Between Giants (16 page)

Whilst the bulk of the German troops invading Lithuania were part of Army Group North, the Vilnius area fell within the remit of Army Group Centre. 7th Panzer Division, part of 3rd Panzer Group, reached the town of Alytus at midday on 22 June, where two key bridges were seized over the River Niemen. As the division’s tanks attempted to exploit their two bridgeheads, they ran into dug-in Soviet tanks on the high ground to the east, and suffered heavy losses. Repeated Soviet counterattacks followed, but by dusk the two bridgeheads had coalesced and the Soviet forces were driven off.

After a night spent recovering and repairing damaged vehicles, 7th Panzer Division pushed on towards Vilnius the following morning, at first hindered more by burning woodland and fallen trees across the road than by Soviet resistance. Immediately to the west of Vilnius, the division’s reconnaissance battalion ran into tougher resistance, but outflanked the Soviet defences and succeeded in seizing vital bridges required for a further advance. By the evening, elements of the reconnaissance battalion, reinforced by tanks, secured the high ground to the south-east of Vilnius, and as darkness fell armoured columns pushed north and seized the eastern parts of the city.
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Early the following morning, the division’s motorcycle battalion captured the airfield outside Vilnius. As the division’s tanks secured the eastern parts of the city, the infantry moved into the centre at first light:

The city was decorated with Lithuanian flags, and the advancing troops were greeted with jubilation. Substantial materiel and food supplies were seized at the railway station, and about 50 aircraft were captured by German troops at the airfield. The infantry brigade, following the advance of the panzer regiment, took up positions south of the city. From the south, enemy armoured battlegroups launched repeated attacks on the division’s columns and positions south of Vilnius; they were all beaten off.
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While Reinhardt’s XLI Panzer Corps was delayed by the fighting around Raseiniai, its neighbouring formation, LVI Panzer Corps, continued to advance, aided greatly by the increasing dislocation in the Soviet front line: 8th Army was being driven north along the coast, while 11th Army found its line of retreat to the north cut off by the advancing German armour, and fell back to the east. In between, there were only scattered elements, and Manstein’s corps was ideally positioned to take advantage of the gap that yawned ever wider in the Soviet lines. After a brief pause late on 24 June, to allow essential fuel and ammunition to be brought forward, Brandenberger once more organised his division’s battlegroups. Crisolli was to advance on the right flank directly towards Daugavpils, with Scheller’s battlegroup on the left; still lagging some distance behind, Scheller would join the advance as soon as he could, while Crisolli was to set off at first light on 25 June. After an advance of only nine miles, Crisolli was halted by determined Soviet resistance near Trakiniai. The Soviet forces fought a determined action to hold the line of yet another small river, and were only driven out when a group of German tanks made use of a nearby ford and outflanked them. By early afternoon, Brandenberger was with Crisolli’s battlegroup as it motored into Utena, having advanced a further 33 miles, slightly halfway from its morning start line to its objective at Daugavpils.

Soviet artillery on high ground overlooking Utena subjected the German battlegroup to a short but heavy bombardment, and then Soviet light tanks, with infantry in support, attacked from the east. With more of his tanks arriving in a steady stream, Brandenberger deployed his armour to attack on a broad front either side of Utena, with support from whatever infantry was available. For the loss of one Pz.38(t) and one Pz.IV, his division captured or destroyed one Soviet tank, four armoured cars, and a variety of anti-tank guns and field guns. Pursuing the shattered Soviet troops, 8th Panzer Division’s tanks pushed on to Degučiai.
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The vital bridges – the main road bridge, and a rail bridge about a mile to the west – over the Daugava at Daugavpils were now within striking range. In order to capture them, Brandenberger reinforced Crisolli’s battlegroup to increase its strength to the bulk of his division’s panzer regiment, four battalions of infantry (including one from 3rd Motorised Infantry Division), a motorcycle battalion, and an artillery battalion. But in order to maximise the chances of seizing the bridges intact on 26 June, Crisolli was also assigned 8 Company of the Brandenburg Regiment.

The Brandenburg Regiment was the Wehrmacht’s ‘special forces’ unit, and owed its origins to a successful, if short-lived, battalion of Polish-speaking German soldiers who enjoyed conspicuous success in 1939, capturing and holding important road junctions in advance of the Wehrmacht. Under the aegis of the
Abwehr
– the military intelligence branch of the Wehrmacht – a new unit was raised after the end of the Polish campaign. In stark contrast to the racially selective policies of other German bodies such as the SS, the new unit specifically sought out soldiers who looked like, or actually were, Poles or Slavs. All recruits were required to be fluent in at least one language other than German, and were familiar with the customs and behaviour of the inhabitants of other countries. 8 Company, under the command of Oberleutnant Knaak, was made up of fluent Russian speakers. Dressed in Soviet uniforms, the company led the advance towards the bridges in two captured Red Army trucks.

The division’s war diary described the advance to the Daugava:

Fighting on the north-east bank of the Daugava was intense. The Soviet defenders – many of whom were identified by the Germans as ‘tough Kirghizians’ – attempted to disable the German tanks by rolling hand grenades under their tracks. At the same time, Soviet aircraft also attacked, but to no avail. The bulk of a German tank battalion, commanded by Major Wendenburg, broke through and secured the road running north-east from Daugavpils, and took up defensive positions to prevent any Soviet counter-attack. By mid-afternoon, with 8th Panzer Division’s motorised infantry beginning to arrive, the balance tilted firmly in favour of Brandenberger’s men. Some of the infantry were deployed to reinforce the defensive screen to the north-east, just in time to help intercept a determined Soviet counter-attack. A company of German tanks, led by Hauptmann Kühl, surged into the attacking Soviet forces, and claimed to have destroyed 20 light tanks, 20 field guns, and 17 anti-tank guns in a brief but fierce engagement, utterly disrupting the Soviet attack. One group of Soviet tanks succeeded in penetrating the German defences to the east, and accompanied by infantry, almost reached the road bridge before being brought to a halt by a German anti-tank battery that had only just crossed the river. By mid-evening, the Soviet attacks had all been repulsed.
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Further elements of 8th Panzer Division, including
Kampfgruppe Scheller
, continued to arrive throughout the night. On 27 June, units of 3rd Motorised Division also reached the Daugava, taking up positions to the right of 8th Panzer Division. Manstein’s LVI Panzer Corps had advanced an astonishing 185 miles since crossing the border, and had completely dislocated Kuznetsov’s defensive line. For their extraordinary achievements, Brandenberger, Crisolli and Fronhöfer were all awarded the Knight’s Cross. The same award was granted posthumously to Knaak and Flotow; the latter, who led the armoured personnel carriers that crossed the road bridge immediately behind the tanks, was killed in the battle to secure the north-east bank.

In an attempt to restore the situation, STAVKA – the newly established Soviet High Command – ordered Berzarin’s 27th Army, still in reserve, to fill the gap in the Soviet line, where Kuznetsov’s two armies had retreated on diverging axes. To give it additional strength, Lelyushenko’s 21st Mechanised Corps was attached to 27th Army, and 22nd Army was also dispatched to the area, to deploy around Kaunas and prevent further retreats by 11th Army. Berzarin was to establish a defensive line along the Daugava, but this would be of little benefit if 8th Panzer Division were able to exploit the bridgehead that it had already established. Both sides rushed troops to the area. The Red Army committed Lelyushenko’s mechanised corps, supported by considerable air assets, to an attack against the bridgehead on 27 June, and heavy fighting erupted. German fighters of
Jagdgeschwader 54
, which had just deployed to the airfield in Daugavpils, found themselves engaged almost immediately in attempts to defend the city from Soviet aircraft. The confusion that reigned in Soviet circles is amply demonstrated by the arrival at the same airfield on the afternoon of 27 June of three Soviet reconnaissance aircraft, which were promptly captured by the Germans.
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Although the Soviet attempts to destroy the bridgehead across the Daugava continued until 29 June, the heaviest attacks were on the first day, and by 28 June, sufficient German forces had gathered for a resumption of the advance, with Soviet attacks restricted to the eastern part of the bridgehead. But in contrast to the opening days of
Barbarossa
, Brandenberger’s immediate superiors – Manstein at LVI Panzer Corps and Hoepner at 4th Panzer Group – showed little appetite for another audacious surge forward. It seems that the sudden mood of caution originated at the headquarters of Army Group North. Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb had actually retired from active service in 1938 after 43 years in the army, and was a conservative figure, in every sense of the term. In 1938, he published a book entitled
Die Abwehr
(‘Defence’), describing how the German army might deal with an attack from the west while German forces were committed in Poland. Unlike Hoepner and Manstein, he did not visit the front-line headquarters of his panzer forces, and was thus isolated from the confident mood that reigned there; similarly, he did not experience first-hand the sense of elation at the clear disintegration of the Soviet defences. Instead, he insisted that the forces on the Daugava hold their positions until the slow-moving infantry divisions of 16th Army arrived. An early advance, he insisted, would be too risky. Despite his own inclinations, Hoepner was forced to pass on these instructions to his corps commanders:

The Commander in Chief of the Army Group is strongly influenced by the idea that given the existing situation, the Panzer Group alone cannot break enemy resistance between the Daugava and Leningrad and is taking measures to bring up the infantry armies closer yet to the Panzer Group.
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This appears to ignore the fact that a single division of the panzer group had completely disrupted Soviet resistance between the frontier and Daugavpils. On 29 June, Brandenberger interpreted his instructions to hold and enlarge the bridgehead as allowing him to probe forward, and pushed his division 20 miles further north, encountering only light Soviet resistance. Despite this, he was ordered to halt, and his division remained stationary for the next two days.

Although 8th Panzer Division was straining at its lead and was desperate to push on, German losses in the face of the Soviet assaults on Daugavpils were severe;
SS Division Totenkopf
, deployed from the German reserves, lost nearly a third of its combat strength, forcing the temporary disbandment of one of its regiments. But Soviet losses were heavier still. 21st Mechanised Corps lost 79 of its 107 tanks, and was unable to dislodge Manstein’s bridgehead.
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Gradually, even in the hard-contested eastern part of the bridgehead, the advantage tilted in favour of the Germans, who steadily levered the Soviet forces back. Exhausted and decimated, the Soviet divisions facing Manstein’s corps – from west to east, 163rd, 46th, 185th, and 42nd Tank Divisions, with 112th Rifle Division at the eastern end of the line nearest Krāslava – were forced to concede defeat and withdrew north-east.