War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (57 page)

They were to advance due east from Roslavl to Moscow with their left flank on the upper Dnieper river east of Smolensk. The northern flank of Army Group Centre held Strauss’s Ninth Army with Panzergruppe 3 (Hoth) under command. It contained 18 infantry divisions, three Panzer and two motorised infantry divisions. Attacking north-east of Smolensk, their task was to penetrate Russian defences north of the Smolensk–Moscow road and cover the flank along the upper Volga river. Army Group Centre had been reinforced by an additional seven ‘fast’ divisions from Army Group North. Its sister formation, Army Group South, had placed one further Panzer, two motorised infantry and five foot divisions under command.

As envisaged in the original ‘Barbarossa’ concept, Panzergruppen 4 (Hoepner) and 3 (Hoth) were massed on the outer flanks of their respective infantry armies. Both Panzer forces were to drive eastward first then turn inwards, this time to encircle Vyazma. Subsidiary encirclements would be executed by the infantry armies as in the first battles east of the Bug, loosely enclosed by the pincers of the larger Panzer envelopments. Once the rings were closed the Panzers would leave the infantry armies behind to subjugate the pockets while they pushed on, maintaining maximum strength and tempo in the direction of Moscow. The Luftwaffe IInd and VIIIth Fliegerkorps had committed over nine fighter and nearly 15 fighter-bomber Geschwader, with eight Stuka, a Bf110, and intermediate- and long-range reconnaissance Geschwader and Staffeln in support. On the ground the Ist and IInd Flak Corps provided anti-aircraft and ground-role anti-tank assistance. The offensive took the Russians completely by surprise. They had felt it was too late in the year to launch another campaign.

Hauptmann Richter’s opening day of the offensive was beset by worries over the effectiveness of Russian mines. The third vehicle of his artillery column was abruptly blown into the air as they changed location to support the forward advance. His diary recorded it as the fourth mine strike in only two days. He quickly reached the damaged vehicle to recover the driver, who appeared uninjured, but ‘his face was as white as snow and he was shaking all over’. Richter drove through several villages toward the previously observed enemy bunkers. En route they saw ‘only a few curious inhabitants staring out of the doors’.

Soviet resistance along the line of bunkers was as tenacious as ever. Assault pioneers had directed artillery and Panzers in the direct-fire role and heavy infantry weapons close-up to embrasures and entrances, to no visible effect. Grenade after grenade was tossed in and one of Richter’s over-zealous NCOs was wounded in the process. Huge detonations reverberated but, as soon as the smoke cleared, pistol shots rang out as entry was sought. One captured Russian was motioned inside a bunker to persuade the crew to surrender. After disappearing from view a single shot rang out. ‘He didn’t come back,’ observed Richter. Artillery again commenced smashing at the entrance and more grenades were tossed in,, and still German casualties occurred as they attempted to break in. In exasperation the assault group sprinkled petrol across the entire bunker mound and set it on fire. Deprived of air, three Russian soldiers hesitantly emerged. ‘Several of our men were so frustrated and enraged they wanted to mete out summary justice,’ said Richter. ‘We quietened them down, conceding that we had at least emptied the bunker, but it had cost time.’ Fighting carried on throughout the night:

‘There was shooting everywhere. Soon the village was on fire. Enemy tanks had shot it into flames, with our own men returning fire. A Russian artillery piece boomed out near us. Explosions and machine gun fire banged and rattled out uninterruptedly from all directions around us until dawn. One round shot by close over our heads. The glare from the flames of Suborowo lit up the sky.’

Richter’s final diary entry on this opening day of the new offensive echoed Hitler’s order of the day. ‘Today,’ it read, ‘the decisive battle against the Russian has begun.’ His opinion was ‘it ought to be all over before winter’.
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They had broken through the defensive crust along the River Desna.

As the momentum of the advance increased, combat transitioned to a series of rapid meeting engagements as the Panzers sought to build up an irrepressible tempo. On 4 October the advance elements of the Kampfgruppe ‘Koelitz’ spearheading the 2nd (Vienna) Panzer Division paused at a track junction, having broken through the Desna line. So engrossed were they in attempting to interpret their poor maps that they were taken aback by the sudden ‘tank alarm’ which immediately overrode their navigational dilemma. Three armoured vehicles had been spotted 300m to the right. These were immediately engaged and hit, but surprisingly to no effect. Especially hardened shot was loaded and could be seen striking their targets but still there was no response. An infantry Oberleutnant seeking to solve the mystery approached the tanks from the rear by motorcycle, and was seen standing and laughing amid the enemy vehicles. He shook the ‘barrel’ of the nearest, which resulted in the entire structure collapsing in on itself. The German advance had been delayed by masterfully constructed tank-target decoys.
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The prevailing mood along the Army Group Centre front was buoyant. ‘There is a tremendous pressure to get moving forward,’ wrote a Panzer division officer, describing the initial three days’ fighting.
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By the second day of the attack Guderian’s Second Panzer Army had penetrated 130km into the enemy hinterland, reaching the Orel–Bryansk road. Thereupon, Panzer spearheads began to turn inwards, to the north. Orel, a city of 120,000 inhabitants sitting astride a strategic road and rail junction, fell on 3 October. The 4th Panzer Division, forming part of this sweep, covered a 240km stretch from Gluchow to the objective in four days. The fuel and rations captured at Orel were sufficient to keep Second Panzer Army resupplied for two weeks. On 5 October, 18th Panzer Division captured Karatschew, and on the following day 17th Panzer took Bryansk and the Desna river bridge. This created a huge pocket south of the city, which was to contain elements of three Soviet armies: the Third, Thirteenth and Fiftieth. Meanwhile Panzergruppe 4 formed the thumb of a hand closing on Vyazma from the south.

The fingers enveloping the pocket from the north were provided by the armoured columns of 7th Panzer Division from Panzergruppe 3. Motorcyclist infantry from 10th Panzer entered the city of Vyazma on 7 October. A second huge pocket was thereby formed around the Sixteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Thirty-second Soviet armies. The
Ostheer
now had the last well-equipped Soviet field armies standing before Moscow in its grasp.

Newly promoted tank commander Feldwebel Karl Fuchs with the 7th Panzer Division relayed the triumphant news to his wife. At last the whole front was moving again:

‘I’m sure that you must have heard the special radio announcements about our battle achievements. Yes, you can find me somewhere on this front near Moscow! The Russians didn’t believe that we would attack at this time of the year when the cold weather is setting in.’
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Another officer in the same division reflected, ‘there is a mood among the troops that we have not seen since the Suwalki [the start of ‘Barbarossa’] days. Everyone is pleased we are finally moving forward again in our sector.’ The commander of the 6th Panzergrenadier Regiment directed ‘full speed ahead’ as his half-track column steadily overtook a line of Russian vehicles on the same road. Cloaked in swirling dust, the Russians were unaware of their predicament until vehicles failing to give way were promptly shot off the road. Panic dispersed the rest. Panzergrenadier Regiment 6 was the first German unit to reach the
‘Autostrasse’
which led from Vyazma to Moscow. A private soldier riding in the half-tracks jubilantly exclaimed, ‘everything was rolling like in the good old days; only one order remained – get moving forward with everything available!’ He continued:

‘We were calling the shots once again in the advance. It made a tremendous impression on us! Wherever the enemy had convinced himself he had erected an invisible barrier to hold us up, we drove over it hardly noticing. We penetrated kilometre after kilometre further eastward and soon we were well in the rear of the enemy.’

The 7th Panzer Division War Diary described the closure of the Vyazma pocket on reaching the Moscow road as ‘a race between the 25th Panzer Regiment and the reinforced Panzergrenadier Regiment 6’. Following up the ‘fantastic success’ of the spearhead units, the infantry commander remarked, ‘we were surprised at the long columns of Russian PoWs marching against us towards the rear’. He reflected on the numerous roadside bunkers and anti-tank ditches which they passed one after the other. ‘They ought to have made our advance impossible – but they hadn’t used any of them.’
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Leutnant Wolfgang Koch, advancing pell-mell in the lead halftrack of Schützen Regiment 52 on Orel, with the 18th Panzer Division, recalled the men playing Tchaikovsky’s choral music on a gramophone in the back of the vehicle. It was just like France in 1940. The Luftwaffe bombed and burned villages ahead while they followed up in the Panzers. Eventually the grenadiers became tired of endless Russian mass choirs. Unlike France, the gramophone represented the only worthwhile booty they had picked up during the entire advance. After hours of ceaseless and monotonous motoring they found they could still bear the ‘Nutcracker Suite’.
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Following close behind came the foot infantry, visibly boosted by the sight of the damage and carnage wreaked by the Luftwaffe and Panzers leading ahead, ‘In brief –
“Sieg und Heil!
”,’ declared a Leutnant with the 123rd Infantry Division with heady optimism, ‘the Red Front has been smashed.’ He jubilantly added, ‘a feeling of profound good fortune has gripped us all, victory celebrations are almost within our grasp’.
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An artillery Gefreiter supporting the 23rd Infantry Division announced: ‘we have been actively moving forward here after holding this bloody front for almost two months’. They were now ‘storming ahead’. The tempo of the advance had meant he was unable to wash or shave for eight days. His battery alone from Artillery Regiment 59 had taken 1,200 prisoners. Victory beckoned.

‘During the weeks before 2 October we had constantly seen Russian bombers and fighters, now they seem to have blown away. Either they are frightened or they haven’t got any left and the last few are being held for the fellows in the Kremlin’s towers. Instinct tells us that Russian resistance will soon be at an end. Only fought-out remnants will be left after that and those can be swiftly settled.’
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A German propaganda company reporting the closure of the Vyazma pocket alongside the 2nd Panzer Division sensed the momentous achievement they were witnessing.

‘We don’t know how many divisions, how many armies, how many guns and numbers of tanks are stuck in these large forests, the edges of which we can now see with our own eyes. We only know that for them there is no escape.’
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Oberst von Manteuffel, the commander of Panzergrenadier Regiment 6, had a less sanguine view of the situation. His predecessor had been killed in action only six weeks before. He suspected what might be coming. As soon as all his units had reported that they were set around the crucial eastern sector of the Vyazma ring he issued a simple instruction: ‘Dig in up to your necks!’
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It was to prove a prophetic directive. Inside the loosely held pocket rings were 67 Soviet Rifle divisions, six cavalry divisions and 13 tank brigades. Once again the German ‘fast’ divisions had ‘a tiger by the tail’.

Meanwhile to the north, in the Panzergruppe 3 sector, XXXXIst Panzer Corps, spearheaded by the 1st Panzer Division, were ordered to attack beyond the forming pockets north-west towards Kalinin on the River Volga. After it had captured Staritza, northwest of Rzhev, resupply difficulties – evident even during the assembly area phase – made themselves felt. Non-combat vehicles were ordered to remain behind to husband sufficient fuel to reach the River Volga. Petrol was siphoned from these non-combatant types and reallocated to Panzers, half-tracks and artillery prime-movers. These ad hoc measures maintained the operational tempo and achieved absolute surprise, reflected in a buoyant radio transmission from the 1st Panzer operations officer to the Corps Chief of Staff, Oberst Hans Röttiger. ‘Russian units, although not included in our march-tables, are attempting continuously to share our road space’ between Staritza and Kalinin, it read. Mischievously, Röttiger was informed the intermingling of Russian with German vehicles was ‘partly responsible for the delay of our advance on Kalinin. Please advise what to do.’ The 1st Panzer Division was boldly advancing with completely open flanks. Its supporting 36th Motorised Infantry Division was languishing to the rear, held up by bad roads and fuel shortages. Oberst Röttiger offered an equally euphoric solution to the problem posed. ‘As usual,’ his message stated, ‘1st Panzer Division has priority along the route of advance – reinforce traffic control!’ In short, the unit was invited to ignore the risks and drive on.
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Trams were still running in the streets of Kalinin as the leading elements of the Panzer division rumbled into the city. Furious street-fighting erupted once armed Russian factory workers, still dressed in civilian overalls, realised who they were. Flamethrower Panzers drenched machine gun nests with fiery petroleum while German motorcycle soldiers were pinned down in the streets by Russian roof-top snipers. Seeking to capture the Volga river bridge intact, the lead element of a Panzergrenadier company from Regiment 113 drove at it. Both civilian and Russian military traffic could be seen streaming over the crossing. An intense battle developed for possession of a canal bridge that appeared unexpectedly before the main span. It was smoked off during the fighting by German mortars and the company commander from Regiment 113 suddenly found himself across.