NINE GERMANS CAPTURE BELGRADE

The Magician, Balkans, 11th April 1941 by David Pentland.
Hauptsturm fuhrer Fritz Klingenberg, and the men of 2nd SS Divisions Motorcycle Reconnaissance battalion stop at the swollen banks of the River Danube. The following day he and six men, a broken down radio, and totally unsupported were to capture the Yugoslavian capital of Belgrade.

Early in 1941, the mighty German Wehrmacht was stalled in the west at the English Channel, but Adolf Hitler and his generals were already putting the final touches on Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Führer was planning on conquering North Africa to reach his dream of a Teutonic empire in the Middle East.

Success in these two huge endeavors hinged on the nations of the Balkans, and Hitler wooed Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary into his fold. Then, through only slightly veiled threats, Prince Peter of Yugoslavia agreed to become Hitler’s ally, signing a pact with the Third Reich on March 24, 1941.

In London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was both furious and worried. Prince Peter had assured the British leader that Yugoslavia would remain neutral. So British agents in the capital of Belgrade coerced anti-Nazi Yugoslavian army and air force officers into launching an armed rebellion. Key points were seized in Belgrade, including the palace, where King Peter II was arrested and hustled off to exile in Greece.

General Dusan Simovic´, whose office in the Air Ministry had been the core of opposition to German penetration of Yugoslavia, took over the reins of government. When the sun set that day, the coup had been accomplished without bloodshed.

In Berlin, Hitler was fuming. He ordered his generals to “destroy Yugoslavia militarily and as a national unit.” He directed that the Luftwaffe bomb Belgrade with “unmerciful harshness.”

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the diminutive, white-haired chief of the Abwehr who was in league with the British, learned of the forthcoming bombardment, code-named Operation Punishment, and secretly warned Yugoslav leaders. Consequently, Belgrade was declared an open city, for centuries a term meaning a place that was not going to be defended; therefore, it should be spared destruction.

On the morning of April 6, 1941, the Luftwaffe struck. In an action that lasted for three days and nights, Belgrade was devastated. Some 17,000 civilians were dead in the rubble. A sickening stench of death hovered over the once beautiful city of about a half-million population.

Hard on the heels of the massive Luftwaffe assault, German panzer and infantry divisions surged into Yugoslavia from three sides and raced toward Belgrade.

On the morning of April 12, a motorcycle assault company of the SS Das Reich Panzer Division approached the city along the northern bank of the Danube River at the eastern outskirts. The flood-swollen river seemed a barrier to the ravaged capital because the bridge over which the motorcycle vanguard had hoped to move had been blown up by the Yugoslavs.

Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Hauptsturmführer (SS Captain) Fritz Klingenberg could see the prize off in the distance, and he was determined to try to reach it even though he was far out in front with only a relative handful of men.

A diligent search turned up one motorboat, and in mid-afternoon, Klingenberg, along with a platoon leader, two sergeants, and five privates, scrambled into the small boat and headed for the far bank. Although nearly swamped by the raging river several times, the craft made the crossing. The SS men jumped onto the sandy shore, and Klingenberg waved his men onward, bound on a seemingly impossible task—capturing the sprawling capital with only himself and eight men.

Klingenberg banked on two factors—stealth and surprise. The Yugoslavs were still bogged down in confusion from the Luftwaffe bombing, and they wouldn’t be expecting to encounter a tiny band of German soldiers in the center of the city. The scenario unfolded almost precisely as the SS captain had envisioned.

Soon after leaving their motorboat, the SS group ran onto a contingent of twenty Yugoslavian soldiers. Shocked to encounter an enemy force in Belgrade, they surrendered without firing a shot. Minutes later, several military trucks loaded with soldiers approached the Germans, who fired a few rounds, and the mesmerized Yugoslavians capitulated.

The gods of war were still smiling on Klingenberg. One of the prisoners was an ethnic German who volunteered to be a guide and interpreter.

Taking over the captured trucks, Klingenberg and his eight soldiers headed for the Yugoslavian war ministry, but they found it an empty shell: the high command apparently had fled. So the SS men drove to the German legation, where the military attaché, who had remained during the Luftwaffe bombardment, greeted the newcomers enthusiastically. He was astonished, however, to learn that Klingenberg and only a few men had been masquerading as the entire potent Das Reich Panzer Division.

If the military attaché was stunned, no doubt Yugoslavian civilian authorities would also believe that an entire German division had penetrated the city. So Klingenberg launched a bold bluff. A Nazi swastika flag was run up the legation’s flagpole, and Klingenberg sent a Yugoslavian civilian to contact the mayor and tell him that Belgrade was in control of the Das Reich Division.

Two hours later, the mayor and several of his top officials arrived at the German legation to formally surrender. The trick had worked magnificently. It was not until the next day that panzers roared into Belgrade to back up Klingenberg and his eight men.

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There was some confusion over who had captured Belgrade since three separate attacks were converging on the Yugoslav capital. The 8th Panzer Division, part of the German 2nd Army, was off the air for nearly 24 hours and then at 11.52 on April 15 the division's operations officer reported: "During the night the 8.Panzer-Division drove into Belgrade, occupied the city, and hoisted the Swastika flag".

However, the 2nd Army had better communications with Panzergruppe 1, who signalled before the 8th Panzer Division: "Panzergruppe von Kleist has taken Belgrade from the south. Patrols of Infanterie-Regiment 'Gross Deutschland' have entered the city from the north. With General von Kleist at the head, the 11 Panzer-Division has been rolling into the capital since 06.32".

Finnish Forces in Barbarossa II

The development of a staff study by Group XXI (Army of Norway) for operations in Finland based on Directive 21. The study was expanded by Marshal von Brauchitsch on January 16 to include examining the feasibility of a German–Finnish southeast drive in the area of Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega, and the White Sea. The Army of Norway was asked to make recommendations for supply operations and command relationships. This study, begun in late December, was completed on January 27, 1941, and given the code name Silberfuchs (Silver Fox).

The Finnish Army would carry the main burden of the attack. The bulk of their forces would be concentrated in the southeast for an attack east of Lake Ladoga towards the Svir River. The Finnish Army was to defend the frontier north of Lake Ladoga with relatively weak forces, and additionally was responsible for the security of the coast and the Åland Islands. The staff study assumed that the overall command in Finland would be given to the Finns because they were providing the preponderance of forces.

The planning and preparation for Renntier was not wasted, but expanded by making it part of the operations assigned to Mountain Corps Norway. The main German attack was a drive from Rovaniemi through Salla to Kandalaksha on the White Sea. This drive would cut the Murmansk Railroad and sever lines of communication between Soviet forces in Murmansk and on the Kola Peninsula from the rest of the Soviet Union.

The forces allocated to the main drive consisted of one German and one Finnish corps. The German corps—XXXVI Corps—consisted of two infantry divisions and SS Kampfgruppe Nord reinforced by a tank battalion, a machinegun battalion, an antitank battalion, an artillery battalion, and engineers. Kampfgruppe Nord would provide security for the assembly of the two infantry divisions. Part of the German forces would turn north when they reached Kandalaksha. In conjunction with one reinforced mountain division advancing from Pechenga towards Murmansk, the forces that turned north would destroy the Soviet forces on the Kola Peninsula and capture Murmansk.

The Finnish corps—III Corps—consisted of two divisions (3rd and 6th) plus border guards. Its main mission was to launch a secondary attack on the German right flank against Ukhta (Uhtua) and then on towards Kem (Kemi) on the White Sea. This drive, if successful, would also cut the Murmansk Railroad. The bulk of the German forces advancing on Kandalaksha would turn south after reaching that town and link up with the Finns in the Kem area for a joint drive southward behind the left wing of the main Finnish Army.

The operations proposed in the Silberfuchs staff study assumed that Sweden would allow German troops and supplies to cross its territory from Norway to Finland. It was planned that five divisions (later increased to seven) would be left in Norway for its defense and that the Army of Norway would supply all German units. This would involve large supply, construction, and transportation assets and many of these would have to come from Germany.

The OKH Operation Order

The German Army issued an operation order at the end of January for operations in Finland using the Army of Norway staff study as its basis. Hitler approved the order on February 3, 1941.

The OKH order assigned the defense of Norway as the highest priority of the Army of Norway. Only forces over and above the requirement for the priority mission would be used in Finland where the mission of German forces was limited to the defense of the Pechanga area until Finland entered the war. At that time the order laid out two possible courses of action. The first was that proposed in the Army of Norway staff study, while the second would come into being if Sweden refused transit of troops. If this materialized, the Germans would launch an attack through Pechenga with the mission of capturing Murmansk.

As far as the mission of the Finnish Army, some disagreements had developed and certain things remained unresolved. Finnish participation in the planning had been indirect and remained so because Hitler’s order on February 3, 1941 specified that all potential allies should be brought into the planning process only when German intentions could no longer be disguised. The Army order gave the Finnish Army the mission of covering German deployments in central Finland and the capturing of Hanko. The Germans wanted the bulk of the Finnish Army to undertake offensive operations towards the southeast when German Army Group North crossed the Dvina River. The Germans accepted offensives on both sides of Lake Ladoga as long as the main effort was made on the east side of that lake. The Finnish Army was expected to make a sweep around the eastern shore of the lake and isolate Leningrad by affecting a junction with Army Group North in the Tikhvin area.

The Generalissimo and Operation Ichigo I

Dai Li reported that the Japanese High Command was deploying 150,000 troops south from Manchuria and North China and rebuilding a bridge over the Yellow River. The troops were presumably moving to join a major offensive in central and east China, probably sometime in the coming months. This operation, called Ichigo, would eventually involve half a million well-armed frontline Japanese soldiers, the largest number of troops ever used in a campaign in Japanese history.

The reason for Ichigo was the destruction of the Japanese merchant fleet down to 77 percent of its prewar level, which was seriously restricting Japan’s importation of raw materials from Southeast Asia. Strategists in Tokyo hoped to solve the crisis by creating a continental corridor linking Japanese- occupied territories from Korea to Manchuria, through North, Central, and South China down to Indochina, and then through Thailand and Malaya to Singapore. Such a corridor would require uninterrupted control of the railways between Hanoi and Peking and to Dalian in Manchuria. The plan would in effect expand Japanese-occupied China west and southwest, thereby securing the empire’s rear and allowing raw materials (such as oil, minerals, and possibly food) as well as troops to be transported from China and Southeast Asia to the port of Pusan in Korea and then across the narrow Tsushima Straits to Japan. The sizable territorial gains that the plan required would also result in the destruction of Chennault’s new airfields. On April 6, Chiang received intelligence reporting that Japan’s goal was not just to destroy the easternmost airfields but to open up “the Big [Dalian to Hanoi] Asian Railway.”  

Consequently, while the Germans were retreating on every front in Europe and the Japanese were falling back in the Pacific, the Imperial Army was planning its biggest offensive of the war in China, bigger than anything MacArthur had faced. In Chungking as in the other Allied capitals there was increasing talk about the possible collapse of Hitler’s regime sometime during 1944. Chiang assumed that at Tehran Stalin had agreed to enter the war against Japan after Germany’s surrender, although the Allies had not informed him of this. Once in control of Manchuria and possibly Peking and Tianjin, Chiang thought, the Soviets would “talk tough and ask for a regional [CCP-dominated] government and regional autonomy.” But there was nothing at the moment he could do about it. In Yan’an, arguments for serious CCP cooperation with the Kuomintang lost what little force they had retained among the Chinese Communists. In Politburo meetings in December, Zhou again admitted his “capitulationist” (proKMT) views.

Chennault warned Chiang that the expected Japanese offensive in central China was imminent and would eventually extend into Hunan and Guangxi. The Y Force, he thought, would be needed to resist the enormous Japanese attack. Stilwell’s recurrently inaccurate intelligence office in Chungking issued an “emphatic dissent” to the prediction of a massive Japanese offensive. Stilwell informed Chennault that “the current crisis in [Imphal] India” had priority and he instructed the air officer not to send the Generalissimo “a gloomy estimate of the military situation” in China. Only when Chennault’s pilots spotted 239 Japanese troop trains steaming south and west did Stilwell’s Chungking headquarters finally conclude that a major offensive was indeed imminent. On April 17, the Japanese 37th Division, with hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, crossed the Yellow River on repaired bridges and rolled across the flat Henan wheat fields. Their goal was to sweep away the Chinese forces between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, clearing the rail lines between Peking and Wuhan. The motley forces of General Tang Enbo’s First War Zone fell back in disarray, but the 28th and 31st Army Groups held on at the key city of Luoyang. For good or bad, the Generalissimo was on the phone personally directing the defense. He also appealed to Stilwell, his chief of staff, for five hundred tons of gasoline from the B-29 stores to fuel Chennault’s fighters supporting the Luoyang defenders, but Stilwell, believing that the Generalissimo had brought the situation on himself, declined.

The Chinese divisions in Henan fought as usual with no armor or motor pool, a few old cannon, and for every three soldiers two old, mostly Chinese-made rifles. The only advantage the Chinese fighters inside China enjoyed was tactical air support from the ninety or so operational planes of Chennault’s 14th Air Force that had been assigned to Chinese army operations inside China. The Luoyang defenders resisted for fifteen days, losing 21,000 Chinese soldiers and officers before Chiang’s withdrawal order came.

During the night of May 11, as the collapse in Henan proceeded, the 72,000-man Y Force waded across the Salween River in western Yunnan province to link up with Stilwell. According to the American liaison officers, the Chinese expedition, with its up-to-date equipment and extensive tactical air support, fought well and bravely. Scattered downpours soon merged into the near constant torrential rain of the monsoon. But U.S. planes dropped supplies and ammunition and the Chinese slogged on. At the same time, Stilwell’s Chinese divisions and Merrill’s Marauders, all battling mud and floods, reached the outskirts of Myitkyina.

Despite the rains, Stilwell was hopeful that his five Chinese divisions could soon link up with General Wei’s twelve “Y” divisions to the east. But in mid-June, Wei’s effort to seize Long Ling, the center of the Japanese line on the Salween front, collapsed when a counterattack by only 1,500 Japanese troops drove back 10,000 Chinese fighters. Chiang was extremely angry and demanded that Wei “spare no effort” to renew the attack and capture Long Ling. Chiang ordered two more Chinese armies from North China to join Wei’s force in Burma. These armies were desperately needed in the Ninth and Fourth war zones, which were awaiting the next phase of the grand Japanese offensive. By diverting them south, Chiang again demonstrated his commitment to an Allied victory in Burma.

American pilots continued to report that elite Japanese units from Manchuria were still pouring down the newly occupied rail line into Wuhan. Chennault again appealed to Stilwell to use his emergency authority to divert supplies, transport capacity, and combat elements of the B-29 command to meet the emergency in East China. Stilwell responded that “until the emergency is unmistakable, the decision will have to wait.” Two days later, the Japanese Sixth Army surged out of the Wuhan bulge into Hunan while smaller forces advanced from Canton and Vietnam. This second stage of Ichigo threatened to seize most of Hunan, which was the main rice bowl for Free China, as well as the bases of the 14th Air Force in Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangxi. The pilots of Chennault’s 23rd Group flew three to four missions a day through and under the weather. They wreaked havoc among the Japanese, but their losses were horrendous—equaling or surpassing that of U.S. bomber groups in Europe. Nearly half the pilots of this group of three squadrons were killed or taken prisoner that summer, among them three squadron commanders.