Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (58 page)

Colonel-General Strauss's Ninth Army had been holding the line between the Moscow Sea and Lake Seliger with three Army Corps since the end of October. The line ran from Kalinin to Lake Volgo—the source of the Volga—and like a big barrier blocked the Volga bend, on the southern leg of which was the town of Rzhev.

Since mid-December 1941 the Ninth Army had been retreating, step by step, from Kalinin to the south-west.

The first attacks by the Soviet Thirty-first and Twenty-ninth Armies were directed against General Wager's XXVII Corps in the area south-east of Kalinin. The temperature was 20 degrees below zero Centigrade. Deep snow covered the frozen ground. Artillery preparation was moderate. Only a few tanks accompanied the Soviet infantry over the ice of the Volga. On the right wing of the Corps, at Lieutenant-General Witthöft's Westphalian 86th Infantry Division on

the Volga reservoir, the Soviet infantry attack collapsed in the German machine-gun fire.

In the adjoining sector on the left, held by the Pomeranian 162nd Infantry Division, however, the Russians punched a hole through the line with the aid of a few T-34s, widened their penetration, and struck through with Siberian ski battalions. In spite of this threat, General Förster's VI Corps, on the left of XXVII Corps, held its sector against furious Soviet attacks. In the sector of 26th Infantry Division the combat-tested 39th Infantry Regiment under Colonel Wiese was down to two battalions—3rd Battalion having been divided up in order to replenish the depleted companies— and the similarly weakened Westphalian 6th Infantry Division had to hold a line of 16 miles. But the Russians did not get through.

Against the 110th Infantry Division, on the other hand, on the left wing of XXVII Army Corps, the Soviets succeeded in getting across to the southern bank of the Volga. From there they were now threatening VI Corps' only supply route, the road from Staritsa to Kalinin. At the same time the town of Kalinin was beginning to be outflanked.

The 3rd Battalion of the Weslphalian 18th Infantry Regiment, the Corps reserve of 6th Infantry Division, was ordered to throw the Russians, who had penetrated with 200 men, back over the Volga again. The Westphalians prepared for action. The thermometer stood at 40 degrees below zero Centigrade. Their line of attack was through knee-deep snow. They tried three times.

But the Russians were across the river in regimental strength. It was impossible to dislodge them. True, the battalion took 100 prisoners, but it also lost 22 of its own men killed and 45 wounded, and, moreover, had 55 of its men affected by severe frost-bite.

At least they had stopped any further Soviet advance. The important supply road was cleared again and covered, and the threatening encirclement of Kalinin had been prevented. As a result, the Corps gained time to withdraw the units fighting in Kalinin. On 15th December 1941 the town was abandoned. On 16th December Soviet troops under Generals Shvetsov and Yushkevich moved into Kalinin.

The Soviet penetration into the German front on the Volga and the capture of Kalinin were a heavy blow. The eastern wing of Ninth Army had to be taken back. The Soviet High Command had thus gained the prerequisites for striking deep into the flank of the German Army.

Colonel-General Strauss had seen the danger approaching. He intended—like Guderian in the south, following Zhukov's breakthrough towards Stalinogorsk—to abandon the front bulge at Kalinin and to swing his Corps back to a greatly shortened line with Lake Seliger as the pivot; the line he intended to hold was a flat arc running from Lake Volgo to Gzhatsk on the Moscow motor highway. Rzhev was to be the centre and the core of the arc. The code name for this winter position was "Königsberg."

The disengagement was to be carried out in small, swift moves through a number of accurately defined intermediate positions, all of them bearing the names of towns as codes— Augsburg, Bremen, Coburg, Dresden, Essen, Frankfurt, Giessen, Hanau, Ilmenau, and Königsberg. However, the timetable functioned only as far as the "Giessen" stop. There the 'train' came to a halt.

Thanks to the gallantry of the fighting rearguards, the divisions had managed to get as far as "Giessen" more or less intact. In spite of the deep snow they had even managed to take most of their heavy weapons with them. For two weeks they had succeeded in holding off the strong enemy and preserving the cohesion of the front line.

The troops accomplished superhuman feats. Frequently the vehicles could be started only after twelve to fifteen hours of extremely hard work. Small fires had to be lit underneath the motor vehicles to thaw out the frozen gear-boxes and transmissions. Even then nearly all the vehicles had to be towed by human labour.

Covering lines organized by the fighting formations kept the pursuing Soviets at bay while the rest of the troops got the withdrawal going. The key role was played by individual fighters. In deep snowdrifts they lay behind their machine-guns opposing the furious Soviet attacks. Their thin gloves were not enough to prevent their fingers from freezing off. They therefore wrapped their hands in rags and pieces of cloth. This, of course, made them too clumsy to

work the triggers of their machine-guns or machine pistols. They therefore wedged little sticks, twigs, or chips of wood from the charred beams of peasant cottages between the rags enveloping their fists, and with these worked the triggers of their weapons.

Thus the Corps on the right wing of Ninth Army "travelled" via "Augsburg" and "Bremen," "Colburg," "Dresden," "Essen," and "Frankfurt," until Hitler's hold-on order halted their systematic withdrawal long before "Königsberg."

The divisions of 3rd and 4th Panzer Groups had already stopped their withdrawal at the Ruza line. For that reason Ninth Army was now ordered to hold the continuation of this front line as far as the Volga.

Field-Mashal von Kluge, the new C-in-C Army Group Centre, demanded strict observation of this order. He instructed Ninth Army: "Everybody must hold on wherever he stands. Anyone failing to do so tears a hole in the line, a hole which can no longer be sealed."

The only faint ray of light in the order was the passage: "Disengagement from the enemy can be useful or purposeful only when it results in more favourable fighting conditions, and if possible in the formation of reserves." But the Field- Marshal immediately restricted this concession: "Any disengagement of units from division upward requires my personal authorization."

On 19th December 1941 Colonel-General Strauss arrived at the headquarters of General Schubert's XXIII Corps, which comprised 251st, 256th, 206th, 102nd, and 253rd Infantry Divisions, with a new order: "Not another step back."

Three days later the assault regiments of General Maslen-nikov's Soviet Thirty-ninth Army struck at the Corps' right wing with T-34s and tried to break through the line of the 256th Infantry Division from Saxony. Maslennikov wanted to reach Rzhev.

The Saxon regiments of 256th Infantry Division resisted desperately. They allowed the Russian tanks to roll past them, and from their holes in the snow shot up the Soviet infantry. Tank demolition squads of the artillery then tackled the T- 34s.

There was Second Lieutenant Falck of 1st Battalion, 256th Artillery Regiment, lying behind a snowdrift. For camouflage he had slipped on a home-made snow smock. A Soviet tank rumbled past him, spraying the ground with machine-gun fire.

That was Falck's moment. He leapt at the tank and swung himself up on its stern. Hanging by his fingers, he wriggled round the turret. He pulled the string of two egg-shaped hand-grenades, holding on to the gun-barrel with his right hand. He then leaned well forward and with his left slipped the grenades down the barrel with a vigorous push. He quickly dropped off the tank, into the soft, two-foot-deep snow. The first bang came at once, followed by a succession of explosions as of fireworks. The hand-grenades had done their job. The tank's ammunition was going up.

The line of 256th Infantry Division held on 22nd and 23rd December. It still held on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The temperature was 25 to 30 degrees below zero Centigrade, The sky was dark and cloudy, and the ground was shrouded by light flurries of snow. Visibility was less than 100 yards.

Out of this backdrop of a "Napoleonic winter" Russian tanks kept emerging like phantoms. German Panzerjägers often engaged the T-34s with their 3-7-cm. anti-tank guns at no more than six yards' range. If the tanks survived, then the anti-tank gunners were crushed. Frequently the 8-cm. AA combat groups of the Luftwaffe or the explosive charges used by daring individual fighters like Second Lieutenant Falck were the only salvation against T-34s.

By 29th December the men of 256th Infantry Division had been resisting a ten times superior enemy for seven days. By then they were holding only minor strongpoints— at road-forks, in forest clearings, on the edge of villages.

The Russians attacked also in the sector of the neighbouring division. Three Armies of Colonel-General Konev's "Kalinin Front" were battering at the German lines along the Volga bend. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Konev intended to strike via Rzhev to the Moscow motor highway, in order to link up with Zhukov's southern prong in

the rear of the German Army Group. Rzhev became a keypoint in the destinies of the Eastern Front.

By 31st December, the last day of 1941, the main fighting line of 256th Infantry Division had been torn open all over the place, in spite of support by VIII Air Corps. The Russians were infiltrating. The 206th Infantry Division, too, was finished. Its 301st Infantry Regiment was down to a few hundred men. On the same day the cohesion of Ninth Army's line was lost west of Staritsa. In the sector of 26th Infantry Division, north-west of the now burning town of Staritsa, the two battalions of 18th Infantry Regiment and what was left of 84th Infantry Regiment, together with 2nd Battalion of the Divisional Artillery Regiment, were holding out against an enemy coming at them from all directions.

The railway station of Staro-Novoye was also blazing fiercely. Christmas parcels, special Christmas rations, and the division's winter clothing, which had at long last arrived, were all going up in flames. All the troops were able to save was a dump of Swiss cheese. Everywhere, in all the peasant huts along the sector, there were piles of the large round cheeses. As the relieved men came in from outside they would carve themselves large chunks with their bayonets.

But twenty-four hours later the peasant huts and the cheeses had to be abandoned. The regiment had to establish a new switchline against enemy groups which had broken through six miles farther to the south-west, at Klimovo.

Aerial reconnaissance had reported a strong enemy column on the right wing of 256th Infantry Division, outside Molo- gino. Mologino was 19 miles from Rzhev. And in Rzhev were 3000 wounded.

Division received an order by radio from XXIII Corps to reinforce its right wing and to "hold on at all costs." The remnants of 476th and 481st Infantry Regiments flung themselves into the path of the Russians along the road.

Hitler's order "Ninth Army will not retreat another step" nailed down the Corps to the line reached on 3rd January 1942, outside Latoshino, east of Yeltsy.

On 31st December at 1300 hours Colonel-General Strauss had turned up at General Schubert's Corps Headquarters in Rzhev with the order: "Mologino must be defended to the last man." What other order could he give? Twenty minutes later, at 1325 to be exact, Lieutenant-General Kauffmann, commanding 256th Infantry Division, entered the room. He came straight from Mologino. He was as white as a sheet and half frozen. In a voice trembling with emotion he reported to his Army Commander-in-Chief: "Herr Generaloberst, my division is down to the combat strength of a regiment and is surrounded by Soviet ski troops. The men are at the end of their tether. They are just dropping with fatigue. They flop into the snow and die from exhaustion. What they are expected to do is sheer suicide. The young soldiers are turning on their officers, screaming at them: 'Why don't you just go ahead and kill us—it makes no odds to us who does us in.' Mologino is lost already."

Colonel-General Strauss stood petrified. Then he said slowly, "It is the Fuehrer's express order that we hold out. There is no other way than to hold on or to die." And turning to General Kauffmann he added, "You'd better drive to the fighting-line, to your men, Herr General—that's where your place is now." The General saluted without a word and left the room.

In point of fact, the situation at Mologino was not quite as desperate as Kauffmann had made out. In the afternoon of 31st December the remnants of the reinforced 1st Battalion, 476th Infantry Regiment, had been rushed into the town, which was still being stubbornly defended by Reconnaissance Detachment 256 under Major (Reserve) Mummert. The remaining units of the regiment were assigned places in the defensive positions planned west of, the town. However, by nightfall Siberian ski troops had occupied the forest between Mologino and the intended line of defence. What was left to be held? It was now merely a case of defending Mologino for as long as possible, thereby tying down the Russian forces and preventing them from interfering with the Corps' withdrawal. In fierce fighting the men of the Reconnaissance Detachment and of 1st Battalion repulsed the attacks of the Siberians. Frequently they would hold on to just a few isolated houses in the middle of the township. Then they would gain a little breathing space again by immediate counter-attacks.