War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (48 page)

As at Smolensk and earlier encirclement battles, the
coup de grâce
had to be administered by the infantry divisions. They did not relish the prospect of such killing unless it meant a shortening of the campaign. Günther von Scheven, a 33-year-old infantryman, instinctively appreciated what this would mean. ‘There is no rest,’ he wrote home. ‘Always the same marching through woodless areas and along endless roads, column after column. Horse, rider and guns like spectres in thick clouds of dust.’ Having marched over 2,000km, he was approaching the extremes of physical and psychological endurance. ‘The last few days of combat are taking a toll of my courage,’ he admitted. ‘One cannot encompass the destruction of so many lives.’ He had already experienced ‘the wild despairing break-out attacks the Russians attempted, surprising even for us, right up to our front with tanks, infantry and Cossacks’. The ‘experience of death is awful,’ he lamented, ‘like a new form of baptism’. Günther von Scheven had fought the earlier encirclement battles south of Uman. His conclusion was both cynical and laconic: ‘probably,’ he said, ‘we will have to annihilate everything before this war is going to end.’
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It was a depressing prospect.

As in the earlier encirclement battles, the Panzer ring faced inward, toward the pocket interior, and outward, establishing pickets to repel Soviet relief attempts. They awaited the arrival of the infantry divisions. Between 16 and 19 September the German Second and Seventeenth Armies – respectively from the north and south – closed in upon Yagolin, the inner encircling ring objective. Sixth German Army, meanwhile, carried out a concentric assault upon the city of Kiev, advancing broadly from the west. It was the third largest city in the Soviet Union and fell after bitter fighting on 20 September, a depressing blow to Russian morale. Some 35 German divisions began to compress the sides of the pocket. Before long the original triangle had shrunk to a smaller version about the size of an area between Munich, Stuttgart and Würzburg in Germany, or likewise Caen, Le Mans and Paris. At this point the manoeuvring was over. The methodical dismemberment and killing of five trapped Soviet armies began.

On 19 September 33-year-old Soviet Major Jurij Krymov wrote a letter to his wife Anka. Surrounded by sleeping soldiers, he pored over the letter in fading evening light, utilising the flickering flame of a lamp and throwing grotesque shadows onto the white clay walls of the shed where he sat. Opposite was his commissar. He had been four days without sleep.

‘How is it that we come to be inside a pocket? One could offer a long explanation, but I do not feel like it. Until now it’s not exactly clear. No one is going to argue about one point. All around, wherever you look there are German tanks, submachine guns or machine gun nests. Our unit has already been defending on all sides by the fourth day, within this circle of fire. At night the surrounding ring is clear to see, illuminated by fires that light up the horizon, which here and there give the sky a wonderful yellow hue.’

Krymov had not written to his wife for some time. There had been ‘no chance to send a letter’. Now appreciating the gravity of the present situation, he felt ‘a written letter might somehow get through to you, an unwritten one would clearly disappear without trace’. He glanced at the soldiers all around, sleeping with full equipment, rifles and machine guns cradled in their arms, only belts unbuckled for comfort, and laboriously attempted to write in the poor light. He described the battlefield night sky about him: ‘wonderful golden twigs,’ he wrote, created by flares ‘grew vertically into the darkness’.

‘These star-like embers of light crept – then abruptly somersaulted – over the vastness of the Steppe and were then extinguished, until another broke out, high up, in another position.’
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As the Germans drove into the pocket, sub-pockets were created, which in turn were smothered in hard fighting. Jewgenlij Dolmatowski, with a Russian press company, was isolated in just such an enclave. ‘We were surrounded, I believe, by soldiers called grenadiers,’ he said. Few asked for quarter which was not freely given. ‘It ended in hand-to-hand fighting,’ continued Dolmatowski, ‘during which I was thrown to the ground, and virtually held down by my hands and feet.’ He likened the desperate mêlée to ‘fighting like children’ but ‘actually, it was to the last’. They were totally outfought. ‘I have never had such a thrashing in my life,’ he admitted, ‘even as a child – never!’ Afterwards ‘we were then taken off to the prison camps’.
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Russian units marched and counter-marched through the confusion inside the pocket, constantly seeking a way out. Local inhabitants, aghast at the prospect of impending German occupation, looked on in despair. Major Krymov described the scene on evacuating a village as they retired deeper into the shrinking pocket.

‘Anxious, serious faces of collective farmers. Soft words from the women. Clipped phrases from the officers. Engine sounds. Horses neighing. “Heads up comrades, we’ll be back”… “Back soon” … “Come back” … “How are we going to defeat the Germans?” … “Now if we don’t come, others will, take care”… “A little fresh water for my field flask?” “Thank you” … “We’ll be back, if not us, then others just as good. And the German parasites will go down like flies”… “Take care friends!” “No, not farewell, simply goodbye.”’

As logistic units attempted to march towards the centre of the pocket, combat units reorganising and regrouping for a break-out marched the other way. Units became entangled. ‘The pocket has been constricted to an appalling degree,’ observed Krymov, ‘nobody can move now, in any direction.’ The decisive phase of the battle was anticipated within hours.

‘Without doubt the soldiers will break out of the pocket, but how, and at what price? This is the issue that preoccupies the various unit commanders.’
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Belated attempts to break out of the pocket during the night of 17/18 September were broken up by the Germans.

The Luftwaffe was meanwhile engaged in two vital tasks: tactical air-ground support for the advancing Panzers and interdicting the area of operations to block all Russian approaches to the pocket. Major Frank’s 3rd Panzer Division advance guard, for example, which achieved the decisive link-up at Lokhvitsa, was protected from a Soviet tank formation by Stuka dive-bombers which broke up an advance menacing one of its tenuously held bridgeheads.
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For four weeks the Luftflotten systematically attacked all Soviet rail communications converging on the area of operations from the east and north-east. The northern part of the pocket was covered by Luftflotte 2’s IInd Fliegerkorps, while Vth Fliegerkorps from Luftflotte 4 attacked in the south. Strafing and bombing attacks were mounted against stations, bridges, defiles and locomotives and trains. Soviet reinforcements for Marshal Budenny’s armies were blocked and lines of retreat disrupted. Fearful punishment was meted out to Russian vehicle traffic jams unable to manoeuvre within the pocket.
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Bad weather hampered close formation attacks, which were substituted by isolated and group sorties. These kept railway lines in the battle area permanently cut. Repeated Bf110 strafing runs cut 20 to 30 trains marooned along one section of railway track to ribbons. Large formation-size Russian units did not appear on the roads until forced to concentrate in order to break out. As soon as they committed themselves, they were – in the words of the Luftflotten commander – ‘relentlessly attacked with devastating results’.
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Gabriel Temkin, serving in a Russian labour battalion, remembered:

‘The Luftwaffe’s favourite places for dropping bombs, especially incendiary ones, were forested areas close to main roads. Not seeing, but expecting, and rightly so, that the woods were providing resting places for army units and their horses, German planes were bombing them, particularly at nightfall.’

Pure birch forests, which, Temkin confessed, ‘I never before or after saw,’ were consumed in the flames. ‘The burning greyish-white trees were turning reddish, as if blushing and ashamed of what was going on.’ As he observed the inferno he became aware of a peculiarly pungent smell. ‘For the first time,’ Temkin said ‘I smelled burnt flesh.’ He was unable to distinguish whether it was men or horses.
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Stuka dive-bombers were employed to shatter resistance in the pocket. Between 12 and 21 September, Vth Fliegerkorps flew 1,422 sorties, dropping 567,650kg of bombs and 96 incendiary Type 36 devices. Results were impressive: 23 tanks, 2,171 vehicles, 6 Flak batteries, 52 railway trains and 28 locomotives were destroyed. In addition, 355 vehicles were damaged and 41 put out of action alongside 36 trains. Railway lines were cut in 18 places and a bridge destroyed. Soviet losses included 65 aircraft shot down and 42 destroyed on the ground. Luftwaffe losses, by comparison, were slight, with 17 aircraft destroyed and 14 damaged, costing 18 missing aircrew and 9 dead.
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German infantry divisions moved in to eliminate any remaining resistance. On 19 September Fritz Köhler’s motorised infantry unit was still north of the River Desna. At midday he heard the radio
Sondermeldung
that the link-up with Army Group South had been achieved and four Soviet armies surrounded. After an afternoon of ‘routine work’ they heard a further announcement that the city of Kiev had fallen. Three days later he was in action with an advance guard hastily dug in to repel break-out attempts near Lokhvitsa. As six T-34 tanks moved towards them, Köhler realised they ‘had been seen’. His lorry-borne unit had only recently dismounted and consequently ‘had not dug in very far’. German 37mm anti-tank and 105mm field guns directly engaged the tanks, but the ‘rounds ricocheted straight off’. One German gun after the other was knocked out during the unstoppable advance, which drove over and crushed wrecked guns and the bodies of the hapless crews. The last German guns abruptly withdrew, leaving the infantry unprotected. Köhler nervously glanced above the parapet of his shell-scrape as:

‘The tanks drove right up next to our position. We experienced some very uncomfortable minutes. One crunched by about five metres from my foxhole and even stopped now and again. I hunched myself up and made myself as tiny as possible, hardly breathing. Finally the armoured vehicle drove on, but it was a moment I will certainly never forget.’

The threatened section of the line was restored with the arrival of 88mm guns and Pioniers who laid mines. Köhler commented, ‘luckily there were no [enemy] infantrymen sitting on the tanks, otherwise few of us would have seen that evening’.
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The German 45th Division, already badly mauled at Brest-Litovsk, began to arrive at Priluki, 120km east of Kiev, on the eastern edge of the pocket. Like so many other divisions, it had endured a steady attrition rate as it marched eastward. At Brest-Litovsk it had lost more men than during the entire French campaign. Between 1 and 6 September, 40 more soldiers were killed and a further two officers and 23 men between 9 and 13 September. Pouring rain slowed their rate of advance to 4.5km per day. They were under the command of Second Army advancing on the pocket from the north. Its commander relayed the situation in an order of the day on 10 September:

‘Bitter enemy resistance, terrible roads and constant rain have not stopped you… This advance has enabled you to contribute to the possible realisation of a battle of annihilation, which will begin within the next few days. We will surround the enemy from all sides and destroy him.’
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As the 45th Division entered the line the outline of the pocket had been reduced to a diameter of about 40km. It was subsequently attached to Sixth Army belonging to Army Group South, forming part of a group of eight German divisions tasked with forcing the beleaguered surviving Russian divisions to surrender. On 20 September 45th Division was set astride the Yagolin gap on the eastern side of the perimeter, which became a focal point for Russian escape attempts. As the first battalions started arriving on 22 September, the Russian attacks began.

Cavalry Feldwebel Max Kuhnert had also arrived at the periphery of the ring surrounding the Kiev pocket. The perimeter, he could see, ‘was closing fast, but this only made the Russian forces in and around Kiev all the more determined to throw everything into the battle’. Positioned behind a Panzer division, Kuhnert admitted, ‘luckily for us’ only ‘strays of the Russian armour got through’. He ruefully reflected, ‘we were then in a fine pickle’, and ‘wished myself many kilometres away’.

‘We were utterly helpless in those situations. Warfare against tanks we had hardly practised because it was not our job on horseback. The best we could do was to get out of the way, seeking cover in the wooded areas, and hope for the best.’
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Massed Soviet break-out attempts often resulted in thinly distributed German mobile units being surrounded themselves. These were reduced to adopting an
Igel
(literally island or hedgehog) all-round defence position, from which they fought for their very lives. Walter Oqueka participated in the earlier Uman encirclement, and was a crew member of a 20mm Flak 38 mounted on a half-track chassis. His unit’s role was air defence, not to fight the ‘grey-green colossus’ Soviet tanks that suddenly appeared on their front.

‘“T-34” – hissed the gun commander between tightly compressed lips. The T-34, we had all heard about these tanks, amazing things – which meant not good for us. We were hardly likely to win any prizes with the 37mm “Wehrmacht door-knocker” [anti-tank gun], and certainly not against these monsters. How were we supposed to knock out these great lumps with our pathetic [20mm] calibre?’