The Road to Berlin (7 page)

Badanov sent me today eight signals. At the moment he is fighting in Tatsinskaya having taken up a circular defence. The corps has 39 T-34 tanks and 15 T-70 tanks. Right now our night aircraft are operating in the Tatsinskaya area, and with the morning all Front aviation will destroy the enemy in the Tatsinskaya–Skosyrskaya area. I ordered Badanov to hold on at Tatsinskaya, but I also informed him that if the worst comes to the worst he may take the other decision. [
IVOVSS
, 3, p. 49.]

Vatutin also transmitted a lengthy appreciation of his Front’s progress and an estimate of enemy intentions:

All the forces which were earlier facing the Front, i.e. about 17 divisions, can now be said to have been completely destroyed and their dumps captured by us. More than 60,000 men have been taken prisoner, no less a number killed, so that the sorry remnants of these former formations offer almost no resistance except in rare cases. Ahead of Front forces the enemy continues to offer stubborn resistance along the Oblivskaya–Verkhne Chirskaya front. In the area of Morozovsk prisoners were taken today from 11th
Panzer
Division and 8th Air Luftwaffe Field Division which were previously facing Romanenko’s army. The stiffest resistance to Lelyushenko’s army and our mobile troops is coming from enemy units which moved up to the Chernyshkovskii–Skosirskaya–Tatsinskaya.
These enemy troops are trying to hold a line in order to prevent the further offensive operation of our mobile formations and thus secure for themselves the possibility of pulling their own troops back, but perhaps the enemy, under favourable conditions for himself, will make the attempt to hang on to the whole of the salient in order later to try to rescue the encircled forces through it. However he will not succeed in this. All forces will be committed to eliminate that salient. [Zhukov,
Vosp
. (2), pp. 124–5.]

The German defence, Vatutin reported, would be on the Northern Donets:

Aerial reconnaissance produced daily reports of the movement of enemy forces into the following regions: Rossosh, Starobelsk, Voroshilovgrad, Chebotovka, Kamensk, Likhaya, Zverevo. It is difficult to judge enemy intentions, but apparently he is setting up his basic defence line on the Northern Donets. In the first place the enemy must seal off the breach made by our troops and which is 350 kilometres wide. It would be excellent to go on defeating the enemy without any special pause but for that it would be necessary to send reinforcements since the forces we have on the spot are taken up with completing
Small Saturn
, but for
Big Saturn
we need extra forces. [
Ibid.]

Both Zhukov and Stalin studied Vatutin’s messages, and sent him immediate instructions:

Your first task is not to allow Badanov to be destroyed and to despatch with all speed Pavlov and Russiyanov to help him. You took the correct decision when you gave Badanov permission to abandon Tatsinskaya if the worst came to the worst. Your linkup thrust on Tormosin with the 8th Cavalry Corps could well be reinforced with any infantry units to hand. As regards 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps and a rifle division driving through Suvorovskii on Tormosin, that is a very timely move. Over transforming
Small Saturn
into
Big Saturn
we have already sent you 2nd and 23rd Tank Corps. In the course of the next week you will get two more tanks corps and three to four rifle divisions.

We have some doubts about 18th Tank Corps which you wish to push in the direction of Skosirskaya: better to leave it in the area of Millerovo–Verkhne Tarasovskii, together with 17th Tank Corps. In general you must bear in mind that it is better to push tank corps along extended advances in pairs, rather than singly, so as not to get into Badanov’s position. [
Ibid
., p. 125.]

But where was 18th Tank Corps at the moment? Zhukov quizzed Vatutin immediately about the location of the corps. Vatutin replied that 18th Tank was due east of Millerovo and ‘will not be isolated’. In closing, Stalin repeated to Vatutin:

Remember Badanov, do not forget Badanov, get him out at any cost.

Vatutin promised:

We will take absolutely every possible measure and we will get Badanov out. [
Ibid
., p. 126.]

At 0130 hours on 29 December Vatutin sent Badanov orders for an ‘independent break-out’ from encirclement. No other decision was possible. Maj.-Gen. Pavlov’s 25th Tank Corps and Lt.-Gen. I.N. Russiyanov’s 1st Guards Mechanized Corps were fighting to Badanov’s left in the Tatsinskaya–Mozorovsk area, but they could not make contact with Badanov’s 24th Tank Corps. Half an hour later Badanov issued his own orders for the break-out. The critical fuel shortage was partly remedied by mixing German fuel-oil and aviation octane, pre-heating the fuel oil in tin cans, and pouring the final mixture into the fuel tanks of the remaining T-34s and T-70s. The corps formed itself into ‘a spike’ to pierce the German units holding the encirclement line. Under cover of darkness 24th Tank Corps suddenly burst out, hammering a gap in the German positions and then swinging out to left and right, making for the corps ‘base’ at Ilinka. Those tanks still with ammunition were used to provide covering fire for the staffs, kitchens, wheeled vehicles and the wounded to pull back first to the village of Nadezhevka and then on to Ilinka. German aircraft tried to destroy the Soviet tank units and a German column opened fire at extended range, but once in the area of Nadezhevka–Mikhailovka Badanov’s tanks were free of the encirclement. Badanov ordered Colonel Gavrilov, chief of the corps rear service, to ammunition the tanks from the supplies at Ilinka and the chief of staff to search for all corps units. Throughout 29 December, Soviet and German tank-gunners fought a prolonged duel along the Nadezhevka–Mikhailovka line; only in the evening did the German tanks move back on Tatsinskaya, where the supply-dumps at the railway station—set on fire as the Russians pulled out—continued to burn. On 30 December, in the area of Kostino, Badanov made contact with 25th and 1st Guards Corps, and on Zheltov’s orders he took command of a ‘tank group’ comprising all three mobile formations. The raid—which accounted for nearly 12,000 German casualties, pulled in 4,769 prisoners and destroyed 84 tanks, 106 guns and 431 aircraft—was over.

On the afternoon of 23 December, Manstein could no longer ignore the crucial situation which had built up on his left, where three Soviet tank formations roamed almost at will: on the lower Chir, 3rd Rumanian Army was directed to release 11th
Panzer
Division (which went after Badanov), while 6th
Panzer
was pulled out of Hoth’s assault force to bolster up the lower Chir. During the night of 23–24 December, Hoth appealed for the rescinding of the order about 6th
Panzer
Division—one final desperate push and LVII
Panzer
Corps would be close enough to the Stalingrad perimeter for Paulus to make his break-out; Army Group Don had taken its decision to strip Hoth of a vital division at a point when Sixth Army could no longer break out—Operation
Donnerschlag
—in time. Operation
Wintergewitter
(Winter Storm) and
Donnerschlag
(Thunderclap) remained dead letters. The whole structure was beginning to tumble in ruins as Soviet armies tore away miles and miles of front between Army Group B and
Don, as well as piling up mobile formations behind the Myshkova. On the ‘Kotelnikovo axis’ where Hoth was engaged, Soviet formations now totalled nineteen and a half divisions (149,000 men), 635 tanks and more than 1,500 guns. Vasilevskii’s plan presented to Stalin on 18 December had envisaged offensive operations beginning in four days (22 December) but on that date the requisite regrouping was by no means complete. Rotmistrov’s 7th Tank Corps was still engaged with 5th Shock Army and Bogdanov’s 6th Mechanized Corps had not yet arrived from
Stavka
reserve, while Volskii’s 4th Mechanized (awarded Guards status on 18 December as 3rd Guards Mechanized) had been drawn into reserve for replenishment in men and machines. Vasilevskii reported the delay to Stalin, but without recommending any basic change in plans (though reinforcement in armoured formations supplied several possibilities). The Guards rifle corps would attack with right-flank elements of 51st Army to destroy enemy units between the Myshkova and the Aksai, with the main attack being mounted by 1st Guards Rifle and 7th Tank Corps on the right between Chernomorov and Gromoslavka; while by the evening of 24 December, 2nd Guards Mechanized and 6th Mechanized Corps would reach the Aksai–Peregruznyi area to strike at the Rumanian units covering the flank of LVII
Panzer
Corps.

During the course of 23 December, Vasilevskii, Yeremenko and Malinovskii met at Verkhne-Tsaritsynskii to complete the attack plans. The next morning, at 0800 hours, ten minutes of Soviet artillery fire signalled the opening of the Soviet attack on the Myshkova, and by noon Malinovskii estimated that he could go for the flanks of 17th and 23rd
Panzer
Divisions by introducing 7th Tank and 2nd Guards Mechanized Corps straight away. That afternoon Lt.-Gen. G.F. Zakharov wrote a letter of congratulations to Volskii of 3rd Guards (Samsonov,
Ot Volgi do Baltiki
, p. 92):

Vasilii Timofeyevich [Volskii]

It has now become clear how much 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps has accomplished:

1.2nd Guards Army—fully concentrated.

2.Today, 24 December 1942, it went over to the general offensive and just now, at 1620 hours, its forward elements have taken Verkhne-Kumskii, Height 146.9.

3.6th Infantry and 23rd Panzer Divisions destroyed. The Party and the country will not forget the history of all this…. I am honoured that at a critical hour for our native land, for 4th Mechanized Corps, I was up with you. I am convinced—3rd GMK [Guards Mechanized Corps] will get to the Northern Caucasus.

Yours,
G. Zakharov

Within seventy-two hours, 3rd Guards Mechanized and 13th Tank Corps with 51st Army had smashed up the flimsy Rumanian positions after striking from the Sadovoe–Umantsevo area and had threatened a deep outflanking movement of the entire German ‘Kotelnikovo concentration’ from the south.
Armeegruppe Hoth
was forced back to the south-west, pressed back relentlessly out of range
of Sixth Army which was now left, alone and beleaguered, without hope of relief. Whatever hope there had been vanished on Christmas Eve 1942, though with the initiative east and west of the Don now firmly in Soviet hands the fate of nearly 300,000 men trapped in the Stalingrad pocket paled in comparison with the development of an enormous threat to Army Groups A, B and Don. Manstein might prejudice one army group in order to rescue Sixth Army, but not three.

Not that Stalin allowed Sixth Army to slip from his horizon. On the morning of 19 December he had telephoned Col.-Gen. Voronov, the Stavka ‘co-ordinator’ with the South-Western and Voronezh Fronts, which were only beginning to exploit their initial successes against the Italian formations on the middle Don, and opened as enigmatically as ever with his standard first question—
‘Kakova obstanovke na fronte?’
(‘What is the situation on the front?’), at which Voronov duly presented his report. What followed, however, was something Voronov had not anticipated. Stalin asked him if he could not wind up his work on the South-Western Front and return to the inner encirclement, a proposal which reduced Voronov to silence and thereby promoted Stalin’s displeasure:

You make no reply to the question I put. It seems to me that you do not wish to go.… Apparently you, like some other people, underestimate how important it is to us to liquidate the encircled German troops. You had better give this some serious thought. [
VIZ
, 1962 (5), p. 74.]

Such thought as Voronov did give the question—and it was no light matter to drop his ‘co-ordination’ at a crucial stage in Vatutin’s and Golikov’s operations—was rudely shattered on his receipt of formal
Stavka
orders (copies to Vasilevskii, Vatutin, Rokossovskii and Yeremenko):

(1)The Supreme Commander’s
Stavka
considers that comrade Voronov has in a thoroughly satisfactory manner carried out his assignment of co-ordinating the operations of the South-Western and the Voronezh Fronts, and moreover, since 6th Army (Voronezh Front) has been subordinated to the command of South-Western Front, comrade Voronov’s mission may be considered to have come to an end.

(2)Comrade Voronov is assigned to the area of the Don and Stalingrad Fronts in the capacity as deputy to comrade Vasilevskii for duties connected with the liquidation of the encircled enemy troops.

(3)Comrade Voronov as a
Stavka
representative and deputy to comrade Vasilevskii is instructed to present not later than 21.12.42 to the
Stavka
an operational plan for the liquidation of enemy troops in the space of five–six days. [
Ibid
., note to p. 74.]

The next day, 20 December, with two senior artillery generals (Velikov and Sivkov) and three officers, Voronov flew down to Zavarykin, ‘residence’ of the Don Front commander Rokossovskii. With less than two days in which to work out a new operational plan there was no time to lose, though time enough for
a brief consultation with Vasilevskii before he left to supervise the preparations for the attack on the Myshkova that was scheduled for 22 December.

The first job was to size up the opposition before settling on any plan. Colonel Vinogradov, intelligence officer on the Don Front, presented a report, estimating the strength of the encircled forces at ‘between 80–90,000 men’; asked to ‘be specific’, he settled for 86,000—five infantry divisions, two motorized divisions, three
Panzer
divisions and three ‘battle groups’. Front intelligence considered that rear-service units could make up for losses sustained by Sixth Army in its Stalingrad fighting, but this would not comprise appreciable reinforcement. Meanwhile transport aircraft brought in supplies and took out wounded or staff officers. (In its early stages, the air-lift had caused the Soviet command little concern, but early in December Stalin had ordered an ‘aerial blockade’ with a proper system of ground observation of aircraft movements and regular fighter interception; Colonel Podgornyi’s 235th Fighter Division was detailed for interceptor duties specifically against the German transports, though the weather wrought more havoc than fighters and
AA
guns.) Stalingrad was to be stormed a second time, but only slowly did it filter through the Soviet command what a formidable force had been walled in by the Soviet armies. One German transport plane forced down behind Soviet lines on its outward flight carried some 1,200 letters from German soldiers. On looking through them and checking names against formations, Voronov finally saw for himself that the ‘guard units’ mentioned by Front intelligence were in fact nothing less than full-scale German infantry divisions.