Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (25 page)

By the second half of October Moscow's first line of defence had been pierced everywhere on a broad front between Kaluga and Kalinin. The German divisions were advancing against Moscow's second and last line of defence along three main roads—from Maloyaroslavets to Moscow, from Naro-Fominsk to Moscow, and from Mozhaysk to Moscow. This second line of defence, ran, reading from south to north, from the town of Tula to Serpukhov, thence along the Nara via Naro-Fominsk to the Nara Lakes on the motor highway, then along the Moskva valley via Zvenigorod, Istra, the Istra reservoir, and Klin to the "Moscow Sea," south-east of Kalinin.

This line of defence was not in fact a line, but a system of positions organized in considerable depth. Towards the west, moreover, all road junctions and railway stations, even well outside the defences proper, were strongly fortified. Towards the rear—
i.e.,
in the direction of Moscow—the anti-tank ditches and field positions went right back to the edge of the capital. Thence they continued all the way to Red Square in the form of barricades, road-blocks, tank- traps, and buried armoured fighting vehicles.

By the end of October Moscow's doom seemed sealed. In the north, in the area of what used to be Hoth's Third Panzer Group and was now the Third Panzer Army commanded by General Reinhardt, the Thuringian-Hessian 1st Panzer Division had succeeded in crossing the Volga in an eastward direction at Kalinin. The combat group Heydebrand, with Training Brigade No. 900 attached to it, thrust along the Torzhok road as far as Mednoye and blocked the roads and railway to the north. A few days later, however, the combat units had to be taken back again to the outskirts of Kalinin, following fierce fighting with fresh reinforcements of Siberian armoured formations. By violent counter- attacks the Russians were trying to regain this important cornerstone of Moscow's defences on the Upper Volga. Their efforts were in vain. Parts of 6th Panzer Division, of 14th and 36th Motorized Infantry Divisions, and later also of 129th Infantry Division, jointly succeeded in holding the vital bridgehead. It was consolidated by XLI Panzer Corps, now under the command of General Model.

The main pressure of the German offensive, however, was along both sides of the Moscow motor highway. Fighting was heaviest there in the area of General Stumme's XL Panzer Corps. Its 10th Panzer Division had taken Shelkovka, an important and strongly fortified road junction, and had advanced across the Moskva river into the area north of Ruza. The task of the Corps was to strike at Moscow from the northwest with the "Reich" SS Infantry Division and 10th Panzer Division. The 10th Panzer Division was determined to be the first in Red Square.

It was halted 49 miles outside Moscow—not by the Russians but by the mud. General Fischer's division had to be supplied along a nine-mile causeway of timbers placed on the mud. Along both sides of this wooden road the vehicles, guns, and tanks lay motionless, stuck fast. Infantrymen, sappers, Panzerjagers, and motor-cycle troops were entrenched in the villages and forests. The tanks had no fuel left. The guns received only a dozen shells each day. Meanwhile the Russians were launching ceaseless attacks with their T-34s, which remained manœuvrable on the soft ground. The 10th Panzer Division lay bogged down, slowly bleeding to death. Those who survived remember and curse the villages of Prokovskoye and Skirminovo to this day.

The men sat in the peasant houses, in despair, praying for the ground to freeze so they could move again. But the frost was slow in coming that year. Meanwhile the division was bleeding to death. When Major-General Fischer reported

his effective strength to the Corps commander, General Stumme exclaimed, horrified, "Good God, this is no more than a reinforced reconnaissance patrol."

Thirty miles south of XL Panzer Corps the 78th Infantry Division had likewise driven a wedge 20 miles deep into the enemy's positions, driving from Ruza along the Zvenigorod— Moscow road, and had thus come up close to the main fortifications of Moscow's second line of defence. In difficult forest fighting and against strong roadblocks the 195th and 215th Regiments, in particular, mastered superhuman difficulties. They succeeded in gaining the fortified ground west of Lokotnya, within 40 miles of Moscow.

But then the mud took over and brought the attack to a standstill on that sector too. They had to wait for the frost.

South of the motor highway, in the area of Kluge's Fourth Army, the offensive at first went very well. The 7th and 292nd Infantry Divisions gained the Kryukovo area, just outside Moscow's second line of defence. They launched an attack on the defences—and got bogged down in the mud. The attack on the main positions along the Nara had to be called off.

Had nature conspired against the German forces? Would nothing be successful any more? Oh, yes, some actions were. The 258th Infantry Division and the 3rd Motorized Division were luckier. The 258th succeeded, by means of a daring stroke of Major Lübke's 2nd Battalion, 479th Infantry Regiment, in taking Naro-Fominsk on the Roslavl—Moscow main road on 22nd October. A penetration had thus been made into Moscow's second line of defence, 43 miles from the city itself.

South of Naro-Fominsk on 22nd October the 3rd Motorized Division thrust across the Nara with 29th Motorized Infantry Regiment and gained a seven-mile-wide bridgehead. "Things are moving again!" the men called out to one another. Yes, they were moving again. The 8th Motorized Infantry Regiment, the sister regiment of the 29th, not only repulsed all Russian counter-attacks, but itself mounted an immediate counter-attack and annihilated a strong Russian combat force. They took 1700 prisoners, including 52 officers. They were members of battalions raised in Moscow, or workers' militia, or Ukrainians. Many of them shouted, "Voyna kaputt"—the war is lost—and later they denounced their political commissars who had torn their insignia of rank off their shoulders.

Another 20 miles farther south the 98th Infantry Division likewise succeeded in leaping across the main obstacle of Moscow's second line of defence—the strongly reinforced Nara river. On its eastern bank the division swung north in order to clear the big road bridge of Gorki on the highway to Podolsk and Moscow, in co-operation with the 19th Panzer Division.

The 19th Panzer Division from Lower Saxony had crossed the river north of Gorki—as already reported—and its 27th Panzer Regiment successfully repulsed all Soviet counterattacks. With the capture of Naro-Fominsk and the crossing of the Nara above and below Gorki the last rampart to the south-west of Moscow was breached in three places. The dam built with the sweat, blood, and tears of half a million women, old men, and children, the dam that was to have stopped the German flood, was riddled.

Would the dam burst? The Muscovites feared that it would.

But as they were waiting for the German tanks to arrive, the tanks which now had no other obstacles to face except the ragged and half-starved local defence levies, the weather came to their rescue in this sector too. Rain turned the ground into mud. The mud became impenetrable. Field-Marshal von Bock had to concede victory to the morass. He ordered his forces to halt and wait for the ground to freeze hard so that their vehicles could move again. If only they had had 5000 track-laying vehicles with tracks as wide as the T-34s, then Moscow would have been lost.

But where was Guderian, that successful leader of the attack of Army Group Centre? Where were the spearheads of his combat-hardened divisions?

His Panzer Group had likewise been promoted to the rank of a Panzer Army, the Second Panzer Army, and reinforced to 12 1/2
.
divisions. It formed the southern wing of Army Group Centre, and its task was to drive towards Tula and seal off Moscow from the south. The High Command had again based its plans on Guderian's aptitude for lightning-

like operations and had envisaged the early strangulation of the Red capital from the south-west. To begin with all went well.

On 30th September XXIV Panzer Corps moved off towards the north-east with 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions in the van. The town of Sevsk was reached on the following day. That day the spearheads of the attack covered no less than 80 miles. On 3rd October Orel fell suddenly to a surprise coup by 4th Panzer Division. By 5th October the bridgehead over the Oka north of Orel had been extended.

Meanwhile the 3rd Panzer Division had left the main road behind in order to drive towards the north. After a night march through a hurricane-force blizzard the division crossed the Tson river. They marched on and on, to the north. Bolkhov fell—800 prisoners were taken. By mid-October parts of 3rd and 4th Panzer Division with the "Grossdeutsch-land" Infantry Regiment were ready to strike across the Suzha north-west of Mtsensk. The river was crossed on 23rd October, and the defeated Russian forces vigorously pursued. Chern was taken—only 56 miles from Tula. But then the mud took command here too.

The road to Tula was not equal to the heavy vehicles. Its surface broke up. Deep pot-holes, filling with water and mud, soon turned the road into a quagmire. Supplies got stuck. Fuel failed to arrive. The advance was slowing down. That in turn gave the Russian rearguards time to destroy the bridges along the road and to lay minefields on both sides of it.

Miles of firm causeways had to be built here too by placing logs and timbers on the ground, so as to enable supplies to reach the spearheads of the attack.

But Guderian refused to be defeated by nature and made a characteristic decision: he united all armour of XXIV Corps, parts of the 75th Artillery Regiment and the 3rd Rifle Regiment, as well as the "Grossdeutschland" Infantry Regiment, into a fast vanguard formation under the energetic Colonel Eberbach and instructed them to disregard everything else but go ahead and take Tula.

Eberbach's force drove, scrambled, slithered, and fought its way through the mud and the Russians. Wherever resistance was encountered, wherever the Russians tried to block their advance, Stukas first swooped down, screaming, upon the enemy's positions, followed presently by Eberbach assaulting with tanks and grenadiers. Mtsensk was taken. Chern fell. On 29th October the spearhead was within three miles of Tula, the industrial centre with 300,000 inhabitants.

The Soviets had strongly fortified this southern cornerstone of Moscow's last line of defence with numerous anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. Their reason was obvious: once Guderian had pushed past Tula Moscow would lie to the west of him, and Stalin's capital would find itself in a stranglehold. The old silver-mining town of Tula, though 100 miles distant from the capital, was therefore in a sense a suburb of Moscow. The Russians were well aware of it. Guderian was aware of it. And Eberbach was aware of it. Tula must fall. Tula was half of Moscow. Tula was a symbol. It even had its own Kremlin.

The 2nd Company of the "Grossdeutschland" Infantry Regiment had 60 men left. Sixty out of 150. But Second Lieutenant von Oppen was set on getting into the town. "Forward, men!" He pushed his steel helmet to the back of his head. "Forward!"

The 2nd Company "Grossdeutschland" was thus the vanguard of Guderian's entire Panzer Army. It was an inspiring thought. Things seemed to go well for the company. Tula was lying before them in the haze of an October evening. The dust-clouds of demolitions hung over the town. The men made their way through an enemy-held sunken lane, with pistol and hand-grenade, one leap at a time, man by man.

The Russians caught their hand-grenades and flung them back.

"Delay throwing and let them burst in the air!" the sergeant yelled. It worked. They got as far as an industrial housing estate on the southern edge of the town. The Russians were falling back. But Eberbach was unwilling to take risks. "Everybody halt," he ordered over the radio. He then went round the positions in person and pacified the grumbling company: "We'll bag the town to-morrow morning." Tomorrow morning. At 0530 hours.

Punctually the next morning Colonel Eberbach was again in the forward positions. He made a personal reconnaissance. He ducked from one house to another through the small industrial estate and spoke to the men of 2nd and 3rd Companies.

"Over there, behind that timber-stack, are the Russian outposts," Second Lieutenant von Oppen reported. "And that red-brick building, probably a barracks, is crammed full with anti-tank guns, mortars, and snipers."

Eberbach nodded. Colonel Hoernlein, the commander of the "Grossdeutschland" Regiment, also arrived on the scene. He glanced at his wrist-watch. "0530," was all he said. Bombast and formalities were unnecessary; indeed, they would have been ridiculous among the men who were now flattening themselves against walls and door-posts—with several days growth of beard, their uniforms and boots caked with dirt, their pockets bulging with hand-grenades, their steel helmets pushed right back, a cigarette shielded in the hollow of the hand, so the Russians should not spot the glowing point.

The second lieutenant stubbed out his cigarette, pulled his trusted 8-mm. pistol from its holster, and cocked it. "We're off!" Words of command issued in a low voice. Somebody clearing his throat. Then the clank of a gas-mask tin. They were moving. In line abreast the 2nd Company made its way through the gardens of the housing estate. A platoon of the 4th (Machine-gun) Company linked up with them on the right.

Von Oppen glanced across to them. It seemed as though he was looking for his friend, First Lieutenant Hànert. But he was not—for, after all, he had been present when they buried him. That was on 17th October, by a little forest stream near Karachev.