Faced once more with a dissipation of forces, Halder believed that the decisive moment had arrived to settle the matter conclusively. Enlisting the support of Brauchitsch, Halder on 18 August sent Hitler a proposal justifying a concentration of strength against Moscow. In addition to the familiar argument of destroying the last enemy forces, Halder asserted that, though important, successes on the flanks in winning resources could never be decisive in themselves. Halder, however, had picked the wrong time for a showdown. Hitler almost certainly believed that in the Supplement to Directive No. 34 he had already made a major compromise. In addition, the strain of the past month had clearly taken a toll on the Führer both physically and psychologically. Although a chronic hypochondriac, in mid-August he suffered an attack of dysentery, accompanied by evidence of rapidly progressing coronary sclerosis. When Goebbels visited the Führer’s headquarters on 18 August, he was taken aback by Hitler’s physical and mental exhaustion. Signs of extreme nervous strain abounded: he was obsessed with the gross underestimation of Soviet strength given him before the war by German intelligence, so much so that he implied that he might have hesitated to launch the attack had he known the truth. He also shocked Goebbels with the suggestion that he might accept a negotiated peace with Stalin. Churchill, the Führer rambled on, was grasping at straws, such as the recently announced Atlantic Charter; indeed, his government might well collapse and the war end suddenly, just as the Nazis had been unexpectedly swept into power in 1933. The Führer’s nerves were clearly frayed, while Goebbels was sobered by the realization that the eastern campaign would not be over in 1941 and that the best that could be hoped for were good winter positions.96
Hitler’s moment of strategic realism had immediate operational implications. If Germany could not destroy enemy forces, economic considerations became paramount. His detailed reply to Halder came quickly and was a terse rejection of the army chief’s proposals. On 21 August, Hitler issued an order through the OKW reaffirming that the principal objectives to be attained before the onset of winter continued to be the capture of the economic and industrial areas of Ukraine as well as the oil region of the Caucasus. Conquest of the Crimea was also a priority in order to secure the Rumanian oil supply, while the encirclement of Leningrad still took precedence over the capture of Moscow. The next day, in a detailed study, Hitler justified his operational priorities not only with the usual political and economic arguments but with military considerations as well. It was, he stressed, as Bock had already conceded, necessary to eliminate the enemy threat on the flanks before launching any attack on Moscow, so the operation into Ukraine to secure economic resources would at the same time serve the aim of securing the southern flank of Army Group Center. In any case, Hitler noted caustically, the original operational plan anticipated movements to the north and south, so, not he, but the Army High Command, had altered the script. Moreover, in a stinging rebuke to the army leadership, he noted that not only had they deviated from the plan, but they had also then failed to achieve a decisive victory. In the ultimate insult, the Führer then contrasted their shaky performance with Goering’s firm leadership of the Luftwaffe. Although Hitler ended with some conciliatory words affirming his acceptance of the thrust on Moscow, he nonetheless emphasized that this would be undertaken only after the other operations had concluded.97
Beside himself with anger, and perhaps also a bit embarrassed that Hitler had seen through his obstructionism, Halder raged in his diary against the Führer, blaming him for the vacillation and indecision of the past weeks, and furious at the humiliating treatment of Brauchitsch. Halder even urged that he and Brauchitsch tender their resignations together, but the latter rejected the proposal. Deeply upset, Halder flew to Army Group Center headquarters the next day to rally support for his preference for resuming the offensive on Moscow. He arranged for Guderian, one of Hitler’s favorite generals and particularly vocal in his opposition to a move south, to accompany him to Führer Headquarters in an attempt to dissuade the dictator from his course of action. Rather amazingly to those present, on the evening of 24 August, Hitler allowed Guderian, in the absence of Halder, to make the case for an attack on Moscow. The Soviet capital, Guderian asserted, was not just the political, transportation, and communications center of Russia but, in a telling analogy that illuminated the military mind-set, “the nerve center of Russia… like Paris is to France.” Hitler then argued the alternative. The raw materials and agricultural resources of Ukraine, he noted, were absolutely vital to a continuation of the war, as was securing the German oil supply. “My generals,” he remarked in a biting comment, “know nothing of the economic aspects of war.” Although the day before he had asserted that an attack to the south by his armored group was impossible, Guderian now reversed himself and affirmed his ability to launch just such a drive. When they heard the news of Guderian’s volte-face, both Halder and Bock were furious, but, in truth, there had been little the panzer commander could do to alter the situation. Hitler’s mind was made up: the battle for Ukraine would go ahead.98
Nor, despite the later self-serving contentions of the generals, were Hitler’s criticisms without merit. The bulk of the Red Army had not been destroyed, Soviet leaders had managed to organize an effective defense in spite of catastrophic losses, and the steadily declining German strength and the vastness of the area to be conquered posed almost insuperable difficulties. In addition, the German logistic system had neared the point of collapse: railroads had not been repaired quickly enough, and the dire state of Soviet roads overwhelmed German motorized transport. The number of trains arriving at Army Group Center could barely sustain daily operations, let alone allow a buildup sufficient to support an advance on Moscow. Although it needed at least twenty-four trains a day to supply its needs, at times in August it received only half that number. Clearly, the basic prerequisite for an attack on Moscow was lacking. Moreover, even holding the ground already taken proved difficult since the Soviets launched unrelenting attacks around Smolensk. By early September, in fact, the Red Army had forced the Germans to withdraw from Yelnya, important both as a psychological victory for the Soviets and as the loss by the Germans of a springboard for later operations. The continuing attacks at Smolensk further convinced Hitler of the need to eliminate the southern threat to any advance on Moscow.99
With the failure to win a quick victory on the frontier, the stark reality facing the Wehrmacht High Command was that, in late August, no one seemed able to produce a war-winning strategy that would finish off a reeling foe. Halder and Jodl both expected operations to continue into the following year, a conclusion arrived at independently in an OKW study and a point also made by Hitler in his study. Given the facts of the situation, Hitler likely had a more realistic view than did Halder. Despite the failure of his key assumption, the latter produced no new plan for victory. Where Halder, despite the evidence of increasing enemy resistance and eroding German strength, clung to the hope that one last blow would lead to the collapse of Soviet defenses, Hitler drew the conclusion dictated by his recognition that the war would not end in 1941: securing economic resources had a higher priority than achieving another operational triumph. At the same time, the advance to the south, and the promise of another vast encirclement operation, might at last break the Red Army. The deeper problem, of course, was the one that had festered since the beginning. Hitler and Halder had never agreed on the fundamental aims of Barbarossa; with no clarity on the overall goals of the campaign, it had from the start been a muddled gamble on luck and good fortune. With his late August decision to strike south, Hitler implicitly acknowledged that the luck had run out and the gamble had failed.100