Winter Storm (11 page)

That
had always been enough in the past. The Generals had always been able to do
something when difficulties were encountered, reach into their haversacks and
pull out a new division, and Guderian knew exactly where he would look for one
that day. Hoth was supposed to be right behind him, with two fresh Motorized
Korps, and plenty of armor, and that was the man Guderian called, kicking the
can further down the road.

“I’m
told you have all the new tanks, Hoth. Don’t be stingy! I need them south of
Tula. Can you send me anything?”

The
General was very pleased when his appeal was answered without hesitation. “Seventh
Panzer has been refitting since early August, and it received some of the newer
tanks. I have much less opposition on my front, so you can have the entire
division. For that matter, you can have
Schwerepanzerbrigaden
101,
as well. They are much closer to your operation than my main line of advance. I
will cut the orders immediately.”

Schwerepanzerbrigaden
101…
thought Guderian. That was the new
unit Halder had crowed about at the meeting, the Big Cats, as all the officers
were now calling the new tanks starting to make their way to the front. That
unit has the cream of all the new heavy tanks we have managed to build in the
last several months. Well, now we will see how well they hunt. In the meantime,
I have a battle on my hands, and I had better get forward to see what Model and
Langermann are worried about.

Mtsensk
was one thing, but the action now underway would dwarf that engagement, and
leave a lasting impression on Guderian for some time. For he could feel it too,
feel it with some inner intuition that was an old tanker’s sixth sense. Things
were changing.

We are
reaching the high tide mark, he thought, and the sea behind us is weary. After
chasing the Russians for over a thousand miles, winning one engagement after
another, the real war is now beginning for the
2nd Panzergruppe,
and every
man here who survives it will never forget these hours and days, for the rest
of his life.

Generaloberst
Herman “Papa” Hoth would come to regret his generosity. A
wizened and experienced officer at the age of 56, he nonetheless had a great
deal of personal energy, and confidence in the deadly craft of armored warfare
in which he specialized. He had led the XV Motorized Korps into Poland, ran on
Guderian’s right shoulder in the mad dash across France. Now, as commander of
3rd
Panzergruppe
, he was moving up behind Guderian’s advance on Orel with seven
divisions in two Motorized Korps. The German mobile forces were bypassing the
stubborn Soviet defenses around Bryansk, threatening to create a pocket in the
Russians did not withdraw, while also posing a growing threat to Moscow itself
on this axis.

For
this operation, Hoth had grouped three divisions in each Korps, holding one in
his Panzergruppe Reserve, the newly outfitted 7th Panzer. He had watched
Rommel’s 7th Panzer outpace all others in France, and was elated when the ‘Ghost
Division,’ as it was called, had followed him to Russia. It was to be one of
the first regular Army Panzer Divisions to be refitted with Germany’s newest
tanks. But in a moment of camaraderie, he had given the elite unit away.

Hoth
once had them all, the Leopards, Lions, and even a few Panthers added to the
mix for early combat trials. Most were grouped together in the new 101st Heavy
Panzer Brigade, a dreadful formation that contained all of Germany’s latest
tank designs. There were 36 new PzKfw-35, Leopards, a fast, well armored tank
with a new 50mm gun that was meant to replace the entire Panzer III series, and
become the new recon tank of the Wehrmacht in all divisions. Next came a single
medium battalion of 24 prototype PzKfw-V Panthers, all experimental vehicles at
this point, yet a design that was to prove particularly effective for Germany’s
mainstream medium tank. But the real thunder in the brigade was in the 48
PzKfw-55L Lions, monsters that would rival the legendary Tiger in ferocity in this
retelling of events.

7th
Panzer was not so lavishly equipped, but it was lucky even to be on the list at
this early stage. All the units in the elite SS Korps had been clamoring for
the new tanks, and were getting them sooner than any other divisions. Hermann
Goering had curried favor with Hitler, and secured a heavy battalion for his
Herman Goering Panzer Division. And when it came time to use the last available
tanks in the initial production run, Hitler personally chose Rommel’s old
outfit, the Ghost Division, which was given 36 Leopards in the light battalion,
a full medium battalion of 36 newly designed PzKfw-IVF tanks, with a much
better long barreled main gun. And a single heavy company of 18 Lions.

When
Guderian ran into the tough 1st Siberian Shock Army south of Tula, his
plaintive call to Hoth for support saw him send both of these newly outfitted
units over to
2nd Panzergruppe
, mostly because all his other divisions
were much further west, and not following Guderian as Halder had promised. Now
he regretted his generosity, as his advance had been pulled further to the
left, and he soon found himself involved in an entirely new operation, with all
thoughts of supporting Guderian’s headlong drive for Moscow suddenly forgotten.

*

As
it so often happened in war, events on the ground savaged
the carefully laid plans of the General Staff at OKW. The Soviet Smolensk
defense group had been encircled, and what looked to become a protracted battle
to reduce it was aided by a frantic and desperate attempt by the Russians to
break out of the trap.

“They
would have been much wiser to sit in their prepared positions and force us to
pry them out,” said Halder. “As it stands, we have them on the run, and out in
the open now.”

“They
tried to force a breakout along the main road to Moscow,” said von Bock, “but
we stopped them. The early reduction of that force now allows us to plan an
even bigger
kesselschlacht
centered on the city of Kirov.”

All the
other Generals around the table knew Hitler would love that city delivered to
him before winter set in. The Russians had built a heavily fortified line, the
Kirov Line, stretching from Vyazma astride the main road to Smolensk, and south
130 kilometers to the big industrial bastion of Kirov. From there it stretched
another 90 kilometers south to Bryansk, another vital hub of industry and rail
communications for the entire Western Front. Both these cities had been the
object of German attention in the latter stages of Operation Barbarossa, which
was to have concluded with their ultimate capture. But the Russians had poured
enormous resources into that defensive belt, while also stubbornly holding out
just north of Smolensk.

In the
middle south, when Guderian’s
2nd Panzergruppe
broke out of Kiev, the
experienced General took one look at the map and determined he would make no
attempt to throw his panzers at Bryansk. The city was bisected by a marshy
banked river, and fringed on every side by thickets of woodland.

“That
is work for infantry,” he muttered to his Chief of Staff when he got the order
to drive north on Bryansk. “I’m going to bypass the damn place and take Orel
instead. The terrain there is much more open, and suitable ground for fast
mobile operations. And Orel is served by a good rail line all the way back to
Kiev. Once we convert that, it will become the primary supply conduit for any
further operations.”

It was
his opinion that once enfiladed by his swift moving panzers, the Russians would
be forced to give up Bryansk, and losing its heavy southern anchor, this would
in turn cause the collapse of the entire Kirov Line, but he was proved wrong.
The Russians refused to budge, manning their heavy fortifications until the
German 9th Army pushed up to Bryansk. In the center of the line, they held the
Roslavl salient for two weeks, until finally falling back to better defensive
positions closer to Kirov.

Yet it
was in the north that the real thunder would come, when the Smolensk group was
finally pocketed, and then routed in its desperate attempt to break out to the
east. This allowed Hoepner’s 4th Panzergruppe to turn the mop-up over to
infantry, and surge northeast up the road to Vyazma. The Soviets stopped him
there, and then he did something that no one on either side expected. Instead
of massing his two mobile Korps to drive through Vyazma on Moscow, he instead
opted to turn east and south, through the woodland country. It was his thought
to envelop the entire Kirov line defense with this maneuver, which begged the
question of who would be on the other side to form the right pincer.

As
Hoepner ground his way through the woodland, fighting through everything the Russians
could get there to try and block him, Guderian was sweeping past Bryansk and
pushing on to Orel, and Hermann Hoth was right behind him.

That
had been the plan in Halder’s mind. Those two
Panzergruppen
would be the
swift moving sword that would sweep up and take Moscow from the south, but the
stolid Russian defense of the Kirov Line, particularly in and around the cities
that anchored that line, served to change everything.

“I
finally convince Hitler that we can take Moscow before winter, and now look!”
said Halder. “As Hoth came north, the infantry was too slow on his heels, and
he had to use his motorized divisions to hold that left flank.”

Von
Bock gestured at the table map, a sour expression on his face. “Hoth had to
move west,” said von Bock. “Otherwise his flank would be completely exposed as
he pushed north of Bryansk.”

“Yes,”
said Halder. “But now the two Panzergruppe are operating side by side, and
instead of one swift penetration on a concentrated narrow axis, the front of
the advance has widened out considerably. I wanted Hoth to follow Guderian, not
get into a horse race with him!”

“But
see the opportunity Hoepner’s 4th Panzergruppe now delivers,” said von Bock. “Turn
Hoth west to link up with him, and we’ll have their entire Kirov Line in the
bag. They must have at least 50 divisions there, half a million men!”

The
General’s estimate was very precise, and even Halder could see that if they
could encircle that force, preventing its withdrawal, the situation would be
much more favorable than fighting those same troops outside Moscow. For that
had been the object of his planning all along—Moscow. Manstein could run wild
in the south with his plan to link up with Ivan Volkov. In fact, he had done
exactly what he said he could, crossing the Donets at Izyum, then pushing his
vaunted SS Korps north to take Valuki, before turning east to Rossosh near the
Don. It was there that he ran into growing resistance from new troops that had
been grudgingly pulled from the Caucasus.

“The
good General Manstein is also stuck for a change,” Halder clucked. “The SS have
stopped at Rossosh.”

“Manstein
insists he is merely consolidating,” said von Bock.

“Oh?
Then why has he moved Kleist? His troops were just about to take Kursk.”

“The
same problem,” said von Bock, “lack of good infantry. If Manstein continues
east now, his left flank is the Don, but he has nothing to hold it.”

“I
thought he wanted to move the Rumanians there until his infantry came up from
Kharkov.”

“They
aren’t ready, and what good would they be in any case? So instead, he called
off Kleist’s drive on Kursk, as it has no support from either side, and so now he
is moving all of
1st Panzergruppe
down to support the SS Korps. Once
they get there, he plans to resume his attack.”

“Yes,”
said Halder with just the edge of sarcasm in his voice. “So he can shake hands
with Ivan Volkov and claim his laurels. Well, that won’t be enough. Sergei
Kirov will fight for Volgograd, you’ll see. He’ll fight for that as tenaciously
as he would Moscow, which is where we should have the SS now. Only the capture
of Moscow in 1941 will bring about conditions that might lead to Soviet
capitulation.”

“That
may be so, but don’t forget Volkov’s oil fields. Unless we link up with him,
how does the Führer get his oil? And not so fast concerning Moscow, Herr
General. You want to storm into Red Square before winter? Yes, Napoleon had the
same idea, but look what happened to his Grand Armee. If we do take Moscow, I
have a mind that says Sergei Kirov will simply relocate his government apparatus
to Leningrad. After all, that was the historical capital of the Romanov
Dynasty, old Saint Petersburg, and it is just where Czar Nicholas left it,
largely untouched by this war. We have no operation threatening that city.”

“That
was another mistake,” said Halder. “And it was all Manstein’s doing. He
poisoned the Fuhrer’s mind with this talk of a southern strategy. Yes,
Volgograd is a worthy objective, but we should have both Moscow and Leningrad
under our heels if we are to ever win this war.”

“First
things first,” said von Bock flatly. “The situation has changed. This massive
cauldron forming around Kirov will likely be the decisive battle of the war. Hitler
has seen the reports, and he wants those forces annihilated.”

“Very
well,” said Halder with a shrug. “It seems we have little recourse now. Order
Hoth to change the axis of his advance and he will now form the right pincer to
operate with Hoepner on the left.”

“What
about Guderian?” asked von Bock.

“What
about him?”

“He’s
run into a new army south of Tula—Siberians.”

“Yes…
I’ve heard his bellyaching all the way from the front. He took Orel as ordered,
and now moves north for a drive on Moscow through Tula. I finally get Hitler’s
permission for that, and Guderian is stopped cold by this new army.”

“Where
did it come from?”

“Where
else?” said Halder. “Intelligence reported that the Siberian airship fleet
visited Moscow recently, and then went north to Murmansk. Kolchak was
assassinated in the far east, and the situation in the Free Siberian State is
very confused. A new figure has stepped forward—this Admiral Karpov with his
fleet of obsolete balloons! Yet he has apparently thrown in with the Soviets,
and troops have been moving west from Siberia for some weeks now. Guderian must
get moving!”

“He has
only 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions in his
Schwerpunkt
,” said von Bock.
“The rest of his mobile divisions are strung out all the way back to Orel, and
further south. It’s the lack of infantry again. That is hurting us more than
anything else now. The Russians have managed to find divisions to put on
Guderian’s right flank as he moved north, and every mile he goes is another
mile someone has to hold behind him. His advance was losing steam with every
gain it made. Now this new Siberian Army is simply too much to brush aside.”

“If
Hoth were behind him, as he should be…” Halder gave von Bock a frustrated look.

“Yes,
if wishes were horses,” said von Bock. “Hoepner has forced our hand. He’s
punched right through the northern segment of the Kirov Defense line. We simply
must support his envelopment operation now.”

And
this is what the Germans did.

When
the Smolensk Group collapsed, the infantry that had been mopping up then became
available to hold the northern shoulder of Hoepner’s push east. This in turn
allowed him to feed one mobile division after another into his advance, which
gathered strength in spite of a tenacious Russian defense.