Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (78 page)

Even without an accompanying Soviet assault, Hoth's panzer group remarked on the ‘lively artillery activity’, which in varying strengths was making its effects felt across the group's entire front. In addition, captured enemy prisoners revealed that the badly weakened Soviet units were being reinforced by fresh troops.
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On Guderian's front too there was still fierce fighting, most particularly at Yel'nya where by the early afternoon of 7 August, the
XXXXVI Panzer Corps reported having already fended off ten waves of enemy attacks.
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Figure 9.1 
From the third week of July the fighting had become a series of slogging battles, increasingly characterised by positional warfare and heavy losses on both sides.

In contrast to the chaotic early weeks of the war when Soviet armies struggled to achieve effective command and control, the settling down of the front took a great deal of the pressure off the Soviet armies, and allowed them to improve the co-ordination of their operations. This was evident in German appraisals of Soviet combat performance. On 6 August
Strauss reported that the Red Army was a ‘well led, tough, powerful enemy with a great deal of artillery and a strong air
force’.
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Three days later a command conference at
Panzer Group 3 described the enemy as a ‘[g]reat mass’ who was ‘still in a position to fight’. His armaments were described as ‘good’ and the artillery ‘much more proficient than in the first days’. Overall, the implications of the enemy analysis were judged ‘unpredictable’ – a radical shift from the dismissive reports of only three weeks before. Finally the question was asked: ‘How much longer should it take until the Russian's fighting strength is broken?’ A dubious and uncertain answer was supplied: ‘We must in this, the hardest struggle in our history, stand behind the Führer.’
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Given Germany's high military standards, the number of references in the various war diaries to the bravery and resilience of the average Red Army man are even more revealing.
Leeb wrote in his diary on 5 August: ‘Regarding the difficulty of battle and the tenacity of the Russians is a characteristic statement given in the daily report of the
18th Army on 4.8.: 40 prisoners and 500 dead Russians at
Muru.’
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Another German general commented after the war: ‘The Russian civilian was tough, and the Russian soldier still tougher. He seemed to have an illimitable capacity for obedience and endurance.’
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Although the German invaders could begrudgingly accept the fanatical concept of fighting to the last man, there were many elements of the war in the east that shocked and revolted them, underlining the totality of the Soviets’ approach to war.
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Many soldiers reacted with indignation at finding Soviet women serving as combatants in the Red Army.
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Karl Fuchs, a soldier in the 7th Panzer Division, wrote home to his wife: ‘When I get home I will tell you endless horror stories about Russia. Yesterday, for instance, we saw our
first women soldiers – Russian women, their hair shorn, in uniform! And these pigs fired on our decent German soldiers from ambush positions.’
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Another example of the Soviet way of war was cited by
Hans von Luck, also posted to the 7th Panzer Division. He described encountering a dog in an abandoned village which ran up to meet them and then promptly disappeared under one of their armoured vehicles. This was followed by an explosion which damaged the vehicle. Incredulous, Luck explained: ‘We ran to it and discovered that the dead dog had an explosive charge concealed in the furs of its back with a movable pin as detonator. When the dog crawled, the detonator tipped over and triggered off the explosion. The dog had been trained to find meat under armoured vehicles.’
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The ‘Molotov cocktail’ was another feature of Soviet desperation in the face of inadequate anti-tank defences. This hand-thrown device was a gasoline- or kerosene-filled bottle that was ignited on impact by means of a burning wick. They had first been used by Franco's troops in the Spanish civil war, and were later employed to greater effect by the outgunned Finnish army during the short
Winter War. It was in the Winter War that the Molotov cocktail acquired its name (an unflattering reference to the Soviet Foreign Minister Vjacheslav
Molotov). In the early period of Operation Barbarossa even Molotov cocktails were in short supply, but their success soon had factories producing them at a rate of 120,000 a day.
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The fanaticism of Soviet resistance was not only evident in their novel use of improvised weaponry, but extended to the way the soldiers fought. Accounts speak of Soviet soldiers pretending to surrender only to open fire or stab their would-be captors at close range.
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Numerous accounts attest to bypassed ‘dead’ Soviet soldiers suddenly assailing the unsuspecting Germans from behind.
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In his memoir
Manstein reported that ‘
there were more than enough cases where Soviet soldiers, after throwing up their hands as if to surrender, reached for their arms as soon as our infantry came near enough, or where Soviet wounded feigned death and then fired on our troops when their back were turned.’
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The warfare on the eastern front was as ferocious as it was brutal, with combatants on both sides often unwilling to give quarter or observe the usual conventions of war. The Germans had begun a war of annihilation in the east intent on murdering millions through starvation and enslaving those that remained,
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but in contrast to their past campaigns, this time they were being opposed by every possible means.

The sum effect of such a bitterly contested conflict manifested itself among the German troops, who were suffering to the limits of their endurance from the physical and mental strain. These led to the first doubts about the progress of the campaign, which was already Germany's longest blitzkrieg, still with no end in sight. One soldier's campaign diary, which time and again revealed the author to be a committed National Socialist, suddenly betrayed doubts. On 6 August Wilhelm
Prüller recorded: ‘It wouldn't be such a mistake for us to go home, for we've about 350 losses in the Battalion. August 4th alone cost us 14 dead, 47 wounded, 2 missing, 1 officer dead and 3 wounded.’
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Another soldier from the
52nd Infantry Division, Ernst
Guicking, wrote home to his wife on 10 August: ‘You have no idea how we feel here after 23 days of the heaviest actions…This morning our battalion was called to a field mass. I can tell you it was an emotional hour. All comrades who have been lost were read out. Their number was not small.’
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Nor were these just the bitter words of disgruntled soldiers. The matter arose in a discussion between
Hoth and his subordinate commanders, with Hoth stating his belief ‘that the impetus [of the men] is at times somewhat reduced’. Colonel von Bismarck tried to sound more upbeat by claiming that, if this was in fact the case, then it was only a symptom of fatigue. General
Kuntzen added that one should tell the troops how successful they had been.
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A report was subsequently issued entitled ‘Morale
Reconstitution’ (
seelische Auffrischung
), intended to ‘convince officers’ by listing the weaknesses of the enemy and contrasting these with German successes.
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Guderian too was feeling the strain of the campaign, as evidenced from his private letters home when he remarked on 6 August, ‘how long the heart and nerves can stand this I do not know’. Days later in a second letter he asked: ‘Have I not become old? These few weeks have imprinted their marks. The physical exertions and battles of the will make themselves felt.’
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Halder
, by contrast, was still clinging to his conviction that the campaign was proceeding on track and the Red Army was nearing its end. On 8 August he compared the ‘changing situation’ in the Red Army to the second phase of the western campaign in
France (which had allowed German forces a relatively straightforward penetration of French defences followed by a long, largely unopposed, advance through northern France). ‘For further operations’, Halder concluded, ‘the enemy has only limited forces left.’
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German losses, however, were hardly inconsiderable. By 6 August the German invasion armies had lost over a quarter of a million men (266,352 casualties) in just six weeks of fighting,
³³
with Army Group
Centre accounting for 88,400 of these.
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With the end of the encirclement at Smolensk and the relative decline in the scale of Soviet attacks, aside from what
Bock dubbed ‘small-scale attacks at the hot-spots’, the withdrawal of the motorised divisions from the front could proceed.
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Nevertheless, once all the infantry divisions had fully closed up on the front (including those previously employed at the Smolensk encirclement) their distribution along the eastern front was inadequate to cover the full line of the army group. Even for a defensive posture against lacklustre enemy attacks, Army Group Centre could not manage without the aid of the motorised divisions, and the more they released the more precarious the front became. Not only were the infantry divisions stretched too thinly to allow any depth to their defensives but, unlike the motorised divisions, when a crisis did occur they lacked the mobility to react quickly. As a consequence their casualties were higher and, by the time local reserves arrived, they were sometimes unable to restore the situation, escalating the crisis. On 7 August, after detailing
the ongoing withdrawal of the motorised divisions from the front, Bock noted:

The situation is nevertheless extremely tense. If I want to create a reserve and try to pull out a division to do so, it is declared ‘impossible,’ if a division deployed in the rear army area arrives at the front it is snatched from my hands! I therefore wrote to the commanders of the armies and armoured groups, made them aware of the results of such a blinkered policy, and asked them to be reasonable on this point. – I don't exactly know how a new operation is to take place out of this situation and with the slowly sinking fighting strength of our constantly attacking forces – but things are undoubtedly even worse for the
Russians!
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By 7 August the majority of Schmidt's
XXXIX Panzer Corps had been relieved with only parts of the
12th Panzer Division still awaiting replacement.
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To the south
Lemelsen's XXXXVII Panzer Corps included the shattered
18th Panzer Division, which had been pulled out of the line in late July, but was only now being joined by the
29th Motorised Division, and shortly thereafter by the
17th Panzer Division. In Vietinghoff's
XXXXVI Panzer Corps, the attempted extraction of the
10th Panzer Division had only been partially successful, and it had to be kept close to the front for sporadic commitment because of the perpetual state of crisis in the Yel'nya salient. The SS division
Das Reich
and infantry regiment
Grossdeutschland
were released on 7 August. On the army group's flanks, however, the situation was more complex. To the south Schweppenburg's
XXIV Panzer Corps had managed to rest and refit for a number of days at the end of July, but had been ordered back onto the offensive at
Roslavl and by 8 August had only just finished eliminating the last pockets of resistance inside its encirclement (see
Map 15
).
Schweppenburg, however, was to be the victim of his own success with the new strategic possibilities created by his victory allowing no rest for his weary corps. On the northern flank Kuntzen's
LVII Panzer Corps was simply too far away and could not be fully relieved until 11 August.
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By 7 August the refitting phase of the motorised divisions had begun in earnest, yet Guderian had promised to have it completed by 15 August – in just eight days. Hoth had been more cautious in his estimate and had originally proposed to be finished between 18 and 20 August.
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On 9 August Halder asked if a panzer division or even a whole panzer corps
could be ready by 17 August on the condition that the necessary motors were given preferential delivery status.
Strauss, the commander of the 9th Army, to whom Panzer Group 3 was subordinated, answered that the delivery of motors was only part of the problem and rejected the earlier date in favour of 20 August.
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