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German Intelligence Assessments of Operation Mars.

As was the case with many operations on the German Eastern Front, German commanders possessed conflicting information regarding Soviet intent to attack in the central (Moscow) sector of the front. Colonel Reinhardt Gehlen's intelligence organization, Foreign Armies East [Fremde Heere Ost], had noted increased Soviet activity in the central sector of the front since late August 1942. In September, however, he altered this assessment and predicted the Soviets would launch counteroffensives somewhere in southern Russia. Gehlen reversed himself once again in early October when he concluded, "The Russian forces assembling around Ninth Army [at Rzhev] are combat forces." In mid-October General Alfred Jodl, the chief of the Armed Forces Staff [OKW], also admitted a limited attack was probable against the base of the Rzhev salient, while Gehlen stated a Soviet assault was probable against German Army Group Center's Third Panzer and Ninth Armies. Finally, in early November Gehlen hedged his bet and predicted likely attacks against both German Army Groups Center around Rzhev and "B" in the Stalingrad region.

Predictably, the intelligence organs of the German Ninth Army and its subordinate corps and divisions sensed the Soviet build-up more keenly. After 19 November, however, their warning cries were drowned out by the sounds of terrible battle raging in southern. None-the-less, German tactical commanders did all in their power to prepare for the anticipated Soviet blow. Unfortunately, they knew neither the precise time of the expected Soviet assault nor, in the case of the Belyi front, the precise location of the impending attacks. This explains why the German XXXIX Panzer Corps was attacked while conducting a relief-in-place of its forward 5th Panzer Division and why the German division defending south of Belyi was not reinforced prior to the Soviet attack.

The five German Ninth Army intelligence (Ic) maps which follow illustrate the German intelligence picture just prior to and throughout the operation.