The flicker of gunfire along a 1,500-mile front which, like summer lightning, preceded the thunder of renewed combat just before first light on 22nd June, need not have surprised the Russians. They had received ample warning of the coming storm but acted far too late upon it. As a result many of the Russian soldiers, who were befuddled by a Saturday night hangover, were swept into the German bag that Sunday morning without firing a shot in their own defence. Within a matter of hours the Luftwaffe had won an air supremacy it was rarely to relinquish throughout 1941, and the three mighty Army Groups, in one of the most proficient armies history had seen, were breaking strongly upon a temporarily stunned opponent.
A comparison between the activities in Russia of Panzer Group 2 (or Panzer Group Guderian as it was better known among the soldiers who took pride in the G painted on their vehicles) and of XIX Corps, the previous year in France, is revealing. In 1941, with five panzer divisions at half the numerical tank strength of the three he had commanded in 1940, Guderian actually led fewer tanks than in France (though the substitution of medium for light tanks redressed the balance of power), while in Russia he had more infantry formations, some of which had armoured assault guns attached to them when in the lead. Yet, in France, XIX Corps had been committed to a frontage which rarely exceeded 25 miles, whereas in Russia his frontage would expand to as much as 100 miles. And while French resistance was frequently immobile and increasingly feeble, that of the Russians grew steadily in fierceness notwithstanding the ineptitude with which their leaders handled numerically superior forces. Neither the wider frontage nor the increased enemy resistance made any difference to Guderian’s conduct of operations. He handled a Group as he handled a Corps – by personal leadership at the front by wireless – and overcame the paucity of the roads by working his staff and drivers that much harder in his efforts to keep in touch with the tanks at the spearhead of action. Again and again he came under direct enemy fire and narrowly escaped. But a comparison between distances covered demonstrates a truly astonishing difference between the two campaigns, even allowing for the fact that there was far more space to trade in Russia than there had been in France.
In France XIX Corps had moved 149 miles from Sedan to Abbeville in 7 days, the maximum distance covered in a single day being 56 miles on the final day. In Russia, Panzer Group 2 moved 273 miles from Brest Litovsk to Bobruisk in 7 days, the maximum distance in a single day (again the last) being 72 miles – and by 16th July the Group had advanced 413 miles to Smolensk despite persistent Russian resistance and self-imposed halts for maintenance. In the course of this remarkable progress a vast haul of enemy equipment, including 2,500 tanks and 1,500 guns, was taken by Army Group Centre alone (the lion’s share in tanks going to the two panzer groups). But the marching infantry also performed prodigiously by covering enormous distances, under the goading of Bock and Kluge, through appalling dust and in intense summer heat in their endeavours to catch up with the motorised columns and rope in hoards of Russians who had been by-passed by Guderian’s and Hoth’s spearheads. Once again, yet more perniciously than in France, the dilemma of gearing the pace of advance to the rate at which a by-passed and defeated enemy could be contained or captured, preoccupied the minds of the higher commanders. Guderian and Hoth were insistent on pressing forward, regardless of what went on behind. They reckoned to achieve safety by movement and believed that the disruption they caused would override minor enemy incursions into their rear. With a glaring torch of success drawing them forward they were blind to what went on behind. But reviving the precedent he had instituted in France, Hitler intervened in Russia and demanded that Guderian and Hoth should close the pincers at Minsk instead of Smolensk, as Bock, Guderian and Hoth wished -even though Guderian accepted that to stretch so far at a single leap incurred risks.
On 27th June Hitler’s orders were implemented, trapping a seething mass of Russians within a steadily contracting circle. Yet, although Guderian writes in Panzer Leader, The foundations had been laid for the first great victory of the campaign’, he was rather more reserved in his letter to Gretel:
‘To-day, after six days of battle, a first short greeting with news that I am well. We are deep in enemy territory and, I believe, have had a very considerable success.
‘A thousand thanks for your kind greetings at the departure and on my birthday, and special thanks for the cornflowers and marguerites. They gave me great pleasure.
‘The battle started early on the 22nd where I left off in 1939. The first blow achieved surprise and had a devastating effect. A few strenuous days followed with little time for eating and sleeping and no time for writing …’
The Advance to Smolensk
He went on to regret the losses including several officers who had been close to him and then wrote:
‘All this is very sad. The enemy resists bravely and bitterly. The fighting, therefore, is very hard. One just has to put up with it.
‘In addition there is some annoyance, one incident of some importance. But of that nothing in this letter. Troops and equipment again in good order, everything else is ship-shape too. Heat, gnats, dust. My caravan proves itself beautifully. But I am missing my bath.’
The ‘annoyance’ was caused, primarily, by his immediate superiors. On 1st July he told Gretel: ‘Kluge has distinguished himself to good effect as a brake on progress’ but in the same letter appears something far more significant, a sign of awakening insight into the perils of Hitler’s misguided power: ‘Everybody is scared of the Führer and nobody dares say anything. Regrettably, this is what causes a useless waste of blood’. This lack of sympathy with the difficulties being experienced by Brauchitsch, Bock and Kluge was, of course, a common enough attitude by any leader of conviction to whom half measures were anathema. Ironically, Haider’s diary on the 29th records a hope that Guderian would disobey the Führer and strike out on his own! Many Germans might have felt easier in mind had they understood the appalling confusion into which the Russians had been thrown. It was not until 30th June that Stalin and the Russian High Command came to hear of the Minsk encirclement (such was the state of their palsied communication system which never rivalled that of the Germans), and only then did they learn by monitoring a German communique. Not even General Pavlov, the Army Group commander, fully recognised the disaster. Indeed, he was never given the opportunity, for he was arrested that day, along with his principal staff officers, and shot. The Germans had not plumbed to depths such as those – as yet.
As it had been in France so it became in Russia. Enormous panzer successes, which Gudenan considered as reason enough for further advances, attracted instructions to slow down while the spoils of war and the still articulate, though isolated, Russian armies, were digested. In Army Group Centre (and in the sectors of the two flanking Army Groups, too, for that matter) three distinctly different kinds of battle, often widely spaced, took place. The infantry formations either grappled with or by-passed Russian formations until they were eliminated or had demobilised themselves among the towns, villages, forests and marshes. The mobile troops tried to make as much headway as restrictive orders permitted and as infantry formations caught them up. And in the ever enlarging zone of communications to the rear of the field armies’ boundaries, the SS Einsatzgruppen began their work of suppression and extermination under the guise of anti-guerilla warfare – in a land where guerillas were, as yet, non-existent and where none need have appeared if umanity had been the rule. Several German generals were aware of the pogrom – though few, if any, its enormity. Nearly all, especially the engrossed operational commanders, ignored it. Guderian, for example, was not in the habit of visiting the lines of communication, but Paul Dierichs recalls his fury when two Russian civilians were shot by SS early in the campaign. And on the 29th Guderian wrote in hope and disquiet to Gretel, ‘The people look on us as liberators. It is to be hoped they will not be disappointed.’
In conditions of fluid mobility the trend of German operations became highly volatile. Lo
osely formulated, pre-campaign instructions which lacked the discipline of clearly defined objectives were compounded into a series of tactical and strategic improvisations that were relatively simple to implement through the admirably flexible command and communication arrangements. At short notice Bock could decide, on or about 28th June, to place Guderian’s and Hoth’s Panzer Groups under Kluge and rename Fourth Army as Fourth Panzer Army. Simultaneously he placed the infantry formations (which, up till then, had been under Kluge) under Second Army. Thus Kluge, without a clear directive, had the unenviable task of controlling the eager Guderian and Hoth. The switch in command was easy but the formulation of directives suffered in continuity. Everybody wanted to move quickly to the east, but each at his own pace. The initial uncertainty of each thrust became further and perilously haphazard as Hitler’s opportunism manifested itself in ill-co-ordinated, direct orders to individual Panzer Corps, instructions which, regardless of the central strategy, aimed them at specific enemy concentrations the moment intelligence claimed to have detected them. Thus, as Hoth was to point out, the panzer fist turned into an outspread hand – the converse of ‘Klotzen, nicht Kleckern’.
Guderian, short of orders, met trouble from Kluge halfway, and, even as Kluge was taking command on the 30th, flew to meet Hoth in an effort to pre-empt what he feared might come, to make private arrangements for their future collaboration in a continued drive to Smolensk as originally demanded by Bock. The evasive system that had evolved in the closing stages in France was re-introduced. While token panzer units were retained to satisfy extraneous demands from above, essential spearhead formations were kept motoring towards the River Dnieper and Smolensk. The Beresina had been crossed on the 28th and on 2nd July the Dnieper was reached at Rogachev. Progress was much slower, in part because of the brake applied by order, in part because heavy rain reduced the fields to quagmires and the foundationless roads to watery cart tracks – but also because the Russians were bringing up reserves and mounting a slightly more coherent resistance. As yet, however, there was nothing to persuade German intelligence that a properly co-ordinated enemy defence was being prepared – a supposition which was absolutely correct and daily typified by the piecemeal commitment and subsequent swift elimination of fresh Russian forces. Nevertheless Guderian and Hoth were threatened with court martial by Kluge when, on 2nd July, elements of their divisions made simultaneous advances that were quite counter to a halt order applied by Kluge.
More ominous to Guderian was a technical shock disclosed by the enemy. The swarm of Russian tanks that had initially presented itself for destruction came as no surprise, nor was their technical inferiority unexpected. These machines showed little advance upon those which the Germans had seen in 1932, at various subsequent Russian demonstrations and in Poland. But reports from Army Group North on 24th June began to tell of a very powerful heavy tank which, for hours on end, had resisted the fire of every gun except the 88 (this was the KV 1 with its new 76mm gun). On 3rd July 18th Panzer Division became involved in a heavy fight with Russian tanks and reported an entirely new tank of quite revolutionary design. Nehring was commander of 18th Panzer (he had been succeeded as Guderian’s Chief of Staff in the autumn of 1940 by Oberst Kurt von Liebenstein) and thus was quick to appreciate the significance of the find. What was more he would soon present Guderian with two undamaged specimens – one an improved type of the other -where they lay in a bog alongside the road. On the 10th at Tolochino Guderian saw and photographed his first T 34s – tanks with well-sloped armour, the powerful 76mm gun and an excellent cross-country performance. At a glance these machines were superior to any German tank in service or planned for introduction. Not even the latest medium and heavy tanks, projected in 1937 and 1939 respectively, would match them in all departments.
The appearance of the T 34s coincided with a mounting sense of crisis as the German situation on the Russian front began to deteriorate. If, on 30th June – the 9th day of the campaign – Guderian could claim that his Group’s state was satisfactory, the fuel situation well in hand, ammunition, supply and medical services functioning smoothly, casualties light and co-operation with Oberst Mölder’s fighters excellent, there were already reasons, in fact, for serious concern on technical grounds. On the 12th day of battle in France the first hesitations occurred because tank strengths were falling below the level of safety. Similar warnings came earlier in Russia where thick dust caused accentuated engine wear similar to that first experienced in the Western Desert by Rommel only three months before. Moreover the replacement and repair system was about to be exposed for what it was – an instrument suitable for short campaigns only. Spares were in irregular supply, facilities for major overhauls in the field non-existent; major repairs could be carried out by maintenance companies – only providing they received spares. After the brief encounters in Poland and France the tanks had been returned to the homeland for overhaul and rebuilding. This was impossible from Russia in 1941, not only because the Russians declined to stop fighting but also because the railway system, that had yet to be converted to the German gauge, could neither, in the summer of 1941, carry supplies forward nor backload shot-up tanks to Germany. In consequence replacement tanks were harder to come by as repairs fell behind wastage – and all this at a moment when it was clear that the Russians were receiving fresh machines.
Acrimony grew more vituperative between Kluge and Guderian when the latter, with Hoth, re-started the advance on Smolensk. On 9th July there was a row after Guderian, contrary to instructions, prepared to cross the Dnieper. Kluge was perfectly aware he was being manipulated and blatantly blackmailed when Guderian blandly produced the argument that arrangements had gone too far to be reversed and that to remain stationary was to invite destruction by the Russian Air Force. There were serious risks in what Guderian and Hoth were doing. The marching infantry was several days to the rear and Russian reserves were appearing in strength to front and flank. On the other hand it was well argued, from experience, that to leave the Russians undisturbed would merely allow them to establish strong defences where, for the present, none existed – a lesson which had been learnt all too often in the First World War. In effect Guderian was patronising to Kluge and snubbed him too openly for safety. Yet not always were they angry with each other and at times there was a grudging similarity of opinion. On this occasion Kluge, according to Guderian, ‘Unwillingly gave his approval to my plan’ with the remark ‘Your operations always hang by a thread’. For a variety of reasons, therefore, it is interesting to read an account by Kluge’s Chief of Staff, General Gunther Blumentritt:
‘In the period from 2nd to 11th July our Panzer Groups … drove into the difficult woodland and marshland of the Beresina – Russian resistance stiffened considerably … On the few roads we encountered the first minefields, numerous bridges which had been blown up, the enemy tenaciously holding out in the woods and swamp; as the result a unique phenomenum of this war occurred.
‘… strong Russian elements simply stayed in hiding in the pathless forests away from the roads. The infantry corps of Fourth and Ninth Army … had to deal with these enemy forces and as a result furious engagements were fought in the woods day after day …
‘The first doubts arose in our minds. No decision had been reached …
‘Feldmarschall von Kluge decided to commit the two Panzer Groups … for an attack along a broad front towards the east … We planned to carry out simultaneous crossing of the wide Dnieper and Dvina rivers at a maximum number of places … This great operation of von Kluge’s Panzer Army will always be regarded as a strategic masterpiece. To be sure he had two armoured commanders with outstanding qualifications. Generaloberst Guderian … in addition to all his other qualifications, possessed inexhaustible energy and enjoyed the absolute devotion of the units serving under him. He could be as hard as steel in his demands, and he was no pleasant subordinate, but he was a born armoured commander. In the eyes of the troops he was a kind of “Rommel of the Armoured Command
”. Guderian meant victory!
‘Generaloberst Hoth was a modern armoured commander who adhered strictly to the techniques of the General Staff Corps. He applied a firm hand with circumspection and acumen. He was an obliging subordinate, a kind of Prince Eugène.’
Guderian: Panzer General Page 21