Panzerkrieg by Mike Syron

Author:Mike Syron
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472107800
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

CHAPTER SEVEN

Death Ride of the Panzers

The unfortunate and ruinous combat of 1943 had defeated all schemes to increase the fighting power of the panzer divisions. Only the quality of the individual tanks could be improved, but the total number dwindled steadily.

Guderian

AT the start of 1943 on the Ostfront, the Germans faced not only the loss of their Sixth Army in Stalingrad, but also the possibility that the whole southern front could collapse. Kleist’s Army Group A, consisting of the First Panzerarmee and the Seventeenth Army, had remained in the Caucasus after Fall Blau ran out of steam and it was now in danger of being cut off by strong Russian forces pushing from the Don towards Rostov. With the Russians closing rapidly on the city from the north and Kleist still far to the east of that, Hitler reluctantly agreed to allow him to retreat, just one day after sending him an order to stay put. On 3 January, the Germans began to withdraw from the Caucasus.

It was to prove one of the most impressive retreats in military history. Kleist won a field marshal’s baton for his skill in covering such a huge distance in winter and suffering relatively light losses while superior enemy forces pressed his flank and rear. With Manstein’s Army Group South covering his flank, Kleist managed to withdraw his forces through the Rostov bottleneck before the Russians could cut them off and so reached the relative safety of the Dnieper. The operation was a fine testament to the effectiveness of elastic defence and Kleist’s forces were still in good enough shape to contribute to Manstein’s counter-attack in February.

The remnants of Sixth Army surrendered on 2 February 1943 – 120,000 Germans had died in the fighting and 90,000 more marched into captivity. Total equipment losses for this period included over 1,000 tanks and SP guns. Yet the situation wasn’t as catastrophic as it had been just weeks earlier, thanks to Manstein’s actions in aiding the remarkable retreat of Kleist’s Army Group A from the Caucasus. Where before the annihilation of the German southern front seemed inevitable and with it certain defeat in the war, now there was at least a half chance of the front surviving.

The recapture of Stalingrad had been a great boost to Soviet morale and self-confidence and on 15 January they launched a massive attack west of the Don, again directed against lines held by German allies, this time the Hungarians. Just like the Romanians, the Hungarians were ill equipped to withstand tank attacks and quickly crumbled when Golikov’s Voronezh Front and Vatutin’s South-West Front swept over them. Soon a 300-km (200-mile) hole had been torn in the front and the German Second Army was forced to abandon Voronezh.

According to Manstein’s calculations, the German divisions in the south were at this stage outnumbered eight to one by the Russians. It was also clear to him that the Russian plan was that the Voronezh Front would recapture Kharkov and when South-West Front reached the Dnieper, it would swing south towards the Black Sea in an effort to trap Army Group South.

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