Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (12 page)

There would be no rest for the Germans, because on the next day, General IS Konev’s 2nd Ukrainian Front (four infantry and one tank army) broke out
of its bridgeheads downstream from Kremenchug and along the seam dividing First Panzer and Eighth Armies. For days it poured units across the river, while von Manstein and von Mackensen were powerless to do more than watch and wait for the Soviets to reach their objectives. Within three days, the 2nd Ukrainian had cut the rail line to Dnepropetrovsk and was half way to Krivoi Rog. First Panzer had vague promises of reinforcements, at least four panzer divisions inbound from various places. But von Mackensen could not wait to create the ideal counterattack force, he had to defend the city, a major resource and transportation center, the site of a huge German supply dump and the pivot point of the entire Dnepr bend. By 21 October, he had received 11th Panzer and SS Totenkkopf from Eighth Army, but the situation at the front had become so tense that these had to man front-line positions and could not be consolidated into even a tactical counterattack force. Two days later, the panzer army’s outpost at Dnepropetrovsk became problematic when the 46th (north) and 8th Guards Armies broke out of their own bridgeheads and threatened to cut off the city. Von Mackensen withdrew his forces by the 23rd, and was left with contact along the Dnepr on either side of Zaporozhe and a dangerously narrow front stretching west past Krivoi Rog. That was enough for von Manstein, who transferred XL Panzer Corps (14th and 24th Panzer Divisions plus SS Totenkopf) back to the panzer army with orders to execute an immediate counterattack against Konev’s 5th Guards Tank Army, now very close to Krivoi Rog; he could not wait for other reinforcements which might not arrive. Red Army troops began to probe the city’s defenses on the 25th, prompting XL Panzer to attack a day earlier than planned. The panzers launched on the 27th, destroying much of two mechanized corps and nine rifle divisions, giving Krivoi Rog a 30km buffer by the end of the month. That would be von Mackensen’s last feat as panzer army commander; on 29 October, General of Panzer Troops Hans Hube, a veteran of panzer battles in the southern theater since Barbarossatag, took over.
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Most of the excitement within Army Group South at the end of 1943 took place in Fourth Panzer Army’s area; First Panzer was locked in a battle of attrition that it would doubtless lose. On New Year’s Day 1944, von Manstein reorganized his forces and moved First Panzer north adjacent to Fourth Panzer: only in this case ‘adjacent’ meant separated by a gaping 70km hole. Hube took over Fourth Army’s VII and XLII Corps. Higher headquarters promised him III Panzer as a mobile striking force of two panzer divisions, one panzergrenadier division and one Jager division. Additionally, Hube had the misfortune of taking over the Germans’ last positions on the Dnepr, what the Landsers near Cherkassy called the ‘Wacht am Dnepr’. A couple of days later, Marshal Vatutin’s 1st Ukrainian Front, which had been working over Fourth Panzer’s
right, turned its attention of Hube’s left. By 4 January, the gap between the two panzer armies exceeded 100km. The VII Corps gave up Belaya Zerkov. At about the same time, 2nd Ukrainian attacked First Panzer in the direction of Krivoi Rog and Kirovograd. Any semblance of a cohesive front between First and Fourth Panzer Armies vanished. By 10 January, 1st Guards Tank Army pushed on toward Zhmerinka (as three days earlier von Manstein had predicted it would), nearly 250km southwest of the Dnepr. The III Panzer only managed to contain this threat after two days of heavy fighting. Farther south, 40th Army opened another gap, this time between VII Corps and III Panzer, almost reaching the huge German logistics base at Uman.
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With this, First Panzer lost contact with both neighbors, Fourth Panzer and Eighth Armies.

Von Manstein judged the breakthrough at Zhmerinka as the most dangerous, so assembled a counterattack force under Breith’s III Panzer (17th and most of 16th Panzer). This assault began on 15 January, and within 48 hours had covered most of the 40km separating it from VII Corps. For two days near Vinnitsa, Hube had been putting together another counterattack force based on the XLVI Panzer Corps (under Lieutenant General Hans Gollnick, mainly the 18th Panzer). A thaw in the weather slowed both sides, allowing von Manstein further to reinforce Gollnick with the Leibstandarte plus the new and unique 18th Artillery Division. By the 24th, both panzer corps were ready. The XLVI Panzer led off, but quickly ran into trouble that not even the 1st SS Panzer could overcome. The next day, III Panzer attacked but halted almost immediately. It seemed 1st Guards Tank and the rest of the Soviet thrust would survive with minimal damage. However, by the last days of January, the two panzer corps eventually succeeded in chopping off the penetration, destroying over 700 AFVs in the process.
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Elsewhere on the front, however, things had gone from bad to worse.

With the VII Corps ingloriously shoved aside to the north and Eighth Army giving way at Kirovograd to the south, a small German promontory at Korsun stood strong as the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts swirled past it and to the east. On 28 January, 5th Guards Tank and 6th Tank Armies linked up, surrounding the Eighth Army’s XI and XLII Corps there, just west ofCherkassy. The 57th, 72nd, 88th, 389th, plus elements of 112th, 255th and 332nd Infantry Divisions, SS Viking and the SS Wallonien Brigade, totaling 54,000 men, had been encircled. Fortunately for them, the hilly terrain favored the defense, and until the weather really turned bad on the 15th, the Luftwaffe managed to fly in up to 185 tons of supplies per day. The XI Corps commander, General of Artillery Wilhelm Stemmermann, took control as the senior man in the pocket. He insured a lively and effective defense along an amazing 250km front. Against
them Konev was in the process of amassing a force of 27 rifle divisions, 4 mechanized and 1 tank corps, supported by approximately 4,000 guns.
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Hitler could not make up his mind what to do, but von Manstein lost no time creating two relief forces. By 1 February he decided that First Panzer Army would employ III Panzer Corps (1st, 16th, 17th Panzer and Leibstandarte) coming from the southwest, while Eighth Army would utilize XLVII Panzer Corps (Lieutenant General Nikolas von Vormann, 3rd, 11th, 14th and 24th Panzer) moving from the south. The rescue effort began on 4 February, 24 hours later than planned, and made good progress despite the conditions. Panzer crewmen carried fuel in buckets, while Landsers went barefoot rather than pull their boots out of the mud every few steps. Meanwhile, the pocket itself crept southwest toward its would-be saviors. The III Panzer only had to go the final 30km, but even this seemed problematic. On 10 February, von Kleist told Breith go ‘no matter what’ on the 11th. With its panthers in the lead, the 1st Panzer Division indeed pushed forward, but not fast enough and by the 12th had stalled on the Gniloy Tikich stream. Its Panthers had run into an ‘armored wasp nest’ of T–34s supported by 85mm anti–tank guns. There were renewed efforts on 13 February, with 16th Panzer and Heavy Panzer Regiment Bake coming up to the left of 1st Panzer. Bäke possessed 11 Tigers and 14 Panthers which had destroyed over 400 tanks in the previous 3 weeks. On the night of the 14th, led by Viking, the healthiest of the emaciated formations inside the pocket, Stemmermann began the final lunge toward III Panzer. But even the most desperate and determined efforts by men inside and outside the pocket could not close the final few kilometers. On the 15th, von Manstein personally sent the following teletext message to Lieutenant Colonel Dr Bäke:

Bravo, despite mud and Russians already much accomplished. There only remains to take the last step. Bite down and onward. That too will be successful.
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With the pocket now measuring 20km by 45km and the Soviets crushing in on every side, there was no option for the 16th except a breakout in three columns. The escape, especially negotiating the Gniloy Tikish, reads just like Napoleon’s disastrous crossing of the Berezina at the end of November 1812. Ziemke and Haupt claim between 20-30,000 Germans escaped, while the rest died (including Stemmermann) or were captured. Glantz and House, using ‘far more credible’ Soviet numbers, write that virtually none escaped, that over 70,000 perished or became POWs. In either case, First Panzer and Eighth Army’s defenses had been ripped apart.
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The Soviets only gave the panzer army a fortnight’s pause before renewing their offensive. Hube, who upon taking command confidently told the men
of the 125th Infantry Division, ‘Don’t weaken before the Russian Scheiss-Infantrie’, would soon have more trouble than he could handle. Ukrainian separatists ambushed Vatutin on 29 February, just before the offensive’s start date. After a long battle he died of his wounds, so Zhukov personally took command of the 1st Ukrainian Front. His goal was to attack down the Seret and Zubruch River valleys to Chernovtsy, practically in the foothills of the Carpathians. The objective of Konev’s neighboring 2nd Ukrainian Front was to aim past Uman and Yampol, also in the general direction of Chernovtsy beyond the Dniester. First Panzer would be caught between a rock and a hard place. Both fronts fielded thirty-six rifle divisions and three tank armies. After the smaller 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts entered the fray, von Manstein’s men (and those in the Sixth Army of von Kleist’s Army Group A) were fighting for their lives along a 1,100km front.
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By 4 March, von Manstein had reorganized his Dnepr defense, and reinforced by the Fourth Panzer’s far-right corps. Hube received the mission of defending Shepetovka and Proskurov (Chemel’nicki). German intelligence had it right this time, for on that same day, Zhukov ripped the seam between First and Fourth Panzer Armies and pushed LIX Corps off to the south, away from Sheptovka. The 3rd Guards Tank Army stormed through the gap and down the rail line towards Chernovtsy. Fourth Panzer could offer little assistance, but von Manstein ordered III Panzer (four panzer divisions) to rail up from the Eighth Army area. Hube maintained a cohesive defense by pulling LIX Corps back even with the Soviet advance, first to Staro Constantinov. By the 6th, III Panzer elements began to arrive around Proskurov, and Breith’s corps got steadily stronger from arriving reinforcements until it managed to halt the Red tank armies on the 7th. Fourth Panzer held the northeastern shoulder of the penetration with the two divisions of XLVIII Panzer. Together, the two panzer armies delayed Zhukov for nearly two weeks, preventing the liberation of Ternopol, an important rail junction and, after Hitler’s Order 11 of 8 March, a Fester Platz (fortified place). Other fortified places in Hube’s area included Proskurov and Vinnitsa, each of which was to be held until the last man in what amounted to a personal contract between Hitler and the senior commander on the scene. Reinforcements arrived to stabilize the panzer army’s center. However, on either of Hube’s flanks, the Soviets managed significant penetrations. The weak position of Fourth Panzer has already been mentioned, and Eighth Army’s lines were compromised by the loss of Uman with its massive German supply dumps.
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Zhukov’s 1st and 4th Tank and 3rd Guards Tank Armies finally unhinged Hube’s positions on 21 March when 200 tanks scattered Kampfgruppen of the Leibstandarte, 7th Panzer and 68th Infantry Divisions.
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They crossed the
Dniester in numerous locations by the 24th, as other Kampfgruppen of the 1st and 6th Panzer Divisions tried to keep the trap from slamming shut. Despite these efforts, three days later the 38th and 4th Tank Armies linked up and Zhukov and Konev created a loose cordon around First Panzer, twenty-one weakened divisions stretching all way from Kamenets-Podolsky to the Proskurov Fester Platz. Von Manstein saw the danger developing and on 24 March ordered First Panzer to begin to ‘breakout to the west to cut off the enemy’. Phrasing a retreat as an attack into the enemy flank was a good way to get the Fuhrer’s approval. Simultaneously, 4th Tank occupied Kamenets–Podolsky, forcing Hube to displace his headquarters to Dunajevcy to the south. The next day the field marshal flew to Hitler’s Berchtesgaden retreat and argued until he received post facto permission to do what he had already ordered. Accordingly, also on the 25th, Panzer Group Waldenfels (elements of 6th, 11th and 19th Panzer Divisions under commanding general of the 6th, Major General Rudolf Freiherr von Waldenfels) attacked early in the morning from the area near Jarmolincy toward Gorodok with the intention of joining up with 1st Panzer, fighting alone at the time, and together creating a bridgehead over the Smotrich. From there the entire panzer group would continue west on the way to freedom.
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Hitler relented and provided an additional force with which to break into the pocket, II SS Panzer Corps (SS 9th Hohenstaufen and 10th Frundsberg Panzer Divisions) plus the 100th Jäger and 367th Infantry Divisions assembling in the Fourth Panzer Army sector. Hube wanted to escape to Romania to the south, which is where Zhukov expected him to go. But von Manstein had three reasons why he wanted Hube to go west: 1. Fourth Panzer could assist in the rescue; 2. the Germans could cut the lines of communication of the 1st and 4th Tank Armies; and 3. the two panzer armies could cooperate to keep the army group’s northern flank more ‘solid’. At 0400 hours on the 26th, the field marshal radioed Hube, ‘Solution west. Orders to follow. Manstein’. By the next day the entire panzer army was creeping westward, with armor units facing that direction, rear services troops making up the rear guard with infantry in between. Hube issued the following Order of the Day:

Any soldier who fails to obey or fight any longer, so long as he has a weapon, is an enemy identical to every Russian and must be handled exactly the same by commanders and subordinate leaders . . . The fate of one of the most glorious armies of the Fuhrer hangs in the balance.
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