Perhaps surprisingly, there was no real discussion or debate over this momentous news among the troops around me. Instead, there was almost a sense of relief that our weeks of waiting and uncertainty were over. We now had our orders and we immediately focused on preparing for war.
It is also true that, as young men, we possessed little tendency to ponder matters deeply. That may indeed be an essential quality for a soldier. If you ordered a company of middle-aged soldiers into combat, you would probably have a problem getting them to fight without convincing them of the necessity of their action. It was not that we soldiers were unconcerned about what was going to happen, but we were conditioned to obey orders as soldiers in a fighting unit.
Though most of the men around me had little or no interest in politics, it was nonetheless apparent to all of us at the time that war between Germany and Russia would be of great historical significance. When German troops and the public back home learned of the invasion of the USSR, most reacted with a deep sense of uncertainty, very different from the mood prevailing at the start of the campaign in the West. The questions that circulated reflected these concerns. “Why is this attack occurring before we have defeated the British?” “Are we going to repeat the experience of Napoleon?” “What will happen next?”
Few Germans doubted our ultimate triumph, but many wondered about the duration of the struggle and the price of final victory. Almost no one questioned the morality of a crusade to destroy Soviet Bolshevism, but there were some like me who shared practical misgivings. Germany’s forces were already engaged all over Europe and it appeared to me that Hitler risked overextending our manpower and resources by undertaking such a colossal campaign in the East.
For the large majority of Germans, the war was never about the Nazi dream of conquering Lebensraum (living space) in the East for colonization by “the Aryan master race.” Like most other German soldiers, I was fighting for my Fatherland out of a sense of patriotic duty and the belief that Soviet Communism posed a grave threat to all of Europe and Western civilization. If we did not destroy the Communist menace, it would destroy us.
In eliminating this danger to Germany and Europe, we would also be liberating the Soviet peoples from their oppressive Communist masters. Though Nazi propaganda presented the Slavic population as Untermenschen (subhumans), none of the men around me embraced such extreme racial views. For us, the Slavs were not a biologically inferior race of human beings; they were simply the ignorant inhabitants of an uncivilized and backward country.
At the start of the invasion, Germany possessed a large army of veteran troops who maintained supreme confidence in their ability to overcome any enemy. In the wake of our string of earlier victories in Poland, the West, and the Balkans, we could not have been more assured of ourselves. A few lines from a letter I wrote to Anneliese later that summer expressed the personal optimism that I had come to feel: “It’s tough here and we fight, but we fight for a reason and I am confident we are going to win. I am positive about that.”
MARCH TO THE EAST: June 22–July 5, 1941
On Sunday, June 22, 1941, the pre-dawn silence was shattered by the roar of guns, as three million German troops commenced “Operation Barbarossa,” the invasion of the Soviet Union along an 1,800-mile front from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The tremendous cascade of thunderous booms echoed around us as German artillery delivered a short but intense hurricane of shells against the Russian lines, producing flashes of light all across the eastern horizon.
As dawn broke, the dim sky above us was filled by waves of Luftwaffe Heinkel and Junkers bombers, Stuka dive bombers, and Messerschmitt fighters droning overhead on their way east. The appearance of this aerial strike force was quickly followed by the rumble of tank engines revving up, but the noise soon faded as the German Panzer units raced eastward. The shock of this combined Blitzkrieg (lightning war) routed the Red Army forces defending the border and sent them into a full retreat.
Late the following morning, the 58th Division received orders to advance as part of the second echelon of troops in the XXXIII Corps of the 18th Army. The 18th Army, 16th Army, and Fourth Panzer Group made up Army Group North, one of the three massive army groups—North, Center, and South—created by the Wehrmacht for the invasion.
As we crossed the frontier, no border defenses were visible, but we noticed an immediate difference in that roads were not as good, though a few were paved. The next evening, the 154th Regiment staged brief assaults against Soviet positions in the small Lithuanian towns of Pajuralis and Kvedama, located about 25 miles east of our jumping off point in Heydekrug. These short actions against what might have been border troops did not even require the support of our heavy weapons, and we were ready to press on the next morning.
Advancing about 15 miles a day, we reached Siauliai, about 60 miles northeast of Pajuralis, by June 28. Though the Panzer units were far ahead, the 58th Division’s rapid progress soon placed it in the lead among the infantry divisions of Army Group North. Despite occasional traffic jams, everything was moving swiftly east, boosting our confidence. In the midst of our success, there was growing optimism that we could defeat the Soviet Union by the coming winter or the following spring.
Our march pressed on through long summer days that lasted from an early dawn until a late dusk when our officers ordered a halt, typically establishing our encampment in a field beside the road. Following a filling meal, the entire company would seek sheltered positions in which to sleep, in case of a Red Army attack. If camped in a village, we might sleep behind a home, but never inside, knowing that any structure presented a potential target for enemy artillery.
Unless posted to guard duty, I would prop my head on my steel helmet and instantly fall asleep. Anywhere from two to four hours later, someone would wake us with a kick in the rear. Within half an hour, we would eat breakfast and resume our trek.
Battling both stifling heat and thick clouds of dust, we plodded countless miles. There were few breaks from our march, except for the occasional chance to hitch a lift on one of our company’s horse-drawn vehicles. After awhile, a kind of hypnosis would set in as you watched the steady rhythm of the man’s boots in front of you. Utterly exhausted, I sometimes fell into a quasi-sleepwalk. Placing one foot in front of the other in my state of semi- consciousness, I somehow managed to keep pace, waking only briefly whenever I stumbled into the body ahead of me.
During our march across the open, flat country of northern Lithuania, we encountered no further enemy resistance, but could hear the perpetual din of gunfire and explosions in the distance as well as witness terrible scenes of carnage close at hand. In drainage ditches and out in the fields that lined the road, hundreds of still warm, contorted bodies lay where they had fallen. In many instances, there were ten or fifteen corpses grouped together, sometimes including uniformed women. The enemy tanks we passed were wrecked hulks, often still belching an oily black smoke.
Most of the Red Army’s troops and tanks had been caught in the open by German aircraft as they attempted to retreat to the east. Exercising complete air superiority over the battlefield, the Luftwaffe made sure that no enemy unit could move safely. When a fighter aircraft let loose with its heavy-caliber machine guns, it would decimate unprotected targets over a wide area.
Such attacks were particularly devastating when our planes swept along roads crowded with Russian men and vehicles. Everything in the path of their bullets would be annihilated; even soldiers sheltering in ditches alongside the road were not safe. In these strafings, nearly everyone who was not killed outright would at least suffer wounds.
The Red Army tanks that had not been destroyed had been driven back by German armor. If our heavy weapons company encountered one, a well-aimed round from one of our 150-millimeter howitzers could incapacitate it by damaging its main gun or its treads with a high explosive round. Our heavy gun company’s primary assignment, however, was to provide fire support for our infantry against Soviet infantry. We lacked the armor-piercing shells designed to penetrate the thick armor of these vehicles and would rarely engage Soviet armor except in a crisis. The division had a variety of other means to cope with enemy tanks.
On our march northeast, we covered the roughly 70 miles from the Lithuanian city of Siauliai to the Latvian capital of Riga within a week. Upon entering the city on July 5, small crowds along the streets greeted us with
