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H-NET BOOK REVIEWPublished by H German@h net.msu.edu (March 2008)
Robert M. Citino. _Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of1942_. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. xiv + 429 pp.Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN978 070061531-5.
Reviewed for H German by Stephen G. Fritz, Department of History, EastTennessee State University
Defeat through Victory
Continuing his examination of the German way of war, Robert Citino hasproduced a cogently argued, clearly written book in which he assertsthat the German defeat in World War II was as much conceptual as it wasmaterial. Given its geographical position and limited resource base,according to Citino, first Prussian, then German leaders learned that inorder to survive a world of hostile enemies, wars had to be short,sharp, and decisive. Consequently, German military doctrine placed greatemphasis on operational factors, to the detriment of prosaic materialand logistical considerations. German planners thus concentrated theirefforts on designing elegant operational schemes to achieve victory,while their opposite numbers in the enemy states tediously mobilizedeconomic resources. As a result, Germany found itself dangerouslydependent on maneuver for success, since it consistently lacked thefirepower and material resources necessary for decisive victory. When itworked, as in 1870-71, the triumph was glittering and spectacular; whenit failed, as in 1941-42, the defeat was total and ruinous. It seemedfor Germany that war was always all or nothing; its dependence onoperational doctrine left it little room for any alternative outcome.
After a short introduction in which he deftly summarizes Prussian/Germanmilitary doctrine, Citino makes it clear that, based on its history, theoperational situation facing German leaders after 1941was neither uniquenor particularly worrisome. The fact that Germany found itselfsurrounded by enemies that substantially outnumbered it and had accessto vastly greater economic resources was nothing new in German militaryhistory. Indeed, graduates of the _Kriegsakademie_ knew what to do,since precisely this scenario formed the basis of their operationalstudies. The lesson of German history screamed one thing: attack andland a crushing blow against a single opponent to shatter the enemycoalition. Citino asserts that the weakness of this approach had alreadymanifested itself by the end of 1941. Given their emphasis onoperational concerns, German military planners were in a sort ofconceptual prison, one in which they thought very little about strategicconcerns, but focused almost exclusively on operational victories. Theweakness of this approach lay in the lack of any exit strategy. Ifmaneuver and a war of movement failed to yield a quick strategicvictory, the only option left to German leaders seemed to be more of thesame: keep winning operational triumphs in the hope that they wouldeventually lead to overall success. Therefore, as Citino notes wryly, by1941, "the Wehrmacht ... had conquered itself into a strategic impasse"(pp. 33-34).
Just as significantly, these dazzling successes of 1939-41, whether inPoland, Scandinavia, France, or the Balkans, while not achieving anydecisive results, had left the Wehrmacht dangerously overextended. Muchto German dismay, the pattern established in the first two years of thewar held fast in the second half of 1941. Once again, the Germans wonbrilliant battles of maneuver and encirclement but to no avail; theSoviets stubbornly refused to give up. More ominously, although theylent themselves to spectacular headlines and brilliant weekly newsreels,these encirclement battles proved to be grinding, grueling, costlyaffairs that began the process of gutting the Wehrmacht. As Citinopoints out, "[t]he Wehrmacht's losses in men and material, even invictory, were far heavier than they had been in previous campaigns" (p.42). Indeed, one might note that the German army actually suffered morecombat deaths in July 1941 than in the crisis months of December 1941 orJanuary-February 1942. For a military organization not keen on logisticsor economic mobilization under the best of circumstances, these lossesproved beyond capacity for replacement. From the summer of 1941, theGerman army consistently ran short on crucial supplies necessary tosustain an all-out war effort.
Although the grim, dogged Soviet resistance was primarily responsiblefor preventing the Germans from converting operational triumphs intodecisive victory, another problem had emerged that would plague theGermans in 1942: a lack of clear focus on the major strategic goals ofthe Barbarossa campaign. For a country that lacked sufficient resourcesin the first place, the failure to prioritize key aims on the EasternFront risked a serious dispersal of effort that could only undermine thelarger goal of a quick victory. In a further bitter twist, the conflictbetween Adolf Hitler and his military leaders put another cherishedGerman military tradition into question: the independence of armycommanders in the field. Although the Germans survived the Sovietcounterattack before Moscow and the savage winter of 1941-42, theexperience both reinforced and undermined key German ideas on how tomake war.
As German leaders pondered the military situation in the early spring of1942, Citino raises one of the most puzzling questions of World War II:given the fact that their armies occupied much of Europe, why did theGermans fail to mobilize resources on a scale similar to their enemies?Unfortunately, although he poses the question, Citino doesn't provideany answers. This omission does not so much point to a failure on hispart as illustrate a limitation inherent in operational militaryhistory: the focus must remain on the battlefield. And here, Citino onceagain proves adept in his analysis of operational factors. Although theGerman gaze remained squarely on the Soviet Union, at this point Citinoshifts the strategic focus of his book to the desert war in NorthAfrica. Admittedly a side show in terms of sheer numbers, the NorthAfrican campaign nonetheless confronted the Germans with the troublingreminder that although they barely had strength enough to fight in onetheater at a time, they now faced the reality of having to conductoperations simultaneously in a number of far-flung areas. This dispersalof energies, in turn, presented problems of both a command andlogistical nature. In North Africa, of course, Erwin Rommel invoked thetraditional independence of the field commander to violate orders on aconsistent basis. Even as he was embarrassing his opponents with hisoperational and tactical brilliance, however, he lacked sufficientlogistical support to achieve anything like a decisive strategicvictory. In a reprise of the Russian campaign of 1941, every Germanvictory in North Africa simply led to a strategic impasse that theGermans could not resolve.
In similar fashion, when faced with the dilemma of what to do in Russiaafter the blitzkrieg had failed, German planners came to the onlyconclusion possible given their history, training, and assumptions:launch another blitzkrieg campaign. In arriving at this decision, armyleaders reinforced their tradition. As Citino also notes, though, interms of the operational plan for 1942 they departed significantly fromtradition and past practices: it was to be an exceedingly complexoperation based on a series of sequential actions directed from the topwith little decision-making freedom accorded field commanders. Successwas assured only if the enemy cooperated once again in his destruction.The plan, Operation Blue, began to fall apart almost immediately, aconsequence of both German and Soviet actions. Here, the experience of1941 proved significant. Determined to avoid the operational chaos ofthe latter stages of the 1941 campaign and faced with insufficienteconomic and military resources (shortages in the Luftwaffe provedespecially limiting), German planners now aimed not to pull off deepbattles of encirclement, but instead to rely on Soviet forces staying inplace and conduct a rolling series of shallow encirclements. In theevent, whether from sheer panic or because of a Soviet decision towithdraw into the vast expanse of southern Russia, the initial Germanthrusts in the summer of 1942, while conquering much territory, nettedfew prisoners. The Wehrmacht found itself punching air. Rather thanstriking in depth to the east and trapping large Soviet formationsagainst the natural line of the Volga, the Germans found themselvessliding ineffectually to the south in an operation that stretched theirsupply lines to the breaking point. Almost from the beginning, theSoviet retreat threatened to render the operational plan for 1942 pointless.
This operational problem concealed a larger dilemma. Hitler's goal forthe war against the Soviet Union had always been the annexation of_Lebensraum_, but how was it to be achieved? The Germans barely had theresources to conquer European Russia, let alone the entire Soviet Union.Now that the Red Army had learned not to let itself be trapped inencirclement battles, destruction of the enemy forces proved beyondGerman capabilities. As the situation in North Africa demonstrated, theUSSR's western allies were steadily amassing economic and militaryresources for use against Germany. For their part, the Germans foundthemselves increasingly dependent on their allies, Italy, Rumania, andHungary, nations that could marshal far few resources than those of thewestern allies. Hitler further compounded this increasingly unfavorablesituation with his impatience and impetuosity: splitting the alreadyover-stretched German forces, demanding that they conduct operationssimultaneously that had been planned sequentially, and ignoring thethreatening situation on the exposed German flanks. Once again, theGermans confronted their basic dilemma, how to do more with less. AsCitino stresses repeatedly, the Germans had enough strength to win onthe operational level, but failed to translate these gains this intostrategic victory. This quandary simply grew with increasing Germansuccess on the battlefield, as scarce resources had to be dispensed overa wider area. To Citno, this conundrum reflects the basic German way ofwar itself, a conceptual framework based on historical experience that,limited in its focus to operational details, by definition could notdevise an alternative approach if operational success failed to bring aswift strategic victory.
Viewed from the present perspective, in light of our awareness of thechronic German deficiencies of men and material, the outcome seemsalmost inevitable: the turning points at Stalingrad and El Alamein, thenthe grinding down of German resistance over the next three years. Citinoresists that temptation, instead soberly reminding us that "the mostshocking aspect of 1942 ... is how absurdly close the Wehrmacht came totaking not one but all of its objectives for 1942" (p. 306). Citino iscorrect in this judgment, and he both affirms and raises some questionsabout his thesis. As Richard Overy has demonstrated, the outcome ofWorld War II hinged on the cumulative effect of narrow victories in afew key areas that eventually produced an overwhelming allied triumph.Once of these key areas was economic mobilization, where the Germansfailed to convert the resources of occupied Europe into sufficientmilitary strength. Did this failure occur because, as Citino wouldargue, the German leadership simply did not concern itself withnon-military factors, being focused exclusively on operational mattersand thus blind to the obvious flaws in their method? Or, as others mightargue, was it the result of the chronic institutional Darwinism andinefficiency of the Nazi bureaucracy, the racist and exploitative natureof the German occupation, the burdens produced by trying simultaneouslyto fight a military war and a war against the Jews, or simply theultimately limitless aims of Hitler?
As with all good interpretative histories, Citino forces the reader tothink about his assertions. Was the German failure in Russia in 1941 theresult of an exclusive emphasis on operational thinking, or aconsequence of a poor operational plan, one with no clearly definedfocus upon which the Germans could concentrate resources? How great arole did key operational decisions play in the German defeats of 1941and 1942? Did the Germans over-extend themselves before Moscow in 1941because of blind operational thinking or because of recent historicalmemories (the Marne in September 1914) of a strategic victory thrownaway because of a failure of effort at the last minute? As Citino notesof German actions in Russia in 1942, "the operational plans for thesummer offensive were in many ways a departure from past militarypractice" (p. 157). Indeed, in terms of preparation and assembly offorces, Operation Blue marked, according to Citino, "a remarkable breakwith the past" (p. 158). Does this information suggest, then, that theGermans might have been successful if they had maintained theiroperational traditions? Or, was the departure from customary practiceitself the result of the failure of operational thinking? Germancommanders' loss of decision-making autonomy in the field alsoconstituted a key sub-theme of 1942, and again represented a significantdeparture from German war-making custom. With less interference fromabove and more freedom on the ground, could the defeat of 1942 beenturned into an operational victory?
Robert Citino has produced an outstanding work of operational militaryhistory, a book that combines exhaustive research with a clear,well-argued thesis. Indeed, many of the endnotes read likemini-historiograpical essays; here Citino discusses interpretativecontroversies surrounding many key assertions in the book. Hisassessment of the 1942 German campaign in the Soviet Union is especiallynoteworthy, not simply in its discussion of the operational details, butthe manner in which he demonstrates that a unique way of fighting, theGerman way of war, died in the steppes of southern Russia. With betterdecision-making and operational plans, could the Germans have faredbetter in Russia in 1942? The answer is almost certainly yes. Would suchvictories have changed the outcome of the war? Given the enormouseconomic potential of the United States and its development of theatomic bomb, the answer is almost certainly no.

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