The Retreat: Hitler's First Defeat by Michael Jones

Author:Michael Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6

Stand Fast!

WITHIN THE WEHRMACHT was a sense of mounting crisis. German forces on Moscow’s northern and southern flanks – at Klin and Livny – had almost been encircled, and the troops had been forced to retreat with massive losses in equipment. At Livny the German 45th Division had to abandon most of its artillery. The commander of the German Army, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch – who had been ill – did not seem to have an answer to the deteriorating situation.

Alarming reports were coming in. On Army Group Centre’s northern flank, as General Reinhardt’s Third Panzer Group pulled out of Klin, army discipline began to break down. One report stated: ‘More and more soldiers are streaming westwards, having abandoned their weapons. One can be seen leading a cow, on a rope, another pulling a sledge laden with potatoes. The road is under constant Russian air attack, and those being killed by the bombs are no longer being buried . . . The Panzer group is in a dismal state.’

‘The effect of the air attacks was devastating,’ Colonel Hans von Luck of the 7th Panzer Division recalled. ‘In great haste, we cleared a retreat route from Klin. Vast mountains of snow were piled up on either side of the road – making it difficult for us to run for cover quickly. Russian planes would appear behind our retreating columns, strafing the infantry and bombing the horse-drawn supply and artillery units. Soon, the narrow roads were choked with the corpses of men and horses. Those that escaped the carnage were usually finished off by Russian ski patrols.’

On the southern wing, things were little better. The Wehrmacht’s Second Army had been badly hit by the Soviet counteroffensive, and its remnants – struggling to extricate themselves from Red Army encirclement – retreated in disarray. German soldier Willy Reese made a succession of night marches with the battered 95th Division: ‘We were trying to slip a noose that Russian forces had almost drawn around us,’ Reese remembered:

The march back began without sleep, mute, in an atmosphere of unexpressed despair. The moonlight shone down on our silent column of fugitives, slowly making its way through the snow – reeling, slithering and stumbling westwards. Behind us were the pursuing Russians. We were dog-tired – this was already our third night without sleep . . . Our eyes closed, our legs went mechanically on for a few seconds, then our knees buckled. We keeled over, awoke with the pain of the fall, pulled ourselves up – and with the last of our strength tottered on. ‘The Russians are coming!’ – the warning worked like the crack of a whip.

Finally, Reese’s unit took shelter in a village. It was allowed a one-hour rest period. ‘I slunk into a house and collapsed in a corner,’ Reese said. ‘I was asleep before I touched the floor. When I awoke, I was all alone. I’d been forgotten about – but some of my strength had returned. I dashed outside. There was no one, neither friend nor foe.

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