Originally Posted by Essay
South Front, 1942—The Soviet Winter Offensives of 1942-43
by John Schettler
On November 19, 1942, the Russians unleashed one of the most successful military offensives of WWII. Code-named "Operation Uranus", it was designed to break the bitter stalemate at Stalingrad; and more, to pocket and destroy the German 6th Army that had ravaged the southern steppes the previous summer and pushed the Soviets to the very edge of the Volga river.
Since the days of Bonaparte, when armies and their logistical trains had to move and flight along natural lines of communication, a new concept of strategy became preeminent. Napoleon discovered that he could force an issue on the battlefield through skillful maneuvers against enemy lines of communication as much as by direct confrontation. Liddell-Hart had described such an operation as "the strategy of the indirect approach". The real genius of the Russian winter offensive of 1942-43 will be seen in its appreciation of this basic strategy.
In warfare there are really only two principal types of battle. The first is based on attrition, where stubborn defense or methodical grinding advance becomes the means of wearing the opponent down and overcoming the enemy by sheer material advantage. Most Allied victories in World War II were won in battles of attrition, Normandy being the most notable. The second type of battle is one of maneuver, an art that the Germans excelled at and the Soviets learned with their staggering defeats in 1941. Battles of maneuver frequently see large encirclements of the enemy forces and deep penetrations behind enemy lines by the attacker's mobile elements (as with the Cobra breakout after Normandy, which changed the campaign from a battle of attrition to one of maneuver.) After trying several grinding counterattacks against the Germans in 1941 and early '42, the Soviets finally learned that the type of warfare most suited to the attack in the vast expanses of Russia was maneuver.
The German summer offensive, "Case Blue", was a classic campaign based on maneuver against an enemy who was vastly inferior in that method of warfare. The Germans conquered all of southern Russia in a matter of a few months! Learning a bitter lesson, the Russians finally stopped trying to maneuver on defense against superior German panzer forces, and offered them battles of attrition instead. Stalingrad was a perfect example of this strategy, which saw the Germans wrongfully committing their mobile elements to the street fighting where all of their combat prowess could not be brought into play. With Stalingrad as the bait, the Soviets then planned their own battle of maneuver—not against the virtuosos in the German panzerkorps, but against the fragile lines of communications that sustained them—lines that were thinly screened by an opponent they could out-maneuver. While Paulus struggled in the rubble of Stalingrad, the long flanks to the north and south of his 6th Army were defended by the Romanians. These hapless troops were simply too weak to muster an attritional defense against the Soviet attack, and possessed neither the equipment nor the requisite experience for a battle of maneuver. The resulting Soviet victory was the turning point of the war in the East.
As soon as the Germans realized that their battle of maneuver on the steppes was transitioning into one of attrition in Stalingrad, they should have broken off the attack and consolidated their mobile forces as a reserve. The meager reserves they did place behind the Romanian and Italian armies were woefully inadequate to stem the tide unleashed by the Red Army in Operation Uranus. One aspect of Soviet offensives which remained even after they had learned the art of maneuver was their propensity to launch truly massive attacks. Close to four hundred tanks were unleashed in the northern pincer of Operation Uranus, to be opposed by about a hundred obsolete Czech tanks in the 1st Romanian Armored Division and 30-40 operational tanks in the depleted German 22nd Panzer Division. Thus the first German strategic error at Stalingrad was in the misplacement of their forces, and the ill-suited strategic assignments given to the mobile elements.
The Russian plan was to break through the thin screening Romanian armies in a vast pincer attack that would close near the Don at the town of Kalach. Once the battle began, the Germans should have immediately appreciated the Soviet intent. After all, they had engineered countless similar battles of maneuver involving pincer operations and battles of encirclement. Surely they would produce the correct response to defeat the Russians again. An examination of the initial German reaction to this crisis shows that the professional generals, Weichs, Paulus, and later Manstein, instinctively perceived the necessity of transitioning quickly to a battle of maneuver with the mobile elements of the forces they had so arrogantly committed to the gutted slag heaps of Stalingrad.
Weichs, in command of Army Group B at Star O'blesk, wanted to immediately pull back to the Don with 6th Army, and move the German XIV Panzerkorps to the river Chir to stop the Russian northern pincer. Instead, Paulus sent the panzers to the aid of the XI Corps on his left, as immediate fuel shortages prevented them from intervening farther west. All of the German corps commanders, Seydlitz-Kurtzbach in particular, desired an immediate withdrawal from their fixed defensive positions and a battle of maneuver against an enemy they had bested time and time again in this arena. Stopping the Russians would not be easy, even if they reacted swiftly. But what the German generals could not overcome, to their lasting detriment, was the paralyzing influence of Hitler at the highest levels.
Hitler's only real battle experience had been during WWI, a war where the concept of attrition was the only known method of combat. In spite of the fact that the German strategy of Blitzkrieg had transformed modern war forever, Hitler insisted on a tenacious holding action whenever it came to relinquishing the hard won territory of Mother Russia. He justified his strategy with economic reasons—the Caucasus had to be held for the oil, Stalingrad was needed to close the Volga and choke off Russian economic traffic. But none of these reasons would result in a victory. Only the defeat of the Red Army would win the war, and with each year that passed, it was an army that would become stronger and stronger until it was largely invincible at the end of the war, the strongest military force on Earth. If Patton had gotten his wish to deal with the Russians at the close of World War II, it is very likely that the Soviet generals would have handed him his head!
In 1942, however, the Red Army was far from its zenith, though showing remarkable signs of the power it would soon develop. A moment of confusion, and the whisper of Göring in Hitler's ear, were all it took to undo months of German victories on the Eastern Front. Just as Weichs managed to wring a tentative approval from Hitler for a battle of maneuver, Göring told the Führer that he would absolutely guarantee the supply of 6th Army from the air. It was not the first promise that the Reichsmarschall would fail to deliver on. He had not been able to guarantee the defeat of the fledgling RAF in the Battle of Britain either.
But Göring's advice dropped like poison into the stew of deliberations at OKH. Hitler seized upon it to stiffen his resolve and forbade any withdrawal from Stalingrad. Without this permission the German fate was sealed. It would be impossible for the mobile elements to prevent the severing of the army's lines of communications, and the resulting supply shortages would prove fatal. The army lost its ability to maneuver and thus would be forced to defend in a battle of attrition against a well-supplied enemy who specialized in this form of warfare.
To restore the situation, Hitler appointed Field Marshal Eric von Manstein as commander of the newly constituted "Army Group Don". A veteran of France and the Crimean campaign, Manstein was widely regarded as perhaps the best strategic thinker in the German Army. Now he was faced with the prospect of restoring the shattered German Southern Front and preventing an even greater disaster by covering the vital lines of communication to Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army farther south.
When Manstein arrived he tried desperately to undo the strategic errors he had inherited. He perceived that the Russian battle of maneuver was entering a temporary lull. Though the Axis flanks still presented inviting targets for continued Soviet attacks, the Russians would eventually need to halt for a time in order to consolidate the initial gains of their offensive. During this interval, Manstein determined to strike. "Operation Winter Storm" would launch a quick battle of maneuver to break through the thin outer ring of the Russian defense and drive the 75 miles to relieve the pocketed 6th Army. Unwittingly, Stalin increased the chances of Manstein's success by insisting on the immediate liquidation of the German pocket. Thus strong tank and infantry forces that could have been used to blunt the German riposte were instead committed to the Soviet attack on the encircled Germans. The Russians must be excused for abandoning their battle of maneuver at this juncture, however. They believed that they had trapped some 80,000 Germans in the pocket, who they hoped would succumb to a quick attrition-style attack now that their supplies were cut off. In actuality there were nearly 300,000, and this force had considerable staying power and good morale despite their embarrassing and highly dangerous situation.
Manstein's Plan
There were only two promising routes for the relief attack. The first was near the confluence of the Chir and Don rivers where the first mobile elements led by Hermann Balck's 11th Panzer Division were rushing to the assistance of the beleaguered XLVII Panzerkorps. This route offered two major problems: The first was the pressure exerted on the Chir front by Romanenko's 5th Tank Army, coupled with the fact that the thin German lines on the upper Chir still presented inviting targets for ongoing Soviet offensives. The second problem was the necessity to cross a major river, the Don, to make the attack. It was the vulnerability of the northern flank which prompted Manstein to discard this option in the end, and ironically, it would be this same liability that would ultimately unhinge his second alternative.
The other possible route of attack was to advance from Kotelnikovo, where remnants of the 4th Romanian Army were being stiffened by the arrival of the German 6th Panzer Division, perhaps the strongest mobile force in the theater in terms of overall effectiveness. This approach had to cover more ground, but it had a secure northern flank on the Don, and if enough troops could be scraped together for the attack it could probably protect its southern flank as well. The problem was magnified, however, by Hitler's refusal to release the necessary reserves.
Army Group A (1st Panzer and 17th Armies) sat in secure positions in the Caucasus, and Hitler grudgingly released the 23rd Panzer Division. When Manstein asked for the 16th Motorized Division as well, Hitler denied permission for the transfer and kept the division at Elista to protect the vast open area on Army Group A's lines of communication. He promised 17th Panzer from Orel instead, but pulled it off the trains near Millerovo and sent it to the German corps forming on the upper Chir. His reason was perhaps valid. The Soviets were beginning to show signs of another offensive buildup in this area. If the division had been left there, however, it might have slowed the Russian advance on Morozovosk and Tatsinskaya. When Hitler eventually released it for the Winter Storm attack, the resulting weakness of the upper Chir front would require Manstein to replace it with 6th Panzer, dismembering his Winter Storm operation by removing its strongest force. As it was, the 17th would not make it to Kotelnikovo in time, and when it did arrive it had little effect before the offensive had to be called off. Hitler's interference, resulting in this inept placement of the few vital maneuver elements left to the Germans, doomed the Winter Storm relief attack to failure.
When the attack finally commenced on December 12, it produced dramatic results despite its inherent weakness. Because the Russians made the mistake of transitioning into a battle of attrition with their attempt at an early liquidation of the pocket, there were insufficient mobile units to oppose the German advance. The Winter Storm offensive knifed through the Soviet 51st Army and reached the Aksay river in a few days. The initial success of the German drive rattled STAVKA, the Soviet High Command, and prompted them to make two major decisions. First, the massive 2nd Guards Army, which Stalin wished to use to crush the pocket, was sent instead to the Myshkova River to stave off Winter Storm. Second, the objectives of the next Soviet "Saturn" offensive were changed, and this was perhaps the most fateful decision of the campaign.
Operation Saturn
While Hermann Balck struggled to hold the line of the river Chir as Winter Storm progressed, a new and powerful Russian threat developed on the middle Don. The Soviets had been reinforcing the sector opposite the Italian 8th Army for some time, and also feeding in new formations to cover Romanenko's right flank as 5th Tank Army advanced. To this end they created a new army designated 3rd Guards to fill the growing gap between 5th Tank Army and the 1st Guards Army on the Don. This allowed 1st Guards, now heavily reinforced, to shift laterally to the west and join the next major Soviet offensive, code named "Saturn". A massive Soviet armored fist was preparing to smash through the Italian 8th Army and drive on Rostov. No less than four new tank corps (17th, 18th, 24th and 25th) with over five hundred tanks were assembled for the attack, supported by strong infantry and Guards rifle divisions.
Events on the Myshkova, however, were about to have a dramatic effect on the Soviet plan. The tough resistance by the German 6th Army in the pocket led Stalin to assemble new assault forces for use in "Operation Klotso" (Ring). This operation was aimed at a speedy liquidation of the trapped German Army. The new troops were tough Siberian Guards formations under the capable leadership of Malinovski. Unfortunately, the German Winter Storm attack so unnerved the Russians in 51st and 57th Army that they put in desperate calls for reinforcements, prompting Stalin to send the Guards to their aid instead. Malinovski's troops planted themselves on the Myshkova river and brought Winter Storm to a grinding halt. At the same time, ostensibly to further weaken the German 6th Army by denying them the airfields they now depended upon for supply, STAVKA ordered a change in the Saturn offensive's objectives. The mobile forces were to hook left, and drive for Morozovsk and Tatsinskaya first. Once these air bases were secured, they would consolidate for the push on Rostov.
When the order came down from STAVKA it caused a tremendous row at the Southwest Front headquarters. Vatutin fought to save the Saturn offensive as originally conceived, but Stalin intervened personally and ordered him to comply with the change of plans. Thus the Soviets lost the main impetus of their "indirect approach" by shifting the offensive towards limited objectives. The new attack was more direct, and the Germans were to have a very direct response as well.
The Russian attack, now designated "Little Saturn", smashed through the Italians and drove south and east. By this time the Germans had managed to scrape together a few reserve divisions under XVII Corps and an ad hoc formation led by Hollidt. These fell back with remnants of the Italian 8th and Romanian 3rd armies as the Russians came forward. A day earlier Hoth had broadcast a message of hope to the trapped 6th Army: "Hold on—We are coming!" Now he would not be able to make good on that promise. Manstein appreciated the gravity of this new Russian attack and knew that Balck could not hope to restore the front with his single good panzer division (the 11th). He had no choice but to admit defeat and order Hoth to give up the 6th Panzer Division to reinforce XLVIII Panzerkorps to the north.
In spite of Hitler, the Germans were showing a glimmer of their brilliance for battles of maneuver. 6th Panzer crossed the lower Don and moved up to join Balck's 11th. Together the two panzer divisions met the Saturn offensive head on. They caught the lead Soviet Tank Corps, Badnov's 24th, and chopped it up so badly that Stalin ordered all Tank Corps to operate in pairs from that day forward. (Poor Badnov escaped with a meager shell of his corps, and it was later rebuilt and awarded "Guards" status for its ordeal by fire at the hands of the best two German divisions on the field.)
The timely counterthrust was enough to blunt the Russian offensive and restore temporary stability to the shattered front. But Saturn did have one undeniable effect—the German 6th Army was now doomed, and Hitler was at last prompted to order Kleist to begin the withdrawal of 1st Panzer Army from the Caucasus. Through their indirect approach, the Russians had achieved a startling strategic victory in destroying one army while forcing another to yield all the territory gained in the previous summer campaign. The German forces had been dealt one of the most stunning defeats of the war, and would never fully recover from the loss of 6th Army. Hitler, however, was not yet willing to believe that Paulus was doomed. He was leaning over the conference table and hammering at a point near the city of Kharkov where the last Russian offensive in this area had been stopped in 1942. As if Manstein's pleas for more troops were finally to be heard, he resolved to send the best shock troops in the German Army for yet another rescue attempt.
So, while Kleist made his brilliant retreat to Rostov, Hitler was insisting on the deployment of the SS Panzerkorps and the famous Gross Deutschland Division near Kharkov for a drive all the way to Stalingrad. No matter how crazed this idea might seem, given the hindsight of history it did have the effect of bringing these strong mechanized reserves to the region, which Manstein used to produce his "Miracle on the Donetz"—the last significant victory by the Germans in WWII. The German mobile forces drawn west to parry the Saturn offensive were reinforced by Kleist to form a strong armored fist in the south. To the north, the SS and Gross Deutschland were massing west of Kharkov. Between them, the Russians pressed their third phase of the winter offensive code named "Operation Star". They were driving right into a carefully laid trap, and Manstein unleashed his panzers in a pincer attack that cut the Russian offensive off at the base and saved the Southern front.
When it was over, the Germans had renewed their confidence in mobile warfare under the able leadership of Eric von Manstein. They also had a massive armored force around Kharkov that would become the southern pincer in the next great offensive operation in the east: "Operation Citadel", the Kursk offensive. Unfortunately, the Russians had other ideas about this battle, and they met the intended German battle of maneuver with a thickly entrenched battle of attrition. Instead of the great encirclement victory the Germans expected, Kursk proved to be the swan song of the Panzertruppen in the east… But that is another story.
Copyright John Schettler, 1998
