Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (27 page)

"Hold on until the frost comes!" They held on. The military cemetery behind the church by the southern ramp of the road bridge over the Volga was becoming increasingly full of wooden crosses. There, on 20th October, the first man in 1st Panzer Division to be awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross, Major Dr Joseph Eckinger, was laid to his last rest. A native of Styria, he had commanded a battalion of 113th Rifle Regiment in the bold action on 14th October which resulted in the capture of both Volga bridges intact.

That then was the picture at Tula and Kalinin at the beginning of November 1941. It was the same along the entire 600-rnile front of Army Group Centre.

Things were no better with the Armies engaged in the frontal advance towards Moscow—Fourth Panzer Group and Fourth Army. A typical description of the actions in that area during the last ten days of October is provided by the diary of an infantry division operating there.

On 25th October 195th Infantry Regiment, 78th Infantry Division, at Ruza was ordered to prepare for the capture of Zvenigorod, a strongpoint in Moscow's second line of defence. As the 2nd Battalion emerged from the woods around Voront-sovo it came under heavy fire from the high ground on both sides of Panovo. After quick redisposition the battalion attacked, over-ran three guns, captured a quadruple machine-gun and three multiple mortars, and took Panovo at nightfall. During the night the battalion pushed through the deep forest towards Krivosheino. On 27th October the entire regiment moved off from Krivosheino via Apalchino towards Lokotnya. Presently it came up against a strongly fortified line of enemy pillboxes, no doubt intended to cover the Ruza-Zvenigorod-Moscow road. The Russians resisted stubbornly. Fierce fighting ensued. Tanks appeared on the scene. Nevertheless the German troops succeeded in taking Apalchino and Kolyuba-kino in the evening.

During the night of 27th/28th October fierce fighting took place for the two villages after the enemy had mounted a counter-attack from the south, with tanks and infantry. All the battalions of the regiment, as well as the assault guns assigned to it, were obliged to join in. In view of the situation on the southern flank—especially at VII Corps immediately on the right—any further advance had to be called off. Since, however, possession of Lokotnya with its

dominating high ground was essential as a jumping-off point for the resumed attack, the troops were ordered to take the village. This attempt led to bitter fighting for enemy positions in the woods west of Lokotnya on 29th October. It was not possible to take the village. All further attacks were therefore called off. The division reorganized itself for defence along a line from Osakovo via Kolyubakino to Apalchino. The enemy had proved too strong in the area of IX Corps too. As elsewhere, the end of the muddy season had to be awaited.

The divisions were thus bogged down in the mud and slush on and along the roads. Their lines of supply were not only tremendously long, but they were also barely negotiable. The fast-moving German divisions, accustomed to Blitzkrieg operations, had become clumsy and slow, almost as clumsy as the Napoleonic armies in 1812. The first thing they did was try to solve their problems by switching supplies to local types of vehicles. Next they reorganized their debilitated units into smaller but more vigorous formations. Thus the tanks of XLI Panzer Corps were regrouped into 'action units,' instead of the former two or three battalions with eight to twelve companies to each regiment, and the remnants of eight companies of infantry were reorganized into the three companies of a divisional carrier-borne rifle battalion.

Reconnaissance battalions and motor-cycle battalions were amalgamated to make new battalions, and the armoured scout car troops were united in a single company directly under Division. In this way the troops in the field attempted to overcome their difficulties by improvisation, inventiveness, and sheer guts. Everybody was hoping that the High Command would meet the changed situation at the front with new measures. But the Fuehrer's headquarters were far, far away—many hundred miles behind the front, at Rastenburg, in East Prussia.

The Soviet High Command, on the other hand, made full use of the fact that it was waging its war on Moscow's doorstep. It enjoyed the advantage of what are called interior lines. From his seat of government Stalin was able, by suburban trains or even on foot, to dispatch new formations from the eastern part of his empire and tanks straight off the assembly-line to wherever he wished, to switch them rapidly from one point of the front to another, and thus to concentrate them, time and again, at the keypoints or on critical sectors of the battle. As a result, no sooner had a German combat group anywhere broken through the Soviet lines than it found itself faced by numerically superior Soviet formations and strong armoured tactical reserves. Yet the fighting morale of most of the Soviet formations was by no means good. With the exception of Far Eastern and Siberian Guards Divisions, and a few cavalry divisions, the Russian troops in the fighting line before Moscow were nothing like the unflinching heroes portrayed by Soviet military historians.

The following passage is from the diary of a Soviet second lieutenant whose name shall remain unpublished for the sake of his parents or children. He was killed in the Tula area on 12th November. On 31st October he made the following entry:

During the night of 30th/31st we crossed the Orel-Tula highway in the area of Gorbachevo-Plavsk and reached the village of Fedorovka. Cases of desertion assumed unbelievable proportions before we crossed that road. The deputy commander, Lieutenant Alaportsev, and others grabbed some officers' horses, including my own, and rode back to the spirit factory. A fine lot of officers! I am sick with influenza, terribly weak, with fits of giddiness and aching temples. In our battalion 80 per cent, have deserted, including some seemingly reliable people in No. 3 platoon. They go into the villages, throw away their weapons, their equipment, and their uniforms, and put on rags. In the villages the collective farms are forcibly liquidated, and horses, harness, and carts are shared out. Grain is driven away from the stores and seed stock divided among the people. There is much talk that the war is lost anyway and that very soon there will be no collective farming.

That then was the picture. But it was like a boxing match when both opponents have no strength left in their fists. The exhausted and poorly supplied German units in the front line no longer had the strength to deal a knock-out blow to the reeling Soviet colossus. "If only the frost would come!" they moaned. "If only the roads were usable again!" If only . . .

The frost came during the night of 6th/7th November. All along the front of Army Group Centre winter suddenly set in. It was a gentle, welcome frost which made the ground hard again and usable by vehicles. The troops along the roads heaved a sigh of relief. True, they had no winter clothes, and many of them were still wearing their summer uniforms. But at least it was the end of that dreadful mud.

They dragged their guns free from the frozen ground. Here and there the result was broken wheels and axles. But what did it matter? Supplies were getting through again—troops' comforts, cigarettes, mail, spirits, and spares. Tanks were rolled out of mobile repair shops. Ammunition was delivered again in the line. Slowly the war machine began turning again. And with it the hope was revived that Moscow might yet be taken.

Needless to say, if that was to be done, the final push had to be started at once. The Army High Command called for urgent action. The Commander-in-Chief Army Group Centre, Field-Marshal von Bock, was equally anxious to get a decision on the resumption of operations. But the armies were so burnt up that they needed time for recovery. The first few days therefore were busy times for the supply troops. On lorries, on sledges, and on farm carts they ferried to the fighting line the
matériel
needed for the resumption of operations. In that first fine flush of doing everything possible for the fighting front a few strange things happened as well—things which caused a great deal of anger among the fighting forces. Some supply authority in France, for instance, had conceived the no doubt praiseworthy idea of giving the Eastern Front a special treat and at the same time boosting the French wine business. As a result, two goods trains full of French red wine in bottles were dispatched from Paris. Wine trains instead of the desperately needed ammunition trains! Heaven knows who authorized these deliveries. Anyway, when they arrived in Yukhnov in the area of Fourth Army, the temperature was 25 degrees Centigrade below freezing. All that the unloading squads found in the wagons was large chunks of red ice intermingled with glass splinters. "Frozen Glühwein instead of winter clothing," the men cursed. General Blumentritt, then Chief of Fourth Army General Staff, has stated that he had never seen the troops so angry as in the face of this truly deplorable faux pas.

On 12th November the thermometer stood at 15 degrees below zero Centigrade. On 13th November it dropped to 20 degrees. It was a lively day for the airfield of Orsha. Halder's machine from Rastenburg and the planes of the Army Group staffs and Army C-in-Cs arrived one after another: Colonel-General Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff, had summoned the Chiefs of Staff of the three Army Groups and of all Armies on the Eastern Front to a secret conference.

The subject of the conference was: What was to be done? Should the divisions dig in, take up winter quarters, and wait for the spring? Or should the offensive—mainly against Moscow—be continued in spite of the winter?

The conference of Orsha is of particular significance in the history of war. It probably provides the answer to a question argued with much passion to this day: Who was ultimately responsible for the resumption of the ill-fated winter offensive?

Was it Hitler? Was it the General Staff? Or—and this is the most recent and most sensational theory—was it all a trick of Stalin, who, by means of false reports planted on the German secret service, lured Hitler into resuming his offensive and thus into a trap? It is an interesting theory, and its source cannot lightly be dismissed.

In his book
Soviet Marshals Explain
Kyrill Kalinov, a Soviet General Staff officer who emigrated to the West from Berlin in 1949 and who worked in the Soviet High Command during the war, quotes an interesting statement by Zhukov— admittedly without a precise source reference. According to Kalinov, Marshal Zhukov made the following claim in 1949, apparently in a lecture:

"The Germans estimated the total of Soviet forces annihilated by them at the fantastic figure of 330 divisions. They did not therefore believe that we had any fresh reserves at our disposal, and consequently expected that all they would encounter was contingents of workers' militia hurriedly raised in Moscow. That was the decisive reason why Hitler took the gamble of mounting his final offensive against our capital.

"In this connexion I can now disclose an important detail which has hitherto been kept secret. The report about the allegedly destroyed 330 divisions was launched by us deliberately to find its way to Germany through the Military Attaché of a neutral country whom we knew to be in touch with Germany's military intelligence service. Our aim was to support Hitler against his General Staff. The generals, as we know, recommended that the German troops, as in 1914, should dig in wherever they stood and set up winter quarters.

"It was, however, to our advantage that the Germans should not give up their intentions with regard to Moscow, but should press forward into the flat wooded country where we should be able to inflict on them a final defeat.

"I was emphatically supported by Comrade Stalin, who was even prepared to risk the surrender of our capital. For four days, therefore, we only employed divisions of the militia in the fighting line immediately outside the capital. The Germans were to gain the impression that these formations were all we had left to put up against their experienced and usually victorious divisions."

In view of the position of the author, this theory cannot be dismissed out of hand. The possibility is too disturbing and too important. It deserves careful examination. The decision to resume the offensive against Moscow was made in Orsha on 13th November. About the proceedings of the Orsha conference a number of reliable reports exist, including one by Major-General Blumentritt, then Chief of Staff of Kluge's Fourth Army, himself a participant in the conversations.

According to him, Halder reviewed the general situation on the 1250-mile-front from Lake Ladoga to the Sea of Azov. His report culminated in the question: Should the offensive be maintained or should defensive positions be taken up? General of Infantry von Sodenstern, Field-Marshal von Rund-stedt's representative, speaking on behalf of Army Group South, demanded the cessation of the offensive and going over to the defensive. Rundstedt, after all, was on the Don, outside Rostov, some 220 miles farther east than the front line of Army Group Centre before Moscow.

Lieutenant-Général Brennecke, Chief of Staff of Field-Marshal Ritter von Leeb, had no difficulty in arguing that Army Group North had been so weakened by having its entire armoured forces detached from it that all offensive operations were out of the question. In fact, it had long gone over to the defensive.

Army Group Centre did not share this view. It pleaded for the continuation of the offensive against Moscow. Major- General von Greiffenberg supported his Field-Marshal's view that the capture of Moscow was necessary both militarily and psychologically. There was, of course, the danger that they might not pull it off, but this would be no worse than lying on open ground in the snow and cold only 30 miles from the tempting objective.