Primitive attempts to encircle German units often missed, or breakthroughs were not followed up by commanders fearful of German counter-measures on their flanks. The strongpoint system maximised German resources and experience, effectively networking their automatic weapons and artillery with a few Panzers in a way the Russians could not. Many German units owed their subsequent survival, despite a considerable mauling, to Soviet tactical failings and inexperience at the higher operational level to combine resources effectively enough to create successful encirclements.
German soldiers were driven by a stark philosophy simply to survive. Leutnant Haape’s regimental commander explained:
‘A soldier must learn that death is always by his side. And if we don’t want death to have complete power over us we must take it for granted that he may strike at any moment – either at us or our comrades. And we must take it as a matter of course. It’s up to every soldier to develop that attitude, or he’s not worth calling a soldier.’(11)
A ‘scorched-earth’ policy was conducted as rearguards retreated from village to village behind Kalinin. The falling darkness was lit from the bright flames of burning villages,’ observed Werner Pott, writing a letter home, ‘in a house which would be up in flames in half an hour.’ His unit was holding ‘a long thin wedge’ sticking out into the enemy line.
‘For weeks we have been in action without a rest or break. Day after day, marching to another quarter through snowstorms at −25°C, with frozen noses and feet so bad it makes you cry out when you take your boots off.’
‘Filth, vermin and other unpleasantries’ pervaded their lives. But beyond this it was the sight of the civilian population condemned to death by hunger or freezing that affected Pott the most, as they burned all villages through which they retreated. He described the scene:
‘Red tongues of flame shot greedily upward as if they wished to devour the heavens – the world is on fire!
‘Stooping old men and mothers with tiny children hasten by, a small bundle on their backs, carrying their last belongings. Behind us engineers are blowing bridges and houses.
‘Back home somewhere is a Christmas tree, twinkling with familiar decorations. Much loved people are singing beautiful carols. It is better not to think about it.’
Werner Pott, a 19-year-old former Hamburg student, concluded his philosophical letter with a terse statement. ‘Now we’re off again to fight on; the village is already burning from end to end.’(12)
Wilhelm Göbel with the 78th Infantry Division witnessed the same gloomy spectacle. ‘The nights presented an awful sight,’ he said, with the entire horizon glowing red from the fires of burning villages.’ He recalled an Unteroffizier Müller from Infantry Regiment 215, who had been given a stinging rebuke for not entirely burning the village of Dolginino, north of Mozhaisk, ‘because the weeping and crying had become too much for him’. Göbel was emphatic: every rearguard had the order to burn the village to the ground as it left.’ The consequence for the inhabitants left behind with no shelter in near-Arctic conditions was clear. They were thereby totally delivered to the mercies of the cold,’ Göbel admitted.(13) Leutnant Haape described what these −45°C temperatures were like. ‘Every time we inhaled the frozen air our bodies lost heat,’ he said, ‘and the cold seemed to penetrate the marrow of our bones until walking became a stiff and awkward business.’ Nevertheless, Infantry Regiment 18 continued to burn villages as it fell back from Kalinin.
‘Nothing had to be left to the Red Army – and nothing was left. We marched with flames licking our footsteps, marched day and night, with only short halts, for we well knew that we were the rearguard… there were no troops between us and the pursuing Russians… Like Mummies we padded along, only our eyes visible, but the cold remorselessly crept into our bodies, our blood, our brains. Even the sun seemed to radiate a steely cold and at night the blood-red skies above the burning villages merely hinted a mockery of warmth.’(14)
Christmas was a sentimental time for the German soldier. Twenty-two-year-old infantryman Harald Henry with Ninth Army sought anxiously to deliver a letter to his parents in time for Christmas. He was concerned that the ‘dry reports’ they were getting in Germany were not the true picture, and admitted that his ‘Christmas letter’ written on 3 December ‘says too little also’. On 7 December he told them he was in poor health, with dysentery and septic lice bites, but ‘I am alive,’ he continued, ‘and uninjured, which gives me some hope to keep going’. Despite the pressures of everyday front life, Harald Henry felt an imperative to write home and stay in touch. ‘Greetings from 11.12,’ he wrote, ‘impossible to write – Harald.’ Another short note followed on 13 December and he managed a further letter on the 21st which included these last few lines:
‘Dear Parents!
Unfortunately still no chance to write. Only the growing certainty of perhaps actually escaping this “dog’s breakfast”, because I appear to be the last single survivor from the whole company.’
The fighting strength of a company was normally about 176 men. On the day before Christmas Eve, Harald Henry was shot in the stomach during a tank infantry battle north-west of Moscow. The young man who had held a brief doctorate at Berlin University did not survive his wounds.(15)
Panzer officer Helmut von Harnack, already twice wounded, managed to extricate an infantry battalion under intense Russian pressure with his company of mixed Panzers and self-propelled guns. ‘It was unforgettable,’ he wrote, ‘the battalion commander, out of breath, kept calling out “My best Christmas present ever!”‘ On Christmas Eve von Harnack received the gift of life himself. As he climbed down from his Panzer to check over one of his broken drive wheels ‘my Panzer was rammed by a heavy Russian tank.’ His elation was, however, short-lived. Within a month he was dead.(16)
The German sentimental view of Christmas lay in cruel juxtaposition to, and starkly emphasised, the reversal of fortunes compared to the more successful previous year. Panzer Leutnant F. W. Christians admitted, ‘Christmas was a particularly emotional experience for us German soldiers in such conditions.’ The Russians, according to artillery soldier Pawel Ossipow, made the most of it also.
‘We know that the Germans would want to celebrate Christmas between 24–25 December. There were indications of this from the Christmas trees and other decorations we found in the villages we liberated. The enemy’s alertness would be correspondingly reduced indulging in such niceties so we tried to pursue them even more quickly during this period. It was, however, particularly tiring for our troops to advance 15km in a day’(17)
Will Thomas, a German infantry NCO platoon commander, wrote to his wife on the second day of Christmas, cynically describing ‘the best Christmas Day of my life’, during which:
‘The enemy attacked in overwhelming strength the entire day, using tanks, against which we had no defence. The entire position was reduced to soot and ashes and we crawled out from under the rubble. It was icy cold. The entire company was torn to pieces. Leutnant Wufert was killed! There was little rest that night, but in the morning it will start up again…’
The unit was surrounded. Thomas ended his letter with a prescient confirmation of his love, writing even in death we will never be apart’. He was killed the following month.(18)