Gerd Von Rundstedt - Planning The Russian Campaign

Planning The Russian Campaign

By July 1940 Hitler was turning his mind to the invasion of the Soviet Union, commissioning General Erich Marcks to prepare preliminary plans. Although the Hitler-Stalin pact had served Germany's interests well, both strategically and economically, his whole career had been based on anti-communism and the belief that "Jewish Bolshevism" was main threat to Germany and the Aryan race. He also believed that Germany's destiny lay in creating lebensraum through a colonial empire in Russia and Ukraine. In December Hitler made a firm decision for an attack on the Soviets the following spring, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. At this point Rundstedt learned that he was to give up his quiet life in occupied France and assume command of Army Group South, tasked with the conquest of Ukraine. Leeb would command in the north, heading for Leningrad, and Bock in the centre, charged with capturing Moscow. On the way, the three army groups were to encircle and destroy the Red Army before it could retreat into the Russian interior.

Rundstedt, like most German officers, had favoured the policy of good relations with the Soviets followed by the Reichswehr commander General Hans von Seekt during the Weimar Republic years, when the Soviet connection was seen as a counter to the threat from Poland. He was also apprehensive about launching a new war in the east while Britain was undefeated. According to Günther Blumetritt, his former chief of operations, he opposed Hitler's plans. If so, he did nothing to oppose them, and in this he was in company even with officers who disliked and opposed Hitler's regime, such as Halder, who threw themselves into planning the invasion, and believed it would succeed. Even the most experienced officers shared Hitler's contempt for the Soviet state and army. "You have only to kick in the door," Hitler told Rundstedt, "and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."

In March Rundstedt left Paris to set up Army Group South's headquarters in Breslau. On the way he attended a conference in Berlin at which Hitler addressed senior officers. He made it clear that the ordinary rules of warfare would not apply to the Russian campaign. "This is a war of extermination," he told them. "We do not wage war to preserve the enemy." This gave the generals a clear warning that they would be expected not to obstruct Hitler's wider war aims in the east - the extermination of the Jews and the reduction of the Slavic peoples to serfdom under a new herrenvolk (Master race) of German settlers. As part of this strategy, the Commissar Order was issued, which stated that all Red Army commissars were to be executed when captured. Rundstedt testified at Nuremberg about the attitude of the Army to this Order: "Our attitude was unanimously and absolutely against it. Immediately after the conference we approached Brauchitsch and told him that this was impossible... The order was simply not carried out." This latter statement was clearly untrue, as the Commissar Order was widely carried out. But whether Rundstedt knew this was another matter, and this question was later to figure prominently in the issue of whether to charge him with war crimes.

Barbarossa was initially scheduled for May, at the beginning of the Russian spring, but was postponed until June because unseasonably wet weather made the roads impassable for armour (not because of the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April, as is commonly supposed). Rundstedt moved his headquarters to Tarnów in south-eastern Poland. Since the dividing line between Army Group Centre and Army Group South was just south of Brest-Litovsk, he was in command of more than half of the total German-Soviet front. Sodenstern was again his chief of staff. Under his command were (from north to south) Reichenau (6th Army), Kleist (1st Panzer Army) and General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel (17th Army). These three armies, bunched between Lublin and the Carpathians, were to thrust south-eastwards into Ukraine, aiming to capture Kiev and encircle and destroy the Soviet forces west of the Dnieper. In the south, General Eugen Ritter von Schobert (11th Army), supported by the Hungarian and Romanian armies, and also an Italian Army Corps, was to advance into Bessarabia (now Moldova) and the southern Ukraine.