These were scarcely signs of waning self-confidence.217 But his over-reaction, two days later, when news reached him that mountain troops had placed the German flag on the Elbrus, highest mountain of the Caucasus range at 5,630 metres, suggests that his self-confidence was a front, perhaps above all for himself. Beneath the façade, his nerves were edgy, his anxiety about the offensive growing. The troops presumably thought he would be pleased. In fact, he was furious at what he saw as a pointless mountaineering feat devoid of military purpose.218 Speer later wrote that he had seldom seen him so enraged, fuming for days at ‘these mad mountaineers’ who deserved to be put before a military court. In the middle of a war, he ranted, their idiotic ambition had driven them to climb an idiotic peak, when he had ordered everything to be concentrated on the taking of Suchum. It was in truth a minor escapade. But from Hitler’s near-hysterical over-reaction it seemed, Speer recalled, as if they had ruined his entire operational plan.219
The last significant successes of Army Group B, meanwhile, had been in encircling and destroying two Russian armies south-west of Kalac, on the Don due west of Stalingrad, on 8 August.220 Advancing in punishing heat and hindered through chronic fuel shortage, on 23 August, the 6th Army, under General Friedrich Paulus, succeeded in reaching the Volga, north of Stalingrad.221 Amid heavy Soviet defences, the advance ground rapidly to a halt. The summer offensive had, as it turned out, run its course in less than two months.222 As early as 26 August Halder was noting: ‘Near Stalingrad, serious tension on account of superior counter-attacks of the enemy. Our divisions are no longer very strong. The command is heavily under nervous strain.’223 The 6th Army was, however, able to consolidate its position. Over the next weeks, it even gained the advantage. But the nightmare of Stalingrad was only just beginning.
While the southern part of the massively extended front was running out of steam, with the 6th Army now bogged down at Stalingrad and List’s Army Group A stalled in the Caucasus, Kluge’s Army Group Centre had encountered a damaging setback, suffering horrendous casualties in an ill-fated attempt ordered by Hitler to wipe out Russian forces at Sukhinichi, 150 miles west of Moscow, from where it was hoped to establish the basis for a renewed drive on the capital. Kluge, on a visit to ‘Werwolf on 7 August, had asked Hitler to remove two armoured divisions from the offensive at Sukhinichi to deploy them against a threatening Soviet counterattack in the Rzhev area. Hitler had refused, insisting that they be retained for the Sukhinichi offensive. Kluge had marched out saying ‘You, my Führer, therefore assume responsibility for this.’224
And in the north, by the end of August expectations of launching an assault and finally taking the hunger-torn city of Leningrad had been massively dented through the Soviet counter-offensive south of Lake Ladoga. Manstein’s nth Army had been brought up from the southern front to lead the planned final assault on Leningrad in September in the ‘Northern Lights’ offensive. Instead it found itself engaged in fending off the Soviet strike. There was no possibility of capturing Leningrad and razing it to the ground. The last chance of that had gone.225 Hitler’s outward show of confidence in victory could not altogether conceal his mounting inner anxiety. His temper was on a short fuse. Outbursts of rage became more common.226 He cast around as always for scapegoats for the rapidly deteriorating military situation in the east. It did not take him long to find them.
Relations with Halder had already reached rock-bottom. On 24 August, the worsening situation at Rzhev had prompted the Chief of the General Staff to urge Hitler to allow a retreat of the 9th Army to a more defensible shorter line. In front of all those assembled at the midday conference, Hitler rounded on Halder. ‘You always come here with the same proposal, that of withdrawal,’ he raged. ‘I demand from the leadership the same toughness as from the front-soldiers.’ Halder, deeply insulted, shouted back: ‘I have the toughness, my Führer. But out there brave musketeers and lieutenants are falling in thousands and thousands as useless sacrifice in a hopeless situation simply because their commanders are not allowed to make the only reasonable decision and have their hands tied behind their backs.’227 Hitler stared at Halder. ‘What can you, who sat in the same chair
