Luftwaffe Luftflotte 2 HQ, located in woods near Smolensk, was considerably reinforced in anticipation of the coming offensive. The VIIIth Fliegerkorps was moved from the Leningrad front at the end of September and attached to the left wing of the gathering Panzer spearheads to support Panzergruppen 3 and 4. The latter was also reinforced by the IInd Flak Corps configured in the ground role. Only Flak artillery calibres were capable of dealing with Soviet heavy tanks with some certainty. The Ist Flak Corps was placed on the right wing to support Fourth Army and Second Panzer Army. In addition to the relocation of the VIIIth Fliegerkorps, 1StG, 77StG and 26JG, formerly committed in the Kiev area, arrived at airfields in Army Group Centre’s area of operations. Once again Luftflotte 2 was positioned to support the army group with massive sortie rates. Meanwhile the ‘Legion Condor’, KG53, began to attack installations in the greater Moscow area from the night of 1 October. Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, commanding Luftflotte 2, described the envisaged concept of operations:
‘Our air-ground support fighters, following a practice which had already become axiomatic, were to blast a path for the army divisions. Our heavy bombers were to seal off the battlefield to the rear.’(22)
As with the Panzers, the Luftwaffe air situation had changed. There would be no unexpected pre-emptive attack. The front now stretched from Leningrad to the Black Sea, having expanded from 1,200km at the beginning of the campaign to a width exceeding 2,000km. Prior to the Kiev encirclement, OKW had calculated respective air strengths (from fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft) to be 1,916 German aircraft against 1,175 Russian. Soviet factories had been steadily making good the damage meted out by the Luftwaffe’s surprise June air-strikes. A comparison of relative operational strengths on 6 September reveals a German 7% shortfall of bomber and dive-bomber strengths, and an almost 2:1 inferiority of medium- and long-range fighters. The figure was based on an assessment of 1,710 Soviet combat and 1,230 training aircraft, with a further 350 ready in factories. Creative accounting was applied by German planners, who assumed a best case figure of 40% for operational Russian aircraft availability.(23)
German letters from the front, supported by diary and eyewitness accounts, testify to the frequency if not lethal impact of constant Soviet air raids up to and including successive Russian defeats at Minsk, Smolensk and Kiev. These were not confidence-building features during the run-up to the final autumn offensive. Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring confided:
‘Preparations for a fresh assault were pushed on from 15 September with coldly calculated ardour. My old friend from Metz days, General Hoepner, commanding Panzergruppe 4 – apparently impressed by the lack of success of Army Group North [at Leningrad] – had little confidence.’(24)
Kesselring observed that the successful Kiev encirclement battles and optimistic expectations of Operation ‘Taifun’ encouraged OKW to anticipate success. Commanders’ doubts, he commented, were to some extent allayed ‘by the spirit of the front-line troops’. OKW was pinning its last offensive hopes on the almost mythical ability of the German soldier to snatch victory from apparently impossible conditions. They had yet to lose a campaign. There was total faith in their capability to master this last test. The Ostheer, however, had changed its intrinsic character since the heady opening days of ‘Barbarossa’.
‘Totsiegen’… ‘victored’ to death
By the third week of the Russian campaign total casualties had exceeded those of the entire French Blitzkrieg in 1940. Officers were perishing during the initial period at the rate of 500 per week (524 died between 22 June and the beginning of July), with 1,540 officer casualties occurring in the first seven days of the offensive. This figure represented the combined officer establishments of three German infantry divisions.(1) At the end of July, even before the end of the battle of Minsk, almost 17% more German soldiers had died in Russia than in France. Total losses were 181,000 killed, wounded and missing, compared to 154,754 for the entire French operation. By the end of September the Germans had lost 518,807 casualties, or over three times the losses suffered during the six-week French campaign.(2)
Despite having inflicted three to four million casualties on the Russian army, the cost – at over half a million men – was sufficient to have a fundamental impact on the structure of the original Ostheer. The Wehrmacht was achieving a Pyrrhic victory. As early as 11 July, the 18th Panzer Division had been reduced to 83 operational tanks representing 39% of its initial start state. It lost 2,279 men, 13.3% of its strength, in almost 20 days. By the end of the month this figure was approaching 20% and required two Panzer regiments to combine to form one with only 600 men in its two battalions. The division commander ominously warned such losses should not be allowed to continue, ‘Wenn wir uns nicht totsiegen wollen’ (‘if we do not intend to victor ourselves to death’).(3) A succession of such victories between June and the beginning of October was affecting the very fabric of the Ostheer. Already seriously injured, the losses of officers, NCOs and men were burning out the seed corn of Blitzkrieg.
The horror of becoming a casualty was all-pervasive. All-encompassing shock is the premier emotion engendered as a projectile tears through vulnerable human tissue. German medical doctor Peter Bamm, serving in an infantry division with Army Group South, described the impact:
‘A man – a human being – is wounded. In the split second in which he is hit he is hurled out of the fighting machine and has become, in an instant, utterly helpless. Up to that moment all his energy was directed forwards, against an enemy… But now he is thrown back on himself: the sight of his own blood restores him to full self-awareness. At one moment he was helping to change the course of history: at the next he cannot do anything even for himself.’
Following shock there is pain and fear. The wounded were often condemned to lie unattended for hours during intensive fighting before they could be recovered.
‘Hours afterwards night falls. Grey fear envelopes him. Will he bleed to death? Will he be found? Is he going to be hit again? Are the Germans retreating? Will he be captured by the Russians?’(4)
If fortunate, the casualty will be dragged or carried back to a shell crater or primitive dug-out where the company aid post offers the first possibility of medical assistance. The regimental medical officer might apply a bandage, a splint or a tourniquet, or give an injection to ease pain. Afterwards the soldier would be laid down somewhere to await the arrival of an ambulance, which would take him to a field dressing station, the next stage in the evacuation chain.
Soldier Erhard Schaumann described the process for those who had not survived this far. ‘You’d take half the [metal ID] tag [snapped in two halves, part for the unit and the other left on the man], and that meant the Feldwebel could notify the relatives.’ Corpses were buried ‘wherever you had a chance, beside a railway or in the woods, and quickly, to prevent epidemics breaking out’. Every soldier was equipped to do this. ‘We all had a little spade,’ he said, ‘on the back of the belt-order.’(5) Those surviving treatment were carried further back to ambulances. A long crowded journey would follow, squashed together with other wounded in semi-darkness, punctuated by the sound of groans. The next time the stretcher was lifted would be into the glare of a hospital theatre lamp prior to surgery.