Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (16 page)

With both the ‘Timoshenko Offensive’ and Smolensk behind them, Second Panzer Army now had two goals. The push east, always toward Moscow, was uppermost in Guderian’s mind. However, the move south on Roslavl would also lead him in a new direction: to the Ukraine. Any delay at this point would allow the Soviets to recover their balance, anathema to the blitzkrieg. Sudden moves, such as Second Panzer’s 90 degree turn, would surely compound Stavka’s confusion. Von Bock would have to pick up the pace now that Guderian had turned south, where the terrain was less well suited to the defense, and better for the Panzerwaffe.

While strategic–level decisions may have been slow incoming out of R as ten burg and Zossen at this point, Guderian did not tarry. Until explicitly ordered south, he pushed his men onward in the direction of Stalin’s capital. Before either the Smolensk or Roslavl battles had run their courses, on 20 July, XLVI Panzer Corps units occupied Yelnia midway between the two main east-west roads to Moscow. The town had three features that both sides coveted: high ground, a bridge over the Desna and a rail station on a main east-west line. Initially, 10th Panzer and SS Reich Divisions occupied the position and had to defend it until marching infantry arrived. Surrounded by Red Army forces to the north, east and south, meant that the salient also suffered from a shortage of infantry and CAS. At the end of July, Stalin ordered Zhukov to eliminate the threat at Yelnia. Therefore, four days after the Germans arrived, Timoshenko began to pound the town.
¹⁸

The following testimony to the severity of the fighting around Yelnia was written by a member of the 1st Battalion of Grossdeutschland on 23 July:

From 0100-0300 the artillery fire weakens. Then, near the rail crossing it beats like a drum. Early on my old Feldwebel Herald is brought back - he has lost his hearing and his great eyes stare into the emptiness. Lieutenant Hanert’s foxhole is between his two machine guns. From here communications is very difficult. Radio interference is bad, dispatch runners cannot get through and he can hardly move. Ammunition and food gets forward in pitiable amounts.

Since morning twilight the lieutenant looks through his scissors binoculars. Back and forth one sees tracers into the woods. One slight movement is enough to recognize – They’re coming! Great heaps of men advance near the stream. Everything in front of us is Russian brown. Here and there heads pop up from our foxholes.

The bulk of them are near the stream. The Russian artillery fire begins. Our ears ring. Only two of our infantry guns fire. Detonations churn up the ground but are way too few. A couple of mortars now help. The brown mass is in front of us. Despite our fire in the stream they do not weaken. They’re coming! Always new attacks. It is oppressive. Lieutenant Hanert, commander of the machine gun company, can do nothing. Through the glasses one can see every man, every head is recognized. Now we see their faces. They’re coming! From twelve barrels the machine guns shoot continuously. It begins and ends abruptly. For sure there is a drain on all weapons.

One cannot write here the astonished screams. In seconds the heaps of men are in front of us. Pause, ammo belts rattle, here and there a machine gun bolt rips back and forth . . .

The Russians come closer and closer. Their fire sings, explodes and whistles everywhere . . .
¹⁹

By early August, Guderian threw his last reserve into the fight: the guard company of his own panzer army headquarters. With the Smolensk pocket finally cleaned up, German infantry began marching into Yelnia. These were soon joined by batteries from another Second Panzer Army asset: the Luftwaffe’s I Flak Corps. After weathering many determined assaults, by 8 August, Guderian withdrew his mobile units from defending the exposed positions. With his attention now directed toward Kiev, he turned over responsibility for the salient to Ninth Army.
²⁰
For them, Barbarossa became an old-fashioned battle of attrition, not the blitzkrieg war or maneuver.

By the second half of August, Hitler had finally prevailed over his unruly generals. As he had originally decided in the autumn of 1940, the Ostheer would take care of its flanks before turning on Moscow. Therefore much of Hoth’s Third Panzer would turn north, while Guderian moved in the opposite direction. With its counterattack at Roslavl, the Second Panzer somewhat unintentionally began the southern trajectory that would lead to history’s greatest encirclement battle. For Hitler, maneuvering against Gomel was the next logical step toward the Ukraine. In terms of blitzkrieg thinking, it was completely consistent with the ‘line of least resistance’ aim. To Stavka this move likewise made sense: the Soviet high command assumed von Bock merely sought to firm up his flanks in preparation for the anticipated assault on Moscow. Von Weichs’ Second Army received the mission of taking Gomel, but due to a dearth of artillery ammunition, muddy roads and other factors, its attack developed slowly. Only on 12 August were his men ready. In order to prevent any defenders from escaping, Guderian sent his far right element, XXIV Panzer Corps, hooking around the city to the east. By the 17 August, the 21st Army defenders began to evacuate, but could not move faster than the panzers. Second Army and Second Panzer captured another 50,000 POWs between them, and at the twin battles of Rogatachev and Gomel, basically demolished the brand new Central Front.
²¹
But had Stalin bought an additional ten days to solidify his position?

The drama within the German high command over, Barbarossa’s next move had not yet played out completely and Guderian himself would play a major part in the next scene. On 21 August, Hitler wrote a Denkschrift (thought paper) on the Moscow–Kiev debate, having the last word, so he believed, on the campaign’s subsequent direction. After a month’s wrangling back and forth with his senior generals, he now had good reason to believe that the matter was closed. The next day, OKH ordered Second Panzer to continue south. But Halder believed he had one last scam in his bag of tricks: the word of the Fuhrer’s favorite panzer general. On 24 August, he flew to Army Group Center headquarters and got agreement from von Bock, Guderian and others that Moscow should be the next objective. Guderian came back to Rastenburg and that same evening, had a conference with Hitler (Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Colonel General Alfred Jodl were there, significantly, von Brauchitsch and Halder were not). That night, in exchange for Hitler’s promise that Second Panzer Army would remain intact, Guderian recanted everything he had told Halder earlier in the day. Tasks that had been unachievable during the conference at army group headquarters all of a sudden were possible. When the Chief of Staff found out about this on the 25th, he was furious with Guderian.
²²

The Soviets only slowly alerted to the danger posed by the Second Panzer’s southward movement. Stalin believed Guderian was attempting an end run toward Moscow, and could not fathom a 90 degree turn on Kiev. Stavka hastily threw the new Bryansk Front (Eremenko) and specifically, its 40th Army (Podlas) in Guderian’s way. The Second Panzer advanced with XXIV Panzer (3rd and 4th Panzer, 10th Motorized Divisions) in the lead and XLVII Panzer (17th and 18th Panzer, 29th Motorized) covering the panzer army’s left (outer) flank against Eremenko. As Guderian picked up speed and left the Second Army further behind, he also had to dedicate increasing scant resources, in this case XLVI Panzer (SS Reich and Grossdeutschland), to flank security. His movement south split the 40th Army, which drifted east toward Bryansk from the 21st Army, which slid toward Kiev. Stavka noted Guderian’s increasingly lengthy and vulnerable flank, and ordered Eremenko to attack. The headquarters insisted Bryansk Front assault, not at one place but at two –Roslavl and Novozybkov. Eremenko lacked the requisite skill and mass and so failed as a result.
²³
Likewise, the Germans had gained confidence and would not allow a flank attack to distract them. There would be no repeat of the nervousness that bedeviled Guderian at Stonne in May 1940.

As usual, Model’s 3rd Panzer took its place at Guderian’s front during the move south. His objective: the 800m–long bridge over the Desna River at Novgorod Seversky. The river was the last major obstacle before the Second Panzer broke into the relatively open Ukrainian countryside. As Model said at the time, ‘That bridge is as good as a whole division’. Paul Carell relates the well-known story of its capture. One of Model’s lieutenants noticed the bridge was still intact:

‘It’s still there!’ Buchterkirch called out. Driver, radio operator and gunner all beamed. ‘Antitank gun by the bridge! Straight at it!’ the lieutenant commanded. The Russians fled. Lieutenant Storck and his men leaped from their armored carriers. They raced up to the bridge. They overcame the Russian guard. There, along the railings, ran the wires of the detonation charges. They tore them out. Over there were the charges themselves. They pushed them into the water. Drums of petrol were dangling from the rafters on both sides. They slashed the ropes. With a splash the drums hit the water. They ran on – Störck always in front ...

Suddenly Störck pulled himself up ... In the middle of the bridge lay a heavy Soviet aerial bomb, primed with a time fuse. Calmly, Storck unscrewed the detonator. It was a race to the death. Would he
make it? He made it. The five men combined to throw the now harmless bomb out of the way.

They ran on. Only now did they realize what 800 meters meant. There did not seem to be an end to the bridge. At last they reached the far side and fired the prearranged flare signal for the armored spearhead.

Buchterkirch in his tank had meanwhile driven cautiously down the bank and moved under the bridge. Vopel with the rest of the tanks provided cover from the top of the bank. That was just as well. For the moment the Russians realized that the Germans were in possession of the bridge they sent in demolition squads - large parties of thirty or forty men, carrying drums of petrol, explosive charges and Molotov cocktails.
²⁴

The Germans prevailed and averted any further danger to the bridge. An hour later Guderian’s units streamed across the Desna on their way south to their planned junction with von Kleist’s First Panzer Army.

Both sides raced to occupy and then hold the Novgorod-Seversky bridge; Model won in each case. Not that the Soviets were giving up. In late August, the Red Army Air Force created Reserve Aviation Groups with their newest CAS aircraft, the Sturmovik, and threw most of these against Guderian. The Second Panzer kept coming. Model ordered a Kampfgruppe to Shostka to cut the direct rail connection between Moscow and Kiev. By early September, the Second Panzer, Second and Sixth Armies threatened the Soviet 5th Army from east, north and west. This elusive army that had been causing so much heartburn to von Rundstedt, was now in mortal danger. Over 300km to the south, von Kleist broke out of the Kremenchug bridgehead and the two panzer spearheads angled for a rendezvous. Marshal Budenny, coordinating the defensive efforts of the Southern and Southwestern Fronts sensed the danger to his flanks. On 4 September, he requested reinforcements. By the 6th, even Stavka knew that days were numbered for 21st Army, trying to maintain a connection between Budenny and the Bryansk Front. A day later Guderian’s vanguard raced through Konotop and on towards Romny, deep in the marshal’s rear.
²⁵
The hopelessness of the Soviet’s situation was becoming obvious to all. Faltering enemy morale was always a good omen to the blitzkrieg.

Stalin and the rest of the Soviet high command over-emphasized Romny’s importance. The town represented Guderian’s objective, here his men would link up with the First Panzer. But did Stavka really think holding on to yet another town would save two-thirds of a million men? Initially, only about ten tanks from the 10th Tank Division stood in Model’s way. Soviet activity
became frantic as the northern and southern jaws of the German encirclement got closer. On 8 September, Zhukov (relieved as Red Army Chief of Staff, but still a member of the Military Soviet) called for Timoshenko to replace Budenny at the helm of the Southwest Direction. On the next day, Stavka finally told the Southwest Front to reorient the 5 th and 37th Armies away from the direct threat posed by Army Group South and against Guderian’s oblique menace. On the 10th, Stalin fired his old crony Budenny for insubordination and Timoshenko arrived two days later to take over the ill-fated Southwest Direction. But half measures such as these amounted to the military equivalent of ‘rearranging deck chairs on the
Titanic’
. On the same day, Stalin ordered 90 percent of the air assets in the Kiev sector against Romny. So tough was the Soviet defense that Model required two days to capture the town, which his men did on the 11th.
²⁶

Panzers

Panzers, German tanks, symbolize the Wehrmacht and the blitzkrieg to many. As is the case with the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, Hitler began the war a few years too early for the Panzerwaffe. Training models, PzKw I and II, plus inadequate foreign types, such as the Czech 35(t), predominated in the force. Together with command panzers (no actual main gun at all) these 4 vehicle types made up 1,492 of the 3,512 panzers available to the 17 panzer divisions present on Barbarossatag, or 42 percent. Of course the Germans had other AFVs in their arsenal that day, armored cars, half-tracks and Sturmgeschütze. But of all these, panzers made up the main currency. It is a well-known fact that the Germans did not have the best or most numerous tanks during the war. But those they did have were adaptable, generally had three-man turrets and in the hands of trained crews, could generally prevail in a fair fight.