War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (47 page)

Panzergruppe 2, on the other side of the pocket being created, struggled desperately to maintain the momentum of its southern advance. Surprise had initially paved the way. Soviet General of Engineers Tschistoff, who had been tasked to construct a defensive obstacle along the River Desna, directed his train from Moscow into Novgorod-Severski on 3 September. It had already been in German hands for eight days. On the following day General Model, commanding the spearhead German 3rd Panzer Division, which had penetrated to 16km north of the River Sejm in Krolevec, was handed a selection of captured maps. They had been removed from the body of a crashed Soviet airman, shot while attempting to escape. Analysis of the material revealed 3rd Panzer lay directly on the boundary between the Soviet Twenty-first and Thirteenth armies and that ahead a gap loomed between the opposing enemy forces. Two days’ fighting through stubborn resistance ‘in every village’ in driving rain followed. A bridgehead was thrown across the River Sejm at Malnja. By 9 September Model’s division was a further 25km south. An advanced detachment with the division Panzerjäger battalion, reinforced with a medium Panzer company (PzKpfwIIIs), a light tank platoon and a company of motorised infantry, was created from the dispersed spearhead element to push on alone. Major Frank, its commander, was given a simple directive: ‘thrust forward as far as possible’. Behind him the 3rd Panzer Division regrouped and concentrated for a deliberate division attack, due to commence at 06.00 hours on 10 September. Every soldier was informed this was the final dash required to link with Panzergruppe 1, advancing towards them from the south. Rain began to soak the columns as the attack toward Romny started.

Panzergruppe 2 reached and crossed two bridges north and south of the city of Romny, establishing a bridgehead over the River Sula. Initially unaware of their presence, violent local Russian counter-attacks developed in the built-up area and around the bridges; 25 air attacks were directed against the 3rd Panzer Division strung out along muddy roads. Fuel trucks had to be towed through impassable boggy areas by engineer half-track tractors to refuel Major Frank’s advance detachment. On 12 September, with the appearance of clearer weather, the small group was ordered to test the route further south to Lokhvitsa.
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Generalfeldmarschall von Bock was satisfied to note that ‘resistance has collapsed in front of the Second Army and Panzergruppe 2’. Success appeared to beckon:

‘At the request of Army Group South, Panzergruppe 2, which is stretched out over more than 200km, was instructed to advance on Lokhvitsa as well as Priluki and Piryatin, in order to link up there with the tanks of Army Group South which early this morning set out toward the north from Kremenchug.’

There was palpable tension at von Bock’s headquarters.

‘At noon came news that the enemy is streaming east out of the more than 200km-wide gap between Kremenchug and Romny in dense columns. Immediately afterward, three telephone calls were received from Army Group South within a half hour, asking if Lokhvitsa had been reached yet!’
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Panzer Unteroffizier Hans Becker was enduring the harsh reality of executing his commander’s intent from a more human perspective on the ground. ‘The advance had been growing steadily slower and slower,’ he said, ‘the number of casualties larger and larger.’ He had destroyed six Russian tanks from his own Panzer PzKpfwIV during a single day’s action until his tank was immobilised by a strike on the right-hand track. With no infantry in direct support, the crew decided to blow up the Panzer to prevent it falling into enemy hands. ‘The score was six to one and we were without a scratch between us,’ commented Becker ruefully. Within a day the crew was in action again, this time manning a reserve Panzer. ‘We felt ill at ease,’ he confessed, because there had been no time to paint the barrel with rings commemorating the crew’s tally of tank kills. Although merely a superstition, it was important to them. The new tank was also a PzKpfwIV but it ‘was unfamiliar in small ways, and all of us were suffering from the aftereffects of the previous evening’s combat,’ he said. During the four and a half hours of subsequent fighting, the new Panzer despatched ‘two enemy tanks up in flames’.

As they broke off the action ‘there came a heart-catching crack and jolt’. Becker instinctively realised this was not superficial damage. ‘The morning’s ill-omens had been justified.’ They had received a direct strike on the right rear corner. The Panzer burst into flames. Two of his five-man crew were dead, ‘sprawled in a corner, covered with blood’. The survivors hauled the bodies through the hatch to prevent them being burned. Unusually, the Panzer did not explode, but there was no alternative but to abandon the scorched but repairable hull to the enemy. Running, dodging and weaving, the three remaining crew members started back to their headquarters using a brief lull in the enemy fire. Once clear, Becker described how ‘dejectedly we plodded back four or five kilometres, smoking cigarettes to steady our nerves’. Their appearance was bizarre. All had been splattered with blood from their dead comrades and the splinters that had ricocheted around the Panzer interior as the incoming round had struck home. Depressing news awaited them when they reached their company headquarters. Two complete crews had failed to return. Their seriously wounded company commander was doggedly manning his post and listened to their unfortunate situation report before being evacuated to hospital himself. Victory had been as costly as defeat. Becker reflected, ‘glory grows with the passing of time, and the best battles are battles long ago.’
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Even the soldiers fighting in the field could sense the climax to this battle was fast approaching. Cavalry Feldwebel Max Kuhnert, riding reconnaissance for infantry regiments, recalled ‘latrine news’ or gossip ‘that a large encirclement was in progress around Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, since air activity had increased and we were urged to march faster’. The implication merely inspired resignation. ‘This meant less rest for everyone, including our horses.’
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As before, the infantry struggled to match the pace of the Panzers. Units on foot, particularly those in transition between battle areas, requisitioned whatever transport was available. Theo Scharf, marching with the 97th Infantry Division, ‘estimated the division [column] reached a maximum [length] of about 60km, with hardly anybody on foot’. Quartermasters did not necessarily approve, but turned a blind eye. Soldiers simply took what horses and wagons they needed. On nearing the combat zone, Scharf said, ‘the illicit requisitioning and trappings, the rubber plants and canary cages, all melted away and the soldiers’ boots were back on the ground.’
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At midnight on 14 September, XIVth Panzer Corps with Panzergruppe 1 ordered its spearhead division, 9th Panzer, to take the railway station at Romodon, 138km north of the Dnieper crossing at Kremenchug. It received further supplementary orders the next day to block Soviet advances east of Mirgorod and advance north to seize a crossing over the River Sula and link up with Panzergruppe 2 driving south on Lokhvitsa. This was where it was proposed the spearheads should meet. Two battle groups formed for the task: one artillery-heavy for the blocking order and a second with Panzers and motorised infantry to achieve the link-up. This was the final spurt to achieve the encirclement. The Panzer battle group advancing north to Senca began to overrun large numbers of Soviet lorries, including one column of 50 trucks. Captured Soviet soldiers in the vehicles were completely shocked, convinced they were moving in a totally secure rear area. By midnight on 15 September Kampfgruppe vehicles of the 9th Panzer motorised infantry were approaching the railway station at Senca. Ahead lay the River Sula.

Three days before, Major Frank’s vanguard unit of Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 had overwhelmed Soviet defences along a road just east of the same river during the evening twilight. During the subsequent hours of darkness they drove a further 45km undetected through Soviet territory. An undamaged bridge over the same meandering river was captured 2km north-east of Lokhvitsa. Heavy fighting developed until the arrival of the first substantial battle groups forming part of the 3rd Panzer Division deliberate attack. As night fell on 13 September, the soldiers camouflaged their vehicles behind haystacks and underneath stooks of corn. Officers closely observed the silhouetted outline of Lokhvitsa, clearly identifiable now from the high ground upon which they had paused. The scene was thrown into golden relief by the dying rays of the setting sun. On inspection:

‘Dust and smoke clouds were seen rising above the houses, machine gun rounds were whistling through and cracking artillery impacts could be discerned. There was now no doubt. The forward element was directly behind the Russian front. Only a few kilometres away was the spearhead of Army Group South.’
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Frank’s battle group, combined with the leading 3rd Panzer Division battle group, fought its way into Lokhvitsa at 05.00 hours the following morning. The large north bridge across the tributary of the River Sula, which ran through the main city, was seized in a
coup de main
assault. German motorised infantrymen clambered over six Soviet heavy anti-aircraft guns which were lined up wheel to wheel, filling the street and pavements 200m beyond the bridge. There was virtually no resistance. The Soviet crews were asleep.
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Confusion reigned as the two converging German army group spearheads groped towards each other in a mêlée of fighting, closing in from both the north and south. The 3rd Division battle group pushed on.

‘Oberleutnant Warthmann gave the order: “Panzers – advance!” The Kampfgruppe trundled forward into a deep depression and fired at the shocked Russians who were killed as they suddenly emerged from the darkness. Ahead lay a small water-course blocking the way. The vehicles sought a crossing point and noticed a bridge. As the Oberleutnant’s Panzer III drove up to it they realised it had been demolished. Grey ghost-like figures leaped to their feet at this point, covered in clay with stubble on their chins, and they waved and waved – soldiers from 2nd Assault Engineer Company of 16th Panzer Division [Army Group South].’

Shortly after, Guderian’s headquarters received a short radio message: ‘14 Sep 1941, 18.20 hours, Panzergruppen 1 and 2 establish contact.’

The grimy soldiers indicated the way across the small stream. Oberleutnant Warthmann’s Panzer ground its way over and turned toward Lubny. The rest followed. Presently they pulled alongside other armoured vehicles with a white ‘K’ (Kampfgruppe ‘Kleist’) painted on the front and rear mudguards. Their own vehicles had the white ‘G’ denoting the Kampfgruppe ‘Guderian’. By 09.10 hours on 15 September the 3rd and 9th Panzer Divisions established conclusive physical contact at Lokhvitsa in the central Ukraine. Stretching out to the west lay five Soviet field armies within this initial tenuous ring.
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Von Bock announced the same day: ‘the ring has closed around the enemy in front of the inner wings of Army Groups South and Centre’. ‘The battle at Kiev,’ he declared, ‘has thus become a dazzling success.’ Hannibal at Cannae won his battle but failed to defeat Rome. Von Bock thought in parallel. A huge victory was in the offing:

‘But the main Russian force stands unbroken before my front and – as before – the question is open as to whether we can smash it quickly and so exploit this victory before winter comes that Russia cannot rise again in this war.’
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To achieve this the Soviet field armies embraced by the Panzer wings had now to be annihilated. Although the potential strategic reward matched the experience of Cannae, the scale was entirely different. On a hot day in August 2,000 years before, 120,000 men fighting on foot and horse faced each other in an area measuring 1.5km by 1.75km. They died at the rate of 100 per minute.
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At Kiev on the first day of the link-up, three German infantry armies and two Panzergruppen had trapped five Russian armies in a huge triangle with sides 500km long encompassing an area of 135,500sq km.
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The same tactics were being applied in a totally different technological age over the massively greater distances appropriate to modern armoured warfare. The triangle covered an area that would today link Paris, Frankfurt and Milan. Euphoric German newsreels portrayed the area as lying between Stettin in the north of the Reich, Cologne in the west and Munich to the south. Seeking to escape this trap were between a half and three-quarters of a million Russian troops, at least 665,000 men from 50 divisions. The scale of killing was also different in modern warfare. At Cannae, 50,000 Romans were lost in a single afternoon. In the battles around Kiev the Russians lost an average of 8,543 soldiers each day for 64 days.
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German field commanders were under no illusion that the hardest part had yet to come. The Russians would fight. Generaloberst Guderian visited Major Frank’s observation post near Lubny on the morning of the successful encirclement. ‘A fine view could be obtained over the countryside,’ he later wrote, ‘and Russian supply columns were to be seen marching from west to east.’ He spoke with Oberstleutnant Munzel, commander of the 6th Panzer Regiment belonging to the 3rd Panzer Division. Prior to ‘Barbarossa’ the regiment numbered about 198 tanks. ‘On this day,’ Guderian observed, ‘Munzel had at his disposal only one Panzer IV [heavy], three Panzer IIIs [medium] and six Panzer IIs [light tanks armed with 20mm cannon], that is to say ten tanks were all that was left of a regiment.’ It was an ominous portent of the Pyrrhic nature of a victory yet to be confirmed and, as Guderian commented, gave ‘a vivid picture of how badly the troops needed a rest and a period for maintenance’.
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Surrounding such a massive Russian force had been a decisive achievement. The scale of this pocket dwarfed any previous experience in the history of warfare.