Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (29 page)

That was how Stalin made his troops fight. He employed everything he had for the defence of his capital. Whatever human or material reserves were left in his empire he mobilized for the defence of Moscow. Stalin knew what Moscow stood for and what its loss would mean. He confessed as much to Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's representative, when he said to him, "If Moscow falls the Red Army will have to give up the whole of Russia west of the Volga." Nothing can illustrate his desperate mood more clearly than his request to Roosevelt, reported by Hopkins: "He, Stalin,

would welcome it if American troops appeared on some sector of the Russian front, and, what is more, under the unrestricted command of the US Army."

Isaac Deutscher, Stalin's biographer, very rightly points out: "This is one of the most revealing remarks of Stalin that have been recorded by the chroniclers of the Second World War." Indeed, it shows as nothing else how desperately Stalin saw his own position.

Roosevelt did not send any troops to the Soviet front, and Stalin had to make do with what he could scrape together within his empire. Not all the units were willing to go into action. Many of the regiments had passed through the searing fire of the summer battles. Entire divisions could only be made to fight by the threat that, in the event of their withdrawal, they would be mown down by reliable security formations.

The Mongolian and Siberian divisions, on the other hand, switched by Stalin to the west from the Far East of his country, were vigorous and full of fighting spirit. It was largely due to them that Moscow in the end was saved. And, of course, also to the fact that Stalin could calmly denude his 5600-mile sea frontier from the Bering Straits to Vladivostok and his 1900-mile land frontier from Vladivostok to Outer Mongolia, without having to fear that Japan's Kwantung Army would cross the USSR's eastern frontier and help its German allies by stabbing the Russians in the back. He was able to do that because he knew from his master spy Dr Sorge that the Japanese, the allies of Germany, were preparing instead to attack the Americans in Pearl Harbor in order to capture for themselves the islands of the Pacific. It was this decision that saved the Soviet Union. Japan was to reap a poor reward from Stalin for this service.

The appearance of Siberian crack divisions before Moscow was of decisive importance, even though Marshal Zhukov disputes this fact in order not to have to share his glory with the Siberian tactical reserves. According to Kyrill Kalinov, Zhukov declared: "Reinforcement by Siberian troops was exceedingly useful to us. But the Siberians did not amount to more than 5 per cent, of the troops engaged in the battle. It would be ludicrous to describe their part as decisive."

Soviet military history refutes the Marshal. In Samsonov's book
The Great Battle of Moscow
we read: "During the muddy period the High Command concentrated strong strategic reserves in the Moscow area; they had been brought up from the deep hinterland, from Siberia and Central Asia. New operational units were formed."

These reserves were so considerable that, according to Sam-sonov, the Russian defending forces at Moscow, at the resumption of the offensive on the Central Front in November, were for the first time numerically superior to the Germans. Sam-sonov gives the proportion of infantry divisions as 1 to 1.2 in favour of the Soviets. If one remembers that the German infantry divisions had lost 30 to 50 per cent, of their combat strength after their ceaseless marching and heavy fighting, and that the armoured divisions were mere shadows of their former selves, operating with barely one-third of their normal strength, one begins to understand what happened at Moscow between 18th November and 5th December, and what it was that the Russian war historians call "the miracle of Moscow."

The cavalry charge at Musino was the bloody overture to the thrust to be made by V Corps on the left wing of 4th Panzer Group against Moscow's vital artery in the north-west —the Kalinin-Klin-Moscow road. General of Infantry Ruoff was to open the way to the capital between that road and the Moskva-Volga Canal.

In the mild winter weather of the first few days of the offensive Lieutenant-Général Veiel's 2nd Panzer Division struck swiftly and confidently across the Lama river. Russian resistance was broken. The division bypassed Klin in the south, while LVI Panzer Corps of the Third Panzer Army was moving against that town from the north-west. The first meagre consignments of winter clothing arrived at the front —one greatcoat to each gun crew. One greatcoat! That was on 19th November. On that day the weather broke. The thermometer dropped to more than 20 degrees below zero Centigrade. Snow fell. Freezing fog formed even in daytime. The severe Russian winter had arrived, earlier than in many previous years, but by no means as exceptionally early as is often claimed.

On 23rd November Lieutenant-Colonel Decker's combat group, moving ahead of the spearheads of V Corps with parts of the reinforced 3rd Panzer Regiment, penetrated into Sol-nechnogorsk from the west. The 2nd Rifle Brigade under Colonel Rodt attacked the town from the north-west with 304th Rifle Regiment. The strong Russian defences were overcome and more than two dozen enemy tanks destroyed. The bridges over the canal were secured intact. Things

were moving again. As a result, General Veiel's Viennese 2nd Panzer Division stood 37 miles from Moscow on an excellent road.

On 25th November Colonel Rodt took Peshki, south-east of Solnechnogorsk, another six miles nearer Moscow. Standing on a hill, the colonel saw through his binoculars three tanks approaching. "What type of tank are those?" he asked his orderly officer. "No idea, Herr Oberst," was the reply.

The first shots were fired. The spearhead of 1st Battalion, 3rd Panzer Regiment, appeared from behind undulating ground and opened up at the surprised enemy tanks with its 7-5-cm. guns. Two of the tanks were hit; the third withdrew. When Colonel Rodt inspected the wrecks he was much surprised—British Mark III tanks, which could be effectively opposed even with the German 3-7-cm. anti-tank gun. Russian translations of the original English lettering and instructions were chalked up on the sides of the tank. They were the first items of British aid for Stalin to appear in the fighting line.

The infantry divisions of V Corps were likewise driving along both sides of the great road, southward towards Moscow and south-eastward towards the Moskva-Volga Canal. They were the 106th, 35th, and 23rd Infantry Divisions. The canal was the last natural obstacle to Moscow's being outflanked in the north. If it was overcome the northern attacking force—Fourth Panzer Group and Third Panzer Army —would have the worst behind them. The Potsdam 23rd Infantry Division headed for the canal via Iksha with 9th Infantry Regiment. The division's other infantry regiment, 67th Infantry Regiment, and the Reconnaissance Battalion 23 were likewise fighting their way to the canal north-east of Krasnaya Polyana. Farther south the reinforced 2nd Rifle Brigade, moving past Krasnaya Polyana, gained Katyushki on 1st December. This village changed hands several times. Patrols of 2nd Company, Panzer Engineers Battalion 38, were advancing in the direction of the railway station of Lobnya. It looked as though the Blitzkrieg was in full swing again.

At first the Russians were confused. And, as always in such a situation, a great many opportunities presented themselves. One of these is illustrated by the following episode. Motorcycle patrols of Panzer Engineers Battalion 62— originally operating under 2nd Panzer Division, but moved forward by Hoepner himself on 30th November beyond the most forward units of 2nd Panzer Division, to strike at the railway station of Lobnya and the area south of it—roared forward on their machines and, without encountering any opposition, got as far as Khimki, the small river port of Moscow, five miles from the outskirts of the city. They spread alarm and panic among the population and raced back again. It was these motorcyclists and Corps sappers who got closest to Stalin's lair. But units of 106th Infantry Division, attacking on the right of 2nd Panzer Division, got almost as close to the Kremlin when a combat group of 240th Infantry Regiment, reinforced by a combat detachment of 52nd Anti-aircraft Regiment, reached Lunevo. Russian sources relate these events with an air of horror to this day—the same horror that swept the Kremlin more than twenty years ago when the news came: "The Germane are at Khimki!"

In the General Staff citadel inside the Kremlin there had in fact been grave dismay ever since 27th November. Stalin was pacing up and down along the great map table, scowling. There was disastrous news from the front: "Enemy forces of the German Third Panzer Army have crossed the Moskva-Volga Canal at Yakhroma, 43 miles north of Moscow, and have established a bridgehead on its eastern bank. There is the danger of a break-through to Moscow from the north." Since there were no further defences beyond the canal, the words "danger of a break-through from the north" were tantamount to an admission that, unless major enemy forces were prevented from crossing over to the eastern bank, Moscow would be lost.

What had happened?

The battle-hardened LVI Panzer Corps under General Schaal—at the beginning of the campaign Manstein's striking force—had been operating to the left of V Corps with 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions as well as 14th Motorized Infantry Division. On 24th November it had taken Klin, and shortly afterwards Rogachevo; it had pressed forward through the burst seam between the Thirtieth and Sixteenth Soviet Armies as far as the Moskva-Volga Canal, and had immediately established a bridgehead on the far bank. In a bold stroke Colonel Hasso von Manteuffel seized the canal bridge at Yakhroma with the reinforced 6th Rifle Regiment and units of 25th Panzer Regiment, stormed across the waterway, and dug in for all-round defence of the bridgehead. A Soviet armoured train which appeared on the scene was

immediately attacked by a tank company of 25th Panzer Regiment under Lieutenant Ohrloff, an officer decorated with the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross, and quickly destroyed. The Russians, in utter confusion, were taken prisoners, and Moscow's big electric power station was occupied undamaged. Manteuffel had thus gained possession of the most easterly point of the Moscow front, and, in addition to setting up a bridgehead for Third Panzer Army on the eastern bank of the canal, also seized the Kremlin's light-switch.

From his fortified room in the Kremlin Stalin continually telephoned to Zhukov, Voroshilov, and Lieutenant-Général Kuznetsov, the C-in-C of the First Striking Army.

These telephone calls were Stalin's way of influencing the strategic and even the tactical decision of his military leaders —a practice which has been much criticized by Khrushchev and his friends as the reason for many of the Soviet defeats during the first year of the war. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Stalin's authority secured many a decision which would probably otherwise not have been taken.

This was certainly true of 27th November. Stalin ordered that two brigades should at once be employed against Man- teuffel's bridgehead, regardless of all other considerations. That bridgehead was to be liquidated at all costs.

Hans Leibel well remembers that day over twenty years ago, near Yakhroma. The weather favoured the Russians. On that afternoon of 27th November, within the short span of two hours, the thermometer dropped to 40 degrees below zero Centigrade. Against this Arctic cold the men of Manteuf-fel's combat group had only their simple balaclava helmets, their short cloth coats, and their much too tight jackboots. In this kind of outfit it was impossible to fight at 40 degrees of frost—even against a weak enemy.

Their unpreparedness for the Russian winter had to be paid for dearly. Not only were there no fur jackets and no felt boots—what was even worse, the German High Command did not know, or failed to apply, certain perfectly simple and easily practicable rules of winter warfare. If any proof were needed that this war against Russia had not been carefully prepared over a long period—at least not by the German General Staff—then it is provided by the evidence of total ignorance of the simplest facts of winter warfare. Thus when, after the first snowfalls, the Finns saw that the German troops were still wearing their jackboots with steel nails, they shook their heads in amazement: "Your nailed boots are ideal conductors of the cold—you might just as well walk about in your stockinged feet!"

In a lecture to the Moscow Officers' Club towards the end of the war, Marshal Zhukov stated that his respect for the German General Staff had first been shaken when he saw the German prisoners taken during the winter battle. "Officers and men all had closely fitting footwear. And, of course, they had frost-bitten feet. The Germans had overlooked the fact that ever since the eighteenth century the soldiers of the Russian Army had been issued with boots one size too large, so that they could pack them with straw in the winter, or more recently with newspapers, and thus avoid frostbite."

The Russians certainly avoided frostbite. Among the German front-line troops, on the other hand, the incidence of frost-bitten feet was as much as 40 per cent, in many divisions during the winter of 1941-42.

But the frost struck not only at the troops' feet. The oil froze in the machines. Carbines, machine pistols, and machine- guns packed up. Tank engines would not start. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that Manteuffel's combat group was unable to hold the Yakhroma bridgehead, in spite of the defenders' stubborn resistance, when two Soviet brigades, the 28th and 50th Brigades of the Soviet First Striking Army, wearing winter greatcoats and felt boots, attacked them. The Russians' sub-machine-guns peeped out of fur cases, and the locks of their machine-guns were lubricated with winter oil. There were no stoppages or jammed bolts on the Russian side. The Russians were able to Ije in the snow, if necessary for hours, to creep up to the German outposts at a suitable moment and silence them. Their infantry was supported by T-34s, whereas all that the 25th Panzer Regiment, 7th Panzer Division, had left were some 48-ton Skoda Mark III tanks with 3-7-cm. cannons and a few Mark IVs with 7-5-cm. cannons.