‘We used our underclothes as bandages. We had no water. The wounded shook… Although there was water next to us, it was under fire. Sometimes we got a bucket into it, but there were only a few drops to distribute. We risked our lives for it, but it was sufficient only to wet the lips of the wounded. They were desperate for it, and appealed – “Sister, sister, water”, but we couldn’t give them any.’(14)
During the morning of 28 June the surviving two tanks from Panzer Platoon 28 were reinforced by a number of repaired self-propelled guns. They continued to shoot up the windows and apertures of the Ostfort, but with no apparent result. An 88mm Flak gun was pulled forward and began to engage in the direct-fire mode. Again, there was no sign of surrender. To break the impasse Generalmajor Schlieper, the commander of 45th Division, despatched a request to the Luftwaffe airfield nearby at Malasze-wieze to administer an aerial coup de grâce to this final stubborn strongpoint. Once the air attack was agreed, the forward German attacking elements had to be withdrawn to the outer fortress wall as a safely measure. Low cloud that afternoon caused the postponement of the solitary Luftwaffe mission. Reluctantly the investing ring was pulled in tightly again to prevent break-outs. Searchlights illuminated the walls all night. Any careless approach venturing too near the fort was immediately engaged by vicious bursts of automatic fire. Tracer continually spat out from this totally isolated outpost. Would it ever capitulate?
On 29 June the news blackout ended in the Reich. Sonder-meldung or special news bulletin 1, preceded by the Liszt ‘Russian fanfare’ announced that ‘the Soviet Air Force had been totally destroyed’. Bulletin number 2 announced, ‘the strong enemy border defences were in part broken, even on the first day’. Victory after victory received commentary in a series of statements that exuded satisfaction. ‘On 23 June the enemy directed rabid counterattacks against the vanguards of our attacking columns’ yet ‘the German soldier remained victorious’. Place names at last emerged. It was stated the fortress of Grodno had been taken after hard fighting. ‘The last strongpoint in the Citadel at Brest-Litovsk was stormed by our troops on 24 June.’ Vilnius and Kowno were taken. In all, 12 special bulletins were sonorously announced one after the other on 29 June.(15) ‘Two Red Armies trapped east of Bialystok,’ Goebbels gloated. ‘No chance of a break-out. Minsk is in our hands.’ Although a glut of information was released, the Reich audience was not totally feckless. Goebbels perceptively admitted to his diary:
‘It is all too much at once. By the end, one can sense a slight numbness in the way they receive the news. The effect is not what we had hoped for. The listeners can see through our manipulation of the news too clearly. It is all laid on too thickly, in their opinion… Nevertheless the effect is still tremendous… We are back at the pinnacle of triumph.’(16)
His comment was echoed in an SS Secret Service report the following day which concurred that ‘summarising the 12 Special Announcements within two or three reports would have been better received’. Despite the feverish anticipation of good news, the extent of the successes came as a general surprise. Media releases were ‘almost unbelievable’, particularly the numbers of Soviet tanks and aircraft destroyed. Rumours continued, because it became obvious from the Sondermeldungen dates that more would follow. ‘With total lack of judgement,’ the SS report commented, ‘in some areas it was being wagered that the German Wehrmacht was likely to appear in Moscow on Sunday’.(17)
These were ‘heady days’. More was to follow as the Blitzkrieg gathered momentum towards Smolensk.
Chapter 7
Blitzkrieg
‘We hardly had any sleep because we drove through both day and night.’
The ‘smooth’ period…
The Panzers
Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, the commander of Army Group Centre, felt exasperated as he turned his two Panzergruppen – 2 and 3 – inwards to complete the first major encirclement of the Russian campaign after being denied the greater prize at Smolensk. It was, nevertheless, a stunning achievement. ‘I was still so annoyed by the order to close the pocket prematurely’ wrote von Bock in his diary, that when visited by Generalfeldmarschall von Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief, his response to congratulations was a gruff ‘I doubt there’s anything left inside now!’(1) The 250–300km Panzer advance beginning to curl around the trapped Soviet forces was about to net some 27 Russian divisions.
Major Johann Graf von Kielmansegg, a Panzer commander with the 6th Division, later explained that the nature of the fighting on the ground belied the impressive achievements trumpeted to the world’s press. It was no walk-over. The Soviet border defences ‘were certainly surprised’, he said, ‘but not overrun’.(2) Leutnant Helmut Ritgen, serving in the same division, concurred.
‘Since nobody surrendered, almost no prisoners were taken. Our tanks, however, were soon out of ammunition, a case which had never happened before in either Poland or France.’(3)
The ‘smooth’ period of the Panzer advance von Kielmansegg described ‘lay between two parts’:
‘The first was the battles fought directly on the frontier – these were very very hard. Next came a blocking action on the so-called “Stalin Line”, which was where Russian reinforcements were fed in. But to speak of “overrunning”, even though Goebbels may have been asserting this, was an overstatement from the start.’(4)
The ‘smooth’ period was testimony to German tactical superiority, conferred by the collective experience of the previous successful campaigns. ‘In three days I have slept for two hours and one attack has followed the other,’ wrote war correspondent Arthur Grimm, advancing with elements of Panzergruppe 1 under von Kleist with Army Group South.
‘The enemy cannot hold us and constantly attempts to pin us down in a major engagement. But we are always forewarned in time and bypass him in ghostly night drives.’(5)
An unpleasant surprise for the supremely confident Panzer troops was the quality of some of the Soviet equipments they soon faced.
On the second day of the campaign, in the 6th Panzer Division sector, 12 German supply trucks were knocked out, one after the other, by a solitary unidentified Soviet heavy tank. The vehicle sat astride the road south of the River Dubysa near Rossieny. Further beyond, two German combat teams had already established bridgeheads on the other side of the river. They were about to be engaged in the first major tank battle of the eastern campaign. Their urgent resupply requirements had already been destroyed. Rutted muddy approaches and a nearby forest infested with bands of stay-behind Russian infantry negated any option to bypass. The Russian tank had to be eliminated. A battery of medium 50mm German antitank guns was sent forward to force the route.