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

The rest of the campaign from 18–27 January was essentially an Axis retreat and a slow Soviet pursuit. The remnants of Gruppe Cramer and the Hungarians fell back to the Oskol River where they managed to stop the 40th Army’s advance for a while. Hitler did indeed transfer the Großdeutschland Division from Heeresgruppe Mitte to reinforce the line on the Oskol, but this was still a drop in the ocean. Amazingly, the Italian Alpine Corps fought its way out of encirclement by 29 January but all three of its divisions were ruined and it suffered over 30,000 casualties. In the south, the collapse of XXIV Panzerkorps forced the Axis forces to abandon Starobelsk and retreat behind the Donets River; this unfortunate formation lost two more commanders between 20–21 January.[6] The XXIV Panzerkorps was reduced to about 2,500 troops and both the 27.Panzer-Division and 385.Infanterie-Division were disbanded soon afterwards. Altogether, the Hungarians had suffered about 100,000 casualties and the Italians 30–40,000. Rybalko’s army had won a significant operational victory, in conjunction with the 40th Army, which knocked both the Italian 8th Army and the Hungarian 2nd Army out of action and thereby created a 190km-wide gap in Heeresgruppe B’s front; von Weichs could not plug all the gaps and his new line on the Oskol River was little more than a speed bump.

Rybalko’s 3rd Tank Army was worn down by the rapid advance and its forward brigades were short on fuel and ammunition, but it was flush with victory. Every German armoured unit involved in opposing the Soviet offensive was either destroyed, dispersed or otherwise rendered combat ineffective – Heeresgruppe B was virtually stripped of armour. Although the two-week long Soviet Ostrogozhsk–Rossosh Offensive is not well known today, it represents a clear indicator that Operation Uranus was not a fluke in November 1942 and that the Red Army was learning how to conduct effective combined arms warfare. The Soviet use of Maskirovka in order to achieve operational surprise, as well as massing fires and using manoeuvre to exploit a breakthrough, were professionally executed. However, the operation also indicated lingering Soviet problems with logistical sustainment in mobile operations and Rybalko’s tank army was unable to maintain its combat power for long due to shortages.

Heeresgruppe Mitte’s trials at Rzhev and Velikiye Luki, 1 January–1 March 1943

For the period January–February 1943, most histories of the Eastern Front tend to focus on the Soviet offensives across the Don and the German counter-offensive at Kharkov, while ignoring the rest of the Eastern Front. In fact, the Soviet Winter Offensive of 1942–43 was across the board and inflicted significant damage on the Ostheer in both Heeresgruppe Mitte and Heeresgruppe Nord. More than half of the Ostheer’s casualties in January 1943 occurred in the northern and central sectors of the front, not the south.[7] Indeed, had the Red Army allowed these other sectors to remain relatively quiet, von Manstein and von Weichs would have received considerably more reinforcements from these commands. Despite the defeat of Zhukov’s Operation Mars in November– December 1942, both the Western and Kalinin Fronts continued to pound on Generaloberst Walter Model’s 9.Armee in the Rzhev salient during January 1943, which necessitated Heeresgruppe Mitte keeping five Panzer-Divisionen and three Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen in this hard-pressed sector. Only the Großdeutschland Division was transferred south. Eventually, Model was able to convince Hitler that it was no longer worth the sacrifice to hold the Rzhev salient and that the resources required to hold the salient could be better used in the south. On 6 February, Hitler finally authorized Model to evacuate the Rzhev salient, although the operation would not begin until 1 March. Consequently, the mass of Heeresgruppe Mitte’s panzers and assault guns remained in the Rzhev sector throughout the winter campaign.