Prestige and propaganda, as always, were also important for Hitler, who sought to use the declaration of war as a means by which to regain the initiative. In his speech to the Reichstag on 11 December, he stressed the endless series of provocations by the United States, until now unanswered, behind which he saw the “Satanic insidiousness” of the Jews, set on the destruction of Germany. He had at last, his patience exhausted, been forced to act. Now, however, with the support of the Japanese, he could take the gloves off and boost Germany’s prospects in the Atlantic. The next day, in a speech to his Gauleiter, he stressed the inevitability of the confrontation with the United States but also revealed something of his strategic thinking. He indicated his firm intention of finishing off Russia in the coming year or at least its European portion. “Then it would perhaps be possible to reach a point of stabilization in Europe through a sort of half-peace” by which this German-dominated continent could exist as a self-sufficient fortress. Problems had arisen that had delayed the German timetable, he acknowledged, but once again he emphasized his vision of the east as Germany’s India. He also stressed, as we have seen, his determination to solve the Jewish problem. “If the German people has again sacrificed 160,000 dead in the eastern campaign,” he vowed, “the originators of this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their own lives.” To Hitler, the Jews had begun the war in Europe and had succeeded, despite his warnings, in making it a world war. They would now pay the price; indeed, from Hitler’s point of view, they had to be eliminated to ensure that Germany was not again “stabbed in the back.” On several occasions in 1943 and 1944, both Hitler and Himmler voiced their belief that only the timely “removal” of the Jews had enabled the Nazi regime to survive military reverses and the aerial bombardment of German cities. This time, unlike 1918, there would be no revolutionary unrest. The matter, Hitler said, could not “have been handled more humanely” since Germany was “in a fight to the death.”104
Given his assumptions, then, Hitler’s decision to declare war on the United States was not all that baffling, nor was it fraught with the deep significance claimed by many historians. It was not the decisive moment in taking Germany down the path of catastrophe: that had already happened. Hitler himself had acknowledged, if only fleetingly, German failure in grasping at world power status in his late November remark to the Danish foreign minister quoted above. Certainly, American entry into the war sealed Germany’s fate, but not before it was able to recover, remarkably well, from the winter crisis that threatened to destroy the Ostheer and achieve amazing victories in 1942. Nor was Hitler’s analysis fundamentally incorrect, for the United States was forced to commit significant resources in the Pacific in 1942, despite Roosevelt’s “Europe first” approach, and not until 1944 was it able to bring to bear substantial ground forces in Europe. Germany had gained a year to win the Lebensraum necessary to compete with the United States and came amazingly close to achieving some sort of triumph over the Soviet Union. Not until the end of 1942, with the Battle of Stalingrad and the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, did Hitler’s gamble finally, definitively, fail. Even then, as Churchill remarked, it was not the beginning of the end, but only the end of the beginning. The war had a long way to go, and, despite his admission that he had no idea how to defeat the United States, Hitler hoped that some sort of victory over the Soviet Union in 1942, combined with a Japanese stalemating of the Americans in the Pacific, might yet retrieve the situation. Unlike the year before, however, Germany had clearly lost its freedom of action and could no longer depend on its own resources for victory. Hitler’s worst fear had proved correct: time was against him.105
The six months between June and December 1941 had proved crucial in determining the fate of the Third Reich. In attacking the Soviet Union, in seeking to realize his ideological vision, Hitler gambled that Germany could remedy its strategic dilemma in a quick campaign that would elevate it to world power status and leave it in control of a continental imperium. In so doing, he also set in motion all the aspects of his war of annihilation: the extermination of the Jews, the starvation and murder of the Soviet civilian population, the homicidal treatment of prisoners of war and partisans, and the colonial exploitation of the conquered territories. Military reverses at the end of the year meant that it was likely that he could not now win the war in the way he originally envisioned, but the change of fortune was not so great that he had to abandon the murderous projects already begun. Although his gamble would ultimately fail, the number of his victims would also soar over the next few years.
5
Reckoning
When the Soviet counteroffensive came on the night of 5–6 December, it could not have been better timed. German troops, having passed the culmination point, were overextended, mentally and physically exhausted, without supplies or winter equipment, and with dangerously vulnerable supply lines. No preparations for the defense had been made, nor could any positions now be built, for both manpower and construction materials were lacking. The Wehrmacht had thrown the last available men into the attack, struggling on largely out of fear of the alternative. As Bock stressed in a telephone call to Jodl on 3 December, “If the attack is called off then going over to the defensive will be very difficult. This thought and the possible consequences of going over to the defensive with our weak forces have… contributed to my sticking with this attack so far.” Two days later, however, Bock admitted that the offensive strength of his forces was shot. The unbearable cold (temperatures had plunged to –36°F on 5 December) not only exhausted his troops but also left German tanks inoperable. Assessing the reasons for the German failure, Bock cited the autumn muddy period that paralyzed movement and robbed him of the ability to exploit the victory at Vyazma as well as the failure of the railroad system. Significantly, he also acknowledged that the Germans had underestimated Soviet reserves of manpower and materiel. The enemy, he marveled, had ruthlessly mobilized so that the Red Army actually had twenty-four more divisions now than in mid-November. The headlong pursuit of the Russians had been justified as long as the OKH believed that the enemy was fighting with the last of his forces; now, Bock noted accusingly, this had proved a grave mistake that placed his army group in serious danger. In this serious situation, however, the Germans comforted themselves with the belief that the Russians could not launch a major attack.1
German intelligence had, in fact, noted at the end of November a buildup of strong, new Russian forces behind the front but believed that they could not mount an immediate, serious counteroffensive. By then, however, Soviet counterattacks designed to achieve local success as well as hold German troops in place had already begun at the far ends of the front, at Tikhvin in the north and Rostov in the south. At the same time, preparations for a far more ambitious attack near Moscow had been completed. The Soviets had begun raising new divisions as early as October, while, in November, troops from Siberia, the Far East, the Volga area, and the Caucasus had been moved into the Moscow region. The true extent of Soviet manpower reserves would have shocked Bock, had he known, for, instead of the twenty-four new divisions he thought he faced, the Russians had formed thirty-three rifle divisions, seven cavalry divisions, thirty rifle brigades, and two tank brigades. These troops were admittedly badly trained, poorly equipped, inexperienced in combat, and led by officers with little training or experience, but they were there, at a time when just the appearance of new enemy formations had been enough to panic the depleted German forces. Despite their astounding losses, the Soviets managed to assemble slightly more than a million men, with more than seven hundred tanks and thirteen hundred aircraft for the operation; actual Soviet combat strength opposite Army Group Center was now greater than it had been when Operation Typhoon began in October. The time was right, Zhukov stressed to Stalin on 29 November, for German strength was sapped. The Soviet dictator agreed and sanctioned the attack. Ironically, in the first two days of December, it appeared as if the Soviet action might have come too late. To the surprise of the Germans as much as the Soviets, units of the Fourth Army broke through the Russian defense line south of the Smolensk-Moscow highway, while elements of Guderian’s Second Panzer Army made headway around Tula. By the third, however, declining strength, stiffening resistance, and the cold forced Bock to call off the attack.2