Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (57 page)

An account of this episode reflects both the gallantry of the German troops and that of an outstanding Russian general who knew how to fight and how to die.

On 17th December 1941 the reinforced 461st Infantry Regiment hurled itself against Dovator's forward formations which were trying to block the route of 252nd Division near Lake Trostenskoye. The danger was averted. All the units of the division reached the Ruza, even though it was a constant race against Dovator's cavalry regiments.

On 19th December the 252nd crossed the Ruza river north of the town of the same name. But Dovator had got there too. He did not want to let 252nd Division escape his clutches. The Ruza was frozen over. The general prepared to mount a flank attack. From the right wing he intended to strike at the Silesians across the ice of the river. The clash came near two small villages, Dyakovo and Polashkino.

Lieutenant Prigann was in position outside Dyakovo on the higher western bank of the river with the remnants of 2nd Battalion, 472nd Infantry Regiment, and 9th Battery, 252nd Artillery Regiment. On the right, in Polashkino, Major Hoffer had taken up position with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, from Schweidnitz. They were good commanding positions. Hoffer and Prigann were determined to make good use of them.

The day was grey and cold. In the late morning snow began to fall—light, dry December snow which was blown by the wind over the fields and the frozen Ruza. The corpses of horses, gutted motor vehicles, and men killed in action and frozen rigid were covered by its shroud.

From the edge of the forest General Dovator was watching his vanguards riding down to the river. He could hear the exchange of fire in the distance. The Cossacks dismounted.

Dovator turned to the commander of his point regiment, Major Linnika: "Attack to the right of the vanguard!"

The major saluted and drew his sword. He issued his command. The 1st Squadron burst out of the wood. It was like a phantom chase. Past the village of Tolbuzino, down towards the river. At that moment the German machine-guns opened up.

The squadron instantly fanned out, dismounted, and flopped into the snow. The charge had not come off.

General Dovator was annoyed. With Major Linnika, the regimental commander, he rode down the path to the north, as far as the highroad from Ruza to Volokolamsk. This was where the spearheads of his 20th Division stood. The 14th Mounted Artillery Battalion was just moving through the forest. The time was noon.

From the edge of the forest there was a good view of Polashkino. On the roads to the west were the baggage trains of 252nd Infantry Division.

"Colonel Tavliyev," the general called out. The commander of the 20th Division leaned forward. "We'll cross the river, bypassing the village of Polashkino on the right. Then we'll strike at the rear and the flank of those columns. I'm coming with you."

The squadrons moved off at a gallop. But no sooner were they out of the wood than they were caught in very heavy machine-gun fire.

"Deploy, colonel," the general shouted. "Drive the fascists out of the village."

With his staff, Dovator galloped down to a hut by the river. He leapt from his horse and patted the animal's neck. The chestnut's name was Kazbek. He was nervous. "Steady, Kazbek," the general calmed him. He threw the reins to Akopyan, his groom. "Walk him up and down a bit, otherwise he'll get cold."

Dovator watched the fighting through his binoculars. On the right Dyakovo was in flames. It was being shelled by Russian artillery. But the dismounted men of the Soviet 22nd Cavalry Regiment were pinned down.

Now the 103rd Regiment was galloping out of the woods, deploying, but a moment later was likewise forced to dismount. The cavalrymen advanced on foot. They reached the ice of the river. There they were kept down by continuous German machine-gun fire.

"We've got to snatch the men up from the ice," the general shouted. He pulled his pistol out of its holster, cocked it, and with long, loping strides ran down to the river himself. His ADC, the political officer of the headquarters squadron, the duty officer, and the headquarters guard followed him.

Less than 20 yards lay between the general and the line of men pinned down in the middle of the river. At that moment a German machine-gun burst swept across the ice from the right-hand edge of the village. Dovator stopped short as though something had frightened him. Then he fell over heavily into a drift of powdered snow which the wind had piled up on the ice.

His ADC ran up to him. But the machine-gun was still stuttering. The German lance-corporal did not take his finger off the trigger. The little spurts of snow showed him the exact position of his bursts. They cut down also the adjutant who bore the German name of Teichman. The bursts also caught Colonel Tavliyev and dropped him down by the side of his general.

"Dogs!" screamed Karasov, the political officer. "Dogs!" His coat flying behind him in the wind, he raced over the ice to Dovator and picked him up. But just then the trail of bullets danced up through the snow and mowed him down too. Dead, he collapsed on to the ice.

At last Lieutenant Kulikov and Second Lieutenant Sokirkov succeeded in crawling over to the general. Under heavy machine-gun fire they dragged their general over the ice and carried him behind the hut.

Kazbek, the stallion, reared as his dead master was brought back. At Polashkino the machine-guns were still stuttering. The infantrymen from Schweidnitz were resisting furious attacks by Shamyakin's cavalry regiment, out to avenge Dovator.

Defeats invariably need their scapegoats. On the day General Dovator was killed in action on the Ruza the first political storm swept through the German Generals Corps. Adolf Hitler dismissed Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief Army, and personally assumed the command of all land forces. Field-Marshal von Bock,

Commander-in-Chief of the hard-pressed Army Group Centre, was given "sick leave." He was succeeded by Field- Marshal von Kluge. And Kluge was succeeded by General Heinrici as Commander-in-Chief Fourth Army.

On 20th December 1941 a very worried Guderian flew to East Prussia to see Hitler at his headquarters. He wanted to persuade him to take the German front line back to more favourable positions, if necessary over a considerable distance.

The five-hour interview was of historic importance. It showed the Fuehrer irritable, tormented by anxiety, but resolved to fight fanatically; it revealed a powerless and obsequious High Command, resembling courtiers in uniforms; and it showed Guderian, alone but courageous, passionately arguing his case and fearlessly giving Hitler his frank opinion on the situation at the front.

The first time the word retreat was mentioned Hitler exploded. The word seemed to sting him like the bite of an adder. It conjured up for him the spectre of the Napoleonic disaster of 1812. Anything but retreat!

Passionately Hitler tried to convince Guderian: "Once I've authorized a retreat there won't be any holding them. The troops will just run. And with the frost and the deep snow and the icy roads that means that the heavy weapons will be the first to be abandoned, and the light ones next, and then the rifles will be thrown away, and in the end there'll be nothing left. No. The defensive positions must be held. Transport junctions and supply centres must be defended like fortresses. The troops must dig their nails into the ground; they must dig in, and not yield an inch."

Guderian rejoined: "My Fuehrer, the ground in Russia at present is frozen solid to a depth of four feet. No one can dig in there."

"Then you must get the mortars to fire at the ground to make shell-craters," Hitler retorted. "That's what we did in Flanders in the first war."

Guderian again had to put Hitler right on his facts. "In Flanders the ground was soft. But in Russia the shells now produce holes no more than four inches deep and the size of a wash-basin—the soil is as hard as iron. Besides, the divisions have neither enough mortars nor, what's more important, any shells to spare for that kind of experiment. I myself have only four heavy howitzers left to each division, and none of them has more than 50 rounds. And that is for a front sector of 20 miles."

Before Hitler could interrupt him Guderian continued: "Positional warfare in this unsuitable terrain will lead to battles of material as in the First World War. We shall lose the flower of our Officers Corps and NCOs Corps; we shall suffer gigantic losses without gaining any advantage. And these losses will be irreplaceable."

There was deathly silence in the Fuehrer's bunker at the Wolfsschanze. Hitler too was silent. Then he stepped up close to Guderian and in an imploring voice said, "Do you believe Frederick the Great's grenadiers died gladly? And yet the King was justified in demanding of them the sacrifice of their lives. I too consider myself justified in demanding of each German soldier that he should sacrifice his life."

Guderian realized at once that with this bombastic comparison Hitler was merely trying to evade the issue. What Guderian was talking about was not sacrifice as such, but useless sacrifice. He therefore said calmly, "Our soldiers have proved that they are prepared to sacrifice their lives. But this sacrifice ought only to be demanded when the end justifies it. And I see no such justification, my Fuehrer!"

From the horrified expressions on the faces of the officers present it was clear that they expected Hitler to explode. But he did not. He said almost softly, "I know all about your personal effort, and how you lead your troops from in front. But for this reason you are in danger of seeing things too much at close quarters. You are hamstrung by too much compassion for your men. Things look clearer from a greater distance. In order to hold the front no sacrifice can be too great. For if we do not hold it the Armies of Army Group Centre are lost."

The argument continued for several hours. When Guderian left the situation room in the Fuehrer's bunker late at night he overheard Hitler saying to Keitel, "There goes a man whom I have not been able to convince."

That was no more than the truth. Hitler had been unable to convince the man who had moulded the German armoured forces. To Guderian Hitler's operational principle of holding on at all costs, and, what was more, under the worst possible conditions, was an insult to the traditional and long-tested strategic thinking of the Prussian General Staff. In a hopeless situation one withdraws in order to avoid needless casualties and in order to regain freedom of movement for new operations. One does not hold on merely to be killed.

At the same time one cannot entirely dismiss the argument that permission to retreat in the wastes of the Russian winter and under pressure by a victory-intoxicated and fanatical Red Army might have turned the retreat of the mauled German troops into a rout.

And what would happen once the troops were on the run? In a retreat panic spreads quickly, turning a withdrawal into disorderly flight. And nothing is more difficult than to halt a flight of panicking units.

These considerations had induced Hitler to turn down Guderian's argument with an uncompromising No. He even countermanded the authorization he had given during the early days of the Soviet offensive for the shortening of frontline sectors and withdrawals to rearward lines, and instead issued his hold-out order which has since been so hotly disputed by military historians : "Commanders and officers must, by way of personal participation in the fighting, compel the troops to offer fanatical resistance in their positions, regardless of enemy break-throughs on the flank or'in the rear. Only after well-prepared shortened rearward positions have been manned by reserves may withdrawal to such positions be considered."

This order has been a subject of contention to this day. On the one side it is said that the order was a piece of lunacy in that it resulted in the substance of the German forces in the East being needlessly sacrificed. The troops, it is argued, would have been quite capable of orderly retreat. Favourable defensive positions, as, for instance, along the high ground of Smolensk, would have compelled the Soviet High Command to launch costly attacks which would have decimated the Soviet divisions instead of the German troops.

No doubt this argument holds good for certain sectors of the front. But there are also many commanders in the field, General Staff officers and Army Commanders-in-Chief who take the view that a general withdrawal under pressure from the Siberian assault divisions, with their superiority in winter warfare, would have led to chaos at many spots and to the collapse of substantial sectors of the front. Gaps would have arisen which no commander could have closed again. Holes would have been punched into the line, and the Soviet Armies would have simply raced straight through them, pursuing and overtaking the retreating Germans. And behind Smolensk the Soviets could then have closed the trap round the whole of Army Group Centre.

Perhaps this theory credits the Soviets with rather too much strength and skill. But it cannot be denied that— from a purely military point of view—Kilter's simple and Draconic hold-out order probably offered the only real chance of averting the terrible danger of collapse. Subsequent events entirely justified Hitler. The chronicler concerned only with military history must accept this fact. Political, moral, and philosophical considerations, needless to say, are an entirely different matter. The mental conflicts to which this hold-out order gave rise among commanders in the field, the tragedies it led to, and also the unparalleled heroism and self-sacrifice shown in obeying it are illustrated by the operations of Ninth Army on the northern wing of Army Group Centre, in the Kalinin-Rzhev area, and in the defensive battles of the neighbouring Sixteenth Army of Army Group North between Lake Seliger and Lake Ihnen.