War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (14 page)

The three German army groups closed onto a frontier stretching from Memel on the Baltic south to Romania on the Black Sea. Many of the images of this dawning of the longest summer day of the year were captured on
Wochenschau
movie newsreels. Spectacular film footage was shown to German cinema audiences within one week of the event. They showed flares hanging in a dark sky already streaked with dawn. Tracer fire curls lazily over a single-span railway bridge, flashes of explosion beneath reflect briefly on the outline silhouette of advancing infantry. On the Russian side, wooden watch-towers alongside the Bug burn furiously, like flaming torches, lighting up the sky above the dark mass of the opposite bank. Smoke rises majestically into the air, expanding languidly into an inky smudge, staining the light of an emerging dawn. Stark black outlines of soldiers laden with combat gear are discernible, moving swiftly through meadow grass and briefly silhouetted crossing the high riverbanks of the Bug. They pause and lie down as the pick-pock of opposing echoing rifle fire pins them down.

The
Wochenschau
images atmospherically convey an aura of menacing power and progress to their audiences, as combat vehicles and soldiers pass the distinctive stripe-patterned frontier marker posts. Cameras linger on scenes of flaming destruction. Repeated shots of artillery muzzles punching through and recoiling back inside camouflage nets that jerk convulsively, raising dust, with each concussive report of the gun, add to the aura of pitiless technological dominance. Birds, panicked by explosions in the target area, fly around the periphery of rising clouds of dirty coloured smoke. Lines of motionless Panzers, filmed awaiting the call forward, underscore a constant theme of latent lethality.

All along the 800km line of the River Bug,
Sturmgruppen
(assault parties) dashed across bridges and overwhelmed surprised Russian guards before they could detonate demolition charges. Rubber dinghies ferried across infantry assault groups, followed soon after by parties of engineers constructing the first pontoon bridges.

In Generalmajor Nehring’s 18th Panzer Division sector near Pratulin, numbers of tanks simply drove down the bank of the Bug and disappeared underwater. Infantry nearby watched in amazement as tank after tank slid beneath the surface of the water like grotesque amphibians. These tanks, belonging to Ist Battalion Panzer Regiment 18 had originally been trained and equipped to wade underwater from ramp-mounted ferry boats built in preparation for Operation
‘Seelöwe’
(sea lion), the proposed invasion of England. In October 1940 the venture was cancelled, then resurrected in part for the foreseen amphibious assault crossing of the Bug.

The ‘U-Boat’ tanks were fitted with 3m steel pipes which protruded from the surface of the water as they waded across the river bottom, enabling the crew and engines to breathe. Exhausts were fitted with one-way valves and gun turrets were insulated by air-filled bicycle inner tubes. Bubbles from the exhaust were obliterated by the moving current. Total surprise was achieved as 80 of these Panzer amphibians emerged on the far bank, rapidly establishing a deep bridgehead. Russian armoured cars that had begun to menace landed infantry were quickly despatched.
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The east is aflame,’ announced Leutnant Haape, observing the progress of the assaulting spearheads. Infantry mainly led the way. Many of these men were still coming to terms with the surprise they had inflicted on the Russians. Gefreiter Joachim Kredel, a machine gunner in Infantry Regiment 67 of 23rd Division, had hours before queried his company commander’s reading of the Führer Order. ‘Soldiers of the
Ostfront,’
it had announced. Kredel turning to a friend asked: ‘Did the company commander actually say
Ostfront
?’ Feldwebel Richard von Weizsäcker (a future President of the Federal Republic of Germany), nearby with Regiment 9, refused to believe, right up to the point of going into action, that Hitler would seriously go to war against the Soviet Union. Leutnant von dem Bussche, a platoon commander in the same regiment, thought:

‘Funny, almost exactly 129 years before, the Emperor Napoleon, supported by the Prussian Corps under General Ludwig Yorck, had started the great Russian campaign. We all know what happened to them. Will we do better?’

Soldiers sought to allay their acute uneasiness by engaging in purposeful last-minute checks. Rifle loaded and safety catch on? Uniform buttons done up? Helmet strap not too tight – or too loose? Hand-grenade arming mechanism screw easy to turn? Have I got an uninterrupted line of sight to the soldier nearby?
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They awaited the signal to advance. Ernst Glasner wrote in his diary while waiting on the edge of the Bug:

‘Involuntarily we counted the seconds. Then a shot tore through the stillness of this summer Sunday on the new Eastern Front. At the same moment a thundering, roaring and whining in the air. The artillery had begun.’
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Feldwebel Gottfried ‘Gottlieb’ Becker had counted off the final seconds, observing the railway embankment that was his first objective. As they ran forward, ‘the echoes of explosions mixed with the incoming whine of new salvoes’. Becker and his platoon were astonished when they reached the embankment without once coming under fire. Only single shots rang out as the first German motorised column began to trundle down the road to his right; with that, worries vanished. The opening attack had proved unexpectedly smooth. Becker had reached his first objective without losing a single man.

Nearby, Gefreiter Kredel with Regiment 67 stormed forward as fast as his legs could carry him, his machine gun sloped across his shoulder. This was his first time in action. Propelling him was the sage advice of a veteran who had assured him ‘the first wave gets through mostly unscathed, because the enemy is surprised. That’s why those that follow get the full punishment.’ Kredel thought it strange the way bullets whistled by one’s helmet. He saw a wooden Russian observation tower reduced to matchwood by a direct hit from an anti-tank gun. ‘Pieces of wood and Russians whirled through the air, and fell like toys to the ground.’ Simultaneously the Germans’ artillery dropped short and fell among their own ranks. ‘Wounded cried out, and curses of “idiots – pay attention!” became mixed with the detonations of shells.’
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Fire shifted abruptly forward, as if in response to these recriminations.

The campaign was already exacting its first toll of dead. Leutnant Hubert Becker with Army Group North remembered:

‘It was a hot early summer day, and I had no inkling. We were walking across a meadow and came under artillery fire. That was my baptism of fire – a very strange feeling. You’re told to walk there, then next to you comes an inimitable sound. There is a feeling that any minute you might be full of holes, but you get over that. Standing next to me was my commanding officer and you had to play the hero. You couldn’t just lie down, which would have been easier. And then over there lay a German soldier. His hand was raised in the air which made his wedding ring shine in the sun, and his head – a little reddish and puffed up – had a mouth with lips full of flies. That was the first dead man I had ever seen in my life.’
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Gefreiter Joachim Kredel stormed forward with the 67th Infantry Regiment, still mindful of the likely retribution that must soon come to this attack, which had obviously achieved surprise. Casualties up until now had been light. His platoon commander, Leutnant Maurer, observed with satisfaction as Kredel repeatedly hosed bursts of MG34 fire across the aperture of a Soviet bunker barring progress. There was a short pause of some seconds. No answering fire. ‘Move! Bypass it!’ cried the platoon commander, and soldiers scrambled around the flanks of the silenced bunker. It was a nerve-racking moment, the calculated instant of exposure.

On the far side of the fortification, Maurer and the lead elements relaxed from their tense crouching stance to a more upright position and continued to move forward. The burst of fire that spat out from the rear of the overrun position killed Maurer instantly and an NCO with two accompanying soldiers. Suspecting just such a ploy, the Russians had moved their machine gun to the rear of the bunker. Now the shock of the enormity of this first major loss sank in.

Unteroffizier Voss took command of the platoon, and with the support of a direct-firing anti-tank gun, managed with his soldiers to scramble up onto the roof of the bunker. Secure from the Russian beaten zone of fire, the position was held in thrall as the remainder of the company stormed by. Voss, marooned on the roof, could not get at the Russian soldiers inside. They held this ‘tiger by the tail’ the whole night long. Only a few isolated pistol shots punctuated the nervous waiting period. They were too tense to sleep. Much later, at daybreak, Kredel and Voss’s group were evacuated from their exposed position and ordered to rejoin the company. A section of assault pioneers was brought up to reduce the menace with explosive charges.
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Surprise had been achieved. The campaign was barely hours old, yet men had already endured experiences that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Years after these events, Karl Unverzagt, a
Fähnjunker
(officer-cadet) in a Panzergrenadier division, quietly reflected, pipe in hand, that ‘we had shot into a scene where there had been dancing, drinking and singing, with people dressed in riding boots.’ His unit had burst in upon this celebration. ‘It was awful what our shells had done, something I will carry with me for the rest of my days – it was so terrible.’
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Josef Zymelka, an engineer, said:

‘Over there, behind the Bug, stood an isolated house. I reckon it was a Customs post. In the early days, before war broke out, we had even swam there, and in the evenings I had always sung “a soldier stands on the banks of the Volga.” Before long, the Russians had also begun to sing, like in peacetime… After the attack I saw that the house was burning. Within four hours I was inside. On entry I saw that the soldiers – there were about 12 of them – had all been shot. They lay amongst burning, half collapsed rafters. They were the first dead I had ever seen.’
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At 04.55 hours XIIth Army Corps reported to Fourth Army HQ that ‘until now, the impression is the enemy has been totally surprised’. The corps pointed to Soviet radio intercepts which were asking ‘what should we do?’ among other things.
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There had been Soviet troop movements prior to the German onslaught. German comment on this and reactions regarding Soviet preparedness are mixed. Committed National Socialists such as Leutnant Hans Ulrich Rudel, a Stuka pilot who participated in the opening raids, left little room for doubt. His unadulterated view was that ‘it is a good thing we struck.’ Based on in-flight observations, he later wrote:

‘It looks as if the Soviets meant to build all these preparations up as a base for invasion against us. Whom else in the West could Russia have wanted to attack? If the Russians had completed their preparations, there would not have been much hope of halting them anywhere.’
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Leutnant Erich Mende, advancing with the 8th Silesian Infantry Division in the central sector, believed ‘the Red Army positions were prepared for attack, not defence. We had, according to one view, pre-empted an assault by the Red Army.’ In the fullness of time, he felt: ‘to support this view directly is wrong. But on the other hand, quite possibly such an operation could have taken place within a few months or a year.’
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Bernd Freytag von Lorringhoven, a Panzer officer serving on the staff of General Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2, said after the war:

‘At that time we had nothing to support the present view, often repeated, that the Russians planned an attack themselves. It became quickly apparent the Russians had adopted a defensive stance and were partly prepared when the German assault began. Infantry divisions were mainly positioned on the border, while the armour was located further to the rear. If they had been required for an attack, they would have had to be positioned closer to the border.’
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Whatever the intention, there had certainly been large-scale Soviet military deployments prior to 22 June. Perception often has paramountcy over facts, and will influence decisions in war. Infantryman Emanuel Selder was in no doubt that ‘at no time’ on the eve of the offensive ‘could anyone seriously calculate the Russians were going to strike first’. His view was that ‘the Red Army was totally surprised by the attack.’ Unimpressed by any ‘preventive war hypothesis’, Selder noted that the Russians in some areas had absolutely no artillery support. ‘Like us,’ he pointed out during interview, the Russians constructed camps within woods near the border.

‘But contrary to our bivouacs, theirs were not camouflaged. They were even showing lights with hanging portraits of Stalin and red flags. All this is basically contrary to the widely held impression that, despite these factors, the Russians were equipped for an attack.’
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This view is echoed by examination of the radio logs of attacking German vanguards. XIIth Corps in the central sector near Brest-Litovsk was reporting by 06.15 hours to Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 that ‘according to radio intercepts and statements from captured officers, the enemy appears completely surprised. Maximum offensive effort by all corps is ordered.’
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Lines of motionless Panzers awaiting information from attacking infantry –
Sturmtruppen
– began to erupt into a haze of blue exhaust-shrouded activity. Dust began to rise as tanks lurched forward and clattered and squeaked toward newly constructed pontoons, or captured bridges. Leutnant F. W. Christians, moving with a Panzer division in Army Group South, remembered how young soldiers were already impressed at the extent to which the battlefield was ‘dominated by our artillery and Luftwaffe’. Another aspect was also evident. Bodies from both sides were already lying by the roadsides. ‘There was also a bitter side to this advance,’ he remarked, ‘the first dead’, which ‘gave the young soldiers a foretaste of what to expect’.
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