Tapping Hitler's Generals полностью

The Russians were extremely clever at forming army corps without us noticing it. I was told an example of that–it must have been in 1944–when we realised, and it was also mentioned in the press, that a large strategic concentration was moving down near ODESSA, so an attack there was expected. Then, much to our surprise, it was made in the centre. What had the Russians done? They had originally assembled in concentration areas. They had set up the whole WT network in the normal way, then left this WT network standing and sent the troops northwards on short night marches. That took a fortnight. They made short marches by night, so that in the morning when it was light and the reconnaissance aircraft made their early morning patrol, everything was hidden away and not a soul was to be seen on the roads.[182] Then there was this point: sometimes it was noticed, but our forces were already so weak, that even when we did notice it, we could take no decisive action against it. The Russians have such a huge population, they can keep on forming new divisions. Just imagine that huge country! The latest figures for the population are probably 200 million. Then millions of Chinese coolies were fetched as well[183] and are doing armament work at the front. Also in that respect HITLER kept on deceiving himself–nobody knows where he actually got hold of the idea–into thinking that this Russian industry was nearly at an end and that their transport system was breaking down. Certainly I believe that the Russian High Command was for a time anxious about their transport system, but there couldn’t have been any question at all of a complete collapse.

Russian low-level command wasn’t as efficient as ours–in my opinion this is also due to their being Slavs; they are somewhat lacking in middle classes such as the Western Europeans have:[184] consequently their successes were only achieved with far greater sacrifices. Once I saw some very unbiased statistics compiled from a great mass of troops experiences; in general you can reckon on three Russians killed to one German.[185] However, they can afford it whereas one is already too much for us. That’s the difference. A Russian division consists of from 10 to 14 thousand men.[186]

I was only in the UKRAINE, in the southern territory. There were no partisans there at all. That is because there are no woods there. There were no partisans where there were no woods. They couldn’t live in the villages as the population would have objected. They reasoned: ‘If we allowed partisans to live here we’ll be the ones to suffer. Take them away!’ As a result there were no partisans there at all. You found them wherever there were woods.[187] They did it along completely revolutionary lines. In time they dropped entire armies etc. by parachute.[188] Of course we had to pay dearly as our forces were already fairly thin and we had to think a long time whether to throw a man in to the North, Centre or South. Immense forces were swallowed up merely in protecting ourselves against the partisans, without our even contemplating fighting them.[189] The partisans got their supplies by air or by organising looting raids in the neighbourhood–they plundered all the villages and took along everything they found, cows etc.[190] They hadn’t many tanks but if they were in a forest through which lead important communication roads which constitute the life lines of armies, and stay there for a few days they caused untold damage.[191] It tied down an immense number of our forces and it was a very nerve-racking and exhausting kind of war for the troops in those parts, as a partisan in the forest is like a wild animal. A peasant nation like the Russians which is far nearer to the soil than we are has a natural sense of direction. Only when fighting a people of that sort do you realise to what extent you’ve become townsmen.