The numerical strength of Hitler’s armies seemed impressive, but they proved insufficient to the magnitude of the task facing them. The broad-front strategy—with separate objectives for the three army groups—was highly ambitious, stretching the Axis to the breaking point. During the opening phase of the campaign, these shortcomings were largely hidden, but when the Wehrmacht began to encounter more systematic resistance its meager general reserve of twenty (second-rate) divisions was soon exhausted. Thereafter, the Wehrmacht was dangerously exposed to any Soviet counteroffensive.
Chapter 12
ADVANCE ON LENINGRAD: ARMY GROUP NORTH
FIELD MARSHAL VON Leeb’s Army Group North—tasked with the capture of the Baltic States and Leningrad—was directed to advance over a relatively narrow front against Soviet forces deployed in depth. As a consequence, Leeb would rely less on maneuver skills and more on the sheer speed and power of General Hoepner’s Fourth Panzer Group. Leading the panzer charge were General Reinhardt’s XXXXI Panzer Corps and the LVI Panzer Corps, commanded by the German Army’s rising star, General Erich von Manstein.
The motorized Totenkopf Division was held back in Hoepner’s panzer reserve. As a consequence of the bad feelings engendered between Hoepner and Eicke in France during 1940, the assignment of Totenkopf to the Fourth Panzer Group seemed an unfortunate decision, yet over the course of the campaign relations between the two commanders improved, sufficiently so for Hoepner to use a squad of Totenkopf troops as his personal bodyguard.1 For Eicke, the attack on the Soviet Union was the culmination of his military and political career. He impressed upon his troops that this was to be a war of unrelenting savagery, and unlike some of his more fastidious colleagues he openly promoted the Commissar Order.
The first German success of Army Group North’s campaign was achieved by Manstein’s LVI Panzer Corps. In an exceptional cross-country dash, Manstein advanced nearly 200 miles in just four days, reaching the Latvian city of Dvinsk (Daugavpils) on 26 June. The city was situated on the Dvina River, a strategic barrier running across the path of the German advance. The Russians were so surprised by the sudden German arrival that they failed to blow the bridges, allowing the Germans to establish a bridgehead on the far bank. With this line crossed, Manstein waited impatiently for the arrival of the slow-moving infantry. In this situation, motorized formations like Totenkopf were invaluable, able to close the gap between panzers and foot soldiers. Eicke’s troops had begun to move eastward on the twenty-fourth, and with the capture of Dvinsk they were ordered to follow in the wake of LVI Corps.
As Manstein’s armored vehicles were carving their way through the ranks of the Red Army, Totenkopf mopped up Soviet troops bypassed in the panzer advance. On 1 July the division encountered its first really organized resistance. Standartenführer Max Simon’s 1st Infantry Regiment fought its way into Kraslau, although poor discipline and a failure to exploit the success brought censure from adjoining army formations. Major General Lancelle of the 121st Infantry Division lodged an official complaint with LVI Corps. According to the report, he “had to enter Kraslau on foot to untangle an enormous traffic jam of SS vehicles and to prod the resumption of an SS attack that had become chaotic and disorganized.” In the town center he was shocked to find “a group of SS soldiers gathered in the main street trying fruitlessly to make an ancient Russian gramophone play while other groups of SS infantrymen shattered windows, looted shops, and loaded all available vehicles with booty of every description.”2 In the Totenkopf Division, old habits died hard.
The next objective was the Stalin Line, a defensive system that stretched across the western Soviet Union from north to south. In many places the defenses existed on paper only, but Eicke’s men faced a well-prepared series of bunkers, trenches, minefields, and camouflaged artillery and machine-gun positions.
Fortifications around the town of Sebesh formed the first barrier. The attack was launched just before dawn on 6 July and came to an almost immediate halt as the Red Army held its positions to the end. Hauptsturmführer Friedrich, a divisional liaison officer, was with Eicke in his command vehicle when the initial assault was made: “Heavy artillery fire—off and away at high speed! In the infantry gun position, the men fire magnificently. The division commander calls out: ‘Well done, men! Good shooting!’ Smiling faces, joy. Then enemy counter-battery fire—direct hit, everybody is dead.”3
The deadlock was broken by the arrival of StuG III assault guns from an adjoining army unit, their extra firepower forcing the remaining Russian survivors back to Opotschka, the linchpin in this section of the Stalin Line. There then followed three days of continuous battle as the SS infantry hacked their way through the Soviet defenses using submachine guns, flamethrowers, grenades, and, at times, bayonets, knives, and sharpened entrenching tools. They were supported by combat engineers, placing high-explosive charges to blow apart the most fiercely defended concrete bunkers.
Obersturmführer Klinter was in the forefront of the attack. Advancing toward a hill held by the enemy, he turned around to find no one following him—his platoon had gone to ground. They were roughly pushed back into action:
I finally got them to the foot of the high ground. Then we could make out the enemy after all. I could see his positions, make out the machine guns, and could bring our own mortars into action. The artillery forward observer, who had come with us, had already established radio contact—friendly artillery fire really pounded the enemy positions! It was nice to hear the rush of our own artillery rounds fly overhead and watch the mushrooms of dirt, debris, stone and wood fly in the air. Yes—they had stopped firing at us. Over the top and no more waiting, Go! Go!4
Klinter’s troops gained the enemy crest and captured the few Soviet soldiers who remained. The fighting for Opotschka swung back and forth, but with grim determination Totenkopf soldiers finally overcame the defenders. “Opotschka is an unforgettable name,” wrote Friedrich. “We fought over the city for three days. Once we captured it, we stood on a heap of rubble.”5
Combined losses among the division were heavy, amounting to 88 officers and 1,777 NCOs and enlisted men in this opening phase.6 Among the casualties was Eicke himself: his command car drove over a mine on 6 July, causing him serious leg injuries. Eicke was evacuated for surgery, with Kleinheisterkamp appointed as his temporary successor before Himmler decided on a more permanent replacement.
General Manstein congratulated the division in his 12 July Order of the Day: “I express my gratitude to the officers and men of this corps for their dedication; my recognition for your high achievements.”7 In private, however, Manstein held more ambivalent views on the military role of the Totenkopf Division—and of the Waffen-SS in general. He praised the division for its good march discipline and the way that it “always showed great dash in the assault and was steadfast in defense.” But he was severely critical of what he saw as deficiencies in training and leadership:
The division suffered excessive losses because its troops did not learn until they got into action what army units had mastered long ago. Their losses and lack of experience led them in turn to miss favorable opportunities, and this again caused unnecessary actions to be fought. I doubt if there is anything harder to learn than gauging the moment when a slackening of the enemy’s resistance offers the attacker his decisive chance. The upshot of all this was that I repeatedly had to come to the division’s assistance, without even then being able to prevent a sharp rise in casualties.8
It took several days for Totenkopf to prepare itself for further combat duties. This reorganization included the dissolution of the 2nd Infantry Regiment, its remaining personnel distributed among the other two infantry regiments. On 15 July Hoepner ordered Totenkopf to move forward to support Manstein’s LVI Panzer Corps as it advanced toward Lake Ilmen.
As the Germans pushed deeper into Russia, the terrain became increasingly difficult for mechanized formations. Good roads were scarce, with trucks, artillery, and armored vehicles forced to struggle along
unsurfaced roads and tracks. The sparsely populated countryside, a mix of swamp and forest, was crisscrossed by a multitude of rivers, streams, and lakes. These conditions played into the hands of the Soviet defenders, skilled in the arts of camouflage and close-quarters combat. They also provided an ideal sanctuary for the thousands of Soviet soldiers who had been cut off in the rapid German advance.
On 19 July Brigadeführer Georg Keppler arrived at divisional headquarters to replace Kleinheisterkamp (until Eicke was sufficiently recovered to return to the field). Chosen specifically by Himmler, Keppler came directly from the Reich Division now fighting its way through Belorussia (Belarus). As a former battalion commander in the “Deutschland” Regiment and CO of “Der Führer” during the invasion in the West, he had all the necessary experience to lead SS troops in battle.
On 31 July, to the dismay of Manstein and Totenkopf, the SS division was reallocated to join General von Wiktorin’s XXVIII Army Corps. From the start, relations between the new army corps and Totenkopf were poor, the SS officers complaining of insults made to them by the corps staff. Keppler and Heinz Lammerding, Totenkopf ’s chief operational officer, also believed the division was being sacrificed to spare army formations.
In early August the SS Polizei Division, released from Army Group North’s general reserve, arrived at the front. The former policemen received a warm welcome from the Red Army as they attempted to break through the Luga Line; the division suffered 2,000 casualties during the battle, including their new commander, Arthur Mülverstadt, who was killed by Soviet artillery fire on 10 August. From then on, the Polizei Division adopted a largely defensive role.
The growing strength of the Soviet defenses along the Luga and immediately in front of Leningrad had brought Army Group North’s progress almost to a halt. A short while later, Hitler decided he would prefer to starve Leningrad into submission, ordering his divisions—with assistance from the Finnish Army—to cordon off the city.
The unhappy relationship between Wiktorin’s corps and Totenkopf was brought to an end as a result of a surprise Soviet offensive. On 14 August, eight infantry divisions and a cavalry corps of the Soviet Thirty-Fourth Army drove into the line held by the German X Army Corps to the south of Lake Ilmen. Manstein was assigned the task of neutralizing this ominous threat to Army Group North’s right flank, with Totenkopf transferred to his command.
Manstein ordered X Corps to hold its positions along the River Polist, as part of his plan to make the Red Army commander commit as many Soviet divisions to the frontline battle as possible and thereby reduce the number of formations held in reserve. While the fighting was ongoing, Manstein calmly marshaled his own forces for a devastating counterstrike against the Soviet’s increasingly exposed left flank. Totenkopf and the 3rd Motorized Division would spearhead the attack.
Early on 19 August Manstein launched his assault, which drove into the surprised Soviet ranks. As darkness fell, Totenkopf was urged on by Manstein to seize the bridges over the Polist and prevent the enemy from escaping eastward to safety. The fighting continued without pause on the twentieth, allowing the Germans to encircle the now desperate Soviet troops. During the night, German artillery mercilessly pounded the Red Army positions in preparation for a final assault in the morning. The twenty-first of August was a glorious day in Totenkopf ’s history, the troops cutting through what remained of the Red Army positions, destroying anything that moved. The exhausted, demoralized Soviet soldiers were incapable of resistance, and those not killed by SS troops on surrender were sent to the rear as prisoners.9
The victory on the Polist was followed by an immediate German drive eastward, across a series of parallel rivers that ran southward from Lake Ilmen: the Redja, the Lovat, and the Pola. Despite its defeat, the Red Army high command was still able to commit sufficient numbers to make the German advance a slow and protracted business, especially as the onset of heavy rain transformed the already marshy ground into a quagmire.
The Red Army clung to its positions along the Pola, and it was only with an improvement in the weather on 7 September that the Germans were able to cross the river. Totenkopf pushed forward a few miles beyond the river to establish a line running around the settlement of Demyansk by 12 September, and here the advance halted.
This marked the high-water mark of Army Group North’s invasion of the Soviet Union. As if to underscore this change of circumstances, Manstein was ordered to leave the LVI Corps and take command of Eleventh Army for the offensive into the Crimea. In the organizational changes that followed Manstein’s departure, Totenkopf was assigned to the II Army Corps and ordered to construct field defenses along the Pola River line. As the divisional staff expected to resume offensive operations, no great attention was directed toward the task, some SS officers asserting that the Red Army was on the verge of collapse.10
On 19 September Eicke returned to take command of his division.11 Although still suffering from his wounds—he walked with a limp and relied on a walking stick—he immediately set about galvanizing the division for action. Shocked at the poor physical state of his men, he dashed off his usual letters of complaint to remedy what he considered a dangerous situation. He wrote to Karl Wolff—Himmler’s adjutant and SS liaison officer to the Führer—requesting that he persuade Hitler to have the division rested, and then to Hans Jüttner to demand that NCO replacements not be siphoned off into other parts of the SS, as had been the practice while he was convalescing. Eicke also reinstated regular ideological instructional sessions for the troops, something that had been allowed to lapse when Kleinheisterkamp and Keppler had led Totenkopf.
As Eicke was reimposing his authority, forward outposts began to report ominous signs of an impending Soviet offensive. On 22 September it was clear that Soviet reconnaissance units were probing German lines to discover weak points that might be exploited in any attack, which duly came on the twenty-fourth with a heavy aerial bombardment. The Luftwaffe was conspicuously absent from the battlefront, allowing the Red Air Force to attack the German lines at will. After this came the standard artillery barrage followed by swarms of advancing infantry. What was new, however, was the massed deployment of armor against the Totenkopf positions.
The main weight of the Soviet attack fell upon Kleinheisterkamp’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, defending Lushno. Hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, the Waffen-SS troops were slowly pushed out of the village, but then immediately counterattacked to regain possession. For the next three days Lushno would become the center of a desperate seesaw battle, neither side seemingly able to gain ascendancy over the other. On 25 September, SS troops holding the line to the north of Lushno were startled to see a herd of squealing pigs bearing down on them; they had been driven forward by their Soviet handlers in an attempt to clear a path through a recently laid German minefield. The porcine mine detectors failed in their mission, and the ensuing human attack also came to nothing.
The shortage of effective 5cm antitank guns was a recurring problem for the German defenders. As a short-term measure, Eicke encouraged the use of tank-killer squads, comprising up to a dozen men armed with mines, satchel charges, and grenades. In the constricted semiurban environment of Lushno, Soviet tanks were vulnerable to these squads—as long as they were sufficiently brave and enterprising.
In a typical encounter, a squad member would creep out from cover and clamber onto the rear deck of the enemy tank to place a high-explosive charge under the turret overhang. A grenade, with a short fuse, was normally used as a detonator, so the SS soldier had to make a hasty exit to avoid the blast. All the while, the remainder of the team would provide suppressive fire against any accompanying Soviet infantry. And if the tank was disabled they would shoot down surviving crewmen attempting to escape the vehicle. Hauptsturmführer Max Seela, from the combat pioneer battalion, became an expert tank killer; he and his team knocked out seven of the latest tanks in a single day.12
The focus of the Soviet attack briefly moved south to concentrate on Simon’s 1st I
nfantry Regiment, but then returned to Lushno in a last attempt to destroy what remained of the 3rd Infantry Regiment. For the Totenkopf Division, this was the critical moment. The reconnaissance battalion—which was then acting as the divisional reserve—had been redeployed elsewhere. If the Red Army broke through the beleaguered infantry lines, there was nothing to block its progress. Eicke and Lammerding even began to prepare their headquarters staff for frontline combat. On 26–27 September the Red Army launched its final attempt to overwhelm the Totenkopf, but the fanatical ideological character of the division—where no Aryan could give way to a Slav—proved its worth. The line held.
Totenkopf casualties were inevitably heavy, nowhere more so than in the 3rd Regiment’s II Battalion. By the end of 26 September every officer was dead, a figure that included 4 battalion commanders killed in quick succession. Overall, the battalion suffered 889 casualties between 24 and 29 September, leaving approximately 150 men to fight on, which they did, launching a final counterattack to retake the village. On 28 September the Red Army ceased offensive operations.
Perhaps the most outstanding single action of the battle was carried out by Sturmann Fritz Christen. His exploits were recounted by Totenkopf officer Karl Ullrich:
Christen, an artilleryman in the anti-tank battalion, was with his battery north of Lushno on 24 September in the middle of Russian armored attacks. After the entire company had fallen except for Christen, he remained alone by his gun and destroyed six tanks. The remaining tanks turned back. Cut off from the rest of his unit, he remained at his 5cm PAK [antitank gun] for two days without water or rations and knocked out an additional seven tanks. He was finally rescued from his desperate position by a counterattack on 27 September. The division commander [Eicke] awarded him the Iron Cross First Class and recommended him for the Knight’s Cross, which he later received personally from the Führer. He was the first enlisted man of the division to receive that award.13
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