Advance units had not outrun their supply lines; instead, provisions simply could not be moved forward. Any systematic delivery of supplies was impossible, both because of the rains and because the few paved highways were repeatedly broken on a daily basis by time-delay explosive charges that ripped holes ten yards deep and thirty yards wide. The Minsk-Moscow highway was so badly damaged that an entire infantry division had to be employed to make it serviceable again. “We can’t go on,” wrote one disgusted Landser. “There is no more gasoline and nothing is coming up behind us…. Rations still do not arrive and we sit in filth the entire day.” Complained another, “The so-called Rollbahn upon which we are marching is a sea of knee-deep mud. Vehicles sink up to the axle and in many places the morass is up to the bellies of the horses.” Thousands of trucks were stranded, while moving even five miles might take a day or two. In the Second Panzer Army, progress was reduced to a half mile per hour. The terrible roads and abysmal weather, moreover, led to fuel consumption three times that of normal, but the dismal state of the railways made it impossible to deliver extra quantities of fuel. Taxed to the limit, emaciated horses collapsed in the mire. “In some cases,” Bock observed, “twenty-four horses are required to move a single artillery piece.” Motorized supply, which was inadequate in any case, could no longer be maintained, nor, given the huge losses of horses, could the Ostheer move even by traditional means. The operational mobility of the troops had been reduced to the next laborious step.39
At times in mid-October, temperatures dropped, and snow mingled with the rain. “We watched it uneasily,” admitted one Landser of the snow, for it meant the impending onset of winter. Bock, too, worried about the effect on morale since the question, “What will become of us in the winter?” was on everyone’s mind. Without heavy coats, soldiers stuffed “newspapers in the boots… between vest and shirt… round the belly… in the trousers… round the legs,” anything to preserve warmth. Constantly soaked, covered in mud, unable to dry their clothing or boots, susceptible to trench foot and other maladies in the near-freezing temperatures, covered in lice, exhausted, and with limited rations, the infantry endured wretched conditions as they struggled to advance. Many were so tired that they no longer bothered to seek protection when enemy shelling began. Others struggled in the wet, cold weather with hands frozen stiff. “My gloves were so wet I could not bear the ache any longer,” wrote Harald Henry. “My contorted face was streaked with tears, but I was in a trance-like state. I plodded forward, babbling incoherently…. All the others were in the same state.”40
Some noticed a strange, and troubling, phenomenon: the foot soldiers were beginning to overtake the “fast” motorized divisions. As the arrival of supplies faltered, the pursuit of the Russians failed to deliver the expected results. “The beaten Russians seemed unaware that as a military force they had almost ceased to exist,” noted one officer sarcastically. “During these weeks… the fighting became more bitter with each day.” With this realization, morale dropped alarmingly. “After four months,” concluded another officer, “one has had enough.” Confirmed Harald Henry, “We can’t take much more.” By late October, Army Group Center worried about the morale of soldiers “exhausted from marching in mud, rain and cold, and very much aware of the lack of an effective weapon to defend themselves against the heavy Russian tanks. In places the troops are not always capable of meeting the demands of battle.” Few at the front or at home now expected the war to conclude by the end of the year. Once again, German triumphs, as Bock admitted, were only partial successes that “mean[t] nothing”: “The splitting apart of the army group together with the frightful weather has caused us being bogged down. As a result, the Russians are gaining time to bring their shattered divisions back up to strength and bolster their defense.” The Ostheer was nearing the limits of its endurance; for many men, the most important thing was no longer a strategic objective but simply finding shelter.41
In a hauntingly familiar refrain, Bock’s hope that this time the cauldrons could be reduced quickly was dashed as well, for the Kesselschlachten at Vyazma and Bryansk proved, if anything, even more intense than in previous pockets, perhaps the hardest fighting of the entire eastern campaign. Once again, maneuver alone, which had induced the French to capitulate a year earlier, failed to produce a similar response from the Soviets, who doggedly fought on regardless of cost. The Germans trapped, then blasted Red Army units into splintered groups, but fighting raged for nearly two weeks, tying down some 70 percent of the army group’s divisions. In the process, blitzkrieg once more ground to a standstill amid irrecoverable losses. The Sixth Panzer Division, for example, which on 10 October still had over 200 tanks, was left with only 60 less than a week later. At the same time, the fighting at Mtsensk left the Fourth Panzer with 38 tanks, while on 16 October the Second Panzer Army as a whole had only 271 panzers. By early November, the Ostheer had lost over 2,000 of its original 3,580 armored vehicles but received only 601 replacements. The fighting power of a panzer division in Army Group Center had declined to just 35 percent of its normal strength. Vehicle losses had also assumed catastrophic dimensions. By now, most supply trucks had ground thousands of miles over dusty, then muddy, roads that caused numerous breakdowns. Reliance on low-grade motor oil led to numerous engine failures, while a chronic shortage of spare parts resulted in junking and cannibalizing of otherwise repairable vehicles. By mid-November, only 15 percent of vehicles in the Ostheer were still in good working order, a further 15 percent needed minor repair, while fully 40 percent required complete overhaul and had to be sent back to Germany. Raids by partisans added to losses, which often totaled a quarter or a third of trucks in supply columns. On 4 November, the Second Panzer Army noted, “There is not a single road… on which larger units can continue moving unhindered or that permits delivery of supplies to the fighting troops…. Operations have come to a standstill.” Less than a week later, it lamented, “Normal provisioning can no longer be guaranteed.”42
Nor was it just the armored divisions that suffered heavy losses; the infantry, too, paid a very high price for success. In just a little over two weeks, Army Group Center lost roughly 50,000 men in savage fighting that unnerved even veteran troops, while, by mid-October, total losses stood at 277,000. German infantry withstood frantic enemy attempts to break out as, day after day, Soviet troops, amid nerve-shattering cries of “Hurrah,” launched desperate human-wave assaults against undermanned German positions. A confusing melee of savage one-on-one combat ensued as Landsers fought with anything available—pistols, spades, and grenades—to check the onslaught. As the infantry fought to the limit of its endurance, the commander of the Fourth Army, Kluge, believed that “the psychologically most critical moment of the campaign in the east” had arrived. German troops, lacking suitable clothing, struggling through impassable terrain, facing the prospect of surviving in winter with inadequate shelter, and confronting an enemy that showed no sign of capitulating, began to realize that an end to operations was unlikely. For many, expectations of victory turned into hopes for survival. The intense fighting and awful road conditions had caused the German advance to falter. “A success for the Russians,” Bock conceded, “whose stubbornness paid off.”43