One of the great questions of World War II is if Hitler and his High Command had forgotten about the severity of the Russian winter when they planned Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.  Most people assume so because the German soldiers eventually found themselves in temperatures as low as -55.6 C (-68 F) ^[1] while still wearing their summer uniforms.  How could that have been possible if not for a colossal oversight on behalf of those in charge of planning the operation as well as those in command?  It seems like a no-brainer but how true is it?  Looking at the evidence, we can see that it is not only a false assumption, but there are elements in the affair that are rarely reported in articles or books on the subject.

Operation Typhoon, the operation meant to finally capture Moscow, began on 2 October 1941.  It started spectacularly but soon rains and melted snowfalls created a muddy quagmire that slowed the blitzkrieg advance to a literal crawl.  On some parts of the front, German forces were able to move forward only several kilometers per day even with no opposition.  The so-called roads on the German maps turned out to be dirt tracks that vanished once the heavy rains arrived.  This was when all the time lost during the unexpected invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece really made itself felt.  That campaign cost the Germans 77 days of good weather and they were going to miss those days very sorely as the weather changed in the Fall and Winter.

German General Heinz Guderian described the situation clearly when he wrote, ‘The next few weeks were dominated by the mud.  Wheeled vehicles could only advance with the help of tracked vehicles.  These latter, having to perform tasks for which they were not intended, rapidly wore out.  Since chains and couplings for the towing of vehicles were lacking, bundles of rope were dropped from airplanes to the immobilized vehicles.  The supplying of hundreds of such vehicles and their crews had now to be done by the air force, and that for weeks on end.’ ^[2]  The fact that the Luftwaffe had to be pressed into a resupply mode demonstrates just how badly the supply and logistics system had collapsed.  It was a harbinger of far worse things to come.

The slowed advance gave the Soviets enough breathing space to rail in reinforcements and establish new defense lines.  At this point, the main worry was not warm clothing for winter but the inaccurate maps and the endless seas of mud.

However, that view had changed by 15 November when the falling temperatures had frozen the ground, solving the mud problem, and allowing for a much more normal freedom of movement.  For example, on 12 November the temperature was down to -15 C (+5 F) on some parts of the front and on the following day, the mercury read -20 C (-4 F). ^[3] Unfortunately for the Germans, those falling temperatures proved to be double-edged swords.

Guderian continued: ‘Preparations made for the winter were utterly inadequate.  For weeks we had been requesting anti-freeze for the water coolers of our engines; we saw as little of this as we did of winter clothing for the troops.  The lack of warm clothes, was, in the difficult months ahead, to provide the greatest problem and cause the greatest suffering to our solders – and it would have been the easiest to avoid of all our difficulties.’ ^[4]

He also said, ‘Only he who saw the endless expanse of Russian snow during this winter of our misery and felt the icy wind that blew across it, burying in snow every object in its path: who drove for hour after hour through that no-man’s land only at last to find too thin shelter with insufficiently clothed, half-starved men: and who also saw by contrast the well-fed, warmly clad and fresh Siberians, fully equipped for winter fighting: only a man who knew all that can truly judge the events which now occurred.’ ^[5]

In addition to this, on 13 November during a meeting convened by Hitler’s Chief of Staff Halder, Guderian stated, ‘How do expect us to crank up a tank engine at minus 20 C (-4 F)?  The pistons are frozen, the transmission oil is a solid block of ice, and the recoils on our guns are stuck.  Keep your red wine and send my boys some padded winter coats instead.’  He was referring to a shipment of wine dispatched by a quartermaster in France as a good-will gesture for the coming Christmas that arrived as lumps of red ice. ^[6] Guderian, as well as other generals, must have been stunned by the fact that the wine shipment made it through to the front but the far more vital winter clothing, anti-freeze for vehicles along with winterized lubricants for engines and weapons did not.  The following quote lays bare the result of this from an officer-on-the-scene’s eyes.

Sometime in November 1941, a young SS officer wrote, ‘Thus we are approaching our final goal, Moscow, step by step.  It is icy cold…To start the [vehicle] engines, they must be warmed by lighting fires under the oil pan.  The fuel is partially frozen, the motor oil is thick and we lack anti-freeze…The remaining limited combat strength of the troops diminishes further due to the continuous exposure to the cold…The automatic weapons…often fail to operate because the breechblocks can no longer move.’ ^[7]

As bad as all the above had been, it was only a preview of what Mother Nature had in store.  The hammer fell on 27 November when the temperature dropped to -40 C (-40 F).  That is death for exposed human flesh.  The German troops did not have either fur-lined coats or felt boots.  The Russians opposing them possessed both.  Their boots were loose fitting, which allowed them to put straw or newspaper in them as insulators.  Alternatively, the German soldiers wore tight boots, which virtually guaranteed frostbite on the toes and feet.  They also wore dark-grey uniforms that stood out in the white winter landscape, making them obvious targets for Russian fire.  In contrast, the Soviet soldiers were clad in padded white suits that allowed them to lie in the snow for hours without being spotted or freezing and getting frostbite.  They also had fur mittens, while the Germans wore wool gloves that left their fingers too stiff to pull triggers.  Because their weapons had not been winterized, the bolt action slides on their rifles frequently froze solid.  Moreover, most of their vehicles suffered from blocked fuel lines, frozen oil in crank cases and transmission boxes that cracked open.  The recoil springs on their heavy guns snapped because the metal became as brittle as icicles as a result of the extreme cold.  Finally, in order to make their machine guns capable of firing, they had to wrap hot bricks in rags and place them over the recoils to keep them warm enough to function. ^[8]

Guderian lost twice as many men to frostbite as to Russian bullets.  German soldiers looted the Russian dead for their clothing, jury-rigged makeshift winter boots from straw and rags, and ended up wearing an increasingly bizarre collection of stolen and often female garments.  All jokes aside, in such exceptionally cold weather where even a few minutes’ exposure meant instant frostbite, it is no surprise that the German soldiers threw dignity to the winds and did whatever they had to in order to escape the relentless, merciless cold. ^[9]

It is so hard for the modern person to understand just how cold the weather was at that time and what difficulties the Germans were confronted with.  Soldiers had to cut their bread with axes, rifles often didn’t fire, the oil in their machine guns and tank motors solidified, making them unusable without makeshift ways to heat them up.  Horses were needed to move guns as the trucks were inoperable. ^[10]

A corporal from the 208^th Artillery Battalion wrote just about that when he said, ‘We have used six horses to draw our howitzer.  Of the six, two just fell over dead from cold and exhaustion.  The other four aren’t strong enough to pull the gun through the deep snow.  We have wrapped ourselves in everything we can find from the houses, even stripped padded jackets and felt boots from dead Russians.  We cannot take off our clothes or we freeze in minutes.  Our clothes are infested with fleas, lice crawl in my hair.  I have stuffed straw into my boots.  In my gun battery there isn’t a single comrade who doesn’t suffer from frozen toes or fingers.  Can you blame us that we have reached the end of our endeavors?’ ^[11]

When temperatures regularly dropped to – 40 degrees C (- 40 degrees F), lubricants froze solid, engine blocks cracked, and frostbite cases soared (more than 100,000 severe frostbite cases would be recorded that winter).  German soldiers supplemented their summer uniforms with newspapers and propaganda leaflets, which were ironically addressed to Soviet troops calling on them to surrender.  Cooked food froze before it could be completely eaten.  In the open, windswept countryside, where there was precious little shelter, even the simple act of defecating could be fatal.  On 10 December, Guderian, commander of the 2nd Panzer Army Group, wrote that “many men died while performing their natural functions, as a result of a congelation of the anus.”  Later, a campaign medal for participants of the Eastern Campaign that winter was created, which ended up with the horrifying nickname Gefrierfleisch Orden, the Order of the Frozen Meat. ^[12]

The Russians, on the other hand, had learned from their experience against the Finns in the Winter War (30 November 1939 – 13 March 1940) when they suffered close to 400,000 casualties, many of them cold and frostbite related.  During that war, it was the Red Army who was unprepared for a bitterly cold winter.  Now their troops had fur caps, white camouflage capes, fur or padded jackets and felt boots.  Many units had been trained to fight on skis.  The soldiers carried simple automatic weapons and used lubricants rated for deep-freeze conditions.  Even the shaggy Russian ponies were better able to cope with the snow and cold than the German Army horses brought in from the warmer parts of Europe.  Russian tanks possessed wide tracks that supported their weight even in deep snow ^[13] and the innovative as well as frightening T-34 had a compressed-air starter, which made it immune to frost. ^[14]

All in all, that left the Germans confronting their worst nightmare: an impossibly cold winter and an enemy adapted to it determined to throw them back to where they had come from.  Numbers give us some clue as to the overall scale of the developing catastrophe.  The German military suffered total casualties of 743,000 from 22 June to 30 November 1941, representing 23% of the total strength of the army. ^[15] In contrast, there were over severe 100,000 frostbite casualties alone for that winter. ^[16]

The lowest temperature recorded by the German forces was -55.6 C (-68 F). ^[17] Exhalation froze the moment it left a soldier’s mouth. ^[18] If a man spat, the moisture froze before reaching the ground.  A single regiment reported 315 frostbite cases. ^[19] Frostbite was causing more casualties than the enemy. ^[20]

A dystopian hell confronted the Germans.  Eventually, four feet (1.2 meters) of soft snow and titanic snow drifts up to 15 feet (4.6 meters) deep blanketed the landscape.  The extreme frostbite caused by all the ice, snow and frigid temperatures often led to gangrene, which could easily kill the sufferer.  One medical officer treating the half-frozen victims pouring into his station said, ‘Will it never end?  Our entire army is made up of cripples.’  Outside of his dressing station, medical assistants stacked up sawn off gangrened limbs like firewood. ^[21]  Another officer from a different field dressing-station wrote: ‘Eighty men were brought in here today, half of whom have second- or third-degree frostbite.  Their swollen legs are covered in blisters, and they no longer resemble limbs but rather some formless mass.  In some cases, gangrene has already set in.’ ^[22]You can imagine that he had his own pile of amputated, gangrened limbs piled up outside as evidence of the winter horror.

By the second half of December, the situation had gotten so bad that Guderian flew in to speak to Hitler himself about it.  On 20 December, the following conversation took place: ‘Guderian: ‘I beg you to remember that it is not the enemy who is causing us our bloody losses: …we are suffering twice as many casualties from the cold as from the fire of the Russians.  Any man who has seen the hospitals filled with frostbite cases must realize what that means.’

‘Hitler: ‘I know that you have not spared yourself and that you have spent a great deal of time with the troops.  I grant you that.  But you are seeing events at too close a range.  You have been too deeply impressed by the suffering of the soldiers.  You feel too much pity for them.  You should stand back more.  Believe me, things appear clearer when examined at longer range.’

‘Guderian: ‘Naturally it is my duty to lessen the suffering of my soldiers so far as that lies within my power.  But it is hard when the men have even now not yet received their winter clothing and the greater part of the infantry are still going about in denim uniforms.  Boots, vests, gloves, woolen helmets are either non-existent or else are hopelessly worn out.’

‘Hitler shouted: ‘That is not true.  The Quartermaster-General informed me that the winter clothing had been issued.’

‘Guderian: ‘I dare say it has been issued but it has never arrived.  I have made it my business to find out what has happened to it.  At present it is in Warsaw station, where it has been for the last several weeks, since it cannot be sent on owing to a lack of locomotives and obstructions to the lines.  Our requests that it be forwarded in September and October were bluntly refused.  Now it is too late.’

To settle this dispute, Hitler summoned the Quartermaster-General, who had to admit that Guderian was correct: the winter clothing had in fact been dispatched, as it had been reported to Hitler, but it had not reached the front, corroborating Guderian’s statement.  A major consequence of this confrontation was that it led to Goebbel’s civilian campaign that first, dreadful Christmas for winter clothing for the soldiers. ^[23]

In this campaign, which was called Aktion Winterhilfe fuer das Ostheer, Goebbels called on the German people to sacrifice their own winter clothing to the soldiers at the front.  As a result of this very fruitful campaign, millions of gloves, sweaters and greatcoats were brought to collection centers across Germany.  Unfortunately for the German soldiers, the same logistical issues that prevented the official military winter clothing from reaching them also worked to prevent this generous aid from the home front from reaching them that winter as well. ^[24] Besides the mud and partisan attacks, a critical logistical issue was the problem that the Russian rail gauge was wider than its European counterpart, which necessitated the excruciatingly long and painful process of changing it to the European standard.  Altogether, these separate problems combined to cripple the supply system to the point that severe frostbite cases would eventually number in the six-digit range.

The final and most interesting point to consider is what the German meteorologists had to say at the time because Hitler and the High Command took their statements very seriously when planning for Operation Barbarossa.  Many, if not most, people today assume the Germans simply didn’t realize what they were getting themselves into weather-wise that first winter.  That is the way it is presented in most books.  However, that assumption is actually quite far from the truth.  The Germans, in fact, were keenly aware of the severity of the Russian winter.  They clearly understood that January and February were likely to be cold enough to end all major fighting until the coming spring.  They also expected Barbarossa to have been concluded by the end of December.

Now comes the critical part.  German meteorologists had told the High Command that since serious weather observations began in the 17^th century, there had never been 3 severe winters in a row in Russia.  Given that the winters of 1939-1940 and 1940-1941 were both severe, the scientists assured the High Command that winter 1941-1942 would not be too bad. ^[25] That assessment was factored into the planning for the operation.

Let us now circle back now to our original question: Did Hitler Forget about the Russian Winter?  We can clearly see that he did not.  Not by a long shot.  We have just seen how the German meteorologists gave Hitler and his High Command a terribly wrong weather forecast for that winter that, along with the expectation that Barbarossa would be completed in December and the broken-down logistical system, meant that the much-needed winter clothing would languish in the rear areas until spring.

In addition to that, we have also seen how Hitler had been misled by the Quartermaster-General into thinking that the official winter clothing had in fact already reached the German soldiers in December.  It took Guderian’s visit to bring the truth to light to him.

This demonstrates what we see time and again in history: that supreme leaders often do not have a clear and accurate picture of what is really going on at the front because they rely on underlings for their information and those underlings are often either incompetent or fearful of passing along negative information that may jeopardize their positions or even their lives!  We can see this happening today in the Russian-Ukrainian War where President Putin green-lit a war based on totally faulty intelligence and military assessment reports that were more focused on passing along information that would please Putin rather than the raw, naked truth.  Like Hitler before him, Putin is now bogged down in a grinding campaign that was supposed to be a glorious blitzkrieg. The wheel turns, but nothing changes.

An addendum to the article is the information related by Guderian in his book Panzer Leader where he talks about an incident that had occurred a few weeks before the meeting you read about above.  Hitler went to an exhibition in Berlin of what OKH was doing for the care of the soldiers during the upcoming winter.  The resulting fiction was presented excellently and was even featured in following newsreels.  Hitler was as delighted by what he saw as he was ignorant of the true situation.  What he was not told was the constant movement of the troops meant none of the semi-fictional structures he was shown had actually been built where they would be of any use and precious little of what was captured from the Russians provided any real shelter from the elements. ^[26] The whole episode had a very Potemkin village sort of feel about it.  It is also a further illustration of how Hitler’s underlings kept him in the dark as to what was really happening at the front.  And it was the common German soldier who would pay for it. 

Sources

• https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/operation-typhoon-the-german-army-attempt-to-capture-moscow/
• Braithwaite, Rodric. Moscow 1941: A City and its People at War. Croydon, UK: CPI Bookmarque, 2007.
• Durschmied, Erik. The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History. London, UK: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999.
• Durschmied, Erik. The Weather Factor: How Nature Has Changed History. New York, USA: Arcade Publishing, 2012.
• Guderian, Heinz. Panzer Leader. London, England: Penguin Books, 2009.
• Hastings, Max. All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945. London, UK: HarperPress, 2012.
• Rayner, Ed and Stapley, Ron. Debunking History: 152 Popular Myths Exploded. Sparkford, Great Britain: J.H. Haynes & Co. Ltd, 2006.

1. Panzer p.258.[↩]
2. Ibid., p.237.[↩]
3. Weather p.197.[↩]
4. Panzer p.237.[↩]
5. Ibid., pp.254-255.[↩]
6. Weather p.198.[↩]
7. Hastings p.165.[↩]
8. Weather pp.202-203.[↩]
9. Braithwaite p.289.[↩]
10. Hinge Factor p.300.[↩]
11. Ibid.[↩]
12. Defensemedianetwork.[↩]
13. Braithwaite p.289.[↩]
14. Hastings p.166.[↩]
15. Panzer p.256.[↩]
16. Defensemedianetwork.[↩]
17. Panzer p.258.[↩]
18. Weather p.206.[↩]
19. Hastings p.165.[↩]
20. Panzer pp.262-263.[↩]
21. Weather p.207.[↩]
22. Hastings p.167.[↩]
23. Panzer pp.266.267.[↩]
24. Weather p.197.[↩]
25. Debunking p.152.[↩]
26. Panzer p.267.[↩]