Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (48 page)

Nevertheless a great many sappers of 1st and 4th Mountain Divisions were killed during the next few days during their arduous work on the bridge. The bridge of Berislav exacted a heavy toll. It was probably the most fiercely contested pontoon bridge of the last war. It was the bridge across which Eleventh Army mounted its decisive attack against the Crimea and the Caucasus.

The Crimean Peninsula is separated from the mainland by the Sivash, also known as the Putrid Sea, a saline marsh impassable by infantry. The expanse was neither solid ground nor sea, and was not negotiable by water craft—not even assault boats or rubber dinghies.

There were three routes across the marsh. In the west was the Perekop Isthmus, a little over four miles wide. In the centre the railway-line crossed at Salkovo. And in the east was the corridor of Genichesk, only a few hundred yards wide. On 12th September 1941, the day that Colonel-General Ritter von Schobert was killed, XXX Army Corps and XLIX Mountain Corps were advancing rapidly east of Berislav, bypassing Antonovka on both sides. Farther south was LIV Army Corps, its vanguard being 22nd and 73rd Infantry Divisions under Lieutenant-Colonel von Boddien and Major Stiefvater. They were racing the reinforced SS Motorized Reconnaissance Detachment "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" under Sturmbannführer [ Rank in Waffen SS corresponding to major.] Meyer, to the Perekop Isthmus. The order which had sent these units into action was the last to be issued by Schobert. An attempt was made to seize the isthmus by swift assault and thus open the western door into the Crimea.

The time was 0430 hours. Between the Dnieper and the Black Sea the Nogay Steppe was glowing bright under the rising sun. It was a fantastic display. The steppe was in flower. There was not a tree, not a hill, for the eye to rest on. The view was wide and boundless, losing itself in the misty horizon. Only the masts of the Anglo-Iranian telegraph- line, built by the German firm of Siemens about the turn of the century, stood in the silent steppe like ghostly signposts. In summer there was not a drop of water to be found. Rivulets and water-courses were dried out; deep and lifeless these 'Balkas' interesected the 12,000 square miles of desert.

The first thought to leap to a soldier's mind was: What perfect ground for armour! But the Eleventh Army had no armour, apart from the armoured scout cars of its reconnaissance detachments. Here, where they could have been put to such excellent use, there were no Panzer or armoured infantry carrier units.

The spearhead of the attack was formed by motor-cyclists and armoured scout cars of the "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler." They were followed by an advanced formation of 73rd Infantry Division. Sturmbannführer Meyer, who was driving with his leading company, searched the horizon through his binoculars. Nothing—no movement anywhere. Forward.

Von Büttner's motor-cycle platoon was moving along the coast towards Adamany, from where the ground should be visible to both sides of the Tartar Ditch. Suddenly, like ghosts, a few horsemen appeared on the horizon and instantly vanished again—Soviet scouts.

Caution was needed. "Drive in open order!" The silence was uncanny. The riflemen in the side-cars were poised to leap out. The riders were hanging over to the side so as to jump off their machines all the more quickly.

It was shortly after 0600 hours. The motor-cycle detachment under Gruppenführer [Rank in Waffen SS equivalent to lieutenant-general.] Westphal was carefully approaching the first houses of Preobrazhenka. The village lay close by the main road from Berislav to Perekop. A flock of sheep was coming out of the village. Westphal waved his arms at the shepherd. "Get your flock off the road, man— we're in a hurry!" But the Tartar did not seem to understand. Or perhaps he did not want to? Westphal opened his throttle till the engine screamed and drove straight into the flock. The sheep scattered wildly and scampered off in panic. The shepherd shouted and sent his dogs after them. It was no use. The sheep ran off the road. A moment later the air was rent with thunder and lightning. The sheep were being blown to smithereens. The flock had run into a minefield. As though this inferno of explosions and the bloodcurdling bleating of dying sheep were not enough, enemy artillery suddenly opened up. Shells were bursting outside and inside the village. The motor-cyclists dismounted and advanced towards Preobrazhenka along the Perekop road. Suddenly before them they saw a whole wall of fire. On the far side of the village, only a few hundred yards in front of the German spearheads, stood a Soviet armoured train: it pumped its shells and machine-gun bursts straight into Meyer's and Stiefvater's companies. The effect was terrible.

"Take cover!" The men lay pressed to the ground. Machine-gun fire swept over their heads. But this fire was not coming from the armoured train: it was coming from Russian riflemen concealed in well-camouflaged foxholes and trenches barely 50 yards in front of the Germans.

Sturmbannführer Meyer gave the order to withdraw from Preobrazhenka. His armoured scout cars opened fire at the armoured train with their 2-cm. guns, to enable the rest of the unit to withdraw under cover of smoke canisters.

Meanwhile a 3-7-cm. anti-tank gun of Meyer's 2nd Company was hurriedly hauled forward and started shelling the train. But no sooner had a few rounds been fired than the gun received a direct hit. Bits of steel sailed through the air, and the crash of metal drowned the screams of the men.

Meyer meanwhile dodged through the village to its far end, accompanied by his runners. From there he could see the elaborate defences of Perekop—trenches, barbed wire, concrete pillboxes. This, he realized, was not a position to be taken by a surprise coup. Any further attempt would mean the end of his formation. Gruppenführer Westphal, who had gone forward with him, suddenly shouted for a medical orderly. A shell had torn one of his arms off. Scattered right and left were the dead and wounded of his group.

"We're getting out of here," Sturmbannführer Meyer repeated. He gave the signal for retreat. His runners passed on the order. Motorcycles came roaring up from behind and about-turned. Without stopping they snatched up their wounded or killed comrades into the side-cars and raced back. The scout cars put down a smoke-screen outside Preobrazhenka, to conceal the move from the enemy. Under cover of that smoke-screen Rottenführer [Non-commissioned rank in Waffen SS.] Helmut Balke made three more trips to the front to bring back the wounded. Meyer brought the last one

back. He was Untersturmführer [ Rank in Waffen SS equivalent to lieutenant.] Rehrl. A shell-splinter had torn open his back. He died in the arms of his commander.

Eleventh Army's first attempt to burst into the Crimea by a
coup de main
with advanced units of its LIV Corps had failed. An hour later Lieutenant-General Bieler, commanding 73rd Infantry Division, read a signal from Meyer and Stiefvater: "Coup against Perekop impossible. Detailed account of engagement follows."

"Panzer Meyer" and Stiefvater were right. In front of the four-mile-wide exposed Perekop approach to the Crimea a system of defences had been established in considerable depth. Its central feature was the "Tartar Ditch," a ditch 40 to 50 feet deep built in the fifteenth century, in the Turkish era, to protect the peninsula against the mainland. Five hundred years later it was to become a gigantic obstacle and dangerous trap for armour. To bypass it was impossible. The fortifications extended from the saline swamp of the Sea of Azov on the one side to the Black Sea on the other. The door to the Crimean Peninsula was well barred.

On 17th September, when General von Manstein assumed command of Eleventh Army at Nikolayev, the great shipbuilding centre on the Black Sea, he instantly realized that with the forces at his disposal he could not simultaneously capture the Crimea and Rostov. One or the other objective had to be set aside. But which of the two? Manstein did not hesitate long.

The Crimea represented a permanent danger to the deep right flank of the entire German Eastern Front, since the Soviets were able to pump ever new forces into the peninsula from the south, across the sea. Moreover, in enemy hands the Crimea was also an airbase threatening the Rumanian oilfields. For that reason Manstein decided to give preference to the capture of the Crimea. On the Rostov front he merely wanted to maintain contact with the enemy forces dislodged at Antonovka.

Manstein's was a good plan. The LIV Corps under General Hansen was first of all to force the Perekop Isthmus by frontal attack. For this difficult task Hansen was assigned the entire artillery, sappers, and anti-aircraft units under Army control. In addition to his own two infantry divisions—the 73rd and the 46th—the 50th Infantry Division, a little farther to the rear, was likewise put under his command. It was a considerable striking force to tackle a defensive front only four miles wide.

Manstein, of course, was a sufficiently experienced commander to realize that with these forces he might be able to force the door to the Crimea, but not to conquer an area of 10,000 square miles, a territory nearly as large as Belgium, with its many powerful fortresses and strongpoints.

As a strategist with a regular General Staff background he therefore based the second phase of his operational plan on precision and luck. General Kübler's XLIX Mountain Corps and the SS Brigade "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" under Obergruppenführer [ Rank in Waffen SS equivalent to general.] Dietrich were to be detached from the mainland front in the Dnieper bend the moment the break-through was accomplished and brought down in forced marches in order to advance, fan out, and occupy the whole of the Crimea.

The "Leibstandarte," magnificently equipped as it was with heavy weapons, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, self- propelled assault guns, motor-cycles, armoured scout cars, and infantry carriers, stood a good chance of overtaking the retreating enemy and cutting him off from Sevastopol. It might then take this important coastal fortress in the south of the Crimea by a swift blow, before it was reinforced.

The Mountain Corps was to be employed in the Yayla mountains, which were up to 4800 ft. high; it was then to seize the Kerch Peninsula and from there, eventually, drive across the narrow space of water into the Kuban and on to the Caucasus.

This plan was not just a mirage. Manstein regarded it as realizable—provided always the enemy did not mount any surprise actions in the Nogay Steppe. That was the risky aspect of Eleventh Army's operations. In order to concentrate his forces sufficiently for the capture of the Crimea, Man-stein had to reduce his mainland forces to a minimum by detaching the "Leibstandarte" and the XLIX Mountain Corps. General von Salmuth's XXX Corps, to which the 72nd and 22nd Infantry Divisions belonged, had to hold on its own the front in the Nogay Steppe, supported only by the Rumanian Third Army. Manstein took this calculated risk because he had confidence in his combat-hardened divisions.

It was 24th September 1941. Mercilessly the southern sun beat down on the featureless steppe before Perekop and lay heavily over the saline marshes of the Sivash. The Soviet 156th Rifle Division was holding its deeply staggered defences. The central approach to the Crimea was covered by 276th Rifle Division. This division belonged to the Soviet Fifty-first Army, commanded by Colonel-General F. I. Kuznetsov. His order was: "Not an inch of soil to be surrendered!"

But a general's order is valid only as long as his troops are alive. After a three days' battle the 46th and 73rd Infantry Divisions burst through the neck of land. They overcame the Tartar Ditch, took the strongly fortified village of Armyansk, and thus gained open ground again for deployment.

Colonel-General Kuznetsov threw his 40th and 42nd Cavalry Divisions as well as units of 271st and 106th Rifle Divisions into his last defences along the isthmus of Ishun. The curtain was about to rise on the last act of Manstein's plan. It was now up to the "Leibstandarte" and the Mountain Corps to complete the breakthrough and to storm the peninsula.

Victory was within reach. But for the time being the Soviet High Command was able to foil the daring plan of attack.

Farther north, in the Nogay Steppe, along the anti-tank ditch before Timoshevka, there was much cautious whispering and coming and going during the night of 23rd/24th September. The regiments of 1st and 4th Mountain Divisions were being relieved for their employment in the Crimea. Rumanian mountain troops of the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Mountain Brigades were taking over the sector. Their headquarters staffs were being briefed. One German battalion after another handed over its positions to the Rumanians and moved off to the south.

"Hurry up, men; we are off to the sunny Crimea," the NCOs were urging on the companies of 91st Mountain Regiment. The men were marching at a fast pace. By the following morning they had covered 24 miles.

Of Regimental Group 13 only one battalion of infantry and one of artillery were left in their old positions. The headquarters section of 4th Mountain Division intended to move off to the Crimea with them.

"Everything ready?" Lieutenant-Colonel Schaefer, the chief of operations of 4th Mountain Division, asked Major Eder, commanding the 2nd Battalion, 94th Mountain Artillery Regiment. "Everything ready to move off, Herr Oberstleutnant," the gunner officer replied.

"What on earth is going on over there?" Schaefer suddenly asked in surprise.

A little distance away Rumanian infantry were hurriedly pulling out of the line.

"Eder, you run across to the Rumanian Brigade HQ and ask what's happening!" Eder did not have to ask many questions. The Rumanians were busy packing. They were flinging their belongings up into their lorries and getting away as fast as they could. "Russian break-through," they assured him.