Gottlob Berger’s mania for cannon fodder also compromised military effectiveness. The formations raised in northern and western Europe and the Baltic States demonstrated their battlefield utility, but the weaker formations from Eastern Europe and the Balkans acted as a drain on German officers and NCOs—and weapons and equipment—to the detriment of the German war effort as a whole. Yet such was the momentum of the SS enlistment system that in the last twelve months of the war, Berger would preside over a last frenzied bout of recruitment that defied all military logic.
Chapter 20
DEFENDING THE UKRAINE
THE SOVIET SUMMER offensive of 1943 pushed the Germans back across eastern Ukraine toward the River Dnieper. Manstein had managed to persuade Hitler to relinquish the industrial Donbass region and establish a new defensive line along the river. The retreat across the eastern Ukraine during August and September was relatively orderly thanks to the rearguard actions fought by the German panzer divisions that included Das Reich, Totenkopf, and Wiking. While Wiking organized the withdrawal across the Dnieper at Cherkassy, Totenkopf and Das Reich were responsible for shepherding the slow-moving infantry divisions over the river at Kremenchug.
To the dismay of the retreating Germans, the Dnieper Line turned out to be a construction on paper only, so the Red Army had little difficulty in establishing several bridgeheads over the river by early October. The SS divisions were then engaged in rushing from one danger spot to another to prevent Soviet breakouts. Totenkopf maintained a resolute defense of Krivoy Rog, a key communications and logistical center within the Dnieper bend. A Soviet armored column seemed on the point of capturing the city when on 27 October it was attacked in the flank by the hastily assembled XL Panzer Corps, led by Totenkopf. The Soviet force was caught by surprise and in the space of a few days thrown back toward the Dnieper. Thanks to this action, Krivoy Rog remained in German hands until a planned withdrawal was undertaken in February 1944.
Farther upstream, Wiking defended the area around Cherkassy, which its troops had driven through in triumph during the heady days of the Barbarossa summer. Although they had been unable to prevent the Red Army from establishing a bridgehead on the river’s west bank, they contained any further enemy advances. In November the division was reinforced by the arrival of the well-equipped 5th SS Volunteer Assault Brigade Wallonien. The Belgian troops were immediately employed in a successful action against Soviet irregulars in the Irdyn marshes that bordered the Dnieper.
The main danger for the German defensive line came farther north around Kiev. At the beginning of November Soviet forces broke out of the twin bridgeheads established close to the Ukrainian capital. The Germans were forced to abandon the city, and as the Red Army advanced at speed to capture Zhitomir, the entire German position in Ukraine, from Kiev to the Black Sea, faced the possibility of encirclement. A proposed German attack in southern Ukraine was abandoned in order to stem the Soviet advance to the north. Das Reich and Leibstandarte, newly arrived from Italy, were dispatched to contain the rapidly expanding Soviet salient.
The Tiger company of Das Reich was among the first to arrive on the battlefield, its tanks unloaded at the rail junction of Bjelaja-Zerkow on the night of 6–7 November. Tank commander Ernst Streng recalled the confusion as the panzers detrained: “The whole city was about to leave. Evacuation trains were rolling out of the station; fires were flaring to burn mountains of files. The headquarters of all German departments were in the process of pulling out. The Russian tank spearheads were expected any hour. Panic and fear drove the people through the streets. Looting and destruction were everywhere.”1
The Tigers advanced northward covered by the screen of the reconnaissance battalion. A couple of days later they were joined by units from the Leibstandarte Division, and together they helped stabilize the front. On 11 November Streng came across enemy forces around the village of Slawia:
We could hear the Russian tanks milling about. A short briefing by the adjutant followed. We moved out of the village, broke through the cover of bushes, and suddenly saw, among the smoke and haze, the black, massive belly of the first enemy tank at 200 meters. Quickly taking aim, we fired and a long lance of flame shot from the barrel. Immediately we saw the yellow-white fireball of the explosion. Smoke and fire mushroomed and obscured the picture of destruction. Two hundred meters east of Slawia we knocked out our second Russian tank that had broken through our lines. Around 8 p.m. the enemy shelling slowed down and then stopped altogether. The infantry of the Leibstandarte came out of their foxholes in the badly damaged positions. The men warmed up at the glowing exhausts and the engine at the rear of our panzer.2
The main German thrust against the Soviet positions would be made by General Balck’s XLVIII Panzer Corps, temporarily expanded to seven divisions (mostly understrength, however). Among them were the army’s 1st Panzer Division and Leibstandarte, who together would lead the assault. Their orders were to cut the Zhitomir-Kiev road and isolate the enemy in Zhitomir. The panzers roared forward on 13 November and caught the Red Army in disarray. On 17 November the road was crossed, and in the evening Zhitomir was captured. Balck then turned eastward to destroy the Soviet defenses around Brusilov.
Leibstandarte’s attack on 20 November was halted, however. Balck’s chief of staff, Major General Mellenthin, noted somewhat acidly, “The frontal attack of Leibstandarte on Brusilov failed; it was the first time in the war that this famous division had launched an attack and failed to gain its objective.”3 Flanking attacks by the other panzer divisions were more successful, and the town fell to the Germans, although Balck was angry that large numbers of Soviet troops had managed to escape his enveloping maneuver. After the capture of Brusilov, Soviet resistance stiffened, slowing the pace of the German advance. On 26 November a sudden rise in temperature—and attendant slush and mud—brought armored operations to a temporary halt.
German panzer forces had once again proved superior to those of the Red Army. Leibstandarte’s Tiger tanks were to the fore with Michael Wittmann adding further laurels to his crown as a panzer ace. On the morning of the opening day of the offensive, Wittmann knocked out ten T-34s and five Paks (antitank guns). By early January 1944 his combined total of destroyed tanks would rise to sixty-six. But for Wittmann and his fellow panzer commanders, the Red Army’s deployment of Pak fronts—where lines of well-camouflaged antitank guns would lie in ambush—was a growing threat. Wittmann made clear that “every tank counts, but each Pak counts double.”4
Leibstandarte’s Tiger company dealt with the Pak fronts with a simple yet risky tactic of assembling a platoon of Tigers in a concealed position and then sending one tank forward to act as bait: as the enemy antitank guns opened fire, so their muzzle flashes revealed their positions to the waiting Tigers. Sturmmann Lau, a panzer crewman, described acting in one such mission: “We drove ahead in order to bring the Ivans out of their reserve and draw their antitank fire. We came under terrific fire. Later, while refueling, we counted a total of 28 hits on the Tiger. Some of them were smaller, of course, but there were also some big enough to easily put one’s fist into. All of the hits were on the frontal armor.”5 If nothing else, Lau’s account confirmed the durability of the Tiger’s armor protection.
Early in December a renewed freeze allowed a resumption of hostilities. Balck’s panzer corps once again threw itself forward in the attempt to drive the Soviets back to Kiev and across the Dnieper. Leibstandarte had now received its battalion of Mark V Panther tanks, and while the tank had still not fully solved its mechanical teething troubles, armor-piercing shells from its 7.5cm L/70 high-velocity gun could slice through T-34 armor with devastating ease.
After the death in action of Georg Schönberger, Leibstandarte’s panzer regiment commander, his position was controversially filled by Jochen Peiper, formerly the commander of the 2nd Panzergrenadier Regiment’s APC battalion. Some officers complained that Peiper was an infantryman who had no experience commanding tanks and that the increased tank
casualties suffered by the regiment during this period came through his reckless attitude toward armored operations. Peiper even had a stand-up row with Obersturmbannführer Albert Fry of the 1st Panzergrenadier Regiment over his unit’s tactical methods.6
In Peiper’s defense, he made good use of combining the II Battalion (Mark IVs) with his former APC battalion, so that armor and infantry fought together in the manner originally envisaged by tank-warfare disciples such as Heinz Guderian. Hauptsturmführer Gührs, a company commander in the APC half-track battalion, wrote approvingly of his old superior: “Peiper’s transfer to the Panzer Regiment was not a problem for us: in a way we remained ‘his battalion.’ Because the Panzer regiment had not yet adapted itself to Peiper’s often Hussar-like style of leadership, he would happily place ‘his battalion’ ahead of the panzers. I remember him saying then, ‘Fetch up the Battalion, we’ll show them!’”7
Peiper’s armored units achieved some spectacular successes as the Germans drove into the Red Army defending Kiev. After making a twenty-six-mile penetration of the Soviet front line, Peiper’s roving force captured the staffs of four enemy divisions and destroyed a hundred tanks and seventy-six antitank guns. With a characteristic flourish, Peiper subsequently wrote of his time in the Ukraine, “Where we were standing was Germany and as far as my tank gun reached was my kingdom.”8
Yet despite these victories, the German advance began to waver through lack of resources, and on 21 December the offensive was brought to a close. Waffen-SS casualties had been heavy, notably among Leibstandarte and Das Reich, the latter division in almost constant frontline combat since the battle of Kharkov earlier in the year. As a consequence, Das Reich was withdrawn to France for refitting, although a strong Kampfgruppe of around 3,000 men remained at the front, its numbers and equipment drawn from all units so that it resembled a miniaturized division.9
THE REPULSE OF the Red Army advance from Kiev was a useful victory, but Manstein and OKH feared the launch of a further and larger Soviet offensive. On 24 December 1943 the storm broke, a skillfully orchestrated attack that ran along the entire Dnieper front. The German defenses could not hold, as Soviet armored columns punched holes in the weaker sections of the line. As usual, Hitler’s orders were to stand fast, which had the consequence of leaving the better-defended sections of the line as dangerously isolated salients. The German positions around Cherkassy, which included Wiking and the Walloon Brigade, held firm. By mid-January the Red Army began to encircle the German position; on 28 January the Soviet pincers met, creating the first of several German pockets in the Ukraine.
Five German divisions and other corps troops totaling around 59,000 men were trapped in the Korsun-Cherkassy pocket (the actual area of the pocket was centered around Korsun, while Cherkassy, already in Soviet hands, lay several miles to the east).10 Manstein had powerful armored units at his disposal and in early February prepared to come to the aid of the troops in the pocket. But he was overruled by Hitler, who, instead, ordered the rescue force to adopt an ambitious plan to counterencircle the Soviets besieging Korsun. This proved a failure, yet all the while the Red Army was squeezing the troops in the pocket ever tighter.
Hitler’s plan was abandoned, and on 11 February III Panzer Corps was ordered to fight its way to the pocket. The rescue attempt was hampered by fuel shortages and the strength of Soviet resistance, as well as fluctuating changes in the weather where sudden warm spells turned the battlefield into glutinous mud. The spearhead of III Panzer Corps came to halt at the Gniloi Tikich River on 16 February, unable to proceed farther. To avoid annihilation, the encircled troops—under General Wilhelm Stemmermann—were ordered to fight their way out of the pocket as best they could.
The breakout meant the abandonment of most artillery and heavy equipment. As the only armored formation in the pocket, Wiking was assigned to lead the breakout, although its fighting vehicles were pitifully few in numbers. The SS Walloon Brigade would assist the rear guard. The pocket had been slowly moving westward over several days, so that on the evening of 16 February its lead units had closed to within five miles of III Panzer Corps on the Gniloi Tikich. A narrow corridor of sorts had been established to link up with the rescue force, but as the German troops struggled through the mud and snow on the seventeenth, the Red Army struck with a vengeance.
While the Wiking panzers fought to hold open the ever-narrowing corridor, the Walloons and German infantry brought up the rear. The Walloon commander, Sturmbannführer Lippert, had been killed by a sniper bullet on 13 February, the brigade briefly passing to Léon Degrelle before he was wounded and evacuated from the pocket by motor transport. Soviet artillery pounded the retreating Germans from both sides of the corridor, while marauding tanks and Cossack cavalry broke through the defenses to wreak havoc on those in their path. The large numbers of ill and wounded were an easy target. Fernand Kaisergruber, an exhausted and wounded infantryman in the Walloon Brigade, was temporarily resting in a shell hole when he encountered a Soviet tank zigzagging across the terrain little more than thirty yards away:
What I then see freezes me with horror and suddenly brings me wide awake. It has chosen several bodies lying on the ground, perhaps still moving, as its target. It squashes them and pivots on them to be quite certain of achieving its goal. I see clearly the face of a man who was not dead and whose trunk disappears under the tank track. His face becomes all red, as if ready to explode, as if the blood was going to come out through his pores! When the tank pivots again, I see a sleeve torn from the uniform stuck between links of the track and turning with them, the arm in the sleeve, and the hand at the end! I see this arm make several complete rounds with the track, hitting the armor each time, just above the track. I do not move, holding my breath for fear of attracting the attention of these modern-day Huns! The tank moves on and I see two more, a bit farther off, venting their fury on the wounded, lying in the snow, disarmed, defenseless, left to their mercy.11
Despite the relentless nature of the attacks on the retreating German rear guard, large numbers of men reached the Gniloi Tikich, with sanctuary lying on the far bank. Pioneers from III Panzer Corps had laid temporary bridges over the river, but the rearguard troops seemed unaware of their existence and were forced to swim across the thirty-yard river, swollen with meltwater. Attempts were made to form a makeshift bridge, but the current was too fast, carrying away all attempts at a crossing. Under Soviet artillery fire, the troops attempted the crossing of the icy torrent, many of the nonswimmers and wounded swept away to their deaths. Kaisergruber was put on a horse and with another man hanging on to its tail managed to get across, their sodden uniforms freezing in the air as they made their way through the German outpost line.
Of the approximately 59,000 men originally trapped in the pocket, 19,000 were killed or taken prisoner and a further 11,000 wounded (although escaping the pocket)—a casualty rate of 50 percent.12 Without the dedication of the breakout troops—and some initial complacency among the Soviet commanders—the German defeat would have been far worse. Both Wiking and Assault Brigade Wallonien suffered heavily, the latter with more than 1,200 casualties from its original 1,850-strong force. The Germans did their best to paint the escape in glowing colors, emphasizing the fortitude of the Tcherkassykämpfer during the battle. One victor of the breakout was Léon Degrelle, whose modest contribution was vastly magnified by German propaganda and, especially, himself.13 He was awarded the Knight’s Cross by Hitler and then sent on a publicity tour of Belgium to drum up recruits for the now heavily depleted Walloon Brigade.
DURING LATE FEBRUARY the Soviet offensive began to slow. Hitler and OKH considered it to be at an end in the belief that the Red Army was exhausted. This proved to be dangerous wish fulfillment, however, as in early March the offensive resumed with even greater intensity. Once again this was a broad-front operation stretching from the Pripet Marshes southward to the Black Sea. General Hans-Valentin Hube’s First Panzer Army, deployed in the western Ukraine with its center around the
town of Kamenets-Podolsky, was soon in danger. As Hube’s forces held their ground in accordance with Hitler’s orders, the effect was to produce a salient. As was the case at Cherkassy, Red Army commanders sensed the possibility of another cauldron battle, and units from both Soviet encircling formations met on 25 March.
On this occasion Hitler accepted the seriousness of the situation and instructed Manstein to allow Hube to fight his way out of the pocket. The obvious breakout route was due south across the River Dniester toward Romania, with the Red Army deploying a large blocking force in anticipation of such a move. Aware of this, Manstein ordered Hube to drive westward across more difficult terrain but with less enemy opposition. A powerful relief force was also assembled, led by a reconstituted II SS Panzer Corps under the command of Paul Hausser.
The II Panzer Corps comprised two completely new Waffen-SS formations: 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions. Their genesis dated back to December 1942 when Hitler agreed to the creation of three divisions to be raised from the youth of the German Reich. One of the divisions would come from the Hitler Youth itself—the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend—while the other two would recruit directly from teenagers in the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD), the Reich labor service. As many of these recruits were minors, typically sixteen or seventeen at enlistment, they were below the permitted recruitment age and, officially at least, had to be volunteers who had been given parental permission to sign up.
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