Oberleutnant Knaak on the road bridge gritted his teeth and urged his driver on. Behind, whining engines and clanking gears indicated he was not alone. A crack followed by the iridescent red-hot slug of an anti-tank projectile spat out from the far Russian bank and slammed into Knaak’s truck, passing straight through, ejecting sparks and splinters of metal. The truck trundled to a halt out of control, Knaak sprawled dead inside the cab. A murderous fire jetted out from houses alongside the riverbank. German Panzers and infantry were, however, already visible on the bridge spans. An artillery shell crashed into the railway bridge producing a secondary detonation from part of the explosive charge. It was repairable, but for the moment tanks could not cross. The ‘Brandenburgers’ were pinned down. Steinberger described the typical dilemma once fighting broke out and decoy uniforms had to be jettisoned.
‘Nobody could tell whether we were friend or foe, and the tanks following on often shot at their own people in the chaos. If a mission succeeded, we usually had very few casualties. But some missions went wrong, if for example, our own people were recognised by the enemy. Then almost everybody was wiped out.’
Leutnant Schmidt commanded the first Panzer platoon to cross the Daugavpils bridge. Soon the remainder of 9/Panzer Regiment 10 was engaged in intense fighting with Russian infantry attempting to scale the river embankment and place grenades on tank tracks to immobilise them. Duelling with anti-tank guns began up and down the streets as further Panzers and German infantry crossed the bridge and began to penetrate the town.
Fighting continued throughout the day and columns of smoke spiralled above the town as desperately mounted Russian counterattacks vainly attempted to wrest control of the bridges back. Air raids conducted by Soviet twin-engined aircraft in a last-ditch effort to destroy the bridges were also unsuccessful. Soviet soldiers were constantly plucked from the bridge superstructures later that day, still attempting to reignite demolition fuses. The 9th Panzer Company destroyed 20 light Russian tanks, 20 artillery pieces and 17 anti-tank guns during its battles around the bridge entry points.
Army Group North had stormed the Dvina and had achieved a bridgehead. The way to Leningrad had been opened.
No news
At home in the Reich there was no news. After the initial invasion announcement the population was given nothing of substance for seven days. Daily OKW reports gave sparse information. There were no names or unit numbers and rivers and towns received no mention at all. Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, played his psychological instrument with adroitness. ‘The public mood is one of depression,’ he recorded in his diary on 23 June. ‘The nation wants peace, but not at the price of defeat, but every new theatre of operations brings worry and concern.’ Well aware of early campaign successes, he wrote on 25 June: ‘We have still issued no details in the High Command Bulletin. The enemy is to be kept in complete ignorance.’ He exploited the period of tension with consummate skill. The press was constrained from publishing big maps of Russia. ‘The huge areas involved may frighten the public,’ he claimed. Similarly he took a firm line against imprudent campaign length predictions widely pronounced by the Foreign Office. ‘If we say four weeks and it turns out to be six, then our greatest victory will be transformed into a defeat in the end.’ The Foreign Ministry appeared to compromise security. ‘I’ve had the Gestapo take steps against one particular loudmouth,’ he admitted.(1)
Quiet confidence began to replace the initial nervousness. Certainty of a rapid victory over Russia became the accepted view, a reversal of previous campaign experience. Rumours abounded, raising tension to a ‘feverish’ height. Over 100,000 Russian prisoners had allegedly been taken. The SS Secret Report on the Home Political Situation reported: ‘Already on Tuesday [the third day of the campaign] one could hear in open conversation that 1,700 aircraft had been destroyed; by Wednesday this number had climbed to over 2,000.’(2)The public deduction derived from all this was general suspicion that German troops had in reality penetrated the Russian hinterland far deeper than hitherto reported. Large-scale maps of Russia completely sold out in bookshops. In Dresden it was rumoured German troops were only 100km from Moscow.(3)
Letters to the front reflected this concern at the news blackout. One wife wrote to her husband, seven days into the invasion: ‘Sunday is upon us again, and you have probably experienced so much already. I didn’t get any post today.’(4) A National Socialist mother wrote to her son from Brand on 28 June announcing the lifting of the postal ban, stating, ‘I do not doubt for one instant that there will be a victory over these dogs, whom one cannot refer to as human beings’. Yet beneath the dogma there remained concern for her son at the front:
‘In the morning we will hear through High Command Bulletins how much and where these barbarians have already been beaten. My dear boy! You know I am really concerned now, for you and Jos. Whenever you get a chance, give me a sign of life – a postcard would suffice.’(5)
Army Group Centre was the strongest in armour of the three army groups and its two Panzergruppen – 3 commanded by Hoth and 2 by Guderian – were committed to a huge encirclement operation. Army Group Centre sought to destroy as many of the Soviet forces as possible facing it in White Russia before they could disengage and escape into the depths of Russia. There, they might choose to stand and fight on the great natural obstacles of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers. The aim was to secure the ‘land-bridge’ between the headwaters of these two rivers – where the Minsk-Smolensk road passes en route to Moscow – as Napoleon did before them. As the massive Panzer thrusts by Army Group Centre gathered momentum, German air reconnaissance reported numerous enemy columns retreating eastward from the Bialystok region.
Simultaneously reports indicated an increase in the tenacity of local Soviet resistance, which Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, the commander of Army Group Centre, assessed might be to cover a withdrawal. The original ‘Barbarossa’ concept visualised Minsk forming the eastern edge of the first encircling movement towards the east. Bock expressed his preference to OKH that his Panzer groups should continue onward to Smolensk, 320km beyond the start line, fearing strong enemy contingents might escape eastwards into the Berezina marshlands, escaping the ring due to close at Minsk.(6) OKH ironically faced the parallel dilemma it had experienced during the race to the English Channel after crossing the River Meuse the year before at Sedan in France. At what point, planners conferred, does a deep penetration become compromised by over-exposed flanks? OKH insisted on the junction of the two Panzergruppen near Minsk, in accordance with the original ‘Barbarossa’ plan. Panzergruppe 3 began to turn inward on 24 June. As a result, Soviet troops were pushed southward onto the flanks of Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2. Fourth and Ninth German armies marching up their infantry on foot were ordered to destroy fast-forming Soviet stay-behind elements that could menace the advance of the follow-up forces needed to consolidate the Panzer advances.
By 25 June Army Group Centre was beginning to coalesce around two primary pockets: 12 Soviet divisions were already marooned in the Bialystok and Volkovysk areas; within four days another belt of 15 Soviet divisions was enveloped in the Minsk area. It was becoming apparent from countless local Russian counterattacks that the enemy, almost instinctively, was going to fight for every foot of soil.