War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942

The home fronts… Victory will be ours! Germany

Outwardly, Sunday 22 June appeared a normal day in the Reich. Some 95,000 voices roared appreciation at a thrilling football cup final being played out at the Berlin Olympic Stadium. Many Germans, ignoring the distraction of world events, immersed themselves in an exciting game of football, the highlights of which were replayed in German cinemas the following week. Rapid Wien, the first Ostmark (non-German) team to play in a German final since the Austrian Anschluss, met the defending champions and favourites FC Schalke 04. The German team, leading 3–0 at the 70-minute point, lost 3–4 in the final few minutes to a suddenly resurgent Austrian team. It was a breathtaking performance and totally unexpected result. National reverses in wartime had been rare until now. Theirs was different.

Reportage of sporting conflicts was preferable to listening to the depressing news broadcast across the Reich hours before. Goebbels’ radio speech shocked the German nation. One housewife in Hausberge Porta wrote:

Another gentleman, Herr F. M. living in Neuwied declared:

Distractions beyond football matches were concentrating minds. Charlotte von der Schulenburg’s husband, already at the front, had left her alone at home with four young children, aged between four months and six years old to support. Domestic pressures were building up. She pointed out:

The war had hit the Reich holiday industry. The Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten (Munich’s Latest News) commented in an article on 1941 tourism that large numbers of Swiss hotels were faced with closure because 60% of their customers had previously been foreign tourists.⁽⁴⁾ War kept people at home in Germany. Soldiers on leave preferred to spend their precious final furlough at home with their families. Hotels were overfilled, but not with holiday-makers. Most were commandeered by the state for military hospitals, convalescent homes for the wounded or for children evacuated to the country to avoid British bombers as part of the Kinderlandverschickung programme. Actress Heidi Kabel, commenting on the growing frequency of air raids, which had grown more menacing since 1940, expressed her concern.

Local threats are often perceived to be more significant than epic impersonal events shaping history. One infantry Oberleutnant, despite optimism that the coming campaign would be short, was concerned more for his wife’s vulnerability to air raids, than of impending combat. ‘These things unsettle me less,’ he wrote home, ‘than the fact you poor women and children have to stay in cellars night after night.’ Euskirchen, his home town, ‘is revisited time after time,’ yet, he asks his wife, ‘you don’t write about casualties?’⁽⁶⁾ She doubtless preferred not to worry him.

Although the government wished to promote an air of normality, there was scepticism in the Reich over the announced invasion. ‘It was a very serious moment,’ recalled Charlotte von der Schulenburg. ‘War had always a deep horror for me’, and with a husband at the front it was ‘an extremely worrying event’.⁽⁷⁾ Gefreiter Erich Kuby’s wife, Edith, writing to her husband on the day the news broke, similarly expressed concern:

The new campaign appeared more sinister than those which had preceded it. ‘The Russian wastes,’ Edith wrote, ‘will bring a different type of war from that in France, because a “forward point” is hardly discernible.’ She despairingly finished her letter saying, ‘all the time it occurs to me how awful war is, and you are now in it.’⁽⁸⁾ The significance of these unfolding events was not lost on children. On her way to fetch the Sunday morning milk with her uncle, grandfather and father, 12-year-old Marianne Roberts heard the radio news that German troops had crossed the Russian frontier. The implications were immediately apparent. Marianne’s uncle Mattes, Pionier Gefreiter, who had already fought in the Polish and French campaigns, broke the complete silence that had ensued. ‘Now we have lost the war,’ he simply announced. Marianne said:

Her uncle departed for Russia immediately and was killed shortly after near Smolensk. Within three years her father was dead also. Four days after the outbreak of the Russian war, the classified SS Secret Report on the Home Political Situation stated:

Leutnant Helmut Ritgen, a Panzer regiment adjutant, regarded himself as a mathematician. So optimistic was he of the outcome of the approaching campaign that he began to calculate potential leave dates. The importance revolved around his future marriage.

He omitted a crucial factor from his equation – the Russians. Optimism there most certainly was. The same secret SS report continued:

Helmut Ritgen’s fiancée was to wait two more years for her wedding. Marga Merz’s experience was different. Her fiancé was conscripted, like her two brothers, into the army in 1940. But the wedding never took place. He was killed within days of the opening of the Russian campaign. She was totally overwhelmed.

The remainder of her war years passed ‘like a terrible dream’.⁽¹²⁾ Similar tragedies were to occur ten-fold in Russia.

Victory will be ours! Russia

Sixteen-year-old Ina Konstantinova lived near Kastin, north-east of Moscow. She confided to her diary on the first day of war that ‘only yesterday everything was so peaceful, so quiet, and today… my God!’ Her thoughts were echoed by Yitskhok Rudashevski from Vilna on the Lithuanian-Russian border, who remembered how a cheerful conversation was interrupted by the sudden howling of an air-raid siren. The siren was so inappropriate,’ he said, ‘to the peaceful, joyous summer which spread out around us.’ The first air raids began that same beautiful summer evening:

The outbreak of war profoundly shocked ordinary Russian people. At noon on 22 June in Moscow public address systems broadcast an announcement by Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov from every street corner describing the German invasion. Contemporary Russian newsreels captured these anxious crowds gazing with concern at metal loudspeakers as if they might offer something of more substance than the metallic voice rasp of the same shocking news that had been delivered to the Reich hours before:

Crowds listened restlessly, hands in pockets, thoughtfully pinching noses or abstractedly raising fingers to mouths as shocked minds came to terms with the import of the speech.

Some individuals stared straight ahead, while others looked about to assess the impact the depressing speech was having on their fellows. Tense faces, pursed lips and shifting glances, manifested the sense of foreboding increasingly apparent to grim-faced audiences straining to catch every word.

Ina Konstantinova declared, ‘I can’t describe my state of mind as I was listening to this speech! I became so agitated that my heart seemed to jump out.’ She, like countless others, was caught up in a patriotic fervour. ‘The country is mobilising; should I continue as before? No! I ought to make myself useful to my Homeland.’ She wrote fervently in her diary, ‘we must win!’⁽²⁾ Lew Kopelew, a Ukrainian studying in Moscow, was initially euphoric. A committed socialist, he admitted later:

His reasoning was based on the fact the German Communist Party in 1933 had been the largest voluntary communist organisation in the world.

Others expressed emotion in terms of pain. Jewgenlij Dolmatowski, later to become a Soviet Second Lieutenant, said, ‘I tell you, seriously, it caused real anguish, a feeling at the pit of the stomach’. From that moment on he was inspired to serve his country. Kopelew was similarly convinced. ‘My Homeland must be defended, and eventually Fascism come to a reckoning,’ he concluded. As a fluent German speaker he suspected he might be considered suitable for recruitment for parachute missions deep into Nazi Germany. ‘Stupid idea, eh?’ he ruefully admitted to his interviewer.⁽⁴⁾

These impacts, however, were the very emotions to which Molotov’s speech sought to appeal. ‘The whole responsibility for this act of robbery’ the speech continued, ‘must fall on the Nazi rulers’. There was a characteristic socialist input which gave some credence to Kopelew’s opinion:

There was scant comprehension, this early, the pitiless ideological methods the German armies would employ to prosecute the war. The attack was nevertheless clearly an aggression, a transgression of civilised behaviour. It must be stopped.

With that the crackling speakers became silent. They later broadcast martial music. The declaration left people shocked and in some respects humiliated. There had been the Non-Aggression Pact. No demands had been made on the Soviet Union, the Germans had simply attacked. Maria Mironowa, a Russian actress, gravely recalled the impact of the surprise announcements:

Sir John Russell at the British Embassy in Moscow declared, ‘the shock was all the greater when it did come.’ It was like a work of fiction.

Elena Skrjabin, listening to Molotov’s radio broadcast with her mother in Leningrad, suspected the effect of the transmission was not quite that intended. ‘War! Germany was already bombing cities in the Soviet Union’. She felt Molotov ‘faltered’ and the speech ‘was harshly delivered as if he was out of breath.’ The atmosphere conveyed suggested something dreadful threatened. People caught their breaths with a start as the news was announced. On the streets she saw:

A palpable feeling of crisis reigned. ‘Throughout the entire day,’ Skrjabin felt, ‘the atmosphere was tense and unsettled.’⁽⁸⁾ A day before, journalist Konstantin Simonov had been summoned to the Party Broadcasting Committee and instructed to write two anti-Fascist songs. ‘With that I decided that the war, which we all basically expected to happen, was very close.’ He worked throughout the morning of 22 June until disturbed by a telephone call at 14.00 hours. The first thing he heard on lifting the receiver was, ‘It’s war.’ Instructions followed to join the Soviet Third Army in the central sector near Grodno. He was to join a Front newspaper organisation. Unbeknown to him, it already lay within the shadow of the German advance. Uniforms were then issued. During the hectic fitting process he recalled, ‘we were all very lively, perhaps too lively and certainly nervous’.⁽⁹⁾

Like the civilian population in Germany, the impressions of that fateful first day are indelibly stamped on Russian memories. Vladimir Kalesnik, a student living in halls of residence, was caught unawares as his door was flung open and a voice cried, ‘It’s war. It’s war get up!’

Caught up in the patriotic fervour of the moment, young Kalesnik was not mature enough to comprehend fully the emotional implications of his work.

Vladimir Garbunow living in the Urals remembered that Sunday ‘was summer-like and warm, and we were not thinking about a war at all’. On his way home he saw people gathering in the streets listening to loudspeaker announcements. War had begun. Garbunow, like Kalesnik, was too young to comprehend its significance.

With the other 16- and 17-year-olds he reported to the Military Commissar and asked for permission to report to the front. Animatedly he recounted:

Now an old man, and having experienced the war, it came back as he was interviewed. ‘Yes,’ he declared, visibly upset, ‘it was difficult, very difficult.’⁽¹¹⁾

Pjotr Aleksandrowitsch Lidow, a 35-year-old party official living in Minsk, was informed by a Pravda secretary at 09.00 hours that morning that his country was at war. Gazing through his apartment window he saw ‘the town was completely quiet. Nobody knew anything. People were going into the parks and the countryside.’ Lidow’s life until that moment had been completely normal. Routine domestic issues occupied his mind. A Sunday drive with the children was planned and the only complication was ‘what should one wear, should we pack the childrens’ sun covers, will we be able to buy refreshment there or do we need to take drinks with us?’⁽¹²⁾ Over breakfast he told his wife and children they were at war.

Vladimir Admoni from Leningrad was travelling on the express train between Ufa and Moscow on 22 June. A passenger who briefly got out at a station to buy something announced bluntly on his return, ‘I think we are at war.’ Aside from that he knew nothing. Admoni remembered ‘all the other passengers except me immediately assumed it was a war against England.’ The press at Stalin’s instigation had been so ‘Hitler friendly’ during the Non-Aggression Pact period, that the English were branded the potential trouble-makers.⁽¹³⁾

Meanwhile, back at Minsk, Josef V., a documentary cameraman, remarked, ‘The war had already begun, but here… it was quiet, nothing was happening.’ Outside he noticed a policeman standing wearing an imposing white uniform with ‘majestic shoulder epaulettes’ and a white-pointed helmet. ‘The police wore such a uniform in those days,’ he said. As he began filming his street documentary panorama, real historical events began to unfold.

Despite the explosions and the urge to take cover, Josef V. carried on filming ‘the first action pictures of the first day of the war’. Suddenly he was seized by the collar and poked in the ribs. Totally engrossed in filming, he ignored the distraction until, unable to pan the camera any longer, he turned to face an unexpected assailant. It was the policeman, only now:

Which is what he did, sincerely believing it was his duty to show cinema audiences the destruction being visited on the streets and buildings he filmed. It resulted in a misappreciation of the bureaucratic tenor that would be applied to his work. ‘People in those days,’ he said, ‘were only used to seeing good things’ on their cinema screens. Every ten minutes fresh swarms of aircraft passed over.

The fundamental difference between the German and Soviet home front experience at the outbreak of war was that Russian civilians were immediately caught up in ground fighting. So far as ordinary Germans were concerned, it was a distant event that one followed on the radio. Stephan Matysh, an artillery commander in the 32nd Russian Tank Division on the outskirts of Lvov, explained how, on the Saturday night before the war, ‘each of us had his plans for Sunday. Each had his family cares.’ All this was abruptly transformed. After the unexpected early morning air raids on barracks, garages, storehouses and officers’ houses, ‘many found they had lost their near and dear ones’ and, as Matysh pointed out, ‘many became orphans and cripples’. He, like many other Soviet officers, was constrained by his joint responsibility to look after civilian dependants while at the same time preparing for action with no warning. His division commander, Colonel Yefim Pushkin, issued orders for action and:

The front situation at this stage appeared serious but salvageable. One Soviet staff officer, Captain Ivan Krylov, concerned at the build-up of a German advance toward Minsk, was assured the dangerous situation could be restored ‘provided our troops fight to the end’. He stated:

‘Don’t die without leaving a dead German behind you’… Brest-Litovsk

Savage fighting continued unabated into the second day at Brest-Litovsk. Grigori Makarow, a Red Army soldier, remembered:

It became apparent to the German 45th Division on the same day that the original decision to withdraw selectively to clarify the front line situation and ensure the citadel was completely surrounded had simply resulted in the vacated positions being immediately occupied by Russians. From 05.00 hours German artillery pounded the citadel in concentric patterns at timed intervals. Care was taken to avoid hitting a beleaguered group of German soldiers, who were trapped with prisoners of war in the vicinity of the church. Gefreiter Hans Teuschler, severely wounded, lying nearby, recalled, ‘never had I had a more burning desire to see the coming day.’ After the pain, chill and uncertainties of the previous night ‘the dear sun became too good to us. The heat rose until it was almost unbelievable.’⁽²⁾

Artillery harassing fire continued throughout the day. German gun crews removed their tunics and laboured on in shirtsleeves, presenting an incongruously peaceful appearance as manual labourers in braces. Infantry began to dig in systematically around the remaining Russian defence works. It was necessary to bury the dead quickly because of the oppressive heat. Small thickets of crosses began to appear, adorned with German helmets. They formed a sinister backcloth to passing dust-shrouded vehicle convoys bypassing the town and the fighting, on their way to ‘Rollbahn 1’ moving east.

Two German propaganda cars, fitted with loudspeakers, began transmitting on the North Island, using the prevailing wind direction to waft their surrender appeals across the citadel. Between 17.00 and 17.15 hours a murderous artillery barrage mushroomed off the enemy positions, after which the loudspeakers announced to survivors they had a temporary 90-minute amnesty within which to surrender. Some 1,900 Russians took the option and shakily emerged from the ruins. Nikitina Archinowa, the wife of a Russian officer near the Ostfort, described what happened:

Their German captors were in no forgiving mood. Forty-fifth Division had already radioed to XII Corps that morning that ‘so far, 18 officers have been killed’. Casualties rose remorselessly. The influx of prisoners suggested ‘the resistance capability of the Russians had been substantially reduced, and that a repeat of artillery fire and propaganda broadcasts would cause the citadel to fall without further losses’.⁽³⁾

Civilian captives were not courteously handled. Mrs Archinowa said: ‘as we came over the bridges shells were being fired into the fortress’. The amnesty was over. Prisoners were made to lie down directly beneath the artillery pieces engaging the citadel walls. Archinowa explained:

Mrs Archinowa’s daughter’s hair turned grey. ‘My son, then only five years old. was permanently deaf afterwards.’ When the constant artillery pounding paused they got up and moved on. Firing recommenced as the newly displaced refugees stumbled along. Their overriding fear was that at any moment they might be taken out of the line and shot.⁽⁴⁾

That evening the propaganda broadcast cars were despatched to Infantry Regiment 133 on the South Island to build on their proven success. Their eerie metallic appeals began echoing around the city again as twilight descended. Once darkness fell, however, the Russians made renewed attempts to break out of the fortress to the north and east into the town. The division after-action report dolefully commented that ‘the intense artillery and infantry fire from all sides opposing [break-out attempts] completely drowned out the volume of the loudspeakers’. It appeared the weaker-willed had already surrendered.

Mrs Archinowa, moving out of immediate range, said, ‘we survived thanks to an old German soldier who had been detailed to look after us.’ After they crossed the River Bug back onto Polish soil the soldier told them, ‘I must report, and you – make up your minds. If you can get going – Go!’ They dispersed and Mrs Archinowa took her children home. Her husband was not to survive the subsequent fighting for the citadel and the war was to take her mother, brother, son and daughter also. ‘Practically my whole family was annihilated,’ she lamented.⁽⁵⁾

On 24 June Gefreiter Teuschler and about 70 other soldiers cut off in the vicinity of the church were rescued by a foray from I/IR133, covered by a concentrated artillery bombardment. The battle for Brest-Litovsk encapsulated in miniature the approaching pitiless experience of the new Eastern Front. Heinz Krüger, a combat engineer, commented after the war:

It was anticipated the division objective could be taken within eight hours. Now it was the third day and there was scant prospect of surrender. Russians occupied the barracks and the so-called ‘Officers’ Mess’ within the citadel, the eastern part of the North Island, part of the wall on the northern bridge (Werk 145) and the Ostfort. A decision was taken to reduce the remaining strongpoints with artillery to avoid further German bloodshed. Invasion traffic could still, with detours, be directed onto ‘Rollbahn 1’ moving east.

At 16.00 hours on 24 June, 45th Infantry Division announced: ‘the citadel has been taken’ and ‘isolated infantry was being mopped up’. Optimistically, it was claimed ‘resistance was much reduced’. A triumphant report at 21.40 hours the same evening announced, ‘Citadel at Brest taken!’ It was one of several misleading messages, commonplace in the confusion of war. Gunfire still reverberated around the city. The brief confirmation of ‘false report’ followed. The siege was about to enter its fourth bloody day⁽⁷⁾

Across the Dvina… Army Group North

Three German Army Groups – North (Leeb), Centre (Bock) and South (Rundstedt) – attacked into the interior of Russia along historically proven invasion routes, towards Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. The northern approach had already been traversed by the Teutonic Knights, ironically re-enacting an epic film being shown to Russian cinema audiences at that time. Sergei Eisenstein’s totalitarian cinematic masterpiece about 13th century warrior prince Alexander Nevsky portrayed a united Russian medieval peasantry combining to defend the city of Novgorod against the invading Knights of the German Teutonic Order in 1242. Its poignant depiction of events was not lost on its audience. The wardrobe of the attackers included distinctively shaped German helmets, and the presciently staged atrocities against Russian peasants stirred the same emotions subsequent brutalities would engender. The manner of the German defeat, its Knights swallowed up by the cracking ice of Lake Peipus in the dead of winter, was so prophetic in symbolic terms that the film had to be withdrawn within a year of release. It conflicted with the diplomatic intent of the Non-Aggression Pact signed with Hitler in 1939. The film was soon back on the screens.

Both the northern and central invasion routes had been used in part by Charles XII of Sweden. His army, defeated at Poltava in 1709, was destroyed by the following Russian winter. In 1812, Napoleon’s Grande Armée thrust across Minsk and Smolensk to Moscow: it, too, collapsed in the Russian winter. The third, southern, route was separated from the other two army groups by the Pripet Marshes to the north of its area and the Carpathian mountains in the south. This road was the gateway to the Ukraine, the ‘bread-basket’ of Russia. Beyond lay the great industrial, mining and oil-bearing regions of the Donets, Volga and Caucasus. Few serious natural obstacles barred these approaches apart from some of the great Russian rivers. Even these were no serious impediment to suitably equipped mechanised forces. Blitzkrieg operations in the Low Countries had already demonstrated the ability of modern technology to overcome them. No serious military operations were contemplated within the swampy 65,000sq km expanse of the Pripet Marshes.

The Wehrmacht appeared to have mastered the operational art of war during its successful fast-moving campaigns in Poland, Scandinavia, the Low Countries and France. This previously unseen capability of waging ‘joint’ campaigns combining the synergy of land, air and maritime forces to direct overwhelming combat power in the right place at the right time was unprecedented. The Schwerpunkt (focus of effort) had to be properly supported by firepower and logistics. The scale and shape of the huge concentration of forces required to invade the Russian land mass from the west, or combine to oppose such an intent, needed careful and skilful operational planning. The German general staff excelled at the art. Such planning involves risk and some luck, and also a methodical prosecution of the aim within an accepted staff framework. This then confers a scientific ability to outweigh the intangible factors, those elements Clausewitz would describe as the ‘frictions of war’. In directing massive armies there comes that decisive moment when forethought backed by meticulous planning and organisation enables the enemy to be outmanoeuvred operationally. This is achieved when the foe, in spite of realising what is likely to happen, is powerless to react. The aim is to penetrate the opponent’s ‘decision cycle’, so that the time and space to execute operational counter-moves is denied him.

These preconditions had been achieved by German planning on the Soviet frontier by the third week in June 1941. Soviet defences were deployed linearly along its 4,500km front from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea. Fifty-six divisions were deployed to a depth of 50km to the front, with the second echelon and their tanks 50–100km behind. Reserve corps were a further 150–400km from the frontier. It was too late to redeploy to meet German offensive concentrations – reserves were too far back. A ‘checkmate’ configuration had been set up on the frontier.

This was soon acknowledged by the Soviet initial contact reports that began to flood higher headquarters. The Soviet Third Army observed on the second day of the campaign that its right flank was being enveloped by the enemy, stating: ‘We have no reserves at all, and there is nothing with which to plan a strike.’ Extracts from the report reveal why: ‘Our most available force – the 11th Mechanised Corps – suffered great losses in tanks, 40 to 50 in all, on 22–23 June 1941.’

The 56th Rifle Division was reduced to two scattered detachments numbering 700 to 800 men and the 85th Rifle Division ‘suffered considerable losses’. The 27th Rifle Division was reduced by 40%, with units down to a quarter or a half of a combat unit of ammunition. Operational flexibility did not exist. ‘Units that are on peacetime establishment have no transport.’ The commander of the Third Army complained, ‘I have had no front orientation for two days’, and that ‘in view of the fact that a number of walkie-talkies are out of order, I can communicate with you on only one walkie-talkie’.⁽¹⁾

Counter-moves were doomed to failure before they could even begin. Soviet mechanised corps in the central area, required to block German advances between 22 and 26 June, faced long marches. These ranged typically from 80–100km for the IIIrd and XIIth Mechanised Corps and up to 200km for the IXth and XIXth Mechanised Corps. The VIIIth Mechanised Corps had to move 500km. The outcome was piecemeal commitments within a few hours of arrival or immediate and costly advances with no preparation. Gains were insignificant.⁽²⁾

Infantry fared even worse. The 212th Rifle Regiment on the right flank of the 49th Division in the Soviet Fourth Army area was facing the German IVth Army Corps. Following an alert at midnight on 22 June the unit slogged 40km through unbearable heat, fighting exhausting skirmishes en route to reach Siemiatycze, its stated objective to the north. Completely fatigued on arrival, they were required to counter-march another 40km after a short rest to Kleszczele, virtually back to their original start point. The soldiers were demoralised. Their situation was hopeless. Progress could be measured by their discarded equipment, notably greatcoats and gas masks, abandoned by roadsides along their route.⁽³⁾

Even with warning, Soviet frontier forces had neither the time nor resources to react. The operational paralysis engendered is a consequence of surprise and had featured in all previous German campaigns. At no point had the Polish or western armies been able to break out of the operational straitjacket to which they had been consigned by German strategy. There were, however, a number of fundamental differences to this new campaign. The Wehrmacht was attacking its most heavily armed and psychologically resilient opponent to date. He had been totally outmanoeuvred on the frontier but time, as with previous offensives in Poland and the West, was short. The German army and economy was geared for only a short war. Space was also different. The Soviet Union was limitless in comparison to the distances traversed during the western Blitzkrieg. A key precondition, neutralising the Red Air Force, had already been achieved. Only time would tell, once the impact of surprise wore off, whether the enemy would remain standing. In the west the French had fought valiantly and with some resilience after Dunkirk, but manoeuvre space had been irretrievably lost. In Russia it could be different.

Army Group North commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm von Leeb was the weakest of the three army groups. The OKH ‘Barbarossa’ order of 31 January 1941 had directed it to destroy enemy forces in the Baltic theatre, and occupy the Baltic ports and Leningrad and Kronstadt, to deny the Russian fleet its bases. Neither of the other two army groups had such vast distances to cover and it had the least armour to execute the thrust. Leeb’s one Panzer group, Panzergruppe 4 under Generaloberst Hoepner, consisted of three Panzer divisions, three motorised infantry and two foot infantry divisions. With two further army corps – XVIth and XVIIIth, consisting of eight and seven infantry divisions respectively – Army Group North was advancing with only 18 divisions, approximately half the size of Army Group Centre and South (including its Romanian divisions). It was directly supported by about 380 aircraft from Luftflotte 1.⁽⁴⁾

Unlike the Centre and South sectors, Army Group North was faced by a shallow rather than wide line of enemy positions. Russian deployment in the recently occupied Baltic countries was dispersed, and in greater depth. Enemy forces stretched back into the territory of the old Russian Empire with a large reserve of Soviet tanks east of Pskov. An encirclement strategy was not, therefore, feasible. Leeb – unlike the practice in the other army groups – kept his comparatively weaker Panzergruppe, the 4th under Hoepner, directly under command and at the centre of his advance. Surprise was to be achieved by exploiting superior speed and mobility. Each partial engagement aimed not at encirclement but rather a deeper and quicker thrust towards Daugavpils, Pskov and Leningrad, the eventual strategic objective. Panzers formed the apex of thrust lines with infantry following as best they could along the flanks, delivering attacks close to the point of the spear to maintain forward Panzer momentum. Daugavpils, with its two bridges over the wide River Dvina, was the immediate objective. The aim, having punched into the defences, was to push forward and maintain sufficient momentum to keep the enemy off balance.

Stiff frontier resistance was quickly broken so that, by the end of the first day, the 8th Panzer Division was already 80km deep into the hinterland, and succeeded in throwing a bridgehead across the River Dubysa. Confidence and progress was so good that at 19.55 hours on the first day the division reported, ‘troops are advancing rapidly eastwards’. The quality of opposition was such that ‘the Division has the impression that it has yet to come into contact with regular troops’.⁽⁵⁾

At 04.00 hours the next day, air reconnaissance identified strong Russian motorised columns moving north from an area north-west of Wilno toward an important road junction at Kedaynyay. The force, which included between 200 and 350 Soviet tanks, appeared to be bearing down on the 8th Panzer Division, leading LVIth Panzer Corps. It was the 2nd Soviet Tank Division. They passed through Kedaynyay and missed LVIth Panzer Corps but then struck the 6th Panzer Division of XXXXIst Panzer Corps at Rossieny, 60km away. Hoepner, the commander of Panzergruppe 4, took a calculated risk. Despite the power of the attacking Russian force – 300 tanks and comparable in artillery and infantry strength to the corps it was attacking – XXXXIst Corps was tasked to destroy it without reinforcement. The lead LVIth Corps division, 8th Panzer, was directed onwards to Daugavpils on the River Dvina as planned. Blitzkrieg was becoming reality.

Between June 24 and 26, the Soviet force, which included 29 heavy tanks of an unknown type, were surrounded and liquidated by XXXXIst Panzer Corps’ large complement of Czech-manufactured light Pz Kpfw IIs and modestly gunned medium Pz Kpfw IIIs. German tactical superiority overcame the shock of encountering the new tank types. The decision not to divert the armoured apex from its aim paid off handsomely, for even as the tank battle at Rossieny died down, the forward elements of the 8th Panzer Division had the vital bridges across the River Dvina in sight. They were over 100km ahead of the main Army Group.

Hauptsturmführer Klinter from the 3rd SS Division ‘Toten-kopf’, following up the armoured spearhead with his motorised infantry company, recalled:

A merciless sun bore down through the swirling dust raised by vehicles. ‘The air,’ Klinter remembers, as they approached Daugavpils, ‘had that putrefying and pervasive burnt smell so reminiscent of the battle zone, and all nerves and senses began to detect the breath of the front’. They became aware of piles of discarded Russian equipment alongside the steep roadside embankments.

Two bridges, road and rail, spanned the River Dvina, approximately 300m wide at this point. The bridges needed to be taken intact to maintain the eastern momentum of Army Group North. Oberstleutnant Crisolli’s Kampfgruppe formed the division vanguard earmarked to attack Daugavpils. It consisted of a Panzer and infantry regiment (10th and 18th respectively), infantry motorcyclists and other motorised elements with artillery and the 8th Company of Lehr Regiment 800 ‘Brandenburg’. The Branden-burger company was ordered to attempt a coup de main.

Lehr Regiment 800, originally conceived as a special forces company, had already been employed as such during the previous Polish and French campaigns. Its role was to raid behind enemy lines, occupy and prevent demolitions or destroy key headquarters and objectives such as bridges. Directly subordinate to Admiral Canaris’s Military Intelligence Headquarters, it was founded at Brandenburg in Berlin from the first Bau-Lehr Company. By the time of the Polish campaign the unit was 500-men strong, rising to two battalions which were employed during the Western campaign. They created confusion in enemy rear areas through sabotage, demolitions and raids in direct support of Blitzkrieg combined advances of paratroopers and Panzers. In October 1940 an entire regiment was formed which had within a year expanded to division size.⁽⁷⁾ Eduard Steinberger from South Tyrol served with the unit and explained:

At the outset of the Russian campaign Oberleutnant Herzner commanded the Ukrainian ‘Nightingale’ battalion, recruited mainly from west Ukrainians released from Polish prisoner of war camps after the 1939 campaign. These formed part of the German advance toward Lemberg.⁽⁹⁾

Oberleutnant Wolfram Knaak, commanding the 8th ‘Branden-burger’ Company observing the Daugavpils bridges, had been wounded during a similar bridge raid near Kedaynyay. He was well aware of the risks involved operating so far forward of the vanguard battle group. ‘When the commanders of the divisions we were assigned saw they’d got a company of Brandenburgers,’ Steinberger remarked, ‘they immediately put us with the advance units who would be the first to make contact with the enemy.’

Knaak split his company into two raiding groups, one each for the railway and road bridges. Steinberger described how these units might be configured for a mission. They could be up to half a company strong, 60–70 soldiers, or more usually platoon sizes of 20–30 men.

The penalty, if they did not, was inevitable execution on capture. ‘We generally played a situation by ear,’ Steinberger said. In attempting to seize a bridge:

During the early morning hours of 26 June Knaak’s group of captured Russian trucks began its tense drive, headlights on, toward both bridges, the spans of which could just be discerned with approaching daylight. The bridges, separated by a bend in the river, were about 1.5km apart. At Varpas, a village over 3km from the river, the parties diverged, each to its allotted objective. Left and straight on was the northern railway bridge, while the road crossing lay in a south-easterly direction to the right. Five Russian armoured cars parked by the road were overtaken by the railway group, which carried on to the main bridge span and judiciously halted, placing itself between these and additional Russian armoured cars on the bridge. During the resulting confusion, as the intention of these newly arrived trucks became clear, enemy gunners in the armoured cars were constrained against engaging the intruders for fear of hitting their own men. They moved off into the town to secure better fire positions. Meanwhile Feldwebel Kruckeberg deftly descended from the trucks to the bridge superstructure and began to cut suspected demolition cables.

Oberleutnant Knaak, having wound his way through unsuspecting civil traffic in the suburb of Griva on the southern riverbank to Daugavpils, drove up in the first of three trucks onto the road bridge. As they approached the western Soviet outpost they noticed the guards chatting to Russian civilians. With the prize tantalisingly within their grasp the action started. The nearest sentries were bayoneted but shots rang out. Now compromised, Knaak’s truck, engine screaming, started to accelerate to the far bank. The remaining lorries in hot pursuit began to close-up behind.

As gunfire began to reverberate around the bridge and suburb of Griva, followed by eerie flashes and the thump of hand-grenades, the lead tanks of Panzer Regiment 10 began to move. They had driven up as close as they dared. Hatches were dropped on order from their commander, Oberstleutnant Fronhöfer, and they began a metallic clattering race through the built-up area of Griva. Civilian traffic scattered.

Oberleutnant Knaak on the road bridge gritted his teeth and urged his driver on. Behind, whining engines and clanking gears indicated he was not alone. A crack followed by the iridescent red-hot slug of an anti-tank projectile spat out from the far Russian bank and slammed into Knaak’s truck, passing straight through, ejecting sparks and splinters of metal. The truck trundled to a halt out of control, Knaak sprawled dead inside the cab. A murderous fire jetted out from houses alongside the riverbank. German Panzers and infantry were, however, already visible on the bridge spans. An artillery shell crashed into the railway bridge producing a secondary detonation from part of the explosive charge. It was repairable, but for the moment tanks could not cross. The ‘Brandenburgers’ were pinned down. Steinberger described the typical dilemma once fighting broke out and decoy uniforms had to be jettisoned.

Leutnant Schmidt commanded the first Panzer platoon to cross the Daugavpils bridge. Soon the remainder of 9/Panzer Regiment 10 was engaged in intense fighting with Russian infantry attempting to scale the river embankment and place grenades on tank tracks to immobilise them. Duelling with anti-tank guns began up and down the streets as further Panzers and German infantry crossed the bridge and began to penetrate the town.

Fighting continued throughout the day and columns of smoke spiralled above the town as desperately mounted Russian counterattacks vainly attempted to wrest control of the bridges back. Air raids conducted by Soviet twin-engined aircraft in a last-ditch effort to destroy the bridges were also unsuccessful. Soviet soldiers were constantly plucked from the bridge superstructures later that day, still attempting to reignite demolition fuses. The 9th Panzer Company destroyed 20 light Russian tanks, 20 artillery pieces and 17 anti-tank guns during its battles around the bridge entry points.

Army Group North had stormed the Dvina and had achieved a bridgehead. The way to Leningrad had been opened.

No news

At home in the Reich there was no news. After the initial invasion announcement the population was given nothing of substance for seven days. Daily OKW reports gave sparse information. There were no names or unit numbers and rivers and towns received no mention at all. Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, played his psychological instrument with adroitness. ‘The public mood is one of depression,’ he recorded in his diary on 23 June. ‘The nation wants peace, but not at the price of defeat, but every new theatre of operations brings worry and concern.’ Well aware of early campaign successes, he wrote on 25 June: ‘We have still issued no details in the High Command Bulletin. The enemy is to be kept in complete ignorance.’ He exploited the period of tension with consummate skill. The press was constrained from publishing big maps of Russia. ‘The huge areas involved may frighten the public,’ he claimed. Similarly he took a firm line against imprudent campaign length predictions widely pronounced by the Foreign Office. ‘If we say four weeks and it turns out to be six, then our greatest victory will be transformed into a defeat in the end.’ The Foreign Ministry appeared to compromise security. ‘I’ve had the Gestapo take steps against one particular loudmouth,’ he admitted.⁽¹⁾

Quiet confidence began to replace the initial nervousness. Certainty of a rapid victory over Russia became the accepted view, a reversal of previous campaign experience. Rumours abounded, raising tension to a ‘feverish’ height. Over 100,000 Russian prisoners had allegedly been taken. The SS Secret Report on the Home Political Situation reported: ‘Already on Tuesday [the third day of the campaign] one could hear in open conversation that 1,700 aircraft had been destroyed; by Wednesday this number had climbed to over 2,000.’⁽²⁾The public deduction derived from all this was general suspicion that German troops had in reality penetrated the Russian hinterland far deeper than hitherto reported. Large-scale maps of Russia completely sold out in bookshops. In Dresden it was rumoured German troops were only 100km from Moscow.⁽³⁾

Letters to the front reflected this concern at the news blackout. One wife wrote to her husband, seven days into the invasion: ‘Sunday is upon us again, and you have probably experienced so much already. I didn’t get any post today.’⁽⁴⁾ A National Socialist mother wrote to her son from Brand on 28 June announcing the lifting of the postal ban, stating, ‘I do not doubt for one instant that there will be a victory over these dogs, whom one cannot refer to as human beings’. Yet beneath the dogma there remained concern for her son at the front:

Army Group Centre was the strongest in armour of the three army groups and its two Panzergruppen – 3 commanded by Hoth and 2 by Guderian – were committed to a huge encirclement operation. Army Group Centre sought to destroy as many of the Soviet forces as possible facing it in White Russia before they could disengage and escape into the depths of Russia. There, they might choose to stand and fight on the great natural obstacles of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers. The aim was to secure the ‘land-bridge’ between the headwaters of these two rivers – where the Minsk-Smolensk road passes en route to Moscow – as Napoleon did before them. As the massive Panzer thrusts by Army Group Centre gathered momentum, German air reconnaissance reported numerous enemy columns retreating eastward from the Bialystok region.

Simultaneously reports indicated an increase in the tenacity of local Soviet resistance, which Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, the commander of Army Group Centre, assessed might be to cover a withdrawal. The original ‘Barbarossa’ concept visualised Minsk forming the eastern edge of the first encircling movement towards the east. Bock expressed his preference to OKH that his Panzer groups should continue onward to Smolensk, 320km beyond the start line, fearing strong enemy contingents might escape eastwards into the Berezina marshlands, escaping the ring due to close at Minsk.⁽⁶⁾ OKH ironically faced the parallel dilemma it had experienced during the race to the English Channel after crossing the River Meuse the year before at Sedan in France. At what point, planners conferred, does a deep penetration become compromised by over-exposed flanks? OKH insisted on the junction of the two Panzergruppen near Minsk, in accordance with the original ‘Barbarossa’ plan. Panzergruppe 3 began to turn inward on 24 June. As a result, Soviet troops were pushed southward onto the flanks of Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2. Fourth and Ninth German armies marching up their infantry on foot were ordered to destroy fast-forming Soviet stay-behind elements that could menace the advance of the follow-up forces needed to consolidate the Panzer advances.

By 25 June Army Group Centre was beginning to coalesce around two primary pockets: 12 Soviet divisions were already marooned in the Bialystok and Volkovysk areas; within four days another belt of 15 Soviet divisions was enveloped in the Minsk area. It was becoming apparent from countless local Russian counterattacks that the enemy, almost instinctively, was going to fight for every foot of soil.

In Germany there were still no Sondermeldungen. These satisfying fanfares of music on the radio had been a distinctive feature of the preceding French campaign, heralding Wehrmacht victories. Edith Hagener wrote to her husband in the field:

Goebbels, better informed, enthused to his diary on 23 June:

This information was unavailable to the general public. The only point they might identify with was Goebbels’ comment on the prevailing weather. ‘I am totally drained by the oppressive heat,’ he complained. ‘These are difficult days for our soldiers.’⁽⁹⁾ One housewife, fretful at the absence of mail, expressed entirely different emotions:

She was correct. Fighting still raged within the disputed border city.

Brest-Litovsk… ‘I wonder how it is I am still alive!’

On the fourth day of the siege at Brest-Litovsk, combat teams from the three infantry regiments of the German 45th Division formed mixed groups of assault pioneers and infantry to reduce remaining strongpoints. Nebelwerfer multi-barrelled rocket launchers were in support. Helmut Böttcher, an assault engineer, recalled their bizarre impact on the enemy.

It was decided to clear the North Island before grappling again with the citadel. Immense difficulties were encountered from the start. Artillery support was impractical due to the confined nature of the areas to be reduced. ‘Infantry weapons were ineffective due to the strength of the walled fortifications,’ reported 45th Division staff, while ‘heavy tanks or SPs (self-propelled guns), which might have made an impact, were not available’. The one remaining flamethrower belonging to Pionier Battalion 81 could not close up to the houses without armoured protection. Attempts were made to bring captured Russian tanks into action.

Newly constituted assault teams commenced mopping up the identified resistance points. Daja Dmitrowna, married to a Soviet artillery soldier, tearfully recalled the claustrophobic nature of the fighting:

Close-in fighting for these enclosed built-up areas was brutal. Trapped Russians, expecting to be shot on the spot if taken prisoner, even fought back with knives. Grigori Makarow, a Red Army soldier, recalled how attack directions conducted with tear gas ‘were indicated by the noxious clouds rising in the air’. Women and children were trapped within the same choking casemates as desperately resisting Russian soldiers. Makarow saw ‘a small youngster, dead. He had suffocated in the gas. His mother had covered his face with a fur glove, to protect him.’ Their position was hopeless. ‘There were many wounded,’ said Makarow, ‘but no disinfectants; gangrene took hold therefore very quickly and many of the injured died.’⁽³⁾

Leutnant Schneiderbauer, of 45th Division’s 50mm Anti-tank Platoon, was ordered to move his guns forward to assist in the reduction of citadel strongpoints. As the platoon advanced across the South Island he noticed:

As the specially constituted assault groups began mopping up enemy-held buildings, 50mm guns provided fire support, shooting up windows and suspected hiding places. Snipers made the enterprise extremely hazardous. A propaganda company officer, ignoring exhortations to be careful, was shot. Extricating the casualty degenerated into a lengthy and dangerous task. Stretcher-bearers came under fire ‘but by a miracle,’ commented Schneiderbauer, ‘managed to get back in one piece’. The remorseless process of wearing down the defenders continued. The anti-tank platoon commander watched as:

The German tactic was to utilise these brief respites offered by supporting fire and rush into the buildings. Schneiderbauer explained, ‘we would go in between, packing and ramming boxes, crates and rubble into all the outlets to prevent the surrounded Russians from breaking out again from beneath the houses.’ The monotonous cracks and thumps of demolitions carried on throughout the day⁽⁴⁾

The so-called ‘Officers’ Mess’ building in the citadel was a constant thorn in the side of mopping-up operations being conducted to clear the North Island. These were repeatedly exposed to enfilading fire. Assault Pionier Battalion 81 was ordered to reduce this flanking threat with demolition teams. Groups clambered onto the roof and again dangled massive explosive charges attached to poles, which were exploded opposite occupied windows. ‘One heard the screams and moans of Russians wounded in the explosions’ recorded the Division report, ‘but they carried on firing.’⁽⁵⁾

Conditions in the Russian strongpoints were becoming intolerable. One nursing sister, Katschowa Lesnewna, described how:

Georgij Karbuk explained the dilemma presented to defending Red Army infantrymen. ‘The worse thing,’ he said ‘was the shortage of water’. Machine guns needed constant cooling to avoid jamming from hot expanded metal working parts producing friction. Lying alongside these same guns were the wounded, dying of thirst.

Progress in German eyes appeared equally illusory. ‘Only now,’ wrote Generalfeldmarschall von Bock in his diary on 25 June, ‘has the citadel at Brest fallen after very heavy fighting.’⁽⁷⁾ Yet the following day an insultingly huge explosion rocked the massive edifice that once housed the Communist Officer School. Pionier Battalion 81 had blasted its metre-thick massive brick side-wall with a prepared charge. Out were taken 450 dazed prisoners. The final impediment to the reduction of the North Island remained the Ostfort. All approaches to it were driven back with withering bursts of accurate machine gun fire. The men of 45th Division concluded ‘the only option left was to oblige the Russians to give up through hunger and especially thirst. All other means were to be employed to accelerate this process of wearing him down, such as constant harassing fire with heavy mortars, preventing movement in trenches or houses, using direct tank fire, employing megaphone appeals to surrender or by throwing in surrender notices.’

The lack of water was virtually unsupportable for the defenders. Sister Katschowa Lesnewna witnessed ‘how one of the nursing sisters from our ward was shot on the riverside meadow because she wanted to fetch water. I saw it with my own eyes. We could not recover the body. She lay there in the grass for eight days.’ Any conceivable ploy to wear down defenders was employed. Georgij Karbuk said:

The siege was now approaching its sixth day. A Russian deserter admitted that resistance, centring on the Ostfort, held some 20 officers and 370 men from the 393rd Anti-aircraft Battalion of the Soviet 42nd Rifle Division. They possessed a quadruple-barrelled AA machine gun, 10 light machine guns, 10 automatic weapons, 1,000 hand-grenades and plenty of ammunition and food. They could be expected to fight on. ‘Water was short, but was extracted from boreholes in the ground.’ There were women and children in the fort. ‘The core of the resistance,’ it was reported, ‘appeared dependent upon a major and a commissar.’⁽⁹⁾ Despite the round-up of several thousand prisoners the day before, German casualties rose inexorably. With them came an increasingly bitter frustration with the failure to end such pointless resistance.

Two incongruous-looking armoured vehicles were driven up by Panzer Platoon 28. One was a French Somua tank taken in the previous French campaign, the other a Russian tank captured in this one. Two other platoon tanks had already broken down. Nevertheless, both vehicles began systematically to shoot up loopholes, embrasures and windows in and around the Ostfort. ‘The Russians became much quieter,’ the division report observed, ‘but still no sign of success.’ Mopping up continued but was inconclusive. The Germans became perplexed and enraged at incredible acts of resistance performed by snipers who ‘fired ceaselessly from the most amazing and impossible hiding places, from beneath dustbins and rubbish heaps’. They were winkled out in detail, but through it all ‘firing from the Ostfort was always discernible’.⁽¹⁰⁾

Grigori Makarow, a Soviet soldier, recalled attacks mounted on 27 June by a ‘troop of German chemical weapons’. They assaulted with tear gas. The defenders had sufficient gas masks but, as Makarow pointed out:

Such harrowing experiences served only to temper and add ferocity to resistance.

Ever more lethal combinations were employed against stubborn strongpoints. Helmut Böttcher, a German assault engineer attached to a flamethrower section, considered himself an ordinary soldier. The barbarous offensive capability he employed was perfectly normal to him, even if it makes uncomfortable reading to modern social democratic rather than totalitarian audiences. ‘I was 19 years old,’ he said, and ‘have often thought about it, being labelled a murderer, but in war one is a hero.’ Moreover, in war the bizarre becomes the norm. Böttcher’s childhood was difficult but not remarkable. A product of the depression years, he said, ‘at 14 years old one could say I was thrown out of home, and eventually sought a different type of experience through military service.’ He had volunteered ‘for this and that, but not for the flamethrowers. I was ordered to do that.’ Army life offered new and different opportunities, and he tried them ‘like many others’. Employment as a flamethrower operator at Brest-Litovsk was a disturbing experience. He rationalised it, saying:

It was not an easy weapon to handle. Strapped to the operator’s back was a cumbersome tank of inflammable liquid weighing over 21kg. This contained an adhesive mixture of viscous fuel which on spraying was designed to enmesh the victim in flame. The strength of the wind and its direction could transform it into a double-edged weapon which was, in any case, highly vulnerable to enemy fire. The operator needed to be part of a team protected by escorting infantry. Böttcher explained:

The inflammable fuel was launched by compressed gas through a nozzle incorporating an igniter to produce a spray of flame against which there was absolutely no defence. Each tank carried sufficient for 10 single-second bursts of fire. They sucked out the oxygen in confined bunkers, scorching and collapsing lungs in cumulative pressure waves of intense heat. ‘Most were burned immediately or at least blinded,’ admitted Böttcher. ‘These things were dreadful.’⁽¹²⁾ Even today, in the preserved ruins of Brest-Litovsk, bunkers remain scarred by the characteristic starred-effect of molten stone. Black or dark red, they resemble a form of lava paste. Georgij Karbuk, a Russian in Brest at the time, remembered:

The sun bore down mercilessly throughout the sixth day of the siege. Most of the citadel and North Island had been cleared but the Ostfort tower still held out. Russian dead, swelling grotesquely in the blistering heat, were tipped into ditches and covered with lime and earth, to alleviate the stench. In the River Bug shallows, German dinghies were reaping a similar dreadful harvest of swollen German dead bodies snagging among the reeds. There seemed no limit to the interminable suffering experienced by the Russian defenders. ‘Everything burned,’ explained Katschowa Lesnewna, a surgical sister, ‘the houses, even the trees, everything burned.’ The condition of the wounded became increasingly critical:

During the morning of 28 June the surviving two tanks from Panzer Platoon 28 were reinforced by a number of repaired self-propelled guns. They continued to shoot up the windows and apertures of the Ostfort, but with no apparent result. An 88mm Flak gun was pulled forward and began to engage in the direct-fire mode. Again, there was no sign of surrender. To break the impasse Generalmajor Schlieper, the commander of 45th Division, despatched a request to the Luftwaffe airfield nearby at Malasze-wieze to administer an aerial coup de grâce to this final stubborn strongpoint. Once the air attack was agreed, the forward German attacking elements had to be withdrawn to the outer fortress wall as a safely measure. Low cloud that afternoon caused the postponement of the solitary Luftwaffe mission. Reluctantly the investing ring was pulled in tightly again to prevent break-outs. Searchlights illuminated the walls all night. Any careless approach venturing too near the fort was immediately engaged by vicious bursts of automatic fire. Tracer continually spat out from this totally isolated outpost. Would it ever capitulate?

On 29 June the news blackout ended in the Reich. Sonder-meldung or special news bulletin 1, preceded by the Liszt ‘Russian fanfare’ announced that ‘the Soviet Air Force had been totally destroyed’. Bulletin number 2 announced, ‘the strong enemy border defences were in part broken, even on the first day’. Victory after victory received commentary in a series of statements that exuded satisfaction. ‘On 23 June the enemy directed rabid counterattacks against the vanguards of our attacking columns’ yet ‘the German soldier remained victorious’. Place names at last emerged. It was stated the fortress of Grodno had been taken after hard fighting. ‘The last strongpoint in the Citadel at Brest-Litovsk was stormed by our troops on 24 June.’ Vilnius and Kowno were taken. In all, 12 special bulletins were sonorously announced one after the other on 29 June.⁽¹⁵⁾ ‘Two Red Armies trapped east of Bialystok,’ Goebbels gloated. ‘No chance of a break-out. Minsk is in our hands.’ Although a glut of information was released, the Reich audience was not totally feckless. Goebbels perceptively admitted to his diary:

His comment was echoed in an SS Secret Service report the following day which concurred that ‘summarising the 12 Special Announcements within two or three reports would have been better received’. Despite the feverish anticipation of good news, the extent of the successes came as a general surprise. Media releases were ‘almost unbelievable’, particularly the numbers of Soviet tanks and aircraft destroyed. Rumours continued, because it became obvious from the Sondermeldungen dates that more would follow. ‘With total lack of judgement,’ the SS report commented, ‘in some areas it was being wagered that the German Wehrmacht was likely to appear in Moscow on Sunday’.⁽¹⁷⁾

These were ‘heady days’. More was to follow as the Blitzkrieg gathered momentum towards Smolensk.