Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (17 page)

Prior to the invasion of Poland, like most armies of the world, the Panzerwaffe had not yet developed the main battle tank, a single version that could both support infantry and fight other tanks. Therefore two types were necessary, and the principal pairing in the early blitzkrieg days was the PzKw III and IV. The Wehrmacht intended that the III, with its 37mm main gun, and the IV, with its low–velocity 75mm gun, would fulfill the two respective roles. The Germans anticipated the weaknesses of the PzKw I, II and 35(t), but during Barbarossa, early marks of the III (Ausf - Ausfuhrung or model – A through F) were also revealed to be inadequate. Fortunately for them, the vehicles size and turret ring were big enough that it could be reengineered to mount larger 50mm guns (Ausf G-M). Even these upgunned models were insufficient for combat against superior Soviet types and production discontinued around February 1943.

The PzKw IV went on to become the mainstay of the Panzerwaffe. The stubby 75mm L24 main gun, familiar to most students of the war, gave way to a real anti-tank weapon (the L43) as early as Ausf F. Later models (Ausf G–J) mounted thicker armor and the higher velocity L48 main gun, making its firepower equal to the Panther and T–34. Its box–like construction made manufacture easy and the vehicle was roomy and reliable. During the war, engine horsepower increased from 250 to 300, and armor was augmented by Schürzen (skirts) bolted to the turret and hull. Over 9,000 PzKw IVs of all models were produced during the war, the last example coming off the assembly line only in March 1945.

The Red Army did have a main battle tank on 22 June 1941, and this T–34 came as a nasty surprise to the mass of the Ostheer (although the Germans had known of its existence for about six months). The Wehrmacht needed a response, and by January 1942 contracts were placed for a prototype panzer to match the T–34. The PzKw V Panther was the result. Initial marks (Ausf D) were sent to the battlefield before all ‘teething troubles’ had been solved, causing a bad first impression. Later Ausf A and especially Ausf G models, with more robust power plants, hull and coaxial machine-guns and other improvements, made the Panther one of the war s best tank designs. Armor was thick and sloped, the tracks wide and the 75mm L48 gun deadly. Panthers were employed in panzer divisions plus a bewildering number of independent brigades and battalions. Nearly 6,000 Panthers were produced by the end of the war.

Another German answer to massive Soviet tanks encountered in the east was the PzKw VI Tiger. Its main assets were the 88mm main gun and 100mm thick frontal armor; its main weaknesses were its 55–ton weight and ⅓–mile per gallon fuel consumption. These Achilles heels meant that many Tigers, immobilized for trivial reasons, were too heavy to tow or recover from the battlefield and had to be abandoned. The Ausf E was the most common variant, and made up the heavy panzer battalions and detachments in Grossdeutschland plus SS Leibstandarte, Das Reich and Totenkopf divisions and many independent formations. The larger Ausf B (King Tiger) had no equal on the battlefield but was made in numbers too small to have much impact on German fortunes. A total of 1,350 PzKw VI Ausf E were delivered.

In accordance with plans conceived months earlier and now completely overcome by events, Soviet reinforcements from Kharkov continued to pour into the developing trap. But von Kleist s panzers were nowhere near Romny. Fighting across the Dnepr, through the mud and against the Red Army was just too hard, and his First Panzer Army was behind schedule. Therefore, OKH ordered a new rendezvous 50km southward, closer to Lokhvitsa. On 15 September, an advance party of 3rd Panzer Division men led by Lieutenant Warthmann broke into the village and met soldiers from Hube s 16th Panzer
coming up from the south. Now complete, the Kiev encirclement described a triangle 500km on a side, with an area of 135,000sq km. German forces around Lokhvitsa lined up back–to–back in order to face both into and out ofthe Kessel as Soviet escape and relief attempts began immediately.
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Second Panzer Army represented the keystone dropped into an arc surrounding two–thirds of a million POWs. The annihilation of a serious threat to Army Group Center s right flank at Kiev, an essential precondition for the final offensive against Moscow, was complete.

The Ostheer s move south to the Ukraine and Guderian s participation in the Kiev Kessel is one of the most debated decisions of the Second World War. Many observers agree with Halder, that the Wehrmacht should have maintained its drive on Moscow. They accuse Hitler of grasping for low–hanging fruit in the form of a non-strategic victory at Kiev. But they do not see the danger posed by over a million Red Army men lurking to the east of the Ukrainian capital and the Rokitno Marshes. Beyond merely representing a massive force in being, these resources could have threatened either the southern flank of Army Group Center or the northern flank of Army Group South (or both) as they made their way east. Apparently these critics do not see Soviet forces arrayed along the Moscow axis weakened by losses incurred by the Timoshenko offensives of July and August. Many of these same critics likewise see the alternative capture of Moscow as a certainty. They see neither German weaknesses, nor Soviet strengths coupled with the determination of the Stalinist state to fight to the bitter end. The moves north and south by von Bock s two panzer armies that summer were correct in terms of the traditional German Vernichtungsgedanke, the original Barbarossa plan and necessities on the ground at the time.

In the third week of September, Guderian wheeled his forces (now reinforced by the XLVIII Panzer Corps from von Kleist) northeast for Barbarossa s upcoming showdown over Moscow. In fact, thanks to the panzer armies rapid redeployment, Army Group Center rewrote its plans for Operation Typhoon, and added the Second Panzer to the offensive s order of battle, making the assault into a triple encirclement of the city s western-most defenses. Anxious about the possibility that the notorious Russian weather would turn bad at any moment, Guderian asked for and received permission to attack on 30 September, before the rest of von Bock s command. Although Second Panzer’s operational rate for combat vehicles stood only at 50 percent, he commanded a sizeable force: XXIV Panzer Corps (3rd and 4th Panzer plus 10th Motorized Divisions); XLVII Panzer (17th and 18th Panzer, 29th Motorized Divisions); XLVIII Panzer (9th and 16th Panzer, 25th Motorized Divisions); XXXIV Corps (95th and 134th Infantry Divisions); XXXV Corps
(95th, 262nd, 293rd and 296th Infantry plus the 1st Cavalry Divisions) with Grossdeutschland in reserve. Opposing them was their familiar nemesis, Eremenko’s Bryansk Front (3rd, 13th and 50th Armies plus Group Ermakov) guarding nearly 250km of front. The Germans felt comfortable about the manner with which they had addressed the flank issues at Leningrad and Kiev so had great confidence as well about Moscow.
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When Guderian struck on that cold and rainy morning, he hit Ermakov’s five vulnerable divisions, just as the latter was about to launch his own attack toward Glukhov. This maneuver opened a 30km gap in the Soviet line, split the seam between two army sized units and exposed the flank of the unlucky but resilient 13th Army. But to Ermakov, the Second Panzer assault registered ‘as only a diversion’. The next day, Eremenko remarkably dismissed the developing attack as ‘not critical’, and ordered Ermakov to continue with his planned maneuver, now becoming a very low–odds proposition. With the Luftwaffe pounding his headquarters, it is no wonder that the usually astute general missed the warning signs. The rest of Army Group Center began their Typhoon offensive on the second day of October, so now everyone in the Soviet high command knew that Guderian’s move was no feint. But Stavka could not discern his objective: was it Kharkov, Kursk or Orel? In its confusion, the headquarters began to rail reserves back and forth across the Moscow defense line, but was always just a bit too slow. (Meanwhile, the rump of the Southwestern Front, smashed at Kiev, regrouped but posed no threat to Guderian’s growing outer (eastern) flank.) Possibly on the strength of his reputation, Stavka focused on Guderian, making the job for the rest of von Bock’s men all that easier. By 3 October, XXIV Panzer Corps captured Orel (Guderian’s first objective) and stood nearly 200km deep inside the Soviet lines.
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Seemingly beguiled by Guderian, Stalin fell for another blitzkrieg staple, the misdirection play wherein von Bock led with a supporting attack on his right (Second Panzer), caused Stavka to react, but then three days later launched his main effort with the center and left (Third and Fourth Panzer).

Logistics, especially fuel shortages, began to hamstring Guderian immediately. Seven Red tanks broke into the 4th Panzer Division’s rear area near Orel and destroyed a dozen fuel and ammunition trucks. Fortunately for the Germans, depots captured in Orel had enough supplies to keep most of the Second Panzer Army advancing for nearly a week. For a while thereafter, the panzers had to run on low-grade Soviet fuel as other motorized units stood immobile with dry gas tanks for days.
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Despite considerable logistics problems of their own, von Bock’s armies executing the Viazma portion of Typhoon enjoyed better success. There were a number of reasons for this: both Second and Second Panzer Armies were relatively exhausted following the Kiev battle, and;
Guderian had two missions – close the Bryansk pocket and drive toward Moscow – and he clearly personally favored the second. Thus, in October Guderian earned the same bad rap as during Minsk and Smolensk: terminal inattention to sealing off encirclements satisfactorily. Evidently he did not subscribe to the Vernichtungsgedanke as did most of the German army.

Guderian received further direction at a conference at Army Group Center’s headquarters on 7 October between von Bock’s staff and von Brauchitsch and Heusinger: with the right wing of von Weichs’ Second Army in tow, Second Panzer’s next objective would be Tula. This did not bode well for German units still trying to seal and reduce the Bryansk Kessel. Apparently sublimating his personal obsession for Moscow, later that same day, Guderian ordered the XLVII Panzer to curl around counter-clockwise back toward the city of Bryansk and Second Army units advancing near there. The 17th Panzer Division entered the city and captured the Bryansk Front headquarters to the south (although most of the staff escaped). On 8 October, 18th Panzer finally linked up with elements of Second Army, officially closing the Bryansk half of Typhoon’s triple envelopment. As before, largely because Guderian did not put the required emphasis on closing the pocket, 13,000 men from 3rd Army, 10,000 men from 13th Army and nearly 10 percent of the 50th Army escaped captivity. Nonetheless, together von Bock’s forces had rent a 450km gash in the Soviet lines, while capturing another two-thirds of a million POWs. Zhukov, now in total command of Moscow’s defenses, but with no apparent reserves to fill up the massive hole, decided he would establish the main line of resistance for the capital at Mozhaisk, and that in the south he would try to halt Guderian near Mtsensk. That mission fell on the 1st Guards Rifle Corps.
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The weather offered the defenders a helping hand.

Rain and mud were nothing new to any German soldiers in the Ostheer. Unit war diaries, often starting well before Barbarossatag in occupied Poland, are full of examples of days when just a few hours of rain would turn roads into quicksand. Just as quickly, one hot day would dry up any traces of rain and turn the same road into choking dust. These anecdotal experiences did not prepare the invaders for the seasonal rasputitsa, literally, the time without roads. In the Second Panzer Army sector, serious rains began around the 7 October, and for the next month mobility improved only when temperatures sank below freezing. In the meantime rain and mud exhausted both men and beast, multiplied maintenance and fuel-consumption problems and generally helped to wreck German hopes.

Now it was the turn of OKH to issue nonsense orders, like those directing Guderian to capture Gorky, over 400km east of Moscow. Halder and the remainder of the German high command had no idea what its own men were
capable of nor what resources the Red Army had available. Meanwhile, Guderian’s spearhead, the XXIV Panzer Corps, made for Tula, ‘Little Moscow’, with its ultimate objective as Kolomna and Kashira. With 3rd Panzer on the left and 4th Panzer on the right, it headed north. A week after leaving Orel, they were nowhere close to Tula, but had run into a hornets’ nest of T–34 tanks at Mtsensk. Only 88s, 105mm artillery pieces and Stukas had any effect against these monsters. By mid-October the entire panzer army counted only 271 panzers. With Guderian stalled far south of Tula, German hopes and Schwerpunkt shifted to the efforts of Third and Fourth Panzer Armies assaulting north of Moscow.
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Guderian was not about to allow his men to give up, however. He mustered elements of seven panzer, three motorized, five infantry divisions plus Grossdeutschland against Lieutenant General IV Boldin’s 50th Army. But the Soviet general, who as Pavlov’s deputy had launched one of the first Soviet counterattacks back in June and had escaped from both Minsk and Viazma pockets, would ruin the Second Panzer’s chances. The 50th’s defense would be crucial to the defense of Moscow’s southern flank. On 25 October, XXIV Panzer renewed its attacks with the support of Grossdeutschland. A day later, the combination of Red infantry, T–34 and KV tanks, mud, Soviet CAS, half–completed anti–tank ditches and low fuel halted the Germans. That roadblock overcome, Guderian continued his northeast trek. Just to keep the drive alive, a few Ju-52 aircraft flew supplies to the muddy airfield at Tschern, south of Tula. A 3rd Panzer Division historian calls the battle against the 1st Guards Rifle Corps a ‘labor of Sisyphus’. All of the corps’ panzers were consolidated under Colonel Heinrich Eberbach, who earned the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross during these struggles. Toward the end of the month, Guderian measured progress in 5km per 48 hour increments. On 28 October, he visited the remnants of XXIV Panzer to exhort them to fight on the final 25km to Tula. The Red Army Air Force ruled the skies with the Luftwaffe nowhere to be seen. By the 29th, the Germans found that they had barely advanced 10km.
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