Back on the artillery firing line, the noise was intimidating. Kanonier Werner Adamczyk with Artillery Regiment 20 described what it was like crewing a 150mm gun battery:
‘Standing next to the gun, one could feel the powerful burst of the propellant’s explosion vibrate through the whole body. The shock wave of the explosion was so powerful that one had to keep one’s mouth wide open to equalise the pressure exerted upon the eardrums – an unopened mouth could cause the eardrums to be damaged.’(14)
Infantry and some armoured vehicles began to move forward. Soldiers advanced with trepidation and mixed feelings. Götz Hrt-Reger with an armoured car unit animatedly recalled the start of ‘Barbarossa’ in a later interview:
‘Of course you’re scared. You were ordered to move out at 03.30 hours and naturally you had certain feelings that set your stomach churning, or you’re afraid you know. But there’s nothing you can do. That’s why I didn’t want to give orders but rather follow… ’(15)
The three German army groups closed onto a frontier stretching from Memel on the Baltic south to Romania on the Black Sea. Many of the images of this dawning of the longest summer day of the year were captured on Wochenschau movie newsreels. Spectacular film footage was shown to German cinema audiences within one week of the event. They showed flares hanging in a dark sky already streaked with dawn. Tracer fire curls lazily over a single-span railway bridge, flashes of explosion beneath reflect briefly on the outline silhouette of advancing infantry. On the Russian side, wooden watch-towers alongside the Bug burn furiously, like flaming torches, lighting up the sky above the dark mass of the opposite bank. Smoke rises majestically into the air, expanding languidly into an inky smudge, staining the light of an emerging dawn. Stark black outlines of soldiers laden with combat gear are discernible, moving swiftly through meadow grass and briefly silhouetted crossing the high riverbanks of the Bug. They pause and lie down as the pick-pock of opposing echoing rifle fire pins them down.
The Wochenschau images atmospherically convey an aura of menacing power and progress to their audiences, as combat vehicles and soldiers pass the distinctive stripe-patterned frontier marker posts. Cameras linger on scenes of flaming destruction. Repeated shots of artillery muzzles punching through and recoiling back inside camouflage nets that jerk convulsively, raising dust, with each concussive report of the gun, add to the aura of pitiless technological dominance. Birds, panicked by explosions in the target area, fly around the periphery of rising clouds of dirty coloured smoke. Lines of motionless Panzers, filmed awaiting the call forward, underscore a constant theme of latent lethality.
All along the 800km line of the River Bug, Sturmgruppen (assault parties) dashed across bridges and overwhelmed surprised Russian guards before they could detonate demolition charges. Rubber dinghies ferried across infantry assault groups, followed soon after by parties of engineers constructing the first pontoon bridges.
In Generalmajor Nehring’s 18th Panzer Division sector near Pratulin, numbers of tanks simply drove down the bank of the Bug and disappeared underwater. Infantry nearby watched in amazement as tank after tank slid beneath the surface of the water like grotesque amphibians. These tanks, belonging to Ist Battalion Panzer Regiment 18 had originally been trained and equipped to wade underwater from ramp-mounted ferry boats built in preparation for Operation ‘Seelöwe’ (sea lion), the proposed invasion of England. In October 1940 the venture was cancelled, then resurrected in part for the foreseen amphibious assault crossing of the Bug.
The ‘U-Boat’ tanks were fitted with 3m steel pipes which protruded from the surface of the water as they waded across the river bottom, enabling the crew and engines to breathe. Exhausts were fitted with one-way valves and gun turrets were insulated by air-filled bicycle inner tubes. Bubbles from the exhaust were obliterated by the moving current. Total surprise was achieved as 80 of these Panzer amphibians emerged on the far bank, rapidly establishing a deep bridgehead. Russian armoured cars that had begun to menace landed infantry were quickly despatched.(16)
The east is aflame,’ announced Leutnant Haape, observing the progress of the assaulting spearheads. Infantry mainly led the way. Many of these men were still coming to terms with the surprise they had inflicted on the Russians. Gefreiter Joachim Kredel, a machine gunner in Infantry Regiment 67 of 23rd Division, had hours before queried his company commander’s reading of the Führer Order. ‘Soldiers of the Ostfront,’ it had announced. Kredel turning to a friend asked: ‘Did the company commander actually say Ostfront?’ Feldwebel Richard von Weizsäcker (a future President of the Federal Republic of Germany), nearby with Regiment 9, refused to believe, right up to the point of going into action, that Hitler would seriously go to war against the Soviet Union. Leutnant von dem Bussche, a platoon commander in the same regiment, thought:
‘Funny, almost exactly 129 years before, the Emperor Napoleon, supported by the Prussian Corps under General Ludwig Yorck, had started the great Russian campaign. We all know what happened to them. Will we do better?’
Soldiers sought to allay their acute uneasiness by engaging in purposeful last-minute checks. Rifle loaded and safety catch on? Uniform buttons done up? Helmet strap not too tight – or too loose? Hand-grenade arming mechanism screw easy to turn? Have I got an uninterrupted line of sight to the soldier nearby?(17) They awaited the signal to advance. Ernst Glasner wrote in his diary while waiting on the edge of the Bug:
‘Involuntarily we counted the seconds. Then a shot tore through the stillness of this summer Sunday on the new Eastern Front. At the same moment a thundering, roaring and whining in the air. The artillery had begun.’(18)
Feldwebel Gottfried ‘Gottlieb’ Becker had counted off the final seconds, observing the railway embankment that was his first objective. As they ran forward, ‘the echoes of explosions mixed with the incoming whine of new salvoes’. Becker and his platoon were astonished when they reached the embankment without once coming under fire. Only single shots rang out as the first German motorised column began to trundle down the road to his right; with that, worries vanished. The opening attack had proved unexpectedly smooth. Becker had reached his first objective without losing a single man.
Nearby, Gefreiter Kredel with Regiment 67 stormed forward as fast as his legs could carry him, his machine gun sloped across his shoulder. This was his first time in action. Propelling him was the sage advice of a veteran who had assured him ‘the first wave gets through mostly unscathed, because the enemy is surprised. That’s why those that follow get the full punishment.’ Kredel thought it strange the way bullets whistled by one’s helmet. He saw a wooden Russian observation tower reduced to matchwood by a direct hit from an anti-tank gun. ‘Pieces of wood and Russians whirled through the air, and fell like toys to the ground.’ Simultaneously the Germans’ artillery dropped short and fell among their own ranks. ‘Wounded cried out, and curses of “idiots – pay attention!” became mixed with the detonations of shells.’(19) Fire shifted abruptly forward, as if in response to these recriminations.