War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942

by Robert Kershaw

  Döring’s Heinkel He111 lifted as it dropped its bombs. Down below, the navigator observed:

  ‘Smoke clouds, flames, fountains of earth, mixed with all sorts of rubble shoots into the air. Blast it! Our bombers had missed the ammunition bunkers to the right. But the lines of bombs continued along the length of the airfield and tore up the runway. We’d scored two hits on the runway. No fighters would be able to take off from there for some time.’

  Other bomber groups would soon unleash their bombs over the same target. He glanced back, ‘as we climbed again’, and ‘I could see that about 15 of the fighters on the runway were in flames as well as most of the living quarters.’ They set course back to base. This had been their first bombing mission. ‘We’d been so successful,’ he reported ‘that there was no longer any need to carry out the second raid we had planned on the airfield.’(20)

  These early morning successes were not achieved without loss. In Poland, Siegfried Lauerwasser, a combat cameraman, was filming aircraft as they returned to their bases. ‘That’s how it started,’ he stated, running the film for television after the war. Within a few hours it became apparent some crews were missing. It was ‘a great surprise,’ he said, ‘when we were told “so and so” had not returned, and we waited’. They were not coming back. ‘What a shock. Comrades, friends, human beings gone – with unknown fates – people you had lived with for days and months together.’(21) This was to be an often repeated experience.

  The most devastating pre-emptive strike in the short history of air warfare was gathering momentum.

  The shortest night of the year… H-hour

  Leutnant Heinrich Haape, medical officer of III/IR18, stood with his battalion commander, Major Neuhoff, and Adjutant Hillemanns on the crest of a small hill on the south-eastern border of East Prussia. They were peering into the darkness ahead, trying unsuccessfully to pick out recognisable features on the pitch-black Lithuanian plain stretching before them. Five minutes remained to H-hour.

  ‘I glanced at the luminous dial of my wrist watch. It is exactly 3 a.m. I know that a million other Germans are looking at their watches at the same time. They have all been synchronised.’

  Haape was sweating slightly. This was more from ‘the awful tenseness of these fateful minutes’ rather than the sultry night. He noticed:

  ‘A man lights a cigarette. There is a barked command and the glowing end drops earthward, sparks on the ground, and is stamped out. There is no conversation; the only sounds the occasional clink of medal, the pawing of a horse’s hoofs, the snort of his breath. I imagine I can see a faint blush in the distant sky. I am eagerly searching for something on which to fix my eyes and divert my thoughts. Dawn is breaking. In the east the black sky is greying. Will these last seconds never tick away? I look again at my watch. Two minutes to go.’(1)

  The shortest night of the year was nearing its end. Although at ground level all was shrouded in a murky darkness, the sky was taking on a distinctly lighter hue.

  Erich Mende, an Oberleutnant in the 8th Silesian Infantry Division, remembered a last-minute conversation with his commanding officer shortly before going into action. ‘My commander was twice as old as me,’ he said ‘and had already fought the Russians as a young Leutnant on the Narwa front in 1917.’

  ‘“We will only conquer our deaths, like Napoleon, within the wide Russian expanse,” he pessimistically predicted. As by 23.00 hours there had been no revision of the original H-hour, they realised the attack would begin at 03.15 hours. “Mende,” he said, “remember this hour, this is the end of the old Germany. Finis Germania!”’

  Mende, however, was unmoved. He explained how ‘amongst the youngsters there was optimism, because of the way the war had gone already. We did not share the doubts voiced by the older men, nor myself, those of my commander.’(2)

  A testimony to the vast scale of the impending campaign was the variation of H-hours required to cater for the spread of daybreak along the 3,000km front. Dawn would appear in Army Group North’s sector first at 03.05 hours. In the Central Army Group it was anticipated at 03.15 hours, in the south at 03.25 hours. All eyes along the massive front followed the progress of minute hands on watches. These final moments were to prove both interminable and unforgettable to men facing the prospect of imminent death or mutilation.

  Hauptmann Alexander Stahlberg, with the 12th Panzer Division, remembered:

  ‘We were sitting in our vehicles in deepest darkness. Many men had simply lain down on the ground in the forest. We could not sleep.

  ‘Towards three o’clock, the NCOs went from one vehicle to another, waking up the soldiers. The drivers pressed their starters and slowly the columns rolled out of the forest, like the gradual emptying of a car park after some sporting event. This new 12th Panzer Division made an impressive sight when, crossing open country, one could see the whole body of 14,000 soldiers with their vehicles.’(3)

  Walter Stoll, an infantry radio operator, positioned nearby on the Bug, remembered frantic last-minute preparations.

  ‘Now we had to get a move on. Strike tents, load vehicles, continue to roll up some [signals] line, receive iron rations and ammunition. We even got chocolate, cognac and beer. Everyone helped each other.’

  As they moved up, the roads became increasingly clogged with artillery moving into their final positions. ‘28s, 15s, 21cm mortars, there was no end.’ They marched across log-corduroy roads, through sand and woods to their assembly areas. In a village jammed with self-propelled assault guns, they discarded equipment except that required for action. Vehicles were left behind. Infantry squads began to shake out in assault formation.(4)

  Gefreiter Erich Kuby, sitting in his Horch vehicle on the edge of a wood, observed: ‘it was a beautiful morning, cool and clear, with dew on the meadows.’ Following the hustle and bustle of the previous week the ‘calm before the storm lay over the land’. Hardly a single vehicle was moving in his sector. All lay motionless awaiting the attack. After receiving the order to drive forward, Kuby noticed the emerging dawn. ‘The sky was yellow and red, the outline of the woods silhouetted in black and presently also the Panzers, waiting in long lines.’ The tranquillity of the scene, with battle shockingly imminent, made a deep impression. ‘There was not a single restless line within the picture,’ displayed before him.(5)

  Senior German officers assembled at vantage points to witness the anticipated spectacle of the opening bombardment. General Guderian, commander of Panzergruppe 2, drove to his command post, an observation tower located south of Bohukaly, 15km northwest of Brest-Litovsk. ‘It was still dark when I arrived there at 03.10 hours,’ he noted.

  General Günther Blumentritt, Chief of Staff to von Kluge, the commander of Fourth Army, was standing in 31st Infantry Division’s sector nearby. From there ‘we watched the German fighter planes take off and soon only their tail lights were visible in the east’. As zero hour approached, ‘the sky began to lighten, turning to a curious yellow colour. And still all was quiet.’(6)

  In the 20th Panzer Division sector near Suwalki, the northern prong of Army Group Centre, the ‘typical tension prior to the beginning of an offensive’ reigned. Rows and rows of tanks waited, motionless, seemingly floating on mist or long dew-strewn meadow grass. Occasional scraping-sounding movements of shadowy figures could be discerned on turret tops as commanders stood to gain a better view forward, scanning with binoculars through an emerging twilight. A few minutes before 03.00 hours swarms of Stuka dive-bombers, followed by more bombers, began to fly up from behind their assembly areas.(7)

  With two minutes to go, Leutnant Haape with Regiment 18, like many others, began to think of his wife.

  ‘My thoughts turn to Martha, linger with her. She will be asleep, as will the sweethearts – and the wives and mothers – of millions of other men along this vast front!’(8)

  Gefreiter Erich Kuby, with Army Group South, composed a last-minute letter to his wife while waiting in his vehicle in the dark. He predicted the emotional i
mpact coming events would have upon her and his child.

  ‘Now you know [about the invasion] as even I. That means at this moment – but not yet – because you will certainly still be asleep as the declaration of the Russian War is read out at 07.30 hours. But soon Mrs Schulz will turn up and you are going to be shocked. Then you will take Thomas into the garden and tenderly tell him that I will come back again.’(9)

  The unsettling immediacy of their present predicament occupied all minds. Heinrich Haape reconciled himself with the thought that at least his wife was mercifully unaware. ‘This night is as a thousand others, and that is how we wish it to be.’ But for the waiting soldiers an uncertain future beckoned. ‘We will march,’ Haape accepted. There was one minute to go, ‘And tomorrow night, where the horizon burns, there the war will be.’(10)

  Down by the River Bug Heinrich Eikmeier watched as the first 88mm round slid easily into the breech of his Flak gun, nicknamed ‘Ceaser’. All around, officers peered intently at stopwatches. Eikmeier took up the slack on the firing lanyard and waited. Would his be the first round to herald the new campaign on the Ostfront?

  Ludwig Thalmaier with the Geschützkompanie (heavy weapons company) of Infantry Regiment 63 fitfully tried to sleep in a lorry, concealed in a wood. He had a light fever. Later recording diary impressions, he saw that:

  ‘The grey dawn comes earlier here than in Germany. The birds began to chirp, a cuckoo called. There – precisely at 03.15 hours – the German artillery suddenly began to shoot. A rumbling filled the air …’(11)

  Gerhard Frey, an artillery gunner, observed that:

  ‘Punctually at 03.15 hours the first report ripped through the stillness, and at the same moment all hell broke loose! It was a barrage unlike anything we had heard before. Left and right of us flashed the muzzles of countless cannon, and soon the flickering flames of the first fires on the other side of the Bug became apparent. Men there were experiencing this awful onslaught of fire in the middle of peacetime!’(12)

  Artillery Oberleutnant Siegfried Knappe had previously studied his target, the village of Sasnia on the Central Front, in bright moonlight. The tranquil scene was transformed.

  ‘I could see our shell bursts clearly from our observation post, as well as the oily black and yellow smoke that rose from them. The unpleasant peppery smell of burned gunpowder soon filled the air as our guns continued to fire round after round. After 15 minutes we lifted our fire, and the soft pop-pop-pop of flares being fired replaced it as red lit up the sky and the infantry went on the attack.’(13)

  Back on the artillery firing line, the noise was intimidating. Kanonier Werner Adamczyk with Artillery Regiment 20 described what it was like crewing a 150mm gun battery:

  ‘Standing next to the gun, one could feel the powerful burst of the propellant’s explosion vibrate through the whole body. The shock wave of the explosion was so powerful that one had to keep one’s mouth wide open to equalise the pressure exerted upon the eardrums – an unopened mouth could cause the eardrums to be damaged.’(14)

  Infantry and some armoured vehicles began to move forward. Soldiers advanced with trepidation and mixed feelings. Götz Hrt-Reger with an armoured car unit animatedly recalled the start of ‘Barbarossa’ in a later interview:

  ‘Of course you’re scared. You were ordered to move out at 03.30 hours and naturally you had certain feelings that set your stomach churning, or you’re afraid you know. But there’s nothing you can do. That’s why I didn’t want to give orders but rather follow… ’(15)

  The three German army groups closed onto a frontier stretching from Memel on the Baltic south to Romania on the Black Sea. Many of the images of this dawning of the longest summer day of the year were captured on Wochenschau movie newsreels. Spectacular film footage was shown to German cinema audiences within one week of the event. They showed flares hanging in a dark sky already streaked with dawn. Tracer fire curls lazily over a single-span railway bridge, flashes of explosion beneath reflect briefly on the outline silhouette of advancing infantry. On the Russian side, wooden watch-towers alongside the Bug burn furiously, like flaming torches, lighting up the sky above the dark mass of the opposite bank. Smoke rises majestically into the air, expanding languidly into an inky smudge, staining the light of an emerging dawn. Stark black outlines of soldiers laden with combat gear are discernible, moving swiftly through meadow grass and briefly silhouetted crossing the high riverbanks of the Bug. They pause and lie down as the pick-pock of opposing echoing rifle fire pins them down.

  The Wochenschau images atmospherically convey an aura of menacing power and progress to their audiences, as combat vehicles and soldiers pass the distinctive stripe-patterned frontier marker posts. Cameras linger on scenes of flaming destruction. Repeated shots of artillery muzzles punching through and recoiling back inside camouflage nets that jerk convulsively, raising dust, with each concussive report of the gun, add to the aura of pitiless technological dominance. Birds, panicked by explosions in the target area, fly around the periphery of rising clouds of dirty coloured smoke. Lines of motionless Panzers, filmed awaiting the call forward, underscore a constant theme of latent lethality.

  All along the 800km line of the River Bug, Sturmgruppen (assault parties) dashed across bridges and overwhelmed surprised Russian guards before they could detonate demolition charges. Rubber dinghies ferried across infantry assault groups, followed soon after by parties of engineers constructing the first pontoon bridges.

  In Generalmajor Nehring’s 18th Panzer Division sector near Pratulin, numbers of tanks simply drove down the bank of the Bug and disappeared underwater. Infantry nearby watched in amazement as tank after tank slid beneath the surface of the water like grotesque amphibians. These tanks, belonging to Ist Battalion Panzer Regiment 18 had originally been trained and equipped to wade underwater from ramp-mounted ferry boats built in preparation for Operation ‘Seelöwe’ (sea lion), the proposed invasion of England. In October 1940 the venture was cancelled, then resurrected in part for the foreseen amphibious assault crossing of the Bug.

  The ‘U-Boat’ tanks were fitted with 3m steel pipes which protruded from the surface of the water as they waded across the river bottom, enabling the crew and engines to breathe. Exhausts were fitted with one-way valves and gun turrets were insulated by air-filled bicycle inner tubes. Bubbles from the exhaust were obliterated by the moving current. Total surprise was achieved as 80 of these Panzer amphibians emerged on the far bank, rapidly establishing a deep bridgehead. Russian armoured cars that had begun to menace landed infantry were quickly despatched.(16)

  The east is aflame,’ announced Leutnant Haape, observing the progress of the assaulting spearheads. Infantry mainly led the way. Many of these men were still coming to terms with the surprise they had inflicted on the Russians. Gefreiter Joachim Kredel, a machine gunner in Infantry Regiment 67 of 23rd Division, had hours before queried his company commander’s reading of the Führer Order. ‘Soldiers of the Ostfront,’ it had announced. Kredel turning to a friend asked: ‘Did the company commander actually say Ostfront?’ Feldwebel Richard von Weizsäcker (a future President of the Federal Republic of Germany), nearby with Regiment 9, refused to believe, right up to the point of going into action, that Hitler would seriously go to war against the Soviet Union. Leutnant von dem Bussche, a platoon commander in the same regiment, thought:

  ‘Funny, almost exactly 129 years before, the Emperor Napoleon, supported by the Prussian Corps under General Ludwig Yorck, had started the great Russian campaign. We all know what happened to them. Will we do better?’

  Soldiers sought to allay their acute uneasiness by engaging in purposeful last-minute checks. Rifle loaded and safety catch on? Uniform buttons done up? Helmet strap not too tight – or too loose? Hand-grenade arming mechanism screw easy to turn? Have I got an uninterrupted line of sight to the soldier nearby?(17) They awaited the signal to advance. Ernst Glasner wrote in his diary while waiting on the edge of the Bug:

  ‘Involuntarily we
counted the seconds. Then a shot tore through the stillness of this summer Sunday on the new Eastern Front. At the same moment a thundering, roaring and whining in the air. The artillery had begun.’(18)

  Feldwebel Gottfried ‘Gottlieb’ Becker had counted off the final seconds, observing the railway embankment that was his first objective. As they ran forward, ‘the echoes of explosions mixed with the incoming whine of new salvoes’. Becker and his platoon were astonished when they reached the embankment without once coming under fire. Only single shots rang out as the first German motorised column began to trundle down the road to his right; with that, worries vanished. The opening attack had proved unexpectedly smooth. Becker had reached his first objective without losing a single man.

  Nearby, Gefreiter Kredel with Regiment 67 stormed forward as fast as his legs could carry him, his machine gun sloped across his shoulder. This was his first time in action. Propelling him was the sage advice of a veteran who had assured him ‘the first wave gets through mostly unscathed, because the enemy is surprised. That’s why those that follow get the full punishment.’ Kredel thought it strange the way bullets whistled by one’s helmet. He saw a wooden Russian observation tower reduced to matchwood by a direct hit from an anti-tank gun. ‘Pieces of wood and Russians whirled through the air, and fell like toys to the ground.’ Simultaneously the Germans’ artillery dropped short and fell among their own ranks. ‘Wounded cried out, and curses of “idiots – pay attention!” became mixed with the detonations of shells.’(19) Fire shifted abruptly forward, as if in response to these recriminations.