Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (45 page)

It was a corner of Europe rich in history. Two hundred and thirty-five years before Harry Hoppe, Peter the Great fought a battle here in order to take from the Swedes the key to the Baltic Sea. He succeeded. For the first time the Tsar of Russia gained for his country access to Europe's most important inland sea, and to protect this conquest he founded the fortress of St Petersburg, now Leningrad. It was that fortress that was being fought for now at Schlüsselburg.

Coming from Novgorod, the 424th Infantry Regiment, 126th Infantry Division, together with Major-General Zorn's 20th Motorized Division, had been set in motion at the beginning of September along the great highway to the north, via Chu-dovo in the direction of Schlüsselburg. It was a good plan. The idea was that the divisions of "Group Schmidt"—XXVIII Army Corps and XXXIX Panzer Corps—under General of Panzer Troops Rudolf Schmidt, should clear up the eastern Neva bridgeheads even before the start of the general offensive against Leningrad, since Soviet formations used these to maintain contact between the Leningrad approaches and .the Volkhov area.

Under cover of this flanking operation the combat groups of Colonels Count Schwerin and Harry Hoppe, with their reinforced 76th and 424th Infantry Regiments, were to reach the starting positions for an assault on Schlüsselburg by 8th September 1941, the day for which the large-scale attack on Leningrad had been fixed—Hoppe's combat group on the right and Count Schwenn's on the left.

They went into action on 6th September. At first everything went according to plan. Tanks of 12th Panzer Division supported the attack. Panzerjägers and AA batteries—including an 8-8—provided cover against enemy tank attacks. Motor-cyclists and sappers formed the vanguard.

The main weight of the attack was in the sector of Hoppe's group. The I and VIII Air Corps provided Stuka support. The troops charged over the famous railway embankment of Mga. They burst into the forest along both sides of the road to Kelkolovo. But there the Russians were waiting for them in well-camouflaged machine-gun and anti-tank positions. The attack got stuck. Infantry guns, anti-tank guns, and mortars were not much use in this wilderness.

Colonel Hoppe was crouching by the railway embankment. A runner from 3rd Battalion came scurrying over the line. "Heavy casualties at Battalion. Three officers killed." Calls for support also came from 2nd Battalion.

"We've got to find a gap," Hoppe was thinking aloud, bent over his maps. "The Russians can't be equally strong everywhere. It's just a matter of finding their weak spot."

Hoppe's idea was either to probe the enemy's weakness by a frontal attack or to outflank him altogether. He combined in himself the dash of a First World War assault troop commander with the sound tactical instruction received in Seeckt's Reichswehr.

The runner scuttled off again. Major-General Zorn appeared at the command post. He no longer believed in the possibility of forcing a break-through in Hoppe's sector. He therefore dispatched the tanks over to Schwerin's group. That was where the main push was now to be made.

But it proved to be a case of a general proposing and a lieutenant disposing. No sooner had the tanks been withdrawn from the line than Second Lieutenant Leliveldt, with his llth Company, discovered the looked-for gap, the weak spot in the enemy's line. He thrust into it, applied pressure to the right and left, and tore a wide breach into the front.

"Buzz over to Harry," the Second Lieutenant shouted at his runner. "We've got the gap. The front is open!"

The runner raced off. Half an hour later the entire combat group was moving. Kelkolovo fell. The notorious rail-track triangle formed by the line from Gorodok to Mga and Schlüsselburg was taken and Poselok 6 was stormed.

At 1600 hours Sinyavino with its huge stores and ammunition depots fell into the hands of 3rd Battalion. From a small hill north of the town the vast sheet of water of Lake Ladoga could be seen and a light sea-breeze felt. There was a good deal of shipping on the lake.

"Keep going,'' Hoppe commanded. His men took Poselok 5 and moved on as far as Poselok 1. From there the "Red Road" led to the "Red Bridge" over the canals and coastal railway-lines. This was the spinal cord of the Schlüsselburg nerve centre.

Night fell over the battlefield. From Sinyavino a gigantic fireworks display lit up the sky: some Russian ammunition dumps had been hit and were now going up. Unfortunately the vast explosions also wrecked the combat group's communications with Division.

On the following morning, 8th September, Schlüsselburg was to have been stormed. But at what time? Hoppe did not know, since Division was going to co-ordinate the time of attack with the Stuka formations. But now, with communications out of action, there was no contact with divisional headquarters. It was an awkward situation.

Over to the west, at Leningrad, the Corps launched its general attack at first light on 8th September. But in Schlüsselburg everything remained quiet. When the sun rose the town with its pointed spires and massive old ramparts lay in front of Hoppe's battalions. The shrub-grown ground favoured the attack. But there was still no contact with Division. The 9th Company made a reconnaissance in force as far as the eastern edge of the town.

At 0615 hours Sergeant Becker reported to 3rd Battalion: The eastern edge of the town is held by weak enemy forces only. Clearly the Russians were not expecting an attack at this point, from their rear. It seemed a unique chance.

Hoppe was in a quandary: should he attack or not? If he stormed the town and the Stukas did not come until his battalions were inside, the consequences were not to be imagined. But he could not just sit there waiting. To wait without doing anything was the worst thing of all—that was what the Service manual said. Better a wrong decision than no decision at all. Hoppe decided accordingly.

Shortly before 0700 hours he ordered: "The 424th Regiment will take Schlüsselburg and drive through to the 1000- yard-wide Neva river, at the point where it leaves Lake Ladoga, dividing Schlüsselburg from Sheremetyevka and the southern bank of Lake Ladoga from its western bank. Time of attack is 0700 hours." Harry had made his plan.

At 0730 hours the battalions were bursting through the weakly held eastern fringe of the town. The Russians were thrown into confusion by the unexpected attack.

At 0740 hours Sergeant Wendt hoisted the German flag over the tall steeple of the church.

Ever since the start of the attack Second Lieutenants Fuss and Pauli had been sitting in front of their walkie-talkie transmitter, trying to make contact with the nearest heavy battery, at Gorodok. It might be possible to re-establish contact with Division HQ through them.

Fuss had been talking into his microphone ceaselessly for three-quarters of an hour. Calling—switching over to receiving —calling again. Nothing happened. "Suppose we don't get through? Suppose the Stukas come?"

At last, at 0815 hours, the battery at Gorodok responded. They had been heard. "This is Group Harry. Urgently pass on to Division: Schlüsselburg already stormed. Stukas must be stopped. Have you got that?"

"Message understood."

The battery officer immediately passed on the signal. The Stukas had already taken off because Hoppe's attack had not been scheduled until 0900 hours. Most of the machines could be recalled. But one squadron had gone too far for the new order to reach it. Via the battery at Gorodok a signal was sent to Hoppe to warn him of his danger.

At 0845 exactly the JU-87s appeared in the sky. Hoppe's men waved aircraft signalling sheets. They fired white Very lights: We are here.

Would the pilots see them? Or would they think this was a trick? Their orders were to bomb Schlüsselburg.

The Stukas banked steeply—neatly, one after another. But suddenly the first one levelled out again, roared on, and dropped its bombs into the Neva. The others followed suit. At the last moment a signal from the squadron commander had reached them. Harry Hoppe and his men heaved a sigh of relief. At 1000 hours the battalions of combat group Schwerin also moved into the southern part of the town.

The conquest of Schlüsselburg meant that Leningrad was sealed off to the east. The city now was an island surrounded by troops and water. Only a narrow corridor was still open to the western shore of Lake Ladoga, because the Finns in the Karelian Isthmus were still standing by. They were waiting for the Germans to drive past Leningrad to Tikhvin.

Only then did Mannerheim intend to drive along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga, across the Svir, and thus form the eastern prong of the pincers closing around a huge pocket with Leningrad in it. That, unfortunately, proved too ambitious an objective.

The Soviet High Command was appalled at the defeat at Schlüsselburg. With every means in his power Marshal Voro- shilov tried to regain this important keypoint for his eastward communications. He drove entire regiments in assault boats and landing craft across the lake from the western shore against the Schlüsselburg side. Simultaneously he ordered an attack from the landward side, from Lipki.

Colonel Hoppe's regiment was cut off at times. The Russians were bringing up more and more forces. On the German sides the troops began to suspect that heavy casualties lay in store for them. And some also began to suspect that Leningrad's encirclement from the east would become illusory once Lake Ladoga froze over in winter.

The optimists laughed at such misgivings. "Winter?" they asked. "Leningrad will have fallen long before the first frost."

But Leningrad did not fall. Why not?

Because Hitler and the Wehrmacht High Command had decided not to take Leningrad before the winter, but merely to encricle it and starve it out.

Paradoxical as it sounds, this is exactly what happened. At the very moment when Leningrad's last line of defence had been broken, when the Duderhof Hills had been stormed, when Uritsk and Schlüsselburg had been taken, and the city, shaking with fright, lay right in front of the German formations, came the red light from the Fuehrer's headquarters.

General Reinhardt, commanding XLI Panzer Corps—later promoted Colonel-General—recalls the situation: "In the middle of the troops' justified victory celebrations, like a cold shower, came the news from Panzer Group on 12th September that Leningrad was not to be taken, but merely sealed off. The offensive was to be continued only as far as the Pushkin—Peterhof road. The XLI Panzer Corps was to be detached during the next few days for employment elsewhere. We just could not understand it. At the last moment the troops, who had been giving of their best, were robbed of the crown of victory."

Sergeant Fritsch merely tapped his forehead when the commander of 2nd Company Panzer Battalion 37 said to him, "We are not allowed into Leningrad. We are being pulled out of the line. I got it from a wireless operator at divisional headquarters."

"You're nuts," Fritsch said, corroborating his gesture. The rumour of the decision had leaked also to 1st Panzer Regiment, 1st Panzer Division. But the officers merely shook their heads. "It's just not possible. Surely we didn't come all the way from East Prussia to the gates of Leningrad merely to walk away now as though it had all been a mistake?" Everybody was grumbling and every conversation ended with the words: "Surely, it's not possible."

The order of Army Group was still being kept secret because Leningrad was to be surrounded as closely as possible and a number of important points on the outskirts were yet to be captured—as, for instance, Kolpino and the heights of Pulkovo. But what unit would fight with any enthusiasm if its men knew that all they were after was front-line rectifications, while the great objective was no longer to be attempted? The troops, therefore, were allowed to believe that the capture of Leningrad was the objective, and so they fought with the utmost vigour. This is shown very clearly by the following account from the diary of Second Lieutenant Stoves, commanding No. 1 Platoon, 6th Company, 1st Panzer Regiment:

On 13th September three Soviet heavy KV-1 and KV-2 tanks, fresh from the Kolpino tank factory, partly without their paintwork, came rumbling down the road from Pulkovo through the morning mist, heading for the intersection with the Pushkin-Krasnoye Selo road.

Stoves gave the action stations signal to his three tanks standing along both sides of the road to the airfield of Pushkin, ordered his own tank-driver to move behind a shed and keep his engine running, and to provide cover towards the south. He then inspected the pickets outside the village of Malaya Kabosi, together with Captain von Berckefeldt.

Thick eddies of morning mist were contending with the sun. The time was 0700 hours. Sergeant Bunzel's tank, No. 612, slowly moved on to the road.

Suddenly, as if they had sprung from the ground, two enormous KV-2s stood in front of them. Stoves and Berckefeldt flung themselves into the roadside ditch. But at that moment came a crash. Bunzel had been on the alert. Once more his 5-cm. tank cannon barked. The leading Soviet tank stopped. Smoke began to issue from it. The second moved forward past it. This one was hit by Sergeant Gulich, whose tank, No. 614, stood on the far side of the road. The very first shell scored a direct hit. The crew of the KV-2 baled out.