It was becoming obvious already by the end of July that the revised ‘Barbarossa’ operational plan as laid down in Hitler’s Supplement to Directive No.33 could not be carried out before winter descended.108 Hitler interpreted this as demanding panzer support from Army Group Centre for the assault on Leningrad. Moscow could wait. Halder took the diametrically opposite view. Making Moscow the objective would ensure that the Soviets committed the bulk of their forces to its defence. Taking the city, including its communications system and industries, would split the Soviet Union and render resistance more difficult. The implication was that the capture of the capital would bring about the fall of the Soviet system, and the end of the eastern war.109 If the attack on Moscow were not pushed through with all speed, the enemy would bring the offensive to a halt before winter, then regroup. The military aim of the war against the Soviet Union would have failed.110
Hitler was still adamant that capturing the industrial region of Kharkhov and the Donets Basin and cutting off Soviet oil supplies would undermine resistance more than the fall of Moscow.111 But he was wavering. At this point, even Jodl and the Wehrmacht Operations Staff had been converted to the need to attack Moscow.112 Citing the arrival of strong enemy reinforcements facing and flanking Army Group Centre, Hitler now, on 30 July, cancelled the Supplement to Directive No.33.113 Halder was momentarily ecstatic. ‘This decision frees every thinking soldier of the horrible vision obsessing us these last few days, since the Führer’s obstinacy made the final bogging down of the eastern campaign appear imminent.’114 But when Directive No.34 was issued the same day it offered Halder little comfort. Army Group Centre was to recuperate for the next attack; in the north the assault on Leningrad was to continue; and Army Group South was to destroy the enemy forces west of the Dnieper and in the vicinity of Kiev.115 The real decision — for or against the drive to Moscow — had effectively just been postponed for a while.116
In early August Hitler remained wedded to Leningrad as the priority. He reckoned this would be cut off by 20 August, and then troops and aircraft could be redeployed by Army Group Centre. The second priority for Hitler was, as before, ‘the south of Russia, especially the Donets region’, which formed the ‘entire basis of the Russian economy’. Moscow was a clear third on his priority-list. He recognized that in this order of priorities the capital could not be taken before winter. Halder tried unavailingly to get Brauchitsch to obtain a clear decision on whether to put everything into delivering the enemy a fatal blow at Moscow or taking the Ukraine and the Caucasus for economic reasons. He persuaded Jodl to intervene with Hitler to convince him that the objectives of Moscow
By now, Halder was realizing the magnitude of the task facing the Wehrmacht. ‘The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian colossus,’ he wrote on 11 August. ‘At the outset of the war, we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360. These divisions indeed are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen… And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front line, without any depth, are subjected to the incessant attacks of the enemy.’118
In his Supplement to Directive No.34, issued on 12 August, Hitler for the first time stated categorically that once the threats from the flanks were eliminated and the panzer groups were refreshed the attack on the enemy forces massed for the protection of Moscow was to be prosecuted. The aim was ‘the removal from the enemy before winter of the entire state, armaments, and communications centre around Moscow’, ran the directive.119 Three days later, however, Hitler intervened once more in the tactical dispositions by ordering panzer forces from the northern flank of Army Group Centre to help Army Group North resist a strong Soviet counterattack.120
