Ostkrieg (28 page)

Despite his doubts about the operation, Guderian received orders to begin a southerly push on 25 August. At 5:00
A.M
. on what would prove to be a blisteringly hot day, General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg's Twenty-fourth Corps, with only about one-third of its tank strength operational, set off for the Desna River. Initially, it made rapid gains, even capturing a key bridge at Novgorod-Seversk intact. The primitive, sandy roads that limited progress to forty miles before the columns had to be refueled as well as the habitual ferocious Soviet resistance quickly slowed the advance. By the twenty-seventh, the Third Panzer and the Tenth Motorized Divisions had been so weakened that they had to go on the defensive, with only the Fourth Panzer capable of offensive operation. At that point, Army Group Center relented and released another two and a half mobile divisions to Guderian, but it took another four days for resupply sufficient to allow the resumption of the offensive. Bock admitted on the thirty-first that, with both his flanks under attack, Guderian was “in a difficult situation.” On 1 September, the Twenty-fourth Corps continued its advance, but strong enemy resistance, poor roads, rainy weather, damaged bridges, and inadequate provisions slowed the German advance to a crawl. The next day, following the loss of a bridgehead south of the Desna, a sense of crisis pervaded the German High Command. “Guderian's description of the situation was so pessimistic,” Bock noted, “that I had to decide if I should propose . . . that the armored group be pulled back across the Desna.” On the fourth, an anxious and dissatisfied Hitler intervened, demanding that Guderian concentrate his forces for the drive south. The latter requested still more reinforcements, a demand that led Bock seriously to consider dismissing him. On the sixth, torrential rains turned the roads into a muddy quagmire that ground all movement to a halt.
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Despite later images of a swift encirclement operation, by the end of the first week of September the Second Panzergruppe struggled to maintain any momentum at all.

At roughly the same time, to the south, units of the Seventeenth Army and the First Panzergruppe of Army Group South had reached their assembly areas for the crossing of the Dnieper. In a series of engagements between 30 August and 2 September, the Seventeenth Army seized river crossings at Kremenchug. Although the original intention had been for these forces to continue to advance eastward once the river had been breached, the stiffening of enemy resistance and the realization that the Soviets were throwing units from other areas into the battle for Kiev caused a fundamental German reassessment. As it became clear that Stalin had ordered the Dnieper line to be held at all costs, the OKW now saw a chance to inflict a disastrous defeat on the Soviets. Already on 1 September, the chief of staff of Army Group South, General Sodenstern, had contacted his counterpart at the Second Army to the north in order to discuss the possibility of an encirclement of Soviet forces east of Kiev that would clear the way for the Moscow operation. On the sixth, the OKW ordered the Seventeenth Army and the First Panzergruppe to turn north and, in conjunction with the Second Army and the Second Panzergruppe, trap the bulk of Soviet forces gathering to the east of Kiev, while the next day Halder and Rundstedt conferred to hammer out the details of the destruction of all enemy forces in the Kiev-Dnieper-Desna bend. Although this meant that the mobile units of Panzergruppe 1 would be tied down in protracted operations in closing and holding the ring and, thus, would be unable to exploit a breakthrough to the east, the lure of a giant envelopment that would free the danger to the southern flank of the Moscow attack proved alluring. In the north, Guderian's forces were to drive on Sumy, and the Second Army was to aim for Romny, while the southern wing would advance on Lubny.
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While the Germans acted quickly to exploit the emerging opportunity, the Soviets obliged their enemy by putting their head further into the noose. Although Zhukov and others had from mid-August tried in vain to warn Stalin of the looming danger at Kiev, the Soviet dictator stubbornly insisted that the city, the ancient center of medieval Russia, the capital of Ukraine, and the third largest city in the Soviet Union, be defended. Stalin had more than historical or sentimental reasons for his seemingly irrational decision. He feared that the loss of the city, the political center of an area that had borne the brunt of his calamitous policy of collectivization of agriculture in the 1930s, might touch off a process of internal disintegration of the Soviet system. Signs of decomposition, which even the notorious blocking units could not stem, had, indeed, become evident by early September in some Soviet units. The
Soviet dictator also wanted to inspire the defenders of Leningrad and Odessa and was anxious as well to reassure nervous American and British leaders that the Soviet Union could survive the German onslaught. Stalin, too, regarded a German move on Moscow, given the importance of the city, as self-evident. He thus initially perceived Guderian's attack as simply part of a typical German maneuver to encircle the capital rather than drive straight at it.
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For Soviet commanders, unwilling to challenge Stalin's orders and risk execution by ordering a withdrawal, events now unfolded as in a script they had seen but were powerless to alter. On 9 September, Guderian's forces, fighting through stubborn resistance “in every village” in driving rain, crossed the Sejm and the next day reached Romny, where over the next two days they beat back violent Soviet counterattacks. After laboriously receiving fuel from trucks that had to be towed through the nearly impassable mud, Guderian's forces, aided by the clearing weather on the twelfth, were able to drive on toward Lokhvitsa and a possible linkup with elements of the First Panzergruppe. The southern wing had been delayed in fierce fighting, but on 13 September its armored spearheads met those of the Second Panzergruppe at Lubny. Two days later, the 120-mile-deep trap, with sides 300 miles long, snapped shut at Lokhvitsa, snaring elements of five Soviet armies inside. Euphoric German newsreels, seeking to give their viewers a sense of the magnitude of the achievement, boasted that the pocket would encompass most of Germany, extending from Stettin in the north to Cologne in the west and Munich in the south. “The ‘Battle at Kiev,' ” Bock exulted, “has thus become a dazzling success.”
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Even now, however, the Germans were under no illusions: if they were to achieve a decisive victory, the Soviet forces had to be annihilated, a task, given previous experience, every Landser knew meant bitter fighting and heavy casualties. Having already marched hundreds of miles and engaged the Russians in seemingly unending battles, nearing the limits of their physical and psychological endurance, most men were left cold by the prospect of further wild combat with a trapped enemy desperate to break out. “Probably,” noted one such veteran, Günter von Scheven, “we will have to annihilate everything before this war is going to end.” Stalin's actions reinforced this gloomy prediction: the Stavka forbade a breakout attempt and ordered Timoshenko, who had replaced the hapless Budenny, to hold Kiev. Not until the night of 17–18 September did a written order allowing the abandonment of Kiev arrive, but, by then, an orderly withdrawal proved impossible. The city fell to the Germans on the nineteenth, even as frantic fighting continued over the next
few days as Soviet troops, often in desperate human-wave attacks, sought to break free. As German troops drove into the pocket, subpockets were created, which resulted in chaotic and frantic combat. Fearful losses on both sides resulted, with roadsides strewn with corpses and piles of bodies stacked before German positions. German soldiers, hungry, thirsty, fatigued, and stunned by the hand-to-hand fighting, were worn down by the remorselessly bloody process of reducing the Kiev pocket. In some German companies, losses ran to 75 percent, yet no end appeared in sight. “I have strong reservations,” one Landser despaired, “whether we will see an end to the war in Russia this year. . . . The land is too big and the Russians are not thinking of surrender.”
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As in previous encirclements, this one was not airtight, and for days small groups of Red Army troops, including Budenny, Timoshenko, and Khrushchev, managed to escape the cauldron. Despite this, the Kiev encirclement was an unprecedented catastrophe for the Red Army, which had certainly experienced its share of disasters in the first three months of war. When the fighting ended on 25 September, the Germans had bagged some 665,000 prisoners, a very high proportion of whom had simply chosen to surrender rather than continue to fight. Four Soviet field armies, consisting of forty-three divisions, had ceased to exist, while the Soviet defeat cleared the way for Rundstedt's forces to seize the important industrial city of Kharkov and advance into the rich economic areas of the Donets Basin and the Caucasus. Since Soviet replacements had to be sent from the center to cover the gap to the south, little protected Moscow from the southwest.
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Guderian and his Second Panzergruppe now had the chance, supply permitting, to seize the capital in a concentrated thrust. The enormous losses suffered by the Red Army at Kiev and in the first three months of the war seemed to justify the German assumption that the attack on Moscow, Operation Taifun (Typhoon), could still succeed despite the lateness of the season. Guderian's already exhausted and depleted forces, however, had been further worn down in the
Kesselschlacht
(battle of encirclement) at Kiev. Their casualties had been high, while, by late September, the Second Panzergruppe had only 33 percent of its armored vehicles in service. The gasoline situation remained precarious, while the redeployment of the Second Army and the Second Panzergruppe from the Kiev area, hampered by incessant rain and muddy roads, took much longer than anticipated. Army Group South's pursuit to the east was hindered by the fact that it now had to give up significant forces to Army Group Center for use in Operation Typhoon. The great economic goals still lay up to three hundred miles away as the Germans were left to ponder
once again the principal bugaboo of the campaign to date: the lack of sufficient forces to capture all the targets temporarily open to them. As with the other envelopments, the Battle of Kiev had been a great tactical triumph but had not resulted in decisive victory. Even as Bock conceded the success at Kiev, he noted ruefully in his diary, “But the main Russian force stands unbroken before my front and . . . the question is open as to whether we can smash it quickly and so exploit this victory before winter comes.”
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The same dilemma, providing the necessary combat strength to achieve decisive success in an expanding theater of operations, played out to the north as Leeb's forces lurched toward Leningrad. Hitler attached considerable importance to the capture of the city, not merely because it was the birthplace of Bolshevism, but more practically because control of the Baltic would ease the German supply situation and free up troops to be used elsewhere. Although Army Group North had achieved great operational success, Leeb was forced to the realization by late July that he simply did not have adequate forces to seize Leningrad. On 15 August, units of the Third Panzergruppe, including the Twelfth Panzer and the Eighteenth and Twentieth Motorized Divisions, were diverted from the center to the north. By throwing in all his available units, including his last reserves, Leeb was able to push through Novgorod and on the twentieth captured Chudovo, thus cutting the main rail line between Moscow and Leningrad. On the twenty-eighth, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, fell, while, on the thirtieth, the Twelfth Panzer Division reached the Neva River, further isolating Leningrad. The city, however, was well situated for defense as the western approaches were protected by the Gulf of Finland, the northern by the narrow Karelian Isthmus, the eastern by Lake Ladoga, and the southern by swampy ground difficult to traverse. By early September, steady rains and stubborn Soviet resistance ground the German advance to a crawl. On 8 September, the Germans managed to seize Shlisselburg, where the waters of Lake Ladoga enter the Neva, and Demyansk to the southeast, but persistent enemy counterattacks forced Leeb continually to regroup his forces.
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The loss of Shlisselburg, however, meant that Leningrad could be supplied only via Lake Ladoga, which encouraged the German belief that the city was ripe for the taking. Three days earlier, in fact, Halder had remarked in his diary, “Leningrad: Our object has been achieved. Will now become a subsidiary theater of operations,” followed by the hope that the drive on Moscow could begin in eight to ten days. Since Hitler had no intention of taking the city in any case, preferring to subdue it through hunger and terror bombing, on 5 September he ordered
the transfer of a number of mobile and air units from Army Group North to Army Group Center, to take effect on the fifteenth. The next day, reflecting his optimism that successes on the flanks had opened the way to Moscow as well as illustrating his awareness of the crucial time factor, Hitler issued Directive No. 35. “Within the limited time available before the onset of winter,” it stated, the enemy before Moscow should be wiped out by concentrating all forces, including those that could be freed from the flanks, for one last encirclement battle. Leeb immediately protested the loss of these units, and, since Halder realized that the attack on Moscow could not commence before the end of the month, he reluctantly allowed Leeb to keep them temporarily.
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Over the next few days, Leeb won a number of local successes, but fighting in the north did not abate as Soviet counterattacks increased in intensity. Although the Fourth Panzergruppe began shifting units to Army Group Center on 15 September, Leeb managed to retain the three divisions of Schmidt's Thirty-ninth Motorized Corps of the Third Panzergruppe. Leeb now faced the task of tightening the ring around Leningrad against stiffening enemy resistance with a significantly reduced combat force insufficient to fulfill the objectives assigned it. On 22 September, the Soviets launched a series of strong attacks against both the northern and the southern wings of the army group that inflicted such high losses on German forces that Leeb feared he would not be able to hold his positions. Schmidt's forces had been so ground down that the Twelfth Panzer had only fifty-four tanks left, about a quarter of its normal strength, while the Eighteenth and Twentieth Motorized Divisions had been reduced to roughly 46 and 65 percent of their respective troop complements. Two days later, in fact, Leeb admitted to the OKH that the situation had worsened considerably and that he could no longer continue offensive operations toward Leningrad.
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