Autumn rains were slashing across the ‘Ostfront’. The natural phenomenon upon which Stalin had relied to deter the final German offensive had arrived. One disgruntled Landser wrote home:
‘We can’t go on. There is no more petrol and nothing is coming up behind us. The route is long and the roads even worse over the last few days. The snow has melted and worsened the muck. Rations still do not arrive and we sit in filth the entire day.’
An infantryman in Second Army recorded, early on 10 October it began to rain and the rain turned to sleet. The difficulties soon set in,’ he said, ‘the roads turned into knee-deep mud and were unbelievable.’ It proved particularly heavy going for the artillery. ‘The so-called “Rollbahn” upon which we are marching is a sea of knee-deep mud,’ complained an artillery unit with the 260th Infantry Division. ‘Vehicles sink up to the axle and in many places the morass is up to the bellies of the horses.’(5)
The headlines back home in the Reich followed a similarly tortuous path as disillusionment set in. ‘The momentous hour has struck: the Eastern campaign is at an end,’ crowed the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper on 10 October. The following day it proclaimed ‘The Breakthrough in the East is widened’. Then on 12 October it claimed, ‘The Annihilation of the Soviet Army is almost finished’, and on the 13th ‘The Battlefields of Vyazma and Bryansk are far behind the Front’. A degree of temporisation was introduced by a clearly exhausted press, seeking to maintain the morale tempo, when on 14 October the headline read ‘The Movements in the East are proceeding according to plan’. The next day there was a simple acknowledgement that ‘The Fighting in the East is running to plan’. This was followed by a resounding silence on 16 October when the headlines limply changed the subject to ‘Torpedo boats sink six freighters from a Convoy’.(6) The point was not lost on the politically astute population of Berlin, always quick wittily to expose press inconsistencies. A joke was circulated whereby it was assessed the ‘BZ’ (an abbreviation for the Berliner Zeitung newspaper) was the only newspaper remaining worth reading. The explanation being, ‘it only lied between “B and Z” while all other newspapers lied from “A to Z”!’(7)
Leutnant Heinrich Haape recalled watching how ‘the first snow fell in heavy flakes on the silently marching columns’ of Infantry Regiment 18 two days after leaving Butovo. ‘Every man’s thoughts turned in the same direction as he watched the flakes drop on the slushy roads.’ Winter had arrived. It was late afternoon and the temperature dropped, causing the snow to fall more thickly until the countryside assumed ‘a white mantle’. Haape remembered, ‘we watched it uneasily’.(8)
Greatcoats were a problem. Not all soldiers even had the temperate issue. During the attack it hampered movement. On dismounting, infantrymen left them behind in their vehicles. Jackets had to suffice. Leutnant Koch serving with the 18th Panzer Division recalled that, just prior to the second (November) phase of Operation ‘Taifun’, his battalion commander ordered all greatcoats to be left behind with the logistic train at Orel. Unlike many other formations, their issue had arrived, but they were not allowed to take them.(9) Leutnant Haape’s men in Infantry Regiment 18 resorted to other methods. ‘In order to keep warm they put on all their spare clothes and slept dog-tired, in full battledress.’ Whereas previously there had been time to wash and change clothing during the static ‘interregnum’ period before ‘Taifun’, ‘now the poor fellows were constantly on the move’ and sleeping in louse-infected houses. There was no time to wash their clothing and scant opportunity to change it. Ingenuity was employed to stay warm. As Leutnant Haape explained:
‘Newspapers in the boots took up little space and could often be changed. Two sheets of newspaper on a man’s back, between vest and shirt, preserved the warmth of the body and were windproof. Newspaper round the belly; newspaper in the trousers; newspaper round the legs; newspaper everywhere that the body required extra warmth.’(10)
Soldiers for the first time in this war positively enthused over propaganda publications. Sheets of it could be put to good use.
Roads resembled muddy moonscapes with metre-deep craters which filled with water. Thousands of trucks were stranded. Supply and construction troops laboured to produce log-wood roads and other repairs, but to little effect. Rain or sleet fell incessantly after the night of 7–8 October. Tracked vehicles moved with difficulty. wheeled transport not at all. It was taking 24 to 48 hours to negotiate a short 10km stretch of road. Second Panzer Division reported ‘it was virtually impossible to supply the troops with the necessary combat and life support’. Junkers Ju52 transport aircraft dropped supplies from the air and landed fuel containers from towed gliders. ‘Each day our bill of fare,’ the report continued, ‘was two crackers, some sausage and a couple of cigarettes.’(11)
Little could be requisitioned from the local population, who were already short themselves. Only light artillery could be moved, at speeds of a kilometre an hour despite superhuman efforts. Von Bock observed, ‘in some cases 24 horses are required to move a single artillery piece.’(12) Heavy guns remained where they were. Carriage wheels for light guns had often to be removed and carried by hand through the mud. The 1st Artillery Abteilung supporting the 260th Infantry Division made dispiriting progress.
‘The gun crews, with coats smeared in wet mud up to their hips, had been in this mud bath for days without taking their boots off. They were clustered around wheel spokes and hanging off ropes. On the signal “Heave!” ten pairs of hands pulled with a loud “huh!” and “get going!” across the barrier. A battery needed one, two or often three hours to overcome such an obstacle. Often it appeared a vehicle had hopelessly sunk in the mud or that a half-destroyed bridge was irretrievably repairable… A sharp easterly wind brought with it the sound of grumbling artillery fire, indicating our comrades in the forward battalion were already in action against withdrawing Russians.’(13)
The simplest task required Herculean effort. Emaciated horses collapsed in the mire, unable to continue. Fähnjunker Karl Unverzagt serving with a Panzergrenadier unit said, ‘there was hardly ever an opportunity to get the mud off’. Not that it really mattered because ‘it provided the most ideal camouflage you might imagine!’ Von Bock, passing a 5th Division artillery regiment on the road, commented ‘it is hard to recognize the men, horses and military vehicles as a military column under their crust of dirt.’(14)
Leutnant G. Heysing with Panzergruppe 4 observed the ‘fast’ motorised divisions started to be overtaken by the foot infantry. ‘Even if the soldiers of the Panzer divisions are more or less powerless against the mud,’ he wrote, ‘this deluge has its master too; the soldiers of the German infantry divisions appear on the scene, drawing closer on anything that can in any way be referred to as a path.’ The infantry, having successfully concluded the double encirclement battles, was moving up.
‘They came marching in endless columns from the west from morning to night, taking advantage of every minute of the few hours of late autumn daylight. Tens and hundreds of thousands, endless and unlimited, with arms and munitions hanging on them, just as soon as they became available from the battle of Vyazma… These infantrymen, all with the same expression under their faded field caps, stamp silently through the mud, step by step to the east. The loamy liquid runs into the top of their boots … The coats also are wet, smeared with clay. The only things dry and warm are the glimmering cigarette butts hanging from the corner of their mouths … If the path is not wide enough to walk in columns, they march in long rows.’
This gritty propaganda piece of reportage intended for the Reich press glorified the aura of invincibility raised by the German infantry, which was sincerely believed by the population at home. Heysing reported the situation on 25 October:
‘The tanks are out of fuel, the guns are nearly out of shells, and again and again we have had to take leave for ever from many dear comrades. It is practically impossible to get our boots dry again, and the uniforms are turning yellow and getting threadbare. But none of us lying
here stuck in the mud in the midst of the enemy have lost our courage. The frost has to come some time and the terrain will become passable again.’(15)
Although Heysing wrote with convincing authenticity, his optimistic view was not shared by all at the front. Unteroffizier Wilhelm Prüller was wrestling with the greatcoat dilemma. ‘Which is better?’ he reflected at the beginning of October, ‘to be moving and to sweat more with a greatcoat and then to shiver less when you’re quiet, or to go on as we’ve been doing, without one?’ His commanding officer, like Leutnant Koch’s from the 18th Panzer Division, said, ‘we can’t move as well in a coat.’ There was little debate. ‘His is the bigger pay packet,’ Prüller ruefully admitted, ‘so it’s no coats for us!’ His diary chronicled the cumulative and depressing impact the appalling wet weather in Army Group South’s sector had on the troops. It lasted almost three weeks.
On 6 October he observed after it had ‘rained in torrents all night’ that ‘at night it gets really cold now, and we all think that it can’t go on much longer’. With the baggage train marooned somewhere behind on the rutted roads, no food or spare dry clothing got through. The next day saw a snowstorm which did not settle ‘but the wind whistled through every nook and cranny of our hut’. Still it rained. By 13 October rain alternated with snow. ‘It only freezes at night,’ commented Prüller, ‘when it’s cold, but at 07.00 in the morning it thaws out again.’ No mail could reach the troops or was collected because the supply trains ‘can’t catch up with us through the mud’. Four days later, ‘there’s still no trace of our baggage train’. Changed weather conditions resulted in different march routines. ‘There’s no point in trying to move during the day; the mud would not allow it,’ said Prüller. ‘We can make it only during the night, when the earth is frozen hard.’ At the end of the week depression became evident, reflected in much shorter diary entries. ‘The rain stops only for a few hours at a time,’ he wrote, and ‘everything is grey, dark and impenetrable. The whole of Russia is sunk in mud.’
On 28 October Prüller was marching ‘in driving snow-cum-rain. On the eve of the attack on Kursk, the last day of the month, ‘the night was simply freezing,’ he complained. ‘We froze, particularly since we had neither blankets nor overcoats.’ Kursk, as a consequence, was an objective well worth attacking, because it could provide accommodation. ‘The rain has stopped, and the streets are frozen solid,’ commented Prüller as the advance got underway.(16) There seemed no end to their misery.
Leutnant Georg Richter with Artillery Regiment 74, driving through light snow conditions in mid-October, fervently wished the light frost, that periodically hardened the roads, would last longer. But when it did, treacherous slides resulted. One sudden halt resulted in a pile-up involving every single vehicle in the column. Two were totally written off. ‘We spent the night in our vehicles either side of the road and almost froze half to death,’ he commented. Depressing circumstances invariably bred hopeful rumours. ‘A common opinion was that our division would still be relieved before the winter and we would most likely be sent to Africa,’ he mused. Shelter was at such a premium that soldiers were prepared to fight for it. Every time they drove into a village at the end of the day it was ‘always the same old picture’, he complained. ‘Every house completely filled up with soldiers, and all over were staffs and baggage trains.’(17)
On the road to Kalinin, Unteroffizier Helmut Pabst marched 55km during a frozen period on 12 October between 08.00 hours and 02.00 the following day. ‘We didn’t find any billets,’ he ruefully commented when they finally reached their distant objective. Freezing temperatures forced them inside, and ‘the boys warmed themselves in the overcrowded rooms, determined to get warm even if it meant standing’, as was often the case. The infantry endured wretched conditions. ‘My boots were still so wet this morning,’ Pabst complained, ‘I could only get into them in my bare feet.’(18) Their feet, constantly soaked, in temperatures just above freezing, were susceptible to ‘immersion’ or ‘trench foot’. Such chilling interrupted the blood flow to these extremities and could cause tissue damage akin to superficial frostbite. Close-fitting wet clothing and saturated shrunken boots exacerbated the symptom, as also did protracted standing in wet and cold conditions. Damage was often not recognised, and dismissed as aching feet, occurring as it did in conditions above freezing. Not seen since World War 1, ‘trench foot’ and hypothermia (body chill) took a steady toll of the sick, further increasing the vulnerability of under-nourished soldiers to face even harsher conditions to come.
Prevailing dull wet weather with driving sleet and rain, together with the social pressures of a crammed existence in crowded foul-smelling accommodation, produced bad tempers. This, combined with the persistent anxiety of impending combat, frayed nerves and tested leadership. ‘War began to sap the soldiers’ nerves,’ recorded the official history of the 9th Potsdam Infantry Regiment:
‘Many were too tired to take cover or even throw themselves to the ground when the whistle of enemy shells was heard. Sleeping in foxholes remained by necessity perfunctory, as they were always on the look out for some danger.’(19)
Overcrowding in cold, wet and unsanitary conditions produced colds, influenza, disease and lice. Unteroffizier Pabst, packed into a small baker’s house on the Kalinin road, complained, ‘the nine of us can hardly move.’ The billet was crawling with lice.
‘Our little Viennese was unwise enough to sleep on the stove last night; he’s got them now – and how! Socks which we put there to dry were white with lice eggs. We’ve caught fleas – absolute prize specimens.’(20)
Lice were the scourge of the Eastern Front, an irritant contributing to ill-health and cumulative psychological depression. Painstakingly picked off the body, they could only be killed with certainty by cracking them between fingernail and thumb after they were gorged with blood. Machine gunner Joachim Kredel with Infantry Regiment 67 embalmed one in hot candle wax on his mess tin, and sent it home in a match box as a souvenir, ‘so that they might at least see one louse!’ he explained.(21)
At home, the cinemas were showing a noteworthy scoop – the fighting around the old Napoleonic battlefield at Borodino. The implicit parallel was that this event preceded Napoleon’s entry into Moscow in 1812. In 1941 it formed part of the Mozhaisk defence line, the outer ring of concentric barriers protecting the capital city, stretching almost 300km from Kalinin to Kaluga. This line was attacked by the spearhead of Panzergruppe 4: the 2nd SS ‘Das Reich’ and 10th Panzer Divisions. The newsreel portrayed unprecedented realism, narrated by war reporter Hugo Landgraf as he participated in the actual attack. His report ‘on the battlefield at Borodino’ was conducted with an immediacy typical of present-day TV media coverage. It caused quite a stir among cinema audiences.(22)
‘I am sitting at the radio operator’s post inside a heavy-duty [PzKpfwIV] Panzer and will be filming the attack from here,’ says Landgraf on the film. ‘Against us are heavily armed and well equipped new groups of Soviet reserves just outside Moscow.’ Bucking images taken through the dark surround of the vision slit recreated the uncomfortable cross-terrain ride of a Panzer sweep. ‘You can hear the clack-clack of artillery and machine gun fire on three sides,’ he said. His armoured group trades fire with enemy positions ‘for hours’ in a ‘fierce battle’ illustrated by images of burning houses and hayricks with momentary glimpses of accompanying Panzers jockeying for and shooting from fire positions. ‘Our tank shakes with mortar rounds landing all around us,’ he reports. Eventually resistance is beaten into submission and Landgraf comments, ‘our gun barrels are becoming hot from continuously firing round after round for so long’. The scene changes to night shots of tracer arching away from the tank into an indiscernible gloom. They have managed to advance several kilometres.
‘It snowed overnight,’ Landgraf continues – an ominous statement for cinema audiences concerned at the onset of winter and fearful of the consequences for their menfolk at the front. Accompanying infantry had dug trenche
s between the Panzers. ‘The battle continues,’ says Landgraf as groups of infantrymen, stooping under the weight of heavy machine guns and ammunition, move by. Many characteristically have cigarette butts or pipes dangling from their mouths. The flat landscape broken up by woods has been totally transformed by a light covering of snow. Panzers and half-tracks starkly silhouetted against the whiteness are engaged in an intense fire-fight. Smoke spurting from squat 50mm tank barrels is accentuated in the freezing air. They have encountered ‘a wall of resistance’ and among fleeting groups of running German infantry ‘our tanks can only inch their way forward’ over a landscape dotted with burning village houses. Luftwaffe dive-bombers are seen to engage enemy artillery positions ahead, but the war reporter dramatically interjects ‘as soon as one battery is defeated another takes its place… Dusk falls again,’ he reports as the metallic concussions of turret machine gun fire ring out. The camera tracks the lines of tracer beyond the vehicles, bursting on indistinguishable targets in the distance.
Daylight revealed, ‘we are standing directly before a wooded area containing one of the main Soviet defence lines’. Up ahead, houses are blazing furiously. ‘The camouflage covering the Soviet bunkers,’ cunningly concealed underneath the wooden houses, ‘has caught fire’. Landgraf next provides commentary to an 88mm Flak gun crew feverishly working and firing their gun in thick falling snow. ‘On the third day,’ he said, ‘anti-aircraft artillery is brought in to assist us in the decisive blow.’ Puffs of smoke indicating air-bursts are seen detonating over the wooded objective. Meanwhile the Flak gun crew are becoming covered in thick wet snow. ‘We manage to break through over a wide front,’ he says. Panzer PzKpfwIIIs and IVs silhouetted against the white background drive past a trio of dead Soviet soldiers sprawled untidily across the snow. The Panzers are shooting the infantry onto the objective as ‘we move in from the flank to attack the middle of the Soviet defence line and break it down in a series of bloody skirmishes’. It is all over. ‘Over there you can see the Bolsheviks coming out of their trenches,’ Landgraf triumphantly announces, ‘we have successfully broken down the enemy defence lines.’
War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 Page 45