Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (77 page)

Its sister regiment, the 141st Jägers, holding the southern part of the bridgehead, was not at first affected by the attacks, and could thus be drawn upon for counter-attacks to clear up enemy penetrations.

One regiment of the Soviet 12th Naval Brigade which had broken through the German lines was pounced upon and routed by the 3rd Battalion, 143rd Jäger Regiment, which had been held in reserve, in a counter-attack launched in hard frost and a blinding blizzard on Hill 263.5. Those who escaped ran straight into the fire of the German artillery.

Along the Arctic Ocean Stalin's winter offensive did not gain an inch of ground. This failure of an attack mounted by numerically superior, superbly equipped, and winter-trained troops proved that the terrain and climate represented an almost insuperable obstacle to any attacker faced by a determined opponent.

But Stalin was no more willing to accept this fact than Hitler. The danger threatening his Murmansk lifeline seemed too great to him. Its severance would have been a fatal blow to the entire Soviet war effort.

By employing all available forces Stalin therefore tried to eliminate that threat and annihilate the German Mountain Corps. No price could be too high provided only Murmansk was held.

In the battle of Kiev in the autumn of 1941, the greatest German battle of encirclement in the Eastern campaign, the German Armies, after weeks of fighting, captured or destroyed, approximately 900 tanks, 3000 guns, and about 10,000 to 15,000 motor vehicles. In the subsequent battle of the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets, the greatest battle of annihilation in the Eastern campaign, the Soviets lost 1250 tanks. That was when Hitler authorized his Reich Press Chief to announce that "the enemy will never recover from this blow."

In fact, the American armament supplies during 1942 almost completely made good the material losses of the Red Army. The decisive effect of American aid on the destinies of the war could not be revealed more clearly than by this fact.

The Western Powers soon discovered how to protect their convoys against the German U-boats in the Arctic Ocean and the German aircraft operating from airfields in Northern Norway and Northern Finland. Powerful naval forces would escort the huge convoys of thirty, forty, or even more merchant-ships right into Murmansk or into the White Sea. But they paid a heavy price for that lesson by the disaster which befell convoy PQ 17.

This famous convoy, at the same time, was a warning to the German High Command of the colossal volume of American aid that was being shipped to Russia's northern ports. In that sense PQ 17 was an important milestone in the war— for both sides.

Early in July 1942 a convoy of thirty-three transports, twenty-two of them American, steamed into the Northern Ocean. Almost the same number of naval units—cruisers, destroyers, corvettes, anti-aircraft vessels, submarines, and minesweepers—escorted the merchant armada, which was sailing in close order; its distant cover was provided by the British Home Fleet, with two battleships, one aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and fourteen destroyers.

On 4th July, as the convoy rounded Jan Mayen Island to turn into the Barents Sea, the British Admiralty in London received an urgent signal from an agent: "German surface units—the battleship
Tirpitz,
the armoured cruiser
Admiral Scheer,
and the heavy cruiser
Hipper,
as well as seven destroyers and three torpedo-boats—have put to sea from Al- tenfjord in Northern Norway."

That could only mean a full-scale attack on PQ 17 with greatly superior forces. The Home Fleet was too far away to arrive at the spot in time. The escort units were therefore ordered to take evasive action and order the convoy to

disperse. The merchantmen were to try to reach their destination singly.

That decision was a fatal mistake. The German High Seas Fleet had no intention of attacking PQ 17; indeed, fearing enemy aircraft carriers, the units presently returned to port.

The scattered convoy, however, abandoned by its shepherds, was presently attacked by Admiral Donitz's pack of U- boats and by bomber squadrons and torpedo aircraft under the "Air Chief Kirkenes," and in a dramatic battle lasting several days utterly destroyed. Twenty-four transports and rescue vessels were sunk.

The true weight of this blow can be judged only if one knows what lay in the holds of the sunken transports. War material lost included 3350 motor vehicles, 430 tanks, 210 aircraft, and 100,000 tons of other cargo. That was the equivalent of the booty taken in a medium-sized battle of annihilation, like the one of Uman.

The Allies learnt their lesson from this disaster. Never again did they send out their convoys without maximum cover by naval units and aircraft carriers. The result was that of 16-5 million tons of total American supplies dispatched to the Soviet Union 15 million tons reached their destination —most of it via Murmansk. These supplies included 13,000 tanks, 135,000 machine-guns, 100 million yards of uniform cloth, and 11 million pairs of Army boots.

But to return to the fighting for Murmansk. Towards the end of April 1942, after a lull of several months, Lieutenant- General Frolov, the C-in-C of the Soviet "Karelian Front," mounted his large-scale offensive with his Fourteenth Army. This offensive was intended to be decisive and to annihilate the German Mountain Corps which had been under the command of Lieutenant-General Schörner since January 1942. By means of a boldly conceived combined land and naval operation the Soviets wanted to crush the 6th Mountain Division in a big two-pronged pincer operation, reach Kirkenes and the ore-mines, and occupy Northern Finland.

The prelude was a frontal attack by the Soviet 10th Guards and 14th Rifle Divisions in the Litsa bridgehead. Concentrated artillery-fire, followed by a charge: at 0300 hours, in the milky light of the polar night, the Russians attacked in unending waves. At first they came in silence, then with shouts of "Urra."

Pounded by heavy shell-fire, smothered by a blizzard reducing visibility to a bare 10 yards, the men of the Austrian 143rd and 141st Jäger Regiments stood in their strongpoints, without yielding an inch. Whenever the Russians succeeded in penetrating the machine-gun and carbine fire and breaking into a strongpoint, they were overcome in hand-to-hand fighting.

For three days the Soviet 14th and 10th Divisions ran amok—then their strength was spent. They had not gained an inch of ground.

But General Frolov did not give up. He had another trump card. On 1st May six ski brigades, including the famous 31st Reindeer Brigade, circumvented the southern wing of the German line of strongpoints and made an enveloping attack against the rear of the 6th Mountain Division.

Simultaneously the replenished and reinforced Soviet 12th Naval Brigade with 10,000 to 12,000 men landed on the western coast of Motovskiy Bay. Under cover of gunfire by Soviet torpedo-boats the naval infantry—or marines— charged ashore, burst through the weak German covering line held by only two companies, and drove on against the Parkkina-Zapadnaya Litsa supply route. "Revenge for 28th December" was their slogan. And it looked as though they would get it.

The situation was extremely critical. General Schörner personally brought up rearward units, supply formations, and headquarters personnel to the threatened supply route. There he flung himself down alongside his Jägers, firing his carbine, directing the counter-attacks, and ceaselessly urging his men: "Hold on! We've got to gain time!"

He succeeded. Enough time was gained for the hurriedly summoned battalions of 2nd Mountain Division to be brought up from Kirkenes. On 3rd May, just before midnight, they moved into action—units of 136th and 143rd Jäger Regiments.

The heavy, costly fighting continued until 10th May, when General Frolov's marines were forced to withdraw. The Soviet naval units in Motovskiy Bay evacuated the remnants. The Soviet northern prong had been smashed.

The southern prong, with the 31st Reindeer Brigade at its centre, encountered the picket lines of 139th Jäger Regiment, along the Titovka river. The strongpoints of these experienced troops, who had been through the fighting for Narvik, held out. But the Soviets seeped through the front and with their reindeer formations threatened the Arctic Ocean road, the airfield, and the nickel-mines.

Schörner mounted a successful counterblow. Battalions of 137th and 141st Jäger Regiments, together with a mixed combat group of Reconnaissance Detachment 112 and Engineers Battalion 91, halted the attack and smashed the enemy.

But the Soviet High Command had another card up its sleeve—a dangerous card at that. But it was prevented from playing it. The fortunes of war intervened in Schemer's favour in a most terrible way.

Along the entirely unprotected southern flank of the German front, in the worst wilderness of the tundra, General Frolov had employed the Soviet 155th Rifle Division. It was to have given the German Mountain Corps its
coup de grâce.
But the Russians too were extended to capacity.

The 155th Division had not received their winter equipment in time. By entire companies the Red Army men froze to death in the tundra. Under vast heaps of snow, along the lines of their advance, they lay dead and buried. It was an appalling repetition of Napoleon's tragedy: of 6000 Russians only 500 reached the combat zone. They were so emaciated that the smallest German picket groups were able to smash them.

But in spite of all defensive successes the general balance-sheet of the campaign in the Far North was shattering. For lack of strength three offensive wedges of the German-Finnish Armies had ground to a standstill in the vastnesses between Finland's eastern frontier and the Murmansk railway.

The offensive of the Mountain Corps Norway had come to a halt in the bridgehead east of the Litsa.

General Feige's XXXVI Army Corps succeeded in taking Salla, in smashing the Soviet XLVI Corps, and in capturing the high ground of Voytya and Lysaya. But after that its offensive vigour was likewise spent.

The front of the Finnish III Corps under General Siilasvuo seized up west of Ukhta in a bridgehead east of the narrow neck of land between Lakes Topozero and Pya. The great objective, the Murmansk railway, though within arm's reach, was never attained.

One question inevitably arises: if it was impossible to seize Russia's vital lifeline from the Arctic Ocean to the Leningrad and Moscow fronts, why on earth were not the railway, the bridges, and the Murmansk transhipment installations put out of action by air-raids? The answer can be found in the records of the German Luftwaffe Command, and it is significant of the war in the East as a whole. The Luftwaffe was able to score only partial successes. Any prolonged interruption of the railway or extensive destruction of engineering works and power stations proved impossible. Why? Simply because the Luftwaffe lacked adequate forces. The Fifth Air Fleet operating on the Northern Front was being dissipated by the need to support too many operations at the same time: hence it was unable to make any concentrated major effort that might have promised success.

The fronts in the Far North had frozen rigid. Murmansk, the objective of the campaign, had not been reached. And Archangel, the finishing-point laid down in the plan for the war in the East, was a long way off.

PART SIX:
The Caucasus and the Oilfields

1. Prelude to Stalingrad

Halder drives to Hitler's Headquarters-Anxieties of the Chief of the General Staff-The Izyum bend-Balakleya and

Slav-yansk-Fuehrer Directive No. 41-"Case Blue"-Curtain up over the Crimea—Failure of a Russian Dunkirk—Mid- May south of Kharkov-"Fridericus" will not take place—Kleist's one-pronged armoured pincers—The road to death— 239,000 prisoners.

COLONEL-GENERAL Halder's car swung out of the Mauer Forest in East Prussia, where OKH, the High Command of Land Forces, was situated in a well-camouflaged spot, on to the road to Rastenburg. A spring gale was sweeping through the branches of the ancient beeches. It was whipping up the surface of the Mauer Lake into white caps, and it was driving the clouds so low over the ground that one almost expected to see them slit open by the tall stone cross on the hill where the military cemetery of Lötzen was situated.

It was the afternoon of 28th March 1942. Colonel-General Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff, was driving over to Hitler's Headquarters at the "Wolfsschanze," hidden in the forests of Rastenburg.

On the lap of his orderly officer lay a brief-case—at that moment perhaps the most valuable brief-case in the world. It contained the German General Staff's operational plan for 1942.

In his mind Halder once more rehearsed his proposals. The ideas, thoughts, and wishes voiced by Hitler as Com- mander-in-Chief of the Army and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces at the daily situation conferences had been laboriously written up by Halder into a carefully considered draft. The main feature of the plan of campaign for 1942 was a full-scale attack in the southern sector towards the Caucasus; its objective was the destruction of the bulk of the Russian forces between Donets and Don, the gaining of the passes across the Caucasus, and eventually the seizure of the vast oilfields by the Caspian.