Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (21 page)

Third Panzer began Barbarossa subordinated to Ninth Army in the Suwalki ‘peak’, with two panzer and two infantry corps assigned (the XL Panzer Corps, recovering from the Balkan campaign, would join in August). Its orders for the campaign read,

break through the enemy’s border forces in the area north of Grodno in cooperation with the Ninth Army and, by quickly advancing into the region north of Minsk, make contact with the Second Panzer Group [
sic
], which is advancing on Minsk from the southwest, to create conditions for the destruction of those forces located in the Bialystok and Minsk region.
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Soviet defenders consisted of Western Front units occupying the dangerously exposed Bialystok salient. This 125km-deep protrusion into German-occupied Poland came into being when Stalin invaded the eastern portion of that country in 1939. He considered it one of the USSR’s prime interwar acquisitions and insisted it be defended without compromise.

Because of sympathetic Lithuanians on both sides of the frontier, Hoth had good intelligence about enemy dispositions. Though his men had to contend with thick woods and trackless terrain, Red Army defenders generally melted away in the face of German pressure as occurred all along the line on Barbarossatag. Marshal Timoshenko radioed Western Front deputy commander Lieutenant General IV Boldin first thing that morning, saying ‘comrade Stalin has forbidden to open artillery fire against the Germans’. The main effort of holding Hoth back fell on Lieutenant General VI Kuznetsov’s 3rd Army, one of whose first reports read, ‘Germans crossing the border, Grodno being bombarded. Telephone contact with border interrupted, two radio stations down’.
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As bad as the situation might have sounded to Soviet high command, reality on the ground was worse. The defenders’ plan had been to demolish the bridge over the Niemen River at Alytus by 1700 hours on the first day, but Hoth’s men arrived there earlier than expected and pioneers of Infantry Regiment 5 captured the bridge intact. Colonel Rothenburg’s Panzer Regiment 25 (7th Panzer Division) lost half of its vehicles to 5th Tank Division’s T-34s in good, hull-down fighting positions, but the Germans had established a bridgehead on the east bank of the river. The Germans retained possession of the battlefield after most of these engagements, and their workshops were able to repair and return to duty many damaged panzers. The 7th Panzer managed to destroy nearly seventy tanks by nightfall and continued the advance eastward the next day.
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As impressive as Guderian’s thrust to the south had been, strategically Hoth’s was by far more important. The Soviets’ problems compounded when
the 11th Army, southernmost component of the Northwestern Front, failed to withdraw due east, but instead swung northeast. This maneuver only opened the door for Hoth all the wider. Within two days, the gap dividing the two fronts measured 100km wide. By 24 June, elements of 7th Panzer approached Vilnius. Pavlov reacted as best he could: on 22 June he ordered Boldin to organize a counterattack by the 6th and 11th Mechanized Corps
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plus the 6th Cavalry Corps northward against Hoth’s southern flank. By the time they were ready on the 24th, Third Panzer had long since moved on to the east, so Boldin’s stroke hit the Ninth Army, surprising Strauss. As many a French general had discovered to their chagrin a year earlier, just doing the right thing, in this case launching a sizeable counterattack against an exposed flank, did not always achieve the desired results. Luftwaffe reconnaissance had been looking deep into the Soviet rear so missed the Soviet build-up closer to the front. Over 200 Stuka sorties and a handful of 88s helped the infantry blunt Boldin’s attack. Around 2100 hours Boldin’s men stalled only 1 mile from downtown Grodno, out of fuel. The assault, despite the large number of units involved, suffered from the usual Red Army shortcomings: poor command and control, weak CAS, no combined arms tactics and under-resourced logistics. The commander of the 6th Mechanized was killed and a day later the cavalry had sustained 50 percent casualties. By the night of 25/26 June, Boldin received an order to withdraw, but his units were too engaged so could not make a clean get-away and made easy targets for the Germans to mop up.
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Violating the accepted tenants of the blitzkrieg, two days into Barbarossa, a dangerous dispersal of Army Group Center’s panzer force began. In part this was due to lack of clarity and agreement among the German generals over Barbarossa’s initial ways and means. Halder wanted to close the inner (infantry) and outer (mechanized) arms of the Minsk encirclement. Von Bock disagreed because he wanted to keep plunging to the east, but he obeyed. Von Brauchitsch offered a compromise, allowing the army group, meaning the panzer armies, to push east with strong security forces. In Hoth’s case, this meant toward Vitebsk and Polotsk, both important crossing sites over the Dvina River and therefore keys to the Soviets’ defensive arrangements.
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Not only did the Army’s Commander in Chief permit the panzers to fan out and lose the benefits of concentration, this also meant fewer German units would be available to ‘digest’ trapped Red Army forces. The Ostheer did not need more worthless territory: it needed to eliminate (Vernichten) thoroughly the enemy it had already caught. This was not a case of the amateur, dilettante Hitler interfering with the professional generals of the German Army; this was a case of the generals ignoring centuries of Prussian/German military tradition and
development and allowing themselves to get caught up in a land grab of questionable utility.

With von Richthofen’s VIII Fliegerkorps overhead, Third Panzer pushed on, having earned ‘operational freedom’ and so free of Ninth Army’s control. The 7th Panzer’s motorcycle battalion captured the Vilnius airfield, complete with fifty intact planes, and then entered the city proper. This maneuver opened the road into the Red Army’s rear echelons, one of von Bock’s operational objectives. A bit south, on 25 June, another of Hoth’s units overran the 13th Army’s command post, complete with numerous documents of high-intelligence value. That night, his vanguard, Rothenburg’s regiment and 1st Battalion, Infantry Regiment 6, cut the Minsk–Moscow highway about 20km northeast of the Belorussian capital.
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Von Bock wanted to send more of Third Panzer towards Polotsk than just the security elements allowed by von Brauchitsch. Again, OKH denied the request: Hoth was to move against Minsk and wait for Guderian in order to seal properly the Kessel: at least somebody was home, minding the store in term of faithfulness to the Vernichtungskrieg philosophy. In accordance with OKH orders of 1130 hours, 26 June, Hoth obediently sent XXXIX Panzer Corps south toward Minsk and the expected rendezvous with Second Panzer. The 12th and 20th Panzer Divisions closed on the city later that day, with 14th Motorized following not too far behind. Elements of 12th Panzer entered Minsk in the evening of the 27th, and completed taking the city the next afternoon. Still back to the west near Novogrudek, the dividing line between Bialystok and Minsk cauldrons, LVII Panzer guarded the northern flank of the pocket until marching infantry arrived. With most trapped Red Army units trying to escape to the southeast, Guderian admittedly would have had a tougher time containing the pocket than Hoth, even if he had been inclined to do so. In any event, as was proper for higher headquarters, OKH looked forward in time to the next battle, at Smolensk.
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On the 28th, Hoth sent the 7th Panzer, leading XXXIX Panzer Corps, toward Borisov on the Berezina River, his next major obstacle to overcome. However, about this time, higher headquarters became nervous about the growing gap between Army Groups Center and North. So, in early July, Third Panzer received the mission to turn back toward Molodechino, then advance northeast to an eventual link-up with von Leeb. Regardless of how one feels about the necessity of capturing Moscow, this represented a possibly fatal dispersal of Third Panzer Army. As a result of this and other strategic decisions, the drive on the Soviet capital seemed to be suffering, so Guderian flew to Hoth’s headquarters on 2 July. The panzer leaders made two decisions: first, they basically conspired to circumvent their new Fourth Panzer Army
commander, von Kluge, (see p. 65) and secondly, on their own initiative, they agreed to continue toward Moscow. With that decision, 7th Panzer (with 20th Panzer close behind) angled away from Polotsk and instead toward Lepel further south and on a much more direct line to the great city. The LVII Panzer took the high road, reaching the Dvina River at Dissna (19th Panzer, after covering 180km in 24 hours) and Polotsk (18th Motorized). Again, VIII Fliegerkorps lent invaluable assistance. All this maneuvering put the Soviets at a disadvantage, but it also meant that Third Panzer had lost the appearance of the armored fist favored by the blitzkrieg and instead looked like fingers on a spread-out hand.
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None of this was lost on Stavka, which considered Hoth a greater danger to Moscow than Guderian. It noticed the 100km gap between XXXIX and LVII Panzer Corps. Therefore, on 4 July, Stavka ordered Timoshenko to ‘organize a reliable defense . . . concentrate reserves . . . deliver counterstrokes along the Lepel, Borisov and Bobruisk axes’. The marshal intending on taking advantage of the fact that neither of Hoth’s spearheads were within supporting distance of the other, threw three new armies across the Dvina–Dnepr gap: 22nd, 19th and 20th Armies at Polotsk, Vitebsk and Orsha, respectively. With 7th Panzer spread out along the Borisov–Lepel road, it made an inviting target and Timoshenko ordered 22nd Army to attack with 5th and 7th Mechanized Corps (300 and 400 tanks, respectively): ‘go over to a decisive offensive to destroy the Lepel enemy concentration’.
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They came dangerously close to splitting the seam between Second and Third Panzer Armies as part of the bargain, and in fact, pushed 7th Panzer back 20km. In response, von Kluge added the 12th Panzer to the 7th, 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions
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already fighting below von Richthofen’s Stukas and Bf-110s. By 6 July, a massive and swirling battle between opposing mechanized forces occurred around the town of Senno. After five days, Timoshenko lost over 800 tanks, the offensive’s cohesion was shot and his scattered formations made easy picking for the panzers. At the same time, 70km to the north and unrelated to the armor battle, two divisions of LVII Panzer, 20th Panzer and 20th Motorized, had already breached the Dvina downstream at Ulla. The XXXIX Panzer reached the river in force on 8 July. Crossing the one remaining railway bridge was slow going for the panzers, where a centimeter mistake one way or the other would result in a 20m plunge to the river below. A day later, smoldering Vitebsk fell to Panzer Regiment 21 and the 92nd Motorcycle and 92nd Antitank Battalions. Within 24 hours, panzer units approached Disna, with the Ninth Army’s XXIII and VI Corps close behind. During the second week ofJuly, the Dvina–Dnepr River Line, a mainstay of the Soviet defensive structure, had been punctured in numerous places. On the 13th, the Germans captured an order
from Timoshenko instructing his units to hold the river line and in fact, assault to regain any positions already lost.
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The seized papers indicated the Soviets had absolutely no intentions of conducting a general withdrawal.

By the middle of July, the Smolensk pocket began to take shape. The freewheeling 7th Panzer was again on the move; on 15 July, 1st Battalion, Panzer Regiment 25 (commanded by a captain) cut the highway to Moscow near Yartsevo. This came as a surprise to Timoshenko, Hoth was much farther east than the Soviets thought possible. The only way Rokossovsky’s men could make sense of this situation was to report an imaginary large-scale paratroop landing up the chain of command to Stavka. At this time, Guderian’s 29th Motorized stood only about 30km to the south. Despite the fact that Stalin’s orders to Lieutenant General MF Lukin to defend Smolensk with his own 13th Army plus remnants of the 19th and 20th Armies played into the Germans’ hands, von Bock did a poor job of executing the Smolensk Kessel for two reasons: 1. As discussed in the previous chapter, Guderian allowed personal objectives to override organizational goals, so did not take the time to reduce the pocket properly, and; 2. Alluded to above, was that OKH sent Third Panzer (and Ninth Army) too far north in an attempt to create a continuous front with Army Group North. Hoth had to compensate for these contradictory instructions by driving his men in two, nearly opposite directions. Further, one of Hoth’s two panzer corps, LVII, was still fighting in the Nevel and Velikie Luki regions and missed the Smolensk battle completely.
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It can be seen that one month into the campaign, unlike Poland, France or Yugoslavia, the massive size of the USSR had deprived the blitzkrieg of much of its punch.

Hoth’s men occupied a great arc west, north and east of Smolensk: 12th Panzer practically surrounded at Rudnya, Training Brigade 900 at Demidov, 20th Panzer occupying an Igel (hedgehog, or 360–degree defense) near Prechistoe and 7th Panzer still at Yartsevo where Infantry Regiment 7 took a severe beating, including a rude introduction to the new Katyusha rocket artillery. A 7th Panzer Division report read:

On 18 July, the Russians attack against the division’s positions in the afternoon with approximately eighty tanks, followed by strong infantry attacks. Our artillery fire causes the attack to collapse immediately to the front of the rifle regiment. In the evening a new attack by another 100 tanks or so, also halted by artillery. Thirty tanks remain burning. At the same time, in the dark we attack traffic on the highway and railroad. An enemy tank platoon is destroyed, detonations go on for two hours. The enemy continues to attack energetically against the
division’s north flank, a section of twenty-five tanks remains in front of our positions.
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