Posted on 07/14/2012 4:48:56 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/jul42/f14jul42.htm
Armored assets dwindle in desert battles
Tuesday, July 14, 1942 www.onwar.com
Panzers knocked out in battle with the British [photo at link]
In North Africa... In fierce fighting, attacks by the British 1st Armored Division on Ruwesiat Ridge lead to heavy losses on both sides, but little advance.
In the Mediterranean... Supplies continue to be sent to Malta to relieve desperate shortages. The HMS Eagle flies in 31 Spitfires. Submarines are also used to bring in food and materiel. The Italian Navy is also using submarines to ferry supplies to North Africa, where the supply situation for Rommel’s troops is also critical.
Where do you get these?
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
July 14th, 1942
UNITED KINGDOM: London: The Free French are officially renamed the “Fighting French” today at General de Gaulle’s request.
Minesweeping trawler HMS Flint launched.
Mooring vessel HMS Moorfly launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
NORTH SEA: The civilian survivors of the U.S. freighter SS Carlton that was sunk on 5 July when it was part of convoy PQ 17 are found by the German submarine U-376. The Germans offer medical assistance, which is declined, and give the Americans rations, blankets and cigarettes. The survivors reach North Cape, Norway on 24 July and are interned. (Jack McKillop)
YUGOSLAVIA: Zagreb: The Nazis murder 700 people in reprisal for the murder of the local Gestapo chief, SS Major Helm.
U.S.S.R.: Hoth’s forces continue fighting in the southern sector at Kursk despite formal orders to abandon the battle. The Soviets are making rapid advances toward Orel.
NORTH AFRICA: British 1st Armoured Division attacks south of Ruweisat Ridge. Heavy casualties on both sides with no gain.
PACIFIC OCEAN: The Japanese submarine HIJMS I-7 torpedoes and sinks the unarmed US freighter SS Arcata east of Dutch Harbor, Territory of Alaska, while enroute from Bethel, Alaska to Seattle, Washington. On board the freighter are a crew of 29-men and four passengers. The Japanese machine gun the life rafts but 25 of those on board the Arcata survive and are rescued. (Jack McKillop)
U.S.A.: President Roosevelt directs the Joint Chiefs of Staff to abandon plans for offensive operations in the Pacific and to concentrate on GYMNAST (later renamed TORCH). (Stoler pp.84 - 87)(Marc James Small)
The motion picture “The Pride of the Yankees” is released in the U.S. This biography of New York Yankees’ baseball superstar Lou Gehrig is directed by Sam Wood and stars Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan and Dan Duryea. Also appearing are New York Yankees’ players Bill Dickey, Bob Meusel and Mark Koenig along with sportscaster Bill Stern; future movie star Dane Clark appears in a bit role. Cooper plays the role of Gehrig with Wright as his wife. The film is nominated for eleven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Cooper) and Best Actress (Wright); it wins one technical award. (Jack McKillop)
Singers Helen O’Connell and Bob Eberly sing their last duet together when they recorded the famous song “Brazil” with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. (Jack McKillop)
Destroyer USS Bearss laid down.
Destroyer escort USS Pope laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
BRAZIL declares war on Italy and German. This action is taken after the sinking of several Brazilian ships during the past week.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Italian submarine Pietro Calvi sunk south of the Azores by sloop HMS Lulworth. Lulworth forced the submarine to the surface by depth charging and then shelled the Pietro Calvi rending it incapable to dive. In the end the Italians abandoned ship and scuttled the submarine.
U-562 fired a spread of four torpedoes from 2800 meters at a small convoy but missed. At 0046 the next day, U-562 fired two torpedoes at the same convoy and he thought both had hit and claimed a tanker of 7000 grt sunk. In fact the Adinda was hit by one torpedo, but the engine was not damaged and she could proceed to Haifa three hours later, where she arrived at 1400. (Dave Shirlaw)
At the library.
Do you email them to yourself, and then upload them?
No. I print hard copies and then cut and paste them for scanning, then upload. I tried the emailing-upload technique but I didn't have success.
You do an excellent job, Homer. Being a WW2 buff, I look forward to your work every day.
Interesting p4 mention of new German tactics and the p6 mention that large scale encirclement of the Red Army is not possible.
Also the little article where the Germans admit their whole strategy of encirclement has been a failure. The Germans were obsessed from the late 19th century onwards with destroying their enemy in massive Cannae type battle. Form my understanding of Operation Blue Ivan finally learned not to let themselves get encircled so Germans captured lots of vast spaces in the endless steppe but their actual take of soldiers and equipment was severely disappointing.
Great minds think alike!!! :)
Okay, thanks for explaining.
When Hitler realized that an encircling movement on the middle Don was no longer probable because of the Russians' quick withdrawal and the delay suffered at Voronezh, he wanted at least to intercept, encircle, and destroy the enemy forces which he believed to be still grouped down along the lower Don.
In order to achieve this objective he dropped, on 13th July, the key feature of his great plan—the fast drive to Stalingrad with all forces in order to bar the lower Volga.
Hitler would have been well able to carry out this operation—indeed, in the circumstances, it would have been the only correct thing to do. For if an enemy refuses to be encircled and withdraws instead, then he must be pursued. He must not be allowed time to establish that new line of defense.
The German objective now was the elimination of enemy forces in the Stalingrad area, and that objective could have been achieved by an energetic pursuit of the Russians. After all, Hitler had two Panzer Armies at his disposal, and some important crossings over the Don had already been gained. He could have reached Stalingrad in a very short period of time.
But Hitler was now suffering from a grand illusion:
he believed the Soviets to be at the end of their strength.
He regarded the Soviet retreat as nothing more than flight, an organizational and moral collapse, whereas in actual fact it was a planned withdrawal.
Such incidents of panic as occurred in many places were due to the incompetence of the lower ranks of the Russian command. Strategically, Timoshenko had the withdrawal well under control. He had set it swiftly into motion. His objective was to save the bulk of the Soviet forces for determined resistance somewhere far back in the interior of the country.
Hitler did not see that danger, or else did not want to see it. He believed he could manage Stalingrad "with one hand" and simultaneously fight a large-scale battle of encirclement on the lower Don with Rostov at its centre. With that purpose in mind he cut short Fourth Panzer Army's advance along the Don towards Stalingrad, halting it in front of the great Don bend, and, in complete deviation from phase three of the grand plan, turned it straight down to the south. Just as he had halted the advance on Moscow in the early autumn of 1941 and switched round Guderian's fast troops to fight their battle of encirclement at Kiev, he now wanted to defeat the Russians at Rostov by another improvised surprise operation. It was to be the greatest battle of encirclement of the war.
The Sixth Army in the meantime continued its lonesome advance towards Stalingrad, now deprived of its spearhead, the fast units of XL Panzer Corps, which had also been switched to Rostov.
On the same day that this fateful decision was taken Field-Marshal von Bock was relieved of his post.
He had opposed Hitler's strategic plans and had wanted to keep the Army Group together as an integrated fighting force under his command. However, the Fuehrer's Headquarters had already issued orders for Army Group South to be divided up. On 7th July Field Marshal von Bock noted in his diary: Orders received that Field-Marshal List will assume command of Eleventh and Seventeenth Armies and of First Panzer Army. This means that the battle is being chopped in two."
That was precisely what was happening: the battle was being chopped in two. Hitler was changing not only the time-table of his great summer offensive, but the entire structure of the southern front.
Field-Marshal List's Army Group A, to which Fourth Panzer Army was later temporarily attached, was informally known as the Caucasus Front. Army Group B, consisting of Sixth Army, the Hungarian Second Army, and Second Army, and since Bock's recall under the command of Colonel-General von Weichs, retained its original assignment— Stalingrad.
This regrouping makes it clear that on 13th July Hitler believed that he could simultaneously achieve both great strategic objectives of the 1942 summer offensive, originally scheduled one after the other, by the simple expedient of dividing his forces. He was hopelessly blinded by his mistaken belief that the Russians were 'finished.' But the Russians were anything but 'finished.' On the very day that Hitler ordered the disastrous turn to the south, split up his forces, and sacked von Bock, a council of war was held at the Kremlin under Stalin's chairmanship.
Present were Foreign Minister Molotov, Marshal Voroshilov, Chief of the General Staff Shaposhnikov, as well as an American, a British, and a Chinese liaison officer. The Soviet General Staff had made it clear to Stalin that he could not afford any more battles like Kiev or Vyazma—in other words, that holding on at all costs was out. Stalin had accepted their view. He endorsed the decision of the Great General Staff which was expounded by Shaposhnikov at the meeting on 13th July. The Soviet troops would withdraw to the Volga and into the Caucasus; there they would offer resistance, forcing the Germans to spend the coming winter in inhospitable territory. All key industries would be evacuated to the Urals and to Siberia.
From the middle of July the German General Staff had known from an agent's report about this important meeting, but Hitler had regarded it as a canard. If there was anyone yet left who doubted that Timoshenko was in fact withdrawing his Army Group, down to the last man and gun, from the area between Donets and Don, then he was soon convinced at a town called Millerovo.
The XL Panzer Corps, acting as the outer eastern prong of the pincers, dropped straight into this Russian colossus after having swept south from Rossosh, with its three divisions moving in the foremost line.
All along the railways and the roads south of Millerovo the Soviet masses were pouring toward the south-east. The divisions of the German Panzer Corps were not nearly strong enough to halt these enormous enemy columns. Nor, in view of the resistance offered them around Millerovo, were they able to establish an intercepting line farther south on the lower Don.
The battle was now inevitably moving south.
It was in the south that Hitler was seeking out the enemy. Indeed, he was so confident of victory in the south that he deleted Manstein's Eleventh Army—which was standing ready in the Crimea to strike across the Kerch Strait—from his plan of operations. Instead the Eleventh Army was entrained for the north. It was to take Leningrad.
After fierce fighting Geyr's XL Panzer Corps reached the lower Don on 20th July and established bridgeheads at Konstantinovka and Nikolayevskaya.
In the meantime the First Panzer Army, forming the inner prong of the new pincer operation, had likewise fought its way towards the south, crossed the Donets, and begun, jointly with Seventeenth Army advancing from the Stalino area, to drive upon Rostov, which was being defended with particular determination by the Soviets as a key bridgehead on the Don.
West of Rostov the Seventeenth Army had broken through enemy positions on 19th July and was now advancing towards the Don between Rostov and Bataysk with LVII Panzer Corps on the left and V Corps on the right. General Kirchner, again supported by his well-tried Colonel Wenck, mounted a bold thrust against Rostov with LVII Panzer Corps, with a view to taking this important city on the Don estuary by surprise and capturing the huge Don bridge between Rostov and Bataysk intact.
To his Corps belonged the 13th Panzer Division, the SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Viking," the 125th Infantry Division, and the Slovak Fast Division.
From the north, leading the First Panzer Army, General von Mackensen's III Panzer Corps was advancing on Rostov with 14th and 22nd Panzer Divisions. Once again, as in November 1941, von Mackensen's formations were engaged in fighting for this city.
On 22nd July Colonel Rodt's 22nd Panzer Division was involved in heavy fighting north-east of Rostov. The 204th Panzer Regiment was driving to the south. The 14th Panzer Division was wheeling against Novocherkassk. All through the day and night furious fighting raged in the strongly fortified approaches to the city.
On the same day the 13th Panzer Division under Major-General Herr and the SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Viking" under General of Waffen SS Steiner attacked from the west and north-west.
Rostov itself had been reinforced into a strongly defended city since the beginning of the year and, in addition to strong defenses in the approaches, was surrounded by three defensive rings with deep minefields, anti-tank ditches, and anti-tank obstacles. Nevertheless assault parties of LVII Panzer Corps succeeded in breaching the covering-lines on the edge of the city by surprise. The non-armored group of 13th Panzer Division attacked from the west with 93rd Rifle Regiment, while the armored group of the reinforced 4th Panzer Regiment advanced along the Stalino-Rostov road and penetrated into the northern part of the city.
On its right the Armored Group "Gille" of the SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Viking" struck right through numerous strongpoints and antitank ditches of the outer defensive ring and seized the airport of Rostov with Sturmbannführer Muhlenkamp's SS Panzer Battalion.
On 23rd July the 22nd Panzer Division slowly gained ground from the north towards the edge of the city. In the sector of LVII Panzer Corps the 13th Panzer Division continued its attack into the city with tanks, rifle companies, and motorcyclists. The SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Viking" got stuck initially in heavy street fighting, and 125th Infantry Division closed up behind it. At first light First Lieutenant von Gaza burst through the enemy positions with his 2nd Company, 66th Rifle Regiment, forced a small river, and seized the road bridge.
The Motor-cycle Battalion 43 charged into the city, mounted. The 13th Panzer Division cleared numerous roadblocks and barricades and slowly gained ground towards the Don. But while its spearheads were moving forward, enemy resistance flared up again behind them from side-streets, from strongly reinforced blocks of buildings, and, in particular, from open squares along its flanks.
To begin with, the tanks of the "Viking" got stuck in the street fighting. Then Sturmbannführer Dieckmann succeeded with his battalion in dislodging the enemy and resuming the attack in a south-westerly direction. By afternoon the Motorcycle Battalion, 13th Panzer Division, had reached the northern bank of the Don, but in the maze of industrial and port installations they had reached the river rather too far east of the main road bridge. Before the motorcyclists were able to reach the bridge over the Don, leading to Bataysk, one of its spans was blown up and crashed into the water.
While 13th Panzer Division was clearing up the area around the bridge the sappers worked feverishly until the following day, making the bridge serviceable again, though at first only for pedestrians and light vehicles. By nightfall the district north of the bridge was in German hands.
The 1st Battalion, 66th Rifle Regiment, took the district around the General Post Office and the NKVD Headquarters, where the enemy resisted stubbornly and skillfully. By nightfall the infantry had taken up positions covering the tanks from all directions. There were fires in many parts of the town. In the early hours of the night units of 22nd Panzer Division, coming from the north, accomplished the first link-up between the spearheads of III and LVII Panzer Corps in the centre of Rostov.
Early in the morning of 24th July the fighting for the city was resumed. In the area of the post office the enemy was overwhelmed fairly quickly, but the NKVD Headquarters was being skillfully defended by a crack force. Not until noon did riflemen of 13th Panzer Division, supported by tanks of 22nd Panzer Division, succeed in breaking enemy resistance and taking the building.
Other units of 13th Panzer Division and "Viking" had meanwhile succeeded in mopping up much of the city centre and pushing the stubbornly resisting enemy out eastward or westward. While 13th Panzer Division was holding the district north of the bridge to Bataysk, the Panzer Battalion "Viking" under Sturmbannführer Mühlenkamp thrust along the northern bank of the Don and by a surprise coup took a ford six miles west of the city—a ford used by the enemy for his withdrawal —thereby enabling the foremost units of XLIX Mountain Corps and the vanguards of 73rd and 298th Infantry Divisions to cross the Don there during the night of 24th/25th July.
In the centre of Rostov meanwhile fierce street fighting continued, and did not, in fact, cease for several days. This operation is described in an account by General Alfred Reinhardt, who, then a colonel, commanded 421st Infantry Regiment, 125th Infantry Division, in July 1942. He describes the savage street fighting, house by house, right across a barricaded urban center —an operation which has probably never been equaled. It was the kind of fighting which the German troops would have encountered in Moscow or Leningrad.
By evening of 23rd July, a scorching hot day, the battalions of the Swabian 421st Infantry Regiment had gained the northern part of Rostov. Panzer companies and riflemen of 13th and 22nd Panzer Divisions as well as of the "Viking" SS Panzer Grenadier Division had reached the Don to both sides of the city. They were also fighting hard in the city centre, but were unable to pierce the heavily fortified built-up area, especially as they lacked the necessary infantry for that kind of operation. But the city had to be penetrated if the great Don bridge was to be gained for a drive to the south, towards the Caucasus.
NKVD troops and sappers had barricaded Rostov and were now defending it to the last bullet. That speaks for itself. This force, the political guard of the Bolshevik regime, Stalin's SS, the backbone of the State police and the secret service, was in its own way a crack force—fanatical, brilliantly trained, tough to the point of cruelty, familiar with all ruses of war, and unconditionally loyal. Above all, the NKVD troops were past masters at street fighting. After all, as the guard of the regime against possible rebellion, that was their main field of action.
What these street fighting experts had done to Rostov defies imagination.
The streets had been torn open, and paving-stones had been piled up to make barricades several feet thick. Side-streets were blocked off by massive brick strong-points. Steel girders planted in the ground and buried mines made any sudden rushing of defense posts impossible. The entrances of buildings had been bricked up; windows had been sandbagged to make firing positions; balconies had been turned into machine-gun nests. On the roofs were well-camouflaged hideouts for NKVD snipers. And in the basements lay tens of thousands of Molotov cocktails, those primitive but highly effective weapons against tanks, simply bottles filled with petrol and touched off with phosphorus or other chemicals which burst into flame upon contact with air.
Wherever a front door had not been bricked up one could be certain that a hidden booby-trap would go off the moment the door-handle was depressed. Or else a fine trip-wire stretched over the threshold would touch off a load of dynamite.
This was no ground for armored formations, and one that offered little prospect of quick victory. True, the Panzer troops had made the first, decisive breach. But the city centre of Rostov was the battlefield of the assault parties. Laboriously they had to clear house after house, street after street, pillbox after pillbox. Reinhardt's Swabian troops got to work against this skillfully fortified area. But the colonel tackled his cunning opponents with his own medicine—with equal cunning, with precision, and with fierce resolution.
The 1st Battalion, 421st Infantry Regiment, under Major Ortlieb and the 3rd Battalion under Captain Winzen were divided into three assault companies each. Each company was given one heavy machine-gun, one anti-tank gun, one infantry gun, and one light field howitzer for the main streets.
The direction of the drive was north to south. The city plan was divided into precise operation sectors. Each assault company was allowed to advance only as far as a fixed line across the north-south road allotted to it, a line drawn for all companies right across the town plan from west to east—the A, B, C, and D lines.
Next, the whole district had to be mopped up and contact made with the assault groups on both sides. Each unit had to wait along these lines until its neighbors had come abreast of it, and until orders for the resumption of the attack came down from regiment. In this way the six assault companies always fought in line abreast, and if any company should find itself making faster headway it could not be attacked from the flank by the enemy provided it stuck to the rules. In this way the operation in the thick maze of buildings and streets remained firmly under control from the top.
As soon as the assault companies of 1st and 3rd Battalions had cleared their allotted district Reinhardt immediately sent in six more assault wedges of 2nd Battalion. Their task was a "second picking over"—to search every building from rooftop to cellar. All civilians, including women and children, were taken from the fighting area to special collection points.
No one who might throw a hand-grenade or fire a machine pistol was left in the buildings behind the assault troops. The companies fighting their way forward had to be safe from their rear. The plan worked with precision. It was probably only thanks to it that Rostov was cleared so quickly of the stubbornly resisting enemy forces—in a mere fifty hours of savage and relentless fighting.
In his account of the operation General Reinhardt reports:
"The fighting for the city centre of Rostov was a merciless struggle. .The defenders would not allow themselves to be taken alive: they fought to their last breath; and when they had been bypassed unnoticed, or wounded, they would still fire from behind cover until they were themselves killed. Our own wounded had to be placed in armored troop carriers and guarded-otherwise we would find them beaten or stabbed to death."
Fighting was fiercest in the Taganrog road, which led straight to the Don bridge. There the German attack was held up repeatedly because it was impossible to pin-point the well-camouflaged NKVD men behind their machine-guns. Dust, smoke, and showers of sparks from the blazing buildings enveloped the street. Keeping close to the walls of the houses, Major Ortlieb ran along the pavement to the big barricade in front. From there he waved the light field howitzer forward.
"To start with, we'll shave all those balconies off."
The anti-tank gun was hauled up the road, pulled by men at the double, and was likewise brought into position along the barricade. Finally an infantry piece was also brought forward.
Then began the bombardment of "suspicious points"— chimneys, basements, and sandbagged balconies. Reinhardt himself came running up to the front line. He stood behind the foremost barricade in the main street, his binoculars at his eyes. Time and again bursts from a heavy Maksim machine-gun swept over the pavement.
"Busing," Reinhardt called out. First Lieutenant Busing, commanding the 13th Company, came crawling over to the general, pressed flat to the ground.
Reinhardt pointed at a balcony on the second floor of a building.
"Over there, Busing-that balcony with the orange boxes. You can see a wisp of dust there now. That's where the Russians are. Let's have that balcony off!"
Busing hurried back to his heavy infantry gun.
"Fire!"
The second round brought the balcony down. Among the confusion of masonry they could see the Russians and their machine-gun hurled down to the street.
Eventually Reinhardt brought up a few tanks of 13th Panzer Division to support his infantry. They zigzagged along the street, from one side to the other. Under their cover several small assault parties worked their way forward.
Things were worst in the old town and in the harbor district. There the streets, until then more or less straight and regular, degenerated into a maze of crooked lanes. It was no place for infantry guns: even machine-guns were no use there. It was a case of hand-to-hand fighting. The men had to crawl right up to basement windows, doors, and the corners of houses. They could hear the enemy breathe. They could hear them slam their bolts home. They could even hear them whisper among themselves. They took a firm grip on their machine pistols—they leapt to their feet—a rapid burst of fire—and down they flopped behind cover again.
On the other side of the street a flame-thrower roared. Hand-grenades crashed. The cry of a wounded man rang eerily through the ghostly street—the long-drawn-out cry of pain: "Stretcher, stretcher. . . ."
The wooden houses were consumed by fire. The pungent smoke made fighting more difficult, even though the wind was favorable and drove the smoke towards the Don. By the time the D line was reached it was dark. Only a few hundred yards divided the companies of 421st Infantry Regiment from the combat groups of the Panzer formations of LVII Panzer Corps on the northern bank of the Don to both sides of the road bridge to Bataysk. Night fell. The men were lying among wooden huts, tool-sheds, and heaps of rubble. The night was riddled with machine-gun fire. Flares lit up the spectral scene as bright as day for seconds at a time.
Sergeant Rittmann with his platoon of 11th Company lay in a shed in the harbor.
The Russians were firing from a weighing shed.
"Now," Rittmann commanded.
With three men he overwhelmed the Russian machine-gun in the weighing-shed. Then they raced on, flinging hand-grenades to the right and left. Towards 2300 hours Rittmann and his men reached the bank of the Don and dug in.
On 25th July before daybreak the assault companies of 125th Infantry Division resumed the attack. But suddenly progress was easy. The last enemy units on the river-bank had withdrawn across the Don during the night. At 0530 hours all the assault companies of the regiment had reached the Don. Rostov was fully in German hands. But Rostov was important as the gateway to the Caucasus only if the gate itself was held by the Germans—the bridge over the Don and the four miles of causeway across the swampy ground which were the continuation of the bridge and which presently became the great bridge into Bataysk. Beyond Bataysk was the plain—a clear road for the drive to the south, towards the Caucasus.
That gateway was finally opened by the "Brandenburg" Regiment, that mysterious, much-maligned, but incredibly brave special formation of daredevil volunteers, in co-operation with units of 13th Panzer Division. On 24th July the Motor-cycle Battalion 43 was the first German formation to cross the Don. Second Lieutenant Eberlein, commanding 1st Company, had been ferried across the river with twenty-eight volunteers by sappers of 13th Panzer Division. Simultaneously, though at a different point, half a company of the "Brandenburg" also crossed the Don. Their intention was to capture the important bridges outside Bataysk—above all, the long causeway on the southern bank of the Don, a causeway consisting of a multitude of lesser bridges and carrying the only road to the south.
During the night of 24th/25th July 1942 First Lieutenant Grabert with his half-company charged along the causeway towards Bataysk. The handful of men of Motor-cycle Battalion 43 under Second Lieutenant Eberlein were already in position in front of the big bridge, in order to keep down the Soviet bridge guard. But the motor-cyclists were scarcely able to raise their heads from the mud: the moment they moved they came under fire from the piers of the railway bridge about 200 yards on their left, where the Soviets had a machine-gun in position. There was also mortar-fire. Lynx-eyed, the men were watching out for the Russian muzzle flashes in order to aim their own mortars.
At 0230 hours Lieutenant Grabert raced on to the bridge with his leading section. The men by the machine-guns were under cover, their fingers taut on their triggers. But nothing stirred on the Russian side. Like phantoms Grabert and his section flitted across the bridge, on both sides of the roadway, followed at short intervals by the other two platoons. Now the Russians had noticed something.
Their machine-guns opened up; mortars plopped. The German covering party immediately put up all the fire they could. Everything depended on whether Grabert would get through.
He did get through, overwhelmed the strong Soviet bridge guard, and established a small bridgehead. Throughout twenty-four hours he held it against all enemy counterattacks.
The companies and their commanders literally sacrificed themselves for the sake of the bridge. Lieutenant Grabert and Second Lieutenant Hiller of the "Brandenburg" were both killed in action.
NCOs and men were mown down in large numbers by the infernal fire of the Soviets.
The Stukas arrived in the nick of time. Then the first reinforcements came up over the causeway and the bridge. By its last pier lay Siegfried Grabert—dead. Some 200 yards farther on, in a swampy hole, lay Second Lieutenant Hiller. Next to him, his hand still clutching his first-aid kit, lay a Medical Corps NCO, with a bullet-hole in his head.
But on 27th July the Panzer and rifle companies of LVII Panzer Corps were moving over the bridges towards the south, towards the Caucasus.
Hitler Moves East
Paul Carell
“Rzhev Is Where I Died” by the State Academic Russian Choir
http://grooveshark.com/#!/search/song?q=The+State+Academic+Russian+Choir+conducted+by+A.V.+Sveshnikov+Rzhev+is+where+I+died
Based on a poem written by Soviet War Correspondent Aleksandr Tvardovsky.
Rzhev is the battle that will bleed the Russian Army, throwing huge numbers against the much smaller German forces for the next several months.
The Soviets took well over 800,000 casualties here in the course of just a few months. Zukov’s operations here was such a disaster, (”The Rzhev Meat Grinder”, Operation Mars) they were literally stricken from Soviet records for decades, until the were finally acknowledged in 1989.
In 2009, a TV movie was made called, Rzhev: Marshal Zhukov’s Unknown Battle”. It made no attempt to cover up the huge losses suffered by Soviet forces, and as a consequence, there were public calls in Russia for the arrest of some of those involved in its production.
It brought back too many inconvenient memories.
'The news bulletin of the United Romanian Jews of America published reports of atrocities committed against Romanian Jewry as early as June 1942.
Printed in New York City and distributed throughout the United States, the headline proclaimed the "Mass Execution of Jews" and queried the government's policy of silence.
Pleas such as this were typical of Jewish organizations throughout the United States.''
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