Das Reich experienced an unexpected change of command when Keppler was struck down with a brain hemorrhage on 10 February. He was replaced by Oberführer Herbert-Ernst Vahl, a former army officer then leading Das Reich’s panzer regiment (he would relinquish command of the division after being seriously wounded on 18 March, indicative of the dangers faced by all Waffen-SS officers). Das Reich was to be joined by the Totenkopf Division, whose units began to arrive at the front in mid-February.
At this time, the cold weather began to alternate with brief periods of spring thaw that turned otherwise hard ground into a boggy morass. Vehicles—tracked and wheeled—that were not standing on asphalt roads would suddenly find themselves sinking up to their axles in mud. Theodor Eicke’s Totenkopf armored units, perhaps overeager to reach their start line, were the first to fall foul of the spring rasputitsa, with most stuck fast on 18 February.14 The following day, with the return of freezing conditions, the vehicles were winched out of the mud, ready for combat.
Night operations were commonplace on the Eastern Front, but they were made all the more difficult in winter weather with still inexperienced tank crews. Martin Steiger, a tank commander in the Totenkopf ’s I Panzer Battalion, described events on 21 February:
It was a starlit, freezing night. The commanders stood rigidly in their hatches. The panzers began to slide on the slippery roads. Around midnight we reached Krasnograd, when a major mishap stalled the advance. Several panzers began to slide on the clear ice at a downhill spot near the exit from Krasnograd and crashed into each other. The panzers of Meierdress [commander of I Battalion] and his adjutant and the panzers of Reifkogel and Siebenkopf collided in a dip in the road and sustained considerable damage. They had to be towed away. It was light before we got going again.15
While the armored vehicles of Totenkopf were coming to terms with the Ukrainian steppe in winter, Das Reich was racing ahead. “Deutschland” and “Der Führer” leapfrogged each other in a sixty-mile two-day dash toward Novomoskovsk on the River Samara. Sturmbannführer Sylvester Stadler, commander of “Der Führer’s” II Battalion, seized the bridges over the river on 21 February in a daring raid that enabled the rest of the division to drive on Pavlograd with minimal delay. In offensive operations where swiftness was essential, the division was divided into ad hoc Kampfgruppen. Three fast battle groups led the assault on Pavlograd, each comprising a company of infantry (from “Der Führer”) mounted in half-tracks, with a panzer company and a battery of armored artillery.16 The ease with which these changes were carried out was indicative of the tactical flexibility of German armored formations.
The speed of the German advance had caught the Soviets off guard, and short of fuel and ammunition they were unable to offer much resistance when Das Reich launched a surprise attack against Pavlograd on 22 February. Supported by waves of Stukas, the city fell with little resistance, Hausser going forward to congratulate his troops at the end of the day’s fighting. Contact was now made with the army formations from Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army, thereby closing the gap in the German line. Das Reich then changed direction and drove northward to crush the scattered Red Army units, now caught in a trap south of Kharkov.
The Totenkopf Division moved alongside Das Reich, announcing its arrival by shelling nearby Das Reich units. There were no casualties in the incident, however, although Totenkopf was shortly to experience a unique loss of its own. On 26 February Eicke was flying over his forward positions in a Fieseler Storch reconnaissance aircraft when it was hit by Soviet small-arms fire. The aircraft crashed to the ground and was raked by further enemy fire; the bodies of Eicke and his crew were recovered the following day.
Eicke had created the Totenkopf Division in his own mold and seemingly against all odds had made it into a crack fighting force. If nothing else, Eicke proved that there was no reason that former concentration-camp guards should not make first-rate combat soldiers. Although his men were obviously dismayed at the loss of “Papa Eicke,” the division was a well-run military formation that continued to function, regardless of individual casualties. Max Simon took command of Totenkopf as it renewed its advance on Kharkov.
THE CONSTANT CHANGES of direction and relentless nature of the German armored attacks bemused the disoriented and increasingly demoralized Soviet forces. Advancing together, the tanks of Totenkopf and Das Reich sprinted over the snowbound steppe, casting aside the remnants of the Soviet First Guards Army before closing in on the Soviet Sixth Army, now threatened with total encirclement. The Soviet high command sent reinforcements to support their beleaguered comrades, but they too were caught in the encircling move that reached a crescendo in and around the village of Yefremovko on 3–4 March.
Leibstandarte had now been committed to the attack and was soon fighting alongside the other two SS divisions. Kurt Meyer’s reconnaissance battalion was in the lead and for a time was briefly isolated in Yefremovko. Meyer, outraged that his men were fired upon by “armed civilians,” ordered the village to be razed to the ground and its inhabitants shot.17
By early March the warm spells that caused the ground to turn to mud became more frequent, inevitably slowing the advance of the SS panzer units. The army’s XLVIII Panzer Corps was directed to drive to the east of Kharkov and the SS Panzer Corps to advance to the west and then surround it from the north. Despite the meteorological problems, the SS troops faced little serious opposition, as what remained of Soviet opposition retreated into the city or attempted to flee eastward across the Donets. Herbert Maeger, of Leibstandarte, recalled the drive north: “Rolling forward over mainly flat terrain we found it strewn with Soviet army equipment relinquished in the typical sequence of a rapid flight. Next, we came upon a zone of abandoned weapons and ammunition containers of all kinds; one kilometer further on the field was littered with blankets and belts, and finally the fleeing hordes had literally left behind the last of all they had in their desperation to escape, for now we found only haversacks and greatcoats and last of all fur caps and lined boots.”18
On 9 March the SS panzer divisions closed on Kharkov, with orders to drive around it from the west. What happened next remains a matter of controversy. The SS Panzer Corps claimed that on the ninth it received an order from Hoth’s HQ at 12:15 P.M. to “take Kharkov in a coup de main.”19 On the next day Leibstandarte attacked the city from the northwest, while Das Reich supported the assault from the west. Totenkopf, meanwhile, provided cover by continuing to drive around the north of Kharkov toward the River Donets. In his postwar memoirs, Manstein criticized Hausser for being obsessed with the recapture of the city, with the implication that such an action could have been better carried out by infantry.20 Hausser countered that his armored units needed to use the city center’s superior roads in order to redeploy northward,21 despite the fact that Totenkopf had already driven around the city on cross-country routes. There can be little doubt that Hausser was personally determined to regain the city he had previously lost.
The full weight of Leibstandarte smashed its way toward the city center. Some idea of the bitterness of the final battles can be seen in this letter from Sturmbannführer Heinz von Westernhagen, commander of the division’s assault-gun battalion:
What we left behind is appalling. If you were to come to Kharkov now, you would not recognize it. Hardly a house is left intact. Nobody is going to forget the street combat. Every single man deserves the Knight’s Cross. In Kharkov itself we drove to within 30 meters of fortified houses and fired directly into them with our panzer artillery. From above, the [Soviet] brothers bedeviled us with satchel charges on our heads. And after the dust from bricks and explosives had settled, these dogs continued to fire. From a distance of 100 meters we fired artillery into them and in places killed them with Cossack sabers.22
The battle raged for nearly four days until the various SS columns converged on the city’s central plaza, briefly renamed Leibstandarte Square. It was an epic moment in the division’s history: the cameras captured Peiper’s half-tracks d
riving into the square as Leibstandarte’s leading officers—among them Dietrich, Witt, Wünsche, and Meyer—congratulated each other.
While Das Reich and Totenkopf secured the area around Kharkov, establishing a defensive screen along the River Donets, a Kampfgruppe under Peiper’s command charged northward to capture Belgorod before the spring thaw brought a complete halt to offensive operations. As well as his battalion of half-tracks, Peiper could call upon two Leibstandarte Tiger tanks and a company of Panzer IVs commanded by Untersturmführer Rudolf von Ribbentrop (son of the German foreign minister).
As usual, Peiper drove his men with a wild enthusiasm, with several Panzer IVs knocked out in the hurry to get forward. But speed had its advantages. Just before the Kampfgruppe reached Belgorod, the Tigers were sent forward to lead the attack. Rottenführer Werner Wendt, a gunner in one of the Tigers, described the action on 17 March:
As we burst into the next village the road curved slightly to the right. We couldn’t believe our eyes; in position in front of us was an enemy 76.2mm anti-tank gun. It was obvious that our appearance had come as a surprise, for instead of being behind their gun, the Red Army men were sitting on a bench in front of a nearby cottage flirting with several girls from the village. There was no need for us to fire. Without hesitating we drove over the gun at full speed; it [was] no threat to us now, having been reduced to scrap. As we continued down the road we were challenged by two T-34s which we destroyed easily. To the left of the road there was a vast expanse over which hundreds of Red Army troops were fleeing, driven by fear of being overrun by our rapid advance. Their coats flapped as they ran.23
Belgorod fell on 18 March, bringing a temporary end to the fighting. Any hopes Manstein held of pushing on to Kursk were dashed by the increasingly warm weather and the exhaustion of the German frontline units.
The Kharkov battle had been a signal German success: inflicting a painful blow on the Red Army, restoring a defensive line in the Ukraine when previously there had been an open space, and raising German morale after the disasters of Stalingrad. Manstein had provided a textbook lesson in how the German Army should use its armored forces, utilizing superior mobility to catch the enemy off guard and concentrating devastating firepower at the critical juncture. Hausser’s SS Panzer Corps had played a key role in achieving Manstein’s victory.
Hitler failed to comprehend the factors behind Manstein’s strategy, but he understood the part played by the SS divisions, especially his beloved Leibstandarte and its commander, Sepp Dietrich. The Nazi propaganda machine went into overdrive to laud the SS heroes. Dietrich was awarded the swords to his Knight’s Cross and prepared for command of a new SS Panzer Corps (Hausser, by contrast, was cold-shouldered by Hitler for disobeying his order to defend Kharkov to the last). Medals were handed out to the SS divisions with jubilant enthusiasm: Leibstandarte received fourteen Knight’s Crosses, Das Reich ten, and Totenkopf five.24 On the debit side, the SS Panzer Corps had suffered heavy casualties. Losses of killed, wounded, and missing totaled 365 officers and 11,154 NCOs and enlisted men.25
Following the victory at Kharkov, Hitler and OKH considered how best to continue the war on the Eastern Front. It centered on two, opposing, choices. The “backhand” strategy favored by Manstein called for a flexible, predominantly reactive approach, where the Wehrmacht was prepared to trade space to allow advancing Soviet forces to overextend themselves before carrying out devastating counterattacks—as had been the case at Kharkov. The other, “forehand,” approach demanded a rigid defense combined with a proactive offensive outlook. This latter strategy was favored by Hitler and would form the basis for the attack on the Kursk salient during the summer of 1943.
Chapter 18
KURSK: CLASH OF ARMOR
RECALLED TO THE Führer headquarters in April 1943, Dietrich was told by Hitler that he was to take command of I SS Panzer Corps. This would comprise Leibstandarte and a new division to be recruited from older members of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend). On 10 February Hitler had agreed to the request by Reich youth leader Artur Axmann for a military formation primarily drawn from Hitler Youth volunteers born in 1926. Hitler had always shown a keen interest in the young—more ideologically malleable than their elders—and backed the idea, which would eventually turn into the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend.
The training cadre for the new division was primarily drawn from officers and NCOs of Leibstandarte. Fritz Witt, of Leibstandarte’s 1st Panzergrenadier Regiment, would become the Hitlerjugend commander, to be joined by Kurt Meyer and Max Wünsche, the latter taking over the new panzer regiment. Leibstandarte also lost a panzer battalion to the new division. As a consequence, it would go into battle at Kursk with just one battalion while a new unit was being raised in Germany, equipped with the latest Panther tanks.
Dietrich had been with Leibstandarte since its inception as Hitler’s personal guard, and his departure would be keenly felt by the soldiers of the division. Staff officer Rudolf Lehmann knew him well: “He was no strategic genius, but a leader of the highest quality of soldiers and of men. His very rare and then very short speeches to his men did not contain any strokes of genius, but they were, as one realized, meant to come from his heart, and they went from heart to heart. This man had an extraordinary charisma.”1 Despite his promotion, Dietrich had little to command during 1943, Leibstandarte still operating under Hausser’s direction while the Hitlerjugend remained a formation under construction.
Dietrich was succeeded by Theodor Wisch on 4 June 1943. He would lead Leibstandarte throughout the Kursk offensive and beyond, relinquishing command only when badly wounded in Normandy. Wisch—seen as a steady hand—had been a young officer in Leibstandarte’s prestigious 1st Company before working his way up the career ladder to lead the 2nd Panzergrenadier Regiment. According to a subsequent Allied interrogation, he was “pleasant faced with a mild speaking voice and possessed with quite a sense of humor.”2
There were changes in the other divisions, too. After the death of Eicke, command of the Totenkopf Division passed briefly to Max Simon and then to Hermann Priess, formerly the division’s senior artillery officer. Eicke had formed a high opinion of Priess, praising his performance during the defense of Demyansk in 1942: “If it wasn’t for Priess, none of us would still be here.”3 In Das Reich, the severely wounded Herbert-Ernst Vahl was succeeded by Walter Krüger, a former commander of the Polizei Division.
During the spring of 1943, Leibstandarte, Das Reich, and Totenkopf Divisions made good the losses they had incurred during the battle of Kharkov. Many of these replacements came from the Luftwaffe, whose bloated organization was being combed out by OKW for the personnel desperately needed by Germany’s ground forces. Although considered good human material, the Luftwaffe servicemen were untrained in ground fighting and were consequently subjected to a crash course in infantry tactics.4 While personnel losses were successfully made up, the three SS divisions were unable to achieve their regulation strength in armored vehicles. Apart from Leibstandarte’s missing tank battalion, the armored vehicles for the Totenkopf Division were down by a third, while Das Reich adopted the unusual expedient of using a company of captured T-34s to augment its numbers.
FOLLOWING THE VICTORY at Kharkov, Hitler was determined to conduct a major offensive on the Eastern Front. He took up an idea originally suggested by Manstein for the elimination of the bulge in the Soviet front line that stretched around the city of Kursk. But Manstein’s plan was for a swift attack by Army Group South—supported by Army Group Center—to be launched immediately once the ground was firm enough for armored operations. Hitler procrastinated, however, and repeatedly postponed the operation, justifying his vacillation on the need to build up Germany’s panzer force to include the new Panther tank and Elefant tank destroyer. The delays caused Manstein to change his mind, and in concert with several of his fellow commanders—notably Model and Guderian—he tried to persuade Hitler to abandon the idea. In the discussions that continued through April and Ma
y, Zeitzler (OKH chief of staff) and von Kluge (Army Group Center) backed the offensive, and their arguments won the day.
The plan—codenamed Operation Citadel (Zitadelle)—comprised a simple pincer movement, with Model’s Ninth Army attacking from the North and Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army driving toward Kursk from the South. Soviet intelligence was well aware of German intentions, however, and between April and the beginning of July the Red Army constructed a formidable series of defenses, many miles deep, which included fixed fortifications, minefields, artillery fire zones, and antitank strongpoints. Behind this the Red Army had gathered their strategic reserve, not only to thwart any German breakthrough but also to prepare a counteroffensive once the German attack had been held.
On 1 July 1943 Hitler finally ordered the offensive to go ahead, with the start date fixed for 5 July. The Wehrmacht had assembled a powerful force, concentrated on the northern and southern shoulders of the Kursk bulge, amounting to just under three-quarters of a million men, with nearly 2,400 tanks and assault guns, 7,500 guns and mortars, and 1,800 aircraft.5 The larger of the two German forces was deployed in the South and consisted of three panzer corps (including Hausser’s).
Air cover was provided by VIII Fliegerkorps, whose bombers, dive-bombers, and fighter aircraft would help the SS divisions break into the Soviet lines. For the first time, the Luftwaffe used its special tank-busting Stukas, armed with twin wing-mounted 3.7cm cannon whose armor-piercing shells proved devastating against the lightly armored engine decks of the Soviet tanks below.
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