Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

The Soviet general staff had not anticipated a direct threat to Leningrad from the southwest and the only remaining armour in the area belonged to General-leytenant Markian M. Popov’s Northern Front, which was tasked with defending the city from the Finns. Popov had two armoured formations at his disposal: General-major Ivan G. Lazarev’s 10th Mechanized Corps stationed around Leningrad, and General-major Mikhail L. Cherniavsky’s 1st Mechanized Corps stationed near Pskov. Lazarev’s corps was essentially a training command with some 450 light tanks and it was tasked to operate in Karelia against the Finns. By the time the Finns declared war on 25 June, the entire 10th Mechanized Corps was deployed on the Finnish front. Popov was more concerned about the Finns than the Germans and, just prior to the German invasion, he had ordered the 1st Mechanized Corps to transfer its 1st Tank Division by rail to the Soviet 14th Army at Kandalaksha, near the northern Finnish border. On the first day of the war, Popov decided to move the rest of Cherniavsky’s 1st Mechanized Corps from Pskov back to Pushkin, where it could provide additional support against the Finns. Although Cherniavsky had no T-34 or KV tanks, he did have two full-strength mechanized divisions with a total of 550 tanks. If his corps had remained at Pskov, they would have been in an excellent position to block Höpner’s panzers; instead, the 1st Mechanized Corps was moved away from the approaching German forces.

The march of Cherniavsky’s 1st Mechanized Corps from Pskov toward Leningrad on 22–24 June was indicative of the dysfunctional nature of Soviet armoured operations at the start of the war, even when conducted without enemy resistance. Despite the lack of harassment from the Luftwaffe and the relatively good roads leading to Leningrad, the 1st Mechanized Corps road march was a debacle. Large numbers of tanks fell out from mechanical defects and traffic control was non-existent. No repair or recovery assets were attached to the convoys to deal with broken-down vehicles, which were simply abandoned at the roadside. A number of regimental, battalion and company commanders regarded the move to Pskov as an administrative rather than tactical movement and travelled separately from their troops. Left poorly supervised, Soviet tankers were undisciplined and left the march columns without permission. After two days on the road, the corps had barely moved 100km and was so thoroughly scattered that Popov ordered Cherniavsky to reassemble his corps at Krasnogvardeysk (Gatchina). Once there, Popov began to detach individual battalions and then the 163rd Motorized Division from the 21st Mechanized Corps, in order to support his operations against the Finns.

However, by late June it was obvious that the Northwestern Front had been defeated in Lithuania and that German panzer forces were racing across Latvia. On 29 June, Zhukov personally intervened by transferring the 1st Mechanized Corps from Popov’s command to the Northwestern Front, and Cherniavsky was ordered to force-march back to Ostrov. Zhukov also wanted the 1st Tank Division returned from the Finnish front, but Popov managed to delay this for nearly three weeks. Instead, Cherniavsky marched to Ostrov to confront Höpner with the 3rd Tank Division, the only major unit still under his command. Once again, an administrative road march was plagued with difficulties and after five days Cherniavsky’s armour was still about 60km from Ostrov. During this time, Kuznetsov was relieved of command on 3 July and General-major Petr P. Sobennikov took over command of the Northwestern Front.

While Cherniavsky was crawling toward Ostrov, Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) was racing toward the Russian border. Generalleutnant Friedrich Kirchner’s 1.Panzer-Division easily penetrated through the Stalin Line fortifications on the border and Kampfgruppe Krüger fought its way into Ostrov late on 4 July. Krüger’s troops even managed to capture the bridges in the city over the Velikaya River intact. Höpner’s advance upon Ostrov was aided by the ability of Heeresgruppe Nord’s quartermasters to move fuel and ammunition forward rapidly.

Cherniavsky’s 1st Mechanized Corps versus Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.); Soviet 3rd Tank Division counterattack against 1.Panzer-Division at Ostrov, 5–6 July and delay back to Pskov, 7–9 July.

When Sobennikov learned that Ostrov had fallen, he ordered Cherniavsky to force-march his armour to the city and, in conjunction with the 41st Rifle Corps, attack early on 5 July. To reinforce the attack, Cherniavsky was provided with ten new KV heavy tanks straight from the factory in Leningrad and was promised air support.