Read Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 Online
Authors: Paul Carell
In the centre of Rostov meanwhile fierce street fighting continued, and did not, in fact, cease for several days. The operation is described in an account by General Alfred Reinhardt, who, then a colonel, commanded 421st Infantry Regiment, 125th Infantry Division, in July 1942. He describes the savage street fighting, house by house, right across a barricaded metropolis—an operation which has probably never been equalled. It was the kind of fighting which the German troops would have encountered in Moscow or Leningrad.
By evening of 23rd July, a scorching hot day, the battalions of the Swabian 421st Infantry Regiment had gained the northern part of Rostov. Panzer companies and riflemen of 13th and 22nd Panzer Divisions as well as of the "Viking" SS Panzer Grenadier Division had reached the Don to both sides of the city. They were also fighting hard in the city centre, but were unable to pierce the heavily fortified built-up area, especially as they lacked the necessary infantry for that kind of operation. But the city had to be penetrated if the great Don bridge was to be gained for a drive to the south, towards the Caucasus.
NKVD troops and sappers had barricaded Rostov and were now defending it to the last bullet. That speaks for itself. This force, the political guard of the Bolshevik regime, Stalin's SS, the backbone of the State police and the secret service, was in its own way a crack force—fanatical, brilliantly trained, tough to the point of cruelty, familiar with all ruses of war, and unconditionally loyal. Above all, the NKVD troops were past masters at street fighting. After all, as the guard of the regime against possible rebellion, that was their main field of action.
What these street fighting experts had done to Rostov defies imagination. The streets had been torn open, and paving- stones had been piled up to make barricades several feet thick. Side-streets were blocked off by massive brick strong- points. Steel girders planted in the ground and buried mines made any sudden rushing of defence posts impossible. The entrances of buildings had been bricked up; windows had been sandbagged to make firing positions; balconies had been turned into machine-gun nests. On the roofs were well-camouflaged hideouts for NKVD snipers. And in the basements lay tens of thousands of Molotov cocktails, those primitive but highly effective weapons against tanks, simply bottles filled with petrol and touched off with phosphorus or other chemicals which burst into flame upon contact with air.
Wherever a front door had not been bricked up one could be certain that a hidden booby-trap would go off the moment the door-handle was depressed. Or else a fine trip-wire stretched over the threshold would touch off a load of dynamite.
This was no ground for armoured formations, and one that offered little prospect of quick victory. True, the Panzer troops had made the first, decisive breach. But the city centre of Rostov was the battlefield of the assault parties.
Laboriously they had to clear house after house, street after street, pillbox after pillbox.
Reinhardt's Swabian troops got to work against this skilfully fortified area. But the colonel tackled his cunning opponents with his own medicine—with equal cunning, with precision, and with fierce resolution.
The 1st Battalion, 421st Infantry Regiment, under Major Ortlieb and the 3rd Battalion under Captain Winzen were divided into three assault companies each. Each company was given one heavy machine-gun, one anti-tank gun, one infantry gun, and one light field howitzer for the main streets.
The direction of the drive was north to south. The city plan was divided into precise operation sectors. Each assault company was allowed to advance only as far as a fixed line across the north-south road alloted to it, a line drawn for all companies right across the town plan from west to east—the A, B, C, and D lines.
Next, the whole district had to be mopped up and contact made with the assault groups on both sides. Each unit had to wait along these lines until its neighbours had come abreast of it, and until orders for the resumption of the attack came down from regiment. In this way the six assault companies always fought in line abreast, and if any company should find itself making faster headway it could not be attacked from the flank by the enemy provided it stuck to the rules. In this way the operation in the thick maze of buildings and streets remained firmly under control from the top.
As soon as the assault companies of 1st and 3rd Battalions had cleared their allotted district Reinhardt immediately sent in six more assault wedges of 2nd Battalion. Their task was a "second picking over"—to search every building from rooftop to cellar. All civilians, including women and children, were taken from the fighting area to special collection points.
No one who might throw a hand-grenade or fire a machine pistol was left in the buildings behind the assault troops. The companies fighting their way forward had to be safe from their rear.
The plan worked with precision. It was probably only thanks to it that Rostov was cleared so quickly of the stubbornly resisting enemy forces—in a mere fifty hours of savage and relentless fighting.
In his account of the operation General Reinhardt reports: "The fighting for the city centre of Rostov was a merciless struggle. .The defenders would not allow themselves to be taken alive: they fought to their last breath; and when they had been bypassed unnoticed, or wounded, they would still fire from behind cover until they were themselves killed. Our own wounded had to be placed in armoured troop carriers and guarded—otherwise we would find them beaten or stabbed to death."
Fighting was fiercest in the Taganrog road, which led straight to the Don bridge. There the German attack was held up repeatedly because it was impossible to pin-point the well-camouflaged NKVD men behind their machine-guns.
Dust, smoke, and showers of sparks from the blazing buildings enveloped the street. Keeping close to the walls of the houses, Major Ortlieb ran along the pavement to the big barricade in front. From there he waved the light field howitzer forward. "To start with, we'll shave all those balconies off."
The anti-tank gun was hauled up the road, pulled by men at the double, and was likewise brought into position along the barricade. Finally an infantry piece was also brought forward.
Then began the bombardment of "suspicious points"— chimneys, basements, and sandbagged balconies. Reinhardt himself came running up to the front line. He stood behind the foremost barricade in the main street, his binoculars at his eyes. Time and again bjirsts from a heavy Maksim machine-gun swept over the pavement.
"Busing," Reinhardt called out. First Lieutenant Busing, commanding the 13th Company, came crawling over to' the general, pressed flat to the ground. Reinhardt pointed at a balcony on the second floor of a building. "Over there, Busing—that balcony with the orange boxes. You can see a wisp of dust there now. That's where the Russians are. Let's have that balcony off!"
Busing hurried back to his heavy infantry gun. "Fire!"
The second round brought the balcony down. Among the confusion of masonry they could see the Russians and their machine-gun hurled down to the street. Eventually Reinhardt brought up a few tanks of 13th Panzer Division to support his infantry. They zigzagged along the street, from one side to the other. Under their cover several small assault parties worked their way forward.
Things were worst in the old town and in the harbour district. There the streets, until then more or less straight and regular, degenerated into a maze of crooked lanes. It was no place for infantry guns: even machine-guns were no use there.
It was a case of hand-to-hand fighting. The men had to crawl right up to basement windows, doors, and the corners of houses. They could hear the enemy breathe. They could hear them slam their bolts home. They could even hear them whisper among themselves. They took a firm grip on their machine pistols—they leapt to their feet—a rapid burst of fire—and down they flopped behind cover again.
On the other side of the street a flame-thrower roared. Hand-grenades crashed. The cry of a wounded man rang eerily through the ghostly street—the long-drawn-out cry of pain: "Stretcher, stretcher. . . ."
The wooden houses were consumed by fire. The pungent smoke made fighting more difficult, even though the wind was favourable and drove the smoke towards the Don. By the time the D line was reached it was dark. Only a few hundred yards divided the companies of 421st Infantry Regiment from the combat groups of the Panzer formations of LVII Panzer Corps on the northern bank of the Don to both sides of the road bridge to Bataysk. Night fell. The men were lying among wooden huts, tool-sheds, and heaps of rubble. The night was riddled with machine-gun fire. Flares lit up the spectral scene as bright as day for seconds at a time.
Sergeant Rittmann with his platoon of llth Company lay in a shed in the harbour. The Russians were firing from a weighing-shed.
"Now," Rittmann commanded. With three men he overwhelmed the Russian machine-gun in the weighing-shed. Then they raced on, flinging hand-grenades to the right and left. Towards 2300 hours Rittmann and his men reached the bank of the Don and dug in.
On 25th July before daybreak the assault companies of 125th Infantry Division resumed the attack. But suddenly progress was easy. The last enemy units on the river-bank had withdrawn across the Don during the night. At 0530 hours all the assault companies of the regiment had reached the Don. Rostov was fully in German hands. But Rostov was important as the gateway to the Caucasus only if the gate itself was held by the Germans—the bridge over the Don and the four miles of causeway across the swampy ground which were the continuation of the bridge and which presently became the great bridge into Bataysk. Beyond Bataysk was the plain—a clear road for the drive to the south, towards the Caucasus.
That gateway was finally opened by the "Brandenburg" Regiment, that mysterious, much-maligned, but incredibly brave special formation of daredevil volunteers, in co-operation with units of 13th Panzer Division.
On 24th July the Motor-cycle Battalion 43 was the first German formation to cross the Don. Second Lieutenant Eb- erlein, commanding 1st Company, had been ferried across the river with twenty-eight volunteers by sappers of 13th Panzer Division. Simultaneously, though at a different point, half a company of the "Brandenburg" also crossed the Don. Their intention was to capture the important bridges outside Bataysk—above all, the long causeway on the
southern bank of the Don, a causeway consisting of a multitude of lesser bridges and carrying the only road to the south.
During the night of 24th/25th July 1942 First Lieutenant Grabert with his half-company charged along the causeway towards Bataysk. The handful of men of Motor-cycle Battalion 43 under Second Lieutenant Eberlein were already in position in front of the big bridge, in order to keep down the Soviet bridge guard.
But the motor-cyclists were scarcely able to raise their heads from the mud: the moment they moved they came under fire from the piers of the railway bridge about 200 yards on their left, where the Soviets had a machine-gun in position. There was also mortar-fire. Lynx-eyed, the men were watching out for the Russian muzzle flashes in order to aim their own mortars.
At 0230 hours Lieutenant Grabert raced on to the bridge with his leading section. The men by the machine-guns were under cover, their fingers taut on their triggers. But nothing stirred on the Russian side. Like phantoms Grabert and his section flitted across the bridge, on both sides of the roadway, followed at short intervals by the other two platoons.
Now the Russians had noticed something. Their machine-guns opened up; mortars plopped. The German covering party immediately put up all the fire they could. Everything depended on whether Grabert would get through.
He did get through, overwhelmed the strong Soviet bridge guard, and established a small bridgehead. Throughout twenty-four hours he held it against all enemy counterattacks.
The companies and their commanders literally sacrificed themselves for the sake of the bridge. Lieutenant Grabert and Second Lieutenant Hiller of the "Brandenburg" were both killed in action. NCOs and men were mown down in large numbers by the infernal fire of the Soviets.
The Stukas arrived in the nick of time. Then the first reinforcements came up over the causeway and the bridge. By its last pier lay Siegfried Grabert—dead. Some 200 yards farther on, in a swampy hole, lay Second Lieutenant Hiller.
Next to him, his hand still clutching his first-aid kit, lay a Medical Corps NCO, with a bullet-hole in his head. But on 27th July the Panzer and rifle companies of LVII Panzer Corps were moving over the bridges towards the south, towards the Caucasus.
A blockhouse near Vinnitsa-Fuehrer Directive No. 45-By assault boat to Asia—Manychstroy and Martinovka—The approaches to the Caucasus-Chase through the Kuban-Mack-ensen takes Maykop-ln the land of the Circassians.
IN July 1942 the Fuehrer's Headquarters were deep in Russia, near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. The staffs of the High Command of the Army, with the Chief of the General Staff, had taken up quarters on the edge of the town of Vinnitsa. For Hitler and his operations staff the Todt Organization had built a number of well-camouflaged blockhouses under the tall pines of an extensive forest. Hitler had moved in on 16th July. The weather was scorching hot, and the shade of the fragrant pines brought no relief. Even at night the heat was sweltering and heavy. The climate did not agree with Hitler, who was for the most part bad-tempered, aggressive, and deeply mistrustful of every one. Generals, officers, and political liaison personnel among Hitler's entourage all agree that the period of his stay in the Ukraine was full of tensions and conflicts. The code name for the Fuehrer's Headquarters near Vinnitsa was "Werewolf." And, indeed, Hitler raged like a werewolf in his small blockhouse.
On 23rd July Colonel-General Halder was summoned to report. Hitler was suffering terribly from the heat, and the news from the front made his temper even worse. Victory succeeded victory, the Russians were in flight—but, oddly enough, the expected large-scale annihilation of enemy forces had not come off between Donets and Don, either at Staryy Oskol or at Millerovo. Nor, for that matter, did it seem to be taking shape at Rostov. What was the reason?
What was happening?
"The Russians are systematically avoiding contact, my Fuehrer," Halder argued.
"Nonsense." Hitler cut him short. "The Russians are in full flight, they're finished, they are reeling from the blows we
have dealt them during the past few months."
Halder remained calm, pointed at the map which lay on the big table, and contradicted: "We have not caught the bulk of Timoshenko's forces, my Fuehrer. Our encircling operations at Staryy Oskol and Millerovo were punches at nothing. Timoshenko has pulled back the bulk of his Army Group, as well as a good part of his heavy equipment, across the Don to the east, into the Stalingrad area, or else southward, into the Caucasus. We've no idea what reserves he has left there."
"You and your reserves! I'm telling you we didn't catch Timoshenko's fleeing masses in the Staryy Oskol area, or later at Millerovo, because Bock spent far too much time at Voronezh. We were too late to intercept the southern group north of Rostov, as it was flooding back in panic, simply because we wheeled our fast troops south too late and because Seventeenth Army began frontally pushing them back east too soon. But I'm not having that happen to me again. We've now got to unravel our fast troops in the Rostov area and employ our Seventeenth Army, as well as First Panzer Army and also Fourth Panzer Army, with the object of coming to grips with the Russians south of Rostov, in the approaches to the Caucasus, encircling them and destroying them. Simultaneously, Sixth Army must administer the final blow to the remnants of the Russian forces which have fled to the Volga, to the area of Stalingrad. At neither of these two vital fronts must we allow the reeling enemy any respite at all. But the main weight must be with Army Group A, with the attack against the Caucasus."
Colonel-General Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff, tried in vain in his conversation with Hitler on 23rd July 1942 to disprove the Fuehrer's thesis. He implored Hitler not to split his forces and not to strike at the Caucasus until after Stalingrad had been taken and the German flank and rear on the Don, as well as between Don and Volga, sufficiently protected.
Hitler brushed aside these misgivings of the General Staff. He was confident of victory and completely obsessed by the belief that the Red Army had already been decisively defeated. This is borne out by several more positively dumbfounding decisions. He transferred the bulk of Field-Marshal von Manstein's Eleventh Army with five divisions from the Crimea, where it was standing by to operate against the Caucasus, all the way up to Leningrad in order to take this irritating fortress at long last.
But that was not all. Hitler also pulled out the magnificently equipped SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Leibstan-darte" from the Eastern Front and transferred it to France for rest and reorganization into a Panzer Division. Yet another crack formation from the southern front, the Motorized Infantry Division "Grossdeutschland," was similarly withdrawn from the fighting-line shortly afterwards. Hitler commanded that as soon as the Manych Dam was reached this division was to be pulled out of the front and transferred to France to remain at the disposal of the High Command.
This decision was partly due to the shortage of motor-fuel on the southern front. The principal reason, however, which Hitler advanced for these decisions was that, according to his information, the invasion of Western Europe was imminent. It was an incomprehensible and fatal mistake. These seven divisions, quite needlessly, withdrawn from the southern front would certainly have been enough to avert the catastrophe of Stalingrad.
Halder was bitter as he returned to his headquarters on the edge of Vinnitsa from his interview on 23rd July. He wrote in his diary: "His persistent underestimation of the enemy's potential is gradually taking on grotesque forms and is beginning to be dangerous."
But Hitler stuck to his mistaken assessment of the situation, and summed up his ideas in a fundamental "Fuehrer Directive No. 45" which he dictated on the same day, 23rd July, following his argument with Halder.
The Directive was delivered to the Army Groups on 25th July. In its introduction it declared—contrary to the actual facts and to the experience of the previous three weeks' fighting—that only weak enemy forces of Timoshenko's Armies had succeeded in escaping German encirclement and reaching the southern bank of the Don.
Contrary to Directive No. 41 for "Operation Blue," which envisaged that Stalingrad should first be reached before the offensive was launched into the Caucasus for the seizure of the Russian oil, the new directive laid down the various objectives as follows:
Another force, to be formed by the concentration of all remaining mountain and Jäger divisions, will force a crossing of the Kuban and seize the high ground of Maykop and Armavir. . . .