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By Root 1456 0

A Moscow plastics worker said: “The leader did not remain silent about the fact that our troops have had to retreat. He does not hide the difficulties that lie ahead for his people. After this speech I want to work even harder. It has mobilised me for great deeds.” But sceptics were not lacking—it would be mistaken to exaggerate Russian unity and confidence in the winter of 1941. A Moscow engineer said: “All this talk about mobilising the people and organising civil defence just goes to show that the situation at the front is absolutely hopeless. It’s clear that the Germans will take Moscow soon and Soviet power will not hold out.” Here was an echo of the despair that overtook some informed British people in 1940. Farther south in Kursk Province a woman said: “Shoot me if you like, but I’m not digging any trenches. The only people who need trenches are the communists and Jews. Let them dig for themselves. Your power is coming to an end and we’re not going to work for you.”

But amid such reluctant comrades, a bare sufficiency of patriots and fighters held the line and repulsed the invaders. By the end of November, the German advance had exhausted itself. “The Führer himself has taken charge,” wrote Kurt Grumann, “but our troops walk around as if they were doomed. Our soldiers hack at the frozen ground, but the heaviest blows yield only enough earth to fill one’s fingernails. Our strength is decreasing every day.” Quartermaster-General Edward Wagner said: “We are at the end of our personnel and materiel strength.” Germany’s fuel situation was so critical that its navy was virtually immobilised. The army’s supply system struggled to support spearheads 300 miles beyond the forward dumps at Smolensk. A gallows joke circulated in German official circles: “Eastern campaign extended by a month owing to great success.”

IN BERLIN on 28 November, a conference of industrialists chaired by armaments supremo Fritz Todt reached a devastating conclusion: the war against Russia was no longer winnable. Having failed to achieve a quick victory, Germany lacked resources to prevail in a sustained struggle. Next day, Todt and tank-production chief Walter Rohland met Hitler. Rohland argued that, once the United States became a belligerent, it would be impossible to match Allied industrial strength. Todt, though an ardent Nazi, said, “This war can no longer be won by military means.” Hitler demanded, “How then shall I end this war?” Todt replied that only a political outcome was feasible. Hitler dismissed such logic. He chose to convince himself that the imminent accession of Japan to the Axis would transform the balance of strength in Germany’s favour. But the November diary of army chief of staff Franz Halder records other remarks by Hitler that acknowledged the implausibility of absolute triumph. For the rest of the war, those responsible for Germany’s economic and industrial planning fulfilled their roles in the knowledge that strategic success was unattainable. They drafted a planning paper in December 1941 entitled “The Requirements for Victory.” This concluded that the Reich needed to commit the equivalent of $150 billion to arms manufacture in the succeeding two years; yet such a sum exceeded German weapons expenditure for the entire conflict. Whatever the prowess of the Wehrmacht, the nation lacked means to win; it could aspire only to force its enemies to parley, together or severally.

Many more months elapsed before the Allies saw that the tide of war had turned. In 1942, the Axis would enjoy spectacular successes. But it is a critical historical reality that senior functionaries of the Third Reich realised as early as December 1941 that military victory had become unattainable, because Russia remained undefeated. Some thereafter sustained hopes that Germany might negotiate an acceptable peace. But they, and perhaps Hitler also in the innermost recesses of his brain, knew the decisive strategic moment had passed. Gen. Alfred Jodl, the Führer’s closest and most loyal military adviser, asserted in 1945 that his master understood in