War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (15 page)

The Soviet Ambassador in Berlin, Wladimir Dekanosow, had been attempting to contact the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, without success. Valentin Bereschkow, his First Secretary and interpreter, recalled: ‘It appeared that the Reich’s Foreign Minister was not in Berlin, but was at the Führer’s headquarters.’ Dekanosow, irritated, had been denied access. He was still unable to protest against the German border overflights.

In the German Foreign Office, Erich Sommer, a Russian-speaking interpreter, was informed by his legation head, Herr Strack, to call Bereschkow at the Soviet Embassy. Ribbentrop would see the Russian Ambassador now. Sommer and Strack drove off to the Russian Embassy to escort the Soviet delegation back. Before they left, Strack informed Sommer that war was to be declared against the Soviet Union, ‘but it had yet to be done’. As the official car drove along the Wilhelmstrasse on the return journey, the sun was only just beginning to rise. The occupants were preoccupied with their thoughts over the coming interview. Dekanosow felt at last he may be able to deliver his long-overdue protest. Sommer recalled his ironic remarks as the car glided past familiar Berlin landmarks. ‘It promises to be a beautiful day,’ the Soviet Ambassador said.
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Josef Goebbels, the Reich’s Propaganda Minister, was anticipating the forthcoming radio proclamation and press conference. ‘Radio, press and newsreel are mobilised,’ he wrote in his diary: ‘Everything runs like clockwork.’
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Telephones had been ringing since 03.00 hours summoning the press. ‘What is it this time?’ many asked. Had the British decided to give up? Was the victorious Wehrmacht announcing a new objective? Cars sped through the dew-covered
Tiergarten
(zoo) towards the press conference room. It seemed it would be yet another hot stifling day.

Dekanosow and Bereschkow were led in at 04.00 hours to see Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. Erich Sommer, present as interpreter, witnessed all that transpired. The Foreign Minister was leaning lightly on his desk. Dekanosow attempted to raise the issue of certain ‘infringements’ affecting both nations but Ribbentrop did not take the matter up. Instead he indicated to his envoy Schmidt who began to read a memorandum ‘in which,’ Sommer said, ‘the Soviet Union was accused of systematically dismantling German-Soviet co-operation’. As Bereschkow and Sommer were about to interject to translate, the Soviet Ambassador stopped them. For nearly half an hour Schmidt continued reading, itemising Soviet border infringements both in the air and on the ground. The Memorandum continued:

‘Unfortunately, because of these unfriendly and provocative actions on the part of the Soviet Union, the German Government is obliged to meet the threat with all available military means.’

Sommer observed that, significantly, ‘the Memorandum did not end with a declaration of war. Hitler had expressly directed that the words “declaration of war” were not to appear in the text.’
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Bereschkow could hardly believe what he heard. The Soviet Union was allegedly threatening Germany. In fact a Soviet attack was pending. Hitler had to protect the German people. Therefore, already – two hours before – German troops had crossed the border.

Ribbentrop stood up and offered the Soviet envoy his hand. ‘The Ambassador,’ Bereschkow said, ‘was very nervous, and I think even a little drunk.’ Dekanosow, not surprisingly, ignored the gesture. ‘He declared that the German invasion was an aggression and the German Reich would soon very much regret launching this attack.’ Sommer saw the Soviet Ambassador ‘go red as a lobster and clench his fists’. He repeatedly said: ‘I regret this so much.’

As Bereschkow followed his ambassador from the room, Ribbentrop unexpectedly approached him and whispered close to his ear that ‘he was against this war. He still wanted to convince Hitler not to begin a war which he himself viewed as a catastrophe for Germany.’ Bereschkow was unmoved. He was damning in his interpretation of these events after the war, declaring: ‘in fact, there was no actual diplomatic declaration of war’. ‘Stalin strove,’ he believed, ‘right up to the last moment, to avoid the war.’ Diplomatic norms had been perverted, in his view, to maximise the military impact of surprise. He stated during interviews:

‘We had not evacuated any Soviet citizens from Germany. Even family dependents and children were still there. All German families had been evacuated from Moscow before 21 June, with the exception of some embassy staff. There were still about one hundred German diplomats in Moscow at the outbreak of war, whereas in Germany something like a thousand remained. It is absolutely clear that when someone initiates an attack, first of all, he evacuates his people. That was not the case with us.’
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Shortly after the painful interview, at 05.30 hours Ribbentrop announced to the world’s press that the war was already two hours old. Only 21 months previously he had returned from Moscow with his greatest diplomatic triumph: the German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship.

Meanwhile Liszt’s
Les Préludes
sounded as a fanfare across countless wireless sets in the Reich. ‘The High Command of the Wehrmacht announced the news of the invasion of Russia to the German people,’ Goebbels grandly wrote in his diary:

‘The new fanfare sounds. Filled with power, booming and majestic. I read the Führer’s proclamation to the German people over all stations. A solemn moment for me.’

Afterwards he drove home to his Schwanenwerder lake residence in Berlin. ‘The burden of many weeks and months falls away,’ he wrote: ‘A glorious wonderful hour has struck, when a new empire is born. Our nation is making her way up into the light.’ Goebbels had every reason to feel pleased with himself. A diplomatic and military triumph was now in the offing. Surprise for this new campaign had most certainly been achieved. At Schwanenwerder the sun was now up ‘standing full and beautiful in the sky’; he allowed himself ‘two hours of deep, healing sleep’.
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By the time he awoke, on the new
Ostfront,
artillery NCO Helmut Pabst was already feeling a hard-bitten veteran. He wrote in his diary on 22 June:

‘The advance went on. We moved fast, sometimes flat on the ground, but irresistibly. Ditches, water, sand, sun. Always changing position. Thirsty. No time to eat. By ten o’clock we were already old soldiers and had seen a great deal: abandoned positions, knocked out armoured cars, the first prisoners, the first dead Russians.’
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Josef Deck with Artillery Regiment 71 near Brest-Litovsk vividly remembers a Feldwebel talking in subdued tones on the way to their final firing positions. This NCO did not share the Reich Propaganda Minister’s optimism. His view was that:

‘A war was beginning in the East before that in the West appeared won. Moreover it had occurred to him that Germany had already once before come to grief in a two-front war.’
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The first Soviet pocket is formed – Brest-Litovsk

Georgij Karbuk had listened to the pleasant melodies of an orchestra in Brest-Litovsk the night before. As dawn broke on 22 June he was rudely awakened by his father. ‘Get up,’ he declared, ‘it’s war!’ Karbuk was immediately aware of the sounds of battle. ‘It was not a case of hearing single shots,’ he remembered, ‘it was a whole barrage. The artillery firing on the fortress.’ Out in the street soldiers were running. ‘What’s up?’ the Karbuks asked. They said: ‘Can’t you see?, It’s war!’
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Maj-Gen A. A. Korobkov, the commander of the Fourth Soviet Army, hastily despatched a situation report from his headquarters in Kobrin to the Western Special Military District in Minsk. Released at 06.40 hours, it read:

‘I report: at 04.15 hours on 22 June 1941 the enemy began to fire on the fortress at Brest and the region of the town of Brest. At the same time enemy aviation began to bomb the airfields at Brest, Kobrin and Pruzhany. By 06.00 hours artillery shelling intensified in the region of Brest. The town is burning… ’
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‘We youngsters did not want to believe in a war,’ admitted Georgij Karbuk, ‘it was something too far away for us.’ Suppressed suspicions were overtaken by the grim reality of events.

‘We had a foreboding that war would soon break out. We had certainly seen the Germans behind the Bug, but in spite of this we did not want to believe it. Then when we saw the first wounded and dead lying on the pavement and all the blood – we had to believe that now there would be war.’
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Katschowa Lesnewna worked as a nursing sister in the surgical hospital located within 36 buildings on the South Island. ‘Immediately with the initial bombardment,’ she said, ‘the buildings forming the surgical clinic went up in flames, as did the others.’ There was outrage. ‘We thought the Fascists would spare the hospital;’ she complained, ‘there was a large red cross painted on the roof. At the same time there were the first wounded and dead.’
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Wooden buildings burned furiously.

Unteroffizier Helmut Kollakowsky, a German infantry NCO, spoke in awe of the opening bombardment:

‘Someone told us that at 03.15 hours an overwhelming barrage would come, and it would be so strong, that we would be able to cross the Bug unhindered. It is impossible to contemplate any resistance after such an opening bombardment.’
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Gerd Habedanck observed the preliminary barrage secure within the battalion HQ bunker of one of the 45th Infantry Division’s assaulting units. They heard a single artillery report break the stillness, then:

‘We had barely heard it when the earth shook, boomed and rolled. Strong draughts of air blew into our faces… I risked a quick look outside the casement. The sky over us was lit up bright red. An infernal whistling, droning and crackle of explosions filled the air. Young willows were bent over as if in a storm… It is still not yet quite light and thick clouds of smoke darken the sky.’
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Wochenschau
German newsreel cameramen were on hand to record the destruction. The films show mushrooms of smoke jetting up from the flash of impacts on the citadel walls; in the foreground, German artillery observers wriggle into better positions to see. Targets smothered in explosions disappear behind clouds of ground-hugging smoke and dust. Here and there, larger-calibre shell strikes abruptly shoot up huge geysers of smoke towering above the rest.

Chaplain Rudolf Gschöpf with 45th Division recalled: ‘as 03.15 hours struck, a hurricane broke loose and roared over our heads, to a degree never experienced before or indeed later in the war.’
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Hermann Wild was in a dinghy precariously weighed down by 37mm anti-tank guns. Alongside Infantry Regiment 130, he was part of the southern attack axis assaulting across the River Bug, and he saw ‘the air filled with metal at a stroke’. Sheltering in a slit trench, ‘one was shoved from side to side by the rhythmic explosion and concussion of shells’.
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Most of Wild’s company achieved the crossing during the short opening bombardment. The plan appeared to be working. Gschöpf described how:

‘This all-embracing gigantic barrage literally shook the earth. Great fountains of thick black smoke sprang up like mushrooms from the ground. As no counter fire was evident at that moment, we thought everything in the citadel must already have been razed to the ground.’
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Gerd Habedanck’s battalion began the assault river crossing of the Bug. His subsequent correspondent’s account atmospherically recreated the scene:

‘One boat after the other slid into the water. There were excited cries, splashing and the howling of assault boat engines. Not a shot from the other bank as blood red flames dance in the water. We jump on shore and press forwards.’
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Gefreiter Hans Teuschler, in the second assault wave of Infantry Regiment 135, was with the northern axis. He watched the rubber dinghies of the first wave enter the river at 03.19 hours. Artillery fire lashed the ground ahead, creeping forward in 100m jumps every four minutes, coinciding with the time it was estimated each wave would need to cross the river. ‘The sky was filled with bursting shells of every calibre,’ Teuschler observed. ‘It was an awful roaring, exploding, crackling and howling as if hell was actually about to come on earth.’ Even the attacking soldiers were intimidated. ‘An uncanny feeling came over us all,’ the NCO admitted.
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The two-pronged assault on the citadel of Brest-Litovsk was pressed home furiously. Two battalions (I and III) from Infantry Regiment 135 penetrated the North and West islands on the northern axis, while to the south two other battalions from Regiment 130 (I and III) attacked the South Island, attempting to bypass Brest town further south, following the line of the River Muchaviec. The imperative was to secure bridges for the Panzers. Leutnant Zumpe’s 3rd Company sprinted across the four-span railway bridge to the north. They passed the customs post through which, barely an hour before, the last goods train from Russia had rolled. They took fire from a dug-out. Soldiers continued to skirmish forward until a dull thud signified it had been despatched with explosives by accompanying assault pioneers. An urgent survey of the bridge’s superstructure revealed a demolition charge on the central pier. This was disconnected and dropped into the river. Zumpe flashed a green light toward the home bank. German armoured cars began to cross immediately. Within 15 minutes of the start of the assault XIIth Corps Headquarters received the anticipated signal: ‘Railway bridge secured intact’.
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