now faced by the German army is evident. Whereas Stalin learnt from the calamities of 1941 and came to leave military matters increasingly to the experts, Hitler’s interference in tactical detail as well as grand strategy, arising from his chronic and intensifying distrust of the Army High Command, was, as Halder’s difficulties indicated, intensely damaging. The tenacity and stubbornness with which he refused to concede the priority of an attack on Moscow, even when for a while, at the end of July, not just the army leadership but his own closest military adviser, Jodl, had accepted the argument, was quite remarkable. After the glorious victories of 1940, Hitler believed his own military judgement was superior to that of any of his generals. His contempt for Brauchitsch and Halder was reinforced on every occasion that their views on tactics differed from his. Conversely, the weeks of conflict, and the bewildering way in July and August in which directives were arrived at, then amended, undermined the confidence in Hitler not just of the hopelessly supine Brauchitsch and of Halder’s Army General Staff, but also of the field commanders.
    But the problem was not one-sided. The tension between the conflicting conceptions of the eastern campaign had still been unresolved as far as Halder was concerned when Hitler’s Directive No. 21 on 18 December 1940 had indicated Moscow as a secondary rather than primary objective, prefiguring the dispute of the coming summer months. If reluctantly, Army High Command had apparently accepted the alternative strategy which Hitler favoured. Strategic planning of the attack in subsequent months followed from this premiss.
    The strategy of first gaining control over the Baltic and cutting off essential Soviet economic heartlands in the south, while at the same time protecting German oil supplies in Romania, before attacking Moscow was not in itself senseless. And the fear that a frontal assault on Moscowwould simply drive back instead of enveloping Soviet forces was a real one. Army High Command’s preference to deviate from the plan of ‘Barbarossa’ once the campaign was under way was not a self-evident improvement. The reversion to Halder’s originally preferred strategy was tempting because Army Group Centre had advanced faster and more spectacularly than anticipated, and was pressing hard to be allowed to continue and, as it thought, finish the job by taking Moscow. But even more it now followed from the realization that the army’s intelligence on Soviet military strength had been woeful. The attack on Moscow, though favoured in the OKH’s thinking from an early stage, had in fact come to be a substitute for the ‘Barbarossa’ plan, which had gone massively awry not simply because of Hitler’s interference, but also because of the inadequacy and failures of the army leadership.
    Since Hitler had placed the key men, Brauchitsch and Halder, in their posts, he must take a good deal of the blame for their failings. But as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Brauchitsch was irredeemably weak and ineffectual. His contribution to strategic planning appears to have been minimal. Torn between pressures from his field commanders and bullying from Hitler, he offered a black hole where clear-sighted and determined military leadership was essential. Long before the crisis which would ultimately bring his removal from office, Brauchitsch was a broken reed. The contempt with which Hitler treated him was not without justification.
    Halder, partly through his own post-war apologetics and his flirtations (though they came to nothing) with groups opposed to