remove the last Jews from German cities, and the promotion of private initiative rather than a state-controlled economy.198
Away from the supper soliloquies, however, tension mounted once more between Hitler and his military leaders. The military advance continued to make ground. But the numbers of Soviet prisoners captured steadily diminished. This was endlessly discussed at FHQ.199 Hitler’s military advisers were worried. They took it that the Soviets were pulling back their forces in preparation for a big counter-offensive, probably on the Volga, in the Stalingrad region.200 Halder had warned as early as 12 July of concern at the front that the enemy, recognizing German envelopment tactics, was avoiding direct fight and withdrawing to the south.201 Hitler’s view was, however, that the Red Army was close to the end of its tether. He pressed all the more for a speedy advance.202
His impulsive, though sometimes — as the Voronezh episode had shown — unclear or ambiguous command-style caused constant difficulties for the operational planners. But the essential problem was more far- reaching. Hitler felt compelled by two imperatives: time, and material resources. The offensive had to be completed before the might of Allied resources came fully into play. And possession of the Caucasian oil-fields would, in his view, both be decisive in bringing the war in the east to a successful conclusion, and provide the necessary platform to continue a lengthy war against the Anglo-Saxon powers.203 If this oil were not gained, Hitler had said, the war would be lost for Germany within three months.204 Following his own logic, Hitler had, therefore, no choice but to stake everything on the ambitious strike to the Caucasus in a victorious summer offensive.205 Even if some sceptical voices could be heard, Halder and the professionals in Army High Command had favoured the offensive. But the gap, already opened up the previous summer, between them and the dictator was rapidly widening. What Hitler saw as the negativity, pessimism, and timidity of Army High Command’s traditional approaches drove him into paroxysms of rage. Army planners for their part had cold feet about what increasingly seemed to them a reckless gamble carried out by dilettante methods, more and more likely to end in disaster. But they could not now pull out of the strategy which they had been party to implementing. A catastrophe at Stalingrad was the heavy price that would soon be paid. The German war effort had set in train its own self- destructive dynamic.
The risk of military disaster was seriously magnified by Hitler’s Directive No.45 of 23 July 1942. Thereafter, a calamity was waiting to happen. Unlike the April directive, in which Halder’s hand had been visible, this directive rested squarely on a decision by Hitler, which the General Staff had sought to prevent.206 The directive for the continuation of ‘Blue’, now renamed ‘Operation Braunschweig’, began with a worryingly unrealistic claim: ‘In a campaign of little more than three weeks, the broad goals set for the southern flank of the eastern front have been essentially achieved. Only weak enemy forces of the Timoshenko armies have succeeded in escaping envelopment and reaching the southern bank of the Don. We have to reckon with their reinforcement from the Caucasus area.’207
Earlier in the month, Hitler had divided Army Group South into a northern sector (Army Group B, originally under Field-Marshal von Bock, then, after his sacking, under Colonel-General Freiherr von Weichs) and a southern sector (Army Group A, under Field-Marshal Wilhelm List).208 The original intention, under his Directive No.41 of 5 April, had been to advance on the Caucasus
Only the most incautiously optimistic assessment of the weakness of the Soviet forces could have justified the scale of the risk involved. But Hitler took precisely such a view of enemy strength. Moreover, he was as always temperamentally predisposed to a risk-all strategy, with alternatives dismissed out of hand and boats burned to leave no fall-back position. As always, his self-justification could be bolstered by the dogmatic view that there was no alternative. Halder, aware of more realistic appraisals of Soviet strength, and the build-up of forces in the Stalingrad area, but unable to exert any influence upon Hitler, was by now both seriously concerned and frustrated at his own impotence.210 On 23 July, the day that Hitler issued his Directive No.45, Halder had written in his diary: ‘This chronic tendency to underrate enemy capabilities is gradually assuming grotesque proportions and develops into a positive danger. The situation is getting more and more intolerable. There is no room for any serious work. This so-called leadership is characterized by a pathological reacting to the impressions of the moment and a total lack of any understanding of the command machinery and its possibilities.’211 On 15 August, Halder’s notes for his situation report began: ‘Overall picture: have we extended the risk too far?’212 The question was well warranted. But the insight had come rather late in the day.
By mid-August, Army Group A had swept some 350 miles to the south, over the north Caucasian plain. It was now far separated from Army Group B, with a lengthy exposed flank, and formidable logistical problems of ensuring supplies.213 Its advance now slowed markedly in the wooded foothills of the northern Caucasus.214 Maykop was taken, but the oil-refineries were left in ruins, systematically and expertly destroyed by the retreating Soviet forces.215 The impetus had by now been lost. Hitler showed little sense of realism when he spoke privately to Goebbels on 19 August. Operations in the Caucasus, he said, were going extremely well. He wanted to take possession of the oil-wells of Maykop, Grozny, and Baku during the summer, securing Germany’s oil supplies and destroying those of the Soviet Union. Once the Soviet border had been reached, the breakthrough into the Near East would follow, occupying Asia Minor and overrunning Iraq, Iran, and Palestine, to cut off Britain’s oil supplies. Within two or three days, he wanted to commence the big assault on Stalingrad. He intended to destroy the city completely, leaving no stone on top of another. It was both psychologically and militarily necessary. The forces deployed were reckoned to be sufficient to capture the city within eight days.216
These were scarcely signs of waning self-confidence.217 But his over-reaction, two days later, when news reached him that mountain troops had placed the German flag on the Elbrus, highest mountain of the Caucasus range at 5,630 metres, suggests that his self-confidence was a front, perhaps above all for himself. Beneath the facade, his nerves were edgy, his anxiety about the offensive growing. The troops presumably thought he would be pleased. In fact, he was furious at what he saw as a pointless mountaineering feat devoid of military purpose.218 Speer later wrote that he had seldom seen him so enraged, fuming for days at ‘these mad mountaineers’ who deserved to be put before a military court. In the middle of a war, he ranted, their idiotic ambition had driven them to climb an idiotic peak, when he had ordered everything to be concentrated on the taking of Suchum. It was in truth a minor escapade. But from Hitler’s near-hysterical over-reaction it seemed, Speer recalled, as if they had ruined his entire operational plan.219
The last significant successes of Army Group B, meanwhile, had been in encircling and destroying two Russian armies south-west of Kalac, on the Don due west of Stalingrad, on 8 August.220 Advancing in punishing heat and hindered through chronic fuel shortage, on 23 August, the 6th Army, under General Friedrich Paulus, succeeded in reaching the Volga, north of Stalingrad.221 Amid heavy Soviet defences, the advance ground rapidly to a halt. The summer offensive had, as it turned out, run its course in less than two months.222 As early as 26 August Halder was noting: ‘Near Stalingrad, serious tension on account of superior counter-attacks of the enemy. Our divisions are no longer very strong. The command is heavily under nervous strain.’223 The 6th Army was, however, able to consolidate its position. Over the next weeks, it even gained the advantage. But the nightmare of Stalingrad was only just beginning.
While the southern part of the massively extended front was running out of steam, with the 6th Army now bogged down at Stalingrad and List’s Army Group A stalled in the Caucasus, Kluge’s Army Group Centre had encountered a damaging setback, suffering horrendous casualties in an ill-fated attempt ordered by Hitler to wipe out Russian forces at Sukhinichi, 150 miles west of Moscow, from where it was hoped to establish the basis for a renewed drive on the capital. Kluge, on a visit to ‘Werwolf on 7 August, had asked Hitler to remove two armoured divisions from the offensive at Sukhinichi to deploy them against a threatening Soviet counterattack in the Rzhev
