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

While Stalin and the Stavka became fixated on the tank battles in the Don Bend, Hitler saw an opportunity for Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee to pivot northeastward after crossing the Don and unexpectedly smash in the Stalingrad Front’s left flank. Hoth’s forces were relatively weak, with the main striking element being General der Panzertruppe Werner Kempf’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps with 14.Panzer-Division and 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.), with no more than 100 operational tanks, but Gordov had concentrated all his available armour on his right flank. Generalmajor Ferdinand Heim’s 14.Panzer-Division achieved a spectacular breakthrough of the 51st Army’s front on 1 August and advanced 40km in a single day, rolling up Gordov’s flank. Supported by the 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.), Heim advanced so quickly toward the northeast that Gordov could not react quickly enough or build a new defensive line. German armour captured the railhead at Kotel’nikovo on the morning of 2 August and reached Abganerovo, only 70km southwest of Stalingrad, on 5 August. The Vorausabteilungen of both mechanized divisions managed to reach Tinguta station, just 60km from Stalingrad, on 6 August. As usual, an advance of this kind reduced Kempf’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps to logistical bankruptcy and the Red Army was given valuable time to recover while the Germans waited for more fuel to arrive. General-leytenant Mikhail S. Shumilov’s 64th Army managed to form a new line of rifle divisions blocking the way to Stalingrad, while Gordov dispatched the decimated 13th Tank Corps and 133rd Heavy Tank Brigade to launch a counterattack.

Shumilov counterattacked XXXXVIII Panzerkorps on the morning of 9 August. Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps entered the battle with only thirty T-34 and four T-70s, but was reinforced by Polkovnik Bubnov’s twenty-two KV-1. It was not a particularly strong counterattack, but it caught the Germans by surprise; one German column was ambushed near Tinguta by some T-34s from the 6th Guards Tank Brigade and Leytenant Nikolai P. Andreev was able to knock-out five German tanks in quick succession. The Vorausabteilungen fell back in hasty retreat. After two days of tank skirmishing which cost Tanaschishin forty tanks and Heim about the same, Kempf was able to establish a stable front around Abganerovo, but lacked the strength to advance any closer to Stalingrad. Heim’s 14.Panzer-Division was reduced to just twenty-four operational tanks. Despite Hitler’s perception that Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee was a powerful force, by mid-August it consisted of only three mechanized divisions with less than 200 tanks and three German and four Romanian infantry divisions.

Once Soviet attention shifted to their left flank, Paulus’ AOK 6 was able to finish off the elements of the 62nd Army and 1st Tank Army that were still in the Don Bend. A pincer attack begun on the morning of 7 August by Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division from the north and the 24.Panzer-Division from the south quickly shattered the 62nd Army’s front and achieved a link-up near Kalach by nightfall of the same day. A total of eight Soviet rifle divisions, plus the battered remnants of the 23rd and 28th Tank Corps, were trapped inside the German kessel. It took the Germans five days to reduce the kessel, but by 12 August Paulus claimed that 35,000 prisoners and 270 tanks had been taken and all the formations inside the kessel destroyed. In fact, about half the trapped forces escaped across the Don, but without equipment.⁵⁵ The 1st Tank Army was no more and it was officially disbanded on 17 August. Paulus then turned to finish off Kriuchenkin’s 4th Tank Army, reduced to only forty-five tanks, with a sudden attack by XIV Panzerkorps on 15 August. Within two days, Kriuchenkin’s army was crushed and soon disbanded, the Red Army cleared from the Don Bend except for a bridgehead at Kremenskaya.