Hans Von Luck - Panzer Commander Read online

  At C16ment Duhour's, I came to know a number of French artists.

  I wore civilian clothes to avoid provocation. I also met J. B. Morel there, who is still one of my best friends today. He was an interior decorator and seemed to know everyone and everything in Paris. He was my own age and had fought against me as a lieutenant. He lived in a delightful apartment in the Rue du Dobropol, near the old Tivoli Gardens by the Bois de Boulogne.

  Through him, I gained access to circles that otherwise wanted no contact of any kind with Germans. e evening he took me to a jazz cellar, in which prohibited black American jazz was played and swing music, unknown to us. There one could only get in by a special knock. “In the Mood” by Glenn Miller and “Down Mexico Way” became two of my favorite tunes; later, in captivity, we were to play them ourselves.

  With my special pass and the faithful Mercedes cabriolet, I had no difficulty in roaming about Paris with my new French friends.

  They were often my guests in Le V6sinet, where we would go out in one of the motorboats lying in the marina for a trip on the Seine, or cross over to Le Peq to eat in the famous restaurant Le Coq Hardi.

  My men used their “war pay” to buy thin ,gs for their families which we had long had to do without at home, such as silk stockings, perfume, fine materials, and drinks. Hitler had established an exchange rate that was highly favorable to us.

  At the end of August, I received 14 days' leave. That, for me, was a further sign that no one in the leadership planned on a landing in England anymore. I decided to spend the two weeks in Bad Kissingen, my last garrison, to visit friends and settle a few matters. I would take along my orderly and trusted friend Erich Beck, who wanted to go home.

  “Beck, get the Mercedes ready. I'm going to take Boy too, the setter, to put him into safe-keeping at home.”

  “Captain,” Beck came to me excitedly, “I've found a brand new Buick in the garage. Couldn't we go in that? No one has ever seen an American car at home.” I let myself be persuaded and actually got papers and army license plates from military headquarters.

  In Kissingen, the spa season was well under way, albeit on a restricted scale, and I drove around the district proudly with pretty girls in the much-admired Buick. The setter, Boy, went to a forester in the Rhoen Mountains, where he unfortunately died later of a virus infection while we were in Russia. When we returned to V6sinet after the visit, I decommissioned the Buick and put it back again, clean, in the garage.

  In October, “Operation Sea Lion” was called off. Our air force, after heavy losses, had been unable to gain ascendancy. The navy had insufficient capital ships to cover a crossing of the Channel effectively.

  How should things continue now, if a landing in England was not possible? We had occupied almost all of Europe, it is true, but uncertainty still hung over the Mediterranean, from which no good news was coming. Through the nonaggression pact with Stalin we had secured our back. But how should we deal with the British?

  They had been forced to leave almost all their materiel behind on the mainland and had lost a not inconsiderable number of prisoners. But the mass of the British army was still intact.

  The materiel was steadily being replaced from America-in spite of the heavy losses inflicted on the British in the U-boat war.

  The British air force was gradually acquiring superiority.

  Churchill let there be no doubt that he intended to destroy Hitler and his National Socialism.

  After the abandoning of “Operation Sea Lion,” our division received orders to move to the Bordeaux area. Movement again at last! I said good-bye to our friends in V6sinet and to my friends J. B. Morel and Clment Duhour.

  “Hans,” they both said to me, “you can no longer win this war, we know that.” C16ment even suggested that in an emergency I should take refuge with his mother in the Basque country.

  “You'd be safe there; we Basques never betray a friend.” He meant it well, but for me it was naturally out of the question. After that, he gave me a silver ring with a Basque motto, the French translation of which was engraved on the inside: Mieux vaut penser que dire (“It is better to think than to speak”). I couldn't shake off Interim, 1940-1941 61 the feeling that the two friends belonged to the Resistance, which was becoming ever stronger. This belief would later turn out to be true. But our friendship was to prove stronger and more important than betrayal and cravings for revenge.

  On our long march to Bordeaux, we stopped for a day's rest at one of the old Rothschild chateaux. There, I was visited by one of my older friends, Siebel. He had been a fighter pilot in the First World War and was the inventor of the

  “Siebel ferry,” which was to save many men in North Africa from being taken prisoner. Siebel mounted old aircraft engines On Ordinary ferries and used their propellers to drive them, thus bridging the short link between Tunisia and Sicily in one night.

  On arriving in Bordeaux, I couldn't help calling at the maison sgrieuse. I was greeted effusively.

  “Mon G6ngral, we have been officially recognized by military headquarters. I am very grateful to you. You will always find friends here and champagne at our expense.” I hope this charming woman did not have to suffer later as a collaborateuse.

  Further replacements had arrived from home, including the new commander of the battalion, Major Riederer von Paar, who had taken part in the First World War and soon gained our confidence. I took over my No.3 Company again, which had been led so well by Sergeant Almus. Lieutenant von Poschinger came to the company as a new platoon leader.

  I found time to enlarge my collection of French wines and cognacs. In vineyards north of Bordeaux, some of them very small, I bought bottles with a scarcity value which would never come on the market. My collection of old burgundies, cognacs, and armagnacs, some in mouth-blown bottles and with handwritten labels, had now grown to nearly 1,000 bottles, which I was anxious to send to Germany at the first opportunity.

  In January 1941, the division was transferred to Germany, to the area west of Bonn. The French chapter was now finally closed.

  Left behind were reserve units, a swelling military administration, and the Gestapo (the secret state police), *ith its reign of terror.

  My company was billeted in the village of Heimersheim; I myself in a moated manor house from the fifteenth century which belonged to Baron von Boeselager, whose sons were also army officers. In the evening, when I returned from strenuous exercises in the field, we often sat together and discussed the situation. “Old Boeselager” was no follower of Hitler's. He was afraid that the next encounter with Britain could lead to disaster. While we talked, the..old Baroness“ sat near us and played patience solitaire). She encouraged me to try it too because it was so soothing. To please her I let her show me two varieties and found the game by no means so boring and old-ladyish. When I left she gave me a pack of cards. They were to be a great help to me later in the recovery of my inner peace in critical situations. My young officers used to say at such times, ”The Boss is playing patience and doesn't want to be disturbed. So things can't be too bad.“ Even today I still like to play my ”soothing patience." At this juncture I tried to sum up the course of the war so far and consider how it might and should continue.

  In two blitzkriegs, Poland and France had been defeated; Denmark, Norway, and Belgium had been occupied. Until the alarming news from the North African theater of war, the Mediterranean area too had seemed to be under control. The Wehrmacht, however, had had to release considerable forces to secure all the territories, especially against a possible invasion by the British at some unforeseeable place.

  We still had our back free through the nonaggression pact with Stalin, which had been bought with territorial concessions in Poland and the Baltic. But how could Britain be defeated, who was being supported to an increasing degree by America, whose air attacks on the Reich had started, and who had retained supremacy at sea?

  In the long conversations with Baron von Boeselager, in which we looked for a way in which t
he war might be brought to an end, we found none. We both feared that this war, which had begun so hopefully, would probably last for a long time yet.

  At the beginning of February 1941, we were told that Rommel was being sent by Hitler to North Africa. The situation in Tripolitania had become so critical that we were being forced to go to the help of the Italians. Rommel spent a short leave with his family and then had no time left to say good-bye to us. On 12 February 1941, he flew to Rome and by the 14th had arrived in Tripoli, where he personally supervised the disembarkation of the first German unit, the elite 3rd Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion, which I knew well from my time in Potsdam.

  We were very sorry to have lost Rommel and met our new divisional commander, General Freiherr von Funk, with some doubts.

  Interim, 1940-1941 63 He was the opposite of Rommel: a general staff officer of the& old school, no “trooper” like Rommel. He led “from behind,” from his command post, and did not, like Rommel, seek contact with his men. All the same, we unit leaders managed to adapt to him, the more so since he made no attempt to restrict us in our mobility.

  The weeks and months went by. The usual routine began: field exercises with imposed complications, training, and the integration of replacements. The war at the time was taking place elsewhere.

  From army bulletins, we heard of Rommel's success in North Africa, of his unconventional, and for the British, unexpected, thrust to the east and the recapture of Cyrenaica. We heard of the increasingly heavy air attacks on Germany. These depressed us most. So now, in contrast to the First World War, the civilian population too was being drawn into the war. We were anxious about our families.

  Hitler made angry speeches; his Propaganda Minister Goebbels called fgr the

  “Final Victory”; and the Jews were pilloried as fiends. Of their fate we heard nothing.

  In April 1941, I received a short leave, half of which I spent with my parents. But I no longer felt happy at home. My brother was in action with his whaler somewhere off Norway; my sister was cramming for the emergency Abitur, my stepfather was suffering from an incurable intestinal cancer and being cared for devotedly by my mother. He couldn't come to terms with modern warfare and was always making comparisons with the First World War. We were at odds with each, other more and more.

  The other half of my leave, I spent in my beloved Paris. There, J. B. Morel and C]6ment Duhour prophesied, again, that the British, alone or with the support of the Americans, would win.

  In their view, Germany had nothing to set against the inexhaustible materiel of the British and Americans, especially since in Germany industrial areas and communication routes were exposed ever more frequently to air attack. I argued against them, but did not know either how we could win the war. I then returned to my company and the 5ame old round began again, which is enervating in the long run. The inhabitants frequently asked us what was supposed to happen next. There was great bewilderment. Only one thing was certain: initial euphoria had given way to sober judgment.

  I wanted to get my collection of bottles into a safe place and asked Baron von Boeselager if I could leave them with him.

  “But of course, I'll sink them in the moat with my own collection. No one will think of looking there.” Later, in Russia, I had a letter from von Boeselager. He had borrowed two bottles of champagne from my stock for his daughter's wedding. He should have taken them all; at the end of the war, the hiding place was discovered by the French occupation troops. ,'The sales Boches stole our wine and cognac. Everything really belongs to us," said the French, as Boeselager told me later. That was the end of my dream of a French wine collection. Cest la guerre.

  At the beginning of June, suddenly and without warning, our division was entrained in Bonn and, after a journey of two or three days, detrained in Insterburg in East Prussia. The battalion was billeted in the surrounding villages. I used the opportunity to visit some friends on an estate nearby, where some years before, gay and light of heart, I had celebrated the wedding of one of my comrades.

  The old woman, who after the death of her husband, now managed the estate alone, greeted me sadly. "How depressing to see you again in these circumstances. How contented we were then and now we are threatened with a long and difficult encounter with Russia. Do you understand it all? What more does Hitler want?

  The Lebensraum so often talked of by him and Rosenberg?“ We walked through the clean stables. It was like saying good-bye to the old Germany. After a meal, my hostess asked me, ”Please play something on the piano. Something lively, please, it's got to be something for me to remember.“ So I sat there by candlelight and played whatever came into my head. The old woman's eyes filled with tears. As I took my leave, her last words were, ”Good-bye, may God protect you!" Today, her estate is part of Poland. Unfortunately, I don't know what became of her.

  A warm, late spring lay over East Prussia. I thought back to my years as a recruit, to Koenigsberg, the old knight's castle of Marienburg, and the Masurian Lakes. I had grown fond of that little patch of earth with its dry summers and very cold winters with heavy falls of snow. I admired the people who had come there with the Teutonic knights at the beginning of the thirteenth century and in the course of the centuries, through conflicts with Poland, Sweden, and Russia, and not least through the climate, had grown into a tough race. The hospitality of the East Prussians was famous, their dry humor notorious. The wide expanse of East Prussia was a preview of how things would look in Russia.

  Interim, 1940-1941 65 What did Hitler have in mind? The entry into Russia seemed certain. The mass of the Wehrmacht was concentrated on the eastern frontier. This showed that it would not be a matter of a limited operation, to bring “home to the Reich” the

  “Baltic provinces,” which had once been occupied by the Teutonic knights. Would Hitler declare the nonaggression pact with Russia to be null and void? How would he try to explain this to the people? Goebbels's propaganda machine was going full strength. There was talk, once more, of “subhumans,” of Lebensraum, which had to be secured for the German race. And, once again, popular opinion was successfully turned around 180 degrees.

  The eve of our entry arrived. We were in a strange frame of mind. The vast Russian empire was hidden, as though by a Curtain. The huge distances were beyond our mental grasp. The Ural Mountains, which were nearly 2,000 miles away, were merely the end of the European part; behind them lay the start of the endless expanse of Siberia.

  We thought of the fat-e of Napoleon, whose victorious army had foundered in the extent and cold of Russia. We were not actually afraid, but neither were we sure of what our attitude should be toward an opponent whose strength and potential were unknown to us, and whose mentality was completely alien.

  The euphoria of the past months had given way to a rather sober view. Even the young ones, who in the years since 1933 had gone through the school of National Socialism, and who had been sworn into the Hitler Youth in the name of their Fuehrer, had now fallen silent. They doubted that Russia could be defeated with idealism alone.

  Would we be able to cope with a “Second Front,” as a result of which the first front in the west would-be held mainly by reserve divisions? Would Britain be able to exploit the weak spot? In spite of all our doubts and questions, we did what soldiers have done in every age: We set our minds on the present and were ready to do our “duty.”

  The Russian Campaign, June 1941 to January 1942 At 4 A.M. on 22 June 1941, the German Wehrmacht crossed the border into Russia. The Luftwaffe made mass attack4 on air fields and railway junctions. On that morning, trains carrying Russian goods were still trundling over the frontier, delivering commodities under the terms of the nonaggression pact. A few days earlier, I had been summoned to my divisional commander, General von Funk. “Luck, you are being attached to 7th Divisional HQ with immediate effect and appointed as my adjutant.” I was reluctant. “General, I don't like leaving my company at this vital moment. Couldn't you find someone else?”

  “No,” he r
eplied, "the adjutant I asked for has not arrived yet.

  Besides, we've already lost too many company commanders and are likely to lose a lot more. To that extent, I regard you in a way as a reserve commander." Gritting my teeth, I said good-bye to my battalion commander and to my men. With Erich Beck and the faithful Mercedes, I reported to divisional HQ. The German troops, with the panzers in the lead, advanced along the whole front and swept over the weak Russian border guards. The Russians seemed to have been utterly surprised by our entry, though our troop concentrations couldn't have escaped them. Our superiority in the air was quite obvious, both in quantity and in quality.

  It soon became clear that the Russian air force had only obsolete machines at its disposal, but above all that the pilots did not function nearly as well as our fighter and dive-bomber pilots, or the pilots of our Western opponents. This was naturally a great relief to us, and when Russian aircraft appeared, we hardly bothered to take cover. We often had to smile, in fact, when, for want of bombs, thousands of nails rained down on us from their bomb bays.

  We soon came to realize that neither war at sea nor war in the air was suited to the Russian mentality. In the course of her history, Russia had waged war mostly on land and had recruited her army from her rural millions. Russia had never been a sea power to be taken seriously, and her cumbersome military bureaucracy had obviously never given much thought to building up a modern air The Russian Campaign, June 1941 to January 1942 67 force. In exchange, however, we very soon had to accustom ourselves to her almost inexhaustible masses of land forces, tanks, and artillery.

  Our panzer corps thrust first to the northeast. Its goal was the city of Vilnius, in what was formerly Lithuania. The resistance we encountered was comparatively slight, but already in evidence were the first T34 tanks, later to become famous, which formed the backbone of the Russian tank force. The T34 was an uncomplicated construction. Its armor plates were welded crudely together, its transmission was simple, everything without any great frills or finesse. Damage was easy to repair.