by Jon E. Lewis
At this conference on ‘Citadel’ Hitler made the significant and perfectly accurate comment, that ‘it must not fail’. On 10 May Guderian saw him again and begged him to give up the idea; Hitler replied, ‘You’re quite right. Whenever I think of this attack my stomach turns over.’ Yet under the pressure of Keitel and Zeitzler he ultimately gave way, and consented to an operation of grandiose proportions. The attack from the south was to be made by ten Panzer, one Panzer Grenadier, and seven infantry divisions; the northern thrust would be delivered by seven Panzer, two Panzer Grenadier and nine infantry divisions. It was to be the greatest armoured onslaught in the history of war.
. . . . It is an accepted fact that plans and preparations for an operation of such magnitude cannot be kept secret for any length of time. The Russians reacted to our plans exactly as was to be expected. They fortified likely sectors, built several lines of resistance, and converted important tactical points into miniature fortresses. The area was studded with minefields, and very strong armoured and infantry reserves were assembled at the base of the salient. If ‘Citadel’ had been launched in April or May it might have yielded a valuable harvest, but by June the conditions were totally different. The Russians were aware of what was coming, and had converted the Kursk front into another Verdun.
. . . The German Supreme Command was committing exactly the same error as in the previous year. Then we attacked the City of Stalingrad, now we were to attack the Fortress of Kursk. In both cases the German Army threw away all its advantages in mobile tactics, and met the Russians on ground of their own choosing. Yet the campaigns of 1941 and 1942 had proved that our Panzers were virtually invincible if they were allowed to manoeuvre freely across the great plains of Russia. Instead of seeking to create conditions in which manoeuvre would be possible – by strategic withdrawals or surprise attacks in quiet sectors – the German Supreme Command could think of nothing better than to fling our magnificant Panzer divisions against Kursk, which had now become the strongest fortress in the world.
By the middle of June Field-Marshal von Manstein, and indeed all his senior commanders, saw that it was folly to go on with ‘Citadel’. Manstein urged most strongly that the offensive should be abandoned, but he was overruled. D-Day was finally fixed for 4 July – Independence Day for the United States, the beginning of the end for Germany.
. . . The terrain, over which the advance was to take place, was a far-flung plain, broken by numerous valleys, small copses, irregularly laid out villages and some rivers and brooks; of these the Pena ran with a swift current between steep banks. The ground rose slightly to the north, thus favouring the defender. Roads consisted of tracks through the sand and became impassable for all motor transport during rain. Large cornfields covered the landscape and made visibility difficult. All in all, it was not good ‘tank country’, but it was by no means ‘tank proof’. There had been sufficient time to make thorough preparations for the attack.
. . . Contrary to the normal practice, we were not to attack at dawn, but in the middle of the afternoon. On 4 July the weather was hot and sultry and there was a feeling of tension along the battlefront. The morale of the attacking troops was of the highest; they were prepared to endure any losses and carry out every task given to them. Unhappily they had been set the wrong tasks.
The resultant battle of Kursk, the greatest clash of armour in history, was a complete failure for Germany; within two months of the battle’s end, the German army in the East had been pushed back 150-miles along a 650-mile front.
WOUNDED SS TROOPS, CHERKASSY, FEBRUARY 1944
Leon Degrelle, Legian Wallonie
Degrelle was the commander of the Belgian Walloon volunteers fighting with the SS-Dwision Wiking. Hitler is reputed to have said that he wished that the diehard Degrelle was his son.
From our makeshift position in Nowo-Buda we had been expecting the breakthrough to come on Monday. By Tuesday it had still not come. When would it happen? What were we to live on in the meantime – that is if we managed to escape the bullets?
Wherever we found ourselves, we soon came under enemy fire. Sanderowka was under fire day and night from “Stalin’s organs”. Wherever we went we came upon dead horses, smashed-up vehicles and corpses which we no longer had time to bury. We had turned the kolkhoz (Russian collective farm) into a field hospital, which was open on all sides, but at least provided a roof for our wounded soldiers. We had completely run out of medicaments, and there was no more material for bandages to be found in the whole of the pocket. To get hold of bandaging our medical orderlies had to wrestle the peasant girls to the floor and pull down their long military underpants – presents from German Don Juans. They screamed and ran off, holding on tight to their skirts. We just let them scream.
The Stalin’s organs bombarded the kolkhoz. The roof caved in. Dozens of wounded men were killed in the bloody confusion. Others went crazy, letting out terrifying screams. The barracks had to be evacuated. Even our wounded men now had to stay out in the open. For several days and nights more than 1,200 wounded men from other units lay out in the open on hundreds of farm carts on a bed of straw. The rain had soaked them to the skin and now they were at the mercy of the biting frost.
Since Tuesday morning it had been 20 degrees below freezing, and lying outside in their hundreds were wounded men whose faces were nothing more than a hideous violet mass, men with amputated arms and legs, dying men, their eyes rolling convulsively.
Snow fell endlessly in the evening. It was soon a foot high. Twenty or thirty thousand people waited in our village for some kind of military end to the drama, with no sort of accommodation. Oblivious to the danger, the people stood out in the open in groups around fires they had lit in the snow. Sleep was impossible. Lying out in this biting cold would have meant certain death. The flames from burning the isbas could be seen from far away. In the valley hundreds of little fires burned, around which disconsolate shadows huddled, soldiers with reddened eyes and ten-day-old beards, warming their yellow fingers. They waited. Nothing happened.
They were still there in the morning – they didn’t even bother trying to get some food. Their eyes looked to the south-west. Wild rumours were flying around. Hardly anyone listened to them any more. The silence was suddenly broken by the Stalin’s organs. Everyone threw themselves down into the snow and then got to their feet again wearily. Wounded men screamed out. The doctors saw to them, to salve their consciences . . .
Twelve hundred wounded men still lay on the carts. Many of them had given up asking for help. They lay crushed together under a miserable cover, all their efforts geared to the task of staying alive. Hundreds of vehicles stood in a confused huddle. Horses reduced to skeletons chewed on the wooden slats of the carts in front of them. Here and there you could hear isolated groans and cries of wounded men. Crazed men raised themselves up, bleeding and with snow in their hair. What was the point of driving yourself crazy thinking of how you might feed these unfortunate men? They hid their heads under the covers. Every now and then the drivers would brush off the snow from these lifeless bodies with their hands. Many had been lying on these carts for ten days. They could feel themselves rotting alive. No injection could ease their most unbearable pains. There was nothing to be had. Nothing! Nothing! All they could do was wait – wait for death or a miracle. The number of yellowing bodies beside the carts kept increasing. Nothing could surprise us any more, nothing could stir our feelings. When you’ve witnessed such horrors, your senses are dumb.
ONE MAN’S WAR: AN UNFORTUNATE DAY ON THE EASTERN FRONT, JULY 1944
Lieutenant Zhuravlev Alexander Grigoryevich, Red Army
I remember one most unfortunate day. We lost 50 men. It was July 1944 near the city of Lvov. Everything began at dawn. There was a rye field behind us. The rye had grown high. As the mist began to dispel Nazis appeared in our rear. They moved straight to our batteries. We turned our guns and dispersed the Nazis. Then we had breakfast. We were ordered to take new positions. Usually our first b
attery headed the convoy on the march. It was followed by the second and the third batteries. There were four studebeckers in our platoon and each carried a heavy gun. Our fourth vehicle drove into a shell-hole breaking an axle. We stopped. The batteries that followed us went ahead. At the approaches to the next village they fell victim to a most fierce air bombing. Vehicles burnt, shells blew up, all people gathered in a straw shed. It was hit by a bomb. When the bombing ended we dug out the straw shed and found burnt bones. We identified the chief of the staff by his boots. We failed to identify others. If our vehicle had not driven into a shell-hole our battery would have been the first to enter that mess. We laboured over the damaged vehicle and had to leave it behind. At an edge of the forest Nazis opened fire on us. We turned away from the highway, we moved on the field. When we camouflaged ourselves I noticed that the third vehicle was lacking. I went to search for it. It was on the field. The driver was injured, his commander was bandaging him. I could not leave the studebecker there, it meant death for the crew. I could drive a car. I drove that vehicle at high speed. The engine was roaring, so I did not hear the sound of shelling: Nazis opened machine-gun fire on me. Only later I noticed that when I turned the wheel to the left the studebecker was listing to the right. I could hardly reach our camouflaged positions. There was a hole in the car’s back. But well, I was not injured. We moved on. On the way we were caught by a thunderstorm and received the order to take defenses on the edge of the forest. We heard Nazi vehicles roaring near-by and their catterpillars clanging. We carried guns with our arms and dug out all night. Next morning there was a lull. Our reconnaisance reported that Nazis had retreated, practically without a shot.
Grigoryevich was awarded the title hero of the Soviet Union for his role in the forcing of the Dnieper River, September–December 1943
WARSAW UPRISING: A PARTISAN GROUP IS TRAPPED IN THE SEWERS, 26 SEPTEMBER 1944
Anonymous fighter, “Polish Home Army”
Twenty thousand resistance fighters of the Polish Home Army rose in revolt against the German garrison in Warsaw, capturing half the city before they were crushed. Although the advancing Russians were only thirty miles away they could not or would not (Stalin had no wish to see an independent Poland) help. Ten thousand Polish Home Army fighters were killed in the eight weeks of the uprising.
It was 26 September. For the last fortnight I and my radio group had been in Mokotow, where the situation was critical, not to say hopeless, just as it had been in the Old Town a month earlier. We were on a narrow strip of territory like an island, with the Germans all round.
We carried her in turns, stumbling over corpses, knapsacks and arms. It was horrible. Ewa’s demented howling mingled with other unearthly screams. She was not the only one.
I felt my strength ebbing away. At one point I lost my footing and fell heavily. My companions, Oko and Geniek, helped to put me on my feet again.
We set Ewa down and covered her with overcoats; we had to rest. She sat, propped against the side wall of the sewer, no longer screaming, and with glassy eyes. A procession of ghastly phantoms kept filing past us, some of them howling as Ewa did only a short time ago. Those screams, multiplied by echoes, were about as much as one could stand.
Then a new party approached. I wanted to warn them that we were resting, but before I could do so one of them had fallen, and the others, no longer aware of what they were doing, went over him, trampling him down into the bottom of the sewer – automatically, quite unconscious of the fact that he was still alive. In the same way they would have walked over us.
When they had passed we got up. Ewa no longer gave any sign of life, nor did the man who had been trampled on. We walked on.
We passed a barricade put across the sewer by the Germans. After some time we caught up with the group which had passed us. Then we came to another barricade. This one was well built and was a real obstacle. There was no way through here. I turned back with my group, and some of the others followed. When we came to the first barricade, the one we had just passed, we met a party of people who told us feverishly that the sewer beyond the barricade in the direction of Mokotow was flooded. So we should never get to the top!
A despairing argument took place between the two groups, the one that had brought the news of the flooding and the one that had come up against the impenetrable barricade. By then people had lost their senses; they were shouting in their fury and anguish.
Some remnant of judgment indicated a return to Mokotow. It was not very likely to succeed, but it was the only way of keeping alive – no matter for how long; the only thing that mattered was not to die in the sewer.
The gas was affecting our eyes more and more the whole time. I felt just as if I had sand under my eyelids; my head, too, was rolling to one side in a queer way. The mass of people all round were still arguing how to save themselves. From time to time a hideous bubbling was heard, as one more person whose strength had gone slipped into the foul liquid. But even more unbearable would be the voice of some woman pulling him out: “Look, he’s alive, he’s smiling! My darling, you’ll soon be on top again!” Oh God, not to see it, not to hear it!
I realized during my increasingly rarer spells of clarity that I was beginning to lose consciousness. I held on to one thought: to get back to the surface. I did not want someone else to hear the splash and the bubbling which my ears would not hear.
I shouted then, at the top of my voice:
“Make way, I’ll lead you out!”
But the angry yells which met me on all sides were the worst thing yet.
“Who said that? Fifth columnist! Shoot him!”
This shouting, like a sharp lash, spurred me to an extra effort. I escaped. I had enough sense left to realize that at such a moment what they threatened could well happen. Edging sideways close to the wall, my group and I crossed the barricade unnoticed by the rest.
We were over on the other side. We were going back, come what might.
At once we were deep in it. After a few steps we could no longer feel the bottom, but with the help of planks, knapsacks and abandoned bundles, we managed to keep our heads above the surface. After a short time we again felt the ground under our feet. The cold water and the absence of the blasted gas helped to clear our heads, and, holding each other’s hands, we crawled slowly forward. Forward, that was what mattered. I knew that by following that sewer we were bound to come out in Dworkowa Street. We had to make it.
At 4 p.m., seventeen hours after we first went down into the sewers, we were pulled out of them by S.S. men in Dworkowa Street.
GERMANS FLEE THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE, DANZIG, 9 MARCH 1945
Hans Gliewe, schoolboy
Danzig in the so-called “Polish Corridor” had been the pretext for the German invasion of Poland in 1939.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that 9 March in Danzig as long as I live. . . . We had found a place to stay with a woman whose name was Schranck. Then, at seven o’clock in the evening, the sirens started to howl. The crashing started right away, the floor shook and the windows rattled. We rushed down the stairs and ran for the nearest air-raid shelter.
The shelter was so crowded we barely squeezed inside. Several hundred refugees had been living in it for days. When we finally dared to come out the sky was red, and over the houses were piles of black smoke. Then we saw that our house was burning, too. We had lost even our baggage.
The fires hissed and crackled. Some horses had torn loose and were galloping down the pavement. Children got under their hooves. Rafters fell down from burning houses. We finally fled back into the air-raid shelter. Next morning we went out again into the ruined streets, and looked for another place to stay. We found someone we knew, and they took us in. We slept on the floor. Mother was ou t almost all day trying to find something for us to eat.
That night, more refugees came and wanted to crawl under. Very late in the night came still another woman with a little baby on her arm. The baby was white in the face, its skin looked transp
arent and all wrinkled. The baby’s right thigh had been torn off, and the little stump was wrapped in bloody rags.
The woman must have been young, but she wore old, torn clothes and looked fifty. She was very shy. She made me think of a scared animal. She had nothing with her, only the child. For a long time she said nothing, only sat there on her chair.
Then she said, “God Almighty, I never thought I’d get as far as this. We were between the Russians all the time. We’re from Marienburg. The first wave of Russians came. They shot Father. They took our watches, and with us they did, oh, what they do . . .”
She went on: “The first lot moved on. Many of them knew a little German, and they told us we should get out because those who came after were even worse. So I took my child and left. I went after them. I thought these are through now, and the next wave will take a little while. I just wanted to stay between the two waves. I walked and I walked. Tanks kept coming, and the Mongols on them, and then it started again. My Joachim lay beside me, crying all the time. When it was over we went on walking. In the evening a couple of trucks caught up with us. I wanted to hide in the snow in the ditch but then I saw they were Germans. I ran out on the road and begged them to take me along. I told them about the tanks, and they cursed and swore.
“On the truck there were other women with their children. We got near a clump of woods. Someone shot at us. The soldiers drove on into another wood, and got off. They did not want to go on, they said, they wanted to surrender to the Russians. We were terribly frightened and cried and wept and begged. But they just said, Do you think we want to get away from Ivan just to be strung up by the chain dogs9? Then a corporal pulled an automatic pistol on them and said, “You yellow bastards, if you don’t get moving with those women right away I’ll shoot you down.” But they just grinned at him, and one of them said, “Go ahead and shoot, you couldn’t get that truck moving, could you? You’re stuck, too.”
