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

Elsewhere, the Soviet Bryansk Front managed to push the 2.Armee back towards Orel, mostly with cavalry and a few dozen light tanks. The Northwest Front also succeeded in surrounding the German II Armeekorps at Demyansk, but lacked the armour and artillery to crush the pocket. Overall, the Soviet Winter Counter-offensive stressed the Wehrmacht nearly to breaking point but failed to achieve any truly decisive results. During the winter fighting of 1941–42, neither side was able to muster more than company and battalion-size groupings of tanks, even in key sectors. Along vast stretches of front there were no tanks at all. Despite possessing an impressive numerical superiority in tanks on paper, the Red Army was never able to assemble a decent operational maneuver group due to the lack of large armoured formations. Instead, Soviet front commanders were forced to improvise mobile groups using weak tank brigades based around light tanks to support cavalry and ski troops. These ad hoc mobile groups were sufficient to outflank German positions – which caused a great deal of trouble – but lacked the firepower to reduce well-defended fortified villages and towns. Consequently, Hitler’s instinctive adoption of hedgehog (Igel) tactics succeeded in the winter of 1941–42 due to the Red Army’s temporary lack of tanks, artillery and ammunition.

Indeed, the Red Army at this point lacked the firepower or tactical skill to overcome well-defended German hedgehog positions. Two in particular – Kholm and Demyansk – held out against repeated attacks. At Kholm, Kampfgruppe Scherer, which initially started with 4,500 troops and four Pak guns, conducted an epic defense during a 105-day siege from 21 January to 5 May 1942. The Red Army repeatedly attacked the town with two rifle divisions, supported by the 146 and 170 OTB, which had a total of forty-six tanks (four KV-1, two T-34, eleven Matilda II and twenty-nine T-60). Initially, the Soviets attacked the town with only a few tanks at a time in infantry support roles, but this allowed the Germans to shift their limited number of Pak guns around the small perimeter. However, the Soviets began attacking with more tanks in February and in different sectors simultaneously, which nearly overwhelmed the defenders. The Matildas proved impervious to the 3.7cm Pak fire, but three were lost to T-mines and their 2-pounder guns were not very effective at engaging targets in buildings due to their lack of an HE round.

The Luftwaffe managed to fly in new anti-tank weapons by glider and parachute to keep the Soviets tanks at bay, including the new Stielgranate 41 HEAT rounds for the 3.7cm Pak, used for the first time on 10 March.¹² Although only 9 of 18 Stielgranate 41 rounds hit their targets and only two tanks were damaged, the introduction of HEAT warheads would slowly begin to change the anti-tank dynamic on the Eastern Front in favor of the defense, even though this would not be realized until the Panzerfaust appeared in 1944. While the two OTBs tried to break into Kholm – and nearly succeeded on several occasions – the Soviets deployed a few T-34s west of the town to block German relief efforts. During the course of the siege, over thirty Soviet tanks were destroyed around Kholm.