Chapter Two

Army Group South 1942

By the spring of 1942 Hitler, who was now in full command of the Wehrmacht, was determined to smash the Red Army once and for all in southern Russia. An ambitious plan was worked out that involved the seizure of Stalingrad, and the isthmus between the Don and the Volga. Following the capture of the city of Stalingrad he planned using the city as an anchor from which to send the mass of his panzer force south to occupy the Caucasus, where it would be used to cut off vital Russian oil supplies. The operation was called Operation ‘Blau’. The directive that Hitler himself dictated was executed in two stages. The first part of the summer operation was a determined all-out drive in successive enveloping thrusts along the Kursk-Voronezh axis, where it was to destroy the Soviet southern flank and carry on to the Don River. The second part was the advance to Stalingrad and across the lower Don into the Caucasus. For this operation Heeresgruppe Süd would be divided. He ordered General List’s Heeresgruppe A south towards Rostov and the Caucasus, while General Weichs’s Heeresgruppe B would be responsible for the drive across the lower Don to the Volga and into Stalingrad.

In the regroup, Heeresgruppe B took command of the 2nd, 4th, and 6th Armies, the first two being detached from Heeresgruppe Mitte. Heeresgruppe A was assigned with the 1st, 11th, and 17th Armies. In order to support the drive to the Volga, Italy, Hungary and Rumania took to the field. Though these allied forces were underequipped and badly trained, they were nonetheless helpful in bolstering the German forces in the area. For the summer offensive a number of divisions, especially those spearheading the drive were brought to authorized strength levels and included artillery, and anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. German strength in the air was equal to that of the 1941 campaign with 1,500 aircraft of the total 2,750 being sent down to the southern sector of the front.

As they stood poised to unleash their forces through southern Russia to the western banks of the Volga, it seemed that the Germans now held the upper hand. At dawn on 28 June 1942, the 2nd and 4th Panzer Armies opened up the ‘Blau’ offensive. Almost immediately the panzers smashed their way through lines of Red Army defences and drove at breakneck speed east of Kursk and pushed toward Voronezh, reaching the outskirts of the smouldering city in four days. Following the capture of the city, 4th Panzer Division then swung southeast along the Don where it met with Paulus’ 6th Army east of Kharkov. Over the next few weeks, strung out over more than 200 miles 6th Army with twenty divisions (250,000 men, 500 panzers, 7,000 guns and mortars, and 25,000 horses) pushed down towards the Don corridor on Stalingrad. The tremendous distances which these divisions had to cover could only be achieved by long foot-marches. Due to the lack of adequate rail and road links, natural obstacles such as the balka, which were high, steep-sided, dried-up watercourses, often obstructed the advance of a tank column until a diversion was made or a bridge erected. In some areas of the advance it was hampered by the lack of fuel, which had been temporarily diverted to Heeresgruppe A, because it had been ordered to thrust into the Caucasus and capture Grozny and the Baku oilfields. The 1st Panzer Army spearheaded the attack. Initially successful attacks were led, with Rostov, Maikop, Krasnodar, and the entire Kuban region captured. But in a number of areas there was bitter opposition and the Russians managed to hold large parts of the front. Though Russian resistance was sometimes patchy and disorganized, again and again their units fought superbly and to the death. Once more German troops found themselves unexpectedly heavily engaged. Tormented by stiff opposition some units were barely able to maintain cohesion, and were soon repulsed by skilfully deployed Russian soldiers. All along the German front to the east erupted into flame. A number of areas were ablaze as artillery, mortars, and tanks unleashed their firepower. Across selected terrain, panzers led across open fields. As they approached enemy emplacements they allowed the infantry to overtake them and sweep in against anti-tank guns, before the tanks themselves once again took over. The Russians had once more proved to be fearless defenders and this was particularly true of the anti-tank gun crews that played a key role in combating German armour.

By September 1942, despite heavy and unrelenting engagements, the Heeresgruppe A offensive was stalled in the Caucasus, and List was relieved of his command. After Hitler briefly took personal control of Heeresgruppe A, on 21 November 1942, he appointed von Kleist to personally take command. While von Kleist got himself acquainted with his new command, Heeresgruppe Don was created from the headquarters of the 11th Army in the southern sector of the Eastern Front on 22 November. The army group only lasted until February 1943 when it was combined with Heeresgruppe B and was made into the new Heeresgruppe Süd. The commander of Heeresgruppe Don was Generalfeldmarschal Erich von Manstein. At the same time General Eberhard von Mackensen was placed in charge of the 1st Panzer Army.

Heeresgruppe Don’s task was to bring the enemy attacks to a standstill and recapture the positions previously occupied by German forces. However, the situation in the area was less favourable for the Germans, for they were pitting their strength against much larger and better equipped enemy formations. Manstein’s Heeresgruppe Don initially consisted of the 6th Army, which was surrounded at Stalingrad by an enemy three times as strong. It was also composed of remnants of the once highly regarded 4th Panzer Army and two Rumanian armies. The best force that Manstein possessed was the intact 16th Motorized Division and four Rumanian divisions. To raise more forces needed to sustain itself on the battlefield Manstein knew it was imperative to shift certain formations from Heeresgruppe A and allot them to his Don force. The Feldmarschal was also aware of the dire situation of the 6th Army at Stalingrad and wanted to send a relief force to the beleaguered soldiers now trapped in and around the city.

By December 1942 the 6th Army became increasingly embroiled in bitter and bloody urbanized fighting inside the ruined city of Stalingrad. Operation ‘Winter Storm’ was launched on 12 December in an attempt to relieve the trapped 6th Army at Stalingrad. The attack was spearheaded by General Kirchner’s LVII Panzerkorps, consisting of the 6th Panzer Division, which was bolstered by some 160 tanks and forty self-propelled guns, and the mauled 23rd Panzer Division. Protecting the Panzerkorps’ flanks were Rumanian troops and two weak cavalry divisions. During the first few uneasy days of the attack the panzers steadily rolled forward, making good progress over the light snow. But despite this auspicious beginning Manstein’s forces were up against strong resilient opponents. On the second day of the operation the LVII Panzerkorps reached the Aksay River and captured the bridge at Zalivskiy. With heavy Luftwaffe support the advance moved progressively, but Manstein’s forces still had another forty-five miles to cover before it reached the pocket. On 17 December the LVII Panzerkorps increased to three divisions due to the arrival of the 17th Panzer Division. With this added strength Kirchner pushed his forces hard across the snow, fighting bitterly as they advanced. Around the town of Kumsky, halfway between the Aksay and Mishkova Rivers, the corps became bogged down in a morass of heavy protracted fighting against two strong Russian mechanized corps and two tank brigades. It seemed that Manstein’s fervent attempt to reach the Kessel and so relieve Paulus at Stalingrad was slowly slipping from his grasp. On 18 December with the cream of his armour burning and his troops fighting to break through what became known as the Aksay Line, the Feldmarschal wearily sent a message to General Kurt Zeitzler of the Army High Command requesting that the 6th Army breakout toward 4th Army. However, the appeal was refused.

On 21 December Manstein reported to Hitler that the 4th Panzer Army had advanced within thirty miles from Stalingrad, but the resistance from the enemy was so great that it could make no more progress. There was also no more fuel for the vehicles and without adequate supplies they were doomed to failure. Hitler had been initially encouraged by the success of the 4th Panzer and had ordered the SS-Panzergrenadier Division ‘Wiking’ to be transferred from Heeresgruppe A to support the armies’ drive to Stalingrad; but it was already too late. With the relief column under threat of encirclement, Manstein had no choice but to retreat back to Kotelnikovo on 29 December, leaving more than 300,000 soldiers encircled in and around Stalingrad to their fate. The limited scope of the Soviet offensive also gave General von Kleist time to withdraw Heeresgruppe A out of the Caucasus and back over the Don at Rostov.

With the relief effort in tatters Soviet forces in considerable strength launched a successful offensive against Heeresgruppe A. The 1st Panzer Army was quickly withdrawn and evacuated through Rostov in January 1943, before the Soviets could cut it off in the Kuban. On 13 January 1943, four armies of General Golikov’s Voronezh Front unleashed a massive attack that encircled and destroyed the Hungarian Second Army near Svoboda on the Don. An attack on the German 2nd Army further north threatened to bring about an encirclement; although the German 2nd Army managed to escape, it was forced to retreat and by 5 February troops of the Voronezh Front were approaching Kursk and Kharkov.

When the last of Field-Marshal Paulus’ troops finally surrendered on 2 February 1943 the Red Army found it hard to believe that the battle of Stalingrad had come to an end and that they were victorious. As the gaunt prisoners emerged crawling from the cellars, dugouts, and bunkers, with their hands held high in surrender, the Russians noticed that many of the men had suffered frostbite and could hardly walk. They also observed that the Rumanian soldiers were in a worse shape than their German allies. According to the Rumanians, their meagre rations had been stopped in an attempt to maintain German strength. The loss of life was huge. The Rumanians had lost 173,000 killed, wounded, and missing, of which a quarter had perished through malnutrition and the arctic temperatures. The Croatian expeditionary force had been totally destroyed, including the 369th Regiment which had been wiped out by Russian troops at Stalingrad. The Italians had lost 115,000 dead and wounded, with 66,000 missing, of which a high number probably drowned in the semi-frozen rivers that had cracked open when hundreds retreated across them.

As for the Germans, their losses were equally immense. Some 150,000 Germans were killed, with 91,000 being taken into captivity, many of whom were never to see their homeland again. During the fighting some 30,000 wounded were flown out of the ravaged city.

Russian losses were much higher than those of both the Germans and their allies. Although figures vary, at least 750,000 Red Army troops were killed or wounded. In five months of bitter and bloody fighting, 99 per cent of Stalingrad was destroyed and of the 500,000 inhabitants of the city, only 1,500 remained to endure the horror, with many being caught up and killed in the battle.

Although the Russians had paid a high price in blood for their hard-fought victory, the Germans had lost both an army and a very important campaign. Both the banks of the Don and the Volga were now littered with the dead and the ambitions of the 6th Army had been destroyed. Although Hitler said that the 6th Army had provided a valuable service by tying down almost 750,000 enemy troops, the loss of the campaign was so immense that it marked the turning point of the war in Russia. Never again was Hitler to launch a major offensive in Russia. His army was now faced with a relentlessly growing and improving Red Army.

As German forces of the 6th Army surrendered, all along the German front Army Group A and Army Group Don were struggling to maintain cohesion against stiff enemy attacks. With huge losses and lacking ammunition and equipment to hold back the Soviet forces, German units fell back in confusion all across southern Ukraine. Russian troops now moved forwards in an ambitious operation for the Voronezh Front. Their plan was to advance to the Dnieper and encircle the 2nd Army. The Red Army south-west and southern fronts were to capture Voroshilovgrad and drive south to the Sea of Azov and encircle Kleist’s Heeresgruppe A and von Manstein’s Heeresgruppe Don.

The Russia plan went well. Kursk was captured on 8 February 1943, Kharkov on 16 February, and Rostov was abandoned on 18 February. A gap had been driven between Heeresgruppe A, which was now being squeezed into a small bridgehead opposite the Kerch peninsula. Heeresgruppe Don was also seriously threatened by Kuzetsov’s 1st Guards Army which was driving a gap between Heeresgruppe Don and von Kluge’s Heeresgruppe Mitte by advancing through Dnepropetrovsk. However, the problems were made much worse for Manstein when the 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad on 2 February, releasing Rokossovsky’s Don Front for new operations. Despite the best efforts of Manstein to bolster Heeresgruppe Don’s dwindling ranks, nothing could now mask the fact that they were dwarfed by the superiority of the Red Army.

Intoxicated by its success at Kursk the Soviets attacked Heeresgruppe Mitte in the salient at Orel before breaking out towards Bryansk. But despite the German retreat, the Soviets’ attack was proving more difficult than they first envisaged. As a consequence the last two weeks of February 1943 saw a tenacious German defence, which consequently saw only minor Russian gains made west of Kursk and none at all at Orel. Yet, despite German resilience, the winter battles had left Heeresgruppe Don battered, but still in reasonable shape. Several Panzer units had enough strength to launch a number of counterattacks and Manstein’s counteroffensive was stiffened by an SS-Panzerkorps equipped with Tiger tanks. On 20 February 1943 it fought its way from Poltava back towards Kharkov, thus gaining the initiative between the Donetz and Dnieper rivers.

By this period of the war, as preparations were made to deliver the stroke against the Soviet Voronezh Front for the battle of Kharkov, Heeresgruppe Don was combined with Heeresgruppe B and made into the new Heeresgruppe Süd. Manstein’s counteroffensive that followed was a huge success. It finally ended the Soviet winter offensive, recaptured Kharkov, destroyed the Russian 3rd Tank Army and supporting units, and captured large quantities of equipment between the Donetz and Dnieper.

Manstein had finally restored the Heeresgruppe’s position in southern Russia. With renewed confidence German forces of Heeresgruppe Süd were being prepared to follow up their success at Kharkov with further bolder attacks east against a huge bulge that now existed in the Kursk sector. What followed in early July 1943 would be the battle of Kursk, which consequently led to the wholesale destruction of German forces in the East.