Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (6 page)

And where was Lohmeyer? This question had become a daily routine at Eighteenth Army and at 291st Division headquarters.

In the evening of 24th June the colonel, with his 505th Infantry Regiment, was seven miles from Liepaja. On 25th June he tried to take the town by a surprise attack. The infantrymen and sailors of a naval assault detachment, under Lieutenant-Commander von Diest, subordinated to Lohmeyer, charged across the narrow neck of land against the fortifications. But they did not get through. A determined assault made by Lieutenant-Commander Schenke with men of Naval Artillery Detachment 530 likewise failed to achieve any success. Before Lohmeyer was able to regroup his

forces and before the other two regiments of the division could be brought up, the garrison of Liepaja launched a counter-attack. Combat units supported by tanks mounted relief attacks, some of them right up to the German gun positions. On 27th June the Russians staged a massive sortie, actually tore a gap in the German encircling front, broke through to the coast road in the strength of several combat groups, and brought about a critical position on the German front. The gap was closed only with great difficulty. Eventually, about noon, the battalions of 505th Infantry Regiment and some infantry assault detachments succeeded in penetrating the southern part of the defences. On the following day assault units fought their way into the town.

Furious street fighting continued for the next forty-eight hours. The cunningly camouflaged Russian machine-gun posts in the barricaded buildings were wiped out only when heavy infantry guns, field howitzers, and mortars had been brought up.

The defence of the town was magnificently organized. The individual Soviet soldier was well trained and fought with fanatical bravery. The Russian troops regarded it as perfectly natural that they should be sacrificed in order to enable the higher command to gain time, or to provide the prerequisite for regroupings or break-outs. The ruthless sacrifice of detachments in order to save larger units was first revealed at Liepaja as a basic part of Soviet military thinking. Its application caused heavy losses to the German attackers: at Liepaja, for instance, the commanding officers of both naval units were killed.

At last, on 29th June, the naval fortress was conquered. The infantry of Eighteenth Army had scored its first great victory. But the victory also held a bitter lesson: Liepaja was the first demonstration of what the Red Army soldier was capable of in defending firm positions, provided he had a cool, resolute head to lead him, and provided the cumbersome Soviet chain of command had time enough to organize the defence.

In contrast to this self-sacrificing defence of Liepaja the resistance in Daugavpils was half-hearted, confused, and panicky.

In the early light of 26th June the spearhead of the Lusatian 8th Panzer Division was speeding along the great highroad which runs straight from Kaunas to Leningrad. The tracks clanked, the engines roared. The tank commanders stood propped up in the open turrets, their field-glasses at their eyes. For the past four days they had been rolling like this across hills and through marshy lowlands, breaking any resistance they encountered, keeping on the move, through forests, sand, swamps, and Russian lines. Right through two of Kuznetsov's Armies. A distance of 190 miles.

There were only 5 miles left to Daugavpils. Then only 4 miles. It was uncanny.

In the leading tank the commander's hand cut through the air and then came down to the right—the signal for "Close up on my right and halt." As the armoured spearhead came to a stop a strange column overtook it—four captured Soviet lorries, the drivers in Russian uniforms. The tank commanders in their turrets grinned knowingly. They knew what this mysterious convoy was: men of the Brandenburg Regiment, a special unit under Admiral Canaris, the head of German Military Intelligence.

Under the tarpaulins sat First Lieutenant Knaak with his men. Their task was as fantastic as it was simple—drive into the town, seize the bridges over the Daugava, prevent the Russians from blowing them up, and hold them until 8th Panzer Division had fought its way up to join them.

Knaak's lorries rolled past the armoured spearhead. They climbed the slight hill. Down there was the river-bend and the town. And down there were the bridges. Across the road bridge in the centre of Daugavpils traffic was flowing as in peacetime. Across the big railway bridge a locomotive chugged amid puffs of steam. The lorries bumped along towards the town. Past the Soviet outposts. The drivers in their Russian uniforms exchanged jokes with the pickets. "Where are the Germans?" the Russians asked. "Oh, a long way back!" On they moved. Into the suburb of Griva. The time was shortly before 0700. Threading their way through the local traffic, passing the tram-cars, Knaak's lorries rolled on. In front of them lay the great road bridge. Foot hard down on the accelerator! Forward!

The first lorry got across. But as the second approached the Russian sentry on the bridge tried to stop it. When it failed to halt it came under machine-gun fire. The platoon commander shouted, "Get out, boys, and let them have it!"

The exchange of fire had aroused the guard at the far end. They now opened up with machine-guns on the leading lorry as it approached. But Knaak managed to get his men out. The Soviet bridge guard were forced to take cover. The second platoon managed to get on to the railway bridge, overcome the sentries, and cut the detonator wires. But through an accident part of the demolition charge went off nevertheless, wrecking a short stretch of the bridge.

On the high ground outside the town the observers of General Brandenberger's armoured spearhead had closely watched Knaak's operation. The moment the gun flashes were seen the commander of the leading tank slammed the hatch down. "We're off!" he shouted into his microphone, quite unmilitarily. "We're off!" his driver echoed. Secure hatches! Turret at 12 o'clock! HE shell! They raced into the town.

At 0800 hours General von Manstein received the signal, "Surprise of Daugavpils town and bridges successful. Road bridge intact. Railroad bridge slightly damaged by demolition charge, but passable."

First Lieutenant Wolfram Knaak and five men had been killed, the remaining twenty under his command had all been wounded. The officer in charge of the Soviet guard party by the road was taken prisoner. Under interrogation he said, "I had no order to blow up the bridge. Without such an order I could not take the responsibility. But there was no one about whom I could have asked."

Here we find revealed a decisive weakness in the lower echelons of the Soviet military command, a weakness we are to encounter many times yet. But in a war no one cares about reasons. The main thing was: Manstein had pulled it off. An armoured thrust without parallel had succeeded. True, there was some fighting in Daugavpils, but Daugavpils was no Liepaja. The commander of the Russian troops ordered a few demolitions and the burning of all stores, and then withdrew his forces. Soviet artillery bombarded the town. Soviet bomber squadrons appeared in the sky, persistently and stubbornly trying to destroy the bridges with bombs at this late stage. German army ÄA gunners and the fighter pilots of First Air Fleet had a field day and ensured the victory of the Daugavpils bridge.

But what use is a victory if it is not exploited? The wide Daugava had been crossed and the vital railway centre between Vilna and Leningrad was in German hands. The 8th Panzer Division and 3rd Motorized Infantry Division were on the far bank of the river. What must be done next?

What indeed? Was Manstein to push on? Was he to take advantage of the enemy's hopeless confusion and assume that he was unable to put in the field any superior or well-led forces against the phantom-like German tank thrust? Or should he adopt the textbook solution, the safety-first solution, and halt until the infantry came up? That was the question—the question which would decide the fate of Leningrad.

One would have thought that Hitler would have chosen the bold alternative. Indeed, on closer scrutiny, there was no real choice. The next move had to follow logically from the entire plan of campaign. And this campaign in the East was based on boldness and gamble. Hitler proposed to crush by rapid assault a gigantic empire which, to his certain knowledge, had over 200 combat-ready divisions in its western part alone. And behind these divisions? Beyond the Urals was unknown territory about which only vague reports were available—reports of gigantic industrial plants, enormous armament industries, and inexhaustible human reserves. Hence this military gamble could be concluded successfully, if at all, only if the oak was felled by lightning. And that lightning had to be swift, powerful, surprise blows straight at the political and military heart of the Soviet empire. The enemy must not be allowed to collect himself or to deploy his strength. The very first days of this war had provided a lesson and a warning: wherever the enemy command was paralysed by surprise, victory was certain; wherever it was given time to resist, its troops would fight like the devil.

This realization and the whole logic of Operation Barbarossa therefore demanded that the bold advance should be maintained. Manstein realized this clearly. The enemy must not be given the opportunity to bring up his reserves against identified and stationary Germany spearheads. If he was allowed to do so, then—but only then—would the open flanks of numerically small armoured units deep in enemy territory be exposed to mortal danger. So long as the push was kept up Kuznetsov would have to throw into battle whatever he had to hand.

Long ago Guderian had formulated the basic commandment of armoured warfare: "Not driblets but mass." Man-stein

added a second commandment: "The safety of an armoured formation in the enemy's rear depends on its continued movement."

Of course, it was risky to have Manstein's corps operating alone north of the Daugava while Reinhardt's XLI Panzer Corps and the entire left wing of Colonel-General Busch's Sixteenth Army were still over sixty miles farther back— but without risks this campaign could not be waged at all, let alone won. The enemy had shown himself not too sensitive to the German armoured wedges—in other words, he had not taken back his other fronts but merely concentrated what units he could scrape together against Manstein's Daugava crossing. But this was not because the Soviet High Command was prepared to accept the swift armoured wedges driven into its lines, but because it was in total ignorance of the true position. Neither Kuznetsov nor the High Command in the Kremlin had a clear picture of the situation. This state of affairs should have been exploited.

However, the German High Command failed to understand the logic of its own strategy. Hitler suddenly became jittery

—afraid of his own courage. It became clear that the man who based his plans so largely on boldness, recklessness, and luck was in practice the first to point an anxious finger at the exposed flanks on the situation map. He lacked confidence in the military skill of his generals. Against Hitler the German High Command could not win its point. Thus it was that Manstein received the orders: "Halt. Daugavpils bridgehead will be defended. Arrival of Sixteenth Army's left wing will be awaited."

The argument that supply considerations and enemy attacks made this halt unavoidable is, of course, quite correct in terms of a conservative general-staff assessment of the situation—but if that were to be made the yardstick, then surely Manstein should not have crossed the Daugava at all, nor, two weeks later, Guderian the Dnieper, No, Kilter's halt sprang from anxiety and even more from uncertainty whether he should first strike at Leningrad or at Moscow. It was this indecision that had halted Manstein. And this halt was Leningrad's first salvation. Like the rumbling of distant thunder the commanders in the field became aware of a crisis between Fuehrer and High Command, of the issue of Moscow versus Leningrad, of that crisis from which the great mistakes were to spring later, those mistakes which, one by one, were nails in the coffin of the German armies in the East.

For six days Manstein's Panzer Corps was made to stand still. For three of these days it was a long way in front of the Army Group. What was bound to happen happened. Kuznetsov scraped together what reserves he could lay hands on. From the Pskov area. From Moscow. From Minsk. He flung everything he had against Manstein's advanced positions. At long last, on 2nd July, when the green light was given for the resumption of the thrust, with Leningrad as the distant objective, valuable time had been lost. Time which the Soviet High Command had used to steady its panicking divisions and to prepare the defence of the Stalin Line, the old and often well-built defences along the former Russian- Estonian frontier, between Lake Peipus and Sebezh. The second round began.

And how did the operation go in the south during these first few days?

Field-Marshal von Rundstedt and the commander of his First Panzer Group, Colonel-General von Kleist, had drawn the most difficult position of the campaign. The Russian southern front, protecting the Ukrainian grain areas, had been organized in particular strength and with great care. Colonel-General Kirponos, who commanded the Soviet Army Group South-west Front, had deployed his four Armies in two groups in considerable depth. Well-camouflaged lines of pillboxes, heavy field-artillery positions, and cunning obstacles turned the first German leap across the frontier into a costly operation.

The divisions of Seventeenth Army under General of Infantry von Stülpnagel had to nibble their way through the lines of pillboxes before Lvov and Przemysl. Reichenau's Sixth Army crossed the Styr in the face of stubborn opposition.