The Smolensk pocket
As the motorised vanguards of Panzer divisions struck substantial Russian resistance, meeting engagements ensued. Infantry or Panzers would move up in combination while artillery and Luftwaffe air support was called forward to break up the crust of the opposition. Areas of stubborn resistance were simply bypassed and subsequently encircled to maintain the momentum of the advance. Armoured advance guards would wheel left and right of the discerned threat and attempt to come together at an identified point further east to close the pocket. The area enclosed was termed der Kessel (the cauldron), an apt description. Closing the pocket was a complicated and dangerous manoeuvre requiring the need to recognise and co-ordinate firepower with fast-moving Panzer units which were directed onto virtual collision courses. Timing and communication was all important. Coloured Very flares were often fired into the air as a crude verification of friend or foe. Confused fighting led to clashes between units on the same side – something that the fast-moving pace of battle made almost inevitable.
The formation of the Smolensk pocket, and the subsequent battles that were fought between 11 July and 11 August 1941 to close it, typified and illustrate the nature of the fighting being conducted at this point in the Russian campaign. The Bialystok and Minsk encirclement battles that started on 24 June ended only three days before the ring around the massive Smolensk Kessel coalesced. They had been tying down 50% of Army Group Centre’s fighting assets, 23 infantry divisions as well as Panzer and motorised formations. These units, mopping up final resistance, had to be pushed eastward in sufficient strength to embrace and crush the new enclave containing the largest Soviet force entrapped to date. On 18 July only seven German divisions were holding down 12 surrounded Soviet equivalents. The Russians not only sought to break out. They were also being reinforced by fresh units from the east, which sought to break in to extricate their own men.
Keil und Kessel tactics were applied to achieve the German encirclement and destroy the Red Army in western Russia. The Keil (wedge) was the penetration hammered into the Soviet front by four Panzergruppen, one each to the north and south and two in the centre. Enemy forces were encircled within concentric rings to form der Kessel The first outer ring achieved by Panzer vanguards isolated the enemy before the Panzers then turning inward to establish dispersed security pickets (see pp.226–7). These were in effect ‘buffers’, whose role was to beat back enemy forays into the pocket. Heat was applied in a terminal sense to bring the cauldron to the boil by the foot infantry divisions marching up. On arrival they formed a second inner circle around the trapped Soviet units and squeezed. German infantry supported by artillery faced inwards, containing repeated Soviet attempts to break out, until the trapped units were inexorably worn down and liquidated. Motorised and Panzer formations meanwhile held the outer ring, simultaneously parrying enemy relief attacks while preparing to continue the advance east once the fate of the pocket was sealed.
Four stages in the destruction of a Soviet pocket are shown overleaf diagrammatically.
1. Panzer spearheads first encircle and cut off Soviet forces.
2. The perimeter, once formed, faces inwards and outwards to prevent break-out attempts and block external Russian counter-attacks seeking to free or reinforce encircled forces.
3. The arrival of the foot infantry divisions with their heavy artillery would herald the subsequent annihilation of resistance. Concentric attacks are mounted to harrass the pocket as the perimeter is hermetically sealed. The Panzer screen is meanwhile withdrawn and continues its eastward advance.
4. Infantry attacks supported by artillery break the pocket into digestible fragments which are reduced in turn.
Tactics, which had proved successful during the earlier western campaigns, proved inappropriate when applied to this fiercely stubborn and less compliant adversary in the east. Inadequacies in German defence doctrine, already identified by senior commanders after the victorious Polish and French campaigns, became apparent again. Although Blitzkrieg doctrine depended on ‘lightning’ advances supported by close Luftwaffe air support, ultimate success depended on how fast the marching infantry could cover ground before they closed with the enemy, and how effectively the Panzers could defend while waiting for them. Much of the fighting, apart from the skirmishing involved establishing pocket perimeters, became a matter of sheer infantry will-power to contain and destroy increasingly desperate cut-off Russian units inside. Robert Rupp, a motorised infantry soldier serving with Army Group Centre, encapsulated the nature of pocket fighting in a diary entry of 31 July. ‘One is concurrently defending during every attack,’ he wrote, ‘perhaps even more than when defending.’(1)
German Panzer divisions may have been fearsome in the attack but they were less formidable when tied to static defensive tasks because they were short of infantry. An up-to-date Panzer operations manual, published just six months before the campaign, devoted 26 pages to the ‘Attack’, but only two paragraphs covered ‘Defence’.(2) Units not only lacked time when hastily organising defensive pickets, but also lacked the expertise needed to produce the sort of co-ordinated defence in depth recommended in infantry training manuals. Motorised units skilled in the art of mobile warfare did not have the eye for ground that experience conferred when selecting defensive positions. A young infantry Leutnant with the Ist Battalion of Panzergrenadier Regiment ‘Grossdeutschland’ explained the dilemma of having to create a defensive position near Smolensk by night:
‘The battalion had taken up a so-called security line spread improbably far apart. This was something new for us; we had never practised it. There was no defence, only security. But what if the enemy launched a strong attack?’(3)
In France or Poland motorised units had generally superimposed a hasty and ad hoc screen consisting of primarily security pickets around an encircled enemy force. It did not work in Russia. Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock, commanding Army Group Centre, wrote with exasperation at the inevitable consequence on 20 July as the battles around Smolensk gathered momentum:
‘Hell was let loose today! In the morning it was reported that the enemy had broken through the Kuntzen corps at Nevel. Against my wishes, Kuntzen had sent his main fighting force, the 19th Pz Div, to Velikiye Luki, where it was tussling about uselessly. At Smolensk the enemy launched a strong attack during the night. Enemy elements also advanced on Smolensk from the south, but they ran into the 17th Pz Div and were crushed. On the southern wing of the Fourth Army the 10th Motorised Division was attacked from all sides and had to be rescued by the 4th Panzer Division. The gap between the two armoured groups east of Smolensk has still not been closed!’(4)
Hubert Goralla was a Sanitätsgefreiter with the 17th Panzer Division caught up in the desperate fighting alongside the Minsk-Moscow Rollbahn leading into Smolensk. Russian break-out attempts were on the point of collapse.
Generalfeldmarschall von Bock was ordered prematurely to close the Army Group Centre armoured pincers on Minsk (300km from Brest-Litovsk) at the end of June, when his preference was to push further east and create an even bigger pocket stretching 500km to Smolensk. His two Panzergruppen came together at Minsk, employing 23 German infantry divisions after the initial encirclement on 29 June. 50% of Army Group Centre’s fighting power was thus tied up until the pocket capitulated on 9 July. Nevertheless, sufficient momentum had been achieved by the remainder of army Group Centre close to the Smolensk pocket on 17 July. The Russians unexpectedly fought on, tying down 60% of the army group’s offensive fighting power until 11 August. Despite staggering Soviet losses, the Blitzkrieg momentum had run out of steam just beyond the Smolensk land bridge’, the jumping-off point for any assault on moscow.