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

After the retreats from Moscow, Tikhvin, Tula and Rostov, it briefly seemed to the Germans on the Eastern Front that major combat operations might be suspended for the rest of the winter. The reasonable course of action for both sides was to limit their operations at the front and focus on rebuilding their badly-depleted armoured units so that they would be capable of further large-scale operations once spring arrived. However, Stalin was exuberant after the German defeat at Moscow and convinced himself – as Hitler had done about the Red Army in October 1941 – that one more major blow would cause the Wehrmacht to collapse. It is interesting how both dictators deluded themselves about the apparent weakness of their opponent, with their general staffs obsequiously feeding this delusion, and which in both cases led to catastrophic over-extension and defeat. After the German panzer armies had been pushed back from Moscow, Zhukov and a few other Red Army commanders wanted time to rebuild their armies, but Stalin was impatient. Instead, in late December 1941 Stalin informed the Stavka that he wanted a new series of counter-offensives, all along the front from Leningrad to the Crimea, to hammer the Germans mercilessly and drive the invaders out of the Soviet Union. Zhukov, realizing that the Red Army’s resources were still quite limited and not capable of supporting multi-front offensives so soon, argued for concentrating at one or two points to achieve decisive results, but was over-ruled by Stalin.⁹ Staffs at front-level, who had been alerted in late December to prepare for offensive action, were given at best a few days to prepare their battle plans.

The first indication that the Red Army was not going to stop after the German defeat at Moscow occurred in the Crimea, where the Soviets mounted amphibious landings at Kerch on 26 December and Feodosiya on 29 December. Von Manstein’s 11.Armee was caught by surprise and the Soviets were able to land over 85,000 troops and forty-three light tanks in a matter of days. Although von Manstein was able to contain the Soviet landings, the Red Army continued to pour troops, tanks and artillery into the Kerch Peninsula in January – meaning that a test of strength would not be long in coming. There were no panzer units in the Crimea, but von Manstein’s 11.Armee did have Stürmgeschütz-Abteilüngen 190 and 197 with a handful of assault guns. Indeed, the assault-gun units proved their worth in stiffening the defense time and again during the Soviet Winter Counter-offensive.

Timoshenko was the first front commander to commit his forces into the general offensive on 1 January, when his Southwest Front began attacking the German 6.Armee near Izyum. The weather was atrocious, with temperatures of –29°C (–20°F) and deep snow covering the ground, but Timoshenko’s forces gradually overwhelmed an isolated German infantry division and achieved a significant breakthrough after two weeks of fighting, creating a 40km-wide gap between AOK 6 and AOK 17. Timoshenko’s breakthrough was facilitated by a small number of KV-1 and T-34 tanks, but his Southwest Front had barely 200 tanks and was forced to rely upon cavalry as its primary exploitation force. Lacking the shock effect of armour, the Soviet cavalry spearheads were eventually halted by German and Romanian blocking detachments, but the net result was the creation of the Barvenkovo salient that drove a deep wedge in Heeresgruppe Süd’s frontline.