Battle for KIEV, first hand account 9.1941, 299th ID, 6th Army, Army Group South, Panzerjäger Pt. 1

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Episode 165

23.9.41: Gefreiter Hans Roth (299 Infantry Division, Sixth Army, Army Group South)

Early on September 19 we penetrated the heavily armed outer ring of the city. The enemy, by far not as strong as we had assumed, was defeated in bloody, close combat, and by 0900 hours we had already reached the western part of the city. The Reds have quite their attempts at heavy street fighting. At the same time strong assault parities attacked the citadel from the direction of Lysa-Hora, and by 1100 hours Nazi swastikas were raised there.

By noon we are in the center of the city, no shots are heard; the wide streets and squares are abandoned. It is eerie. The silence is making us nervous, because it’s hardly believable that such a large city has fallen into our hands in such a short amount of time. . . What does this western defense line, which Budenny depended upon just like the French did with the Maginot Line, look like? It’s not a common line of bunkers; no, it’s a collection of diabolic resources, which can only be conceived by the brain of a paranoiac. I will try and describe some of these horrific death zones that we passed through while intensely fighting on September 17, 18 and 19:

To the rear of Gatnoje, there are fields of cooperatives, vast vegetable farms. They lie there harmlessly in the sum. Who would believe that hiding among those plants is the most horrific death: a high voltage current! Atop the vegetation is a webbing of fine calibre wire the length of several kilometers. This rests on thin, isolated metal poles, which are all painted green; a deadly net of high current, which is run by a power plant in a bunker. It is so well camouflaged that we recognize it unfortunately much too late, only after a continued accumulation of losses.

Then there are the devil’s ditches, lined up in great depth, several hundred meters long. They are mined, and when a single land mine is tripped, entire fields, which are connected underground by detonation channels, explode. At the same time, water pipes explode and rapidly flood the area two meters deep. There are even a few more goodies that happen to be just lying around, seeming random objects that are interesting to every soldier: watches, packs of cigarettes, pieces of soap, etc. Each of these objects is connected to a hidden detonator. If the soldier picks any of these objects up, he starts the ignition and detonates a mine or an entire minefield.

In this category also belong well-hidden trip wires, which cause contact mines to explode. These monsters jump up ¾ of a meter and explode. . . There are other areas where hidden among trip wires are thousands of knife-sharp steel spikes, which are poisoned and cause the injured to die a horrible death ten minutes later. All of the defensive belts are littered with automatic flamethrowers, which are activated by pressure.

Well—just imagine, among all these devilish things there are the normal battle installations: two-story bunkers, automatic weapons stands, ditches, kilometers of barbed wire, tank barriers, in addition to the normally mined streets and paths. Add to that infantry mines, booby traps, ban mines and vehicles mines. And now, just imagine this whole hellish apparatus during combat; this is their defense against our attack. . .

Mine dogs: we shot about a dozen of these German shepherds alone near Schuljany. The animals carry a device with explosives on their back. According to a prisoner who has trained these dogs, they are made to attack tanks and other vehicles with their load of 3 kilos of explosives.

1 Alexander and Kunze (eds.), Eastern Inferno. The Journals of a German Panzerjäger on the Eastern Front, 1941-43, 103-106.

To this point, the largest battle of encirclement on the the Eastern Front had taken place to the east of Kiev. It lead to the destruction of 4 Soviet armies. The immense pincers of the envelopment that developed during the massive attack came from the area around Smolensk in the north and from the lower Dnjepr in the South.

The German armored forces being lead by General’s Guderian from the north and von Kleist from the south thrust forwards, encircled the Soviet armies and then secured the pocket’s perimeter to the east. This removed all possible lines of Soviet retreat. Here is the massive area of this battle of encirclement.

Being attacked from all sides, the 4 entrapped Soviet armies were compacted together gradually losing their ability to maneuver. Finally in the area of this small triangle they were destroyed.

And now here’s an overview of the operation that resulted in a huge encirclement of Soviet troops in the vicinity of Kiev.

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