Ironfall (Kirov Series Book 30)

by Schettler, John

“I have returned with our response, and signed by Hitler himself this time, so there will be no doubt as to Germany’s intentions.” He handed Volkov the document, which was a formal declaration that all territory in the Kuban and Taman liberated by German troops would now be formally annexed.

  “This is outrageous!” said Volkov. Not only had Hitler rebuffed his demand for the Kuban, but he also made an additional claim on the whole of the Taman Peninsula. But that was not all. As Volkov continued reading, his cheeks reddened and the lines on his forehead deepened.

  “What? In addition to this insult concerning the Kuban, you now presume to make a further claim to the Maykop District? This is absolutely absurd! That area, as well as the Taman and Kuban, have been our sovereign territory for decades! What gives you the right to make any claim whatsoever on these regions?”

  Ribbentrop folded his hands. “To put it bluntly, Mister General Secretary, might. German arms in the field liberated those first two zones, and Hitler’s Directive concerning that territory will stand.”

  “Might makes right, is it?” said Volkov heatedly. “You are aware that the entire Maykop District is presently occupied by the 3rd Army of Orenburg?”

  “I am well aware of that, and this document now requests the formal withdrawal of those forces from that district to the line specified in subparagraph four. The new North-South demarcation line will now begin at the Kuban bend east of Kropotkin, then follow the Kuban down to Armavir, which will be a German occupied city. It then follows the line of the Urup River to its source in the high country to the south, before jogging southwest to the coast just beyond Soche. These are the new permanent boundaries established by the Führer himself.”

  Volkov could hardly believe his ears. “Is that so? The Führer himself? Well he might have taken note of the fact that this line is well beyond the present German frontier. You were told earlier, and in no uncertain terms, that all these districts were deemed to be my sovereign territory. You were told that the matter of the Kuban was not a subject for discussion or compromise. Was this related to Hitler directly?”

  “It was. He dismissed your claims before dictating the document you now hold.”

  “My God man—do you realize this means war with the Orenburg Federation? Do you think we will sit by and permit this blatant land grab? We will not! I will issue no such order for the withdrawal of my 3rd Army, and I repeat once again my demand that all German forces now south of the Don should withdraw north of that river immediately.”

  “Mister General Secretary…. As this latest directive from the Führer indicates, that is clearly impossible. There will be no withdrawal of German forces, and in fact, our 17th and 11th Armies now have orders to advance to occupy the Maykop District in 48 hours. If your 3rd Army remains on its present positions at that time, they will be forcibly removed.”

  “Forcibly removed….” Volkov gave Ribbentrop a derisive look. “You may find that more easily said than done, Herr Ribbentrop. This is an insult of the highest order. You yourself negotiated the accord which has governed the relationship between our two nations since 1940. Yet I can see now that Germany never had any intention of remaining a faithful ally of the Orenburg Federation. So here is my response. Should one shot be fired at my troops on the line west of Maykop, a state of war will exist between the Orenburg Federation and Germany. Understand? Then we will see who’s might makes right. I am, this very hour, ordering all commanders in 1st and 3rd Kazakh Armies, and 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 7th Armies of Orenburg, to the highest state of ready alert. All prior demarcation of border zones and areas of responsibility are herewith abolished. Our forces will, as of this day, stand ready to conduct any operation of war deemed necessary to enforce our just and right claim upon all these disputed territories. Furthermore—I should have you hauled out of that chair and shot!”

  Ribbentrop said nothing, knowing that many bringers of bad news had lost their heads through history. He stood up, the matter clearly concluded, and finally spoke. “Mister General Secretary, it is with great regret that I see the fruits of our previous accord shattered over this disagreement. You may kill the messenger here, but it will do nothing to change what I have been authorized to relate to you. I do, however, request diplomatic immunity, and will guarantee the same to all diplomatic personnel from Orenburg presently within German held territory. They will be granted safe passage to any destination they wish. As for the orders you say you are prepared to deliver to your armies, they are duly noted and will be reported directly to the Führer by me personally upon my return to Berlin. May I now be taken to my plane at the airport?”

  “Go!” said Volkov. “And hear one thing more as you do, Ribbentrop. I am not called the Prophet without reason, for I have seen the end of this miserable conflict, and I can tell you now that it will end with the victorious forces of Russia burning and blasting their way into Berlin! Your armies will be driven out of our homeland and utterly destroyed! It was only my own blindness that saw an ally in Germany, for you have had your way on the battlefield up until now, and success has many friends. But do not think, even for one moment, that you can truly enforce anything in this document by force of arms. The end of all Hitler’s ambitions will be only one thing—the complete and utter destruction of the Third Reich!”

  In that single discussion, the entire complexion of the war in the east had suddenly changed.

  Chapter 8

  Manstein sat in his headquarters in Rostov, staring at the map. This must be what they are doing this very moment at OKW, he thought. They are standing there around the map table, with Hitler probably drawing in new front lines as he is given to do these days. In their minds, this is a simple readjustment of the front, but it may not be welcomed or wanted by the forces of Orenburg. I must take the liberty of getting a firm order of confirmation before something happens here that we may come to regret. And yet, I can already hear what Hitler will say. He will be so full of himself that we have finally delivered the Kuban and eliminated the last of Sergei Kirov’s forces in this region, that he will simply order the nightmare to begin.

  Should I set this order concerning Maykop aside and fly to Berlin immediately? Perhaps I could talk some sense into the Führer. Even as he thought that, he knew it might only be a waste of his time and energy. Once Hitler had his mind made up on something, he was immovable. Yet he had shown uncharacteristic flexibility of late. He finally allowed Model to fight his way out of the Voronezh pocket, and some of those divisions were put to very good use here. His sudden reinstatement of Operation Merkur, and this new attack into Syria and Iraq have produced startling results.

  Yet the aim of all those operations is clear, just as it is for Edelweiss . He wants the oil, and he is no longer inclined to wait for Volkov to ship it to him. He has been emboldened by our many recent successes on the battlefield, and now he sees the Wehrmacht as invincible. So he will stop at nothing. Halder could not restrain him, nor will Zeitzler, and I do not think he will even listen to my advice on this matter.

  Even as he thought this, Manstein knew that he had been quietly preparing for renewed operations into the Caucasus for the last three weeks. Virtually every mobile reserve division in Armeegruppe South had already been sent over the Don through Rostov and into the Kuban. 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions had been pulled out of the Taman, and 17th Army had been moved to the Kuban bend area to occupy all the crossing sites: Kropotkin, Kazanskaya, Labinsk. The 29th Motorized had been sent to back 3rd Panzergrenadiers, and now his elite Grossdeutschland Division was concentrated at Tikhoretsk.

  To restore some mobile reserve behind his long defensive front along the Donets, Manstein pulled 22nd and 23rd Panzer Divisions off the line, replacing them with reserve infantry divisions that had been rehabilitating at Kharkov. Lastly, he told Steiner to free up one of his three remaining SS divisions by making any prudent adjustment to his front that he deemed necessary. The division pulled into reserve was the battle hardened 3rd SS Totenkopf .

  If this nig
htmare begins, he thought, then I will fight it north and east of the Kuban River. All those fast motorized divisions will break through and go right for Stavropol, the city the Soviets had called Voroshilovgorad. That move flanks Armavir on the Kuban, seizes a major railhead city, and then from there we simply drive south to Nevinomyssk and cut the main rail line to Groznyy and Baku. That isolates everything Volkov has in the Maykop region, and also opens the road east and south to the real prize fields at Groznyy and Baku, for I have little doubt that I will soon be ordered there. That is all of 700miles as the crow flies from Rostov, farther than our drive to reach this headquarters.

  Yet the price for this is war with the Orenburg Federation. Is that oil worth the cost in blood? Our lines run parallel to Volkov’s from the Black Sea all the way up to the Don bend where we just made that minor adjustment by pulling back to the Chir. This front is the only point of contact with Orenburg. All the rest of his troops are still facing down the Soviets along the Volga, but will they stay there? What if both sides had all those units free to use against us? Yes… that is the real nightmare behind all of this. Six more Soviet armies, and Volkov’s 1st, 4th, and 6th armies could be freed up for operations, and if this happens there can be no operation against Leningrad when the winter finally relents.

  He shuddered inwardly, knowing the chaos that would bring to the entire war in the east. I could take the Caucasus if Hitler orders it, he thought. It took us only one month to destroy four Soviet Armies in the Kuban. I would go right through these troops from Kazakhstan and a fast offensive, with sufficient mobile forces, will probably not be stopped anywhere forward of Groznyy. However, if Volkov manages to mend fences with Sergei Kirov…. then we get the nightmare. My troops may very well be in Baku when that happens, but something tells me they will not stay there long….

  The outcome of the war was on a razor’s edge that was now 48 hours wide. OKW secretly signaled all armies in the field bordering troops of the Orenburg Federation to make ready for offensive operations. Planes and messengers were dispatched to Rostov to brief Manstein directly, where he learned that all his assumptions and misgivings were about to become grim reality. It was too late, he knew, to attempt a direct appeal to Hitler to rescind those orders, and so he bowed to the inevitable, signaling Hörnlein in the Grossdeutschland Division a single pre-arranged Codeword—Edelweiss II.

  The seconds ticked off, their sound becoming louder and louder with each passing moment, and then, on the 28th of March, 1943, they finally resolved to the booming sound of artillery fire. Germany had now opened yet another new war front in the deep south of the Caucasus. Now the panzers would advance in to the rolling steppes replete with sunflowers, abundant grain only now emerging from beneath the last of winter’s morning frost, and of course, the oil. It was a vast new frontier, desolate in many places where the dry balkas would creep through desert salt pans, past the old buried bones of previous generations that were gathered in telltale mounds. Eventually the desert would give way to the marshy shores of the far Caspian Sea, and to the south, the land would rise sharply to the towering heights of Gora Elbrus, King of the Great Caucasus Range.

  Volkov’s armies had held forth in that region for decades, once holding all the terrain to the line of the River Don, and glaring at the Soviet river forts at Rostov. Sergei Kirov’s 1940 offensive had pushed them all the way back to the Kuban and beyond, with Maykop switching hands twice, finally recovered by Volkov’s late 1941 counterattack. Yet the German army did not fight like the Soviets of 1940 and 1941. Its infantry hit hard, and was backed by good artillery and Stug battalions. Its panzers moved like steel chariots.

  After years of simply minding his static borders with Soviet Russia, Ivan Volkov finally had his war. He would soon come to understand the meaning of the proverb that Ribbentrop had handed him—Might makes Right.

  One minute after the deadline dictated by the Führer, the guns of Fredrik de Gross, Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm opened fire on the Georgian defenders of Tuapse. From the sea, the German 132nd Infantry Division was lifted from the Kerch area for an assault, while the inland side of the port was attacked by the 97th Jaeger Division. Tuapse fell that morning. As did Hill 69 near that small oil field, where the Stug Battalion of Ott’s 52nd Korps had ground its way up the slope. The Orenburg 38th Division was driven back on the flanks by 339th Infantry, and the Germans controlled the area by dusk.

  Further north along the Kuban, the German 257th Division pushed over the crossing sites at Labinsk, and a small bridgehead was obtained near Kazanskaya, about 10 kilometers west of Kropotkin. These attacks were meant simply to draw the interest of any reserves the Orenburg 3rd Army might have deeper in the Maykop Zone. The real action was to the northeast, where the 57th Panzer Korps launched its attack through Novo Alexandrovka towards Stavropol. It would fall upon the 3rd Kazakh Army, a much less capable formation than the regular army units in the Maykop District. Three of the five rifle divisions on the line withdrew, and of the two that stood their ground, the Timur Rifles took 40% casualties. Further north, the Amir Guard Division was surrounded by 29th Motorized Division and tried to fight its way out of the trap.

  The Germans had only hit the outer shell of Volkov’s defense in that sector. Anticipating an attack along the lines of what Manstein had ordered, Volkov sent his 7th Regular Army to Stavropol, and they were now hastily marshaling to arms along an inner defense line that stretched from Stavropol to the north. Other measures saw the massive silver behemoths of the Southern division airships climb high to avoid German fighters, penetrating deep behind German lines. They would then descend to deploy their small airmobile company, with a mission to interdict the vital rail lines that would sustain the German offensive.

  One landed north of Tikhoretsk, causing a good bit of damage before the Ersatz Battalion of the Grossdeutschland Division surrounded and destroyed the raiders. A company off the airship Krasnodar made good on its name by raiding the rail line northeast of that city. It, too, would meet a sad fate when found by the German 503 Heavy PzJag Battalion that had been moving up the road to the crossing bridgehead at Labinsk. A 3rd Company off the airship Kungur struck the auxiliary rail line running from Rostov to Salsk.

  While this effort was made to interdict German rail lines, Volkov made good use of his own. The last four rifle divisions of his 7th Army moved all day and night, down along the Volga to Astrakhan and then on down the Caspian shore towards Groznyy. This route would eventually turn west to take them up towards Nevinomyssk and Armavir, where Volkov determined the Germans would come.

  So in these initial days, and in spite of his foreknowledge of how the old Operation Edelweiss had ended, Volkov chose to backstop his forward lines in the effort to hold as much territory as possible. He was perhaps making a grave mistake in choosing to fight for every mile of ground, rather than adopting the strategy the Russian Armies had used in the old history. There they had made a hasty withdrawal, even uprooting and shipping all the oil rigs and equipment at Maykop. They would delay on the line Pyatigorsk, Mineralne Vody, Georgievsk, and then fall back on the Terek River. (See Map of Manstein’s drive into the Caucasus)

  In the Maykop Zone, it seemed that Volkov’s strategy was working. His 3rd Army was fighting hard, and its reserve Mech Corps had come forward to deliver some sharp counterpunches against 17th Army. Beyond Hill 69 with that nascent oil field, there was heavy woodland that had stopped Volkov’s troops when defended by stalwart Soviet troops. Now they hoped to use that terrain to their own good advantage, and it was slow going for the infantry attacks, particularly since the Germans had already been fighting for a month.

  It was the German bridgehead over the Kuban at Labinsk near Kropotkin that became the major problem. The Germans had used three Pioneer Regiments to get the infantry over the river, and now they had deepened their bridgehead to a depth of 15 kilometers. A brigade from 3rd Army’s Mech Corps was committed there to try and hold the line, but it was unable to make much of a difference. The
German infantry found the weak points in the enemy line, hammered their way through, and then presented the strong points with the option to either withdraw or be enveloped. Cavalry Divisions used to plug holes were quickly pushed back, and the weight of this attack would soon begin to threaten the strong defensive front west of Belorchensk.

  Yet that was not even the main German effort, for Manstein assumed that Maykop would fall like a ripe plum the instant he had swept through Stavropol and began pushing to cut the rail line to the south. The German mobile units had all but destroyed the outer defensive line of 3rd Kazakh Army, and now they were fighting with the regulars of the 7th Army. Grossdeutschland Division came barreling right up the road from the Kuban bend east of Kropotkin, and was already closing on Stavropol. 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions were mopping up shattered enemy stragglers and forging on. 7th Army had been trying to watch the entire front from Stavropol north to the Manych Canal, a distance of 135 Kilometers, and it was still waiting for its last four divisions.

  As the Germans pushed to within 12 kilometers of the main airfield at Stavropol, the order was given to fly off the fighter group there to Elista. The 18 planes took off, heading north east towards the wide empty desert region, but not an hour later the drone of planes could be heard again. The remaining ground service crews rushed to man machineguns, thinking the field was under German attack, but to their great surprise, down came another group of 12 fighters, all Volkov’s Yak-1’s, built with plans he had provided. The bewildered ground crews soon learned they had just flown in from Armavir.

  “The Germans have crossed the Kuban north of the city!” the pilots exclaimed. “They have taken Armavir!”

  That sleight of hand had been accomplished when the 24th Bridge Column trundled forward and threw up a pontoon bridge on the night of the 30th of March. The following morning, 170th Infantry crossed, soon to be followed by the 81st. This sudden and unexpected attack had completely compromised the defenders at Kropotkin, and those trying to contain the Labinsk bridgehead, and now Volkov’s Generals had to make some very difficult decisions. They had stopped the Germans in that heavy woodland just north of Aspheronsk, the best defensive positions they had west of Belorchensk, but now that whole line had been flanked. The rail line that fed them ran back through Armavir, and the defense of the Labinsk bridgehead was now collapsing. Manstein’s plan was working.