Important elements of the German combat experience in the east are found in this passage. Soviet artillery superiority was a fact of life for much, if not all, of the German army from 1942 on, and the experiences of the 126th Infantry Division certainly fell into this general trend. The introduction of new weapons – such as the MG 42 or the 7.5cm ATG 40 – allowed the under-manned German infantry to even the odds against its Soviet opponent and this, in combination with the fact that Red Army attacks had been repeatedly repulsed over the course of two years on this section of the front, fed into the German army’s still meaningful confidence on the battlefield. Issues of terrain, however, had yet to be solved, and these plagued the army throughout the entirety of the campaign.
This defensive mind-set was even applied to the panzer divisions that had served as the foundation for Germany’s string of victories based on mobility and manoeuvre between 1939 and 1941. While his division was situated in the Polotsk-Vitebsk area, the 8th Panzer Division’s commander explained to his officers the unit’s role in early summer 1943:[38]
I. The situation of the army is clear. The army must hold its present position at all costs. The Russian has a particularly favourable spring board near us in order to achieve success. We cannot move back to the west under any circumstances. The Eastern Wall of our army must hold out against everything.
We need an Eastern Wall of men and it must be built to the utmost. […]
Every man must be clear and unambiguous about this understanding of the Eastern Wall.
The wall must be held at all costs by weak forces.
[…]
II. Much has already been written and spoken, but it has not yet been translated into action such as the army must demand. Many orders of the army have been perceived as meddling.
This is not as it should be.
The will is to be translated into action that is decisive.
A side effect of positional warfare is that details need to be ordered [from above]. Unfortunately, there are still commands in which the necessary vigour does not prevail.
Guidelines for all commanders to emphatically do this. Especially the weak ones must be exhorted to this end.
Carelessness will not be tolerated, for that reason alone we are poor [in men and equipment].
Positional warfare brings the danger that a slackening occurs too easily. This danger must be universally combated.
First and foremost, the troops’ spirit of the attack and their feelings of superiority towards the Russians need to be promoted.
The will for action and for work must be emphasized, when necessary through a hard grip. Other than that, recognition in any form.
The very fact that a panzer commander spoke about the need to maintain a ‘wall’ spoke volumes about conditions on the northern and central sectors of the Eastern front; clearly the German approach to combat was in a state of transformation. This emerged from the statement on ‘meddling’. What was once seen as interfering with a commander’s prerogative on the battlefield was now seen as a necessity, due both to the larger context of the war in the east and to the loss of experienced commanders who had been replaced by ‘weak ones’. Finally, the commander’s emphasis on the importance of will reflected a larger trend within the army that looked to balance out the Red Army’s growing quantitative and in some cases qualitative superiority with the supremacy of the individual German soldier, an issue further addressed in chapter 7.
In addition to its primary mission of fighting the Red Army on the battlefield, the army also found itself increasingly engaged in combat in the rear area, fighting an ever-burgeoning partisan movement.[39] This insurgency proved especially intractable in the centre of the front, as the large forests and swamps offered numerous areas for partisan bands to regroup and hide. German anti-partisan policy evolved by 1943 into one in which large operations had become the standard response. Involving various formations – including front-line panzer and infantry divisions – these were true military operations that looked to encircle and destroy insurgent groups.[40] The following report concerning the outcome of Operation ‘Gypsy Baron’ provides a look at the partisan threat facing the army and the Germans’ response to it.[41]
1) Operation ‘Gypsy Baron’ is concluded except for Group Bornemann’s cleansing out of the corner Ssov-Nerusea on 6.6.43. In combat against a devious enemy with tremendous terrain difficulties in a swampy, heavily-mined forest area, the troops succeeded through considerable exertions in annihilating the majority of the gangs[42] in the area south of Briansk, destroying their shelters and seizing a large amount of goods.
[…]
8) Enemy losses and seized goods during Operation ‘Gypsy Baron’:
1,525 prisoners
869 deserters
1,536 enemy dead, the number of dead in reality will be substantially higher as it has been determined that the gangs buried their dead immediately after battle
15,801 evacuated civilians
201 destroyed camps
2,915 destroyed bunkers and battle positions
9 pistols […]
1,093 rifles, of which 175 were [semi-]automatic, 26 gun barrels
87 machine pistols
123 machine guns, outside of numerous machine gun mounts and drums […]
55 mortars
14 anti-tank guns, 2 anti-tank gun barrels […]
9 light guns
12 heavy guns
3 tanks, including 1 T-34
2 armoured scout cars
2 planes, including one with telephone and radio equipment […]
165,720 rounds of rifle ammunition
Around 30,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition
11,000 rounds of heavy machine gun ammunition […]
183 sleds
316 horses
380 cows
717 panje wagons
Clothing and equipment for some 500 men
The complexity of the partisan war emerges clearly from this document. On the one hand, the partisan movement possessed the military means to threaten German lines of communication and supply, as well as the troops themselves. In addition to large numbers of small arms, machine guns, and considerable quantities of ammunition, German troops seized artillery pieces, tanks, armoured cars and even two planes (of course whether any of the latter were operational was left unsaid). On the other hand, German losses for the operation were quite small, suggesting that it was not characterized by pitched battles.[43] In contrast, Soviet casualties of over 1,500 dead suggest that the army’s pacification policies frequently degenerated into arbitrary murder of civilians. The economic aspect of the operation also clearly emerges as cows, horses, wagons, and, most importantly, nearly 16,000 civilians were deported to the German rear for their use. This report therefore demonstrated the ways in which German military and economic goals – influenced by Nazi ideological beliefs – were inextricably entwined on the Eastern front. It also illustrated the various tasks that an increasingly strained and under-manned German army was being called on to complete. Since the army found it extremely difficult to adequately train its men for the multiplicity of these missions, violence frequently became the foundation of those – such as anti-partisan policy – which were deemed secondary to its primary task of combat.
40
For more on large-operations, see Ben Shepherd,
42
The term ‘gangs’ (German:
43
In his study