Hitler's Stalingrad Decisions

Hitler’s

Stalingrad

Decisions

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS BEHAVIOR SERIES

Edited by Michael Brecher

GEOFFREY JUKES

Hitler’s

Stalingrad

Decisions

University of California Press

BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 1985 by

The Regents of the University of California

Printed in the United States of America

123456789

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Jukes, Geoffrey.

Hitler’s Stalingrad decisions.

(International crisis behavior series; v. 5)

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Stalingrad, Battle of, 1942-1943. 2. Hitler,

Adolf, 1889-1945. 3. Strategy. I. Title. II. Series.

D764.3.S7J79 1985 940.54'21 84-16280

ISBN 0-520-05130-0

Contents

Contents

Maps

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE The Pre-crisis Period

CHAPTER TWO August-September 1942: Failures and Dismissals

CHAPTER THREE Transition to the Crisis Period

CHAPTER FOUR The Beginning of the Crisis Period: November 1942

CHAPTER FIVE The Crisis Continued: December 1942—2 February 1943

CHAPTER SIX The Post-crisis Period

CHAPTER SEVEN Overall Conclusions

CHAPTER EIGHT Hitler and Stalin Compared

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

Maps

Foreword

MOST INTERNATIONAL CRISES during the half-century 1929-1979 occurred in an environment of negative peace, that is, an absence of collective violence between two or more independent states. Many crises were triggered by violent acts and/or involved violence as a technique of crisis management, including full-scale war. Slightly less than one-fourth of these crises occurred during a war and are designated Intra-War Crises (IWCs). They are defined as situational changes which generate among the decision-makers of a state three interrelated perceptions: a high threat to one or more basic values; time constraint in responding to the threat; and an adverse change in the military balance.

IWCs are triggered by several types of acts, events, or developments during a war:

1. Entry of a new major actor into an ongoing war (e.g., the People s Republic of China into the Korean War in October 1950, a crisis for the United States and South Korea).

2. Exit of a major actor (e.g., Germany’s attack on Western Europe in May 1940, leading to the fall of France, a crisis for the U.K.).

3. Technological escalation of a war (e.g., the introduction of nuclear weapons with the Hiroshima A-bomb in August 1945, a crisis for Japan in the closing days of the Second World War).

4. A major escalation other than the introduction of a qualitatively advanced technology (e.g., the Tet Offensive by North Vietnam in January-March 1968, as a crisis for the United States and South Vietnam).

5. A perceived high probability that a major actor will enter the war (e.g., Israels crisis in November 1956 arising from the Soviet threat to intervene directly in the Suez-Sinai War).

6. A perceived high probability that a major actor will withdraw from a war (e.g., the anticipated U.S. withdrawal from the Vietnam War at the time of the Paris Accords, in January 1973, a crisis for South Vietnam).

7. Defeat in a military campaign or significant battle (e.g., the defeat at El Alemain, a crisis for Germany in November 1942).

It is this last type of Intra-War Crisis which Geoffrey Jukes analyzes in depth in the following pages. The literature on the battle of Stalingrad is vast. Mr. Jukes himself has contributed to our knowledge of this turning point in the military history of the Second World War. However, the present work is a study not of German military history but of Hitler s decision-making in a ‘crisis within a crisis/ The author justifies this focus by noting the centralization of decision-making in Nazi Germany in Hitlers own person, acting through military, party, and governmental agencies under his direct control: the Führer Headquarters (FHQ); the Army Headquarters (OKH); the State Chancellory; and the Presidential Secretariat.

Relying heavily on the multi-volume War Diary of the High Command of the Armed Forces, Jukes provides a gripping account of the major decisions, both Führer Directives and Führer Orders, which were made during the twice daily Führer Conferences at FHQ. This is done with care for the three periods of Germany’s Stalingrad Intra-War Crisis: pre-crisis, a growth of perceived threat from soon after the launching of the German offensive on 28 June 1942—the realization that Soviet forces were withdrawing rather than being destroyed—to the third week of November 1942, a threat perception accentuated by Rommels defeat at El Alamein and the Allied invasion of North Africa on 7-8 November; crisis, a sharp rise in perceived threat, along with an awareness of time pressure and of an adverse change in the military balance, from 19-22 November—when the besiegers at Stalingrad suddenly became the besieged—until 24 January 1943; and post-crisis, from 24 January, when Army Group A was successfully evacuated from the Caucasus, to the last week of March.

The narrative in Chapters 1-6 is accompanied by an instructive analysis, for each of the three periods, of the Crisis Components as designated by the framework for comparative case studies designed for the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project, namely: the Environmental Change(s) which served as the crisis trigger (e.g., the major Soviet counteroffensive north and south of Stalingrad on 19-20 November 1942, as the catalyst to the crisis period); the Value Threat (e.g., annihilation of two Army Groups comprising 77 divisions and 1,750,000 men); the Probability of an Adverse Change in the Military Balance (e.g., at least eleven requests for permission to withdraw from Stalingrad by German Generals to Hitler from 22 November 1942 to 30 January 1943); and Time Pressure (e.g., the awareness of time constraints by the field commanders and most High Command generals—but not by Hitler).

In Chapter 7, Jukes evaluates the Stalingrad Intra-War Crisis in terms of the nine ICB research questions, by testing hypotheses about the effects of escalating and de-escalating crisis-induced stress on patterns of information and consultation, on decisional forums, and on the search for and consideration of alternatives. Illustrative of his findings are the following:

1. The evidence points strongly to increased conceptual rigidity by Hitler under the stress of the peak crisis period.

2. There is no evidence that Hitlers cognitive performance was impaired by fatigue.

3. His receptivity to new information declined as the crisis progressed.

4. The evidence concerning the effects of stress on the search for and evaluation of alternatives is mixed.

5. Increasing stress did lead to a higher value being placed on immediate goals and less attention being paid to the distant future.

6. Most significantly, perhaps, the range of perceived alternatives did not narrow under the impact of greater stress, contrary to the findings from other international crises; the four alternatives open to the besieged German force at Stalingrad were all considered.

Combining the methods of history and political science, Jukes’s study of Germany’s Stalingrad Crisis makes a valuable contribution at several levels:

1. New light is shed on one of the turning points in twentiethcentury world politics.

2. The study enriches our understanding of a crucial case study of state behavior in a hitherto neglected type of international phenomenon, namely, an Intra-War Crisis.

3. Evidence from the behavior of decision-making in a crucial wartime crisis is marshaled in order to test hypotheses which have been generated primarily from crucial non-war crises: the Powers in the June-July 1914 Crisis, which occurred prior to a world war; the United States in June 1950, prior to its active entry into the Korean War; and the superpowers in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

For all of these reasons, and more, this is a welcome addition to the literature on international crisis behavior.

Michael Brecher, Director International Crisis Behavior Project

Acknowledgments

THE RESEARCH FOR this book was carried out under the auspices of the International Crisis Behavior Research Project. My thanks are due to Professor Michael Brecher for his invitation to participate, his patience, and his help in securing funds from Canada Council resources; the Federal German Bundesarchiv in Koblenz and the Militärarchiv in Freiburg, especially the Reading Room staffs; the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford, and the President and Fellows of Clare Hall, Cambridge; Mrs. Robin Ward and Mrs. Shirley Steer for research and secretarial assistance beyond the call of duty; and my wife, Eunice, for forbearance.

Introduction

THIS STUDY IS concerned with the impact of crisis within crisis upon the highly centralized decision-making process at the top level of government in Nazi Germany at the end of 1942.

The war itself was a crisis of German foreign policy, because Hitler did not expect the British and French to go to war in September 1939, nor did he anticipate that sensational German military successes in the first two years would not persuade the British to respond to peace feelers. In the belief that Britain could do little against Germany, Hitler turned his back and attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. At first, he appeared as successful as in the previous campaigns in Europe; but a Soviet counteroffensive, launched at Moscow early in December 1941, inflicted on the German army its first major defeat of the war. Although the Soviet offensive eventually petered out, it ensured Russian survival into the next campaigning season, something that many German generals, apprehensive of the wisdom of the invasion, had hoped to avoid. This, coupled with Americas entry into the war in the same month, made it clear in hindsight that Hitlers largest single error of the war was his decision to invade the Soviet Union without first subjugating the United Kingdom. It was this that the Chief of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff, Generaloberst Alfred Jodi, undoubtedly had in mind when, in 1946, shortly before he was hanged, he declared that this was the time in which the God of war passed from Germany’s side to that of her enemies.1

But however clear that may have become in hindsight, it was not so at the time. In mid-1942, German troops were again advancing in Soviet territory and in North Africa, while U-boats were scoring impressive successes in the Battle of the Atlantic, and the new Japanese ally was making spectacular progress in the Pacific. Only in the air was there obvious cause for dissatisfaction, in the Luftwaffe s inability to stop nightly British bombing raids on the cities of northwest Germany; but even these were as yet thorns in the flesh rather than daggers at the heart. It was already possible to envisage German troops from North Africa linking up with others south of the Caucasus, and going on to join hands with the Japanese somewhere in India.

From late October 1942 to April 1943, the picture changed radically. The Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October-4 November 1942) put an end to the dream of ousting the British from the Middle East. The Anglo-American landings in French North Africa began on the night of 7/8 November; and on 19 November, the Russians launched a massive counteroffensive at Stalingrad. The catastrophe to which this led Germany was barely mitigated by a local victory at Kharkov and Belgorod before the spring thaw temporarily immobilized the forces of both sides in a sea of mud.

This victory, moreover, was to prove the only significant bright spot in a dark winter for Germany. In March, merchant shipping sinkings in the Atlantic remained high, and U-boat losses low; but in April, a dramatic turnabout was observed, so far-reaching that in May the Commander-in-Chief Submarines, Admiral Dönitz, was forced to concede defeat and withdraw all U-boats from the North Atlantic. Although the Germans remained unaware of the fact for over thirty years,2 the largest single factor in this also dated to November 1942, when the British broke the new U-boat cipher machine system, Triton, and recovered the capacity to read U-boat traffic which they had lost on its introduction in February.3 November 1942 is therefore the pivotal month of the period, and probably of the entire Second World War.

Despite the artificially engineered monolithic facade of the one- party National Socialist state, there were deep rifts in the structure, especially between Hitler and many senior Army officers. In 1938, the Chief of General Staff was privy to a plot to overthrow Hitler, which was frustrated by the Führers success in achieving British, French, and Italian consent at Munich to the acquisition of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Army plotting against Hitler continued until the unsuccessful assassination attempt of 20 July 1944.4 The objectives of the plotters were various, but a common factor among the military anti-Nazis was a belief that Hitlers foreign policy objectives were excessive and must eventually bring disaster upon Germany.

Hitler had served in the First World War, rising to the rank of Gefreiter (Private First Class), and receiving the Iron Cross First Class (seldom awarded to enlisted men) for bravery.5 He therefore had no military training comparable to that of the career professional officers whom politics had made his servants, and he shared the front-line soldier s contempt for chair-borne generals such as those with whom he was surrounded at his headquarters. The boldness of his military thinking owed much to his lack of training and therefore of possible stereotyping; and until the defeat at Moscow, he could validly claim to have achieved remarkable results by overruling the professional caution of his generals.

However, the succession of victories between the outbreak of the war and early 1941, marred only by the failure of the German Air Force to win the Battle of Britain and thereby make an invasion possible, fed his belief in his own infallibility, and especially in the superiority of his military judgment over that of his professional military advisers. The invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, like those of Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and France in 1940, was a subject of deep apprehension among the German military, alleviated or suppressed only by the belief that the Red Army could be defeated west of the River Dnieper, and that the Soviet publics distaste for the Stalin regime would cause it to collapse in the aftermath of initial military defeats.

The campaign in the summer of 1941 began with enormous successes: Stalins insistence on standing fast doomed entire Army Groups to encirclement and virtual annihilation, and Soviet losses in killed or captured alone substantially exceeded four million during the first six months of the Soviet-German war. Nevertheless, the prime military objective of destruction of the Red Army before the winter was not attained; and of the targets of the three major strategic offensives—the capture of Leningrad, Moscow, and the Ukraine—only the latter was achieved. By the beginning of December 1941, the German offensive against Moscow had stalled, and the Russians then instituted a counteroffensive of which Hitler had not considered them capable. The outcome was a near-panic in the German headquarters, leading to the dismissal of the Commanders- in-Chief of the Army, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, and of all three Army Groups operating on the front between the Baltic and the Black Sea coast. Coinciding as it did with the entry of the United States into the war, this period was defined, after the end of the war, by one of Hitlers principal military advisers, ColonelGeneral Alfred Jodi, as the one in which Hitler recognized for the first time that the war was lost. There is, however, no indication that Hitler ever acknowledged this, and there is ample evidence that, although discountenanced by the defeat before Moscow, he nevertheless thought that it was not irreversible, while, until very late in the war, he grossly underestimated the capacity of American industrial and manpower resources to influence the final outcome. Whatever private misgivings he may have had, he at once set in motion a planning process for a renewed offensive on the south of the Eastern Front in 1942. The objectives of this offensive were, first, to reach the west bank of the Volga somewhere in the neighborhood of Stalingrad, thereby interrupting Soviet oil supply from the Transcaucasus oil fields to the Soviet armies in Russia and the northern Ukraine, and then, by an offensive across the Caucasus range, to seize the oil fields themselves and make them available for the German war effort.6

Although the concentration of main effort in the south, in contrast to the three simultaneous strategic offensives of the previous year, was an implicit acknowledgment that the strategic balance had tilted somewhat against Germany since 1941, an offensive against Leningrad was also provided for, and its inclusion in the planning caused a certain degree of dispersion of resources until the undertaking was abandoned late in the year.

The 1942 summer offensive attained considerable initial successes in acquisition of territory, but the haul of Soviet prisoners and equipment was not on a scale approaching that of the previous year. Differences of opinion between Hitler and his generals began to arise early in July, barely a week after the start of the offensive, and rose to a major pitch during September, as it gradually became clear that the offensive was not achieving its aims. The city of Stalingrad, which occupied no position of importance in the original German planning, gradually acquired a symbolic significance, derived from its name (Stalin city) and the stubborn Soviet defense of it, which came to overshadow all other developments on the Eastern Front. The initial aim of reaching the Volga was attained, but the continual pouring of resources into the battle for the city starved the effort to capture the Transcaucasian oil fields, and, even more dangerously for the German Army, led to the creation of a long and vulnerable flank along the Don between Voronezh and Serafimovich, which was manned by the troops of Hitler s satellites, Romania, Italy, and Hungary. Despite misgivings voiced by Field Commanders, by the military at Hitlers headquarters (FHQ), and by Hitler himself, no adequate measures were taken to strengthen the Don front by corsetting the ill-armed and, on the whole, ill- motivated satellite forces with a sufficient number of German units. Nor, despite reports that Soviet forces were being massed against the Don front, was adequate account taken of Soviet intentions and capabilities for a winter counteroffensive.

The outcome was the first, and possibly the most devastating to German morale, of a series of disasters that were to befall the German Army on the Eastern Front between the winter of 1942-43 and the end of the war in May 1945. By breaching the satellite front, primarily that of the Italian 8th and Romanian 4th Armies on the Don, and that of the Romanian 3rd Army south of Stalingrad, the Red Army succeeded in encircling and eventually annihilating the entire axis force in the area of Stalingrad and the Don bend, comprising twenty-two German and two Romanian divisions, a regiment of Croats, and a large number of smaller independent formations. Estimates of the total number of men lost in the encircled force at Stalingrad vary between a minimum of 250,000 and a maximum of 400,000; the most likely figure is about 300,000. In addition, a number of other divisions suffered heavy attrition, while the Italian and Hungarian Armies were so roughly handled that they had to be withdrawn from the front. Between the surrender of Stalingrad at the beginning of February and the onset of the spring thaw in March 1943, a brilliantly conceived and executed counteroffensive under the direction of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein succeeded in inflicting a severe, though local, defeat upon the pursuing Soviet forces north of the Don, while the efforts of the encircled troops at Stalingrad prevented the Soviets from cutting off and wiping out the German Army Group in the Caucasus, which for the most part succeeded in withdrawing safely. Nevertheless, the German summer offensive of 1942 was an almost unmitigated disaster, which neither a temporary local success nor a successful withdrawal from an unattained objective could mitigate to any substantial extent.

Although the majority of German military resources were being consumed in the east during the period covered by this study, events in other theatres of war occupied a considerable and growing part of Hitler s attention. Most significant among these was the Mediterranean, where a badly handled British offensive in North Africa broke down and brought the German-Italian Panzer Army (DIPA) to within striking distance of Alexandria, Cairo, and the Suez Canal. The situation here turned sour for the Axis when the Second battle of El Alamein, which began on 23 October 1942, culminated in a breach of the line and a German withdrawal on the night of 2 November, to be followed on the night of 7/8 November by Anglo-American landings in the French North African colonies.

As this is a study not of German military history but of Hitler s decision-making in crisis within crisis, specifically the breakdown of the German offensive in the east, the North African situation is referred to here only insofar as Hitlers decisions about it affected the diffusion of German resources, and has not been followed through to the surrender of German and Italian forces on that continent at the beginning of May 1943. Nor has much attention been devoted to the Battle of the Atlantic. Although success in this battle was crucial to continuation of the British war effort, the German Navy was accorded much greater autonomy, especially in the handling of the submarine campaign, than was the Army. During the period, a crucial advance was made when the cryptanalysts of the British Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park succeeded in November 1942 in breaking the German naval machine cipher Triton, and thereby regaining an insight into German submarine movements which they had not had since introduction of the cipher early in the year. However, full exploitation of this advantage was not possible until April 1943. In view of this, and because of the small impact of FHQ on German submarine operations, attention to naval decisions has been concentrated here on the aftermath of the unsuccessful attack by German heavy surface warships in the Battle of Bear Island on 31 December 1942, on Hitler’s consequent decision to deactivate the major surface ships, and on the resulting resignation of the Commanderin-Chief of the Navy, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder.

In view of the extreme centralization of the German command function under the Third Reich, in which Hitler combined in his own person the posts of Head of State, Head of Government, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and, at one stage in the period, Commander-in-Chief of an Army Group, this study is essentially concerned with Hitlers personal decisions. Although no attempt has been made at a full-scale comparison between his decision-making and that of Stalin (who, though never occupying the ceremonial position of the Soviet Head of State, in fact possessed as much unchallenged decision-making power as Hitler, being Head of Government, Head of the Communist Party, and Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces), some comparisons have been drawn between the performance of the German and Soviet decision-making apparatus during 1942.

The study has been terminated at the end of March 1943, so that the post-crisis period following the surrender at Stalingrad is somewhat arbitrarily defined at eight weeks. This is partly because the main source for reports of Hitler s day-to-day military decisionmaking, the High Command War Diary for the second quarter of 1943, disappeared after the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials of 1946, in which it was an exhibit, has never been traced, and is believed to have been burned.7 But the principal reason is that the pattern of Hitlers decision-making, which, as will be demonstrated, exhib ited severe disruption between the achievement of an encirclement by the Soviets on 21 November 1942 and the surrender of the encircled forces on 2 February, had substantially resumed its preNovember shape by the end of February, suggesting that the postcrisis period selected is not unreasonably short.

THE GERMAN APPARATUS OF DECISION-MAKING

Decision-making in Nazi Germany was highly centralized in Hitlers own person. Appointed to power as Reichskanzler (head of the executive government) in January 1932, without ever having persuaded more than 44 percent of the electorate to vote for him,8 but with his opponents failing to form an anti-Nazi coalition, he succeeded to the position of Head of State after the death of President Hindenburg, on 2 August 1934, by declaring the Presidency merged with the Chancellorship. On the very day of Hindenburg s death, the Head of State s constitutional position as titular Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces was made more specific by the device of having all officers and enlisted men take an oath of unconditional obedience to Hitler personally as Führer (Leader, the term that replaced President) of the German State and People and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.

From 19 August 1934, on which a plebiscite gave him a 90 percent vote in favor of the steps taken on the 2nd, Hitler consolidated his position as Head of State, Government, and Armed Forces. The occasion of an unsuitable marriage by the Minister of Defense, General von Blomberg, was used to force his resignation, whereupon Hitler abolished his Ministerial post and assumed his function as executive Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.9 Simultaneously, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Colonel-General von Fritsch, was coerced into resignation on grounds of ill health after faked evidence of immoral conduct had been produced against him,10 and he was replaced by the much more pliant General von Brauchitsch. The Air Force had already been placed under one of Hitlers close henchmen, Hermann Göring, and only the Navy re mained relatively free from close Party control, in part because Hitler laid no claim to expertise in naval matters, but mainly because his aims did not at that time include war with the British, and the Navy was therefore of low importance.11

In December 1941, after the collapse of the offensive against Moscow, Hitler dismissed the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, and took over his post himself, exercising his functions through the Army Headquarters (OKH), and extending his decision-making function one step further down the chain of command.

The basic decision-making unit for this study is therefore Hitler himself, and the apparatus at his disposal was as follows:

1. The Führer Headquarters (Führerhauptquartier, FHQ). This initially was located in a camp in a forest near Rastenburg in East Prussia, known by the code name of Wolfsschanze (Wolf ’s Lair). It contained Hitler’s Party Chancellory, headed by Martin Bormann, and the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW), headed by Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) Wilhelm Keitel, and consisting of a number of sections, the most important of which for the purposes of this study was the Armed Forces Command Staff (Wehrmachtführungsstab, Wfst), headed by Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Alfred Jodi. OKW also contained representatives of the Air Force, Navy, and Foreign Office. On 16 July 1942, the FHQ and Wfst moved to a camp codenamed Werwolf (Werewolf) near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine.

2. The Army Headquarters (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH), located near Angerburg, a few kilometers from OKW, until 16 July 1942, when it, too, moved to Vinnitsa. The most significant decision-making element of OKH was the Army General Staff, headed until 24 September 1942 by Colonel-General Franz Halder, and thereafter by Colonel-General Kurt Zeitzler. Significant inputs were made by the Intelligence Sections Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East) and Fremde Heere West (Foreign Armies West), while the Operations Section (la) was the principal transmission belt for orders from Hitler to the Commanders-in-Chief of the Army Groups on the Eastern Front (initially North, Center, and South; in early July, Army Group South was divided into two:

Army Group A in the Caucasus and Army Group B on the Don- Volga front, including Stalingrad).

3. The State Chancellory. This remained in Berlin throughout the war; it was headed by a senior public servant, State Secretary Dr. Hans Lammers.

4. The Presidential Secretariat, under State Secretary Otto Meissner, a survival from the Weimar Republic, in which the offices of President and Chancellor had been separate. It, too, remained in Berlin.

The line of command from Hitler to each of these agencies was clear. His authority over the Party Chancellory derived from his headship of the Party. His control of OKW stemmed from his roles as Head of State and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. OKH was subject to him in addition through his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Army since December 1941. The two remaining Secretariats were at his disposal through his tenure of the offices of Head of Government (Chancellor) and Head of State (Führer).

The subordination of all these organs to Hitler is the only clear feature of the administrative apparatus, which embodied a principle aptly described by Fest as "authoritarian anarchy. ’12 Overlapping jurisdictions abounded. In the military sphere, for example, OKH broadly bore responsibility for the Eastern Front, and OKW for all other combat theatres, but there were numerous instances of OKW involvement in Eastern Front matters, at least until September 1942, and occasional instances thereafter, while OKH retained considerable noncommand functions in respect of OKW areas, including the provision of intelligence by Foreign Armies West which was directly germane to command decision-making in OKW.

The main decision-making sessions were the Führer conferences in FHQ, which normally took place twice daily.13 The morning one, invariably at noon, was the major one; it dealt with events of the previous day and night, and was attended by representatives of all services and the Foreign Ministry from OKW, and by a senior member, usually the Chief of General Staff himself, from OKH. Representatives of other bodies (e.g., the armaments industry or Germany’s allies) attended on an ad hoc basis and/or by invitation.14 While Halder was Chief of General Staff of OKH, it was normal for the Eastern Front to be discussed extensively, and decisions taken in respect of it, but after his replacement by Zeitzler this became uncommon.15 Partly because of Hitler’s growing distrust of Keitel and especially of Jodi, and probably in conformity with Zeitzler’s own preference for professional autonomy, it became normal for Zeitzler to open the proceedings with a very brief account of Eastern Front developments, and then leave.16 This procedure curtailed discussion by OKW personnel almost to the vanishing point, and decisions concerning the Eastern Front were increasingly taken at private meetings between Hitler and Zeitzler, usually during the afternoon.

A second, smaller conference took place during the evening, usually at 8:00 or 9:00 P.M., and dealt with events that had taken place during the day.17

The term conference (Vortrag) is slightly misleading. Although discussion often took place, and sometimes became heated, the normal procedure was for the service representatives to present situation reports for the various combat theatres, and for Hitler to then deliver decisions or accept or reject proposals on the spot.18 Only in matters of detail, for example in execution