The 98th Infantry Division had been demobilised after the French campaign and then reconstituted in February 1941. Training began in earnest, ‘but “what is to happen to the 98th Division?” was a question that occupied everyone’. Moreover it appeared that the ‘industrial holidaymakers’ – those temporarily demobilised – had forgotten much ‘during the interim period’.(12) It demonstrated that German soldiers were ordinary men. As in all armies, soldiers were subject to and (reluctant, even if they wished, to resist) peer pressure. Conscript soldiers were positively discouraged from being independently minded. The system operated as teams to be effective en masse. This was a factor of training. The soldiers for their part did not want ‘to stick their neck out’. So nobody was going to debate the Commissar Order. The German soldier believed in his superior officers and the Führer, who had already demonstrated economic, diplomatic and, more recently, military prowess. If they were to invade the Soviet Union, well, the Führer knew his business and had it in hand. Soldiers were comfortable with Befehl und Gehorsam (law and order) and the ‘soldierly’ concept of duty. His officers were confident that, in spite of the difficulties confronting him, the individual German soldier was innately superior to his Soviet counterpart.
The 120 German divisions poised on the border of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 represented potentially the most lethal striking force yet seen in the history of warfare. They were in terms of technology and tactical proficiency far superior to their opponents and were to attack with the benefit of surprise and timely concentration of force. In ideological commitment they possessed a fervour and enthusiasm that would never again be matched by succeeding German armies. The cream of German youth was going to battle: 75% of the Wehrmacht’s total field army and 61% of its air force. Oberleutnant Dr Maull, the battalion adjutant of Infantry Regiment 289, was awarded the Iron Cross just before he departed for Russia. He wrote to his wife:
‘I have always striven through personal example to achieve the ideal. Such standards have never been more necessary than in the army today. I am totally prepared, ready above all else, to face what is coming!’(13)
What was to transpire was to alter the map of Europe for decades to come.
Chapter 3
The Soviet frontier
‘It was the very picture of tranquillity.’
‘There was no information…’
Within the Soviet hinterland the Russian Army was on the move. Lines and lines of tanks stood motionless on railway flatcars waiting in open fields near the frontier area. Some 4,216 wagons loaded with ammunition were threading their way towards the frontier network; 1,320 trainloads of lorries puffed and hissed their way towards border objectives. The LXIIIrd Rifle Corps, 200th and 48th Rifle Divisions were still in transit as were many other units in the middle of June. A huge consignment of maps alone filled 200 railway wagons in the Baltic, Western and Kiev Special Military Districts. Possibly the largest-scale train movement in Russian history was under way, much of it unnoticed by German reconnaissance, all of it moving westward.(1)
About 170 Soviet divisions were within operational distance of western Russia, from a total of perhaps 230–240 divisions under arms, but not all at war strength.(2) These belonged to the First Strategic Echelon; 56 were already deployed directly on the frontier and 114 further back. Ten Soviet armies were located within four Military Districts running north to south (see p.55). To the north was the Baltic Special Military District with the 26 divisions of Eighth and Eleventh Armies, which included six armoured divisions. Next in line south were Third, Tenth and Fourth Armies, belonging to the Western Special Military District. It had 36 divisions, of which 10 were armoured. The Kiev Special Military District with Fifth, Sixth, Twenty-sixth and Twelfth Armies had 56 divisions, of which 26 were armoured. To the south was the Odessa Special Military District with a further 14 divisions including two armoured. Behind these forces to the north lay the Leningrad Military District with the Fourteenth, Seventh and Twenty-third Armies. They faced a proposed new German front of 1,800km stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
On Friday, 13 June 1941, Moscow radio broadcast an unusual and incongruous TASS report which was printed in the Communist Party organ the next day. It stated:
‘The rumours of Germany’s intentions to tear up the [Russo-German Non-Aggression] pact and to undertake an attack on the USSR are without any foundation [and are] clumsy propaganda by forces hostile to the USSR and Germany and interested in an extension of the war.’(3)
On the day this communiqué was issued, 183 Soviet divisions were in transit. Between 12 and 15 June orders were given to the western military districts to move all divisions stationed within their interiors closer to the state frontier. The entire First Strategic Echelon of 114 divisions began to concentrate directly in the border belt; an additional 69 divisions belonging to the Second Strategic Echelon began preparations and movement in secrecy and under cover towards the western frontier. Maj-Gen N. I. Biryukov, the commander of the 186th Rifle Division stationed in the Ural Military District, recalled:
‘On 13 June 1941 we received a directive of special importance from District Staff according to which the division must move to “a new camp”. The address of the new quarters was not communicated even to me, the division commander. Only when passing through Moscow did I learn that our division was to be concentrated in woods to the west of Idritsa.’(4)
All the divisions of the Ural Military District received similar orders. The first elements of the 112th Rifle Division began moving by rail. Then the 98th, 153rd and 186th Divisions started to move. All troop movements were conducted in secret. Similar redeployments simultaneously took place within all the internal military districts of the Soviet Union, inside the Kharkov, North Caucasian, Orel, Volga, Siberian and Archangel Military Districts. A total of eight complete armies was thereby formed.(5) Five immediately and secretly moved to the Ukraine and Belorussia. The operation took up the entire spare capacity of the national rail system to achieve it and even this was insufficient for a concurrent simultaneous move of all armies. Soon some 860,000 reservists were crammed inside railway wagons on the move. Colonel I. Kh. Bagramyan, the head of the Kiev Military District operational department, recalled the frantic activity required to take the XXIst Rifle Corps under command. Its one mountain and four rifle divisions numbered 48,000 men. They undertook a gruelling 16,000km rail journey from the Far East. ‘We had to provide quarters for almost a whole army in a short time,’ he said. ‘At the end of May echelon after echelon started to arrive.’ Resources were stretched to the uppermost.
The whole of the First Strategic Echelon of the Soviet Army was being secretly reinforced. Activity on the frontier zone was not concerned solely with digesting the arrival of these large reinforcing formations; much regrouping along frontier districts also took place. Under the guise of changing summer camps, units drew closer to the frontier. The 78th Rifle Division in the Kiev Special Military District ‘on the pretext of training exercises’ according to the district official history ‘was moved out to the state frontier’. Colonel Bagramyan recalls the instruction to move all five of his district’s rifle corps to the border on 15 June, stating ‘they took with them everything necessary for active operations.’ In the Odessa District, Maj-Gen M. V. Zakharov, the Ninth Army Chief of Staff, oversaw the movement of the 30th and 74th Rifle Divisions on the same day. They ‘assembled in woods to the east of Bel’tsy under the pretext of training exercises’.(6)