Read Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 Online
Authors: Paul Carell
A grim illustration of the tightness of the situation and the excessive demands made on the troops was the battle waged by Army Group South for Rostov.
On 17th November General von Mackensen's III Panzer Corps had mounted its attack against this gateway to the Caucasus with 13th and 14th Panzer Divisions, 60th Motorized Infantry Division and the "Leibstandarte." The "Leibstan-darte," reinforced by 4th Panzer Regiment, 13th Panzer Division, penetrated the outer fortifications at Sultan-Saly. On its left 14th Panzer Division struck at Bolshiye-Saly. General Remi-zov, who was defending Rostov
with his Fifty-sixth Army, replied with a strong attack against the flank of 14th Panzer Division. Mackensen thereupon employed his 60th Motorized Infantry Division in a flanking attack to the east, in order to cover his flank.
On 20th November the three fast divisions penetrated into the town, which then had 500,000 inhabitants, and pushed
straight on to the Don. The 1st Battalion "Leibstandarte" stormed across the Rostov railway-bridge and captured it intact. The 60th Motorized Infantry Division meanwhile covered the exposed flank of the Corps by a dashing drive far to the east and south-east, and captured Aksayskaya, while units of 13th Panzer Division vigorously pursued the retreating enemy from the west. Rostov, the gateway to the Soviet oil paradise, was in German hands.
[See inset on Map 13.]
It was a decisive victory. The Don bridges at Rostov were more than mere river crossings: they were the bridges leading to the Caucasus and to Persia. Not for nothing had Britain and the Soviet Union occupied Persia at the end of August 1941 and built a supply road from the Persian Gulf via Tabriz to the Soviet Caucasian frontier. In this way the Soviet Union had gained a direct overland link—its only one—with its rich Western Allies. The old Georgian Military Highway, the road from the Terek Valley over the Caucasian passes to Tiflis, conquered by the Russians about the middle of the nineteenth century, had acquired a new importance.
As a result, Rostov had become a kind of communications centre, a relay post between the Soviet Union and Britain for supplies shipped by the Persian Gulf. Naturally the Soviet General Staff made every possible effort to recapture Rostov from the Germans and to bar Kleist's Panzer Army from access to the Caucasus.
With his Thirty-seventh and Ninth Armies under Generals Lopatin and Kharitonov, Timoshenko now staged a very skilful operation. As a result of Mackensen turning to the south a gap had arisen between Seventeenth Army and First Panzer Army, a gap which, in view of the shortage of forces, could not be immediately closed. Here was Timoshenko's opportunity. He struck at the gap and into the rear of III Corps. It was a dangerous situation.
To meet the danger Mackensen was obliged to detach first the 13th and then also the 14th Panzer Divisions from his front and employ them at Generalskiy Most and Budennyy Most in the threatened Tuslov sector. But no sooner was the crisis in the Corps' rear more or less averted than Timoshenko pounced on Mackensen's weakened Corps along its eastern and southern flanks. The main weight of these attacks fell on 60th Motorized Infantry Division and the "Leibstandarte."
The date was 25th November 1941. The motor-cyclists of the motorized reconnaissance detachment "Leibstandarte" were holding a five-mile sector along the southern edge of Rostov, immediately on the bank of the Don, which at that point was nearly two-thirds of a mile wide. But the vast river had ceased to be an obstacle. It was frozen over. It was bitter weather. The men were quite inadequately protected against the cutting cold.
The alarm came at 0520 hours. Soviet regiments—units of 343rd and 31st Rifle Divisions, as well as 70th Cavalry Division—were attacking the positions along their whole breadth. Three hundred grenadiers were lying in the foremost line— a mere 300. And they were being charged by three Soviet divisions. The first assault was made by the Russian 343rd Rifle Division. For a moment the Germans were paralysed with shock: their arms linked, singing, and cheered on with shouts of "Urra," the Soviet battalions came marching up towards them on a broad front, out of the icy dawn. Their mounted bayonets were like lances projecting from a living wall. That wall now moved on to the ice of the Don. At a word of command the Russians broke into a run. Arms still linked, they came pounding over the ice.
Obersturmführer [Rank in Waffen SS equivalent to captain.] Olboeter, commanding 2nd Company, was in the front line, with the heavy machine-gun of No. 3 section. "Wait for it," he said.
On the ice the first mines planted by German sappers in the snow were now exploding, tearing gaps in the charging ranks. But the great mass of them continued to advance.
"Fire!" Olboeter commanded. The machine-gun started stuttering. A fraction of a moment later other guns joined in the infernal concert.
Like a gigantic invisible scythe the first burst swept along the foremost wave of the charging Soviets, cutting them down on to the ice. The second wave was likewise mown down. To realize how Soviet infantry can charge and die one must have been on the bank of the Don at Rostov.
Over their dead and wounded the next waves charged forward. And each one got a little nearer than the last before it was mown down.
With trembling fingers Horst Schrader, the nineteen-year-old No. 2 of the machine-gun, guided the new belt into the lock. His eyes were wide-with terror. The gun's barrel was steaming. As from a great distance he heard his gun commander's shout, "Change barrel! Change barrel!"
In the sector of 2nd Company the Soviet 1151st Rifle Regiment attacked with two battalions. Three waves had collapsed on the ice. The last one now, in battalion strength, was on top of the defenders.
The Russians broke into the positions and went for the machine-gun crews. They killed the grenadiers in their foxholes. Then they rallied. Unless they were thrown back by an immediate counter-attack things would be very ugly for the motor-cyclists of the reconnaissance detachment "Leibstan-darte." The southern approaches to Rostov were in danger.
Things were also getting sticky in the 1st Company sector. Here two Soviet rifle regiments, the 177th and the 248th, were attacking. Their foremost wave was barely 20 yards in front of the German lines. Just then three German self- propelled guns, with grenadiers riding on top of them, arrived in the sector of 2nd Company for an immediate counter- attack and sealed off the Russians who had broken in. Six officers and 390 other ranks surrendered. Most of them were wounded. More than 300 Soviet killed were lying in front of the German lines.
Fierce fighting continued throughout the day. The following day the Russians came again. And the day after that.
On 28th November the Russians were inside the positions of 1st Company. They were units of the Soviet 128th Rifle Division, raised in July and brought across from Krasnodar for their first action. Obersturmführer Olboeter decided to launch an immediate counter-attack, but this time with only thirty men and two self-propelled guns. First of all, however, some one had to cut his boots off his frozen feet. He wrapped his feet and legs in gauze bandages, squares of flannel, and two horse blankets, tying it all up with string. Then he climbed aboard the leading self-propelled gun. "Off!" was all he said. "Off!"
Olboeter was an experienced tactician. With one self-propelled gun he attacked on the left wing, while he got the other to circumnavigate the enemy position until it appeared, belching fire, in the Russians' right flank. Keeping close to the self-propelled guns and firing as they ran forward, Olboeter's men broke into the Russian lines. In spite of his blanket- wrapped frozen feet, the Obersturmführer kept bobbing up to the right and left of his assault gun, directing operations, issuing orders, flinging himself down into the snow and firing his machine pistol.
The fighting lasted two hours. After that Olboeter returned with three dozen prisoners. He had rolled up the enemy position. The Soviets, taken by surprise and battle-weary, had fled across the Don. Once again a typical weakness of the Russians had been revealed: the lower commands were not sufficiently elastic to exploit local successes on a grand scale. In the recaptured position lay 300 dead Russians. But among them, also, lay most of the officers and motor- cyclists of 1st Company of Obersturmbannführer [Rank in SS equivalent to colonel.] Meyer's reconnaissance detachment.
But what use was a local success? The Russians came back. Impassively their massed attacks broke against the tenuously held German fighting-line. And even the greatest heroism could not offset the fact that the German formations in and around Rostov were simply too weak. Three badly mauled divisions, whose companies barely had one-third of their establishment, could not in the long run stand up to ceaseless assault by fifteen Soviet rifle and cavalry divisions as well as several armoured brigades.
Once again the decisive German weakness was revealed— insufficient resources. The front of III Corps was 70 miles long. It could not possibly be held with the forces available. Field-Marshal von Rundstedt realized this, rang up the Chief of the Army General Staff and the Fuehrer's Headquarters, and requested permission to abandon Rostov.
But Hitler would not hear of retreat. He refused to believe that the Russians were stronger; he preached hardness when only commonsense could save the situation. Thus Rundstedt received orders to hold out where he was.
But for once Hitler had misjudged his man. The Field-Marshal refused to obey the order. Hitler thereupon relieved him of his command. Field-Marshal von Reichenau, hitherto C-in-C Sixth Army, took over Army Group South and instantly stopped the retreat which Rundstedt, with prudent anticipation, had already set in motion.
But even Reichenau could not close his eyes to harsh reality. Twenty-four hours after taking over the Army Group, at 1530 on 1st December 1941, he telephoned the Fuehrer's Headquarters: "The Russians are penetrating into the overextended thin German line. If disaster is to be averted the front must be shortened—in other words, taken back behind the Myus. There is no other way, my Fuehrer!"
What Hitler had refused Rundstedt twenty-four hours earlier he now had to concede to Reichenau: Retreat, surrender of Rostov.
Although not a disaster, this was the first serious setback of the war. It was a skilful "elastic withdrawal." The major part of the important Donets area remained in German hands.
But nothing could disguise the fact that the German armies in the east had suffered their first major defeat. At his Army headquarters before Moscow, on Tolstoy's estate of Yasnaya Polyana, Guderian remarked glumly, "This is the first ringing of the alarm bells."
He could not know that they would ring on his own sector within six days. And not only on his sector, but along the entire Eastern Front. The blow that had fallen upon Rundstedt was only an episode by comparison with what burst upon Army Group Centre in the Moscow area six days later.
PART FOUR:
Winter Battle
5th December 1941—No winter clothing—Fighting for Klin— 3rd Panzer Group fights its way back—Second Panzer Army has to give ground—Drama on the ice of the Ruza—Brauchitsch leaves—Historic conversation at the Fuehrer's Headquarters-Hold on at all costs—Break-through at Ninth Army—The tragedy of XXlll Corps—Time-table for "Giessen"-Guderian is dismissed.
THE outposts in the sector of 87th Infantry Regiment had just been relieved. The time was 0500, and it was icy cold. The thermometer stood at 25 degrees below zero Centigrade. The men were trudging through the snow towards the little Ya-khroma river. From the chimneys of the peasant cottages in the valley the smoke rose straight into the grey morning. Everything was quiet. The 87th Infantry Regiment belonged to 36th Motorized Infantry Division. The regiments from Rhineland— Hesse were holding the front line between the Volga reservoir south of Kalinin, also known as the Moscow Sea, and Roga-chevo. The long sector could be held only in the form of separate strongpoints. For anything else the regiments were too weak. They had been bled white—and, even more so, frozen white.
In a temperature of 30 to 40 degrees below zero Centigrade no man could lie in a forward snowhole for more than an hour. Unless, of course, he was wearing a sheepskin and felt boots, a fur cap and padded gloves. But the men of 36th Motorized Infantry Division had none of these things.
They were within 30 yards of the village. Iced-up, their horse-drawn wagons stood by the stream. The shaft of the village pump rose high above the low roofs. By the pump stood some Russian women, getting water. Suddenly they all started—the pickets who had just been relieved and the Russian women. Instinctively they ducked. They scampered to the nearest cottages. And there it was—the "howling beast." There was a crash, fountains of snow rising into the air, red-hot fragments bouncing off the ground, which was frozen as hard as stone. The shell-splinters crashed into the bath-house and into the cottages. Action stations!
The date was 5th December 1941—a Friday. A page was being turned in the history of the war. The great Russian counter-offensive before Moscow was beginning. Here, in the sector of 36th Motorized Infantry Division, in the
operations zone of LV1 Panzer Corps, the curtain was rising on a savage historical drama. Twenty-four hours later the great battle began also on the remaining sectors of Army Group Centre —between Ostashkov and Yelets, along a 600- mile front.
What was the situation before Moscow on that 5th December? North and west of the Soviet capital the German spearheads had got to within a few miles of the outskirts of the city. On the northern wing of Army Group Centre, Ninth Army held a 105-mile arc through Kalinin to the Moscow Sea.
The divisions of 3rd Panzer Group, which were to have outflanked Moscow in the north, had advanced as far as Dmitrov on the Moskva—Volga Canal. Farther south were the most forward units of XLI Panzer Corps, poised to cross the canal north of Lobnya. The combat group Westhoven of 1st Panzer Division, having captured Nikolskoye and Belyy Rast, had reached the western edge of Kusayevo. Adjoining on the right, 4th Panzer Group held a quadrant around Moscow, from Krasnaya Polyana to Zvenigorod; the distance to the Kremlin was nowhere more than 25 miles. The combat outposts of 2nd Panzer Division were at the first stop of the Moscow tramway. An assault detachment of Engineers Battalion 62 from Wittenberg had got closest to Stalin's lair by penetrating into the suburb of Khimki, only 5 miles from the outskirts of the city and 10 from the Kremlin.
On the southern wing of Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group, reading from left to right, were 106th and 35th Infantry Divisions, llth and 5th Panzer Divisions, as well as the SS Motorized Infantry Division "Das Reich," and 252nd, 87th, 78th, 267th, 197th, and 7th Infantry Divisions. Next followed the divisions of Kluge's Fourth Army. They were 30 miles from Moscow, along a line running from north to south, between the Moscow motor highway and the Oka.
Next along the front came Guderian's Second Panzer Army. It had bypassed the stubbornly defended town of Tula and was holding a big eastward bulge around Stalinogorsk; its armoured spearhead, the 17th Panzer Division, pointing northward against the Oka, stood before Kashira.
On the extreme right wing the Second Army was covering the southern flank and maintaining the link with Army Group South.
This then was the 600-mile front line along which the German offensive had come to a standstill at the beginning of December—in the most literal sense frozen into inactivity. Men, beasts, engines, and weapons were in the icy grip of 45 and even 50 degrees below zero Centigrade. In the diary of a man of 69th Rifle Regiment, 10th Panzer Division, we find the sentence: "We are waging the winter war as if this was one of our Black Forest winters back home."
That was the exact truth. Officers and troops lacked suitable special winter clothing to enable them to camp and fight on open ground at temperatures of minus 50 degrees. As a result, they clad themselves in whatever they could lay their hands on, or what they found in Russian textile mills, workshops, and stores—one garment on top of another But this hampered the men's movements instead of making them warm. And these filthy clothes, which were never taken off, were breeding-places for lice, which got right into the skin. The men were not only cold, but also hungry. Butter arrived hard as stone and could only be sucked in small pieces as "butter ice." Bread had to be divided with the axe, and then thawed out in the fire. The result was diarrhoea. The companies were dwindling away. Their daily losses due to frostbitten limbs and feverish intestinal troubles were higher than those from enemy action.
Like the men, the horses suffered from cold and hunger. Supplies of oats did not arrive. The frozen straw off the cottage roofs no longer satisfied their hunger, but merely made the animals sick. There was a heavy incidence of mange and colic. The animals collapsed and died by the dozen.
The engines likewise were out of action. There was not enough anti-freeze: the water in the radiators froze and engine- blocks burst. Tanks, lorries, and radio vans became immobile and useless. Weapons packed up because the oil froze in the moving parts. No one had thought of making sure of winter oil. There was likewise no special winter paste for the lenses of field-glasses, trench telescopes, and gunsights. The optics froze over and became blind and useless.
Hardly anything was available that would have been necessary for fighting and for survival in this accursed Russian winter. The Fuehrer's Headquarters had thought that the troops would be in Moscow before the onset of the frost. The bill for this bad miscalculation in the operational time-table and the resulting lack of supplies had now to be footed by
the men in the field.
Why were the needs of the hard-pressed front not met by supplies from Europe? Because what few locomotives were available likewise froze up. Instead of the twenty-six supply trains needed daily by Army Group Centre, only eight, or at most ten, arrived. And most of the JU-52 supply aircraft were unable to take off from their airstrips in Poland and Belorussia because of the biting cold and the lack of hangars.
Here is a passage from a letter by Lance-corporal Werner Burmeister of the 2nd Battery, 208th Artillery Regiment, a regiment newly arrived from France:
It's a hopeless job—you've got six horses harnessed to the gun. The front four can be led by hand, but for the two alongside the shaft some one must be mounted, because unless a man is in the saddle and jams his foot against the shaft it will hit the flanks of the animals at every "step. At 30 degrees below, in those tight, nailed jackboots of ours, you get your toes frozen off before you even realize it. There isn't a man in my battery who hasn't got frostbite in his toes and heels.
That was the Russian winter—cruel in an undramatic and trivial way. The Russian troops invariably received leather boots one or two sizes too large, to enable them to be stuffed with straw or newspaper—a highly effective procedure. It was a trick well known also to the old lags in the German Army in the East. But unfortunately for them their boots were the right size.
In these conditions, was it surprising that the troops were finished? The combat strength of the regiments was down to less than half. The worst of it was that the Officers' and NCO Corps, as well as the bulk of the old experienced corporals, had been decimated by death in action, by freezing, and by disease. There were lieutenants in command of battalions, and frequently sergeants in command of companies. There were no reserves anywhere. In such conditions Army Group Centre was expected to hold a line over 600 miles long. All this must be realized in order to understand what happened next.
And what was the situation on the Soviet side? Even while the German offensive was still gaining ground the Soviet High Command had assembled a striking force south of Moscow and another north of the city. Whatever military reserves were available in the huge country were brought to Moscow. The eastern and southern frontiers were ruthlessly denuded. Siberian divisions, accustomed to winter and equipped for winter warfare, formed the nucleus of these new forces. The Soviet High Command dispatched thirty-four Siberian divisions to its Western Front; of these twenty-one were facing Army Group Centre, which had comprised seventy-eight divisions in October, but which by early December was left with the combat strength of a mere thirty-five. This greatly reduced effective fighting power was thus outweighed by the freshly arrived Siberian units alone. Their employment proved decisive.
The concentration of Soviet forces before Moscow was the result of what was probably the greatest act of treason in the Second World War. Stalin knew Japan's intention to attack not Russia but America. He knew it from his agent in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, who, as the trusted colleague of the German Ambassador and the friend of the most highly placed Japanese politicians, was acquainted with the intentions of the German and the Japanese leaders. He reported to Stalin that Japan had refused the German Government's suggestion that she should attack Russia. He reported that the Japanese military were preparing for war against America in the Pacific. Since Sorge's reports about the German offensive intentions in spring 1941 had been so fully confirmed by events, Stalin this time believed the reports from Tokyo and withdrew his entire forces from the Far East to Moscow, even though the Japanese Kwantung Army was poised ready to strike in Manchuria.
But for these dispositions Moscow could not have been saved. The ultimate proof of the tie-up between Sorge's information and military events is provided by the fact that Stalin opened his offensive on the very day when the Japanese warships set course for Pearl Harbour to start the war against the USA. Even this top-secret date, the date of Japan's attack on America, had been passed on to Stalin by Sorge. And as soon as Soviet reconnaissance aircraft confirmed the Japanese naval deployment Stalin, mistrustful though he was, felt sure that Dr Sorge's information was reliable. He could now safely employ his Siberians outside Moscow.
]
At the beginning of December 1941 the Soviet High Command had concentrated altogether 17 /i Armies for an attack against the German Army Group Centre. Three of these— the First, Tenth, and Twentieth Armies—consisted of Siberian and Asian divisions which had been newly raised. The other Armies, according to the reliable military historian Samsonov, had been "trebled or quadrupled by the inclusion of reserves." Russian military writers, who are fond of playing down their own numbers while invariably overestimating the German forces, quote the ratio between German and Soviet strength at the beginning of the counter-offensive as 1.5 to 1 in favour of the Soviets. And this Soviet superiority became more marked with each week that passed.
Throughout December the German Army Group Centre received not a single fresh division. The Russian "Western Front," on the other hand, which was facing it, was reinforced during that same period by thirty-three divisions and thirty-nine brigades. These figures speak for themselves. Germany's resources were inadequate. She was waging a war beyond her capabilities.
What were the Soviet High Command's plans for its counter-offensive? Even without official Soviet sources the answer would be easy. It sprang from the situation itself. The first task was to smash the two powerful German armoured wedges threatening Moscow from the north and south.
Whether—as is nowadays claimed by Soviet military writers —the Red High Command had been planning from the very start to follow up this first objective by that of encircling the entire German Army Group Centre must remain a matter for speculation. It does not seem very plausible. But if this was indeed the plan from the outset, then it was badly conceived.
We shall presently see why.
The Soviet counter-offensive started north of Moscow with a battle for the Klin bulge. This projecting arc of the front of 3rd Panzer Group was the most serious threat to the Red capital.
At the very heart of this battle were the German XLI and LVI Panzer Corps with 36th and 14th Motorized Infantry Divisions, 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions, as well as—since 7th December—1st Panzer Division. General Schaal, formerly the commander of the well-tried 10th Panzer Division, was now in command of LVI Panzer Corps. There exists a report of his which, together with the operation reports of the separate divisions, provides an impressive and historically interesting picture of the dramatic happenings. They show, by the example of the Klin bulge, how the fate of the northern wing of Army Group Centre early in December 1941 frequently hung by a thread. They also show under what difficult conditions, with what inadequate forces, and with what heroic efforts the troops and their officers were meeting the danger.