Stalingrad to Kursk: Triumph of the Red Army by Geoffrey Jukes

Author:Geoffrey Jukes [Jukes, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: new
ISBN: 9781848840621
Amazon: 1848840624
Goodreads: 23103432
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Published: 2011-05-19T04:00:00+00:00

Addition of these (158,918) to the Stalingrad figures (629,033) gives a total of 787,951, compared to 543,000 German ‘departures’, suggesting in round figures three Soviet losses for every two German. Compared to some battles at other periods of the war, especially in 1941, this is much less unfavourable to the Soviet side. Besides, these were the price for one major and two lesser victories, and more easily replaced than German losses that were incurred in one major and two lesser defeats.

The last offensive of the winter was at Voronezh and Kharkov, by the Voronezh Front and one army each of the Bryansk and South-West Fronts, against Army Group B. It began on 14 January and continued until 3 March. Initially it was very successful, destroying most of the Hungarian 2nd Army and the remainder of the Italian 8th Army, together with several German divisions, and taking 86,000 prisoners. Operation ‘Zvezda’ (‘Star’), proposed by Vasilevsky and Golikov and amended by Stalin and Zhukov, began on 2 February, aiming to take Kharkov and continue to the coast of the Sea of Azov, to cut off Manstein’s Army Group Don. This soon created a serious enough situation for Hitler on 6 February to summon Manstein and Kluge to Rastenburg, where they at last secured his formal agreement to requests for shortening the front line that he had previously refused, Manstein’s for a withdrawal to the River Mius, and Kluge’s for abandonment of the Rzhev salient (Zeitzler had obtained Hitler’s agreement to this latter on 25 January, but formal orders had not yet been issued). Hitler then abolished Army Group B, dividing the remains of its forces (the German 2nd Army and Armeeabteilung (Army Detachment) Kempf) between Army Groups Centre and Don (now renamed Army Group South).

Manstein also secured Hitler’s agreement to a counter-offensive, spearheaded by the three experienced divisions of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, just transferred from the west, and the Wehrmacht’s elite ‘Grossdeutschland’ Division, redeployed from Army Group Centre. This offensive began on 19 February, and achieved complete surprise; by the second half of March, when the spring thaw imposed its customary pause on both sides, the 2nd SS Panzer Corps had retaken Kharkov, Grossdeutschland had captured Belgorod, the front line had been pushed back eastwards to the river line of the Seversky Donets, and most of the ground temporarily ceded north of the Don had been recaptured.

That Manstein’s offensive took the Soviets so totally by surprise was mainly because the success of Operations ‘Uranus’ and ‘Little Saturn’ had convinced all the senior military involved, from Front commanders Golikov and Vatutin up to and including Stalin, that the Germans were engaged in a full-scale withdrawal to the Dnepr river. They interpreted events in the light of that assumption; when efforts to encircle westward-moving German formations failed, they were assumed to be in headlong retreat, whereas they were actually being regrouped and concentrated for the counter-offensive. Golikov admitted after the war that he had indeed misinterpreted the German moves, and Vatutin (who

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