Was Hitler engaging in hyperbole in claiming that this was the most important decision of the war? Not necessarily. Although virtually all his top military leaders believed that Germany would win, they also recognized the need to set priorities and make the best use of their increasingly limited resources. Moreover, there was a gnawing sense that the initial gamble had failed, that, despite the impressive victories, the Red Army remained an intact fighting force and, thus, that the Wehrmacht now needed to make use of all its considerable operational skills in order to resolve the situation satisfactorily. Thus, the ongoing assessments of the comparative strength of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht played a key role in influencing these deliberations over the sequence and timing of future operations. To the Germans, the summit seemed tantalizingly close; the problem was how to attain it. Hitler and the Army High Command were not sure how to proceed, an uncertainty reflected in the protracted discussions, confusion, vacillation, and contradictory orders that characterized the period from mid-July through August.
Although Halder was clearly aware that the initial objective, the destruction of the enemy’s strength west of the Dnieper line, had not been accomplished, he nonetheless assumed that the serious losses suffered by the Red Army had nearly exhausted its ability to continue fighting. On 8 July, he estimated that 89 of the 164 known enemy infantry divisions, and 20 of the 29 armored units, could be considered destroyed or largely eliminated, with only 46 Russian combat divisions left to contest the Germans. By his reckoning, the Soviets were no longer in a position to organize a continuous front, nor would the activation of new units offer much help since they would lack officers, equipment, and training. To Halder, the Soviet goal seemed simply to drain German strength through ceaseless counterattacks. These attacks, in which the Russians fought “with wild ferocity and enormous human sacrifice,” were admittedly worrisome, but the very scale of the enemy losses encouraged his belief that the resistance must soon slacken. Using the rough formula that 1 million civilians could provide soldiers for two divisions, German experts assumed that the limits of Soviet manpower had been reached.68 Despite the continual appearance of new enemy divisions, the Germans were slow to draw the proper conclusions; when they finally did, it was too late.
Not only the profligate manner of Red Army counterattacks, but also the size and quality of the Soviet tank force, came as an unpleasant surprise. In early July, enemy tank strength had been reestimated at fifteen thousand, but the total was likely closer to twenty-four thousand. The armament and thickness of armor on the new T34 and KV model tanks, which had come into service a few months earlier, also came as a shock, as German antitank crews often saw their shells bounce harmlessly off the Soviet tanks. “Each shot seems to be a direct hit,” one antitank gunner remarked in astonishment, “[but] the shells bounce off…. The fire doesn’t bother the tanks in the least.” German tactical ingenuity and experience soon began to level the odds, but the appearance of the heavier and obviously superior Soviet tanks chipped away at German confidence and assurance of victory. Even the mammoth destruction of Russian aircraft at the outset of the fighting proved a mixed blessing. Since most of the planes had been destroyed on the ground, Russian losses in crew had not been so severe, allowing the Soviets to rebuild their formations with new planes from factories beyond the range of German bombers.69
The Soviets had also made a considerable effort to evacuate factories to the east, especially those engaged in aircraft manufacture and the production of arms and ammunition, tractor works, metallurgical installations, and chemical plants. In this regard, the stubborn Red Army resistance in Ukraine proved particularly important, for it allowed time to disassemble and remove entire factories from a key industrial region. Estimates of the total number of factories relocated to the Urals, western Siberia, and Kazakhstan vary from fifteen to twenty-five hundred, with the overwhelming majority related to the armaments industry. Although there were numerous problems with the evacuation—industrial equipment arriving damaged, at the wrong destination, or not at all—the action nonetheless secured roughly 8–10 percent of prewar Soviet productive capacity. Even more remarkably, despite the loss of highly important industrial regions, the Soviets managed to increase their output of key military equipment in 1941. In the first half of the year, Soviet factories had produced 1,800 tanks, 3,950 aircraft, 15,600 artillery pieces and mortars, 11,000 machine guns (and submachine guns), 792,000 rifles, and 18.8 million shells. In the final six months of 1941, however, the Soviets churned out 4,700 tanks, 8,000 aircraft, 55,500 artillery pieces and mortars, 143,000 machine and submachine guns, 1.5 million rifles, and an astounding 40.2 million shells. Stalin, using draconian tactics, far more effectively mobilized the Soviet population for the war effort than did Hitler. Even allowing for problems raised by the relocation, including a sharp slump in production in the winter of 1941–1942, the evacuation of industry was an impressive economic and organizational achievement.70
At the same time Soviet military production was increasing, Halder understood that the fighting power of the frontline German combat units was eroding. The Wehrmacht had entered Russia with forces only marginally larger than those engaged in France the year before. As in France, it had gambled on hitting the Soviets with virtually all its available strength and, thus, had practically nothing left in reserve. Everything had been front-loaded, aimed at a knockout blow in the first round, with nothing held back in the event of a prolonged match. The 3,050,000 men who had invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June had been backed by only 385,000 men in the Replacement Army, a figure for trained reserves that the army estimated would be exhausted by the beginning of October. Army leaders had been willing to accept this risk, largely because they had been misled by the surprisingly low losses—fewer than 100,000 killed—in the first two years of war. Now, after three weeks of hard fighting, and with the size of the front expanding both in width and in depth, the Germans were hard-pressed to satisfy even the minimal replacement requirements of the individual army groups. On 6 July, Halder estimated that almost 12,000 Germans had been killed in the fighting to date, a number too low by at least half since in June alone 25,000 had died on the eastern front. A month later, his figures indicated that the Eastern Army had suffered a total of 180,000 casualties but had received only 47,000 replacements. Once again, the casualty figure was too small since in July more than 63,000 Landsers were killed, making the two-month death toll some 88,000. OKW figures from early January 1942 listed a total of 213,301 casualties from 22 June through the end of July 1941, with another 197,000 in August, for a two-month total of roughly 410,000, a figure larger than the total Replacement Army.71 The numbers were indisputable; the fierce Soviet resistance in July had begun seriously to erode the fighting strength of the German Eastern Army. Although the winter fighting in front of Moscow has received the bulk of attention, in terms of hollowing the Wehrmacht July 1941 remained for the Ostheer the single worst month, at least for deaths, until December 1942, when the savage struggle in Stalingrad finally surpassed it in deadly intensity.