When President Roosevelt, at the end of his meeting to discuss war strategy with Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff at Casablanca in French Morocco between 14 and 24 January 1943, had — to the British Prime Minister’s surprise — announced at a concluding press conference that the Allies would impose ‘unconditional surrender’ on their enemies, it had matched Hitler’s Valhalla mentality entirely82 For him, the demand altered nothing. It merely added further confirmation that his uncompromising stance was right. As he told his Party leaders in early February, he felt liberated as a result from any attempts to persuade him to look for a negotiated peace settlement83 It had become, as he had always asserted it would, a clear matter of victory or destruction. Few, even of his closest followers, as Goebbels admitted, could still inwardly believe in the former. But compromises were ruled out. The road to destruction was opening up ever more plainly. For Hitler, closing off escape routes had distinct advantages. Fear of destruction was a strong motivator.
Some of Hitler’s leading generals, most notably Manstein, had tried to persuade him immediately after Stalingrad that he should, if not give up the command of the army, at least appoint a supremo on the eastern front who had his trust. Manstein was the obvious candidate for the post of ‘Supreme Commander in the East’. But Hitler was having none of it. He knew, he said, no commander whom he could trust to take such a command84 Probably, as Guderian suspected, Manstein was too independent and forthright in his views for Hitler. After the bitter conflicts over the previous months, he preferred the compliancy of a Keitel to the sharply couched counter-arguments of a Manstein85 It meant a further weakening of Germany’s military potential. But Hitler’s instinctive reaction to the disaster at Stalingrad was not to concede anything; he had to wrest back the initiative on the eastern front without delay.
Manstein’s push to retake Kharkhov and reach the Donets by mid-March had been a much-needed success. Over 50,000 Soviet troops had perished86 It had suggested yet again to Hitler that Stalin’s reserves must be drying up87 His confidence boosted, he returned in mid-March from Vinnitsa to the Wolf’s Lair, as Warlimont put it, ‘with the air of a victorious war-lord, clearly considering himself and
At this point, the split in military planning between the army’s General Staff, directly responsible for the eastern front, and the operations branch of Wehrmacht High Command (in charge of all other theatres) surfaced once more. The planners in the High Command of the Wehrmacht favoured a defensive ploy on all fronts to allow the gradual build-up and mobilization of resources throughout Europe for a later grand offensive. The Army High Command thought differently. It wanted a limited but early offensive. The danger of the defensive strategy, army leaders argued, was the need to commit extensive German forces to the eastern front as long as the Soviet Union posed a threat, thus weakening the defences, notably in the Mediterranean and in western Europe. Stabilizing the eastern front was, therefore, the first priority. A successful offensive was needed to achieve this. Chief of the Army General Staff Kurt Zeitzler had devised an operation involving the envelopment and destruction of a large number of Soviet divisions on a big salient west of Kursk, an important rail junction some 500 miles south of Moscow. Five Soviet armies were located within the westward bulge in the front, around 120 miles wide and 75 miles deep, left from the winter campaign of 1942–3. If victorious, the operation would gravely weaken the Soviet offensive potential.90
