Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Once the German Stossgruppen reached the northern perimeter of Fort Stalin, Heyer’s pioneers took over and began to blast holes in the barbed wire. The three machine-gun bunkers could not cover this angle, so the obstacle was only defended by small-arms fire. By 0400hrs several groups of German infantry had entered the perimeter and begun to assault each bunker with hand grenades and satchel charges. It turned out that the Soviets had reinforced their positions with tree trunks, which absorbed a great amount of any blast. In one case, soldiers from Schrader’s battalion simply piled large stones against a bunker door, sealing the occupants within. German pioneers had some success using smoke grenades to flush Soviet troops out of underground shelters, who were mostly shot down as they emerged. Only 14 prisoners were taken on Fort Stalin.⁶⁰ The assault guns were able to approach and engage some of the outer timber fighting positions and blast them with 7.5cm high-explosive rounds, but they could not reach the three inner machine-gun bunkers. Instead, the Germans brought up their Panzerjäger team, who dragged a 3.7cm Pak gun up the hill and through one of the breaches. Using the new Stielgranate 41 hollow-charge round, they attacked each bunker from behind at a range of only 15 yards and blew their back doors off. Close combat and hand-to-hand fighting continued within Fort Stalin’s small perimeter for 90 minutes, but by 0530 Soviet resistance was broken. A few Soviet positions, including Pyanzin’s command bunker, held out for another ten hours. Pyanzin maintained a tenuous radio link with his battalion headquarters and he requested artillery fire on his own position, for which he later received the Hero of the Soviet Union. However, Heyer’s pioneers gradually moved in and blew in the sides of his bunker around 1530hrs, silencing Pyanzin forever.

The assault troops had suffered heavily, and every officer in Major Arndt’s battalion was either dead or wounded, so Choltitz sent the battalion adjutant, Oberleutnant Bringewatt, up the hill to reorganize the survivors. It is axiomatic that after seizing a well-defended position, the attackers must immediately prepare a hasty defense and reorganize their depleted forces, lest an enemy counterattack retake the position before the victors have regained their composure. It was not long before the Soviets realized that Fort Stalin had fallen. Fort Volga, located 465 yards southwest of Stalin, began to fire mortars and antitank fire at the Germans, who were now visible in the light of dawn. Three assault guns were quickly hit – one being destroyed – and the others were obliged to withdraw back down the hill. Yet the 2nd Battalion/1165th Rifle Regiment, which was located at Fort Volga, made no effort to intervene in the fight for Fort Stalin. Around 0630hrs a small Soviet counterattack was launched out of the “Wolf’s Ravine” on the east side of Stalin, but was repulsed with machine-gun fire from Nahrwold’s support group. Soviet divisional artillery batteries also began to pound Fort Stalin, and this fire killed Hauptmann Schrader, who had previously been awarded the Ritterkreuz. Choltitz declared Fort Stalin secured around 0700hrs although mopping-up continued for the rest of the day. The assault had cost his regiment 32 killed, 136 wounded, and two missing – about half of the infantry committed. Virtually all of the German infantry officers in the attack had become casualties, including Arndt. By noon, Arndt’s I./IR 16 had only 45 infantrymen still combatready on the objective out of the 105 that began the attack. Companies were reduced to just 15–17 soldiers, led by a Feldwebel.⁶¹ Surprisingly, Generalmajor Wolff made his way to the top of the exposed hill in order to congratulate the assault troops and to personally hand out iron crosses to the survivors, including Hauptmann Cäsar.⁶² In contrast, Petrov was so far removed from this critical point that he failed to realize how weak the Germans were on Fort Stalin, and thus failed to launch even a battalion-size counterattack from nearby positions, even though Guz’s 345th Rifle Division still had plenty of troops in the area. It is apparent that German senior leadership at Sevastopol was more “hands-on” than on the Soviet side, and that this contributed to the outcome.