At 04.00 hours the next day, air reconnaissance identified strong Russian motorised columns moving north from an area north-west of Wilno toward an important road junction at Kedaynyay. The force, which included between 200 and 350 Soviet tanks, appeared to be bearing down on the 8th Panzer Division, leading LVIth Panzer Corps. It was the 2nd Soviet Tank Division. They passed through Kedaynyay and missed LVIth Panzer Corps but then struck the 6th Panzer Division of XXXXIst Panzer Corps at Rossieny, 60km away. Hoepner, the commander of Panzergruppe 4, took a calculated risk. Despite the power of the attacking Russian force – 300 tanks and comparable in artillery and infantry strength to the corps it was attacking – XXXXIst Corps was tasked to destroy it without reinforcement. The lead LVIth Corps division, 8th Panzer, was directed onwards to Daugavpils on the River Dvina as planned. Blitzkrieg was becoming reality.
Between June 24 and 26, the Soviet force, which included 29 heavy tanks of an unknown type, were surrounded and liquidated by XXXXIst Panzer Corps’ large complement of Czech-manufactured light Pz Kpfw IIs and modestly gunned medium Pz Kpfw IIIs. German tactical superiority overcame the shock of encountering the new tank types. The decision not to divert the armoured apex from its aim paid off handsomely, for even as the tank battle at Rossieny died down, the forward elements of the 8th Panzer Division had the vital bridges across the River Dvina in sight. They were over 100km ahead of the main Army Group.
Hauptsturmführer Klinter from the 3rd SS Division ‘Toten-kopf’, following up the armoured spearhead with his motorised infantry company, recalled:
‘Heat, filth, and clouds of dust were the characteristic snapshot of those days. We hardly saw any enemy apart from the occasional drive-by of enemy prisoners. But the country had totally altered after we crossed the Reich border. Lithuania gave us a little taste of what we were to find in Russia: unkept sandy roads, intermittent settlements and ugly houses which were more like huts.’
A merciless sun bore down through the swirling dust raised by vehicles. ‘The air,’ Klinter remembers, as they approached Daugavpils, ‘had that putrefying and pervasive burnt smell so reminiscent of the battle zone, and all nerves and senses began to detect the breath of the front’. They became aware of piles of discarded Russian equipment alongside the steep roadside embankments.
‘Suddenly all heads switched to the right. The first dead of the Russian campaign lay before our eyes like a spectre symbolising the destructiveness of war. A Mongolian skull smashed in combat, a torn uniform and bare abdomen slit by shell splinters. The column drew up and then accelerated ahead, the picture fell behind us. I sank back thoughtfully into my seat.’(6)
Two bridges, road and rail, spanned the River Dvina, approximately 300m wide at this point. The bridges needed to be taken intact to maintain the eastern momentum of Army Group North. Oberstleutnant Crisolli’s Kampfgruppe formed the division vanguard earmarked to attack Daugavpils. It consisted of a Panzer and infantry regiment (10th and 18th respectively), infantry motorcyclists and other motorised elements with artillery and the 8th Company of Lehr Regiment 800 ‘Brandenburg’. The Branden-burger company was ordered to attempt a coup de main.
Lehr Regiment 800, originally conceived as a special forces company, had already been employed as such during the previous Polish and French campaigns. Its role was to raid behind enemy lines, occupy and prevent demolitions or destroy key headquarters and objectives such as bridges. Directly subordinate to Admiral Canaris’s Military Intelligence Headquarters, it was founded at Brandenburg in Berlin from the first Bau-Lehr Company. By the time of the Polish campaign the unit was 500-men strong, rising to two battalions which were employed during the Western campaign. They created confusion in enemy rear areas through sabotage, demolitions and raids in direct support of Blitzkrieg combined advances of paratroopers and Panzers. In October 1940 an entire regiment was formed which had within a year expanded to division size.(7) Eduard Steinberger from South Tyrol served with the unit and explained:
‘The Brandenburg Division originally consisted of mostly non-Reich Germans – Sudeten Germans who spoke Czech, a few Palestinian Germans and volunteer Ukrainians. There were people from all over who mostly spoke other languages, but all units were under German command.’(8)
At the outset of the Russian campaign Oberleutnant Herzner commanded the Ukrainian ‘Nightingale’ battalion, recruited mainly from west Ukrainians released from Polish prisoner of war camps after the 1939 campaign. These formed part of the German advance toward Lemberg.(9)
Oberleutnant Wolfram Knaak, commanding the 8th ‘Branden-burger’ Company observing the Daugavpils bridges, had been wounded during a similar bridge raid near Kedaynyay. He was well aware of the risks involved operating so far forward of the vanguard battle group. ‘When the commanders of the divisions we were assigned saw they’d got a company of Brandenburgers,’ Steinberger remarked, ‘they immediately put us with the advance units who would be the first to make contact with the enemy.’
Knaak split his company into two raiding groups, one each for the railway and road bridges. Steinberger described how these units might be configured for a mission. They could be up to half a company strong, 60–70 soldiers, or more usually platoon sizes of 20–30 men.
‘We always operated in decoy uniforms. We wore all kinds – Russian ones for example – over our Wehrmacht uniforms. We had to be able to swiftly get rid of the cover uniform.’
The penalty, if they did not, was inevitable execution on capture. ‘We generally played a situation by ear,’ Steinberger said. In attempting to seize a bridge:
‘We always drove over in captured Russian trucks, with one of us sitting on top while someone who spoke Russian, a Latvian or Estonian for instance, sat in the cab.’(10)
During the early morning hours of 26 June Knaak’s group of captured Russian trucks began its tense drive, headlights on, toward both bridges, the spans of which could just be discerned with approaching daylight. The bridges, separated by a bend in the river, were about 1.5km apart. At Varpas, a village over 3km from the river, the parties diverged, each to its allotted objective. Left and straight on was the northern railway bridge, while the road crossing lay in a south-easterly direction to the right. Five Russian armoured cars parked by the road were overtaken by the railway group, which carried on to the main bridge span and judiciously halted, placing itself between these and additional Russian armoured cars on the bridge. During the resulting confusion, as the intention of these newly arrived trucks became clear, enemy gunners in the armoured cars were constrained against engaging the intruders for fear of hitting their own men. They moved off into the town to secure better fire positions. Meanwhile Feldwebel Kruckeberg deftly descended from the trucks to the bridge superstructure and began to cut suspected demolition cables.
Oberleutnant Knaak, having wound his way through unsuspecting civil traffic in the suburb of Griva on the southern riverbank to Daugavpils, drove up in the first of three trucks onto the road bridge. As they approached the western Soviet outpost they noticed the guards chatting to Russian civilians. With the prize tantalisingly within their grasp the action started. The nearest sentries were bayoneted but shots rang out. Now compromised, Knaak’s truck, engine screaming, started to accelerate to the far bank. The remaining lorries in hot pursuit began to close-up behind.
As gunfire began to reverberate around the bridge and suburb of Griva, followed by eerie flashes and the thump of hand-grenades, the lead tanks of Panzer Regiment 10 began to move. They had driven up as close as they dared. Hatches were dropped on order from their commander, Oberstleutnant Fronhöfer, and they began a metallic clattering race through the built-up area of Griva. Civilian traffic scattered.