Barbarossa The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front PICTORIAL SUMMARY Part 3

Barbarossa The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front PICTORIAL SUMMARY  Part 3

Eine Nahaufnahme von einem Totenkopf Motorrad. Beachten Sie die Hakenkreuzfahne auf der Seite des Beiwagens, verwendet für die Erkennung von der Luftwaffe

A close-up of a Totenkopf motorcycle. Note the swastika on the side car, used for recognition by the Luftwaffe

Deutsche Fahrzeuge mit Geschwindigkeit entlang der Anfangsphase der Operation Barbarossa. Später in den Kampagnen wurden Straßen so gut wie unmöglich geworden aufgrund des Regen's dann Schnee.

German vehicles speed along the initial phase of Operation Barbarossa. Later in the campaign roads were to become all but impossible due to rain then snow

Waffen-SS troops scan the skyline from an armoured car. Armoured cars were used for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, scouting ahead of mechanical units to assess enemy strength and location, Their primary role was tp observe rather than fight enemy units, although they were expected to fight if endangered by the Soviets.

The German Army used several million bicycles during the Second World War but they were better suited to good roads in western Europe than the rough tracks in Russia.

Although an excellent weapon the 17cm K18 MrsLaf was expensive to produce., difficult to manoeuvre and very slow to set up and take down. Many very lost when their crews destroyed them to avoid capture by the advancing Soviets.

The 17cm K18 in MrsLaf in action by day and night had a maximum range of 18 miles and was used to provide lond range counter battery support.

A German troop reflects the battle during the lull in the fighting. Their hopes tha Barbarossa would all be over by Christma was shattered by the stall in the advance of Army Group Centre outside the gates of Moscow in December 1941.

General Sillasvuo was the Commander of the III Finish Army which included the Waffen-SS 'Nord Division'. The Fins enthusiastically joined in the attack on Russia to get their revenge for the winter of 1939-40. This saw the Red Army humiliated but through sheer numbers overrun the country

 Waffen-SS engineers carry out vital repairs to an Sd.Kfz 251 half-track. The fighting, weather and the large distances involved in Russia meant that vehicles were in constant need of servicing and repair.

The Germans were quick to utilise captured T34 tanks, marking them with German insignia. When introduced in 1940 it was the most advanced tank design in the world. Although by 1943 outclassed by other tanks such as the German Panther, it remained a formidable opponent.

Crossing the river Beresina Soviet Partisans blew up the bridge destroying a German assault gun. The Waffen-SS Unit survived the 8 meter drop.

A knocked out Russian BT-7 tank. Part of the mainstay with the T34 of the Soviet army. The T34 was more than equal to the German Panzers at the beginning of the campaign and was only later outclassed by the German Panzer VI-Tiger and Panther.

German soldiers dig in at Borodina, Russia. The vast distances involved across the 1,800 mile front posed huge logistical problems to both Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS.

A shot down Russian Rata aircraft. In the opening days of the campaign much of the Soviet airforce was destroyed on the ground before it could take-off, with over 2,000 planes destroyed on the first day alone.

Oberführer Bittrich, commander of the 2nd SS-Panzer Division, 'Das Reich', enjoys a cigarette with a soldier outside his regimental HQ in the summer 1941.

Members of the reconnaissance Battalion 'Das Reich' are awarded the Iron Cross for bravery during the opening months of the campaign. 25th July 1941.

An SS-Grenadier proudly displays his Eiserne Kreuz 2nd class(or Iron Cross) for bravery on the battlefield, 1941. Over four and a half million Iron Crosses were awarded in World War II.

A 7.5 cm 'Leichtes Infantriegeschütz (7.5 cm le.IG 18) light infantry support gun is brought up to support the troops. It had a rate of fire of 8 - 12 rounds per minute and a range of 3,500 metres. The crew put the fingers in their ears to reduce the noise.

'Totenkopf' troops crossing a makeshift bridge on a Horch 108 troop carrier. Note: The Death Head insignia on the rear.

Waffen-SS troops using an anti tank gun against the Soviet T-34 Tank.Tthe T-34 was heavily armoured and it required a direct hit to its tracks or at very close range to disable it.

SS-Totenkopf officers drive to the front in a Volkswagen Kübelwagen Type 82 the German equivalent of a Jeep, 1941. Although more comfortable than a Jeep, it's low centre of gravity meant it struggled with the deep mud in Russia.

Paul 'Papa' Hauser, Lieutenant-General of the 2nd SS-Division 'Das Reich', receives the Knights Cross to the Iron Cross from General of the Panzer Troops, Heinrich von Vietinghof-Scheel. He was highly respected by his troops and known as the 'father' of the Waffen-SS.

In Germany a march past of the Leibstandarte on Heldengedenktag (Heroes Day). It was previously known as the Volkstarauertag or Commemoration Day , a national day of mourning for all those who had been killed in battle but the Nazis turned it into their day to celebrate the heroism of their struggle, not the sacrifice of German troops.

'Army Group North' advanced through the Baltic States and on to Leningrad, accompanied  by the 'Totenkopf','Polizei','Das Reich', 'Leibstandarte'.Tthe 'Wiking' were with Army Group South and travelled towards the Ukraine and Kiew.

     A Wafffen-SS soldier with an MG-34 machine gun, which was replaced with the MG42 a more robust and reliable weapon and fired over 1000 rounds a minute.

Motorcycles of the 'Wiking Division' scout ahead of the Panzers. The speed and ferocity of the German attack coughs the Russians completely by surprise.

Continued in 4

BARBAROSSA - THE WAFFEN SS ON THE EASTERN FRONT PICTORIAL SUMMARY, PART 2

German troops cross the border and walk into Soviet Russia. An event that would have calamitous consequences for Germany four years later.

Germans with captured T 34 tank best ww2

German soldiers inspect an abandoned Russian T-34 tank. The tank proved to be best amongst all tanks used during WW2. In the background a German convoy moves inexorably into Russia.

Ukrainian women give German soldiers water to drink. Initially the German were welcomed in Ukraine. They were sick of Stalin's brutal ways. But when the bad boys from the Einsatzgruppen came in the wake of the Wehrmacht it began to dawn on the people there that the Germans were worse; they turned against them.

June 20, 1941. Russian border guards were blissfully unaware about the tidal wave that was to burst through two days later.

Waffen SS men saunter along as a Soviet armoured car burns.

Russian sniper V A Sidorov takes position to pick a German victim in August 1941. He is armed with a Mosin rifle. Soviet snipers became legends during the war and they got special treatment

A Waffen SS medic treats a German soldier.

This is what remained of a Soviet convoy after German dive bombers were done with them.

Waffen SS soldiers walk through a Ukrainian village. A Soviet artillery tractor lies broken.

German soldiers in action with a mortar in an Russian village

Germans march through the streets of Grodno, Belarus on June 23, 1941.

                                                                                                                             
ATTACK ON GRODNO
In the darkness of the night of June 23, 1941 an infernal fire from the heavens suddenly rocked Grodno. Grodno was one of those cities in the Russian zone which was the first to be the victim of the lightning air raid by the Nazi warplanes. Wave after wave of air raids stormed down upon Grodno, spreading a hailstorm of bombs, explosions and fires. The first bombs fell in the area of the bridge by the Nieman river, near the army barracks. A paralyzing panic overtook the distraught residents, who at first did not realize the extent of their tragedy, and had no idea as to how and where to find refuge. The Soviet forces retreated in panic, taking with them only their own people and local residents who had worked in the administrative apparatus.

Crossing the River Bug

First week of Barbarossa. Men from the German 101st Infantry Division escort a captured red Army soldier. Polish town of Przemysl.

 German soldiers in the Polish town of Przemysl

Captured women Soviet soldiers at Nevel (Pskov area). With reference to the mass rape of German women in 1945 by the Russian army; we must keep in mind the number of rapes that German soldiers committed in Soviet Union. German soldiers were no angels.

 Soviet soldiers surrender to Waffen SS soldiers

    More surrender. This time to men from the 9th Armored Division of the Wehrmacht

Naked German soldiers examine a destroyed Soviet KV-1 tank.

Ukrainians of Lutz welcome the Germans. If Hitler had used his head and not his Untermenschen-Jews-to-be-wiped-out theory, he might well have conquered Russia.

A village in Bialystok region. Germans examine abandoned T-26 and BT-7 tanks

Waffen SS soldiers examine the Stalin Line

                                                                         
WHAT WAS THE STALIN LINE?
The Stalin Line was a line of fortifications along the western border of the Soviet Union. Work began on the system in the 1920s to protect the USSR against attacks from the West. The line was made up of concrete bunkers and gun emplacements, somewhat similar but less elaborate than the Maginot Line. It was not a continuous line of defenses along the entire border but rather a network of fortified regions, meant to channel the potential invaders along certain corridors.
In the aftermath of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with the westward expansion of the USSR in 1939 and 1940, into Poland, the Baltic, and Bessarabia the decision was made to abandon the line in favour of constructing the so-called Molotov Line further west, along the new border of the USSR. A number of Russian generals felt that it would be better to keep both lines and have defence in depth, but this conflicted with the pre-World War II Soviet military doctrine. Thus the guns were moved, but were mostly in storage as the new line began construction.
  The 1941 German invasion caught the new line unfinished and the Stalin Line largely abandoned and in disrepair. Neither was thus of any use in stopping the onslaught of Operation Barbarossa, though parts of the Stalin Line were manned in time and contributed to the defense. Following World War II, the line was not maintained, in part due to its wide dispersal across the USSR. Unlike in Western Europe, where similar fortifications were demolished for development and safety reasons, much of the line survived beyond the breakup of the USSR in 1991 due to being ignored. Today, the remains of the Stalin Line fortifications are located in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

The Germans get a taste of the Russian rains. Russia had poor roads, many of them were just mud tracks. The rains turned them into a slush that became a nightmare for the Germans. Here men of the 7th Panzer Division move through the Soviet countryside.

German soldiers in the Baltics

Top Soviet generals captured. Commander of the 12th Army of the Red Army, Major General PG Ponedelin (center) and commander of the 13th Rifle Corps, 12th Army Maj. Gen. N. Kirillov. District Uman. August 1941

                                                                                                                             
STALIN'S ORDER NO.207
At the onset of the Great Patriotic War between Germany and the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin issued the infamous Order Number 207 on August 16, 1941. The order condemned those who surrendered to the enemy and, regardless of the circumstances, those soldiers and commanders were treated as traitors and enemies of the people.
“We have no prisoners of war, only traitors of the motherland!” Stalin declared, giving the main idea behind Order No. 270. It was issued several months after Hitler’s army had entered the territory of the Soviet Union. Poorly-armed Soviet forces were suffering defeat after defeat against the superior army of the enemy. Stalin’s aim was to put the blame on someone for the losses and quickly dispel undesirable doubt as to his power and the victory of the Red Army.
First to bear the blame in Stalin’s order were the awarded Red Army commanders, Generals Nikolay Kirillov and Pavel Ponedelin, who had been taken prisoner by the Germans earlier that month. The Nazi’s used the fact of the war prisoners as propaganda. Both generals were photographed next to German officers and leaflets with those photos were scattered over the positions of Red Army troops.
Of course, there were those soldiers who displayed cowardice and had surrendered immediately, and others who had deserted and allied themselves with the enemy. But the plague of Order No. 270 was that it doomed anyone who was captured by the enemy, without any specific proof, investigation or consideration of circumstances. Under Stalin’s order, Soviet soldiers were to fight to the death, and those who were captured had either to escape or commit suicide. Those who didn’t have the inner strength to do so deserved a single verdict – execution. Families of commanders who were taken prisoners were subject to arrest and those of general soldiers were deprived of any state allowance and assistance.
According to Stalin, both Ponedelin and Kirillov were “fully capable of fighting their way back to their troops, but instead gave way to panic, turned into cowards and deserted to the enemy.” They were sentenced in absentia to execution by shooting. Ponedelin’s wife and father were sentenced to five years in camps as relatives of a traitor. Ponedelin and Kirillov remained in a fascist prison camp until the end of war. When they returned to their motherland, both were sent to Lefortovo prison in Moscow and executed for treason in 1950. It was noted that, just before the execution took place, Ponedelin said “I’m dying with peace, because after all it is my native Russian soil that will take in my ashes.” After Stalin’s death, cases of former prisoners of war were reviewed by a special committee who launched an investigation. In 1956, Nikolay Kirillov and Pavel Ponedelin were rehabilitated, but sadly too late to have any effect on their tragic fate, and that of thousands of other brave soldiers who had fallen victim to Order No. 270.
http://russiapedia.rt.com/on-this-day/august-16/

Soviet airfield and warplanes destroyed at Lvov

 THE LUFTWAFFE SUPERIORITY
The Luftwaffe's task was to neutralize the Soviet Air Force. This was not achieved in the first days of operations, despite the Soviets having concentrated aircraft in huge groups on the permanent airfields rather than dispersing them on field landing strips, making them ideal targets. The Luftwaffe claimed to have destroyed 1,489 aircraft on the first day of operations.
  Hermann Göring — Chief of the Luftwaffe — distrusted the reports and ordered the figure checked. Picking through the wreckages of Soviet airfields, the Luftwaffe's figures proved conservative, as over 2,000 destroyed Soviet aircraft were found. The Luftwaffe lost 35 aircraft on the first day of combat. The Germans claimed to have destroyed only 3,100 Soviet aircraft in the first three days. In fact Soviet losses were far higher: some 3,922 Soviet machines had been lost (according to Russian Historian Viktor Kulikov).
  The Luftwaffe had achieved air superiority over all three sectors of the front, and would maintain it until the close of the year. The Luftwaffe could now devote large numbers of its Geschwader (see Luftwaffe Organization) to support the ground forces.

 RUSSIAN AIR FORCE IN PITIFUL STATE
In the first two days of the invasion Germany destroyed 2,500 Soviet aircraft. Many were destroyed on the ground. Others were destroyed by poor tactics. Soviet bomber wings tried to attack without fighter escort. When threatened, bombers formed tight wedges and fighters formed defensive circles.
  In April 1942, Lieutenant General Alexander Novikov took command of the Red Army Air Force. He ordered that all air power be consolidated, from the individual ground units to which it was connected, into one unified force. It was around this time as well that the factories that were moved east of the Ural Mountains began full production, pumping out roughly 1000 planes a month.
  This reconstitution and increased production made the Soviet air force formidable again but so did tactical advancement. “Loose pairs” began to prevail over standard formations with planes working in tandem, or one plane covering while the other attacked. Bombers began to be escorted. Four bombers would be escorted by up to ten fighters. When fighters escorted ground attack craft they split into two groups. A group that flew with the formation and a group that flew high above and about half a mile (800M) ahead to scout for enemy patrols. By 1945 the Red Army Air Force had 17 air armies each with 2 fighter divisions, 2 fighter-bomber divisions, a night bomber regiment, a reconnaissance squadron and a liaison squadron. http://www.world-war-2-planes.com/soviet-aircraft.html

 Exhausted Waffen SS soldiers take a breather

Germans pass through an Ukrainian village. Date unknown.

A Russian POW has something to say to the Germans. The poor guy must have to a sad bad end.

Late August 1941. Germans cross the Luga river. There seems to be a traffic jam

Late August 1941. Germans cross the Luga river. There seems to be a traffic jam