Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1943-1945: Red Steamroller

Due to the drawn-out Polish rebellion in Warsaw, which the Germans were allowed to crush undisturbed, the Stavka decided to temporarily suspend operations in the centre of the Eastern Front and concentrate on the flanks. The 1st Baltic Front struggled to sever Heeresgruppe Nord’s lines of communication through Riga, but PzAOK 3 was reinforced and mounted another counter-offensive on 16 September with nearly 400 tanks – one of the last major German armoured operations of this size on the Eastern Front. However, the effort failed to remove the threat to the corridor and lost one-third of its tanks. The Red Army’s tank units were now plentifully equipped with the T-34/85 and even the JS-2 was available in significant numbers. Every time the Germans managed to scrape together an armoured force, it ran straight into a wall of anti-tank guns and was constantly attacked by Soviet fighter-bombers. The Luftwaffe could no longer protect the Panzer-Divisionen. After absorbing the German counter-attacks, the 1st Baltic Front began its own massive offensive on 6 October, using the 5 GTA as its battering ram. The 3 PzAOK disintegrated and retreated into East Prussia, while the 5 GTA reached the Baltic on 10 October. By 15 October, Riga fell and Heeresgruppe Nord was isolated in the Courland Peninsula, where it remained for the rest of the war. The 4. and 12.Panzer-Divisionen were among the isolated units. Instead of evacuating these two armies by sea to reinforce the defence of East Prussia, Hitler ordered them to remain where they were, although some units were evacuated in January 1945. Amazingly, the Soviets decided to keep attacking the Courland Pocket all winter – even though it made little military sense – and lost over 1,000 tanks for minimal gains.

The other major focus for the Stavka was the Balkans. Romania was completely occupied by the end of September and the 1st and 4th Ukrainian Fronts advanced into Hungary, while the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts marched into Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The German PzAOK 1 and PzAOK 4 put up a stiff fight in the Carpathians, particularly at Dukla Pass in eastern Czechoslovakia in September. At Debrecen, the Germans managed a counter-attack that destroyed Pliev’s mobile cavalry-mechanized group, although this was just a tactical victory. Since AOK 6 had been destroyed yet again in Romania, the OKH decided to form a new 6.Armee, even though it only had the decimated 13.Panzer-Division and a single infantry division. Pursued by Tolbukhin’s forces, AOK 6 retreated into southeastern Hungary and by the end of October nearly half of Hungary had been overrun and Belgrade had been liberated. In November, Malinovsky’s 2nd Ukrainian Front made a push for Budapest, but did not encircle the city until 26 December 1944.

Amazingly, Germany succeeded in recreating fronts in both the east and west, while their opponents outran their supply lines. Yet instead of using this respite to rebuild his forces in the East, Hitler decided to allocate his remaining armoured reserves for a grand, nonsensical counter-stroke in the West in the Ardennes. All the best armoured units went to the Ardennes, leaving mostly burnt-out or untried divisions in the East. Yet the Ardennes offensive failed and squandered Germany’s last armoured reserves. In addition to ill-conceived counter-strokes, the Germans also decided to upgrade the Großdeutschland division to a corps-size formation, and the same was done with the Hermann Göring division; this was a foolish waste of resources on a few elite units while the rest of the Panzer-Divisionen were starved of replacements. The second division in Panzerkorps Großdeutschland, Panzergrenadier-Division Brandenburg, was poorly equipped and its Panzer-Regiment only had a single battalion equipped with a mix of Panthers, Pz IVs, Pz IIIs, assault guns and SPW half-tracks.⁴⁹