Victory At Stalingrad by The Battle That Changed History

Author:The Battle That Changed History
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2008-08-24T01:33:30+00:00

chapter six

A F T E R M A T H :

revenge and retribution

on the road to Berlin,

1943 – 5

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AFTERMATH: REVENGE AND RETRIBUTION

The Red Army’s victorious march to Berlin began with a

series of setbacks. In January 1943 the Soviets launched a

general offensive in the southern theatre. Building on

Operation Little Saturn, the ambitious aim was to entrap,

encircle and destroy all the German armies in the south.

According to John Erickson ‘the Soviet command planned to

entomb an estimated seventy-five German divisions in the

Ukraine’ (1983, p.44).

At first all went well. On 26 January Voronezh was retaken.

This was followed by the rout of the Hungarian 2nd Army

guarding the Germans’ flanks in this sector. On 14 February the Soviets retook Rostov and the next day the Germans

evacuated Kharkov. But the Germans had hung on long

enough in Rostov to evacuate Army Group A from the

Caucasus and in mid-March they were able to launch a

counter-attack which recaptured Kharkov (the city changing

hands for the third time) from the Soviets. By this time the Soviet counteroffensive was petering out and all operations were grinding to a halt in the spring mud of the Rasputitsa (‘the time of bad roads’). When the smoke had cleared in spring 1943 the Germans occupied more or less the same positions and front line as they had held in June 1942 on the eve of Operation Blau. After nearly a year of struggle in the south the Germans had gained precisely nothing, at the cost of innumerable armies and divisions, and of a crushing defeat at Stalingrad from which they would never recover.

The main German commander in the south was von

Manstein and, thanks mainly to his generalship, the surviving forces of the Wehrmacht were able to stage a remarkable 139

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VICTORY AT STALINGRAD

defensive recovery and stave off complete disaster in the

Stalingrad theatre. Despite the catastrophic defeat at

Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht remained a formidable fighting force. It was not a force capable any more of winning the war or even of threatening the Soviet strategic position, but it was more than capable of staging a fighting retreat and of inflicting considerable damage on its way back to Germany.

After this post-Stalingrad setback to their grand plans Stalin and the Stavka seemed to have finally learned the lesson that the war on the Eastern Front would be won gradually and incrementally rather than by a revolutionary change in the

strategic situation. German-style Blitzkrieg was abandoned and there was a return to the traditional Soviet doctrine of ‘consecutive operations’. Lightning thrusts by armoured formations were not ruled out, but the emphasis was on posi—

tional forward movement. Hence, the somewhat surprising

Soviet decision to remain on the strategic defensive in 1943, awaiting the Germans’ next move, with the intention of anticipating it, defeating it, and using it as a launchpad for a major counter-attack. Again, Zhukov and Vasilevskii were the masterminds of Soviet strategy and tactics.

The German move came at the Battle of Kursk in July 1943.

The town of Kursk

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