The Brandenburgers’ role in ‘Marita’ had been highly successful and, in later years, they were to become very familiar with the Balkans region as they were increasingly committed to fighting the brutal and unrestrained partisan war that soon began to rage between disparate ethnic communities as well as against the occupying forces. However, before that time, the Brandenburgers would lead the way in the most decisive campaign fought by Hitler’s Wehrmacht: Operation ‘Barbarossa’, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
CHAPTER 5
Hitler Turns East: The Invasion of the Soviet Union
‘If your sword is too short, take one step forward.’
Admiral Marquis Heihachiro Togo
On 22 June 1941 Hitler took the most audacious gamble of his military and political life and launched a campaign into the cavernous expanse of the Soviet Union. The dreaded ‘war on two fronts’ had begun, though in reality the Wehrmacht was stretched across more than just two. While to the west Britain still obstinately refused to die, German troops were now active in North Africa to the south, the Kriegsmarine fought fiercely contested battles in the Atlantic and the attack against the Soviet Union would also open a northern front in the bitterly cold wastes of Finnmark. On all those battle lines, elements of the Brandenburgers would go to war.
The main continental invasion forces for Operation ‘Barbarossa’ were divided into three large Army Groups: North, Centre and South. In the vanguard of each, the Brandenburgers assumed their now-familiar role as both shock troops and covert infiltration units, tasked primarily with the seizure of bridges, severing enemy communications, sabotage and sowing confusion behind enemy lines.
By the time of the German invasion, the Wehrmacht had established a very clear picture of the front-line Soviet military forces and their disposition thanks to Abwehr intelligence networks. While Hitler and OKW may have lacked the clear-sightedness to appreciate the enormous potential of mechanical production and manpower reserves that Stalin had at his command, they entered combat in June 1941 armed with knowledge accumulated since the Red Army had occupied half of Poland in 1939. During the beginning of 1941 the Abwehr had established the forward intelligence staff designated ‘Abwehrbefehlsstab’ for reconnaissance duties in the east (Frontaufklärungsleitstelle I Ost). This new body was codenamed ‘Walli’ and divided into three sections mirroring the purposes of the three Abwehr departments:
•Walli I (based at in Sulejowek, east of Warsaw) operated under the command of the ‘short, thin, chain-smoking ex-infantryman’ Oberstleutnant Hermann Baun and was responsible for military and economic intelligence on the Soviet-German front;1
•Walli II (situated in Suwalki, Poland, near the Lithuanian border) was commanded by Major Seeliger, late of the Quenzgut training school and was responsible for sabotage operations in the rear areas of the Red Army;
•Walli III (situated in Breslau, Lower Silesia), directed by Oberstleutnant Heinz Schmalschläger, concentrated on counter-espionage, predominantly collecting information about the Soviet NKVD.
It was with the staff of Walli II that the Brandenburgers would predominantly work; though, as with the Abwehr there was frequent cross-referencing between the three departments. Both Walli I and III would field groups ranging from a dozen to sixty men that cooperated with front-line Wehrmacht units, answerable to the Army Group’s ‘Ic’ in the same manner as Brandenburg deployment. However, their primary missions were the collection of intelligence documents or hunting for enemy agents and operatives behind German lines. The Brandenburgers, on the other hand, continued their role as infiltrators and sabotage troops though their scope of responsibility had broadened significantly as the regiment had expanded. While still comprised of three battalions plus independent regimental units, a loose umbrella had also been thrown over separate formations, predominantly composed of various indigenous peoples and designed for operations in the Reich’s new battlefields.
Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Abwehr had enlisted a unit of Ukrainian separatists under the control of Stepan Bandera, a 32-year-old political activist who had led the anti-Soviet and anti-Polish OUN (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists) national executive, dedicated to an independent Ukraine. The Abwehr had begun involvement with the OUN before the war when, on 13 June 1939, Lahousen had instructed an OUN representative named Roman Shusko to train a formidable force of 1,300 officers and 12,000 men for use in the impending attack on Poland. A separate 600-strong sabotage group, named the Bergbauerhilfe, was also envisioned, tasked with attempting sabotage in Polish territory and the fomenting of an anti-Polish uprising. However, the actual number of men gathered only reached 120 and though established on 15 August, they were disbanded in September and the Abwehr was subsequently ordered to cease all association with Ukrainian nationalists following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Arrested during 1934 for coordinating the assassination of Polish Minister of Internal Affairs, Bronislaw Peratsky, Bandera had been sentenced to life and held in Wronki Prison until freed by the German invasion of 1939. He remained in occupied Poland and soon developed a close working relationship with the German General Government based in Kraków. Still of a revolutionary bent, he clashed with his replacement as leader of the OUN, Andriy Melnyk, and thus two factions were born: Bandera’s aggressively nationalist OUN-B and Melnyk’s more conservative and pro-German OUN-M.
Despite their contrasting approaches to nation-building, both were recruited into the Abwehr, Bandera soon pushing for the establishment of an armed ‘Ukrainian Legion’ to fight under the flag of the Wehrmacht. A productive meeting with Canaris resulted in permission to form the Legion being granted on 25 February 1941, approximately 800 men soon being assembled by Bandera’s immediate subordinates Yaroslav Stetsko, Mykola Lebed and Roman Shukhevych, the latter named commander of this ‘Ukrainian Legion’, though primarily for political and ideological reasons as he lacked any military training.
During May 1941, the Legion was split into two battalions named ‘Nachtigall’ and ‘Roland’, the former training at Neuhammer (now Świętoszów in western Poland) and coming under Brandenburg command. There, the Imperial German Army had previously established a major training ground, with a nearby prisoner of war camp built for Russians captured during the First World War and by 1941 housing significant numbers of French and Polish prisoners (Stalag VIII-E).
Alongside the Ukrainian Shukhevych, the Abwehr installed their own Theodor Oberländer as a ‘political officer’ to the battalion at the nominative rank of Oberleutnant. Oberländer, a member of the Nazi Party since 1933, was a noted professor who advocated the principles of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Germany and occupied territories, ultimately playing a significant role in laying the academic groundwork for what would later coalesce into the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’. During 1939 he began working with the Abwehrstelle Breslau, moving to the University of Prague in 1940 from where he became active with the Nachtigall Battalion as an expert on ‘ethnic psychology’. In contrast with Oberländer’s obvious zeal for Party laws, in military command of the battalion was Oberleutnant Dr Hans-Albrecht Herzner who had mounted the first raid on Poland and long been part of the inner circle of Abwehr officers that opposed their own government. The men of Nachtigall were equipped with standard Wehrmacht uniforms and equipment, whereas the Roland Battalion – which was not placed under Brandenburg control – was outfitted with Czech uniforms adorned with a yellow armband upon which was printed ‘Im Dienst der Deutschen Wehrmacht’ (‘In the Service of the German Armed Forces’). With mixed Czech and German light weapons and First World War Austrian helmets, the battalion was attached to Army Group South and largely performed noncombatant roles.
During the final days preceding ‘Barbarossa’, the Nachtigall Battalion moved east to Zakopane from where it would cross the border at Przemyśl on the second night of the invasion. By the time that Nachtigall was moving into action, elements of the Brandenburgers had already been in ac
tion at various points along the line and to varying degrees of success. Though not all units would precede the first wave, nearly the entire strength of the regiment was committed to Operation ‘Barbarossa’, only a single company of each battalion being left out. Each of the regiment’s constituent units was subdivided for operational purposes, sometimes into ‘half-companies’, or into smaller battlegroups dependent upon the mission requirements. This remained the nature of Brandenburger commitment, as the regiment as a whole was never designed to operate as a homogenous unit. The regiment was deployed as follows:
1st Battalion (Major Heinz), attached to Army Group South, headquartered in Kraków:
Liaison officer, Oberleutnant Dlab.
1st Company (Hauptmann Vatter, with Headquarters unit and ‘V-Leute’ Company that acted as a collection point for new recruits), remained in Brandenburg an der Havel.
2nd Company (Hauptmann Dr Hartmann), stationed in the Tatra Mountains at Zakopane.
3rd Company (Oberleutnant John), codenamed ‘Sturm Kompanie Schulze’, advancing with III Panzer Corps.
4th Company (Oberleutnant Kürschner), minus the Fallschirmjäger Platoon, stationed in the Tatra Mountains at Zakopane.
Fallschirmjäger Platoon (Leutnant Lütke).
Nachtigall Battalion (Herzner), temporarily attached and stationed in the Tatra Mountains at Zakopane.
2nd Battalion (Major Paul Jacobi):
5th Company, elements engaged in guarding the Danube River while the rest was stationed in Baden bei Wien.
6th Company (Oberleutnant Meissner), stationed in Romania guarding oilfields but scheduled to join German–Romanian forces attacking in the southeast under the command of the 22nd Luftlande (Air-Landing) Division.
7th Company (Leutnant Pfannenstiels), stationed in East Prussia.
8th Company (Oberleutnant Knaak), stationed in Tilsit, East Prussia (now Sovetsk, Russia).
3rd Battalion (Rittmeister Franz Jacobi):
9th Company, in training and not ready for commitment to Russia until late summer 1941.
10th Company (Oberleutnant Aretz), stationed in the Schönewald near Płaska, East Prussia (now Szczęsne, Poland).
11th Company (Oberleutnant Fendt), designated as cadre for Sonderverbänd Felmy (288) in Potsdam destined for service in North Africa.
12th Company (Oberleutnant Schäder), transferred to Modlyn in preparation to advance to the border and seize bridges over the Bug River.
Regimental Units:
13th Company (Oberleutnant von Koenen), the ‘Tropical Company’ en-route to North Africa.
14th Company (Oberleutnant Berndt), ‘Replacement Company’ acting as training company for 2nd Battalion.
15th Company, ‘Light Company’ in Finland, redesignated ‘Finland Company’.
16th Company (Hauptmann Benesch) ‘Light Company’ stationed in Düren but earmarked for amphibious/aerial assault on the Baltic island of Oesel;
17th Company (Oberleutnant Babuke) in training.
By the beginning of ‘Barbarossa’, the regiment’s 1st Company was still acting as a processing unit for fresh recruits, amalgamated with the headquarters company and the elderly Sudeten-German Hauptmann Fritz Vatter’s V-Leute Company, that was engaged in training spies at Quenzgut. Vatter was in his sixties, a whitehaired veteran of the Austro-Hungarian Army who sported a row of decorations from the 1914–18 war, including the Austrian Tapferkeitsmedaille (Medal for Bravery) in gold.
He [Vatter] had a special way of celebrating the company’s roll call. After the troops had been presented to him, he walked before them with slow heavy steps, looking deeply and seriously into the eye of every soldier. One of his usual phrases was: ‘Men, when I look you in the eye …’ Sometimes, however, he was not quite on top of the situation. At one roll call, he suddenly commanded: ‘Attention! Shoulder rifles!’ The Leutnant … who had presented the unit to him had to point out that everything was ready, except we had no rifles. Hauptmann Vatter apologised … but the order had to be finished … and so the next command came: ‘Rifles down, stand at ease!’2
Major Heinz led the remainder of his 1st Battalion – plus the attached Nachtigall unit and minus the platoon of Fallschirmjäger – to assembly points near the Polish town of Zakopane which lies near the Slovakian border in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains. The picturesque town had already featured in German–Soviet relations during March 1940 when representatives of the NKVD and Gestapo met for a week-long conference in Zakopane’s Villa Tadeusz, coordinating the crushing of resistance in occupied Poland.3 Leutnant Lütke had taken his detached Fallschirmjäger to Suwalki, quartered near the headquarters for Seeliger’s Walli II and prepared to move east at short notice. Lütke’s men would not make their first combat jump until 25 June after relocating to the captured airfield at Valena, Lithuania.
Attached to Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt’s Army Group South, Heinz’s troops were gathered and ready in southern Poland by 15 June, with Oberleutnant Dlab in Kraków as their liaison officer with the Army Group’s Intelligence Officer. The 2nd and 4th Company and Nachtigall troops moved east to the border area opposite Przemyśl where they awaited orders to attack, subordinated locally to the 1st Gebirgs Division. Oberleutnant John’s 3rd Company, renamed ‘Sturmkompanie Schulze’ for the invasion, was attached to Generaloberst Eberhard von Mackensen’s III Army Corps (motorised), held in the staging area for the Sixth Army in preparations for operations against crossings over the Bug River.
Major Paul Jacobi’s 2nd Battalion had left the 5th Company behind, spread between guarding the Danube waterways and reformation and training in Baden. Oberleutnant Meissner’s 6th Company was moved from guard duty in the Ploieşti oilfields to attachment with the 22nd Luftlande Division. This division had been created after retraining of the 22nd Infantry Division for rapid deployment by air, particularly for the capture of enemy airbases for which it was used during the invasion of The Netherlands, albeit with heavy casualties and little success. Generalleutnant Hans Graf von Sponeck’s division was part of Army Group South, advancing alongside Romanian forces into Bessarabia and the southern Ukraine, with the Brandenburgers in the vanguard as the division had to cross the Pruth and Dnestr Rivers before assaulting the formidable defences of the Stalin Line.
Both the 7th and 8th Companies were held ready for use with Generalfeldmarschall Ritter von Leeb’s Army Group North advancing from East Prussia. Hauptmann Wilhelm Walther was in loose command of all the northern Brandenburger units, acting as liaison between them and Army Group North staff. Siegfried Grabert led his 8th Company by express train from Austria to Tilsit, East Prussia, on the Neman River that marked the frontier with Sovietoccupied Lithuania. On 19 June Grabert suffered a head injury in an accident that forced his temporary hospitalisation. Oberleutnant Hans-Wolfram Knaak was transferred by the Abwehr to take command until Grabert was fit for duty once more.
The two companies of Rittmeister Franz Jacobi’s 3rd Battalion which were actively involved in Barbarossa also moved towards the frontier in preparation for the attack. Oberleutnant Schäder’s 12th Company had travelled first from Baden to Düren, Germany, before moving east and preparing for action as part of Army Group Centre, being ordered to undertake ‘night operations against the large road and rail bridges over the Bug River, prevent their destruction, take and hold them until infantry arrive’.
Oberleutnant Aretz’s 10th Company was held at a camp in the in the dense woodland of the Schönewald near Płaska, East Prussia. Aretz’s men were attached to the axis of advance taken by the 12th Panzer Division, Army Group Centre, two half-companies – one under the command of Leutnant Kriegsheim, the other under Leutnant Karl Kohlmeyer – tasked with taking control of the approaches to Grodno and ordered to ‘take possession of all the road and railway bridges and to hold them until the infantry arrive’. In total eight different objectives were identified and the company divided into eight combat teams to fulfil their objectives. Timetables were set and agreed with local Wehrm
acht commanders through their own intelligence officers, the password ‘Vöcklabrück’ to be used to identify Brandenburg units to advancing troops.
Battles with Army Group Centre
The 26-year-old Prussian Leutnant Ernst Gerhard König of Aretz’s company was the first Brandenburger to go into action in the Soviet Union as he led twelve men through the barbed wire that marked the frontier at 0130hrs on 22 June. König’s men were in Volltarnung, ample Soviet uniforms having been supplied though they were often unrealistically ‘new’ and clean and the men were at pains to attempt to make them appear more ‘lived in’. Though stocks of material, including uniforms, trucks and weapons, were available from Finland where they had been captured during the Winter War of 1939–40, the Brandenburgers still carried German weapons, trusting that darkness would hide that fact from their enemy. The border area was criss-crossed with streams, Soviet troops having removed planking from many small bridges to impede any progress through the marshy land, leaving only the upright pylons in place. König’s men had come prepared, however, and laid boards over each skeletal bridge that they crossed for the benefit of troops to follow. The men paused once over the frontier, Gefreiter Rau, who spoke fluent Russian, crawling forward to scout the path ahead. Rau had volunteered for the mission and prearranged signals had been agreed upon that would bring König and the remaining ten men to Rau once the path ahead had been mapped out. Minutes dragged by with no sign until a sudden burst of noise followed by an ominous ‘gurgling’ noise was heard by König and his men. Without the signal and no sign of Rau, they could not advance with any certainty and the young Leutnant decided to await the opening of the German artillery barrage at 0305hrs to cover their advance. All the Brandenburger troops had been enjoined not to fire any weapons before the scheduled bombardment, the Wehrmacht running to a strictly timetabled plan of attack and counting upon the element of surprise and shock to their enemies.
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