‘Strategy is a system of stop-gaps.’ MOLTKE
WHILE THE eyes of all Germany were on Stalingrad at the turn of 1942-3, and anxious hearts prayed for the sons who fought there, the southern wing of the Eastern Front was simultaneously the scene of a struggle even greater than that being waged for the lives and freedom of Sixth Army’s gallant two hundred thousand.
The issue was no longer the fate of a single army but of the entire southern wing of the front and ultimately of all the German armies in the east.
This struggle was spared the tragedy of defeat, being ultimately marked for the last time in World War II by a brief glimpse of victory. But it embraced, quite apart from its initial association with the trials of Sixth Army, such a wealth of unprecedented tensions and well-nigh fatal crises that the campaign may be regarded as one of the most exciting of the war. On the German side there could no longer be any question of this being one last bid for the palm of final victory. Indeed, thanks to the errors of leadership in the summer and autumn campaigns of 1942, the principal aim at least to begin with could only be, in the words of Schlieffen, ‘to bring defeat underfoot’. In the face of an enemy whose manifold superiority offered him every chance of victory, the German command had to improvise again and again, and the fighting troops to perform unparalleled feats.
Though its end was marked by neither the fanfares of victory nor the muffled drum-beats which accompanied Sixth Army’s death-march, this battle still deserves recording. As a withdrawal operation it must inevitably be devoid of glory. Yet the fact that, far from ending in defeat, it offered the Supreme Command one more chance of achieving at least a military stalemate was possibly something more than an ordinary victory.
In order to appreciate the significance of this decisive campaign on the southern wing and the magnitude of the dangers it involved, we must briefly consider the operational position at its inception.
In the winter of 1941-2 Russia’s military resources had only sufficed to halt the German attack on Moscow, and with it the German campaign as a whole. Then, in the summer of 1942, the tide had surged eastwards again, finally to ebb on the Volga and in the Caucasus.
But now in the winter of 1942-3 the enemy at last felt strong enough to wrest the initiative from us. The question henceforth was whether that winter would bring the decisive step towards Germany’s defeat in the east. Momentous and distressing though the Stalingrad disaster undoubtedly was, it could not, in terms of World War II, effect such a blow on its own, whereas the annihilation of the German armies’ entire southern wing might well have paved the way to an early victory over Germany. There were two reasons why the Soviet High Command could hope to attain this goal in the south of the Eastern Front. One was the extraordinary numerical superiority of the Russian forces; the second was the favourable position it found itself in operationally as a result of the German errors of leadership associated with the name of Stalingrad. It undoubtedly strove after this goal, even if it did not succeed in reaching it.
Let me first give a short account of the strategic situation at the start of this winter campaign in South Russia.
The German front in November 1942 formed a wide arc curving far out to the east in the area of the Caucasus and eastern Ukraine. The right wing of this arc touched the Black Sea at Novorossisk and continued along the front of Army Group A (Seventeenth Army and First Panzer Army) through the northern Caucasus without actually linking up with the Caspian Sea in the east.
The deep open flank of this front, which faced southwards, had only 16 Motorized Division to cover it in the direction of the Lower Volga in the east. The division was located in the Kalmyk Steppes east of Yelista.
The continuous front of Army Group B only began at a point south of Stalingrad. From Stalingrad it receded to the Don and then ran along the latter as far as Voronezh. In it were Fourth Rumanian Army, Fourth Panzer Army, Sixth Army, Third Rumanian Army, one Italian and one Hungarian army and then Second German Army. The bulk of the German forces had for months past been bunched around Stalingrad, while the rest of the front, in particular the line of the Don, was entrusted mainly to allied armies. There were no reserves worth speaking of behind the fronts of either Army Group A or B.
The enemy, whose armies formed a ‘Caucasus Front’, a ‘South-West Front’ and a ‘Voronezh Front’, had not only superior forces in the line but also powerful reserves behind these army groups and the central or Moscow sector of the Eastern Front, as well as in the hinterland.
In order to grasp the true danger of this situation and the full extent to which it benefited the enemy, one must try to picture one or two distances of strategic significance.
The distance to the Don crossing at Rostov from the Don sector in which Third Rumanian Army was over-run on 19th November (i.e. opposite and west of the Russians’ Don bridgehead at Kremenskaya), as well as from that occupied by the Italian Army on each side of Kasanskaya, amounted to only a little more than 185 miles. Through Rostov ran the rear communications not only of the whole of Army Group A but also of Fourth Rumanian and Fourth Panzer Army. Yet the left wing of Army Group A was at least 375 miles from Rostov, while Fourth Panzer Army, in its location south of Stalingrad, was some 250 miles away.
Further back the lines of communication of the German armies’ southern wing led across the Dnieper crossings of Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk. The connexion through the Crimea and across the Straits of Kerch was not a very efficient one. These vital Dnieper crossings in the rear of the German southern wing lay some 440 miles from Stalingrad and more than 560 miles from the left wing of the Caucasus front. On the other hand, they were only about 260 miles from the enemy front on the Don, measuring either from Kasanskaya to Zaporozhye or from Svoboda to Dnepropetrovsk!
What this situation could mean in practice I knew only too well from personal experience, having in summer 1941 covered the odd 190 miles from Tilsit to Dvinsk in four days with 56 Panzer Corps. I had done so, moreover, against opposition that was certainly tougher than anything the Italian and Hungarian Armies could offer on the Don. At that time the Russians had also had very many more reserves behind their front than were available to us in the winter of 1942.
Added to this strategic advantage was the Russians’ immense preponderance of numbers. The ratio of forces at the beginning of Don Army Group’s struggle has already been shown in the chapter on Stalingrad. How it developed in the course of the winter may be gathered from two figures. In March 1943 the number of divisions at the disposal of Southern (formerly Don) Army Group on the 435-mile front from the Sea of Azov to north of Kharkov was thirty-two. Facing this sector, either in or behind the line, were 341 enemy formations, consisting of rifle divisions, armoured or mechanized brigades, and cavalry divisions.
Thus the conditions under which Don Army Group had to fight were constantly governed by two factors:
First, an overwhelming superiority of numbers. Even when the Army Group, augmented by the bulk of First Panzer Army and new forces supplied by O.K.H., consisted of three, and later four, German armies, the ratio of German to enemy forces was still 1: 7. (This allows for the numerical inferiority of certain Russian formations when compared to German divisions.)
Secondly, there was a strategic danger inherent in the fact that an enemy who was stronger than ourselves, and who for a time enjoyed complete freedom of action following the collapse of the allied armies, had shorter distances to travel to the life-lines of the German southern wing Rostov and the Dnieper crossings than we had.
Taken in conjunction with one another, these two factors implied a danger that the southern wing, once cut off from its supplies, would be pushed back against the coast of the Sea of Azov or Black Sea and ultimately destroyed, as the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was just as capable as ever of imposing a blockade. After the destruction of Don Army Group and Army Group A, however, the fate of the entire Eastern Front would have been sealed sooner or later.
By virtue of the initial strategic situation outlined above, the whole battle on the southern wing in the winter of 1942-3 and it was destined to be the battle in the east that winter boiled down to the same question on both sides. Would the Soviets succeed in trapping the German southern wing, thereby accomplishing the decisive step towards their final victory, or would the German command be able to avert such a catastrophe?
The operational plan for the Russians to adopt was obvious enough. It had been offered them on a silver platter when the German Supreme Command allowed the front to petrify in the final phase of the summer offensive. Nothing was more natural than that the Soviets should first seize their chance to trap Sixth Army as it lay bunched around Stalingrad.
In the further course of operations, the enemy was to be expected to cash in on his knock-out successes in the Rumanian, Italian and Hungarian sectors and to try, by striking again and again in ever-increasing strength and scope, to outflank the German southern wing to the north and west. His object had to be to amputate this wing from its communications zones and ultimately to box it in on the sea-coast. It was a strategic concept which derived every possible encouragement from the situation in which the German southern wing had been left for far too long by the Supreme Command.
On the German side there was the much harder problem of deciding how to escape from the danger in which we had been landed by our own omissions and the enemy’s first unexpected successes on both sides of Stalingrad. In view of the overall strategic situation, however, our Supreme Command should have realized from the first day of the enemy attack how things would develop and, in particular, how dangerously exposed was Army Group A in the Caucasus.
Broadly speaking, the German Supreme Command had to choose between two courses. The first would have been to disengage Sixth Army from the Volga immediately after it had begun to be attacked and before it could be tightly surrounded, and then to try to restore the situation in the large bend of the Don with the help of strong reinforcements. At the same time it would have been necessary to shore up the allied-occupied Don sectors with German forces. Obviously, however, the Supreme Command neither had the necessary troops available for this solution nor could it, in view of the low capacity of the few existing railways, have brought them up in time. To take Sixth Army away from Stalingrad was something it could not make up its mind to do. Indeed, not many weeks after the start of the Soviet offensive it was clear that the army was to be lost for good and that the best it could do within the framework of the operation as a whole was to tie down the largest possible body of forces for the longest possible period. It was a task which the gallant army fulfilled till the end and for which it ultimately sacrificed itself.
Nevertheless, even after events had taken such an ominous turn as a result of the obstinate way in which Hitler clung to Stalingrad, and after all hope of extricating Sixth Army had proved illusory, there was still a second course open to the Supreme Command. At the cost of surrendering the territory won in the summer campaign (which could not be held anyway), a grave crisis could have been turned into victory! To this end it would have been necessary to withdraw the forces of Don Army Group and Army Group A from the front’s eastward protuberance according to fixed timings, taking them first behind the Lower Don or Donetz and subsequently to the Lower Dnieper.
In the meantime, any forces that could possibly be made available including those divisions of either army group which became disengaged through the shortening of the front would have had to be concentrated, let us say, somewhere around Kharkov. On them would have devolved the task of driving into the flank of the enemy as he pursued the retiring army groups or attempted to cut them off from the Dnieper crossings. In other words, the idea would have been to convert a large-scale withdrawal into an envelopment operation with the aim of pushing our pursuer back against the sea and destroying him there.
Don Army Group proposed this solution to O.K.H. when there was no longer any prospect of relieving Sixth Army and as soon as it became plain that Army Group A’s position in the Caucasus was untenable and that the enemy breakthrough on the Italian front threatened to cut off the entire southern wing.
But Hitler was not the man to embark on a course which initially committed him to relinquish the conquests of summer 1942 and would unquestionably have entailed considerable operational hazards. Such a step was entirely out of keeping with the personality I have already analysed in the chapter on Hitler as a Supreme Commander. With his lack of experience in operational matters, he may even then have hoped to restore the situation on the southern wing by throwing in the SS Panzer Corps which was moving up to Kharkov.
As far as Don Army Group Headquarters was concerned, the first of the above-mentioned courses had already been ruled out before it arrived on the scene, for by that time Sixth Army had been completely surrounded. Neither the battered remnants handed over to us as ‘Don Army Group’, nor the thin trickle of reinforcements we were getting, could possibly suffice to fight a battle in the large bend of the Don with any prospect of success — even less so after the reinforcements had been held up in Army Group B’s sector following the defeat of the Italian Army. As for the second course, that of turning a large-scale withdrawal operation into a counterblow against the enemy’s northern flank as he inevitably exposed this in the course of his pursuit, Don Army Group lacked the absolute authority to take it. To do so we should have required power of command over the whole southern wing of the Eastern Front and freedom to do what we liked with the O.K.H. reserves.
Instead, the Army Group was committed to deal in turn with the tasks which presented themselves in its allotted sphere of command. It had to devise one stop-gap after another to meet a danger which arose from the original strategic situation and grew increasingly acute as time went on: the danger that the entire southern wing would be tied off.
The first task confronting the Army Group was the relief of Sixth Army. Initially this had to take precedence over all other operational considerations.
Once this task had proved insoluble for the reasons already related in the chapter on Stalingrad, the Army Group had to tackle the problem of preventing the even greater catastrophe of the loss of the whole southern wing. As the forces still available as reserves to O.K.H. were not enough to keep the southern wing’s lines of communication over the Lower Don and Dnieper open, the only course left to us was to gather in the eastern wing of the Army Group and throw the forces thus released over to the western wing. Everything depended, then, on our always thinking far enough ahead to switch forces from our eastern to our western wing in time to intercept the enemy’s outflanking movements as they gradually extended further and further west. It was a task rendered all the more difficult by the fact that the neighbouring formation in the north, Army Group B, was slowly but surely disappearing from sight as a result of the loss of the allied armies. On the other hand, it was not possible to shift forces to the western wing in sufficient numbers without calling on forces from Army Group A, which was not under Don Army Group’s orders.
Though conceived on a larger scale and extending over a longer period, it was the same task that had confronted General Paulus at Stalingrad between 19th and 23rd November. This time, too, it was a matter of moving forces promptly and regardless of local repercussions to the places on which the survival of our rear communications depended and simultaneously of maintaining our operational mobility. The only difference was that in General Paulus’s case the decision had been compressed into a few days, or perhaps even hours, and that he could count on no reinforcements whatever to begin with. In our own case, however, this idea was to govern our whole approach to operations and involve us in months of conflict with the Supreme Command.
In essence, the idea of leap-frogging from east to west to parry the enemy’s attempts to ‘tie off’ the southern wing was an extremely simple one. In war, however, it is so often the simple things which prove hardest to carry out, the real difficulties lying not so much in the taking of a decision as in its unswerving execution. In the present instance any withdrawal of forces from the eastern wing was bound to create a danger there which no one could be sure of surviving. Above all, if these shifts of forces were to have a timely effect, they must be initiated some time if not several weeks before the danger of being cut off had become so acute as to be acknowledged by Hitler. Last but not least, developments in Army Group A’s sector, as will be seen later, long prevented us from putting the ‘leap-frog’ plan into practice.
And so, simple and self-evident though it was, this basic approach of ours proved difficult to implement consistently in the face of the increasing gravity of the situation. The same difficulty was experienced in getting it accepted by the Supreme Command at least in time for it to have any useful effect since the latter’s views were diametrically opposed to our own. Hitler persisted in the principle of holding rigidly on to his gains, whereas we considered operational mobility at which our operations staffs and fighting troops had the advantage of the enemy — to be the real key to victory.
The situation which confronted it at the time of its take-over, combined with the restrictions imposed on it by the Supreme Command and its far-reaching dependence on the actions and attitudes of the neighbouring army groups, led Don Army Group to adopt a ‘system of stop gaps’ without, at the same time, ever sacrificing the basic formula.
In the light of the foregoing, Don (later Southern) Army Group’s winter campaign of 1942-3 may be broken down into four successive phases :
The first was the struggle for the relief of Sixth Army, on which the Army Group staked everything it could possibly afford.
The second phase was the Army Group’s struggle to keep the rear of Army Group A free while it was being disengaged from the Caucasus front.
The third phase consisted in the actual battle to keep open the lines of communication of the German armies’ southern wing and to prevent it from being ‘tied off’.
This led to the final, fourth phase in which the Army Group succeeded if on a smaller scale than it would have liked in delivering the counterblow culminating in the battle of Kharkov.
The attempt to relieve Sixth Army, or rather to enable it to break out of the Stalingrad pocket, has already been recounted.
In an all-out effort to make this attempt succeed, Don Army Group went to the very limits of what could be risked. Right up to the time when the fate of Sixth Army was sealed, i.e. the end of December 1942, it endeavoured to manage with a minimum of forces in the centre and on the left of the Army Group front, which only amounted to a thin protective screen as it was. Its object was to delay any decisive developments in these sectors until Fourth Panzer Army’s battle east of the Don had successfully opened up the beleaguered army’s way to freedom.
Only after all hope of linking up Fourth Panzer and Sixth Armies had had to be abandoned, and the simultaneous defeat of the Italian Army had laid bare Don Army Group’s western flank and thrown open the enemy’s road to Rostov, did the Army Group concede precedence to the problem of maintaining the whole southern wing of the Eastern Front.
All that remains for me to do in this context is to give a brief account of how Don Army Group’s situation came to deteriorate as a result, on one hand, of Sixth Army’s decision not to attempt the break-out and, on the other, of the way things developed on the right wing of Army Group B (the Italian Army).
The difficult position in which Fourth Panzer Army had landed on the eastern wing of the Army Group as the enemy threw in increasingly strong forces from the Stalingrad siege-front to meet it has already been indicated. In the battles between the Aksai and Kotelnikovo, as well as in the fighting for the latter as a spring-board for Fourth Panzer Army’s relief offensive, 57 Panzer Corps suffered considerable losses after being left alone on the battlefield by the Rumanians. 23 Panzer Division, which had been severely weakened before this, was particularly badly hit. The non-appearance of reinforcements from Army Group A made it unlikely that Fourth Panzer Army would even hold its own sufficiently to prevent the enemy from swinging strong forces into the rear of First Panzer Army.
The trend of events on the rest of the Army Group front was not a whit less serious. In what had been the sector of Third Rumanian Army, the fact that Fourth Panzer Army was falling back east of the Don enabled the enemy to cross the ice-covered river around Potemkinskaya, and a little later at Tsymlyanskaya, and to threaten the Chir positions in the flank and rear. On this front, General Mieth had meanwhile assumed command in place of Third Rumanian Army Headquarters. Since the Russians were coming over the Don from the east and south, we had no choice initially but to order the Mieth Group to make a fighting withdrawal behind the Kagalnik.
On the left wing of the Army Group the position looked even more critical. Admittedly Army Detachment Hollidt had succeeded, notwithstanding the loss of the Rumanian divisions, in bringing its forces back southwards from the Upper Chir. Without any justification, however, a newly arrived, recently formed division which was to have taken over the defence of the Army Detachment’s flank on the Bystraya Gnilaya gave up the crossing point at Milyutinsky. This opened the enemy’s way into Hollidt’s flank and also to the important air-base at Morosowsky.
Far more serious still was the fact that, thanks to the disintegration of the Italian Army and the almost complete elimination of the Rumanians from the battle (1 and 2 Rumanian Corps on what had been the left wing of Army Detachment Hollidt), the enemy was able to make for the Don crossings of Forchstadt, Kamensk and Voroshilovgrad almost unopposed. Only at Millerovo, where the newly formed Fretter-Pico Group on the right wing of Army Group B stood like a solitary island amid the red flood, was any resistance being offered. In any case, the enemy was free to wheel east into the rear of Army Detachment Hollidt or the Mieth Group, or alternatively to keep heading south to Rostov.
Don Army Group’s situation was serious enough, therefore. Had it been acting quite independently, the only correct way to solve the crisis would have been to put the ‘leap-frog’ principle into effect forthwith, regardless of any other considerations. Fourth Panzer Army could have been pulled back to Rostov in one single movement and thereafter used to fight off the threat to the Army Group’s left flank and its communications to the west. The forces of the Mieth Group and Army Detachment Hollidt still in action in the large bend of the Don would have had to come back to the Donetz.
The objection to this solution lay in the fact that Army Group A was still lodged as firmly as ever in its positions in the Caucasus. To expose its rear by shifting Don Army Group’s forces over to the western wing was out of the question. On the contrary, it was Don Army Group’s duty not only to cover the rear of Army Group A, but also to keep open its lines of communication through Rostov.
For the time being, then, the idea of basing the Army Group’s operations on the principle of switching their main effort westwards to balk the enemy’s attempts to cut off the whole wing of the German armies could still not take effect. During the first few weeks after the take-over, indeed, the Army Group had deliberately shelved it in the interest of Sixth Army. Now in the second phase it found itself compelled, in spite of the steadily growing threat to its western flank, to embark on a desperate struggle to keep the rear of Army Group A free.
The German Supreme Command should really have been aware from the start that Army Group A could not stay in the Caucasus if the battle to free Sixth Army did not immediately succeed in other words, if there were no clear possibility of somehow establishing a reasonably secure situation within the large bend of the Don. But when the enemy tore a gap on the right wing of Army Group B which opened his way to Rostov, it should have been palpably evident to anyone that there could no longer be any question of holding the Caucasus front. Unless, of course, Hitler had been able or willing to bring in large bodies of troops from other theatres.
As early as 20th December, the day when the flight of two Italian divisions had exposed the flank of Army Detachment Hollidt and cleared the Russians’ way to the Donetz crossings, I had pointed out to General Zeitzler that by advancing in the direction of Rostov the enemy would now have his chance to strike the decisive blow against the whole of the German southern wing.
On 24th December I had again drawn attention to the fact that it was now no longer the fate of Don Army Group alone that was at stake but of Army Group A as well.
I have already mentioned the rejection of my demand for the release of forces from Army Group A to Rostov and Fourth Panzer Army. Even if one no longer envisaged renewing the attempt to extend a rescuing hand to Sixth Army, it was still in Army Group A’s interest that Fourth Panzer Army should be reinforced, since its defeat would have given the enemy access to the Army Group’s rear. Since Army Group A quite understandably did not want to hand any units over, it was the business of the Supreme Command to order the equalization of forces so urgently needed between the two Army Groups. One possible reason for Army Group A’s refusal to let us have the divisions we asked for (see the Chapter on Stalingrad) may well have been the quite perplexing degree to which its formations and ‘units had been shuffled around and intermingled with one another.
Undoubtedly the disengagement of the larger ones would have been a difficult and at best time-consuming task. This state of affairs was in part the inevitable outcome of a need in the absence of adequate reserves to patch up the gaps caused by enemy penetrations. However, it was also due in equal measure to the Army Group’s having for months on end been without a commander of its own to keep things in order. At the best of times, many military commanders are unable to appreciate that units must be left in their normal order of battle if one is to achieve maximum efficiency and preserve manoeuvrability. When, as in this case, there was no responsible commander whatever for a considerable period, it was hardly surprising if the troops became disorganized.
In response to the insistence of Don Army Group, Hitler finally decided on 29th December to order the withdrawal of the eastern and most exposed wing of Army Group A, First Panzer Army, to the Kuma sector of Pyatigorsk-Praskoveya. Yet he still had no intention of giving up the Caucasus front as a whole. Evidently he still hoped that by bending back Army Group A’s eastern wing to the Kuma he would be able to pivot it upon the Manych flats, thereby stabilizing the situation between the Manych and Don and simultaneously keeping the communications of the southern wing open across the Lower Dnieper. Thus the ‘balcony’ which had been formed in November by pushing the front out into the Caucasus and up to the Volga and which had led to the unfavourable situation we were in at present was not to be eliminated, but merely reduced in size. Where, on the other hand, the forces were to be found to compensate for the loss of the Rumanian and Italian armies and before very long the Hungarian one as well remained a complete mystery. This, in due course, was what caused the remainder of the Caucasus front to be abandoned.
In this second phase of its struggle Don Army Group was confronted with the following tasks:
Instead of acting as the situation really demanded and radically shifting the main point of effort to its western wing to remove the danger of being cut off, the Army Group was compelled, in the face of a mounting crisis, to fight for time.
South of the Lower Don it had to protect Army Group A’s rear and at the same time to keep its communications through Rostov open. It was a dual commitment with which the weak forces of Fourth Panzer Army were unlikely to cope in view of the wide expanse of territory they had to control between the Caucasus and Don and the strength of the enemy operating there.
In the large bend of the Don and forwards of the Donetz it was the job of Army Detachment Hollidt to retard the enemy’s advance north of the Lower Don to such an extent that he could not cut off Fourth Panzer Army, and with it Army Group A, by a swift thrust on Rostov from the east. In addition, it had to prevent the enemy from crossing the Donetz line Forchstadt Kamensk-Voroshilovgrad and thereby deny him access to Rostov from the north.
Finally, the Army Group had to find ways and means of keeping open the lines of communication running to the Lower Dnieper in the west, either with its own resources or else with the assistance of what meagre reserves O.K.H. was able to send us.
All this had to be done with troops who had long been subjected to overstrain and were faced by an enemy many times stronger than themselves.
Difficult though this task, or series of tasks, was in itself, the paramount danger lay in Army Group A’s inability to disengage swiftly from the Caucasus. It was just one more example of the hardening-up process which inevitably sets in whenever mobile operations degenerate into static warfare. If only for the sake of economizing one’s forces, immovable weapons have to be dug in and rations and ammunition accumulated. Various facilities are installed to ease the lot of the troops a particularly important measure when a shortage of reserves prevents them from being taken out to rest. As the horses cannot usually be fed in a static battle zone, they have to be accommodated further back, and this in turn tends to immobilize the fighting units. (The state of the roads during a Russian winter, particularly in mountainous country, only added to these difficulties.)
The upshot is always that troops and formation staffs lose the knack of quickly adapting themselves to the changes of situation which daily occur in a war of movement. Inertia and stagnation gain the upper hand, for every change involves difficult reliefs, movement of forces, inconveniences and often danger. The inevitable process of accumulating weapons, equipment and stores of all kinds ties down assets which one feels unable to do without for the rest of the war. The result is that when the command staff in question is faced with the necessity of a major withdrawal, it begins by asking for a long period of grace in which to prepare for the evacuation. It may even reject the idea of a withdrawal out of hand because of the equipment and stores it has come to regard as indispensable. It will be remembered that when the German offensive came to a standstill in 1918, even such a notable commander as Ludendorff could not bring himself, by a boldly conceived withdrawal, to precipitate the war of movement in which Germany’s last hope of victory then lay. In the final analysis he felt unable to write off all the matériel committed on and behind the German front, or else could not make up his mind to abandon territory which it had cost such sacrifices to win.
The situation on Army Group A’s front was a similar one. A talk with the Chief-of-Staff of First Panzer Army revealed that this formation could not begin moving back until 2nd January, but after we had helped out with petrol it was finally able to start on New Year’s Day. Even then, Army Group A announced a few days later that First Panzer Army would have to fall back on to the Kuma line sector by sector in the interest of getting equipment out and evacuating the wounded from the mountain resorts in the Caucasus. For these purposes, it was stated, the army would require 155 trains (twenty per division) and would not (on account of the low rail capacities) be in position along the Kuma line for another twenty-five days. So although it should have been realized since the end of November that at least the rear of Army Group A would be endangered sooner or later, it was obvious that nothing had been done to prepare for an evacuation. One reason for the omission was undoubtedly that Hitler had forbidden such preparations or was expected to do so if he learnt of them. But an equally important one, I am sure, was the Army Group’s lack of a responsible commander in recent months.
O.K.H. had been considering the idea of placing Army Group A, which had now been taken over by Colonel-General v. Kleist, under my command. Generally speaking, it is not a good thing to put an army group or army under a headquarters of equal status. In the present critical situation, however, this would probably have had its advantages provided, of course, that no strings were attached. Any possibility of interference by Hitler or of Army Group A’s invoking his decisions in opposition to my own had to be expressly barred. Hitler, however, was unwilling to accept my conditions, and Army Group A consequently remained autonomous. All that Don Army Group could do was to keep on pressing for a speed-up of Army Group A’s evacuation measures with a view to effecting the earliest possible release of the forces whose intervention south of the Don and later on the western wing of Don Army Group would be of decisive importance. Everything depended on cutting down this second phase of the winter campaign to the utmost in order to get the position on the German southern wing finally stabilized. The only hope of doing so lay in smashing the enemy forces which were trying to envelop that wing to the west. In the event, it did prove possible to get the deadlines for the Caucasus evacuation considerably curtailed.
The hindrances mentioned above were due partly to what appeared to be the inevitable outcome of static warfare conditions and the difficulties encountered in a mountainous theatre, and partly to the Supreme Command’s aversion to surrendering anything voluntarily. The fact that they committed Don Army Group to a battle in the Don area lasting from the end of December to early February was bound in view of what was happening to Army Group B to intensify the danger that the whole southern wing would be cut off.
It would hardly be possible to find a better illustration of Moltke’s definition of strategy than in this battle fought by the two armies of Don Army Group. The reason why we succeeded, despite a series of crises, in mastering the tasks already outlined is that the army and army group staffs adhered firmly to two well-established German principles of leadership:
(i) Always conduct operations elastically and resourcefully;
(ii) Give every possible scope to the initiative and self-sufficiency of commanders at all levels.
Both principles, admittedly, were greatly at variance with Hitler’s own way of thinking. While the first will find expression in the account of the battle fought by our two armies, I should like to say a few words on the second one now.
It has always been the particular forte of German leadership to grant wide scope to the self-dependence of subordinate commanders to allot them tasks which leave the method of execution to the discretion of the individual. From time immemorial certainly since the elder Moltke’s day this principle has distinguished Germany’s military leadership from that of other armies. The latter, far from giving the same latitude to subordinate commanders on the tactical plane, have always tended to prescribe, by means of long and detailed directives, the way orders should actually be carried out or to make tactical action conform to a specific pattern. On the German side this system was considered a bad one. It would, admittedly, appear to reduce the risk of failure in the case of a mediocre commander. Yet it only too easily leads to the executant’s having to act against the exigencies of the local situation. Worst of all, in its preoccupation with security it waives the opportunity that may occur through the independent action of a subordinate commander in boldly exploiting some favourable situation at a decisive moment. The German method is really rooted in the German character, which contrary to all the nonsense talked about ‘blind obedience’ has a strong streak of individuality and possibly as part of its Germanic heritage finds a certain pleasure in taking risks. The granting of such independence to subordinate commanders does, of course, presuppose that all members of the military hierarchy are imbued with certain tactical or operational axioms. Only the school of the German General Staff can, I suppose, be said to have produced such a consistency of outlook. Nevertheless, there are plenty of occasions when the senior commander in the field is faced with the problem of whether or not to take a hand in the operations of the armies or other formations under his command. The more complex the situation and the smaller the forces with which he has to manage, the more often is he tempted to meddle in the business of his subordinates.
As far as my own Headquarters was concerned, I think I can say that we only intervened in the operations of our armies when it was quite imperative to do so. This was particularly true whenever the Army Group’s operational intentions involved the assumption of responsibilities which it would have been unreasonable to expect the army headquarters in question to accept. On the other hand, we refrained on principle from proffering off-the-record ‘advice’, which kills all initiative and hides responsibility.
That Hitler showed little understanding for the old-established German principle of leadership and repeatedly sought to meddle in the operations of subordinate headquarters by issuing specific orders of his own has already been mentioned earlier on. Nothing could be done about such orders when they related to the movements of adjacent army groups or the action to be taken with formations which were still O.K.H. reserves. However, in the many cases when they directed that a particular line was to be held to the last man and the last round, the force of circumstances usually proved stronger in the end.
Something which has also been discussed already and was even harder to overcome was Hitler’s dilatoriness in the taking of urgently needed decisions. We could not, after all, compel him to give an order. In such cases one had no choice but to report that in default of an O.K.H. directive by such-and-such a time or such-and-such a day, we should act at our own discretion.
In contrast to the above, I doubt very much whether any of the armies under our command during this or any later campaign ever had reason to complain that we were slow to take decisions. Whenever they put an inquiry or recommendation up to my headquarters, they always received an immediate reply. Only in difficult situations did the Army Group ever delay a decision for a very limited period at most for a few hours or until the following morning.
On the whole apart from Stalingrad — the Army Group always managed in the end to get the requisite action taken in the face of Hitler’s interference or procrastination.
Fourth Panzer Army had two different tasks to fulfil if it was to keep the rear of Army Group free.
It had to prevent the enemy now on its heels from moving in against the rear of First Panzer Army until such time as the latter had wheeled back from the Caucasus on to a front facing east.
At the same time, it had to ensure that the enemy did not thrust down the lower reaches of the Don to Rostov and cut off both Fourth Panzer Army and Army Group A from their communications zones.
It was clear that the army had not enough forces to deny the enemy the whole area between the lower course of the Don and the northern spurs of the Caucasus. Since the loss of the Rumanians all it had up around Kotelnikovo was 57 Panzer Corps, consisting only of two seriously weakened divisions (17 and 23 Panzer). 15 Luftwaffe Field Division was still not ready to go into action, and 16 Motorized Division had still not been relieved at Yelista by forces from Army Group A.
All Don Army Group’s efforts to get the army reinforced in good time were unavailing. The provision of 3 Panzer Corps by Army Group A had already been turned down by O.K.H., and now 7 Panzer Division, which Don Army Group had intended to use with Fourth Panzer Army, was retained by Hitler at Rostov to cover this crossing-point to the north following the collapse of the Italian Army. In essence this was not a bad idea, except that the infantry division we had requested from Army Group A (i.e. from Seventeenth Army) would have done just as well. But this, as I have said, Hitler had refused to let us have because he feared that its withdrawal from the Novorossisk sector would cause the Rumanian divisions there to give way.
An acute threat materialized in the rear of First Panzer Army when strong elements of the enemy which had been following Fourth Panzer Army turned south against First Panzer Army just as it was swinging backwards. Although 16 Motorized Division was able to launch a successful attack and bar the way to the enemy from behind the Manych, it was delayed still further from taking part in the struggle of Fourth Panzer Army, which it now did not join until the middle of January.
A measure which the Army Group had intended taking in its own area to reinforce Fourth Panzer Army was thwarted by the enemy. We had envisaged bringing 11 Panzer Division out of the large bend of the Don to join the army. Just when it was about to come over the Lower Don, however, the enemy himself crossed the river at two different places to drive from the south and south-east into the rear of the Mieth Group, which was still holding the Lower Chir on a front facing north. To parry this thrust and to enable the Mieth Group to swing back into a front facing east behind the Kagalnik, 11 Panzer Division had to be committed north of the Don and was lost to Fourth Panzer Army in consequence.
In the end, therefore, the only forces to augment the two above-named armoured divisions of 57 Panzer Corps were the Viking SS Division, which had already been released earlier by Army Group A, and-in mid-January 16 Motorized Division.
By this time Fourth Panzer Army was under pressure through Kotelnikovo from two Soviet armies, Second Guards and Fifty-First, which between them comprised one tank, three mechanized, three rifle and one cavalry corps. Shortly afterwards a third army (Twenty Eighth) made its appearance further south from the Kalmyk Steppes.
It could safely be assumed that these three armies were bent not merely on tying down Fourth Panzer Army from the front, but ultimately on by-passing it to the north and south in order to encircle it completely.
If Hitler thought he could order us, in the face of that preponderance of forces and with such an expanse of territory to cover, to make the army hold some ‘line’ or other, or else to obtain his approval before undertaking any withdrawal, he was seriously mistaken. As an obstacle, a hard-and-fast line was likely to prove about as effective as a cobweb in Fourth Panzer Army’s situation. Nonetheless, he still made repeated attempts to restrict our operational freedom by orders of this kind and stuck to his refusal to reinforce Fourth Panzer Army. By 5th January, therefore, I felt I must ask to be relieved of command of Don Army Group and sent the Chief of the General Staff a teleprinter message which stated inter alia:
‘Should these proposals not be approved and this headquarters continue to be tied down to the same extent as hitherto, I cannot see that any useful purpose will be served by my continuing as commander of Don Army Group. In the circumstances it would appear more appropriate to replace me by a “sub-directorate” of the kind maintained by the Quartermaster-General.’
(The Quartermaster-General’s ‘sub-directorates’ at army groups were headed by older staff officers who ran their formations’ supply and transport services in accordance with direct instructions from the central directorate.)
As things now stood, Fourth Panzer Army’s object was not to offer inadequate resistance along an over-extended line, but to keep its forces close together. Only thus could it offer strong opposition at vital spots or deal the enemy a surprise blow whenever an opportunity presented itself. At times it would obviously have to denude parts of its’ area completely and be content to cover others with only a flimsy defence screen.
Colonel-General Hoth, supported by his admirable Chief-of-Staff, General Fangohr, went about this difficult task with a calm resolution matched only by the versatility of his leadership. He skilfully retarded the progress of the enemy pressing hard on his front without exposing himself to danger by holding any one position too long. Furthermore, by rapidly assembling forces on both his wings, he repeatedly dealt the enemy sharp jabs which foiled every attempt to outflank him.
Though unable to let the army have sufficient forces to discharge its difficult task, the Army Group did reserve the right to relieve it of responsibility for at least its most intricate problem by the issue of specific orders. As I have said, Fourth Panzer Army actually had to deal with two tasks at once. It had to prevent any of the three enemy armies following it from taking First Panzer Army in the rear before the latter had completed its swing back from the Caucasus on to a front facing east and was ready to look after its own defence. At the same time it had to counter any attempt by the enemy to drive on Rostov along the lower arm of the Don. If this were successful, the three armies fighting south of the Lower Don would be cut off.
Fourth Panzer Army was only capable of solving one of these tasks at most. Which of them should have priority was a matter that only the Army Group could decide. Admittedly the threat to Rostov was the greater danger in the long run. Yet should the enemy succeed in encircling First Panzer Army as it wheeled back into its new position, there could be no further point even in holding Rostov, and the three German armies south of the Don would be doomed. If, on the other hand, the withdrawal of First Panzer Army were successfully accomplished, ways and means would be found to avert a crisis at Rostov.
The enemy did try to exploit the two opportunities indicated above. It has already been mentioned that 16 Motorized Division had just been in time to intercept the Soviet elements which had turned off to take First Panzer Army in the rear. Yet, with the same operational aim in view, the enemy made repeated attempts to envelop Fourth Panzer Army to the south and thereby to introduce himself between the latter and First Panzer Army. At the same time he endeavoured to drive along the Lower Don through Konstantinovka in the direction of Rostov. On 7th January a smallish enemy force turned up on the northern bank of the Don some 12 miles from the Army Group Headquarters’ location at Novocherkask, after the Cossacks and frontier troops guarding that stretch of river had given way. We had to dislodge this domestic invader with a few tanks fetched out of workshops for the purpose. Subsequently the tank corps of which this enemy force formed part was turned off towards Proletarskaya in the rear of Fourth Panzer Army, which meant that we were rid of the threat to Rostov for at least the next few days. Fourth Panzer Army, for its own part, was duly able to cope with this threat on its northern flank.
By 14th January First Panzer Army had completed its withdrawal movement, having been able to speed it up after all in the meantime. It now had its left wing established on a line running from Cherkask to Petrovskoye. This meant that at least a measure of operational cooperation was now possible between First and Fourth Panzer Armies, even if a wide gap still yawned between Petrovskoye and Proletarskaya. (This, admittedly, was partly covered by the mud-flats of the Manych.)
The first part of Fourth Panzer Army’s task, which had been to keep the rear of Army Group A free in the area south of the Don, was thus fulfilled. There still remained the second part that of holding open this Army Group’s lines of communication through Rostov.
In the face of the enemy’s many times greater strength, the accomplishment of the second part was complicated by the fact that First Panzer Army was initially to remain several days in the line it had reached in order to prepare the further evacuation of its rear areas. Indeed, Fourth Panzer Army’s task was to come dangerously near to not being fulfilled at all, for even now Hitler could still not make up his mind to abandon the Caucasus entirely. The question of whether First Panzer Army was to be pulled back on to the northern bank of the Don or whether the whole of Army Group A should remain in the Kuban still hung in the balance.
While Fourth Panzer Army was carrying out its task south of the Don during the first half of January, Army Detachment Hollidt had a no less difficult job to do in the large bend of river. As was stated in the chapter on Stalingrad, the enemy had spent the past few weeks making ‘ repeated attacks in infinitely superior strength on the Army Detachment’s front along the Chir.
At General Hollidt’s disposal, on a front extending some 125 miles from the Don at Nizhne Chirskaya as far as Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, were and this included the Mieth Group, now under command — four infantry divisions (62, 294, 336 and 387) which had already been very badly worn down in the fighting to date. Also helping to hold the front were some ‘alarm units’ and a valuable buttress, these anti-aircraft units commanded by the seasoned General Stahel. As for the Army Detachment’s two Luftwaffe field divisions, what little was left of them inevitably had to be incorporated into army formations. The main strength of the Army Detachment was constituted by 6 and 11 Panzer Divisions, augmented by the newly arrived 7 Panzer. The badly battered 22 Panzer Division had to be disbanded.
With these forces General Hollidt had to prevent the enemy in the north from moving down on the lower reaches of the Don (i.e. into the rear of Fourth Panzer Army) and most important of all from breaking through to Rostov for as long as Fourth Panzer Army and Army Group A were in the area south of the Don. Furthermore, it was the Army Detachment’s job to see that the enemy opposite its left wing did not push through to the Donetz crossings between Forchstadt and Voroshilovgrad, thereby opening the way to Rostov from the north west. At the same time, however, the Army Detachment found itself threatened on both flanks in the west as a result of the disappearance from the battlefield of the Italians (in whose place the Fretter-Pico Group was slowly fighting its way back from the Millerovo region towards the Donetz), and in the east because several enemy army corps now had crossed the Don, first at Potemkinskaya and then at Tsymlyanskaya. They could only be stopped, as was noted earlier, by throwing in n Panzer Division and bending the Mieth Group back on to a front facing east from behind the Kagalnik.
Like Fourth Panzer Army, Army Detachment Hollidt reflected firm yet versatile leadership in mastering its task amid heavy fighting and incessant crises. Here, too, however, the Army Group assumed ultimate responsibility by ordering it, at great—if not immediate—risk to the spots thus laid bare, to bunch its armour together for short offensive thrusts.
The fact that the Army Detachment succeeded in finally halting the enemy on the Donetz, and thereby in saving Fourth Panzer Army and Army Group A from being cut off south of the Don, must be ascribed first and foremost while not forgetting the way its staff handled operations to the bravery with which the infantry divisions and all other formations and units helping to hold the line stood their ground against the enemy’s recurrent attacks. Yet their defence could never have been maintained had not our armoured divisions time and again shown up at danger spots at just the right moment. On one hand they intervened to ward off the impending encirclement of the Army Detachment’s right wing as it wheeled back on to the Kagalnik and later to intercept a threatened breakthrough in that sector. On the other, they surprised the enemy by driving straight into his assembly positions as he was about to attack the Army Detachment’s northern front forward of the Donetz. While it was the business of the Army Detachment itself to mount such close counterblows as part of its defensive role, the actual responsibility for risking them usually lay with the Army Group. The latter had to relieve the Army Detachment of responsibility for any emergencies which might arise whenever, on Army Group instructions, it concentrated its armour in one spot and thereby imperilled the remaining sectors of the front.
By the middle of January 1943 the operational situation on the southern wing of the Eastern Front had come to a head. Its seeds had been laid in the late autumn of 1942, when our military command had allowed the front to solidify into a line which was operationally untenable from a long-term point of view. What had clearly been shaping up since Christmas Week 1942, when the last opportunity for Sixth Army to break out was missed, had now come to pass. Only the desperate struggle waged by the German fighting troops and command staffs had so far staved off an even worse crisis.
Sixth Army was doomed. The best it could do now, with what little strength it still possessed, was to render its comrades in the Don bend and the Caucasus the last supreme service of tying down strong enemy forces for just a short while longer.
It was clear that after the loss of Sixth Army the Caucasus region could not even be held on a reduced scale.
Now, however, thanks to the doggedness and dexterity with which Fourth Panzer Army had been fighting in the area south of the Don, there was at least a chance that when the Caucasus went, Army Group A need not be lost with it. Its eastern wing, which had been in the greatest danger of all, was now safely retracted. And even though First Panzer Army was still 190 miles from the river-crossing at Rostov, it was nonetheless out of the mountains and no longer threatened from the rear. If things came to the worst, it could fight its own way back from now on.
In the area between the Don and Donetz it had so far been possible to deny the enemy access to Rostov and prevent him from closing the trap from the north behind the three armies standing south of the lower arm of the Don.
But it was evident that neither Army Detachment Hollidt nor the Fretter-Pico Group (now fighting around Millerovo and consisting of H.Q.. 30 Corps with 3 Mountain and 304 Infantry Divisions under command) could prevent the enemy from crossing the Donetz upstream from Kamensk-Shakhtinsky once he was strong enough to reach so far round to the west. From then on he would be at liberty to drive on Rostov from the north-west or straight down to the Sea of Azov.
Worst of all, about this time the Army Group B sector held by the Hungarian Army on the Middle Don collapsed before a fresh enemy offensive. The connecting front in the north was also caught up in the disaster. Army Group B wanted to take its forces back behind the Aidar as far up as Starobyelsk, which meant leaving open the Donetz downstream from Voroshilovgrad. For all practical purposes, however, this wing of the Army Group was to cease to exist within a few days. A wide gap opened up from Voroshilovgrad to the north in which only isolated German battle groups of Army Group B were offering desperate local resistance. The Hungarians like the Italians had disappeared from the battlefield.
It seemed certain that O.K.H. could not hope to plug this hole with the reserves now on the way.
In any case, as far as Don Army Group was concerned, the time had obviously come to ‘leap frog’ strong forces from the area south of the Don to the Middle Donetz if the enemy were to be prevented from tying off Don Army Group and Army Group A.
The German Supreme Command still did not agree, however. Either it was unable to foresee what turn events would inevitably take if nothing effective were done to make us strong in the crucial area between the Donetz and Lower Dnieper, or it simply would not see the dangers of the situation.
Hitler was still not disposed to give up the Caucasus region. He still thought he could somehow maintain a front south of the Don which would at least safeguard his possession of the Maikop oilfields. His minimum requirement was the retention of an extensive bridgehead in the Kuban from which he proposed at a later date to renew his grab for the Caucasus oil.
And so, in the weeks that followed, our Army Group was compelled to continue its desperate struggle on both sides of the Don in the interest of a systematic withdrawal of Army Group A. All this time it was having a fierce dispute with the Supreme Command over the idea of ‘leap frogging’ forces to the Donetz area. This concerned not only the acceptability of the principle as such but also the question as to how many of Army Group A’s forces should be brought back through Rostov to the decisive battleground. To tie up substantial elements of Army Group A in a Kuban bridgehead amounted, in our opinion, to sheer wishful thinking from the point of view of operations as a whole.
By 14th January, the day on which First Panzer Army reached the line Cherkask-Petrovskoye and established a front facing eastwards, another crisis was brewing in the area of Army Detachment Hollidt.
On that day an enemy tank corps succeeded in breaking through towards the Donetz on the right wing of Army Group B, in the area of the Fretter-Pico Group south of Millerovo. Although O.K.H. provided the group with a new infantry division (302), this alone could not possibly suffice to stabilize the situation on the river.
When, on 16th January, O.K.H. placed the Fretter-Pico Group under command of Don Army Group (while simultaneously extending the latter’s front to the Aidar), it was still not even certain whether the group would get back behind the Donetz at all. It had meanwhile emerged that the enemy intended to throw three or four mechanized corps against the Donetz on either side of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky in the Fretter-Pico Group’s own area.
Fortunately, thanks to a neat success scored a few days previously by Army Detachment Hollidt when two of its armoured divisions had struck a surprise blow on the Kalitva, an enemy attack had been wiped out there while still in the preparation stage.
We therefore ordered the Army Detachment to execute its planned withdrawal into the Donetz positions in such a way as to have an armoured division available at the earliest possible moment for mobile defence of the Donetz sector of Forchstadt-Kamensk. For operations in the newly acquired Kamensk-Voroshilovgrad sector of the river, however, there was nothing to hand except for the Italians who had streamed back there as stragglers. In other words, there was a danger that Don Army Group’s Donetz front would shortly be outflanked to the west.
At the same time, it became evident that the enemy intended to envelop Army Detachment Hollidt from the east as well. In the gap between its right wing, where the Donetz joined the Don, and Fourth Panzer Army, which was still having to cover First Panzer Army’s northern flank against a far superior enemy forward of Salsk on the Manych, two enemy corps were identified in the angle between the Sal, Don and Manych. These could be expected to attempt to cross the Don for an advance on Rostov or else to thrust into the rear of Army Detachment Hollidt’s Donetz positions.
Don Army Group accordingly proposed that it now be allowed to shift Fourth Panzer Army over to its western wing (while leaving one division temporarily forward of Rostov to keep the crossing open for First Panzer Army). This would naturally have necessitated O.K.H.’s issuing simultaneous orders for the withdrawal of Army Group A with First Panzer Army moving back on Rostov and Seventeenth Army into the Kuban.
Once again it was impossible to get a quick decision from Hitler. Neither would he countenance the Army Group’s proposal that Army Group A’s armoured divisions be concentrated in the area of Fourth Panzer Army for a short offensive stroke to facilitate First Panzer Army’s withdrawal and thereby to speed up the release of Fourth Panzer Army.
Not until 18th January did O.K.H. finally concede Fourth Panzer Army freedom of movement to the extent that the latter no longer had to cover the northern flank of First Panzer Army on the Manych north-eastwards of Salsk. On the other hand, Don Army Group still had to safeguard Army Group A’s use of the Rostov-Tikhorets railway line until eighty-eight supply trains had passed safely through to stock up the Kuban bridgehead. Whether First Panzer Army would now be withdrawn towards Rostov or into the Kuban was still anybody’s guess.
The time being taken to decide whether to allow forces to be ‘leap-frogged’ westwards inside the German southern wing could only benefit the enemy, of course. It enabled him to exploit the collapse of the Italian and Hungarian sectors of Army Group B’s front and to assemble powerful forces with which to advance over the Middle Donetz towards the coast of the Sea of Azov or the Dnieper crossings forces to which, for the moment, we had nothing to offer in the way of opposition. The enemy was also given opportunity to concentrate his formations for a direct assault on Rostov and to envelop Army Detachment Hollidt’s western wing through Voroshilovgrad.
On 20th January the enemy in the area of Fourth Panzer Army launched an attack over the Lower Manych towards Rostov with four corps he had concentrated for this purpose. His tanks reached the Rostov airfield. Though 16 Panzer Division, which Fourth Panzer Army had thrown over to this northern wing, had been delaying the enemy’s progress between the Don and Manych by repeated thrusts into his flank from the southern bank of the latter, it had naturally been unable to halt all four corps on its own.
By simultaneously attacking the army’s 57 Panzer Corps, which was now gradually falling back on Rostov from the Middle Manych, the enemy endeavoured to detain Fourth Panzer Army’s main forces forward of Rostov until he had possession of the Rostov crossing in their rear.
Furthermore, the enemy was hitting hard at the front of Army Detachment Hollidt. Here, too, he obviously aimed to pin down our forces until he had encircled them by the capture of Rostov and an envelopment movement across the Middle Donetz. By launching these attacks against General Mieth’s Corps in the angle between the Don and Donetz as well as on either side of Kamensk, he was presumably also trying to prevent the release of any forces from this front which could be thrown against him on the Middle Donetz.
Once again the Army Group’s problem was which threat to tackle first. Two armoured divisions (7 and 11 Panzer) were standing by in Army Detachment Hollidt’s area to be switched to the western wing on the middle Donetz. But however great the danger there might become in the long run, the Army Group felt it was even more urgent at this moment to avert the threat to Rostov. Everything possible had to be done to get not only Fourth but at least the whole of First Panzer Army back through the city. Otherwise there would not be the slightest prospect of ever assembling sufficient forces on the Army Group’s western wing to counteract the danger of the entire southern wing’s being surrounded on the sea-coasts.
For this reason Don Army Group resolved that, in order to prevent the capture of Rostov, the two above-named armoured divisions should in the first instance be used to deliver a sharp blow at the enemy attacking over the lower Manych in the direction of the city. However, because of petrol shortage (all the supply trains at that time were going to the Kuban bridgehead by way of Rostov!) and the impossibility of obtaining air support for our attack under the prevailing weather conditions, this counterblow took longer to effect than was admissible in the existing situation. For time was pressing more and more. Since Sixth Army’s resistance was now coming to an end, we had to expect to have most of the enemy’s Stalingrad forces about our ears within two or three weeks. I had already told General Zeitzler on 22nd January that I should not be surprised to see them turn up in the Starobyelsk area, i.e. in the broad gap between Don Army Group and Army Group B.
The same day Hitler finally decided that a part, at least, of First Panzer Army should not be taken into the Kuban bridgehead, but be brought back through Rostov that is, into what was later to be the decisive battleground. This, though only a compromise solution in our own eyes, was nonetheless welcome in the sense of the Army Group’s own conception of operations.
It was, however, of the utmost importance that this withdrawal should be performed at maximum speed, so that Fourth Panzer Army, in its turn, could be transferred to the Army Group’s western wing at the earliest possible moment. The rapidity of First Panzer Army’s withdrawal through Rostov depended entirely on the ability of Army Group A’s other components to adapt their speed of movement accordingly. Yet it was clear that even now the Army Group was still, unable to increase its speed to the extent the situation demanded. I have never been able to elicit a satisfactory reason for this. At all events First Panzer Army maintained after coming under my command that had it not been repeatedly halted on instructions from above, it could in fact have moved much more smartly from the very start. Both Army Group A and O.K.H. disputed this. Whatever the answer, the fact remains that Army Group A had so timed the move of its left wing—which was still around Belaya Glina, 30 miles east of Tikhorets on 23rd January—that it would not reach Tikhorets until 1st February!
On 23rd January Don Army Group came into another ‘legacy’—this time the southern part of Army Group B’s front between the Donetz and Starobyelsk. As usual, the liabilities far outweighed everything else. They consisted of about 40 extra miles of front and at least three enemy corps now on the advance in that sector one of them armoured and the other mechanized. The only asset we acquired now that the Italians could no longer be counted upon-was 19 Panzer Division, at that moment located around Starobyelsk. The very next day, however, it was forced to yield Starobyelsk to the enemy. It was an exceptional achievement on the part of this valiant division, so outstandingly led by Lieutenant-General Postel, that it was ever able to fight a way through to the west at all. The enemy’s action in swinging south across the Donetz was something it could not prevent.
On 24th January Hitler decided that if possible the whole of First Panzer Army should be withdrawn through Rostov from now on. Since its southern wing was still at Armavir, this naturally meant tying down Fourth Panzer Army south of the Don even longer in order to keep Rostov open. Whether the army could still be thrown over to the western wing of the Army Group in time thus became increasingly doubtful.
There were, nonetheless, two gratifying facts to record.
Army Group A, which had been understandably reluctant to see one of its armies disappear across the Don, had realized after all that its own fate, too, would be decided on the Donetz and not in the Kuban. Besides, it was becoming more and more unlikely that a force of any strength in the Kuban could be supplied across the Straits of Kerch. Henceforth Army Group A, as well, came out in favour of withdrawing the largest possible number of forces through Rostov.
The second fact was that on 25th January the above-mentioned attack of two of our armoured divisions on the enemy advancing across the Lower Manych finally produced the success we had hoped for. With that, the immediate threat to the Rostov crossings was eliminated for the time being.
Instead, the situation on Fourth Panzer Army’s southern wing took another critical turn. Bringing up fresh forces which appeared to have been drawn from the Soviet armies pressing after Army Group A, the enemy attempted to get between Fourth Panzer Army and the northern wing of First Panzer Army in order to envelop the former from the south and force the latter away from Rostov. Don Army Group accordingly presented Army Group A with a final demand that it should join in this battle with an armoured division and also step up First Panzer Army’s withdrawal on Rostov with every means at its disposal.
At last, on 27th January, at least the northern half of First Panzer Army came under command of Don Army Group, with the result that the latter was now itself able to order the measures to which I have just referred.
At the same time, since Fourth Panzer Army still had to keep the Rostov crossing open for the time being, Don Army Group decided that H.Q. First Panzer Army, which could be released sooner south of the Don, should be the first to move over to the Middle Donetz. It was to be followed there by its divisions as they were fed through Rostov, as well as by forces of Fourth Panzer Army as they became available.
By 31st January things had reached a point where First Panzer Army could be expected to come back through Rostov though whether it would arrive at the Donetz in time to stop the enemy breaking across the river to the sea-coast was quite another matter. The unfortunate thing was that even now not all of the army’s formations could be got to the decisive battleground. Thanks to Hitler’s hesitation in deciding whether to bring the army back towards Rostov or to move it into the Kuban, 50 Division (one of the well-tried formations of the former Crimean Army) had not been in time to join in the move to Rostov and had gone over to Seventeenth Army. Furthermore, after days of indecision, Hitler at the last moment re allocated 13 Panzer Division to Army Group A for use in the Kuban after we had striven to the last to preserve a gap through which to slip it to Rostov. Thus both these divisions were withheld from the crucial battleground while some 400,000 men lay virtually paralysed in the Kuban. Admittedly the latter served to tie down the powerful enemy forces who were vainly striving to do away with the bridgehead. But they never achieved the operational effect which Hitler sought, and ultimately the enemy was left free to decide what size of force he should leave there. Not even Hitler’s argument that a large force must be kept in the Kuban in order to deny the enemy the naval port of Novorossisk held any water. He still had to give it up in the end.
On 29th January our headquarters moved from Taganrog, where it had gone on the 12th, to Stalino, as the Army Group’s main point of effort now had to shift from the Don to the Donetz.
During the battles in and south of the large bend of the Don, the aim of which had been to cover the withdrawal of Army Group A from the Caucasus, but in which the larger issue was whether the German southern wing could be preserved at all, a fresh problem was already emerging. The question was whether this southern wing would be able to maintain the Donetz area.
This area, which lies between the Sea of Azov, the Don estuary and the Lower and Middle Donetz and is roughly bounded in the west by the line Mariupol-Krasnoarmeiskoye-Isyum, had played a fundamental part in Hitler’s operational calculations as far back as 1941, for he considered possession of it to be of vital importance to the outcome of the war. On the one hand he contended that we should not get through the war economically without its vast coal deposits, while on the other he considered that the loss of these had dealt a telling blow to the Soviet war effort. Donetz coal, he declared, was the only kind the Russians had (at least in European Russia) that was suitable for coking, and sooner or later the lack of it must paralyse their tank and munitions production. While I do not propose to discuss the pros and cons of these assertions, the fact remains that the Russians managed to produce thousands of tanks and millions of shells in the years 1942-3 without recourse to this Donetz coal.
The real question was whether we could remain the military masters of the Donetz basin or not. From the point of view of our war economy it was unquestionably desirable that we should retain it with the one qualification that while we extracted substantial quantities of Donetz coal for our own use, all the bunker coal for the railway supplying this vast territory had to be brought out from Germany because Donetz coal did not suit our locomotives. As the Reichsbahn had to run several coal-trains a day to cover its own requirements, the proportion of troop trains fell off accordingly.
Be that as it may, Hitler maintained that the German war economy could not possibly do without the Donetz basin. (A year later he said exactly the same thing about the manganese output of Nikopol.) And yet our possession of the area was in doubt from the moment the Hungarian front collapsed south of Voronezh, throwing open the enemy’s road to the Donetz and across it to the Dnieper crossings or the Sea of Azov.
The first time the question of our fighting to hold the Donetz basin came up was in a telephone conversation I had with General Zeitzler on 19th January. He wanted to hear my views on the subject, having ‘broached’ it to Hitler albeit without success the day before. This was the day on which the danger appeared of a breach in the whole front from Voroshilovgrad to Voronezh. I told Zeitzler that however important this area might be, even from the economic point of view, the question was relatively simple to answer. If it were to be retained in its entirety, strong forces must be assembled with a minimum delay and as far east as was feasible forward of Kharkov, if possible. Should we be unable to do this because it was thought that Central and Northern Army Groups could not spare any more forces, because the new drafts at home were not ready, because O.K.W. would not release any forces from other fronts or, finally, because such a sudden deployment would be too much for the railways in their present state, we should simply have to accept the consequences. The southern wing of the German Armies could not close the gap with its own forces if it remained on the Lower Don.
Nor could it go on fighting there in isolation if the expected reinforcements took a long time to arrive and deployed far to the rear i.e. out of all relation to the operations of the southern wing. The battle being fought by the southern wing and the deployment of the new forces must be so attuned to one another in a spatial sense as to become operationally coherent. Either the new forces must be made to deploy swiftly and relatively far to the east, in which case it would be possible for the Army Group to remain on the Lower Don and Donetz, or else they could not, and the Army Group would have to be pulled back to join them. If one of these two courses were not taken, the enemy would have an opportunity to cut off the whole southern wing before any reinforcements could make their presence felt. General Zeitzler agreed with me.
It was certain in any case that the SS Panzer Corps due to assemble around Kharkov by the middle of February would not have the necessary strength to close the gap now being torn open from Voroshilovgrad to Voronezh. Nor could it be made operational in time to launch an offensive thrust north of the Donetz for the purpose of freeing the flank of the southern wing in the event of its remaining on the Lower Don and Donetz.
The next few days served to increase the Army Group’s alarm at the trend of events in its deep flank.
As early as 20th January we had noticed two enemy corps trying to outflank the Army Group’s left wing (the Fretter-Pico Group at Kamensk) by a movement in the direction of Voroshilovgrad. At the same time the enemy was feeling his way forward against the Italian remnants behind the Donetz east of Voroshilovgrad. Otherwise his main forces apparently aimed to drive west on Starobyelsk in the first instance, obviously with the object of gaining some initial elbow-room. As soon as the enemy had attained these aims, however, it could be assumed that he would not only strive to envelop the Fretter-Pico Group, but also, by throwing strong forces further round to the west, to advance over the Donetz towards the Dnieper crossings or the coast of the Sea of Azov.
Only four days later, on 24th January, there were already reports of enemy cavalry south of the Donetz in the region of Voroshilovgrad though it was always possible that a false alarm had been sounded by some jumpy town major in a rear area.
On 31st January I sent O.K.H. a teleprinter message re-stating my views on the problem of holding the Donetz basin.
The prior condition for retaining it, I said, was that a timely attempt be made from the direction of Kharkov to relieve the pressure on us and that the enemy in the area north-east of the city be beaten before the muddy season set in. If, as unfortunately seemed to be the case, neither of these should prove practicable, there would be no possibility of holding the basin at least not to its full extent in the east. Any attempt to remain on the Lower Don and Donetz would thus be a mistake from the operational point of view.
A second factor which must not be overlooked, I went on, was that our present forces would not alone suffice to hold the whole Donetz area if—as seemed certain—the enemy were to bring up further reinforcements from the Caucasus and Stalingrad. It was just not good enough to pin one’s hopes on the enemy’s becoming exhausted (great though his losses might well have been in attacks on German troops) or on his operations being brought to a premature halt by difficulties of supply. (These were the arguments which Hitler constantly produced to General Zeitzler whenever the latter drew his attention, on the strength of the basically accurate intelligence reports he received from us, to the tremendous numerical superiority of the enemy. Undoubtedly there was some justification for what Hitler said. Yet it had to be borne in mind that the enemy’s attacks on allied armies had cost him very little and that he was far less dependent on supply and transport than we Germans were in enemy territory.) The very next few days confirmed the Army Group’s appreciation of the enemy’s intentions. It became clear that he was out to crush our front on the Donetz and simultaneously to outflank us to the west.
On 2nd February he crossed the Donetz east of Voroshilovgrad without encountering any serious opposition from the Italians there. The assault group he had assembled consisted of three tank corps, one mechanised and one rifle corps obviously part of the forces which had previously over-run the Italians on the Don. The objectives of this grouping could be taken to be Rostov or Taganrog.
After ejecting 19 Panzer Division from Starobyelsk, the enemy had swung another strong force of three or four tank corps and a rifle corps south-west against the line Slavyansk-Lisichansk. It was plain that he planned a movement to outflank our wing further west. This if one ignored the residue of Italians he could expect to find around or even east of Voroshilovgrad.
Except for the measures the Army Group was able to take in its own sphere of command with the ultimate object of flinging First Panzer Army over to the Middle Donetz, therefore, the period following the end of January was taken up with wrangles between the Army Group and O.K.H. on how to proceed with the operations as a whole.
As has been stated, I had already emphasized to General Zeitzler on 19th January that the whole of the Donetz basin could only be held on condition that strong forces intervened swiftly and effectively from the Kharkov direction. As no prospect of this existed, I asked for permission to reduce the echeloning of our eastern wing at least far enough to release the forces which the Army Group would need if it were to prevent the amputation of the southern wing with its own resources and the reinforcements it had been promised.
We had already dispatched First Panzer Army to the Middle Donetz to counteract the threat of envelopment that had now become acute there.
What had to be done now was to get Fourth Panzer Army, too, out of the ‘balcony’ on the Lower Don and Donetz. This was the only timely way to meet the danger of an enemy attempt to cut us off from the Dnieper crossings by advancing across the Isyum-Slavyansk line. Further up the Don, moreover, the enemy must always be expected to bring even more troops over the river towards the Lower Dnieper than had already been reported at Slavyansk. Apart from 1 Division of the SS Panzer Corps, which had meanwhile arrived at Kharkov, there were nothing but battered remnants to oppose him anywhere in the area of Army Group B. These alone could not prevent him from wheeling into our deep flank. But Fourth Panzer Army could only be released if a considerable reduction were made in the length of the Army Group front. Instead of continuing to hold the extensive arc formed by the Lower Don and the Donetz from Rostov as far as the region west of Voroshilovgrad, the right wing of the Army Group must be taken back, as it were, on to the string of the bow. This ‘string’ was the system of defences which the German southern wing had held in 1941 after the first withdrawal from Rostov a line running behind the Mius and continuing northwards as far as the Middle Donetz. Taking the front back into this position naturally meant abandoning the eastern part of the Donetz coalfields.
In order to justify this withdrawal, I made an attempt to bring home my conception of the long-term conduct of military operations to the Supreme Command. The following is roughly how I expressed it in a teleprinter message addressed for Hitler’s personal attention:
To hold the Don-Donetz salient for any length of time was not possible, even in a purely defensive context, with the forces at the Army Group’s disposal. In the event of the Supreme Command’s having to remain on the defensive in 1943 on account of the loss of Sixth Army and its twenty divisions, an all-out attempt to defend the entire Donetz basin would mean committing all the forces there that could possibly be made available. That, however, would give the enemy a free hand to take the offensive with far superior forces at any point he cared to pick on the remainder of the front. While the present danger was that Don Army Group would be bottled up on the Sea of Azov (and Army Group A consequently lost in the Kuban), we could safely assume that even if this could be avoided and the whole Donetz area held, the enemy’s later aim would be to encircle the whole southern wing of the Eastern Front on the Black Sea.
If, on the other hand, the Supreme Command felt able to seek a solution by renewed offensive action in 1943, it could again only do so on the southern wing but on no account from out of the Don-Donetz salient because of the now familiar supply difficulties and the flanking threat to which any attack from this ‘balcony’ projection would be exposed from the outset. The only means of achieving an offensive solution always assuming that this were in the least feasible—consisted in the first place in drawing the enemy westwards towards the Lower Dnieper on our southern wing. Having once achieved this, we had to launch a powerful attack from the Kharkov area and smash the Russian front connecting there in order to turn south and surround the enemy on the Sea of Azov.
Hitler, however, was apparently unwilling to entertain any ideas of this kind. He had already been told by Zeitzler himself, so the latter informed me that the only question now was whether to abandon the Donetz area by itself or to lose Don Army Group along with it.
Hitler’s answer had been that although his Chief-of-Staff was probably right from the operational point of view, the surrender of the Donetz area was impossible for economic reasons — not so much because of any loss of coal to ourselves as because a German withdrawal would put the enemy back in possession of the supplies so vital to his own steel production. As an interim solution, Hitler had directed that the SS ‘Reich’ Division, the first of the SS Panzer Corps’ formations to have reached Kharkov, should launch a thrust from that area into the rear of the enemy forces advancing against our Donetz front.
Quite apart from the fact that this solitary division could never suffice for such a far-ranging operation (it would have had to over-run six enemy divisions for a start) and that there would be nothing available to cover its ever-lengthening northern flank, its commitment to battle would have meant splitting up the only striking force the SS Panzer Corps which could be expected to join us in the foreseeable future. If it came to that, the ‘Reich’ Division was no longer free for such an operation, Army Group B having already had to throw it in to meet the rapid advance of the Soviets towards Kharkov. At that very hour it was tied up in a pretty unpromising defensive action at Volchansk, north-east of the city.
During the next couple of days (4th and 5th February) the situation on Don Army Group’s front deteriorated visibly, the enemy bringing sharp pressure to bear on Fourth Panzer Army as it covered the flow of First Panzer Army through Rostov. Two armies from his former Caucasus front, Forty-Fourth and Fifty-Eighth, had now joined the three already facing Fourth Panzer Army a sure sign that the ‘threat’ which Army Group A’s Seventeenth Army in the Kuban was supposed to constitute in the flank of the Russians had not deterred them from transferring substantial forces to the decisive battleground. Before long Don Army Group would have to expect a massed attack on both Rostov itself and the Don front each side of Novocherkask.
In addition, a strong motorized force was found to be moving from Stalingrad towards the Don.
On the Army Group’s left wing, too, the situation was becoming increasingly grave. East of Voroshilovgrad, 6 Panzer Division, which Army Detachment Hollidt had rushed up to the Middle Donetz in pursuance of the Army Group order of 14th January, had not succeeded in flinging the enemy back across the river. All it could do for the time being was to bottle him up in the bridgehead he had gained there.
Further west, the enemy had been able to cross the Donetz on a broad front, there being practically no forces whatever to defend it. He was now outside Slavyansk and had taken Isyum.
Even now, therefore, it appeared doubtful whether the withdrawal of Army Detachment Hollidt into the Mius positions would still be at all feasible. The Army Group had intended to have it on the Novocherkask-Kamensk line by 5th January, but in fact it had been tied down on the Don and Donetz through Hitler’s refusal to let us take the front back to the Mius. If the enemy were to push swiftly south-eastwards from Slavyansk, he would unhinge the Mius defences from the start.
Even though H.Q. First Panzer Army and the forces we had allocated to it were by this time on the road from Rostov to the Middle Donetz, it would inevitably be several days yet before the army could take an effective hand there. What made things worse was that the saturated roads in the coastal area greatly hampered the progress of the armoured divisions, whereas the ground further north was still frozen solid and in no way affected the Russians’ mobility.
In view of these ominous developments, the Army Group not only renewed its call for an immediate withdrawal of its right wing to the Mius, but also presented O.K.H. with a series of specific demands which were intended to underline the perilousness of the situation. It called for the concentration of 7 AA Division, which was engaged on anti-aircraft defence in the communications zone, to provide both air and ground protection for the supply route running through Dnepropetrovsk. It called for the immediate preparation of an airlift in case the enemy were to cut its rear communications.
It called for a ruthless increase in the transport capacity of the railway at the expense of supplies to Army Group B, which had hardly any more troops to feed anyway.
It demanded that unless the promised attack by the SS ‘Reich’ Division had achieved complete success — which must mean reaching Kupyansk by 6th February, the SS Panzer Corps should attack south of the Donetz towards Isyum as soon as the increase in troop-trains enabled it to assemble around Kharkov.
Finally, the Army Group called for the immediate transfer of the combat troops of 13 Panzer Division and two infantry divisions of Seventeenth Army to the Lower Dnieper, where they would be furnished with new weapons and take over the B-echelon transport and supply columns of Sixth Army located there.
Even if Hitler shut his eyes to our more long-term view of operations, these demands would in any case bring the urgency of the position home to him.
And sure enough, as a result of this teleprinter message, a Condor aircraft touched down on our airstrip on 6th February to fetch me to General Headquarters for an interview with Hitler. His decision to give me a personal hearing may have been partially due to a visit paid to us at the end of January by his senior military assistant, Schmundt, to whom we had expressed our views very forcibly on the present situation and the way in which things were being handled at the top.
The conference of 6th February 1943 between Hitler and myself made it possible to forestall the disaster threatening to overtake the German southern wing and to give the Supreme Command one more chance at least to obtain a stalemate in the east.
Hitler opened the talks as I have already reported in the chapter on Stalingrad with an unqualified admission of his exclusive responsibility for the fate of Sixth Army, which had met its tragic end a few days previously. At the time I had the impression that he was deeply affected by this tragedy, not just because it amounted to a blatant failure of his own leadership, but also because he was deeply depressed in a purely personal sense by the fate of the soldiers who, out of faith in him, had fought to the last with such courage and devotion to duty.
Yet later on I came to doubt whether Hitler had any place whatever in his heart for the soldiers who put such boundless trust in him and remained true to him till the end. By then I wondered if he did not regard all of them from field-marshal down to private soldier as mere tools of his war aims.
Be that as it may, this gesture of Hitler’s in assuming immediate and unqualified responsibility for Stalingrad struck a chivalrous note. Whether deliberately or unconsciously, he had thus shown considerable psychological skill in the way he opened our discussion. He always did have a masterly knack of adapting his manner to his interlocutor.
For my own part, I had made up my mind to discuss two questions with him.
The first was that of the future conduct of operations in my own area, which depended on getting Hitler’s consent to the abandonment of the eastern part of the Donetz basin. It was essential to elicit this from him that very day.
The second question I wished to bring up was that of the Supreme Command i.e. the form in which it had been exercised by Hitler ever since the dismissal of Field-Marshal v. Brauchitsch. The outcome of this style of leadership Stalingrad gave me adequate reason for raising it.
To dispose of the second question first, let me say quite briefly that no satisfactory conclusion was reached. Realizing that a dictator like Hitler would never bring himself to resign as Commander-in-Chief, I tried to get him to accept a solution which would not damage his prestige and yet guarantee a salutary military leadership for the future. I asked him to ensure the uniformity of this leadership by appointing one Chief-of-Staff whom he must trust implicitly and at the same time vest with the appropriate responsibility and authority.
But Hitler was clearly not willing to treat the matter impartially. He kept resorting to the personal aspects of the case, complaining of the disappointments he had suffered with v. Blomberg the War Minister and even with v. Brauchitsch. He quite bluntly declared, moreover, that he could not possibly put anyone in a position that would virtually set him above Göring, who would never subordinate himself to the guidance of a Chief-of-Staff even if the latter were acting in Hitler’s name. Whether Hitler was really reluctant to offend Göring or merely used this as a pretext, I cannot say.
This brings us back to the first question, that of the future of operations in the area of Don Army Group.
I began by giving Hitler a picture of the Army Group’s present situation and went on to list the conclusions to be drawn from it. I pointed out that our forces would on no account suffice to hold the area of the Don and Donetz. However highly Hitler cared to rate its value to either side, the only real question was whether, in trying to hang on to the whole of the Donetz basin, we wanted to lose the latter plus Don Army Group (and in due course Army Group A as well) or whether, by abandoning part of it at the right moment, we could avert the catastrophe that threatened to overtake us.
Passing on from these manifest aspects of the present situation, I endeavoured to make Hitler see what would inevitably happen later if we persisted in remaining in the Don-Donetz ‘balcony’. The enemy would be free, now that Army Group B was almost completely out of action, to turn the strong forces advancing through the latter’s area down towards the Lower Dnieper or the coast and thus to cut off the entire southern wing. What happened down on this southern wing, I emphasized, would decide the outcome of the whole war in the east. It was certain that the enemy would continue to draw on his still strong reserves (particularly from around Stalingrad) to ensure that his struggle to slice off the German armies’ southern wing fully achieved its object. For this reason no counter-thrust by the SS Panzer Corps could be considered adequate to intercept the wide outflanking movement which the enemy would make. He would be quite powerful enough to carry out this envelopment and screen it off to the west around Kharkov simultaneously. Even the sum total of possible German reinforcements would still not be enough to stop this enemy thrust. It was absolutely essential, therefore, that First Panzer Army, now on its way to the Middle Donetz, should be immediately followed by Fourth Panzer Army to intercept the still not acute, but nonetheless inevitable threat of an enemy envelopment between the Donetz and Dnieper. Only then would it be possible, in co-operation with the approaching reinforcements, to restore the situation on the German southern wing of the Eastern Front i.e. the entire stretch of front from the coast of the Sea of Azov to the right wing of Central Army Group. Unless Fourth Panzer Army were pulled back from the Lower Don, this would not be possible. Yet to take it away from there automatically implied withdrawing from the Don-Donetz salient into the Mius positions along its base. There was not a day to lose over this.
Indeed, it was already doubtful thanks to the delay in taking a decision whether Army Detachment Hollidt, now saddled with the defence of the whole front from the coastline to the Middle Donetz, would ever get back to the Mius in time. Consequently I had to receive permission that very day to give up the eastern part of the Donetz area as far as the Mius.
This statement of mine to which, incidentally, Hitler listened with the utmost composure — was followed by a dispute on the Donetz basin issue lasting several hours. Even during the second part of our talks, when I discussed the whole problem of leadership with him in private, Hitler kept coming back to it.
As was to be my experience on similar occasions, he avoided any real discussion of what I had to say on operational matters. He did not even try to propound a better plan of his own or to refute the assumptions on which I had based my arguments. Nor did he dispute that the situation would develop in the way I felt bound to anticipate. He treated every statement not bearing directly on the most pressing needs of the moment as sheer hypothesis which might or might not become reality. Now, all considerations of an operational nature are ultimately based -especially when one has lost the initiative to the enemy — on appreciations or hypotheses regarding the course of action which the enemy may be expected to take. While no one can prove beforehand that a situation will develop in such-and-such a way, the only successful military commander is the one who can think ahead. He must be able to see through the veil in which the enemy’s future actions are always wrapped, at least to the extent of correctly judging the possibilities open to both the enemy and himself. The greater one’s sphere of command, of course, the further ahead one must think. And the greater the distances to be covered and the formations to be moved, the longer is the interval that must elapse before the decision one has taken can produce tangible results. This long-term thinking was not to Hitler’s taste, however at least not in the operational field. Possibly he disliked the prospect of being confronted with conclusions which did not conform to his wishes. Since these could not be refuted, he avoided becoming involved in them wherever possible.
And so this time, too, he mainly drew his arguments from other fields. He began by dwelling on his understandable aversion to any voluntary surrender of hard-won territory so long as it could not be proved as he thought that no alternative method existed. It was a viewpoint which every soldier will appreciate. In my own case, particularly, it went right against the grain on this and so many later occasions to have to goad Hitler into giving territory up. I should have much preferred to be able to submit plans for successful offensives instead of for the now inevitable withdrawals. But it is a well-known maxim of war that whoever tries to hold on to everything at once, finishes up by holding nothing at all.
Another argument which Hitler kept advancing was that any shortening of the front such as I had proposed for the purpose of making additional forces available would release an equivalent proportion of enemy forces which could then be thrown into the scale at a crucial spot. This, in itself, was also quite a tenable argument. The constantly decisive factor in any such shift of forces, however, is which of the two opponents gains the lead in other words, which of them is offered the opportunity, by his own timely action, to seize the initiative at the crucial spot and thereafter to dictate his own terms to the more slow-moving enemy, even when the latter is collectively the stronger. In the case of any attempt to hold the Don-Donetz salient, moreover, the excessive length of the fronts virtually cancelled out the superiority in strength usually enjoyed by a defender over his attacker. In conditions of this kind the attacker has a chance to pierce the over-extended front at a spot of his own choosing, using relatively small forces and suffering no great losses. Since the defence lacks reserves, he is able to demolish the whole structure.
Hitler also argued that if one fought bitterly for every foot of ground and made the enemy pay dearly for every step he advanced, even the Soviet armies’ offensive power must one day be exhausted. The enemy had now been attacking for two and a half months without a break. His losses were high and he must soon be at the end of his tether. As he drew further away from his starting lines, moreover, his supply difficulties would halt any far-flung outflanking movement he might be planning.
There was certainly a great deal of truth in all that Hitler said. Undoubtedly the enemy had had very big losses, at least when attacking sectors held by the Germans, and these would have made large inroads on his offensive power. Yet he had had correspondingly easy successes in sectors where there was not the stubborn resistance of German troops to contend with. It was also true that the losses of the Soviet troops the infantry first and foremost had greatly lowered their quality, otherwise we could not have held our own against such odds. But however much the enemy divisions’ losses might reduce their combat efficiency, there were always new ones to take their place. As for Soviet supply difficulties, these could indeed be expected to increase the further the enemy’s operations took him. But in this age of motor transport the distances from the armies’ railheads to the Sea of Azov or the Lower Dnieper were not big enough to frustrate the impending Soviet drive to lop off the German southern wing.
During World War I it had still been accepted that no army could normally put more than 95 miles between itself and its railhead. That this figure no longer held good in World War II had been adequately proved by our own operations in both east and west. In addition, the Russians were masters at the rapid reconstruction of railways, which presented relatively few engineering problems on those vast expanses of plain. In any case, it was entirely wrong to base our own measures on the vague hope that the enemy would soon reach the limit of his strength or mobility. When all was said and done, our own divisions, long overtaxed and severely bled, were themselves not far from exhaustion. In this respect I must emphasize that Hitler was fully aware of the condition and casualties of our own troops. What he did not care to admit was that the newly established divisions initially had to pay far too high a toll in blood on account of their lack of combat experience. On the other hand, he did agree that the Luftwaffe field divisions had proved a fiasco, and even confessed that they had been brought into existence as a concession to Göring’s thirst for prestige.
All Hitler actually had to say about the operational position was to express the belief that the SS Panzer Corps would be able to remove the acute threat to the Middle Donetz front by a south-easterly thrust from the Kharkov region in the direction of Isyum. His one reservation was that by the time the corps’ second division, the ‘Leibstandarte’, arrived, the ‘Reich’ Division should have dealt with the enemy at Volchansk. (A third division could not come until later.) His faith in the penetrating power of this newly established SS Panzer Corps was apparently unbounded. Otherwise, however, his statements showed that he still did not, or would not, realize the dangers of the less immediate future, especially when the enemy’s Stalingrad formations appeared on the new battlefield.
But the most decisive argument repeatedly put forward by Hitler was the present impossibility, as he saw it, of giving up the Donetz area. He feared the repercussions on Turkey, for one thing. Most of all, he stressed the importance of the Donetz coal to our own war economy and the effect on the enemy of continuing to be deprived of it. Only by regaining this coal, he said, would the Russians be able to maintain their steel production and thereby keep up their output of tanks, guns and ammunition. When reminded that they had turned out plenty of tanks and ammunition to date despite having lost the Donetz basin, Hitler replied that they were simply living off their existing stocks of steel. If they did not get the coalfields back, he insisted, they could not keep up their previous production, which in turn would prevent them from mounting any more big offensives. Now no one would deny that the enemy must be having production trouble in consequence of the loss of the coking coal and the steel and other plant of the Donetz basin. One proof, in my own opinion, was the fact that he had so far not succeeded in replacing the mass of the artillery he had lost in 1941. It was this which had enabled us to defend the patchwork Chir front earlier on. That winter he did in fact have enough guns to commit an overwhelming concentration of them on limited sectors of front as, for example, during the three successive breakthroughs on the Don but he obviously still had not enough to equip all his divisions with fully mobile artillery. This discussion on the economic importance of the Donetz area, by the way, gave Hitler an opportunity to display his quite astonishing knowledge of production figures and weapon potentials.
In this conflict of views on the advisability or otherwise of trying to hold on to the Donetz basin, I was ultimately left with only one trump card in my hand. Shortly before my flight to Lötzen we had had a visit at my headquarters from Paul Pleiger, President of the Reichsvereinigung Kohle, the German coal cartel. When questioned on the real importance of the Donetz area to the German and Russian war economies, he had assured me that the mines around Shakhty i.e. in that part of the basin which lay east of the Mius were in no way vital, as the coal there was unsuitable for coking or locomotive combustion. This disposed of Hitler’s objections from the standpoint of economic warfare!
But anyone who supposes that he would now admit his defeat is underestimating the man’s pertinacity. As a means at least of delaying the evacuation of the Don-Donetz salient, he finally resorted to the weather. As luck would have it, an unusually early thaw had set in during the last few days. The road across the ice of Taganrog Bay could no longer be used with complete safety, and although the Don and Donetz were still frozen over, it was always possible that the ice would soon start breaking up if the milder weather continued.
Hitler now used all the eloquence at his command to persuade me that in only a few days’ time the broad valley of the Don might well be an impassable obstacle over which the enemy could not possibly attack before summer. Conversely, our own Fourth Panzer Army would get bogged down in the mud if it moved west. The least I could do in the circumstances, he said, was to wait for a short while longer.
When I still would not budge and refused to stake the fate of my Army Group on the hope of a quite unseasonable change of weather, Hitler finally agreed to the withdrawal of the Army Group’s eastern front to the Mius. If one included the discussion on the command problem, we had been in conference for four whole hours.
The extent of Hitler’s perseverance is shown by a small thing which happened just after I had taken leave of him. Having given what amounted to final approval of my operational intentions, he called me back again as I was about to leave his room. He said that while he naturally had no wish to alter a decision once it had been agreed upon, he would still urge me to consider just once more whether I could not wait for at least a little longer. A thaw in the Don basin might even yet enable us to remain in the Don-Donetz salient. I still stood firm, however. All I would promise him was not to issue the withdrawal order until I reached my headquarters at noon next day, provided the situation report sent up that evening did not necessitate immediate action.
I have given all this space to my interview with Hitler not only on account of the decisive effect it had on the outcome of the campaign that winter, but also because I find it in many respects typical of his attitude and of the difficulty of getting him to accept anything which did not conform to his own wishes.
It would be wrong to suppose, just because we had succeeded, after a long tussle, in obtaining Hitler’s agreement to the evacuation of the east of the Donetz basin which in turn enabled us to throw Fourth Panzer Army over to our western wing that the menace to the German southern wing as a whole was already eliminated. The process of ‘leap-frogging’ Fourth Panzer Army from east to west was bound to take about two weeks, in view of the distance involved and the state of the roads. Furthermore, it was by no means certain whether Army Detachment Hollidt would reach the Mius positions safely, considering that the enemy in its deep flank around Voroshilovgrad was already south of the Donetz. It was still uncertain, moreover, whether First Panzer Army could hold, or restore to any reasonable extent, the front on the Middle Donetz. Above all, the situation in the area of Army Group B i.e. in the region of Kharkov was shaping so ominously that all sorts of opportunities were opening up to the enemy. Not only could he drive through to the Dnieper crossings at Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye and cut off Don Army Group’s communications there; it was even possible for him to cross the river further upstream and block it from the west. Besides shifting Fourth Panzer Army over to the western wing of the Army Group, therefore, it would be necessary to form a new grouping of forces to replace Army Group B’s allied armies, which had by now gone almost completely to pieces.
At noon on 7th February I arrived back at my headquarters at Staline. The situation on the Don had been aggravated by the capture of Bataisk, a suburb of Rostov on the south bank of the river. Immediately upon my return the Army Group gave orders to fall back behind the Don and begun moving H.Q. Fourth Panzer Army, together with whatever divisions it could make available, over to the western wing. Army Detachment Hollidt received instructions to retire to the line Novocherkask-Kamensk in the first instance.
On 8th February further emergencies arose at Rostov and Voroshilovgrad, where the enemy broke out of the bridgehead he had gained earlier on. The position of First Panzer Army, now involved in the fighting on the Middle Donetz, was just as critical inasmuch as the success we had hoped it would score against the enemy advancing across the stretch of river between Lisichansk and Slavyansk had so far not materialized.
Around Kharkov, in the area of Army Group B, a new army detachment was just being formed under General Lanz. The SS Panzer Corps, which was still in the process of arriving, had been placed under its command. We learnt that the SS ‘Reich’ Division, which was to have smashed the enemy at Volchansk preparatory to thrusting south-east towards Isyum, had in fact come nowhere near doing so. On the contrary, it had retired behind the Donetz. In the circumstances it was certain that nothing would come of the thrust which Hitler had proposed making with the SS Panzer Corps-of which the ‘Reich’ Division was the only formation so far available to relieve the pressure on our western flank.
On 9th February the enemy had taken Belgorod and Kursk, in Army Group B’s area north of Kharkov. He was also advancing west from the Donetz bend around Isyum. In the gap between the Dnieper and the right wing of Central Army Group, which only began some considerable distance north of Kursk, there was practically nothing but Army Detachment Lanz (whose assembly at Kharkov was already imperilled) and Army Group B’s badly battered Second Army west of Kursk.
In view of the fact that the enemy could now carry out a wide out-flanking movement across the Dnieper upstream from Dnepropetrovsk, it was clear that despite the steps taken to shift Fourth Panzer Army to the western wing, Don Army Group would in the long run be unable to guarantee the security of its rear communications with its own forces alone. Something radical had to be done. I accordingly sent General Zeitzler a teleprinter message calling for the deployment within the next fortnight of a new army of at least five or six divisions in the area north of Dnepropetrovsk, as well as of another army behind Second Army’s front i.e. west of Kursk— for a thrust to the south. To do this, I said, there must be a basic improvement in the efficiency of transport, as the slow trickle of divisions which had been coming through to date could not possibly help matters in the present situation.
General Zeitzler did hold out the prospect of really effective assistance from now on. He hoped that he could at last release six more divisions from Central and Northern Army Groups and get these to us faster than had been the case hitherto. The daily number of trains he envisaged was thirty-seven, which meant that we could count on having one of the six promised divisions every other day. In view of the breadth of the gap torn in the German front, of course, even these forces would be no more than a stop-gap to tide us over the worst dangers until the muddy season set in, and whether they would arrive in time depended on developments around Kharkov, on which our own Army Group had no influence. In any case, the German southern wing remained overshadowed by the mortal danger that either before or immediately after the muddy season the enemy would push through to the Sea of Azov or, by striking even further west, to the Black Sea.
While the Army Group’s deep flank thus constituted its main source of anxiety, the trend of events on its own fronts was also far from encouraging.
First Panzer Army (commander, General v. Mackensen; Chief-of-Staff, Colonel Wenck), the task of which was to throw the enemy who had crossed the Middle Donetz back across the river, had to contend with two superior enemy forces. The first, which had come over the Donetz at Voroshilovgrad, was trying to drive in between Army Detachment Hollidt as it fell back on the Mius and First Panzer Army as it moved up to the Donetz from the south. The other was the force which had crossed the Donetz along the Lisichansk-Slavyansk line and was now striving to shift its main effort to its western wing on both sides of the Krivoi Torets. First Panzer Army, which was liable to be enveloped from both flanks, had to try to tackle the two groups of enemy successively. The Army Group’s own view was that it should deliver the first punch on its western wing and dispatch the enemy at Slavyansk before turning on the force at Voroshilovgrad. Unfortunately the army had initially been compelled to tie up part of its forces with the latter group, with the result that it was no longer strong enough to beat the enemy at Slavyansk. This, in turn, meant that there could not be enough forces south of Voroshilovgrad to block the enemy’s thrust to the south-west.
As is so often the case in times of crisis, the large-scale emergencies were intensified by irritations of a localized character. On the basis of a reconnaissance carried out before it dispatched 40 Panzer Corps to destroy the enemy force advancing from Slavyansk, First Panzer Army had decided that it was impossible for tanks to outflank the enemy over the ground west of the Krivoi Torets because the deep fissures criss-crossing this particular stretch of country were buried in snow. Consequently 40 Panzer Corps put in its attack more or less frontally along and eastwards of the river valley. As the intense cold of the Russian winter makes it virtually impossible for troops to remain in the open country at night, most of the fighting inevitably took place around the inhabited localities in the Krivoi Torets valley, the first main objective being possession of the big factory town of Kramatorskaya. In a battle of this kind, however, there was no hope of gaining the quick decision we so urgently needed against the enemy force at Slavyansk, and 11 Panzer Division, which was leading the attack, progressed only with great difficulty.
While the Army Group’s intention of cutting the enemy off from the Donetz by enveloping him from the west had thus been rendered nugatory, the latter pushed a strong force of armour through the allegedly impassable country west of the Krivoi Torets on the night of 11th February, penetrating as far as Grishino. Once again it was seen that the western conception of impassability had only limited validity where the Russians are concerned partly, of course, because the wider tracks of Soviet armoured vehicles made it considerably easier for them to negotiate the mud or deep snow which held up our own tanks. At Grishino the enemy was now not only deep in the flank of First Panzer Army but also blocking the Army Group’s main railway line from Dnepropetrovsk to Krasnoarmeiskoye. Only the railway through Zaporozhye remained open, and even in this case efficiency was reduced by the fact that the big Dnieper bridge destroyed by the enemy in 1941 was still not open to traffic. As a result all goods had to be reloaded, and tank-wagons carrying petrol could not go through to the front.
While supplies to the battle front, especially petrol, were thus endangered and First Panzer Army was faced with the threat of being outflanked from the west, the enemy simultaneously tried to turn its flank from the east with the forces which had broken through by way of Voroshilovgrad. In particular, one enemy cavalry corps had managed to penetrate as far as the important rail junction of Debaltsevo, which lay not only far to the rear of the army’s right wing but even behind the position due to be occupied by Army Detachment Hollidt on the Mius. Although it was possible to surround this corps at Debaltsevo, its destruction proved a difficult and lengthy business on account of the tough resistance it put up in the villages. As a result 17 Panzer Division, which was urgently required on the army’s western wing, remained tied down here for the time being.
On the eastern front, Soviet armoured forces just back from a rest and refit pressed hard behind Army Detachment Hollidt as it fell back on the Mius. As a result we were temporarily unable to pull out the armoured divisions still with the Army Detachment. (The Army Detachment did, nonetheless, succeed in reaching the Mius positions on 17th February and in organizing a defence there.)
On the western wing it had meanwhile proved possible to halt the enemy armour at Grishino by throwing in the ‘Viking’ Division as it arrived from the Don. The latter was unable to dispose of the enemy with any speed, however. Apart from having been considerably weakened in the recent heavy fighting, it was suffering from an acute shortage of officers. The division was composed of SS volunteers from the Baltic and Nordic countries, and its losses had been so severe that there were no longer enough officers available with a command of the appropriate languages. Naturally enough this had an adverse effect on the fighting efficiency of what was intrinsically a useful body of troops.
In the meantime Fourth Panzer Army was still moving by road and rail from the Lower Don to the western wing, its progress being considerably delayed by the bad state of the roads. Thus, apart from the fact that the enemy was already in First Panzer Army’s deep flank at Grishino and able to send in fresh forces to reinforce those temporarily held up there, the danger in the yawning gap between the left wing of First Panzer Army and the Kharkov region remained as desperate as ever. In this area the enemy had complete freedom of action. These critical developments in the Army Group’s own area were primarily the result of the excessive length of time it had had to leave its forces forward on the Don and Donetz to cover the withdrawal of Army Group A. Henceforth our headquarters also watched Army Group B’s sector with growing alarm.
The enemy was capable while ensuring that he was covered in the direction of Kharkov of moving down on Pavlograd with the forces reported to be advancing westwards from Isyum. From Pavlograd he could go on to the Dnieper crossings of Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye, thereby severing the Army Group’s communications across the river. He could, moreover, try to over-run Army Detachment Lanz, which was still in the process of assembling. If he succeeded, his way across the Dnieper would be open on both sides of Kremenchug, and he would subsequently be able to block the approaches to the Crimea and the Dnieper crossing at Kherson. The result would be the encirclement of the entire German southern wing. Even if the onset of the muddy season, which usually came about the end of March, were to interrupt such a far-reaching operation, the enemy could still be expected to continue pursuing this objective once it was over.
In the light of these reflections, I sent O.K.H. a fresh appreciation of the situation on 12th February for submission to Hitler. Basing myself on the operational considerations outlined above, I laid special emphasis on two points:
First, the ratio of forces. I pointed out that although the enemy had quite obviously been trying for almost three months past to precipitate matters on the Eastern Front by either demolishing or isolating our southern wing, the distribution of forces on our own side still took not the least account of this fact. Even if one allowed for the large number of divisions which had been sent to Don Army Group in recent months, the ratio of German to Soviet forces here and in Army Group B was still at least 1: 8, whereas in the case of Central and Northern Army Groups it stood at 1:4. Now it was quite understandable that O.K.H. should hesitate to create new crisis spots by taking forces away from these two Army Groups. Furthermore, O.K.H. had probably been quite right when it pointed out, in reply to previous representations from me on the subject, that almost the whole of the available replacements of troops and weapons were being sent to Don Army Group, as a result of which the fighting potential of Central and Northern Army Groups was lower than our own. To all this, however, we could retort that the divisions of Don Army Group had been involved in incessant and very heavy fighting for months on end, which was not so in the case of the two Army Groups in the north. Besides, our divisions were fighting in open country, while Central and Northern Army Groups were established in timbered dug-outs.
The crucial factor, in any case, was that the enemy’s decisive effort was directed not against the central or northern sectors of the German armies but against their southern wing, and that it was inadmissible that we should continue to be left at such a numerical disadvantage.
It could be taken for granted that even if we succeeded in averting the danger of being cut off from the Dnieper crossings, the enemy would still not lose sight of his more far-reaching aim of destroying the southern wing by surrounding it on the sea-coast. For this reason there must at all costs be a radical improvement in the ratio of forces on the German southern wing, even if it involved making concessions on other parts of the front or in other theatres of war.
In addition to ventilating this fundamental question of the overall distribution of forces, I also stated my views to O.K.H. on the subsequent conduct of operations on the German southern wing. This will be dealt with in the chapter on Operation Citadel.
During the night of 12th February the Army Group-which had meanwhile been renamed Southern Army Group — moved its headquarters to Zaporozhye with a view to having the best possible control of the battle at what would shortly become the decisive spot.
On the night of 13th February a directive was received from O.K.H. which was obviously the sequel to my proposals of 9th February. It ruled, in accordance with these proposals, that a new army should deploy on the line Poltava-Dnepropetrovsk and another behind the southern wing of Second Army. In the event, however, neither army was ever formed. The one which was due to deploy behind Second Army did not arrive at all. While Second Army did receive a few reinforcements, they were given to it at the cost of those promised to ourselves. The army which was to deploy on the line Poltava—Dnepropetrovsk was Army Detachment Lanz, already committed at Kharkov. It was subsequently placed under command of Southern Army Group, together with the sector of Army Group B inclusive of Belgorod. Second Army went over to Central Army Group, and H.Q. Army Group B was finally withdrawn from the Eastern Front order of battle.
And so, around the middle of February 1943, the acute crisis in the area of Southern Army Group reached a new climax. With it the danger that the entire southern wing of armies would be encircled by an extensive flanking movement from the neighbouring sector in the north threatened to take shape sooner or later. And yet, paradoxically, it was in this very culmination of the crisis that the germs of a counter-stroke lay.
Initially, however, the picture became gloomier still.
It was undoubtedly a hazardous step to withdraw Army Group B at this particular moment from command at the cleft in the front. Although, apart from Second Army, it now had nothing but the battered remains of various units at its disposal, it still constituted an essential link in the chain of command on the Eastern Front. Its removal was bound to cause the front to burst open at the seam between Central and Southern Army Groups.
In point of fact, moreover, H.Q.. Southern Army Group could not yet assume command of the Kharkov sector now apportioned to it (i.e. that held by Army Detachment Lanz), as no signals links had been established. Before we could take over, Kharkov was due to be lost. The fact that the take-over could take place as quickly as it did was due to the consistently high performance of the Army Group signals regiment and the purposeful way in which our Chief Signals Officer, General Müller, handled our communications. As usual we got liberal assistance from my friend General Fellgiebel, the chief of the Corps of Signals.
But although the removal of H.Q. Army Group B complicated the handling of operations at the most delicate spot on the Eastern Front, it still served one useful purpose. By bringing Army Detachment Lanz under Southern Army Group, it enabled our headquarters to exercise exclusive command at the decisive place and the decisive time. In effect this contributed substantially to the final success of the winter campaign of 1942-3.
Meanwhile the Kharkov area was to become a fresh source of anxiety or the Army Group, even if Army Group B or rather Hitler, by dint of his personal interventions — remained in command there for a few days yet.
Army Detachment Lanz had been ordered by Hitler to hold Kharkov at all costs, which now threatened to become a prestige issue like Stalingrad before it. With the object of relieving the pressure on Southern Army Group’s left flank, moreover, the Army Detachment was to thrust in the direction of Losovaya with the SS Panzer Corps as its nucleus. Of the latter’s three armoured divisions, there were still only two to hand.
Clearly the Army Detachment could fulfil only one of these two tasks with the forces at its command. It could either fight around Kharkov or else lend a hand on the left wing of Southern Army Group. I therefore suggested to Hitler that Army Detachment Lanz should forgo Kharkov for the time being and try instead to beat the enemy south of the city. By this means the danger of the Army Group’s being enveloped across the Dnieper on both sides of Kremenchug would be temporarily eliminated. On the other hand, it was reasonable to suppose that by throwing in Fourth Panzer Army, we could cope on our own with the enemy making for the Dnieper crossings at Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk. Once Lanz had dealt with the enemy south of Kharkov he could turn his attention to recapturing the city.
This solution, however, did not suit Hitler, for whom Kharkov, as the fourth biggest city in the Soviet Union, had already become a symbol of prestige, and on 13th February he again passed a strict order to Army Detachment Lanz, through Army Group B, to hold Kharkov at all costs.
Thereupon I demanded to be informed by O.K.H. whether this order would remain in force after Lanz had come under my own command and whether we should adhere to it even if the SS Panzer Corps were threatened with encirclement in Kharkov. I also requested an answer to the general appreciation which I had sent to Lötzen the previous day. In reply General Zeitzler told me that Hitler had described it as ‘much too far-reaching’. To this I retorted that I considered it only right for an army group to think four to eight weeks ahead unlike the Supreme Command, which never seemed to look any further than the next three days.
As for the situation at Kharkov, circumstances proved stronger than Hitler’s will. The SS Panzer Corps, which really was in danger of being surrounded there, evacuated the city on 15th February incidentally against the orders of General Lanz. This accomplished fact was reported to us by Army Group B, which finally relinquished its command about this time. Had the evacuation of Kharkov been ordered by a general of the army, Hitler would undoubtedly have had him court-martialled. But because this action had quite rightly been taken by the SS Panzer Corps, nothing of the sort occurred. All the same, the commander of Army Detachment Lanz was replaced a few days later by General Kempf on the grounds that Lanz was a mountaineer, while Kempf was a tank specialist.
While the situation around Kharkov was manifestly deteriorating during the period in which Army Group B handed over the area to Southern Army Group, the possibility of the latter’s being cut off from its communications across the Dnieper also became acute.
It was reported on 10th February that the enemy— as we had been expecting him to do for some time past — was advancing in strength towards Pavlograd and Dnepropetrovsk from the area west of Isyum. If he succeeded in reaching Losovaya junction or Pavlograd (or alternatively the station of Sinsinikovo hard to the south-west of Pavlograd), the railway link through Poltava would be severed.
At the same time the speed of arrival of the reinforcements promised by O.K.H. slackened off again. Instead of the scheduled thirty-seven troop-trains per day, only six had come through on 14th February.
Furthermore, Central Army Group announced that at present it lacked the necessary forces to make any serious attempt to co-operate with Southern Army Group along the line of cleavage between us. Apparently it would be more than happy if it succeeded in halting Second Army, which was falling back into a concavity which already extended far west of Kursk.
The situation had become so critical that Hitler decided to visit me at my headquarters. Presumably my various comments had set him thinking. Much as I welcomed the prospect of putting my views to him personally and of letting him see the seriousness of our position for himself, it was naturally difficult to guarantee his safety in a sizeable factory town like Zaporozhye (on which the enemy was advancing) particularly as he had expressed the intention of staying for some days. He and his suite, which included the Chief of the General Staff and General Jodl (and, as usual, his private cook), were accommodated in our office building, the whole vicinity of which had to be hermetically sealed off. Even then the situation was not very reassuring, for Hitler’s arrival had not passed unnoticed. As he drove into Zaporozhye from the airfield he was recognized by soldiers and Party officials in the streets. Practically the only troops we had available were our own defence company and a few anti-aircraft units, and before long enemy tanks were to get so close to the town that they could have fired at the airfield lying east of the Dnieper.
Hitler arrived at my headquarters at noon on 17th February. I began by giving him the following review of the situation:
Army Detachment Hollidt had reached the Mius positions that same day, closely pursued by the enemy.
First Panzer Army had halted the enemy at Grishino, but not yet finished him off. In the Kramatorskaya area, likewise, the battle against the enemy forces which had come over the Lisichansk-Slavyansk line was still undecided.
Army Detachment Lanz, having evacuated Kharkov, had withdrawn south-west towards the Mosh sector.
I then went on to inform Hitler of my intention to take the SS Panzer Corps right out of Kharkov, leaving only the balance of Army Detachment Lanz in occupation.
The SS Panzer Corps was to thrust south-eastwards from the Krasnograd area in the general direction of Pavlograd, thereby coming into concert with Fourth Panzer Army as it moved up there. The job of these forces would be to smash the enemy advancing through the broad gap between First Panzer Army and Army Detachment Lanz. As soon as this had been achieved and there was no further danger that Army Detachment Hollidt and First Panzer Army would be cut off, we should proceed to attack in the Kharkov area.
Hitler at first refused to discuss the sequence of the operations I was proposing. He would not admit that there really were powerful forces advancing through the area between First Panzer Army and Army Detachment Lanz. He also feared that the operations I envisaged between the Dnieper and the Donetz would become bogged down in the mud. As the winter was already quite far advanced, this was naturally a possibility to be reckoned with. But the main reason for Hitler’s negative reaction was most probably the wish to recapture Kharkov at the earliest possible date, which he hoped would be when the SS Panzer Corps had assembled its full complement of divisions. In fact the situation was such that a prior condition for any stroke in the direction of Kharkov was the removal of the threat to the Dnieper crossings.
Unless the communications across this river were kept open, neither First Panzer Army nor Army Detachment Hollidt could remain alive. For the stroke at Kharkov, moreover, the co-operation of at least a part of Fourth Panzer Army would be needed. Since it was certain that when the thaw finally put an end to operations, it would do so in the region between the Donetz and Dnieper before it affected the country around and north of Kharkov, one could reasonably hope that we should still have time to attack at Kharkov after we had beaten the enemy now advancing between First Panzer Army and Army Detachment Lanz. On the other hand, it was more than doubtful whether the two operations could be carried out the other way round.
Because of the obstinacy with which Hitler invariably clung to his point of view, another interminable discussion ensued. I finally put an end to it by pointing out that as the SS Panzer Corps must in any case first assemble on the Kharkov-Krasnograd road, which it could not do before 19th February at the earliest, the final decision on whether to go north or south need not be taken till then. This dilatory approach of mine was made possible by the reflection that Fourth Panzer Army could not be available before 19th February either. I also felt justified in assuming that Hitler would be brought to reason by the course of events which he was now experiencing at first hand.
On 18th February I saw Hitler again. The enemy had attacked in strength on the Mius and penetrated at several places into the as yet unconsolidated front of Army Detachment Hollidt. Furthermore, it had still not been possible to destroy the enemy cavalry corps encircled behind this front at Debaltsevo. I submitted to Hitler that in spite of this it was still urgently necessary to withdraw motorized units from here to the western wing, even if it were not possible at that particular moment. The enemy mechanized corps in the deep flank of First Panzer Army at Grishino was not yet defeated either, so that the forces committed there were still tied up,
On the other hand, there was now incontestable evidence that the enemy in the gap between First Panzer Army and Army Detachment Lanz was indeed advancing in force against the Dnieper crossings. His 267 Rifle Division had been identified south of Krasnograd, and he had taken Pavlograd with 35 Guards Division, which included a tank battalion. An Italian division located there (one left over from the former Italian Army) had hurriedly pulled out on the approach of the enemy.
Army Detachment Lanz had reported that the wheeled-vehicle units of the ‘Death’s Head’ SS Panzer Division were completely bogged down between Kiev and Poltava. This washed out the northwards stroke to retake Kharkov which had been Hitler’s primary concern. If the SS Panzer Corps had not even been able to hold the city without the ‘Death’s Head’ Division, it was less likely than ever to recapture it when the latter’s availability date could not be anticipated for the time being. The only thing we could do, therefore, was to strike south eastwards and destroy the enemy advancing through the gap between Army Detachment Lanz and First Panzer Army. Since the thaw must be expected in that area, too, in the very near future, there was no time to lose. In the circumstances Hitler agreed to my idea of immediately committing the ‘Reich’ Division, as the first available formation of the SS Panzer Corps, in the direction of Pavlograd. The ‘Leibstandarte’ Division was to provide Fourth Panzer Army’s operation with cover against the enemy pushing hard southwards from Kharkov. At all events it was now to be hoped that Fourth Panzer Army, reinforced by the ‘Reich’ Division, would be successful.
Following this decision, I put my view to Hitler on the situation generally. I pointed out that even if we managed — and it was far from certain that we should to avoid any unfavourable developments until the muddy season set in, I still had to think ahead. The mud would not give us a break of more than a few weeks. After that the Army Group would have a front of 470 miles to hold, for which, inclusive of the forces of Army Detachment Lanz, there were thirty-two divisions available. On the other hand, it could be taken for granted that once the muddy season was over, the enemy would again direct his main effort against the German southern wing and go all out to encircle it on the Black Sea.
A front of 470 miles defended by only about thirty divisions, I told Hitler, could be pierced by a stronger enemy at any point he liked. Above all, no one could prevent him from steadily outflanking the Army Group to the north until he reached the Sea of Azov or the Black Sea.
Once the muddy season finished, therefore, the Army Group must not remain stationary until the enemy broke through somewhere or outflanked it in the north. It could only afford to stay where it was if O.K.H. were able to launch a well-timed offensive stroke to relieve the pressure on the front which still projected a long way eastwards.
My purpose in putting forward these ideas was to persuade Hitler to consider operations on a long-term basis for once. It was obvious, however, that he had no intention whatever of committing himself. While admitting that the Army Group’s forces would be too weak to defend that front in the coming year, he would not accept the ratio of strengths I had given him. He did not dispute the presence opposite us of the 341 enemy formations we had identified, but contended that they were no longer of any value. When I objected that our own divisions were also at the end of their tether, he replied that they would be brought fully up to strength and issued with new weapons during the muddy season (which in point of fact they were). He would not recognize, however, that during that same period the enemy would bring his 1926 class of one and a half million men to the front.
Neither would he admit that with the number of tanks the enemy could produce in two months (i.e. the approximate duration of the muddy season) he could refit about sixty armoured brigades. Instead, Hitler was at pains to emphasize the decisive importance which the Donetz area would have for Soviet tank production if it were once to fall back into enemy hands. As for Germany’s own conduct of operations in the east in 1943, he could not take the forces for a large offensive from any of the other theatres, nor could he find them from newly drafted units. On the other hand, he did think that it would be possible to take limited and localized action with the help of new weapons. This brought Hitler right back to the subject of weapons and weapon production, and it proved impossible to pin him down on his intentions regarding the coming summer campaign.
We lived, it seemed, in two entirely different worlds.
On 19th February a further conference took place, and this time Field-Marshal v. Kleist had been asked to attend. Apparently Hitler’s stay at my headquarters had quite impressed him after all as to the dangers on the German southern wing, for he announced that Army Group A was henceforth to transfer whatever forces it could possibly spare to Southern Army Group. In his own words, Army Group A would henceforth be regarded as an ‘adjacent reservoir of forces’ for the Southern Army Group front, which presumably meant that his plan for bringing the Kuban bridgehead back into the operational picture at some later date was now on the shelf. The future was to show, unfortunately, that this ‘reservoir’ was not to be exploited on anything like the scale which the transport facilities over the Crimea would have allowed. The Kuban bridgehead was to go on living its isolated existence. Experience has long taught that nothing is more difficult than to get forces released from a place once they have been wrongly tied up there.
That day tension mounted even higher when the enemy, apparently in considerable strength, reached the railway station of Sinsinokovo. As a result of this he not only temporarily blocked the main supply line to the centre and right wing of the Army Group but was also less than 35—40 miles away from the headquarters in which the Führer of the Reich was staying! As there were no troops whatever on the intervening ground, I was most relieved when Hitler flew home the same afternoon. It was quite conceivable that by the following day the enemy tanks could have denied us the use of our airfield lying east of the Dnieper.
The last point I had made to Hitler was that I should need almost all the armoured divisions for the blows I intended delivering on the western wing, which meant they would have to be taken away from the Mius positions. If it had been possible to hold the latter until now, the only reason was that the main body of the enemy forces advancing on them had to pass through the Rostov bottleneck and had not yet arrived. The possibility that the Donetz area would be taken from the east, therefore, was one which could not be ignored. Nothing could be done to prevent it until we had first removed the danger of the Army Group’s being cut off from its rear communications. This Hitler seemed to grasp.
In any case, I had the impression that Hitler’s visit to my headquarters had helped to bring home to him the danger of encirclement which immediately threatened the southern wing of the Eastern Front and would continue to do so for some time to come. In spite of this, a story was soon afterwards circulated by O.K.W. or General Schmundt that the real purpose of Hitler’s trip had been ‘to put some backbone into the Army Group’. I am not aware that my headquarters was ever in need of this. Even if we were not prepared to do what Hitler demanded and fight stolidly for every foot of ground regardless of the consequences of ‘holding on at all costs’, I do not think it would be easy to find another headquarters which, in the teeth of so many crises, clung more stubbornly than our own to its will for victory. In this respect there was never the slightest divergence between my staff and myself.
On 19th February the Army Group ordered Fourth Panzer Army to deploy for its counter attack against the enemy who had come over the line Pereshchepino-Pavlograd-Grishino to cut off the Army Group from the Dnieper.
On 20th February the picture of the enemy’s operational intentions became completely clear and proved to be exactly as we had anticipated.
On our eastern front the enemy attacked Army Detachment Hollidt’s positions on the Mius, breaking through at three main points.
To cut our communications over the Dnieper he appeared to have committed in addition to the forces held up by us at Grishino and Kramatorskaya — an army with a strength of three rifle divisions, two tank corps and some cavalry.
Simultaneously he was trying to break through the weak front of Army Detachment Kempf (General Lanz having now been relieved by General Kempf) to the west and south-west of Kharkov. Furthermore, he was making a bid to envelop this Army Detachment on its northwestern wing and — by reaching further north — to outflank it completely.
In the face of these developments the Army Group had two different things to accomplish. It must try to hold the eastern front on the Mius to the best of its ability though whether it could do so with such limited forces and without any reserves was an open question.
Secondly, it must use Fourth Panzer Army to bring about the quick defeat of the enemy in between First Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf in order to prevent its own isolation from the Dnieper crossings. If it failed in this, most of the Army Group’s forces would shortly be immobilized through a lack of motor fuel.
Once it had been possible to beat the enemy force between the Donetz and Dnieper, it would depend on how the situation had developed in the meantime whether we could immediately thrust northwards with all our mobile forces in order to restore the position of Army Detachment Kempf. On the other hand, it might first be necessary for Fourth Panzer Army to fight another action in the area of First Panzer Army if the latter had still not succeeded in dealing on its own with the enemy at Grishino and Kramatorskaya.
In any case we must hold off on our northern wing, i.e. in Army Detachment Kempf’s area, for the time being. All that the latter could be given to do at present was to bar the way to the Dnieper, be it through Krasnograd to Dnepropetrovsk or through Poltava to Kremenchug, by putting up the toughest possible resistance. Should the enemy by any chance be aspiring to reach Kiev (and the many signs that he was were making Hitler increasingly apprehensive), we could only wish him a pleasant trip. Such a far-flung outflanking movement was hardly likely to achieve any positive results before the muddy season set in.
21st February brought us the first hints of relief on what at present were the Army Group’s most vital stretches of front.
The eastern front on the Mius had held. The remnants of the enemy cavalry corps long surrounded behind it at Debaltsevo were finally compelled to surrender. An enemy tank corps which had been encircled after breaking through the Mius front at Matveyevkurgan was also doomed to destruction.
On the right wing of First Panzer Army the enemy was maintaining his pressure on the Fretter-Pico Group, obviously with the object of next unhinging the Mius position or outflanking the northern front of First Panzer Army. Opposite the latter everything remained quiet. Monitored wireless messages made it clear that the Soviet force engaged on the western front of First Panzer Army at Grishino and in the Kramatorskaya area (i.e. the Popov group) was faring badly. Evidently its supplies had broken down. Fourth Panzer Army had taken Pavlograd, and there was reason to hope that its last formations would have closed up with the main body before the roads softened. The fact that a not very powerful enemy tank force had thrust close up to Zaporozhye did not now imply any great danger. It ran out of petrol some 12 miles from the town and was duly destroyed piecemeal. Unfortunately a new division destined for Pavlograd (332) was diverted to the right wing of Central Army Group by O.K.H. while already on its way up to us. Though Second Army’s position was probably not at all rosy, Southern Army Group had a prior claim now that we were finally on the way to regaining the initiative. Whether the enemy made any progress towards Kiev in the meantime was comparatively unimportant.
That the enemy did harbour such intentions was shown by the fact that Soviet forces were advancing in considerable strength from the Belgorod direction towards Akhtyrka, clearly with a view to getting round the northern flank of Army Detachment Kempf.
In the next few days Fourth Panzer Army’s counterstroke achieved the success for which we had been hoping. With that the initiative in this campaign at last passed back to the German side.
For a start, the army smashed the forces advancing towards the Dnieper crossings i.e. those in the area around and south of Pavlograd. What Hitler had refused to accept was now substantiated, in that there did prove to be two tank, one rifle and one cavalry corps involved. Immediately afterwards it was possible, in co-operation with First Panzer Army, to defeat the four enemy tank and mechanized corps opposite its western front.
By 1st March it was clear that by reason of his defeats between the Donetz and Dnieper the enemy was also beginning to soften up opposite the northern front of First Panzer Army and that the latter would regain the Donetz line in this sector. One felt a strong temptation to chase the enemy across the still frozen river and take him in the rear in and west of Kharkov.
To have our hands free to advance across the Middle Donetz, however, it was first necessary to knock out the southern wing of the enemy’s Kharkov group, which was present in force on the Berestovaya, south-west of the city. Whether this could still be done in view of the imminent thaw was more than doubtful. Consequently the Army Group had to content itself initially with seeking out and defeating the Kharkov enemy west of the Donetz.
In the southern strip of the Army Group’s operational area, near to the coast, it had already started to thaw. At the end of February the enemy on the Mius front had given up his attempt to break through with armoured and other mobile formations and sent in rifle divisions instead. Evidently he wanted to have at least some bridgeheads west of the river before the mud came. After even this broad assault had failed, his offensive finally degenerated into fruitless local attacks.
By 2nd March the Army Group was able to survey the results of its first counterblow, delivered by Fourth Panzer Army and the left wing of First Panzer Army against the enemy between the Donetz and Dnieper. In the course of this attack and Army Detachment Hollidt’s successful defensive on the Mius, the armies of the enemy’s ‘South-West Front’ had received such a beating that they were temporarily incapable of further offensive action.
Particularly heavy punishment had been meted out to the forces which had driven forward against the left wing of First Panzer Army and into the gap between the latter and Army Detachment Kempf—the Soviet Sixth Army, the Popov Group which had fought at Grishino, and First Guards Army. The enemy’s 25 Tank Corps and three rifle divisions could be written off completely, while 3 and 10 Tank Corps and 4 Guards Tank Corps, one independent armoured brigade, one mechanized brigade, one rifle division and one ski brigade were known to have had a severe battering. In addition, heavy losses had been suffered by 1 Guards Tank Corps and 18 Tank Corps, as well as by six rifle divisions and two ski brigades.
According to reports received from our own troops, the enemy had left some 23,000 dead on the Donets-Dnieper battlefield, and the booty included 615 tanks, 354 field-pieces, 69 anti-aircraft guns and large numbers of machine-guns and mortars. The figure of 9,000 prisoners appeared small in comparison. The reason for it was that our own forces, most of which were armoured, had not been able to form an unbroken ring round the enemy. Because of the cold particularly at night the troops tended to bunch together in and around the villages, with the result that individual Soviet soldiers and units which abandoned their vehicles were left with plenty of room to slip away over the intervening countryside. It had not been possible to block the Donetz in the enemy’s rear, as it was still ice-bound and entirely passable to lightly armed troops moving on foot.
Apart from the enemy losses already mentioned, 4 Guards Mechanized Corps, which had been encircled behind the Mius front, and 7 Guards Cavalry Corps were also wiped out.
After thus regaining the initiative by the victory between the Donetz and Dnieper, Southern Army Group proceeded to deliver the stroke against the ‘Voronezh Front’—i.e. the enemy forces located in the Kharkov area—in accordance with an order already issued on 28th February. The intention was to attack these forces in their southern flank with the aim either of turning the latter or—if at all possible—of later driving into the enemy rear from the east. Our object was not the possession of Kharkov but the defeat—and if possible the destruction of the enemy units located there.
Hence the first priority was to smash the enemy’s southern wing, which consisted of Third Soviet Tank Army on the Berestovaya south-west of the city. This was achieved by Fourth Panzer Army by 5th March. Of Third Tank Army, 12 and 4 Tank Corps, a cavalry corps and three rifle divisions were partly cut to pieces and partly captured in a small pocket at Krasnograd. While there were once again relatively few prisoners, our own troops put the number of enemy dead at 12,000 and reported the capture of 61 tanks, 225 guns and 600 motor vehicles.
A turn in the weather prevented the Army Group from now moving against the rear of the enemy harassing Army Detachment Kempf at Akhtyrka and Poltava in order to make him fight a battle with reversed front. This would have necessitated Fourth Panzer Army’s crossing the Donetz downstream from Kharkov, but the ice was liable to break up at any time and no pontoon bridges would have held against the drift-ice. Even to launch a smaller-scale flanking movement by crossing the Mosh and taking the city through which the enemy’s rear communications ran — from behind hardly seemed feasible now that the ground was thawing out. Thus an attempt had to be made to roll up the enemy from the flank and to force him away from Kharkov in the process.
With this aim in view, Fourth Panzer Army— including the SS Panzer Corps, the last formation of which, the ‘Death’s Head’ Division, had meanwhile arrived complete — attacked in a northward direction from the Krasnograd area on 7th March. Army Detachment Kempf joined in as soon as the enemy began to relax his pressure on its own front.
The attack made good progress in the days that followed. By this time, however, the enemy had recognized the threat to his Voronezh Front. Our radio monitors ascertained that he was moving what appeared to be several tank and mechanized corps from the Voroshilovgrad area to Isyum, presumably for use against the flank of Fourth Panzer Army as it drove north of Kharkov. These, however, no longer achieved any notable impression, either because they had expended their offensive capacity in the preceding battles around Voroshilovgrad or on the Mius, or else because the thawing of the Donetz hindered their intervention. All the enemy could do was to win a minor bridgehead north-west of Isyum on the south bank of the river. He also fetched 2 Guards Tank Corps up to Kharkov from the east and pulled certain of his forces which had been harassing Army Detachment Kempf’s northern wing and Second Army back to Bogodukhov. As Second Army was too weak to go over to the offensive itself, it seemed doubtful whether we should succeed in preventing the forces which had pushed a long way west towards and north of Akhtyrka from escaping eastwards. Whatever happened, though, we wanted to try to force the enemy facing Army Detachment Kempf further south away from Kharkov or alternatively to cut him off from the Donetz crossings east of the river. If this came off, Kharkov could be taken by a coup de main. At all costs the Army Group wished to avoid Kharkov’s becoming a second Stalingrad in which our assault forces might become irretrievably committed.
It was inevitable, however, that the name of Kharkov should act as a magic stimulus on the fighting troops and less senior command staffs.
The SS Panzer Corps, wishing to lay the recaptured city at ‘its Führer’s’ feet as a symbol of victory, was eager to take the shortest route there, so that the Army Group had to intervene vigorously on more than one occasion to ensure that the corps did not launch a frontal assault on Kharkov and become tied down there while enemy elements still fighting to the west of the city were able to make good their escape. In the end it was possible to bring the SS Panzer Corps round to the east. The city fell without difficulty, and we succeeded in cutting off the retreat of considerable numbers of the enemy across the Donetz.
As has been seen, the enemy had been compelled by developments in the area around and south of Kharkov to thin out his forces opposite Army Detachment Kempf when they were already near to Poltava and in possession of Akhtyrka further north. Subsequently he had to move them back towards Kharkov and Belgorod, with Army Detachment Kempf in close pursuit.
On 10th March Hitler paid our headquarters a further visit. In addition to briefing him on the current situation, I dealt in particular with our view of how operations should be conducted at the end of the muddy season, which was now setting in. This will be covered in the next chapter.
On 14th March Kharkov fell to the SS Panzer Corps. At the same time, on the northern wing of Army Detachment Kempf, the ‘Gross-Deutschland’ Division moved swiftly on Belgorod. The enemy once again threw in strong armoured forces to oppose it, but these were wiped out at Gaivoron.
The capture of Kharkov and Belgorod marked the conclusion of Army Group’s second counterblow, as the increasing muddiness of the ground did not permit any further operations. As a matter of fact the Army Group would have liked to wind up by clearing out, with the help of Central Army Group, the enemy salient extending some distance westwards of Kursk in order to shorten the German front. The scheme had to be abandoned, however, as Central Army Group declared itself unable to co-operate. As a result the salient continued to constitute a troublesome dent in our front which left certain openings to the enemy and at the same time cramped our own operations. Nevertheless, the Army Group was now securely in possession of the entire Donetz front from Belgorod down to where the Mius positions branched off from it. These Donetz and Mius fronts together formed the very same line as had been held by German troops in the winter of 1941-2.
If, in conclusion, we cast a final glance at the full course and outcome of the 1942-3 winter campaign in South Russia, we must begin by acknowledging the successes attained on the Soviet side, the magnitude of which was incontestable. The Russians had contrived to encircle and destroy the German Sixth Army, the strongest we had in the field. They had, moreover, swept four allied armies clean off the map. Many brave members of the latter had fallen in battle, and considerable numbers had gone into captivity. What allied troops remained had disintegrated and had sooner or later to be withdrawn for good from the zone of operations.
Even though it was possible to reconstitute the majority of Sixth Army’s divisions from residual units and replacements and for Army Detachment Hollidt to assume the designation of Sixth Army in March 1943, the loss of the bulk of the fighting troops of twenty divisions, besides a considerable proportion of the army artillery and engineers, was quite irreparable. And limited though the fighting efficiency of the allied armies might be, their loss was still a considerable one, depriving us as it did of a substitute for German forces on quiet sectors of the front.
Yet despite the disappearance of five whole armies from the German order of battle, no one can say that this alone need have decisively influenced the outcome of the war. It was accompanied by the loss of the whole of the immense territories we had won in the 1942 summer offensive, together with their natural resources. The grab for the Caucasian oilfields, one of the fundamental aims of that offensive, had failed to come off—and here we may note that this economic goal, on which Göring had been so insistent, decisively contributed to the offensive’s split. In their pursuit of this economic objective people had forgotten that its attainment and retention always depended on defeating the main body of the enemy forces. All the same, it had still been possible to hold the part of the Donetz basin that was essential to the conduct of the war.
But great though their gains undoubtedly were, the Russians had still not succeeded in winning their decisive victory over the German southern wing, the destruction of which could probably never have been made good by our side. By the end of the winter campaign the initiative was back in German hands, and the Russians had suffered two defeats. Though not decisive in character, these did lead to a stabilization of the front and offer the German command a prospect of fighting the war in the east to a draw. Nevertheless, we could clearly bury any hope of changing the course of the war by an offensive in the summer of 1943. Our loss of fighting power had already been far too great for anything of that order.
The obvious inference for the Supreme Command to draw was that it must strive with every means at its disposal to come to terms with at least one of Germany’s opponents. Similarly it must realize the need to base its subsequent conduct of the war in the east on a policy of sparing its own forces particularly by avoiding the loss of entire armies, as at Stalingrad — while seeking to wear down the offensive capacity of the enemy’s. To that end, resolutely ignoring all secondary aspirations, it must switch the main effort to the Eastern theatre for as long as Germany’s Western adversaries were unable to land in France or to deliver a critical blow from the Mediterranean area.
If we now return to the 1942-3 winter offensive and its outcome, the next question to ask is why the Soviet command, despite its big successes in this campaign, did not achieve the decisive success of annihilating the whole of the German southern wing? After all, with that overwhelming number of formations and the operational advantages it possessed at the outset, it had the highest possible trumps to play.
It must be emphasized for a start that the Soviet command showed no lack of aggressive spirit and engaged its troops without the least regard for casualties in order to attain its objectives. The troops themselves, as was almost invariably true of the Russians, fought with great bravery and at times made unbelievable sacrifices. Nonetheless, there was an unmistakable fall-off in the quality of the infantry, and the losses of artillery in 1941-2 had still not been made good. Since the beginning of the war the Soviet leaders had unquestionably learnt a great number of lessons, especially regarding the organization and use of large armoured formations. Although the enemy had possessed large numbers of tanks as early as 1941, he had not known then how to use them as individual members of a united whole. By now he had them properly organized in his tank and mechanized corps and had also taken over the German technique of penetration in depth. In spite of this we almost always succeeded — except in the situation of November 1942—in ultimately beating or destroying these tank and mechanized formations, even when they had already driven deep into the German forward areas. After the encirclement of Sixth Army, on the other hand, they were never again able to drive through to vital spots with such speed and in such strength as to fulfil the aim of cutting off the German southern wing, whether on the Don, the coast of the Sea of Azov or the Lower Dnieper. Except for Stalingrad, where Hitler gave it the opportunity, the Soviet command was never able to bring about a battle of encirclement as we had done on various occasions in 1941, taking several thousand prisoners in the process. This held good in spite of the Russians’ enormous preponderance of forces in the winter of 1942-3 and the fact that the opening situation and the collapse of the allied armies afforded them a free passage into the rear of the German front. We, on the other hand, had had to fight a mainly frontal battle in 1941.
So let us take a look at the Soviet leadership at the top. In view of the operational situation that existed at the end of the German summer offensive, the strategic aim of encircling the German southern wing was so palpably evident that it could not possibly be overlooked. The idea of breaking through the fronts of the allied armies was also a very obvious move. In other words, not very much genius was required on the Soviet side to draft an operations plan in the late autumn of 1942.
The first stroke — the encirclement of Sixth Army — was undoubtedly correct. If it succeeded and the German Supreme Command did everything to see that it did the strongest striking force the Germans had would be eliminated. It would have been better if this first blow had been co-ordinated with the offensive against the fronts of the Italian and Hungarian Armies, in order that every effort should be made from the start to cut off the German forces at Rostov or on the Sea of Azov in one unified and large-scale assault operation. Clearly the available artillery was not equal to the task, and for this reason, presumably, the breakthrough operations had to be staggered. It is also conceivable that the transport situation did not allow the sum total of assault forces to be assembled and supplied simultaneously.
However, the unexpectedly swift and complete collapse of the allied armies on our own side compensated the Soviets to a great extent for the inconveniences which this staggering of the three breakthrough offensives entailed. When the Soviet command failed to accomplish its mission of tying off the German southern wing on the Lower Don, the Sea of Azov or, in the last instance, the Dnieper, the reason was certainly not that its offensive was necessarily bound to get bogged down in that extensive zone of operations. When considered by the standards of modern warfare, the distances to be covered by the Soviet assault groups to their various objectives were by no means excessive. Nor were the German reserves which were thrown in to meet them so strong that the Soviet offensive need have come to a standstill short of its decisive objectives and have ultimately ended in a serious reverse.
On the contrary, one must say that, with the exception of Stalingrad, the Soviet command never managed to co-ordinate strength and speed when hitting a decisive spot.
In the first phase of the winter campaign it undoubtedly tied down unnecessarily large forces against Sixth Army in order to make doubly sure of its prize. In doing so, it let slip the chance to cut off the German southern wing’s supply lines on the Lower Don. The forces that attacked the Chir front were certainly strong, but they did not act in concert.
After the breakthrough on the Italian front the Soviet command similarly failed to stake everything on quickly crossing the Donetz and reaching Rostov. With such far-reaching objectives involved, there was admittedly a danger that the Russians would later be attacked in the flank themselves, but they should have expected to derive the necessary protection here from the offensive due to be launched on the Hungarian front immediately afterwards. Risky, I agree. But anyone who is not prepared to take such risks will never achieve decisive and as was essential in this case speedy results.
Even after the successful breakthrough against the Hungarian Army, which tore open the German front from the Donetz to Voronezh, the Soviet command still failed to press on with sufficient speed and strength in the decisive direction towards the Dnieper crossings. Instead of putting all its eggs in one basket and simply leaving a strong, concentrated shock group to provide offensive protection to the west, it squandered its forces in a series of far-ranging un-coordinated thrusts at Akhtyrka and Poltava by way of Kursk, against the Dnieper and across the Donetz line Slavyansk-Lisichensk-Voroshilovgrad. In this way it enabled the German command to be stronger at the decisive spots when the time came.
Schlieffen once said that both sides in a battle or campaign, the loser just as much as the winner, contribute to the outcome by the various actions they take. The German Supreme Command’s share of responsibility for the loss of Sixth Army and indeed for the whole crisis which arose on the southern wing of the Eastern Front in the winter of 1942-3 has already been plainly stated. It is thus only fair to mention what contribution the German side made to the Russians’ ultimate failure to encircle the German southern wing. In this respect only one thing need be said: but for the almost super-human achievements of the German troops and their commanders in facing up to an enemy many times their superior in numbers, the Army Group could never have succeeded in ‘bringing its defeat underfoot’. This winter campaign could never have been fought had not our brave infantry divisions — unlike the troops of our allies, and often without adequate anti-tank defences stood firm before the assaults of the enemy’s armoured formations and, by closing the front behind his tanks whenever they broke through, ensured their ultimate destruction. A similar debt was owed to our panzer divisions, which fought with unparalleled versatility and more than doubled their effectiveness by the way they dodged from one place to the next. The German fighting troops, convinced of their superiority as soldiers, stood their ground in the most desperate situations, and their courage and self-sacrifice did much to compensate for the enemy’s numerical preponderance.
One thing must not be forgotten. It was the valiant Sixth Army which, by loyally fighting on to the last, snatched the palm of an annihilating victory against the German southern wing from the enemy’s hand. Had it, instead of resisting till early February, given up the struggle as soon as its position became hopeless, the Russians could have thrown in such an extra weight of forces at the crucial spots that their aim to encircle the whole southern wing of the German front would most probably have been achieved. Such was Sixth Army’s vital contribution to our success in once more stabilizing the situation on the Eastern Front in March 1943. Though the self-sacrifice of the men of Sixth Army may have been in vain so far as the final outcome of the war was concerned, this can never annul its moral worth.
That is why, now that we have come to the end of the chapter, the name of Sixth Army is to shine forth for one last time. This army fulfilled the highest demand that can ever be made on a soldier to fight on to the last in a hopeless situation for the sake of his comrades.