Between Giants
Page 35
The main forces of Army Group North were positioned as before in the Riga area and 36km east of the city. General Yeremenko [commander of 2nd Baltic Front] had told me in a telephone conversation that the enemy was ensconced in the strong Riga Positions, which would cost 2nd and 3rd Baltic Fronts considerable efforts and losses to penetrate.
The main danger to us was from the armoured forces south of Riga. Tanks and infantry had been spotted in concentrations on the south-west approaches to the city. These consisted of one panzer division and two infantry divisions, which were in reserve. The breakthrough of 3rd Mechanised Corps in the area that extended 9.5 miles from the southern edge of Riga had forced Schörner to position this strong reserve on the road to the city.
We were particularly pleased to learn from the reconnaissance chief and the commander of 3rd Air Army that the panzer divisions that had given us so many headaches in August and September were as before south-west of Jelgava. It therefore seemed that the Fascists had not noticed our regrouping. If they were now to discover something, it would be too late. Nevertheless, we made some allowances. It was simply impossible to keep the regrouping of an entire Front secret. Apparently, enemy reconnaissance in the first days of October had spotted something. This was probably the reason why Schörner had slowly pulled the panzer divisions back, in order to move them further towards Memel. But this plan came too late.5
Raus’ 3rd Panzer Army had two corps protecting the western approaches to Klaipėda. Of these, Hans Gollnick’s XXVIII Corps was the one that would feel the full weight of Bagramian’s attack. Between them, XXVIII Corps and XL Panzer Corps to the south had five infantry divisions, as Bagramian’s intelligence had assessed, and they were indeed strung in a very thin line, covering over 120 miles. The division in the path of the main Soviet thrust was 551st Grenadier Division, commanded by Siegfried Verhein. During the course of the coming fighting, like all grenadier divisions, it would be redesignated as a Volksgrenadier division, but despite its grandiose name, it was a weak formation. Its regiments were actually up to strength in numbers, but they had been formed largely from rear area units, personnel transferred to the army from the navy and Luftwaffe, and men previously deemed unfit or too old for front-line service. The division had little experience of war, particularly under the harsh conditions of the Eastern Front, and had had no opportunity to establish the essential cohesion required to survive a Soviet assault. Furthermore, it was defending a sector of 29 miles, leaving its positions hopelessly thin.
German staff officers first considered the possibility of a Soviet attack towards Klaipėda as early as 25 September, but at this stage, it was considered merely as one possible option. There continued to be considerable concerns about a possible Soviet operation once more aimed at reaching the Gulf of Riga. Nevertheless, the arrival of more elements of III SS Panzer Corps from Estonia in the area south of Riga allowed for plans to be made for 4th and 7th Panzer Divisions and Grossdeutschland to be moved to protect the approaches to Klaipėda. Hitler continued to fantasise about a renewal of German offensives, and on 28 September Schörner returned from a meeting in Germany with the news that Hitler still wished to attack towards the north-east from Šiauliai, i.e. a resumption of Doppelkopf. The reaction of Schörner’s subordinates is not known.6
German reconnaissance belatedly detected the Soviet preparations, spotting that 6th Guards Army had moved south-west on 29 September. The whereabouts of 5th Guards Tank Army – Bagramian’s most powerful force – remained unknown. By the following day, it was clear that an attack was being prepared in the general Raseiniai– Kelmė area, and plans were made to move 7th Panzer Division to this sector. In the meantime, plans were drawn up for a German offensive, codenamed Blitz, which would attack north-east from the Raseiniai area, with a view to destroying or at least disrupting Soviet forces that were now known to be gathering in the Šiauliai area. It was planned that forces for this attack would begin to gather at the end of October, with a view to a start date of 3 November. Grossdeutschland was alerted to move to XXVIII Corps, and its first elements, a battalion of Tiger tanks and the reconnaissance battalion, set off late on 3 October. The rest of the division would follow as soon as trains could be provided. 5th Panzer Division was also on the move, assigned on 2 October to strengthen the defences of XL Panzer Corps; like Grossdeutschland, its redeployment was held up by a shortage of trains. Finally, Gruppe Lauchert was sent from its current deployment in the Riga defences to XL Panzer Corps. But, as Bagramian had already concluded, these moves were too late to prevent the Soviet attack from gaining crucial momentum.
Despite Bagramian’s preparations, his forces were a long way from recovering from their losses earlier in the year, particularly in terms of infantry. The rifle divisions should have had nearly 12,000 men, but most had barely 7,000, with some as few as 3,000 men. Many of these were barely trained recruits, often forcibly conscripted from the newly liberated areas of the western Soviet Union. Nevertheless, 1st Baltic Front enjoyed a substantial superiority over the German forces it faced, particularly given its concentration on such a narrow front.
5 October dawned with widespread fog, preventing Bagramian from unleashing his considerable air power. Indeed, some of his army commanders wanted to postpone the attack, but aware that 3rd Panzer Army was belatedly moving its armour to counter his own redeployment, Bagramian felt he had to proceed as planned. In any event, by 1100hrs, the fog had lifted sufficiently to allow the Soviet artillery to open fire.
The initial Soviet bombardment was concentrated on the main German battle line over its full depth, for about 20 minutes. Then the infantry assault began. Although there were immediate gains in some sectors, 551st Grenadier Division put up considerable resistance, throwing back the first two waves of attacks in many areas. The third wave, however, swept the remnants of the division aside. In an attempt to restore the situation, the Grossdeutschland reconnaissance battalion was dispatched to the front. Commanded by Rittmeister Schroedter, the battalion encountered a Soviet regiment moving westwards, and launched a swift counter-attack into its flank, throwing it back in confusion. Without pausing, Schroedter moved east to the main battle positions, where he encountered a battlegroup from 551st Grenadier Division, fighting on under the command of Hauptmann Licht. The combined force managed to hold the front line until darkness, but with no contact with friendly units on either flank, and Soviet forces swiftly pressing on to the west, Schroedter ordered a withdrawal.
The first elements of 7th Panzer Division began to go into action against the advancing Red Army. The division’s panzer regiment encountered Soviet tanks from 19th Tank Corps, part of Chistiakov’s 6th Guards Army, advancing towards the Shisma, a small river several miles behind the original front line. Lacking infantry support, the Germans pulled back to the river, where they were involved in a night action against Soviet tanks and infantry. Whilst the German tanks succeeded in halting the Soviet forces facing them, they found – like the Grossdeutschland reconnaissance battalion – that they had been bypassed on either side, and were forced to pull back early on 6 October.
Bagramian was keen to maintain momentum in his attack, and ordered Colonel-General Vasili Timofeevich Volskii’s 5th Guards Tank Army, the main exploitation force of the operation, to press forward. At the same time, 4th Shock Army attacked the German line to the north of the main battle area, throwing back the weak 201st Security Division. In an attempt to shore up the security division, elements of III SS Panzer Corps – two battalions of combat engineers, a battalion of artillery and the SS reconnaissance battalion – were deployed in support under the title Sperrgruppe Schäfer. Although the German line was slowly forced back, the presence of this small, mobile group prevented any of the Soviet penetrations from developing into complete breakthroughs.7
One of the major problems faced by 1st Baltic Front’s staff officers was the task of coordinating the movements of so many troops in such a confined area, especially given the relatively primitive nature of
the local roads. Chistiakov’s 6th Guards Army in particular struggled to bring its second echelon troops forward, and Volskii asked for a delay of a day before his tank army advanced, to prevent his units from becoming entangled with those of the first wave. The roads were choked with supply units struggling to bring ammunition, food and fuel to the infantry and supporting armour that had penetrated the German defences; the factors that had hindered the Germans so much during both Doppelkopf and Cäsar now proved equally problematic for the Red Army.
At the same time as Bagramian’s main assault, 2nd Guards Army opened its attack further south. The Soviet forces included a substantial Latvian contingent:
The reinforced battalion of 156th Rifle Regiment, from 16th Latvian Rifle Division, advanced particularly briskly. Led by the battalion commander, Captain Belan, the Communists and Komsomol members were the first into the enemy positions and tore through the entire [enemy] unit. The division commander, Colonel Urbšas, exploited this success and set his main force in motion. Lieutenant Colonel Lyssenko attacked Kelmė with his 249th Rifle Regiment. The reconnaissance battalions of the divisions of 11th and 13th Guards Rifle Corps excelled themselves. The 18 year old Komsomol member Michail Yepishkin, from 2nd Guards Rifle Division’s battalion, particularly stood out. When they came under fire from high ground, he attacked from the rear with some others of a similar age. In a brief fight, they engaged the Fascists with hand grenades and raised a red flag on the high ground. They called their comrades from the 1st Guards Rifle Regiment forward.
For his heroism, Yepishkin was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.8
XL Panzer Corps, responsible for this sector of the front, initially had only a single major formation at its disposal, 548th Grenadier Division, which was as weak as all such new divisions; there was a general view in the Wehrmacht that divisions with numbers greater than 500 were of very limited use, particularly on the Eastern Front. 5th Panzer Division was en route to the area, but to date, only a small portion of its forces had arrived. Gotthard Heinrici, the corps commander, had no option but to order the deployment of these limited forces close to the front line. 5th Panzer Division’s anti-aircraft battalion, whose powerful 88mm guns were of particular value as anti-tank weapons, was ordered late on 5 October to deploy to the east of Kelmė, but Hauptmann Braumüller, the battalion commander, left the bulk of his heavy weapons to the west of the town, wishing to prevent them from being overrun in the first phase of any Soviet assault.9
By the end of the first day of the attack, Bagramian had good reasons to be satisfied, even if he had not been able to deploy his exploitation forces as fast as he might have wished:
We drew up the first reckoning. 6th Guards Army and 43rd Army had penetrated between 14 and 17km into the enemy’s positions and had widened the breakthrough to 176km … formations of 6th Guards Army had succeeded in reaching the Tryškiai area, right on the edge of the second defensive line … Right at the front, as before, was the 16th Latvian Rifle Division, whose 249th Rifle Regiment had forced the Krozenka and had secured the Šiauliai–Kelmė road.10
Interrogation of prisoners by the advancing Soviet units identified the presence of 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions and Grossdeutschland, and on 6 October, 2nd and 3rd Baltic Fronts renewed their attacks towards Riga, to prevent Schörner from moving more forces to intercept the Soviet drive to the coast. Although the German defences around the Latvian capital continued to hold firm, the bulk of 16th and 18th Armies remained tied down, unable to release forces for the major battle that was now raging to the west. Volskii’s 5th Guards Tank Army was finally released to push on to the Baltic coast, and by mid-afternoon reached the town of Ubiške, where well-positioned German anti-tank guns took advantage of swampy ground to stop the Soviet advance, much as Soviet defenders had done against Doppelkopf. After a brief discussion with Bagramian, Volskii turned his spearheads south to bypass the German position. At Luokė, they encountered Kampfgruppe Fabisch from Grossdeutschland, freshly arrived from the north. The German force was able to repulse the Soviet forces, but these were merely the tip of the spearhead. The bulk of the Soviet armour merely bypassed the German unit and drove on towards the west.11
Other German formations were also being moved to deal with the new threat. On 6 October, 4th Panzer Division was ordered to move its Panther battalion, with a reconnaissance company and a battalion of combat engineers, to the village of Viekšniai, in order to counter the thrust of 4th Shock Army. XXXIX Panzer Corps dispatched whatever rear area units it could scrape together to try to build a new front line facing south, but speed was of the essence. When the battlegroup from 4th Panzer Division reached Viekšniai, it found the area already occupied by Soviet forces, mainly from 119th Rifle Division. According to 4th Panzer Division’s unit history, the battlegroup swiftly retook the village.12 Bagramian gives a different account, in which the Germans suffered substantial losses as they attempted to penetrate into 119th Rifle Division’s artillery positions.13 The outcome of both accounts was the same: the Soviet attempt to advance through Viekšniai was brought to an abrupt halt.
In the south, the Soviet forces, with 1st Tank Corps now in the lead supporting the Latvians and the 3rd Guards Rifle Division, swept past the flanks of Braumüller’s anti-aircraft formations, mainly to the north, and bypassed Kelmė. As they passed to the west, they overran Braumüller’s guns almost before they could go into action. Four Soviet tanks were destroyed at close range, but ten guns were lost. More elements of 5th Panzer Division had arrived overnight, but the division’s panzer regiment could field only 15 Panthers and 12 Pz.IV. With this small force and the bulk of the division’s 14th Panzergrenadier Regiment, Oberst Herzog, commander of the division’s panzer regiment, launched a counter-attack into the southern flank of the Soviet forces streaming to the west. The German battlegroup claimed to have destroyed 26 Soviet tanks, but was unable to close the gap to Gruppe Lauchert, about six miles to the north. 1st Tank Corps continued to drive west, with 5th Panzer Division’s reconnaissance battalion attempting to keep up with it on its southern flank. By the end of the day, the German division was strung out over about 12 miles, and Karl Decker, the division commander, gave up the unequal struggle, ordering his men to make contact with 548th Grenadier Division to the south-east. Even if he had been able to concentrate his division’s fighting strength, the absence of the vital supply elements left his men desperately short of fuel and ammunition.14
The weather became overcast and rainy on 7 October, but this was not sufficient to prevent Bagramian’s air support from operating. With more elements of Grossdeutschland and 7th Panzer Division arriving overnight, XXVIII Corps attempted to build on the check achieved at Ubiške, by establishing a new front line stretching to Tryškiai. The retreating remnants of 551st Grenadier Division were incorporated into the line, but the southern flank of the position had already been turned by Volskii’s deviation, and the Germans were forced to pull back further. Bagramian, who was already impatient with Volskii’s slow rate of advance, continued to harangue his subordinate to get his tanks moving faster, but even without the full weight of 5th Guards Tank Army, the Soviet forces continued to put huge pressure on the Germans. Gruppe Fabisch, consisting of a battalion of panzergrenadiers supported by a few assault guns and an artillery battalion, was joined in Luokė by a substantial part of 7th Panzer Division’s panzer regiment, as well as perhaps a battalion or more of stragglers from 551st Grenadier Division. The tanks were deployed on the southern flank of the German position, and as a group of Panthers advanced in a local counter-attack, they came under heavy fire from their southern flank, suffering several losses.15 Soviet artillery fire on Luokė steadily grew heavier, with a salvo of Katyusha rockets causing terrible casualties when the Grossdeutschland field dressing station was hit.
Soviet infantry began to penetrate into the village, and with Soviet armour from Malakov’s 19th Tank Corps already bypassing the position to the south, the German forces were ordered to withdraw. As
they withdrew, the tanks of 7th Panzer Division attempted to take as many infantry with them as they could, but suddenly found themselves under intense small-arms fire. Partially surrounded, they fought their way clear, though most of the infantry riding on the tanks were killed. As they broke out of the encirclement, one of the tanks slipped into a ditch full of German soldiers attempting to take cover. Unaware of the presence of the infantry, the tank driver continued to drive on, and the crew of the following tank could only watch in horror as the soldiers trapped in the trench were literally torn apart by the tank’s tracks.16 As they pulled back towards Klaipėda, the German tanks could do nothing to prevent the Soviet 19th Tank Corps from driving through open space on their southern flank.
The defences at Luokė were swiftly overwhelmed. A panzergrenadier battalion from Grossdeutschland failed to receive the order to withdraw at the same moment as the other units, and was encircled. Late on 7 October, the battalion succeeded in breaking through to the west, leaving much of its heavy equipment behind. Another battalion from the division encountered a battalion of T34s from 19th Tank Corps. After an initial probing attack, the Soviet battalion, commanded by Major Pissariev, bypassed the town to the north before turning back and attacking from the northwest. The Soviet tanks inflicted heavy losses on the German forces, but the arrival of a group of German assault guns allowed the panzergrenadiers to rally on the western outskirts, where they were able to prevent a further Soviet advance.17 Several Tiger tanks from Grossdeutschland also found themselves isolated, but adopted all-round defence until dusk, when they were able to drive through the Soviet lines without incident and reach German lines.