When news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reached Germany, that nation's leadership was absorbed by the crisis in its war with the Soviet Union, begun by the German attack earlier that year. In view of a serious defeat administered to the German forces by the Red Army at the southern end of the front, Adolf Hitler had relieved the commander-inchief of the German army group fighting there, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, on December 1 and flew to the army group and army headquarters in the southern Ukraine on December 2. Late on December 3, he flew back to his headquarters in East Prussia, only to be greeted by more bad news: the German army group at the northern end of the main front was also being pushed back by Red Army counterattacks; and, most ominous of all, the German offensive in the center toward Moscow was not only exhausted but was itself in danger of being overwhelmed by a Soviet counteroffensive of which the first major effects were beginning to be noted in German headquarters on December 5 and 6. Not yet recognizing the extent of the defeat at the front, and imagining that there would merely be a temporary halt in German offensive operations, Hitler and the German Army Chief of Staff, General Franz Haider, as well as the head of operations in the high command of the armed forces, General Alfred Jodl, prepared a general directive for winter operations which was signed by Hitler, issued on December 8, and quickly overtaken by the reality of Red Army victories on the Eastern Front.