Read Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 Online
Authors: Paul Carell
The first ramparts were stormed, the first casement was captured, the first prisoners were taken. They were worn out, utterly exhausted, and lethargic. But the battalions of 16th Infantry Regiment were down to sixty to eighty men.
In view of the situation at the Isthmus of Parpach, should this costly fighting be continued? Manstein came to the conclusion that it should not. Considering the situation at Feodosiya, he did not want to run any further risks. He ordered operations to cease. That was the last day of 1941.
Colonel von Choltitz with his 16th Infantry Regiment therefore evacuated the painfully gained ramparts of the fort and, in accordance with instructions, moved back to the crest along the Belbek Valley. The 24th Infantry Division was able to hold on to its positions. But for it too, as, indeed, for all formations of Eleventh Army on the Sevastopol front, the order of the day now was: Wait.
Five months were to elapse before the battle for the most powerful fortress of the Second World War was resumed, and five months and a half before 16th Regiment was back inside Fort Stalin.
In the morning of 31st December 1941 the leading battalions of 46th Infantry Division reached the Isthmus of Parpach. However, the forward detachments of the Soviet 63rd Rifle Division had got there before them, holding Vladislavovka, north of Feodosiya. Was the division's disengagement manœuvre to have been in vain after all?
"Attack, break through, and take Vladislavovka!" was General Himer's order to 46th Infantry Division. The troops quickly lined up for attack on the flat, snow-covered plateau. The icy wind blowing down from the Caucasus cut through their thin coats and chilled them to the marrow. The tears of impotent fury froze on their cheeks before they had run as far as their moustaches.
The exhausted regiments punched their way forward over another four miles. Then they ground to
a.
halt. The men simply collapsed.
Under cover of darkness the battalions eventually skirted round the Russian lines on their right, pushed through the still open part of the isthmus, and presently "took up position" on the frozen ground, facing to the south and the east. The last rearguards arriving in that hurriedly improvised line belonged to 1st Company, Engineers Battalion 88.
The following noon the Russians attacked. But the German troops held them. West of Feodosiya also a tenuous covering-line was successfully established across the path of the Soviet 157th Division by 213th Infantry Regiment, 73rd Infantry Division, brought up at the very last moment, and by Rumanian formations, units of the Rumanian Mountain Corps.
When the Russians attacked with tanks the last three self-propelled guns of the "Lions Brigade" saved the critical situation. Captain Peitz had switched them to the front from Bakhchisaray, where they had provided cover against partisans. Second Lieutenant Dammann, the troop commander, managed to lead them to within 600 yards of the enemy tanks in the undulating ground south-west of Vladis-lavovka. Then came the first crash. Presently an infernal duel was raging. Sixteen Soviet T-26s were left on the battlefield, blazing or shattered. The armoured spearhead of the Soviet Forty-fourth Army had been broken. The danger of a Russian thrust deep into the hinterland of Sevastopol had been
averted. The Russians had been stopped.
ludging by results, therefore, Count Sponeck had been justified. Or was there room for doubt? Manstein himself, in his memoirs, does not answer the question unequivocally one way or the other. He criticizes Count Sponeck for facing the Army with a
fait accompli
and making any other solution impossible.
Manstein says: "Such a precipitate withdrawal of 46th Infantry Division was not the way to maintain its combat strength. If the enemy had acted correctly at Feodosiya the division, in the condition in which it arrived at Parpach, would scarcely have been able to fight its way through to the west." If! But the enemy did not act correctly, and the outcome alone is what counts. Whichever way one judges the Sponeck affair, the general's decision sprang neither from dishonourable motives nor from cowardice. His dismissal from his command, decreed by Manstein, can be justified on grounds of principle, as an issue of obedience to superior orders. But this was not all. At the Fuehrer's Headquarters a court martial was held under the presidency of Reich Marshal Goring which sentenced Lieutenant- General Count von Sponeck, who had been summoned before it, to reduction to the ranks, forfeiture of all orders and decorations, and to death by execution.
Hitler himself must have had some misgivings about this barbarous verdict, for on appeal by the C-in-C Eleventh Army he commuted the death sentence to seven years' fortress detention. Judged by his later verdicts, this was a remarkable decision, virtually tantamount to acquittal.
But some two and a half years later, after 20th July 1944, one of Himmler's execution squads amended Hitler's clemency by brutal murder. Count von Sponeck was shot without cause and without sentence.
Count
Sponeck's sentence by court martial had its repercussions on 46th Infantry Division. What Field-Marshal von Reichenau, who had meanwhile taken over Army Group South, did to the men of this division was almost as cruel as the verdict against its commanding general. Early in January 1942 its four regimental commanders were summoned to divisional headquarters. Pale and hoarse with emotion, Lieutenant-General Himer, the divisional commander, acquainted them with a teleprinter signal from Army Group. It ran: "Because of its slack reaction to the Russian landing on the Kerch Peninsula, as well as its precipitate withdrawal from the peninsula, I hereby declare 46th Division forfeit of soldierly honour. Decorations and promotions are in abeyance until countermanded. Signed: von Reichenau, Field-Marshal."
Stony silence met this death sentence upon a gallant division. What had been its crime? It had carried out an order by its commanding general. It had passed through extreme hardships and, at the end of them, had still fought bravely and prevented the enemy from breaking through to the Crimea. This now was its reward. A cruel humiliation which assumed criminal responsibility where none existed, which used exaggerated concepts of honour to conceal the excessive demands made on the troops, and which disregarded all true yardsticks.
But the verdict on an entire gallant division could not remove the real cause of the whole affair—the fact that insufficient forces were being assigned excessive tasks. This fact, dramatically illuminated by the "Sponeck affair" and the humiliation of 46th Infantry Division, was soon to reveal itself as the tragic truth—and not only in the Crimea.
There and elsewhere it soon became obvious that Stalin was by no means defeated, but that, on the contrary, he was mobilizing the manpower resources of his gigantic empire in order to make good the defeats of the summer. And he succeeded because the fatal German weakness was making itself increasingly felt—too few soldiers for the difficult battles in the vast expanses of Russia. To-day, in the age of technological wars, with mechanization and automation, the manpower potential of a numerically superior enemy can be outweighed by weapons of mass destruction. But at the time of Hitler's war in Russia these had not yet been developed. Manpower, number of divisions, still played a formidable part. With the arms supplied to the Soviets by an economically superior America this manpower potential could even become the decisive factor. That was the reason for the superiority of the Russians. After six months of unparalleled German victories the enemy, though badly battered and more than once on the point of collapse, succeeded in recovering and in scoring successes which heralded a turning point in the war. This turn of the tide was exemplified in the battles fought by Army Group South on its mainland front, to which we shall presently turn our attention. We cannot, however, leave this Crimean theatre of war with its aura of heroism, tragedy, and sombre symbolism without recording the correction made in the military annals in connection with the gallant 46th Infantry
Division. At the end of January 1942 Reichenau's successor, Field-Marshal von Bock, had the following Order of the Day read out to the division: "For its outstanding performance in the defensive fighting in the Isthmus since the beginning of January I express my very special commendation to 46th Division and shall be looking forward to recommendations for promotion and decorations." The 46th Infantry Division had regained its honour.
Kleist's Panzer Army takes Stalino-Sixth Army captures Kharkov-First round in the battle for Rostov— Obersturmführer Olboeter and thirty men—Rundstedt is dismissed—Ringing of the alarm bells.
HOW were things going on the remaining fronts of Army Group South?
While Manstein had burst into the Crimea the other Armies of Army Group South, fighting on the mainland, had advanced farther to the east between the Dniener and Donets.
Kleist's Panzer Group, since promoted to First Panzer Army, had been pursuing the defeated enemy and was now lining up to attack Rostov. Between 12th and 17th October the port of Taganrog on the Sea of Azov was occupied after heavy fighting. The cost of this success is illustrated by the fact that 3rd Company of the Infantry Regiment of "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" came out of this operation with only seven men. The rest had been killed. But the Myus had successfully been crossed. On 20th October 1941 the German 1st Mountain Division seized Stalino from the Soviet Twelfth Army. Thus the principal armaments-making centre in the Donets area, the most, .important industrial region of the Soviet Union, was in German hands. According to Hitler's theory—the theory he had upheld against his General Staff and High Command, that the war would be decided by the capture of industrial centres —Stalin's defeat ought now to have been sealed.
On 28th October Colonel-General von Kleist had reached the Myus with all units of his First Panzer Army, and General von Stiilpnagel's Seventeenth Army was on the Donets. Four days previously Reichenau's Sixth Army on the northern wing of the Army Group had taken the large industrial centre of Kharkov.
But then, in the south as elsewhere along the whole Eastern Front, the period of autumn mud halted all operations. The Armies were stuck. Not until 17th November, with the onset of frost, was Kleist able to resume his advance on the right wing. Forty-eight hours earlier Field-Marshal von Bock had mounted his "attack on Moscow" on the Central Front.
But the Soviets had made good use of the breathing space provided by the mud. In the Caucasus Marshal Timoshenko was raising new Divisions, Corps, and Armies. Among the members of his Military Council of the South-west Front was a man, then hardly known, who displayed great energy in raising new units and, in particular, organized partisan activities. His name was Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev.
While the Soviet High Command was mobilizing ever new Armies, the general shortage of all resources was making itself increasingly felt on the German side. Nowhere were there any reserves. If the Russians broke through anywhere along the front, then forces had to be withdrawn from some other spot in order to seal off the penetration. It was clear that the Eastern Front was short of at least three German Armies—one for each Army Group.