Waffen-SS

by Adrian Gilbert

  Mackensen and Steiner were sufficiently worried at the strength of the enemy fire that the infantry attack was repeatedly postponed. At 1:00 P.M. a sympathetic Mackensen told Steiner that he would accept a cancellation of the planned operation: “I realize that the attack will be very difficult, Therefore I will not demand it of you. In spite of the great difficulties the bridgehead presents us, I would rather forgo its enlargement than sacrifice a division for it.”10 Before Steiner was forced to make this difficult decision, Soviet gunfire began to slacken, the artillery battle finally going in favor of the Germans. By 2:00 P.M. “Germania” and “Westland” were forcing their way through the streets of Dnepropetrovsk’s northern suburbs. Over the next two days the Germans ejected the Red Army from the city, looking forward to an exploitation of their hard-won success in having successfully crossed the Dnieper.

  AS LEIBSTANDARTE AND other army formations were battering themselves against the Soviet lines guarding entry into the Crimea, the remainder of Eleventh Army continued its eastward march toward Rostov-on-Don. The advance was halted by a surprise counterattack by two Soviet armies, launched on 23 September, which opened up a gap between Romanian and German forces. The success of the Red Army attack forced Manstein to temporarily curtail the Crimean operation and redirect forces to protect the now wavering spearhead.

  As one of the few mobile formations at Manstein’s disposal, Leibstandarte was rushed eastward, across the empty, forbidding Nogai Steppe to the north of the Sea of Azov. One SS man wrote of the barren conditions they encountered: “There is very little water and what there is salty. Movement is visible for miles; clouds of choking, red-brown dust hangs over our moving columns and pinpoint our exact positions. Paradoxically the only signs of life are the dead tree trunks of telegraph poles. Without them it would be difficult to orientate oneself. Sometimes we find a melon field, but the unripe ones have unhappy effects.”11 The normally positive Kurt Meyer was also affected by the nature of the Nogai Steppe, feelings accentuated by the ever-increasing distance from the fatherland: “I felt the terrifying emptiness of the open spaces for the first time. The yawning emptiness of the steppe had a depressing effect on us. How were we to operate in the east?”12

  The initial Soviet success in disrupting the German-Romanian advance encouraged the Red Army commanders to press on farther, a move that was to leave them dangerously overextended. While the German troops from the Crimea advanced directly to the rescue of their comrades between Multipool and Bryansk, General von Kleist’s powerful panzer divisions (soon to renamed First Panzer Army) had driven southward along the eastern bank of the Dnieper. By the end of September they had cut through the lines of communication of the Soviet armies, and on 6 October they met up with units from the German Eleventh Army—which included Leibstandarte—at Berdyansk. Poor Soviet intelligence as to the whereabouts of Kleist’s armored formations and the sheer speed of the German reaction transformed the situation from seeming defeat to an easily won victory.

  By 10 October at least 65,000 Soviet troops had laid down their arms, leaving the way open for the continuation of the German march eastward.13 The port of Taganrog—at the mouth of the River Mius—was captured by a Leibstandarte battalion commanded by Fritz Witt on 17 October. A little to the north, Wiking was engaged in the attack on Stalino (Donetsk), which fell on the twentieth. The seizure of these two towns provided a good jumping-off point for Army Group South’s prime objective: Rostov-on-Don.

  Any chance of a swift drive on Rostov was confounded by the arrival of heavy rains during mid-October, turning the land into a virtually impassable quagmire. The history of the Wiking Division provided a good account of the effects of the rasputistsa, the local name for the Soviet Union’s “rainy season” that brought operations to halt, both in the fall and in the spring:

  In these miserable days the vast and desolate countryside of the southern Ukraine between the Dnieper and the Donets revealed the full malice of its black earth. Every movement by wheeled or tracked vehicles became a laborious exercise in the muddy lanes; vehicles were ruined and fuel consumption skyrocketed. Any tank or gun that deviated from the muddy roads or tried to move into position off the road sank into the soft earth up to its axles. Vehicles that did so could often only be pulled out after strenuous efforts. The only possible means of advancing was to use the tough little steppe horses. The Russians hitched them to small carts and were able to slowly negotiate the black earth tracks of the Ukraine.14

  The rain and the increasingly cold winds sweeping across the steppes were not the only problem faced by Rundstedt’s Army Group South. As the Germans pressed farther east, so their supply chain lengthened, and with that came attendant shortages of food, ammunition, and, above all, fuel. The only efficient means of transporting fuel were by rail, but Kleist’s fuel-hungry mechanized divisions were now far from the nearest German railheads, reliant on trucks to bring up essential supplies. Danish volunteer Hauptsturmführer Paul Engelhardt-Ranzow was a staff officer with Wiking, and his diary entry for 15 October noted that, much to Steiner’s irritation, the division had been able to advance only a few miles:

  Enemy disintegrating and in retreat but we are unable to pursue. Our division needs 136 cubic meters of fuel operating serviceable vehicles on passable roads. Today in the mud, 350 cubic meters. But we already need 700 cubic meters just to bring fuel from Dnepropetrovsk since the trains can’t come any further. So we sit here without fuel—motorized units, tanks, aircraft. The water is very bad. I put a glass of boiled water down in the evening and the next morning the bottom of the glass was covered with a 1 cm thick layer of oil.15

  A lowering of morale and the onset of illnesses through exhaustion, poor diets, and uncertain hygiene reduced the fighting ability of the men. Even the toughest soldiers were not immune. Kurt Meyer was laid low by a bout of jaundice and dysentery that forced him to relinquish command of his reconnaissance battalion. As October gave way to November, the weather alternated between windswept rain and bitterly hard frosts.

  Despite their problems, the German mechanized divisions struggled along as best they could. An improvement in the weather in late October and the arrival of (limited) fuel allowed elements of the Wiking Division to advance with a degree of their former swiftness. Among these was the antitank battalion, which had the bizarre experience of repelling a Soviet cavalry charge on 6 November 1941.

  On the same day that this throwback to nineteenth-century warfare was being played out, “Nordland” encountered a cutting-edge example of the latest Soviet technology. A regimental antitank gun commander saw several Soviet tanks bearing down on his lines: “My four guns opened fire simultaneously and I could clearly see that the 3.7cm tracer rounds were on target. I was startled to see the tanks carry on and circle the infantry’s dugouts. Round after round was fired by our guns with no discernible effect. The rounds simply bounced off the tanks and only a hit in the suspension or tracks achieved any results. In short, we had the first T-34s in front of us.”16

  The sudden arrival of the T-34 tank came as a shock, the Soviet tank superior to anything fielded by the German army at that time. In addition, Wiking and Leibstandarte soldiers found themselves enduring barrages from Katyusha rocket launchers. The Germans had been schooled in the idea that Russians were subhuman, and the surprise created by these new weapons was as unsettling as it was unwelcome. And as the Red Army gained in material strength and confidence, so the Germans in the Ukraine began to reach the end of their ability to conduct offensive operations. But Hitler was determined that Rostov would fall, and on 17 November Kleist’s First Panzer Army twitched in one last spasm of offensive action.

  On 13 November the alternating wet and cold weather finally gave way to permanent winter conditions. For the poorly equipped German soldiers in their summer uniforms, this meant yet more misery, with the onset of widespread cases of frostbite that included Sepp Dietrich, who suffered first- and second-degree frostbite on the toes of his right foot. One Leibstandarte
soldier recalled how in this weather, “the wounded die quickly; the blood freezes as it leaves the body and a sort of shock sets in which kills. Light wounds that heal in three days in summer kill you in winter.”17

  For the mechanized formations, the lack of suitable cold-weather lubricants and antifreeze to protect the engines was a troublesome complication. During the coldest periods a tank crew would have to light a wood fire underneath their vehicle in the morning to generate sufficient heat to get the engine started. But once these difficulties were surmounted, the armored vehicles could, at least, roll forward into action over the hard ground.

  General Mackensen’s confidence in Leibstandarte was sufficient for him to choose it to lead the assault on Rostov, supported by the 14th Panzer Division. Dietrich’s troops, reinforced with an army tank regiment, crossed the Tusloff River on 17 November, just fifteen miles north of Rostov. After a swift breakthrough phase, the Germans encountered heavy resistance as they fought their way into the northern suburbs of the city. On 20 November, SS troops reached the River Don, and in a daring action led by Obersturmführer Heinz Springer the main rail bridge over the river was captured intact. The following day Rostov was in German hands.

  But as the Germans were fighting their way into Rostov, the Red Army was assembling powerful forces to mount a counterattack. North of Rostov, the German line came under severe pressure, and on the night of 21–22 November Wietersheim’s XIV Corps conducted a fighting withdrawal to the Tusloff, with Wiking’s “Westland” Regiment providing the rear guard. This retirement left Rostov as an increasingly vulnerable salient, and an anxious Kleist began to consider its evacuation. On 28 November, as Red Army infantry penetrated the outer districts of Rostov and Soviet armor pressed from the north, Rundstedt and Kleist ordered a general withdrawal behind the River Mius, some fifty miles to the west of Rostov.

  Hitler was outraged when he discovered how far the Germans had retreated, the first such reverse his forces had suffered since the outbreak of war in 1939. Kleist was upbraided as a coward, while Rundstedt—ultimately responsible for ordering the retreat—was sacked and replaced by General von Reichenau, commander of Sixth Army and an enthusiastic Hitler supporter. Dietrich bravely came to Rundstedt’s support and informed Reichenau that there had been no realistic possibility of holding Rostov and that retreat had been the only option. Dietrich asked Reichenau to pass on his views to the Führer. Dietrich also dispatched Leibstandarte’s combat strength returns to Hitler, which from an establishment figure of 290 officers and 9,704 men had fallen to 157 officers and 4,556 men, with just 15 percent of vehicles in a roadworthy condition.18

  Hitler was sufficiently perturbed by the whole situation that on 2 December he flew out to Army Group South headquarters at Mariupol, where Dietrich once again defended his army superiors against Hitler’s criticisms. Hitler, partially mollified, then returned to his headquarters, leaving Army Group South, with Leibstandarte and Wiking, to hold the line along the River Mius through the grim winter of 1941–1942.

  Chapter 14

  THE DRIVE ON MOSCOW: ARMY GROUP CENTER

  FIELD MARSHAL VON Bock’s Army Group Center was assigned the most ambitious task in the German invasion plan, the destruction of the Soviet armies defending Moscow. Accordingly, it was provided with a greater offensive capability. Whereas the other two army groups were allocated a single panzer group, Bock’s force had the advantage of Colonel General Hoth’s Third Panzer Group and Colonel General Guderian’s reinforced Second Panzer Group. Used in conjunction, the two panzer groups would win a series of brilliant encirclement battles in the initial stages of the campaign.

  Hausser’s SS Reich Division joined Guderian’s panzers, as part of General von Vietinghoff ’s XLVI Panzer Corps. The other two formations in the corps comprised the reinforced Infantry Regiment “Grossdeutschland”—old rivals in the race to Belgrade—and the 10th Panzer Division, the latter forming a close bond with Reich during the advance to Moscow.

  Fully exploiting Stalin’s slow response to the German invasion, the two panzer groups easily broke through the Red Army’s defenses. On 27 June advance units from the panzer groups met to the east of Minsk, trapping three Soviet armies in the process. Over the following days German infantry divisions broke up the encircled Soviet forces into two pockets, at Bialystok and west of Minsk, which they then proceeded to liquidate, the battle concluding on 10 July. Although a substantial number of Soviet troops managed to slip through the German cordon, out of a total force of 625,000 men just under 100,000 were killed and approximately a third of a million men taken prisoner.

  This victory, and others along the front, produced an intoxicating elation among OKH, the German Army high command. Franz Halder, the army chief of staff, wrote on 3 July, “It may be said that the objective to shatter the bulk of the Russian Army this side of the Dvina and Dnieper has been accomplished. It is thus probably no overstatement to say that the Russian campaign has been won in the space of two weeks.”1 Hitler even began to talk of ceremonial parades and firework displays in Moscow.

  FOR HAUSSER’S REICH Division, the invasion of the Soviet Union began slowly, its pioneers and artillerymen constructing bridges across the River Bug while the rest of the division waited impatiently for the order to move. On 26 June Reich joined the queues of vehicles crossing the Bug, its role to provide security to the southern flank of Guderian’s Second Panzer Group as it pushed forward into Russia.

  Skirting the northern side of the Pripet Marshes, Hausser’s Reich Division faced a series of river crossings that included the Berezina and the upper reaches of the Dnieper. Speed was of the essence, and the division’s vanguard consisted of reconnaissance and motorcycle troops along with a battalion from the “Deutschland” Regiment, with extra firepower provided by the StuG IIIs of the new assault-gun battery. Each assault gun was given its own name, taken from ships of the Imperial Navy and drawn in turn from famous Austro-German soldiers. The assault gun “Yorck” was the first into action and in a confused encounter on 30 June knocked out several Soviet tanks and antitank guns.

  On 3 July Hausser was pleased with the performance of the division’s “new” infantry regiment, SS Infantry Regiment 11, when it drove back Soviet forces in the forests bordering the main supply route. During the Balkans campaign the regiment had been kept back in reserve, and it was only now that the former concentration-camp guards from the 11th Totenkopf Standarte found themselves fighting an enemy with military training.

  The next obstacle was the River Berezina, but this was crossed by the division on 4 July with minimal opposition. Guderian believed that the Soviet forces—still in disarray after the Bialystok-Minsk encirclement—were hoping to make a stand on the Dnieper and the Stalin Line defenses that lay behind the river. As they pushed forward to the Dnieper, the SS advance was encumbered in the wooded regions made swamp-like by heavy rain. Ordered to press on without delay, there was little the Reich soldiers could do when Red Army infantry fell back into the relative safety of the forests. This was a recurring problem for all German forces advancing into the Soviet heartland in the summer and autumn of 1941. One German soldier outlined the problem:

  The Russians again proved their mastery in forest fighting. With sure instinct they moved among the impenetrable undergrowth. Their positions, not on the forest’s edge but deep inside, were superbly camouflaged. Their dugouts and foxholes were established with diabolical cunning, providing a field of fire only to the rear. From the front and from above they were invisible. The German infantrymen passed them unsuspecting, and were picked off from behind. The Russians were also very good at infiltrating into German positions. Moving singly, they communicated with each other in the dense forest by imitating the cries of animals, and after trickling through the German positions they rallied again and reformed as assault units.2

  By 9 July Reich and the other formations of Vietinghoff ’s XLVI Panzer Corps closed on the Dnieper. Hoping to surprise the Soviet defenders, Vietinghoff insisted
on elaborate deception measures and a covert advance. On 11 July Reich and the 10th Panzer Division prepared to assault the Soviet positions on the far side of the river, which at this point was roughly a hundred yards wide. To prepare the way, an aerial bombardment was launched against the Stalin Line. The divisional history recorded the attack carried out by “Der Führer”: “To our great surprise, the devastating Stuka attacks made the enemy evacuate the heavily fortified positions on the eastern bank. Thus the regiment began crossing in the great heat at 1530 hours. Contrary to our expectations, it occurred without a fight or any complications.”3

  Oberführer Keppler was immensely relieved that he had gotten his men across the Dnieper and through the Stalin Line virtually without loss. As he was preparing to go over the river, he received a surprise order to immediately stand down as CO of “Der Führer” and take command of the Totenkopf Division following the incapacitation of Theodor Eicke. Having nurtured the regiment from its inception in Austria in 1938, Keppler had deep reservations regarding the “promotion,” but in accordance with his orders he handed the regiment over to Sturmbannführer Otto Kumm of the III Battalion.

  Another abrupt command change occurred two days later. The Red Air Force, having recovered from the disasters of the first week of combat, was beginning to fight back. On 13 July Soviet bombers struck the command post of the 11th SS Infantry Regiment, mortally wounding its commander, Obersturmbannführer Brandt, and killing or wounding almost all of his regimental staff. Brandt, with his doctorate in engineering and pioneering work with camouflage uniforms, had been a staunch pillar of SS-VT from the outset, becoming the first commander of the division’s illustrious reconnaissance battalion and upgrading 11th Regiment in a remarkably short time.