The loss of Shlisselburg, however, meant that Leningrad could be supplied only via Lake Ladoga, which encouraged the German belief that the city was ripe for the taking. Three days earlier, in fact, Halder had remarked in his diary, “Leningrad: Our object has been achieved. Will now become a subsidiary theater of operations,” followed by the hope that the drive on Moscow could begin in eight to ten days. Since Hitler had no intention of taking the city in any case, preferring to subdue it through hunger and terror bombing, on 5 September he ordered the transfer of a number of mobile and air units from Army Group North to Army Group Center, to take effect on the fifteenth. The next day, reflecting his optimism that successes on the flanks had opened the way to Moscow as well as illustrating his awareness of the crucial time factor, Hitler issued Directive No. 35. “Within the limited time available before the onset of winter,” it stated, the enemy before Moscow should be wiped out by concentrating all forces, including those that could be freed from the flanks, for one last encirclement battle. Leeb immediately protested the loss of these units, and, since Halder realized that the attack on Moscow could not commence before the end of the month, he reluctantly allowed Leeb to keep them temporarily.19
Over the next few days, Leeb won a number of local successes, but fighting in the north did not abate as Soviet counterattacks increased in intensity. Although the Fourth Panzergruppe began shifting units to Army Group Center on 15 September, Leeb managed to retain the three divisions of Schmidt’s Thirty-ninth Motorized Corps of the Third Panzergruppe. Leeb now faced the task of tightening the ring around Leningrad against stiffening enemy resistance with a significantly reduced combat force insufficient to fulfill the objectives assigned it. On 22 September, the Soviets launched a series of strong attacks against both the northern and the southern wings of the army group that inflicted such high losses on German forces that Leeb feared he would not be able to hold his positions. Schmidt’s forces had been so ground down that the Twelfth Panzer had only fifty-four tanks left, about a quarter of its normal strength, while the Eighteenth and Twentieth Motorized Divisions had been reduced to roughly 46 and 65 percent of their respective troop complements. Two days later, in fact, Leeb admitted to the OKH that the situation had worsened considerably and that he could no longer continue offensive operations toward Leningrad.20
By the end of the month, stalemate had settled on the northern front. Leningrad was besieged, but the Germans had not closed the ring tight enough to allow effective artillery bombardment of the city or to cut it off completely from its hinterland. As a result, even the possibility of starving the city into submission—which at least had the advantage, Leeb noted coldly, that large numbers of people would die, “but at least not before our eyes”—seemed remote.21 Even though the city remained in mortal danger, the Germans had not been able to end the fighting in the north, which meant that large numbers of troops would not be available for operations elsewhere. September thus proved a frustrating month for the Germans. As at Kiev, an apparently great triumph had resulted in actual gains much less than those anticipated. Worse, the struggle would continue as the Wehrmacht sought the elusive decisive battle that would finally end Soviet resistance.
Hitler intended that “final battle” to be the much-delayed assault on Moscow that Bock and Halder had advocated in August. Even as German forces completed the encirclement of Leningrad and pulled off the spectacular envelopment operation east of Kiev, the two fretted that time to force the decisive showdown was slipping away. The bitter arguments of July and August between Hitler and the OKH, the persistence with which Hitler promoted his ideas against the advice of the army leadership, and the flurry of often contradictory directives led to charges at the time, and ever since, that Hitler’s dilettantism and diversion of forces from the center caused the German defeat. Hitler’s views, however, were not as odd as they have been made to seem, nor were those of his advisers necessarily more incisive. Not only did Hitler’s ideas correspond more closely to the original Barbarossa plan, but the growing realization that Halder had subverted his wishes from the beginning, combined with the indecision of the hopelessly ineffective Brauchitsch, undermined his trust in both. Nor, given the economic and supply problems facing Germany, was his strategy of seizing the Baltic and the vital resources of Ukraine before launching an attack on Moscow without merit. Moreover, far from pursuing a defeated foe, as advocates of the thrust to Moscow imply, German commanders readily acknowledged that Soviet resistance was stiffening rather than slackening.
Therein lay the cause of the mounting problems facing the Germans. The assumption that the Red Army could be defeated quickly and that the Soviet system would collapse like a house of cards had proved horribly wrong. The Germans had signally failed to destroy Soviet forces in the first weeks of the war, an omission Halder now sought to remedy by the capture of Moscow. Stalin, however, fully expected such a move and, thus, had prepared strong defenses to meet it. At the same time, Soviet forces in Ukraine posed an intolerable danger for the long, exposed southern flank of a thrust on Moscow and had to be eliminated before any attack on the capital. Nor did most in the German leadership really expect the capture of Moscow to trigger a collapse of the enemy’s will to resist, as had happened in France, hoping instead merely to gain favorable starting positions for the next year’s campaign. Stalin had long since mastered the crisis of the early weeks of the war and regained control of his system. Given the Soviets’ furious mobilization of their enormous resources as well as the promise of massive Western aid, the war would have continued even with the loss of Moscow. In any case, regardless of these other factors, a rapid drive toward the Soviet capital could not have taken place since German resources were already stretched to the breaking point. Without substantial reinforcements and resupply, Army Group Center was in September incapable of launching an offensive.22
The continuous fighting since late June had taken an enormous toll on the Eastern Army. Since the Germans had assumed that the destruction of Soviet forces on the border would allow them to leap the three hundred miles to the Dnieper, then pause for a rest, they had gambled that a logistic system dependent on truck columns would suffice to provide the necessary supplies. In the event, however, Russian resistance, the absence of paved roads, persistent rains that turned even good roads into muddy tracks, the wear and tear on machinery, constant congestion and traffic jams, and the higher-than-expected fuel expenditure produced a logistic nightmare. In the best of times, driving conditions were harsh, but the long distances to be covered meant that German truck columns had to snake slowly across decrepit roads day and night, their long lines vulnerable to attack by partisans. By the time the fighting at Smolensk had ended, Guderian’s Second Panzergruppe was 450 miles from its original base, barely within reach of motorized supply. The relentless Soviet counterattacks throughout July and August, moreover, not only denied Landsers the opportunity to rest but also resulted in a serious ammunition crisis. German transport capacity was so limited that a switch in priorities to munitions, however, necessitated a drastic cut in the supply of fuel and food rations. Expedients such as giving precedence in supply to the motorized units also backfired since this served only to increase the gap between them and the marching infantry. The supply situation with regard to tanks, motor vehicles, and fuel was so precarious, in fact, that on 11 September the quartermaster-general’s office warned that the strength of the Ostheer might be “insufficient to bring the eastern campaign to a conclusion in the autumn.” “A great reduction in the fighting power and mobility of the army, perhaps at the crucial moment,” might result unless drastic measures were adopted.23