Eastern Front , November 1941

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The Retreat , Hitler’s First Defeat - Michael Jones

The evidence of brutality was growing. On 9 November German officer Robert Rupp decided to visit a prisoner-of-war camp at Mtensk: ‘What I saw there was harrowing,’ he stated:

“Early in the morning they bring out the work detail, flogging them, and raining blows on their heads, before leading them away. At noon and in the evening a tiny amount of food is available for these unfortunates. It is horsemeat, which stands out in the open in large vats. The prisoners come with makeshift canisters, some hammered out from their helmets. They beg for more – they are so desperately hungry. Yet the horsemeat is scarcely edible. At night, they sleep on wooden slats, in a side annexe exposed to the open air – and it is already very cold. Most of them are sick – and many have chronic stomach pains. Some attempt to patch up their boots by winding wire around them; others try to make gloves from pieces of rag and string. All have lice, for there is no provision for washing or changing clothes. I found a supply officer and described the prisoners’ condition and we immediately got into an argument. I learnt that some clothes were available – but they had been left in storage and not distributed. In a derelict factory room, there is a long trough and one dripping tap. Rats scurry around it. This is the prisoners’ sole source of drinking water.”

Rupp added: ‘These conditions are an absolute disgrace. There is not an iota of compassion here.’ He made a final trip to the camp hospital: ‘It is situated in a large ruined hut, where the wounded lie on the bare earth. Someone is having a foot amputated. An old man begs me to allow him home – he wants to be properly cared for.’ Rupp concluded: ‘This day has profoundly shaken me.’ Shortly afterwards he wrote to his wife: ‘Only rarely do I weep. Crying is no way out when you are standing amidst these events. The feelings of guilt and shame are too deep’.

The frost was hardening the roads, and the German Panzers hoped soon to advance once again. On 10 November Nina Semonova wrote in her diary: ‘A sunny day. I carried my baby daughter outside, to get a little fresh air. A German officer appeared. He boasted that they had already occupied Moscow and Leningrad. I remained silent.’ Once again, there was a widening gap between the sentiments of troops occupying towns such as Rzhev, and therefore distanced from the actual fighting, and those on the front line. Here, the inactivity was playing on soldiers’ nerves. ‘The men are becoming listless and apathetic,’ wrote Hellmuth Stieff on 11 November. ‘We have a frost now, and temperatures have fallen to below −10 degrees Celsius, though we still do not know when the attack will start again. We are ready to try for this one last goal.’ And then Stieff echoed the complaint of Hoepner: ‘Our high command continues to issue wholly unrealistic orders, and we have not yet been properly resupplied with ammunition and fuel.’

The growing gulf between front-line perceptions of what was feasible and the views of the German high command was beginning to worry Stieff seriously, and he returned to it, declaiming: ‘For us, their attitude is utterly incomprehensible. They devise their objectives in the map room, as if the Russian winter did not exist, and our troops’ strength is still the same as when the campaign started in June. However, winter is now on our doorsteps, and our units are so burnt out that one’s heart bleeds for them. Soon we will be unable to attack anything at all – the men desperately need rest.’

Such frustration was now widespread. ‘When we talk about the war,’ Lieutenant Ludwig Freiherr von Heyl of the 36th Motorised Infantry Division wrote from Kalinin on 12 November: *"we are all of the same opinion: that the official army communiqués are largely exaggeration, that the Russians are in many respects an equal opponent to us and an opponent from whom we can learn something. For despite our series of victories, they are in no way broken, they continue to resist strongly against the whole German army, and an end to the campaign may not be reached before the winter. In a larger sense, the war has reached a critical stage. *

*Further major advances are no longer possible because of the difficulties we are having with our supplies. I personally believe that by December we will no longer be able to conduct large-scale military operations at all, and – although much remains unpredictable – we will then have to switch to a protracted defence. But no preparations are being made for such an eventuality. *

We have not lost our courage or resolve, but a little realism from time to time would do no harm here. For the last three days, temperatures have dropped steadily, from −5 to −20 degrees Celsius, with light snow. The thought that the real winter is yet to come is a sobering one."

Heyl’s unit had received some reinforcements, but was still under strength, and in particular had not made good its losses in officers. ‘Yesterday our very competent second lieutenant was killed,’ Heyl continued: “He died in of all places the Corps command post in the centre of the city – it received a direct hit. This is no gentleman’s war here, but more of a brutal pillaging raid. One becomes totally numb. Human life is so cheap – cheaper than the shovels we use to clear the roads of snow. The state we have reached will seem quite unbelievable to you back home. We do not kill humans, but ‘the enemy’, who are rendered impersonal – animals at best. They behave the same way towards us.”

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However tough the fighting, the prospect of ordering a temporary halt was unpalatable to Hitler. He had frequently boasted that the war in the east would be over before the winter. Now he prolonged the campaign, hoping for a last great triumph. He had seen a report of the SS security service, which stated: ‘Large sections of the German population are disappointed that Bolshevism has not been crushed as quickly as had been hoped, and that the end of the eastern campaign is not yet in sight . . . The halt in the advance on Moscow is a matter of particular concern, all the more so since it was reported reported several weeks ago that German troops were only 60 kilometres from the Russian capital.’ Hitler now hoped that the capture of Moscow would improve the popular mood in Germany and reawaken the conviction that the Wehrmacht was invincible.

Meanwhile thousands of German soldiers were preparing for a last-ditch assault on the Russian capital. Horst Lange’s 56th Infantry Division was among them. ‘We are to push forwards again,’ he wrote, ‘past Kalinin and the Volga before we take up winter quarters.’ Lange and his comrades found the marching arduous, for the snow-covered tracks had frozen over, the ruts were stone-hard and an icy wind swirled around the struggling infantrymen. The landscape was disorientating. ‘Our marching rhythm is regularly interrupted,’ Lange wrote. ‘We get lost in this wintry world, stand about in the freezing cold and then move forward again. Our second lieutenant, who has the map, has no idea where we are, and has gone over to the next village, which has appeared – indistinctly – between folds of snow drifts. He is going to ask for directions.’

To their relief, the men finally reached the main Smolensk-Moscow highway, and pushed on towards the town of Gzhatsk, where Colonel General Hoepner had organised his offensive against Borodino a month earlier. Lange found his surroundings bleak and depressing: ‘A small, dirty town,’ he commented, ‘with the houses mostly destroyed and two large churches lying in ruins. One has completely burnt down. I hate this grey, monotonous landscape, yet find myself caught in its all-encompassing, hostile grip. We trudge past a hill, dotted with large windmills, whose enormous sails turn slowly. The surrounding villages are crammed with soldiers and Luftwaffe personnel. It is beginning to snow again.’ Lange felt uneasy. He saw around him evidence of partisan operations – bridges and causeways had been blown up, and the column frequently halted while new ones were constructed. ‘They are trying to disrupt our supplies ahead of the offensive,’ he thought. Then the way ahead was blocked by a narrow ravine, and negotiating a crossing point Lange’s boot slipped on the icy ledge. He fell straight through the ice into the freezing water below.

Eventually, Lange stumbled into his living quarters for the night. ‘I spoke to the inhabitants in broken Russian,’ he continued. ‘They want to know when this war is going to end, which is only too understandable, since they now have German soldiers billeted on them eating their last reserves of bread.’ He looked around him: ‘Torn rags on the floor, rickety furniture and the detritus of former prosperity – holy pictures, metal icons and a large mix of photos, with Tsarist and Bolshevik soldiers coexisting peacefully together on the wall. They all show the same tough, courageous faces.’ The following morning the troops pushed on. Spruce forests seemed to hover above the greying horizon as a damp chill sank into the men’s bones. Lange found the time passing in a kind of trance: ‘The constant marching in these conditions creates a sort of drunkenness,’ he observed, ‘where reality starts to dissolve. Physical sensations are strangely heightened, while the normal train of thought becomes more and more disjointed.’

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While Lange and his comrades were marching towards the front, German generals were now debating whether to continue the offensive. A growing number of them believed that a halt should be called, and any further attack on Moscow postponed to the spring. Colonel General Maximilian von Weichs, commander of the German Second Army, on the southern flank of Army Group Centre, was a strong advocate of this course of action: ‘We all had hoped that the frost would harden the road surfaces again,’ Weichs wrote.

‘However, I know from my experience in the First World War how quickly winter falls here – and it is far more extreme than in central Europe. I doubted whether the operation against Moscow was still feasible this year, and suggested instead that a defence line be built before the drop in temperature made digging difficult, so we could hold our positions during the winter months and continue the operation in the spring. This option was rejected – and I was accused of not supporting the offensive any more.’

Hans Meier-Welcker – on the staff of the 251st Infantry Division, part of the Ninth Army on Army Group Centre’s northern wing – was also reassessing the situation: ‘The fallacy of the war against Russia was the belief that the Soviet Union would collapse internally after our first military successes,’ Meier-Welcker wrote. ‘But even at this current stage of the war, there is no sign of this. And since the hope of a rapid internal collapse has proved a mirage, we are in a quite different situation. We no longer know how to master our opponent.’ After this frank acknowledgement Meier-Welcker continued:

“Another mistaken belief was that our great October offensive would bring the whole campaign to a victorious conclusion. But we have dangerously underestimated the enemy’s resources. In mid-October we believed – very prematurely – that the combat strength of the Red Army was broken. However it is quite amazing how quickly the Russians have created new armies. They have brought up fresh reinforcements – and are now conducting their defence with considerable skill.”

Meier-Welcker believed that prospects of success were fading fast: ‘We are facing a growing supply crisis, which is affecting not only my division but he whole Army Corps. Rail links are inadequate, and as the roads have been impassable to motor vehicles for several weeks, we have received scant supplies of fuel, ammunition and food. We have had to abandon many of our vehicles, economise on ammunition and rely on what the troops and horses can carry forward.’ He concluded: ‘The supply situation is undermining the attacking potential of the entire Army Corps.’ When these concerns were conveyed to the Army’s high command they reacted defensively. Weichs was dismissed as the commander of the German Second Army, but his replacement, General Rudolf Schmidt, was even more forcefully opposed to a resumption of the attack on Moscow. On 13 November he warned: ‘The number of losses due to frostbite is now rising steadily. Our troops are still largely without winter clothing. Many have stuffed newspapers into their boots – their footwear is worn and defective and gloves are sorely missed.’ Schmidt continued:

In respect of winter clothing, the Quartermaster General is grievously at fault. Things are determined by weather conditions at the front, not the temperature in Germany, and the temperature here is now dropping below −11 degrees Celsius. Our men are often out in the open at night, where many lie, stand or sit – and then have to fight the following day. The thoughts of our higher command seem rose-tinted. They are hiding in a world of false optimism and completely overlooking the operational problems we are facing. Our leaders cannot face the fact that the army is no longer in a position to continue this offensive. Our battalions – already under strength – have been reduced from 500 combatants to fewer than 60!

Schmidt finished: ‘The troops have had no chance to rest or recover, are suffering from the worsening cold and are quite at the end of their tether. Once the strength of our forces drops below a certain point even the sharpest orders will have little effect. We have reached this point now.’

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At a crucial meeting of army staff and the German high command at Orsha near Smolensk on 13 November such concerns were minimised. The commander of the German Army, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, had suffered a mild heart attack three days earlier, so the meeting was convened by the army’s chief of staff, Colonel General Franz Halder. Although Halder invited discussion, he presented the advance to Moscow as a fait accompli. He simply announced that the offensive would continue, regardless of any difficulties, making clear that he spoke for Hitler as well as army high command, and closing proceedings by saying emphatically that it was ‘the Führer’s wish’. Halder himself was strongly in favour of the attack on Moscow, and he knew that the commander of Army Group Centre, Field Marshal von Bock, supported the plan. Opposition was brushed aside.

There were only enough supplies available for German troops to reach the Moscow-Volga Canal. The rest would be delivered ‘later’. General Hermann Geyer summarised the attitude of the high command in a letter to his officers: ‘The positive aspects of every situation must always be recognised and emphasised. The enemy’s problems are greater than ours. And in such difficult situations a soldier can often do more than his best, more than seems humanly possible. Success often comes at the last minute, and can hang upon a single thread. Often one realises later that, given a last push, the opponent would have fallen over.’ The German Army, it seemed, was supposed to advance on sheer willpower.

Meanwhile, whatever the misgivings of the infantry commanders, the Panzers were pushing forward. On 16 November Colonel General Hoepner threw fresh forces into the attack. He struck at the junction point of two of the defending Soviet armies, the Fifth and the Thirtieth. His aim was to get a Panzer force onto the Volokolamsk-Moscow highway and outflank the Russian position.

‘The German attack on 16 November was very difficult for us,’ General Zhukov admitted. ‘The enemy was driving forwards, heedless of losses, in an attempt to break our lines before Moscow.’ Tank brigade deputy commander Anatoly Shvebig was more explicit. ‘The 16th of November was a calamity. Many of our forward units were surrounded by the enemy, and Rokossovsky himself was desperately trying to avoid encirclement. The Germans got onto the road from Volokolamsk to Moscow and we had virtually nothing left to stop them with. My own brigade was down to its last two operable tanks.’ On this day there was a brief resurgence of the German bravado that had dominated dominated the early days of Operation Typhoon. ‘We seized two Wehrmacht officers who had strayed too far ahead of their advancing forces,’ Shvebig continued, ‘and they seemed confident of victory. They kept saying: “Moscow is kaput!” They regarded their capture as some kind of temporary mishap. That evening the enemy began bombing our retreating troops.’ But some Russian units were fighting with remarkable tenacity.

Opposing Hoepner’s thrust were the troops of General Ivan Panfilov’s 316th Division. At the end of a day of intense fighting Panfilov wrote to his wife: ‘You will hear on the radio broadcasts and in the newspapers about the heroic deeds of my soldiers and officers. I believe we have earned that praise. It is an honour to defend our capital, and all our men are aware of it. They are true patriots – and are fighting like lions. They have just one thought, to destroy the Germans without pity and never let the enemy into Moscow.’

Major General Rokossovsky visited Panfilov’s command post. The combat there was ferocious. ‘The German attacks began with heavy artillery and mortar fire, supported by air attacks,’ Rokossovsky recalled:

“Bombers circled overhead, diving in turn and dropping bombs on our infantry and artillery positions. Then groups of tanks, followed by sub-machine gunners, were flung into the battle . . . The tanks continued to advance, regardless of losses, halting occasionally to blast at our anti-tank batteries. Some of them churned about, with damaged tracks, or began belching smoke, others pushed on, and managed to reach our trenches, before they were put out of action.”

Rokossovsky was struck by the fighting spirit of these troops, and was encouraged to regroup and reorganise his own defence. ‘I began to believe,’ he said, ‘that the Germans might not reach Moscow.’

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Many Red Army units were forced to keep fighting where they stood. However, Russian troops were also powerfully motivated. ‘In mid-November, when the German offensive resumed, and our forces were suffering terrible losses, iron discipline alone would not have kept our soldiers going,’ said Red Army soldier Dmitry Vonlyarsky. ‘It was a desperate patriotism, a love of our Motherland, that held us together. The resolve to defend Moscow to the last man sprang from that.’ Anatoly Shvebig agreed: ‘We no longer had anywhere left to retreat to,’ he exclaimed. ‘If we pulled back any further, the Germans would get into Moscow. To stop them, we had to stand and fight where we were – and fight to the death.’ On 19 November the German Army Group Centre noted that the enemy was putting up an increasingly tough defence, ‘to the point of self-sacrifice’.

On the same day, General Panfilov died at his command post. In recognition of his courage, his division was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the title of a Guards Division. Rokossovsky noted that the slogan ‘Moscow is behind us!’ was now spontaneously taken up by his whole army.

The German 5th Panzer Division was pushing along the Volokolamsk-Moscow highway. Colonel General Hoepner had praised the fighting performance of these men, but they were confronted by increasingly stubborn opposition. On 19 November German Private Graf Castell described the struggle to take a Russian stronghold at Denikovo: We moved up to new positions, ahead of our infantry, close to the edge of the village. Russian artillery immediately became very active. At 3.00 p.m. we received the order to move forward. But as we went into the attack we found that enemy engineers had destroyed part of the road ahead of us and blown up the bridge. The Russians had strongly fortified the station building and our orders were to push round it, cut the defenders off and get the railway line into our possession as quickly as possible. But as our tanks turned off the damaged road, several ran straight into a minefield. The enemy’s artillery now found its range. We tried to get round the village, driving our tanks and armoured support vehicles along a gully. But, at the end of the day, the station was still in Russian hands.

Rokossovsky described the ingenuity of the Soviet defenders: ‘Whenever the enemy was unable to bypass our defences, he concentrated his tanks en masse, and supported the attacks with heavy artillery and mortar fire, and air bombardment. We countered them by manoeuvring our gun batteries and tanks, which intercepted the Germans, sometimes at point-blank range. Our engineers would travel with them, planting mines along the expected route of the enemy’s advance.’

Colonel General Halder, the German Army’s chief of staff, was dismissive of such efforts. ‘The enemy has no more reserves, and is in a far worse predicament than we are,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Our stronger will is prevailing.’ But German soldiers’ unease was growing. On 19 November Hellmuth Stieff recorded: ‘Our winter clothing is only trickling in – a few gloves, woollen vests and hats. God knows when the rest will come! The supply situation should have been resolved weeks ago. It is an extraordinary mess, and we are supposed to be “the best armed forces in the world”. The boots and trousers of many of our soldiers are completely ripped and torn, and some are only wearing canvas shoes or just tying leggings round their feet for protection.’ He continued: ‘The last few days have been particularly tough. West of Serpukhov the Russians brought up five new divisions and attacked our eastern flank. We only just fended off an enemy breakthrough – which would have cut our army’s vital transport artery, the Medyn-Moscow road – with the help of artillery and air strikes.’ Then Stieff declared:

*"I am frightened by what might happen here. We have no more reserves, and fresh reinforcements will not arrive before the spring. We are poorly equipped for winter and have no prepared positions – and the enemy is becoming increasingly active. Hopefully the snow will soon put a stop to the fighting and allow our troops to get some rest, otherwise we are heading for disaster.

We have got ourselves into a fine mess. And it is infuriating to hear the nonsense our propaganda people churn out. It is astonishing how many fairy tales they are making up. They deride the Russians, again and again. It is as if they are deliberately tempting fate."*

German infantryman Ernst Jauernick echoed Stieff’s concerns: "We have now begun the last great raid on Moscow – but we lack almost everything. We have not yet been assigned winter clothing, and our motorised units have no lubricating oil. We receive little in the way of food. In the autumn it was the mud that was our enemy, but this cold may finish us off completely. Our poor horses are being pushed to the very limits and are suffering horribly. We can no longer offer them straw to lie on or hay to eat. They get ice-cold water to drink and have to nibble on small branches we gather from the forest. At night they have little shelter from the freezing cold, often having to lie with their bellies in the icy snow.
Jauernick then said with feeling: “The cold – and the gruelling forced marches – are pushing us to the edge of insanity. Everything is frozen. If we want bread we must chop it into bits with a hacksaw and then put the pieces in our trouser pockets so that they can thaw out. To combat the lice we make fires from forest brushwood and then take off our clothes and hold them over the smoke. What that feels like, in temperatures well below freezing, is hard to describe. Exhausted and miserable, we are advancing on Istra, the last Russian defence position before Moscow.”

The troops of Army Group Centre, however, were still advancing. ‘They say that the campaign will end before the onset of real winter,’ a soldier of the 31st Infantry Division wrote on 21 November, ‘but I do not see much sign of this happening. It is best not to set one’s hopes on miracles. Even if we capture Moscow, I doubt whether this will finish the war in the east. The Russians are capable of fighting to the very last man, the very last square metre of their vast country. Their stubbornness and resolve is quite astonishing. We are entering a war of attrition – and I only hope in the long run Germany can win it!’

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