Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (23 page)

The Soviet State Defense Committee realized on 6 October that they could not halt the inevitable defeat at Viazma and Bryansk. Two days later, Stavka mandated the next defensive effort along a line centered on the town of Mozhaisk. As history would have it, this was where the real Battle of Moscow would be fought. On the 10th, Zhukov took over command of Reserve and Western Fronts. Simultaneously across the front, on 7 October OKH ordered Reinhardt to attack along the Gzhatsk-Sychevka to Kalinin axis. There, if everything went according to plan, it would repeat its success at Viazma by creating another Kessel, again presumably with Fourth Panzer. Unfortunately for the Germans, any lessons about the benefits of shallow pockets gained at Viazma and Bryansk were evidently now forgotten. On the 11th, OKH ordered Second and Fourth Panzer Armies to execute a ridiculously deep encirclement hundreds of kilometers east of Moscow. The dangerous dispersal of effort that had bedeviled Third Panzer for much of Barbarossa continued. Reinhardt now had three tasks: continue reducing the Viazma Kessel, drive towards Kalinin as part of the developing battle for Moscow and push toward Rybinsk to help close the 80km-wide gap with Army Group North.
²⁴

Despite the impossible-sounding combination of conflicting missions, Third Panzer drove on against the 22nd and 29th Armies of Konev’s Kalinin Front. Low fuel supplies and muddy terrain conspired with unrealistic higher headquarters’ expectations and Red Army defenses to slow Reinhardt’s men to a crawl. Nevertheless, while 36th Motorized and 6th Infantry Divisions guarded the growing flank from Soviet probes, SS Motorized Division Reich captured Gzhatsk on the 8th and other units took Sychevka the next day. For all the new
troops who had only left the Leningrad fighting the month before, the terrain around Moscow seemed much different: fewer trees and flatter topography. Now the Red Army Air Forces owned the skies, flying from numerous permanent airfields around the Soviet capital, complete with heated hangers and concrete runways; the Luftwaffe, planes parked out in ice storms and using earthen airstrips, was seldom seen. Nevertheless, Zubsov fell to Reinhardt’s men on the 11th and Staritsa the next day; both towns sat on the upper reaches of the Volga. Third Panzer’s appearance managed to surprise the Soviets, but the latter still managed to launch counterattacks against the panzer army flanks. Requirements for German security outriders, including Brigade 900, to deal with these threats meant weakened spearheads. On 14 October, 1st Panzer Division became Reinhardt’s first element to reach Kalinin. With this maneuver he cut the Moscow–Leningrad rail line and created an oblique threat to Moscow that Zhukov could not ignore. Reinhardt had two courses of action open to him: at any time Third Panzer might wheel right, either on Moscow or behind the Mozhaisk Line. While Model reinforced the success of the 1st Panzer with more XLI Panzer Corps formations – 36th Motorized, 6th, 26th and 129th Infantry Divisions plus Brigade 900, Konev dispatched his chief of Staff, Lieutenant General NF Vatutin, in an attempt to stabilize the situation.
²⁵
The danger to Moscow’s northern flank seemed real enough.

Third Panzer, with the help of Ninth Army (now through clearing the Viazma Kessel), fought a running battle in Kalinin until 29 October, when it finally prevailed over Group Vatutin. A counterattack on 24 October, by Siberian battalions of the 29th Army versus Reinhardt’s left accomplished little, but as always, indicated Stalin’s desire to contest every meter of the country. On the 26th, a corporal in 6th Panzer wrote, ‘Rumors are everywhere that we only have a few weeks to deliver a death blow to the Soviet giant. In reality nothing looks so rosy.’
²⁶
Meanwhile, on the panzer army’s right, LVI Panzer (6th and 7th Panzer, 14th Motorized Divisions), in conjunction with the Ninth Army’s XXVII Corps (86th and 162nd Infantry Divisions), moved on Volokomansk. Reinhardt was putting tremendous pressure on the Moscow defenses. However, by the end of the month, due to defenders, weather, logistics and pure exhaustion, Operation Typhoon had come to rest, generally along the Mozhaisk Line. The plan for the final assault on Moscow as approved by Hitler on 30 October had Third Panzer attacking beyond Klin and over the Volga–Moscow Canal, starting by the middle of November. Reinhardt still embodied the main threat to Moscow and von Bock had such high hopes for the operation’s success he parked his command train behind the Schwerpunkt: Third and Fourth Panzer Armies. Quite correctly, Zhukov worried little about
his center opposite the methodic and lethargic von Kluge, and concerned himself instead over Moscow’s flanks, especially the northern.
²⁷

Zhukov hoped to launch a preemptive attack, but except for a small effort by Rokossovsky’s 16th Army, the Germans got the jump on him on 15–16 November with Operation Schneesturm. The attackers counted approximately 233,000 men, 1,880 guns, 1,300 panzers and 800 aircraft. The defenders fielded a like number of men, 1,254 guns, 502 tanks and 600–700 aircraft. With 7th Panzer in the lead, the panzer army promptly split Rokossovsky from Leliushenko’s 30th Army. Leliushenko further obliged Reinhardt by swinging away to the north instead of facing Third Panzer directly. Germans poured through the growing hole as Reinhardt outpaced Hoepner. On the 23rd, Klin (with Rokossovsky personally in charge of the defense) fell to a combined force of 7th Panzer and 14th Motorized troops. Soviet counterattacks failed to dislodge them. Reinhardt exhorted his men eastward and two days later, Panzer Regiment Rothenburg and Infantry Regiment 6 reached Yakhroma. They cut the Volga–Moscow Canal and the 7th Panzer created a small bridgehead on the eastern bank. Although the Germans did not realize it, with Colonel Hasso von Manteuffel’s men only 35 km from the Kremlin, 27 November was the Soviet’s nadir. Stalin sent all available reserves to his northern flank and directed all Red Army Air Force assets in that direction. Zhukov sent the winter-equipped 1st Shock and 20th Armies into the gap between the 16th and 30th Armies. By the 28th, just 24 hours after its creation, Army Group Center ordered the Yakhroma bridgehead evacuated. That same day, the 1st Shock Army launched its attack.
²⁸
As the history of the half-frozen 7th Panzer Division states,

On 29 November, the higher command ordered withdrawal from the bridgehead and creation of defensive positions on the west bank of the canal. The withdrawal crushed all members of the division, especially members of the Kampfgruppe on the far bank that, with exemplary preparation and bravery, had won the bridgehead in the expectation of an advance over the canal towards Moscow.
²⁹

Model’s XLI Panzer Corps, its troops still in their temperate uniforms, edged to within 25 km of Moscow on the canal’s west bank, but basically the threat to Moscow had passed. By the last day of November, its panzer strength stood at 77 (1st Panzer: 37, 6th Panzer: 4, 7th Panzer: 36). At the same time, Zhukov had over 1,000 tanks divided among 1 tank division, 16 tank brigades and over 20 independent tank battalions. Even the perpetually optimistic Model realized that with the infantry down to thirty men per company, no food, no ammunition or fuel coming forward and with Soviet counterattacks getting
bolder, the drive on Moscow was over. On 5 December, Reinhardt wrote in his diary, Third Panzer Army was ‘completely exhausted and, for the first time in the campaign, combat ineffective’.
³⁰

So long as it could act in a concentrated manner, Third Panzer Army contributed mightily to Operation Barbarossa. Through the Battle of Smolensk, it received much more of the Soviets’ attention, including being attacked by over three-fourths of the Red Army forces involved in the Timoshenko Offensive. However, by the beginning of August, demands placed on Hoth by higher headquarters meant it lost the advantages of mass. Regrouped again for Typhoon, by late November, Third Panzer caused Zhukov his most anxious moments. However, the panzer army’s operational excellence could only bring it to the outskirts of Moscow and no closer.

The Soviets’ general counteroffensive began on 5 December with no less ambitious an objective than the total destruction of Army Group Center. North of Moscow, from 5 to 7 December, that meant blasting through Third and Fourth Panzer Armies in concert with a similar subsequent effort against Guderian to the south. If Stalin had had his way, Zhukov would have created an encirclement on the scale of Kiev three months earlier.

The 30th, 1st Shock, 20th and 16th Armies combined to attack the bulge created by the Third and Fourth Panzer Armies. Elements of Konev’s Bryansk Front overran the LVI Panzer Corps headquarters. Manning the canal just south of Yakhroma, stood the 1st Panzer Division. Unable to resist the 1st Shock Army, at 2130 hours that first day of the offensive, the division commander, Major General Walter Kriiger, radioed his command post from his vantage point with the fighting troops, ‘We’re going back! Turn the division around!’ The 1st Panzer lost or abandoned all of its panzers so the crewmen had to fight with rifles and grenades like ‘common’ Landsers. Further north, the 30th Army split the seam between the 14th and 36th Motorized Divisions and made for Klin. Reinhardt ordered 1st Panzer in that direction and by 7 December the Germans temporarily stabilized the situation and maintained their hold on the city. Behind the 1st followed the 2nd, 6th and 7th Panzer, 14th and 36th Motorized and 23rd Infantry Divisions, plus corps and army troops in three side-by-side convoys. Red cavalry and partisans hounded their every step, picking off stragglers. A 6th Panzer soldier recorded in his diary, ‘In long rows, unnaturally silent, the three companies moved back at night.’
³¹
But the Germans’ grasp on Klin could only be temporary, and the panzer army commander told von Bock that Third Panzer would have to order a general withdrawal. Luftwaffe transport aircraft flew in supplies, mainly fuel, originally allocated for Guderian. Krüger led a mishmash of units with
three Sturmgeschütze, five Panzer IIIs, nineteen Panzer 38(t)s, division musicians, Luftwaffe aircrew and maintenance personnel, army and Luftwaffe Flak units plus a few panzers from the maintenance shops. By 11 December, LVI Panzer security lines had been penetrated in numerous places and the corps was in danger of encirclement. Pioneers detonated massive amounts of special Christmas rations warehoused in the city. Despite Reinhardt’s exhortations on the 13th to hold Klin, by the next night his men were streaming south-west, heading back along the roads they had just covered days earlier. They left 800–1,000 wounded in the hospital that they could not evacuate. Soviet infantry, T-34s and CAS aircraft chased the survivors.
³²

The 6th Panzer had the unenviable job of covering the panzer army’s rear as it withdrew. The next logical place for Third Panzer to halt and offer resistance was along the Lama River. On 18 December, Reinhardt said he doubted his men could do it. Strength of XLI Panzer stood at 1,821 Kämpfer (fighters), while LVI Panzer had 900 combat troops. The four panzer divisions possessed thirty-four operational panzers between them. Reinhardt could count on sixty-three light and twenty-one heavy artillery pieces and a dozen PAKs in his entire panzer army. His men reached the Lama on the 19th and faced east against Zhukov’s avenging frontovicki. By the end of 1941, Reinhardt believed he could defend the river position indefinitely, and besides, Third Panzer was almost frozen into place so he doubted he could withdraw in good order even if instructed to. The 6th Panzer’s 1st Battalion, Infantry Regiment 4 (all thirty men of it), spent New Year’s Eve capturing a small hut, putting the frozen dead outside then drinking some wine, while Red Army soldiers did about the same in another house only 50m away. A week into 1942, the panzer division, called by its men the 6th Division zu Fuss (Foot Division) felt it had earned a breather.
³³
Like almost every similar unit in the Wehrmacht in Russia, it had been de facto de-mechanized by the exertions of a five-month campaign.

On the Third Panzer’s left flank, however, the Soviets pressed hard along the boundary with the Ninth Army. To the west, the VI Corps of the Ninth, since 29 December under General of Aviation von Richthofen, held Rzhev, the ‘corner post’, against the 39th, 29th and 31st Armies. Von Richthofen, simultaneously still commanding VIII Fliegerkorps, made sure his Stukas continued to fly on 2 January despite the —40° F temperatures. Three days later, the 3rd Shock Army forced its way between Reinhardt and von Richthofen, creating a 12km wide gap. A lame counterattack attempt by the SS Cavalry Brigade on 7–8 January failed to neutralize the threat or seal the break. A week later, Hitler approved a retreat to the Königsberg Line, running along the Volga to Gzhatsk and thence southeastward. Von Kluge withheld his concurrence for three days, finally permitting the Third and Fourth Panzer Armies to retreat to the new
line between 18 and 25 January. At about this time, in mid-January, Stavka ordered Belov’s 1st Guards Cavalry Corps to advance against Viazma, close to the seam between the two panzer armies, a maneuver calculated to threaten Reinhardt’s only rail connection, his army’s lifeline. Belov could count on the help of the 4th Airborne Corps (4th, 8th and 201st Airborne Brigades) dropped between Viazma and Yartsevo, plus countless partisans.
³⁴
Though this force rampaged in the army group rear unchecked for weeks, huge snow drifts hampered German rail movement as much as the Red cavalry. A 7th Panzer soldier described the winter fighting that January thus:

Day and night the men stayed at their posts without chance for warmth or rest. They try to improve their positions daily, schlepping around materials for bunkers. There are few supplies, one can hardly speak of ‘organizing’ materials taken from homes and burnt-out huts. It is very easy for the Russians to break through our thin lines. Our men become exhausted going through the snow from one bunker to another. How can one describe this fighting? The Russians attack in a completely mulish and senseless manner, and think nothing of it if ten, thirty, forty or fifty men fall. In every combat we have two-three men in fighting positions without any communications with neighbors on the right or left. The wind blows against the observation posts so one’s tears freeze in his eyes. Nose, ears and chin have no feeling from the cold and are often frozen. Who among them doesn’t have frozen feet? Who has hands that move? Who does not have intestinal problems? Who is not frozen?
³⁵