German tank crews were clearly shocked by the appearance of heavier and obviously superior Russian tanks. It did not square with the comfortable Untermensch (sub-human) perception of the Russians, fostered by overrunning squalid worker settlements early in the campaign. German cinema newsreels often poked fun at so-called ‘paradises for Soviet workers’, assuming German technological superiority was unassailable. Broadcasts in the Reich proclaimed German tank rounds ‘not only penetrated once, but came out the other side of Russian tanks as well’.(12) Leutnant Helmut Ritgen of the 6th Panzer Division admitted after clashes with these previously unknown tank types that:
‘That day changed the character of tank warfare, as the KV represented a wholly new level of armament, armour protection and weight. German tanks had hitherto been intended mainly to fight enemy infantry and their supporting arms. From now on the main threat was the enemy tank itself, and the need to “kill” it at as great a range as possible led to the design of longer-barrelled guns of larger calibre.’(13)
German crews entered Russia convinced of their innate technological and tactical superiority, proven in former campaigns. Tank gunner Karl Fuchs, crewing the relatively inferior PzKpfw38(t) with the 7th Panzer Division in the central sector, wrote to his wife at the end of June:
‘Up until now, all of the troops have had to accomplish quite a bit. The same goes for our machines and tanks. But, nevertheless, we’re going to show these Bolshevik bums who’s who around here! They fight like hired hands – not like soldiers.’(14)
Curizio Malaparte, an Italian war correspondent advancing with a German armoured column in Bessarabia, described a group of Germans examining a knocked-out Soviet heavy tank four days later.
‘They look like experts conducting an on-the-spot enquiry into the causes of an accident. What interests them most of all is the quality of the enemy’s matériel and the manner in which that matériel is employed in the field… They shake their heads and murmur “Ja, ja, aber”… The whole secret of the German success is implicit in that “aber”, in that “but.”’(15)
Karl Fuchs declared more candidly to his wife, we have fought in battle many days now and ‘we have defeated the enemy wherever we have encountered him.’(16) Victory jargon even became a feature of Wehrmacht slang. The BT-7 light Soviet tank was knocked out in such numbers it was referred to as the ‘Mickey Mouse’. This was because the silhouette of both crew hatches, invariably left open on top of abandoned tank hulks, resembled the distinctive mouse ears of the famous Walt Disney cartoon figure.
Frontier tank battles
War correspondent Arthur Grimm rode with the 11th Panzer Division, part of Army Group South, toward the first major tank battle in the eastern campaign within 24 hours of the invasion. Columns of half-track SdKfz251 armoured personnel carriers festooned with infantry churned up dust as they lurched along heavily rutted village roads, ‘when the reconnaissance group from our unit radioed that some 120 Soviet tanks had moved up in front of the village of Radciekow’. Engines whined and hummed into life as Grimm described ‘their forward advance into the dawn twilight’. Shortly before 05.00 hours ‘we drove through high cornfields as the early morning fog began to clear’. PzKpfwIIIs and IVs drove by, dark silhouettes floating across the surface of a sea of corn. They distinguished groups of Soviet tanks to their right which ‘included the heaviest and most modern tanks in the world’.
On the other side of the dispersed village houses Grimm observed the dark tell-tale dots that were Soviet tanks moving about. At 05.20 hours the German assault drove into the left flank of these indistinguishable dots and, with a flash, a tall globule of black smoke rose slowly into the air and began to form into a dark ominous mushroom shape. The boom of the report carried across the intervening distance as the first Soviet tank erupted with a shot that ‘penetrated its ammunition compartment’. The first tanks encountered were B-26 variants. Grimm, following closely behind the German tank advance, took photographs of scenes of blazing destruction around him. Dirty columns of smoke began to hang lazily in the air as tank after tank was hit.
‘20-rounds were required to bring this heavy tank to a standstill’, commented Grimm captioning a photograph which he took passing a blazing T-34 tank. Its gun was traversed rearward, to enable the driver to escape from his forward hatch. ‘But this only lasted a few seconds before the remaining ammunition exploded in a blinding flash’. Grimm’s reportage for Signal,(1) the German pictorial propaganda magazine, glossed over the desperate nature of the engagement as German tank gunners realised they were up against surprisingly heavy and unknown tank types. Leutnant Ritgen’s observations of the 6th Division’s encounter with KVs at Rossieny three days later were more honest:
‘These hitherto unknown Soviet tanks created a crisis in Kampfgruppe “Seckendorff”, since apparently no weapon of the division was able to penetrate their armour. All rounds simply bounced off the Soviet tanks. 88mm Flak guns were not yet available. In the face of the assault some riflemen panicked. The super-heavy Soviet KV tanks advanced against our tanks, which concentrated their fire on them without visible effect. The command tank of the company was rammed and turned over by a KV and the commander was injured.’(2)
Despite the quality of the Russian tanks, tactical surprise and superior German battle drills began to tell. Alexander Fadin, a Soviet T-34 tank commander, described the spectrum of emotion a tank crewman would feel in such a battle:
‘You get excited as you look for a target. The engine starts and the ground bumps up and down as you charge forward. You sight the gun and the driver shouts “Fire!”’
Spent shell cases clatter to the floor of the turret and begin rattling around, as with each concussion and recoil of the gun the fighting compartment fills with fresh cordite fumes. Fadin continued:
‘When you hit a German tank in battle and blow it up, instead of firing at another tank, you open the hatch. You look out and make sure you got it!’(3)
German tank crews were coldly and professionally detached. Leutnant Ritgen surmised, ‘the Soviet tank crews had no time to familiarise themselves with their tank guns or zero them in,’ so soon after the invasion, ‘since their fire was very inaccurate… Furthermore, the Soviets were poorly led.’ Arthur Grimm observed that by midday on 23 June ‘a dusty sea of black smoke from red and yellow flames had built up’. German reinforcements that had been brought up in support ‘hardly needed to get into the fight and remained merely as spectators’. Leutnant Ritgen said the 6th Panzer Division’s early frontier battles were not without crisis.
‘One of our reserve officers – today a well-known German author – lost his nerve. Without stopping at the headquarters of his regiment, the division or the corps, he simply rushed to the command post of General Hoepner [the commander of Panzergruppe 4] to report that “everything was already lost”.’