Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (18 page)

On 30 October, the first Germans, a company of sixty men under a 19–year–old lieutenant, entered Tula’s suburbs. Some Ju–52s managed to drop supply canisters from a height of 15m: many canisters broke into pieces upon impact with the frozen rock-hard ground. Fighting raged around Count Leo Tolstoy’s estate, which the Germans tried not to damage. Dead Landsers were buried right next to the author’s grave. On the same day, Hitler gave approval to the plan for the final push to surround Moscow. Seemingly divorced from reality on the ground, he ordered Guderian to attack over Kashira, swing around in a counter–clockwise direction east of Moscow, in order to meet up with Third Panzer Army coming from the opposite bearing. But, Second Panzer
still had not solved the riddle of Tula; the city blocked the road to Moscow and could not be taken frontally. Fairly large (pre–war population: 300,000), it had many factories, elevations that offered good observation and fields of fire plus other features that favored the defense. On 8 November, near Uslovia, Boldin launched a preemptive attack against the master himself. Guderian’s men occupied a great arc east, south and west of Tula: left to right, XLVII Panzer (General of Panzer Troops Joachim Lemelsen, 18th Panzer, 10th, 25th and 29th Motorized Divisions), LIII Corps (General of Infantry Karl Weisenberger, 167th and 112th Infantry), XXIV Panzer (General of Panzer Troops Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, 3rd, 4th, 17th Panzer, Grossdeutschland) and XLIII Corps (General of Infantry Gotthard Heinrici, 31st and 131st Infantry). Panzer strength of the three assaulting divisions was pitiable: 3rd Panzer Division –52 operational machines, 4th Panzer – 35, 17th Panzer – 15.
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Guderian launched his last attack at 0500 hours on 18 November. Aiming at Kolomna, and with Stukas flying overhead, he split the Western and Southwestern Fronts. Some 3rd Panzer troops captured an 80m bridge near Kamenka. However, four days into his last offensive, Guderian wanted to quit due to an extended eastern flank, debilitating weather and mounting casualties. The next day, the 23rd, von Bock even flew to his headquarters to urge the panzer general on to Kolomna. Everywhere the Germans made analogies to the Marne in 1914, and warned about the dangers of a premature halt to their attacks. The 17th Panzer somehow staggered into Kashira on the Oka River (last natural obstacle before Moscow), opening the road to Stalin’s capital and established a feeble defense of scattered outposts. Boldin’s 50th Army was at the end of its endurance, which alarmed Zhukov. Stavka sent in the 2nd Cavalry Corps (renamed the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps on the 26th), which counterattacked under heavy Red Army Air Force CAS on the 26th. This shock stunned the 17th Panzer and marked the beginning of the end for Guderian’s thrust. After over five months of campaigning, by the end of November, 4th Panzer strength had sunk to 21 operational panzers, 18 artillery pieces and 4 infantry battalions with an average bayonet strength of 600 each. The XXIV Panzer tried to complete the encirclement of Tula, but only managed to cut rail and road connections to Moscow by 3 December. Guderian personally marched with the Landsers of XLIII Corps in order to share the hardships of his troops. The enemy only got stronger. At 0140 hours on 3 December, Army Group Center ordered its units to assume the defensive. The next day, OKH joined Second and Second Panzer Armies together as Armeegruppe Guderian.
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The end date of Operation Barbarossa is usually given as 5 December, the day the Soviet general counteroffensive began. In reality, the campaign culminated days or even perhaps weeks earlier as Zhukov mastered successive
and sequential threats with successive and sequential reactions. With Moscow in sight, the German generals could not perform successfully in the climactic and ‘war winning’ battle they had always wanted. That November, von Kluge especially made a complete hash of Typhoon’s Schwerpunkt by ignoring repeated calls to action from von Bock, the three panzer generals and many others. The Ostheer had yet another huge force defending Moscow, ripe for the taking, but it could not pull off this penultimate Vernichtungschlacht. German exhaustion and strategic overstretch, weak logistics, Soviet resistance plus climate and terrain all conspired to deny the blitzkrieg its punch. It came up short with the perfect target for another operational victory to its immediate front. For the Second Panzer Army the glory days were over, the last three and a half years of the war would be drudgery by comparison.

General Zhukov had been husbanding reserves around Moscow and starting on 5 December he loosed them on Army Group Center in an increasing torrent. He succeeded in turning the tables of operational maneuver against the Ostheer. A major goal of Stalin’s counteroffensive was the destruction of the two panzer spearheads north and south of Moscow. In view of the greater threat posed by Third and Fourth Panzer Armies north and northwest of the capital, Zhukov began there. Knowing it would soon be Second Panzer’s turn, on the 6th, von Bock gave Guderian permission to withdraw to better defensive positions as far back as the Don and Shat Rivers, slightly east of Tula. For his part, Guderian had already been considering pulling back to the Plava River, west of the city. However, Zhukov struck on 8 December, before Guderian had a chance to withdraw. The 10th and 50th Armies of Zhukov’s Western Front aimed straight at Second Panzer headquarters and its only railhead at Orel.
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The 10th Motorized Division, guarding Guderian’s long and exposed eastern flank was partially encircled but largely managed to escape. However, Zhukov created a huge gap between the XXIV Panzer and XLIII Corps through which poured twenty-two rifle divisions and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps. By 10 December, von Bock seemed on the verge of losing his nerve and began to speak in terms of a general retreat of ‘Napoleonic proportions’. The OKH had no help to give although decisions now came fast and furious. On the 14th, with the entire Tula front about to implode, von Brauchitsch, in one of his last official acts as Army Commander in Chief, flew to Roslavl to meet von Kluge and Guderian. The following day Hitler ordered Second Panzer to hold its ground, although he would permit it to ‘straighten out’ the Tula Line. But Hitler could not make up his mind and for two more days issued conflicting guidance. That all changed around midnight on the 16th when the Fuhrer finally decided on his defensive strategy. As he told von Bock: fanatical resistance
and not one step back. On 19 December, von Bock went on medical leave and von Brauchitsch tendered his resignation.
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The day before, Hitler ordered Second Panzer to plug the gap between XXIV Panzer and XLIII Corps. The latter formation had stubbornly stuck to Fourth Army and had therefore swung northwest, while XXIV Panzer and the mass of Second Panzer fell away to the southwest down the Tula-Orel road. Boldin’s advanced units occupied Kaluga and the 10th Army reached Belev, both on 20 December. In his vanity, Guderian still believed he had significant influence with Hitler, so on that same day flew to Fuhrer headquarters on his own initiative (and over the head of von Kluge, von Bock’s replacement). There, instead of showing the expected fighting resolve, he presented withdrawal plans, and for his pains received a viscous dressing down for his ‘insane scheme’. The general saw no way out; his men were forced into making do with a mere 360 tons of supplies per day. His panzer strength had dropped from a 970 (initial issue plus reinforcements) to 70 machines in running order and another 168 in various stages of repair. Unbeknownst to the Germans, this mid-December crisis coincided with the end of Phase I of the Soviet counteroffensive (Stavka now considered Moscow out of immediate danger). To complicate matters, Zhukov recreated the Bryansk Front, and in Phase II, planned to smash through Guderian’s right, and cut off Army Group Center near Mstensk.
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Guderian’s problems were not over.

A change of organizational boundaries on 21 December made Kaluga the Fourth Army and von Kluge’s problem. But Guderian’s personal crisis neared its finale. He spent all day on the 22nd with the 296th Infantry Division, the front of which had been penetrated in many places. On the following day, he unilaterally pulled the division behind the Oka River. Within 24 hours, von Kluge told him that Hitler would not allow such a retreat. The army group commander in turn telephoned Halder, explaining that Guderian had begun to withdraw the entire Second Panzer, and if that formation pulled back, the neighboring Second Army would have to as well. Halder recommended a court martial for Guderian. By Christmas Day, Hitler had had enough, and gave von Kluge permission to ‘do what is necessary’ with the panzer expert. The field marshal cashiered Guderian that same day, while Hitler prohibited a farewell message to the panzer army.
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Armeegruppe Guderian became Armeegruppe Schmidt the following day, named after acting Second Army commander, General of Panzer Troops Rudolf Schmidt. Schmidt tried to accomplish Hitler’s orders to his predecessor but had only one division, 4th Panzer, even remotely capable of closing the gap with Fourth Army. It duly attacked toward Belev on the 27th, got stuck in the deep snow and had to turn back having accomplished nothing. Making better
progress than Zhukov expected, the 10th and 50th Armies continued west toward Sukhinichi. In view of these Soviet successes, it looked for a while as though Schmidt might have to give up both Orel and Kursk. However, by the first week of January 1942, after nearly a month on the offensive, the Red Army ran out of steam just as German defenses began to stabilize. For the next eighteen months, both sides could only manage to launch tactical operations of barely a couple divisions’ strength. The gash in the German lines had grown to almost 80km wide at its mouth and over 100km deep, but Zhukov lacked the reserves to exploit this success. By 9 January, the Second Panzer and Fourth Army fronts trailed off toward Kirov in the west, and this town marked 10th Army’s limit of advance. Headquarters XXIV Panzer– soldiers of the actual corps headquarters – manned a portion of the line. In the middle of a sea of red, 216th Infantry Division plus some support troops occupied a now–isolated outpost at the Sukhinichi railroad junction.
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Despite Stavka’s exhortations that German resistance at Sukhinichi ‘at all costs had to be broken down’, the 216th Infantry managed to survive on hard fighting and random air-dropped supplies. On 15 January, Hitler ordered Sukhinichi rescued, originally in a combined Second Panzer and Fourth operation (but the Fourth was otherwise occupied and did not participate). A day later, Schmidt gave XXIV Panzer Corps the mission of relieving the beleaguered garrison. At Zhizdra, von Schweppenburg assembled portions of 18th Panzer (fresh from chasing down rampaging Red cavalry and partisans near the city of Bryansk, but down to only a dozen panzers) and 208th Infantry Divisions to attack northeast along the rail line to Moscow. This tiny task force took the 323rd Rifle Division by surprise and in general, the Soviets reacted slowly. By the 24th, the Kampfgruppe had opened a 50km corridor and managed to evacuate 1,000 German wounded. Even Zhukov panicked over the possible threat to his hard-won salient and ordered Rokossovsky to retake the town with his 10th and (newly created) 16th Armies. Initially Hitler insisted on keeping Sukhinichi, but later relented, requiring only that Schmidt keep it within artillery range. Red Army troops liberated the town on the 29th.
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With Soviet exhaustion and the coming spring rasputitsa, action along the Army Group Center front began to resemble First World War positional warfare. On 6 February, von Kluge ordered Schmidt to change direction to the northwest and attack to close the hole in army group lines at Kirov. But with only forty-five operational panzers and XXIV Panzer stuck in exposed positions fewer that 10km from Sukhinichi, this was impossible. A month later von Kluge and Schmidt met and agreed to withdraw from the Belev and Sukhinichi salients, which indeed happened by early April. That spring of 1942, the Wehrmacht reoriented its efforts to the southern theater so that
reinforcements dried up and many units deployed to Army Group South. The winter counteroffensive had certainly shocked the Germans, caused massive casualties and saved Moscow from danger. However, the Soviets were not easy on themselves. They identified three main reasons for not accomplishing all they set out to achieve: 1. Overestimating their chances of success; 2. Failure to concentrate reserves so that there were seldom enough at breakthroughs, and; 3. Failure to concentrate tank and cavalry forces to develop a main effort, therefore allowing the Germans to reestablish their defenses.
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During the autumn of 1942 they would show how well they had learned these lessons.

The Second Panzer’s rear areas between the cities of Bryansk and Kirov were heavily forested and had become a massive sanctuary for partisans that required much effort by Schmidt’s men to combat. One major cleansing operation was Operation Vogelsang. Led by XLVII Panzer Corps headquarters, 6,000 men from the 339th Infantry and 707th Security Divisions tried to clear 12,000 square miles of marches and forests. These men fought in terrible conditions against hidden enemies, mosquitoes as much as partisans and accomplished little during the period 6 June to 4 July 1942. Another major mission that spring was participation in the Wehrmacht’s deception plan to trick the Soviets into thinking the Germans planned to renew the assault against Moscow. With Army Group Center occupying approximately the same area it had in November 1941, Operation Kremlin was not so far fetched. Phony orders went out to Second Panzer to recapture Tula. Stavka continued to expect an attack on Moscow even weeks after Operation Blau should have indicated to them that Hitler really wanted the Caucasus oil region and Stalingrad.
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Once the Soviets realized their mistake, they planned their own attacks along the northern and central theaters in order to attempt to take pressure off the more critical southern. On 5 July, elements of 16th, 61st and 3rd Armies attacked against the 18th and 19th Panzer and 52nd Infantry Divisions around Belev and Zhizdra. The common (at that time of the war) Red Army handicaps, weak coordination and poor combined arms tactics, condemned the effort. After losing 446 tanks, they called off the attack. Von Kluge tried his hand attacking with Operation Wirbelwind, 11–24 August. This shoestring operation suffered from many false starts and constant draining off of assault forces to threatened sectors elsewhere within Army Group Center. Eventually, four panzer divisions operating in two pairs launched an attack on either side of Ulyanovo, part way between Belev and Kirov, aiming past the old Sukhinichi battlefield. The 11th Panzer gained 12km on the first day, the other three divisions, just 2km. By 14 August, one panzer division had a small bridgehead over the Zhizdra River. Von Kluge’s pep talk at the panzer army’s command post
that day did little to change things. This time the Soviets were not deceived and did not overreact: they boxed in the bridgehead with a large minefield. When 16th Army counterattacked on the 24th, the Germans evacuated the bridgehead.
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Except for these anti-partisan operations, both sides settled down to many months of static defense and mutual harassment.