Hitler and the Opening Battles of Three Great Blitz Campaigns:
Comparing the Strategic Picture in Barbarossa with that in France and the Balkans
The German army's virtuosity in winning the battles of 1939-1941 has masked the eccentric pattern of Hitler's concern with local crisis and immediate detail at the expense of the grand concepts of the early campaigns. Except for a few high points, such as the Dunkirk decision, Hitler's apprehensive intrusion in the war's direction from 1942 onward in the losing stages is better known than his earlier interference with success. The earlier meddling was characterized by a fatuous pattern of dissipating the main effort in campaigns in extraneous excursions and mistaken alarms. The earlier meddling also had far more important consequences than the later. It resulted in the turning point—the loss of the war for the Germans in August 1941—and his anticlimactic but better-known half-measures from 1942 onward.
Hitler's Indecisive Objectives In the West, 1939-1940: Setting the Pattern for Russia
At the highest level, perhaps the best pre-Barbarossa example of Hitler's fear of grand military concepts in continental war was his initial move into serious military strategy—his unrealistic directive of 9 October 1939 to launch an attack in the west by 12 November 1939. Not only did Hitler order an attack with bad timing that gave little chance of success, but he also approved a plan of military operations whose truncated aim was to achieve, roughly, the occupation of Belgium. The OKH operation order issued on 19 October 1939 in conformance with Hitler's earlier directive contains the following indecisive German aim for an offensive in the west: "To defeat the largest possible elements of the French and Allied Armies and simultaneously to gain as much territory as possible in Holland, Belgium, and Northern France as a basis for successful air and sea operations against Britain and as a broad protective zone for the Ruhr."{1}
At first glance, this timorous half-measure, disguised as the German armed forces' aim in launching an offensive against the combined strength of two major world powers, indicts Hitler, Brauchitsch, and Halder as less than competent to fight a war in 1939. Few writers have addressed the ramifications of a German offensive in the west conducted according to the aim highlighted above— to seize roughly forty miles of Belgian seacoast so that the most powerful land power in Europe could conduct more efficient sea and air operations against Britain. Although that aim was extended by an amendment of 29 October 1939, the amended OKH operations order contained no hint of fighting a French campaign to victory. The amended operations order was the basis for a German offensive in the west from the end of October 1939 to the last half of February 1940, a period of four months. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that had the German army executed the operations order of 29 October 1939 and achieved its stated aim, the result would have been stalemate in the west.{2} That would have been a strategic dead end for Germany in the autumn of 1939 or spring of 1940, when the offensive could have been launched under the defective order.
At second glance, then, Hitler and OKH, but especially Halder as army chief of staff, are still indicted as less than competent in planning the quick victory in the west required to prevent German defeat through blockade and attrition. But how could Hitler, with his penchant for the dramatically decisive political move, and Halder, with his expressed emphasis on grand operational concepts, have been parties to the October operations order? Regarding Hitler, who seems more complex and remains hidden farther from view, the answer is clear. He fearfully perceived early in October 1940{3} that the French would occupy Belgium during the onset of winter fog and, apparently on that dread perception, decided to launch an offensive to forestall it.{4} Although concerned with a realistic potential action by the enemy. Hitler was obsessed by that detail to the exclusion of a decisive plan to defeat the Allied forces in France and occupy it. From the beginning of the war it is clear that he ignored a principal aim of military strategy, the destruction of the enemy armed forces, and instead chased less important objectives.{5} Well before the planning and execution of Barbarossa, he can be seen in a pattern of going for every tempting objective at once on the offensive, then overreacting to crises in the ensuing battle.
If any important question remains unanswered in the war from 1939 to 1941, it is probably: How could the Germans win anything from September 1939 to October 1941 with Hitler's nervous instability, British possession of Ultra, and the incapability of the Italians to conduct their part of the war? The answer lies partly in the need to reevaluate upward the quality of Germany's trumps. Hitler's decisiveness in the great political moves of the period must be seen as even more important in explaining the German victories than suspected. The battle-winning capabilities of the German army also must be seen as extraordinary because the army had to overcome first-class opposing armies and the unique combination of factors noted above.
Hitler proved a frail reed in his capacity as military commander by his inability to back the vital line of operations in the "lightning" campaigns of 1940-1941. Halder, in contrast, must be represented as capable of seeing the vital line of operations in any military campaign. Yet, reacting to Hitler's directive of 9 October 1939 to attack in the west immediately, he was largely responsible for producing the ineffectual OKH operations order of 19 October 1939. Halder, whose competence can scarcely be doubted, produced an operations order that was a classic half-measure. The combination of Halder and half-measure is an unlikely one, demanding an explanation, which, in turn, could produce a better interpretation of the war and similar situations in other wars.
In October 1939, Brauchitsch and Halder (commander and chief of staff, German army, respectively) found themselves directed by the supreme political authority of the state to carry out an almost immediate attack in the west. Neither man showed great confidence in the attack prepared in October 1939, but neither left any comprehensive comments on what he felt was wrong with it.{6} Halder kept an extensive diary and wrote several pieces for the U.S. Army after the Second World War. He gave an incomplete picture in which he makes clear that the army required more time to recover from the Polish campaign than a November 1939 attack date would allow. The army also needed better weather for offensive operations. With all his operational skills, he does not comment on the circumscribed, utterly indecisive aim set for the offensive in the west. It is not clear, therefore, whether Halder lacked confidence in the attack directed by Hitler because of the unrealistic timing and season or because the Hitler-directed attack was an impossible half-measure and could not defeat the French even if its aim were accomplished.
In an argument that casts a favorable light on Hitler, Halder may have been the prisoner of his historical condition in the German army of 1939, one that involved enormous respect for the French army{7} and reflected no room for strategic maneuver against a France shielded by the Maginot line and alerted to a German attack through Belgium. As prisoner of that condition, and faced with the strained and premature concerns of Hitler to prevent a French coup in Belgium, Halder must have lacked confidence in the success of the half-measure forced on the German army. In fighting for better timing and season for the offensive, and probably for an indefinite postponement of any attack in the hope of a negotiated political settlement, Halder can be seen as pessimistic about the war and unwilling to examine the possibilities of another decisive Schlieffen plan.{8}
Hitler's Indecisive Objectives In the West, 1939-1940:
The Analogy Between France (1940) and Russia (1941)
The German offensive against France can be employed to understand the grander possibilities of the offensive against the Soviet Union. Hitler can be shown, for example, more willing than the commander and chief of staff of the army to combat the French. It appears that Hitler, as usual, displayed unerring instincts in his aggressive will to attack France but erred in almost every detail of the battle against the French army. Brauchitsch and Halder showed neither confidence in a battle in Belgium and northern France nor willingness to fight it. They get high marks for humanitarian instincts in seeking a peacefully negotiated political settlement and lower marks for their warfighting energy. Fundamentally disagreeing with an attack in the west, Brauchitsch and Halder did not have the courage to confront Hitler and tell him that his winter attack was militarily unsound, despite his political panic over the possibilities of a French advance into Belgium. The soldiers did not clarify that the attack ordered was unsatisfactory for three overriding military reasons. First, it had unacceptable chances of succeeding because of faulty timing; second (with more important ramifications), it stood no chance of defeating the French because of its own indecisive objectives; and third, it entailed a commitment of forces and the possibilities of losses out of balance with desired gains. Under contemporary circumstances, Brauchitsch and Halder can be excused philosophically for their devious ploys to delay and discourage an attack in the west. Under historical scrutiny they stand characterless and at the borderline of incompetence in failing to insist on the necessity for a decisive ' attack in the west in the event that Hitler persisted in the political decision to continue the war. They also stand indicted for not modifying the order to achieve the complete defeat of Allied forces on the continent of Europe.
Too close to Hitler in the chain of command, and subject to immediate pressures, Brauchitsch and Halder were incapable of translating Hitler's call for an offensive into a winning military plan. The vagaries of chance and the battle-winning talents of the German army helped Hitler and OKH transform the impotent amended order of 29 October 1933 into the ultradecisive order associated with the ideas of Generalmajor Erich von Manstein and the battlefield energy of General der Panzertruppe Heinz Guderian. Bad weather forced numerous postponements of the October order, and the capture of the order by the Belgians on 10 January 1940 gave the Germans both opportunity and reason for change.{9} The final act in the transition to an effective plan seems to have been the meeting of 17 February 1940 between Manstein and Hitler, in which the former advanced his ideas on a decisive attack in the west.{10} For reasons that are less dear, Hitler seems to have edged toward establishing the Schwerpunkt of the attack in the west with Army Group A. between Sedan and Dinant, rather than Army Group B, farther to the north. On 18 February 1940, the plan for the attack in the west was changed by Hitler, who issued a new directive for the attack. Number 10, of 20 February 1940, in its final successful form.
The planning for the French campaign repeats a pattern in the preparations for Barbarossa. In the planning and execution of the French campaign. Hitler displayed epic determination to launch a surprise offensive against a major world power within an ongoing war. He set indecisive aims, however, for the military offensive. The OKH showed a reprehensible inability to present a grand operational concept to Hitler but followed up with brilliant direction of the final order. The German field armies came to the rescue of everyone German, Manstein constructing an alternate operations plan and Guderian executing a decisive tank attack. In the planning and execution of the Russian campaign. Hitler similarly showed epic determination to launch a surprise offensive against a major power. He demanded, however, an indecisive halt of the main concentration of the German armies to assist ancillary forces in seizing subsidiary objectives. The OKH produced an elegantly simple and direct operational concept for the campaign but followed with a reprehensible failure to sweep aside Hitler's objections to their decisive formulation. The German field armies again came to the rescue with effective enough handling of the main concentration of the tank force to achieve the decisive objectives of the army plan. Unlike the case in France, though, Hitler managed to misdirect the German tank force far enough and long enough to lose the Russian campaign.
This comparative summary of political decision and military planning for two campaigns supports a view that none of the important factors in the later campaign predetermined a German defeat in Russia. It shows Hitler as the key figure, with the authority, will, and characteristic indecisiveness to ruin the battle of Russia. In the French campaign, however, the German army surmounted both the French and the Fuhrer to win almost immediately. From the aspect of Hitler, OKH. and the army, the factor decisively different from that in the French campaign was the absence of a Manstein to focus on the potential for disaster in the planned halt of Army Group Center. No Manstein emerged to modify the Hitler directive, but the army operations order gave Bock, Hoth, and Guderian the green light into the Moscow-Gorki space. Even if the Hitler directive and the army operation order had been modified to direct an unfettered drive of Army Group Center to Moscow, Hitler probably could not have overcome his "fascination" with subcritical detail and local crisis, and a battle with Hitler would still have been fought by the German army as part of the battle of Russia. As a special irony, based on its performance in the opening engagements of Barbarossa, the German army proved capable of defeating the Soviet armed forces and winning the battle against the Russians but incapable of triumphing in the double battle suggested above.
Hitler Caught by Surprise In the Balkans, 1941:
Contrasting the Balkans with the Opening of the Russian Campaign
The Balkan campaign, another important way station along the road to Barbarossa, showed a similar pattern of German factors but also a difference or two that help us to understand the possibilities of a German victory over the Soviet Union. In the special circumstances of the Balkan campaign. Hitler played a less obtrusive role than he did in the planning and conduct of the French and Russian campaigns.{11} Although the Germans had planned an armed intervention in Greece since December 1940, designated Operation Marita, they had not originally considered the undertaking overly challenging, and Hitler was not engrossed in details. Yet, in accord with his aggressive political talents, he ordered a buildup of combat forces (as opposed to military advisory forces) in Romania and Bulgaria to provide an option of seizing part or all of Greece. He needed that option as a prudent measure to forestall an opportunistic British landing to support Greece, using the excuse of the war between Italy and Greece since October 1940. Hitler had not shown overwhelming interest in Marita, probably because of his growing preoccupation with Barbarossa and the success of his policy in Yugoslavia until 26 March 1941, the latter success a factor that reduced the chances of British intervention in Greece. Hitler also was considering other operations in the Mediterranean, including action at Gibraltar, Malta, and in Libya, and he had already dispatched a small motorized force under General-leutnant Erwin Rommel to assist the Italians in Libya.
This unstable but relatively quiet situation in the Balkans changed suddenly with a political coup in Belgrade on 26 March 1941 in which the revolutionaries overthrew the pro-German government of the regent, Prince Paul, and proclaimed Peter II as king. The deposed government had just signed the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Pact, but the revolutionaries announced that the new government would follow a policy of neutrality. Hitler was personally offended by the government and its action, and the British government had new incentives to reinforce the Greeks, The Germans faced an uncomfortable contretemps that undermined the security of their pending operations against the Soviet Union. The situation called for action and showed the Germans at their "best" in the Second World War.{12} Hitler, in his unequivocal style, ordered the immediate smashing of the Yugoslav and Greek states, with emphasis on immediate destruction and little concern about how the task should be done.
One could argue that the Balkan campaign was important for the similarity between it and Barbarossa in the patterns of advance, exploitation, and style of the actors; hence it enforces the understanding of the Germans' winning in Russia, It might also be argued that the Balkan campaign was important because of its concrete results—the destruction of opposing armed forces and seizure of territories—and how those results conduced to German success in the battle of Russia (Barbarossa proper). In pattern and style, the Balkan campaign illustrates the near-ideal situation for the Germans, when Hitler made an immediate, decisive political decision, and the army was freed from either a whimsical change in the thrust of the army plan or his stubborn concern with operationally irrelevant detail. The German army executed the quickest draw and fired the most efficient shots of the Second World War in Europe. In eleven days (26 March-6 April 1941), the Germans reinforced their troops in Bulgaria and massed new forces in Romania, Hungary, and southern Germany (Austria) in time to commence an eighteen-day battle (6-23 April 1941). In the fight, the armed forces of two states were bagged, a quality British expeditionary force was withdrawn from the continent, the Italian army was freed from a major theater of operations, and German casualties totalled only about 5,655 in killed, wounded, and missing.{13}
The point is that it was a brilliant campaign, showing in April 1940 how the Germans could perform in Barbarossa. Reappraising the Balkan campaign, however, one could denigrate the German performance by positing that the quality of opposition and the challenge of geographical space made the German accomplishment less impressive. One could elaborate that Serbians and Greeks were not Russians, implying less toughness and technology among the Balkan peoples, and point out that Yugoslavia and Greece were smaller states. These reasonable points are overshadowed by the toughness of the Greeks in fighting against the Italians, the difficult mountainous terrain over much of Yugoslavia and Greece, and the dimensions of the theater of operations, comprising an 800-mile "front" from northern Yugoslavia to southern Greece. Other factors add luster to the German performance, notably the short time for German planning and concentration, the thinly developed, almost primitive communications network, and the intervention of a significant first-rate British expeditionary force. On reevaluation, the Balkan campaign retains its luster, and set in the context of Barbarossa. it displays the formidable nature of the Hitler-army synthesis in war-fighting when Hitler did not intrude into military operations.
Hitler Opens the Russian Campaign: German Trumps and Strategic Timing
The Balkan campaign, thus, is important not so much for its results in Yugoslavia and Greece but for Hitler's political decision and the German planning and concentration for battle on the southeastern front, which won it without campaign-losing interference by Hitler. Because it took place on the eve of Barbarossa, the Balkan campaign suggests a "Hitler-on-vacation" reevaluation of the Second World War. In that reevaluation, it could be generalized that the German army would have defeated the Soviet armed forces and occupied enough territory to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union had Hitler been absent from the scene from 22 June to approximately 31 August 1941 for whatever reason. In the Balkan campaign, the key to German success was the effectiveness of the Hitler-army synthesis, not so much the weakness of the opposition. Being reoriented into the sequence of events leading to Barbarossa, the Balkan campaign serves historical purpose by illuminating the possibility that the Germans would have won the war in Russia very quickly had they used their trumps more effectively. A major objection to that generalization is that the Germans would have faced tougher resistance from a larger army in a more expansive theater in the battle of Russia. Part of the thesis of this book, however, is that the Hitler-army synthesis was so strong that no combination of Soviet forces in the short offensive could check the Germans, and it follows that only a mistake by the Germans could have led to a German defeat.
The thesis must be jarring for the reader brought up on a fare of the great natural strength of the Russian fatherland, the organizing abilities of the Communist party, and the stubborn courage of numerous Russians, especially when the logic behind it demands that the Russians could save themselves no more than the Poles, French. British (of the expeditionary forces in France and Greece), Greeks, and Yugoslavs. It is difficult to find situations in which the Greeks might have survived the German attack, but two suggest themselves immediately. If Hitler were so important in the German victories of 1939-1941, it is possible he might have faltered in his political decision to intervene in the Balkans, thus giving the Greeks, Yugoslavs, and British time to organize effective defenses in the mountainous terrain. Using a parallel military argument. one could say that the German army may have faltered in battle due to special circumstances in the advance or, more likely, might have been held up by Hitler with his penchant for being distracted by tangential objectives.
Strategic timing is an important consideration in evaluating Hitler's realism in his decision to move east. Hitler announced his decision in July 1940 to attack the Soviet Union and confirmed in writing in December 1940 that the attack would take place by approximately 15 May 1941. The well-chronicled Balkan campaign contributed to the delay of Barbarossa more than five weeks, to 22 June 1941. It is less well known that the winter of 1940-1941 was severe and the spring of 1941 exceptionally wet. Weather conditions combining late thawing of the eastern European rivers, late melting of snow, and spring rains conspired to keep rivers at flood levels until well into May and the surrounding land almost impassable for large-scale military movements{14}. The Bug River and its tributaries stood in the path of Panzer Group 2, the largest organized for the invasion, and farther north the Nieman River stood in the path of Panzer Group 3. These two panzer groups comprised the armored wedges (Kielen) of Army Group Center and carried the hopes of the army for a quick victory in the Soviet Union. The river flood levels and wet ground conditions would probably have delayed Barbarossa at least three weeks to allow the natural barriers in front of Army Group Center to clear up even if the Balkan campaign had not taken place.{14} One authority recently noted that German weaknesses in the production of important weapons and other equipment (notably motor vehicles) would probably also have delayed the start of the campaign beyond the directed ready-date of 15 May 1941.
Historians and analysts have emphasized this delay in the German attack, the consensus being that the Balkan campaign was a critical factor in the collapse of the German winter attack against Moscow in the first week of December 1941. Virtually every book, article, and report taking the Russian campaign as its major theme notes the Balkan war, relates it to a delay in opening Barbarossa, and often links it with the collapse of a German offensive close to Moscow later in December. The subtle but important point made in only a few of the more perceptive and knowledgeable German works—and with startling candor in several Soviet works—is that the great offensive of 22 June-16 July 1941 had achieved the necessary preconditions for a German victory over the Soviet Union. The important element, then, is not the delay in opening the campaign in June but the results achieved by July.
At a higher level of consideration than the month of attack in 1941 is the year itself. Hitler showed a combination of prudence and exaggerated concern for economic matters and war production from 1939 to 1941. He lifted Germany out of its great depression in 1933 by armaments and other large-scale, state-supported economic programs, such as Autobahnen construction. Hitler claimed in a Reichstag speech in 1939 that he had invested 90 billion reichsmarks (one reichmark equaled approximately 20 cents at that time) in armaments production from 1933 to 1939, an impressive figure for the uninflated currencies of the day. The actual figure was closer to approximately 56 billion reichmarks, a sensational amount also, but one seen retrospectively to have been near the minimum necessary for Germany to survive the first part (1939-1940) of the war.
Hitler had been more modest in his rearmament of Germany than was generally supposed from 1933 to 1939 and had not intended to get embroiled in a war with Britain and France as early as September 1939. He placed great importance on his popularity with the German people, and an explanation for his modest armaments effort was his concern with straining that popularity by a burdensome, belt-tightening economic policy. He had acute instincts about the importance of economic matters in political movements and war. The invasion of Norway (to secure Swedish iron ore), drawing a line with Stalin over Romania (to secure Romanian oil), and at an even higher level of consideration, his stress on securing living space for Germany to maintain its political greatness illustrate his concerns. One can sense a nervous ambivalence in Hitler's views about war production to secure a thousand-year Reich and also maintain his contemporary popularity. With the fall of France in June 1940, Hitler was probably most concerned with the military balance between Germany and Soviet Russia, In setting levels of war production adequate to win the battles in 1939 and 1940 while maintaining his popularity on the home front, he seemed acutely aware that such levels and the associated size of the German armed forces would not be satisfactory should the Soviets expand their defense production and armed forces in anticipation of a war against Germany.
Hitler's instincts, reasoning, and timing of Barbarossa for 1941 were striking because further Soviet preparations for war, including 1941 and most of 1942, would have been disastrous. The Soviets would have had at least twelve months to develop border fortifications, expand their peacetime army, improve tanks and aircraft, deploy frontier forces more effectively, and take steps to prevent a surprise attack by the Germans. A useful historical analogy illustrates the probable adverse situation for Germany. When the elder Helmut von Moltke, chief, army general staff (1859-1888), faced the increasing possibility of a two-front war with France and Russia in the 1880s, he conceptualized an initial main attack against Russia to knock it out of the war quickly and then turn on France. His successor (once removed), the decisive Count Alfred von Schlieffen (1891-1906), faced an Imperial Russian program to improve fortifications and communications on the Russo-German border, which changed the strategic calculus in Schliefferis mind. He felt compelled to launch the opening main attack in a two-front war against France, then move against Russia. The analogy shows the decisive effect of a moderate increase in preparations for war by the Russians in the early 1890s on Germany's eastern front and suggests adverse effects for the Germans had the offensive been delayed until 1942.
In timing Barbarossa for 1941, Hitler judged that the battle of Russia would be fought under the best strategic circumstances regarding the military balance between the two states. He also calculated that success would automatically secure the National Socialist Weltanschauung living space, probably force Britain out of the war, reduce German war production even if Britain remained in the war, and have a significant effect on keeping the United States out of a war in Europe even should Britain remain in the war. By timing the attack for 1941, Hitler also escaped the criticism by German military officers planning the invasion and later commentators that he embarked on a two-front war that could not be won. Hitler conceptualized a campaign to last six to ten weeks, with consolidation stretching to approximately seventeen weeks. But Germany would not have been in a two-front war at all in 1941 because of Britain's inability to bring significant pressure to bear on Germany by land, air, or sea during the planned battle period{15}.
Hitler pointed out early in the planning for Barbarossa that the campaign would make sense only if it were finished quickly. Halder and the army planners put together a battle intended to accomplish the political goal of quick defeat of the Soviet Union. But how can planners contrive to put the armed strength of a great power in a bag like a cat? That would be a formidable feat. The German general staff assumed the planning, however, and added realism to the chances of defeating even a great power like the Soviet Union. The general staff, thanks to weather-induced delays in the battle of France and providential changes in the plan of attack by the former operations officer of the general staff (Man-stein), put the French army in a bag in June 1940. Certainly European Russia was different from France, and Russians from Frenchmen. but it could be deduced from general principles that the Russian armed forces were no more than a bigger cat in a bigger bag, and subject to the same principles of war exploited by the Germans in France in 1940.