Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (24 page)

During the third week of the month, Third Panzer Army headquarters moved west by aerial transport to the Velikie Luki–Bely sector in an attempt to contain the 4th Shock Army. There, in an effort to create his own battle of annihilation, Zhukov endeavored to envelop Army Group Center by exploiting the break between it and Army Group North. Reinhardt’s new area of responsibility did not have a solid front line, but instead consisted of division – sized Igel fighting positions at Velikie Luki, Velizh and Demidov, all randomly linked by screening forces. His neighbor to the north, Sixteenth Army, had a similar arrangement, with its southern-most fortified location at Kholm. In between, Red cavalry units and bands of partisans were everywhere. Soon however, the Soviets fell victim to many of the same limitations as the Germans a month earlier: exhaustion, overstretch, German resistance, the rasputitsa and, perhaps most significantly, Stalin’s interference, which meant the end of the winter counteroffensive without exterminating Army Group Center.
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To the Germans, the spring of 1942 meant more than just the return of the seasonal rain and mud, it signaled the change from defense to offense. Specifically, the Wehrmacht made preparations for its summer offensive, Operation Blau, the attack on the southern front toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus oil region. Headquarters, Fourth Panzer Army would be one of Blau’s main players and it deployed to the Ukraine, so on 1 April, Third Panzer returned to the familiar Gzhatsk and Viazma sector in its place. In addition to the deception plan to convince the Soviets that the main German blow that year would once more aim at Moscow, Army Group Center formations reinforced their defenses and endeavored to clear their rear areas of Soviet conventional and partisan forces. One such operation was Hannover, conducted by Fourth Army from 24 May to 21 June. Reinhardt contributed elements of the IX Corps to mop up remains of Belov’s 1st Guards Cavalry, 4th Airborne Corps and their partisan comrades, which had stubbornly remained behind German lines. Third Panzer also lost the 20th Panzer Division to Ninth Army for its anti-partisan mission, Operation Seydlitz, which lasted from 2–12 July. Some major conventional combat operations took place along the central theater that summer as well. On 13 August, as part of a larger action to pinch off the bulge at Gzhatsk, the 33rd Army attacked Third Panzer’s right along the Vorya River. They hit the seam between the 183rd and 292nd Infantry Divisions in battalion strength, and soon added tanks in waves of twenty to forty. German artillery fired at tanks over open sights and Stukas added their bomb loads to the mix. On the 15th, a one-division counterattack surrounded the enemy’s main body. Reinhardt visited the command post of the 292nd and received a report from commander of 2nd Battalion, Infantry Regiment 507:

We succeeded in surprising the enemy. He had sought shelter from the rain and had security only in the north. After short but very lively house-to-house fighting, the Russians lost their heads and fled into the woods. His losses must have been great. But before daybreak we arrived at the new defense line as ordered with all of our elements intact and only slight losses.
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Reinhardt’s men counterattacked and mastered the situation. Move and counter-move by both sides did not venture into the operational realm, but were limited to tactical harassment operations. Soon both sides settled down to the routine of static defense, with the usual partisan activity bedeviling the Germans in increasing intensity.
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Attention remained riveted on the south that autumn and winter: the great battles around Stalingrad and the Caucasus, the Soviet Operations Uranus, Little Saturn and Ring and finally, von Manstein’s counter stroke that
eventually ended only in March 1943. By far the most serious fighting in von Kluge’s area had been against the Ninth Army’s salient at Rzhev. A second hot spot was at Velikie Luki, on the army group’s extreme left, defended by the corps-sized Group von der Chevallerie. On 16 January, under the blows of the 3rd Shock Army, the Germans lost the town. To master that situation, two weeks later, von Kluge once again pulled Third Panzer Army out of the line facing Moscow and returned it to the Velikie Luki area. As before, Reinhardt also assumed the mission of maintaining contact with Army Group North. Within days of arriving, he tried to recapture the town, but failed owing to the ‘appalling condition’ of the troops he had inherited.
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Fighting on the front lines ebbed and Third Panzer turned its attention to partisans in the rear. Its ‘front line existed mainly on maps, but in reality was a porous set of strongpoints’,
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often occupied by Luftwaffe field divisions of doubtful quality; partisan bands roamed free in the large gaps in between. At Surazh, near the center of his sector, Reinhardt launched Operation Kugelblitz with two security divisions against approximately 4–5,000 partisans. Between 15 February and 8 March, the Germans claimed 3,700 partisans killed. The focus in the spring and summer again shifted south, this time to Operation Citadel on the boundary of Army Groups Center and South. Reflecting the continued decline in the stature ofpanzer armies, Reinhardt’s command played no part in the fighting around the Kursk salient. With the unmitigated failure of the 1943 offensive, and in recognition of the swing in momentum from the Wehrmacht to the Red Army, on 12 August Hitler ordered work begun on a series of defensive works stretching the entire length of the eastern front. In Third Panzer’s area, this ‘Panther position’ ran north–south along a line east of Vitebsk and Nevel and west of Velikie Luki.
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However, the concept of such an ‘East Wall’ represented the Führer’s wishful thinking of a most dreamy nature. The Soviets had no intention of allowing the invaders such a comfortable luxury.

The Red Army wasted absolutely no time transitioning from strategic defense to strategic offense as soon as Citadel had shot its bolt in mid - July. Its first target in von Kluge’s area was the Orel bulge where the Second Panzer and Ninth Armies were soon overwhelmed. The scope of the Soviet assault soon spread north, first with the Western Front’s attack against Heinrici’s Fourth Army and then when Eremenko’s Kalinin Front attacked Reinhardt. During the second half of September, Eremenko overwhelmed the Third Panzer’s right flank, taking Velizh on 20 September and Demidov two days later. Not many hours after, VI Corps troops arrived at Surazh and the under-construction Panther position. Eremenko thereupon switched his main effort north to the junction of Army Groups Center and North. This was
the weakest point in the already weak German line and the terrain was equally terrible for attacker and defender alike. On 6 October, his 3rd and 4th Shock Armies hit the Luftwaffe’s 2nd Field Division near Budnitsa. After offering resistance against four rifle divisions and two tank brigades for a couple of hours, the division vaporized, creating an 18km gap between the two army groups. Reinhardt sent the 129th Infantry and some of his panzer army assets to buttress what was left of the II Luftwaffe Field Corps. Over 500 sorties of CAS flew in support of their brethren in blue, fighting for their survival on the ground. Nevel fell that same day and it had lost all contact with Army Group North, but Third Panzer seemed to be holding its own for the time being.
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On 9 October, Eremenko paused, allowing the Third Panzer to regain its footing. Field Marshal Ernst Busch, new Army Group Center commander, helped by sending the 20th Panzer Division and the 505th Heavy Panzer Battalion (Tiger tanks), while also authorizing a withdrawal to the Panther position. Toward the end of the month, the 1st Baltic Front (as Eremenko’s command was renamed on 1 October) launched some preparatory assaults that dented Reinhardt’s line. Its attacks began in earnest on 2 November. They promptly succeeded in cutting the Nevel–Polotsk rail line and by the 6th had reached Pustoshke on the panzer army’s left. Reinhardt assembled a counterattack force based on the 252nd Infantry Division, reinforced with a Nebelwerfer regiment, two battalions each of Sturmgeschütze and PAKs, plus one battalion each of pioneers and heavy artillery. The 20th Panzer participated as well, but when Army Group North did not contribute from the north as planned, Busch called off the attack after gaining barely 8km in 24 hours. That same day, 8 November, Eremenko again shifted his main effort, this time toward Vitebsk. The 206th Infantry stood alone against 8 rifle divisions, 2 rifle brigades, 2 tank brigades and a mechanized brigade. A relief counterattack by the 211th Security Division had to be cancelled when fog grounded the scheduled Luftwaffe CAS. By the 11th, the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps broke through Reinhardt’s right and made for Gorodek, thus threatening the panzer army’s line of communications. Meanwhile, 4th Shock had penetrated as far as Dretun, 50km in Third Panzer’s rear and dangerously close to Polotsk.
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The greater threat was connection to the strained right flank of Army Group North. With Gorodek and Vitebsk both in danger, Third Panzer had its share of worries. Reinhardt sensed another exposed salient developing around Vitebsk and requested permission from Busch to pull out of that town. The army group commander refused. Reinhardt told his men: ‘In this anxious hour, each of us has been called upon by the Führer to hold our positions until the last. Difficult weeks lay behind us. In spite of this, we will hold in the decisive hour. I believe in each of you. We must and will succeed!’
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On 24 November, Third Panzer received a break from an unexpected source: unseasonable warm weather occurred, causing a thaw that turned the countryside to mud. Both sides waited for the next frost, which came on 9 December. Four days later, the 4th Shock and 11th Guards Armies renewed their attacks, this time against the IX Corps at the Third Panzer’s northernmost extremity. Again Reinhardt requested to withdraw his almost-trapped elements. Again Busch told him ‘No’. By the 15th, enemy tanks stood behind IX Corps, now encased around Lobok. Only then did Hitler relent, but now it was too late for the two divisions inside. What two days earlier would have simply been an extremely difficult escape, turned into a very low-odds breakout. As happened with the Ostheer countless times, an encircled garrison marched out across enemy territory, leaving behind over one-quarter of its men and most of its heavy equipment. The final straw came on 17 December, when the 5th Tank Corps split the 20th Panzer from the 129th Infantry Division. On his own initiative, starting that day, Reinhardt ordered Third Panzer back.
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For the next few days, the Soviets probed 14th Panzergrenadier Division positions in front of Vitebsk. Then, on 23 December, 1st Baltic Front launched a new assault on the town from due east, sending portions of his 4th Shock, 11th Guards, 39th and 43rd Armies right between the 206th and 246th Infantry Divisions. On Christmas Eve, 5th Tank Corps achieved another penetration and rushed the town of Gorodek. Three days later, Busch sent one division each from Second and Ninth Armies to Reinhardt as reinforcements, but these were small consolation in the face of thirty-eight Soviet divisions and fifteen tank brigades. The newly arrived Feldherrnhalle Panzer Grenadier Division managed to put up a credible defense astride the Vitebsk–Orsha road in order to prevent the enemy from breaking any deeper into the German rear area. Into the first week of 1944, the Soviets lavished attention on Feldherrnhalle, but the division generally held its ground with the help of the 256th and 246th Infantry Divisions. A week later, another attack hit the Luftwaffe’s 6th Field Division, now down to 436 men.
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The Soviets refused to cut the panzer army any slack and kept up relentless pressure.

By 17 January, however, the 1st Baltic Front could go no farther. From left to right Reinhardt’s line included IX, LIII and VI Corps, but only one panzer division, the 20th, in this ‘panzer army’. He had between 60 and 80 additional operational AFVs in 3 Sturmgeschutz and Hornisse (Hornet) battalions. On 3 February, 1st Baltic Front was ready to try Vitebsk again. After 2½ hours of artillery preparation, elements of the 11th Guards, 4th Shock plus 5th, 33rd, 39th and 43rd Armies combined against the 131st and 206th Infantry Divisions to the southeast of the city (the Soviet main effort) and the 12th Infantry and part of the 20th Panzer to the northeast. Heavy fighting raged for days.

Red Army forces achieved a breakthrough on the 12th, but could not exploit their success due to deep snow drifts. Five days later, the Soviets called off the attack: Reinhardt’s men had held. A month later, on 13 March, Hitler’s Order #11 added Vitebsk to his list of Fester Platz cities that could not be surrendered. That spring, Third Panzer Army participated in anti-partisan operations Regenschauer (11–16 April) and Fruhlingsfest (16 April–10 May) around Ushachi and Kormoran across a large area generally north and northeast of Minsk (22 May–20 June).
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Reinhardt had demonstrated tactical skill in the unfamiliar role of the defense, especially considering the Ostheer’s deteriorating position and the Red Army’s growing confidence. Like the Second Panzer to the south, Third Panzer had hardly played an operational role in the eighteen months following Barbarossa. All it could do was to observe the Soviet build-up across the front and wonder what would happen next?

‘Next’ came the destruction of Army Group Center, a disaster, in terms of German men and materiel lost, worse than Stalingrad. The Soviets had numerous reasons to emphasize the central theater: 1. Many German units were defending there (or to put it another way, many German units could be destroyed there); 2. Since an offensive in this area would directly threaten the German Reich and put Army Groups North and North Ukraine in a position of severe disadvantage, Hitler was bound to send reinforcements there, and these would also be ripe for the picking; 3. Soviet forces elsewhere, especially in the northern Ukraine, had taken a bad beating, despite recovering much territory since the previous summer; 4. The partisan movement was very strong in this region and would assist the Red Army, and; 5. It was unexpected by the Germans. Busch’s headquarters knew the Soviets were preparing an offensive, it just did not know in what strength. Intelligence officers of the Third Panzer.and other armies in the area saw unmistakable signs of an impending attack.
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Considering the massive violence Stalin threw at Army Group Center that summer, this foreknowledge would only help so much.