This was soon acknowledged by the Soviet initial contact reports that began to flood higher headquarters. The Soviet Third Army observed on the second day of the campaign that its right flank was being enveloped by the enemy, stating: ‘We have no reserves at all, and there is nothing with which to plan a strike.’ Extracts from the report reveal why: ‘Our most available force – the 11th Mechanised Corps – suffered great losses in tanks, 40 to 50 in all, on 22–23 June 1941.’
The 56th Rifle Division was reduced to two scattered detachments numbering 700 to 800 men and the 85th Rifle Division ‘suffered considerable losses’. The 27th Rifle Division was reduced by 40%, with units down to a quarter or a half of a combat unit of ammunition. Operational flexibility did not exist. ‘Units that are on peacetime establishment have no transport.’ The commander of the Third Army complained, ‘I have had no front orientation for two days’, and that ‘in view of the fact that a number of walkie-talkies are out of order, I can communicate with you on only one walkie-talkie’.(1)
Counter-moves were doomed to failure before they could even begin. Soviet mechanised corps in the central area, required to block German advances between 22 and 26 June, faced long marches. These ranged typically from 80–100km for the IIIrd and XIIth Mechanised Corps and up to 200km for the IXth and XIXth Mechanised Corps. The VIIIth Mechanised Corps had to move 500km. The outcome was piecemeal commitments within a few hours of arrival or immediate and costly advances with no preparation. Gains were insignificant.(2)
Infantry fared even worse. The 212th Rifle Regiment on the right flank of the 49th Division in the Soviet Fourth Army area was facing the German IVth Army Corps. Following an alert at midnight on 22 June the unit slogged 40km through unbearable heat, fighting exhausting skirmishes en route to reach Siemiatycze, its stated objective to the north. Completely fatigued on arrival, they were required to counter-march another 40km after a short rest to Kleszczele, virtually back to their original start point. The soldiers were demoralised. Their situation was hopeless. Progress could be measured by their discarded equipment, notably greatcoats and gas masks, abandoned by roadsides along their route.(3)
Even with warning, Soviet frontier forces had neither the time nor resources to react. The operational paralysis engendered is a consequence of surprise and had featured in all previous German campaigns. At no point had the Polish or western armies been able to break out of the operational straitjacket to which they had been consigned by German strategy. There were, however, a number of fundamental differences to this new campaign. The Wehrmacht was attacking its most heavily armed and psychologically resilient opponent to date. He had been totally outmanoeuvred on the frontier but time, as with previous offensives in Poland and the West, was short. The German army and economy was geared for only a short war. Space was also different. The Soviet Union was limitless in comparison to the distances traversed during the western Blitzkrieg. A key precondition, neutralising the Red Air Force, had already been achieved. Only time would tell, once the impact of surprise wore off, whether the enemy would remain standing. In the west the French had fought valiantly and with some resilience after Dunkirk, but manoeuvre space had been irretrievably lost. In Russia it could be different.
Army Group North commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm von Leeb was the weakest of the three army groups. The OKH ‘Barbarossa’ order of 31 January 1941 had directed it to destroy enemy forces in the Baltic theatre, and occupy the Baltic ports and Leningrad and Kronstadt, to deny the Russian fleet its bases. Neither of the other two army groups had such vast distances to cover and it had the least armour to execute the thrust. Leeb’s one Panzer group, Panzergruppe 4 under Generaloberst Hoepner, consisted of three Panzer divisions, three motorised infantry and two foot infantry divisions. With two further army corps – XVIth and XVIIIth, consisting of eight and seven infantry divisions respectively – Army Group North was advancing with only 18 divisions, approximately half the size of Army Group Centre and South (including its Romanian divisions). It was directly supported by about 380 aircraft from Luftflotte 1.(4)
Unlike the Centre and South sectors, Army Group North was faced by a shallow rather than wide line of enemy positions. Russian deployment in the recently occupied Baltic countries was dispersed, and in greater depth. Enemy forces stretched back into the territory of the old Russian Empire with a large reserve of Soviet tanks east of Pskov. An encirclement strategy was not, therefore, feasible. Leeb – unlike the practice in the other army groups – kept his comparatively weaker Panzergruppe, the 4th under Hoepner, directly under command and at the centre of his advance. Surprise was to be achieved by exploiting superior speed and mobility. Each partial engagement aimed not at encirclement but rather a deeper and quicker thrust towards Daugavpils, Pskov and Leningrad, the eventual strategic objective. Panzers formed the apex of thrust lines with infantry following as best they could along the flanks, delivering attacks close to the point of the spear to maintain forward Panzer momentum. Daugavpils, with its two bridges over the wide River Dvina, was the immediate objective. The aim, having punched into the defences, was to push forward and maintain sufficient momentum to keep the enemy off balance.
Stiff frontier resistance was quickly broken so that, by the end of the first day, the 8th Panzer Division was already 80km deep into the hinterland, and succeeded in throwing a bridgehead across the River Dubysa. Confidence and progress was so good that at 19.55 hours on the first day the division reported, ‘troops are advancing rapidly eastwards’. The quality of opposition was such that ‘the Division has the impression that it has yet to come into contact with regular troops’.(5)
At 04.00 hours the next day, air reconnaissance identified strong Russian motorised columns moving north from an area north-west of Wilno toward an important road junction at Kedaynyay. The force, which included between 200 and 350 Soviet tanks, appeared to be bearing down on the 8th Panzer Division, leading LVIth Panzer Corps. It was the 2nd Soviet Tank Division. They passed through Kedaynyay and missed LVIth Panzer Corps but then struck the 6th Panzer Division of XXXXIst Panzer Corps at Rossieny, 60km away. Hoepner, the commander of Panzergruppe 4, took a calculated risk. Despite the power of the attacking Russian force – 300 tanks and comparable in artillery and infantry strength to the corps it was attacking – XXXXIst Corps was tasked to destroy it without reinforcement. The lead LVIth Corps division, 8th Panzer, was directed onwards to Daugavpils on the River Dvina as planned. Blitzkrieg was becoming reality.
Between June 24 and 26, the Soviet force, which included 29 heavy tanks of an unknown type, were surrounded and liquidated by XXXXIst Panzer Corps’ large complement of Czech-manufactured light Pz Kpfw IIs and modestly gunned medium Pz Kpfw IIIs. German tactical superiority overcame the shock of encountering the new tank types. The decision not to divert the armoured apex from its aim paid off handsomely, for even as the tank battle at Rossieny died down, the forward elements of the 8th Panzer Division had the vital bridges across the River Dvina in sight. They were over 100km ahead of the main Army Group.
Hauptsturmführer Klinter from the 3rd SS Division ‘Toten-kopf’, following up the armoured spearhead with his motorised infantry company, recalled:
‘Heat, filth, and clouds of dust were the characteristic snapshot of those days. We hardly saw any enemy apart from the occasional drive-by of enemy prisoners. But the country had totally altered after we crossed the Reich border. Lithuania gave us a little taste of what we were to find in Russia: unkept sandy roads, intermittent settlements and ugly houses which were more like huts.’
A merciless sun bore down through the swirling dust raised by vehicles. ‘The air,’ Klinter remembers, as they approached Daugavpils, ‘had that putrefying and pervasive burnt smell so reminiscent of the battle zone, and all nerves and senses began to detect the breath of the front’. They became aware of piles of discarded Russian equipment alongside the steep roadside embankments.
‘Suddenly all heads switched to the right. The first dead of the
Russian campaign lay before our eyes like a spectre symbolising the destructiveness of war. A Mongolian skull smashed in combat, a torn uniform and bare abdomen slit by shell splinters. The column drew up and then accelerated ahead, the picture fell behind us. I sank back thoughtfully into my seat.’(6)
Two bridges, road and rail, spanned the River Dvina, approximately 300m wide at this point. The bridges needed to be taken intact to maintain the eastern momentum of Army Group North. Oberstleutnant Crisolli’s Kampfgruppe formed the division vanguard earmarked to attack Daugavpils. It consisted of a Panzer and infantry regiment (10th and 18th respectively), infantry motorcyclists and other motorised elements with artillery and the 8th Company of Lehr Regiment 800 ‘Brandenburg’. The Branden-burger company was ordered to attempt a coup de main.
Lehr Regiment 800, originally conceived as a special forces company, had already been employed as such during the previous Polish and French campaigns. Its role was to raid behind enemy lines, occupy and prevent demolitions or destroy key headquarters and objectives such as bridges. Directly subordinate to Admiral Canaris’s Military Intelligence Headquarters, it was founded at Brandenburg in Berlin from the first Bau-Lehr Company. By the time of the Polish campaign the unit was 500-men strong, rising to two battalions which were employed during the Western campaign. They created confusion in enemy rear areas through sabotage, demolitions and raids in direct support of Blitzkrieg combined advances of paratroopers and Panzers. In October 1940 an entire regiment was formed which had within a year expanded to division size.(7) Eduard Steinberger from South Tyrol served with the unit and explained:
‘The Brandenburg Division originally consisted of mostly non-Reich Germans – Sudeten Germans who spoke Czech, a few Palestinian Germans and volunteer Ukrainians. There were people from all over who mostly spoke other languages, but all units were under German command.’(8)
At the outset of the Russian campaign Oberleutnant Herzner commanded the Ukrainian ‘Nightingale’ battalion, recruited mainly from west Ukrainians released from Polish prisoner of war camps after the 1939 campaign. These formed part of the German advance toward Lemberg.(9)
Oberleutnant Wolfram Knaak, commanding the 8th ‘Branden-burger’ Company observing the Daugavpils bridges, had been wounded during a similar bridge raid near Kedaynyay. He was well aware of the risks involved operating so far forward of the vanguard battle group. ‘When the commanders of the divisions we were assigned saw they’d got a company of Brandenburgers,’ Steinberger remarked, ‘they immediately put us with the advance units who would be the first to make contact with the enemy.’
Knaak split his company into two raiding groups, one each for the railway and road bridges. Steinberger described how these units might be configured for a mission. They could be up to half a company strong, 60–70 soldiers, or more usually platoon sizes of 20–30 men.
‘We always operated in decoy uniforms. We wore all kinds – Russian ones for example – over our Wehrmacht uniforms. We had to be able to swiftly get rid of the cover uniform.’
The penalty, if they did not, was inevitable execution on capture. ‘We generally played a situation by ear,’ Steinberger said. In attempting to seize a bridge:
‘We always drove over in captured Russian trucks, with one of us sitting on top while someone who spoke Russian, a Latvian or Estonian for instance, sat in the cab.’(10)
During the early morning hours of 26 June Knaak’s group of captured Russian trucks began its tense drive, headlights on, toward both bridges, the spans of which could just be discerned with approaching daylight. The bridges, separated by a bend in the river, were about 1.5km apart. At Varpas, a village over 3km from the river, the parties diverged, each to its allotted objective. Left and straight on was the northern railway bridge, while the road crossing lay in a south-easterly direction to the right. Five Russian armoured cars parked by the road were overtaken by the railway group, which carried on to the main bridge span and judiciously halted, placing itself between these and additional Russian armoured cars on the bridge. During the resulting confusion, as the intention of these newly arrived trucks became clear, enemy gunners in the armoured cars were constrained against engaging the intruders for fear of hitting their own men. They moved off into the town to secure better fire positions. Meanwhile Feldwebel Kruckeberg deftly descended from the trucks to the bridge superstructure and began to cut suspected demolition cables.
Oberleutnant Knaak, having wound his way through unsuspecting civil traffic in the suburb of Griva on the southern riverbank to Daugavpils, drove up in the first of three trucks onto the road bridge. As they approached the western Soviet outpost they noticed the guards chatting to Russian civilians. With the prize tantalisingly within their grasp the action started. The nearest sentries were bayoneted but shots rang out. Now compromised, Knaak’s truck, engine screaming, started to accelerate to the far bank. The remaining lorries in hot pursuit began to close-up behind.
As gunfire began to reverberate around the bridge and suburb of Griva, followed by eerie flashes and the thump of hand-grenades, the lead tanks of Panzer Regiment 10 began to move. They had driven up as close as they dared. Hatches were dropped on order from their commander, Oberstleutnant Fronhöfer, and they began a metallic clattering race through the built-up area of Griva. Civilian traffic scattered.
Oberleutnant Knaak on the road bridge gritted his teeth and urged his driver on. Behind, whining engines and clanking gears indicated he was not alone. A crack followed by the iridescent red-hot slug of an anti-tank projectile spat out from the far Russian bank and slammed into Knaak’s truck, passing straight through, ejecting sparks and splinters of metal. The truck trundled to a halt out of control, Knaak sprawled dead inside the cab. A murderous fire jetted out from houses alongside the riverbank. German Panzers and infantry were, however, already visible on the bridge spans. An artillery shell crashed into the railway bridge producing a secondary detonation from part of the explosive charge. It was repairable, but for the moment tanks could not cross. The ‘Brandenburgers’ were pinned down. Steinberger described the typical dilemma once fighting broke out and decoy uniforms had to be jettisoned.
‘Nobody could tell whether we were friend or foe, and the tanks following on often shot at their own people in the chaos. If a mission succeeded, we usually had very few casualties. But some missions went wrong, if for example, our own people were recognised by the enemy. Then almost everybody was wiped out.’
Leutnant Schmidt commanded the first Panzer platoon to cross the Daugavpils bridge. Soon the remainder of 9/Panzer Regiment 10 was engaged in intense fighting with Russian infantry attempting to scale the river embankment and place grenades on tank tracks to immobilise them. Duelling with anti-tank guns began up and down the streets as further Panzers and German infantry crossed the bridge and began to penetrate the town.
Fighting continued throughout the day and columns of smoke spiralled above the town as desperately mounted Russian counterattacks vainly attempted to wrest control of the bridges back. Air raids conducted by Soviet twin-engined aircraft in a last-ditch effort to destroy the bridges were also unsuccessful. Soviet soldiers were constantly plucked from the bridge superstructures later that day, still attempting to reignite demolition fuses. The 9th Panzer Company destroyed 20 light Russian tanks, 20 artillery pieces and 17 anti-tank guns during its battles around the bridge entry points.
Army Group North had stormed the Dvina and had achieved a bridgehead. The way to Leningrad had been opened.
No news
At home in the Reich there was no news. After the initial invasion announcement the population was given nothing of substance for seven days. Daily OKW reports gave sparse information. There were no names or unit numbers and rivers and towns received no mention at all. Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, played his psychological instrument with adroitness. ‘The public mood is one of depression,’ he recorded in his diary on 23 June. ‘The nation wants peace, but not at the price of defeat, but ever
y new theatre of operations brings worry and concern.’ Well aware of early campaign successes, he wrote on 25 June: ‘We have still issued no details in the High Command Bulletin. The enemy is to be kept in complete ignorance.’ He exploited the period of tension with consummate skill. The press was constrained from publishing big maps of Russia. ‘The huge areas involved may frighten the public,’ he claimed. Similarly he took a firm line against imprudent campaign length predictions widely pronounced by the Foreign Office. ‘If we say four weeks and it turns out to be six, then our greatest victory will be transformed into a defeat in the end.’ The Foreign Ministry appeared to compromise security. ‘I’ve had the Gestapo take steps against one particular loudmouth,’ he admitted.(1)
Quiet confidence began to replace the initial nervousness. Certainty of a rapid victory over Russia became the accepted view, a reversal of previous campaign experience. Rumours abounded, raising tension to a ‘feverish’ height. Over 100,000 Russian prisoners had allegedly been taken. The SS Secret Report on the Home Political Situation reported: ‘Already on Tuesday [the third day of the campaign] one could hear in open conversation that 1,700 aircraft had been destroyed; by Wednesday this number had climbed to over 2,000.’(2)The public deduction derived from all this was general suspicion that German troops had in reality penetrated the Russian hinterland far deeper than hitherto reported. Large-scale maps of Russia completely sold out in bookshops. In Dresden it was rumoured German troops were only 100km from Moscow.(3)
Letters to the front reflected this concern at the news blackout. One wife wrote to her husband, seven days into the invasion: ‘Sunday is upon us again, and you have probably experienced so much already. I didn’t get any post today.’(4) A National Socialist mother wrote to her son from Brand on 28 June announcing the lifting of the postal ban, stating, ‘I do not doubt for one instant that there will be a victory over these dogs, whom one cannot refer to as human beings’. Yet beneath the dogma there remained concern for her son at the front:
War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 Page 17