Third Reich Victorious (19 page)

Once the Wehrmacht had eroded the strength of the Red Army sufficiently, the entire German Army would counterattack to trap the remaining Russian armies in and around the Pripet Marshes. The German Army would then advance in its own right to take Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. Hitler envisioned four weeks for the entire operation. In order to accomplish this better, Whirlwind added a fifth Panzer group to the original Barbarossa plan. A formidable force, it consisted of four Panzer divisions, three motorized divisions, one infantry division, one cavalry division, and three independent Panzer battalions. The 2nd and 5th Panzer Divisions were both veterans of Yugoslavia and Greece, while the 22nd and 23rd Panzer Divisions were newly constituted formations. The 52nd Infantry Division was joined by three motorized divisions; the 60th, the 1st SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, and the 3rd SS Totenkopf. As for the 1st Cavalry Division, it was the only formation of its kind in the German Army. Last were three independent light Panzer battalions, a conglomeration of Czech and German tanks, including a large number of flame tanks. The new Panzer group was thus a mixture of the new and the old. It was equipped with more than 900 tanks in its Panzer divisions—and almost 4,500 horses and sabers in its cavalry division!
³⁰

In May, Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel, one of the Panzertruppe’s most audacious commanders, had returned to Germany, after a brief and successful spell in Africa, at the personal request of Hitler. Upon being briefed on Operation Whirlwind and the creation of the new Panzer group, the ambitious general asked for command of the unit. Hitler agreed immediately. In fact, he had not considered anyone else for the command. Rommel had long been one of the Führer’s favorites. Indeed, the German leader had already designated the formation Panzergruppe Rommel in honor of his young protégé.

Rommel worked with his usual zeal and energy in transforming his paper group into a formidable fighting force. His first priority was ensuring that his armor units had as many tanks as possible. He and his staff begged, borrowed, and stole tanks, trucks, antitank guns, artillery, ammunition, and mobile communications equipment from anyone and everyone. No garrison unit in France or Germany was safe from the unit’s predatory practices. Officers and NCOs who had served with the general in France and northern Africa flocked to his headquarters, which usually found a position for them without first informing their commands. Nor did the antics stop there. Units reporting for gunnery training at ranges throughout Germany arrived to find Rommel’s units had arrived first and were firing their ammunition, burning their fuel, and eating their food. Complaints poured in to Hitler’s office, but the Führer was content to turn a blind eye. “Genius must be nurtured,” explained Hitler to a fuming General Staff. By the end of June, Panzergruppe Rommel was much more than a paper tiger, although it was still not the formidable fighting force its commander desired. Training thus continued in the group’s assembly areas near Lodz, where Rommel’s group acted as OKW reserve.

The experience with the Red Army’s reconnaissance elements and forward detachments had validated the German defensive scheme. The Soviets had advanced only as far as the outpost line before being annihilated. But the respite was short, for the bulk of four Soviet armies had entered Poland in strength.

Army Group North’s offensive and 3rd Panzer Group’s spoiling attack had desynchronized Operation Storm by savaging the 11th Army and preventing its participation in the Soviet offensive. The commanders of the Northwestern Front and the Western Front’s 11th Army were reeling from the unexpected German assault and screaming for air support to halt its advance. Zhukov responded by dispatching additional Red Air Force units and the 22nd Reserve Army to stop Army Group North. In the meantime, the 28th Reserve Army was ordered to Smolensk for commitment in either the north or the west. With the 11th Army out of the picture, he ordered the 13th Army to take its place. As it would take some time for that formation to catch up with Major General Golikov’s attacking 10th Army, Zhukov also attached the 14th Mechanized Corps from Maj. Gen. A. A. Korobkov’s 4th Army to the 10th Army.

The rest of the operation had started just as badly. It took the front commanders almost four hours to recover from the German air attacks and begin crossing the border in strength. To make up for lost time, Golikov attacked with his two mechanized corps in the lead, followed by two tank-reinforced infantry corps and a cavalry corps. In the south, the 6th Army, responsible for the close envelopment, attacked with two rifle corps abreast, followed by two mechanized corps, while the 26th Army, responsible for the deep envelopment, attacked with its mechanized and cavalry corps in the first echelon followed by its infantry corps.

In the north, 3rd Panzer Group’s LVII Motorized Corps had the mission of slowing the Western Front’s advance without becoming decisively engaged. It would be joined by the XXXIX Motorized Corps once that formation had finished with its spoiling attack against the 11th Army. Second Panzer Group’s XLVI and XLVII Motorized Corps and 1st Panzer Group’s XLVIII Motorized Corps were charged with the same mission against the Southwestern Front in the center and south. The German commanders were told to give priority to the destruction of the Soviet mechanized corps. Their corps began to engage the heads and flanks of the three Russian armies soon after they crossed the border, knocking out scores of Soviet tanks from a range of 1,000 yards and greater. Now and then the Red Army tanks responded, but their fire proved generally ineffective. The Russians, however, continued advancing ponderously, a thick screen of light tanks to their front and flanks, foiling German efforts to slow the momentum of the main body. “They moved like Cossacks,” remembered one Panzer officer as he watched the swarms of enemy tanks flow toward any threatening Panzer formations before ebbing back to the main body. The armor screen was well supported by Soviet artillery, which fired at the Germans whenever they appeared in strength.

After two hours of this game, the commander of the LVII Motorized Corps decided to attack in an attempt to penetrate the 10th Army’s screen, knock out the artillery, and engage the main body. It was a mistake. Russian heavy antitank guns backed by detachments of T-34s and more artillery awaited the two Panzer divisions. The Germans encountered a withering fire that mauled the lead regiments and sent both formations reeling northward. “Ponderous in the attack, steadfast in the defense,” reported the chastened corps commander to General Hoth.

By 1800 the Southwestern Front armies had almost reached the outpost line. At about the same time, 500 aircraft of Luftflotte 4 came screaming over the battlefield at treetop level, wreaking havoc on the massed tanks, artillery, trucks, and horses strung out along the highway to Przemysl. Wave after wave of Bf 109s, Me 110s, and Ju 87s pummeled Russian units on the highway for almost two hours, scattering them everywhere. In the meantime, elements of the XLVIII Motorized Corps finally penetrated the Soviet tank screen and battered the 8th Mechanized Corps. In the Army Group Center sector, Luftflotte 1 and the XXXIV Motorized Corps pulverized the 10th Army in much the same way. By the time the much diminished Red Air Force reached the battlefield, the rear elements of three Russian armies were in shambles.

In the meantime, the Russian forward corps had continued moving, reaching the German outpost line in strength at 2000. Although they had already lost hundreds of tanks each, the army commanders decided to attack without waiting for the remainder of their infantry and artillery far to the rear. The Western Front’s 6th, 13th, and 14th Mechanized Corps attempted to steamroller the German line, assaulting in deep columns. A dense wall of tank and antitank fire from the front and flanks crushed the first Russian attempt, transforming hundreds of KV-1s and T-34s into flaming obstacles and breaking the momentum of the attack within the hour. Another two assaults in the next two hours were repulsed in similar manner with heavy Soviet losses and little gain. Only the intervention of nightfall prevented the Red Army from making another attempt.

Zhukov, boiling with rage, ordered the two front commanders to dig in for the night and continue the fight in the morning. “Lead with your infantry and artillery!” he admonished. He ordered Pavlov and Kirponos to reorganize their shattered infantry corps and supporting artillery and to integrate them into the next morning’s attacks. In the meantime, the chief of the General Staff would coordinate Red Air Force support, which had been disappointingly ineffective to date. He also planned on pushing the 13th and 16th Armies forward under the cover of darkness, followed by the 19th and 20th Armies. “We will break them in the morning,” he told his staff.

Both sides used the night to move up or reposition units, as well as to refuel and rearm their vehicles. The men of the two armies sensed that the fate of the war could be decided the following day. For most, sleep was out of the question. Not that it had ever been a viable option. German and Russian fighter-bombers attempted to bomb each other’s armies, running the gauntlet of improvised night fighters and heavy air defense fire, which shook the entire battlefield even as it illuminated the skies overhead. Scores of Soviet reconnaissance and cavalry units took advantage of the darkness to probe German positions, while engineers attempted to clear lanes through the minefields. At the same time, strong Panzer formations roamed along the flanks of the Russian armies and well to their rear, moving toward the Bug River to reconnoiter future attack routes and interdict supplies and reinforcements. An engagement between the XXXIX Motorized Corps and the forward detachments of the advancing 13th Army set off a series of brief but intense battles that stopped both formations in their tracks. Zhukov demanded that his army commanders continue moving through the night, but chance encounters ate away at the courage and forward momentum of the two Russian armies, bringing their advance to a crawl. Illumination lit up the battlefield constantly, sending soldiers and vehicles scurrying for cover in the shadows like ants.

At 0400 on July 7, 1941, Soviet artillery opened up on the Wehrmacht’s battle outpost line with high explosive and smoke rounds, reducing Ostow, Lublin, and Przemysl to rubble. The barrage tore the German defensive positions to pieces, neutralizing their fires and forcing many of the defenders to fall back to the main defensive line. Thirty minutes later some 400 Red Army fighters and fighter-bombers began their attacks on both the strong points and the motorized corps that had caused Zhukov’s plan such grief. The Luftwaffe, on its way to punish the Red Army yet again, entered the fray only minutes later and a free-for-all soon developed, with both sides diverted from their ground support mission.

At 0600 the Russian ground attack began. Soviet engineers had done their work well, and the forward detachments were through the cleared and marked lanes, advancing on the German defensive line within an hour. Behind them came a wave of engineers, infantry, artillery, and cavalry pouring through the gaps under the cover of smoke to deal with the minefields and strong points ahead. Finally came the tank and motorized divisions of the mechanized corps, which had been reconstituted during the night by merging depleted units. By noon the lead elements of both fronts had reached the German main defensive line, running along the Ostrotchka-Deblin highway, then south along the Vistula River to Sandomierz, and finally to Gorlice and the Hungarian border.

At 1600 both fronts launched a concerted attack on the forward edge of the final German line. The 10th Army’s artillery barrage preceding the attack lasted only a few minutes, due to a shortage of ammunition. Even before it ended, General Golubev’s mechanized corps was racing for Warsaw at top speed, his tanks laden with infantry. The first salvo from the waiting 4th Army tank, antitank, and antiaircraft guns devastated the lead battalions in minutes before they ever reached the outskirts of the Polish capital. The following echelons continued pushing down the highway, while an infantry regiment attempted to storm the heights at Ostrotchka overlooking the main east-west road to the Polish capital. The Red Army enveloping detachment was decimated by rapid firing 20mm antiaircraft guns. A second assault by a mounted cavalry regiment, attempting to take advantage of the wooded terrain, ended in similar failure, as did a third attack by a combination of infantry, light armor, and artillery.

On the ridge, waiting Panzers began slowly to move forward, enveloping the road from the north and concentrating their fires on the medium and heavy tanks of the mechanized corps. The Soviets returned an ineffectual fire. After several hours of this uneven fight, the surviving Russians began to
flee
back up the highway toward Bialystok. Golubev next committed two rifle corps supported by what remained of the 14th Mechanized Corps to renew the attempted breakthrough to Warsaw. Within hours, however, they too had been routed. Fearing an envelopment from the north and worried about his supply situation, he ordered his depleted mechanized and cavalry corps to cover the withdrawal of broken rifle units. He planned on falling back on the advancing 13th and 20th Armies before rejoining the Western Front’s offensive in the morning.

To the south, the Southwestern Front fared noticeably better. The weight of its artillery hammered General Stülpnagel’s 17th Army unmercifully. The Russian 6th and 26th Armies, advancing under the cover of smoke, closed quickly with the defenders. Although the Soviet 6th Army was thrown back by the German 6th Army in a bitter struggle that lasted all day, the badly battered and reconstituted 8th Mechanized Corps and the 8th Rifle Corps broke through the Wehrmacht’s XLIX Mountain Corps at Rzeszow by the end of the day. The 24th and 7th Motorized Divisions surged through the breach, heading west toward Krakow, while the 8th Rifle and 4th Cavalry Corps struck out toward the northwest of Kielce. “
Proryv!
” (Breakthrough!) shouted an ecstatic Kirponos to Zhukov, who, in turn, reported this first bit of good luck to Stalin. By evening the lead elements of the 26th Army were advancing on Tarnow and Mielec. Before they could reach either destination, however, the advance ground to a halt, the Russian tank commanders weeping and pounding their tanks in frustration. The Red Army had run out of fuel!