A cold reception: Halder’s offensive plans

Undeterred by the state of Army Group Centre, the OKH remained adamant that Bock could continue his attack towards Moscow and even achieve a resounding success. The feeling was that doubts within the command staff of the major formations in the east had to be countered with ‘the thinking of the general staff’, and to do this Halder himself would travel to the east and meet with the chiefs-of-staff of the three army groups as well as most of the armies to fire the new offensive with the requisite vigour and resolve.

On 12 November, Halder left the army high command compound at Angerburg in East Prussia to board a special train to take him, and a number of his top branch chiefs, to Orsha in eastern Belarus. There he would meet with the three chiefs-of-staff of the army groups, Lieutenants-General Kurt Brennecke (north), Greiffenberg (centre) and General of the Infantry Georg von Sodenstern (south), as well as the chiefs-of-staff from seven of the ten armies operating in the east (from north to south, the Eighteenth, Sixteenth, Ninth, Fourth, Second Panzer, Sixth and Seventeenth). The meeting took place in Halder’s special train and began promptly at ten o’clock on the morning of 13 November. Halder commenced proceedings giving a speech that attempted to recast the history of the eastern campaign to fit his agenda for the Ostheer’s impending success. As Halder explained the ‘fundamental idea’ of the campaign had been to ‘wrest a decision’, but that this was no longer ‘100 percent attainable’. Indeed, without the slightest hint of irony, Halder then made the contrasting admission that the Soviet Union had been weakened ‘by at least fifty percent’ and that therefore it could not simply be ‘kept under observation’. The east, he said, would therefore have to remain an active theatre of war and the army now had to ‘strive to maximise damage to the enemy’ before the end of the year. Halder assured his officers that the situation was still favourable. ‘