Captured Russian troops being marched westwards, away from the fighting. During the first eighteen days of the German invasion the Soviet Western Front alone recorded nearly 420,000 casualties out of an initial strength of 625,000 men. Prisoners of war accounted for the vast majority of the casualties.

Harshness on the German side was directed at the Russian people, whom Hitler regarded as subhuman (Untermenschen). Captured Soviet soldiers were not treated according to the Geneva Convention, unlike those of the western Allies. During the first few days after surrendering this was sometimes understandable, since the German armies did not have sufficient food and shelter immediately available to provide for the sometimes hundreds of thousands trapped in the great pockets. But thereafter, once they were in proper POW camps, their treatment did not change. Indeed, it became worse, with most captured Russians being employed as slave labour.

Hitler had two specific targets among the Soviet population. One was members of the Communist Party, whose fate was enshrined in his infamous Commissar Order, issued before the invasion took place, and which called for the summary execution of all political officers. The Russian Jews were also to be rooted out. This task was given to the SS Einsatzgruppen (Special Groups) following up behind the armies, who were literally extermination squads. While the Wehrmacht tried to distance itself from their activities, it was drawn in, even If this was merely witnessing mass executions carried out by the Einsatzgruppen.

Yet many Russians in the overrun territories, especially in the Ukraine, where desire for total autonomy had always been strong, welcomed the invader. They believed that the Germans had come to liberate them from the Communist yoke. Fed with Nazi racial doctrine, the Germans failed to grasp the significance of this, even though, as their casualties mounted, they did recruit a sizeable number of Russian POWs into their army. These were known as Hiwis (Hilfswillige, or 'voluntary helpers'). But soon many others, once they realized the true nature of their occupiers, turned against the Germans and an increasing number joined the bands of partisans being formed in the forests and marshes by soldiers who had evaded capture. Soon these were to become an increasing thorn in the flesh of the German lines of communication. But the resolve of the Russian people was also stiffened when Stalin began to appeal directly to their patriotism rather than exhorting them to defend Marxist-Leninism.

Launched in the early hours of 22 June 1941, Operation Barbarossa was Hitler's greatest and most ambitious Blitzkrieg gamble of all. Its objective was nothing less than the destruction of the Soviet Union, and the timetable was perilously tight, with but five months to go before the expected onset of the Russian winter.

On their cluster of four fields to the east of Warsaw (which they shared with elements of JG 53), Oberstleutnant Werner Mölders' Gruppen were almost in the centre of the 4480 km-long front that stretched all the way from the Barents Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. Their principal task in this new theatre of operations would be to clear the skies above and ahead of the armoured divisions of Panzergruppe 2, which itself formed the right-hand flank of Army Group Centre's twin pincer advance aimed northeastwards towards Moscow (whose fall, it was confidently predicted, would immediately bring about the collapse of the Soviet state).

But first, in true Blitzkrieg fashion, Barbarossa would begin with a series of pre-emptive air strikes intended to eliminate the enemy's air forces on the ground. The results on the opening day exceeded all expectations. By the time darkness fell on 22 June, it was estimated that although more than 300 Soviet aircraft had been shot down, some 1500(!) had been destroyed on the ground. Even Göring refused at first to believe these staggering claims. But, if anything, they were proved to be conservative after German troops had overrun the enemy's frontline areas - including all 31 of the airfields targeted - and a detailed survey of the damage inflicted could be carried out.

It is not known how many Soviet aircraft the Geschwader accounted for on the ground, but 2./JG 51, whose new Friedrichs - like their earlier Emils- had been fitted with ventral bomb racks, were alone credited with 43 destroyed in four separate ]abo sorties during the course of the day.

In the air, Mölders' four Gruppen (with IV./JG 51 temporarily attached to Stab JG 53) claimed no fewer than 93 enemy machines shot down! The Kommodore himself was responsible for four of the Stabsschwarm's five victories. These took his total to 72, and won him the immediate Swords. The first award of this newly instituted decoration had gone to Adolf Galland, for 69 kills in the west, just 24 hours earlier.

Many other pilots achieved multiple successes during these early hours of Barbarossa. Among them was l./JG 51's Leutnant Heinz Bar, whose trio of kills before mid-morning raised his score to 20. But Bar would have to wait ten days for his Knight's Cross, by which time he had added a further nine to his tally.

The second day of the campaign in the east saw the Geschwader carry out another round of low-level strikes, but in stark contrast to the day before, it resulted in only two aerial victories. One of these provided a first for future Knight's Cross recipient Feldwebel Anton 'Toni' Lindner of 2./]G 5l.

Another 'Toni' opened his shore-sheet 24 hours later. Fully recovered from the injuries he had sustained in the crash-landing at Mardyck three months earlier, the Soviet SB-2 bomber claimed by 6. Staffers Gefreiter Anton 'Toni' Hafner was the first rung on the ladder to his becoming JG 51's top scorer.

In addition to Hafner's opener, the Geschwader had been credited with a further 81 victories on that 24 June, for despite the Luftwaffe's best efforts, the Red Air Force was far from being knocked out. Having recovered from the immediate shock of the first days' savage onslaught, Soviet commanders called up bombers from as-yet untouched rear-area bases and hurled them in waves against the advancing German ground forces. With no frontal fighters to protect them, the Soviet bombers suffered horrendous losses. On 25 June JG 51 alone shot down 83 Tupolev SB-2s. And still the desperate Russians kept up the pressure. It peaked on the last day of the month, when Mölders and his Gruppen claimed an unprecedented 137 enemy aircraft destroyed!

This huge total included several personal and unit landmark scores. The third of the five Ilyushin DB-3 bombers downed by the Kommodore took Werner Mölders' score to 80 level with Rittmeister Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, the legendary 'Red Baron', and top-scoring German fighter pilot of World War 1. Hauptmann Hermann-Friedrich Joppien was also credited with five victories, the fourth of which gave the Kommandeur of 1. Gruppe his half-century.

And 30 June 1941 was the date on which it was announced that JG 51 had become the first Jagdgeschwader to reach 1000 victories!

By now German forces had already smashed through Soviet frontier defences along the River Bug and breached the more substantial 'Stalin Line' some 300 km inside Russian territory guarding the approaches to Minsk. The fighting around the capital of White Russia resulted in the first of the great 'cauldron' battles of the eastern front. When it ended on 9 July, nearly a third of a million Russian prisoners had been taken.

Once again, regardless of cost, the Soviets had thrown in their unescorted bombers in a vain attempt to blast open an escape route for the survivors of the four Russian armies trapped inside the 'cauldron'. And once again JG 51's pilots had exacted a heavy toll. On 2 July an SB-2 had provided Hauptmann Josef Fözö with victory 22, and the immediate award of the Knight's Cross.

Minsk lay at the western end of the major Rollbahn, or supply highway, that linked it directly to Moscow. This formed the obvious axis for Army Group Centre's line of advance. And within 24 hours of the collapse of the Minsk 'cauldron', the Army Group's spearheads had captured the town of Vitebsk, nearly a third of the way along the 88G-km highway to the Soviet capital. JG 51's Gruppen had already leapfrogged forward four times since the launch of Barbarossa in their efforts to keep abreast of General Guderian's Panzers. By 10 July the bulk of the Geschwader was gathered on the complex of ex-Soviet airfields around Bobruisk, some way to the south of the Rollbahn. Only Major Beckh's IV.I]G 51, still operating under the control of]G 53, was based at Borissov, close to the highway itself.

Thus far, the Geschwader's losses had been incredibly light. Only five pilots had been reported killed or missing, including one brought down during a low-level attack on a Soviet armoured train. But the many recent moves, coupled with the multiple missions being flown almost daily, were having a serious effect on JG 51's serviceability figures. Many pilots were also beginning to feel the strain. On 11 July the newly decorated 'Joschko' Fözö crashed on take-off. His injuries were so severe that he would be off operations for ten months. In the meantime, IL/JG 51 would be led by acting Kommandeure.

The following day, one of the three kills credited to Hauptmann Richard Leppla gave the Geschwader its 500th eastern front victory (and, at the same time, took its overall wartime total to 1200). And in that summer of 1941, the greatest Experte of them all was undoubtedly Werner Mölders. On 14 July a trio of Soviet Pe-2 bombers had taken his total to a tantalising 99. Twenty-four hours later, another pair of Petlyakovs assured him a place in military aviation history as the first fighter pilot ever to reach the century!

Having been second in line for both the Oak Leaves and the Swords, Werner Molders' premier position was now firmly established by the immediate award of the newest and highest grade of the Knight's Cross the Diamonds. Or, as the special communiqué of 17 July announced in more formal, if somewhat fulsome terms, 'The Fuhrer and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht has awarded Oberstleutnant Molders, this shining example of Luftwaffe heroism and the most successful fighter pilot in the world, as the first officer in the Wehrmacht with Germany's highest medal for bravery, the Oak Leaves with Swords and Diamonds to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross'.

German troops fighting on the outskirts of Brest.

On 22nd June, 45th Infantry Division did not suspect that it would suffer such heavy losses in this ancient frontier fortress. Captain Praxa had prepared his assault against the heart of the citadel of Brest with great caution. The 3rd Battalion, 135th Infantry Regiment, was to take the Western Island and the central area with the barracks block. They had studied it all thoroughly at the sand-table. They had built a model from aerial photographs and old plans from the days of the Polish campaign, when, until it had to be surrendered to the Russians, Brest was in German hands. Guderian's staff officers realized from the outset that the citadel could be taken only by infantry, since it was proof against tanks.

The circular fortress, occupying an area of nearly two square miles, was surrounded by moats and river branches, and sub-divided internally by canals and artificial watercourses into four small islands. Casemates, snipers' positions, armoured cupolas with anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, were established, well camouflaged, behind shrubs and under trees. On 22nd June there were in all five Soviet regiments in Brest; these included two artillery regiments, one reconnaissance battalion, an independent anti-aircraft detachment, and supply and medical battalions.

General Karabichev, who was captured beyond the Berezina very early in the campaign, stated under interrogation that in May 1941 he had been instructed, as an expert in fortification engineering, to inspect the western defences. On 8th June he had set out on his trip.

On 3rd June the Soviet Fourth Army had staged a practice alarm. The report on this exercise, which was captured by German units, had this to say about the 204th (Heavy) Howitzer Regiment: "The batteries were not ready to fire until six hours after the alarm." About the 33rd Rifle Regiment it said this: "The duty officers were unacquainted with the alarm regulations. Field kitchens are not functioning. The regiment marches without cover. . . ." About the 246th Anti-Aircraft Detachment it said: "When the alarm was given the duty officer was unable to make a decision." When one has read this report one is no longer surprised at the lack of organized resistance in the town of Brest. But in the citadel proper the Germans got a surprise after all.

When the artillery bombardment began at 0315 hours the 3rd Battalion, 135th Infantry Regiment, was 30 yards from the river Bug, directly opposite the Western Island. The earth trembled. The sky was plunged in fire and smoke. Everything had been arranged in minute detail with the artillery units which were softening up the citadel: every four minutes the hail of death was to be advanced by 100 yards. It was an accurately planned inferno.

No stone could be left standing after this lot. That, at least, was what the men thought as they lay pressed to the ground by the river. That was what they hoped. For if death did not reap its harvest inside the citadel, then it would surely get them.

After the first four minutes, which seemed like an eternity of thunder, at exactly 0319, the first wave leaped to their feet. They dragged their rubber dinghies down into the water. They jumped in. And like shadows, veiled by smoke and fumes, they paddled across. The second wave followed at 0323. The men reached the other bank just as if they were on an exercise. Swiftly they climbed the sloping ground. Then they crouched down in the tall grass. Hell above them and hell in front of them. At 0327 Second Lieutenant Wieltsch, commanding No. 1 Platoon, straightened up. The pistol in his right hand was secured by a lanyard so that, if necessary, he had both hands free for the hand-grenades he was carrying in his belt and in two linen bags slung over his shoulders. No word of command was needed. Bent double, they crossed a garden. They moved past fruit-trees and through old stables. They crossed the road which ran along the ramparts. And now they would enter the fortress through the shattered gate-house. But here they had their first surprise. The bombardment, even the heavy shells of the 60-cm. mortars, had done very little damage to the massive masonry of the citadel. All it had done was to waken the garrison and give the alarm. Half dressed, the Russians were scurrying to their posts.

Towards midday the battalions of 135th and 130th Infantry Regiments had forced their way deep into the fortress in one or two places. But at the eastern fort of the Northern Island, as well as by the officers' mess and the barracks block on the Central Island, they had not gained an inch. Soviet snipers and machine-guns in armoured cupolas barred their way. Because of the close interlocking of attacker and defender the German artillery could not intervene. In the afternoon the corps' reserve, 133rd Infantry Regiment, was thrown into the fighting. In vain. A battery of assault guns was brought forward. With their 7-5-cm. guns they blasted the bunkers directly. In vain.

By evening 21 officers and 290 NCOs and men had been killed. They included Captain Praxa, the battalion commander, and Captain Krauss, commander of 1st Battalion, 99th Artillery Regiment, as well as their combat staffs. Clearly, it could not be done that way. The combat units were pulled back from the fortress, and artillery and bombers had another go. Carefully they avoided the ancient fortress church: there seventy men of the 3rd Battalion sat surrounded, unable to move forward or back. Luckily for them they had a transmitter and had been able to report their position to Division.

The third day of Brest dawned.

As the sun's rays penetrated the smoke they fell upon an old and wrecked Russian anti-aircraft position. Amid the rubble was Lance-Corporal Teuchler's machine-gun party, belonging to Second Lieutenant Wieltsch's platoon. A painful rattle came from the gunner's throat. He had been shot through the lung and was dying. The machine-gun commander was sitting up stiffly, his back against the tripod. He had been dead for hours. Lance-Corporal Teuchler was lying shot through the chest, slumped over his ammunition-box. The sun on his face brought him round again. Cautiously he rolled over on his side. He could hear agonized voices. He saw a muzzle flash from a casemate some 300 yards away every time a wounded man sat up or tried to crawl behind cover. Snipers! It was they who wiped out Teuchler's party.

At noon a strong assault detachment of 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment, broke through from the Western Island to the citadel church. The trapped German troops were freed; Lance- Corporal Teuchler was found. But the relieving units got no nearer to the officers' mess.

The eastern fort on the Northern Island was likewise still holding out. On 29th June Field- Marshal Kesselring sent in a Stuka Geschwader against it.

[Unit consisting of 3 Gruppen, usually 93 aircraft.]

But the 1000-pound bombs had no effect. In the afternoon 4000-pounders were dropped. Now the masonry was shattered. Women and children came out of the fort, followed by 400 troops. But the officers' mess was still being stubbornly defended. The building had to be demolished piece by piece. Not one man surrendered.

On 30th June the operations report of 45th Infantry Division recorded the conclusion of the operation and the capture of the fortress. The division took 7000 prisoners, including 100 officers. German losses totalled 482 killed, including 40 officers, and over 1000 wounded, of whom many died subsequently. The magnitude of these losses can be judged by the fact that the total German losses on the entire Eastern Front up to 30th June amounted to 8886 killed. The citadel of Brest therefore accounted for over 5 per cent, of all fatal casualties.

By Chris Perello

Of the 141 divisions taking part in Operation Barbarossa, 108 of them (76%) were non-motorized infantry. These divisions, plodding along at the speed of a marching man, were incapable of the rapid concentration and deep exploitation that made the blitzkrieg possible. The Germans were aware of their infantry's shortcomings, but their economy was incapable of producing the motor vehicles needed to motorize them, and even less capable of supplying the fuel to run all those vehicles.

After the successful conclusion of the 1940 campaign, the German General Staff had drawn up plans to motorize the entire army, but that would have meant reducing its size to no more than 70 divisions. The invasion of Russia required greater numbers than that, so the marching divisions were retained. In fact, to help equip the 18 new panzer and motorized divisions formed after the fall of France, the infantry divisions lost many of the motor vehicles they had, their place being taken by more horsedrawn vehicles. Thus the infantry of 1941 was less mobile than it had been in France the year before.

The tactics chosen by the Germans for the invasion, the Kesselschlacht or cauldron (pocket) battle, were based on the division of the army into mobile and non-mobile portions. The infantry divisions simply couldn't keep up with the mobile formations on the deep and fast drives called for by the Blitz theorists, but there were too few mobile divisions to defeat the Soviets alone.

Not only could the German economy not motorize the entire army, it could not really support an army of the size fielded in 1941. Few divisions outside the eastern front could be maintained at their full authorized strength. There were only 130 replacement battalions available, representing less than 10 percent of the invading army's strength. In 1942, thousands of skilled workers were scheduled to be returned to the civilian economy they had been "borrowed" from industry to maximize the number of divisions available.

The shortage of trained officers and NCOs was even worse. The limitations of the Versailles Treaty meant a whole generation of Germans had never received military training. The tiny peacetime army of 100,000, though trained to a high standard, was insufficient to lead the mass army of 1941. Only by calling up World War One veterans, Austrian officers, and policemen, could the shortage be made up. Even so, the rapid expansion came at the cost of quality leadership, especially in the infantry divisions, which were at the bottom of the priority list for officers, as they were for manpower, motor vehicles and equipment.

Starting in the mid-1930s, new divisions had been added to the army in "waves." Each wave was organized and equipped in a similar fashion to ease administrative burdens, but the army as a whole had a wide variety of organizations and equipment lists. Only the 42 divisions of the first two waves (plus the mobile divisions, some of which were formed by converting first-wave divisions) had anything like a full complement of leaders and technical specialists. Many officers thought the new divisions compared unfavorably with those of 1914 in marksmanship, nightand close-combat training and fieldcraft.

Organization

The basic German infantry fighting unit was the squad of 10 men, armed with a light machinegun (LMG), a submachinegun and eight rifles. Nearly every major combatant power in WWII used a similar organization, but there was one critical difference: in every other army, the LMG (or automatic rifle) was used to supplement the rifle fire of the squad; in the German army, the LMG was the squad.

On defense, the LMG provided the firepower to stop enemy attacks; the riflemen protected the LMG and helped carry ammunition for it. On the attack, the LMG would pin enemy defenders while the riflemen worked their way forward to assault enemy positions with grenade and bayonet. Built around the concepts of the WWI Stosstruppen (Shocktroops), the squad was expected to operate independently, calling for help only when absolutely necessary.

Each commander above squad level was expected to accomplish much the same. That is, at each command level, the commander was given three or four maneuver units and one or two support units with progressively heavier weapons. Those weapons could be employed en masse or detached to reinforce a subordinate unit for a particular mission. German doctrine emphasized the formation of ad hoc battle groups at every level, which made German units more flexible than comparably-sized units in other armies.

The infantry regiment was the smallest permanent infantry organization. Companies were formed and disbanded at the discretion of the regimental headquarters, and were often transferred from battalion to battalion as the situation demanded. Platoons and squads were consolidated within the company as needed. After mid-1941, battalions also were disbanded and reformed.

The machinegun (or heavy weapons) companies could be deployed as whole units, or could be broken up to provide direct and indirect fire support to the line companies. The machineguns used were identical to the LMGs in the infantry squads, but were mounted on tripods for greater stability and accuracy. They also had larger crews to carry more ammunition and more spare barrels to enable constant firing. (Squad MGs had to fire a series of short bursts or risk overheating). Early in the war, some of these companies were even capable of conducting indirect machinegun fire to create dead zones.

This was an old and honored World War I tactic that disappeared as training standards fell.

The regimental artillery company was equipped with light artillery pieces that were used for direct fire. The purpose of the company was to give the regimental commander heavy fire support for assaults, not as a supplement to divisional indirect fire.

The regimental anti-tank companies were equipped mostly with inadequate 37mm guns or captured French 47mm pieces. The new 50mm gums were still in short supply, so were being parceled out to all units in ones and twos as they became available. After encountering the Soviets' T-34 and KV-1 tanks, these companies were often supplemented by field pieces from the divisional artillery, again in ones and twos.

The remaining support platoons of the regiment were not found in all units. The engineers were actually "pioneers," specialists in the use of explosives and mines rather than construction or bridging. The reconnaissance unit was likely to be bicycle-mounted rather than motorized.

The artillery regiment formed the core of the division's firepower on both attack and defense. In fact, some officers felt the infantry had become too dependent on artillery support, sacrificing speed and wasting ammunition. The artillery's effectiveness was hampered by the fact the guns were horsedrawn, and because the shortage of trained personnel, radios and vehicles prevented formation of observation battalions in most divisions. It was therefore difficult to achieve rapid and flexible concentrations of artillery fire.

Nearly every division had the authorized battalion of truck-towed anti-tank guns, mostly 50mm plus some of the new 75mm pieces. Again, captured French and Czech equipment was used to fill some gaps. The remaining support battalions were found in the 42 first-class divisions, but were weaker or non-existent in the others.

Though the infantry divisions moved no faster than their predecessors in the Kaiser's army, they were trained using the same concepts as the mobile units. The emphasis was on infiltration of enemy lines and exploitation of opportunities. Mission orders were given in broad terms, with subordinate commanders expected to use their initiative in carrying them out, and with the assumption the larger formations would follow and support a successful subordinate unit. The purpose of combat was as much to shock the enemy into submission as to kill him outright.

The underlying weaknesses of the German war machine were brought home by the heavy losses during Barbarossa. By September, the average infantry division in Army Group Center was about 1,600 men under-strength. This represented only 10 percent of total personnel strength, but more than half the riflemen, who incurred most of the casualties. Administrative and support troops were drafted into the squads, but they were inadequately trained and insufficient in number to maintain combat strength for long.

By early December, the average infantry company could field no more than 60 men: platoons, companies, and even battalions were consolidated to maintain company strength. Those under-strength units proved adequate for defense, since the firepower of the LMG was undiminished. In one example from early 1942, a German company of only sixteen men occupied a front of nearly a mile, with each man armed with his own LMG. This company stopped several attacks by a full Soviet regiment.

But attacking was a different story. The machineguns could only pin defenders; they could not take ground. That required assault parties of riflemen. The failure of the final German offensive around Moscow was as much due to a lack of riflemen as anything else.

The German infantry never recovered from the losses of 1941. For the 1942 offensive, only those divisions in the spearhead were brought to anything near full strength. For the rest, official strength was reduced to nine men per squad, 90 per company and two battalions per regiment: a total rifle strength less than half the original. Even that existed only on paper. Many regiments could keep only one battalion on the line, leaving the other in the rear as a depot unit. Companies increasingly became small combat groups formed around a few LMGs and one or two mortars or anti-tank guns, with the regiments constantly forming new companies to maintain a fresh reserve, however small.

From 1942 on, the infantry divisions formed a thin and brittle line, and the brunt of the battle fell to the mobile divisions. The German infantry bled to death in Russia.

Running Total of German Casualties During Operation Barbarossa 6/22/41 - 1/1/42

These figures include killed, wounded and missing. The numbers in parenthesis represent the percentage of the total

German armed forces fighting in the east.

13 July - 92,120 (3.6%)

13 August - 389,924 (10.0%)

26 August - 441,100 (11.6%)

30 September - 551,039 (16.2%)

13 November - 699,726 (20.6%)

31 December 1941 - 930,903 (26.00%).

Kubelwagens and assorted medium and It-ton trucks advance into Russia, summer 1941. The divisional 'Stahlhelm' marking is clearly visible, as are the tactical markings denoting vehicles of the motorcycle recce company from the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion. Note also the white formation keeping markers on the outer corners of each vehicle to simplify travel by night.

Only the regiment's armoured and artillery elements took part in the initial assault on Russia on 21 June 1941, co-operating with 7th Panzer Division in their attack over the River Bug at Janow, but the remainder of the units soon followed, crossing the Soviet frontier north of Brest Litovsk on 27/28 June and advancing on Minsk, which they reached on 6 July.

Again under command of the 10th Panzer Division, Infantry Regiment 'GD' continued to advance until the middle of July, over the River Beresina to the Dnepr, with occasional fierce hand-to-hand fighting against the stubborn but poorly led Soviet defenders. Transferred to a reserve position, the regiment was moved to the vicinity of Jerva, where it took part in the frantic defensive battles around the level crossing at Waskovo, for which the 1st Battalion's commander, Oberleutnant Hanert, received the Knight's Cross.

In September 1941 the regiment was again moved-something to which it was to become accustomed !-to Kiev, where it helped in the securing of the German bridgeheads over the River Desna, before being sent up to the north to take part in the desperate fighting for Orel and Tula during the Nazi advance on Moscow. Rain brought the inevitable clinging mud towards the end of October, which slowed progress, and at the beginning of December, when the cold really clamped down, the regiment was chiefly involved in defensive delaying actions along the Orel-Tula railway line. During 1941 the regiment had a hard time, with a great deal of marching and fighting punctuated by some brilliant successes as well as some dismal defeats (almost the entire motor cycle company was wiped out at Kolodesnaja, near Tula, at the beginning of December) . The tally up to 6 January 1942 was 900 men killed, 3,056 wounded and 114 missing; 1942 would also be hard, but it would see the reconstitution of the regiment as a fully-fledged division.

Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (January, 2009)

Dietrich Eichholtz. _Krieg um Öl: Ein Erdölimperium als deutsches Kriegsziel 1938-1943_. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2006. 141 pp.

EUR 19.90 (paper), ISBN 978-3-86583-119-4.

Reviewed for H-German by Alison Frank, Harvard University

Towards a Great German Oil Empire

Dietrich Eichholtz does not mince words. From the first page of this powerfully argued book, his underlying argument is clear: "The imperialist interest in oil played a role in the occurrence, course, and outcome" of the Second World War (p. 7). More specifically, "[f]rom September 1939, petroleum was a short- and long-term war aim, as well as one of the most important means of waging the war itself" (p. 15). At the same time, in Eichholtz's telling, this is not a hair-raising tale about a dystopia that might have been; the Third Reich does not appear as an unstoppable juggernaut hurtling from one victory to another and narrowly, just narrowly, failing to secure not only world domination, but also a "great German oil empire" (p. 45). On the contrary, "in reality, the military and politicians found themselves caught up, on the one hand, in the myth of their own invincibility, in their delusions of world conquest, and in their ideological megalomania, and on the other hand in the world of raw facts, the impossibility of enforcing their hybrid strategic visions, and their military and political failures and disappointments" (p. 41). At the heart of this book lies a forceful demonstration of the great gap between so-called German elites' grandiose plans and their inability to overcome the mundane, but exigent, obstacles to realizing them.

Although his expertise in the field of energy history is indisputable, Eichholtz is not interested in oil for oil's sake.[1] Rather, he singles out the Third Reich's fuel problem to serve as _pars pro toto_ for its military and strategic planning. It was, after all, a problem that every European power preparing for war in the 1930s had to solve. The lessons of the Great War were clear: the relative inferiority of the fuel supply available to the German army, navy, and air force relative to that of the Allies had been decisive. In Lord Curzon's oft-cited opinion, "the Allied cause had floated to victory on a wave of oil."[2] If, in the words of a contemporary geologist, winning the First World War had been impossible "without gasoline for automobiles and airplanes, without oil for lighting in dugouts and on the homeland's flat soil, without diesel oil for submarines, and without lubricating oil for the innumerable machines in industry and transportation," the increasing demands of an enlarged navy, a powerful air force, and an increasingly motorized army made a petroleum-strapped victory even more unthinkable thirty years later.[3]

Nevertheless, in the 1930s, Germany seemed impossibly far from oil independence. Two-thirds of its oil consumption was covered by imports, most of them from North and South America. Adolf Hitler knew it would be difficult to reconcile the anticipated post-mobilization growth in demand with a nearly inevitable shortage in the event of a war-related blockade, and demanded in August 1936 that Germany complete the move to its own fuel production within eighteen months. Synthetic fuel production played a critical role.[4] But despite its frequent use of terms like "self-supply" and "autarky," the Nazi regime was "helpless and incompetent" (p. 9). The chaos and incoherence of energy policy from shortly before Hitler's rise to power until 1938 have been described in great detail by Titus Kockel ("no captain steered this ship," he notes with evident disdain).[5] Eichholtz's periodization therefore reflects not so much well-known political events on the domestic or international stage, but more specifically a turning point in Germany's oil policy that he, like Kockel, finds critical: only in the summer of 1938 did a concentrated attempt to follow a specific fuel policy emerge.

The key figure behind the new direction taken in 1938 was Hermann Göring, who pulled together a group of experts to develop plans to move Germany towards the goal of preparing to mobilize. At the core of this new "Four-Year-Plan" organization was the Reichsstelle für Wirtschaftausbau, led by Carl Krauch of I. G. Farben. Along with Krauch, the planning team included General Georg Thomas, and Alfred Bentz, a leading petroleum geologist and Göring's "Bevollmächtigte[r] für die Förderung der Erdölgewinnung" (Deputy for Petroleum Production).[6] Although they represented competing private interests and at times advocated incompatible strategies, these men could all agree that estimates for Germany's fuel needs in the case of war had to be dramatically increased. Likewise, they were seduced by dreams of a Greater Germany with control over the most significant fuel supplies in Europe and the Near East--a vision that Eichholtz describes as "dangerously illusory" (p. 14), "hubris," and "the loss of every sense of reality in the field of fuel" (p. 15). Despite the prominent role of I. G. Farben's chairman, Krauch, and its director, Ernst Rudolf Fischer, there was never any doubt that synthetic oil would need to be supplemented by petroleum gained through military exploits. The "Four-Year-Plan" men, whom Eichholtz calls the "masterminds of the future German oil empire" (p. 46) were, despite their expertise, "positively intoxicated by the early successes of the Wehrmacht" (p. 92).

Although the book's title might seem to imply that Germany waged war in order to secure access to oil, the narrative itself does not suggest that this was the case. On the contrary, the thirst for oil seems to have been as much driven by military success as it was an inspiration for military engagement. The attraction of oil was not its value on the world market, but its indispensability to achieving and maintaining expansive imperial power.

The chief of staff for military economy, Major General Georg Thomas, took Japan as his explicit model, noting that Japan "first carved out, according to plan, the basis for its war economy with the help of military operations in order then to proceed to the realization of its plans for world power" (p. 11). After introducing the fundamental fuel supply problem and outlining early successes in Austria, Poland, and on the western front, Eichholtz presents both phases of the process described by Thomas--planning and military operations--in sections devoted to specific geographical regions: Romania, Iraq, and the all-important Caucasus.

The greatest obstacle to developing a realistic fuel policy seems to have been Germany's early military successes; Hitler must have been pleasantly surprised to note that one year after the beginning of the war, Germany's fuel supplies exceeded their September 1, 1939 levels by 57 percent. Thanks to the Galician oilfields in southeastern Poland, the Polish campaign brought a net increase. Victories in the west were helpful not so much because of the diminutive oilfields in Pechelbronn (Alsace), but rather because of large quantities of stored oil found in refineries in Rotterdam, Antwerp, and La Rochelle. The annexation of Austria had brought newly discovered oilfields in the Vienna basin under German control. The Germans were able to increase production in those fields by more than twenty-one times. Could it be that German expertise would work similar wonders in the Galician oilfields, and even in Romania? Göring gave a speech on September 9, 1939, as German troops headed towards the Galician oilfields, in which he noted, "the Poles have only exploited 10 percent of their 'natural resources (_Erdschätze_),'" and boasted that "we will soon have a utilization of 100 percent" (p. 18). The lessons Göring and his group of economic experts gathered from the experiences of 1939 and 1940 encouraged them. First, Germany was able to extract more oil from conquered territories than the conquest itself had cost. Second, withdrawing forces had substantially damaged neither the Polish oilfields nor the western oil facilities.

Eichholtz's summation is sobering: "In the summer of 1940, German imperialism seemed to stand on the pinnacle of success, both militarily and economically. In reality, the German leadership had problems to solve that were more difficult than ever before" (p. 40).

With hindsight, it is easy enough to see signs of the dangers inherent in Göring and Hitler's heady plans for economic exploitation. Germany's early victories in Galicia were soon repulsed by a Soviet push into eastern Galicia that forced Germany to retreat to the border designated by the "friendship treaty" between the two powers--a border that lay west of the most productive Galician oilfields (Boryslav and Drohobych). More foreboding than this was the fact that despite their "great plans to modernize the _'polnische Wirtschaft'_ in the oil industry" (p. 20) ("Polish management" being a ubiquitous slur for sloppy, careless, or backward business practices), the German occupiers were not able to do more than just barely maintain Polish production at its prewar levels, in part because they neglected to invest in any kind of long-term reconstruction. A contemporary analyst made less of Germany's culpability for low Galician production levels than Eichholtz does here--the Petroleum Industry War Council in the United States was told in 1941 that "Poland's negligible oil industry, enemy-occupied and Nazi-dominated, has doubtless been mulcted to the limit."[7]

The most significant economic outcome of Germany's early military victories in Poland and western Europe was not, however, a direct improvement in oil supply in those territories, but rather the influence that the impression of German strength had on Germany's relations with Romania, which had been the fourth largest oil producer in the world in 1936. (That 1936 had represented Romania's all-time production peak would only become clear later.) Most Romanian oil companies were controlled by foreign capital. (French, British, and Dutch shareholders controlled 45 percent of the capital in Romanian oil companies, Romanians 43 percent, U.S.-Americans 9 percent, Italians 3 percent, and Germans only 0.2 percent.) After the war began, Germany had an advantage that those other countries did not: the bellicose and revisionist Romanian government saw its own best interest in an alliance with Germany--after all, "no one else, not even Great Britain, was in the position to arm the Romanian military" (p. 30). Thanks to its victories in Poland and elsewhere, Germany had arms to trade for oil--and that is exactly what it did, at extremely favorable rates. Eichholtz characterizes the behavior of German firms in Romania as imperialist--thanks to hostile takeovers and tremendous political pressure, German companies (such as Deutsche Bank) were able to secure control over formerly French and Belgian holdings in Romania. Soon the German share of control over Romanian oil production rose to 47 percent, leading Hermann Neubacher, Germany's "Special Representative for Economic and Transportation Issues" in Bucharest, to claim with pride that Romania had been turned into a "gas station" for the German military that "ran as smoothly as an automated machine" (p. 36)--a claim Eichholtz says was, in 1941, not exaggerated.

As in Galicia, German oil experts expected that their influence in Romania would lead to a dramatic increase in production. But here, too, they would be disappointed. In 1941, Romania accounted for 96.8 percent of German oil imports, and it remained the most important foreign source of oil for the German military until the summer of 1944. But Germany's declared goal of raising Romanian production was never realized, for several reasons. First, the fields were actually reaching the point of exhaustion. Second, Germany could afford to dedicate neither the capital nor the time required for successful exploration, drilling, and exploitation of new fields (the riskiest and most capital-intensive stage of oil production). Additionally, the same Romanian nationalism that made cooperation with Germany attractive (Hitler had promised Romania unspecified land in the Soviet Union as a reward for loyal alliance) made Romanian politicians reluctant to give up total control over their own natural resources.

The Middle East was at the center of all experts' plans for supplying the anticipated German empire with fuel after the war was over. Both Bentz and Ernst Rudolf Fischer, the director of I. G. Farben and head of the mineral oil section of the Reichswirtschaftministerium, prepared memoranda in 1941 in which they concluded that the oil reserves of the Near East (meant were Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Iran) would be absolutely critical.

Despite the appeal of a potential "peripheral" anti-British strategy (that is, drawing Britain's attention to the margins of its empire by carefully selected engagements), the contingent that supported destroying the British Empire rather than the Soviet Union was "by no means a lasting, consistent, or united, not to mention organized, fraction within the ruling class" (p. 54). Within the regime itself, the top priority was the "anti-Bolshevik crusade and colonial war" (p. 55), and the resources available to operations in the Middle East were limited. Eichholtz completely dismisses Winston Churchill's claim that the Germans barely missed securing control over Syria, Iraq, and Iran as "lying outside the realm of the possible"; Germany's half-hearted attempts to encourage uprisings in Iraq were nothing more than a "sad operetta war" (p. 79).

Galicia, Romania, Iraq, synthetic fuel production--all these played a role in Germany's fuel production plans. Nevertheless, it was the oilfields of the Caucasus that would prove decisive. In a monograph that is the starting point for any Anglophone researcher setting out to write a book about oil, Daniel Yergin notes that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union with the specific purpose of capturing the oil fields of the Caucasus.[8] Eichholtz's account, however, emphasizes that going after the oilfields of the Caucasus did more to increase fuel demand than fuel supply-- and that Göring's advisors foresaw this problem. In so doing, he does not undermine the importance of the fuel question to the planning and carrying out of Operation Barbarossa so much as reiterate that this operation was symptomatic of a regime that repeatedly created problems it could not solve.

In June 1941, Göring signed a document stressing that "'the main economic goal of the operation is to win for Germany as much food and petroleum as possible'" (p. 86). But what would really be required in order to gain control of the oil of the Caucasus? What seemed on the surface like a question of controlling territory (a traditional military goal) quickly became much more complicated. As Eichholtz explains, Germany would have not only to secure and use the fuel supplies it found in the Caucasus, but also to secure, repair, or create the infrastructure, tools, and equipment necessary to keep oil production and refining active. This would require the ongoing maintenance, construction, and repair of derricks, oil wells, refineries, pipelines, pumping stations, storage facilities, mixing and filling stations, reservoirs, barrels, tanks, railroads, and much more.

Eichholtz mentions dozens of studies examining disagreements between advocates of an attack on the Caucasus and advocates of an attack on Moscow and its surrounding armaments industry, nothing that such debates often occur "under the unserviceable premise that one of the two sides represented the 'right' strategy and the other the 'wrong' one" (p. 93). The problem they faced, however, had no good solution. German troops were exhausted and Soviet manpower seemed inexhaustible. Rather than choosing between two imperfect options, Hitler sent troops simultaneously south to the Caucasus and east towards Stalingrad. This decision "rested on a catastrophic self-delusion regarding the relative strength, and in particular regarding the material and moral potential of the Soviet Union" (p. 95). Germany's long string of military successes was abruptly cut off with the failed attack on Moscow. Nowhere, however, was the gap between "goals and means" as great as in the south, where Hitler hoped as late as December 1941 to gain control of the Caucasian oil wells before the end of the year. When the Germans reached Khadyzhensk (southwest of Maikop) in August 1942, they were horrified to find the oilfields in a condition much worse than even their most pessimistic imaginings had anticipated. Bentz visited the oilfields and reported, "[e]verything is broken. It is gruesome to look at. Every nail has to be brought along [from Germany]" (p. 125). For the next four months, the Technical Brigade Mineral Oil (TBM) worked desperately to return the oilfields to working condition: "The recklessness with which the German leadership adhered to its oil strategy becomes conspicuously apparent when one considers that in this time not a single major military unit was sent from the Caucasus to support the relief of Stalingrad" (p. 129). Ultimately, this dedication to the oilfields of the Caucasus would produce less than 1,000 tons of oil--most of it used locally by the TBM itself.

This book, though brief, is packed full of illustrative detail, rich footnotes, careful textual analysis of archival documents, and more than a little polemical language. Because it is in German, it does not lend itself to use in the U.S. classroom, which is a shame. Although it is devoted to a specific topic, its underlying argument stresses the vast gulf separating Hitler's grandiose plans for the German Reich and the thoughtless irresponsibility with which actions were taken to achieve goals for which no adequate preparations had been made.

Notes

[1]. Eichholtz's other works on the topic of oil include _Deutsche Politik und rumänisches Öl, 1938-1941_ (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2005), and _Die Bagdadbahn: Mesopotamien und die deutsche Ölpolitik bis 1918. Aufhaltsamer Übergang ins Erdölzeitalter_ (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007).

[2]. Arthur J. Marder, _From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919_, vol. 2, _The War Years: To the Eve of Jutland_ (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 332.

[3]. Ferdinand Friedensburg, "Das Erdöl auf dem Gebiet des galizischen und rumänischen Kriegsschauplatzes, 1914-1918,"

_Militärwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen_ 70 (1939): 455.

[4]. There is, not surprisingly, a considerable literature on Germany's fuel problems and strategies during the National Socialist period. On the role of I. G. Farben in particular, see Peter Hayes, _Industry and Ideology: I. G. Farben in the Nazi Era_ (Cambridge: University Press, 1987).

[5]. Titus Kockel, _Deutsche Ölpolitik, 1928-1938_ (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005), 334.

[6]. Bentz is a leading figure in Kockel's monograph.

[7]. George A. Hill, Jr., _Trends in the Oil Industry in 1944 (Including United States Foreign Oil Policy): As Presented to the Petroleum Industry War Council, January 12, 1944_ (Washington, DC: Petroleum Industry War Council, 1944), 10.

[8]. Daniel Yergin, _The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money&Power_ (New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 13.

Less than a month after "Barbarossa" was launched, Army Group South had to replace half of its trucks with Russian horsedrawn "Panje-wagons" due to mechanical failure and lack of replacements.

The Shock of the Old

Twentieth-century horsepower was not a left-over from a pre-mechanical era; the gigantic horse-drawn metropolis of 1900 was new. In Britain, the most industrialised nation in the world in 1900, the use of horses for transportation peaked not in the early nineteenth century but in the early years of the twentieth. How could it be that horse transport expanded at the same time as trains pulled by 'iron horses'? The answer is that economic development and urbanisation went hand in hand with more horse-buses, horse-trams and horse-carriages. In addition, while train and ship carried goods over long distances, over shorter distances horse-drawn vehicles became ever more necessary. Thus visitors to London's Camden Market, on the site of a huge railway yard and interchange with the canal system, will note that many of the old buildings were stables. These were not there to house animals used for riding in nearby Regent's Park, but for draught animals. In 1924 the largest and most progressive British railway company, the London, Midland and Scottish, had as many horses as it had locomotives-10,000. By contrast it had just over 1,000 motor vehicles. In 1930 the London and North Eastern Railway railway had 7,000 steam locomotives and 5,000 horses, and only about 800 motor vehicles. There is no doubt though, that by 1914 in the great rich cities of the world, horse transport was giving way to the motor-powered buses, lorries and cars, and electric-powered trams.

In agriculture, the horsepower peak was to come later. For example, in Finland the horse population peaked in the 1950S because they were used in logging. The United States provides the most graphic example. Agricultural horsepower peaked in 1915 with more than 21 million on American farms, up from 11 million in 1880, a level to which it had returned by the mid-1930s. The US case is particularly interesting because at the beginning of the twentieth century it had highly mechanised agriculture, but this was horse-powered agriculture. We are apt to underestimate the implications of relying on horsepower in the countryside. At the peak of agricultural horse use in Britain and the USA, about one-third of agricultural land was devoted to the horses' upkeep: they were large consumers of grass, hay and grain. Mechanised agriculture helped the US to become the richest large nation in the world, and one that by the 1910s was by far and away the largest producer of motor vehicles.

In one area of twentieth-century life, the use of horses for transport was particularly remarkable. The Great War and the Second World War are seen as industrial wars, as feats of engineering and science and organisation. And so they were. Because of this both involved huge numbers of horses, which, like men, were conscripted. Every belligerent depended on them, as well as on mules and other beasts of burden. Before the Great War, the small British army had 25,000 horses but by the middle of 1917 the great new mass British armies had 591,000 horses, 213,000 mules, 47,000 camels and 11,000 oxen. In late 1917 there were 368,000 British horses and 82,000 British mules on the Western Front alone, hugely outnumbering British motor vehicles. This was not a question of a deluded commitment to cavalry. Only one-third of the British horses on the Western Front were for riding (and only some of these were in cavalry units)-the great majority transported the vast quantities of materiel required in modern war, particularly from the railheads to the front. The use of the animals was not an exceptional emergency measure to make use of Britain's existing horses. Horses were desperately needed, and Britain bought 429,000 of them and 275,000 mules from the US, and imported vast quantities of fodder too. Britain's ability to exploit world horse markets was crucial to its military power. In any case the British were not unique. The vast American armies pouring into Europe in 1918 equipped each of their very large infantry divisions with 2,000 draught horses, another 2,000 riding horses and no fewer than 2,700 mules: one horse or mule for every four men.

An even starker example of the continuing importance of the horse is provided by the Second World War. The German army, so often portrayed as centred on armoured formations, had even more horses in the Second World War than the British army had in the Great War. The horse was the 'basic means of transport in the Germany Army.' German rearmament in the 1930s involved mass purchase of horses such that by 1939 the army had 590,000, leaving 3 million others in the rest of the country. Each infantry division needed around 5,000 horses to move itself. For the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, 625,000 horses were assembled. As the war progressed the German horse army got ever larger as the Wehrmacht pillaged the agricultural horses of the nations it conquered. At the beginning of 1945 it had 1.2 million horses; the total loss of horses in the war is estimated at 1.5 million. Could it be that the Great War and the Second World War saw more horses in battle than any previous war? Could it be that the draught horse-to-soldier ratio also increased, despite the use of other forms of transport? Certainly the Wehrmacht embarked on its march to Moscow with many times more horses than Napoleon's Grand Armee. Indeed, it took longer to get there.

By David Edgerton

LINK

Compared to the stripped-down divisions left holding the defensive front, the German southern attack forces that assembled for Operation Blau seemed sleek and powerful. However, this appearance was deceiving. The divisions assigned to Army Group South (later divided into Army Groups A and B) suffered from many deficiencies that compromised their offensive and defensive capabilities.

In May 1942, most of the infantry divisions in Army Group South stood at about 50 percent strength. Although brought nearly up to strength over the next six weeks, the southern divisions had little time or opportunity to assimilate their new troops. Only one-third of the infantry divisions committed to the upcoming attack could be taken out of the line in early spring for rehabilitation; the remaining divisions stayed in their old winter defensive positions and tried to train and integrate their replacements even as they fought desultory defensive battles against minor Russian attacks. As a result, the general training standards in the southern assault forces were far below those of the 1939-41 German armies. Losses in officers, NCOs, and technical personnel during the 1941 winter battles had further sapped the combat abilities of the German forces. In fact, many German units now regretted the use of artillerymen, signalers, and other specialists as infantry during the winter months since they were so hard to replace. Moreover, even after strip-ping vehicles and equipment from the northern forces, Army Group South's divisions lacked their full complement of motor transport. According to a General Staff study in late May, the spearhead forces (those divisions that would actually lead the attacks toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus) would embark with only 80 percent of their vehicles, and the follow-on infantry divisions and supply columns would be slowed by shortages of both horses and vehicles. For all of the ruthless economies inflicted on their poorer relatives to the north, Army Groups A and B would therefore be more clumsy, be less mobile, and have less logistical staying power than the German armies that had launched Barbarossa a year before.

Army Group B had two distinct missions in Operation Blau: first, to carve its way eastward along the southern bank of the Don River some 300 miles to Stalingrad, and second, to post a defensive screen along its northern flank as it went, protecting its own rear and the further unfolding of Army Group A's attack to the south. Though not the decisive thrust (Army Group A would actually push into the Caucasus toward the strategic oil fields), Army Group B's mission was crucial to German success.

*
Army Group B's far-flung tasks could not be accomplished with the German divisions at hand. Consequently, the most critical jobs were given to the more powerful German armies, and the less-demanding tasks were allotted to a polyglot of allied contingents. The Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzer Army were to attack toward Stalingrad, while the veteran Second Army was to seize Voronezh and then form the link between Army Group Center's defensive front and Army Group B's flank pickets. The job of covering the long flank in between was handed to allied armies of lesser fighting value.

*
In the spring of 1942, Hitler prevailed on the Reich's military partners to provide additional combat forces to augment the German armies. Romania, Hungary, and Italy all reluctantly consented to deploy additional forces on the Eastern Front, though they each insisted that their contingents fight under their own army headquarters rather than as separate divisions in German corps and armies. By early August, thirty-six allied divisions were committed in the southern portion of the front, roughly 40 percent of the total number of Axis divisions in that region. Even though German liaison staffs were assigned to these forces, the combat effectiveness of the allied armies was generally poor. So by relegating the allied forces to purely defensive missions along the German flanks, the German High Command figured to minimize the demands placed on these forces while still conserving Wehrmacht divisions for crucial combat roles.

Through early summer, the forces posted along Army Group B's northern flank had little difficulty in fending off Soviet assaults. A Second Army afteraction report on 21 July 1942, following the defeat of Soviet counterattacks near Voronezh, was particularly reassuring. Written at the request of the General Staff's Training Branch in Berlin and circulated throughout the German Army's higher echelons, this report allayed lingering fears caused by the Red Army's winter successes in 1941-42. "Russian infantry in the attack is even worse than before," the report began. "Much massing, greater vulnerability to artillery and mortar fire and to flanking maneuver. Scarcely any more night attacks. This report brightened the prospects for successful defense along Army Group B's northern flank.

Despite this reassurance, Army Group B's left wing remained vulnerable. Hitler's own interest in this potential weakness began in early spring when he ordered that the Second Army be reinforced with several hundred antitank guns as an additional guarantee against the collapse of Blau's northern shield. In anticipation of its defensive operations, Second Army also had been assigned numerous engineer detachments, labor units, and Organization Todt work parties for general construction and fortification. After its successful attack on Voronezh in early July, Second Army attempted to fortify its portion of the exposed flank using these assets throughout the remainder of the summer.

To the east beyond Second Army, however, the Don flank was held by troops of the Hungarian Second Army, the Italian Eighth Army, and the Romanian Third Army. Other Romanian formations, temporarily under the command of Fourth Panzer Army, held the open flank south of Stalingrad. As expected, these forces proved to be mediocre in combat, leading German commanders to be even more uneasy about this long, exposed sector. By September, General Maximilian von Weichs, the commander of Army Group B, regarded his northern flank to be he so endangered that he ordered special German "intervention units" (Eingreifgruppen) rotated into reserve behind both the German- and allied-held portions of his left wing.

The use of intervention units was not new to German defensive doctrine. In fact, the Elastic Defense doctrine of 1917 and 1918 had required that intervention divisions be used to reinforce deliberate counterattacks against particularly stubborn enemy penetrations. In 1942, however, the role of these intervention units went beyond counterattack. They could also provide advance reinforcement "corsetting" to threatened sectors since, according to Weichs' explanation, the Russians "seldom were able to conceal preparations for attack." Thus, the intervention units could support faltering allied contingents, hopefully steeling their resistance until additional help could arrive.

In October, General Zeitzier, the new chief of the Army General Staff, began to echo Weichs' concerns. In a lengthy presentation to Hitler, Zeitzier argued that the allied lines between Voronezh and Stalingrad constituted "the most perilous sector of the Eastern Front," a situation that posed "an enormous danger which must be eliminated." Although Hitler made sympathetic noises, he refused to accept Zeitzier's conclusions and ordered no major changes to German deployments or missions.

Even though the Fuhrer rejected Zeitzier's recommendation that German forces withdraw from Stalingrad, he did authorize minor actions to help shore up the allied armies. One of these measures was the interspersing of additional German units (primarily antitank battalions) among the allied divisions. In accordance with Hitler's published defensive instructions, if the allied units were overrun, these few German units were to "stand fast and limit the enemy's penetration or breakthrough. By holding out in this way, they should create more favorable conditions for our counterattack." Another protective measure was the repositioning of a combined German-Romanian panzer corps behind the Romanian Third Army. This unit, the XLVIII Panzer Corps, consisted of only an untried Romanian armored division and a battle-worn, poorly equipped German panzer division. Weak as it was, this corps was not placed under the control of the Romanians or even Weichs. Rather, it was designated as a special Fuhrer Reserve under the personal direction of Hitler and therefore could not be committed to combat without first obtaining his release." Finally, from October onward, German signal teams were placed throughout the allied armies so the German High Command could independently monitor the day-to-day performance of those forces without having to rely on reports from the allies themselves. These and other measures were not executed without some friction, however: the Italians, for example, huffily rejected German suggestions for improving their defensive positions.

The allied units were not the only soft spots on the defensive flank. By autumn, several newly raised German divisions, hastily consigned to Army Group B in June in order to flesh out its order of battle, were also causing some concern. For example, barely days before its preliminary June attack on Voronezh to secure the German flank, Second Army had received six brand-new German divisions. Though game enough in their initial attacks, these units quickly began to unravel due Tu poor training and inexperienced leadership. In one case, the 385th Infantry Division reportedly suffered "unnecessarily high losses" including half of its company commanders and five of six battalion commanders in just six weeks, due to deficient training. This fiery baptism ruined these divisions for later defensive use. The loss of so many personnel in such a short period of time left permanent scars, traumatizing the divisions before time and battle experience could produce new leaders and heal the units' psychological wounds. Second Army assessed the situation on I October 1942 and informed Army Group B that these once-new divisions were no longer fully reliable even for limited defensive purposes and that heavy defensive fighting might well stampede them. Unless they could be pulled out of the line for rest and rehabilitation, these divisions, which accounted for nearly half of Second Army's total infantry strength, could only be trusted in the defense of small, quiet sectors.

The German southern offensive thus trusted its long northern flank to a conglomeration of listless allied and battle-weary German units. Like the forces farther north on the defensive front of Army Groups Center and North, these armies were stretched taut, manning thin lines with few reserves beyond insubstantial local forces. Barely strong enough to hold small probing attacks at bay during the summer and early fall, these armies lacked the strength to meet a major Russian offensive without substantial reinforcement.

Shielded by this doubtful defensive umbrella, Operation Blau made good initial progress. In fierce house-to-house fighting, General Friedrich Paulus' Sixth Army gnawed its way into Stalingrad, the projected eastern terminus of Army Group B's defensive barrier. Despite nagging shortages of fuel and other supplies, as well as Hitler's confused switching of forces and missions, Army Group A had cleared Rostov and penetrated the northern reaches of the Caucasus Mountains by late August.

At this point, the German campaign lost whatever coherence it might have possessed earlier. Forgetting that Army Group B's mission was but secondary to that of the advance toward the oil fields, Hitler became obsessed with capturing Stalingrad. Ordering not only Sixth Army but even the cream of Fourth Panzer Army into the city, Hitler committed the German forces to a prolonged battle of attrition for control of Stalingrad's rubbled streets and factories. By late autumn, Operation Blau had degenerated into a test of military manhood between Hitler and Stalin on the Volga.

Whatever the outcome of the battle for possession of Stalingrad, by October it was clear that another winter defensive campaign was imminent. As described earlier, Hitler's Operations Order I ordered winter defensive preparations on all parts of the front, though in that same directive he bade the Stalingrad fighting continue. Yet even the Sixth Army in and around Stalingrad began to take preliminary steps for a winter defense. After discussions with Sixth Army staff members, an Army High Command liaison officer dispatched a memorandum to Berlin in mid-October assessing the feasibility of fortifying a miniature "east wall" on the Volga steppes and recommending the transfer of additional engineer units to Paulus' command for that purpose.

The German defensive arrangements along the Don River held together only until 19 November, when a Red Army offensive flattened the Romanian Third Army northwest of Stalingrad and knifed southward toward the rear of the German Sixth and Fourth Panzer Armies.

A day later, another Soviet attack burst through the Romanian lines south of Stalingrad. On 23 November, these pincers met near Kalach, severing Sixth Army's land supply routes. The collapse of the Axis defenses along the Don River and the encirclement of Sixth Army transformed the situation of the southern front, casting the Wehrmacht forces there into a desperate struggle for their very survival.

The ensuing winter defensive battles in southern Russia can be divided into three separate phases. In the first phase, lasting from 19 November until 23 December 1942, the Germans scrambled to hold an advanced defensive line near the confluence of the Don and Chir Rivers from which they could support relief operations toward Stalingrad. Once the attacks to relieve Sixth Army were irretrievably repulsed, the focus of German defensive efforts shifted. During the second phase, lasting from the last week of December 1942 to mid-February 1943, German divisions fought to block another huge Soviet envelopment, this one aimed at the rear of the entire German southern wing near Rostov. Finally, from mid-February until the spring thaw, the third phase of the winter battles saw the restabilization of the front south of Kursk.

German defensive operations differed in each phase, and these differences reflected variations in the mission, the strength and composition of German forces, and the actions of the enemy. In no case, however, were these chaotic defensive actions conducted along doctrinal lines. Instead, from the initial collapse of the Romanian armies in November 1942 to the stabilization of the front in March 1943, German defensive operations were once again almost completely extemporaneous.

The first phase of fighting focused on the fate of the beleaguered German Sixth Army in Stalingrad. Ordered to stand fast and repeatedly assured by Hitler that Sixth Army would be relieved, General Paulus swiftly put his forces into a giant hedgehog defensive posture.

Establishing an effective defensive perimeter at Stalingrad was doubly difficult due to a desperate shortage of infantrymen (the bulk of whom had fallen in the earlier street fighting) and the lack of prepared positions. On the eastern face of the Stalingrad pocket, German troops continued to occupy the defensive positions built up during previous fighting for the city. However, the southern and western portions of the perimeter lay almost completely on shelterless steppes, and the hasty defenses there never amounted to more than a few bunkers and shallow connecting trenches. (Because the steppes were almost treeless, no lumber was available for building fires for heat or for constructing covered defensive positions.) Significantly, the subsequent Soviet attacks to liquidate the surrounded Sixth Army came almost exclusively from the south and west against the least well-established portions of the German defenses. On 23 November, well-built positions to the north of Stalingrad were rashly abandoned without orders by the German LI Corps commander, General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, who had hoped thereby to provoke an immediate breakout order from Paulus. This hasty action sacrificed the 94th Infantry Division, which was overrun and annihilated by Red Army forces during the movement to the rear, and also gave up virtually the only well-constructed defensive positions within the Stalingrad Kessel.

Sixth Army had difficulty in defending itself because of insufficient resources. Lack of fuel prevented the use of Paulus' three panzer and three motorized divisions as mobile reserves. Hoarding its meager fuel supplies for a possible breakout attempt, Sixth Army wound up employing most of its tanks and assault guns in static roles. Likewise, shortages of artillery ammunition and fortification materials hindered the German defense. The Luftwaffe's heroic attempts to airlift supplies into Stalingrad were hopelessly inadequate: since daily deliveries never exceeded consumption, the overall supply problem grew steadily worse in all areas. In some ways, the aerial resupply effort was counterproductive. Scores of medium bombers were diverted from ground support and interdiction missions to serve as additional cargo carriers, a move that emptied the skies of much-needed German combat air power at an extremely critical period.

For both tactical and logistical reasons, then, what the Nazi press dramatically called "Fortress Stalingrad" was, in reality, no fortress at all. Surrounded by no less than seven Soviet armies, Sixth Army was marooned on poor defensive ground without adequate forces, prepared positions, or stockpiles of essential supplies. Forbidden by Hitler to cut its way out of the encirclement, Sixth Army's eventual destruction was a foregone conclusion unless a relief attack could reestablish contact.

In response to this crisis, Hitler created Army Group Don under Field Marshal von Manstein on 20 November. Manstein was to restore order on the shattered southern front and, even more important in the short term, to direct a relief offensive to save Sixth Army. To accomplish this, Hitler promised Manstein six fresh infantry divisions, four panzer divisions, a Luftwaffe field division, and various other contingents.

Sixth Army's temporary aerial supply and eventual relief required the Germans to hold a forward defensive line along the Chir River, where the most advanced positions were only about forty miles from the Stalingrad perimeter. This line also covered the main departure airfields for the airlift and could serve as an excellent jumping-off point for a counterattack to link up with Sixth Army.

While Manstein worked out his plan for a relief attack, the Chir River line was held by whatever forces could be scraped together. Initially, these forces consisted of mixed combat units swept aside by the Russian offensive, alarm units called out from various support units, service troops, rear area security forces, convalescents, and casual personnel on leave. All these were formed into ad hoc battle groups and plugged into an improvised strongpoint defense along the Chir "like pieces of mosaic."

That this rabble managed to hold the Chir line, and even some bridgeheads on the eastern bank, was due as much to Soviet indifference as to German improvisation. Through early December, the Soviet High Command was content to tighten its coils around Stalingrad and made little effort to exploit the German disarray farther west. In so doing, the Soviets were avoiding their great strategic mistake of the previous winter, when Stalin's failure to concentrate forces on major objectives frittered away excellent opportunities to no decisive gain.

In mid-December, however, the fighting on the Chir front accelerated, with both sides committing substantial forces to this crucial area. On 12 December, Manstein began his relief attack toward Stalingrad. Intending to pin down German forces and to prevent reinforcement of the rescue effort, Soviet forces hurled themselves against the Chir line at several points. Meanwhile, the Germans reinforced the ragtag elements along the Chir with fresh units, most notably the reconstituted XLVIII Panzer Corps (11th Panzer Division, 336th Infantry Division, and 7th Luftwaffe Field Division). These mid-December defensive battles demonstrated both the capabilities and the limitations of German defenders during this phase.

The XLVIII Panzer Corps intended to hold its sector of the Chir front with two infantry divisions forward and a panzer division in reserve. The 336th Division was an excellent, full-strength unit that had recently arrived on the Russian Front from occupation duty in France. Even though reinforced somewhat with Luftwaffe flak and ground combat units, the division could only man its wide front by putting all its assets forward, holding only a handful of infantry, engineers, and mobile flak guns in reserve. Even so, the 336th Division formed "the pivot and shield" of the German defense. The 7th Luftwaffe Field Division, though well equipped and fully manned, was poorly trained and lacked leaders experienced in ground combat. Behind the infantry, General Hermann Balck's 11th Panzer Division, which had recently been transferred from Army Group Center after fighting in several tough defensive battles, assembled for duty as a mobile counterattack force. Although its infantry strength was fairly high, it (like other weakened divisions from the northern defensive front) had only a single battalion of Panzer Mark IVs in its entire tank regiment.

On 7 December, even as the Germans were still settling into position, Soviet tank forces penetrated the left flank of the 336th Division. The Germans had not yet had time to lay mines or erect antitank obstacles, and their few Paks could not be used effectively. (Though relatively flat, the steppes were crisscrossed by deep ravines that provided excellent covered approaches into the German positions.) Facilitated by the weakness of the German antiarmor defenses, Russian tanks forced their way through the thin infantry defenses, overran part of the division's artillery, and thrust some fifteen kilometers into the division rear. In a three-day running battle, the 11th Panzer Division carved up this Russian tank force with repeated counter-attacks against its flanks and rear. Despite the heady successes enjoyed by Baick's panzers and mechanized infantry (reports claimed seventy-five destroyed Russian tanks), the fighting was not all one-sided. For example, between 7 and 10 December, Russian tanks overran one infantry battalion of the 336th Division three different times.

Even tougher fighting followed. Beginning on 11 December, fresh Russian attacks charged against the Chir front, forcing several local penetrations. Though eventually broken by counterattacks and the fire of the 336th Division's artillery, these Soviet probes threatened to erode the German defenders by-attrition. In one case, a German battle group holding a bridgehead south of the Don-Chir confluence lost 18 officers and 750 men in ten days of combat. Breakthroughs in the 336th Division's front between 13 and 15 December produced an extremely confused situation, with groups of enemy and friendly troops finally so intermixed that German artillery could not be used effectively for fear of firing on its own forces. Moreover, Soviet tanks again broke through as far as the German artillery positions, overrunning some guns and knocking out others by direct fire. By nightfall on 15 December, the situation of the 336th Division had become so grave that, according to one staff officer, the division's continued survival depended "exclusively on outside help."

Again, the 11th Panzer Division saved the German position on the Chir. Harkening to desperate appeals from the 336th Division for additional antitank support, the 11th diverted three of its precious tanks to buttress the flagging infantry, while the balance of the German armor hammered the Soviet flanks. By 22 December, the Chir front was quiet as both sides slumped into exhaustion.

The battles on the Chir River had been a masterpiece of tactical improvisation by the Germans. Although regular combat troops were gradually brought into the fighting through reinforcement, the initial German defense had been conducted almost entirely by hastily organized contingents of service troops. While the performance of these units in no way matched that of regular combat veterans, their gritty stand fully vindicated the German Army's policies of training, organizing, and exercising rear-echelon alarm units on a regular basis.

Doctrinally, the committed German infantry forces in the XLVIII Panzer Corps' sector lacked the manpower and local reserves to conduct a competent defense in depth. Additionally, the German defense was throttled by Hitler's standing orders against tactical retreat, leaving the forward divisions little choice but to hold on to their initial positions even when penetrated or over-run. Short of antitank weapons, the German infantry forces were almost powerless against the Soviet armor. Had it not been for the availability of the 11th Panzer Division as a "fire brigade" counterattack force, the German defenders would almost certainly have been doomed to eventual annihilation in their positions clustered along the Chir.

The deft counterattacks by 11th Panzer Division repeatedly exploited speed, surprise, and shock action to destroy or scatter numerically superior Soviet forces. The generally open terrain provided a nearly ideal battlefield for mobile warfare, and the tank-versus-tank engagements almost resembled clashes in the North African desert more than they did other battles in Russia.

The Germans used simple command and control measures to conduct this fluid combat. According to General Balck's postwar accounts, command within the 11th Panzer Division was exercised almost entirely by daily verbal orders, amended as necessary on the spot by the division commander at critical points in the fighting. Liaison between the panzer units and the forward infantry divisions also was managed largely on a face-to-face basis. These casual arrangements were made possible in part by the rather simple coordination procedures that developed during the Chir fighting. The positions of the forward German infantry were well known and, due to Hitler's insistence, seldom changed. The broad sectors and relatively low force densities on both sides tended to leave units conveniently spaced. Balck's well-trained and experienced forces seldom operated in more than two or three maneuver elements. General Balck was thus able to truncate normal staff procedures largely because there were very few moving parts in the German machine, and even those were comfortably separated. However, the rude German control methods sacrificed many of the benefits of synchronization and close coordination. By General Balck's own admission, for example, little effort was made to integrate indirect fire with the German maneuver forces.

The German defensive efforts benefited from other favorable circumstances. The Soviet attacks on the Chir front were not conducted in overwhelming strength and were intended primarily as diversions to pin down German forces and to prevent reinforcement of the Stalingrad relief expedition. Also, the Russian assaults were piecemealed in time and space. Instead of a single, powerful attack in one sector, the Red Army forces jabbed at the Chir line for nearly two weeks with several smaller blows. As a result, the Germans were able to make the most of their limited armored reserves. Equally beneficial was the poor Soviet combined arms coordination in these battles. The Russian attacks were conducted mainly by tank forces, and the Soviet infantry played only a minor accompanying role. Therefore, the Germans concentrated their panzers solely on the destruction of the enemy armor and paid scarcely any attention to the enemy riflemen. This also greatly magnified German combat power, placing a premium on the superior tactical skill of the German tank crews while allowing the weaker German infantry to remain huddled in dugouts. Furthermore, the Red Army artillery remained amazingly silent throughout the battles, which left the Russian tank forces to fight without the benefit of suppressive fires. Soviet air power likewise was ineffective.

The German defensive successes on the Chir River were victories of a limited sort. First, despite their tactical virtuosity, even the German panzers were unable to wrest the operational initiative from the Soviets. Throughout the December actions, the Germans were compelled to respond to the uncoordinated Red Army blows by fighting a series of attritional engagements. The Russians retained complete freedom of maneuver and, in all likelihood, could have crushed the German resistance if they had been more skillful in massing or in coordinating their efforts. Second, even though the Germans inflicted serious losses on their enemies, they also suffered substantial casualties of their own. The hapless 7th Luftwaffe Field Division disintegrated during the Chir battles, and by mid-January, its ragged remnants had been amalgamated into other formations. The 11th Panzer Division, whose bold exploits saved the Chir position on several occasions, saw its combat power diminished by half from the beginning of December. Third, though driving back Soviet attacks, neither the 11th Panzer Division nor the balance of the XLVIII Panzer Corps was able to hold the ground that it won by counterattack. To defend terrain required infantry, and neither the panzer formations nor the overextended German infantry divisions had sufficient riflemen to conduct a positional defense. Conversely, German tanks performed best in fluid combat and were notably less successful when trying to drive Red Army troops from their consolidated positions. For example, the Soviets managed to hold a few well-entrenched bridgeheads on the western bank of the Don-Chir line despite repeated German armored attacks.

Although rebuffed by the skill and steadfastness of the German defenders, the Soviet attacks against the Chir River line succeeded in preventing reinforcement of Manstein's relief attack on Stalingrad. Under Manstein's concept, the XLVIII Panzer Corps was to have joined those elements of Fourth Panzer Army (LVII Panzer Corps) making the main relief attempt from farther south. However, as already seen, the XLVIII Panzer Corps had struggled just to stave off its own destruction and never entered into the offensive effort. Without that support and without even the full reinforcements that Hitler had originally promised, the German drive to open a corridor to Sixth Army had to be abandoned after 23 December. From that time on, the defensive battles in the south entered a new phase, with German defensive efforts shifting to the containment of a new major Soviet offensive attempt to sever the entire Axis southern wing.

The new Russian offensive began by scattering the Italian Eighth Army, which was still in position on the northern Don. Driving southward toward Rostov, the Soviets aimed at cutting the communications of both Army Group Don and Army Group A. Also, this attack directly enveloped the German defensive line on the Chir, making the German position there untenable. This not only spoiled all prospects for a renewed attack to free Sixth Army, but it also resulted in the eventual loss of the forward airfields supplying Paulus' encircled divisions.

In contrast to the earlier jabs against the Chir line, the new Russian advance swept forward on a broad front, brushing aside the counterattacks of the weak 27th Panzer Division (earlier posted behind the Italians as a stiffener) as if they were bee stings. Clearly, the sleight-of-hand defensive tactics used by the Germans so successfully on the Chir River were not sufficient to cope with this new threat.

Two major problems hampered German attempts to forge an effective defensive response to the ripening crisis. The first problem was the lack of fresh combat forces. The best units in the German Army, groomed in the spring of 1942 to carry out Operation Blau, were now either wintering uselessly in the Caucasus (Army Group A) or else withering away at Stalingrad or in vain attempts to relieve it (Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army). The various impromptu commands set up to defend the Chir and lower Don were barely adequate for that task alone and stood little chance in a set-piece battle against the massive new Soviet onslaught.

In addition, reinforcements could be shifted from other parts of the front only with difficulty. The drained units of Army Groups Center and North had been stripped of assets months earlier to provide resources for the Blau offensive and were hard-pressed to resist the Soviet attacks drumming against their own positions. Therefore, local commanders from the northern defensive front, who saw only their own pressing problems, opposed attempts to siphon reserves away from them. Only at the highest command levels could the assembly and transfer of reserves be accomplished fairly and effectively. In this case, however, the smooth redistribution of forces by Hitler and the Army High Command was handicapped by complex variations in the status and structure of German units.

By this point in the war, most German divisions had major discrepancies between their paper organization and their actual structure. This was due partly to unredeemed combat losses, partly to the German Army's de facto policy of propagating organizational peculiarities by constantly changing the divisional structure of newly forming units, and partly to the stripping of resources from some divisions for assignment elsewhere. Some frontline units, for example, had little or no motorized transport, substituting instead horse-drawn wagons or even bicycles for logistical and tactical mobility. Others were short their full complement of artillery or else had entire battalions fitted out exclusively with captured guns. Other divisions lacked reconnaissance units or even full infantry regiments that had been detached for antipartisan duties.

In addition to organizational oddities, German divisions also differed greatly in combat readiness due to fluctuations in their morale, training, replacement status, combat experience, fatigue, and quality of junior leadership. These eccentricities made centralized management of German forces extremely difficult, since nearly every division deviated in some way from its normal status. Since Hitler and the Army General Staff were not always aware of these organizational peculiarities, some confusion ensued when corps and army commanders, ordered to release divisions for emergency use elsewhere on the front, sometimes forwarded units that were unsuited for the particular missions for which they had been requested. In December 1942, the Army High Command initiated a new reporting system to correct this situation, requiring corps and army commanders to submit secret subjective evaluations of their divisions' combat worthiness on a regular basis. (Frontline commanders found it to be in their own interest to be as candid as possible in these assessments, since a frank statement of liabilities was considered to be some protection from having to feed additional forces into the "Stalingrad oven.") Such inventories made the paper management of the threadbare German resources more efficient, but the fundamental lack of adequate combat forces to cover the expanding Eastern Front crisis remained unresolved.

The second problem shackling German operations was the Germans' own Byzantine command arrangement. Afield in the southern portion of the Eastern Front were three autonomous army groups (Army Groups A, B, and Don). No single commander or headquarters coordinated the efforts of these army groups save for the Fuhrer himself. From his East Prussian headquarters, Hitler continued to render his own dubious brand of command guidance. Inspired by the success of his stand-fast methods the previous winter, the Fuhrer now balked at ordering the timely withdrawal and reassembly of the far-flung German armies, even truculently resisting the transfer of divisions from the lightly engaged Army Group A to the mortally beset Army Group Don. Hitler's opening response to the new Soviet offensive against the rear of the German southern wing was to decree a succession of meaningless halt lines, ordering the overmatched German forces to hold position after position "to the last man."

Field Marshal von Manstein, whose Army Group Don was to halt the Soviet offensive, confronted both of these major problems head-on. In a series of teletype messages to Hitler, Manstein pleaded for the release of several divisions from the idle Army Group A in the Caucasus in order to put some starch into the German defense. Though relenting too late to assist the relief attack on Stalingrad, Hitler at last ordered a few divisions and then finally all of First Panzer Army to move from Army Group A to Manstein's control."

Manstein also pressed Hitler about command authority. In late December, Hitler offered to place Army Group A under Manstein's operational control. However, this consolidation of authority was not consummated because, as Manstein later explained, Hitler "was unwilling to accept my conditions" that there be no "possibility of interference by Hitler or of Army Group A's invoking . . . decisions in opposition to my own." Less than two weeks later, furious that Hitler was still insisting on a no-retreat policy and forcing him to beg permission for each tactical withdrawal, Manstein presented the Fuhrer with an ultimatum. On 5 January, Manstein sent a message to the chief of the Army General Staff for Hitler's consideration: "Should . . . this headquarters continue to be tied down to the same extent as hitherto, I cannot see that any useful purpose will be served by my continuing as commander of Don Army Group. In the circumstances, it would appear more appropriate to replace me. . . ." Hitler chose to ignore Manstein's ultimatum, but he did at last concede a singular (though temporary) degree of autonomy and flexibility to Manstein for the conduct of defensive operations. Although Hitler's draconian stand-fast policy remained officially in effect, Manstein was allowed freedom of maneuver by means of a face-saving charade: instead of asking permission, Manstein would simply inform the Army High Command of Army Group Don's intention to take certain actions unless specifically countermanded, and Hitler by his silence would consent without actually abandoning his hold-to-the-last-man scruples.

As a result of this arrangement, Manstein conducted operations from early January until mid-February largely unfettered either by Hitler's customary interference or the rigid no-retreat dictum. No other German commander was allowed to enjoy these two privileges on such a large scale for the remainder of the war. As a consequence of this independence, German defensive operations during the second phase of the southern winter battles evinced a measure of flexibility, economy, and fluid maneuver unsurpassed on the Russian Front during the entire war.

While these command arrangements were being ironed out, the operational situation continued to deteriorate. Still more Soviet attacks had routed the Hungarians and the Italians, completing the disintegration of the entire original flank defensive line along the Don River east of Voronezh. By late January, hardly any organized Axis resistance remained between the surviving units of Army Group B (Second Army) at Voronezh and the hard-pressed forces for Army Group Don along the lower Don and Donets Rivers. The German Sixth Army, now in its death throes at Stalingrad, ironically provided one source of hope: the longer Paulus' troops could hold out, the longer they would continue to tie down the powerful Russian armies encircling them, thereby delaying the reinforcement of the widening Soviet attacks farther to the west.

Manstein's overall concept of operations was to combine the withdrawal of First Panzer Army units from the Caucasus with the establishment of a defensive screen facing northward against the onrushing Soviets. One by one, the First Panzer Army divisions were pulled through the Rostov bottleneck and redeployed to the northwest, extending the makeshift German defensive line ever westward. The Soviets could still outflank this line by extending the arc of their advance to the west and, in fact, did so even while maintaining frontal pressure along the Donets. Each of these wider envelopments, however, delayed the final decision and allowed Manstein to leapfrog more units into position. Moreover, the farther the Soviets shifted their forces to the west, the more tenuous the Russian supply lines became."

This operation was exceedingly delicate. Any major Soviet breakthrough or uncontested envelopment could cut through to the rail ganglia on which both Army Groups A and Don depended for their supplies. Army Group Don thus had to accomplish three tasks simultaneously: slow the Soviet frontal advance, shift units from east to west to parry Soviet envelopments, and preserve its forces by allowing timely withdrawals to prevent encirclement or annihilation.

These tasks had to be performed under several tactical handicaps. First, even with the gradual reinforcement by First Panzer Army, Manstein's forces remained generally inferior to those of the enemy. Discounting the late arrivals, most of the divisions of Army Group Don were extremely battle worn, having been in continuous combat for over two months. Too, the preponderance of the German forces were less mobile than the Soviet tank and mechanized forces opposing them, a factor that weighed heavily against Manstein's hopes of exploiting the Germans' superiority in fluid operations.

Second, many of Manstein's forces were grouped together under impromptu command arrangements. The German order of battle included several nonstandard control headquarters identified simply by their commanders' names, such as Army Detachment Hollidt, Group Mieth, and Battle Group Adam. Even many of the divisions assigned to the various headquarters lacked normal internal cohesion. For example, by January 1942, the 17th Panzer Division was conducting defensive operations with an attached infantry regiment (156th Infantry Regiment), which possessed neither the training nor the vehicles to allow it to cooperate smoothly with the division's tanks and organic Panzergrenadiers.

Similarly, in mid-January, two infantry divisions within Army Detachment Hollidt contained substantial attachments from two shattered Luftwaffe field divisions, while one so-called division (403d Security Division) was actually a division headquarters controlling several thousand troops whose furloughs had been abruptly canceled." These ad hoc forces generally lacked the precision that comes from habitual association and common experience, and this internal friction was magnified by the rapidly changing combat conditions confronting Army Group Don. Moreover, none of the improvised groupings were structured for sustained combat; therefore, they lacked the technical and support assets that normally would have serviced such large units.

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Third, though relatively fresh and well organized, the First Panzer Army divisions arriving from the Caucasus came with their own special problems. In Manstein's words, these forces suffered from the "hardening up process which inevitably sets in whenever mobile operations degenerate into static warfare." Their relatively inactive sojourn in the Caucasus from September to January had caused these "troops and formation staffs [to] lose the knack of quickly adapting themselves to the changes of situation which daily occur in a war of movement." The first symptom of this stagnation was the snail-like pace of the Caucasian disengagement. Having accumulated "weapons, equipment and stores of all kinds.. . which one feels unable to do without for the rest of the war," the divisions of First Panzer Army invariably requested "a long period of grace in which to prepare for the evacuation." When finally committed to combat along the Donets, these forces maneuvered lethargically at first, their earlier snap and elan dulled by the routine of prolonged positional warfare.

Finally, the Germans were plagued by the enormous mobility differential between their own infantry and panzer forces. In previous campaigns, this problem had been most evident in offensive operations, as during Barbarossa when the swift panzers had outrun their infantry support. In southern Russia in January and February of 1943, this disparity proved equally disruptive in defensive operations, vastly increasing the difficulty of orchestrating German maneuver.

Since the bulk of the German combat power consisted of infantry, of necessity the German defensive tactics were built on the less-mobile infantry forces. The infantrymen, their numbers frequently including engineers, flak units, and various alarm units, were disposed in forward defensive lines. Because of their standards of training. The training of tank crews never ceased, even in combat. In the 17th Panzer Division it was the practice to hold a critique after each engagement, in which successes and failures were discussed, just as after peacetime exercises." Equally important was the aggressiveness, imagination, and flexibility of the German leaders. Commenting on the operations of its improvised mobile rear guard, the 294th Division's after-action report explained that "the choice of a leader [was] especially important" since such units "[were] not led according to field manuals or even according to any fixed scheme."

Despite its aggressiveness and skillful use of mobile forces, Manstein's defense of the German southern wing was not a mobile defense in the classic sense. Army Group Don's forces could not be insensitive to the loss of territory, since to have done so would have endangered the vital rail lines leading through Rostov. Furthermore, the bulk of Manstein's formations were relatively immobile and could only be used in a succession of static defenses. Although playing an important role, the German panzer and motorized forces operated principally as intervention forces in support of the pedestrian infantry.

The German defensive method was thus actually a potpourri of tactical techniques. What set these battles apart from others was Manstein's style of control. What Manstein did, and what Hitler, as a rule, did not, was to provide firm operational guidance to his subordinates and then to allow those commanders to use their forces and the terrain to maximum advantage. The hard-pressed infantry forces, often composed of hastily assembled patchwork units without any real unit training, were best employed in static defenses from prepared positions. Mobile panzer and motorized bands delivered sharp counterattacks to help sustain the infantry defenses and, occasionally, kept the enemy off-balance with preemptive spoiling attacks. If the infantry's main positions became engulfed, the panzers and mechanized infantry helped the slower forces to disengage. The mobile formations also fought delaying actions while subsequent main positions were being organized. Major defensive lines were designated well in advance, allowing units to make deliberate plans for their withdrawals. (This practice alone added considerable coherence to German operations. Hitler usually procrastinated about allowing retreats until, when finally ordered, the withdrawals had to be done pell-mell to avoid encirclement.) For example, in fighting its way back from the Chir to the Donets in January, a distance of roughly 100 miles, Army Detachment Hollidt occupied no less than nine intermediate defensive lines. Its movement from the Donets to the Mius in February followed the same pattern.

In contrast to preferred German defensive methods, these battles were fought almost entirely without tactical depth. Indeed, the fluidity of the battles in southern Russia stemmed, in large measure, from the German inability to absorb the Soviet attacks within successive defensive zones. Lacking the forces to establish a deeply echelon defense, the Germans instead combined maneuver?including both lightning attack and withdrawal, with stubborn positional defense to give artificial depth to the battlefield. In this way, the Germans were able to brake major Soviet attacks, preventing catastrophic breakthroughs while still preserving the integrity and freedom of action of their own forces.

As with the XLVIII Panzer Corps' December battles on the Chir River, these tactics, like the traditional Elastic Defense, were essentially attritional. Russian attacks were contained or worn down one by one, and even though German units occasionally seized the tactical initiative by some aggressive riposte, the operational initiative remained with the Soviets. However often single German panzer divisions sallied in preemptive spoiling attacks, the Red Army's major maneuver units were never in danger of sudden annihilation.

This situation existed because the scarcity of German forces and the great distances in southern Russia kept German units dispersed. In blocking the Soviets' relentless broad-front advance, the Germans operated completely from hand to mouth and were therefore unable to engineer any operational massing of their own. Significantly, from the time of the cancellation in late December of the three-division Stalingrad relief attack until the conclusion of the winter battles' second phase in late February, all the German panzer divisions on the southern front were employed piecemeal to relieve local emergencies. No two panzer divisions ever combined their meager assets to make a concerted blow. For instance, Army Detachment Hollidt, which in mid-January fielded four panzer divisions, retained only one division under its own control and assigned the other three to its individual subordinate commands for "fire brigade" use in support of their infantry divisions. While effective in stemming local Russian attacks, this task organization made it impossible to concentrate powerful mobile forces for larger-scale operations.

Manstein appreciated this fact and, from mid-February, began laying the groundwork for a different employment of the German armor. The fresh SS Panzer Corps, just off-loading near Kharkov with two crack Waffen SS panzer divisions, together with other reinforcements formed the nucleus of an operational masse de manoeuvre. Convinced that casualties, mechanical breakdowns, and lengthening supply lines must have taken their toll of the Russians, Manstein foresaw an opportunity to seize the operational initiative with a counteroffensive of his own. Manstein's target was the Soviet armored spearheads, then still careening southwestward between Kharkov and Stalino.

The third phase of the winter campaign saw the restabilization of the southern front. The centerpiece of this phase was a strong German counterstroke by five panzer divisions against the Soviet flank south of Kharkov. Manstein's 22 February riposte completely surprised the Russians and, within days, had shattered the Soviet First Guards Army as well as several independent armored groups. As trophies, the Germans counted 615 destroyed enemy tanks and over 1,000 captured guns. The haul in prisoners, however, was disappointingly low: as always, the infantry-poor German panzer formations were unable to seal off the battlefield, and thousands of Soviet troops casually marched out of the German trap.

Despite its success, Hitler took little satisfaction in Manstein's Kharkov counteroffensive. As Hitler had admitted in his Fuhrer Defense Order of September 1942, his defensive ideas were of a pre-1917 vintage. Consequently, Hitler's own preference, first and last, was for a rigid no-retreat defense. He had been uncomfortable enough with Manstein's parry-and-thrust tactics in January and early February, but for all of its tactical dash, that style of defense had still been operationally conservative and had remained focused on denying the Russians access to certain critical areas. What rankled Hitler most was the purposeful relinquishing of terrain on an operational scale. When Manstein continued to give up ground, even after the Soviet drive showed signs of stalling on its own, while building up his reserve striking force, Hitler's nervousness increased. In the end, Manstein barely saved his counteroffensive plan from Hitler's shrill demands that the new reserves be thrown into battle piecemeal to prevent further territorial losses. And yet this very stratagem finally provided the basis for Manstein's counteroffensive, as the Russian advance eventually overextended itself and lay vulnerable to the hoarded German reserves. Hitler prized the holding of ground even over the annihilation of sizable enemy forces, however spectacular.

Bought breathing space by Manstein's successful counteroffensive near Kharkov, the other tattered German forces managed to patch together a continuous defensive line on the southern front. Army Detachment Hollidt, withdrawing by bounds from the Donets, moved into Army Group South's old defensive lines on the Mius River. Except for a series of salients north of Kharkov, the German southern armies in late March held again nearly the same positions from which the Blau offensive had begun the previous spring.

This line could easily have been forced at almost any point prior to the spring thaw at the end of March 1943. For example, the XXIV Panzer Corps, which, in fact, had no panzer units whatsoever, held the extreme southern portion of the German line with one infantry and two patchwork security divisions. These forces, whose sector ran for nearly 125 kilometers (including a stretch of Azov coastline), amounted to only fourteen understrength infantry battalions. A XXIV Panzer Corps after-action report noted that the two security divisions' organization, cohesion, and weaponry were so uneven that little could be expected from them. Fortunately, these units occupied old defensive works along most of their front and also were able to retrain and rehabilitate their forces due to the lack of renewed offensive action by the tired Soviets.

The German Kharkov counteroffensive and the tenuous restabilization of the southern front ended the winter campaign's third phase. As the crisis subsided, Manstein's independence from Hitler's close control also evaporated. Hitler's patience with Manstein had actually begun to wane in early February. Then, alarmed by the enormous swatches of territory being surrendered by Manstein's forces, Hitler reasserted his personal authority over Army Group Don on 12 February 1943 with Operations Order 4, which ordered Manstein to reestablish a solid, stand-fast front on the Mius-Donets line. In fact, only Manstein's promise to Hitler to recover much of the lost ground with the Kharkov counterstroke, together with the awkwardness of switching field commanders in the midst of such a confusing battle, probably saved Manstein from being relieved.

With the dissipation of Manstein's autonomy came a reassertion of all Hitler's defensive nostrums, and the fragile German defenses taking shape along the southern front reflected this. Once again, the standard defensive guidance became "no retreat; hold to the last man!".

General Walther Nehring, supervising the improvement of his XXIV Panzer Corps positions, displayed the uncomfortable blend of traditional defense and Hitlerian caveat that had become doctrinal practice. In an 18 March 1943 defensive order to his units, Nehring directed the improvement of positions in depth, the careful coordination of artillery fire support, and the siting of clusters of antitank weapons behind the main positions in perfect accord with the Elastic Defense system in Truppenfiihrung. However, Nehring's instructions also ordered compliance with Hitler's benumbing provisos: "Penetrating enemy elements are instantly to be thrown back by immediate counterattack and the HKL [main line of resistance] regained. Evasive maneuver before the enemy or evacuation of a position without my [Nehring's] special order is forbidden."

German defensive practice therefore had gained little from the lessons of the previous year. Despite the strained battles on the northern defensive front, the disaster at Stalingrad, the desperate fights between the Volga and the Mius Rivers, and finally Manstein's brilliant operational riposte at Kharkov, the German armies on the Eastern Front looked forward to future defensive fighting still handicapped by Hitler's rigid constraints. Even so, German Army units continued to review their own tactical methods and to suggest modifications to defensive doctrine within the limits established by the Fuhrer's guidance.