Although in the north the Ninth Army and the Fourth Panzergruppe had managed, at the cost of very high casualties, to slow the Russian advance, to the south the enemy attack launched on 6 December had been more successful. By the seventh, the Soviets had taken Mikhailov, where panic erupted among German troops, and the next day punched through German lines. With his army under attack from three sides, Guderian began to pull his units back from Tula in order to prevent encirclement and with hopes of forming a coherent defense. Attempts to close the widening gap in his lines failed for lack of troops, vehicle breakdowns, the numbing cold, and deep snow that hindered all movement. By the tenth, the gap stretched to twelve miles; in desperation, Bock ordered the First SS Brigade, the 221st Security Division, and two police battalions withdrawn from the rear area and sent to the front. Guderian, with no more than forty panzers in his whole army, pleaded with Bock for more troops, but the latter had none to give. Hitler had forbidden the dispatch of any intact divisions to the front; only men returning from leave and convalescent battalions could be expected. After all, he told Schmundt, his military adjutant, he “could not send everything out into the winter just because Army Group Center had a few gaps in its front.” At the same time, a serious crisis faced the Second Army as Soviet forces broke through and drove in the direction of Livny. The Germans’ attempt to seal the breach by attacking the Russian flanks failed, raising the worrisome possibility of a deep operational breakthrough toward Kursk and Orel that would cut their supply and retreat routes as well as those of the Second Panzer Army to the north. As a last resort, the divisional headquarters and two reinforced regiments from two infantry divisions in Army Group South were sent to the Second Army, but they would not arrive before the thirteenth or fourteenth.8
Only on the twelfth, with the entire front in danger of disintegrating, did Halder begin to realize the seriousness of the situation. When, in reply to yet another of Bock’s reports about the untenable situation at the front, he persisted in doubting that the enemy could build on his success, he was shocked by Bock’s response: “Of course they can! We cannot stop our troops running away as soon as they see a Russian tank!” Finally shaken to reality, Halder admitted that Germany faced “the most serious situation of the two [world] wars.” It was, he conceded, a question of the very existence of the Ostheer. With little hope that the army group could hold out, Bock emphasized the next day to Brauchitsch that key decisions had to be made that went beyond the military and that only the Führer could make.9
Despite the alarming reports from the front, Hitler had steadfastly resisted making a decision. In part, this resulted from his reluctance to give up his offensive plans for 1942; in part, it reflected the limits he faced since he could hardly afford a large-scale call-up of workers owing to the precarious situation of the labor market. He was also notoriously mistrustful of army reports and in any case evidently had not seen Bock’s evaluation of the situation. Not until the fourteenth, when Schmundt confirmed Brauchitsch’s report on the catastrophic state of affairs at the front, that, indeed, he saw no way of “getting the army out of this difficult situation,” did Hitler realize that he had to act immediately if Army Group Center was to be saved. He agreed to a straightening of the front at Klin and Kalinin and the withdrawal of Guderian’s forces in the south, but no other retreats were to be made until rear defense lines had been prepared. After all, he stressed, only in a few places had there been deep penetrations. That same night, he ordered General Fromm, the commander of the Replacement Army, to mobilize what units he could—barely four divisions—and dispatch them to the front. The next day, he ordered that five divisions be sent from Western Europe, although, in order to expedite their movement, only “rifle bearers” were to be gathered and sent, while an additional four divisions would be made available from forces in the Balkans. At the same time, the home front was to be scoured for men who could be sent east for construction tasks. Since these transfers would take time, however, Hitler could see no alternative at the present but to hold the line and not retreat.10
With the German command system at odds—the generals continued to advocate retreat, while Hitler insisted that such a move made no sense if, at the end of it, the troops found themselves in the same situation but without heavy weapons and artillery—the Führer on 16 December asserted control. Having heard that day from both Bock and Guderian that their forces faced destruction without the speedy arrival of replacements and supplies, Hitler that night made a decision based largely on Bock’s earlier arguments, which, to the Führer, justified the “great gamble” of risking the loss of the army group: without prepared positions, and having abandoned most of their equipment, any withdrawal might well turn into a panicked rout. Hitler, who prided himself on his ability both to master and to profit from a crisis, now set out to resolve this one. That night, he issued his controversial Haltebefehl (order to hold out), which allowed Army Group North to withdraw to the Volkhov but then ordered “the front to be defended down to the last man.” He thus hoped to overcome the danger with an iron will and by seeing to the rapid transfer of all available units to the east. In a step toward the further Nazification of the army, he also demanded: “The commanders-in-chief, commanders, and officers are to take personal charge of forcing the troops into their positions to put up fanatical resistance…. Only with this style of leadership can the time required to bring up the reinforcements… be gained.” Since Hitler would now take all decisions personally, any withdrawal would require his approval, which meant a near-complete loss of autonomy for front commanders. In effect, he assumed direct command of the army itself. His stand-and-fight order, which at least provided clarity and removed the uncertainties of the situation, also stripped his generals of the flexibility and command initiative that had been the key to German operational success.11
Although, in retrospect, this decision has been much criticized by historians, at the time it likely seemed the only possible course of action. Withdrawal meant losing the heavy weapons and would not have halted the Russians in any case, while Bock himself worried about the very real possibility that, once begun, a retreat would turn into a disaster of Napoleonic proportions. Nor was a mobile defense a serious alternative, given the lack of vehicles, tanks, fuel, supplies, and the difficulty of movement on the snow-covered roads. As Bock and his army commanders had repeatedly pointed out, the only feasible solution lay in holding their positions and rushing reserves to fill the gaps. Hitler, then, was largely acceding to the advice of his generals, but with a new twist: not only had he taken command initiative away from them, but the order to stand fast would now be carried out in a rigid and uncompromising manner that meant the needless death of many Landsers. In the event, Hitler’s intent to hold out up front until reinforcements arrived failed, not because it was inherently unreasonable, but as a result of the deficient German transportation system.12