Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (47 page)

 

In the evening of 8th November the Pomeranians and Silesians of 12th Panzer Division and 18th Motorized Infantry
Division entered Tikhvin after stiff and costly fighting. The two divisions organized themselves for defence—General Harpe's 12th Panzer Division west of the town and General Herrlein's 18th Motorized Infantry Division east of the town. The 18th thus represented the extreme north-eastern corner of the German front in Russia.

 

The first part of the operation had gone so smoothly, thanks to the employment of experienced regiments, that the Fuehrer's headquarters quite seriously asked Corps whether a drive to Volagda—
i.e.,
another 250 miles farther east— would be possible. Two hundred and fifty miles—in winter! Major Nolle, the chief of operations of 18th Motorized Infantry Division, spoke his mind very bluntly when the question was put to him by his Corps commander.

 

How Utopian such an idea was was shown only two days later. The morning of 15th November brought the expected full-scale attack by a fresh Siberian division, supported by an armoured brigade with brand-new T-34s. The day began with a hurricane of fire from the very latest type of "Stalin's organ-pipes." It was a savage battle. The batteries of 18th Artillery Regiment under Colonel Berger destroyed fifty enemy tanks. For several days the Siberian rifle battalions charged against the German front line—until they were bled white. Tikhvin, though but a smouldering heap of ruins, remained in German hands.

 

Naturally the Soviet High Command realized that the bold German Panzer operation was aiming at a link-up with the Finns on the Svir. Stalin therefore flung further Siberian divisions into the path of the Panzer Corps. Highly critical situations arose in the area of 61st Infantry Division, which was in danger of being surrounded, and stiff fighting consumed the combat strength of the Corps. All their courage was in vain. Even the hardy Finns, familiar as they were with the climate of the North Russian tayga in winter, did not succeed in crossing the Svir. The XXXIX Panzer Corps was on its own. In desert country, in the face of unceasing attacks by Siberian operational reserves, the Corps was unable to maintain its exposed positions. General von Arnim, Schmidt's successor, therefore again withdrew his divisions to the Volkhov.

 

The feats of the rearguard battalions covering this retreat were unparalleled. Colonel Nolle—then Major Nolle and chief of operations of 18th Motorized Infantry Division— remarked: "Not many men make good vanguard commanders. But to command a vanguard is an easy matter compared with commanding a rearguard. The vanguard commander is backing success—the rearguard commander covers up for a failure. The former is swept ahead by the enthusiasm of thousands, the latter is weighed down by the misery and sufferings of the defeated."

 

In terms of military discipline and courage, the retreat from Tikhvin to the Volkhov, according to Colonel-General Halder, marked a glorious page in the history of soldierly virtue. An outstanding example was llth and 12th Companies, 51st Infantry Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Grosser, who literally sacrificed themselves—who allowed themselves to be shot, bayoneted, and battered to death in order to cover the retreat of their comrades. When the spent remnants of XXXIX Panzer Corps were brought back across the Volkhov on 22nd December 1941, in 52 degrees below zero Centigrade, they had behind them an appalling experience. The Silesian 18th Motorized Infantry Division alone had lost 9000 men. Its combat strength was down to 741. These few made their way back over Ihe Volkhov. The Tikhvin operation, the great encirclement of Leningrad, had failed.

 

The fate of 3rd Battalion, 30th Motorized Infantry Regiment, demonstrates how the fighting for Tikhvin surpassed the capabilities of the units involved. On its march from Chudovo to Tikhvin, when the temperature suddenly dropped to 40 degrees below zero, the battalion lost 250 men—half its combal slrenglh—most of them through being frozen to death. In the case of some of them the frightful discovery was made that their cerebral fluid had frozen solid because they had not worn any woollen protection under their steel helmets.

 

From then onward the front between Leningrad and Volkhov was to be a permanent source of danger and costly fighting for the German forces in the East.

 

It was the penalty for having gambled away the capture of Leningrad The penalty for trying to do too much m too many different places. As it was, Hitler had not reached his operational objectives for 1941 either in the North or on the Central Front: Leningrad and Moscow remained unsubdued.

 

PART THREE:
Rostov
  1. Through the Nogay Steppe
    New objectives for the Southern Front—The bridge of Berislav—Sappers tackle the lower Dnieper—Mulders's fighter aircraft intervene—The road to the Crimea is barred-Battle at the Tartar Ditch—Roundabout in the Nogay Steppe— Between Berdyansk and Mariupol.
    ON 12th September 1941, when 36th Motorized Infantry Division and 1st Panzer Division were rapidly advancing towards Leningrad past the Duderhof Hills under a brilliant late-summer sky, it was raining heavily on Lake Ilmen. The headquarters staff of LVI Panzer Corps had set up their command post alongside a gutted farmhouse south-west of Demyansk. General von Manstein sat in his sodden tent with his orderly officers. They were waiting for the evening report, and until then were killing time by a rubber of bridge.
    Suddenly the telephone rang. Captain Specht lifted the receiver. "The Commander-in-Chief would like to speak to the general," he said.
    Manstein grunted. Telephone calls at that hour usually meant bad news. But for once this was not so. Colonel-General Busch, the Commander-in-Chief Sixteenth Army, had rung to congratulate his friend Manstein.
    "Congratulate me? On what, Herr Generaloberst?" Manstein asked in surprise. Busch deliberately paused for a moment and then read out a signal he had just received from the Fuehrer's headquarters: "General von Manstein will assume command of Eleventh Army with immediate effect."
    The Eleventh Army! That meant the southern end of the front—the extreme right wing of Army Group South. A few hours previously the Army commander, Ritter von Schobert, had attempted a forced landing in his Fieseier Storch aircraft and had come down in the middle of a Russian minefield. Pilot and general had been blown to pieces.
    Manstein received his appointment with mixed feelings. An Army command, of course, was the crowning achievement of an officer's career—but an Army command also meant giving up the personal, active direction of troops in the field. Manstein was with all his heart a commander in the field. Yet, both as chief of staff of Rundstedt's Army Group A and later as the general commanding XXXVIII Army Corps, had he also proved himself an outstanding strategist. Indeed, the pattern of the campaign against France had been Manstein's work.
    In spite of all the regret at leaving LVI Panzer Corps—the Corps he had led right up to the gates of Leningrad, the Corps with which he had overcome dangerous crises, smashed Soviet armies, and frequently borne the brunt of the campaign of Army Group North—one consideration made his departure easier for him. Because he was a gifted strategist Manstein realized the mistakes made by the High Command in the north and at the centre, and had long been unhappy about the tug-o-war between Hitler and the Army High Command on the issue of the great strategic objectives. Only that morning, on 12th September, after recording his Corps' successes in the fighting against a vastly superior Soviet force south of Lake Ilmen, he had written in his diary: "In spite of everything I lack a sense of real satisfaction at these successes."
    Why did Manstein lack that sense of satisfaction? Because he saw that at the top there was no clear idea of the objective that ought to be pursued, or of the purpose which his costly operations were to promote. Bock, just as the Army High Command, wanted to head for Moscow. Leeb, sticking to Hitler's original idea, wanted to make for Leningrad. And Hitler himself? Hitler did not want to make for Leningrad or for Moscow. He was after economic objectives—grain, oil, and ores. He wanted the Ukraine and the Caucasus.
    It was no accident that, at the very climax of the battle of Leningrad and at a crucial phase of Sixteenth Army's successful operation against the flanking position of Moscow's defences, Hitler dispatched his best man from the north to the south.
    On the southern front, about the middle of September, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt was on the point of concluding the battle of the Kiev pocket, after an initially slow and laborious operation. Together with Guderian's Panzer Group, Rundstedt's forces destroyed the bulk of the Soviet southern armies in the Ukraine.
    The Eleventh Army, mounting its offensive from Rumania, had taken no part in the battle of Kiev. Together with two Rumanian armies it was to recapture Bessarabia, which the Soviets had forced the Rumanians to surrender to them in 1940. Its re-annexation was Hitler's reward for Rumania's participation in the Eastern campaign. Following the liberation of Bessarabia, Eleventh Army was to advance to the lower reaches of the Dnieper, a huge river which ran as a colossal obstacle through the zones of operations of both Army Groups. The forcing of the Dnieper crossings marked the beginning of a dual strategic task. In the words of the order: "Eleventh Army will capture the Crimean Peninsula with some of its forces, and with the bulk of its forces will drive towards Rostov along the northern edge of the Sea of Azov."
    Undoubtedly the Crimea and Rostov were both highly important strategic objectives. Rostov-on-Don with its four major railway-lines and countless road intersections towards east, west, north, and south was the gateway to the Caucasus. And whoever controlled the Crimea would control the Black Sea and could exert political pressure on neighbour countries— Turkey and Persia, for instance. Turkey, in particular, was very much in Hitler's mind. He was extremely anxious to have that country on his side, for that would mean the forging of a bridge to the Mediterranean and to the fabulously rich oilfields of the Arab world. Rommel's armies in Africa and the armies in the East might link up. Might!
    The plan to seize the Crimea was, moreover, motivated by considerations of economic warfare. The peninsula was a dangerous Soviet airbase for attacks on the Rumanian oilfields of Ploesti—a permanent source of anxiety to Hitler.
    By seizing the Crimea and Rostov, Eleventh Army was therefore to provide the basis for Rundstedt's conquest of the "Soviet Ruhr," the Donets basin. Stalingrad on the Volga and Astrakhan on the Caspian were the more distant objectives in Hitler's mind. In fact, they were laid down in the explanatory notes to Operation Barbarossa, and, as the A-A line, figured in the detailed schedule of war aims. The A-A line meant Astrakhan-Archangel, a gigantic line right across the Soviet Union, from the Arctic Ocean along the Northern Dvina and the Volga—a distance of roughly 1250 miles. It was Hitler's finishing-line for his operation against Stalin's empire. From this line armed patrols based on big frontier fortifications on the Volga and Northern Dvina were to contain the Soviet forces and their bases on both sides of the Urals.
    Only a map in hand can fully convey the fantastic objectives pursued by the highest leaders of Germany. Yet the objectives mapped out even for Eleventh Army involved tasks which were bound to lead to a dissipation of its forces.
    Manstein, the cool, sober strategist, realized at once that too much was being demanded of Eleventh Army. Even though he was taking over an excellent force he knew that the best and most self-sacrificing divisions could not be expected to do things which were far beyond their capacities.
    Eleventh Army had often proved its striking power. But one of its most remarkable feats was the crossing of the Dnieper at Berislav by the 22nd Infantry Division from Lower Saxony. This classical instance of a major river crossing deserves a more detailed account—if only because it represents a glorious achievement by the sappers, so often the poor relations of military history. Unlike the armoured forces and mobile divisions, the sappers never bask in the limelight of victory, but perform their indispensable duties in the shadow of battle.
    Nothing demonstrates the drama of that vital crossing of the Lower Dnieper more clearly than a factual account of the operation.
    On 24th August Lieutenant-Colonel von Boddien reached the western bank of the river with an advanced formation of 22nd Infantry Division, composed of the Motorized Reconnaissance Detachment 22, the 2nd Company Panzerjäger Detachment 22, 3rd Company Engineers Battalion 22, and an AA group. The town was held by strong Soviet forces.
    On the following morning Boddien attacked the town. The 16th Infantry Regiment, reinforced by 2nd Company, Engineers Battalion 22, and 2nd Battalion, 54th Artillery Regiment, were brought up on lorries. Straight from their vehicles the troops joined in the fierce street fighting that was already raging. By nightfall of 26th August Berislav had been taken and was firmly in German hands.
    Now came the great moment for the sappers. The Dnieper, the second biggest river of European Russia, was 750 yards wide at that point. And on the far bank were the Soviets, knowing that the Germans were planning to force the river.
    Colonel Ritter von Heigl, commanding the Engineers Regiment Headquarters 690, was in charge of the first phase of the operation, the crossing itself. Two divisional sapper battalions, Nos. 22 and 46, as well as the Motorized Army Engineers Battalion 741 and the Assault Craft Detachment 903, had the task of ferrying the first waves of assault infantry across the river under enemy fire.
    On 30th August, even before daybreak, the infantrymen of 22nd Infantry Division, men from Hanover and the towns and villages of Oldenburg, had taken up positions by the water's edge. The battalions of 16th Infantry Regiment were on an island in the river, in a spot inaccessible to anyone without local knowledge. A Ukrainian fisherman had shown them how to get there. The men of 47th Infantry Regiment were awaiting the order to attack at the foot of a vineyard, in a spot almost entirely devoid of cover, pressed flat to the ground. Soviet bombers and fighter-bombers kept coming over again and again, dropping parachute flares and looking for targets. Whenever they appeared all movement had to freeze into immobility. At dawn a milky white mist began to rise from the river, a real godsend.
    The time was 0427 hours. The motors of the assault craft came to life with a whine. Simultaneously, artillery and heavy infantry weapons put up a heavy barrage across the river. The Soviet river defences were being kept down. Behind the assault boats the various inflatable dinghies, small and large, were being got into the water.
    From the far bank white Very lights were fired: the bank had been reached. The artillery moved its barrage farther forward. Machine-guns ticked; carbines barked. Stukas and bombers of Fourth Air Fleet roared over the river and dropped their bombs on Soviet positions on the far bank. The assault boats came back for fresh infantry and then crossed over again to the far bank.
    For three hours the assault-boat men had been standing by their tillers. The river was boiling with the bursts of heavy enemy artillery. A boat was blown to bits. Others capsized through near misses. But the Russians evidently had no artillery spotter left by the river. Their fire was haphazard.
    The first wave of infantry had dislodged the Soviet riverside pickets and gained a small bridgehead. Heavy infantry weapons were now ferried across on sapper ferries. The initial crossing had been successfully accomplished. The infantry extended the bridgehead. Two days later it was two and a half miles deep. The second phase, the building of a bridge for the bulk of the division and for XXX Corps, could begin.
    Colonel Zimmer, commanding Mountain Engineers Regiment 620 and in control of all sapper units of XLIX Mountain Corps, was in charge of the complicated technical set-up needed for the building of an eight-ton bridge with 116 pontoons. The Engineers Battalions 46 and 240 and the Mountain Engineers Battalion 54 were employed in this task, together with the Rumanian 10th Bridge-building Company—a total of over 2500 men.
    The pontoons were moored some four miles upstream from the bridging-point, well camouflaged. They were first linked in twos, to make a kind of ferry, and several of these ferries were then linked to make bridge units. In accordance with a definite plan these bridge units were called downstream and steered from both banks, into the bridging-line. In this way the bridge grew out from the two banks, until its two arms met in the middle. That was always a tense moment. Only by accurate calculations on the part of the sapper officer would the last bridging units fit together exactly to make a perfect joint.
    The work began at 1800 hours on 31 st August. After midnight, by 0100 hours, the two arms of the bridge were within 25 yards of each other.
    By 0330 hours on 1st September the gap was closed. At 0400 hours the first group of vehicles of 22nd Infantry Division moved across to the far bank. Just then a high wind sprang up and waves of up to five feet smashed against the pontoons. The vehicles on the bridge were flung about, and a few of the pontoons sprang leaks.
    Right into the middle of this difficult manœuvre burst an attack by Soviet bombers. They swooped low. A direct hit. Two ferries sank, and there were 16 dead and wounded among the sappers. Repairs in the turbulent river took two and
    a half hours. Then traffic resumed.
    But presently the Soviet bombers and fighter-bombers returned—this time with fighter cover. There was no cover for whoever was on the bridge, and the river was over 50 feet deep. The columns could only move on, hoping for the best. Bombs came crashing down. Four pontoons were sunk.
    This time the repairs took seven hours. The sappers were soaked to the skin; their hands were covered in blood and their bones were aching. The bridge built over this wind-lashed, stubbornly defended river, 750 yards wide, would make military history.
    Colonel Mölders with his 51st Fighter Squadron took over the protection of the bridge which the Russians were trying at all costs to destroy. In two days Mölders and his fighters shot down seventy-seven Soviet bombers. Two Luftwaffe AA units, the 1st Battalion, 14th AA Regiment, and the 1st Battalion, 64th AA Regiment, brought down a further thirteen Russian bombers.

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