Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (15 page)

Rollbahn: enemy in the woods to the left. Sturmgeschutze are under Lieutenant Franz, with whom we coordinate and make plans to destroy the enemy. As they are still 400 meters in front of the grain field, the company advances across a broad front. When we get to the edge of the woods a platoon goes in. Then: ‘Urrah!’ the Russians attack with total surprise. Wild explosions, ricochets, panic. A few men run back to the road embankment. We build a new holding line here - that was quite a shock. One half hour later, accompanied by a 50mm PAK, the company pushes into the woods again to save our wounded comrades. There were 5–6 men . . . Finally we reach them. There they lay, wickedly mutilated, bestially disfigured – all dead! That was quite a shock that all the men carried with them: everyone knew what it meant to fall into Russian hands.
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At this critical juncture, Army Group Center did something in common with many organizations (military and otherwise) that often pays minimum dividends at a steep cost: it reorganized. On 3 July, the German high command converted the Fourth Army into the Fourth Panzer Army with von Kluge at its head. Ostensibly, the reason behind this peculiar move so short into the
campaign, was to make von Bock’s job easier and both to coordinate better and somewhat rein in Hoth and Guderian by placing them under an intermediate headquarters. In reality the action may have been a salve to Hitler’s nervousness that the two panzer armies were behaving completely unrestrained. Von Kluge turned over most of his infantry units to Headquarters Second Army, coming up from the rear. As conceived, he would lead the two panzer formations while the Second and Ninth Armies brought up the rear. Henceforth, von Bock would figuratively command two separate armies, one fast and one slow, each with radically different missions and neither in close contact with the other.
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Even von Bock’s choice of commander, von Kluge, was a curious one: at no time since the invasion of Poland nearly two years earlier had he shown the flair assumed to be required for the job of
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senior panzer commander in the east. He had nothing to recommend him for the position, except that as a field marshal he outranked the two colonel generals. Within three days of assuming command first von Brauchitsch and then von Bock admonished him to get his new panzer army moving. By then Army Group Center’s two field marshals were not even talking to one another. With von Kluge, equally as poor a subordinate as a superior (plus not at all comfortable with the blitzkrieg), this arrangement did not last beyond the 27th of the month. In the end this completely unsatisfactory command relationship served no useful purpose, and may have even been counterproductive.

The mighty Dnepr River represented both a strategic objective for the Germans and a key to the Soviet defense. A major characteristic of the blitzkrieg was quick and decisive action, thus preventing the enemy from catching his balance. Guderian would have to overcome the obstacle in short order, but for his men, getting over the river was not the difficult part, staying across was. Even at high flood because of the heavy and late rains that spring, advance elements of the 3rd Panzer Division crossed the 800m-wide river near Rogatachev, also on 3 July. Three ‘submarine’ panzers tackled the river but only two made it to the far bank. With no reinforcements to speak of, this tiny bridgehead held out until the 6th, as casualties mounted while ammunition and food dwindled. Similarly, the 4th Panzer crossed 75km upstream at Stary Bychov the next day, but was thrown back over the river by Red Army troops who then destroyed the bridge. In spite of contemporary military intelligence (and subsequent military history) to the contrary, from what the Germans on the scene could tell, the so-called Stalin Line was very real. The well-defended garrison town of Stary Bychow, with its stout anti-tank ditch, created definite challenges. With the help of the 210mm guns of Mortar Battalion 604, 4th Panzer Division blasted free of the Dnepr on the 7th. It curled around to attack the 117th Rifle Division that had successfully barred the way of 3rd Panzer. Two days later,
Guderian visited the command post of the 29th Motorized to stress the importance of its crossing operation 100km further north beginning on 10 July. Guderian tried to overload the Soviet’s Dnepr Line by constantly switching his Schwerpunkt from one site to another. The Soviet defense there was likewise too tough, and the 29th could not reach the near bank to even attempt a crossing. Finally, by 1400 hours on the 11th, the division was across with help from Sturmgeschutz Battalion 203, a flak battery firing over open sights, a PAK battalion plus corps pioneer units.
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At last Second Panzer Army could put the Stalin Line behind it.

Guderian’s headquarters occupied the same building in Tolochino that Napoleon had used in 1812. Thus inspired, by 11 July, Second Panzer split the junction between the 13th and 20th Armies and presently had a string of Dnepr bridgeheads (and therefore equally important, a string of breaches in the Stalin Line) at Orsha, Kopys, Bychov and Rogatachev. The Soviet line had been fatally compromised. Only Mogilev stood unbowed, but Guderian would not waste any more time or effort than absolutely necessary reducing it; Colonel General Maximilian Freiherr von Weichs’ Second Army could do that. The 13th Army had spent weeks making Mogilev into a fortress. Initially two rifle divisions defended the town, joined in the third week of July by two more. But as then-Lieutenant General AI Eremenko complained after the war, ‘There were no troops . . . to prevent the enemy from crossing the Dnepr and then advancing in any direction he pleased’.
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Red Army front headquarters were underdeveloped and in no way qualified to master these simultaneous crises. The Soviets could only react to German moves. Stalin demanded action, but Stavka could give him none. Fortunately for the Soviets, the situation was not as dire as Eremenko made it sound. Anchored by ‘Gallant Mogilev’ (which held out for 17 days until the 27th), Guderian struggled to get past the Dnepr Line through 16 July. Guderian’s next objective, the open country south of Smolensk.

This hard-won freedom of maneuver allowed von Bock to close his next great Kessel, at Smolensk. Hoth sent his 7th Panzer down from the north. Guderian dispatched the 29th Motorized up to meet it. Only 40km separated the two units, representing tips of opposing pincers. By 14 July, the 29th reached Lenino, opening the road to the famous city. Defenders of the 16th Army put up a stiff resistance leading to high casualties on both sides. By the next evening, the 29th Motorized entered the southern suburbs of Smolensk and linked up with Hoth’s men on 16 July.
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But Guderian, still looking east, had only allocated one division to the task of closing the southern portion of the trap. Inside the pocket, 16th Army commander Lieutenant General MF Lukin, NKVD commanders and Communist Party officials organized a viable defense
and even a workable escape plan. House-to-house fighting in the city was costly to both sides. While Stalin demanded a defense to the last man, von Bock lamented that his Kessel ‘has a hole’. Since Guderian paid scant attention to the encirclement and stubbornly headed east with the bulk of his panzer army, tens of thousands of Soviets soldiers escaped. Indeed, even though the rest of Second Panzer wreaked havoc with Marshal Timoshenko’s defensive structure, in so doing it made the victory at Smolensk incomplete.

The men of XXIV Panzer Corps took their place at Guderian’s right, a virtual outpost surrounded on three sides by Red Army khaki. A Kampfgruppe of 4th Panzer reached Krichev on the morning of 17 July and secured a bridge over the River Sozh. A couple of days later it reported its combat vehicle status: 44 panzers operational, 49 in repair, 40 awaiting parts and 42 total write-offs. With the division spread out in a long thin line, maintenance suffered as rear services struggled to keep up. In the 3rd Panzer, some companies had lost all their officers in less than a month of fighting. On 19 July, the Soviets attacked XXIV Panzer Corps command post, forcing von Schweppenburg to defend himself with a machine pistol.
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These attacks acted as harbingers of renewed Soviet efforts to dispute Smolensk. In early July, Stavka told Timoshenko to ‘deliver a series of counter–strokes along the Borisov and Bobruisk axes:’
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– direct threats to Guderian. The speed and violence of the blitzkrieg still confounded the Soviets, however, so that by the time Timoshenko was ready to attack, Guderian had advanced far beyond Bobruisk. Orders were orders, especially when they came from Stalin, so the marshal created an attack force with units on hand and launched the assault as soon as he was ready. As would be the case throughout the Nazi-Soviet war, German strategic intelligence (Fremde Heere Ost) completely underestimated Soviet forces available. On 8 July, it told Hitler that Timoshenko had only eleven divisions with which to counter Army Group Center. In reality sixty-six divisions defended the Moscow axis, twenty-four of those in the first echelon alone. Frustrated by Timoshenko’s slowness, Stavka (read: Zhukov) instructed him ‘Immediately organize a powerful and coordinated counter-stroke by all available forces from Smolensk [and] Orsha [and] conduct active operations along the Gomel and Bobruisk axis to exert pressure on the rear of the enemy’s Bobruisk grouping.’
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The Soviet leadership hoped that every tiny effort would cause Guderian to pause and the blitzkrieg to stumble.

As originally intended, Stavka launched the ‘Timoshenko Offensive’ in order to threaten German pincers encircling Smolensk, thereby saving the city and its defenders. By the time Timoshenko’s units were finally ready, the Germans had Smolensk encircled, so his new mission was amended to break into the city and relieve the siege. Timoshenko directed most of his
attention against Hoth, considered the most dangerous threat to Moscow. Only Group Kachalov (the 28th Army, from left to right, 145th and 149th Rifle and 104th Tank Divisions supported by the 209th Assault and 239th Fighter Aviation Regiments) attacked Guderian. NKVD Lieutenant General VI Kachalov began his assault on 23 July, from near Roslavl and toward Pochep. He blindsided 10th Panzer and Grossdeutschland, even threatening to encircle elements of the two units with the 145th Rifle and 104th Tank Divisions. Von Bock instructed Guderian to take stock of the situation.
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The two forces faced off between Roslavl and Smolensk. Guderian’s solution was to counterattack toward the base of Kachalov’s attack at Roslavl, an important Soviet communications node. On 27 July, he briefed his plan to von Brauchitsch and von Bock and received a green light. On the last day of July, Guderian pulled XXIV Panzer and VII Corps (23rd, 78th, 197th Infantry Divisions) out of the line near Krichev to counterattack toward the east and into Kacahalov’s rear. The next day, he sent IX Corps (263rd and 292nd Infantry Divisions) from the opposite direction (southeast) to finish off the Soviet threat. Roslavl fell on 3 August, with 38,000 POWs taken and 250 tanks and 713 guns destroyed. Kachalov, personally commanding a tank, died trying to escape the trap. A week later the battle was over, as was the entire ‘Timoshenko Offensive’.
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From the German’s perspective, the threat to Smolensk was past, and although German memoirs refer to Timoshenko’s attack, little respect is shown for the Soviet effort. On the other side of the front, Stalin proved that he would grasp at the initiative whenever he could, although Red Army forces lost in July and August would be sorely needed two months later when von Bock threatened Moscow for real.

While Guderian devoted nearly half of his panzer army to holding back Kachalov, he still had the other half with which to accomplish his other two missions: contribute to reducing the Smolensk pocket and keeping the eastward pressure on the Soviet defenders. Guderian’s absorption with the second of these objectives and his inattention to the first, meant that many members of the 16th and 20th Armies escaped the Smolensk Kessel in the direction of Dorogobuzh. Eventually the cordon firmed up and the escapes ended. On 5 August, von Bock could announce that his army group had bagged another 302,000 POWs plus destroyed 3,205 tanks, 3,120 guns and 1,098 aircraft.
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Army Group Center’s haul at Smolensk, coupled with that at Minsk and the numerous smaller encirclements Guderian and Hoth created along the way, give the impression of a flawless campaign. Problems with panzer army employment in fact plagued both the strategic and operational levels. The debates at Germany’s highest level during late July and early August need not detain us here. Suffice it to say, that when Barbarossa hit this critical ‘what next?’ stage,

Führer Headquarters, Armed Forces High Command (OKW) and OKH could not operate with the necessary unity of effort. Nevertheless, at a conference of army chiefs of staff on 25 July, Army Commander in Chief von Brauchitsch criticized both von Bock’s inability to mass his panzers and what he sensed as a lack of a unifying Schwerpunkt: such weaknesses would hamstring the successful conduct of any campaign. The army group’s chief of staff, Colonel Hans von Greiffenberg came to his commander’s defense: how could there be a Schwerpunkt when von Bock had to operate in three directions?
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A similar problem existed with the Second Panzer Army, which also lacked a clear focus and had been pulled in three directions. The expedient of creating a unitary panzer army headquarters like the Fourth might have worked if there had been some forethought given to the matter and if it had had a suitable commander. Although the Germans proved again and again throughout the Second World War that they were masters of improvisation, the main effort of their most massive invasion was probably not the best place to experiment on the fly. As for von Kluge, his greatest failure, the inability to pull the trigger decisively on the main German assault against Moscow, still lay ahead of him months down the road.