Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

Given the muddy roads and long distances involved, it took six days for von Kleist to replenish his forward panzer divisions. Cherevichenko mistakenly believed that the German offensive had culminated and sent the bulk of his reinforcements, including three tank brigades, to build up the 37th Army for a counter-offensive against von Kleist’s left flank. It thus came as a surprise when Mackensen’s III Armeekorps (mot.) committed the LSSAH, reinforced with Panzer-Regiment 4 from 13.Panzer-Division, to attack the 56th Army’s outer perimeter at Sultan-Saly on 17 November. The 14.Panzer-Division and 60.Infanterie-Division joined in the final assault and the two Soviet rifle divisions in this sector were pushed back to their second line of defense. Yet even as Mackensen was closing in on Rostov, the Soviet 37th Army began its own offensive which began to threaten von Kleist’s left flank. On 19 November, Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division began to fight its way into Rostov, which was defended by about 80,000 Soviet troops. This was the first and only attempt by the Germans to fight with a panzer division in a major city without infantry support and this proved a costly undertaking. By the end of 20 November, Mackensen’s troops had captured most of Rostov, but his forces had finally reached their culmination point and gone well beyond it. Kühn’s 14.Panzer-Division had lost twenty tanks in taking Rostov and was reduced to just thirty-six tanks (ten Pz.II, twenty Pz.III, two Pz.IV and four PzBef). Von Wietersheim’s corps, although not fully involved in the final push on Rostov, were also spent and could not fend off the counteroffensive by 37th Army, even though it only consisted of six rifle divisions supported by fewer than 100 tanks. Both Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division and SS-Division Wiking began to give ground by 21–22 November, which threatened Mackensen’s position in Rostov.

Von Kleist found himself in a very difficult position, made worse by the shortage of fuel, which made it impossible for him to conduct the kind of mobile defense preferred by German commanders. The offensive to take Rostov had cost PzAOK 1 over 6,000 casualties, including 1,778 dead, and about half its remaining armour. The prospect of meaningful reinforcements was nil. By 25 November, the writing was on the wall and Mackensen’s corps was slowly being squeezed as von Wietersheim’s corps was continuously forced to yield ground. Von Rundstedt and von Kleist recognized that PzAOK 1 no longer had the strength to hold Rostov, but Hitler insisted that the city would be held.

Striking the Hydra’s Head, 25 November–15 December

If military history teaches us anything, it is that false assumptions are at the root of all major disasters. Hitler and the OKH had begun Operation Typhoon and the armoured attacks at Tikhvin and Rostov with inadequate fuel and ammunition which – far more than the weather – caused these offensives to culminate short of their objectives. Time and again, the German panzer spearheads were forced to halt their advances because of fuel shortages. The shortage of artillery ammunition, when combined with the reduced scale of close air support, degraded the ability of the panzer groups to reduce Soviet strong points at places like Istra, Volokolamsk and Tula, which enabled the Red Army to recover from its set-backs. Operation Typhoon and the other attacks were built upon the assumption that none of these material factors would matter and that somehow the Wehrmacht would triumph through superior willpower. Yet by the time that the worst winter weather arrived in early December, each of the German panzer armies had been stopped because of material inadequacies, which precipitated a collapse of German front-line morale. Furthermore, the German panzer units on all fronts – Tikhvin, Moscow, Tula and Rostov – were all over-extended and spent, with little or no remaining offensive combat power. In each case, their attacks had left them holding positions with weakly-protected flanks and minimal infantry support.