‘The campaign in the east had begun with unspeakable harshness. We were all firmly convinced of the necessity of this battle, all believed in our leaders and in our own strength and were in no doubt that we would emerge victorious from this confrontation.
‘But in spite of all the confidence, in spite of all our self-confidence, a feeling of isolation crept over us when we – following the army’s armoured spearheads – advanced into the endless expanses of Russia. We did not share the unfounded optimism of many who hoped that they might spend Christmas 1941 at home. For us the Red Army was the big unknown, which we had to take seriously, which we could not underestimate. The goal of this struggle lay in the unforeseeable future.’(36)
Army Group South, which would support the right flank, had similar misgivings. The commander of its IIIrd Panzer Corps reminded the commander of Panzergruppe 1, Generaloberst von Kleist, that ‘it is psychologically wrong to drive a unit that has proven its fitness’. More than half of his combat leaders had fallen in some units and his Panzers were reduced from 338 to 142. ‘The vast majority of all vehicles are worn out,’ he lamented. His comments concerning the fighting power he was able to muster were more significant. ‘Morale,’ he explained, ‘is weighed down’ by the increasing frequency of Russian air raids and the apparently inexhaustible reserves of Russian ammunition. Both factors ‘will only increase as the Russians move back to their unattacked positions and reach their stocks of ammunition and matériel’. His men were depressed ‘by the fact that the final goal seems out of sight’. Moreover ‘the number of men out of commission proves that the Russians are by no means “beaten” as it might appear in the big picture’ – a statement all the more significant coming, as it did, three weeks after the annihilation of several Russian armies in the Kiev pocket. The men were worn down. ‘Readiness for action for the personnel can only be achieved with a few days of rest outside the area of Russian fire.’ So far as ‘material’ was concerned, ‘no full readiness can be expected anymore’.(37)
One artillery NCO serving with Army Group Centre expressed his foreboding more succinctly. ‘God save us from a winter campaign in the east,’ he wrote. ‘It is very cold here already and it rains practically every day.’(38) Infantryman Harald Henry noted in his diary on the eve of Operation ‘Taifun’ that even ‘at the beginning of this new offensive we had no rest for 44 hours having been incessantly on the march’. Pressure was beginning to tell:
‘You couldn’t imagine how it is with endless nights with no cover or coats in a half-open barn or even digging in under the open sky! One cannot even unfasten one’s equipment if the enemy is nearby. You have to sleep through the awful cold, battered again by icy storms tonight like the one before, already soaked by freezing rain, with your marching pack still attached to your back.’(39)
The German infantryman was at the end of his tether, as was also the fighting power of the Ostheer.
A dying army
The fighting power of an army can be broken down into three components: the conceptual, physical and moral.(1)The conceptual is ‘how’ the campaign is to be fought and includes the strategy and operational and tactical plans to support it. Successful Blitzkrieg was dependent upon the flexibility conferred by the Auftragstaktik concept of mission command tactics. Up to one-third of the veteran leadership of the Ostheer, its officers and senior NCOs, had perished by the eve of Operation ‘Taifun’. These were veteran combat leaders, men who had been killed leading from the front. Although they represented one-third of the whole, in logistic ‘tail’ compared to forward ‘teeth’ terms they represented a greater loss, more like 50%, because only a small proportion of a typical division actually closes with the enemy. (See Appendix 3.) Such men were irreplaceable. Eighteen months was required to train individual replacements, but the seed-corn of experience had been irretrievably lost. Therefore the conceptual component, the command and leadership of the fighting element of the Ostheer, had been grievously injured.
The physical component represents the sum of resources: manpower, logistics, equipment and the training and readiness that makes up the whole. In manpower terms the Ostheer had suffered over half a million casualties, more than three times what it had lost in France. Thirty division equivalents were for practical purposes removed from the order of battle, a loss greater than the size of Army Group North, which had fought itself to Leningrad. A logistic ‘trip-wire’ had been crossed past which little could effectively be squeezed beyond physical choke-points. War-winning priority equipment – Panzers, artillery prime movers and motorised vehicles – were worn out. There was barely 500km of effective life in them before major overhauls and replacements would be needed to avoid breakdowns. This was hardly sufficient to reach Moscow.
The third and decisive component was the moral, the ‘hearts’ that sustain the conceptual ‘mind’. Losing the cream of its combat leadership affected not only the flexibility, experience and professionalism of the remainder, it also impacted on the will to fight. Most Landser were committed and motivated by duty to fight. There was, however, some questioning of the practical ability to reach Moscow, even if it was the last major objective. The debilitating and cumulative impact of stress and physical deprivation was wearing men down. Doubts and scepticism are evident in Feldpost letters and diaries that survive from this period at the front. ‘Duty’ was being eroded to some extent by a moral questioning in some instance of the ‘justness’ of a cause that was inflicting state-sponsored terror upon the local populace. Interestingly, the official history of the Potsdam-Berlin Infantry Regiment 9 fighting on the Central Front is entitled ‘Between Duty and Conscience’.(2) Preaching ideological conflict was not the same as physically inflicting its implications upon a helpless civilian populace. Soldiers feel more at ease with the certainty of a just and clearly identified cause to rationalise the violence they are called upon to execute in battle. A degree of moral degradation was also afflicting the Ostheer. Thinking men had to come to terms with the immense cost and ghastly implications of prosecuting an ideological ‘Total War’.
The Ostheer was bleeding profusely. All three of the primary components constituting its fighting strength were seriously damaged. The assumption that kept the force going was that the Russians were even more grievously hurt. Victory was achievable, it was felt, if the final Soviet field army standing before Moscow could be decisively defeated. Such a catastrophic reversal might indeed provide the catalyst required to convince the Soviet regime to conclude an armistice and allow the occupation of Moscow. Failure was never seriously countenanced, despite the parlous state of the Eastern Army itself. The Wehrmacht had never been defeated in this war, but neither had it sustained such punishment in any previous campaign. It was practically ‘victoring itself to death’.
Chapter 13
The last victory
‘It ought to finish here before the onset of winter. That means the end of this month should see the conclusion [of the campaign].’
German soldier’s letter home
Double encirclement… Vyazma and Bryansk
Artillery Hauptmann Georg Richter felt the sun on his back as he observed the Russian positions from the heights overlooking the River Desna. It was 1 October, a beautiful autumn day. His unit, Artillery Regiment 74, was in support of the 2nd (Viennese) Panzer Division belonging to Generaloberst Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4. The river lay in the dead ground before him. Scanning the other side, he was able to locate eight Russian bunkers. Both sides were harassing each other with sporadic artillery fire.
Richter wrote in his diary that night, ‘I believe the attack will start the next day; in my opinion it will be the last big operation this year.’ The woodland on the heights ‘was just like an exercise area where another track opens up as soon as a vehicle goes by’. It was a fragile peace. Mines were going off intermittently. Only 150m away a gun exploded as it was being guided into its firing position. Shortly after, a platoon prime mover (artillery towing vehicle) also blew up on a mine
. There had been time while all this was going on to review the future. Doubts were less about whether the objective would be reached, but rather how the eventual victory would be played out.
‘The question is: will Moscow be included in the huge pocket about to be created, or would the ring close immediately in front of the towers of the capital?’(1)
Unteroffizier Helmut Pabst, serving with Ninth Army, declared, ‘We don’t yet know when it will start,’ but it would obviously be soon. ‘Somebody has seen the tanks,’ he said, ‘the yellow ones which were meant for Africa.’ All sorts of weapons – SP assault guns, Nebelwerfer multi-barrelled rocket launchers and heavy guns – were appearing in his sector. ‘It’s piling up inexorably like a thunderstorm,’ he observed. News was pieced together by the soldiers ‘like bits of a mosaic’. The front was showing all the signs of impending developments. Pabst and his men perceived ‘the veil over the calm getting thinner, the atmosphere gathering tension’.(2) The storm was about to break.
At 04.40 hours the next morning – and ‘a hot day’, commented Richter – at least 20 batteries of artillery opened up around him in a ‘dazzling display of fire’. Simultaneously, ‘Stuka squadrons appeared from our rear and began to fly in huge circles’, awaiting direction for targets. A Focke-Wulf twin-fuselage reconnaissance aircraft curved by and appeared to transmit the objective to the Stukas, ‘who dived, huge detonations testifying to the power of their bombs’. Richter watched as directed artillery fire began to straddle the bunkers. ‘To our left a noticeable series of hissing reports captured our attention’ as Nebelwerfer rocket salvoes streaked out toward the Russian positions – ‘long trails of white smoke across the sky’.
‘Any war film would pale by comparison,’ commented Unteroffizier Pabst. He counted about 1,200 tanks, not including assault guns, advancing on a 2km front. After the artillery preparation he watched as ‘assault guns and motorised infantry come on without a pause’. Roads appeared across fields which 15 minutes previously had been a featureless expanse. He remarked the assault was ‘far bigger than the one on the frontier defences’ the previous June. ‘It will be some time before we see a picture like this again.’ The Russian defensive crust had first to be broken. Georg Richter monitored the forward movement closely through binoculars. ‘White Very signals indicated the front line,’ he said, ‘and red was a request to shift [artillery] fire in depth.’ Red lights were constantly arcing across the terrain to their front.(3) Operation ‘Taifun’, the final attack towards Moscow, was under way.
Guderian’s Second Panzer Army to the south had the greater distance to cover and had begun its offensive from the Gluchow area on 30 September. This was within four days of the officially announced conclusion of the Kiev battle. He pushed northeastward against the Bryansk–Orel line with five Panzer divisions, four motorised infantry, one cavalry and six foot-marching infantry divisions. To the north, and on the left flank of Second Panzer Army, eight infantry divisions belonging to Second Infantry Army began to move forward to complete an encirclement of Soviet forces in the Bryansk area. A second pocket was foreseen around Vyazma. Left of Second Army, and further north, Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4 in concert with Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge’s Fourth Army provided the Schwerpunkt for the attack with 15 foot divisions, five Panzer and two motorised infantry divisions.
They were to advance due east from Roslavl to Moscow with their left flank on the upper Dnieper river east of Smolensk. The northern flank of Army Group Centre held Strauss’s Ninth Army with Panzergruppe 3 (Hoth) under command. It contained 18 infantry divisions, three Panzer and two motorised infantry divisions. Attacking north-east of Smolensk, their task was to penetrate Russian defences north of the Smolensk–Moscow road and cover the flank along the upper Volga river. Army Group Centre had been reinforced by an additional seven ‘fast’ divisions from Army Group North. Its sister formation, Army Group South, had placed one further Panzer, two motorised infantry and five foot divisions under command.
As envisaged in the original ‘Barbarossa’ concept, Panzergruppen 4 (Hoepner) and 3 (Hoth) were massed on the outer flanks of their respective infantry armies. Both Panzer forces were to drive eastward first then turn inwards, this time to encircle Vyazma. Subsidiary encirclements would be executed by the infantry armies as in the first battles east of the Bug, loosely enclosed by the pincers of the larger Panzer envelopments. Once the rings were closed the Panzers would leave the infantry armies behind to subjugate the pockets while they pushed on, maintaining maximum strength and tempo in the direction of Moscow. The Luftwaffe IInd and VIIIth Fliegerkorps had committed over nine fighter and nearly 15 fighter-bomber Geschwader, with eight Stuka, a Bf110, and intermediate- and long-range reconnaissance Geschwader and Staffeln in support. On the ground the Ist and IInd Flak Corps provided anti-aircraft and ground-role anti-tank assistance. The offensive took the Russians completely by surprise. They had felt it was too late in the year to launch another campaign.
Hauptmann Richter’s opening day of the offensive was beset by worries over the effectiveness of Russian mines. The third vehicle of his artillery column was abruptly blown into the air as they changed location to support the forward advance. His diary recorded it as the fourth mine strike in only two days. He quickly reached the damaged vehicle to recover the driver, who appeared uninjured, but ‘his face was as white as snow and he was shaking all over’. Richter drove through several villages toward the previously observed enemy bunkers. En route they saw ‘only a few curious inhabitants staring out of the doors’.
Soviet resistance along the line of bunkers was as tenacious as ever. Assault pioneers had directed artillery and Panzers in the direct-fire role and heavy infantry weapons close-up to embrasures and entrances, to no visible effect. Grenade after grenade was tossed in and one of Richter’s over-zealous NCOs was wounded in the process. Huge detonations reverberated but, as soon as the smoke cleared, pistol shots rang out as entry was sought. One captured Russian was motioned inside a bunker to persuade the crew to surrender. After disappearing from view a single shot rang out. ‘He didn’t come back,’ observed Richter. Artillery again commenced smashing at the entrance and more grenades were tossed in,, and still German casualties occurred as they attempted to break in. In exasperation the assault group sprinkled petrol across the entire bunker mound and set it on fire. Deprived of air, three Russian soldiers hesitantly emerged. ‘Several of our men were so frustrated and enraged they wanted to mete out summary justice,’ said Richter. ‘We quietened them down, conceding that we had at least emptied the bunker, but it had cost time.’ Fighting carried on throughout the night:
‘There was shooting everywhere. Soon the village was on fire. Enemy tanks had shot it into flames, with our own men returning fire. A Russian artillery piece boomed out near us. Explosions and machine gun fire banged and rattled out uninterruptedly from all directions around us until dawn. One round shot by close over our heads. The glare from the flames of Suborowo lit up the sky.’
Richter’s final diary entry on this opening day of the new offensive echoed Hitler’s order of the day. ‘Today,’ it read, ‘the decisive battle against the Russian has begun.’ His opinion was ‘it ought to be all over before winter’.(4) They had broken through the defensive crust along the River Desna.
As the momentum of the advance increased, combat transitioned to a series of rapid meeting engagements as the Panzers sought to build up an irrepressible tempo. On 4 October the advance elements of the Kampfgruppe ‘Koelitz’ spearheading the 2nd (Vienna) Panzer Division paused at a track junction, having broken through the Desna line. So engrossed were they in attempting to interpret their poor maps that they were taken aback by the sudden ‘tank alarm’ which immediately overrode their navigational dilemma. Three armoured vehicles had been spotted 300m to the right. These were immediately engaged and hit, but surprisingly to no effect. Especially hardened shot was loaded and could be seen striking their targets but still there was no response. An infantry Oberleu
tnant seeking to solve the mystery approached the tanks from the rear by motorcycle, and was seen standing and laughing amid the enemy vehicles. He shook the ‘barrel’ of the nearest, which resulted in the entire structure collapsing in on itself. The German advance had been delayed by masterfully constructed tank-target decoys.(5)
The prevailing mood along the Army Group Centre front was buoyant. ‘There is a tremendous pressure to get moving forward,’ wrote a Panzer division officer, describing the initial three days’ fighting.(6) By the second day of the attack Guderian’s Second Panzer Army had penetrated 130km into the enemy hinterland, reaching the Orel–Bryansk road. Thereupon, Panzer spearheads began to turn inwards, to the north. Orel, a city of 120,000 inhabitants sitting astride a strategic road and rail junction, fell on 3 October. The 4th Panzer Division, forming part of this sweep, covered a 240km stretch from Gluchow to the objective in four days. The fuel and rations captured at Orel were sufficient to keep Second Panzer Army resupplied for two weeks. On 5 October, 18th Panzer Division captured Karatschew, and on the following day 17th Panzer took Bryansk and the Desna river bridge. This created a huge pocket south of the city, which was to contain elements of three Soviet armies: the Third, Thirteenth and Fiftieth. Meanwhile Panzergruppe 4 formed the thumb of a hand closing on Vyazma from the south.
The fingers enveloping the pocket from the north were provided by the armoured columns of 7th Panzer Division from Panzergruppe 3. Motorcyclist infantry from 10th Panzer entered the city of Vyazma on 7 October. A second huge pocket was thereby formed around the Sixteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Thirty-second Soviet armies. The Ostheer now had the last well-equipped Soviet field armies standing before Moscow in its grasp.
War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 Page 42