Although the supply and transportation services worked round the clock to remedy the situation, the inadequacies of motorized transport could not be easily overcome. By the end of September, the shortfall in motor vehicles was estimated at 22 percent, a situation that would only worsen given the deteriorating weather, the lack of spare parts, and the rugged road conditions. The result was a shortage of supplies in nearly every category, a fact that significantly reduced the army’s mobility and fighting power. Nor could increased use of the railroads plug the gap. In preparation for Barbarossa, the railroad net in Poland had been expanded, which in a terrible irony would serve to assist in the Final Solution, but Russian railroads did not conform to the German gauge. Relatively few railway troops had been assigned the task of converting the Russian tracks, however, so their progress lagged behind demands. As a result, bottlenecks occurred at the exchange points between German and Russian rail lines, with waits of up to three days to unload some trains, while others were simply lost. Even converted track proved problematic as Russian rail beds were lighter, which prevented the use of heavy locomotives. In addition, German engines needed additives in order to burn Russian coal efficiently. Finally, deportations of German Jews began on 15 October, which meant that the Reichsbahn was able to furnish only half the required boxcars for supplying the Ostheer, while much of the remaining rolling stock was engaged in transporting food, cereals, and meat back to the Reich.24
To stockpile sufficient supplies of fuel for Operation Typhoon, the Eastern Army needed twenty-seven fuel trains daily throughout the month of September and twenty-nine in October, but the OKW promised delivery of twenty-seven trains only for the first half of September. It agreed to twenty-two daily through October, while in November the number fell to three. In practice, however, even these figures could not be achieved, with the result that, at the beginning of the offensive, Army Group Center had barely enough fuel to reach Moscow and stocks of ammunition sufficient for only two weeks. Nor were other supplies getting through. Army Group Center in August needed at least twenty-four supply trains daily to meet its requirements and twenty-six in September, but at times only half this number arrived and seldom more than eighteen trains a day. Supplying winter equipment to the troops, which had not yet begun, would put further demands on the system. The offensive, as a result, would have to be decided quickly. A report from Forty-first Panzer Corps admitted that “the supply stations cannot cope with even modest demands on account of their lack of supplies from the outset.” Once available stocks were consumed, the sclerotic German supply system could not cope.25 The initial German assumption that the army could be adequately supplied to the Dnieper had been correct; beyond that line, serious logistic difficulties now put sharp limits on the further conduct of operations.
Just as worrisome, the combat power of the armored divisions that were to spearhead the attack on Moscow had declined precipitously as a result of the continuous fighting and lack of rehabilitation. By the end of August, the Ostheer had lost 1,488 armored vehicles and, since Hitler was hoarding tanks for “the time after Barbarossa,” had received only 96 replacements. Even though 125 tanks were in the supply pipeline and Halder had requested the release of a further 181, these numbers were still astonishingly low when the decisive battle of the campaign was being planned. In early September, Halder noted that 30 percent of the Eastern Army’s tanks were completely out of action and that another 23 percent were back in Germany being overhauled. In Army Group Center, the situation was worse, with only a third of tanks ready for action, while in some individual units the figure hovered around 20 percent. Moreover, because of bad weather, muddy roads, and the inadequacy of the railways, the redeployment of forces back to Bock was taking longer than expected. In a dreary reprise, the Germans again faced the reality that they could not concentrate sufficient strength for a knockout blow. The Second Panzergruppe in late September had only 33 percent of its armored vehicles in operation and faced a parlous fuel situation yet was expected to play a major role in the attack on Moscow. Similarly, to the north, Panzergruppe 3 had been forced to leave three motorized divisions in the Leningrad area, while combat and the strain of moving some four hundred miles exacted a considerable toll on the men and equipment of those units returned to Army Group Center.26
In another key measure, as well, it proved impossible to bring Army Group Center back up to strength. While the “beaten” Red Army continued to form reserves, the operational strength of the OKH had been exhausted, as Halder was well aware. At five weeks, roughly the same amount of time as it had taken to defeat the French, total German casualties were almost 17 percent higher, while, by the end of September, the Germans had three times the casualties as in the previous year. Even before the start of Operation Typhoon, the Wehrmacht had lost 185,000 men killed, a figure larger than the total casualties of the entire French campaign. By the end of August, virtually all available forces in the Replacement Army had been brought to the front, with the result that casualties sustained after mid-September could not be replaced. Bock’s forces, which through September had suffered almost 220,000 casualties, had received only 151,000 replacements. Moreover, officer and NCO casualties had been extremely high. These were men, normally the experienced elite of the combat spear, who could not easily be replaced. They were the ones who were schooled in initiative and independent action that gave the Wehrmacht its qualitative edge, whose skills allowed tactical and operational flexibility, who maintained the steadiness, motivation, and morale of their troops in spite of the fanatic enemy resistance. By the end of August, nearly thirty division equivalents of officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) had been killed or wounded, a staggering figure that had a profound impact on the effectiveness of the Eastern Army. Combined with the constant hardships of daily existence—the filth, mud, lice, fatigue, hunger, and diseases—the sight of trusted officers and NCOs, on whose ability one’s own survival often depended, being struck down in droves was profoundly discouraging. Inevitably, men began to question the extent and duration of their sacrifices or whether the objective could ever be attained, especially since the Russians did not seem beaten. Thus, although Army Group Center had roughly 1.9 million men, it did not possess the fighting power these figures would suggest since veteran soldiers were exhausted and the replacements were not comparable in training or experience to those whose places they were taking. Such losses could not continue, one divisional commander warned, “if we do not want to win ourselves to death.”27
By the end of September, just such a prospect seemed at hand as German leaders could look back at a series of spectacular triumphs—grabbing an enormous swath of territory; taking some 2 million prisoners; destroying entire Soviet army groups in impressive encirclement operations; seizing Kiev and isolating Leningrad—yet enemy resistance had still not been broken. German operations, bedeviled all summer by frequent changes of emphasis, a dispersal of effort, and the resultant failure to concentrate sufficient forces for a final knockout blow, continued in typical fashion as the decisive battle of the campaign loomed, struggling to assemble the strength necessary for Army Group Center to accomplish its task.