Between Giants
Page 23
Von Schiller once again took the enemy under fire. Not until the third shot, however, did the Russian tank commander leave his tank. He then collapsed, severely wounded. The other Russians were dead. We took the Soviet lieutenant to division, but he couldn’t be interrogated any more. He succumbed to his injuries along the way.
… I remember how we cursed the stubbornness of this Soviet lieutenant at the time. Nowadays, I have another opinion.14
Carius’ opinions of Soviet tanks and their commanders shed some light on how the numerically inferior German forces succeeded in holding their own for so long during the war:
Our guidelines were: ‘Shoot first, but if you can’t do that, at least hit first.’ The prerequisite for that, of course, is fully functioning communications from tank to tank and also among the crew. Furthermore, quick and accurate gun-laying systems need to be present. In most instances, the Russians lacked both of these prerequisites. Because of that, they often came out on the short end of the stick, even though they frequently didn’t lag behind us in armour, weapons, and manoeuvrability.
… The personal aggressiveness of the commander while observing was decisive for success against numerically vastly superior enemy formations. The lack of good observation by the Russians often resulted in the defeat of large units. Tank commanders who slam their hatches shut at the beginning of an attack and don’t open them again until the objective has been reached are useless, or at least second rate. There are, of course, six to eight vision blocks mounted in a circle in every cupola that allow observation. But they are only good for a certain sector of the terrain, limited by the size of the individual vision block …
Unfortunately, impacting rounds are felt before the sound of the enemy’s gun report … Therefore, a tank commander’s eyes are more important than his ears. As a result of rounds exploding in the vicinity, one doesn’t hear the gun report at all in the tank. It is quite different whenever the tank commander raises his head occasionally in an open hatch to survey the terrain. If he happens to look halfway to the left while an enemy anti-tank gun opens fire halfway to the right, his eye will subconsciously catch the shimmer of the yellow muzzle flash.
… No one can deny that the many casualties among the officers and other tank commanders were due to exposing their heads. But these men didn’t die in vain. If they had moved with closed hatches, then many more men would have found their deaths or been severely wounded inside the tanks. The large Russian tank losses are proof of the correctness of this assertion.15
Govorov harried his army commanders forward, ordering 2nd Shock Army to push forward to Kingisepp and the Estonian frontier, while 67th Army advanced south to Luga. At the same time, Meretskov would ensure that Korovnikov’s 59th Army advanced on Luga from the east, in an attempt to catch the German forces in a pincer. Lindemann’s forces, which had withdrawn from the north towards Estonia, succeeded in holding off 2nd Shock Army, not least because Fediuninsky showed little imagination in attacking the German rearguards, often squandering the lives of his men in costly frontal attacks on prepared positions. On 23 January, Govorov’s impatience with his subordinate began to show:
You have not fulfilled your mission of the day … In spite of my orders, the army’s formations continue to mark time in front of the severely damaged enemy forces, neither suffering casualties nor achieving decisive success. As has been the case before, the corps commanders are displaying slowness, are directing combat weakly, and not directing the corps to employ manoeuvre and decisive movement forward. Exploiting our slowness, the enemy, who is conducting cover force operations in small groups, is withdrawing his main forces south and south-west from Krasnogvardeisk and Elizavetino.16
Heavy fighting flared around Krasnogvardeisk, held by General Wilhelm Wegener’s L Corps. In addition to 11th and 170th Infantry Divisions, he had what remained of four other divisions, together with 215th Infantry Division and parts of 24th Infantry Division at Pushkin and Slutsk. The Soviet 123rd and 117th Rifle Corps assaulted Krasnogvardeisk, while 110th Rifle Corps attempted to outflank the German forces still clinging to Pushkin. By 23 January, the town was encircled from three sides, but Krasnogvardeisk continued to hold out. Nevertheless, the situation deteriorated steadily for Lindemann, and by the end of 24 January, he had lost contact with 16th Army to the south. Fediuninsky’s 2nd Shock Army continued to grind forward, cutting the railway between Krasnogvardeisk and Kingisepp on 26 January, but despite repeated requests, Hitler continued to refuse permission for a withdrawal of the hard-pressed formations. The reconnaissance battalion of III SS Panzer Corps, SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 11 – shortly thereafter given the honorific title ‘Hermann von Salza’ – used its mobility and firepower to try to hold off the Soviet forces:
In the pale light of morning, Russian armour broke through the morning grey on a broad front and rattled toward Gubanitsy over the open terrain. At first there were seven. Then, behind them, a whole mass of them. In addition to the T34s, there were all possible types, even old models. The gunners of 5/SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 11 brought the enemy tanks into their telescopic sights. Six out of the seven Soviet tanks in the first wave were knocked out. Then it was the second wave’s turn. It turned into a tank engagement, the likes of which I had never seen. The bark of the cannon filled the air. Round after round was fired from the barrels of the heavy anti-tank guns. The crews worked feverishly behind the gun shields. I had counted 61 tanks, many of which were right in front of us at that point. And the battle raged on. SS-Rottenführer Spork headed for the Soviets at top speed in his Kanonenwagen [a half-track with a 75mm short-barrelled gun mounted on the back] and knocked out one tank after another over open sights at short range. I could not even hope to guess how long the fighting had gone on, having lost all sense of time. The surviving Russian tanks turned away. The breakthrough attempt was a failure.17
The battle at Gubanitsy cost the Red Army 48 tanks, 11 of them destroyed by Casper Spork. A little to the south, Wengler’s battlegroup from 227th Infantry Division – with support from a small number of Tiger tanks – held onto the town of Volosovo for several days while stragglers from the shattered front streamed back. In honour of their commander, Wengler’s men nicknamed the town ‘Wenglerovo’.
On 27 January, Küchler was ordered to attend a National Socialist conference in Königsberg, in East Prussia, where he had to endure speeches by Hitler calling for his followers to remain faithful to the belief in final victory. Küchler told the conference that the winter fighting had cost 18th Army 40,000 casualties, and that his men were fighting as hard as could be expected. Hitler publicly disagreed, suggesting that he believed that the army could show more determination.
With Hitler’s admonitions loud in his ears, Küchler returned to the front, calling on his men to show more resolve. Despite this, Generalleutnant Eberhard Kinzel, his chief of staff, took it upon himself to advise Lindemann to begin a withdrawal. Late on 27 January, 18th Army’s forces began to pull back, destroying bridges as they went. The fighting around Krasnogvardeisk came to a head on 25 January, with the Soviet 108th Rifle Corps, reinforced by a tank brigade, pushing into the town from the west. At the same time, 117th Rifle Corps battled forward from the north, and the town fell on 26 January. The German 11th Infantry Division suffered heavy casualties in the fighting, but contrary to the claims of the Soviets, was not destroyed and managed to withdraw. Nevertheless, the pursuit of the retreating Germans posed a constant threat. The mobile elements of III SS Panzer Corps had to fight repeated actions to keep the main line of retreat open. Converging along several roads, the German forces made for Kingisepp and the crossings over the River Luga. It was the intention of the German High Command to attempt to hold the line of the Luga, but Soviet forces were already across the river south of Kingisepp. Any defence of the Luga around the city would be short-lived.
Further to the south-east, Soviet forces advancing from the east showed a lack of urgency in pressing the Germans, allowing Lindeman
n to complete an orderly withdrawal. Attempts by Sviridov’s 67th Army to envelop the German XXVII and XXVIII Corps from the north were frustrated by 12th Panzer Division, but nevertheless, Govorov continued to edge closer to Luga from the north. Unfortunately for the Red Army, the Volkhov Front, which should have been pushing forward from the east towards Luga, and tying down the two German corps, made painfully slow progress. Küchler had rushed whatever minimal forces he could scrape together to try to maintain the link between his two armies, and created a thin, fragile line of several units. Kampfgruppe Schuldt, comprised of elements of 2nd SS Brigade, the remnants of 28th Jäger Division, and elements of three other divisions, lined up alongside Kampfgruppe Speth with 1st Luftwaffe Field Division and elements of SS-Nord, and Kampfgruppe Feurguth with 290th Infantry Division and the rest of SS-Nord in the path of Korovnikov’s 59th Army. Despite the weakness of this line, the Soviet 6th Rifle Corps, supported by a tank brigade, almost came to a halt on 24 January, at least partly because the Soviet units had suffered heavy losses in driving the Germans out of their dense fortifications over the previous fortnight; the tank brigade had been reduced to only eight tanks.18 Korovnikov had an additional rifle corps at his disposal, but instead of throwing it at the weak German line, he dispatched it further south, where it ran into difficult terrain and also made little headway. 12th Panzer Division’s battlegroups continued to shuffle back and forth across the front, and although the southern flank of the Soviet Volkhov Front made good progress, 59th Army inched forward, despite receiving substantial reinforcements. Further to the south, the 2nd Baltic Front also showed an inability to prevent an orderly German withdrawal. Consequently, 16th Army was able to pull back to new positions, and released substantial forces – 8th Jäger Division, elements of 21st Luftwaffe Field Division, parts of 32nd and 132nd Infantry Divisions, Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 303, and 58th Infantry Division – to the aid of Lindemann’s 18th Army.19
Despite these reinforcements, pressure continued in the north. 10th Luftwaffe Field Division’s commander, Generalleutnant Hermann von Wedel, was badly wounded on 29 January. He was evacuated to a military hospital in Estonia, where he died a week later. His division, now lacking any cohesion, was disbanded, and its survivors added to the ranks of 170th Infantry Division. By the end of the month, 18th Army was in a perilous state. Its infantry strength, already weak at the beginning of the year, had shrunk by over two thirds, and Hitler’s insistence on it continuing to hold its ground, with deep Soviet salients driven into its lines, resulted inevitably in gaps in the front line, in addition to the gap to 16th Army in the south. On 30 January, Küchler managed to secure permission to retreat to the River Luga, but only if he was then able to restore continuity along the front. Soviet forces were already over the Luga, between Luga and Kingisepp, and Küchler’s staff protested that the orders were unworkable. The result was the sacking of Küchler, and his replacement by Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model.
Highly decorated in the First World War, Model had served in the Reichswehr between the wars, when he was strongly influenced by the defensive theories of Generalleutnant Fritz von Lossberg. He was a staff officer in the early campaigns of 1939 and 1940, accompanying 16th Army across Luxembourg and northern France, and commanded 3rd Panzer Division at the onset of Barbarossa. He led XLI Panzer Corps during the battle of Moscow, and thereafter showed great defensive skill in command of 9th Army during 1942 and 1943. He was now dispatched to restore the situation in the north.
Model became a field marshal at the age of 53 (he was promoted two months after taking command of Army Group North), the youngest man to hold this rank in the Wehrmacht. Heinz Guderian once described him thus: ‘A bold inexhaustible soldier … the best possible man to perform the fantastically difficult task of reconstructing a line in the centre of the Eastern Front.’20 He was by all accounts a man who was outspoken to the point of tactlessness, and many of the army’s conservative officers regarded him as suspiciously pro-Nazi. His hard-driving attitude earned him the respect of his men, but in most of his posts, his staff officers found it hard to cope with him – when he took over XLI Panzer Corps, the entire staff requested transfers.21 His outspoken attitude even extended to Hitler; when the Führer challenged his deployment of part of 9th Army in 1942, he stared down the German leader with the words, ‘Who commands the 9th Army, my Führer, you or I?’22
The prickly, energetic Model rapidly asserted his personality on the staff at Army Group North. It was clear to him that regardless of Hitler’s orders, it would be suicidal for 18th Army to attempt to hold its current positions. Aware of Hitler’s aversion to withdrawals, he articulated the concept of a ‘shield and sword’ defence, in which the army group would allow a withdrawal from the north into a salient around Luga – the shield – and would then use the forces freed up to mount a sword-like counter-thrust further west against Soviet forces approaching the Estonian border. But even these measures would require time to be executed. Fediuninsky’s 2nd Shock Army, which had broken through the German defences around the Oranienbaum bridgehead, was now ordered to force the line of the Luga, and to reach and cross the River Narva. 42nd Army would advance on Fediuninsky’s southern flank, driving to Lake Peipus, while 67th Army and the entire Volkhov Front attempted to capture Luga itself.
The first phase of the Soviet reconquest of the Baltic States was therefore a direct continuation of the rolling offensive that had driven the Germans back from the gates of Leningrad. 43rd and 122nd Rifle Corps from 2nd Shock Army launched determined attacks on Kingisepp throughout 30 and 31 January, inflicting heavy losses on SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 23 Norge and SS-Panzergrenadier- Regiment 24 Danmark, composed mainly of Norwegian and Danish volunteers respectively. With Soviet forces bypassing the town and crossing the frozen river to north and south, the SS abandoned Kingisepp, blowing the bridges as they left. Elements of III SS Panzer Corps and LIV Corps fought a determined rearguard action to the frozen River Narva, about ten miles to the east, and used explosives to disrupt the ice, in an attempt to prevent the Red Army from achieving early crossings. Nevertheless, the day after the fall of Kingisepp, the Soviet 4th Rifle Regiment, part of 43rd Rifle Corps, managed to establish a small bridgehead north of the city of Narva, while 122nd Rifle Corps crossed the river about six miles further south in the frozen Krivasoo swamps.
In Estonia, the approach of the front line led to a significant change of heart in the leadership installed by the German occupiers. Until now, the Directorate had opposed attempts to mobilise the population for war, but with the Red Army coming ever closer, the acting prime minister, Jüri Uluots, announced a different policy. In a radio broadcast on 7 February, he supported mobilisation, hinting that armed Estonian forces might do more than merely fight the Red Army, and – aware that the Germans would monitor his words – added that their creation could have ‘a significance much wider than what I could and would be able to disclose here’.23 With the end of the war coming closer, Uluots – like other Baltic politicians – hoped that there would be an opportunity, as there had been in 1918, for Estonia to make a bid for independence. Meanwhile, the civilian population of Narva was evacuated, and the town prepared for a major battle.
Model, meanwhile, attempted to reshuffle his meagre resources. Lindemann was ordered to adopt a defensive line closer to Luga, reducing the length of front line substantially. 12th Panzer Division would attack to restore contact with 16th Army to the south, and thereafter – in conjunction with 58th Infantry Division – would drive down the Luga valley to link up with the forces facing Fediuninsky on the Narva. Such an operation was probably beyond the strength of the forces deployed, given the unfavourable ratios of strength between the opposing sides, but the most pressing concern was to shore up the defences on the Narva. If these were to give way, the consequences could be catastrophic for 18th Army, Army Group North, and indeed the entire German position on the Eastern Front. The capture of Narva would open the way for the Red Army to advance along the Estonian
coast to Tallinn, allowing the Red Banner Fleet to venture out further into the Baltic. The oil shale plant on the Estonian coast, one of the few remaining oil resources that the Reich still controlled, would be lost, and a rapid advance by Soviet troops across Estonia, to the west of Lake Peipus, would threaten to roll up the entire German front line. Politically, the consequences could also be serious. Hitler was aware that the Finns were attempting to negotiate a ceasefire with the Soviet Union, and keeping control of the Estonian coast was vital if this was to be prevented.
Narva now became the focus of the fighting. The city first developed as an established settlement in the 13th century when the Danes built the imposing Hermannsburg fortress on the west bank of the Narva. Downstream of the city, the east bank of the Narva climbs rapidly, compared with the relatively flat land to the west; consequently, Soviet forces approaching from the east had a good view of the German positions, and were able to observe troop movements and call down artillery fire whenever targets presented themselves.
On 2 February, Model visited the Narva positions. Otto Sponheimer, commander of LIV Corps, was given command of all the forces along the river, directly subordinate to Army Group North, first as Gruppe Sponheimer, then as Army Detachment Narva after Sponheimer was replaced by General Johannes Friessner on 23 February. A steady stream of reinforcements arrived to shore up the line, so that by the last week of February, Army Detachment Narva had an impressive array of forces at its disposal. One of the new units to be sent to the area was the Panzergrenadier Division Feldherrnhalle, dispatched from Army Group Centre. Originally built around the remnants of the 60th Motorised Infantry Division, which was destroyed in Stalingrad, this division contained large numbers of former members of the Sturmabteilungen or SA, the pre-war paramilitary wing of the National Socialist Party; it was therefore named in honour of Hitler’s failed attempt to seize power in 1923. It now provided much-needed armoured support for the hard-pressed forces on the Narva.