War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942

Cannae at Kiev

On 20 August the Eastern Front presented a fascinating picture. Lead elements of Army Group Centre had occupied Yelnya, southeast of the Minsk–Smolensk–Moscow highway, holding a salient that appeared to point at the Russian capital. Some 600km due south on roughly a straight line, Army Group South had reached the River Dnieper at Kremenchug. This represented the forward wedge of a German front shaped like an isosceles triangle. Its western apex lagged 550km behind the leading eastern elements. Concentrated within the triangle was the entire South-west Soviet Army Group situated south of the Pripet Swamps. Few commanders since Hannibal had ever enjoyed the prospect of achieving an operational double envelopment. Concept here verged on actuality.

On a hot August day in 216BC, an outnumbered Carthaginian force of 40,000 men commanded by Hannibal Barca surrounded eight Roman legions during the battle of Cannae. A feint toward the centre resulted in the double envelopment of the Roman Army of 86,000, twice the size of the Carthaginian force. Seventy thousand Roman legionaries perished, unable to escape. History appeared to be repeating itself more than 2,000 years later. Soviet Marshal Budenny’s South-west Army Group was inside an enormous salient 240km wide that extended from Trubchevsk in the north to Kremenchug on the River Dnieper to the south. Kiev lay at the western extremity of the bulge. The conditions for a Cannae-like battle of encirclement were recognisable at this point, but only to those with a visionary operational view. Marshal Budenny had about a million and a half soldiers in this area, elements of eight armies, located mainly at Uman and Kiev itself.

Hitler’s controversial strategic directive to change the main axis of advance southwards was planned as a double encirclement. A preliminary inner ring was to be created by three manoeuvring German infantry armies. Second Army was to advance south-east from Gomel, Seventeenth would strike north from Kremenchug, while the Sixth Army fixed Russian attention on the centre at Kiev. The outer ring was to be formed by Generaloberst Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 driving south from Trubchevsk with 500 Panzers to make contact with von Kleist’s 600 tanks of Panzergruppe 1 attacking north from Kremenchug, 200km east of Kiev. It was a carbon copy of Cannae. Carthaginian infantry lured the Roman legions into the heart of their concave formation in the centre, while cavalry, the precursor of the Panzers, smashed the wings and then enveloped the committed Roman infantry from the rear. The aim was not to defeat but annihilate the enemy.

As the German plan unfolded, the Russians appeared paralysed and incapable of decisive action. Nobody saw the awesome trap opening. Instead of withdrawing behind the natural defensive line of the River Dnieper, Marshal Budenny reinforced those very areas, like Uman south of Kiev, which were to be engulfed by the German spearheads even before the main battle commenced. General von Kleist’s Panzers entered Novo Ukrainka on 30 July, cutting the Kiev–Dnepropetrovsk railway line, isolating Uman from the rear. The only route left open to the Soviet Sixth, Twelfth and Eighteenth Armies lay south-eastward along the River Bug to Nikolaev on the Black Sea. The Kessel (cauldron) thus formed leaked until closed by the German infantry divisions of Eleventh and Seventeenth Armies marching up from the west and south-west, which relieved the Panzers. Fifteen Soviet infantry and five armoured divisions were trapped and destroyed in a pocket that netted 103,000 PoWs. Its reduction was complete by 8 August. One German artillery battery pounding the encirclement fired more ammunition in four days than it had expended throughout the entire six weeks in France during 1940.⁽¹⁾

An idea of the magnitude of distances covered during these tactical envelopments can be gauged from the progress of one of the Panzer spearhead divisions. Ninth Panzer Division, belonging to von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1, was at the end of the pincer that closed the Uman pocket. Setting off at Belaja-Zerkow, it swung down from the north to link with German infantry from the Ist Gebirgsjäger Corps. Between 24 and 30 July it captured 747 PoWs, destroying two tanks and eight guns en route before grappling with the enemy. By 5 August it had knocked out 33 tanks and 116 guns, taken or destroyed 1,113 trucks and captured 11,000 PoWs during an advance of 185km. A further tactical sweep occurred between 7 and 26 August through a series of Ukrainian industrial and communications centres between Kirovograd and Dnepropetrovsk on the River Dnieper. The distance covered was 490km, greater than the distance from London to Paris and slightly less than from Paris to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. A further 65 guns and over 16,000 PoWs were taken en route.⁽²⁾ This latest advance opened up the possibility of a Cannae-like pocket. To the west the front was concave in shape, while the sinister spindly fingers of Panzer advances reflected on maps were reaching out to envelop the Soviet flanks. Fingers poised at Roslavl in the north and Kremenchug in the south needed only to close in order to spring a gigantic trap. They were some 600km apart.

The experience of these fast-moving German columns alternated between routine interspersed with sudden isolated skirmishes. Nothing was permitted to interrupt the flow of operations. Food was eaten on the move. Curizio Malaparte, an Italian war correspondent, described how:

Fighting varied in intensity. Activity for the most part was clinically observed from a safe distance through binoculars. Incidents spluttered to life here and there, clouding the overall picture. Malaparte described a skirmish between his armoured column and Russian rearguards, which typified the haphazard and indistinguishable nature of such mobile engagements.

A Soviet tank opened fire on the column. ‘I hear distinctly the clatter of its tracks,’ he wrote, but nobody was aware of what was going on. ‘It seems to be sniffing the air, trying to locate an invisible trail leading though the corn.’ Battle was joined, but its progress and outcome was indistinct:

The Russian infantry attack that followed was similarly surreal:

Leutnant Weil, the officer accompanying Malaparte, unlike the majority, knew the plan. ‘Arme Leute [poor fellows] – poor bastards,’ he said. The Russian soldiers spotted the Panzer column and advanced down the hill towards it, firing as they came.

Scores of such flanking and minor tactical encirclements made up the flow of the German Panzer advance. They were unstoppable, but progress was not necessarily easy.

Occasionally there was time for pathos. After the skirmish, Russian bodies alongside the knocked-out tank were checked for signs of life. There’s nothing we can do,’ concluded the medical orderly.

Interestingly, Malaparte observed he did not bother to cover the faces of the Mongolian soldiers.⁽⁵⁾

Despite the signs of impending encirclement at Kiev and the consequent likelihood of a catastrophic situation developing on the southern front, Stalin rejected suggestions that Russian troops be withdrawn to more defensible positions. On the contrary, he sought to increase the already over-manned Ukrainian capital garrison, being prepared to strip other sensitive sectors of the front to do so. German moves were interpreted as a diversionary feint to focus attention away from Moscow, the main objective, which he expected to receive an all-out attack prior to the autumn rains. A speedy resolution of the immense and technically complex issues which the German side would have to solve to create an envelopment was beyond the comprehension of Soviet staff officers with far less experience. There was, indeed, no historical precedent – which may have stimulated suspicion – to compare. Michael Milstein, an officer on General Zhukov’s staff, gave his view on the impending catastrophe after the war:

The potential for catastrophe was not appreciated. Zhukov was relieved as Chief of the Red Army General Staff and down-graded to a reserve front at Leningrad for having the temerity to suggest surrendering Kiev and withdrawing the exposed South-west Front to more defensible positions. Marshal Budenny, who commanded this sector of the front, was given an unambiguous order: not a step backwards, hold and if necessary die’. Dimitrij Wolkogonow, a young Soviet staff officer, assessed the likelihood of anyone questioning such an order:

Stalin had already relieved about 100 military commanders in 1941, including an array of generals. General Pavlov was removed after the initial catastrophic week on the western frontier and was arrested alongside Klimowskich, the front signals commander, with one other army commander and several other generals. They were executed. Wolkogonow summed up, pointing out that ‘Stalin forced his military commanders to produce successes through such stern measures.’⁽⁷⁾

On 9 September Col-Gen Michael P. Kirponos, commanding Soviet forces around Kiev, was ordered by Marshal Budenny, the front commander, to begin preparing for an ‘orderly phased withdrawal’ to escape the approaching encirclement and prepare to counter-attack. Stalin was familiar with this theatre of operations, having served there in 1918. He took close interest, having determined to fight in its defence. As a precaution he ordered the evacuation of industrial plant eastwards. He further conferred regularly with the Kiev High Command hierarchy, and installed a telegraph machine in the Kremlin for this purpose. Kirponos, Budenny and Nikita Khrushchev, the political commissar commander (and later Soviet premier) constantly raised the issue of withdrawal at these conferences. Alexander M. Wassiliwski, Stalin’s Deputy Chief of the Red Army General Staff, recalled his ruler ‘flying into a rage’ on hearing of the ‘absolute necessity’ to give up Kiev recommended by his commanders. Orders were issued to cancel the withdrawal set in motion. ‘Take all possible and impossible measures,’ he ordered, ‘to defend Kiev.’ Two days later Kirponos appealed again for flexibility, but Stalin was uncompromising. He adamantly declared:

Kirponos, at the other end of the telegraph, responded with a tired resignation. ‘Your orders are clear – out. Farewell.’⁽⁸⁾

Generaloberst Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 had started south on 23 August on a blisteringly hot summer day. Armoured columns began raising immense clouds of impenetrable dust. The 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions moved with the 10th Motorised Infantry Division, supported directly behind by the 2nd SS Division ‘Das Reich’. They attacked due south. The 3rd Panzer Division was typically subdivided into three mixed Kampfgruppen (battle groups) of Panzers, motorised infantry and artillery with anti-tank units. Primitive sandy road conditions reduced progress to no more than 70km before columns had to be refuelled. After 40km the lead battle group – Kampfgruppe ‘Lewinski’ – passed the first road sign bearing the distinctive Cyrillic characters which indicated they were entering the Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine. General Guderian’s initial response on hearing his army was to move into the Ukraine and then back toward Moscow was, ‘I doubt if the machines will stand it, even if we are unopposed.’⁽⁹⁾ Encirclement battles at Minsk and Smolensk had already exacted a considerable toll. His Panzer divisions were on average only at 45% effective strength. Exceptions were the 10th Panzer Division at 83% and the 18th at 57%.⁽¹⁰⁾

The troops, nevertheless, were in buoyant mood. Roads were firm with few swampy areas and the weather was sunny and clear. It was Sunday, typical ‘cavalry weather’ or in other words ‘Panzer weather’, according to the 3rd Division official historian. After three hours’ driving, a Russian transport column was surprised and caught on the road. The enemy abandoned their Panje-wagons and fled into the sunflower fields. As the Panzer spearhead breasted another rise they came across a huge column of Russian lorries passing left to right. The line of vehicles consisted of artillery batteries, logistic units, engineers, tractors, Panje-wagons and mounted Cossacks riding security supported by two armoured cars. Lead Panzers shot a gap through the column and the spearhead passed on through the stream of milling Russian vehicles.⁽¹¹⁾

^{The drama of the ‘Cannae’ fought at Kiev unfolded on an unprecedented scale, as shown on the representative scale of the pocket indicated by the triangle on the map. Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 from Army Group Centre pushed southwards, linking up with von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 coming up from the south. Five Soviet armies were annihilated, generating hope again in Germany that the war might be won that year. But it was a victory without decisive results, achieved at considerable German cost. The Russians fought on.}

On 24 August an advance battle group from the 3rd Panzer Division captured the 700m-long bridge spanning the River Desna at Novgorod Seversk. So rapid was the assault that the Pionier platoon commander was overtaken by the lead Panzer company as he removed high explosive charges from the bridge and tossed them into the water. Having crossed, strong resistance was encountered from units of the Soviet Twenty-first Army. Its commander was becoming increasingly alert to the sinister implications of this powerful Panzer force, driving south-east, well over 200km east of Kiev.

The 2nd SS Division ‘Das Reich’ captured another bridge on the division’s right flank at Makoshim, after a daring assault by its motorcycle infantry reconnaissance battalion. Stuka dive-bomber air support had been frustratingly delayed. As the SS soldiers began to prepare the bridgehead against inevitable Russian counter-attacks, the missing Stukas appeared and howled into the attack, dive-bombing their own troops. Forty Waffen SS soldiers were killed.⁽¹²⁾

Between 25 August and 7 September the 3rd Panzer Division fought a number of heavy battles south of Shostka, advancing only a further 55km south.

Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, the commander of Army Group Centre, monitoring Guderian’s progress from afar, was becoming increasingly frustrated at the imposed redirection of his main armoured thrust away from Moscow. Army Group Centre’s stalled infantry were now enduring intense punishment from Russian counter-attacks directed at the Yelnya salient, where some ground had to be given up. On 30 August he sullenly confided to his diary, ‘the idea of an offensive on my front thus appears to be dead’. He noted the next day, ‘the Panzer group [Guderian] is being attacked on both flanks and is in a difficult situation’. On 2 September Guderian was demanding more forces to support his southern advance, following the loss of the 10th Motorised Infantry Division bridgehead south of the River Desna. ‘Guderian’s description of the situation was so pessimistic,’ declared von Bock, ‘that I had to decide if I should propose to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army [Halder] that the armoured group be pulled back across the Desna.’

Even the Führer felt the tension emanating from this ambitious enterprise. Guderian, he insisted, should be concentrating his forces for the drive south. Generalfeldmarschall Keitel telephoned von Bock twice on 4 September and stated, ‘if the Army Group and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army don’t intervene with orders, the Führer will do it.’ Guderian became so headstrong and irritated at the perceived lack of support from his army commander that von Bock felt, ‘I finally had to ask for his relief.’ On 5 September he admitted, ‘I cannot hide my worries about new difficulties with this outstanding and brave commander.’⁽¹³⁾ Tension was not a solely Russian prerogative. On the following day, the weather broke. Torrential summer storms turned the roads into a quagmire. Kriegsmaler Theo Scharf observed, ‘half an hour of deluge would turn the unmade roads in the rich red soil into knee-deep melted chocolate, bogging down every vehicle, except the fully tracked ones.’⁽¹⁴⁾ Movement began to grind to a halt.

General Halder visited von Rundstedt’s Army Group South headquarters on 7 September and agreed final details for a plan involving both Army Group South and Army Group Centre. It directed that all enemy in the Kiev–Dnieper–Desna bend were to be destroyed and the city of Kiev taken. The Panzer envelopment shaping up like Cannae 2,000 years before was imminent. Guderian was to continue his 12-day-old thrust southward to Romny and Priluki with Second Army (infantry) covering his right flank. Army Group South’s Seventeenth Army would pin Soviet forces on the lower Dnieper below Cherkassy and establish a bridgehead across the river at Kremenchug. Von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 was to drive northward and link up with Guderian in the Romny-Lokhvitsa area. Six Soviet armies could then be cut off and isolated. Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Reichenau’s Sixth Army was to cross the 650m-wide River Dnieper opposite Kiev and attack the now encircled enemy forces in the city. Panzergruppe 1 was down to 331 armoured fighting vehicles, which was 53% of its campaign start-state.⁽¹⁵⁾ By 12 September he was over the River Dnieper and the race northwards to link up with Guderian was on.

Panzergruppe 2, on the other side of the pocket being created, struggled desperately to maintain the momentum of its southern advance. Surprise had initially paved the way. Soviet General of Engineers Tschistoff, who had been tasked to construct a defensive obstacle along the River Desna, directed his train from Moscow into Novgorod-Severski on 3 September. It had already been in German hands for eight days. On the following day General Model, commanding the spearhead German 3rd Panzer Division, which had penetrated to 16km north of the River Sejm in Krolevec, was handed a selection of captured maps. They had been removed from the body of a crashed Soviet airman, shot while attempting to escape. Analysis of the material revealed 3rd Panzer lay directly on the boundary between the Soviet Twenty-first and Thirteenth armies and that ahead a gap loomed between the opposing enemy forces. Two days’ fighting through stubborn resistance ‘in every village’ in driving rain followed. A bridgehead was thrown across the River Sejm at Malnja. By 9 September Model’s division was a further 25km south. An advanced detachment with the division Panzerjäger battalion, reinforced with a medium Panzer company (PzKpfwIIIs), a light tank platoon and a company of motorised infantry, was created from the dispersed spearhead element to push on alone. Major Frank, its commander, was given a simple directive: ‘thrust forward as far as possible’. Behind him the 3rd Panzer Division regrouped and concentrated for a deliberate division attack, due to commence at 06.00 hours on 10 September. Every soldier was informed this was the final dash required to link with Panzergruppe 1, advancing towards them from the south. Rain began to soak the columns as the attack toward Romny started.

Panzergruppe 2 reached and crossed two bridges north and south of the city of Romny, establishing a bridgehead over the River Sula. Initially unaware of their presence, violent local Russian counter-attacks developed in the built-up area and around the bridges; 25 air attacks were directed against the 3rd Panzer Division strung out along muddy roads. Fuel trucks had to be towed through impassable boggy areas by engineer half-track tractors to refuel Major Frank’s advance detachment. On 12 September, with the appearance of clearer weather, the small group was ordered to test the route further south to Lokhvitsa.⁽¹⁶⁾ Generalfeldmarschall von Bock was satisfied to note that ‘resistance has collapsed in front of the Second Army and Panzergruppe 2’. Success appeared to beckon:

There was palpable tension at von Bock’s headquarters.

Panzer Unteroffizier Hans Becker was enduring the harsh reality of executing his commander’s intent from a more human perspective on the ground. ‘The advance had been growing steadily slower and slower,’ he said, ‘the number of casualties larger and larger.’ He had destroyed six Russian tanks from his own Panzer PzKpfwIV during a single day’s action until his tank was immobilised by a strike on the right-hand track. With no infantry in direct support, the crew decided to blow up the Panzer to prevent it falling into enemy hands. ‘The score was six to one and we were without a scratch between us,’ commented Becker ruefully. Within a day the crew was in action again, this time manning a reserve Panzer. ‘We felt ill at ease,’ he confessed, because there had been no time to paint the barrel with rings commemorating the crew’s tally of tank kills. Although merely a superstition, it was important to them. The new tank was also a PzKpfwIV but it ‘was unfamiliar in small ways, and all of us were suffering from the aftereffects of the previous evening’s combat,’ he said. During the four and a half hours of subsequent fighting, the new Panzer despatched ‘two enemy tanks up in flames’.

As they broke off the action ‘there came a heart-catching crack and jolt’. Becker instinctively realised this was not superficial damage. ‘The morning’s ill-omens had been justified.’ They had received a direct strike on the right rear corner. The Panzer burst into flames. Two of his five-man crew were dead, ‘sprawled in a corner, covered with blood’. The survivors hauled the bodies through the hatch to prevent them being burned. Unusually, the Panzer did not explode, but there was no alternative but to abandon the scorched but repairable hull to the enemy. Running, dodging and weaving, the three remaining crew members started back to their headquarters using a brief lull in the enemy fire. Once clear, Becker described how ‘dejectedly we plodded back four or five kilometres, smoking cigarettes to steady our nerves’. Their appearance was bizarre. All had been splattered with blood from their dead comrades and the splinters that had ricocheted around the Panzer interior as the incoming round had struck home. Depressing news awaited them when they reached their company headquarters. Two complete crews had failed to return. Their seriously wounded company commander was doggedly manning his post and listened to their unfortunate situation report before being evacuated to hospital himself. Victory had been as costly as defeat. Becker reflected, ‘glory grows with the passing of time, and the best battles are battles long ago.’⁽¹⁸⁾

Even the soldiers fighting in the field could sense the climax to this battle was fast approaching. Cavalry Feldwebel Max Kuhnert, riding reconnaissance for infantry regiments, recalled ‘latrine news’ or gossip ‘that a large encirclement was in progress around Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, since air activity had increased and we were urged to march faster’. The implication merely inspired resignation. ‘This meant less rest for everyone, including our horses.’⁽¹⁹⁾ As before, the infantry struggled to match the pace of the Panzers. Units on foot, particularly those in transition between battle areas, requisitioned whatever transport was available. Theo Scharf, marching with the 97th Infantry Division, ‘estimated the division [column] reached a maximum [length] of about 60km, with hardly anybody on foot’. Quartermasters did not necessarily approve, but turned a blind eye. Soldiers simply took what horses and wagons they needed. On nearing the combat zone, Scharf said, ‘the illicit requisitioning and trappings, the rubber plants and canary cages, all melted away and the soldiers’ boots were back on the ground.’⁽²⁰⁾

At midnight on 14 September, XIVth Panzer Corps with Panzergruppe 1 ordered its spearhead division, 9th Panzer, to take the railway station at Romodon, 138km north of the Dnieper crossing at Kremenchug. It received further supplementary orders the next day to block Soviet advances east of Mirgorod and advance north to seize a crossing over the River Sula and link up with Panzergruppe 2 driving south on Lokhvitsa. This was where it was proposed the spearheads should meet. Two battle groups formed for the task: one artillery-heavy for the blocking order and a second with Panzers and motorised infantry to achieve the link-up. This was the final spurt to achieve the encirclement. The Panzer battle group advancing north to Senca began to overrun large numbers of Soviet lorries, including one column of 50 trucks. Captured Soviet soldiers in the vehicles were completely shocked, convinced they were moving in a totally secure rear area. By midnight on 15 September Kampfgruppe vehicles of the 9th Panzer motorised infantry were approaching the railway station at Senca. Ahead lay the River Sula.

Three days before, Major Frank’s vanguard unit of Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 had overwhelmed Soviet defences along a road just east of the same river during the evening twilight. During the subsequent hours of darkness they drove a further 45km undetected through Soviet territory. An undamaged bridge over the same meandering river was captured 2km north-east of Lokhvitsa. Heavy fighting developed until the arrival of the first substantial battle groups forming part of the 3rd Panzer Division deliberate attack. As night fell on 13 September, the soldiers camouflaged their vehicles behind haystacks and underneath stooks of corn. Officers closely observed the silhouetted outline of Lokhvitsa, clearly identifiable now from the high ground upon which they had paused. The scene was thrown into golden relief by the dying rays of the setting sun. On inspection:

Frank’s battle group, combined with the leading 3rd Panzer Division battle group, fought its way into Lokhvitsa at 05.00 hours the following morning. The large north bridge across the tributary of the River Sula, which ran through the main city, was seized in a coup de main assault. German motorised infantrymen clambered over six Soviet heavy anti-aircraft guns which were lined up wheel to wheel, filling the street and pavements 200m beyond the bridge. There was virtually no resistance. The Soviet crews were asleep.⁽²²⁾

Confusion reigned as the two converging German army group spearheads groped towards each other in a mêlée of fighting, closing in from both the north and south. The 3rd Division battle group pushed on.

Shortly after, Guderian’s headquarters received a short radio message: ‘14 Sep 1941, 18.20 hours, Panzergruppen 1 and 2 establish contact.’

The grimy soldiers indicated the way across the small stream. Oberleutnant Warthmann’s Panzer ground its way over and turned toward Lubny. The rest followed. Presently they pulled alongside other armoured vehicles with a white ‘K’ (Kampfgruppe ‘Kleist’) painted on the front and rear mudguards. Their own vehicles had the white ‘G’ denoting the Kampfgruppe ‘Guderian’. By 09.10 hours on 15 September the 3rd and 9th Panzer Divisions established conclusive physical contact at Lokhvitsa in the central Ukraine. Stretching out to the west lay five Soviet field armies within this initial tenuous ring.⁽²³⁾

Von Bock announced the same day: ‘the ring has closed around the enemy in front of the inner wings of Army Groups South and Centre’. ‘The battle at Kiev,’ he declared, ‘has thus become a dazzling success.’ Hannibal at Cannae won his battle but failed to defeat Rome. Von Bock thought in parallel. A huge victory was in the offing:

To achieve this the Soviet field armies embraced by the Panzer wings had now to be annihilated. Although the potential strategic reward matched the experience of Cannae, the scale was entirely different. On a hot day in August 2,000 years before, 120,000 men fighting on foot and horse faced each other in an area measuring 1.5km by 1.75km. They died at the rate of 100 per minute.⁽²⁵⁾ At Kiev on the first day of the link-up, three German infantry armies and two Panzergruppen had trapped five Russian armies in a huge triangle with sides 500km long encompassing an area of 135,500sq km.⁽²⁶⁾ The same tactics were being applied in a totally different technological age over the massively greater distances appropriate to modern armoured warfare. The triangle covered an area that would today link Paris, Frankfurt and Milan. Euphoric German newsreels portrayed the area as lying between Stettin in the north of the Reich, Cologne in the west and Munich to the south. Seeking to escape this trap were between a half and three-quarters of a million Russian troops, at least 665,000 men from 50 divisions. The scale of killing was also different in modern warfare. At Cannae, 50,000 Romans were lost in a single afternoon. In the battles around Kiev the Russians lost an average of 8,543 soldiers each day for 64 days.⁽²⁷⁾

German field commanders were under no illusion that the hardest part had yet to come. The Russians would fight. Generaloberst Guderian visited Major Frank’s observation post near Lubny on the morning of the successful encirclement. ‘A fine view could be obtained over the countryside,’ he later wrote, ‘and Russian supply columns were to be seen marching from west to east.’ He spoke with Oberstleutnant Munzel, commander of the 6th Panzer Regiment belonging to the 3rd Panzer Division. Prior to ‘Barbarossa’ the regiment numbered about 198 tanks. ‘On this day,’ Guderian observed, ‘Munzel had at his disposal only one Panzer IV [heavy], three Panzer IIIs [medium] and six Panzer IIs [light tanks armed with 20mm cannon], that is to say ten tanks were all that was left of a regiment.’ It was an ominous portent of the Pyrrhic nature of a victory yet to be confirmed and, as Guderian commented, gave ‘a vivid picture of how badly the troops needed a rest and a period for maintenance’.⁽²⁸⁾ Surrounding such a massive Russian force had been a decisive achievement. The scale of this pocket dwarfed any previous experience in the history of warfare.

As at Smolensk and earlier encirclement battles, the coup de grâce had to be administered by the infantry divisions. They did not relish the prospect of such killing unless it meant a shortening of the campaign. Günther von Scheven, a 33-year-old infantryman, instinctively appreciated what this would mean. ‘There is no rest,’ he wrote home. ‘Always the same marching through woodless areas and along endless roads, column after column. Horse, rider and guns like spectres in thick clouds of dust.’ Having marched over 2,000km, he was approaching the extremes of physical and psychological endurance. ‘The last few days of combat are taking a toll of my courage,’ he admitted. ‘One cannot encompass the destruction of so many lives.’ He had already experienced ‘the wild despairing break-out attacks the Russians attempted, surprising even for us, right up to our front with tanks, infantry and Cossacks’. The ‘experience of death is awful,’ he lamented, ‘like a new form of baptism’. Günther von Scheven had fought the earlier encirclement battles south of Uman. His conclusion was both cynical and laconic: ‘probably,’ he said, ‘we will have to annihilate everything before this war is going to end.’⁽²⁹⁾

It was a depressing prospect.

The reduction of the Kiev pocket

As in the earlier encirclement battles, the Panzer ring faced inward, toward the pocket interior, and outward, establishing pickets to repel Soviet relief attempts. They awaited the arrival of the infantry divisions. Between 16 and 19 September the German Second and Seventeenth Armies – respectively from the north and south – closed in upon Yagolin, the inner encircling ring objective. Sixth German Army, meanwhile, carried out a concentric assault upon the city of Kiev, advancing broadly from the west. It was the third largest city in the Soviet Union and fell after bitter fighting on 20 September, a depressing blow to Russian morale. Some 35 German divisions began to compress the sides of the pocket. Before long the original triangle had shrunk to a smaller version about the size of an area between Munich, Stuttgart and Würzburg in Germany, or likewise Caen, Le Mans and Paris. At this point the manoeuvring was over. The methodical dismemberment and killing of five trapped Soviet armies began.

On 19 September 33-year-old Soviet Major Jurij Krymov wrote a letter to his wife Anka. Surrounded by sleeping soldiers, he pored over the letter in fading evening light, utilising the flickering flame of a lamp and throwing grotesque shadows onto the white clay walls of the shed where he sat. Opposite was his commissar. He had been four days without sleep.

Krymov had not written to his wife for some time. There had been ‘no chance to send a letter’. Now appreciating the gravity of the present situation, he felt ‘a written letter might somehow get through to you, an unwritten one would clearly disappear without trace’. He glanced at the soldiers all around, sleeping with full equipment, rifles and machine guns cradled in their arms, only belts unbuckled for comfort, and laboriously attempted to write in the poor light. He described the battlefield night sky about him: ‘wonderful golden twigs,’ he wrote, created by flares ‘grew vertically into the darkness’.

As the Germans drove into the pocket, sub-pockets were created, which in turn were smothered in hard fighting. Jewgenlij Dolmatowski, with a Russian press company, was isolated in just such an enclave. ‘We were surrounded, I believe, by soldiers called grenadiers,’ he said. Few asked for quarter which was not freely given. ‘It ended in hand-to-hand fighting,’ continued Dolmatowski, ‘during which I was thrown to the ground, and virtually held down by my hands and feet.’ He likened the desperate mêlée to ‘fighting like children’ but ‘actually, it was to the last’. They were totally outfought. ‘I have never had such a thrashing in my life,’ he admitted, ‘even as a child – never!’ Afterwards ‘we were then taken off to the prison camps’.⁽²⁾

Russian units marched and counter-marched through the confusion inside the pocket, constantly seeking a way out. Local inhabitants, aghast at the prospect of impending German occupation, looked on in despair. Major Krymov described the scene on evacuating a village as they retired deeper into the shrinking pocket.

As logistic units attempted to march towards the centre of the pocket, combat units reorganising and regrouping for a break-out marched the other way. Units became entangled. ‘The pocket has been constricted to an appalling degree,’ observed Krymov, ‘nobody can move now, in any direction.’ The decisive phase of the battle was anticipated within hours.

Belated attempts to break out of the pocket during the night of 17/18 September were broken up by the Germans.

The Luftwaffe was meanwhile engaged in two vital tasks: tactical air-ground support for the advancing Panzers and interdicting the area of operations to block all Russian approaches to the pocket. Major Frank’s 3rd Panzer Division advance guard, for example, which achieved the decisive link-up at Lokhvitsa, was protected from a Soviet tank formation by Stuka dive-bombers which broke up an advance menacing one of its tenuously held bridgeheads.⁽⁴⁾ For four weeks the Luftflotten systematically attacked all Soviet rail communications converging on the area of operations from the east and north-east. The northern part of the pocket was covered by Luftflotte 2’s IInd Fliegerkorps, while Vth Fliegerkorps from Luftflotte 4 attacked in the south. Strafing and bombing attacks were mounted against stations, bridges, defiles and locomotives and trains. Soviet reinforcements for Marshal Budenny’s armies were blocked and lines of retreat disrupted. Fearful punishment was meted out to Russian vehicle traffic jams unable to manoeuvre within the pocket.⁽⁵⁾

Bad weather hampered close formation attacks, which were substituted by isolated and group sorties. These kept railway lines in the battle area permanently cut. Repeated Bf110 strafing runs cut 20 to 30 trains marooned along one section of railway track to ribbons. Large formation-size Russian units did not appear on the roads until forced to concentrate in order to break out. As soon as they committed themselves, they were – in the words of the Luftflotten commander – ‘relentlessly attacked with devastating results’.⁽⁶⁾ Gabriel Temkin, serving in a Russian labour battalion, remembered:

Pure birch forests, which, Temkin confessed, ‘I never before or after saw,’ were consumed in the flames. ‘The burning greyish-white trees were turning reddish, as if blushing and ashamed of what was going on.’ As he observed the inferno he became aware of a peculiarly pungent smell. ‘For the first time,’ Temkin said ‘I smelled burnt flesh.’ He was unable to distinguish whether it was men or horses.⁽⁷⁾

Stuka dive-bombers were employed to shatter resistance in the pocket. Between 12 and 21 September, Vth Fliegerkorps flew 1,422 sorties, dropping 567,650kg of bombs and 96 incendiary Type 36 devices. Results were impressive: 23 tanks, 2,171 vehicles, 6 Flak batteries, 52 railway trains and 28 locomotives were destroyed. In addition, 355 vehicles were damaged and 41 put out of action alongside 36 trains. Railway lines were cut in 18 places and a bridge destroyed. Soviet losses included 65 aircraft shot down and 42 destroyed on the ground. Luftwaffe losses, by comparison, were slight, with 17 aircraft destroyed and 14 damaged, costing 18 missing aircrew and 9 dead.⁽⁸⁾

German infantry divisions moved in to eliminate any remaining resistance. On 19 September Fritz Köhler’s motorised infantry unit was still north of the River Desna. At midday he heard the radio Sondermeldung that the link-up with Army Group South had been achieved and four Soviet armies surrounded. After an afternoon of ‘routine work’ they heard a further announcement that the city of Kiev had fallen. Three days later he was in action with an advance guard hastily dug in to repel break-out attempts near Lokhvitsa. As six T-34 tanks moved towards them, Köhler realised they ‘had been seen’. His lorry-borne unit had only recently dismounted and consequently ‘had not dug in very far’. German 37mm anti-tank and 105mm field guns directly engaged the tanks, but the ‘rounds ricocheted straight off’. One German gun after the other was knocked out during the unstoppable advance, which drove over and crushed wrecked guns and the bodies of the hapless crews. The last German guns abruptly withdrew, leaving the infantry unprotected. Köhler nervously glanced above the parapet of his shell-scrape as:

The threatened section of the line was restored with the arrival of 88mm guns and Pioniers who laid mines. Köhler commented, ‘luckily there were no [enemy] infantrymen sitting on the tanks, otherwise few of us would have seen that evening’.⁽⁹⁾

The German 45th Division, already badly mauled at Brest-Litovsk, began to arrive at Priluki, 120km east of Kiev, on the eastern edge of the pocket. Like so many other divisions, it had endured a steady attrition rate as it marched eastward. At Brest-Litovsk it had lost more men than during the entire French campaign. Between 1 and 6 September, 40 more soldiers were killed and a further two officers and 23 men between 9 and 13 September. Pouring rain slowed their rate of advance to 4.5km per day. They were under the command of Second Army advancing on the pocket from the north. Its commander relayed the situation in an order of the day on 10 September:

As the 45th Division entered the line the outline of the pocket had been reduced to a diameter of about 40km. It was subsequently attached to Sixth Army belonging to Army Group South, forming part of a group of eight German divisions tasked with forcing the beleaguered surviving Russian divisions to surrender. On 20 September 45th Division was set astride the Yagolin gap on the eastern side of the perimeter, which became a focal point for Russian escape attempts. As the first battalions started arriving on 22 September, the Russian attacks began.

Cavalry Feldwebel Max Kuhnert had also arrived at the periphery of the ring surrounding the Kiev pocket. The perimeter, he could see, ‘was closing fast, but this only made the Russian forces in and around Kiev all the more determined to throw everything into the battle’. Positioned behind a Panzer division, Kuhnert admitted, ‘luckily for us’ only ‘strays of the Russian armour got through’. He ruefully reflected, ‘we were then in a fine pickle’, and ‘wished myself many kilometres away’.

Massed Soviet break-out attempts often resulted in thinly distributed German mobile units being surrounded themselves. These were reduced to adopting an Igel (literally island or hedgehog) all-round defence position, from which they fought for their very lives. Walter Oqueka participated in the earlier Uman encirclement, and was a crew member of a 20mm Flak 38 mounted on a half-track chassis. His unit’s role was air defence, not to fight the ‘grey-green colossus’ Soviet tanks that suddenly appeared on their front.

Oqueka’s battery commander, Oberleutnant Rossman, ordered them to concentrate automatic fire on the tracks of the advancing T-34s. Nobody was optimistic as to the likely outcome, but there remained little else they could do. Oqueka ‘clenched his teeth and decided they would sell their skins as dearly as possible’. They held their fire until the tanks had approached to within 200m. A burst of fire smashed the track of the leading T-34, which began to turn helplessly around on the same spot. Guns were then ordered to concentrate fire at the turret. Even before the first magazine emptied, the turret lid flipped open and a white flag appeared. The Russian crew clambered out and were taken prisoner. Meanwhile the cone of 20mm fire was switched to the left and another T-34 similarly disabled.

Instead of surrendering, the crew of this vehicle chose to fight with small arms as they emerged. They were cut to pieces by multiple impacts of 20mm cannon explosions which sparked and spluttered around the hull. Other tanks met the same fate. Crews were scythed down at any sign of resistance. The rest of the T-34s turned back. It was inconceivable to Oqueka and the other gun crews that their insignificant calibre cannon could have triumphed against tanks considered the heaviest and best of their type. ‘Our nervous tension was released in a triumphant yell,’ Oqueka exclaimed, ‘as if we were eight-year-old kids playing cowboys and indians!’

They moved forward curiously to examine the results of their handiwork and discovered that, apart from cut caterpillar treads and damage to drive and sprocket wheels, there was nothing to explain the abrupt abandonment of the tanks. ‘Not until the prisoners were questioned did the riddle become clear,’ explained Oqueka. The answer lay in the resonant din produced by multiple 20mm strikes on cast steel turrets, which had the effect of transforming them into ‘huge bells’.

Oqueka recalled the example of executions of indicted criminals in ancient China. Hapless individuals were incarcerated inside a huge bell which was hammered outside until the unfortunate victim expired. The 20mm gunners appreciated they were not totally defenceless when facing heavy tanks. Oqueka claimed his battery disabled 32 T-34 tanks before the end of the year, employing similar tactics.⁽¹²⁾

Other German sectors on the Kiev perimeter were not so fortunate. On the right wing of the 45th Infantry Division, Infantry Regiment 133 experienced ‘a lunatic and reckless cavalry attack which rode through our machine gun fire’. They were followed by ‘mass human-wave attacks, which we had not experienced until now’. Cossacks galloped through German outposts with drawn sabres, slashing down with such force that troops caught in the open had their helmets cleaved through to the skull. A segment of this epic Tolstoyian charge reached as far as the division headquarters at Yagolin before it was stopped. Behind the cavalry came a tightly compact triple-wave infantry assault, supported by heavy artillery fire. Four tank and three lorry-mounted infantry platoons were amongst them, suicidally driving directly against the division line. As they dismounted when blocked by a railway line atop an embankment facing the German positions, they were subjected to a withering storm of fire from co-ordinated artillery, anti-tank, machine gun and small arms fire. ‘The dead,’ according to the division report, ‘covered the length of the embankment in countless masses.’ Among them were women in uniform.

On 24 September the tidal wave of suicide assaults shifted against the 44th Division to the right and south of 45th Division. Russian troops exploiting inter-division boundary gaps penetrated into the rear positions, falling upon the logistic and artillery units that stood in the way. The 6th Battery of Artillery Regiment 98, occupying high ground at point 131, fired directly into waves of attacking Russian infantry, creating huge gashes in the advancing crowds. Undeterred, the remorseless mob swept into the German gun positions where furious hand-to-hand fighting developed. One German artillery piece was captured and hauled around to fire at its own division headquarters, wounding horses but missing personnel. At this moment in the struggle, one of those curious paradoxes of war occurred. While the chaotic and savage mêlée continued around the gun positions of 6th Battery, hardly 100m away columns of Russian infantry marched by moving eastwards, with rifles at the shoulder, as if on parade, oblivious to what was going on. They would have made all the difference and widened the breakthrough if they had been deployed to support the penetration struggling on their flank. The 45th Division padre, watching this in disbelief, remarked ‘they did not take the slightest notice of the clear route on offer over there, they were on another mission!’⁽¹³⁾

Fearful losses on both sides became increasingly apparent as the pocket was compressed. ‘I could not avoid seeing the truckfuls of young corpses,’ recalled Max Kuhnert following the advance. They were German.

Strewn along the roadsides were dismembered corpses. German soldiers were visibly affected at the sight of uniformed female Russian casualties. Kuhnert, inspecting a knocked out ‘60-tonner’ tank, saw that the flames had burned away the clothes of the driver and another crew member, a woman, hanging half out of a side door. She was probably a tank crew member but Kuhnert, uncomfortable with the concept of women fighting in uniform, surmised, ‘the Russians had apparently been so confident of their breakthrough that one had taken his wife or sweetheart into the large tank.’ Kuhnert was eating iron rations, which often contained a small tin of pork. As he prised it open with the tip of his bayonet and took his first mouthful, it coincided with the awful stench emanating from the tank.

He was violently sick.

The reduction of the Kiev pocket was a battle of annihilation. As the Soviet divisions were cut to pieces, German casualties rose also. ‘Whose turn would it be today?’ was the unasked question vexing tired infantry as they roused themselves from a few hours’ sleep, often in woodland, before resuming the advance. ‘Pain, hunger and thirst took second place now,’ said one soldier, ‘with the ice-cold breath of death brushing our cheeks and sending shivers down our spines.’ It took five days to reduce the pocket. On the fourth day, 45th Infantry Division was attacking a heavily wooded feature in the Beresany area, pushing westwards toward Kiev. Heavy hand-to-hand fighting developed near Ssemjonowka against Soviet soldiers unusually armed with sub-machine guns and automatic weapons. There was no surrender.

Bundles of grenades bound together were hurled at the German attackers for maximum effect. One concentrated charge wiped out an entire machine gun crew. All night long the Russians repeatedly attempted to break out. By first light about 100 corpses could be counted, sprawled around the perimeter of one of the lead companies. A body inspection revealed 25 were officers and commissars and another 25 were NCOs. The wood where the enemy had been concentrated was raked by heavy artillery time and again until all resistance ceased: 700 PoWs including a Soviet army corps general emerged.

Even areas already overrun had to be systematically combed. It was a slow, methodical and remorselessly bloody process. ‘Survival became the only thing that mattered,’ declared Kuhnert. ‘One could actually become jealous of others who got wounded, not badly mind you, but just enough to get them home or away from this place of slaughter, stench and utter destruction.’ All the countless haystacks and straw huts that dotted the landscape had to be laboriously checked. Hiding inside were cut-off enemy groups who continued to pick off single German soldiers or vehicles. A ‘reconnaissance by fire’ was instituted to overcome the problem. The shelters were shot into flames. The 45th Division chaplain described the surreal scene:

Unteroffizier Wilhelm Prüller with Infantry Regiment 11 was pursuing fleeing Russian columns in vehicles mixed with tanks. German Panzer and motorised companies had become intermingled with the enemy ‘in the intoxication of this fabulous chase’.

Prisoners were flushed out from beneath haystacks or lying between furrows in the fields. ‘Shy, unbelieving, filled with terror, they came,’ gloated Prüller. Resistance by ‘many a Bolshevik’ was regarded as ‘stupid pig-headedness’. They were shot on the spot.⁽¹⁶⁾

By the fifth day Russian resistance was visibly collapsing. Col-Gen Michael P. Kirponos, commanding the Kiev troops, perished alongside his staff when his column failed to break through the German ring. Very few Soviet units escaped. Marshals Budenny, Timoshenko and their senior political commissar, Khrushchev, were flown out of the pocket by air. M. A. Burmistrenko, a member of the war council and Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, and the Chief of Staff of the Soviet Army Group, General Pupikov, were killed, as were most members of the General Staff. One single cavalry unit led by Maj-Gen Borisov managed to exfiltrate with 4,000 men.⁽¹⁷⁾ Although masses of Soviet PoWs were rounded up, they did not readily surrender. Gabriel Temkin, serving in a Soviet labour battalion, admitted ‘although officially a taboo in the Soviet press, the PoW issue was a public secret’. The Russian public was aware huge numbers of prisoners had been taken. ‘We were told both how the Nazis were mistreating them, which was indeed a fact, and what the Soviet punishment for letting oneself become a PoW was, which was also true.’

Commanders who surrendered were considered deserters, the consequence was their families could be arrested as forfeit. Likewise, families of Red Army soldiers taken prisoner would be denied government benefits and aid. ‘Falling into the enemy’s hands was considered almost tantamount to treason,’ Temkin explained. Exoneration was achievable only if one was incapacitated by wounds, killed, or later escaped. The capture of Stalin’s own son, Yakov, produced a poignant irony. ‘The Germans,’ Temkin said,’ were dropping leaflets with his photo over cities as well as over railway stations and Red Army groupings.’ Many soldiers had already witnessed the random and apparently officially sponsored shootings and ill-treatment of prisoners. Stalin’s son later died in a concentration camp. Temkin had no illusions. ‘I could not get out of my mind the fear of falling into their hands,’ he confessed. ‘I dreaded it more than being killed.’⁽¹⁸⁾

Major Jurij Krymov had already resigned himself to the inevitable. He received notification at 02.00 hours that the enemy were 4km from his left flank. There was no room inside the crowded shed with his sleeping soldiers, so he went outside. ‘The whole horizon was illuminated in red with everywhere the damn clatter of machine gun fire.’ It was apparent that ‘even with the best will in the world we are not going to get out of this’. A further depressing report revealed contact had been lost with the neighbouring unit to his left. Beleaguered from all sides, ‘they were being overwhelmed by events’. His commissar, who had supported him throughout, interrupted his melancholic train of thought, passing him two biscuits. ‘I had absolutely no idea where he had got them from,’ he said, ‘but he had not eaten them, he had brought them to me.’ Krymov’s letter to his wife stopped at this point. He was killed three days later.⁽¹⁹⁾

Leutnant Kurt Meissner was watching yet another despairing Soviet attack on the hard-pressed German ring. ‘This great mass of singing humanity had only been told to break out in our direction,’ he said. He and his men were new to combat and afraid. They had never seen anything like this before.

Meissner and his men, covering a vast and flat sector, fired and fired until a wall of corpses built up, behind which still, advancing Russians began to shoot back. Thousands more came on, pushing beyond the bloody barrier and trying to rush the German positions. Meissner’s men quickly fell back and took up new positions to avoid being overrun. Now blocked, the Soviet tide sought to break through in another direction. As they did so, the Germans poured a murderous fire into their flanks. Meissner admitted:

On the fifth day it ended. German soldiers moved warily across to take the surrenders. Meissner recalled, ‘we moved over hundreds of dead, dying and wounded, they had no apparent organisation for dealing with the latter. Russki – Komm!’ was the first order preceding nightmarish forced marches to the rear and PoW camps.

The battle of Kiev spluttered to an end on 24 September 1941. A doctor from the 3rd Panzer Division surveying the battlefield reported:

Sergeant Ivan Nikitch Krylov, a demoted Soviet staff captain, witnessed the final days in the pocket.

Six Soviet armies – the Fifth, Twenty-first, Twenty-sixth, Twenty-seventh, Thirty-eighth and Fortieth – were either wholly or partially destroyed and 50 Soviet divisions were removed from the Soviet order of battle as a consequence. The German news service announced the pocket contained 665,000 Russian prisoners, 884 tanks and 3,718 guns. Soviet sources record that 44 divisions and six brigades with 12 defended localities participated during the Kiev defensive operation conducted between 7 July and 26 September. A total of 700,544 casualties are admitted, of which the greater part – 616,304 – were irrecoverable losses.⁽²³⁾

The battle, as Krylov suggested, was not completely one-sided. Feldwebel Max Kuhnert’s unit suffered heavy casualties but, as a colleague pointed out, ‘our losses are nothing like the poor devils of the battalions’. The IInd Battalion and reconnaissance unit on his right flank was much reduced: ‘motorcycles with sidecars were standing or lying on the primitive track and there were bodies everywhere’.⁽²⁴⁾

Chaplain Rudolf Gschöpf’s 45th Division had received a comparable mauling to that already received at Brest-Litovsk. Three infantry Regiments lost 86, 151 and 75 men respectively; 40 others died at the division dressing station and 40 more were scattered elsewhere. In total the division lost 40 officers and 1,200 NCOs and men. This represented half a regiment’s complement of officers and a battalion and a half of men. A service was held over the graves, freshly covered in flowers, and the military band played before the division departed the battlefield. Gschöpf commented, ‘it was the last time our music corps were able to play their instruments during this war.’⁽²⁵⁾ Vehicle shortages had dictated the instruments be sent home to make space for essential stores. The war was losing its heraldry; lethality and objective usefulness were all that was left.

The German press was jubilant. The Völkischer Beobachter crowed: ‘An Army of One Million Wiped Out!’ and ‘End of the Kiev Catastrophe’. The Frankfurter Zeitung declared simply: ‘Five Soviet Armies Annihilated’.⁽²⁶⁾ For over a month there had been no Sondermeldungen relayed to the population since the heady days of Smolensk. The third anniversary of the start of World War 2 had passed, bringing with it an inevitable questioning of what had been achieved and, more significantly: what remained to be done? Interest in the Russian War had not been attracting the previous banner headlines. Secret SS situation reports briefed to Himmler at the beginning of September stated, ‘the already overlong campaign in the east is viewed by much of the population with a certain disquiet.’⁽²⁷⁾ Victory at Kiev changed all this. Attention once again focused on Russia. Popular interest surged to the previous ‘Barbarossa invasion levels. ‘Recently held convictions that static positional operations had developed and that a severe winter campaign is in the offing have slipped into the background,’ observed reports.⁽²⁸⁾ A German housewife living near Nuremberg wrote:

German infantry with Army Group South were less sanguine. It was they who had to mop up the mortally wounded Soviet armies, easily written off by the press, as if surrounding them was all that was required. Finishing off the Kiev pocket had been a hazardous enterprise. Thirty-five German divisions, including six Panzer and four motorised, had been required to execute this Cannae. They represented about one-third of the strength of the original ‘Barbarossa’ invasion force – a massive effort. Soldiers felt and recognised the immense strain. An Obergefreiter with the 98th Infantry Division wrote, ‘we have had 75% losses in our company’. He anticipated the arrival of replacements in a few days. ‘But I believe if they do arrive sooner, as is invariably the case, we will already have been relieved and moved on before they even get here.’ Replacements never seemed to arrive.⁽³⁰⁾

Another Unteroffizier, with the 79th Infantry Division, wrote he ‘had got through the pocket fighting east of Kiev well enough’. He hoped ‘that after this battle they would be taken out of the line, but, even though we have shrunk to a tiny band, sadly, it was out of the question’. They were already marching toward Kharkov. ‘I have strong reservations,’ he confessed, ‘whether we will see an end to the war in Russia this year.’ The outlook appeared pessimistic. ‘Russia’s military might is certainly broken, but the land is too big, and the Russians are not thinking of surrender.’⁽³¹⁾ His view was echoed by that of a Gefreiter with the 72nd Infantry Division, who declared in a letter that ‘the campaign against Russia began today, three months ago’. He had then surmised ‘the Bolsheviks would be ripe for surrender within at least eight to ten weeks’. German soldiers, he reflected, were more used to a Blitzkrieg – a tempo campaign. Progress had been as rapid as in France when considered in manpower and material terms. ‘Only this morning,’ he wrote, ‘we heard by chance that near Kiev for example, 600 guns were destroyed and 150,000 men taken prisoner… What about those for numbers!… Russia is almost inexhaustible!’ But there was, he pointed out, a fundamental difference between the French and Russian campaigns. In the west:

In short, ‘there would be no armistice forthcoming from the Russians’.⁽³²⁾

Generalfeldmarschall von Bock became impatient to begin the promised thrust against Moscow as soon as the encirclement at Kiev had been achieved. The move south had been a distraction from his main effort. He had been miserly with resources, husbanding the main forces within Army Group Centre for as long as possible, reluctant to assist Guderian in the tactical possibilities he opened up as operations progressed. As these forces moved further south he became correspondingly geographically removed from what he clearly considered to be the overdue main effort: an assault on Moscow prior to winter. Throughout the Kiev encirclement battles his diary reflected his frustration and concern. On 20 September, the day after the formation of the pocket, he wrote:

On 24 September he observed, ‘it is clear that the Russians are withdrawing forces from in front of my front to prop up their threatened northern and southern wings. It is time!’⁽³³⁾

As ever, the soldiers in the field were blissfully ignorant of this intent. Panzerjäger Ernst Victor Meyer was enjoying the same sunny day to the east of the Kiev pocket. Writing to friends back home, he admitted his virtual ignorance of the true situation.

Theo Scharf, moving through cornfields with the 97th Infantry Division toward Kharkov, recalled, ‘the yellow ripe cornfields could now be picked out of their own tall, stalky forests.’⁽³⁵⁾

It was autumn.