Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

Panzergruppe 4 versus the Northwest Front, 22–30 June

Nervous about the obvious German military build-up along the Lithuanian border, General-polkovnik Fyodor I. Kuznetsov, commander of the Baltic Military District (soon to be redesignated the Northwest Front) attempted to improve the readiness of his command, even without specific guidance from Moscow. Under the guise of an exercise, Kuznetsov decided to move General-major Nikolai M. Shestopalov’s 12th Mechanized Corps forward from Riga and Liepaja and concentrate it around Siauliai on 19–20 June 1941. Kuznetsov wanted Shestopalov’s armour within 60km of the border to support the three rifle divisions the 8th Army had deployed along the border. These three rifle divisions were required to screen a 155km-wide front along the border with units at only 60 per cent strength, which meant they were little more than a tripwire.[2] While Shestopalov’s corps was in a better position at Siauliai to respond to a border incident, the hastily-conducted move consumed most of the unit’s on-hand fuel and left the corps fuel depot in Riga 190km in the rear. Since the 12th Mechanized Corps had less than half its authorized number of fuel trucks, it would take multiple convoys back to Riga to refuel the tanks at Siauliai. Furthermore, a large number of tanks and other vehicles fell out on the march due to technical defects, so it would take a few days to bring the 12th Mechanized Corps up to readiness. Once the 12th Mechanized Corps was en route to Siauliai, Kuznetsov issued other orders to the 8th Army to begin laying minefields on the border and prepare bridges for demolition. When General Georgy Zhukov, chief of the Soviet general staff in Moscow, heard about Kuznetsov’s unauthorized movements of armour and defense preparations he exploded with anger and ordered him to repeal the orders. Zhukov even stooped to calling Kuznetsov’s efforts to evacuate family members ‘an act of cowardice’ and accused him of trying to ‘spread panic among the people’. With no small amount of courage – and personal risk – Kuznetsov ignored Zhukov and established a tactical command post in the woods south of Dvinsk (Daugavpils).

At X-zeit (X-hour), 0400 hours (local time) on 22 June, Heeresgruppe Nord began crossing the Lithuanian border, with Generaloberst Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 and ten infantry divisions from 18.Armee. General der Panzertruppen Georg-Hans Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) crossed the border just south of Taurogen with the 1.Panzer-Division on the left and the 6.Panzer-Division on the right, with the 36.Infanterie-Division (mot.) trailing. The 1.Panzer-Division attacked directly into the town of Taurogen with Kampfgruppe Westhoven, while Kampfgruppe Kruger enveloped the town and crossed the Jura River at an unguarded ford. Thanks to Kuznetsov’s last-minute alerts, the 125th Rifle Division put up a tough fight for Taurogen and the panzers were slowed by mines and anti-tank fire; Taurogen was not secured until 2000 hours. In clearing the city, 1.Panzer-Division expended a great deal of ammunition and lost the better part of a day, while much of the 125th Rifle Division actually succeeded in escaping to the northeast. While the 1.Panzer-Division was clearing Taurogen, Generalmajor Franz Landgraf’s 6.Panzer-Division moved past some anti-tank ditches on the east side of the town with Kampfgruppe Raus and Kampfgruppe Seckendorff and advanced northeast, directly toward Siauliai, although they had no knowledge of Soviet armour being there. The 48th Rifle Division, armed only with training ammunition as part of Kuznetsov’s impromptu mobilization exercise, was easily brushed aside. Overall, Höpner’s plan to use a panzer division to seize the border city of Taurogen was ill-conceived and ultimately limited the XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) to a 30km penetration on the first day of Barbarossa, which merely pushed the enemy back rather than encircling them.

In contrast to Reinhardt’s methodical attack through the Soviet border defenses, General der Infanterie Erich von Manstein’s LVI Armeekorps (mot.) avoided Soviet resistance centers by advancing cross-country, almost due east, toward Kedainiai, with 8.Panzer-Division’s Kampfgruppe Crissoli way out in front, followed at some distance by 3.Infanterie-Division (mot.) and 290.Infanterie-Division.[3] Manstein was focused on his objective – the bridges over the Dvina River 300km away – and essentially ignored Soviet forces that did not directly block his path. Consequently, Manstein’s lead division advanced 70km through heavily wooded terrain on the first day and had no significant contact with Soviet forces.

The Soviet response to the invasion was sluggish and confused. Once Kuznetsov was sure that the Germans were across the border in force, around 0930 hours, he decided to commit his armour to counterattack. However, Luftwaffe air attacks seriously disrupted Soviet high-level communications and 8th Army did not issue its own counterattack order until 1400 hours.[4] Due to these communications problems, Kuznetsov’s orders did not reach the 12th Mechanized Corps until 2340 hours. The orders directed Shestopalov to advance southward 70km and strike the left flank of the German invasion group.

However, the 8th Army order temporarily diverted the 23rd Tank Division to assist the 10th Rifle Corps in restoring the border near Memel, which dispersed the counterstroke by the 12th Mechanized Corps; this indicated the divide within the Red Army between those who viewed mechanized forces as best used en masse as a shock force and those who wanted it dispersed for infantry support. Kuznetsov had also sent orders to General-major Aleksei V. Kurkin’s 3rd Mechanized Corps, assembling west of Vilnius behind the 11th Army, instructing him to detach his 2nd Tank Division to attack the German right flank somewhere near Raseinai. In order to coordinate the attack, Kuznetsov sent Polkovnik Pavel P. Poluboiarov, the Northwest Front commander of tank and mechanized forces. Kuznetsov’s concept of an armoured double pincer attack was not a bad plan, just not feasible under current conditions.

Shestopalov’s corps began moving forward during the night of 22–23 June, but lacked the fuel to move all his tanks at once. Efforts to send supply convoys back to Riga for more fuel were frustrated by confusion and jammed roads. Kuznetsov wanted the armoured counterattack begun at dawn, but Poluboiarov was able to convince him to delay the operation until the bulk of the 3rd Mechanized Corps was ready. Polkovnik Ivan Chernyakhovsky, commander of the 28th Tank Division, made a forced march of 60km to reach the front, but at dawn the Luftwaffe detected the Soviet armoured columns and attacked, knocking out forty-four tanks and a large number of wheeled transport. Despite this, Chernyakhovsky’s advance guard finally reached their assembly areas in the late afternoon of 23 June. Chernyakhovsky was supposed to wait for the rest of the corps, but instead decided to conduct a hasty attack with forty T-26 and BT-7 light tanks from Major Sergei F. Onischuk’s 55th Tank Regiment. Moving forward to contact without infantry or artillery support, Onischuk ran straight into the German 21.Infanterie-Division around 2100 hours and lost two BT-7 and three T-26 tanks to German anti-tank guns.

Chernyakhovsky followed Onischuk’s mixed battalion in his own command BT-7TU and, according to Soviet accounts, personally engaged a German Pz.IV medium tank (possibly from the 1.Panzer-Division) at a range of 800 meters. When his 45mm AP rounds failed to penetrate at this range, Chernyakhovsky maneuvered his BT-7 closer and knocked out the Pz.IV with a flank shot from 400–500 meters.

Onischuk sent his deputy, Major Boris P. Popov, on a flanking maneuver through the woods with seventeen BT-7 light tanks and Popov succeeded in overrunning some German infantry and a couple of 3.7cm Pak guns. Popov, coming from a peasant background and with only a secondary education, lacked the training of his German panzer counterparts but was recklessly brave and steadfast. He pressed the attack even as the Germans began to rally and his BT-7 was struck repeatedly and set afire. When Popov attempted to exit his burning tank, he was shot and killed by German infantry; he would soon be posthumously decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union (HSU). Although Chernyakhovsky’s hasty attack inflicted some damage, three hours of fighting cost him seventeen of forty tanks engaged and he ordered Onischuk to disengage. Realizing that the Germans were too strong, Chernyakhovsky decided to regroup and wait for reinforcements.

While Shestopalov’s corps was beginning a piecemeal attack on the supposed flank of Panzergruppe 4, there was considerable armoured activity occurring to the east around Raseiniai and Kedainiai. After easily overrunning the 48th Rifle Division northeast of Taroggen, the 6.Panzer-Division advanced 55km and occupied Raseiniai by the afternoon of 23 June. Generalmajor Landgraf’s two panzer kampfgruppen secured separate bridgeheads over the Dubysa River and he paused the division in Raseiniai to refuel and re-arm. Meanwhile, General-major Egor N. Solyankin’s 2nd Tank Division force-marched 100km from Kedainiai in order to retake Raseiniai. Solyankin’s division included six different tank types, including thirty-two KV-I, nineteen KV-II and fifty T-34, further complicating combat logistics. The KV heavy tanks fared particularly poorly on the long road march due to clogged air filters and transmission malfunctions; nearly half broke down en route to the battlefield. However, Solyankin managed to get a good portion of his force near Raseiniai late on 23 June and he planned to attack at dawn the next morning.

Oddly, the 6.Panzer-Division was not expecting a major Soviet armoured counterattack, even though reconnaissance aircraft from Panzergruppe 4 had spotted tanks approaching from Kedainiai. Thus the Germans were doubly shocked on the morning of 24 June, when not only were they attacked by a large Soviet armoured group, but also by three different types of tanks that they did not even know existed. Solyankin directed his main effort – two tank regiments and part of a motor rifle regiment – against Kampfgruppe Seckendorff.

The Soviet tanks attacked in waves, with the light BT and T-26 types out front, followed by T-34s and then the KV heavy tanks. Although shocked by the appearance of T-34, KV-I and KV-II tanks, the German panzerjäger followed doctrine and did not engage with their 3.7cm and 5cm Pak until the Soviet tanks were within 200 meters. The German AP rounds simply bounced off and then the Soviet heavy tanks overran the panzerjägers and part of Kradschützen-Abteilung 6. No German infantry had yet been overrun by enemy tanks in the Second World War and this was terrifying. After bashing their way through Kampfgruppe Seckendorff, three KV heavy tanks led by Major Dmitry I. Osadchy forded the Dubysa River and attacked part of Schützen-Regiment 114. The KV tanks managed to overrun part of a German artillery battery before being engaged by direct fire from 15cm howitzers. Although the howitzers could not penetrate the KV’s thick armour, they managed to blow off the tracks, immobilizing them.

The 6.Panzer-Division was shocked by the violence of this attack. Most histories of the Battle of Raseiniai depend upon Erhard Raus’ account, even though he was only lightly engaged in this action.[5] Raus’ account focuses on his efforts to destroy a single KV-2 that managed to get behind his kampfgruppen and sever his supply line, but says little about the decimation of Kampfgruppe Seckendorff. The Soviet attack subsided when the commander of the 3rd Tank Regiment was killed by shell splinters and his tanks ran low on fuel and ammunition. The Soviet pause granted the Germans a short reprieve. Due to constant Soviet bomber attacks on the German supply columns crossing the Lithuanian border, Panzergruppe 4 had kept its available 8.8cm flak batteries in the rear and none were available near the front at Raseiniai. Reinhardt quickly ordered a flak battery to move forward to support 6.Panzer-Division and, in the meantime, Landgraf was on his own against Solyankin’s tanks. Oberst Richard Koll, commander of Panzer-Regiment 11, led a counterattack with his diminutive Pz.35(t) light tanks and a handful of Pz.IV against the Soviet tanks pounding on Schützen-Regiment 114, but this was a hopeless gesture and Koll broke off the attack after suffering significant losses. Another odd thing about the Battle of Raseiniai is the absence of the Luftwaffe; the arrival of Stukas might have tipped the balance, but they were nowhere in sight.

Solyankin launched six separate attacks on 24 June, which considerably upset the Germans, but Soviet armour power waned as fuel and ammunition were exhausted. Soviet combat logistics fell apart. Most of the T-26 and BT-7 light tanks, as well as the motorized infantry, were lost early in the battle, leaving the remaining KV and T-34 tanks unsupported. The Soviet heavy tanks made one last effort to break through to Raseiniai late in the day, but by this point an 8.8cm flak battery and a 10cm heavy howitzer battery had arrived and they succeeded in immobilizing several tanks, causing the attack to falter.

Although stunned by the Soviet counterattack at Raseiniai, Reinhardt spent the day skillfully directing the 1.Panzer-Division and 36.Infanterie-Division (mot.) around Solyankin’s open flank. Meanwhile, Manstein’s 8.Panzer-Division had marched almost unopposed into Kedainiai, overrunning Solyankin’s rear area units. By nightfall on 24 June, Solyankin’s 2nd Tank was enveloped on both flanks. The next morning, Solyankin attempted a breakout with his remaining heavy tanks in the lead, which caused 1.Panzer-Division some tense moments when Kampfgruppe Westhoven was attacked by KV heavy tanks near Vosiliskis. Once again, the panzerjägers were unable to stop the Soviet heavy tanks and the Germans were forced to use 8.8cm flak and 10cm howitzers in the anti-tank role. Afterwards, Reinhardt spent the next day reducing the encircled 2nd Tank Division and Solyankin was killed in action on 26 June. While the Battle of Raseiniai was a Soviet defeat, Solyankin’s division had effectively held up Reinhardt’s entire corps for three whole days.

By the time that the 2nd Tank Division was surrounded at Raseiniai, Shestopalov’s 12th Mechanized Corps was nearly surrounded near Kaltinenai by German infantry from the I and XXVI Armeekorps. The Soviet 23rd and 28th Tank Divisions fought doggedly against the AOK 18 on 24–25 June, but their T-26 and BT-7 light tanks were rapidly picked off by German panzerjägers. After two days of combat, the corps exhausted its supplies and was reduced to about 20 per cent of its armour. Recognizing that his forces were too weak to hold Lithuania, never mind throw the Germans back across the border, Kuznetsov ordered Shestopalov and the remaining infantry from the 8th Army to withdraw north of the Dvina River. Chernyakhovsky conducted a skillful rearguard action with the remnants of his 28th Tank Division, enabling the bulk of the corps to escape. During the retreat, Shestopalov was wounded and then captured, dying soon afterward in German captivity.

By 0800 hours on 26 June, Manstein’s advance guard from 8.Panzer-Division had seized both the rail and road bridges over the Dvina at Daugavpils intact after a 315km march. While Manstein had accomplished his intermediate objective in just four days, he was in no position to exploit it. His bold dash had consumed 5.5 V.S. of fuel (545 tons) and, as a result, the 8.Panzer-Division was now immobilized for lack of fuel. In addition, the long-distance road march caused twenty-four tanks from Panzer-Regiment 10 to fall out due to mechanical defects.[6] Reinhardt’s corps was still engaged around Raseiniai, 165km to the rear, and not in a position to support Manstein for several days. Kuznetsov directed the 21st Airborne Brigade to try and retake Daugavpils, while the Stavka dispatched General-major Dmitri Lelyushenko’s 21st Mechanized Corps from Idritsa to retake the bridges. Although Lelyushenko’s corps was little more than a cadre formation with no tanks and few vehicles, the VAMM in Moscow provided Lelyushenko with two tank battalions crewed by instructors and students; this added 105 BT-7 and two T-34 tanks to the 21st Mechanized Corps. In addition, the Stavka reinforced his corps on 23–24 June with a large shipment of 45mm anti-tank guns and the new 76.2mm USV gun.

Lelyushenko quickly reorganized his incomplete corps into two combat groups, each with a tank battalion, a rifle battalion mounted on trucks and a mixed artillery/anti-tank battalion. He then set out on the 200km road march to Daugavpils on 25 June. Despite Luftwaffe attacks that destroyed some of his wheeled transport, Lelyushenko’s lead group reached the vicinity of Daugavpils within two days. At 0800 hours on 28 June, Lelyushenko attacked the 8.Panzer-Division’s forward positions northeast of Daugavpils with about sixty BT-7s, supported by some infantry and artillery. The German panzers were short of fuel but Lelyushenko’s tanks started the battle with very little ammunition and could not get anywhere near the bridges. Lelyushenko kept attacking all day as the rest of his troops arrived, but this only served to erode his combat power in piecemeal attacks. After providing Manstein with a stressful day, Lelyushenko broke off the attack at nightfall and fell back to defensive positions north of the city. By 30 June, Lelyushenko’s corps comprised only about 3,000 troops, seven BT-7s and forty-four artillery pieces.

By 28 June, the Northwest Front was in full retreat from Lithuania, although the German pursuit failed to catch any large units. Kuznetsov briefly tried to form a defense along the Dvina with the remnants of the 12th Mechanized Corps and the rifle divisions of the 27th Army, but Manstein had already breached the river line on 26 June and Reinhardt’s corps crossed the Dvina near Jekabpils on 29 June. With the river line defense collapsing, Kuznetsov ordered his forces to fall back toward the Stalin Line positions at Pskov and Ostrov, but on 30 June he was relieved of command. The next day, Kampfgruppe Lasch from the 1.Infanterie-Division, supported by five StuG-III assault guns, entered Riga.

Höpner pushed Panzergruppe 4 north toward Ostrov, about 200km distant, with Reinhardt’s corps on the left and Manstein’s on the right. Despite the outward appearance of success, Panzergruppe 4’s performance in Lithuania was sub-par. Aside from the 2nd Tank Division and parts of one rifle division, the bulk of the Northwest Front escaped.

Time and again during Barbarossa, local German commanders became so impressed with seizing territory that they missed golden opportunities to encircle and eliminate Red Army units. One of the iron rules about armoured warfare on the Eastern Front was not to commit one’s best armoured units until the enemy’s strength had been located. Höpner went into Lithuania fairly ignorant about the location of opposing Soviet armoured units and then he mistakenly committed all three of his panzer divisions before any of Kuznetsov’s armour had been located. He foolishly committed 1.Panzer-Division to a street battle for Taurogen, tying down his best mobile unit for a full day, and failed to coordinate the actions of Manstein’s and Reinhardt’s corps.

Panzergruppe 3 and the Crossing of the Neman, 22–24 June

Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock, commander of Heeresgruppe Mitte, intended to pulverize the Soviet Western Front forces in the Bialystok salient with a powerful armoured pincer attack from both north and south, then continue on to finish any remnants around Minsk. The northern pincer was formed by Generaloberst Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3, which fielded four panzer divisions and three motorized infantry divisions in the XXXIX and LVII Armeekorps (mot.). The initial objective for both corps was to crash through the Soviet 11th Army border defenses and advance 45–65km to seize crossings over the Neman River at Alytus and Merkine. Following this, both corps would drive due east across Lithuania and Belarus and then envelop Minsk from the north. Hoth’s initial attack benefited from striking near the boundary between the Northwestern and Western Fronts, but the terrain was more heavily wooded than the area that Höpner had to traverse. The Luftwaffe’s VIII Fliegerkorps, which included 158 Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers from St.G. 1 and St.G. 2 and seventy-eight Bf-110 fighter-bombers from ZG 26, was assigned to provide close support to Hoth’s Panzergruppe.

The Soviet 11th Army had eight infantry regiments screening a 170km-long sector along the southern Lithuanian border. Kurkin’s 3rd Mechanized Corps was in reserve, on the east side of the Neman River. When Panzergruppe 3 attacked across the border at 0405 hours on 22 June, both German armoured corps advanced abreast and easily bypassed the bulk of the 128th Rifle Division and pushed on to the Neman. A strong kampfgruppe from 7.Panzer-Division, led by Oberst Karl Rothenburg, reached the outskirts of Alytus at 1240 hours and was soon able to seize the two bridges over the Neman intact from an unprepared NKVD guard detachment. Kuznetsov, the Northwest Front commander, had already stripped the 3rd Mechanized Corps of the 2nd Tank Division to support his counterattack at Raseiniai, leaving only Polkovnik Fedor Fedorov’s 5th Tank Division in a position to stop Rothenburg’s kampfgruppe.

Fedorov’s tanks had to march 30km to reach Alytus and a number of tanks fell out due to mechanical problems, so by the time his lead elements reached Alytus, Rothenburg’s Panzer-Regiment 25 was already crossing the Neman. Leytenant Ivan G. Verzhbitsky, leading the 2nd Battalion/9th Tank Regiment, was the first to arrive, with forty-four T-34 tanks. One T-34, commanded by a Sergeant Makogan, engaged the German column and destroyed a Pz.38(t) tank crossing the northern bridge. This action was the very first German contact with the T-34 – less than ten hours after the start of Barbarossa. Although the T-34 was vastly superior to the Pz.38(t), the Soviet tanks only had a few rounds of AP ammunition and the drivers had no experience with their new tanks. Verzhbitsky decided to deploy his tanks in defilade and await reinforcements, which soon arrived with the twenty-four T-28 medium tanks of the 1st Battalion/9th Tank Regiment. The German panzers could not close to effective range of their 3.7cm cannon and were effectively blocked by Federov’s tanks. While Rothenburg was temporarily stymied, he called up the Luftwaffe, who blasted the Soviet positions with high explosive. Meanwhile, a smaller kampfgruppe from the 7.Panzer-Division seized the southern bridge, but was blocked by the Soviet 10th Tank Regiment, equipped with forty-five BT-7 tanks.

Fedorov launched three counterattacks during the day, which inflicted some damage on 7.Panzer-Division, but his own forces were rapidly depleted. Unlike the Germans, Federov had minimal infantry and artillery support and no air support, as well as far less fuel and ammunition for his tanks. Schmidt, the XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) commander, directed the lead kampfgruppe from the 20.Panzer-Division toward the northern bridgehead and it arrived around 1930 hours.[7] With the III/Pz.Regt 25 in the lead, the 7.Panzer-Division broke out of the bridgehead and began to roll up Federov’s tired tankers. By nightfall, Federov had to break off the action. The Battle of Alytus cost the 5th Tank Division seventy-three tanks (sixteen T-28, twenty-seven T-34 and thirty BT-7) against the 7.Panzer-Division’s loss of eleven tanks (seven Pz.38(t) and four Pz.IV). Most of the T-34s were lost due to crew errors, including two sunk in the Nemen River and others toppled into ditches or craters. According to Soviet sources, German tank losses at Alytus numbered about thirty, but this included armoured cars and tanks that were only damaged. It also appears that a single Soviet T-34, commanded by Sergeant Makogan, may have been responsible for nearly half the German losses; in tank combat, it is not uncommon that much of the damage is inflicted by a few highly-skilled crews.

After seizing Alytus, the 7 and 20.Panzer-Division brushed aside the remnants of Federov’s division on 23 June and advanced quickly upon Vilnius, while 12.Panzer-Division advanced from the Merkine bridgehead as well. Hoth’s rapid exploitation from the Alytus bridgehead prevented the Soviet 11th Army from establishing a new front, so opposition in front of Panzergruppe 3 was weak and scattered. Amazingly, a 3,000-man battle group from the 5th Tank Division evaded pursuit and managed to escape toward Pskov. The 7.Panzer-Division’s Kradschützen-Abteilung entered the outskirts of Vilna at dawn on 24 June. Hoth’s defeat of the left wing of the Northwest Front put the neighboring Western Front forces in the Bialystok salient at risk of envelopment from the north.

The Destruction of Pavlov’s Armour in the Bialystok Salient

General Dmitry Pavlov had not increased the alertness of his Western Front forces, as Kuznetsov had done, and he was committed to a virtually static defense of the Bialystok salient. Much of Pavlov’s armour was still stationed in its peacetime garrisons and ill-prepared to transition immediately to mobile wartime operations. He did have more infantry on the border than Kuznetsov had, which briefly gave him the illusion that a coherent defense could be established around Bialystok.

German intelligence estimates of the strength of Pavlov’s armour were wildly inaccurate and assessed that the Red Army had about 1,000 tanks in the area, instead of the actual number of 2,251. The Germans had correctly identified the 6th Mechanized corps at Bialystok, but were unaware of the existence of the 11th and 14th Mechanized Corps on the flanks. However, the general excellence of the German operational plan for an armoured double envelopment of the Bialystok salient, along with Pavlov’s failure at battle command, was sufficient to hand the Wehrmacht its first major victory on the Eastern Front.

At the same time as Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3 attacked the Northwest Front’s 11th Army along the Neman, 200km to the south, Generaloberst Heinz Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 attacked the Western Front’s 4th Army near the fortifications at Brest-Litovsk. Guderian decided to bypass Brest-Litovsk, with General der Artillerie Joachim Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) to the northwest and General der Panzertruppen Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) to the south. Both corps had to cross the 90-meter-wide Western Bug River, which represented a substantial obstacle. In addition to division-level pioneers, Heeresgruppe Mitte provided Guderian with substantial engineer support, including Sturmbootkommando 902, with eighty-one assault boats.[8] The Luftwaffe’s II Fliegerkorps, which included 115 Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers from St.G. 77 and eighty-three Bf-110 fighter-bombers from SKG 210, was assigned to provide close air support to Guderian’s Panzergruppe.

Although Generalleutnant Walter Model’s 3.Panzer-Division was able to seize the Koden bridge intact with a coup de main, there were no bridges in the area Lemelsen chose to cross the Western Bug. Instead, after 8.8cm flak guns were used to knock out Soviet bunkers on the eastern bank of the Western Bug near Pratulin with direct fire, the 18.Panzer-Division sent 120 infantrymen from its Kradschützen-Abteilung across in assault boats to secure the far side at 0415 hours.[9] German artillery and Stuka bombardments were used to suppress the Soviet defenders on the eastern bank. Thirty minutes later, Major Manfred Graf von Strachwitz led his I/Panzer-Regiment 18, equipped with submersible Pz.III and Pz.IV tauchpanzer, across the river by driving along the bottom. Model’s Panzer-Regiment 6 was also equipped with tauchpanzer, but the capture of the Koden bridge obviated their use in this role. Once both corps had established bridgeheads on the opposite shore, German pioneers began to build a 16-ton pontoon bridge for each panzer division and improve the crossing sites. Yet aside from the tauchpanzers and Model’s spearhead, the mass of Guderian’s armour would not begin to cross the Western Bug until about 1220 hours on 22 June, and it would take about six hours for an entire panzer regiment to cross. Thus, the bulk of Guderian’s combat power would not cross the bridges until the evening of the first day.

Across the river, the closest Soviet armoured formation was General-major Stepan I. Oborin’s 14th Mechanized Corps. By chance, most of the units of the 14th Mechanized Corps had been engaged in training exercises on the night of 21–22 June, and General-major Vasiliy P. Puganov’s 22nd Tank Division was 40km away from its normal garrison in Brest-Litovsk. Puganov, formerly in charge of combat training for the GABTU, had taken most of his T-26 tanks to gunnery ranges near Zabinka, while his artillery and rear services were still at Brest. The opening German artillery and air attacks on Brest-Litovsk demolished much of the 22nd Tank Division’s ammunition and fuel stockpiles, as well as much of its artillery. Oborin’s command post was bombed at 0500 hours, demolishing his communications links, so he was not able to alert his corps until after the Germans had already begun crossing the Bug River. Nevertheless, Puganov dispatched a tank battalion towards the river, but it was unable to seriously interfere with the German crossing. Despite continued Luftwaffe bombing, Oborin was gradually able to gather the combat elements of the 22nd and 30th Tank Divisions around Zabinka by late morning.

Neither Guderian nor Model waited for the pioneers to complete their work at the fording sites, but crossed to the eastern bank to lead their advance guards. Guderian moved with Strachwitz’s tauchpanzer battalion to capture an intact bridge over the Lesnaya River, north of Brest, while Model jumped aboard an Sd.Kfz.231 (8-rad) armoured car and pushed toward Kobrin. Polkovnik Semyon I. Bogdanov, commander of the 30th Tank Division, responded by dispatching one of his tank regiments to counterattack Strachwitz’s panzers at 1200 hours. However, Guderian requested Luftwaffe close air support sorties, which defeated the counterattack. Oborin decided to call off any further hasty attacks and issued an order at 1830 hours: the 14th Mechanized Corps would temporarily shift to the defensive, but launch an all-out three-division counterattack on the German bridgeheads at 0500 hours on 23 June. Puganov used the night to refuel and rearm his tanks from warehouses in Kobrin. Oborin was an artilleryman with no experience of armour and he opted for the safe, textbook approach taught at the Frunze military academy, but he also gave Guderian a quiet night to bring the bulk of his armour across the Bug.

Oborin’s counterattack began around 0800 hours, consisting of 200 T-26s from Puganov’s and Bogdanov’s tank divisions, but with limited infantry and artillery support. Bogdanov’s armour attacked the 18.Panzer-Division, while Puganov attacked 3.Panzer-Division. In a very one-sided action, German panzers and panzerjäger had little difficulty in destroying the unsupported enemy light tanks, although the Germans did lose a number of tanks as well. Once Oborin’s armour was decimated, Guderian attacked with all four panzer divisions of the XXIV and XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) on line, pushing northeast. Puganov’s 22nd Tank Division was demolished by Model’s 3.Panzer-Division and Puganov was killed, while Bogdanov’s 30th Tank Division was shoved aside.[10]

Lemelsen’s corps captured Pruzhany and advanced over 80km on 23 June, while von Schweppenburg’s corps captured Kobrin. Oborin was wounded in the mêlée and, when he flew back to Moscow for treatment, he was arrested and later executed for desertion. Bogdanov took charge of the remnants of the corps and retired east toward Pinsk. The tank battles around Zhabinka, Kobrin and Pruzhany had failed to seriously delay Guderian’s panzers and the defeat of the 14th Mechanized Corps sealed the fate of three Soviet armies in the Bialystok salient.

While Oborin’s 14th Mechanized Corps was being taken apart by Guderian and the rest of the Bialystok salient was under attack from all directions, Pavlov was initially uncertain what to do with his armoured reserve – General-major Mikhail G. Khatskilevich’s 6th Mechanized Corps – until others made the decision for him. On Pavlov’s northern flank, the Soviet 4th Rifle Corps, defending a long stretch of the border north of Grodno, was virtually obliterated by the attack of the German VIII Armeekorps on the morning of 22 June. General-leytenant Vasily Kuznetsov, the 3rd Army commander, hastily decided to commit General-major Dmitri K. Mostovenko’s 11th Mechanized Corps to counterattack the German 8.Jäger-Division, which was already on the outskirts of Grodno. Only Polkovnik Nikolai P. Studnev’s 29th Tank Division, stationed south of Grodno, was able to respond on short notice. By 1200 hours, Studnev had deployed his understrength 57th and 59th Tank Regiments on line, which had no more than two KV tanks, twenty-six T-34s and thirty-eight T-26 tanks. Interestingly, this was one of the rare occasions during the border battles where Red tank units were not exhausted by long marches and out of fuel, and they thus had real potential to inflict some damage on a German infantry formation.

However, Studnev was not one of the rising stars of the Red Army; before the war he had twice been relieved of command and was only given a division command in 1941 because Stalin’s purges had so thinned the ranks of senior tank officers. Southwest of Grodno, Studnev’s two tank regiments bumped into a kampfgruppe from Infanterie-Regiment 84, supported by some assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 184. After advancing a few kilometers, Studnev mistook the handful of assault guns for tanks and quickly halted and decided to engage by fire, not maneuver, which handed the initiative to the Germans. Soviet tankers had not been trained in fire discipline and they rapidly fired off much of their ammunition, but hit little. While their short-barreled StuG-IIIs and 3.7-cm Pak guns were useless in a long-range gunnery duel against Studnev’s T-34s, the Germans instead used their excellent radio communications to request close air support from the VIII Fliegerkorps, which promptly dispatched Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers to the scene. For four hours, Studnev’s semi-stationary tanks were pounded from the air and by German artillery, which knocked out virtually all his light tanks and some of his T-34s. Finally, Studnev ordered his survivors to pull back after his division operations officer was killed and both tank regiments became combat ineffective. For the loss of about half his sixty-six tanks, Studnev had inflicted only about fifty casualties on the 8.Jäger-Division.[11]

After the failure of Studnev’s counterattack, the Soviet 3rd Army commander decided to abandon the city of Grodno (which had a pre-war population of 50,000), including its fuel depot. When Marshal Semyon K. Timoshenko, the People’s Commissar for Defense and de facto commander-in-chief of the Red Army, learned of the loss of Grodno, he believed that Hoth’s armour was responsible. Timoshenko immediately telexed an order to Pavlov at 2115 hours, directing him to send the 6th Mechanized Corps to eliminate the German forces threatening Grodno. Three hours later, Pavlov obediently issued the orders to Khatskilevich’s Corps and sent his deputy, General-major Ivan S. Boldin, to coordinate the counteroffensive. At this point, Pavlov believed that the 13th Mechanized Corps supporting the 10th Army would be able to stabilize the situation south of Bialystok, where the German 4.Armee had crossed the border in force on Guderian’s left.

Khatskilevich’s 6th Mechanized Corps began moving from its deployment areas around Bialystok before dawn on 23 June. When the sun rose, German reconnaissance aircraft quickly detected the mass of Soviet armour moving toward Grodno and Fliegerkorps VIII delivered a series of punishing attacks on the packed columns; the 7th Tank Division lost sixty-three tanks to air attack. After a 90km road march, the combat elements of Khatskilevich’s corps reached their assembly areas southwest of Grodno around 1400 hours, but since most of the KV tanks only had a quarter-load of fuel remaining, Boldin decided to postpone attack until the next morning. However, the Luftwaffe had destroyed the fuel depot in Bialystok and the nearest alternate fuel supply was in Volkovysk, 75km away. There was actually plenty of petrol for the T-26 and BT light tanks, but diesel was in short supply. On paper, Khatskilevich had one of the most powerful armoured groups in the Red Army, with over 100 KV and 200 T-34 tanks, but the shortage of diesel fuel greatly reduced their combat potential.

Boldin intended to attack with the 6th Mechanized Corps into the flank of the German XX Armeekorps at 1000 hours on 24 June. Due to lack of radios, Boldin was unable to coordinate with the 11th Mechanized Corps, which also intended to counterattack again on 24 June. Boldin had a very inaccurate picture of the enemy situation, which led to faulty deployments for the 6th Mechanized Corps. When Khatskilevich’s tanks began advancing the next morning, they found that the enemy was still nearly 30km away and the long approach march gave the German XX Armeekorps plenty of time to establish an anti-tank defense with the II/Flak 4, equipped with twelve 8.8cm flak guns. Fliegerkorps VIII returned and the Stukas caused considerable damage with accurate dive-bombing. Still awaiting resupply of diesel fuel, Khatskilevich committed only his petrol-fueled BT and T-26 light tanks, which the 8.8cm flak guns of II/Flak 4 shot to pieces at ranges up to 800 meters; between twenty and forty Soviet tanks were lost.[12] Khatskilevich decided to break off his attack, apparently deciding to wait for his heavy tanks, infantry and artillery support to move up, rather than to conduct an attack with just unsupported light tanks.

Pavlov had also promised air support, so Khatskilevich could expect better results if he waited. Likewise, the 11th Mechanized Corps continued to attack the 8.Jäger-Division on 24 June, but lost most of its remaining tanks. However, Khatskilevich’s premature attack had alerted the Germans that a major Soviet armoured counterattack was forthcoming and the 256.Infanterie-Division had time to establish a robust anti-armour defense around the town of Kuznica, strengthened by a battery of 8.8cm flak guns, and two batteries of StuG III assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 210.[13]

On 25 June, Khatskilevich continued his attack with 150–200 tanks, but his artillery and air support failed to materialize. As before, the Soviet armour attacked in successive waves, with BA-10 and BA-20 armoured cars in the first wave as reconnaissance, followed by a second wave of T-26 and BT light tanks, to engage enemy positions. The T-34 and KV tanks appeared in the final third wave. When Khatskilevich’s armour struck the 256.Infanterie-Division, the gunners in Panzerjäger-Abteilung 256 quickly found that their 3.7cm and 5cm anti-tank guns could not defeat the Soviet tanks at normal ranges of 500–600 meters. For a moment, the Germans were seized with panic at the sight of Soviet heavy tanks and it seemed that the Red Army might actually achieve a local victory. The second battery of StuG III assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 210 was dispatched to deal with the Soviet armour, but their short-barreled 7.5cm howitzers were equally ineffective. Horst Slesina, a German war correspondent, witnessed the combat against the KV and T-34 tanks near Grodno:

At least two assault guns, a few Pak guns and two infantry guns were destroyed, but Khatskilevich’s tanks failed to break the 256.Infanterie-Division’s defenses because they attacked without significant infantry or artillery support. Instead, once the Germans recovered their composure they began to immobilize the Soviet heavy tanks by firing at their tracks. The 8.8cm flak guns from 9./Flak 4 had several crewmen wounded, but chalked up another dozen or more kills. German Panzerjägers soon discovered that the 5cm Pak 38 anti-tank could penetrate a KV-1 heavy tank’s side armour with the Panzergranate 40’s tungsten carbide penetrator at ranges up to 200 meters, but this required a very steady crew.[15] A few KV-1 tanks did succeed in plowing through the German line like elephants, causing more damage by crushing vehicles and equipment in their path, but then became mired in marshy terrain and were abandoned. Khatskilevich, trying to lead his corps from a T-34, was killed and the attack faltered. Nevertheless, the appearance of 150–200 Soviet tanks caused a panicked reaction from XX Armeekorps, which erroneously reported to Heeresgruppe Mitte that its infantry had been ‘reduced to cinders.’[16]

By midday on 25 June, Pavlov was finally aware that the main threat to the Bialystok salient was not at Grodno, but that Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzer groups were advancing relentlessly toward Minsk on his flanks. At 1645 hours on 25 June, Pavlov ordered Boldin to take what was left of the 6th and 11th Mechanized Corps and immediately force-march toward Slonim to prevent German panzers from cutting the Minsk–Warsaw highway. However, the rearward movement rapidly became a rout that destroyed both corps, with much equipment abandoned along the way. Pavlov evacuated his Western Front headquarters to Mogilev on 26 June, further diminishing Soviet command and control over the Minsk–Bialystok fighting.

While the best of Pavlov’s armour had been fixed at Grodno, Hoth’s panzers had swept almost unopposed across southern Lithuania, occupying Vilna on 24 June. The only Soviet formation left standing between Hoth’s panzers and Minsk was the understrength 21st Rifle Corps, stationed near Lida. Soviet prewar military exercises had determined that Lida was a likely avenue of approach for enemy armour, so the 21st Rifle Corps and 8th Anti-tank Brigade had been positioned in this area to protect the boundary between the Western and Northwest Fronts. However, both the rifle divisions and anti-tank brigade possessed only 40 per cent of their authorized strength and were in no position to stop the German LVII Panzerkorps. The 12.Panzer-Division skillfully slipped around the flank of the 21st Rifle Corps while the 19.Panzer-Division fought its way into Lida on 25 June. Hoth pushed the 12 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen towards Minsk, while the 7.Panzer-Division split off toward Borisov on the Berezina.

Meanwhile, after brutally shoving the remnants of Oborin’s 14th Mechanized Corps out of the way, Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 achieved a clear breakthrough at Pruzhany and pushed rapidly northward toward a link-up with Hoth’s panzers. With unusual alacrity, Pavlov managed to shift the 47th Rifle Corps over 160km to establish a blocking position at Slonim, while the cadre-strength 17th Mechanized Corps dug in at Baranovichi. When Generalleutnant Hans-Jürgen von Arnim reached Slonim with the vanguard of his 17.Panzer-Division late on 24 June, he found that the Soviets had burned the wooden bridge over the Shchara River and were entrenched on the far side. Guderian was faced with the daunting task of conducting an opposed river crossing against a foe with significant artillery support. Nevertheless, pioneers from the 17.Panzer-Division’s Brücko B column were able to bridge the Shchara during the night, and the next day the XXXXVII Panzerkorps fought its way into Slonim and then Baranovichi. At this point, Guderian split his panzer group up into three sections, attempting to simultaneously accomplish multiple missions. He directed the 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) to turn westward and establish a blocking position to prevent the escape of the Soviet 3rd and 10th Armies from the rapidly shrinking Bialystok pocket, while the rest of the XXXXVII Panzerkorps advanced northeast toward Minsk. Von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Panzerkorps was sent due east toward Slutsk, which Model’s 3.Panzer-Division overran on 26 June. Although Guderian clearly had the Red Army on the run, he also effectively dispersed his panzer group on divergent axes, which complicated his already tenuous logistic situation.

The second-echelon Soviet 13th Army made a futile last-ditch effort to defend Minsk with the understrength 20th Mechanized Corps and several reserve rifle divisions, but Hoth was able to concentrate the 12 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen on the northern outskirts of the city by 26 June. Minsk was surrounded by a pre-war Fortified Region that had 580 bunkers, including 45mm anti-tank casemates, but it was garrisoned by only four fortress battalions. The 13th Army managed to get two rifle divisions of the 44th Rifle Corps into position to reinforce the Minsk fortified line north of the city just before Hoth’s panzers arrived, but they were spread thinly across a 50km-wide front. The Luftwaffe also bombed the city mercilessly, setting more than half of Minsk afire – which added to the defender’s chaos. At 0300 hours on 27 June, both the 12 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen began assaulting the Minsk Fortified Region with their motorized infantry – a total of just eight battalions. A number of concrete bunkers with 76.2mm howitzers proved particularly troublesome. The Soviet troops fought tenaciously, but both German panzer divisions were gradually able to fight their way through the 2–3km-thick fortified belt by the end of the day.

Interestingly, heavy rain was already creating mud and waterlogged roads around Minsk, hindering German mobility. On 28 June, Hoth resumed the attack and the Soviet defense crumbled; Generaloberst Josef Harpe’s 12.Panzer-Division was able to reach the center of Minsk before noon. Once it became clear that Minsk could not be held, most of the Soviet 13th Army succeeded in escaping east to the Berezina river, where they began establishing a new line. The rapid seizure of a large city by panzers alone – repeated at Orel in October – gave the Germans the false impression that even larger urban areas, such as Moscow and later Stalingrad, could be seized by a bold armoured coup de main.

Thanks to the relentless advance of Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzers, the Wehrmacht had achieved a major victory that encircled and then smashed the bulk of Pavlov’s Western Front within six days of Barbarossa’s start. Boldin and Mostovenko managed to herd the remnants of the 6th and 11th Mechanized Corps into several semi-effective combat groups by gathering up all remaining fuel and operational vehicles, and ruthlessly abandoning everything else. Despite heavy losses in the fighting around Grodno, these armoured battle groups succeeded in evading the encroaching German dragnet for a time by moving eastward along forest tracks near Volkovysk. However, their luck ran out when they discovered the German 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) blocking their escape route at the town of Zel’va. Several BT-7 tanks attempting to ford the Shchara River were shot up by German Pak guns, forcing the remainder to divert 10–15km south to cross the river near Klepachi. Although the Soviet armour managed to ford the river on 27 June, they found that the Germans had already established blocking positions near Klepachi and Ozernitsa as well. An anti-tank ambush quickly claimed four more Soviet tanks. Major Iosif G. Cheryapkin, commander of the 57th Tank Regiment, led a determined breakout attempt with ten tanks and, despite being wounded, succeeded in escaping the encirclement.

Another group from the 13th Tank Regiment, with two T-34s and one KV-1 tank, made it as far as Slonim on the road to Minsk; both T-34s were immobilized by German panzerjäger but the KV-1 nearly escaped, until it fell off a wooden bridge into the Shchara River. Other Soviet tank crews and leaders escaped as well, including Boldin, Mostovenko and Polkovnik Mikhail Panov. As formations, all of Pavlov’s mechanized corps were eliminated in just a week of combat and the road between Volkovysk and Zel’va was littered with tanks that had run out of fuel, but German claims about eliminating over 3,000 Soviet tanks in the Minsk-Bialystok pocket ignored the fact that a significant number of Soviet tankers had escaped the kessel and would soon participate in defeating the Panzerwaffe. The Minsk-Bialystok kessel battle provided the first indication that the limited amount of German motorized infantry in the panzer groups prevented them from forming airtight encirclements. Soviet troops were everywhere in the forested terrain and the Germans only succeeded in scooping up clumps of Red Army troops along roads and in towns. Those who took to back trails through marshes and forests often escaped, albeit without much equipment.

Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzers linked up again east of Minsk on 5 July, trapping still more troops from the Western Front. Reduction of Pavlov’s encircled forces continued for several more days. Although Hoth seized a crossing over the Berezina at Borisov and Guderian had a bridgehead at Bobruisk, both panzer groups had to divert the bulk of their forces to holding and reducing the kessel, leaving little left for exploitation eastward toward their next objective – Smolensk. Until the roads through the pocket were cleared of resistance, it was also difficult for the panzer groups to receive fuel and ammunition resupply in quantity.

Both Panzer groups had achieved their initial objectives and were well-positioned to pursue their next objective – Smolensk – in early July. A number of modern historians, including David Stahel and David Glantz, have portrayed German losses in the Minsk-Bialystok kesselschlact (encirclement battle) as excessive, but these assessments are due to misinterpretation of statistics and overreliance on biased Soviet-era accounts.[17] A number of sources fail to differentiate between ‘totalausfall’ (total loss) and damaged but repairable tanks, most of which would be returned to service in a matter of days since the Germans held the battlefield. It is also a mistake to include Pz.I losses with German losses, since these obsolete light tanks were no longer included in German tank companies and were only being used in auxiliary roles. During the Minsk-Bialystok fighting between 22 June and 5 July, both Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzer groups lost about sixty-five main battle tanks each as total losses, or 12 and 7 per cent of their starting strength. In addition, about one-third of their tanks were not combat-ready due to battle damage and mechanical defects, although the 10.Panzer-Division had been in reserve for part of the battle and still had 84 per cent of its tanks operational. In comparison, all but a handful of Pavlov’s armour were total losses in the battle, representing a lop-sided 16–1 exchange ratio of 130 German tanks for well over 2,000 Soviet tanks in the kessel. German personnel losses in the panzer groups were also far from debilitating at this point. For example, the heavily-engaged 18.Panzer-Division suffered 331 killed and missing in the battle, with total casualties about 6 per cent of the division’s strength. The only significant panzer leader casualty in the battle was Oberst Rothenburg of 7.Panzer-Division, whereas the Red Army lost five of six mechanized corps commanders and most of the tank division and regimental commanders in the pocket. German victory in the Minsk-Bialystok kesselschlacht changed the equation for the rest of the 1941 campaign as far as the Moscow axis was concerned; the Germans went from numerical inferiority in armour to a position of strength even when attrition losses were factored in.

After losing virtually all his tanks – but not his tankers – Pavlov was relieved of command, recalled to Moscow and executed on 22 July. Timoshenko assumed direct control over the remnants of the Western Front, which were already forming a new front. While approximately 259,000 Soviet troops were lost in the catastrophe at Minsk-Bialystok, tens of thousands more escaped to fight another day.

Von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 versus the Southwest Front

The situation facing Heeresgruppe Süd at X-hour on 22 June 1941 was far more disadvantageous than that faced by either of the other two German army groups. Von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 had to conduct an opposed river crossing across the Western Bug into a heavily-defended fortified region, which meant the 6.Armee’s infantry would first have to create a series of bridgeheads before German armour could be committed.

Beginning at dawn on 22 June, the 6.Armee used five infantry divisions to conduct multiple crossings across the Western Bug River. The 298.Infanterie-Division, with the help of Brandenburg infiltration troops, managed to seize an intact bridge at Ustilug. German pioneers also succeed in capturing an intact bridge further south, at Sokal. Two Soviet rifle divisions opposed the crossing but were too thinly spread to seriously interfere with the initial bridge seizures. Wasting no time, 6.Armee immediately sent Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197 across the Sokal bridge at 0450 hours.[18] In order that von Kleist’s panzers would not be delayed by the use of just two bridges, German pioneers immediately began building pontoon bridges across the river to provide multiple crossing points. Despite the successful crossing of the Western Bug, von Kleist could initially commit only three of his nine motorized divisions to exploit the bridgeheads due to the narrowness of the attack sector and congestion at the two bridges. General der Panzertruppen Ludwig Crüwell’s 11.Panzer-Division crossed the Sokal bridge and pushed past weak resistance nearly 30km by the end of the first day. From Ustilug, the 6.Armee was able to seize the town of Vladimir Volynskii, which opened the way for General der Panzertruppen Friedrich Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division to push toward Lutsk – Panzergruppe 1’s intermediate objective.

General Leytenant Mikhail P. Kirponos, in command of the Southwestern Front, hurried to his new wartime command post at Tarnopol, but once there he could barely communicate with any of his subordinate forces for the first two days of the war. His headquarters personnel were unable to establish a functioning radio command net (during peace-time, the Red Army tried to avoid use of radio communications in order to limit opportunities for adversary signals intercepts, but when war erupted suddenly, most units had neither the experience nor the correct code books to initiate secure communications) so he was forced to rely upon civilian phones to try and coordinate his forces. In this command vacuum, local commanders began making their own decisions on how to respond to the German invasion. The Soviet 5th Army, headquartered in Lutsk, directed General-major Semen M. Kondrusev’s 22nd Mechanized Corps to counterattack the German forces threatening Vladimir Volynskii. Although most of this corps was about 100km from the border, by chance its most powerful formation, Polkovnik Petr Pavlov’s 41st Tank Division, was conducting field training just north of Vladimir Volynskii. Pavlov had thirty-one KV-2 heavy tanks (which lacked 152mm ammunition) and 342 T-26 tanks, which were in an excellent position to counterattack the German 14.Panzer-Division as it marched over the bridge at Ustilug. Instead, Pavlov found himself in a quandary that was not uncommon in the Red Army of June 1941 – he was out of radio communications with Kondrusev’s corps headquarters and his pre-war mobilization orders directed him to deploy to Kovel – away from the Germans at Ustilug. Pressured by local Soviet commanders to do something to help the crumbling border defenses, Pavlov split the difference by sending the bulk of his tanks on the road to Kovel, but detaching a tank battalion under Major Aleksandr S. Suin with fifty T-26 light tanks to support Soviet infantry at Vladimir Volynskii. Suin’s battalion arrived just in time to be shot to pieces by German panzerjäger, who knocked out thirty of his T-26 tanks and forced him to abandon Vladimir Volynskii.

Only vaguely aware of the extent of German advances by the end of 22 June, Kirponos was able to get in touch with General-major Ignatii I. Karpezo’s 15th Mechanized Corps, located near Brody, and order them to counterattack Crüwell’s 11.Panzer-Division near Radekhov while the rest of Kondrusev’s 22nd Mechanized Corps deployed to counterattack at Vladimir Volynskii. The 1st Anti-tank Brigade (RVGK) under General-major Kirill S. Moskalenko, which was fully motorized and equipped with forty-eight 76.2mm F-22 anti-tank guns and seventy-two 85mm M1939 anti-aircraft guns, was ordered to create a blocking position west of Lutsk. Moskalenko’s anti-tank unit was one of the most powerful anti-armour formations in the Southwest Front and was also plentifully supplied with anti-tank mines. Kirponos had four other first-echelon mechanized corps in the Southwest Front, but the 4th and 8th Mechanized Corps spent the first few days of the war marching and counter-marching to no useful purpose.

Rokossovsky’s cadre-strength 9th Mechanized Corps was beginning a 200km march to Lutsk, but would not arrive for a few days. The 16th Mechanized Corps was even further away from the border. In short, although Kirponos had an overall 6–1 numerical superiority in tanks over von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1, the piecemeal arrival of Soviet armour on the battlefield meant that the Red Army’s advantage was whittled down to a 2–1 local superiority, which was adequate for defense but not attack. Nevertheless, an order from the Stavka, signed by Georgy Zhukov, was received at Kirponos’ command post at 2300 hours on 22 June, directing Kirponos to counterattack with five mechanized corps within less than forty-eight hours.

On 23 June, von Kleist’s armour advanced eastward, with Kühn’s spearhead in the north and Crüwell’s spearhead in the south. They were advancing along very narrow frontages and not mutually supporting, as they were separated by a distance of over 50km. Under these circumstances, the Red Army should have been able to inflict heavy losses on these vanguard units. During the morning, the 13.Panzer-Division reinforced the 14.Panzer-Division across the Western Bug and, together with infantry from 6.Armee, they began to mop up the remaining Soviet border defenses. Crüwell’s 11.Panzer-Division advanced to Radekhov with Kampfgruppe Riebel (Oberstleutnant Gustav-Adolf Riebel’s Panzer-Regiment 15 and the Luftwaffe I/Flak Regiment General Göring, with twelve 8.8cm flak guns) and Kampfgruppe Angern (Oberst Günther von Angern’s 11 Schutzen Brigade and the 119.Artillerie-Regiment).[19] Part of the Soviet 20th Tank Regiment, from Generalmajor Sergei I. Ogurtsov’s 10th Tank Division, was in the town, but they were apparently caught by surprise and hurriedly abandoned Radekhov, along with twenty BT-7 and six T-34 tanks. After securing the town, Riebel sent a tank platoon from Oberleutnant Edel Zachariae-Lingenthal’s 5./Panzer-Regiment 15 forward to reconnoiter to the south and this platoon spotted a group of Soviet tanks in column approaching Radekhov from the southwest along a road. The German tanks quickly occupied hull-down ambush positions and waited until the Soviets – which were T-34 medium tanks – were within 100 meters. Then the five Pz.IIIs opened fire with 3.7cm and 5cm Panzergranate AP rounds.

This Soviet probe merely alerted Riebel to the presence of an impending Soviet armoured counterattack and he promptly deployed the I and II/Panzer-Regiment 15 in a linear defense just west of Radekhov, with the Luftwaffe 8.8cm flak guns in the center and Kampfgruppe Angern’s artillery behind him.[21] Soon thereafter, Ogurtsov conducted a sloppy, unsupported attack with just two tank and two motorized infantry battalions across open terrain in broad daylight. He refused to wait for reconnaissance to spot the German positions or his own artillery to deploy, so his forces went into battle blind. Tank–infantry cooperation was virtually non-existent. The 100-odd Soviet tanks attacked in several waves; first the light BT-7 and BA-10/20 armoured cars, then the medium T-28 and T-34 and finally the KV-1 heavy tanks. The German tankers opened fire at about 400 meters and easily put paid to the first wave of Soviet light tanks, but the T-34s began engaging the German tanks from 800–1,000 meters and knocked out three Pz.III and two Pz.IV tanks.

The 5cm KwK 39 L/42 was completely ineffective at that range, but in desperation Oberleutnant Zachariae-Lingenthal ordered his Pz.IVs to fire 7.5cm Sprenggranate 34 (HE) rounds at the T-34s. Since the T-34s had been committed straight after a long approach march, they were still carrying reserve fuel drums on their back decks, which could be set alight by shell fragments. A lucky hit or two convinced the Soviets to pull back.[22] Despite the near invulnerability of their armour to German 3.7cm and 5cm guns, a number of T-34s and KV-1s were immobilized by hits on their tracks and then abandoned by their crews. After suffering nearly 50 per cent losses, Ogurtsov broke off his amateurish attack. The Soviet 10th Tank Division lost forty-six tanks in their first battle with 11.Panzer-Division, but knocked out five German tanks and several anti-tank guns.[23] After the action, Zachariae-Lingenthal inspected some of the abandoned T-34 tanks, alarmed by its superior firepower and armoured protection and later wrote, ‘this was a shocking recognition to the German panzer and panzerjäger units and our knees were weak for a time.’[24]

Meanwhile, Kirponos tried vainly to bring up more of his mechanized corps in order to comply with the Stavka-directed counteroffensive on the morning of 24 June, but only the 15th and 22nd Mechanized Corps were in any position to do anything. Von Kleist was gradually feeding more armour into the battle as the Soviet border defenses were eliminated, but he initially held back the 9.Panzer-Division and his four motorized infantry divisions. This was an important command decision – throughout the Battle of Dubno, the Germans maintained strong mobile reserves, while Kirponos committed each formation as it arrived with nothing left in reserve to deal with enemy breakthroughs. Due to poor Soviet radio security at the division level and below, the German 3rd Radio Intercept Company was able to detect Soviet armour units moving toward the border. Although army and higher-level units used good encryption on their radio nets, the tank regiments and divisions employed simpler ciphers that the Germans could break and often failed to change frequencies and call signs for days after compromise. Soviet tank units also had a bad habit of calling for fuel supplies just before launching an attack, which provided German intelligence officers with a valuable indicator.[25] Thus poor Soviet radio procedures in tank units handed another advantage to the German panzer divisions.

Not surprisingly, no grand Soviet counteroffensive materialized on the morning of 24 June, since neither the 15th nor 22nd Mechanized Corps were ready to attack. Instead, Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division attacked eastward toward Lutsk at 0800 hours, supported by bombers from Fliegerkorps V. Kühn’s panzers brusquely pushed aside a Soviet rifle division blocking the road to Lutsk, but then ran straight into Moskalenko’s 1st Anti-tank Brigade west of Lutsk. Moskalenko’s unit was caught with its guns still limbered in column, enabling the panzers to shoot up his lead battalion, but once the rest of his unit deployed on line, the German tanks were vulnerable in the open. The Soviet anti-tank gunners were easily capable of penetrating the Pz.III and Pz.IV tanks at 1,000 meters or more, and it was only the lack of supporting infantry or tanks that prevented Moskalenko from giving 14.Panzer-Division a very bloody nose. As it was, both sides suffered significant losses in this first major duel between panzers and Soviet anti-tank guns. It was not until 1400 hours that the 22nd Mechanized Corps was finally ready to attack, and then only with part of the 19th Tank Division. Bravely charging, a battalion of forty-five T-26 light tanks struck the left flank of the 14.Panzer-Division near Voinitsa and briefly regained some ground. However, the Germans were merely withdrawing to regroup and at 1800 hours they struck back with a combined-arms attack that shattered the 19th Tank Division. Not only were most of the division’s light tanks lost, but the division commander was wounded and all three regimental commanders were killed or captured, as well as the artillery commander. The remnants of the Soviet division fell back in disorder toward Lutsk, along with Moskalenko’s anti-tank brigade. During the retreat, Kondrusev was killed by German artillery fire, leaving the 22nd Mechanized Corps leaderless.

Nor had Karpezo’s 15th Mechanized Corps been able to stop Crüwell’s 11.Panzer-Division, which bypassed Soviet blocking positions east of Radekhov and advanced 55km to the outskirts of Dubno. Karpezo seemed to think that his mission was to defend Brody, and was content to sit almost immobile as Crüwell’s division marched past him. Indeed, Crüwell took considerable liberty with Karpezo, leaving his right flank dangerously exposed – but nothing happened. German panzer commanders were trained to accept risk and ignore their flanks, and in 1941 this often paid handsome dividends. Generaloberst Hans-Valentin Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division followed in Crüwell’s path, as well as two infantry divisions, to exploit the breakthrough. Zhukov, who had arrived as Stavka representative at Kirponos’ command post at Tarnopol, ordered him to launch a counteroffensive into the flank of 11.Panzer-Division by 0700 hours on 25 June, even though this would be another piecemeal attack. While the German panzer corps commanders used radio to direct and maneuver their panzer-divisions in coordinated fashion, the Soviet mechanized corps operated with little or no coordination with other friendly formations at this point. Lack of C²-driven coordination prevented Kirponos from effectively massing his armour on the battlefield.

While the main armoured battle was developing around Dubno, Kirponos’ strongest armoured formation – General-major Andrey Vlasov’s 4th Mechanized Corps – was senselessly committed by the 6th Army commander to local counterattacks against the German 17.Armee approaching L’vov. Vlasov’s counterattack did not go well, as his armour was also committed piecemeal and without artillery support. Polkovnik Petr S. Fotchenkov’s 8th Tank Division lost nineteen of its 140 T-34s and the 32nd Tank Division lost sixteen tanks on 24–25 June fighting German infantry units. Vlasov did not report these heavy losses to Kirponos, but did claim the destruction of thirty-seven enemy tanks, even though no German armour was in this sector. Even worse, the tanks of the 4th Mechanized Corps were marched hither and yon by the 6th Army, which wanted tanks everywhere at once, but the result was that hundreds of tanks fell out due to mechanical defects.

25 June was a very good day for Panzergruppe 1. Generaloberst Eberhard von Mackensen had both 13 and 14.Panzer-Divisionen advancing toward Lutsk, and together they were strong enough to force Moskalenko’s anti-tank brigade to withdraw. By the afternoon, German tanks from 13.Panzer-Division seized a bridgehead over the Styr River and occupied Lutsk.[26] The Soviet 9th and 19th Mechanized Corps, approaching from the east, were too late to save the city. Karpezo continued to sit immobile, ignoring Zhukov’s attack order, and allowed Crüwell’s 11.Panzer-Division to fight its way into Dubno by 1400 hours. Soviet infantry attempted to form a defensive line behind the Ik’va River, but Crüwell’s fast-moving kampfgruppen defeated this effort. The easy capture of both Lutsk and Dubno effectively drove a wedge between the Soviet 5th and 6th Armies, making efforts to coordinate joint actions even more difficult. The only positive aspect of the day for the Soviets was that the 9th and 19th Mechanized Corps were assembling near Rovno and the 8th Mechanized Corps had arrived to reinforce Karpezo at Brody. On a map, it appeared to Zhukov that the Red Army could mount a powerful armoured pincer counterattack to cut off the vanguard of Panzergruppe 1 at Dubno.

However, Zhukov’s efforts to jump-start a counteroffensive were no more successful on 26 June and only resulted in further diminishing Kirponos’ armour. General-major Konstantin K. Rokossovsky established a fairly strong blocking position due east of Lutsk, which prevented either the 13 or 14.Panzer-Divisionen from advancing directly on Rovno, but recognizing that his 100-odd light tanks stood no chance against Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.), he opted to make only a demonstration to comply with the letter of Zhukov’s order and then shifted to the defense. General-major Nikolai V. Feklenko was less circumspect and obediently launched an attack with his 19th Mechanized Corps against 11.Panzer-Division at Dubno around 1400 hours. Feklenko attacked with about 200 tanks, but only two KV-1 and two T-34; the rest were either T-26 or T-37 scout tanks armed only with machine-guns. Crüwell easily repulsed Feklenko’s counterattack and both KV-1 tanks were lost. Adding insult to injury, Crüwell boldly pushed his motorcycle battalion, Kradschützen-Bataillon 61, 30km eastward to the outskirts of Ostrog.[27] On the southern side of the bulge produced by Panzergruppe 1’s advance, Karpezo’s 15th Mechanized Corps was joined by General-leytenant Dmitri I. Ryabyshev’s 8th Mechanized Corps, which had just completed a 600km road march to the front.

Ryabyshev’s corps had lost almost half its tanks due to mechanical breakdown, including forty-four out of forty-eight T-35 heavy tanks. Ryabyshev’s corps conducted a forward passage of lines early on 26 June, passing through Karpezo’s disorganized corps. Karpezo opted to remain on the defensive, allowing Ryabyshev to make the main effort in assaulting the right flank of General der Panzertruppen Werner Kempf’s XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) between Leshnev and Kozyn. Ryabyshev began a premature attack with General-major Timofei A. Mishanin’s 12th Tank Division at 0900 hours, but the rest of his corps could not be committed until the afternoon. Ryabyshev intended to capture the village of Leshnev, then push on to seize Berestichko, which would isolate the 11.Panzer-Division at Dubno. Ryabyshev was confident that Mishanin’s division, which had a company of KV-1 tanks and a full battalion of T-34 tanks, could accomplish this mission.

Unfortunately, Mishanin’s armour was committed nearly straight off the line of march, with no time to reconnoitre the unfamiliar terrain or for his artillery and engineers to arrive. Consequently, Mishanin conducted a nearly pure-armour attack with his two tank regiments, but only minimal infantry support. The tanks immediately encountered very marshy terrain along the Syten’ka River, which was little more than a stream, but the Soviet tank crews lacked the skill to negotiate even this minor obstacle. Three T-34 tanks were stuck in the marshy terrain and Mishanin was forced to look for an alternate crossing in full sight of the German troops from the 57.Infanterie-Division in Lishnev. As the Soviet tanks bunched up around the river, the Germans called for artillery fire, which pounded the massed armour. Eventually, Mishanin was able to get his tanks across the marshy terrain and assault into Leshnev. The German panzerjäger were overwhelmed by the T-34 and KV-1 tanks and a number of Pak guns were crushed under their tracks. The German infantry abandoned Leshnev and fell back. However, before Mishanin could consolidate on the objective, an armoured kampfgruppe from Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division attempted to retake Leshnev. While the Pz.III and Pz.IV tanks were seriously out-gunned by the T-34 and KV-1 tanks, the German panzers enjoyed artillery and air support, as well as better C², which evened the odds considerably. German gunners concentrated on hitting the tracks on the bigger Soviet tanks and succeeded in immobilizing some of the T-34s. Eventually, the German panzers broke off the action and retreated. Mishanin had twenty-five tanks stuck in the marshes or knocked out around Leshnev and was in no position to continue the attack with his unsupported armour. Instead, he sent a company of KV-1 tanks forward to sever the Berestichko-Dublin road and to shoot up some of the German wheeled traffic along this route. Ryabyshev’s other two divisions, the 34th Tank and 7th Mechanized, only got into the fight late in the day and achieved little or nothing.

Amazingly, one of the most powerful Soviet armoured units of June 1941 had failed to inflict significant damage on a single German infantry division. The Red Army’s failure to use combined arms tactics – which was mostly due to impatience in the higher command – almost completely negated the superior capabilities of the T-34 and KV tanks. By the end of 26 June, it appeared that Ryabyshev and Karpezo were still in an excellent position to smash in von Kleist’s right flank on the next day, but the Germans had their own surprise in store. German reconnaissance aircraft had been observing the mass of Soviet armour around Brody all day and they had spotted the GAZ-AAA radio trucks belonging to both the 8th and 15th Mechanized Corps command posts. Around 1800 hours, several groups of low-flying Ju-88 bombers from Fliegerkorps V came in and bombed both command posts. Karpezo was badly wounded but Ryabyshev survived, minus his radio truck, which was left burning. This one air strike – which was a result of poor operational security in the Red Army – seriously degraded Soviet C² in the armoured battles around Dubno. On top of these difficulties, the Stavka reiterated its order at 2100 hours that Kirponos would continue attacking with all armoured forces and forbid even tactical retreats to prevent encirclements.

Despite Kirponos’ intent to launch a pincer attack from Rovno and Brody to encircle the German forces in Dubno, the lack of coordination between the mechanized corps and other Red Army units resulted in a series of piecemeal battles throughout 27 June. The pincer from Rovno collapsed as Feklenko’s and Rokossovsky’s understrength corps dashed themselves to pieces against 14.Panzer-Division and two supporting infantry divisions. Von Kleist’s panzers now had the benefit of infantry support, which had caught up with them, greatly increasing the staying power of the frontline units. Once the Soviet armour from the 9th and 19th Mechanized Corps was spent, the Germans committed their armour: both 13 and 14.Panzer-Divisionen attacked, threatening to envelop the remnants of Feklenko’s and Rokossovsky’s corps. Meanwhile, Crüwell’s 11.Panzer-Division blasted its way through a thin blocking force of Soviet infantry and captured Ostrog. A counterattack by fifteen BT-7 light tanks against Panzer-Regiment 15 in Ostrog failed to budge the Germans. Kirponos was forced to cobble together Task Force Kukin, a small mechanized formation, to block Crüwell from pushing even further east.

In spite of the myriad problems afflicting the Red Army’s armour units at the outset of the war, Ryabyshev’s 8th Mechanized Corps came close to achieving a real success southwest of Dubno on 27 June. Assembling Mishanin’s 12th Tank Division, Polkovnik Ivan V. Vasil’ev’s 34th Tank Division and Colonel Aleksandr G. Gerasimov’s 7th Motorized Division north of Brody, Ryabyshev was able to mount a fairly organized attack that managed to envelop and isolate the 11 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen, as well as part of the 75.Infanterie-Division, by midday on 27 June. A number of Soviet tanks were lost crossing the marshy terrain, but a mobile group with about 200 tanks succeeded in fighting its way to the outskirts of Dubno. Mishanin was wounded in the attack and Soviet losses were heavy, but the situation for Kempf’s XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) was equally desperate. By the end of the day, German and Soviet armour units were thoroughly intermixed southwest of Dubno and there was no distinct front line.

Although Zhukov abruptly returned to Moscow, he continued to hound Kirponos by teletype messages to continue the counter-offensive against von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1. Kirponos, intimidated by his commissars, complied and thereby sentenced much of the remainder of his armour to annihilation. Rokossovsky managed to scrape together a battle group with about fifty T-26 and BT light tanks, a handful of KV-2 heavy tanks and some infantry, which he used to attack into the northern flank of Panzergruppe 1’s bulge on the morning of 28 June. However, by this point the infantry from 6.Armee had arrived in force to bolster von Kleist’s exposed flanks and the panzerjägers from 299.Infanterie-Division stopped Rokossovsky’s attack cold. Polkovnik Mikhail E. Katukov led his thirty-three BT-2 and BT-5 light tanks into battle and lost all of them.[28] As usual, Soviet armoured attacks went in with little or no reconnaissance support and negligible artillery support. Massed artillery, anti-tank fire and flak destroyed most of the Soviet armour, although a single damaged KV-2 limped away. Once the Soviet attack was spent, Generaloberst von Mackensen deftly coordinated the 13 and 14.Panzer-Divisionen into an all-out attack that smashed in the flanks of the Soviet 9th and 19th Mechanized Corps. The fragments of seven Soviet tank and motorized infantry divisions were routed and fled back behind the Goryn River. Feklenko abandoned Rovno, which was quickly occupied by the 13.Panzer-Division.

While disaster was striking the northern group of Soviet armour, Ryabyshev’s 8th Mechanized Corps found itself being encircled. This was the first instance in the war in the East of Soviet armour achieving a significant penetration of German lines, and Ryabyshev set a precedent that would occur again and again over the next two years. First, no follow-on forces were available to support the breakthrough; the nearly leaderless 15th Mechanized Corps mounted only a demonstration attack against the infantry of the German XXXXIV Armeekorps which provided no help to Ryabyshev. Second, the Germans reacted quickly to sever the narrow penetration corridor used by the attacking Soviet armour, isolating the bulk of the 12th and 34th Tank Divisions in a kessel just west of Dubno. Third, morale and C² within the trapped forces quickly disintegrated, resulting in rapid loss of any unit cohesion. The German 75.Infanterie-Division played a vital role in isolating the bulk of Ryabyshev’s forces, which speaks volumes about the Soviet lack of battlefield situational awareness at this point. A foot-marching infantry unit could envelope fully motorized units. Once Ryabyshev’s armour was encircled, Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division began a series of attacks that quickly reduced the kessel. German heavy artillery and flak was brought up to finish off the trapped Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks, which were now low on fuel and ammunition; twenty-two tanks were knocked out.

Ryabyshev, who was outside the kessel, personally led the 7th Motorized Infantry Division in an effort to break through to his two trapped tank divisions, but failed after crippling losses. By the end of 28 June, Ryabyshev’s corps had been neutralized and von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 had driven a deep wedge into the boundary of the Soviet 5th and 6th Armies. In just six days of battle, four of Kirponos’ mechanized corps had been defeated and the remainder had been seriously reduced.

For the first six days of the battle, while Kirponos was grinding up his own armoured forces in piecemeal battles, von Kleist held back the 9.Panzer-Division and his four motorized divisions. Once the best Soviet armoured formations were spent, von Kleist began to commit his second-echelon motorized forces on 28–29 June. The 9.Panzer-Division attacked unexpectedly into the flank of the Soviet 6th Army north of L’vov and quickly broke through its infantry. The 16 and 25.Infanterie-Division (mot.) used their superior mobility to quickly reinforce the flanks of Panzergruppe 1 at Berestichko and Rovno, which enabled the panzer divisions to resume their attacks eastward. Von Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) sliced into the fragments of Rokossovsky’s forces and pushed them back. After heavy fighting with Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division southwest of Dubno, Ryabyshev retreated with the remnants of his corps, reduced to 35 per cent of their initial tank strength, four infantry battalions and four batteries of artillery. The rest of his corps, roughly 10,000 troops and 200 tanks, were left in the kessel outside Dubno. With the Southwest Front’s forces in retreat or faced with encirclement, the Stavka finally ordered Kirponos to withdraw to the Stalin Line on the old border.

In the final actions near Dubno, the trapped tankers of the 34th Tank Division took advantage of fog along the Ik’va to stage a breakout operation on the night of 30 June, which succeeded in saving some troops, but not much equipment. In a confused night action – rare on the Eastern Front – the Soviets massed their remaining tanks and punched through Hube’s cordon. The Germans massed artillery, flak guns and tanks to destroy the fleeing Soviets, but some German troops panicked when T-34 and KV heavy tanks appeared out of the mist and overran their positions. Corps Commissar Nikolai Popel, leading the breakout, later wrote:

By 1 July, the Southwest Front was in full retreat and Panzergruppe 1 had achieved its initial objectives. The tank battles fought between Panzergruppe 1 and elements of seven Soviet mechanized corps around Lutsk-Rovno-Dubno-Brody in the first week of Barbarossa were the largest tank battles to date, involving over 600 German and 3,800 Soviet tanks. While it is true that von Kleist failed to encircle and destroy any Soviet mechanized corps, as occurred in the battle of the Bialystok-Minsk kessel, the 8th, 15th and 19th Mechanized Corps were badly mauled and three other mechanized corps lost at least half their strength. Approximately two-thirds of the Soviet armour, or 2,500 tanks, were lost in the battle between 22–30 June 1941; the majority of losses were caused by non-combat factors, including mechanical failure and lack of driver training. The technical superiority of the Soviet KV-1 and T-34 tanks counted for very little in the Battle of Dubno due to untrained crews and inept tactics. The Stavka’s insistence on launching a premature counteroffensive resulted in the best Red Army armoured units being thrown into battle piecemeal, where they were chopped to ribbons by veteran panzer units. In addition to material losses, losses of senior armoured leaders included two of six mechanized corps commanders, six of eighteen division commanders and ten of thirty tank regiment commanders. The surviving formations were reduced to division-size battle groups with little artillery or support services left after the retreat to the Stalin Line. The one bright spot for the Red Army in the Ukraine was that second-echelon armoured units near Kiev and the 2nd and 18th Mechanized Corps, deployed with the Southern Front near Odessa, were too distant to be significantly affected by the initial German Blitzkrieg; these formations would greatly assist Kirponos in slowing Heeresgruppe Süd’s advance upon Kiev in July–August.

In contrast to the damage suffered by Kirponos’ first-echelon armour, the German panzer units in Panzergruppe 1 suffered very light losses in the first week of combat; no senior panzer leaders were casualties and total personnel losses were around 5 per cent or less. Excluding Pz.I and command tanks, no more than twenty-five tanks in Panzergruppe 1 were totally destroyed by 30 June, with about another 100 damaged or down for mechanical defects, but all five panzerdivisions were still fully combat-capable. German leadership, from von Kleist, to von Mackensen and Kempf at corps level, to Crüwell and Hube at division level, had demonstrated great flexibility and aggressiveness. Even when briefly isolated, the panzer divisions retained their cohesiveness and fought their way out of trouble. To be sure, the Pz.III tanks armed with the 3.7cm KwK 36 L/46 cannon had proven to be a liability in combat against Soviet tanks, but the German skill at combined arms warfare and air-ground coordination had carried the day against Soviet numerical superiority and technical advantages. As Heeresgruppe Süd continued its advance to the Stalin Line in early July 1941, von Kleist was still outnumbered but his forces were better handled and, thus, capable of achieving decisive local superiorities.

An Assessment of the June 1941 Border Battles

The last nine days of June 1941 had cost the Red Army about 25–30 per cent of its pre-war armour and, across the board, the mechanized corps had fared very poorly against the more experienced and better-trained panzer-divisions. Even worse, most of the available T-34 and KV heavy tanks were lost in the initial debacles and it would take months to replace these losses. Yet many second-echelon Soviet armoured formations in the interior of the USSR remained intact, and the Stavka began to move them forward as rapidly as possible to meet the panzer divisions head on. While the second-echelon mechanized corps were equipped mostly with light tanks, they were at least given the chance to properly fuel and arm their vehicles. Given that the best Red Army tank units had only turned in a mediocre performance against German infantry, it would have been wiser to avoid tank-on-tank battles until the playing field was more even, but Stalin was only concerned with results, not losses.

Operation Barbarossa consisted of offensive ‘pulses’, dictated by the ability of the panzer divisions to attack for a week or two, gain some ground, encircle some Soviet formations, then wait for resupply and their own infantry to catch up. Although it has become fashionable for some modern writers to insist that Barbarossa had clearly failed by either July or August because the Red Army was still undefeated, that is not how either side saw it at any point before the winter of 1941–42. As every professional soldier knows, no plan survives contact with the enemy and even Hitler and the OKH recognized that a quick, cheap victory over Russia was not in the cards after mid-July. However, Hitler believed that the Wehrmacht was accomplishing his intended objective – smashing the Red Army – even if not according to schedule. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1941, German forces held the strategic and operational initiative, with the Soviets only managing to mount counterattacks in between German offensive pulses.

The four German Panzergruppen suffered about 10,000 casualties and lost 106 tanks (including thirty-three Pz.38(t), forty-four Pz.III and fifteen Pz.IV) ‘totalausfall’ in the first eight days of the invasion, but given the scale of destruction they were inflicting on the Red Army, these losses did not seem excessive. About another 200 tanks were damaged or down for repairs, meaning that most panzer divisions still had 100 or more operational tanks in early July. While it is true that operational tank strength in some divisions dropped as low as 30–35 per cent during the summer, the strength of most panzer divisions hovered at around 80–100 operational tanks until cold weather arrived. In contrast, Soviet armour was rapidly disappearing from all but critical sectors on the battlefield.

The first week in Russia revealed that German operational-level efficiency was far more at risk from logistical inadequacies than combat losses. German units quickly discovered that the poor condition of Russian roads greatly increased fuel consumption; one V.S. of fuel would suffice for only 70km of movement instead of 100km. Losses of trucks in panzer units due to a combination of enemy action, accidents and inadequate maintenance quickly resulted in heavy losses of supply vehicles, which put even greater strain on division and corps-level logistics. The Wehrmacht was still essentially tied to the railheads for long-haul, bulk logistic shipments such as fuel (9,000 tons per day), ammunition and spare parts, but the Eisenbahntruppen could only repair and regauge the Soviet broad-gauge tracks at a slow rate.[30] Even once repaired, the railroads were only delivering half of the army’s supply needs and fuel and ammunition were in short supply throughout most of the summer fighting. As the Panzergruppen advanced eastward, they quickly moved far beyond practical resupply range and were often forced to call upon the Luftwaffe for emergency resupply. Yet while aerial resupply could suffice in an emergency, it could never really take the place of ground resupply columns. Typically, a single Ju-52 could carry just 1,600 liters of fuel, sufficient to refuel a platoon of five Pz.III tanks. In order to refuel an armoured kampfgruppe, the Luftwaffe would have to conduct about twenty-five Ju-52 sorties, and that does not include additional sorties required for food, ammunition and other supplies. Unless the Wehrmacht could improve its logistic capabilities – which was doubtful – the Panzergruppen would become increasingly depleted as they advanced further eastward.

Stopping Höpner’s Advance on Leningrad, July–September 1941

Once Höpner got across the Dvina River in strength with Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) and von Manstein’s LVI Armeekorps (mot.), there was nothing that the retreating Northwest Front could do to prevent the German panzers from racing across the Latvian countryside in the first days of July 1941. General-major Aleksei V. Kurkin’s 3rd Mechanized Corps had virtually ceased to exist and the 12th Mechanized Corps had suffered 80 per cent losses, including its commander. General-major Dmitri D. Lelyushenko’s 21st Mechanized Corps gamely conducted a fighting retreat from Daugavpils and tried to make a stand against von Manstein’s SS Totenkopf Division at Rezekne, but was wrecked in the process. By the time he reached the Russian border near Ostrov, Lelyushenko had seven tanks and 3,000 troops left. All told, the Northwest Front had fewer than 100 tanks remaining, mostly T-26, to defend the approaches to Leningrad against Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4, which had at least 300 operational tanks.

The Soviet general staff had not anticipated a direct threat to Leningrad from the southwest and the only remaining armour in the area belonged to General-leytenant Markian M. Popov’s Northern Front, which was tasked with defending the city from the Finns. Popov had two armoured formations at his disposal: General-major Ivan G. Lazarev’s 10th Mechanized Corps stationed around Leningrad, and General-major Mikhail L. Cherniavsky’s 1st Mechanized Corps stationed near Pskov. Lazarev’s corps was essentially a training command with some 450 light tanks and it was tasked to operate in Karelia against the Finns. By the time the Finns declared war on 25 June, the entire 10th Mechanized Corps was deployed on the Finnish front. Popov was more concerned about the Finns than the Germans and, just prior to the German invasion, he had ordered the 1st Mechanized Corps to transfer its 1st Tank Division by rail to the Soviet 14th Army at Kandalaksha, near the northern Finnish border. On the first day of the war, Popov decided to move the rest of Cherniavsky’s 1st Mechanized Corps from Pskov back to Pushkin, where it could provide additional support against the Finns. Although Cherniavsky had no T-34 or KV tanks, he did have two full-strength mechanized divisions with a total of 550 tanks. If his corps had remained at Pskov, they would have been in an excellent position to block Höpner’s panzers; instead, the 1st Mechanized Corps was moved away from the approaching German forces.

The march of Cherniavsky’s 1st Mechanized Corps from Pskov toward Leningrad on 22–24 June was indicative of the dysfunctional nature of Soviet armoured operations at the start of the war, even when conducted without enemy resistance. Despite the lack of harassment from the Luftwaffe and the relatively good roads leading to Leningrad, the 1st Mechanized Corps road march was a debacle. Large numbers of tanks fell out from mechanical defects and traffic control was non-existent. No repair or recovery assets were attached to the convoys to deal with broken-down vehicles, which were simply abandoned at the roadside. A number of regimental, battalion and company commanders regarded the move to Pskov as an administrative rather than tactical movement and travelled separately from their troops. Left poorly supervised, Soviet tankers were undisciplined and left the march columns without permission. After two days on the road, the corps had barely moved 100km and was so thoroughly scattered that Popov ordered Cherniavsky to reassemble his corps at Krasnogvardeysk (Gatchina). Once there, Popov began to detach individual battalions and then the 163rd Motorized Division from the 21st Mechanized Corps, in order to support his operations against the Finns.

However, by late June it was obvious that the Northwestern Front had been defeated in Lithuania and that German panzer forces were racing across Latvia. On 29 June, Zhukov personally intervened by transferring the 1st Mechanized Corps from Popov’s command to the Northwestern Front, and Cherniavsky was ordered to force-march back to Ostrov. Zhukov also wanted the 1st Tank Division returned from the Finnish front, but Popov managed to delay this for nearly three weeks. Instead, Cherniavsky marched to Ostrov to confront Höpner with the 3rd Tank Division, the only major unit still under his command. Once again, an administrative road march was plagued with difficulties and after five days Cherniavsky’s armour was still about 60km from Ostrov. During this time, Kuznetsov was relieved of command on 3 July and General-major Petr P. Sobennikov took over command of the Northwestern Front.

While Cherniavsky was crawling toward Ostrov, Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) was racing toward the Russian border. Generalleutnant Friedrich Kirchner’s 1.Panzer-Division easily penetrated through the Stalin Line fortifications on the border and Kampfgruppe Krüger fought its way into Ostrov late on 4 July. Krüger’s troops even managed to capture the bridges in the city over the Velikaya River intact. Höpner’s advance upon Ostrov was aided by the ability of Heeresgruppe Nord’s quartermasters to move fuel and ammunition forward rapidly.

When Sobennikov learned that Ostrov had fallen, he ordered Cherniavsky to force-march his armour to the city and, in conjunction with the 41st Rifle Corps, attack early on 5 July. To reinforce the attack, Cherniavsky was provided with ten new KV heavy tanks straight from the factory in Leningrad and was promised air support.

After marching all night, Cherniavsky was able to begin his counterattack against 1.Panzer-Division in Ostrov at 0530 hours on 5 July. The Germans were dismayed by the appearance of more KV heavy tanks and 1./Panzerjäger-Abteilung 37 was overrun. German Pak guns and vehicles were crushed under the tracks of the KV tanks.

Spearheaded by the KV tanks, one Soviet tank company managed to fight its way into Ostrov and nearly recaptured the bridge. Yet Cherniavsky was only able to get three tank battalions, with no substantial infantry or artillery support, into the battle and the German combined-arms kampfgruppen displayed enormous resilience. A battery of 10cm s.K 18 howitzers engaged the KVs directly with Pzgr Rot (AP) ammunition and managed to knock out a KV-2 and several other tanks.[31] Cherniavsky pulled his armour back to wait for support units to arrive and he recommenced his attack with armour and two infantry regiments at 1525 hours after a thirty-minute artillery preparation. Although better prepared, this attack failed when the lead elements of the 6.Panzer-Division arrived to reinforce the German defense of Ostrov. A sudden German attack flung Cherniavsky’s forces back in disorder. Altogether, Cherniavsky’s corps suffered about 50 per cent losses, including eight of ten KV tanks and most of the light tanks.

Stalin got personally involved in the armoured counterattack at Ostrov and ordered Sobennikov to continue the operation no matter the cost. Cherniavsky attacked again on 6 July with his remaining forty tanks, as well as the remnants of the 21st Mechanized Corps. Reinhardt’s two panzer divisions easily repulsed these feeble efforts and, by afternoon, the Soviets were in retreat. The Battle of Ostrov demonstrated that the Red Army’s inability to implement combined arms warfare put their armour at a significant disadvantage in a stand-up fight against even a single panzer division.

After failing to stop Reinhardt’s panzers at Ostrov, the 3rd Tank Division fought a delaying action back to Pskov, which was the first city in Russia proper that was threatened by German panzers. In an effort to stop the 6.Panzer-Division from crossing the Velikaya River and reaching the city, the 3rd Tank Division mounted a sacrificial counterattack at Cherekha at 1700 hours on 7 July with about 100 BT and T-26 light tanks. In this kind of tactical combat, the Pz.35(t) and Pz.IV tanks of Oberst Richard Koll’s Panzer-Regiment 11 had the upper hand and they broke through and seized the bridge over the Velikaya intact. Prompt action by Podpolkovnik Gregory N. Pasynchuk’s 5th Tank Regiment stopped Koll’s tanks from exploiting the bridgehead, but Pasynchuk was captured in the scuffle at the bridge. Fighting continued for five hours, but by nightfall the 3rd Tank Division was down to about thirty-five BT tanks, while 1 and 6.Panzer-Divisionen still had a total of over 200 operational tanks remaining. On 9 July, Reinhardt’s panzers fought their way into Pskov – again, this was non-doctrinal for tanks to fight into cities without substantial infantry support – and the remnants of the 3rd Tank Division retreated eastward.

While the tank battles at Ostrov and Pskov were occurring, on the Northwest Front the Soviets were frantically trying to establish a strong blocking position at Luga 140km south of Leningrad to prevent Höpner’s panzers from advancing directly up the highway to Leningrad. Luftwaffe reconnaissance soon detected the Soviet concentration at Luga and Höpner decided to use Reinhardt’s corps for a direct assault upon the town, while using von Manstein’s LVI Armeekorps (mot.) to conduct a wide envelopment of Luga to the east. Manstein’s corps had been lagging behind in the push across Latvia and did not reach Ostrov until five days after Reinhardt’s panzers had captured the town. Höpner was partly at fault, having assigned von Manstein some of the worst marshy and wooded terrain to traverse, but von Manstein also made the kind of mistakes that someone who had never worked with tanks before would make – like mistaking ‘no-go’ terrain for ‘slow-go’ terrain. Generalmajor Erich Brandenberger’s 8.Panzer-Division, which was von Manstein’s only panzer unit, was turning in a very lackluster performance during the Russian campaign. Höpner’s choice of assigning a very difficult mission to a two-division motorized corps with a commander who seemed to have lost his aggressive edge seems rather suspect, and one can only speculate about whether von Manstein’s abrasive arrogance – he was not widely popular among other senior German officers – led to Höpner’s command decision.

Von Manstein advanced directly toward Porkhov with 8.Panzer-Division and 3.Infanterie-Division (mot), pushing aside the wreckage of 3rd Tank Division. On 10 July he captured Porkhov and then advanced northeast toward Soltsy, with the intention of outflanking the Luga position. Reinhardt made his first probes against Luga on the same day, but the 1.Panzer-Division was repulsed. He sent 6.Panzer-Division on a flanking maneuver to the west, but their advance along forest tracks was slow and tortuous, the exact opposite of Blitzkrieg. Normally, the German instinct for envelopment over frontal attack was the correct one, but at Luga Höpner failed to recognize that he was in a race against time and that the schwerpunkt should have remained there, instead of trying lengthy flank marches through slow-go terrain.

On the Soviet side, the bulk of the 10th Mechanized Corps’ 21st and 24th Tank Divisions had just returned by rail from Karelia and greatly stiffened this position, which was held by a rifle corps. The Soviet Northwest Front – now under the command of Marshal Kliment Voroshilov – became aware of the German outflanking efforts and realized that Reinhardt’s decision to split Panzergruppe 4 into non-supporting corps offered the Red Army an ideal opportunity to defeat at least one of the German spearheads and thereby reduce the threat to Leningrad. General-leytenant Nikolai F. Vatutin, the talented and aggressive chief of staff of the Northwestern Front, recommended committing the 11th Army’s reserve to encircle and destroy von Manstein’s LVI Armeekorps (mot), which was furthest from any potential help. Vatutin requested and received the 21st Tank Division, as well as five rifle divisions, to establish an ambush position near Soltsy, along the forest trail that von Manstein would have to pass.

Von Manstein advanced up the sandy trail from Porkhov to Shimsk with Brandenberger’s 8.Panzer-Division strung out in a long march column, with a one-tank front. Brandenberger’s 8.Panzer-Division had not yet suffered significant losses and still had 163 operational tanks.[32] The Germans advanced without flank guards through the forest and the Luftwaffe failed to detect any Soviet concentrations in this area. On the morning of 15 July, Vatutin sprang his ambush, with the fresh 70th Rifle Division cutting the road behind 8.Panzer-Division’s lead kampfgruppen, while another rifle division and the remaining thirty-five BT-7 tanks from 3rd Tank Division conducted a fixing attack against the 3.Infanterie-Division (mot). Von Manstein soon found that he had advanced into a linear ambush, with elements of five Soviet divisions attacking him from all directions. The next day, the 21st Tank Division attacked the flank of 8.Panzer-Division at Soltsy with 128 T-26 light tanks and a handful of KV heavy tanks against Pz.38(t) and Pz.IV tanks. Vatutin ensured that the attack was supported by Soviet bombers and artillery, although tank-infantry cooperation was still problematic. After three days of heavy fighting, the 8.Panzer-Division fought its way out of the encirclement, but was forced to abandon Soltsy and retreat all the way back to Dno. Reinhardt sent the SS-Division Totenkopf to assist von Manstein in breaking away, but the result was still a German tactical defeat, since they had to abandon damaged vehicles on the battlefield. The Soviets claimed to have destroyed seventy German tanks, but the actual number was twelve tanks as total losses (two Pz.II and ten Pz.38(t)) and twenty-seven damaged, although losses of wheeled vehicles were much heavier.[33] The Soviet 21st Tank Division lost fifty-four of its 128 tanks, but for once the heavy Soviet armoured losses were justified, since von Manstein’s effort to outflank Luga had failed. After von Manstein extracted his corps from Vatutin’s ambush, Höpner sent the shaken 8.Panzer-Division into reserve (although the division still had 124 operational tanks), leaving von Manstein with no armour.[34]

Despite the setback at Soltsy, Reinhardt succeeded in gaining a small bridgehead across the Luga at Poretsye with Kampfgruppe Raus from 6.Panzer-Division on 14 July, and then 1.Panzer-Division gained another bridgehead at Sabsk. Nearby Soviet militia units, supported by some tanks, immediately began counterattacking both bridgeheads with great ferocity. Raus, whose kampfgruppe was isolated from the rest of his division and virtually out of supply, was struck the hardest. A Russian militia company, supported by a single KV-1 heavy tank, managed to infiltrate through nearby forests and launched an attack that caught Kampfgruppe Raus by surprise:

Although there were far fewer T-34s and KV heavy tanks on the battlefield by mid-July 1941, the ones that did appear tended to be more dangerous since now they were fully armed and fueled, and had drivers with some experience. The Kirov plant in Leningrad was building more than forty KV tanks a week and the Northwest Front was receiving many of these. Furthermore, there were many re-called reservists with combat experience from the Russo-Finnish War and the best of these were used to form KV crews. The fact that Kampfgruppe Raus was forced to use such ad hoc desperation tactics to stop a single KV tank attack indicates the increasingly evident inadequacy of German tank and anti-tank weaponry.

After an advance of over 400km in less than three weeks, a combination of stiffening Soviet resistance, adverse terrain and supply problems brought Höpner’s advance to a virtual halt. It would take almost three weeks for Reinhardt’s corps to get sufficient supplies and reinforcements to break out of its Luga River bridgeheads. The stubborn Soviet defense at Luga bought Leningrad almost an additional month to prepare its defenses. After the Battle of Soltsy, both the 1st and 10th Mechanized Corps were dissolved, but part of the 1st Tank Division (minus one tank regiment and its motorized rifle regiment) was returned to Leningrad from the northern Finnish front on 17–19 July. The division remained in reserve near Krasnogvardeysk for the rest of July and into early August, receiving replacements and twelve new KV-1 tanks from the Kirov plant. By early August, the Northwest Front had about 250 operational tanks left: the 24th Tank Division at Luga (less than 100 BT-2 light tanks), a few tank detachments from the disbanded mechanized corps (about fifty–100 mixed BT and T-26) and the 1st Tank Division (sixty–eighty tanks).

Large-scale armoured warfare did not resume on the Leningrad front until 8 August. Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) began its breakout from its bridgehead near Kingisepp, while von Manstein’s LVI Armeekorps (mot.) made a direct frontal assault on the Luga position. The 24th Tank Division committed individual platoons of light tanks to support the 41st Rifle Corps at Luga, but Voroshilov held most of his remaining armour back for the first few days, uncertain whether it would be needed to counterattack any German breakthroughs. In the breakthrough battle, Höpner’s panzers were aided by the arrival of several German infantry divisions, but heavy fighting lasted along the Luga line for two weeks. Voroshilov began committing the 1st Tank Division in bits and pieces, but a detachment sent to aid the defense of Kingisepp was ambushed by Reinhardt’s panzers and lost twenty-eight tanks on 11 August, including eleven KV heavy tanks. The Soviets claimed eleven German tanks in this action. However, the 1st Tank Division was able to make good some of its losses, including five more KV tanks and four of the new T-50 light tank (of which only sixty-nine were built).

The Luga position was gradually enveloped as Reinhardt enlarged his Kingisepp bridgehead in the west and other German forces captured Staraya Russa and Novgorod in the east. The Soviets briefly managed to divert German attention away from the main battleground by launching their own bold counterattack at Staraya Russa, which encircled X Armeekorps on 16 August and forced Höpner to dispatch von Manstein to rescue the trapped German infantry. Meanwhile, Reinhardt’s panzers finally crushed Soviet infantry around Kingisepp then pushed eastward toward Moloskovitsy, where there was a head-on clash between the 1.Panzer-Division and General-major Viktor I. Baranov’s 1st Tank Division on 15 August. Baranov was one of the most experienced senior Soviet tank leaders, having commanded a tank battalion in the Spanish Civil War and then a tank brigade in the Russo-Finnish War, where he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union (HSU) for his role in breaking through the Mannerheim Line. However, the Battle of Moloskovitsy went badly for the Soviet tankers, who lost fifty-two of sixty-five tanks, including six KV, four T-28, thirty-two BT-7, six T-50 and four T-26, and the division was forced to retreat to Krasnogvardeysk. Baranov claimed that his tankers inflicted the loss of 103 tanks and forty-one antitank guns upon Reinhardt’s corps, but the Germans were not seriously damaged. Once in Krasnogvardeysk, which was a strongly fortified position blocking access to Leningrad, the 1st Tank Division received additional new-built tanks and trained reservists to replace its losses. The division was reorganized into a three-battalion armoured group with a total of fifty-nine tanks. Baranov put the thirty-four-year-old Kapitan Iosif B. Spiller in command of his 1st Tank Battalion, which had twenty newly-built KV tanks. Spiller was another very experienced Soviet tanker, with prior combat experience against both the Japanese and the Finns. Contrary to the mass of English-language, German-influenced historiography which often depicts Soviet tankers as untrained and unskilled buffoons, the Red Army did in fact possess men who were every bit as experienced and capable as their opponents.

After the debacle at Moloskovitsy, Baranov decided to avoid large-scale battles with Höpner’s panzers, since Red Army tank units were not yet ready to employ combined arms warfare. Instead, Baranov opted to use his tanks in platoon-size ambushes to disrupt and delay the German advance toward Leningrad. It took Reinhardt’s panzers three days to advance 30km on the road from Kingisepp to the outskirts of Krasnogvardeysk, being engaged daily by Baranov’s tankers employing ‘shoot ‘n scoot’ ambush tactics. Höpner transferred the 8.Panzer-Division, recovered after its defeat at Soltsy, to Reinhardt’s corps, where it was made the vanguard on 18 August. Spiller was tasked with defending the outskirts of Krasnogvardeysk and he deployed a platoon of five KV-1 tanks under Leytenant Zinoviy G. Kolobanov just west of the city, along the route that 8.Panzer-Division was approaching. On the morning of 19 August, Kolobanov’s KV-1s, which were the ‘ekranami’ model with extra 35mm-thick armour plates welded on the turret, waited hull-down in ambush.[36] Once again, the 8.Panzer-Division demonstrated a propensity for falling into enemy ambushes and a certain tactical mediocrity, as its lead kampfgruppe drove straight into the kill zone unaware. Kolobanov’s five KV-1s opened fire at a range of 450 meters, engaging the lead elements of the Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 59 (reconnaissance battalion) and quickly destroyed an assortment of armoured cars, half tracks and wheeled vehicles. Panzerjäger-Abteilung 43 tried to deploy its 3.7cm and 5cm Pak into firing positions on the road, but Kolobanov easily blasted them to pieces with high explosive rounds and then hosed down the survivors with his 7.62mm coax machine-gun. The III./Panzer Regiment 10 managed to get a company or more into action, but its Pz.38(t) and Pz.IV could not defeat Kolobanov’s platoon.[37] Kolobanov’s tank was hit repeatedly without being knocked out, although his sights were eventually demolished and his turret jammed. He broke off the action after firing his entire basic load of ninety-eight rounds. The Soviets claimed that Kolobanov’s platoon had destroyed forty-two German tanks, including twenty-two by Kolobanov himself, without a single KV-1 being lost. While Soviet kill claims were exaggerated by counting every AFV as a tank, there was little doubt that General Erich Brandenberger’s 8.Panzer-Division had gotten another bloody nose. The KV had also demonstrated that it was an excellent defensive tank.[38]

Despite Baranov’s efforts, the Germans managed to encircle and destroy the Luga group by 24 August. Von Manstein crushed the Soviet counterattack at Staraya Russa, inflicting heavy losses. Even worse, the OKH transferred General Rudolf Schmidt’s XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) from Heeresgruppe Mitte to Heeresgruppe Nord to reinforce the final drive on Leningrad. Schmidt’s two mobile divisions, 12.Panzer-Division and 20.Infanterie-Division (mot.) quickly proved their worth by severing the main Moscow–Leningrad rail line and beginning a drive toward the vital rail-junction at Mga, to complete the isolation of Leningrad. Baranov’s tankers continued to assist in repelling German panzer attacks upon Krasnogvardeysk, claiming the destruction of another thirty German tanks by the end of August, but admitted the loss of twenty-eight of their own tanks (eleven KV, four T-28, one T-34, three BT-7, nine T-26). Despite Baranov’s best efforts, Höpner had a significant numerical edge in armour on the Leningrad front by late August and there were no major Red Army tank units left to stop Schmidt’s steamroller advance.

On 30 August, Generaloberst Josef Harpe’s 12.Panzer-Division captured Mga, cutting off Leningrad’s last ground link with the outside world. However, Harpe had not arrived quickly enough to prevent the machinery and thousands of workers from the Kirov plant (Zavod 100) from escaping through Mga by rail to Chelyabinsk, where they reestablished the KV-1 production line.[39]

After the Luga position was eliminated, Höpner and Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm von Leeb, commander of Heeresgruppe Nord, believed that it might be possible to storm Leningrad before its defenses were fully prepared, as Harpe’s 12.Panzer-Division had done at Minsk. Höpner’s panzers were badly depleted and exhausted after ten weeks near-continuous fighting, but the Red Army had fewer than 100 operational tanks left defending the approaches to the city. The Soviet 42nd Army was putting up very stiff resistance at Krasnogvardeysk that stymied Reinhardt’s motorized corps, but Schmidt was advancing on the east side of Leningrad against very weak opposition. Reinhardt massed the 1 and 6.Panzer-Divisionen and 36.Infanterie-Division (mot.) near Krasnogvardeysk and launched an all-out attack on 11 September that finally broke the Soviet defense near Taitsy. The remnants of Baranov’s 1st Tank Division mounted a counterattack against 1.Panzer-Division near Krasnogvardeysk, including Leytenant Kolobanov’s KV-1 platoon, but could not stop the panzers. The Soviet defensive positions began to crumble, with Krasnoye Selo lost on 12 September and Krasnogvardeysk itself lost on 13 September. Baranov’s tankers retreated to the last line of defense before Leningrad, the Pulkovo Heights.

While the rest of Reinhardt’s forces were mopping up the Krasnogvardeysk position, a kampfgruppe from 1.Panzer-Division, consisting of II/Panzer-Regiment 1 and I/Schützen-Regiment 113, raced ahead and seized part of the Pulkovo Heights, just 7km south of Leningrad. Georgy Zhukov, who had just arrived in Leningrad to replace the incompetent Marshal Voroshilov, ordered immediate counterattacks to push the German armour back from the city. Baranov was ordered to use his last twenty-five tanks to spearhead the counterattack, which would be supported by several battalions of militia. Kapitan Spiller, still in command of the 1st Tank Battalion, had three KV-1s and five KV-2s, but the rest of the armour consisted of light tanks. The Soviet tanks attacked around 1500 hours, with Spiller’s KVs in front, lumbering out of the city and slowly climbing the heights south of the city. The German panzerjägers tried to break up the attack, but by this point they knew that their puny 3.7cm and 5cm antitank guns could do little to stop the KV heavy tanks.

KV tanks began crushing the Pak guns under their tracks and destroying their prime movers. German infantry, witnessing the defeat of their anti-tank troops, began to pull back. Several Pz.III tanks from Panzer-Regiment I tried to intervene but were knocked out by 76.2mm fire. Eventually, the counterattack culminated in a number of Soviet tanks being immobilized by damage, but 1.Panzer-Division was forced to pull back. Afterwards, Zhukov deftly shifted the few remaining KV tanks around the shrinking Leningrad perimeter, to contest German advances on the east and west sides of the city. Zhukov also used naval gunfire from the Baltic Sea fleet to support small-scale counterattacks, which impressed the Germans.

By late September, Höpner knew that his panzers had great difficulty dealing with dug-in Soviet heavy tanks and that he lacked the firepower to fight his way into Leningrad. However, with Leningrad now surrounded, von Leeb and Höpner did not see the need to incur heavy losses in direct assault, preferring to let starvation win the battle for them. Höpner’s Panzergruppe was no longer combat-ready, with most of its tanks damaged or worn out, its personnel ranks thinned by losses and the survivors exhausted. With the Leningrad campaign seemingly won, it was time to pull back the panzers in order to regroup and let the infantrymen and artillerymen of Heeresgruppe Nord handle the siege.

In anticipation of the up-coming Operation Typhoon against Moscow, Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 was transferred to Heeresgruppe Mitte on 22 September, less than a week after the German offensive crested on the Pulkovo Heights. Schmidt’s XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) was retained in Heeresgruppe Nord for the time being.

Soviet armour, as well as the self-sacrificial courage of Red Army tankers, had played a critical role in slowing the German drive on Leningrad, but every Red Army tank unit involved was burnt out in the process. The remnants of Baranov’s division were disbanded at the end of September and the surviving personnel – now all experienced combat veterans – were used to form the 123rd Tank Brigade. During the autumn of 1941, as the siege began, neither side had more than a few dozen operational tanks left, which were reserved for occasional counterattacks. Höpner’s conduct of the campaign deserves poor marks, since he allowed the bulk of the Northwest Front’s 8th and 11th Armies to escape Lithuania, he failed to properly coordinate the operations of Reinhardt’s and von Manstein’s corps, and he allowed the terrain to get the better of him and set the pace of operations. He would have been better advised to send Reinhardt’s corps in an end-run through Estonia to seize Narva, while using von Manstein’s corps as a diversion at Luga.

Once at Narva, the whole Luga line would have been flanked and, by using Lake Peipus to shield his right flank, he would have minimized the risk of Soviet counterattacks like Soltsy and Staraya Russa. Instead, Höpner’s fumbling effort to overcome the Luga position cost Heeresgruppe Nord a vital month and gave the Soviets time to redeploy armour from the Finnish front and to partly rebuild their tank units with new KV heavy tanks. Despite the failure to prevent the encirclement of Leningrad, Soviet armour had achieved more on the approaches to the city than any other Red Army tank units prior to the winter of 1941–42.

Crossing the Berezina and Dnieper, July 1941

Among other mistaken assumptions, when the OKH staff developed the Barbarossa plan they had not included the Red Army’s second-echelon forces deployed deeper within the Soviet Union, or the possibility of newly-raised reinforcements as important factors and, consequently, did not anticipate that the Red Army’s Western Front would be able to re-form a coherent front line after its first-echelon forces were defeated in the Minsk-Bialystok salient. In fact, this planning assumption was proven wrong no fewer than four times between June and November 1941.

Although the reduction of the encircled Soviet 3rd and 10th Armies west of Minsk consumed much of Heeresgruppe Mitte’s effort until 8 July, Guderian and Hoth were already moving some of their armour eastward as soon as Minsk was captured on 28 June and they attempted to seize bridgeheads across the Berezina river while part of their armour assisted with containing and reducing the trapped Soviet units west of Minsk. In Hoth’s sector, only the 7.Panzer-Division was immediately available to advance eastward, but 17.Panzer-Division could assist sooner. In Guderian’s sector, the bulk of von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) was not involved in the Minsk kessel and was pushing toward the Berezina, as was most of von Viettinghoff’s XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.): a total of four motorized divisions. Tank and personnel losses were not yet serious, so even these parts of Hoth’s and Guderian’s forces still constituted over 500 tanks. While German logistics were tenuous at this stage, Heeresgruppe Mitte was repairing two rail lines to support operations: the Brest-Baranovichi-Minsk line and the Grodno-Vilna-Minsk line.[40] By 1 July, German railroad repair troops had the line operating as far as Baranovichi and the first supply trains pulled into Minsk on 5 July. Some of the roads around Minsk were all-weather, pavedasphalt rather than the sandy tracks near the border, which made it more practical for supply trucks from the Kraftwagen-Transport-Regiment 605 (a Großtransportraum or GTR unit) to move fuel, ammunition and rations to the forward panzer units. When necessary, Luftwaffe Ju-52 transports were also being used to move emergency resupply forward to the more distant 3 and 4.Panzer-Divisionen.[41]

On the Soviet side, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko arrived at Smolensk from Moscow on 2 July to replace Pavlov and rebuild the shattered Western Front. Aside from the remnants of the 13th Army – the threadbare 20th Mechanized Corps (no tanks) and ten battered rifle divisions – Timoshenko initially had very few forces at hand. Fortunately, the Stavka had been in the process of transferring a large number of formations from the interior military districts to the West when Barbarossa began and had four armies under RVGK control.

Pavlov’s disaster in the Bialystok-Minsk salient bumped Timoshenko’s request for reinforcements to the top. General-leytenant Ivan S. Konev’s 19th Army, with six rifle divisions, was rerouted from the Ukraine to Smolensk, while General-leytenant Pavel A. Kurochkin’s 20th Army was formed with seven rifle divisions from the Moscow and Volga military districts. General-leytenant Mikhail F. Lukin’s 16th Army began arriving in Smolensk on 5 July with two rifle divisions from the Ukraine and was soon joined by the independent 57th Tank Division (160 T-26 tanks) from the Transbaikal military district. All told, Timoshenko would receive a total of fifteen good-quality rifle divisions in the vicinity of Smolensk in the first half of July 1941; all these units were pre-war formations at about 84–88 per cent of authorized strength. Timoshenko also received a number of artillery regiments and anti-tank brigades from the RVGK.[42]

Furthermore, Timoshenko was fortunate in that the RVGK could quickly provide him with two nearly full-strength mechanized corps, the 5th and the 7th, to rebuild his armoured strength and four other mechanized corps later in July. General-major Ilya P. Alekseenko’s 5th Mechanized Corps was in the process of transferring from the Transbaikal MR to the Kiev MR when the war began. The 109th Motorized Division had already detrained at Shepetovka and it was quickly sent to contain the German breakthrough at Ostrog, but the rest of the corps was diverted enroute to Smolensk, where it joined the 20th Army that was forming. Alekseenko was one of the most experienced senior tankers in the Red Army, having commanded a tank brigade at the Battle of Nomonhan in 1939.

Closer at hand, General-major Vasily Vinogradov’s 7th Mechanized Corps was stationed around Moscow and was alerted immediately after the German invasion began. The corps moved by road and rail to Orsha, with the first elements arriving there on 26 June. Three days later, the elite 1st Moscow Motorized Division led by Polkovnik Yakov G. Kreizer was ordered to hurry toward Borisov to establish a defensive screen along the Berezina River, while the rest of the corps set up blocking positions between Orsha and Vitebsk. Kreizer’s division was particularly fortunate in having four tank battalions with 225 of the latest BT-7M light tanks (with the same V-2 diesel engine as the T-34 and better sloped armour), as well as receiving ten KV heavy tanks and thirty T-34 tanks from local training units. Ammunition was still a problem and few armour-piercing rounds were available. However, Kampfgruppe Teege from General-major Walther Nehring’s 18.Panzer-Division reached Borisov first, around 1300 hours on 30 June, and attempted a coup de main against the still-intact concrete road bridge. Major Willi Teege had his own II/Panzer-Regiment 18 plus the Kradschützen-Bataillon 18 and the Aufklärungs-Abteilung 88, but ran into unexpectedly heavy resistance west of the river from remnants of the 13th Army and cadre from the Borisov tank school, who shot up some of the tanks in his vorausabteilung. It was not until dismounted infantry from Schutzen-Regiment 52 arrived that the Kampfgruppe Teege was able to seize the bridge intact. Over the next couple of days, Nehring expanded his bridgehead and was reinforced by a kampfgruppe from 17.Panzer-Division.[43]

Kreizer’s vanguard was too late to save the bridge at Borisov, but Kurochkin ordered him to assemble a counterattack to retake it as soon as possible. Even for a well-equipped division such as Kreizer’s, this was a tall order. Kreizer attacked with all his armour on the morning of 3 July, by which time Nehring’s division was firmly established on the east bank of the Berezina. Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance spotted the approaching Soviet armour and provided invaluable early warning to Nehring, who was able deploy his panzers and panzerjägers in a dense patch of silver birch 8km east of the Borisov bridgehead. Amazingly, Kreizer’s tanks attacked straight down the Minsk-Moscow highway, in the open, in broad daylight, and in not in any particular formation, but in small platoon and company-size gaggles of tanks. At least one KV-2, several KV-1s and a number of T-34s participated in the attack, but the bulk of Kreizer’s armour consisted of the BT-7Ms. Under these conditions, the panzers and panzerjägers had little difficulty knocking out many of the attacking BT-7M light tanks, but the KV heavy tanks and T-34s managed to briefly penetrate the German defenses. At least one Pz.III was knocked out by a T-34, but the German tankers eventually concentrated their fire against the tracks of the Soviet heavy tanks, to immobilize them.[44] The intervention of German flak and heavy artillery in the battle further encouraged Kreizer’s tankers to withdraw. As usual, the Soviets claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on a panzer division – some sixty–seventy tanks – but actual German losses were light. German panzer-division commanders were quick to note that seizing key terrain and then quickly switching to the tactical defensive often resulted in the Soviets mounting near-suicidal counterattacks that then opened the way for further German advances.

Thereafter, Kreizer delayed back toward Orsha, counterattacking Nehring’s spearheads at Krupki on 4 July and Talachyn on 5 July. Kreizer claimed to have inflicted 1,000 casualties on the pursuing panzer units at Talachyn, but in fact his division continued to retreat. Further combat against Soviet heavy tanks revealed that in addition to shooting off their tracks to immobilize them, direct hits on their turrets could jam the traversing mechanisms. While 17 and 18.Panzer-Division were slowly pushing toward Orsha, von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) crossed the Berezina at Bobruisk and the XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.) soon had the SS-Reich and 10.Infanterie-Division (mot.) across as well. By 3 July, both German panzer groups were across the Berezina in strength and pushing against scattered resistance toward the Dnieper. Meanwhile, Hoth sent the LVII Armeekorps (mot.) to capture Polotsk, thereby guarding the left flank of the German advance, but this weakened the armour available for the upcoming Battle of Smolensk.

Timoshenko had only been in command of the Western Front for three days when he ordered the still-arriving 5th and 7th Mechanized Corps, along with infantry from the 20th Army, to counterattack the German armour advancing upon Orsha. Coordination between divisions and corps was still rudimentary, but Timoshenko believed that this mass of armour might be able to halt the relentless German advance. At 1000 hours on 6 July, Vinogradov and Alekseenko deployed their four tank divisions and one motorized division on line west of Orsha and began advancing toward Senno and Lepel. All told, both corps managed to get about 1,100 tanks, including thirty-seven KV-I and KV-II heavy tanks and sixty-nine T-34, into the operation. The Stavka had directed that a battalion of twenty-nine T-34s from the Kharkov Tank School and forty-four brand-new KV tanks from the Kirov plant be sent directly to reinforce Vinogradov’s 7th Mechanized Corps, but the Soviet tankers had difficulty driving the heavy tanks and burned out the clutches on seven KVs moving just 5km from the railhead to an assembly area. Over the course of the next few days, about half of the KVs were immobilized by the same fault.[45]

Meanwhile, Schmidt’s XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) was well out in front of the rest of Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3 and only had the advance units of Generalleutnant Hans Zorn’s 20.Infanterie-Division (mot.) and Generalleutnant Hans Freiherr von Funck’s 7.Panzer-Division screening east of Vitebsk while the rest of the corps moved up. Zorn had just occupied Beshenkovichi and Funck’s lead unit, Kradschützen-Bataillon 7, was on the outskirts of Senno. Schmidt’s forces were dispersed and vulnerable, but the Luftwaffe alerted them to the presence of approaching Soviet armoured units, which allowed the forward units to establish a hasty defense.

Once again, the Soviets attacked without reconnaissance and tactical commanders had little idea of the enemy’s dispositions or the nature of the terrain. Vinogradov, who had no prior experience with armour, displayed great foolishness in the meeting engagement phase by sending a reinforced tank company under Captain Georgy F. Haraborkin to find fording sites over the Chernogostitsa River east of Beshenkovichi on the morning of 6 July. Haraborkin was a very experienced tanker who had been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union for his combat performance during the Russo-Finnish War, but Vinogradov sent him on a fool’s errand. Instead of using armoured cars for reconnaissance, Vinogradov wanted a reconnaissance in force, so Haraborkin led twelve KV-1 and two BT-7 tanks to the river. In addition to the fact that the terrain around the ford site was marshland, the advance elements of Zorn’s motorized division had already reached the ford and emplaced anti-tank mines. When Haraborkin attempted to cross, four KV tanks struck mines and three others became stuck. The Germans had Pak guns covering the mine obstacle and began to pound the stranded Soviet heavy tanks, while calling in artillery. The Soviet tankers managed to recover two KV tanks under fire but Haraborkin was killed and a total of seven KVs were abandoned in the river.[46]

By the end of 6 July, the Soviet 5th and 7th Mechanized Corps were in contact with the two divisions of XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.), but had not yet struck a serious blow. The actions of the two corps were not coordinated and difficulties in pushing fuel forward further desynchronized their actions. Vinogradov’s corps used 75 per cent of its fuel in moving to contact and Alekseenko’s 5th Corps was much the same, but Vinogradov decided to continue the advance while Alekseenko paused his advance to await more fuel. Consequently, Schmidt would only have to face one Soviet mechanized corps on 7 July, not two. Timoshenko, who often demonstrated poor situational awareness during operations, was unaware of Alekseenko’s decision and confidently expected that both corps would attack and crush a single German panzer division on 7 July.

Vinogradov’s attack commenced at 0800 hours on 7 July, a sunny and warm day, with the 18th Tank Division probing toward Senno with a tank battalion. However, Oberstleutnant Wolfgang Thomale’s III/Pz.Regt 25 had arrived during the night to reinforce the motorcycle infantry and the Pz.38(t) and panzerjäger repulsed the first attack.

After the initial attack failed, the Soviets seemed uncertain what to do and wasted precious hours until finally renewing the attack on Senno at 1630 hours. Again, Kampfgruppe Thomale repulsed this Soviet attack and a third at 1900 hours which included two KV-II and one T-34 tanks. During the course of the day, Thomale’s troops destroyed a total of seventeen Soviet tanks (including both KV-II), at a cost of four of his own tanks and a 5cm Pak gun.[47] Further north, the 14th Tank Division encountered Kampfgruppe von Boineburg, which included Hauptmann Adelbert Schulz’s I/Pz.Regt 25, II/Schützen Regiment 7 and 1./Panzerjäger-Abteilung 8 with six 8.8cm flak guns mounted on an Sd.Kfz.8 chassis. The Soviet attack in this sector was more powerful and included infantry support, but advanced at a slow pace which allowed the Germans time to react. While the German panzerjägers and four artillery units pounded the approaching Soviet armour, Hauptmann Schulz maneuvered his panzer battalion to strike the flank of the Soviet formation. By using fire and maneuver in the defense, Kampfgruppe von Boineburg shattered the 14th Tank Division’s attack and sent it reeling with the loss of forty-three tanks. Two of the self-propelled 8.8cm flak guns, which had a very high profile, were destroyed, but otherwise proved useful against the Soviet heavy and medium tanks. By the end of the day, Funck’s 7.Panzer-Division had repulsed both Soviet tank divisions and knocked out 103 Soviet tanks at a cost of eight of their own and 136 casualties.[48]

Alekseenko’s armour essentially sat out the day, awaiting more fuel, while Vinogradov’s armour was being demolished. By the time that Alekseenko began committing his armour on 8 July, Hoth had brought up the rest of the armour with 12 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen and Guderian had two panzer divisions from XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) near Orsha. The 17.Panzer-Division attacked into the flank of the 5th Mechanized Corps on 8 July and, by the next day, Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzers threatened to envelop both Soviet mechanized corps.[49] The Germans noted that Polkovnik Ivan P. Korchagin’s 17th Tank Division performed particularly poorly and attributed this to its composition of 60 per cent Ukrainian soldiers – many of whom still remembered ill-treatment at the hands of the Soviet regime and were now unwilling to risk their necks forMother Russia.[50] Oberst Kurt Cuno, commander of Panzer Regiment 39, used fire and maneuver tactics with his Pz.IIIs and Pz.IVs to engage Alekseenko’s small number of KV and T-34 tanks:

The Soviet KV-1 crushed a German 3.7cm Pak gun that tried to block its path and advanced over a dozen kilometers before finally becoming immobilized in a marsh.

Recognizing that most of Timoshenko’s armour was committed to the counterattack at Senno, Hoth decided to use Schmidt’s XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) to smash in the front of the 22nd Army and then pivot to envelop Vinogradov’s 7th Mechanized Corps. The 20.Panzer-Division had already captured a road bridge over the Western Dvina at Ula and had been developing a bridgehead for several days.[52] On the morning of 9 July, the 20.Panzer-Division crossed the Western Dvina into the bridgehead and conducted a superbly-executed attack that was in stark contrast to Vinogradov’s debacle. Panzer-Regiment 21 made short work of the Soviet infantry, easily penetrating the front held by the 62nd Rifle Corps and advanced 60km to seize the city of Vitebsk by nightfall. Otto Carius was a loader on a Pz.38(t) tank in the I./Pz. Regt. 21 at Ula:

The 20.Infanterie-Division (mot.) also crossed the Dvina at a different location and supported the attack on Vitebsk. Schmidt’s handling of the XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) during the fighting along the Western Dvina amply demonstrated what well-led armour could accomplish. In contrast, the battered remnants of the 5th and 7th Mechanized Corps were in full retreat. The armoured counterattack near Orsha was a fiasco, resulting in the loss of about 832 tanks and another 100 damaged, or more than 80 per cent of the armour committed. Indeed, the scale of Soviet armoured losses in just a few days was astounding, almost as bad as if they had deliberately driven both corps off a cliff. Furthermore, a large number of Soviet tanks were simply abandoned by their crews, indicating morale problems. Perhaps the only bright spot was that at least forty-five damaged tanks (including four KV and eleven T-34) were recovered from the battlefield – a first for the Red Army in this campaign. However, instead of regrouping the survivors and repairing his damaged tanks, Timoshenko rashly ordered them and Konev’s 20th Army to retake Vitebsk. Schmidt’s 7 and 12.Panzer-Divisionen easily repulsed this half-hearted effort, which cost another 100 Soviet tanks. Amazingly, Timoshenko had squandered the majority of the RVGK’s best armoured reserves in less than a week, before the Battle of Smolensk proper had even begun.

Seizing the Bull by the Horns: Smolensk, 10 July–5 August

In order to support the offensive toward Smolensk, Heeresgruppe Mitte quickly established a major logistics base in Minsk. By 12 July, German quartermasters had stockpiled 2,000cbm of fuel, 2,600 tons of ammunition and two days’ rations of food in Minsk for Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzer groups, with some stockpiled as far forward as Borisov.[54] Anticipating a pursuit operation rather than heavy combat after Guderian crossed the Dnieper, German quartermasters prioritized fuel, rather than ammunition.

Consequently, Guderian’s panzer divisions entered the Battle of Smolensk with heavy fuel reserves – up to 5 V.S. in some divisions – but only one basic load of ammunition. Faulty logistic priorities, rather than a failure to deliver gross logistical tonnage to the front line, was more at fault in the subsequent German difficulties in the Battle of Smolensk.

Timoshenko’s fumbled armoured counterattack provided the perfect segue for Hoth and Guderian’s panzer groups – still full of fight – to explode across the Dnieper river on 10 July. In order to gain surprise, Guderian deliberately chose suboptimal crossing sites over the Dnieper that were relatively unguarded. The 3 and 4.Panzer-Divisionen crossed first near Staryy Bykhov on 10 July, followed by the 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) at Kopys and the 10.Panzer-Division at Shklov on 11 July. German pioneers built a pontoon bridge at Kopys in less than eleven hours, enabling the rest of General der Artillerie Joachim Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) to cross. On the other side of the Dnieper, the Soviet 13th Army, badly battered after the fighting around Minsk, had no mobile reserves left and its commander was mortally wounded by a Luftwaffe raid. By the end of 11 July, Guderian had all three of his motorized corps across the Dnieper and the large Soviet garrison in Mogilev was about to be encircled. The Dnieper crossing was superbly executed and it represented the third major river-crossing operation by Guderian’s panzers in just three weeks. Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.), with the 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) in the lead, followed by the 17 and 18.Panzer-Divisionen, advanced rapidly through the wreckage of the 13th Army and made a beeline for Smolensk.

Likewise, after securing Vitebsk, Hoth’s panzers easily punched through the front of Ershakov’s 22nd Army and Konev’s 19th Army, both of which consisted entirely of rifle divisions without significant armour support. Although the Soviets had plenty of infantry in the field, the density of anti-tank guns and artillery defending this sector was very low.

Soviet accounts emphasize the use of field-expedient anti-tank weapons such as Molotov cocktails during the Battle of Smolensk, but hand-thrown weapons simply could not stop massed armoured formations in open terrain. Schmidt’s XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.), with Generalleutnant Hans Freiherr von Funck’s 7.Panzer-Division and Generalleutnant Horst Stumpff’s 20.Panzer-Division in the lead, sliced through Konev’s infantry like a knife through butter. Between them, these two divisions still had about 250 tanks operational and they were employed in regimental-size kampfgruppen, not company-size packets like the Red Army’s armour. Consequently, there was significant panic among Konev’s infantry units, causing units to retreat without orders. Funck’s 7.Panzer-Division advanced over 100km in four days, shoving aside Konev’s infantry, and reached the town of Demidov late on 13 July.

General-leytenant Pavel A. Kurochkin’s 20th Army stood like a rock in the triangle between Smolensk-Vitebsk-Orsha, but soon found both flanks being enveloped by Hoth’s and Guderian’s panzers. With his Western Front crumbling just ten days after being re-established, Timoshenko was desperate to stop the German pincers, but had very little offensive power available in terms of armour, artillery or air power. Instead, he did what Soviet commanders usually did in times of defensive crisis: commit units piecemeal into the path of the German schwerpunkt, hoping to buy time for more of the Stavka’s RVGK’s reinforcements to arrive. Timoshenko was more concerned about the threat posed by Schmidt’s XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) from the north, so he ordered both the 32nd and 34th Rifle Corps to set up a new defensive front facing the 7.Panzer-Division at Demidov.

Less concerned about the 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) approaching from the south, Timoshenko decided that Polkovnik Vasiliy A. Mishulin’s incomplete 57th Tank Division (only one tank regiment), just arrived in Smolensk from Transbaikal, could stop Lemelsen’s vanguard. A single rifle regiment was deployed to defend the south side of Smolensk. Mishulin, who had commanded a mechanized brigade at Nomonhan in 1939, placed his four T-26 battalions into blocking positions south of Smolensk and waited.

However, Schmidt’s corps did not take the direct path toward Smolensk, instead bypassing the 32nd and 34th Rifle Corps and moving due east to Dukhovschina on 15 July. On the afternoon of 15 July, Funck detached Kampfgruppe von Boineburg to interdict the Smolensk–Moscow highway at Yartsevo, east of Smolensk. At 2030 hours, von Boineburg was able to capture the unguarded town of Yartsevo, thereby isolating the bulk of the Soviet 20th Army in the kessel forming west of Smolensk. Schmidt quickly redeployed his three divisions to contain Soviet troops inside the forming kessel, while blocking any relief attempts.

Meanwhile, Generalleutnant Walter von Boltenstern’s 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.), heavily reinforced with Sturmgeschütz, flame-throwing tanks from Panzer-Abteilung (Flammpanzer) 100, Nebelwerfers and 8.8cm flak guns, approached the southern outskirts of Smolensk in the afternoon of 15 July. Mishulin’s tanks and accompanying infantry were bypassed. Boltenstern used his Schutzen-Regiments 15 and 71 to clear out the city south of the Dnieper river during the rest of the day, then mounted a daring assault river-crossing operation at 0400 hours on 16 July. Rokossovsky, promoted to command the new 16th Army, arrived in Smolensk just twenty-four hours before Boltenstern’s troops arrived and his headquarters had only a rifle regiment and some artillery under its direct command.

The two German Schützen regiments advanced northward quickly from the river, defeating Rokossovsky’s forces in detail, and Boltenstern’s division had captured all of Smolensk by 2300 hours.[55] Once again, as at Minsk, German motorized forces had captured a major Soviet city ‘on the bounce’, before the Red Army could react.

By the morning of 17 July, the bulk of Timoshenko’s Western Front was either encircled, retreating or scattered. Three tank divisions and Kreizer’s 1st Motorized Rifle Division were isolated west of Smolensk, although a narrow path still existed at Solov’evo between Hoth’s panzers near Yartsevo and Guderian’s panzers in Smolensk. At this point, there is no doubt that the Germans made some serious operational-level mistakes that prevented an early conclusion to the Smolensk kesselschlacht. First, Guderian became fixated on the XXXXVI Armee-korps’ (mot.) advance to Yeln’ya. Guderian believed that XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) had the situation in hand at Smolensk and preferred to focus on pushing east to the next obvious objective: Moscow. He believed that a kesselschlacht was the infantry’s business and wanted to avoid more than a single one of his motorized corps from getting tangled up in a stationary battle (and falling under the authority of his rival, Generalfeldmarschall Günter von Kluge’s 4.Armee). A second factor was that both von Bock at Heeresgruppe Mitte and the OKH became very nervous about the Soviet stronghold at Mogilev and the mounting Soviet threat to Guderian’s right flank. Guderian was forced to employ his third corps, von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) to contain the kessel at Mogilev, which held nearly 100,000 Soviet troops, while fending off relief efforts by the 21st Army. Finally, Hitler became convinced that the Soviets were massing a major counterattack force near Velikiye Luki and ordered Hoth to divert a significant part of his forces away from Smolensk toward a secondary objective.

Although Richard Stahel has argued that the declining number of operational panzers in Hoth’s and Guderian’s groups led to a protracted three-week battle of attrition at Smolensk, the real cause of German difficulties was the fragmentation of effort.[56] Rather than the previous unity of effort, at Smolensk each of the German motorized corps began pursuing divergent objectives, which prevented them from achieving the kind of decisive local superiorities they had heretofore employed.

Showdown at Yartsevo, 17–31 July 1941

While Heeresgruppe Mitte was trying to form a solid cordon around the isolated 20th Army west of Smolensk, the Stavka had been hurriedly forming a third echelon of armies around Vyazma and Spas-Demensk, but these were virtually all-infantry formations – including a great deal of people’s militia – with no armour and few heavy weapons. On 15 July, the Stavka also issued an order abolishing all Red Army mechanized corps, even though this had already been accomplished by the Wehrmacht. Instead, the Stavka began forming the ‘100-series’ independent tank divisions, with obsolete light tanks and a sprinkling of new construction, but woefully deficient in terms of artillery and support units. Timoshenko was provided the hurriedly raised 101st and 104th Tank Divisions to spearhead his counterattacks at Smolensk. Polkovnik Grigoriy M. Mikhailov’s 101st Tank Division had seven new KV heavy tanks and seventy old light tanks, while the 104th Tank Division had twelve KV and thirty T-34 added to its mixed bag of 180 light tanks. These two formations, with a total of roughly 300 tanks, represented the only real armour reserve left to the Western Front after the fall of Smolensk. In July, the factories in Leningrad and Kharkov were producing about thirty-five KV-1 and seventy T-34 per week, but the GABTU made the mistake of doling them out to different units in company-size detachments, rather than concentrating them into a few fully-capable armour units.

Although the KV and T-34 tanks still awed the Germans whenever they appeared, by midsummer both sides had learned a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of these tanks. One Soviet after-action report sent to the GABTU noted that the presence of ‘KV tanks on the battlefield baffled enemy tanks and in all cases their tanks retreated.’ However, Soviet tankers noted that enemy shell hits on the KV-1’s turret could jam the traversing mechanism and both vehicles could be immobilized by damage to their tracks. The transmission on the KV-1 was a major failure and greatly reduced the mobility and mechanical reliability of the tank, but both KV and T-34 also had serious problems with their clutches and steering – which led to a high loss rate with untrained drivers.[57]

The Stavka peremptorily put Rokossovsky in charge of the effort to retake Yartsevo, although his tiny command was incapable of anything but defense until at least 18 July. Eventually, he received Mikhailov’s 101st Tank Division and the 69th Motorized Division from Transbaikal, plus the burnt-out 38th Rifle Division and some artillery – all told, equivalent to eight tank and twelve infantry battalions. Funck was holding Yartsevo with the equivalent of two panzer and five infantry battalions, supported by his division’s pioneers, panzerjägers and artillery regiment. After a series of probes, Group Rokossovsky began an all-out offensive to recapture Yartsevo on 21 July, but despite a 3–1 numerical superiority, the Soviet attacks were continuously repulsed. For eight days, Rokossovsky continued to hurl his armour and infantry against the 7.Panzer-Division at Yartsevo, losing most of his armour in the process. Finally, his remaining handful of KV-1 tanks were able to fight their way into the town on 29 July, but Funck counterattacked and retook Yartsevo on 31 July. Rokossovsky’s beaten troops fell back, having failed to defeat the 7.Panzer-Division. While 7.Panzer-Division was easily the most battered German armoured unit in Russia, its losses up to the end of the Battle of Smolensk were far from crippling: about fifty main battle tanks destroyed and 20 per cent of its wheeled vehicles, while personnel losses were about twenty per cent. Even when damaged or inoperative equipment is included, 7.Panzer-Division still retained about 50 per cent of its combat capability after Yartsevo.[58]

Meanwhile, the XXXXVII Armeekorps fought off all efforts to retake Smolensk and helped to contain the southern side of the kessel. Inside the kessel, the Soviet 20th Army only had sixty-five tanks left by 26 July and most of their fuel and ammunition was exhausted by 29 July. The sole remaining corridor for the trapped 20th Army, through Ratchino and Solov’evo, was guarded by remnants of the 5th Mechanized Corps, which had only fifteen T-26 tanks left. It was easily within reach for Guderian to slash through this last Soviet corridor with his unengaged XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) and link up with the 7.Panzer-Division at Yartsevo, but he deliberately ignored direct orders to do this. Instead, he pushed the 10.Panzer-Division and SS-Reich Division toward Yelnya, which they captured on 20 July. It was not until Yelnya was secured, and with great reluctance, that Guderian redirected the 17.Panzer-Division and SS-Reich toward the vulnerable southern side of the Soviet corridor, by which point several rifle divisions had arrived to set up a defense. Guderian’s forces finally linked up with Hoth’s forces and sealed the pocket on 26 July. While it is true that over 40,000 Soviet troops escaped the Smolensk kessel before it was finally closed, they brought out only three BT and six T-26 light tanks.

The final armoured battles around Smolensk occurred on Guderian’s southern flank, near Roslavl. The Soviet 28th Army formed an assault group, named Group Kachalov, which included Polkovnik Vasiliy G. Burkov’s 104th Tank Division (twelve KV-1, thirty T-34, 180 BT/T-26). Group Kachalov attacked Guderian’s left flank on 23 July, with Burkov’s tanks initially pushing back part of Nehring’s 18.Panzer-Division. However, Nehring simply fell back upon his line of artillery and panzerjägers, which stopped Burkov’s tanks. Once the Smolensk pocket was finally sealed, Guderian turned to deal with Group Kachalov, by redeploying the 3 and 4.Panzer-Divisionen from von Schweppenburg’s corps to conduct an enveloping attack. Guderian unleashed this attack on 1 August and, within two days, Roslavl had been captured and Group Kachalov and Burkov’s tanks were encircled. Kachalov took one of Burkov’s T-34 tanks and tried to fight his way out of the pocket, but was killed. Burkov was wounded, but succeeded in breaking out with some of his tankers. However by 4 August, the 4.Panzer-Division had crushed the kessel and another 38,500 Soviet troops were captured. After the destruction of Group Kachalov, the Western Front had been stripped of most of its armour again.

Attempts have been made in recent Eastern Front historiography, notably by David Glantz, to depict the Battle of Smolensk as a Soviet tactical victory that cost the Germans dearly in terms of casualties and time lost. It is true that the Wehrmacht suffered its heaviest losses during Operation Barbarossa during the month of July. It is also true that the protracted Battle of Smolensk ensured that the Wehrmacht would not achieve a rapid victory in the Soviet Union, although failing to accomplish a military operation on a predesignated schedule does not, in itself, equate to a defeat. Yet it is a fact that after the battle ended, all of the German panzer divisions still existed – no matter how battered – but that the last of the Red Army’s mechanized corps had been eliminated and the Germans had a 2–1 or better numerical edge in tank strength on the Moscow axis for the rest of 1941. While the combat power of the panzer divisions had been reduced by 50 per cent or more, the relative combat power of the Red Army declined even more precipitously after the Battle of Smolensk, with few tanks or anti-tank guns left to stop the final phase of Operation Barbarossa. Furthermore, it is a gross over-simplification to take the number of operational tanks as the sole determinant of armoured unit combat effectiveness, which instead derived from the synergistic effect of combined arms tactics.

Despite the loss of perhaps one-third of their tanks and 10 per cent of their personnel, the German combined arms teams were still intact, with the vital artillery, signals and other support units in the panzer divisions having suffered negligible losses as yet.

Velikiye Luki: Punch and Counterpunch, 17 July–26 August

While the Smolensk kesselschlacht was going on, von Bock, the OKH staff and Hitler were becoming increasingly concerned about the northern flank of Heeresgruppe Mitte, along the Western Dvina. Earlier, Hoth had directed General der Panzertruppen Adolf Kuntzen’s LVII Armeekorps (mot.), with the 19.Panzer-Division and 18.Infanterie-Division (mot.), to seize a crossing over the Western Dvina at Disna on 4 July. German pioneers built a 195-meter long, 20-ton capacity pontoon bridge over the Western Dvina by 1830 hours on 5 July.[59] However, General-leytenant Filipp A. Ershakov’s 22nd Army – with eight rifle divisions and a single tank battalion – was able to contain the German bridgehead with furious local counterattacks and constant artillery bombardment. In addition, the Polotsk fortified region, which was part of the ‘Stalin line,’ had T-26 tank turrets set in concrete pillboxes and proved a formidable obstacle to further expansion of the German bridgehead over the Western Dvina. As the mechanized corps from the Stavka’s RVGK reserve began to arrive to reinforce the Western Front in mid-July, Hitler became convinced that Ershakov’s army would be heavily reinforced and use the Polotsk fortified region as a springboard to launch an enveloping counteroffensive against von Bock’s left flank, which could endanger the delicate situation around Smolensk.

Consequently, Hitler directed Hoth to use Kuntzen’s LVII Armeekorps (mot.) to eliminate the Soviet fortified region at Polotsk and the bulk of Ershakov’s army before it could be reinforced. This was a very tall order for just one panzer and one motorized infantry division, equipped mostly with Pz.38(t) light tanks. The 9.Armee provided some infantry to help reduce the Polotsk fortified position, but German forces committed on this axis were outnumbered in every category but tanks. Polotsk fell on 15 July and Kuntzen pushed Generalleutnant Otto von Knobelsdorff’s 19.Panzer-Division up the road to Nevel, which fell late on the same day. Although the forest and lakes of the terrain were highly favorable to the defense, the German panzer attack caught Ershakov by surprise and his army was cleaved in two. However, the Stavka had indeed decided to send some armour to reinforce Ershakov’s 22nd Army – Polkovnik Dmitry Y. Yakovlev’s 48th Tank Division from the 23rd Mechanized Corps. Yakovlev was a forty-year-old cavalry officer and his division arrived by rail from Voronezh just before the German offensive began and was assembling at Nevel, northeast of Polotsk. The 48th Tank Division had just eighty-five tanks (seventy-eight T-26 and seven BT-7), no armoured cars and 130 ZIS-5 trucks – it was really just a regimental-size armoured group.

With Ershakov’s army in disarray, Knobelsdorff boldly pushed up a forested logging trail with his panzers into Nevel and then toward Velikiye Luki. Yakovlev tried to conduct a mobile delay operation to harass Knobelsdorff and help Ershakov’s rifle divisions to escape the unfolding trap. Nevertheless, Yakovlev was unable to prevent a kampfgruppe from 19.Panzer-Division from fighting its way into Velikiye Luki, a city of 30,000, and overwhelming the defense there on 17 July. Velikiye Luki was an important rail junction in northern Russia and the German vanguard succeeded in capturing a train-load of tanks at the station, intended for Yakovlev’s division.

However, Ershakov’s army was not defeated and the Stavka – enraged by the rapid fall of Velikiye Luki – pushed him into launching an all-out counterattack at Kuntzen’s lines of communications through Nevel. Gathering up his remaining infantry and Yakovelv’s tank group, Ershakov suddenly struck the 14.Infanterie-Division (mot.) on the night of 19–20 July, causing it to stumble backward. Other Soviet rifle units counterattacked Knobelsdorff’s vanguard at Velikiye Luki. Stung by the ferocity of these Soviet counterattacks, Knobelsdorff decided that his kampfgruppe in Velikiye Luki might be cut off and he ordered it to retreat southward. On the morning of 21 July, Ershakov’s troops liberated Velikiye Luki – the first Russian city liberated in the Second World War.

Ershakov’s triumph was short-lived. Hoth brought up the 20.Panzer-Division to reinforce 19.Panzer-Division at Nevel, as well as four infantry divisions from 9.Armee. General der Panzertruppen Georg Stumme, recently arrived from Germany, was put in charge of both panzer divisions and other assault units, designated as Gruppe Stumme. In early August, Hoth’s forces gradually converged on Velikiye Luki, but Yakovlev used his armour to launch a series of spirited counterattacks that mauled a regiment from 253.Infanterie-Division. Ershakov managed to get four rifle divisions into line around the city and construct a defense-in-depth. Nevertheless, while 9.Armee gradually arrayed its infantry south and west of the city, Stumme maneuvered his two panzer divisions into assault positions southeast of the city and cut the rail line leading to Rzhev. Then he launched a set-piece attack on the morning of 22 August, kicked off by rocket bombardment from a Nebelwerfer battalion. It took Stumme’s panzers three days to fight through the Soviet defense east of the city, but they gradually enveloped Velikiye Luki.

Yakovlev’s tankers and Ershakov’s infantry fought a desperate two-day battle in the city, then staged a breakout on 26 August. Yakovlev managed to extract only two tanks and 2,400 troops from Velikiye Luki, but the rest of the garrison was lost and Stumme’s forces took 24,109 prisoners.[60] Ignoring the outcome, Timoshenko immediately ordered Yakovlev to counterattack Gruppe Stumme and retake the city. When Yakovlev protested that his remaining troops were not capable of accomplishing this mission he was arrested and, by order of Timoshenko, executed.

The brief Soviet victory at Velikiye Luki, led by Yakovlev’s tankers, demonstrates that a successful armoured operation was not dependent upon superior tanks such as KV-1 or T-34s, but on superior leadership and aggressiveness. Yakovlev performed more with his eighty-five-odd BT and T-26 light tanks than others had accomplished with entire mechanized corps equipped with modern tanks. Not only had he recaptured Velikiye Luki and held it for a month, but he had forced Hoth to divert two full panzer divisions to crush a regimental-size tank group. Unfortunately, Yakovlev received no recognition or Hero of the Soviet Union for his accomplishment, just a bullet in the back of his head from the NKVD and a shallow grave.

The Road to Kiev, 2–9 July

Even after the disastrous Battle of Dubno and the retreat to the Stalin Line in early July, Kirponos’ Southwest Front still had over 1,200 tanks left. More than one-quarter of these tanks were under the command of General-major Andrey Vlasov’s 4th Mechanized Corps, which had about 40 per cent of its armour. As for the rest, the 8th, 16th, 19th and 24th Mechanized Corps each had 100 tanks or more left, the 9th and 15th Mechanized Corps had about eighty each and the 22nd Mechanized Corps had about 60 tanks.[61] More than two-thirds of the Southwest Front’s modern tanks were lost in the first week of the war, but the eight mechanized corps still had about 100 KV and 150 T-34 tanks left. Thus, the Southwest Front retained a numerical and qualitative advantage in armour over von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1.

Von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 was spread out between L’vov and Rovno by 2 July, with Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) fairly concentrated with his three divisions just east of Rovno. Parts of Kempf’s XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) were still reducing Soviet pockets around Dubno, but Crüwell’s 11.Panzer-Division and the 16.Infanterie-Division (mor.) were in a good position to resume the offensive. Only von Wietersheim’s XIV Armeekorps (mot.) was not ready for further advance eastward, since it was still engaged with Soviet infantry units east of L’vov. Von Kleist had one uncommitted mobile division – the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) – which remained in reserve during the Battle of Dubno.

While Heeresgruppe Süd’s AOK 6 and AOK 17 marched slowly eastward, von Kleist pondered his next move in conjunction with Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt, Hitler and the OKH. Despite the fact that the Southwest Front had been defeated at Dubno and L’vov, it was clear that Kirponos still had large reserves of armour, infantry and artillery with which to defend the Ukraine. Von Kleist and von Rundstedt were cautious, old-school commanders, and they favored keeping Panzergruppe 1 concentrated and focused on a single objective – namely, an operational-level envelopment against the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies retreating from the border. Hitler agreed that bagging these two armies would be a worthy objective, but he also wanted von Kleist to seize Kiev in a coup de main, as Hoth’s panzers had done at Minsk. Yet splitting up Panzergruppe 1 in order to pursue multiple objectives when the Red Army in the Ukraine was undefeated seemed to be asking for trouble. Kiev was a large city of 846,000, protected by two lines of defense, which Kirponos was feverishly filling with infantry, artillery and anti-tank troops.

After a brief pause, the III and XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) resumed advancing eastward on 2 July, but Major General Nikolai V. Feklenko’s 19th Mechanized Corps conducted a successful mobile delay operation along the River Horyn that enabled other parts of the Soviet 5th Army to escape. Feklenko was an experienced armour officer who had served at Nomonhan and managed to properly gauge the right moment to retire. The 5th Army used the time bought by Feklenko’s delay to garrison the Stalin Line positions at Novgorod Volynskiy behind the Slucz river, 83km east of Rovno. On 4 July, Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) seized two division-size bridgeheads over the River Horyn with artillery and Luftwaffe support. Generalmajor Friedrich Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division reached the outskirts of Novgorod Volynskiy on 5 July, but the road bridge over the Slucz had been destroyed and all crossing sites were covered by fire from bunkers on the far side. Mackensen judged the Soviet defenses at Novgorod Volynskiy too strong for a hasty attack so he spent nearly two more days bringing up the other two divisions in his corps. Mackensen directed Generalleutnant Walther Düvert’s 13 Panzer-Division to bypass the strong defense at Novgorod Volynskiy and cross the Slucz river 8km to the south at Hulsk.

At 0330 hours on 7 July, Oberstleutnant Job-Detlef von Raczeck’s I/Schutzen-Regiment 93 from Düvert’s division quietly slipped across the river in assault boats and surprised the Soviet troops in the bunkers covering the crossing site. Raczeck’s assault troops cleared the bunkers with explosive charges and established a bridgehead, which was quickly reinforced with two more infantry battalions.[62] In this sector, the Stalin Line consisted of a dozen bunkers, which were gradually cleared out while German pioneers built a pontoon bridge over the Slucz. Kirponos decided to commit the remaining armour of the 9th, 15th, 19th and 22nd Mechanized Corps – perhaps 250–300 tanks – to eliminate Düvert’s bridgehead on 8 July. However, by the time that Soviet armour began its counterattack, German panzerjägers had crossed the river and they repulsed the uncoordinated and piecemeal attacks with heavy losses. By the end of 8 July, Mackensen’s corps had created a wide-scale breach in the Stalin Line and the 5th Army was in retreat. While still mopping up around Novgorod Volynskiy, Mackensen made the bold decision – the kind that German low-level commanders were empowered to make – to immediately dispatch a kampfgruppe down the road toward Kiev.

Düvert selected Raczeck to form a kampfgruppe, which included Oberleutnant Heinz Renk’s 7./Pz.Regt 4, an artillery battery from AR 13 and some panzerjägers, and advance eastward as far as possible. Kampfgruppe Raczeck bypassed retreating Soviet columns and marched 80km to enter the city of Zhitomir unexpectedly on the afternoon of 8 July.

Even though Raczek’s force was quite small, the Red Army put up fairly weak resistance in Zhitomir – mostly snipers and a handful of BT and T-26 light tanks, which were knocked out. One German Panzer III fell into a crater and was immobilized, but Raczek secured Zhitomir at negligible cost. Deciding to continue while Soviet resistance was weak, Raczek left some troops in Zhitomir and pushed on another 110km, reaching the River Irpen at 0300 hours on 9 July. Just seventeen days after the beginning of Barbarossa, the lead element of 13.Panzer-Division was 17km from the center of Kiev.

However, Raczek could not capture a city of nearly one million people with ten tanks and a couple of infantry companies. It would take a few days for the rest of 13.Panzer-Division and the III Armeekorps (mot.) to catch up, which would give Kirponos some time to strengthen the city’s defences. Nor was the XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) in any immediate position to help with an impromptu assault upon Kiev. Crüwell’s 11.Panzer-Division advanced from Ostrog and captured Berdichev on 7 July, but was struck by a counterattack from Vlasov’s 4th Mechanized Corps the next day. With Zhukov egging him on from Moscow, Kirponos committed much of his remaining armour to interfere with the forward advance of von Kleist’s panzers past Zhitomir and Berdichev, which brought the German advance to a halt for several days in order to fend off recurrent Soviet attacks.

This tactic managed to delay a German assault on Kiev, but the 9th, 19th and 22nd were reduced to a total of just ninety-five tanks by the end of 13 July. The Soviet counterattacks also convinced Hitler that von Kleist’s panzers could not capture Kiev without the full support of Heeresgruppe Süd’s infantry and artillery, so he began to reconsider using at least one or two corps to envelope the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies in the vicinity of Uman.

Kishinev, 2–12 July 1941

While the leadership of Heeresgruppe Süd was pondering whether to go for Kiev or for envelopment of Uman, Romania made its bid to regain its lost province of Bessarabia, which had been seized by the Red Army in 1940. The Romanian 3rd and 4th Armies were committed to the operation, with fourteen infantry divisions, six brigades and the 1st Armoured Division. Brigadier General Alecu I. Sion, a long-serving artillery officer with no prior experience commanding maneuver units, was chosen to lead the newly-formed division just six weeks before it was committed to battle. Although trained by German instructors, the Romanians chose not to commit their armour as a concentrated formation but instead detached one tank regiment with seventy-five French-built Renault R-35 tanks to act in the infantry support role for their III Army Corps. Sion led the rest of the division, which had two tank battalions (126 Skoda-built R-2 light tanks – the same as the Pz.35(t) in German service) and five motorized infantry battalions. Germany provided the 11.Armee, which was already deployed in Romania, to support the Romanian offensive with five infantry divisions and three Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen, but no other armour.

Opposing them, General Ivan Tyulenev’s Southern Front relied upon the 9th Army to hold Bessarabia with seven rifle divisions, two cavalry divisions and the 2nd and 18th Mechanized Corps. The two Soviet corps had a total of 625 tanks, including a battalion of T-34s and one company of KV-1s. Unlike other front-line Red Army units, Tyulenev’s Southern Front had ten days after the start of Barbarossa to prepare for combat, so they benefited from a less hectic transition to a wartime footing.

The III Army Corps of the Romanian 4th Army crossed the Prut River into central Bessarabia on 2 July with a single reserve infantry division, while the German XXX Armeekorps crossed on their left flank. The invaders advanced 8–10km on the first day, pushing aside border guard units. The Romanian advance was sluggish and it took five days for the III Army Corps to get all three of its divisions across the Prut. Initially, Tyulenev wanted to evacuate Bessarabia and withdraw the 9th Army behind the Dniester River, but he was over-ruled by the Stavka, which ordered him to use his armour to counterattack the German-Romanian units that had crossed the Prut River. Thanks to the time provided by the slow Romanian build-up, Tyulenev was able to launch a fairly coordinated attack at Lozova with the 11th Tank Division and 48th Rifle Corps on 7 July that caught the Romanians completely by surprise. The Soviet tanks overran an infantry regiment from the 35th Reserve Infantry Division, then two artillery regiments; over 2,200 Romanians and forty-four artillery pieces were captured.[63] Red Army tankers quickly learned that the Romanian Army was particularly vulnerable to Soviet armour, since it lacked the equipment or training to establish an effective anti-tank defense. Romanian light tanks were armed with low-velocity 3.7cm guns that were only suited for infantry support and the infantry divisions lacked heavy artillery or 8.8cm flak guns to stop Soviet medium or heavy tanks. Consequently, at a cost of just twenty tanks knocked out, the Red Army counterattack forced the Romanian III Army Corps onto the defensive for a week while they awaited assistance from the Germans.

The Romanian 4th Army advanced cautiously into Bessarabia, as the Soviet 9th Army continued to mount small-scale counterattacks with tanks and infantry whenever an opportunity arose. By 14 July, the German 11.Armee provided one infantry division for the drive on Kishinev and the rest of the Romanian 1st Armoured Division was committed to reinforce an all-out offensive. The Soviet forces fell back grudgingly, but Tyulenev was now authorized to withdraw behind the Dniester River. The Soviet 47th Tank Division conducted one last counterattack west of Kishinev on 15 July, with Soviet T-26 tanks engaging Romanian R-2 light tanks. By this point, with German forces threatening Kiev, the Red Army could no longer afford to have large armoured units tied up in Bessarabia and the 9th Army began withdrawing across the Dniester. Both the 2nd and 18th Mechanized Corps were ordered to move to Uman; both formations were still combat-capable and the 2nd Corps possessed most of its T-34s and KV-1s. A task force from the Romanian 1st Armoured Division entered Kishinev on the morning of 16 July on the heels of the Soviet withdrawal, overrunning some Soviet rearguards. By 20 July, the last Soviet units had left Bessarabia.

The Romanian Army used its armour sparingly in the liberation of Bessarabia and it succeeded, but at the overall cost of 22,765 casualties. Romanian armour losses were light, but at least 10 per cent of the tanks involved were destroyed or damaged after two weeks of operations. In contrast, the Soviet 9th Army suffered significantly fewer losses than the Romanians and learned how poorly prepared the Romanians were to counter armoured attacks. The fighting around Kishinev demonstrated that the Red Army’s armour leaders were capable of mounting effective counterattacks when given time and resources.

Although a forgotten sideshow, operations around Kishinev presaged a day when Soviet armour would demonstrate the full efficacy of their Deep Battle doctrine.

Debacle at Uman, 15 July–8 August

Even as the 9th Army was withdrawing from Bessarabia, Marshal Semyon Budyonny – now placed in overall charge over both Kirponos and Tyulenev by Stalin – made the foolish decision to abandon the westernmost end of the Dniester river line, even though it had not yet been breached. The stout defense of Bessarabia convinced Budyonny that the threat from the Romanians was not serious, but Panzergruppe Kleist was a different matter. The German advance after Zhitomir was threatening to break out onto the flat steppe of the Ukraine and Budyonny wanted to build up a new front around Uman to cover the 300km-wide sector between the Dniester and Kiev. Budyonny ordered the 6th and 12th Armies – which had retreated 450km from the western Ukraine, hounded all the way by the German 17.Armee – to concentrate at Uman. To anchor the flanks of this new front, the 26th Army was assigned to defend the area south of Kiev along the Dnieper, while the 2nd Army held the area between Uman and the Dniester. Complicating matters, some of the armies were subordinate to Kirponos and others to Tyulenev, rendering any cooperation a small miracle.

Hitler was adamant that the Red Army should not reestablish a viable defensive front in the southern Ukraine or behind the Dnieper River and, in Führer Directive No. 33, issued on 19 July, he directed that, ‘the most important object is, by concentric attacks, to destroy the enemy 12th and 6th Armies while they are still west of the Dnieper.’[64] Von Kleist quickly developed a plan to encircle the Soviet armies around Uman, while the 6.Armee kept up pressure on Soviet forces around Kiev. Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) would strike the 26th Army before it had a chance to establish a firm defense and thereby create a breach south of Kiev. Then XIV and XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) would jump off from Zhitomir with six divisions, turning southward to roll up the right flank of the 6th Army.

Meanwhile, the infantry of 17.Armee would continue to act as beaters, pushing and herding both Soviet armies eastward, toward von Kleist’s enveloping panzers. The German 11.Armee, which began to cross the Dniester on 20 July, would also act in a supporting role. German radio intelligence played a significant role in forming the Uman kessel; Soviet radio discipline deteriorated sharply during the hectic retreat from the border and the 12th Army was guilty of sending many messages in clear during this period, which provided valuable insight to von Kleist about Soviet dispositions and intentions.[65]

Although the German panzer units enjoyed a number of advantages over the Red Army at this point, Heeresgruppe Süd’s logistic situation declined rapidly in early July and became increasingly critical throughout the summer. Whenever the panzers advanced quickly, they not only left much of their supporting infantry and artillery behind, but their own Gepäcktroß (field trains) as well. Unteroffizier Heinrich Skodell, a gunner in 1./Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197, noted in mid-July that, ‘rations and resupply are very poor; we must take care of ourselves. Unfortunately, there was not much available.’[66]

After a brief halt to let some supplies catch up, Panzergruppe Kleist resumed its attack on 15 July, beginning with Mackensen committing the 13 and 14.Panzer-Divisionen as well as the SS-Division Wiking near Fastov. The 26th Army was comprised of eight rifle and two cavalry divisions, but it had few tanks and could not hope to stop Mackensen’s corps in open terrain. Initially, the 26th Army fell back from Fastov and Balaya Zerkov toward the Dnieper when confronted with massed German armour. At the same time, Lemelsen’s XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) attacked the right flank of the 6th Army near Kazatin, with the 11 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen and two motorized infantry divisions. The remnants of the 15th and 16th Mechanized Corps were easily pushed back. Suddenly, a huge gap was appearing in the front between the 6th and 26th Armies. Von Kleist quickly sent the XIV Armeekorps (mot.) into this gap, with Generalleutnant Alfred Ritter von Hubicki’s 9.Panzer-Division in the lead.

Amazingly, the 6th Army was able to respond to this crisis by quickly redeploying the 2nd and 24th Mechanized Corps to stop the 11 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen from completely enveloping its flank. A fierce tank battle was fought around Monastryshche from 21–27 July as the Soviet 2nd and 24th Mechanized Corps tried to prop up the army’s battered flank while the remainder of the 6th and 12th Armies retreated eastward toward Uman.

General-major Yuri V. Novoselsky’s 2nd Mechanized Corps still had about 100 operational tanks, including one KV-1 and eighteen T-34s, and gave a good account of itself – but fuel and ammunition were in very short supply. Meanwhile, the 18th Mechanized Corps fought a delaying action against the pursuing 17.Armee, but by late July Axis forces were closing in on all sides. Although the 17.Armee had no German armour, it did include the Hungarian ‘Rapid Corps’ under Major General Béla Miklós. This Hungarian formation was roughly equivalent to a reinforced German motorized infantry division, with three armoured reconnaissance battalions (equipped with Swedish-designed Toldi light tanks), four motorized infantry battalions, eight bicycle infantry battalions and two cavalry regiments. Miklós, an experienced cavalry officer, led his formation with dash and élan against the flank of the retreated Soviet armies.

Despite the failure to smash in 6th Army’s flank, Hubicki’s 9.Panzer-Division captured Novo Archangel’sk, which threatened the Soviet lines of communication to Uman. Vlasov’s 4th Mechanized Corps – reduced to perhaps thirty tanks – was tasked with retaking Novo Archangel’sk on 31 July, but the remaining T-34s were too starved of fuel and ammunition to achieve a breakthrough. Once the LSSAH moved up to take over this position, Hubicki advanced southward to seize the bridge at Pervomaysk on 2 August, where he linked up with the lead element of 17.Armee – the 1.Gebirgsjäger-Division. Miklós’ Hungarian ‘Rapid Corps’ also linked-up with 9.Panzer-Division the next day, further sealing the Uman kessel. Von Kleist had surrounded the bulk of the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies, including the remnants of several mechanized corps.

It is often stated that the German panzer division could encircle Soviet forces, but that they suffered heavy losses from Soviet break-out attempts while awaiting the arrival of German infantry to take over the kesselschlacht. This did not occur at Uman. By the time 9.Panzer-Division and LSSAH cut off the last Soviet escape route, the infantry of 17.Armee had already arrived in force on the western side of the kessel, which was crushed in less than a week. Since the Red Army had no significant armoured forces south of the Dnieper, von Kleist’s panzers had little difficulty fending off the pin-prick counterattacks that did occur. Panzergruppe Kleist suffered 11,415 casualties between 20 July and 10 August, including 2,468 dead, which were considerable and the men could not easily be replaced. While losses of front-line junior officers and NCOs were steadily mounting, few officers above battalion level were casualties and this meant that the overall ability of German panzer units to plan and conduct operations remained fairly good. In contrast, when the Uman kessel was crushed on 8 August, the Red Army did not only lose another 200,000 troops, but also a large percentage of its trained command cadre in the Southwest Front. The commanders of both the 6th and 12th Armies, along with most of their staff, were captured. Both the 16th and 24th Mechanized Corps were destroyed and their commanders lost, as well the commanders of the 8th and 44th Tank Divisions. The Uman kessel effectively removed the last combat-worthy elements of five mechanized corps from the Red Army order of battle and left the area between the Dnieper and the Black Sea virtually bereft of Soviet armour. Some tankers were among the 11,000 troops who did escape the kessel, but they would only be sufficient to form three of the new tank brigades during autumn 1941.

After the Uman kessel was crushed, von Kleist’s panzers spread out across the southern Ukraine in pursuit of the broken remnants of the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies. Most of the 2nd Army retreated into the fortified port of Odessa, which the Germans delegated to the Romanian Army to reduce. Although the Uman kessel was smaller than either the Minsk-Bialystok or Smolensk encirclements, the Southwest Front lacked the resources to quickly patch together a new front as the Western Front had done after each of its disasters. Consequently, neither the 9th nor 18th Armies could make a stand in front of the Dnieper River and von Kleist committed all nine of his motorized divisions to the pursuit. For the first time, in August the Red Army began to make greater use of anti-tank mines to slow German armoured advances. In some units, mines caused more damage and casualties than Soviet tank and anti-tank gun fire; one batterie of Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197 had five of its six StuG III assault guns damaged by mines during a three-week period.[67]

Von Macksensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) reached Kremenchug with the 13.Panzer-Division and SS-Division Wiking on 15 August. Further south, von Wietersheim’s XIV Armeekorps (mot.) stormed Dnepropetrovsk and part of Zaporozhe with the 14.Panzer-Division and 60.Infanterie-Division (mot.) on 17–18 August, then seized a bridgehead across the river a week later. However, the Soviets managed to blow up all the major railroad bridges across the Dniepr – at Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhe, Kremenchug and Kanev – which would soon cripple German logistics once they moved any distance beyond the river. Meanwhile, Lemelsen’s XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) eliminated Soviet forces in the port of Nikolayev with 16.Panzer-Division and the LSSAH, then cleared out the lower Dnieper River area. By late August, von Kleist’s panzers had secured the entire western bank of the Dnieper River and were poised to seize bridgeheads near Kremenchug and Dnepropetrovsk that could threaten the flank of Kirponos’ forces in Kiev.

Yelnya: Zhukov’s Pyhrric Victory, 8 August–6 September

On 16 July, Guderian disobeyed direct orders from Generallfeldmarschall von Bock to direct his own panzer forces toward an immediate link-up with Hoth’s 7.Panzer-Division at Yartsevo. Instead, Guderian figured that somebody else could attend to such details and what really mattered was pushing eastward as far and as fast as possible. Visions of Moscow’s golden spires apparently twinkled in his mind’s eye. Toward that end, he deliberately ordered von Viettinghoff’s XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.) to proceed east toward Yelnya, not north to Yartsevo. On 19 July, the 10.Panzer-Division captured Yelnya and gained a bridgehead across the Densa river – just 300km from Moscow. In Guderian’s mind, possession of the Yelnya bridgehead was critical since it served as a springboard for a march upon Moscow. Von Bock was less than happy when he heard that Guderian had not closed the Smolensk kessel at Yartsevo and disregarded Guderian’s claim that capture of Yelnya was a great success. Rather, von Bock wrote, ‘I immediately replied that that was not what mattered, and that the only thing that did was the hermetic sealing of the Smolensk pocket while screening to the east.’[68]

Like it or not, von Bock was now forced to defend Guderian’s bridgehead at Yelnya, which rapidly became a magnet for Soviet counterattacks. The 10.Panzer-Division held the salient on its own for four days, before being joined by the SS-Division Reich on 23 July and then Infanterie-Regiment Großdeutschland on 28 July. However, the Red Army forces arrayed around von Viettinghoff’s XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.) gathered ominously in late July. The Stavka formed the 24th Army under General-major Konstantin K. I. Rakutin, an NKVD officer, who was tasked with eliminating the salient, but his initial attacks in late July lacked the resources to overcome von Viettinghoff’s defense.

Armour is not well-suited to static defense and committing a motorized corps to an attritional battle was a waste of precious resources that von Bock could not tolerate for long. He ordered the XX Armeekorps to move into the salient with three infantry divisions and replace von Viettinghoff’s motorized division; the first infantry division entered the salient on 30 July and by 6 August most of von Viettinghoff’s forces had been replaced. The 10.Panzer-Division was placed in reserve behind the salient, to support the XX Armeekorps if needed.

In early August, Georgy Zhukov, the new commander of the Reserve Front which included Rakutin’s 24th Army, decided to crush the Yelnya salient with a massive counter-offensive. Whereas Rakutin’s earlier attacks had failed because he pitted a handful of Soviet rifle divisions against German panzers, Zhukov intended to mount a proper combined-arms offensive with tanks, artillery and air support – just like his triumph at Nomonhan in August 1939. Using his influence with the Stavka he received several RVGK artillery regiments, more and better-quality rifle divisions, and two tank divisons formed from incomplete mechanized corps in the Northern Caucasus and Central Asia.

Polkovnik Ivan D. Illarionov’s 102nd Tank Division was the strongest formation, with eight KV-1 tanks and 100 BT-series light tanks. Polkovnik Aleksei S. Beloglazov’s 105th Tank Division had about 100–120 T-26 light tanks, in poor condition. Zhukov also received the 103rd and 106th Motorized Divisions, each with a battalion of 30–40 light tanks. In addition, Zhukov received a single company of nine T-34 tanks. All told, Zhukov was able to assemble a motley collection of about 300 tanks to spearhead the 24th Army’s attack against the Yelnya salient.

Zhukov demonstrated little tactical finesse or operational art in planning the Yelnya counter-offensive. He formed a shock group based around Illarionov’s 102nd Tank Division and three rifle divisions, supported by some 230 atillery pieces, to attack on a single axis on the northern side of the salient. The counteroffensive began at dawn on 8 August, attacking the positions held by SS-Division Reich and the 15.Infanterie-Division, and made only a minor advance. Fighting continued for a week, with the German 15.Infanterie-Division suffering about 2,000 casualties, but Illarionov’s 102nd Tank Division lost two battalion commanders and about half his tanks. By massing his forces in just one sector rather than attempting a pincer attack, Zhukov allowed the Germans to employ the tactic of ‘the central position’, with all its attendant advantages for the defenders. By 18 August, Zhukov was forced to break off the counter-offensive, having achieved very little. He was particularly furious at his tank commanders and sent an angry memorandum to Polkovnik Beloglazov stating:

Zhukov asked for and received more reinforcements from the RVGK, then resumed the Yelnya offensive on 30 August. This time, Zhukov intended to mount a concentric attack from all directions, but his main effort remained in the north. After very heavy fighting, the German defense began to give way as casualties mounted and Yelnya was captured on 5 September. Unwilling to suffer further losses, von Bock authorized the evacuation of the salient on 6 September. For the first time, the Red Army had broken a German positional defense, although no enemy units were encircled or destroyed. However, Zhukov’s victory – which he went to lengths to promote – was pyrrhic in outcome. The Battle of the Yelnya salient cost the Reserve Front roughly 75,000 casualties from mid-July to early September, and both tank divisions were so depleted that they were broken up afterwards to form cadres for tank brigades.[70] In contrast, the German defenders suffered roughly 10,000 casualties in the battle, three-quarters of which were among the infantry units of 4.Armee, not Guderian’s XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.). Although efforts have been made to suggest that the defense of Yelnya sapped Guderian’s armoured strength, Viettinghoff’s corps had been replaced in the salient before Zhukov’s counter-offensive began and did not lose a significant amount of tanks or personnel in the July defensive fighting. Instead, the main result of the Yelnya counteroffensive was to demonstrate that the Red Army did not yet have the ability to mount effective deep armoured operations, but rather, clumsy and costly battles of attrition that could only gain their objectives through profligate expenditure of blood and resources. While the loss of the Yelnya salient was a painful blow to German morale, von Bock was quick to realize that the losses suffered by the Western and Reserve Fronts increased their vulnerability when Heeresgruppe Mitte resumed its advance eastward.

Kiev: the Führer’s Choice, 25 August–20 September

While von Kleist’s panzers had been creating the Uman kessel, Kirponos had used a good portion of his remaining armour to spearhead a counterattack by the Soviet 5th Army against the left flank of 6.Armee, which was already in the suburbs of Kiev. This attack was more diversionary than a serious effort to envelope AOK 6; it was intended to divert German attention and reinforcements away from Kiev. Vlasov had been pulled out of the Uman battle before his mechanized corps was encircled and he was put in command of the newly-formed 37th Army, which barred the direct route into Kiev from the west. In order to buy time for Vlasov’s defense, the 5th Army assembled a counterattack force consisting of the remnants of the 9th and 22nd Mechanized Corps as well as two rifle and one cavalry divisions. Both mechanized corps were little more than cadre formations after a month of fighting, with a total of just thirty-five tanks (including one KV-1) between them. The 5th Army’s assault group attacked the German LI Armeekorps at Malyn, northwest of Kiev, on 24 July and continued attacking in this area for the next twelve days. Although the counterattack succeeded in pushing the German 262.Infanterie-Division back 10km and caused some anxiety in Heeresgruppe Süd, it failed to seriously disrupt German efforts to prepare for an all-out assault on Kiev. Furthermore, the Southwest Front’s remaining armour was squandered in this effort and both the 9th and 22nd Mechanized Corps had no remaining operational tanks by mid-August. A major local attack by the German 6.Armee inflicted greater damage on the 5th Army, which finally prompted Stalin to allow the battered 5th Army to retreat behind the Dnieper River on 16 August. Vlasov’s 37th Army still held a strong defense in Kiev, but German advances on his flanks left his troops in a dangerously exposed salient and Kirponos was forced to stretch out his forces to protect the northern flank along the Desna and the southern flank along the Dnieper. His only mobile reserve was the greatly-depleted 32nd Tank Division, stationed behind the Kiev salient at Priluki.

Although most of the OKH staff and the leadership of Heeresgruppe Mitte, including Guderian, had been pushing Hitler to resume the advance on Moscow after the Battle of Smolensk was concluded, the Führer was less sanguine.[71] A great deal has already been written about the internal German debates about choices of operational objectives in August 1941 and whether or not alternative decisions might have led to more favorable outcomes. I will not belabor this point – important though it is – but instead focus on those aspects that are important for assessing the conduct of armoured warfare. Hitler recognized that the ‘straight-up-the-middle’ approach in July through Minsk and Smolensk had been costly in terms of both equipment and personnel. Von Bock’s Heeresgruppe Mitte suffered over 77,000 casualties during the month-long battle around Smolensk, including 17,000 dead. While Hitler’s primary objective in Barbarossa was to destroy the Red Army, it is often missed that he wanted to do so at the lowest possible cost to his own forces. Hitler craved public support in Germany and therefore sought easy victories. By August 1941, it was apparent to Hitler that the Red Army was going to block the path to Moscow with every last soldier, tank and gun it could muster, and he became increasingly skittish about the Moscow axis as German losses mounted. He also realized that winter and the end of the campaigning season would soon be at hand and, if Barbarossa was to be presented to the German people as a success – even though a second year of fighting in Russia was now inevitable – Hitler needed another one or two large-scale victories to create the impression of triumph. The relatively quick success at Uman convinced him that the best place to find cheap victories was in the Ukraine. Führer Directive 34, issued on 30 July, had shifted Heeresgruppe Mitte to the defensive in order to provide Hoth’s and Guderian’s armour a brief pause and for the infantry armies to reach the front-line east of Smolensk.[72] During the pause, Guderian’s panzer units had been increasingly drawn toward the south in order to deal with Soviet counterattacks from the Roslavl and Gomel areas. On 23 August, Hitler directed that two of Guderian’s motorized corps near Gomel – the XXIV and XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) – would attack southward to link up with von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 attacking northward out of the Kremenchug bridgehead.

Although this double envelopment looked very feasible on Hitler’s map table at Rastenburg, the impact on the men and equipment in the panzer divisions would add considerable strain to units which had already been in continuous combat for nine weeks. The rough terrain did not favor rapid advances and there were numerous water obstacles to cross. Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.), which would lead the advance to the south, would have difficulty keeping 100–120 tanks operational between the 3 and 4.Panzer-Divisionen.[73] Guderian’s supply situation was very poor, with only a bare minimum of fuel available. Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.), which had the 14 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen at Dnepropetrovsk, was in better shape. Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division was able to keep ninety–100 tanks operational throughout the month of August, equivalent to 65–70 per cent of its strength at the start of Barbarossa.[74] While the Germans were initially committing just 300 tanks and seven divisions to the double envelopment operation against the Kiev salient, the Red Army had little or no armour or mobile forces left in this area to oppose them.

On 25 August, von Schweppenburg began his attack with Model’s 3.Panzer-Division, while the 4.Panzer-Division and 10.Infanterie-Division (mot.) were still enroute. Guderian’s schwerpunkt was intended to slice through the left flank of the newly-created Bryansk Front, between its 13th and 21st Armies. Von Schwep-penburg’s initial objective was the vital rail junction at Konotop. Kampfgruppe von Lewinski, which had about sixty tanks from Panzer-Regiment 6 and the half tracks of I/Schützen-Regiment 3, advanced 80km in thirty hours. Model was right behind this vanguard unit, aggressively leading from the front. Despite the threadbare nature of the German offensive, it began with a piece of good fortune when Kampfgruppe von Lewinski succeeded in capturing intact the 700-meter-long bridge over the Desna River near Novgorod Severskiy on the morning of 26 August. The Red Army reacted to the loss of the bridge by shelling it intensively; Model was wounded by a shell splinter and the commander of his artillery regiment was killed.[75]

However, Model’s depleted panzer division was not strong enough to exploit this success on its own and rainy weather and logistical problems reduced von Schweppenburg’s ability to get the rest of his corps across the Desna. In the meantime, the Stavka reacted quickly by deploying the 40th Army as a blocking force in the path of the XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) build-up on the Desna. The 40th Army was typical of the hastily-formed formations that the Red Army fielded in 1941: a grab-bag collection of three rifle divisions, 8,000 paratroop recruits – roughly 25,000 combat troops total – but very little artillery and few anti-tank guns. General-major Sergey I. Ogurtsov’s 10th Tank Division, reduced to an 800-man battlegroup with about fifteen tanks, was attached as a mobile reserve for 40th Army. Yet an even bigger weakness for the Red Army at this point was the lack of radios below division level, which greatly reduced the situational awareness of Soviet commanders.

Von Schweppenburg’s corps advanced very slowly in the last days of August, finally getting the 10.Infanterie-Division (mot.) across the Desna near Korop, but a strong counterattack threw them back across the river. By 1 September, von Schweppenburg had both 3 and 4.Panzer-Divisionen across the Desna with a total of just eighty-six operational tanks, and both flanks of his corps were virtually up in the air.[76] The Stavka recognized both the danger and vulnerability of Guderian’s narrow thrust southward and initially tried to slow down his advance with massed air attacks by DB-3 tactical bombers on 29–31 August, but these inflicted only minor damage. While Soviet air attacks were increasing in frequency, they lacked the ability to seriously interdict German armoured movements in the manner that Allied tactical aviation demonstrated over Western Europe in 1943–45.

Ogurtsov’s tankers counterattacked Model’s 3.Panzer-Division west of Glukhov, while minor armour units from the 21st Army struck 4.Panzer-Division near Korop. Kampfgruppe Eberbach from 4.Panzer-Division repulsed the 21st Army counterattacks, knocked out seven tanks and took over 1,200 prisoners. Model’s division was brought to a halt for several days by the Soviet counterattack, as well as severe fuel shortages.

Guderian had hoped to use the XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) in his advance to the south but continuous Soviet counterattacks from the east forced him to commit it to guard his left flank. The 10.Infanterie-Division (mot.) was used to screen the right flank of the penetration, leaving von Schweppenburg with just the much-depleted 3 and 4.Panzer-Divisionen to continue the advance. Guderian badgered von Bock to release more units to support his operation, but Heeresgruppe Mitte had its hands full containing continued counterattacks by Timoshenko’s Western Front and could only promise the token addition of the Infanterie-Regiment Gross-deutschland on 30 August and then the SS-Division Reich.[77] Guderian continued to manifest a primadonna attitude throughout the Kiev operation, constantly demanding priority for reinforcements while ignoring the ‘big picture.’ Von Bock tried to relieve Guderian of command, but failed.[78]

Yeremenko’s Attempted Deep Battle, 30 August–7 September

On 14 August, the Stavka formed the Bryansk Front from remnants of other formations and placed it under the command of General-leytenant Andrei Yeremenko, a forty-eight-year-old cavalry officer who had been recalled from the Transbaikal MD in July. Yeremenko was a rising star in the Red Army and Stalin – who was fond of officers that had served in the Konarmia in the Civil War – believed him to be competent and reliable, so he was often given the most difficult assignments. He played a brief but important role in the Battle of Smolensk until he was wounded. After a brief recovery, he asked for another command and the Bryansk Front was a critical post, since he would have to halt Panzergruppe Guderian.

At 0610 hours on 30 August, the Stavka issued VGK Directive No. 001428 which ordered Yeremenko to encircle and ‘destroy’ Panzergruppe Guderian by means of a counter-offensive toward Starodub, which was personally amended by Stalin to read: ‘Guderian and his entire group must be smashed to smithereens.’[79] Such a mission was well beyond the capabilities of the Bryansk Front, but Yeremenko dutifully attempted to accomplish this mission. Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot) was screening a very long stretch of Guderian’s flank around Starodub, with the 17.Panzer-Division holding nearly a 60km-wide front. Yeremenko decided to attack with two rifle divisions from 3rd Army in the center, supported by flank attacks from the 13th and 50th Armies, with seven more divisions, to tie down the rest of Lemelsen’s over-extended corps. In an attempt to utilize elements of the defunct Deep Battle doctrine, Yeremenko formed a mobile group under General-major Arkadiy N. Ermakov, consisting of the 108th Tank Division, the 141st Tank Brigade and the 4th Cavalry Division, to exploit the expected breakthrough.

Instead of the earlier ad hoc counterattacks around Smolensk, Yeremenko hoped to mount a properly-planned attack incorporating air and artillery support, as well as adequate fuel and ammunition stockpiles, but Stalin wanted immediate results. Polkovnik Sergey A. Ivanov’s 108th Tank Division had been formed in July and had sixty-five tanks (five KV, thirty-eight T-34 and twenty-two T-40), while Polkovnik Petr G. Chernov’s 141st Tank Brigade had sixty-two tanks (four KV, eighteen T-34, forty BT). Given that 17.Panzer-Division was effectively reduced to only a single Panzer-Abteilung with about fifty tanks (with only half Pz.IIIs), Mobile Group Ermakov would enjoy a 2–1 numerical advantage in armour and the presence of nine KV and fifty-six T-34 tanks should have been decisive.

Hoping to appease Stalin by making an armoured probing attack on the evening of 30 August – just twelve hours after receiving the order from the Stavka – Yeremenko ordered Group Ermakov to march toward the town of Pogar and seize a crossing over the Sudost River. Apparently, Yeremenko had little idea where the German frontline was actually located and he believed that there were only enemy reconnaissance elements east of the river. Group Ermakov moved out without prior reconnaissance of the route or knowledge of the enemy’s whereabouts. Ivanov’s 108th Tank Division led the march and he divided his force into two parallel columns, with the left column consisting of two battalions of the 108th Motorized Rifle Regiment, a battalion of T-40 light tanks and two battalions of the 108th Artillery Regiment, while the right column consisted of his main assault group built around the 216th Tank Regiment. Some 20km northeast of Pogar, near the village of Karbovka, the leftmost column ran into an ambush by Panzer-Regiment 39, which had its Pz.III tanks hidden in a forest parallel to the road. In short order, five T-40 light tanks were knocked out and the column thrown into disarray. The Germans called in a Stuka attack which hit the two artillery battalions hard: nine artillery tractors were destroyed and half the artillery pieces were damaged. Oddly, Ivanov heard the sounds of his left column under attack just 8km away, but chose not to support his other column. However, when he tried to skirt around the German positions, he ran into another enemy blocking force at the village of Romanovka. Rashly, Ivanov ordered one platoon of three KV-1s and one platoon of three T-34s to assault the village without support. Romanovka was held in force by a detachment of Panzer-Regiment 39, supported by panzerjägers and heavy artillery.

By this point, the Germans were beginning to adapt their tactics to counter the superior Soviet tanks and they held their fire until pointblank range and then concentrated upon the tracks of the Soviet heavy tanks. Amazingly, all three T-34s and one of the KV-1s were immobilized and later destroyed, forcing the two surviving KV-1s to retreat. Ivanov claimed that four German tanks were damaged in Romanovka, but they still held the village. By the end of 30 August, the vanguard of Group Ermakov’s armoured spearhead was immobilized due to confusion and uncertainty.

Generalleutnant Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, commander of 17.Panzer-Division, was a strong believer in the offensive and he decided not to wait for Group Ermakov to reorganize itself and attack. On the morning of 31 August, von Arnim mounted a two-pronged counterattack with elements of Panzer-Regiment 39, his panzerjägers and one of his Schützen regiments, supported by artillery and the Luftwaffe. The sudden combined-arms counterattack caught Ivanov by surprise and his division lost one KV-1, eleven T-34s and eight T-40s, but claimed twenty-two German tanks. Strangely, Ivanov chose to dig his tanks in and formed a hedgehog in the forest – probably to shield him from further air attacks – but this allowed Panzer-Regiment 39 to surround the bulk of the 108th Tank Division by the end of the day. On 1 September, von Arnim continued to pound Ivanov’s encircled division with airpower and artillery, knocking out another seven T-34s and four T-40s. Strangely, the rest of Group Ermakov and Yeremenko’s Bryansk Front did little to rescue their trapped armoured spearhead, even though the German forces encircling Ivanov were grossly outnumbered. The 4th Cavalry Division was easily fended off by 17.Panzer-Division and Chernov’s 141st Tank Brigade accomplished little except losses.

Yeremenko began his offensive on the morning of 2 September, with a two-hour artillery preparation, but it was a weird attack where the armoured group was already surrounded and the Germans not where they were expected. Von Arnim tried to finish off Ivanov’s division with a sudden assault by a panzer battalion supported by Stukas, but this effort was repulsed after heavy fighting; the Soviets admitted the loss of six T-34s and the Germans admitted that seven panzers were knocked out. Yeremenko’s counterattack was quickly falling apart and Stalin admonished him for his failures. On the night of 3–4 September, Ivanov broke out with eleven tanks and 1,200 men and reached Soviet lines, having accomplished nothing. He left most of his wounded, artillery and equipment behind. Yeremenko continued attacking for a few more days, but Lemelsen’s over-extended XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) managed to repulse these uncoordinated pin-prick attacks. By the end of the offensive, Group Ermakov had lost seventy-five of its 127 tanks and Ivanov’s tank division had been destroyed as a fighting force. Yeremenko claimed the destruction of 110 German tanks – more than double the number in von Arnim’s 17.Panzer-Division – but the plain fact is that Group Ermakov’s armour had failed to strike a solid blow and German tank losses were likely in the neighborhood of about twenty knocked out and five destroyed. Overall, Yeremenko’s counteroffensive cost the Bryansk Front 100,000 casualties and more than half its armour.[80] The operations of Group Ermakov were also the last armoured counterattack by the Red Army involving more than 100 tanks in 1941 – including a large number of T-34s – and the last attempt to execute Deep Battle according to PU-36 for some time. The utter failure of Group Ermakov to best a depleted and over-extended panzer division represents the nadir of the Red Army’s skill at armoured operations in the Second World War.

Kiev: Closing the Kessel, 1–20 September

While Guderian’s panzers were inching southward, most of von Kleist’s armour managed to get a few days of rest and refit around Krivoi Rog and Dnepropetrovsk, while 17.Armee took over the front along the Dnieper. Von Rundstedt had already decided to make his main effort at Kremenchug, but wanted to keep von Kleist’s armour near Dnepropetrovsk as long as possible until infantry arrived to take over the bridgehead there, and also to deceive Kirponos as to where the German schwerpunkt would fall. To some extent Kirponos was misled, focusing more on the efforts to retake Dnepropetrovsk rather than the threat of possible envelopment from Kremenchug. Instead, he sent his best remaining units to Dnepropetrovsk and left the under-resourced 38th Army to secure the area around Kremenchug; this formation had two rifle divisions formed in July from reservists and local militiamen, completely lacking in anti-tank weapons and possessing minimal artillery support. The only mobile reserve in the Kremenchug area was the burnt-out 47th Tank Division, which had one or two dozen light tanks. After extensive preparations, on 31 August the LII Armeekorps from 17 AOK established a bridgehead 40km southeast of Kremenchug. German pioneers were able to build a pontoon bridge across the 1,200-meter-wide channel in a single night. The German bridgehead across the Dnieper was precarious, but the best that the 38th Army could do was attempt to contain it, while Kirponos beseeched the Stavka for reinforcements. Grudgingly, the Stavka agreed to provide the 132nd Tank Brigade forming at Kharkov and General-major Pavel A. Belov’s 2nd Cavalry Corps to reinforce the 38th Army.

The Soviet counterattacks against von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) south of the Desna forced Guderian to narrow his axis of advance. By 4 September, he had both 3 and 4.Panzer-Divisionen on line north of Korotop, but amazingly the 293rd Rifle Division and a separate tank battalion with twenty tanks managed to hold off both divisions for two days. On the night of 5–6 September, Kampfgruppe Eberbach tried an end run to get around the 293rd Rifle Division and cross the Seym River on the bridge at Baturin, but the Soviet tankers managed to hold off his storming party until the bridge could be blown up. Oberst Eberbach contented himself with knocking out six Soviet tanks and a regiment of artillery. Model had more luck and managed to get some of his motorized infantry across the Seym at Melnya and bring up a Brücko B column, which constructed an 8-ton pontoon bridge over the river. Fuel shortages temporarily held up von Schweppenburg’s exploitation of this bridgehead but then, on 10 September, Model’s 3.Panzer-Division exploded southward and achieved a clear breakthrough in the Soviet front. Model formed a Voraus-abteilung (advance guard) under Major Heinz-Werner Frank, commander of Panzerjäger-Abteilung 521, with a platoon of Pz.III tanks, a company of Panzerjäger I self-propelled 4.7cm anti-tank guns, eight reconnaissance armoured cars, an artillery battery and some infantry in SPW half tracks. Model ordered them to go all-out while the Soviets were disorganized. Oberst Günther von Manteuffel would follow with the rest of the combat elements. Despite poor roads and rainy weather, Major Frank bypassed Konotop – leaving that for 4.Panzer-Division to mop up – and advanced 70km south to seize Romny.[81]

Major Frank’s Vorausabteilung was isolated at Romny for the next several days, with Soviet units all around them, but their deep thrust had shattered the 40th Army’s front in exactly the manner in which the Germans expected Blitzkrieg operations to work. Despite the arrival of the motorized 23rd NKVD Division (which took little actual part in the fighting), the 40th Army began to retreat eastward and Soviet resistance began to evaporate. Von Manteuffel and Model were able to push to Romny and regroup most of the division, deep behind Soviet lines. Although Model could not send his supply columns back through Soviet-held territory for more fuel, he luckily captured a small Soviet fuel depot in Romny, which he used to refuel Major Frank’s Vorausabteilung. On the morning of 13 September, Model sent Major Frank forward 45km to Lokhovitsa to meet Kleist’s expected forces from the south, while he formed a hedgehog in Romny and waited for the rest of Guderian’s forces to rescue him. Despite lack of experience with armoured units, Model had demonstrated that he was one of the most skillful and aggressive panzer commanders of the 1941 campaign, willing to take extreme risks – which contributed to his rapid rise in the Wehrmacht.

Meanwhile, the German AOK 17 spent the period 1–11 September expanding its bridgehead at Kremenchug by moving eight infantry divisions across the Dnieper and building a second pontoon bridge. The Soviet 38th Army’s cordon around the bridgehead was gradually built up to seven rifle and three cavalry divisions, as well as the depleted 47th Tank Division. In addition, two of the newly-formed tank brigades arrived a few days before the German attack: Polkovnik Grigoriy Kuzmin’s 132nd Tank Brigade (three battalions of light tanks) and Polkovnik Nikolai F. Mikhailov’s 142nd Tank Brigade (seven KV-I, twenty-two T-34, fifty-seven T-26). The 38th Army attacked the German bridgehead repeatedly but failed to eliminate it; in the process the Red Army lost over 40,000 personnel and 279 tanks at Kremenchug. Nor were the Soviets expecting German armour in this sector, since von Kleist’s panzers were believed to still be massed near Dnepropetrovsk. Unlike Guderian, von Kleist prepared a carefully-planned deliberate attack with General der Panzertruppen Werner Kempf’s XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.), and he incorporated deception into his planning. On 10 September, Kempf began shifting first Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division then Kuhn’s 14.Panzer-Division toward Kremenchug, with 9.Panzer-Division due to follow. On the evening of 11 September, Hube’s panzer division began crossing the pontoon bridge into the bridgehead.

On the morning of 12 September, Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division attacked the western end of the 38th Army cordon, held by two battle-worn rifle divisions. Supported by artillery and the Luftwaffe, Hube’s panzers shattered both Soviet rifle units in a matter of hours and quickly advanced to the northwest. The Soviet 38th Army’s front was shattered beyond recovery. Over the next two days, von Kleist moved the bulk of the III and XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) over the Dnieper and the three panzer divisions were able to create a huge bulge in Kirponos’ southern flank. The 38th Army used the last of its armour to launch counterattacks into the flank of Kempf’s corps, but they could not stop the German armoured juggernaut. Hube’s advance elements made a tentative link-up with Model’s Vorausabteilung at 1820 hours on 14 September, but the 9.Panzer-Division raced ahead on 15 September and made a firmer link-up with Model’s division south of Lokhovitsa.

When this link-up between Guderian’s and von Kleist’s panzers finally occurred, the bulk of the Soviet 5th, 21st, 26th and 37th Armies were encircled. Within four days, Kiev was captured, Kirponos himself was killed and 440,000 of his troops were captured in the Kiev kessel. Overall Soviet losses in the fighting around Kiev were over 600,000 men and 400 tanks, which left the Southwest Front gutted. Only 15,000 troops and fifty tanks escaped the kessel.[82] Although it took some time for Heeresgruppe Süd to mop up around Kiev and repair infrastructure across the Dnieper, the Southwest Front’s surviving 38th and 40th Armies could do little but delay the inevitable German advance toward Kharkov and the Donbas region.

Sustaining the Tanks, September 1941

As the end of summer approached, the armoured units on both sides were badly depleted and exhausted by ten weeks of continuous combat. During this period, the Red Army lost over 15,000 tanks and the Wehrmacht 800 tanks. Despite German operational successes, it was clear even before 1 September that Barbarossa was not going to destroy the Red Army in a single campaign, so it was imperative for both sides to replenish their armoured forces and restore their combat capabilities.

The Stavka had abolished the pre-war mechanized corps on 15 July and employed the few remaining units as independent tank divisions. Nine new ‘100-series’ tank divisions were hastily formed from existing units in July–August 1941 and equipped with surplus light tanks and a handful of newer models. Most of these expedient units were consumed in the Battle of Smolensk. By 1 September, there were only four intact large armoured formations left in the entire Red Army: the 61st and 111th Tank Divisions in the Transbaikal MD and the 58th and 112th Tank Divisions in the Far East. The Stavka decided to leave the two tank divisions in the Transbaikal since their combat readiness was negligible, but the two better-equipped tank divisions in the Far East were ordered to prepare for transfer to the West as soon as rail transport was available. However, the movement of Soviet industry eastward severely curtailed the amount of available rail capacity, so neither tank division could be immediately transferred. It was not until 14 October that General-major Aleksei F. Popov’s 60th Tank Division, stationed on the Manchurian border, began entraining and then spent two weeks traveling over 8,600km westward by rail.

It was clear, though, that the Red Army could not rejuvenate the shattered prewar units, and it lacked the trained personnel and equipment to create new corps or even division-size formations. In particular, the loss of command cadre and the lack of radios mandated smaller formations, so General-leytenant Yakov N. Fedorenko, head of the GABTU, successfully convinced the Stavka to concentrate on creating tank brigades for the rest of 1941. Fedorenko played an important role in rebuilding the Red Army’s tank forces in 1941–43 and in guiding how they were used, but he was one of many officers whose contributions were minimized due to Zhukov’s efforts to keep the spotlight on his own actions. Fedorenko combed the tank schools for officers and NCOs to act as cadres for the new tank brigades and filled them out with thousands of tankers who had lost their tanks in the early battles and survived to escape eastward. In mid-August, the first nine tank brigades began forming in Moscow, Kharkov and Stalingrad.

These first tank brigades had the pick of survivors from the pre-war formations and were supposed to consist of three tank battalions with a total of sixty-two tanks (seven KV, twenty-two T-34 and thirty-one BT/T-26) and a motorized infantry battalion. A few of these early brigades were quite good and represented a conscious effort by the Stavka to marry up the best commanders with the best available equipment. Polkovnik Mikhail E. Katukov’s 4th Tank Brigade, formed at Stalingrad, was provided with thirty brand-new T-34 tanks and thirty BT-7s. Polkovnik Pavel A. Rotmistrov’s 8th Tank Brigade, formed in the Urals, was also given seven new KV-1s and twenty-two T-34s. However, Soviet industry could not provide anything like the amount of equipment to outfit these brigades properly and most were provided with only light tanks and the number of tank battalions was soon reduced from three to two. Another twenty-one tank brigades began forming in September, followed by another dozen in October. Yet the diversion of all new tank production to support the formation of tank brigades meant that the remaining Soviet armoured units at the front were starved of replacements and allowed to disintegrate.

In fact, this Soviet shift to tank brigades marked a critical point in the dynamics of Eastern Front armoured warfare, since the Red Army chose to disperse all its armour into smaller units for infantry support, thereby removing any possibility of conducting decisive mobile operations until this was reversed. Each Soviet front-line army began requesting a tank brigade, which meant that the principle of concentration was set aside. This was the same mistake that the French army made with tanks in 1940. While many accounts of the Eastern Front choose to emphasize that the Soviet Union was producing more tanks than Germany in 1941, they fail to note that the Red Army was dispersing its armour to the point that it lost numerical superiority on the critical sectors. In contrast, the Germans had fewer tanks overall, but continued to mass them where it counted most. Furthermore, the new Soviet tank brigades were designed only for the infantry support role and lacked organic artillery or engineers, which put them at a major disadvantage when up against German panzer divisions.

Soviet tank production began to drop off in September 1941 as the KhPZ plant prepared to evacuate from Kharkov to Nizhny Tagil and the Kirov Plant in Leningrad was in the process of relocating to Chelyabinsk. The only major Soviet tank plant unaffected by the evacuation was the Stalingrad Tank Factory (StZ), which was producing forty T-34s per week. An alternate T-34 production line set up at Zavod 112 in Gorky managed to build only five T-34s in September and twenty in October 1941. Instead, the only tank being built in quantity in autumn 1941 was the new 5.8-ton T-60 light tank, armed with a 20mm cannon. Mass production of the T-60 began at the GAZ plant in Gorky in October, with output rising to 600 units per month in November–December, although these light tanks added very little to the Red Army’s armoured capabilities. The industrial evacuation also had an impact on supplies of ammunition and other equipment necessary to outfit large armoured units. Even before the German invasion, the People’s Commissariat for Munitions (Narkomat Boepripasov) had regularly failed to meet ammunition production goals and this remained one of the least efficiently-run sectors of Soviet defense industry throughout 1941. Most frontline Red Army armour units were dreadfully short of tank ammunition throughout most of the summer, but rapid efforts to increase production output led to a sudden decrease in quality control. Instead of using hardened steel for penetrators, some manufacturers began substituting other metals, which reduced the penetrative power of 45mm anti-tank shells by nearly 50 per cent. The production of 76.2mm tank and anti-tank ammunition was so low that tank gunnery training was minimal or omitted altogether. Like the Wehrmacht, Red Army tankers faced serious shortages of spare parts in the second half of 1941, which led to a high level of non-combat losses. Production of tank radios was suspended in August and did not resume until mid-1942.[83]

Despite all these problems, Stalin’s war cabinet – the State Committee for Defense (Gosudarstvenny Komitet Oborony or GKO) – made the very critical decision to put priority on a few tank models and to build them in large quantities. A number of new models, such as the KV-II heavy tank and T-50 light tank, were discontinued. The KhPZ had already completed a prototype of an improved T-34, designated as the T-34M, which was approved for mass production just seven weeks before the start of Barbarossa. The T-34M had thicker armour and a number of other advantages over the standard T-34 Model 1941, but since it would take months to complete the design and get it into production the GKO cancelled the program. One exception was the T-34–57 equipped with the high-velocity ZiS-4 L/73 57mm gun, which was optimized for anti-tank combat. This variant was ready for production when Barbarossa began and the GABTU was keen to improve the firepower of the T-34, so a limited production run of forty-one was authorized in August, but the program was then put on hold. Furthermore, only 2,800 57mm anti-tank rounds were manufactured, making this variant little more than a field test. Afterwards, the GKO mandated that only minor, incremental changes be allowed in tank designs in order not to impact production output, even though it essentially ‘froze’ Soviet tank design in place for the next two years. Some aspects of the cancelled T-34M program were gradually worked into later upgraded models of the T-34.

In order to ensure that tank production goals were met by Soviet industry, Stalin made Vyacheslav Malyshev, an engineer who had proven himself in the expansion of Soviet heavy industry in the 1930s, head of the People’s Commissariat of the Tank Industry of the USSR (NKTP) that was established on 11 September. Malyshev took charge of an industry that was in chaos, moving the Leningrad and Kharkov tank plants to the Urals. He rapidly began to simplify construction procedures for the T-34 and within less than a year the number of man-hours required to produce T-34s was cut in half. Malyshev encouraged the use of stamped parts and a cast turret in order to cut corners, accepting a certain temporary reduction in quality in return for much greater output of tanks. He motivated factory managers by reminding them what happened to people who didn’t meet Stalin’s quotas and pointedly said, ‘I am responsible for the tanks with my head.’ While Soviet efforts to mobilize labour and industrial resources were prodigious, it should be noted that the rapid expansion of Soviet tank production would have been handicapped without the delivery of Lend-Lease raw materials and machine tools to replace equipment lost in the hasty evacuations. After the loss of aluminum sources in the Ukraine, 80 per cent of the aluminum used in the T-34’s diesel tank engine came from Lend-Lease deliveries; without Lend-Lease, there would have been significantly fewer T-34s.[84]

On the German side, in early September 1941 the Wehrmacht still had over 1,500 operational tanks on the Eastern Front, including 362 Pz.III and 193 Pz.IV. These figures meant that overall the panzer divisions still had about 48 per cent of their armour operational, but only 39 per cent of the most useful models. Yet it is important to note that the losses were not spread evenly; the 7 and 11.Panzer-Division were both reduced to about 25 per cent effectiveness, but two units – the 10 and 14.Panzer-Divisionen – still had over 70 per cent of their tanks operational. The deterioration of German operational tank strength has been used to make the case that the Wehrmacht’s offensive combat power was all but gone before the summer of 1941 had even ended, but this thesis usually ignores a major game-changer: the arrival of the fresh 2 and 5.Panzer-Divisionen from Germany in mid-September.[85] Both divisions had been involved in the Balkan Campaign and had missed the first three months of Barbarossa. The divisions spent the summer resting and refitting in Germany – receiving about 160 new tanks – before being sent eastward to join the Heeresgruppe Mitte for Operation Typhoon. These two fully-equipped divisions added a total of 380 tanks to the German order of battle, including 210 Pz.III and forty Pz.IVs, and helped to restore some measure of the striking power of the panzer groups, albeit temporarily. However, the OKH made a huge mistake in not using the arrival of these two divisions to rotate at least two battle-worn panzer divisions back to Germany in autumn 1941 for refit. Personnel losses in the panzer divisions were also heavy and Panzergruppe Guderian had suffered over 32,000 casualties by the end of September 1941, including 7,200 dead. Few personnel replacements had arrived before the end of August and only enough to replace about half the casualties. Yet it is important to note that most of the casualties in panzer units were infantrymen in the Schützen-regiment and reconnaissance battalion, while tank crews accounted for only about 2.5 per cent of overall losses. Unlike the Red Army, the panzer divisions had lost very few senior leaders and the Wehrmacht had overtrained its personnel in peacetime, so the process of promoting soldiers to fill NCO and junior officer vacancies could suffice for a while.

By mid-September, the German panzer groups in the Soviet Union also had nearly 900 non-operational tanks due to battle damage or mechanical defects, of which 520 were Pz.III or Pz.IVs. Almost half the panzers awaiting repairs were in Guderian’s panzer group, whereas Heeresgruppe Nord and Süd both had better success in keeping their tanks operational. Guderian’s tanks had seen harder, more continual use than the other three panzer groups and operated at greater distances from their supply railhead, which resulted in higher breakdown rates. Engine failure among tanks that had driven over 2,000–3,000km within three months was common, but most could be repaired within a day or less if spare engines and parts were available. The Wehrmacht set up three main spare parts depots (Zentrales Ersatzteillager or ZEL) in the Soviet Union, located at Pleskau, Borisov and Berdichev to support the three Heeresgruppen. Over 22,000 tons of spare parts were shipped by rail to these ZEL in July–August, but the loss or breakdown of 30–50 per cent of the trucks in most panzer divisions by early September 1941 made delivery of spare parts and supplies increasingly problematic.[86] As part of the build-up for Typhoon, Hitler authorized the release of 3,500 replacement trucks to be sent to the Eastern Front in mid-September.[87]

The Eastern Front was very rough on the panzers and the thick dust degraded air filters and then engines, beginning in early July. The engine crankshaft on the Pz.IV proved to be its Achilles’ Heel during extended operations, as excessive heat and metal fatigue caused it to warp and then break. Bearings for the roadwheels also wore out quickly in Russia, along with leaf springs and piston rings, all of which were in short supply. Track pins that held the track together tended to break from stress – as when the tank ran over a large object – and were always in short supply. Although the Germans managed to ship over 22,000 tons of spare parts to the Eastern Front in June–August alone, this proved to be well short of the amount required. German maintenance crews in field Werkstatt performed minor miracles to keep one-third of their tanks running week after week, but most tanks had accrued over 3,000km without real maintenance by the beginning of autumn and were operating on borrowed time.[88] Increasingly, Werkstatt crews turned to controlled substitution (aka ‘cannibalization’) to keep vehicles running, stripping parts from other disabled vehicles in worse condition – but this was only a quick fix that eventually turned some disabled vehicles into total losses. Occasionally, the creaking German supply system pulled off miracles, such as ensuring that Panzer-Abteilung 211, deployed at Oulu in northern Finland, continued to receive spare parts for its Hotchkiss H-39 tanks all the way from Gien in France.

Adding to the logistic inadequacies of the Wehrmacht’s strained supply system, Hitler added to the tank replacement and spare parts crisis by directing that most new-build tanks and spare parts would be held back in Germany until Operation Barbarossa was completed. Hitler expected that each panzer division would disband one Panzer-Abteilung as losses mounted and send the surplus personnel back to Germany for reequipping with new tanks. This outlook was in line with the German philosophy of combat replenishment – that it was better to take whole units back and rest and reequip them in their home Wehrkreis, rather than send replacement vehicles in dribs and drabs, which resulted in units that were not refitted properly – but it did not fit the conditions of the Eastern Front.

Most panzer divisions did disband one of their Panzer-Abteilung in the late summer, but they kept the personnel on hand for rear area security or other tasks. Although German industry constructed 1,890 tanks between July and December 1941, only about one-third were sent to the Eastern Front before the end of the year. At best, for every three tanks declared totalausfall, a panzer unit would receive only one replacement tank. Hitler authorized the OKH to release 350 new tank engines and 307 new tanks (including ninety-one Pz.38(t), 166 Pz.III and fifty Pz.IV) to reinvigorate Heeresgruppe Mitte’s armour in time for Operation Typhoon, but many more tanks remained at warehouses in Magdeburg and Vienna.[89] The replacement situation was even more dire with wheeled vehicles and Guderian was forced to press captured Soviet GAZ and ZIL trucks into service to keep his supply columns functional.

Pursuit to the Donbas, September–October 1941

Once Heeresgruppe Süd was across the Dnieper River, there was little that the Red Army could do to stop von Kleist’s panzers before the cold weather set in. Hitler ordered von Rundstedt to pursue the defeated Southwestern Front forces and occupy the Donbas region, which was 410km further east, as well as occupy the Crimea. In turn, von Rundstedt split up his army group, with 6.Armee to advance upon Kharkov, the 11.Armee to occupy the Crimea and Panzergruppe Kleist to head for the Donbas. The first two advances were supported by assault-gun battalions, but otherwise had no significant armoured support. Von Kleist’s panzer group was still capable of mobile operations and benefited from the fact that the Red Army had few operational tank units left in the Ukraine after the debacles at Uman and Kiev. However, von Kleist was obliged to transfer nearly half his panzer strength to Heeresgruppe Mitte, including Kempf’s XXXXVIII Armeekorps (mot.) with the 9.Panzer-Division, 16 and 25.Infanterie-Divisionen (mot.) and the 11.Panzer-Division. Kleist was left with just three panzer-divisions and the Waffen SS divisions LSSAH and Wiking to conquer the rest of the Ukraine.

Following Kirponos’ death, Marshal Timoshenko arrived to take over the four remaining armies of the Southwest Front and he found that there were negligible amounts of armour and artillery remaining. In the words of American historian David M. Glantz, ‘the Southwestern Front had to be recreated from scratch.’[90] The onset of rainy and muddy weather in early October slowed the German advance upon Kharkov, but Timoshenko could only hurl untrained rifle units into the path of the 6.Armee. Unteroffizier Heinrich Skodell, a gunner in 1./Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197, noted that ‘that resistance was slowly giving way to flight. The Russian infantry has not been up to par for a long time. They are all older people, some of them have only been soldiers for eight days.’[91]

Timoshenko’s forces did buy time for the KhPZ factory to move by rail out of Kharkov, thereby saving one of the main T-34 tank-production lines, but they could not hold the city. Although desperately short of fuel and ammunition, Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197 fought its way into Kharkov on 22 October and the city was in German hands within two days.

The Soviet Southern Front was also in disarray, with its 9th and 12th Armies having abandoned its front on the Dnieper south of Zaporozhe. General-leytenant Ivan V.Tyulenev had been wounded in late August and replaced as front commander by General-leytenant Dmitri I. Ryabyshev, former commander of the now-defunct 8th Mechanized Corps. Ryabyshev had just received three tank brigades as reinforcements and when he saw the German 11.Armee (now under Generaloberst Erich von Manstein) split its forces, with one corps proceeding to the Perekop narrows to attack the Crimea and two other corps heading east to Melitopol, he saw an opportunity to inflict a painful defeat on his pursuers. On 26 September, rifle and tank units of the 18th Army attacked two Romanian brigades attached to the 11.Armee and threw them back with heavy losses. Von Manstein quickly dispatched the LSSAH to stabilize the 11.Armee’s front and the Soviet counterattack was contained within a few days. Yet Ryabyshev remained focused on pounding the vulnerable Romanian units, while oblivious to his own right flank, as Timoshenko’s armies retreated. Heeresgruppe Süd was quick to notice that the boundary between Timoshenko’s and Ryabyshev’s fronts, which lay east of the German bridgehead at Dnepropetrovsk, was held by only two rifle divisions and one cavalry division.

Von Kleist assembled General der Infanterie Gustav von Wietersheim’s XIV Armeekorps (mot.) on line on the north side of the Dnieper, with the 14 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen on line, facing east. Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) was assembled behind von Wietersheim’s corps, to reinforce success. Although an infantryman, the fifty-seven-year-old von Wietersheim had been in command of his corps for over three years and had led it across Poland and France – he was the oldest, but one of the most experienced motorized corps commanders in Russia. On 30 September, von Wietersheim attacked with the Soviet rifle units in front of him with both panzer divisions. Within twenty-four hours, von Wietersheim’s panzers had torn a gaping hole in the boundary between the two fronts and pivoted to the southeast, rolling up the northern flank of Ryabyshev’s Southern Front. Meanwhile, Ryabyshev continued to try and break through the Romanians – achieving some success – but oblivious to the approaching threat from behind. Ryabyshev’s new tank brigades proved of little value in this action because they were so poorly equipped; the 15th Tank Brigade had thirty-three tanks but only three trucks, which meant that it had no support troops or logistic/maintenance capabilities.

Von Wietersheim’s panzers rolled up the 18th Army’s positions around Zaporozhe on 2 October and Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division plunged ahead to the southeast, overrunning the town of Orikhiv, within striking range of the Southern Front’s lines of communications. Ryabyshev finally awoke to the threat of envelopment and tried to order a retreat, but von Manstein’s 11.Armee pinned most of his forces with fixing attacks. A few units, such as the 130th Tank Brigade, were sent to try and check Hube’s panzers at Orikhiv, but Kleist soon brought up the 13 and 14.Panzer-Divisionen to support him, giving the Germans absolute numerical superiority in armour at the critical point. The mass of von Kleist’s armour began slicing across Ryabyshev’s communications, heading for Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov. The cohesion of the 9th and 12th Armies began to fall apart on 5 October as units began to retreat pell-mell eastward and gaps appeared in the front line. The LSSAH daringly pushed into one of these gaps and advanced eastward to seize Berdyansk on 6 October. By 7 October, von Wietersheim had both his panzer divisions blocking the Soviet escape route to the east, while Mackensen’s corps formed the north side of the kessel and von Manstein’s infantry pressed in from the west. The trap had closed around both the 9th and 12th Armies. A few Soviet units escaped – without much equipment – but when the Melitopol kessel was crushed on 11 October, the Red Army had lost another 106,000 troops and 210 tanks. Among the dead was the commander of the 18th Army. After this debacle, Ryabyshev was replaced by General-polkovnik Yakov T. Cherevichenko. This action, dubbed the Battle of the Sea of Azov by the Germans, was a classic demonstration of the Wehrmacht’s ability to conduct opportunistic mobile battles of encirclement with their panzer units slashing into the unprotected rear of larger Soviet formations. At this point, Red Army tankers had been reduced to a limited infantry support role and had no ability to conduct these kind of deep operations.

After the defeat of the Southern Front, von Kleist continued to push eastward against disorganized resistance and managed to cross the Mius River north of Taganrog with the LSSAH by mid-October and then seize the city by 17 October. Von Kleist split his forces, with von Wietersheim’s XIV Armeekorps (mot.) advancing northeastward toward Stalin, while Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) headed due east for Rostov. However, Heeresgruppe Süd was no longer able to adequately supply von Kleist’s panzers so far from a railhead and rainy weather virtually immobilized his two motorized corps. By 24 October, the LSSAH and 13.Panzer-Division were on the approaches to Rostov, but Soviet resistance was stiffening.

Preparing for Typhoon, 6–30 September

After the fall of Kiev, Hitler was willing to consider an operational pause since Heeresgruppe Nord and Mitte had already shifted to a defensive posture and it appeared that little else could be accomplished in the remaining campaigning season aside from securing the Crimea and the Donbas region. While the Red Army was undefeated, Hitler and the OKH could still reasonably view Barbarossa as a partial success that left the Wehrmacht in a good position to finish off the Soviet Union in 1942. As a leader, Hitler was not inclined toward excessive risk-taking, particularly when he felt that he was ahead.

From the beginning, Hitler viewed Moscow as a symbolic objective with little military value and he had been opposed to committing the bulk of the Wehrmacht’s panzer units to seizing a geographic objective rather than carrying out their primary function as he saw it – encircling and annihilating large formations of the Red Army. Yet even before Kirponos’ Southwest Front was encircled at Kiev, Hitler came to believe that the only real Soviet combat power left lay with the Western Front defending the approaches to Moscow. Timoshenko’s Western Front had launched repeated counterattacks against Heeresgruppe Mitte in August–September, particularly against the exposed Yelnya salient, but had achieved little except inflicting a bruising battle of attrition on both sides. Consequently, Hitler believed that Timoshenko’s armies were exhausted from weeks of fighting and, if hit hard from the flanks, would collapse. On 6 September – the same day that von Bock evacuated the hard-pressed Yelnya salient – Hitler issued Führer Directive 35, which stated that German successes at Velikiye Luki and Kiev had created the ‘prerequisites for conducting a decisive operation against Army Group Timoshenko, which is conducting unsuccessful offensive operations on Heeresgruppe Mitte’s front. It must be destroyed decisively before the onset of winter.’ Hitler’s directive allowed for a pursuit along the Moscow axis after the destruction of Timoshenko’s forces, but did not explicitly task Heeresgruppe Mitte with capturing the Soviet capital. The OKH began developing an operational plan, designated Typhoon, to smash the Soviet Western and Bryansk fronts by using most of the available German armour left on the Eastern Front.

Von Bock’s Heeresgruppe Mitte would become the battering ram that smashed through the last Soviet organized resistance. The OKH began shifting part of Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 from Heeresgruppe Nord to Heeresgruppe Mitte and von Kleist had to transfer four divisions from his command as well. This was a massive redeployment of armoured forces in a very short period of time; for example, Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) had to move 600km in less than a week to join von Bock’s Heeresgruppe Mitte.[92] These road marches, conducted over long distances on poor road networks, resulted in a great number of breakdowns among both tracked and wheeled vehicles. A few units, such as the 1.Panzer-Division, were fortunate enough to transfer their panzers by rail to Vitebsk, thereby preserving vehicles.[93] By late September, von Bock had Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2, Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3 and Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 with a grand total of fourteen panzer and eight motorized infantry divisions under his control. Höpner – who had failed to pull off a single kessel battle during Barbarossa – was made the main effort and provided the two fresh panzer divisions as well as the still-capable 10.Panzer-Division. Operation Typhoon would be one of the largest German offensives of the war, involving about 1,800 tanks and sixty-nine divisions. An additional fourteen Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen with 350 StuG III assault guns would support the three German infantry armies. By massing more than 80 per cent of their remaining armour along the Moscow axis, the Germans gained a substantial local numerical advantage over the Red Army for the first time in the campaign: Heeresgruppe Mitte would have a 1.7–1 superiority in the number of tanks and 1.5–1 in manpower over the Soviet Western Front. The Luftwaffe also massed half its remaining aircraft under Luftflotte 2 to support von Bock’s Heeresgruppe Mitte. Although von Bock gained control over most of the Wehrmacht’s remaining armour for Operation Typhoon, the army quartermasters had been unable to amass any stockpiles of fuel or ammunition in the battle zone. In particular, inter-theater fuel deliveries from Germany had been barely adequate for Heeresgruppe Mitte’s defensive operations in August-September, never mind a major offensive. There simply would not be enough fuel for all of Heeresgruppe Mitte to reach Moscow even under the best circumstances.

General-leytenant Ivan Konev took over the Western Front from Timoshenko on 12 September, when the latter went south to try and stave off defeat in the Ukraine. Konev had six armies to defend the direct approach to Moscow and Marshal Semyon Budyonny commanded the Reserve Front, with six more armies echeloned directly behind him. The southern approaches to Moscow were protected by General-leytenant Andrei Yeremenko’s Bryansk Front, with four more armies. The Red Army’s position in front of Moscow appeared to be a strong one, since they were defending in depth and had time to construct extensive field works along the front. All told, the three Soviet fronts had a total of eighty-three rifle and nine cavalry divisions, and were supported by sixteen tank brigades and two independent tank battalions with a total of 849 tanks (including 128 T-34s and forty-seven KV-1s).[94] However, appearances were deceiving. The three Soviet fronts lacked a unified command structure and there was no significant armoured force held as a mobile reserve. Nor was there much of a defense in depth, since many of the Reserve Front units had not properly entrenched themselves and key supply and communications nodes such as Vyazma and Orel were not even garrisoned. Most of the experienced Soviet divisions were reduced to half strength or less after the fighting in August and the quality of many of the new replacement divisions was shockingly poor. Even worse, Hitler’s shift toward the Ukraine had misled Stalin into believing that Moscow was no longer at great risk, so he directed the Stavka to send more replacements to Timoshenko’s new command in the southern Ukraine.

Hitler had not directed that Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 should participate in Operation Typhoon since it was spread out between Konotop and Lokhovitsa after the closure of the Kiev kessel. Yet von Bock wanted to put every tank he could in the field to smash the Western Front in one last, mighty blow and on 15 September he ordered Guderian to reorient his forces back to the north as soon as operations around Kiev were completed, and move to assembly areas near Glukhov. The 185km road march to Glukhov put additional wear and tear on vehicles and men that were exhausted and left just two or three days for rest and refit. By 27 September Guderian had only 25 per cent of his tanks still operational, with a total of 187 tanks, including ninety-four Pz.III and thirty-six Pz.IV, between the four panzer divisions of the XXIV and XLVII Armeekorps (mot.).[95] Guderian managed to get OKH to release 149 new replacement tanks (124 Pz.III and twenty-five Pz.IV) to replenish his divisions, but these were still en route when Typhoon began and were not received until 1–2 October. Even worse, Guderian’s logistic situation was the most tenuous of any of the three Panzer-gruppen involved in Typhoon and he would start the operation with less than two V.S. of fuel on hand, enough for a 200km advance. Moscow was 550km from Guderian’s starting position.

Typhoon: Guderian’s Battle, 30 September–16 October

After the defeat of Group Ermakov in Yeremenko’s failed counter-offensive, General-major Arkadiy N. Ermakov and his surviving units were shifted to a relatively quiet sector to rebuild. Ermakov deployed his three rifle divisions and two cavalry divisions in a thin screen blocking the main road from Glukhov to Orel, with two tank brigades in reserve.

Polkovnik Boris S. Bakharov, an experienced tank officer, commanded the 150th Tank Brigade, which sat astride the Glukhov-Orel road with twelve T-34 and eight T-50 tanks. The 14-ton T-50 was a new light tank that had just entered production as a replacement for the T-26 and it had the sloped armour and diesel engine of the T-34, but only forty-eight were completed before the GKO terminated the program in favor of the cheaper T-60.

Ermakov’s other armoured reserve was Polkovnik Nikolai N. Radkevich’s 121st Tank Brigade, deployed near Dmitriyev with seventy tanks (six KV-1, eighteen T-34, forty-six T-26). Radkevich was also an experienced tank officer, who was a VAMM graduate and trained general staff officer. The terrain was relatively flat and open in this sector and thus did not favor the defense.

After a night of heavy rain, Guderian kicked off his part in Typhoon at 0635 hours on 30 September with a brief artillery preparation on the 283rd Rifle Division positions near Essman, followed by Stuka attacks on their artillery. Then von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps, which was designated as the main effort, attacked the center of Ermakov’s line, while Lemelsen’s XLVII Armeekorps (mot.) mounted a supporting attack on the boundary between Group Ermakov and the Soviet 13th Army. Kampfgruppe Eberbach from 4.Panzer-Division formed the schwerpunkt and easily punched through the front-line positions of the Soviet 283rd Rifle Division, but ran into a company of tanks from Bakharov’s 150th Tank Brigade at Essman. Eberbach’s panzers from I./Pz.Regt 35 knocked out a few enemy light tanks that appeared, but were stopped for a couple of hours by two T-34 tanks in excellent hull-down positions near the town. The German tankers also encountered a substantial obstacle belt comprised of wooden TMD-40 anti-tank mines which, so far, had been rare on the Eastern Front. Eberbach sent the II/Pz.Regt 35 on a flank march to hit the T-34s from behind, but a T-34 knocked out the Pz.III belonging to Oberleutnant Arthur Wollschlaeger, commander of the 6.Kompanie. The German tankers called in air support and a flight of Bf-110 fighter-bombers strafed the Soviet positions, prompting the enemy tanks to disengage.[96]

Ermakov incorrectly reported the scale of the German attack to Yeremenko, who mistakenly assessed Guderian’s attack as a mere diversion – and then directed Ermakov to resolve it with local counterattacks. However, Ermakov’s C² – shaky from the start – fell apart under the heat of battle and he lost control over his armour. After skirmishing with Kampfgruppe Eberbach, Bakharov’s 150th Tank Brigade retreated eastward – leaving the road to Orel open. Radkevich’s 121st Tank Brigade, which was in excellent position to conduct a flank attack against Kampfgruppe Eberbach, sat immobile for five days, doing nothing. Left unmolested by Ermakov’s armour, Kampfgruppe Eberbach routed the Soviet infantry, overran Soviet artillery positions and then captured Sevsk by noon on 1 October.

On Guderian’s left flank, Lemselsen’s corps also enjoyed success on the western flank, punching through thinly-spread infantry positions and then defeating a counterattack by the 141st Tank Brigade. The Germans had begun to adapt their tactics to counter Soviet heavy tanks and now began attaching one medium 10.5cm howitzer and one 8.8cm flak gun to each Panzer-Abteilung. When Chernov’s tanks attacked head-on into the 17 and 18.Panzer-Divisionen they managed to shoot up one German column, but ran into a deluge of fire that quickly knocked out at least one KV-I and one KV-II.[97] Lemelsen’s panzers quickly pushed in the 13th Army’s flank, widening the gap between it and Group Ermakov. Within forty-eight hours, Guderian had shattered Yeremenko’s front, routed Group Ermakov and begun enveloping the 13th Army. For the first time in two months, Guderian’s panzers had achieved a clean breakthrough and he made the most of it; Kradschützen-Abteilung 34 was sent 100km ahead up the Orel highway in the afternoon and seized the bridge over at the Oka River at Kromy by dusk. Kampfgruppe Eberbach followed, moving at maximum speed against negligible resistance.

Early on 3 October, Kampfgruppe Eberbach advanced upon Orel, a city of 110,000 people, which was defended only by a few Soviet rear service troops. Once again, German panzers were able to ‘bounce’ a major Soviet city and capture it before the Red Army could react. A lone panzer company, Oberleutnant Wollschlaeger’s 6./Pz.Regt 35, drove into the center of Orel by 1600 hours; he lost three tanks to anti-tank fire but otherwise resistance was patchy.[98] Eberbach’s panzers also engaged TB-3 bombers that were landing elements of the 5th Airborne Corps at the Orel airfield. The loss of Orel was a catastrophic blow to the Bryansk Front, since the primary communications lines ran through the city and Yeremenko quickly lost contact with many of his own units and the Stavka in Moscow.[99]

In just four days, the 4.Panzer-Division had advanced 240km and inflicted 2,200 casualties on the enemy, while capturing sixteen tanks and twenty-four artillery pieces for the loss of only forty-one killed and 120 wounded. Overall, Guderian’s two corps had eliminated over 10,000 Soviet troops in this period, and mauled two tank brigades.[100] Yet Guderian’s euphoric advance was shortlived, because the XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) used all its fuel to get to Orel and had none left. Eberbach made it into Orel with II/Pz.Regt 35, Schützen-Regiment 12, Kradschützen-Abteilung 34 and one artillery battalion, but the rest of the 4.Panzer-Division ran out of fuel 20–40km short of the city. Contrary to myth, Guderian’s spearhead was immobilized four days prior to the first snowfall, due to lack of fuel. Ammunition stockpiles with the forward units were also very low. Guderian asked the Luftwaffe to deliver 500m³ of fuel by Ju-52 transport to the Orel airfield, but Soviet fighters were active in this area and the Luftwaffe demurred. Instead, von Schweppenburg was forced to send his supply columns back to the rear for fuel and it would take four days to restock his two panzer divisions with one V.S. each – even though this amount was still insufficient to reach Guderian’s next objective – Tula.

While von Schweppenburg’s corps was immobilized at Orel, the Stavka began reacting to Guderian’s breakthrough on the Bryansk Front. In Moscow, the Stavka ordered General-major Dmitri Lelyushenko to proceed immediately to Orel and take command of several RVGK reserve units that would be released to him. He was ordered to try and retake Orel or establish a new front north of the city. By chance, Polkovnik Mikhail E. Katukov’s 4th Tank Brigade, en route from Stalingrad to Moscow by rail, was not far away and was rerouted to the Mtensk train station north of Orel. Katukov’s brigade began unloading at Mtensk on 4 October and he had a total of sixty tanks (seven KV, twenty-two T-34, thirty-one BT-2/5/7). Polkovnik Arman P. Matisovich’s 11th Tank Brigade was en route from Moscow with about fifty more tanks, including some KV-1 and T-34s. Both Lelyushenko and Katukov were very competent and experienced tank officers and, for the first time, the Red Army would have some of its best leaders and equipment in the field. Even before his brigade was fully unloaded, Katukov dispatched two tank companies with nineteen T-34s and two KV-1s under Kapetan Vladimir Gusev and Starshiy Leytenant Aleksandr F. Burda to conduct a reconnaissance in force down the road to Orel.

Meanwhile, Yeremenko was blissfully unaware of Guderian’s breakthrough and instructed the 13th Army to refuse its flank, which merely gave Lemelsen the opportunity to approach Bryansk from behind. Insufficient radios and poor coordination between units robbed Yeremenko of situational awareness and enabled Guderian’s forces to easily outmaneuver their opponents. Yeremenko’s last mobile reserve – Chernov’s 141st Tank Brigade – attempted a brief stand at Karachev against Lemelsen’s two panzer divisions, but was brushed aside. The 17.Panzer-Division then dispatched a company-size kampfgruppe from I/Pz.Regt 39 under Major Hans Gradl due west, approaching Bryansk from behind. Gradl had just thirteen tanks (seven Pz.II, six Pz.III), four SPWs with a platoon of infantry and two self-propelled 2cm flak guns. Yeremenko was unaware of the threat until Gradl’s panzers literally showed up outside his headquarters and proceeded to shoot it up; Yeremenko was wounded and forced to flee.[101] Shortly thereafter, Gradl seized a bridge over the Desna River on the evening of 6 October and then advanced into Bryansk, a city of 87,000, and seized it by coup de main on the morning of 7 October. In addition to a city, Gradl captured over 1,000 Red Army soldiers, a battalion of artillery and fourteen tanks, including four KV-1.[102] At one stroke, a small German armoured force had decapitated the leadership of the Bryansk Front, seized a major Russian city and isolated the 3rd and 13th Armies with fourteen divisions. The German 2.Armee pressed in from the west, forming the Trubchevsk kessel. It was a remarkable success, but Guderian threw it away by refusing to allocate sufficient forces from Lemelsen’s corps to properly seal off the Trubchevsk pocket. Five days later, the trapped 3rd and 13th Armies mounted a successful breakout attack that Lemelsen was unable to block, enabling elements of seven rifle divisions to slip through the loose cordon and reach Soviet lines near Tula.

Guderian was determined to maintain the initiative and did not want distractions like the Trubchevsk kessel to divert him from the prize of Moscow. He believed that the infantry of 2.Armee could mop up Trubchevsk. However, it was clear that Panzerarmee 2’s logistic support was grossly inadequate for a further large-scale advance and Guderian was reduced to conducting a ‘rock soup’ style offensive, by robbing fuel and ammunition from some of his units, like 3.Panzer-Division, to give just enough resources to Kampfgruppe Eberbach to continue advancing toward Tula and then Moscow. The easy rout of Group Ermakov and capture of Bryansk convinced Guderian that the Red Army had no significant forces left in front of him – he just needed to push on as fast as possible to achieve a historic victory.

Kampfgruppe Eberbach sent a single tank company with some reconnaissance troops 15km up the Orel–Tula road on 5 October until they bumped into Gusev’s and Burda’s T-34s. Burda engaged the German column and knocked out some of the reconnaissance vehicles, while the rest of the German column beat a hasty retreat. A few wounded German troops were left behind and they revealed that the 4.Panzer-Division would soon advance up this road toward Mtensk. Armed with this information, Katukov pulled his armour back to the Lisiza River, where he deployed his two tank battalions on high ground overlooking the bridge. It was a perfect ambush position, since Katukov had excellent visibility from this position and the terrain would constrict any German advance.

The skirmish on 5 October alerted Eberbach to the presence of enemy heavy tanks and he acted accordingly by assigning a battery of 8.8cm flak guns, a battery of 10cm heavy artillery and a battery of 10.5cm medium field howitzers to his vanguard, which would be led by the very capable Major Meinrad von Lauchert. By 6 October, the 4.Panzer-Division had received just enough fuel to enable Lauchert to utilize five companies of tanks and Kradschützen-Abteilung 34, but there was not enough fuel for the Schützen-regiment.

Although no Luftwaffe support was available, Lauchert was promised that a battalion of Nebelwerfer multiple rocket launchers and two artillery battalions would provide general support fire. At 0900 hours, von Lauchert moved out with orders to conduct a movement to contact. He moved past the site of the fighting on the previous day without spotting any Russians and it looked like the enemy had pulled back. Von Lauchert’s lead tank company reached the bridge over the Lisiza River, which was curiously intact. Katukov had deployed some attached NKVD infantry and 45mm anti-tank guns, along with four of his BT light tanks, as a screening force on the north side of the bridge to deceive the Germans into thinking that this was his main defensive line. Once spotted, von Lauchert called for an artillery barrage on their position and the panzers quickly overran the hapless NKVD troops. Cautiously, von Lauchert pushed two companies of tanks across the bridge at around 1130 hours, plus some of the motorcycle infantry, two 8.8cm flak guns, a 10cm gun and the 6./Artillerie-Regiment 103 (four 10.5cm howitzers), to seize the ridge overlooking the bridge site.

Unknown to von Lauchert, Polkovnik Katukov had deployed two of his tank battalions in ambush positions about 400 meters back from the bridge on the ridgeline and when the German tanks reached the top of the grade they were struck by a barrage of 76.2mm anti-tank rounds from KV-1 and T-34 tanks concealed in stands of birch trees on both sides of the road. One German tank was knocked out, but the others returned fire. The Soviet tankers opened fire from outside the effective range of the Pz.III’s low-velocity 5cm gun and the Panzergranate rounds bounced off the thickly-armoured Soviet tanks. Previous actions involving KV and T-34 tanks had usually ended in disaster due to poor choice of ground and/or poor choice of tactics, but on the road to Mtensk, Katukov reaped the benefits of a carefully planned ambush. Once the Germans realized that they were out-gunned by the T-34s and KV-1s, they pulled back into turret defilade positions at the edge of the ridgeline and brought up their 8.8cm flak guns. These flak guns required an 8-ton soft-skin Sd.Kfz.7 half track to tow them into position, which made them quite conspicuous on the battlefield, and it took ten minutes to deploy the gun into a firing position. One 8.8cm flak gun succeeded in getting into action and it hit the T-34 of Sergeant Ivan T. Lyubushkin, injuring all four crew members. However, the T-34 did not burn and another tank in his company destroyed the flak gun with a direct hit. A second 8.8cm flak gun was brought into action but fired only three rounds before it too was destroyed, along with its prime mover. Sergeant Ivan T. Lyubushkin managed to get back into action and, from his position, he methodically knocked out five German tanks at the rim of the ridgeline.

Von Lauchert had had enough and ordered his lead units to disengage and retire across the bridge. The motorcycle infantry withdrew first, but once Kapetan Vladimir Gusev noticed the German withdrawal he ordered Burda’s company to attack the bridgehead. The 10cm s.K18 howitzer knocked out one T-34 with an anti-tank round but was itself destroyed. Gusev committed the rest of his battalion, some twenty-one T-34s and four KV-1s. The four 10.5cm howitzers of the 6./Artillerie-Regiment 103 stood their ground as the T-34s drove straight at them, firing on the move. Three T-34s were knocked out, but two howitzers were overrun and their crews killed. One KV-1 that drove into the German position broke down – probably a transmission defect – and several German soldiers quickly jumped up on the immobilized tank with fuel cans and set it alight. Katukov ordered his tanks to pull back to avoid further losses; they had accomplished their mission of repulsing the German river-crossing and could pound the Germans from the distance without fear of return fire. The remaining Germans quickly retreated across the bridge, abandoning knocked-out vehicles. As a fitting end to the battle, the first winter snow began falling. Von Lauchert had lost ten tanks, as well as five artillery pieces. Katukov had lost one KV-1, two T-34s and four BT tanks, plus four more T-34s damaged but recovered.[103]

The tank action near Mtensk on 6 October had a profound impact on armoured combat on the Eastern Front, even though it only involved a single tank battalion on each side. Although German tankers had been shocked by the appearance of the KV and T-34 tanks since the border battles in June, no German panzer unit had actually been defeated by these Soviet ‘wonder weapons’. A special commission from the OKH sent to inspect captured T-34s and KV-1s at Raseiniai on 27 June had recommended the 8.8cm flak gun as sufficient to defeat these Soviet heavy tanks, but at Mtensk the flak guns were quickly put out of action.[104] For the first time, the Red Army was able to employ the KV and T-34 in sufficient numbers and under optimal conditions and they demonstrated a significant tactical advantage. An entire German tank company had been shot to pieces, although only seven crewmen were killed. Guderian was shocked by the battle and referred to the 4.Panzer-Division’s losses as ‘grievous’. He later wrote, ‘the rapid advance on Tula which we had planned had therefore to be abandoned for the moment.’[105] Guderian also knew that the Battle of Mtensk signaled that at least some Red Army tank commanders were learning how to properly conduct armoured operations and that Germany’s best tank, the Pz.III, was hopelessly obsolete. Guderian requested that the OKH send another special commission to examine the results of the battle and make recommendations about improving the quality of German armour. However, the OKH had its hands full directing Operation Typhoon and the commission would not be dispatched for another six weeks.

In the meantime, Guderian still had a mission to accomplish – enemy resistance, winter weather and insufficient supplies notwithstanding. The 3.Panzer-Division had to remain in Orel due to lack of fuel, so the offensive would resume with just a single panzer division. Guderian ordered von Schweppenburg to bypass Katukov’s tank brigade and use outflanking maneuvers to force the Soviets to retreat. Eberbach, whose command vehicle had been destroyed in the battle on 6 October and whom Guderian found when he conferred with him to be suffering from exhaustion, sent his Kradschützen-Abteilung on a wide sweep that secured a crossing across the Oka River on 7 October and threatened to get behind Katukov.[106] Katukov merely retreated 5km and set up a new defensive line near Dumchino. Lelyushenko tasked Katukov with conducting a mobile delay – trading space for time – while he established a more solid defensive line behind the Zusha River at Mtensk. Lelyushenko provided Katukov with a tank battalion from Matisovich’s 11th Tank Brigade, some NKVD border guards and two battalions of BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers, but this was clearly an insufficient force to hold any position for very long. The lack of supporting infantry was Katukov’s greatest weakness.

Von Schweppenburg spent two days restocking his fuel and ammunition for a set-piece battle. This time, German reconnaissance identified the location of Katukov’s brigade and Eberbach decided upon a change of tactics: he would send his two infantry regiments, Schützen-Regiment 12 and 33, to infiltrate on foot around both flanks of Katukov’s tanks and then only commit von Lauchert’s tanks once the Soviets began to withdraw. The German infantry began moving forward in two groups at 0630 hours on 9 October. A single company of tanks from Pz.Regt 35 and some infantry managed to get around Katukov’s left flank due to his lack of supporting infantry, but they were soon pinned by fire from T-34s in ambush positions. Eberbach called in a Stuka mission which failed to inflict significant damage, but Soviet aircraft began strafing Eberbach’s columns along the road back to Orel. Katukov claimed that his tanks destroyed forty-one German tanks and thirteen guns, but the actual results in the one-sided battle were bad enough: at least five of von Lauchert’s tanks were knocked out, plus an 8.8cm flak gun, a Pak gun and an SPW half track from the panzer pioneers.[107] Katukov’s losses were negligible and he had stopped Guderian’s best division for a full day, but he could not remain in a wooded area infested with enemy infantry at night so he pulled back to another position 3km south of Mtensk.[108]

The fighting on 9 October consumed half of Eberbach’s ammunition and his Panzer-Regiment 35 had only thirty operational tanks left. A heavy snowfall on the night of 9–10 October turned the road into a muddy mess, meaning that supply trucks would not reach him anytime soon. However, the snow came to the rescue of Eberbach. German scouts had discovered a Soviet pontoon bridge over the Zusha River just southeast of Mtensk and the heavy snowfall reduced visibility to 200 meters or less. Eberbach decided on the risky tactic of sending a single tank company – Oberleutnant Arthur Wollschlaeger’s 6./Pz.Regt 35 – with a company of infantrymen from SR 33 embarked to move cross-country to seize the pontoon bridge and then take the city from the northern side. In an amazing display of tactical stupidity, the pontoon bridge was only lightly guarded and Mtensk itself had few defenders. Wollschlaeger seized the pontoon bridge without being spotted by Katukov’s tankers and got his own tanks across although – proving once again that a tank can go just about anywhere, once – the pontoon bridge collapsed before an accompanying 8.8cm flak battery could cross. Undaunted, Wollschlaeger pressed on into the city at 1200 hours and overran a battery of seven BM-13 rocket launchers and an anti-aircraft battery. Although his handful of tanks and infantry were insufficient to control an entire city, Wollschlaeger seized the critical part that controlled the northern side of the main road bridge. At one stroke, Katukov’s tanks were cut off.

Katukov immediately tried to counterattack across the bridge with eight tanks into the city, but the tactical situation was now changed. As Eberbach later wrote, ‘Our tanks had taken up concealed and covered positions behind houses and in gardens and allowed the Soviets to approach to pointblank range. Three Russian tanks [T-34s] were knocked out; the rest pulled back…’ In fact, the other Soviet tanks simply drove through the German ambush and exited the city. Only one German tank was knocked out. Despite this success, Eberbach realized that Wollschlaeger was in a tight spot and pushed the pioneers to repair the pontoon bridge and get reinforcements into Mtensk. Lelyushenko reacted to the German seizure of Mtensk by dispatching a company of six KV-1s from the 11th Tank Brigade to retake the city but, by the time they arrived, the panzer pioneers had emplaced some anti-tank mines and a 10cm howitzer had reached Wollschlaeger; three KV-1s were knocked out and the rest withdrew. In a race against time, Eberbach rushed to get more reinforcements across the Zusha into Mtensk, while Lelyushenko and Katukov tried to assemble a coordinated force. Around 1330 hours, the infantry of I/SR 33 reached Wollschlaeger, along with an 8.8cm flak gun. When Lelyushenko finally committed the rest of the 11th Tank Brigade and some infantry around 1500 hours, the Germans were dug in solidly in Mtensk. With a clear field of fire, the 8.8cm flak gun knocked out three T-34s at about 1,000 meters, causing the attackers to retreat. Cut off south of the Zusha, Katukov waited until nightfall and then conducted a wild breakout across the railroad bridge under fire. Most of Katukov’s brigade reached Lelyushenko’s lines north of Mtensk, but many damaged vehicles were abandoned and the 4th Tank Brigade was reduced to three KV-1, 7 T-34 and twenty-odd light tanks.

Katukov’s 4th Tank Brigade had – with only limited help – limited Guderian’s advance toward Tula to a crawl for nearly a week with a brilliantly-executed mobile delay. While Katukov lost about twenty-five of his sixty tanks and 300 of his personnel in this period, he destroyed eight German tanks and damaged ten more. Moreover, the 4.Panzer-Division had seized Mtensk by coup de main, but Guderian was forced to shift onto the defensive for the next two weeks until he could replenish his supplies and losses. Recognizing a winner, Stalin personally ordered that Katukov and his brigade be transferred from the now-quiet Mtensk sector to help stem the German advance on Moscow from the west. Although Guderian did not know of it, he would have been shocked to learn that Katukov’s tanks moved north on a 360km-long road march – during a period of mud that immobilized many German vehicles – without losing a single tank to mechanical breakdown.[109]

Hoth Demolishes the Western Front, 2–12 October

At 0530 hours on 2 October, the main part of Operation Typhoon began with the attacks launched by Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3 and Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 against the Soviet Western and Reserve Fronts. Von Bock intended that both Panzergruppen would punch through the Soviet front lines on a narrow front, advance deep into the rear areas and then link up behind the city of Vyazma to encircle the main part of the Western and Reserve Fronts. Unlike other German panzer encirclements, this operation was conducted as a frontal attack and without operational or strategic-level surprise. On this occasion, the defending Soviet armies were alert. This time, there would be no fancy maneuvers through unexpected terrain. Yet while the Red Army had 639 tanks in these two fronts, including thirty-five KV and ninety T-34s, they were badly deployed too close to the front in infantry support roles. Half of Konev’s armour was assigned to General-major Lev M. Dovator’s mixed cavalry-tank group opposite the German 9.Armee. Neither front had a significant armoured reserve deployed in depth and ready to respond to a German breakthrough.

Hoth focused his XXXXI and LVI Armeekorps (mot.), which had the 1, 6 and 7.Panzer-Divisionen, on breaking the junction between the Western Front’s 19th and 30th Armies. Both Soviet formations consisted entirely of rifle divisions. There were just three anti-tank guns per kilometer and no supporting armour at all along a 50km stretch of Konev’s front held by these two armies. This is where Hoth decided to attack with his three panzer divisions. While many historians have pointed to the extraordinary ability of the Stavka to raise ‘instant’ rifle divisions in 1941, few have noted what impact this willy-nilly effort actually had on the Red Army’s combat effectiveness. Whereas a pre-war Soviet rifle division had its own anti-tank battalion equipped with eighteen M1937 45mm anti-tank guns, plus a 6-gun battery in each infantry regiment and a 2-gun platoon in each infantry battalion, for a total of fifty-four anti-tank guns, the rifle divisions formed in July–August had no anti-tank battalions and were reduced to just eighteen 45mm guns. Similarly, the divisional artillery was reduced from sixty artillery pieces to just twenty-four pieces, most of which were 76.2mm F-22/USV cannons. Even worse, the artillerymen drafted during the hasty mobilization had not been trained to use indirect fire – just direct fire – which greatly reduced the ability of Soviet artillery to influence the battle beyond their own field of vision. So few radios were available that most of the new units were forced to rely upon field telephones, which were easily disrupted and useless in a mobile battle. With only two or three weeks of training, these ‘instant’ divisions were little more than place-holders and, after the blood-letting of Timoshenko’s August counteroffensive, most of the divisions in the 19th and 30th Armies had lost 30–50 per cent of their personnel and equipment in their first month at the front. As a result, the Western Front’s forward defenses were manned by depleted, poorly-trained units with minimal communications and heavy weapons support, and not much idea of how to react to a large-scale armoured attack.

General der Panzertruppen Ferdinand Schaal, having moved from command of 10.Panzer-Division to replace von Manstein as commander of the LVI Armeekorps (mot.), led Hoth’s main schwerpunkt with the 6 and 7.Panzer-Divisionen. Altogether Schaal had about 300 tanks, mostly Czech-made Pz.35(t) and Pz.38(t), plus the StuG III assault guns of Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 210 and the 4.7cm-armed Panzerjäger I tank destroyers of Panzerjäger-Abteilung 643. The Pz.35(t) tanks were rapidly reaching the end of their usefulness, with no spare parts left in the pipeline, and Hoth knew that Typhoon would be their last battle. Supplies of fuel and ammunition for Hoth’s Panzergruppe were barely adequate for a short offensive, never mind a protracted battle.

After conducting a forward passage of lines through the 129.Infanterie-Division on the night of 1–2 October, Schaal deployed both panzer divisions abreast and designated a penetration corridor that was less than 10km wide. It was rough, hilly terrain, with more than half the area covered by forest – not particularly good tank country. After an artillery preparation that included fire from two Nebelwerfer rocket launcher battalions, Kampfgruppe Raus from 6.Panzer-Division opened the ground assault. In their path was the 91st Rifle Division from 19th Army; this was one of the very first ‘Siberian divisions,’ transferred from the Far East in July. Although better trained than most of its neighbors, the 91st RD proved little more than a ‘speed bump’ to Raus’ kampfgruppe, which easily broke through the front-line defenses and advanced rapidly eastward, along with 7.Panzer-Division. On Schaal’s left flank, Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) attacked with 1.Panzer-Division against the 162nd Rifle Division from 30th Army. By the end of the day, Hoth’s two corps had achieved a wide breach in the Soviet frontline in this sector and they fanned out to east and west to widen the breakthrough. Hoth also had two infantry corps under his control for the offensive, the V and VI Armeekorps, which he used to launch fixing attacks against the front of the 19th and 30th Armies. Lacking armoured support, the commanders of the 19th and 30th Armies chose to fight a static battle – which is exactly what Hoth was hoping for – while awaiting Konev to send armoured reinforcements to plug the gap. By the second day of the offensive, Kampfgruppe Raus managed to capture two small wooden bridges over the Dnieper at Kholm-Zhirkovski, opening the way for a rapid advance toward Vyazma.

On the next morning a small kampfgruppe from 7.Panzer-Division began probing eastward from the Dnieper bridgehead, with a platoon of Pz.IIs, a platoon of infantry mounted in SPWs and some Panzerjager I self-propelled 4.7cm guns. The Soviets had emplaced some ‘dragon’s teeth’ anti-tank obstacles and some dug-in T-34 tanks behind the Dnieper, but they were overcome.[110] Konev reacted quickly to Hoth’s breakthrough across the Dnieper, first by ordering the 19th Army to bombard the German spearhead with three RVGK howitzer regiments – nearly 100 152mm howitzers. However, artillery has difficulty engaging a moving armoured target under the best of circumstances and the artillery failed to stop Hoth’s panzers. He then directed the closest armoured unit to the breakthrough, the 143rd Tank Brigade (nine T-34, forty-four T-26), to launch a counterattack, but it mistakenly attacked the infantry of VIII Armeekorps and was repulsed. On 3 October, Konev decided to try a pincer attack from Dovator’s cavalry group and other tank units from the Western Front to try and cut off Hoth’s spearhead units. He designated his deputy, General-leytenant Ivan Boldin, to form an operational group, comprising the 101st Motorized Division and 126th and 128th Tank Brigades, to attack Raus’ bridgehead at Kholm-Zhirkovski. Boldin had only hours to pull together these forces, which on paper had 190 tanks, including eleven KV and ten T-34. On 4 October, Operational Group Boldin attacked Kampfgruppe Raus at Kholm-Zhirkovski. Raus later wrote:

Boldin’s ill-planned counterattack was defeated, with the loss of about 100 tanks. It was clear that the lack of radio communications prevented Boldin from massing his armour effectively, which enabled a far-inferior German force to defeat them. After Boldin retreated, Schaal’s two panzer divisions sealed the victory by overrunning most of the unprotected Soviet artillery in the area. Konev’s counter-offensive capability was eliminated in a single action and he no longer had the means to stop Hoth. In fact, Hoth’s most serious problem was fuel shortages, which hampered his ability to use all his armour, and he was forced to rely upon Luftwaffe aerial resupply to keep the 7.Panzer-Division moving forward.[112] However, the Luftwaffe had committed the bulk of its transport force on the Eastern Front – 200 Ju-52s – to move the paratroopers of the 7.Flieger-Division to Leningrad during the first several days of October, leaving very few aircraft to support Typhoon.[113] This commitment of a vital transport asset to a secondary theater at the same time as the main push on Moscow began demonstrates the OKH’s failure to remain focused on critical objectives.

On 6 October – the fifth day of the offensive – Kampfgruppe Manteuffel from the 7.Panzer-Division passed north of Vyazma, scattering weak Soviet units in their path, and then turned south to cut the Minsk highway around 2000 hours. Meanwhile, the 1.Panzer-Division opened the way to Rzhev for the 9.Armee by capturing Belyy, which forced Dovator’s cavalry group to retreat northward. At a cost of about 1,000 casualties, Hoth’s Panzergruppe had completed its mission of forming the northern pincer of the Vyazma encirclement and defeated a large portion of Konev’s armour in the process.

On 5 October, all four Panzergruppen were renamed as Panzerarmee. Heretofore, the Panzergruppen had been nominally attached to one of the regular field armies, but the redesignation indicated that they were now fully independent and co-equal with the other armies. On the same day, there were significant changes in the panzer leadership ranks: Hoth left the Panzerarmee 3 to assume command of AOK 17 in Heeresgruppe Süd and his place was taken by Georg Hans Reinhardt. Walter Model, whose 3.Panzer-Division was out of fuel at Orel, was brought up to take command of Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.).

Höpner Seals the Vyazma kessel, 2–12 October

Generaloberst Erich Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 was given the lion’s share of resources for Operation Typhoon and it was expected that his forces would be the ones to capture Moscow. His formation was completely changed from what he had commanded in Heeresgruppe Nord and now included three motorized corps: the XXXX Armeekorps (mot.) under General der Panzertruppen Georg Stumme, the XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.) under Generaloberst Heinrich von Viettinghoff-Scheel and the LVII Armeekorps (mot.) under General der Panzer-truppen Adolf Kuntzen. Altogether, Höpner had about 765 operational tanks, including over 300 Pz.III and seventy-five Pz.IV, and he received the two full-strength divisions – the 2 and 5.Panzer-Divisionen. Stumme’s corps – which would be the main effort – was the strongest, with 335 tanks. In addition, Höpner had the SS-Division Reich, the 3.Infanterie-Division (mot.), an assault-gun battalion and two straight-leg infantry divisions. Höpner benefited from the fact that his main supply railhead, Roslavl, was only 25km from his assembly areas.

Höpner’s mission was to smash through both echelons of Marshal Budyonny’s Reserve Front and advance to form the southern pincer around Vyazma. Given the size of his formation, Höpner decided to attack on a fairly wide 25km attack frontage with the XXXX and XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.) up front and Kuntzen’s corps in reserve to exploit success. Opposite them, the Soviet 43rd Army had four rifle divisions thinly spread across an 85km-wide front, with a defensive density of fewer than 200 troops and 0.8 anti-tank guns per kilometer of front – meaning that Höpner’s panzers would enjoy an overwhelming advantage over the defense in this sector. For example, the 10.Panzer-Division would only be opposed by a rifle regiment supported by four or five 45mm antitank guns. Furthermore, the 43rd Army only had eighty-eight tanks from the 145th and 148th Tank Brigades in support. Höpner kicked off his offensive at the same time as Hoth, beginning with a bombardment from Nebelwerfer rocket launchers and Stuka dive-bombers on the front-line Soviet positions. Following the preparation, Stumme’s and Viettinghoff’s corps quickly established bridgeheads across the Desna and punched through the thin Soviet first-echelon rifle units. The Desna River was shallow enough that the tanks of the 11.Panzer-Division were able to ford it on their own and the Soviets had failed to emplace mines at the ford sites.[114] Rather than using his armour to counterattack, the 43rd Army commander decided to use his two tank brigades to defend the vital rail junction at Spas-Demensk. Little or no effort was made to hinder Höpner’s crossing of the Desna or construction of pontoon bridges. Although the infantry of the 43rd Army was quickly overrun by the German Panzerkeil, Budyonny had deployed his forces in depth and the five rifle divisions of the 33 rd Army should have slowed the German advance.

Instead, the Soviet rifle units were too dispersed to be mutually supporting and Stumme’s corps simply massed its armoured strength against one rifle division after another, routing them. Many of Budyonny’s divisions were militia units, with few heavy weapons, and they were totally unsuited to stop massed armour attacks. During the first three days of the offensive, Höpner routed much of the 33rd and 43rd Armies and created a huge breach in Budyonny’s front. Budyonny made the mistake of visiting the 43 rd Army headquarters and got caught up in the rout, which deprived the Reserve Front of senior leadership at a critical moment.[115] On 4 October, Viettinghoff’s corps captured Spas-Demensk and encircled the 145th and 148th Tank Brigades.

On 5 October, Höpner committed Kuntzen’s corps to exploit the breakthrough. While Stumme and Viettinghoff swung toward the north to envelope Vyazma, Kuntzen advanced boldly with the SS-Division Reich toward Gzhatsk and the 3.Infanterie-Division (mot.) toward Yukhnov. The next forty-eight hours went very badly for the Soviets, with one disaster after another. Budyonny’s Reserve Front quickly fell apart in front of Höpner’s panzers and the operation became more of a pursuit than an offensive. A lone Soviet Pe-2 light bomber on a reconnaissance mission spotted columns of German armour moving unopposed up the Warsaw–Moscow highway, but was discounted. The 10.Panzer-Division, now under General der Panzertruppen Wolfgang Fischer, conducted a bold slashing attack by sending one kampfgruppen to seize Yukhnov at 0530 hours on 6 October and another kampfgruppen toward Vyazma. When Stalin heard that Yukhnov had fallen – less than 200 km from the Kremlin – he panicked and ordered Konev and Budyonny to fall back immediately toward Mozhaisk, but it was already too late. This is when the Stavka’s rapid creation of units – without adequate transportation assets – came back to haunt the Red Army; the rifle units simply lacked the mobility to outrun panzer divisions. At 1030 hours on 7 October, a kampfgruppe from the 10.Panzer-Division fought its way into Vyazma against surprisingly weak resistance – there were only militia and antiaircraft units in the city – and linked up with Manteuffel’s Kampfgruppe from 7.Panzer-Division. Rokossovsky and his staff were on hand to witness the German coup but they were powerless to stop it and beat a hasty retreat toward Moscow.[116] The jaws of the German pincers had closed around four Soviet armies inside the Vyazma kessel, including Boldin’s Operational Group. Having plenty of practice by now in forming kessel, Hoth used the LVI Armeekorps (mot.) while Höpner used the XXXX and XXXXVI Armeekorps to seal the east end of the pocket, while five infantry corps pressed in from the west. Although a wet snow fell on 6 October, turning to rain on 7 October, this had little effect upon the German ability to crush the pocket. In less than a week, the Vyazma pocket was crushed, although Boldin was able to escape it with about 85,000 troops.

In ten days, the two German panzer armies conducted a series of envelopments that resulted in the Vyazma–Bryansk pockets. The Western and Reserve Fronts were demolished and the Bryansk Front scattered, having lost 855,000 troops, 830 tanks and 6,000 artillery pieces. More than thirty Soviet divisions and eight tank brigades were eliminated. Considering that von Kleist was encircling the bulk of the Southern Front at the same time as Hoth and Höpner were encircling the Western, Reserve and Bryansk Fronts, Stalin was faced with the loss of nearly one million troops and one-third of the Red Army’s combat strength in just a ten-day period. German losses were significant, but Hoth’s and Höpner’s panzer armies were still combat effective; they had suffered about 6,000 casualties in the first ten days of Typhoon, including 1,200 dead. Overall, Heeresgruppe Mitte suffered nearly 33,000 casualties in the Vyazma–Bryansk battles, including 6,600 dead, but inflicted casualties upon the Red Army at a rate of 25–1. German tank losses from all three panzer armies amounted to only sixty tanks and five assault guns destroyed, which amounted to less than 5 per cent of their armour. In desperation, Stalin recalled Zhukov from Leningrad and he arrived in Moscow on 6 October. Stalin told him to meet with Konev and Budyonny, assess the situation and determine what the enemy was going to do next. With these vague instructions, Zhukov headed off to the front.[117]

Zhukov: Playing for Time, 7–31 October

It was raining on the morning of 7 October, with low, grey clouds hanging overhead, when Polkovnik Aleksandr Druzhinina’s 18th Tank Brigade began unloading its tanks from railroad flat cars just over a kilometer from the rail station at Mozhaisk. German bombers had struck the main rail station, which was wrecked, so the train unloaded Druzhinina’s brigade short of the city. Druzhinina’s brigade came from Vladimir, 185km east of Moscow, where the RVGK was forming three new tank brigades.[118] Even though the brigades were still incomplete, they were better equipped and trained than the slap-dash brigades sent to the field armies in August and the Stavka decided to immediately dispatch all three to provide Konev with armoured forces for his shattered Western Front. Without tanks the Germans could not be stopped. The 18th Tank Brigade had 1,400 troops in two tank and one motorized infantry battalion, with sixty-three tanks (twenty-nine T-34, thirty-three BT and one T-26); the T-34s were newly-built models from StZ, but the light tanks were all obsolescent vehicles drawn from repair depots.

There were more tanks available but, unfortunately, not accessible. In August, Stalin had ordered the creation of a special tank reserve separate from the Stavka-controlled RVGK and to be maintained near Moscow under his personal direction. He ordered that these tanks were ‘to be given to nobody.’[119] When a particular commander pleased him, he would dole out a number of tanks to him as a reward, and the RVGK then had to divert tanks to refill Stalin’s personal reserve. Interestingly, both Stalin and Hitler at various times during the war tried to maintain personal tank reserves – which they alone could release – and in every case this micromanagement proved harmful.

When Zhukov finally found Konev on the evening of 7 October, he discovered that there was very little left of the Western Front and that Konev himself was in despair, expecting to be shot for his failure. In this regard he was correct – Stalin wanted his head – but Zhukov managed to defer that idea. Konev briefed him on the situation, which was awful. The SS-Division Reich was advancing up the Moscow–Minsk highway toward Gzhatsk, which was defended only by the 50th Rifle Division. Further south, Kuntzen’s LVII Armeekorps (mot.) had captured Yukhnov and the bridge over the Ugra River; their next objective – Maloyaroslavets – was defended by two battered Moscow militia divisions. The first snow of the season had arrived but quickly turned to rain and it was getting colder, which was bound to impair German mobility, but the two main avenues to Moscow were barely guarded at all. In his memoirs, Zhukov tried to make it appear that he quickly took control of the situation and restored the front, but his role was initially advisory and much of the credit actually goes to others.

Polkovnik Semyon I. Bogdanov, a tank officer who had fought his way out of the Minsk–Bialystok pocket, was in charge of forming new tank brigades in the Moscow military district when Typhoon began. When it became apparent to the Stavka that the Western and Reserve Fronts were crumbling, Bogdanov was ordered to take command of the Mozhaisk fortified area. The Stavka also decided to reform the 5th Army – which had been destroyed in the Kiev pocket – as a command cadre at Mozhaisk for reinforcements being dispatched to restore the Western Front; Bogdanov, the man-on-the-spot, was made deputy commander. When the first two RVGK tank brigades began arriving by rail from Vladimir, Bogdanov decided to employ them as screening forces while he established a firm defense at Mozhaisk and Maloyaroslavets. He ordered Druzhinina’s 18th Tank Brigade to head to Gzhatsk to block the SS-Division Reich and Polkovnik Ivan I. Troitsky’s 17th Tank Brigade to delay Kuntzen’s forces from reaching Maloyaroslavets. Three more brigades – the 9th, 19th and 20th – were en route. The decision to establish this armoured delay was made before Zhukov arrived, without Stavka approval and by a mere colonel – and it was a crucial one.

8 October 1941 proved to be another dreary, rainy, chilly day. Druzhinina and Troitsky moved their tank brigades into assembly areas near Gzhatsk and Maloyaroslavets and prepared for battle. Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Paul Hausser’s SS-Division Reich was one of only two major German motorized units not involved in reducing the Vyazma-Bryansk pockets and was tasked with advancing as far down the Minsk-Moscow highway as possible. Hausser’s Waffen-SS division was a strong formation with nine motorized infantry battalions, a Kradschützen-Abteilung and an Aufklärungs-Abteilung, but his only armour support was a Sturmgeschütz-Batterie with six StuG IIIs. Von Bock was so absorbed with forming the perfect kessel at Vyazma that he paid little attention to providing Hausser with reinforcements or supplies to sustain his advance. Likewise, Kuntzen demonstrated little drive in getting his forces up the Warsaw–Moscow highway to Maloyaroslavets, allowing the 20.Panzer-Division to lag well behind Generalleutnant Curt Jahn’s 3.Infanterie-Division (mot.). Indeed, both major German spearheads advancing toward Moscow in this crucial period of 7–12 October were being led by motorized infantry divisions, with negligible armoured support.

On the morning of 9 October, the SS-Regiment Deutschland fought its way into Gzhatsk, only 175km west of Moscow, and secured the town by 1230 hours. Jubilant at this victory, Hausser sent his Kradschützen-Abteilung, followed by the SS-Regiment Der Führer to probe further down the highway toward Mozhaisk. Druzhinina had established a blocking position 10km east of Gzhatsk, with his tank concealed in ambush near the village of Budayevo.[120] At 1630 hours, Druzhinina’s tankers spotted the approaching Waffen-SS vanguard, led by motorcycles and armoured cars. The Waffen-SS troops were stunned when more than fifty Soviet tanks opened fire on them, some at point-blank range. Lacking the ability to defeat T-34s, the Waffen-SS troops withdrew, after suffering 400 casualties. Hausser immediately requested that Stumme’s XXXX Armeekorps (mot.) send him armoured support to counter the enemy tanks. Further south, Troitsky’s 17th Tank Brigade counterattacked the lead elements of Kuntzen’s corps northeast of Yukhnov.

Major Nikolai Y. Klypin, who had won the HSU as a tanker in the Russo-Finnish War, led a vicious counterattack with two companies of T-34 that ripped apart Oberst Horst von Wolff’s Infanterie-Regiment 478. Wolf had been moving up to reinforce Jahn’s 3.Infanterie-Division (mot.), but his handful of 3.7cm Pak guns were completely useless against Klypin’s T-34s. Oberst Wolff, one of the few German officers who had won both the Pour le Mérite in the First World War and the Ritterkreuz in the Second World War, was killed in action and his regiment routed. After days of disaster, Soviet tankers had finally gained some measure of success.

The German pursuit had been halted and the Stavka tried to make good use of this time. Polkovnik Sergey A. Kalihovich’s 19th Tank Brigade arrived by rail in Mozhaisk and was sent to reinforce Druzhinina’s brigade. More important, the first elements of the 32nd Rifle Division began unloading at Mozhaisk on 10 October; this was a well-trained, full-strength unit from Siberia, with 15,000 troops and a full complement of artillery. Also on this day Zhukov was finally put in overall command of the Western Front (with remnants of the Reserve Front included), with Konev as his deputy. The Germans had nearly crushed the Vyazma kessel by this point and the 10.Panzer-Division sent Kampfgruppe von Hauenschild (Pz.Regt 7 and SR 86) to reinforce Hausser’s advance toward Mozhaisk. Kuntzen directed the 19 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen to Yukhnov, but the vehicles of both divisions were in such poor condition that they could only advance at a crawl along the muddy roads. Command lethargy was also a factor developing among the German mid-level leaders as illness and exhaustion robbed commanders of their normal aggressiveness. German inactivity on this day was equivalent to another Soviet tactical victory.

On 11 October, General-leytenant Dmitri Lelyushenko arrived at Mozhaisk from Mtensk to take command of the 5th Army, with Bogdanov remaining as his deputy. Another RVGK tank brigade – Polkovnik Ivan F. Kirichenko’s 9th Tank Brigade – arrived at the front and was sent to reinforce Troitsky’s 17th Tank Brigade at Maloyaroslavets. The Western Front now had over 200 tanks, including about sixty T-34s, on the main approaches to Moscow, whereas Heeresgruppe Mitte only had a handful of assault guns up front – this asymmetry at a critical moment helped to reduce the German advance on Moscow to a crawl far more than snow, rain and mud. However, the four Soviet tank brigades were merely a screening force with very little infantry or artillery support, and the danger in a mobile delay operation is judging when the correct moment to break contact arrives. Polkovnik Druzhinina misjudged this moment. Kampfgruppe von Hauenschild arrived to reinforce Hausser’s advance late on 11 October and the appearance of a battalion of Pz.III tanks from Pz.Regt 7 flanking his blocking position caught Druzhinina by surprise. The Germans did what they always did when faced with a tough enemy position – outflanked it and called in the Stukas. Under bombardment and with his brigade about to be cut off, Druzhinina fought his way out of the encirclement with seven tanks, but his deputy commander was killed and thirty-two tanks were lost. This action represented the fragility of the Soviet tank brigades, which lacked the supporting arms of a panzer division. The Germans also managed to envelop Kalihovich’s 19th Tank Brigade, which was forced to withdraw after losing about a dozen tanks. Oberstleutnant Theodor Keyser’s Panzer-Regiment 7, which started Typhoon with 152 tanks, had about twenty tanks knocked out while rolling back the 5th Army’s armoured screening force.

One of Zhukov’s first and most important decisions was to concentrate all his remaining forces to defend and hold three key positions on the Moscow periphery: that part of Rokossovsky’s 16th Army that escaped the Vyazma kessel would defend Volokolamsk, Lelyushenko’s 5th Army would hold Mozhaisk and the remnants of the 33rd and 43rd Armies would hold Maloyaroslavets. The consequence of Zhukov’s decision was that the Red Army essentially abandoned less critical areas, which allowed Heeresgruppe Mitte to continue to advance into areas vacated by the Red Army despite muddy roads and supply shortages. The German infantry divisions – which were not as affected by mud or supply issues, but were vulnerable to Soviet armoured counterattacks – succeeded in capturing Kaluga on 12 October and Rzhev on 13 October. The OKH was quick to note that the Red Army appeared to be in full retreat and directed von Bock to divert the XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) from Hoth’s Panzerarmee 3 to push north, eliminate remnants of the Western’s Front’s 22nd and 29th Armies and then seize Kalinin. Some in the OKH optimistically believed that Kalinin would be a useful springboard for a follow-on operation to split the junction between the Soviet Western and Northwest Fronts.

Thanks to the initial snowfall melting and a sudden dry spell, the 1.Panzer-Division – which was down to fifty tanks – dispatched Vorausabteilung Eckinger (initially I./SR 113 with SPWs, 3.I/Pz.Regt 1, a battalion from Artillerie-Regiment 75, a platoon of 2cm flak guns on Sd.Kfz.7 half tracks and some engineers) northward to capture Kalinin, a city of 216,000. At this point, the XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) was extremely short of fuel and could only move a few other units to reinforce Major Josef-Franz Eckinger’s small command. Oberst Hans-Christoph von Heydebrand followed with Panzer-Abteilung 101 (flamethrower-equipped Pz.II tanks), Kradschützen-Abteilung 1 and some additional artillery and pioneers. Further back, Lehr-Brigade 900 (mot.) was also directed to proceed to Kalinin. The 36.Infanterie-Division (mot.) also contributed its own Kradschützen-Abteilung 36 and Kampfgruppe Fries with two truck-borne battalions of Infanterie-Regiment 87, but they advanced along a separate axis toward Kalinin. Given the extreme lack of fuel and the unknown enemy situation, the German drive toward Kalinin with such small forces was an extremely high-risk operation.

Shoving aside retreating Soviet units on the road to Kalinin, Eckinger was fortunate in that the Soviet defenses in Kalinin were extremely weak and initially had no armour. Nevertheless, Soviet anti-tank guns knocked out three of his tanks when he began probing into the city on the morning of 14 October. Von Heydebrand reinforced Eckinger and the flamethrower tanks proved quite useful in rooting Soviet infantry out of buildings. By 1830, Eckinger’s small detachment had not only seized central Kalinin, but had also captured a large, steel highway bridge over the Volga intact. The seizure of Kalinin was the fifth time that a German panzer kampfgruppe had single-handedly seized a major Soviet city by coup de main during the 1941 campaign.

Although caught by surprise – again – the Stavka had been scrambling to get reinforcements to Kalinin. The Northwest Front’s highly-competent chief-of-staff, General-leytenant Nikolai F. Vatutin, formed an operational group to head to Kalinin, consisting of two rifle and two cavalry divisions, but its primary striking element was Polkovnik Pavel A. Rotmistrov’s 8th Tank Brigade with forty-nine tanks (seven KV, ten T-34, thirty-two T-40). Rotmistrov’s brigade marched 250km in a single day to reach Kalinin – an amazing feat – but arrived just after the 1.Panzer-Division seized the city.[121]

Rotmistrov linked up with a few battalions of Soviet infantry at Kalikino northwest of the city and hoped to launch a counterattack to retake the city once the rest of Vatutin’s troops arrived, but the Germans pre-empted him. At 1145 on 15 October, the Lehr-Brigade 900, supported by a company of seventeen tanks from Pz. Regt. 1 and some assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 660 began advancing west along the Torzhok road, unaware that Rotmistrov’s tankers were nearby. Rotmistrov’s forces were exhausted after their forced march, but succeeded in launching surprise attacks against both German flanks; three German tanks were knocked out as well as eight half tracks and other vehicles, compelling the Germans to fall back into Kalinin. The Germans made a stronger push a few hours later, reinforced with a second tank company, but Rotmistrov committed his KV-1 company, which destroyed at least two German tanks with long-range 76.2mm fire. In retaliation, an 8.8cm flak battery was brought up and disabled the Soviet KV-1 tank company commander’s vehicle. While Rotmistrov gained a temporary tactical victory, he was forced to shift to tactical defense due to lack of fuel. Rotmistrov had established blocking positions just outside the western outskirts of Kalinin, but he had very little infantry or artillery support. On the morning of 16 October, the Luftwaffe bombed Rotmistrov’s positions and then the 1.Panzer-Division maneuvered around the Soviet right flank. Tanks from Pz.Regt 1 overran Rotmistrov’s brigade command post and the situation was deteriorating so quickly that Rotmistrov decided to retreat – without orders. He was forced to abandon thirty-one of his damaged or out-of-fuel tanks, including six KV-1 and five T-34s. With Rotmistrov’s brigade out of the way, the Lehr-Brigade 900 advanced 20km to capture Mednoye and a bridge over the River Tvertsa. Konev threatened Rotmistrov with court martial – and the explicit threat of execution – unless he immediately returned to block any further German advance along the Torzhok road. The next day, Major Eckinger did try to push further up the Torzhok road, but one of Rotmistrov’s T-34s spotted his SPW command track and destroyed it with 76.2mm rounds. The death of the dynamic Major Eckinger brought the German advance to a halt and helped to redeem Rotmistrov’s reputation.[122]

An even more daring Soviet effort to retake Kalinin came from the south. General-leytenant of Tank Troops Yakov N. Fedorenko, head of GABTU, personally ordered Podpolkovnik Andrei L. Lesovoi’s 21st Tank Brigade – which had just arrived by rail in Moscow – to proceed to Zavidovo and then unload and prepare to assist Vatutin’s effort to recapture Kalinin. Lesovoi’s brigade was a fairly elite unit, equipped with nineteen T-34/76 and ten T-34–57 ‘tank killers’, equipped with the high-velocity 57mm gun, as well as twenty BT, ten T-60 and four ZiS-30 57mm self-propelled guns. The 21st Tank Brigade also had an exceptional level of combat-experienced leadership: Major Mikhail A. Lukin, commander of the brigade’s 21st Tank Regiment, had been awarded the HSU for leading a tank raid at Nomonhan in 1939, Kapetan Mikhail P. Agibalova, commander of the 1st Battalion, was also awarded the HSU for valor at Nomonhan and his deputy, Starshiy Leytenant Josif I. Makovsky, was awarded the HSU for leading tanks during the Russo-Finnish War. Once the 21st Tank Brigade detrained at Zavidovo, it marched westward to assembly areas near Turginovo, about 30km south of Kalinin. Fedorenko made little effort to coordinate the 21st Tank Brigade’s operations with other Soviet forces in the area and Lesovoi was ordered to mount a single brigade attack on Kalinin from the south, without benefit of reconnaissance or any other external support – in essence, a tank raid.

Before dawn on 17 October, the 21st Tank Brigade began advancing northward toward Kalinin in two groups, one led by Lukin and the other by Agibalova. The Germans were in the process of moving the 36.Infanterie-Division (mot) to reinforce Kampfguppe von Heydebrand in Kalinin and Lukin’s force suddenly encountered a German column on the road 15km south of Kalinin. Although some German trucks were destroyed by the tanks, the 611.Artillerie-abteilung managed to get some of its 10cm howitzers into action and bring the Soviet tanks under fire.[123] A lucky shot struck Lukin’s left front track, blowing off the return sprocket and causing his left track to come off. Even worse, the tank plunged

nose-first off the road into soft ground and the long 57mm gun tube could not traverse properly. Lukin told his crew to abandon the tank and run for it, but he was killed by a burst of German machine-gun fire. Agibalova continued to lead the raiding force northward and some of his tanks attacked a German airfield just south of Kalinin and shot up some Ju-52 transports on the ground. Although the Soviet tank raid caught the Germans by surprise, they reacted quickly and deployed the bulk of Panzerjäger-Abteilung 36, Sturmgeschütz-abteilung 600 and Bf-109E fighter-bombers from II.(Schlacht)/LG2 to crush the Soviet tank battalion. Agibalova’s T-34 was immobilized by fire near Kalinin and he committed suicide rather than surrender. Nine T-34s actually made it into Kalinin and moved individually and without coordination, since the only radios had been in Lukin’s and Agibalova’s T-34s. Gradually, the 36.Infanterie-Division (mot.) picked off the unsupported T-34s with a combination of artillery, anti-tank fire, mines and air attacks. Only a single T-34 made it all the way through Kalinin and reached Soviet lines northeast of the city. Lesovoi’s 21st Tank Brigade was virtually wrecked after losing twenty-one of its twenty-nine T-34s and its attached motorized rifle battalion (who rode as desant troops on the T-34s) in the raid, as well as two Heroes of the Soviet Union, but succeeded in destroying eighty-four trucks, thirteen Sd.Kfz prime movers, two artillery pieces and eight Pak guns. At least two German Pz.III tanks from the 1.Panzer-Division and some Pz.II flamethrower tanks from Panzer-abteilung 101 were knocked out.[124] Even more significantly, twelve of the trucks destroyed were fuel tankers, which deprived Kampfguppe von Heydebrand of fuel resupply. Yet despite these accomplishments, the raid demonstrated that even large numbers of well-led T-34s could not achieve decisive results without infantry and artillery support.

By mid-October, Operation Typhoon was running out of steam even with the capture of several prominent Russian cities. The railheads supplying Heeresgruppe Mitte were well in the rear of the panzer divisions and the muddy, congested roads made movement a tortuous process for their resupply columns – it often took up to a week for supply columns to make round trips from the railhead near Vyazma to the front-line panzer divisions. Even worse, the amount of fuel reaching Vyazma was only about one-third of what was required to keep three panzer armies in motion and 3.Panzerarmee was particularly short-changed for petrol. Fuel shortages created ammunition shortages, since supply columns could not keep up with demand. At Kalinin, the hard-pressed 1.Panzer-Division had only 0.1 V.S. of fuel, only 0–5 per cent of one basic load of artillery ammunition and 10–40 per cent of one load of tank ammunition.[125] Despite these near crippling logistical shortages – alleviated only in part by emergency aerial resupply by the Luftwaffe – the OKH ordered the XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) at Kalinin to push westward toward Torzhok. However, Kampfgruppe von Heydebrand and Lehr-Brigade 900 (mot.) advanced into a hornet’s nest and became surrounded by five Soviet rifle divisions, supported by Rotmistrov’s tankers, from 18–21 October. Both German units eventually managed to fight their way out of encirclement back to Kalinin, but 1.Panzer-Division lost about sixty tanks and many of its vehicles – which had to be abandoned due to lack of fuel – as well as 750 casualties. As a result of the senseless fighting around Kalinin, which diverted substantial German resources from the drive on Moscow, the XXXXI Armeekorps was badly mauled and rendered incapable of anything but static defense.

Even though the OKH was diverting a good deal of his combat power toward secondary objectives such as Kalinin and Kursk, von Bock realized that – like Zhukov – he had to focus his finite resources on the key points in order to make a decisive breakthrough before the Western Front rebuilt itself. Recognizing that time was running out, von Bock chose to emphasize the direct approach, by going straight through Mozhaisk to Moscow. Lelyushenko had four days to build an improvised defense in front of Mozhaisk at Borodino, site of the famous battle against Napoleon in 1812. Druzhinina and Kalihovich continued to fight a mobile delay on 12–13 October, which delayed the advance of the SS-Division Reich and 10.Panzer-Division, but cost most of their remaining tanks.

Lelyushenko had managed to build two outer blocking positions at Rogachevo and Yelnya with reliable infantry from the 32nd Rifle Division and the 121st Anti-Tank Regiment, which the SS-Division Reich vanguards encountered on 13 October. Both German probes were repulsed and the II/Pz.Regt 7 lost six tanks knocked out at long range by concealed 76.2mm F-22 anti-tank guns. Leytenant Aleksandr V. Bodnar, commander of a dug-in KV-1 tank, cooly destroyed two German half tracks at a range of 500 meters.[126]

Although surprised by the level of Soviet resistance, Hausser and Oberst Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild decided to mount a full-scale combined arms attack the next morning. Lelyushenko’s flanks were unprotected, but he lacked the troops to do much about that.

While the SS-Regiment Der Führer and a tank battalion from Pz. Regt 7 flanked the Soviet position at Yelnya, von Hauenschild massed a brigade-size force for a frontal attack, supported by Stukas and over thirty Nebelwerfer rocket launchers. Both the Yelnya and Rogachevo positions were flanked and overrun, and Hausser committed his fresh SS-Infanterie-Regiment 11 and his assault-gun battery to exploit the collapsing Soviet front.

Lelyushenko reacted by committing all the remaining elements of the 32nd Rifle Division, two battalions of 76.2mm anti-tank guns and his only armoured reserve – Polkovnik Timofei S. Orlenko’s 20th Tank Brigade. The SS motorized infantry retreated at the sight of an approaching battalion of T-34 tanks, but Orlenko was shot and killed when he tried to stop a group of fleeing Soviet soldiers. Soviet morale and discipline was beginning to show signs of cracking under the pressure of repeated defeats.

By 15 October, there was an inch of snow on the battlefield as both German divisions mounted a set-piece attack that bit into the main Soviet defensive belt. Kampfgruppe von Hauenschild broke through the Soviet infantry and approached Lelyushenko’s command post; Lelyushenko managed to organize a counterattack which halted the German panzers, but he was seriously wounded in the action and replaced by General-major Leonid A. Govorov, an artilleryman. The emplacement of anti-tank mines and continued effectiveness of the 76.2mm anti-tank guns limited the German advance. In consolation, a barrage of BM-13 Katyusha rockets struck Hausser’s SdKfz 253 command track and severely wounded him; SS-Oberführer Wilhelm Bittrich took over the Reich division. The Germans mounted an even stronger attack with both divisions on 16 October, which gained more ground as the 32nd Rifle Division’s defense began to crumble. Once again, it was the timely arrival of the 20th Tank Brigade, with sixty tanks including twenty-nine StZ-built T-34s and eight 57mm anti-tank guns, which counterattacked SS-Regiment Deutschland and prevented a breakthrough. However the respite was only temporary. At 0630 hours on 17 October, the fresh Kampfgruppe von Bulow from 10.Panzer-Division (I and II./SR 69, and Kradschützen-Abteilung 10), reinforced by the remaining tanks of Keyser’s Pz.Regt 7, broke through the last defensive positions of the 32nd Rifle Division.

The remaining survivors of the 5th Army conducted a fighting retreat toward Mozhaisk, but a Kampfgruppe from SS-Regiment Deutschland captured the town by 1500 hours on 18 October. The Kradschützen-Abteilung SS-Division Reich probed further down the highway toward Moscow, finding no organized resistance and Moscow only 90km away, but Stumme’s XXXX Armeekorps (mot.) was too spent by the fighting at Borodino to take advantage of this fleeting opportunity.

The six-day Battle of Borodino was a very bloody affair. The 10.Panzer-Division suffered 776 casualties, including 167 killed, and about fifty tanks destroyed and many more damaged. This was the first real occasion where a German panzer unit had tried to breach a defensive zone that included a good number of Soviet anti-tank mines and 57mm and 76.2mm anti-tank guns; it was a painful preview of the PaK fronts of 1943. The SS-Division Reich suffered 1,242 casualties in the battle, including 270 dead, and was forced to disband one of its three motorized infantry regiments. While Lelyushenko lost most of the forces he committed at Borodino, including over 10,000 troops and most of his armour, he had purchased valuable time for Zhukov to rebuild the Western Front. The German tactical victory at Borodino did spark a brief panic in Moscow, with parts of the Soviet Government evacuating to Kuybyshev.

The rest of Zhukov’s Mozhaisk Line was overrun by late October. Despite the lethargic advance of Kuntzen’s LVII Armeekorps (mot.), the Soviet 43 rd Army failed to build as robust a defense at Maloyaroslavets as Lelyushenko did at Borodino. The Soviets tried to build a strong defense around the 312th Rifle Division arriving from Central Asia and four tank brigades (5th, 9th, 17th and 24th), but Kuntzen finally managed to get both 19 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen into the fight and the Soviet units were defeated piecemeal. The 312th Rifle Division was encircled and crushed and Polkovnik Troitsky, commander of 17th Tank Brigade, was severely wounded in the Battle of Maloyaroslavets.

Generalleutnant Georg von Bismarck’s 20.Panzer-Division had just received fifty-five new Pz.38(t) and fourteen Pz.IV tanks just before the start of Typhoon and it used them to overrun Maloyaroslavets on 18 October. At the northern end of the Mozhaisk Line, Rokossovsky’s 16th Army fought a protracted battle for the Volokolamsk crossroads against Viettinghoff’s XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.). General-major Ivan V. Panfilov’s 316th Rifle Division detrained near Volokolamsk from Central Asia just a few days before the advance elements of the 2 and 11.Panzer-Divisionen arrived. Rokossovsky was also provided with the 27th and 28th Tank Brigades as well as two anti-tank regiments to stop the Germans. Viettinghoff was slow to move his divisions up – granting Rokossovsky precious time – and was not in a position to begin probing attacks until 20 October. Panfilov and the two supporting tank brigades mounted a very stubborn defense, based around dug-in T-34 tanks and 76.2mm anti-tank guns, which managed to repulse two very strong German panzer divisions for a week. As usual, the Germans tried to outflank the Soviet strongpoint, using the 10.Panzer-Division from the south, but the mud slowed this down to a crawl. Katukov’s 4th Tank Brigade arrived from Mtensk late in the battle and helped to prevent Rokossovsky’s defense from cracking. After much heavy fighting and losses, Viettinghoff finally captured Volokolamsk on 29 October, but failed to encircle any major units.

Even though the Mozhaisk line had finally been pierced, the Germans lacked the resources to continue the advance, with Panzerarmee 4 reporting that it was only receiving 15–20 per cent of its daily supply requirements.[127] The fighting at Mozhaisk and Volokolamsk had expended the last appreciable reserves of fuel and ammunition, so a brief lull settled over the Moscow front. Heeresgruppe Mitte had suffered 72,870 casualties in October, including 13,669 dead, as well as about 250 tanks and assault guns lost. Von Bock did have five panzer divisions within 100km of Moscow, but Zhukov had used the time gained at Borodino, Maloyaroslavets and Volokolamsk to rebuild a 50km front protecting the capital. The Red Army’s tankers – from eleven different brigades – had played a major role in slowing and then stopping the German advance. Soviet losses had also been heavy and Zhukov was left with no appreciable armoured reserve, just scattered tank companies supporting knots of resistance at key points. On the German side, the pursuit operation was badly bungled by Reinhardt and Höpner, who essentially delegated authority down to corps, division and even brigade commanders. After winning big at Vyazma, von Bock violated the military principle of concentration by dispersing his armour to pursue multiple objectives, particularly Kalinin.

While Zhukov fought his intense delaying actions throughout October, the Stavka used the time to organize fresh armies that would turn the tide within a matter of weeks. Another seventeen tank brigades arrived at the front during October, replenishing some of the grievous armour losses at Vyazma-Bryansk and in the Ukraine. Most of these tank brigades had been formed in just 1–2 weeks, meaning that training and unit cohesion were minimal, but the troops were fresh and eager to do their part. On paper, these seventeen new tank brigades should have been equipped with 1,139 tanks, including 119 KV-1 and 510 T-34, but Soviet tank production was at its lowest ebb of the war in October 1941 and only 396 tanks were built that month, with just ninety-one being KV-1 and 185 T-34s.

Consequently, the tank brigades were outfitted with anything available, including repaired tanks, obsolescent tanks that had been in storage or training units and the first British-built Lend-Lease tanks that were just arriving. In reality, the new tank brigades averaged thirty-one tanks – not the sixty-seven authorized – and only between none and four KV-1 and one and twenty T-34s. While the T-34 was superior to all current German tank models, many were sent to the front without basic issue items and tools, which meant that the crews could not repair simple problems like thrown track or replace damaged roadwheels – resulting in high non-operational rates due to non-combat defects.

Guderian Tries for Tula, 22 October–30 November

After two weeks of inactivity at Mtensk, Guderian struggled to get his Panzerarmee 2 back into the fight in the last days of October. Aside from a paucity of fuel and ammunition, he only had two panzer divisions from von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) to continue the advance toward Tula. The Bryank Front’s 26th Army erected a stout defense around Mtensk based upon the 6th Guards Rifle Division and the 11th Tank Brigade.

Kempf’s XXXXVIIII Armeekorps (mot.) was advancing due east toward Kursk while Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.) was immobilized around Bryansk and Orel for lack of fuel. Determined to push back the Bryansk Front’s 26th Army covering forces north of Mtensk, Guderian and von Schweppenburg prepared a deliberate attack to break out of the Mtensk bridgehead on 22 October. Guderian decided to mass his remaining armour in Kampfgruppe Eberbach, which was given the 6.Panzer-Regiment from 3.Panzer-Division and I./Pz.Regt 18 from the 18.Panzer-Division, giving him six Panzer-Abteilungen with about 150 tanks. After initial efforts to break out out of the Mtensk bridgehead directly failed, Guderian reverted to the standard formula of a flanking maneuver by sending Kampfgruppe Eberbach to cross the Zusha River west of Mtensk near Roshenez. On the night of 21–22 October, several companies of schUtzen crossed the 40-meter-wide Zusha river in rubber boats to secure a bridgehead, then German pioneers began building a 16-ton bridge. The bridge was not completed until 0930 hours and it took three hours for the first German armour to get across: the III./Pz.Regt 6 (three Pz.II, sixteen Pz.III and five Pz.IV) under Hauptmann Ferdinand Schneider-Kostalski and the 1./SR 3 with infantry mounted in SPW half tracks. The Soviets had shelled the bridgehead heavily but the 26th Army missed the opportunity to launch a counterattack with the 11th Tank Brigade before the Germans got panzers across. Now, Schneider-Kostalski’s small force advanced rapidly eastward to seize the village of Shelyamova. Around 1300 hours, seven T-34s from a company of the 11th Tank Brigade that had been in a nearby assembly area moved to engage the approaching German column. A brief tank battle ensued, with two T-34s and two Pz.IIIs knocked out. Inexplicably, the Soviet tanks broke off the action and retreated, enabling the German column to capture the village and establish a defensive hedgehog for the night.[128]

During the night of 22–23 October, much of the rest of Kampfgruppe Eberbach crossed the small bridge over the Zusha, including two more Panzer-Abteilungen. When morning came, Eberbach’s forces fanned out to roll up the Soviet defenses still at Mtensk from behind. Despite the successful outflanking maneuver, it still took more than a day to overwhelm the 6th Guards Rifle Divisions but, by late on 24 October, Eberbach advanced with the III/Pz.Regt 6 to reach the Mtensk–Tula road, where they caught a retreating Soviet column and engaged them in a wild night-time tank battle. Two KV-1 tanks were disabled in close combat and three other Soviet tanks knocked out. Fuel was a problem for the panzers throughout the offensive and since the normal supply trucks could not cross the muddy terrain around the Zusha River, Eberbach had directed that each panzer regiment would use tank transporters towed by Sd.Kfz.9 semi-tracks from its Panzerwerkstattkompanie to carry about 9,000 liters of additional fuel – enough to refuel one Panzer-Abteilung.[129]

On the morning of 25 October, Eberbach used his remaining fuel to form a Vorausabteilung from Schneider-Kostalski’s III/Pz.Regt 6, the 1./SR3 (SPW-mounted infantry), and detachments from Panzerjager-Abteilung 521 and divisional artillery, and sent them up the road to Tula in pursuit. The 26th Army had been caught off-guard and was falling back toward Tula, but it managed to emplace a huge minefield on the main road near the town of Chern’. However, the retreating Soviets had made the amateurish mistake of not leaving a rearguard to cover the obstacle by fire and the German vanguard simply bypassed the mines and reached Chern’ by dusk. It appeared that the village had been abandoned but, as Schneider-Kostalski’s panzers moved in, they spotted a number of T-34 tanks. Apparently, the Soviet tankers had gone to sleep, not expecting the Germans to show up until the next morning. Schneider-Kostalski fired a parachute flare to illuminate the area and another brief night mêlée ensued. The T-34 had less of an advantage at night since combat occurred so close that the 5cm gun on the Pz.III had some chance of successfully penetrating its side armour. After several of their vehicles were hit, the Soviet tankers withdrew.

Partially refueled, Kampfgruppe Eberbach bolted north along the road to Tula in a sudden burst of speed, bypassing Soviet rifle units and forcing the 11th Tank Brigade to fall back. Despite mud and snow, Eberbach advanced about 20km per day and he attempted a broken-field play when he saw that Tula, a city of 272,000, was garrisoned only by militiamen, anti-aircraft troops and some NKVD troops. Soviet 37mm and 85mm anti-aircraft guns were used to engage Eberbach’s panzers on the road south of Tula, but these were knocked out by sprenggrenate from the 7.5cm howitzers on the Pz.IVs. At 0530 hours on 30 October, Eberbach attacked the thin Soviet defenses in the south end of the city with about sixty panzers and several battalions of infantry. Normally, Soviet militia would have collapsed under tank attack but, in this case, they mounted a stubborn defense that inflicted significant casualties upon Eberbach’s infantry – three company commanders were killed. Soviet 37mm anti-aircraft guns, fired over open sights, damaged a number of German tanks. Unwilling to advance into a city without infantry support and with his ammunition nearly exhausted, Eberbach pulled back to regroup, but his window of opportunity had closed. That night, Polkovnik Ivan Yuschuk’s 32nd Tank Brigade arrived with thirty-four tanks (five KV-1, seven T-34, twenty-two T-60) and a battalion of infantry by rail, followed soon thereafter by three more rifle divisions. Yuschuk launched a counterattack the next morning on 31 October, in an effort to push Eberbach’s forces back from the southern outskirts of the city, but lost two KV-1 and five T-34s knocked out by German tank and anti-tank fire. Eberbach had learned from experience to pull his panzers back when faced by Soviet heavy tanks in daylight and let the 8.8cm flak guns engage the enemy. Unable to storm Tula, Guderian’s spearhead was stymied 160km south of Moscow.

Continued rain and frost made the German logistic situation in Tula even more precarious in the first week of November, with Guderian increasingly dependent upon using captured horse-drawn panje wagons and SPW half tracks to move a bare minimum of fuel and ammunition forward. Morale among Guderian’s troops fell with the thermometer as soldiers were unprepared mentally or materially for living outdoors in freezing conditions. Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) was forced onto the defensive south of Tula and hit repeatedly by small company and battalion-size Soviet counterattacks.

Eventually, the ground began freezing around 11 November and von Schweppenburg’s corps regained some of its mobility. However, Guderian’s Panzermee 2 was scattered across a large area and he now lacked the resources to overcome Tula’s defenses on his own. His nearest railhead was 130km behind his forward forces and the road from Orel to Tula was a mess, so the supply situation was not going to improve anytime soon. General-Leytenant Ivan V. Boldin’s 50th Army was solidly dug in around Tula with six rifle divisions, the 11th and 32nd Tank Brigades and the 131st OTB with 21 Mk III Valentine tanks. Guderian could only commit 3, 4 and 17.Panzer-Divisionen, but he decided to have one last attempt at a pincer attack against Tula, with some help from the XLIII Armeekorps of von Kluge’s 4.Armee. The Germans massed 102 operational tanks from the three panzer divisons into an armoured fist and attacked southeast of Tula at 0530 on 18 November. Panzer crews had white-washed their tanks to provide camouflage on the snow-covered battlefield. Although the first issue of winter clothing (earmuffs and greatcoats) arrived on 7 November, it was only sufficient to equip one-quarter of the troops.[130] The rest had to operate outside in –25°C (–13°F) cold in their summer uniforms. The Soviet 413th Rifle Division – one of the famed ‘Siberian’ units – was holding the Bolkohovo sector chosen for the German breakthrough; the Siberian troops were tough and inflicted several hundred casualties on the supporting Schützen-Abteilungen, but could not stop massed armour. Matisovich’s 11th Tank Brigade and Yuschuk’s 32nd Tank Brigade had deployed some T-34s and KV-1s forward to support the Siberians, but they were picked off individually by German 8.8cm flak guns. After penetrating the Soviet defenses, the German schwerpunkt fanned out, with the 3.Panzer-Division curving inward toward Tula with fifty tanks, the 17.Panzer-Division heading due north toward Venev with fifteen tanks and the 4.Panzer-Division heading towards Stalinogorsk with thirty-five tanks.[131]

After knocking out a troublesome KV-1 and some T-26 light tanks in Uzlovaya, Panzer-Regiment 35 occupied Stalinogorsk late on 22 November. Guderian had only intended that this town be occupied to screen his right flank while he enveloped Tula, but the Soviets had other ideas. They mounted a major counterattack from the east on 26 November that retook the town, forcing von Schweppenburg to divert Schneider-Kostalski’s III/Pz.Regt 6 to restore the situation, but for once the ensuing tank battle went very badly for the Germans. Schneider-Kostalski was wounded and the 1.Kompanie was virtually destroyed after losing its commander and eight tanks (five Pz.III, three Pz.IV). The Red Army was learning.

The 17.Panzer-Division pushed on to the town of Venev. Unteroffizier Erich Hager, a Pz.IV driver in the 6./Pz.Regt 39, recorded his experience of the actions near Venev in his diary:

Although Hager’s kampfgruppe destroyed a large number of Soviet tanks south of Venev, Soviet 85mm anti-aircraft guns knocked out several German panzers approaching the town on 24 November. There was heavy tank versus tank fighting in the town itself, with at least three KV-1 and one T-34 knocked out against two German tanks. After seizing the town, the 17.Panzer-Division pushed toward Kashira, but Panzer-Regiment 39 was down to only thirteen operational tanks and had reached the end of its combat effectiveness. Probably due to a combination of the cold and wear and tear, Hager’s Pz.IV broke a torsion bar, which caused further damage to the suspension; however, due to the desperate situation, Hager’s tank operated in ‘degraded mode’ for another week. Even more disconcerting, the 17.Panzer-Division discovered that the lead elements of Polkovnik Andrei L. Getman’s 112th Tank Division, with about 200 T-26 light tanks, were arriving at Kashira from the Far East.

Boldin’s defense was temporaily disrupted by Guderian’s attack and the 4.Panzer-Division and Infanterie-Regiment Grossdeutschland managed to get behind Tula and briefly severed road and rail links to the city on 2 December. However, the offensive had over-extended Guderian’s depleted forces and he was now unable to hold the terrain that had been captured. Furthermore, von Kluge’s 4.Armee failed to press their part of the attack with vigor, so Guderian could not completely encircle Tula. Very few tanks were still operational by the end of November and the infantry was increasingly useless due to to the freezing temperatures. Yet it was not until 3 December that Guderian finally admitted that he could not take Tula and ordered his forces to shift to the defense. It was too late.

While the final battle for Tula was going on, Guderian received a visit from the OKH Panzerkommission he had requested to review the Battle of Mtensk over a month before. The commission included the head of the Heereswaffenamt [Army Weapons Department] Wa Pruef 6 and his senior designer, along with industry representatives from Krupp, Daimler-Benz, Henschel and MAN. Guderian allowed the commission to inspect captured T-34 tanks and stated that the Wehrmacht needed a new tank to defeat the T-34. He outlined the requirements for such a tank as having ‘heavier armament’ than the current Pz.III/Pz.IV, ‘higher tactical mobility’ and ‘improved armoured protection’. Guderian emphatically told the commission that the purpose of the new tank ‘should be to re-establish the previous superiority [of German tanks]’. The commission returned to Berlin and, before the end of November 1941, the Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition (Ministry for Armaments Production and Munitions) had issued a formal request for proposals for a new 30-ton tank outfitted with 60mm sloped armour – this became the genesis of the Pz.V Panther tank. Both MAN and Daimler-Benz began developing prototypes during the winter of 1941–42.[133]

Typhoon: the Last Roll of the Dice, 1 November–4 December

Meanwhile, after breaking through the Mozhaisk Line, the rest of Heeresgruppe Mitte had ground to a halt within 70–90km of Moscow by the end of October. Von Bock – desperate for victory before time ran out – wanted to continue the advance to Moscow, but supplies were dangerously low and the troops were exhausted. Hitler agreed to a two-week operational pause to enable Heeresegruppe Mitte to prepare for the final offensive, which would resume on 15 November. Von Kluge’s 4.Armee took an inordinate time to bring up his eleven infantry divisions and he was reluctant to risk his troops in further attacks. The Russian roads were at their worst in late October and the first week of November, with many vehicles lost in the mud – the German advantage in mobility was temporarily neutralized. Curiously, von Bock squandered his primary remaining advantage – a concentrated armoured striking force – by allowing it to dissipate; he directed Hoth to commit the rest of Model’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) to support the 9.Armee’s useless fighting around Kalinin. Consequently, Hoth’s grandly-named 3.Panzerarmee was reduced to Schaal’s LVI Armeekorps (mot.) with the 6 and 7.Panzer-Divisionen and 14.Infanterie-Division (mot.) – which altogether amounted to barely 150 operational tanks. The Czech-made Pz.35(t) tanks, which formed the bulk of 6.Panzer-Division’s armour, were approaching the end of their useful lives. Erhard Raus estimated that most of the Pz.35(t) had over 12,000km on their odometers by the end of October 1941 and that only ten of the remaining forty-one were repairable through cannibalization.[134]

Von Bock decided to deploy Höpner’s Panzerarmee 4, which still had a total of about 400 operational tanks, with the XXXX and XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.), on Hoth’s right flank and make a combined attack from Volokolamsk toward Moscow. Höpner detached Kuntzen’s dilapidated LVII Armeekorps (mot.) to operate separately under 4.Armee control near Naro-Fominsk. Consequently, von Bock’s armoured fist had been reduced from five motorized corps to only four, with much less infantry support. German front-line morale declined as the freezing temperatures grew more severe, supplies were low and Soviet resistance refused to break. On the other hand, Hitler had finally agreed to release sizeable tank replacements to the Eastern Front and 397 new tanks were sent east in October-November 1941.[135]

On the Soviet side, the Western Front still had 328 tanks left in thirteen tank brigades and the 1st Guards Motorized Rifle Division (1GRMD) by the end of October: thirty-three KV-1, 175 T-34, forty-three BT, fifty T-26 and thirty-two T-60. The British Arctic PQ-1 convoy had reached Archangelsk on 11 October with twenty Mark II Matilda tanks, followed by PQ-2 on 30 October with seventy-six Mark III Valentine tanks; these ninety-six tanks were rushed by rail to Moscow and used to outfit the 146th Tank Brigade and four independent tank battalions (131, 132, 136, 138 OTB).[136] Another major British Lend-Lease convoy, PQ-3, would arrive in Archangelsk on 22 November with 200 more British tanks. Red Army tank officers were not impressed with the 2-pounder (40mm) gun on the Matilda and Valentines, nor their poor cross-country mobility, but their 60–75mm-thick armour was impervious to German 3.7cm and 5cm anti-tank weapons. British-built armour plate also had a much higher nickel content – 3 per cent versus 1 per cent for Russian-made steel – which reduced the risk of armour spalling (i.e. metal splinters inside the tank) when the tank was hit by non-penetrating rounds.[137] Although designed as infantry support tanks and employed in that role by the Red Army, the 2-pounder gun did not have an HE round, which reduced the value of the tanks in that role. Nevertheless, British Lend-Lease tanks helped the Red Army to restock its tank units until domestic production could catch up and are estimated to have comprised about 10 per cent of the tanks defending Moscow in November–December 1941.

Tanks were also useful for raising morale as a symbol of the Red Army’s strength and Stalin decided to make them the centerpiece of the military parade celebrating the October Revolution in Moscow on 7 November; Polkovnik Andrei G. Kravchenko’s newly-formed 31st Tank Brigade paraded across Red Square with its KV-1, T-34 and T-60 tanks, then headed straight to the front to join the 20th Army at Klin. In another effort to bolster morale, the Stavka decided to create the first guards units and Katukov’s 4th Tank Brigade was redesignated as the 1st Guards Tank Brigade (1 GTB). Aside from the prestige associated with guards units, this began a process by the Stavka of providing the best battle-proven units with the newest tanks and keeping them up to strength. However there were initially too few resources to create more than a few guards tank units before the end of 1941 and the Stavka was forced to form a number of independent tank battalions and company-size-detachments so that each army received at least a few tanks.

Zhukov used the respite in the German offensive to integrate fresh units into his line in front of Moscow and sent Konev to take over the new Kalinin Front. Konev was ordered to keep counterattacking the German 9.Armee in order to force von Bock to divert further forces away from Moscow. The critical area along the Lama River between Kalinin and Istra, where Höpner’s panzers intended to break through to Moscow, was held by General-major Vasiliy A. Khomenko’s 30th Army and Rokossovsky’s 16th Army. Rokossovsky received five new rifle divisions and five tank brigades (Katukov’s 4th Tank Brigade, and 23, 27, 28, 33 TB) with about 250 tanks to rebuild his battered army, but Khomenko’s 30th Army was under-resourced. The other critical sector was around Naro-Fominsk, where the 5th, 33rd and 43rd Armies were provided eight tank brigades with 450 tanks. By mid-November, Zhukov’s Western Front had a total of fourteen tank brigades with almost 1,000 tanks, although there were only thirty-seven KV-1 and 156 T-34s. A large part of the Red Army’s remaining tank force was now comprised of light tanks that were inferior to the German Pz.III and Pz.IV.

Although the Germans were content to allow the first two weeks of November to pass quietly, Zhukov was not and he ordered his front-line units to conduct aggressive local counterattacks to hinder the German build-up. A protracted series of skirmishes occurred around the village of Skirminova, east of Volokolamsk, between Rokossovsky’s tank brigades and the German 10.Panzer-Division on 8–12 November. In one skirmish, Katukov’s tankers destroyed a Pz.Bef.Wg. III, killing Oberst Theodor Keyser, commander of Panzer-Regiment 7 from 10.Panzer-Division. However, a counterattack on 14–15 November by Polkovnik Aleksandr A. Kotlyarov’s 58th Tank Division, recently arrived from the Far East, was less successful. Kotlyarov attacked the German 5.Infanterie-Division with over 200 light tanks, mostly BT-7 and T-26, but lost about one-third of them in less than two days of fighting. Zhukov had already executed several senior officers for battlefield failures or alleged cowardice and Kotlyarov apparently feared reporting that German infantry had defeated his tankers and opted to commit suicide instead. Zhukov’s spoiling attacks accomplished very little and prevented Rokossovsky from building up any appreciable reserves. Furthermore, in addition to Kotlyarov’s defeat, the new tank brigades suffered significant losses in these tank skirmishes – including about one-third of the available KV-1 and T-34 tanks. Predictably, the results of Zhukov’s local counterattacks in early November were not worth the loss of troops, equipment and supplies, and only served to set the conditions for one last German tactical success.

The German plan for the second phase of Typhoon was a classic pincer attack that completed ignored terrain, weather and logistics. Hoth and Höpner would crush Rokossovsky’s 16th Army and advance to Yakhroma, north of Moscow. Von Kluge, supported by Kuntzen’s panzers, would break through the Soviet center at Naro-Fominsk, and Guderian would seize Tula and then approach Moscow from the south. Von Bock optimistically hoped for a link-up between the three panzer groups east of Moscow.

However, Heeresgruppe Mitte was only committing thirty-six divisions to the final attack on Moscow, instead of the seventy he employed at the start of Typhoon, since nearly half of Heeresgruppe Mitte was being drawn to defend the flanks from Soviet counterattacks. Nor could von Bock rely upon the Luftwaffe, which had transferred a number of units to the Mediterranean theater and could commit only 300 aircraft to the second stage of Typhoon. Although the Eisenbahntruppen had regauged the rails as far forward as Gzhatsk, Volokolamsk and Kaluga, very little fuel and ammunition was arriving due to transportation issues and shortages. Due to Hitler’s decision to reduce ammunition production at the start of Barbarossa, Germany was running very low on artillery ammunition at a critical moment. Most of the panzer divisions involved in the second phase of Typhoon were only able to set aside 1.0 to 1.5 V.S. of fuel for the attack.

The second phase of Typhoon began on 15 November with local actions by 1.Panzer-Division against the 30th Army around Kalinin, but the offensive proper began when Schaal’s LVI Armeekorps (mot.) seized a crossing over the Lama river on 17 November. The next day, Höpner smashed in Rokossovsky’s front near Volokolamsk and advanced toward Klin with the 2.Panzer-Division. Once again, German armour had made their main effort near the boundary between two Soviet armies; the breakthrough split apart the 16th and 30th armies. By late on 18 November, Rokossovsky’s army was falling back under heavy pressure toward Istra, while Lelyushenko was rushed to Klin to take charge of the crumbling 30th Army from Khomenko, an incompetent NKVD general. Lelyushenko had relatively little infantry to defend Klin, but armour from three different tank brigades and the remnants of the 58th Tank Division enabled him to build a barrier around the town.

The German panzers were operating better now, on the hard frozen ground, and regained a degree of their former mobility. Lelyushenko was able to hold off Hoth’s panzers at Klin for five days, thanks to the presence of a handful of T-34 and KV-1 tanks. However, the 2.Panzer-Division captured Solnechnogorsk on 24 November, which threatened Lelyushenko with encirclement and forced him to withdraw. Stalin was worried about this German advance, which brought their panzers to within striking distance of Moscow, and asked Zhukov if the city would be held. Zhukov replied that it could be, but that it would require 200 more tanks. Stalin replied that there were no more tanks in the RVGK reserve or even his own personal reserve – Zhukov already had everything available.[138] By 25 November, the Red Army was running out of space and tanks.

Rokossovsky’s 16th Army was forced to fight off Stumme’s still-powerful XXXX Armeekorps (mot.) at Istra; the SS-Division Reich and 10.Panzer-Division continued their partnership begun at Borodino, pushing General-major Ivan V. Panfilov’s stubborn 78th Rifle Division a few kilometers each day. Panfilov was killed by mortar fire on 18 November but just when it appeared that Rokossovsky’s 16th Army could not hold, the Stavka sent him the fresh 78th Rifle Division from Siberia. Another reinforcement provided to Rokossovsky by the Stavka was the 146th Tank Brigade with forty-two Valentine Mark III tanks – the first British Lend-Lease tanks to reach the front.[139]

Although the Siberians proved a stubborn obstacle to Stumme’s advance, the Germans knocked out a number of the Valentines and Höpner redeployed the 11.Panzer-Division to reinforce his schwerpunkt. The SS-Division Reich finally took Istra on 27 November after suffering 926 casualties in three days. Rokossovsky was angry with Zhukov for forcing his army to ‘die in place’, with his army being gradually crushed by repeated German panzer attacks. By 28 November, Rokossovsky had re-formed a line just 35km northwest of Moscow. However, the fighting at Istra and Klin had consumed most of the remaining German stocks of fuel and ammunition, while the cold weather was now impairing the fighting efficiency of German infantry units. The Soviet defenders were also plagued by ammunition shortages and few of the Soviet troops had decent winter uniforms either, but their morale was bolstered by a sense of last-ditch patriotism in defending the capital. In the last stages of the Battle of Moscow, Soviet infantry also began to receive the 14.5mm PTRD-41 anti-tank rifle. Although the weapon had entered production soon after the start of Barbarossa, the inefficiently-administered People’s Commissariat for Munitions (Narkomat Boepripasov) did not put the 14.5mm ammunition into production until November. The PTRD-41 did not prove particularly effective in penetrating the armour on German tanks, but it did serve to boost the morale of Red Army rifle units at a critical moment by providing them with a tool to prevent them being overrun by enemy tanks.

Hoth managed to reach Yakhroma and capture an intact bridge across the Moskva-Volga canal with von Manteuffel’s kampfgruppe from 7.Panzer-Division at 0410 hours on 27 November; however, von Manteuffel was only able to cross the canal with a single Schützen-Abteilung and a company of Pz.38(t) tanks. Just four hours later, the Soviets counterattacked with T-26 tanks from the 58th Tank Division and almost reached the bridge. The 11./Pz.Regt 25 managed to repulse the Soviet T-26s with the help of a few panzerjägers, but von Manteuffel realized that he could not hold the bridgehead as more Soviet reinforcements arrived. The Yakhroma bridgehead was evacuated by 0230 hours on 29 November.

By the end of November, Stumme’s XXXX Armeekorps (mot.) had ground to a halt with the 2.Panzer-Division closest to Moscow at Krasnaya Polyana. Although temperatures were freezing, Hoth still had about eighty tanks operational in 1, 6 and 7.Panzer-Divisionen and Höpner about 170 tanks in 2, 5, 10 and 11.Panzer-Divisionen, but the fuel and ammunition were gone and the troops were past breaking point. Heeresgruppe Mitte had suffered another 45,735 casualties in November and lost another 300 tanks and assault guns, but Moscow remained beyond their grasp. The last, great offensive had failed and the troops – and commanders – knew it. On one of few occasions during the Second World War, German front-line morale collapsed. Here and there, fanatical commanders like Oberst Ludwig Fricke in 11.Panzer-Division managed to get troops to advance a little bit closer to Moscow in –40°C weather, but even these efforts fizzled out by the end of November. Von Kluge – whose 4.Armee had sat out most of Typhoon’s second phase – made one last ridiculous gesture with part of Kuntzen’s LVII Armeekorps (mot.) and three infantry divisions on 1–2 December, attacking on either side of the Soviet stronghold in the town of Naro-Fominsk. Surprisingly, the 19 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen made significant advances, but Zhukov promptly counterattacked and threw back Kuntzen’s spearheads – the last significant German advance toward Moscow in the war. On 4 December, Hitler finally recognized the obvious and suspended Typhoon, optimistically hoping that Heeresgruppe Mitte could hold its positions near Moscow until another offensive became possible in spring 1942.

Gamble at Tikhvin, 16 October–18 November 1941

The bulk of Heeresgruppe Nord had settled into siege lines around Leningrad by late September and von Leeb fully expected that the garrison would quickly succumb to starvation. Yet it did not. Zhukov had flown in to reinvigorate fighting spirit among the city’s defenders before leaving on 6 October, and the Red Army and Navy were quick to organize a tenuous supply line with barges across Lake Ladoga. The Soviet Volkhov Front still controlled the east side of the lake and used railheads at Volkhov and Tikhvin as staging bases for this logistic operation. Von Leeb realized that Soviet resupply operations across Lake Ladoga could prolong the siege and he decided to take a desperate risk to terminate this activity. Although Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 had already transferred to Heeresgruppe Mitte for Operation Typhoon, Schmidt’s XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) was still available near Chudovo with the 8 and 12.Panzer-Divisionen and 18 and 20.Infanterie-Divisionen (mot.). Yet Schmidt’s corps was in poor condition, with its vehicles worn out and troop strength inadequate for a major offensive. Furthermore, Heeresgruppe Nord’s priority for supplies was reduced to a low level after the siege began and Schmidt would have to attack with a bare minimum of fuel and ammunition. Even worse, the weather situation was deteriorating daily.

On the morning of 16 October, Schmidt attacked General-leytenant Nikolai K. Klykov’s 52nd Army, which held a 60km stretch of the Volkhov river front with the 267th and 288th Rifle Divisions, both newly-raised reserve units. German pioneers built a pontoon bridge over the Volkhov at Grusino, enabling the eighty tanks of the 12.Panzer-Division to cross the river and engage the 288th Rifle Division. Snow, mixed with rain, deprived the offensive of Luftwaffe close air support and the 30cm of snow on the ground reduced all ground movement to a snail’s pace. Consequently, it took Schmidt’s troops four days to break through a defense that consisted of a thin line of second-rate infantry. The Soviet 52nd Army had no reserves to counter this breakthrough and the 12.Panzer-Division was able to march directly upon Tikhvin. However, the terrain was abysmal, consisting mostly of a roadless wilderness of dense forests and frozen marshlands. The 12.Panzer-Division ground forward at a meager 5km per day against negligible Soviet resistance. The 8.Panzer-Division joined the offensive on 17 October, with a supporting attack on the right flank of the 12.Panzer-Division, with two kampfgruppen; Panzer-Regiment 10 still fielded two panzer battalions with a total of ninety-one tanks.[140] All told, the Germans committed about 170 tanks to the Tikhvin operation.

Meanwhile, the Stavka recognized that the loss of Tikhvin could lead to the loss of Leningrad and allocated General-leytenant Vsevolod F. Yakovlev’s 4th Army from the RVGK to defend the city. To counter the German armour, it was decided to reroute General-major Aleksei F. Popov’s 60th Tank Division – currently in the process of moving by rail from the Far East to Moscow – toward Tikhvin instead. Popov’s division, which began unloading at Tikhvin on 29 October, had 6,000 personnel and 179 light tanks (including thirteen BT-7, 164 T-26 and two T-37). Several other rifle units were dispatched to bolster the 4th Army at Tikhvin, including one of the first Guards Rifle Divisions and two independent tank battalions with seventy-eight light tanks. The Stavka provided Yakovlev with over 250 tanks, which made 4th Army one of the largest concentrations of Soviet armour in November 1941.

Yet rather than committing his armour as a concentrated force against Schmidt’s slow-moving spearhead, Yakovlev – who was an infantryman – fell back on the Red Army’s traditional method of employing tanks. He decided to split up Popov’s 60th Tank Division to provide direct support to his infantry units; the entire 191st Tank Regiment was subordinated to the 4th Guards Rifle Division and another tank battalion left to protect his headquarters in Tikhvin. On top of this poor decision, Yakovlev decided to try and mount a hasty counteroffensive on 3 November before all his reinforcements had arrived. He formed an assault group with the residual 60th Tank Division, the 4th Guard Rifle Division, the 27th Cavalry Division and two other rifle divisions to attempt an overly-complicated two-pronged counter-offensive against Schmidt’s panzers as they crossed the Pchyovzha River near Budogoschch. Not only did Yakovlev’s plan require the armour of the 60th Tank Division to move nearly 100km along forest tracks to reach the assembly area, but tactically, the ground chosen was also very poor. Popov’s tankers were expected to attack through a narrow defile surrounded by a vast marshland area – with little room for maneuver.

The poorly-planned road march proved to be the undoing of the 60th Tank Division. While most accounts of the Eastern Front stress the impact of muddy conditions upon German armoured mobility, there is little recognition that mud often impaired the Red Army’s tanks as well. Popov’s tanks ended up bogged down along forest tracks turned into quagmires by rain and snow and then quickly ran out of fuel. At a critical moment, this tank division was immobilized for more than a week while 4th Army conducted its counter-offensive with only infantry units. Ultimately, Yakovlev’s counter-offensive proved only a minor distraction, which forced Schmidt to detach the 20.Infanterie-Division (mot.) to guard the eastern flank of his advance, but otherwise failed to stop the German push on Tikhvin.

Schmidt’s panzers continued to advance slowly up the Chudovo-Tikhvin road, with his Pz.IIIs and Pz.IVs barely able to cross the rickety wooden bridges along the route. The 8.Panzer-Division was brought on line with 12.Panzer-Division. Kampfgruppe Bleicken, comprised of a motorized infantry battalion, an artillery battery and 1./Panzer-Regiment 10, led the way. Yakovlev held Tikhvin with part of the 4th Guards Division and elements of two rifle divisions, as well as a battalion from Podpolkovnik Pavel A. Garkusha’s 121st Tank Regiment. By 5 November, the Germans were within 20km of Tikhvin and Garkusha was ordered to launch a spoiling attack against the flank of 8.Panzer-Division at the wooded crossroads of Zaruchev’. The next day, Garkusha’s T-26s attacked out of the woods and ran straight into the Pz.38(t) tanks of 1./Pz.Regt 10. The German tankers quickly knocked out twelve of fourteen attacking T-26s and another was claimed by a 5cm Pak gun.[141] Finally, on 8 November a kampfgruppe of the 8.Panzer-Division and the 18.Infanterie-Division (mot.), fought their way into Tikhvin, while the rest of the corps fended off more Soviet local counterattacks. Within hours, Soviet resistance in the city collapsed and Tikhvin was in German hands. Schmidt then shifted Kampfgruppen from both his panzer divisions to support the stalled drive by the infantry of I.Armeekorps against Volkhov, but the attempt to envelop the town failed.

By late November, the German offensive had run its course and had achieved only partial success. However, the failure to capture Volkhov left Schmidt’s XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) in a very exposed salient and Heeresgruppe Nord was unable to establish an effective line of communications across 60km of muddy trails to Tikhvin.

Quickly recovering from their setback at Tikhvin, the Soviet 4th Army launched continual attacks against the exposed flanks of the salient, which were soon close to collapse. Von Leeb’s effort to speed up the siege of Leningrad not only deprived him of his only mobile reserve, but created a crisis on a front that should have been a quiet sector for the Germans in autumn 1941.

Rostov: von Kleist’s Frozen Blitzkrieg, 5–20 November

The onset of winter in the Ukraine found von Kleist’s 1 Panzerarmee (PzAOK 1) stuck just 22km west of Rostov, with supplies very low. Due to the destroyed railroad bridges over the Dnieper – which would not be fully repaired until 1943 – no fuel trains could proceed east of the river. Instead, supplies had to be ferried across the Dnieper and then either loaded onto the few captured Soviet trains available or moved over 300km by the trucks of the Grosstranportraum. Due to the poor condition of the roads, a one-way trip for a resupply column might take three to four days. By mid-October, von Kleist’s forward panzer units were receiving little or no supplies at all.[142] After victory at Kiev, Kleist’s forces were reduced to Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) with 13.Panzer-Division, LSSAH and 60.Infanterie-Division (mot.) and von Wietersheim’s XIV Armeekorps (mot.) with 14 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen and SS-Division Wiking. The 14.Panzer-Division still had sixty-eight operational tanks on 1 November, but overall, von Kleist could muster fewer than 200 tanks and assault guns. Furthermore, he had no infantry in his sector and was obliged to hold a 100km-wide front with his own units, which meant that the panzer units had little chance to rest or refit.

In late October, General-polkovnik Yaakov T. Cherevichenko, the new Southern Front commander, managed to build a firm defense in front of Rostov with the 56th Army formed from units transferred from the Caucasus, while the rebuilt 9th Army established a defense in depth north of the city. Cherevichenko had little armour left, even though he had received six of the new tank brigades – these were quickly whittled down in defensive combat. He also had four separate tank battalions formed from repaired or recovered tanks, but altogether he had about 150 tanks, mostly light models. Cherevichenko assigned forty tanks to the 56th Army holding Rostov, sixty tanks to support the 9th Army and kept fifty in his frontal reserve. Although strictly on the defensive, Cherevichenko was forming a new 37th Army to act as a shock group for a counter-offensive once more reinforcements arrived.

With Operation Typhoon uncertain of seizing Moscow, Hitler wanted one last conquest for this campaign season and Rostov, a city of 510,000, would do nicely. He ordered von Rundstedt to use Kleist’s PzAOK 1 to seize the city before the weather grew worse. While von Kleist knew that he had a slight superiority over Cherevichenko in terms of armour, he had no other material advantages. He also knew that the straight, 22km path directly into the city would be a battle of attrition which could cripple his army. Instead, von Kleist opted to gain the advantage of surprise by opting for the indirect approach. Rather than attacking due east into the teeth of Cherevichenko’s defenses, von Kleist decided to mass both his motorized corps to punch a hole in the 9th Army’s front, drive 60km to the northeast, then swing south to take Rostov from behind. It was a very daring plan that relied on speed and maneuver, even though autumn rains and inadequate logistics made this problematic. Von Kleist quietly began shifting two of his panzer divisions into position in early November, which was apparently missed by Soviet intelligence.

On 5 November, von Kleist attacked. While Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) made a feint attack against the 56th Army positions in front of Rostov, von Wietersheim’s XIV Armeekorps (mot.) struck the 30th and 136th Rifle Divisions in the center of 9th Army’s front. Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division spearheaded the breakthrough, which initially made good progress by advancing 20km on the first day. However, Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division ran into trouble after penetrating about 12km; a counterattack by Major Georgy Kuznetsov’s 2nd Tank Brigade (eighteen tanks) struck the flank of Kühn’s division and the Germans retreated to their starting positions. Even worse, the SS-Division Wiking, assigned to make a supporting attack on Hube’s left flank, encountered a large Soviet fortified antitank position at D’iakovo, that was protected by thirty-seven anti-tank guns (including six 57mm ZIS-4 high-velocity anti-tank guns that could defeat all German tanks out to 1,000 meters), seven battalions of field artillery with eighty-four pieces and a rifle regiment. Normally Soviet anti-tank units had used linear defenses that were fairly easy for panzer units to defeat in detail, but the D’iakovo position was a large, well-planned hedgehog and the Wiking’s attack was repulsed with heavy losses. Hube soon found himself with both his flanking units having retreated and in danger of being cut off.

Amazingly, the 9th Army mounted a coordinated counterattack against Hube’s exposed division from three directions on 6 November with a total of sixty to seventy tanks from the 2nd and 132nd Tank Brigades, plus two motorized rifle regiments. Hube was compelled to fall back after suffering significant losses. Despite the setback, von Wietersheim reorganized his corps and attacked in the same sector, and the 14 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen created a large bulge in the 9th Army’s front. On 7 November, the 14.Panzer-Division rolled up the Soviet 339th Rifle Division, while Hube expanded the bulge eastward. Kuznetsov’s 2nd Tank Brigade continued to launch aggressive counterattacks, but Soviet armoured strength in this sector was insufficient. On 8 November, the 1.Gebirgsjäger-Division – from 17.Armee – did what SS-Wiking could not do, and captured the D’iakovo position. Gradually, von Wietersheim’s corps was chewing its way through the Soviet 9th Army and it had advanced 60km eastward by 11 November before von Kleist had to temporarily suspend his offensive due to crippling supply shortages.

Given the muddy roads and long distances involved, it took six days for von Kleist to replenish his forward panzer divisions. Cherevichenko mistakenly believed that the German offensive had culminated and sent the bulk of his reinforcements, including three tank brigades, to build up the 37th Army for a counter-offensive against von Kleist’s left flank. It thus came as a surprise when Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) committed the LSSAH, reinforced with Panzer-Regiment 4 from 13.Panzer-Division, to attack the 56th Army’s outer perimeter at Sultan-Saly on 17 November. The 14.Panzer-Division and 60.Infanterie-Division joined in the final assault and the two Soviet rifle divisions in this sector were pushed back to their second line of defense. Yet even as Mackensen was closing in on Rostov, the Soviet 37th Army began its own offensive which began to threaten von Kleist’s left flank. On 19 November, Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division began to fight its way into Rostov, which was defended by about 80,000 Soviet troops. This was the first and only attempt by the Germans to fight with a panzer division in a major city without infantry support and this proved a costly undertaking. By the end of 20 November, Mackensen’s troops had captured most of Rostov, but his forces had finally reached their culmination point and gone well beyond it. Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division had lost twenty tanks in taking Rostov and was reduced to just thirty-six tanks (ten Pz.II, twenty Pz.III, two Pz.IV and four PzBef). Von Wietersheim’s corps, although not fully involved in the final push on Rostov, were also spent and could not fend off the counteroffensive by 37th Army, even though it only consisted of six rifle divisions supported by fewer than 100 tanks. Both Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division and SS-Division Wiking began to give ground by 21–22 November, which threatened Mackensen’s position in Rostov.

Von Kleist found himself in a very difficult position, made worse by the shortage of fuel, which made it impossible for him to conduct the kind of mobile defense preferred by German commanders. The offensive to take Rostov had cost PzAOK 1 over 6,000 casualties, including 1,778 dead, and about half its remaining armour. The prospect of meaningful reinforcements was nil. By 25 November, the writing was on the wall and Mackensen’s corps was slowly being squeezed as von Wietersheim’s corps was continuously forced to yield ground. Von Rundstedt and von Kleist recognized that PzAOK 1 no longer had the strength to hold Rostov, but Hitler insisted that the city would be held.

Striking the Hydra’s Head, 25 November–15 December

If military history teaches us anything, it is that false assumptions are at the root of all major disasters. Hitler and the OKH had begun Operation Typhoon and the armoured attacks at Tikhvin and Rostov with inadequate fuel and ammunition which – far more than the weather – caused these offensives to culminate short of their objectives. Time and again, the German panzer spearheads were forced to halt their advances because of fuel shortages. The shortage of artillery ammunition, when combined with the reduced scale of close air support, degraded the ability of the panzer groups to reduce Soviet strong points at places like Istra, Volokolamsk and Tula, which enabled the Red Army to recover from its set-backs. Operation Typhoon and the other attacks were built upon the assumption that none of these material factors would matter and that somehow the Wehrmacht would triumph through superior willpower. Yet by the time that the worst winter weather arrived in early December, each of the German panzer armies had been stopped because of material inadequacies, which precipitated a collapse of German front-line morale. Furthermore, the German panzer units on all fronts – Tikhvin, Moscow, Tula and Rostov – were all over-extended and spent, with little or no remaining offensive combat power. In each case, their attacks had left them holding positions with weakly-protected flanks and minimal infantry support.

The first to suffer from these false assumptions was von Kleist’s Panzerarmee 1, which lacked the strength to hold Rostov. The Soviet South Front began its counterattack on 25 November and General-major Anton I. Lopatin’s 37th Army began to push back von Wietersheim’s XIV Armeekorps (mot.), which was screening von Kleist’s left flank along the Tuzlov River. The area held by the Slovakian Fast Division and the SS-Division Wiking near Lysogorka proved to be a weak spot and Lopatin massed several rifle divisions, two cavalry divisions and three tank brigades in this sector. Von Wietersheim’s defense did not collapse, but gradually fell back under pressure, which left the III Armeekorps (mot.) perilously exposed at the end of a long, thin salient in Rostov. The Soviet 56th Army committed more infantry, cavalry and a tank brigade to a direct attack from the south and east on Rostov, which added additional stress to von Kleist’s position.

On the night of 25–26 November, the 56th Army managed to cross the Don river with two rifle divisions and an NKVD regiment, while the 54th Tank Brigade and a cavalry division moved in on the northern side of the city – forming a pincer attack with the LSSAH in the middle. On 28 November, von Rundstedt authorized von Kleist to withdraw to the Mius River, which was the best course of action. However, Hitler begged to differ and relieved Rundstedt of command on 1 December. Nevertheless, Rundstedt’s replacement – Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Reichenau – quickly recognized that retreat was the only option to save Panzerarmee 1 and Hitler grudgingly allowed von Kleist to fall back 70km and dig in behind the Mius River. Soviet armoured forces played a supporting role at Rostov, with only a few brigades engaged – forty-two Soviet tanks were lost in the counter-offensive to retake Rostov.[143] No German units had been lost at Rostov, but von Kleist’s Panzerarmee 1 had suffered over 6,000 casualties in the November fighting and the panzer divisons were combat ineffective; the 14.Panzer-Division alone lost over fifty tanks around Rostov and had only thirteen tanks still operational when the retreat began.[144]

An even worse calamity was faced by Reinhardt’s Panzerarmee 3 in the Klin bulge northwest of Moscow, where his forces held a 50km-long front along the Moscow-Volga Canal and a 60km flank stretching back to the Moscow Sea. Reinhardt had attacked and attacked until he was virtually out of fuel and ammunition, then ground to a halt within 20–40km of Moscow. Reinhardt had Walter Model’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) massed near Yakhroma with the 1, 6 and 7.Panzer-Divisionen, the attached 23.Infanterie-Division and four non-divisional artillery battalions. Model’s corps had suffered badly in the final days of the offensive. By the first week of December, the 6.Panzer-Division only had five operational tanks left in Oberst Richard Koll’s Panzer-Regiment 25 and a total of 1,061 infantry in its four schützen and one Kradschützen-Abteilung; effectively 2 per cent of its authorized armour and 25 per cent of its infantry.[145] Reinhardt’s extended northern flank was screened by Schaal’s LVI Armeekorps (mot.) with the 14 and 36.Infanterie-Divisionen (mot.) and the Lehr-Brigade 900, which had a handful of assault guns attached.

These motorized units deployed in battalion-size Igel (hedgehogs) centered around villages, which were essential for housing as temperatures dropped below freezing at night, but which were not fortified. Reinhardt had part of 1.Panzer-Division in reserve, but its mobility was limited. More pertinently, he had just 10–12,000 infantrymen available to hold 100km of front. His artillery was very low on ammunition and could not be moved because most of the prime movers were non-operational and the tanks had little fuel left. A cold front moving across central Russia on 4 December pushed temperatures as low as –40°C (–40°F), which caused most of the troops to seek shelter, abandoning their vehicles to the frost. Very little anti-freeze had reached forward units so fuel lines froze solid and even tank tracks froze to the ground. The German advantage in tactical mobility disappeared.

Unknown to Reinhardt, Höpner or von Bock, the Stavka had been assembling three new armies to mount a major counter-offensive, which Stalin approved on 30 November. Zhukov’s Western Front had General-leytenant Vasily I. Kuznetsov’s 1st Shock Army and General-Leytenant Andrei A. Vlasov’s 20th Army moving into position north of Moscow to strike the front of the Klin bulge. These two assault armies were plentifully equipped with infantry – roughly 60,000 – but had only limited artillery support (about thirty-six medium howitzers and fifty BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers) and even less armour. Kuznetsov had one independent tank battalion (OTB) and Vlasov had the 24th Tank Brigade and one OTB; altogether, barely 100 tanks and no more than thirty were KV or T-34s. Kuznetsov did have one advantage, in that he held a sizeable bridgehead across the Moscow-Volga canal opposite the 6.Panzer-Division, which meant that the canal provided no real defensive benefit to the Germans. On the northern side of the Klin bulge, Konev’s Kalinin Front had General-major Dmitri D. Lelyushenko’s re-formed 30th Army prepared to play a major role in the counter-offensive. Lelyushenko had a mixed force with about 30,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and about fifty tanks, of which no more than ten were KV or T-34s. Polkovnik Pavel A. Rotmistrov’s 8th Tank Brigade, reinforced with a rifle battalion, was intended to be the 30th Army’s main strike force – which was an indicator of just how depleted the Red Army’s tank forces were in Decenmber 1941.

At 0600 hours on 6 December, Lelyushenko began his offensive against Reinhardt’s Panzerarmee 3 from the north with a series of un-coordinated regimentalsize infantry and cavalry attacks against the Igel of the 14 and 36.Infanterie-Divisionen (mot.). The attacks were conducted before dawn in order to minimize the effectiveness of German defensive fires. Three of Lelyushenko’s rifle divisions and one cavalry division had just arrived from the Urals MD and went into battle shortly after detraining. Most of the Soviet attacks were repulsed since they were spread across a 50km-wide frontage and lacked mass. However, Rotmistrov, attacking in conjunction with the 365th Rifle Division, managed to force a German blocking detachment to evacuate the village of Zabolote, which created a gap in the 36.Infanterie-Division (mot.) sector. Rotmistrov’s tankers managed to advance over 8km on the next day, driving a shallow wedge behind the German defense at Klin. On the same day, Kuznetsov’s 1st Shock Army attacked the 6.Panzer-Division near Yakhroma with several rifle brigades, but failed to gain any ground. Reinhardt reacted to the Soviet counter-offensive by ordering 1.Panzer-Division to send a Panzer-Abteilung to block Rotmistrov from making any further penetration and he ordered Model’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) to pull back from the Dmitrov-Yakhroma area to shorten the front.

On 8 December, the Soviet counter-offensive against the Klin bulge gathered momentum as Panzerarmee 3 continued to fall back toward Klin and Solnechnogorsk. The 14.Infanterie-Division (mot.) abandoned the important road intersection at Rogachevo without much of a fight, abandoning a great deal of equipment and damaged vehicles. Rotmistrov’s tank brigade continued to inch forward, widenening the gap in the German line, and late on 9 December he captured Yamuga, just 7km north of Klin. Reinhardt and von Bock seemed paralyzed – similar to the way Red Army commanders had reacted to the initial surprise attacks in June 1941 – and had difficulty determining whether they should try and hold fast or withdraw to defensible positions. Hitler would not approve any major retreats, but German commanders became adept at justifying minor ‘line straightening’ movements that were actually tactical withdrawals. Rokossovky’s 16th Army had also begun attacking Höpner’s Panzerarmee 4 at Krasnaya Polyana, preventing him from providing any significant aid to Reinhardt.

By 10 December, the situation around Klin was becoming very dangerous for Reinhardt, once Rotmistrov cut the Klin-Volokolamsk road and attacked the LVI Armeekorps (mot.) headquarters 4km from Klin; Schaal was forced to use a rifle to defend his command post. Reinhardt’s troops kept falling back from village to village, until four of his divisions were clustered around Klin. Höpner sent part of the 2.Panzer-Division to help eject Rotmistrov’s brigade, but its departure from the front enabled Rokossovsky to recapture Istra and Solnechnogorsk on 11 December. By 12 December, it was apparent that the Soviet 30th Army and 1st Shock Army were bent on encircling the bulk of Panzerarmee 3 at Klin and that there was little that Reinhardt could do to stop it. Lelyushenko formed an operational maneuver group under Rotmistrov with the 8th and 21st Tank Brigades, an OTB and a motorcycle regiment, and instructed them to seal off Reinhardt’s escape route. Rotmistrov managed to come close to surrounding the 1, 2, 6, and 7.Panzer-Divisionen and 14.Infanterie-Division (mot.) but the Germans managed to mount a small attack at Nekrasino that kept the escape route open long enough for Reinhardt’s forces to escape westward, abandoning Klin on 15 December. Few if any prime movers were left, so most of the 8.8cm flak guns and artillery had to be abandoned; with few tanks or guns left, Reinhardt’s divisions were reduced to little more than infantry kampfgruppen.

The Battle of the Klin bulge had been catastrophic for Panzerarmee 3, resulting in about 2,500 personnel casualties and heavy material losses, including most of the artillery and vehicles. All five of Reinhardt’s motorized divisions were rendered combat-ineffective and were no longer capable even of defensive measures – instead, they continued retreating westward even though the Soviet pursuit could not keep up with them. At the same time, Konev’s Kalinin Front recaptured Kalinin on 16 December and put 9.Armee to flight. Heeresgruppe Mitte’s left flank was retreating in disarray. Von Bock directed Reinhardt to withdraw to the Konigsberg Line, but the retreat was more of a rout than an orderly operation. Lelyushenko managed an impressive victory at Klin despite very limited resources and time for planning, which was executed superbly at the tactical level by Rotmistrov. While far from reflective of Deep Battle doctrine, the 30th Army’s attack at Klin reflected a successful hybrid mix of tanks, infantry and cavalry that was the best that the Red Army could manage until industry replaced the losses of 1941.

At Tula, Guderian’s over-extended Panzerarmee 2 was quickly defeated in detail between 6–12 December as both his flanks were smashed in and he was forced to fall back again and again. The third Stavka reserve army, the 10th, suddenly appeared on Guderian’s eastern flank near Mikhailov and routed Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Armeekorps (mot.). The 10th Army advanced 30km in two days, slashing across Guderian’s lines of communication, and threatened to link up with the 50th Army attacking out of Tula, which would have resulted in the encirclement of von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.). Guderian reacted promptly to the Soviet counter-offensive by ordering a rapid retreat and briefly created a new front between Tula and Yeifan, but when Timoshenko’s Southwest Front forced the 2.Armee to retreat toward Orel, Guderian was forced to fall back as well. As with Reinhardt’s Panzerarmee 3, Guderian’s retreat forced him to abandon artillery and vehicles which Germany could not replace.

At Tikhvin, the XXXIX Armeekorps (mot.) had been in an untenable position since mid-November due to the impossibility of supplying a motorized corps along a single trail across frozen marshland. Generalleutnant Hans-Jürgen von Arnim took over the corps at Tikhvin after General der Panzertruppe Rudolf Schmidt reported to the OKH that his troops were ‘on the brink of collapse’ due to the absence of winter uniforms and supplies. However, von Arnim’s arrival failed to alter the poor German situation and the Soviet 4th Army began a series of counterattacks that gradually pushed in the German flanks and interfered with ground lines of communication. The position of the Tikhvin garrison became critical and von Arnim was forced to request aerial resupply which, given the harsh weather conditions, would clearly be insufficient to keep a motorized corps in fighting trim. On 4 December, the Soviet 4th Army mounted a direct assault on the town of Tikhvin and the German lines began to buckle. On 8 December, von Arnim finally bowed to the inevitable, abandoning Tikhvin, and ordered a withdrawl to the Volkhov River. Although von Arnim’s forces escaped the Soviet pincers, the 8 and 12.Panzer-Divisionen were forced to abandon a great deal of equipment in the retreat, rendering them combat-ineffective. The liberation of Tikhvin cost the 4th Army 70 tanks.[146]

Amazingly, the Red Army’s counterattacks between 25 November and 15 December had resulted in the defeat of every single Geman panzer army in the Soviet Union in just three weeks. With few exceptions, the retreat caused grievous material losses to the panzer divisions, which could never be fully replaced. By the end of 1941, the Wehrmacht had lost over 2,600 tanks and assault guns on the Eastern Front and another 1,000 tanks were non-operational and in need of repairs. The losses of wheeled vehicles, artillery and 8.8cm flak guns were also very high and greatly weakened the offensive firepower and mobility of the remaining German mechanized divisions. Overall, the Wehrmacht had suffered 830,903 casualties on the Eastern Front in 1941, of which 27 per cent were in the panzer armies.

Defeat also had a price for the senior leadership of the Wehrmacht and the Panzerwaffe. In addition to von Rundstedt, Hitler relieved von Bock on 18 December and Guderian on 26 December. In each case, Hitler relieved these officers for conducting unauthorized retreats, but the real reason was that he believed that they had lost the will to win – Hitler was quick to sense defeatism in his generals. Höpner was also relieved for unauthorized retreats in January and the corps commanders von Schweppenburg and Kuntzen were replaced due to poor health. On the other hand, Hitler was quick to reward those officers, like Walter Model, who demonstrated steadfastness even in adversity. When Model complained about retreating to the Konigsberg Line in mid-December 1941, Hitler decided that he would be the perfect choice to take over the crumbling 9.Armee at Rzhev.

The Red Army came close to encircling large German panzer formations at Tikhvin, Klin and Rostov in the December counter-offensive, but lacked the strength and skill to pull this off. Indeed, despite the recovery of terrain, the Red Army failed to destroy any major German units. By the end of December 1941, the NKVD reported only 10,602 German prisoners in Soviet captivity, whereas the Germans had captured 3,355,000 Soviet soldiers in the previous six months.[147] Yet the Red Army’s own tank forces were in very poor shape by the end of 1941 and only able to play a supporting role in the Winter Counteroffensive. By Christmas 1941, the armoured forces of both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army had been virtually demolished and they each had very few operational medium or heavy tanks left after six months of sustained combat. Neither side was left with any substantial armoured reserve and consequently operations degenerated into First World War-era tactics.

The main reason for the dominance of German panzer divisions throughout the armoured battles of 1941 was not due to superior doctrine, equipment or even leadership, but rather the ability of its Panzertruppen to properly employ combined arms methods at the tactical level of combat and coordinate with other friendly panzer units by radio. The lack of adequate Soviet pre-war driver and gunnery training was also a serious deficiency that often negated the mobility and firepower advantages of the KV and T-34 tanks.

During 1941, in spite of the fact that the KV and T-34 tanks were superior in firepower and armoured protection to any German tanks, the Red Army managed to lose 940 of the available 1,540 KV heavy tanks (61 per cent) and 2,331 of the 3,131 available T-34 medium tanks (74 per cent). While Vyacheslav Malyshev would ensure that Soviet industry built as many tanks as possible, it was not enough to simply have more or better tanks – it was critical that General-leytenant Yakov N. Fedorenko, as head of GABTU, ensured that Soviet tankers were trained to use them. The Red Army also had to increase the number of radios in tank units in order to make command and control a practical reality – almost every Soviet armoured counterattack in 1941 fell apart because of inadequate C². At the operational level, German superiority was much less pronounced and the Red Army had a number of tank leaders who understood how to plan an enveloping attack and coordinate with other arms – but most Soviet tankers lacked the ability to actually conduct this on the battlefield. Both sides also failed to build logistic support structures that could adequately supply mobile operations, which seriously undermined their ability to conduct high-intensity armoured offensives for more than a few weeks.