Tapping Hitler's Generals

From the point of view of actual fighting the German soldier always felt superior to the Russian on account of his knowledge, his efficient handling of weapons and his tactics. Tactics on both sides were probably equal but German soldiers were more highly trained in the various things and knew more about them. Especially after 1941, the great shortcomings of rapid training became apparent in the Russian soldiers, besides which Slavs are doubtlessly not as intelligent or receptive as Germans. However the Slavs have one immense advantage over Western Europeans: death means nothing to them, nothing at all! This attitude towards death is entirely different from ours, even the European Slavs. He inclines towards the oriental attitude and consequently is incredibly steadfast. He’ll fight until the last as a matter of course much more readily than we Western Europeans. We used to shout and shout about it but in practice it was difficult to carry out. It wasn’t so hard for the Russians; they really did allow themselves to be slaughtered. In addition the so-called commissar system which meant there were commissars in every army branch, right down to the individual companies,[178] proved a great main-stay. Even if a simple soul, a peasant who doesn’t know much more about Bolshevism than we do, faltered, there was always someone who, by iron energy, persuasion, punishments or rewards, was able to save the situation. Thus, on the whole, the Russians were quite excellent soldiers.

German arms were superior to Russian ones in 1941. From 1942 onwards the Russians came along with their masses of T-34s–which were the best tanks in the world for a long time, there’s no doubt about it in spite of their many disadvantages.[179] Above all these tanks had the advantage of a slanting shape which caused shells to bounce off them unless fired under exceptionally favourable conditions. Its disadvantage was its relatively poor field of vision which was much worse than ours. However, they produced them in large quantities. In that respect we also made a huge mistake. We didn’t believe Russian industry capable of holding out–I can’t judge to what extent they were aided by ENGLAND and AMERICAN–and of recuperating so quickly from their collapse in 1941 when they lost the whole of the DONETZ basin, STALINGRAD etc. which contained gigantic factories. This was probably due to the fact that no one knew what was going on beyond the URALS. We only realised later, in retrospect, that they must have a terrific industrial area there which enabled them to produce such quantities of war materials in spite of everything.[180] Then they brought out their so-called STALIN ‘Orgeln’, rocket-launchers, ‘Katuschkas’. At any rate they were most unpleasant as new weapons. Gradually we grew accustomed to them. They’re like this: contrary to artillery shells they approach so slowly you can’t hear them; in the case of artillery fire you can usually hear each shell being fired and can throw yourself down and take cover but you cannot do that in the case of these rockets because they approach so slowly they make no noise; suddenly they land all round you in the field where you happen to be standing, driving or riding, all in the course of a minute. First and foremost is their moral effect! Their actual effect wasn’t as great. We also had a rocket-launcher but it couldn’t be thrown in on that scale. The principle was the same. As regards anti-tank weapons, they hadn’t any more than we had, the so-called ‘Pak-Kanone’, but they were mainly on the defensive then and were forced to bring out a slightly larger calibre than we had. We had the ‘3.7’ which proved completely useless after some time. The Russians soon switched over to ‘5.6’; nowadays ‘7.5s’ are preferred as a rule. You never use anything smaller than ‘7.5’ nowadays.[181] They were very effective as they penetrated everything. The Russian campaign was interesting in as far as one observed the continual battle between tanks and defence weapons. When the Russian brought out their new weapon we had to alter our tank tactics. We could no longer dash into an attack in a straight-forward manner as we used to do, reckoning that we might lose a tank or two; we couldn’t do that but we had by cautiously creeping forward to try and locate the weapons and attempt an attack from the side. That was the continuous struggle. The Russians then developed a new method of using their weapons; they attempted to form ‘Pak’ nests in order not be be surrounded; that sort of thing is always in a continuous state of development.