The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [88]
By the summer of 1940, the genius of the Führer as ‘history’s supreme warlord’ was an essential part of Nazi ideology, and part of that genius seemed to have lain in his ability to take decisions without needing to spend large periods of time poring over maps, reading reports and conferring with his Staff. Yet it is not even certain that if he had devoted more study to the issue he would have acted differently. He feared – probably too much, considering the Roosevelt Administration’s isolationist domestic opposition – that the United States was likely to enter the war on Britain’s side in 1942, and deduced from this that he needed to act swiftly. Fortress Europe had to be established, and its full productive capacity harnessed, before the resources of America could be brought to bear against Germany.
In choosing how to invade Russia, it is worth quoting from Führer Directive No. 21 of 16 December 1940, which had been sent to all the most important figures in the Reich and which was adhered to remarkably closely six months later:
The mass of the Russian Army in western Russia is to be destroyed in daring operations, by driving forward deep armoured wedges, and the retreat of units capable of combat into the vastness of Russian territory is to be prevented… Effective intervention by the Russian Air Force is to be prevented by powerful blows at the very beginning of the operation… On the wings of our operation, the active participation of Romania and Finland in the war against the Soviet Union is to be expected… In the zone of operations divided by the Pripet Marshes into a southern and northern sector, the main effort will be made north of this area. Two Army Groups will be provided here. The southern group of these two Army Groups [that is Army Group Centre] will be given the task of annihilating the forces of the enemy in White Russia by advancing from the region around and north of Warsaw with especially strong armoured and motorized units. The possibility of switching strong mobile units to the north must thereby be created in order, in cooperation with Army Group North operating from East Prussia in the general direction of Leningrad, to annihilate the enemy forces in the Baltic area. Only after having accomplished this most important task, which must be followed by the occupation of Leningrad and Kronstadt, are the offensive operations aimed at the occupation of the important traffic and armament centre of Moscow to be pursued. Only a surprisingly fast collapse of Russian resistance could justify aiming at both objectives simultaneously… By converging operations with strong wings, the Army Group south of the Pripet Marshes is to aim at the complete destruction west of the Dnieper of the Russian forces standing in the Ukraine… Once the battles north and south of the Pripet Marshes have been fought, we should aim to achieve as part of the pursuit operation: in the south, the prompt seizure of the economically important Donets Basin; in the north, rapid arrival at Moscow. The capture of this city means a decisive success politically and economically and, beyond that, the elimination of this most important railway centre.43
Führer Directive No. 21 therefore very much envisaged another Blitzkrieg operation, with deep armoured thrusts enveloping and cutting off enormous numbers of Soviet troops, who would then have no choice but to surrender to what they could not know was going to be a genocidal captivity. But instead of a two-month operation over a maximum front of 300 miles, which was what all Hitler’s earlier wars had involved, Barbarossa envisaged a five-month assault over an 1,800-mile front, and against an enemy whose population more than doubled Germany’s, and which was