Chapter 2

The Kalinin and Western Fronts’ 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka Offensive (Operation Mars) (25 November–16 December 1942)

Introduction

When the Stavka determined the strategic objectives it wished the Red Army to accomplish during the offensives and counteroffensives it launched in late November 1942 and conducted during its subsequent campaign in the winter of 1942–43, its attention quite naturally focused on the German-occu-pied Rzhev salient west of Moscow. Stalin and his senior military advisers in the S tavka considered this salient, whose eastern face was situated only 150 kilometers from the Soviet capital, as a virtual “dagger” aimed at the Soviet Union’s heart. This salient, which was occupied by the Ninth Army of the Red Army’s long-standing nemesis, German Army Group Center, offered the forces lodged within it direct access to the Soviet capital city via the main highway running from Viaz’ma through Gzhatsk to Moscow. Therefore, as long as the salient existed, the forces lodged within it posed a direct, constant, and menacing threat to Stalin’s capital. Immediately after the salient formed during the Red Army’s winter campaign of 1941–42, its existence compelled the Stavka to organize the Moscow Defensive Region, at times numbering as many as 800,000 troops, to defend Moscow against a possible German attack from the Rzhev region. After the winter campaign of 1941–42 ended in April 1942, the elimination of the Rzhev salient and the destruction of its defenders headed the list of the Stavka’s priority strategic objec tives.

Army Group Center’s Ninth Army had captured the city of Rzhev and its associated salient on 14 October 1941 during its advance on the city of Kalinin Operation Typhoon. Thereafter, the Red Army launched numerous offensives to recapture the city; the most significant of these during its winter campaign of 1941–42 and, once again, while the Germans were conducting Operation Blau during the summer of 1942. However, all of these offensives failed, and both Rzhev and its salient remained in German hands. The Red Army’s first attempt to recapture the city occurred between 5 December 1941 and 7 January 1942, when the Kalinin Front conducted an offensive to capture Kalinin and the region to the south. During this offensive, the Kalinin Front’s 39th, 29th, and 31st Armies did indeed seize the Kalinin region but, during the exploitation phase of the operation, failed to overcome the Ninth Army’s defenses on the northern bank of the Volga River north of Rzhev. Since Hitler considered the Rzhev region to be a vital launching pad for a future offensive against Moscow, he insisted the Ninth Army’s forces dig in and hold on to the city and its bridgehead on the Volga’s northern bank at all costs. Its German defenders thus transformed the city and its associated bridgehead on the Volga’s northern bank into a fortified bastion.

The Stavka also included Rzhev and its nearby bridgehead as premier objectives when the Red Army conducted the second stage its counteroffensive in the Moscow region from mid-January through late April 1942. Accordingly, during the Rzhev-Viaz’ma offensive (8 January–20 April 1942), the Kalinin Front’s 29th, 39th, and 30th Armies, in intense winter fighting along the offensive’s northern wing, launched assault after assault against the Ninth Army’s defenses north and northeast of the city, but once again to no avail. Although the attacking Soviet troops managed to compress the salient somewhat from the east and west and even managed to carve salients of their own in the German rear area, the Ninth Army stubbornly clung to the bulk of the salient and strengthened the fortifications around its periphery. Three months after the winter campaign ended, the Ninth Army consolidated its grip on the Rzhev salient in July 1942 by encircling and destroying the Red Army’s forces (the 39th Army) lodged in their rear area.

Later in the summer, when the Stavka planned and conducted a series of offensive operations designed to thwart the German advance toward Stalingrad in southern Russia, on Zhukov’s recommendation, Stalin once again designated the Rzhev salient as a key Red Army target. As a result, in July and August 1942, Zhukov’s Western Front and Colonel General I. S. Konev’s Kalinin Front conducted the massive Pogoreloe-Gorodishche (Rzhev-Sychevka) offensive operation and associated Gzhatsk-Viaz’ma offensive operation against German forces defending the salient (see Forgotten Battles , volume III). Conducted by Zhukov with characteristic audacity and ferocity, the Western Front’s forces collapsed the northeastern part of the salient but failed to capture Sychevka or crush the salient as a whole. In the offensive’s aftermath, with an eye to the future, Zhukov lamented, “With one or two more armies at our disposal, we could have combined with the Kalinin Front … and defeated the enemy not only in the Rzhev area but the entire Rzhev-Viaz’ma German force and substantially improved the operational situation in the whole Western strategic direction [axis]. Unfortunately, this real opportunity was missed by the Supreme Command.”⁹

In late September 1942, the Stavka began planning the offensive and counter offensive actions it intended to conduct in late fall, as well as its anticipated offen sive campaign during the winter of 1942–43. Zhukov, still inspired by the unrequited potential of the offensive he had conducted in the Rzhev region during the late summer, strenuously urged the Stavka to conduct major strategic offensive operations along both the western (Moscow) and southwestern (Stalingrad) axes. Stalin, accepting his deputy Supreme Commander’s recommendations, then ordered the Stavka and its principal planning organ, the Red Army General Staff, to plan two major strategic efforts, the first, a counteroffensive code-named Uranus in the Stalingrad region to encircle and destroy Axis forces in the vicinity of Stalin’s namesake city and, the second, a major offensive code-named Mars against the Ninth Army in the Rzhev salient west of Moscow to destroy the army and cripple Army Group Center. Although the Stavka initially planned to commence both operations in late October, because of the uncertain situation in the Stalingrad region and difficulties it encountered while raising and fielding its strategic reserves and regrouping and supplying its forward operating forces, ultimately it postponed the two offensive operations until mid- and late November.

When the Stavka finally began Operation Mars in late November 1942, it expected the forces of its Kalinin, Northwestern, and Western Fronts to “utterly defeat the enemy in the Rzhev and Novo-Sokol’niki [Velikie Luki] regions.”¹⁰ At the same time, the armies of the Northwestern Front were to encircle and destroy German forces in the Demiansk salient. Since a recently-published book covers all aspects of Operation Mars in considerable detail, what follows is an abbreviated overview of the operation, which includes documents released since the book’s publication.¹¹

Planning

Operation Mars is one of most glaring instances when existing histories of the German-Soviet War have failed us. Together with Operation Uranus, the Red Army’s counteroffensive in the Stalingrad region, Mars constituted the focal point of Soviet strategic efforts in the fall of 1942 and the launching pad for the subsequent conduct of a massive offensive campaign during the winter of 1942–42. Originally, the Stavka ordered the Kalinin and Western Fronts to commence Operation Mars in mid-October; however, because the local counterstrokes it conducted during early and mid-October in the Stalingrad region failed and it underestimated the amount of time necessary to assemble and prepare the required assault force, it ultimately postponed the offensive’s start date to 25 November. By authorizing the Red Army to conduct these two strategic offensive operations virtually simultaneously, Stalin was convinced his forces could regain the strategic initiative along the entire Soviet-German front and, thereafter, begin its march to ultimate victory.

Appropriately named after the Roman God of War, Operation Mars was planned by Zhukov and the commanders of the two fronts designated to conduct the offensive, Colonel General I. S. Konev, the commander of the Western Front, and Colonel General M. A. Purkaev, the commander of the Kalinin Front. The offensive was coordinated by Zhukov and conducted by the two front commanders and their respective army commanders. In terms of its immense scale and ambitious objectives, Operation Mars was roughly equivalent to Operation Uranus. In its fickleness, however, history “remembered” Uranus, largely because it succeeded, but “forgot” Operation Mars because it failed. Only now can we correct this historical mistake and commemorate properly the sacrifices of the many Red Army soldiers and Germans who fell during the operation.

In late September 1942, the Stavka formulated a strategic plan designed to reverse the spectacular gains the German Wehrmacht had recorded during the summer and fall of 1942 and restore the strategic initiative into the Red Army’s hands.¹² Army General Zhukov, a charter member of the Stavka and now a deputy Commissar of Defense of the USSR and, as Stalin’s most trusted senior military adviser, a deputy Supreme High Commander to the dictator, played a significant role in planning the offensive.¹³ Based on his own strategic analysis and personal experiences he amassed while serving as chief of the Red Army General Staff and as a Stavka representative and a front commander during 1941 and 1942, Zhukov was convinced the Red Army could best attain strategic victory in 1942 by defeating and destroying German Army Group Center, whose forces posed the most serious threat to Moscow and the Soviet regime.¹⁴ He also believed the Stavka had sufficient forces in its operating fronts and strategic reserves to conduct two major, mutually supporting, strategic offensive efforts, the first an offensive against Army Group Center’s Ninth Army lodged in the Rzhev salient west of Moscow and, the second, a counteroffensive against Army Group B’s overextended German Sixth Army in the Stalingrad region.

In support of Zhukov’s contention, the Stavka had roughly equivalent forces deployed along the western and southwestern axes in the early fall of 1942. Along the western (Moscow) axis, the Red Army’s Kalinin and Western Fronts, together with the Moscow Defense Zone to their rear, fielded a force of almost 1,900,000 men, supported by over 24,000 guns and mortars, 3,300 tanks, and 1,100 aircraft along the critical western (Moscow) axis.¹⁵ Along the southwestern axis, the Stalingrad and Don Fronts (which were formed on 28 September from the former Stalingrad and Southeastern Fronts) fielded over 1 million men, supported by a force of about 15,000 guns and mortars, 1,400 tanks, and over 900 aircraft.¹⁶ Although a major Red Army counteroffensive in the Stalingrad region would exploit the presence of Rumanian, Italian, and Hungarian Armies now deployed in large sectors of Army Group “B’s” defensive front, Zhukov thought it wiser and more prudent to defeat the large and wholly German force in the Rzhev salient, thereby removing the threat to Moscow once and for all.

Stalin, accepting Zhukov’s strategic judgment, approved his deputy’s proposals on 26 September 1942 and, soon after, assigned the twin offensive operations their respective codenames, Mars and Uranus and appointed Zhukov to coordinate Operation Mars in the Rzhev region and Colonel General A. M. Vasilevsky, the Chief of the Red Army General Staff., to coordinate Operation Uranus at Stalingrad.¹⁷ Once fully developed, the Stavka’s strategic plan for offensive action in the fall of 1942 required the Red Army to conduct two major offensive operations, each consisting of two distinct stages, with each of the four stages designated by the code-name of a planet. Operating along the western axis under Zhukov’s overall supervision, in Operation Mars the Kalinin Front’s 41st, 22nd, and 39th Armies and the Western Front’s 31st, 20th, and 29th Armies were to attack to encircle and destroy Army Group Center’s Ninth Army in the Rzhev and Sychevka regions. After successfully completing Mars, the same force, joined by the Kalinin Front’s 43rd Army and 4th Shock Army attacking southward through Dukhovshchina toward Smolensk and by the Western Front’s 5th and 33rd Armies and 3rd Tank Army attacking westward through Viaz’ma toward Smolensk, was to destroy all of Army Group Center’s forces east of the Smolensk region in an operation probably code-named either Jupiter or Neptune (see Map 6).¹⁸

At roughly the same time, operating along the southwestern axis under Vasilevsky’s supervision, in Operation Uranus the Don Front’s 63rd, 21st, 65th, 24th, and 66th Armies, the Stalingrad Front’s 57th and 51st Armies, and, after it was formed on 22 October, the Southwestern Front’s 1st Guards, 5th Tank, and 21st Armies, were to attack to encircle and destroy Axis forces in the Stalingrad region.¹⁹ During the second stage of his offensive, Vasilevsky’s forces, now joined by the Voronezh Front’s 6th Army, were to conduct Operation Saturn to capture Rostov, destroy German Army Group “B,” and isolate Army Group “A” in the Caucasus region.²⁰ In terms of their timing, although the Stavka initially ordered the Red Army to launch both offensives in mid-October, ultimately it delayed the start dates of both to mid- and late November.