Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (40 page)

The increasing enemy opposition around the bridgehead perimeters was reflected also in the air. There were no

German bomber or fighter formations to oppose the Soviet air attacks; the German machines were in the Lake Ilman area, in accordance with the "main weight on the right" directive. Only the Trautloft fighter group occasionally intervened in the fighting on the Luga, with one or two flights of ME-109s, from their forward airstrip west of Plyusa.

This Russian superiority in the air gave rise to a bitter humour among Reinhardt's formations, which found expression in little messages in verse sent to division HQ and thence to Corps, asking for air support. But all the higher commands could do was radio back more rhymed couplets.

There was no doubt that the Soviets had gained time to reinforce what used to be the weakest points in the Leningrad defences. The chance of capturing the city in one fell swoop from the north-west had been lost. Colonel-General Reinhardt later remarked, "That the offensive could not be continued immediately was obvious. The road system would first have had to be improved to ensure supplies and the movement of reinforcements. That would have taken several days." Several days, certainly, but not three weeks. Bitterly Reinhardt continued: "Time and again our Corps urged a speedy resumption of the attack and asked that some units at least of Manstein's Corps should be switched over to us, especially as they were bogged down where they stood. But all was in vain."

General Reinhardt's diary shows the following entry under 30th July, when he had been waiting for the resumption of the attack for a whole fortnight: "More delays. It's terrible. The chance that we opened up has been missed for good, and things are getting more difficult all the time."

Events were to prove Reinhardt right. While XLI Corps, favoured by good fortune, had crossed the lower Luga, but was pinned down by orders from above, a crisis was brewing up in the eastern sector of the Panzer Group, at Manstein's LVI Corps. Manstein's orders were to capture Novgorod and then to tackle the important traffic junction of Chudovo in order to cut the road and railway from Leningrad to Moscow.

The 8th Panzer Division had pushed forward beyond Soltsy to form a bridgehead over the Mshaga. The 3rd Motorized Infantry Division had moved up on its left, covering the flank of 8th Panzer Division and fighting its way forward to the north-east and north. Enemy opposition, however, was getting stronger and stronger, and the marshy ground here too was getting less and less negotiable. Moreover, the shunting away of XLI Corps from Luga had released Soviet forces in that area, with the result that Manstein's Corps, which had run well ahead of the general une, although consisting only of 8th Panzer Division and 3rd Motorized Infantry Division, without any reserves and without flank cover, suddenly found itself under attack by numerous divisions of the Soviet Eleventh Army. Voroshilov hurled himself with all available forces against the dangerous German armoured spearhead which was aimed at Novgorod, his command post, and at Chudovo, a vital traffic junction. The Soviet 146th Rifle Division succeeded in making a penetration between the two German divisions and in cutting off their supply route. Man-stein instantly made the correct counter-move: he withdrew 8th Panzer Division and prepared for all-round defence.

Three critical days followed. Voroshilov needed a success and tried at all costs to annihilate the surrounded German divisions. He employed half a dozen rifle divisions, two armoured divisions, and strong artillery and air force units. But the steadfastness of the German formations and Manstein's superior generalship prevented a catastrophe. The fierceness of the fighting is attested by the operations report of 3rd Motorized Infantry Division, which had to repel seventeen enemy attacks in a single day. Even the artillery was fighting in the foremost line.

The 1st Battery, 3rd Artillery Regiment, under First Lieutenant von Tippelskirch was able to survive a massed enemy attack. In a forest clearing, two miles behind the foremost infantry line near Gorodishche, the battery was in position. Impassable swamp lay to the right and left of the road. Was it impassable also for the Soviets?

To protect themselves against surprise attack from the swamp the artillerymen had put out sentries and pickets on rapidly made wooden paths, and that was what saved them. For Voroshilov got some locals to guide a newly equipped battalion of his 3rd Armoured Division through the swamp with a view to cutting off the spearheads of the German division. On 15th July the battalion encountered the German pickets. The pickets raised the alarm. The Russians evidently thought they were dealing with an infantry unit and attacked overhastily, without identifying the position of the heavy battery. With shouts of "Urra" the Soviets charged. Machine-guns out in the swamp gave them covering fire. The artillerymen leapt to their guns. The crew of No. 2 gun was mown down by machine-gun fire as they sprang from

their dug-outs. The battery officer, Second Lieutenant Hederich, worked his way over to the gun with his troop leaders and manned it hmself. The Russians had got within 300 yards. "Fire!"

At point-blank range the 10-cm. shells slammed into the charging ranks. The battery machine-gun raked the attackers.

The first wave collapsed on the edge of the clearing. But now the Russians got heavy machine-guns into position. The gun shields were riddled. Mortar shells put the German battery's machine-gun out of action. A dozen Soviet troops got within ten yards of Hederich's gun, leapt to their feet, and charged. Hederich and his men resisted with spades, pistols, and bayonets. Four Russians were killed. Three or four disappeared into the scrub. Lieutenant Hederich and the entire gun crew were wounded. The fighting continued for two hours. Nearly all the ammunition was spent. Most of the officers and NCOs had been killed or wounded, and tractor-drivers and other general service personnel were roped in for combat duty. A mere 120 men were fighting against an entire battalion. At the last minute the battery commander arrived on the scene with a motor-cycle platoon of 8th Infantry Regiment and launched an outflanking attack from the right. This confused the Russians. They withdrew, taking with them some of their wounded, but leaving behind then: heavy equipment and fifty dead.

After 4th Panzer Group command had again placed the "Death's Head" SS Division at General von Manstein's disposal the LVI Panzer Corps succeeded in overcoming its critical situation by 18th July and in clearing the Corps' supply route.

The danger had passed by 18th July, but Manstein took the opportunity to urge Army Group, and through General Paulus the High Command, to bring the two Corps of the Panzer Group together again at long last and use them jointly as the strong-point of the coming offensive. It was not a question of Manstein pleading his own case, but of recommending that the bridgeheads established by Reinhardt's Panzer Corps should be made the starting-point for the assault on Leningrad.

But Manstein did not succeed either. Army Group and the High Command insisted on having the main weight of the attack on the right. All they were prepared to do was to detach Manstein's Corps from the Mshaga front and to employ it instead on the middle Luga opposite the important town of Luga. In the impending general offensive it would be Manstein's task to gain the main road at Luga, to destroy the enemy and then drive towards Leningrad.

It was an incomprehensible plan. For weeks the strength of the enemy's fortifications in the Luga area had been well known. And although the ground had proved to be almost entirely unsuitable for armour, it nevertheless remained a mystery why the LVI Panzer Corps employed as the southern striking force was assigned merely the 3rd Motorized Infantry Division, the 269th Infantry Division, and the newly brought up SS Police Division, while the "Death's Head" SS Division was kept back at Lake Urnen and the 8th Panzer Division was sent to hunt partisans in the rearward areas.

The attack began on 8th August. At 0900 hours, jn pouring rain, Reinhardt's divisions moved off from the Luga bridgeheads, but because of the bad weather they had no air support. The two Panzer divisions and the 36th Motorized Infantry Division were to occupy the open ground south of the Leningrad-Kingisepp-Narva railway-line by a swift thrust. The 8th Panzer Division and the bulk of 36th Motorized Infantry Division were then to be brought forward, and the entire force was to wheel eastward beyond the railway-line and strike towards Leningrad. It was a good plan.

But where three weeks earlier there had been only weak Soviet field pickets, there were now the reinforced 125th and lllth Soviet Rifle Divisions in solidly built field fortifications constructed by tens of thousands of civilians—women, children, and members of the Party's youth organizations—in ceaseless round-the-clock work.

Facing the Porechye bridgehead was a Soviet combat unit with extremely strong artillery; according to interrogated prisoners this force had likewise planned to attack the bridgehead on 8th August. However, 6th Panzer Division got their blow in first. In this way they prevented what might have been a disastrous setback to the German offensive. Things were bad enough as they were. After the first day of fighting Corps seriously considered whether, in view of the casualties suffered, the offensive could be maintained. It was maintained only because of the optimistic appraisal of the situation by 1st Panzer Division. Lieutenant-Colonel Went von Wietersheim, commanding a combat unit, in particular was most reluctant to give up his hard-won ground. The optimism of Lieutenant-Colonel von Wietersheim and Lieutenant-Colonel Wenck, the Chief of Operations of 1st Panzer Division, proved justified. On the following

morning the regiments made good progress, broke through the enemy line, brought some relief to 6th Panzer Division in its difficult attack from its bridgehead towards Opolye, and pierced the 30-mile-deep belt of forest south of the Leningrad railway, the last natural obstacle before the metropolis on the Baltic Sea.

The fighting continued. On 14th August all the divisions had gained the favourable open ground beyond the swampy forests. The enemy had been defeated. Only minor formations were now encountered. The battlefield was dotted with dozens of brand-new super-heavy Soviet tanks.

The road to Leningrad was once more clear. Only on the left flank was there still some threat from enemy forces withdrawing from Estonia in the direction of Leningrad. That was why Reinhardt did not advance right up to the edge of the city, although, as far as frontal opposition was concerned, he could have done so.

What then was needed? "We've got to have some forces to cover our flank," Hoepner requested, implored, and threatened. "Two divisions—even one division at a pinch—would be enough," he pleaded with Field-Marshal Ritter von Leeb. Hoepner was in a very similar situation to Guderian five weeks earlier, when he extorted from Kluge permission to continued his thrust from the Berezina over the Dnieper to Smolensk: "You're throwing away our victory if you don't let me go ahead," Guderian had implored Kluge. "You are throwing away our victory," was what Hoepner might have said to Field-Marshal Leeb.

On 15th August Leeb arrived in person at Hoepner's headquarters. After a heated discussion the Field-Marshal agreed to detach the experienced and combat-hardened 3rd Motorized Infantry Division from Manstein's Panzer Corps and to place it under Reinhardt's command.

This division could well be spared at Luga. Although, as planned, Manstein had also mounted his offensive on 10th August, with the object of capturing Luga, the inevitable happened: he was halted in front of the strong Russian defensive lines. The 3rd Motorized Infantry Division, scheduled to cover the Corps' flank at a later stage, had thus not gone into action at all by then. It was now decided to move Manstein's headquarters also to the north, into Reinhardt's zone of operations.

Leeb's decision triggered off a mood of victory at Hoepner's headquarters. "Leningrad can't escape us now," the officers were saying to each other. There was much relief also at Manstein's headquarters: the period of piecemeal moves seemed to be over at last, and the Panzer Group would now go into action again as a massive force.

On 15th August Manstein handed over his command at Luga to General Lindemann's L Corps. He then climbed into his command car with his officers and drove off—to Lake Samro, where Hoepner also had his headquarters. The road was frightful, full of potholes and deep sand, so that the 125-mile journey took them eight hours. Covered with dust, Manstein and his staff arrived late in the evening.

"On with your swimming-trunks, gentlemen, and into the lake!" he ordered. But at that moment a runner came racing up from the communications van. "A call from Panzer Group, Herr General!"

Manstein frowned. The runner apologized. "It's very urgent, Herr General; the Commander-in-Chief is on the line in person," Quickly Manstein strode over to the field telephone.

Critical situation at Staraya Russa-The battle of Novgorod-A Karelian supplies Russian maps-German 21st Infantry Division against Soviet 21st Armoured Division—Through the forests near Luga—On the Oredezh—The Luga pocket

—On top of the Duderhof Hills-Radio signal from Second Lieutenant Darius: I can see St Petersburg and the sea.

THE sun was setting behind Lake Samro in a blood-red western sky. General von Manstein arrived at the communications van. The radio operator held out the telephone receiver to him. "The Herr Generaloberst is on the line, sir."

"Manstein," the General said.

"Hoepner here," the voice came over the line. "I have bad news, Manstein. Our attack on Leningrad is off. A serious crisis has developed for Sixteenth Army on Lake Ilmen, in the Staraya Russa area. You'll have to act as fire brigade. You will halt your 3rd Motorized Infantry Division at once and make it turn about. Move off again to the south. The 'Death's Head' SS Division is being switched over to you additionally from XXVIII Corps from the Luga front. As for yourself, you will drive over with your headquarters to Sixteenth Army headquarters at Dno first thing to-morrow morning. Any further instructions you will get there from Colonel-General Busch."

Manstein was not too pleased. Hoepner sensed the disappointment of his Corps commander. "Field-Marshal Leeb wouldn't stop our advance on Leningrad unless the situation was pretty serious," Hoepner said. "Anyway, best of luck, Manstein—hope you'll soon get back north again!"

It was to prove a vain hope.

When Manstein informed his staff of the new order there were long faces. Was it conceivable? A moment ago they had all been talking about the inevitable fall of Leningrad. And now this! "Everything into reverse," groaned Major Kleinschmidt, the Quartermaster, and started reorganizing the Corps' transport and supplies from scratch.

On the following evening, 16th August, Manstein arrived in Dno, at Sixteenth Army headquarters. This time the 160- mile journey took him thirteen hours.

The situation he found there was, as he himself put it in blunt Army language, "shitty."

A fortnight earlier, at the beginning of August, X Corps, with its three divisions—the 126th, 30th, and 290th Infantry Divisions—had started its attack against the important transport centre of Staraya Russa, south of Lake Ilmen.

The experienced 30th Infantry Division from Holstein had broken into the strong defences nine miles outside the town, but in spite of desperate efforts the 6th and 26th Infantry Regiments were unable to pierce the deeply echeloned system of defences. The regiments of the 290th Infantry Division from Lower Saxony likewise got stuck in front of and inside the wide anti-tank ditch which formed the backbone of the Russian defences.

Young workers from Leningrad who had never seen action before, together with experienced units of the Soviet Eleventh Army, offered stubborn resistance at close quarters. Every foot of ground had to be fought for with rifle-butt, spade, pistol, and flame-thrower. Buried Soviet tanks, enfilading machine-guns, and very heavy shelling eventually brought the German attack to a halt.

A nasty surprise also was the wooden mines encountered here for the first time. Electrical mine detectors did not react to them. In some places the German sappers had to clear as many as 1500 of these dangerous contraptions.

The 126th Infantry Division from Rhineland-Westphalia, operating in the north of the attacking front, along the road from Shimsk to Staraya Russa, was luckier than the 30th and 290th Divisions. After three days of fierce fighting its regiments penetrated the Soviet defences with infantry combat groups made more mobile by the inclusion of Panzer- Jägers, artillery, sappers, and cyclists. An immediate Russian counter-attack with tanks was repulsed in the sector of 426th Infantry Regiment by Second Lieutenant Fahrenberg's 12th heavy machine-gun company, whose men tackled the enemy armour with demolition charges.

When, after the deep penetration made by 126th Infantry Division, the 30th Infantry Division mounted an attack from the flank the Russians withdrew from their last positions before the town.

At the head of 3rd Battalion, 426th Infantry Regiment, Major Bunzel charged into the western part of Staraya Russa towards noon on 6th August. The penetration was made so unexpectedly that the chief of operations of the;, Soviet Eleventh Army was wounded and captured.

Following a heavy air attack on the strongly fortified eastern part of the town, beyond the Polstiy river, where every house had been turned into a fortress, the regiment succeeded in penetrating as far as the eastern outskirts. The

Russians were still resisting, making immediate counter-attacks and engaging the Germans in savage hand-to-hand fighting in the blazing streets.

During the next four days of continuous fighting against furiously resisting Soviet forces the Lovat river was reached on a broad front. Thus the right flank of Army Group North seemed adequately covered for the attack on Leningrad.

But Marshal Voroshilov, the C-in-C of the Soviet Northwest sector, had realized the significance of the German operation. Using all available forces, including units of his newly brought up Thirty-fourth Army, he launched an attack on 12th August against the funnel between Lake Ilmen and Lake Seliger, where the town of Demyansk was situated. This funnel, which positively invited attack by the Russians, had been formed by the diverging directions of the operations of Army Group North and Army Group Centre—the one towards Leningrad-and the other towards Moscow. With numerically vastly superior forces—eight rifle divisions, one cavalry Corps, and one armoured Corps

—the Soviet Thirty-fourth Army launched an outflanking attack against the three divisions of the German X Corps and threatened to push them back into Lake Ilmen.

Voroshilov, moreover, intended, after the elimination of X Corps, to drive on to the west, block the neck of land between Lakes Ilmen and Peipus, and thus cut off the German armies operating against Leningrad from their rearward communications. It was a highly critical situation that Manstein had been sent to cope with. But cope with it he did.

While General Hansen with his X Corps was holding out in heavy defensive fighting, facing southward, with Lake

.Timen at his back, Manstein led his two fast divisions, unnoticed by the enemy, into the exposed flank and rear of the Soviet Thirty-fourth Army.

Like a thunderstorm the 3rd Motorized Infantry Division and the "Death's Head" SS Division struck at the Russians on 19th August. They rolled up the Army's flank and shattered its rearward communications. Among the most advanced units of LVI Panzer Corps the reconnaissance battalion of the "Death's Head" Division, which had raced a long way ahead of the bulk of the division, arrived in the most critical sector and with its motor-cyclists dislodged the enemy.

They pressed on at once and forced the Soviet spearheads back across the Lovat. The commander of the bold reconnaissance battalion, Sturmbannführer
[
Rank in Waffen SS equivalent to Army major.] Bestmann, who was subsequently killed in action, was the first member of the "Death's Head" SS Division to win the Knights Cross.

Map 11.
15th-23rd August 1941: Manstein saved X Corps and smashed the Soviet Thirty-fourth Army.

At that moment, just as the Soviet Command was paralysed by shock and surprise, the regiments of X Corps launched their attack. This completed the disaster to Voro-shilov's Thirty-fourth Army. It was smashed.

The vast booty of 246 guns included also the first intact multiple mortar, the dreaded "Stalin's organ-pipes," as well as a brand-new 8 • 8-cm. anti-aircraft battery of German manufacture, dated 1941. Where had it come from? Once before, in Daugavpils, a considerable amount of military equipment of German manufacture had been found in a Soviet Army depot. How these German weapons came into Soviet possession has never been established. The German troops had their own ideas.

The success of Sixteenth Army meant that the threat to the right flank of Army Group North was averted for the time being. But there could be no question of Manstein's Panzer Corps returning to Leningrad to rejoin Hoepner's offensive forces, for Voroshilov did not give up trying. He brought up three more Soviet Armies in order to reach his operational objective—blocking off the neck of land between Lakes Pei-pus and Ilmen. It was another alarming illustration of Russian resources. The bulk of one Army had just been annihilated, yet units of three new Armies, reinforced to full strength, were being employed at the focal point of the defensive fighting between Luga and Lake Ilmen.

And what had happened meanwhile outside the much contested town of Novgorod "the Golden," situated on the northern shore of Lake Ilmen, exactly opposite Staraya Russa?

There, at the original focal point of the German offensive against Leningrad, at the southern cornerstone of Leningrad's defences, the German Command had been trying for weeks to pierce the Soviet lines in order to reach Chudovo, a railway junction on the Leningrad-Moscow line. At Chudovo the Murmansk railway, coming down from the Arctic Sea, ran into the so-called October Railway. Along this lifeline came the supplies and aid shipped by the Western allies to Murmansk, the supplies of British and, even more, of American tanks, lorries, foodstuffs, ammunition, and aircraft for the entire Soviet front from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

During the night of 9th August, a clear, starry summer night, the divisions of I Corps from East Prussia silently moved into their jumping-off positions for the offensive across the wide, marshy Mshaga river. The cornerstone of Leningrad's defences was to be overturned at last.

The main weight of the attack was borne by General Spon-heimer's 21st Infantry Division, which, reinforced by 424th Infantry Regiment, 126th Infantry Division, was to advance along the strongly fortified main road towards Novgorod. The ground was tricky even for infantry. Swamps, thick undergrowth, and numerous streams and river-courses made movement difficult. The Russians, moreover, had developed the whole area into a fortress: there were pillboxes, minefields, machine-guns nests, and mortar positions blocking what few roads and paths led through the swampy ground.

In the grey light of dawn formations of VIII Air Corps had set out from their bases and had been dropping their bombs since 0400 hours on the enemy positions on the far bank of the Mshaga. Stukas made screaming low-level at-attacks, skimming across the river at barely 150 feet, dropping their bombs on dug-outs, gun positions, and machine-gun posts.

The military machine was working with great precision. No sooner had the last bomb been dropped than 200 guns of all calibres opened up. It was a classic preparation for an attack.

At 0430 hours exactly the company commanders of 2nd and 3rd Battalions, 3rd Infantry Regiment, as well as 1st Battalion, 45th Infantry Regiment, leapt out from their hideouts. The men dragged inflated dinghies to the river-bank and, under cover of the artillery umbrella, ferried themselves across. Together with the infantry the sappers also crossed the Mshaga, and on the far bank cleared lanes through the minefields for the assault detachments following hard on their heels.

To start with everything went surprisingly smoothly. The enemy seemed to have been utterly shattered by the preliminary aerial and artillery bombardment. His heavy weapons and artillery were silent.

Ducking low, the assault detachments ran along the white tapes with which the sappers had marked out the cleared lanes through the minefields. The bridgehead was secured. The first heavy weapons were ferried across the river. Then

the barges were linked to form a bridge. By twelve noon it was ready. The division moved into the bridgehead.

The 24th Infantry Regiment was now also brought forward. Slowly the enemy recovered from his shock. Resistance was getting suffer. In the late afternoon the 24th Infantry Regiment took the village of Mshaga. By nightfall the Soviet defences had been pierced to a depth of five miles. The following day Shimsk, at first to be bypassed, fell to the Germans.

On 12th August the Ushnitsa river was forced by a frontal attack. The infantrymen were weighed down by their weapons and ammunition-boxes. Everything had to be carried. The Russians were resisting stubbornly. Along the railway embankment especially they contested every inch of ground.