Chapter 5 The longest day of the year

‘After the first shock, the enemy has turned to fight.’

Halder diary, 22 June 1941

The first Soviet pocket is formed – Brest-Litovsk

Georgij Karbuk had listened to the pleasant melodies of an orchestra in Brest-Litovsk the night before. As dawn broke on 22 June he was rudely awakened by his father. ‘Get up,’ he declared, ‘it’s war!’ Karbuk was immediately aware of the sounds of battle. ‘It was not a case of hearing single shots,’ he remembered, ‘it was a whole barrage. The artillery firing on the fortress.’ Out in the street soldiers were running. ‘What’s up?’ the Karbuks asked. They said: ‘Can’t you see?, It’s war!’(1)

Maj-Gen A. A. Korobkov, the commander of the Fourth Soviet Army, hastily despatched a situation report from his headquarters in Kobrin to the Western Special Military District in Minsk. Released at 06.40 hours, it read:

‘I report: at 04.15 hours on 22 June 1941 the enemy began to fire on the fortress at Brest and the region of the town of Brest. At the same time enemy aviation began to bomb the airfields at Brest, Kobrin and Pruzhany. By 06.00 hours artillery shelling intensified in the region of Brest. The town is burning… ’(2)

‘We youngsters did not want to believe in a war,’ admitted Georgij Karbuk, ‘it was something too far away for us.’ Suppressed suspicions were overtaken by the grim reality of events.

‘We had a foreboding that war would soon break out. We had certainly seen the Germans behind the Bug, but in spite of this we did not want to believe it. Then when we saw the first wounded and dead lying on the pavement and all the blood – we had to believe that now there would be war.’(3)

Katschowa Lesnewna worked as a nursing sister in the surgical hospital located within 36 buildings on the South Island. ‘Immediately with the initial bombardment,’ she said, ‘the buildings forming the surgical clinic went up in flames, as did the others.’ There was outrage. ‘We thought the Fascists would spare the hospital;’ she complained, ‘there was a large red cross painted on the roof. At the same time there were the first wounded and dead.’(4) Wooden buildings burned furiously.

Unteroffizier Helmut Kollakowsky, a German infantry NCO, spoke in awe of the opening bombardment:

‘Someone told us that at 03.15 hours an overwhelming barrage would come, and it would be so strong, that we would be able to cross the Bug unhindered. It is impossible to contemplate any resistance after such an opening bombardment.’(5)

Gerd Habedanck observed the preliminary barrage secure within the battalion HQ bunker of one of the 45th Infantry Division’s assaulting units. They heard a single artillery report break the stillness, then:

‘We had barely heard it when the earth shook, boomed and rolled. Strong draughts of air blew into our faces… I risked a quick look outside the casement. The sky over us was lit up bright red. An infernal whistling, droning and crackle of explosions filled the air. Young willows were bent over as if in a storm… It is still not yet quite light and thick clouds of smoke darken the sky.’(6)

Wochenschau German newsreel cameramen were on hand to record the destruction. The films show mushrooms of smoke jetting up from the flash of impacts on the citadel walls; in the foreground, German artillery observers wriggle into better positions to see. Targets smothered in explosions disappear behind clouds of ground-hugging smoke and dust. Here and there, larger-calibre shell strikes abruptly shoot up huge geysers of smoke towering above the rest.

Chaplain Rudolf Gschöpf with 45th Division recalled: ‘as 03.15 hours struck, a hurricane broke loose and roared over our heads, to a degree never experienced before or indeed later in the war.’(7) Hermann Wild was in a dinghy precariously weighed down by 37mm anti-tank guns. Alongside Infantry Regiment 130, he was part of the southern attack axis assaulting across the River Bug, and he saw ‘the air filled with metal at a stroke’. Sheltering in a slit trench, ‘one was shoved from side to side by the rhythmic explosion and concussion of shells’.(8) Most of Wild’s company achieved the crossing during the short opening bombardment. The plan appeared to be working. Gschöpf described how:

‘This all-embracing gigantic barrage literally shook the earth. Great fountains of thick black smoke sprang up like mushrooms from the ground. As no counter fire was evident at that moment, we thought everything in the citadel must already have been razed to the ground.’(9)

Gerd Habedanck’s battalion began the assault river crossing of the Bug. His subsequent correspondent’s account atmospherically recreated the scene:

‘One boat after the other slid into the water. There were excited cries, splashing and the howling of assault boat engines. Not a shot from the other bank as blood red flames dance in the water. We jump on shore and press forwards.’(10)

Gefreiter Hans Teuschler, in the second assault wave of Infantry Regiment 135, was with the northern axis. He watched the rubber dinghies of the first wave enter the river at 03.19 hours. Artillery fire lashed the ground ahead, creeping forward in 100m jumps every four minutes, coinciding with the time it was estimated each wave would need to cross the river. ‘The sky was filled with bursting shells of every calibre,’ Teuschler observed. ‘It was an awful roaring, exploding, crackling and howling as if hell was actually about to come on earth.’ Even the attacking soldiers were intimidated. ‘An uncanny feeling came over us all,’ the NCO admitted.(11)

The two-pronged assault on the citadel of Brest-Litovsk was pressed home furiously. Two battalions (I and III) from Infantry Regiment 135 penetrated the North and West islands on the northern axis, while to the south two other battalions from Regiment 130 (I and III) attacked the South Island, attempting to bypass Brest town further south, following the line of the River Muchaviec. The imperative was to secure bridges for the Panzers. Leutnant Zumpe’s 3rd Company sprinted across the four-span railway bridge to the north. They passed the customs post through which, barely an hour before, the last goods train from Russia had rolled. They took fire from a dug-out. Soldiers continued to skirmish forward until a dull thud signified it had been despatched with explosives by accompanying assault pioneers. An urgent survey of the bridge’s superstructure revealed a demolition charge on the central pier. This was disconnected and dropped into the river. Zumpe flashed a green light toward the home bank. German armoured cars began to cross immediately. Within 15 minutes of the start of the assault XIIth Corps Headquarters received the anticipated signal: ‘Railway bridge secured intact’.(12)

Leutnant Kremer’s amphibious coup de main force of mixed infantry and assault pioneers from Regiment 130 and Pionier Battalion 81 had barely manhandled their nine assault boats into the water when they were engulfed by the same hurricane of fire that was plastering the opposite bank. A carpet of crackling detonations spurted multiple geysers from the river intermingled with fountains of mud and huge clods of damp earth which were ejected into the pale sky. Bitter-smelling clouds of grey cordite smoke wafted along the riverbank in the deathly calm that followed. Four of the nine boats were a complete wreck, floundering and settling in shallow water.

Bodies began to snag among the reeds lining the riverbank. Wounded soldiers shrieked for assistance. Hermann Wild, attacking upriver, remembered losing his close friend Muller to this unexpected strike. ‘I had spoken with him only five hours before the assault,’ he said: ‘Even then he was already troubled by a premonition of impending death.’(13) Now he would never speak to him again. German artillery, likely the newly employed secret Nebelwerfer multi-barrelled mortar Regiment, had dropped short: 20 men were dead or hideously mutilated.

Kremer reorganised the survivors. Delays and the mind-cloying shock of the artillery strike stifled momentum, but they continued with the mission. Five surviving assault boats motored eastwards along the River Muchaviec toward the first bridge objective. To their left rose the imposing two-storey-high walls of the citadel fortress. Before long a storm of scything, splashing fire spat out from its dominating walls. Two more boats riddled with holes were swamped in the vicinity of the north bridge linking the West Island to the citadel. Survivors struggled ashore to the Citadel Island where they were to remain pinned down for two days. Leutnant Kremer had lost two-thirds of his force in the first few hundred metres. He rallied the surviving three boats and pressed onward toward the first two bridges. These were secured by 03.55 hours, jointly supported by a landward attack pressed home by the ‘Stosstrupp Lohr’, also from Regiment 130. Leutnant Lohr’s group fired from the riverbank while Kremer’s remaining trio of vulnerable boats carried on. The third ‘Wulka’ bridge was captured at about 05.10 hours. Kremer was elated. He insisted on raising a swastika flag over the bridge, his final objective, to mark the accomplishment of the mission that had cost his force so dearly. Lohr advised him not to expose himself but Kremer recklessly persisted. As the flag was raised the hapless officer violently jerked backwards, mortally wounded, struck in the head by a single sniper’s bullet.(14)

The northern axis of the 45th Infantry Division’s attack made good progress. The IIIrd Battalion, having penetrated thick bushes and barbed wire on the high banks of the West Island, pushed on through parkland dotted with buildings burning furiously from the artillery bombardment. The 37mm PAK (anti-tank) guns were manhandled along by crews spearheading and supporting the advance. Presently the pronounced landmark of the Terespol tower, already considerably holed by shellfire, came into view as did also the tall two-storey walls enclosing the citadel. Shortly after 04.00 hours German troops penetrated this inner bastion utilising a dead ground approach enabled by the low north bridge. The flow of the German advance parted either side of the garrison church inside the walls. The northern prong had already pierced the fortress’s keep.

Meanwhile the southern fork of the division’s advance had gained swift admittance to the South Island via the south gate. German machine gun posts were established on the high earth walls that overlooked the island to cover the advance to the Tsar’s Gate, the southern bridge entrance to the citadel. Hermann Wild’s gun crews tore hands and bruised limbs manhandling their 37mm antitank guns onto heavy-duty rubber dinghies. ‘The marshy approaches to the river made it difficult,’ he said, ‘but on the other side it was even worse!’ Terrain east of the River Bug was a morass of water-filled ditches and swamp. ‘In places the anti-tank guns sank up to their axles in mud,’ complained Wild. ‘We were pushed extremely hard to keep the momentum of the advance going.’

Lines of straining infantrymen pulled the PAKs over the high banks and down into the South Island. The wide ‘camp road’ through the middle was strewn with a carpet of leaves and branches scythed down by artillery fire. As they trundled their guns north along this route they passed groups of Russian corpses strewn at the road’s edge. Many wore underclothes or were only partially dressed. ‘The first Russian prisoners came up,’ Wild remembered. ‘They had very few or practically no clothes on at all. One could see they had been totally surprised!’(15) Soon the 37mm guns were in action against light Russian armour.

Further to the south-east the IIIrd Battalion, bypassing the town of Brest, was winding its way around knocked-out obsolete Russian tanks. Counter-attacks by these and light amphibious tanks had either bogged down in the marshy ground or were destroyed by guns. Back at division headquarters, situation reports passed on by these lead units indicated clear success.

Timofei Dombrowski, a Russian machine gunner, excitedly described how ‘again and again huge volumes of fire’ engulfed his unit. ‘The Luftwaffe from above, and at ground level everything that an army had at its disposal – mortars, machine guns – and all at the same time!’ The implication of all this was sinisterly clear.

‘We were positioned directly along the line of the Bug, and we could see the complete advance on the other side, and immediately grasped what that meant. Germans – it was war!’(16)

There were normally 8,000 Soviet soldiers stationed in the fortress of Brest-Litovsk, but only 3,500 were present at the time of the attack. It was a weekend, Sunday morning in peacetime, and many soldiers were on leave.(17)

The fortress was a small community in its own right. Next to the barracks and magazine was a school, a kindergarten and hospitals. Families lived alongside the soldiers. Nikitina Archinowa, the wife of a Russian officer in the Ostfort, remembered:

‘Early in the morning I was woken up with my children by a terrible noise. Bombs and shells were exploding. I ran barefoot with my children into the street. We only had the opportunity to throw on a coat, and what a dreadful scene outside. The sky above the fortress was full of aircraft dropping bombs on us. Totally distracted women and children were rushing about looking for a place to hide from the fire. Before me lay the wife of a lieutenant with her young son; both had been killed.’(18)

The animated rhetoric and suppressed excitement characterising these postwar interviews with Russian eyewitnesses give some indication of the shock, surprise and fear activated by the sudden and unexpected German attack. A Russian policeman at Brest railway station, Nikolai Yangchuk, stated:

‘At 04.00 hours when the German artillery began to fire from behind the Bug, we all reported, as ordered, to the station. Lieutenant Y. gave the orders to distribute weapons and defend the station.’

They moved down to the Bug bridge and saw German troops were bearing down on them. ‘A great avalanche with no start or finish.’ These men appeared lethally bent on their destruction. ‘They had their sleeves rolled up, hand-grenades stuck in belts and machine pistols hanging from their necks or rifles at the ready.’(19) Dombrowski, defending on the river line, declared: ‘some of our people ran away faced with this mass attack’.(20)

Wassilij Timovelich, a Russian engineer, accounted for the apparent ease with which the outer Soviet defences were overrun. ‘Our fortifications were very well built,’ he explained, modelled on their Maginot and Siegfried line predecessors. ‘But the bunkers were not finished, and had yet to be occupied by their military crews.’ The transfer of the Russian border westward into the Polish–Soviet occupation zone in 1939 negated much of the effectiveness of the original Russian frontier defences. Repositioning was still going on. ‘Only 14 cupolas were enclosed by fortifications,’ Timovelich estimated, ‘and patrolling soldiers made certain nobody went inside. But,’ he logically asked, ‘who would want to do so? This was a border area!’ The sector was not on alert. ‘Troops were seldom inside the bunkers,’ because there was no need; consequently, ‘we slept in tents in the summer’. These tents dotted around the defence belt were overrun in the initial German rush. Many of the sleeping soldiers within were killed before they even realised they were at war. Surprise was complete. ‘Soon an intense rate of fire’ raked the unsuspecting bivouacs ‘and bullets went whizzing through the tents. There were many direct hits,’ Timovelich explained. ‘Tents were riddled and human bodies flung out.’ The defenders, confused and befuddled by sleep, had scant opportunity to defend themselves. Nikolai Yangchuk echoed this view:

‘We had too few rifles. A reinforcement of one thousand men suddenly arrived and they were sent into battle. “Don’t we get any rifles?” they asked. “Get to the front,” they were told. “You will find some weapons there”.’

There was no alternative but to move forward and lie in the trenches. ‘There they waited until someone was killed,’ Yangchuk soberly testified, ‘before they got their rifles.’(21)

The initial German assaults profoundly shocked the garrison. Grigori Makarow, a driver in a Soviet infantry division, said:

‘I felt in the first moments what war meant. All around me were dead and wounded friends and dead horses… German infantry came from the railway and began to penetrate into the fortress.’

Georgij Karbuk in Brest town said that ‘after a few hours the first tanks drove through the town, followed by motorcycle troops, then the infantry’.(22) The Panzers were beginning to move.

The 45th Infantry Division sent a stream of optimistic situation reports to XIIth Corps headquarters. At 04.00 hours, 45 minutes into the attack, it was claimed: ‘Thus far, still no enemy resistance’. A number of bridges were secured: the key railway bridge and another bridging the southern entrance to the citadel. Yet ‘still there was no noteworthy enemy resistance’. At 04.42 hours ‘50 prisoners of war were picked up dressed only in shirts, because they had been surprised while asleep’. Momentum built up, additional bridges and fort emplacements fell into German hands. Three hours after H-hour, XIIth Corps was informed ‘that the division believes it will soon have occupied the North Island’. Resistance was becoming more apparent with ‘enemy armoured attacks between the bridge and the citadel’ but the situation was in hand. Within five hours bypassing Panzer spearheads announced good progress, supported by effective Stuka dive-bombing attacks on ‘Rollbahn 1’, the main axis of advance.

At 08.35 hours, however, a more sober appraisal admitted that, ‘there was still hard fighting going on in the citadel’. By 08.50 hours XIIth Corps began to realise that the 45th Infantry Division thrust into Brest was not mirroring the pace of flanking formations bypassing the built-up area. It was decided to commit the corps reserve – Infantry Regiment 133 – to alleviate a situation where ‘thus far two battalion commanders and a company commander have been killed, with one regimental commander seriously wounded’. By 10.50 hours the pessimism was more pronounced. ‘The fighting for the Citadel is very hard – many losses,’ it was reported. ‘We are going to try and lay smoke on the objective.’ The attack against the citadel was bogging down.(23)

Gefreiter Hans Teuschler crossed the River Bug as part of the second wave with the 10th Company, Infantry Regiment 135. His unit advanced through the West Island ‘without noticeable difficulty’ across gardens, through isolated enemy positions, and soon reached the inner Citadel Island. They crossed over the bridge dominated by a huge gate, the entry to the inner keep of the fortress. Directly opposite was a long extended building with four great gates ‘which were defended by Soviet machine gunners and riflemen who had now overcome the first shock of surprise’. Fighting began in earnest. Each gate had to be grenaded into submission. ‘The square in front’ of the building, Teuschler observed, ‘was cloaked in thick smoke, punctured by fresh shell bursts and covered with rubble, which at least offered some possibility of cover.’ Attacks by light Russian armour were beaten off. The 10th Company advanced to a further gate where other assault groups and battalion support elements were assembling, concentrating for the next phase of the attack. They filed onward, picking their way around the massive garrison church. III/IR135 was now deep within the citadel and on the point of achieving its objective.(24)

To its left I/IR135, forming the other prong of the northern attack axis, had traversed the North Island and was attempting the break into the citadel from the east. The southern advance was doggedly clearing routes through the South Island and bypassing the town of Brest even further south. The pitchfork thrust into Brest-Litovsk had impaled itself deeply into the enemy’s defences on both axes. All indications suggested that the harm inflicted was mortal. No suggestion of any setback was apparent to XIIth Corps commander until 11.00 hours; 45th Infantry Division staff were, however, expressing misgivings within three to four hours of H-hour.

‘It soon became clear between 05.30 hours and 07.30 hours that the Russians were bitterly fighting especially hard behind our forward attacking companies. Infantry operating with the 35 to 40 tanks and armoured cars based inside the citadel began to form a defence. The enemy brought his sharp-shooting skills to bear, sniping from trees, rooftop outlets and cellars in multiple engagements, which soon caused us heavy losses among officers and NCOs.’(25)

Having penetrated the citadel, III/IR135 was pinned down in the vicinity of the church and partly surrounded by Russians. Reinforcements attempting to follow up through the West Island were slowed to crawling pace, picking their way forward with extreme difficulty. Commanders were being struck down by snipers with depressing rapidity. Hauptmann Praxa and his artillery battery commander, Hauptmann Krats, were killed attempting to coordinate the move forward. Major Oeltze, commanding I/IR135 trying to break into the citadel from the eastern side, was struck down alongside his artillery forward observer Leutnant Zenneck. The advance was steadily denuded of its leadership. The Terespol bridge leading into the citadel became impassable. Russian infantry, having overcome their initial shock, were now manning the citadel walls. Anyone moving in the open was shot.

As the day wore on the sun grew increasingly hot. Russian resistance around the church and officers’ mess inside the citadel perceptibly increased. Walking wounded soldiers began to stumble back across the bridges, many bandaged and half undressed, always under fire. By midday the division’s attack was visibly faltering. The subsequent post-action report explained:

‘During the early morning hours it became clear that artillery support for close quarter fighting in the citadel would be impossible because our infantry were totally enmeshed with the Russians. Our own line was in a tangle of buildings, scrub, trees and rubble and could hardly be identified as it ran partly through Russian resistance nests or was in places surrounded. Attempts to engage the enemy directly with individual heavy infantry weapons, anti-tank guns and light artillery often failed due to poor visibility, the danger to our own troops and primarily the thickness of the fortress walls.’

A passing battery of self-propelled guns was commandeered and employed to no effect. Infantry Regiment 133, the corps reserve, was moved forward after 13.15 hours to the South and West islands, but was unable to influence the situation because:

‘New forces reappeared after a short time, where the Russians had been driven or smoked out. They emerged from cellars, houses, pipes and other hiding places, shooting accurately, so that our losses rose even higher.’(26)

Gefreiter Hans Teuschler, near the church inside the citadel, was directing the fire of a light machine gun from an abandoned Russian anti-aircraft position. Using binoculars, he had barely discerned muzzle flash from a casemate 300m away when the number two on the gun shouted urgently ‘Get down!’ The sniper round slammed into Teuschler’s chest as he attempted to do so. Spun around by the massive force of the impact, he remembered drowsily trying to squeeze the hand of the machine gunner lying alongside him, to give an indication of life that might be ebbing away. Thoughts of God and home welled up in his mind before blacking out. On regaining consciousness later he was confronted with a bleak scene:

‘On the forward edge of the Flak position was the half-constructed tripod of a heavy machine gun. Behind it lay its gunner, mortally wounded, gasping with a severe gunshot wound to the lung. His eyes were glazed over and he groaned with pain and thirst. “Have you anything to drink Kamerad?” he asked me. I passed him my canteen with difficulty. To my right the machine gunner sat bolt upright, unmoving. There was no response when I spoke to him. In the immediate vicinity a sad concert of cries from the helpless wounded could be heard from all sides. “Medic, medic. God in Heaven, help me!” The sniper had been particularly effective in his work.’

Teuschler, nearing the end of his strength, weakly struggled to extricate himself from the top of an uncomfortable ammunition box, upon which he had fallen backwards after being shot. ‘My chest felt as heavy as lead,’ he admitted, ‘and my shirt and tunic were soaked in blood’. He placed a field dressing on his chest to ‘build up a crust’ to match that which had congealed over the exit wound on his back, where he had lain on the box. His senses, dulled by shock, barely enabled him to complete the process. But having achieved it ‘he felt himself rescued and began wandering through a wonderful dream world’.(27) He was delirious. All the time the sun beat mercilessly down.

At 13.50 hours Generalleutnant Schlieper, the commander of 45th Infantry Division, on the North Island observing the faltering attack from a vantage point in Infantry Regiment 135’s sector, resigned himself to the inevitable. The citadel would not be taken by infantry attack alone. Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, the commander of Army Group Centre, had visited the XIIth Corps Command Post 40 minutes before, and came to the same conclusion. At 14.30 hours it was decided to withdraw the 45th Division vanguard elements who had already penetrated the citadel. The move would have to be conducted under the cover of darkness. Once a clear combat demarcation line had been established, the Russian garrison could be reduced by systematic and directed artillery fire. Commander Fourth Army confirmed the decision. The division log explained the reasoning:

‘He did not want any unnecessary casualties; traffic on the “Rollbahn” and railway line already appeared possible. Enemy interference to this should be prevented. In general, the Russians should be starved out.’(28)

It was a depressing start to the campaign for 45th Division: 21 officers and 290 NCOs and men had been killed in the first 24 hours.(29) This represented two-thirds of the entire losses suffered during the preceding six-week French campaign.

The XIIth Corps requested additional support from self-propelled guns and flamethrowers. Mopping up was unlikely to be achieved by artillery alone.

Across the River Bug, the decisions being enacted at headquarters had no impact upon the intensity of the fighting raging in and around the citadel as dusk settled. The outline of the garrison church was barely discernible, shrouded by the dust and smoke of battle. Some 70 German soldiers, still holding Russian prisoners, were cut off. There was radio contact, but intermittent. Fresh salvoes of artillery fire howled over the headquarters and began to flash and crackle in the dying light. This appeared no easy task.

‘Only 1,000km as the crow flies to Moscow’

‘Thank God! It’s started up again!’ wrote a Wochenschau newsreel cameraman on his calendar.(1) The tension of the previous weeks had broken at last. ‘It appears that we brutally surprised the Russians early this morning,’ confided 28-year-old Ulrich Modersohn in a letter to his mother. Modersohn, serving with Army Group South, described how:

‘It was never possible for him to muster any worthwhile resistance. Our artillery and Stuka fire must have been pure hell for him. By midday assault bridges were across the Bug and ready. Now our troops are rolling over into Russia. This afternoon I saw how the earth shook and the sky hummed… Everything is following the set plan.’(2)

First-day impressions recorded by soldiers reveal elation at the extent of success and atmospheric descriptions of conflict often just out of sight. Robert Rupp, a Berlin school teacher in civilian life, wrote: ‘The thunder of artillery woke us at 03.15 hours. 34 batteries are firing.’ He was observing the River Bug border from the edge of a wood 7km away:

‘Soon villages were burning and white Very flares climbed high. The front raged like a lightning storm. Grey stripes climbed up into the sky if Flak fired and dispersed slowly. An aircraft fell burning to the ground. The sky, which to begin with was red and clear, became tinged with purple and green. A huge smoke-cloud stood behind the low base-line silhouette of the ground and turned slowly to the right. I tried to sleep a little but managed only a doze.’(3)

Oberleutnant Siegfried Knappe observed the infantry assaults that advanced following the pause in the opening artillery barrage in the Army Group Centre sector:

‘As the infantry moved forward, the morning darkness was filled with the sounds of shouting, the crack of rifle shots, the short bursts of machine guns, and the shattering crashes of hand-grenades. The rifle fire sounded like the clatter of metal-wheeled carts moving fast over cobblestone streets. Our infantry overran the barbed wire the Russians had erected on each side of their no-man’s land and stormed the guard towers and pillboxes the Russians had built immediately beyond the death strip.’

Short bitter fire-fights took place with an enemy who often stood his ground even though surprised. ‘Our men took as prisoners those Russians who surrendered and killed those who resisted,’ commented Knappe. A bottle-neck of retreating Russian soldiers was decimated at a bridge in Sasnia, the objective, by Stuka dive-bomber support. Knappe, a veteran of the French campaign, confronted with the sight of the first dead bodies, declared: ‘although I was no longer shocked by the sight, I had not become accustomed to it either.’ The advance rolled irresistibly eastwards. Knappe’s unit, the 87th Infantry Division, was preceded by Panzer formations. ‘We took Sasnia and Grajewo the first day,’ he declared, ‘and then started the long road to Moscow.’(4)

Progress was evident along the entire 3,000km front. Curizio Malaparte, an Italian war correspondent with Army Group South standing on the banks of the River Prut, watched the advance of a mechanised division near Galatz.

‘The exhausts of the Panzers belch out blue tongues of smoke. The air is filled with a pungent, bluish vapour that mingles with the damp green of the grass and with the golden reflection of the corn. Beneath the screaming arch of Stukas the mobile columns of tanks resemble thin lines drawn with a pencil on the vast green slate of the Moldavian plain.’

He was held up for two hours as the column rumbled by. ‘The smell of men and horses gives way to the overpowering reek of petrol,’ he remarked. Traffic control at crossroads was conducted by groups of ‘stern, impassive Feldgendarmen’ (military police). Lorried infantry followed the tanks. ‘The men sat in strangely stiff attitudes; they had the appearance of statues.’ The open trucks filed by, raising huge columns of dust, which settled upon the weary infantrymen hunched in the back. ‘They were so white with dust,’ observed Malaparte, ‘they looked as if they were made of marble.’(5)

Leutnant Alfred Durrwanger, commanding an anti-tank company in the 28th Infantry Division attacking from East Prussia near Suwalki, said: ‘When the battle began, we found the Russians surprised, but not at all unprepared.’ His men crossed the Soviet border with a sense of foreboding. ‘There was no enthusiasm,’ he declared, ‘not at all!’ The prevailing atmosphere ‘was rather a deep feeling of the immensity of that enterprise, and the question immediately arose: where and at which place would there be an end to the operations?’(6)

This was a question asked by many German soldiers at the outset of the campaign. Some were arrogantly confident; one Leutnant in the 74th Infantry Division wrote:

‘I tell you in advance that in four to five weeks time the swastika flag will be wafting over the Kremlin in Moscow, and that moreover we will have Russia finished this year and Tommy on the carpet… Ja – it is no secret, when and how, that we will be in Moscow within four weeks with our as yet undefeated Wehrmacht. It is only 1,000km from Suwalki as the crow flies. We only need to conduct another Blitzkrieg. We only know how to attack. Forward, onward and again forward in concert with our heavy weapons raining fire, cordite, iron, bombs and shells – all on the heads of the Russians. That’s all it needs.’(7)

Another infantry Oberleutnant declared that, unlike his comrades, he was not surprised at the outbreak of war ‘which he had always prophesied’. He rationalised that ‘after this war with Russia, and that in Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, is over – which I believe will be in a short time – then Ribbentrop [the German Foreign Minister] will need only to send a single German soldier to England to negotiate’ the peace. Whatever the outcome, he sarcastically continued, ‘perhaps we will all have to go over [to England] but we will have at least secured our rear with five to six air fleets and 10,000 Panzers.’(8) Others were fortified by ideological conviction. ‘Na, what do you think of our new enemy then?’ wrote an infantry Feldwebel. ‘Perhaps Papa will recall how I spoke about the Russian army during my last leave, emphasising even then that it’s not possible to maintain lasting friendly relationships with the Bolsheviks,’ commenting sinisterly: ‘There are too many Jews there.’(9) Not all members of the invading army were so patriotically motivated, as anti-tank gunner Johann Danzer recalled:

‘On day one during our first break one of the company’s soldiers shot himself with his own rifle. He put the rifle between his knees, placed the muzzle in his mouth and squeezed off. For him, the war with all its pressures was at an end.’

Danzer’s experiences on this first day bore mute testimony to the horrors his suicidal comrade sought to avoid. After the opening bombardment he and his anti-tank gun crew ‘could see absolutely nothing at first, except for powder smoke. But as this began to disperse, and it got lighter, the devil broke loose from the Russian side.’ The PAK crew of five and commander had to drag their 37mm anti-tank gun into the attack, maintaining the same pace as the infantry advancing alongside. Four additional infantry soldiers were earmarked to assist so they could keep up. ‘Our immense load became, as a consequence, the primary target for enemy fire.’ The first burst of Russian machine gun fire tore the entire group apart. ‘Three men were killed instantly,’ said Danzer, ‘all the others were severely wounded and I was the only one left uninjured.’(10)

After the crust of Russian resistance was broken by the infantry, on the frontier the Panzers began to clatter through the breaches and penetrate the hinterland. Their passage was not totally unimpeded. ‘I found myself on the Eastern Front encountering what seemed to be a different and terrible race of men,’ declared Hans Becker,(11) a Panzer crew man with the 12th Panzer Division. ‘The very first attacks involved sharp, fierce fighting.’

Seventh Panzer Division achieved an initial deep penetration. Border defences were weak in relation to what had been reported by intelligence, ‘and enemy artillery never emerged in any consequential strength’. By 12.45 hours on the first day the bridge spanning the River Neman at Olita was captured intact, falling victim to a determined swiftly advancing vanguard. The bridgehead was immediately counter-attacked by Russian heavy tanks supported by infantry and artillery. During this first tank-on-tank battle of the Russian campaign, 82 Soviet tanks were shot into flames.(12) Karl Fuchs, a tank commander in Panzer Regiment 25, wrote home:

‘Yesterday I knocked off a Russian tank, as I had done two days ago! If I get in another attack, I’ll receive my first battle stripes. War is half as bad as it sounds and one thing is plain as day: the Russians are fleeing everywhere and we follow them. All of us believe in early victory!’(13)

Olita village burned furiously. Numbers of German tanks smouldered along the roads leading into it. Rubber treads on road wheels formed miniature flaming hoops. Many had turrets blown clean away. All had been picked off during the advance by dug-in Russian tanks. Seventh Panzer Division almost immediately burst out of its bridgehead on the other side of the River Neman, but Oberst Rothenberg, the commander of Panzer Regiment 25, was to call the engagement ‘the hardest battle of my life’.(14)

The weather on this first attack day was, as the 7th Panzer Division official history declared:

‘…particularly favourable for fighting, and over the following days. It was dry, the sun shone, roads and tracks were easily negotiable, and even the terrain off roads and paths, normally swampy, had dried out and was drivable for both tracked and wheeled vehicles.’(15)

Gefreiter Erich Kuby summed it up with some irony in his diary: ‘This is truly Hitler war weather,’(16) he declared. The official history of the 20th Panzer Division, also with Panzergruppe 3 under Generaloberst Hoth, commented on the impact the heat was having on accompanying marching infantry regiments, which traversed considerable stretches on the first day, some as far as 50km. Assessments of Soviet strength on the border proved exaggerated. Three hundred prisoners, including 20 officers and 10 lorries, were captured on 22 June. Deeply rutted sand tracks caused unexpectedly high levels of fuel consumption. Shortages resulted when wheeled fuel tankers found they were unable to keep up in the hot sandy conditions. Columns began to stretch out. ‘The long slow division line snaked along dry shifting tracks in the summer heat,’ recorded the division history, ‘raising clear dust-cloud outlines, offering a promising target for enemy bombers.’ Six air attacks fell on these lines of erratically moving vehicles on the first day alone.(17)

Where was the Red Air Force?

‘We were not bothered at all by the Red Air Force,’ remarked Leutnant Michael Wechtler. His men, lying in reserve with Regiment 133, awaited the call forward to Brest-Litovsk. They basked in the sun in an open meadow seemingly oblivious to air attack, awaiting further orders.(1) Leutnant Heinz Knoke, a Bf109 fighter pilot flying with JG52, had already attacked his early morning Russian headquarters objective. Total surprise was achieved:

‘One of the huts is fiercely blazing. Vehicles have been stripped of their camouflage and overturned by the blast. The Ivans at last come to life. The scene below is like an overturned ant-heap, as they scurry about in confusion. Stepsons of Stalin in their underwear flee for cover in the woods.’

Five or six more strafing runs were conducted over the camp and headquarters. Light Flak began to open up and was immediately suppressed. ‘An Ivan at the gun falls to the ground,’ Knoke observed, ‘still in underwear.’

His flight arrived back at Suwalki fighter base at 05.56 hours, managing a turn-round within 40 minutes before returning to their previous objective, guided ‘by the smoke rising from the burning buildings’. After systematically raking the target the wing was refuelled and rearmed again; this time it took 22 minutes. By the end of the day Knoke saw that:

‘Thousands of Ivans are in full retreat, which becomes an utter rout when we open up on them, stumbling and bleeding as they flee from the highway in an attempt to take cover in the nearby woods. Vehicles lie burning by the roadside after we pass. Once I drop my bombs on a column of heavy artillery drawn by horses. I am thankful not to be down there myself.’

By 20.00 hours Knoke’s squadron was flying its sixth mission of the day. The Luftwaffe, the most modern arm of the Wehrmacht, had many technically trained young Germans in its ranks. They had, in the main, been educated by a National Socialist regime extolling the virtues of modern technology and racial purity. Air attacks as a consequence were pursued with pitiless ferocity. Knoke admitted:

‘We have dreamed for a long time of doing something like this to the Bolshevists. Our feeling is not one of hatred, so much as utter contempt. It is a genuine satisfaction for us to be able to trample the Bolshevists in the mud where they belong.’(2)

A Luftwaffe Unteroffizier based at Lyon wrote home the day following the invasion. His pragmatic comments are tinged with similar racist overtones. ‘Yesterday we stood close to the map and thought through all the possible contingencies we could face.’ Identifying the problems, they mockingly concluded: ‘It would be better if we’re never stationed with the General Staff.’ Weltanschauung still jaded the NCO’s reasoning process. ‘Everything that belongs to Jewry stands on one front against us. The Marxists fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the big financiers as was the case in Germany in 1933.’ Surprise at the invasion announcement was tinged with a degree of quiet optimism. ‘Who would have thought that now we would be up against the Russians,’ he declared, ‘but if I recall correctly, the Führer has always done the best he could.’(3)

The efficacy of this statement was borne out by an increasing realisation of the success of the pre-emptive air strike. Flights of gull-winged Stuka dive-bombers were at that moment peeling off, sirens wailing into the attack. Junkers Ju87B Stukas were the main providers of close air support to the army. Leutnant Hans Rudel had by the evening of the first day ‘been out over the enemy lines four times in the area between Grodno and Volkovysk.’ His targets were large numbers of tanks together with supply columns that the Russians were bringing up to the front. ‘We bomb tanks, Flak artillery and ammunition dumps supplying the tanks and infantry,’ he wrote.(4)

War correspondent Hans Schaller described the cockpit view of just such a dive-bombing attack. Observing a Stuka flight below, he described how:

‘They are just changing their course. I cannot hear them above the noise of my own machine; they seem to be flying quietly and noiselessly above the landscape like sharp-eyed birds of prey, eager to claim their victim. One of the dive-bombers is already leaving the formation! The machine tilts to one side, begins to dive and plunges down through a milky wall of cloud towards the objective, hurtles down steeper and steeper. Stands on its head, dives almost perpendicularly and now the tension of the pilot has reached its climax.’(5)

This mode of attack, although not precision bombing, was the most accurate that technology could achieve at the time. Pilots laboured under uncomfortable G-force pressures varying from 4g to 12g for one to six seconds depending how the pilot levelled from his dive.(6) Hauptmann Robert Oleinic, a Stuka training instructor, explained:

‘A dive speed of 480kph placed enormous strain on the system. The dive brake set at this speed prevented the machine from breaking up in the air, enabling the pilot to get it under control again. The pressure while levelling out was so intense that pilots occasionally experienced a temporary misting sensation that could last a few seconds. That meant for a moment he blacked out.’(7)

Leutnant Rudel commented on the cumulative physical strain dive-bombing had upon Stuka pilots during the opening weeks of the Russian campaign. Take-off was at 03.00 hours in the first few days with the final landing often after 22.00 hours. ‘Every spare minute,’ he stated, ‘we stretch out underneath an aeroplane and instantly fall asleep.’ When scrambled, ‘we hop to it without even knowing where it is from’. Prolonged stress caused them to go about their business ‘as though in our dreams’.(8)

Soviet Air Force reports were soon referring to impending catastrophe. Third Army Air Force commander informed his Western Front higher command that:

‘At 04.00 hours on 22 June 1941 the enemy attacked our airfields simultaneously. The whole of the 16th Bomber Regiment was put out of action. The 122nd Fighter Regiment suffered heavily, the 127th Fighter Regiment to a lesser extent.’

A paralysis of command and control developed. Frantic requests for information were despatched. The report continued:

‘I request that you report where the 122nd and 127th Fighter Regiments have been transferred and give us their call signs and wave numbers. I request that you reinforce us with fighters for the fight against the air enemy.’(9)

Fourth Soviet Army reported similar setbacks. ‘The enemy is dominant in the air; our aviation regiments are suffering great losses [of 30–40%].’(10)

The staff of the Soviet Tenth Army was told by the 9th Air Division that by 10.29 hours all its fighters at Minsk had been destroyed. At 10.57 hours, 28 minutes later, the 126th Fighter Regiment in the same division asked permission to destroy its logistic stocks at Bielsk and retreat so as to evade likely capture. Bielsk, the staff ominously noted, was 25km inside the border.(11)

Soviet Air Force units were mauled as they took-off from runways. At Bug near Brest-Litovsk a single Soviet fighter squadron attempting to ‘scramble’ was bombed while still in motion on the ground. Flaming wrecks skidded into each other in a fiery mêlée and were left to burn out on the airfield boundaries. Reckless courage displayed by Soviet bomber crews to stem the onslaught was to no avail. ‘It seemed to me almost a crime to allow these floundering aircraft to be attacked in tactically impossible formations,’ commented Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring commanding Luftflotte 2. On the second day he described how ‘one flight after another came in innocently at regular intervals, as easy prey for our fighters’. His final caustic comment was: ‘It was sheer “infanticide”.’(12)

Hauptmann Herbert Pabst from Stuka Geschwader 77 saw a Soviet air raid on his base shortly after returning from a sortie. Black mushrooms of smoke suddenly burst up from the airfield boundaries with no warning. Six twin-engined enemy machines could be observed making a wide curving turn away, heading for home. Simultaneously two or three minute dots, German fighters, were sighted converging rapidly.

‘As the first one fired, thin threads of smoke seemed to join it to the bomber. Turning ponderously to the side, the big bird flashed silver, then plunged vertically downwards with its engines screaming. As it crashed a huge sheet of flame shot upwards. The second bomber became a glare of red, exploded as it dived, and only the bits came floating down like great autumnal leaves. The third turned over backwards on fire. A similar fate befell the rest, the last falling in a village and burning for an hour. Six columns of smoke rose from the horizon. All six had been shot down!’

Pabst added: ‘They went on coming the whole afternoon’, but all were knocked out. ‘From our airfield alone we saw 21 crash and not one got away.’(13)

The German pre-emptive air strike hit 31 airfields during the early morning hours of 22 June. Sorties thereafter were directed against suspected Soviet staff headquarters, barracks, artillery and bunker positions and oil depots. Defending Soviet fighters tended to keep their distance, turning away after an initial burst of fire. Leutnant Rudel was clear the Russian ‘Rata’ J15 was inferior to the German Bf109s. Whenever they appeared, ‘they are shot down like flies,’ he reported. Heinz Knoke claimed on 22 June there was ‘no sign of the Russian Air Force the entire day’. Therefore, ‘we are able to do our work without encountering opposition’.(14) The reason was clear. By the end of the first morning the Soviets had lost 890 aircraft, of which 222 were shot down in the air by fighters and Flak and 668 destroyed on the ground. Only 18 German aircraft failed to land after the initial attacks. By that night the Soviets had lost 1,811 aircraft: 1,489 on the ground and 322 shot down. German losses rose to only 35.(15)

Between 23 and 26 June the number of Soviet airfields attacked reached 123. By the end of the month 4,614 Soviet aircraft were destroyed at a cost of 330 German. Of these 1,438 were lost in the air and 3,176 caught on the ground. Total Luftwaffe air supremacy had been achieved. Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring recalled the ‘reports of enemy aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground totalled 2,500; a figure which the Reichsmarschall [Goering] at first refused to believe!’ Pilot reports by the very nature of the mêlée of air combat were prone to exaggeration. ‘But when [Goering] checked up after our advance, he told us our claim was 200 or 300 less than the actual figure.’(16) In fact the claims had been underassessed by some 1,814 aircraft.

Damage inflicted on completely unprepared Russian airfields was enormous. Soviet pilots and ground crews had been asleep under canvas when the first attacks swept in. Aircraft were not camouflaged and stood in densely packed rows at border airfields. Bomber squadrons were not stationed in depth within the hinterland and were mostly unprotected by flak. When they finally rose in swarms to do battle, their ponderous non-tactical and unprotected formations were savaged by attacking German fighter wings. JG3, commanded by Major Günther Lutzow, shot down 27 attacking Soviet bombers in 15 minutes, without losing a single aircraft.(17) As a consequence, senior army and Luftwaffe generals were euphoric in the first week of the campaign. Generalmajor Hoffmann von Waldau, Chief of the Führungsabteilung of the Luftwaffe General Staff, claimed ‘full tactical surprise’ had been achieved, reckoning on ‘battle-winning success’. This view was shared by General der Flieger Frhr von Richthofen, the commander of the VIIIth Fliegerkorps in Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2, who believed at the end of June that the mass of the Red Army’s attack armies had been annihilated. Two weeks later he stated, ‘the way to Moscow was open.’ Eight days, he felt, was all that was required.(18)

Premature as this comment may have been, air supremacy was assured. The Soviet Air Force, however, was not totally destroyed, although it had been dealt a crushing blow. Most of the aircrew baling out from stricken bombers did so over their own territory. They would live to fight another day, as also the crews of machines destroyed on the ground, who could be reintroduced into the air battle at a later stage. Only 30% of the European Red Air Force had been located by the Luftwaffe during the planning and reconnaissance phase. Its overall assessment of potential was out by one half. Nine days after the pre-emptive strike Generalmajor Hoffmann von Waldau told the Army Chief of Staff, Halder:

‘The air force has greatly underestimated the enemy’s numerical strength. It is quite evident that the Russians initially had more than 8,000 planes. Half of this number has probably already been shot down or destroyed on the ground, so numerically we are now equal with the Russians.’(19)

He privately confided to his diary on 3 July that the surprise attack had hit a massive Russian deployment. The high numbers previously dismissed as propaganda now required careful reassessment. ‘The matériel quality is also better than expected,’ von Waldau admitted. Continued success was dependent upon maintaining the current massive Russian attrition rate with ‘minimal own losses’. But a sinister development was already apparent: ‘The bitterness and extent of mass resistance has exceeded all we had imagined.’(20)

The first indication of this was when Soviet pilot Sub-Lieutenant Dimitri Kokorev of the 124th Fighter Regiment deliberately rammed a Messerschmitt Bf110 during a dogfight over Kobrin. He had run out of ammunition. Both aircraft spiralled earthwards. Near Zholkva another Polikarpov I-16 pilot, Lieutenant I. Ivanov, directed his propeller into the tail of a German Heinkel He111 bomber. Kokorev was to survive; Ivanov did not. Nine Russian pilots reportedly resorted to suicidal ramming tactics on the first day. One exasperated Luftwaffe Oberst declared: ‘Soviet pilots were fatalists, fighting without any hope of success or confidence in their own abilities and driven only by their own fanaticism or by fear of the commissars.’(21) The Germans were winning the air battle, but their opponents, despite the one-sided nature of the dogfights, could still be unpredictably lethal.

The Luftwaffe had the Russian tiger by the tail. Mass resistance tinged with an element of fanaticism was pitted against a tactically deadly but smaller foe. Only by constantly achieving the same level of crippling losses could the Luftwaffe expect to win. ‘Success is axiomatic to inflicting very high casualties relative to minimal own losses,’ von Waldau calculated, ‘but first greater numbers need to be annihilated’.(22) German control of the air was complete by dusk on the first day. From now onwards Luftwaffe units concentrated on supporting the ground advance.

Arnold Döring flying with KG53 was strafing and bombing the roads north-east of Brest-Litovsk leading toward Kobrin. His comments encapsulated the Luftwaffe’s new intent. ‘In order to leave the road intact for our own advance,’ he said, ‘we dropped the bombs only at the side of the road.’ Their target was massed enemy columns of tanks, motorised columns with horse-drawn carts and artillery in between, ‘all frantically making their way east’. The result was pandemonium.


‘Our bombs fell by the side of the tanks, guns, between vehicles and panic-stricken Russians running in all directions. It was total panic down there – nobody could even think of firing back. The effect of the incendiary and splinter bombs was awesome. With a target like this there are no misses. Tanks were turned over or stood in flames, guns with their towing vehicles blocked the road, while between them horses thrashing around multiplied the panic.’(23)

Dusk… 22 June 1941

‘As the men marched the dust rose until we were all covered in a light yellow coating,’ remarked Leutnant Heinrich Haape with Infantry Regiment 18, part of Army Group Centre. ‘Men and vehicles assumed ghostly outlines in the dust-laden air.’(1) Steady progress had been achieved during this, the longest period of daylight in the year. ‘Our divisions on the entire offensive front,’ noted General Franz Halder, ‘have forced back the enemy by an average of 10-12km. This has opened the path for our armour.’(2) Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4 had captured two bridges across the River Dubysa intact in Army Group North’s sector. Units were achieving penetrations averaging 20km.(3) General Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 in the centre made startling progress: 17th Panzer Division covered 18km; 18th Panzer to its right drove 66km north of Brest-Litovsk. South of the town, 3rd Panzer Division penetrated 36km, 4th Panzer 39km and the 1st Cavalry Division 24km.

The pace had been hectic. Robert Rupp wrote in his diary after crossing the River Bug: ‘Further drive at speed into the darkness. Dust often so thick that one could hardly see the vehicle in front any more.’(4) The vanguard of XIIth Army Corps, the detachment ‘Stolzmann’, reached the Bereza Kartuska area one day later, an advance of 100km.(5) Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3 forced the River Neman near Olita and Merkine scattering enemy resistance. It created full operational freedom of movement in so doing; there was no tangible enemy line in front of it. Hoth was poised to break out. Further south, von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1, part of Army Group South, was approaching the River Styr; patrols were already across the River Prut. The frontier crust appeared broken. All bridges on the Bug and other river frontiers were captured intact. Halder concluded:

‘Tactical surprise of the enemy has apparently been achieved along the entire line. Troops were caught in their quarters, planes on the airfields were covered up, and… enemy groups faced with unexpected developments at the front enquired at the HQ in the rear what they should do.’

The OKW report for 22 June reported an ‘overall impression that the enemy, after having overcome initial surprise, took up the battle’. Chief of Staff Halder likewise concurred; ‘After the first shock,’ he wrote, ‘the enemy has turned to fight.’(6)

Infantry following up the main border-breaching assaults were beginning to feel the consequence of this. In Army Group Centre, III/IR18, numbering some 800 men, was fired upon by a Soviet rearguard. It consisted merely of a Soviet Commissar and four soldiers, who aggressively defended a hastily improvised position in the midst of a cornfield. German casualties were negligible. ‘I didn’t expect that,’ battalion commander Major Neuhoff confided shakily to his medical officer, Leutnant Haape. ‘Sheer suicide to attack a battalion at close quarters with five men.’

It left an uncomfortable feeling of insecurity. Veterans of the previous French campaign the year before were accustomed to enemy surrender once they were outmanoeuvred. These tactics were unfamiliar. ‘We were to learn that those small groups of Russians would constitute our greatest danger,’ declared Haape. High-standing corn provided ideal cover for small stay-behind groups, prepared to fight on, even after the main body of Russian forces had been pushed back. ‘As a rule they were fanatically led by Soviet commissars and we never knew when we should come under their fire.’ German units were subjected to nuisance raids the entire day. Haape’s battalion was ambushed twice in the morning. A Hauptmann from a neighbouring unit admitted later the same day: ‘That’s happening all over the countryside’. Exasperated, he complained: ‘These swine build up ammunition dumps in the cornfields and then wait until our main columns pass before they start sniping.’(7)

By contrast the German general staff was not too displeased at this Soviet tendency to turn and fight. ‘There are no indications of an attempted disengagement,’ Halder reported. The Russian command organisation ‘is too ponderous to effect swift operational regrouping in reaction to our attack, and so the Russians will have to accept battle in the disposition in which they were deployed’. The aim was to destroy the Russian armies as far west as possible. Halder’s diary entries exude a certain smug confidence. The plan was working. ‘Army groups are pursuing their original objectives,’ he noted. ‘Nor is there any reason for a change. OKH has no occasion to issue any orders.’(8) The campaign was developing satisfactorily.

Blitzkrieg for the ordinary soldier at the front, however, was not fitting this tidy conception of order and progress. At the end of this interminably long summer’s day Leutnant Haape was taxed by the grim task of providing assistance to the injured who had already fallen in the apparently faultless execution of the task. Progress at troop level was not so obvious. Faced now as a medical officer with the onerous task of clearing up the physical and psychological carnage, Haape felt exasperated, even indignant. He remonstrated:

‘In how many fields and woods and ditches were German soldiers dying, waiting for help that would not come – or that would be too late when it did arrive? Surely, I thought, the army could have made better arrangements to deal with the hellish mix of confusion, terror and despair that was left behind by the relentless forward march of our storm troops. The organisation of the fighting troops and the paraphernalia of war seemed to have been worked out with amazing precision, but there appeared to have been a criminal disregard of the necessities behind front line troops. Surely it would even have been better to advance more slowly if it would have given us time to find and treat our wounded and bury our dead.’(9)

The victors had suffered in the process. Even less compassion was expended on the vanquished as the first 24 hours of a conflict that was to last nearly four years drew to a close.

Загрузка...