Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (9 page)

The deluge came two days later when Timoshenko struck the Rostov salient with 21 divisions. His 56th Army led the way, soon followed by the 9th, 37th and 18th Armies. Perhaps hardest hit was 1st SS, holding both ends of the Don River bridge. Linked arm-in-arm and screaming ‘Urrah!’, they crossed
the frozen river. The SS lines were so depleted, ‘even the heaviest of Soviet bombardments were negligible . . . so thin were the troops on the ground’. Dozens of T–34s accompanied the Red infantry, disregarding the anti-tank mines the Germans had laid on the ice. Initially, von Kleist believed his men could hold their positions, and Hitler concurred. But after one day, 56th and 9th Army units plus members of the Rostov militia cleared the city of the invader. Von Kleist ordered a retreat to the Kolmytskaya River. A day later, 30 November, he had given up even that half measure and ordered First Panzer back to the Mius as he had anticipated over a week earlier. At 2000 hours that night, when informed of the decision, Hitler countermanded that order and told von Kleist to remain at his present positions along the Maksimovsky-Merzhanovsky line ‘for the time being’. Keitel explained, in any event it was essential to retain the good airfields in and around Taganrog. Three hours later, OKH instructed Army Group South to reinforce the panzer army. ‘With what?’ von Rundstedt asked, explaining that no ‘intermediate position’ existed between Rostov and the Mius. Hitler merely assumed the field marshal refused to obey orders. Having received no satisfaction, therefore ‘the grumbling, growling bear of a Junker from Courland’ asked to be relieved. Shortly after midnight, the Fuhrer accepted, and by 0550 hours assigned von Reichenau the new duty of army group commander in addition to his current job at the head of Sixth Army. Hitler reiterated his demand that First Panzer stop and fight along the Maksimovsky-Merzhanovsky Line. Von Reichenau said that was out of the question and Hitler relented. Luftwaffe attacks kept the Red Army from pursuing too closely. On 2 December, Hitler took the highly unusual step and flew to First Panzer Army headquarters to meet with von Reichenau, von Kleist, the chief of staff of Luftflotte Four and his old Nazi crony, Leibstandarte commander Sepp Dietrich. It was the last named whose testimony affected the Fuhrer most. Although he owed his position to Nazi Party politics, Dietrich stood up for von Rundstedt, von Kleist and von Mackensen, saying that the three old-style generals had done everything humanly possible given the unworkable situation at Rostov. The dictator finally got the clue. On his way back to Rastenburg the next day, he stopped at Poltava and gave von Rundstedt the closest thing to an apology any German general would receive during the war.
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First Panzer Army had performed as a true operational weapon during Barbarossa. Initially hamstrung by the fact it was not paired with another panzer army, von Rundstedt compensated by using the fast-moving Seventeenth Army. During a two-week period in the middle of September it both unhinged the Red Army’s main Dnepr defensive line and closed off the southern half of the Kiev pocket. By adroitly wheeling to the Sea of Azov, it kept the Soviets’ entire southern defensive structure on its heels. Von Kleist had little option
other than to follow unrealistic orders and keep driving on to Rostov. Barbarossa culminated for Army Group South at that point, and along with it, so did First Panzer Army’s operational maneuvering.

The Mius River valley served as a dividing line numerous times during the sea-saw battles that raged across the eastern Ukraine from 1941 to 1943. During the winter of 1941–42, it was a good enough position for the two exhausted armies and they shared little of the aggressive excitement common with the rest of the theater. Both sides settled down to defenses anchored by strongpoints in small villages, and harassed each other with patrols and artillery fire. Small groups of soldiers took turns going to the old tsarist palace at Taganrog for a few days of rest and relaxation in the land of electricity and plumbing. A 125th Infantry Division soldier remembered Christmas Eve as experienced by troops in the field:

Suddenly the door [to their shelter] was thrown open and a runner stuck his head in and yelled, ‘Two men from every group to the field kitchen now to pick up mail!’ You can bet that any one of us would carry that little bit of mail for us all. But about ten men went. And when they returned each dragged in a sack, an entire sack full of mail! Man oh man, we’d never received such mail before! After it was distributed, each of us had a small pile. Now it was really Christmas! A few furtive tears ran down the hollow, unshaven cheeks.
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On Christmas Day, officers and first sergeants (Spiess) pulled guard duty on the front-line outposts so their men could celebrate a bit. The Soviets remained quiet that day. At this relatively early point in the war, the Wehrmacht had evidently begun to scour all of occupied Europe for manpower replacements: in the 100th Light Division’s area alone, Croatian and Wallonian battalions helped man the line.
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Further north, in mid-January, Timoshenko concluded he could threaten the lines of communication for both First Panzer and Seventeenth Armies by attacking southwest from the Izyum bridgehead over the Don River. For about ten days the Soviets threatened the stability of Army Group South. Claiming Hoth’s staff suffered from overwork during the crisis, new army group commander von Bock placed ‘the very enterprising’ von Kleist in charge of both formations. Presumably his thinking was that in this case, First Panzer would ride to the rescue of the Landsers all the more quickly. This is indeed what happened as Group von Mackensen (14th Panzer, 113th and 298th Infantry, 100th Light and 1st Romanian Divisions plus the 60th Panzer Battalion, all under control of Headquarters, III Panzer Corps) moved out on
2 February in the direction of Barvenko. A number of ad hoc combat groups, generally of regimental size, also participated in the counterattack. Progress was measured in a few kilometers, and a single Sturmgeschutz, or self-propelled PAK, made the difference between success and failure. Heavy fighting developed around Barvenko and Slavyansk until the second half of the month. Von Bock threw in additional units, including an Italian division. Only in early March, when the 1st and 5th Cavalry Corps had been separated from its tank support did the Soviets’ pressure on the German lines subside.
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The spring rasputitsa brought further offensive maneuver on both sides to a temporary halt. Hitler continued thinking about natural resources in the southern USSR as he had the year before with Operation Barbarossa. In 1942, he would continue the drive toward the Caucasus and Baku on the Caspian Sea, at that time, location of some of the world’s largest known oil fields. As outlined in Fuhrer Directive 41, dated 5 April, the first step would be encirclement and destruction of Red Army forces defending the southern theater, in what became known as Operations Blau I and II. He envisioned a Vernichtungsschlacht ‘similar to the double envelopment at Viazma and Bryansk’. Afterwards, Blau III would secure Stalingrad and Don River crossings, with the final objective, the Caucasus, belonging to Blau IV. Across the front, Stalin labored under the false impression that the Ostheer would once again try to capture Moscow, so arranged his defenses accordingly. A German deception plan, Operation Kremlin, reinforced this notion (see p. 85). A major difference in the methods the Soviets would use in 1942 compared to 1941, was the Red Army would not ‘die in place’ as it had during Barbarossa. Their planned withdrawal wreaked havoc with the Vernichtungsgeschlacht doctrine and added another layer of tension to the later campaign.
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Fighting was not over in the Izyum bulge, however. As von Bock began to assemble troops for Blau, on 12 May, Timoshenko burst out of Izyum and into the Sixth Army in what is often called the Second Battle of Kharkov. The Sixth lost sixteen battalions in 17 hours. Timoshenko had pre-empted an Army Group South attack, planned to start in just six days. Unfortunately for the Soviets, the location of von Bock’s troops was tailormade for a counterattack, as Hitler, von Bock and von Kleist all agreed. For his part, the panzer leader, still commanding the Seventeenth Army as part of Armeegruppe von Kleist, contributed the III Panzer and XLIV Corps. First Panzer attacked at 0315 hours on 17 May, under heavy Luftflotte Four CAS. It tore into the 9th Army on the Timoshenko’s southern flank and soon created a 60km gap. The Soviet spearhead had been separated from its base and in vain the Red Army Chief of Staff asked Stalin for permission to abandon the offensive. Within a week, von Kleist’s men had reconquered the familiar ground on either side ofBarvenko,
and by 22 May continued to Balakleya, where 14th Panzer made a rendezvous with Sixth Army units. Attacking into the teeth of German forces preparing for Blau could have hardly been any worse for the Soviets, who in 10 days lost about 27 divisions and 14 tank brigades destroyed and 240,000 men, 1,200 tanks and 2,600 artillery pieces captured. The Red Army nevertheless maintained a large salient east of Kharkov, and Hitler saw a chance to kill off some more of the enemy and tidy up the Operation Blau start line all at the same time.
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The Führer had to wait for von Manstein to capture the Crimea anyway, so in mid-June he launched two assaults. The common feature of both was the leading role played by III Panzer Corps, at times 14th, 16th and 22nd Panzer plus 60th Motorized Divisions. From 10–15 June, as Sixth Army eliminated the northern bulge southeast of Volchansk, it participated in Operation Wilhelm. A week later, now as part of First Panzer, von Mackensen’s men had turned 90 degrees from east to south and attacked toward Kupyansk. Von Kleist’s objective was trapping the 9th and 38th Armies between III Panzer (with the temporary addition of 44th Infantry) and XLIV Corps. After numerous delays due to bad weather, Operation Fridericus II began on the first anniversary of Barbarossa. By the evening, the 16th Panzer had almost reached Kupyansk, while 22nd Panzer, followed by 14th Panzer and 60th Motorized, turned south toward XLIV Corps. At the same time, against tough Soviet defense, the infantry corps levered a bridgehead over the Donets, east ofIzyum. Soon the LI and XI Corps joined the action, creating a crescent of Germans pressing the salient from three sides. After two days the 101st Jager Division coming up from the north met 22nd Panzer near Gorokhovatka. Inside the trap were a further 22,800 POWs and about 100 tanks and 250 guns. In his diary, von Bock wrote about a troubling trend, quite unlike 1941: for the last two months the Soviets retreated instead of allowing themselves to be encircled in great numbers. This would bode ill for Operation Blau.
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Only in the most limited sense of the term can one say First Panzer Army functioned as an operational weapon during that winter and spring. Von Kleist improvised defense and counterattack as part of Army Group South’s overall defensive scheme. A greater test for operational maneuver lay ahead that summer.

Blau I began on 28 June when Hoth’s Fourth Panzer attacked toward Voronezh. As planned, after Hoth turned south to roll up the Soviet defenses, Blau II, including First Panzer, would start. Along with Sixth Army, the two panzer armies were to inaugurate the 1942 campaign with a massive Barbarossa-style Vernichtungsschlacht. But as just mentioned, the Soviets had demonstrated during the spring that they had no intention of repeating the mistakes of 1941.

When, during Blau I, Red Army forces pulled back almost as soon as the Germans attacked, Hitler decided to pull the trigger on Blau II two weeks early.
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Ready or not, von Kleist had to move out if the Germans hoped to annihilate the enemy’s main armies, considered to be an essential prerequisite of a successful campaign against Stalingrad and the Caucasus oil region.

What can be called Blau II (because barely a week after its start, the Germans were having a terrible time adjusting to the realities of the campaign) began on 9 July when the newly activated Army Group A initiated its offensive with First Panzer Army. Strangely, von Kleist led off with his infantry since his panzers, still recuperating from Fridericus, had not left their assembly areas 50–60km behind the fighting. He would launch a right hook through Lisichansk and Starobelsk to Vysochanovka, where he was to meet Hoth and complete the giant Kessel. It took less than 24 hours for the first change of plans: the new rendezvous point with Fourth Panzer would be Milerovo. On von Kleist’s right, Seventeenth Army also advanced, with the Soviets also withdrawing.
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Again, ‘Group von Mackensen’ represented First Panzer’s main striking force, made up of III Panzer (14th, 16th and 22nd Panzer plus 60th Motorized Divisions) and LI Corps (44th, 62nd, 71st, 297th and 384th Infantry). By the 10th, they had closed on the Donets River, only to find that the retreating Soviets had demolished all the bridges. The 1st Mountain (XI Corps) managed a crossing, however, and on that same day 76th Infantry occupied Lisichansk, while the two panzer divisions forced their own bridgeheads. Two days into the campaign the Germans had crossed the Aydar River and their movement resembled a pursuit. The 14th and 22nd Panzer outpaced the marching 1st Mountain to the extent that the latter became the panzer army reserve. Unfortunately for the Germans, the Ostheer’s Achilles heel flared up again: by 13 July the high command could neither agree on strategic objectives nor on how to achieve goals it did have. Adding greatly to the complications, on that day Hitler relieved von Bock and reorganized his southern flank again.
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Evidently, in the nine months since Viazma and Bryansk, the Wehrmacht had forgotten how to conduct a Vernichtungsschalcht. Of course, Stalin no longer cooperated, either. On 15 July, von Kleist’s 14th Panzer met Hoth’s 3rd Panzer near Millerovo, thereby trapping elements of the 9th and 38th Armies. In view of the high expectations for Blau, however, this was a weak performance. By mid-July, the area around Millerovo became home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of armor, belonging to First and Fourth Panzer and Sixth Armies. It had no enemy to attack and no where to go. Von Kleist was at a serious disadvantage, due to casualties and wear and tear caused by action in Operations Wilhelm and Fridericus. Unable to complete refitting after these offensives due to the rushed start, First Panzer began Blau II with a 40 percent
operational rate, but had lost a quarter of that value in the ensuing week of maneuver. The German propensity for logistics on a shoestring, a fatal weakness of Barbarossa, would soon cripple Blau as well. New orders also flowed from Fuhrer Headquarters, in the form of instructions issued late on the night of 13 July to Field Marshal Wilhelm List’s massively reinforced Army Group A to attack Rostov. While Sixth Army stood guard along the middle Don, Fourth Panzer joined First Panzer and Seventeenth Armies on a drive due south. Army Groups A and B had come up empty-handed when the Millerovo option failed. Now, based on more faulty military intelligence from Fremde Herre Ost (FHO - Foreign Armies East), Hitler looked to Rostov for another huge enemy concentration to annihilate.
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He was to be severely disappointed, with fatal consequences for Blau.