The next day 1st Battalion, 421st Infantry Regiment, had fought its way within 50 yards of the bridge unbeknownst to the Soviets. They watched the tightly packed flow of personnel and equipment crossing the bridge. It looked as if once again the Germans would be able to pull off another daring coup de main and seize the crossing. A company commander leapt to his feet pointing his pistol. He took three steps forward and was immediately shot through the head. His men charged. This time the Soviet engineer officer in charge of the bridge was alert. The racing Germans were only 20 yards from the bridge when he blew it.
At half a dozen separate points the bridge went up with a roar like thunder, complete with the Russian columns on it. Among the smoke and dust, men and horses, wheels and weapons, could be seen sailing through the air. Horse-drawn vehicles, the horses bolting, raced over the collapsing balustrades, hurtling into the river and disappearing under the water.
Without the bridge, it took the Germans until the night of the 13th and 14th to find a way across the river and resume their advance.13
Mount Elbrus, 13 August 1942
The men of the 5th SS Division Wiking at first saw what they thought was a great white cloud sitting in the distance. As they got closer the towering twin summits of Mt Elbrus became clear. Its west peak was the highest point in Europe at 18,510ft. Its permanent icecap fed twenty-two glaciers.
Most of the men of the Wiking Division were volunteers from northern Europe who had joined the Germans to help wage their anti-Bolshevik struggle. Of its three motorized regiments, Germania was recruited from ethnic Germans, Westland from Dutch and Flemish volunteers, and Nordland from Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes. With them was the Slovak Fast Division (1st Slovak [Mobile] Infantry Division), together forming LVII Panzer Corps.
Behind them came XLIX Mountain Corps with the 1st and 4th Gebirgsjäger Divisions and the three Italian Alpini divisions. Their objective was the Klukhor Pass with the glaciers of Mt Elbrus hanging above. Through the pass ran the Sukhumi Military Highway to the port of Sukhumi on the Black Sea coast, which was the southernmost of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet’s remaining three major naval bases.
After the loss of its main base at Sevastopol, the fleet had occupied bases at Novorossiysk, Tuapse, and Sukhumi along the narrow coastal strip below the mountains. Each was also defended by an army, and each was now a target. V Corps was heading to Novorossiysk, the Romanian Mountain Corps was attacking through the foothills of the Caucasus to Tuapse, and XLIX and the Alpini Corps were to open the way to Sukhumi for the Vikings of the SS and the Slovaks. From Sukhumi it was only a hundred miles to the Turkish border at Batumi.
Initially List had planned for LVII Panzer Corps to be the main force in the drive on Tuapse. However, he concluded that it would be wasted there. The Romanians would be enough to fix Soviet forces in that direction. It was not necessary to attack all three Soviet naval bases in strength. His mountain corps would punch through the mountain passes that would give the Germans access to the thin coastal strip and roads to Sukhumi. Take Sukhumi, and the other two bases would be cut off - another great battle of encirclement. Unfortunately, the Gebirgsjäger and Alpini would be spent in simply fighting through the mountains. That’s where LVII Panzer Corps came in as the exploitation force.
While the mountain troops were breaking through the high passes, 1st Panzer Army was to ‘advance parallel to the eastern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains to seize Nal’chik and Mozdok, cross the Terek River, and capture Grozny, the coast of the Caspian Sea near Makhachkala, and ultimately Baku’.14 To help his panzers get through the mountains of southern Chechnya, List assigned to 1st Panzer Army the new LV Mountain Corps.
Already Stalin was pouring reinforcements into the North Caucasus Front commanded by his old crony from the Civil War, Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Budenny. They were desperately needed; the front was burnt out and in a shambles. In a report of 13 August to the Stavka, Budenny wrote that of his seven armies four were no longer combat effective, three of them down to fewer than 7,000 bayonets each. Rifle divisions were reduced to 300 to 1,200 bayonets. He complained that the reasons for failing to defend the Kuban were:
the complete absence of tanks and motorized units . . . the weakness of aviation, the extreme exhaustion and paucity of the infantry, the absence of reserves, and the weak command and control of the forces and communication with them on the part of the weak newly formed front staff.
He concluded by saying that ‘The Front’s chief mission is to defend the axes to Tuapse and Novorossiysk resolutely. Therefore, it is necessary to resolve [this mission] by means of a solid defence of the mountain defiles that protect Tuapse and Novorossiysk.’15 Nowhere did he mention Sukhumi.
Adding to Budenny’s miseries, Lavrenti Beria descended on the region. The ghoulish head of the NKVD came to spread terror among the native peoples of the Caucasus. The Imperial yoke had been bad enough, but they had writhed under the crueller yoke of Soviet Power. For good reason, Stalin doubted their loyalty, and he sent Beria to use the only tool he knew - terror. Stalin, the Georgian, had no love for these peoples, many of whom were Muslim, especially the Chechens who had raided down into Georgia for centuries before the Russians finally subdued them. Of course Beria’s cruelties accomplished just the opposite of what he had intended. Everywhere the arrival of the Germans was met with rejoicing, gifts of food and cattle, and volunteers, many, many volunteers.
Beria’s ruthlessness had been a pillar of Stalin’s rule as the war threw defeat after defeat at the Red Army. Stalin trusted no one, but Beria’s usefulness had given him a certain protection from Stalin’s paranoia. That did not keep Stalin from keeping a dossier on Beria as a serial rapist and paedophile. You never knew when that might prove useful.16
These were heady days for the Germans; Hitler’s fantastical dreams infected the men of Army Group A as they rolled over the Kuban. The engineers were calculating how much bridging equipment they would need to cross the Nile, and ‘whenever a trooper was asked, “Where’s our next stop?” he would frivolously reply, “Ibn Saud’s palace”.’ The mountain troops joked as they marched over the hot, flat steppe, ‘Down the Caucasus, round the corner, slice the British through the rear, and say to Rommel, “Hello, general, here we are!”’17
Kharkov, 14 August 1942
Tank crews from Grossdeutschland Division took possession of 150 Soviet T-34 medium tanks at the Kharkov Tractor Repair Plant and loaded them onto flat cars. Their destination was the siding at a large former Soviet training centre outside of Rostov.
A week before Hitler had gone back on his decision not to transfer the division to France and convert it to a panzer division. He would send it to France after all. Again Manstein had had to plead with him not to do so and suggested an imaginative alternative. Grossdeutschland could be converted in a much shorter time if it were done in theatre and with the Soviet tanks being repaired in Kharkov. At first Hitler was dead set against it. ‘Das ist wanzig, Manstein, heller wanzig [This is madness, Manstein, sheer madness]! To reequip the iconic division of the German Army with the creations of these Untermenschen is completely unacceptable.’
Manstein was all honey and light:
Mein Führer, I appeal to you as a frontline soldier of the First War. Who else but the man who has to fight the battles can see what weapons he needs. You yourself have told us how the men in the trenches understood the war better than the General Staff. I have here a message from the commander of Grossdeutschland requesting these tanks.
‘No, Manstein, no. It is unacceptable.’
The field marshal had detected a lessening of his Führer’s anger. The appeal to him as a frontline soldier had some effect. Hitler had never hesitated to bring down the General Staff a peg or two by saying that he alone had been in the trenches the way most of them never had been. Only he understood what the average soldier, the Landser, was going through. Now for the clincher. ‘You know, mein Führer, it would be a delicious irony to use these tanks as nails
in the coffin of the Bolsheviks.’ He got his way. To make up the earlier loss of Leibstandarte, Hitler agreed to transfer Raus’s 6th Panzer Division from France to be reequipped with Soviet tanks. They could turn over their complement of new German equipment to Leibstandarte.
As long as the Soviet tanks had not been burnt out or the turret ring damaged, they could be repaired. At the Kharkov plant the tanks had not only been repaired but improved. Each one had been outfitted with a radio as all German tanks were. Instead of just a crank to turn the turret, an electrical system was installed to make engaging a target faster. The German tankers loved the T-34; it was easier to maintain, more heavily armoured and better armed with its high-velocity 76mm gun than even the best of the German tanks, the Mark IV.18
Kluhkor Pass, 16 August 1942
The Gebirgsjäger were eager to pass through the Wiking and Slovak divisions to begin the ascent into the mountains after a long, hot march through the Kuban. The Alpini were no less eager. Their corps commander had moved from unit to unit addressing them:
Ragazzi [My boys], the eagles of our ancestors look proudly down upon you. You have marched farther than any legion of la cittá eterna. Now the great mountains of the Caucasus tower over us. You will conquer them! Roma will give you a triumph such as Caesar would have envied. Viva l‘Italia! Viva l’Alpini!
The elite troops of the Italian Army were excellent. The mass of the Italian Army, however, suffered from the deep incompetence of the officer corps compounded by the corruption and unrealities of the Fascist regime.19
The German and Italian objectives were the high mountain passes, the most important of which was the 9,230-foot Klukhor Pass and the beginning of the Sukhumi Military Highway. Defending a 275-mile stretch of mountains and passes was the 46th Army. It had largely neglected the defence of the passes, never believing the Germans would attempt to break through such forbidding terrain. At most the passes were defended by companies or battalions. The company at the mouth of the Klukhor Pass had no idea of the troops they were up against. The 1st Gebirgsjäger Division fixed the enemy’s attention to their front with a demonstration, climbed the flanking mountain, and fell upon their rear, collapsing the defence by the evening of the 17th. They were followed by the Austrians and Bavarians of the 4th Gebirgsjäger Division, and together they pushed on to overwhelm the strong Soviet defence of the pass exit.20
MAP №4 PENETRATING THE CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS
It was a close-run thing. The attackers had expended the last of their ammunition just as the Soviet defenders broke and fled. Their margin had been filled by the mules of the Alpini. The Italians had developed special mule supply units that could navigate some of the harshest mountain trails. They had generously shared them with the Germans. The Alpini were at the same time clearing the high passes of the main range to the southwest and suddenly found themselves also in the forests on the southern side, with Sukhumi barely 12 miles away on the Ossetian Military Highway.21
Mules or not, neither the Germans nor Italians would have broken through the increasing Soviet resistance had not the Luftwaffe flown close air support. Flying through mountain valleys is tricky in peacetime. In wartime it adds a whole new dimension to risk. One man who positively relished the intensified risk was Major Hans-Ulrich Rudel who had used every bit of influence and pull to bring his new squadron of Stukas to the fight. Rudel was the ideal new German - devoted to National Socialism and Hitler and as lethal as the plague. For him:
Fighting in the narrow valleys is a thrilling experience. It is easier after we have been into every valley a few times and know which valleys have exits, and behind which mountain it is possible to get out into open country. This is all guesswork in bad weather and with low lying clouds. When we make low level attacks on some valley road occasionally the defence fires down at us from above because the mountains on either side of us are also occupied by the Ivans.22
Particularly dangerous to the troops fighting their way down the rear slopes of the mountains was an armoured train whose artillery raked the Germans. Every time Rudel’s Stukas attempted to take it out, timely warnings of their approach caused it to flee for safety into a mountain tunnel. The train always won the cat and mouse game with the Stukas until the day Rudel changed the rules. While the train was hiding in its lair, Rudel’s Stukas hit the tunnel mouth with special bombs that collapsed the entrance, sealing the train inside.
Rudel tried to answer every call for close air support, but ‘battles in the mountain forests are particularly difficult; it is fighting blindfold’. Yet time and time again his Stukas delivered steel on the target, earning the praise of the troops on the ground.
With the Klukhor now cleared, the Wiking and Slovak divisions flowed down through the pass and onto the Sukhumi Military Highway as it led through the lush semi-tropical forests towards Sukhumi, only 25 miles away.
The German mountain troops could not resist the opportunity to climb Mt Elbrus itself, even as the attack on the passes began. The Italians heard of it and insisted on going along. The Germans had wanted the glory for themselves until the Italians asked how useful the mules were. A group of men from each of the German and Italian divisions then made the ascent and planted their division flags and the swastika and royal Italian flag on its summit. It made an enormous propaganda splash, but Hitler launched into one of his tirades at what he thought was a wasteful stunt. His architect, Albert Speer was there:
I often saw Hitler furious but seldom did his anger erupt from him as it did when this report came in. For hours he raged as if his entire plan of the campaign had been ruined by this bit of sport. Days later he went on railing to all and sundry about ‘those crazy mountain climbers’ who ‘belong before a court-martial’. They were pursuing their idiotic hobbies in the midst of a war, he exclaimed indignantly, occupying an idiotic peak even though he had commanded that all efforts must be concentrated upon Sukhumi.23
He need not have worried. Sukhumi was well in hand.
Planning Germany’s attack on the USSR in 1941. From left, Field Marshal Keitel, Chief of Staff of OKW, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, C-in-C of the Army, Hitler, Gen. Halder, Chief of Staff of the Army.
Marshal of the Soviet Union and brutal dictator, Joseph Stalin, was as murderous as Hitler but a far more rational war leader.
The men trying to keep the Soviet Union in the war through military aid: President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill (seated). Behind them stand (from left) Adm. King, Gen. Marshall, Gen. Dill, Adm. Leahy, and Adm. Pound.
Soviet T-34 tank refurbished and improved at the Kharkov Tractor Factory for use by the Germans.
Soviet military production was severely disrupted by the German invasion which forced the relocation of thousands of factories to the Urals and elsewhere. The tank factory at Chelyabinsk was so large it became known as Tankograd.
Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, conqueror of the Crimea, the only man Hitler could call on to retrieve the situation at Stalingrad.
Col. Gen. Friedrich Paulus, commander of the 6th Army, a competent general until the situation required him to think for himself.
Col. Gen. Walter von Seydlitz-Kurbach, hero of the Demyansk Pocket, commander of LI Corps and later of 6th Army, a man of decisive initiative.
Maj. Gen. Erhard Raus, Austrian commander of 6th Panzer Division, beloved by his men for being able to get them out of any scrape.
Reinhard Heydrich, the second man in the SS, organizer of the Final Solution, and self-styled heir to Adolf Hitler.
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, German military intelligence, and early mentor of Heydrich in the Navy.
General Georgi Zhukov, Stalin’s best general, who had saved Leningrad and Moscow. Could he now save Stalingrad?
Maj. Gen. Vasili Chuikov, the fiercely tenacious commander of the 62nd Army in the defence of Stalingrad.
Some of the hundreds of Soviet tanks destroyed in the fighting in the great bend of the Don.
British poster emphasiz
ing the importance of the Arctic convoys in keeping the Soviet Union in the war. Red Air Force support was much exaggerated.
The nightmare of the British and the heart of the German fleet in being, the battleship Admiral Tirpitz, in Altenfjord, Norway (above); and in a US Navy recognition drawing (left).
The heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, seen here in a US Navy recognition chart, was the flagship of the greatest fleet action in German naval history.
HMS London followed by USS Wichita, two of the ships of the Cruiser Covering Force for Convoy PQ-17. Both carried eight 8-inch guns, but the Wichita was better armoured.
Flagship of the Allied naval force protecting PQ-17, the battleship HMS King George V.
The USS George Washington finally finished off the German battleship Tirpitz.
HMS London, flagship of the Allied Cruiser Covering Force for PQ-17.
The USS Tuscaloosa at anchor in the British base of Scapa Flow shortly before the PQ-17 operation.
The cruiser USS Wichita with the splashes of near misses from heavy enemy shells visible just beyond.
Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History Page 17