Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (31 page)

At midnight on 16 December, Hitler believed he could halt the rout with a new ‘stand fast’ order, but Stalin’s offensive had not yet run its course. An SS man in Motorized Division Reich penned these lyrics, sung to the tune of ‘Lili Marlene’:

Auf der Strass’ von Moskau zieht ein Battalion
es sind die Letzten Reste von unser Division.
Wir sehen Moskau schon von ferne stehen
jedoch wir musten stiften gehen.
Wie einst Napoleon, wie einst Napoleon ..
.

A battalion on the road to Moscow pulls away
From our division it is all that remains.
From afar we see Moscow standing
Nevertheless we must get going.
Like Napoleon once, like Napoleon once . . .
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On the right, 78th and 267th Infantry divisions were smashed. ‘Hiwis’, Soviet POWs now working with the Germans, no longer simply drove trucks and cooked food, they fought at the front and manned artillery pieces. Landsers wore women’s sweaters to ward off the cold. Another SS man, Sturmbahn–Führer Dr Roschmann, wrote about his experiences as a physician in a field hospital in mid-December:

There was no rest day and night. We got lice from the infected wounded. There were many severely wounded, many amputations, stomach and lung shots, fractured bones. We had the tragic certainty that all of them, despite their need for quiet, must shortly be transported in unfavorable conditions. That, and the uncertainty about the right time to order transport, wore heavily on my nerves ... We quickly eat in the operating room, a bite of bread and a gulp of coffee, because we have to take a break until the new wounded are brought in. The excised scraps of skin, the blood-stained uniforms and amputated members have to be taken away. Our eyes are teary, heavy and drooping, our legs have no feeling, we are sick from the bloody work and the lice bites. When the next wounded is brought in it is understood that we have to concentrate on him like he was the first one when we were fully rested. We can cut through the air because it is so heavy from the heat and instrument sterilizer, and because of the many bodies that work so close together. The smells and the haze . . .
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By the 19th, both von Brauchitsch and von Bock were gone, Guderian and Hoepner and others would soon follow. Recalling his combat during the First World War, Hitler took direct command of the Army in addition to his many other duties. Only the day before, Hoepner had warned his superiors that Fourth Panzer was at risk of being vaporized by the Soviet onslaught, leaving a gaping hole in the front. But exactly the opposite occurred: on the same day the Führer took over the Army, the panzer army quickly managed to take new positions along the Ruza after breaking contact with the 5th and 33rd Armies near Solnechnogorsk. About 24 hours later it looked like five Soviet armies had ground to an ignominious halt. However, by 20 December, Hoepner’s V Corps, battered from its direct assault on Moscow and long retreat east, managed to hold the 15km space between the Ruza and Lama Rivers southeast of Volokolamsk. Its parent organization and left neighbor, Fourth and Third Panzer Armies respectively, helped to shore up the corps and secure the line. Somehow, the line held past Christmas Day, reinforced by a battalion flown directly to the front from Germany armed only with pistols and wearing regular shoes. That it managed to retain its positions past New Year’s Day almost defies explanation. Perhaps the three best reasons are that Hitler’s ‘stand fast’ order had some merit, that Stalin had overreached Soviet capabilities and that the assaulting Red Army formations had also suffered tremendous losses.
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The Fourth Panzer’s positions on 1 January 1942 projected dangerously on either side of the Warsaw–Moscow highway, centered on Mozhaisk. Its Ruza and Nara River Line stood firm as Third Panzer and Fourth Armies faded away to the west. Amazingly, they still stood within 70km of Moscow’s center. When, on the next day Hoepner asked about the possibility ofa planned withdrawal, a ‘categorical’ denial came back as the answer. On the day after that, von Bock’s replacement as Army Group Center commander, von Kluge ordered Fourth Panzer to launch a counterattack to regain contact with Fourth Army’s left flank, now wide open near Maloyaroslavets. Hoepner needed five days to make preparations for the attack. By that time the situation had changed, Soviet forces now threatened the panzer army’s right but von Kluge insisted the assault go off as planned. The commander of the now-endangered XX Corps told Hoepner his corps would perish if forced to continue attacking as it had on 7–8 January and not withdraw. Von Kluge, not the type of general to make a decision or take responsibility himself, said he would phone Halder who in turn said he would contact Hitler. By January 1942, the Führer had not yet reached the point where he would throw corps away like so much spare change (that only came later in the war), so all concerned figured they had a fifty-fifty chance XX Corps could be saved. However, when no permission arrived, Hoepner authorized the withdrawal of the corps’ slower troops on his
own authority. There is reason to believe that von Kluge misrepresented Hoepner’s case to OKH. And 24 hours later, about midnight on the 9th, von Kluge telephoned Hoepner to say that Hitler had relieved the panzer army commander of his duties. General of Infantry Richard Ruoff, until then commanding the embattled V Corps, took over Fourth Panzer.
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The 35km withdrawal that cost Hoepner his career meant Fourth Panzer relinquished the Nara portion of its line. On 13 January, Führer Headquarters authorized the exact same withdrawal that Hoepner advocated, anticipating a bizarre command behavior common later in the war that brutally punished a field commander for some misdeed, then in a prudently retroactive manner approved of the same course of action hours or days later. The following day, von Kluge gave the army group permission ‘in principle’ to withdraw to the Konigsberg Line (when he gave the word), which so far as Fourth Panzer was concerned, meant either side of the highway, just east of Gzhatsk. He allowed movement to begin on the 18th, but then he micromanaged the entire operation. He would not allow a clean break that might make a retreat under enemy pressure, one of the more difficult military maneuvers, any easier. The large (eight divisions and four brigades) 5th Army captured Mozhaisk on 20 January but then the advance slowed. Other Red Army formations pursued, initially somewhat energetically, but later much less so: they too had taken a severe beating along the Nara-Ruza Line. Despite 33rd Army’s movement (itself eight divisions) and a sizeable cavalry presence in the rear and along the boundary between Fourth and Fourth Panzer Armies, Ruoff generally honored the Konigsberg Line. In this, on 21 January, Stavka greatly aided Army Group Center by withdrawing the 1st Shock and 16th Armies. On 3 February, the 20th Panzer, attacking south from Gzhatsk, met the Fourth Army’s XII Corps coming north from Yukhonov, closing the gap in the middle of the army group’s front.
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The 33rd Army represented the Soviet effort along the Moscow theater in microcosm: while it had reached suburbs of Viazma, deep in Army Group Center’s rear and a key rail junction with lines going in all four cardinal directions, the 33rd became isolated from its comrades and the Germans eventually whittled it away. Stavka used every asset at its disposal: conventional forces, cavalry raids, partisan activities and even airborne operations. In this last case, in late January the Soviets made many numerous parachute jumps into the Viazma area, often into the Fourth Panzer Army sector. The 3rd Motorized Division history records this action:

We pushed into the town, and could tell that the partisans had left and had gone south into the next village. We had to change our
tactics: we had to go quickly into a village so that the partisans had no time to leave and alert the other villages. On the third day our entire battalion was ‘motorized’ on sleds. Each sled had hay on its undercarriage and on the hooves ofthe horses, and besides a Russian driver, a crew of two to three men. The crew was ready and aimed right and left behind the horses. We were able to fire on the move. That day was supposed to be our first attempt ... While one company went wide right another went left through the next village to keep the Russians from escaping while the main column attacked straight ahead into Semeshkovo. A platoon of the Brandenburger company rushed the village, opened fire and surprised the Russian’s security. We lamented three dead and five to six wounded, including the lieutenant and a platoon leader. In despair, the rest of the men took cover behind dead horses and overturned sleds until we had taken the villages. We settled in for the night.

At midnight, suddenly alarm. The Russians attacked. Shots go through windows and walls of the wooden houses. Everyone out and into the prepared positions in the snow. Finally quiet reigned. Then we heard the familiar sound of the motors of the Russian bombers. Quite slow and low over the snow, barely a hundred meters overhead. Their dark shadows rush over us. On the next day we saw impressions in the snow but no parachutes. Interrogation of POWs confirmed the suspicion [the Soviets had jumped without parachutes]. Dark spots reveal sacks thrown out full of welcome provisions. In the distance is a bi-plane on its nose, it had a hard luck crash landing.
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Phase II of the Stalin’s winter counteroffensive ended like the first: the Germans farther away from Moscow and pounded mercilessly, but the Soviets over optimistic and over extended. By early March, the ‘Africans’ of5th Panzer busied themselves clearing up pockets in the panzer army’s rear, first the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps and later remnants of the 33rd Army. Then in mid-March, the springtime half of the bi-annual rasputitsa struck. As the snow melted, Ziemke and Bauer relate how ‘corpses of men, animal cadavers, garbage and human waste that been frozen for weeks . . . began to thaw thus . . . raising the threat of an epidemic’ for both armies.
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Zhukov kept up the pressure, despite the conventional wisdom that operations came to a halt during that season. By mid-April even these threats diminished as the combined factors of casualties, enemy action, weather, insufficient logistics, illness and others brought both sides to a halt.
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Of the six German armies that the Soviets brutally shoved back from Moscow that winter, Fourth Panzer perhaps fared best. Like the other three panzer armies during Stalin’s winter offensive, it can hardly be considered to have played a significant operational role. It had fought to maintain itself on the battlefield, despite losses, non-existent logistic support, the weather and the Red Army. While it was not employed as an operational-level weapon in the sense used in this book, it had remained intact, had not allowed any major breaches in its lines and, in fact, had negated a significant danger to Army Group Center’s lines of communications. The OKH pulled out the panzer army headquarters and sent it back to the Army’s reserve where it would refit and assume command of new and refurbished divisions in preparation for its next campaign: Operation Blau.

The strategic background for the Wehrmacht’s 1942 campaign against the Caucasus oil region and Stalingrad has been explained in Chapter Two. The experience of Fourth Panzer in 1942 would be very different from its sister panzer armies. Toward the end of April, Seventeenth Army commander Hermann Hoth prepared to go to Germany on leave, when he was told that upon his return he would take command of a new Fourth Panzer Army. When he did come back, he once again fell under von Bock, now commanding general of Army Group South. Hoth’s first mission would be to first attack to seize Voronezh, then turn hard right behind the main Soviet defenses to Korotoyak on the Don River. The assumed start date was approximately 15 June, and within thirty days of that, OKH expected to have laid the groundwork for a massive, Barbarossa-style Kessel. During Phase II, it would continue along the Don to the area of Millerovo, link up with First Panzer and Sixth Armies a month later. In Blau III, First and Fourth Panzer Armies would come under Army Group A for the drive on Stalingrad and then capture the oil-rich Caucasus. As in the year before, the panzers would be joined with an infantry army, in this case von Weichs’ Second, into Armeegruppe Weichs, which also included the Hungarian 2nd Army.
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After nearly two weeks of delays due to other operations, weather and security breaches, Operation Blau began on 28 June. Near midnight on the eve of the offensive, the panzer army commander visited the assembly area of 1st Company, Fusilier Regiment 2 of Motorized Division Grossdeuschland. The company commander wrote:

I just had a meeting with my platoon leaders in a hut when one of my men reports, ‘The colonel general is here!’ I ran to report as my
men, some sleeping, some getting ready, some lying with weapons in foxholes call from group to group, ‘The colonel general is coming!’ and jump up to report. The small general on foot with his orderly at least two heads taller, came into our assembly area and winks, ‘Stay seated boys, don’t get up!’ (Bleibt sitzen, Kinder, bleibt liegen!) He recognized me when I reported and asked in a friendly manner if we are ready to advance and if we took casualties from the enemy air activity. By this visit we see that he is a man in motion. His eyes are constantly moving between the men. He is open-faced about thanking us about the expected massive attack and the unavoidable losses. Somewhat abruptly he asks, ‘Do you think all will go well?’ I answer, ‘What we can control will go well, and everyone will do the best he can.’ With that a thought occurred to me for the first time because of the colonel general’s question: the attack will go for sure the next morning. Colonel General Hoth indicated it would not be easy and then said quite literally, ‘Hopefully everything will go well!’ Once more he offered me his hand and wished me personally and my men, ‘Break a leg!’ (Hals und Beinbruch!)
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