The Moscow Option

by David Downing

  ‘Of course the retention of the Caucasus is vital,’ Zhukov replied. ‘But we do not have the forces to defend all those areas that are vital.’ He took a memorandum from his attaché case. ‘And it seems that the Caucasus is not so vital as the Germans believe, or as we ourselves believed. The oilfields in the Volga-Kama, Ukhta, Guryev and Ural regions are now being developed at the fastest possible speed. According to this report we can survive, at a pinch, without the Caucasian oil. And this is a pinch. The defence of the Caucasus must come second to the defence of the Volga line.’

  Stalin, the Georgian, said nothing. Which usually implied agreement. Shaposhnikov was not satisfied. What about the aid from the West? Was it not vital to keep open the southern ingress route, which passed through the Caucasus?

  Zhukov reached for another memorandum. ‘Work on the new road between Ashkabad and Meshed in northern Persia is well advanced. Of course this road will not have the capacity of the trans-Caucasus route, but it will be better than nothing. The southern ingress route is not the only one. The Archangel railway is carrying a substantially greater volume of goods. And even if Vologda falls - which is likely - the terrain between there and Konosha is most unsuitable for the enemy’s armoured formations. We have a much better chance of holding this route open. And even if it were closed, there is still Vladivostok. Unless the Japanese win a great victory over the Americans they will not add to their list of enemies by attacking us in the Far East. If they do, if the worst comes to the worst, we shall have to carry on without outside aid. We will have no choice. But we must hold the Volga line, or there will be nothing left to carry on for!’

  The meeting went on into the early hours, but Zhukov’s list of priorities was not questioned in principle. The Red Army’s dispositions in the following weeks reflected these priorities. The front was now divided into nine Fronts - North, Volkhov, North-west, West, Voronezh, South-west, South, North Caucasus and Caucasus - comprising twenty-six armies or roughly three and a half million men. Half of these armies were attached to only two Fronts, West and Voronezh, holding the centre of the line between the Volga below Kalyazin and Liski on the Don. Of the six armies held in reserve, four were deployed behind these two Fronts. If the Germans intended a straight march east towards the Urals they would have to go straight through the bulk of the Red Army.

  III

  An hour before dawn on 24 May the German artillery began its preliminary bombardment, and as the sun edged above the rim of the eastern horizon the panzer commanders leaned out of their turrets and waved the lines of tanks and armoured infantry carriers forward.

  In the German ranks morale was high. The soldiers had survived the rigours of a winter that would once have been beyond their darkest imaginings, and now it was spring. The leaves were on the trees, the pale sun warmed their feet, their hands and their hearts. The next few months would see this business in the East finished. And then at best there would be peace and home, at worst a more amenable theatre of operations.

  The commanders were equally optimistic. Guderian, up with the leading tanks of 2nd Panzer, was later to write:

  “Although there was some concern that the final objectives of the summer campaign were not clearly defined, and that this lack of clarity might encourage interference from the Supreme Command (i.e. Hitler), there was little doubt in any of our minds that the war in the East would be concluded before the autumn.”

  Guderian of course was always at his most optimistic when moving forward, and Second Panzer Army was certainly doing that. On the opening day of the campaign the two strong panzer corps, 24th and 47th, burst through the weak link between the Soviet Twenty-fourth and Fiftieth Armies, throwing the former south towards the Oka and the latter north into the path of von Kluge’s advancing infantry. By evening on that day the leading elements of 2nd Panzer had broken through to a depth of thirty miles and were approaching Lashma on the Oka. Fifteen miles to the north 3rd Panzer was nearing Tuma. The Soviet forces facing Second Panzer Army had been comprehensively defeated.

  One-hundred-and-twenty miles to the north, on the other wing of Army Group Centre’s attack, Fourth Panzer Army was having greater difficulty breaking through the Soviet Fifth Army’s positions on the River Nerl. This unexpectedly stubborn resistance forced Manstein, who had relieved the sick Hoppner as Panzer Army commander, to shift the schwerpunkt of his attack southwards in the early afternoon, and it was not until dusk that 8th Panzer was free of the defensive lines and striking out across country towards the Moscow-Yaroslavl road.

  On the following day both panzer armies were in full cry towards the Volga and their intended rendezvous in the neighbourhood of Gorkiy. But that evening the Führer decided to interfere with the smooth unfolding of Halder’s plan. To Hitler July 1941 was only three months and a long coma away. He remembered only too clearly how many Russians had escaped from the over-large German pockets around Minsk and Smolensk. Then he had insisted on smaller, tighter encirclements against the opposition of his panzer generals. He did so again now. Watching Guderian and Manstein motoring blithely on across the Wolfsschanze wall-map towards the distant Volga the Führer again feared that the Russians would escape the net. He ordered both panzer armies to turn inwards behind the retreating enemy.

  Guderian and Manstein both protested loudly to von Bock. Bock protested diplomatically to Brauchitsch. Brauchitsch protested very diplomatically to Hitler. A day was wasted. The Führer remained unmoved. Brauchitsch said as much to Bock, who passed on the message to Guderian and Manstein. Both duly turned a panzer corps rather than their whole armies, inward behind the Russians.

  Or so they thought. In fact the Red Army formations, granted an extra day’s grace by the arguing Germans, had pulled back beyond the range of the gaping jaws. When Guderian and Manstein’s units met east of Kovrov on the evening of 27 May they closed a largely empty bag. The eventual tally of prisoners was a mere 12,000.

  Hitler was not disappointed. The low figure, he told Halder, was an indication of the enemy’s weakness. Halder was inclined to agree, but the commanders on the spot were not so sure. But in any case only a few days had been wasted, and what were a few days?

  In the long term they were to prove rather important. For when Manstein had received Hitler’s original directive he had been on the point of ordering 41st Panzer Corps into the undefended city of Yaroslavl. But with the need to close the pocket there had no longer been the forces available. This was unfortunate for the Germans, for Yaroslavl was to cost the Wehrmacht many more lives than those Russians trapped by Hitler’s manoeuvre.

  Meanwhile the Soviet armies that had escaped encirclement were now back behind the Klyaz’ma river, and Guderian’s panzers were held up for a further two days by resolute defence. Then, to the Germans’ surprise, the Russians withdrew during the night of 30 May. Apparently they were not going to stand their ground and fight to the last as in the previous year. This new devotion to elastic defence was disturbing.

  Fortunately for the Germans the same day offered evidence that the Red Army had not yet shaken off all its bad habits. With that incompetence which the Master Race found more typical of their enemy the Soviet forces in Murom allowed 2nd Panzer to seize the road and rail bridges across the Oka intact. By morning on 31 May a sizeable bridgehead had been established, and the whole of 47th Panzer Corps was being funnelled through on to the right bank of the river. Two days later, as Manstein’s tanks reached the Volga north of Gorkiy, Guderian’s were cutting the city’s road and rail links to the south and east.

  Here again Hitler attempted to interfere, though with less success. He forbade Guderian to enter the city; panzer forces were not suitable for urban warfare, and Gorkiy would have to wait for the infantry, still some eighty miles to the west. Guderian, while agreeing in principle, thought it senseless to allow the enemy three or four days to prepare defences in what was virtually a defenceless city. He informed Bock that the order could not be obeyed, as 29th Motorised was already engaged within the cit
y limits. Having done so he ordered 29th Motorised to engage itself within the city limits. Hitler bowed to the apparently inevitable. On 3 June the last Red Army units in the city withdrew across the Volga, and the swastika was hoisted above Gorkiy’s Red Square.

  It was not yet fluttering above Yaroslavl. By-passed by the panzers when occupation would have been little more than a formality, the city was being feverishly prepared for defence as Ninth Army ponderously approached the flaming chimney beacons from the west. On 3 June the first battles were beginning in the vast textile factories of the ancient city’s western suburbs. No one in the German or Soviet High Commands foresaw that Yaroslavl’s reduction would take six weeks and cost the Germans 45,000 casualties. The beginnings of this battle were ignored for, with the capture of Gorkiy, all eyes were now fixed on the Oka line, springboard for Stage 2 of Siegfried, the great march to the south.

  IV

  In Kuybyshev Stavka waited. Where would the enemy strike next? Zhukov, who had been Stavka’s representative at West Front HQ during the preceding fortnight, had been relieved to see that the Germans were making no attempts to secure bridgeheads across the Volga between Gorkiy and Yaroslavl. A panzer advance downstream along both banks would have presented formidable problems. But, given that the enemy had eschewed such a tempting opportunity and, further, given that his armour was still concentrated north of the Oka, it seemed most likely that a direct march east across the Volga Uplands was intended. And this was barely less dangerous. Stavka knew that there was no natural line short of the river that the Red Army could hope to hold. All the strength it possessed would be needed to hold the river-line itself. It was re-emphasised to all Front, army and divisional commanders that on no account should they allow their formations to be encircled by the German armoured units; they were to fight, retreat, fight and retreat again, if necessary - and it probably would be - all the way back to the Volga.

  In Hitler’s Rastenburg HQ, now over 800 miles from the front, little attention was paid to the possible responses of the enemy. As always the German strategic intelligence was as poor as the tactical intelligence was good. The paucity of prisoners taken in Stage 1 was attributed to the Red Army’s lack of manpower; reports from the Front that the Soviet formations were showing a new awareness of the tactical values of withdrawal were given little credence. It was estimated that there were approximately 120 Soviet divisions on the line Gorkiy-Sea of Azov, and the Führer expected most of them to fall into the bag during Stage 2. In these early June days the atmosphere at Rastenburg was little short of euphoric. Cairo had fallen, Gorkiy had fallen. The Japanese had won a major victory in the Pacific. Everything was going right. There was no reason why Stage 2 should go wrong.

  On the morning of 17 June Army Group Centre rolled forward into the enemy once more. This time Second Panzer Army was on the left wing, Fourth Panzer Army having been moved to the Ryazan area during the second week of the month. The two armies made rapid progress. Such rapid progress in fact that even Halder began to grow suspicious. Prisoners were scarce, the Russians coolly fighting their way backwards. Guderian’s tanks rumbled into Arzamas, Manstein’s reached the Tsna river south of Sasovo. Second Army took Ryazsk on Manstein’s right flank, Fourth Army moved forward between the two panzer armies.

  For the next few days the panzers rolled on through pasture lands broken by large stretches of deciduous forest. The Stukas swooped down on the retreating Red Army, the tanks sent up their clouds of dust, German commanders examined their inadequate maps by the light of burning villages. All the familiar horror of blitzkrieg spread southwards towards the open steppe.

  The miles slipped away beneath the panzers’ tracks at a rate not seen since the previous summer. On 23 June Guderian’s advance units had travelled two hundred miles and were approaching Penza from the north. The next day they met Manstein’s vanguard south-east of the town. Another huge pocket had been created. But again the haul of prisoners and equipment was disappointing. And many of those forces which had been caught in the encirclement found little difficulty in breaking through Guderian’s thin screen and escaping to the east.

  Four hundred miles to the north the struggle for possession of Yaroslavl was entering its third week. Hoth’s panzers had secured a bridgehead over the Volga to the east of Rybinsk, and the Army Group North commander Field-Marshal von Leeb had planned to use them to cut off Yaroslavl’s communications to the north. But as he was about to set this process in motion Hitler, worried about the long front south of the Don which was held by only Seventeenth Army and the armies of Germany’s allies, demanded that Hoth’s Panzer Army should part with one of its two panzer corps. Ninth Army would have to continue its struggle for the factories, sewers and cellars of Yaroslavl with insufficient support.

  On 23 June the two northernmost armies of Army Group South - Sixth Army and First Panzer Army - joined the drive to the south-east. Kleist’s panzers struck east and south-east, towards Balashov and along the left bank of the Don. Simultaneously Manstein and Guderian were preparing to resume their southward march.

  Another week passed. On 30 June the pincers closed again, this time outside the railway junction of Rtishchevo. Further east Guderian’s panzers, aimed on Saratov, were checked for the first time in the neighbourhood of Petrovsk. The leading units of 2nd Panzer were assailed by a Soviet armoured brigade and suffered unexpected casualties. The continuation of the German advance had to wait for 18th Panzer’s arrival the following afternoon. The Soviet tanks melted away to the east.

  Guderian continued south, reaching the Volga above Saratov on the morning of 2 July, and cutting the railway entering the city from the west twenty-four hours later. Saratov seemed well-defended, so this time the refractory general obeyed the orders from Rastenburg to place a screen round the city rather than attempt its capture. 47th Panzer Corps moved on down the right bank of the great river. Its tanks had now covered over five hundred miles since 24 May and the strain was beginning to tell. Though losses in action had been negligible, the attritional qualities of the Soviet roads had exerted a formidable toil on the vehicles.

  In the Wolfsschanze such things were not visible on the wall-maps. All these showed was the relentless march of the German forces. Siegfried was succeeding. All was well.

  In Kuybyshev, strange though it would have seemed to Hitler and his henchmen, spirits were also rising. The southern thrust of the German armour had brought that same relief with which the French High Command had greeted von Kluck’s fatal turn to the south outside Paris in August 1914. Then General Gallieni, the Military Governor of the French capital, had transported troops in taxis to attack the exposed German flank. Stavka had no such options available to it, but the Soviet leaders could bear such inconvenience. What mattered, what really mattered, was that the panzers were streaming southwards, away from the crucial line, away from a swift end to the war in the East.

  Their own armies were withdrawing steadily towards the Volga. Though often outflanked by the German armour and pummelled by the screaming Stukas the Red Army refused to break up and die as it had the previous year. Skilful leadership in the field and intelligent use of propaganda played their part in encouraging this fortitude, but the most telling factor was Stavka’s simple common-sense tactical directive: fight until threatened with encirclement, and then withdraw. Of course a large proportion of the Soviet forces were encircled at one time or another, but the enormity of space on the steppe and the profusion of forests in the northern half of the battle-zone offered ample opportunities for escape. The German lines were too thin on the ground, the Luftwaffe too thin in the sky, to dominate such a vast area. The major portion of the West and Voronezh Front armies had reached the line Gorkiy-Saransk- Saratov-Stalingrad by the end of the first week of July.

  Their retreat left South-west and South Fronts, covering the Don-Sea of Azov line, in an exposed position, and as Kleist’s tanks neared the Don-Volga land-bridge west of Stalingrad on 6 July Zhukov ordered the two Front commanders
to withdraw their armies south-eastwards to the line of the Don. Hoth’s panzer corps, which had just arrived in the ‘threatened sector’ was ordered back to the north by Hitler, to the exasperation of all others concerned. Seventeenth Army, and the Italian, Rumanian and Hungarian formations, moved forward into the vacuum left by the retreating Russians.

  Stage 2 of Siegfried was almost complete. On 8 July Guderian’s tanks entered the northern outskirts of Stalingrad as Kleist’s moved in from the south-west. After two days’ skirmishing the Red Army fell back across the mile- wide Volga. Upriver Sixth Army was fighting its way into Saratov. The central section of the line Archangel-Astrakhan had been reached. As Ninth and Third Panzer Armies prepared for the final onslaught on Yaroslavl, Eleventh, Seventeenth, First Panzer and Second Panzer Armies deployed for the invasion of the Caucasus.

  And after that the Middle East. Rommel, the troops in Russia were told rather prematurely, was about to cross the Suez Canal. Soon they would be joining hands with him somewhere in Arabian Nights’ country. For the enemies of the Reich nemesis was clearly at hand.

  Chapter 9: Feeding the Flood, Raising the Dykes

  An ambulance can only go so fast.

  Neil Young

  Cairo/Tel el Kebir

  Mussolini had made his triumphal entrance into Cairo on 12 June, and after spending three days in the Abdin Palace tutoring King Farouk in fascist theory and practice he had returned to Rome. The Duce was somewhat disappointed in the lukewarm reception he had received from the Egyptian populace; he would have been more so had anyone been tactless enough to inform him of the rapturous acclaim accorded to Rommel in the previous week.

  Farouk, once free of Mussolini’s overbearing presence, devoted himself to self-congratulation. He considered he had handled the whole business rather well. His national popularity had reached new heights, his friend Ali Maher was forming a government. A new era had formed for the two inseparables - himself and Egypt.