In the event, it was less Halder’s arguments and more the reality of growing Soviet strength and increasing German supply difficulties that caused Hitler first to suspend and then to cancel the Supplement to Directive No. 33. Although on hearing the news Halder exclaimed, “This decision frees every thinking soldier of the horrible vision obsessing us these last few days, since the Führer’s obstinacy made the final bogging down of the campaign appear imminent,” the reality of Directive No. 34 was a bit less cheering. In it, Hitler still called for operations to envelop Leningrad and destroy Soviet forces at Kiev and in Ukraine west of the Dnieper while ordering Army Group Center to go on the defensive while it was refitted and reequipped. Halder clearly expected that the developments on the front would strengthen his position and that, after the enforced supply halt, the central front would again become the main axis of advance.90
Amid much vacillation, the “July Crisis” of the German military leadership had thus ended, at least temporarily, although it was clear that, after the replenishment period, a decision would still have to be taken. The crucial decision—for or against Moscow—had merely been postponed. Nor, in retrospect, is it clear that Halder’s arguments were markedly better than Hitler’s. In view of the logistic situation, any further advance on the central axis was for the time being out of the question. The quartermaster-general’s staff had already concluded that a major attack on the central front was unfeasible since an adequate rate of supply to sustain an offensive could not be provided. At the same time, Hitler’s decision corresponded with continued fighting still raging in the Smolensk pocket, so the stable situation necessary for replenishment of the front units did not exist. Because of the early capture of the Baltic ports, an action Hitler had urged from the outset, Army Group North had accumulated sufficient supplies to sustain its operations, although terrain difficulties would hamper its movement. Moreover, the strong Soviet forces in the Pripet Marshes did represent a significant threat to the flanks of both Army Group Center and Army Group South as well as a menace to the already strained supply lines to the Sixth Army. In addition, large numbers of German troops, some six divisions, were tied down in combating enemy forays from the swamps. Even Bock admitted that “a precondition for any further operation is the defeat of the enemy on the army group’s flanks, both of which are lagging far behind.” As a result, by the late summer of 1941, the envelopment of Kiev was probably the only major operation feasible. Although supply difficulties still dogged a move to the south, the supply organizations of Army Groups Center and South could at least share the burden, while the terrain was largely favorable to mobile operations.91
Strong Soviet resistance, a failure to resolve supply problems, and rainy weather that hampered the German advance all ensured that the mood of crisis would continue into August. The bitter fighting at Smolensk had sobered the German commanders and impelled them to alter their original strategy. The fear that the blitzkrieg momentum had slipped away was palpable, with little agreement on a course of action to regain the strategic initiative. By early August, the Barbarossa campaign had already exceeded in length that in the west the previous summer, with no clear way to end it in evidence. Victories had been won, yet a terrible price had been paid. “We are at the end of our tether,” Bock admitted on 2 August. “The nerves of those burdened with great responsibility are starting to waver.” Landsers, too, sensed that the fighting might be as endless as Russia itself. “We shouldn’t be allowed to continue much longer, otherwise the burden will be really heavy,” complained one on 10 August, while another noted on the same day, “Our losses are immense, more than in France.” A third wrote simply, “I have never seen such vicious dogs as these Russians…. They have an inexhaustible supply of tanks and material.”92 Underpinning the gloom was the gnawing anxiety that the war could not be won in 1941. In early August, the Führer remained wedded to the position that a decisive weakening of the Soviet ability to wage war meant the seizure of Leningrad in the north and the key economic, oil, and industrial regions of Ukraine and the Caucasus in the south, an implicit recognition that Moscow could probably not be taken by the onset of winter.
The ruthless Soviet mobilization of resources and unrelenting counterattacks had both surprised and unnerved German generals. “The situation is extremely tense,” Bock worried on 7 August. “I don’t exactly know how a new operation is to take place… with the slowly sinking fighting strength of our… forces.” Still, he consoled himself with the thought that “things are undoubtedly even worse for the Russians!” A few days later, however, he confessed: “In spite of his terrific losses in men and materiel the enemy attacks at several places daily, so that any regrouping, any withdrawal of reserves… has so far been impossible.” He then added, in a revealing concession, “If the Russians don’t soon collapse somewhere, the objective of defeating them so badly that they are eliminated will be difficult to achieve before the winter.”93
At the same time, Halder, too, succumbed to gloom, noting on 4 August, “We could not expect to reach the Caucasus before onset of this winter,” a virtual admission that Barbarossa had failed. Nor did his mood improve substantially in the next week. “On the fronts… reigns the quiet of exhaustion,” he admitted pessimistically in his diary on 11 August:
What we are now doing is the last desperate attempt to prevent our front line from becoming frozen in position warfare…. Our last reserves have been committed…. The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus, who consistently prepared for war with that utterly ruthless determination so characteristic of totalitarian states…. At the outset of the war we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360. These divisions indeed are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen. The time factor favors them, as they are near their own resources, while we are moving farther and farther away from ours. And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front line, without any depth, are subjected to the incessant attacks of the enemy.94
As the invading armies were swallowed in the immensity of the Soviet Union, as every triumph brought German forces deeper into the quagmire, a bitter irony became clear: the Wehrmacht was winning itself to death in the vast expanses of Russia. Despite the failures of the encirclement battles at Minsk and Smolensk to destroy the Soviet will and ability to resist, however, Halder could think of nothing else but to try again. If the remnant of the Red Army was to be destroyed, it would have to be done in front of Moscow.
Hitler, on the other hand, drew an entirely opposite conclusion. If the Soviets were, indeed, massing their last forces in front of the capital, that surely meant easier pickings in the north and south, precisely where his primary objectives lay. During the first two weeks of August, then, Hitler and his army chief of staff wrestled with the key issue of the main axis of German operations. Halder achieved a certain success on 12 August when the Führer conceded, in the Supplement to Directive No. 34, that the aim was “the removal from the enemy before the winter of the entire state, armaments, and communications center around Moscow.” The army chief’s triumph, however, was limited by the further stipulation that the attack on Moscow would go ahead only once the threat to the flanks of Army Group Center had been eliminated. Three days later, in fact, strong Soviet counterattacks again disrupted Halder’s intentions as Hitler ordered panzer units away from Army Group Center to the north to counter the danger and directed that Bock’s forces should refrain from any further attacks toward Moscow.95