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

From their starting positions, the huge Tractor Factory was visible. At dawn on 24 August, Hube moved two kampfgruppen toward the suburbs of Spartanovka, but the Soviets were just able to rush NKVD infantry and fifty T-34s from the StZ factory to prevent the Germans from making any headway. General-major Nikolai V. Feklenko organized an armoured counterattack that caught the Germans off-balance and succeeded in overrunning the command post of Kampfgruppe Krumpen; Hube failed to seize Spartanovka and by nightfall his division was forced to concentrate into three defensive hedgehogs.

Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division’s drive to the Volga, 23 August, and Soviet armoured counterattack, 26 August 1942.

Stalin reacted to Hube’s breakthrough to the Volga with fury and ordered General-polkovnik Andrei I. Yeremenko’s newly-named Southeastern Front to launch an immediate counter-offensive to crush the XIV Panzerkorps. The Stavka committed the 2nd, 4th and 16th Tank Corps, plus the battered 23 rd Tank Corps, to the operation, with a total of 600 tanks, but it took two days for them to reach their assembly areas. This collection of armour included about fifty KV-1 and 250 T-34 tanks, but the rest consisted of T-60 and T-70 light tanks. Yeremenko sensibly planned for a pincer attack against both sides of the XIV Panzerkorps’ narrow corridor, but the actual amount of time provided for planning and preparation was the usual inadequate five to six hours. Once again, Stalin forced the Red Army to launch its armoured forces into an uncoordinated, piecemeal effort that undermined their 10–1 local superiority in tanks. The two Soviet armoured assault groups attacked both sides of the corridor on the morning of 26 August, but encountered heavy fire from dug-in panzerjäger units. Fliegerkorps VIII harassed Soviet armoured concentrations, relentlessly pounding them with Stuka attacks. While the Soviet armour did succeed in cutting through the corridor after three days fighting and interfering with Hube’s lines of communication, they did so at the cost of about 500 tanks. All four Soviet tank corps were rendered combat-ineffective. While Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division was hurt, it managed to hold its ground and Luftwaffe aerial resupply mitigated the temporary loss of ground communications. Zhukov, who arrived from Moscow as a Stavka representative on 29 August, claimed that Yeremenko’s counteroffensive – which he took credit for – had saved Stalingrad. Nevertheless, by 30 August von Wietersheim had restored ground communications with Hube and Yeremenko had lost the battle of the corridor. Paulus’ AOK 6 and Hoth’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps then gradually pushed the Soviet forces back into Stalingrad.

Having failed to seize Stalingrad by coup de main, Paulus was forced to conduct a deliberate offensive into the city, but he was not ready to do so until 14 September. It is not my intent to detail all operations around Stalingrad in September–October 1942, but to highlight how armoured forces were employed in urban combat. Up to this point, the Germans had very limited experience with employing tanks in urban areas and it had been very unpleasant. German doctrine also militated against using large armoured units in cities, yet Paulus decided upon this course of action because AOK 6 lacked sufficient infantry and Hitler was insistent that the city be captured as soon as possible. Paulus’ first assault into the city center began on 14 September, using the 14 and 24.Panzer-Divisionen, 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) and five infantry divisions, supported by the 243 and 245 Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen. The German armoured units were already quite depleted at the start of the fight for the city, with Generalmajor Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild’s 24. Panzer-Division reduced to only thirty-four operational tanks. On 4 September, von Hauenschild was badly wounded during fighting on the outskirts of Stalingrad and replaced by Generalmajor Arno von Lenski. By the time that Paulus’ offensive began on 14 September, the 24.Panzer-Division was reduced to only twenty-two operational tanks and 56 per cent of its personnel.⁶³