Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (9 page)

The German troops behind their machine-guns could hear their hearts thumping. It was almost too much to bear. At last came the order: "Fire at will!" They squeezed the triggers. They knew that if they did not get the attackers the attackers would get them.

The machine-guns were rattling. "Fire!" Carbines barked. Sub-machine-guns spluttered. The first wave collapsed. The second collapsed on top of them. The third ebbed back. Brown mounds covered the vast field.

In the evening they came again. This time they came with an armoured train—a Soviet weapon that might have been useful in a civil war but was hardly suited to a modern battle of
matériel.
An armoured locomotive hauled behind it gun-platforms and armoured infantry wagons. Puffing heavily and firing from all guns, the monster approached from the direction of the little town of Zelva. Simultaneously, two squadrons of cavalry were charging on the left of the rail track, and on the right of it several T-26 tanks were rolling towards the headquarters of 2nd Battalion.

A 3-7-cm. anti-tank gun of the 14th Company, hurriedly brought up, set the armoured train on fire after the sappers had blown up the track and thus halted it. The cavalry charge collapsed in the machine-gun fire of 8th Company. It was the most terrible thing the men had experienced so far—the screaming of the horses. Horses howling with pain as their torn bodies twisted in agony. They rolled on top of one another, and, sitting up on their lacerated hindquarters, flailed the air with their forelegs like beasts demented.

"Fire!" Put them out of their misery. Make an end of it.

Things were easier for the men behind the anti-tank guns. Tanks do not scream. Besides, the Russian T-26 was not a

match for the German 5-cm. anti-tank guns. Not one of them broke through the line.

However, the 29th Motorized Infantry Division could not be switched to the north, which had been Guderian's intention.

That same evening, on 28th June, Yeremenko's bomber landed at the military airfield of the Soviet capital. The general drove straight to the War Ministry. Marshal Timo-shenko, the Defence Minister, met him with the words: "We've been waiting for you." There were no courtesies or polite phrases. The marshal came straight to the point. He went over to the situation map of the Central Front and—as Yere-menko reports in his memoirs—said, "Our failures on the Western Front are due to the fact that the commanders in the frontier zone did not show themselves equal to their tasks."

Yeremenko was amazed.

Timoshenko passed a shattering judgment on the Com-mander-in-Chief, Colonel-General Dmitriy Pavlov, who had been stationed in the Bialystok bend with the bulk of the Soviet motorized forces and who had been known in the Red Army before the war as "the Soviet Guderian."

Yeremenko was horrified when Timoshenko indicated on the map the territories which had already been lost during the first week of the war. Timoshenko's pencil moved over the map. "The Germans are now along the line Jelgava- Daugav-pils—Minsk—Bobruysk. Belorussia is lost. Four Armies of the Western Front are cut off. The enemy is obviously aiming at Smolensk. And we have no forces left to protect it."

Timoshenko paused. According to Yeremenko's report, there was complete silence in the room. Then the marshal continued in a cold, angry voice: "The danger of the fascists lies in their tank strategy. They attack in large units. Unlike us, they have entire armoured corps operating independently, whereas our armoured brigades are no more than support for the infantry, and our tanks are employed piecemeal. And yet those German tanks are not invincible. They have no super-heavy types—at least they have not used any so far. I have realeased the T-34 for operational use. All those available will be supplied to the front as quickly as possible by the Moscow Tank Training Regiment."

The dramatic quality of the situation cannot be described more fittingly than in Yeremenko's own words:

Marshal Timoshenko said, "Well, then, Comrade Yeremenko, now you have a clear picture." "It's a sad picture," I replied. After a while Timoshenko continued: "General Pavlov and his Chief of Staff are being relieved at once. By decree of the Government you have been appointed Com-mander-in-Chief of the Western Front."

"What is the task of that front?" Yeremenko asked concisely. Timoshenko replied: "To stop the enemy advance." It was a clear order. A precise order. The fate of Moscow depended on its implementation.

The question inevitably arises: Why was not Stalin present at this conversation? What other Head of State and Supreme Commander-in-Chief would have denied himself the opportunity, at such a crucial moment, of personally swearing in the general he had chosen as his country's military saviour? But not only Yeremenko—no one in Moscow heard anything of Stalin during the first two weeks of the war. It was Molotov who, in a nation-wide broadcast, had told the country of the German attack and called on the people to fight. Yet Stalin had been Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars—
i.e.,
Head of the Government—since the beginning of May.

"Where is he?" the Muscovites were asking. He did not speak. He made no public appearances. He had not even received the British Military Mission which arrived on 27th June to offer economic and military assistance. The wildest rumours were circulating. Had he been overthrown because he had trusted Hitler? It was even being said that he had fled the country. That he had gone to Turkey, or to Persia. At any rate, there was no sign of life from him. And on that night of 28th/29th June, Yeremenko had to embark on his difficult task without Stalin's blessing.

Meanwhile the German supply columns were moving in unbroken lines over the hot, dusty, rutted roads of the central

sector. They were moving ceaselessly. 'Roads' was a misnomer for the deep, sandy tracks. Forward, ceaselessly forward, to where the armoured spearheads were waiting for fuel and their crews for cigarettes. Those cursed Russian roads! The arteries of the war! A Blitzkrieg was not just a question of fighting morale, but equally one of transport morale. The roads determined the pace of the war. And that pace decided the battles of the armoured corps. Only some one with experience of Russian roads can begin to suspect the amount of quiet planning that had to be done by the quartermasters.

Thus, in the operations area of Guderian's Panzer Group there were, once the Bug had been crossed, only two good roads of advance—from Brest to Bobruysk and to Minsk. Along these two roads some 27,000 vehicles of the Panzer Group and another 60,000 of the following infantry, headquarters personnel, and communications troops had to be ferried. To cope with this problem and to avoid complete chaos, Guderian had introduced three priority ratings. For any traffic with No. 1 priority the road had to be cleared. Anything with No. 2 priority had to yield precedence to anything with No. 1. Only when no formation with No. 1 or No. 2 priority was on the road could it be used by No. 3 priority traffic. Needless to say, this arrangement gave rise to fierce squabbles and rivalry. The Hermann Goring Luftwaffe Communications Regiment, for instance, had been assigned No. 3 priority since at that time it was concerned only with the transport and erection of telegraph posts. The Reich Marshal was very angry and ordered the regimental commander to see Guderian about it. Goring demanded No. 1 priority.

Guderian listened to the complaint and then asked, "Can telegraph posts shoot?" "Of course not, Herr Generaloberst," the regimental commander replied. "And that," Guderian said to him, "is why you'll keep No. 3 priority." That was the end of the matter. At least of the official side of it. On the human plane it ended more tragically. The regimental commander dared not report his failure to the Reich Marshal and shot himself.

Thus a mere handful of roads had to serve as the main arteries of the war against Russia. If only the Soviet Command had realized the significance of this fact in good time it could have inflicted upon the German supplies far more crises than in fact they had to face. There was the instance of 3rd Battalion, 39th Panzer Regiment. Those seasoned old warriors of the Panzer Lehr Regiment were lying in a patch of wood near Minsk on the evening of 28th June. They were waiting for motor-fuel. A tanker lorry pulled up. Lance-Corporal Piontek had to allow himself to be teased by Sergeant Willi Born: "Had a good journey, fuel-driver? Let's have thirty jerricans!" He unfastened the small trap in the armour-plating behind which the filler-cap was located.

But Piontek did not feel like joking. "Twelve jerricans— that's all," he decided. "That's hardly enough to fill my lighter," complained Born. But then he saw Piontek's face and fell silent. Piontek explained: "The Russian fighters— Ratas—got us. Five lorries burned out. All the drivers killed. And farther back the Russians have broken through, cut the road, and made a frightful mess of our entire supplies."

These were the drawbacks of the armoured thrusts through thickly held enemy territory, where entire Russian divisions were lurking in the woods. This was not the first time the regiment was in trouble. Things had been pretty bad at Slonim. They had driven on as far as the railway embankment of the Bialystok—Baranovichi line. Suddenly they heard the noise of battle coming from the town. The Russian infantry had lain low while the armoured spearheads passed, but now they pounced on the anti-aircraft gunners, the sappers, and .the supply columns with everything they had.

No. 1 and No. 2 Troops of 9th Company, 39th Panzer Regiment, turned back. They went back into the town. "Clear them out!" That was easily said. For at the same moment the Russians attacked across the railway embankment.

Slonim was in flames. The regiment was cut off and was being harassed from all sides. The troops dug in for all-round defence.

In the grey light of dawn Russian columns were made out through field-glasses on the far side of the railway embankment. The German tanks had all switched their radios to receiving. Time and again the battalion commander's stand-by signal came through for each tank in turn. The radio operator would push his key over to the right, so that his whole crew could hear the commander's orders: "Fire is not to be opened until you see the red Very light. Let the enemy get in close. Then concentrate your fire on the tanks." The engine noise was getting louder. "The old man must be asleep," the men in the tanks were saying. "They're practically on top of us!" The enemy column was headed by

tanks. These were followed by lorries, horse-drawn carts, field-kitchens, and ammunition vehicles. The leading vehicles were now within fifty yards of the German line. At last the red Very light.

At a single blow a veritable wall of fire and smoke was thrown up by the German tanks. On the other side vehicle after vehicle went up in flames. The column was scattered. The tanks wheeled about and made for the fields with the tall crops. It was afternoon before Slonim was cleared and the Russian break-out attempt smashed. That had been three days ago—six days after the campaign had started.

And now General von Arnim's 17th Panzer Division was on the southern edge of Minsk. The troops saw the burning city. On the highway in the distance columns of traffic were moving in both directions. Radio Operator Westphal slung his machine pistol over his shoulder. He pushed his field-glasses back inside his tunic and climbed up on his tank. Three hours' watch lay in front of him. By the time he was relieved by the gun-loader it would be daylight. How far was it to Moscow? And how big was this country?

The distance from Moscow to Minsk is exactly 420 miles. And to Mogilev, where General Pavlov, C-in-C of the Bialystok sector, had his headquarters, it is 305 miles. Until the publication of Yeremenko's memoirs it had generally been believed that Pavlov shot himself after Marshal Kulik had deposed him on Stalin's orders and had put a pistol on his desk. Yeremenko tells a different story. According to his account, he arrived at Pavlov's headquarters early in the morning of 29th June, just as Pavlov was having breakfast in his tent. Pavlov was surprised to see him. He welcomed him rather glumly : "What brings you to this lousy spot?" Then he motioned towards the table. "Come on, sit down and have a spot of breakfast with me. Tell me the news."

But in mid-sentence Pavlov's voice tailed off. He sensed the icy chill which emanated from Yeremenko. Yeremenko said nothing. Instead of an answer he handed Pavlov his letter of dismissal. Pavlov ran his eyes over it. His face went rigid with shock. "And where am I to go?" he asked.

"The People's Commissar has ordered that you should go to Moscow."

Pavlov nodded. He bowed slightly. "Wouldn't you like a cup of tea after all?"

Yeremenko shook his head. "I consider it more important to acquaint myself with the situation at the front."

Pavlov sensed the reprimand. He justified himself: "The enemy's surprise attack found my units unprepared. We were not organized for action, A large part of the troops was in the garrisons or on the practice ranges. The troops were all set for a peaceful life. That is how the enemy found us. He simply drove straight through us, he smashed us, and he has now taken Bobruysk and Minsk. We had no warning. The order alerting the frontier units arrived much too late. We had no idea."

Caught napping—that was the great excuse. And Yeremenko, who otherwise has not a good word to say for Pavlov, writes: "On this point Pavlov was right. Today we know it. Had the order alerting the frontier units arrived sooner, everything would have turned out differently."