Despite their success, the assault group had suffered five men killed and at least twenty others wounded. Amongst the dead was Oberleutnant Wolfram Knaak.7 The fallen officer was later posthumously promoted to Rittmeister and finally awarded the Knight’s Cross in November 1942 for gallantry in action. All five men were buried together, a cross crowned with a helmet and adorned with their names and the battalion insignia created by Grabert marking the spot.
On 28 June, Oberfeldwebel Werner’s unit that had triumphed at Lydavenai was called into action once again, this time against another major 200m bridge over the Daugava River. The objective lay at the foot of the town of Jēkabpils and Werner’s men disguised themselves in a combination of Soviet uniforms and civilian clothing, Unteroffizier Gert Drenger sitting in the truck’s cab in uniform, with Pionier Strömer in dark work clothes as driver. Riding on the truck’s footboard was Unteroffizier Purwin, who spoke fluent Russian and would act as interpreter. The truck reached the bridge in the dull grey light of early morning but was forced to pause as an improvised barricade of mined paving stones had been erected by Soviet defenders who carefully observed their approach from the north bank. In what was a careless oversight and unfortunate for Werner and his men, a motorcycle sidecar combination was following close behind the Russian truck, carrying a mortar for potential fire support. However, the motorcyclist was still in his German uniform of the 1st Panzer Division and defending Soviet troops recognised the threat and immediately opened fire with everything they had, including anti-tank guns. The Brandenburgers threw themselves out of the truck to scramble for whatever cover they could find, the driver Strömer being riddled with bullets while still inside the cab.
Several men were killed and wounded, the remainder rolling down the embankment to attempt to get below the Russians’ line of fire. However, the defending barrage was relentless and within minutes all of the Brandenburgers were dead or dying except for one man, named Burrer. He had seen two Russians approaching and shot both before hiding in a shallow ditch. A Soviet officer passed nearby, apparently going to the aid of his men, and he too was shot down by machine-gun fire. Burrer’s weapon jammed as he heard other Russian voices nearby, so he lay as still as possible and let them pass by as they ran parallel to the river and out of sight. Suddenly there was an almighty explosion and Burrer was showered with water and rubble as the Soviet troops successfully blew the bridge.
Burrer stayed there for over an hour until he heard approaching armour. Unsure of their nationality he remained frozen in place until the familiar sight of German panzers and accompanying infantrymen came into view. The bridge was lost, but Burrer had survived; all the remaining fourteen men of his unit were killed in the short brutal firefight, including their leader Oberfeldwebel Werner.
In total, seven bridges had been taken and held by the 8th Company and by 28 June elements of the company were just 80km short of Leningrad, but at a heavy cost in dead and wounded. Nevertheless, Leeb, the commander of Army Group North, penned a letter to Lahousen at the Tirpitzufer, with copies despatched to OKW and Canaris in which he praised the regiment:
What these brave men have done on Russian soil has justified and surpassed the regiment’s reputation which it acquired in the other campaigns of this war. Through their great bravery in difficult situations, they have led the panzers and troops along the path to victory and obtained results, the lack of which would have been irreplaceable for carrying out the operations … Their high losses are a sign of the heroic commitment and German soldiers’ fame. Before the fallen we lower our flags in awe and gratitude.8
In the meantime, while German troops were in the outskirts of Dünaberg, Leutnant Hermann Lütke’s Fallschirmjäger platoon had made their first combat jump. The small unit had been furnished with parachutes before the beginning of ‘Barbarossa’ though an originally planned jump to seize a strategically valuable bridge had been rendered unnecessary by the rapid ground advance capturing the target with unexpected speed. The Fallschirmjäger moved from Suwalki to the captured Soviet airfield at Varene, where they were briefed on Operation ‘Bogdanow’, the capture of two railway bridges on the line from Lida to Maladzyechna near the village manor houses of Bogdanow in Belarus. One of the bridges crossed the river Holszanka while the other was a viaduct that traversed a road 240m away along the track. Elements of the 19th Panzer Division had become bogged down and separated from the main German thrust after Soviet troops had infiltrated between the vanguard advancing towards Bogdanow and the bulk of the division. The Fallschirmjäger drop was of dual purpose; to secure the rail track and provide a diversionary raid in the area and relieve pressure on the separated panzer troops.
On the afternoon of 25 June, at 1630hrs, three Ju 52 aircraft carrying Lütke and thirty-five men took off and flew at low level towards the drop zone, skimming the treetops to avoid enemy anti-aircraft fire or fighter interception. The idea was to land 1,200m past the river bridge atop a small clear plateau, whereupon the men would make their way through a relatively sparsely wooded area and onwards to the bridge. As the drop zone neared, the leading Ju 52 unexpectedly attracted heavy ground fire that shattered the cockpit glass and wounded the pilot in the mouth. The aircraft radio operator (who also acted as jumpmaster) and two Fallschirmjäger were also injured, one shot through the upper thigh, and the embarked troops were immediately ordered to prepare to jump, despite being short of the target. At a height of only 60m they began to exit the aircraft, their parachutes barely opening before they hit the ground. As was the method with early German parachute operations, the Fallschirmjäger had dropped without their main weapons which were parachuted separately in containers. These were still aboard the lead aircraft and initially it appeared that the mission was doomed from the outset until the injured pilot circled slowly around to their position, attracting more heavy ground fire as the wounded radio operator threw the containers out of the door.
The Fallschirmjäger rapidly made contact with two armoured cars from the Panzer Division’s reconnaissance unit PAA 19 (Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 19), commanded by Leutnants König and Watermann. The combined force immediately came under attack from two companies of Red Army troops, supported by four tanks and fire from heavy mortars. During the initial confusion, both Hermann Lütke and his deputy Feldwebel Eric Reichert had fallen. For three hours, the pocket of Germans that had reached the bridge fended off repeated attacks, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat, before shelling by the Russian tanks forced them to retreat into the river itself for cover. While the two armoured cars provided valuable fire support, moving position frequently to frustrate enemy gunners, the Fallschirmjäger fought for a further one-and-a-half hours, frequently firing while standing in breast-deep water, until darkness began to fall. Their ammunition was virtually exhausted when, abruptly, the Soviet attackers withdrew, leaving both the bridge and viaduct in German hands. The armoured car unit had lost two men killed – Gefreiter Hugo Ulrich and Oberpionier Herbert Frenzel – while the Brandenburgers had suffered four dead, four wounded and thirteen others missing in action. At midnight Feldwebel Rose took command of the Fallschirmjäger and two Russian prisoners that had been taken during the battle. With this first combat drop, the regiment had inaugurated a new form of warfare for themselves and, despite the heavy casualties, had acquitted themselves well. The surviving Brandenburger Fallschirmjäger were not sent back to Vilna until the beginning of July.
Battles with Army Group South
Oberleutnant Meissner’s 6th Company, 2nd Battalion, was attached to Army Group South, Meissner moving from guarding the Romanian oil wells to operations alongside the 22nd Luftlande Division. On the morning of ‘Barbarossa’ the 6th Company advanced together with Romanian forces into Bessarabia and the southern Ukraine, the Brandenburgers in the vanguard to enable capture of bridges over the Pruth and Dnestr Rivers before beginning the assault on the formidable defences of the Stalin Line.
From there they forced crossings of the Bug and Dnieper Rivers and b
egan the attack on the Crimea with the Luftlande Division. Its commander, Generalleutnant Hans Graf von Sponeck, issued orders to his staff two days before the invasion commenced that Jewish Red Army prisoners be identified and kept separately, later commanding his division to work closely with Einsatzgruppe D in rounding up and shooting Jews in his operational area. Fortunately for the Brandenburgers they retained their autonomous character throughout ‘Barbarossa’ and there seems to be no evidence that they were involved in those genocidal actions.
The ready companies of Major Heinz’s 1st Battalion were also attached to Army Group South. The Battalion Headquarters, 2nd and 4th Companies as well as the Nachtigall Battalion were subordinated to General der Infanterie Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel’s Seventeenth Army, operating in the region of XXI Gebirgs Corps, while the 3rd Company was placed elsewhere under the control of III Panzer Corps of Kleist’s Panzer Group 1.
During the early morning darkness of 22 June, Hauptmann Dr Wolf-Justin Hartmann’s 2nd Company left their forward staging area west of Przemyśl dressed in full Soviet uniforms and seized the rail bridge north of the city across the San River, a tributary of the Vistula. Hartmann, described frequently as having a ‘very lively manner’, had enlisted in the regiment as a 45-year-old reserve officer, having served during the previous war, fighting in Russia as an artillery commander during 1916 and later a volunteer member of the Deutschen Asienkorps (German Asian Corps) with the 701st Field Artillery Division where he was employed as a liaison officer with the Ottoman Army, fighting in Palestine against British Imperial forces. An adventurer by nature, he had subsequently sailed extensively during the 1920s before living for several years in South America, writing novels of his wartime adventures. A fresh European conflict brought his return to Germany and enlistment in the Brandenburgers.
The company raced east, breaking through the incomplete fortifications of the so-called ‘Molotov Line’; the Przemyśl sector of the line that marked the Soviet Union’s new western border comprising nine centres of resistance totalling ninety-nine bunkers stretching for 120km. They passed through the largely unmanned bunker system until caught in a savage artillery bombardment near the town of Butsiv that killed five of Hartmann’s men and forced a temporary halt to their advance.
On the left flank of Army Group South, Oberleutnant Werner John’s 3rd Company (named ‘Sturmkompanie Schulze’ for the attack) stormed the defended bridge over the Bug River at Ustyluh on the morning of the invasion, supported by the 298th Infantry Division. John led twelve men that were disguised as Red Army troops, the only members of the group who spoke the native language being four Ukrainians while the remaining eight covered themselves in bloodstained bandages to discourage any attempts to communicate with them while they attempted to infiltrate the front line. During the previous night, they had stolen a calf from a local farm, though they were discovered in the act and John was forced to mollify the agitated owner with some money and a flask of schnapps. The calf was slaughtered, the meat given to the nearest German field kitchen while its blood was used to soak bandages on the Brandenburger troops. Slipping through the porous front line in two groups, they managed to mingle with retreating soldiers, many of whom shared similar bloodstained bandages after the border skirmishes that morning.
The first crossing of the Bug at Ustyluh was achieved with little problem, the Brandenburgers using the chaos caused by the start of the initial German artillery bombardment to make their appearance as retreating troops. Soviet Commissars that were shepherding the retreating rearguard towards the east attempted to order John’s leading Brandenburgers onto trucks for the withdrawal, but soon left the scene before making any attempt to enforce the order. Ustyluh is situated at the confluence of the Luga and Bug Rivers and was a transit point for the grain and lumber traffic that had plied the waterway as far as Danzig. The German artillery bombardment that threw the Red Army into headlong retreat destroyed or damaged more than 80 per cent of the town’s houses and killed approximately 500 people. Once the Wehrmacht established a firm hold on the ruins it was used as a railway traffic point, the local Jewish population soon being rounded up and put to work fixing minor artillery damage to the bridge over the Bug River, clearing the debris from the street and loading freshly arrived ammunition and military provisions onto trucks at the railway station.
John’s company continued to head east towards two wooden bridges near P’yatydni. Their crossing of the Bug had taken place at 0315hrs and they reached their new objective by 0430hrs. Racing across the pair of bridges, they established a small defensive enclave on the eastern bank that they defended against frequent and heavy counter-attacks. At one point, Soviet engineers attempted to attack using the river itself, approaching on pontoons in an unsuccessful effort to destroy the two bridges with explosives. The lightly armed Brandenburgers were scheduled to hold the bridges for only twenty minutes, though it was oneand-a-half hours before infantry reinforcements arrived and John’s exhausted men were relieved.
Sturmkompanie Schulze continued fighting alongside the 25th Motorised Infantry Division, also seizing a railway bridge across the Styr near Rozyszce 80km to the east on 28 June, establishing another bridgehead that came under severe Soviet pressure but never buckled. However, Soviet snipers and infantry attacks had taken their toll; sixteen men had been killed from the 3rd Company and Oberleutnant John wounded by shell splinters after being caught in a bombardment by Soviet tanks. Hospitalised, he was replaced as company commander by Leutnant Dieter Weithoener until the remains of the company returned to Brandenburg an der Havel during August.
Meanwhile Heinz led the 4th Company and Nachtigall troops through Russian lines in the vanguard of the 1st Gebirgs Division. Local villagers recounted stories of Soviet border guards fleeing at the first sign of German troops, which could account for the lack of serious resistance encountered by Heinz at that point.9 Heinz had led his troops across the San without serious casualties and by 28 June ‘Kampfgruppe Heinz’ stood before a strongly fortified Russian position near the city of Lviv (known as Lemberg to the Germans). Flushed with the success experienced thus far and with the Soviet defenders reeling back in confusion, the Brandenburgers were poised at the gates of the city and mounted their attack on the strongpoint at 0300hrs on 29 June. The Nachtigall Battalion led the assault and, despite the apparent complexity of the defensive works, met only moderate resistance before the Red Army lines collapsed.
As the Nachtigall Battalion marched into Lviv they were greeted enthusiastically by the local populace who generally harboured little ill-will towards their Wehrmacht ‘liberators’ from the severe and unrelentingly oppressive Soviet yoke that had historically degraded the Ukraine. Heinz himself arrived in the city at the head of thirty men on motorcycles and sidecars. Heading at full speed for the city hall, he was apparently responsible for rescuing Bishop Graf Czepticki from the adjacent cathedral, the Bishop of the Ukrainian Unity Church having been chained inside the building by retreating NKVD men who then set fire to the ornate interior. By 1400hrs the first elements of the 1st Gebirgs Division were in the city and Lviv firmly under German occupation.
With Heinz’s approval, the next move made by the Ukrainian Nachtigall troops was to proclaim the beginning of an independent Ukrainian state at 2000hrs on 30 June during a ‘liberation ceremony’ conducted by Bandera’s representative, Yaroslav Stets’ko. He declared to an assembled audience in a small meeting room in the building belonging to the Prosvita Society – dedicated to the preservation of Ukrainian culture and shut down by Soviet rulers in 1939 – that the newly independent Ukraine would cooperate fully with ‘National Socialist Greater Germany, which under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, is creating a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian nation liberate itself from Muscovite occupation’. Lviv’s radio station, occupied by enthusiastic Nachtigall troops, was later used to relay the message over the airwaves, giving hope to nationalists who heard the proclamation.
However, wh
ile Heinz may have encouraged the Ukrainians, two other German officers present – Hauptmann Hans Koch (an Abwehr II officer who acted as an OKW consultant for Ukrainian affairs) and Engineer Hauptmann Wilhelm Ernst zu Eikern (Army Corps Staff) – were quick to inform the enthusiastic Ukrainians that only Hitler himself could proclaim the nation’s independent statehood and pointedly reminded them that the war was not yet won and such a declaration of independence was somewhat premature. Yet there were precedents for the Ukrainian announcement; the Slovakian Hlinka Party had declared a Slovak state on 14 March 1939 following the German annexation of Czechoslovakia and the Croatian Ustaša had proclaimed theirs on 10 April 1941 after the German entry into Yugoslavia. Both claimed liberation, the former from Czech occupation, the latter from Serbs as the oppressors of Croatia. Both states were recognised by the Axis powers, though not as truly independent countries, but rather satellites of the Greater German Reich. A more foreboding precedent was that both also unleashed extreme bouts of ethnic violence immediately afterward.
Indeed, into this heady mix of emotions in Lviv came news that at least 2,800 bodies had been found in the city’s prisons, murdered by the retreating NKVD, many showing obvious signs of torture. Caught surprisingly off-guard by the German attack – despite frequent and explicit warnings from collected intelligence – Stalin had ordered the immediate liquidation of anybody suspected of espionage or subversive activities against the Soviet Union. Killings took place predominantly in prisons and labour camps, particularly in the Baltic states, the Ukraine, Belorussia and annexed Polish territories. On the day of the German invasion, many ‘ordinary criminals’ were released and the shooting of political prisoners began. Troops of the NKVD dragged prisoners from their cells and executed them, killing others in their crowded cells with grenades and pistol fire. Wehrmacht doctors, lawyers and the Ukrainian Red Cross were all swiftly coordinated in collecting information on the NKVD’s crimes in Lviv, though the events that swiftly followed were no longer the responsibility of Stalin’s murderers.
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