Eastern Front:
The New Scenarios

One of the more exciting aspects (read: backbreaking labors) of the new, deluxe edition of Panzer Grenadier: Eastern Front has been the research, writing and testing of 65 brand-new scenarios for this game.

Usually, I don’t recall later how I get myself into mind-numbing commitments. But I know exactly why I agreed to do 65 more scenarios, and it involved neither alcohol nor lust. It was all Brian Knipple’s fault.

Brian designed about two-thirds of the 51 scenarios in the original edition. Because we wanted to add new pieces to the deluxe editions and thus more scenarios, we knew there would be extra scenarios to design. I was thinking of 75 as the total goal (same as Road to Berlin, which had been put on our internal schedule already). Brian does a lot of our design work, but had drawn several assigments due out at about the same time: Beyond Normandy, Strike South, Alsace and Gazala. I was going to have to do this one, but it didn’t seem hard. Two dozen scenarios, I told him, using the new Romanian pieces and the new German Pz38t and Pz35t tanks, shouldn’t be too bad.

Then he opened the day’s mail. Being an engineer, he can multitask this way. Some game company had sent us an ad for a tactical-level World War II game, for the whopping price of $112. It had 12 scenarios. He found this very, very funny.

“Maybe we should give them 112 scenarios.”

“Sixty-one new scenarios?”

“Sure. You can do that.”

“That’s 61 new scenarios. That’s research in four languages. Sixty-one times.”

“What, you can’t do that? You’ve turned into (prima donna incompetent game designer)? Just turn in some hand written notes and blame the developer later if they suck? I’m the one who has to oversee the playtest. All you have to do is design them. That’s the easy part.”

So, since Liz, our marketing director, wasn’t there to make me stand up to his childish taunting, I agreed to design 112 scenarios for the new edition. Since several of the older ones would need to be replaced, in all 65 new ones have been added to the mix.

Unlike the first edition, the deluxe version includes the Romanian army, something I’d hoped to have in the original and later in a supplement of its own. There are 23 scenarios for the Romanians. The very first covers the 8th Cavalry Brigade’s fight at Fontana Alba on 22 June 1941. There are four from the Romanian victory at Kishinev (covered at a larger scale in our Red Steel game) and nine from the destructive siege of Odessa.

For the horsey set, favorites are going to be Crossed Sabers and Ride of the Seventh, two scenarios where the Romanian 7th Cavalry Brigade takes on Soviet cavalry divisions. The second one named takes place in October 1941, as the Romanian unit and a Soviet division charge each other en mass like something out of a cast-of-thousands movie.

And there are two more scenarios featuring the coolest tank ever, the Soviet T-35 heavy tank.

Here’s a look at the first third of the new scenarios.

Mike Bennighof
May 2005

Fontana Alba

22 June 1941: On Romania’s northern flank, the understrength 3rd Army faced the much stronger Soviet 12th Army. Even though the Red Army’s Gen. P. G. Ponedelin and his staff faced extreme danger of German flanking attacks, they responded sharply when the Romanians advanced into their former province of Northern Bucovina. Despite German condescension, and the fact that Romania had yet to declare war, both sides proved very willing to spill blood over “national” territory.

Conclusion: The Romanian cavalrymen took the village of Fontana Alba in the morning, meeting 8th Cavalry Brigade’s objectives. But around noon the Soviets counterattacked in force and drove them back out. The Red Army in this sector put up spirited resistance, but eventually had to pull back due to defeats elsewhere.

Ride to Mediocrity

22 June 1941: Well before dawn, troopers of the German 1st Cavalry Division saddled up and moved out across the Soviet border. They had bold objectives, being expected to use their off-road mobility to slip through the groves and swamps of the Polish borderlands even faster than the panzers and grab the city of Pinsk. But first they would have to get past the Red Army.

Conclusion: The horsemen failed to penetrate the Soviet positions very deeply, despite the utter confusion among the Red Army command and its troops. Things didn’t get any better when a false report of a tank attack caused a literal stampede among the Aryan conquerors. Despite the misplaced romanticism of later writers, the reality appears to be that the German cavalry simply weren’t very good.

The Crossing at Alytus

22 June 1941: In the early morning hours of 22 June, 7th Panzer Division raced over the border from East Prussia into Lithuania and headed for the key bridges over the Neiman River at Alytus. The Soviet 5th Tank Division, stationed there in peacetime, had already begun to withdraw. But when the Red Army engineers tried to destroy the big concrete bridge on the south end of town, it withstood the blast. Realizing that his division’s T-26 tanks could not outrun the panzers, Col. F.F. Fedorov ordered his unit to turn around and strike the Germans as they deployed into their newly-won bridgehead.

Conclusion: A confused tank battle developed on the fields west of Alytus; exactly where it took place is, like many such actions, still disputed. During their rapid advance the units of 7th Panzer had become badly intermingled and command and control suffered accordingly from this lack of march discipline. The 5th Tank Division suffered heavy losses but inflicted considerable damage on 7th Panzer as well. Only the timely arrival of 20th Panzer’s tank regiment allowed the Germans to drive off the Soviet division and resume their offensive.

Insecurities

22 June 1941: German plans for their sneak attack on the Soviet Union called for the Red Army’s 5th Rifle Corps, stationed west of Bialystok, tobe left along while tank forces surrounded it. But Lt. Gen. Johann Pflugbeil (or perhaps some overzealous subordinate) could not bear to be left out of the grand operations, and part of the 221st Security Division went forward. Intended for occupation duties (a sinister implication in the Jewish-dominated Bialystok district), the 221st had no artillery and few heavy weapons, these not being necessary against unarmed opponents.

Conclusion: In one of the few Soviet successes on this darkest of days, the 13th Rifle smashed the disjointed attacks and held its positions. But lacking orders to do anything else, the diviusion stayed in its assembly areas until the 24th, when it began a belated withdrawal. By then it was much too late, and 13th Rifle Division had ceased to exist by the end of the month – no thanks to the German security men.

South of Brest

22 June 1941: The Soviet 22nd Tank Division had been moved right up to the new western frontier in the spring of 1941, taking over a former Polish army barracks just south of Brest-Litovsk. On the morning of 22 June, word of the German sneak attack came in the form of artiullery shells raining down on the division’s sleeping soldiers. They rushed for their tanks and began a confused battle with the invaders.

Conclusion: Attacking Austrian infantrymen soon followed up the artillery barrage, and 22nd Tank Division was scattered into battalion-sized battlegroups doing their best to offer resistance. By 10 a.m. the division’s 235 tanks had been reduced to 60 and most of its howitzer regiment had been captured. Small groups fought on until mid-July. The 45th Infantry would spend the next several weeks in a brutal fight for the Brest-Litovsk fortress complex just to the north.

Night of the Guards

23 June 1941: On the war’s first day the Romanian Royal Guard Division had seized several bridgeheads over the river Prut, for use when the main offensive opened a week later. The Soviets did not sit quietly, and made furious attempts to drive the interlopers back over the river.

Conclusion: A ferocious, close-quarters clash including numerous incidents of hand-to-hand fighting left hundreds of casualties on both sides. Soviet cavalrymen got very close to the bridge, but were driven back by a moonlit bayonet charge by the regiment’s 9th Company that killed dozens of Red Army troops and captured four machine guns and 13 rifles. The Guard kept its bridgehead; the Soviets pulled back to re-form and try again.

Heavy Tank Attack

26 June 1941: Several times a year, the Red Army proudly displayed its powerful tanks in parades through Red Suqare in Moscow. The 34th Tank Division (and its predecessor, 5th Heavy Tank Brigade) operated these huge vehicles. When the Germans attacked, 34th Tank Division had been moved into western Ukraine, close to the new German border. When the Germans advanced, the huge but slow tanks lumbered forward to attack them near Brody.

Conclusion: The German sources relied on by Western authors until the late 1990’s make few references to the huge T-35 in combat, but the Soviet records show them in action in these battles. Or at least attempting to get into action. Many of the huge tanks broke down along the way, and of those that made it, more of them fell victim to German anti-tank guns. The 34th’s attack failed despite the nasty shock of a handful of T-34/76 models scattered among the giants, and the division pulled back to try again.

Land Battleships

28 June 1941: The 34th Tank Division had failed to make much of a dent in the German infantry, and 8th Mechanized Corps pulled them back out of the line and around to the corps’ left flank to make another attack. More giant tanks broke down along the way, while air attacks pestered the march columns, and it was a weakened division that went back into action just two days later.

Conclusion: This attack fared even worse than the previous attempt, as the Germans used their smaller but better-handled tanks to separate the Soviet vehicles into easily-handled segments. The 34th Tank Division managed to become encircled by the end of the day, more through driving into the position than through German design. Along with elements of 12th Tank Division that had been attached, the 34th managed to break free with heavy losses.

Lelyushenko’s Counterattack

30 June 1941: With German hordes pouring into the Motherland, the Red Army rushed many reserve formations forward to stop them. Among them was the 21st Mechanized Corps, its divisions formed only in March and still lacking tanks. With Mother Russia in danger, the corps staff would hear no such excuses, and “liberated” 98 training vehicles from the Moscow Military Academy. Just outside Daugavpils in Latvia, the understrength and hastily-organized corps crashed into the German LVI Panzer Corps.

Conclusion: The counter-attacks launched straight off the march did their jobs –- the German panzers were halted in their tracks for almost a week, an unheard-of achievement in the dark summer of 1941. Unfortunately, other formations were far less successful, and the time bought by 21st Mechanized Corps would prove for nothing as the front crumbled around them. Erich von Manstein, the German corps commander, admitted that “at a number of points, the situation became quite critical” but blamed the timidity of Panzer Group commander Gen. Erich Hoeppner (disliked by many German generals for his opposition to Hitler).

West of Rovno

1 July 1941: Driven back from their initial positions in occupied eastern Poland, the Red Army commanders decided to pull back to the heavily fortified Stalin Line on the pre-war border. To help the infantry break contact, 5th Army in the western Ukraine launched all of its tank and mechanized divisions against the invaders. The Red Army fought with spirit, but in the summer of 1941 the German tankers stood at their peak efficiency.

Conclusion: Thirty-Fifth Tank Division had been formed just over the border in Ukraine, and fought with all the tenacity of men protecting their homes. But short of officers, trucks and other equipment, the unit proved no match for a full-strenth enemy panzer division. The Germans brushed the 35th aside and continued their drive on Kiev.

Depot Defense

2 July 1941: After the initial breakthroughs on the border, the German panzers began to fan out and head for their deeper objectives. The Red Army’s Stavka quickly recognized the looming danger to the Kiev Special Military District’s main supply depot at Shepetovka. The Lukin Operational Group flung the newly-formed 213th Mechanized Division into the gap.

Conclusion: With no anti-tank guns, half their infantry support weapons and only a small portion of their assigned vehicles, the 213th had no hope of stopping the Germans. The 213th sacrificed itself to buy time for Red Army sappers to destroy the depot; tragically, their efforts proved in vain when the demolitions failed to take place. Eleventh Panzer raced on toward Kiev.

First Tank Battle

4 July 1941: The Royal Armored Division crossed the Prut River into Soviet-occupied Basarabia on 3 July 1941, and on the next day fought its first tank battle against the Soviet 16th Tank Division near the town of Brinzeni. Romanian morale would never be higher than in these first days of combat, when the troops saw themselves as liberators of Romanian national territory.

Conclusion: The Romanians out-manuevered and out-shot the Soviet tankers, who reacted very slowly to the Axis attack. The Royal Armored Division rolled on toward the Dnester River bridges.

Tank Battle at Ostrov: Day One

4 July 1941: With German panzer spearheads pushing ever closer to Leningrad, birthplace of the Revolution, the Red Army committed more and more of its reserve mechanized corps to stop them. First Mechanized Corps had trained in the Pskov manuever area south of the great city since the previous autumn and had elderly equipment but a better than average cadre. Col. K. Yu. Andreev had only taken command of 3rd Tank Division on 17 June, less than three weeks before he was ordered to stop the German XLI Panzer Corps. The tankers of his 6th Tank Regiment passed through the lines of 111th Rifle Division and fell on the Germans as they crossed the intact rail and highway bridges at Ostrov.

Conclusion: Andreev had prepared as best he could, picking up seven factory-fresh KV tanks on the way to the battlefield and giving them to his best crews. But he’d already lost his rifle regiment and several tank companies, frittered away to support other units in the previous two weeks of war. The Soviet tankers drove right through the Germans, shooting up their soft vehicles and pressing close to both bridges. Lack of infantry support at this crucial moment prevented a signal Soviet victory, and the Red Army men pulled back to try again the next day. The German commander, Lt. Gen. Friedrich Kirchner, radioed for help and his unit’s sister division began a rapid march to join the 1st Panzer in their bridgehead.

Tank Battle at Ostrov: Day Two

5 July 1941: Both sides licked their wounds after the first encounter at Ostrov. While the Germans awaited the 6th Panzer Division, the 3rd Tank Division received 10 more new KV’s as well as some older tanks that had been delayed in joining the first day’s attack (probably through mechanical breakdowns, but this is not specified in the record). With both his regiments now on the site, plus his full howitzer regiment and several battalions of the 111th Rifle Division now attached to his command, Andreev felt confident of driving the Hitlerites back across the river.

Conclusion: Another furious battle developed, with the Soviets pressing continually toward the bridges. These were almost in their grasp when 6th Panzer Division’s forward elements arrived and drove them back and out of the town of Ostrov. By the end of the day 3rd Tank Division had lost half its armored strength, while 1st Panzer Division had to report it was not much better off. But the Germans held the battlefield, and most of their lost panzers would be recovered to see action again.

Head On

6 July 1941: When the Soviet 5th Mechanized Corps arrived at the front from the Trans-Baikal Military District in Siberia, the Stavka ordered them directly into action against the advancing Hitlerites. North-west of Orsha, the corps’ aging light tanks crashed into the Germans.

Conclusion: Seventeenth Tank Division’s predecessor unit, 33rd Light Tank Brigade, had fought against the Japanese in 1939 and many of its officers and professional cadre were veterans of that armored victory. Yet poor tank-infantry coordination wrecked the attack before it started, and 17th Tank left over half its vehicles on the battlefield.

Red Steel: Crossed Sabers

7 July 1941: Romanian attempts to force the Cornesti Massif and open the road to Kishinev ran into an elite Soviet formation, the 2nd Cavalry Corps. With the infantry blocked by the Soviet horsemen, the Romanian high command fed one of their own elite formations into the fight.

Conclusion: The Romanian brigade launched a spirited attack, but failed to dislodge the Soviet riders from their positions. Cavalry squadrons charged and counter-charged in scenes reminiscent of the Crimean War, but at the end of the day the situation remained about the same.

Red Steel: Reservist Nightmare

8 July 1941: Applying all force to the liberation of Bessarabia, the Romanian high command also called out six divisions of ill-equipped, ill-prepared and overaged reservists. Only one of these was deemed fit for combat, and sent to the front with III Corps. Crossing the Prut without opposition, the second-line troops found themselves placed in the front line. When the Soviet command realized this, they laid on a fine reception.

Conclusion: Unwilling and unready, the reservists did what they’d been trained to do: follow their leaders. Unfortunately for the Romanian command, the 35th’s leaders headed straight for the rear areas and their men followed as best they could. Steadier regular units took over and the advance on Kishinev resumed.

Cavalry Probe

8 July 1941: Two weeks into Operation Barbarossa, the German 1st Cavalry Division was lagging well behind the rest of XXIV Panzer Corps. When the panzers bypassed two Soviet rifle corps and an airborne corps along the Berezina River, the horsemen finally had a chance to get into the action. They moved against the Soviet screen in an attempt to cut off the Red Army’s forces on the wrong side of the river.

Conclusion: While the Red Army would manage to smoothly integrate mounted and mechanized formations, 1st Cavalry Division proved a disappointment in Operation Barbarossa. Despite their exhaustion and disorder, the Soviets managed to repel the Germans. On 5 November the 1st Cavalry Division gave up its horses and boarded trains back to Germany; the unit had served so badly the troopers were not even considered worth deploying as dismounted infantry in the desperate fighting in front of Moscow.

Forest Brothers

12 July 1941: Hoping to show solidarity with their Finnish “brothers in arms,” the Germans detailed one division to join the Finnish attack on the Soviet Union. The Finns assigned the unit to the right flank of their Group O, a small corps of elite light infantry and cavalry units. Its first action came as part of the Finnish advance onto the old Tolvajärvi battlefield.

Conclusion: The Germans proved confused by the thick forests, and the Soviets maintained their line and inflicted casualties on them. However, to the northeast the Finns began making rapid progress and the 74th called back its battalions facing the Germans lest they become cut off.

Cavalry Counter-Attacked

13 July 1941: Reeling from the shock of the sudden German onslaught, the Soviet armies re-grouped and began to launch counter-attacks of their own. One of the most successful came from the Soviet 21st Army, which attacked all along its front in support of 4th Army’s attacks just to the north, in front of Smolensk. At Zhlobin on the upper Dnepr River, the army’s 63rd Rifle Corps crossed the river and flung itself against the Hitlerites.

Conclusion: Having grown used to victory, the Germans recoiled at such unexpected ferocity. The cavalry pulled back in disarray. Though cheered by the local victory, one of the few bright points in the horrific summer of 1941, the Red Army would eventually have to give up its gains as the panzers advanced rapidly on either side of the Rogachev-Zhlobin sector.

Timoshenko’s Strike

13 July 1941: As the German panzers surged toward Smolensk, the Red Army’s Western Front ordered the battered 4th and 13th Armies to strike the southern flank of the penetration. German Gen. Heinz Guderian claimed that 20 fresh divisions had been thrown in by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, but in reality these were local counter-attacks launched with considerable spirit. Near Propoisk, the ill-equipped Soviet 25th Mechanized Corps hit XXIV Panzer Corps.

Conclusion: The 50th Tank Division, a second-line unit at the start of the war, had managed to avoid the utter disasters that had befallen most other Soviet armored units. But Guderian’s panzers brushed the division aside and continued their march toward Smolensk, while the Panzer Leader managed to grossly inflate his opposition’s strength.