Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  had three times more tanks and twice as many guns as the Russians. By November 22

  they had broken into Klin north of Moscow and in the west to Istra, the point nearest to Moscow they were ever to reach in force. It was no doubt from Istra that German

  generals later remembered that they "could look at Moscow through a pair of good field-glasses". Istra is some fifteen miles west of Moscow.

  There were many acts of heroism by Russian soldiers in the embittered fighting north of Volokolamsk, such as the many— if atrociously costly—feats by General Dovator's

  cossack cavalry (Dovator himself was to be killed during the Russian counter-offensive on December 19), or the suicidal resistance of Panfilov's anti-tank unit who were

  guarding the Volokolamsk highway at the Dubosekovo crossroads:

  On that day the Germans had hoped to break through to the Volokolamsk highway,

  and to advance on Moscow. After a massive air attack, German tommy-gunners

  tried to break into the Russian trenches, but were driven back by rifle and machine-gun fire. Then a second attack was launched by a fresh unit supported by twenty

  tanks... Using anti-tank rifles, hand-grenades, and petrol bottles the Panfilov men crippled fourteen of the tanks and the other six were driven back. Shortly

  afterwards the wounded survivors were again attacked by thirty more tanks. It was then that politruk (political instructor) Klochkov turned to the soldiers, saying

  "Russia is big, but there is nowhere to retreat, because Moscow is behind us"... One by one the Soviet soldiers were being wounded and killed in a merciless fight which lasted four hours. The severely wounded politruk threw himself under an enemy tank with a bunch of hand-grenades and blew it up. The Germans, having lost

  eighteen tanks and dozens of men, failed to break through...

  [ IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 261.]

  There are various versions of the famous story of the "Twenty-eight Panfilov men"; what is curious about such stories of suicidal Russian resistance is that they are a little like a lottery or a lucky dip; numerous equally valiant deeds passed, if not unnoticed, at least unrecorded for posterity. But there were a few sample heroes, so to speak, who were to be built up in the popular imagination. The air force had its national hero in the famous Captain Gastello who, in the first week of the war, had crashed his burning plane into a column of German tanks; the infantry—its twenty-eight Panfilov men; the Partisans—

  and, by implication also the Komsomol and the Soviet people generally—were to have as their national heroine Zoya Kosmodemianskaya, the eighteen-year-old Moscow

  Komsomol girl, who had set fire to a German stable and was tortured and hanged by the Germans in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow during the grim days of November

  1941.

  [Later in the war there was a similar "canonisation" of the "Young Guard" resistance group in the mining town of Krasnodon in the Donbas. A. Fadeyev later wrote a famous novel on them.]

  It so happened that the story of Zoya was discovered, together with her tortured and frozen body, with a rope round her neck, by Lidin, a Pravda reporter at the time of the Russian counter-offensive two weeks later... In reality, neither Gastello, nor the twenty-eight Panfilov men, nor Zoya were isolated cases of Russian bravery and self-sacrifice; there were very many others in the levée en masse atmosphere of November-December 1941.

  On the southern flank of the Moscow front, the industrial city of Tula, joined to the capital by a narrow bottleneck, was in constant danger of being encircled. There was a particularly strong Party organisation in that old Russian centre of arms manufacture, and the workers' battalions took a very active part in the defence of their city, which was living in a sort of "1919" atmosphere, dramatically described by General Boldin, who was placed in charge of the defence of Tula on November 22. Guderian had failed

  already once to reach Tula, but had not abandoned his attempts to outflank and isolate it.

  On December 3 Tula was encircled, the Germans having cut both the railway and the

  highroad to Moscow. As Boldin tells the story:

  On December 3, sixteen enemy tanks, together with motorised infantry crossed the

  Tula-Moscow railway at Revyakino and occupied three villages... I was also told

  that, later in the day, the Hitlerites had cut in several places the Tula-Moscow

  highway, some ten miles north of Tula. "What shall we do now?" said Zhavoronkov (the local Party chief). "A strange question," I said, trying to sound cheerful. "We'll just go on defending Tula as before, and go on killing Fascists."

  Not for a moment did the roar of guns stop in and around Tula. I called up the

  command post of the 258th rifle division in the village of Popovkino, and asked for its commander, Colonel Siyazov. "Mikhail Alexandrovich," I had to bellow into the field telephone, "take immediate steps to clear the Germans off the Moscow

  highway!" Siyazov could hardly hear me. I had to spell out every word. Then I could faintly hear him say: "Comrade General, your order will be carried out. I am ordering the 999th regiment to attack."

  I asked Siyazov to inform me hourly. Not for a moment did I doubt that they would succeed. Then the phone rang from H.Q., and General Zhukov asked for me. I felt it would be an unpleasant conversation. And so it was. "Well, Comrade Boldin,"

  Zhukov said, "this is the third time you've managed to get yourself encircled. Isn't it rather too much? I already told you to move your army headquarters and command

  post to Laptevo. But you were pig-headed, wouldn't carry out my order..."

  "Comrade Commander," I said, "if I and my army staff had left, Guderian would already be here. The position would be much worse than it is now."

  For a couple of minutes there was a loud crackle in the receiver, and finally I could hear Zhukov again. "What steps are you taking?" he said. I reported that the 999th rifle regiment of the 258th division had gone into action to clear the Moscow

  highway and that, moreover, an attack was being mounted against the Germans at

  Kashira. "What help do you need?" said Zhukov. "May I ask you to move the tanks of Getman's division southwards along the Moscow highway to meet the 999th

  rifles?" "Very well, I shall," said Zhukov. "But you, too, do your stuff."

  Siyazov went on phoning hour by hour. The 999th regiment had been fighting for

  seventeen hours when another phone call came. An overjoyed excited Siyazov

  reported: "Comrade Commander, Vedenin (the Regiment's commander) has just

  phoned to say that his men and the German tanks have joined up. Traffic may be

  resumed along the Tula-Moscow highway."

  [Boldin, op. cit., pp. 184-5.]

  At Tula, December 3 turned out to be the most critical day; at most other sectors of the front, however, the Germans had been virtually stopped about a week earlier, and already preparations were in full progress for the Russian counter-offensive which was to start on the 6th.

  Towards the middle of their second offensive against Moscow, the Germans were

  beginning to suffer from the cold. A little over a week after Guderian had bitterly

  complained that he couldn't move his tanks because of the mud and was hoping for an

  early frost, which would make it easier to advance on Moscow, he started to complain equally bitterly about the frost for which he had longed. On November 6 he wrote:

  It is miserable for the troops and a great pity that the enemy should thus gain time while our plans are postponed until the winter is more and more advanced. It all

  makes me very sad... The unique chance of striking a single great blow is fading

  more and more. How things will turn out, God only knows.

  And then he said that, on November 7, "we suffered our first severe cases of frostbite".

  By November 17 he sounded even more downcast:

  We are only nearing our final objective step by step in this icy cold a
nd with all the troops suffering from this appalling supply situation. The difficulties of supplying us by railroad are constantly increasing... Without fuel, our trucks can't move... Yet our troops are fighting with wonderful endurance despite all these handicaps... I am thankful that our men are such good soldiers.

  It was all most distressing. As he later wrote:

  The 1941 harvest had been a rich one throughout the country, and there was no

  shortage of cattle. (But) as a result of our wretched rail communications only a

  small amount of food could be sent to Germany from the area of the Second Panzer

  Army.

  [Guderian, op. cit., pp. 246-9. Here is also to be found the much more dubious story about the wonderfully good care the Germans were taking to supply the Russian civilians at Orel and elsewhere with food! As we shall later see, Orel suffered from an appalling famine in the winter of 1941-2 under Guderian's tender care. See p. 690.]

  On November 17, we learned that Siberian troops had appeared ... and that more

  were arriving by rail at Riazan and Kolomna. The 112th Infantry Division made

  contact with these new Siberian troops. Since enemy tanks were attacking

  simultaneously... the weakened troops could not manage this fresh enemy. Before

  judging their performance it should be borne in mind that each regiment had

  already lost some 500 men from frostbite, that, as a result of the cold, the machine-guns were no longer able to fire and that our 37-mm. antitank gun had proved

  ineffective against the Russian T-34 tanks. The result of all this was a panic... This was the first time that such a thing had occurred during the Russian campaign...

  The battle-worthiness of our infantry was at an end...

  For all that, Guderian continued to attack Tula, and also records the fact that his troops did, at one moment, cut the Tula-Moscow highway as well as the Tula-Moscow railway;

  but it is clear from his story that something went wrong—though he does not say

  anything except that "the strength of the troops was exhausted, as was their supply of fuel."

  All subsequent attacks on Tula failed, largely, according to Guderian, for the same

  reasons, and because on December 4 the thermometer had dropped to minus 31°C., and

  on the 5th to minus 68° (sic). This is a physical impossibility, and must be regarded, it seems, as a Freudian lapse, betraying Guderian's urge to blame everything on the

  weather!

  The Russians, while denying that it was exceptionally cold in November, agree that it was very cold indeed in December; what they very rightly point out is that it is a stupid fallacy to imagine that Russian soldiers do hot suffer, like anybody else, from extreme cold! What they do say, however, is that the Soviet troops had far better winter clothing than the Germans:

  General Blumentritt bitterly admits that the German soldiers were destined to

  spend their first winter in Russia fighting heavily, and with nothing to wear but summer clothes, overcoats and blankets. At the same time, according to him, "most of the Russian effectives were well supplied with short fur jackets, padded jackets

  (telogreiki), felt boots (valenki) and fur hats with ear-flaps. They also had fur gloves, mittens and warm underwear." We can only agree with these lamentations of the beaten Nazi general. The facts he mentions merely show... that the Soviet High

  Command proved more farsighted than the German High Command... For the first

  time in World War II the Nazi Army was passing through a severe crisis. The Nazi

  generals were deeply discouraged by the enormous losses their troops had suffered, and by their failure to end the war against the Soviet Union in 1941. All their hopes of warm, comfortable billets in Moscow had gone up in smoke.. .

  [IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 268.]

  The almost astronomical figures of German losses quoted at the time for obvious

  propaganda purposes by both Stalin and the Sovinformbureau communiqués are not

  repeated in present-day Soviet histories of the War. In the course of the second German offensive against Moscow (November 16 to December 5), says the History, the German losses were: 55,000 dead, over 100,000 wounded and frostbitten, 777 tanks, 297 guns and mortars, 244 machine-guns, over 500 tommy-guns which is a reasonable estimate, not

  greatly differing from the losses suggested, for instance, by Guderian.

  [Ibid., p. 265.]

  The total German losses for the first five months of the war are now put not at Stalin's four and a half million, but at 750,000, not counting the losses of Germany's allies. This figure is even slightly lower than that given by the Germans themselves. As Hillgruber and Jacobsen say: "There is no doubt that German losses were very high during the first phase of the Russian campaign, especially during the Battle of Moscow... The total losses of the German army in the east were, up to December 10, 1941 (not counting the sick), 775,078 men (roughly, 24.22 per cent of the eastern armies which, on the average,

  totalled 3.2 million men). According to Halder's Diary the losses were as follows (in round figures) up to the second half of the second Moscow offensive:

  Total up to 31 July 213,000 men

  Total up to 3 August 242,000 men

  Total up to 30 September 551,000 men

  Total up to 6 November 686,000 men

  Total up to 13 November 700,000 men

  Total up to 23 November 734,000 men

  Total up to 26 November 743,000 men

  Of these nearly 200,000 were dead, including 8,000 officers.

  As against this, the German authors glumly remark, 156,000 was the total of the German losses (of whom, some 30,000 dead) during the whole of the Western campaign in 1940!

  [ B. S. Telpukhovsky, op. cit., German edition, footnote on p. 93.]

  Chapter XII THE MOSCOW COUNTER-OFFENSIVE

  In preparing for its winter counter-offensive, the Soviet High Command had a minimum and a maximum programme.

  [As is implied in IVOVSS]

  The minimum programme was to restore communications with blockaded Leningrad, to

  lift the threat hanging over Moscow, and to close the Germans' access to the Caucasus.

  The maximum programme was to break the Leningrad blockade, to encircle the Germans

  between Moscow and Smolensk and to recapture the Donbas and the Crimea. As things

  turned out, even the minimum programme was only partly carried out: Rostov, the

  "padlock of the Caucasus" had been liberated by the Russians at the end of November, and the Germans were pushed back to the Mius line, but apart from a local offensive in the Donbas, later in the winter, which recaptured a small salient including Barvenkovo and Lozovaya, the Russians got no further. In the Crimea, Sebastopol was holding out, but the Russian landing on December 26 on the Kerch Peninsula in the Eastern Crimea

  was to end in disaster in the following spring. On the Leningrad front the recapture of Tikhvin on December 9 alleviated Leningrad's supply position considerably. But the land blockade as such continued. The Russian advance in the Moscow area was more

  spectacular, yet despite the liberation of large territories—one of the Russian thrusts, for instance, went nearly all the way to Velikie Luki, a matter of about 200 miles—the

  Germans succeeded in holding the Rzhev-Gzhatsk-Viazma triangle of fortified hedgehog positions, less than a hundred miles west of Moscow.

  It was Hitler who, against the advice of many of his generals— these advocated a major withdrawal—insisted on holding Rzhev, Viazma, Yukhnov, Kaluga, Orel and Briansk;

  and, with the exception of Kaluga, all these places were held. Many of the discouraged generals—among them Brauchitsch, Höppner and Guderian—were sacked, while von

  Bock fell "ill". In the north, von Leeb was also relieved of his command for reasons of

  "health" and was replaced by General Küchler, a more wholehearted Nazi. Hitler had been greatly disappointed by von
Leeb's failure to capture Leningrad in August or

  September, just as he had been incensed by von Bock's failure to capture Moscow.

  Rundstedt also fell into temporary disfavour after the Russian recapture of Rostov.

  The Russian counter-offensive was launched on December 5-6 along almost the whole

  560 miles from Kalinin in the north to Yelets in the south, and during the very first days spectacular progress was made nearly everywhere. A characteristic of the fighting in winter conditions was the avoidance, as far as possible, of frontal attacks on the enemy's rearguard, and the formation of mobile pursuit units, calculated to cut the enemy's lines of retreat and create panic among them. Such pursuit units, comparable to the Cossacks of 1812, who mercilessly harassed the Grande Armée, were composed of tommygunners, ski troops, tanks and cavalry—notably the cavalry units under General Belov and General Dovator. But the results of these tactics often proved disappointing, and the cavalry units suffered particularly heavy casualties.

  The behaviour of the Germans in this winter war varied from place to place; usually they still offered stubborn resistance, but were clearly obsessed by the fear of encirclement; thus, when by December 13 the Russians closed in on Kalinin and Klin and summoned

  the German garrisons to surrender, these rejected the ultimatum, but nevertheless

  hastened to pull out before it was too late—not without first, it is true, setting fire to as many buildings as possible. In other places, however, the German retreat often

  degenerated into a panic flight. West of Moscow and in the Tula area, miles and miles of roads were littered with abandoned guns, lorries and tanks, deeply embedded in the snow.

  The comic "Winter Fritz", wrapped up in women's shawls and feather boas stolen from the local population, and with icicles hanging from his red nose, made his first

  appearance in Russian folklore.

  On December 13, Sovinformbureau published its famous communiqué announcing the

  failure of the German attempt to encircle Moscow, and describing the first results of the Russian counter-offensive. The newspapers published photographs of the outstanding

  Soviet generals who had won the battle of Moscow: Zhukov, Lelyushenko, Kuznetsov,