Crescendo Of Doom (32 page)

So Kirov’s offensive, if successful, would not only seize much needed oil reserves for his own war effort, but also cut off the flow of those resources north to the industrial center of Volkov’s state in the capital city of Orenburg. To achieve this, he would have to eventually take Astrakhan, but at the outset, with so many troops facing down the growing German threat, he did not have the divisions available to mount that offensive. The expedient course had been to try and seize Volkov’s Black Sea ports as a fall back for his Black Sea Fleet in the event the Crimea ever fell into German hands, and the oil center at Maykop as a ready source of new petroleum. The question now was whether he would have time to extract that oil, and the clock was ticking ever neared to the launch of Operation Barbarossa.

* * *

The
German plan for Barbarossa was also much revised given the situation in Russia. Instead of aiming for Moscow and Leningrad, the political and industrial heart of Kirov’s State, it would place a much stronger force in Army Group South. The intent was to drive to Rostov, the major supply center sustaining Kirov’s offensive against Volkov. From there the combined Axis forces would cut off the Crimea, and all Soviet troops that had crossed the Taman Straits into the Caucasus to threaten Maykop. Once these armies were defeated, and a link was forged with Volkov’s troops, the Axis powers would then turn north and begin a combined offensive aimed at Moscow.

As strong as the German Army now looked on paper, just over 140 divisions, Halder had his misgivings about the coming storm, and not just because of the oil figures he had been fretting over. He had heard the whispered warnings of Ivan Volkov, trying to convince the Germans that their vaunted Panzer Divisions would soon be matched by the might of the Soviet Army. There will soon be strong new tanks, he had warned, and he had gone so far as to send diagrams and design plans he claimed to have obtained showing a new Russian tank to be called the T-34. Yet his intelligence indicated that the Soviets were still using tank models developed in the late 1930s, the BT-5 and BT-7, and older tanks like the T-26, T-28 and T-35. What was this T-34? It had not been seen in any Soviet units penetrated by German intelligence thus far.

Yet the sudden appearance of a new British heavy tank in North Africa had done much to awaken German military planners. Very few of these tanks had been seen, perhaps no more than 50 or 60 according to reports, but they had been able to stop Rommel twice, and halt the German counterattack in Syria. If the Soviets had anything similar… Halder did not wish to think about this, yet given the fact that the Soviet Union was allied with Great Britain, how long would it be before the Russians benefited from these new British designs?

Keitel and Jodl are correct, he thought. We must build new tanks, and quickly. Keitel tells me we have three on the drawing board, the ‘Big Cats’ as he likes to call them. For now we will have to make do with what we have, mostly Panzer IIIs, though we are getting more with the 50mm gun into the front line units now. That gun is already inadequate in my view. We will need at least a 75mm gun, and our new tank designs may soon need something bigger. Yet Rommel claims that he could not kill these British tanks with anything, even his 88s! That is most alarming.

Guderian has read the reports, yet not having seen any of this first hand, he takes them with a grain of salt. He claims Rommel is reckless, which may be so, but numbers are difficult to argue with, and now we have the battle at Rayak with 9th Panzer to consider as well. This cannot be written off as a defeat suffered by a headstrong and overly confident general, out to seek yet another medal on his chest. No. The forces we committed to Syria should have stopped the British advance on Rayak, but they could not do so. It was only when Steiner’s Wiking Division was able to concentrate, that the front was stabilized there.

In that Halder was telling himself what he wanted to believe, that the presence of at least one good German division had saved the day, but in doing this he overlooked the quality of the units that had heretofore been beaten by the British. 5th Light was undermanned, but 15th Panzer Division was at nominal strength, as was the 9th Panzer. The truth of the matter is that the British were forced to pull this new heavy mechanized unit of theirs out of the Syrian front and return it to Libya, so Rommel’s offensive was good for something after all.

But all of this is really irrelevant, he thought. I do not think Sergei Kirov has these tanks, nor will he get such weapons any time soon. So before he does, we must raise hell, strike hard, and run like the wind. Our Blitzkrieg tactics may have met an able challenger in North Africa, but Guderian remains convinced that we can still beat the Russians.

Halder looked at his watch, the ticking of the second hand seeming loud. His pulse quickened as the time swept inexorably on, counting down the last seconds that formed the wafer thin boundary between the old war, and the new war that was now about to begin. In his mind, he could already see the massed squadrons of
Stukas
gathering like dark crows over the borderlands, hear the shouts of the artillery officers as over 7000 guns were being elevated, perceive the low growl of the tank engines turning over in the Panzer regiments.

Tick, Tock.

It was all planned, with just that clock like precision. 3.4 million men, 148 divisions, 7100 guns, nearly 3400 tanks, and close to 2800 planes…

And when it began, the world did indeed hold its breath. It was as if a line of well muscled men had taken sledge hammers to the stalwart wall of the Soviet defensive line that stretched from Riga in the north to Odessa on the Black Sea. Before that first awful day was over, tens of thousands would die. The Germans would use the battering ram of their Panzer Divisions to smash a hole in the enemy front, and then rush through. Nearly 1500 Soviet planes were caught on the ground and destroyed, another 400 died in the skies over the battlefield, but even these staggering losses represented only 20% of the Soviet air strength, which was counted at 10,775 planes on May 15th. The
Stukas
pounded rail yards, trains, enemy gun positions, and any massed formation of armor they could find, and they did not have far to search.

The German onslaught would drive into a massive Soviet military force, comprised of 4.5 million personnel in 300 divisions, with 50 of those being tank divisions, and 25 more being mechanized divisions. They would field an astounding number of tanks, mostly pre-war models, but over 20,000 strong, more than five times as many as the Germans had, supported by 48,000 artillery pieces! Kirov’s armies outnumbered the Germans in almost every category, but one—the Russians had only 270,000 trucks, less than half as many as their adversaries, and their forces suffered from this general lack of mobility, especially when facing an enemy that placed a premium on rapid deployment and lightning swift movement. That said, most German infantry divisions were still relying on horsepower of the four legged kind to drag their guns forward through the mud, with over 700,000 horses employed.

The German operational art, the balance of tanks, AFVs and supporting weapons in their units, the training and skill of their troops, all weighed in their favor. At one point in the line, along the Bug River at Pratulin, the Germans would employ a devious tactic that surprised their own troops as well as the enemy—the
tauchpanzers
.

The old canceled plans for Operation Seelöwe had envisioned the offloading of tanks in water up to 25 feet deep on the English coast, and an ingenious method was devised to permit that, and allow the tanks to advance on the sea floor itself to reach the shore. Special adhesives were used to seal off the tanks to water penetration, inner tubes surrounded the wide seam between the turret and tank body, and a long snorkel was attached to the tank to feed air to the crews. The gun barrels were plugged with a rubber cap. Blind under water, the tanks were to be steered by using a compass. To prevent water in the exhaust, a one way valve was attached there.

To test the principle, tanks were rigged out and ferried out to sea near the Island of Sylt, then sent down long ramps into the water to the sea floor below, where they would attempt to drive to the nearby shore. When the invasion of England was cancelled, the units trained were sent off to form a regular panzer regiment, but the special conditions at Pratulin reminded a staff officer that they might just wade their tanks right beneath the river, and catch the enemy by surprise. It worked as planned. Manfred Graf Strachwitz led the attack of the 18th Panzer Regiment, with the German infantry gawking at the tanks as they lumbered down the muddied river bank, and disappeared beneath the water.

In later years the idea of amphibious tanks would become more common, but this was a first, and it achieved the desired surprise when the Germans literally drove 80 tanks under the river, instead of trying to get bridging units in place under heavy enemy fire.

In most places, the tried and true methods would be used, and the art of rapid cross river assault had been perfected in France during the rapid advance of the Panzer forces there. In the south, these defended river lines were arrayed one after another, a series of natural water barriers formed by the Southern Bug, Prut, Nistru, Danube, Dniester and Dnieper all forming major obstacles to rapid forward movement.

But here the Germans had reorganized their plans to put those “good German divisions” on the line, pulling the
Liebstandarte, Das Reich
and
Totenkopf
units together into one korps, and adding a new unit that was not in any order of battle Fedorov could read about. Hitler had been so pleased with the performance of Grossdeutschland at Gibraltar, that he order the formation of another “Sturm” division, with its units built around cadres of the elite Brandenburgers. So it was that the “Brandenburg Motorized Division” came into being, and would lead the attack of the SS Korps as a specialized infiltration and breakthrough unit. Instead of snorkeling tanks, the highly trained and daring officers of the old Brandenburg commandos would lead the way, with the best troops in Germany behind them.

And this also worked as planned…

Chapter 29

Volkov’s
hands tightened on the hand rails of his armored capsule when the explosion rocked his ship. The RS82 rockets struck the tail of Big Red, and the resulting explosion was so violent that
Orenburg
had been dealt a fatal blow. The fireball had expanded to sear the side of the great airship, where it had been hanging in the skies no more than 200 meters above
Krasny
, in a perfect position to blast that ship to pieces. The fleet flagship had turned smartly, its rapid descent corrected, and was just beginning to climb again when the explosion occurred. Within minutes, the gashes torn in
Orenburg’s
side by a hundred fragments of Big Red’s shattered duralumin frame, had fatally compromised the ship’s buoyancy.

Through the chaos of that moment, as the airship rolled in the sky, fires spreading rapidly to engulf its tail and rudders, Volkov heard his Security Chief shouting frantically over the voice tube to his capsule.

“Sir! Are you all right down there?”

“What’s happening?” Volkov had shouted back, though he knew very well what was happening. He could feel the ship shuddering in the sky, hear the hiss of helium escaping from the lacerated gas bags, feel the queasy roll of
Orenburg
as the flight crew struggled for control. The sight of
Krasny
falling from the sky was a chilling prelude to what was now about to happen to his own ship. They were going down, and Volkov gritted his teeth, his eyes searching frantically for the overhead lever that would eject his capsule into free fall so that he could escape.

“Kymchek! I’m using the escape pod! Save yourself! Get off the ship, and by god, if you make it out alive round up every man you can find and get a security detail to my landing site.”

He reached for the lever, never thinking a moment like this would come. He had always been above the heat of combat, immune to the violence he set in motion with his iron will. Now his pulse was rising with the thought that this emergency system had never been used before. What if it failed to operate? What if the parachute would not deploy? He could be plunging to his death at that very moment, but there was nothing else to be done.

He found the lever, pulled hard, and was relieved when the securing clamps released, and the weight of the capsule allowed it to fall freely away from his burning ship. Agonizing seconds passed, then the sharp tug of the chute deployment stilled his fear, and he eased back, collapsing against the bulkhead and gaping out the observation window, seeing burning fragments of the chaos above falling like molten rain. A man fell screaming, then another. Some were saved as their parachutes also deployed, though he saw one chute suddenly engulfed in flames from the falling burning cinders. Crew members from both the stricken airships were leaping for their lives, each with the same hope and fear that wrenched his own chest.

Seconds passed, and he finally realized, with great relief, that his parachutes were going to hold. The capsule was descending through a grey-white cloud, and then it broke through, allowing him to see the green rolling taiga below. All he had to do now was survive the landing.

“Damn you, Karpov!” he swore, venting his emotion. “I’ll see that you burn in hell!” He realized now what must have happened. Big Red was the same ship that dropped that terrible fire bomb on his troops some months ago. And he had seen Karpov use the weapon again, savaging the ships of the Caspian Division and sending
Salsk
and
Sochi
to a fiery end. There must have been another bomb aboard
Krasny
, mounted in the tail cargo holds. My God! He fired those rockets at his own ship this time, just so he could detonate that weapon. I will never underestimate that man’s black heart and soul again!