The Austro-Hungarian Revolutions
Chapter IV – The Empire Strikes Back
January 4th, 1936
Heinz Guderian was smiling like a schoolboy who had gotten away with something forbidden. He was standing in the turret of a Sturmpanzerwagen II, one in nearly three hundred that were piled up along a five kilometre section of the Moravian front, just north of Bratislava. He was dressed in an Austrian field uniform complete with a
feldgrau greatcoat and thick lambskin gloves to fend of the cold, which made his breath form little puffs. Neither his running red nose or his uncomfortably high and stiff collar, adorned with the single silver star on gold lace of a Major-General (rather than the three gold stars on silver lace of a Colonel) could bring down his mood on this hallmark day. He was going into combat again, for the first time in nearly twenty years, and he was doing it at the head of his very own division; and in more than one sense.
The Panzer-Division “Radetzky” was his own brainchild from start to finish, one that Kaiser Otto I had been kind enough to allow him to put together after listening to his unconventional ideas. He had even given him an Austrian rank of Major-General to go with his divisional command. As a core, the Kaiser had agreed to give him three dragoon regiments, the 3rd, 4th, and 11th. Lacking motorised infantry, Heinz considered Dragoons, or mounted infantry, as the next best thing. He also had two of the Austrian Army’s three Panzer Brigades, which after a refit with German equipment in the last month (they had lost almost all their vehicles during the long retreat) numbered some 300 Sturmpanzerwagen II. Add to this some horse-drawn divisional artillery, and Heinz thought he had a decently mobile force. Had he had proper panzers to work with, like the ones the Russians or the French made instead of these bi-turreted leviathans, cavalry could never have kept up with the Panzers, but at least he was faster than leg infantry. On the down side, the “Division” lacked cohesion, and Heinz knew it. A few weeks of training together had not been anywhere near enough to make it much more than the sum of its parts. He would have to run a very tight ship, allowing a minimum of discretion to subordinate commanders that hadn’t got the proper training to be able to exercise it, but this was his Great Chance. If he could win victories with this mongrel unit, built along lines dismissed by the General Staff, then maybe they would re-examine his theories on force concentration in armoured warfare – the
Schwerpunkt Doctrine. Not even single-handedly winning the war could have pushed his more controversial doctrinal ideas, what he lovingly referred to as the
Blitzkrieg doctrine, through the dim skulls of the dinosaurs holding the General and Field Marshal ranks of the German Imperial Army, but one thing at the time.
He looked at his wristwatch – 5:59 AM. In about one minute his divisional artillery commander, Colonel Freiherr von Söller, would give the order to fire – that is, if he had bothered to synchronise his watch properly. Just in case he hadn’t, Guderian had decided to order his frontline units to attack once artillery had opened up, rather than order an advance at a given hour. He REALLY didn’t want his men slaughtered by friendly fire, or by an unsuppressed foe. Austrian
Schlamperei grated on Heinz’s Prussian nerves more than any other of their national traits, but he had learned to accept it as just another obstacle to plan around. The Austrian officers did, and got things done, somehow. Heinz wasn’t sure if they could do something on time if they really wanted to. For a while, he had had his doubts, like when he called a meeting of his subordinate officers the day he took command and threatened to sack anyone showing up late on that reason alone. They must have realized he was bluffing. Either that or they were simply unable to keep an appointment with more exactitude than give or take five minutes, even if their careers were riding on it.
The Panzer Division was not the only one whose guns would open up at 6:00 AM. As a part of the generalised counteroffensive planned on the basis of his and General Rommel’s advice, all Austrian units north and south of Brno would begin a concerted offensive against the Moravian city at that time. In Croatia, a twin counterattack was in the making as well, at least if the Ustasha troops could be made to obey orders from the Imperial General Staff, which remained to be seen.
It was time. Heinz looked over his shoulder, and after a few seconds, the entire horizon seemed to light up, as hundreds of tubes began to vomit shells over the enemy lines.
Schlamperei or not, the Austrian artillery officers were doing their job with split-second precision. Heinz waved his hand forward, and all around him, Sturmpanzer IIs started up their engines, belching thin gray smoke. When the sound of the massive barrage, resembling the low-pitch rumble of rolling thunder reached Heinz’s Panzer, it was already rolling forward. A few hundred metres behind, thousands of horsemen in uniforms that still retained far too much colour prodded their mounts into a trot and then a canter to keep up with the tracks. The attack was on.
***
‘Gunner, AT-gun, eleven o’clock, 500 meters! Driver, full stop!’
The commanders voice, carried trough the auriculars of the headpiece cut through the deafening engine noise inside the Sturmpanzer. Even before the noise subsided and the track slowly came to a halt, Kurt was frantically turning the traverse wheel and peering through his Zeiss sights. There it was all right, a Soviet made 45mm PstK sloppily camouflaged by snow walls – a nasty little anti-track piece which could send a 1,4 kg projectile flying their way at 760m/sec. Kurt wasn’t about to let it do that. Quickly he adjusted the sight for range and placed the cross hairs over the enemy gun.
‘Loaded HE, target acquired’
‘Fire!’
Kurt pressed the trigger, all the sixteen tons of the Sturmpanzerwagen II trembled slightly as the gun recoiled. An acrid cordite fume invaded the fighting compartment. It took the shell the better part of a second to reach its mark, but it fell short – an orange flash, and a fountain of black dirt and smoke obscured the Red gun.
‘Miss, loading HE!
Kurt was already reaching for a new 6,8 kg HE shell from the shelves surrounding him on all sides. Once he realized he’d be riding into battle encased in high explosives, he had become much less cavalier about the safety provided by a few centimetres of steel. When he enlisted, trackers had seemed an invulnerable lot compared to the poor foot infantry, the proverbial cannon fodder. It was only after having commenced training that he heard the saying going “trackers are buried in groups of 18”. That, of course, applied to the old Sturmpanzer A7U that had been in German service in the years after the Great War and soldiered on in Austria into the early 30s. Nowadays, the saying spoke about groups of six; commander, gunner/loader, driver, front machine-gunner, mechanic/wireless operator and rear machine-gunner, but it was still a sobering thing to remember for cocky young Panzer crews who forgot that their main task in combat was to draw fire from the infantry.
Kurt, fine-limbed and intelligent from a well to-do Viennese family, was not the ideal gunner, since he lacked the brute strength for easily hauling the heavy shells when loading the gun. Since enlisting three months ago, he had grown considerably more muscular, but it had been at the price of pain and more pain. Not surprisingly, he considered it an idiotic design decision to have the gunner also serve as loader of the main weapon. The turret should have had place for a dedicated loader, who would only need strength to qualify for the job. As it was, gunners were a hard lot to find, since the combination of strength and accuracy was rare.
He pushed the heavy white-nosed HE shell into the breech of his gun and slammed it shut. Then the Red AT-gun returned fire. A glancing hit ricocheted off the turret, making the sound of a giant hammer hitting the steel. Everyone in the crew winced, but since they hadn’t died, continued what they were doing.
‘Loaded HE!’ Kurt yelled, correcting his aim slightly. There was no answer. Maybe the shot had disabled the intercom? He went ahead and fired anyway, certain that the Commander would approve of not giving the enemy gun an opportunity to fire again. This time he scored a hit, or near enough not to matter. The PstK gun was thrown sideways by the force of the blast, the crew faring considerable worse.
‘Hit!’ Still no answer from the commander. Kurt turned in his chair to look at
Leutenant Maier, and immediately realised why there had been no reply. As it ricocheted of the turret, the enemy AT shell had torn Maier’s head clean off his shoulder. Mesmerized, the young gunner stared at the film of blood drenching the front of the dead commander’s uniform.
‘The Commander is dead!’ shouted Kurt over the intercom.
Szaba, the rear gunner, swore loudly in his native Hungarian, before stating quite calmly; ‘Well, Corporal Waldheim, I believe you’re the ranking soldier in the vehicle. What are your orders?’
Kurt’s mouth hanged open in a most undignified manner. Him, commander of a Panzer?
‘Kurt, the
Hauptman is screaming at us to get going again!’ the radio operator reported.
The imperatives of the situation overrode his indecision. ‘All right, I’m taking command of the Panzer. Szaba, get up here and take over the cannon, and bring your headpiece! Jörg… sorry, I mean Radio, answer
Hauptman Fromm, inform them about the death of
Leutenant Maier. Driver, half speed forward!’
He unplugged his headpiece and climbed to crouch in front of the commander’s chair. Carefully, Kurt removed the limp body of his commanding officer and laid it to rest on the floor of the turret fighting compartment. Climbing into that blood-spattered chair seemed like the worst idea of his short life, but he had little choice – within seconds, his head was sticking out of the turret hatch, the gelid January winds hitting his face like a slap. Outside, the roar of the engine mixed with the constant thunder of artillery and sharp clatter of machineguns to form an almost overwhelming curtain of sound. Yellow tracer rounds were flying with apparent slowness over the white fields of Moravia, and far ahead, a burning Brno was painting the led-grey clouds blood red. Kurt took it all in a stride, and started to look for threats. All around him were the ponderous machines of Panzer Division "Radetzky", motoring fast over the open fields – the front had been shattered and they were now driving into a void. It was terrifying, and yet exhilarating. Kurt Waldheim, Panzer Commander. He liked how that sounded.
