Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (68 page)

14th January 1942. At Shanskiy Zavod I slept at the home of a woman partisan. Nearly half the village collaborated with the Germans. The partisans were not only not supported, but betrayed and opposed. I had to get up at three in the morning to get back to the front. It was difficult. I had slept on a warm stove. It was covered with white tiles which I had never come across before. I must confess it looked very good.

23rd January 1942. The Germans are in the village of Agroshevo, nine miles behind us. It's freezing hard. I had to rub my nose with snow several times—otherwise it would have frozen off. Some 50 per cent, of my men have frostbitten noses; in some of them gangrene is beginning to develop. By nightfall it was clear that we were surrounded. No supplies coming through. We are hungry.

25th January. "You know, Comrade Lieutenant," one of my men said to me yesterday, "when one gets really cold one becomes indifferent to freezing to death or being shot. One only has one wish—to die as quickly as possible." That's the exact truth. The cold drains the men of the will to fight.

26th January 1942. At midnight a breakout attempt was mounted towards Rubikhonov. The 4th Company tried to envelop the enemy from the left, with one machine-gun and three mortars. One mortar-shell hit the machine- gun crew of my No. 1 Platoon. Three men were wounded and three men killed. One of the wounded screamed, cried, and begged to be carried out of the fire. Another implored me to shoot him dead. In the open the frost was so hard that I could not bandage the man, because I would have had to undress him. I only had the choice between letting him freeze to death or bleed to death. The battalion is down to 100 men, including headquarters staff and supplies. In the main fighting-line only 40 to 50 men are left. Our strength is ebbing away. These damned Germans fight like the devil.

1st February 1942. Zass is no longer our regimental commander. I'm very pleased. The man was perpetually drunk. While drunk he would make idiotic decisions, and as a result of these we have lost a lot of men.

6th February 1942. Several men of the Ski Regiment were shot to-day because of pilfering, going absent without leave, and offences while on sentry duty.

8th February 1942. The Germans are attacking.

That is the last entry. Goncharov was killed in action near Papayevo, six miles north-west of Yukhnov, on 9th February 1942, fighting against formations of the Hessian 34th Infantry Division. His regiment was smashed.

The author of the second diary, Second Lieutenant V., was a very different man from Goncharov. He too was employed south-east of Vyazma. Facing him were units of the German 19th Panzer Division and the 3rd Motorized Infantry Division. Fanatical, ambitious, yet astonishingly clear-sighted, this young "Hero of the Soviet Union" is interesting source material for the study of the lower commands of the Red Army. Clearly this lieutenant had on several occasions averted dangerous situations for his regiment.

"The company's morale," he wrote on 7th February 1942, "is excellent—if it were not for the disastrous food situation. If only the men had enough to eat one could win any battle with them."

On 10th February we read:

I have become weak from this nomadic life of the past year. Yesterday I had an upset stomach from the bad bread and frozen potatoes. But I've got to remain in harness. Last time I was away from the company for twelve days all discipline went to hell. If only these damned supplies would get through! The men would charge into a rain of bullets without batting an eyelid. But they are hungry. They are losing their strength. The weapons, too, are getting rusty: we've got no lubricating oil. Yesterday I organized a meeting in a barn, together with the political commissar. I explained why fascist prisoners must be allowed to remain alive—as a source of information.

I intended to submit my application for Party membership since I believed we would go into action to-day. I shall only hand if in just before a battle, so that no one would suspect me of seeking personal advantage.

19th February 1942. Yesterday I handed in my application for Party membership, to become a Bolshevik. In the evening I was ordered to go out with only my sub-machine-gunners and take the forest which 3rd Company had been unable to take. It's a formalistic plan. But orders are orders. I'm off in an hour.

The entry after the attack reads:

The men stood up well, and the attack was successful. Ten Germans were killed and five taken prisoner. Four of these we had to shoot because they refused to come back with us. My thirty men received spirits and several tins of cigarettes, biscuits, sausage, and butter from the CO's personal-disposal supplies.

24th February 1942. As from to-day I am a probationer for Party membership. I'm beginning to get enthusiastic about the war. I would have made quite a good partisan.

25th February 1942. To-day sapper-instructor B. arrived. When he was told that he was in the front-line he got very dejected and asked Gladev to play a funeral march to him on his guitar. Gladev obliged. Fifteen minutes later B. was killed. Fate? Or do the bullets seek out the cowards?

The bulk of our active officers went to Officers' Training Courses only for the sake of the uniforms and the gold collar-flashes. They are better at marching than tactical knowledge, and better at making reports than carrying out orders. At best they know how to charge and be killed.

26th February 1942. I had my photograph taken to-day for the Party papers. We are being sent on a special mission. My company is ready for action. I hope they are not sending us in in daylight: that would be dangerous and stupid. The Red Army must fight at night.

27th February 1942. I had to carry out a court-martial sentence—an execution. In response to my question three men volunteered at once. The two culprits had hidden themselves while out on patrol and had shirked action. Silly fools! They thought they could escape honourable death and now had to die ignominiously.

4th March 1942. At last a letter from my wife: I keep re-reading it. Letters from home bring joy and pain.

This ambiguous sentence is the last entry. It dates from the time when Soviet hopes of a victory on the Central Front were evaporating.

From this time also dates the letter of a young Russian. Addressed to a friend, it was found in his pocket, unfinished, when he was killed near Dorogobuzh. It is quoted here for all those, wherever they may be, who lost friends in the war. It may even be that its reproduction decades after it was written will enable it at last to get to its addressee. It reads:

Greetings, dear friend! Greetings and also farewell—because I am no longer alive. This letter will be sent to you only in the event of my death. But that day is not distant— I can feel it. I do not know how long this letter will remain in my pocket, crumpled, but sooner or later it will reach you to remind you for a last time of your schoolmate.

I feel an urge to say a great deal to you on this final occasion—a great deal. I want to pour out my whole sadness of unfulfilled hopes, to communicate to you my fear of this unknown death. Yes, dear friend, fear—for I am afraid of what comes after death.

I do not know how and where I shall die, whether I shall be hit by the bullet of a German machine-gunner, torn apart by an aerial bomb, or killed by a shell-burst—but each one of these possibilities terrifies me equally. I have seen hundreds of men killed. I have repeatedly heard the rattle of death in the throats of comrades with whom I had cheerfully eaten a meal out of the same mess-tin a little while before.

I have met death face to face many times. Once a shell-splinter tore my cap off my head. Another time a bullet went through my mess-tin so that my soup ran out and I was left hungry. But never before have I been so afraid as now.

Look about you—spring is coming. The six letters of this word keep disturbing me. For this is no ordinary spring— this spring I shall be twenty. Twenty years old—almost a man. And to die just when nature is smiling upon you, when your heart pounds with joy because of a bird's song or the gentle caress of the moist spring breeze. . . .

It was spring when this letter was written. But at the time when the German gunner Burmeister was aiming his light field howitzer at Lyudinovo, when the unending columns of sledges were evacuating the wounded from Sukhinichi, when the machine pistols stuttered at the Ugra bend, and when all along the front shouts were going up: "Russian tanks breaking through!" snow was still lying several feet deep on the battlefields of the Eastern Front.

But the winter battle had already been decided. True, the men in the front line did not yet realize this. They were still engaged in exceedingly heavy defensive fighting. But the maps at the Army headquarters were already revealing the truth: the great crisis at Army Group Centre was over.

Mobile Soviet cavalry formations continued to advance as far as Dorogobuzh, east of Smolensk, during the next few weeks, but these were the last waves of a drive that had lost its momentum. The Soviets had reached the end of their offensive strength. They had failed to reach the strategic objective of their winter battle—to destroy Army Group Centre and thus cause the entire German Central Front to collapse.

The turning-point had been due to two things. First, the Soviet High Command had bitten off too much. Operational leadership, conditions, and supplies for their offensive Armies had not been up to such far-reaching aims.

The second reason
was
the outstanding achievements of the German formations in denying the Soviets their success and preventing disaster. In terms of discipline, gallantry, hardships, and self-sacrifice, officers and men had surpassed anything previously known. Military organization had remained intact and capable of functioning in spite of the troops being over-extended, in spite of hunger and inadequate clothing. That was how the situation was saved at the threatened Central Front in the winter of
1941-42.
That alone ensured the success of Hitler's hold-on order and of the tactics of hanging on to vital reinforced positions.

Thus Rzhev was saved and Sukhinichi relieved. At the last moment and with the last ounce of strength the enemy was kept off the Smolensk-Moscow motor highway. The encirclement of Army Group Centre was prevented. The great crisis on the Central Front was, on the whole, overcome.

But what was the situation like in the area of Army Group North? How did the troops on the Leningrad Front and on the Volkhov river survive the Soviet winter offensive?

4. Assault on the Valday Hills

The Soviet 57th Striking Brigade charges across the Volkhov-Rendezvous: Clearing Erika-Two Soviet Armies in the bag-Demyansk: 100,000 Germans surrounded—An unusual Order of the Day by Count Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt—A pocket is supplied from the air—Operation " Bridge-building"-Kholm, a fortress without guns.

THE point where the Tigoda river runs into the Volkhov was the junction between the German 61st and 21st Infantry Divisions. These junctions were always vulnerable and a favourite target for Russian attacks. The Russians had found from experience that the overlapping command pattern along these junctions made it more difficult to clear up any penetrations. Who was responsible for sealing off a penetration along a junction? No commander ever was particularly anxious to do so himself; he would much rather leave the responsibility to his neighbour. For that reason special "junction reserves" had been a customary thing in the First World War. But the weak German Eastern Front was only rarely able to afford such a luxury during the winter of 1941-42.

"That damned junction, of course," Colonel Lohmeyer cursed as, on 3rd January 1942, he received the curt and clear- cut order from the command of 291st Infantry Division: "Enemy forces which have penetrated between 61st and 21st Infantry Divisions at the mouth of the Tigoda must be thrown back and the main fighting-line restored."

The East Prussians of the Elk Division had been withdrawn from the line only a few days previously for rest and replenishment. But what was the use?

With his well-tried 505th Infantry Regiment and part of an SS Battalion of the 9th ("Death's Head") SS Regiment, newly arrived from Finland, Lohmeyer flung himself against the Soviet ski battalions which had penetrated at the mouth of the Tigoda. It was a fantastic kind of fighting in chest-deep snow, 42 degrees below, in thick forest matted with impenetrable undergrowth.

In the early evening of 4th January Colonel Lohmeyer, the hero of Liepaja, was killed in a forest by an enemy mortar- bomb. The news spread like wildfire and was a profound shock to the regiment. Colonel Hesse took over command and with the angry battalions of 505th Infantry Regiment cleared up the Soviet penetration.