AFTER BREACHING THE Stalin Line, the Reich Division was directed to seize the high ground to the east of the town of Yelnya. Whereas previously the division had acted to support the drive of the panzer divisions, it now became the spearhead of the German advance, engaged in the next great battle intended to trap three Soviet armies around Smolensk. As the most easterly point in the German encirclement maneuver, Yelnya would face the full force of Soviet attempts to break through to their comrades in the Smolensk pocket.
Driving forward with the 10th Panzer Division, Reich passed through Yelnya on 21 July. On the following morning Hausser personally briefed his commanders for the assault on the high ground to the east; while the meeting was in progress, they were subjected to a Soviet mortar barrage, two officers being wounded by shell splinters. Throughout the 22nd the “Deutschland” and “Der Führer” Regiments led the attack, gaining their objectives as evening fell. According to the divisional history, “The exceedingly difficult, costly fighting in the burning heat completely exhausted the men of the division. They received exemplary support from the assault guns, which reached the Russian positions without a single remaining round of ammunition.”4
Ammunition shortages were now a chronic problem for the Germans, as was a shortage of fuel that temporarily grounded the tanks of the adjoining 10th Panzer Division. That this should be the case after just a month’s fighting reflected the fundamental weaknesses of the whole logistical system and fatally undermining operational effectiveness. During the coming weeks the artillery commanders at the front were forced to husband their stocks of ammunition at all times.
The initial Soviet counterattack on 23 July pressed hard on the German defenders, while on the following day it threatened to overwhelm them. Unterscharführer Erich Rossner, commander of a 5cm (Pak) antitank gun, saw a column of eight Soviet tanks driving toward his position. According to the after-action report:
He ordered fire to be held until the lead vehicle was within 50 meters. Rossner used the familiar tactic: kill the first vehicle, then the last and, finally, destroy the trapped remainder at leisure. The first Russian tank was hit and “killed,” but the second was a flame-throwing vehicle which projected huge gouts of flame at the anti-tank gunners. The Russian crew then leapt from their machine and raced towards the gunners, who grabbed entrenching tools, pistols and grenades, doubling forward to meet the Russian charge. On that bright July morning a small knot of men, Germans and Russians, fought for their lives and when, at last, the Russian tankmen had been killed the SS gunners went back to their Pak and carried on firing until all the Russian tanks had been destroyed.5
Rossner later reckoned the entire action had lasted just five minutes; he was subsequently awarded the Knight’s Cross.
The moment of crisis came in the late afternoon. The SS troops had successfully held their position, but an army unit, having run out of ammunition, gave way on their left flank, close to the village of Ushakova. This was the most bitterly contested section of the line, the village having changed hands several times since the fighting began. A gap now appeared in the German line; if the Soviets could push sufficient forces through the gap, then the whole German position would be outflanked. Almost all of Reich’s reserves had already been committed to the battle, but at 5:00 P.M. Obersturmbannführer Ostendorff, the division’s senior staff officer, deployed what forces he had been able to collect: the pioneer battalion; the assault guns “Seydlitz,” “Ziethen,” and “Derfflinger”; and four antitank guns. Personally leading the battle group, Ostendorff attacked the left side of Ushakova, the assault guns and antitank guns taking on enemy armor and guns while the pioneers fought their way through the village to eject the Soviet infantry and restore the line.
On 25 July the Red Army brought up more artillery and subjected the Yelnya position to massed bombardments that the SS troops had never before encountered. They dug furiously to improve their positions, all the while repulsing further Soviet attacks. By the twenty-seventh, the intensity of the enemy attacks began to diminish, and with the arrival of reinforcements and supplies of ammunition the front line stabilized, taking on the appearance of a World War I battlefield. On 9 August the first Reich units were taken out of the front line, the rest of the division joining them over the next ten days. Casualties for the period 22 July–8 August amounted to 1,663, relatively light given the intensity of the fighting.6
The Reich Division and the other formations holding the Yelnya position prevented Soviet attempts to release their comrades trapped in the Smolensk pocket. Approximately 300,000 Soviet troops were captured, but the battle had exhausted Army Group Center. On a wider level, it was now clear to OKH that the Red Army had not collapsed in this opening phase of Barbarossa. It had suffered terrible casualties, but its determination to fight remained undiminished. General Halder, once so confident that the war was nearly won, expressed his doubts as early as 11 August:
The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian Colossus. This applies to organizational and economic resources, as well as the communications system and, most of all, to the strictly military potential. At the outset of the war we reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360. These Divisions are not armed [or] equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen.7
Despite overoptimistic calls from Guderian and Hoth to push on toward Moscow, Army Group Center required time to reorganize. All the while, the Red Army counterattacked the line held by the Germans to the east of Smolensk, preventing any realistic prospect of an immediate advance toward the Soviet capital.
Throughout August, a fierce debate raged within the German high command regarding the primacy of German objectives. Most of the generals argued for a drive on Moscow, while Hitler favored the seizure of the industrial regions of the Donets basin in the eastern Ukraine, a first step in a drive to capture the oil fields bordering the Caucasus Mountains.
Hitler’s focus on the Ukraine grew stronger after receiving intelligence that vast numbers of Soviet troops around Kiev had failed to retreat to relative safety to the east. They were ripe to be destroyed in another encirclement battle using the panzer groups of Guderian and Kleist (diverted from Army Group South). During the middle of August, Hitler’s plan was put into effect.
The Reich Division was assigned to Guderian’s southward drive, “Der Führer” taking the lead with the rest of the division following. On 7 September “Der Führer” reached Makoshin on the River Desna, defended by a Soviet force attempting to hold open a gap for their comrades to escape the rapidly closing German pincers. During the fight for the village, the SS troops were bombed by the Luftwaffe: “There were frightful casualties and many curses were shouted up at the Stukas.”8 Later in the day an intrepid SS patrol captured the bridge over the Desna, dismantling the explosive charges that were due to be blown and establishing a bridgehead on the far side. Over the next couple of days the bridgehead was strengthened, and on 9 September “Deutschland” broke out in a general exploitation of the battle that led to contact with German armor from Army Group South.
The Kiev encirclement was another military disaster for the Soviet Union, the Germans capturing more than 600,000 enemy soldiers. The Reich Division, meanwhile, was withdrawn from the front on 24 September for rest and a refit.
AS THE GERMANS pushed eastward into the Soviet Union, they created a vast area of occupied territory containing many of the enemies of the Nazi state: Soviet soldiers on the run and millions of Jews who were especially populous in the Baltic States, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. It was this behind-the-lines zone that came under Himmler’s jurisdiction. As well as the police and Einsatzgruppen death squads, Himmler deployed his own army, the Command Staff of the Reichsführer-SS. Under the overall direction of Kurt Knoblauch, it would provide additional weight in the Nazi program of genocide.
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p; Himmler’s private army was deployed across the whole eastern theater. The 1st SS Infantry Brigade initially followed Army Group South into the Ukraine, operating on the southern borders of the Pripet Marshes in antipartisan operations. Toward the end of 1941, it was redeployed within Army Group Center’s sector and briefly thrown into the front line during the Soviet winter offensive of 1941–1942 before returning to antipartisan duties. It would later become the cadre for the 18th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Horst Wessel.
The 2nd SS Infantry Brigade operated with Army Group North, and like the 1st SS Brigade it was also involved in rounding up and killing enemies of the Reich in antipartisan actions. During the winter of 1941–1942, it began to incorporate some of the Germanic Legions from northwest Europe, and in 1942 it began a close association with SS recruits from Latvia, eventually forming the cadre for the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.
The Pripet Marshes had been bypassed by the German Army during Operation Barbarossa. The German high command left its pacification to the SS and second-line army units. Himmler seized his opportunity for military action and sent in Obersturmbannführer Hermann Fegelein’s SS Cavalry Brigade to bring the area under German control and to liquidate its large Jewish population. Himmler believed the (largely) mounted Cavalry Brigade would be most effective in the boggy terrain of the area.
In this early phase of the war, there were few if any partisans in the Pripet Marshes, so the SS Cavalry Brigade concentrated its activities on the local Jews. On a direct order from Himmler, all Jewish men were to be shot, while “women and children were to be driven into the swamps and drowned.” The two cavalry regiments of the brigade swept through the marshes, killing and destroying as they went, following Himmler’s orders to the letter. One subsequent report on the atrocities read: “A farmer stated that when the women did not want to move on and held up their children to keep them from drowning, the soldiers ruthlessly machine gunned those wading in the waters.” By the end of September the SS Cavalry Brigade was withdrawn from the Pripet Marshes, having killed as many as 23,700 people in its short but bloody reign of terror.9
On 29 September the brigade was dispatched to Toropets, roughly 120 miles north of Smolensk, operating on the northern flank of Army Group Center. It was here that Fegelein’s cavalry had to contend with real partisans for the first time. Their pacification mission was not particularly effective, however. In a standard tactical set piece carried on throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans, partisan groups attacked an enemy weak point and then melted away, leaving the inhabitants of the nearest town or village to face the wrath of the vengeful Germans. The SS cavalry units caught few partisans but killed many civilians.
AS THE SS Cavalry Brigade was advancing toward Toropets, so Army Group Center prepared what it hoped would be the knockout blow of the war: the drive on Moscow, code-named Operation Typhoon. The offensive opened on 2 October, and in keeping with its name the Germans advanced at a whirlwind pace. Guderian’s Second Panzer Army scored a major success at Bryansk, while the Third Panzer Army, cooperating with the redeployed Fourth Panzer Army, developed another encirclement battle around the town of Vyazma.
The Reich and 10th Panzer Division captured the town of Gshatsk (east of Vyazma), with SS troops riding into battle on the tanks of their army comrades, before penetrating the outer line of the Soviet Moscow Defense Position. During the attack, the Germans came under fire from massed batteries of Katyusha rockets, the experience described by one SS officer: “As I had not dug a slit trench I just flung myself behind a tree and watched the terrifyingly beautiful display of rocket shells. The memory of the smell of the high-explosive and of black, red and violet colors as the shells detonated and took on the shape of tulip heads will always remain in my mind.”10
On 14 October, Paul Hausser came forward to inspect the advance made by “Der Führer,” but on arrival at the regimental command post he was seriously wounded by Soviet tank fire. Hausser survived his wounds—losing an eye in the process—but this marked the end of his command of the Reich Division. When he returned to duty he was earmarked to lead the new SS Panzer Corps, command of the division passing to Wilhelm Bittrich, CO of the “Deutschland” Regiment.
The Vyazma encirclement yielded as many as 500,000 Soviet prisoners, and for a while it seemed that Moscow would fall to Hitler. The Red Army was badly shaken, but the Germans had also suffered heavy casualties, and with a growing shortage of fuel, ammunition, and serviceable vehicles, the advance faltered. The deteriorating weather was also a factor, as outlined in the “Der Führer” regimental history: “Each day the weather became less favorable: heavy snow showers mixed with rain; light frost during the night; temperatures above freezing during the day; the roads and terrain were transformed into clinging mud.”11
On 22 October “Der Führer” pushed on through the mud to capture Borisovo before being forced to halt until the ground was sufficiently frozen to resume motorized operations. While at Borisovo, an eyewitness described how Reich troops rounded up the village leaders and heads of collective farms and had them shot on the basis that they were partisans.12 It would seem that the frustrations produced by the slowing of the offensive were making themselves felt throughout the division.
As the troops of the division “eagerly awaited the winter, for the frost that would make the ground passable again,” it underwent a basic reorganization.13 Reinforcements had failed to keep up with casualties, and as a consequence the 11th Infantry Regiment was disbanded, its remaining soldiers distributed among “Deutschland” and “Der Führer.”
By 7 November, with the weather becoming progressively colder and the terrain firmer, limited offensive operations resumed, the division preparing itself for the push to capture Moscow. The order came on the seventeenth, as temperatures were falling fast and the ground was rock hard. Supported by newly arrived Nebelwerfer rocket launchers and the last two serviceable assault guns, “Prinz Eugen” and “Yorck,” the SS troops drove over the snow-covered fields to engage the enemy. Progress was good, although the Germans were disconcerted to find they were facing fresh, well-equipped units that had recently arrived from Siberia.
By 25 November Reich had fought its way to Istra, only twenty-five miles from the Soviet capital and a stronghold in Moscow’s inner defensive ring. It was famous for its New Jerusalem Monastery, a complex of religious buildings complete with golden cupolas and towers, surrounded by a sixteen-foot wall now manned by Red Army troops. The SS infantry breached the walls and fought their way through the monastery buildings and into the town itself. The Soviets were forced to retreat when the twenty-eight remaining tanks of the 10th Panzer Division pushed around the town and threatened to encircle the defenders.
Once beyond Istra the Germans prepared for the final assault. Even with the reallocation of soldiers from the 11th Regiment, casualties were sufficiently heavy that companies were down to twenty-five or thirty men each. As with the rest of the German armed forces, the men of the Reich Division lacked suitable winter clothing to fend of temperatures that by the end of November were regularly dropping to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. But despite the cold and rising numbers of frostbite cases, the Germans in front of Moscow fought on with undiminished resolve.
On 29 November the offensive was resumed, and by 4 December the suburb of Lenino had been taken by Reich and the 10th Panzer Division, the latter now down to just seven tanks. On the same day, the Reich motorcycle battalion reached a terminus of the Moscow tram network, roughly twelve miles from the city center. The “Deutschland” regimental history reported: “In the bright winter weather one could make out the Kremlin towers. My God! How close we were to that historic objective.”14
But this was as far as the Germans were to go. To the indignation of the SS soldiers, an order to retreat was issued on 6 December; all the pain and suffering they had endured over the past months seemed to be for nothing. Yet the German high command had no other option. The Red Army had launched its great w
inter offensive on 5 December, and the exhausted German troops on the front line around Moscow were in real danger of being overwhelmed. On Bittrich’s instructions, the battered SS forces fell back to Istra, and when the full might of the Soviet offensive became apparent, the retreat continued to the more defensible Ruza Line, reached on 21 December. From this position the Reich Division would spend the winter fending off waves of Soviet attacks.
Chapter 15
HOLDING THE LINE: THE EASTERN FRONT, 1941–1942
BY EARLY DECEMBER 1941 the German Army on the Eastern Front was exhausted, its forces stretched to the limit. Stalin’s Red Army, by contrast, had built up substantial strategic reserves. Among these were divisions from Siberia, released from their eastern deployment after the intelligence discovery that Japan was about to attack the United States and not the Soviet Union, as originally feared. The Red Army launched its great winter offensive along the entire length of the Eastern Front, although the main weight of the attack fell on Army Group Center on 5 December.
Senior German field commanders issued orders for withdrawals to less exposed positions. The Führer had not been consulted, however, and when informed of the German retreat, he flew into one his increasingly violent rages, countermanding the withdrawal orders and insisting that his troops stand their ground whatever the cost. Hitler’s fury was followed by retribution. Bock followed Rundstedt into retirement in a wave of sackings that included Guderian and two other army commanders. The commander in chief of the German Army, von Brauchitsch, had already been dismissed, his position absorbed by Hitler.
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