6. THE ARMY GROUPS
The western campaign was barely three weeks old and still in full swing when Hitler turned his mind to new horizons. On June 2, 1940, he spoke in General Rundstedt’s headquarters about his hopes of soon concluding a peace treaty with Britain in order to gain “a free hand” for what he considered his “great, true mission: the struggle against Bolshevism.”1 Shortly thereafter, on July 21, he ordered the army high command to begin “mental preparations” for renewed operations in the East, which he considered launching as early as the fall of that year. This time, however, in contrast to his stubbornness after the Polish campaign, he allowed himself to be easily dissuaded from such an early date.
Above all it was his concern about the difficulty of waging a two-front war that made Hitler more uncertain and receptive. He had once said that avoiding such a predicament was a fundamental principle of German foreign policy. To get around it, he now elaborated a risky plan to divide the war into two phases: first the Wehrmacht would turn on the Soviet Union and conquer it in a lightning strike, then, after gathering its strength, it would turn to the task of polishing of Great Britain once and for all. Hitler’s confidence in his luck and invincibility, and his obsession with his “true mission,” which now lay so tantalizingly near, eventually laid to rest most of his concerns, and any lingering hesitation was overcome by his anxiety about timing- “Time, always time!” as he later grumbled. In mid-December he informed Alfred Jodl that “all problems on the continent of Europe” would have to be ironed out by 1941 because by 1942 “the United State s would be in a position to intervene.” To Mussolini he said that he felt like someone who had only one shot left in his rifle as night began to fall. In his haste, before the final decision to invade had even been made, he ordered that suitable locations be found in the East for headquarters and command posts for the army groups and that construction begin “as quickly as possible.”2
At the same time, he began to make his entourage aware that this would be no ordinary war waged according to the traditional rules; it was to be a war of annihilation. His annoyance at repeated complaints from military leaders about atrocities committed in the Polish campaign led him to summon nearly 250 senior officers to the Berlin Chancellery on March 30, 1941, in order to explain this new kind of warfare to them. Everything they had previously experienced-the “flower wars,” the easy victories gained through happy circumstance and the battles fought on the wrong battlefields-was only a prelude, he told them, in a speech that was to last two and a half hours. The real war, his war, was about to begin. According to the notes taken by one of his listeners, it would be a “struggle of two ideologies.” Bolshevism was “equivalent to a social criminality, a tremendous danger for the future,” the Führer declared. “We must abandon the viewpoint of soldierly comradeship,” he cautioned. “What is involved is a struggle of annihilation. The commanders of the troops must know what is at stake.” He concluded by singling out Communist leaders and the secret police for special treatment. “Commissars and GPU men are criminals and must be treated as such. The fight will be very different from the fight in the West. In the East harshness is kindness toward the future. The leaders must demand of themselves the sacrifice of overcoming their scruples.”3
When Hitler finished speaking there was a moment of stunned silence. But he had scarcely left the room before the marshals besieged Commander in Chief Brauchitsch, talking and gesticulating wildly. No one had any doubt, it seems, about the real meaning of Hitler’s words. Brauchitsch stood firm against the waves of complaints and references to international law, saying he had already done all he could but Hitler was not to be dissuaded. According to a Statement that Jodl made at the Nuremberg trials, Brauchitsch and Hitler did indeed have a number of “very heated conversations.” Halder tried to persuade Brauchitsch that the two of them should resign together, but the commander in chief was incapable of making a decision of that magnitude.4
Hitler knew better than to rely solely on appeals for harshness. A number of preparatory guidelines were soon issued transferring the Wehrmacht’s responsibility for the administration of the occupied territories to special Reich commissioners. Heinrich Himmler and four Einsatzgruppen were commissioned to undertake “special tasks” arising “from the final battle of two opposed political systems.” The dry administrative language outlining directives for the planned “war of ideologies” could hardly disguise the extent to which the basic principles of international law and warfare were being thwarted. Two of the most infamous directives were the decree on military law and the so-called Commissar Order. The former transferred responsibility for punishing crimes against enemy civilians from military courts to individual division commanders, while the latter required that Red Army political commissars be segregated upon capture and, “as a rule, immediately shot for instituting barbaric Asian methods of warfare.” When Oster produced the documents at a meeting in Beck’s house, “everyone’s hair stood on end,” according to one who was there, “at these orders for the troops in Russia, signed by Halder, that would systematically transform military justice for the civilian population into a caricature that mocked every concept of law.” They all agreed that, “by complying with Hitler’s orders, Brauchitsch is sacrificing the honor of the German army.”5 In the first half of June, two weeks before the invasion was launched, the “Commissar Order” was issued to the staffs at the front as the last of a series of preparatory edicts.
Henning von Tresckow was the first general staff officer of Army Group Center, headquartered in Posen at the time. Those who were close to him all recalled the strong impression he made, his “leadership qualities,” “distinguished manner,” “sense of honor,” and “Prussianness.” These descriptions do more, however, to obscure his character than to illuminate it.
Next to Stauffenberg, he was the most remarkable figure in the military resistance, displaying not only the mental discipline and passionate moral sense of the other conspirators but also great coolness under pressure, decisiveness, and daring. The so-called Kaltenbrunner reports of the interrogations carried out after the July 20 assassination attempt describe him as the “prime mover” and the “evil spirt” behind the plot.6 Originally an admirer of National Socialism, Tresckow did not have to wait for Hitler’s blatant warmongering to see the error of his ways. The continual illegal acts, the persecution of minorities, the suppression of free speech, and the harassment of churches had long since turned him against the party. Unlike many others, he realized early on that the “excesses” of the Nazi regime were not excesses at all but its real nature. And with the same frankness with which he had once supported Hitler, he now began to criticize him. When one of his army comrades defended the regime, Tresckow vehemently disagreed and ended by predicting that a dispute like this could easily lead to their taking up arms on opposite sides some day. Indeed, the commander of the First Regiment of Foot Soldiers had once prophesied that young officer Tresckow would end up as either chief of general staff or a mutineer mounting the scaffold.7