Hitler's Commanders (9 page)

Leeb at once protested against this strategically ridiculous order, but it did no good: Hitler was insistent. This decision turned out to be one of the great blunders of the war. It tied down two German armies in a useless siege, which was finally broken in January 1944. Leningrad never fell.

Meanwhile, despite the lateness of the season, Hitler ordered a frustrated Field Marshal von Leeb to take the Tikhvin bauxite-producing region and occupy the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga—which would require an advance of 250 miles—in the middle of the Russian winter. Juergen von Arnim’s XXXIX Panzer Corps smashed the Soviet 4th Army and actually succeeded in capturing Tikhvin on November 8, but was met with fierce counterattacks from Stalin’s Siberian reserves, which forced it to retreat on November 15. By the time it limped back to its starting line, the XXXIX Panzer had been more than decimated. The 18th Motorized Division alone had suffered 9,000 casualties in the Tikhvin operation and was reduced to a strength of 741 men—about the size of a normal peacetime battalion.

By mid-December the Soviet winter offensive was in full swing, and Ritter von Leeb was wondering aloud if Hitler and Stalin were secretly allied against the German Army. Leeb also annoyed Hitler and the Nazis by protesting against the massacres of Soviet Jews by the SS, SD, and Lithuanian irregulars, and by his requests to retreat in spite of Hitler’s hold-at-all-costs orders. Still, there is no evidence that Hitler planned to sack Leeb, as he had done with Rundstedt, Guderian, and others who were much less anti-Nazi than Leeb. Instead, it was the marshal’s own growing sense of frustration that led to his downfall. On January 12, 1942, he requested permission to pull Count Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt’s II Corps out of Demyansk, to keep it from being encircled. Hitler rejected this request on the grounds that such salients tied down more Soviet than German troops. As a result, 100,000 badly needed German soldiers were surrounded a few days later; Leeb, however, refused to accept this kind of strategic reasoning and, on January 16, asked to be relieved of his command. He was placed in Fuehrer Reserve the next day and not employed again.

Leeb was arrested by the Western Allies at the end of the war and, in October 1948, at the age of 72, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment as a minor war criminal—a sentence that seems severe, given his record. After his release the old marshal, a relic of a bygone era, returned to Bavaria, where he died in the town of Hohenschwangau on April 29, 1956. He was 79 years old.

Wilhelm’s younger brother, Emil von Leeb (1881–1969), commanded the 15th Infantry Division (1936–1939) and Wehrkreis XI (1939) prior to World War II. Promoted to general of artillery on April 1, 1939, he led the XI Corps in the Polish campaign and was chief of the extremely important Army Weapons Office (
Heereswaffenamt
, or HWA) from March 1940 until January 1945, when he was replaced by Walter Buhle. He was discharged from the army on May 1, 1945.

georg von kuechler
succeeded Wilhelm von Leeb as commander-in-chief, Army Group North, on January 17, 1942, and was charged with the task of maintaining the Siege of Leningrad. As was the case with Leeb, this turned out to be his last command.

Kuechler was born in Schloss (Castle) Philippsruh, near Germersheim, on May 30, 1881, the son of an old Prussian Junker family. Educated in cadet schools, he joined the Imperial Army as an officer-cadet in the 25th Field Artillery Regiment at Darmstadt in 1900 and received his commission the following year. He continued to serve in the artillery until 1907, when he was transferred to the Military Riding School in Hanover. Promoted to first lieutenant in 1910, he spent the next three years at the War Academy, undergoing General Staff training. In 1913 he was assigned to the topographical section of the Greater General Staff in Berlin. When World War I broke out the following year, he was promoted to captain and given command of an artillery battery.

Captain von Kuechler distinguished himself in World War I, which he spent primarily on the Western Front. He served as a battery commander in the 9th Reserve Field Artillery Regiment on the Western Front (1914–January 1915), on the General Staff of the IV and VIII corps and as first General Staff officer (Ia) of the 206th Infantry and 9th Reserve divisions, all on the Western Front. After the war he was a General Staff officer to General Count Ruediger von der Goltz, who fought the Reds in the Baltic States in 1919 and 1920. Briefly a member of the Freikorps, Kuechler joined the Reichsheer in 1920 as a staff officer with the I Corps (later Wehrkreis I) in East Prussia.

Thoroughly Prussian in his attitude, despite a curious untidiness in his personal appearance, Kuechler advanced steadily during his postwar career. Initially, he served as an instructor in the Infantry School at Munich (1920–1921), followed by tours in the Army Construction Department (T-4) (1921–1923); as battery commander in the Hessian-Wuerttemberg 5th Army Regiment at Ulm (1923–1926); in the Infantry School at Ohrdruf, Thuringia, and then Dresden, Saxony (1926–1928); and in the Artillery School at Jueterbog, about 40 miles southwest of Berlin (1930–1932). He became Artillery Commander I at Koenigsberg, East Prussia, on October 1, 1932.
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He was promoted to major (1923), lieutenant colonel (1929), colonel (1931), and major general (April 1, 1934). In 1935, he was named inspector of army schools and promoted to lieutenant general. In 1937, he succeeded Brauchitsch as commander of Wehrkreis I and, on April 1, 1937, was promoted to general of artillery.

Kuechler had a very important and potentially dangerous command in those days, as East Prussia was surrounded on all three land sides by a hostile Poland. Kuechler coordinated with Nazi Party formations in matters of frontier defense, expanded the military forces in his area, and supported Hitler in the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis. Accompanied by Heinrich Himmler and Gauleiter Erich Koch, his forces occupied Memel, Lithuania, on March 23, 1939, in the last of Hitler’s bloodless conquests.

When the war broke out on September 1, 1939, Kuechler’s headquarters (redesignated 3rd Army) controlled seven infantry divisions, an ad hoc panzer division, and four brigade-size units. His forces took Danzig, helped clear the Polish Corridor, and pushed south toward Warsaw, against the Polish Modlin Army. Later, 3rd Army was diverted to the east, where it overran the Polish defenders on the Narew and Bug, and linked up with the Soviets.

After the fall of Poland, Kuechler’s headquarters was redesignated 18th Army (to fool Allied intelligence) and was sent west, where it was given the mission of conquering the Netherlands the following spring. For this task, Kuechler was given five infantry divisions, the SS-Verfuegungs Motorized Division, and the weak 9th Panzer Division, which was equipped mainly with light Czechoslovakian tanks. He also had the support of strong Luftwaffe forces and of the XI Air Corps—Germany’s parachute, glider, and air-transported combat forces, which seized key towns and bridges in the Dutch interior and held them until the ground forces arrived. As a result, Kuechler conquered the Netherlands in only five days, before the Dutch Army had time to mobilize. He then turned south, where his forces occupied Antwerp, and launched the final assault on Dunkirk on June 4, capturing 40,000 French soldiers whom the British Navy had been unable to evacuate.

During the second phase of the Battle of France, Georg von Kuechler was given the historic task of capturing Paris. Initially in reserve with six infantry divisions, 18th Army was not committed until the French were in full retreat. Paris was declared an open city on June 13, and the 218th Infantry Division took possession of the city on the morning of June 14, marching down the Champs-Elysees in parade formation. Kuechler, however, was always prouder of his capture of Dunkirk than of the French capital, which was already doomed before 18th Army was committed and fell virtually without opposition.

General von Kuechler had performed brilliantly in the campaign of 1940, often leading his men from the sidecar of a motorcycle, frequently exposing himself to enemy fire in order to help wounded enlisted men—a habit well calculated to inspire admiration in the ranks. His men loved him for these demonstrations of the compassion he felt for them. For his services in Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, Kuechler was promoted to colonel general on July 19, 1940. Then he was sent back to Poland, to guard the Reich’s new eastern borders against the Soviets. During Operation Barbarossa, his 18th Army formed the left wing of the German invasion, conquered the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), and, on Hitler’s orders, laid siege to Leningrad. When Ritter von Leeb asked to be relieved, he was replaced by Georg von Kuechler on January 17, 1942.

When Kuechler took command of Army Group North, the situation was already desperate. He controlled the 18th Army (General Georg Lindemann) and the 16th Army (Colonel General Ernst Busch), which together faced 12 Soviet armies. Kuechler had virtually no reserves, and his exhausted men had very little winter equipment or clothing in temperatures that dropped to 49 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Kuechler simply did not have the forces to man a continuous line, so he made the winter campaign in the northern sector a battle for the major crossroads, reasoning that the Soviets would not be able to resupply their spearheads once the spring thaw set in if he continued to hold these key positions. This strategy took considerable nerve, but Kuechler pulled it off.

The fighting centered on Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Kholm, and Demyansk. Because Hitler had forbidden withdrawals, Kholm was encircled on January 21 and Demyansk was surrounded on February 8. Both garrisons were resupplied by the Luftwaffe despite terrible losses. At Staraya Russa, the Soviets were thrown back only after hand-to-hand fighting in the streets.

Kuechler resorted to many improvised and patchwork measures to hold his strongpoints and to limit or seal off breakthroughs. He created ad hoc battalions of Latvian volunteers, used service troops and Luftwaffe ground units as infantry, and weakened several sectors (and took the risk of more Soviet breakthroughs) to reinforce key strongpoints. By early March, however, it became evident that he had mastered the crisis, and his front was more or less stabilized. Now he began a series of counterattacks aimed at destroying Soviet penetrations and rescuing the surrounded garrisons.

On March 15, Kuechler began an offensive on either side of the Soviet’s Volkhov salient. Four days later two Soviet armies were cut off. The battle to collapse the pocket was fierce, and fighting continued until July, but in the end 17 Red Army divisions were destroyed. Most of the defenders were killed; only 32,000 men surrendered.

Meanwhile, Kuechler made two unsuccessful attempts to rescue the garrison at Kholm. On May 5, however, the third attempt was successful, and the defenders were saved after a siege of 103 days.

To relieve the 100,000 men trapped around Demyansk, Kuechler created a special assault force of five divisions he carefully mustered near Staraya Russa. Under Lieutenant General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, these divisions began to advance on March 21 and penetrated five separate Soviet defensive lines and 24 miles of mud. Seydlitz reached the western edge of the pocket on April 20. It was May 2, however, before the German gains could be consolidated and a tenuous overland supply line established with the II Corps at Demyansk.

For Kuechler’s part in checking the Soviet winter offensive of 1941–1942 and for his subsequent victories, Adolf Hitler promoted him to field marshal on June 30, 1942.

The Siege of Leningrad was a problem that plagued Kuechler throughout his tenure of command at Army Group North and eventually ended his career. A planned German offensive in the fall of 1942 had to be cancelled because of the Stalingrad crisis, and after that about all Kuechler could do was to try to maintain his siege lines. He repelled several massive attacks in October, but on January 12, 1943, a dozen Red Army divisions struck at Schluesselburg and by the 19th had established a six-mile-wide corridor to the city, linking Leningrad to the outside world for the first time in 17 months.

Throughout 1943 Army Group North was neglected by Hitler and the High Command of the Army. From December 22, 1942, Kuechler lost eight divisions to other theaters, including both of his panzer divisions and two of his three motorized divisions. By October 10, 1943, he had 43 divisions: 30 infantry (almost all understrength), three jaeger (light divisions with only two infantry regiments), and three security divisions (with only two infantry regiments and no organic artillery). He had only one motorized infantry division. His other five divisions (four Luftwaffe Field divisions and a training division) were of little combat value. Nevertheless, in November 1943, Hitler forced him to commit five infantry divisions to the Battle of Nevel, on the extreme southern end of his line. Kuechler protested against this depletion of his reserve because he feared an imminent Soviet attack in the Leningrad sector but was curtly overruled.

Kuechler was right. In late December 1943, he was forced to give up three more divisions.
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He now had only 40 understrength divisions to defend some 500 miles of front at a time when a full-strength division could expect to successfully defend only about six miles against a determined attack. In late December, Kuechler urgently requested permission to abandon the Siege of Leningrad and retreat to the Panther Line in the west, a move that would shorten his defensive line by 120 miles. Hitler not only denied him permission but, as if to add injury to insult, also transferred three more infantry divisions (the veteran 1st, 96th, and 254th) to other sectors. All three were taken from 18th Army, which was facing Leningrad. Again Kuechler protested; again he was ignored.

The Soviet offensive struck 18th Army in full fury on January 14, 1944. On January 17 Georg Lindemann, the commander of 18th Army, requested permission to retreat, but Hitler refused to allow it. The situation continued to deteriorate until the following evening, when Kuechler signaled OKH that he intended to retreat that night, whether Hitler approved or not. Hitler did approve that night, but only after General Kurt Zeitzler informed him that the retreat was already in progress. The Fuehrer, however, would agree only to local withdrawals. No general withdrawal to the Panther Line was permitted. Finally, however, on the orders of Army Group North, 18th Army did begin a general retreat on January 30. It had suffered 31,000 casualties (including 14,000 killed) and was down to a strength of 17,000 men.