In late July 1941, the German leadership was perplexed at the strategic situation on the ground. Barely five weeks into the campaign, the German armies were beginning to flounder in the vastness of Russian space. The Russian theater was so immense--and ever widening as the Germans pushed eastward--that concentrated German force could only be applied in a few areas.

German troops advance on foot, bicycle, and horse cart during the summer of 1941. Russia's poor roads and incompatible rail network disrupted German supply operations.

The overall ratio of German force to Russian space was so low, in fact, that a continuous German front line could not be maintained. Instead, sizable gaps routinely yawned between major German units. Too, substantial geographic obstacles divided the German army groups: the Pripyat Marsh region lay between Army Groups Center and South, while forests, streams, and poor roads reduced lateral movement within and between Army Groups North and Center.

German units became dangerously separated in depth as well as in width. The mobility differences between the motorized and non-motorized elements of the Wehrmacht caused the Germans to advance, in effect, in two distinct echelons. During the frontier battles of encirclement, the Germans had managed this disparity through their Keil und Kessel tactics. However, the extended distances over which the Germans now operated aggravated this problem, opening larger gulfs between the advanced panzers and the following infantry. Increasingly, the German forces not only advanced separately but fought separately as well. [32]

The open areas between German units were, of course, populated by bypassed Red Army units, and these gaps constituted weak points that could easily be exploited by Soviet counterattacks. Already in the campaign, bypassed Red Army forces had waylaid the German 268th Infantry Division, stampeding the German troops. This incident had resulted in the capture of some of the division's artillery and had caused consternation within the German High Command. [33]

The awkwardness of the German position was not lost on the Soviets. On 19 July, Army Group Center reported the capture of a Russian order "indicating that the Russian High Command [is] aiming at separating the German armor from supporting infantry by driving attacks between them."

Halder dismissed this as "a very pretty scheme, but in practice it [is] something that [can] be carried out only by an opponent superior in number and generalship." Halder could not picture the Russians applying such a technique against the Germans. [34]

Hitler was less sanguine than Halder in his evaluation of the vulnerable German position. In July, to the despair of General Halder and Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, commander in chief of the German Army, Hitler began to renew the meddlesome interference in tactical operations that he had practiced in the French campaign. He directed the diversion of German units to "tidy up" and secure the German flanks against lurking Red Army contingents. [35]

Hitler carried this idea further in mid-July, de-emphasizing large-scale operations in favor of smashing the enemy "piecemeal by small tactical operations." [36]

Explaining the Fuhrer's concept during a visit to Army Group Center headquarters on 25 July, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel of the German High Command announced that, for the time being, German operations would concentrate on small-scale mopping-up actions. These actions would complete the destruction of those Red Army elements that had escaped encirclement and destruction in the Kessel battles and would secure the German flanks for future operations. Furthermore, Keitel explained that the smaller scope of these operations would reduce the distance between the German tanks and infantry, thereby reducing the heavy combat losses inflicted on unsupported panzers by Soviet counterattacks. [37]

Brauchitsch, Halder, and other senior officers vehemently disagreed with Hitler's designs, arguing that such policies violated the principles of concentration and decisive maneuver. They urged, instead, an immediate march on Moscow, which they regarded as the military, political, and economic jugular of the Soviet Union. Such strong and nearly unanimous opposition caused Hitler to waver temporarily, and as a result, he issued a series of conflicting strategic directives between 30 July and the latter part of August. [38]

While the Germans argued strategy, the Soviets demonstrated that they could, in fact, exploit the fissures in the German front. During the second week of August, strong Russian forces (the Thirty-Fourth Army and parts of the Eleventh Army) thrust into a gap between the German X and II Corps South of Lake Ilmen.

Jumbo Map: Soviet counter-offensive against AGN and Manstein's subsequent counterattack: Aug 12-22, 1941

Driving north and west from the area south of Staraya Russa, the Russians advanced nearly sixty kilometers by 14 August and threatened not only the flank of the German X Corps but the entire rearward communications of the Sixteenth Army and Army Group North. [39]

Locked in desperate defensive combat, the divisions of the German X Corps were unable to establish an elastic defense in depth due to extended frontages and a severe shortage of reserves. [40]

Furthermore, since Army Group North's motorized elements were concentrated in the Panzer Group 4 area north of Lake Ilmen, no panzers were available to counterattack enemy penetrations as had been envisioned in Truppenfuhrung. Field Marshal von Leeb, commander of Army Group North and author of prewar articles on defensive operations, gave a grim situation report to the Army General Staff on 18 August. Halder wrote in his diary: "Very gloomy picture of the situation in X Corps. The last man has been thrown into the fighting; the troops are exhausted. The enemy keeps on pushing north of Staraya Russa. Only the engineer companies are left for commitment. The Commanding General, X Corps, and Commander-in-Chief, Army Group [North], think they are lucky if this front holds another day." [41]

Hitler was extremely agitated by this Soviet blow and created a stir within the German High Command by frantically ordering mobile units stripped from other sectors to deal with this new emergency. [42] Manstein's XLVI Panzer Corps (the 3d Motorized Infantry Division and the Waffen SS Totenkopf Motorized Division) was detached from Panzer Group 4 and brought on a circuitous rearward march to strike the enemy's western flank on 19 August. This surprise counterstroke quickly caused the Soviet offensive to collapse. [43]

Although the Germans could thus claim victory in this battle--the first substantial defensive crisis on the Russian Front--it bore little resemblance to the neat Elastic Defense of German doctrine. The width of the front and the scarcity of forces had robbed the Germans of their desired defensive depth and ready reserves. Consequently, the German defensive line had stood in imminent danger of collapse until saved by the counterattack of Manstein's mechanized posse. Even this use of German mobile forces had more correctly been a counteroffensive rather than a counterattack, since it had been marshaled and delivered apart from the defensive battle per se.

On 21 August, Hitler clarified German strategy by ordering new offensive drives on both wings of the Eastern Front. In the Army Group North area, German forces would strike toward Leningrad to isolate that city and link up with the Finns east of Lake Ladoga. Farther south, even stronger elements would advance southward from the right flank of Army Group Center to encircle and annihilate the Soviet armies facing Army Group South in the Kiev salient. This latter action would open the way to the Crimea, the Don Basin industrial area, and the Caucasian oil-producing regions. Army Group Center, which since the second half of July had been primarily engaged in defensive fighting while attempting to consolidate and refit its divisions, would assume an outright defensive posture with the rump of its forces 14 (see map 3).

Hitler justified this controversial new strategy on dubious economic and political grounds, thereby overruling the purely military views of his senior officers. The recent Soviet offensive near Staraya Russa probably had helped Hitler make his decision by demonstrating the danger of leaving intact Soviet forces on either flank of Army Group Center. In this respect, Hitler's decided course of action--much criticized by German officers in later years as perhaps the decisive mistake of World War II--seemed militarily prudent since it eradicated, once and for all, the threats to the German flanks. [45]

Conducting offensives to the north and south meant that any drive on Moscow would have to be postponed indefinitely. Two months earlier at the beginning of Barbarossa, the concentration and power of the German forces had been sufficient to allow simultaneous offensives on all parts of the front. By late August, however, German units were too dispersed and their combat potential too diminished to repeat such a feat.

Since the beginning of the campaign, the line of contact with Russian forces had stretched by nearly 50 percent, yet few reinforcements had been added to the German order of battle. German combat units were fatigued from the combination of rapid advance and heavy combat experienced thus far. On 24 August, for example, Halder estimated that the combat strength of the German infantry divisions averaged 60 percent of full capacity and the panzer divisions only 50 percent. [46]

German combat power was adversely affected by logistical considerations as well. Available stocks of fuel, food, and ammunition had sunk to dangerously low levels in many units, and supply deliveries were becoming more erratic as distances increased. The execrable Russian roads were claiming a heavy toll on the mobile units so that German tanks and other motor vehicles desperately needed extensive maintenance. (Incredibly, through July, Hitler had ordered that replacement tanks be withheld from the east in order to build new divisions for later use elsewhere. This policy compounded the already difficult maintenance and equipment replacement problems of the panzer divisions. [47])

German personnel replacements--originally gauged for a short campaign--were running low. [48] Too, the replacement of lost weapons and other equipment was proceeding slowly: the German war economy had not been geared up for Barbarossa, and current production lagged behind consumption. Indeed, in anticipation of a rapid victory in Russia, German armaments production was already shifting emphasis away from army materiel. In fact, by December 1941, monthly weapons output had declined by 29 percent from earlier peak production. [49]

With German forces dissipated, the diverging operations that Hitler ha ordered to the north and south dashed the Army High Command's hopes of a climactic advance on Moscow. To lend weight to the attack on Leningrad and the great envelopment at Kiev, Army Group Center had to relinquish most of its armor and a large share of its infantry. General Hermann Hoth's Panzer Group 3 had to hold a portion of Army Group Center's static front with non-motorized infantry divisions inasmuch as both its XXXIX and LVII Panzer Corps were sent to assist Army Group North. General Heinz Guderian's Panzer Group 2 (less one corps) and General Freiherr von Weichs' Second Army were ordered south to fall on the rear of the Soviet Southwest Front guarding Kiev.

Shorn of its offensive cutting edge, Army Group Center thus had to remain on the defensive until the operations on its left and right concluded. The defensive battles waged by Army Group Center from the end of July through September 1941 are instructive for being the first German attempt in World War II to sustain a large-scale positional defense.