Author: Shen Du
In World War II, many Soldiers of Prussian nobility in the German Army looked down on Hitler, who was born poor. Hitler also disliked the aristocratic officers and felt that they were too proud.
Some officers from civilian origins were appreciated by Hitler for their excellent performance, and their promotion was rapid, among which Modell's promotion speed could be called a rocket, and he was promoted from division commander to group commander in half a year. It's just that for generals on the battlefield, promotion is not necessarily a good thing.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > ordered in times of crisis</h1>
On 14 January 1942, The commander of the German 41st Motorized Army, Modell, was ordered to take over as Commander of strauss and become commander of the 9th Army, where he had been commander of the 41st Army for only three months, and just half a year earlier he had been a division commander.
Modell
Compared with the Junker nobles in the German army, Modell was an uncompromising grassroots, starting his military career as an ordinary soldier and rising to the rank of officer by virtue of his performance. Modell's origin made him particularly close to the soldiers, and he was frank and straightforward, often leading the way as a middle and lower-level officer, even if he became the commander of the army group, he often went to the front line to inspect the front-line officers and soldiers, and his characteristics won the trust of the soldiers, and when he gave orders, the soldiers could carry them out to the letter.
Grossman, commander of the 6th Infantry Division, recalled that once the soldiers of the 9th Army watched a movie, the theater door was opened outwards and only half open, because there were too many people and it was very crowded, the theater administrator asked the soldiers to retreat to open the closed half door, and the soldiers answered in unison, "Modell told us not to retreat", and the half door was not opened.
Modell (first from left) talks to his subordinates
By the time Modell took office, the 9th Army had shrunk to the protrusion of Lezhev-Serchovka-Vyazma under Soviet attack, and Konev's Kalinin Front and Zhukov's Western Front attempted to divide and encircle the 9th Army from the 4th Army. The 22nd and 29th Armies of the Kalinin Front encircled seven divisions of the 23rd Army of the 9th Army, while the 39th Army was inserted into the rear of the 9th Army.
At this time, the German army was divided, the battle line was fragmented, and the cold made the soldiers miserable, and some German troops were frozen to death in the daytime. When Modell arrived at the headquarters of the 9th Army in Viazima on the 18th, he could command no more than 150,000 people, including less than 60,000 infantry, more than 300 artillery pieces, few tanks, half of the troops were surrounded by Soviet troops, and the battle lines were fragmented and broken.
German soldiers building positions in heavy snow
Instead of sticking to the rules and sticking to the remaining fronts, he restored the fronts of the Lezhev-Orlenino-Sechovka triangle and rescued the encircling troops. Modell understood that at this time, the German army was exhausted, the Soviet army was also the end of the crossbow, and blindly sticking to it would only increase the morale of the Soviet army and destroy its own prestige. As he sketched his plan of attack on a map, a lieutenant colonel staff officer asked him , "General, how many troops have you brought to carry out your plan?" Modell replied generously, "I'm alone."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="78" > offense is the best defense</h1>
In order to do a good job of attack, Modell often inspected the front line, in addition to taking a stork reconnaissance plane to look down on the battlefield, he also took a jeep to the front line to comfort the soldiers, and even skied to survey the terrain. However, Modell's craziest move was to confront Hitler in front of Wolfsburg, hoping that the 46th Motorized Army would come under his command, including the 5th and 11th Panzer Divisions, the SS Imperial Division, and the 10th Panzer Division, which was a powerful armored force, so he came to Wolfsburg on January 20.
Hitler promised that the 46th Army could be commanded by Modell, but there was a huge disagreement over where to deploy it. Modell said bluntly, "My Fuehrer, are you commanding the 9th Army, or am I?" and refused to carry out Hitler's orders. Hitler was stunned and finally compromised with Modell.
On 21 January, Modell ordered the 1st Panzer Division to move north to contain the Soviet forces in Lezhev, and the 6th and 23rd Armies, separated by the Soviet forces in Lezhev, each sent a battle group to the east and west. Although the German armored forces were pitifully small, as Modell estimated, the Soviets were already at the end of the crossbow, and they also lacked armored units and anti-tank weapons, and the Germans broke through the Soviets' blockade to successfully meet the division.
German anti-tank guns maneuvered with horses
After the concentration of troops, the Soviet army wanted to divide the German army more than enough, at this time the cold is not only the enemy of the German army, but also the enemy of the Soviet army, the Red Army soldiers in a state of counterattack lack of shelter to avoid the wind and snow. The Germans were finally able to enter the so-called "Winter Final Line", east of Yukhnov-Gzaczk and north of Zubzov-Lezhev.
However, the crisis of the 9th Army was still not lifted, and a large number of Soviet troops were active in their rear, and once they could contact the Soviet forces on the periphery, the German army could collapse.
On the 25th, Modell drew from the Imperial Division to deploy the Führer regiment north of Lezhev along the Volga River, which blocked the route of the Soviet retreat and separated the Soviet 29th and 39th Armies from the 30th Army on the periphery, and the Soviet 29th and 30th Armies, which had been trying to encircle the Germans a few days earlier, were now in danger of being surrounded by the Germans. The Soviets launched a tidal attack on the Führer regiment in order to break through the encirclement, and the regimental commander Qom led the SS to the death, both sides killed the red eye, and Qom's regimental headquarters participated in the battle.
On the 27th, the Soviets airdropped hundreds of paratroopers into the German encirclement, and as a result, the bad weather made it impossible for the paratroopers to assemble, and the paratroopers who were dropped were sent to the head, and the Soviets had to stop parachuting. On the 28th, at Modell's urging, the 46th Motorized Army launched an offensive, and although the armored units dispatched were some old-fashioned Panzer III tanks and even captured T-34 tanks, these tanks were a major killer for the exhausted Soviet army, and the 46th Army quickly cut off the supply lines of the besieged Soviet army.
German machine gunner in the snow and ice
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="79" > volga miracle</h1>
The encircled Soviets launched tidal offensives again and again, with Modell commanding troops to stop the Soviet breakout at all costs, and occasionally a few small Soviet troops broke through the defensive line, but the vast majority of the Soviets were trapped dead. The bloody attack and defense also made the German army feel difficult, Modell stopped compressing the encirclement, dismantled the reserve into small units, and supported wherever there was a crisis, ensuring that the German troops in each place could be reinforced at the first time.
The Soviet Air Force kept dropping airdrops at the besieged Soviets, but they only knew how to airdrop weapons and ammunition, and forgot to airdrop items for heating. The Soviet breakthrough was uncoordinated and inefficient, the valuable armored forces blindly rushed to the German positions, were eliminated one by one by the hidden German assault guns, and the guerrillas in the jungle constantly harassed the Germans, for which Modell slaughtered almost all the civilians in the encirclement and reported them as exterminated guerrillas.
Soviet forces in the counterattack
As the Germans on all fronts stopped retreating, there were more offensive forces on the front lines, and shorter supply lines allowed the Germans to get supplies faster. Modell's 9th Army was reinforced, and his old forces, the 41st Army and the 56th Army, were placed under his command, with a total of 24 divisions for him to call.
In order to achieve the final victory, Modell needed to launch a decisive attack. He mobilized the logistics, engineers, and air forces in the rear and turned them into combat groups with the field troops. With these units, Modell launched an attack on the Soviet 29th Army on February 5, and the Soviet army, which was about to freeze in the ice and snow, was unable to resist and collapsed all the way.
The 39th Army was also in a semi-encircled state. Stalin mobilized two Guards infantry divisions, seven infantry divisions, and four aviation regiments to supplement the Kalinin Front. Konev ordered the 30th Army to storm the German lines to open a gap to meet the besieged Soviets, but with little success.
On 17 February, the besieged Soviets basically collapsed, launching wave after wave of suicide attacks on the Germans, one by one, being wiped out by the Germans. It was also on this day that Modell received the Knight's Cross of the Silver Oak Leaf.
The next day he issued a directive to the 9th Army, stating that "after weeks of arduous fighting, the 9th Army has wiped out the Russian Army Group that has broken through our lines" and that "the feats you have created from the winter of 1941 to 1942 will be recorded in the history of our great Germanic nation." SS commander-in-chief Hauser called the victory a "Volga miracle" and believed that "the final victory modell deserves a great credit".
Hauser
On February 20, the 9th Army reported the results of the battle, saying that the Soviet 29th Army was completely annihilated, most of the 39th Army was annihilated, 6 infantry divisions were completely annihilated, 4 to 9 infantry divisions were severely damaged, 5 tank brigades were wiped out, 4888 Soviet troops were captured, 26647 Soviet troops were killed, 187 tanks were destroyed or captured, and countless other supplies were captured. The 9th Army suffered more than 5,000 casualties, and 90 percent of its front-line combat forces were depleted. The Führer regiment of the Imperial SS Division suffered heavy losses, leaving only a few dozen wounded soldiers.
This time the Battle of Lezhev brought to the fame of the Master of the Modell Defense, he attached great importance to reconnaissance, in addition to sending reconnaissance troops, he often went to the front line himself to understand the state of the front line as much as possible. However, the "elastic defense" later known as "elastic defense" was not actually Modell's original, and the German army used this tactic in World War I, that is, to establish multiple lines of defense, and when the first line of defense was difficult to support, it withdrew to the rear front, so that artillery and reserves could deal with the enemy who had worked hard to break through the first line of defense and launch a counterattack.
Modell made changes on this basis, dispersing the original concentrated tanks to various defense lines and cooperating with the infantry to launch a counterattack, which greatly improved the success rate of the counterattack. At the same time, his prestige among the officers and men made his orders executed to the letter, especially his style of fighting desperately regardless of casualties, and his extremely high requirements for the loyalty of officers and soldiers.
A major factor that cannot be ignored in Modell's victory is that the Soviet soldiers who have just experienced the defense of Moscow and launched a large-scale counterattack are not of high quality, and the cooperation is not tacit enough, and at stalin's urging, they do not take a break to attack continuously, resulting in an excessively long front, a lack of supplies on the front line, and although they broke through the German front, they were weak in succession and unable to break through the core position of the German army.
The so-called heroes of current events, the German army in crisis, the tired Soviet army, gave Modell the opportunity to play, and the Fuehrer's trust in him allowed him to let go of his hands and feet and win at a critical moment.