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

In order to provide von Manstein’s new command some striking power, the OKH began transferring panzer divisions to Heeresgruppe Don. Generalmajor Erhard Raus’ 6.Panzer-Division, which had just completed refitting in France, was en route when Operation Uranus began and was the first reinforcement to arrive. The 6.Panzer-Division was a superbly-equipped armoured outfit with 159 tanks (twenty-one Pz.II, seventy-three Pz.IIIL/M, thirty-two Pz.IIIN, twenty-four Pz.IVG and nine PzBef) and six Marder III tank destroyers. The lead elements of Raus’ division reached Kotelnikovo on 27 November, but the first tanks of Panzer-Regiment 11 did not arrive until 3 December and they were immediately sent into action when the Soviet 51st Army conducted a spoiling attack with the 65th Tank Brigade and 81st Cavalry Division. A major tank action occurred near the village of Pokhlebin, 12km northwest of Kotelnikovo, on the morning of 5 December, involving about ninety tanks from Panzer-Regiment 11, the II (SPW)/Panzergrenadier-Regiment 114 and anti-tank troops in a meeting engagement against about sixty tanks from the 65th Tank Brigade. First blood went to the T-34s, which ambushed Major Franz Bäke’s kampfgruppe and knocked out four Pz.IVs in one company and three Pz.IIIs in another company. The Germans managed to regroup and, with the help of their artillery and panzerjägers, repulse the Soviet spoiling attack. Although about 2,000 cavalrymen were captured in mop-up operations, the tank skirmish at Pokhlebin was ample demonstration that the quality of Soviet tankers was improving. Overall, the Germans lost two Pz.III, three Pz.IV and one Marder III destroyed and ten more tanks damaged, against eleven Soviet tanks destroyed – a not very favorable exchange ratio for the Germans.⁷⁸ Raus tried to whitewash this outcome in his not-very-accurate memoirs, claiming that his Panzer-Regiment 11 ‘destroyed’ the Soviet 4th Cavalry Corps in a masterful double envelopment at Pokhlebin and knocked out fifty-six tanks from the 65th Tank Brigade. He embellished the tale by recounting ‘immortal deeds of heroism’ on the part of his troops – postwar German accounts like this have helped to create a mythology about German panzer operations that obscures the fact that by late 1942 armoured battles on the Eastern Front were becoming less one-sided.⁷⁹

Heeresgruppe Don’s lateral lines of communication were awful, which, combined with winter weather, seriously hindered the German deployment of additional panzer divisions to Heeresgruppe Don. General der Panzertruppen Hermann Balck’s 11.Panzer-Division, with seventy-eight tanks, departed from Roslavl and detrained near Morozovskaya airfield on 5 December. The 23.Panzer-Division, with Heeresgruppe A in the Caucasus, began moving north on 24 November, first by rail to Ssalsk, then on its own tracks to Kotelnikovo, which was hindered by snow and ice. While en route, Panzer-Regiment 201 received twenty-two new Panzer IVGs, bringing its armoured strength up to about sixty-two tanks.⁸⁰ Lastly, the OKH transferred the 17.Panzer-Division from Orel, but this unit was still en route on 10 December. Manstein assigned the 6 and 23.Panzer-Division to General der Panzertruppen Friedrich Kirchner’s LVII Panzerkorps and the 11 and 17.Panzer-Divisionen to General der Panzertruppen Otto von Knobelsdorff’s XXXXVIII Panzerkorps.