Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees

Author:Laurence Rees [Rees, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

However, the reality was not as straightforward as either Maisky or Churchill perceived it. Yes, the Germans had made great progress in the south of the Soviet Union and had indeed ‘waged war’ in Africa better than the British, but behind the scenes all was not well. For years there had been an underlying tension between Hitler and many of his generals, not just about their different attitude to risk – with Hitler almost always more of a gambler – but also about broader questions concerning the way a warrior should be, and the manner in which such a man (and, to Hitler, warriors were always men) should hold himself. Reinhard Spitzy, a committed Nazi who served in the German Foreign Office, recalled Hitler’s view that ‘My generals should be like bull terriers on chains, and they should want war, war, war. And I should have to put brakes on the whole thing. But what happens now? I want to go ahead with my strong politics and the generals try to stop me. That’s a false situation.’15

In the summer of 1942 Hitler most definitely did not think his generals were like ‘bull terriers on chains’. Quite the contrary. On 13 July he sacked Field Marshal von Bock, the commander of Army Group South, because he wasn’t making progress quickly enough. This was the second time Bock had been dismissed by Hitler. He had previously, in December 1941, lost his job as commander of Army Group Centre. He maintained that this latest removal was purely the result of Hitler’s ‘impatience’.16 He would not be the last gifted commander to be dismissed in the course of this operation.

Ten days later, at Hitler’s new forward headquarters in Ukraine, the German leader issued the wildly optimistic Directive Number 45. The opening sentence set the tone: ‘In a campaign of little more than three weeks, the broad goals I had set the south wing of the eastern front have been essentially achieved.’ He then listed a series of new objectives. Instead of Army Group South accomplishing its tasks sequentially, one part – Army Group A – would now proceed directly to the Caucasus, and another – Army Group B – would move east towards Stalingrad and ‘occupy the city’.17 Up to now, taking Stalingrad had never been a goal of this operation.

As a consequence of Hitler’s decision, it was now as if Army Group A and Army Group B were fighting totally different campaigns – one down towards the Caucasus, the other across the steppe towards Stalingrad. Such were the immense distances involved that German units were more like ships journeying through the ocean than armies on land. The contrast with the swift advance across France in 1940 was stark. Here, on the vast steppe and in the high mountains, the problems of supplying the fighting troops grew exponentially.

The same day that Hitler issued the directive, General Halder wrote in his diary that at a military conference the German leader had erupted into a ‘fit of insane rage’ and hurled the ‘gravest reproaches against the General Staff’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.