The Road to Berlin (6 page)

Report Nos. 42–47: Yakovlev’s [Malinovskii, 2nd Guards] army continues to concentrate in the area of Verkhne Tsarinskii-Bratskiisovkhoz (farms), Krep, Yurkin and Zety. From 24 hours 17.XII Volskii’s corps [4th Mechanized], 300 and 87 RDs and 4 Cav. Corps, covering the deployment of the army, transferred from Trufanov and subordinated to Yakovlev.

Concentration of Yakovlev’s army with the exception of one RD, three independent tank regiments and reserve units to be completed during the night of 21.XII.

Request you confirm the following plan for further operational planning and operations by Yakovlev. During night of 21 and 22 [December] to deploy Guards rifle corps of Yakovlev’s army on river Myshkova on the Nizhne Kumskii–Kapkinskii front and to concentrate 2nd Guards Mechanized Corps in area Peregruznyii, Aksai, Shelestov, and from morning of 22.XII to go over to active operations.

22.XII—Guards rifle corps, making main attack in the direction of Gromoslavka, Shestakov and further along the
railway [line]
to Kotelnikovo, together with Volskii’s corps to effect final destruction of enemy in the Verkhne-Kumskii area, clear nor[thern] bank of the river Aksai and exit on southern bank of the Aksai and dig in.

2 Gds. Mech. Corps from the Aksai area to operate against enemy flank and rear through Darganov and by the evening of 22.XII must, having taken Kotelnikovo with powerful forward elements, bring its main force into the area Pimen–Cherchen, Gremyschii, and thus straddle the rear of enemy grouping operation north of Kotelnikovo.

23.XII—Liquidation of enemy to nor[th]-east of Kotelnikovo with powerful covering force from 2 Gds. Mech. Corps in the direction of Dubovskoe and with the movement of the Gds. rifle corps by the evening to the line Verkhne–Yablochnyi, Pimen–Cherni, Darganov.

24.XII—Movement of Gds. rifle corps to line Maiorskii, Kotelnikovo, Poperchernyi, to advance 2 Gds. Mech. Corps and Volskii’s corps to river Sal, cutting railway line.

Securing of these operations by Yakovlev from the east assigned to Trufanov’s army with 38, 302, 126 and 91 RDs, two tank brigades and additionally to Cav. Corps Shapkin [4th Cavalry], which in immediate future to move into area Plodovitoe.

Popov [5th Shock Army] instructed 20.XII to attack from north-west to take Nizhne–Chirskaya and then to co-ordinate operations with Romanenko [5th Tank Army] towards Tormosin and by evening of 24.XII to be on river Tsymla.

Of two tank corps recently moved up I consider it urgent to subordinate one to Popov, the other and the Mech. Corps (should Yakovlev’s operations go well) to use for the final destruction of enemy forces encircled at Stalingrad.

Request your authorisation.

MIKHAILOW [Vasilevskii]

At 0530 hours on 19 December Stalin returned a reply
(ibid.):

SPECIALLY URGENT:
Comrade Mikhailov. Your operational plan No. 42, confirmed by Supreme Commander’s
Stavka
.

VASILIEV [Stalin]

From their forward positions in the Myshkova bridgehead, the tankmen of VI
Panzer
could at this very moment see the flares fired on the Stalingrad perimeter, the city itself shining in the cold, clear night.

Three days earlier, however, the Voronezh and South-Western Fronts had launched ‘Small Saturn’ on the upper reaches of the Don against the northern flank of Army Group Don and the right flank of Army Group B; ‘Small Saturn’ was aimed specifically at the rear of the de-blockading forces trying to break into Stalingrad. Under the revised plan that Vatutin was finally obliged to accept,
the main task of his South-Western Front was to use his 1st Guards and 3rd Guards Armies in co-operation with the Voronezh Front to encircle and destroy the 8th Italian Army and then to attack through Nizhne–Astakhov on to Morozovsk. V. I. Kuznetsov’s 1st Guards Army with five rifle divisions and three tank corps would attack through Mankovo–Kalitvenskaya, Degtevo, Tatsinskaya, Morozovsk to destroy 8th Italian Army and Group
Hollidt
(rifle formations to reach the line Markovka–Nikolskaya–Chertkovo, tank corps to reach Tatsinskaya–Morozovsk); while Lelyushenko’s 3rd Guards was to breach the enemy defences at Bokovskaya and attack along the lines Bokovskaya–Verkhne Chirskaya and Bokovskaya–Nizhne Astakhov–Kashara to link up with 1st Guards Army. Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army would destroy enemy forces in the Nizhne–Chirskaya and Tormosin area, and ‘under no circumstances’ permit any break-out from here towards other encricled groups. Kharitonov’s 6th Army (Voronezh Front) was assigned the attack on Kantemirovka after breaking through the defences at Novaya Kalitve–Derezovka, to reach the line Golubaya–Krinitsa–Pasyukov–Klenovy–Nikoslaya by the fifth day of its operations. Three tanks corps would be committed on the first day of the Voronezh–South-Western Front operations; on the second day rifle units of 1st and 3rd Guards Armies were to encircle the main force of the 8th Italian Army, to complete its destruction by the evening of the fourth day, and by the sixth day to advance the main forces to a line running from Valentinovka–Markovka–Chertkovo–Ilinka–Tatsinskaya–Morozovsk–Chernyshkovskii. As reinforcement, the
Stavka
had released three rifle divisions (267th, 172nd and 350th), a rifle brigade (106th), 17th Tank Corps and seven artillery regiments to 6th Army, as well as four Guards rifle divisions (35th, 41st, 38th, and 54th), the 159th Rifle Division, three tank corps (18th, 24th and 25th), one mechanized corps (1st Guards), six independent tank regiments and sixteen artillery regiments; but armour and artillery had still to reach Vatutin’s Front. By 12 December, the main body of reserve formations had nevertheless moved up, and both Fronts were regrouping. Engineers built their six-ton, sixteen-ton, forty-ton and sixty-ton capacity bridges over the Don, and during the night of 16 December the tanks moved up to their start lines, some three to five miles from the front line. Along a front running from Novaya, Kalitva in the north (6th Army) to Nizhne–Chirskaya (5th Tank Army), a little over 200 miles, 36 rifle divisions, 425,476 men, 1,030 tanks, almost 5,000 guns and mortars (81mm and upwards in calibre) waited out the night of 16 December.

‘Small Saturn’ opened in the thick morning mist of 16 December at 0800 hours, when Soviet artillery opened fire. On some sectors, however, visibility was too poor for a punctual start and Soviet planes were grounded on the forward airfields. Kuznetsov’s 1st Guards and Kharitonov’s 6th Army crossed the ice of the Don, the prelude to some savage fighting in the forward positions. Shortly before noon Vatutin ordered the tank corps—25th and 18th in the lead, 17th following—to move out only to have the lead units blunder into unreconnoitred
minefields, disorganizing the attack and bringing losses at once. Similarly Lelyushenko with 3rd Guards Army enjoyed no success on the first day. During the night Soviet forces regrouped, moved up the artillery and cleared lanes through the minefields. On 17 December the offensive was renewed, and all four tank corps—25th, 18th, 17th and 24th—moved on in two echelons, tank brigades in the lead followed by motorized infantry. Lelyushenko’s 3rd Guards, short of fuel and ammunition when its first attack opened, brought up supplies and resumed its attack on the following day.

After seventy-two hours, when the Italians had taken to their heels and the German batteries were silenced, 1st Guards and 6th Army had ripped a thirty-mile gap in the front to a depth of twenty miles and Lelyushenko had penetrated ten miles. On the evening of 19 December the
Stavka
subordinated 6th Army to Vatutin’s command and agreed to Vatutin’s suggestion to expand ‘Small Saturn’ as the South-Western Front turned to a general pursuit. All armoured formations—17th, 18th, 24th, 25th Tank Corps and 1st Guards Mechanized Corps—were turned loose in a south-easterly direction with orders to reach Tatsinskaya by 23 December (24th Corps), Morozovsk by 22 December (25th Corps and 1st Guards); 17th and 18th Tank Corps were to take Millerovo by the evening of 24 December.

Maj.-Gen. P.P. Poluboyarov’s 17th Tank Corps raced into Kantemirovka (an important traffic junction between Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don) at noon on 19 December, to find trains loaded with ammunition and supplies, and the streets strewn with blazing vehicles and abandoned guns. Poluboyarov’s success secured the right flank of 1st Guards Army and secured 6th Army also; 17th Tank Corps swung south on Voloshino while Maj.-Gen. Badanov’s 24th Tank Corps pushed south through the shattered Italian divisions. The main body of 6th Army also turned south-east, as did 1st and 3rd Guards Armies with two tank corps (24th and 25th) on their outer flank and two (18th Tank and 1st Guards Mechanized) on their inner flank operating with rifle formations, chopping up the remnants of the Italians and breaking Group
Hollidt
apart.

At Army Group Don, Manstein was aware that a situation of the utmost gravity, yet one of baffling obscurity, was developing by 20 December, when a message was sent to
OKH
emphasizing that decisive Soviet action following the destruction of the Italian divisions could lead to a massive threat to Rostov (and hence to Army Group A). That dire forecast received confirmation almost within hours, when German intelligence officers interrogated Maj.-Gen. Krupennikov, deputy commander of 3rd Guards Army who had taken over 3rd Guards while Lelyushenko had fallen ill; I.P. Krupennikov was, in fact, chief of staff and was captured on 20 December (to be succeeded in his post by Maj.-Gen. Khetagurov). From Krupennikov, German officers learned the attack assignments of 6th, 1st Guards and 3rd Guards Armies and concluded from the interrogation that Rostov was the objective of the Soviet offensive. Two days later, Maj.-Gen. P.P. Privalov (commander of 15th Rifle Corps) and his artillery commander Colonel Lyubinov
were taken prisoner on the Kantemirovka–Smyaglevsk road. Privalov, forty-four years old, married and with children (their fate unknown since they lived in the Carpathian region), had commanded a shock group at Tikhvin in 1941–2; after attending a staff course, he had been interviewed by Ryumantsev of the Cadres Administration and assigned to 15th Corps. Now, with grenade splinters in his head, he was a prisoner and from him German intelligence officers derived more information about the operations of his own corps, 6th Army and the Voronezh Front. (One item that Privalov also vouchsafed to his interrogators, who had a detailed picture of his corps, was that shoulder-boards were to be reintroduced as rank markings into the Red Army from 1 January—a move Privalov thought should have been made a year ago to stiffen discipline.) And to their information derived from interrogation, German intelligence added the data produced by air reconnaissance and radio monitoring (which had identified 3rd Guards Army well before it attacked).

The front on the Lower Chir still held against the attacks launched on 22 December by 5th Tank Army, although this engulfed XLVIII
Panzer
Corps in such fighting that none of its strength could be used for the relief of Stalingrad. Badanov’s 24th Tank Corps was meanwhile launched on its 120-mile raid deep into the German rear: on 22 December, 24th Tank was fighting in the Bolshinka–Ilinka area and pressed on for Tatsinskaya, one of the main German air bases for flying transports into Stalingrad and, as a vital junction on the Likhaya–Stalingrad railway, stuffed with supplies and weapons. More than 150 miles now separated Badanov from his supply base; 24th Tank Corps had run low on fuel and ammunition when its forward units bypassed Skosyrskaya to the north of Tatsinskaya. Screened by thick fog on the morning of 24 December, Badanov’s 130th, 54th and 4th Guards Tank Brigades took up positions for the attack on the railway station, village and airfield at Tatsinskaya. At 0730 hours one salvo from the rocket-launchers signalled the beginning of the assault that rolled on the station and towards the airfield, where German planes tried desperately to take off as the advancing T-34s came on firing. A Soviet tank and a taxiing Ju-52 both collided, disappearing in one sheet of flame in the roaring explosion. With the airfield shot to pieces, with aircraft, weapons and supplies destroyed on the railway trucks at the junction, Badanov at 1830 hours radioed Front and 1st Guards Army
HQ
that he had carried out his orders. But behind 24th Corps, German troops took up positions north of the Tatsinskaya and Morozovsk stations, thereby holding any further advance by South-Western Front and sealing off Badanov.

The fortunes of 24th Tank Corps, and the mounting concern about it on both the Soviet and German side, are traced in its signals. On Christmas Day 1942, Badanov reported that he had 58 tanks left (39 T-34s and 19 T-70s), with the corps woefully short of fuel and ammunition. At 0500 hours on 26 December a column of five tankers and six lorries with ammunition, escorted by five T-34s, reached the forward brigades, and an hour later 24th Motorized Rifle Brigade
moved up to Tatsinskaya, but behind the tankers and the lorried infantry the few routes—in or out—snapped shut with German troops. On the morning when the tankers arrived, Badanov learned an hour later by radio that 24th Tank was now 2nd Guards Tank Corps and he, himself, the first recipient of a new decoration, the Order of Suvorov. In the afternoon the corps came under heavy attack, and Badanov signalled to Vatutin and Kuznetsov (Samsonov,
Stalingrad, bitva
, p. 483):

Corps suffering serious shortage of ammunition. Substitute for diesel fuel exhausted. Request you cover corps operations from the air and speed up movement of army units [assigned] to secure operations of corps units. Request aircraft to drop ammunition.

Badanov

During the night of 27 December German units closed in on 24th Tank Corps and attacked all through the day. At 1800 hours Badanov radioed Vatutin urgently
(ibid.):

Situation serious. No shells. No tanks. Heavy losses in personnel. Can no longer hold Tatsinskaya. Request permission to break out of encirclement. Enemy aircraft on aerodrome destroyed.

Badanov

Vatutin had ordered Badanov to hold Tatsinskaya, but ‘if the worst came to the worst’ he could use his discretion and attempt to break out. At 2200 hours Badanov had decided to hold on and an hour later Soviet planes air-dropped ammunition over his lines. At this point Stalin took a hand. During the course of his report to the Supreme Commander, Vatutin outlined the situation: