Leningrad

Put aside with Barbarossa’s launch, the disagreement broke into the open again in mid-July, as von Leeb asked for more troops and equipment for his Army Group North. A parallel argument over whether to bypass surrounded Russian towns or capture them before advancing further was resolved in the generals’ favour, but on Leningrad Hitler held firm. ‘My representations stressing the importance of Moscow’, Halder grumbled to his diary on 26 July, ‘are brushed aside with no valid counter-evidence.’ Ten days later, as the Wehrmacht approached Novgorod, Halder tried again, this time via General Paulus: ‘At my request the commander of Army Group South raised points of high strategy, emphasising the importance of Moscow. The Führer again showed himself absolutely deaf to these arguments. He still harps on his old themes: 1. Leningrad, with Hoth [commander of Army Group Centre’s 3rd Panzer Group] brought into the picture. 2. Eastern Ukraine. . 3. Moscow last.’ The following day Halder tried to recruit Chief of Operations Staff General Alfred Jodl to the cause. ‘I put it to him that Leningrad can be taken with the forces already at [von Leeb’s] disposal. We need not and must not divert to the Leningrad front anything that we might need for Moscow. Von Leeb’s flank is not threatened in any way. . Von Bock must drive with all his forces on Moscow. (Ask the Führer: Can he afford not to reduce Moscow before winter sets in?)’15

Increasingly irritated by von Leeb’s pleas for more resources — ‘Wild requests by Army Group North for engineers, artillery, anti-aircraft guns’ — Halder was driven to consider resignation by a Führer Directive of 21 August, which flatly contradicted Army High Command. ‘OKH’s [High Command’s] proposals’, Hitler declared, ‘do not conform with my intentions. . The principal object still to be achieved before the onset of winter is not the capture of Moscow, but rather, in the South, the occupation of the Crimea and the Donets coal basin. . and in the North, the encirclement of Leningrad and junction with the Finns.’ Not until these objectives were met would forces be freed up to advance on the capital.

Halder was furious. Hitler’s interference was unendurable, and the Führer had only himself to blame for ‘the zigzag course caused by his successive orders’. High Command, now in its fourth victorious campaign, should not ‘tarnish its reputation’ with his latest demands, and Brauchitsch, the commander-in-chief, was being treated ‘absolutely outrageously’. He suggested to Brauchitsch that they both tender their resignations, but Brauchitsch refused ‘on the grounds that the resignations would not be accepted, so nothing would change’.16 The row was patched up (‘Bliss and harmony’, Halder noted sarcastically on 30 August, ‘Everything just lovely again’) but not resolved until 5 September, when Hitler finally agreed that if von Leeb had not captured Leningrad within ten days, Hoepner’s Panzer Group Four would be transferred south to join von Bock’s push for Moscow.17 In the event, von Leeb’s protests and promises of imminent victory meant that the transfer started three days late, but Halder’s point was won. ‘The ring around Leningrad’, he wrote on the day the panzers swung south, ‘has not yet been drawn as closely as might be desired, and further progress after the departure of the 1st Armoured and 36th Motorised Divisions is doubtful. . The situation will remain tight until such time as hunger takes effect as our ally.’18

The redeployment did not seem overwhelmingly significant at the time. On the German side it was seen as a temporary compromise; on the Russian, the sense of looming catastrophe only intensified. In retrospect, however, it was the point at which Germany missed her best chance of taking Leningrad. Never again, despite more than two years of near-continuous fighting, did Army Group North amass the mobility and firepower for a full-scale frontal assault on the city. Instead, it became the Eastern Front’s poor relation, starved of reinforcements and unable to move troops into reserve for fear that they would immediately be redeployed elsewhere. While in the south and centre armies swept back and forth across the map, round Leningrad the front congealed — exactly as Hitler had planned that Barbarossa should not — into the mud and blood of positional trench warfare, during which neither side, despite repeated offensives, ever mustered the strength decisively to beat the other.

The Wehrmacht’s change of strategy — from ground assault to starvation and air raids — was made official in a memo circulated to Army Group North under Halder’s name on 28 September:

According to the directive of the High Command it is ordered that:

1. The city of Leningrad is to be sealed off, the ring being drawn as tightly as possible so as to spare our forces unnecessary effort. Surrender terms will not be offered.