War Without Garlands

Double encirclement… Vyazma and Bryansk

Artillery Hauptmann Georg Richter felt the sun on his back as he observed the Russian positions from the heights overlooking the River Desna. It was 1 October, a beautiful autumn day. His unit, Artillery Regiment 74, was in support of the 2nd (Viennese) Panzer Division belonging to Generaloberst Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4. The river lay in the dead ground before him. Scanning the other side, he was able to locate eight Russian bunkers. Both sides were harassing each other with sporadic artillery fire.

Richter wrote in his diary that night, ‘I believe the attack will start the next day; in my opinion it will be the last big operation this year.’ The woodland on the heights ‘was just like an exercise area where another track opens up as soon as a vehicle goes by’. It was a fragile peace. Mines were going off intermittently. Only 150m away a gun exploded as it was being guided into its firing position. Shortly after, a platoon prime mover (artillery towing vehicle) also blew up on a mine. There had been time while all this was going on to review the future. Doubts were less about whether the objective would be reached, but rather how the eventual victory would be played out.

Unteroffizier Helmut Pabst, serving with Ninth Army, declared, ‘We don’t yet know when it will start,’ but it would obviously be soon. ‘Somebody has seen the tanks,’ he said, ‘the yellow ones which were meant for Africa.’ All sorts of weapons – SP assault guns, Nebelwerfer multi-barrelled rocket launchers and heavy guns – were appearing in his sector. ‘It’s piling up inexorably like a thunderstorm,’ he observed. News was pieced together by the soldiers ‘like bits of a mosaic’. The front was showing all the signs of impending developments. Pabst and his men perceived ‘the veil over the calm getting thinner, the atmosphere gathering tension’.⁽²⁾ The storm was about to break.

At 04.40 hours the next morning – and ‘a hot day’, commented Richter – at least 20 batteries of artillery opened up around him in a ‘dazzling display of fire’. Simultaneously, ‘Stuka squadrons appeared from our rear and began to fly in huge circles’, awaiting direction for targets. A Focke-Wulf twin-fuselage reconnaissance aircraft curved by and appeared to transmit the objective to the Stukas, ‘who dived, huge detonations testifying to the power of their bombs’. Richter watched as directed artillery fire began to straddle the bunkers. ‘To our left a noticeable series of hissing reports captured our attention’ as Nebelwerfer rocket salvoes streaked out toward the Russian positions – ‘long trails of white smoke across the sky’.

‘Any war film would pale by comparison,’ commented Unteroffizier Pabst. He counted about 1,200 tanks, not including assault guns, advancing on a 2km front. After the artillery preparation he watched as ‘assault guns and motorised infantry come on without a pause’. Roads appeared across fields which 15 minutes previously had been a featureless expanse. He remarked the assault was ‘far bigger than the one on the frontier defences’ the previous June. ‘It will be some time before we see a picture like this again.’ The Russian defensive crust had first to be broken. Georg Richter monitored the forward movement closely through binoculars. ‘White Very signals indicated the front line,’ he said, ‘and red was a request to shift [artillery] fire in depth.’ Red lights were constantly arcing across the terrain to their front.⁽³⁾ Operation ‘Taifun’, the final attack towards Moscow, was under way.

Guderian’s Second Panzer Army to the south had the greater distance to cover and had begun its offensive from the Gluchow area on 30 September. This was within four days of the officially announced conclusion of the Kiev battle. He pushed northeastward against the Bryansk–Orel line with five Panzer divisions, four motorised infantry, one cavalry and six foot-marching infantry divisions. To the north, and on the left flank of Second Panzer Army, eight infantry divisions belonging to Second Infantry Army began to move forward to complete an encirclement of Soviet forces in the Bryansk area. A second pocket was foreseen around Vyazma. Left of Second Army, and further north, Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4 in concert with Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge’s Fourth Army provided the Schwerpunkt for the attack with 15 foot divisions, five Panzer and two motorised infantry divisions.

They were to advance due east from Roslavl to Moscow with their left flank on the upper Dnieper river east of Smolensk. The northern flank of Army Group Centre held Strauss’s Ninth Army with Panzergruppe 3 (Hoth) under command. It contained 18 infantry divisions, three Panzer and two motorised infantry divisions. Attacking north-east of Smolensk, their task was to penetrate Russian defences north of the Smolensk–Moscow road and cover the flank along the upper Volga river. Army Group Centre had been reinforced by an additional seven ‘fast’ divisions from Army Group North. Its sister formation, Army Group South, had placed one further Panzer, two motorised infantry and five foot divisions under command.

As envisaged in the original ‘Barbarossa’ concept, Panzergruppen 4 (Hoepner) and 3 (Hoth) were massed on the outer flanks of their respective infantry armies. Both Panzer forces were to drive eastward first then turn inwards, this time to encircle Vyazma. Subsidiary encirclements would be executed by the infantry armies as in the first battles east of the Bug, loosely enclosed by the pincers of the larger Panzer envelopments. Once the rings were closed the Panzers would leave the infantry armies behind to subjugate the pockets while they pushed on, maintaining maximum strength and tempo in the direction of Moscow. The Luftwaffe IInd and VIIIth Fliegerkorps had committed over nine fighter and nearly 15 fighter-bomber Geschwader, with eight Stuka, a Bf110, and intermediate- and long-range reconnaissance Geschwader and Staffeln in support. On the ground the Ist and IInd Flak Corps provided anti-aircraft and ground-role anti-tank assistance. The offensive took the Russians completely by surprise. They had felt it was too late in the year to launch another campaign.

Hauptmann Richter’s opening day of the offensive was beset by worries over the effectiveness of Russian mines. The third vehicle of his artillery column was abruptly blown into the air as they changed location to support the forward advance. His diary recorded it as the fourth mine strike in only two days. He quickly reached the damaged vehicle to recover the driver, who appeared uninjured, but ‘his face was as white as snow and he was shaking all over’. Richter drove through several villages toward the previously observed enemy bunkers. En route they saw ‘only a few curious inhabitants staring out of the doors’.

Soviet resistance along the line of bunkers was as tenacious as ever. Assault pioneers had directed artillery and Panzers in the direct-fire role and heavy infantry weapons close-up to embrasures and entrances, to no visible effect. Grenade after grenade was tossed in and one of Richter’s over-zealous NCOs was wounded in the process. Huge detonations reverberated but, as soon as the smoke cleared, pistol shots rang out as entry was sought. One captured Russian was motioned inside a bunker to persuade the crew to surrender. After disappearing from view a single shot rang out. ‘He didn’t come back,’ observed Richter. Artillery again commenced smashing at the entrance and more grenades were tossed in,, and still German casualties occurred as they attempted to break in. In exasperation the assault group sprinkled petrol across the entire bunker mound and set it on fire. Deprived of air, three Russian soldiers hesitantly emerged. ‘Several of our men were so frustrated and enraged they wanted to mete out summary justice,’ said Richter. ‘We quietened them down, conceding that we had at least emptied the bunker, but it had cost time.’ Fighting carried on throughout the night:

Richter’s final diary entry on this opening day of the new offensive echoed Hitler’s order of the day. ‘Today,’ it read, ‘the decisive battle against the Russian has begun.’ His opinion was ‘it ought to be all over before winter’.⁽⁴⁾ They had broken through the defensive crust along the River Desna.

As the momentum of the advance increased, combat transitioned to a series of rapid meeting engagements as the Panzers sought to build up an irrepressible tempo. On 4 October the advance elements of the Kampfgruppe ‘Koelitz’ spearheading the 2nd (Vienna) Panzer Division paused at a track junction, having broken through the Desna line. So engrossed were they in attempting to interpret their poor maps that they were taken aback by the sudden ‘tank alarm’ which immediately overrode their navigational dilemma. Three armoured vehicles had been spotted 300m to the right. These were immediately engaged and hit, but surprisingly to no effect. Especially hardened shot was loaded and could be seen striking their targets but still there was no response. An infantry Oberleutnant seeking to solve the mystery approached the tanks from the rear by motorcycle, and was seen standing and laughing amid the enemy vehicles. He shook the ‘barrel’ of the nearest, which resulted in the entire structure collapsing in on itself. The German advance had been delayed by masterfully constructed tank-target decoys.⁽⁵⁾

The prevailing mood along the Army Group Centre front was buoyant. ‘There is a tremendous pressure to get moving forward,’ wrote a Panzer division officer, describing the initial three days’ fighting.⁽⁶⁾ By the second day of the attack Guderian’s Second Panzer Army had penetrated 130km into the enemy hinterland, reaching the Orel–Bryansk road. Thereupon, Panzer spearheads began to turn inwards, to the north. Orel, a city of 120,000 inhabitants sitting astride a strategic road and rail junction, fell on 3 October. The 4th Panzer Division, forming part of this sweep, covered a 240km stretch from Gluchow to the objective in four days. The fuel and rations captured at Orel were sufficient to keep Second Panzer Army resupplied for two weeks. On 5 October, 18th Panzer Division captured Karatschew, and on the following day 17th Panzer took Bryansk and the Desna river bridge. This created a huge pocket south of the city, which was to contain elements of three Soviet armies: the Third, Thirteenth and Fiftieth. Meanwhile Panzergruppe 4 formed the thumb of a hand closing on Vyazma from the south.

The fingers enveloping the pocket from the north were provided by the armoured columns of 7th Panzer Division from Panzergruppe 3. Motorcyclist infantry from 10th Panzer entered the city of Vyazma on 7 October. A second huge pocket was thereby formed around the Sixteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Thirty-second Soviet armies. The Ostheer now had the last well-equipped Soviet field armies standing before Moscow in its grasp.

Newly promoted tank commander Feldwebel Karl Fuchs with the 7th Panzer Division relayed the triumphant news to his wife. At last the whole front was moving again:

Another officer in the same division reflected, ‘there is a mood among the troops that we have not seen since the Suwalki [the start of ‘Barbarossa’] days. Everyone is pleased we are finally moving forward again in our sector.’ The commander of the 6th Panzergrenadier Regiment directed ‘full speed ahead’ as his half-track column steadily overtook a line of Russian vehicles on the same road. Cloaked in swirling dust, the Russians were unaware of their predicament until vehicles failing to give way were promptly shot off the road. Panic dispersed the rest. Panzergrenadier Regiment 6 was the first German unit to reach the ‘Autostrasse’ which led from Vyazma to Moscow. A private soldier riding in the half-tracks jubilantly exclaimed, ‘everything was rolling like in the good old days; only one order remained – get moving forward with everything available!’ He continued:

The 7th Panzer Division War Diary described the closure of the Vyazma pocket on reaching the Moscow road as ‘a race between the 25th Panzer Regiment and the reinforced Panzergrenadier Regiment 6’. Following up the ‘fantastic success’ of the spearhead units, the infantry commander remarked, ‘we were surprised at the long columns of Russian PoWs marching against us towards the rear’. He reflected on the numerous roadside bunkers and anti-tank ditches which they passed one after the other. ‘They ought to have made our advance impossible – but they hadn’t used any of them.’⁽⁸⁾

Leutnant Wolfgang Koch, advancing pell-mell in the lead halftrack of Schützen Regiment 52 on Orel, with the 18th Panzer Division, recalled the men playing Tchaikovsky’s choral music on a gramophone in the back of the vehicle. It was just like France in 1940. The Luftwaffe bombed and burned villages ahead while they followed up in the Panzers. Eventually the grenadiers became tired of endless Russian mass choirs. Unlike France, the gramophone represented the only worthwhile booty they had picked up during the entire advance. After hours of ceaseless and monotonous motoring they found they could still bear the ‘Nutcracker Suite’.⁽⁹⁾

Following close behind came the foot infantry, visibly boosted by the sight of the damage and carnage wreaked by the Luftwaffe and Panzers leading ahead, ‘In brief – “Sieg und Heil!”,’ declared a Leutnant with the 123rd Infantry Division with heady optimism, ‘the Red Front has been smashed.’ He jubilantly added, ‘a feeling of profound good fortune has gripped us all, victory celebrations are almost within our grasp’.⁽¹⁰⁾ An artillery Gefreiter supporting the 23rd Infantry Division announced: ‘we have been actively moving forward here after holding this bloody front for almost two months’. They were now ‘storming ahead’. The tempo of the advance had meant he was unable to wash or shave for eight days. His battery alone from Artillery Regiment 59 had taken 1,200 prisoners. Victory beckoned.

A German propaganda company reporting the closure of the Vyazma pocket alongside the 2nd Panzer Division sensed the momentous achievement they were witnessing.

Oberst von Manteuffel, the commander of Panzergrenadier Regiment 6, had a less sanguine view of the situation. His predecessor had been killed in action only six weeks before. He suspected what might be coming. As soon as all his units had reported that they were set around the crucial eastern sector of the Vyazma ring he issued a simple instruction: ‘Dig in up to your necks!’⁽¹³⁾ It was to prove a prophetic directive. Inside the loosely held pocket rings were 67 Soviet Rifle divisions, six cavalry divisions and 13 tank brigades. Once again the German ‘fast’ divisions had ‘a tiger by the tail’.

Meanwhile to the north, in the Panzergruppe 3 sector, XXXXIst Panzer Corps, spearheaded by the 1st Panzer Division, were ordered to attack beyond the forming pockets north-west towards Kalinin on the River Volga. After it had captured Staritza, northwest of Rzhev, resupply difficulties – evident even during the assembly area phase – made themselves felt. Non-combat vehicles were ordered to remain behind to husband sufficient fuel to reach the River Volga. Petrol was siphoned from these non-combatant types and reallocated to Panzers, half-tracks and artillery prime-movers. These ad hoc measures maintained the operational tempo and achieved absolute surprise, reflected in a buoyant radio transmission from the 1st Panzer operations officer to the Corps Chief of Staff, Oberst Hans Röttiger. ‘Russian units, although not included in our march-tables, are attempting continuously to share our road space’ between Staritza and Kalinin, it read. Mischievously, Röttiger was informed the intermingling of Russian with German vehicles was ‘partly responsible for the delay of our advance on Kalinin. Please advise what to do.’ The 1st Panzer Division was boldly advancing with completely open flanks. Its supporting 36th Motorised Infantry Division was languishing to the rear, held up by bad roads and fuel shortages. Oberst Röttiger offered an equally euphoric solution to the problem posed. ‘As usual,’ his message stated, ‘1st Panzer Division has priority along the route of advance – reinforce traffic control!’ In short, the unit was invited to ignore the risks and drive on.⁽¹⁴⁾

Trams were still running in the streets of Kalinin as the leading elements of the Panzer division rumbled into the city. Furious street-fighting erupted once armed Russian factory workers, still dressed in civilian overalls, realised who they were. Flamethrower Panzers drenched machine gun nests with fiery petroleum while German motorcycle soldiers were pinned down in the streets by Russian roof-top snipers. Seeking to capture the Volga river bridge intact, the lead element of a Panzergrenadier company from Regiment 113 drove at it. Both civilian and Russian military traffic could be seen streaming over the crossing. An intense battle developed for possession of a canal bridge that appeared unexpectedly before the main span. It was smoked off during the fighting by German mortars and the company commander from Regiment 113 suddenly found himself across.

As the smoke cleared, the superstructure of the 250m bridge-span beckoned. A solitary Russian sentry stood with his back towards him on the road. It was one of those bizarre incidents of war that can occur even during the most intense fighting. He was attired in a simple khaki cape and alone, his comrades having long since fled. Unable to bring himself to shoot this unsuspecting and vulnerable individual, the German officer called out: ‘Hey you! Hop it!’ He later recalled the Russian ‘obviously did not understand German, but he turned around and for a few seconds was rooted to the spot, mouth agape’. Suddenly he sped away. The German advance guard, lying around catching their breath on the south side of the bridge, let him go. ‘A race with death’ followed as they hesitatingly broke into a run to reach the other side. Facing them on the northern bank was an artillery piece, a machine gun bunker and infantry positions. ‘We received heavy fire,’ said the company commander, ‘but it was not possible to pause.’ At every running step they winced in anticipation that the bridge might be blown up. It was not. By the evening of 14 October, Kalinin was in German hands.⁽¹⁵⁾

The Kesselschlachten (pocket battles) at Vyazma and Bryansk were to last 10 days. Fighting raged in woods, villages and over strategic road junctions and around lakeland to finish off the last effective remaining Soviet armies before Moscow. As in earlier encirclement battles at Minsk, Smolensk and Kiev, the initial burden of the fight fell upon the motorised infantry and motorcycle battalions of the Panzer divisions. Schützen Regiment 6 belonging to the 7th Panzer Division was ordered to hold 6km-wide battalion sectors, which was two or three times greater than the norm. This could only be practically achieved by establishing interlinked strongpoints. These covered wide stretches of front with limited or often no depth. Support weapons and artillery would then attempt to dominate the inevitable gaps by fire. Mobile Panzer units were employed in a ‘fire brigade’ capacity as reserves. As 7th Panzer Division commented:

Feldwebel Karl Fuchs, commanding a Czech 38,T light tank on the edge of the Vyazma pocket, declared, ‘for days now the enemy has tried to break out of our iron encirclement, but their efforts have been in vain’. Ground mist was beginning to complicate the subjugation of a foe using every ruse to break out. Fuch’s Panzer platoon of four tanks was ordered to scout and foil such attempts occurring between infantry strongpoints. After they had destroyed two Russian tanks and beatien off a third, the fog rose from the valley feature they were covering. ‘We really let them have it with every barrel,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘tanks, anti-aircraft guns, trucks and the infantry fired on everything in sight.’ Inevitably a price was paid. The motivation driving the exhausted German soldiers was their perception this was likely to be the final battle of the campaign. Fuchs wrote sadly three days later that ‘my brave, young friend Roland just died of severe wounds’. He reflected with frustration ‘why did he have to give his life now, with the end practically in sight?’⁽¹⁷⁾

Further sacrifices were required of the 7th Panzer Division. One of the private soldiers in its 7th Infantry Regiment claimed companies could now field only two platoons. These weak units were required to hold sectors 3.5km wide, a battalion task. ‘One attack after the other was broken up by the infantrymen and supporting weapons,’ he said. Forty of his comrades from the ‘Schleevoigt’ Platoon were overrun and killed with their platoon commander at the head, having ‘fought to the last round’. Vyazma became a battle of annihilation, pursued with the pitiless ferocity of men intent on finishing the war here. Leutnant Jäger from the same regiment described the bizarre lengths Russian tank, infantry and even cavalry took to puncture the thin German lines. His men held fire until the last possible moment:

Following the assaults, which continued throughout the night, the German infantrymen lay in their foxholes, virtually out of ammunition. ‘They waited, nerves at breaking point, for whatever was to come next.’⁽¹⁸⁾ Soviet corpses were strewn all around.

The 2nd Panzer Division had converged on Vyazma from the south with Panzergruppe 4. On 10 October the anti-tank guns of the Kampfgruppe ‘Lubbe-Back’ were spread about 150m apart with infantry from Regiment 304 dug in between. They awaited the inevitable attacks from the interior of the pocket. At daybreak Panzers would relieve them. As the sun descended, the landscape was transformed to a dark grey, always a tense time. Panzerjäger H. E. Braun recalled, ‘the woods and shrubs in the foreground appeared to change shape from minute to minute’. Light eventually deteriorated into a misty darkness. ‘Everyone paid sharp attention’ to the scene ahead; ‘they were reliant now on hearing alone.’ Braun said:

Braun shared this acute anticipation. At first indiscernible, and then gradually more clearly, strange noises wafted toward the antitank and infantry positions. At about 22.00 hours the fires in the west had died down. Total darkness reigned and in the blackness the noise in front of the perimeter perceptibly increased. A horse would whinny, wagon wheels creaked and engine noises could be heard. ‘The tension was unbearable,’ said Braun as the first Very lights burst in the night sky.

From this point onward the fighting troops, Braun explained, lost all sense of time. ‘Several times the attacking Russians were shot to pieces directly before the positions.’ The rest were thrown back. Piles of bodies appeared in wave-like mounds before the German positions as the Russians stacked their dead to chest height to seek cover from fire. Complete Russian company groups tortuously crawled through heaps of their own dead to attempt sudden rushes against the German trenches. Little could be seen from these positions although the shrieks of the mortally wounded and appeals for help could clearly be heard. Russian lorries and armoured vehicles were hit until more light was provided from a petrol-laden carrier that burst into flames. The furious battle raged all night. Braun remembered how startled soldiers were when checking watches during a pause. They saw they had been fighting uninterruptedly for five hours. As dawn approached the fires on the burning lorries finally went out.

The coming light brought a sense of relief, for with it would come the reinforcing Panzers. Soldiers allowed themselves a chance to relax. ‘Suddenly the dead in the foreground started to move again,’ realised Braun with some alarm. Even though they were raked by a combined weapons barrage, ‘a sea of Red Army soldiers’ bore down on their positions. The impact of the merciless defensive fire dreadfully shaped the approaching mass, chopping parts away so that Braun described it resembling ‘the head of a huge Hydra, with ever new earth-brown forms’. With a nerve-shattering ‘Urrahscream’ the Red Army soldiers swept in waves across the German positions. Braun and his comrades, fearing for their survival, glanced anxiously ‘at the dark red colouring on the muzzle brakes of their anti-tank guns’, now glowing from the heat of constant firing.

Isolated ‘islands’ of resistance held out, shooting in all directions. ‘Now the time came for the logistics men and the staff,’ Braun said. ‘Cooks fought weapons in hand from their kitchens and the rear-area drivers fought for their naked lives.’

Panzer reinforcements in the next village drove into the counterattack, plunging and firing into the mêlée with machine gun and main armament fire. ‘They fired without aiming straight into the mass,’ said Braun, ‘hitting Red Army men who had broken through and their own men.’ Dozens of Panje carthorses galloped around out of control, ‘whinnying pitifully’. Russian platoon vehicles, completely festooned with men hanging on for dear life, rolled over the living and the dead. ‘Russian lorries raced by at full speed, completely full of soldiers,’ Braun observed, ‘lit only by the flash of weapon reports’.

On the position, the infantry fought with pistols, spades and grenades to gain space. Even the company commander fought with a smoking-hot machine pistol from his trench, fed full magazines by his orderly. Braun, fighting nearby, opened fire on Russians running toward him with their hands up. He had noticed the grenades. A huge detonation followed after the Russians pitched to the ground.

Finally it was over. ‘With tracks whirring and loud engine noises our Panzers from Regiment 3 approached their island of resistance from the rear.’ Steadily the steel-grey Panzers moved through their position on the final mopping-up. Russian survivors raised their hands and were formed into small columns to be marched off. Braun noticed their dumb, beaten-looking expressions as they were waved on.⁽¹⁰⁾ It appeared had momentous victory had been achieved.

The Panzers did what they could to hold the porous perimeters in support of their own motorised infantry, who were quite literally bled white. Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, well aware of these losses, cajoled and pushed his infantry divisions forward.

‘The performance of the infantry,’ he reflected in his diary on 3 October, ‘has been almost unbelievable.’ More, however, was required. Three days later he was to remind General Strauss of the Ninth Infantry Army ‘that its most important task was quickly to send strong infantry forces after the tanks’. Road conditions were atrocious. Driving along the Roslavl–Moscow highway he saw ‘things are a mess’. He described how ‘four to five columns side by side, with unauthorised Luftwaffe elements wedged in between them, clog the road on which the entire supply effort, including deliveries of fuel for the tanks, depends’.

Four days later the Vyazma pocket, still fighting furiously, was dwindling in size. Guderian’s Second Panzer Army was having difficulty containing the Bryansk pocket. Von Bock’s diary charted the steady compression until by 13 October the Vyazma Kessel was beginning to collapse amid fanatical resistance. Bryansk, meanwhile, was disintegrating into lesser pockets, which remained troublesome and indeed unpredictable. On 15 October a German regiment from the 134th Division was surrounded on all sides in the southernmost pocket.⁽²⁰⁾ Two more sub-pockets were pinched out between 17 and 18 October.

An officer from Schützen Regiment 7 with 7th Panzer Division described the plight of its first battalion, before being rescued by the Panzers of Regiment 25:

Hauptmann Schroeder’s Panzer Abteilung reached the right flank of the threatened battalion in the nick of time. They were totally sobered by what they found. All around them lay large numbers of the 3rd Company, strewn about their positions on the heights north of Bogowodjiskije.

Schroeder, visibly affected by the scene, was to remind his battle group constantly during the bleak days ahead of the example they had witnessed that day. The price had been paid by men convinced that one final effort would conclusively break Russian resistance. The end justified the means. Panzer commander Karl Fuchs also lost a close friend.

The Soviet pockets at Bryansk, however, held on. On 14 October two battalions from the ‘Grossdeutschland’ Infantry Regiment were ordered to conduct a night attack on Annino, to prevent further seepage by Soviet forces from the beleaguered pocket. Nobody relished the prospect of a night attack. Both battalion commanders were depressed, knowing casualties would be heavy. Company commanders registered disquiet in their own indirect way through repeated radio requests for confirmation that the attack was to go ahead. ‘No man can adequately describe the feeling that prevails before a major attack,’ admitted one eyewitness. ‘The troops sat there [during the briefings] with their notes and inner battles.’ Leadership was applied and feelings of insecurity suppressed. Oberleutnant Karl Hänert, a veteran Knight’s Cross holder, wounded three times, represented the steadying influence that kept soldiers moving despite nervous stress. He was 27 years old and his orders were ‘cold and clear’.

After the attack went in, reports came back one after the other of company commanders killed or wounded. Hänert was shot in the head by a Soviet sniper. Another company commander, in post barely four weeks before, also died. The news of Hänert’s death was passed on by a weeping aide. ‘No one spoke a word,’ said the witness. ‘We didn’t look at each other. Everyone had been floored by the news.’ Shock enveloped them. ‘I am not sure what happened in the next hour,’ he said. The carnage continued. Several other officers were killed the same night. ‘It was difficult to comprehend that they were gone,’ reflected the witness. ‘Surely at any minute they must come up and say something to us!’ Annino was successfully taken, but during the following night another officer was killed and a second seriously wounded. They were mistakenly shot by their own sentries.⁽²³⁾ The drain on the veteran leadership of the Ostheer was constant and unremitting.

Operation ‘Taifun’ was launched by Army Group Centre with 14 of the 19 Panzer divisions in theatre, and eight of 14 motorised infantry divisions. These ‘fast’ divisions were supported by a force of 48 infantry foot divisions marching up in depth. Twenty-five infantry divisions were reducing the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets while a further seven continued the advance to the east. Nine infantry divisions were deployed securing the flanks. Nine of the ‘fast’ divisions (six Panzer and three motorised) were intensively committed to pocket fighting, leaving six (four Panzer and two motorised infantry) continuing towards Moscow, moving west to east. A further three divisions (two Panzer and one motorised) sought to disengage from the Bryansk battles and advance on Tula and Moscow beyond on a north-easterly axis. The success of this strategy was dependent upon the destruction of the six to eight last-remaining Soviet field armies now in their grasp, standing before Moscow. Generalfeldmarschall von Bock announced in an Order of the Day on 19 October that:

Booty was calculated at 673,098 prisoners, 1,277 tanks, 4,378 artillery pieces, 1,009 anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, 87 aircraft and huge amounts of war matériel.⁽²⁴⁾

To be successful, the strategy now required a Russian capitulation. This was anticipated. Von Brauchitsch had confided to von Bock during the heady days of the initial ‘Taifun’ success ‘that this time it was different from Minsk and Smolensk, this time we could risk pursuing immediately’. Panzergruppe 3 was the only sizeable element of Army Group Centre still pushing eastward towards Moscow. Bock declared, still remembering his frustration at the decision prematurely to form pockets at the outset of ‘Barbarossa’:

The double encirclement battles at Vyazma and Bryansk rivalled the achievement at Kiev. It represented perhaps the final and decisive Cannae. Tank commander Feldwebel Karl Fuchs was euphoric:

This view was clearly reflected in letters sent home across the front. An Unteroffizier with the 6th Infantry Division, jubilantly describing taking thousands of prisoners, said that ‘some are even coming voluntarily – a sign of the approaching resolution of the issue… And we are already being bombarded by press reports stating: “[Soviet] Annihilation is just around the corner!”’ Another artillery NCO with Army Group South predicted that, by the time his wife read his letter, ‘bells throughout Germany will be proclaiming victory over the mightiest enemy civilisation has ever faced’. He was totally confident. ‘It cannot last longer,’ he predicted; in fact, ‘we are puzzled what will become of us here now – are we coming back to Germany or will we stay on as occupation troops?’⁽²⁶⁾

It was anticipated, as in the case of the battle fought by Napoleon at Borodino, before Moscow in 1812, that the Russians might surrender their capital city, following the destruction of their field armies. If they chose not to, it would be difficult for the Ostheer to impose an armistice because only a fraction of its striking force was still moving eastward. Some 70% of the infantry divisions belonging to Army Group Centre were mopping up the pockets and securing its rear and flanks. Only seven divisions appeared to be still advancing. The ‘fast’ divisions had been bloodied yet again and only 40% of these were still pushing toward Moscow. Moreover, they had entered the battle at only two-thirds of their established strengths. Von Bock wished to exploit his victory. ‘If the weather holds,’ he wrote on 7 October, ‘we may be able to make up for much of what was lost through Kiev.’ He constantly chivvied his subordinates to keep the momentum going. A week later, the battle at Vyazma had been fought to a successful conclusion and the pocket at Bryansk was soon to be extinguished, but the intense fighting and awful road conditions meant Guderian’s north-east advance faltered. ‘A success for the Russians’ resistance,’ Bock concurred, ‘whose stubbornness paid off.’⁽²⁸⁾

An event occurred at the beginning of the second week of October which was to be recorded in virtually every letter or diary account maintained by German soldiers serving on the ‘Ostfront’. Unteroffizier Ludwig Kolodzinski, serving with an assault gun battery in the Orel area with Second Panzer Army, remembered it well. He was shaken from a deep sleep at 02.00 hours on 8 October by his radio operator, Brand. ‘Hey, Ludwig,’ Brand whispered urgently, ‘open your eyes a moment and come outside with me!’ Kolodzinski quickly pulled on a jacket and was abruptly jerked to his senses by an icy flurry of wind and something whipping into his face as he looked out.

Major Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg was driving forward with the 6th Panzer Division. ‘On 8 October the battle of Vyazma concluded,’ he said in a postwar interview. ‘The aim and objective of this battle had been to kick in the gates of Moscow.’ But conditions changed. ‘On 9 October, as we started to move in the north, centre and south towards Moscow, the temperature dropped and the rain began.’⁽³⁰⁾ The onset of poor weather affected the infantry also. ‘Yesterday we had the first snow,’ wrote an NCO with the 6th Infantry Division on the same day.

‘The roads, so far as there were any in the western sense of the word, disappeared in mud,’ remarked Major Graf von Kielmansegg. ‘Knee-deep mud, in which even the most capable overland tracked vehicles stuck fast.’ The Russians, faced with the same problems, avoided the German tendency, through inexperience, to drive through the same ruts. Ordered to bypass Moscow to the north, 6th Panzer Division remained stuck fast in the mire for two days once the rain began. ‘The division was strung out along 300km,’ von Kielmansegg remarked, ‘whereas the normal length of a division column then was 40km.’ One soldier summed up the development thus:

The great illusion

The colossal victory at Kiev at the end of September rekindled German public interest in the eastern campaign previously thought deadlocked. It resurrected thoughts that the war may be over before the winter. Two Russian cities had consistently held the public’s attention. Leningrad, the birthplace of the Bolshevik ideology, was anticipated to fall soon. Letters from the front stimulated rumours that the other, Moscow, had already been targeted by German Fallschirmjäger units, which had dropped east of the capital. Moscow was the lofty prize that would signify the war’s end. Kiev had already been compared to the World War 1 victory at Tannenberg, and public expectation was raised even further by the news of the latest Army Group Centre offensive.

^{The final German victories at Vyazma and Bryansk utilising favourable autumn conditions appeared to herald a final Blitzkrieg that would overcome Moscow itself. The final Russian field armies facing Army Group Centre before Moscow were surrounded and annihilated at Bryansk and Vyazma. It was a success comparable with Kiev. The German press claimed final victory even as the much weakened Panzer pincers were brought to a standstill by autumn rains and mud, and an ominously undiminished bitter resistance. The weather denied the tactical mobility thereby gained. In reality, however, the Ostheer was itself mortally wounded and in the throes of ‘victoring itself to death’.}

‘German Autumn Storm Breaks over the Bolsheviks’, announced the Völkische Beobachter newspaper on 2 October. This was followed by the Führer’s announcement that ‘the enemy is already broken and will never rise again’. Rumours began to circulate that a new pocket battle for Moscow had started and that its fall was imminent.⁽¹⁾ Front letters appeared to confirm the press line. Infantryman Johann Alois Meyer, writing to his wife Klara, said, ‘you will have heard the Führer’s speech yesterday’ announcing the opening of the final offensive. ‘It ought to finish here before the onset of winter,’ he assessed. ‘That means the end of this month should see the conclusion.’ Meyer, however, hedged his bets like everyone else when he ended: ‘give thanks to God that it does come and pray to God above all else that we come through it sound in mind and limb.’⁽²⁾

Radio programmes in the Reich were interrupted during the evening of 8 October with the dramatic announcement: ‘we expect an important special announcement in a moment’. These Sondermeldungen had always presaged momentous events: the capitulation of Warsaw, victory in the Low Countries, the French Armistice and fall of Paris and Belgrade. Brass fanfares had played for the fall of Crete, entry into Athens, the storming of Smolensk and the battle of annihilation at Kiev. Loudspeakers were turned up in expectation in cafés and restaurants. Guests were forbidden to speak and waiters to serve. ‘Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt,’ – “The High Command of the German Armed Forces announces’ – (the precursor to all such statements), ‘the final victory which the decisive battles in the East have led to, has arrived!’ Adolf Hitler declared during a speech to the German people the following day:

Dr Dietrich, the Reich Press Chief, announced this news to the world’s press and accredited diplomats. Rumours immediately circulated throughout Berlin that Moscow had already fallen, that Stalin was seeking an armistice and the troops would be home for Christmas. A Berlin post official from the post office in Nürnberger Strasse sent a housewife home when she requested ‘front postcards’ claiming, ‘you will not need them any longer’. Sausage was given away free by a butcher in Hausvogteiplatz. On 10 October the Völkischer Beobachter claimed, ‘the eastern offensive has achieved its aim: the annihilation of the enemy’, adding triumphantly, ‘Stalin’s armies have been wiped from the face of the earth’.⁽³⁾

SS Home Front reporters monitoring the situation observed, ‘the various phases of the final battle were followed with utmost tension’. Newspaper banner headlines announcing German troops were already far beyond the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets reminded the public of the previous year. ‘One saw parallels between the advance of German troops on Moscow and the taking of Paris, which was followed soon after by the French Armistice,’ stated observers. The press had whipped the Reich into a fervour of anticipation. One housewife wrote to her husband at the front on 14 October:

Autumn rains were slashing across the ‘Ostfront’. The natural phenomenon upon which Stalin had relied to deter the final German offensive had arrived. One disgruntled Landser wrote home:

An infantryman in Second Army recorded, early on 10 October it began to rain and the rain turned to sleet. The difficulties soon set in,’ he said, ‘the roads turned into knee-deep mud and were unbelievable.’ It proved particularly heavy going for the artillery. ‘The so-called “Rollbahn” upon which we are marching is a sea of knee-deep mud,’ complained an artillery unit with the 260th Infantry Division. ‘Vehicles sink up to the axle and in many places the morass is up to the bellies of the horses.’⁽⁵⁾

The headlines back home in the Reich followed a similarly tortuous path as disillusionment set in. ‘The momentous hour has struck: the Eastern campaign is at an end,’ crowed the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper on 10 October. The following day it proclaimed ‘The Breakthrough in the East is widened’. Then on 12 October it claimed, ‘The Annihilation of the Soviet Army is almost finished’, and on the 13th ‘The Battlefields of Vyazma and Bryansk are far behind the Front’. A degree of temporisation was introduced by a clearly exhausted press, seeking to maintain the morale tempo, when on 14 October the headline read ‘The Movements in the East are proceeding according to plan’. The next day there was a simple acknowledgement that ‘The Fighting in the East is running to plan’. This was followed by a resounding silence on 16 October when the headlines limply changed the subject to ‘Torpedo boats sink six freighters from a Convoy’.⁽⁶⁾ The point was not lost on the politically astute population of Berlin, always quick wittily to expose press inconsistencies. A joke was circulated whereby it was assessed the ‘BZ’ (an abbreviation for the Berliner Zeitung newspaper) was the only newspaper remaining worth reading. The explanation being, ‘it only lied between “B and Z” while all other newspapers lied from “A to Z”!’⁽⁷⁾

Leutnant Heinrich Haape recalled watching how ‘the first snow fell in heavy flakes on the silently marching columns’ of Infantry Regiment 18 two days after leaving Butovo. ‘Every man’s thoughts turned in the same direction as he watched the flakes drop on the slushy roads.’ Winter had arrived. It was late afternoon and the temperature dropped, causing the snow to fall more thickly until the countryside assumed ‘a white mantle’. Haape remembered, ‘we watched it uneasily’.⁽⁸⁾

Greatcoats were a problem. Not all soldiers even had the temperate issue. During the attack it hampered movement. On dismounting, infantrymen left them behind in their vehicles. Jackets had to suffice. Leutnant Koch serving with the 18th Panzer Division recalled that, just prior to the second (November) phase of Operation ‘Taifun’, his battalion commander ordered all greatcoats to be left behind with the logistic train at Orel. Unlike many other formations, their issue had arrived, but they were not allowed to take them.⁽⁹⁾ Leutnant Haape’s men in Infantry Regiment 18 resorted to other methods. ‘In order to keep warm they put on all their spare clothes and slept dog-tired, in full battledress.’ Whereas previously there had been time to wash and change clothing during the static ‘interregnum’ period before ‘Taifun’, ‘now the poor fellows were constantly on the move’ and sleeping in louse-infected houses. There was no time to wash their clothing and scant opportunity to change it. Ingenuity was employed to stay warm. As Leutnant Haape explained:

Soldiers for the first time in this war positively enthused over propaganda publications. Sheets of it could be put to good use.

Roads resembled muddy moonscapes with metre-deep craters which filled with water. Thousands of trucks were stranded. Supply and construction troops laboured to produce log-wood roads and other repairs, but to little effect. Rain or sleet fell incessantly after the night of 7–8 October. Tracked vehicles moved with difficulty. wheeled transport not at all. It was taking 24 to 48 hours to negotiate a short 10km stretch of road. Second Panzer Division reported ‘it was virtually impossible to supply the troops with the necessary combat and life support’. Junkers Ju52 transport aircraft dropped supplies from the air and landed fuel containers from towed gliders. ‘Each day our bill of fare,’ the report continued, ‘was two crackers, some sausage and a couple of cigarettes.’⁽¹¹⁾

Little could be requisitioned from the local population, who were already short themselves. Only light artillery could be moved, at speeds of a kilometre an hour despite superhuman efforts. Von Bock observed, ‘in some cases 24 horses are required to move a single artillery piece.’⁽¹²⁾ Heavy guns remained where they were. Carriage wheels for light guns had often to be removed and carried by hand through the mud. The 1st Artillery Abteilung supporting the 260th Infantry Division made dispiriting progress.

The simplest task required Herculean effort. Emaciated horses collapsed in the mire, unable to continue. Fähnjunker Karl Unverzagt serving with a Panzergrenadier unit said, ‘there was hardly ever an opportunity to get the mud off’. Not that it really mattered because ‘it provided the most ideal camouflage you might imagine!’ Von Bock, passing a 5th Division artillery regiment on the road, commented ‘it is hard to recognize the men, horses and military vehicles as a military column under their crust of dirt.’⁽¹⁴⁾

Leutnant G. Heysing with Panzergruppe 4 observed the ‘fast’ motorised divisions started to be overtaken by the foot infantry. ‘Even if the soldiers of the Panzer divisions are more or less powerless against the mud,’ he wrote, ‘this deluge has its master too; the soldiers of the German infantry divisions appear on the scene, drawing closer on anything that can in any way be referred to as a path.’ The infantry, having successfully concluded the double encirclement battles, was moving up.

This gritty propaganda piece of reportage intended for the Reich press glorified the aura of invincibility raised by the German infantry, which was sincerely believed by the population at home. Heysing reported the situation on 25 October:

Although Heysing wrote with convincing authenticity, his optimistic view was not shared by all at the front. Unteroffizier Wilhelm Prüller was wrestling with the greatcoat dilemma. ‘Which is better?’ he reflected at the beginning of October, ‘to be moving and to sweat more with a greatcoat and then to shiver less when you’re quiet, or to go on as we’ve been doing, without one?’ His commanding officer, like Leutnant Koch’s from the 18th Panzer Division, said, ‘we can’t move as well in a coat.’ There was little debate. ‘His is the bigger pay packet,’ Prüller ruefully admitted, ‘so it’s no coats for us!’ His diary chronicled the cumulative and depressing impact the appalling wet weather in Army Group South’s sector had on the troops. It lasted almost three weeks.

On 6 October he observed after it had ‘rained in torrents all night’ that ‘at night it gets really cold now, and we all think that it can’t go on much longer’. With the baggage train marooned somewhere behind on the rutted roads, no food or spare dry clothing got through. The next day saw a snowstorm which did not settle ‘but the wind whistled through every nook and cranny of our hut’. Still it rained. By 13 October rain alternated with snow. ‘It only freezes at night,’ commented Prüller, ‘when it’s cold, but at 07.00 in the morning it thaws out again.’ No mail could reach the troops or was collected because the supply trains ‘can’t catch up with us through the mud’. Four days later, ‘there’s still no trace of our baggage train’. Changed weather conditions resulted in different march routines. ‘There’s no point in trying to move during the day; the mud would not allow it,’ said Prüller. ‘We can make it only during the night, when the earth is frozen hard.’ At the end of the week depression became evident, reflected in much shorter diary entries. ‘The rain stops only for a few hours at a time,’ he wrote, and ‘everything is grey, dark and impenetrable. The whole of Russia is sunk in mud.’

On 28 October Prüller was marching ‘in driving snow-cum-rain. On the eve of the attack on Kursk, the last day of the month, ‘the night was simply freezing,’ he complained. ‘We froze, particularly since we had neither blankets nor overcoats.’ Kursk, as a consequence, was an objective well worth attacking, because it could provide accommodation. ‘The rain has stopped, and the streets are frozen solid,’ commented Prüller as the advance got underway.⁽¹⁶⁾ There seemed no end to their misery.

Leutnant Georg Richter with Artillery Regiment 74, driving through light snow conditions in mid-October, fervently wished the light frost, that periodically hardened the roads, would last longer. But when it did, treacherous slides resulted. One sudden halt resulted in a pile-up involving every single vehicle in the column. Two were totally written off. ‘We spent the night in our vehicles either side of the road and almost froze half to death,’ he commented. Depressing circumstances invariably bred hopeful rumours. ‘A common opinion was that our division would still be relieved before the winter and we would most likely be sent to Africa,’ he mused. Shelter was at such a premium that soldiers were prepared to fight for it. Every time they drove into a village at the end of the day it was ‘always the same old picture’, he complained. ‘Every house completely filled up with soldiers, and all over were staffs and baggage trains.’⁽¹⁷⁾

On the road to Kalinin, Unteroffizier Helmut Pabst marched 55km during a frozen period on 12 October between 08.00 hours and 02.00 the following day. ‘We didn’t find any billets,’ he ruefully commented when they finally reached their distant objective. Freezing temperatures forced them inside, and ‘the boys warmed themselves in the overcrowded rooms, determined to get warm even if it meant standing’, as was often the case. The infantry endured wretched conditions. ‘My boots were still so wet this morning,’ Pabst complained, ‘I could only get into them in my bare feet.’⁽¹⁸⁾ Their feet, constantly soaked, in temperatures just above freezing, were susceptible to ‘immersion’ or ‘trench foot’. Such chilling interrupted the blood flow to these extremities and could cause tissue damage akin to superficial frostbite. Close-fitting wet clothing and saturated shrunken boots exacerbated the symptom, as also did protracted standing in wet and cold conditions. Damage was often not recognised, and dismissed as aching feet, occurring as it did in conditions above freezing. Not seen since World War 1, ‘trench foot’ and hypothermia (body chill) took a steady toll of the sick, further increasing the vulnerability of under-nourished soldiers to face even harsher conditions to come.

Prevailing dull wet weather with driving sleet and rain, together with the social pressures of a crammed existence in crowded foul-smelling accommodation, produced bad tempers. This, combined with the persistent anxiety of impending combat, frayed nerves and tested leadership. ‘War began to sap the soldiers’ nerves,’ recorded the official history of the 9th Potsdam Infantry Regiment:

Overcrowding in cold, wet and unsanitary conditions produced colds, influenza, disease and lice. Unteroffizier Pabst, packed into a small baker’s house on the Kalinin road, complained, ‘the nine of us can hardly move.’ The billet was crawling with lice.

Lice were the scourge of the Eastern Front, an irritant contributing to ill-health and cumulative psychological depression. Painstakingly picked off the body, they could only be killed with certainty by cracking them between fingernail and thumb after they were gorged with blood. Machine gunner Joachim Kredel with Infantry Regiment 67 embalmed one in hot candle wax on his mess tin, and sent it home in a match box as a souvenir, ‘so that they might at least see one louse!’ he explained.⁽²¹⁾

At home, the cinemas were showing a noteworthy scoop – the fighting around the old Napoleonic battlefield at Borodino. The implicit parallel was that this event preceded Napoleon’s entry into Moscow in 1812. In 1941 it formed part of the Mozhaisk defence line, the outer ring of concentric barriers protecting the capital city, stretching almost 300km from Kalinin to Kaluga. This line was attacked by the spearhead of Panzergruppe 4: the 2nd SS ‘Das Reich’ and 10th Panzer Divisions. The newsreel portrayed unprecedented realism, narrated by war reporter Hugo Landgraf as he participated in the actual attack. His report ‘on the battlefield at Borodino’ was conducted with an immediacy typical of present-day TV media coverage. It caused quite a stir among cinema audiences.⁽²²⁾

‘I am sitting at the radio operator’s post inside a heavy-duty [PzKpfwIV] Panzer and will be filming the attack from here,’ says Landgraf on the film. ‘Against us are heavily armed and well equipped new groups of Soviet reserves just outside Moscow.’ Bucking images taken through the dark surround of the vision slit recreated the uncomfortable cross-terrain ride of a Panzer sweep. ‘You can hear the clack-clack of artillery and machine gun fire on three sides,’ he said. His armoured group trades fire with enemy positions ‘for hours’ in a ‘fierce battle’ illustrated by images of burning houses and hayricks with momentary glimpses of accompanying Panzers jockeying for and shooting from fire positions. ‘Our tank shakes with mortar rounds landing all around us,’ he reports. Eventually resistance is beaten into submission and Landgraf comments, ‘our gun barrels are becoming hot from continuously firing round after round for so long’. The scene changes to night shots of tracer arching away from the tank into an indiscernible gloom. They have managed to advance several kilometres.

‘It snowed overnight,’ Landgraf continues – an ominous statement for cinema audiences concerned at the onset of winter and fearful of the consequences for their menfolk at the front. Accompanying infantry had dug trenches between the Panzers. ‘The battle continues,’ says Landgraf as groups of infantrymen, stooping under the weight of heavy machine guns and ammunition, move by. Many characteristically have cigarette butts or pipes dangling from their mouths. The flat landscape broken up by woods has been totally transformed by a light covering of snow. Panzers and half-tracks starkly silhouetted against the whiteness are engaged in an intense fire-fight. Smoke spurting from squat 50mm tank barrels is accentuated in the freezing air. They have encountered ‘a wall of resistance’ and among fleeting groups of running German infantry ‘our tanks can only inch their way forward’ over a landscape dotted with burning village houses. Luftwaffe dive-bombers are seen to engage enemy artillery positions ahead, but the war reporter dramatically interjects ‘as soon as one battery is defeated another takes its place… Dusk falls again,’ he reports as the metallic concussions of turret machine gun fire ring out. The camera tracks the lines of tracer beyond the vehicles, bursting on indistinguishable targets in the distance.

Daylight revealed, ‘we are standing directly before a wooded area containing one of the main Soviet defence lines’. Up ahead, houses are blazing furiously. ‘The camouflage covering the Soviet bunkers,’ cunningly concealed underneath the wooden houses, ‘has caught fire’. Landgraf next provides commentary to an 88mm Flak gun crew feverishly working and firing their gun in thick falling snow. ‘On the third day,’ he said, ‘anti-aircraft artillery is brought in to assist us in the decisive blow.’ Puffs of smoke indicating air-bursts are seen detonating over the wooded objective. Meanwhile the Flak gun crew are becoming covered in thick wet snow. ‘We manage to break through over a wide front,’ he says. Panzer PzKpfwIIIs and IVs silhouetted against the white background drive past a trio of dead Soviet soldiers sprawled untidily across the snow. The Panzers are shooting the infantry onto the objective as ‘we move in from the flank to attack the middle of the Soviet defence line and break it down in a series of bloody skirmishes’. It is all over. ‘Over there you can see the Bolsheviks coming out of their trenches,’ Landgraf triumphantly announces, ‘we have successfully broken down the enemy defence lines.’

Much was made of this example of realistic war-reporting, which proceeded to show the extent of the defences overcome on this position either side of the Moscow road. A diagrammatic survey shows automatic flamethrowers, zig-zag trenches and wide antitank traps covered by artillery and spiky ‘hedgehog’ tank obstacles constructed from sections of railway track. Heavy concrete bunkers covered by intermediate positions housing heavy weapons and artillery formed the core of the line. The camera lingered over the broken bodies of the Russian defenders. The film was in stark contrast to the clarion special announcements by the Reich Press Chief, Dr Dietrich, and newspaper headlines declaring the war was just short of being decisively won. It was shown in German cinemas at the end of October, coinciding with SS Secret Service observations of ‘a certain public disappointment’ at events. ‘The collapse of the Bolshevik system was anticipated in a few days’ and the public’s interpretation of this was that ‘it was unlikely large scale actions would occur at the front’. Reports such as Landgraf’s demonstrated this was not the case. Confusion turned to cynicism. It was obvious major fighting was still going on.⁽²³⁾

This was grimly apparent to soldiers at the front. Leutnant G. Heysing, writing about the same battle at Borodino with Panzergruppe 4, reported the town of Mozhaisk on the strategic Moscow defence line was taken on 18 October, but that ‘autumn rains have set in, depriving German soldiers of the fruits of the victory they have already won’. His assessment was, ‘the German assault is stuck knee-deep in the mire’. The 10th Panzer Division spearheading the advance ‘is spread far apart between forest and swamp, the mud reaching the vehicles in some instances up to the loading area so that supplies cannot get through’. He concluded, ‘try as we may, we cannot go on.’⁽²⁴⁾ Both the 10th Panzer and the 2nd SS Division ‘Das Reich’ in support suffered heavy losses during the Borodino fighting. The ‘Der Führer’ Infantry Regiment was down to 35 men per company, compared to a normal complement of 176 soldiers. They were over-stretched. ‘Every objective given the regiment was reached,’ declared its official historian, ‘even if it required unspeakable effort.’ The regiment’s first battalion and motorcycle battalion had fought the Soviet 82nd Motorised Rifle Division for possession of Schelkowka, an important crossroads on the advance.

Expectations had been high that the Sondermeldungen trumpeting the victories at Vyazma and Bryansk heralded the end of Russian resistance. This was the great illusion. Cynicism now began to set in. Unlike the previous Borodino battle, the gates of Moscow did not swing open, nor had an armistice been offered. General Günther Blumentritt described the bitter realisation:

At the end of October only a small part of the Reich’s population believed the war in the east would end that year. Observers commenting on recent reports of progress and fighting against stubborn and bloody Soviet resistance had ‘clearly led to an intensification of public scepticism over the propaganda of the preceding few weeks’. By early November ‘there were signs of impatience that clarion announcements of successes were not forthcoming’. Continued reports of bitter Soviet opposition led to frustration. The interpretation of the public mood read: ‘one simply cannot understand why the German troops do not suddenly swiftly advance after destroying 260 of the best-equipped Russian divisions.’ This feeling had changed to ‘resignation’ by the middle of November. ‘The conviction that a decisive outcome to the war is unlikely to occur this year is becoming even more pronounced,’ read another secret SS report.⁽²⁷⁾ A similar view was emerging at the front.

‘One began to hear sarcastic references to the military leaders far away in Germany,’ commented Blumentritt. ‘The troops felt that it was high time our political leaders came and had a look at the front.’⁽²⁸⁾ Unease permeated the motivation sustaining fighting power at the front, especially among the infantry. Harald Henry’s infantry regiment in Ninth Army marched at night, when the mud temporarily froze over. Between 17.45 hours and 02.00 the following morning ‘we were outside in a snowstorm, apart from a short break,’ he said.

Henry’s company was ordered to sweep a wood. The snow, over knee-deep, soon filled his boots with a slushy mess. As they painstakingly clambered across frozen marshland they occasionally broke through the ice, immersing their feet in freezing water.

Wood-clearing was tedious, frustrating, exhausting and dangerous. By nightfall the sweep was over. ‘Then came an order that said the operation had been unsuccessful and we had to do the whole thing again from the beginning.’ Just as they started, another radio message was received ordering a withdrawal. This meant a 10–15km march, which was to last nine hours. Much of it was spent waiting in column, as the company made tortuous progress through the trees. It was a physical ordeal which left them:

At 02.00 hours they reached a village where they were told they could rest. ‘All of us are ill and absolutely worn out to some degree or other.’ Their joints were stiff. ‘Every fibre in my body is broken,’ complained Henry. Early the next morning it would probably start all over again. The awful weather, however, precluded any further movement. Men lay on the floor, some 30 to a small room. ‘Liquid excrement ran through the middle of the hut between our ponchos and packs,’ said Henry. ‘We all had diarrhoea and stomach cramps.’⁽²⁹⁾ There seemed no end to the suffering.

Soldiers grew increasingly sensitive to the ‘hurrah-patriotism’ they heard on the radio and read in the press. ‘One can only shake one’s head at what you hear on some radio programmes, or in some propaganda company reports,’ complained an artillery Leutnant with the 131st Infantry Division. ‘We’re not too influenced by such shitty stories,’ he said, ‘but it is no good singing about it.’ Morale was being eroded. ‘After four months,’ concluded the officer, ‘one has had enough.’⁽³⁰⁾

‘Morale has dropped,’ reported IIIrd Corps with Army Group South, particularly after the optimistic propaganda ‘which contradicts their experience on the battlefield’. Troops enduring the hardship that produced the victories were unsparing with their comments. One said, ‘the capture of Odessa, Kharkov, or anywhere else makes no impression at all if you yourself are lying in the shit.’⁽³¹⁾

Warfare on the Eastern Front had changed from attaining strategic objectives to fighting for the next shelter. Oberstleutnant von Bose, commanding an infantry battalion with the 98th Division, took a delivery of rations on a particularly cold night on 16 October and found they were frozen solid. He radioed his regimental headquarters and said, ‘we’re freezing and want to attack’. Back came the mystified response: ‘Attack where?’ Von Bose retorted, ‘It doesn’t matter where – we need accommodation!’ An order followed to capture the village of Awdotnja, which the battalion took in a surprise attack. All night the battle raged against repeated Soviet counter-attacks, desperate to regain their lost shelter.⁽³²⁾

The German soldier at the front felt keenly the disappointment of having the chalice of victory dashed from his lips, more so than the population in the Reich. Unteroffizier Helmut Pabst summed up the feeling in mid-October when he wrote, ‘what a country, what a war, where there’s no pleasure in success, no pride, no satisfaction, only a feeling of suppressed fury now and then.’⁽³³⁾ Harald Henry exclaimed:

The Ostheer had delivered all that had been demanded of it, and more. The last remaining identified Soviet field armies were destroyed in the twin encirclement battles at Vyazma and Bryansk. Operating beyond logistic range and bled white in the process, the German armies had inflicted a further devastating blow on the Russians. But still the enemy fought on. Moreover, whatever the result of the victory, a two- to three-week delay was being imposed by the mud of the autumn rains. General Blumentritt remarked, ‘the troops not unnaturally now resented the bombastic utterances of our propaganda in October.’⁽³⁵⁾