War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (26 page)

The appearance of the 34-ton T-34 caused much consternation to the German Panzerwaffe. Developed in relative secrecy six years before, its 76mm gun was the largest tank armament (apart from the 15cm KV-2) then mounted. Its 60% sloping armour was revolutionary in terms of the increased armoured protection it offered against flat trajectory anti-tank shells, which often simply ricocheted off. Josef Deck, a German artilleryman with Regiment 71 in the central sector, complained that the 37mm standard antitank fire ‘bounced off them like peas’.
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Adapting the American Christie suspension system, the T-34, with extra-wide tracks and a powerful lightweight diesel engine, possessed an enormous relative power-to-weight ratio, conferring superior mobility on the Russian vehicles. It was to prove the outstanding tank design of the war, and was a formidable adversary, even in the hands of a novice. Alexander Fadin, a T-34 commander, remarked:

‘As soon as you start the motor it begins throbbing, and you feel part of this powerful machine. You pick up speed and no obstacle can stop you. Nothing, not even a tree.’
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The vast majority of Soviet tanks, some three-quarters, were the T-26 series (approximately 12,000) while BT-2s, 5s and 7s made up a further 5,000. The remainder consisted of 1,200 T-34s and 582 heavier KV-1s and KV-2s. As a consequence 17,000 Soviet tanks were on an equal fighting footing or inferior to 979 PzKpfwIIIs and 444 PzKpfwIVs and superior to 743 PzKpfwIIs and 651 PzKpfw38(t)s, based on a captured Czech chassis. Other generally technically inferior or command variants made up the German difference with the notable exception of 250 Sturmgeschütz IIIs assault guns made up of 75mm guns on a PzKpfwIII chassis – that operated in independent units. They were heavily armoured, with a low hard-to-target profile; they proved lethal Russian tank killers, normally employed in close support of infantry. German armoured superiority stemmed not from technology but from the combat edge conferred by their trained crews. German crews were larger: five within the PzKpfwIII and IV and even four inside the small PzKpfw38(t). Russian crews numbered four in heavy tank prototypes or less. Panzers operated within a comprehensive radio net whereas the Russians had few radios and hardly any below battalion level. Control was executed using signal flags. Responsiveness in rapidly changing circumstances was therefore cumbersome.

German Panzer crews were well versed in battle drills developed over several recent campaigns and many of their junior commanders had combat experience. Russian tank crews, by contrast, tended laboriously to follow crest lines to aid visibility and control, presenting themselves as easy targets. The Soviet tank arm caught unprepared in the middle of reorganisations and major operational redeployments to frontier areas was presented with conflicting tactical and command dilemmas. Many of the older Russian tanks, estimated at 29%, required total overhaul on the eve of the invasion and 44% were due routine servicing.
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A key factor further bedevilling Soviet armour was the lack of air parity. Russian armoured columns were consistently and destructively harassed by the Luftwaffe while denied the accurate air intelligence freely available to their Panzer adversaries.

German tank crews were clearly shocked by the appearance of heavier and obviously superior Russian tanks. It did not square with the comfortable Untermensch (sub-human) perception of the Russians, fostered by overrunning squalid worker settlements early in the campaign. German cinema newsreels often poked fun at so-called ‘paradises for Soviet workers’, assuming German technological superiority was unassailable. Broadcasts in the Reich proclaimed German tank rounds ‘not only penetrated once, but came out the other side of Russian tanks as well’.
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Leutnant Helmut Ritgen of the 6th Panzer Division admitted after clashes with these previously unknown tank types that:

‘That day changed the character of tank warfare, as the KV represented a wholly new level of armament, armour protection and weight. German tanks had hitherto been intended mainly to fight enemy infantry and their supporting arms. From now on the main threat was the enemy tank itself, and the need to “kill” it at as great a range as possible led to the design of longer-barrelled guns of larger calibre.’
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German crews entered Russia convinced of their innate technological and tactical superiority, proven in former campaigns. Tank gunner Karl Fuchs, crewing the relatively inferior PzKpfw38(t) with the 7th Panzer Division in the central sector, wrote to his wife at the end of June:

‘Up until now, all of the troops have had to accomplish quite a bit. The same goes for our machines and tanks. But, nevertheless, we’re going to show these Bolshevik bums who’s who around here! They fight like hired hands – not like soldiers.’
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Curizio Malaparte, an Italian war correspondent advancing with a German armoured column in Bessarabia, described a group of Germans examining a knocked-out Soviet heavy tank four days later.

‘They look like experts conducting an on-the-spot enquiry into the causes of an accident. What interests them most of all is the quality of the enemy’s matériel and the manner in which that matériel is employed in the field… They shake their heads and murmur “Ja, ja, aber”… The whole secret of the German success is implicit in that “aber”, in that “but.”’
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Karl Fuchs declared more candidly to his wife, we have fought in battle many days now and ‘we have defeated the enemy wherever we have encountered him.’
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Victory jargon even became a feature of Wehrmacht slang. The BT-7 light Soviet tank was knocked out in such numbers it was referred to as the ‘Mickey Mouse’. This was because the silhouette of both crew hatches, invariably left open on top of abandoned tank hulks, resembled the distinctive mouse ears of the famous Walt Disney cartoon figure.

War correspondent Arthur Grimm rode with the 11th Panzer Division, part of Army Group South, toward the first major tank battle in the eastern campaign within 24 hours of the invasion. Columns of half-track SdKfz251 armoured personnel carriers festooned with infantry churned up dust as they lurched along heavily rutted village roads, ‘when the reconnaissance group from our unit radioed that some 120 Soviet tanks had moved up in front of the village of Radciekow’. Engines whined and hummed into life as Grimm described ‘their forward advance into the dawn twilight’. Shortly before 05.00 hours ‘we drove through high cornfields as the early morning fog began to clear’. PzKpfwIIIs and IVs drove by, dark silhouettes floating across the surface of a sea of corn. They distinguished groups of Soviet tanks to their right which ‘included the heaviest and most modern tanks in the world’.

On the other side of the dispersed village houses Grimm observed the dark tell-tale dots that were Soviet tanks moving about. At 05.20 hours the German assault drove into the left flank of these indistinguishable dots and, with a flash, a tall globule of black smoke rose slowly into the air and began to form into a dark ominous mushroom shape. The boom of the report carried across the intervening distance as the first Soviet tank erupted with a shot that ‘penetrated its ammunition compartment’. The first tanks encountered were B-26 variants. Grimm, following closely behind the German tank advance, took photographs of scenes of blazing destruction around him. Dirty columns of smoke began to hang lazily in the air as tank after tank was hit.

‘20-rounds were required to bring this heavy tank to a standstill’, commented Grimm captioning a photograph which he took passing a blazing T-34 tank. Its gun was traversed rearward, to enable the driver to escape from his forward hatch. ‘But this only lasted a few seconds before the remaining ammunition exploded in a blinding flash’. Grimm’s reportage for
Signal,
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the German pictorial propaganda magazine, glossed over the desperate nature of the engagement as German tank gunners realised they were up against surprisingly heavy and unknown tank types. Leutnant Ritgen’s observations of the 6th Division’s encounter with KVs at Rossieny three days later were more honest:

‘These hitherto unknown Soviet tanks created a crisis in Kampfgruppe “Seckendorff”, since apparently no weapon of the division was able to penetrate their armour. All rounds simply bounced off the Soviet tanks. 88mm Flak guns were not yet available. In the face of the assault some riflemen panicked. The super-heavy Soviet KV tanks advanced against our tanks, which concentrated their fire on them without visible effect. The command tank of the company was rammed and turned over by a KV and the commander was injured.’
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Despite the quality of the Russian tanks, tactical surprise and superior German battle drills began to tell. Alexander Fadin, a Soviet T-34 tank commander, described the spectrum of emotion a tank crewman would feel in such a battle:

‘You get excited as you look for a target. The engine starts and the ground bumps up and down as you charge forward. You sight the gun and the driver shouts “Fire!”’

Spent shell cases clatter to the floor of the turret and begin rattling around, as with each concussion and recoil of the gun the fighting compartment fills with fresh cordite fumes. Fadin continued:

‘When you hit a German tank in battle and blow it up, instead of firing at another tank, you open the hatch. You look out and make sure you got it!’
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German tank crews were coldly and professionally detached. Leutnant Ritgen surmised, ‘the Soviet tank crews had no time to familiarise themselves with their tank guns or zero them in,’ so soon after the invasion, ‘since their fire was very inaccurate… Furthermore, the Soviets were poorly led.’ Arthur Grimm observed that by midday on 23 June ‘a dusty sea of black smoke from red and yellow flames had built up’. German reinforcements that had been brought up in support ‘hardly needed to get into the fight and remained merely as spectators’. Leutnant Ritgen said the 6th Panzer Division’s early frontier battles were not without crisis.

‘One of our reserve officers – today a well-known German author – lost his nerve. Without stopping at the headquarters of his regiment, the division or the corps, he simply rushed to the command post of General Hoepner [
the commander of Panzergruppe 4
] to report that “everything was already lost”.’

German tactical ingenuity began to level the odds. ‘Despite their thick skin,’ Ritgen explained, ‘we succeeded in destroying some by concentrating fire on one tank after the other. “Aim at the hatches and openings!” we ordered.’

Grimm, the war correspondent, observed by 16.00 hours that afternoon ‘the black smoke over the battlefield became ever thicker’. PzKpfwIV tanks had already ceased firing because they were being resupplied with ammunition. Panzer tactics varied according to crew initiative. ‘Some enemy tanks were set on fire and others blinded,’ Ritgen pointed out. ‘If they turned around we found it was possible to knock them out from the rear.’ Such lessons were being learned throughout the new Russian theatre.

Hauptmann Eduard Lingenhahl serving with Panzer Regiment 15 explained the heavy PzKpfwIV companies ‘found mainly by chance’ that quarter-second delayed action HE shells fired into the back of T-34 tanks either set the fuel or engine on fire, as blazing fuel poured through the air induction grating.
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By 21.00 hours the battle was over. The 11th Panzer Division destroyed 46 tanks on the heights south-west of Radciekow village alone. Contrary to the later propaganda coverage there was little complacency. Three days later Major Kielmansegg spoke to his 6th Division commander about the first encounter with heavy Soviet tanks at Rossieny. ‘Herr General,’ he said, ‘this is a totally different war from that we have experienced with Poland or France.’ It had been ‘a hard battle with hard soldiers’ and a number of officers had been badly shaken. ‘Early panic,’ Kielmansegg declared, ‘was mastered finally only by the attitude and discipline of the officers.’ He stated soberly:

‘At the division level we saw, for the first time in the war, the danger of a serious defeat. This was one of the heaviest strains I experienced during the war.’

The only comfort he could derive was a report that one of the ‘monster tanks’ he had seen had been immobilised by a Leutnant placing a mine under its track.
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Arthur Grimm’s
Signal
report, not unexpectedly, ended on a high note.

‘The Soviets left the battlefield after a duel lasting eleven hours. More than 40 Soviet tanks were destroyed. The pursuit continues. Only five of our own tanks were disabled.’
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Hard fighting near the frontier was followed by a relatively ‘smooth’ period of spectacular Panzer advances towards Minsk and later Smolensk. The pattern of these days, although less eventful, remained gruelling. Hyazinth Graf von Strachwitz – an Ober-leutnant with Panzer Regiment 15 – declared, ‘we hardly had any sleep because we drove through both day and night.’
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The enemy was given time neither to rest nor regain the initiative. Anotoli Kruzhin, a Red Army captain facing the German onslaught opposite Army Group North, said:

‘In the first days of the war the German Army was advancing very quickly. The state of shock, as it were, stayed with us for quite a long time. As far as I know the Soviets were not organised to fight until July or even the beginning of August. This was in the region of Staraya Russa, west of Novgorod. But before that, in July, the Soviet Army was retreating in such chaos that reconnaissance for the North-West front had to be provided by a special detachment. Not to find where the enemy was positioned, but Soviet units – their own army!’
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