Ostkrieg (65 page)

Goebbels, however, had hoped not only to speed this process of total mobilization but also to gain decisive control over it. In addition, troubled by what he saw as a fracturing of the Volksgemeinschaft, he intended to use patriotic themes and a radicalization of the war itself to promote a revolutionary restructuring of German society. In this scenario, Hitler would use Stalingrad in much the same way that Churchill had used Dunkirk, as a means by which to rally the nation to unity and sacrifice. For all his efforts, however, and despite the Führer's accord with the spirit he was trying to invoke, Goebbels largely failed in his
personal efforts. His control over the total war effort remained confined to psychological mobilization, although the resolve and defiance he provoked, along with ever-intensifying measures of oppression, assured that there would be no collapse of the German home front.
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The move to total war also unleashed a contest for dominance in the new power spheres that were opening up, a burst of feverish activity that, in the absence of any consistent leadership from Hitler, lacked the coherent, coordinated planning that might have made a difference in the German war effort. Amid the jumbled jurisdictions and institutional Darwinism characteristic of Hitler's preferred style of rule, a halfhearted effort was initially made to achieve some overall coordination of policy. In mid-January 1943, Hitler authorized Keitel, Bormann, and Lammers, the heads of the three main branches of the Führer's authority (the Wehrmacht, the party, and the Reich Chancellery)—and men not likely to challenge him—to oversee the total mobilization of the German population for the war effort. Predictably, however, from the outset this triumvirate found its efforts undermined by opposition from men such as Speer, Goebbels, and Goering as well as by the fact that Hitler reserved for himself the right to make the final decision on anything of importance. Within a week of his total war speech, in fact, Goebbels had defined the problem precisely. “We have not only a ‘leadership crisis,' ” he mentioned privately to Speer, among others, “but strictly speaking a ‘leader crisis.' ”
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Still, despite the inevitable chaos and inefficiencies that resulted from this shapeless system of rule, it often resulted in impressive short-term successes. Such seemed to be the case in the first part of 1943. By the end of May, the output of aircraft, artillery, ammunition, and infantry weapons was nearly 120 percent higher than the year before, while the total production of armaments more than doubled from the beginning of 1942 to the end of 1943. For Hitler and Speer, however, the key to victory was not so much a general increase in output as a decisive rise in the production of tanks, the weapon deemed critical for success in the east. Announced to much propaganda fanfare at the end of January 1943, the Adolf Hitler Panzer Program, with its promise to double and triple the production of tanks, including the much heralded Panther and Tiger models, was as important symbolically as it was materially. If total war demanded total exertion, there had to be the prospect of some payoff for such efforts: the tank program was that reward. Certainly, the Ostheer badly needed tanks since it had fewer than five hundred at the end of January 1943. Nor can the success of the Adolf Hitler Panzer Program be denied: tank production in May was more than double that of the autumn, while, in all of
1943, 41 percent more tanks were built than the year before, with fully 40 percent of them the Panther and Tiger models.
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The ultimate problem, however, was twofold: for all its success, German armaments output in 1943, including tank production, was being swamped by that of its enemies. In that year alone, the Allies produced just about six times more aircraft, nearly five times the number of artillery pieces, and almost four times more tanks. In each of these categories, the United States alone doubled and tripled German output. More vitally, in the spring of 1943, the German war economy itself was drawn directly into the fighting as the Anglo-American bomber offensive began to achieve significant results. Tank production required massive amounts of steel, which Hitler had now reallocated to the army rather than the navy or Luftwaffe. Pursing ruthless efficiency, German steel mills had in March 1943 managed an impressive jump in output, a feat that, combined with the stabilization of the front in April, left Speer and Hitler optimistic that further large gains in steel production would follow. Instead, beginning hesitantly in March, then increasing in frequency and intensity from April through July, British Bomber Command began the Battle of the Ruhr. Intended both to cripple output in this vital industrial area and to destroy the fabric of urban life, the bombers not only killed thousands of people but also disrupted steel production just as the Nazis anticipated an armaments surge. Where a significant increase had been expected, steel output now fell. Not only did that lead to an immediate cutback in tank and ammunition production, but the disruption in the Ruhr also resulted in a supplier crisis as all manner of parts, castings, forgings, and components vital for continued production in plants outside the Ruhr were now in short supply. The result was sobering: in the second half of 1943, armaments output stagnated. As Speer acknowledged, Allied bombing negated the plans for a substantial increase in production. Not until spring 1944 would the armaments index again show a significant increase, one that would last through September, but by then it was too late.
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The Allied bomber offensive also provoked a crisis of morale among the German civilian population best illustrated by the three-day assault on Hamburg in late July. It created a firestorm so intense that bodies mummified, glass melted, and asphalt ran in the streets; 40,000 people suffocated or were burned alive, and another 500,000 were left homeless. Large parts of the great port city had been reduced to mountains of rubble, while thousands fled in sheer terror, spreading panic and disorder throughout the surrounding area. As the news from Hamburg leaked out, the Gestapo reported shock and dismay across the country,
while the SD noted that hardly any senior industrial leaders believed any longer that victory was possible. In mid-August, in despair at the destruction of German cities, Hans Jeschonnek, the chief of staff of the Luftwaffe, shot himself. Among average Germans, anger at the failure of the regime to protect them from enemy air raids was widespread. Speer feared that a few more such raids might lead to a total collapse of German morale and a complete halt to arms production. The disaster was put off for another year, however, as the Allies mistakenly chose not to keep hammering at the Ruhr choke point, while the Germans initiated effective new defensive measures. At the same time, the regime responded to the crisis, in typical fashion, by imposing greater discipline on the home front. At the end of July, Speer had agreed to allow the SS to oversee security operations in the armaments industry, while, in early October, he authorized the SD to check on civilian production in industry. Moreover, any hint of defeatism was met with harsh punishment, including the death penalty. As Hitler repeatedly emphasized, there would not be another November 1918.
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Even as the Germans struggled to maintain output under the onslaught of Allied bombers, a shortage of the other key resource necessary to step up production—labor—loomed as a major obstacle. Although German industrialists had long been pressing for an increased use of women, Hitler had consistently rejected their conscription into war industries, whether from ideological objections (the birth rate would fall, undermining the nation's racial essence) or fears of domestic unrest such as occurred in 1918. When the war began, Germany actually experienced a fall in female employment as consumer goods production was cut back. Over the next few years, the number working in war production gradually rose, but generous government allowances to wives and widows of soldiers offset any inducements to work. By early 1943, however, the worsening labor situation compelled Hitler to concede that a greater use of female workers could no longer be avoided. The problem, however, was that any dramatic increase in female employment in industry was unlikely. Despite claims to the contrary, German women participated in the labor force to a much higher degree than in either Great Britain or the United States, with the great majority engaged in agriculture. In 1943, millions of women labored on the small farms so characteristic of much of Germany, an obstacle both to efficient production and to the employment of women in industry. Most experts conceded that even the most vigorous measures to mobilize women would result in little more than a million new workers, a fraction of the number needed if output was to be increased significantly.
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A brutal logic now emerged: if larger numbers of German women could not be brought into the workforce, Sauckel's legions would simply have to procure more workers from the east. After all, foreign workers could be forced to do tough physical labor for longer hours at low pay, could not take holidays, and were docile and compliant. Despite the fact that Sauckel's roundups continued to foment unrest and contributed to a surge in partisan resistance, the needs of the Reich came first. The urgency, after Stalingrad, of securing foreign labor was reflected in the numbers: almost half the nearly 8.5 million forced laborers in Germany at the end of the war had arrived since 1943. Although the living and working conditions for foreign workers continued to be atrocious, noticeable improvements were made after the declaration of total war, when Nazi officials recognized the necessity of increasing the output of Ostarbeiter. From mid-1943, almost all sectors reported a rise in productivity and output, and, by mid-1944, foreign labor had become the backbone of the German war economy. Any improvement in the working conditions of the eastern workers, however, was more than offset by the harsh racial attitudes with which they were confronted. The racial inferiority of the Ostarbeiter was constantly emphasized to both German civilians and the workers themselves through leaflets and posters, with pointed reminders to Germans to act as racial masters. Reich authorities worried incessantly about sexual contact between the eastern workers and German women and, thus, imposed draconian punishments for any sort of fraternization of a sexual nature. Moreover, Ostarbeiter were frequently warned that they risked being sent to a concentration camp if they slacked off at work or upset production. They were paid minimal wages, worked long hours, kept under strict control, subjected to harsh discipline, and regarded with utter contempt. When Allied bombers rumbled overhead, foreign workers were kept out of the municipal air raid shelters, with the result that disproportionate numbers died in the bombing attacks. Little wonder, then, that most felt they were “no better off than pigs.”
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The same economic requirements that led to the brutal Menschenjagd also contributed to an intensification of the partisan war in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Although Hitler had initially welcomed Stalin's call to action in July 1941 as a cover for the deadly operations of the Einsatzgruppen, the Wehrmacht had from the outset struggled to control the vast regions it had conquered. The harsh measures directed at the local population, the often contemptuous behavior of German troops, the brutal treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, and the mass shootings of the murder squads all contributed to a growing embitterment that aided the spread of the partisan movement. German
security divisions, with their overage, badly trained, ill-equipped, and overstretched troops, struggled against a ruthless foe who used a mix of inducements and terror to tighten his hold over ever-larger areas. By early summer 1942, economic exploitation, harsh pacification policies, and increasing impoverishment of the rural population had created a cruel dynamic that fed the growth of the partisan forces. As they became increasingly bold and began to assume operational importance in some rear areas, German forces responded with large-scale search-and-destroy operations that resulted in very high civilian body counts but little diminution of partisan activities.
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In the first year of the war, German security troops killed some 80,000 alleged partisans, at a loss of a little over a thousand of their own men, only to find that their brutality had simply fueled an increase in guerrilla numbers. In Belorussia alone, German figures indicated a kill ratio of seventy-three to one, and, during the entire war, German
casualties
in the central sector of roughly 34,000 were dwarfed by some 300,000 partisan
deaths
, yet partisan numbers tripled during 1942. Although many German officers on the ground understood the necessity of better treatment of the rural population as a prerequisite for regaining their support, Hitler responded by entrusting the SS with sole authority for combating the partisans. Thus empowered, Himmler in August 1942 appointed the ruthless SS police leader and Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski to lead the fight against “bandits,” charging him with the pacification of central Russia. If von dem Bach was not already aware of what pacification meant, an addendum by Hitler to his own October directive that all partisans were to be killed spelled it out with brutal clarity: the partisan war in the east, he stressed, was “a struggle for the total extirpation of one side or the other.”
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Although the partisans enjoyed some sporadic success in disrupting rail traffic and supply movements, the partisan war itself was hardly, in 1942, the great “people's struggle” of later Soviet myth. Despite often brutal measures directed against the peasantry, the partisans largely failed to break their wait-and-see attitude—that resulted primarily from the military setbacks of 1942–1943, which made a German victory less likely, and the Reich's escalating economic demands, which inherently contradicted any attempt at real pacification. Faced with the pitiless logic of total war, German officials combined economic considerations with existing ideological predispositions and security concerns to unleash devastation on great swaths of occupied territory. The large-scale combing sweeps, the
Großunternehmen
, now aimed not so much at rooting out guerrillas as at plundering anything of value in the so-called bandit
areas. German economic officials directed the seizure of crops and livestock, the destruction of villages, the wholesale evacuation of the inhabitants for forced labor, and the liquidation of those deemed unfit for work. The sheer ruthlessness and brutality of this policy have led the historian Christian Gerlach to speak of the emergence of a
Tote Zonen
(dead zones) policy that envisioned the cultivation of select parts of the rear area and the complete evacuation and utter destruction of others. By the end of the year, the explosion of brutality associated with the Tote Zonen policy had resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths as well as the emergence of a full-blown partisan movement capable of extensive disruption of rear-area operations. This counted for little with Nazi officials, however, obsessed as they were with avoiding a repetition of 1918.
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