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

The Crisis of Heeresgruppe Don: Gruppe Hollidt, 1 January–14 February 1943

While Hoth’s panzers were delaying Eremenko’s drive to cut off Heeresgruppe A, Gruppe Hollidt was struggling protect the eastern approaches to Rostov from Vatutin’s Southwest Front. Rostov was the anchor for the entire German position in southern Russia and the supply lines for both von Manstein’s Heeresgruppe Don and von Kleist’s Heeresgruppe A ran through the city. Throughout December, Gruppe Hollidt’s primary mission had been to defend the airfields at Morozovskaya and Tatsinskaya, from which the Luftwaffe was conducting the airlift missions to the encircled AOK 6 at Stalingrad. However, after Vatutin’s ‘Little Saturn’ offensive began and the Tatsinskaya airfield was overrun by a Soviet mechanized raid on 24 December 1942, the Luftwaffe airlift was disrupted and Hollidt’s mission rationale began to erode.²⁵ Even though Tatsinskaya was reoccupied, both it and Morozovskaya were now too close to the front line and the Luftwaffe relocated the airlift mission to Salsk. By early January, Gruppe Hollidt had already fallen back from the Chir River under heavy pressure and was slowly drifting back to the Donetsk River.

On Hollidt’s left flank, another ad hoc formation – Armee-Abteilung Fretter Pico under General der Artillerie Maximillian Fretter-Pico – attempted to hold the area between the Don and Millerovo with a single complete infantry division, the 304. Infanterie-Division just arrived from Belgium, part of the Italian Ravenna Division and some flak units. Gruppe Kreysing, consisting of 6,000 German troops from the 3.Gebirgsjäger-Division was encircled inside Millerovo by the Soviet 17th and 18th Tank Corps from the 1st Guards Army. Kreysing was being supplied by air and had established a hedgehog defence supported by two artillery battalions, so the Soviet tankers unwisely decided to besiege the town until the 6th Guards Rifle Corps arrived. Fretter-Pico’s situation was even worse than Hollidt’s, but the Soviet fumbling around Millerovo for three vital weeks enabled him to cobble together a defence. In December, the OKH had created an independent tank unit – Panzer-Abteilung 138 – from two panzer replacement units in Germany and this battalion was provided with 30 brand-new Pz IV Ausf G and 8 Pz III Ausf L/M, then sent east by rail. On 4 January, Panzer-Abteilung 138 arrived at Kamenka and quickly deployed to provide a vital counter to the two Soviet tank corps in this sector. The sudden appearance of a fresh panzer unit in this sector was a tonic for German morale and helped to slow down the advance of the 1st Guards Army.

Although Hitler was opposed to unnecessary retreats, von Manstein recognized that the hidden benefit of retreating toward the Donets and Rostov was that German supply lines were shortening and it was becoming easier to bring reinforcements into battle by rail, whereas Vatutin’s supply lines were stretched to the breaking point and getting worse as they moved westward. Nevertheless, von Manstein’s Heeresgruppe Don was under great pressure in the centre and on both flanks and one mistaken command decision could lead to a disastrous encirclement; the only factor that blocked Vatutin from swiping the bedraggled units of Gruppe Hollidt out of his way was a handful of battle-worn Panzer-Divisionen and a single Panzer-Abteilung.