Bundles of grenades bound together were hurled at the German attackers for maximum effect. One concentrated charge wiped out an entire machine gun crew. All night long the Russians repeatedly attempted to break out. By first light about 100 corpses could be counted, sprawled around the perimeter of one of the lead companies. A body inspection revealed 25 were officers and commissars and another 25 were NCOs. The wood where the enemy had been concentrated was raked by heavy artillery time and again until all resistance ceased: 700 PoWs including a Soviet army corps general emerged.
Even areas already overrun had to be systematically combed. It was a slow, methodical and remorselessly bloody process. ‘Survival became the only thing that mattered,’ declared Kuhnert. ‘One could actually become jealous of others who got wounded, not badly mind you, but just enough to get them home or away from this place of slaughter, stench and utter destruction.’ All the countless haystacks and straw huts that dotted the landscape had to be laboriously checked. Hiding inside were cut-off enemy groups who continued to pick off single German soldiers or vehicles. A ‘reconnaissance by fire’ was instituted to overcome the problem. The shelters were shot into flames. The 45th Division chaplain described the surreal scene:
‘If it were not necessary to contribute further to the fury of war one might have admired the countless dazzling columns of fire that made up this grandiose spectacle of illumination. In between, the infantry fanned out in wide skirmish lines and finally cleared the area of the last remnants of its defenders. Here and there the last magazine was fired off or a grenade thrown from haystacks already on fire.’(15)
Unteroffizier Wilhelm Prüller with Infantry Regiment 11 was pursuing fleeing Russian columns in vehicles mixed with tanks. German Panzer and motorised companies had become intermingled with the enemy ‘in the intoxication of this fabulous chase’.
‘There ought to be some newsreel men here; there would be incomparable picture material! Tanks and armoured cars, the men sitting on them, encrusted with a thick coating of dirt, heady with the excitement of the attack – haystacks set on fire by our tank cannons, running Russians, hiding, surrendering! It’s a marvellous sight!’
Prisoners were flushed out from beneath haystacks or lying between furrows in the fields. ‘Shy, unbelieving, filled with terror, they came,’ gloated Prüller. Resistance by ‘many a Bolshevik’ was regarded as ‘stupid pig-headedness’. They were shot on the spot.(16)
By the fifth day Russian resistance was visibly collapsing. Col-Gen Michael P. Kirponos, commanding the Kiev troops, perished alongside his staff when his column failed to break through the German ring. Very few Soviet units escaped. Marshals Budenny, Timoshenko and their senior political commissar, Khrushchev, were flown out of the pocket by air. M. A. Burmistrenko, a member of the war council and Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, and the Chief of Staff of the Soviet Army Group, General Pupikov, were killed, as were most members of the General Staff. One single cavalry unit led by Maj-Gen Borisov managed to exfiltrate with 4,000 men.(17) Although masses of Soviet PoWs were rounded up, they did not readily surrender. Gabriel Temkin, serving in a Soviet labour battalion, admitted ‘although officially a taboo in the Soviet press, the PoW issue was a public secret’. The Russian public was aware huge numbers of prisoners had been taken. ‘We were told both how the Nazis were mistreating them, which was indeed a fact, and what the Soviet punishment for letting oneself become a PoW was, which was also true.’
Commanders who surrendered were considered deserters, the consequence was their families could be arrested as forfeit. Likewise, families of Red Army soldiers taken prisoner would be denied government benefits and aid. ‘Falling into the enemy’s hands was considered almost tantamount to treason,’ Temkin explained. Exoneration was achievable only if one was incapacitated by wounds, killed, or later escaped. The capture of Stalin’s own son, Yakov, produced a poignant irony. ‘The Germans,’ Temkin said,’ were dropping leaflets with his photo over cities as well as over railway stations and Red Army groupings.’ Many soldiers had already witnessed the random and apparently officially sponsored shootings and ill-treatment of prisoners. Stalin’s son later died in a concentration camp. Temkin had no illusions. ‘I could not get out of my mind the fear of falling into their hands,’ he confessed. ‘I dreaded it more than being killed.’(18)
Major Jurij Krymov had already resigned himself to the inevitable. He received notification at 02.00 hours that the enemy were 4km from his left flank. There was no room inside the crowded shed with his sleeping soldiers, so he went outside. ‘The whole horizon was illuminated in red with everywhere the damn clatter of machine gun fire.’ It was apparent that ‘even with the best will in the world we are not going to get out of this’. A further depressing report revealed contact had been lost with the neighbouring unit to his left. Beleaguered from all sides, ‘they were being overwhelmed by events’. His commissar, who had supported him throughout, interrupted his melancholic train of thought, passing him two biscuits. ‘I had absolutely no idea where he had got them from,’ he said, ‘but he had not eaten them, he had brought them to me.’ Krymov’s letter to his wife stopped at this point. He was killed three days later.(19)
Leutnant Kurt Meissner was watching yet another despairing Soviet attack on the hard-pressed German ring. ‘This great mass of singing humanity had only been told to break out in our direction,’ he said. He and his men were new to combat and afraid. They had never seen anything like this before.
‘They came on in a shambling, shuffling gait and all the way they were calling out in this low, moaning way, and every so often they would break out into this great mass cry of “Hurraaa! Hurraaa! Hurraaa!”.’
Meissner and his men, covering a vast and flat sector, fired and fired until a wall of corpses built up, behind which still, advancing Russians began to shoot back. Thousands more came on, pushing beyond the bloody barrier and trying to rush the German positions. Meissner’s men quickly fell back and took up new positions to avoid being overrun. Now blocked, the Soviet tide sought to break through in another direction. As they did so, the Germans poured a murderous fire into their flanks. Meissner admitted:
‘I was in a sweat, very hot and frightened. Then a strange thing happened, and this was even more extraordinary: the whole mass of surviving Russians – and there were still thousands of them – simply stopped dead about a kilometre from us as if on order. We wondered what was happening and then saw through our glasses that they were discarding all their equipment. Then they turned about to face us. All the enormous sacrifice they had made had been in vain. They simply sat down on the spot and we received orders to go in and round them up.’(20)
On the fifth day it ended. German soldiers moved warily across to take the surrenders. Meissner recalled, ‘we moved over hundreds of dead, dying and wounded, they had no apparent organisation for dealing with the latter. Russki – Komm!’ was the first order preceding nightmarish forced marches to the rear and PoW camps.
The battle of Kiev spluttered to an end on 24 September 1941. A doctor from the 3rd Panzer Division surveying the battlefield reported:
‘A chaotic scene remained. Hundreds of lorries and troop carriers with tanks in between are strewn across the landscape. Those sitting inside were often caught by the flames as they attempted to dismount, and were burned, hanging from turrets like black mummies. Around the vehicles lay thousands of dead.’(21)
Sergeant Ivan Nikitch Krylov, a demoted Soviet staff captain, witnessed the final days in the pocket.
‘The Germans outnumbered us, their munitions were practically inexhaustible, their equipment without fault and their daring and courage beyond reproach. But German corpses strewed the ground side by side with our own. The battle was merciless on both sides.’(22)
Six Soviet armies – the Fifth, Twenty-first, Twenty-sixth, Twenty-seventh, Thirty-eighth and Fortieth – were either wholly or partially destroyed and 50 Soviet divisions were removed from the Soviet ord
er of battle as a consequence. The German news service announced the pocket contained 665,000 Russian prisoners, 884 tanks and 3,718 guns. Soviet sources record that 44 divisions and six brigades with 12 defended localities participated during the Kiev defensive operation conducted between 7 July and 26 September. A total of 700,544 casualties are admitted, of which the greater part – 616,304 – were irrecoverable losses.(23)
The battle, as Krylov suggested, was not completely one-sided. Feldwebel Max Kuhnert’s unit suffered heavy casualties but, as a colleague pointed out, ‘our losses are nothing like the poor devils of the battalions’. The IInd Battalion and reconnaissance unit on his right flank was much reduced: ‘motorcycles with sidecars were standing or lying on the primitive track and there were bodies everywhere’.(24)
Chaplain Rudolf Gschöpf’s 45th Division had received a comparable mauling to that already received at Brest-Litovsk. Three infantry Regiments lost 86, 151 and 75 men respectively; 40 others died at the division dressing station and 40 more were scattered elsewhere. In total the division lost 40 officers and 1,200 NCOs and men. This represented half a regiment’s complement of officers and a battalion and a half of men. A service was held over the graves, freshly covered in flowers, and the military band played before the division departed the battlefield. Gschöpf commented, ‘it was the last time our music corps were able to play their instruments during this war.’(25) Vehicle shortages had dictated the instruments be sent home to make space for essential stores. The war was losing its heraldry; lethality and objective usefulness were all that was left.
The German press was jubilant. The Völkischer Beobachter crowed: ‘An Army of One Million Wiped Out!’ and ‘End of the Kiev Catastrophe’. The Frankfurter Zeitung declared simply: ‘Five Soviet Armies Annihilated’.(26) For over a month there had been no Sondermeldungen relayed to the population since the heady days of Smolensk. The third anniversary of the start of World War 2 had passed, bringing with it an inevitable questioning of what had been achieved and, more significantly: what remained to be done? Interest in the Russian War had not been attracting the previous banner headlines. Secret SS situation reports briefed to Himmler at the beginning of September stated, ‘the already overlong campaign in the east is viewed by much of the population with a certain disquiet.’(27) Victory at Kiev changed all this. Attention once again focused on Russia. Popular interest surged to the previous ‘Barbarossa invasion levels. ‘Recently held convictions that static positional operations had developed and that a severe winter campaign is in the offing have slipped into the background,’ observed reports.(28) A German housewife living near Nuremberg wrote:
‘Another public announcement was issued today saying the Russians appear to be breaking up around Kiev and 50 divisions have been destroyed. Father said that would be an even greater blow because of the amount of material taken there as well. The Russians with their great masses are impervious to human losses, but they will not be so quick to replace all the equipment.’(29)
German infantry with Army Group South were less sanguine. It was they who had to mop up the mortally wounded Soviet armies, easily written off by the press, as if surrounding them was all that was required. Finishing off the Kiev pocket had been a hazardous enterprise. Thirty-five German divisions, including six Panzer and four motorised, had been required to execute this Cannae. They represented about one-third of the strength of the original ‘Barbarossa’ invasion force – a massive effort. Soldiers felt and recognised the immense strain. An Obergefreiter with the 98th Infantry Division wrote, ‘we have had 75% losses in our company’. He anticipated the arrival of replacements in a few days. ‘But I believe if they do arrive sooner, as is invariably the case, we will already have been relieved and moved on before they even get here.’ Replacements never seemed to arrive.(30)
Another Unteroffizier, with the 79th Infantry Division, wrote he ‘had got through the pocket fighting east of Kiev well enough’. He hoped ‘that after this battle they would be taken out of the line, but, even though we have shrunk to a tiny band, sadly, it was out of the question’. They were already marching toward Kharkov. ‘I have strong reservations,’ he confessed, ‘whether we will see an end to the war in Russia this year.’ The outlook appeared pessimistic. ‘Russia’s military might is certainly broken, but the land is too big, and the Russians are not thinking of surrender.’(31) His view was echoed by that of a Gefreiter with the 72nd Infantry Division, who declared in a letter that ‘the campaign against Russia began today, three months ago’. He had then surmised ‘the Bolsheviks would be ripe for surrender within at least eight to ten weeks’. German soldiers, he reflected, were more used to a Blitzkrieg – a tempo campaign. Progress had been as rapid as in France when considered in manpower and material terms. ‘Only this morning,’ he wrote, ‘we heard by chance that near Kiev for example, 600 guns were destroyed and 150,000 men taken prisoner… What about those for numbers!… Russia is almost inexhaustible!’ But there was, he pointed out, a fundamental difference between the French and Russian campaigns. In the west:
‘After the penetration of their defensive lines and encirclement, their armies saw further resistance as senseless genocide. They surrendered to save their people. It’s another case here. We’re not fighting against the Russian people but against the Bolshevik world menace, which has enslaved them.’
In short, ‘there would be no armistice forthcoming from the Russians’.(32)
Generalfeldmarschall von Bock became impatient to begin the promised thrust against Moscow as soon as the encirclement at Kiev had been achieved. The move south had been a distraction from his main effort. He had been miserly with resources, husbanding the main forces within Army Group Centre for as long as possible, reluctant to assist Guderian in the tactical possibilities he opened up as operations progressed. As these forces moved further south he became correspondingly geographically removed from what he clearly considered to be the overdue main effort: an assault on Moscow prior to winter. Throughout the Kiev encirclement battles his diary reflected his frustration and concern. On 20 September, the day after the formation of the pocket, he wrote:
‘The build-up in my front lines can’t be concealed from the enemy in the long run. I must reach a decision: should I wait for the bulk of the promised forces or should I not? In spite of the difficulty of the attack, I am leaning toward “risking something” and attacking as soon as the most necessary units are in place.’
On 24 September he observed, ‘it is clear that the Russians are withdrawing forces from in front of my front to prop up their threatened northern and southern wings. It is time!’(33)
As ever, the soldiers in the field were blissfully ignorant of this intent. Panzerjäger Ernst Victor Meyer was enjoying the same sunny day to the east of the Kiev pocket. Writing to friends back home, he admitted his virtual ignorance of the true situation.
‘As always we know practically nothing about objectives and intentions. So for now, we are totally unaware what should become of us. Another “Kessel” pocket [Kiev] has been “finished off” and for the moment our task completed. Now where are we off to?’(34)
Theo Scharf, moving through cornfields with the 97th Infantry Division toward Kharkov, recalled, ‘the yellow ripe cornfields could now be picked out of their own tall, stalky forests.’(35)
It was autumn.
Chapter 12
‘Victored’ to death
‘I considered whether I ought to write a letter to [my wife] Maria, so that it would be in my pocket, should I never get to go home.’
German soldier
Objective Moscow
Führer Directive Number 35 was issued on 6 September as Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 battled southward to begin the closure of the Kiev pocket. Code-named ‘Taifun’ (Typhoon), the operation aimed at the defeat and annihilation of the Russian forces blocking the road to Moscow ‘in the limited time which remains available before the onset of the winter weather’. Following the encirclement and destruction of the Re
d Army facing Army Group Centre, Generalfeldmarschall von Bock would ‘begin the advance on Moscow with [his] right flank on the Oka [river] and [his] left on the upper Volga’.
Army Group Centre was to become the Schwerpunkt (main point of effort) in this last push before the end of the year. Von Bock issued his attack order on 26 September,(1) even as the final blows were being administered to the disintegrating Kiev pocket. In order to provide Army Group Centre with the appropriate force and penetrative power commensurate with its Schwerpunkt role to achieve the objective, Army Groups North and South were directed to transfer important forces to von Bock’s control. Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4 was to be detached from Army Group North and Panzergruppe 2, fighting around Kiev, from Army Group South. Von Bock would have three Panzergruppen under command: these two and Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3, at that moment supporting von Leeb’s assault on Leningrad. Three marching infantry armies – the Ninth, Fourth and Second – would follow behind the Panzer forces.
The attack plan aimed at a double armoured encirclement which would close their pincers east of Vyazma, bringing the Panzer spearheads to within 160km of Moscow astride the main road leading from the west. Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 (now renamed Second Panzer Army) was tasked to attempt an envelopment southeast of Bryansk, by advancing north-east from its present position at Kiev to effect a junction with the Second Infantry Army moving due east. Staff preparation now focused on the requirement to amass the necessary force and matériel.
War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 Page 37