Hitler's Commanders by Jr. Samuel W. Mitcham

morning of June 14, marching down the Champs-Elysees in parade formation. Kuechler, however, was always prouder of his capture of Dunkirk than of the French capital, which was already doomed before 18th Army was committed and fell virtually without opposition.
    General von Kuechler had performed brilliantly in the campaign of 1940, often leading his men from the sidecar of a motorcycle, frequently exposing himself to enemy fire in order to help wounded enlisted men—a habit well calculated to inspire admiration in the ranks. His men loved him for these demonstrations of the compassion he felt for them. For his services in Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, Kuechler was promoted to colonel general on July 19, 1940. Then he was sent back to Poland, to guard the Reich’s new eastern borders against the Soviets. During Operation Barbarossa, his 18th Army formed the left wing of the German invasion, conquered the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), and, on Hitler’s orders, laid siege to Leningrad. When Ritter von Leeb asked to be relieved, he was replaced by Georg von Kuechler on January 17, 1942.
    When Kuechler took command of Army Group North, the situation was already desperate. He controlled the 18th Army (General Georg Lindemann) and the 16th Army (Colonel General Ernst Busch), which together faced 12 Soviet armies. Kuechler had virtually no reserves, and his exhausted men had very little winter equipment or clothing in temperatures that dropped to 49 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Kuechler simply did not have the forces to man a continuous line, so he made the winter campaign in the northern sector a battle for the major crossroads, reasoning that the Soviets would not be able to resupply their spearheads once the spring thaw set in if he continued to hold these key positions. This strategy took considerable nerve, but Kuechler pulled it off.
    The fighting centered on Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Kholm, and Demyansk. Because Hitler had forbidden withdrawals, Kholm was encircled on January 21 and Demyansk was surrounded on February 8. Both garrisons were resupplied by the Luftwaffe despite terrible losses. At Staraya Russa, the Soviets were thrown back only after hand-to-hand fighting in the streets.
    Kuechler resorted to many improvised and patchwork measures to hold his strongpoints and to limit or seal off breakthroughs. He created ad hoc battalions of Latvian volunteers, used service troops and Luftwaffe ground units as infantry, and weakened several sectors (and took the risk of more Soviet breakthroughs) to reinforce key strongpoints. By early March, however, it became evident that he had mastered the crisis, and his front was more or less stabilized. Now he began a series of counterattacks aimed at destroying Soviet penetrations and rescuing the surrounded garrisons.
    On March 15, Kuechler began an offensive on either side of the Soviet’s Volkhov salient. Four days later two Soviet armies were cut off. The battle to collapse the pocket was fierce, and fighting continued until July, but in the end 17 Red Army divisions were destroyed. Most of the defenders were killed; only 32,000 men surrendered.
    Meanwhile, Kuechler made two unsuccessful attempts to rescue the garrison at Kholm. On May 5, however, the third attempt was successful, and the defenders were saved after a siege of 103 days.
    To relieve the 100,000 men trapped around Demyansk, Kuechler created a special assault force of five divisions he carefully mustered near Staraya Russa. Under Lieutenant General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, these divisions began to advance on March 21 and penetrated five separate Soviet defensive lines and 24 miles of mud. Seydlitz reached the western edge of the pocket on April 20. It was May 2, however, before the German gains could be consolidated and a tenuous overland supply line established with the II Corps at Demyansk.
    For Kuechler’s part in checking the Soviet winter offensive of 1941–1942 and for