On 19 July, at the height of the fighting at Smolensk, the OKW issued Führer Directive No. 33, which reflected Hitler’s recognition that the large-scale encirclement operations had not achieved decisive success and that such success was not likely to be expected soon. Both Army Group Center and Army Group South had been slowed by the creation of pockets and by the continuing presence in the rear areas (the Pripet Marshes) of substantial Soviet forces. The aim over the next few weeks would be simply to prevent enemy units still within reach from withdrawing further into the vast spaces of this enormous land and to destroy them. As many German commanders realized, this policy would slow their exploitation of any offensive successes and allow the enemy time to construct new defenses. Since the Germans had largely outrun their fragile supply system, the poor roads made it difficult for infantry to keep pace with the tanks (whose number was dwindling rapidly), and the frontline units had received only scanty replacements, there seemed little alternative to such a decision. The order thus took account of the fact that significant time would still be required to eliminate the remnants of Soviet forces in the Smolensk area, a task that was to be left to the infantry. The bulk of the two Panzergruppen would then be shifted to the north and south, to support the drive on Leningrad and to clear the Soviet Fifth Army from the Pripet Marshes. As was becoming uncomfortably apparent, the Wehrmacht bested the Red Army in individual battles time and again but found itself lacking the strength to accomplish all that it needed to do to secure victory.86
Given the dogged resistance on the central axis, the continuing attacks from the Pripet area that delayed the advance of the Sixth Army to the south and threatened to sever its supply lines, rainy weather that further hobbled the Germans, and the possibilities raised by the situation at Kiev noted by Halder on 9 July, Hitler’s order appeared neither unrealistic nor unreasonable. In fact, however, Halder protested immediately and sought to have it canceled, worrying that it presaged a disastrous abandonment of a concentrated attack on Moscow. In response, on 23 July Hitler issued the Supplement to Directive No. 33, which could hardly have calmed Halder’s anxieties. Although the transfer of armored units was made dependent on the operational and supply situation, this addendum nonetheless clearly intended that significant units from Guderian’s Second Panzergruppe would be turned south to clear enemy forces west of the Dnieper, then strike to the east, capture the key industrial areas of Kharkov and the Donets Basin, and proceed on toward the Caucasus oil region. At the same time, Hoth’s Third Panzergruppe would temporarily be assigned to Army Group North to aid in its attack on Leningrad. Army Group Center would be left with only “sufficiently powerful infantry formations” to advance “as far as possible to the east.” Only at the beginning of September, and then only if the armored units temporarily stripped from it were returned, could Army Group Center expect to resume its offensive toward Moscow. As the OKW conceded, the Soviets had forced this delay and deflected the immediate threat to Moscow, which represented a significant political victory. In addition, the pause would give the enemy a month to strengthen its defenses west of the capital as well as have use of the considerable armaments industries of the Moscow region. Although the directive noted that Moscow should be brought under attack by the Luftwaffe and that rapid progress could be expected once the offensive resumed, its sober tone left little doubt that the German High Command recognized that it faced serious difficulties.87
Halder understood immediately the implications of this directive, which meant a fundamental shift in the operational-strategic objective from the destruction of enemy combat power in front of Moscow to the occupation of vital economic regions. That evening, he and Brauchitsch met with Hitler to express their deep concern and persuade the Führer to concentrate available German forces against Moscow. In part, their arguments followed familiar lines: since most of the remaining enemy forces would be concentrated in front of Moscow, that offered the best chance of decisive victory. The capture of the city and its communications and “leadership apparatus” as well as its significant armaments industry, the two argued, would split Russia in half and make further organized resistance “extraordinarily difficult.” As with France a year earlier, Halder (and Bock) expected the capture of the Soviet capital to induce such political shockwaves that the entire system would collapse. Halder also raised a new and disquieting concern: the Germans lacked sufficient time and strength to complete the Barbarossa plan before winter. The Russians, he noted, were desperately trying to delay the German advance until the onset of winter. If reduced to “positional warfare,” Halder warned, the enemy would be able to organize its defenses and mobilize its industries so that next spring the Wehrmacht would face newly raised and equipped Soviet formations. As a result, “the military goal of the war against Russia, the rapid elimination of one opponent in a two-front war in order to turn full strength against the other [England], could not be achieved.” Halder concluded that the enemy had been “decisively weakened” but not yet “completely defeated” and, thus, that the aim of future operations had to be the destruction of the enemy ability to resist.88
Hitler, however, was not impressed by Halder’s arguments, not least because he considered the capture of Soviet economic and oil resources of far greater importance in undermining the enemy ability to resist. Moreover, in the absence of an inescapable position into which to push Russian forces, such as the English Channel, he believed that a frontal assault on Moscow would simply allow Soviet troops once again to withdraw, an argument seemingly confirmed by the operations at Minsk and Smolensk. His advice—that the army should concentrate on “tactical battles of destruction over smaller areas in which the enemy could be pinned down and completely destroyed”—must have come as a stinging rebuke to Halder and his conduct of operations. Over the next few days, indeed, the chief of the OKH fumed that the campaign was becoming little more than static warfare while sarcastically noting the impossibility of avoiding all risks. On 26 July, he bluntly told Hitler that he was playing into Russian hands by resorting to “tactical envelopments” while trying to rally the top army leaders, including Jodl, his rival in the OKW, to his position. Both corps commanders of panzer forces in the north, Manstein and Hoepner, reported that the area facing them between Lakes Peipus and Ilmen was unsuitable for mobile warfare, as did Paulus, who was dispatched to the region on a fact-finding mission.89