Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (35 page)

Von Manstein put together a counterattack plan with the objective being the base of the Soviet penetration near Boguduchov. Kempf (after 14 August: Wöhler) would attack northward with III Panzer Corps while Hoth came down with an ad hoc collection of units under the new XXIV Panzer: 7th (17 panzers) and 11th (6 panzers) Panzer Divisions and Grossdeutschland (70 AFVs,
including Tigers and Panthers) plus the 52nd and 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalions (13 Tigers and Panthers, total). Vatutin’s 47th Army launched its own preemptive strike early on 17 August against the 57th and 68th Infantry Divisions. Hoth was not to be deterred by the uncoordinated effort and attacked as planned the next morning. However, that day the unheard of occurred, 57th Infantry broke and ran after suffering the same treatment 167th Infantry had experienced a fortnight earlier. Hoth’s mechanized units kept driving, and on the 20th linked up with Totenkopf west of Kharkov.
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Vatutin ordered counterattacks everywhere along the endangered sector. The cordon created by XXIV and III Panzer Corps proved too thinly held and the bulk of the 4th and 5th Guards Armies managed to escape. Hoth claimed to have taken 32,000 POWs and to have destroyed over 2,000 tanks and almost that many artillery pieces. These numbers sound impressive and it is clear that Zhukov and Vatutin had underestimated the strength of the Fourth Panzer Army. But Rumantsev had had limited objectives all along and had deliberately eschewed the overambitious penetrations and encirclements that had marred similar operations earlier that winter. The Soviets had generally avoided becoming encircled themselves and suffered from no breakdowns in discipline at the front. On the German side of the front, numerous infantry regiments and divisions had been obliterated either by the massive preparation fires of the Red artillery or uneven combat when their remnants came up against strong Soviet forces. Although Hoth’s net panzer strength was about the same at both ends of August, his men had been forced to destroy many Panthers and Tigers that could not be repaired.
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Through 22 August, the Germans fought the fourth and final Battle of Kharkov, and then began the long retreat to the Dnepr River.

In the second half of August, Stavka ordered operations continued in order to build upon their success in the Kharkov area. The battles around Achtyrka and Bogoduchov sapped Fourth Panzer strength, while Hoth became increasingly frustrated by the slow trickle of promised reinforcements. The fact that the Soviets had consumed most of their stockpiled fuel and ammunition helped the Germans. Nevertheless, to the north, Hoth lost contact with Army Group Center and as Rokossovsky renewed his attacks on the 26th, Soviet wedges began to break Fourth Panzer into three groups. By the first week of September, Stalin saw his chance to split the seam between Fourth Panzer and Eighth Armies, gain some crossings over the Dnepr and seriously threaten Kiev. With Rokossovsky to the north of the Ukrainian capital and Vatutin to the south, it was a race, all the while the Germans drove herds of cattle before them and left scorched earth behind. Hoth’s men broke contact and thereby earned some freedom of maneuver on 16–17 September. In Hitler’s mind the Dnepr
represented a solid defensive line, part of what he wishfully called the East Wall. On the main southern sector, both Soviet fronts reached the river on 21st, and near Kanev Vatutin’s 3rd Guards Tank Army crossed the next day. Tiny bridgeheads up and down the Dnepr soon swelled, with those at Pereyaslav and Sorokoshichi (where the Pripet joins the Dnepr) being most threatening to Hoth.
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Twenty–four months minus a week earlier, the two combatants had discovered how even a massive river like the Dnepr (between 500–1,000m wide in the area defended by Fourth Panzer) could not halt a modern army. Granted, the west bank was generally up to 100m higher than the east, giving the Germans more of a defensive advantage in September 1943 than Kirponos enjoyed two years earlier. But at that later date, the defenders were exhausted and weakened by years of combat, perhaps at no time worse than the preceding ten weeks. At their bridgeheads near Kanev, Pereyaslav and also Burkin, the Dnepr makes a very sharp bend, and here is where Vatutin planned to expand three small encroachments into a massive one. He would take an existing 40th Army bridgehead and drop in three airborne brigades and some glider-borne troops. On the night of 24/25 September, slightly fewer than 5,000 parachutists (less than half of planned number) landed scattered all over the bridgehead, and right in the middle of Wohler’s XXIV Panzer Corps and Hoth’s 19th Panzer and 72nd Infantry Divisions. Most of the Soviet soldiers were killed or rounded up within 24 hours, although many escaped to join partisans or otherwise continue to fight the Germans. The bottom line so far as von Manstein was concerned was that this potential threat was neutralized and contained. Rokossovsky and Vatutin continued to expand existing lodgements on the west bank and create new ones. By the second week of October, elements of three armies crowded into the Burkin-Kanev bridgehead, but lacking heavy weapons, failed in two attempts to break out during the middle of the month. Meanwhile, Vatutin, his command renamed 1st Ukrainian Front, cast about for a way to break the Dnepr stalemate. His attention settled on Lutezh, immediately north of Kiev, where the 38th Army and the redeployed 3rd Guards Tank would have better success. Supported in this instance by 2,000 tubes of artillery, and with a tank corps present, Vatutin attacked on 3 November. By the end of the day, Hoth’s lines suffered from a 6km deep gash. Within two days - precisely according to Vatutin’s ambitious time plan –his men rudely pushed aside Hoth’s VII Corps and liberated Kiev. Not content with that single accomplishment, the 3rd Guards Tank with 38th Army in tow made for the important rail junction of Fastov, where the 25th Panzer Division was just arriving from France.
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Both Stavka and the OKW/OKH realized the importance of Kiev as a stepping stone to both southern Poland and the Carpathian Mountains and one of the Reich’s last allies, Hungary. The city’s loss was too much for Hitler, who had soured on Hoth despite the general’s exemplary service since the invasion of Poland. Hoth left for home leave in November; Hitler made the departure permanent and never recalled the short Brandenburger to service. The XLVII Panzer Corps commanding general, Raus, took over the reins of Fourth Panzer Army that same month. In the midst of this turmoil at the top of the panzer army, von Manstein tried to regain the initiative in the Fastov area. Raus’ new organization was stretched from Korosten near the fringe of the Rokitno Marshes (LIX Corps), arcing around the Kiev salient (VII and XIII Corps) then coming to rest on the Dnepr upstream from Burkin (XXIV Panzer) and its component parts were dispersing as if by centrifugal force. An old friend, XLVIII Panzer Corps, was arriving near Fastov from the First Panzer area. During the second week of November, the new 25th Panzer struggled in the mud and winter against the veterans of the 3rd Guards Tank Army. In the meantime, XLVIII Panzer assembled major portions of its three divisions (1st and 7th Panzer plus Leibstandarte) and counterattacked on 12 November to the northwest and into the 38th Army’s rear. The objective was to continue on to Zithomir, but Balck’s men could not make it on the first go. They cut off the three lead tank brigades of 3rd Guards, but 1st Guards Cavalry Corps defenses halted them short of the city. Two days and some reorganization later, XLVIII Panzer tried again, this time with the experienced 7th Panzer in place of the green 25th. General von Manteuffel, commanding Rommel’s old division, had this to say:

On 18 November, I tried the entire day to penetrate the Zithomir, but could not find any weakness in the enemy’s defensive system. I tried to come around the city from the south. It didn’t succeed –crossing the Tetrev into Zithomir was only possible with riflemen because the bridge was destroyed. With a different Kampfgruppe of the division I tried a similar attempt from the east and then in the evening from the northeast. There was a weak spot where our forces could break through. We also had to establish security from the east because our reconnaissance reported enemy forces on the Kiev–Zithomir highway, that our security elements had stopped. About an hour before dark we receive a radio call: ‘All stations, Manteuffel to Schultz as soon as possible!’: That was discomforting and I feared that this fact indicated some disaster because just two hours earlier I had spoken to Schulz in his command post. When I met Lieutenan
Colonel Schulz he told me that a local advance in the direction of the city had overwhelmed a drunken antitank gun crew. (We later found many empty champagne and cognac bottles there.) This signaled to me that we should attack as soon as it became dark. I sent an ‘All stations’ message that everyone should attack the city and follow Schulz and me. Further, I said on the radio, ‘The Christmas gifts are in Zithomir!’ We, in other words, Lt. Col. Schultz with six panzers, me in my APC and a panzer grenadier battalion of about 100 men, pushed ahead, meter by meter, into the city . . . We began at 1700 hours and by 0300 the next day (19 November), we had broken the Red Army resistance and had begun to clear the houses of its men.
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The Leibstandarte went on to capture Bruislov on the 23rd. To the north, after a seesaw battle the LIX Corps took Korosten on the next day, which reopened the rail connection to Army Group Center. In spite of unseasonably warm weather and rain, everywhere Raus’ men were successful in pushing the Soviets back toward Kiev. Vatutin assumed a defensive posture while the Germans figuratively beat themselves up fighting both the Red Army and the mud.
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In early December, as freezing weather returned, von Manstein may have even believed that Fourth Panzer could recapture Kiev. Again XLVIII Panzer with nearly 200 panzers would be the main assault force against the 60th Army on Vatutin’s right. After achieving total surprise, it advanced from north of Zithomir on 6-10 December, in the process creating a 25km penetration and eliminating five Soviet bridgeheads over the Tetrev. The numerous Panthers present put on an impressive show, as did the IL–2 Sturmoviks (nicknamed ‘the butcher’ by the Germans). In this operation the 18th Artillery Division, a replica of similar Soviet organizations (9 artillery and 1 infantry battalion, with 60 light guns and 40 medium guns and 24 Sturmgeschutze) provided valuable support. The XLVIII Panzer attacked again from the 19th to the 21st but with much less success. At that point, Raus ordered his men to take up a defensive posture. Between 8-28 November, Fourth Panzer had killed an estimated 20,000 frontovicki and captured another 5,000, while destroying 603 tanks and 1,305 guns. From 6–13 December it killed a further 11,000 and sent another 4,000 POWs to the rear, while destroying 254 tanks and nearly 900 guns. These figures are not staggering like those from Barbarossa, yet they demonstrate the Ostheer’s continued ability to cause damage when ever it could create a convergence of a healthy panzer corps set up against a Soviet force that had reached its culminating point. But while the XLVIII Panzer appeared to be having its way blunting Vatutin’s spear tip, Stavka was creating a new striking
force with the objective of crushing the panzer army and indeed, the Germans’ entire southern defensive structure. On Christmas Day 1943, the Soviets launched a new offensive with forces they had been assembling for weeks, thus initiating what they call the third, and last, period of the war.
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Vatutin made his opening move the day before, moving against Zithomir, the principal Ukrainian city west of Kiev. Instead of heading due west in the most direct route to Poland and Germany, the 1st Guards and 3rd Tank Armies veered south toward another rail junction, Kazatin, and the site of von Manstein’s headquarters, Vinnitsa. The blow fell squarely on the XXIV Panzer (8th and 19th Panzer Divisions). These transportation nodes, plus Zhmerinka, on the main lines of communication for both Army Group South and A, had to be held if Hitler’s southern front was to remain viable. Von Manstein told the OKH that without serious reinforcement (five or six divisions), Fourth Panzer could not survive. Since these reinforcements could only come from a withdrawal somewhere else in the army group’s lines, OKH replied that there was little chance such a move could be made; in other words, he would have to fight on the cheap, with what he had. By the offensive’s second day Vatutin began to reinforce the original southward thrust with 40th Army and also push west toward Korosten with the 3rd Guards Tank, 1st Guards, 13th and 60th Armies. This time XLVIII Panzer did not have the strength to launch a meaningful counterattack, but could only plug holes. The twenty-five Tigers of Leibstandarte and ten from Das Reich could only do so much. On the 30th, the Germans, including the 18th Artillery Division, lost Kazatin and a huge amount of logistical assets to marauding tanks. And 24 hours later, on the last day of the year, Zithomir changed hands for the last time in the war. Vatutin threw 47 rifle divisions and 9 tank and mechanized corps at Raus’ 14 infantry, 1 motorized, 8 panzer and 1 artillery divisions. However, for von Manstein to strengthen his left, or possibly even counterattack there, he would have to retreat elsewhere to create the necessary surplus of forces. This caused an explosion at Führer headquarters where Hitler railed against the field marshal. He insisted that the VII and XLII Corps maintain their hold on the Dnepr, meaning that Fourth Panzer stretched back west nearly 200km, before turning sharply northwest the same distance to Novgorod–Volynsky.
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Fortunately for Raus, Vatutin did not push too hard against LIX Corps, which had fallen back into pre-war Poland by the beginning of 1944. The Fourth Panzer’s large central force (XXIV and XLVIII Panzer plus XIII Corps) held the Berdichev-Vinnitsa Line with twelve divisions. XLVIII Panzer, since New Year’s Day under Lieutenant General Nikolas von Vormann, shifted northwest of Berdichev in order to make an effort to reach out to LIX Corps, while also preventing Vatutin from coming in behind the panzer army. This
mission devolved onto XIII Corps, now the main obstacle to the Soviets simply moving due west through the area around Rovno, Kovel and Lutsk, towns from the Barbarossatag battles thirty months earlier. With the help of XLVIII Panzer the Germans held Dubno, but could not appreciably narrow the 50km gap to LIX Corps. At the same time, III Panzer Corps, on temporary loan from Eighth Army, had come to Vinnitsa to shore up XLVI Panzer, another temporary expedient. By the second half of January, three weeks of constant offensive operations has taken its toll on Vatutin’s 1st Ukrainian Front at the same time Raus concentrated the few reinforcements von Manstein could spare. Soviet tank formations made general progress along most of the 500km front, notably toward Uman, but achieved no crippling penetration or encirclement against Fourth Panzer. Strategically Stalin was concerned with his far northern and southern flanks, and operationally, Zhukov (coordinating efforts of 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts) had to deal with the protrusion between those two elements: what became the Korsun Pocket (see p.51).
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For most of February, the panzer army had a much-needed break between two storms.