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

Kampfgruppe Sauvantfrom 14.Panzer-Division continued to support the XI Armeekorps west of Stalingrad, while 16 and 24.Panzer-Divisionen also sent small kampfgruppen to Golubinskaya, north of Kalach. Paulus focused more effort on refusing both his right and left flanks to conform to Soviet advances, rather than making an earnest effort to use his available armour to try and protect his lines of communication – he acted as if that was somebody else’s job. As Soviet armour approached Kalach on 22 November, there were only German rear area troops holding the bridge over the Don and Paulus actually pulled his armour in closer to Stalingrad away from Kalach after 16.Panzer-Division lost five tanks in skirmishes. However, Kampfgruppe Sauvant retreated down the rail line toward Kotelnikovo, thereby salvaging a kernel of 14.Panzer-Division – eighteen tanks and one panzer-grenadier company – from the impending kessel.⁷⁶

It came as no surprise that the lead elements of Kravchenko’s 4th Tank Corps linked up with Volskii’s 4th Mechanized Corps near Kalach at 1400 hours on 23 November – completing the encirclement of AOK 6. Inside the Stalingrad kessel, the encircled AOK 6 included Hube’s XIV Panzerkorps with 14, 16 and 24.Panzer-Divisionen, as well as the 3, 29 and 60.Infanterie-Division (mot.), plus the 243 and 245.Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen and three self-propelled Panzerjäger-Abteilungen equipped with Marder II tank destroyers. Stalingrad was an epic disaster for Germany’s Panzertruppen, with six of twenty-five mechanized divisions and twelve of forty-six Panzer-Abteilungen trapped inside the kessel.

With the kessel formed, the three Soviet fronts tried to increase the distance between Paulus’ AOK 6 and potential help by advancing further southward, but Romanenko’s 5th Tank Army failed to get across the Chir River. Heeresgruppe B quickly formed Gruppe Hollidt with some remnants of the Romanian 3rd Army and German support troops to hold the Chir River line. Operation Uranus demonstrated that the Red Army’s armoured forces could conduct complex, mobile operations if allowed time to prepare a proper offensive. Soviet victory at Stalingrad was not due to superior numbers of tanks – that approach failed in July–August – but upon careful planning and bold tactical action, enhanced by cunning exploitation of maskirovka to deceive the enemy and timing during bad weather to deprive the enemy of their air support. Another reason that Operation Uranus succeeded was that Zhukov – who was preoccupied with his own Operation Mars against the Rzhev salient – had little or nothing to do with it. His command style of ruthless bullying of subordinates, reckless disregard of casualties and utter subservience to Stalin’s incessant demand for immediate results could have greatly undermined the Red Army’s performance at Stalingrad.

Wintergewitter , 12–19 December

Even before the Soviet armoured pincers met at Kalach, Hitler ordered Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein, who was on the Leningrad Front, to proceed to Rostov and take charge of the new Heeresgruppe Don. Hitler directed von Manstein to ‘bring the enemy’s attacks to a standstill and recapture the positions previously occupied by us.’ Unwilling to fly directly to Rostov with his staff, von Manstein did not arrive there until 26 November and Heeresgruppe Don was not operational until the next day. At that point, he took command over AOK 6 inside the Stalingrad kessel, General der Infanterie Karl Hollidt’s scratch force on the Chir River and Hoth’s shattered command, which had managed to hold onto the vital rail station at Kotelnikovo. While von Manstein was en route to Rostov, Hitler directed the Luftwaffe to begin a major airlift to sustain the AOK 6 inside the Stalingrad kessel. On 24 November, Generaloberst Wolfram von Richtofen’s Luftflotte 4 commenced the Stalingrad airlift, using Tatsinskaya and Morozovskaya airfields as the primary operating bases for his squadrons of Ju-52 transports. The airlift rarely delivered more than 10–15 per cent of AOK 6’s logistic needs, so the armoured forces within the pocket quickly declined due to lack of fuel and ammunition.⁷⁷ By late November, Paulus’ AOK 6 was reduced to essentially an all-infantry force with very little mobility or organic fire support, but still capable of determined defense.