The Road to Berlin (9 page)

Trapping First
Panzer
Army depended on close co-ordination between the Southern Front and the two groups of the Trans-Caucasus Front, the Northern and Black Sea Group. While Petrov struggled to build up his Black Sea Group for its attack on Krasnodar and thence Tikhoretsk, the Southern Front received orders to attack in two directions, with its right wing along the lower reaches of the Don towards Rostov and with its left towards Salsk and Tikhoretsk. The Soviet armoured formations had already taken a heavy battering in the Kotelnikovo fighting; now, ploughing through snow and moving every hour away from their supply bases, 3rd Guards and 13th Mechanized Corps needed more tanks and fresh supplies. The Front command asked for 300 new tanks. The
Stavka
on 4 January promised 150 and suggested that the remainder be made up from machines repaired on the spot. Trufanov’s 51st and Gerasimenko’s 28th Armies ran into stiff opposition at Zimovniki, which was finally cleared on 7 January; this left an open flank, which was closed by moving 2nd Guards Army armoured formations to the Zimovniki area to operate between the Don and the Sal. On the right wing of the Southern Front, Popov’s 5th Shock Army and part of 2nd Guards, under its deputy commander Kreizer, pressed on to the Kagalnik. By 11 January, Malinovskii’s 2nd Guards and Trufanov’s 51st Armies had reached the river Manych between its mouth and the railway station of Proletarskaya; Rotmistrov (whose 7th Tank Corps was now 3rd Guards) was in command of a ‘mechanized group’ consisting of his own corps (3rd Guards), 2nd and 6th Mechanized Corps and 98th Rifle Division—a force Malinovskii hoped to use in seizing Rostov and Bataisk by a very rapid drive. Malinovskii issued orders for Rotmistrov to seize crossing bridgeheads on the southern bank of the Manych by the morning of 17 January, and then to go for Bataisk and Rostov.

For all this pressure south of the Don, and for all Popov’s attacks with 5th Shock Army along the lower Don through Konstantinovskii, Rostov would not be so speedily closed off. Nor could the Southern Front, for all its exertions, break through to Tikhoretsk. After the middle of January, First
Panzer
Army, having speeded up its withdrawal very considerably, had established ‘operational co-operation’ with Fourth
Panzer
. Rostov must now be held to secure lines of communication, though the survival of First
Panzer
was scarcely at risk. Meanwhile, Petrov’s offensive with his Black Sea Group, aimed at Krasnodar-Tikhoretsk, slowly but surely ground to an inevitable halt. Struggling with floods and winter mud, Petrov could only attack in stages; on 11 January, Lt.-Gen. Leselidze’s 4th Army and Maj.-Gen. Ryzhkov’s 18th Army began their diversionary attacks aimed at Maikop and Belorechenskaya, but within twenty-four hours pouring rain flecked with light snow brought havoc to transport columns. Ryzhkov’s troops fighting in the mountains floundered in snow drifts. The diversionary attack
on the left flank, mounted by Maj.-Gen. Kamkov’s 47th Army—the main instrument of Operation ‘Heights’—began its operations on 16 January in much the same appalling conditions in the wooded, mountainous terrain. With roads awash and streams turned into miniature rivers, with artillery bogged down despite the feverish manhandling of guns and with aircraft the only means of supply on his left, Grechko made only painful progress towards Krasnodar. On 20 January Petrov reported to Vasilevskii that any movement of armour was out of the question. Four days later Grechko was glued to the ground on the southern approaches to Krasnodar, and the prospect of the drive on Tikhoretsk vanished completely.

On 24 January, when to the north-east of Rostov Vatutin’s South-Western Front and 5th Shock Army on the northern wing of Southern Front had reached the rivers Aidar and Northern Donets, and while to the east and south-east the Soviet line of advance ran along the lower reaches of the Don and the Manych, and on to Belaya Glina, Armavir and Labinskaya, the
Stavka
decided upon a rapid change of plan to sever the German escape routes. The three armies of the Southern Front (2nd Guards, 51st and 28th Armies) operating south of the Don were to operate with the right-flank armies of the Northern Group of the Trans-Caucasus Front (44th and 58th Armies plus the ‘cavalry-mechanized group’), in an attack on Bataisk, shutting off Rostov from the south and then moving along the coast of the sea of Azov. The capture of Bataisk would halt the movement of German forces through Rostov into the Donbas (and would thus hinder the build-up of a new German front). In order to trap Seventeenth Army, the left-flank armies of the Northern Group (9th and 37th Armies) were to operate with Petrov’s Black Sea Group; Petrov was to concentrate his main forces north-east of Novorossiisk in order to break through at Krimskaya and thereby prevent any escape into the Taman peninsula. Finally, the Northern Group of Tyulenev’s command was established as an independent front, the North Caucasus Front. On the same day, Hitler finally decided to bring all of First
Panzer
, whose southern wing was still at Armavir, back through Rostov; Fourth
Panzer
would, therefore, have to hold south of the Don.

Manstein’s grip on the lower Don, however, was made totally precarious by the calamities precipitated on the upper Don by Golikov’s attack launched on 12 January against the 2nd Hungarian Army—the Ostrogorzhsk–Rossosh operation. This had ripped a huge and gaping hole in the German front from south of Voronezh to Voroshilovgrad, and dangerously loosened the German hold on the Donbas by opening the way to the Donets and on to the Dnieper crossings or the sea of Azov. Golikov’s operational plan called for three simultaneous strikes by his Front command, a method selected to ensure surprise and to inhibit enemy reserves. The ‘northern group’ (Maj.-Gen. Moskalenko’s 40th Army), was to aim for Alekseyevka, where it would link up with the ‘southern group’ (Maj.-Gen. Rybalko’s 3rd Tank Army) moving out from north-west of Kantemirovka; meanwhile the ‘central group’ (Maj.-Gen. Zykov’s 18th Independent Rifle Corps)
would move west, south-west and south. For immediate security of the operations to the south, Maj.-Gen. Sokolov’s 7th Cavalry Corps would attack towards Valuiki, while to the north 4th Tank Corps would secure Moskalenko’s external flank (a guard against possible German attack from the Voronezh–Kastornoe direction). For the forthcoming operations the
Stavka
had substantially reinforced the Voronezh Front: Rybalko’s 3rd Tank Army (its
HQ
in the Tula area) was moved in with its two tank corps, 12th and 15th, four rifle divisions (48th, 184th, 180th and 111th), one independent rifle brigade (87th) and two artillery components. With a second burst of reinforcement, Golikov was assigned three more rifle divisions, one tank brigade and a ski brigade.

Moskalenko’s planning was finished by 25 December (40th Army had prepared a contingency plan even before 21 December), but the planning of the Front operation was supervised by General Zhukov, joined by Col.-Gen. Vasilevskii and with the participation of Maj.-Gen. V.D. Ivanov from the Operations Section of the General Staff. Peresypkin, head of Red Army Signals, was also present during the planning and preparation. From 3 January 1943, Front preparations came under the immediate control of Zhukov and Vasilevskii as
Stavka
representatives, and not without Zhukov laying about him a little. It was, nevertheless, an offensive planned with minute attention to detail, bearing many of the marks of Zhukov’s close, unbending scrutiny: he was furious at a suspected breach of security (though none had in fact occurred and the offensive enjoyed its advantage of surprise). Enemy air reconnaissance failed to reveal the preparations, and the Hungarian commanders reported nothing untoward. Soviet units moved at night, though snow-bound roads made movement far from easy; at the ‘northern group’, 4th Tank Corps was behind schedule and finally Golikov was obliged to seek Stalin’s permission for a postponement, to 14 January. Stalin agreed.

Two days earlier, on 12 January, Moskalenko had begun a reconnaissance in force. On the following day the 7th Hungarian Division took to its heels and Moskalenko decided to commit his main force, breaking through the enemy defensive zone to a depth of some three miles. Rybalko’s 3rd Tank Army attacked on 14 January in thick mist; by the evening, with two tanks corps in action, Rybalko was twelve miles into the enemy positions and Maj.-Gen. Koptsov’s 15th Tank Corps had overrun the
HQ
of XXIV
Panzer
Corps. Soviet cavalry struck out very successfully for Valuiki and under the pale winter sun on 19 January the horsemen in black capes and flying hoods charged down the hapless Italians, killing and wounding more than a thousand before this brief resistance by the fleeing, hungry and frostbitten men of the 5th Italian Infantry Division ended. By that time thirteen divisions had been trapped, 56,000 men made prisoner (and approximately the same number killed by Soviet reckoning), and 1,700 tanks, 2,800 machine-guns, 55,000 rifles, and lorries and horses by the thousand, as well as whole ammunition dumps, had been captured. A few days later in Budapest the rumours flew round the streets that ‘the Hungarians have perished to a man’. The final elimination of the encircled divisions lasted until
the end of the month, by which time the tally of prisoners rose to 86,900; in his letter to Hitler, Admiral Horthy subsequently listed the loss of 80,000 officers and men killed, with 63,000 wounded. The 2nd Hungarian Army, remnants of the 8th Italian Army, the Italian Alpine Corps and XXIV
Panzer
Corps were rubbed out of the German order of battle. Between Voronezh and Kantemirovka a 120-mile breach gaped in the German line.

On the evening of 18 January, when the Soviet pincers first closed on the Hungarians and Italians, Vasilevskii, who had supervised the execution of the present operation, presented Stalin with proposals for the next attack. This was to unroll on the German Second Army and thereby eliminate Army Group B completely: the ‘Voronezh–Kastornoe operation’ was directed at the exposed northern and southern flanks of Second Army, which was now trapped in a salient, with the Bryansk Front to the north and the Voronezh Front to the south. Wiping out this twelve-division force (125,000-men strong) would establish ideal conditions for an attack on Kursk (and also release more north-south railway lines). Two Soviet fronts, Bryansk and Voronezh, would co-operate to accomplish the Voronezh–Kastornoe encirclement. On Lt.-Gen. Max Reiter’s Bryansk Front, Maj.-Gen. N.P. Pukhov’s 13th Army—that disastrously unlucky army of 1941—would attack from the north to Kastornoe, and, from Golikov’s right and centre, Moskalenko’s 40th, Maj.-Gen. Chernyakhovskii’s 60th and Lt.-Gen. Chibisov’s 38th Army would attack from the south-east (40th and 60th) and the north-west (38th). The
Stavka
permitted the use of Reiter’s left flank, but could make no other reinforcement available. The provisional date was fixed at 24–26 January. On 24 January Moskalenko attacked in the worst of wintry conditions—fog, a blizzard which blew from dawn onwards, and the temperature down to minus twenty degrees; shortly after noon, the tanks of Kravchenko’s 4th Tank Corps (recently at Stalingrad) moved up, using up great quantities of fuel by slithering off the roads and in towing stranded machines. By night Soviet U-2s dropped them drums of diesel oil. German troops had already started to pull back from Voronezh and the Don, but three Soviet armies, 60th, 38th and finally Pukhov’s 13th, now joined the attack. On the morning of 28 January, armoured units of the Bryansk Front moving from the north and west, and those of the Voronezh Front advancing from the south and east, closed on Kastornoe, where the fighting lasted until the early hours of 29 January.

Although the trap had not closed entirely on Second Army, two of its three corps had been encircled. Army Group B had been sliced away from Army Group Don and destroyed as an effective command. Along a 150-mile sector running along the railway line from Kursk–Kastornoe and south to Kupyansk (South-Western Front) only five German divisions were holding the line, with only three in operational reserve at Kharkov. On this calculation, the quicker Soviet armies struck out for Kursk and Kharkov the better, before German reserves concentrated at Kharkov. Vasilevskii and Golikov pressed this argument upon Stalin on 21 January in a survey of the possibilities presented by the
breakthrough on the upper Don. Once the Voronezh–Kastornoe operation was completed, the Voronezh Front would concentrate its striking forces on the line of the river Oskol on a sector running from Stary Oskol to Urazovo, and from there launch a three-pronged attack on Kharkov. This idea Stalin approved in principle, and Golikov was ordered to prepare this offensive which would be opened no later than 1–2 February, an operation which received the codename
Zvezda
(‘Star’). On the eve of the Kastornoe operation, Golikov let Chernyakhovskii and Chibisov in on the course of future operations, ‘promising’ the Kharkov operation to the army which first liberated Kastornoe. As Soviet armour moved in on this important rail junction on 28 January, Golikov issued the first orders connected with the Kursk–Kharkov attack—Second Army was to be fully eliminated as right-flank armies moved up to the Tim and Oskol river-lines, from which the Kursk–Kharkov attack would be launched. Voronezh Front operations, however, were themselves only part of a much greater undertaking, the strategic counter-offensive on the southern wing, also involving the South-Western and Southern Fronts, to liberate the Ukraine, the Donbas and to drive along the shore of the sea of Azov. The
Stavka
directives, which were being prepared and which would within days be on their way to Front commanders, set the terminal line for the Soviet advance before the spring thaw at Chernigov–Kherson. In the Stalingrad ring, where Operation
Koltso
had opened on 10 January with an enormous barrage followed at 0900 hours by the first tank and infantry attacks, Paulus had surrendered himself at his
HQ
in the
Univermag
building on 31 January. Behind the humiliation of one man lay the appalling agonies and grievous suffering of thousands of men in Sixth Army, the army which had done much to fell the Low Countries, Yugoslavia, Greece and the Ukraine. Before the opening of the attack, Voronov on 4–5 January had conceived the idea of sending an ultimatum to Sixth Army to surrender or be destroyed. The
Stavka
approved the text submitted by Voronov, and on 7 January radio contact was established with Sixth Army
HQ
to arrange the passage of emissaries, Major Smyslov and Captain Dyatlenko. The first attempt to hand over the ultimatum failed. The
Stavka
was all for calling off the attempt, but on the morning of 9 January the two Soviet officers, blindfolded (with bandages they carried already prepared in their own pockets), were taken to a German command post. Paulus refused to meet the emissaries, who were informed that Sixth Army’s commander already knew the contents of the message from Soviet radio transmission.