The Wiking Division would win further laurels in the drive
to the Caucasus Mountains and then in the defensive fighting in the southern
Ukraine during the winter of 1942-1943. The spring of 1942 was a relatively
quiet time for Wiking, Steiner incorporating lessons learned from the
Barbarossa fighting. Among these was an organizational change to “Westland,”
converting it into a “light regiment” of two five-company battalions,
the fifth company acting as the heavy-weapons unit containing pioneer,
infantry-gun, and “attack” platoons.
New arrivals included a battalion of Finnish infantry and an
assault-gun battery, to replace the StuG IIIs lost in the February fighting
south of Kharkov. And in June, with only a few weeks to spare before the
opening of the new campaign, the division received its panzer battalion
(Abteilung ) under the command of Sturmbannführer Johannes Mühlenkamp. Hausser
and Steiner had long campaigned for their divisions to have a tank capability,
enabling them to act independently without help from other panzer units.
Mühlenkamp was an ideal panzer commander, combining an
aggressive attacking impulse with sound tactical knowledge. An early member of
the SS-VT, his prowess as a competition motorcycle rider led to command of
“Germania’s” motorcycle company. After recovering from wounds
suffered during the advance on Moscow, Mühlenkamp was given command of one of
the four panzer battalions being raised for the Waffen-SS (the other three
being assigned to Leibstandarte, Das Reich, and Totenkopf ).
The SS tank crews were trained by the army at Wildflecken,
beginning on captured French Hotchkiss tanks before graduating to German
models. Mühlenkamp’s battalion comprised just under sixty tanks divided into
three companies. The 1st and 2nd Companies were equipped with the Panzer Mark
III, whose new high-velocity 5cm L/60 gun gave improved battlefield performance
(although still inferior to the Soviet T-34). The 3rd Company was equipped with
the Panzer Mark IV, whose original low-velocity 7.5cm L/24 gun had been
replaced by an L/43-armed model with a reasonable antiarmor capability
(subsequently upgraded with an L/48 gun).
Hitler’s 1942 summer offensive was intended to secure the
Caucasus region and provide Germany with new sources of urgently needed fuel
(and correspondingly deny them to the enemy). The attack would be directed
toward the oil fields of Maikop, Grozny, and then Baku, the ultimate prize on
the Caspian Sea. A subsidiary advance was directed toward Stalingrad to protect
the left flank of the main drive. For the offensive- code-named “Fall
Blau” (Case Blue)-Hitler had assembled approximately 1 million German and
300,000 Axis soldiers, supported by 1,900 tanks and 1,600 aircraft. This was an
impressive force, which tore through the Soviet lines with almost contemptuous
ease. Such was the success of the initial phase of the campaign, launched on 28
June 1942, that it turned Hitler’s head toward the seizure of Stalingrad. But
the attempt to capture Stalingrad would fatally divert air and ground forces
from operations in the Caucasus.
On 18 July the Wiking Division readjusted its position
slightly farther south along the River Mius Line near Taganrog. Its objective
was the recapture of Rostov, the city on the Don that Leibstandarte had been
forced to relinquish in November 1941. Steiner used an imaginative combination
of combat pioneers, infantry, and armored vehicles to break through the
concentric defensive lines that protected Rostov. Bombarded by artillery and
massed waves of aircraft, a surprised Red Army offered little resistance so
that on 24 July the city fell to the Germans. Among the wounded was the medical
officer of the pioneer battalion, Obersturmführer Josef Mengele, who had
previously been awarded the Iron Cross for rescuing two crewmen from a burning
tank. Declared unfit for further frontline service, Mengele returned to his
former interest in racial genetics, achieving lasting infamy at the Auschwitz
concentration camp.
Once past Rostov, Wiking’s orders were to cross the Kuban
River and secure the Maikop oil fields situated in the foothills of the western
Caucasus Mountains. The tanks, assault guns, artillery, and truck-borne
infantry raised huge plumes of dust as they raced southward. The divisional
history reported how its troops “drove through the masses of still
retreating Russians who scattered before the panzers and disappeared in the fields
of sunflowers.” The changing landscape also seemed to reflect Germany’s
improved military fortunes:
The villages were prettier than in the Ukraine, the roads
better and countryside was covered with golden corn and red tomato fields. In
the village gardens the trees were heavy with ripening fruit. Everything the
heart desired was there: melons of a size never seen before, apples, pears and
other delicious fruit which made the soldiers’ mouths water. Every pause was
used to gorge on the fruit and quench their thirst. It was very hot and dusty;
so dusty that the only feature recognizable through the thick layer of dust on
the faces of the young European volunteers were their eyes.
The progress of the German land forces was facilitated by
the close air support provided by Colonel General Wolfram von Richthofen’s
Luftflotte Four. Richthofen-a cousin of the World War I fighter ace-was an
intelligent, uncompromising airman who had pioneered air-ground cooperation.
The Luftwaffe’s contribution to the campaign was readily acknowledged by the
Wiking officers: “Soon it became customary for the Luftwaffe commander,
Major Diering, to land at dawn at the command post by Storch [light aircraft].
He would take part in the briefing and issue orders to his liaison officer
accordingly. As the Panzerkampfgruppe deployed it would be accompanied by an
air patrol of two ground-support aircraft. These would call up the remainder of
the unit’s aircraft, which were on alert at Rostov, when heavier air support
became necessary.” This period marked the high point of German air-ground
cooperation, soon to be undermined by a chronic shortage of aircraft and
aircrew as Hitler’s demands stretched the Luftwaffe beyond breaking point.
The physical barrier of the Kuban River was crossed in
stages between 4 and 7 August. This opened the way for a direct advance on the
oil fields around Maikop, occupied by German troops on the tenth. A team of oil
specialists had been sent to restore the wells to production, but the
retreating Soviet forces had destroyed the plant facilities so thoroughly that
no oil was ever extracted.
As Wiking advanced south of Maikop, it entered the foothills
of the Caucasus, whose narrow defiles and high passes impeded operations. The
division was ordered to halt and await the arrival of German mountain infantry.
Wiking’s last offensive action in this region was fought on 14 August, when its
Finnish battalion scattered the remnants of a Red Army cavalry division during
the capture of Linejuaja.
For the rest of August and into September Wiking took part
in antipartisan operations against Soviet forces hiding in the hills. During
this period the army-organized Walloon Legion (Legion Wallonie) from southern
Belgium briefly came under Wiking control. Among the legion’s soldiers was
Belgian journalist and nationalist politician Léon Degrelle, who was greatly
impressed by the SS division. He would later use his influence to have the
Belgian unit taken over by the Waffen-SS. When the German mountain troops
arrived, they joined the Walloon Legion to drive through the mountains and
capture the Black Sea port of Tuapse.
At one point-as the men of the Wiking Division awaited
redeployment-they were entertained by a regimental orchestra, which set up its
instruments a short distance from the front line. Sturmann Hepp, a Dutch
soldier in “Germania,” found the concert-which included uplifting
works by Beethoven and Wagner-a deeply moving experience. It confirmed his
belief in the moral, spiritual, and intellectual superiority of the New Order:
“How characteristic for the humanity and culture we were defending that it
was not some fiery dance music, some libidinally charged dance hall tune that
was brought to the men at the fighting front. Instead it was the most sublime
and challenging music that the occidental masters had created.”
#
Orders from OKH for Wiking’s redeployment to the Chechen
region of the East Caucasus were instigated on 16 September. The transfer took
four days and saw the division assigned to Kleist’s First Panzer Army, now bogged
down in the Terek Valley around Mosdok.
When the chief of staff of the First Panzer Army explained
the objectives to Steiner- a march on Grozny to be followed by a crossing of
the Caucasus Mountains to strike Baku-the SS general was openly skeptical of
the whole enterprise, especially given the Germans’ limited resources and the
lateness of the campaigning season. The chief of staff agreed with Steiner’s
misgivings but emphasized that these were orders from OKH and were to be
obeyed. This disjuncture between Hitler and his staff and the generals at the
front would become ever greater, directly contributing to the failure of the
campaign.
The Wiking Division was assigned to General Eugen Ott’s LII
Army Corps, whose drive from Mosdok had been stopped in its tracks. Ott’s
high-handed manner immediately caused friction with the bullish Steiner, and
relations between the two commanders deteriorated as the campaign progressed.
Blocking any German advance to Grozny was the Malgobek
ridge. A frontal attack had already been repulsed with heavy casualties.
Steiner was ordered to launch a flanking maneuver along the valley of the River
Kurp that ran behind the ridge. Wiking’s first objective was the fortified town
of Ssagopschin, several miles farther up the valley, which was crisscrossed
with steep-sided gorges (balkas) and antitank ditches. Steiner expected close
air support to help him rip open the Soviet defenses, but Richthofen flew in to
LII Corps HQ to inform him that the Tuapse and Stalingrad operations had
priority and all he could provide were a few obsolete bombers.
The troops moved into position on 26 September, ready for
the assault on the following day. The plan of attack was for the infantry from
“Westland” and “Nordland” to secure the higher ground running
on both sides of the valley, while the tank battalion and assault-gun battery
would advance along the valley floor, reinforced by combat pioneers and
infantry mounted on the armored vehicles. Fire support would be provided by the
massed batteries of the Wiking artillery regiment and LII Corps.
To Steiner’s dismay, the enemy defenses were harder to
overcome than even he had anticipated. The well-supplied Soviet troops fought
with the utmost resolve, while the German armored advance was slowed by minefields
and Soviet tank-hunter teams who raced up to attack the panzers with bundled
charges. On 28 September the Germans made better progress and were within
reaching distance of Ssagopschin until a Soviet counterattack forced the SS
infantry to temporarily retreat.
The Wiking troops not only faced concentrated artillery and
machine-gun fire but were continually bombed and strafed by Soviet aircraft
roaming over the battlefield at will. The infantrymen crouching under their
fire noticed that many were from the United States, transported overland
through Iran to the Soviet Caucasus command. They also found themselves under
attack from British-made Valentine tanks, an otherwise reliable and
well-armored vehicle undermined by a woefully inadequate 2-pounder (40mm) main
gun.
The Wiking armored vehicles managed to repel the Soviet
counterattacks but were unable to break through to Ssagopschin. All the while
they were subject to a Soviet barrage from the heights on both sides of the
valley. Sturmmann Neumann, a tank crewman in a Panzer Mark III, recalled coming
under this heavy artillery fire:
We were being engaged from all sides. The reports from an
15.2cm battery could be clearly distinguished. It was a damned tricky
situation. The bastards were registering on us. The impacts came ever closer.
Depending on where they landed we moved back and forth. The shells exploding
right next to our tanks made an ear-deafening racket. In between, there was the
whistling sounds of the anti-tank guns and the tank main guns. Dust and dirt
penetrated the interiors of the tanks; shrapnel smacked with a clang against
the steel walls of the tank. It was a terrible strain on the nerves, sitting
there in the middle of artillery fire without being able to do anything,
hearing the report of the guns and waiting for the impacts. There was no
getting around the feeling of confinement in a tank.
Neumann and his comrades were eventually able to escape
their ordeal after withdrawing into a nearby tank ditch.
Despite the best efforts of the Wiking Division, there was
no escaping the fact that the advance had been halted. Kleist and Ott pressured
Steiner to capture Ssagopschin without delay. Steiner also encouraged his men
to press forward, but another attack on 30 September similarly failed to make
headway. On 1 October Oberführer Fritz von Scholz, commander of
“Nordland,” insisted his troops could not advance farther and asked
to be allowed to withdraw to a better position more than a mile to the rear.
Ott expressly forbade any retreat, but Steiner, on discussing the situation
with Scholz at the front, overruled the order and allowed the SS troops to
retire. This proved a wise decision, enabling the now disordered SS units time
and space to reorganize for further offensive action.
At dawn on 2 October the combined forces of the division
advanced at speed, overrunning the Soviet positions and finally capturing
Ssagopschin. Despite the success, criticism of Wiking continued, with First
Panzer Army headquarters suggesting that its multinational nature caused
problems of command and control. This accusation was vehemently refuted by the
division, which pointed out that on 1 October 1942 foreign volunteers made up
around 12 percent of the division’s regulation strength and that combat had
melded the various nationalities into a coherent whole.
Ott, still furious that his orders had been disobeyed,
instructed Steiner to capture the Malgobek ridge, now in an exposed position
following the fall of Ssagopschin. The “Germania” Regiment was chosen
to lead the attack. Steiner, on being told that again there would be no air
support, lost his temper and shouted at Ott that “the attack could not be
executed and that he would report the matter to Reichsführer-SS Himmler.”
This threatened circumvention of the chain of command was clearly a breach of
regulations, and Steiner was duly reprimanded by First Panzer Army
Headquarters. But Steiner’s foot-stamping did have one desired result: a flight
of Stukas was promised for the attack.
“Germania” opened the assault on 5 October,
supported by the rest of the Wiking Division from the south and by army units
from the north. The SS troops secured a foothold on the ridge, which was
cleared with comparative ease on the following day. The Red Army withdrew
farther east to continue its defense of Grozny. Ott then insisted that the
nearby Hill 701 be secured by Wiking and the army’s 111th Division.
Both divisional commanders expressed reluctance to continue
the offensive, which brought forth a sarcastic response from Ott: “If the
authority or willingness to fight on the part of subordinate leaders is not
sufficient, I request the esteemed division commanders to personally take the
place of the regimental commanders and conduct it.” The first assault on
the position was made on 15 October, and after a series of hard-fought seesaw
battles Hill 701 was captured by the Finnish battalion on the sixteenth.
Steiner’s reluctance to press forward had been informed by
his firsthand knowledge of the growing weakness of the German forces in the
area; any advance on Grozny without huge reinforcement was clearly impossible.
In fact, the capture of Hill 701 marked the high-water mark of the German
advance in the Caucasus; from this time onward, they would go over to the
defensive.
Arguments between Waffen-SS field commanders and their army
counterparts were extremely rare-normally confined to Theodor Eicke’s splenetic
outbursts-but the ongoing dispute between Steiner and First Panzer Army caused
disquiet at OKH. On 20 October General Kurt Zeitzler-Halder’s replacement as
army chief of staff-flew out to the Caucasus to assess the situation. Steiner’s
reservations about his division’s treatment were seemingly accepted by
Zeitzler, who also tried to allay anxieties as to the overall strategic situation.
In early November Wiking was withdrawn from the Malgobek
area and redeployed a few miles away in defense of German positions around
Alagir. During this period of relative calm, Steiner was informed that the
division would henceforth be designated as 5th SS Panzergrenadier Division
Wiking, in line with a comprehensive numerical overhaul of all Waffen-SS
formations. (Each unit in the division was prefixed by its formation number,
except for the two panzergrenadier regiments, which were all numbered sequentially,
with Leibstandarte’s two regiments numbered 1st and 2nd, Das Reich’s numbered
3rd and 4th, and so on, with Wiking’s two regiments numbered 9th and 10th.)
Of rather more significance was the troubling news that a
Soviet offensive had trapped the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad and was
threatening to cut off Army Group A in the Caucasus. On 22 December Wiking was
ordered to drive northward to help the Fourth Panzer Army’s attempt to break
through to Stalingrad. This was the first stage in a wider German retreat from
the entire Caucasus region.
After a relatively swift train transport north, advance
elements of the division detrained on 30 December at a snowbound Simovniki,
headquarters of Fourth Panzer Army. But on arrival the SS troops found the town
deserted, the headquarters recently departed. Steiner was informed that Wiking
was not to take part in a rescue attempt toward Stalingrad-now abandoned-but
act as a rear guard for a general retreat back to Rostov. “Westland,”
supported by a battalion from “Germania” and 5th Panzer Battalion,
held Simovniki for seven days, buying vital time for the withdrawal, not only
for the rest of the division but also for Kleist’s First Panzer Army, hurrying
back to a new defensive line behind the River Don.
The harsh winter weather gave Wiking’s withdrawal a
nightmarish quality. The tank drivers-inexperienced in these conditions-found
travel across the icy balkas a constant challenge; on such steep gradients, the
caterpillar tracks could not always find sufficient traction, so the tank
slithered back to the bottom of the ditch, entailing a long-drawn-out rescue
process with other tanks acting as towing vehicles. On one occasion, three
Panzer IIIs had to be abandoned due to the ice-ridden conditions.
All the while, the retreating German troops faced the
possibility of attack by packs of roving T-34s. Red Army units harried the
retreating Wiking rear guards, but they lacked sufficient numbers to bring them
to battle. By the beginning of February, Wiking approached Rostov with the
major part of the First Panzer Army safely across the Don. On 5 February the
battered division passed through the city to take up new defensive positions
around Stalino (Donetsk). Once in place, Wiking was ordered to surrender its
“Nordland” regiment, which would become the core infantry unit in a
new Waffen-SS formation, the 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division
Nordland, with Scholz as its commander. A battalion of Estonian troops was sent
to join Wiking as partial recompense for the loss of “Nordland.”
Hitler’s 1942 summer offensive had ended in calamitous
failure. The Wehrmacht was back in the same position it had occupied in July
1942, but now there were huge gaps in the German line across the Ukraine, which
the mechanized divisions of the Red Army were intending to exploit.
