War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (69 page)

‘Soon, of course, when I had seen burnt overalls, burnt hands and burnt faces, I understood what war was. When tank men jumped out of their burning machines, they were all ablaze. Besides, they often broke their arms or legs. They were serious cases. They would lie and beg us, “If I die, please write to my mother or wife”’.
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Russian resistance in German eyes alternated between the fanatical and the bizarre. An infantry officer with 7th Panzer Division, breaking into fortified villages near the Lama river, described ‘resistance of such bitter intensity, it can only be seriously comprehended by those who had been through it themselves’. During these Panzergruppe 3 battles in the third week of November, ‘Red Army soldiers continued to shoot from blazing houses even when their clothes were on fire.’
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Such intense fighting was costing the Germans their best NCOs, the very men who led from the front in order to keep the lesser-motivated going. Feldwebel Karl Fuch’s vulnerable Czech 38,T light Panzer was finally knocked out near Klin in an unequal skirmish with Russian tanks on 21 November. He was killed. A photograph taken by his comrades examining the destroyed tank reveal its 37mm gun bent in several places like a toy. Frau Fuchs received the death notice from Leutnant Reinhardt, his company commander. It read: ‘I hope it will be a small consolation for you when I tell you that your husband gave his life so that our Fatherland might live.’ This was probably scant compensation. ‘We commiserate and are saddened that fate did not allow Karl to see his little daughter,’ wrote the Leutnant. He was not to know that the child that had been born after his father left for the front was in fact a son. Reinhardt had doubtless written countless similar death notices. Feldwebel Fuchs’s only child had been five months old nine days before.
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Towards the end of November the division’s Panzergrenadiers observed Alsatian dogs loping toward their armoured half-tracks with strange packages attached to their flanks and back, secured by wide leather girths. They opened fire immediately. Each dog appeared to trail a wire like an extended leash. These lines ran to Russian foxholes. The animals were trained to duck under vehicles or jump inside the fighting compartments. Red Army soldiers looking on would yank the line to arm the detonator mechanically which would then explode on contact with a surface. The German regimental commander had briefed his men to be wary of such tactics but in reality had already dismissed the bizarre warning as ‘the usual latrine rumours’. He commented, ‘One could never know or indeed imagine what new bestial methods the Russians would dream up next.’ A virtual ‘hare-shoot’ followed, reported another witness, ‘there were no checks on opening fire and a great many dogs were shot’. When the advance continued, the regimental commander’s radio operator counted 42 ‘mine dogs’ pathetically scattered about in the snow. ‘I did not hear of a single case in our attack area when this Red Army trick worked,’ added the regimental commander.

Three days after this incident the Panzergrenadier regiment had reached the Kalinin–Klin–Moscow road with the ‘Von Rothenberg’ Panzer regiment in support. That afternoon, they were attacked by Russian cavalry, an epic scene from a bygone age. Oberstleutnant von der Leye, the officer in charge, was a keen rider and wistfully regarded the oncoming riders with some regret. He was the third commander appointed since the beginning of the campaign and had no intention of taking any chances. ‘Must we shoot at them?’ asked a machine gunner alongside. He nodded in the affirmative. A storm of fire descended on the charging cavalry, cut to pieces in the co-ordinated fire of their modern Panzer counterparts. The advance continued on and it soon became apparent that the enemy for once was retreating steadily, not even torching the villages they vacated.
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At dusk on 27 November, Kampfgruppe ‘Von Manteuffel’ reached the Astrezowo–Jakowlewo area, 4km north-west of a bridge spanning the Moscow–Volga canal. A raid was ordered to capture it intact. The canal was the last defence obstacle before the city itself. Roads marked on maps would not be used, to avoid the likelihood of bumping into Russian resupply convoys. Von Manteuffel approached the bridge, detouring through surrounding woodland and bypassing villages en route. Engineer troops equipped with motorised saws were at the head of the column to cut pathways through the trees sufficiently wide for Panzers, half-tracks and heavy weapons to transit. Dismounted infantrymen moved either side of the column for security as it snaked its way through forest areas. Once clear, they accelerated along icy paths and across snow-covered fields toward the south-east. Shortly before darkness, the head of the column penetrated thick woods and came out in the village of Astrezowo.

No German troops were allowed to approach the wooded outlets on the Yakhroma town side for fear of compromising the raid. The battle group commander moved forward to the heights above the town where he was able to discern the iron girder bridge, the objective, silhouetted north of the town in the gathering winter dusk. Many of his officers and men, acutely aware of the vital significance of this bridge for any future advance, urged its immediate capture by
coup de main,
while it was still intact. Von Manteuffel refused to be drawn piecemeal. Equipment and additional units were still arriving and the Panzers would require more fuel if they were to be able to range around the sizeable bridgehead needed on the other bank. Orders were given for a dawn attack. They were meticulously briefed because few men had actually seen the objective. As one soldier remarked, ‘we had not been able to see the approach terrain to the bridge so the commander painted a precise picture of the ground and axis of advance’. This was so accurate that ‘despite pitch darkness not one foot was out of place during the pre-planned move to the bridge’. Villagers in Astrezowo were rounded up and locked away in a few houses as a security measure. Fires were strictly monitored as also orders for opening fire in the event of an unexpected enemy appearance. They were now set to go.

At 02.00 hours on 28 November a selected company of volunteers under Oberleutnant Reineck stealthily overpowered the guards on the bridge, and crossed without a shot being fired. The Moscow–Volga Canal was a deep stonework construction with steep sides which cut through the wintry landscape like a vivid scar. There was a road along both sides and a railway line on the eastern edge. Breathless German infantrymen were soon scaling the steep slopes of the high ground on the east bank, carrying or towing heavy weapons and ammunition. Enemy foxholes on the far side were reached and penetrated. As the first Russians came forward with their hands raised to surrender, they were shot down by their own men behind.

A Panzer group under Hauptmann Schroeder clattered across to the other side and the bridgehead swiftly began to take shape. Pandemonium resulted when a Russian armoured train appeared on the railway line and a group of several Russian T-34s began to attack German infantry digging in on the east side. A German Panzer company shot the armoured train into a flaming wreck. Smoke poured into the sky now growing lighter with the dawn and swirled about at ground level, smudging the snow. Very quickly three T-34s were hit, motionless and burning. At this moment a taxi cab drove incongruously onto the bridge and its surprised occupants were taken prisoner by the headquarters staff of Regiment 6. Inside was a Soviet officer with written orders and maps for the defence of the canal. Von Manteuffel remarked, ‘He was amazed to be told to get out because he had no idea we had already broken through the canal defensive positions and that the bridge was in our hands.’

Complete surprise had been achieved. Nobody in the town of Yakhroma realised anything was wrong. At about 07.00 hours, workers poured into the factories and even at 08.00 the huge bread factory was at work. When it became lighter, realisation dawned what was going on and the town’s noisy bustle resumed as the factories closed. Yakhroma’s citizens – such as 19-year-old Valentina Igorowna Belikowa – had previously ‘dug tank ditches so that the Panzers would not get through’. It was already too late. She said:

‘We suddenly heard engine noises during the night of 27/28 November 1941, but they were from a direction we would have never thought possible. They came with motorcycles and started searching immediately for partisans all over the town.’

Von Manteuffel, the battle group commander, strode across the Yakhroma bridge, grim-faced and seemingly oblivious to the shouted cries of congratulations from his men. They appreciated the significance of their achievement. Indeed, Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, on hearing the news, wrote, ‘I had been preoccupied with the idea for days; its execution might bring about the collapse of Moscow’s entire north-eastern front provided we simultaneously kept the advance by Fourth Army’s northern wing going … But,’ he added, ‘that is not yet assured,’ hence Manteuffel’s grave expression. His men had driven a wedge across the canal, forming a bridgehead within ideal defensive terrain on the other side. Transmissions picked up on his own radio net confirmed his own worse fears. ‘I realised,’ he said, ‘that apparently there were no worthwhile combat units quickly following up, to exploit this surprising success.’

First Soviet Shock Army, one of three armies building up for the proposed counter-offensive, had its concentration area nearby. It had yet to be identified by German forces. Von Bock noted in his diary later that day, ‘I was given further cause to consider when, toward evening, Panzergruppe 3 reported heavy attacks against the bridgehead at Yakhroma.’ He ordered the bridgehead to be held ‘at all costs’ but with ‘no unnecessary casualties’. Von Manteuffel, meanwhile, began to piece together a troubling intelligence picture. An ominous report from a recently shot-down Russian pilot disclosed that the roads leading from the capital, over which he had just flown, ‘were completely filled with marching Russian columns’; and they were heading his way.
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On the same day, 2nd Panzer Division came to a virtual standstill 30km south at Krassnaya Polyana, 18km north of Moscow. to their right was General Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4 with 11th and 5th Panzer, the 2nd SS Division ‘Das Reich’ and 10th Panzer Division groups all probing and stretching fingers out to Moscow, but unable to grasp a hold. They were battering their way head-on into the minefields and fiercely defended earthworks ringing the city. Behind and in echelon were the 23rd, 106th and 35th Infantry Divisions seeking to move either side of the 2nd Panzer Division in support. Von Kluge’s Fourth Army northern flank was likewise making hesitant progress. Hoepner’s Panzer battle groups were stretched so thinly they were barely able to maintain contact. Second Panzer Army, meanwhile, was enlarging its substantial bulge south of Tula.

A thrust north to Kashira was drawing swarms of Soviet cavalry and tanks upon the doggedly advancing, but now vulnerable, 17th Panzer Division. A decision point had been reached. Army Group Centre was poised to ‘do or die’. As von Bock, its commander, expressed it: ‘If we do not succeed in bringing about the collapse of Moscow’s north-western front in a few days, the attack will have to be called off.’ He was emphatic in his resolve not ‘to provoke a second Verdun’.
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This was the direction from which pressure was to be applied. The focus of the advance now began to shift south of 7th Panzer Division as the fingers of the laboriously advancing Panzer division battle groups scraped at the outer defensive crust north-west of Moscow.

At the end of November there were indications that the cold snap was coming to an end. Although frost, fog and some snow continued, temperatures rose to 0°C. This appeared to offer some physical respite. Meteorological statistics stretching as far back as the 19th century gave no reason to expect heavy snow and extreme low temperatures before mid-December. Until now, weather conditions had resembled the worst one might anticipate on an exercise during a bad winter in the Berlin area. Difficulties were encountered because of the lack of winter training. Units generally occupied warm barracks in such weather, sallying out to train for only short periods. On 1 December temperatures plummeted. The 2nd dawned sunny and clear but with temperatures at −20°C. A north-west European winter began now to give way to the merciless embrace of its Asian variant. Until this point OKW
Kriegstagebuch
(war diary) entries had referred only to frost and snow in its daily weather summaries, with occasional reference to comparable western European extremes. Now it was different. Temperatures slipped to −25°C on 4 December and then −35°C and −38°C on subsequent days. ‘General Winter’ had entered the field.

By the light of a freezing moon, which had already risen by 17.00 hours on 1 December, armoured half-tracks of the 6th Panzer Division infantry regiment combat group began to crawl forward laboriously through frozen snow. Ahead, their objectives were the villages of Ipleura and Swistuela, north-east of Moscow. Vehicle after vehicle began to break down in the freezing conditions. Before long, 15 had fallen by the wayside, left behind with skeleton and watchful crews. Most of the soldiers had already spent three complete nights in the open in conditions for which they were totally unprepared. The Division Supply Officer (1b) had already noticed that ‘the lack of fat [in their rations] is having a detrimental effect upon the soldiers’ body resistance’. They had received barely two days’ equivalent (60 grams) over the previous 10 days. The last PzKpfwIV heavy tank in Panzer Regiment 11 also broke down that day in temperatures of −22°C.
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Soldiers require a substantial calorific intake to fight in these temperatures, otherwise they become increasingly lethargic. This, combined with living unprotected in the open, sapped physical and mental resilience. Winter clothes had still to be issued. The 98th Infantry Division had received only ‘some winter coats and some gloves’, and these had been set aside for drivers. ‘It was like a drop of water on a hot stove,’ commented one witness.
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Winter warfare clothing layers need constant adjustment to control body temperature when undergoing strenuous tasks. Sweat clogs the airspace in material with moisture, reducing its insulating qualities. Perspiration when it evaporates chills the body and can cause freezing in extreme conditions.