The consequences of the massively costly victories were all too apparent at the front, where the symbols that the OKH pushed around on a map had little relation to the actual combat value of individual units. Without significant resupply, the provision of winter clothing and equipment, and meaningful reinforcements, the fighting power of most German divisions had been reduced to little more than raiding parties. Nor could the dispatch of specialized troops to the front remedy the situation since most had not been trained for infantry combat. As one general admitted, “We wound up with valuable tank crews fighting… in the snow as infantrymen—and being totally wasted.” As these men discovered, living in foxholes and fighting in ice and snow were not comparable to life in a tank; some 70 percent of losses were from frostbite. Employment of Luftwaffe crews and maintenance personnel at the front also proved catastrophic: not only were they ineffective in combat, but they were also then lost for the tasks for which they had been trained. Moreover, with the high rate of losses suffered by officers, the very structure of the Wehrmacht was disintegrating. In the absence of experienced veterans, both morale and operational effectiveness declined as German tactical expertise could no longer compensate for inferior numbers or tanks. In the icy cold and snow that reduced German mobility, a sense of vulnerability began to take hold as Landsers realized that their only effective defense against the T-34, the fearsome eighty-eight-millimeter antiaircraft gun, was often too cumbersome to bring into action in the Russian winter. As temperatures plunged, machine guns, rifles, artillery, and vehicles froze, further contributing to a sense of helplessness, especially as spare parts were lacking to make them operable.90
Nor could men keep warm since winter clothing failed to arrive; on average, only one man in five had a greatcoat. The bottlenecks in the German transportation system meant that trains loaded with winter gear had to be shunted aside in favor of higher-priority ammunition and fuel trains. To make do, German soldiers looted Russian homes of coats, boots, blankets, white sheets—anything that would provide protection from the numbing cold. Simply struggling through the deep snow burned considerable energy that could not be made good by the inadequate rations reaching the front. Daily life was a constant struggle. “Bread had to be chopped with hatchets,” noted one soldier, “gasoline froze…, and the skin from hands remained frozen to rifles. The wounded froze to death within minutes.” Infantry companies down to thirty men found it taxing to post sentries since men had to be relieved every thirty minutes or so in the biting cold, making it nearly impossible to get any rest. “Our people are kaputt,” admitted Wilhelm Prüller. “One hour outside, one hour in the hut, watch, alarm sentry duty, listening duty, observer duty, occupy the MG [machine gun] posts…. For weeks and weeks one hour of sleep, then one hour of duty.” Even going to the toilet was a chore, as one Landser remembered: “You try coming out and dropping your trousers when it’s 40° below zero!” Behind this sardonic comment was a troubling reality, however, as frostbite claimed many men suffering from dysentery. Drugged by the cold, poorly nourished, numbed by fatigue, Landsers succumbed to lethargy as morale plummeted. “Our best strength was murdered here on these snow fields,” Harald Henry wrote bitterly in early December while lying in front of Moscow, then added, “A tremendously deep hatred, a resounding ‘No’ collected in our breasts.” Another Landser conceded that many a man, “when it came to the decisive moment, opted not to stick his head out as far as he might have done otherwise.” Brutalized, demoralized, and overwhelmed by the savage winter conditions, Landsers had reached the limits of their endurance. “We are all so tired of Russia,” lamented Klaus Hansmann, “tired of the war.”91
Hitler, too, was noticeably uneasy about the offensive, remarking to Halder on 19 November that he expected a negotiated peace since “the two belligerents cannot annihilate each other.” On the twenty-fourth, General Fromm, the head of the Replacement Army and chief of Military Armaments, warned that the “catastrophic worsening” of the situation in the armaments economy made an imminent peace a “necessity.” The next day, according to his adjutant, Major Gerhard Engel, Hitler expressed great concern about the Russian winter, fearing, “We started too late.” Time, he mused, was “his greatest nightmare.” Two days later, on the twenty-seventh, Quartermaster-General Wagner told Hitler, “We are at the end of our personnel and material strength.” As if sobered by this, Hitler let slip that same day a revealing remark to the Danish foreign minister: “If the German people are no longer strong enough and ready to sacrifice their own blood for their existence, they should perish.” Two days later, Hitler received yet another jolt of bad news, this time from one of his most trusted and able advisers, the ardent Nazi and minister for armaments and munitions Fritz Todt. Along with Walter Rohland, the head of the tank production program, Todt met with Hitler on the twenty-ninth and painted a disturbing picture of supply problems, materiel deficiencies on the eastern front, and the superiority of Soviet tank production, then observed: “This war can no longer be won by military means.” Hitler listened without interruption, then asked calmly, “How, then, should I end this war?” Todt replied that it could be concluded only politically, a path already pondered by Hitler in August, to which the Führer responded simply, “I can scarcely see a way of coming politically to an end.” Although that same day, in separate discussions with Goebbels and Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, he projected an optimistic facade, Hitler surely realized that his plans for Russia could no longer be realized.92 With no clear way out of his dilemma, however, he had little recourse but to pursue some sort of military solution, even if it would not result in the complete triumph he had originally expected.
As a result, the Führer did not intervene when both Brauchitsch and Halder insisted that the Second Panzer Army keep attacking to inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy, despite the obvious fact that the Germans, too, would suffer heavy casualties for which they had no replacements. Halder conceded in a meeting on the twenty-third that the means for continuing the war were limited, that Germany would never again have an army like it had in June 1941, and that the main effort had now shifted to sustaining morale and holding out economically. Amazingly blind to reality, however, he still hoped to reach the Caucasus oil fields by the end of the year as well as sustain pressure on the enemy everywhere else on the vast front line. Moreover, his injunction to accomplish this without proper winter quarters or supplies, all the while maintaining “frugality in the employment of our forces and arms and ammunition,” must have seemed a mockery to front officers, as did his assurance that Soviet forces were cracking under the German attack. “We are in a situation like the battle of the Marne,” he claimed, once more invoking the historic memories that had such deep significance for German leaders. Despite Halder’s exhortations, the gap between rhetoric and reality was now unbridgeable. Guderian had to halt his advance toward Kolomna on the twenty-fifth because of fierce enemy counterattacks, while the attempt to seize the key city of Tula failed. By 5 December, with temperatures plummeting to –30° F, virtually no fuel, vehicles and weapons inoperable in the bitter cold, and fewer than forty tanks in the entire army, Guderian suspended the offensive. It was, he emphasized to the army group, more important to preserve his remaining fighting strength than to continue the attempt to seize Tula.93