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

Soviet and German Armoured Forces, January–March 1942

By 1 January 1942, the nineteen German panzer divisions on the Eastern Front were in a very sorry state. The Germans had kept attacking until their panzer divisions were totally spent and then the retreats had cost them dearly. Panzer-Regiment 203 – which had only arrived in Heeresgruppe Nord on 17 December – was the strongest German armoured formation left on the Eastern Front, with about sixty operational tanks at the beginning of January. Otherwise, most of the panzer divisions were reduced to five to fifteen tanks each, for a grand total of perhaps 300 operational tanks spread across the entire Eastern Front. The Schützen-Regiment in most of the panzer divisions were gutted, with personnel losses between 50 and 80 per cent and vehicle losses even higher. More than half of the trucks and prime movers had been lost in the 1941 campaign, which severely reduced the mobility and logistical sustainability of many units, particularly the motorized infantry divisions. Some examples of the very limited combat effectiveness of the panzer-divisionen at the start of 1942 include:

• The 1.Panzer-Division had five operational tanks and less than two battalions of infantry.

• The 3.Panzer-Division had fifteen operational tanks in I/Pz.Regt 6 (one Pz.II, eleven Pz.III, two Pz.IV, one Pz.Bef).[1]

• The 4.Panzer-Division had one company with ten tanks, which was increased to two companies with a total of sixteen tanks by 21 January.

• The 6.Panzer-Division had no operational tanks and had lost 80 per cent of its infantry and most of its prime movers. The only combat-effective element was Kampfgruppe Zollenkopf, equivalent to a reinforced rifle battalion.[2]

• The 7.Panzer-Division had five operational tanks (four Pz.38(t) and one Pz.IV).[3]

• The 8.Panzer-Division had a mixed panzer kampfgruppe with twelve tanks (eleven Pz.38(t) and one Pz.IV) and about 15 per cent of its infantry remaining.[4]

• The 11.Panzer-Division withdrew its remaining tanks to the rear at Gzhatsk. It is not clear how many were operational, but no more than ten to fifteen.[5]

• The 18.Panzer-Division had a small number of Pz.III and Pz.IV operational.

Von Kleist’s 1.Panzerarmee reported in mid-January that it still had 458 tanks, but only 166 were operational (twenty-two Pz.II, 111 Pz.III, thirty-three Pz.IV), plus fifteen StuG III assault guns – making his command the only Panzerarmee still worthy of the name on the Eastern Front. While this might sound like a combat effective force, he also reported that there was only 0.25 V.S. of fuel with the front-line units – barely enough to turn the engines over a few times a day.[6] Von Kleist did benefit from the fact that after his defeat at Rostov he did not retreat far – so little equipment was abandoned – and that the Red Army left his forces relatively unmolested for the rest of the winter. Elsewhere along the Eastern Front, most panzer regiments formed a mixed company or two with the remaining tanks, while the other panzer companies were disbanded and the personnel assigned to alarm units to deal with enemy partisans or raids. A few ‘unhorsed’ panzer crews were sent back to the Ersatz-Abteilungen (replacement battalions) in their home Wehrkreis, but most were pressed into the line as ad hoc infantrymen. The remaining tanks were used strictly in the infantry support role, stiffening the hard-pressed German infantry at key points. A few assault guns remained in service too, but not many. German supply services all but collapsed for a time during the winter of 1941–42, with the railroad system almost paralyzed when most German-made trains proved unable to withstand the cold in Russia and the roads blocked by snow that could be one meter or more in depth.

Although there was no major armoured combat during the winter months, German tank losses remained heavy during January–February 1942 as tanks were abandoned due to retreats and lack of recovery vehicles. Deliveries of new tanks did not begin in earnest until February 1942, by which time the Soviet Winter Counter-offensive was beginning to run out of momentum.[7] The German Werkstatt units were finally able to start repairing some tanks and vehicles as well, but throughout the winter the Germans had no appreciable mobile reserves on the Eastern Front.

German tankers and assault gun crews did receive one significant reinforcement in early January 1942: the first 7.5cm Gr. 38 H1 High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) ammunition. The Heereswaffenamt had been experimenting with HEAT ammunition since 1939, but the weakness of conventional German antitank ammunition against Soviet KV-1 and T-34 tanks led to the program being accelerated in late 1941. The first batch of HEAT ammunition that reached the front suffered from temperamental fusing – the warhead had to detonate at precisely the right moment and angle in order for the explosive to work properly, If it did, the warhead would form a gas jet that could burn through 70mm of steel plate, which could easily destroy a T-34 and inflict serious damage on a KV-1. Since the HEAT ammunition did not rely upon velocity as conventional kinetic penetrators did, the warhead was just as effective at 1,000 meters as it was at 500 meters.

On the other side, the Red Army appeared to have a huge numerical and qualitative advantage in armoured forces at the start of 1942. Ostensibly, the Red Army had 7,700 tanks on 1 January 1942, including about 600 KV heavy tanks and 800 T-34s.[8] However, about 4,400 of these tanks were stationed in the Far East, on the Turkish border or other interior military districts or in schools. There were seven tank brigades and nineteen independent tank battalions (OTB) with a total of about 880 tanks forming up or refitting in the Moscow MD. The Stavka’s reserve, the RVGK, had nine tank brigades and one OTB with about 435 tanks, including about sixty KV-1 and 100 T-34s. The units in the RVGK were generally kept as close to authorized strength as possible, so that when they were committed to battle they could have the greatest impact. In the ten active fronts, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the Red Army disposed three tank divisions, forty-three tank brigades and fifty-five OTB with approximately 2,000 tanks. The three tank divisions (21, 60 and 112) were only battle groups that would soon be converted into tank brigades. The front’s tanks units were generally well understrength, with most tank brigades down to about twenty-six–thirty tanks and OTBs averaging twelve–fifteen tanks. About 30 per cent of the front-line tanks, particularly the KV-1s with their inadequate transmissions, were non-operational at any one time. Nevertheless, the Red Army’s field armies enjoyed at least a 6–1 numerical advantage in armoured forces over the Panzerwaffe at the start of 1942. The question was, could the Red Army’s leadership achieve anything decisive with this advantage?

Given the lack of large armoured formations and inadequate training, Zhukov and the other Soviet front commanders knew that they could not execute Deep Battle or any other fancy operational maneuvers with the forces they had available in January 1942. At best, the Red Army’s nascent tank units could serve in the infantry support role and spearhead the counteroffensives in their sectors of the front. At Zhukov’s recommendation, the Stavka directed each front to form shock groups, which usually consisted of a tank brigade, a rifle brigade or division, some cavalry and a ski battalion or two – perhaps 5,000 troops and thirty tanks, but with negligible artillery or logistic support. These shock groups became the basis of the Soviet Winter Counter-offensive and although they gave the Wehrmacht some bad moments, they failed to fulfill the role of a breakthrough and exploitation force.

The Winter Counter-offensive, January–March 1942

After the retreats from Moscow, Tikhvin, Tula and Rostov, it briefly seemed to the Germans on the Eastern Front that major combat operations might be suspended for the rest of the winter. The reasonable course of action for both sides was to limit their operations at the front and focus on rebuilding their badly-depleted armoured units so that they would be capable of further large-scale operations once spring arrived. However, Stalin was exuberant after the German defeat at Moscow and convinced himself – as Hitler had done about the Red Army in October 1941 – that one more major blow would cause the Wehrmacht to collapse. It is interesting how both dictators deluded themselves about the apparent weakness of their opponent, with their general staffs obsequiously feeding this delusion, and which in both cases led to catastrophic over-extension and defeat. After the German panzer armies had been pushed back from Moscow, Zhukov and a few other Red Army commanders wanted time to rebuild their armies, but Stalin was impatient. Instead, in late December 1941 Stalin informed the Stavka that he wanted a new series of counter-offensives, all along the front from Leningrad to the Crimea, to hammer the Germans mercilessly and drive the invaders out of the Soviet Union. Zhukov, realizing that the Red Army’s resources were still quite limited and not capable of supporting multi-front offensives so soon, argued for concentrating at one or two points to achieve decisive results, but was over-ruled by Stalin.[9] Staffs at front-level, who had been alerted in late December to prepare for offensive action, were given at best a few days to prepare their battle plans.

The first indication that the Red Army was not going to stop after the German defeat at Moscow occurred in the Crimea, where the Soviets mounted amphibious landings at Kerch on 26 December and Feodosiya on 29 December. Von Manstein’s 11.Armee was caught by surprise and the Soviets were able to land over 85,000 troops and forty-three light tanks in a matter of days. Although von Manstein was able to contain the Soviet landings, the Red Army continued to pour troops, tanks and artillery into the Kerch Peninsula in January – meaning that a test of strength would not be long in coming. There were no panzer units in the Crimea, but von Manstein’s 11.Armee did have Stürmgeschütz-Abteilüngen 190 and 197 with a handful of assault guns. Indeed, the assault-gun units proved their worth in stiffening the defense time and again during the Soviet Winter Counter-offensive.

Timoshenko was the first front commander to commit his forces into the general offensive on 1 January, when his Southwest Front began attacking the German 6.Armee near Izyum. The weather was atrocious, with temperatures of –29°C (–20°F) and deep snow covering the ground, but Timoshenko’s forces gradually overwhelmed an isolated German infantry division and achieved a significant breakthrough after two weeks of fighting, creating a 40km-wide gap between AOK 6 and AOK 17. Timoshenko’s breakthrough was facilitated by a small number of KV-1 and T-34 tanks, but his Southwest Front had barely 200 tanks and was forced to rely upon cavalry as its primary exploitation force. Lacking the shock effect of armour, the Soviet cavalry spearheads were eventually halted by German and Romanian blocking detachments, but the net result was the creation of the Barvenkovo salient that drove a deep wedge in Heeresgruppe Süd’s frontline.

The main component of the Soviet Winter Counter-offensive began on 6 January, with a fairly coordinated series of offensives by General Kirill A. Meretskov’s Volkhov Front, General-Polkovnik Pavel A. Kurochkin’s Northwest Front, Konev’s Kalinin Front and Zhukov’s Western Front. Zhukov employed nearly one-fifth of the Red Army’s available armour in his sector, about 400 tanks, leaving less than 200 tanks for Konev, 100 for Kurochkin and 150 for Meretskov. The Volkhov Front attacked with the 4th, 59th and 2nd Shock Army against the 16.Armee and one corps of the 18.Armee. The marshy and heavily-wooded terrain along the Volkhov precluded the large use of armour by either side, although the neighboring Leningrad Front was able to use small numbers of KV-1 and T-34 tanks against the hard-pressed German Stützpunkt (strongpoint) at Kirishi, which quickly gained a reputation as ‘the Verdun of the Volkhov’. Soviet tankers painted their KV-1s with whitewash for winter camouflage, contributing to their nickname as ‘White Mammoths’. German infantrymen in front-line trenches would see the ‘White Mammoths’ forming up for an attack in the open, up to 1,000 meters away. The Soviets knew that their KV-1s were invulnerable to all but 8.8cm flak and heavy artillery – which could not be easily moved to the front through deep snow – and became increasingly brazen, which they hoped would undermine German morale when they realized how impotent their defenses were against the KV-1. Often, one or two KV-1s would approach German lines and, from a distance of 500 meters – beyond the effective range of the 5-cm Pak gun – they would mercilessly hammer any visible targets with high explosive rounds and machine-gun fire. This occurred day after day during the winter, when low clouds and poor visibility made it unlikely that any Luftwaffe Stukas could intervene.

On the morning of 18 January 1942, a small group of KV-1s and T-34s from Polkovnik Mikhail Rudoy’s 122nd Tank Brigade began their usual demonstrations near Pogost’e, west of Kirishi. Suddenly, the Soviet tanks came under fire at a distance of about 800 meters and several of their tanks were knocked out. Lying concealed in the German positions, two StuG III assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Batterie 667 were firing 7.5cm HEAT ammunition. Although the ‘White Mammoths’ broke off their attack, they apparently thought that the engagement was some kind of fluke and tried again the next day – with similar results. In two days, the German StuG IIIs managed to knock out four KV-1s and five T-34s – almost one-third of Rudoy’s brigade.

The three Soviet armies encircled in Leningrad had over 100 tanks in the 124th Heavy Tank Brigade and five OTBs and made repeated efforts during the winter of 1941–42 to break out toward the rail junction at Mga in order to link-up with Meretskov’s forces. In one action, the 124th Tank Brigade committed the only extant KV-3 heavy tank – an experimental version of the KV-1 that was built in Leningrad just prior to the war. The 62-ton KV-3 was intended as a ‘breakthrough tank’ and was given additional armour plate, making it nearly invulnerable – or so the Soviets thought. In an effort to punch through the German blockade lines around Leningrad, the single KV-3 was made the vanguard of an attack. The heavy behemoth clanked toward the German lines, but its weight greatly reduced its mobility, which gave the enemy artillery the ability to zero in on it. A well-placed German 15 cm howitzer shell struck the KV-3’s turret and detonated its ammunition, bringing the combat debut of the only Soviet breakthrough tank to a sudden end.

Elsewhere however, the KV-1 was more successful in creating breakthroughs. As part of Kurochkin’s Northwest Front offensive, the 11th Army sent a platoon of five KV-1s under a Leytenant Astakhov and a company of T-60s across frozen Lake Il’men on the night of 7–8 January in order to outflank the German X Armeekorps at Staraya Russa. As one Soviet rider noted:

Leytenant Astakhov’s KV-1s crossed frozen Lake Il’men, but one tank fell through the ice and was abandoned when they crossed the River Lovat. With little left of the night, the Soviet tankers assembled in a forest and refuelled from drums brought on sledges. At daybreak, German infantrymen from the 290.Infanterie-Division were stunned when the four remaining KV-1s led an attack, along with a regiment of Soviet infantry, against a Stutzpünkt in the village of Yur’evo.

The third tank, commanded by a Leytenant Chilikin, was hit several times by German projectiles but burst into the village and overran the German anti-tank gun. The German defenders fell back in shock, and within two days the 11th Army was on the outskirts of Staraya Russa. This action is interesting in that Soviet tank platoon leaders were still relying upon signal flags to direct their tanks in battle and that the tanks were operating ‘buttoned up’ – it makes one wonder how Leytenant Chilikin could spot a signal flag at that distance in the heat of battle. Although caught by surprise, the German defences did stiffen near Staraya Russa and a platoon of Pz.III tanks from Panzer-Regiment 203 arrived to prevent Soviet ski troops from surrounding the city.

In less than a week, three Soviet armies attacked the German front between Ostashkov and Rzhev and broke the junction of Heeresgruppe Nord and Heeresgruppe Mitte. The 9.Armee’s XXIII Armeekorps was thrown back in disorder and a huge 150km-wide gap torn in the German front line. The Soviet steamroller fanned out, with the 3rd Shock Army advancing toward Kholm, the 4th Shock Army toward Velikiye Luki and the 22nd Army due south toward Yartsevo. This Soviet breakthrough was easily the worst crisis suffered during a winter filled with crises for the Germans, since it threatened the existence of Heeresgruppe Mitte. However, the Stavka had provided each of these three armies with only a single OTB and no cavalry, so their ability to exploit the victory was limited to a walking pace through deep snow. The Germans were not able to completely stop the Soviet avalanche, but they used their rail movement capability to move reinforcements to Kholm and Velikiye Luki, which became fortified strongpoints. To make matters worse for the Germans, Konev’s Kalinin Front achieved a significant breakthrough with its 39th Army that isolated the German XXIII Armeekorps at Olenino and threatened to envelop the entire 9.Armee at Rzhev with the 11th Cavalry Corps.

In contrast to the Northwest and Kalinin fronts, which had limited tank and cavalry forces to exploit their victories, Zhukov ensured that the Stavka provided his Western Front with the lion’s share of available armour, artillery and cavalry. However, Zhukov’s fifteen tank brigades were worn out from two months of continuous combat and in poor shape for a general offensive. The strength of four of the brigades on 1 January indicates that their remaining armoured strength was 10–35 per cent of authorized strength and also that no more than one-quarter of the available tanks were T-34s:

• The 20th Tank Brigade had five operational tanks (one T-34, one T-26, one T-60 and two Valentines)

• The 23rd Tank Brigade had six operational tanks (one T-34 and five Valentines)

• The 32nd Tank Brigade had twelve operational tanks (one KV-1, five T-34, six T-60)

• The 146th Tank Brigade had sixteen operational tanks (two T-34, ten T-60, four Valentines)

After being relatively sober-minded throughout 1941, Zhukov suddenly let Stalin’s vision of imminent German collapse cloud his judgment, and he believed that his Western Front could pull off a large-scale pincer attack toward Vyazma. His forces had already created a gap between 4.Panzerarmee and the 4.Armee near Borovsk and the 4.Armee’s right flank had also been torn apart near Sukhinichi. Zhukov weighted his armour on his right flank, with eight tank brigades supporting the 5th, 16th and 20th Armies, while he formed another pincer on his left with the 43rd, 49th and 50th Armies, which were supported by five tank brigades. From the German point of view, with von Kluge now in charge of Heeresgruppe Mitte, the situation was awful and the only possible solution – as demanded by Hitler – was to dig in and wait for the Red Army to outrun its limited supplies. The handful of remaining German tanks were gathered in central reserve near Vyazma.

Zhukov’s steamroller began on 20 January and simply shoved the German 4.Armee back along a 100km-wide front, recapturing Mozhaisk. Although the German XIII Armeekorps was nearly encircled at Yukhnov, Zhukov failed to trap any German units. His decimated tank brigades lacked the strength to conduct more than local actions and the fact that most of his armour was comprised of T-60 light tanks made it difficult for his forces to reduce a German Stützpunkt equipped with anti-tank guns. On 27 January, Zhukov decided to commit his own mobile group, Belov’s 1st Guard Cavalry Corps, to a deep raid toward Vyazma. Belov’s cavalrymen reached the outskirts of Vyazma but were turned away by a kampfgruppe from 5.Panzer-Division. Likewise, the 11th Cavalry Corps approaching from the north was prevented from cutting the Minsk–Moscow highway and Heeresgruppe Mitte’s main line of communications by a kampfgruppe from 11.Panzer-Division. By 1 February, Zhukov’s forces had been stopped at Gzhatsk and Yukhnov and a surprise German counterattack – led by infantry, not tanks – isolated the 33rd Army on the approaches to Vyazma. Zhukov began to display a tendency to reinforce failure by sacrificing three airborne brigades and more troops in an effort to reenergize his offensive. However, General der Infanterie Gotthard Heinrici, the new commander of 4.Armee, fought a very cagey battle against Zhukov that prevented him from either taking Vyazma or rescuing the 33rd Army, which was eventually crushed. Likewise, Model, who took over 9.Armee, managed to repair the holes in his line, hold onto Rzhev and eventually destroy the Soviet 39th Army.

Elsewhere, the Soviet Bryansk Front managed to push the 2.Armee back towards Orel, mostly with cavalry and a few dozen light tanks. The Northwest Front also succeeded in surrounding the German II Armeekorps at Demyansk, but lacked the armour and artillery to crush the pocket. Overall, the Soviet Winter Counter-offensive stressed the Wehrmacht nearly to breaking point but failed to achieve any truly decisive results. During the winter fighting of 1941–42, neither side was able to muster more than company and battalion-size groupings of tanks, even in key sectors. Along vast stretches of front there were no tanks at all. Despite possessing an impressive numerical superiority in tanks on paper, the Red Army was never able to assemble a decent operational maneuver group due to the lack of large armoured formations. Instead, Soviet front commanders were forced to improvise mobile groups using weak tank brigades based around light tanks to support cavalry and ski troops. These ad hoc mobile groups were sufficient to outflank German positions – which caused a great deal of trouble – but lacked the firepower to reduce well-defended fortified villages and towns. Consequently, Hitler’s instinctive adoption of hedgehog (Igel) tactics succeeded in the winter of 1941–42 due to the Red Army’s temporary lack of tanks, artillery and ammunition.

Indeed, the Red Army at this point lacked the firepower or tactical skill to overcome well-defended German hedgehog positions. Two in particular – Kholm and Demyansk – held out against repeated attacks. At Kholm, Kampfgruppe Scherer, which initially started with 4,500 troops and four Pak guns, conducted an epic defense during a 105-day siege from 21 January to 5 May 1942. The Red Army repeatedly attacked the town with two rifle divisions, supported by the 146 and 170 OTB, which had a total of forty-six tanks (four KV-1, two T-34, eleven Matilda II and twenty-nine T-60). Initially, the Soviets attacked the town with only a few tanks at a time in infantry support roles, but this allowed the Germans to shift their limited number of Pak guns around the small perimeter. However, the Soviets began attacking with more tanks in February and in different sectors simultaneously, which nearly overwhelmed the defenders. The Matildas proved impervious to the 3.7cm Pak fire, but three were lost to T-mines and their 2-pounder guns were not very effective at engaging targets in buildings due to their lack of an HE round.

The Luftwaffe managed to fly in new anti-tank weapons by glider and parachute to keep the Soviets tanks at bay, including the new Stielgranate 41 HEAT rounds for the 3.7cm Pak, used for the first time on 10 March.[12] Although only 9 of 18 Stielgranate 41 rounds hit their targets and only two tanks were damaged, the introduction of HEAT warheads would slowly begin to change the anti-tank dynamic on the Eastern Front in favor of the defense, even though this would not be realized until the Panzerfaust appeared in 1944. While the two OTBs tried to break into Kholm – and nearly succeeded on several occasions – the Soviets deployed a few T-34s west of the town to block German relief efforts. During the course of the siege, over thirty Soviet tanks were destroyed around Kholm.

The first large German armoured operations in 1942 were the relief of the Kholm and Demyansk pockets in March–May 1942. The relief of Kholm was spearheaded by StuG IIIs from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 184 and a Kampfgruppen Crissoli from 8.Panzer-Division. After intense fighting on the approaches to Kholm, in which both sides lost armoured vehicles in ambush-style combat, German assault guns finally fought their way into the town and relieved Kampfgruppe Scherer. At Demyansk, the Soviets had encircled six German divisions with 96,000 troops, but the Red Army lacked the strength to reduce the pocket or even to seriously interfere with the Luftwaffe airlift that kept the defenders in supply. On 21 March 1942, Gruppe Seydlitz began Operation Brückenschlag, a relief effort involving five German infantry divisions, supported by thirty tanks from I./Pz.Regt 203 and 13 StuG IIIs.[13] The going was very slow, over frozen marshlands and heavily forested, and temperatures still ranged between –20°C (–13°F) and –29°C (–20°F). The Soviets employed their only armoured reserve in this sector, the 69th Tank Brigade, to launch an attack on 27 March to try and stop the German relief effort. However, the German jägers managed to repulse the Soviet tank brigade and knocked out eight of its twenty T-34 tanks using a combination of means. The spring thaw, which began in early April, proved a bigger obstacle to the German relief effort than Soviet tanks. Nevertheless, Gruppe Seydlitz finally managed to link up with the trapped German forces at Demyansk on 21 April. The use of German armour – although only a single battalion plus two assault gun batteries – had been decisive in breaking the Soviet ring around the Demyansk pocket. This episode proved to be a harbinger of many future German operations, where panzer units were used to spearhead relief efforts.

Despite a lack of decision, the winter fighting was very costly for both sides. The failed efforts to capture Rzhev and Vyazma cost Konev’s and Zhukov’s forces the shocking total of 776,889 casualties and 957 tanks – which was 73 per cent of their personnel strength and 150 per cent of their tank strength at the start of the operation. During the same period, Heeresgruppe Mitte suffered 150,008 combat casualties but received over 160,000 replacements. Overall, the 1941–42 Winter Counter-offensive cost the Red Army 1.854 million casualties in the first three months of 1942.[14]^, [15]

Armoured Warfare in the Winter

German tanks were not designed with the Russian winter in mind. The tracks on the Pz.III and Pz.IV were 16–25 per cent narrower than the T-34 and both vehicles had less ground clearance than either the T-34 or KV-1, which caused them to get stuck in deep snow. In particular, the T-34 had a significant mobility advantage over the Pz.III and Pz.IV on soft ground or snow due to its superior horsepower to weight ratio and lower ground pressure. The V-2 diesel tank engine provided the T-34 with mobility, reliability and endurance that no German tank matched during the Second World War. However, the Soviet tank with the best mobility on snow and ice was actually the T-60 light tank, even though its thin armour resulted in it being dubbed the BM-2 or ‘Bratskaya Mogila na dvoikh’ (a brother’s grave for two) by Soviet tankers. In contrast, the British-made Valentine and Matilda tanks had very little mobility in deep snow and little traction on ice. Near Lake Seliger, when the 170th OTB was marching to the front, it lost two of its thirteen Matilda IIs when they slid off an icy road and rolled over.[16] Near Istra, the 146th Tank Brigade also lost several Valentines to roll-over incidents.

Aside from inferior mobility in deep snow, the German tanks were badly affected by the penetrating cold in Russia. Although both German and Soviet tanks had means to divert warm air from the engine exhaust to the interior of the crew compartment, this only sufficed when the engine was running. When fuel was in short supply, as in October–December 1941, they could not run their engines continuously. Lacking petrol-fired personnel heaters in their tanks (which could operate with the engines off), panzer crews retreated into nearby houses or peasant izbas, leaving their tanks out overnight in deep freeze. Consequently, the water inside the tank’s batteries froze, cracking the cases, which then required immediate replacement – but batteries were in short supply. Even if the batteries didn’t rupture, the charge they could hold dropped off rapidly below freezing. Rubber coatings on power cables could also crack at temperatures below –29°C (–20°F). Petrol and diesel fuels were also affected by severe cold, which could have ice crystals form in fuel lines. Below –32°C (–25°F), the hydraulic fluid in the main gun’s recoil system would freeze, resulting in the main gun being thrown out of battery if fired. The lubricant in machine-guns froze at –37°C (–35°F), making the weapons unusable until cleaned. Ammunition became difficult to work with after being frozen and the main gun breech could become very ‘sticky’ after a frost, resulting in rounds getting stuck in the breach.[17] Even when the unit received more fuel, starting an engine that had been idle for several days in sub-zero temperatures proved very difficult for the Germans and they resorted to extreme measures, such as building a wood fire under the tank. Once heated, the frost turned to condensation inside equipment. In contrast, the Soviet T-34 had internal compressed air bottles for cold weather starting and the T-34 had been extensively tested in winter conditions. As a result, German panzer units became very vulnerable if attacked by Soviet armour early in the day, when many panzers could not start; if the German unit was forced to withdraw, non-starting tanks were abandoned.

Even when the Germans could start their tanks, they found that the cold weather seriously degraded critical systems. Radios were particularly vulnerable to freezing and condensation, as well as the gunner’s primary optical sight. The optics tended to trap frost inside the lenses, which prevented effective aiming. Tank maintenance became very difficult in temperatures below –29°C (–20°F), with exposed skin adhering to metal surfaces and even standard oil lubricants and tank grease becoming too thick to properly use. Without lubrication, tanks quickly lost the ability to move without damaging the running gear. Tasks like changing a torsion bar or drive sprocket were all but impossible without shelters in sub-zero weather. While the Red Army could shuttle its damaged tanks back to nearby Moscow for repair in proper facilities, the Wehrmacht was at a distinct disadvantage, far from its industrial base in Germany and lacking forward repair bases.

Indeed, the Russian winter reduced much of Hitler’s panzer armies to frozen scrap metal in a matter of a few weeks – proving to be the most effective Soviet anti-tank weapon of 1941. This is not to say that the Russian winter defeated Hitler’s panzer armies, but that it neutralized an already spent and defeated force. Nor were German tank crews prepared for winter weather in either material or psychological terms. Most crewmen wore their black panzer uniforms throughout the winter of 1941–42, since the bulk of the available winter uniforms went to the infantry and artillery, not the panzer troops. German panzer crewmen had not been led to expect a winter campaign and when the heavy snow and deep cold began, many seemed to lapse into the idea that they would be sent home to get new tanks. Some surplus crews were sent home, but the majority were pressed into service as infantry or anti-partisan troops, for which they were ill-suited. In contrast, most Soviet tank crews were well supplied with warm winter clothing. While Soviet tankers were too thinly spread to achieve decisive results in the winter of 1941–42, they did learn a great deal during the period when their opposite numbers were laid low.

Fateful Decisions and Armoured Renewal, April–May 1942

Despite successfully surviving Operation Barbarossa and Typhoon and forcing all four German panzer armies to retreat, the Winter Counter-offensive had demonstrated that the Red Army could not inflict decisive defeats upon the Wehrmacht with a motley collection of tank brigades and separate tank battalions. In order to conduct deliberate offensives that could seize deep objectives and encircle large enemy formations, the Red Army needed to resurrect corps-size armoured formations. In February 1942, the Stavka authorized the formation of twenty-five new tank corps from existing and newly-formed tank brigades. Initially, these formations were based upon two or three tank brigades with 100–150 tanks and a motorized rifle brigade with an authorized strength of 1,900 infantry, but were provided very limited artillery, engineer, reconnaissance and air defense supporting arms. Even trucks to carry fuel and ammunition for the corps were in very short supply.

The first three tanks corps were officially formed on 31 March 1942 in the Moscow Military district, with General-major Mikhail E. Katukov commanding the 1st Tank Corps (1 TC), General-major Dmitry K. Mostovenko getting the 3 TC and General-major Vasiliy A. Mishulin getting 4 TC. Katukov’s corps was based upon his own veteran 1st Guards Tank Brigade, but the other two tank brigades added to his command were newly-formed units that had not yet seen combat. Ten more tank corps were formed in mid-April and six more in May. Rotmistrov, who like Katukov had earned himself a reputation for results at the front, was given command of the 7 TC. All of the officers chosen to lead the first nine tank corps in March-April 1942 had commanded a tank brigade or division in combat during the 1941 campaign and three had been wounded in action. Thus, each corps contained a kernel of combat veterans and trained tankers, but many personnel were fresh from the tank training schools.

The Stavka and GABTU decided that the tank corps would receive the best available tanks, namely the KV-1, T-34, Matilda II and T-60. Outfitting the first nine tank corps in March-April 1942 required about 1,400 tanks, including 540 T-34s and 200 KV-1s. Equipping these tank corps should have been fairly straightforward for the GABTU, since by March Soviet industry was producing over 700 T-34s and 250 KV-1s per month. Yet while the Stavka and GABTU recognized that the new tank corps were essential to spearhead upcoming offensive operations, the Red Army’s infantry commanders all demanded tank support, so the decision was made to retain and even expand the number of separate tank brigades and OTBs so that each field army would have some armour support. While most of the remaining T-26 and BT light tanks and British-made Valentines were fobbed off on the infantry support units, they too would get a share of T-34s and KV-1s. However, the Red Army was still trying to do too much, too fast and the decision to develop two separate tank forces – one for mobile warfare and one for infantry support – diluted the Soviet Union’s growing advantage in tank production in early 1942 and resulted in units that often had a hodgepodge of tank models. Instead of concentrating the best armour in the tank corps, the separate brigades and battalions would divert a significant number of tanks and crews to units that would have little or no operational-level impact. The impact of this mistake was to reduce the value of the Red Army’s growing numerical superiority in tanks in the early campaigning in spring and summer 1942.

Even though combat experience from the 1941 campaign indicated that the T-34 had poor visibility for its buttoned-up commanders and the KV-1 had an inadequate transmission, the GKO and GABTU decided not to make any major changes to these designs since it would reduce short-term production output. Instead, both tanks received some additional armoured protection in their 1942 models and the T-34 Model 1942 would begin using a larger hexagonal-shaped turret after May 1942 in order to help improve crew performance. New tracks and road wheels began to appear during the course of 1942, but the major defects were left uncorrected until 1943–44. Indeed, Soviet tank design became rigidly conservative for more than a year, although once Germany began to field its own improved tanks the GABTU leadership recognized that the T-34 design needed to be updated. The KV-1 was more problematic and no amount of minor improvements would change the fact that it lacked the mobility to keep up with T-34 tanks. The only new Soviet tank introduced in 1942 was the 9-ton T-70 light tank armed with a 45mm cannon, which was intended to replace the T-60, which only had a 20mm cannon. The main reason for producing the T-70 was that it could be built in quantity and would help make up the deficit of T-34s, not because it added a great deal of combat effectiveness to Soviet armoured units.

On the German side, there were a number of important developments that altered the dynamic of armoured combat. Whereas the German army had concentrated virtually all its tanks in nineteen panzer divisions in the 1941 campaign, the experience of violent Soviet tank attacks against German infantry divisions – such as the 21st Tank Brigade raid against the 36.Infanterie-Division (mot.) at Kalinin in October 1941 – convinced the OKH that the motorized infantry divisions should be provided with their own Panzer-Abteilung as soon as practical. Four of the motorized infantry divisions assigned to Heeresgruppe Süd, including the Grossdeutschland Division, were provided a tank battalion. The Waffen SS also successfully lobbied for their own panzer units, since the four divisions employed during Barbarossa were constantly forced to request armoured support from the army. A total of forty StuG III assault guns had been provided to these four Waffen-SS Divisions, but these were best suited for defensive combat, not a rapid war of movement. After much discussion, the OKH finally authorized the formation of three SS-Panzer-Abteilungen on 28 January 1942; these battalions would go to the LSSAH, Reich and Wiking divisions in March–April. The German army leadership had resisted giving the Waffen-SS tanks because it would make them more independent – which was regarded as a dangerous development – and it meant diverting about 150 tanks from new tank production. Not to be excluded, even the Luftwaffe managed to get authorization to form one panzer company for the new Hermann Göring Brigade. Thus, going into the 1942 campaign, the panzer divisions surrendered their previous monopoly on mobile armoured operations and conceded a role to a variety of new players. Yet the result of this change was to dilute the concentration of German armoured strength that had produced victory in the past in order to placate bureaucratic interests and eventually force the existing panzer divisions into a competition for scarce resources with the Waffen-SS and other so-called elite formations.

Hitler had been eager to form new panzer divisions for future operations and he diverted new tank production in September 1941 to begin forming the 22 and 23.Panzer-Divisionen in France. It took six months to train both divisions and they began shipment to the Eastern Front in March 1942. The 24.Panzer-Division, using the disbanded 1.Kavallerie-Division as a base, began forming in November 1941 and would be sent to the Eastern Front in May. In conjunction with these three new panzer divisions being sent eastward, the OKH ordered the badly-depleted 6, 7 and 10.Panzer-Divisionen to return by rail to Germany to refit and re-equip; it was intended that these three divisions would return in time to provide a second wave of armoured reinforcements for the later stages of the 1942 campaign. By mid-February 1942, Hitler had already decided that he wanted to make the main effort of the 1942 offensive in the south, so he directed the OKH to strengthen the panzer divisions in Heeresgruppe Süd by taking armour from the panzer divisions in Heeresgruppe Nord and Mitte; each of von Kleist’s panzer divisions would be provided with three panzer battalions, but this meant that a number of the panzer divisions along the rest of the Eastern Front were now reduced to just a single panzer battalion. In the short term, this decision by Hitler quickly restored the armoured forces under the control of Heeresgruppe Süd and allowed the Wehrmacht to mount a major offensive on this part of the Eastern Front in the summer of 1942, but it reduced German armoured units on the rest of the Eastern Front to a strictly defensive capability and surrendered the initiative in these areas to the Red Army’s tankers. Instead of trying to rebuild the shattered panzer armies of 1941 – which had proved doctrinally and organizationally sound – Hitler opted to direct the majority of his available armoured resources into one over-sized command, designed for a single purpose: to reach the oilfields in the Caucasus. This was a very risky and dangerous approach – although it did not appear so in Berlin in February 1942 – because if it failed, the Wehrmacht would completely lose the initiative in the East.

After spending most of a year in constant dread of the T-34 and KV-1 tanks, German panzer and panzerjäger units began to receive the first new weapons intended to counter Soviet heavy tanks in February 1942 and this process accelerated during the spring. The 7.5cm HEAT rounds had arrived in limited quantities in January and problems with quality control limited production for some time, but their appearance helped to end the Soviet predilection for raids by single KV-1s. The Germans had also captured significant quantities of Soviet 76.2mm field guns in the 1941 campaign and these were rechambered in Germany and reissued as the 7.62cm Pak36 (r) in February 1942. The Pak 36(r) was the first weapon provided to the panzerjägers that could destroy a KV-1 or T-34 tank with kinetic armour-piercing rounds out to 1,000 meters or more and helped to level the playing field in 1942 until Rheinmetall could deploy the equivalent 7.5cm Pak40 in quantity. Since the Pak 36(r) was double the weight of the 5cm Pak 38, the Germans began mounting a large proportion of the Pak 36(r) guns on surplus Pz.II chassis, which entered service in April as the Marder II tank destroyer.

Production of tungsten-core 5cm anti-tank rounds for the 5cm Pak 38 and the 5cm guns on the Pz.III tank was also significantly expanded in early 1942, since the Panzergranate 40 – which was the only anti-tank round that had any effect on the T-34 – had only been available in token quantities during the 1941 campaign. Additionally, a new generation of anti-tank weapons that used the Gerlach ‘tapered bore’ principle to produce extremely high muzzle velocities began appearing in limited numbers, such as the 4.2cm Pak 41 and the 7.5cm Pak 41. While tungsten penetrators and tapered bore guns led to a temporary increase in German anti-tank firepower for the 1942 campaign, Germany’s supplies of tungsten – mostly imported from Portugal – were too limited to re-equip all units with this improved weaponry, or even to sustain increased production for very long. Instead, the Heereswaffenamt put its greatest emphasis in the short term on up-gunning the Pz.III and Pz.IV tanks to long-barreled weapons in order to increase muzzle velocities. The introduction of the Pz.III J with long 5cm Kwk 39 L/60 in December 1941 provided Germany’s main medium tank with the ability to effectively engage the T-34 at ranges up to 500 meters, although the Pz.III’s inferior levels of armoured protection and mobility meant that the T-34 was still a formidable opponent, if well handled. The Pz.IVF2, equipped with the long 7.5cm KwK 40 L/43, had the potential to become Germany’s ‘universal tank’ that could fulfill the anti-tank and infantry support roles equally effectively, but very little effort was made to expand its production during the critical winter months. In March 1942, the Pz.IVF2 began to appear in limited numbers – usually arriving in batches of just five to ten new tanks – which meant that the barely-adequate Pz.IIIJ would be the main German battle tank for much of the 1942 campaign. Concurrently, the StuG III Aus. F assault gun began appearing with the 7.5cm StuK 40 L/43 cannon, which provided the Sturmartillerie with a real anti-tank capability – even though their primary mission remained infantry support.

While these crash programs and ad hoc expedients significantly raised German anti-tank capabilities in 1942, the long-term plan to counter the T-34 was based upon finishing the development of the new heavy tank and medium tank designs. Henschel and Porsche were each developing heavy tank prototypes, but Hitler would not select the Henschel design for production as the Pz.VI Tiger until April. Armed with the 8.8cm KwK 36 L/56 gun and protected by up to 120mm of armour, the Tiger would provide the Wehrmacht with a large advantage in firepower and armoured protection when it began to appear in August, but its mobility remained inferior to the T-34, as well as previous German tanks.

Meanwhile, Daimler-Benz and Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nurnberg (MAN) were involved in a tight competition to produce the new medium tank, which would be equipped with the new 7.5cm KwK 42 L/70 gun under development by Rheinmetall. Originally, the new medium tank was supposed to be 30 tons, but the division of the Heereswaffenamt responsible for overseeing the new medium tank – Wa Pruef 6 – raised the requirement to 36 tons. Engineers at Daimler-Benz made a careful study of captured T-34s and developed a prototype that had a similar silhouette and was powered by a Mercedes-Benz MB 507 diesel engine. In contrast, MAN made torsion bar suspension the determining characteristic of its prototype, even though this was irrelevant to the original requirement made by Guderian in November 1941. Hitler was impressed by the Daimler-Benz design, which was shown to him in April 1942, and he favored a diesel tank engine.

However, due to a variety of back-room political factors, Wa Pruef 6 favored the MAN design, which was powered by a petrol engine. Hitler was told that a diesel tank engine could not yet be manufactured in large quantities and that selecting the Daimler-Benz prototype would result in unacceptable production delays, so on 14 May he selected the MAN prototype to be the next German medium tank.[18] The decision not to equip its next main battle tank with a diesel engine proved to be one of Germany’s most serious mistakes in armoured combat in the Second World War. Since fuel shortages were already crippling panzer operations by late 1941, the need for greater fuel efficiency was just as important as adding bigger guns and more armour to its tanks, but the Heereswaffenamt was oblivious to the impact that continued reliance on petrol engines would have on German mechanized operations. Hitler, who had already displayed sounder judgment than some of his engineers in pressing for a long-barreled gun on the Pz.III prior to the discovery of the T-34, regarded development of a diesel tank engine as a critical requirement for the Panzerwaffe, but the Heereswaffenamt and German industry managed to ignore his priorities. While Hitler’s decisions that led to German defeats are often highlighted, those where his judgement proved correct are often overlooked. After Germany’s defeat, it was convenient for German military and industrial leaders to dump all blame on Hitler’s head, which helped to conceal their own egregious errors of judgment.

Clearly the most notable fault – which directly impacted the ability of the Panzerwaffe to recover from the defeats of 1941 – was that German tank production remained ridiculously weak throughout the period of January–May 1942, with an average of 240 Pz.III and sixty–eighty Pz.IV built each month – a total of just 300–320 medium tanks. In addition, 36–45 StuG III assault guns were produced each month during the same period. Much of the blame for the inadequacy of German armaments production must fall on the head of Reichsminister Fritz Todt, the head of the Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition. In addition to new tanks, German industry rebuilt sixty-seven Pz.III and twenty-four Pz.IV during January–April 1942, which was not even enough to reequip a single panzer division. This half-hearted effort by German industry enabled the Soviets to seize an impressive 3–1 or better numerical advantage in tank production output, which they never lost. Thus, Todt’s death in an airplane crash on 8 February 1942 and his replacement by the capable Albert Speer can only be regarded as a lucky break for the Third Reich. While Speer’s impact on German tank production was too late to influence the 1942 campaign, his efforts to improve the efficiency of the German armaments industry would enable the Panzerwaffe to survive the losses of the 1942–43 campaigns.

Tank Skirmishes in the Crimea, 1 January–20 May

Although the Soviet Winter Counter-offensive culminated in early March, one place where the fighting continued virtually non-stop from January until the summer was in the Crimea. Both sides employed no more than a few hundred tanks and assault guns in the Crimea, but given the close-quarter fighting caused by the constrictive terrain, even small amounts of armour could make contributions well beyond the tactical level. The Soviet landings at Kerch and Feodosiya forced von Manstein to break off his attack on the fortress of Sevastopol and force-march the XXX Armeekorps eastward to contain the Soviet beachheads. This was the first time in the Second World War that the Wehrmacht had to react to a major enemy amphibious landing, but it was also the first time that the Red Army had conducted one. At the start of 1942 in the Crimea, both sides were in a race, with the Soviets trying to land more forces, including armour, to affect a breakout before the Germans could erect an impenetrable barrier across the narrow neck of the Kerch peninsula. Von Manstein requested a panzer unit to help crush the Soviet beachheads but the OKH had none to spare.

Von Manstein was at his best in a set-piece battle and, although he had no armoured support, the XXX Armeekorps had Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 190 and the Luftwaffe still had some measure of air superiority over the Crimea, so Stuka support was available. Although the Soviet 44th Army had two weeks to fortify its position in Feodosiya and had the 79th OTB with T-26 light tanks, they were not expecting von Manstein’s weaker forces to counterattack. On 15 January 1942, the XXX Armeekorps suddenly attacked Feodosiya with heavy air and artillery support and within three days they had recaptured the port. It was a stinging tactical victory and von Manstein claimed that the 44th Army lost 16,700 troops and eighty-five tanks at Feodosiya.[19]

Despite von Manstein’s success at Feodosiya – the only German victory in January 1942 – the Soviets managed to establish the Crimean Front under General-leytenant Dmitri T. Kozlov in the Kerch peninsula with the 44th, 47th and 51st Armies. In order to breach the German defensive line across the 13km-wide Parpach narrows, the Stavka sent Kozlov additional armour and artillery, as well as air support. Unlike other jury-rigged Red Army operations during the Winter Counter-offensive, Kozlov was provided the resources to mount a proper set-piece attack. However, the Parpach Narrows was one of the few places on the Eastern Front where the terrain enabled the Germans to establish defensive positions in accordance with their doctrinal norms; von Manstein’s infantry divisions were only required to hold 4–6km-wide fronts, not 20–25km as along much of the Eastern Front. By late February, Kozlov had nearly 200 tanks in the Kerch peninsula, including thirty-six KV-1 and twenty T-34, so he mounted a probing attack on 26 February, including the use of armour against the Romanian 18th Infantry Division.

However, heavy rains, marshy terrain and German minefields made it difficult for the Soviet tanks to advance and over the course of a week’s indecisive combat, Kozlov lost twenty-eight of his thirty-six KV-1 tanks and seven T-34s from the 39th and 40th Tank Brigades and 229th OTB. If ever there was a place where the KV-1 could fulfill its intended function as a breakthrough tank, it was in the Kerch peninsula, but it failed to deliver, despite the fact that the two opposing German infantry divisions had very limited anti-tank weaponry. Nor could von Manstein use 8.8cm flak guns in the front line, since they would be spotted in the flat terrain and destroyed by Soviet artillery. Instead, the German infantry relied upon large quantities of Tellermine 35 AT mines and the Soviet tendency to use KV-1s in small groups.

Prodded by Stalin to recommence his offensive, Kozlov decided to resume his attacks on 13 March after receiving another tank brigade and an independent tank regiment. With some 225 tanks available, as well as significant artillery support, Kozlov should have been able to dent, if not break, von Manstein’s front, which was held by only two German and one Romanian infantry divisions. Yet Kozlov had learned little from his first setback and he employed his armour in the same sector with exactly the same result: between 13–19 March the 39th Tank Brigade lost twenty-three of its twenty-seven tanks, the 40th Brigade lost eighteen tanks and the 56th Tank Brigade was shattered, losing eighty-eight of its ninety T-26 light tanks. Soviet tanks tried to advance over flat, open terrain and without the element of surprise, and then cross an obstacle belt that the Germans had covered with anti-tank fire. Although von Manstein’s anti-tank capabilities were modest, his troops managed to knock out more than half of Kozlov’s tanks in a week. The Luftwaffe also managed to intervene on occasion and the Kerch peninsula was no place for tankers without air cover, since there was no way for a tank battalion or brigade to avoid detection on the treeless steppe.

In response to earlier pleading for armoured support, the OKH finally provided von Manstein with the newly-formed 22.Panzer-Division just as Kozlov’s second offensive was smashed. Von Manstein immediately decided to mount a spoiling attack with the 22.Panzer-Division, but the operation was mounted before all of the division had arrived. Despite his reputation as a strategist, von Manstein knew very little about tank tactics and he amply demonstrated this in his imprudent employment of the 22.Panzer-Division. Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Koppenburg, commander of Panzer-Regiment 204, led two of his tank battalions in the attack which began at 0600 hours on 20 March. Koppenburg attacked with 142 tanks, mostly Pz.II and Pz.38(t), but with minimal infantry and no engineer support. A thick morning fog covered the battlefield and Koppenburg’s panzers advanced blindly into the mist, with visibility down to 50–100 meters. He quickly lost control of his two battalions in the fog and the I./Pz.Regt 204 blundered into an undetected minefield. Even worse, the assembly areas of the 55th Tank Brigade and 229th OTB were nearby and the Soviets quickly committed a battalion of T-26 light tanks and four KV-1s to engage the panzers. Koppenburg’s battalions split apart in the fog and Soviet tanks and antitank guns pounded the I./Pz.Regt 204, which suffered 40 per cent losses. After four hours of mucking about in the fog, Koppenburg’s battered regiment retreated to its start position, having failed in its mission. The attack of the 22.Panzer-Division at Korpetsch was one of the most badly-bungled German armoured attacks of the entire war on the Eastern Front; thirty-two of 142 tanks had been lost (nine Pz.II, seventeen Pz.38(t) and six Pz.IV) and this new division had to immediately be pulled out of the line to refit its panzer regiment. The use of panzers without air, artillery, infantry or engineer support went completely against German combined arms doctrine and the failure to properly plan or support the attack rests squarely on von Manstein’s head.

Kozlov was able to replenish his own armour and mount another offensive on 9 April with 150 tanks, but this also failed to break von Manstein’s front. The Jäger-Regiment 49 of 28.Leichte Infanterie-Division had received a few of the new 2.8cm sPzB 41 tapered-bore anti-tank guns, which proved to be an excellent anti-tank weapon in the Crimea. Manning one such gun, Obergefreiter Emanuel Czernik destroyed seven T-26 tanks and one BT on 9 April, at ranges from 70–600 meters.[20] After battering his forces against a solid defense for two months, Kozlov was forced to temporarily suspend his efforts to break out of the Kerch peninsula and by early May he had over 230 tanks in four brigades and three OTBs back in service. However, the delay was fatal for the Crimea Front as warm weather had returned and the Wehrmacht intended to regain the initiative.

In order to prepare for the second German summer offensive in the Soviet Union, which the OKH had named ‘Blau’ (Blue), Hitler wanted two preliminary operations conducted in the spring to eliminate troublesome Soviet penetrations: Kozlov’s Crimean Front in the Kerch Peninsula and Timoshenko’s Southwest Front in the Barvenkovo salient. These were intended to be true ‘Blitz’ operations, using the proven schwerpunkt formula of panzer-led assaults supported by Luftwaffe dive-bombers, to quickly rip holes in the Soviet frontlines and then execute enveloping operations to encircle and eliminate entire Soviet armies. In accordance with Führer Directive 41 issued on 5 April, von Manstein was directed to eliminate Kozlov’s forces first, then Heeresgruppe Süd would deal with Timoshenko and then, afterwards, von Manstein would finish off operations in the Crimea by capturing the fortress of Sevastopol. However, unlike Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht no longer had the resources to conduct simultaneous major offensives, but instead would have to shuttle its resources between the Crimea and the other armies of Heeresgruppe Süd – this might work as long as the offensives stuck to schedule and encountered no unexpected problems.

Von Manstein developed an operation plan dubbed Trappenjad (‘Bustard Hunt’) to crush Kozlov’s 44th, 47th and 51st Armies in a short-term, high-intensity attack. At first glance, the odds did not appear to favor a successful German attack upon the Soviet defensive line centered upon Parpach. Even by stripping all other sectors, von Manstein was only able to concentrate the 22.Panzer-Division, five German infantry divisions and two and a half Romanian divisions to attack a total of nineteen Soviet divisions and four tank brigades (230 tanks). Kozlov had his forces deployed in depth, with General-leytenant Vladimir N. L’vov’s 51st Army defending a 9km-long front in the north with eight rifle divisions, three rifle brigades and two tank brigades and General-leytenant Stepan I. Cherniak’s 44th Army defending the southern sector of the front along the Black Sea with five rifle divisions and two tank brigades. In reserve, Kozlov had two rifle divisions and one cavalry division from General-major Konstantin S. Kolganov’s 47th Army. Under pressure from Stalin to mount another break-out attempt soon, Kozlov intended to launch another offensive in the north and had massed the bulk of his forces to support this plan. Kozlov did not expect a major German attack given that his forces outnumbered the enemy by more than 2–1 and the marshy terrain along the Black Sea coast appeared unfavorable for offensive operations. Furthermore, the VVS-Crimean Front had controlled the skies over the eastern Crimea for months and Kozlov assumed that Soviet air superiority would deter a German offensive.

However, Soviet intelligence failed to detect the deployment of Generaloberst von Richthofen’s Fliegerkorps VIII to airfields in the Crimea in early May. This elite formation had over 600 aircraft, including Schlachtgeschwader 1 (SchG 1) equipped with forty-three of the new Hs 129 B-1 ground attack planes; this aircraft was armed with two 20mm and one 30mm cannon. Von Manstein deliberately chose to place his schwerpunkt in the worst terrain – the southern sector held by Cherniak’s 44th Army. He planned to use the three infantry divisions of Generalleutnant Fretter-Pico’s XXX Armeekorps in the first echelon to breach the Soviet lines, then push the 22.Panzer-Division into the breach to exploit. Clearly von Manstein had learned from the debacle with 22.Panzer-Division in March and this time he intended to hold his armour back until Fretter-Pico’s infantry created a penetration corridor through the enemy’s defenses. Von Manstein skillfully provided Fretter-Pico with the tools to unlock Cherniak’s defense: a total of fifty-seven StuG III assault guns from the 190, 197 and 249.Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen, two batteries of 8.8cm flak guns and assault boats from the 902.Sturmboote Kommando to mount an amphibious landing behind Soviet lines. Trappenjad is an interesting use of German armour in two separate capacities – assault guns for infantry support and breakthrough, tanks for exploitation. While the German 46.Infanterie-Division and the Romanian 7th Mountain Corps fixed the strong Soviet right wing with a series of feints, von Manstein intended to smash in the weaker left wing and then pivot north with 22.Panzer-Division to trap the main Soviet forces against the Sea of Azov. Only through careful security could the 11.Armee conceal the fact that more than half of its combat forces were massed against the southernmost point of the Soviet line and that the rest of the front was only lightly held.

Operation Trappenjad began at 0315 hours on 8 May, with a ten-minute artillery barrage against the forward echelon of the Soviet 44th Army. Precision Stuka attacks assisted the German infantry in piercing Cherniak’s first two lines of defense in just three and a half hours and reaching an 11-meter-wide anti-tank ditch that marked the boundary of the 44th Army’s final line of defense. Not only had the Soviets mined the approaches to this anti-tank ditch, but they had also emplaced steel girders in it to stop tanks, although they made the amateurish error that the most formidable obstacle is of little value if not covered by fire. German infantry crossed the ditch and accompanying pioneers began to clear the obstacles. At a cost of just 388 casualties, the XXX Armeekorps ripped open the left flank of the Crimean Front. Belatedly, the 44th Army committed its 56th Tank Brigade and 126th OTB with ninety-eight tanks, including seven KV-1, to attack the 28.Jäger-Division near the breach site. However, the tanks were caught in the open by the Stukas of StG 77 and the Hs 129 Bs of SchG 1 and blasted to pieces in a hail of bombs and cannon fire; forty-eight tanks were knocked out, including all seven KV-1.

By the time that Kozlov realized how badly the 44th Army’s front had been breached, German pioneers had almost completed filling in the anti-tank ditch clearing the way for 22.Panzer-Division. Kampfgruppe Groddeck, comprised of Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 22, a Panzerjäger-Abteilung, an assault-gun battery and some motorized infantry, moved out first, exploiting eastward toward Kerch. Cherniak committed the rest of his armour to local counterattacks against the German breach, which cost him twenty-six more light tanks. After midday on 9 May, the lead elements of 22.Panzer-Division began crossing the anti-tank ditch and moved northward, but a sudden heavy rain storm brought the attack to an abrupt halt by depriving the schwerpunkt of its air support. Despite the death of the commander of the Soviet 51st Army in a German air strike, Kozlov managed to shift the 40th Tank Brigade and 229th OTB into the path of the German panzer division, with fifty-three tanks including twenty-one KV-1. Yet when the rain stopped the next morning, the Luftwaffe easily spotted the Soviet heavy tanks and pulverized them – eleven KV-1 were knocked out and others immobilized. With the Soviet armour knocked about, the 22.Panzer-Division resumed its advance and quickly reached the Sea of Azov, cutting off the entire 51st Army. Kozlov’s last armour – the 55th Tank Brigade – mounted a futile, unsupported effort to stop 22.Panzer-Division on 10 May, but lost twenty-six of forty-six tanks, including all ten KV-1. After that, the Crimean Front began to disintegrate, with many troops surrendering and others fleeing to Kerch in hope of evacuation.

By 20 May, von Manstein’s forces had occupied Kerch and eliminated Kozlov’s Crimean Front in less than two weeks. At a cost of just 3,397 German casualties, three Soviet armies had been smashed and 175,000 troops lost. The Red Army lost four tank brigades and three OTBs with 238 tanks, including forty-one KV-1, against only eight tanks (one Pz.II, four Pz.III, three Pz.38(t)) from 22.Panzer-Division and three assault guns. Indeed, the Germans even managed to recover six of their tanks that had been lost in March and pressed into Soviet service. Operation Trappenjad was an exquisitely-executed set-piece offensive, with near-perfect use of a combined-arms schwerpunkt to quickly achieve decisive results. Although von Manstein had to return the 22.Panzer-Division and some of the Luftwaffe units to Heeresgruppe Süd for operations around Kharkov, he could now turn confidently to reduce fortress Sevastopol with no threat of other Soviet forces at his back.

Decision at Kharkov, 12–28 May 1942

Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock, who took over Heeresgruppe Süd in January 1942, had intended since February to mount a pincer attack utilizing the AOK 6 and some of von Kleist’s 1.Panzerarmee to cut off Timoshenko’s armies in the Barvenkovo salient, but had lacked the armour, air support or supplies to mount an enveloping operation. However, the OKH dispatched two panzer divisions and three infantry divisions to Heeresgruppe Süd in March, which restored some measure of its combat capabilities. By April, when Führer Directive 41 specified that the Barvenkovo salient had to be eliminated prior to the beginning of Operation Blau in June, von Bock’s staff developed operational plan Fridericus, which expected to use these forces to cut off the 75km-wide neck of the salient. According to the original plan, General der Panzertruppen Friedrich Paulus’ AOK 6 would launch the main attack from the north, while von Kleist provided Gruppe Mackensen, with the 14.Panzer-Division and 60.Infanterie-Division (mot.), to launch a supporting attack against the south side of the salient. Paulus was given the 3 and 23.Panzer-Division, which he kept in reserve near Kharkov. However, German logistics remained problematic even as warmer spring weather appeared, with Mackensen’s divisions having only 0.2 V.S. of fuel on 25 April. Von Bock allowed the date for Fridericus to slide into May and decided to allow von Manstein to conduct Trappenjad first, since AOK 11’s supply requirements were significantly less than the amount required for Fridericus. Once von Manstein crushed Kozlov’s Front, Paulus and Kleist would execute Fridericus.

Unknown to von Bock, Timoshenko was planning his own offensive near Kharkov. Although Stalin and the Stavka expected the Germans to mount their next summer offensive against Moscow, they wanted to use the Red Army’s new tank units to mount offensives in other sectors to keep the Germans off balance and divert reserves from Heeresgruppe Mitte. Since Timoshenko had achieved one of the best successes in the winter counter-offensive, Stalin favoured his proposal to mount a large-scale double envelopment to encircle and destroy Paulus’ AOK 6 at Kharkov. However, Stalin was upset when Timoshenko requested 1,200 more tanks to conduct the operation, which indicates that Soviet armoured resources were still finite. Instead, Timoshenko was provided with 923 tanks, only 34 per cent of which were modern main battle tanks (eighty KV-1 and 239 T-34). Over 21 per cent of Timoshenko’s armour was composed of British-made Matilda II and Valentine tanks. Not only was one-third of Timoshenko’s armour comprised of T-60 light tanks of modest combat value, but he was forced to employ even obsolescent BT-2 and BT-5 light tanks in some tank brigades. Indeed, only six of Timoshenko’s nineteen tank brigades were equipped according to the 10March 1942 standard (ten KV-1, twentyT-34, twenty T-60).[21] This is very interesting because it indicates that a high-priority Red Army offensive was provided only one-third of one month’s current production of KV-1 and T-34 tanks and had to make do with odds and ends, which begs the question – why didn’t the Stavka provide Timoshenko with better armoured resources? The logical explanation is that the Red Army was not receiving as many tanks as Soviet industry claimed to be producing at the time. Despite a purported 3–1 Soviet advantage in output of medium/heavy tanks over German output in spring 1942, Timoshenko only had a 2–1 numerical advantage on the battlefield at Kharkov and the German panzer units had a much higher proportion of medium tanks than the opposing Soviet tank brigades. Furthermore, the Germans were able to field 112 Pz.IIIJ and seventeen Pz.IVF2 at Kharkov, which for the first time provided panzer divisions with some ability to stand up to the T-34.

Timoshenko intended to conduct the northern pincer of his offensive with the 21st, 28th and 38th Armies from the Staryi Saltov bridgehead east of Kharkov and the southern pincer with the 6th Army in the Barvenkovo salient. After breaking through the German front lines, the 6th Army would commit a mobile group comprised of the new 21st and 23rd Tank Corps to envelop AOK 6 from the south, while the northern group committed the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps to envelop Kharkov from the other flank; Timoshenko expected the Soviet pincers to link up within four to five days of the beginning of the offensive. The Stavka hoped that Timoshenko’s Kharkov operation would be the Red Army’s first deliberate offensive of the Russo-German War, but Stalin was unwilling to commit the resources or time to realize this goal.

Superficially, Timoshenko tried to conduct an offensive that looked like the kind of Deep Battle operation envisioned in PU-36. However, his designated main effort – the 6th Army – was provided only 2.7 loads of fuel for its tanks, instead of the 7–8 loads that Stavka planners indicated were necessary. The amount of fuel and ammunition stockpiled in the Southwest Front was also inadequate to support a full-scale offensive for more than a few days.[22] Coordination between the four Soviet armies involved in the offensive was minimal, with no overall commander appointed over the three northern armies. Yet the most egregious error in planning the Kharkov operation was the faulty intelligence provided on German dispositions and intentions. Timoshenko was completely unaware of the presence of some of the German reinforcements and he airily dismissed the presence of Paulus’ armoured reserve – the 3 and 23.Panzer-Divisionen – as irrelevant, since he claimed that the Soviet pincers would close around AOK 6 before Paulus had a chance to commit his armour to a counterattack. In essence, Timoshenko’s offensive was planned on a logistical shoestring, with inadequate C² and knowledge of the enemy, and simply assumed a static, immobile opponent.

Timoshenko did gain a certain amount of tactical and operational-level surprise when his forces attacked AOK 6 at 0630 hours on 12 May. It was a clear, sunny day with temperatures reaching 22°C (71°F). Both assault formations began the offensive in style, with powerful sixty-minute artillery preparations along large portions of Paulus’ front line, followed by air strikes that struck German artillery positions further back. At 0730 hours, the attacking Soviet armies committed shock groups, each formed around a rifle division and a tank brigade with forty to forty-five tanks. All told, 300 tanks were committed in the north and 124 in the south, and front-line German infantrymen were shocked by the appearance of so many tanks. Initially, Soviet armour was used strictly in an infantry support role to help their own infantry reduce the German defences, which were based upon battalion-size Stützpunkten (strongpoints). The 28th and 38th Armies achieved considerable success when two of their shock groups, spearheaded by the 36th and 90th Tank Brigades, routed two kampfgruppen of the 294.Infanterie-Division and captured the town of Nepokrytaya. In this sector, the German infantry had only three 5cm Pak 38 guns to oppose more than ninety Soviet tanks; the KV-1 and Matilda II tanks quickly overwhelmed the few panzerjägers, which incited a rare ‘tank panic’ among the German infantrymen.[23] German artillerymen put up a stiff fight in the streets of Nepokrytaya with their 10.5cm l.FH18 howitzers firing over open sights and managing to knock out twelve Matilda II tanks, but lost two complete artillery batteries in the process. In the south, the 6th Army massed four rifle divisions and three tank brigades against two German infantry divisions, yet only managed to advance 6–8km on the first day; the flanks of both the 62.Infanterie-Division and the 454.Sicherungs-Division were pushed in, but neither division was crushed by the weight of Soviet firepower. While Paulus’ infantry was severely stressed on the first day of Timoshenko’s offensive – sometimes showing signs of panic – they avoided destruction by either trading space for time or entrenching themselves in fortified positions like Ternovaya.

Timoshenko’s assessment that the Germans would not commit their armoured reserve in time proved wrong on the first day, when von Bock directed Paulus to move both the 3 and 23.Panzer-Divisionen up to the front to support the hard-pressed XVII Armeekorps. Neither division was prepared to launch an immediate counterstroke and von Bock instructed Paulus – who was a novice commander by German standards – to avoid committing them until he could ensure a coordinated effort with Luftwaffe support. Consequently, the shock groups of the 28th and 38th Armies crushed the remainder of the 294.Infanterie-Division on the morning of 13 May and captured Peremoga, just 18km west of Kharkov. It thus came as quite a shock when, at 1230 hours, Kampfgruppe Schmitt-Ott from 3.Panzer-Division (III/Panzer-Regiment 6 and I/Schützen Regiment 3) and the 23.Panzer-Division struck the two lead rifle divisions of the 38th Army near the Babka river. The German armour caught both Soviet rifle divisions in the open and routed them; some Soviet artillery batteries engaged the German tanks but were quickly overrun.

Amazingly, only three German tanks were destroyed and nineteen disabled out of 262 committed to the counterattack. The Soviet 38th Army commander foolishly decided to combine his three tank brigades involved in infantry support into the 22nd Tank Corps to provide a counterweight to the German armour, but the formation of this ad hoc command deprived the 38th Army’s rifle units of tank support at a critical moment. Furthermore, the 22nd Tank Corps had just twenty-two T-34s and no KV-1s, the rest being light tanks and British tanks. Timoshenko reacted to the German armoured counterattack by diverting the 6th Guards Tank Brigade of 28th Army – which was still advancing – to reinforce the faltering 38th Army, thereby further weakening the northern pincer. Timoshenko also became fixated on eliminating the encircled German Kampfgruppe Grüner in Stützpunkt Ternovaya and committed significant resources toward this task – a mistake the Germans would later commit themselves at Bastogne in 1944.

By the third day of the Soviet offensive, the two German panzer divisions had battered the 38th Army into a combat-ineffective state and defeated the poorly-handled 22nd Tank Corps. Overhead, Luftwaffe fighters gained air superiority and deprived the Soviet shock groups of close air support. Nevertheless, the 28th Army continued to slowly advance toward Kharkov with four rifle divisions and two tank brigades, even though its flanks were increasingly exposed. In the south, the 6th Army continued to push back the 62.Infanterie-Division, but was surprised when it bumped into the 113.Infanterie-Division and Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 244 deployed further back. A close-quarter armoured action in the town of Efremovka on 14 May resulted in nine StuG IIIs lost against twelve Matilda II tanks knocked out.[24] The German VIII Armeekorps gradually fell back under intense pressure, but the Soviet 6th Army conducted a relatively unimaginative set-piece battle and failed to use its armour to adequately pursue retreating German units. The only clean breakthrough was made on the left flank of the 6th Army – which Timoshenko regarded as a secondary sector – where the 6th Cavalry Corps was ordered to advance toward Krasnograd. Despite the fact that he had the 269 tanks of the 21st and 23 rd Tank Corps ready for the exploitation mission, Timoshenko wanted to keep them in reserve until 6th Army had achieved a clean breakthrough on the direct route to Kharkov. Timoshenko’s rigid adherence to the original plan, rather than taking advantage of changed circumstances, stood in stark contrast to the flexible, opportunistic style of most senior German commanders. It was not until 16 May that Timoshenko finally decided to commit the 21st and 23rd Tank Corps to battle, by which point the repeated counterattacks of the 3 and 23.Panzer-Divisionen had completely halted the northern assault armies. Both Soviet assault groups had suffered significant losses and were running low on ammunition, without having really broken the German defences.

In the north, the 3 and 23.Panzer-Division mounted an attack on 17 May to relieve the encircled Kampfgruppe Grüner in Ternovaya. The 28th Army committed its last reserve, the 6th Guards Tank Brigade, to stop the German relief effort. A major tank battle involving about 100 tanks on each side occurred southwest of Ternovaya. The Germans lost thirteen tanks in the actions, including some of the new Pz.IIIJs, but they brought up a battery of 8.8cm flak guns which inflicted heavy losses on the Soviet tanks. Afterwards, Kampfgruppe Schmidt-Ott from 3.Panzer-Division and Kampfgruppe Soltmann from 23.Panzer-Division pushed on and relieved Grüner’s encircled command. By this point in the battle, Luftwaffe air superiority was making life very difficult for Soviet tank units and the Soviet offensive in the north was reduced to uncoordinated local actions. On 20 May, the two German panzer divisions mounted another counterattack which smashed in the front of the 28th Army and brought the northern phase of Timoshenko’s offensive to an abrupt end.

As the battle developed, von Bock had merely traded space for time in sectors where the AOK 6 infantry was hard-pressed, while repositioning part of von Kleist’s 1.Panzerarmee – Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) and the XXXXIV Armeekorps (mot.) on the southern side of the Barvenkovo salient to execute Fridericus. Undetected by Soviet intelligence, von Kleist’s forces moved into position opposite General-major Fedor M. Kharitonov’s 9th Army, which had six rifle divisions, two tank brigades and two anti-tank regiments deployed along an extended front. Unlike the German offensives of 1941, only three of the eleven divisions von Kleist deployed for the offensive were motorized and he was obliged to attack with just a single panzer division on each attack axis. At 0500 hours on 17 May, von Kleist attacked, first with a large artillery preparation, then Stuka attacks, then two schwerpunkten, one led by 14.Panzer-Division and the other by 16.Panzer-Division. Despite the presence of two anti-tank regiments, Kharitonov’s front-line rifle divisions were unable to stop the on-rushing German armour, were decimated and then encircled in the opening hours of von Kleist’s attack. When Kharitonov’s command post was bombed by the Luftwaffe, his communications were disrupted and he lost all command over his forces. Two understrength Soviet tank brigades tried to stop von Kleist from achieving a breakthrough, but at the decisive point near Barvenkovo – the schwerpunkt – the Red armour was outnumbered 5–1 and easily defeated. On the first day, von Kleist’s panzers caused the collapse of 9th Army at a cost of just eight tanks.[25] The back door of the Barvenkovo salient was now open, with German armour pouring in.

Timoshenko was oblivious to the German counter-offensive, partly due to the evasiveness of Kharitonov in reporting the scale of the disaster suffered by his army. Instead, Timoshenko was focused on 6th Army, finally achieving some measure of success with the commitment of the 21st and 23 rd Tank Corps, which pushed back both flanks of the German 113.Infanterie-Division and threatened to collapse the defense of the VIII Armeekorps. General-major Grigoriy I. Kuzmin’s 21st Tank Corps was able to overrun some German infantry positions but then ran into hardened resistance in the village of Ryabukhyne, where three StuG III assault guns and an 8.8cm flak battery knocked out thirty-four Soviet tanks. General-major Efim G. Pushkin’s 23rd Tank Corps had a bit more success, advancing 15km at the cost of just nine tanks, but a fresh German division – the 305.Infanterie-Division – arrived in time to prevent a complete breakthrough. Although German veterans often claimed that fresh Soviet units always seemed to appear just as their panzers were on the verge of victory, at Kharkov the boot was on the other foot. By late on 17 May, Timoshenko was aware that 9th Army was in serious trouble and, based upon recommendations from the Stavka, he decided to send Pushkin’s 23rd Tank Corps back to support Kharitonov’s forces. The diversion of his breakthrough force to deal with von Kleist took the wind out of 6th Army’s offensive and was typical of the kind of mistakes in battle command that degraded the performance of the Red Army’s armour in 1941–42.

Paulus was equally nervous about the possible collapse of his VIII Armeekorps under the hammer-blows of Soviet armour and diverted Kampfgruppe von Heydebreck (I/Pz.Regt 201) from 23.Panzer-Division and several more 8.8cm flak batteries to reinforce the faltering German infantry units. The first six of the long-awaited 7.5cm Pak 40 reached the 113.Infanterie-Division, providing a counter to the KV-1 and T-34 tanks.[26]

Von Kleist completed the destruction of Kharitonov’s 9th Army on 18 May, with 14 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen slicing through Soviet infantry and cavalry units. Only thirty-one hours after Fridericus began, the lead German armour reached the Donets and captured the southern part of Izyum. A huge bulge had been pushed into the southern side of the Barvenkovo salient and there was less than 30km separating von Kleist’s spearheads from Paulus’ own assault group assembling near Balakleya on the north side of the salient. The Soviet 57th Army managed to refuse its left flank to prevent von Kleist from completely rolling up the Soviet rear areas, but Timoshenko now had to divert both tank corps and most of the 6th Army reserves to try and contain the German breakthrough. Incredibly, Timoshenko ordered the 6th Army to continue its offensive, as if the threat posed by von Kleist’s armour was a mere nuisance. Once the Soviet tank corps withdrew, Kampfgruppe von Heydebreck delivered a swift counterattack near Borki that caught a great deal of Soviet infantry and artillery in the open; the 6th Army offensive was halted.

With Soviet resistance disintegrating in front of him, von Kleist was able to leisurely resupply his panzers on 19 May and assemble 14 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen and 60.Infanterie-Division (mot.) into a powerful armoured fist, while his infantry divisions mopped up the 9th Army remnants. Timoshenko finally called off his own offensive on 19 May but, rather than massing his still considerable armoured forces to prevent von Kleist from sealing off the Barvenkovo salient, he committed the two tanks corps to a static defense near the village of Grushevakha, while clumsily trying to use the 57th Army’s rifle and cavalry to try and isolate von Kleist’s panzers. Von Kleist easily spotted the threat to his left flank and deftly transferred Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division to mount a sudden attack on the morning of 20 May that demolished the 2nd Cavalry Corps and pushed the 57th Army back 30km. Von Kleist then returned Hube’s division to his spearhead and resumed the advance northward to cut off the Barvenkovo salient. Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) encountered stiff resistance near Mar’evka on 21 May, where a tank melee developed between Pushkin’s 23rd Tank Corps and Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division. This was one of the few large tank-vs.-tank actions of the Second Battle of Kharkov and Hube lost twenty-one tanks, but managed to capture the town and force the Soviet tankers to retreat.

The Luftwaffe was out in full force and the Stukas ruthlessly pounded any concentration of Soviet armour, which forced many battalions to disperse in order to survive, but this made it easier for massed German armour to defeat them in detail. Soviet logistics in the Barvenkovo salient were also failing as von Kleist’s panzers overran one Donets bridge after another. The only problem for von Bock was Paulus’ dithering in moving the 3 and 23.Panzer-Division to link up with von Kleist; Fridericus was supposed to be a double pincer operation, but it ended up being a single envelopment until all but the end. It was not until 22 May that Paulus committed his panzers to Fridericus, but they rapidly tore through the Soviet infantry left holding the northern side of the salient and linked up with von Kleist’s armour on 23 May, trapping the Soviet 6th and 57th Armies in the Barvenkovo kessel.

By May 1942 the Germans had considerable experiencing in dealing with encircled Soviet forces and von Kleist quickly brought up infantry divisions to seal off the trapped forces in the kessel, while his panzers were relocated to deal with the inevitable Soviet relief and breakout efforts. Timoshenko scraped together some reserve units to make an attempt to pierce the German ring, including the 114th Tank Brigade, which had American-made M-3 Stuart light tanks and M-3 Lee medium tanks. Mackensen’s panzers easily turned back these puny relief efforts, while the German infantry decimated repeated Soviet efforts to break out of the kessel. Von Bock instructed von Kleist and Paulus to rely upon artillery and the Luftwaffe to crush the trapped forces, which they did with great relish between 24–28 May. The commanders of both the 6th and 57th Armies were killed, as well as Kuzmin, commander of the 23rd Tank Corps. Pushkin was able to escape with one brigade before the kessel was closed, but the rest of his corps was lost. According to the Soviets, 22,000 troops and six T-34s managed to escape the kessel before it was crushed, but the truth was that the Southwest Front had suffered a catastrophic defeat. Timoshenko’s forces suffered 277,190 casualties or 36 per cent of the troops committed. Of the 1,200 tanks committed during the course of the battle, 775 had been lost. Kuzmin’s 21st Tank Corps was annihilated – the first of the new breed to suffer that fate – and Pushkin’s 23rd Tank Corps was crippled.

An interesting demonstration of the inability of Soviet armour to break through a solid German infantry defense at this time was provided by the 62.Infanterie-Division, which had been directly in the path of the Soviet 6th Army assault. During the battle from 12–24 May, the 62.Infanterie-Division suffered a total of 3,121 casualties out of 17,900 troops, including 591 dead and 1,084 missing. However, during the same period, the division claimed 162 enemy tanks knocked out and gave a detailed breakdown of how it accomplished this feat, which indicated that most Soviet tanks fell victim to either 5cm Pak 38 or 8.8cm flak guns.[27] The use of field artillery in the direct fire role against tanks occurred often during the Battle of Kharkov, but yielded a very poor 1–1 exchange ratio.

In contrast, the Axis forces suffered 30,000 casualties during the Second Battle of Kharkov and no major units were destroyed. German infantry was becoming less helpless against Soviet armour in 1942 than it was in the previous year. Although new anti-tank weaponry only played a minor role in the final stages of the battle, the increased production of PzGr 40 anti-tank rounds greatly improved the battlefield lethality of both the 5 cm Pak38 and the 5 cm guns on Pz.III; whereas these tungsten-core rounds had been in very short supply in 1941, they now comprised 17–18 per cent of the available 5cm ammunition.[28] Out of the 421 tanks committed in the four panzer divisions, 108 were lost, but this was equivalent to only one-third of monthly production and could still be replaced. Von Kleist’s forces suffered the bulk of German armoured losses, since they were on the offensive. Generalmajor Hermann Breith’s 3.Panzer-Division knocked out sixty-two enemy tanks, including five KV-1 and thirty-six T-34, at a cost of ten of its own panzers (seven Pz.III, three Pz.IV), while Generalmajor Hans Freiherr von Boineburg-Lengsfeld’s 23.Panzer-Division knocked out 260 Soviet tanks, including fifteen KV-1 and 116 T-34, for the loss of just thirteen of its own tanks.[29]^, [30] Additional German tanks were damaged in combat, but since they kept the battlefield, they could recover and repair them.

In tactical tank-vs.-tank combat, the Germans demonstrated that they could inflict a 6–1 or better casualty ratio on Soviet armour, but the odds were more even when Soviet armour was on the defense. In strategic terms, the elimination of the Barvenkovo salient greatly shortened the German front line, thereby providing Heeresgruppe Süd with the necessary reserves to mount Operation Blau.

The German operational handling of their armour during the Second Battle of Kharkov was superb, and in many respects the panzer divisions were at the apogee of their capabilities. In each case, the armour-air support team had formed a successful schwerpunkt that broke through Soviet rifle units with relative ease. Soviet tank units were still difficult to deal with, when equipped with either KV-1 or T-34 in large numbers, but the performance of the improved German Pz.III and Pz.IV tanks and PzGr 40 ammunition indicated that the gap was closing. Another more ominous result of the battle was that von Bock and the OKH came to believe that Romanian forces could hold front-line defensive sectors if properly supported – which would lead to problems soon enough. In fact, no significant Soviet tank units were deployed against the four Romanian infantry divisions involved in the battle, so they had not really been tested. For the Stavka, Kharkov was a painful lesson about the necessity of proper intelligence and logistic preparation in order for offensives to succeed, as well as including likely German responses into planning.

Clearing up Loose Ends, 2 June–4 July

Once Timoshenko’s Southwest Front was crippled by its losses in the Second Battle of Kharkov, von Bock directed his subordinate armies to clear up loose ends before Operation Blau began on 28 June. Von Manstein’s 11.Armee began Operation Störfang (Sturgeon Haul) against fortress Sevastopol from 2 June, using an unprecedented amount of artillery and air support to smash the Coastal Army’s multi-layered defenses, before beginning his ground assault on 7 June. Von Manstein, who had developed the concept of the assault gun before the war, massed three Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen with sixty-five StuG IIIs to support his infantry, but he spent two weeks battering his way through the first two Soviet lines of defense. In order to assist in reducing concrete bunkers, von Manstein also received Hauptmann Weicke’s Panzer-Abteilung (FL) 300, which used radio-controlled B IV and Goliath-tracked explosive carriers to attack Soviet fortifications. Nevertheless, the reduction of Sevastopol took longer than expected and most of the Luftwaffe air support was needed elsewhere before von Manstein’s assault had reached a decisive point. For their part, the Soviet Coastal Army had the 81st and 125th OTBs, with a total of one T-34 and thirty-seven T-26 tanks, which were used to support local counterattacks. Von Manstein’s use of assault guns and radio-controlled tanks at Sevastopol helped to shape German thinking about how armour could be used in city-fighting, which had not occurred much in 1941.

On 10 June, Paulus’ AOK 6 kicked off Operation Wilhelm, using four infantry divisions from VIII Armeekorps and von Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) to conduct a double envelopment against the Soviet 28th Army in the Staryi Saltov bridgehead. Mackensen’s armour, with 14 and 16.Panzer-Divisionen, struck at the boundary of the Soviet 28th and 38th Armies and rapidly overran a single rifle division. After resisting for a day, the 28th Army began to withdraw eastward as its flanks gave way – the Red Army had learned something from previous battles like Vyazma-Bryansk – and it used its four tank brigades to conduct self-sacrificial local counterattacks to prevent the German pincers from closing too fast. Yet within five days, the German pincers did close, trapping 24,800 Soviet troops, but two-thirds of the 28th Army escaped. Mackensen’s corps accounted for more than half the prisoners and knocked out or captured 264 tanks, at a cost of 4,334 casualties.[31]

Timoshenko’s center was so denuded of armour after this defeat that he was obliged to transfer the 13th Tank Corps and request more armour from the RVGK. Stalin agreed to transfer the 4th and 16th Tank Corps from Bryansk Front to reinforce Timoshenko’s Southwest Front, but dressed him down for losing so much armour so quickly.

A week after Operation Wilhelm defeated the 28th Army, von Kleist’s 1.Panzerarmee launched Operation Fridericus II against the 9th and 38th Armies. Once again, the III Armeekorps (mot) – temporarily commanded by Geyr von Schweppenburg – formed the schwerpunkt which sliced through the enemy’s infantry, resulting in the Battle of Kupyansk. Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division bumped into determined resistance from the 9th Guards Rifle Division, supported by the 6th Guards Tank Brigade and three anti-tank brigades, which temporarily halted the panzers on 24–25 June. Hube lost four tanks to enemy mines but, once again, the Soviet forces chose to retreat rather than stand and die.

By the time that Fridericus II concluded, the 38th Army had been badly hurt, with more than 22,000 of its troops captured and another 100 tanks sacrificed. Altogether, Wilhelm and Fridericus II further reduced the Southwest Front’s ability to stop a major German offensive by severely depleting its armour and artillery.

In the Crimea, von Manstein did not achieve his big breakthrough until 29 June, when he penetrated the final defensive lines at Sevastopol. The Soviets managed to evacuate some troops by sea, but the last resistance was crushed on 4 July. The fall of Sevastopol cost the Soviets 113,000 troops, but victory did not come cheaply to von Manstein’s forces, which suffered 27,000 German and 8,454 Romanian casualties.[32] Armoured units only played a supporting role at Sevastopol, but the Germans would not have been able to breach the Soviet defensive lines at an affordable cost without the assault-gun battalions. It has been implied by some historians that since the Soviet Union had greater material resources and industrial output, that somehow the losses of the Red Army did not really matter because they were replaceable, but Axis losses were less likely to be replaced in toto. In essence, the argument that the Red Army was best suited to win a battle of attrition tries to depict German victories as essentially empty triumphs. Yet Soviet losses did matter, and when they occurred on a grand, sudden scale as in 1941–42, they often provided the essential conditions for subsequent German operational-level success.

Between 10 May and 4 July, a period of just eight weeks, Heeresgruppe Süd managed to encircle and destroy major parts of nine Soviet armies in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine, inflicting over 612,000 casualties and the loss of 1,400 tanks. Von Bock’s subordinate armies accomplished these victories at a cost of 67,000 German casualties and 140 tanks and assault guns, yielding an exchange ratio of 9–1 in personnel and 10–1 in armour. The lop-sided nature of these losses handed the strategic initiative back to the Wehrmacht and set the stage for Operation Blau, as Hitler had intended.

With the summer weather at hand, the German logistic situation improved considerably and the OKH directed most of the available new weapons, fuel and ammunition toward von Bock’s Heeresgruppe Süd. The quartermasters of Heeresgruppe Süd established a large fuel depot in Stalino, with subsidiary depots close behind the German frontline.[33] From 7–19 June, Heeresgruppe Süd received a significant quantity of new anti-tank weaponry, including forty-eight Marder II and twelve Marder III tank destroyers with the Soviet-built 7.62cm Pak gun, ninety of the new 7.5 cm Pak40 (with only twenty rounds of ammunition per gun), 160 7.5-cm Pak 97/38 (with only thirty-five rounds of HEAT per gun) and 144 4.2cm Pak41. German armoured strength was replenished in part as over 400 Pz.IIIJ and 100 more Pz.IVF2 arrived by rail from Germany and many previously damaged tanks were repaired. On 21 June, all the Armeekorps (mot.) headquarters were redesignated as ‘panzerkorps’.

For the coming Operation Blau, Heeresgruppe Süd formed two main armoured strike groups: comprising the III and XIV Panzerkorps under von Kleist’s 1.Panzerarmee and the XXIV and XXXXVIII Panzerkorps under Generaloberst Hermann Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee. However, Stumme’s XXXX Panzerkorps was attached to Paulus’ AOK 6 and Kirchner’s LVII Panzerkorps was kept under von Bock’s direct control as a reserve. Altogether, Heeresgruppe Süd managed to assemble nine panzer and six motorized infantry divisions, with a total of 1,582 tanks for Operation Blau. Von Bock was provided thirty-two of forty-six Panzer-Abteilungen and thirteen of twenty-one Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen, or roughly 70 per cent of the available German armour on the Eastern Front for Blau, including virtually all the available new-model Pz.III and Pz.IV tanks. The rest of the German armies in the Soviet Union were left with minimal armour support – just 200–220 tanks and assault guns in Heeresgruppe Nord and 650 tanks and assault guns in Heeresgruppe Mitte. Unlike 1941, the Wehrmacht lacked the resources to mount offensives on more than one sector of the Eastern Front and was forced onto the permanent defensive along two-thirds of the front. The restoration of the German armoured force on the Eastern Front to a force with more than 2,200 tanks and 400 assault guns by 1 July was something of a mini-miracle, but committing the bulk of this force to a single offensive risked catastrophic consequences if something went wrong. As in 1941, the Wehrmacht was committing itself in Blau to deep-penetration mobile operations with no appreciable reserves.

Another significant factor in the revitalization of German armoured strength in early 1942 was the tripling of the production of the Sd.Kfz.251 Schützenpanzer-wagen (SPW) half tracks, including over 350 built in the period March–June 1942. The number of Schützen-Abteilung in the panzer divisions equipped with the Sd.Kfz.251 rose from just three in 1941 to twelve in 1942, which significantly improved the tactical mobility of the infantry, mortar platoons and engineers in the German combined arms team. For example, the 9.Panzer-Division in Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee received eighty-five SPWs just prior to the beginning of Blau.[34]

Soviet armoured strength increased dramatically during May–June, with the first tank army – although designated as 3rd Tank Army – formed at Tula on 25 May. The 5th Tank Army began forming near Moscow in June. The tank armies were intended to be the Red Army’s answer to the German Panzerarmee and would be used as breakthrough armies to create major penetrations in the enemy front and then cause a collapse by exploiting deep into their rear areas. By forming the first two of four tank armies created in 1942, the Stavka indicated that it was ready to move beyond the use of armour strictly for the infantry support role and allow more mobile, independent operations for tank units. However, the tank armies had very little organic artillery support – just one regiment of BM-8/13 multiple rocket launchers – and lacked the combined arms structure of a German Panzerkorps. Nor was the equipment initially provided to the tank armies anything different from other Soviet tank units of mid-1942; the 5th Tank Army had 439 tanks, of which there were only fifty KV-1 and 132T-34 (42 per cent), with the rest consisting of eighty-eight Matilda II and 159 T-60 tanks. Assigning tanks like the slow-moving, short-ranged Matilda II to a tank army rendered Deep Battle operations problematic.

By early July, Soviet industrial output enabled the Red Army to achieve an overall numerical superiority of about 3.4–1 over Germany’s armoured forces on the Eastern Front, although the Stavka was unaware of this superiority. Soviet intelligence grossly over-estimated German tank production by nearly 400 per cent in 1942 and believed that the Germans were building almost as many tanks as the Soviet Union – thus Red Army leaders did not expect to have a large numerical superiority in armour.[35] About 48 per cent of the available Soviet armour was comprised of KV-1 and T-34 tanks that were still superior to most German tanks, but 12 per cent were foreign-built tanks (Matilda II, Valentine, Stuart, Lee) and the remaining 40 per cent were near-useless T-60 light tanks.

Since Stalin was convinced that the Germans would make another attempt to capture Moscow, one-third of the Red Army’s 9,100 tanks were massed around Moscow in Zhukov’s Western Front or nearby in reserve. Zhukov believed that the most likely German avenue of approach to Moscow was from the south, as Guderian had tried, so Rokossovsky’s Bryansk Front was also provided with an unusually large amount of armour – over 1,500 tanks – and one of the two new tank armies. The Stavka expected the main tank battles of 1942 to be fought in the center of the Eastern Front and the armour possessed by Zhukov, Konev and Rokossovsky had nearly an 8–1 local superiority over Heeresgruppe Mitte’s depleted armoured forces. Elsewhere, Timoshenko’s armoured forces in the Southwest Front bounced back quickly from their defeats in May–June, but they were still outnumbered by Heeresgruppe Süd’s concentration of armour. The other Soviet fronts, between Leningrad–Staraya Russa in the north and Rostov in the south, were provided sufficient armour for infantry support missions but not for large-scale offensive operations. It is also interesting that more than one-quarter of the Red Army’s available armour – about 2,400 tanks – was in reserve and not even at the front. In contrast, the Wehrmacht had no appreciable armoured reserves on the Eastern Front or in the west – everything was committed up front.

Case Blau: Hoth’s Advance to Voronezh, 28 June–15 July

In Führer Directive 41, issued in April, Hitler specified that the objective of the main summer offensive was ‘to wipe out the entire defense potential remaining to the Soviets, and to cut them off, as far as possible, from their most important centers of war industry.’[36] Although Hitler wanted to destroy as much of the Red Army in southern Russia as possible with his next grand summer offensive, his main goal was to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus which were vital for Germany’s war effort. In this regard, Hitler was correct – chronic fuel shortages had significantly reduced the combat power of the Luftwaffe and the panzer armies in 1941. Seizure of oil fields in the Soviet Union could redress this problem, while also serving to deny fuel resources to the Red Army. Three oilfields – near Maikop, Grozny and Baku – produced 82 per cent of the Soviet Union’s crude oil. Without this oil, the Red Army would lose its ability to conduct sustained large-scale offensive operations with tank armies and air armies.[37] Thus, Case Blau was intended to be a war for oil, with victory measured by the seizure of specific geographic objectives, not a free-wheeling war of maneuver with no definite end. To some extent, Hitler and the OKH recognized that they would get better results in using their armour in operations that were tailored to available resources, in order to avoid continuous operations that ground their panzer divisions down to combat ineffectiveness. Blau was premised on the idea of a multi-phase operation that employed all available forces toward one objective at a time. Nor did the distances to the objectives chosen for the summer offensive seem unreasonable, compared to what the Wehrmacht accomplished in 1941.

The distance from the German AOK 6 front-line positions in June 1942 to Stalingrad and the Volga River was 500km. From von Kleist’s frontline on the Mius River, the distance to the oilfields in the Caucasus was 350km to Maikop, 700km to Grozny and over 1,000km to Baku. Given three months of decent weather, these distances seemed attainable to the Panzerwaffe.

The first objective of Blau was for Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee to smash in the left flank of General-leytenant Filipp I. Golikov’s Bryansk Front with a massive armoured attack, then advance eastward to seize the city of Voronezh, a city of 326,000 people, on the Don.[38] Once Voronezh was seized, Hoth would pivot southward to conduct a double envelopment of Timoshenko’s Southwest Front in conjunction with Paulus’ AOK 6 and von Kleist’s 1.Panzerarmee. The basic scheme of maneuver for Blau was similar to that used in Typhoon in the Battle of Vyazma-Bryansk, but it was premised that the Red Army would do as it had in 1941 – stand and fight. Hoth assembled his XXIV and XXXXVIII Panzerkorps east of Kursk, opposite the Soviet 40th Army of Bryansk Front. Hoth selected the sector north of the town of Tim, which was the boundary between the Soviet 13th and 40th Armies, for his two-corps schwerpunkt. The offensive opened on the morning of 28 June with a thirty-minute artillery preparation, followed by Luftwaffe air strikes on targets in the enemy rear areas. It was a warm, cloudy day, perfect for a Blitzkrieg. Although the Soviet armies were defending with two layers of rifle divisions or brigades arrayed in depth, Hoth’s armour had no difficulty breaking through the front line. The XXIV Panzerkorps committed the 11.Panzer-Division against the 143rd Rifle Division from 13th Army and the 9.Panzer-Division against the 121st Rifle Division from 40th Army. Both Soviet divisions were veteran, pre-war units but lacked the defensive firepower to stand up to an attack by nearly 300 tanks; after suffering heavy losses, they retreated but lived to fight another day. The 212th Rifle Division in the path of 24.Panzer-Division from XXXXVIII Panzerkorps was less fortunate and was quickly overrun and demolished. The Sd.Kfz.251/2 half tracks mounting 8cm mortars proved particularly useful in this kind of fast-moving operation, enabling the Panzer-Abteilungen to request HE or smoke rounds to suppress enemy strongpoints in villages. Generalleutnant Johannes Baeßler’s 9.Panzer-Division succeeded in quickly seizing a railroad bridge over the Tim river, which enabled the panzers to advance about 20km the first day, but the retreating Soviets managed to destroy the next bridge over the Kshen River. In its first action, Generalleutnant Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild’s 24.Panzer-Division had the best first day, advancing over 30km.

After achieving their initial breakthrough, Hoth’s armour spread out into a large armoured wedge, with the 9, 11 and 24.Panzer-Divisionen in the lead, followed by the 3 and 16.Infanterie-Division (mot.) and the Grossdeutschland Infanterie-Division (mot.). Heavy rain on 29–30 June slowed the rate of advance, but the German panzer units continued to advance. Golikov was not slow to react – he quickly committed the two tank brigades belonging to the 40th Army to delay Hoth’s advance, while committing General-major Mikhail E. Katukov’s 1st Tank Corps and General-major Mikhail I. Pavelkin’s 16th Tank Corps to stop Hoth at the Kshen River. Nervous that Hoth’s attack suggested a new push on Moscow from the southwest, as Guderian had done the previous year, the Stavka ordered Timoshenko on the night of 28–29 June to send his 4th and 24th Tank Corps to reinforce Golikov’s crumbling left flank. Although some Soviet rifle units were withdrawing under pressure from Hoth’s panzers, Stalin refused Golikov’s request to allow his 13th and 40th Armies to retreat in order to avoid encirclement and demanded a major armoured counterattack as soon as practical. In just the first few days of Blau, the refitted armoured forces of both sides were committed to a major trial of strength against each other.

Despite rain, General der Panzertruppen Rudolf Veiel advanced 30km on 29 June and the 24.Panzer-Division managed to overrun the command post of the 40th Army, causing a further degradation of Soviet C². Meanwhile, Katukov’s 1st Tank Corps approached the left flank of the XXIV Panzerkorps from Livny as Pavelkin’s 16th Tank Corps moved to strike it from the east. General der Panzer-truppen Hermann Balck’s 11.Panzer-Division, on the corps’ left flank, was about to be squeezed between two on-rushing Soviet tank corps. However, the clash of armour – which began prematurely late on 29 June – was a disaster for the Red Army, in spite of a favorable tactical situation and a 2–1 numerical advantage. Balck’s division had 110 of the improved Pz.IIIJ and 12 Pz.IVF2 tanks and had attached 8.8cm flak guns to Oberstleutnant Max Roth’s Panzer-Regiment 15. Pavelkin committed only two of his three tank brigades and was roughly handled, losing about eighty tanks in two days, including most of his KV-1s. Since the two Soviet tank corps were not coordinated, Balck was able to deal first with Pavelkin, then with Katukov.

Although Katukov would not admit it in his memoirs, his corps conducted a meeting engagement and apparently ran straight into a well-planned anti-armour ambush.[39] The terrain around Volovo was open agricultural land, providing Balck’s troops with excellent observation and fields of fire. Katukov’s corps advanced with Major Aleksandr F. Burda’s battalion in the lead – these were some of the most experienced and skilled tankers in the Red Army of mid-1942. Suddenly, Burda’s battalion came under intense tank and anti-tank fire – they were surprised that the new Pz.IVF2 tanks could successfully engage T-34s at ranges out to 1,000–1,200 meters. Hidden in the tall grass, the Pz.IIIJs and Pz.IVF2s methodically slaughtered Burda’s tanks, while the T-34s had difficulty identifying the German tankers. The Soviet tankers were not expecting or prepared for a long-range gunnery duel. One of the casualties was Ivan T. Lyubushkin, awarded an HSU for knocking out five German tanks during the Battle of Mtensk, but now just another victim in a burning T-34. After extracting his survivors, Katukov turned his corps around and broke off the counterattack.

Golikov tried to make a stand at Kastornoye behind the Olym River, 70km west of Voronezh, by committing General-major Ivan P. Korchagin’s 17th Tank Corps and the 115th and 116th Tank Brigades, which briefly halted the XXIV Panzerkorps. Elements of the 4th and 16th Tanks Corps were also nearby. General-leytenant Yakov N. Fedorenko, commander of all the Red Army’s tank forces, arrived at Voronezh as Stavka representative to coordinate the armoured counterstroke. From Moscow, Stalin exhorted Golikov to smash the German penetration, noting that he had 1,000 tanks between Hoth and Voronezh, against fewer than 500 German tanks. However, the new Soviet tank corps commanders and their staffs proved unable to effectively control their own forces or coordinate with their neighbors. Korchagin’s staff failed to provide enough fuel for the movement to Kastornoye, resulting in impaired tactical mobility. Rather than attack straight into a mass of Soviet armour – which was spotted by the Luftwaffe – Hoth used maneuver tactics by sending the 11.Panzer-Division to bypass Kastornoye to the north and 9.Panzer-Division to the south. Korchagin was befuddled by the German maneuvering and failed to react, allowing his corps to be defeated piece-meal; the 17th Tank Corps lost 141 tanks in a few days and fell back in disorder. Panzer-Abteilung Grossdeutschland had its baptism of fire, with its Pz.IVF2 tanks knocking out sixteen T-34s in the tank skirmishes around Kastornoye.[40] Petr I. Kirichenko, a radio operator in a T-34 in the 116th Tank Brigade was in one of the tanks that was ‘brewed up’:

Likewise, General-major Vasily A. Mishulin’s 4th Tank Corps attempted to block the path of the XXXXVIII Panzerkorps near Goreshechnoe, but was repulsed by 24.Panzer-Division. Golikov’s armoured counterstroke was a disaster, which inflicted only twenty-four hours delay on Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee, but resulted in four tank corps being mauled.

On 30 June, the German offensive widened as Paulus’ AOK 6 attacked the 21st Army which protected the right flank of Timoshenko’s Southwest Front. Stumme’s XXXX Panzerkorps attacked the front of the 21st Army with the 3 and 23.Panzer-Divisionen, while AOK 6 attacked with two infantry corps on his left flank. Generalleutnant Hans Freiherr von Boineburg-Lengsfeld’s 23.Panzer-Division formed Stumme’s schwerpunkt, with Kampfgruppe von Bodenhausen (I, II./Pz.Regt 201, SR 128) and Kampfgruppe Muller (III./Pz.Regt 201, SR 126) advancing northeastward on the road to Novy Oskol, where it was intended that they would link-up with XXXXVIII Panzerkorps to complete the encirclement of much of the 21st and 40th Armies. The two German kampfgruppen, about 4km apart, crossed the start line after a brief artillery preparation but quickly ran into trouble. Kampfgruppe Muller ran into mines and anti-tank gun fire, slowing its advance to a crawl. Outside the village of Nesternoye, Kampfgruppe von Bodenhausen encountered a minefield that was covered by fire from anti-tank guns and T-34s in hull-down positions. In previous battles, the Red Army had often been sloppy about ensuring that its obstacles were covered by fire, but in this case, they demonstrated increased skill.

Five German tanks were knocked out and I./Pz.Regt 201 engaged in an unequal long-range gunnery duel that consumed all of its ammunition in two hours. Eventually, Kampfgruppe von Bodenhausen maneuvered around the mines and chased a Soviet rifle battalion out of Nesternoye but due to the delay, Oberst Karl-August Pochat, commander of the Panzer-Regiment 201 ordered the advance to continue without clearing up Soviet forces on his flank. While moving toward the next village of Degtyavnoye, Kampfgruppe von Bodenhausen was hit by flanking fire from hidden Soviet artillery and anti-tank guns. Oberst Pochat, leading in his PzBef command tank, was killed by a shell splinter and other tanks were knocked out as well. Nevertheless, Kampfgruppe von Bodenhausen continued the attack on Degtyavnoye, which was held by another Soviet rifle battalion, dug in behind more mines and well-supported by anti-tank guns, artillery and T-34 tanks. The opposition at Degtyavnoye proved even tougher and was not overcome until Stukas bombed the village and Kampfgruppe Muller finally arrived to reinforce the attack. However, Oberstleutnant Georg-Henning von Heydebreck, comander of I./Pz.Regt 201, was wounded in the fight for the village and another five German tanks were lost.[42]

Recognizing that the 23.Panzer-Division was encountering unusually heavy opposition, Stumme decided to halt the attack at 1200 hours in order for the two panzer kampfgruppen to resupply and more firepower to be brought to bear on this sector. However, a renewed attack up the road as evening approached met a Soviet strongpoint at Ssirotino that shot up the German vanguard and knocked out more tanks. Supporting T-34s used reverse-slope defensive positions, which allowed them to pop up, fire and then withdraw before German return fire could target them – Soviet tankers were learning. Likewise, the 3.Panzer-Division on the right flank of XXXX Panzerkorps made only slow progress against the Soviet 15th Guards Rifle Division and part of Badanov’s 24th Tank Corps.

Although the 23.Panzer-Division had advanced 11km on the first day and penetrated the 21st Army’s first line of defense, it had not achieved a breakthrough. For the first time in clear weather, the Soviets had actually stopped a German schwerpunkt that included panzers and Stuka close air support, and managed to inflict grievous losses. On the first day of battle, 23.Panzer-Division lost ten tanks destroyed and another fifty tanks damaged, while losing a panzer regiment commander, a battalion commander, two company commanders and several platoon leaders. The German attack had been conducted without tactical surprise along a likely avenue of approach, which the Soviets had liberally seeded with mines. Adding insult to injury, the 23.Panzer-Division had inflicted minimal damage on the enemy, who simply fell back to their second line of defense during the night.

On 1 July, the 23.Panzer-Division made another effort to storm the Soviet strongpoint at Ssirotino but, after being repulsed again, they were forced to employ a flanking maneuver. Eventually, Kampfgruppe Muller flanked the Soviet position and managed to pick off four T-34s with flank shots, causing the Soviet tank brigade to fall back a few kilometers to the next defensive position. This process was repeated for the rest of the day, with the Soviets forcing the 23.Panzer-Division to conduct time-consuming flanking maneuvers. By the end of the day, the 23.Panzer-Division had advanced another 8km, but the real breakthrough occurred on their left flank, where the infantry of VIII Armeekorps rolled up the right flank of the 21st Army. Oddly, it was the infantry that led the way in the AOK 6 sector and the panzers which had to call upon the infantry for support. Indeed, VIII Armeekorps was rolling over the 21st Army so rapidly that General-major Petr E. Shurov’s 13th Tank Corps was directed to counterattack the AOK 6 infantry divisions, rather than Stumme’s stalled armour. Shurov, who was known as an excellent trainer of tankers and who had been commanding the Stalingrad Tank Training facility just six weeks before, struck the German 305 and 376.Infanterie-Divisionen as they were trying to get across the Oskol River near Chernyanka. Amazingly, the panzerjägers in the infantry divisions were strong enough to repulse the attack, knocking out dozens of Soviet tanks.

Shurov was mortally wounded by artillery. The fact that a German infantry division could defeat a Soviet tank corps without organic armoured support speaks volumes about the fragility of the new Soviet armoured formations. After repulsing the 13th Tank Corps, the VIII Armeekorps reached Stary Oskol the next day and linked up with XXXVIII Panzerkorps. However, the Stavka had authorized the 21st and 40th Armies to escape the forming kessel, so the maneuver failed to destroy any large Soviet units.

By 3 July, Soviet resistance between the Olym River and Voronezh evaporated and the defeated 17th Tank Corps retreated east, across the Don. While Balck’s 11.Panzer-Division, assisted by some infantry from AOK 2, held off the 1st and 16th Tank Corps, Hoth sent the rest of his armour east toward Voronezh. The Grossdeutschland Division was able to capture an intact bridge over the Don at 1930 hours on 4 July and the 24.Panzer-Division seized two bridgeheads over the Don the next morning. Once again, the Red Army had failed to leave any units to garrison a major city and the 24.Panzer-Division advanced into the city on 6 July. General-major Ivan D. Chernyakhovsky’s 18th Tank Corps arrived just in time to put up a fight for the city center, but quickly lost its 180th and 181st Tank Brigades with 116 tanks.[43] German video within Voronezh shows many intact T-34s, in column, which suggests that many tankers may have abandoned their tanks when they feared being cut off by the German advance. Once again, German panzers seized a major Russian city with a coup de main. However, in this case the Germans had only seized Voronezh to protect the left flank of Heeresgruppe Süd as it advanced to the Volga, and they had no intention of exploiting east across the Don, even though there was now a significant gap between the Bryansk and Southwest Fronts.

Even before Voronezh had fallen, Stalin pressured Golikov to commit his main armoured reserve – General-major Aleksandr I. Liziukov 5th Tank Army – to strike the flank of Hoth’s advance to the Don. The Stavka hastily transferred General-major Pavel A. Rotmistrov’s 7th Tank Corps from the Kalinin Front to join Liziukov’s 5TA at the Elets railhead. In fact, Rotmistrov’s corps was the first to reach its jump-off positions, while General-major Andrei G. Kravchenko’s 2nd Tank Corps and General-major Aleksei F. Popov’s 11th Tank Corps were slower to get into position. Despite the fact that no artillery or air support was available and that only two of nine tank brigades were ready to attack, Liziukov ordered the counterattack to begin at 0600 hours on 6 July. Thus, the first offensive operation conducted by a Soviet tank army in the Second World War was not a carefully planned action, but rather a meeting engagement where forces were fed into battle piecemeal.

Von Langermann, the XXIV Panzerkorps commander, had been alerted to the presence of Soviet armour for several days and he shifted both the 9 and 11.Panzer-Divisionen to protect 4.Panzerarmee’s left flank near Bolshoy Polyana. Langerman also had time to coordinate with the neighboring XIII Armeekorps, which established a firm defensive line facing toward the threatening Soviet armour. Nevertheless, Rotmistrov’s two tank brigades managed to push back 11.Panzer-Division’s covering forces and advance 10km before encountering the main German defensive positions behind the Kobylia Snova river. On 7 July, one of Popov’s tank brigades arrived, but the 9.Panzer-Division joined in the fight and claimed to have knocked out sixty-one tanks, which halted Rotmistrov’s advance. It was not until 8 July that Popov got the rest of his corps into action and, together, the 7th and 11th Corps forced the 9 and 11.Panzer-Divisionen to fall back 6km to the Sukhaia Vereika River. Heavy fighting continued along the river on 9–10 July, with about 260 Soviet tanks opposing 200 German tanks. Although initially surprised by the weight of the Soviet armoured attack, the Germans gradually gained the upper hand as their air superiority enabled them to relentlessly hammer the Soviet formations with Stuka bombardments. Without effective artillery support, the Soviet tank corps also had difficulty suppressing the German anti-tank guns, hidden in the tall grass. On 12 July, the 11.Panzer-Division mounted a major counterattack that routed the 2nd and 7th Tank Corps, which effectively brought the 5th Tank Army’s counter-offensive to an ignominious end. Between 6 and 15 July, Liziukov 5th Tank Army suffered nearly 8,000 casualties and lost 341 tanks destroyed, including 130 T-34, fifty-eight KV-1 and fifty-one Matilda II. The 5th Tank Army had just 27 per cent of its tanks, half of which were T-60 light tanks, still operational by the time the counter-offensive ended. In contrast, the 9.Panzer-Division lost only thirty-nine tanks (two Pz.II, twenty-eight Pz.III, nine Pz.IV) since the start of Blau and still had ninety-four operational tanks.

Hoth’s advance to Voronezh was a resounding success for the Panzerwaffe, resulting in the seizure of important terrain along the Don. While no major Soviet formations were encircled and destroyed, ten Soviet tank corps were mauled in the battle and their clumsy performance indicated that the Red Army was not yet ready to conduct large-scale armoured combat toe-to-toe with the Wehrmacht. Even the best Soviet armour commanders, Katukov and Rotmistrov, had turned in very lackluster performances due to the improvised nature of Soviet operational planning. As a result of the German capture of Voronezh, the Stavka created the Voronezh Front to hold a sector along the Don. As operations wound down around Voronezh, Hitler and the OKH began to implement the next phase of their summer offensive. Heeresgruppe Süd was broken up into two smaller formations in order to pursue separate objectives at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus: Heeresgruppe A and B. Von Bock would command Heeresgruppe B, which included Hoth’s PzAOK 4 and AOK 2, as well as the 2nd Hungarian, 3rd Romanian and 8th Italian Armies. Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm List took command of Heeresgruppe A, which included von Kleist’s PzAOK 1 and Paulus’ AOK 6. However, Hitler wanted Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee sent south immediately after the capture of Voronezh to support the AOK 6 advance to Stalingrad, but von Bock was reluctant to release all the armour due to 5th Tank Army’s counteroffensive. Hoth and von Bock effected a compromise, sending the XXXXVIII Panzerkorps south, but keeping the XXIV Panzerkorps engaged with Liziukov’s armour for another week. Hitler became increasingly upset with von Bock’s foot-dragging, which was justified by the tactical situation, but which threatened to upset German operational plans. Finally, Hitler relieved von Bock of command on 15 July and promoted Generaloberst Freiherr Maximilian von Weichs from command of AOK 2 to command of Heeresgruppe B. Thus, Liziukov’s armoured counterattack had unforeseen consequences, in that the delay imposed upon 4.Panzerarmee in supporting the drive on Stalingrad contributed to the German failure to seize the city by coup de main as occurred at Voronezh.

Von Kleist’s Panzers Head for the Oil, 9 July–6 September

Von Kleist’s Panzerarmee 1 had waited behind the Donets while Hoth’s panzers smashed in the Bryansk and Southwestern Fronts. By the time that von Kleist attacked at dawn on 9 July, the Southwest Front was already off-balance, with its left flank falling back under the hammer blows of AOK 6’s pursuing XXXX Panzerkorps. Von Kleist deployed his III and XIV Panzerkorps on line with the 14, 16, and 22.Panzer-Division side-by-side and conducted a frontal assault against four rifle divisions of Kozlov’s 37th Army. Kozlov only had a single tank brigade with forty-six tanks to oppose Kleist’s 330 tanks, so the Soviets fell back rather than face encirclement and annihilation, as they had before. AOK 17 joined the offensive on 11 July, slowly pushing the Southern Front back toward Rostov.

At this point, with the entire Soviet front between Voronezh and the Sea of Azov in flux, Hitler issued Führer Directive 43, which made ill-judged alterations to the Blau operational plan: Hoth’s panzers were transferred to Heeresgruppe A for the drive into the Caucasus, rather than supporting the AOK 6 drive on Stalingrad.

Within six days, Mackensen’s III Panzerkorps ended up conducting a great wheel, turning southeast and ending up behind the 12th and 37th Armies. The Soviet 12th Army was forced to abandon Voroshilovgrad and hastily retreat to avoid encirclement. Veiel’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps from Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee joined up with von Kleist’s two corps, reinforcing the great armoured wheel to the southeast, with the Southern Front in full retreat. The German motorized infantry divisions, each reinforced with their own Panzer-Abteilung, proved their worth in a pursuit operation: the Grossdeutschland and 16 and 29.Infanterie-Divisionen (mot.) raced ahead of the panzer divisions and reached the Don river east of Rostov by 17 July. Once this occurred, the Southern Front fell back through Rostov, leaving only elements of the 56th Army to defend the city. General der Panzertruppen Friedrich Kirchner’s Gruppe Kirchner (LVII Panzerkorps and XXXXIX Gebirgs-korps), which up to this point had been sitting on the sidelines, advanced 30km on 21 July and approached Rostov from the west with the 13.Panzer-Division, SS-Division Wiking and three infantry divisions. This action was also the combat debut of Waffen-SS armour on the Eastern Front, with SS-Sturmbannführer Johannes-Rudolf Mühlenkamp’s SS-Panzer-Abteilung 5 leading the way into Rostov. Simultaneously, Mackensen’s III Panzerkorps also approached Rostov from the north – four German mechanized divisions closed in on the city. Three layers of anti-tank ditches and mines slowed, but did not stop the advance of German armour into the city. A company of Brandenburg infiltration troops was attached to the 13.Panzer-Division, which assisted them in seizing key points in the city. On 22–23 July, Wiking and 13.Panzer-Division fought their way into western Rostov, which was burning and covered by dense clouds of smoke. The Soviets fought the battle with rearguards, enabling the Southern Front’s remaining armour to escape across the Don. For the first time, German armour was involved in serious fighting in an urban environment, which made panzer commanders fearful of sticking their heads out of their cupolas due to the threat posed by Soviet snipers. Most of the streets were blocked with obstacles, which severely limited the tactical mobility of the Panzer-Abteilungen. Several centers of resistance, such as the NKVD headquarters building, required close tank-infantry coordination to reduce. After a tough fight, most of the Soviet rearguards pulled back across the Don on the night of 24–25 July, although mop-up continued in Rostov until 27 July.[44]

Despite the capture of Rostov, von Kleist’s armour would not be able to reach the oil fields in the Caucasus if the 56th Army blew up the main rail bridge over the Don River at Bataysk. Without a rail bridge over the Don, Heeresgruppe Süd would not be in a position to support a deep thrust into the Caucasus for weeks, which would have given the Southern Front time to recover. The railroad bridge was not the only obstacle, but a long causeway over marshy terrain, followed by another bridge – a tailor-made blocking position. Instead, the Soviet 56th Army made the kind of horrendous error which seemed to dog the Red Army even in the second year of the war: they neglected to properly guard or destroy the railroad bridge at Bataysk. During the night of 24–25 July, a small force of motorcycle infantry from the 13.Panzer-Division and some Brandenburg infiltrators slipped across the Don in rubber boats and caught the bridge security detail by surprise.

Although most of the German assault troops were killed and the bridge partly damaged, it was held long enough for a force from 13.Panzer-Division to arrive and secure the bridge, providing von Kleist with his entry point into the Caucasus. This was the place where even a single battalion of T-34 tanks might have brought Operation Blau to a premature halt, but the Southern Front had pulled its armour back from the river. It was a gross blunder, in a war filled with blunders.

Von Kleist sent two infantry divisions across into the Bataysk bridgehead to clear out the town and marshland, giving his panzers a brief pause. East of Rostov, the XXIV and XXXX Panzerkorps had already established four small bridgeheads with pontoon bridges across the lower Don and the 3.Panzer-Division was across in force. After Rostov fell, the German intelligence estimate of Soviet forces and dispositions in the Caucasus was vague.

In fact, General-polkovnik Rodion I. Malinovsky’s Southern Front had only five very beat-up armies with 112,000 troops stretched along a 300km-wide front south of the Don. Malinovsky knew that the Stavka was going to send most of its reserves to support the fighting around Voronezh and Stalingrad and that he was more or less on his own for some time. On 25 July, von Kleist began his advance into the Caucasus by probing southward with elements of XXXX and XXXVIII Panzerkorps. The 3 and 23.Panzer-Divisionen, along with 16.Infanterie-Division (mot.) easily smashed the thin defenses of the 37th Army and plunged deep into the steppe, toward the Manych River. In response, the Soviet 51st Army flung the 135th and 155th Tank Brigades against the flank of the 23.Panzer-Division at Martinovka on 28–29 July; the result was a one-sided tank battle where the Soviets lost up to seventy-seven of 100 tanks (a mix of T-34s and T-70s) against only three German tanks. Much of the action was fought at close range, under 300 meters, but Kampfgruppe Burmeister’s gunnery proved far superior to that of the Russian tankers.[45]

By 28 July, Malinovsky could see his front collapsing and he ordered the 12th, 18th and 37th Armies to retreat southward. On 29 July, the LVII Panzerkorps exploded out of the Bataysk bridgehead and 13.Panzer-Division captured Ssalsk on 30 July. Von Kleist’s armour shifted to full pursuit mode, with the LVII, III and XXXX Panzerkorps driving all before them. The LVII Panzerkorps took about 9,000 prisoners in four days, which – while not spectacular – was still about half the front-line strength of the opposing 18th Army.

For the first time in months, German panzer divisions were advancing 20–40km per day against minimal resistance. Morale among von Kleist’s tankers was sky high – pursuit of a broken foe is a heady, intoxicating feeling, while it lasts. Heeresgruppe A split into two parts, with von Kleist’s 1.Panzerarmee pressing on for the oilfields while AOK 17 turned to clear the Kuban. With victory seemingly within von Kleist’s grasp, two factors intervened to hobble the Blitzkrieg. First, Hitler decided to transfer the XXXXVIII Panzerkorps back to Hoth’s command to support the drive on Stalingrad, which was now designated as the priority, not the Caucasus. The OKH also decided to take the Grossdeutschland Division – von Kleist’s strongest motorized infantry division – and send it to Rzhev. Second, von Kleist’s logistic situation deteriorated rapidly once he advanced south of the Don, away from his supply sources, and fuel shortages became endemic. As July ended, the remnants of Malinovsky’s Southern Front were absorbed into Marshal Semyon Budyonny’s North Caucasus Front. Budyonny tasked Malinovsky with stopping von Kleist’s armour with the 12th, 37th and 51st Armies while the rest of his forces tried to stop AOK 17 in the Kuban.

As August began, von Kleist massed his three Panzerkorps into a massive wedge, with a total of about 350 tanks, and pushed due south to Armavir. Advancing across the arid steppe of the Caucasus, von Kleist’s panzers encountered temperatures up to 40°C (104°F), which made water just as important for resupply as fuel. After advancing 100km, the 13.Panzer-Division captured Armavir on 3 August, while 3.Panzer-Division captured Stavropol on 5 August, which forced Malinovsky’s forces to continue their retreat toward Grozny. By 7 August, von Kleist’s armour was finally within range of its first objective – the oilfields at Maikop – and he directed the 13.Panzer-Division, SS-Wiking and 16.Infanterie-Division (mot.) to converge on the city. Although Soviet anti-tank guns put up a stiff resistance at the Laba River on 8 August and knocked out some of SS-Wiking’s tanks, the 12th Army had no tanks left and could not stop the III Panzerkorps. Assisted by Brandenburg infiltrators dressed in Red Army uniforms, the 13.Panzer-Division fought its way into Maikop on 9 August and occupied the oil fields by the next day. The retreating Soviets had thoroughly sabotaged the pumping equipment and set the fields alight, meaning it would be up to a year before more than a trickle of crude oil might be available to the Wehrmacht – but Maikop would be abandoned in January 1943. Nevertheless, the occupation of Maikop did deprive the Red Army of 6.8 per cent of its crude oil supplies for the duration of the war – a not inconsiderable accomplishment.

By 10 August, von Kleist had Malinovsky’s forces on the run, with XXXX Panzerkorps pushing southeast down the main rail line to Grozny and Baku, while III and LVII Panzerkorps mopped up around Maikop. By this point, Malinovsky’s only armoured unit was Major Vladimir Filippov’s 52nd Tank Brigade – a low-quality unit equipped with a mixed group of forty-six T-34s, T-60s, Valentines and Lees. A total of 4,500 tankers who had escaped into the Caucasus after abandoning their tanks – a shocking indictment of the low state of morale and training in the Red Army’s tank units in mid-1942 – were sent to the Urals to reequip with new tanks.[46] It was at this point that the Germans decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm List was one of Hitler’s uninspired choices to lead his main effort in the 1942 campaign, since he had limited experience with armour – just the brief Balkans campaigns – and had completely missed the first year of the war on the Eastern Front. List brought an old-school, First World War mentality to his handling of Heeresgruppe A and he was concerned when von Kleist’s panzers went charging off toward Grozny and Baku, while leaving AOK 17 to clear out the Kuban and the coastline. He believed that Soviet forces in these areas posed a threat to his right flank, even though the 47th and 56th Armies had minimal combat strength remaining and just fifteen light tanks. Nevertheless, on 12 August List ordered von Kleist to divert both the III Panzerkorps and the LVII Panzerkorps to support a drive westward to Tuapse to cut off the two Soviet armies and clear the coast. During 12–18 August, SS-Wiking, the 13.Panzer-Division and the 16.Infanterie-Division were tied up in this ridiculous diversion, which consumed their limited fuel supplies on a secondary objective. List sent this collection of armour down a narrow road into the mountains, which was easily blocked – and they never reached Tuapse. Meanwhile, von Kleist continued toward Grozny with just 3.Panzer-Division and part of 23.Panzer-Division; even though the Wehrmacht had nineteen panzer divisions on the Eastern Front, the schwerpunkt aimed at the critical objectives of the entire summer offensive was reduced to less than two. List also diverted much of Heeresgruppe A’s limited supplies toward his efforts to clear the Kuban and the coast, leaving von Kleist’s spearhead to sputter for lack of fuel.

Nevertheless, on 15 August the 23.Panzer-Division managed to capture Georgievsk, 200km from Grozny, before its fuel began to give out. Heeresgruppe A managed to repair the rail line all the way from Rostov down to Pyatigorsk by 18 August, but it was a single-track line that could only handle very limited throughput. Given a respite from von Kleist’s pursuit, the Stavka sent reinforcements to the Caucasus, including the 10th Guards Rifle Corps, which enabled Malinovsky to build a more solid defensive line behind the Terek River. Once the German drive on Tuapse stalled, List finally allowed the III Panzerkorps to rejoin von Kleist’s advance toward Grozny, but the 13.Panzer-Division and 16.Infanterie-Division (mot.) ran out of fuel en route and were immobilized, then the OKH decided to transfer the latter unit to Heeresgruppe B. The XXXXIX Gebirgskorps was supposed to support von Kleist’s armour, but List diverted it westward to Sochi – which was never taken. Kleist made it to the Terek river with the 3, 13 and 23.Panzer-Divisionen by 23 August, but with only two infantry divisions of LII Armeekorps in support. While von Kleist had a 3–1 numerical advantage in armour over Malinovsky, the Soviet commander had considerably more infantry. By this point, Malinovsky had scraped together three OTBs to supplement Filippov’s 52nd Tank Brigade, but he had virtually no T-34s; rather, he had about forty-three Valentines, sixty-three Lees and a handful of T-60s.

Due to the difficulty of shipping T-34s from the Urals on the single rail line remaining into the Caucasus, Malinovsky’s forces were almost entirely dependent upon Lend-Lease American and British armour arriving through Persia. On the German side, von Kleist still had most of his armour since there had been relatively light combat in the Caucasus, and he was beginning to receive upgraded Pz.IIIL and Pz.IVG tanks. However, his fuel situation was abysmal and most of his air support had been stripped away as well.

Von Kleist realized that time was running out and he decided to try and get across the Terek River with the forces available. The 3.Panzer-Division managed to seize Mozdok on the northern side of the Terek on 25 August, but efforts to cross the wide river were repulsed. On the morning of 26 August, Generalmajor Erwin Mack, commander of the 23.Panzer-Division, and one of his battalion commanders, was killed by Soviet mortar fire while observing operations along the Terek.[47] The river proved too wide, deep and fast-flowing to cross under fire and von Kleist was stymied. In desperation, Oberst Erpo Freiherr von Bodenhausen, commander of the 23.Panzergrenadier Brigade, was selected to lead a mixed armoured kampfgruppe toward Chervlennaya on the north side of the Terek, where the junction of the Baku-Astrakhan rail line ran. Von Bodenhausen succeeded in reaching the rail junction on 31 August – only 27km from Grozny – and briefly interrupted Soviet rail traffic from Baku (still 490km distant), but his force was too small to hold this exposed position and he fell back toward the main body.[48] Von Kleist’s forces were completely out of fuel and he was not able to make another attempt to get across the Terek River until 6 September. The 13.Panzer-Division succeeded in finally getting across the river, but it was too late; Malinovsky’s forces had steadily been reinforced and his numerically-superior troops were too well dug in to budge. Hitler finally relieved List three days later and took personal control over Heeresgruppe A – surely one of his weirdest command decisions of the Second World War. While fighting would continue along the Terek River until early November, when the first snow arrived, von Kleist’s offensive had culminated and the front became static.

The Caucasus was the kind of campaign that the panzer divisions were designed to win, using bold maneuvers across flat steppes against a disorganized foe who lacked proper air, artillery or armour support. However, Hitler and the OKH failed to provide their main effort with the resources it needed to succeed. Reduced to only five fuel-starved divisions at the tip of his spear, von Kleist’s spearhead was stopped more by his own side than the Red Army. In the Caucasus, the Red Army lacked the material advantages in armour and artillery it enjoyed on other fronts. While von Kleist’s panzers failed to seize a significant amount of the oil resources of the Caucasus, they did come exceedingly close to interdicting two-thirds of the Soviet Union’s supply of crude oil. Oil was just as much the Red Army’s strategic center of gravity as it was for the Wehrmacht. Had von Kleist’s panzers reached Grozny and Baku, the Red Army would have likely found it difficult to provide fuel for the multi-front offensives of 1943–44.

Drive on Stalingrad, 16 July–23 August

When von Weichs took over Heeresgruppe B, Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee was in the midst of disengaging from the armoured battles between Bolkhov and Voronezh and Paulus’ AOK 6 had begun to advance eastward with its left flank anchored on the Don. Timoshenko’s forces had suffered 232,000 casualties since the start of Blau and had just been redesignated as the Stalingrad Front. The Stavka allowed Timoshenko to conduct a fighting withdrawal eastward, rather than the die-in-place missions of 1941. In an effort to envelop Timoshenko’s retreating forces, the great pincers of Hoth’s and von Kleist’s panzer armies closed around Millerovo but caught very little in their net. Even worse, every time the Germans panzer armies moved distances of 100km or more, their logistic situation virtually collapsed and jury-rigged improvisations became the norm. Throughout Blau, fuel shortages seriously undermined the German panzer armies’ ability to conduct operational-level maneuver warfare. It was only the fact that Luftflotte 4 had nearly 300 Ju-52 transports available and was willing to provide regular aerial resupply runs to the panzer spearheads that Heeresgruppe B could maintain any offensive momentum at all.[49]

Paulus’ AOK 6 was ordered to advance upon Stalingrad but since the bulk of Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee had been shifted by Hitler to support Heeresgruppe A’s advance into the Caucasus, Paulus did so with no appreciable armoured support. Furthermore, Hitler also accorded priority of supplies and air support to Heeresgruppe A, which meant that Paulus’ AOK 6 had insufficient fuel to move all its divisions at once. Instead of Blitzkrieg, Paulus’ AOK 6 waddled toward Stalingrad with only two infantry divisions of VIII Armeekorps in the lead. When the German pursuit slowed after Millerovo, Timoshenko was able to recover and began to deploy the 62nd and 64th Armies in the Don Bend to block Paulus’ advance upon Stalingrad. Yet Stalin finally had enough of Timoshenko’s fumbling and ineffectual operations and replaced him with General-leytenant Vasily N. Gordov on 21 July.[50] Gordov found that he had plenty of infantry to rebuild his front, but he was short of tanks since the Bryansk, Southwest and Southern Fronts may have lost as much as 2,400 tanks between 28 June and 24 July, or about three-quarters of the armour they had at the start of Blau. In late July, the Stavka rushed tank replacements to the Stalingrad Front to begin outfitting the 1st and 4th Tank Armies, which were intended to be used in a general counteroffensive in early August.

It was not long before Hitler, in his Wehrwolf headquarters near Vinnitsa in the western Ukraine, grew concerned that Paulus’ slow advance toward Stalingrad was giving Timoshenko time to recover and ordered the transfer of von Wietersheim’s XIV Panzerkorps with 16.Panzer-Division and 3 and 60.Infanterie-Divisionen to energize the AOK 6 offensive. He also issued Fuhrer Directive 45 on 22 July, which switched the main priority from the Caucasus to Stalingrad and returned Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee to Heeresgruppe B. The XIV Panzerkorps pushed the infantry of the 62nd and 64th Armies back into the Don Bend west of Stalingrad, but Paulus continued to plead for more armour support and received the XXIV Panzerkorps with the 24.Panzer-Division, which meant that he now had 300–350 tanks. Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division fanned out in front of AOK 6, deployed in four kampfgruppen.[51] On 24 July, the 3 and 60.Infanterie-Divisionen (mot.) pierced the 62nd Army’s thin screening forces and advanced 50km in a single day, approaching Kalach on the Don. Yet by the time that XIV Panzerkorps neared the Don, they were very low on fuel. As a result of von Wietersheim’s advance, three divisions of the 62nd Army were isolated by the German breakthrough and Gordov sent General-major Trofim I. Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps from 1st Tank Army across the Don on 25 July to prevent Hube’s panzers from completing the encirclement. A brisk tank skirmish near Manolin involving about 100 German and 150 Soviet tanks developed on 26 July between Hube’s panzers and Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps, with losses on both sides.

Stalin was also becoming fixated on the Stalingrad axis and was worried about the rapid approach of German mechanized forces to Kalach. At this point, the smart play for Gordov’s Stalingrad Front was to sit tight behind the Don river and wait for Paulus to begin crossing the river near Kalach, then hit his schwerpunkt with two concentrated tank armies. However, Stalin refused to wait and instead ordered Gordov to commit both of the still-forming 1st and 4th Tank Armies to an immediate counter-offensive across the Don to rescue the trapped elements of the 62nd Army. This was one of the most hair-brained Soviet armoured operations of the Second World War, with the forces involved being given just six hours to plan and prepare; at the tank battalion and tank regiment level, this meant a quick oral briefing at best. Many of the tanks in both armies were undergoing maintenance and not yet ready for action, but they were committed nonetheless.

General-major Kirill S. Moskalenko was an artilleryman but had gained considerable experience fighting German panzers since June 1941 and now led the 1st Tank Army into battle against the XIV Panzerkorps on the morning of 27 July. Initially, Moskalenko only had Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps in action across the Don, but he tried to feed General-major Georgi S. Rodin’s 28th Tank Corps into battle as soon as possible. Altogether, Moskalenko’s 1st Tank Army had seven tank brigades with 330 tanks, including 162 T-34s and thirty KV-1s, but he was unable to get more than a couple of brigades into action at once. Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division was hard-pressed on 27 July, being caught with its four kampfgruppen dispersed, outnumbered and low on fuel. Tanaschishin’s tankers managed to surround Kamfgruppe Witzleben from Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 16, but lost about fifty tanks to Oberst Rudolf Sieckenius’ Panzer-Regiment 2 in a series of meeting engagements around Verkhne-Buzinovka. Hube requested air support from Fliegerkorps VIII, which had about eighty Ju-87D Stukas from StG 2 based at Tatsinskaya airbase.[52]

The Stukas caught Tanaschishin’s armour in the open and he lost thirteen T-34s and seven T-70s to air attack. Part of Georgy S. Rodin’s 28th Tank Corps also crossed the Don and engaged the 3 and 60.Infanterie-Division (mot.) with some success. Yet General-major Vasily D. Kriuchenkin’s 4th Tank Army, which had 370 tanks in seven tank brigades, was unable to begin crossing the Don until 28 July, which saved the XIV Panzerkorps from a serious defeat. A significant part of Kriuchenkin’s tanks fell out due to mechanical difficulties on the road march to the Don, which limited his ability to feed forces into the battle. Nor did the eight OTBs in the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which comprised 200 tanks, play any significant role in the counter-offensive due to lack of coordination. On 28–31 July, the tank battles continued to revolve around Verkhne-Buzinovka as the two Soviet tank armies attempted to break through the XIV Panzerkorps to the three encircled divisions of the 62nd Army. The Soviet 8th Air Army finally provided some significant air support, including a regiment of Il-2 Sturmoviks, which managed to shoot up some German columns. However, the improvised nature of the Soviet armoured counter-offensive meant that Gordov was unable to provide any significant artillery support to the two tank armies and very little motorized infantry was available.

Fliegerkorps VIII’s relentless ground attack sorties helped to balance out the Soviet 2–1 numerical superiority in tanks. Kriuchenkin gradually fed General-major Aleksandr A. Shamshin’s 22nd Tank Corps, General-major Abram M. Khasin’s 23rd Tank Corps and Polkovnik Nikolai M. Bubnov’s 133rd Heavy Tank Brigade (forty KV-1) into the battle from the northeast. Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps managed to break through to the encircled 62nd Army units from the south and facilitate a partly-successful breakout operation, while other Soviet tanks overran the XIV Panzerkorps command post. Gordov’s armoured counter-offensive did succeed in halting AOK 6’s advance on Stalingrad for a week, although German supply difficulties would have accomplished much the same result. Otherwise, the commitment of this mass of Soviet armour into open steppe terrain allowed the Germans to shoot and bomb the 1st and 4th Tank Armies to pieces over the course of a week. By 31 July, AOK 6 had halted the Soviet counteroffensive and the Stalingrad Front lost more than 600 tanks in a week. The Soviet armoured counter-offensive in the Don Bend was a virtual repeat of the 1941 Battle of Dubno – an uncoordinated, piecemeal meeting engagement that handed a tactical victory to the Germans on a silver platter. The Soviet preference for impulsive, unplanned attacks – usually instigated by Stalin – was a near-lethal tendency that the Germans continually exploited. Yet Stalin ignored his own role in the disastrous Battle of the Don Bend and issued a scathing Stavka Directive in its aftermath:

Stalin had finally stated what many field commanders already knew: halftrained tank crews that were fed into poorly-planned battles like so much cannon fodder would often choose personal survival over mission accomplishment. Whereas German tankers usually continued to fight their tanks even after suffering one or more non-penetrating hits, many Soviet tankers abandoned tanks that were still combat effective and walked back to their assembly areas. Photographic evidence of numerous captured T-34s from mid-1942 indicates that many had little or no evidence of major damage. Stalin had already issued his ‘Not One Step Backward!’ [Ni shagu nazad!] command in Order No. 227, but tankers clearly needed more explicit guidelines. By summer 1942, Soviet tank units began to distinguish between tanks that ‘burned’ on the battlefield – indicating catastrophic damage – and those that were abandoned but not burned. Crews that abandoned a tank that did not burn were now sent to penal units, which served to discourage others from abandoning their tanks.[54]

While Stalin and the Stavka became fixated on the tank battles in the Don Bend, Hitler saw an opportunity for Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee to pivot northeastward after crossing the Don and unexpectedly smash in the Stalingrad Front’s left flank. Hoth’s forces were relatively weak, with the main striking element being General der Panzertruppe Werner Kempf’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps with 14.Panzer-Division and 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.), with no more than 100 operational tanks, but Gordov had concentrated all his available armour on his right flank. Generalmajor Ferdinand Heim’s 14.Panzer-Division achieved a spectacular breakthrough of the 51st Army’s front on 1 August and advanced 40km in a single day, rolling up Gordov’s flank. Supported by the 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.), Heim advanced so quickly toward the northeast that Gordov could not react quickly enough or build a new defensive line. German armour captured the railhead at Kotel’nikovo on the morning of 2 August and reached Abganerovo, only 70km southwest of Stalingrad, on 5 August. The Vorausabteilungen of both mechanized divisions managed to reach Tinguta station, just 60km from Stalingrad, on 6 August. As usual, an advance of this kind reduced Kempf’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps to logistical bankruptcy and the Red Army was given valuable time to recover while the Germans waited for more fuel to arrive. General-leytenant Mikhail S. Shumilov’s 64th Army managed to form a new line of rifle divisions blocking the way to Stalingrad, while Gordov dispatched the decimated 13th Tank Corps and 133rd Heavy Tank Brigade to launch a counterattack.

Shumilov counterattacked XXXXVIII Panzerkorps on the morning of 9 August. Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps entered the battle with only thirty T-34 and four T-70s, but was reinforced by Polkovnik Bubnov’s twenty-two KV-1. It was not a particularly strong counterattack, but it caught the Germans by surprise; one German column was ambushed near Tinguta by some T-34s from the 6th Guards Tank Brigade and Leytenant Nikolai P. Andreev was able to knock-out five German tanks in quick succession. The Vorausabteilungen fell back in hasty retreat. After two days of tank skirmishing which cost Tanaschishin forty tanks and Heim about the same, Kempf was able to establish a stable front around Abganerovo, but lacked the strength to advance any closer to Stalingrad. Heim’s 14.Panzer-Division was reduced to just twenty-four operational tanks. Despite Hitler’s perception that Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee was a powerful force, by mid-August it consisted of only three mechanized divisions with less than 200 tanks and three German and four Romanian infantry divisions.

Once Soviet attention shifted to their left flank, Paulus’ AOK 6 was able to finish off the elements of the 62nd Army and 1st Tank Army that were still in the Don Bend. A pincer attack begun on the morning of 7 August by Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division from the north and the 24.Panzer-Division from the south quickly shattered the 62nd Army’s front and achieved a link-up near Kalach by nightfall of the same day. A total of eight Soviet rifle divisions, plus the battered remnants of the 23rd and 28th Tank Corps, were trapped inside the German kessel. It took the Germans five days to reduce the kessel, but by 12 August Paulus claimed that 35,000 prisoners and 270 tanks had been taken and all the formations inside the kessel destroyed. In fact, about half the trapped forces escaped across the Don, but without equipment.[55] The 1st Tank Army was no more and it was officially disbanded on 17 August. Paulus then turned to finish off Kriuchenkin’s 4th Tank Army, reduced to only forty-five tanks, with a sudden attack by XIV Panzerkorps on 15 August. Within two days, Kriuchenkin’s army was crushed and soon disbanded, the Red Army cleared from the Don Bend except for a bridgehead at Kremenskaya.

Paulus’ AOK 6 was exhausted after six weeks of continuous combat and his panzer divisions were worn down. Nevertheless, he needed to get AOK 6 across the Don in order to push into Stalingrad. At 0310 hours on 21 August, four infantry regiments from AOK 6 began crossing the Don at Vertiachii by means of the assault boats of the 902 Sturmboote Kommando. A bridgehead was rapidly seized and pioneers constructed two 20-ton pontoon bridges across the Don within twenty-four hours. During the night of 22–23 August, Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division crossed the pontoon bridges, followed by the 3.Infanterie-Division (mot.). At 0430 hours on 23 August, Hube attacked out of the bridgehead with the panzers of Kampfgruppe Sieckenius in the lead followed by Kampfgruppe von Strachwitz – a broad panzerkeil (armoured wedge) of tanks and SPWs moving across the fender-high steppe grass toward the Volga. Fliegerkorps VIII mounted a maximum effort, enabling Hube’s panzers to easily blast through the Soviet 62nd Army’s defenses. After a dash of 60km, the 6./Pz.Regt 2 reached the Volga north of Stalingrad at 1835 hours. One German noted that ‘from the towering heights of the western shore there is a stunning view of the mighty river and the Asian steppe spreading out to infinity.’[56]

Although the rest of XIV Panzerkorps was approaching along the same route, Hube’s division was in a very exposed position at the end of a long corridor, with Soviet forces ringed around him. Hube deployed his division in kampfgruppen-size hedgehogs and waited for the infantry of AOK 6 and resupply to arrive. The Germans had succeeded in reaching Stalingrad, but without the kind of coup de main that had effortlessly taken other cities – there would be no cheap victories at Stalingrad. Despite the appearance of German armour outside Stalingrad, the Stavka made the decision not to evacuate the StZ tank factory, which built 250 T-34s – or 20 per cent of Russia’s total output of T-34s – in August.

Tank Battles north of Orel, 5 July–29 August

Zhukov had expected the main German summer offensive to try again for Moscow and the Stavka assessed that the most likely enemy avenue of approach was from the Bolkhov region, north of Orel. Consequently, Zhukov ensured that a great deal of the new tank production was sent to this sector and that he would have control over them. Yet when it became obvious by early July that the Germans were not going to try for Moscow again, Zhukov refused to allow his heavily-reinforced Western Front to stand idle while Heeresgruppe Süd crushed the Bryansk and Southwestern Fronts. With six tank corps under his command, Zhukov recommended to Stalin that the Western Front could mount a counterstroke against the German 2.Panzerarmee guarding the northern part of the Orel salient. On 2 July, the Stavka authorized Zhukov to conduct a counteroffensive to help take some of the pressure off the Bryansk Front and possibly divert Hoth’s armour away from Voronezh. With minimal planning, Zhukov directed General-leytenant Konstantin K. Rokossovsky’s 16th Army to attack the Zhizdra sector held by General der Artillerie Joachim Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Panzerkorps and General-leytenant Pavel A. Belov’s 61st Army to attack the Bolkhov sector held by the German LIII Armeekorps. These two Soviet attack sectors were 90km apart and hence not mutually supporting. Zhukov was hoping to execute something resembling Deep Battle, but in his eagerness to ‘do something’ before Voronezh fell, he opted to commit two of his armies to an operation with negligible logistical preparation or coordination between units.

Belov attacked first on the morning of 5 July, committing the 12th Guards Rifle Division and the 192nd Tank Brigade as his main effort against the boundary of the German 112 and 296.Infanterie-Divisionen. Over 250 artillery pieces were available to support the attack, but most of their ammunition was fired in the initial prep bombardment. Achieving local surprise, the Soviet guardsmen managed to create a 3km-deep dent in the German security zone before being stopped by mines and well-directed artillery fire in front of the German HKL (main line of resistance). Nor was Soviet air support very helpful and the 192nd Tank Brigade lost six of its tanks to fratricidal Soviet air attacks.[57] When the Soviet attack stalled, the Germans were able to rush reinforcements, including Hauptmann Martin Buhr’s Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 202, to strengthen their HKL. Despite failing to achieve a breakthrough, Belov decided to commit his armoured exploitation force – General-major Dmitri K. Mostovenko’s 3rd Tank Corps with 192 tanks – at 1400 hours on 7 July. By this point, the element of surprise was gone and the German HKL in front of Belov’s shock groups had been made nearly impregnable with assault guns, 8.8cm flak batteries and additional panzerjägers. Unsurprisingly, Mostovenko’s armour suffered heavy losses from anti-tank fire as they arrived on the battlefield and Belov’s artillery no longer had the ammunition to suppress the enemy guns.

There is an important lesson in Mostovenko’s situation, in that an operational-level commander must ensure that he has sufficient fire support remaining when his exploitation force is committed. Instead, the 3rd Tank Corps was stopped cold and bloodied by determined German infantry divisions and could not advance. Although Belov continued attacking for another five days, he achieved nothing.

By waiting an extra day to attack, Rokossovsky’s 16th Army was able to make a considerably stronger opening effort, with three rifle divisions, five rifle brigades and three tank brigades in the first echelon. General-major Vasily G. Burkov’s 10th Tank Corps, with 152 tanks, waited to exploit the breakthrough. Rokossovsky used 400 artillery pieces to support the attack, as well as over 600 tactical air support sorties, but due to the difficult terrain in his sector he chose to attack across a fairly wide 20km frontage; this was the exact opposite of the German schwerpunkt, which committed all resources at a decisive point. The Zhizdra sector was also heavily wooded and marshy, which made armoured operations difficult – Zhukov apparently had not considered terrain in his decision to attack. Kicking off at 0800 hours on 6 July, Rokossovsky’s infantry managed to advance 3–5km into the 208.Infanterie-Division’s defenses before encountering the same determination as Belov had discovered. Even worse, the 17 and 18.Panzer-Division were both available to reinforce the front-line German infantry divisions in this sector. Unteroffizier Erich Hager, a Pz.IV driver in the 6./Pz.Regt 39, noted that his battalion had completed two days of gunnery training just prior to Rokossovsky’s offensives, so the crews were well-honed.[58]

Rokossovsky’s first echelon included the 94th, 112th and 146th Tank Brigades and the 519th Tank Battalion with flamethrower tanks, a total of 131 tanks, while Lemelsen decided to initially commit only small armoured kampfgruppen into battle to stabilize the front, but kept some armour in reserve to deal with the Soviet tank corps. Both panzer divisions had been forced to contribute a Panzer-Abteilung to reinforce the divisions involved in Blau, leaving only seventy-one tanks in the 17.Panzer-Divisionen and forty-seven tanks in the 18.Panzer-Division. Hager’s 6.Kompanie was committed, but quickly lost three of its eleven Pz.IV (short-barreled) tanks. Hager noted that the Soviets had a 4–1 superiority in tanks in his sector. On 7 July, Lemelsen committed more of his armour to prevent a breakthrough of the infantry HKL, resulting in a brutal nine-hour battle between the opposing tanks and artillery. Hager’s Pz.IV was hit three times, once in the hull and twice on the turret, but only one crew member was injured by spalling (splinters from the armour). Some tank-vs.-tank combat occurred as close as 200 meters. Hager noted,

The 17 and 18.Panzer-Division managed to prevent a breakthrough and shot up most of Rokossovsky’s infantry support tanks in the process. As Hager noted, German tank losses were also significant, but since they held the ground most damaged tanks could be recovered and repaired. Despite lack of a breakthrough, on the evening of 7 July Rokossovsky decided to commit Burkov’s 10th Tank Corps, but their night deployment was seriously hindered by the marshy terrain in the sector. Whenever near the front, large armoured units are frequently moved at night in order to avoid detection by the enemy and thereby gain the maximum advantage of surprise. A well-trained armour unit will send a quartering party ahead to reconnoiter the route of march from the assembly areas all the way up to the front, leaving traffic control personnel along the way to ensure that vehicles stay on the correct path. However, the Red Army of mid-1942 had not yet learned these lessons and instead, tanks and vehicles of Burkov’s 10th Tank Corps blundered off the road and got stuck in marshes. When daylight on 8 July arrived, Burkov’s armour was still all bunched up in column formation on trails just behind the front and Lemelsen requested Luftwaffe air strikes on the mass of Soviet armour. German air superiority over the Zhizdra sector was absolute and Rokossovsky later wrote, ‘before the battle I had never seen the Germans throw so many aircraft into such a small sector as the one in which the 16th Army was operating.’[60] Burkov’s armour was badly knocked about by the Luftwaffe and entered battle piecemeal, not as a corps.

During the night of 7–8 July, the 17.Panzer-Division dug in a number of its tanks along the HKL to protect them from Soviet artillery fire and they awaited Burkov’s armour. Hager’s Pz.IV knocked out a T-34 but was hit on the hull by an HE round that damaged the track and engine. Nevertheless, Hager’s Pz.IV kept firing until all ammunition was expended and remained in the fight for eight hours. One German tank platoon of three tanks knocked out ten attacking Soviet tanks and, overall, Burkov’s corps lost about fifty tanks on its first day in action. Even though it was clear by 8 July that neither Belov nor Rokossovsky was going to achieve any worthwhile success, Zhukov ordered the offensive to continue and 9 July was a repeat of the previous day. Hager noted,

After two days of battle Hager’s Pz.IV was still combat-capable, but operating in degraded mode. Statistics about numbers of ‘operational tanks’ should consider that many in this category were actually rather marginal. After firing something like 200 rounds in two days, the recoil system on the 7.5cm cannon was malfunctioning and finally broke down altogether. The tank’s radio was also non-operational after repeated hits on the hull and turret and the running gear was in poor condition. Nevertheless, Hager’s degraded-mode Pz.IV was committed into action again on 10 July, when 17.Panzer-Division mounted a counterattack against the off-balance 10th Tank Corps. Oberstleutnant Otto Büsing led a kampfgruppe from his II/Pz.Regt 39, which included Hager’s 6.Kompanie:

Hager and his crew walked on foot back to their battalion assembly area – a not unusual occurrence for tankers on the Eastern Front – and admitted that ‘not one Pz.IV came back’ from the attack. The men of II/Pz.Regt 39 spent all of 11 July recovering their knocked-out tanks with the battalion’s Sd.Kfz.9 (FAMO) semitracks and, amazingly, the I-Gruppe mechanics repaired six of the Pz.IVs by the end of 12 July. By that point, Zhukov’s offensive had failed to seriously dent 2.Panzerarmee’s front or to inconvenience German plans. Although PzAOK 2 suffered about 5,000 casualties, both the 3rd and 10th Tank Corps were rendered combat-ineffective for some time. Soviet C² was abysmal during the offensive and inter-unit coordination non-existent. Despite much heroism and bloodshed, the Red Army had not yet learned how to break an entrenched German defensive line, particularly one supported by panzers and assault guns.

Although Zhukov’s Zhizdra-Bolkhov offensive failed, he was quick to urge more offensive action in this sector as well as against the German 9.Armee in the exposed Rzhev salient. Zhukov still had four intact tank corps under his immediate control and General-leytenant Petr L. Romanenko’s 3rd Tank Army was nearby in the RVGK.

However, the Germans noted that the recent bungled Western Front offensive presented Heeresgruppe Mitte not only with an opportunity to mount a riposte to eliminate all or part of the Sukhinichi salient before the Red Army recovered, but also to distract Zhukov’s remaining armour away from the vulnerable Rzhev salient. Despite the priority of Blau, Hitler and the OKH authorized a limited offensive known as Wirbelwind, set to begin in early August. Schmidt’s 2.Panzerarmee would form the schwerpunkt of its offensive with General der Infanterie Heinrich Clößner’s LIII Armeekorps, which was given 11 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen, the 197 and 202.Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen and four infantry divisions. In addition, Schmidt retained Lemelsen’s XXXXVII Panzerkorps with the 18.Panzer-Division and gained Generaloberst Josef Harpe’s XXXXI Panzerkorps, with the 9, 17 and 19.Panzer-Divisionen. Schmidt’s divisions also received their first Pz.IIIJ and Pz.IVF2 replacement tanks, putting them on a more equal footing with Zhukov’s T-34s. Despite the concentration of six panzer divisions in a fairly small sector north of Bolkhov, Operation Wirbel-wind has been overshadowed by Operation Blau and the Battle of Stalingrad.

Clößner’s LIII Armeekorps attacked the boundary of the Soviet 61st Army north of Bolkhov on the morning of 11 August and achieved some initial success. In particular, the 11.Panzer-Division was able to advance up to 25km in heavily wooded terrain toward the intermediate objective – Sukhinichi. Thereafter, Soviet resistance hardened quickly and the Red Army was particularly formidable in forest-fighting. German tankers were wary of moving along narrow forest tracks that were usually mined and covered by anti-tank ambushes. While the 2.Panzerarmee succeeded in gaining a small bridgehead over the Zhizdra river, the 16th Army blocked any further advance toward Sukhinichi by moving Burkov’s rebuilt 10th Tank Corps and General-major Aleksei V. Kurkin’s 9th Tank Corps to contain the German advance. Three Soviet rifle divisions were cut off and destroyed and the two Soviet tank corps lost about 200 tanks, but Wirbelwind failed to seize significant terrain or seriously impair Zhukov’s freedom of action. Instead, it was the German panzer units that suffered heavy losses in the ill-judged offensive and diverted resources that could have been better used elsewhere. The 9.Panzer Division, which started the operation with 110 tanks, lost forty-four tanks in Wirbelwind.[62] Although difficult terrain was certainly a factor in the failure of Wirbelwind, this was the second time since the beginning of Blau that a German panzer schwerpunkt had been stopped cold by determined Soviet resistance, which was an ominous portent of the Red Army’s growing competence.

Just as Hitler decided to abort Wirbelwind, Zhukov made the surprise decision to commit Romanenko’s 3rd Tank Army to the Bolkhov sector in an effort to cut off 2.Panzerarmee’s spearhead. Romanenko’s 3TA had moved by rail from Tula and assembled on the eastern flank of 2.Panzerarmee’s salient, near Kozel’sk. Zhukov assembled a force of 218,000 troops and 700 tanks to crush the German forces in the salient, which were outnumbered by 3–1 in armour. Romanenko attacked at 0615 hours on 22 August, committing three rifle divisions and a rifle brigade in the first echelon to claw their way through the defenses of the German 26 and 56.Infanterie-Divisionen. After the infantry had advanced 4–6km through the outer German defenses – but not achieved a real breakthrough – Romanenko committed the 3rd, 12th and 15th Tank Corps into the battle.

Once again though, the Red Army’s use of large armoured formations was marred by the lack of pre-battle reconnaissance; Romanenko’s tanks ran into swamps, enemy mines and generally got lost in the forest trails. Even after moving forward for twelve hours, Romanenko’s tanks had not yet encountered the enemy and were behind the forward line of their own infantry. The Luftwaffe managed to gain and keep local air superiority over this sector, enabling Stukas and bombers to mercilessly hammer the stalled columns of Soviet armour. Romanenko was finally able to get some of his armour, in piecemeal fashion, into battle on 23 August, but by that time Clößner had shifted the 11 and 20.Panzer-Division to bolster the flagging German infantry. The Red Army had little experience supplying a formation of 600 tanks and Romanenko’s tank corps suffered from fuel shortages, even though they never gained more than 2–3km into the German line. An effort by Rokossovsky’s 16th Army to assist Romanenko by attacking the western side of the German salient was quickly snuffed out. Gradually, the combination of German panzer divisions in defense and Luftwaffe overhead reduced the immobilized 3rd Tank Army into wreckage. By the time that Zhukov finally ended the offensive in early September, the attacking Soviet forces had lost 500 of 700 tanks and Romanenko’s 3rd Tank Army had been rendered hors de combat. Afterwards, both sides shifted to the defense and much of the remaining armour was transferred elsewhere.

Even though the fighting around Bolkhov-Zhizdra in July–August 1942 is not well known, it involved six of the nineteen panzer divisions and five of the twenty-two Soviet tank corps on the Eastern Front, making these battles one of the largest clashes of armour in 1942. Neither side enjoyed any real offensive success in these battles, mostly due to restrictive terrain, and German air power played a prominent role in equalizing the Soviet numerical superiority in manpower and tanks. It is also noteworthy that Zhukov’s use of large armoured formations and efforts at conducting set-piece offensives had no more success than other Soviet commanders at that time. The Bolkhov-Zhizdra offensives were an amateurish waste of armour, costing the Red Army another 1,000 tanks for no gain at all. On the other hand, Hitler’s willingness to commit so much armour to a secondary theater violated the principle of concentration of force, when he needed every Panzer-Abteilung, Stuka sortie and liter of petrol available to support Heeresgruppe Süd’s drive for the Caucasus.

Stalingrad: the Schwerpunkt Hits a Brick Wall, 24 August–1 November

No sooner had Hube reached the Volga River than he found that his 16.Panzer-Division was isolated from the rest of XIV Panzerkorps and under pressure from Soviet forces both north and south of his division. Von Wietersheim had to deploy the bulk of the 3 and 60.Infanterie-Divisionen (mot.) just to hold a tenuous link to Hube’s division, which left nothing left to support an attack into the northern outskirts of Stalingrad. Nevertheless, Hube – easily the most aggressive and skilled panzer division commander on the Eastern Front – began attacking with three kampfgruppen into the northern outskirts of Stalingrad on 24 August. Hube only had about fifty operational tanks and was advancing into a dense urban area with just two Panzer-Abteilungen, five motorized infantry battalions and one engineer battalion – a grossly inadequate force. Yet the Germans had captured other large Soviet cities with equally small armoured forces in the past and it seemed worth a try.

From their starting positions, the huge Tractor Factory was visible. At dawn on 24 August, Hube moved two kampfgruppen toward the suburbs of Spartanovka, but the Soviets were just able to rush NKVD infantry and fifty T-34s from the StZ factory to prevent the Germans from making any headway. General-major Nikolai V. Feklenko organized an armoured counterattack that caught the Germans off-balance and succeeded in overrunning the command post of Kampfgruppe Krumpen; Hube failed to seize Spartanovka and by nightfall his division was forced to concentrate into three defensive hedgehogs.

Stalin reacted to Hube’s breakthrough to the Volga with fury and ordered General-polkovnik Andrei I. Yeremenko’s newly-named Southeastern Front to launch an immediate counter-offensive to crush the XIV Panzerkorps. The Stavka committed the 2nd, 4th and 16th Tank Corps, plus the battered 23 rd Tank Corps, to the operation, with a total of 600 tanks, but it took two days for them to reach their assembly areas. This collection of armour included about fifty KV-1 and 250 T-34 tanks, but the rest consisted of T-60 and T-70 light tanks. Yeremenko sensibly planned for a pincer attack against both sides of the XIV Panzerkorps’ narrow corridor, but the actual amount of time provided for planning and preparation was the usual inadequate five to six hours. Once again, Stalin forced the Red Army to launch its armoured forces into an uncoordinated, piecemeal effort that undermined their 10–1 local superiority in tanks. The two Soviet armoured assault groups attacked both sides of the corridor on the morning of 26 August, but encountered heavy fire from dug-in panzerjäger units. Fliegerkorps VIII harassed Soviet armoured concentrations, relentlessly pounding them with Stuka attacks. While the Soviet armour did succeed in cutting through the corridor after three days fighting and interfering with Hube’s lines of communication, they did so at the cost of about 500 tanks. All four Soviet tank corps were rendered combat-ineffective. While Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division was hurt, it managed to hold its ground and Luftwaffe aerial resupply mitigated the temporary loss of ground communications. Zhukov, who arrived from Moscow as a Stavka representative on 29 August, claimed that Yeremenko’s counteroffensive – which he took credit for – had saved Stalingrad. Nevertheless, by 30 August von Wietersheim had restored ground communications with Hube and Yeremenko had lost the battle of the corridor. Paulus’ AOK 6 and Hoth’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps then gradually pushed the Soviet forces back into Stalingrad.

Having failed to seize Stalingrad by coup de main, Paulus was forced to conduct a deliberate offensive into the city, but he was not ready to do so until 14 September. It is not my intent to detail all operations around Stalingrad in September–October 1942, but to highlight how armoured forces were employed in urban combat. Up to this point, the Germans had very limited experience with employing tanks in urban areas and it had been very unpleasant. German doctrine also militated against using large armoured units in cities, yet Paulus decided upon this course of action because AOK 6 lacked sufficient infantry and Hitler was insistent that the city be captured as soon as possible. Paulus’ first assault into the city center began on 14 September, using the 14 and 24.Panzer-Divisionen, 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) and five infantry divisions, supported by the 243 and 245 Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen. The German armoured units were already quite depleted at the start of the fight for the city, with Generalmajor Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild’s 24. Panzer-Division reduced to only thirty-four operational tanks. On 4 September, von Hauenschild was badly wounded during fighting on the outskirts of Stalingrad and replaced by Generalmajor Arno von Lenski. By the time that Paulus’ offensive began on 14 September, the 24.Panzer-Division was reduced to only twenty-two operational tanks and 56 per cent of its personnel.[63]

Once sent into the city, panzer divisions were forced to commit their armour in small platoon and company-size detachments in the infantry support role – the antithesis of how the Wehrmacht wanted to use its armour. The Luftwaffe had heavily damaged large portions of Stalingrad, clogging streets with rubble that greatly limited the mobility of the German tanks. Due to enemy snipers, panzer commanders were forced to operate in ‘buttoned up’ mode in the city, which greatly reduced visibility and situational awareness. Soviet anti-tank guns and PTRD anti-tank rifle teams could get close to German armour that lacked effective infantry support. German infantry commanders frequently tried to use Pz.III and Pz.IV tanks as assault guns, even though the lacked the additional 30mm bolt-on armour plates that made StuG IIIs better suited for urban combat. On the Soviet side, General-leytenant Vasily I. Chuikov’s 62nd Army mounted a dogged defense of the city that astounded the Germans. Chuikov’s armoured support never exceeded eighty tanks and was often reduced to just a couple of dozen tanks. Most Soviet tank commanders in Stalingrad chose to dig in their tanks and integrate them into infantry fighting positions. The presence of even a few dug-in T-34s could make a Soviet battalion-size position virtually impregnable. Paulus’ first assault succeeded in capturing the southern part of Stalingrad by late September and the StZ workers built their last T-34s and then joined the battle.

While AOK 6 was fighting to evict Chuikov’s 62nd Army from the city, Zhukov pressured Yeremenko to mount another offensive against the German northern flank around Kotluban, held by von Wietersheim’s XIV Panzerkorps. General-major Kirill S. Moskalenko, unemployed after the destruction of his 1st Tank Army, was given a new command – the 1st Guards Army – and the Stavka transferred Kravchenko’s 4th Tank Corps, Rotmistrov’s 7th Tank Corps and the battered 16th Tank Corps to provide armoured muscle to this strike force. By mid-September, Moskalenko had massed a force of 123,000 troops and 340 tanks (including forty-two KV-1 and 143 T-34) opposite the 60 Infanterie-Division (mot.) and 76.Infanterie-Division (mot.) near Kotluban. However, mass was not enough and Yeremenko failed to employ deception, so Paulus saw the blow coming and concentrated his anti-tank guns and 8.8cm flak guns in this sector.

Moskalenko attacked on the morning of 18 September, in broad daylight, across flat terrain with good fields of fire. The German anti-tank guns and flak guns ripped the Soviet armour to pieces, inflicting 106 losses on the first day; the new 7.5cm Pak40 was now available in quantity and could destroy either the KV-1 or T-34 at ranges up to 1,000 meters or more. The Luftwaffe also bombed the 1st Guards Army mercilessly and the impotence of Soviet air support ensured failure. Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division launched a vicious counterattack with about fifty tanks that demolished two of Rotmistrov’s tank brigades, knocking out seventy-five of his ninety-three tanks. One of Hube’s panzer companies, the 7./Pz.Regt 2, had only seven operational tanks but succeeded in knocking out twenty-two of Rotmistrov’s tanks. Moskalenko’s 1st Guards Army suffered 46,000 casualties during the offensive and lost 341 of 384 tanks committed, including forty-eight KV-1 and 173 T-34. Rotmistrov’s 7th Tank Corps was reduced to just eighteen operational tanks. German newsreels filmed after the battle depict a vast tank graveyard in the open steppe north of Stalingrad, marking another cheap German tactical victory due to the ill-considered offensive ordered by Zhukov.[64] It was not that Zhukov was incompetent – he knew better – but he had been around Stalin too long and come to accept that he could dictate a victory rather than planning one. Zhukov went back to Moscow empty-handed, but proclaimed the Kotluban offensive to have been an attritional victory.

Despite this success, von Wietersheim complained about the misuse of his armour in urban combat and Paulus relieved him of command and replaced him with Hube. On 27 September, Paulus began his second major offensive, intending to conquer the northern half of Stalingrad. The 16.Panzer-Division joined the offensive from the north, while 24.Panzer-Division advanced from the south. This time, the German schwerpunkt utilized four infantry divisions backed by up to 100 tanks. Attacking toward the Barrikady Gun Factory, the 24.Panzer-Division managed to advance 6km in two days – quite a feat in Stalingrad – but suffered crippling losses to its four Panzergrenadier-Abteilungen. By early October, all three of Paulus’ panzer divisions were badly depleted. Many panzer crews were without tanks by October but, in a demonstration of arrant stupidity, Paulus ordered that dismounted tankers be employed as infantry in the city. The AOK 6’s logistics situation was also very poor, with limited fuel, ammunition and rations reaching the remaining panzer kampfgruppen. Nevertheless, on 14 October, Paulus committed the 14.Panzer-Division and one infantry division to seize the heavily-defended Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory. Within twenty-four hours, the Germans succeeded in capturing the tractor works, but 14.Panzer-Division suffered 138 casualties and had thirty tanks knocked out. Many of these panzers were quickly repaired, but two days later the 14.Panzer-Division was sent to attack the Barrikady Gun Factory and had seventeen tanks knocked out by dug-in T-34s.[65] Damaged German tanks were continually repaired, but only enough for limited operations. Some new replacement tanks did reach AOK 6, including two dozen Pz.IIIN, equipped with the 7.5cm KwK L/24 howitzer, which were useful for bunker-busting in the city.

At Stalingrad, Hitler and the OKH exercised insufficient oversight over Paulus and allowed him to let three of the Wehrmacht’s best panzer divisions bleed to death for minimal gains. Paulus’ use of armour in the city was asinine and ignored everything that von Manstein had learned under similar conditions at Sevastopol. Paulus also kept most of XIV Panzerkorps in or near the city, while his long flanks were held only by German and Romanian infantry. It was not until November that Paulus deployed part of the shattered 14.Panzer-Division to help bolster his army’s left flank, but he otherwise refused to pull his armour out of the line to rest and refit.

The Rzhev Meatgrinder, 2 July–30 August

Throughout the winter and spring of 1942, Generaloberst Walter Model’s 9.Armee had been precariously holding the Rzhev salient under intense pressure from Zhukov’s Western Front and Konev’s Kalinin Front. Gradually Generaloberst Walter Model gained the upper hand and began clearing out his rear areas, which were infested with Soviet paratroopers, cavalry and partisans that were still there from the Winter Counter-offensive.

Operation Hannover, which included kampfgruppen from both the 5 and 19.Panzer-Divisionen, eliminated this threat in May–June. During the operation, Model was badly wounded on 23 May and temporarily replaced by Generaloberst Heinrich von Viettinghoff.[66] As a result of Operation Hannover, the Soviet 39th Army, with seven rifle divisions, was isolated on the west flank of the salient and 9.Armee developed a more ambitious plan known as Seydlitz to remove this thorn from their side. Heeresgruppe Mitte sent the 1 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen to reinforce the operation, providing von Viettinghoff with a total of four panzer divisions.

Operation Seydlitz began on 2 July, with 1 and 2.Panzer-Divisionen mounting pincer attacks from Olenino and Belyy to link up and complete the encirclement of the 39th Army. Even though the distance to be covered was minimal – less than 30km total – the infantry of the Soviet 39th Army stopped both German panzer divisions cold and prevented the narrow corridor leading west from being closed. Admittedly, both German panzer divisions were weak in armour, with only a single Panzer-Abteilung each, but both schwerpunkte had failed. Even worse, the 41st Army just outside the corridor committed its 2nd Guards Motorized Division, 21st and 82nd Tank Brigades to counterattack the German panzer spearheads. Fierce tank combat ensued for several days at the mouth of the Belyy corridor, with the Soviet tankers preventing the Germans from closing the kessel.

The German 5.Panzer-Division, attacking from Rzhev, also made no progress, but the 20.Panzer-Division, attacking from the east, found a weak spot. The 373rd Rifle Division could not hold the 20.Panzer-Division and the panzers advanced rapidly, causing the 39th Army’s all-around defense to collapse. A panic ensued, allowing the 1 and 2.Panzer-Divisionen to link up on 5 July, completing the encirclement of the 39th Army. Over the next week, the Germans smashed the Soviet divisions within the kessel, and eventually took at least 30,000 prisoners and eliminated 218 Soviet tanks.[67]

While the 39th Army was dying on the western side of the Rzhev salient, Zhukov assembled a mass of troops and armour on the eastern side to retake Rzhev and eliminate the 9.Armee. Konev’s Kalinin Front would attack with its 29th and 30th Armies from the north, while Zhukov’s Western Front attacked from the east with its 20th and 31st Armies. Zhukov also ensured that there would be adequate air support for the operation – two air armies – which helps to explain why the Luftwaffe was virtually unopposed in the Bolkhov-Zhizdra sectors.

Konev’s two armies attacked first, with only a few tank brigades in the infantry support role, beginning on 30 July. Yet the German infantry were well dug in north of Rzhev and Konev’s own infantry could make no real progress, despite repeated efforts. Soviet artillery preparations were still undermined by limited stockpiles of ammunition and poor fire coordination, so the level of artillery support typically dropped off sharply after the first few days of an offensive. Unable to achieve a breakthrough, Konev withheld most of his armour. Zhukov waited until 4 August, hoping that Konev could divert German reserves, then committed his 20th and 31st Armies into an attack against the northeast corner of the Rzhev salient. The two Soviet armies committed a massive amount of infantry and artillery against the Pogoreloe sector, held by the German XXXXVI Panzerkorps with 36.Infanterie-Division (mot) and the 161.Infanterie-Division. Each army had a mobile group, comprised of three tank brigades, to exploit success and Zhukov had the 6th and 8th Tank Corps as front-level exploitation forces. Zhukov had a flair for pouring overwhelming resources into a battle and he simply buried these two German front-line divisions under an avalanche of firepower. Within twenty-four hours, Zhukov’s forces had created a 30km-wide hole in 9.Armee’s front, with penetrations varying from 12–20km. Indeed, Zhukov had succeeded in achieving a breakthrough against a strongly fortified German line – a first for the Red Army. However, Zhukov did not apparently realize the scale of his victory and allowed the 20th and 31st Armies to continue to dawdle in committing their mobile groups to exploit the victory. Indeed, the Soviet offensive made clear that the concepts of mobile warfare were still not completely understood by all Red Army senior leadership, some of whom still moved at a First World War pace of operations. In a race against time, von Viettinghoff rushed kampfgruppen from the 2 and 5.Panzer-Divisionen from Vyazma to block the advance of the 20th and 31st Armies before Soviet armour appeared in quantity on the battlefield. By the end of the second day, the 20th and 31st Armies began committing their mobile groups, but German armour was already at hand to oppose them. Yet these two panzer divisions could only put about 150–180 operational tanks into the field, while Zhukov committed 600 tanks to the Pogoreloe sector and could call upon more from the RVGK. After a rapid advance of up to 20km, both Soviet assault armies slowed to a crawl and the battle became more of a pushing and shoving match, although the Red Army still maintained the upper hand.

Frustrated that neither the 20th nor 31st Armies could push through the two incomplete panzer divisions in their path or even widen the breach, Zhukov began committing his front-level mobile group on 11 August. Zhukov put his deputy, General-major Ivan V. Galanin, in command of a mobile group comprising General-major Andrei L. Getman’s 6th Tank Corps, General-major Mikhail D. Solomatin’s 8th Tank Corps and General-major Vladimir V. Kriukov’s 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps. Putting an infantryman with no prior experience with mechanized operations in charge of a mixed armour-cavalry mobile group with 334 tanks was probably not a sound choice, but it mattered little since the salient formed by the 20th and 31st Armies was too small for maneuver. Instead, Galanin’s mobile group simply reinforced the army-level mobile groups and proceeded to push westward. German resistance stiffened as more reinforcements arrived, including a kampfgruppe from 1.Panzer-Division and Generaloberst Walter Model, who returned to resume command of the 9.Armee.

The Germans also unveiled a new anti-tank weapon during the Rzhev battle in August: the 7.5cm Pak 41, an advanced tapered-bore weapon that fired tungstencore Panzergranate 41 rounds that could penetrate a T-34 or KV-1 at ranges up to 1,500 meters. Panzerjäger-Abteilung 561 was equipped with twelve Pak41s and managed to bring the 6th and 8th Tank Corps to a halt in a three-day battle around Zubtsov. The KV-1 tankers were particularly stunned to see that their previous invulnerability was now gone and forty-one out of forty-eight KV-1 tanks committed to the battle were knocked out. However, Red Army policy dicated that armour units could not disengage from an assigned mission unless all tanks were knocked out, so tank units were expected to attack until completely ineffective.[68]

Zhukov did what he always did when a battle did not go his way – he added more forces, ordering 5th Army to attack the neighboring 3.Panzerarmee at the base of the Rzhev salient on 11 August, followed by the 33rd on 13 August. Forced to divert some forces to deal with these new attacks, which stretched Heeresgruppe Mitte’s limited panzer reserves, Model was forced to grudgingly give some ground against Zhukov’s armoured wedges. On 23 August, the 8th Tank Corps captured Karmanovo and the 31st Army captured Zubtsov, but this was the high-water mark for Zhukov’s offensive. He allowed the offensive to continue until early September, but no more significant gains were made. Overall, in a month Zhukov had advanced up to 32 km, at great cost, but failed to cut off the Rzhev salient or crush the 9.Armee. To be sure, Model’s 9.Armee was hurt by Zhukov’s offensive, suffering 32,974 casualties in August, including 8,700 dead and missing – which was 23 per cent more than 6.Armee’s casualties during the same period on the approaches to Stalingrad. The 9.Armee had been saved by the ability of Heeresgruppe Mitte to provide up to five panzer divisions to reinforce the front-line defenses before they completely collapsed, but this was an exorbitant use of armoured resources to hold a position of no strategic value. Model was quick to recognize that he could not hold the Rzhev salient without the permanent support of several panzer divisions, and he recommended evacuation of the salient as an economy of force measure, but Hitler vetoed the idea. Yet had Hitler listened to Model in September 1942, he would have had several additional panzer divisions available in reserve on the Eastern Front – which could have made a real difference when the Soviet winter counter-offensives began.

Enter the Tigers, August–December 1942

The first Pz.VI Tiger heavy tanks were completed at the Henschel factory in Kassel in August and began to equip three new separate heavy tank battalions. The 56-ton Tiger I was not a major breakthrough in tank technology because its layout was similar to the Pz.IV medium tank, it failed to incorporate sloped armour and its Maybach HL 210 P45 engine (641hp), which still used petrol, had poor fuel efficiency and power output. The Tiger was intended to be a breakthrough tank, used in the forefront of any schwerpunkt, but it lacked the mobility for true mobile warfare. The Tiger’s armour was much thicker than previous German tanks and it was impervious to 76.2mm fire from its frontal arc, but it could be successfully engaged with flank shots at ranges under 500 meters. Yet the Tiger earned its reputation – and the admiration of later generations of tank enthusiasts – due to its superior firepower. The 8.8cm Kwk 36 L/56 cannon provided the Tiger I with a very high hit/kill probability against armoured targets out to 1,000–1,200 meters; very few Second World War tank engagements occurred at ranges beyond this. After more than a year of operating in dread of the T-34, the Germans finally had a tank that could negate the Red Army’s qualitative edge in armour. Unfortunately for their cause, the Tiger could only be produced in token quantities.

Within a few weeks of receiving the first production Tigers – which had many technical deficiencies that were still being addressed by the manufacturer – all three heavy tank battalions were directed to send one of their two tank companies to the front. Apparently, the OKH put no real thought into the initial operational deployment of these three Tiger I companies and it was poorly executed. The 1./502 schwere Panzer-Abteilung 502 (s.Pz.Abt. 502) was deployed by rail to the Leningrad front in August–September and eventually fielded nine Tiger tanks. The s.Pz.Abt. 501 was sent with eleven Tigers to Tunisia in November and the s.Pz.Abt. 503 was designated to reach Heeresgruppe A before the end of December with twenty Tigers. By deploying forty-odd Tiger tanks to three different areas, the OKH ensured that the new tanks would have no more than a localized, tactical impact and would prematurely expose the technical capabilities of the new weapon to both the Western Allies and the Red Army before they were available in quantity. It was an idiotic decision. Making the choice of deployment even more problematic, the OKH disregarded the difficulty of supporting a new tank type in company-size detachments. Albert Speer, as minister of armaments, warned that splitting the available Tiger tanks up into small detachments across different fronts would make logistical support virtually impossible, since very few spare parts for the Pz.VI were manufactured. Maybach only provided one spare transmission and engine for each ten Tigers, which led to a very low operational readiness rate for Tigers at the front.[69]

Nor was the combat debut of the Tiger auspicious. Shortly after receiving most of its Tigers, Heeresgruppe Nord committed 1./s.Pz.Abt. 502 in an ill-judged infantry support attack east of Leningrad on 22 September.[70] The terrain in this area was marshy, with heavy vegetation and non-existent road networks – totally unsuitable for the use of heavy tanks. In this kind of terrain, Soviet tanks and antitank guns had better opportunities to ambush Tigers at close range and defeat their thick armour. The Tigers were also suffering from endemic problems with their transmissions, which had not yet been perfected for field conditions. Nevertheless, four Tigers were committed to the attack, which proved to be a fiasco, with all four lost to either mechanical defects or anti-tank fire. Three damaged Tigers were recovered, but one had to be abandoned. The 1./s.Pz.Abt. 502 continued to serve in the Leningrad area throughout the rest of 1942, but due to adverse terrain and poor operational readiness rates, it accomplished very little. The lead elements of s.Pz.Abt. 503 were sent to Heeresgruppe Don on 27 December, but arrived too late for Operation Wintergewitter.

The appearance of the Tiger, even in token quantities, did worry the Red Army and helped to spur qualitative improvements to Soviet armoured forces. Soviet tank design had basically frozen on 22 June 1941, with only minor improvements to the T-34, which had been sufficient for the battlefield of 1941–42. However the GABTU became concerned when the Germans introduced the long 7.5cm KwK 40 L/43 gun in spring 1942 and recognized that once German tanks with 8.8cm guns and thick armour became more common on the battlefield, the T-34 would be put at a grave disadvantage. In June 1942 the GABTU tasked the KhPZ design team, now at Nizhniy Tagil, to reexamine the pre-war T-34M in order to develop an improved T-34. By the time that the first Tigers appeared on the Eastern Front, a prototype T-43 was completed; this utilized a new larger, three-man turret, torsion-bar suspension and thicker armour, but still relied upon the same 76.2mm F-34 gun.[71] After trials indicated that the heavier T-43 had less mobility compared to current model T-34/76 tanks, the GABTU decided to defer production and continue development.

Likewise, the SKB-2 team at Chelyabinsk was directed to develop a follow-on to the KV-1, designated as the KV-13. Like the T-43, the KV-13 would still employ the F-34 gun.[72] Although the development of larger 85mm, 100mm and 122mm guns was considered, the GABTU’s main intent at this time was to develop a ‘Universal Tank’ to merge the best features of both T-34 and KV-1, not to develop an all-new tank. Impressed by the usefulness of the German StuG-III series, the GABTU also became interested in developing assault guns and tank destroyers for the Red Army. By late December, the first Su-122s would enter limited production.

Operation Uranus, 19–23 November

During the period 12–28 September, there was an intensive debate within the Stavka and GKO about planning a major counter-offensive for the autumn. In addition to Zhukov, General-polkovnik Aleksandr M. Vasilevsky, chief of the general staff, and his deputy General-leytenant Nikolai F. Vatutin, led the discussions. Zhukov, who had just returned from a two-week period at Stalingrad, recommended a major counter-offensive against the long flanks of AOK 6 along the Don. After the failed Kotluban’ offensive, he recognized that a decisive success against dug-in German troops was unlikely, but the Romanian 3rd and 4th Armies were more lucrative targets. The consensus of opinion was that Soviet armour could succeed against the Romanians and that a Deep Battle attack against Paulus’ lines of communication would put AOK 6 at serious risk. Stalin approved this plan, which would be called Operation Uranus. However, Zhukov also argued that the Red Army was now strong enough to mount two major counter-offensives and, in addition to Uranus, he wanted to lead a renewed attack against AOK 9 in the Rzhev salient. Stalin agreed to Zhukov’s proposal, which was designated Operation Mars. Both counter-offensives were planned to begin sometime in October, giving several weeks for preparations.

While Zhukov focused on Operation Mars, the Stavka selected Vasilevsky to plan and organize Operation Uranus (Zhukov did remain involved as an overall supervisor). Although not widely recognized in the west, Vasilevsky was the Red Army’s best operational-level equivalent to von Manstein and a gifted staff officer. In anticipation of the importance of the new operation, the Stavka wanted its best field commanders and assigned Vatutin to take over the Southwest Front and Rokossovsky to take over the new Don Front, while Yeremenko kept the Stalingrad Front. Vasilevsky intended to conduct a double envelopment of AOK 6 at Stalingrad, using the basic principles of the pre-war Deep Battle doctrine.[73] The main effort would be launched by Vatutin’s Southwest Front, with Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army attacking out of the Serafimovich bridgehead and General-leytenant Ivan M. Chistiakov’s reinforced 21st Army attacking from the Kletskaya bridgehead across the Don to strike the 3rd Romanian Army. Vatutin would send Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army due south toward the rail line at Oblivskaya while the mobile group from 21st Army advanced to the southeast to envelop AOK 6’s left flank. Altogether, Vatutin’s three tank corps and several separate tank brigades had 440 tanks, far fewer than had been committed into the Battle of the Don Bend in July. Vasilevsky based Uranus on maneuver not mass – a departure from previous Soviet counter-offensives. Rokossovsky’s Don Front would conduct supporting attacks with two armies against AOK 6’s left flank, but with only 103 tanks in 16th Tank Corps. The other half of the Soviet counter-offensive would begin a day later, when Yeremenko’s Stalingrad Front attacked the Romanian 4th Army near Lake Sarpa, south of Stalingrad. Vasilevsky intended that Operation Uranus would be marked by a high offensive tempo and, once the Romanian defensive lines were broken, the Soviet armoured units were expected to advance 30–40km per day and a link-up occur by the end of the third day.

All told, the Red Army committed 1,560 tanks to Operation Uranus. In addition to the five tank corps involved in the counter-offensive, Uranus would also see the first employment of the newly-organized mechanized corps. Since the tank corps had proved quite fragile in combat, the Stavka wanted a formation with greater staying power. General-major Vasiliy T. Volskii’s 4th Mechanized Corps, formed on 18 September, had nine motorized infantry battalions and five tank battalions, for a total of 220 tanks and 6,000 infantry. While the mechanized corps was still deficient in terms of organic artillery and support units, it demonstrated that the Red Army was learning from its mistakes and evolving its force structure to make the best of its capabilities.

General Petre Dumitrescu’s 3rd Romanian Army was the primary target of Operation Uranus. Dumitrescu had over 150,000 Romanian and 11,000 German troops in the II, IV and V Corps, with seven infantry and two cavalry divisions, holding a 138km-wide front along the Don. The Romanian infantry divisions were forced to hold very wide sectors, averaging 20km wide, and were very deficient in anti-tank capability – twelve 4.7cm anti-tank guns at division-level and twelve 37mm guns at regiment-level – and very limited artillery fire support. Poorly-equipped and unmotivated, the Romanian infantry’s ability to withstand large-scale enemy armoured attacks was minimal. The Germans regarded the Romanians as place-holders for their own infantry, but did not expect them to hold off large-scale Soviet offensives on their own. Recognizing the dangers of having both of AOK 6’s flanks guarded by Romanian forces, the OKH directed Heeresgruppe B to deploy armoured reserves behind them, ready to counterattack if necessary.

Generalleutnant Ferdinand Heim’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps was deployed 40–50km behind the Romanian 3rd Army, with Generalleutnant Eberhard Rodt’s 22.Panzer-Division and the Romanian 1st Armoured Division. However, Rodt’s division was in poor condition since it had been stripped of one of its panzergrenadier regiments and its pioneer battalion, while its Panzer-Regiment 204 only had forty operational tanks (including twenty-two Pz.III and eleven Pz.IV). Although the Romanian armoured division was still equipped with eighty-seven R-2 (Pz.35(t)) light tanks, it had recently received a major shipment of German equipment, including eleven Pz.IIIN and eleven Pz.IVG tanks, and nine 5cm Pak38 and nine 7.5cm Pak40 anti-tank guns.[74] Fuel for the entire corps was in very short supply. Thus, Heim’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps had 150 tanks, but limited ability to withstand large numbers of T-34s. Paulus did not expect a major enemy counter-offensive across the Don because German intelligence failed to identify the deployment of the 5th Tank Army, but the VIII and XI Armeekorps commanders were so nervous about Soviet front-line activity in their sectors, that he consented to send Major Bernhard Sauvant’s kampfgruppe from 14.Panzer-Division with thirty-five tanks and some panzer-grenadiers to support his left flank. Nor did German intelligence detect the 4th Mechanized Corps arriving south of Stalingrad. Soviet operational-level maskirovka (deception) played a major role in shaping the outcome of Uranus.

Operation Uranus began at 0720 hours on 19 November with a massive artillery bombardment along the Southwest and Don fronts. It was snowing, with heavy mist and a thick blanket of snow covered the ground. Visibility was very limited and the temperature was –19°C. Vasilevsky preferred to attack in poor weather because it preserved the element of surprise to the last moment and prevented interference from the Luftwaffe. Dumitrescu’s infantry were deployed in field entrenchments, so the artillery barrage was only moderately effective, but they also did not see the attacking Soviet infantry and tanks until they were within small arms range. Minefields gave the Soviets some trouble, but Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army rolled over the Romanian 9th and 14th Infantry Divisions in a matter of hours, creating a 16km-wide breach near Bolshoy. To the east, near Kletskaya, General-major Andrei G. Kravchenko’s 4th Tank Corps smashed through the Romanian 13th Infantry Division, but lost twenty-five of its 143 tanks knocked out in the minefields and obstacle belt. Chistiakov’s 21st Army made a 10km-wide breach in the Romanian lines and the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps plunged into the gap, advancing 35km on the first day. Within six hours of the beginning of Uranus, Dumitrescu’s front was pierced in two places and Soviet armour and cavalry were advancing boldly into the breaches. Many Romanian troops in these two sectors panicked and either surrendered or retreated without orders, widening the Soviet breakthrough.

Heim’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps began ‘moving to the sound of the guns’ within hours of the beginning of the Soviet offensive, but only forty-one tanks were operational and fuel limitations prevented the entire unit from moving. Instead, Kampfgruppe Oppeln was formed and dispatched toward Bolshoy. Coordination between XXXXVIII Panzerkorps and Heeresgruppe B, the Romanian 3rd Army or AOK 6 was virtually non-existent, so Heim was committing the sole armoured reserve into an unknown situation. Instead of advancing together, the Romanian 1st Armoured Division advanced due north, while Kampfgruppe Oppeln went to the northwest. It was already dark by 1700 hours, when the German armoured column bumped into a group of tanks from General-major Vasiliy V. Butkov’s 1st Tank Corps near Petshany. A wild shoot-out occurred at close range, in the swirling snow and darkness, and the Germans were not the victor.

By 20 November it was clear that the Soviet 5th Tank Army and 21st Armies had achieved a major breakthrough of the Romanian 3rd Army front. A large kessel had already been formed by the Soviet armoured pincers between Bolshoy and Kletskaya, with 40,000 Romanians from Group Lascar trapped inside. Heeresgruppe B told Group Lascar to stand fast – help was on the way – but when the Romanian 1st Armoured Division tried to link up with Group Lascar it quickly became encircled within the kessel and only parts of it escaped. The 22.Panzer-Division tried to block Butkov’s 1st Tank Corps, but it was not an effective combined arms team and lost much of its armour. This was one of the few times during the Second World War that German panzer units performed poorly and German C² was actually worse than Soviet C². Hitler was infuriated by the poor performance of the XXXXVIII Panzerkorps – ignoring its material deficiencies – and ordered Heim arrested and replaced by his deputy, General-major Hans Cramer. Yet Cramer was just as helpless to stop the breakthrough or the destruction of both flimsy armoured formations. Kampfgruppe Sauvant from 14.Panzer-Division managed to prevent the Don Front from smashing in AOK 6’s left flank, but the German effort to support the Romanian 3rd Army was too little and too late.

South of Stalingrad, Yeremenko’s Stalingrad Front began its participation in Operation Uranus on the morning of 20 November by bombarding the opposing Romanian 4th Army with 4,900 artillery pieces. In this sector near Lake Sarpa, the Romanians were spread even more thinly, with division frontages averaging 20–40km wide, meaning that it was more of a screen than a serious defensive line. General-major Vasily T. Volskii’s 4th Mechanized Corps struck the Romanian VI Corps, which shattered under the weight of 200 tanks. The sector was simply too wide for a handful of anti-tank guns and minefields to seriously impede the Soviet armour. By afternoon, four Romanian divisions had been defeated and scattered. Further north, Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps struck the junction of the Romanian 4th Army and the German IV Armeekorps, which proved more resilient. Nevertheless, Yeremenko rapidly achieved a complete breakthrough, routing the Romanians in their path and setting the stage for an advance to Kalach. Like Vatutin and Chistiakov, Yeremenko committed a cavalry corps into the breach to reinforce the momentum of the advance, since cavalry was less dependent upon resupply. Hoth, who was with IV Armeekorps, quickly deployed the 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) to impede Tanaschishin’s armour, which prevented a complete collapse of AOK 6’s right flank.

Vatutin, Chistiakov and Yeremenko all achieved breakthroughs and began to exploit into the enemy’s depths within six hours of beginning their offensives, which was a first for the Red Army. These breakthroughs might still have failed if the Germans had been able to deal with them one at a time as in previous battles, but Vasilevsky, acting in the role of Stavka coordinator, played a critical role in orchestrating this complex multi-front operation. While the infantry army mopped up the Romanian 3rd and 4th Armies, three Soviet mechanized formations converged upon the town of Kalach. This was a heady time for Soviet tankers, the first where they had the operational and tactical initiative, and they had the bit between their teeth. The 22.Panzer-Division and Romanian 1st Armoured Division continued uncoordinated skirmishing with Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army, but lost almost all their tanks within two days and were forced to retreat westward.

In contrast to Soviet decisiveness, AOK 6 and Heeresgruppe B were slow to react to the developing crisis and were not fully aware of what was going on until the second day of Uranus. All three panzer divisions of Hube’s XIV Panzerkorps were alerted on the evening of 19 November to pull out of the city fight and prepare to move west to support the XI Armeekorps, under attack by Rokossovsky’s Don Front. Altogether, Paulus had 239 operational tanks at his disposal, including 116 Pz.IIIJ/L/M and fifty-two Pz.IVF2/G; the three panzer-divisionen had thirty to fifty-five tanks each and the motorized infantry divisions had twenty to sixty tanks each. The 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) was in the best shape, with twenty-three Pz.III with long 5cm guns and eighteen Pz.IV with long 7.5cm guns.[75] Despite the number of tanks available – which might have made a difference at the right place – the amount of fuel available was insufficient for mobile operations.

Kampfgruppe Sauvantfrom 14.Panzer-Division continued to support the XI Armeekorps west of Stalingrad, while 16 and 24.Panzer-Divisionen also sent small kampfgruppen to Golubinskaya, north of Kalach. Paulus focused more effort on refusing both his right and left flanks to conform to Soviet advances, rather than making an earnest effort to use his available armour to try and protect his lines of communication – he acted as if that was somebody else’s job. As Soviet armour approached Kalach on 22 November, there were only German rear area troops holding the bridge over the Don and Paulus actually pulled his armour in closer to Stalingrad away from Kalach after 16.Panzer-Division lost five tanks in skirmishes. However, Kampfgruppe Sauvant retreated down the rail line toward Kotelnikovo, thereby salvaging a kernel of 14.Panzer-Division – eighteen tanks and one panzer-grenadier company – from the impending kessel.[76]

It came as no surprise that the lead elements of Kravchenko’s 4th Tank Corps linked up with Volskii’s 4th Mechanized Corps near Kalach at 1400 hours on 23 November – completing the encirclement of AOK 6. Inside the Stalingrad kessel, the encircled AOK 6 included Hube’s XIV Panzerkorps with 14, 16 and 24.Panzer-Divisionen, as well as the 3, 29 and 60.Infanterie-Division (mot.), plus the 243 and 245.Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen and three self-propelled Panzerjäger-Abteilungen equipped with Marder II tank destroyers. Stalingrad was an epic disaster for Germany’s Panzertruppen, with six of twenty-five mechanized divisions and twelve of forty-six Panzer-Abteilungen trapped inside the kessel.

With the kessel formed, the three Soviet fronts tried to increase the distance between Paulus’ AOK 6 and potential help by advancing further southward, but Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army failed to get across the Chir River. Heeresgruppe B quickly formed Gruppe Hollidt with some remnants of the Romanian 3rd Army and German support troops to hold the Chir River line. Operation Uranus demonstrated that the Red Army’s armoured forces could conduct complex, mobile operations if allowed time to prepare a proper offensive. Soviet victory at Stalingrad was not due to superior numbers of tanks – that approach failed in July–August – but upon careful planning and bold tactical action, enhanced by cunning exploitation of maskirovka to deceive the enemy and timing during bad weather to deprive the enemy of their air support. Another reason that Operation Uranus succeeded was that Zhukov – who was preoccupied with his own Operation Mars against the Rzhev salient – had little or nothing to do with it. His command style of ruthless bullying of subordinates, reckless disregard of casualties and utter subservience to Stalin’s incessant demand for immediate results could have greatly undermined the Red Army’s performance at Stalingrad.

Wintergewitter, 12–19 December

Even before the Soviet armoured pincers met at Kalach, Hitler ordered Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein, who was on the Leningrad Front, to proceed to Rostov and take charge of the new Heeresgruppe Don. Hitler directed von Manstein to ‘bring the enemy’s attacks to a standstill and recapture the positions previously occupied by us.’ Unwilling to fly directly to Rostov with his staff, von Manstein did not arrive there until 26 November and Heeresgruppe Don was not operational until the next day. At that point, he took command over AOK 6 inside the Stalingrad kessel, General der Infanterie Karl Hollidt’s scratch force on the Chir River and Hoth’s shattered command, which had managed to hold onto the vital rail station at Kotelnikovo. While von Manstein was en route to Rostov, Hitler directed the Luftwaffe to begin a major airlift to sustain the AOK 6 inside the Stalingrad kessel. On 24 November, Generaloberst Wolfram von Richtofen’s Luftflotte 4 commenced the Stalingrad airlift, using Tatsinskaya and Morozovskaya airfields as the primary operating bases for his squadrons of Ju-52 transports. The airlift rarely delivered more than 10–15 per cent of AOK 6’s logistic needs, so the armoured forces within the pocket quickly declined due to lack of fuel and ammunition.[77] By late November, Paulus’ AOK 6 was reduced to essentially an all-infantry force with very little mobility or organic fire support, but still capable of determined defense.

In order to provide von Manstein’s new command some striking power, the OKH began transferring panzer divisions to Heeresgruppe Don. Generalmajor Erhard Raus’ 6.Panzer-Division, which had just completed refitting in France, was en route when Operation Uranus began and was the first reinforcement to arrive. The 6.Panzer-Division was a superbly-equipped armoured outfit with 159 tanks (twenty-one Pz.II, seventy-three Pz.IIIL/M, thirty-two Pz.IIIN, twenty-four Pz.IVG and nine PzBef) and six Marder III tank destroyers. The lead elements of Raus’ division reached Kotelnikovo on 27 November, but the first tanks of Panzer-Regiment 11 did not arrive until 3 December and they were immediately sent into action when the Soviet 51st Army conducted a spoiling attack with the 65th Tank Brigade and 81st Cavalry Division. A major tank action occurred near the village of Pokhlebin, 12km northwest of Kotelnikovo, on the morning of 5 December, involving about ninety tanks from Panzer-Regiment 11, the II (SPW)/Panzergrenadier-Regiment 114 and anti-tank troops in a meeting engagement against about sixty tanks from the 65th Tank Brigade. First blood went to the T-34s, which ambushed Major Franz Bäke’s kampfgruppe and knocked out four Pz.IVs in one company and three Pz.IIIs in another company. The Germans managed to regroup and, with the help of their artillery and panzerjägers, repulse the Soviet spoiling attack. Although about 2,000 cavalrymen were captured in mop-up operations, the tank skirmish at Pokhlebin was ample demonstration that the quality of Soviet tankers was improving. Overall, the Germans lost two Pz.III, three Pz.IV and one Marder III destroyed and ten more tanks damaged, against eleven Soviet tanks destroyed – a not very favorable exchange ratio for the Germans.[78] Raus tried to whitewash this outcome in his not-very-accurate memoirs, claiming that his Panzer-Regiment 11 ‘destroyed’ the Soviet 4th Cavalry Corps in a masterful double envelopment at Pokhlebin and knocked out fifty-six tanks from the 65th Tank Brigade. He embellished the tale by recounting ‘immortal deeds of heroism’ on the part of his troops – postwar German accounts like this have helped to create a mythology about German panzer operations that obscures the fact that by late 1942 armoured battles on the Eastern Front were becoming less one-sided.[79]

Heeresgruppe Don’s lateral lines of communication were awful, which, combined with winter weather, seriously hindered the German deployment of additional panzer divisions to Heeresgruppe Don. General der Panzertruppen Hermann Balck’s 11.Panzer-Division, with seventy-eight tanks, departed from Roslavl and detrained near Morozovskaya airfield on 5 December. The 23.Panzer-Division, with Heeresgruppe A in the Caucasus, began moving north on 24 November, first by rail to Ssalsk, then on its own tracks to Kotelnikovo, which was hindered by snow and ice. While en route, Panzer-Regiment 201 received twenty-two new Panzer IVGs, bringing its armoured strength up to about sixty-two tanks.[80] Lastly, the OKH transferred the 17.Panzer-Division from Orel, but this unit was still en route on 10 December. Manstein assigned the 6 and 23.Panzer-Division to General der Panzertruppen Friedrich Kirchner’s LVII Panzerkorps and the 11 and 17.Panzer-Divisionen to General der Panzertruppen Otto von Knobelsdorff’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps.

While the panzer divisions were assembling, von Manstein and his staff hastily developed an operational plan to rescue Paulus’ trapped AOK 6. The basic idea for Operation Wintergewitter (Winter Storm) was for a two-pronged attack led by Hoth, using both the XXXXVIII and LVII Panzerkorps. Previous experience in armoured operations indicated that a two-pronged offensive had the best chance of maintaining momentum, since the schwerpunkt could be switched between the two spearheads to keep the enemy off balance. Manstein wanted to use the German-held bridgehead across the Don at Nizhniy Chir, only 100km from Stalingrad, as the main jump-off point for XXXXVIII Panzerkorps to mount a relief operation, with LVII Panzerkorps attacking from Kotelnikovo. However, the two-pronged concept did not last long. Vatutin also recognized the importance of Nizhniy Chir and ordered Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army to attack Armee-Abteilung Hollidt on the Chir River on 7 December. Butkov’s 1st Tank Corps (reduced to fifty-two tanks), along with the 3rd Guards Cavalry corps and two rifle divisions, attacked the German screening positions on the Chir; the 336.Infanterie-Division held its ground against Soviet tank attacks but the 7.Luftwaffen-Feld-Division lost two of its battalions, allowing Butkov’s armour to penetrate the German screen and reach Sovkhoz (State Farm) 79. Von Manstein was forced to commit the XXXXVIII Panzerkorps to restore the front and Balck’s 11.Panzer-Division, which was still arriving, counterattacked into Butkov’s flank on 8 December. According to von Mellenthin’s well-known account in Panzerschlachten (1956), Balck knocked out fifty-three Soviet tanks – but there is no mention of German losses.[81] Balck’s troops did find the bodies of 100 German rear-area troops who had been captured at Sovkhoz 79 and murdered by troops from the 157th Tank Brigade. Balck used this incident to raise combat morale in a statement to his troops, reminding that ‘the terrible fate of Sovkhoz 79’ awaited them if they were not victorious.[82] In any case, Balck prevented Romanenko’s armour from getting across the Chir in strength, but Vatutin kept pressure on Hollidt’s forces and eventually forced the Germans out of Nizhniy Chir, which prevented the XXXXVIII Panzerkorps from joining Wintergewitter.

Unable to use the XXXXVIII Panzerkorps, von Manstein was forced to adapt Wintergewitter to a single prong launched by LVII Panzerkorps from Kotelnikovo. From that position, the distance to Stalingrad was 145km. Although Hitler promised that von Manstein would receive a dozen divisions to conduct Wintergewitter, by 10 December he only had Raus’ 6.Panzer-Division and part of 23.Panzer-Division in place. Although these two formations had a total of 200 tanks, there were no German infantry divisions on hand to support Hoth – just the remnants of two Romanian infantry divisions – which was an ominous sign that the operation was doomed to fail. Von Manstein wanted to wait for more reinforcements, but by this point it was clear that the Luftwaffe airlift was failing and that AOK 6’s situation was becoming critical. Wintergewitter was based on the assumption that AOK 6 would launch a breakout effort once Hoth’s armour approached close to Stalingrad, but by early December Paulus was so short of fuel and ammunition that his armoured units were all but immobilized. Consequently, von Manstein authorized Hoth to commence Wintergewitter on 12 December with just the 6 and part of the 23.Panzer-Divisionen, to be joined by 17.Panzer-Division when it arrived.

North of Kotelnikovo, General-major Nikolai I. Trufanov’s 51st Army deployed a very thin screen of three rifle divisions, three cavalry divisions and two tank brigades (with seventy-seven tanks) in hasty blocking positions across a 150km-wide front. Most of Trufanov’s units were at half-strength and had not constructed prepared defenses. When Hoth attacked with his two panzer divisions on line at 0630 hours on 12 December, they had little difficulty punching through Trufanov’s thinly-spread infantry. Raus’ 6.Panzer-Division overran a rifle division, then pivoted westward to overrun a cavalry division and knocked out ten Soviet tanks for no loss, then boldly advanced toward the Aksay River.[83] On their right flank, the 23.Panzer-Division was only able to make a limited attack with Kampfgruppe Illig (III./Pz.Regt 201 and I (SPW)./Pz.Gren.Regt 128), but secured its objectives and captured 250 prisoners and seventeen artillery pieces. Fliegerkorps IV managed to provide some air support, which helped Hoth’s armour in the initial actions, but as he advanced toward Stalingrad his flanks were only protected by unsteady Romanian and Luftwaffe troops.

Yeremenko reacted quickly to Hoth’s rapid advance and committed Volskii’s 4th Mechanized Corps, which had thirty-two T-34s and thirty-eight T-70s, to occupy blocking positions at Verkhne Kumski, while Trufanov moved Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps to Zutov to block the 23.Panzer-Division from getting across the Aksay.[84] Yeremenko also sought permission from the Stavka to transfer General-leytenant Rodion I. Malinovsky’s 2nd Guards Army from the Don Front to reinforce Soviet defenses on the approaches to Stalingrad, but Stalin was initially reluctant since this formation was earmarked to be used in the reduction of the Stalingrad kessel.

Shortly after dawn on 13 December, Oberst Walther von Hünersdorff led his armoured Kampfgruppe consisting of I. and II./Pz.Regt 11, II.(SPW)/Pz.Gren.Regt. 114, six artillery batteries, a Pioneer-Kompanie and a Panzerjäger-Kompanie across an unguarded ford at Zalivsky over the Aksay River. Kampfgruppe Hünersdorff had advanced 40km in the first twenty-four hours, although half of the 6.Panzer-Division was still engaged south of the Aksay River. After securing the Zalivsky bridgehead, Hünersdorff advanced another 12km to the village of Verkhne Kumski, a nondescript one-street Russian village. According to Raus’ unreliable memoirs, Hoth had ordered 6.Panzer-Division to stop once it seized a bridgehead across the Aksay and wait for 23.Panzer-Division to catch up, but Raus allowed von Hünersdorff to move north of the river to engage and destroy Soviet armoured reserves. Shortly after von Hünersdorff occupied Verkhne Kumski, two Soviet tank brigades were spotted advancing across the open steppe toward the village from north and east. Raus goes on to describe a fanciful ‘revolving battle’ around the village, with von Hünersdorff’s two Panzer-Abteilungen engaging a total of five Soviet brigades, which attacked piecemeal and were defeated in turn; he claims that von Hünersdorff’s forces knocked out 135–140 enemy tanks in this one action, but does not mention German losses.

In actuality, von Hünersdorff had advanced directly into the 4th Mechanized Corps assembly areas around Verkhne Kumski and quickly found his kampfgruppe nearly surrounded by a superior force. It is unclear why Volskii had no forces in the village itself, and his C² was inadequate to mount a coordinated attack to crush Kampfgruppe von Hünersdorff; instead, each of his brigades attacked at the initiative of its commander. Part of Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps also got in the fight. While II.(SPW)/Pz.Gren.-Regt. 114 and the artillery and engineers set up a hasty defense in the tiny village, von Hünersdorff’s two Panzer-Abteilungen maneuvered outside the village to engage the Soviet brigades. Soviet tank losses were heavy, but a group of T-34s managed to reach the village and overrun some of the German artillery before they were knocked out by panzer-grenadiers with the new Hafthohlladung hollow charge magnetic anti-tank mines.

Although von Hünersdorff managed to prevent his command from being destroyed, he was forced to conduct a fighting withdrawal at dusk when it became clear that Soviet armour had cut his line of communications and his fuel and ammunition were nearly expended. Von Hünersdorff retreated to the Zalivsky bridgehead and remained there for the next three days. Contrary to Raus’ lurid account, the Battle of Verkhne Kumski on 13 December was a Soviet tactical and operational victory, since Hoth’s advance on Stalingrad had been halted for three critical days. Since the 4th Mechanized Corps held the ground at the end of the day, many of its knocked out tanks would be recovered and repaired. Hoth’s schwerpunkt had been stopped and Kampfgruppe von Hünersdorff forced to retreat with heavy losses (at least thirty panzers knocked out).

Hoth consolidated his forces on the Aksay, enabling his pioneers to build a pontoon bridge across the river. Meanwhile, the 23.Panzer-Division, which was echeloned to the right of 6.Panzer-Division, engaged the 254th Tank Brigade at Ssamochin on the morning of 14 December. The Germans were alerted to the approach of the Soviet brigade due to poor communications security, with radio traffic being sent in the clear, and ambushed the two lead companies. A total of twelve Soviet tanks, including two KV-1, were knocked out by Kampfgruppe von Heydebreck, which lost two tanks and one Marder III. After this, Kampfgruppe von Heydebreck advanced to capture an intact railroad bridge over the Aksay at Kruglyakov at 1430 hours. Soviet counterattacks against both bridgeheads began on 14 December and continued the next day, forcing the panzer-grenadiers to entrench. The 23.Panzer-Division knocked out ten T-34s and two T-60s on 15 December, but lost two 8.8cm flak guns.[85] On 16 December, two companies of T-34s from the 13th Tank Corps attacked the Kruglyakov bridgehead and overran two Pak guns and three 10.5cm howitzers before being driven off. All momentum was gone from Hoth’s brief advance.

Reinforcements were trickling in to LVII Panzerkorps, such as Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 228 which arrived with forty-two assault guns, but Yeremenko’s forces were being reinforced as well. On 16 December, Raus tried committing Kampfgruppe von Hünersdorff again, but the 4th Mechanized Corps and other Soviet rifle units had established a defense-in-depth north of the bridgehead that could not be broken by an armour-heavy attack. Raus claimed that camouflaged Soviet PTRD anti-tank rifle teams proved too difficult to eliminate and that, ‘never before had our tank crews felt so powerless.’[86] The second German armoured attack north of the Aksay had failed.

On 17 December, Raus switched tactics and used Kampfgruppe Zollenkopf with two dismounted panzer-grenadier battalions, artillery support and Luftwaffe support to expand the Zalivsky bridgehead. The 23.Panzer-Division was able to expand its own bridgehead and the lead element of 17.Panzer-Division, Kampfgruppe Seitz, arrived to reinforce the offensive. Raus massed his firepower and infantry at one point and managed to punch a hole through the 4th Mechanized Corps’ front, which unhinged Volskii’s defense. As the Soviet 51st Army began to fall back to the Myshkova River, Raus sent his SPW-mounted battalion to seize Verkhne Kumski in a sudden night assault. Hoth spent much of 18 December mopping up bypassed pockets of resistance and moving his forces toward the Myshkova River. By the end of 18 December, Hoth only had 101 operational tanks left and his remaining combat power was dwindling. In one last throw of the dice, Raus sent Kampfgruppe Hünersdorff in a 30km end-run on 19 December that bypassed Soviet blocking positions and managed to reach the Myshkova River, where they seized a bridge over the river at Vasilyevka at 2000 hours. The oft-repeated mythology about Stalingrad and Wintergewitter has made a great deal about Hünersdorff reaching a position that was just 48km from Stalingrad and how – if only Paulus had chosen to conduct a break-out effort at this point – events might have turned out differently. This is a fantasy. Stalin had released Malinovsky’s 2nd Guards Army to Yeremenko on 15 December and, after a 200km road march, the lead elements of Rotmistrov’s 7th Tank Corps and 2nd Guards Mechanized Corps were just reaching the Myshkova River, where they encountered scouts from Kampfgruppe Hünersdorff. Hoth’s forces lacked the strength to fight their way through the 2nd Guards Army and Paulus’ army lacked the mobility to even reach this area. Both of Hoth’s flanks were virtually open and the closer that he came to Stalingrad, the greater the possibility that his own small strike force would be enveloped and then surrounded. In reality, Operation Wintergewitter failed on its second day, but the Germans did not recognize this until their schwerpunkt ground to a halt on the Myshkova River.

Von Manstein knew that Hoth’s panzers no longer had a chance of reaching Stalingrad, but he ordered Hoth to keep Kampfgruppe Hünersdorff at the Vasilyevka bridgehead for three days, while he sought to cajole Paulus into activating the unauthorized breakout operation known as Donnerschlag (Thunderclap). However, Paulus refused to disobey Hitler and, as time slipped by, Malinovsky’s armour began massing against Kampfgruppe Hünersdorff. Even worse, the new Soviet offensive – Operation Little Saturn – forced von Manstein to order Hoth to give up his strongest formation, 6.Panzer-Division, to support Heeresgruppe Don’s collapsing left flank. Wintergewitter was over. In a bitter postscript, Hitler ordered that LVII Panzerkorps would hold the bridgeheads over the Aksay river ‘at all costs,’ which meant that 17 and 23.Panzer-Division were badly battered by Soviet counterattacks from 20–25 December. Hoth was not authorized to retreat from the Aksay River until the evening of 26 December and then LVII Panzerkorps conducted a rapid withdrawal back down the rail line, pursued by Rotmistrov’s 7th Tank Corps. Soviet numerical superiority was now telling, with large numbers of T-34s threatening the retreating Germans from all directions. The 23.Panzer-Division was reduced to only five operational tanks by the time that it reached Kotelnikovo, which was then lost on 29 December.

Operation Mars, 25 November–20 December

While the Red Army had been preparing for Operation Uranus in October, Zhukov ensured that his own project – Operation Mars, the attack against Model’s AOK 9 in the Rzhev salient – received priority in terms of reinforcements and supplies. The two fronts involved in the operation – Western and Kalinin – received the newly-formed 1st and 3rd Mechanized Corps as well as one of the first artillery divisions. Altogether, Zhukov committed 2,352 tanks and thirty-seven rifle divisions to Operation Mars, against Vasilevsky’s 1,560 tanks and thirty-four rifle divisions earmarked for Operation Uranus.[87]

Zhukov’s basic plan was to conduct a double envelopment of the Rzhev salient, with Generalpolkovnik Maksim A. Purkaev’s Kalinin Front attacking the western side of the salient with the 22nd and 41st Armies, while Ivan S. Konev’s Western Front attacked the eastern side with the 20th Army. A supporting attack would also be launched by the Kalinin Front’s 39th Army against the northern side of the salient. Zhukov believed that once the German-held salient was simultaneously hit from three different directions that AOK 9 would collapse like a house of cards. Then, the Western and Kalinin Fronts would release their armour – two mechanized and two tank corps – to complete the enemy’s defeat by linking up and encircling the remnants of Model’s battered army. Zhukov believed that Operation Mars would lead to the disintegration of Heeresgruppe Mitte.

However, Zhukov did not put a professional effort into planning Operation Mars. He made little effort to employ maskirovka during the build-up phase in October, which enabled Model’s intelligence officer to not only accurately assess that a Soviet major offensive was imminent, but which sectors were threatened. Model demonstrated real talent for defensive tactics in the Rzhev salient and he personally visited each sector and ensured that his front-line units had preplanned engagement areas on likely enemy avenues of approach; anti-tank and anti-personnel mines were laid and covered by fire.

Model also positioned the 5 and 9.Panzer-Divisionen, with a total of 180 tanks, as mobile reserves to support General der Panzertruppe Jürgen von Arnim’s XXXIX Panzerkorps on the eastern side of the salient, and the 1.Panzer-Division to support General der Panzertruppe Josef Harpe’s XXXXI Panzerkorps on the western side of the salient. Although Model’s panzer divisions only had one Panzer-Abteilung each and his infantry divisions were at half-strength, his troops were well-entrenched and supported by 260 artillery pieces. Unlike the Romanian 3rd and 4th Armies near Stalingrad, Model was expecting Zhukov’s offensive and well-prepared.

Operation Mars began on the morning of 25 November, with simultaneous assaults around the periphery of the Rzhev salient. The scale of the Soviet assaults was awesome – Zhukov and Konev both favored mass – but it just did not work against Model’s defense.

The heavily-reinforced 20th Army massed fifty-three artillery regiments to try and blast a hole through von Arnim’s defenses, but fog and snow greatly reduced the accuracy of the initial Soviet artillery preparation (another example of Zhukov’s inadequate planning; Operation Uranus also began in fog/snow conditions, but Vatutin ensured that his artillerymen pre-registered their guns), so the three rifle divisions that began the ground assault were repulsed with 50 per cent losses. Zhukov ignored these losses and told Konev to keep attacking in the same sector, which suited Model fine. Model relied upon his artillery to break up the massed Soviet infantry assaults, which then allowed his panzerjägers to pick off unsupported T-34s and KV-1s.

Stützpunkt Grediakino, held by Major Kurt Stieber’s II/Pz.Gren. 14 from 5.Panzer-Division, proved to be an immovable roadblock for the 20th Army. Oberleutnant Hans-Siegfried Rothkirch’s 2./Pz.Regt 31, equipped with a mixed group of seven tanks (one Pz.IIIN with short 7.5cm, two Pz.III with short 5cm, three Pz.III with long 5cm and one Pz.IV with short 7.5cm) and two Marder tank destroyers moved into Grediakino to support the defense. The constant Soviet artillery bombardments forced Rothkirch’s panzers to remain in dead space most of the time, but they were still damaged repeatedly by near-misses and the panzer crews were forced to remain inside their vehicles for several days without resupply of food, fuel or ammunition. Nevertheless, every time Soviet armour from the 25th and 93rd Tank Brigades attacked the strongpoint, Rothkirch’s panzers emerged and picked off enough enemy tanks to drive off the assault. The 42nd Guards Rifle Division managed to encircle Stützpunkt Grediakino, but the Luftwaffe provided aerial resupply drops and a lone Pz.II fought through Soviet lines with a load of Panzergranate APC ammunition. Over the course of seven days, Rothkirch’s company knocked out sixteen Soviet tanks (eight T-34, two KV-1, two T-60, one Lee and three BT) at a cost of two tanks and one Marder II lost. All the German tanks were repeatedly damaged by hits from artillery and PTRD anti-tank rifle fire, but remained in action. Finally, Model recognized that Kampfgruppe Stieber was running out of defenders and organized a breakout, which succeeded at 0300 hours on 1 December. Rothkirch’s 2./Pz.Regt 31 made it back to German lines.[88]

Konev’s infantry finally made a small tear in von Arnim’s front south of Grediakino and Zhukov prodded Konev to commit General-major Andrei L. Getman’s 6th Tank Corps and 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps into the breach as a mobile group. Although Konev’s mobile group managed to advance west 12km and caused a crisis for the Germans, it soon found itself in a long, thin salient. As usual, the Luftwaffe appeared and pounded Konev’s tightly-packed mobile group mercilessly. Von Arnim conducted a masterful elastic defense until he was able to maneuver the 5 and 9.Panzer-Division against Konev’s salient, but an initial counterattack by Kampfgruppe Hochbaum from 9.Panzer-Division at Aristovo on 27 November failed; eighteen tanks from the 6th Tank Corps were knocked out, but Panzer-Regiment 33 lost eight tanks knocked out.[89] On 29 November, von Arnim was finally able to orchestrate a counterattack the cut off Konev’s mobile group, and gradually annihilated it by 4 December.

On the western side of the salient, Purkaev’s Kalinin Front attacked Harpe’s XXXXI Panzerkorps at two places with the 22nd and 41st Armies. The 41st Army achieved a major breakthrough south of Belyi by overrunning the 2.Luftwaffen-Feld-Division, then it pushed General-major Mikhail D. Solomatin’s 1st Mechanized Corps, and 6th Rifle Corps into the breach; these forces advanced 35km eastward before being stopped by Generalleutnant Walter Krüger’s 1.Panzer-Division’s Kampfgruppe von Meden (one Panzer-Abteilung and three motorized infantry battalions) at the Nacha River. Solomatin started the offensive with 215 tanks, but he quickly fragmented his corps by committing one brigade against Belyi, which was held by the rest of Krüger’s 1.Panzer-Division, three brigades against von Meden and his reserve brigade in a flanking maneuver.

Consequently, Solomatin squandered his breakthrough by failing to mass at a single point, as the German schwerpunkt did. Solomatin’s mechanized units eventually got across the Nacha River and began to split Kampfgruppe von Meden into two pieces, but Oberst Karl-Friedrich von der Meden was able to delay Solomatin from finishing off his beleaguered kampfgruppe – which was down to its last two operational Pz.III tanks – until the lead elements of 12.Panzer-Division arrived to reinforce him on 1 December.

The 22nd Army also achieved a breakthrough in the Luchesa valley north of Belyi, into which it committed General-major Mikhail E. Katukov’s 3rd Mechanized Corps, with 232 tanks, against the 86.Infanterie-Division. With both flanks giving way, Harpe’s XXXXI Panzerkorps was on the verge of collapse. Adding to Model’s problems, the 39th Army also managed to gain ground on the northern side of the Rzhev salient. Model left part of the Grossdeutschland Division, which had been transferred from Heeresgruppe B in August, to contain the 39th Army, but sent two kampfgruppen that included tanks from Panzer-Abteilung Grossdeutschland to block Katukov’s tanks. The Luchesa River valley was a poor maneuver area for Katukov’s tanks, since it was swampy and heavily forested, with only a single trail. By 27 November, Katukov had advanced 12km and was close to destroying Harpe’s right flank, but Kampfgruppe Kohler from the Grossdeutschland Division was beginning to arrive. A very sharp tank battle developed on 29 November, pitting the 49th Tank Brigade against Kampfgruppe Kohler; the T-34s and KV-1s managed to overrun a battery of 5cm Pak38 antitank guns, but the arrival of a battery of 8.8cm flak guns halted Katukov’s tanks. By 30 November, about half of Katukov’s armour had been knocked out and he had failed to break out of the Luchesa valley, but Panzer-Abteilung Grossdeutschland was also ground down considerably.[90]

Faced with simultaneous enemy breakthroughs all around his army’s perimeter, Model acted with speed – unlike Paulus at Stalingrad – to commit local reserves to shore up the most threatened sectors while assembling his panzer reserves for a counterstroke. As a battlefield commander, Model consistently displayed the trait of Fingerspitzengefühl (‘finger on the pulse’) or ‘situational awareness’ in modern parlance. He worked first with von Arnim to crush Konev’s mobile group, then reoriented to deal with Harpe’s collapsing front. Model recognized that the depleted 1.Panzer-Division could not stop two full-strength Soviet mechanized corps on its own, so he activated a prearranged contingency plan with Generalfeldmarschall Günther von Kluge, commander of Heeresgruppe Mitte, to temporarily receive the 12, 19 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen, which had a heterogeneous collection of 195 tanks. While 12.Panzer-Division had received seventeen Pz.IIIJ/L/M and eighteen Pz.IVF2/G, the other two panzer divisions were still equipped with obsolete Pz.38(t) tanks and short-barreled Pz.III/Pz.IV tanks, meaning that their combat effectiveness against Soviet armour was limited.[91] While these units were en route, Harpe’s troops conducted an epic defense of Belyi, which prevented the two Soviet mechanized corps from linking up. By early December, most Soviet attacks had ground to a standstill, unable to overcome German centers of resistance. On 1 December, the 19 and 20.Panzer-Divisionen launched a coordinated attack with about 120 tanks that cut off Solomatin’s 1st Mechanized Corps and 6th Rifle Corps – which were demolished over the course of a week. Throughout December, Zhukov kept demanding that his subordinates continue attacking, but this only resulted in tired units becoming burnt-out wrecks and by 20 December it was clear the Operation Mars had failed.

Operation Mars cost the Western and Kalinin Fronts about 335,000 casualties in four weeks. Six elite Soviet corps were destroyed or crippled, including the 1st and 3rd Mechanized Corps and 5th and 6th Tank Corps. About 85 per cent of the Soviet armour engaged in Operation Mars was lost, with the Germans claiming 1,852 tanks knocked out.[92] At the tactical level, Zhukov’s forces demonstrated poor tank-infantry cooperation and an inability to overcome German strongpoints. Model used aerial resupply to keep isolated Stützpunkte from running out of supplies and entrenched German infantry, when supplied with magnetic antitank mines and better anti-tank guns, could keep KV-1s and T-34s at bay. Although Konev and Purkaev had plenty of infantry, tanks and artillery, they consistently failed to employ them in coordinated fashion – which demonstrates that those historians who claim that the Red Army’s victory was ‘inevitable’ are divorcing Soviet industrial output from battlefield realities. The strongest lesson of Operation Mars and Operation Uranus, when viewed together, was that the Red Army could not simply rely upon mass to win, because the kill-ratios almost always favored German defenders – the brute force approach of Timoshenko, Konev and Zhukov would result in the Red Army attacking itself to death. In order to win, the Red Army needed to employ cunning, deception and maneuver at the operational level of armoured warfare, and learn effective tank-infantry coordination at the tactical level.

Model’s forces suffered heavy losses during Operation Mars, but no German units were destroyed or rendered combat ineffective. Yet despite Model’s efficient battle command and defensive tactics, his forces only prevailed because Heeresgruppe Mitte was able to commit six panzer divisions to help hold the Rzhev salient – which was one-third of all the available armoured units on the Eastern Front. Even after defeating Zhukov’s offensive, Model still needed thirty German divisions to hold the Rzhev salient, which was no longer affordable in light of the unfolding disaster with AOK 6 at Stalingrad. After his victory. Model recommended that AOK 9 evacuate the Rzhev salient in order to free up units for operations elsewhere, which Hitler reluctantly began to seriously consider but did not approve until February 1943.

Deep Battle, 16–30 December

Even before implementing Operation Uranus, General-polkovnik Aleksandr M. Vasilevsky, the Stavka director of operations, was developing plans for the next phase of the Soviet winter counter-offensive, which was initially designated Operation Saturn.

Vasilevsky had the best skills for operational planning in the Soviet general staff and he was a student of pre-war Deep Battle theory as described by Triandafillov, Tukhachevsky and Isserson and codified in the prewar PU-36 regulations. He believed that with proper planning, the Red Army of 1942 was capable of conducting the kind of Deep Battle operation envisioned by pre-war theory and that if successful, the next offensive could lead to the disintegration and destruction of the entire Heeresgruppe Don. Vasilevsky envisioned a two-phase offensive, with the 1st and 3rd Guards Armies from General-leytenant Nikolai Vatutin’s Southwest Front smashing the Italian 8th Army, while Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army defeated Armee-Abteilung Hollidt in the first phase, followed by the commitment of the 2nd Guards Army to exploit toward Rostov in the second phase. Operation Saturn was far more ambitious than any previous Soviet offensives and expected advances of up to 250km. Vatutin’s main effort would be General-leytenant Vasiliy I. Kuznetsov’s 1st Guards Army, which had four tank corps (17, 18, 24, 25) with 533 tanks (320 T-34, 161 T-70, fifty-two T-60) and eight rifle divisions. General-leytenant Dmitri D. Lelyushenko’s 3rd Guards Army had seven rifle divisions, the 1st Guards Mechanized Corps and a tank brigade, with a total of 234 tanks.[93] Vatutin’s forces would have a 10–1 superiority in armour and 7–1 superiority in artillery in the chosen attack sectors.

Due to Operation Wintergewitter, Vasilevsky had to send his exploitation force – Malinovsky’s 2nd Guards Army – to stop Hoth’s panzers and Romanenko’s sub-par performance against XXXXVIII Panzerkorps on the Chir River reduced his ability to contribute to Vasilevsky’s new offensive. Consequently, on 13 December Vasilevsky was forced to scale back the operation, which was redesignated Little Saturn, but his intent remained to demolish General Italo Gariboldi’s (Italian) 8th Army on Heeresgruppe Don’s left flank, then push strong armoured forces toward Heeresgruppe Don’s lines of communication and the airfields involved in the Stalingrad airlift. The ultimate prize was Rostov, which would result in the isolation of Heeresgruppe A in the Caucasus.

Operation Uranus was a wake-up call for the Germans and von Manstein was aware of the vulnerability of Gariboldi’s 8th Army, but he could send few resources other than the 298.Infanterie-Division, Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 201 and a few 8.8cm flak guns to stiffen the Italian-held sector. Gariboldi’s 8th Army had very limited armour support; just the LXVII Battaglione Bersaglieri corazzato (67th Bersaglieri Armoured Battalion) with fifty-eight L6/40 light tanks armed with 20mm cannon, and the XIII Gruppo Semoventi, Reggimento Cavallegeri Alessandria (Alexandria Cavalry Regiment) with nineteen Sermoventi 47/32 self-propelled guns, armed with a 47mm gun.[94] None of the Italian armoured fighting vehicles had a chance against the T-34, nor did the primary Italian antitank gun, the 47mm, offer an effective defense against Soviet armour. In order to make up for the weakness of Italian armour, von Manstein provided Oberst Hans Tröger’s incomplete 27.Panzer-Division as an on-call mobile reserve for Gariboldi; this formation consisted of only one Panzer-Abteilung (sixty-five tanks), two Panzer-grenadier battalions, a Panzerjäger-Abteilung and two artillery battalions. Tröger’s panzers included seven different tank types, but only ten Pz.IIIL/M and five Pz.IVG offered any real ability to stop Soviet armour.

At 0800 hours on 16 December, Kuznetsov’s 1st Guards Army began a massive ninety-minute artillery preparation against the Italian II and XXXV Army Corps near the Osetrovka bridgehead. With the 6th Army launching a supporting attack with infantry across the frozen Don on his right, Kuznetsov committed two guards rifle corps against the Italian Ravenna infantry division and part of the German 298.Infanterie-Division. However, the Italo-German defense proved quite solid and Soviet infantry failed to achieve a breakthrough on the first day of Operation Little Saturn and only made limited advances of 1–2km depth. German anti-tank mines knocked out twenty-seven Soviet tanks, preventing meaningful armour support until engineers cleared lanes through the obstacle belts. During the afternoon of the first day, Tröger’s 27.Panzer-Division even managed a small counterattack with twenty tanks that checked further progress.

Lelyushenko’s 3rd Guards Army also attacked mostly with infantry on the first day and failed to make much progress. A counterattack by remnants of the 22.Panzer-Division forced Lelyushenko’s assault troops to retreat across the Don. The first day of Operation Little Saturn demonstrated that well-entrenched infantry, secure behind an obstacle belt, was just as effective at stopping an infantry assault as during the First World War.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, Vatutin ordered Kuznetsov and Lelyushenko to begin feeding their armour into the battle. On 17 December, Kuznetsov committed General-major Pavel P. Poluboiarov’s 17th Tank Corps, General-major Boris S. Bakharov’s 18th Tank Corps and General-major Petr R. Pavlov’s 25th Tank Corps into an infantry support role and finally broke through the front of the Italian II Army Corps some thirty-six hours after the start of Little Saturn. Contrary to German efforts to paint the Italians as scapegoats, the Cosseria and Ravenna divisions put up unexpectedly tough resistance, forcing Vatutin to commit three of his four tank corps before he finally got his breakthrough. Yet while tough, the Italian defenses were thin in depth and once the Soviet armour achieved a breakthrough, there was nothing left to stop them. By late on 17 December, Vatutin alerted General-major Vasily M. Badanov’s 24th Tank Corps to prepare to begin its exploitation mission on the next day. In the 3rd Guards Army sector, Lelyushenko committed General-leytenant Ivan N. Russiyanov’s 1st Guards Mechanized Corps, which gained some ground before being stopped.

The boldest part of Little Saturn began at 0200 hours on 18 December, when Badanov’s 24th Tank Corps passed through the penetration corridor between the shattered Ravenna and Cosseria divisions and began advancing southward. Pavlov’s 25th Tank Corps had already gone through the gap in the Italian front and moved ahead of, and independent of, Badanov’s corps. Vatutin directed these two corps to conduct a deep raid against the Tatsinskaya and Morozovskaya airfields, which lay 240km from the start-line on the Don. Up to this point, it was unprecedented in the history of warfare to move a large armoured formation so far behind enemy lines. However, the logistic preparations made by Vatutin’s staff were inadequate to support raids of this scale and depth, which led to unanticipated dissipation of combat power prior to reaching the objectives. Aerial resupply of armoured spearheads – which the Germans had frequently utilized since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa – was not even considered by Vatutin’s staff, even though transport planes were available. Badanov’s and Petrov’s corps each relied upon what they could carry on their own vehicles, which amounted to two loads of fuel and ammunition and five days’ rations.

The Red Army had no practical experience planning this kind of Deep Battle operation and expected that the corps could advance at a steady rate of 50km per day. However, Badanov was forced to move at 25km per day in order to conserve fuel and keep his corps together. While German panzer units regularly called upon Luftwaffe aerial resupply when fuel ran out during mobile operations, the Red Army and VVS were unable to employ similar methods. Vatutin expected both corps to reach their objectives in four days, but they were unable to keep to his timetable – Clausewitz referred to this as ‘friction’, which needs to be factored into planning. Even the T-34s found it difficult to move cross-country through 1-meter deep snow for over 200km, and the GAZ-AA trucks carrying extra fuel and ammunition, as well as the motorized rifle brigades, fell behind before halfway to the objectives. Crews froze in their tanks and trucks, requiring frequent halts, and there were only eight and a half hours of daylight at this time of year. In short, terrain, weather and possible enemy resistance were ignored in the hasty planning process for Little Saturn, and no effort was made to get updated intelligence about the targets to the raiding forces once they were en route. Isserson’s prescient pre-war calculation that a mechanized exploitation force would become vulnerable to attrition and enemy reaction after a three-day long Deep Battle operation were ignored.[95]

Badanov and Petrov’s corps also found themselves moving rapidly out of Vatutin’s command and control radius. Soviet armoured units were plagued throughout 1941–42 by inadequate radios, but this became particularly harmful during Deep Battle operations. Each tank corps only had a single RSB-F HF transmitter mounted on a GAZ-AAA truck, which could only communicate with higher headquarters to a maximum range of 30km while on the move. In order to achieve its maximum transmission range of 160km, the truck had to stop and put up a long whip antenna. Consequently, Badanov and Petrov were only in contact with Vatutin when they stopped at night and, when they approached the objective, not at all. Despite all these logistical problems, Badanov’s and Petrov’s corps plowed on through the snowy void to their objectives while the 1st and 3rd Guards Armies pushed south through the wreckage of the Italian 8th Army.

Von Manstein had little at hand to stop Vatutin’s offensive and he could only guess at what was happening south of the Don. By chance, the fresh 306.Infanterie-Division was en route from Belgium to join Heeresgruppe Don and von Manstein detached part of it to protect the Stalingrad airlift airfields. Once Luftwaffe reconnaissance detected Soviet armour moving south toward Tatsinskaya and Morozovskaya airfields, the German 306.Infanterie-Division was ordered to set up hasty blocking positions along the Bystraya River. Pavlov’s 25th Tank Corps encountered a regiment of the 306.Infanterie-Division at Milyutinskaya on the morning of 23 December. First blood went to a German panzerjäger platoon equipped with a few 7.5cm Pak 40 anti-tank guns, which knocked out nine of Pavlov’s tanks.[96] Rather than bypassing the strongpoint, Pavlov committed his entire corps to eliminating the German infantry in his path. The German infantry regiment could not stand up to 100 Soviet tanks and a battalion was overrun with heavy loss, but it was a pyrrhic victory because Pavlov consumed a great deal of his dwindling fuel stocks in a day-long battle around the village. The beleaguered German infantrymen called upon the Stukas of I./St.G.2, which mercilessly pounded Pavlov’s exposed tanks and trucks. The last twenty-five operational tanks in Pavlov’s tank corps continued to crawl forward, but finally ran out of fuel 16km short of Morozovskaya airfield.

Badanov’s tankers also encountered a serious roadblock at the bridge over the Bystraya at Skosyrskaya at 1700 hours on 23 December. Kampfgruppe Heinemann, composed of 200 Luftwaffe signal troops and six 8.8cm flak guns, engaged Polkovnik Stepan K. Nesterov’s 130th Tank Brigade as it crossed the bridge. Nesterov’s tankers managed to overrun five of the 8.8cm flak guns and chase the Germans out of the town, but many vehicles were damaged and fuel stocks were low. Badanov made the bold decision to proceed to Tatsinskaya with two tank brigades, but leave the rest of his corps in Skosyrskaya. At dawn on 24 December, about sixty tanks from Badanov’s corps approached Tatsinskaya airfield, which was shrouded in fog. The Luftwaffe had not organized a ground defense of this vital airbase, which had 170 transport planes and warehouses full of supplies destined for Stalingrad – the Germans were caught totally by surprise. The 54th and 130th Tank Brigades executed a concentric attack on the airfield which caused a panic; the Ju-52s began a chaotic mass take-off that managed to save 124 transports, but Badanov’s raid destroyed forty-six transports. The loss of Tatsinskaya was catastrophic for AOK 6 in Stalingrad since it brought the airlift to a virtual halt. Badanov reported to Vatutin that he had captured Tatsinskaya and still had fifty-eight tanks (thirty-nine T-34 and nineteen T-70) left, but only 0.2 loads of diesel fuel and twenty-four–forty rounds of 76.2mm ammunition for each T-34.[97]

The capture of Tatsinskaya caused a convulsion within Heeresgruppe Don. Von Manstein hastily directed both Raus’ 6.Panzer-Division and Balck’s 11.Panzer-Division to move west and crush the Soviet armoured raiders. The lead element of 11.Panzer-Division bumped into Badanov’s 130th Tank Brigade at Babovnya, east of Tatsinskaya; seven Soviet and five German tanks were knocked out in the skirmish. A Ukrainian tank officer was captured, who under interrogation revealed the size and disposition of Badanov’s forces at Tatsinskaya.[98] Both German panzer divisions converged on Tatsinskaya, encircling Badanov’s fuel-starved corps. Badanov requested support from Vatutin, who told him to hold on, help was on the way. The Germans tightened the noose around Badanov on 26 December with armoured probing attacks, while Stukas pounded the immobilized Soviets. By 27 December, Badanov was surrounded by both 6 and 11.Panzer-Divisionen and it was obvious that a final assault was imminent. At 0200 hours on 28 December, Badanov conducted an unauthorized breakout with eleven tanks, thirty trucks and 927 of his men and was able to slip through the 6.Panzer-Division’s lines and reach the area held by the 1st Guards Army. The two raids had succeeded in disrupting the Stalingrad airlift for a few days and inflicting significant losses upon the Luftwaffe’s transport fleet, but at the cost of the 24th and 25th Tank Corps suffering crippling losses.

Vatutin called off Little Saturn on 30 December. He had succeeded in shattering the Italian 8th Army and forced Armee-Abteilung Hollidt to abandon the Chir River line, but failed to reach Rostov or cause a complete German collapse. All of the Soviet armoured units involved in the operation were in poor shape due to heavy losses and only had 10–20 per cent of their armour still operational after two weeks of Deep Battle operations.[99] Heeresgruppe Don had survived – but barely – and mostly due to inadequate Soviet logistics.

Armour on the Eastern Front at the End of 1942

During 1942, the Red Army lost over 15,000 tanks, including 1,200 KV-1, 6,600 T-34s and 7,200 T-60/70s.[100] About half of the 10,500 Lend-Lease tanks (3,000 British, 7,500 USA) delivered in 1942 were also lost.[101] Soviet industry built 24,231 tanks in 1942, including 12,535 T-34s and 2,426 KV-1s. Overall Soviet armour losses in 1942 were 62 per cent of those tanks built – which was less than the German build: loss rate and indicated that the Red Army could absorb huge losses in material. However, the overall 7–1 exchange ratio between Soviet and German tank losses was inconsistent with the Red Army gaining any kind of superiority over the Wehrmacht’s panzer forces. At these loss rates, the Red Army was still far more dependent upon Lend-Lease armour than it was willing to admit, and it did not have enough excess production to fully outfit its best units with T-34s until mid-1943.

In operational terms, the Red Army mounted eleven major offensives in 1942 that employed multiple tank corps or tank armies, but only Uranus and Little Saturn could be considered successful. Despite being well-equipped, the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th Tank Armies had all performed poorly in battle and two of them were disbanded. The tank armies were not built as combined arms teams, being weak in organic artillery and support assets, which contributed to their failure against panzer divisions. Several tank corps were destroyed in 1942 and many more crippled at one time or another. However, the Red Army had enough large armoured units by late 1942 that it could cycle decimated units through the RVGK to rebuild, while replacing them with fresh units. In contrast, the Wehrmacht only occasionally received a rebuilt panzer division from training areas in France and its panzer divisions remained at the front until burnt out. The Wehrmacht conducted six major armoured offensives in 1942, with Wirbelwind and Wintergewitter being failures.

The Wehrmacht lost about 2,480 tanks on the Eastern Front in 1942, including about 293 Pz.II, 429 Pz.38(t), 1,261 Pz.III and 389 Pz.IV. In addition, the Germans lost another 563 tanks in North Africa during the same period, or about 18.5 per cent of their total armour losses in 1942. Although Russian historians tend to dismiss the contribution of Great Britain to defeating the Wehrmacht in 1941–42, a disproportionate share of German armour was being lost in North Africa and Rommel’s Deutsche Afrika Korps (DAK) was a sink-hole for tanks that would have been better used on the Eastern Front. Altogether, Germany built 4,168 tanks in 1942 and lost 73 per cent of them; among the main types, 63 per cent of Pz.IIIs and 48 per cent of Pz.IVs were lost. German tank production remained flat throughout 1942 with negligible growth, although the proportion of assault guns being built increased to nearly one-quarter by late 1942. The increased emphasis on assault guns, plus diversion of production toward the new Pz.VI Tiger tank, cast the Panzerwaffe in an increasingly defensive role that emphasized firepower and protection over tactical mobility. Another important industrial decision was Hitler’s decree in June 1942 that no more tungsten would be used for armour-piercing ammunition due to the shortage of that material, and that existing stocks had to be turned in; just as German industry was producing better tank guns, they lost access to the raw materials needed to make them most effective. Going into 1943, the Panzerwaffe and Panzerjäger would be increasingly dependent upon larger guns to increase muzzle velocity, which resulted in heavier, less mobile tanks and anti-tank guns.

While German industry was just beginning to field new tanks, it finally standardized its two main battle tanks in late 1942, enabling significant production increases in 1943. The Pz.III Ausf L and Ausf M models added only minor improvements to armoured protection and fording capability, but the Pz.IV Ausf G increased frontal armoured protection to 80mm and soon received the improved 7.5cm KwK 40 L/48 cannon. Likewise, the StuG III Ausf G, also outfitted with the L48 cannon behind 80mm thick frontal protection, began mass production in December 1942. While the Pz.IIIL/M were only modest threats to the T-34, the appearance of the up-gunned Pz.IVG and StuG IIIG signaled that the Russian policy of resisting upgrades on the T-34 in favor of increased production would carry increased costs on the battlefield. While the T-34 still had superior tactical and operational-level mobility over any German tanks, its firepower advantage was gone and its level of armoured protection increasingly inadequate. By the end of 1942, German tankers knew that they were beginning to receive tanks that gave them some measure of superiority over their opponents.

The Wehrmacht ended 1942 with nineteen panzer divisions on the Eastern Front, but three were surrounded and would be annihilated by late January 1943. The loss of these three panzer divisions, plus the three Panzergrenadier-Divisionen in the Stalingrad kessel was a catastrophe that had never occurred before. Far more serious than the loss of equipment – which was bad enough – was the loss of trained personnel. Some panzer cadres were flown out of the kessel, including Hube, or missed the kessel altogether by being on home leave, but the junior leaders and experienced crews could not be made good. The hard-fighting 16.Panzer-Division managed to save 4,000 of its personnel, but the remaining 9,000 would be lost.[102] The Ersatz-Abteilungen back in the home Wehrkreis found it difficult enough to train replacements to fill gaps created by normal combat losses, but it could not simply recreate experienced company commanders, platoon leaders and NCOs. Consequently, the quality of panzer crews – which was of decisive importance in the tactical success of German armoured units in 1941–42 – declined steadily after Stalingrad. Nevertheless, the Wehrmacht still had more than 1,500 operational tanks and assault guns on the Eastern Front – a far better situation than they had faced in December 1941 – and the panzer divisions still had a tactical edge over the Soviet tank corps.